Obama should know better than to mess with an Angelinos’ commute — it’s bad enough with presidential gridlock.

But the prez came to town to raise $$$ and made a lot of people hopping mad.

LAT

We have one word for you, Mr. President, the next time you want to sweep into Los Angeles late on a weekday afternoon: Helicopter. That way, you can avoid the streets the rest of us mere residents must use to get around.

President Obama’s fundraising mission in Los Angeles on Monday evening may have been a whirlwind trip for him, but it was a tedious slog for the thousands who found themselves in gridlock from the Westside to downtown.

A Brentwood resident’s two-mile jaunt took 45 minutes. An Echo Park couple who left home at 5:30 p.m. found their usual 20-minute drive west to Olympic and Rimpau boulevards took a whopping hour and 15 minutes. An attorney left his Miracle Mile-area office at 5:45 p.m. and sat unmoving in traffic for 45 minutes.

No matter their politics, Los Angeles residents found themselves united. “It was a beautiful thing,” said Brentwood resident Myles Berkowitz, commiserating with his neighbors on Montana Avenue. “Young, old, black, white — everyone was pissed off.”

Doug McIntyre in the Daily News:

I wasn’t invited to meet President Obama at Monday night’s million-dollar Democratic Party fundraiser at the Hancock Park home of big-time TV producer John Wells.

Which doesn’t mean I didn’t get to participate.

Our president promised to unite Americans. Give the man his due – on Monday he united tens of thousands of us by creating a massive, hours-long traffic jam that was felt from the Westside to the Valley and back.

Obama’s motorcade from LAX bridged the divide between left and right, rich and poor, black, white and Latino. When you mess with L.A. traffic, you mess with E Pluribus Unum. The president’s motorcade route resembled a Lakers victory parade minus the joy, cheering and burning taxis. For the record, that wasn’t the “We’re #1!” finger greeting Obama on Olympic Boulevard.

While the glitterati hobnobbed at the president’s soiree at $30,000 a head, the rest of Los Angeles could go pound sand. It’s official: our time is not nearly as precious as Steven Spielberg’s.

We have to protect the president, and sadly, this president more than most. Obama, or Bush before him, or any president shouldn’t have to take the Super Shuttle from LAX. But there’s a difference between tight security and Caesar-like imperial contempt for the peasantry. That’s what L.A. experienced on Monday.

Thousands found themselves trapped in their cars for hours while searching for an escape route – only to be lost in a closed maze of streets. So much for CO2 s killing the planet.

Many abandoned their vehicles and tried to make it home on foot only to be prevented by the LAPD from crossing the street, and this was happening miles from Hancock Park, and long after the president had safely arrived for his champagne and caviar summit with Spielberg and company. Who planned this trip for Obama, the Republicans?

LA Daily News

Battling back against the tough economic times, thousands of union members swarmed outside Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, calling on city leaders and politicians to save jobs, create more work and stop outsourcing.

“Today is a national call for good jobs now,” said Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

“It starts in L.A., but it’s going to make its way all across the United States of America.”

You betcha, hon’.

Except the wave is  against government unions with their greed, self interest, inflated salaries and pensions, and lack of accountability.

Why, to listen to you, we private citizens owe it to you to tax ourselves to create plumb jobs for your gang. Public servants? Hardy har har.

…Kenneth Hermosillo, a 42-year-old sheet metal worker from Torrance who has been unable to find work for a year and a half.

“We’ve got to get building going back,” Hermosillo said. “Once we get building going, people start working, taxes get paid, people start eating out. It’s the whole trickle-down theory.”

Nice to hear a presumed Democrat cite trickle down economics, but he’s got the theory wrong.

Government spends money taxed from those who produce wealth. Government does not create wealth. The trickle starts with the private sector.

How to get the private sector generating wealth and jobs?

Bush did it with tax cuts that put more money into the private economy.  Democrat policy is the opposite.

These union folks are barking up the wrong tree.

One final dig: can’t you folks make up your own signs and slogans?

The OC Register’s Watchdog looks into Jerry Brown’s pension and hits a brick wall.

As Jerry Brown grabbed the spotlight with his critaicism of Bell city officials and their outrageous pensions, The Watchdog got to wondering: How much will the Democrat for Governor make in retirement?

That, as it turns out, is a very difficult question to answer. After more than a month of investigation, the Watchdog can only say for certain that Brown and a handful of other top officials are eligible for generous benefits under a special pension fund so obscure that few people in government know how it works and many thought it had been eliminated 20 years ago by outraged voters.

Under the law, Brown should have accrued, at most, 16 years of service credit in this special fund, known as the Legislators’ Retirement System, or LRS. Actuarial statements produced by LRS, however, indicate that an unnamed person of Brown’s age and earning Brown’s exact salary has been credited with 25 to 29 years of service. The difference would mean tens of thousands of dollars in additional pension payments for Brown each year.

Brown’s campaign staff acknowledge the unnamed person sure looks like the gubernatorial candidate but have been unable to explain the discrepancy over service.

Officials at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which manages LRS, have similarly refused to cooperate, saying the law forbids them from answering questions about specific individuals. Meanwhile, The Watchdog has sought help from the offices of seven state lawmakers, one constitutional officer and one state department as well three outside pension experts and not one has been able to explain the discrepancy…

Oh, sweet irony:

The California Nurses Association, one of the state’s most powerful labor unions, saying it “won’t be pushed around” by Meg Whitman, unveiled a scathing ad campaign Friday seizing on an altercation between the former eBay CEO and one of her employees…

Pete Peterson in City Journal on how California’s Meg Whitman could learn from Governor Chris Christie.

