Bill Thomas

Watch for the sparks to fly Wednesday as the Fiscal Crisis Inquiry Commission turns its focus on the credit rating agencies, which many believe played a key role in the near collapse of the U.S. economy.

Financier Warren E. Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway , and Raymond W. McDaniel, chairman and chief executive officer of Moody’s Corp ., will be among those called to testify during the FCIC hearing.

According to Fortune magazine’s Carol Loomis , who is Buffett’s long-time friend, the editor of his newsletter and a shareholder, the financial giant refused invitations to voluntarily testify before the commission. Gary Cohen, the FCIC’s general counsel, confirmed Buffett was issued a subpoena to testify.

Still one of Moody’s biggest shareholders, Buffett began selling off his interest in the rating company last summer.

While most of the commission’s hearings have been held in Washington, D.C., Wednesday’s will be held at The New School in New York City.

The bipartisan commission, which was created by Congress, is headed by Democrat Phil Angelides, California’s former state treasurer, and former Republican Congressman Bill Thomas of Bakersfield, Calif.

In an interview with Dianne Hardisty, which appeared in The Bakersfield Californian in December, on the eve of the commission’s first major hearing, Thomas was highly critical of credit rating agencies in providing a false sense of security around risky investment schemes.

"What really happened was that all these large banks were carrying these strange instruments of consolidated mortgages. And all of a sudden they weren't worth that much,” Thomas told Hardisty. “Well, how much were they worth? We didn't know for sure. Moody's gave them a triple-A rating so they could sell them to other people. But if you look at the rating game, you pay for the rating. So you end up hiring one of the firms that gave you a triple-A.

"It's a lot like what happened to the accounting firms that recommended how and where you invested your money, and then went over the books and, guess what, they concluded that was a great place to invest your money. Except it blew up. You can't have people on both sides of a ledger when they are carrying out a function,” Thomas said.

‘Steam’ is building throughout California over the proposed route of California’s high speed rail system . A futuristic transportation system that former California Gov. Gray Davis once dismissed as being something out of “Buck Rogers,” a recent allocation of about $2.6 billion in federal stimulus dollars and California voters’ passage of a nearly $10 billion bond in 2008 has moved high speed rail from “theoretical” to “possible.”

But with the system’s brighter hopes is coming controversy over details, including where the high speed train tracks will be laid.

In the May 30, Bakersfield Californian, reporter Steve Mayer wrote about the controversy over two proposed routes through the heart of his city. Both basically follow an existing railroad alignment.

The plan is for the route to enter Bakersfield from the northwest, stop at a downtown terminal and exit to the east on the way to the Antelope Valley and beyond to Southern California. Because of the speed, both routes deviate a bit – in a sweeping curve – from the existing railroad alignment. Likely historic homes and buildings will be in its path, causing controversy in the city.

Bakersfield is not alone in raising concerns about the path high speed rail will take. Farmers up and down the San Joaquin Valley are expressing objections. And battles have broken out in the Bay Area and Southern California.

“Bringing a high speed rail line through Bakersfield will be disruptive, as well as beneficial,” observed John Hardisty, the city’s retired development services director. John Hardisty now is a court mediator and planning consultant .

Issues of safety and noise will need to be addressed for any route, he said, adding that “rather than deciding that the exact alignment will be where the preliminary study lines have been drawn, the design engineers and environmental reviewers should be refining a route that would least impact the community. Wherever possible, they need to avoid schools, hospitals, homes, businesses and churches.”

Earlier this year, Hardisty wrote in a Bakersfield Californian opinion column about the need for the city to organize its efforts to become the site of a test track and heavy maintenance facility for the California High Speed Rail system. Several San Joaquin Valley cities, including Fresno, Merced and Bakersfield, are competing for the project, which will bring million of dollars in investments and thousands of jobs to the community that is selected.

But route selection for the entire system has become increasingly contentious.

“If you think getting a freeway alignment adopted is tough, you ain't seen nothing yet. This could be a bigger battle,” said Hardisty.

John Hardisty writes about high speed rail and other land-use issues on his Planning Beat blog.

About the author: Dianne Hardisty retired in 2009 as The Bakersfield Californian’s editorial page editor. She now is a freelance writer in Bakersfield with reporting specialties in business and government. Her articles also appear on her Examiner  Webpage.

Writing in today’s Bakersfield Californian , Maureen Buscher-Dang reveals that people who donate blood at their local community blood banks may be helping U.S. soldiers on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As an example, she notes that during the past 18 months,Houchin Community Blood Bank in Bakersfield, Calif., has sent six shipments – each containing 15 units of blood products – to the Armed Services Blood Bank Center in Tacoma, Wash.

