Droughts are naturally occurring; water shortages are government-created and political. A proposed California ballot measure titled “Water Priorities for All,” would shift bond money earmarked for California’s bullet train and use it instead to build new dams and enlarge existing dams.

The initiative would also amend the State Constitution to include language prioritizing residential and agricultural water use over environmental and recreational claims on river water while leaving water rights untouched.

The ballot measure is under attack by a coalition of seemingly environmental opponents. The Committee to Stop the Special Interest Water Grab, led by David Guy, president of the Northern California Water Association, Tim Johnson, president of the California Rice Commission and a “contract administrator” at California Rice Industry Association, and political operative Steve Maviglio of Forza Communications, a Democratic strategist and big supporter of High Speed Rail and the Twin Tunnels, have launched an all-out assault campaign against the California Water Priorities Initiative.

All communications against “Water Priorities for All” have come… Read More

Assemblywoman ShannonGrove’s fight for public union employees who have been battling the Service Employees International Union for transparency was stilted Wednesday when Democrats killed two bills aimed at opening unions’ books, and allowing more frequent votes on union representation.

After several years of nasty legal battles with the SEIU to see where dues money is spent, the union members came to Grove and asked for her help. She allowed them to draw up two bills attempting at union reforms and transparency.

Grove’s two union reform bills,AB… Read More

Freedom of the press protects the right to obtain and publish information or opinions without government censorship or fear of punishment, whether or not government finds the material offensive, or disagrees with it.

Free speech enables people to obtain information from a diversity of sources, make decisions, and communicate those decisions to the government.

Recently I wrote about having my press credential renewal denied by the Capitol Correspondents Association of California, appointed as an arm of the California Legislature’s Joint Rules Committee, which has the final say in press… Read More

In my last article, Why Can’t California Farmers Get the Water They Need?, exposed were Gov. Brown’s appointees at the State Water Resources Control Board who ordered the release of massive amounts of water from the New Melones Reservoir and Lake Tulloch, to save a dozen fish, and Gov. Brown who has systematically booted a number of qualified people off of the California Water Commission, the body that decides how to spend $2.7 billion in Prop. 1 Water Bond water storage money.

… Read More

Every year in California’s state capital, 120 full-time lawmakers, 2,000 full-time staff, and 130 legislative committees, introduce an average of 5,000 bills each legislative session, thus creating a booming industry for California’s 1,100 registered lobbyists. They do this with a $150 billion annual budget. And they do this while simultaneously managing to keep out most of the public.

In… Read More

On the heels of the Sacramento Taxpayer Association awarding the bankrupt Sacramento Regional Transit its annual GOLDEN FLEECE AWARD, the Sacramento Bee published a story claiming Regional Transit “may be better than you think.” Rather than acting like a watchdog on government, the Bee appears to be the Public Relations firm of RT.

GOLDEN FLEECE AWARDs are bestowed upon public officials, governmental agencies and organizations for their “wasteful, ridiculous, or ironic use of taxpayers’ money.”The SacTax FLEECE AWARD went to the… Read More

On Friday April 15, 2016 the three-member California Agricultural Labor Relations Board voted to set aside the November 5, 2013 decertification election of the United Farm Workersat Gerawan Farming, and destroy the Gerawan employees’ ballots.

In other words, the ALRB is saying, “We will protect employee’s rights by destroying their ballots?”

Acting as an arm of the union, the ALRB did this to not to protect the farm workers – as is the ARLB mission – but to protect the flailing United Farm Workers labor union. Against every bit of evidence to the contrary, in doing so, the ALRB has declared by default that the employer has somehow violated the law. But in reality, the ALRB has violated the law, as I’ve chronicled in hundreds of stories, for nearly four years now.

This decision punishes the Gerawan workers, and demonstrates just how… Read More

Part ll – California’s Political Water Wars Heating Up. Part l is HERE.

Despite some nice rainfall this year, the more than two dozenState Water Contractorsthroughout the state have been told to expect 45 percent water allocations.

A recent Daily… Read More