5-20-09

 
5-20-09
Merced Sun-Star
Matt Jennings: Protests a wrong message...Matt Jennings of Merced teaches at Atwater High School.
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/115/v-print/story/855604.html
Saturday was an incredibly emotional day for many students, families, local dignitaries and Merced residents.
Not only was there a grand celebration of the first class of graduates to have attended UC Merced all four years, but the occasion was marked by the commencement speech by first lady Michelle Obama.
Regardless of one's political or ideological alignment, one would be hard pressed to deny that her recognition of the students' effort in pursuing her as their commencement speaker lent immediate legitimacy to not only UC Merced but the entire Valley.
In short, it was the kind of day that seemed devoid of a single gray cloud, on both literal and figurative levels. Except for one by my estimation.
As was witnessed by anyone traveling toward the university Saturday, Lake Road was lined with protesters carrying signs with messages ranging from "Abortion is murder" to "Abortion is not an American family value." The pro-life voice was loud and clear.
Their aim was to convey the message that they were not in favor of abortion, mostly because the wife of our president would see them.
As an American, I fully identify with one's desire to outwardly express his or her views in a public forum (when appropriate/necessary).
As a teacher at a local high school, I am constantly encouraging my students to practice speaking their minds in responsible and productive ways. And as a Christian, I have experienced moments during which my faith has prompted such action.
This is a responsibility I do not take lightly, nor do I deny that it is a privilege afforded by the Constitution.
Furthermore, I too would categorize myself as someone who is in the pro-life camp. Still, I am struggling to find a reason to approve of the protesters Saturday for a variety of reasons.
First of all, it was disrespectful to the students and families celebrating such a monumental day. Wrong place, wrong time. Just my opinion.
Secondly, their efforts would have been much better spent doing something proactive instead of standing behind signs.
About two miles from UC Merced, a group of people of action were participating in the Walk for Life put on by the Alpha Pregnancy Help Center.
Alpha works to assist young mothers who have nowhere else to turn after discovering they are pregnant.
Though the hope for the women is that they carry their children to term, they are more than welcoming of young women who are facing pregnancy and have made the decision to go through with an abortion.
They offer counseling, health information, parenting classes, mentoring, pre- and post-abortion counseling, adoption information and many other services for women who have nowhere else to turn.
Is it possible that while holding signs and shouting at bypassing cars, the protesters completely and utterly missed the point?
I believe that life is precious. As the older brother of an unwed teen mother, I have very strong feelings about the choices facing young pregnant women.
The Jesus I have grown to love and follow was a man of action. He loved the unlovable, offered comfort to the outcast and provided shelter and protection to the persecuted.
Did the protesters even think about the young women who may be unwed, poor, uneducated and whose only answer seems to be abortion?
If preventing abortion is so important, why aren't the protesters instead trying to add to the total of more than $30,000 raised at the Alpha Walk for Life?
Perhaps there was a young girl, maybe the sister of a UC Merced graduate or the daughter of a professor attending the commencement, who sat in the back seat of a car on Saturday, wrestling with the fear of revealing to anyone around her that she was pregnant.
It breaks my heart to think that the message she needed to hear was resounding in a park not far from the misplaced protests.
Modesto Bee
Housing appears to be bottoming out...Martin Crutsinger, The Associated Press
http://www.modbee.com/business/v-print/story/710276.html
WASHINGTON — Single-family home construction posted a modest rebound in April, raising hopes that the three-year slide in housing is leveling off. But a bulging supply of unsold homes, record levels of foreclosures and still-falling home prices suggest a sustained recovery isn't likely until next spring at the earliest.
The Commerce Department said construction of homes and apartments fell 12.8 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 458,000 units. That's the lowest pace on records going back a half-century.
Applications for new building permits dropped 3.3 percent to an annual rate of 494,000, also a record low.
"I think it will take another year for a recovery in housing to get going," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
All of last month's weakness came in the volatile multi-family part of construction. By contrast, single-family construction and permits both rose, which economists took as a hopeful sign that this bigger sector of home construction was stabilizing.
A healthy home market is needed to feed a recovery.
