Judge blasts ‘corrupt’ Cal Fire in wildfire lawsuit

  Superior Court Judge Leslie Nichols this month ruled that the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection repeatedly deceived and withheld evidence in a lawsuit seeking $8.1 million from a company and several landowners for a wildfire that the company

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CalPERS rate hike slams cities

Californians are finding out how Gov. Jerry Brown is going to deal with the state’s pension crisis: make the taxpayers pay for it. This from CalPensions: A divided CalPERS board yesterday approved a faster rate hike for the state urged

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Obama drought relief package aids his constituency

On Friday Feb. 14,  President Barack Obama choppered into California’s drought zone in Democratic-leaning Fresno. As shown in the adjacent photo from the White House, he traveled with U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Rep. Jim Costa, all California

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‘We are destined to live with a growing and permanent underclass’

It may be building very slowly, and years later than it should have first appeared. But there is beginning to be a groundswell of a broad understanding in California that there is a link between job creation and what the

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‘No Party Preference’ gains in CA voter registrations

“No Party Preference” continues its gradual rise in voter registrations according to new data released today by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen. As of Dec. 31, 2013, registration was: Democratic: 43.6 percent, down from 46.8 percent in 1997; Republican:

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Obama working on CA drought

As difficult as the drought is for California, it’s wonderful to know that President Obama cares and is helping out. He won the state in 2012 by a margin of more than 3 million votes. From Time magazine: On Saturday,

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CA Dems own state of the economy: Right, journos? Right?

Whenever President Barack Obama gets blamed for the still-mediocre condition of the national economy, his defenders in the Democratic Party, the punditocracy and in the allegedly neutral newsrooms of America immediately say things like, “He can’t get anything through Congress!

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Court of Appeal keeps high-speed rail chugging for now

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the Draft 2014 Business Plan of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Part 1 is here. On Friday, California’s 3rd District Court of Appeal kept California’s high-speed rail project chugging at least a

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UC workers approve strike vote

More than 21,000 workers at the University of California have voted to go on strike. An overwhelming 96 percent of the university’s service workers and patient care employees approved the strike authorization after three days of voting, union officials announced on Friday. The

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iPads in LAUSD just small part of CA school bond scandals

The GOP assemblyman who’s upset about the misuse of 25-year borrowing to pay for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of  iPads in Los Angeles Unified has an unfortunately narrow perspective on the problem. But at least Assemblyman Curt Hagman,

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