In a state facing as many challenges as California, one has bedeviled us even longer than chronic budget deficits. For decades, in times of both prosperity and recession, we have grappled with the problem of securing enough water.

While the drought was ended this year by heavier-than-usual rainfall, drought will continue to be a recurring reality in Southern California. We tend to forget that we live in a desert and the way of life we enjoy is due to the foresight of our civic forebears who built the great water projects that irrigate this desert.

While that pioneering spirit has ebbed in more liberal, benighted parts of the state, it remains alive in Huntington Beach. On Tuesday, September 7, the city council votes on whether to approve a project that will lessen Orange County’s dependence on expensive imported water, create jobs, generate much needed tax revenue for the city and generally advance our ability to benignly utilize technology to harness nature for human benefit.

I’m referring to the desalination plant Poseidon Resources… Read More

Lots of newspapers and publications are sending out questionnaires for candidates to fill out. That comes with this time of year. I get it.

Every one of these newspapers would immediately point out the conflict of a legislator that were to include a copy of a piece of legislation they had introduced with a third house fund raising request.

What I don’t understand is how a newspaper looking for answers to questions that will help enlighten their editorial process can possible include a "political advertising rate sheet" with those questions.

This is just wrong for the same reason that it would be wrong to include a copy of the vote on AB XXX with a fund raising request to a group concerned with AB XXX.… Read More

Tonight’s debate between Carly Fiorina and Barbara Boxer was probably the worst debate I’ve ever seen in all my years of watching political debates. Not on Fiorina’s part—she did a great job for her first general election, televised debate. But Randy Shandobil, KTVU Channel 2 and the panel of journalists should collectively be ashamed of themselves. Now, because this is a right-of-center blog, I’m sure that they may easily dismiss my observations as simply partisan, but they would be wrong. Like most people, I want to see a fair, balanced exchange between the two major candidates running for one of the state’s most powerful jobs. But what I saw was not a fair and balanced debate. It was Shandobil, the SF Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci, KQED’s Scott Shafer & La Opinion’s Pilar Marrero piling on Fiorina while throwing generalized, softball questions to Boxer. And not once, not twice, but over and over… Read More

Here at the press room at the Fiorina Boxer debate, I asked CalBuzz blogger Jerry Roberts to critique the food spread…

I will certainly say that the food spread here doesn’t come close to the one from the Orange County Whitman-Poizner debate. Here is the video critique from that night…

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Check out my live-tweeting from the U.S. Senate debate…… Read More

Here’s an inspiring story about an elementary school teacher who almost single-handedly turned a school’s math scores from dismal to great. Denise Maimone applied logic when she stealthily went into Georgetown Elementary School, located in a remote region of El Dorado County, and rejected the notion that every single 8th grader is somehow magically prepared for algebra, when in fact most aren’t. Instead, she parsed out those kids who were ill-prepared for the rigors of higher math and those who had the skills and brought the school’s math test scores up by 88 percentage points – the highest, by far, in the state. As a founder of a private Christian school, I have always supported and protected funding for education. It’s really a no-brainer to support the education of our future generation of kids. That being said, I don’t think California leaders achieveacademic greatness simply… Read More

America’s fifth largest county, San Diego, once more has a Republican plurality. In the last month or so the county has gone from a 4,850 Democrat advantage to a 891 Republican advantage. Cheers to San Diego County Republican Party Chairman Tony Krvaric and his team.… Read More

While I have some general concerns about becoming nauseous in the mere presence of ultra-shrill, ultra-left wing, and ultra-annoying Senator Barbara Boxer, I am going to take some Pepto and suck it up — because tonight I am going to be at the United States Senate debate between Boxer and Carly Fiorina taking place at St. Mary’s College in Moraga in the East Bay Area.

This should be an excellent show — and frankly my expectations for this debate are high, at least in terms of drama, and presentation. Both Boxer and Fiorina are articulate, forceful people and that should make for good show — important for bloggers covering the event!

As always, our coverage will be fair — and biased. As a matter of fact, we’re calling the debate for Fiorina now. Details to come later…

The debate will apparently be carried live on C-SPAN — which means you can tune into C-SPAN via your cable or satellite provider — or you can go to C-SPAN’s website and catch their live feed there. The action starts at 7pm and goes for one… Read More