The Associated Press reports that a Russian billionaire is coming to the rescue of a state park in Sonoma County affected by budget cuts. Viktor Vekselberg, head of Russian-based Renova Group, signed an agreement last Tuesday with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to provide "substantial financial support" to keep Fort Ross open.

 By Morris Newman

Dammit, it's not fair! Residents of affordable housing get all the lucky breaks. Just look at all the money they're getting from all directions: local government, the local power company, the feds, the green-building lobby. Case in point: the Casa Dominguez development in East Dominguez Hills, an unincorporated area of south Los Angeles County, even has a child care center and a medical clinic, on site.

By Morris Newman

TIPPER and AL GORE have retired for the evening. They lie supine under the covers and are wearing pajamas, each with their respective monograms on the chest pockets. 

Al: "Honey, something's been on my mind...."

Tipper: "If it's dirty, please write it down. You know I don't like to hear smutty language."

Al. (chuckling): "No, hon, nothing like that. Those fires are banked for the night. I'm just wondering if we blew enough insulation into this house."

Tipper (lecturing tone): "Albert, we have 300 cubic yards of insulation in this house. Plus we live in Tennessee, not Wasilla. It's never below 50 degrees."

AL: "I know, I know. It's just that this house is so… freakin' gi-normous. Sometimes I don't see you for days."

Tipper: "It's true. But, then again, it's not even the biggest on the block!" (coyly): "Did you miss me?"

(Please note that the word "draconian" does not occur once in the following post concerning the ongoing budget debacle. Readers susceptible to cliché-induced seizures (CIS) can read this article without ill effect.)

By his own characterization, the governor's latest proposal attempts to close the $19 billion shortfall in the coming year's budget almost entirely through cuts. For CP&DR readers, it's probably unnecessary to explain that many of these cuts affect – or have effectively eliminated – services for low-income people, not limited to affordable housing, health care and early childhood education. Hell, we can't even afford our prisons—an irony well deserved by the Lock-'em-Up State. 

Don't be fooled by the peaceful, pastoral look of West Village, a proposed housing development on the campus of UC Davis.

"Shucks," the conceptual site plan seems to say, "I'm just a little old country town. See my bib overalls?"

I'm not falling for it. West Village may be bucolic and all, but this 220-acre project, intended to provide rental housing for students and for-sale housing to faculty, shows an uncompromising commitment to sustainability. Although pastoralism is not always the same thing as environmentalism, in this case it comes with some hard-minded environmentalism.

Hey you, Mr./Ms. Conventional Apartment Developer! Yes, you. Don't attempt to ignore me by rolling up your construction-loan documents and sticking them in your ears.

First it was the climate crisis. Then it was the economy. Now the experts are sounding the alarm over... the future of the American suburbs? This time, you pointy-heads, you've gone too far! You can't have my tranquil, SUV-lined streets! I'm telling Rush Limbaugh and Sen. Inhofe about this.

This is a message to all California cities: Take your hats off to Chula Vista. This city of 210,000 people between San Diego and the Mexican border has adopted a plan for an all-new downtown in the Otay Ranch district that makes most other downtown plans seem tentative and incomplete. Perhaps another California community has the political will to approve something equally forward-looking; for the time being, the Otay Ranch Eastern Urban Center is among the plans that are raising the proverbial bar in city planning.
   

The Los Angeles City Council voted today to limit the number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the city (described by one councilmember as the "the capital of medical marijuana") to a total of 70 storefront locations. With an estimated 900 dispensaries currently operating within city limits, there are currently more medical marijuana outlets in L.A. than Starbucks. That is a sobering figure. How on earth did we end up with this many Starbucks?

Like nearly everybody, I awoke last Wednesday morning to ghastly images and video of the Haitian earthquake. Anybody who lives along the California coast – and that's about 80% of the state population – is likely to have respond to this event with a combination of pity, fear, sadness and possibly a bit of what psychologists call "the guilt of the survivor."