This is another one of those, boy oh boy blog posts. I get this question a lot. Not only do I get this question but I get it with a boat load of anger built in to it! Believe me, SOME agents can be vicious, mean and really angry when their listings show up on your website.

I should file this post under the things that annoy me tag like my friend The Phoenix Real Estate Guy would likely do.

For the common reader who is wondering how and why this question comes up. As a REALTOR and member of your local MLS [Multiple Listing Service] real estate agents have the ability to advertise listings through the IDX [Internet Data Exchange] agreement that is in place. The IDX agreement is possibly one of the if not greatest things to ever happen in the real estate business. For Team Aguilar, our head honcho Howard Blum is the broker / partner, Carlos Aguilar is a Realtor member / partner [my father] who manages this website. Through his REALTOR membership he is given permission to display listings on www.TeamAguilar.com via the IDX MLS listing feed for San Diego County. Obviously, this provides additional exposure for all listings. One day I am going to write a blog post with an IMAGE / OLD MLS Printout I have. It’s my grandparents MLS printout from 1962 for their home listed here in San Diego that was in a 3 ring binder. Back then, agents in the office would go to the 3 ring binder to search for homes in certain areas. Can you see the difference between a 3 ring binder and an IDX data feed that goes out to thousands of websites instantly?

So getting back to the question now that I have given you the cliff notes on IDX. Why is MY MLS LISTING showing up on your website? I feel like I should say, Why THE HELL is MY MLS LISTING showing up on your website? That is what a couple agents have said to us on the other end of the phone.

Well, the reason your listing is showing up on our website is because you are ALLOWING it to show up. When a real estate agent enters a listing into the MLS they are asked two questions.

- VOW [Virtual Office Website] Yes/No

- Internet Syndication Yes/No

When you say YES to these two items you are allowing websites like www.TeamAguilar.com and thousands of others to display your listings. The official Sandicor IDX rule reads as followed.

Sandicor’s IDX (Internet Data Exchange) rule enables MLS Participants (Principal Brokers) to display each others’ listings on their web sites. The rule is found on Section 12.16 of the Sandicor Rules and Regulations. This is only for internet display; it does not apply to any other type of medium (newspaper, flyers, etc.). Brokers must not have opted out of this program. IDX is considered advertising by the DRE and therefore must abide by DRE rules and regulations.

Now you always have the option to say NO to these and please understand that when you call screaming at us asking, Why is MY MLS LISTING showing up on your website? This is the answer.

YOU CAN ALWAYS SAY NO, or OPT OUT but in my opinion you would have to be a complete idiot to do so or care about nothing more than trying to act as a dual agent on all your deals which happens more then you realize. The IDX rule is the best thing to happen since sliced bread for real estate agents. Why would you cut your listing off from all of the available marketing sources out there? Your #1 objective is to sell your clients home, sell it at the highest possible price and OPTING OUT will limit the number of people who view your clients listing.

CONSUMERS. How do you know if your agent is opting out? Visit a typical real estate agents website like www.TeamAguilar.com and do a search for your home. Make sure you are getting the most exposure possible.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

You may be asking yourself who Janet Yellen is? Well she is the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and she just happened to be in San Diego today to give a speech at the Burnham Moores Center for Real Estate University of San Diego 14th Annual Real Estate Conference.

I try to make it out to this event as often as possible. It’s usually a nice breakfast and for $30-40 bucks you get to hear from some of the financial big wigs we have in this county! Some of the talk can get a bit long and dry but I try to post a few of the points that stick out. Here are a few things from Janet Yellen as well as Real estate mogul billionaire Sam Zell who also gave his outlook on the future of real estate. He was fun and brought a bit of energy to the conference!

First, some of the questions that Janet Yellen commented on during her visit to San Diego. After her speech, she spent a few minutes answering some questions. Here was her take on several questions asked.

What is her take on the economy and what direction are wee headed in?

The finalcial system will, “take a long time to fully heal.” She expects economic growth of about 3.5% this year and 4.5% in 2011. “I’m afraid that the economy will continue to operate well below its potential throughout this year and next, even though the recession appears to be over, it does not mean that we are where we want to be.” She referred to the the economic growth being fairly postive but said it’s overshadowed by a poor unemployment rate of 9.7% which she felt would continue through the year and be reduced to 8% by 2011.