Many economists say any rebound in home construction isn't expected to take hold until next spring, and even then is likely to be slow.
Modesto awarded $18M in groundwater lawsuit...Adam Ashton
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/710391.html
A San Francisco jury has awarded $18.3 million to Modesto in a long-running lawsuit the city filed 11 years ago against producers of dry cleaning chemicals that leached into soil and polluted groundwater.
Modesto intends to put the money away for groundwater cleanup and to pay its attorneys' fees in the case.
The city argues that the chemical makers -- Dow Chemical of Michigan and PPG Industries of Pennsylvania -- bear a share of the responsibility for what could amount to $100 million in costs to remove perchloroethylene, a chemical referred to as PCE that is suspected of causing cancer, from Modesto groundwater.
The city has collected more than $23 million from other chemical producers in settlements. It also has collected millions of dollars from insurance claims related to PCE leaking into groundwater from dry cleaners.
One of the cleanup efforts is expected to appear before the Modesto City Council next Tuesday.
We can actually see real results in moving forward on items to clean up the water, which was the whole purpose behind Modesto's efforts in undertaking this action against the polluters," City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood said.
Monday's verdict against Dow and PPG centered on contamination from Elwood Dry Cleaning Service in the 400 block of McHenry Avenue.
Dow Chemical said it intends to appeal the award. An attorney for PPG Industries did not return a call for comment.
Dow charges that any contamination from its products resulted from accidental mishandling by dry cleaners.
"These isolated incidents had nothing to do with Dow's safe warning and use guidelines," Dow spokesman Jarod Davis said. "We continue to believe that PCE can be used safely when dry cleaners and distributors follow safe use and handling guidelines."
The jury met for 114 days of trial and deliberation. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith dismissed most of the sites that Modesto claimed were contaminated, finding that the city didn't provide evidence to support the charges.
Goldsmith and the jury dismissed claims against one of the chemical makers that Modesto sued. R.R. Street of Illinois was found not to be responsible for any contamination in Modesto.
"We're just ready to move on after 10 years of litigation," said John Thomas, the attorney who defended R.R. Street. "We think the result is we didn't do anything wrong and we just want to go home."
The companies in the case argue that Modesto's drinking water is filtered and safe to drink.
Goldsmith has another claim to consider in the case pertaining to a state redevelopment law.
"The bottom line is that I do not think that this is the final word," Assistant City Attorney Roland Stevens said. "I believe that we can expect more litigation."
Cities throughout California are looking for ways to pay for PCE cleanup. Visalia recently dug six wells to determine the scope of PCE pollution in its city. Turlock is working with the state to remove the chemical from its soil.
Fresno Bee
GEORGE RADANOVICH: Two Gates project can help agriculture survive water wars...George Radanovich
http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/wo/v-print/story/1416551.html
For years, those of us living and working in the San Joaquin Valley have known that the answer to California's chronic water shortages is a peripheral canal, around the San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta, and additional storage south of the Delta such as a Temperance Flat dam.
While we have heard every plan, promise, proposal and pledge to fix our state's water woes, we are left with little action and even less water. It appears that the political will to make these changes won't happen until water delivery to all Californians, including urban water users, grinds to a halt.
California's drought is largely man made, as the water supply is being held hostage by the Endangered Species Act. These water restrictions are the reason California will lose 40,000 jobs this year and more than $2 billion of income. Today, many Valley fields are bone dry and empty as 0% to 15% water allocation from the Delta threatens the $90 billion industry that is California agriculture.
Recognizing the impending doom of our region's main economic engine, earlier this year I introduced HR 856, the California Drought Alleviation Act. The bill temporarily suspends the ESA on the Delta pumps to allow them to operate at maximum capacity -- immediately delivering much needed water to our farmers and farmworkers.
While I am making every effort to pass HR 856, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Obama administration are beholden to the environmental community and are fighting this every step of the way. Because of their indifference, the west-side water districts could face a 0% farm water allocation for the next 10 years, putting all Valley agriculture in jeopardy.
