Projects

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

SACRAMENTO - State Capitol politicians may have an extra $3.2 billion to play with. Or they may not. It depends on whose figures you believe: nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor's or contrarian Gov. Jerry Brown's. I tend to have more confidence in Taylor, suspecting that Brown may be lowballing it to be on the safe side so legislators won't try to overspend and plunge the state back into a deficit hole. That's noble. But it may not be looking at the world as it really is and making wise use of the revenue that taxpayers are generating.

Sometimes Apple becomes so wrapped up in its secrecy that it declines to release accessories that its products obviously could use. But that's what third parties are for, and right now a bunch of start-up third parties are on Kickstarter trying to get seed money for some pretty cool Apple-related projects. They range from iPhone cases and gadgets to a stand built to improve Apple's iPad Smart Cover and Smart Case. That project is the Smarter Stand , and it's a pair of clips that help you get more stand positions for your iPad out of your Smart Cover by holding together two of the cover's folds at the same time.

Does California's signature environmental law protect the state's air, water and wilderness by acting as a check on runaway projects proposed by overzealous developers? Or does it encourage baseless lawsuits that unfairly delay and even derail worthwhile projects that could provide badly needed jobs and housing for Californians? Actually, it does both. The 43-year-old California Environmental Quality Act, passed to inform and empower the public, requires developers to disclose the environmental effects of their projects in detailed reports and to mitigate any harm caused.

When Los Angeles performer Selene Luna applied for a grant in 2007 through the Franklin Furnace Fund, it took nine months and packets of paperwork to receive her money ? a small bounty of $3,000. But last month, looking for financing for her online soap opera, "Selene's Hollywood Confidential," she turned to a less traditional fundraising source: Kickstarter.com. It took her 30 days to meet her $5,000 goal. In fact, she even raised a little more. Luna is one many Los Angeles artists who have turned to Kickstarter.

There are no highways running through this impoverished rural county. Children study in dilapidated schoolhouses. On many streets, you're just as likely to run into a chicken as you are a pedestrian. Yet the Wangjiang local government is constructing a headquarters on a slab of land the size of the Pentagon building — a sprawling edifice of granite and glass with a $10-million price tag in a county where the average resident earns $639 a year. "The government building is so grand, but at the same time, many people are still living in poverty here," said Ye Daoman, a local farmer and activist.

SACRAMENTO - When state officials wanted a computer system to track the cost of therapy, transportation and other services for 240,000 disabled Californians, they hired Deloitte Consulting. After four years, the Department of Developmental Services decided the new system didn't work as needed and canceled the project after paying Deloitte $5.7 million. That same month in 2006, the Department of Industrial Relations hired the New York-based company to computerize its monitoring system for workers' compensation claims.

Not one, but two, projects posted on the crowd-sourced funding website broke the $1 million barrier on Thursday, kicking the previous record of $942,579 to the curb. And even crazier? One of those projects - a new game by game designer Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions - earned $1 million in less than 24 hours. A minute-by-minute post on the Kickstarter blog describing Kickstarter's big day in giddy detail shows the whole Kickstarter staff staring at a large screen hovering above their office, thumbs placed on Champagne corks to pop the bubbly the second the million dollar pledge for Double Fine's game came in, which it did at 6:41 p.m. EST. In the words of the Kickstarter blogger, “YES!

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $1.5-billion initiative to fix crumbling streets in his final months in office would also cover a backlog of other maintenance projects, like trimming tens of thousands of trees. According to documents circulated by the mayor's office, Villaraigosa's L.A. Road Works plan would include trimming an estimated 75,000 trees, ripping out 3,750 tree stumps and planting an equal number of replacement trees. Funds for the tree trimming would be drawn from $150 million in transportation funds now earmarked for street repairs, city officials said Monday.

The Obama administration proposed rules Thursday that could affect construction of coal-fired power plants and other government-approved projects that produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. The guidelines for the first time set uniform standards on how federal agencies consider the causes and effects of climate change during their environmental analyses. They would require study of the greenhouse gas emissions of any project expected to emit at least 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year -- roughly 4,600 cars' worth.

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Even though its ubiquitous Internet search engine practically mints money, Google Inc. was widely seen as a company whose best days were behind it. It was written off as the next Microsoft Corp. - a staid high-tech giant in the shadows of Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. that had lost its sense of urgency and innovative edge. But that sentiment has shifted dramatically over the last year, and when Google swings open the doors to its annual conference for software developers Wednesday, it won't just be showcasing its latest products.

On a warm, Friday morning in Beverly Hills, 150 prospective television producers from around the world gathered at PitchCon 2013 at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills to try to sell their projects to 50 of Hollywood's top industry professionals. At one table in the center of the room, Charla Young, 40, of Louisville, Ky., calmly pitched a television executive the idea for her inspirational talk show "Power to Change. " Having already obtained regional syndication in her home state, Young had come to Los Angeles to find national distribution for her show.

Federal wildlife officials took the unprecedented step Friday of telling private companies that they will not be prosecuted for inadvertently harassing or even killing endangered California condors. In a decision swiftly condemned by conservationists and wildlife advocates, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said operators of Terra-Gen Power's wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains will not be prosecuted if their turbines accidentally kill a condor during the expected 30-year life span of the project.

I remember life before the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. I grew up in Altadena and Pasadena during the late 1930s and '40s. All too often I awoke to thick smog and air quality warnings. I watched as segments of the San Gabriel Valley shifted from orange groves to miles upon miles of housing, and communities were cut in half by an ever-expanding network of freeways. By 1970, Gov. Ronald Reagan and a Republican-led Legislature realized that something had to be done.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a controversial rail yard serving the harbor, setting the stage for possible court challenges alleging violations of environmental and civil rights laws. The proposal to build a center for trains hauling freight from the largest port complex in the nation has raised questions about environmental justice, particularly for minority and low-income neighborhoods in west Long Beach, which would bear the brunt of the effects. Council members voted 11 to 2 to approve the Southern California International Gateway and certify its environmental analysis, saying that the $500-million project would bolster efficiency in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, create jobs and improve air quality in surrounding communities.

Re "Gov.'s plan for highways riles critics," Jan. 11 If the governor wants to have these 10 highway projects ready to go, then rather than "lifting environmental safeguards," he should have the projects conform to them. Then the projects would be ready to be implemented. It is backward thinking to always assume that environmental protections are the cause of delaying projects. Isn't it true that if environmental protections were followed in the first place (for example, when designing a project)

Ecuador expelled a top Brazilian construction firm, sending troops to seize projects worth $800 million. President Rafael Correa ordered the government to take over the projects, which include a small regional airport, two hydroelectric plants and a rural irrigation project. The president is battling with the firm, Odebrecht, over a dam the government says was badly built. His decree accused Odebrecht of "putting public services at risk." The San Francisco hydroelectric dam was completed last year but is not functioning because of damaged machinery.

TUCSON - The harsh Sonoran Desert claims the lives of hundreds of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each year. Many of the dead - about 1 in 3 - go unidentified. Now there may be an easier way to put a name to some of the suspected border crossers who died north of the international boundary. On Monday, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner and the human rights organization Humane Borders Inc. started an online system that will allow the public to identify the deceased found in southern Arizona - more than 2,000 deaths over 13 years.

The California bullet train agency on Thursday defended its bidding criteria for selecting the winner for its first construction contract, saying that the process held down prices and was handled properly. The California High-Speed Rail Authority has come under fire from critics who assert changes to the bidding criteria could jeopardize the quality of the project. The authority tentatively chose a team led by Sylmar-based Tutor Perini to build a 29-mile segment of track through Fresno even though it had the lowest technical score.