Time is Running Out on Meaningful CEQA Reform
With three weeks left in the 2013 legislative session, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reform is waiting on the sidelines while the list of public and private projects being stalled under the allegation of CEQA violations continues to grow. The most recent ruse is a CEQA challenge to a new downtown high-rise housing project in […]
Eric Garcetti’s First Stand
While some individuals are known for their grandest and often last battle that establishes their reputation, newly elected Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, might be at his reputation establishing moment in his first stand as mayor – fighting both the city council and the union at the Department of Water and Power over a new […]
Yellen or Secession?
What does a Californian have to do to get the most important job in the world? It’s a relevant question since Janet Yellen, a longtime UC Berkeley economist who served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and now is #2 at the Federal Reserve, is a contender to be Fed chairman. […]
Governor Brown Fighting Obama Administration to Defend Pension Reform
Remember AB 340, the pension reform successfully pushed by Democratic Governor Brown, that even Governor Brown acknowledges is only a first step towards making public employee pensions financially sustainable? Well even AB 340 goes too far according to Obama’s new Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez. As Dan Borenstein of the Contra Costa Times reports on August […]
Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, Part 1, Backgrounder
In a series on CA high speed rail published earlier this year (here, here and here), I ended with a whisper echoing the whisper to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. Plastics… plastics! I said that ETT (evacuated tube transport) was the plastics of a coming revolution in transportation. Apparently, Elon Musk agrees. Now the whisper […]
California Homes Require Real Reach
In the 1950s and 1960s, Southern California was ground zero for the “American Dream” of owning a house. From tony Newport Beach and Bel-Air to the more middle-class suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and Garden Grove to working-class Lakewood, our region created a vast geography of opportunity for prospective homeowners. Today, with house prices […]