In 2008, California voters approved a $9.4 billion proposition to build a High Speed Rail [HSR] network in California. The trains will reach speeds over 200 mph. Construction may start as soon as 2011 and will take years to complete.

On Sunday evening, East Bay Representative Jerry McNerney (D-11-Pleasanton) cast one of the 219 votes in favor of the Senate health insurance reform bill.  Until Saturday, McNerney was the lone Bay Area Democratic hold-out, refusing to commit to a “yes” vote, but not for the reasons most people may think. 

On Sunday night, a historic health care reform bill was passed by a rather cloak-and-dagger procedure in the House. Before the actual computerized vote was taken, a lot was said about the state of health care and those seen as running it.

As any Californian will tell you, the housing crisis which hit the country has had particularly nasty effects on homeowners in States with high property values. And while California carries mercifully low tax rates for homeowners thanks to the existence of Proposition 13, this does little to alleviate the woes of people struggling with a more onerous and privately imposed burden – namely, their mortgage.

Did someone really just accuse the Dems of offending God by holding a vote on Sunday?  Oh, the silliness that has become our political dialog.  Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on the Glenn Beck radio program:  "They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God..."

And now, a word from the real world:

If Congress passes the $940 billion healthcare bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a $138 billion savings over ten years. While this sounds impressive in deficit reduction terms, in reality, it represents an infinitesimal percentage of the federal budget. Consider this.

“Birther” Lawyer Orly Taitz has qualified to run for California Secretary of State, giving Debra Bowen new competition for her position. Taitz, a USSR native and naturalized U.S. Citizen, has gained notoriety for her numerous legal challenges to the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency.

Taitz told the Orange County Register she is running “to clean up the fraud we all have seen in the 2008 election. It is important to bring legitimacy to elections.” Taitz added that she “will be fighting to ensure the California corporations are not overburdened by regulations.”

There are over 242,000 Defense Department contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This at times exceeds the amount of troops we have officially deployed.  The cost is well over $100 billion to American taxpayers.

A study released earlier this week by the University of California Los Angeles showed that almost 25% of Californians under the age of 65 lacked health insurance during all or in part of 2009.  That is a 28 percent increase as compared to the 6.4 million uninsured in 2007.  With California’s unemployment at 12.5 percent, an increase in the number of the uninsured was expected.  But it has been reported that even these numbers took the researc