5-7-09

 
5-7-09
Merced Sun-Star
Research creates opportunities for UC Merced grad...DANIELLE GAINES
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/832067.html
Anita Ghia, a shy, 21-year-old senior in bioengineering at UC Merced, is the textbook definition of a devoted academic.
She nearly embedded herself into campus laboratories as soon as they were opened to students.
Now when she's done researching in the labs, she usually heads to the campus library.
"I've just been in the labs a lot of these three years," Ghia admitted.
Her fascination with research at UC Merced began in her sophomore year when she was accepted to the university's COINS research program.
Named after the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, the program afforded undergraduate students the opportunity to do research in conjunction with programs at Berkeley, Cal Tech, Stanford and UC Merced...
This fall, Ghia will re-embed in a master's degree program for material science engineering in her home town at San Jose State University...
Modesto Bee
Will Central Valley 'survive or thrive'?...Garth Stapley
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/693244.html
SACRAMENTO — Whether the Central Valley becomes a world leader in alternative energy and agribusiness or mired by a poverty-stricken inferiority complex could depend on decisions being made today.
That message was sounded Wednesday by various experts addressing hundreds of attendees at the annual conference of Modesto-based Great Valley Center.
"We have the ability to decide to survive or to thrive," said keynote speaker A.G. Kawamura, California secretary of agriculture. "(Just) surviving is not a good thing. Investing resources in our future gives us the chance to thrive."
Like Kawamura, several presenters suggested building on what the valley already does as well as any region on earth: farming.
"This great valley has been the breadbasket of the country," said L. Hunter Lovins, founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions. "It could be the breadbasket of the world if you decide not to pave it over."
Jan Ennenga of the Manufacturers Council of the Central Valley, based in Modesto, said the San Joaquin Valley's eight counties, from Lodi to Bakersfield, would be the nation's No. 1 agricultural producer if split from the rest of California — which would constitute No. 4.
But valley residents wowed by progress in other regions sometimes seem embarrassed by the valley's farming heritage, Ennenga observed. The valley's chronic high unemployment, heart disease and obesity rates continue to hold spirits down, others said.
Outsiders have been known to exploit valley resources, take the money "and leave the carnage behind," Ennenga said.
Fantastic opportunities drove the valley's rampant growth over the past few decades, but threaten its ability to produce food if not handled right, Lovins said.
" 'We grow or we die' is not true of any healthful organism on the planet," she said. "Let's start a conversation of what do we want more of? There are many things we can have more of that do not run down human capital."
Kawamura noted that advances in technology have enabled California growers to decrease water use by 14 percent over the past four decades while boosting crop values 84 percent.
"We can continue to feed the world. The question is, do we have the will to do it?" he said.
Quentin Kopp said California will produce the United States' first bullet trains by 2025. Voters in November approved a nearly $10 billion bond for high-speed rail going as fast as 220 mph in the valley's open stretches.
Though officials chose a route from the Bay Area to Southern California that bypasses much of the valley, a later phase connecting Merced to Sacramento will run through Modesto, Kopp said. His panel maintained valley support, he said, by creating the Altamont Corridor Partnership Working Group, which is developing plans to improve existing transit from the valley to the Bay Area in addition to a potential future Modesto link.
"I don't hear a single squeal from San Joaquin, Stanislaus or Sacramento counties," Kopp said. "I think this working group has dissipated any sourness about the decision" favoring the Pacheco Pass route that bypasses Modesto, he said.
The conference continues today at the Sacramento Radisson.
Fresno Bee
Fee hike is attack on middle class
Soon only the rich and the poor will be able to afford a college education...Editorial
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/v-print/story/1385860.html
California's public universities are going down a very dangerous path that will one day create a very restrictive class of students.
Constant student fee increases will make California's universities the province of children of the rich and children of the poor. Children of the middle class won't be able to afford college, and won't be eligible for financial aid because their working parents make too much money.
It seems that's just fine with the legislators in Sacramento and the regents and trustees who oversee the state's two four-year university systems. Not one of California's leaders are looking out for middle-class families, and that's one of the things wrong with the once-Golden State.
Today, University of California regents are expected to raise students fees by 9.3% and next week the trustees of the California State University system are expected to raise fees by 10%.
The regents and trustees seldom question the administrators, whose default position is always to balance their budgets by asking the students to pay more. This will be the third straight year of fee increases on CSU students.
