The measure would also accelerate the state’s goal of reaching 50% renewable energy. Legislation approved two years ago set a deadline of 2030 , but the new proposal would move that up to 2025.
Federal Transit Administration has put the brakes on a $647 million grant to help pay for electrification of a commuter train system on the San Francisco Peninsula that was considered a key part of extending California’s planned high-speed rail line to the Bay Area.
Drivers in the car-crazy California metropolis spent 104 hours each driving in congestion during peak travel periods last year. That topped second-place Moscow at 91 hours and third-place New York at 89, according to a traffic scorecard compiled by Inrix, a transportation analytics firm.
Gas prices in the Los Angeles/Orange County region stood near $3 a gallon Monday while they topped $2.90 in the Inland Empire — up more than 50 cents from a year ago as OPEC production cutbacks worked their way to local pumps. . . It’s normal for gas prices in Southern California to increase this time of year as the state switches over to summer blend gasoline. The gas is 8-12 cents a gallon more expensive to make than winter blend gasoline, according to Automobile Club of Southern California spokesman Jeffrey Spring. Down refineries also cause gas prices to rise in the spring.
Texas has 11,592 turbines and an installed wind capacity of 20,321 megawatts, according to the American Wind Energy Association: three times as much capacity as the next state, Iowa. (California is third.) For the 12-month period ending in October last year, wind provided 12.68% of Texas’s electricity production – equivalent to powering 5.7 million homes.
Some of the only state money available to incoming college students could get cut under Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget.
“At the first meeting of the Trump Leadership Council — an advisory group consisting of top CEOs from major companies — President Donald Trump asked these business leaders what was their biggest problem. I expected the answer to be America’s anti-growth tax system. The CEOs almost all listed the federal tax code as an albatross, but not the heaviest one. But I was surprised to learn that most insisted he biggest restraint on growth is federal red tape and regulation. Manufacturers, energy firms, financial services, agriculture interests — across all industries — federal rules were seen as mindless, inefficient, costly and incomprehensible.”
“However, recriminations about Oroville, even if deserved, should not obscure the larger lesson that we must be willing to do – and pay for – the maintenance and enhancement of our vital public facilities. That’s obviously true of dams and other hydrologic systems that supply water and protect us from floods, but also applies to the electric power grid, our roadway network and everything else that a modern civilization needs to function.”
The crisis at Oroville is a third act in the state’s history: One majestic generation built great dams, a second enjoyed them while they aged, and a third fiddles as they now erode.
The change of gear is recent. One car in a hundred sold today is powered by electricity. The proportion of EVs on the world’s roads is still well below 1%. Most forecasters had reckoned that by 2025 that would rise to around 4%. Those estimates are undergoing a big overhaul as carmakers announce huge expansions in their production of EVs. Morgan Stanley, a bank, now says that by 2025 EV sales will hit 7m a year and make up 7% of vehicles on the road. Exane BNP Paribas, another bank, reckons that it could be more like 11% (see chart). But as carmakers plan for ever more battery power, even these figures could quickly seem too low.
Some of the diseases of poverty are individual, but some of them thrive in congregation (gang violence is the obvious example), and the only treatment for these is dilution. A 2000 Brookings study of Jack Kemp’s famous Moving to Opportunity program found “striking” evidence that poor families who moved out of poor communities with help from the Department of Housing and Urban Development earned more, enjoyed better health, and saw their children do better in school than did families who stayed behind.
But perhaps the simplest step that could be taken immediately to advance the fight for $50 and reduce the skills gap is protecting the entry-level jobs that largely train the American workforce. In practice this means not pursuing minimum wage increases that destroy these opportunities. While only a small part of the workforce earns the minimum wage at a given time, a giant slice of it got its start at this level. Thousands of CEOs, including Jeff Bezos, Lloyd Blankfein, Warren Buffett, Michael Dell and even Barack Obama, began their careers at entry-level wage jobs.
The unaffordability problem affecting the Bay Area-Silicon Valley region of California is a serious statewide crisis that Sacramento isn’t taking seriously. But this problem isn’t the Bay Area’s alone. California’s most populous region – Greater Los Angeles – is also plagued with unaffordable homes and rentals. And March 2017’s consolidated Los Angeles election has housing affordability front and center.
Fueled by a dated system that does not always respond to market incentives or pressure, costs and surpluses of energy have both grown in California, raising pointed questions about what residents should expect from rates and regulations alike.
On Feb. 8, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBE) released its annual ranking of the 50 states “according to 55 policy measures, including a wide array of tax, regulatory, and government spending measures.” The findings were not surprising — Nevada, Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming and Florida were at the top, while Vermont, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey and California were at the bottom. What is troublesome is that year after year the business-unfriendly states do so little to improve their rankings. As the author of the study, Raymond J. Keating, chief economist of the SBE Council, noted: “Too many elected officials choose to ignore the basic economic realities of how government affects entrepreneurship, business, and investment.”