The California Nurses Association—one of the state’s strongest unions—recently launched a new advertising campaign under the slogan, “Nurses Won’t Be Pushed Around.” The tagline refers to a recent New York Times story describing an apparent physical altercation between Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman and an eBay employee back in 2007, while Whitman was still the company’s CEO. Playing up the class angle, activists for the union—which has endorsed Whitman’s opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown—have carried signs calling Whitman “Queen Meg” alongside images of cash and gold. The new line of attack highlights what’s becoming the central identity question for the Whitman campaign: will unions succeed in framing her as an aloof, pampered billionaire incapable of understanding the issues of “everyday” Californians, or will those same Californians see her as a Margaret Thatcher-like “Iron Lady” who can bring the state back to some semblance of fiscal sanity?

On the other side of the country, New Jersey governor Chris Christie knows something about Whitman’s plight. In his efforts to bring state spending on unionized personnel under control, Christie’s brash leadership style (Time described him as a “human bulldozer”) is providing a strategic and personal template for budget-conscious governors—and aspiring governors—even as he’s become a target for unions and liberal legislators. Recent polling on his job performance highlights the potential costs of this type of governance—but also the opportunities. Whitman and her team should study the Christie example closely.

Christie has become a YouTube hero to fiscal conservatives for his videotaped speeches in support of his “Cap 2.5” plan to slow the state’s property-tax and spending growth to 2.5 percent annually. He’s effectively focused responsibility for out-of-control municipal salaries and benefits on union organizations and not on individual employees like nurses, firefighters, and teachers. During a talk in early June, the governor proclaimed that his effort to cut back K–12 funding was “not about teachers, and let’s make this really clear: the overall majority of teachers are in there for the right reasons—they love kids . . . but, the union is a different story.” At each of his public engagements, Christie is careful to make this distinction, and it’s a central one, politically, if he hopes to prevail. Public-sector unions know that if the fight can be framed between a governor and a firefighter, they’ll win every time.

Through his speeches and press conferences, Christie has also demonstrated the ability to walk the essential tightrope for any fiscal conservative: be tough, but show a sense of humor, too. From his joking dismissal of then-governor Jon Corzine’s crude attacks on his weight during the 2009 campaign (he predicted he’d be “a big fat winner”), to his dead-on barbs aimed at union leaders, liberal legislators, andreporters, Christie has tempered his straightforward rhetoric and austere policy proposals with one-liners and self-deprecating asides. Whitman could learn from Christie here. Though an experienced speaker from her days in the Fortune 500 world, she appears stiff even in television commercials, not to mention the rare press conference. Hiring a few joke writers probably wouldn’t hurt.

This one is a must read.

If nothing else, follow the link for the graphic presentation comparing the civics class version versus the Sacramento version.

Karen de Sa at the San Jose Mercury News.

SACRAMENTO — Imagine: At a time when California is lurching from crisis to crisis, a legislator has an idea to make life better. He puts together a bill, gathers support and shepherds it into law.

If only Sacramento worked like that. Instead, it often works like this:

A lobbyist has an idea to make life better — but only for his client. The lobbyist writes the bill, shops for a willing lawmaker to introduce it and lines up the support. The legislator? He has to do little more than show up and vote.

This is the path of the “sponsored bill,” a method of lawmaking little noticed outside California’s capital but long favored on the inside. In many states lobbyists influence legislators; in

California, they have — quite baldly — taken center stage in lawmaking.

Although lawmakers in recent years have routinely failed to grapple with health care, the state budget and other matters of public interest, they’ve managed to do the bidding of the private interests who tout sponsored bills at an impressive clip.

A Mercury News analysis found that in 2007-08, the most recent complete two-year legislative session, more than 1,800 bills — about 39 percent of the total — were sponsored by outside interests. And those sponsored bills made up 60 percent of the legislation that was passed into law.

This is how plumbing manufacturers ensured that industry-friendly labs — and not state regulators — would conduct the testing that determines whether drinking faucets sold in California are lead-free. This is how a Los Angeles County billionaire crushed a legal challenge over whether his plans for a new football stadium violated the state’s long-standing environmental protection law.

Recalling his first encounters with lobbyists seeking legislative backing for their bills, former Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla said, “It’s like being in a Middle Eastern bazaar. You are surrounded by hawkers saying, ‘Take this one, no, take this one, no, I’ve got a better one over here.’ The openness of that — the ‘oh yeah, that’s the way things are done’ attitude — was the most shocking.”

Legislators, continued Pittsburg funeral home director Canciamilla, “are supposed to be the buffer between the interest groups and the public — and that buffer no longer exists. Now, they’re a direct conduit.”

The Mercury News analysis, the first ever undertaken of sponsored bills in California, revealed:

• Sponsored bills swamp the Legislature. They amounted to 42 percent of the bills introduced in the Assembly and a third of the Senate bills.
• Profit-seeking bills abound. While advocacy groups, trade associations and government agencies also sponsor legislation, more than 500 of the sponsored bills introduced in the 2007-08 session came from private industries and industry trade groups, often seeking to increase market share, repel regulations or limit lawsuits.

Read it all.

First, there’s this:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called on Congress on Friday to send emergency education education to the states to prevent lay-offs, according to the AP.

Now, let’s look at how the Los Angeles school district (LAUSD) manages its money. In 1999, it opted to build a high school on a toxic site.

The Belmont Learning Complex was envisioned as one of a kind. It would combine the city’s first new high school in nearly 30 years with housing and retail development — extras that could raise money to help cap construction costs at about $45 million.

When the school opens in 2008, at least nine years behind schedule, it will indeed make history — with its cost. The final tab will top $400 million, almost certainly claiming the title of America’s most expensive high school, and there will be no retail or housing.

Also, because of the methane leaking from the soil expensive pollution mitigation costs will endure forever. You’d think that would chasten the LAUSD. But no…

Disney Hall, built for half the cost of LA's latest high school

Already ballooning to $572 million, Los Angeles Unified’s most expensive school – and possibly the nation’s – looks like it will need a final $6 million infusion before fully opening this fall.

The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a K-12 complex on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel where Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, needs the money to satisfy environmental regulations.

