How Limousine Liberals, Oligarch Farmers and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply - By Yasha Levine - The eXiled

A group of water oligarchs in California have engineered a disastrous deregulation and privatization scheme. And they've pulled in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars without any real public outrage. The amount of power and control they wield over California's most precious resource, water, should shock and frighten us -- and it would, if more people were aware of it. But here is the scary thing: They are plotting to gain an even larger share of California's increasingly-scarce, over-tapped water supply, which will surely lead to shortages, higher prices and untold destruction to California's environment.

NASA Satellites Can See California's Wealth Transfer All The Way From Space - By Yasha Levine - The eXiled

That much water would be enough to keep the taps and toilets flowing for half the people living in America for a year. And, in terms of cash-money, it's worth many billions of dollars. At the most conservative estimate (using the rate at which California's water officials buy back water from farmers), it amounts to something like $6 billion. But it could go all the way to a hundred billion if the state's dry spell persists. And because NASA says that most of the pumping happened on the south-western edge of the Central Valley, all those billions have been going to the richest corporate farmers in California, the kind of farmers who commute to work at the crack of dawn on their personal jets while getting briefed by their financial advisers on a plan to scrap their farming operations and transition into water trading full time. Because selling taxpayer-subsidized water back to the masses at a markup has been the easiest money they ever made.