Infrastructure

Budget ‘transparency’ murky in Senate
Thursday, June 13th, 2013
Senator_Bob_Huff

June 14, 2013 By Katy Grimes SACRAMENTO -- I watched in dismay as Senate Democrats voted yesterday to bypass proper procedure in order to play politics with the budget. They withdrew several of their budget bills from the Rules Committee, to send them directly to the Senate Floor. This ...

Top officials live up (down?) to bullet train tradition
Monday, June 10th, 2013

June 10, 2013 By Chris Reed When the Los Angeles Times broke the story in April that the California High-Speed Rail Authority had quietly changed the rules to de-emphasize the importance of technical competence among bidders for the first segment of the bullet train, new authority CEO Jeff Mo...

Political energy crisis in the making
Saturday, June 8th, 2013

June 9, 2013 By Katy Grimes With industrial electricity rates 88 percent higher in California than in Texas last year, the news that the San Onofre nuclear plant in is not going to be restarted is just more evidence of a government created energy crisis in the making. Due to  political...

Gov. Jerry Brown’s father complex
Wednesday, June 5th, 2013
Darth Vader

June 5, 2013 By John Seiler Calling Dr. Freud. Gov. Jerry Brown's relationship with his later father, Gov. Pat Brown, is complex. It's so complex it's a father complex. Our colleague Steven Greenhut writes about it on Bloomberg, "Who Will Pay for Jerry Brown' Father Complex?" It's full spe...

Special problems for high-speed rail
Friday, May 31st, 2013

May 31, 2013 By John Seiler The Mercury-News reported today: "SACRAMENTO -- High-speed rail officials acknowledged Thursday that they almost certainly won't break ground on the $69 billion project as planned in July after hitting some last-minute bumps in the road. And even more delays are po...

Tesla just a tax-funded government project
Sunday, May 26th, 2013

May 26, 2013 By John Seiler I've seen a couple of Tesla cars tooling around Orange County. They're neat, as we said in the 1960s. And they're made in California. They also survived where other electric car companies, such as Fisker, have crashed. The problem with the Tesla and all these car...

Shake, rattle and roll in Nor Cal
Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
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May 23, 2013 By Katy Grimes Earthquake! Tonight in Sacramento, we felt the rumblings of a 5.7 earthquake centered in in Greenville, CA, in Plumas County -- 300 miles from Sacramento. This is considered a moderate earthquake. So far, there have been 13 small aftershocks reported. This...

Bridge debacle foreshadows bullet train mega-debacle
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013
Brooklyn-Bridge

May 22, 2013 By Chris Reed Mankind has been building bridges for more than 3,000 years. A bridge built in the 13th century BC in Greece is still in use. Building durable bridges over water is not a modern accomplishment. The Roman Empire liked to build simple arch bridges over rivers and pu...

TX soaring way above CA in energy production
Monday, May 6th, 2013
Texas and California oil production

May 6, 2013 By John Seiler The California fantasy is that energy magically will flow in abundance from windmills and solar panels, even when there's no wind and at night. The reality is that it's old-fashioned "fossil" fuels that will continue to generate almost all our power for the next c...

Feinstein, Boxer stymie water, power & wildlife for Lake McClure
Saturday, May 4th, 2013
McClure Lake

May 4, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi New York Times journalist Peter Passell once wrote: “California’s water system might have been invented by a Soviet bureaucrat on an LSD trip.” And as the 1960s hippies would have put it, the trip would have been a bummer. San Joaquin Valley farmers must ...