How to Reduce the California State Budget by $40 Billion

As of a few days ago, high-wage earners have a new reason to leave California: their state income taxes are no longer deductible on their federal income tax returns.

Can California’s union-controlled state legislature adapt? Can they lower the top marginal tax rates to keep wealthy people from leaving California?

The short answer is, no, they cannot. They cannot conceive of the possibility that California’s current economic success is not because of their confiscatory policies, but in spite of them.

Earlier this year California’s union controlled legislature approved a gas tax increase that will increase state tax revenue by about $5.0 billion per year. Next in their sights is changing property taxes to a “split roll” system, whereby all commercial properties will no longer be protected from steep tax rate increases. Also under consideration is extending sales taxes to services, along with taxes on watermarijuana, and, who knows, maybe even robots.

These new taxes have attracted a lot of attention, but in reality California’s state government derives most of its tax revenue, 58%, from personal income tax. In recent years personal income taxes have contributed as much as 65% of the California state government’s total tax revenue. California’s top marginal income tax rate of 13.3% is by far the highest in the U.S. Oregon has the 2nd highest rate, at a much lower 9.9%. The impact of this can be seen on the chart depicted below, which is taken from the State Controller’s most recent annual financial reportfor the fiscal year ended June 30, 2016. As can be seen, state income taxes accounted for 58% of all tax revenue in the most recent fiscal year for which we have data. Nothing else even came close.

California Tax Revenue By Source – 2015 and 2016

When around 60% (or more) of all state tax collections depend on how much money individual residents make each year, revenue can be volatile. A recent analysis by the Franchise Tax Board, as reported in the Sacramento Bee, showed that the top 1% of California taxpayers by income paid 45% of the total income taxes collected. This means that in the last fiscal year, the top 1% paid 26% of ALL taxes collected in the State of California. If you extend that comparison to the top fifth – those Californians who earned on average over $237K in 2013, it can be seen they paid nearly 90% of the total income taxes collected, or 51% of ALL taxes from all sources.

California Income Tax Burden by Income Group – 2013 vs 1994

When you have the top fifth of your wage earners paying more than half of ALL taxes collected in your state, you definitely don’t want those folks moving to other states. California has really great weather, but there are a lot of reasons to leave: An inhospitable business climate, a global economy with burgeoning new opportunities in many low tax regions, and an increasingly virtual work environment which means you don’t have to live within 50 miles of the California coast in order to attract venture capital or find business partners.

Just for the sake of argument, here are ways to cut expenses in the state budget, in order to keep California’s state government solvent without punishing the wealthy, or, worse, losing them to other states and nations.

HOW TO REDUCE THE CALIFORNIA STATE BUDGET BY $40+ BILLION

(1) Reduce Costs for Prisons – $2.0 billion or more:  California now spends over $75,000 per year per prisoner, a cost that has doubled since 2005. In Alabama, it costs less than $15,000 per year per prisoner. If California contracted with the State of Alabama to have them house its 130,000 prisoners, that would save California taxpayers $7.8 billion per year. If doing business with Alabama is unpalatable, how about right across the border in Nevada? The State of Nevada spends under $18,000 per year to house their prisoners – sending California’s prisoners across the Sierras to Nevada could save taxpayers $7.4 billion. Obviously relocating California’s prisoners to other states is an extreme solution. But there are many other less extreme, bipartisan solutions to lower prison costs, including alternatives to incarceration.

(2) Cut Ratio of Administrators to Faculty in Public Universities – $2.0 billion or more:  In 2000 California’s UC System employed around 4,000 administrators and 7,000 faculty. Only 15 years later, in 2015, the UC System employed 10,500 administrators and 9,000 faculty. Just assuming for a moment that the administrative overhead in the UC System wasn’t already bloated in 2000, the UC System could reduce their administrative headcount by over 5,000 administrators, and save at least $500 million per year. Do the same thing in California’s much larger Cal State and Community College systems, and you can probably achieve total savings of around $2.0 billion per year

(3) Outsource CalTrans Work and Eliminate Redundant Positions – $2.5 billion or more: CalTrans is set to consume $12.8 billion of the State 2017-18 budget. As recommended by State Senator John Moorlach after an audit of the agency, just eliminating 3,500 redundant positions would save $500 million. But competitive outsourcing of roadwork contracts could save much more. CalTrans only outsources 10% of its roadwork, whereas, for example, Arizona outsources 80% of their roadwork. It is common to take competitive bids from private contractors to do public road maintenance and upgrades – CalTrans is the exception. A very expensive exception.

(4) Fund all CalTrans Work With Proceeds from Bullet Train Financing – another $10 billion per year for ten years: Ok, this isn’t entirely fair. Bonds are deferred taxes. But just imagine if instead of paying for a train that will never make any meaningful contribution whatsoever to relieving the congestion on California’s roads and freeways, all that money was used to improve the roads? Redirecting Bullet Train funds – which are destined to total well in excess of $100 billion – into CalTrans projects would save taxpayers nearly 100% of CalTrans budget for a decade or more.

(5) Slash State Agency Headcount and Pay/Benefits by 20% – $6.5 billion: In 2015 the average pay and benefits for the 154,000 full time employees of state agencies was $116,887. Eliminating 20% of these jobs would save taxpayers $3.6 billion per year. Reducing pay and benefits for the 123,000 remaining state employees by 20% would save another $2.9 billion – their average pay package would “only” be $93,500 per year after this reduction. Is this feasible? Recent history proves that it is. In 2009, cash-strapped California state agencies implemented “Furlough Fridays,” which functionally achieved both objectives described here – there was a 20% reduction in work being performed, and state workers collected 20% less in pay. And guess what? The state government continued to function.

(6) Reform Pensions – $2.1 billion: When you talk about pensions, it is understating the problem to restrict the discussion to state agencies. Local cities, counties and school district pensions combine with state agencies to produce an unfunded liability that – depending on who you ask – ranges between $200 and $700 billion. Moreover, pension reform might be subsumed under the preceding Option #5. Nonetheless, here are the numbers for state agencies: Taxpayers contribute, on average, $21,900 towards each state workers pension, representing 26% of their pay. Just lowering that to a contributory 401K equivalent to 10% of pay would save at least $2.1 billion per year. In reality, because these pensions are so underfunded, getting control of pension benefits would actually save much more than this estimate.

