Navajo Nation Council Chambers, Window Rock, AZ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My immediate question to this article in the local newspaper this morning was the same one I’ve been asking for years: If American Indian tribes are sovereign nations, why then must the rest of America subsidize them? Or why can’t the tribes be self-sufficient?

The largest Indian nation in the United States is the Navajo Nation, yet with its casinos and other financial enterprises it can’t seem to support its people without the help of others. At least that’s this layman’s viewpoint.

While I’m the first to support private enterprise and agriculture, the part that hit me most from the newspaper article was how the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry (NAPI) plans to sell its newly created flour to stores cheaper than its competitors can.

On the surface you can call that good business. If they can sell their product cheaper than their competitors, and still turn a profit, then I’m all for it. But the skeptic in me says they’ll either: a) not turn a profit, or b) find US government funding to cover the difference, or c) both.

My money is on the idea that they’ll find a way to profit and still bilk the US taxpayer.

Following local media reports on the large American Indian nation as I have over the past several years I’ve discovered that the government structure of the Navajo Nation may in fact be more corrupt than even the US Government, if that is even possible. Stories continue to be reported of troubling issues within the local chapters of the Navajo Nation wherein money is embezzled and blatantly taken for personal use by chapter officials with total impunity. Meanwhile, many Nation residents appear to live in abject poverty.

If these sovereign nations are truly that — sovereign governments with no need of external support — why then must a US Senator promise to find funding for irrigation projects to support the agricultural enterprises of a nation not his own?

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Two major cities — Stockton and San Bernardino — have garnered attention in recent weeks because of their fiscal insolvency. The Town of Mammoth Lakes also made the news in as many weeks as the third of four municipalities to seek bankruptcy protection. The City of Vallejo started its bankruptcy process several years ago as it too could not keep up with rising costs.

For several years now California’s golden luster has tarnished as the state’s financial position in the world sunk from what was once the worlds 6^th largest economy to the 9^th or 10^th largest now. This mess has been years in the making. It wasn’t that long ago that California was basking in the glory of a state budget windfall and budget surplus under a governor who was ultimately fired by state voters in a recall election that elevated a “B” movie actor to the top state-house position.

Say what you will about Stockton’s mess, which is a shining example of how greedy public unions are, and the false premise that private sector taxpayers will always have the money to pay public employees an opulent wage while employed and lavish salaries to live out their decades-long retirement in blissful luxury. Even San Bernardino’s published problems related to the housing crash and the loss of property tax revenue fails, while egregious in terms of the city’s ability to conservatively manage its revenues, to point a responsible finger at the true culprit of local government woes in California.

The blame rests with Sacramento

For the most part, the problems with shrinking local revenues in California cities and counties is due wholly to Sacramento’s inability to live within its means and the legal ability it has to blackmail cities and counties into picking up the tab for its spending orgies.

While some continue to claim that Proposition 13, passed by voters in the 1970’s to slow property tax rate hikes, forever killed the golden goose, the fact remains that the State of California has developed a fetish for spending money at rates faster than it can be created, earned and taxed. Additionally, California’s fulltime legislature and bureaucratic machine had developed a keen ability to pass the buck, quite literally, down to the cities and counties by forcing local governments to pick up the tab for things that were formerly paid for through state taxes.

In the early 1990’s, California legislators discovered that they could force cities and counties to give up their local sources of revenue under the notion that they ought to pay for the public education from which they more closely benefit. Never mind that the state up until then had always paid for public education through its own tax stream.

Just 10 years earlier California voters were asked to approve a state lottery, from which oodles and gobs of money would be added to public education. As it turned out, that became just another example in a long list of schemes borne in Sacramento to extract money from gullible Californians. Here’s how that scheme worked: As the mandated amount of money from lottery revenues was given to public education, a like amount of money was withheld from public education, to be spent elsewhere. In short, for every dollar the schools got from the lottery, at least a dollar was withheld from traditional general fund expenditures to public education. To California legislators, the lottery simply became a new source of money to be dolled out in any way they saw fit.

