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Hydrogen Highway to Cause MORE Pollution—Not Less—At Taxpayer Expense
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Another California Industry in Trouble—Los Angeles Area Ports
by Stephen Frank on 11/05/2013
California is losing its movie and TV industry. Manufacturing is gone—no steel mills or auto factories Dairy farmers are moving to South Dakota, tomato farmers are moving to Mexico—ten years ago 90% of the world strawberries came from Ventura County—now it is 50%–the rest from China.
We design TV’s, cell phones and computers—none built in this nation. Not a single light bulb is made in the USA—thanks to Bush and Obama all are made in China. Now we are about to lose most of the Ports on the West Coast. Mexico is opening a massive high tech port just below San Diego to take care of the West Coast—nonunion, no crazy regulations, significantly cheaper than a U.S. Port—and thanks to NAFTA they can use Mexican drivers to transport around the U.S. (looks like the Teamsters are in trouble in the long run)
“There are other challengers to our supremacy, including port expansions in both Western Canada and Mexico that could offer newer facilities and rail connections directly within their own countries and the vast U.S. market. But the greatest challenge seems likely to come from the Gulf, which offers excellent access to trains that carry goods directly to the vast majority of the United States.
Demographic trends will also play a role. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pacific Coast seemed like the premier growth market, but high housing prices, taxes and regulatory restraints – and, most importantly, outmigration – have slowed regional business growth.”
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CalPERS Members Live Longer, May Push Up Rates
by Stephen Frank on 11/05/2013
We know that CalPERS on 1/1/14 will have $640 billion in unfunded liabilities. We know that it is mismanaged and secretive, not allowing the public a good look at its books—so the unfunded liabilities could be more. This is an agency that opposes any reform and has opposed a proposal that would not save money for twenty years, even that is a negative to CalPERS. They do not want interference from those who will lose their pensions or those paying for them.
Now another “worry”—that isn’t. They are concerned that people will live longer, thus cost more. Over the weekend dozens of cancer patients have told the heart wrenching story of being cut off from their doctors and medicines due to ObamaCare. Many more say they can no longer afford the care to keep themselves alive. Barack Obama is making sure lots of people die before their time due to the Third World health care program. The rich will pay for good care out of pocket. The poor have the taxpayers to pay for theirs—it is the middle class that will die off, literally.
How many cops will be fired to keep this economic illiterate system? “Assuming 10 years of mortality improvement, a phased-in employer rate increase would be 0.4 percent to 0.9 percent of pay in the first year and in the sixth year 1.4 percent to 3.9 percent of pay.
Assuming 20 years of mortality improvement, the employer rate increase would be 1.0 percent to 1.8 percent of pay in the first year and in the sixth year 2.8 percent to 6.4 percent of pay.”
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No Need for Government Choo Choo—HyperLoop Can Do it PRIVATELY and for 1/20th the Cost
by Stephen Frank on 11/05/2013
We do have a choice. Either allow Guv Brown to pay off his union buddies and donor base with $200 billion worth of contracts for a choo choo train—or allow a private firm to spend $10 billion of its own money to provide a world class train—which few will use anyway.
The Hyperloop Can take you from LA to San fran in about 35 minutes—the Brown $200 billion model could go the same distance in four hours. Which would you want—costly and slow and no taxpayer cost and fast?
This is the future of infrastructure—Sacramento is the corrupt past.
“”I found it an extremely interesting engineering challenge,” he said. “I used to work in space environments. It takes a lot of the challenges that I’m used to and brings them down to earth.”
JumpStartFund is helping the company hire a core team of 30 to 50 employees through its crowdsourcing platform. The company has received applicants in Australia and Asia, said JumpStartFund Chief Executive Dirk Ahlborn. Many of the initial team will work remotely in exchange for stock options. “
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Few Californians “Buy” ObamaCare—Medi-Cal (Total Gov’t Health Care via tax $$) Explodes
by Stephen Frank on 11/05/2013
You thought that ObamaCare was about getting folks to buy their own health care insurance? Actually, the purpose, by changing the Med-Cal regulations, was to put MILLIONS of people on the government dole—paying nothing. That explains why YOUR health care costs are skyrocketing—to pay for millions to get it absolutely free. You are subsidizing the long lines, few doctors and lack of hospitals for the millions who now qualify for Med-Cal (other States have their own names for this Medi-Caid program)
“Most people who purchase individual health-insurance plans buy for affordability, so they will likely opt for the Bronze — the least expensive — plan on the exchange, Hopper said. But the premiums of those new plans are more expensive than current plans, and his clients are seeing their premiums jump 30 percent to 50 percent, he said.”
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No Insurance Provider Safe From California Government: Non Profit Kicked Out of Exchange—Less Choice for Health Care in Alameda County
by Stephen Frank on 11/05/2013
So, on October 5 you bought your health insurance through the State of California in a company called Alameda Alliance—a non profit. Great. Now forget about it. The State of California no longer likes the group, so your new insurance policy is dead. You will not get a subsidy for its high rates—more than you were paying for before, because the government just “remembered” the rules.
What stops the cronies running your health care from doing it to another health care insurance firm? Nothing—you are a pawn in the power game. Now you only have three choices left in the Bay Area—all chosen by government.
“Alliance was one of the Bay Area’s four regional plans that were offered in addition to the state’s major insurers, including Contra Costa Health Plan, Valley Health Plan in Santa Clara County and Chinese Community Health Plan in San Mateo and San Francisco counties.
