Mudslides on SMART tracks? What Mudslide?

"Excuses aren't reasons" (Carroll County Maryland Politician Questions Population Growth Projections) Lesson for Marin County

Excuses aren't reasons

When negotiating a contract, and the other party bulks, to overcome objections, you must discern between "excuses" versus "reasons."

Most of us unwittingly blur the distinction from time to time. My wife wants ice cream, and I tell her I don't feel like ice cream, but what I really mean is, "It's too fattening and I'll gain weight." The first is the "excuse," the latter is the "reason."

So it is with government policies. Manufactured excuses mask real reasons behind policies.

Tell me the reason why 2 percent to 4 percent annual population growth isn't enough?

I'm for economic growth, but one or two commissioners say we need more population growth in order "to do what needs to be done." Tell me, exactly what needs to be done? I want sound "reasons," not political "excuses."

Besides, if we can't run a healthy county with 170,000 people, tell me exactly why we can do it if we add thousands of "affordable housing or workforce housing units." (That's government-speak for apartments, and government-sponsored housing projects preferred by energetic politicians.)

Carroll County's low population growth rate may be 'new normal'

Ironically, considering the average household must gross $80,000 in wages, and pay taxes on a house costing at least $320,000 to generate enough tax revenue to pay for county services, it is self-evident the "excuse" for low-end growth simply exacerbates the "reason" for government financial challenges.

Forget "excuses." What are the real "reasons" behind drum-beating for more population growth?

Recently, in Annapolis, I challenged a liberal senator who concocted an "excuse" to justify policies harmful to rural counties. He said rural development is "too expensive for government," and suggested urban development is more affordable. It isn't.

Urban development leads to skyrocketing costs for social services, housing services, drug treatment services, municipal utilities, law enforcement services, emergency services … and when you add all of these together, urban development is actually a greater strain on government.

I blew-up the senator's "excuse" by pointing-out that urban areas consistently have higher tax rates than rural areas. If urban development is more affordable, cities would have the lowest tax rates. They don't. It's just an excuse that hides the real "reason." Urbanesque development shifts voting blocks from right to left. Witness Frederick County.

So, tell me a "reason" why higher growth rates will make Carroll County better? Will it lead to lower crime, less congestion, better communities and a higher quality of life … or simply increase the strain on existing taxpayers?

Here's my position: "People move to Carroll from surrounding jurisdictions to escape urban development patterns. They don't want Carroll officials re-creating what they came here to escape." Hundreds of people attended our PlanMaryland forum four years ago and booed then-Gov. Martin O'Malley's Secretary of Planning when he tried to sell denser development to us.

There's also that other pesky problem … too many schools costing too much money. So, let's grow the county any way we can to fill empty schools … right? Wrong.

But commissioner, we've been told large numbers of teachers are leaving Carroll County because of poor pay. Except, this "excuse" simply wasn't true. Two years ago, Carroll had the lowest teacher attrition rate in the entire state of Maryland. Last year, our attrition rate was still among the lowest in the state.

Question: Why did the school system advance this blatantly misleading "excuse?" You know the real "reason." It's green, but has nothing to do with the environment.

Recently, public school political hacks grabbed front page headlines alleging Carroll is not "welcoming." Hogwash. All legal citizens are welcome in Carroll. Our Realtors, communities and government embrace Equal Housing Opportunity. So, what's this hoopla really about? It's an attempt to justify social engineering of communities to promote a political agenda and fill empty classroom seats. Again, it's about green … as in greenback.

Let's face fact: Donald Trump's election proves citizens are tired of expensive overbearing government that interferes with citizens' lives. It was a referendum against establishment government — of both parties.

Decision-making should always be based on solid "reasons." Leave the politically correct "excuses" at the doorstep.

By the way, what were those "excuses" about why we need to spend $60 million rebuilding the Career and Tech Center? Do you remember hearing any good "reasons?"

Florida Sheriff Produces Absurd, Threatening Video over Small Number of Drug-Related Deaths

Florida Sheriff Produces Absurd, Threatening Video over Small Number of Drug-Related Deaths

You’d think Lake County must be some sort of trafficking hotbed. It’s not.

