August 22, 2003

James Flanigan on How to Fix the California Budget.

The brilliant LA TIMES economic writer James Flanigan has provided an informed and cogent plan to deal with California’s economic situation.

The article is titled, “No Time for Sound Bites if State Is to Be Saved”. Flanigan is usually upbeat when others are forseeing doom. If he’s concerned, attention must be paid.

High points (emphasis added):

• [Roll] back regulations and articulate a well-thought-out overhaul of the broken workers’ compensation system, including changing the very definition of an injured worker. Labor advocates will scream, but it’s the only way to make California competitive again.
• On energy policy, for instance, it should be declared that any power company unwilling to renegotiate its costly California supply contracts would be barred from future projects that involve so much as a penny in state funds. Such bare-knuckle tactics would make corporations see red, not to mention file suit, but that shouldn’t deter someone who really cares about curing what ails California.
• As for housing… [address] a tax structure that penalizes communities erecting houses instead of big-box retail centers; excessive environmental restrictions; and runaway liability lawsuits against builders of multiple-family units.
• The most important need… is for changes to the state’s budgeting process. ... keeping tight control over property taxes, the state has forced cities and towns to rely too heavily on sales levies to finance public services, including police and fire protection. Now the whole system has begun to creak. “The state today is characterized by a complete lack of fiscal discipline,” says former Democratic congressman and White House budget director Leon Panetta.

I particularly like the way he addresses the contracts Gray Davis signed with the energy companies, that are costing us an extra $40 billion. Tell them if they ever want any more California business, they have to renegotiate these outrageous contracts.

No one else yet, as far as I know at this time, has provided such a detailed and well-informed plan.

That fish in the upper left looks like it isn’t buying Davis’ act.

Fight Islamic Extremism in Iraq Now—or Here Later.

Avigdor Haselkorn, author of “The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence”, has written an insightful article about the current situation in Iraq. The article is called “Jihadis View Iraq as the Place to Slay the Great Satan—The United States must not bow in the face of escalating attacks.”

By positioning itself militarily in this area, the U.S. has turned the tables on its enemies. It seized the strategic initiative and, instead of radicals holding it and its allies hostage, it is regimes such as those in Iran and Syria that have been boxed up.

The mullahs in Tehran, for instance, who have staked their survival and Iran’s regional designs on Iran building nuclear weaponry, are now afraid to do so. They are aware that pursuing this course would probably end their political longevity. After all, the U.S. military is now poised on Iran’s western and eastern borders. Moreover, as long as U.S. forces are patrolling the Syrian border, Iran can’t use Hezbollah to distract Israel from going after Tehran’s nuclear efforts.

The Syrians have been under heavy U.S. pressure to cease their support for Hezbollah and an array of Palestinian terrorist groups. But Damascus is even more nervous that the U.S. example in Iraq the forceful disarming of an extremist regime believed armed with weapons of mass destruction signals that its vast stores of chemical weapons could become the next casus belli for the Bush administration.

...Were the U.S. to be successful in establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq and rehabilitate the country’s economy, the political danger of the new regime serving as an example to the rest of the neighborhood would have led to intensive efforts to subvert the experiment. The extensive campaign of sabotage underway in Iraq, exemplified just recently by new bombings of the oil pipeline to Turkey and the water main in Baghdad, should be seen as confirmation of this trend. It is imperative that the U.S. prevail in this conflict. Were the American forces to pack up and leave Iraq under pressure, as some have already called for, the war on terror would crumble.

If the U.S. forces were to retreat now, the perception that the U.S. is nothing but a paper tiger unable to sustain casualties would prove itself. Such a realization would open the gates to a relentless onslaught against the U.S. itself, its interests worldwide and its regional allies.

Iraq is serving as a lightning rod, attracting Islamic extremists, and those who just want to preserve the oppressive political order in nations such as Syria and iran. With the US on the ground in their own back yards, they are fighting us there, in Iraq, rather than here, on our soil.

That’s where we want them. We need to stay the course in Iraq.