"California is in an economic meltdown," CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said in justifying the double-digit fee increase. "We need this revenue to educate the 460,000 students these institutions serve."
We think Reed has his logic upside down. Fees should not be raised because California is in an economic meltdown. It's also disappointing that the impact of the fee increase on middle-class families doesn't even seem to be a consideration at the CSU headquarters in Long Beach.
CSU officials contend that one-third of the funds from the fee increase would go toward financial aid for the neediest students at the system's 23 campuses. This justification has always struck us as odd. They'll raise the fees on all students to give part of it back to those on financial assistance.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to cut the fee increase by one-third and not have to go through this contorted redistribution of revenue? This seems to be more about subsidizing the campus financial aids offices than actually helping students.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature are also to blame for this attack on the education of middle-class Californians. They have refused to adequately fund the public universities, knowing that administrators will always ask the students and their parents to make up the difference.
It's time that someone in power stands up for the state's beleaguered middle-class families. But gouging students and their parents is so much easier than doing what is sensible for California in the long run.
This is one more reason the state is losing the middle class that has driven California's economic engine.
Valley Voice
Environmental Group
Moves to Keep Pumps Off
http://www.valleyvoicenewspaper.com/vv/stories/2009/vv_
environmentalgroup_0043.htm
San Joaquin Valley - The National Resource Defense Council that was a part of the San Joaquin River Settlement has asked to join the federal Department of the Interior as defendants in a suit brought by farming interests aimed to keep the San Joaquin Delta pumps operating.
Johnny Amaral, chief of staff for Congressman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), said the action shows that the environmental group is steadfast in its opposition to turning the Delta pumps on and the action jeopardizes the portion of the river settlement that calls for water to be redirected back to the south Valley after flowing down the San Joaquin River.
“Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Friant's so-called 'environmental partners' in the San Joaquin River Settlement, have just taken steps to permanently eliminate the ability of Friant farmers to recover water that will be dedicated to salmon,” wrote Nunes' office in an email last week.
The reuse of the San Joaquin River water was a key component of the settlement legislation approved by Congress in March.
“This should come as no surprise to anyone – it certainly didn't surprise us. It is simple, they believe fish are more important than families,” said Amaral.
However, Ron Jacobsma, Friant Water Users Authority general manager, says it is too early to tell if the suit pending in the court will impact the San Joaquin River restoration flow.
“It is undetermined at this time what effect the lawsuit will have on that,” said Jacobsma, one of the proponents of the river bill. Nunes vehemently opposed the bill. “We feel there still will be restoration flows.”
The settlement calls for flows down the San Joaquin River be restored to help fish (salmon) and the environment. The agreement was the result of a lawsuit filed by the NRDC in the 1990s. A test run is scheduled for October with the actual flow set to begin in February of next year. The test run will be for just six weeks, while
next year's flow and thereafter will be for 10 months or longer.
Farmers eventually agreed to the settlement when part of the bill included recycling water back out of the California aqueduct, through the Delta and to be used for irrigation. However, the Delta pumps will have to be used for that to happen, says Sarah Wolfe, spokesman for Westlands Water District.
“The point that Nunes is making is if we are not allowed to utilize the pumps, it makes it impossible to recapture the water and reuse it and it's lost to the ocean,” she said, stressing, “It's not possible to reuse that water in any other way unless you use those pumps.”
Westlands filed papers last month seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from shutting down the pumps and further restricting the water in the system. The action came after the state announced the large water district on the Westside of the Valley would get only 10 percent of its average surface water this summer.
Wolfe said that 10 percent of water supply could be lost if the Fish and Wildlife Service imposes a new set of restrictions beginning on May 18 on the Bureau of Reclamation's operation of the Central Valley Project pumps in the Delta. The action would be to protect the Delta Smelt, the tiny fish at the forefront of the battle between environmentalists and agriculture in turning the pumps on to send water south.
“Under these pumping restrictions, if, for example, 10 percent of the smelt population were in the vicinity of the pumps, the new rules would restrict pumping to ensure that any harm from the pumps would be limited to about one tenth of one percent of the overall population of these tiny fish. This rule would apply even though this year, the survey data show most of the delta smelt are in fact far away from the pumps. The rule is based on the hypothetical results of a model instead of data about actual conditions,” she said.
Jacobsma agreed, saying what is needed is a more reliable biological opinion. For the longterm, he said what is needed is a way to bring water across the Delta to farmers in the south – a peripheral canal.
