I went to the U.S. Census's Web site, census.gov, and got this screen:

I could understand why they wouldn't put up new data, such as the unemployment numbers that were scheduled for last Friday. But why take down the whole site?

When I go to sleep, I don't take down CalWatchDog.com.

Did the Census stop paying its servers? Then why is the notice still up? Shouldn't there just be that “NOT FOUND” error message?

All I know is that, although I find the Census numbers valuable, I have other ways of getting data. They could shut it down permanently and it wouldn't crimp my work, especially if the money saved was refunded by cutting my taxes.

But it's obvious that the notification is just another nuisance intended to annoy people so they call for funding the government. With me, it had the opposite effect.

By Wayne Lusvardi

When will California’s population “pop” at 50 million persons?  Two recent studies conducted by the Population Dynamics Research Group at the University of Souther California and the Public Policy Institute of California differ widely in their conclusions.

The main conclusions of the two studies differ as to the timing that new roads, electric grids, sewers and telecommunications infrastructure may be needed.

USC: “The population slowdown may bring reprieve to a fiscally strapped state under pressure to keep up with infrastructure needs.”

PPIC: “Growth will put pressure on infrastructure.”

PPIC forecasted California would reach 50 million people by 2032. That’s 20 years from now. Its numbers were based on California Department of Finance data from 2007 and updated in 2010.

USC’s forecast is for California’s population to reach 50 million by 2046. That’s 34 years from now. The USC forecast is the first to use data from the 2010 U.S. Census.

The USC forecast sees California reaching 50 million people 14 years later than PPIC.  This would put less time pressure on planners and decision makers to finance and build out public improvements needed to serve a population of 13 million million people.  That is about four mega-cities the size of the city of Los Angeles.

Where Would They Live?

The PPIC forecast sees the growth being spread out mostly in the inland areas of the state. That’s different from the central planning policies of the state Legislature in tandem with regional planning agencies that want to steer that growth mainly toward “urban infill” locations in already highly populated areas to alleviate “urban sprawl.”  These agencies include the Association of Bay Area Governments in northern California and the Southern California Association of Governments.

Central planners foresee putting one-half to two-thirds of this new population in apartments and condominiums around existing population centers. Historically, California growth has been about two-thirds from single family homes in the suburbs and inland counties.

The USC study does not contain a forecast of the locations where population growth would be the greatest. However, the USC study indicates that most new growth would be from “California born” residents rather than those “foreign born” or “born in other states.”

As suburbs and inland areas are where there are a greater proportion of families, this presumes that growth would be in suburbs and inland areas.  Once again, this would run against the mandates of central planners and SB 375, the “anti-urban sprawl” bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008.  Diverting population growth to “infill” areas of highly populated cities will put greater pressure on water supplies than allowing population to spread to suburbs and inland areas.

Fewer Immigrants?

Concurrently with the release of the USC study, the Pew Hispanic Center issued a report concluding that foreign immigration has come to a standstill, and may even be reversing  The USC study likewise sees the major reason for slower population growth as a leveling off of foreign immigration.

The PEW study claimed that about 900,000 fewer immigrants have come to the U.S. since 2008 than were expected. That is about 225,000 fewer immigrants per year in the.   In the last 40 years, about 12 million people came here, reflecting about 300,000 per year. Half of those foreign born coming to the U.S. were illegal.

But Where Would They Get Water?

The 14 more years to build major infrastructure forecasted by USC would not apply to California’s water situation. California has only about one-half year of water storage in its combined state and federal water systems, compared to about four to 10 years of water storage along the Colorado River water system. Since 2000, environmentalists have diverted five “waterless” water bonds — Propositions 12, 13, 40, 50 and 84 — totaling $18.7 billion mainly for open space acquisitions and environmental studies.  That would be enough to build about four to eight major water reservoirs.

Where California’s future population is going to get its water is still in question.

Of all the 50 states, California’s government workers make the highest pay, averaging $5,774 a month in March 2010, according to U.S. Census data. That works out to $69,288 a year.

Local government workers in Washington, D.C., made a little more, at $5,990. But D.C. gets vast funding from federal taxpayers, part of the $4,000,000,000,000.00 of our tax dollars that sluices through D.C.

For the 50 states and local governments, although a lot of federal money is involved, most money is grabbed from state citizens. No wonder California taxpayers are whacked at among the highest rates in the country.

And what do we show for it? Although unemployment has improved, it’s still the second worst in the country, behind Nevada.

Our schools commonly rank 48th of the states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests.

Median income in California crashed 9 percent from 2006 to 2010, nearly double the 5 percent annual rate.

The roads are falling apart. The infrastructure is dilapidated. The state can’t solve its Delta water problems.

