Politics, Government & Business in California's Inland Empire
Published: Aug. 30, 2015 – Updated: 11:14 p.m.
Members of a union representing Riverside County prosecutors and other county lawyers have been working since the end of June without a new contract and the county is taking a firm line on pay raises, according to the union’s president.
To read story by Jeff Horseman in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Melody Petersen
August 30, 2015
California taxpayers have never paid more for public worker pensions, but it’s still not enough to cover the rising number of retirement checks written by the state’s largest pension plan.
By Matt Latimer
08/30/15 – 08:52 PM EDT
Remember way back to two weeks ago when the Donald Trump candidacy was the best thing to ever happen to Jeb Bush?
By Janell Ross
August 30, 2015 at 2:15 PM
Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos called Donald Trump, a top Republican presidential candidate, “dangerous” in an interview Sunday on ABC News’s “This Week.”
By Erik Eckholm
August 29, 2015
Whether California’s application of the death penalty is so drawn out and arbitrary that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment will be argued on Monday before a federal appeals court in Pasadena.
David Weigel
The Washington Post
Sunday, August 30, 2015
One of politics’ most reliable polls has found first-time candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson galloping to big leads in the Iowa caucuses. The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll, released Saturday night, also finds one-time front-runner Scott Walker, governor of neighboring Wisconsin, losing the dominance he’s had all year.
By Dan Balz and Philip Rucker
August 29, 2015 at 9:00 PM
MINNEAPOLIS — The Democratic Party, whose presidential race has been mostly overshadowed by Donald Trump and the Republicans, heads into the fall with its nomination contest far less certain than it once appeared and braced for a series of events that will have a significant effect on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.
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Maureen Dowd
SundayReview | Op-Ed Columnist
August 29, 2015
Washington — PITY Poppy.
When I went down to Houston a few years ago to eat pizza with the former president, he was his usual gracious self, speaking fondly about President Obama and his new pal Bill Clinton.
But there was one person who got dismissed with a brusque obscenity: Donald Trump.
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Friday, August 28, 2015 – 06:00 p.m.
Los Angeles-based KTTV-TV 11 is airing a story alleging that negligence inside the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services Agency (CFS) has resulted in multiple preventable child deaths and needless abuse.
Saturday, August 29, 2015 – 10:30 a.m.
Two local newspapers have published stories related to six and one-half years long high-profile San Bernardino County legal issue.
Published: Aug. 28, 2015 – Updated: 11:12 p.m.
Ontario International Airport had a 1.45 percent increase in passenger traffic for July, the small rise driven by international flights to Mexico even as domestic passengers decreased in the year-over-year comparison.
To read article by Richard K. De Atley in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Mark Hensch
August 29, 2015 – 12:27 pm
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he is leading the GOP race because he represents Americans who have had it with their nation coming up short.
By Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo
08/29/15 – 06:26 AM EDT
Three top Jeb Bush fundraisers abruptly parted ways with his presidential campaign on Friday, amid internal personality conflicts and questions about the strength of his candidacy, POLITICO has learned.
Friday, August 28, 2015 – 05:00 p.m.
The Lou Desmond and Company Show is broadcasting from the Toyota of San Bernardino Recording Studios!
On the show today, Ed Hoffman, President of Wholesale Capital Corporation, sits in for Lou. On the show tonight: San Bernardino’s decision to move forward with outsourcing the fire department and Moreno Valley’s approval of the World Logistics Center.
Friday, August 28, 2015 – 08:30 a.m.
There’s an interesting uproar building in the drama surrounding San Bernardino trashing its fire department in favor of a contract with the San Bernardino County Fire Department for fire protection services.
It’s all about a $143 per year parcel tax.
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By Peggy Noonan
Aug. 27, 2015 – 6:41 p.m. ET
So, more thoughts on Donald Trump’s candidacy, because I can’t stop being fascinated.
By Steve Scauzillo, San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Posted: 08/27/15 – 10:48 AM PDT |
California residents reduced water consumption by 31 percent in July, the largest savings in one month since the state began tracking urban water use more than a year ago, state officials announced Thursday.
