Finding Water for the San Joaquin Valley

By Edward Ring
12/06/2024
Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley require roughly 15 million acre feet of water per year to irrigate their crops. In return they produce more than half of all California’s agricultural output. But everything is changing. Since 2000 the amount of water the farmers receive from the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project has...

TAGS: California water policy, farming, San Joaquin Valley, water

Union Greed Drives California to Bankruptcy

By Steven Greenhut
04/01/2013
Few non-local people pay much attention to the goings-on in Stockton, a hard-pressed Gold-Rush-era industrial city of 300,000 that sits in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley at the eastern edge of the California Delta. But bondholders, taxpayers and government officials throughout the country will be listening to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein’s expected ruling...

TAGS: California Public Employees Retirement System, San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, Stockton bankruptcy

Watch Union Official’s Rude Antics at California High-Speed Rail Conference

By Kevin Dayton
01/15/2013
On January 11, 2013, a video camera recorded a stunning public tirade by Fresno’s top construction union official at a conference about supposed local contracting opportunities for the first segment of California’s High Speed Rail. Below is video footage of the beginning of a panel discussion about Project Labor Agreements, and below that is the...

TAGS: Associated Builders and Contractors, California high speed rail, California High-Speed Rail Authority, Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, Community Benefits Agreements, Community Benefits Policy, Gray Davis, Project Labor Agreements, Proposition 1A (November 2008), San Joaquin Valley, State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, U.S. Department of Labor

Unions Creep Closer to Monopolizing California High-Speed Rail Construction

By Kevin Dayton
12/06/2012
UPDATE (December 7, 2012): A article today in the Fresno Bee (‘Needy’ Workers Will Get Jobs on High-Speed Rail) about the “Community Benefits” policy approved on December 6, 2012 by the California High-Speed Rail Authority contains a stunning revelation: Five teams of contractors have been invited to bid on the first major contract for a stretch of the rail route between...

TAGS: Associated Builders and Contractors of California, Bob Balgenorth, California High-Speed Rail Authority, Clark Construction, Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction (CFEC), Fresno Bee, Project Labor Agreements, San Diego Convention Center Expansion, San Joaquin Valley, State Building and Construction Trades Council of California