California

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/454657/Ice-age-on-the-way-as-scientists-fear-the-Sun-is-falling-asleep

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/22/smith-wesson-stop-selling-guns-california-due-micr/

[Crafty_Dog]

second post:

Red-light cameras being stopped in California cities
by Stephen Frank on 01/22/2014

This is what we know.  When there are red light camera’s at an intersection, there are more traffic accidents.  The revenues to cities are very small, many even lose money on the deal.  The money maker is the Australian firm 10,000 miles away—which refuses to come to court to answer questions about the traffic tickets THEY, not the COPS, give.

In Europe the people burn turn, tear down and destroy red light camera’s—even the passive socialist subjects refuse to allow these camera’s.  In the United States we write letters to the editor and complain about them.  For some reason we do not defeat or Recall the elected officials that allow us to be gouged by a foreign corporation.
“Declining revenues, a nonsupportive court system and increases in the number of accidents instead of decreases, are the major reasons why cities have pulled the plug on red-light cameras in the past two years.

Some city council members and city traffic engineers interviewed said photo enforcement is causing more rear-end accidents because people are scared when they see a yellow light at a camera-controlled intersection and slam on their brakes.

At one intersection in Los Angeles, Beeber said statistics showed an 80 percent increase in rear-end collisions. Murrieta reported a 325 percent increase in rear-end collisions after red-light cameras were installed, according to the state Legislature. Both cities have scrapped their programs. In Murrieta, voters approved a ballot measure that called for removing the cameras by 87 percent. The courts later overturned the ballot measure.”

[Crafty_Dog]

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/01/23/california-state-budget-increases-9-includes-raises-for-unionized-state-workers/

[Crafty_Dog]

On the California Water Front
How green politics has exacerbated the state's growing shortages.
Jan. 26, 2014 5:42 p.m. ET

Governor Jerry Brown in his state of California speech last week recalled Joseph's advice from scripture to "Put away your surplus during the years of great plenty so you will be ready for the lean years which are sure to follow." If only government water regulators were as wise as Joseph.

Mr. Brown has declared the state's severe drought an emergency. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas, the state's primary water source, is 20% of normal for this time of year, and reservoirs that capture the melted runoff are fast being depleted. While urging conservation, he says the government's ability to provide relief is limited since "we can't make it rain." That's refreshing modesty for Democrats these days. But the water shortage like so many other crises in California has been exacerbated by government. Californians are getting another first-hand lesson in the high costs of green regulation.


Local water districts that supply southern California, the Bay Area and the southern San Joaquin Valley may receive only 5% of their contractual allocations this year while growers in the heart of the valley might be cut off completely. Supplies for residents north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could be sharply restricted for the first time.

Districts in the south report they can weather the drought through 2015 without rationing water since they've invested in underground storage, desalination, wastewater reclamation and water metering. Yet the normally flush north, which likes to blame southern Californians for wasting the state's most precious resource, has been slow to adopt such technologies and is now feeling the pinch.

The green paradise of Santa Cruz has barred restaurants from serving water with meals except on diners' request. Sacramento residents have been ordered to scale back their water consumption by 20% and forbidden from using sprinklers on weekdays or washing cars with a hose. City workers and neighborhood watch groups are patrolling the streets for scofflaws.

Suffering the most are farmers south of the delta whose water allocations have plunged over the last two decades due to endangered-species protections. According to the Western Growers Association, up to 4.4 million acre-feet of water is diverted annually to environmental uses like wildlife refuges and salmon restoration. That's enough to sustain 4.4 million families, irrigate 1.1 million acres of land and grow more than 100 million tons of grapes.

Farmers are having to fallow hundreds of thousands of acres and pump groundwater, which depletes aquifers and can cause land subsidence. One irony here is that environmentalists are destroying one of FDR's great public-works programs—irrigating the naturally arid San Joaquin Valley.

California's biggest water hog is the three-inch smelt, which can divert up to one million acre-feet in a wet year. In 2008, federal regulators at the prodding of green groups restricted water exports south to protect the smelt, which have a suicidal tendency to swim into the delta's pumps. While wildlife refuges have continued to receive all 400,000 acre-feet of water they're entitled to under environmental regulations, farmers haven't gotten 100% of their water allocations since 2006. Even during years of heavy precipitation, federal regulators have supplied growers with 45% to 80% of their contractual deliveries.

After a deluge late in 2012, 800,000 acre-feet of melted snowpack was flushed into the San Francisco Bay. Regulators worried that reservoirs could overflow if the heavy precipitation continued. Yet they didn't want to harm the smelt by pumping more water south. All that flushed-out water would come in handy now.

California also has limited surface water storage because green groups oppose building new reservoirs or expanding existing ones like the Shasta Dam. Construction could disturb species's habitats. Reservoirs also encourage population growth, which is one reason many northern California communities rely heavily on groundwater.

Senator Dianne Feinstein noted last year that "expanding and improving California's water storage capacity is long overdue" since the last significant government investments in water storage and delivery were in the 1960s—not incidentally before the California Environmental Quality Act and National Environmental Policy Act were enacted in 1970. Those laws make it easier for environmentalists to block public works.

Ms. Feinstein and her fellow Democrats are now rushing to dodge the political storm brewing in the San Joaquin Valley. Earlier this month, she and her fellow California Senator Barbara Boxer and Rep. Jim Costa of Fresno urged federal agencies to "exercise their discretion in regulatory decision-making within the confines of the law to deliver more water to those whose health and livelihoods depend on it."

That sounds nice, but both Senators left farmers out to dry in 2012 when they opposed House legislation that would have redirected more water to humans and helped mitigate the present shortage. The Senators claimed the bill would "eviscerate state and federal environmental laws and water rights" and "seriously set back California's ability to resolve its water challenges." President Obama threatened a veto.

Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes and David Valadao plan to introduce similar legislation that would temporarily suspend some environmental regulations and put humans at the front of the water line once it starts raining. This is a modest step toward reforming the absurd government status quo that puts green indulgences above human welfare.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/29/report-some-bay-area-communities-could-run-out-of-water-within-4-months/

[Crafty_Dog]

Some hyperventilating can be found in this source, but it regularly does the work and research that others do not.

Be sure to check Steve Frank's California News & Views throughout the day for breaking news and commentary! Visit http://capoliticalnews.com/!



How “Good” is California Government Education? Only 25% of 4th Graders Read at Grade Level
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Bakersfield—What Recovery? Sales Tax Revenues Down—Healthcare/Pension Costs Up
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

Guv Brown needs to talk with the city council of Bakersfield.  Then he needs to fire his speech writers and his economic team.  Either they have been lying to Jerry—or he is too confused to understand higher spending, lower revenues, plus the water policy of protecting fish over the needs of people—we are in a Depression in California—and it is getting worse.

Sales tax revenues are down—but spending is not cut.  This is getting owrse.

“The city’s unfunded liability has risen by $8.7 million, to just more than $176 million for the 2011-2012 Fiscal Year.

Unfunded liability is the amount CALPERS would be short if every Bakersfield city employee whose pension it covers retired tomorrow.
The city’s cost for the one Kaiser Permanente and two Blue Cross health plans which it offers employees also rose, between 8.5 percent and 15 percent for contracts approved last month.