Scott Shackford|Apr. 10, 2017 12:57 pm

A group of armed, masked men brazenly posted a video on Facebook recently threatening to violently bust down the doors of American citizens and invade their homes.

It's okay, though. They're law enforcement! Lake County, Florida, Sheriff Peyton Grinnell has put out a video where he, surrounded by masked men, threaten drug dealers in the county that his officers are tracking them down and plan to send SWAT teams into their houses at some undefined time and "blow [their] front doors off the hinges."

Watch the video below:

Well, one only hopes those masks they're wearing don't obscure their ability to read addresses properly. We would hate for a poorly organized SWAT raid at the wrong home to run smack into the state's "Stand Your Ground" gun laws.

Grinnell claims this over-the-top video, which is being compared to threatening ISIS propaganda films, is due to calls he's getting from citizens concerned about heroin overdoses in his county. So claiming that he's just waiting for some existing warrants to get signed is really for the benefit of these callers and not actual drug dealers.

Let's not dismiss citizens' concerns entirely. Florida, like many other states, has seen a dramatic increase in deaths involving heroin, cocaine and the opioid fentanyl, according to an annual report by state medical examiners for 2015.

This doesn't mean, though, that such an absurd, militaristic approach is called for. Don't look to Florida if you're looking for examples of easing off the drug war, though they finally (after two attempts) legalized medical marijuana use. Florida still has laws on the books that allow anybody who provided somebody else with a prohibited drug to be charged with first degree murder if that drug causes their death. And Florida has the death penalty (technically—there are still some issues there). Grinnell points this out in the video that he wants to hold those evil, evil drug dealers responsible for these deaths.

But while law enforcement and prosecutors want to present the idea that this is about getting "drug dealers," that's really not what the law says and it's not how these laws get enforced. If there's anything we should have learned from our experience in how mandatory minimums have played out in federal prosecutions, they are used to throw poor people who have made mistakes into prison for absurdly long sentences disproprtionate to the circumstances of the crimes.

And Florida's considering making its drug war laws even harsher by adding fentanyl, the latest drug panic, to the list of pharmaceuticals that could trigger a murder charge.

Yet, while Lake County has seen dramatic drug death increases, there's nothing in the medical examiners' report from 2015 that showed anything that should be especially alarming enough to justify this response. The district that Lake County is part of saw only eight deaths due to heroin in 2015. It saw 30 deaths due to cocaine, and 191 deaths caused by prescription drugs, only 10 of which involved fentanyl. The prescription drug deaths were actually in decline; fewer people in this sheriff's area died of prescription drugs in 2015 than they did in 2014. So even as fentanyl is taking off as an opioid choice, overall prescription drug deaths declined.

While the state has not put out full numbers yet, Lake County has apparently reported 32 cases in 2016 where heroin caused or contributed to a person's death. That's certainly an increase, but the county has a population of more than 300,000. This response is notable in its absurdity given the actual threat presented to the population.

The sheriff's response is not likely to make his community safer; he's going to be busting down doors and threatening harm not to the slick drug dealers he sees on television shows, but to his county's poorest citizens. That's not something to be puffing up his chest about.

And of course the internet responded.

California Taxpayers Expected To Nearly Double Public Pension Contributions Over Next 5 Years (Marinwood CSD too!)

The California Policy Center (CPC) has just updated it's annual study on pension contributions required from local California municipalities and, to our complete 'shock', the conclusions are brutal for Cali taxpayers.  Among other things, the study found that California taxpayers will be forced to double their contributions to CalPERS over just the next 5 years alone from $5.3 billion in 2017/2018 tax year to $9.8 billion in 2022/2023.

• In Fiscal Year 2017-2018, California local governments will make over $13 billion in pension contributions to CalPERS, county pension plans and single employer plans.
• Local government pension contributions to CalPERS will total $5.3 billion in Fiscal 2017-2018 and are projected to rise to $9.8 billion in Fiscal 2022-2023 – an increase of 84%.
• In Fiscal Year 2015-2016, at least 26 California cities and counties devoted over 10% of their total revenue to pension contributions. San Rafael, San Jose and Santa Barbara County shouldered the highest pension burdens – exceeding 13% of revenue.
• Major local governments that have recently surpassed the 10% pension contribution to total revenue threshold include Contra Costa County, Berkeley and Newport Beach.