There is a temporary solution, though, that will allow the Delta pumps to deliver water to California agriculture very quickly. A proposal called the Two Gates project would require the simple construction and installation of two gates near the Delta pumps that would keep the hallowed Delta smelt safe while simultaneously pushing the lifeblood of the Valley to our farmers. The project is permit-ready and, once approved, could be installed as quickly as 90 days.
The Two Gates project was submitted to the Department of Interior as part of a list of shovel-ready California water infrastructure projects to be considered by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. Shockingly, Two Gates was not included in the final list of water projects.
President Obama sold this massive spending plan under the pretense of stimulating the economy by creating or saving American jobs. While I did not support this legislation, the stimulus funds can and should be used to solve our water crisis. Instead, most of the "job creating" stimulus funds are going to projects that "improve the environment."
The Two Gates project would cost a modest amount of money ($25 million), a minuscule portion of the $800 billion stimulus bill. It could save up to 40,000 jobs in the San Joaquin Valley -- one of the region's most severely impacted by the economic downturn.
To most, this makes obvious sense, but apparently the Obama administration has other priorities than the well-being of one of America's most productive industries.
We cannot let the agriculture industry become collateral damage in California's water wars. A temporary solution such as the Two Gates project will provide farmers the lifeline they need until a permanent solution is finally approved and installed.
At this point, the only thing keeping Two Gates from becoming a reality is a mountain of red tape at the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Department of Interior.
Citizens of California should rally around the Two Gates project and demand that the permitting process be expedited, the red tape swiftly cut through and that our government installs this project immediately.
It's nature's law: When people arrive, animals vanish...ROBERT S. BOYD,McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.fresnobee.com/news/national-politics/v-print/story/1416845.html
WASHINGTON - It seems to be a law of nature that when people come, animals go. It happened in the past, and it's happening again now.
About 11,000 years ago, more than 130 species, including most large mammals such as the woolly mammoth, saber-tooth cat and a 5-ton ground sloth, suddenly vanished from North America.
Scientists are still debating the reasons, but two leading suspects are excessive hunting by humans who had newly arrived from the Old World and devastating human-borne diseases.
"People come and animals begin to disappear," said Ross MacPhee, the curator of the mammal collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
A third commonly cited cause of the massive extinction is climate change at the end of the Ice Age and its effect on plant and animal habitats.
The combination of climate change and human impact was especially destructive, according to Anthony Barnosky, a paleontologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
"Today we stand at a similar crossroads," Barnosky reported in an analysis of the extinctions during what scientists call the Late Pleistocene age, about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. "A similar but scaled-up natural experiment is under way today - the exponential growth of human populations at exactly the same time the Earth is warming at unprecedented rates," he wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
There are disturbing analogies between what happened in the Pleistocene and today's world:
-Human contributions to global warming are causing potentially harmful climate change, threatening the survival of many species.
-Intercontinental travel rapidly spreads diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, cholera and pandemic flu.
-In the Amazon, expanding populations are cutting down rainforests where more than 600 species, including jaguars, tapirs and giant otters, are listed as endangered.
-In Africa, rogue hunters are slaughtering apes and monkeys to eat as "bush meat."
Looking to the future, Dennis Hansen, a biologist at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., predicted that human activities are "set to cause further extinctions among large vertebrates."
In an article last month in the journal Science, Hansen pointed to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where the vast majority of animals have gone extinct, leaving the forests "largely populated by ghosts today."
"Hunters who seek out large species for their meat and charismatic species for their hides, ornaments and supposed medicinal value pose a particularly acute problem," according to Joseph Wright, a biologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "Many persecuted species have been extirpated or persist only at greatly reduced abundances," he wrote in the journal Biotropica.
Scientists offer conflicting explanations for the rapid burst of extinctions in North America at the end of the most recent Ice Age. No consensus has developed.
For decades, the dominant theory, proposed by Paul Martin, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson who's now retired, was a rampage of hunting by humans who had just arrived across a land bridge from Asia. Within a few hundred years, Martin theorized, a "blitzkrieg" of killing wiped out more than half of all the mammals that weighed more than 100 pounds.
As a result, "Americans live in a land of ghosts," Martin wrote in his 2005 book, "Twilight of the Mammoths."