Thursday, August 27, 2015 – 09:00 a.m.
The trend continues to favor Billionaire Candidate Donald Trump.
Published: Aug. 26, 2015 – Updated: 11:42 a.m.
Before Donald Trump, Ann Coulter received accolades from conservatives and condemnation from liberals for her comments about immigration and Latinos.
To read expanded post by Jeff Horseman in The P-E Political Empire Blog, click here.
Politics 2016
Jill Colvin and Sergio Bustos / AP
Aug. 26, 2015
Updated: Aug. 27, 2015 1:36 AM ET
“I think I handled that well. I got a lot of credit for it”
(PENSACOLA, Florida) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s proud of kicking one of the country’s best-known Spanish-language journalists out of an Iowa news conference — the latest in a series of clashes with the media.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015 – 05:00 p.m.
The Lou Desmond and Company Show is broadcasting from the Toyota of San Bernardino Recording Studios!
Wednesday, August 26, 2015 – 12:30 p.m.
Only San Bernardino, California could hatch a whacked-out and completely unlawful scheme to tax it’s property owners.
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
August 25, 2015
Gov. Jerry Brown says California’s drought and the wildfires it has spawned are wake-up calls about the potentially cataclysmic effects of climate change.
By Kurtis Lee
August 25, 2015
Donald Trump ordered Univision anchor Jorge Ramos unceremoniously evicted from a news conference Tuesday as the immigration issue continued to dominate the Republican presidential primary.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015 – 05:00 p.m.
The Lou Desmond and Company Show is broadcasting from the Toyota of San Bernardino Recording Studios!
Tonight on the show, Phil Naman fills in while Lou is out. He is joined by Ken White, who is founder of Brothers of America. They discuss several topics. Among them, Ken’s upbringing on the south side of Chicago, San Bernardino’s decision to outsource fire, what America needs in the next election, and Obama calling his opponents “the crazies.”
Tuesday, August 25, 2015 – 01:30 p.m.
The Daily Press has published the final piece of a troubling three-part opinion editorial on a high profile San Bernardino County legal issue.
To read the column, click here.
By Joe Nelson, The Sun
Posted: 08/24/15 – 6:54 PM PDT |
Public agencies across Southern California have launched investigations into whether their employees secretly accessed adultery website Ashley Madison after hackers leaked hundreds of government e-mail addresses plundered from the site.
By Ryan Hagen, The Sun
Posted: 08/24/15 – 3:45 PM PDT |
SAN BERNARDINO >> The release of 200 butterflies at the newly completed San Bernardino Transit Center on Monday symbolized the same thing officials stressed repeatedly at the completion ceremony: transformation.
By Ryan Hagen, The Sun
Posted: 08/25/15 – 12:25 AM PDT |
SAN BERNARDINO >> The City Council voted 4-3 on Monday to move forward with transferring responsibility for fire and emergency protection to the County Fire Department, a move that would also mean a $142-per-year tax on every parcel in the city.
By Chris Megerian and Phil Willon
August 24, 2015
Gyrations in the stock market have taken California’s fragile finances for a ride before — when the dot-com bubble burst, when the Wall Street crash sank the national economy less than a decade ago.
Monday, August 24, 2015 – 05:00 p.m.
The Lou Desmond and Company Show is broadcasting from the Toyota of San Bernardino Recording Studios!
On the show today, Estimable Economist Jay Prag joins the show to discuss the rollercoaster ride that the stock market has been. At one point today it was down over 1,000 points. What does he predict in the coming months?
Monday, August 24, 2015 – 09:00 a.m.
The Daily Press has published the second of a three-part opinion editorial covering a high-profile San Bernardino County Government legal issue.
Op-ed columns that both The Sun and Daily Bulletin newspapers declined to publish.
To read the column, click here.
Published: Aug. 21, 2015
Updated: Aug. 23, 2015 – 9:32 p.m.
Riverside County supervisors are ready to move on from a feud that has pitted the county’s top lawyer against a court-appointed watchdog panel and led to an ongoing legal fight and dueling accusations of unethical practices.