School board members are scheduled Tuesday to vote on the additional funding request.

The school will consist of six different learning centers and enroll 4,260 students, making the cost per seat about $135,000 – nearly 40 percent higher than the average school built in the central Los Angeles area over the past two years.

It even exceeds the per-seat cost of the pricey High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, whose $132,000 per-seat price tag – along with its bold, roller-coaster inspired architecture – raised plenty of eyebrows when it opened in September 2009.

District officials say the cost of the Robert F. Kennedy complex is more than justified if you consider its urban location, historical significance and expected community role.

“It has all the modern amenities, like an underground garage, a pool, a state-of-the-art auditorium…,” said James Sohn, LAUSD’s chief facilities executive. “In that context, cost of the schools is appropriate.”

Why not? It’s not their money. The Daily News put the $572 million price tag in context with some other LA buildings.

Americana at Brand: $400 million, 2008

Staples Center: $375 million, 1999

Walt Disney Concert Hall: $274 million, 2003

Universal Studios backlot: $200 million, 2010

Downtown cathedral: $190 million, 2002

Home Depot center: $150 million, 2003

LAUSD has a dismal graduation rate. By contrast, Thousand Oaks High school is a top academic performer in the state. The school looks like something the army would build — purely utilitarian with a gym designed like a quonset hut.

In the collectivist minds of Obama and his party, well-run school districts and their citizens should subsidize free spending idiots.

LA’s mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in trouble for taking freebies — mostly free tickets. His defense is he’s doing official city business when he attends concerts and Lakers games.

Doug McIntyre ain’t buying it.

L.A. still wallows in red ink, still hemorrhages jobs, and still produces crop after crop of high school dropouts. And now it’s become obvious to all – even to some of the mayor’s most ardent supporters – his administration has been an integrity abomination.

Yet, the mayor has pledged to keep walking the red carpet and “doing what mayors do.”

Let’s look at what he’s done.

After publicly promising documentation of the “official” city business he allegedly conducted at a Shakira concert and 99 other events over the past years, all he came up with is a “log” as devoid of substance as most Villaraigosa promises. Remember the million trees? The thousand cops? School reforms? The filled potholes? Remember all those new jobs L.A. was supposed to attract?

Our easily distracted mayor will now be preoccupied trying to pull a Houdini-like escape from an ethical and possibly legal straitjacket. City and state ethics laws are very clear on what he can and can’t accept as gifts. Yet, Villaraigosa has made it equally clear he doesn’t care.

Brian Currey, the mayor’s lawyer, floated the unique notion that the mayor’s physical existence constitutes an official duty – even advancing the ludicrous theory that by attending a Dodgers game somehow Villaraigosa attracts tourists to L.A.

I tested this theory.

I asked the wife where she’d like to go on vacation. She mentioned Hawaii and I shot that down with the pithy, “I don’t even think Hawaii has a mayor.”

So I showed the Mrs. a picture of Pelican Rapids, N.D., mayor, Bill Woessner, and she agreed Bill is a handsome man. However, I drew a blank when grilled on how we’d kill a week in Pelican Rapids.

Did Barbara Boxer’s campaign pitch this absurd story or did the AP just dream it up themselves?

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina is kicking off her general election campaign against Democrat Barbara Boxer by criticizing the $862 billion federal stimulus package as doing little for private businesses.

Yet there was at least one California business that benefited from the stimulus plan, one close to Fiorina’s personal story.

Federal data analyzed by The Associated Press show that Hewlett-Packard Co., where Fiorina was chief executive from 1999 to 2005, has been paid $22.5 million so far in stimulus money distributed to cities, school districts, hospitals and universities across the country.

They used the money to buy computers, laptops, servers and other equipment from the Silicon Valley computer giant that provided much of Fiorina’s personal wealth.

So a company Fiorina used to run got federal dollars from a program she opposes.

So what?

Doug McIntyre

City Controller Wendy Greuel is shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca!

Of course, in this case Casablanca is Los Angeles and the controller’s long-overdue audit of the Department of Water and Power only confirms empirically what most of us have known intuitively – the DWP is a rogue agency.

According to Greuel’s audit, the DWP had the $73.5 million it owed the city and could easily have transferred the funds without a rate hike. However, as Greuel said, “It’s hard to look at these numbers and not say that the DWP was trying to extort the City Council.”

What Greuel won’t say is who wrote the extortion note. “It will be up to them (DWP) to question their staff on who provided them with the information,” said the controller.

Which is like asking BP to investigate how BP caused the oil rupture in the Gulf.

To paraphrase President Obama, “Whose ass do the ratepayers kick?”

Still, it’s a step forward that we now have the city controller officially on record that the DWP is run by thugs who extorted a rate hike. Unfortunately, the controller’s report also says the DWP should be allowed to keep the money they extorted. Why?

The City Council approved this rate hike under duress based on deliberately falsified data. Justice demands the rate hike be immediately suspended. The extortionists should have to return to the Council with real numbers before one additional penny is turned over.

And now for the eternal Los Angeles question – who will be held accountable?

When someone as rhetorically cautious as Wendy Greuel uses words like “misled” and “extortion,” it’s time to clean house. But consider which house we’re talking about – “The House That Tony Built.”

Every member of the DWP board, as well as the DWP’s interim general manager, Austin Beutner, were all picked by Mayor Villaraigosa. The mayor issued a vanilla response to Greuel, “thanking” her for the report, but if you have any doubts about how the mayor truly feels about the audit, consider Beutner’s immediate response: he attacked Greuel claiming her report contains “errors of fact.”

Since it’s beyond pointless to ask the DWP to investigate themselves and at this point it’s hard to tell if the mayor runs the DWP or the DWP runs the mayor. We need to look elsewhere for the truth. Maybe council members Jan Perry and Bernie Parks will turn up the heat from the council horseshoe, but how much can we expect from the Paul Koretzes and Janice Hahns of the world? These people will wet themselves before they’d dare cross Brian D’Arcy and his uber-powerful IBEW Local 18, the DWP union that’s behind almost everything.

