Another Wall Street credit-rating agency has given California kudos, citing spending restraint and management changes. Oh boy.
From the Bee's David Siders: "Fitch's action follows a similar upgrade by the ratings house Standard & Poor's earlier this year."
"The upgrade is based on institutionalized changes to fiscal management in recent years, which combined with the ongoing economic and revenue recovery have enabled the state to materially improve its overall fiscal standing," Fitch said in a statement. "Notable progress includes timely, more structurally sound budgets, spending restraint, and sizable reductions in budgetary debt."
"Fitch cheered deep spending cuts in recent budgets and "a restrained approach to restoring past cuts." However, the agency said California remains vulnerable to swings in personal income tax revenue and a lack of reserves."
If you're a transit union worker, with friends like the head of the Senate Transportation Committee, who needs enemies?
From the LAT's Anthony York: "The head of the Senate Transportation Committee praised Gov. Jerry Brown for preventing Bay Area transit workers from walking off the job Monday and said he is still considering legislation that would permanently take away their right to strike."
"Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said in an interview that workers in the Bay Area have rights that few of their colleagues around the state share. “Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and the Bay Area are the exception,” he said. “All of the other large systems do not allow transit workers to strike.”
"DeSaulnier, who called himself "pro-labor and pro-transit," said neither labor nor management seems to want to change the current law, but the frequency of labor strife in the Bay Area Rapid Transit district has led him to look at the issue. The former Contra Costa County supervisor says that in the 22 years he’s been in elected office, workers have walked off the job or come close four times."
The state released a positive study of the benefits of the huge Delta tunnels project, with Resources Secretary John Laird saying the numbers "pencil out." Not everybody thought so.
From the Bee's Matt Weiser: "Critics swiftly attacked the study, claiming it relies on rosy water delivery scenarios that may not prove feasible in the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Water from the estuary currently serves 25 million Californians and 3 million acres of farmland."
"To obtain permits under state and federal endangered species laws, the project must demonstrate that it not only protects imperiled fish species but restores them. This may require reduced water diversions and more natural outflow to the ocean."
"In addition, the project's actual ability to deliver water will not be known until after it is built, because the Brown administration intends to use a "decision-tree" process to determine safe diversion levels later. As a result, many assumptions in the study may prove to be wrong, saidBill Jennings, director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.
"The whole thing falls apart if BDCP doesn't deliver any more water," Jennings said."
From Susan Abram in the LA Daily News: "Two state regulator agencies were accused Monday of placing the public's health at risk by allowing the Boeing Co. to demolish an old plutonium fabrication building on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site and then planning to dispose the debris at an unlicensed dump in Kern County."
"Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica based advocacy organization, joined by several other groups, warned the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Department of Public Health that they face a lawsuit if they don't block Boeing's actions in the next 24 hours."
"Your agencies' actions and approvals have created the risk of imminent public harm through the disposal of radiologically contaminated material at levels above background in sites that are not licensed to receive such materials," the groups' letter said. "This conduct violates numerous laws."
California's creation of an independent commission to draw legislative and congressional boundaries could serve as a template for the rest of the country. At least, that's the hope of a former California legislator now serving in Congress.
From KPCC's Kitty Felde: "California has 14 new members in Congress this year — more than a quarter of the state's delegation. Much of the turnover can be traced to California's citizen-drawn redistricting map. Now, one of the state's freshman lawmakers wants to expand citizen redistricting commissions nationwide."
"With the idealism of a modern-day Don Quixote, Long Beach Democrat Alan Lowenthal admits his idea will be an uphill struggle..."
"Lowenthal says the last straw for him was in 2001 when the California state Legislature — with lots of input from Congress — redrew Congressional district lines, eliminating the seat of Long Beach Republican Steve Horn. Lowenthal, himself a state assemblyman at the time, disagreed politically with the former Cal State Long Beach president, but says Horn "was in that district all the time. People liked Horn. He represented us."
And from our "Art for Art's Sake" file comes the tale of the CIA's role in promoting modern art during the 1950s and 1960s.
"For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years."
"The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing."
"Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete."