How does she feel about the future of interest rates and the possibility of raising rates?

“When the day comes to start raising rates again, we have tools at the ready, for the time being, the economy still needs the support of extraordinarily low rates.” Later she went on to state, “This is not the time to be tightening monetary policy, but eventually the economy will gain enough momentum and won’t need today’s extraordinarily low interest rates.”

The other interesting speech came from Sam Zell.

Some of this speech was a bit over the top but he made some interesting points especially if your an investor in commercial real estate. His opinion on commercial real estate currently underwater in mortgage balances is that, “If there are opportunities in distressed real estate, it’s in buying the debt in return for equity.” What he said makes a lot of sense. Commercial real estate allows you to be much more creative in a bad economy. You don’t have to wait around for a modification or short sale. Investors will go out and seek investments and search for property they can take a equity position in and work out their own deal.

As for the residential market? He noted that San Diego may be an area that would see a slower recovery. One interesting thing he noted is that whenever single family home owners exceeded 62%, we got into trouble. He noted that this time because of sub-prime loans that number rose to 69%. We are currently at 66% and he felt that we needed to get down to 63-64% before we have a sustainable, affordable single family market.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

According to the National Association of Home Builders latest report, the home affordability rate is currently at 48.1% for San Diego County.

What does this mean? Home values are slowly increasing and we may be past the peak of affordability which appears to have peaked at 58.8% during the 1st quarter of 2008.

The NAHB housing opportunity index represents the percentage of homes sold that a median income household could afford using standard lender underwriting guidelines. A few years ago we never had to worry about this because anyone who could fog up a mirror could get a loan.

San Diego County has always been an expensive place to live and these numbers are nothing new but look at the chart below to see how much more affordable it is to live in many other parts of the country. You have to ask yourself, do I want to give up Sunny San Diego to live somewhere I could afford a home? Perhaps……..

See Wichita, KS on that list? Our field agent, Cory has a lot of family there and visits regularly but I think he prefers Sunny San Diego over Wichita.

MOST AFFORDABLE – Kokomo, IN is the most affordable place to live in the United States, 98% of all homes sold there are affordable to the medium household income. WOW, when you think about that it would be really nice if San Diego was a little higher on that list. No offense to anyone reading this from Kokomo In, but I have never been there or even heard of your nice affordable city.

LEAST AFFORDABLE – New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ is the least affordable. Only 19.7% of all homes sold there are affordable to the medium household income. WOW, now when you think about that it gets a bit scary. It’s nice San Diego is no where close to that.

DATA SOURCE, National Association of Home Builders

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

As more and more homeowners are going into default, it appears more and more are just walking away from their mortgage.

TEAM AGUILAR DISCLAIMER: Let me state that Team Aguilar or myself are not instructing anyone to walk away from their mortgage and ultimately the one that has to make that decision is you. VIEW THIS CALCULATOR AT YOUR OWN RISK!

There is a new calculator, may not be new to you but it’s new to me and I want to introduce it here. It may help people determine if it makes sense to walk away. The calculator is on the website, www.YouWalkAway.com, here is a LINK to the calculator.

Once you go through and start punching in the numbers it really gets you thinking. As an example I used a very typical scenario that seems very common here in San Diego.

I started by entering a home value of $300,000 with a 1st loan balance of $420,000 and a 2ND mortgage of $80,000. This is fairly common here in Southern California. Many people purchased a $500,000 home with 100% financing using an interest only loan that is NOW worth $300,000 in today’s market. After punching in all the numbers and using a rate of appreciation of 4% which I think is a very fair historical national average it would take approximately 16 years to get back to the break even point. The walk away monthly savings is approximately $700 a month along with a “Walk Away Cash Savings” of over $100,000.

What’s the bottom line? Well if you only planned on staying in your home for a few years to begin with, less then 10 it may make sense to walk away. If you know you are going to live in this home forever and be buried in the back yard then it’s likely that you will be just fine. It’s similar to your retirement account that are in the dumps right now with this market. If your close to retirement you may be in trouble but if you have time and years are on your side you will have to time to recover.

Voluntary defaults happen to be a brand new phenomenon in our society. With the recent collapse in housing, estimates show that as many as ten million families may currently be underwater on their mortgage.