To read article by Jeff Horseman in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
Capitol Alert
By Christopher Cadelago
ccadelago@sacbee.com
August 23, 2015
For nearly 30 years, former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock hosted a talk radio show, weaving his trademark sarcasm into defenses of limited government and riffs on liberals to become perhaps the most accomplished past politician on the airwaves.
By Ed Mendel
August 24, 2015
CalPERS took another step last week toward a gradual long-term rate hike, a move to lower the risk of big investment losses as the maturing pension system enters a new era.
Sunday, August 23, 2015 – 11:00 a.m.
The new Reuters/Ipsos poll covering the republican presidential primary contest has opened some eyes this weekend.
Sunday, August 23, 2015 – 10:30 a.m.
We now have a front and center example of just how co-opted The Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspapers really are.
By IE Business Daily
Saturday, August 22, 2015
The Republican Primary race for President was supposed to be a low-key, grinding, policy heavy and uneventful affair. Just two months ago, the crowded field of governors, senators, and a few outsiders wasn’t making many waves.
Published: Aug. 21, 2015
Updated: Aug. 23, 2015 9:48 a.m.
Minutes after the vote approving his massive warehouse complex, supporters rushed to take their pictures with developer Iddo Benzeevi while chanting his name.
“Iddo, Iddo, Iddo.”
To read article by Imran Ghori in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Mike Reicher, Los Angeles Daily News
Posted: 08/22/15 – 4:47 PM PDT |
On the Los Angeles County government’s official list of employee take-home vehicles, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas looks very frugal. His assigned car, a 9-year-old Chrysler 300 Limited sedan, cost the county about half as much as the next supervisor’s.
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
August 22, 2015
A cogent – and perhaps unanswerable – question punctuates the political machinations over raising billions of new dollars to repair California’s deteriorating highways.
Politics | Fri Aug 21, 2015 6:44pm EDT
WASHINGTON | By Emily Stephenson
Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party’s U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.
By Michael Barbaro, Nate Cohn adn Jeremy W. Petersaug
August 22, 2015
In the command centers of Republican presidential campaigns, aides have drawn comfort from the belief that Donald J. Trump’s dominance in the polls is a political summer fling, like Herman Cain in 2011 — an unsustainable boomlet dependent on megawatt celebrity, narrow appeal and unreliable surveys of Americans with a spotty record of actually voting in primaries.
A growing body of evidence suggests that may be wishful thinking.
By Paul Kane
August 22, 2015 at 6:03 PM
[This post has been updated.]
Vice President Biden huddled Saturday with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the rising liberal star who has declined to endorse a candidate for the 2016 presidential race, an impromptu meeting that came as speculation mounted over Biden’s own potential candidacy, according to a report.
US | Sat Aug 22, 2015 6:08pm EDT
COLUMBUS, Ohio | By Emily Flitter
While thousands streamed into a football stadium Friday evening in Mobile, Alabama to see Donald Trump, a much smaller crowd of committed conservatives unwound at a bar and mused over the good, the bad and the unknown of the unlikely Republican presidential front-runner.
Saturday, August 22, 2015 – 10:00 a.m.
Democrats in the California Legislature want to pick your pockets again!
Saturday, August 22, 2015 – 09:45 a.m.
The various U.S. stock market indexes have essentially declined 10% from their record highs earlier this year.
Now all of a sudden the world is coming to an end.
Published: Aug. 21, 2015 – Updated: 5:39 p.m.
Those who don’t regularly follow politics might not be familiar with George P. Bush. But they’ve surely heard of his father, uncle and grandfather.
To read expanded post by Jeff Horseman in The P-E Political Empire Blog, click here.
By Jason Henry, San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Posted: 08/21/15 – 10:11 PM PDT |
Two advocacy groups suing the Los Angeles Police Department and the LA County Sheriff’s Department for access to data from automated license plate readers have won a chance to argue before the California Supreme Court.
By Patrick McGreevy and Abby Sewell
August 21, 2015
Anxiety was high Friday in state, county and city offices after hackers released lists of dozens of government email addresses in California that were used to access the Ashley Madison online dating site for married people.
William Leitch
Aug 21, 2015 – 5:03 PM PDT
(Updated 8:18 a.m. ET)
Donald Trump’s juggernaut: Meet Friday night lights.