“They continue to try to reduce the pumping. That's been their overall effort for a long time. This is just one more thing in a list of actions they have taken to limit and ultimately completely stop water deliveries to ag and two-thirds of the state's population. That's the position they have taken for many years now,” said Wolfe of the NRDC.
The NRDC, in its court filing April 24, said it has an interest to protect the Delta smelt.
Amaral said the only way farmers are going to see the 200,000 to 250,000 acre feet of water that flows down the river is if the pumps are turned on. He said NRDC was a partner in the settlement and now it is trying to keep the pumps off.
Wolfe said Westlands could see a slight increase in its water allotment if the pumps are allowed to operate. Last week, the state Department of Water Resources' final snow survey of the season indicated the snowpack water content is ­­­66 percent of normal for the date, statewide. Last year at this time, snowpack was measured at 72 percent of normal, statewide.
However, she said last week's storms did little to improve that figure, although Visalia and much of Tulare County received a quarter to a half of an inch of rain on Friday night. Light snow was reported in much of the local mountains.
Sacramento Bee
Land owners, state square off over canal planning...Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/v-print/story/1839762.html
Dozens of property owners in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are challenging a state demand to access land for studies related to a controversial water canal.
The state Department of Water Resources has filed court petitions in five counties seeking access to 36 properties whose owners have rejected the department's request for access. The first hearing on those petitions was scheduled today in Contra Costa County. The other affected counties are Sacramento, San Joaquin, Yolo and Solano.
DWR is in the preliminary stages of investigating a modern-day version of the peripheral canal, a concept rejected by voters statewide in 1982. The canal is being considered anew as a device to avoid direct water diversions from the Delta, which serve 23 million Californians but also kill millions of fish and alter aquatic habitat.
The proposed earthen canal would divert a portion of the Sacramento River's flow at a point near Freeport and deliver it around the Delta directly to water export pumps near Tracy. The canal would be up to 50 miles long and at least 600 feet wide, and would cost at least $10 billion to build.
DWR wants access to hundreds of private parcels for a three-year period to study soil conditions, habitat and wildlife. The information would inform preliminary studies on the canal. Some of the work would involve trenches 12 feet deep and 20 feet long, and drilling up to 200 feet deep.
Property owners say the requested access is overly broad and threatens farming practices and enjoyment of the land. Some also claim DWR has not established the necessary legal authority to begin studying a canal.
"The general feeling down here is that the state, egged on by its (water) contractors, is just going to try to roll over the Delta," said Tom Zuckerman, a property owner on Rindge Tract, an island near Stockton, who is challenging DWR's access request.
DWR spokesman Matt Notley said about half of the property owners it has contacted have granted access. He said the department doesn't want to harm land or property owners during the surveys.
"Any damage that occurs because of us, they'll be compensated," he said.
Delta landowners say no to peripheral canal survey...Matt Weiser
http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/v-print/story/1840673.html
Property owners in five counties around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are protesting plans by the state to survey their land for a controversial new water canal – opposition that has landed them in court.
The conflict marks a rocky start to the rebirth of the peripheral canal, a plan to divert the Sacramento River around the Delta rejected by voters statewide in 1982. The proposed surveys are an important first step in reviving the project, still considered by water planners an important piece of California's plumbing.
Three dozen property owners in the Delta have refused to let researchers from the California Department of Water Resources onto their land to study soil properties and environmental conditions. As a result, state Attorney General Jerry Brown has petitioned the courts in Contra Costa, Solano, Yolo, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties to enforce access on DWR's behalf.
"The general feeling down here is that the state, egged on by its water contractors, is just going to try to roll over the Delta," said Tom Zuckerman, a land owner on Rindge Tract, a Delta island near Stockton, who is one of those challenging the state.
Property owners oppose the terms of access sought by DWR. But perhaps more importantly, they're challenging the validity of the project itself, claiming the state doesn't have authority yet to study a canal.
"We don't think they're proceeding legally," said Dante Nomellini Sr., a Stockton attorney representing a number of property owners. "We want to get those (questions) framed in these legal actions regardless of the outcome by the court in terms of access."
A Delta canal is drawing renewed interest as a means of addressing environmental and water security problems affecting the entire state.
The Delta is the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas, as well as a water supply for 23 million Californians and more than 2 million acres of farmland. Water diversions by state and federal agencies are one suspect in the decline of nine fish species.
