6-14-09

 
6-14-09
Badlands Journal
Statewide consequences of the knuckleheads we elect to office...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-06-14/007266
The article below from the LA Times, datelined Merced, observes that the Republican legislative delegation from the San Joaquin Valley, one of the poorest places in the nation, is going to once again do the "right" thing despite their desire to be compassionate and vote to lower taxes and cut health and human services in the next state budget.
"Herald chalks it up to core GOP ideology, a yearning to shrink government," the Times reports. 'In fairness to them,' he said, 'much of it is simply philosophical.'"                       
Because it's "philosophical," it is forgiven? Anyone who would dignify the plutocratic greed behind the rightwing ideology of our thoroughly bought-and-sold legislative delegation does a grave disservice to philosophy by avoiding facing the economic absurdity, the social dangers and the immorality of this ideology. This is the same, so-called "fiscal conservatism" which, as practiced in the "free" wholesale market for politicians, precipitated the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, is causing other nations like Brazil, Russia, India and China to act in self-defense to organize alternatives to the USD reserve-currency status, and has "bailed out" banks to the tune of trillions to reinflate the real estate bubble, as foreclosures keep on going on and banks keep on "banking" the public funds.
As close to philosophy as the thugs we've elected get to is the old gunfighter, gambler, Dodge City lawman and NYC sports writer Bat Masterson's final observation on society in 1921:
“There are many in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime and the poor get it in the winter.”
Badlands Journal editorial board
Los Angeles Times
GOP lawmakers bring the budget pain home
Many call for cutting public aid despite representing poor rural areas with the greatest percentage of need...Eric Bailey...6-14-09
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gop-poor13-2009jun13,0,5077510,print.story
Reporting from Merced, Calif. — In the belly of the Central Valley, hard times have hit harder than just about anywhere else in America. But it's also a stronghold of Republicans ready to shrink the safety net.
One in five Merced County adults are out of work, home foreclosures run rampant and anti-poverty programs are stretched to the limit. The county welfare chief calls it California's Appalachia.
This also is a region represented in the statehouse budget brawl almost exclusively by anti-tax Republicans, whose push to downsize government collides with sobering reality -- a greater percentage of their constituents depend on health and welfare programs than anywhere else in California.
One in 12 residents of Merced County have tapped CalWorks, the state's welfare-to-work effort, double the per-capita use in Los Angeles County and five times the percentage in San Francisco.
But the region's Republican lawmakers hold fast to a pledge to tame the tax-and-spend cycle of California's Capitol and are backing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to slash programs for the poor.
Other rural parts of California face the same situation, from the quiet timberlands of the north to the agricultural heartland of the San Joaquin Valley, where high per-capita use of public health and welfare coexists with small-government GOP representation.
It is a paradox lingering in the background as the state grapples with a $24.3-billion budget deficit. But it is not lost on Jessica Alvarez, 23.
Little more than a year ago she was homeless on the streets of Merced, pregnant with twins, gripped by a decade-long methamphetamine addiction. When her babies were born with complications, Alvarez realized the sad consequences of a wasted life.
She entered drug treatment and got into CalWorks. It paid for child care and enrollment at Merced College. She dreams now of becoming a psychologist or lawyer.
"It's really too bad what's happening in Sacramento," Alvarez said. "They don't really think about the lower-class people. . . . There are a lot of people in need."
Schwarzenegger's budget proposes slashing health and welfare spending by 26.5%.
That means eliminating CalWorks, which services 1.4 million statewide. It means killing off Healthy Families and slicing Medi-Cal, affecting more than 2 million people, most of them children. It means cutting home-care workers for the elderly and disabled, and carving deeply into programs for Alzheimer's patients and people with HIV.
Although the number of participants in anti-poverty programs is far larger in urban cities, rural enclaves consistently have the greatest per-capita need.
Roughly 1 in 20 people receive food stamps in big coastal counties such as Los Angeles. The rate is doubled in agrarian counties, such as Merced.
Although about 4% of the people in Los Angeles County fall back on CalWorks to help land a job, more than 8% use the program in the San Joaquin Valley counties of Tulare, Fresno and Merced, which routinely send GOP lawmakers to Sacramento.
Although the rural demographics are shifting, old political habits die hard and Republicans retain a political grip in wide swaths of the Central Valley and the far north, said Barbara O'Connor, director of Cal State Sacramento's Institute for the Study of Politics and Media.
"The opinion leaders remain agriculture and business leaders," she said. "They really drive the political climate."
Anti-poverty groups say the anomaly is no secret inside the Capitol.
"We've shown [Republican lawmakers] time and time again -- they're voting in ways that are disproportionately more harmful to their own districts," said Michael Herald of the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
Herald chalks it up to core GOP ideology, a yearning to shrink government. "In fairness to them," he said, "much of it is simply philosophical."
Rural Republicans say California's mammoth deficit makes the cuts a painful but necessary step.
"I don't see any way around it. The truth is it's going to be one of the tougher votes we'll have to do," said Assemblyman Michael Villines (R-Clovis), who as GOP leader broke with Republicans in February to approve major tax increases -- an act he vows not to repeat.
Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) sees the current calamity as "that inevitable moment" brought on by years of fiscal mismanagement.
"We do want to have compassion," he said. "But the magnitude of this deficit is so huge and the need to act so great."
Democrats say there are alternatives, such as tapping the state's rainy-day reserves, rescinding $1 billion in corporate tax breaks approved in February or enacting a 10% tax on oil pumped from California soil.
Assemblywoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) said Republicans face a stark choice: "Do they want to keep corporate tax giveaways while throwing women and children off the lifeboat?"
Some economists see additional consequences. Shutting down CalWorks and Healthy Families means potentially losing billions of dollars in federal funds.
Experts also talk of the economic downdraft caused by eliminating welfare checks.
Anti-poverty payments go right back into the local market -- to mom and pop stores, landlords and coin laundries.
A study commissioned by California welfare directors found that $1.32 in economic activity is generated for every dollar spent on human services.
"It's the ultimate economic stimulus," said Nicole Pollack, Merced County's deputy human services director.
The proposed anti-poverty cutbacks come as demand rises. Pollack is seeing "the new poor," first-timers laid off after years of steady employment.
Ana Garcia, 46, a single mother, worked two decades for Mervyns before it shut down and her world unraveled.
Pride kept her from applying for government help. Desperation forced her to give in.
Buoyed by CalWorks, she recently started a new job at a health office.
"I'm so blessed this program was here when I needed it," Garcia said. "I never dreamed I'd be on welfare. But it's my tax dollars at work for me. It's my safety net."
Modesto Bee
Merced placed first in jobs recovery...J.N. Sbranti
http://www.modbee.com/local/v-print/story/743640.html
Here's a switch: Merced County's employment outlook is brighter than most of Northern California.
At least that's what a leading economic forecaster is predicting. An analysis by Massachusetts-based IHS Global Insight contends Merced will get back all the jobs it has lost by fall 2012.
San Joaquin County won't return to its pre-recession employment peak until spring 2013, and Stanislaus County's job market won't recover until spring 2014.
"We do have Merced coming out stronger in the long term," said James Diffley, IHS managing director of U.S. regional services.
Diffley said his company's analytic model suggests Merced's economy will grow faster than most of its northern neighbors, partly because of its University of California campus and population growth.
But some of IHS Global Insight's statistics for the region seem suspect.
Example: Its housing construction statistics are incorrect and it apparently doesn't track foreclosures.
The company based its forecasts, in part, on statistics showing home building was beginning to expand again. It estimated that 95 Merced homes started construction this January, February and March. In reality, six new home permits were issued during those months, and home construction levels have declined about 99 percent since 2006.
Global Insight's statistics don't include foreclosure data. Merced has one of the nation's highest mortgage default rates, with an estimated 15 percent of all mortgages 90 days or more delinquent. Nearly 5 percent of Merced houses are owned by banks, which haven't been able to resell them since foreclosing. That's seven times higher than the national rate for bank-owned houses.
Better data for the state
"For California as a whole, we get good current data," said Diffley, who acknowledged his company's county-by-county data may not be as adequate. "The economic indicators are far different in the San Joaquin Valley, and we're not appreciating that."
Economists who routinely focus on the Northern San Joaquin Valley see things a little differently than Global Insight.
"My assessment would be that San Joaquin has the brightest economic prospects of these three counties over the next few years, although it is more accurate to say least dim," said Jeffrey A. Michael, director of the Business Forecasting Center at Stockton's University of the Pacific.
"At this point, both Merced and Stanislaus look to have equally miserable 2009s, and I wouldn't say one looks better than the other in 2010," Michael said. "To the extent that Stanislaus has already lost more employment ground than Merced, I would agree with Global Insight's assessment that it will take longer for Stanislaus to return to peak employment."
But Merced's economy is more closely tied to agriculture, which Michael said is having a difficult year.
Global Insight's projections looked only at nonfarm sectors, so it didn't take job losses because of dairy closings or drought into consideration.
"It is true that employment declined more in Stanislaus and San Joaquin than Merced through most of 2007 and 2008. As a result, Stanislaus is currently the furthest below peak employment and thus has the most ground to make up," Michael said. "The return to peak employment date is more backward looking than forward looking."
·  Jobs rebound seen - years off
Economic forecast looks at nation's metropolitan areas...Tony Pugh, Bee Washington Bureau
http://www.modbee.com/local/story/743627.html
WASHINGTON -- Unlike the labor market collapse that killed millions of U.S. jobs in a matter of months, the nation's return to peak employment will not be nearly as uniform or as swift.
While signs indicate that the worst of the recession may be over, only six metropolitan areas across the country are expected to regain their pre-recession employment levels by the end of 2009, according to projections from Massachusetts-based IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster.
The areas poised for a jobs rebound this year are: Anchorage, Alaska; Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Columbia, Mo.; Laredo, Texas; and the Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux areas of Louisiana.