Friday, August 21, 2015 – 01:30 p.m.
California gasoline stockpiles at in-state refineries are climbing.
Friday, August 21, 2015 – 01:00 P.M.
Global stock markets plunged on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging 530 points. The S&P 500 fell 65 points, while the Nasdaq fell 171 points.
Friday, August 21, 2015 – 09:00 a.m.
Here’s the latest from the Hillary Clinton slow-drip, death by a thousand cuts, political implosion.
Friday, August 21, 2015 – 08:30 a.m.
A new poll shows that a large majority of likely GOP voters believe that Billionaire Businessman Donald J. Trump will be the likely nominee for President of the United States.
Published: Aug. 19, 2015
Updated: Aug. 20, 2015 – 2:30 p.m.
Shortly after filing a damage claim against Riverside that names the mayor and three former city officials, City Councilman Paul Davis announced he’ll run for mayor in 2016.
To read article by Alicia Robinson in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Beau Yarbrough and Ryan Hagen, The Sun
and Sandra Emerson, Redlands Daily Facts
Posted: 08/19/15, 12:57 PM PDT |
California’s legislators returned to work in Sacramento on Monday, poised for the battle to get their legislation approved before the 2015-16 session ends on Sept. 11.
By Gregory J. Wilcox, Los Angeles Daily News
Posted: 08/20/15 – 6:34 PM PDT |
Rising home prices across California have eroded affordability to the point that only seven counties, including San Bernardino, have housing that a family earning the median income can afford to buy, according to a study released Thursday.
By Teri Sforza / Staff Columnist
Updated Aug. 21, 2015 7:18 a.m.
Southern California Edison did its very best to figure out which chitchats between its executives and state regulators were “substantive” enough to require disclosure to the rest of the world, it argued in a legal filing Thursday. But those rules are murky, people’s recollections change, and Edison has beefed up tracking company communications with state regulators as a result, to better sort the wheat from the chaff.
Published: Aug. 19, 2015 – Updated: 11:50 p.m.
After three years of controversy that has divided residents, Moreno Valley officials voted Wednesday, Aug. 19 to dramatically transform the city’s east side with what would be one of the largest warehouse complexes in the country.
To read article by Imran Ghori in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
Thursday, August 20, 2015 – 08:00 a.m.
The Daily Press has started coverage of a high-profile San Bernardino County legal issue of public interest.
To read the article by Shea Johnson in The Daily Press, click here.
By Jessica Calefati and Josh Richman, Staff writers
Posted: 08/20/2015 – 06:23:45 AM PDT
SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers on Wednesday took the first steps toward raising taxes and fees on motorists and further restricting Californians’ tobacco use as the Legislature convened special sessions aimed at solving the state’s transportation and health care funding crises.
By Abby Sewell
August 19, 2015
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey notified the Board of Supervisors last week that their vote on a controversial downtown jail plan violated the state’s open meetings law, the latest in a string of incidents in which the board has run afoul of the Ralph M. Brown Act.
By Sarah Favot, Los Angeles Daily News
Posted: 08/19/15 – 8:36 PM PDT |
Accused of corruption, Paul Tanaka, once second in command of the Sheriff’s Department, said charges against him should be dropped, according to federal court documents obtained Wednesday.
Thursday, August 19, 2015 – 05:00 p.m.
The Lou Desmond and Company Show is broadcasting from the Toyota of San Bernardino Recording Studios!
On the show today, Lou is joined by Adrian Moore of the Reason Foundation. As Lou travels through Oregon, he’s noticed a few differences between Oregon and California. Is there anything that California can do differently to help businesses?
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 – 07:15 a.m.
The new legal story impacting San Bernardino County government is published in the Wednesday edition of The Sun newspaper.
To read the article by Joe Nelson in The Sun click here.
Published: Aug. 18, 2015 – Updated: 9:47 p.m.
Supporters and opponents of the World Logistics Center squared off Tuesday night as the Moreno Valley City Council aimed for a vote Wednesday on the massive warehouse project.