(7) Face Reality and End the “Sanctuary State” – around $20 billion: According to the United Nations, there are now over 250 million displaced refugees in the world. Right behind them are another 1.2 billion individuals living in extreme poverty. America, with only $330 million residents, is not nearly capable of absorbing even a fraction of these multitudes, much less California with not quite 40 million residents. Yet California has thrown open the doors and foots the bill, betting that the tech boom and asset bubble will last forever. A study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated the cost of undocumented immigrants to California taxpayers at over $25 billion per year – $14.4 billion for education, $4.0 billion for health care, $4.4 billion for justice and law enforcement, $0.8 billion for public assistance, and $1.6 billion for general government services. This scrupulously footnoted study, published in Sept. 2017, got virtually no coverage in the media. What did receive extensive media coverage was a study promoted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that estimated the total state and local taxes paid by California’s illegal immigrants to equal nearly $3.0 billion per year. Net cost and potential savings: $22 billion. At the least, California should stop being a magnet state for undocumented immigrants, and instead should help craft then adhere to a realistic national policy.

The most powerful special interest in California, government unions, wants nothing to change. They are hostile towards corporations and individual wealth. They have strong incentives to want inefficient, expensive prisons, universities, and infrastructure projects. They have strong incentives to expand all government services to accommodate destitute immigrants. Why? Because the more government workers are hired and the more taxpayers’ money is wasted, the more dues paying government union members they acquire.

Joining these government unions are California’s powerful Latino Legislative Caucus and their allies in the identity politics industry, who recognize a huge political opportunity by spewing separatist demagoguery, nurturing a bleak, tribal paranoia in the collective minds of recently arrived immigrants. Also joining these government unions are left-wing oligarchs and the monopolistic businesses they control, who see in an expanded government and a hostile business climate a chance to prosper through legislated scarcity and mandated product choices. And, of course, the asset bubbles produced by contrived shortages add precarious value to the pension funds and increase property taxes.

So these solutions, while eminently practical, may never see the light of day. But California’s voters should understand that around $40 billion could be cut from the state budget if California’s government was ran in the interests of the people, instead of in the interests of government unions and their elitist allies. If $40 billion were cut from California’s state budget, not only could the new gas tax be repealed, but the top marginal tax rate could be dropped to under 10%. And as any student of the Laffer Curve knows, that might actually keep California’s wealthy from leaving; it might even cause income tax revenue to go UP, as fewer high income individuals feel the need to shelter or defer their taxable earnings.

The Laffer Curve
Depending on where you are on the curve, lowering taxes can raise tax revenue.

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Rhetoric to Challenge California’s Statist Elites

California’s ruling elites have enacted policies that make it impossible for middle class citizens to live here. They have artificially elevated the cost of living, nearly destroyed public education, decimated public services, neglected public infrastructure, and declared war on small business. To deflect criticism, they’ve convinced a critical mass of voters that any attempts to roll back these abominable policies are being engineered by racist, sexist plutocrats, and their willing puppets in the Republican party.

Exposing this diabolical, conniving scam won’t be easy. The ruling elites are a powerful coalition, comprised of left wing oligarchs including most of Silicon Valley’s billionaires, California’s public sector unions armed with the billion dollars (or more) they collect every year in forced dues, and the environmentalist lobby and their powerful trial lawyer cohorts.

Defeating California’s ruling elite requires a new coalition, comprised of the private sector middle class, enlightened members of the public sector middle class, and members of disadvantaged communities that aspire to the middle class. Attracting members of these communities, especially California’s Latinos, Asians, and African Americans, requires convincing them that current policies actually harm their interests.

To do this, there are two moral arguments the elites make that have to be debunked, because they underlie all of the intrusive, statist policies that are destroying California’s middle class. The first is the argument that capitalism is inherently evil and must be strictly curbed if not completely replaced by socialism. The second is the argument that unprecedented sacrifices must be made in order to save the planet from an environmental catastrophe.

Corrupt Capitalism vs Competitive Capitalism

Here are examples of two very different ways to critique wealth. In each example, the first phrase is employed by the ruling elites. It feeds on resentment and ignorance. The second phrase is offered as a counter argument. It appeals to the aspiring middle class family, or the small businessperson. It is designed to extol the positive virtues of capitalism and expose the opportunistic cynicism of the statist elites.

(1) “Tax the corporations” vs “make corporations compete.”

(2) “Capitalism is inherently evil” vs “no economic system in history has delivered more individual freedom and prosperity.”

(3) “Wealth is usually the result of privilege” vs “Wealth is usually the result of hard work in a free society.”

(4) “Government needs to regulate corporations” vs “corrupt corporations use regulations to destroy their smaller competitors.”

(5) “We have to redistribute wealth so people can afford to live” vs “we have to nurture capitalist competition to lower the cost of living.”

These arguments shine a spotlight on the great con job promulgated by the elites: The ruling class does not care about you, but we do. Because like you, we have to try to make payments on a half-million or even a million dollar mortgage, just to own a small house. Like you, we have to pay more for gasoline and electricity than any other citizens in any other state in America. Like you, we have to send our children to failing K-12 schools, then sink further into debt to pay tuition for them to attend colleges and universities where they don’t get a good education.

Extreme Environmentalism vs Practical Environmentalism

Apart from the distraction of race and gender, environmentalism provides the moral argument used as cover for policies that have imposed a punitive cost of living on Californians. It is important to make the distinction between attacks that discredit environmentalism in its entirety, and environmentalist reform that exposes the hidden agendas and inherent futility of California’s extremist environmental policies. Here are examples of two very different ways to apply environmentalist values.

(1) “Stop urban sprawl” vs “California has 163,000 square miles of land and is nearly empty, adding 10 million more people on quarter acre lots (even including new roads and new commercial/industrial centers) would consume less than 2,000 square miles!”

(2) “People need to live in multi-family dwellings” vs “detached single family homes are cheaper per unit to build than multi-family dwellings, and are more popular among buyers.”

(3) “There isn’t enough water for people to have detached homes and yards” vs “for less than $20 billion, we could build enough desalination capacity to provide water to every home and business in Los Angeles County; farming consumes 80% of all water diversions in California, we are exporting water intensive crops like alfalfa, grown using massively subsidized water, in the Imperial Valley (desert)!”

