The Daily Brief

Rental rates in Los Angeles and Orange Counties have now surpased even San Francisco:

As of June 30, apartment owners collected an average monthly rent of $1,336 in Los Angeles and Orange counties — by far the most populous section of Southern California. The rental price represented a 3.7 percent increase from the same time last year, according to RealFacts, a Novato research firm that has been monitoring Western apartment rents since 1989.

In a five-county cluster within the San Francisco Bay area, June apartment rents averaged $1,310 per month, a 1 percent decrease from the same time last year.

None of the other 17 Western markets surveyed by RealFacts have average apartment rents above $1,300. The metropolitan areas surveyed are in California, Washington, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico.

The rapidly growing Southern California swath of Riverside and San Bernardino counties generated the West’s biggest rent increase. Apartment rents in the region averaged $978 in June, 6 percent higher than last year.

Of course, The Bay Area is still reeling from the collapse of the Clinton Bubble. But, throughout California, the expense and time required to do residential development, as well as a tax scheme which grossly favors localities undertaking commercial development (frequently fueled by coercive redevelopment programs), has created a chronic housing shortage.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Juan Williams tried to downplay Sandy Berger’s theft of documents from the National Archives by stating that there were “other copies” available. This was succinctly retorted by William Kristol, who noted that these were the only copies with sidebar notes by Berger, and other Clinton White House staffers. But, what I find even more interesting, is Rep. Christopher Cox’s critism in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, concerning Berger’s conflict of interest:

While many are concerned with which laws may have been broken, a more fundamental question is why Mr. Berger, by any objective reckoning a subject of the Commission’s investigation, was reviewing sensitive materials in order to determine which Clinton administration documents would be provided to the Commission. The destroyed documents reportedly contained more than two dozen recommendations for action against Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network–a measuring stick for the Clinton administration’s response.

The fact is that Sandy Berger, like so many of those involved in the Commission’s investigation such as high-level Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick, had an overpowering conflict of interest.