California!! It's Another Country!!

[Haggis@wk]

Its come to this

Tracy Residents Now Have To Pay For 911 Calls

Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency.

But there are a couple of options. Residents can pay a $48 voluntary fee for the year which allows them to call 9-1-1 as many times as necessary.

Or, there's the option of not signing up for the annual fee. Instead, they will be charged $300 if they make a call for help.

"A $300 fee and you don't even want to be thinking about that when somebody is in need of assistance," said Tracy resident Greg Bidlack.

[Haggis@wk]

Cash-strapped LA going after unlicensed dogs

LOS ANGELES – Cash-strapped Los Angeles is going to the dogs — literally.
The City Council voted Tuesday to have two departments share information in order to track down people who haven't licensed their pets.
Council President Eric Garcetti estimates two-thirds of the city's dogs are unlicensed. Licenses cost $15 for a sterilized dog and $100 for an unaltered pet.
Getting all dogs licensed would mean at least an additional $3.6 million in fees to the city.
The Department of Animal Services has eight full-time people whose job is to find and license dogs. The Department of Water and Power keeps a meter-reader database of homes with dogs. The council ordered the departments to coordinate to find the pooches.

[analog]

no difference - big business, big crime, big government, big brother, all will shake you down.

Eric Hoffer said it - the measure of freedom is perhaps more in what you are free NOT to do....
Florida's constitution USED to begin with the statement "Every person has a right to be let alone by government."

Bye Bye, American Pie....

a.

[Haggis@wk]

CALIFORNIA UPDATE:

“A California couple wrongly accused of abusing their teenager was arrested and had their other children removed from their home. They’ve since been cleared of the charges, but no one seems to know how to take them off the state’s list of child abusers. Under California law, local authorities are required to add to the list anyone even accused of abusing children, even if they’ve yet to be charged. The problem is that the law apparently offers no guidance on who has the authority to remove people once they’ve been cleared.”

Plus, from the comments: “Let’s all go accuse our assemblymen, see if that fixes the problem.”

[Haggis@wk]

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Recently our air waves have been thick with angry ads from the teachers' unions. We are informed that the greedy, the wealthy, and corporations refuse to pay higher taxes, and thus the more noble of our citizens, such as teachers and their students, are suffering. Lost in the strident message is that California's sales, income, and gas taxes are now the highest in the country (at a time when federal income, FICA, and health-care taxes are slated to rise to record levels on upper brackets); its teachers are the highest paid in the nation; and California's students' test scores in math and English are variously ranked from 46th to 49th in the nation. Given that about 150,000 Californians (out of some 36 million) pay nearly half of the income taxes, and given that estimates suggest nearly 3,500 more affluent Californians are leaving the state each week to no- or low-tax states like Nevada, Utah, Oregon, etc., it would seem suicidal to go after that shrinking 1-5 percent of taxpayers even further — all in order to ensure that the highest-paid teaching cadre in the nation continues business as usual, the results of which are only too clear from national rankings of state achievement in our public schools.

[jamiebk]

Don't get me started on the teacher's union Haggis

[Haggis@wk]

Don't get me started on the teacher's union Haggis

I'd be more worried about that "150,000" group. Don't get them too mad!!

[Haggis@wk]

California votes are going to vote on whether or not to legalize marijuana this fall. I was curious how our Left coast brethern (Piq (the too often absent) OT, Jamie, Selma, et all feel about it? I personally think that the states should be the ones to determine their states policy on drugs.

IMHO, the Harrison Drug Act of 1914 was unconstitutional and even when the SCOTUS upheld a challenge to it in 1915 they expressed doubts about its constitutionality: "While the Opium Registration Act of December 17, 1914, may have a moral end, as well as revenue, in view, this court, in view of the grave doubt as to its constitutionality except as a revenue measure, construes it as such."

If California does authorized it there will be the MOA legal fights and I think the 10th Amendment is going to (hopefully) make a comeback.

[jamiebk]

Personally, I hope that they do legalize it. We spend too many dollars trying to iradicate that which could provide revenue for the state. It is said that a pound of weed goes for $4000 these days. With this kind of profit in the stuff, cultivation attracts all kinds of bad elements including desperados from Mexico. They cultivate in National and State parklands and create hazardous situations for people who would stumble on to the farms...pit bulls, shot guns and booby traps kill and injure people. Illegal money gets shipped to who know where and buys who knows what. If it was legalized, the price is forecasted to drop to $300 per pound and the criminal element no longer is incentivised to break the law. The state would make a lot of tax revenue on pot. Even so, there is a lot of medical pot around...anyone can get it.
I used to smoke the stuff back in my early college and "20's" years. I don't any more but I don't really have anyting against it and no...I never went on to other recreational drugs. I really think that it's less harmful (health-wise) than alcohol. I would not mind an occassional "kick back" evening with some of my favorite music and movies, however, some of my interests such as scuba demand a totally clear head for my own safety and the safety of others...I would never risk that, legal or not. I won't drink so much as a beer with lunch if I am diving.