Yet the bureaucrats who run the whole shebang — mainly run it into the ground — are getting paid more than those in any other state.

If California were a private-sector company, it long ago would have gone bankrupt, its profitable parts, if any, sold off to the highest bidder.

But because so many people believe the fiction that government is somehow “different,” that it’s really all of “us” working “together,” this expensive, dysfunctional monstrosity continues to tax and regulate us to death — while being paid excessively.

A good example of the dysfunction is firefighters, who top the pay list in California at $9,774 per month on average, or $117,288 a year. Yet firefighting easily could privatized everywhere, or turned over to volunteer fire departments.

That’s unlikely to happen because the “people” don’t run California, the government-worker unions do. The unions force massive dues from their “members,” then use the money to get their bought politicians to pilfer the pockets of taxpayers at record levels. Not only that, but the unions have run up pension benefits $500 billion beyond the state’s current ability to pay.

Instead of trying to raise taxes $7 billion, as Gov. Jerry Brown wants, he should be cutting the massive pay, perks and pensions of government workers. The state just can’t afford it anymore. Common citizens — the private sector — are broke and suffering. The slaves can’t take any more lashes across their backs.

Feb. 7, 2012

In an address yesterday to the NAACP, Gov. Jerry Brown contrasted his highly tolerant and politically correct self with a predecessor. According the Bee, he “said that California has come a long way since the state’s first civilian governor said he didn’t want free African Americans to come to California.”

Has it?

In those days, blacks were restricted from coming here and discriminated against — but came here anyway.

Nowadays, the racial laws have been eliminated and prejudice is a lot lower. But blacks are leaving the state. Reported The Root:

For a variety of reasons, those black settlers found the city of San Francisco an inhospitable place. Now, little more than 150 years after that first migration, many black San Franciscans understand how they felt.

Today, city officials and concerned citizens are grappling with a continuing depletion of black residents in San Francisco, as many of them leave, in part, because of a wave of gentrification that’s pricing them out of the market; and partly because of a sense of cultural and social marginalization at odds with the city’s reputation for tolerance and diversity.

The decline in the population of black San Francisco has been the result of a perfect storm of social ills and social transitions. The Bay Area’s long reputation as a nexus for high technology has jacked up home prices for years, often out of the range of black and minority households; there are high crime rates, particularly in the Bayview-Hunters Point district, where many blacks reside; and a decades-long drop in black businesses has had a corrosive effect on minority entrepreneurship in the city.

Thomas Sowell has written a series of books on global migrations. He recently wrote in his column:

The latest published data from the 2010 census show how people are moving from place to place within the United States. In general, people are voting with their feet against places where the liberal, welfare-state policies favored by the intelligentsia are most deeply entrenched.

When you break it down by race and ethnicity, it is all too painfully clear what is happening. Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the liberal, welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy….

Black Exodus

Under Brown, California is continuing these recent policies that have forced blacks — and others — to leave California. Recent U.S. Census numbers tell the story: In just a decade, California blacks have gone from 7.7 percent of the population in 2000 to 6.1 percent in 2010.

And Gov. Jerry “Jobs Killer” Brown’s policies of increasing taxes and regulations will only chase more away.

Doesn’t anybody at the NAACP see what’s going on?

We seem to be regressing in this area. In 1918, the first black was elected to the California Assembly. He was Republican Frederick Madison Roberts, a newspaper owner (pictured above). He sponsored anti-lynching laws and became “the dean of the Assembly.” He belonged to the NAACP.

He represented the state’s burgeoning black community, which came her for the same reasons as everybody else, despite the discrimination blacks endured: not just the balmy climate, but a burgeoning economy with high-paying jobs and cheap housing. State government was less than half it’s current size.

Today, the jobs are gone along with the cheap housing. The California Coastal Commission, eminent domain, redevelopment and other schemes have driven up housing costs. And state government is so expensive it’s sucking dry the productive private sector.

Now, the Black Exodus has been going on for some time, and will continue under Gov. Brown.

July 25, 2011

As I noted earlier, the redistricting essentially splits California in two: about two-thirds of the populace lives in predominantly Democratic coastal areas from the Bay Area down through Los Angeles County. The rest live in predominantly Republican areas, beginning about 40 miles inland, plus Orange County and maybe San Diego County.

So that’s how we should split the state. The 2010 U.S. Census revealed an absurdly large population of 37 million. That’s 12 times the population of the original 13 U.S. colonies in 1776. And it’s even bigger than the whole U.S. population of 30 million in 1860, as the Civil War began.

California obviously is ungovernable as it is. Splitting it is the obvious solution.

The new names could be: California del Este and California del Oueste. Or, perhaps, en Anglais, Jerrybrownland and Reaganland.