The center’s primary mission is to support the nation’s military operations, explained Victor Shermer, the center’s donor recruiter and public affairs officer. Shermer also is a retired Army major.

Shermer told Buscher-Dang that within a week of being drawn from a donor in Bakersfield, or someplace else in the United States, a unit of blood may be helping a soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq.

The Armed Services Blood Program relies primarily on military personnel, military families, federal employees and participants in universities’ reserve officer training corps for blood donations. But like with their civilian counterparts, sometimes there is a special need for a rare blood type and inventories run low. The Armed Services Blood Program then sends out a call to purchase units from civilian centers, such as Houchin.

“December and January are the worse months of the year,” explained Shermer. “Soldiers go home on leave. They are not available to donate. When we do not have enough to meet our quota, we purchase it.”

MaureenBuscher-Dang is a Bakersfield public relations consultant, who represents Houchin Community Blood Bank. She is passionate about donating blood and supporting our troops. Until his recent retirement, her husband, Alex Dang, was a member of the Army Reserves and completed a tour of duty in Iraq.

Hina Patel is interviewed by Dianne Hardisty at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital.

Today is Memorial Day, when we remember those who have died who stepped forward – during the present wars, or earlier wars – to defend this country. Often we just look at this day as a day off work, or the beginning of the summer vacation season. But it should be a day to reflect on the sacrifices that have been made.
 

I do not intend to take anything away from the sacrifices of our veterans. That is what this day REALLY is about. But we can also spare a few minutes today to think about the sacrifices everyday people make for their country, neighborhoods and families.
 

Today I am thinking about a young Bakersfield woman, Hina Patel . In February, The Bakersfield Californian published a story  by Dianne Hardisty about Hina and her brave battle with sickle cell disease. Born with the affliction, she lived two decades with sickle cell disease.
 

When she spoke at the Houchin  Community Blood Bank's annual recognition dinner in February for platelet donors, she thanked the Bakersfield donors for their life-giving generosity. She had been sustained by frequent platelet transfusions.
 

And when she agreed to be interviewed for a follow-up story, she was very, very sick. In fact, part of the interview took place in an isolation room at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital But Hina and her mother, Bhavana Patel, gave up their privacy and some of their precious final minutes together because they were committed to having people better understand the devastation of sickle cell disease and the need for people “at risk” to be tested.
 

Hina died on May 5, 2010. Despite her illness, she graduated with honors from Bakersfield’s Stockdale High School, was enrolled at Bakersfield College and had been accepted into the University of Pacific’s pharmacy program. She was a brave and accomplished young woman.
 

About the author: Dianne Hardisty  retired as The Bakersfield Californian's editorial page editor. She now is a freelance writer in Bakersfield.

Jack Hendrix stands in front of the turn-of-the-century Bakersfield home he restored.

John Hardisty spent nearly 30 years guiding the city of Bakersfield , Calif., forward as its development services director. He managed the city’s Planning Department as Bakersfield grew to include about 143 square miles and serve a population of nearly 340,000 people.

During those years, his focus was on the present and the future. Now retired from the city and working as a planning consultant and court mediator, Hardisty’s focus is also on the past, as he writes an occasional column for The Bakersfield Californian.

Beginning with his May 23 feature on the turn-of-the-century home of the late Louise V. Olcese , a Bakersfield capitalist, Hardisty will write about the historic, significant and sometimes downright strange homes and buildings in Bakersfield.

Bakersfield, at the southern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley, has a rich history rooted in oil and agriculture. It also has a hard-scrabble reputation born of the struggles of the Depression-era Okies, who flocked to the community.

Known for its brand of Country Western music and Basque food, Bakersfield can be as sophisticated as any city – and mind you, it’s California’s 11^th largest – but it can also be a bit quirky.

Hardisty’s occasional column will highlight such attractions as Bakersfield’s tallest building and explain why at 12 floors it was required to obtain a variance from the city’s height limitation. He also will interview the architect of Bakersfield’s futuristic-looking triangle building and recall the 1970s battle waged to get city clearance to build the “funny looking thing.”

At the center of what was once the city of Kern (east Bakersfield) is a sprawling, formerly elegant train station. He will tour readers through the now mostly boarded up and weather-beaten structure, which is used by the railroad to house a skeleton staff and store supplies.

“To keep moving forward, it is important for every community to understand its past,” said Hardisty, explaining the focus of his column. “To attempt progress without an understanding and respect for history is like building without a foundation.”