To read story by Imran Ghori in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Andrew Khouri
August 18, 2015
The Southern California housing market is enjoying a summer almost as hot as the weather.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015 – 10:00 a.m.
Here’s the latest from the Hillary Clinton slow-drip, death by a thousand cuts, political blowout.
Published: Aug. 17, 2015 – Updated: 11:17 p.m.
Moreno Valley began weighing two contrasting visions of the city’s future Monday, Aug. 17, as the City Council took up the proposed World Logistics Center mega-warehouse.
To read article by Imran Ghori in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
August 17, 2015
The Legislature reconvened Monday after a monthlong summer recess and immediately focused on what most members like best: spending money.
By Jennifer Agiesta, CNN Polling Director
Updated: Tuesday, August 18, 2015 – 12:31 PM ET
Story highlights:
Washington (CNN) — Donald Trump has won his party’s trust on top issues more than any other Republican presidential candidate, and now stands as the clear leader in the race for the GOP nomination, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
Monday, August 17, 2015 – 05:00 p.m.
The Lou Desmond and Company Show is broadcasting from the Toyota of San Bernardino Recording Studios!
On the show today, Estimable Economist Jay Prag joins Lou on the show. First, NPR featured a story about children in San Bernardino who grow up in motels described as “meth addict summer camp.” What do stories like these do for the city’s image?
Monday, August 17, 2015 – 09:00 a.m.
The non-stop construction of warehouse properties in the Inland Empire is moving at a break-neck pace.
Monday, August 17, 2015 – 08:30 a.m.
Donald Trump remains on top in the latest national poll, this time conducted by Fox News.
By John Solomon – The Washington Times
Sunday, August 16, 2015
While media coverage has focused on a half-dozen of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal emails containing sensitive intelligence, the total number of her private emails identified by an ongoing State Department review as having contained classified data has ballooned to 60, officials told The Washington Times.
Published: August 14, 2015
Updated: August 15, 2015 – 8:57 p.m.
As a vote nears on the massive World Logistics Center warehouse, a big question has lingered.
Who would pay for the new streets, wider freeway interchanges and other improvements needed to serve the complex?
To read article by Imran Ghori in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Chris Megerian and Patrick McGreevy
August 15, 2015
Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers will start tackling some of the state’s toughest challenges this week, and the solution to many of them may be new taxes and fees for Californians.
By Jeff McDonald | Noon Aug. 15, 2015
When Southern California Edison replaced the steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear plant, state regulators allowed the utility to start billing customers for the upgrade without the benefit of what’s called a “reasonableness review.”
By Julia Angwin, Charlie Savage, Jeff Larson, Henrik Moltke, Laura Poitras and James Risen
August 15, 2015
The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.
By Anne Gearan, Karen Tumulty and Dan Balz
August 15, 2015 at 9:03 PM
It was supposed to be different this time. After the wounds of 2008, many of them self-inflicted, Hillary Rodham Clinton rebooted for 2016 with a new message, new advisers and new energy.
By David Weigel
August 15, 2015
FLINT, Mich. — A few hours before Donald Trump’s plane landed, 20 minutes south of where he would speak, people gathered outside the Flint Assembly Plant to take a peek into the past. Some of them were retired, reuniting with friends. All of them remembered how there used to be more to the place.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Let’s get some facts out from the very beginning. The Airline industry has been running on shoe-string budgets for decades. Airlines go out of business every year. Competition and demand determine where and how many flights any airline makes. The cost of flying a plane is fixed based on aircraft costs, maintenance, fuel and staffing requirements.
Published: Aug. 14, 2015 – Updated: 8:52 p.m.
The union representing Riverside County sheriff’s deputies has pulled its support from Sheriff Stan Sniff and accused him of a dictatorial approach that shunned union input on the deployment of body-mounted cameras and other matters.
To read article by Jeff Horseman in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
By Carol D. Leonnig, Karen Tumulty and Rosalind S. Helderman
August 14, 2015 at 4:51 PM
Late last month, Hillary Rodham Clinton stood before a line of television cameras at a rural Iowa campaign stop to deny reports that she had sent sensitive information over her private e-mail system.