Meanwhile, 20 California cities were found to already spend more than 10% of their annual revenue on pension contributions, with San Rafael at closer to 20%.  And, given that it's highly unlikely these towns are willing to cut 10% of their budgets over the next 5 years, we can only assume that taxpayers are about to get slammed with massive tax hikes.

Unfortunately, as our readers are undoubtedly aware, the reality is even far more bleak than the numbers above would suggest because they use CalPERS' 7% discount rate to calculate underfunded levels.  But, as we pointed out back in December (see "CalPERS Board Votes To Maintain Ponzi Scheme With Only 50bps Reduction Of Discount Rate"), even CalPERS' finance committee chair admitted that 7% is too high and the decision to not move it lower was politically motivated to allow "municipalities and other government agencies some breathing room before they absorb the impact."

In its August 2016 actuarial reports, CalPERS included projections of future contribution rates through Fiscal Year 2022-2023. We used these documents to determine total contribution amounts and then recalculated the totals to reflect the impact of CalPERS’ recent decision to change the rate at which it discounts future liabilities from 7.5% to 7%. Although CalPERS did not update its projections, it provided employers with a circular containing guidance on how to adjust

the August 2016 amounts. We used this guidance in our own calculations.

So what's to blame for these skyrocketing pension costs?  Well, as CPC points out, in Newport Beach at least part of the problem is attributed to a gaggle of lifegaurd "captains" raking in over $100,000 per year which serves as the basis for calculating their massive pensions.

The city of Newport Beach contributes to CalPERS. Its net pension liability in 2016 was $264 million, and its plans were only about 68% funded. Pension contributions grew from $20 million in 2014-2015 to $31 million in 2015-2016, and are projected to reach $52 million in 2022-2023. One reason for the increase is that the city is accelerating its repayment of the unfunded liability. The new funding schedule is expected to save the city $129 million over 30 years.

One unusual contributor to Newport Beach’s pension burden is its team of lifeguards. While many of the city’s beach lifeguards receive relatively modest compensation, the city employed 10 Lifeguard Captains and Battalion Chiefs in 2015, all of whom received more than $100,000 in wages. Lifeguards hired before 2011 were eligible for the 3%-at-50 pension formula. That year, the city council voted to lower the benefit for newly hired lifeguards to 2%-at-50, but due to the California Rule, already employed lifeguards were unaffected. Lifeguards hired after the implementation of PEPRA are on the 2.7% at 57 pension formula.

In February, the Daily Pilot reported that the city was shelving several projects due to increasing pension costs. The projects in jeopardy include a new library and fire station in Corona del Mar, a new restaurant for the Newport Pier and new junior lifeguard headquarters.

In conclusion, CPC offered this sobering reality check to California taxpayers:

Despite the strong economy and a buoyant stock market, pension cost burdens faced by California local governments have continued to grow – with many now devoting more than 10% of revenue to retirement contributions. With the Great Recession now eight years behind us, the risk of a new downturn is increasing. The result would be a further spike in pension burdens on local governments. Unless the state enables more aggressive pension reforms than those allowed under the 2013 PEPRA legislation, several California cities and counties will find themselves forced to slash other spending. The less fortunate will simply be unable to pay the bills they receive from CalPERS or their local retirement system.

Editor's Note: In the Marinwood CSD we are in the same situation but have limited tax revenue sources due to the lack of a commercial tax base. It is difficult to imagine how this problem will be solved unless it involves punative tax rates, bankruptcy and/or liquidation of our open space reserves.  Let's hope not.

Street Vendors and the Politics of Economic Self Sufficiency

Confusion on CA housing market brings flurry of legislation

13Apr, 2017by James Poulos

Debate over California’s housing situation ratcheted up amid conflicting data and a flurry of new legislation designed to mitigate high prices and low supply. 

Analysts have separated into two camps around Golden State real estate, one more bullish than the other. “Two recent reports — from Fitch Rating, a Wall Street credit reviewer, and Arch MI, a seller of mortgage insurance — attempt to gauge the stability of regional housing markets by tracking changes in real estate metrics vs. other economic measurements,” the Orange County Register reported. “Using a California prism, the studies draw wildly different conclusions. Fitch concludes California housing is among the most overvalued housing markets in the nation. Yet California is not on Arch MI’s list of riskiest places to own.”

