Shameless plug. If you want more criticism of Politifact, go to www.hoystory.com and search for "politifraud" or try politifactbias.blogspot.com.

This would be a much better "investment" than loan guarantees to green energy companies (read: Solyndra).

Except this is unlikely to be wasted in the long run. The economy will pick up eventually, even Obama and Brown can't keep it in this moribund state forever, tax revenues will increase and they'll eventually be able to expand into that school.

It's not like this is the high-speed train to nowhere.

That may eventually be the case, but school boards don't have taxing authority, so I wouldn't blame them.

ILuvSnoopy is correct. You make a false connection when you say the district spent "the equivalent of 70% of its annual revenues on one single high school." School construction in California is typically funded by bond issues. Funds from bonds cannot be spent on recurring expenses of running the school.

I don't live in Riverside, but I have no doubt that this school has been in the planning stages for a decade or more and that the contracts to build it were issued before this financial crisis hit. Even if the district trustees had seen this coming (which means they should've been running major banks and not some school district in SoCal), the only thing they could've done was stop building. They couldn't have used the bond funds to hire more teachers, or even to construct temporary classrooms on the campus--that would've been illegal and a breach of their fiduciary duty.

This had nothing to do with poor planning or a failure to "stand up to the unions."

You know how we on the right often like to point out reporters' ignorance on complicated issues. Well, you just proved that it's not limited to the mainstream media.

Keith, can you provide a link to the 25-cent gasoline tax? Or is that just the practical effect of the proposed elimination of allowing the oil and gas industry various standard business deductions?

Why force Lewis to pass the lie detector test? Just get him to take it. If he passes, great, the UNCF gets $10,000 and we have a modicum of respect for him. If he fails, we know he's a liar and the UNCF gets $10,000.