The New York attorney general has begun a sweeping investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.
Following a series of meetings, proponents of the various tax-extension proposals say they are exploring a compromise that would raise money into a special fund to pay for schools and colleges as well as healthcare programs. Involved in the talks are the Service Employees International Union, California Teachers Association, California Hospital Association and the California Medical Association.
The proposed initiative, supported by the Service Employees International Union’s state council, would boost the base wage to $15 per hour by 2020, and mandate six paid sick days a year. The current $9-an-hour minimum wage is scheduled to increase to $10 on Jan. 1.
Educational bureaucrats are very prone to writing documents in “edu-speak,” a jargon for insiders. The “multiple measures” plan now being drafted is a monument to such deliberate obfuscation.
But if our schools aren’t performing particularly well, those who run the schools are again demonstrating their unmatched ability to make excuses for failure.
California environmental regulators zeroed in on tropical deforestation Wednesday as a top cause of global climate change and looked for ways to halt the destruction of distant forests through the state’s pioneering carbon cap-and-trade program.
Like hoarders, various groups find contentment in the classification mess they helped create. Unions and governors (including Brown) bargained new classifications as pay raises by another name. Departments added classifications over the years to control their own hiring. Sometimes state law adds new classifications.
Severe drought struck the state four decades ago. Since then, California has spent untold billions of dollars on supposedly addressing its severe imbalance between water supply and demand. But we never really did anything concrete, leaving us extremely vulnerable when severe drought struck again.
David Miller, the president of the scientists’ union, notes that annual raises last year to his members’ managers averaged $42,000 to comply with a like-pay for like-work court ruling. Rank-and-file scientists thought they’d be next. The bargained agreement didn’t come close.
Sixteen years after it abetted one of the most irresponsible political acts in state history – a massive increase in public pension benefits – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System may finally be reforming.
Tragically, in other words, the efforts devoted to raising the academic achievement of low-income children went for naught. Other factors, such as poverty and familial and peer influences, prevailed.
California is a high-tax state – relative not only to what’s happening elsewhere but to our own economy. But how high is not easy to figure out because we not only pay a lot of taxes that are obvious, such as those on income, retail sales and automotive fuel, but many that are virtually hidden.
When California’s electric power system went into a virtual meltdown 15 years ago, one might think it would have cured politicians’ urges to fiddle with its operations.
“Taken together, the voluminous data dumps reveal that those on the upper rungs of the economic ladder, and the communities in which they cluster, particularly in the Bay Area, are doing well. However, very large portions of the state, both geographically and sociologically, are struggling.”
“Rice grown in Arkansas and other Southern states has filled much of the void, along with rice from Europe and Australia. It’s likely just a temporary shift. But after back-to-back years of weak crops, some Sacramento Valley growers are starting to worry about their long-term international prospects even if El Niño packs a serious punch this winter, as some forecasters predict.”