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    While Our Nation's Progressives Shudder... A Note from the Left Coast

    By oldenGoldenDecoy on Wed, 11/12/2014 - 2:53am |

    Infrastructure = Job Creation = Happy Voters . . .

     

    Jerry Brown has nation-sized plans for California -- if he can keep spending in check.

     

    Brown presides over the world’s eighth-largest economy. Its health has been fifth best in the U.S. since he took office at the start of 2011, according to the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States. While anti-tax, anti-government Republicans in Kansas, Arkansas, Maine and Virginia promise gains through austerity, Brown is setting out to show that public spending will improve his state’s prosperity now and in the future.

    .


    “I’m going to try and do everything I can to keep the state in balance but I also want to build things,” Brown told reporters in his Sacramento office after the election last week. “It’s a balance between holding my foot on the brake while pushing my other foot on the accelerator. It’s definitely paradoxical.”

    .

    Brown has vowed to push forward with a plan to construct a $68 billion high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles even though funding for the project remains in doubt. The state was able to get $3 billion in federal money before Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 2011 and cut off funding for the project.

    .

    Brown also wants to spend $15 billion to build a pair of water tunnels, each the width of a two-lane interstate highway, and $10 billion to restore an ecologically sensitive river delta they’ll run beneath, east of the San Francisco Bay. The tunnels would ship water more reliably from northern California to thirsty farms and cities in the south. They would also bolster the ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is on the verge of collapse from supplying water to 25 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland.

    .

    California is already a global leader in clean air initiatives and in efforts to curb climate change. Brown said he wants to push that advance even more, setting the state’s goal of getting 33 percent of its energy from renewable sources even higher. “I want to make sure that what we are doing works, such as energy efficiency in our appliances and in our buildings, and constructing a more sophisticated electricity grid, encouraging the purchase of electric vehicles and moving our renewable generation from 22 percent to 33 percent and then going beyond that,” Brown said. “All those things are what we are doing now and we have to keep doing them and keep doing them in a sensible way.”

     

    The above passages are from Bloomberg...

    Jerry Brown Sets California on a Course of Public Works - Nov 9, 2014

     

    ~OGD~

     

    Comments

    Rick Scott and friends have been buying up land in Florida between Orlando and Miami to build a private high speed rail.  That is why he turned down the stimulus.  Jeb Bush had several private toll roads built but they are too expensive to drive on and few people use them.  In the mean time Rick Scott will figure out how to pass grants on to companies he owns and then put the money back into his pocket so he can run for another office.  

     


    by trkingmomoe on Wed, 11/12/2014 - 10:33am

    My heart does go out to you...

    Now... Here's a small window into who Jerry Brown truly is. After his first stint as governor, before he left the office in January 1983 he signed a governor's order directing then State Treasurer Jesse M. Unruh and then State Controller Kenneth Cory and the Department of Finance to return all monies paid from state tax that remained in the general fund to each and every person in the state that had paid state taxes. Our cut of that return was $750.00. That amount also included all interest accrued up to that date. He explained his actions as follows; Reagan can start with a clean slate but he won't be able to dip into the hard earned money of all the Californians that had paid taxes to help him run the state during his tenure.

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Wed, 11/12/2014 - 1:20pm

    Republicans in Congress always prefer sending unrestricted block grants of federal money (call it money laundering?), or to use state tax moneys, for projects, with 100% state control (by guys like Scott).......because:

    1. The GOP usually controls the legislature and attorney general office, so there is more opportunity to avoid investigation for graft, lining pockets, and political patronage for GOP businesses.

    2. There is less oversight and/or regulation on state run projects. It's much easier to avoid getting caught running 20 different racketeering operations in 20 different states than just one run by the feds. If one or two are uncovered, see (1), meanwhile the big shots like Rubio, Ryan etc in DC, of course, keep their hands clean.

    2A. This is why the GOP likes a myriad of voting restrictions, state by state, with no federal rules, for voting rights activists it's like whack-a-mole.

    3. Allowing the federal government to do anything positive for the common folk is completely contrary to the ideology of the right, and is DOA in a GOP Congress.

    4. Republicans really don't have any experience, motivation or skill at designing projects on a national scale to serve the nation. Their skill set ends at campaigning for election.


    by NCD on Wed, 11/12/2014 - 3:08pm

    I just note that California is facing its worst series of droughts in its history.

    I must have read ten articles on this mess over the last week or so.

    There are communities that have to have water delivered and people have to grab a bottle of water before going to the bathroom.

    I am so lucky to live in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.

    It will be more than interesting to see how they handle this disaster.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/california-drought-tulare-county.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A9%22%7D

     

    http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000002980095/californias-extreme-drought-explained.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A9%22%7D&module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A9%22%7D

    The issue of water and clean water is going to trump any other  issues facing tens of millions of Americans now and in  the  near  future.

    Again, it will be interesting to see the measures taken in  California over the next decade.


    by Richard Day on Wed, 11/12/2014 - 2:33pm

    If we can build oil pipelines we can build a system of water lines to California.  One of the things that I have learned from hanging out in climate blogs is areas will be much wetter and areas much dryer.  We are too old to see this but there will be reservoirs built in wet areas to catch the flooding and piped to very dry areas.  The corporate farms and their practices will have to end and smaller more sustainable agriculture will have to happen.  

    The problem is California can be managed but the Atlantic swallowing the East Coast is doomed in some places like Miami. Miami will be the first to go because of porous lime stone.  You can't build a dike around it.  The water will just seep up through the ground.  


    by trkingmomoe on Thu, 11/13/2014 - 12:40pm

    I think its likely you underestimate the difficulty and cost of pumping water from wet to dry areas. Liquids don't flow uphill and its likely that water will have to be pumped over the Rocky Mts to California. Perhaps this is part of a solution for drinking water to cities but not for farms which use a significantly larger percentage of water. Even with more sustainable drought friendly crops paying for the costs of the water needed to farm those dry areas would likely be prohibitive.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 11/13/2014 - 4:38pm

    Absolutely correct. As many ecological analyses point out, there's a trade off between water usage and energy usage. One can expend energy to get more water, whether it's through pumping from wetter areas or through desalination, but then you have to worry about how to generate the energy.


    by Verified Atheist on Thu, 11/13/2014 - 5:55pm

    You're correct about energy usage...

    But over the long haul, here in California when it comes to energy, as Governor Brown stated:

    “I want to make sure that what we are doing works.... moving our renewable generation from 22 percent to 33 percent and then going beyond that...”

    And also keep in mind what else he said:

    “It’s a balance between holding my foot on the brake while pushing my other foot on the accelerator. It’s definitely paradoxical.”

     

    Jerry Brown is living breathing paradox...

    ~OGD~


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Thu, 11/13/2014 - 7:53pm

    The 100 year old Los Angeles Aqueduct . . .

    The aqueduct had been designed to deliver water to Los Angeles entirely by gravity, requiring no power for the pumping of water along the route.

    That's why the Los Angeles Aqueduct is considered a 233 mile engineering marvel.

    The system can provide 775 cu ft/sec of water. That is equal to 347,820 gallons per minute.

    The California Aqueduct is a whole other animal.

    ~OGD~

     


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Thu, 11/13/2014 - 7:38pm

    I am not going to rule out technology in the future to tackle moving water. Where we grow our food will change and how we grow it will change.  We will see a migration of people to better climate away from the harsh dry areas.  


    by trkingmomoe on Thu, 11/13/2014 - 8:27pm