“California was one of 10 states with overvalued housing by Fitch’s standards. Four states had the same pricing mismatch as California: Florida, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah. Next states on the dicier scale — 10 percent to 14 percent overvalued — were Arizona, North Dakota, Nevada and Texas […]. Idaho was in the worst shape at 15 percent to 19 percent overvalued. But Arch MI saw California with riskiness below the norm. California’s risk of falling home prices is ‘minimal’ or a 2 percent change of depreciation in the next two years. National risk by this math is 4 percent.”

Searching for answers

Along with an analytical split surrounding a possible housing bubble, residential options in California have been opening a gulf of their own. “California is one of the most unequal states in the country, and its housing market is similarly bifurcated, offering both multimillion dollar houses and rent-controlled apartments, but less and less of a foothold for people in the middle,” the American Interest observed. “This is a key reason so many working class families have left the Golden State in the past 25 years.” In a recent report issued by Bankrate.com analyst Claes Bell, “California ranked as the toughest state in the nation for first-time home buyers, who typically would be in the millennial age bracket of 18 to 34,” according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Policymakers grappling with the state’s compounded housing challenges have no shortage of plans to pore over — over 130 bills touching upon the issue, the Times noted. “Reams of statistics support the depth of the problem: California’s homeownership rate is at its lowest since World War II, a third of renters spend more than half of their income on housing costs and the state has nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless residents — despite having 12% of the overall U.S. population,” the paper noted in a breakdown of some leading legislative contenders — which range from proposals to expand low-income rent-controlled units to increasing tax credits to pushing easier and less traditional permitting. 

Back to rent control?

The push toward increased rent control has been spearheaded by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica. “Bloom wants to repeal the state law known as the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, named after a moderate-leaning Democratic former state senator from the Central Valley and a short-time Republican assemblyman from Orange County,” the Sacramento Bee recalled. “During 1995, Jim Costa, now in Congress, and Phil Hawkins, who served just two years in the state Assembly, became the face of a disputed political campaign lodged largely by landlords and real estate interests to weaken – statewide – the ability of cities to pass strong rent-control laws. It came nearly two decades after the rent-control movement, born in cities like Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Berkeley, was spreading across the state.”

In core metro areas across California, rents have risen dramatically — in part reflecting an influx of wealthier residents to downtown urban neighborhoods, but also fueling a domino effect of hikes further down the affordability chain. “Statewide, average rents have increased 60 percent over the past 20 years. In 2016, median rents in the Bay Area and Los Angeles area ranged from $2,427 to $4,508, according to a housing report from the California Department of Housing and Community Development,” the paper added. “Nearly half of California’s households rent, and 84 percent of them are considered ‘burdened,’ spending 30 percent to 50 percent or more of annual income on rent.”

Marinwood CSD Full Meeting. April 11, 2017

Marinwood CSD Full Meeting. April 11, 2017  

Marinwood CSD raises taxes again WITHOUT voter approval one month after voting themselves another year in office ("to save money on elections"),  

Fire station gourmet kitchen remodel may cost FIVE TIMES original cost estimate of $25,000. 

New staff spending limit for non approved purchases increased up to $500 to $25,000 for emergencies.  

Record tax revenues expected this year to the highest level in history due to real estate recovery and new revenue streams.  

Unfunded pension liabilities continue to grow.  

Cost saving measures suggested by public ignored.  

Two thirds of Marinwood Fire Department emergency responses  happen in neighboring San Rafael,  under "shared services agreement" at Marinwood tax payers expense. 

San Rafael just reimburses Marinwood for gas and provides some training but Marinwood pays the salaries, benefits and pensions for the response personnel.  This is a HUGE gift to the City of San Rafael and helps justify the existence of Marinwood Fire department that we carry millions of dollars in unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities.  

Water is pooling on the Community Center roof under the new solar collectors which could lead to leaking roofs and eventual MAJOR roof repairs if not addressed.  The board and Eric Dreikosen, CSD Manager refused to acknowledge the letter to the board or comment whether the roof drainage will be repaired.    

