Government & Politics

Rider's Financial Advice of the Week: Buy food.

Three reasons:

1. Inflation -– our dollar is losing value because we put so many in circulation via the mechanics of the Federal Reserve.

2. Growing demand for food worldwide -– especially in the rapidly developing nations such as China and India.

3. Floods in the U.S., and droughts elsewhere -– especially Australia. More than usual this year, apparently.

My column in North County Times questioning the ancillary functions of public libraries brought a storm of protest from library lovers. Well, a squall at least.
http://nctimes.com/articles/2008/05/29/opinion/rider/doc483ee3f9b66bd295...

What struck me about the criticism is that many of these supposedly well-educated folks apparently read no further than the headline before firing away in the online comments section. Either that, or their vaunted reading comprehension remains at third-grade level.

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.

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.

For two years or more, an inflammatory anti-Mexican immigrant (legal and illegal) chain letter email has circulated the Internet. It lists a series of truly disturbing statistics demonstrating that these illegal immigrants (ALL people of Mexican descent are assumed to be illegal immigrants) are the number one problem in America -– raping, pillaging and welfaring their way across the land.

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.

Public vs. private salaries, California business climate, Republican Party straw poll, make a will, fire fighter jobs, beach booze ban, Second Amendment, Omaha Mall shooting