Who is the California Farm Water Coalition?

David Zetland:

Mike Wade, Executive Director of the California Farm Water Coalition, has often commented (or been quoted) on this blog and other places in favor of continuing or increased water deliveries to agricultural interests.

And I have often disagreed with the way that Mike has presented his case.

What bothered me was Mike’s dogmatic insistence that water for ag was more important than water in other places. It reminded me of how a lawyer or lobbyist would say or do anything to benefit his client.

And that made me wonder just WHO Mike’s client was. It also made me wonder if CFWC was not violating its status as a 501(c)3 non-profit, which forbids lobbying* legislators on particular legislation (such as the water bills or how to allocate federal stimulus money).

Read more…

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A water economist’s hot links

David Zetland Speed Blogging for Tuesday, July 27, 2010

 

• Food and Water Watch has a guide to understanding your utility’s water quality report. It may be useful, but you will have to wade through their human rights and government-knows-best propaganda.
• Many English speakers cannot understand the passive tense. That may explain why academics and bureaucrats like to use it (to sound smart), but it also explains why people have a hard time understanding them. That’s a problem if citizens cannot understand laws or their rights.
• Some interesting thoughts on subsidies vs user pays.
• Pro-citizen groups have put together a tool to help people understand how to draw their own borders for congressional districts. This is a great way of seeing how far politically-biased boundaries drift from boundaries that are objective or that serve OTHER partisan interests.
• The extra stuff in beer that they (Bud, Miller) don’t tell you about.
• Details on why clean coal isn’t.