A Simple Mind Trick Will Help You Think More Rationally

Emotions can cloud our rational decision-making. By adopting the perspective of an outside advisor, psychologist Dan Ariely says we can inject some rationality into our cognitive processes. Ariely's new book is titled Irrationally Yours (http://goo.gl/LZJRZy).

Child Endangerment? Dad Leaves 8-Year-Old in Parking Lot to Teach Him a Lesson.

Mike Tang is refusing to reply with a court order and may face more jail time.

Transportation tax hikes an insult to taxpayers

Transportation tax hikes an insult to taxpayers 

In this April 21, 2014 file photo drivers using the onramp to eastbound Highway 50 pass a sign showing where to get information about the pending work on the freeway in Sacramento, Calif.







By JON COUPAL |


PUBLISHED: April 2, 2017 at 7:00 am | UPDATED: April 9, 2017 at 9:09 pm


It’s easy to spend money when it’s not your own. That’s the case with the proposed massive tax hikes on California drivers announced Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.


The $5.2 billion in taxes imposed annually are aimed squarely at the middle class — citizens who see their cars not as a luxury but as a necessity to get to work, take the kids to school and run their errands at the end of a long day. The governor and his tax-and-spend allies — including interests that get rich off the taxpayer dime — are pushing a gas tax hike of 12 cents per gallon on top of our already high gas tax plus higher vehicle registration fees that average out to about $50 per vehicle. This would leave California with the highest gas and car taxes in the nation by far.


Not surprisingly, taxpayers are not buying what the governor is selling. A Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that a majority of Californians, including 42 percent of Democrats, oppose the taxes. A recent California Chamber of Commerce poll showed that 80 percent of voters want to see spending reforms first, before new taxes.


There is a good reason for the lack of trust between the people and their government when it comes to transportation spending. General fund spending has increased by $36 billion over the last six years, and not one dime has been spent on transportation infrastructure. If legislators don’t view transportation as a critical priority, why should California drivers support even higher taxes?


No one doubts that California’s roads and highways are in terrible shape. But the blame for this rests squarely on our political class, not hard-working taxpayers who already live in a state that has the highest income tax rate in America as well as the highest state sales tax.


The question has always been one of priorities. How is it that the state budget is near record highs and yet no money can be found for transportation? Over the years, billions of dollars of truck weight fees have been diverted from road repair to pay off bond debt which, for all other state bonds, are repaid out of the general fund, not out of revenue that is supposed to be dedicated to transportation.


And no discussion of transportation spending would be complete without addressing the nation’s biggest boondoggle: high-speed rail. Hundreds of millions of dollars of cap-and-trade money every year are going to prop up this floundering project that could be better spent on transportation systems people actually use. And a further $3 billion in sales taxes on the purchase of new and used vehicles annually could be used to fund road repair.


While some of these solutions are easier to implement then others, the point remains that the Legislature could easily designate tens of billions of dollars of existing revenues to transportation without shortchanging other programs.


Perhaps the biggest insult to taxpayers is that the governor and the ruling party in Sacramento have no intention of letting the voters have a say on this tax. If they can get two-thirds of each house to approve this permanent tax increase, it’s a done deal. That explains why the governor is trying to rush a vote on this damaging proposal this coming week.





If citizens are as disgusted with this unnecessary and damaging tax proposal as those of us who see what’s really going on in Sacramento, they need to let their elected representatives in the state Assembly and Senate know now. Tell them that willful neglect of transportation infrastructure is never an excuse to increase regressive taxes on millions of beleaguered taxpayers and drivers.


Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.





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Jon Coupal

Will SMART be buried in Mud or Just Debt?

On January 13, a train enthusiast reported a massive mudslide.   Rather than report this major engineering and environmental setback the SMART board (Sonoma Marin Transit) hid the problem from the public until it was reported in local media on April 4, 2017 on a citizen's tip.  The SMART board had IGNORED landslide concerns and public safety in this seismically active area.  SMART cannot be trusted. They are millions over budget and delivering far less than the promised rail line and bike paths approved by voters.

Stop the DUMB train!

Trapped in Paradise!

