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ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Imagine you’re legendary business guru Jim Collins. Decade ago “Good to Great” and “Built to Last” made him the new Peter Drucker. He’s a guy USA Today says would rather be rock climbing than helping companies learn the secrets of making “the leap to greatness.”

But that was nine years (and two brutal recessions) ago. Then, shortly after the Iraq War started, he was forced back to the drawing boards, and wrote “How the Mighty Fall.” Why? His summary in BusinessWeek explains: “Some of the great companies we’d profiled … had subsequently lost their positions of prominence,” including the Bank of America.

These programs are a waste of money, and states ought to be repealing them. But as states raise taxes and cut programs in response to the recession, many aren’t touching their film subsidies. Some, like New York, even plan to expand them.

According to a recent Tax Foundation report, 44 out of 50 states offered some sort of subsidy program for filmmakers, usually in the form of a tax credit. Back in 2002, only five states had such programs, but during the last decade a bidding war caused the programs to spread almost everywhere — even California offers a tax credit for making films right in Hollywood.

The state of California’s real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

That’s the finding from a study released Monday by Stanford University’s public policy program, confirming a recent report with similar, stunning findings from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.

To put that number in perspective, it’s almost seven times greater than all the outstanding voter-approved state general obligation bonds in California.

For small developers, the stakes are high. Having an app accepted for a highly coveted Apple product means reaching a passionate group of consumers who have demonstrated their willingness to spend over and over again on applications for mobile devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. The potential revenue is huge; the apps market for those two devices alone is already worth a billion dollars a year in sales.

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The parallels between the political situation in 1946 and 2010 are limited but instructive. Americans once again are faced with proposals that would vastly expand the size and scope of government. And they are faced by proposals to increase the power of labor unions. Public opinion polls show that in 2010, as in 1946, most Americans reject such policies. Republicans in 1946 were prepared to advance policies that turned America away from such policies. The question is whether Republicans in 2010, with the prospect but not the assurance, of winning a majority in the House and perhaps a majority in the Senate, are similarly prepared.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Oil prices rose on Tuesday as investors continued to pour money into crude with the hope that global demand will strengthen.

What prices are doing: Crude prices inched 25 cents higher to $86.87 a barrel. Prices are up over 5% since last week and over 70% since April 2009. That’s their highest level since Oct. 8, 2008, when crude settled at $88.95.

Because the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion” of regulatory authority to an actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the power to regulate an Internet provider’s network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Tuesday’s decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat.

Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules–even though Congress has not given the agency permission to do so. That push is opposed by Verizon and other broadband providers.

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By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON (AP) – 10 hours ago

LOS ANGELES – A 13-year-old California boy plans to try to climb Mount Everest in a quest to reach the summits of the highest peaks on all seven continents.

If Jordan Romero succeeds, he’ll become the youngest person to conquer the world’s highest mountain.

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Even London – widely considered the world’s most closely watched city with an estimated 500,000 cameras – doesn’t incorporate private cameras in its system as Chicago does.

While critics decry the network as the biggest of Big Brother invasions of privacy, most Chicago residents accept them as a fact of life in a city that has always had a powerful local government and police force.

The complaint came after Liu, a Berkeley law professor, gave the Senate Judiciary Committee a bundle of supplemental material that contained 117 things he left out after his February nomination.

Among the items disclosed were several speeches on affirmative action and his participation at an event co-sponsored by the Center for Social Justice at Berkeley and the the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

In response to the new information, all seven Republicans on the Judiciary Committee fired off a letter to its chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., demanding that Liu’s hearing be postponed again.

California’s three major public pension funds are underfunded by more than half a trillion dollars, according to a report released Monday, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) commissioned the study, which was prepared by graduate students at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (Theriault, San Jose Mercury News, 4/5).

The study examined:

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System;
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System; and
The University of California’s retirement system (Walters, “Capitol Alert,” Sacramento Bee, 4/5).
The three systems serve about 2.6 million retirees (Bussewitz, AP/Ventura County Star, 4/5).

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