MacPhee, however, thinks that it wasn't over-hunting but the diseases people brought with them that ravaged animal populations in North America. As a parallel example, he noted how microbes introduced by European conquerors destroyed Central and South American civilizations 500 years ago.
Other scientists, such as Russell Graham, a museum director at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, think that climate change was "the major driving force that caused the extinctions." It destroyed animals' native habitats and reduced their geographic range so much that they could no longer survive.
"We're seeing the same thing now," Graham added. "The combination of human activities and climate change is extremely lethal."
Some scientists refer to the current loss of species as the "sixth extinction." Five previous mass extinctions occurred long before humans arrived on the planet, most recently when a huge asteroid or comet helped wipe out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
"I don't think there's any question that extinctions have occurred in the past, that they're occurring now and that they will occur in the future," Graham said.
ON THE WEB
More on the Pleistocene epoch: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/quaternary/ple.html
More on the "Sixth Extinction": http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html  
Sacramento Bee
After long fight, California's emission rules are now national policy...Jim Downing
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/1876310.html
President Barack Obama did most of the talking at Tuesday's launch of the nation's first greenhouse-gas restrictions for cars, but the spotlight was on the Californians sitting in the front row in the White House Rose Garden.
After millions in legal costs and years of delays, the state's emissions rules are now national policy, set to drive a nearly 40 percent increase in vehicle fuel efficiency by 2016.
"This has been a huge victory for the state of California," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was in the audience Tuesday. "As the president said, if it wouldn't have been for the great leadership of our great state, this would have never happened."
It's been more than eight years since state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, then in her first weeks in the Assembly, introduced the vehicle emissions bill that eventually led to Tuesday's announcement.
"It wasn't the popular issue to carry back in 2001," Pavley said in a phone interview en route to Tuesday's event. "But being a freshman, I said, 'Well, why not?' "
Assembly Bill 1493, signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis in 2002, became the opening shot in California's war on global warming.
The state had been driving national standards on smog-forming emissions since the 1960s, but Pavley's bill was the first attempt to regulate climate-warming gases.
California is the only state with the power under the federal Clean Air Act to set its own air pollution rules – subject to the approval of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If the EPA blesses California's standards, other states can copy them.
Eventually, at least 15 states declared their willingness to adopt California's plan. That potential for national impact turned AB 1493 into an early battleground for climate change regulation.
Automakers sued to block the rules, arguing the emissions standards would drive up costs by thousands of dollars a vehicle.
At the same time, the Bush administration's EPA argued that California had no jurisdiction over greenhouse gases. The agency for two years refused to respond to California's request to implement the law, then rejected it in December 2007 – prompting a suit from Attorney General Jerry Brown.
All told, Brown's office spent roughly $4 million to uphold AB 1493, according to Deputy Attorney General Kate Kenealy.
As the disputes dragged on, the state's climate agenda expanded. In 2006, Schwarzenegger signed a bill committing the state to trim greenhouse gas emissions from nearly all sectors of the economy to 1990 levels by 2020. California Air Resources Board regulators have been counting on AB 1493 to deliver nearly a fifth of those cuts.
The stalemate over the bill began to break last fall in a series of meetings between state air quality regulators, their environmental allies, and officials from Ford, General Motors, Honda and Toyota.
"What everybody realized was that there was real interest in trying to unknot these problems," said Roland Hwang, vehicle policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who was at the meetings.
Soon after his November victory, Obama signaled that he planned to back California's emissions-cutting request.
At the same time, automakers' troubles were deepening, eroding their bargaining position.
"I don't think there was really any choice," said David Cole, chairman of the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. "The financial problems are so serious in this industry that to pick a fight on this now would be ludicrous."
Discussions intensified last weekend, leading to the agreement that sent Schwarzenegger, Pavley and air board Chairwoman Mary Nichols rushing to Washington for Tuesday's announcement.
While California officials and environmental groups are presenting the deal as a win for their side, automakers are also casting it in a positive light. They had consistently opposed a greenhouse-gas standard valid only in certain states. Under the new agreement, the nation will have a single standard.
While Tuesday's deal settles the major disputes over AB 1493 for now, the peace won't necessarily be permanent.