Under California’s 1990’s scheme to defraud local governments and voters, local governments would give up their sole source of funding for public safety and services. That started a landslide of local, targeted tax measures aimed at filling local budget deficits by jacking up local property tax and sales tax rates.

The selling point for these tax hikes was simple: do you want police and fire? Then agree to raise your local sales and property tax rates? What were local voters to do?

Shortly after this mess was created by Sacramento politicians, a local county supervisor in one of California’s more sparsely populated counties, announced out of frustration during budget hearings that he might as well resign as more than 95% of that county’s revenue was mandated by state and federal bureaucracies to be spent on specific programs. So much for local control!

Trying to be a responsible and inquisitive newspaper reporter at the time, I asked a county executive officer why cities and counties didn’t merely keep the taxes they collected and use them locally, rather than sending 100% of it to the state, only to get less than that back. His short and politically correct answer was that this is not how it works in California.

It still puzzles me, what with 58 individual counties, hundreds of cities and their thousands of elected representatives, Sacramento’s 120 legislators can’t be bullied into doing the right thing for the millions of people who live in California’s cities and counties and rely upon the services they provide.

While this doesn’t immediately address local cities like Stockton and others, who are drowning in a sea of debt created in large part by selfish public employees unions, the fact remains that had Sacramento not stolen local tax revenues from the cities and counties, then maybe local governments would be in a better position to afford the excessive salaries that only public employees enjoy.

Related articles

• Another California Bankruptcy, Away From the Coast – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• As San Bernardino declares bankruptcy, experts debate whether it’s another fluke, or another domino (mercurynews.com)
• More city bankruptcies on California horizon? – MarketWatch (marketwatch.com)
• Dan Walters: California just as insolvent as bankrupt cities (sacbee.com)
• Stockton, California, Files for Bankruptcy Protection – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• As San Bernardino declares bankruptcy, experts debate whether it’s another fluke, or another domino (mercurynews.com)

The so-called Media Diet includes 2.5 hours a day of reading/viewing the news. (Photo credit: Adam Crowe)

Here’s one of those stories that ranks high on the “duh!” factor, at least in my opinion.

Those of us addicted to our computers and smart phones have been there before. We come across an intriguing story slug or headline tagged in that familiar shade of “click-me” blue. And so, we click.

And then the frustration mounts!

“I have to pay for this?” you ask yourself. “No way!”

And so you move on.

Apparently some journalism instructors have taken to asking their students if they would pay a nominal amount of money for access to Facebook. While some agree that a buck a month might be acceptable, none of the students were willing to pay any amount of money for access to news media sites. I’m the same way. The quickest way to send me in another direction is to demand I pay to read an online newspaper.

But why? After all, if I want the print version of a newspaper I know full well that I’m going to have to pay something. Or maybe it’s that I’m not willing to pay at all for any version of the news.

Who pays for what?

There’s a grand irony as I see it, and it’s contained in the quote attributed to a newspaper publisher in the story linked to above. Apparently the newspaper publisher incredulously believes that he doesn’t need readers, certainly not the college-educated, upwardly-mobile reader with a disposable income. Pssst! Don’t tell that to his advertisers or shareholders!

Even more telling is how this attitude will become painfully apparent to these budding journalists when they discover that their paychecks don’t have the disposable income sufficient to cover the cost of the online subscriptions they already refuse to pay, especially once they learn the reality of economics and discover that the rent is due before they eat! The sad fact throughout this 20-year long discussion within media circles regarding the shift towards electronic publishing is that the very people tasked with writing the stories that are supposed to engage and attract readers have seen their pay increase less, on a percentage basis, than has the federal minimum wage, during this same period of time.

Yet this arrogance seems to be popular with publishers and even some editors. Oh, they won’t say that, but it’s apparent in the “just get it out the door” attitude of newspaper publishing. Who cares what’s in the newspaper, as long as the sales staff is relatively successful?