Only five areas are expected to see a similar jobs recovery in 2010: Bakersfield; Las Cruces, N.M.; and El Paso, San Antonio and the McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr area of Texas.
Most of the country -- 286 of 325 metro areas covered in the IHS analysis -- aren't likely to regain their pre-recession employment levels until at least 2012.
Of these areas, 112 probably won't return to their recent peaks until 2014 or later, including the Modesto area. Other areas include Rust Belt cities such as Cleveland, Dayton and Akron, Ohio; Detroit, Warren and Flint, Mich.; the hurricane-ravaged Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss., region; and greater Los Angeles, where the housing bubble and high unemployment have strangled the local economy.
Rebuilding will take time...
Three ahead of the rest...
More job losses expected...
·  Return to peak employment
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/14/04/employment.
source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
This is IHS Global Insight’s prediction for when certain California counties will get back all of the jobs they lost to the recession. Massachusetts-based IHS is a leading economic forecaster.
·  Interactive Map: When will our jobs return?...Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee 
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/1936416.html
While signs indicate that the worst of the recession may be over, only six metropolitan areas across the country are expected to regain their pre-recession employment levels by the end of 2009, according to projections from IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster. Most of the country - 286 of 325 metro areas covered in the IHS analysis - aren't likely to regain their pre-recession employment levels until at least 2012. This map shows what year economic forecasters say each metro area will return to employment levels seen before the recession.
--Also: Find your area's current unemployment rate

Current unemployment and trends for every U.S. metropolitan area

State

--Any--
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·  Interactive Slideshow: Northern California's 20 toughest job markets...Sacramento Bee 
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/1926578.html
Northern California's unemployment rate stands at its highest point in decades. Every city has been affected, some more than others. This slide show presents the 20 Northern California cities with the highest average unemployment rates from November through April. In all of these cities, at least one of every seven workers is unemployed. Some of these cities are the hardest hit by the housing bust; some are farming towns whose numbers will improve as the seasons change; some are old manufacturing hubs hurt by offshoring.
A few notes: Only cities with more than 10,000 workers north of (and including) the city of Fresno are included. Many of these cities have long had unemployment problems; all have gotten much worse.
Click the picture below to start the countdown ...

The toughest job markets in Northern California

·  PDF: U.S. Economic Survey Report...U.S. MARKETS, AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF REGIONAL ECONOMIES
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/17/Q1_2009_US_
Regional_Economic_Summary.source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
The Spring 2009 Forecast: The Bottom at Last...
·  PDF: Return to peak performance (national numbers by city)
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/17/ReturntoPeak
Nationwide.source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·  PDF: Return to peak performance (state numbers by city)
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/17/ReturnToPeak
PerformanceCal.source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·  PDF: Stanislaus County Short-Term Outlook
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/18/StanShortTerm.
source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·  PDF: Stanislaus County Long-Term Outlook
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/18/StanLongTerm.
source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·   PDF: Merced County Short-Term Outlook
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/18/MercedShortTerm.
source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·  PDF: Merced County Long-Term Outlook
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/18/MercedLongTerm.
source.prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·   PDF: San Joaquin County Short-Term Outlook
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/18/SJShortTerm.source.
prod_affiliate.11.pdf
·  PDF: San Joaquin County Long-Term Outlook
http://media.modbee.com/smedia/2009/06/13/18/SJLongTerm.source.
prod_affiliate.11.pdf
Pricey pension lists bring issue out front...Editorial
http://www.modbee.com/editorials/v-print/story/743621.html
The generous -- and unsustainable -- level of public employee pensions in California is finally getting some long-overdue attention on two fronts:
Cities, counties and other government entities feel the pinch now but expect serious pain for 2010-11 because of pension funds' huge investment losses. Stanislaus County will pay more than $36 million in pension costs in 2009-10 and the amount could double the following year. The city of Modesto is bracing for a multimillion-dollar increase in its obligations to the California Public Employees' Retirement System next year.
A statewide group advocating pension reform has posted on the Internet lists of PERS (Public Employees' Retirement System) and CalSTRS (State Teachers' Retirement System) retirees receiving more than $100,000 a year and is pressing county retirement associations for the same information.
More than 5,000 PERS retirees get more than $100,000 annually. Many are retired public safety workers eligible for "3 at 50" -- 3 percent of their salary for each year worked, starting at age 50. Many other workers get 2.5 or 2.7 percent at age 55.
The STRS list contains more than 3,000 names. At the top is retired Modesto City Schools Superintendent Jim Enochs, who receives almost $23,800 a month. Educators' pensions are creating less controversy around the state because the standard retirement age is 60, when they are eligible for 2 percent of final compensation for each year worked. Those who work past 60 and for more than 30 years can receive an additional 0.4 percent a year. Enochs retired at age 72 after a 50-year career.
Californians for Fiscal Responsibility, the pension reform group that published the PERS and STRS lists, is getting mixed reactions as it pushes for public release of the over-$100,000 recipients from county associations.
A retired deputy in Contra Costa County has gone to court to prevent the release of the information.