The increase will cost the city $1.5 million during 2014, Smith said, and is largely based on medical claims paid out.”

.See the full story by clicking on the blue headline


How many workers will be affected by Obama’s minimum wage executive order?
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

The headlines for the compassionate looks great—raise the minimum wage to get people out of poverty.  Not mentioned is that very few would be affected—most on minimum wage are teenagers, not adults with families. Not heard from are those that will lose their jobs if the minimum goes up—will Obama speak for them?

“Though the 2 million figure has been widely cited, it’s worth clarifying several points. To start, the 2 million estimate didn’t only include people who were employed through federal contracts, but also workers whose wages Demos estimated were funded through other federal spending, such as Small Business Administration loans, Medicare, and Medicaid. According to the Demos study, the number of workers who are employed directly through federal contracts was 560,000. A spokesman for Demos told the Washington Examiner that this is the category of people the group believes to be covered by the executive order.
But the number covered by the executive order would still be less than this 560,000.”

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



How “Good” is California Government Education? Only 25% of 4th Graders Read at Grade Level
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

Over the past twenty years California has more than doubled the money spent on government education.  If this was a product, the management would be fired, the process changed and anybody responsible for the results not allowed to work in the industry.

How well do California government school fourth graders read?  “The majority of California’s fourth-graders aren’t making the grade when it comes to reading. A new report finds only one in four California fourth-graders is reading at grade level.”  You get an “F” if you score 25% on a test—this result is after billions have been spent, curriculum dumbed down and continuous changes to the curriculum over the years.

This is why children and parents should decide the education venue for each student—not the failed special interests that own the schools.  Our children deserve the best—not the system we have now.

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



Little-Known Facts About the Contract for the First Construction Segment of California High-Speed Rail
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

Guv Brown and his desire to pay off unions and special interests means that Sacramento can not be transparent.  The choo choo train is not about transportation—no one wants it, it is too expensive and literally the Authority is stealing private property in Fresno to continue the pretense this is going forward.  The values of the contract is publicly misstated, the political donations from the construction companies AND the unions (not noted in this article) are not mentioned by the Guv and his political team.
Arnold, Jerry and the High Speed Rail Authority have been caught lying about the cost, the route, the travel time and the ridership..they even lied that this is a high speed rail.  Due to how slow it will go, it is nothing more than a slick looking slow train.

“Three days after the $27,200 contribution was made – and on the day it was recorded by the California Secretary of State – California Attorney General Kamala Harris submitted an extraordinary request to the California Supreme Court on behalf of Gov. Brown, the California High-Speed Rail Authority, and other interested parties. They want the court to grant relief to allow the project to continue, even though a Sacramento County Superior Court judge decided in 2013 that the California High-Speed Rail Authority failed to comply with the law established by Proposition 1A in 2008 and therefore could not sell any of the $9.95 billion in bonds authorized by voters under that statewide ballot measure.”

”See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



Water supply project costs could halt plans for desalination, water recycling plants
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

This is a terrible choice for the people of San Fran—but they have worked hard to get into this mess.
They now have a choice.  For the short run spend money on the seismic problems of the water supply of the city.  Or, for the long run spend money for a desalinization plant and recycling of wastewater programs.  They do not have money for both.  They have to pick one, and it does not matter which—in the future San Fran will lose its water supply.

“An extra $161 million in costs required to finish the so-called Water Systems Improvement Project and to start gleaning drinking water from groundwater will be paid out of money set aside for the desalination plant, Ritchie said. The WSIP — a seismic rebuild of the dams, tunnels and pipes that deliver SFPUC water to 2.6 million Bay Area homes and businesses — exceeded its $4.6 billion budget thanks to construction overruns like the one at Calaveras Dam, where the discovery of ancient landslides made the job more difficult.”

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline


CalSTRS: where is the urgency? It is Unsustainable
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

Thanks to being forced to admit the full unfunded liabilities of CalSTRS, that agency has a deficit of $171 billion.  When this was only $71 billion, it was declared to be unsustainable—now it is really $100 billion more and the agency has said and done nothing.  The Board is not even anxious—have you seen statement of concerns, plans to solve the problem, urgency from the Governor or the Democrats running the Legislature?  The unions that own Sacramento like the pensions—thinking money for education can be increased by raising taxes.

“CalSTRS provides pension benefits to nearly 900,000 beneficiaries. To ensure that money is available to pay for future benefits, the system accumulates contributions into a trust fund.  Officially, CalSTRS has only 63% of the assets it needs to provide current and future retirement benefits, leaving the system with an $80.4 billion funding shortfall (market value). Currently, that unfunded liability grows $22 million each day lawmakers forgo a solution.”

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



Greenhut: Everything is great in California (but don’t look too closely)
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

When you watch Jerry Brown patting himself on the back for the California “miracle” you can almost believe it.  For instance our jobless number are down—yet, in San Diego, that drop is counting the 92% that have dropped out of looking for jobs.  Brown says he has a budget surplus—yet the State Controller says we have an $18.4 billion cash deficit—is Brown too confused or is trying to be like Obama?

So far, the State has found 17 communities that will be waterless in 90-120 days—as we get closer to summer, while salmon, delta smelt and the fairy shrimp have all the water they need, families will be cutting back 20% or more—and Central Valley farmers will get about 5% of their needs.

“But, as Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury News reported recently, “Gov. Jerry Brown’s image as a responsible, penny-pinching steward of California’s finances has been cemented in recent weeks because of his renewed call to pay off California’s ‘wall of debt.’ That’s a term Brown coined when he took office to describe the tens of billions of dollars California owed to public schools and special funds whose coffers were raided to help balance budgets in the past. But look behind that $24.9 billion wall and you’ll see a $330 billion skyline of other liabilities threatening the state’s financial health. It includes $80 billion needed to cover teachers’ pensions and $64 billion to pay for state workers’ health care in retirement — two particularly troublesome liabilities because the state isn’t even making the minimum payments on them.”

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline


Should California’s Crowded Prisons Look to San Francisco’s Shrinking Jails
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

A court has ruled that the comfort of criminals is more important that the safety of society.  So far, between Arnold and Jerry, close to 50,000 criminals that should be in the State prison system are backed on the streets—in Los Angeles to probation folks have lost track of where thousands of these criminals are and what they are doing.  On the plus side, this has caused the explosion in the purchasing of guns.  Maybe that is because as the criminals have been released cash poor cities and counties have been forced to fire law enforcement officers.  This exposed the fact that YOUR safety is your business, government can not protect you 24/7

“When it’s time for an inmate to leave prison or jail, San Francisco’s counselors find out what’s needed in housing, employment, health care and drug rehabilitation. The probation department has gone as far as picking people up from prisons to help them return to San Francisco. And little steps—like trying not to release people from county jail in the middle of the night when they’re more prone to slip up—have become part of the culture. “Other counties have taken realignment money and invested it in more jails,” Adachi says. “We haven’t done that.” Instead, San Francisco has focused on alternative sentencing and re-entry programs that hook offenders up with drug treatment, education and employment services.”

Now you know why gun sales have soared.