Key details of the 2016 targets won't be released until next year. As the rules take effect, California could choose to step in if it feels the EPA isn't enforcing the standards, Kenealy said.
In addition, California retains its right to set its own air standards, and AB 1493 authorizes the air board to tighten vehicle emissions in 2017 and beyond – setting up another potential battle with carmakers and the federal government.
San Francisco Chronicle
Federal agency sued over ports' clean trucks plan...Tuesday, May 19, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/19/state/n204941D73.DTL&type=printable
Los Angeles, CA (AP) -- An environmental organization has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Maritime Commission to get information about the agency's opposition to the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports' new clean trucks program.
The National Resources Defense Council filed the lawsuit against the agency Tuesday in Washington to get the agency to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in November.
The Santa Monica-based council wants to know why the commission got involved in challenging the ports' plan.
The commission had sued the ports to delay parts of the plan, which is aimed at reducing diesel emissions at the ports by replacing older trucks with cleaner models.
A federal judge in Los Angeles denied the commission's request in April.
Election commission dismisses claims vs Wal-Mart...JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/19/financial/f140337D49.DTL&type=printable
Little Rock, Ark. (AP) -- The Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint by labor groups that accused Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of pressuring employees to vote against Democrats in the November election, though FEC staffers warned that the case was a "close call."
Commissioners voted to end the inquiry requested by the AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work and WakeUpWalMart.com after an August article in The Wall Street Journal. However, the six-member commission split on whether employees of the world's largest retailer broke the law when they made comments that went beyond a script regarding a bill that would make it easier for workers to unionize.
Wal-Mart held meetings that store managers and department supervisors were required to attend, to warn that if Democrats prevailed in the general election, they would likely push through a bill that the company says would hurt workers. That bill, known as the Employee Free Choice Act, would allow labor organizations to unionize workplaces without secret ballot elections.
In its findings, commission staffers found that Wal-Mart put together a script and slideshow presentation to show to hourly employees who supervise other workers at the retail chain. Wal-Mart has vigorously opposed unionization efforts at its stores in the past.
One slide warned: "If Democrats win enough Senate seats and we elect a Democratic President in 2008, this will be the first bill presented." Two slides later, the commission's report said, those giving the presentations were asked to tell workers that such bills would be "potentially harmful to our business."
"We are not trying to tell you or anyone else how to vote or who a person can support. Republican, Democrat or Independent: That is your personal choice," the script reads. "However, we do want to encourage you to be informed on how congressional and presidential decisions could impact our personal lives and the company we work for."
In a report to commissioners, FEC employees said that Wal-Mart provided a clear statement in its presentation that it was not trying to tell workers how to vote in the upcoming election. Still, the report acknowledged, the presentation "could be interpreted, and was interpreted by some, as a warning to vote against the Democratic presidential candidate, and, therefore, makes the guide a close call."
The report also said some Wal-Mart presenters went off-script and made their own denunciations regarding the unionizing bill and then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. After the story appeared in the newspaper, the report said Wal-Mart itself acknowledged "even more egregious" problems at the meetings. The company said one presenter showed a slide that read "Obama union" and told those attending "why unions were bad."
In a decision announced Tuesday to reporters, the commissioners agreed that the script and slide show themselves weren't a violation of federal election law. However, the commission deadlocked over the steps individual presenters took when sharing the information with other workers. In a letter, commissioners Cynthia L. Bauerly and Ellen L. Weintraub wrote that they felt a "limited investigation" was needed to ferret out whether Wal-Mart encouraged workers to embellish the script.
"There was not enough information at this stage of the proceeding conclusively to determine that Wal-Mart either did or did not attempt to coerce its employees into voting against Democratic candidates," the commissioners wrote. "What we did not have was sufficient information to find no reason to believe a violation occurred, given the public statements of the employees and (the) corporation's response."
Daphne Moore, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the company was pleased with the FEC's decision. Moore said she had no information on whether employees who embellished their presentations faced any disciplinary action.
Officials with the AFL-CIO referred questions to American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy group supported by unions and progressive groups. Josh Goldstein, a spokesman for the organization, said the group would examine what options it had after the FEC's decision. An FEC spokeswoman said the groups likely would have to file a new complaint to bring the matter back before commissioners.