This sensitivity to history is particularly important to Bakersfield.  The city was hit in 1952 by an earthquake that destroyed much of its downtown and many of its public buildings. Some contend Bakersfield’s historic character was turned to rubble by the earthquake. But if you look closely, you will find some remnants have survived.

Hardisty’s column will take readers on a treasure hunt for Bakersfield’s historic character.

About the author: Dianne Hardisty retired as The Bakersfield Californian's editorial page editor. She is now a freelance writer. This article appeared first on her Examiner page .

Photo by Dianne Hardisty
Flags adorn graves at the Bakersfield National Cemetery.

Bakersfield National Cemetery , located on 500 acres donated by the Tejon Ranch Co ., 20 miles southeast of Bakersfield, Calif., held its first Memorial Day Ceremony Sunday, May 30. Those speaking during the ceremoney included Steve L. Muro, acting under secretary for memorial affairs, and Congressmen Kevin McCarthy and Jim Costa .

The 130^th national cemetery in a system that now includes 131, the Bakersfield National Cemetery opened in July 2009.

To date, the remains of 600 have been interred in the cemetery since its opening, according to director Cindy M. Van Bibber.

Nationwide, an estimated 1,000 World War II veterans are dying every day. The death rates for Korean War and Vietnam War veterans also are increasing. The system of national cemeteries has expanded to accommodate these veterans.

“I am surprised more people are not utilizing the Bakersfield cemetery,” said Van Bibber, who recent transferred to the facility from a similar one in Fort Bliss, Texas. “The setting is awe-inspiring.”

Bakersfield is one of three cemeteries in the system that utilize “water wise” landscaping. The other two are located in Phoenix, Ariz., and Fort Bliss. The Phoenix and Fort Bliss cemeteries are located in deserts, where cactus and similar vegetation are commonly found.

While Bakersfield  is not located in a desert, the site lacks a source of water, preventing it from sprouting the carpet of grass found in most cemeteries.

To some, the Bakersfield National Cemetery may appear bleak and barren. But Van Bibber notes that landscaping still is taking shape. Native plants, including the oak trees and wild flowers that decorate the rolling foothills of the Tehachapi and Sierra Nevada Mountains will adorn the national cemetery.

She credits the cemetery’s support group with providing guidance and assistance as the cemetery provides a resting place for the men and women who dedicated themselves to preserving the freedom of the United States.

About the author: Dianne Hardisty retired as the editorial page editor of The Bakersfield Californian . She is now a freelance writer. This article appeared first on Dianne Hardisty's Examiner.com page .

California has unveiled an agriculture “specialty license plate” that will do more than raise money for education. It will raise public awareness and some hope support for one of the state’s major economic engines.

In the state’s Central Valley, which is plagued by record unemployment rates, the agriculture engine is being threatened by water shortages and the erosion of farmland protection programs. Public understanding and support for the industry is critical, farmers contend.

Who will buy your home?

Dowell Myers , a demographer at the University of Southern California, posed this question to urban planners during the annual American Planning Association conference in New Orleans.

Struggling with neighborhoods filled with foreclosed and abandoned homes – the fallout of the nation’s subprime lending fiasco and resulting economic crisis -- planners were warned that more trouble looms ahead.

As baby boomers retire and want to downsize – move out of their homes into townhouses, “adult” communities, or assisted living – they will find few buyers. And the buyers they do find likely will come from a growing immigrant community.

The future financial well-being of the baby boomer generation – in terms of home sales, government services, medical care, etc. – is tied to the progress minority groups, particularly Hispanics in California, can make in their educations and career aspirations.

“In the 1970s, the baby boomers came of age,” Myers said, noting home prices and sizes rose as boomers moved up their career ladders. With boomers surfing through the market, it’s was no surprise that “sooner or later they would hit the beach.”

People born between 1946 and 1964 are considered baby boomers.  The generation now is about 80 million strong (and graying.)

In California, alone, there were 9.7 million baby boomers between the ages of 40 and 49 in 2005. They constituted 51 percent of the prime working-age population.

By 2020, these baby boomers will be 55 to 74 years old – retired or nearing retirement. According to Myers, the ratio of retirees to “workers” – people 25 to 64 years old – will jump 30 percent, and an additional 29 percent by 2030.

The ratio of seniors to working-age people in California is about 250 per 1,000 today. Myers predicted the ratio will balloon to 411 per 1,000 in 2030.

Myers has written about this demographic time bomb in his book “Immigrants and Boomers : Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America,” as well as in articles for the American Planning Association and other groups.

With significant population growth occurring primarily in immigrant groups, Myers told urban planners that efforts must be made to increase the educations and earning potentials in these groups.