Alliance did not meet a minimum financial solvency requirement to sell its plans on the exchange, according to the Department of Managed Health Care.”
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Unions Fighting to Keep Failed Schools From Parents—Do Not Want Quality Education for Students—Just the $$
by Stephen Frank on 11/05/2013
Unions are special interests looking for power and money—they have nothing to do with production (thought the auto companies are proof union kill an industry). Unions are not about saving lives—note the numerous strike closing hospitals and putting the elderly and young at risk for death—just to make a point they, not doctors own the hospital.
Now we have the California Teachers Association fighting hard to keep perverts in the classroom, getting you daughters major surgery—without letting you know. Then you have the most failed of schools, where the parents understand the unions have killed education for thousands—and the unions fought to keep children in bad schools, not learning—because they can.
“Many schools statewide, particularly in Los Angeles, are eligible for reform under the law.
UTLA leaders know this, and they’re worried. The union represents 35,000 Los Angeles educators, and though statewide teachers unions have taken the lead in the fight against the parent trigger in the past, UTLA is prepared to take up the cause on its own.”
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Hydrogen Highway to Cause MORE Pollution—Not Less—At Taxpayer Expense
by Stephen Frank on 11/04/2013
Even junk science cannot save this massive boondoggle meant for unions and crony capitalists. At a cost of $ 2 million each—paid for by drivers in California—100 hydrogen gas stations will be built—for the less than 250 hydrogen cars—which cost upwards of one million each!! This is how the rich get richer—getting the poor to pay for their lifestyle choices.
The worst part is that these ultra-rich will not make the air—they will make the air dirtier! These Al Gore sycophants are going to harm our environment—at a hefty price to us. Ford did not use tax dollars to subsidize the Model T—let the ultra-rich pay for their own mess.
““Hydrogen fuel cells in the cars themselves produce virtually no pollution, aside from water,” concluded a 2007 study by the libertarian Reason Foundation. “However, depending on the technology used, the manufacture of hydrogen cells produces as much or more net pollution than the manufacture and use of gasoline.”
Advocates respond that hydrogen production will become cleaner as the technology advances. But Adrian Moore, who managed the Reason study, told me, “The only
way it is green is if each station makes the hydrogen from solar, wind or hydro power on site, without shipping the hydrogen in tankers.” He said the 2007 conclusions are still valid.”
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Swisscom builds ‘Swiss Cloud’ as spying by NSA Killing U.S. Industry
by Stephen Frank on 11/04/2013
Here is another industry that the United States is going to lose. Not because of regulations or taxes, but because our Federal government consists of snoops that spy on everybody in the world—we are a nation that cannot be trusted with secrets, information or privacy. Now the world is fighting back.
The “cloud” is a new form of information storage. It is an almost exclusive effort by American companies. Now that foreigners and foreign government know that the NSA is stealing their secrets, others are making plans to provide secure clouds in other country that the NSA cannot steal from.
The Swiss are very “diplomatic” “But revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) secretly gathered user data from nine big U.S. tech companies including Google, Apple and Facebook has demonstrated that privacy for users of cloud services can be compromised, and some suggest customers could seek out alternatives to the dominant U.S. providers to try and protect sensitive information.
Swisscom’s head of IT services Andreas Koenig told Reuters the telecom provider’s decision to set up a home cloud was unrelated to the recent NSA revelations and driven more by a desire to cut costs and make its systems more dynamic.”
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Lowest bidder CR&R being recommended to privatize Newport Beach trash collection!
by Stephen Frank on 11/04/2013
Is it the role of government to collect the trash? That is not a basic service. Glad to see the City Council of Newport Beach is about to give a contract to privatize trash collection. Let a private firm do it, make profits and pay taxes on its revenues—this is a win-win.
Next the Newport Beach Council needs to sell off all of its parking lots and unneeded property—return them to the property tax rolls and allow private jobs to be created. This is not the time for government to be no different than a crony capitalist conglomerate.
“City staff members plan to recommend that the Newport Beach council agree to outsource trash services to the company that submitted the lowest bid for the work.
Staff will present to council members an agreement negotiated with CR&R waste services, whose original proposal would have saved the city an estimated $17 million over seven years, according to an independent assessment.”
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Weintraub: Californians’ love-hate relationship with direct democracy
by Stephen Frank on 11/04/2013
Voters love to complain about the Initiative process in California. They do not understand the measures, they are not sure if a NO is for or against their views. They never know the true costs or the weasel words used to reverse the real purpose of the ballot measure. So they complain.
http://capoliticalnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/110411-vote-sm.pngThen they complain about the high taxes, bad policies, crummy schools and now the lack of health care caused by the State legislature. Maybe if these folks stopped watching Seinfeld re-runs and got involved in public policy and politics California and America is governed by “low information” voters—those that believe the TV ads and slick brochures instead of reading all sides of an issue—they read the Times or Bee (of any variety) and think they understand an issue—yet seem to be unaware they are getting just one side of the story. California is in a Depression, folks are getting ripped off with high cost Third World health care, and the NSA and IRS have exploded our privacy rights. When will the people get really angry?
“We love that we have the ability to set the politicians straight, either by getting a jump on them on the next big issue or reversing course when we think they’ve made a big mistake.
But we’re not wild about reading through all those damn initiatives that appear on the ballot every year, or sorting through the claims and counter claims of the interest groups that sponsor and oppose them. And we don’t like the way that big money pays to get most measures on the ballot and then underwrites the campaigns.”
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