Content… Content… Content

The problem with this attitude is the reader (you know, those people who advertisers hope see their printed sales pitch in the morning newspaper) are leaving in droves, taking with them the advertisers that pay the bills. While to a certain extent it seems that the newfound lack of income must be made up somewhere, publishers seem dumfounded at the unwillingness of readers to subsidize what for more than a century has been subsidized by the advertiser. Lost in this incredulity is the notion that the free market will simply not support something that has no intrinsic value.

As a reader and a consumer (and a J-school grad), I’ve long-since lost the willingness to pay for information that I can find for free in so many places. Moreover, I refuse to pay subscription rates for information, even that information that I can’t seem to find elsewhere, simply because I have determined that it ultimately has no value to my life. I’ve even stopped watching television news programs in part because I don’t trust them to provide me with useful, and in many cases, truthful information.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a service or a tangible product, consumers want to feel as if they’re getting something of value when they elect to exchange their hard-earned money for something, whether it be a piece of electronic gadgetry, a new car, or a form of media.

Amazing as it is, people are still willing to part with their income. One need look no farther than Apple, Inc. to see a shining example of how one company has found a way to create value and extract large sums of money from consumers. Newspaper publishers could do well to learn this if they expect to revive their dying publications.

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The Golden Gate Bridge recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and stands as an icon of California’s once-golden economy.

It’s been a couple years since I fled California. The lack of jobs chased me from what I think should be renamed “The Tarnished State.” California is certainly not golden anymore, not in the economic or political sense.

So when I read the Facebook comment of a fellow conservative the other morning, I had to chuckle… not at her, but at her comment.

Happy for Wisconsin, not so much for California…..Feinstein, Waxman, Waters, Stark, Schiff, ugh. Really, again, Cali??? For a state full of ‘artists & dreamers’ you certainly don’t have much imagination when it comes to politicians. Apparently the majority of voters are perfectly happy paying insanely high taxes, having businesses move to other states, paying almost $5 for gas, maintaining one of the worst public school systems in the US, etc etc. At least the weather’s nice…sigh.

A couple words in her comment caused me to ponder. California has typically been known as a state chock full of artists and dreamers. After all, Hollywood exists there. Aside from that, you can’t travel far within California without coming across an art gallery or a book featuring the gorgeous and diverse landscapes that cover over half of America’s left coast.

What is it about the vast majority of voters in California who seem stuck in the rut of failed feel-good political policies? Has California lost its ability to dream big?

I’m not talking about $68 billion bullet trains or other stupid, costly ideas. After all, isn’t California also home to the Silicon Valley and ideas that started companies such as Apple and Microsoft? Maybe California’s proposed bullet train wouldn’t be such a colossal example of stupidity if everyone who wanted to in the state was employed or otherwise engaged in the creation of ample amounts of private capital that could be taxed at a reasonable rate so as to support a limited government bent on perpetuating the advance of more private capital. It’s rather ironic that a state that is tens of billions of dollars in debt and over-extended in spending can even consider adding four times its current budget deficit in additional debt for a bullet train through the world’s most productive agricultural land, but I digress.

Where’s California’s imagination for the next great private equity start-up that could once-again make it one of the world’s top 5 economies? But maybe that’s not the best first question to ask. After all, there are those who still live there who remember voting in a recall election to oust a governor who was blamed for skyrocketing utility rates, even though California boasted the worlds fifth largest economy at the same time. Now, two governors later the state has sunk to the 9th largest economy in the world and is still trying to convince its remaining residents (20-some percent of which do not work and are therefore not capable of paying taxes to fund such ventures) that the problem is that Californians aren’t paying enough taxes!

Why, with all the talent, intelligence and ingenuity — just think big dreams — in California do voters continue to elect people with a proven track record of stifling, stealing and suppressing those dreams? Where’s the motivation, desire and foresight for bigger and better, or has it already fled for other states where their elected representatives don’t tax and regulate those dreams out of existence?

