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Five Arizona counties have been designated by federal agriculture officials as primary natural disaster areas due to damage caused by ongoing drought and related disasters that began in January. Contiguous counties in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah are also part of the declaration which went into effect last week. Apache, Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, and Santa Cruz counties were recognized by the USDA as natural disaster areas on August 16, making all qualified farm operators within those areas el

The situation for residents of Kings Beach, California has finally taken a turn for the better.  As we have reported here and here, this small town set hard against the North Lake Tahoe shore has been targeted for a potentially noisy and polluting biomass energy plant in the middle of a residential neighborhood, a mere block away from the town’s only elementary school, and only three blocks from the lake itself. But on July 26, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) Executive Director Joanne Ma

California ranked dead last in a poll of 556 CEOs asking which state is the best place to do business. While CEOs are certainly not an unbiased lot, they also have considerable say in where to open new facilities. And it appears they would rather be hung upside down than do business in California. This should be of concern to all Californians, especially in the current nasty recession. The survey asked CEOs to grade states based on three criteria: taxes and regulation, workforce quality, and li

Lately, there's been a growing contrarian view of California's proposed renewable energy future. Instead of clean energy flowing seamlessly from solar, wind, and geothermal plants through a smart grid to California homes and businesses, these contrarians see a system doomed to fail, soaring energy prices, businesses leaving the state, and huge profits made by those who gamed the system with the help of compliant, overzealous state bureaucracies. As you can see, these contrarians are not embracin

The biomass plant being proposed for the small North Lake Tahoe community of Kings Beach looks more and more like a disaster in the making rather than a smart environmental advance.  As I reported here last week, the plant would literally be located in a residential neighborhood only 1000 feet from an elementary school and just a few blocks from the lakefront.  The potential for noise and air pollution ranges from unknown to enormous depending on the type of technology used and the funding avail

It certainly seems that way sometimes, doesn't it? The California legislature shambles around, bumping into things, with no apparent sense of direction. Issues that managed to get resolved quickly in other states (like Utah revising their public pension plans in one year flat) take ponderously interminable amounts of time for California to even start pondering them. This certainly seems zombie-like to me, and also to economist William Watkins of California Lutheran University.  He says Californ

A hand-lettered sign at the corner of Speckled and Bear Avenues in Kings Beach, CA -- two narrow lanes by most city's standards -- cries out for attention to those passing eastbound toward CA-267:  NO BIO-MESS. It's hard to take the protest seriously.  The sign is rough-hewn, as is the neighborhood.  In fact, much of the Kings Beach "grid" -- the central, in-town part of the small town hard up against the northern edge of Lake Tahoe -- is haphazard at best.  Here a dilapidated trailer park, the

Riverside Public Utilities thought they had locked in a deal for renewable energy that would put them comfortably ahead of the new California law mandating that all utilities be 33% renewable by 2020. They had a contract with Shoshone Renaissance in Utah to provide geothermal energy at a competitive price, but Shoshone was unable to get adequate financing to build the plant, with the result that the contract was voided. This leaves Riverside scrambling for new sources of renewable energy as the

California budget negotiations have an eternal air of unreality about them. Negotiators make lofty assumptions about income and revenue, only to be proven wrong later. Complicated proposals requiring the approval of eternally squabbling factions are floated as though they have a fine chance of being passed. Democrats resist spending cuts, while Republicans insist taxes must never be raised. Both sides accuse the other of villainous maneuvers, of moving money around from entity to entity in a mad

California continues to struggle economically even as other states may be starting to slightly recover. Sure, these are tough times, but Bill Watkins at Newgeography says California's problems are made worse by DURT: Delay, Uncertainty, Regulation, and Taxes. Such impediments put California at a disadvantage compared to other states. Here's a simple example of this. In California, there is no information on the Secretary of State's website that I could find on how to start an LLC. The process i