Doug McIntyre:

…Apparently, honoring America’s greatest heroes – the men and women who lost their lives defending our country – isn’t high on our “to do” list.

But we found the dough for a Lakers victory parade when they beat the Celtics. Somehow we found funds for the protest march against Arizona. Too bad our soldiers died in battle instead of overdosing like Michael Jackson.

Remember when Mayor Villaragoisa famously announced L.A. would pick up the tab for MJ’s send-off because “world class cities like L.A.” provide for public events? On September 16th, we’ll have the money to celebrate Mexican Independence Day. But Memorial Day? Yawn.

At parade time I found a mostly empty Sherman Way with the majority of stores closed, some permanently. I bumped into a solitary parade spectator, Robert Weil, decked out in a red, white and blue crocheted cap that looked exactly like the potholders my wife knitted a few years ago.

“The Mayor blew it.” said Weil. “He could have driven up and down the street waving to people.” Of course our Mayor doesn’t need a parade to preen.

Melissa Manzanera works the register at Green Thumb Nursery, one of the few businesses that actually flew the American flag. Melissa was more like a switchboard operator when I stopped in, taking call after call from customers asking about the parade.

“People seem really surprised it was cancelled,” Manzanera said.

International Liberty:

Here’s a fascinating table that was linked on Marginal Revolution. Of all the political jurisdictions in the world, the one most likely to default (according to market perception) is Venezuela. No big surprise, of course, but I was surprised to see California in 8th place.

That’s worse than Portugal and Spain (neither of which are in the top 10, though perhaps bottom 10 would be a better description of this list). This is a very damning indictment of the modern American welfare state. How about a new motto? Instead of “The Golden State,” California’s new motto can be “Better than Ukraine, Worse than Iraq.”

George Will

…The city is chin-deep in California’s trickle-down misery, and last week Richard Riordan, who was L.A. mayor from 1993 to 2001, coauthored with Alexander Rubalcava—an investment adviser—a Wall Street Journal column declaring the city’s fiscal crisis “terminal.” They say Villaraigosa should “face the fact” that “between now and 2014 the city will likely declare bankruptcy.” Villaraigosa says that will not happen. But look what has happened.

For 15 years Villaraigosa was an organizer for the Service Employees International Union and the city’s teachers’ union. Now he is trying to cope with, and partially undo, largesse for unionized public employees: “I have to sign the checks on the front, not just the back.”

Riordan and Rubalcava say two numbers—8 percent and 5,000—define the city’s crisis. L.A. has conveniently but unrealistically assumed 8 percent annual growth of the assets of the city’s pension funds. The two main funds’ actual growth over the last decade have been 3.5 percent and 2.8 percent. And Villaraigosa added 5,000 people to the city’s payroll in his first term.

Nationwide, government employees are most of what remains of “defined benefit” America. More than 80 percent of government workers have defined benefits—as opposed to defined-contribution—pension plans. Only about 20 percent of private-sector workers have defined-benefit plans. California’s parlous condition owes much to burdensome health-care and pension promises negotiated with public employees’ unions, promises that are suffocating the state’s economic growth.

Riordan and Rubalcava suggest replacing defined-benefit pensions with 401(k) accounts for new public employees. But when another product of America’s immigrant culture, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, tried to do that, public employees’ unions squashed the idea. Riordan and Rubalcava say the retirement age for public employees should be raised from 55 to 65, employees should pay more than the maximum of 9 percent of their salaries for pensions, and the city should end subsidies of up to $1,200 a month for health insurance for those who retire before becoming eligible for Medicare. But even his ideas for nibbling at the edges of the fiscal problem by privatizing the zoo, the convention center, and city parking lots are opposed by the unions.

They are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself for ever-larger portions of wealth extracted by the taxing power from the private sector. Increasingly, government workers are the electoral base of the party of government. So Villaraigosa must live with the arithmetic of interest-group liberalism. The federal government, he says, can run deficits and print money; the state government (supposedly) must balance the budget but can push burdens down onto cities. There, he says, “you have 10 cookies in the cookie jar and every interest wants all 10.”

The nightmare numbers include the state’s unemployment rate (12.6 percent)—it is higher than the nation’s (9.9)—and the city’s rate (13.5), which is higher than the state’s. The city’s long-term success depends on its schools, in many of which most of the children come from homes without fathers, and in some of which, Villaraigosa says, 40 percent of the children are in foster homes. He has little control over the school system and, anyway, unions oppose radical reforms. He would like to emulate the education reforms of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a recent visitor to the mayor’s residence, but, holding his fingers three inches apart to suggest the thickness of the standard contract with the teachers’ union, Villaraigosa calls the union “the most powerful defender of the status quo.”

The mayor’s residence is near Wilshire Boulevard, which is named for a socialist who made and lost several fortunes before dying destitute. The life of Henry Wilshire is a cautionary tale for this city where the climate is usually Mediterranean and the fiscal climate is now Greek.

California and Greece have too much in common. Tim Cavanaugh in Reason:

Lest anti-Greek bias rear its ugly head, note that you can get a subpar workforce right here in these United States. In Chief Executive magazine’s annual survey of “Best and Worst States for Business,” California workers scored a gentleman’s B-, helping the Golden State come in 51st place out of the 50 states. (District of Columbia is included in the rankings.)

Chief Executive’s survey of business owners tabulates the tax and regulatory environment, the quality of the workforce and the state’s living environment. There are actually quite a few states with less appealing workers than California’s, but the state’s high taxes and heavy regulation give it the only F on the list. The Orange County Register explains:

It doesn’t take a national survey to reveal California’s failing business climate. Seven California metro areas were among the 15 national leaders in commercial bankruptcy filings in 2009, according to Equifax Inc. Not coincidentally, California had twice as many personal bankruptcies as any other state in 2009 when it ranked 11th in bankruptcies per capita.