California once had several very large (albeit public) projects going on simultaneously, the product of dreamers who accomplished things seemingly insurmountable. One of those projects just celebrated its 75th anniversary of completion and still stands as a picturesque icon that proves that big dreams, matched with skill, ingenuity and foresight, along with the political will of the people, can accomplish great things.

I don’t think all is lost for California, though it sure seems like it at times. All it will take is the political will of the people, dreaming big, and of a limited government, bending to the will of the people and their dreams, for a greater California where ideas aren’t taxed and over-regulated beyond their ability to be realized.

I served in the US Army, but never had to fire my weapon at an enemy or in defense of others or myself. I was trained to kill in the defense of my country. Everyone around me was trained the same.

The closest I got to combat was serving as a drill sergeant during the first Gulf War, when President Bush ordered our troops to liberate Kuwait from the clutches of a dictator. None of the young men I trained saw combat during that brief war as it started and finished during their early weeks of Basic Combat Training. I have no idea how many of them may still be serving, or wound up paying the ultimate price in defense of their nation.

I don’t say this to pat myself on the back for a job well done, though I am very proud of my service to my country. I am blessed to have been born here. I did nothing of myself to deserve these blessings of liberty. I am thankful to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, as Isaiah writes, for these blessings and for the ultimate sacrifice of God’s son on that cruel cross so many years ago. He died in my place; but what’s more, he rose again as promised and will return one day to claim those of us who have professed him as Lord and Savior.

Until then I will continue to thank those here in the United States of America who laid down their lives for a larger cause, to ensure the freedom and liberty that we enjoy today. Freedom isn’t free, for it carries with it a responsibility and a duty to promote, protect and perpetuate it until the day when Jesus Christ returns to claim his people.

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It really wasn’t all that long ago that newspaper conglomerates such as Gannett were basking in the glory of 50% profit margins while companies such as Exxon Mobile were mired in much more conservative figures that in the last 10 years never exceeded 12%. Now newspapers are bleeding red ink by the barrel.

Why then is money baron Warren Buffet spending money in an industry that just three years ago he claimed had the proven potential for repeated and unending losses?

According to Bloomberg News, Buffett recently struck a deal to purchase 63 newspapers, and may buy more, as he gives voice to the idea that there’s money to be made if only the newspaper industry would stop giving away its content. The problem with that premise, as I’ve witnessed over the years while working in print media, is that there’s long been a drive to charge for content that freely makes it to the web. The problem with Buffett’s notion is that people have come to expect information via the World Wide Web to be free. Changing that mindset isn’t going to be easy. Maybe Steve Jobs could have done it, but he’s no longer with us.

I don’t know about you, but given the quality of newspaper content these days, what passes for local news — and even national and international information — is already overpriced. But that doesn’t seem to be where Buffett is going, at least as I read it.

Buried within the Bloomberg report is this little nugget: “Berkshire will … favor towns and cities with a strong sense of community.”

What does he mean by “sense of community?” Could he mean those newspapers that operate under the premise that serving the customer (namely the reader) is job one? And, practically speaking, what does this look like for newspapers as they move ahead through the electronic age?

Still, Buffett seems to believe that newspapers should be “indispensable” to their communities. Could that mean the printed word on newsprint will still be the model as we move through the electronic age where smart phones and tablets continue to gain prominence?

The indispensability factor is going to be a mighty tall mountain to climb since many of the communities I’ve lived in over the past decade seem to have a more “leave it” than “need it” attitude when it comes to their local newspapers. It’s common to hear jokes about the local newspaper and the ever-shrinking amount of time it takes to peruse it for valued information. It’s certainly the case in my local community.

I still recall the small, community newspaper I once worked for in rural northeastern California and the “must-have” attitude of the public when it hit the streets every Thursday morning, rain, snow or shine. It’s my understanding that people still wait outside the offices of the Modoc Record in Alturas, Calif. for the print edition of the newspaper that has published only local news for well over a century. Yet in keeping with the times, subscriptions can now be purchased online and the newspaper read by computer, tablet or smart phone.