Troubled species include the Central Valley fall-run chinook salmon, which plunged to record levels last year, prompting closure of commercial salmon fishing in Oregon and California.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision Task Force last year recommended a Delta canal after two years of study. The aim is to divert a portion of Sacramento River flows directly to diversion pumps near Tracy, thereby avoiding diversions directly from the Delta that kill millions of fish every year.
Two canal options are proposed, stretching up to 50 miles long and at least 600 feet wide. They could be combined with an additional "through-Delta" canal built by reinforcing existing levees.
DWR wants access to 125 parcels over a three-year period in a first phase of work. Spokesman Matt Notley said about half of those have so far agreed to provide access.
Two additional phases involve 338 more properties. So the list of objecting owners is likely to grow.
The surveys could include digging trenches up to 12 feet deep and 20 feet long, drilling holes up to 100 feet deep, trapping wildlife and surveying historic resources.
The agency wants access for as much as 60 days over a three-year period. It is offering each owner a $500 payment for inconvenience and a promise to fix any damage.
The lengthy access period is needed because wildlife surveys require return visits over several seasons, said DWR spokesman Matt Notley.
"We do not want to get in the way of their farming operations or anything else that would disrupt their life," he said.
Some landowners claim $500 isn't enough for the inconvenience, especially on farm properties with permanent crops like vineyards and orchards. Others contend extended access is a "taking" that could harm their livelihoods.
"A lot of the landowners would like not to have it happen, or at least be compensated in a way they feel is more fair," said Brian Poulsen, a Sacramento attorney representing two property owners.
At the core of many objections is a philosophical dislike for the project itself.
The Delta canal remains one of California's most sensitive water issues. Many Delta residents are opposed to it, fearing it would hurt agriculture by altering freshwater flows.
Nomellini contends the Legislature must first approve the canal, then the obscure California Water Commission must vote to access private land.
But DWR Chief Counsel David Sandino said existing law gives DWR power to study new water projects, and the water commission's vote is needed only to purchase land.
"We believe we have broad authority to go forward and do environmental surveys and geologic surveys for water- related activities," he said. "The court has authority to give us that entry and can also prescribe, if it feels necessary, appropriate conditions."
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Wider tiger salamander protections restored...BLEYS W. ROSE
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090506/articles/905069882.
Environmentalists and federal wildlife regulators have settled a federal lawsuit on tiger salamander habitat, agreeing to roll back the clock to 2005 and return to the days when all 74,000 acres of the Santa Rosa Plain were considered as protected.
The agreement reverses the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s 2005 attempt to limit habitat consideration to 21,000 acres west of Highway 101. It also renders moot a locally inspired attempt to craft building permit procedures and mitigation banks in lieu of any habitat designation.
The agreement approved April 10 by the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco was hailed by environmentalists, who feel it saves the salamander. But it was criticized by real estate interests, who said it could bar already-restricted development, particularly in southwest Santa Rosa.
“If anywhere near 74,000 acres is adopted, the housing industry in Sonoma County might never recover,” said Paul Campos, vice-president and general counsel at the Home Builders Association of Northern California. “It is on life support now, this might just pull the plug.”
But Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued the federal government to force full habitat designation, said development interests are using the slumping economy to justify bad environmental practices.
“It is am important victory because we wanted to make sure the tiger salamander stayed on the list of endangered species, that recovery plans for habitat protection remain and that the process is re-energized,” Galvin said. “Developers tried to take environmental protections away and they failed.”
The 74,000-acre plain stretches from the Laguna de Santa Rosa to the eastern hills of Santa Rosa and from Windsor Creek to Skillman Road in northern Petaluma.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Arizona, filed the legal challenge to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in late 2005 to reduce from 74,000 to 21,000 the number of acres to be considered for critical habitat designation.
Such designation would require developers to study whether salamanders are present and to mitigate impacts if the nocturnal amphibians are adversely affected by construction.
The agreement effectively puts an end to the group of industry, environmental and government leaders called Santa Rosa Plain Conservation Strategy, which attempted to streamline the permitting process and establish mitigation banks for habitat preservation. That effort was put on hold about a year ago when Sonoma County supervisors and Santa Rosa council members said they could no longer fund it.
County planning director Pete Parkinson said the effort has not gone to waste because developers have been getting project approvals by agreeing to fund mitigation banks that are increasing the extent of salamander habitat.
