Business

The California unemployment figures for May 2008 constitute some misleading good news. We moved from the third worst state in April to the fifth worst state in May.

The bad news is that California's improvement is due to the fact that a handful of other states' unemployment rates are rising even faster. Michigan -– which used to build cars -– is in the toilet with an 8.5% unemployment rate.

Feel any better?

Here's an excellent article from an odd source: Karl Rove. Printed in the Wall Street Journal, this piece exposes the economic nonsense of both Obama and McCain when it comes to raising taxes on oil companies. Good stuff.

I got some interesting responses to my January 2008 post about how I escaped from the insanity of Windows Vista back to the productive calm of Windows XP. For instance, InfoWorld quoted me extensively in an article, and I was one of the first to sign their "Save XP" petition. But apparently, it didn't get saved. Now what?

A small financial tip for these hard times: If you have cable TV service, AT&T is starting to compete in some areas. Not to say they are necessarily better, but the competition itself is indeed beneficial.

I just called my cable company, Time Warner, and told them that I was considering switching to AT&T cable and high speed Internet services. That prompted the sales clerk to suddenly note that I was under an "old" plan (established less than a year earlier), and that now there are better deals.

Much is being made of "reducing our carbon footprint." I'm in favor of that -– to a point. I look for carbon-reducing steps that also save me money and/or make my life more pleasant! As I see it, if a carbon reducing strategy costs more, then often the wisdom of selecting that option is highly suspect.

For instance, I like using energy-saving florescent bulbs. I've used the big florescent lights in my fully equipped, professional office in the home for about 30 years. I also use the newer compact florescent bulbs whenever they fit with the demand, which fortunately is most of the time.

Did you see the excellent map of gasoline taxes, state by state, across America, May 6 on the front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune? If you didn't look too closely, or read the entire story you might have missed a salient fact -– we're number one!

Yup, California has the highest total taxes on gas of any of the 50 states (not just "among the highest" as the newspaper writes). As of January, we wealthy West Coast folks paid 63.9 cents of federal and state taxes a gallon, vs. the national average of about 47.0 cents.

The recession is upon us.

While still not official, most agree that we are in an economic downturn. Unemployment is rising, housing prices are plummeting and energy costs are soaring. As a result, in this election year, the federal government is offering tax rebates (admittedly ill-advised) to lessen the pain.

But in California, politicians think there are only two times to raise taxes -- good times and bad times. Oddly enough, this is one of those times.