[dai bread]

I'm inclined to agree. However, one of my colleagues at work, with a lot more experience than me in the security business, said no. I respect her judgement enough to hold back until I've talked with others on the sharp end of security. Police, in particular. Also medical people and social workers.

[Haggis@wk]

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Yesterday I think I understood why California is in deep trouble. Let me walk you through another day out here.”

All of which raises the question: how would we return to sanity in California, a state as naturally beautiful and endowed and developed by our ancestors as it has been sucked dry by our parasitic generation? The medicine would be harder than the malady, and I just cannot see it happening, as much as I love the state, admire many of its citizens, and see glimmers of hope in the most unlikely places every day.

After all, in no particular order, we would have to close the borders; adopt English immersion in our schools; give up on the salad bowl and return to the melting pot; assimilate, intermarry, and integrate legal immigrants; curb entitlements and use the money to fix infrastructure like roads, bridges, airports, trains, etc.; build 4-5 new damns to store water in wet years; update the canal system; return to old policies barring public employee unions; redo pension contracts; cut about 50,000 from the public employee roles; lower income taxes from 10% to 5% to attract businesses back; cut sales taxes to 7%; curb regulations to allow firms to stay; override court orders now curbing cost-saving options in our prisons by systematic legislation; start creating material wealth from our forests; tap more oil, timber, natural gas, and minerals that we have in abundance; deliver water to the farmland we have; build 3-4 nuclear power plants on the coast; adopt a traditional curriculum in our schools; insist on merit pay for teachers; abolish tenure; encourage not oppose more charter schools, vouchers, and home schooling; give tax breaks to private trade and business schools; reinstitute admission requirements and selectivity at the state university system; take unregistered cars off the road; make UC professors teach a class or two more each year; abolish all racial quotas and preferences in reality rather than in name; build a new all weather east-west state freeway over the Sierra; and on and on.

In other words, we would have to seance someone born around 1900 and just ask them to float back for a day, walk around, and give us some advice.

[Haggis@wk]

Investor's Business Daily, opens its report on the drought with a few rhetorical questions: "Would France rip out its storied vineyards? Would Juan Valdez scorch Colombia's coffee crop? Sri Lanka its black pepper harvest? China its tea?" IBD writes:

On a springtime drive through the Central Valley, it's hard not to notice how federal and state governments are hell-bent on destroying the state's top export -- almonds -- and everything else in the nation's most productive farmland.

Instead of pink blossoms and green shoots along Highway 5 in April, vast spans from Bakersfield to Fresno sit bone-dry. Brown grass, dead orchards and lifeless grapevine skeletons stretch for miles for lack of water. For every fallow field, there's a sign that farmers have placed alongside the highway: "No Water = No Food," "No Water = No Jobs," "Congress Created Dust Bowl."

Locals say it's been like this for two years now, as Congress and bureaucrats cite "drought," "global warming" and "endangered species" to deny water to this $37 billion breadbasket through arbitrary "environmental" quotas

.

IDB reports, almost unbelievably: "Whatever the excuse, 75% of the fresh water that has historically irrigated California is now being washed to the open sea. For farmers in the southwest part of the valley, last year's cutoff amounted to 90%."

California's dust bowl is man-made and has been brought to California farmers courtesy of the government.

[jamiebk]

I don't buy it Haggis. We had a great water year this year...no restrictions. They are just trying to steal NorCal water by bringing back the old Peripheral Canal deal. It's all political...be sure of that.

Barnidge: Can California finally solve Delta crisis?
By Tom Barnidge
Contra Costa Times columnist
Posted: 04/30/2010 03:45:23 PM PDT
Updated: 04/30/2010 03:45:23 PM PDT


STOP US if you've heard this one before: California has a water problem.

Demand keeps growing, supply is limited, levees are unstable and the ecosystem is near collapse. Farmers in the south want open spigots, fishermen in the north want them closed and politicians don't know what they want.

This mess has been with us since before Arnold Schwarzenegger grunted his way through "Conan the Barbarian." Only now it's worse. The stakes keep rising, but no one can agree on a solution.

The state's longest-festering open wound was reopened for examination last week when the Contra Costa Council invited four experts from local and state agencies to discuss "The Delta's Future: Implementing Water Reform Legislation."

Lester Snow represented the California Natural Resources Agency, Phil Isenberg the Delta Stewardship Council, and Linda Fiack and Mary Piepho spoke for the Delta Protection Commission.

Those are but three of the many organizations that will have input into how to redirect Delta water south, and that fact says as much as anything about the snail-like progress of efforts to date.

Also involved: the State Water Resources Control Board, Department of Water Resources, Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bay Delta Conservation Plan, Delta Conservancy and the National Marine Fisheries Service (apologies to any agencies we overlooked).

Believe it or not, this


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is a streamlined version of what preceded. Before the Stewardship Council was created to be the lead dog, as many as 200 local, state and federal agencies were nipping at one another's heels with parochial agendas and tunnel-vision demands.

"At least half the problem of trying to manage the Delta," Snow said, "has been the sheer number of government jurisdictions that have some decision to make. Usually they are jurisdictions with different missions and purposes."