The Stanislaus County Employees' Retirement Association has not provided the requested information about its top pensioners. It should.
The point behind making the information public is not to single out individuals so much as to identify the practices that have made some of these pensions so high. These include "spiking" -- adding accumulated vacation time and other benefits to the final year's salary used to determine pension amounts.
Furthermore, many of those receiving the highest pensions were in positions to negotiate the labor contracts that have contributed to pension bloating. Under typical "me-too" clauses, the executives benefit from the same provisions they negotiate for others. There's no incentive for restraint.
Finally, many agencies pay all or part of employees' retirement contributions as well as the employers' portion. All that is taxpayer money, though not readily visible when salaries are released.
California's generous pension plans date to the late 1990s, when state legislators and other elected officials naively bought the argument that because the investment returns were so high, these perks could be provided at no cost.
That might have been true for that moment, but it's abundantly clear that those overly-generous defined-benefit pensions cannot be sustained. Agencies should not and cannot renege on the benefits they have guaranteed current workers and retirees, but they must immediately start negotiating more realistic pensions for future employees, at ages more consistent with those in the private sector and with current life expectancies.
Sacramento Bee
Golden State losing folks as old Dust Bowl beckons...Phillip Reese
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/1944947.html
OKLAHOMA CITY – Fleeing the Great Depression and a drought unprecedented in American history, a vast wave of Oklahomans and Texans dubbed "Okies" loaded everything they could onto crowded vehicles during the 1930s and headed west for California. Today, in huge numbers, their grandchildren are moving back.
It doesn't take Loren O'Laughlin much time to come up with a reason why, in between bites of a burger at an Oklahoma City diner. "There aren't really people lined up on the streets here competing for a few scraps," said O'Laughlin, 23, who grew up in Sacramento but recently graduated from Oklahoma Christian University and opted to stay put. "Small businesses thrive here because networking is so easy."
As California housing prices went wild in the middle of this decade, hundreds of thousands of residents scratched their heads and moved to places where homes were still affordable, state and federal statistics show. When prices started falling and unemployment started rising, many continued to leave California for healthier job markets.
The result was five consecutive years when California saw more residents going to other states than coming. Although many stayed closer to home – Nevada, Oregon, Arizona – the mid-South saw a large influx.
From 2004 through 2007, about 275,000 Californians left the Golden State for the old Dust Bowl states of Oklahoma and Texas, twice the number that left those two states for California, recent Internal Revenue Service figures show. In fact, the mid-South gained more residents from California during those four years than either Oregon, Nevada or Arizona. The trend continued into 2008.
As a result, it's easy to find Californians – even former Sacramentans – living and working in Oklahoma City, a capital of the American heartland.
Ask these Okies-in-reverse why they traded the Golden State for the Sooner State – named for settlers who came there sooner than the Homestead Act allowed – and you'll hear a lot of similar themes: easier to find a job; cheaper to buy or rent a home; better place to make a fresh start. Ask them why they stay in Oklahoma and they'll add to that list a deep optimism that it's a place where things are about to take off.
"Oklahoma City is like Sacramento back when the Kings were in the playoffs," said Branddon Jones, 26, who moved about a year ago to get out of Del Paso Heights. "It's growing. You can get a job. It's just crazy."
Two different cities
A lot of that has to do with the downtown core, particularly an area called Bricktown where, on a recent Thursday, former Sacramentan Tim Higgins sat on a restaurant patio, watching water taxis weave through a nearby canal.
Around Higgins was a vast collection of old warehouses that sat abandoned as recently as 15 years ago. That was before the city's residents – though relatively conservative – passed a temporary 1-cent sales tax increase to improve downtown; before the funds from that tax increase built a baseball stadium, an arena (now occupied by an NBA team), a canal and a library; before at least 1,000 new housing units sprang up within walking distance of where Higgins was sitting.
Now those warehouses are warrens of shops and eateries, cozying up to the meandering canal.
"This would be the equivalent of Old Sacramento," said Higgins, 47, "except it's much more happening."
From the restaurant patio, Higgins could see a large crane working. Just to his south, workers toiled on a massive project to move a federal interstate away from downtown to make way for a park.
The bustle is very different from what Higgins, a videographer, witnessed back home before he moved out in October.
"When I left, all construction had stopped throughout California," he said. "Here I see a lot of construction, a lot of new businesses."
Slow and steady
Watching tax revenues gush into California city coffers as housing prices skyrocketed a few years ago, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett couldn't avoid a twinge of envy. He doesn't feel that way now.
Oklahoma City didn't boom, and it's not busting.
Things aren't perfect, but unlike Sacramento, there have been no city employee layoffs, nor are any being discussed. Unlike Sacramento, Oklahoma City does not face a giant budget deficit.
"We're flat," the mayor said.
And for next year? "We're projecting slight growth."
The metro area of 1.2 million grows by a percentage point or two every year, its housing prices keep up with inflation and its businesses tend to expand at a sustainable pace.
Oklahoma City's economy is diverse, but its three biggest drivers are energy, government and defense, industries that generally tend to be stable. Several of the largest natural gas companies in the nation are based here. So is Tinker Air Force Base, which employs tens of thousands.