It’s Still a Mad, Mad California

It’s Still a Mad, Mad California

Coastal elites set rules for others, exempt themselves, and tolerate rampant lawlessness from illegal aliens.

By Victor Davis Hanson — January 3, 2017

One reason for the emergence of outsider Donald Trump is the old outrage that elites seldom experience the consequences of their own ideologically driven agendas.

Hypocrisy, when coupled with sanctimoniousness, grates people like few other human transgressions: Barack Obama opposing charter schools for the inner city as he puts his own children in Washington’s toniest prep schools, or Bay Area greens suing to stop contracted irrigation water from Sierra reservoirs, even as they count on the Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy project to deliver crystal-clear mountain water to their San Francisco taps.

The American progressive elite relies on its influence, education, money, and cultural privilege to exempt itself from the bad schools, unassimilated immigrant communities, dangerous neighborhoods, crime waves, and general impoverishment that are so often the logical consequences of its own policies — consequences for others, that is. Abstract idealism on behalf of the distant is a powerful psychological narcotic that allows caring progressives to dull the guilt they feel about their own privilege and riches.

Nowhere is this paradox truer than in California, a dysfunctional natural paradise in which a group of coastal and governing magnificoes virtue-signal from the world’s most exclusive and beautiful enclaves. The state is currently experiencing another perfect storm of increased crime, decreased incarceration, still ongoing illegal immigration, and record poverty. All that is energized by a strapped middle class that is still fleeing the overregulated and overtaxed state, while the arriving poor take their places in hopes of generous entitlements, jobs servicing the elite, and government employment. 

and moats.

Go to a U-Haul trailer franchise in the state. The rental-trailer-return rates of going into California are a fraction of those going out. Surely never in civilization’s history have so many been so willing to leave a natural paradise.

Yet collate that fact with the skyrocketing cost of high-demand housing along a 400-mile coastal corridor. The apparent paradox is no paradox: Frustrated Californians of the interior of the state without money and who cannot afford to move to the coastal communities of Santa Monica or Santa Barbara (the entire middle class of the non-coast) are leaving for low-tax refuges out of state — in “if I cannot afford the coast, then on to Idaho” fashion. The state’s economy and housing are moribund in places like Stockton and Tulare, the stagnation being the logical result of the policies of the governing class that would never live there. Meanwhile, the coastal creed is that Facebook, Apple, Hollywood, and Stanford will virtually feed us, 3-D print our gas, or discover apps to provide wood and stone for our homes.

Crime rates are going up again in California, sometimes dramatically so. In Los Angeles, various sorts of robberies, assaults, and homicide rose between 5 and 10 percent over 2015; since 2014, violent crime has skyrocketed by 38 percent. This May, California’s association of police chiefs complained that since the passage of Proposition 47 — which reclassified supposedly “nonserious” crimes as misdemeanors and kept hundreds of thousands of convicted criminals out of jail — crime rates in population centers of more than 100,000 have increased more than 15 percent. California governor Jerry Brown has let out more parolees — including over 2,000 serving life sentences — than any recent governor.

How does that translate to the streets far distant from Brentwood or Atherton?

Let me narrate a recent two-week period in navigating the outlands of Fresno County. A few days ago my neighbor down the road asked whether I had put any outgoing mail in our town’s drive-by blue federal mailbox, adjacent to the downtown Post Office. I had. And he had, too —to have it delivered a few hours later to his home in scraps, with the checks missing, by a good Samaritan. She had collected the torn envelopes with his return address scattered along the street. I’m still waiting to see whether my own bills got collected before the thieves struck the box.

Most of us in rural California go into town to mail our letters, because our rural boxes have been vandalized by gangs so frequently that it is suicidal to mail anything from home. (Many of us now have armored, bullet-proof locked boxes for incoming mail).

On the same day last week, when I was driving outside our farm, I saw a commercial van stopped on the side of the road on the family property, with the logo of a furniture- and carpet-cleaner company emblazoned on the side. The driver was methodically pumping out the day’s effluvia into the orchard. When I approached him, he assured me in broken English that there was “no problem — all organic.” When I insisted he stop the pumping, given that the waste water smelled of solvents, he politely replied, “Okay, already, I’m almost done.” When it looked as if things might further deteriorate, the nice-enough polluter agreed to stop.

