July 29th, 2009 12:18pm
by PeteGolis
It was so unexpected. On an otherwise beautiful day, I was checking into the Lake Yellowstone Hotel in the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park when a stranger delivered the shocking news. No sir, there is no cell phone service in this area of the park, and no, the hotel has no Internet connection.
I was briefly disoriented. How can this be? What if someone needs to reach me? What if …
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July 28th, 2009 10:42am
by PeteGolis
Martin Espinoza’s story – read it here – testifies to the price Californians will pay for the absence of common sense in state government. It will be only one example among many.
In Sonoma County, he reports, some 10,000 kids – children of the poor and the working poor – will be denied health care.
This was done in the name of saving money – but it won’t save money. It simply …
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July 27th, 2009 10:49am
by PeteGolis
Final thoughts at the end of another budget crisis: There are no illusions about what happened in Sacramento last week. One more time, the governor and the state Legislature failed to make the hard choices about spending priorities and the structure of state government. One more time, they failed to address a tax system that is both inequitable and unreliable. One more time, they needed accounting gimmicks and borrowed …
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July 21st, 2009 12:24am
by PeteGolis
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders today agreed to a deal that seeks to close a $26 billion gap in the current year’s state budget.
The agreement, which must be ratified by the state Legislature, calls for broad cuts in spending, more borrowing and the transfer of money from local to state government. Now California begins to pay the price for all those years in which politicians ducked the hard choices.
In …
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July 11th, 2009 10:49am
by PeteGolis
In the long-running calamity that is state finances, it seemed like just another hiccup. Another rating firm this week lowered California’s bond rating, citing the state’s inability to balance its budget.
As always, the decision means the state will pay even higher interest rates on its debt – borrowing costs that will no longer be available to pay for other state services. The state’s debt load continues to grow, in part …
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July 7th, 2009 11:31am
by PeteGolis
In April, I wrote about our family’s decision to stop watering the front lawn. The column – here – focused on how drought conditions, global warming, new rules to protect endangered species and a shortage of money to build new water projects all but guarantee that Californians will need to find ways to reduce summertime water usage.
At the time, I calculated that we could save 1,800 gallons per month during …
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July 5th, 2009 09:52am
by PeteGolis
As I write this, I am 37,000 feet over Colorado. I am starting a column, catching up on Sonoma County news, exchanging e-mails, monitoring Twitter and RSS feeds, checking with friends on Facebook and listening to music. Later, I may upload photos, buy a new application for my iPhone and post to my blog.
In an airplane half-way between San Francisco and New York, I think: Wow, this is so cool.
And …
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Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat and a longtime resident of Sonoma County.
