California

This decade has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area (the San Jose-San Francisco combined statistical area or CSA), with the addition of three Central Valley metropolitan areas, Stockton, Modesto and Merced. Over the same period, there has been both a drop in the population growth rate and a shift of growth to the Central Valley exurban metropolitan areas.  read more »

As California continues to throw good money after bad and baste in the fires of its own Gehenna, the White House has threatened to cut off emergency aid (FEMA) to residents displaced by the recent forest fires.

The state’s mismanagement of past funds has put it in the situation it is in today. Rather than patch the hole in the sinking ship the state would rather bring in a larger sump pump to evacuate the water. The water in this case is actually its fire maintenance budget and the sump pump represents more FEMA funding.  read more »

Californians are mired in a conundrum of conflicting goals to accommodate its growing population, its growing number of registered vehicles, the need for more housing to accommodate its growth, and the unrestricted growth of its forests where much of the housing is encroaching.  read more »

For decades, there has been substantial dispersion of population in Greater Los Angeles (Los Angeles combined statistical area or CSA), as the suburban areas outside the urban core have dominated population growth. The latest population estimates by the US Census Bureau confirm the continuation of that trend. But something has changed. In recent years the Los Angeles CSA has experienced an unprecedented slowing of growth. The little growth has occurred has been dispersed away from coast, especially from Los Angeles and Orange counties to inland Riverside and San Bernardino counties.  read more »

For virtually all of its history from statehood in 1850 to 2000, California was a magnet drawing households from the rest of the United States for better lives. Indeed, in a nation that had its "American Dream," California had its own "California Dream."  There was no Oregon dream, despite its mountains , seashore and proximity to California, nor was there a Maine or South Carolina dream.  read more »

A California Regional Sustainability Plan for the 88 cities of Los Angeles County to be carbon neutral by 2050 includes a sunset to the oil and gas industry. That 220-page plan will also sunset the 5th largest economy in the world. Sunsetting, as used here, means bringing it to a slow and untimely death.  read more »

California may have gotten its global allure from the Gold Rush and the movies, but it’s planes, missiles and now drones and spaceships that have underpinned the state’s industrial emergence.

Today, after decades of rapid decline, California’s aerospace employment is growing again, albeit slowly, providing a new chance for the state’s productive economy.  read more »

California prides its image as the green leader in America. However, California’s love of importing electricity and oil exposes the states’ irreverent passion to go green at any cost, and delegates the states’ responsibility for environmental stewardship to other countries and states that have significantly less environmental controls than California.  read more »

Tech elites paid for the rope that may hang them.

The term “useful idiot,” often credited to Vladimir Lenin, applies to people supporting a cause or movement injurious to their own self-interest.  read more »

Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes. We’ve seen this fight before. The current conflict fundamentally reprises the end of the French feudal era, where the Third Estate, made up of the commoners, challenged the hegemony of the First Estate and Second, made up of the church and aristocracy.  read more »