UPDATE: So there seems to be some question about the You Walk Away organization. LET ME SAY that I know nothing about their services or service. I don’t know anything other then what I have read online on some different forums, blogs and message boards. I have no idea what value if any they can offer. I know that the mortgage calculator is unique and it may help you decide what to do. It’s fairly simple and you can create one of your own fairly easily. The bottom line is that you need to look at all of your options and decide what is best for you. Don’t rely on someone else or some organization to do this for you. You should take all the information you can gather, all the options available to you and decide what the best option is for YOU!

Also, a little rant and rave! Another issue really bothering me, LOAN MODIFICATION SCAMS. There are thousands of legal services offering loan modification services right now here in California and I am sure in many other states. The California state BAR is investigating hundreds of them right now. All of the services being offered by these companies are things that you can do on your own. It just requires a little bit of your time. Save your money, I can’t tell you how many times I talk to someone that forked over thousands of dollars just to have their home go to foreclosure with the modification company not doing one thing. I recently spoke with someone that contacted their lender just a few days before their foreclosure trustee’s sale only to find out that the lender had NO RECORD of the loan modification company ever contacting them.

Alex Aguilar
Team Aguilar
Real Estate Agent, Blogger!
Alex@TeamAguilar.com
www.TeamAguilar.com
Real Estate Blog

If your looking for real estate in San Diego, Riverside or Imperial County you have arrived at the right place. Please feel free to contact us and please read our Real Estate Blog and leave your comments.

As summer approaches…well hell, Memorial Day Weekend was this past weekend so……Now that summer is here, we San Diego residents find ourselves in a formidable “Level 2″ drought alert condition. For residents this means that there will be rate hikes on excess water use, limits on outdoor watering, and mandates to promptly repair leaks. But this drought brings to light an ever-increasing problem and the need for a new era of water restrictions and social responsibility.

In 2001, California passed a bill that, according to Hoa Quach the political writer for the San Diego News Network, that “forces developers to show that the Urban Water Management Plan, which is completed in five-year cycles for a 20-year outlook, shows a sufficient amount of water is available for the proposed project.” Much more effective, in my opinion, is the part of the bill that “requires projects over 500 units to create an alternative water supply.” Hoa Quach interviewed Tom Sudberry or Sudberry Properties whose company is developing a 4780 unit multi-use development called Quarry Falls near Qualcomm Stadium. That development, per the requirement of 2001’s senate bill, will have its own water treatment plant. According to Tom Sudberry, “We’ll be able to create about 250,000 gallons of water a day, enough water to irrigate all of the landscaping of the entire project.” In addition, sub-meters will be installed for each unit allowing the tenant to keep tabs on their own water use.

It’s good to see some real solutions being put into action on new developments. But a big step to improving our city’s water conservation would be to require sub-meters to be placed in all new developments. However, according to Marco Sessa, Sudberry VP, “regardless of new buildings having sub-meters or not, older homes use more water than new buildings as older homes may, sometimes have leaks that use a vast [amount] of our H20. One wonders whether more effort should be placed into retro-fitting some of the older homes.” Well Marco, brings up a good point. But in my opinion, more effort should first be put forth towards permanently expanding water restrictions not just to developers, but to everyone, just as they have done now that we’re at a Level 2 Drought Alert. I couldn’t believe how much my condo complex watered the lawns every day until the alert came into action. I like a green lawn as much as the next guy, but no one needs to water their lawn twice a day EVERY DAY!

So, in the spirit of our Level 2 times, I am providing a list, courtesy of Better Homes And Gardens, of things you can do to help reduce the amount of water you use, and to help Southern California face our water shortage head on:

Check all pipes, hoses, and faucets in the house for leaks. According to the American Water Works Association, a dripping tap can waste 5,000 gallons of water in a year.

Check toiliets for leaks. put a little food coloring in the tank. If it appears in the bowl without flushing, it’s leaking and  can waste up to 4,000 gallons of water in a year.

Take shorter showers as they use two or three “buckets” of water every minute; limit baths as they use two-and-a-half times as much water on average as a shower.

Turn on your dishwasher or washing machine only when it’s full. A dishwasher uses only about 9-12 gallons of water while hand-washing dishes can use up to 20 gallons.

Don’t run the tap when brushing your teeth; use a cup of water to rinse.

Use a trigger hose when washing the car.

Use a broom to clean your driveway, not your hose.