Add to that some quality of life measures: little traffic, almost as many days of sunshine as Sacramento and residents widely regarded as among the nation's friendliest.
But the city does have its downsides, according to several of the Sacramento refugees. The weather can be random, even dangerous when tornadoes sweep through. Mass transit is woefully inadequate. There's far less ethnic or cultural diversity than in California. And Oklahoma City is seriously landlocked, a full day's drive from the nearest coastline.
The recession also is starting to bite. Oklahoma's unemployment rate has jumped in the last year to about 6 percent.
All about jobs
Unemployment in California, however, now stands at 11 percent, nearly twice Oklahoma's. It doesn't take an economist to figure out which state offers more options to job seekers.
Branddon Jones certainly thinks his luck has improved since leaving Sacramento. He joined the Army as a cook after graduating from Grant High in 2001. Three years later, his mom died, and he came back to his hometown.
A father himself by then, Jones struggled to make it in Del Paso Heights and, later, south Sacramento. He had a brush with the law – a weapons charge. He worked some decent, low-skill jobs but could barely afford rent. His dad, meanwhile, was making a good wage in Oklahoma City.
Jones thought about his life in 10 years, the lives of his three young daughters in 10 years, and he saw himself working the same types of jobs and living in the same places. He felt like he couldn't catch a break.
"You've got to have something to make it out of there," he said, referring to south Sacramento and Del Paso Heights. "In Oklahoma City, if you just wake up every morning and do what you are supposed to do, you won't have any problems."
After arriving in 2008, Jones quickly found a few good jobs to choose from. Generally he has found pay comparable to California, but there are a couple of key differences, he said.
If he feels like he is being mistreated or cheated, Jones said, he can shrug his shoulders, quit and quickly find something else just as good. He did that recently when he said a boss didn't follow through with a promised raise.
Affordable housing
More importantly, Jones said, his money stretches a lot further. A gas station clerk in Oklahoma makes about $1.50 an hour less than a gas station clerk in California. But Jones takes his money from working behind the counter and spends $400 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. In Del Paso Heights, a similarly sized apartment could easily cost $750.
That's where the similarity ends, too. Jones is not living in the Oklahoma City equivalent of Del Paso Heights. He lives a short drive from a large city lake, not far from a vibrant commercial strip featuring a Romano's Italian Grill and a Chuck-E-Cheese.
All three of his kids, ages 3, 6 and 8, live with him, and they love it. Jones, who is separated from his wife, said his family is safer here than in his old neighborhood – he prefers the occasional threat of a tornado to the sound of gunshots in the evening.
Tim Higgins has swankier digs. He sleeps on the 12th floor of a downtown high-rise in a one-bedroom apartment. Yet he pays just slightly more than $800 a month in rent, including utilities.
"When I arrived here, I managed to get a local phone number, a local bank account and an apartment in a secured downtown building – all in one hour," Higgins said. "I don't know anywhere else where that would happen that quickly."
Higgins also came to Oklahoma in pursuit of opportunity. He had spent 15 years running video and audio at Arco Arena, including for the Sacramento Kings. They parted ways in 2003, and Higgins had been freelancing since then, hoping to get back into the National Basketball Association.
Enter the Oklahoma City Thunder, the newest team in the NBA. They needed a video guy, and they offered the gig to Higgins just days before their inaugural season began in October. He took it, and has worked almost nonstop since.
It's a simple equation for Higgins. "As far as being more attractive than Sacramento – yes, there is a job here for me!" he said.
Losing good people
Many of those leaving California for the mid-South have valuable skills, census figures show. They skew younger and highly educated, the kind of people upon which a state builds its future.
In concrete terms: California is losing people like Loren O'Laughlin.
O'Laughlin is an artist and designer. He left Rancho Cordova when he got a scholarship from Oklahoma Christian University, and he liked the college's vibe. He never planned to stay in the area, but he met his wife in college, and he was wooed by a local company months before he graduated with a bachelor's degree in art and design.
Now O'Laughlin designs trophies for MTM Recognition, a large outfit with big-name clients. When Dale Earnhardt Jr. raises that massive trophy over his head after winning a big NASCAR race, there's a pretty good chance that O'Laughlin helped design it.
O'Laughlin earns $16 an hour. It may not seem like a lot, but, along with his wife's job teaching English as a second language, the couple can afford a two-bedroom house in a cute neighborhood – think the area around the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento – for which they pay $690 a month. (The median income is about 20 percent lower in Oklahoma City than in Sacramento, but that income goes 10 percent further, federal statistics show.)
O'Laughlin admits to having mixed feelings about his adopted city. His wife, Penelope, grew up in Oklahoma, and she wants to leave as soon as she finishes her master's degree.
Devoutly Christian, O'Laughlin is nonetheless frustrated by what he perceives as the religious ethos in many Oklahoma City suburbs. Or as he puts it in a typical rapid-fire tirade: "The strange hybrid of Americana-consumer-driven-megachurch-evangelical-nothing-is-wrong-here-everything's-fine-oil-money-endowed-conservative Christianity that bombs recklessly around town in an H2."
