by Kara Altshuler

.....a Bush appointee lies to Congress about what he really wants to do with the taxpayers' money.

And banking execs laugh all the way through Christmas with their undeserved bonuses intact.

Meanwhile GM workers get laid off for 1.5 months starting Dec. 24, and hunger reaches epidemic proportions in the world's richest country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121402670_pf.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed2/idUSTRE4B970320081210

By Kara Altshuler

Why is this significant? First of all, Dr. Chu is a scientist, not a lobbyist or former politician. This is significant because it represents a sea change in Washington politics.

For example, our current Secretary of Energy is Dr. Samuel Bodman, who was previously the Deputy Secretary of Treasury. Now Bodman's no idiot, he has a B.S. and a Sc.D. in chemical engineering, but his biography shows that after a brief stint as a professor, he switched to working for venture capital firms. So, he was more suited to helping with financial issues than he was being a big thinker regarding the pressing energy issues of our lifetime.

The Secretary of Energy before him? Spencer Abraham--lawyer, former Michigan Senator, and one of the founders of the Federalist Society--he's the one who basically let Cheney and the oil/gas industries run amok. So, for the last 8 years, we've been in the weeds, folks.

Dr. Chu, however, is completely suited to the task for which he has been chosen. He won the Nobel prize in physics in 1997 for work he did at AT&T/Bell Labs. He has been a professor at Stanford and UC Berkeley. Since 2004, he's been the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. While there, he and his team have aggressively been pursuing ways to combat global warming, and they've come up with some great results. He's big on energy efficiency--and he shows how research and development in this area can gain more energy than current alternative energy production in the US. How nice it will be to finally have someone in this Cabinet position with the intelligence to tackle the problems ahead.

http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/Director/

Once again, President-elect Obama shows that he's not paying lip service to the idea of change. We are going in a new direction come Jan. 20, 2009, and Dr. Chu is going to help.

By Kara Altshuler

Well, the economists have finally admitted what we all know, we've been in a recession for about a year.

I'm sure all of us know friends or family members who have been laid off, had their hours reduced, or have simply stopped looking for a job. There is no oversight of the TARP money, the Big 3 automakers are facing the prospect of new management in order to get any help from the U.S. taxpayers, and so far, none of the bailout money has been directed at homeowners and credit is still frozen (despite Bush's platitudes to the contrary).

Governors (including our own) are asking Capitol Hill for some of the booty, but according to the Wall Street Journal, big-city mayors say any funds should come straight to them, bypassing state governments altogether. Given the financial missteps of our legislature recently, I'd say that's not a bad idea. And apparently, President-elect Obama favors metropolitan-area funding, rather than giving just to cities, per se.

The Star reports that VC will get some substantial funding from Homeland Security in the future, which may be intended to help facilitate emergency response around Port Hueneme; I personally don't see Ventura County being a big target for Mumbai-style organized terrorist attacks (or even unorganized terrorist attacks). That being said, any money that doesn't go into the ridiculous efforts at window-dressing we've suffered through at airports and water ports over the past 5 years is a step in the right direction.

I guess we'll have to wait until Jan. 20 to see some real leadership on homeland security nationwide. But that's a topic for another day.

Although the DHS money is a shot in the arm, it is focused and not intended to address the really pressing issue at hand, which is that the economy will shed around 2 million jobs or more this year and unemployment may top 10% or higher in 2009. California needs infrastructure, and Antonio Villaraigosa and other mayors say they have the plans to get our citizens to work.

What do you think? And how could we get some relief in Ventura County? Do we deserve to get any money from the feds? And if so, where would you put it to do the most good?