California

Government bureaucrats want your water softener. The Culligan Man is fighting back. The company behind the renowned "Hey Culligan Man!" advertising campaign of the 1950s has launched a political and public relations offensive to kill a bill targeting its signature product. That proposal would allow regulators to ban conventional water softeners that discharge salt into municipal sewer lines.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has approved two major initiatives that will require utilities to pay consumers for generating extra power and will boost the payoff for certain solar facilities. Homes, businesses and schools that have solar panels or wind turbines previously had no financial incentive to use less electricity than they generated. But AB 920, written by Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), will encourage efficiency, supporters say. SB 32, by state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino)

California plans to sell $4 billion in tax-free bonds next week to fund infrastructure projects, and the state is hoping for robust demand from individual investors. The offering is expected to be a big test of California's standing in financial markets amid a still-precarious budget situation. The last state bond sale was in June.

California must shrink the population of its teeming prisons by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday, ordering the state to come up with a reduction plan by mid-September. The order cited Gov.

A few years ago, Occidental Petroleum Corp. executive Stephen I. Chazen sounded like a cryptologist out of a Dan Brown novel as he told investors that an oil bonanza awaited any outfit that could "crack the code" of California's seismically fractured underground. Occidental's engineers may have done it. The Westwood company revealed in July that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil and natural gas in an undisclosed part of Kern County using techniques that the oil company's executives would rather not talk about.

California on Wednesday became the biggest issuer so far of a new type of municipal bond that has caused investors to rethink the muni market overall -- in a way that is driving down bond interest rates. Robust investor demand allowed Treasurer Bill Lockyer to boost the size of a planned $4-billion bond offering to $6.85 billion. Proceeds from the securities will finance voter-approved infrastructure projects. Included in the deal were $5.

Nearly one in 10 students in the class of 2009 did not pass the state's high school exit exam, which is required to receive a diploma. The results, released Wednesday, were nearly stagnant compared with the previous year. By the end of their senior year, 90.6% of students in the graduating class had passed the two-part exam, compared with 90.4% in the class of 2008. "These gains are incremental, but they are in fact significant and they are a true testimony to the tremendous work being done by our professional educators . . . as well as our students," said state Supt.

Environmentalists and industry representatives pleaded their case with federal regulators Tuesday over rules that would slash toxic emissions from cement kilns, the top source of mercury emissions in California. The Environmental Protection Agency issued proposed regulations for Portland cement kilns earlier this year, after more than a decade of pressure from environmental groups.

The most persistent misconception about Californians is that we hate to raise taxes. The truth is that we adore raising taxes -- as long as someone else is paying, that is. So nonsmokers vote to raise cigarette taxes, teetotalers to raise liquor taxes. The middle and working classes want to hike taxes on the rich, who are happy to return the favor. Yet this only compounds the mystery of why we're so resistant to raising taxes on perhaps the biggest, fattest target of all: the oil industry.

A lawyer for the state, citing "dramatic improvements" in state prisons, asked a federal judge Monday to end a receiver's control of California's prison healthcare system. Paul Mello, representing the state, told U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson that there has been a "virtual elimination of alleged preventable deaths" due to shoddy prison health services. "Circumstances have changed," Mello said. But James J.