"When you're up to your knees in alligators, sometimes it's difficult to remember your initial objective was to drain the swamp." That is what has happened over the past few years as Arizona lawmakers have struggled with the budget deficit.

Demonstrations inspired by the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan were reportedly held in well over a hundred cities and towns across the country over the weekend. Beginning last Thursday, thousands converged at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC to amplify the movement’s message in the nation’s capital.

Stirling Energy Systems (SES) recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which further complicates California's big push toward 33% renewable energy by 2020, as two massive solar thermal projects had been approved using the company's technology.

The average age of farmers and ranchers in America is increasing, and rural populations are in decline. This is why the U.S. Department of Agriculture is acting to plant a new crop of much needed agricultural producers here in California and across the nation.

Wall Street isn't the only place where popular unrest has been fomenting. Here on the West Coast, inmates of the California prison system are protesting their conditions in a hunger strike that now has thousands of participants in at least eight California prisons, and has entered its tenth day.