“Although the conservation strategy was never adopted by anybody, the city and the county are still using the guidelines because it shows where mitigation can take place and shows the way projects can move ahead,” Parkinson said. “Frankly, critical habitat designation is not going to change anything very much.”
Al Donner, assistant field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agreement calls for his agency to repropose the 74,000 critical habitat designation by August. The federal agency would then begin public hearings, take new public comment and conduct an economic analysis of the impact.
By July 2011, the agency is supposed to announce a decision, he said.
San Francisco Chronicle
Feds to reconsider critical habitat for 2 fish...SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/06/national/a185831D62.DTL&type=printable
Albuquerque, N.M. (AP) -- A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can reconsider the critical habitat designation of two threatened fish species in New Mexico and Arizona after a probe found political interference likely affected scientists' findings.
Senior U.S. District Judge John Conway ruled Tuesday that the agency's original habitat designation for the spikedace and loach minnow would remain in place while federal biologists determine whether the fish need more habitat.
Conway said that it would be "least disruptive" to allow the existing designation to remain in effect pending a review.
A coalition of counties in the two states and the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association had sued over the original designation, saying the Fish and Wildlife Service overstepped its bounds and failed to adhere to requirements of the Endangered Species Act in setting aside the critical habitat.
They argued that the original designation should be vacated while the agency reconsiders the matter.
In his ruling, Conway said the original designation was likely "not expansive enough."
He referred to a report by the Department of Interior inspector general that found potential political interference by Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant Interior secretary. Among other findings of interference, the report said MacDonald selected one of several potential critical habitat designations for the two fish and wanted to make the area set aside for the species "as small as possible."
The agency filed a motion earlier this year seeking to take a new look at the species' habitat needs.
The Fish and Wildlife Service planned to review the designation and have a draft proposal in October 2010, agency spokeswoman Charna Lefton said Wednesday. It would then be another year before the agency makes a final decision.
The spikedace and loach minnow have been eliminated from more than 80 percent of their ranges in the two states. The fish were once common in the Verde, Salt, San Pedro and Gila rivers.
On the Net:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: www.fws.gov/southwest/
Center for Biological Diversity: www.biologicaldiversity.org/
California had most subprime loans, study says...Tom Abate. Hearst intern Samuel Rubenfeld in Washington, contributed to this report.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/07/MNF417FUBR.DTL&type=printable
California was the center of the mortgage meltdown that led to the nation's current economic crisis, as lenders in the state issued a majority of all recent subprime loans, says a nonprofit journalism group based in Washington.
The study published Wednesday on the Center for Public Integrity's Web site analyzed government data on $1.38 trillion worth of subprime mortgages made from 2005 to 2007.
The analysis found that about 56 percent of those loans were originated by 15 lenders from California.
"The size of the industry in California was massive," said John Dunbar, lead reporter on the six-person team that spent more than six months analyzing millions of mortgages.
Titled "Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown," the report examines the causes and consequences of subprime lending. Subprime lenders created mortgages that gave people with low credit ratings cheap initial payments that grew more expensive over time. Some subprime lenders allowed people to state their income without documenting it.
The series examines how rising foreclosure rates among subprime borrowers led to the bank failures that precipitated the financial crisis last fall, and traces the roots of the meltdown and the financial institutions that profited from it.
Dunbar said his team still isn't sure why California was home to so many subprime lenders. The group's list of the top 25 subprime lenders was led by Countrywide Financial Corp. and included IndyMac Bancorp, which was seized by federal regulators last year. Wells Fargo Financial, a unit of the San Francisco banking giant, was ranked eighth in the group's tally, with at least $51.8 billion of subprime mortgages during the study period.
Consumer and industry experts said one reason lenders in California were so big in subprimes is that the state is the nation's largest and, arguably, costliest, real estate market, making it a natural home-lending center.
"The market was hotter here than just about anywhere else in the country," said Dustin Hobbs, spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Association.
Hobbs said subprime mortgages allowed many buyers to get properties they couldn't finance with traditional loans, and, he said, the "vast majority" of such borrowers are current on their payments.
But Norma Garcia with the Consumers Union said California law doesn't protect people against lending practices that allow them to get in over their heads.
"California was a very comfortable place for these subprime lenders to do business," she said.
