California's chronic budget deficits ? even in times of economic expansion ? testify to its political dysfunction, which is reason to wonder whether a November ballot measure on budget procedures, if enacted, would have much positive effect.
California Forward, a centrist amalgam of civic, political and cultural elites, has proposed what is now Proposition 31 (the numbering sequence is subject to a pending lawsuit). It includes such changes as more public notice on legislation, two-year budgeting cycles and requiring any major new spending program or tax cut to identify an offsetting revenue or savings.
Political activists on the left and right dislike Proposition 31's provisions, which might be a good reason for others to embrace them. But the real question is whether they would truly move California closer to fixing its finances, or merely add another layer of complexity to the Capitol's already byzantine fiscal games.
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/ walters. Follow him on Twitter @WaltersBee.The history of dictating budget procedures via ballot measure is not encouraging.
More often than not, governors and legislators wind up putting together a political deal to do what they want to do and then dreaming up ways to make it legal, or at least legal enough to get them through another budget cycle.
Take, for instance, Proposition 98, the 1988 constitutional amendment on school finance that only a handful of fiscal mavens profess to understand, and rarely agree on what it means.
When Proposition 98 requires the state to spend more on schools than it has to spend, or more than politicians want to spend vis-?-vis other categories, they employ bookkeeping tricks to give the schools money on paper, but not in cold cash.
Routinely, the Capitol's denizens dream up phantom revenue and ignore spending obligations to produce budgets that are "balanced" on paper but have immense real-world gaps.
So why wouldn't they just ignore or work around Proposition 31? Most certainly they would, if the politics of the moment impelled them to do so.
The budget mess ? along with other long-simmering, never-resolved issues such as water, transportation and education ? is just a symptom.
California's budget process is dysfunctional because its politics are dysfunctional. They are dysfunctional because an archaic structure does not and cannot reconcile the conflicting demands of a very large and very complex society.
California needs a top- to-bottom overhaul that connects political decision-making to its unique social and economic reality and creates cause-and-effect accountability for those we elect to office.
Proposition 31 is akin to giving someone with a flesh-eating infection an aspirin to relieve the pain momentarily when the patient truly needs radical surgery or powerful drugs to stop the infection.
Source: http://www.modbee.com/2012/07/30/2303419/dan-walters-california-needs-more.html
meteor shower rashad evans jon jones chuck colson death meteor showers 2012 ufc 145 jones vs evans
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 31-Jul-2012
Share ] 
Perhaps you are unaware or maybe you have indeed heard the statistic that 50% of all personal bankruptcies are caused due to medical bills. Often, far too often the folks actually had medical insurance, but the co-pays, deductibles or items not covered exceeded the ability of the patient or the patient?s family ability to pay. Most of these medical debtors were not lower class, rather middle class. The upper middle and upper class was able to weather the storm and onslaught of medical bills much easier. This tells us one thing, it tells us that the healthcare system is out of control and completely broken.
Every fan dreams of owning a piece of there favorite professional sports team? Would you overpay for the privilege to say you own a piece of the New York Yankees? Dallas Cowboys? L.A. Lakers? Most fans would hop on that opportunity right away. Well for the rest of the world, soccer team Manchester United is their New York Yankees. Winner of 19 English Premier League Titles, Manchester United is the most glorified sports franchise of all-time, boasting well over 600 million supporters worldwide. And in less than a month, just about any of those 600 million supporters will be able to make one call or a simple click of the mouse and own shares of the iconic franchise. Buying shares of Man United will be a great idea to many for the obvious personal reasons but the real question is whether or not buying shares of Manchester United is a good investment at all?
What?s not to like, Manchester United is a franchise that turns a profit every year and has a track record of being a solid equity investment. Man United has appreciated more than 
What other Sports Teams are Publicly Traded? While there are technically no other professional sports teams publicly traded in the U.S., investors can buy shares of Madison Square Garden (NASDAQ: MSG), which gives you ownership of the NBA?s New York Knicks, the NHL Rangers, a WNBA team, an arena and a TV network. Sorry, no Jeremy Lin though. Another similar company is Liberty Media (NASDAQ: LMCA) owns the Atlanta Braces baseball team, which is only one component of their huge portfolio of companies. Nintendo (NTDOY) owns most of the Seattle Mariners, Rogers Communications (RCI) a small piece of the Toronto Blue Jays. So technically all of these are indirect ways to owning a sports team. Outside the U.S., there are a handful of soccer teams that actively trade on other foreign global markets. For example, AJAX trades in the Netherlands; Juventus in Italy; Benfica in Portugal, and Fenerbache a lesser-known name listed in Turkey, but has an annualized return of almost 14 percent. Meanwhile the other mentioned teams all had negative annualized returns and have all been losing investments. The big question looming is where Manchester United will stand.