That frustration shows up in O'Laughlin's art, much of it hanging these days at a local coffee shop where he is the artist of the month. His  
O'Laughlin is thinking about moving back to the West Coast, but to Portland, Ore., not Sacramento. Still, standing amid scrap he is rusting to artistic perfection in his backyard, he worries about leaving behind a good situation.
"The thought of moving somewhere else, as much as Penelope wants to be somewhere else," he said, "we can't afford to have the lifestyle we have here."
No intention of returning
As much as California could use more creative talent like O'Laughlin's, it needs newly minted nurses like Angela Outlaw even more. The state is short about 50,000 registered nurses, according to the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.
But Outlaw has no intention of returning to California. She has many quality hospitals to choose from in Oklahoma, and if she does move, she said, it will be to someplace like Austin, not like Antelope.
"I meet more Californians here than anyone else," said Outlaw, 42. "And, most of them are planning on staying here permanently."
Outlaw first left Sacramento for Texas but headed to Oklahoma a few years ago when her mother was transferred to Tinker Air Force Base after McClellan shut down. A California State University, Sacramento, graduate, Outlaw went back to school at the University of Oklahoma and will finish her nursing degree within a year.
She spends many of her weekends hiking in the Wichita Mountains southwest of Oklahoma City. She admits that "the mountains are really hills," especially compared to the Sierra Nevada, but says the canyons and the granite outcroppings covered with deep green shrubbery nonetheless inspire her.
Outlaw converted to Christianity a few years after moving to the mid-South and worships at one of Chuck Smith's nondenominational Calvary Chapel churches, part of a national evangelical movement that maintains the Bible is complete and infallible.
"I feel free to express my faith in God here," she said. "In California, I find that people are often less accepting of people's spiritual beliefs."
Sitting just a few miles from a modern airport named after perhaps the most famous Oklahoman ever to leave for California, Will Rogers, Outlaw talked about her new home the same way an Okie might have talked about the Central Valley decades ago.
"I never thought I would leave California," Outlaw said. "But all the neat places I've seen, the people I've met – I'm really glad I left."
Where Californians are moving
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1944947-a1945278-t46.html
Agribusiness puts subsidized crops ahead of people...Jim Jones. Jim Jones is past president of the Save the American River Association.
http://www.sacbee.com/740/v-print/story/1942918.html
In the fight over the future of California's water resources, San Joaquin Valley agribusiness interests have long tried to reduce the struggle to a simple, but false, comparison between fish and people. Now, with federal biologists documenting the decline of the salmon and suggesting a menu of possible fixes, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has joined this Big Farm chorus.
"This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians and the health and security of the world's eighth largest economy," Schwarzenegger said June 4.
The governor should know better. Certainly, his secretary of Natural Resources, Mike Chrisman, and director of Water Resources, Lester Snow, do.
Apparently the governor thinks growing water-thirsty alfalfa and taxpayer-supported cotton in the San Joaquin Valley is more important than salmon – or people. But the fishermen, communities, and their residents and business owners up and down the California coast which depended on the once-prolific salmon runs are people, too. They just don't have the voice or political clout and millions of dollars for politicians' campaigns and public relations firms that agribusiness can employ to get its message out.
The recent report from biologists at the National Marine Fisheries Service suggested a 5 percent to 7 percent reduction in water deliveries to San Joaquin Valley agriculture under certain conditions. That would hardly be the calamity that the governor would have us believe.
A far more responsible response to the biological opinion came in a statement from Donald Glaser, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's regional director: "We have to just find better ways to make efficient use of the water we have," he said.
That presents the governor with a great opportunity, if only he is willing to first recognize, then embrace it.
Namely, a recognition that fish are long overdue to be placed on equal footing with agriculture. And they certainly should be given a higher status than the thousands of acres of the San Joaquin Valley now devoted to tax-supported cotton, water-wasting alfalfa, speculative wine grapes and almonds for export. More than two-thirds of almonds grown here are sent overseas.
The dirty but not-so-little secret of San Joaquin Valley agriculture is that a great deal of it has nothing to do with putting food on the tables of Americans and more to do with propping up water-wasteful, welfare-farming operations that would not exist except for direct and indirect taxpayer support.
The collapse of the salmon run correlates perfectly with an increase in Delta diversions to record levels to water those crops. Drivers heading south on Interstate 5 pass field after field of newly planted grape vines, fruit and nut trees stretching to the horizon. Nine hundred thousand acres of the San Joaquin Valley was devoted to cotton in 2008, an increase over 2007 acreage even though California was in a drought. But fewer than 70,000 salmon returned to the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system last fall, more than a 90 percent decline from the peak of 800,000 recorded since records started being kept in 1967.
A new public awareness coupled with a shift in the governor's approach to water leadership would make available a substantial quantity of water to meet California's water needs – more than would have been provided by an Auburn dam. And one that doesn't require the billions of dollars, and unpredictable, but potentially catastrophic environmental risk associated with building a huge concrete-lined channel bypassing the Delta.
