In an effort to spend the toll-payers new ultra-high toll cash before the deal was politically exposed and stopped, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) shoved $93 million to a politically correct group of hedge fund managers for a new headquarters in arguably the most expensive city in the Bay area – San Francisco. A number of well known commercial real estate brokers said it was one of the quickest deals they have ever seen – period.

WSJ - By BOB TITA

      Carl Icahn's purchase of a large stake in Navistar International Corp. and his recent investment in Oshkosh Corp. suggest the billionaire investor known for corporate shake-ups is targeting the commercial truck industry.

      Mr. Icahn's specific intentions for Navistar or Oshkosh aren't readily apparent, but the notoriously uneven demand for trucks and both companies' shrinking stock prices lately could work in his favor if he pursues changes to raise the value of the companies' shares.

      In a regulatory filing Thursday, Mr. Icahn said he acquired 9.8% of Navistar stock on "the belief that the shares were undervalued at current levels." He added that he wants to meet with Navistar executives to discuss business strategies and the possibility of adding directors backed by him to the company's board. Analysts say splashy options such as dismantling Navistar won't relieve the company's exposure to lumpy end markets or lower its manufacturing costs.

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) – Authorities went door to door with guns drawn Wednesday in search of a disgruntled employee they say opened fire at a Northern California limestone quarry, killing two and wounding six, before possibly wounding another woman in an attempted carjacking.

Schools were on lockdown or closed in the Silicon Valley city of Cupertino as SWAT teams sought Shareef Allman, 47.

Allman was at a routine safety meeting at the quarry at about 4:30 a.m. when he became disgruntled and left, Santa Clara County Sheriff's Lt. Rick Sung said. He then returned with a handgun and rifle and started shooting people, Sung said.

OC Register

The mainstream press has been criticized, rightly so, for parroting what it’s told, uncritically accepting outrageous allegations as gospel truth and effectively being the unthinking mouthpiece for political correctness. No topic demonstrates the truth of these criticisms more than the press’ reporting on “global warming.”

Today’s egregious example is from USA Today. The opening sentence of its story goes this way:

“Global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, jumped 45% between 1990 and 2010, and reached an all-time high of 33 billion tons last year, the European Commission reports.”

Notice the assumptions. First, that CO2 emissions are “the main cause of global warming.” Nowhere in the story will you read a hint that legions of scientists dispute that claim. Nowhere do you read that many global warmists concede CO2 is but a trace atmospheric gas and its influence on temperature pales in comparison with that of water vapor. And of course not a clue is offered in the story that the sun probably is responsible for any fluctuations in global temperature far more than anything else. These facts are not even on the reporter’s radar, obviously.

Another splinter environmental group counted up all the red-dot bad air days in California for the past two years for a “new report” on ozone related smog. You probably already know what they found and surprisingly the Central Valley didn’t come in first as the article above would make you believe.

If you guessed that the Riverside and San Bernardino (the Inland Empire) residents had the worst air (according to this report), you're right - they came in at number one. According to LA-based Environment California, a statewide, environmental lawyered-up advocacy organization, a third of the time (122 days) the Inland Empire air exceeded current federal standards for ground level ozone set at 125 ppb. You know ozone, that scary gas that President Obama told the job killing, junk science based EPA to back away from three weeks ago. The EPA has developed an Air Quality Index (AQI) to help explain air pollution levels to the general public. Under the current standards, eight-hour average ozone mole fractions of 85 to 104 nmol/mol are described as "unhealthy for sensitive groups," 105 nmol/mol to 124 nmol/mol as "unhealthy," and 125 nmol/mol to 404 nmol/mol as "very unhealthy”.

Another environmental wealth redistribution ploy – don’t be fooled

Thursday, Sep. 22, 2011

When high temperatures, hovering around the 100-degree mark, the right wind direction and the natural geography of the Valley “the hole” meet, the air quality suffers in this perfect storm. When levels of ozone rise to a point that has been arbitrarily designated as harmful (to people), it will trip EPA fines on the locals. Yes, the Valley ozone levels, the gas that President Obama told the EPA not to lower the standard on in late August, had readings inching close to a violation of federal standards earlier this week.

A reading over 125 parts per billion of ozone, even 1 part over would trigger a violation. The Valley during certain times of the year is considered to have some of the worst air quality in California. "We don't want to pass 125," said Jaime Holt, spokeswoman for the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District. "We're still at risk, but we're holding steady."

Energy Policy: Deep-water drilling will resume in the Florida Strait when a giant, semi-submersible oil rig en route from Singapore arrives later this fall. The bad news is it will not be American.

While U.S. oil and energy prices "necessarily skyrocket," as President Obama once said they would under energy policies that have imposed a de facto ban on offshore drilling, a massive Chinese-built semi-submersible oil rig is on its way from Singapore to a drilling position off northwest Cuba perhaps as little as 50 miles from Key West, Fla.

The long-predicted move could come as early as November, as Spanish oil giant Repsol YPF leads an international consortium that will operate the rig known as Scarabeo 9. It wants to wait until the hurricane season ends before it begins drilling.

Six wells are planned to be drilled with this rig by the various international companies that own exploration rights off the north shore of the island.

Repsol drilled the only offshore well in Cuba in 2004 and said at the time it had found hydrocarbons. It plans to drill at depths of more than 5,500 feet, deeper than the blown-out Deepwater Horizon well that spewed 5 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico two summers ago.

Published Thursday, Sep. 15, 2011 - Sacramento Bee

SAN FRANCISCO – Still smarting from the Legislature's defeat of his tax and jobs plan, Gov. Jerry Brown accused Republican lawmakers Wednesday of an "unconstitutional delegation of power," saying they are controlled by the anti-tax group Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

"The Republicans in Sacramento have one jockey," Brown said in a fiery speech to about 1,000 nurses at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis.

In recent days, Brown has decried the GOP, rallied labor unions and called for "a war on unemployment" in an uncharacteristic spate of public appeals.

The public appearances – including three speeches in three days – are in sharp contrast to the low profile he kept after previous legislative failures, when budget talks with Republicans stalled in March and collapsed months later.

A high profile, politically well-connected California solar energy company that had won a $535 million loan guarantee from the Obama Administration declared bankruptcy earlier this month and closed its doors sending 1100 workers to the unemployment line.   The demise of Solyndra has already sparked an FBI investigation, congressional hearings, and raised numerous questions of political cronyism and corruption connected to the highest levels of the Obama Administration.  

While the White House and Congressional Democrats feign surprise at the collapse of what was described as "the most hyped startup in the crowded Solar Energy field," it appears Obama Administration representatives were either easily duped or willingly blind to the facts.  ABC News reports that Department of Energy officials have been regularly attending Solyndra board meetings for months as the company "careened towards bankruptcy" after blowing through the more than half a billion taxpayer dollars. 

JunkScience Side Bar

Wind farms: the monuments to lunacy that will be left to blot the landscape
These pointless monstrosities will continue to proliferate until the Government sees sense.
Christopher Booker

Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”.

This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported, have raised £50,0000 from their savings to pay lawyers to argue their case when their village’s fate is decided at an inquiry by a Government inspector. (TDT)