April 29, 2013 By Joseph Perkins After giving a speech in which he refused to bail out New York City from impending bankruptcy, Gerald Ford prompted the famously pithy headline in the New York Daily News: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. The Los Angeles City Council this week did not exactly te...
InfrastructureLA council attack on San Onofre might bring blackouts to Orange County, San DiegoMonday, April 29th, 2013CARB chair plugs electric carsWednesday, April 17th, 2013 April 17, 2013 By Joseph Perkins Mary Nichols was in Detroit this week for the Society of Automotive Engineers annual World Congress. The chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board told attendees that her agency wants to have better relations with the auto industry. “If we can colla... Water plan threatens taxpayers, environmentSunday, April 14th, 2013 April 14, 2013 By Steven Greenhut In Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” a priest recalls the words of a man who confessed: “The more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular.” We can all think of people like that --- folks of varied political persuasions wh... Anti-nuke activists aim at San OnofreWednesday, April 3rd, 2013April 3, 2013 By Joseph Perkins Southern California Edison meets today with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It hopes to persuade the feds to approve its proposed license amendment for San Onofre nuclear plant, which has been offline since January 2012 because of certain wear and tear on it... Real Culprits in CA Housing CrashFriday, January 11th, 2013Jan. 11, 2013 By Joseph Perkins As the California economy continues slowly to recover from the collapse of its once-thriving housing sector, the banking industry is trying to close its books on the financial disaster. This week, Bank of America agreed to pay Fannie Mae $11.6 billion to sett... Solar power fries ratepayersSaturday, December 29th, 2012Dec. 29, 2012 By Joseph Perkins Most lawmakers in Sacramento have no idea who Robert K. Merton was. But they almost certainly are familiar with terms the late great American social scientist introduced into the popular lexicon, including “unintended consequences.” An apt example of ... Yes to DesalinationFriday, September 28th, 2012Sept. 28, 2012 By Joseph Perkins The Western Hemisphere’s largest seawater desalination plant moved a huge step closer to actually being built with the tentative agreement Thursday by the San Diego County Water Authority to buy all the water produced by the Carlsbad plant’s private develop... Rare court victory for home buildersWednesday, August 22nd, 2012 Aug. 22, 2012 By Joseph Perkins It has taken the better part of two decades, but the California Supreme Court has finally reined in so-called “construction defect” lawsuits, the threat of which has had a damping effect on development of multi-family for-sale housing. The case in questio... Chevron refinery fire sets off money grabFriday, August 10th, 2012 Aug, 10, 2012 By Joseph Perkins Well, that didn’t take long. No sooner did Chevron douse the fire this week at its Richmond oil refinery before a couple thousand folks, claiming some sort of personal injury or another, started looking for a way to get paid. More than a thousand “victim... Calif. refuses to generate own electricityFriday, August 3rd, 2012Aug. 3, 2012 By Joseph Perkins George Santayana famously warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So it is that, only a decade after the Great California Energy Crisis, during which wholesale electricity prices ran up 800 percent in an eight-month span, s... |