Infrastructure

The tangled web of High-speed spending

June 11, 2012 By Katy Grimes SACRAMENTO — With the looming state budget deadline of June 15, most lawmakers are at least pretending to have budget issues in their sights at the moment. But there are still thousands of bills

Shock: Wind energy goes radioactive

CalWatchdog Staff June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012 By Chriss Street Al Gore opened his 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” with an apology for not having already saved the world from global warming: “I have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate reductions in

Liberal downfall of San Diego falsely blamed on conservatives

CalWatchdog Staff June 4, 2012

June 3, 2012 By Wayne Lusvardi What passes for academic public policy analysis in California has deteriorated to the level of a bunch of children pointing fingers at everyone but themselves when it comes to answering the question, “Who broke

Voters don’t trust state to build high-speed rail

CalWatchdog Staff June 4, 2012

June 4, 2012 By Katy Grimes SACRAMENTO — Californians don’t want to pay for high-speed rail, nor do they trust the state government to build it, despite the aggressive push from Gov. Jerry Brown. A new poll found that the

Cap & Trade will socialize your power bill

CalWatchdog Staff May 22, 2012

May 22, 2012 By Wayne Lusvardi The mere mention of the words Cap and Trade in California and people just tune out because it sounds too complicated to understand. While it is complicated, it is nevertheless understandable. What we’re learning

Space: Next California frontier

Joseph Perkins May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012 By Joseph Perkins The dawning of the commercial space age begins Tuesday. That’s when SpaceX is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida for a rendevous with the International Space Station — the first time a

Bullet Trains, Green Jobs and ‘The War Between Data and Storytelling’

CalWatchdog Staff May 15, 2012

May 15, 2012 By Chris Reed SAN DIEGO — The smug, insufferably superior politics of the faculty lounge have gone mainstream on the Left in the past decade to the point where many “progressive” pundits and Democratic lawmakers openly act

How to save state parks from closure

Joseph Perkins May 11, 2012

May 11, 2012 By Joseph Perkins A pair of Northern California lawmakers unveiled a proposal this week to avert the scheduled July 1 closure of 70 state’s 278 parks, casualties of last year’s budget-cutting by the Legislature. “The notion of

Delta cost-benefit study politicized

CalWatchdog Staff May 10, 2012

May 10, 2012 By: Wayne Lusvardi Noted environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg recently said that cost-benefit studies could be used to evaluate big public works projects having environmental impacts in an age of austerity. But California legislators propose to turn an unneeded

San Diego Wheels, Deals and Sues for Water

CalWatchdog Staff May 7, 2012

Commentary May 7, 2012 By Wayne Lusvardi San Diego’s recent transfer of excess agricultural water from Imperial County has been the only major addition to urban water sources for Southern California for decades. The transfer is the largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer in