Parched Politics
Money used to be the “mother’s milk of politics,” today it’s water. Understanding the labyrinth of water systems feeding the desert that is southern California requires a divining rod with GPS. The politics, however, are a lot simpler.
An interlocking directory of competing interests continuously moves the water game around the map like a rugby scrum. The feds, the state, individual water agencies, agriculture, enviros, business, developers, NIMBY’s, et. al., notwithstanding, Nature is still the ultimate ref in this do-or-die struggle for the life-blood of our future.
The politics of water in our state is pretty much a reflection of the politics in our legislature, everybody gets just enough to keep on going while the loudest complainers compete over marginal shifts in the distribution of valuable resources. But standby, the water whiners are about to grow in both size and volume.
California Housing: Ready to Recover?
More good news and bad news for the California housing economy.
Home prices continue their unabated decline, but existing home sales are on a roll – especially in inland California. New housing starts are still anemic, but government programs are poised to subsidize that end of the market.
First the bad news:
California home prices continued their freefall into 2009. The Standard and Poor’s monthly index of metro home prices showed California registering another record year-over-year drop. The composite average for San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego prices dropped in January by 27 percent from the previous year, the same as December’s year-over-year drop, but short of the recorded by the state, and exceeded only by the Sunbelt cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas.
A Real Lawman
Elections are like trains or buses. There is always another one coming. And it looks like the 2010 election cycle is already heating up. The election on May 19th should give us a good indication of what we might expect next year. Looking at the voter’s mood as of today the letter next to a candidate’s name that will be the scarlet letter is not “D” or “R”, but “I” for incumbent.
But most of the 2010 talk has been about who will be the candidates for governor. However, with apologies to Lt. Governor Garamendi, the second most important constitutional office is that of Attorney General. Other than the occasional news story saying that San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris and maybe LA City Attorney Ricky Delgadillo, both Democrats are looking at the race, we haven’t heard much about what Republicans are up to.
It has come to my attention that a number of prominent law enforcement officials from across the state have been encouraging former naval aviator and current U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Tom O’Brien to run for Attorney General.