The Christmas Season: By the Numbers

by: BillShrink Guy

From: http://www.billshrink.com/

‘Tis the season for Christmas trees, lights and gifts, and in the past that has also meant the season of outrageous spending. While the holidays may not be cheap, hard times sometimes call for desperate measures and drastic budget changes. Here’s a look at the hard facts and numbers of this most wonderful time of the year.

(click to enlarge)

Smoke This Recession: It's simple: First we tax the booze. Then we legalize the pot. Done!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

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It is a time of strange bedfellows and bizarre contortions and extraordinary responses to extreme situations, all overslathered with gobs of panic and dread and oh my God, I might have to sell the Range Rover.

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In other words, it is a time -- like you don't already know -- of plentiful alarmist rhetoric, resulting in weird outbursts of ingenuity and wanton ethics-loosening, all in a desperate effort to suck up some much-needed cash.

Translation: Money's tight, baby. City's in trouble. State's deep in the hole. Nation's broke.

Solution? Upend the system. Think differently. Get creative. Demolish Ye Olde Ways. And maybe get a really nice buzz on while you're at it.

Where to begin? How can the city/state refill their empty coffers and further gouge the populace to make ends meet? Increased bridge tolls? A new per-mile driving tax? Heavier parking fines? State parks abandoned and left to seed? Child's play, darling.

You want to raise funds in an instant? You want a sure-fire, double-barreled source of nearly limitless funds from a wary, burned-out citizenry? That's easy. Go after its biggest vices, its most beloved balms.

Up first: booze. Already local governments are quietly proposing jacking up the alcohol tax and loosening sales restrictions because, well, why the hell not? Aren't you, right this very moment, as you prepare your taxes and weep over your gutted portfolio and stare down one very bleak 2009, more in need of a drink or three than at any time in recent history except for the entirety of the last eight miserable, Bush-stabbed years? Well, there you go. Tax increases on cocktails, here they come.

But it's not just governments. Check out the happily shameless TV networks who, for the first time in a whocares number of years, are allowing ads for alcohol and K-Y lube during prime-time programming. Oh the outrage! Oh the debauchery! Who, pray who, will protect the children? Oh wait, the children are out buying daddy some more beer and applying for a job at Starbucks to help pay rent. Never mind.

New taxes on the other Great American vices: porn, gambling, prescription meds, pro sports, obesity, Miley Cyrus? Watch for it.

Now, let's get serious. Because there are, of course, bigger fish to fry in the sea of potentially lucrative, all-American inebriates. There is a far more potent, obvious solution to the state's budget woes, a huge, untapped revenue source, and now might be the perfect time to, you know, light it up.

Really now, could there be a better time to decriminalize/fully legalize pot? Or, more fully, to decriminalize pot, and then spread respectable pot shops and vending machines and dispensaries far and wide, instill quality control and decent oversight and then tax the living hell out of the glorious, stress-reducing goodness, as we stop wasting billions fighting its grand ubiquity and instead sink into profitable pools of warm, hazy progress? Don't you already know the answer?

It's difficult to imagine that some intrepid legislator hasn't already walked into Arnie "Pot is not a drug" Schwarzenegger's office and said, "Governator, now is the time. Light it up. Inhale the new reality. Pot is, by a huge margin, the single largest cash crop in the state unless you count porn stars and celebrity rehab. It rakes in upwards of $14 billion a year -- maybe a lot more than that -- and that's just from five clever hippies and a couple intrepid grandmas in Ukiah. Imagine what we could do if we went all-in."

Are the discussions ongoing? Are they passing the bong of possibility around the state Senate chambers? You're damn right they are. What's holding them back? Probably the usual: the negative PR, looking "soft" on crime, encouraging permissiveness, pressure from prison lobbies, and so on. Don't worry, Sacramento. Everyone's already plenty drunk/high on prescription meds trying to alleviate fears of losing their job to care about that nonsense right now. Get to it.