(4) “The government needs to discourage further development of fossil fuels such as clean natural gas” vs “Californians are paying as much as ten times what energy consumers pay for electricity in low cost states, and that California’s CO2 emissions are a minute fraction of those from other nations such as China and India.”

(5) “We have to get people out of their cars and build passenger rail” vs “cars, trucks and buses offer far more convenience and versatility, and are on the verge of becoming 100% clean and sustainable modes of transportation.”

(6) “No new mines and quarries should be allowed within California, and existing ones should be phased out” vs “developing in-state natural resources creates in-state jobs and costs less than importing materials from elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada.”

When the elites demand “environmental justice” for people of color, ask them (using the San Francisco Bay Area as an example) what any of that has to do with why we can’t build homes on the eastern slopes of the Mt. Hamilton Range, or in San Jose’s Coyote Valley, or along the I-280 corridor in the Santa Cruz mountains. Ask them why they’re paying 60% of their income for rent or a mortgage, when California has 163,000 square miles of land and is nearly empty. Ask why money that is being spent on high speed rail, using imported materials, isn’t instead being used to create high paying jobs in road and infrastructure projects that will actually improve lives. Ask why thousands of people aren’t working in high paying jobs in mining and quarrying, so building materials can cost less.

For aggressive reformers, good questions are plentiful. What have California’s elites done for working families? Have they gotten you better jobs? Have they nurtured robust and competitive housing markets to lower the price of a home? Have they widened the freeways? Have they enabled competition to drive down the cost-of-living? Have they made your communities safe and prosperous and affordable? Have they done anything other than bribe your so-called leaders with campaign contributions so they’ll do what they’re told?

It comes down to this: These purported spokespersons for true environmentalist values have become personally successful by fomenting environmentalist panic, but they do not represent the best interests of ordinary Californians, and they do not articulate a realistic or practical vision of environmentalism.

California’s elite has declared war on the working class. They have used race as a distraction, and extreme environmentalism as the phony moral justification for their self-serving policies. They must be exposed.

The Moral High Ground

This fact – that the rhetoric of California’s elite does not translate into a better quality of life for the people they govern – is the core moral argument against current policies. Across virtually every issue, the policies of the elites are failing ordinary Californians. Pouring money into public schools has not helped students. Raising taxes has not improved services. Expanding college curricula that replace academic rigor with what amounts to political indoctrination has not improved employment opportunities for graduates. And creating artificial scarcity in the name of saving the planet has not helped the planet, but it has impoverished millions of California’s most economically vulnerable residents.

In claiming the moral high ground, reformers can use the same rhetoric the elites have employed for decades, and by doing so will find the elites have already done much of their work for them. The seditious goal of making California friendlier to small businesses, with more affordable housing, more affordable energy, better jobs and better schools is furthered by reminding Californians what the elites have done. They have engaged in one of the biggest cons of all time, enriching themselves at the expense of the average worker.

Once the issues of race and environmentalism are exposed as overstated issues, overemphasized in order to manipulate the electorate, then the resentment the elites have inculcated in their constituents can be turned against them.

Pro-growth policies don’t have to rely on terminology that has been tainted by the status-quo elites. “Free market,” “Libertarian,” “Conservative,” “Classical liberal,” etc. have seductive appeal for many ideologically driven reformers, but they have limited value in California politics. Reformers have to supplement their vocabulary, borrowing more from the left than from the right. The values and slogans that the ruling class has invested decades in inculcating in the minds of Californians can be used against them, because these elites have engaged in rank hypocrisy. Terms such as “social justice” and “equity” now have tremendous value to reformers, because reform policies will further those goals, whereas the policies implemented by California’s elite have condemned ordinary people to poverty.

Examples of using terms popular with the left to advance reformer causes:
Social justice – charter schools, teacher accountability
Civil Rights – the right to a quality education in a school chosen by parents
Equity – competitive land development to create affordable housing
Micro-aggression – countless taxes, hidden taxes, fees and regulations
Fairness – prices for energy and water competitive with other states
Progressive – pension benefits with lower percentage formulas for highly paid public employees
Diversity – college curricula that embrace conservative as well as liberal values
Anti-Discrimination – merit based, color blind criteria for hiring and college admissions

A pragmatic, centrist ideology that co-opts the rhetoric of the status-quo elites to attack the ruling class can resist being pigeonholed as left or right, or conservative or socialist. We are pragmatists. We are pro-growth, pro-job Californians and our policies will lead to prosperity, affordable housing, affordable utilities, affordable education, and social justice and equity for all Californians, and not just the elites.

The Government Union War on Meritocracy

How can you persuasively counter arguments for diversity quotas, when implacable fanatics purporting to represent every identifiable group whose aggregate achievements fall short of the mean will argue it is discrimination, not merit, that determine outcomes? Expect no help from government unions. Resentment gives them passion, restitution gives them power. Undermining the meritocracy is key to their survival.

Imagine a public school system where the excellence of teachers was the only institutional criteria for their job security and prospects for career advancement. Imagine government bureaucracies where innovative, more effective practices were adopted even if it meant smaller budgets and fewer employees. Imagine law enforcement agencies that had zero tolerance for officers that abused their authority. Are we there yet? Not if government unions have anything to say about it.

But the government union war on the meritocracy goes well beyond protecting bad employees. Government unions representing K-12 teachers and college faculty have been overran by “social justice warriors” who preach identity politics as the new religious gospel and the new academic canon. They have taken their war on the meritocracy into the classrooms and lecture halls, saturating the curricula from kindergarten to graduate school. Their message? Unless you are a heterosexual white male, you are a victim of discrimination by heterosexual white males. You live in an unjust society. Merit, according to this doctrine, is a smokescreen. It is discrimination in disguise.

What do you do if you believe in meritocracy? What do you do about this?

Math SAT Scoring Distribution by Ethnicity – 2015

If you want to earn more money in a merit-based, productive market economy, quantitative reasoning skills are required. The more of these skills you’ve got, the more money you’ll earn. So what happens when you have far, far higher percentages of highly qualified individuals in some groups than in other groups?