In the interior of green California, it is considered rude or worse to ask otherwise pleasant people not to pump out their solvent water on the side of the road. Down the road, I saw the morning’s new trash littered on the roadway — open bags of diapers and junk mail. Apparently California’s new postmodern law barring incorrect plastic grocery bags (and indeed barring free paper grocery bags) has not yet cleaned up our premodern roadsides. Remember: California knows it dare not enforce laws against trash-throwing in rural California; that’s too politically incorrect and would be impossible to enforce anyway. Instead, it charges shoppers for their bags. In California, the neglect of the felony requires the rigid prosecution of the misdemeanor.

I was in my truck — and suddenly I felt blessed that I was lucky enough to have it. Last summer it was stolen from a restaurant parking lot in Fresno when my son borrowed it to go to dinner. The truck was found four days later, still operable but with the ignition console torn apart and the interior ruined, amid the stench of trash, marijuana butts, beer bottles, waste, and paper plates still full of stale rice.  

During this same recent 14-day period, my wife stopped at her office condo in Fresno to print out a document. She left the garage door open to the driveway for ten minutes. Ten minutes is a lifetime in the calculus of California thievery. Her relatively new hybrid bicycle was immediately stolen by a fleet-footed thief. I noted to her that recent parolees often walk around the streets until they can afford to buy or manage to steal a car — and therefore for a time like bikes like hers. That same week, her bank notified her that her credit card was canceled — after numerous charges at fast-food franchises showed up in Texas. Cardinal rule in California: Be careful in paying for anything with a credit card, because the number is often stolen and sold off. 

I thought things had been getting better until these awful two weeks. One-third of a mile down my rural street, in the last 24 months, at least the swat team crashed a drug/prostitution/fencing operation hidden in a persimmon orchard. The house across the street from that operation was later surrounded by law enforcement to root out gang members. Forest fires started by undocumented-alien pot growers were down in the nearby Sierra. I hadn’t lost copper wire from a pump in two years.

I once also thought the proof of American civilization was predicated on three assumptions: One could confidently mail a letter in a federal postal box on the street; one in extremis could find safe, excellent care in an emergency room; and one could visit a local DMV office to easily clear up a state error. 

None are any longer true. I’ll never put another letter in a U.S. postal box, unless I’m in places like Carmel or Atherton that are in the Other California.

Two years ago, I was delivered by ambulance to a local emergency room after a severe bike accident; on fully waking up, I saw a uniformed police officer standing next to my bed to protect fellow ER patients from the patient in the next cubicle — a felon who had punched his fist through a car window in a failed burglary attempt and who was now being visited by his gang-member relatives.

Not long ago, the DMV did not send me the necessary license sticker. Online reservations were booked up. So I made the mistake of visiting the local regional office without an appointment, where I first got my license 47 years ago — the office then was a model of efficiency and professionalism. A half-century later, a line hundreds of feet long snaked out the door. The office is designated as a DMV center for licensing illegal aliens. The entire office, in the linguistic and operational sense, is recalibrated to assist those who are here illegally and to make it difficult if not impossible for citizens to use it as we did in the past. After 20 minutes, when the line had hardly moved, I left.

What makes the law-abiding leave California is not just the sanctimoniousness, the high taxes, or the criminality. It is always the insult added to injury. We suffer not only from the highest basket of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation, but also from nearly the worst schools and infrastructure. We have the costliest entitlements and the most entitled. We have the largest number of billionaires and the largest number of impoverished, both in real numbers and as a percentage of the state population.

California crime likewise reflects the California paradox of two states: a coastal elite and everyone else. California is the most contentious, overregulated, and postmodern state in the Union, and also the most feral and 19th-century.

On my rural street are two residences not far apart. In one, shacks dot the lot. There are dozens of port-a-potties, wrecked cars, and unlicensed and unvaccinated dogs — all untouched by the huge tentacles of the state’s regulatory octopus.