There won't be much pushback from D.C. President Obama's already stated that his upcoming appointee to head the DEA is going to knock it the hell off with the insidious raids of harmless medical pot shops in California, and wants to quit using federal resources to bash hippies and circumvent state laws.

Look. Is there really anyone left who doesn't already know the "War on Drugs" is a pathetic joke, an abject failure and a taxpayer nightmare, and the only reason it survives at all is to fund the CIA and fellate the prison guard unions and support a shameful prison system, and to let politicians say they're "tough on crime" so they can to deflect all those uninformed parents who relentlessly whine about pot in public schools just before dashing off a wine-tasting party to snort a nice line of Bolivian coke?

Anyone left, furthermore, who doesn't know that pot is far safer than booze, less addictive, nonviolent, more transportable, easier to light, and generally won't interfere with your ability to crawl across the carpet and lick cookie crumbs from your lover's thighs? And sure, while heavy, daily usage can make you slow and stupid and rather useless to the world, well, so can a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and six hours of TV every day. Gateway drug? That's on Channel 2, right after "Oprah."

And another thing. Maybe it wouldn't be merely tax 'n' puff. Maybe California, already the pot-growing capital of the nation, could become something more. A hub. A world-class research center. Pot education, study, medicine, import/export, the works. We could ship our crop to various nations in desperate need of chilling the hell out, like Israel. Palestine. Pakistan. Russia. The N-Judah on a Friday afternoon. We could become the largest research and manufacturing center in the world. How proud we would be. You know, sort of.

Let's phrase this grand scenario in another way: Why the hell not try it? What have we got to lose? What, we could go more broke? We could get more desperate and anxious? Fact is, economic nightmares need not breed only miserable stories of lost homes and lost jobs and shuttered businesses. They can also spawn creative solutions, innovative thinking, widespread munchies. Now is the time.

Let's not get carried away. Pot's only one little inebriate, one mild and -- let's just admit it -- relatively boring feel-good plant. California is $40 billion in debt and we're running low on water and we can't give away those hideous tract developments out in Stockton. Milking the pot cow for all she's worth might net us, at best, a few billion a year. To get out of this massive hole, we'd have to legalize Ecstasy too. (Someday, honey, someday).

But it's something. It's radical new thinking that's not the slightest bit radical, or new, and in fact the notion is now even more obvious than it's been for the past 30 years. What are we waiting for? A match?

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Thoughts about this column? E-mail Mark.

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Recession threatens to burn out pot clubs

By Tamara Barak Aparton
Examiner Staff Writer 2/17/09

Business at The Green Cross medical marijuana dispensary has slowed due to the poor economy. Cindy Chew/The Examiner SAN FRANCISCO – One might guess that tough economic times would only fuel the desire for mind-altering substances. For San Francisco’s cannabis clubs, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

The deepening economic crisis has hit the dispensaries hard, forcing the nonprofit collectives to cut staff, business hours and donations to charities.

Charlie Alazraie, manager of Bay Area Safe Alternatives, said business has dropped about 60 percent since summer, as the economy forces patients to buy smaller quantities. Alazraie had to let go of one full-time employee and two part-time workers at the small Western Addition collective.

Also halted were donations to soup kitchens and low-cost health clinics that serve many of BASA’s patients. The previously profitable collective was hit with a penalty last quarter after paying their sales tax late for the first time.

“This year we’re going to be so much in the red, I don’t want to find out. I know it’s going to be ugly,” Alazraie said. “We’re in arrears with our vendors, with architects, with everything.”

The collective has always had a commitment to provide free medical marijuana for those in impossible situations — people who are critically ill and living in poverty were subsidized with money set aside from sales. In the past, the number of people who qualified hovered around 36. Today, there are 60.

The recession hit right after many San Francisco pot clubs had spent tens of thousands of dollars to comply with legislation passed in 2005 requiring them to meet city permit regulations.

