California economy

Twitter is atwitter over Gov’s budget

Gov. Jerry Brown just released his budget for 2014 Thursday. Claiming fiscal restraint, the governor’s $155 billion spending plan increases the general fund, as well as significant spending in education and social services. Text Your Ex Back By Michael Fiore

Jobs crash endangers Brown budget

John Seiler January 10, 2014

Uh oh. Just a day after Gov. Jerry Brown's budget spending splurge proposal, the latest U.S. jobs numbers came in. Unemployment in December dropped to 6.7 percent, which is good. But only 74,000 jobs were created, which is really bad.

Brown still on loony, increasingly lonely bullet-train bandwagon

Chris Reed January 10, 2014

Cal Watchdog managing editor John Seiler and I were among the pundits who got a telephone budget briefing from Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday afternoon. I was disappointed but unsurprised to hear that the governor is still 1,000 percent on

Brown seeks to prop up doomed bullet train with AB 32 $

Chris Reed January 6, 2014

As warned in this spot, Gov. Jerry Brown is conflating two of the state’s worst programs: “Brown plans to propose spending millions of dollars in fees paid by carbon producers to aid the state’s controversial high-speed rail project. “The proposal

As with fracking, Obama shuns green cultists on GMO foods

Chris Reed January 5, 2014

One of the most puzzling phenomena I’ve seen in years of watching the California media is how they simply won’t report that the Obama administration considers fracking to be just another heavy industry that can be made safe with routine

As consultant, bullet-train boss helped write doomed business plan

Chris Reed January 4, 2014

A lengthy Comstock’s profile of Jeff Morales, the former Washington D.C. and Chicago political operative brought in to save the bullet train by Gov. Jerry Brown, gets some little details about the high-speed rail project wrong and has some dubious

2013 saw emergence of potential giant CA defense contractor

Chris Reed January 2, 2014

Most of the reports last month that Mountain View-based Google bought Boston Dynamics — its eighth recent purchase of a robotics firm — focused on how this fit in with so many “moon shot” Google initiatives. Some stories looked forward

Unregulated CA entrepreneurs thrive in … the pot business

Chris Reed January 1, 2014

Happy New Year! Are you familiar with the state that has such an innovative and advanced marijuana industry that quality control extends to making sure pot brands consistently produce the same sensations? Where entrepreneurs are turning to increasingly sophisticated tools

Rich sheltering dough in South Dakota

John Seiler December 30, 2013

When Proposition 30 was being pitched in the fall of 2012, Gov. Jerry Brown and others pooh-poohed the idea that rich folks would find ways to avoid its $7 billion in new taxes. Because the national and state economies have

Housing market problems

John Seiler December 28, 2013

CalWatchDog.com stories repeatedly have warned that the optimism over California being “back,” as Gov. Jerry Brown insists, may be overblown. That doesn’t mean a recession is approaching, only that policymakers ought to be careful. Now this from AP: The number