Redwood City mortgage broker Steven Krystofiak said divided oversight is one reason subprime loans got out of control. Krystofiak, an industry whistle-blower, said the Department of Corporations and the Department of Real Estate oversee different aspects of state-chartered mortgage lenders. Nationally chartered lenders are overseen by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Comptroller of the Currency, as well as the Federal Reserve, which sets many basic rules for all lenders.
"No one regulator could have solved this," Krystofiak said. "It would have had to have been a group effort of numerous federal and state agencies."
Kathleen Day, with the Washington, office of the Center for Responsible Lending, singled out the Fed for criticism. She said 15 years ago Congress gave it the authority to spell out more precise rules for mortgages that would have set a baseline for both national and state-chartered lenders.
"Last year, it finally wrote those rules - 14 years too late to avert this crisis," Day said.
Los Angeles Times
New jobless claims unexpectedly plunge to 601K...Associated Press
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-economy8-2009may08,0,3939252,print.story
WASHINGTON -- New applications for jobless benefits plunged to the lowest level in 14 weeks, a possible sign that the massive wave of layoffs has peaked. Still, the number of unemployed workers getting benefits climbed to a new record.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number newly laid off workers applying for benefits dropped to 601,000 last week. That was far better than the rise to 635,000 claims that economists expected.
But the total number of people receiving jobless benefits climbed to 6.35 million, a 14th straight record.
The four-week moving average of initial jobless claims, which smooths out volatility, totaled 623,500 last week, a decrease of more than 30,000 from the high in early April. Goldman Sachs economists have said a decline of 30,000 to 40,000 in the four-week average is needed to signal a peak.
In a separate report, the government said that productivity, the key ingredient to rising living standards, grew at a 0.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter, slightly better than the 0.6 percent increase that economists had expected. Wage pressures, as measured by unit labor costs, increased at a 3.3 percent rate, down from a 5.7 percent spike in the fourth quarter.
While wage pressures outpacing productivity normally would raise alarm bells about inflation, the threat of any price spikes is seen as remote. Regulators and economists are not worried about inflation since many workers are more concerned about keeping their jobs in the recession than demanding higher wages.
Even with the big drop in new applications for jobless benefits last week, the claims remained at elevated levels. By comparison, weekly jobless claims totaled 372,00 a year ago.
But since peaking at 674,000 in late March, claims have been trending lower, raising hopes that the huge wave of layoffs that have rocked the country could be easing a bit.
Even if the recent declines signal that layoffs have peaked, economists do not expect them to return to pre-recession levels anytime soon. They expect the jobless rate will keep rising through the rest of this year even if their forecasts for an end to the recession in the second half of 2009 are accurate.
The government is scheduled to release unemployment data for April on Friday. Analysts expect the jobless rate will climb to 8.9 percent from the current 25-year high of 8.5 percent. Many analysts expect the jobless rate will hit 10 percent by the end of this year.
The rise in continuing claims to 6.35 million was registered for the week ending April 25, the latest data available. That was up from 6.30 million in the previous week and marked the highest tally on records dating to 1967.
The high level of continuing claims is a sign that many laid-off workers are having difficulty finding work.
More than 5 million jobs have vanished in the recession, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday predicted "further sizable job losses" in the coming months.
Among the states, Michigan saw the largest increase in claims with 9,998 more for the week ending April 25, which it attributed to more layoffs in the automobile industry, according to the Labor Department. The next largest increases were in Massachusetts, Kentucky, North Carolina and New York.
California saw the largest drop in claims with 10,833, which it said was due to fewer layoffs in the construction and service industries. The next biggest declines were in Georgia, South Carolina, Wisconsin and New Jersey.
More companies recently announced job cuts. General Motors Corp. laid out a restructuring plan that includes cutting 21,000 U.S. factory jobs by next year. Microsoft Corp. said it was starting thousands of the 5,000 job cuts it announced in earlier this year and left the door open to even more layoffs. Chip maker Atmel Corp. last week said it would lay off 300 people, or 5 percent of its work force.
 
5-7-09
Meetings
5-12-09 Merced County Board of Supervisors meeting...10:00 a.m.
http://www.co.merced.ca.us/BoardAgenda/
Agenda posted 72 Hours Prior To Meeting
 
5-13-09 Merced County Planning Commission agenda...9:00 a.m....*Room 310*
http://www.co.merced.ca.us/pdfs/commissionarchive/2009/5-13-2009/PC%20Agenda%2051309.pdf
 
5-13-09 MCAG Technical Review Board meeting...12:00 p.m.
http://www.mcagov.org/trb.html