Kevin Reed, founder of the Green Cross, which delivers medical marijuana to patients in San Francisco, said his sales are down 25 percent in the past 40 days, and dropped 45 percent in the past two weeks.

To survive, the collective cut its hours and cut its 12 employees’ pay by $2 an hour.

“It’s amazing to me,” Reed said. “It’s an industry I never thought could be affected.”

Reed said he thought marijuana would be a recession-proof product, much like alcohol.

“I always heard that if the economy went bad, people would be depressed,” he said. “The whole theory got blown out the window for me.”

The cost of the pot hasn’t risen, but the $300-an-ounce price tag has become a heavy burden for people who have lost their jobs and cut back on expenses. Insurance does not cover medicinal marijuana.

“The only busy day we’ve had in the past 40 days is when we offered a one-third off discount for veterans,” Reed said. “It seemed like half the veterans in the state signed up.”

Green sector

The recession is weighing on medical pot sales in The City.

30 Known medical marijuana dispensaries (clubs and delivery services) in San Francisco

2 Known medical marijuana dispensaries (clubs and delivery services) in San Mateo

$103 Cost of state medical marijuana card

$300 Approximate cost of an ounce of medical marijuana

Sources: San Francisco Health Department, The Green Cross, sanfranciscocannabisclubs.com

tbarak@sfexaminer.com

Recession hits Silicon Valley as layoffs pile up

By Anupreeta Das

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The recession turned up late on Silicon Valley's doorstep but is likely to stay awhile, as technology companies slash thousands of jobs and rein in costs to make up for shrinking earnings and tight-fisted customers.

Job cuts in the technology sector have trailed other industries until recent weeks. Now they are coming fast and furious as the economic downturn grips the Valley, the strip of land in northern California that is home to household names like Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc.

Tech giants like Intel Corp and Microsoft Corp are laying off thousands of employees, while start-up companies are firing in smaller numbers as they struggle to survive with fewer customers and venture capital dollars.

And this is just the start, analysts say, expecting thousands more to lose their jobs this year as the recession forces the industry to slash marketing and capital spending.

"Organizations are saying, 'What is the absolute nuclear winter? Let's plan for that,'" said Adam Charlson, senior partner at executive search firm Korn/Ferry International Inc, who works closely with the recruitment divisions of top tech firms. "What you're seeing now is organizations putting those plans into reality."

Last year, Silicon Valley lost 11,700 jobs, according to Steve Levy, senior economist at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy (CCSCE). The number is small compared to the 200,000 jobs lost after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, but that is because the 2008 numbers don't reflect recent layoffs yet, he said.

"The headline is that the recession has hit Silicon Valley," Levy said. As a result, he said he was "substantially revising downward" employment predictions for 2009.

California's jobless rate hit a 14-year high of 9.3 percent in December, significantly above the national average of 7.2 percent, according to state officials.

ONCE BITTEN, TWICE PREPARED

Some analysts said they are reading the mass layoffs as preemptive acts by tech companies. When the last recession hit, tech companies were too slow in cutting costs and laying off workers, said Andy Miedler, a senior technology analyst at Edward Jones.

But not this time, he said. "Layoffs and cost-cutting are unfortunate, but companies have to make tough decisions in a rough economy to preserve their own financial position."

Mark Cannice, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of San Francisco, said Silicon Valley has been "inoculated to some degree" after the dotcom bust.

"Many firms didn't survive .... The ones that survived are much more efficient and resilient and were funded on sounder business models," said Cannice, who publishes a quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index.

But he said Valley companies are not entirely immune -- especially venture capital-funded start-ups. As large companies like Microsoft and Google cut back on spending, start-ups that supply them with software and other IT could run into trouble.

With venture capital funding falling 71 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 from a year ago, start-ups could be forced to fold up if they can't sustain their business and investors cannot fund them any longer.

But mass layoffs in the tech sector need not necessarily be all doom and gloom. They could actually boost innovation as laid-off engineers, scientists and other highly skilled individuals decide to pursue their own ideas.