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



NAFTA at 20 years old—American Unemployed and Larger Trade Deficits
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

In the last twenty years American manufacturing jobs have gone overseas—just as Ross Perot and other NAFTA opponents said they would.  Special rules were created for foreigners that American firms can not use.  NAFTA was a way, we were told to globalize our economy—instead our economy took a hit and our workers became victims of those that believe in “One World”, not the protection of this nation.

A total disaster—as we knew it would be.  Only the big corporations won.

“Major corporations like General Electric, Caterpillar and Chrysler announced they would add jobs for increased sales to Mexico. Instead, they eliminated jobs. For example, General Electric testified before Congress saying, “We are looking at another $7.5 billion in potential sales over the next 10 years. These sales could support 10,000 jobs for General Electric and its suppliers.” In reality, “General Electric has eliminated 4,936 U.S. jobs since NAFTA due to rising imports from Canada and Mexico or decisions to offshore production to those countries.”

The report also documents the fact that “the small pre-NAFTA U.S. trade surplus with Mexico turned into a massive new trade deficit and the pre-NAFTA U.S. trade deficit with Canada expanded greatly.” According to Census Bureau data, in 1993, the non-inflation adjusted U.S. trade surplus with Mexico was $1.6 billion, and in 2013, the U.S. trade deficit had grown to $50.1 billion. The non-inflation adjusted U.S. deficit with Canada grew from $4.4 billion in 1994 to $7.4 billion in 2013. Together the Mexico and Canada inflation-adjusted trade deficits “have morphed into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion.”

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



Economic Disaster of Drought has Started for 17 California Communities
by Stephen Frank on 01/29/2014

This is going to be a very long summer in California, unless we get another 1991 “March Miracle” and rain pours for ten days and ten nights, solving our water problem for years. The Brown/Obama policy has stopped 50% of the water needed in order to assure that the delta smelt, salmon and fairy shrimp have all the water they need.  Now this process is beginning to collapse, for California citizens.

“As California’s drought deepens, 17 communities across the state are in danger of running out of water within 60 to 120 days, state officials said Tuesday.

The water systems, all in rural areas, serve from 39 to 11,000 residents. They range from the tiny Lompico County Water District in Santa Cruz County to districts that serve the cities of Healdsburg and Cloverdale in Sonoma County.”

Add to that the impending farm crisis in the Central Valley, receiving only 5% of the water they need for the farms. This could be the most difficult summer faced by California in a generation.  Watch the water issue and you will see the pin pulled on the economy of our Golden State.

See the full story by clicking on the blue headline



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[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369695/californias-obamacare-scandal-jillian-kay-melchior

[Crafty_Dog]

Conceptually it is correct that it is a loan, but that is not how it is being presented.

http://www.craighuey.com/630_000_californians_will_have_their_property_confiscated?utm_campaign=hueyrep_2_1_14&utm_medium=email&utm_source

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/05/long-forgotten-pot-bust-bureacratic-screwup-prompt-agents-to-seize-california/?intcmp=latestnews

[Crafty_Dog]

The Opinion Pages|OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

The Dust Bowl Returns
By Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytl

 

FRESNO, Calif. — EVERY Saturday in late December and January, as reports of brutal temperatures and historic snowfalls streamed in from family in Vermont, New York and even southern Louisiana, we made weekly pilgrimages to our local beer garden to enjoy craft brews and unseasonably warm afternoons.

Normal winters here in Fresno, in the heart of California’s Central Valley, bring average highs in the 50s, steady periods of rain and drizzle, and the dense, bone-chilling Tule fog that can blanket the valley for days and even weeks on end.

But not this year. Instead, early 2014 gave us cloudless skies and midday temperatures in the 70s. By the end of January, it seemed like April, with spring trees in full bloom.

We fretted over the anomalous weather, to be sure. A high-pressure system parked off the Alaskan coast had produced not just our high temperatures but also soaring levels of fine particulate matter in the air and more than 50 rainless days, worsening a
three-year drought, the most severe in half a millennium. If it’s this bad in January, we wondered, what’s it going to be like in July? But then we’d return to the beer taps, or meander over to peruse food truck menus.

Life in the Central Valley revolves around two intricately related concerns: the quality of the air and the quantity of the water. Although Fresno is the state’s fifth-largest city, it is really just a sprawling farm town in the middle of the nation’s most productive agricultural region, often called “America’s fruit basket.” Surrounded by mountains, which trap the pollution created by a surging population, interstate transportation and tens of thousands of farms, the valley has noxious air, even on good days.

The political atmosphere surrounding crop irrigation is equally toxic. Some farms in the western Valley — crippled by cuts in water allocations, salt buildup in the soil and depleted aquifers — now resemble the dust bowl that drove so many Tom Joads here in the 1930s. Farmers line highways with signs insisting that “food grows where water flows,” while environmentalists counter that the agriculture industry consumes 75 percent of the water transported by California’s byzantine water system.

Locals assess the situation in numbers and colors. Meteorologists compile and trade rainfall statistics with all the regularity and precision of batting averages, but without any of the fun. The air quality index — ranging from a “healthy” green to a “hazardous” maroon — occupies an ominous presence in the day, not unlike the color-coded terrorism alert scale adopted after 9/11.

Experts offer dire warnings. The current drought has already eclipsed previous water crises, like the one in 1977, which a meteorologist friend, translating into language we understand as historians, likened to the “Great Depression” of droughts. Most Californians depend on the Sierra Nevada for their water supply, but the snowpack there was just 15 percent of normal in early February. And the dry conditions are likely to make the polluted air in the Central Valley — which contributes to high rates of asthma and the spread of Valley Fever, a potentially fatal airborne fungus — even worse.

The current crisis raises the obvious question: How long can we continue to grow a third of the nation’s fruit and vegetables?

Tom Willey — an organic farmer from nearby Madera with the genial manner and snowy beard of a Golden State Santa Claus — certainly wonders. For six and a half years, he and his wife, Denesse, have provided most of our family’s fresh produce through their community-supported agriculture program. The Willeys taught us to appreciate kohlrabi and even turned our 5-year-old into a fan of brussels sprouts, which she likes to eat straight from the farm box.

Twenty years ago, the water table under the Willeys’ farm measured 120 feet. But a well test in late January revealed that it is now 60 feet lower. Half of that decline, Tom estimates, has occurred in the last two years.

I guess the Tom Joads' of the current generation will not be singing "California here I come." All this snow in Minnesota looks pretty good...

The Willeys have done what they can to cope. They’ve cut back on less profitable crops, and they are already dedicated practitioners of sustainable agriculture. But many farmers aren’t, and the future is worrisome. Pumping from aquifers is so intense that the ground in parts of the valley is sinking about a foot a year. Once aquifers compress, they can never fill with water again. It’s no surprise Tom Willey wakes every morning with a lump in his throat. When we ask which farmers will survive the summer, he responds quite simply: those who dig the deepest and pump the hardest.

Yet for all the doom around us, here in Fresno itself it is hard to find evidence that the drought is changing the behavior of city dwellers. Locals have made a few concessions, though mainly to mitigate the effects of the bad air. The two of us, for instance, have skipped afternoon jogs to ease the strain on our lungs.