Install water-saving shower heads and low flow faucets.

Consider buying a rain barrel to capture water for shrubs and lawns.

Cover the swimming pool on hot days and at nights as pools can lose up to 50 gallons of  water in a single day through evaporation.

Don’t use your toilet as a disposal unit by flushing a used tissue or other garbage. A single flush can use as much as seven-to-ten gallons of water depending on your resevoir.

Keep a container of drinking water in the fridge. Running the tap to cool water can waste up to three gallons per minute.

By Andrew Brentan

Happy Earth Day my fellow Earth occupying humans. While our federal government is reigning in the 2009 Earth Day/Week by unveiling a plan to set aside billions of dollars to renovate the nation’s railway systems in an effort to create jobs and lesson the impact of highway traffic, our own California government decided to go in the other direction and cut $14.4 million of its support for San Diego’s transit systems (MTS). Balancing California’s budget is priority number one in Sacramento, and in the short term, improving San Diego’s already crappy transit system apparently isn’t close to the top of their list.

It is no secret: San Diego’s transit system is a bit of a joke. I’ve lived here for 4 years and I’ve used the trolley 3 times. It is RARELY convenient. The routes and connections feel like they were mapped out and designed by a dyslexic 5 year old who had a vision and a crayon. And yet, every day it seems that traffic gets worse and worse on the highways. Dean Calbreath, writer for the Union Tribune wrote that, “in the short term at least-[the answer] is more funding rather than less, to provide the means to link up the transit system’s lines in a way that would provide more comprehensive service to the community”.  I can’t even tell you how enjoyable a convenient, efficient transit system would be. Everything in San Diego is so spread out and you need to drive everywhere. What an embarrassment for a city and state that boasts its environmental sensitivity.  Not to mention, taxis are almost non-existent and if you are able to get one, you’ll be paying out your ying yang to get 5 minutes down the road (San Diego is second only to Honolulu as the nation’s most expensive city for cabs).

Yes, more funding is a huge part of the solution. But in the meantime, because of clipping of funds by Sacramento, San Diego has unveiled a plan to reduce services and raise ticket prices. Calbreath reports, “If the new plans come into effect, gone are some of MTS’s weekend and holiday express lines. Gone is the weekend service on several lines in Point Loma, Mission Valley and El Cajon. In their place are a wide array of new fees. Among other things, the MTS plans to double its downtown trolley fares from $1.25 to $2.50 and raise the standard monthly pass by close to $50 a year.” He goes on to add, “…MTS caluculates that it will lose nearly 600,000 rides because of fee increases.” Woohooo! More cars on the highway! Happy Earth Day California!

We’re reaching the breaking point. At some point, we’re going to need a revamped transit system. It is just going to get too damn crowded and polluted. Calbreath notes a suggestion from Paul Weinstein, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. who says we should strongly consider “shifting some of the billions of dollars that we are already spending on highway construction into rail lines and bus systems. If that’s not enough, he says, we should boost the gasoline tax, which would have the added benefit of encouraging drivers to spend less time in their cars and more in public transit.” Mr. Weinstein, your suggestion is fundamentally flawed: It makes perfect sense and even more so, it would be too simple to implement.

SANDAG (San Diego’s Association of Governments) hopes to create a multilevel transit system that would charge premium fees for comfortable express transportation and lower fees for more basic services. They are considering floating a ballot initiative to raise local sales taxes by 0.25 percent to fund such a system according to Calbreath. Mulilevel, single level…it matters so very little. What matters is that there we are willing to work to create a fully functioning transit system that benefits everyone. So just as soon as we can get this budget thing ironed out, maybe we can start putting money back into the city and state in areas that truly benefit everyone. Then, maybe an Earth Day or two down the road, we can hold our heads high and be proud of what our city and state legislators were able to accomplish.

By Andrew Brentan

When the President came to California yesterday and announced that the state will receive $145 million to help communities hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis, I thought to myself, “$145 million? That’s pocket change.” I realized then, that with all the stimulus packages, and budgets plans, and financial talk that have been spattered about the news like a massive Pollock painting in the last few months, my perception of the actual worth of $145 million dollars had been greatly skewed. $145 million can go a long way, can’t it?