There is a ray of hope now that a resolution is on the horizon, although you will need a powerful telescope to make it out.

The goal, as explained in the Delta Vision Committee Implementation Report: "Restore the Delta ecosystem and create a more reliable water supply for California." Or, put another way: Find a way to send more water south that doesn't muck up the environment.

Isenberg said his group must present a plan by Jan. 1, 2012, which by state government standards constitutes a breakneck work pace. In addition to all the agency signoffs, the proposal must meet standards set by the federal Natural Community Conservation Plan and the California Environmental Quality Act.

It's a wonder anything ever gets done in this country.

Piepho, a Contra Costa County supervisor, expresses cautious optimism that the effort will bear fruit, but she worries that local concerns will be ignored.

"The Delta," she said, "is not simply a plumbing fixture for all the people who wish to use it. It is a significant natural resource for aquatic and terrestrial species."

She blanches at the thought of a water conveyance — the peripheral canal, to you and me — measuring as much as 200 yards wide and 40 miles long. "The 15,000-cubic-feet-per-second modeling that they are using now at BDCP would implode the Delta," she said. "Let's look smaller. Let's see what the science says."

She hopes the plan will, as rumored, be downsized for a tunnel rather than a runway-sized aqueduct. The Stewardship Council soon will name a board of independent scientists who will study the environmental impacts of various proposals. The board succeeds the CalFed Science Program, yet another agency that has left its fingerprints on the project.

Water reforms to be funded by an $11.1 billion bond issue include drought relief projects, waste water treatment improvements, integrated regional water management, water storage projects and environmental restoration of Delta levees. But the bond issue, which comes up for a vote in November, comes with its own set of problems.

Said Piepho: "According to the Legislative Analyst's Office, repaying the bond will cost the state's general fund between $600 million and $800 million a year. There's a lot of pork in the bond unrelated to reliable water supply, and there's not nearly enough money in it to restore the Delta."

For that matter, the bond issue will not pay for the peripheral canal. That expense is to be shared by those who benefit from the newfound water supply, although lawmakers didn't get around to detailing how fees will be assessed.

That shouldn't come as a surprise.

They aren't accustomed to getting this far with a water reform package.

[Haggis@wk]

Immigration's effects on California. The most striking finding was that California has the least-educated work force in the nation:

In 1970, California had the 7th most educated work force of the 50 states in terms of the share of its workers who had completed high school. By 2008 it ranked 50th, making it the least educated state.

California won’t be able to catch up with Mississippi and Arkansas any time soon: "There is no indication that California will soon close the educational gap. California ranks 35th in terms of the share of its 19-year-olds who have completed high school."

Speaking of Mississippi: "California's income distribution in 2008 was more unequal than was Mississippi's in 1970."

And this too: "In 2008 California ranked 11th highest in terms of the share of its households accessing at least one major welfare program and 8th highest in terms of the share of the state’s population without health insurance."

But don't worry — it'll all work out. You know, when the state spends all that extra money it has on the education and training of its future workforce.

We can see the future and it won’t work.

[jamiebk]

Unless and until the immigration problem is solved this will continue. The state gets smacked for alll the costs associated with these people yet nothing is forthcoming form the feds. Further, the feds refuse to do anything meaningful about sealing the border. AZ got it right.

[Shapley]

The state gets smacked for alll the costs associated with these people yet nothing is forthcoming form the feds. Further, the feds refuse to do anything meaningful about sealing the border. AZ got it right.

True, but you also have cities in California that have designated themselves 'safe harbours' for illegal immigrants. The feds need to do their part, but the State also has to get serious about dealing with it. As you not, Arizona apparently passed the tipping point. How long before California will do so? Perhaps if your capitol was located closer to the border, they might see the problem? As it is, the people in Sacramento are as distant from the problems at the border as are people in Wichita, KS.

[jamiebk]

True, but you also have cities in California that have designated themselves 'safe harbours' for illegal immigrants.

And San Francisco is one of them. I think this is an abomination...everyone becries the states taking matters into their own hands and passing laws the overstep the federal laws (AZ e.g.), however, when cities do this, it is even worse. They have no right to override or ignore federal laws...they become lawbreakers themsleves.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

San Francisco has threatened to secede from California (I think they were kidding, but I'm never sure) in the past. Most of us here in SoCal have been willing to let them, and offered the People's Republic of Santa Monica to 'em as a territorial annex... The folks in the city and Berzerkley have always kind of baffled me, from the Flower Chillen on down. I don't know if they have an actual immigrant population that they're shielding or if they're just still being themselves.

The Ellay "amnesty" attitude is fairly easy to understand: they're talking about family. (Seriously - try asking street directions anywhere in, say, Santa Anna) (in English). As individuals, I don't have much of a problem with Tio Jesse or Tia Maria or the cousins; it's the aggregate burden of the total illegal immigrant population that becomes an issue.

[dai bread]

I don't have any problems with Tia Maria either. It's a nice drink.

[Haggis@wk]

Forbes has an interesting tool that show migration of Americans in 2008. Here's migration to Dallas. The red lines reflect immigration out of Dallas. For a contrast click on Los Angles.