According to a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, almost half of Californians are worried that they, or someone in their family, will lose their job in the next year. With California’s unemployment over 12 percent (12.6% in Los Angeles County; 13.9 % in San Bernardino County; and 11.2% in Ventura County) and given the fact that most of California’s job losses – 760,200 of the 952,800 attributed to the current economic recession – occurred only in the last year, those concerns are well founded.

All told, more than two million Californians are unemployed, with thousands more joining their ranks every month. In July, eight industry sectors lost jobs, including 15,900 in the trade, transportation, and utilities fields, 10,700 construction jobs, and 3,300 manufacturing jobs.

The only sector to enjoy job gains over the year was educational and health with 17,900, but 3,300 jobs were lost there in July. Between July 2008 and July 2009 the trade, transportation and utilities sector lost a staggering 196,600 jobs. More than 144,000 construction jobs, 132,000 professional and business services jobs, 124,400 manufacturing jobs, 62,100 jobs in the leisure and hospitality industries and tens of thousands of other positions also vanished during the same time frame.

Entire cities could be populated by the unemployed men and women behind the numbers of each of these job loss categories and economic forecasters tell us that things are going to get worse before they get better. So, not surprisingly, 52% of respondents to the aforementioned PPIC poll cited jobs and the economy as the “most important issue facing people in California today.”

You might think that job creation and retention would then obviously be the top priority in the State Capitol. Sadly, you would be wrong. Majority Democrats did not pass even one job-creation bill this year. Worse, they continued to churn out legislation adding to the cost of doing business in California, making our already notoriously hostile business climate even less attractive to employers.

Enough is enough. We need to reduce business fees and regulations and take every viable action we can to promote economic growth and job creation. If there were ever a time for politicians to pander to public opinion, it’s right now. Californians want to get back to work, and Sacramento needs to get serious about making California’s economy competitive again so that can happen.

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From my colleague, Sen. Dave Cox, of Sacramento:
Why California Gasoline Costs More

One of the most common questions we get in our office is: Why do Californians pay more for gasoline than anywhere else in the country.

Recently, the Orange County Business Council conducted a research study into this question and the findings were quite striking:

Californians pay between five and fifteen cents per gallon extra due to increased fuel refining costs required by the special gasoline blends required by the California Air Resources Board.

Because few refineries are equipped to make this special blend, availability is often limited and price is affected when these refineries break down or close for maintenance.

State gas taxes, at 35.3 cents per gallon, are 43% higher than the national average. Only New York charges more.

California is a “fuel island” with no pipelines linking us to domestic oil supplies. Thus, all crude oil must come here by tanker. We also have a limited capacity for storage, having lost six million barrels of storage capacity in the last 15 years.

California has not opened a new gasoline refinery since 1969, and 20 refineries have closed since 1980. Thus our refineries are forced to become more efficient, but they have only increased their capacity by one half of one percent (0.5%) between 1995 and 2006. During this same period, fuel sales increased by 18%.

The report concludes: “Because unplanned outages and ‘shocks to the system’ will never go away, California’s current fuel standard differentiation puts the state in a continual risky, precarious position. Consequently, there will continue to be consumer outrage, media reports, and other negative ramifications over high and lengthy fuel price spikes unless there are constructive measures taken to address (these) policy impacts.”

To read this study you can go here: http://www.fuelingcalifornia.org/docs/Fueling%20California%20FINAL%20RES...