Calling it "forced" entrepreneurship, Cannice said he was optimistic that the current layoffs would "unleash the next wave of creative, thoughtful entrepreneurs."

Layoffs in the traditional tech sector could also spur employment in the alternative energy sector, recruiters said.

Neil Boyden, managing director of executive search firm Boyden's technology practice group, said the so-called "cleantech" sector -- which employs environmentally friendly technologies -- will continue to grow and offer jobs.

"It's not that the sky has fallen entirely," he said.

(Reporting by Anupreeta Das; Editing by Tiffany Wu, Richard Chang)

(anupreeta.das@thomsonreuters.com; +1 415-677-2511)

The bottom 10: Cheapest new cars

Recession-friendly new cars


Even in these budget-squeezing times, sometimes you just need to buy a new car. If so, it's always nice to start from the bottom of the price list. With the help of the number crunchers at Kelley Blue Book, we have compiled a pictoral list of the 10 new cars priced to compete in one of the toughest times of car-selling history.

-- Los Angeles Times staff writers

No. 1: Hyundai Accent GS

Base MSRP: $10,665

2-door hatchback

4-cylinder, 1.6-liter engine

5-speed manual transmission


click here for the rest of the article

Hard Times at the LA Auto Show

Ferrari California: Probably the most attractive exotic car on the floor was Ferrari’s California, a brand-new V-8 powered hardtop convertible whose image will soon decorate the bedroom walls of teenagers everywhere. Seth Fletcher

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The movement of the crowds at the semi-funereal 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show said it all. No one, it seemed, wanted to hang out with the most beleaguered of the Detroit automakers, Chrysler and GM. As plenty of attendees noticed, Chrysler’s large expanse of showroom floor was all but empty most hours of the day. Same across the room at the General Motors stand: Aside from a small group milling about the Chevy Volt, all was quiet. The mob of journalists appeared smaller than normal this year, and they congregated around the imports: Nissan attracted a good crowd, as did the German manufacturers and Hyundai. Aside from Ford, which did its best to put on a happy face, Detroit was present mostly as the constant subject of grim conversations. “This is the last auto show ever, you know,” joked a journalist friend. We laughed, sadly, and then thought ahead to January—what will the Detroit auto show be like?

During Nissan CEO Carlos Gohsn’s keynote address the opening morning, it was possible to imagine a post-Detroit future. While the CEOs of Detroit’s Big 3 were in Washington, taking their lashes before an unsympathetic congress, Gohsn was speaking soberly and authoritatively about the challenges at hand and convincingly about Nissan’s plans to deliver mass-market electric cars within the next two or three years. In a post-Detroit future, Asian automakers would probably rule the mass market with their small, sporty, fuel-efficient cars, while German brands like Mercedes, BMW, and Audi will continue to dominate the luxury market. And then there are the wild cards: What about Tata? What about China? What about small automakers that don’t yet exist?

Neither GM nor Chrysler gave a press conference. Ford unveiled a new Mustang and an impressively practical Ford Fusion; Mazda, which is owned by Ford, revealed the new Mazda 3, one of the nicest looking small cars at the show. These are good cars that should sell, as soon as people are in the mood to buy cars again. Yet the crowd at the show seemed most excited about clean diesels from Germany (like the Volkswagen Jetta TDI, which won Green Car of the Year), and the electric cars available for test drive—the Mini E, the Mitsubishi iMiev.

This was the backdrop on the second day of the auto show’s press preview: Detroit’s Big 3 CEOs left Washington with nothing more than an order to present business plans to Congress in early December. California Rep. Henry Waxman, an ardent environmentalist from Los Angeles, replaced pro-Detroit congressman John Dingell in his post as chairman of the house energy and commerce committee, making it all the more likely that automaker will soon face much more stringent environmental and fuel-economy regulations. The Dow dropped to nearly 7,500. And by mid-afternoon most journalists had left the showroom floor, wondering what on earth the automotive industry is going to look like this time next year.

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