Category: San Francisco/California

In so many ways, it seems like we’re living in a time when truth is way stranger than any fiction! Here’s today’s update on Diebold — see my previous post. They’re like the gang that can’t shoot straight.

Today’s New York Times has a story about the CEO of Diebold saying it had been a “huge mistake” for him to express support for President Bush’s re-election in a fund-raising letter. Regarding the debacle over their voting machines in California:

Reading carefully from a statement, Mr. O’Dell said, “Diebold intends to fully cooperate with the attorney general in his investigation of the secretary of state’s concerns.”

Diebold entered what was a small market for electronic voting systems in 2002, when it bought Global Election Systems of McKinney, Tex. Mr. O’Dell characterized Global as near failure, and Diebold, he said, has spent a great deal of time “bringing the company up to the right level.”

Obviously, Mr. O’Dell’s view of what the right level is is very different from that of the California Secretary of State! Tim Oren concurs!

If you work in California, be sure you work in “public safety”, at least according to an article in yesterday’s Sacramento Bee. Actually, before long all of us may be working in public safety positions — just to get the lucrative retirement benefits!

In the 1960s, only about one in 20 state workers received enhanced retirements for their role in keeping the peace. Today, it’s close to one in three. The state paid out $587 million for the public safety categories in 2001-02, the most recent year statistics are available. That’s nearly as much as it paid that year for the 230,000 workers not involved in public safety.

Bee Blogger Daniel Weintraub explains a bit more about the craziness here. Today’s installment includes the following:

Any California firefighter or police officer who comes down with syphilis can claim an industrial disability retirement. The same goes for HIV – or mad cow disease. Since 2001, such blood-borne diseases are among the disabilities presumed to be work-related for various safety employees in California. Under the Labor Code, these workers needn’t prove they were exposed to tainted blood on the job – the presumption is enough. Once a presumption is in play, the burden of proof shifts from the employee to the employer, who must prove that the injury or illness was not caused by the job.

David Kirby writes in the New York Times Travel section about the Sonoma County coast — one of those very special pleasures of northern California!

Past undulating vineyards of pinot noir and chardonnay that climbed the steep forested ridges, I caught glimpses of the blue Pacific stretching out far below the redwoods. The crisp air was heavy with the scent of wildflowers and evergreens and the sun glowed warm and pure. The landscape was peaceful and deserted, a world away from the crowded coast to the south.

Amen! Also, 36 Hours in Sonoma, and, closer to home, Berkeley and Oakland, the quirky heart of the East Bay.

Gilbert Chan reports in the Sacramento Bee on yesterday’s votes in the California Assembly and Senate to overhaul the state’s workers’ compensation system — which has been one of the major cost drivers behind employers moving jobs out of the state.

The legislature acted after it became apparent that the governor had been successful in obtaining more than enough signatures to force the question onto the November ballot.

Meanwhile, Virginia Postrel points out an example of the continuing difficulties generated by the full-time California legislature.

If you pass a new regulation every time some citizen finds something he or she doesn’t like, pretty soon you have a terrible place that discourages enterprise–and encourages exit.

[Update: 8/2/07 – Ron Lyons passed away from cancer at age 69.]

We get so used to what’s familiar in our lives. Indeed, we take the familiar for granted, don’t we?

Today, San Francisco’s KCBS traffic and weather anchor Ron Lyons retired this morning at the end of the 9 o’clock newshour.

I was in the car this morning driving from meeting to meeting as Ron introduced his last traffic report at 9:58 AM and followed by the weather. It all ended so abruptly — the pressures of radio not permitting enough time to truly say goodbye.

During an earlier break this morning, Lyons spoke of his friendship with and admiration for former KCBS anchor Al Hart — and Hart’s decision a couple of years ago to leave KCBS to care for his wife.

Lyons spent 49 years in radio — most of them in San Francisco. For the last 17 years, he was one of the best at KCBS. His special voice and unique touch during the morning hours will be missed.

Read all about Jamis’ new book.

One of the on-going insanities in California is what’s happened to salaries and benefits for public employees over the last few years. This story, published in the Los Angeles Daily News last Saturday, sums the bad news up nicely.

Curiously, the authors of the article didn’t even include the pension costs — which in most local communities are exploding in the current and future budget years, acting like a cancer that’s sucking up money otherwise destined for local programs.

The taxpayers in California have been taken to the cleaners by what’s happened. In an environment where the cost of LABOR has been declining, public employee compensation and benefits have been increasing at a ridiculous rate. It’s the cost of labor (not the cost of living) that matters.

A few months back there was a humorous story circulating on the ‘net about how the US Congress had been outsourced to India. Too bad it was only a story — the California legislature should be next on that outsourcing list.

Donna Lane has the right idea.

I don’t have epiphanies every morning at 6:30 a.m. picking up trash along Kennedy Drive in the cold fog, but when I feel low I look around me and remember that I am working in one of the most remarkable parks in the world, a jewel conceived more than 125 years ago and built on a void of sand dunes. I edge. I prune. I wrestle with sprinkler heads and the sun breaks through. Gardening is my trade. It isn’t a life sentence of hard manual labor. It’s a life.

It’s a delightful Sunday morning here in the San Francisco Bay Area — and our banner image has changed to reflect the great springtime feeling. The image is from a similar Sunday in the Spring visit last year to nearby Filoli Gardens.