"We still believe there was wrongdoing on the part of Wal-Mart," Goldstein said.
The FEC complaint is the latest skirmish between Wal-Mart and unions. Wal-Mart has long opposed workers unionizing in its stores. After failing to organize employees of Wal-Mart with traditional tactics, unions launched two political campaign-style groups in 2005 in an effort to harness public opinion to pressure Wal-Mart to provide better wages and benefits.
On the Net:
Federal Election Commission: www.fec.gov
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.: www.walmart.com
NC appeals court upholds tax bill for Wal-Mart...GARY D. ROBERTSON, Associated Press Writer
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/19/financial/f170542D87.DTL&type=printable
Raleigh, N.C. (AP) -- The state Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its efforts to get a $33 million tax refund, upholding a trial judge's ruling that found a complex corporate structure was used primarily to avoid corporate income taxes.
In a unanimous opinion, the three-judge panel said the state revenue secretary has the authority to combine the finances of multiple subsidiaries when determining the discount retailer's tax bill in North Carolina.
Wal-Mart said it did nothing illegal. The appeals court rejected its definition of true taxable earnings in state law while determining Wal-Mart Stores and its Sam's Club warehouse division are not entitled to refunds.
"The language of the statute is broad, allowing the secretary to require combined reporting if he finds as a fact that a report by a corporation does not disclose the true earnings of the corporation on its business carried on in this state," Judge Donna Stroud wrote for the court.
Wal-Mart is reviewing the decision, which could wind up at the state Supreme Court, although an appeal isn't offered automatically.
"We feel all taxpayers should be able to rely on clearly defined laws that are reasonably and fairly enforced," company spokeswoman Daphne Moore said.
The case has received attention because it may signal the extent in which North Carolina and other states are able to evaluate revenue subject to state tax law even when profits generated in North Carolina are shifted to tax shelters.
In the mid-1990s, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company began to shift its corporate structure as a method to reduce its state taxes, according to court documents.
It created a captive real estate investment trust, which served as a landlord to Wal-Mart retail stores. The stores, operating as a corporation called Wal-Mart Stores East, paid rent to the trust. The rent was tax-deductible for Wal-Mart Stores East.
The rent money was then paid out as dividends to another Wal-Mart subsidiary based in Delaware, providing the company another tax break.
That subsidiary then returned the earnings to Wal-Mart Stores East. Such dividends paid by a subsidiary to a parent corporation aren't counted as taxable income.
The state Revenue Department audited the tax returns for Wal-Mart Stores East from 1999 through 2002 and by examining two other subsidiaries ordered additional income tax payments for the company.
Stroud, along with Judges Sanford Steelman and Barbara Jackson, also upheld interest and penalties tacked on to the tax bill.
Monterey Herald
Dan Walters: CalPERS looms over budget plan...Dan Walters writes for the Sacramento Bee.
http://www.montereyherald.com/opinion/ci_12409733
When the governor and legislators talk about balancing California's state budget, they're talking about closing the gap between revenues and required expenditures by increasing the former or reducing the latter. The task becomes more difficult by the minute.
Looming on the not-too-distant horizon are other huge obligations that the current elected officeholder has chosen to ignore, because acknowledging them would make closing the chronic budget gap that much harder.
There is a potentially huge increase in the "contribution" the state must make to the California Public Employees' Retirement System to cover public pensions.
CalPERS has seen its once-immense investment portfolio shrink dramatically because of recession and some truly boneheaded investments, such as a $1 billion haircut on raw land in Southern California. Big increases in pension benefits, enacted a decade ago, are a factor.
CalPERS won't tell the state how much its boost will be until some time next year, but it could be hefty, unless CalPERS postpones the pain by stretching out the bite over several years — which would merely postpone the pain.
An even bigger headache is a new requirement that state and local governments identify and quantify their obligations for providing health care to their retired employees. The state auditor's office and an advisory commission told the state two years ago that its unfunded liability for health care is $48 billion.