And while religious communities around the valley organized a day of prayer and fasting, entreating God to send rain, concrete efforts to solve the water problem are less apparent. Gov. Jerry Brown has called on all Californians to reduce their water use by 20 percent, but residential lawns, seeded each year with winter ryegrass, continue to glow in brilliant, bright-green hues, kept alive by sprinkler systems that are activated in the dark of night.

Fresnans have long resisted water-saving measures, clinging tenaciously to a flat rate, all-you-can-use system. Nudged by state and federal officials, Fresno began outfitting new homes with water meters in the early 1990s, but voters passed a ballot initiative prohibiting the city from actually reading them. It took two decades for all area homes to acquire meters and for the city to start monitoring the units. To its credit, Fresno has a watering schedule, limiting when residents can water their lawns. But enforcement, to put it charitably, is lax.

Our behavior here in the valley feels untenable and self-destructive, and for much of it we are to blame. But we also find support among an enthusiastic group of enablers: tens of millions of American shoppers who devour the lettuce and raisins, carrots and tomatoes, almonds and pistachios grown in our fields.

Rain showers moved in Thursday morning, for the third time in a week. The faithful will see signs of divine intervention, but it seems clear we need to stage one of our own. These storms brought less than two inches of rain — merely a drop in our tired, leaky bucket.

Blain Roberts, the author of the forthcoming book “Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women: Race and Beauty in the Twentieth-Century South,” and Ethan J. Kytle, the author of the forthcoming book “Romantic Reformers and the Antislavery Struggle in the Civil War Era,” are associate professors of history at California State University, Fresno.
+++++++++++++++++++++

2
 February 2014

Severe Drought Has U.S. West Fearing Worst
By Adam Nagourney and Ian Lovett

LOS ANGELES — The punishing drought that has swept California is now threatening the state’s drinking water supply.

With no sign of rain, 17 rural communities providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out within 60 to 120 days. State officials said that the number was likely to rise in the months ahead after the State Water Project, the main municipal water distribution system, announced on Friday that it did not have enough water to supplement the dwindling supplies of local agencies that provide water to an additional 25 million people. It is first time the project has turned off its spigot in its 54-year history.

State officials said they were moving to put emergency plans in place. In the worst case, they said drinking water would have to be brought by truck into parched communities and additional wells would have to be drilled to draw on groundwater. The deteriorating situation would likely mean imposing mandatory water conservation measures on homeowners and businesses, who have already been asked to voluntarily reduce their water use by 20 percent.

“Every day this drought goes on we are going to have to tighten the screws on what people are doing” said Gov. Jerry Brown, who was governor during the last major drought here, in 1976-77.

This latest development has underscored the urgency of a drought that has already produced parched fields, starving livestock, and pockets of smog.

“We are on track for having the worst drought in 500 years,” said B. Lynn Ingram, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Already the drought, technically in its third year, is forcing big shifts in behavior. Farmers in Nevada said they had given up on even planting, while ranchers in Northern California and New Mexico said they were being forced to sell off cattle as fields that should be four feet high with grass are a blanket of brown and stunted stalks.

Fishing and camping in much of California has been outlawed, to protect endangered salmon and guard against fires. Many people said they had already begun to cut back drastically on taking showers, washing their car and watering their lawns.

Rain and snow showers brought relief in parts of the state at the week’s end — people emerging from a movie theater in West Hollywood on Thursday evening broke into applause upon seeing rain splattering on the sidewalk — but they were nowhere near enough to make up for record-long dry stretches, officials said.

“I have experienced a really long career in this area, and my worry meter has never been this high,” said Tim Quinn, executive director of theAssociation of California Water Agencies, a statewide coalition. “We are talking historical drought conditions, no supplies of water in many parts of the state. My industry’s job is to try to make sure that these kind of things never happen. And they are happening.”

Officials are girding for the kind of geographical, cultural and economic battles that have long plagued a part of the country that is defined by a lack of water: between farmers and environmentalists, urban and rural users, and the northern and southern regions of this state.

“We do have a politics of finger-pointing and blame whenever there is a problem,” said Mr. Brown. “And we have a problem, so there is going to be a tendency to blame people.” President Obama called him last week to check on the drought situation and express his concern.

Tom Vilsack, secretary of the federal Agriculture Department, said in an interview that his agency’s ability to help farmers absorb the shock, with subsidies to buy food for cattle, had been undercut by the long deadlock in Congress over extending the farm bill, which finally seemed to be resolved last week.

Mr. Vilsack called the drought in California a “deep concern,” and a warning sign of trouble ahead for much of the West.

“That’s why it’s important for us to take climate change seriously,” he said. “If we don’t do the research, if we don’t have the financial assistance, if we don’t have the conservation resources, there’s very little we can do to help these farmers.”

The crisis is unfolding in ways expected and unexpected. Near Sacramento, the low level of streams has brought out prospectors, sifting for flecks of gold in slow-running waters. To the west, the heavy water demand of growers of medical marijuana — six gallons per plant per day during a 150-day period — is drawing down streams where salmon and other endangered fish species spawn.

“Every pickup truck has a water tank in the back,” said Scott Bauer, a coho salmon recovery coordinator with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “There is a potential to lose whole runs of fish.”

Without rain to scrub the air, pollution in the Los Angeles basin, which has declined over the past decade, has returned to dangerous levels, as evident from the brown-tinged air. Homeowners have been instructed to stop burning wood in their fireplaces.

In the San Joaquin Valley, federal limits for particulate matter were breached for most of December and January. Schools used flags to signal when children should play indoors.

“One of the concerns is that as concentrations get higher, it affects not only the people who are most susceptible, but healthy people as well,” said Karen Magliano, assistant chief of the air quality planning division of the state’s Air Resources Board.

The impact has been particularly severe on farmers and ranchers. “I have friends with the ground torn out, all ready to go,” said Darrell Pursel, who farms just south of Yerington, Nev. “But what are you going to plant? At this moment, it looks like we’re not going to have any water. Unless we get a lot of rain, I know I won’t be planting anything.”

The University of California Cooperative Extension held a drought survival session last week in Browns Valley, about 60 miles north of Sacramento, drawing hundreds of ranchers in person and online. “We have people coming from six or seven hours away,” said Jeffrey James, who ran the session.

Dan Macon, 46, a rancher in Auburn, Calif., said the situation was “as bad as I have ever experienced. Most of our range lands are essentially out of feed.”

With each parched sunrise, a sense of alarm is rising amid signs that this is a drought that comes along only every few centuries. Sacramento had gone 52 days without water, and Albuquerque had gone 42 days without rain or snow as of Saturday.

The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies much of California with water during the dry season, was at just 12 percent of normal last week, reflecting the lack of rain or snow in December and January.

“When we don’t have rainfall in our biggest two months, you really are starting off bad,” said Dar Mims, a meteorologist with the Air Resources Board.

Even as officials move into action, people who have lived through droughts before — albeit none as severe as this — said they were doing triage in their gardens (water the oak tree, not the lawn) and taking classic “stop-start-stop-start” shower.

Jacob Battersby, a producer in Oakland, said he began cutting back even before the voluntary restrictions were announced.