The funds, as the President said on Thursday, “will be used to purchase and rehabilitate vacant, foreclosed homes and resell them with affordable mortgages.” He goes on to add that the funds “will also provide mortgage assistance and rehabilitation loans for low-income and middle income families.” The program that generated these funds, “was created as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which permits state and local governments to purchase foreclosed homes at a discount and rehabilitate or redevelop them”, reports the Associated Press. “Additionally, funds will come from the massive stimulus package.” Who knows how much additional funding from the stimulus package will actually go towards California’s foreclosure problem, and who knows how far this money can go to do all the things that the program is intended to do.

After-all, according to the RealtyTrac research firm, there were filings for 80,775 foreclosures on California properties in February. Oooooowweeeee, that’s a fair bit of foreclosures. How much money are we getting again? Of course, that number is slightly skewed due to the foreclosure moratorium that took place starting at the end of November and ended towards the end of January. For those unaware, the moratorium basically just halted the foreclosure process for that time period in an effort to keep people in their homes during the holiday season. So during that time, the amount of foreclosure filings piled up. But now that it’s over, we’ve got a lot to deal with. It would be interesting to get a number on the average dollar amount that will be spent per foreclosure with this money and see how big of dent the $145 million can actually make.

But I don’t mean to sound like Debbie Downer. $145 million is a fair bit of money. And hopefully a nice chunk of the money that California gets from the stimulus package will help as well. And moreover, this money will certainly help rejuvenate some neighborhoods in the state, and any bit of progress that can be made to lessen the enormity of this foreclosure crisis is a damn good thing.

By Andrew Brentan

It’s happening. The State of California is broke, they can’t balance the damn budget, $4 billion of scheduled state payments are being delayed, people’s lives are being severely affected as a result, and it makes me want to shake somebody! I wish that all the law makers in Sacramento, including the Governator, would form a single file line outside my office door, and one by one I would invite them in so that I could SHAKE THEM. How much more helpless can we feel as citizens? Listen, I think it’s all good and fine that Democratic lawmakers want moderate spending cuts and tax increases, and it’s all good and fine that Republican lawmakers want no new taxes and deep spending cuts, but for the love of all that is good with the state of California, can you not come to a compromise already?!

The well publicized $42 billion budget deficit California is projected to reach by mid-2010 is resulting in spending cuts that are turning heads and causing uproars. Just last Thursday Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette ruled that Governor Schwarzenegger does indeed have the authority to force tens of thousands of state workers to  take days off without pay. According to the Associated Press, “The two-day-a-month furloughs are scheduled to start Feb. 6 and would apply to all 238,000 state workers”. This move will result in the budget being cut down by a whopping $1.4 billion. But cuts like this seem like somewhat reasonable solutions given the emergency circumstances the state is facing. However, it is the stalemate in Sacramento that is now resulting in further hardships for people that depend on the state for a number of financial needs.

Nearly $4 billion of scheduled state payments are being delayed in an effort to prevent the state from running out of cash. Bobby White and Stu Wood of the Wall Street Journal interviewed the Controller John Chiang last week about this delay, which is expected to last 30 days. “I am very concerned about the potentially devastating impact to individuals, to families, to businesses,” he said. But “my principal responsibility at this time is to make sure that California does not go into default.” What a mess. So while the state lawmakers are “trying to hammer out a solution”, there are a lot of people undeservingly getting screwed. Income tax refunds are an expected and depended on stimulus for citizens, and local retailers and businesses. College students won’t be paid their educational grants, and welfare checks will be put on hold. Entire counties and cities, many of whom don’t have much money themselves, will be required to cover the costs of social service programs normally included among the state payments. When it rains it pours and this is a serious storm.

I do not know what goes in to balancing a state budget. If I did, I might be able to provide some concrete examples of how lawmakers might get over this hurdle. Or maybe, if I knew about balancing a state budget I’d understand more fully just how difficult it is to make it work. But we, the citizens of California (more specifically, those of us on the lower end of the tax bracket), are truly paying a hefty price for this budget stalemate. I learned the value of compromise a kid, why are extremely intelligent adults having such a difficult time giving up a little in order to reach a common goal? On family road trips, my brother and I would get into shouting matches over where we should stop for lunch. I wanted McDonald’s because I loved their chicken nuggets and he always wanted Burger King because he liked their burgers better. And boy oh boy, were we stubborn about it. But there were two ways that we handled such situations (or more matter-of-factly, how my parents handled such situations): 1.We would agree that we would stop at McDonald’s on the way there and Burger King on the way back, or 2.We’d go to Wendy’s. And there you have it ladies and gentlemen: A compromise! Chicken nuggets and tax increases, Whoppers, and huge spending cuts, it’s all the same in this, my fast-food metaphor for how to come to a compromise. If only it were that simple right? But, lawmakers of California, does this really need to be as difficult as you are making it? I can’t for the life of me believe that it is.

