California’s State Auditor last week released its updated assessment of high-risk issues that loom over the state, and the failure to keep up with the state’s infrastructure needs made the cut.
“Paramount Pictures announced layoffs on Tuesday as part of the studio’s effort to cut costs.
The Hollywood studio, owned by Viacom Inc. of New York, notified employees that 110 staffers will be cut from departments including finance, human resources, IT, legal and marketing.”
A Texas-based conservative think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis, has entered the debate by launching an interactive website that allows users to calculate the tax effects of moving from one state to another.
US factory activity expanded last month at the fastest pace in 2 ½ years, an encouraging sign that manufacturing could lift economic growth and hiring in the coming months.
California’s State Auditor last week released its updated assessment of high-risk issues that loom over the state, and the failure to keep up with the state’s infrastructure needs made the cut.
“The Census Bureau reported recently that 15 percent of California’s 38 million residents were living in poverty last year, the 20th highest rate in the nation.
However, an experimental Census Bureau method of gauging poverty, which includes a cost-of-living factor, puts California’s rate at more than 23 percent, the nation’s highest.”
“Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly pledged to tear down what he calls California’s “”wall of debt.””
But Brown’s definition of that debt wall – about $30 billion in accumulated deficits from recent state budgets – is less than 10 percent of the debt that state and local governments have amassed, according to a new compilation by the California Taxpayers Association, if one includes unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions.
Cal-Tax researchers counted $443 billion in state and local debts, roughly two-thirds of it carried by the state and the other third by local agencies. That’s the equivalent of a fifth of the state’s annual economic output and amounts to $11,600 for each of California’s 38 million residents. “
“Gov. Jerry Brown has repeatedly pledged to tear down what he calls California’s “”wall of debt.””
But Brown’s definition of that debt wall – about $30 billion in accumulated deficits from recent state budgets – is less than 10 percent of the debt that state and local governments have amassed, according to a new compilation by the California Taxpayers Association, if one includes unfunded liabilities for public employee pensions.
Cal-Tax researchers counted $443 billion in state and local debts, roughly two-thirds of it carried by the state and the other third by local agencies. That’s the equivalent of a fifth of the state’s annual economic output and amounts to $11,600 for each of California’s 38 million residents. “
There was no fanfare, no big press conference, not even a signing statement (though maybe this should have sufficed). In the end, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Sen. Darrell Steinberg’s final CEQA reform bill late on a Friday afternoon, a time-honored way to avoid media attention.
“Los Angeles has the highest poverty rate among California counties, according to a new analysis announced Monday that upends traditional views of rural and urban hardship by adding factors such as the soaring price of city housing.
The measurement, developed by researchers with the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, found that 2.6 million, or 27%, of Los Angeles County residents lived in poverty in 2011. The official poverty rate for the county, based on the U.S. Census’ 2011 American Community Survey, is 18%.”
The head of Germany’s largest utility has warned it will be years before Europe can hope to counter the US’s growing advantage in energy costs and predicts that the disparity will meanwhile lead heavy industry to abandon the continent.
California state and local governments face more than $443 billion in outstanding liabilities from borrowing, deferrals, and other unfunded financial obligations.
State regulators gathered at a green stamp-making business Thursday to unveil what they tout as the nation’s best approach to identify consumer products containing hazardous chemicals and prod manufacturers to find nontoxic substitutes.
After 10+ Years of Losses, California Posted its First Back-to-Back Years of Manufacturing Job Gains in 2011 & 2012.
“California’s non-solar homeowners are paying a growing share of maintaining the power grid under a controversial state policy, while ratepayers with solar rooftops are paying less, a report commissioned by the state’s utility regulator said on Thursday.
The report, which was issued by the California Public Utilities Commission but performed by an outside research firm, forecast that in 2020, the policy of “”net metering”” would cost $1.1 billion a year. It will shift about $359 million in costs a year from customers with solar panels to other ratepayers. Residential customers who have no solar panels would bear about $287 million of those costs.”