When it comes to college admissions and college curricula, the solution of the social justice warriors, and the faculty unions who nurture them, is many faceted. Here are some of their mitigating strategies:

  • Invent “holistic” admission criteria that diminishes the importance of quantitative aptitude.
  • Concoct theories of cognition that claim math itself is an arbitrary and subjective expression of white power (yes, this really happened).
  • Create entire college departments that are academically weak but instead offer separatist political indoctrination.
  • Blame most if not all of the gap in aptitude on systemic discrimination by the “white patriarchy.”
  • Demand race-driven quotas of ever-expanding scope; in hiring, promotions, housing, wealth, political office, whatever.

The problem with these solutions, if you want to call them that, are their actual consequences. In pursuit of quota driven diversity, colleges are turning away qualified applicants at the same time as colleges are failing to produce anywhere near the number of STEM graduates that American industry demands. Meanwhile, the students that are waved in despite being marginally qualified to pursue higher education are being trained to ascribe any failures they may encounter to racism, and any successes they may encounter to fortuitous state intervention. And not least, there is the consequence of bitterness and cynicism being bred into the psyche of all those more qualified students and future employees who are passed over in favor of meeting diversity quotas.

How does one challenge the doctrine of equality over merit? How do you challenge allegations of systemic racism? How do you do it persuasively, with hard facts, but also with compassion and empathy? It’s not easy. College youth need passion, they need a cause, they need clarifying polarities. The teachers unions offer them a good one: A rich and wealthy white patriarchy that has exploited people of color for centuries, one that must be resisted, uprooted, and replaced.

Tough love arguments should be part of any campaign of persuasion. Reality therapy. Why are people with lower test scores admitted to college if they’re being discriminated against? That’s ridiculous. And why do they think taking classes that replace difficult coursework with political indoctrination – fomenting resentment and advocating separatism – are going to give them marketable skills? Do they really believe they need on-campus “cultural safe spaces”? Aren’t those just a 21st century version of Jim Crow laws? Where does this end? And why do Asians perform so well on college aptitude tests? Why are Asians so successful economically? Aren’t they also “people of color”? Could it be because they study so diligently, and that a meritocracy is colorblind?

Along with tough love, opponents of quotas should offer understanding. It is our individuality that defines our abilities and challenges much more than the groups we’re a part of. All ethnic groups are collections of individuals with infinite diversity; short and tall, thin and obese, weak and strong, plain and beautiful, slow and smart, timid and assertive, surly and charming, lucky and unlucky, good and bad. As individuals we succeed and we fail. We endure crushing disappointments and spectacular success. Life is not always easy or fair – for anyone. We are joined by our common humanity, no matter what color we are. And nothing overcomes prejudice, should it ever exist, better than a smile.

Despite occasional rhetorical acknowledgments, government unions don’t like the message of individual accountability. But that is the message that must prevail, if we are to avoid the tyranny of quota-driven equality of outcome.

REFERENCES

Race gaps in SAT math scores are as big as ever – Brookings Institution (source for chart)
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/02/01/race-gaps-in-sat-math-scores-are-as-big-as-ever/

How Public Sector Unions Exploit Identity Politics

As the ethnic composition of America changes from mostly white to a kaleidoscope of color within a generation, there is no better way to fracture society than to teach everyone to resent everyone else. Nurturing tribal resentment is a winning strategy for government unions, because a swollen, authoritarian, unionized government becomes the referee. Government union power increases every time another “person of color” becomes convinced that only government redistribution and racial quotas can mitigate their persecution at the hands of a racist white “patriarchy.”

When society fractures, when we face increasing unrest and poverty, government unions win. It is inherently in the interests of government unions for society to fail. If public education fails, hire more teachers and education bureaucrats. If crime goes up, hire more police and build more prisons. If immigrants fail to assimilate, hire more multilingual bureaucrats and social workers. If poverty increases, hire more welfare administrators.

If you don’t think this strategy can work, come to California, America’s most multi-ethnic state, and a place where government unions wield absolute power. Their wholly owned subsidiary, the Democratic party in California, has spent the last 20+ years perfecting the art of convincing the electorate that Republicans are racists. The strategy has been devastatingly effective, especially with people of color.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, among California’s “likely voters,” slightly more Whites remain registered as Republicans, 39%, than Democrats, 38%. Among Latinos the registered Democrats, 62%, far outnumber Republicans, 17%, and among Blacks the disparity is even greater, 82% Democrat vs. 6% Republican. Among Asians, where the disparity is less, the Democrats still have a nearly two-to-one advantage, 45% to 24%.

All of this racial perseverating comes at tragic cost. Among the fifty states, California has the highest taxes, the highest state and local government debt, the most welfare recipients, the most people living in poverty, and the highest cost-of-living. The roads and bridges are crumbling, and the water and energy infrastructure hasn’t been significantly upgraded in 30 years. But purveyors of identity politics have a strategy that earns votes, so why engage in actual governance? It’s all about race, stupid. Hire more bureaucrats.

The worst consequence of choosing identity politics over actual governance is the slow but relentless destruction of California’s once great system of public education. There has been negligible improvement in educational achievement for members of California’s disadvantaged, despite decades of political control by public sector union funded Democrats who pander incessantly to the voter’s lowest common denominator of resentment, race. Rather than admit that failures of culture, community, and public education are the real reasons some ethnic groups underachieve, the Democrats that run Sacramento attribute every disparity in outcome among races to the pervasiveness of racism. Their solution? Quotas.

Here is an interesting comparison to prove that quotas are being used to discriminate against California’s “privileged” youth. All data is for 2017. The first column shows what percentage of students taking the SAT, by ethnicity, achieved a score at or above the minimum to be considered “college ready.” The second column shows the ethnic breakdown of college age students in California. Column three uses a factor calculated from columns one and two, for each ethnicity, the percent of college ready students is multiplied by that ethnicity’s percent of the total pool of college age Californians. Each factor is then divided by the sum of all four factors, to calculate a crude but significant indicator of what percentage of 2017 college admissions would be offered to students of each ethnicity, if admissions were based on merit as expressed by SAT scores. Column four shows the actual admissions to California’s UC System in 2017 by ethnicity.

California’s UC System – 2017 Admissions – Actual vs. SAT Based
There are a few obvious takeaways from the above chart. Most salient is the fact that white applicants, if SAT scores were the sole basis for admission, are clear victims of discrimination. After all, if based on their college readiness as assessed by their SAT performance combined with their percentage of the population, they should have earned 43% of the admissions to the UC System, why did they only represent 23% of the incoming freshmen in 2017? But there are other disparities that point to an even bigger problem.

Why, for example, do actual Asian admissions, 34%, exceed the merit based admissions percentage, 21%, as indicated based on their percentage of the college age population and the percentage of them achieving the SAT benchmark? Why, for that matter, are the actual Latino admissions, 33%, slightly less than the amount they would theoretically earn, 35%, based that same criteria? The answer in both cases is the same, and can be best summarized in this quote taken from a report released earlier this year by the Brookings Institution:

“Race gaps on the SATs are especially pronounced at the tails of the distribution. In a perfectly equal distribution, the racial breakdown of scores at every point in the distribution would mirror the composition of test-takers as whole i.e. 51 percent white, 21 percent Latino, 14 percent black, and 14 percent Asian. But in fact, among top scorers—those scoring between a 750 and 800—60 percent are Asian and 33 percent are white, compared to 5 percent Latino and 2 percent black. Meanwhile, among those scoring between 300 and 350, 37 percent are Latino, 35 percent are black, 21 percent are white, and 6 percent are Asian.”

What this means in plain English is that in the UC System, where supposedly only the most elite high school graduates are granted admission, you will find the distribution of the higher SAT scores by ethnicity skewed even more in favor of Asian and White students than you find when evaluating how many students merely achieve the “benchmark” SAT score. This is why Asian admissions, which are arguably the only UC admissions in 2017 that were based truly on merit, skew higher than you would otherwise expect. That is also the reason that Latino admissions skew somewhat lower. And it also indicates that White applicants are discriminated against even more than shown on the table.

Such is the landscape of California’s public system of higher education, considered among the best in the world.

To further investigate this evidence, I talked someone who spent over a decade serving on the Board of Regents at the University of California. They did not mince words. Here are a few of the things they had to say:

– SAT scores have become less important because the university has gone to “holistic admissions” instead of SAT based admissions – the SAT is also watered down with a subjective 3rd “essay” section. The subjectivity of the admissions criteria makes it harder to prove discrimination.

– For years now, the UC System has diversified the faculty by taking more professors to fill positions in African American and Latino studies and shielded itself from discrimination because they can say the person hired had strength in the discipline they needed to fill.

– Ethnic studies departments are academically weak and don’t provide graduates with anything they can use. Most ethnic studies departments are growing because people are being hired and enrolled in order to fulfill de facto diversity quotas both for faculty and students. The alternative would be to destroy the integrity of the hard sciences with unqualified faculty and students.

– After the passage of Prop. 209, the admission of Asians rose to about 35% because you could not suppress their achievement without admitting you’re breaking the law. Latino and Black admissions track at 29% and 6%, respectively, more consistent with their percentage within California’s population. To accommodate the Asian over-enrollment and the Black and Latino quotas, qualified White applicants are the victims – Whites represented less than 25% of admissions to the UC system last year.

– California’s legislature is controlled by the Latino Caucus, which makes sure that 25% Latino admissions are maintained. Whites don’t go out and protest and make noise because that is politically incorrect and the media doesn’t report the data anyway.

Readers are invited to challenge the accuracy of any of the above statements, made by an informed observer. And what is the result of all this mediocrity that hides behind diversity, this discrimination that hides behind achieving quota-driven equality of outcome? A fracturing of society into identity groups, each of them, whether via propaganda or via reality, encouraged to harbor resentment towards every other group.

If one were to identify which of California’s public sector unions is the most guilty of fomenting racial disharmony, it would certainly be the ones representing K-12 public school teachers and the ones representing college faculty. Their outlook, which is reflected in their policies, their curricula, and only somewhat camouflaged on their websites, is to blame the academic achievement gap on anything but their own poor performance as the most influential determinant of educational policy in California. Blame the rich. Blame capitalism. Blame Western Civilization. Blame “white privilege.” Blame racist Republicans. But don’t look in the mirror.

A rising trope among these neo-racialist purveyors of separatist identity politics is that white people should engage in “allyship,” which to them means for well behaved white people to do whatever they’re told by the high priests of the disadvantaged, no matter how disingenuous or ridiculous. But a true ally would provide tough, genuine love, and tell the truth. Which is if you want to achieve in America, the most inclusive and tolerant nation in the history of the world, you have to work hard, stay sober, stay out of jail, keep your families intact, be thrifty, and hit the books.

That truth would unify and enrich this nation. And a unified and prosperous nation would mean less government, less government employees, and weaker public employee unions. We can’t have that now, can we?

REFERENCES

Race and voting in California: Public Policy Institute of California
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_RaceandVotingJTF.pdf

Class of 2017 SAT Results, College Board
https://reports.collegeboard.org/sat-suite-program-results/class-2017-results

California Demographics by Age and Ethnicity – University of California
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/ca-demographics

Percentage of 2017 UC Admissions by Ethnicity – EdSource
https://edsource.org/2017/uc-admits-more-students-from-outside-california-but-officials-expect-more-state-residents-will-enroll/584321

Race gaps in SAT scores highlight inequality and hinder upward mobility – Brookings Institution
asdfasdfhttps://www.brookings.edu/research/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-highlight-inequality-and-hinder-upward-mobility/

Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago – New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/affirmative-action.html

Are We All Unconscious Racists? – City Journal
https://www.city-journal.org/html/are-we-all-unconscious-racists-15487.html

Without Government Unions, there Would be No Gas Tax Increase

Nobody argues that California’s roads need huge upgrades. But the solution didn’t require the $0.12 per gallon tax hike that goes into effect today. The root cause of these neglected roads – and the reason even more taxes will never be enough to fix them – is the power of public sector unions, whose agenda is consistently at odds with the public interest. Let us count the ways.

1 – CalTrans mismanagement:

CalTrans could have done a much better job of maintaining California’s roads. One of the most diligent critics (and auditors) of CalTrans is state Senator John Moorlach (R, Costa Mesa), the only CPA in California’s state legislature. Last year, Moorlach released a report on CalTrans which he summarized in “7-Step Fix for ‘Mismanaged’ Caltrans,” an article on his official website. Just a few highlights include the following:

  • In May 2014 the Legislative Analyst Office determined that CalTrans was overstaffed by 3,500 architects and engineers, costing over $500 million per year.
  • While to an average state transportation agency outsources over 50% of its work, CalTrans outsources only 10% of its work. Arizona and Florida outsource more than 80%.
  • 54% of CalTrans staff is at or near retirement age, so a hiring freeze would reduce staff merely through attrition, without requiring layoffs.