Whatever the names, it’s time for a divorce. That way, Jerrybrownland could raise taxes to it’s heart’s content; and Reaganland could cut taxes to the bone. Reaganland would be like New Hampshire with great weather: no state income or sales taxes.

I can’t see any drawbacks. Except Reaganland would have to erect a fence to keep out Democrats fleeing high taxation and North Korean-levels of regulation they themselves would impose in Jerrybrownland and would do so, again, once entrenched in Reaganland.

And they’d have to ban Arnold Schwarzenegger from coming to Reaganland, or he’d become governor again, wreck the place and leave behind a couple of “love children.”

Like Arnold und Maria, the thrill is gone, the love is lost and it’s time to go our separate ways.

June 14, 2011

By JOHN SEILER

Using data from the 2010 U.S. Census, analysis from various think tanks will be trickling out. One of the most revealing just was released by the Brookings Institution on America’s child population (boldface in original):

New minorities—Hispanics, Asians, and other groups apart from whites, blacks, and American Indians—account for all of the growth among the nation’s child population. From 2000 to 2010, the population of white children nationwide declined by 4.3 million, while the population of Hispanic and Asian children grew by 5.5 million.

No surprise there. But here’s the key sentence in the study:

Los Angeles was the only major metropolitan area to witness a decline in Hispanic children from 2000 to 2010.

According to Brookings author William H. Frey, “It’s no longer white flight; it’s middle-class flight.”

Beginning around 1990, whites and blacks began leaving California in greater numbers than those in which they migrated here from other states in America. That’s a major reason for the declining numbers and fortunes of the state’s Republican Party, which is predominantly white.

Thomas Sowell, of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, wrote just last week:

Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the liberal, welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy.

Although California has long been a prime destination of Asian immigrants and the homes of their descendants, the 2010 census shows a striking increase in the Asian American population of Nevada, more so than any other state. Nevada is adjacent to California but has no income tax nor the hostile climate for business that California maintains.

Now, the Brookings data show, Hispanics are leaving California too — especially those in the middle class.

California Costs Too Much

Why would the middle classes of all races, creeds and colors leave this paradise? Because they can’t afford it. Some reasons:

* High taxes. Just by moving to Texas, Nevada or Washington state, a family can avoid paying California’s income tax. The top income tax rate here is 10.33 percent for millionaires. But the real gouger is the 9.33 percent income tax rate on the middle class, beginning at about $55,000 of income.

Dot-com billionaires in Silicon Valley can hire tax attorneys to finagle ways out of paying high taxes. The middle class cannot.

* Taxes could go yet higher. Not content with driving out the middle-class of all races, new Gov. Jerry Brown, the Democratic Legislature and public-employee unions have spent the past 100 days obsessed with raising taxes even higher. So far, they have failed. But one area in which California remains No. 1 is its government’s ability to come up with creative ways to grab the taxpayers’ money.

* High housing costs. As recently as 1998, just 13 years ago, a median-priced home in Orange County cost about $180,000. Today the median price is $425,000. And that’s after the housing crash of recent years, including a 5 percent decline in the past year.

Housing costs are high for a number of reasons: Severe restrictions on development along the coast, as imposed by the California Coastal Commission. And ridiculous regulations, such as SB 375, that restrict housing growth to force on Californians Soviet-style “smart growth.”

* Bad schools. Some school systems in California, such as that in Irvine, are excellent. Others are atrocious. In Los Angeles, only half of students graduate high school. Overall, California ranks 49th of the 50 states on student test scores.

* Punishing regulatory environment. AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is just one among hundreds of bills and thousands of regulations that make operating a business in California a minefield for which there is no mine detector.

* One-party politics. Republicans in California have been a pretty pathetic lot, as we have detailed here on CalWatchDog.com in many articles. But at least they once provided some semblance of resistance to the control of the state by the axis of Democratic Party-public employee unions. But now, Republicans are about as relevant as the Prohibition Party.

And as I was the first to note last year, the demographic changes soon will give Democrats two-thirds majorities in both houses of the Legislature, allowing them to increase taxes without any votes of Republicans at all.

Bleak Future for Families

Families, naturally, look to the future different from single folk. Parents are concerned about the tax levels, schools and regulatory climate where they will be raising their kids. California’s balmy weather certainly is nice. But it’s actually farther down the list than many think.

After all, does anybody really enjoy those endless muggy months of East Texas? Yet it increasingly is the destination of new jobs creation, and of California exiles.

A group of California lawmakers next week will travel to Texas to discover why so many jobs are created there. They should save their effort. The reason is that Texas has the opposite of the detriments of California listed above. Texas has no state income tax, reasonable business regulation, low-cost housing and better schools.

In a phrase: Texas is pro-family, while California is anti-family. And there’s no sign that that will change at any time in the near future.