As You See It: July 3, 2009

In Thursday's article about PVUSD's budget, my support of school libraries appeared questionable.

[Ray in Santa Cruz]

Jim Rothstein, have you noticed that the rail line goes no where people want to go? Other then going through the middle of Santa Cruz, and along the Board Walk, how does it serve the destinations with the highest volumes of traffic? It doesn't.

The most vocal people supporting the rail purchase seem to me to want it not for transportation, but for recreation, and that is a lot of money for the few who would acutally use it.

[PV resident]

Despite Trustee Nichols' effort at a face-saving about face, it was as obvious to anyone attending the Pajaro Valley school board meeting as it was to the Sentinel reporter that she placed a much higher priority on maintaining reduced class sizes than on keeping school libraries open. That's not surprising, since increasing class size would enable reducing teacher positions. Since she's in the teachers union and her husband is an actual member of its board, that's a no-no. But when it comes to closing some school libraries...hey, throw those little library media techs under the school bus.

[The real Realist]

Ray in Santa Cruz wrote:

Jim Rothstein, have you noticed that the rail line goes no where people want to go? Other then going through the middle of Santa Cruz, and along the Board Walk, how does it serve the destinations with the highest volumes of traffic? It doesn't.
The most vocal people supporting the rail purchase seem to me to want it not for transportation, but for recreation, and that is a lot of money for the few who would acutally use it.

you mean to say that it goes nowhere YOU want to go, so therefore it isn't warranted.

The rail could go to Watsonville, Monterey and Salinas.

[Rio]

PV Resident missed the point. It isn't about library techs vs teachers. It is about the Superintendent saying she did not need board approval to reinstate the library tech jobs. The board labored over the cuts. Now the administration says they can make changes without board approval. The board represents the people. The Superintendent represents the administration. This is not right. The people who made the cuts should have been who decides what and how much is reinstated.

[Smoke and mirrors]

Sharon Hudson: Thanks for letter "Cannabis and cancer." Original writer's claim about there being "not one dead body to show cannabis causes cancer of any kind" could only be true if not a single cannabis user had ever died of cancer. Patently absurd, but the Sentinel can't screen out all absurd letters, or we'd be stuck with little more than Praiseworthy.

[Recovering Liberal]

Contrary to Mr. Lowes Liberal Socialistic pro-tax rant, it was the tax and spend Democrats who took hundreds of millions of special interest dollars from everyone from unions to illegal immigrant groups to expand the government provided free services to all the losers who have lived in this dysfunctional Democrat majority controlled state the past 55 years! Too many millions of unproductive losers sucking up way too much money! Our state is in a perpetual yearly budgetary shortfall due to the Democrat fiscal irresponsibility!

[dON hEICHEL -sOQUEL]

The state's inability to pass a budget is absurd. With Democratic lawmakers refusing billions in cuts and Republicans and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refusing billions in tax increases, the state of California finds itself in financial limbo. Most Californians know who the culprit is when it comes to the current financial mess. The anti-tax movement and Proposition 13 and the GOP are dictating fiscal policy for the Golden State.
Ron Lowe, Santa Cruz

ANOTHER BLAME PROP 13 DIMOCRAT SPEAKS W/HIS KEYBOARD!

California as Liberalism's Laboratory

For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California's business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state's. In the last decade, net out-migration of Americans has been 1.4 million. California is exporting talent while importing Mexico's poverty. The latter is not California's fault; the former is.

If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit,

Liberal orthodoxy has made the state dependent on a volatile source of revenues -- high income tax rates on the wealthy. In 2006, the top 1 percent of earners paid 48 percent of the income taxes. California's income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, its business conditions among the worst, as measured by 16 variables directly influenced by the Legislature. Unemployment, the nation's fourth highest, is 11.2 percent.

Required by law to balance the budget, the Legislature has "solved" the problem by, among other things, increasing the income, sales, gas and vehicle taxes. This, although one rationale for the federal government's gargantuan "stimulus" was to spare states the need to raise taxes which, in California, will more than vitiate the stimulus.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/200...