If baby boomers want to sell off their major investments – their homes – they must “grow” a generation with the money to buy them. They must be willing to spend money to improve the schools that minority students attend and open economic opportunity doors.

“Every seller needs a good buyer,” said Myers.

Stacy Carlson is shown in her cluttered, cramped Treasury Building office.

Stacy Carlson’s life has taken many high-powered turns since she grew up in Bakersfield in the 1970s, graduated from Highland High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Cal State Bakersfield. But even Carlson was stunned and at times a bit overwhelmed when she landed in the middle of the U.S. economy’s “perfect storm.”

In “You, Me & the U.S. Economy,” Carlson writes about her experiences as former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s speech writer from 2007 to 2009, when the nation’s economy headed for meltdown and the stock market could rise and fall with every word she wrote. In her first book, Carlson also explains in a plainspoken manner about what caused the crisis.

Paulson, President Bush’s third and final treasury secretary, writes in the book’s forward:

“We knew that the words we chose would play an enormous role in determining whether we would be successful. My communications team at Treasury was essential to meeting this challenge, and my speechwriter, Stacy Carlson, was a pivotal part of that team. … it was very difficult, in the midst of an unprecedented financial crisis, to educate the American people about all of the complex subjects that caused the crisis.”

Carlson came to the Treasury Department job with an MBA from Stanford University and years of experience in the banking industry. In between, she was a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., founded the business writing firm Invisible Hand LLC, served as the executive vice president of global government affairs for the Motion Picture Association of America, and was a member of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s senior Washington staff.

She cut her political teeth as a teenager in Bakersfield working on Republican President Gerald Ford’s 1976 reelection campaign. Her first paying political job was as an intern and later legislative assistant on Bakersfield Congressman Bill Thomas’ Washington, D.C., staff. In late 1984, she returned to Bakersfield to work as newly elected Kern County Supervisor Roy Ashburn’s chief of staff, before entering graduate school. She also worked on George Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and was a member of his transition team.

Carlson knew her way around Capitol Hill and politics when a friend told her Paulson was looking for a speech writer in 2007. Although she admits the speech-writing experience on her resume was a bit thin, the man she replaced, who was leaving to go to law school, assured her the office pace “was pretty slow” and he often had months to work on projects.

Carlson was in for a rude surprise. Filling her book with a good deal of humor – much of it pointed at herself – Carlson wrote about the stress of keeping up with the dire, breaking news.

“I wasn’t an expert in anything, yet was expected to write expertly about everything,” she wrote, adding that there “were days when I chewed erasers off pencils and the inside of my cheek until it was raw. I smoked too much and swore I would quit, tomorrow.”

Economic warning signs had started to appear when Carlson was settling into her tiny Treasury Building office. But “we were still optimistic. People were working, buying houses, getting raises,” she wrote.

“Who knew that 15 months later, lack of trust and confidence would push us to the brink of financial meltdown?”

She recalled that by the summer of 2008, “We watched the housing market and thought it would bottom out soon. We expected to speed down the economic highway for the foreseeable future, and the August recess waved like a good friend with a beach house and a boat drink.”

But with the presidential election fully underway, home prices continued to fall, home mortgage lenders were going out of business and two Bear Stearns subprime mortgage hedge funds were about to go bankrupt. By the fall, the clouds over the U.S. economy were very dark.

As Paulson and others in the Bush administration scrambled to head off a catastrophe, Carlson wrote that she “was the silent scribe and witness to acts of courage, clarity and confusion.”

“At Treasury, the lead writer was called the person ‘with the pen.’ … I became [Paulson’s] pen: not his muse, not his advisor, not his whisperer. I needed to be quiet and to be confident. I needed to do my job.”

Carlson listened intently. She turned even some of the treasury secretary’s “throwaway phrases” into quotes that were repeated around the world.

“At one point [Paulson] put his hands on the table, leaned forward and said, ‘People are impatient; they want results.’ From that I wrote for his [U.S.-China talks] opening statement: ‘Americans have many virtues – we are hard-working, innovative people – but we are also impatient.’

“That sentence was the key news bite in the Dow Jones wire, the AP and in Time magazine’s ‘Verbatim’ column. I would never have captured that sentiment if I hadn’t listened differently.”

She admits in her book that she struggled with the complexities of some of the topics she wrote about. She draws on her Bakersfield roots to laugh at herself about that.

“What I knew about China, I’d learned in books, movies and my first job as a hostess at Bill Lee’s Bamboo Chopsticks in Bakersfield, California,” she wrote, recalling that Mrs. Lee “sat on a stool at the cash register and yelled at me in Chinese. I vaguely recalled Nixon going to China and something about ping-pong.”