“My wife and I both enjoy gardening,” he wrote in an email. “ ‘Sorry, plants. You will be getting none to drink this winter.’ ”

[Crafty_Dog]

 http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/02/12/1056971.pdf.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/02/24/calif-doctor-shortage-could-lead-to-higher-rates-on-exchange-plans/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-republicans-20140303,0,804636.story?track=rss#axzz2tzJmAUqn

[Crafty_Dog]

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/12/bullet-train-spending-approaches-1-2b-now-dead-broke/

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/12/high-speed-rail-authority-deadbeats-still-stealing-private-property-and-signing-contracts/

and this on pensions:

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/12/rising-pension-expenses-to-put-an-end-to-long-beachs-brief-period-of-financial-stability/

[G M]

Who is shocked to read this? Aside from the majority of Californians...

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/12/bullet-train-spending-approaches-1-2b-now-dead-broke/

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/12/high-speed-rail-authority-deadbeats-still-stealing-private-property-and-signing-contracts/

and this on pensions:

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/12/rising-pension-expenses-to-put-an-end-to-long-beachs-brief-period-of-financial-stability/

[ccp]

I really don't know how we can defeat the dependency crowd when there are so many of them and growing by leaps and bounds unless there is a big shock wave that finally makes at least some of them wake up to reality.   We will see. 

*****Republicans roar for Tea Party candidate at California convention

Reuters
By Sharon Bernstein 13 hours ago
 
BURLINGAME, California (Reuters) - California Republicans wrapped up their annual state convention on Sunday with a roar of approval for a charismatic Tea Party-backed candidate seeking to unseat popular Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as he vies for an unprecedented fourth term.

Tim Donnelly, a Southern California state assemblyman who made his name as a leader for the anti-illegal immigration Minutemen Project, brought the crowd of several hundred party activists to its feet in a speech that slammed Brown, warned of government tyranny and criticized recent efforts in the state to allow transgender children to use school restrooms in accordance with their gender identities.

"I want my state back," said Donnelly, a businessman who represents the conservative desert area east of Los Angeles. He blamed government regulation for driving customers away from a plastics business that he founded. "I want my freedom back."

About 1,000 delegates and guests attended the weekend convention in Burlingame, about 15 miles south of San Francisco. Speakers included former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus who urged members to strike a more inclusive tone as the party struggles to rebuild in a state where it once dominated.

"We have a responsibility to those who do not yet have the liberties and the rights that we enjoy," Rice told the group on Saturday as part of a speech urging the party to become more inclusive on issues like immigration. "We cannot abandon them ... We were once them."

The convention took place after months of strategizing and fundraising led by former Republican state senate leader Jim Brulte. In a state where Democrats control both legislative houses and every statewide elected office, Brulte is charged with helping to revive the party's moribund operation.

Just 29 percent of voters were registered Republicans in California in 2013, down from about 35 percent in 2005, part of a long decline in the party of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in the increasingly diverse and socially liberal state.

Brown, who served as the state's top executive from 1975 to 1983 before winning the spot again in 2010, is seeking a fourth term as governor. By steering Democrats in the legislature sharply toward the center and stubbornly demanding fiscal restraint, his focus on paying down debt while restoring funding in key areas such as education has won him high approval ratings in a state where voters can be fickle.

CONSERVATIVE CROWD

But it was clear from the differing reactions to Donnelly and a more moderate candidate, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari, that this was a conservative crowd.

Kashkari, who is seeking support from business interests in the state and is more moderate than Donnelly on many social issues, has made jobs and education the cornerstone of his campaign. He cited support from college Republicans and said he planned to meet with party activists in their hometowns after the convention ended.

"I'm running for governor because California is failing millions of our families," Kashkari said, referring to low-performing schools and a weak rate of job creation. His speech was met with polite applause, but not with the thunderous reaction that delegates gave to Donnelly.

At the convention and behind the scenes, Republican leaders have been urging candidates to be more inclusive and to refrain from inflammatory rhetoric. In his speech, Donnelly avoided talking about immigration and religion.

Democrats, he told the delegates, were not the enemy - they were potential Republicans.

Donnelly, 47, has an impassioned, populist style of speaking that tends to include a lot of zingers. His Burlingame speech was not without swipes at liberal causes, including environmentalists who want a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial method of extracting natural gas and oil from underground rock deposits.

"We ought to frack our way to prosperity and drill our way to prosperity, rather than sitting on an ocean of oil and importing it from our enemies," he said to wild applause.

On his first day in office, Donnelly said, he would declare a moratorium on all laws that would restrict freedom, businesses or the constitutional rights of Californians.

He also railed against politicians who want to allow boys to use the girls' restroom at school, a jab at a recent state law allowing transgender youth to play sports or use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identities.

Assemblyman Brian Jones, a San Diego-area Republican who has thrown his support behind Donnelly, said that the sometimes provocative candidate has taken to heart pleas from senior party leaders and the business community to make his message more inclusive.

"He's saying the same things, but in a more welcoming manner," Jones said. "He's grown and is paying attention and being responsive to feedback."

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Matthew

[DougMacG]

Yes, there is quite an art and a skill to gaining trust and changing hearts and minds, and not just insult the idiocy of liberalism.

"He's saying the same things, but in a more welcoming manner."

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/03/californias-historic-drought/100706/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/04/15/tax-used-to-research-initiative-to-make-85-of-california-blighted-to-return-redevelopment-agencies-to-steal-private-property/

[Crafty_Dog]

Court Again Says No Bond Sales for High Speed Rail Authority (Choo Choo Train)
by Stephen Frank on 04/16/2014

Guv Brown and his Democrat buddies again went to court to claim the law does not pertain to them.  If Obama can make his own laws, why not the Democrats of California?  Again, the California 3rd Court of Appeal said NO—you may not violate the law and issue more bonds.  Now there will be a trial.  Then, when that trial is decided, the losing side will appeal—all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.  This could take another 3-4 years before an absolute final decision is made.
Yet the Authority continues to sign billion dollar deals, without a dime in the bank or anyway to pay the bills.  They are so far in debt, they are using $26 million of borrowed money this year, and $29 million next year (from the State) just to pay attorneys to keep the lawsuits going.

“On April 15, 2014, the California 3rd District Court of Appeal rejected an extraordinary appeal backed by Governor Jerry Brown, Attorney General Kamala Harris, Treasurer Bill Lockyer, and the California High-Speed Rail Authority. These top state officials wanted the appeals court to suppress two decisions of a lower court so the state could borrow money for the High-Speed Train Program by selling bonds.

In 2013, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge found that the California High-Speed Rail Authority failed to comply with provisions of Proposition 1A, the “Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act,”

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/education/competing-views-of-teacher-tenure-are-on-display-in-california-case.html?emc=edit_th_20140417&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193

[Crafty_Dog]

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/04/21/calpers-hikes-rate-459-million-funding-still-low/

In a related vein see  http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/04/21/pensions-still-cloud-stockton-bankruptcy-exit/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/04/29/mexico-and-texas-have-lower-taxes-than-california-both-have-growing-economies-while-our-state-in-depression/

[G M]

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/california-612425-toyota-state.html

[prentice crawford]

California GOP worried over top-two governor race.

http://start.toshiba.com/news/read/category/Top%20News/article/the_associated_press-california_gop_worried_over_toptwo_governor_race-ap

                             P.C.