NOTICE THE TAXES THE DIMOCRATS IN SACRAMENTO ALREADY INCREASED THIS RECESSION?(income, sales, gas and vehicle taxes + tobacco)

But Mr. Lowe thinks the cost of owning property should be increased...oh yeah, it would also make the cost of doing biz higher; all so the Dimwits that run the Legislature in Sacramento (and their greedy public unions) can have more taxes to squander.

Democrats prove over and over that trying to be kind is cruel to the average Californian BY RUNNING BUSINESSES AND TAXPAYERS OUT OF STATE.

WHERE ARE THE GREEN JOBS CARBON REDUCTION (AB 32) WAS SUPPOSED TO CREATE?

LAST I LOOKED WE WERE A FULL TWO POINTS HIGHER IN UNEMPLOYMENT THAN THE NATIONAL AVERAGE...THAT'S ABOUT 400,000 JOBS (gone).

Wonder what those 400,000 jobs would mean in economic activity and tax revenue?

[Carl Bendix]

Ray in Santa Cruz wrote:

Jim Rothstein, have you noticed that the rail line goes no where people want to go? Other then going through the middle of Santa Cruz, and along the Board Walk, how does it serve the destinations with the highest volumes of traffic? It doesn't.
The most vocal people supporting the rail purchase seem to me to want it not for transportation, but for recreation, and that is a lot of money for the few who would acutally use it.

Can you imagine bicycles blowing across 30th and 38th Ave like they do stop signs?

[dON hEICHEL -sOQUEL]

Why stagflation is coming

That certain aroma means it's baked in the cake

Both the money supply and federal spending have increased at breathtaking rates over the past year, unprecedented in peacetime. The policy decisions made by the Federal Reserve Board and Congress virtually assure we will enter a period of 1970s-like stagflation.

The recovery, when it comes, will combine slow economic growth, unusually long un- and underemployment, stagnating real incomes, rising interest rates and inflation. There is little that policymakers, having made colossal mistakes, can do to prevent such an outcome.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/...

COLOSSAL MISTAKES?

You ain't seen:

cap and trade yet...

More health welfare...

Immigration reform...

Yer gonna love it!

[OVB]

A rail corridor that goes from the west side to: downtown, the boardwalk, the yacht harbor and beaches, 41st Ave (you could walk to the mall), Capitola and beaches, Rio Del Mar and Seascape. Yeah putting a trolley on those tracks would be a waste because nobody goes to those places.

[MyCatKnowsThat]

Recovering Liberal wrote:

Contrary to Mr. Lowes Liberal Socialistic pro-tax rant, it was the tax and spend Democrats who took hundreds of millions of special interest dollars from everyone from unions to illegal immigrant groups to expand the government provided free services to all the losers who have lived in this dysfunctional Democrat majority controlled state the past 55 years! Too many millions of unproductive losers sucking up way too much money! Our state is in a perpetual yearly budgetary shortfall due to the Democrat fiscal irresponsibility!

Thank you! Ditto!!!!

[MyCatKnowsThat]

dON hEICHEL -sOQUEL wrote:

The state's inability to pass a budget is absurd. With Democratic lawmakers refusing billions in cuts and Republicans and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refusing billions in tax increases, the state of California finds itself in financial limbo. Most Californians know who the culprit is when it comes to the current financial mess. The anti-tax movement and Proposition 13 and the GOP are dictating fiscal policy for the Golden State.
Ron Lowe, Santa Cruz
ANOTHER BLAME PROP 13 DIMOCRAT SPEAKS W/HIS KEYBOARD!
California as Liberalism's Laboratory
For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California's business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state's. In the last decade, net out-migration of Americans has been 1.4 million. California is exporting talent while importing Mexico's poverty. The latter is not California's fault; the former is.
If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit,
Liberal orthodoxy has made the state dependent on a volatile source of revenues -- high income tax rates on the wealthy. In 2006, the top 1 percent of earners paid 48 percent of the income taxes. California's income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, its business conditions among the worst, as measured by 16 variables directly influenced by the Legislature. Unemployment, the nation's fourth highest, is 11.2 percent.
Required by law to balance the budget, the Legislature has "solved" the problem by, among other things, increasing the income, sales, gas and vehicle taxes. This, although one rationale for the federal government's gargantuan "stimulus" was to spare states the need to raise taxes which, in California, will more than vitiate the stimulus.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/200...
NOTICE THE TAXES THE DIMOCRATS IN SACRAMENTO ALREADY INCREASED THIS RECESSION?(income, sales, gas and vehicle taxes + tobacco)
But Mr. Lowe thinks the cost of owning property should be increased...oh yeah, it would also make the cost of doing biz higher; all so the Dimwits that run the Legislature in Sacramento (and their greedy public unions) can have more taxes to squander.
Democrats prove over and over that trying to be kind is cruel to the average Californian BY RUNNING BUSINESSES AND TAXPAYERS OUT OF STATE.
WHERE ARE THE GREEN JOBS CARBON REDUCTION (AB 32) WAS SUPPOSED TO CREATE?
LAST I LOOKED WE WERE A FULL TWO POINTS HIGHER IN UNEMPLOYMENT THAN THE NATIONAL AVERAGE...THAT'S ABOUT 400,000 JOBS (gone).
Wonder what those 400,000 jobs would mean in economic activity and tax revenue?

DITTO & Thank You!! Shame I can find few people in Santa Cruz County that would agree with the above. I know others out there exist, probably just afraid to say these things out loud - conservatives around here are outnumbered and our ideas bashed as evil, bigoted, take your pick of any one of a number of names we have been called in opinion pages!

[My two cents]

How's that "Hopey-Changey" thing working for ya?
How long before all the orgasmic Obama voters
admit that Obama is the biggest mistake they
ever made??? Getting tired of seeing that
wingnut on TV? He really thinks he's a star
still on the campaign trail. Now he's on his way to Russia to make a bigger fool of himself,and us.
The world is,if not laughing, then ignoring
this ninmrod.

[Mojo95062]

Jim- Why do you insist on comparing the Santa Cruz branch to the Monterey branch? You are comparing apples to oranges. For example, there are still trains on the Santa Cruz side. Can the Monterey side say that? No. There has not been a train on there in over 10 years. Furthermore, the Monterey tracks are isolated from the world in two ways. First, the switch allowing access to the branch at Castroville was removed in the late 1990s by Union Pacific. Good luck getting them to allow putting the switch back in as they won't pay for it since they will claim they don't use it. Second, the Salinas river bridge needs to be replaced BEFORE the FRA or the PUC will let trains across it.
I would strongly suggest you do just a little bit of research before you make comaprisons between the two sides of Monterey Bay rail transit.
and OVB, everybody goes to most of those places. They just come from other places in the state and beyond. They are called tourists.

[counterstrike]

dON hEICHEL -sOQUEL wrote:

T
ANOTHER BLAME PROP 13 DIMOCRAT SPEAKS W/HIS KEYBOARD!

Just more prop 13 diatribe, ridiculous and never-ending whine. Not falling for credit cards, mortgages, loans, whatever, basically means- revoke 13; I am free as a bird to leave. And I gladly will leave this auto-centric tourist trap. Becoming unbearable! Then I too can join the growing club of "I told you so" people who left.

[Patti]

Recovering Liberal wrote:

Contrary to Mr. Lowes Liberal Socialistic pro-tax rant, it was the tax and spend Democrats who took hundreds of millions of special interest dollars from everyone from unions to illegal immigrant groups to expand the government provided free services to all the losers who have lived in this dysfunctional Democrat majority controlled state the past 55 years! Too many millions of unproductive losers sucking up way too much money! Our state is in a perpetual yearly budgetary shortfall due to the Democrat fiscal irresponsibility!

Could not agree more.

[dON hEICHEL - sOQUEL]

The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic

Mr. Obama took another shot at his predecessors in April, vowing that "the days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over."

Except, that is, when it comes to Mr. Carlin, a senior analyst in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics and a 35-year veteran of the agency. In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.

Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.... I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/200...