“I would eventually write about every issue Treasury touched, yet wouldn’t ever be wholly a part of anything except the words,” she wrote. “Sometimes I was as much a translator as a writer, trying to turn policy wonkese, the dense language of experts, into understandable English.”

And that is what she tries to do with her 225-page book, which includes a glossary, or listing of definitions of sometimes mind-boggling concepts and alphabet soup financing programs.

In a recent interview, Carlson was asked to list four top lessons she hopes people will learn from reading her book. They were:

n  “There is plenty of blame to go around. President Bush said ‘Wall Street got drunk.’ That’s true, but Washington, with reckless housing policies, and the failure to catch the problems through regulation, and Main Street, with reckless borrowing and debt,  hoisted a few, too.

n  “There are always economic cycles – what [the treasury secretary] used to call the ‘economic gravity’ of what goes up does come down. Don’t think we can defy economic gravity, but instead prepare for it by saving and keeping debt low so your entire personal wealth isn’t at risk.

n  “There is no substitute for prudent risk management. That was a big failure at ‘regular’ (FDIC regulated) banks, investment banks, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.

n  “If we’re better informed about how banks and the economy works, then we’ll make better decisions, and demand our elected officials make better ones, too.”

Carlson acknowledged in her book that the country had grown tired of “Hank Paulson, George Bush and most all of us Republicans.”

But to the end of his tenure, Paulson continued to work hard and Carlson continued to write. “Hank’s last speech on Jan. 7, 2009, laid out possible treatments for ailing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, treatments we wouldn’t be around to administer.”

With the change in administration, Carlson turned out the lights in her Treasury office for the last time in January 2009, turned in her security badge and returned to her Alexandria, Va., home to restart her freelance writing business.

The concluding pages of her book capture the mood. She recalled a reporter asked Paulson how he thought history would treat his tenure. Paulson responded that history will have to figure that out. All he knew was that he did his best.

“That included sweeping government intervention to avoid a complete financial collapse, which opened the door to bailouts and blame,” Carlson wrote. “Politics played a part in the final weeks, but not in the way you’d expect. President Bush said he felt ‘a sense of obligation to my successor…we’re in a crisis now…but I don’t want to make it even worse.’”

Carlson concluded, “We were well-intentioned and fallible. The country had sped down the economic highway with the windows down and the radio on, and ran into an inevitable wreck. As we survey the damage and its causes, I hope we learn the right lessons.”

This article by Dianne Hardisty appeared first in The Bakersfield Californian on March 21, 2010.

Veterans for Trees, a non-profit organization based in Frazier Park, Calif., held its first tree planting event Saturday, March 13, 2010. Organizers hope their idea will sprout nationwide.

The idea is simple: Plant a tree for every U.S. veteran.

That could mean millions of trees will be planted and millions of veterans will be honored. The plantings are good for the environment and good for the soul.

Eleven small trees – blue spruces, autumn blaze maples and quaking aspens – were planted during a ceremony Saturday in Kern County’s Frazier Mountain Park. The plantings took place near the Brian Cody Prosser Veterans Memorial. The 28-year-old Prosser, who was well-known in the mountain community, was one of the first American soldiers killed in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Prosser was killed Dec. 5, 2001 by friendly fire.

Veterans for Trees is being spearheaded by Richard J.C. Sheffield, a retired U.S. Air Force technical sergeant, who is a licensed landscape and tree contractor. Sheffield and his wife, Tammy, own Antioch Nursery, Landscape and Tree Service in Lake of the Woods, a mountain community west of Frazier Park.

Veterans for Trees is headquartered in Frazier Park on about 15 acres of established incense cedar, redwood, gigantium, white fir, scotch pine and blue spruce trees. The property was formerly a Christmas tree farm.

In addition to growing larger-sized trees for the Veterans for Trees National Memorial Tree Planting Program, the headquarters property will be used to grow hundreds of thousands of jeffrey pine and pinion pine seedlings for planting in the Veterans for Trees California Wildfire Restoration Program.

According to the organization’s website, these seedlings will assist the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Forestry and National Park Service in reforestation efforts.

Sheffield told The Los Angeles Times that he plans to ask wholesale nurseries and retailers nationwide to offer veteran trees, which will have their trunks wrapped in red, white and blue, and will carry a tag containing information about the program. From each sale, $1 will go to Veterans for Trees to operate the tax-exempt, 501 (c)(3) organization.

“It’s a win-win for veterans and for the environment,” Sheffield told The Times.

For more information about the group and how you can honor veterans by planting a tree, go to www.veteransfortrees.org/

Dianne Hardisty

Bakersfield, Calif.

www.svs2help.com/