California is hurting, in a budget mess, and delinquent in its basic financial obligations with the lowest state bond rating in the USA. Why aren't you doing more for your home state ? California. That is your home state, right ?
In less than 50 years , we have gone from being the pride of the USA,,,to the dog of North America:from the best public education in the US to the worst with superintendents making multimillion contracts that are not tied to performance like in banking and corp. and have golden parachutes even tho they just watch the decline of another and another California school district,,, San Jose State College got to re-name itself a University, after losing most greeks, and the respect compared to ucsf of most of us that went there with the east side of campus an eyesore and ghetto and rip-off prices for textbooks the Student Union should be selling to benefit the students as ebooks, but that is not happening much at any California state college or state joke 'university' or University of Ca.,,,
Silicon Valley began as a first,,,and with little state or federal regulation, computer companies were allowed to store very unhealthy and environmentally dangerous chemicals underground in tanks that shortly leaked this poison into the south San Francisco Bay Area's water system, causing cancers, acute and chronic sickness, and death. We now have more Superfund sites concentrated here, than anywhere else in the USA, even Love Canal or 3 mile island nuclear reactor American disaster area.
Most of our expressways and boulevards do not have timed lights, thus wasting over these 50 years or less, millions and billions of gallons of diesel and gasoline and trillions of hours stuck in traffic while you just make smog and go no where, and many more people suffer respiratory distress, asthma, and death,,,just because we lack leadership to do something as simple and obvious and no-brainer as time the traffic lights at just below the speed limit on divided 2x2 major thoroughfares like boulevards and expressways. We talk Environmentalism, but we don't walk or drive it. Watch the dvd of "Why they took away the Electric Cars".
Governor Arnold has a huge tv campaign to bring more new people to reside in California, even tho we are getting less rain and much less snow-from 10feet of snow pack every year at Donner Pass on highway 80,,,to 3 feet of snow pack there in the last several years. And global warming or this decline in the states water supply is not being planned for with more reservoirs and less wasteful use by the big 'cheap' water users, like farmers. In California, corporate farmers are secretly subsidized, and have been for decades, with 'cheap' water that they get at less than $50 /acre foot ,,,and they take the top 70% of this state's water,,,and waste it by flooding their fields and growing water intensive crops that are not in short supply like non-organic cotton our most toxic farm crop and alfalfa and rice,,,when home owners in Silicon Valley are paying about $50-100/month for water rationing in the dark for a standard 3br 2ba house and yard with front and back lawns and landscaping on terrible sticky clay soil that nature gave us.
After the disaster of the infamous Enron and Governor Grey Davis home energy deregulation, why have you not brought back full energy price controls, when senior couples like my parents on one teacher's retirement salary are paying $500 /month for electricity for a 3br 2ba standard house, with doctor-prescribed new central air conditioning?!!
Our roads, highways and freeways have gone from being the best maintained in the USA to the worst with potholes everywhere. Our Senators must not drive to be inconvenienced by expensive tire blowouts, yearly steering alignment and wheel balancing, and road surfaces so rough you can not listen to CDs in your car because of the hard jolts that cause cd players to skip. The state's infrastructure, from roads to highways to power transmission to SF's( mayor Gavin Newsom's,,,trying to run for Governor?!!) water diversion pipes from Yosemite, are all falling apart due to the lack of proper maintenance funding. What are you doing about this, as state leaders, when our movie star Governor seems unwilling or incapable of doing anything, other than his promise 'not to raise taxes'-hell, that is one tombstone he is going to regret?!!
On the much larger scale, at the Federal level, we have a run-away Department of Defense and affiliates budget with irresponsible spending of $350 million for EACH of over 150 new super high tech F-22 fighter jets , that without a major cold war like with China or tiny Russia, we do not need. Billions are hidden and trillions have been wasted , because our 2 California Senators can not or will not stand up to the old boys in Washington, D.C. And that means there is less money for these inappropriate weapons like the Humvee-what a waste/joke to replace the jeep-, new and expensive DE-1071 anti-sub destroyer with massive rear sonar spool uselessly sent to VietNam, a Army and Marine Corp that failed in Somalia and just made matters worse, military academies even the Air Force Academy that have had repeated sex scandals of men raping women by Officer Candidates!, and the stupid anti-gay "don't ask" policy when Britain does just fine respecting citizen soldiers differences. Now our military is trying to leave Iraq, grudgingly not staying forever, and instead of coming home to protect our borders from terrorists who easily cross unlike in Switzerland with machine guns everywhere, they are getting our new President Obama to make more terrorist enemies and increase the American and allied forces in next door Afganistan. More bad expensive no-possible-victory decisions from our own military, with little control seen from Congress.
As women, we expected better from you. But, we have gotten more of the old-boy politics that have failed us all. I, for one, am extremely disappointed in your lack of state and federal leadership.