[Crafty_Dog]

 

Both of them are terrible candidates.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/14/sriracha-ceo-compares-ca-to-communist-vi

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/what-recovery-houston-notches-more-new-home-starts-than-the-entire-state-of-california/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/high-speed-rail-crashes-into-high-costs/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/top-two-electoral-disaster-for-california-18-turnout-and-one-party-rule/

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/alabama-gop-gets-dose-of-teacher-union-bipartisanship-happening-in-ca-as-well/ 

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/free-pot-for-san-jose-voters-bribe-and-brain-killer/

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/they-gave-an-election-but-nobody-came-that-happened-tuesday/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/guv-brown-cap-and-trade-to-pay-for-high-speed-rail-for-next-272-years/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/18-billion-in-ca-water-bonds-not-a-drop-of-new-water-now-sacramento-wants-another-11-billion/ 

[ccp]

Barry Goldwater 2.0: This candidate wants to redefine conservatism 

 By George Will 
 JewishWorldReview.com |    MENLO PARK, Calif.

Fifty Julys ago, up the road near San Francisco, in the unfortunately named Cow Palace, the Republican National Convention gave its presidential nomination to Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who knew he would lose: Americans were not going to have a third president in 14 months. Besides, his don't-fence-me-in libertarian conservatism was ahead of its time. His agenda, however, was to change his party's national brand.

Today, in this state where one in eight Americans lives, and where Democratic presidential candidates can reap 55 electoral votes without spending a dime or a day campaigning, the Republicans' gubernatorial candidate has an agenda and spirit similar to Goldwater's. Neel Kashkari is not, as some careless commentary suggests, an anti-Goldwater, diluting the state party's conservatism. He is Goldwater 2.0, defining conservatism a half-century on.

He relishes "turning upside down" the parties' stereotypes. The Democratic candidate, 76-year-old Gov. Jerry Brown, is "the old white guy." Kashkari, the 40-year-old son of Indian immigrants, was born in 1973, the year before Brown was first elected governor. Brown is a child of the establishment — his father, Pat, California's 32nd governor, was defeated in 1966 by Ronald Reagan. Jerry Brown, California's 34th and 39th governor, is a government lifer, having been secretary of state, attorney general and Oakland's mayor when not unsuccessfully seeking a U.S. Senate seat and the presidency (three times).

Kashkari prospered in the private sector, a place as foreign to Brown as Mongolia. Born in Ohio, Kashkari studied mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois, came to California to work in the aerospace industry, then earned an MBA from Wharton, joined Goldman Sachs and landed a Washington job with a Goldman Sachs alumnus, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. As a treasury official during one of the most dangerous periods in America's economic history, from July 2006 to May 2009, Kashkari says: "I saw the best in our political system."



 RECEIVE LIBERTY DEFENDING COLUMNISTS IN YOUR INBOX … FOR FREE!
 
 Receive Will and many, many more. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
 
 




He remembers that, with a liquidity-deprived financial system pushing the nation to the precipice of a depression, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell simply said, "Of course we'll find a way to get this done." The politically perilous but nation-saving business of bailing out the banking system was done in days. "What other democracy in the world," Kashkari asks, "can move that fast to deal with a crisis?"

Just as McConnell's opponent in this year's Kentucky Republican primary execrated McConnell's finest hour, Kashkari's primary opponent vociferously deplored Kashkari's role as administrator of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This opponent, a factually challenged fire-breather (of illegal immigration, he said, "We are in a war"), also said Kashkari supports sharia law. That would be peculiar for a Hindu who calls himself "a libertarian socially" (he is pro-choice and pro-same-sex marriage) and lives in Southern California's culturally relaxed Laguna Beach.





     

     




Today, California is a one-party state: Democrats have 2-to-1 majorities in both legislative chambers and account for 40 of 55 members of Congress. Republicans hold no statewide office and have only 28 percent of voters registered by party. All of this has something to do with these facts: California has the nation's highest income tax, sales tax and poverty rate (adjusted for the cost of living) and the second-highest gasoline tax. Only four states have higher unemployment rates. Kashkari says California's "U-6 unemployment rate" — which includes unemployed people seeking full-time jobs, part-time workers who want full-time jobs and people too discouraged to seek jobs — is above 16 percent.

Running against Brown requires discerning silver linings on black clouds. Kashkari says of polls showing Brown leading 52 percent to 32 percent: Well, 100 percent of Californians know who Brown is, so 48 percent are looking for an alternative.

Kashkari promises to derail Brown's obsession — the (at least) $68 billion San Francisco-to-Los Angeles bullet train. Brown has been silent about the recent court decision striking down the tenure system that entrenches incompetent public school teachers. The public likes the decision; teachers unions loathe it. Brown, Kashkari says dryly, has "multiple owners."

"If I get Jerry on a debate stage," Kashkari says, "anything can happen." That is true, as is this: Goldwater lost 44 states but won the future. His conservative cadre captured the GOP, which won five of the next six and seven of the next 10 presidential elections. If California becomes a purple state and Democrats can no longer assume its 20 percent of 270 electoral votes, Republicans nationwide will be indebted to the immigrants' son who plucked up Goldwater's banner of conservatism with a Western libertarian flavor.

• George Will Archives

[Crafty_Dog]

Yes, I have.

Unfortunately he is pro-amnesty, pro-abortion, and pro-gay marriage.

In that in California a major part of why the Reps are on the verge of irrelevant is because of the successful passage (and reversal by Fed courts) of Prop 187, which led Latinos to conclude that Reps are anti-Latino, I cannot say that a pro-amnesty position is not necessary to have a chance of winning.

In that in California, the vote is overwhelmingly pro-abortion, so here too I cannot fault the logic.

In that in California the Fed courts struck down TWO initiatives for traditional marriage what a politician says has been made irrelevant, so again here too , , ,

I very much like his insight to define the Rep Party as the "Party of Work".  This is pithy, profound, and precisely on point.  It speaks well of the man's political instincts, as does his strategy of focusing on Brown's support of the disastrous bullet train.

[ccp]

" I cannot say that a pro-amnesty position is not necessary to have a chance of winning."

We lose either way 

[DougMacG]

Oops, I put my post on this in the states thread instead of in 'California'.
http://dogbrothers.com/phpBB2/index.php?topic=2404.msg82528#msg82528

[Crafty_Dog]

Brother, Can You Spare a Job?
I spent a week as a homeless person, looking for work.The 'California Comeback' has a long way to go.
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By
Neel Kashkari
July 31, 2014 12:00 a.m. ET

'California Comeback!" is the favorite slogan of Gov. Jerry Brown and other Sacramento politicians cheering a temporary budget surplus provided by a roaring stock market. But California also has the highest poverty rate in America at 24%. Is California really back?

I wanted to see firsthand what that comeback looks like for many Californians. So, on the morning of July 21 I took a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Fresno. With only $40 in my pocket (and no credit cards), a backpack, a change of clothes and a toothbrush, I planned to find a job and earn enough money to get by. I am an able-bodied 41-year-old. Surely I could find some work.

