The state of the state? "A train wreck," says one official.

If the world’s eighth-largest economy were a member of the proper religious order, it’d be time to call in a priest to administer last rites.

Name almost any serious malady and the state of California has it: the nation’s highest marginal tax rate coupled with an abysmal public education system; the most home foreclosures; a free-falling commercial real estate sector; lame-duck governor with no legislative support and a disdain for an annual budget process that he refers to as kabuki theater; unemployment somewhere between the official number of 12% and the whisper number of 18%; a 20% drop in year-over-year revenue; municipalities that have either declared bankruptcy (Vallejo) or are on the verge (Los Angeles); and a black-box permitting process that scares away business investment even while every week, 3,000 more taxpayers migrate to greener pastures.

Californians may be a can-do lot, but faced with all that evidence and much more, the political and economic leaders who spoke at the Milken Institute’s annual “State of the State” conference held yesterday at the Beverly Hilton could hardly have been more dour. “It’s a train wreck, and it’s getting worse,” said Bill Lockyer, California State Treasurer. Added former Assembly speaker Bob Hertzberg, now co-chair of governance reform group California Forward, “A high-speed train wreck.” More

San Francisco is using advanced technology – and the strong arm of government – to turn the city into one of America's greenest.

By David Ewing Duncan

Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco

On Pier 96 on San Francisco Bay, a dirty, smelly leviathan of a machine roars and vibrates as it organizes 750 tons of refuse each day into neat cubes of plastic, paper, and metal.

It may look crude, but this three-story-high knot of conveyors, computers, bins, and gears is a central part of San Francisco's growing effort to use technology and ingenuity as the most innovative companies do: to cut costs, solve problems, and improve life for customers (or in this case, citizens).

Communities that embrace technology in this way are increasingly branding themselves "smart cities" — a fancy marketing term describing a place that strives for efficiencies in mobility, construction, energy, and transportation, usually with the help of the latest digital or green technology.

Stockholm uses sensors, software, and computer networks to monitor traffic during peak periods. Shanghai boasts the world's first low-pollution magnetic railway that transports passengers at more than 100 mph. Massachusetts plans to install 300 wind turbines in its towns and cities. More

"Tanker 979" pressed into service by deadly fires in Southern California

Tanker 979 can spray 20,000 gallons of flame retardant. Photo: Evergreen International Aviation

The biggest fire-fighting jet on the planet started duty Monday combating the deadly fires around Los Angeles. It is a converted Boeing 747, dubbed Tanker 979.

If it performs as well as expected over the next few days, it could not only mean less destruction of buildings and lives, but big business for the plane’s owner, McMinnville, Oregon-based Evergreen International Aviation.

Fighting fires from helicopters and planes is not new, but nothing comes close to the fire-snuffing capacity of this former freight jet.

After a design and conversion process that cost $50 million, according to the private company’s chairman Timothy Wahlberg, the supertanker can spray 20,000 gallons of flame retardant from four-16-inch nozzles mounted on the fuselage in a pattern that amounts to a rain shower the width of a football field and three miles long. More