But Moorlach didn’t make explicit the reason CalTrans is mismanaged. It’s because the unions that run Sacramento don’t want to outsource CalTrans work. The unions don’t want to reduce CalTrans headcount, or hold CalTrans management accountable. Those actions might help Californians, but they would undermine union power.

2 – Bullet train boondoggle:

Money that could have been allocated to maintain and improve California’s roads is being squandered on a train that will do nothing to ameliorate California’s transportation challenges. A LOT of money. According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, California’s freeways can be resurfaced and have a lane added in each direction at a cost of roughly $5.0 million per mile in rural areas, about twice that in urban areas.

Meanwhile, the latest estimate for California’s “bullet train,” is $98 billion (that’s $245 million per mile), thanks to construction delays, and design challenges including nearly 50 miles of tunnels through seismically active mountains to the north and south. And hardly anyone is going to ride it. Ridership won’t even pay operating costs. But Sacramento pushes ahead with this monstrous waste when that same money could (at the urban price of $10 million per mile) resurface and add a lane in each direction to 10,000 miles of California’s freeways. Imagine smooth, unclogged roads. It’s not impossible. It’s just policy priorities.

But while bad roads destroy the chassis of millions of cars and trucks, and commuters endure stop-and-go traffic year after year, the California High Speed Rail Authority dutifully pushes on. Why?

Because that’s what the government employee unions want. They don’t want roads, with all the flexibility and autonomy that roads offer. They want to create a gigantic high-speed rail empire, with tens of thousands of new public employees to drive the trains, maintain the trains, maintain the tracks, and provide security, running up staggering annual deficits. But all of them will be members of public sector unions.

3 – All rapid transit boondoggles:

In a handful of very dense urban areas around the U.S., fast intercity trains make economic sense. But most light rail schemes, along with laughably absurd “streetcar” schemes that actually block urban lanes sorely needed by vehicles, do not achieve levels of ridership that even begin to justify their construction when the alternative is using that money for better, wider connector roads and freeways. The impact of ride sharing apps, the advent of non-polluting cars, and the option of using buses to accomplish mass transit goals all speak to the superior versatility of roads over rail for urban transportation.

So why do California’s cities continue to poor billions into light rail and streetcars, when that money could be used to unclog the roads?

To reiterate: The public sector unions that run California want tens of thousands of new public employees to operate the trains and streetcars, maintain them, maintain the tracks, and provide security, running up staggering annual deficits. But doing this means that public sector union membership – hence public sector union power – will increase.

4 – CEQA reform so people can live closer to the jobs:

The median home value in the United States today is $202,700. The median home value in California today is $509,600, 2.5 times as much! There is no shortage of land in California, and the alleged shortages of energy and water are self-inflicted as the result of policies enacted by California’s state legislature. But instead of reforming California’s Environmental Quality Act, SB 375, AB 32, and countless other laws that have made building homes in California nearly impossible, California’s legislature is doubling down on more government solutions – primarily to subsidize either extremely high density housing, or subsidized housing for the economically disadvantaged, or both.

None of this is necessary. Outside of California’s major urban centers, there is no reason homes cannot be profitably built and sold at a median price of $202,700, and there is no reason the people living in those homes cannot drive or ride share to work on fast, unclogged freeways.

But California’s public sector unions want more regulations on home building, and they want more subsidized public housing. Because those solutions, even though inadequate and coercive, enable them to hire vast new bureaucracies to enforce the many regulations and administer the public assets. Unleashing the private sector to build affordable homes in a competitive market would rob these unions of their opportunity to acquire more power. It’s that simple.

5 – Insatiable appetite for pension fund contributions:

According to a California Policy Center study, taking barely adequate annual employer pension contributions into account, the average unionized state/local government worker in California makes over $120,000 per year in pay and benefits. But to adequately fund their promised pension benefits, employers will need to pay at least another $20,000 per employee to the pension funds. This funding gap, which equates to over $20 billion per year, is the additional amount that is required to cover the difference between how much California’s public employee pension funds currently collect from taxpayers, and how much they need to collect to keep the promises that union controlled politicians have made to the government unions they “negotiate” with. That is a best-case scenario.

It could be much worse. A 2016 California Policy Center analysis (ref. table 2-C) estimated that under a worst-case scenario, the annual costs to fund California’s public employee pension funds could cost taxpayers nearly $70 billion more per year than they are currently paying.

And by the way, California’s pension funds are themselves almost entirely under the control of public sector unions – research the background of CalPERS and CalSTRS board directors to verify the degree of influence they have. Absent significant reform, funding California’s public employee pensions is going to continue to consume every dollar in new taxes for the next several decades. The cumulative financial impact of funding these pensions is easily triple that of the bullet train’s $100 billion fiasco, probably much more.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Government unions control California. They collect and spend over $1.0 billion every year, and spend most of that money on either explicit political campaigning and lobbying, or soft advocacy via expensive public relations campaigns and sponsored academic studies. Their presence is felt everywhere, from local transit districts to the governor’s office. They make or break politicians at will, by outspending or outlasting their opponents. At best, California’s most powerful corporate players do not cross these unions, often they collude with them.

California’s public sector unions operate as senior partners in a coalition that includes left-wing oligarchs especially in the Silicon Valley, extreme environmentalists and their powerful trial lawyer cohorts, and the Latino Legislative Caucus – usurped by leftist radicals – and their many allies in the social justice/identity politics industry. The power of this government union led coalition is nearly absolute, and the consequences to California’s private sector working class have been nothing short of devastating.

Government unions force California’s agencies to over-hire, overpay, and mismanage, because that benefits their members even as it harms the public. These unions enforce absurd policy priorities that further harm the public in order to increase their power. They are the reason California has increased its gas tax.