Over the next seven days, I walked mile after mile in 100-degree heat searching for a job. I offered to do anything: wash dishes, sweep floors, pack boxes, cook meals, anything. I went to dozens of businesses in search of work but wasn't able to get any. In seven days, I didn't see a single "Help Wanted" sign, but I did see plenty of signs that fast-food outlets now accept food stamps.
Enlarge Image

Getty Images

I was committed to finding a job. It was my top priority, but halfway through the week my priority was forced to change: I barely had any money left and needed to find food. Fortunately, kindhearted homeless residents in Fresno pointed me to a shelter, Poverello House, which provides services to the homeless. I had no choice but to join the hundreds of men, women and families who go to the shelter for food. As the shelter did not have any beds for me I slept on the streets all six nights. I had only one shower during that time.

The meals at Poverello House were a Godsend. But they introduced a new challenge: I now needed to stay within a short walk of the shelter so I could be back in time for my next meal. I had only enough money left to take the city bus once, so my job-search area shrank. The odds of me finding a job were getting smaller by the day.

Since I had little money, a motel was out of the question. I tried to sleep on park benches or in parking lots. Anywhere I wouldn't be chased out. Night after night, however, I was woken up and told to move along by security guards or the police.

The people I met during my week in Fresno are proud. They don't want to be homeless. They don't want to be poor. They don't want to depend on a shelter or the state. Most want jobs but simply cannot find one.

But this poor job market doesn't just affect people seeking minimum-wage jobs; it also affects people up the education ladder. An educated, professionally trained photographer told me that when the economy faltered, his photography work dried up. Now he is grateful to have a job serving coffee. Unfortunately, stories similar to his are playing out in many cities across California.

The Fresno Community Food Bank is doing a record business these days, serving food to 220,000 residents, including 90,000 children, each month, up 340% from a few years ago, according to the food bank. Fresno is in the heart of California's agriculture economy. With a third year of record drought, farmers don't have enough water for their almond, cantaloupe and other crops. The rising cost of water had forced farmers to idle about 500,000 acres of land. One young woman in line at the food bank said it simply: "There's not enough water. Crops can't be grown. My family works in the fields and they can't get work every day . . . sometimes just on weekends."

I walked for hours and hours in search of a job, giving me a lot of time to think. Five days into my search, hungry, tired and hot, I asked myself: What would solve my problems? Food stamps? Welfare? An increased minimum wage?

No. I needed a job. Period. Like others, I have often said the best social program in the world is a good job. Even though my homeless trek was only for a week, with a defined endpoint, that statement became much more real for me. A job was the one thing that could have solved my food, housing and transportation problems.

California's record poverty is man-made: over-regulation and over-taxation that drive jobs out of state, failing schools that don't prepare students for the skilled work force and misguided water policies that prevent us from saving surplus water in wet years to prepare for our inevitable droughts. We have the power to tackle poverty if we implement smart, pro-growth economic policies, as many other states have done.

While the politicians who run California pat themselves on the back and claim a "California Comeback," they willfully ignore millions of our neighbors who are living in poverty. California's most vulnerable citizens deserve leaders who will fight for them. It's a fight that Republicans should lead. We have the policy ideas—improving education and reducing regulations to help create jobs—to rebuild the middle class and give every Californian, and every American, real economic opportunity.

Mr. Kashkari is the Republican nominee for governor of California. A video documenting his week of homelessness can be found at www.neelkashkari.com/poverty.

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/california-democrats-outlaw-best-weapons-from-being-sold-in-state/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/repeal-prop-14-top-two-primary-before-unions-and-wealthy-totally-own-sacramento-editorial-by-stephen-frank/

[Crafty_Dog]

Hat tip to PC 

California wait period doesn't apply to gun owners
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge has overturned part of a California law requiring a 10-day waiting period for gun buyers, ruling that it does not apply to those who already own firearms.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii of Fresno ruled that "10-day waiting periods impermissibly violate the Second Amendment" for gun-buyers who already passed background checks or are authorized to carry concealed weapons.

Californians buying their first firearm will still be subject to background checks and the 10-day waiting period under the ruling, dated Friday.

A spokesman for the state attorney general, Nick Pacilio, said Monday that officials are reviewing the ruling as they decide whether to appeal.

Two gun owners and two gun-owner rights groups, The Calguns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation, sued over the state waiting period in 2011.

http://start.toshiba.com/news/read/category/Top%20News/article/the_associated_press-california_wait_period_doesnt_apply_to_gun_owners-ap

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/there-is-no-california-comeback-income-tax-revenues-down-6-for-first-six-months/

There Is No California Comeback—Income Tax Revenues DOWN 6% for First Six Months
August 25, 2014 By Stephen Frank Leave a Comment
Text Size:  a-  A+

    A few months ago I had the opportunity of meeting Stephen Moore at a Franklin Center bloggers conference in Virginia. He is as entertaining and direct in person as he is on TV or in this article. Importantly, he is willing to state facts that are too confusing for our Governor to understand. Remember, a couple of weeks ago Jerry Brown was trying to figure out how to handle a $30 billion debt along with an multi-billion “water” bond” where most of the money goes to special interest and less than a third MIGHT be used to create water storage. Oh, per the LAO, California has a $340 billion, ten times more than our confused Guv Brown knows about.

    “First, the tax-receipt bubble may have already burst.

    A 3 percent retroactive tax hike approved in November 2012, hit wealthy Californians on their prior earnings, and took the state’s top effective tax rate to 13 percent. Revenues shot up by more than 20 percent in fiscal 2013 thanks to the retroactive tax bills wealthy Californians had to pay last year.

    But so far this calendar year, according to the latest data from California’s State Controller’s Office and the Rockefeller Institute, personal income-tax revenues fell by 11 percent in the first quarter of this year and more than 6 percent through June.

    In fact, the decline through the first quarter, according to the Rockefeller Institute, was more than any other state.”

    california fire

There Is No California Comeback

Stephen Moore, Daily Signal, 8/24/14

Stephen Moore, who formerly wrote on the economy and public policy for The Wall Street Journal, is chief economist at The Heritage Foundation. Read his research.

News media from coast to coast are celebrating a “California comeback” after a near-decade-long Golden State economic collapse.

But even this latest recovery may be much more fragile than has been reported, and the state’s structural defects still imperil the left-coast economy.

Certainly there are reasons for optimism. Tax collections were way up last year, and the state is balancing its budget after years of scrambling to close multibillion deficits with accounting gimmicks.

Silicon Valley is on fire as the tech boom has rebooted. San Francisco is one of the fastest-growing cities, with rents doubling and even tripling in recent years.

There is even a whispering campaign that if Hillary Clinton tanks, Gov. Jerry Brown, who will be older in 2016 than Reagan was when he left office, may run for president, on a platform of resurrecting the U.S. economy the way he engineered the rebound in California.

For liberals this is a story of “progressive government” — the model of high taxes, heavy regulation and government “investments” leading to prosperity.

That’s the message from the left’s leading economic sage, Paul Krugman, who recently wrote that the lesson from the “California comeback” is “that you should take anti-government propaganda with large helpings of salt.”

“Tax increases,” he maintained, “aren’t economic suicide; sometimes they’re a useful way to pay for things we need.

Government programs, like Obamacare, can work if the people running them want them to work, and if they aren’t sabotaged from the right.

