PT BLOG
them. Fourth, maybe it’s time to go back to my core business. Perhaps that airplane division and the factory making refriger- ators need to be closed or sold off to someone who knows how to do it better. Have you heard any government agency even hint at doing
any of these things? Let me parse it for you. How about a goal of reducing costs 10% in every depart-
ment in the organization. Let them come up with plans to cut, cut, cut. Of course, the police department will start with street cops, so there needs to be some emphasis on the 47 deputy chiefs in charge of public relations and sustainability and the like. Are the street department and the library and the schools
delivering what we promised? If not, why not? Sometimes we lose sight of why we are
here.Are we supposed to teach students or change the social fiber of the country?You get the idea. Who are the government’s customers? Probably 75%of the
populace never use the services provided (except maybe the street and water department), so why do we provide them? Is this the right thing to do?Maybe many programs need to be re- thought and canceled and then re-justified. What is our core business? Should we be collecting trash?
Running recycling programs? Selling water and electricity? Running a rapid-transit system? Owning hospitals? Building housing? Or should we get out of the way and spend our time making it easy for private industry to do those things? Or we could just raise parking taxes and fees and forget the
whole thing.
Gas prices: California vs. Colorado and Georgia (posted Sept. 4) I have spent the past few days in Denver and before that in
Atlanta. Great cities. The thing that impressed me most was the price of gas. It averaged 50 cents a gallon less than in LosAnge- les. That’s $7 on a typical fill-up. I started to feel sorry for those poor souls who have to live in those two hell
holes.After all, they had no police or fire protection, their schools were closed, their streets unpaved; they had no water or electricity, their skies were filled with smog. No, wait! Both Georgia and Colorado seem perfectly fine to
me. They have great schools, good roads, excellent police and fire departments; the water and electricity seem to run well. But what about my home state of California? We have the highest (OK,maybe the second-highest) tax rate
in the country, the ninth-largest economy on the planet, and gas taxes are over the moon. One would assume that all would be right with the world. Well, with all that money, we can’t seem to repair the roads,
build infrastructure, keep the schools up to date, and the like.Our wonderful Governator and the state Legislature can’t agree on a budget, and are considering God knows what all to help the gov- ernment survive fiscally. Higher income doesn’tmean that a government will do well. It also has to do with the money that is flowing out.
Continued on Page 56
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