Tag "Wayne Lusvardi"
Back to homepageNo Prop. 13 tax dodge by Dell if Miramar Hotel had net lease
May 20, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi The last thing billionaire Michael Dell would have done if he wanted to avoid paying property taxes on his purchase of the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica in 2005 was to buy a share
Read MoreBoxer’s Delta levee bill is real estate pork barrel
May 17, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi “I drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry,” go the famous lyrics to singer Don McClean’s 1971 hit song, “American Pie.” The California Dream of home ownership and speculative riches in
Read MoreCA governments need caution on fracking investments
May 16, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi Being the home of Hollywood and Disneyland, news in California always has an element of political theater and Fantasyland. This is certainly so for all the contradictory headlines about fracking — the hydraulic fracturing
Read MoreElectricity rate shock more likely than blackouts this summer
May 15, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi There have been many forecasts of possible rolling blackouts in California this summer due to a shortage of power from the shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear power plant and the instability of a
Read MoreAre school parcel taxes social status symbols?
May 7, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi Question: Are working-class communities smarter than wealthier school districts by not putting increased school parcel taxes on local election ballots? This is not the conclusion suggested in a new study released May 2013 by EdSource,
Read MoreFeinstein, Boxer stymie water, power & wildlife for Lake McClure
May 4, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi New York Times journalist Peter Passell once wrote: “California’s water system might have been invented by a Soviet bureaucrat on an LSD trip.” And as the 1960s hippies would have put it, the trip
Read MoreLegitimacy, not consensus, is key to Delta modernization
May 3, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi Do we care whether there is a consensus about what to do with the so-called natural resources of the Sacramento Delta among scientists and interest group “stakeholders” in California? The Public Policy Institute of
Read MoreCould Obama also privatize the Central Valley Water Project?
May 1, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi Almost out of nowhere, the Obama Administration has opened up discussions for possibly privatizing the model asset of the New Deal, the Tennessee Valley Authority, to bring in revenues to the federal government and
Read MoreCA Delta water war being won by legitimacy, not money
April 30, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi The most memorable proverb about California water is: “Water runs uphill towards money.” But water doesn’t flow uphill towards money only. If it did, Southern California — which has two-thirds of the state population —
Read MoreFlawed study tries to link smog with childhood cancer
April 26, 2013 By Wayne Lusvardi Anyone who remembers the choking smog of 1960s Los Angeles knows of the great advances since then in cleaning the air. But as Nobel economist Milton Friedman once quipped, “Nothing is so
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