It also doesn’t take a CEO to notice the differences between California and top-rated Texas. Texas, with nearly as many residents and the world’s 12th largest economy, “is where 70 percent of all new U.S. jobs have been created since 2008,” the magazine reported. Also unsurprisingly, Texas gained more than 848,000 net residents based on migration in and out of the state in the past decade, while California lost 1.5 million, according to the Census.

California’s longterm population-loss trend has reportedly turned around slightly in the last few months, and Greece will no doubt bring in a new haul of tourists this summer, proving the claim that self-satisfied Californians love to make whenever their state is compared unfavorably with Texas: The weather is really nice. And people still haven’t managed to screw up the weather.

But every suntan eventually turns into parched, leathery skin. The insidious thing about an unfriendly business climate is that it takes a long time for the effects to show up in the government’s inability to pay its bills. So long, in fact, that when the sovereign bankruptcy comes, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that tax rates are too low. Both California and Greece are going through a variety of this type of denial right now. But with the governor of California and the prime minister of Greece both promising to turn over a new leaf, this is a good time to remember that you can’t take people’s money if you prevent them from making money in the first place.

If we as a state want to make a New Year’s resolution, I suggest taking a good look at the California we have created. From our out-of-sync tax system to our out-of-control civil service, it’s time for politicians to begin an honest dialogue about what we’ve become.

Take the civil service.

The system was set up so politicians like me couldn’t come in and fire the people (relatives) hired by the guy they beat and replace them with their own friends and relatives.

Over the years, however, the civil service system has changed from one that protects jobs to one that runs the show.

The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life.

But we politicians, pushed by our friends in labor, gradually expanded pay and benefits to private-sector levels while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages that pay ex-workers almost as much as current workers.

Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most officeholders. But at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact that 80 percent of the state, county and city budget deficits are due to employee costs.

Either we do something about it at the ballot box, or a judge will do something about in Bankruptcy Court. And if you think I’m kidding, just look at Vallejo.

Obama said this while stumping for Babs (call me Senator) Boxer:

…And you know what, that’s the story of California. This is a state that always drew dreamers, men and women with the courage to pursue their dreams. It’s a state that inspired pioneers to head out across an unforgiving wilderness; a state that spurred glory-seekers to rush westward for gold; the state that draws innovators and entertainers, from Hollywood Hills to Mountain View. And there’s always been something about California that inspires us to dream; that’s called on us to build a better life; that has helped us imagine the world as it is and then recognize that the world as it might be is out there.

And I’m absolutely confident that if folks in Washington can recapture that same spirit — that same boundless, resilient American spirit — we’re not only going to rescue our economy, we’re not only going to rebuild it stronger than before, but we’re going to do what generations did before and make the American Dream more secure for our children and our grandchildren. That’s what Barbara Boxer is about. That’s what you’re about.

Obama has made our children’s future less secure by spending trillions we do not have and charging it to them.

As for California’s dreamers and doers, the liberals have chased many of them away with high taxes and regulations. They now do business in Texas or Nevada.

Steven Malanga in City-Journal has a long, meaty article about how public service labor unions took over California. An excerpt:

…Consider the California Teachers Association. Much of the CTA’s clout derives from the fact that, like all government unions, it can help elect the very politicians who negotiate and approve its members’ salaries and benefits. Soon after Proposition 13 became law, the union launched a coordinated statewide effort to support friendly candidates in school-board races, in which turnout is frequently low and special interests can have a disproportionate influence. In often bitter campaigns, union-backed candidates began sweeping out independent board members. By 1987, even conservative-leaning Orange County saw 83 percent of board seats up for grabs going to union-backed candidates. The resulting change in school-board composition made the boards close allies of the CTA.

But with union dues somewhere north of $1,000 per member and 340,000 members, the CTA can afford to be a player not just in local elections but in Sacramento, too (and in Washington, for that matter, where it’s the National Education Association’s most powerful affiliate). The CTA entered the big time in 1988, when it almost single-handedly led a statewide push to pass Proposition 98, an initiative—opposed by taxpayer groups and Governor George Deukmejian—that required 40 percent of the state’s budget to fund local education. To drum up sympathy, the CTA ran controversial ads featuring students; in one, a first-grader stares somberly into the camera and says, “Pay attention—today’s lesson is about the school funding initiative.” Victory brought local schools some $450 million a year in new funding, much of it discretionary. Unsurprisingly, the union-backed school boards often used the extra cash to fatten teachers’ salaries—one reason that California’s teachers are the country’s highest-paid, even though the state’s total spending per student is only slightly higher than the national average. “The problem is that there is no organized constituency for parents and students in California,” says Lanny Ebenstein, a former member of the Santa Barbara Board of Education and an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “No one says to a board of education, ‘We want more of that money to go for classrooms, for equipment.’ ”

With its growing financial strength, the CTA gained the ability to shape public opinion. In 1996, for instance, the union—casting covetous eyes on surplus tax revenues from the state’s economic boom—spent $1 million on an ad campaign advocating smaller classes. Californians began seeing the state’s classrooms as overcrowded, according to polls. So Governor Pete Wilson earmarked some three-quarters of a billion dollars annually to cut class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. The move produced no discernible improvements in student performance, but it did require a hiring spree that inflated CTA rolls and produced a teacher shortage. (The union drew the line, however, when it faced the threat of increased accountability. Two years later, when Wilson offered funds to reduce class sizes even more but attached the money to new oversight mechanisms, the CTA spent $6 million to defeat the measure, living up to Wilson’s assessment of it as a “relentless political machine.”)

During this contentious period, the CTA and its local affiliates learned to play hardball, frequently shutting down classes with strikes. The state estimated that in 1989 alone, these strikes cost California students collectively some 7.2 million classroom days. Los Angeles teachers provoked outrage that year by reportedly urging their students to support them by skipping school. After journalist Debra Saunders noted in LA’s Daily News that the striking teachers were already well paid, the union published her home phone number in its newsletter and urged members to call her.

John Ellis:

All across the country there were demonstrations on March 4 by students (and some faculty) against cuts in higher education funding, but inevitably attention focused on California, where the modern genre originated in 1964. I joined the University of California faculty in 1966 and so have watched a good many of them, but have never seen one less impressive that this year’s. In 1964 there was focus and clarity. This one was brain-dead. The former idealism and sense of purpose had degenerated into a self-serving demand for more money at a time when both state and university are broke, and one in eight California workers is unemployed. The elite intellectuals of the university community might have been expected to offer us insight into how this problem arose, and realistic measures for dealing with it. But all that was on offer was this: get more money and give it to us. Californians witnessing this must have wondered whether the money they were already providing was well spent where there was so little evidence of productive thought.

The content vacuum with filled with the standby language of past demonstrations, and so there was much talk of “the struggle,” and of “oppression,” and—of course—of racism. “We are all students of color now” said Berkeley’s Professor Ananya Roy, and a student proclaimed that this crisis represented “structural racism.” (Why not global warming too?) Berkeley’s Chancellor Birgeneau called the demonstrations “the best of our tradition of effective civil action.” Neither Chancellors nor demonstrations are what they used to be. The nostalgia for the good old days surfaced again in efforts to shut the campus down by blocking the entrance of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that the old “shut it down” cry was somewhat misplaced when keeping it fully open was what the present demonstration was about, but then this was not an occasion when anyone seemed to have any idea of what they were trying to achieve.

One group at UCLA stumbled into the truth, though it was a truth they did not understand. At Bruin Plaza a crowd chanted “Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power.” In its context this was just another slogan of a mindless day, but the reality is that those people do indeed have the power, and routinely use it in a way that makes them the author of their own troubles. Let me explain.

Unemployment in California is still rising. It just went up from 12.3 to 12.5%, nearly three points above an already bad national average. This horrendous figure is the source of California’s budget problem. The huge loss of tax revenue is compounded by greatly increased unemployment outlays. If we look at the few other states that have unemployment figures well above the national average, there are obvious explanations. Michigan is at 14.6 because employment in its major industry (automobiles) has collapsed. Nevada, at 13.0, is dependent on discretionary cash at a time when there isn’t any. But California is too big to be dominated by one industry, and its plight can only be explained by the state’s having grossly mismanaged its affairs.

In 2007 Raymond Keating formulated a Small Business Survival Index, which is a composite of various aspects of the climate for business in a particular state: business and personal taxes, regulations, mandates, and so on. In that index California ranked 49 among the 50 states. Rhode Island ranked just above California, and its unemployment rate is 12.7. At the bottom of the Index is D.C., and its unemployment rate is 12.1.

In the component parts of the SBSI index, California ranks worst of 51 (including D.C.) on top personal tax rates, worst on top capital gains tax rates, 42 on corporate taxes, 43 on health insurance mandates, 46 on electric utility costs, 47 on workman’s compensation costs, rock bottom again on state gas taxes, 45 on state and local government five year spending trends, and 47 on state and local per capita government spending. It also ranks 49 among the states on the US Economic freedom index, and it has the highest state sales tax rate too: where some states have an income tax but no sales tax, and others have a sales tax but no income tax, California has both, AND it has the highest rates in both.

In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country’s highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.

Mark Steyn:

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen – because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 – or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids – i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility – the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared with Spain and Italy, Greece has the least-worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?

By the way, you don’t have to go to Greece to experience Greek-style retirement: The Athenian “public service” of California has been metaphorically face down in the ouzo for a generation. Still, America as a whole is not yet Greece. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my book “America Alone,” I put the Social Security debate at that time in a bit of perspective: On 2005 figures, projected public pensions liabilities were expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of GDP. In Greece, the figure was 25 percent: in other words, head for the hills, Armageddon outta here, The End. Since then, the situation has worsened in both countries. And, really, the comparison is academic: Whereas America still has a choice, Greece isn’t going to have a 2040 – not without a massive shot of Reality Juice.

Is that likely to happen? At such moments, I like to modify Gerald Ford. When seeking to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, President Ford liked to say: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Which is true enough. But there’s an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn’t big enough to get you to give any of it back. That’s the point Greece is at. Its socialist government has been forced into supporting a package of austerity measures. The Greek people’s response is: Nuts to that. Public sector workers have succeeded in redefining time itself: Every year, they receive 14 monthly payments. You do the math. And for about seven months’ work: for many of them the work day ends at 2:30 p.m. And, when they retire, they get 14 monthly pension payments. In other words: Economic reality is not my problem. I want my benefits. And, if it bankrupts the entire state a generation from now, who cares as long as they keep the checks coming until I croak?

We hard-hearted small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government: Once a chap’s enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest; he’s got his, and to hell with everyone else. People’s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.

Maybe the threat of this will cause foolish, pious politicians to get up to date on real science.

Republican politicians and conservative activists are launching a ballot campaign to suspend California’s landmark global-warming law, in what they hope will serve as a showcase for a national backlash against climate regulations.

Supporters say they have “solid commitments” of nearly $600,000 to pay signature gatherers for a November initiative aimed at delaying curbs on the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and factories until the state’s unemployment rate drops.

GOP gubernatorial candidates and Tea Party organizers paint the 2006 law, considered a model for other state and federal efforts, as a job-killing interference in the economy. Talk radio is flailing at what John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, drive-time hosts on Los Angeles’ KFI-AM (640), call “the global-warming final solution act” promoted by “fascist, Nazi” officials.

“We are on fire,” said Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Marysville), a sponsor of the proposed initiative. “People are calling from all over the country. This will be the most intense campaign the state has seen in 50 years.”

Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman of the state’s Air Resources Board, which is implementing the law, known as AB 32, called the initiative “a campaign that has to be taken seriously.”

“It would put all our efforts at energy efficiency and renewable energy in the deep freezer for a long time,” she said.

The measure would halt proposed regulations until the state’s jobless rate dips to 5.5% or below for a year. That’s a level that California has not seen since 2007. California has one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates: 12.4%.

Returning from a three day shoot in Santa Barbara, I spotted this sailboat that was beached by the storms that have battered most of California. After three years of drought, no one is complaining.

A larger view here.

Lovely video shot with a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR.

Shovel ready? Better bring dynamite to break through the red tape.

Dozens of construction projects funded with federal stimulus money are being delayed in California because the office that oversees historic preservation is overwhelmed with applications, the state’s stimulus watchdog said Monday.

In a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Inspector General Laura Chick asked that more staff be made available to accelerate the review process. She said the backlog will grow because the bulk of stimulus money for public works projects is just beginning to flow to states.

“This is trying to get the problem from getting worse,” Chick said in an interview.

At stake are desperately needed jobs for Californians that would be created through new construction and retrofits, she said in her letter.

The state Office of Historic Preservation, an entity of the National Park Service that is an administrative unit of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, is just one of many agencies that must sign off on construction projects before they can begin.

For example, if an alternative energy company is proposing a solar project, the office must make sure the land does not include Native-American artifacts. Similarly, modifying a building that is a registered historic landmark cannot undermine its architecturally significant features.

Chick said many of the delayed projects are small, such as installing a new heating and air conditioning unit. Others are larger infrastructure projects, from a Highway 101 bypass in Mendocino County to rehabilitation of the Pasadena Civic Center, according to lists provided by the inspector general’s office.

All funded with money borrowed by us, but will get repaid by our kids and grandkids.

During the Rose Parade Friday morning, the TV cameras tilted up to show gorgeous blue skies on a  72-degree New Year’s day.

I grew up in gray Maryland, watching such scenes with great envy. It always seemed to be sunny in California. For the most part, it is. That much the clowns running the state cannot ruin.

Everything else is up for grabs.

Two recent articles try to answer why California has become such a mess, where each week 3,427 more folks exit than enter.

City Journal notes how Texas is growing as California recedes:

It’s not surprising, then, that an intense debate rages over which model is more satisfactory and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax alternative succeeds not only on its own terms but also according to the criteria used by defenders of high benefits and high taxes. Whatever theoretical claims are made for imposing high taxes to provide generous government benefits, the practical reality is that these public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good: their beneficiaries are mostly the service providers themselves, and their quality is poor. For evidence, look to the two largest states in the nation, which are fine representatives of the liberal and conservative alternatives.

One out of every five Americans is either a Californian or a Texan. California became the nation’s most populous state in 1962; Texas climbed into second place in 1994. They are broadly similar: populous Sunbelt states with large metropolitan areas, diverse economies, and borders with Mexico producing comparable demographic mixes. Both are “majority-minority” states, where non-Hispanic whites make up just under half of the population and Latinos just over a third.

According to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau, for the fiscal year ending in 2006, Americans paid an average of $4,001 per person in state and local taxes. But Californians paid $4,517 per person, well above that national average, while Texans paid $3,235. It’s worth noting, by the way, that while state and local governments in both California and Texas get most of their revenue from taxes, the revenue is augmented by subsidies from the federal government and by fees charged for governmental services and facilities, such as trash collection, airports, public university tuition, and mass transit. California had total revenues of $11,160 per capita, more than every state but Alaska, Wyoming, and New York, while Texas placed a distant 44th on this scale, with revenues of all governmental entities totaling $7,558 per person.

What might interest Tiebout is that while California and Texas are comparable in terms of sheer numbers, their demographic paths are diverging. Before 1990, both states grew much faster than the rest of the country. Since then, only Texas has continued to do so. While its share of the nation’s population has steadily increased, from 6.8 percent in 1990 to 7.9 percent in 2007, California’s has barely budged, from 12 percent to 12.1 percent.

William Voegeli at The Claremont Institute looks at the politics behind the decline.

At next year’s parades marking the centenary of the Progressives’ triumph, confetti suppliers and marching bands may have to be paid with IOU’s instead of cash. California’s bonds are rated lower than any other state’s; its budget deficit, relative to the size of the state’s population, is higher than any other’s. The current recession is the proximate cause of California’s crisis, but other states devastated by the economic downturn, such as New York and Florida—even Michigan—face choices about taxes and spending that are far less dire. A growing number of observers argue that California’s real problem is that it has become ungovernable. Kevin Starr, for example, who just published the eighth volume in his comprehensive history of the Golden State, recently told an interviewer, “In our public life, we’re on the verge of being a failed state, and no state has failed in the history of this country.”

Rome wasn’t sacked in a day, and California didn’t become Argentina overnight. Its acquired incapacity to manage its own affairs has been a long, complicated story, with many contributing factors rather than a single villain or tragic flaw. No analysis of California’s political demise, however, would be complete without discussing how the Progressive legacy has undermined the state’s ability to govern itself.

Hyperdemocracy

According to historian Alonzo Hamby, the framework for Progressive politics was the conviction that the political conflict was between “the people” and “the interests.” It followed that the highest political duty was to help the people resist and ultimately triumph over the interests. One problem with this framework is that it lends itself better to the disdain than to the practice of politics. “The Progressives did not like politics,” writes political scientist Jerome Mileur, because “the politics they saw was not about the public purpose of the nation, but was instead consumed by local interests and private greed, indifferent alike to the idea of a great community and the idealism of grand purpose.”

As a result, Progressivism’s anti-politics was designed for the people as they ought to be, not as they really are.

Read it all.

U2 guitarist David Evans, aka The Edge, wants to build five homes on a Malibu ridge. He’s even built a website to smooth the way.

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez isn’t persuaded.

