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Back to homepageWill Enviros Bend on CEQA Reform?
Jan. 28, 2012 CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, has long been the third rail of politics here in theGoldenState. If a politician dare touch it, he or she is dead to the state’s powerful environmental lobby. Gov. Jerry Brown
Read MoreDenying CA’s Plight Won’t Ease It
Jan. 23, 2012 Years ago, after starting to report and editorialize on news events in an old factory city in Ohio, I was quickly dubbed a “negative” for pointing out the disastrous government spending, housing and tax policies embraced by
Read MoreDiversity Trumps Education In CA
Katy Grimes: Since when are race and ethnicity “front and center in the state’s education system”? Isn’t education supposed to be the goal? In an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, Linda J. Wong, executive director of the Center for Urban Education at
Read MoreCourts Undermine State’s Initiative System
Jan. 20, 2012 I voted against Proposition 215, the so-called Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana use here in the nation’s largest pot-growing state for — wink, wink, nod, nod — “medicinal purposes.” That’s why it is rather ironic that
Read MoreCA Credit Rating Nothing to Celebrate
JAN. 17, 2012 They were slapping high fives in the offices of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer this week. Why the celebration? Because California no longer has the nation’s worst credit rating, according to Moody’s Investors Service. “The reason we’ve improved
Read MoreCA GOP Going to Elephant Graveyard?
JAN. 17, 2012 Many in the media say that Republicans are rapidly becoming irrelevant in California, and will become nothing more than an afterthought after the next election. Even a Capitol press club, made up of declining “old media” newspaper,
Read MoreLots of Mileage in Naming Roads
Jan. 16, 2012 California legislators never have enough time, and always lack the vision, to deal appropriately with the state’s pressing budget and infrastructure problems. But they are great at self-aggrandizement and at catering to the special-interest groups that help
Read MoreRedevelopment barons plot comeback
JAN. 9, 2012 I’m still giddy after the California Supreme Court ruled last month that the state had every right to shut down those noxious enemies of property rights and fiscal responsibility — redevelopment agencies. Better yet, the state’s high
Read MoreGov.’s Groundhog Day In California
JAN. 7, 2011 It felt like “Groundhog Day” on Thursday during Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal press conference. I had a flashback to January 2011. Listening to him make the same claims about the budget that he made all year
Read MoreDelta Science Remains in Question
JAN. 6, 2011 A federal judge opened up a can of whoop ass last fall on two government biologists, accusing them of mendacity in making their case for stricter environmental regulations in the Delta. This week, a report by a
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