San Joaquin Valley interests would like to gut the state's environmental regulations, supposedly to mitigate economic impact to communities. But by that logic, the hydraulic gold mining popular in the late 1800s would still be scouring Sierra hillsides to prop up once-booming foothill mining communities like Gold Run and Dutch Flat.
The damage being done by irrigation practices in the San Joaquin Valley may be less visible than was the destruction caused by hydraulic mining. But it is every bit as damaging. Water is denied to more valuable uses. Land and waterways are poisoned by a witches' brew of irrigation drainage water laden with pesticides, nutrients and leached salts.
Perhaps even more fundamental is the compelling evidence compiled by Jeffrey Michael, director of the Business Forecasting Center and associate professor of the University of the Pacific, disproving agribusiness contentions that the San Joaquin Valley's high unemployment levels are due to a "regulatory drought." His numbers show that farm employment has grown faster than any other sector of the economy during the past year, and the number of farm jobs has been climbing throughout three-year drought. In Fresno County, farm payrolls grew by 3.2 percent in the 12 months that ended in April, while private, nonfarm payrolls shrank by 3.4 percent.
But some good may yet come from the real drought if there were a shift in San Joaquin Valley farming practices away from tax-supported, water-thirsty and speculative crops, either through legislation or by removing financial props. That could free up more than 200,000 acre-feet – the average annual yield once proposed for the Auburn dam – for more beneficial uses such as domestic and industrial uses, and yes, for fisheries dependent on a healthy Delta.
Of course, that's a big "if" – dependent on a newfound public awareness of the distinction between farming and "farming." With the natural drought and the ongoing litigation over the future of the Delta, the public is paying increased attention to the fight over California's water supply. It is the perfect "teachable moment." Schwarzenegger should take advantage of that opportunity to begin a reasoned and informed discussion of the issues and alternatives, not use it to further inflame passions that already are driven by ignorance.
Stockton Record
Ex-river guide among many who fought dam...Alex Breitler
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090614/A_NEWS/906140316
ANGELS CAMP - With water already pooling behind New Melones Dam, river guide Mark Dubois wandered upstream and bolted himself to a rock with a 6-inch chain around his ankle.
He sat.
Authorities got word and went searching, but Dubois didn't want to be found; trees and brush cloaked him from the helicopters and boats.
He claimed to his friends, who brought him food under cover of darkness, that he was willing to drown to save the scenic Stanislaus River canyon.
But federal officials blinked; that claim could not be tested. A dry Dubois climbed out of the canyon after one week, having received assurances that the reservoir would not rise above Parrott's Ferry Bridge that year. Eventually, of course, it did, and today New Melones Lake is California's fourth-largest reservoir.
Dubois, now a prominent environmental activist, and about 150 others gathered in Angels Camp last weekend to remember the 30th anniversary of his protest, and a river swallowed up by California's growing thirst.
"I had fallen in love with the place," Dubois said. "I got completely swept into it. And I felt that the life, magic and beauty of the place - that 9 million years of evolution - was about to be eradicated if I didn't speak up."
The bittersweet reunion came, coincidentally, three days after the release of a new plan to protect steelhead on the Stanislaus. That plan from the National Marine Fisheries Service says New Melones Dam - which supplies Stockton and south San Joaquin County with much-needed water - has imperiled a fragile population of steelhead that spawns downstream.
With the focus on the Delta as the heart of California's water wars, one might forget that New Melones was perhaps the country's last great battle over a large new dam.
The Stanislaus was, as one advocate put it, "the last river lost." Advocacy group Friends of the River said the decade-long fight was "probably the biggest citizen effort to save a river and stop a dam in American history."
At stake was nine miles of Class 3 river rapids through a cave-riddled limestone canyon. Even beginning boaters could enjoy the trip, often spread over two days, recalled George Wendt, president of Angels Camp-based Outdoor Adventure River Specialists.
Much of the land was public and accessible, unlike other streams. Historic artifacts abounded. And upstream dams meant reliable year-round flows for rafters, Wendt said.
Supporters of the dam argued New Melones would increase storage while providing flood control, hydroelectric power and lake recreation. Calaveras County leaders, whose law enforcement officers spent time and money searching for Dubois, called his hideout "a cheap publicity trick."
The reservoir finally filled in 1983. The protestors lost, but Wendt said the movement triggered "a major societal shift."
"We realized we can't keep expending resources and borrowing from the future," he said.
Last weekend, Dubois, 60, of Bainbridge Island, Wash., visited New Melones on his own for the first time since chaining himself to the canyon wall. He saw the bathtub ring of mud around the lake. A half-dozen motorboats jetted through the water.
"It was just stunning to feel the death of the place, compared to the magic of the river," he said. "The place just felt dead."
To learn more
Some of the original opponents to New Melones Dam are on Facebook. Their group name is "Spirit of the Stanislaus."