The Malibu area has been buzzing since a video was added to The Edge’s website in the last several weeks, perhaps in anticipation of an upcoming California Coastal Commission hearing on the proposal. Against a gag-inducing track of New Age music, with birds tweeting in the background, fawning proponents of The Edge’s plans praise the project. His supporters include Bonny Reiss, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s former senior advisor, and, more surprisingly, Mark Massara, head of the Sierra Club’s Great Coastal Places Campaign.

“It’s going to take those visionary leaders being associated with projects like these, that are going to show how to make the California coastline a model of sustainability,” Massara says on the video, in which he all but encourages the Coastal Commission to embrace the proposal.

Clearly The Edge is lining up all the political muscle and environmentalist star power he possibly can. He’s even got a well-connected PR and lobbying firm — California Strategies — backing him up.

And that combination of clout and slick marketing is part of what riles Malibu City Councilman Jefferson Wagner. Although the compound would be outside Malibu city limits, it would require major expansion of a road within the city. Wagner is not inclined to vote in favor, and he’s not a fan of the website testimonial, which makes no mention of all the dust in the wind there’d be once the bulldozers take the mountain.

“It’s a sales-pitch video,” said Wagner, a local surfing legend who has his own nickname — Zuma Jay.

He called the video The Edge’s way of saying: “I’m doing the right thing.”

“But if he was doing the right thing,” Wagner went on, “he wouldn’t need that video, right?”

Not necessarily. To some greenies, the only good development is no development.

Of course borrow implies consent from the lender.

Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners — holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.

Technically, it’s not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers’ annual tax bills won’t change.

Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You’ll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less.

But with rising gas costs, depressed home prices and double-digit unemployment, the state’s added reach into residents’ regular paycheck isn’t sitting well with many.

“The state’s suddenly slapping people upside the head,” said Mack Reed, 50, of Silver Lake. “It’s appalling how brash that is.”

LA Daily News:

At a time when government agencies are cutting back on law enforcement, health care for children and services for the poor, the number of public servants collecting $100,000-plus pensions – including one raking in nearly $500,000 a year – has exploded in recent years, in some cases tripling or even increasing sevenfold.

In Los Angeles County, the number of retired county employees receiving pensions of $100,000 or more has nearly tripled from 1,198 in 2004 to 3,096 today, the Daily News has learned through a series of Public Records Act requests.

Throughout California, the number of retired state workers collecting $100,000-plus pensions has mushroomed more than sixfold from 816 in 2004 to 5,115 now.

And the number of school administrators and teachers collecting six-figure pensions has rocketed more than sevenfold from 427 in 2004 to 3,088 now.

Los Angeles, excluding the Department of Water and Power, currently has 600 retirees collecting more than $100,000 a year.

“This is just outrageous to me,” said Marcia Fritz, vice president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, an organization that advocates statewide pension reform. “I would not have expected the number of ($100,000 pension club members) to have increased that much in the last five years.”

California should serve as the canary in the coal mine, a warning against stupid, ruinous public policy. Instead, it seems to be the blueprint for Obama’s version of the USA.

Joel Kotkin:

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Terminator came to power with the support of much of the middle class and business community. But since taking office, he’s resembled not the single-minded character for which he’s famous but rather someone with multiple personalities.

First, he played the governator, a tough guy ready to blow up the dysfunctional structure of government. He picked a street fight against all the powerful liberal interest groups. But the meathead lacked his hero Ronald Reagan’s communication skills and political focus. Defeated in a series of initiative battles, he was left bleeding the streets by those who he had once labeled “girlie men.”

Next Arnold quickly discovered his feminine side, becoming a kinder, ultra-green terminator. He waxed poetic about California’s special mission as the earth’s guardian. While the housing bubble was filling the state coffers, he believed the delusions of his chief financial adviser, San Francisco investment banker David Crane, that California represented “ground zero for creative destruction.”

Yet over the past few years there’s been more destruction than creation. Employment in high-tech fields has stagnated (See related story, “Best Cities For Technology Jobs“) while there have been huge setbacks in the construction, manufacturing, warehousing and agricultural sectors.

Driven away by strict regulations, businesses take their jobs outside California even in relatively good times. Indeed, according to a recent Milken Institute report, between 2000 and 2007 California lost nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs. All that time, industrial employment was growing in major competitive rivals like Texas and Arizona.

With the state reeling, Arnold has decided, once again, to try out a new part. Now he’s posturing as the strong man who stands up to dominant liberal interests. But few on the left, few on the right or few in the middle take him seriously anymore. He may still earn acclaim from Manhattan media offices or Barack Obama’s EPA, but in his home state he looks more an over-sized lame duck, quacking meaninglessly for the cameras.

2. The Public Sector

Who needs an economy when you have fat pensions and almost unlimited political power? That’s the mentality of California’s 356,000 workers and their unions, who make up the best-organized, best-funded and most powerful interest group in the state.

State government continued to expand in size even when anyone with a room-temperature IQ knew California was headed for a massive financial meltdown. Scattered layoffs and the short-term salary givebacks now being considered won’t cure the core problem: an overgenerous retirement system. The unfunded liabilities for these employees’ generous pensions are now estimated at over $200 billion.

The people who preside over these pensions represent the apex of this labor aristocracy. This year two of the biggest public pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTERS, handed out six-figure bonuses to its top executives even though they had lost workers billions of dollars.

Almost no one dares suggest trimming the pension funds, particularly Democrats who are often pawns of the public unions. Some reforms on the table, like gutting the two-thirds majority required to pass the budget, would effectively hand these unions keys to the treasury.

3. The Environment

Obama holds up California’s environmental policy as a model for the nation. May God protect the rest of the country. California’s environmental activists once did an enviable job protecting our coasts and mountains, expanding public lands and working to improve water and air resources. But now, like sailors who have taken possession of a distillery, they have gotten drunk on power and now rampage through every part of the economy. (more…)