California's water outlook is grim, but behind the bad news there may be some good signs for those backing the November water bond.
From Capitol Weekly's Samantha Gallegos: "When it comes to water, there’s bad news flowing for the state and its farmers, water agencies, customers, environmentalists, home owners, towns, landscapers — you name it — as California faces a third consecutive dry year."
"But even as the rain clouds appear sparse, there may be a silver lining for the backers of a major ballot measure: Experts say the grim outlook could spur voters to approve a multibillion-dollar bond facing voters in November 2014. It could bring to reality the need to borrow money and resolve some of the state’s water issues."
Speaking of water, LA's Department of Water and Power wants to put a $680 million solar energy plant near Manzanar, the place where citzens of Japanese Ancestry were interned during World War II.
From the LAT's Louis Sahagun: "The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Southern Owens Valley Solar Project would erect 1 million photovoltaic panels on 1,200 acres it owns roughly 6 miles south of Independence and 3 1/2 miles east of the Manzanar National Historic Site on U.S. 395."
"Opponents led by Japanese American organizations and National Park Service officials are concerned that views of a solar complex in the distance would destroy an important element in understanding what internees here experienced 70 years ago: To be in Manzanar felt like being in the middle of nowhere."
For some, the end of the holidays means the end of jobless benefits -- 220,000 in California alone. Not a whole lot of "Happy New Year" here.
From the LAT's Marc Lifsher: "Congress went home for the holidays without approving a federally funded extension of jobless benefits for about 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work six months or longer. And Republicans, who control the House, are showing little inclination to take up the measure when lawmakers return Jan. 7."
"For unemployed Californians, the cutoff caps a year made more difficult by the state's Employment Development Department, which has been struggling since September with a botched upgrade of its aging computer systems. Payments to tens of thousands of unemployed workers have been delayed, sometimes for months. EDD workers are still processing many claims by hand, reducing the staff available to answer phone calls from frustrated clients."
It seems like once a month somebody is coming up with a plan to carve California up into separate states. So what would the six-state map proposed by Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper look like?
From the LAT's Anthony York: "The Oregon-border state of Jefferson, the least populous of the six new entities, with about 949,000 residents, would be more than 80% white, with Latinos making up just 15% of the population, and blacks just 1%, the smallest numbers of any of the six proposed states.'
"The largest state, coastal West California, which would stretch from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo, with a population of more than 11.3 million, would be just one-third white, with Latinos (46%) Asians (13%) and African Americans (8%) making up about two-thirds of the overall population. Between them, those groups would constitute a majority in four of the six states.'
"If the six states existed in last presidential election, Mitt Romney would have narrowly carried Jefferson and Central California, while President Obama would have won wide victories in three of the other four states, while narrowly carrying South California, the state that would be made up of Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties."
Applications are up at the California State University and the hot campus in the system is Long Beach.
From Josh Dulaney in the San Bernardino Sun: "Applications to the largest public university system in the country continue to climb, with the California State University system receiving a record 775,498 applications, according to preliminary figures obtained Monday."
"Cal State Long Beach led the 23-campus system with the most applications among first-time freshmen and transfer students hoping to enroll in fall 2014, according to the CSU Chancellor’s office. The campus received 56,281 applications from freshmen, 667 more than last year. San Diego State was the second most popular campus with 55,780 applications."
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Happy Holidays!