Bloomberg quotes Buffett from a Berkshire company memo: “Our future depends on remaining the primary source of information in certain subjects of great importance to our readers. Technological change has caused us to lose primacy in various key areas, including national news, national sports, stock quotations and employment opportunities. So be it. Our job is to reign supreme in matters of local importance.”

Buffett nails it! Maybe the newspaper model of the future isn’t the “be-all” attitude of the smaller dailies that once thought they could compete with the larger, regional dailies. Maybe size does matter, but rather than larger, the new model is for smaller geographies of reporting. Maybe what the newspaper industry needs is an entirely different focus — one that dials in the premise that local news is king and begins to hire reporters and editors who are willing to role up their sleeves and wade into their communities in search of the issues, rather than the failed practice of parking themselves in front of a computer monitor and telephone as junior editors dole out press releases and complain about the quality of information reporters are regurgitating from their assigned news releases.

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Navy SEAL hands Obama his arse.

If things continue on course, the State of California may wind up as uninhabited as the former mining town that in its heyday had money flowing as freely as the spring runoff from the nearby Sierra Nevada.

The Sacramento Bee reports that more college-bound Californians are fleeing to other states, in spite of the higher sticker price for out-of-state tuition costs.

That’s because California’s liberal legislature and its growing full-time bureaucracy, have succeeded in running what was once the world’s 5th largest economy, into the proverbial toilet, but you won’t get that part of the story by reading the Bee article alone.

Based on the Bee’s Page-One story, even the higher out-of-state tuition costs are not a deterrent for students wanting to learn valuable and marketable skills within a reasonable amount of time. The reasons, from the story, are two-fold: California in-state tuition rates continue to climb at an astronomical rate; and, colleges are cutting back on the number and availability of courses, turning a typical four-year degree into a 5 or 6-year process.

Some interviewed for the story claim that this will further exacerbate California’s “brain drain,” as younger, smarter, more energetic people will leave the state and won’t return. Inserted in this premise is the notion that jobs and a lucrative income tax base is important to the well-being of the state.

Blame California’s brain drain in large part on the state’s absurd and onerous tax structure. Coupled with its blatantly anti-business stance in Sacramento, where career politicians learn quickly how to insulate themselves from the real world, California has succeeded in forcing the state’s best and brightest to greener pastures in states such as Texas and Florida.

That’s okay though, because California Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown has a plan to raise taxes and force through a multi-billion bullet train to transport people from the sticks into the collapsing cities where jobs are as scarce as common sense in Sacramento.

Not long ago the Sacramento Bee also reported that the state’s population of illegal immigrants, who were welcomed with open arms across a porous border, are now themselves fleeing back to Mexico because… wait for it… there are jobs to be had.

Mexico currently boasts an unemployment rate of around 5% and a GDP 2-3 times that of the United States. Given that California’s unemployment rate is somewhere north of 12% (50% in some local communities), and that the political climate is about as anti-business as one can get, it’s rather comical that even the undocumented Democrat voters are abandoning ship.

California’s problem is foundational. The Democratically-controlled legislature has for decades bled the most productive of Californians dry while the state agencies they amply fund with taxpayer dollars, do their best to further fleece businesses through draconian policies and laws passed by their legislative buddies.

Kudos to the Bee for pointing out another symptom of California’s disease. At least someone at the paper had the guts to point out a serious problem. One can only hope that the lawmakers and policy wonks in California can piece together the symptoms with a proper diagnosis and a radical, but necessary treatment program to bring California back to life. Otherwise, a lot more people will be permanently leaving what was once this nation’s 5th largest economy for lands of opportunity elsewhere.

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Before it can appear here, much of our food and fiber found on grocery store shelves first starts on American farms and ranches. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An incredible editorial in the Modesto Bee makes me believe that some in the mainstream media actually do get it, and in more ways than one.