San Francisco Chronicle
Trees on levees must be axed, says Corps...Cain Burdeau, Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/14/MNDP183S42.DTL&type=printable
Columbia, La. -- The Army Corps of Engineers is on a mission to chop down every tree in the country that grows within 15 feet of a levee - including oaks and sycamores in Louisiana, willows in Oklahoma and cottonwoods in California.
The corps is concerned that the trees' roots could undermine barriers meant to protect low-lying communities from catastrophic floods like the ones caused by Hurricane Katrina.
An Associated Press survey of levee projects nationwide shows that the agency wants to eliminate all trees along more than 100,000 miles of levees. But environmentalists and some civil engineers insist the trees pose little or no risk and actually help stabilize levee soil.
Thousands of trees have been felled already, though corps officials did not have a precise number of how many will be cut.
The corps has "this body of decades of experience that says you shouldn't have trees on your levees," said Eric Halpin, the agency's special assistant for dam and levee safety.
The saws are buzzing despite the outcry from people who say the trees are an essential part of fragile river and wetland ecosystems.
"The literature on the presence of vegetation indicates that it may actually strengthen a levee," said Andrew Levesque, senior engineer for King County, Wash., where the corps wants trees removed on the six rivers considered vital to salmon populations.
The anti-tree policy arose from criticism directed at the corps after Katrina breached levees in New Orleans in 2005. The agency promised to get tough on levee managers and improve flood protection.
In 2006, the corps began sending hundreds of letters to levee districts across the nation, ordering them to cut down "unwanted woody vegetation," a prospect that could cost many of the districts millions of dollars each in timber-clearing expenses.
Inspectors began an inventory of the levee system and told districts to fill in animal burrows, repair culverts and patch up erosion.
If they fail to comply, the agencies risk higher flood insurance premiums and a loss of federal funding.
"The corps' new edict was regarded as a major change in policy," said Ronald Stork, senior policy expert with California Friends of the River in Sacramento. "Something that is cheap and inexpensive is a chain saw. It was something to do that didn't cost a lot of money that made you feel better."
Last summer, the cutting crews came to Columbia, La., on the wooded Ouachita River levee at Breston Plantation, an 18th-century French colonial estate.
The plantation is surrounded by sycamores, live oaks, elms, pines, cedars, magnolias and crepe myrtles. Hundreds of trees grow within 15 feet of the levee. In theory, they would all have to go.
But after months of negotiations with landowners and the Tensas Basin Levee District, the corps agreed to let the district chop down only a few dozen trees on the levee.
"We don't know how long the trees have been here, but they've never caused any problem up until now," said Hugh Youngblood, 61, whose ancestors came to Breston in the 1800s.
On a recent afternoon, his son, who is also named Breston, was upset as he walked the levee, pointing to a heap of limbs.
"They didn't even find a buyer for the wood or the pulp," the son said.
In 2007, the corps sought to clear oaks, cottonwoods, willows and other vegetation from 1,600 miles of levees in California's Central Valley. But state wildlife officials complained that the policy would destroy habitat, and residents in Sacramento and elsewhere objected that it would have turned rivers into little more than barren culverts.
The corps eventually dropped the idea.
In a neighborhood north of Sacramento, the corps plans to rebuild the levees surrounding a basin that is home to 70,000 people and has determined that 900 trees, mostly native valley oaks, must be cut down.
Experts outside the corps say a tree has never caused a U.S. levee failure.
"If trees are a problem, why aren't we having problems with them?" said George Sills, who formerly worked for the corps' Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Miss. "There's never been a documented problem with a tree."
In a March 2008 e-mail, Sills told the corps to remove his name from an updated vegetation policy paper he worked on for the corps. He said he ran analyses for the corps "that looked at the possibility that the trees caused any of the (levee) failures in New Orleans" and "it was determined that trees did not lead to any of these failures."
Corps officials see it differently.
Halpin, the corps' dam and levee expert, said the agency does not know whether a tree has ever directly caused a levee failure. But he noted that dam failures have been linked to trees, including a 1970s collapse in Georgia that claimed 39 lives.
The corps also wants to get rid of trees for safety reasons. A treeless levee is easier to inspect and repair during a flood.
But none of that washes with local authorities whose levees are being targeted by the corps.
"This is something they've dreamed up. It's like they're hell-bent to write up some negative reports," said Frank Keith, levee commissioner of the Tulsa County Drainage District in Oklahoma, where levees contain the Arkansas River.
Some 230 miles of levees in Keith's district got an "unacceptable rating" in December 2007, and the district faced losing its federal accreditation in part because of tree growth. The district is working with landowners to cut trees and fix other problems the corps found with its levees.
The carping frustrates Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, a group based in Madison, Wis., that represents interests such as insurers and engineers.
"If you're going to have a levee, you have to be able to maintain a levee and make it safe," Larson said.
Others are skeptical.
In Portland, Ore., residents of the Bridgeton neighborhood on the Columbia River lost a legal fight in 2007 to retain cottonwoods and poplars. About 90 trees were cut down at a cost of $268,000, though the corps planted 255 others nearby.
"They don't care if that's good science," resident Walter Valenta said. "It is their policy."