Six years after the controversial California High-Speed Rail Authority was approved by the California Legislature, just 7% of the estimated 1,100 pieces needed for the first leg to travel 130 miles across sparsely populated Central California farm country has been
With producer prices in China declining for nearly three years, the European Union as China’s biggest trading partner has been importing deflation. But with Chinese deflation accelerating, Europe seems doomed to suffer a deflationary crash as consumers delay purchases, companies
Away from all the national bleeding and great gnashing of teeth in the Democratic Party, the sun is shining bright for newly reelected Governor Jerry Brown as he picked up his second solvency award with a state credit upgrade from
The accelerating United States energy boom allowed America to record its highest level of oil exports in 57 years and its second highest level since 1920 in the month of July. After becoming the world’s largest producer of natural gas
With a hot stock market driving commercial demand for engineers, and Edward Snowden’s Citizen Four running in theaters, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers spoke at Silicon Valley’s Stanford University on Monday in an effort to recruit America’s best and
Facebook has been on a roll this year, with its stock up stock up 54%. With the company delivering third quarter revenues increase of 59.0%, the Morgan Stanley brokerage issued a buy recommendation on FB stock at $75 a share
Groucho Marx famously said: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” The quote sums up the depressing realization for Tinseltown’s progressives this morning that a conservative Republican wave
In what appears to be a coordinated strategy to inflict a humiliating blow against President Obama on election day, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (known as ISIS or ISIL) and their Al Qaeda allies (Jabhat al-Nusra) launched
Attorney General Kamala Harris released her second annual California Data Breach Report on October 28, which revealed hacking penetration is up 600% since 2012. This year, the Attorney General issued 12 recommendations to companies in various industries, and to the legislature
As someone who was forced into Covered California (CC) last year when Aetna, my long-time and excellent healthcare insurer, exited California’s individual market, I am painfully aware of the technical incompetence of the CC website. This year, the CC website
A Dutch start-up called Blendle is taking global the equivalent of “a penny for your thoughts” by pioneering a Spotify-style market for copyright journalism. To begin to touch a world of seven billion people, Blendle just raised $3.8 million in a first
After a two-year suspension in issuing nuclear power plant licenses, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has quietly granted long-term licensing renewals for two Limerick Generating Station Units near Philadelphia. Unit 1 is renewed until 2044 and Unit 2 until 2049. The
California public employees now enjoy the highest benefits of any state in the nation. To pretend to fund this largess, California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) is an “outlier” among public pension plans in using creative accounting to blur its grossly underfunded
Although lousy quarterly earnings would result in lower stock prices for most companies, shareholders gave Amazon a pass for over a decade as the high-tech company rapidly grew top-line sales to become America’s Everything Store. But in a year when
TechCrunch reports that the Amazon Rewards Visa Card has joined Visa, MasterCard and American Express in accepting Apple Pay for credit card transactions. Although some were surprised that Amazon would do business with Apple’s “closed garden,” Chase Bank is already working with
In a decision that is sure to inflame San Francisco politics, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District Charles Breyer ruled Tuesday a San Francisco law requiring landlords to pay displaced tenants the difference between current rent and the amount needed to
WhatsApp Chief Executive Officer Jan Koum, whose mobile-messaging company was acquired by Facebook for $22 billion this year, confronted a dicey past as he joined the Facebook board as the third-largest shareholder. Koum apologized for actions that resulted in a
Arthur Laffer made his name as the USC professor who helped give credibility to the Reagan Administration’s supply-side economics, based on the idea that higher tax rates inadvertently result in lower taxes collected. But California Governor Jerry Brown’s recent State of
Kaiser Permanente and other health providers are putting pressure on the powerful California Nurses Association (CAN) in negotiations for reductions in medical staffing and compensation due to the implementation of California’s version of Obamacare. Union nurses on Friday tried to
With the Los Angeles Unified School District Board ready to fire Superintendent John Deasy, he resigned as head of the nation’s second-largest public school system just six months after he spiked his annual salary to $384,184 with $54,184 in buy-outs. After
Civilian drones have been deployed by California farmers to monitor crop growth, cartographers to create more precise maps of the Swiss Alps, and even by archaeologists in Bolivia to help excavate ancient Inca ruins. Most of these early adopters that have legitimized civilian
Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said during a news conference Wednesday that a Texas nurse should not have taken a flight the day before she was diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus. The CDC acknowledged on October
The highly respected Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota just advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus
Here is a brilliant Internet business plan: We get rich by creating a service that goes viral and generates 175 million customers. We then make $.08 a year on each and every one of them! All we have to do