REFERENCES

Pump bump: California drivers to pay 12 cents more per gallon starting Wednesday – San Jose Mercury, Oct. 31, 2017
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/31/pump-bump-california-drivers-to-pay-12-cents-more-per-gallon-starting-wednesday/

California’s gas tax increases Wednesday – Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2017
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-gas-tax-increase-political-battle-20171031-story.html

How much you’ll REALLY pay in gasoline tax in California – San Diego Union Tribune, Apr. 23, 2017
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-california-gastax-20170413-story.html

What Californians Could Build Using the $64 Billion Bullet Train Budget – California Policy Center, Mar. 21, 2017
http://californiapolicycenter.org/what-californians-could-build-using-the-64-billion-bullet-train-budget/

American Road and Transportation Builders Association – FAQs, ref. “How much does it cost to build a mile of road?
https://www.artba.org/about/faq/

High-Speed Rail Delay More than Triples Planned Cost to San Jose – San Jose Inside, Oct. 2, 2017
http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2017/10/02/high-speed-rail-delay-more-than-triples-planned-cost-to-san-jose/

A 13.5-mile tunnel will make or break California’s bullet train – Los Angeles Times, Oct. 21, 2017
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-tunnel-20171021-story.html

California Environmental Quality Act – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act

State Senate bills aim to make homes more affordable, but they won’t spur nearly enough construction – Los Angeles Times, Aug. 11, 2017
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-state-housing-deal-effects-20170811-htmlstory.html

California’s Public Sector Compensation Trends – California Policy Center, Jan. 2017
http://californiapolicycenter.org/californias-public-sector-compensation-trends/

What is the Average Pension for a Retired Government Worker in California? – California Policy Center, Mar. 2017
http://californiapolicycenter.org/what-is-the-average-pension-for-a-retired-government-worker-in-california/

The Coming Public Pension Apocalypse, and What to Do About It – California Policy Center, May 2016
http://californiapolicycenter.org/the-coming-public-pension-apocalypse/

What We Could Build With $64 Billion

AUDIO:  A discussion of more useful infrastructure projects that could be funded with the $64 billion that is currently budgeted for the “Bullet Train” in California – 14 minutes on KFI Los Angeles – Edward Ring on the John and Ken Show.

Keeping Friends in the Age of Trump

AUDIO:  Life behind the Blue Curtain – Edward Ring for 13 minutes on KABC Los Angeles.

The Opportunity Cost of High Speed Rail

AUDIO: A discussion of more useful infrastructure projects that could be funded with the $64 billion that is currently budgeted for the “Bullet Train” in California – 8 minutes on KOGO San Diego – Edward Ring on the Carl DeMaio Show.

What Californians Could Build Using the $64 Billion Bullet Train Budget

California’s High-Speed Rail project fails to justify itself according to any set of rational criteria. Its ridership projections are absurdly inflated, its environmental benefits are overstated if not actually net detriments, and its cost, its staggering cost, $64 billion by the latest estimate, overwhelms anyone with even a remote sense of financial proportions. To make this final point clear, here is an assortment of California infrastructure projects that could be paid for with a $64 billion budget.

If these projects were built, instead of the bullet train, Californians would have abundant, cheap electricity, abundant fresh water, and upgraded roads and freeways capable of handling all the traffic a surging economy could possibly dish out.

(1) Build 10 natural gas power plants generating 6.2 gigawatts of electrical output for $5.7 billion.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a modern natural gas power plant generating 620 megawatts can be built at a capital cost of $568 million. Someday, when electricity storage technologies are inexpensive and safe, the solar age can ripen to maturity, but in the meantime, California’s private energy companies can tap abundant in-state natural gas reserves, enabling California’s public utilities to provide cheap electricity to the public.

Since California’s peak demand rarely exceeds 50 gigawatts, increasing capacity by 12% will drive the price for electricity way down, making California competitive again with other states. Cheap electricity will also obviate the need to force consumers to purchase extremely expensive “energy sipping” appliances that are internet enabled, monitor your behavior and penalize you if you run your dryer at the “wrong” time, break down a lot, are unnecessarily complex, and require ongoing warranty and software upgrade payments forever.

Who needs that? Build natural gas power plants and develop natural gas.

(2) Build plants to desalinate 1.0 million acre feet of seawater per year, supplying 1/3 of ALL California’s residential (indoor and outdoor) water requirements for $15 billion.

Desalination plants are being developed all over the world, and California, with only one major desalination plant operating (Carlsbad in San Diego), is way behind. Desalination requires no more energy today than the amount of energy already being used to transport water from California’s northern regions several hundred miles south (and over the Tehachapi mountains) to Southern California’s coastal cities. The California current, second in flow volume only to the legendary Gulf Stream, can easily disperse the brine left over after extracting fresh water. The energy and environmental issues surrounding desalination have been addressed, and nobody would ever build these plants more responsibly than Californians.

While desalinating water from the sea, at a capital cost of $15,000 per acre foot of annual output, is the most expensive means of increasing California’s water supply, it has the unique virtue of being the only way to actually create fresh water, as opposed to reuse or redistribution. It is a technology that has been proven at large scale for decades and is a necessary part of California’s strategy to increase water security as the state alternates between wet and dry multi-year weather cycles.

What Californians Could Build on a $64 Billion Budget

(3) Build plants to reclaim and reuse 2.0 million acre feet of sewage per year, supplying 2/3 of ALL California’s residential (indoor and outdoor) water requirements for $10 billion.

Californians produce about 3.0 million acre feet of sewage per year, and today only a small fraction of that sewage is treated to “potable” (drinkable) standards. In California’s huge coastal urban centers this sewage is treated sufficiently to be released into the environment where it wasted as outfall into the ocean. A recent installation in Orange County, the “Ground Water Replenishment System” (GWRS) plant, reclaims as indirect potable water 70,000 acre feet of sewage per year, at a capital cost of only $350 million (not much when compared to the bullet train budget). This equates to a capital cost of $5,000 per acre foot of annual output, which is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase the supply of fresh water for Californians.

Sewage reuse combined with desalination not only have the potential to fulfill 100% of California’s residential water requirements for a combined price of $25 billion, but the treated water can be injected into coastal aquifers, combating saltwater intrusion. Currently these aquifers are often replenished with water transported from rivers hundreds of miles to the north, at equal or greater cost.

(4) Build the Sites Reservoir for $4.4 billion.