[Carl Bendix]

OVB wrote:

A rail corridor that goes from the west side to: downtown, the boardwalk, the yacht harbor and beaches, 41st Ave (you could walk to the mall), Capitola and beaches, Rio Del Mar and Seascape. Yeah putting a trolley on those tracks would be a waste because nobody goes to those places.

I don't think most people will walk those distances carrying bags of merchandise and groceries. Have you ever seen shoppers waiting for a parking in front of the door when there are vacant spaces within 15 or so feet. Have you ever observed how bad it is at the Westgate Mall? SC is no different.

[pat]

dON hEICHEL -sOQUEL wrote:

The state's inability to pass a budget is absurd. With Democratic lawmakers refusing billions in cuts and Republicans and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refusing billions in tax increases, the state of California finds itself in financial limbo. Most Californians know who the culprit is when it comes to the current financial mess. The anti-tax movement and Proposition 13 and the GOP are dictating fiscal policy for the Golden State.
Ron Lowe, Santa Cruz
ANOTHER BLAME PROP 13 DIMOCRAT SPEAKS W/HIS KEYBOARD!
California as Liberalism's Laboratory
For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California's business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state's. In the last decade, net out-migration of Americans has been 1.4 million. California is exporting talent while importing Mexico's poverty. The latter is not California's fault; the former is.
If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit,
Liberal orthodoxy has made the state dependent on a volatile source of revenues -- high income tax rates on the wealthy. In 2006, the top 1 percent of earners paid 48 percent of the income taxes. California's income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, its business conditions among the worst, as measured by 16 variables directly influenced by the Legislature. Unemployment, the nation's fourth highest, is 11.2 percent.
Required by law to balance the budget, the Legislature has "solved" the problem by, among other things, increasing the income, sales, gas and vehicle taxes. This, although one rationale for the federal government's gargantuan "stimulus" was to spare states the need to raise taxes which, in California, will more than vitiate the stimulus.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/200...
NOTICE THE TAXES THE DIMOCRATS IN SACRAMENTO ALREADY INCREASED THIS RECESSION?(income, sales, gas and vehicle taxes + tobacco)
But Mr. Lowe thinks the cost of owning property should be increased...oh yeah, it would also make the cost of doing biz higher; all so the Dimwits that run the Legislature in Sacramento (and their greedy public unions) can have more taxes to squander.
Democrats prove over and over that trying to be kind is cruel to the average Californian BY RUNNING BUSINESSES AND TAXPAYERS OUT OF STATE.
WHERE ARE THE GREEN JOBS CARBON REDUCTION (AB 32) WAS SUPPOSED TO CREATE?
LAST I LOOKED WE WERE A FULL TWO POINTS HIGHER IN UNEMPLOYMENT THAN THE NATIONAL AVERAGE...THAT'S ABOUT 400,000 JOBS (gone).
Wonder what those 400,000 jobs would mean in economic activity and tax revenue?

How can when California be a liberal laboratory when the states purse strings are held by republicans? i wish it was a liberal laboratory with no republican interference, than maybe it would work..

[Mojo95062]

Carl Bendix wrote:

<quoted text>I don't think most people will walk those distances carrying bags of merchandise and groceries. Have you ever seen shoppers waiting for a parking in front of the door when there are vacant spaces within 15 or so feet. Have you ever observed how bad it is at the Westgate Mall? SC is no different.

Not only that, would you let your kids bike next to an active rail line? Yeah sure they might put a fence up to keep things seperate but that will only slow down those intent on getting to the tracks. It will not even phase any rolling equipment that might venture from the tracks for whatever reason. While I'm at it can you imagine the liability costs associated with putting a pedestrian trail next to an active rail line? Most insurance companies will not even touch anything with the word train or railroad in it. This is even true of model railroad clubs that function in public venues (County Fair for example). If they do decide to take on a policy for this, you can expect to need a telescope to see the how high the cost will be. Personally, I hope 2010 passes with not purchase. Our County leaders have absolutely NO business being in the railroad business. Hell, they can't even run a Bus system effectively.