The West Ranch Beacon – News & Commentary for the Santa Clarita Valley

(From Science Daily) Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy. That’s the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels. (more…)

Congressional candidate Dr. Lee Rogers today released the following statement on the ongoing Countrywide mortgage scandal involving his opponent, incumbent U.S. Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon: “On Friday, Representative McKeon met with The Signal and the Antelope Valley Press to review the documents related to his controversial Countrywide VIP loan. (more…)

The following is political activity for Monday, January 30, 2012, going on in Washington and across the nation. It is courtesy of Scott Wilk, Community Organizer, and Anchor Consulting group. The Beacon will be posting these daily as they become available. (more…)

The Santa Clarita City Council election is just over two months away and it will be a very contentious and important election. It will be contentious because Councilman Ferry and his cabal, which Laurie Ender is part of, are gunning for Bob Kellar who is one of two incumbents up for reelection. It will be important because the outcome of this year’s City Council election will have a profound impact on our valley communities. (more…)

(From the sacbee.com) Gov. Jerry Brown said in an interview airing in Los Angeles today that California’s high-speed rail project will cost far less than the state’s current estimate of nearly $100 billion and that environmental fees paid by carbon producers will be a source of funding. (more…)

The West Ranch Town Council will hold its regular monthly meeting Wednesday, February 1, 2012, at the Tournament Player Club in West Ranch located at 26550 Heritage View Lane in the Westridge neighborhood at 6:30 PM. The meeting will include regular updates from Los Angeles County, the CHP and the Sheriff’s Department. The following items are on the agenda: (more…)

(From the latimes.com) The Santa Ana winds subsided Sunday and wind advisories for the valleys of Los Angeles and Ventura counties have expired, National Weather Service forecasters said. Taking the place of the Santa Anas will be a calmer sea breeze, bringing cooler temperatures and moisture to the region, said David Sweet, a weather service meteorologist. (more…)

(From the nytimes.com) Only four years ago, life certainly seemed on the upswing for Kate and Marcus Freeman, young professionals who had recently moved from Worcester, Mass., into a new house here in sun-splashed central Florida, where they hoped to enjoy the warmer weather and new jobs. He was an accountant. She would be teaching preschool. (more…)

(From the latimes.com) A shallow magnitude 3.2 earthquake was reported Sunday evening two miles from the Geysers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 7:57 p.m. at a depth of 1.9 mile. According to the USGS, the epicenter was four miles from Cobb, six miles from Anderson Springs, 26 miles from Santa Rosa and 74 miles from Sacramento. 

(From smartmoney.com) Tax season gets into full swing today, when the Internal Revenue Service begins accepting electronically filed returns. Once a rarity, e-filing is quickly becoming the norm: a record 100 million taxpayers filed electronically in 2011. That included 77% of individual returns filed, up from 58% in 2008, according to the IRS. A chunk of those taxpayers were do-it-yourselfers: about a third of all tax returns were filed online last year by people who did their own taxes using software, according to IRS data. (more…)

It is quite interesting to watch Congressman Buck McKeon dealing with the Countrywide loan scandal. He appears to be following the same pattern as most politicians do when they have an ethics issue. He is making every misstep possible with denying knowledge of the VIP Loan program when the apparent evidence shows that he did know. (more…)

(From the nytimes.com) The latest poll of likely Republican primary voters in Florida gives Mitt Romney front-runner status heading into the final days of campaigning before Tuesday’s primary. Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has an 11-point advantage over Newt Gingrich in the statewide poll conducted for the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and television stations Bay News 9 and Central Florida News 13. (more…)

(From the latimes.com) Keep enjoying L.A.’s spring-like weather in January -– it’s expected to continue through Sunday. Temperatures are expected to reach into the 80s along the L.A. coastline through Sunday afternoon before cooling down to the 60s and 70s as the workweek begins, according to the National Weather Service. (more…)

Over the past two decades, access to healthcare for patients has become financially onerous, while the practice of medicine for physicians has become exceedingly difficult. Doctors and the public are caught in this chaos of spiraling upward costs and diminishing care, yet there is a slowly emerging link between this debacle and the one on Wall Street trickling down to Henry Mayo Hospital. (more…)

It was a solar eclipse moment in South Carolina, just prior to the Palmetto State Primary. Newt Gingrich handed CNN’s John King his dentures and slightly bruised ego. I was so proud of Newt, words fall short. It is incredible the in-the-tank mainstream media, including NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and bird-cage covering Newsweek have devolved to such a base level. It stretches the imagination how these media toilets can call themselves reporters. The above are a disgrace to professional journalism. (more…)