Anyone who has taken a look recently at the San Luis Reservoir in Central California, now 100% full, can appreciate the beauty of off-stream storage. Fed by surplus run-off water that is delivered there by aqueduct, and available for farms and urban use, this reservoir minimizes environmental harm because it doesn’t block the flow of any river. Like San Luis and just as big, the proposed Sites Reservoir, with a planned capacity of 1.8 million acre feet, will be situated in the semi-arid foothills of California’s Central Valley. Unlike San Luis, the Sites Reservoir will require almost no aqueduct, because it will be up in the northern Central Valley, immediately west of the Sacramento River. If the Sites were available today, it would already be filled up with runoff from this year’s many storms, and filling it would have taken pressure off of levees from Sacramento all the way to the delta.

The vast, 100% full San Luis reservoir, 84 square miles, holding 2.0 MAF.

(5) Build the Temperance Flats Reservoir for $3.3 billion.

While this proposed reservoir is in-stream, and would dam the San Joaquin River, it nonetheless has virtues that make a strong argument for its construction. First of all, there are already dams on the San Joaquin River, which would be submerged beneath the larger Temperance Flat dam. With planned storage of 1.3 million acre feet, the Temperance Flat reservoir would guarantee more water to farmers in the dryer reaches of the San Joaquin Valley even during droughts. It would also ensure a reliable flow into the San Joaquin river, to protect its riparian habitats during droughts.

(6) Widen and resurface every major interstate (and then some) in the entire state.

Are you tired of risking your life on Interstate 5 when it’s only two lanes in each direction, and trucks clog the slow lane and speeding tailgaters own the fast lane? Then spend $15.4 billion to add lanes and resurface the entire length of Highway 101 (807 miles), Interstate 5 (796 miles), Route 99 (415 miles), Interstate 15 (294 miles), Interstate 10 (243 miles), Interstate 80 (204 miles), and Interstate 8 (172 miles). According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, this will cost $5.25 million per mile, and the freeways just listed total 2,931 miles.

(7) Fix the Potholes.

With everything noted so far, we have only used up $53.8 billion. That is, for only 84% of the bullet train budget, we have delivered to Californians cheap, abundant energy, abundant water, and unclogged our major freeways. But we still have $10.2 billion left. What to do? Why not fix the potholes? For $10.2 billion, we can resurface 8,160 miles of 4-lane roads, or, presumably, an even greater length of 2-lane roads. Isn’t that the first thing that goes when governments go astray, and prioritize pet (and useless) environmentalist mega-projects ahead of serving the public? Potholes?

Apart from the fact that a few farms have been purchased in Fresno County, and a few pylons have been stuck in the ground, and a handful of extremely well-paid bureaucrats are doing everything they can to preserve their jobs, why is high speed rail still being pushed? The reasons are a disappointing example of our dysfunctional democracy here in California. Because you could accuse every project on the above list of being susceptible to cronyism and cost-overruns, and you’d be right. Just as the Bullet Train will never get built for a mere $64 billion, it is likely these projects will also, in aggregate cost more than $64 billion. But we’d have abundant energy, abundant water, and a 21st century network of wide, upgraded freeways. If you’re going to play the innately corrupt game of public works, build things that help people live better, more prosperous lives!

Instead, California contends with an alliance of financial oligarchs whose pecuniary interests depend on Californians paying punitive prices for energy and water. Their green energy and high-tech ventures depend on forcing Californians to completely retool their homes with new, upgraded appliances (all of them – washer, dryer, dishwasher, air-conditioner, furnace, refrigerator) that are efficient to the point of diminishing returns. As mentioned, these appliances now double as surveillance devices that will force us to live our lives according to utility company algorithms. Utility companies, of course, no longer make profits based on the quantities of energy or water they deliver, but rather on fixed percentages over cost, which means to please their shareholders, units of energy and water have to cost more. Much more. And manufacturers are thrilled to design all this frippery into their appliances so they can sell them as a service requiring perpetual payments, instead of a durable good.

Our household has a washer that we bought, already used, for $25 in 1999. It has never broken down. No ongoing warranty payments. No ongoing “software update” payments. Do you think you’ll be able to say any of that about any appliance purchased in the last few years?

For anyone who wants this lucrative, exploitative party for the oligarchs to continue, high speed rail is a good place to put what remains of California’s public financing capacity. The environmentalist lobby, firmly in the pocket of these oligarchs, offers up high speed rail to private construction unions, who lack the clout or the vision to demand something that might actually adhere to their ideals – i.e., the projects listed above, that would help ordinary working families in California.

Ed Ring is the vice president of policy research for the California Policy Center.

REFERENCES

(1-a) Cost for modern natural gas power plant generating 620 megawatts
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/capitalcost/

(1-b)  Peak megawatt demand in California (July 24, 2006) just over 50 gigawatts
Source: California ISO, California Peak Load History 1998 through 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California

(2-a) Cost for desalination plants – global comparisons:
Source: California Policy Center, Rebuilding California’s Infrastructure – Desalination
http://californiapolicycenter.org/rebuilding-californias-infrastructure-desalination-part-4-of-6/

Recently constructed desalination plants in Israel, rest-of-world, and California:

(2-b) Annual water consumption in California (million acre feet):


Source: Public Policy Institute of California – Uses and Value of Water, Table 2.2
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf

(3) Cost for sewage reuse plants:
Orange County GWRS IPR Project (2008) Fountain Valley
Source: California Policy Center, Rebuilding California’s Infrastructure – Water Reuse
http://californiapolicycenter.org/rebuilding-californias-infrastructure-water-reuse-part-2-of-6/

(4) Most recent and highest cost-estimate for Sites Reservoir:
Source: KCRA News
http://www.kcra.com/article/5-things-to-know-about-the-proposed-sites-reservoir/8593792

(5) Highest cost-estimate for Temperance Flat Reservoir (estimates range from $1.2 billion to $3.3 billion):
Source: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
https://web.archive.org/web/20120316022146/http://www.valleyvoicenewspaper.com/vv/stories/2009/vv_temperanceflat_0164.htm

(6 and 7 – a)  Cost to add lanes and resurface freeways:
Source: America Road & Transportation Builders Association
http://www.artba.org/about/faq/ 

(6 and 7 – b) Length of California’s principal highways and freeways:
Source: CaHighways.org
http://www.cahighways.org/itypes.html

 *   *   *

How California’s Leftists Are Puppets of the Plutocrats

AUDIO:  A lively discussion on pensions, pension fund solvency, and how leftists are being duped by oligarchs – 30 minutes on KUHL 1440 Santa Maria (Central Coast) – Edward Ring on the Andy Caldwell Show.