“In other words,” he concludes, “California’s success is a demonstration that the extremist ideology still dominating much of American politics is nonsense.”

Before we start declaring a California Miracle, let’s examine the state’s underlying economy, because this looks more like an economic mirage.

First, the tax-receipt bubble may have already burst.

A 3 percent retroactive tax hike approved in November 2012, hit wealthy Californians on their prior earnings, and took the state’s top effective tax rate to 13 percent. Revenues shot up by more than 20 percent in fiscal 2013 thanks to the retroactive tax bills wealthy Californians had to pay last year.

But so far this calendar year, according to the latest data from California’s State Controller’s Office and the Rockefeller Institute, personal income-tax revenues fell by 11 percent in the first quarter of this year and more than 6 percent through June.

In fact, the decline through the first quarter, according to the Rockefeller Institute, was more than any other state.

The tech and social media boom has inflated revenues too, with tax windfalls from the Facebook, Zillow, and Yelp IPOs, Tesla  stock sales and the WhatsApp acquisition to name a few.

According to the state’s legislative analyst, Facebook’s IPO alone was expected to net the $2.5 billion in one-off taxes.

“How many times do Californians have to relearn the lesson that one-off events are nonrecurring?” asks Rob Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates, a nationally renowned money management firm headquartered in California.

“The revenues soon disappear as is happening now. When Google went public in 2004, capital-gains revenues jumped 49 percent the next year. Within two years, cap-gains taxes accounted for 11 percent of the California budget. But not long after the Google tax windfall had faded, the state was broke again.”

The big challenge for California, says Arnott, is “with the newly higher tax rates, and the resentment caused by tax retroactivity, how many spectacular new startups are likely in California, providing new tax windfalls, and how many will choose other tech hubs, like Austin or Seattle?”

Second, consider the supposed budget surplus. The rosy numbers don’t include gargantuan hidden deficits from state pension liabilities.

Moody’s reports that the state’s pensions assume a discount rate of 7.5 percent on liabilities. Is anyone getting a 7.5% low-risk return on their money today? Long-term Treasury bonds yield less than 3.5 percent.

The 4% difference, applied to $650 billion of liabilities, means a hidden deficit of $26 billion that the state hopes to close with investments carrying higher downside risk. If investments don’t close the gap, then future contributions — funded by even higher taxes or deeper cuts in state services — are the state’s obvious destiny.

In 2013, Moody’s prepared an analysis of state pensions, using a still-generous 5.47 percent discount rate. It found $120 billion in unacknowledged additional unfunded liabilities for California, and nearly $1 trillion nationwide. With a 3.5 percent discount rate, these hidden liabilities double.

As return assumptions are forced lower in the years ahead, the hidden deficits and unfunded liabilities (which will almost certainly have grown by then) will gradually move onto the official budget as red ink.

Whoever is presiding over the interjection of truth into this process will get the blame.

Meantime, a new report by a taxpayer watchdog group called TransparentCalifornia sheds light on why these pension and health care liabilities for city and state workers are so huge.

It found that in 2013 an assistant chief of police and fire for Los Angeles received a golden egg retirement package worth more than $900,000. An L.A. police captain with 30 years of service raked in $750,000 in ’13, and a retired San Diego program manager got $600,000.

There are scores and scores of such taxpayer rip-offs going on each year. And who pays for this largesse? Current and future California taxpayers — many of whom will never earn a six-figure salary let alone a high-six-figure pension.

There are other economic signs of a continuing economic malaise that the California enthusiasts don’t acknowledge.

The Census Bureau reported last year that the California poverty rate adjusted for cost of living is 23.8% — almost 50% above the average for all other states.

The Los Angeles Times reported in September 2013 that California’s poverty rate is the highest in the nation, despite welfare benefits that are among the highest.

Economist Arthur Laffer, an adviser to President Reagan, notes that “the poverty rate is now higher in California than in Texas, adjusted for cost of living, even though Texas is still a poorer state.”

One reason for the high poverty is that almost everything is more expensive in California. Transportation, electricity, water, fees and housing are often 50% higher and sometimes double the rest of the nation, according to a California Policy Institute analysis.

These costs, the CPI finds, are a result of extraordinary regulatory burdens, high taxes, green policies, and generous pay and pensions for state and municipal public employees. Such costs act as regressive taxes on California’s working poor.

Naturally, income inequality in California is widening, as the rich in Silicon Valley and Hollywood have seen big wealth gains, while more at the bottom of the income ladder fall into poverty and the middle class is crushed.

For example, despite the hiring boom in the tech industry, the unemployment rate in California is still tied for seventh highest in the nation. In some areas of the state, the jobless rate is 20%.

One of the best indicators of prosperity for a state or city is whether people and businesses are moving to that location or away from it. Detroit went bankrupt in part because fixed government costs (e.g., pensions) were stuck while the population shrank by more than half and the tax base evaporated.

Meanwhile, places that have a friendly environment for business, and especially for entrepreneurs — such as Texas and Arizona — attract people and capital. Here is where California scores most poorly of all.

From 2003 to 2012, a net 1.4 million people left California for other states. According to the CPI analysis based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the state lost 5 percent of its businesses in 2012 due to bankruptcy, outmigration or mergers. And during an economic recovery, no less.

By the end of 2013 (the most recent quarter available), California was still down compared with two years earlier. How many more business owners will add to the growing exodus, moving their businesses to less-hostile tax and regulatory regimes?

The history of California since the 1970s has been one of glorious booms and gut-wrenching busts. In the last two decades, the booms have gotten shorter and the busts more severe.

The state has enormous natural advantages — beautiful weather, mountains, beaches, enormous energy resources, some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, and many of the greatest universities in the world. It’s also a magnet for some of the most talented immigrants from every corner of the world.

But the policies that progressives keep pushing are making California unlivable and unaffordable. CEO Magazine has ranked California “the worst state in which to do business” — in terms of taxes, regulations, litigation costs and business friendliness — 10 years in a row.

Joseph Vranich, a business relocation consultant who tracks movement of businesses in and out of the state says, “Over the last decade we’ve detected a steady acceleration of businesses moving out of California. You routinely see these employers and the jobs relocated in Nevada, Colorado, Texas and Idaho.”

Arnott’s glum assessment: “We’re beyond bankrupt here in California, as are many of the big states. It’s only a matter of time before that becomes obvious.”

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-california-lawmakers-reject-background-checks-for-ammo-buyers-20140828-story.html

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/40-of-los-angeles-workers-paid-minimum-wage-why-california-is-in-a-depression/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/san-francisco-transit-workers-average-123k-per-year-reject-11-raise/

[ccp]

Is this GOP challenger this good?   Any chance or am I California dreamin':

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/gop-challenger-hammers-brown-california-governors-debate

[Crafty_Dog]

I didn't even hear about the debate!  (I've given up reading Pravda on the Beach)  Anyone have a URL?

I think I've posted about this Rep. candidate before-- very promising!

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/technology/with-tech-taking-over-in-schools-worries-rise.html?emc=edit_th_20140915&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/california-club-a-triple-decker-56-labor-cost-jump/

[Crafty_Dog]

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/los-angeles-collects-information-on-citizens-via-traffic-cameras-3000000-a-week/