By Andrew Brentan

Did anyone hear the State of the State address that Governor Schwarzenegger gave on Thursday morning? I’m willing to bet that not too many people were in a position to turn on the radio or TV to hear what he had to say. Well, if you weren’t able to listen in, I can assure you, you didn’t miss a thing. In fact, it seemed like the speech was purposely held at a time when few people could listen. Why? Because he spoke for ten minutes and simply reiterated the need for the legislators and he to work out the state budget as soon as possible.

I’m starting to feel a little sorry for Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had come to office as the governor of California with a great vision for this state. His dedication to education, healthcare, prison-reform, and the environment was lauded by citizens and governments across the country. And now, as the delay of passing a state budget continues, he is being forced to make decisions that go against his original vision in order to put money back in the state’s pocket.

Evan Halper of the Los Angeles Times discussed how this budget deficit has forced Arnold to reevaluate his visions of grandeur for the state of California. “At the same time he is pushing a $14-billion expansion of healthcare to nearly all Californians, his budget calls for a rollback of existing medical programs for the needy. His hope for improving schools may be dashed by what he says is a need, for the first time in years, to cut by hundreds of dollars the amount spent on each student. And an expansion of the prison system he hoped to reform is now eclipsed by his proposal to release tens of thousands of inmates and lay off prison guards. Schwarzenegger’s budget recommendations put into stark contrast the disparity between his vision of what the state can accomplish and what it can afford in the current economy—especially, say state finance experts, if he sticks to his promise not to raise taxes”. I don’t want to pay more taxes than I need to, but I will happily give more in taxes if it will help get our state’s economy back above water. The Governor continues to preach the need for everyone to make sacrifices in order to get our state’s economy back on track. But in my opinion, the billions of dollars he has proposed cutting from education and health services is a far more detrimental sacrifice than taxing citizens a little extra for the next few years.

Determined not to raise taxes, Arnie’s proposed a few “fees” to be tacked on to certain things, but if you ask me, a fees damn near the same thing as a tax, isn’t it? The proposal is for a surcharge averaging $10 a year property-insurance policies of millions of Californians in order to pay for fire protection. Also, his proposed $11 increase in vehicle registration fees to fund the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Highway Patrol. Can’t you hear the Gov’s Austrian accent saying, “Dees are naught taxes, dey are fees”? It’s all semantics I tell you. I’m not saying that a tax increase will solve the deficit problems, but I’m quite certain the tax-increase issue remains one of the main reasons for the budget stalemate.

And remember when times were good, and Arnold made us all proud by passing a landmark bill to reduce emissions? That was the environmentally friendly, humanitarian Arnold we came to know and love. That was his vision as Governor at work, doing what was best for us. But now? Poor Arnold is considering licensing more offshore oil drilling in order to collect fees for revenue. He is also proposing to close 48 state parks, beaches, reserves and recreation areas, which will knock off a measly $14.3 million of the deficit. Our state’s budget may be in turmoil, but don’t take away the places we go to recreate and enjoy ourselves!

I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t know a thing or two about a thing or two about the fiscal responsibilities of our state. But when The Governor spoke this morning, I did not hear the same governor who once demanded bipartisanship and better education. I did not hear the man who, just two years ago was showing the country that California was the state leading the charge on sustainable energy and the fight against global warming. Instead, I heard a man who was frustrated to the point of exhaustion. I heard a man who was placing blame on partisanship, and a man who spoke unconvincingly of a need to make sacrifices. You said it yourself Arnold: in order to accomplish the things you want to accomplish as Governor, we need to first alleviate the enormous weight of the state’s deficit. But try not to lose site of what is truly important to you and the people of California in order to make the numbers work. As we head into Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, I’ll leave you with a quote from the Doc himself, “If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” Easier said than done when your 42 billion in the hole, but the Doc had it right nonetheless.

By Andrew Brentan