The Bee believes that a lawsuit filed against the California Milk Advisory Board and the California Department of Agriculture by the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is indeed “silly” and “misdirected.”

I couldn’t agree more.

In short, PETA contends that the Happy Cow ads that became popular more than 10 years ago are grossly false and misleading because they depict talking cows standing on lush, green pastures, and that because most dairy cows do not live in such conditions, they must not be very happy. Then again, they’re not too concerned over the false notion that cows can talk, just that dairy cows must not be very happy because of PETA’s false premises, which the Bee articulates well in its editorial.

I wonder if the brain-trust at PETA is likewise concerned that beer companies are equally as reprehensible as dairy farmers because they portray their products as elixirs that cause people to be smarter and more attractive. You’d think that someone would have noticed that the product dairy farmers produce doesn’t cause people to drive drunk and kill other human beings… just a thought.

The Bee is well placed within California’s agriculturally-rich Central Valley to indeed “get it.” It’s as the paper’s editorial board should, given their placement in one of California’s five top agriculturally prolific counties in the United States. But this isn’t so much about the Bee or its editorial position on the latest PETA lawsuit.

Call for better education of agricultural practices

While the Bee’s point was to apparently illustrate just how ridiculous PETA’s lawsuit is, the editorial touches on a much more important issue (I believe) facing agriculture today: the abject ignorance of consumers about the products farmers and ranchers produce — namely “what goes into caring responsibly for livestock,” the Bee writes.

Of all the various trade organizations that farmers and ranchers willingly, and in some cases, not-so-willingly, send their money to, you’d think that at least one of them would take it upon themselves to focus intently on educating the public about the food and fiber that their farmer and rancher members produce, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

In California’s case, the California Farm Bureau Federation’s media department is heads and shoulders above its other state counterparts in terms of the vast amount of information produced for public consumption, particularly across the entire agricultural spectrum. The California Milk Advisory Board, since that’s one of the defendants in this report, merely represents dairy farmers, although it’s funding comes not from voluntary contributions, but through involuntary confiscatory measures employed by the dairy industry itself.

As is the case with Farm Bureau, one would argue that much of the information produced is aimed at its farmer and rancher members, and not the general public, who simply assume that the grocery stores they patronize are amply stocked with a wide variety of safe and tasty items produced on America’s farms and ranches.

Look at the light switch as a metaphor of public indifference and ignorance. We all take for granted that the electricity powering the lights in our homes will be there at our command when we flip the switch. We truly don’t know and in most cases don’t care how the power gets to our home, just that it’s there when we want it. It’s much the same for the grocery store: we all take for granted that the dairy case will be adequately stocked with cold, fresh milk until we discover that the delivery truck hasn’t arrived and the dairy case is empty. I’ve actually experienced that in my local grocery store.

I fully understand organizations such as the California Farm Bureau Federation, and others, have board-approved mission statements, goals and objectives. I fully understand that it’s the dollars that come in from voluntary membership in these organizations that funds the multimedia campaigns of these organizations, along with the various other programs that membership in these organizations provides.

What I am suggesting is that these media campaigns are misdirected to a certain degree, and need to be aimed not so much at convincing members to remain as active, dues-paying members (that’s obviously vital to the existence of any voluntary organization), but that these campaigns need to be amped up to better educate their consumers, who are constantly bombarded with absolute lies and false premises about the production of the products they buy at the grocery store (just look at the latest “pink slime” issue involving American beef as yet another example). It’s these false premises and lies that cause farmers and ranchers to lose money and, in some cases, rightfully wonder if their membership dollars are truly having the impact they desire.

As a consumer with a good bit of knowledge on agriculture and how it operates (I did not grow up on a farm, nor am I the offspring of a farmer), I’d like to see a more direct effort (offense versus defense) employed by American agriculture to educate my peers about just how well farmers treat the Earth and how much effort they put into keeping their livestock healthy and comfortable before the commodities they produce become food on our tables.

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