State officials were advised to commit $3.73 billion during the current fiscal year to begin shrinking the unfunded liability, but the state is paying just $1.36 billion to cover its current costs.
The Legislature, under the sway of unions, rejected Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to overhaul employee health care to save money, but he is trying again, seeking to increase the amount of time it takes new state employees to earn lifetime health benefits, boosting it from 20 to 25 years.
The state auditor's office says in a new report that $4.71 billion would be needed in 2009-10 — this year's unfunded deficit, next year's current costs and next year's share of the unfunded amount. It is like a high-interest credit card debt that continues to grow when a cardholder makes only minimum payments.
The numbers don't count future health care costs for University of California or court system retirees, estimated at $13 billion. Nor do they include retirees from local school districts and local governments, another $58.7 billion.
Some of the latter have begun to set aside money for retiree health care, the auditor's office says in its report, but the state, the university and the court system have not. The state's total retiree health care headache is about $120 billion — more than the entire one-year state general fund budget — and growing steadily.
One can understand the politicians' reluctance to set aside money from a budget that's already awash in red ink. But how long can they ignore this ticking fiscal time bomb?
Los Angeles Times
Judge doesn't rule out breaching Snake River dams to save salmon
Federal officials, who have spent much of the last decade 'avoiding their obligations under the Endangered Species Act,' need a contingency plan to save the endangered fish, the judge says...Kim Murphy
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-salmon20-2009may20,0,166981,print.story
Reporting from Seattle — For years, the federal government has struggled to find a way to operate the massive hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest and still recover the endangered salmon that all too frequently are slaughtered at the massive dams as they make their way up and down the river.
One option for saving the fish has never really been on the table: breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River that stand between the salmon and millions of acres of pristine habitat in central Idaho and northeastern Oregon.
President George W. Bush made it clear that would never happen on his watch. The dams, after all, are generating enough electricity to power Seattle, and provide Lewiston, Idaho, with a port for barging valuable cargoes of grain 140 miles down the river.
But it's a new watch. And a federal judge in Oregon has signaled that breaching the Snake River dams needs to be considered, at least as a contingency plan, if other options for bringing back salmon fail to do the job.
In a letter to parties in the long-running litigation, U.S. District Judge James A. Redden made it clear that he was ready to find substantial shortcomings in the biological opinion for salmon recovery laid out by the Bush administration last year.
"Federal defendants have spent the better part of the last decade treading water and avoiding their obligations under the Endangered Species Act," the judge wrote. "Only recently have they begun to commit the kind of financial and political capital necessary to save these threatened and endangered species, some of which are on the brink of extinction. We simply cannot afford to waste another decade."
The government needs to develop a contingency plan to study "specific, alternative hydro actions, such as flow augmentation and/or reservoir drawdowns," the Portland-based judge wrote, "as well as what it will take to breach the lower Snake River dams if all other measures fail."
Reading between the lines, it looks like yet another federal salmon recovery plan is on its way to getting tossed out by the courts -- by a judge who's ready to look at the most serious of options, dam breaching, if it comes to that.
"This is a significant development in the case, because it indicates to the new administration that they have a significant problem to solve in order to come up with a plan that will protect these species and all the people that depend on them," said Todd True, attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice.
"We believe that a serious look at the science and the options we have for bringing the fish back will lead to the conclusion that removing dams on the lower Snake River is a critical step that we should stop dancing around and start dealing with."
Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle, said the agency could not comment on the judge's letter before reviewing it. But he said government scientists believe they can bring salmon populations back without breaching the dams.
"I don't think anyone argues that conditions in there for fish would be improved if there were no dams," he said, "but what we have argued in this biological opinion is that we can get to where we need to go without breaching the dams, given the fact that breaching the dams would be enormously disruptive politically and socially and economically."
The Justice Department this month requested a delay of up to two months in the court case to "more fully understand all aspects" of the plan. Redden said his letter was intended as a guide to what issues he thinks need looking at.
Government scientists "improperly rely on speculative, uncertain and unidentified tributary and estuary habitat improvement actions to find that threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead are, in fact, trending toward recovery," he said.
"All of us know that aggressive action is necessary to save this vital resource," the judge said, "and now is the time to make that happen."