Nearby, another owner is being regulated to death, as he tries to rebuild a small burned house: His well, after 30 years, is suddenly discovered by the state to be in violation, under a new regulation governing the allowed distance between his well and his leach line; so he drills another costly well. Then his neighbor’s agricultural well is suddenly discovered by the state regulators to be too close as well, so he breaks up sections of his expensive new leach line. After a new septic system was built by a licensed contractor and a new well was drilled by a licensed well-driller, he has after a year — $40,000 poorer — still not been permitted to even start to rebuild his 900-square-foot house.

In the former case, the owner of port-a-potties and shacks clearly cannot pay and belongs to an exempt class of the Other. The latter owner is a rare law-abiding Californian, and so he has a regulatory target on his back — because he is someone of the vanishing middle class who can and will do and pay as ordered. He is an endangered species whose revenue-raising torment is necessary to exempt others from the same ordeal.

In feral California, we suffer not just from too many and too few applications of the law, but from the unequal enforcement of it. When the state has one-fourth of its population born in another country, dozens of sanctuary cities exempt from federal law, and millions residing here illegally, it makes politicized cost-benefit choices.

Feral California out here is a live-and-let-live place, a libertarian’s dream (or nightmare). The staggering costs for its illegality are made up by the shrinking few who nod as they always have and follow the law in all its now-scary manifestations.

The rich on the coast tune out. From her nest in Rancho Mirage, a desert oasis created by costly water transfers, outgoing senator Barbara Boxer rails about water transfers. When Jerry Brown leaves his governorship, he will not live in Bakersfield but probably in hip Grass Valley. High crime, the flight of small businesses, and water shortages cannot bound the fences of Nancy Pelosi’s Palladian villa or the security barriers and walls of Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley billionaires — who press for more regulation, and for more compassion for the oppressed, but always from a distance and always from the medieval assumption that their money and privilege exempt them from the consequences of their idealism. There is no such thing as an open border for a neighbor of Mr. Zuckerberg or of Ms. Pelosi.

A final window into the California pathology: Most of the most strident Californians who decry Trump’s various proposed walls insist on them for their own residences.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.

Editor's Note: We disagree that illegal aliens are more dangerous than U.S. citizens. In fact, in Marin, they have LESS crime per capita.  The fact they live in high density communities concentrates the crime but overall the crime rate is pretty low. The frustration of many who have lost their jobs as a result of black market labor is very real.  We favor sensible immigration reform and enforcement of the same laws for everyone.

Warning Signs Were There Prior to Landslide That Caused Train Derailment: Geologists

Warning Signs Were There Prior to Landslide That Caused Train Derailment in 2016

 See Video HERE

Local geologists anticipated local trouble spots for landslides ahead of Monday's ACE train derailment, and the risk continues in many Bay Area communities as long as El Nino rains keep falling. Raj Mathai reports. (Published Tuesday, March 8, 2016)

Source: Warning Signs Were There Prior to Landslide That Caused Train Derailment: Geologists | NBC Bay Area http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Warning-Signs-Were-There-Prior-to-Landslide-Geologists-371475911.html#ixzz4dsJd5psY



A view from above shows a wicked scar – what remains after thousands of pounds of mud and trees tumbled into the path of a commuter train Monday evening.


Local geologists anticipated local trouble spots for landslides ahead of the derailment, and the risk continues in many Bay Area communities as long as El Nino rains keep falling.


VIDEOMudslide Cause of Train Derailment


“We’re looking at a year where we could see some failures in March if the next round of storms is powerful,” geologist Jonathan Stock told NBC Bay Area just hours before the Niles Canyon landslide derailed the ACE train.


We asked his colleague at the U.S. Geological Survey whether the agency could have anticipated the slide.


VIDEOPassengers: Train Derailment Like Hollywood Thriller


“We can’t make that one-to-one connection yet,” said Brian Collins, a civil engineer.


Collins said the past two storms over the weekend created near-saturated conditions. Also, the pore water pressure at the closest monitoring station to the derailment site was elevated.


Commuter Train Derails in Sunol, 1 Car Plunges Into Creek


“That’s the kind of pressure you feel at the bottom of a swimming pool that presses on your ears. That’s the kind of pressure that causes landslides,” Stock said.


The combination of saturation, pressure and continuing storms means slopes around the Bay Area are prime for sliding.


“But there are times when pressure builds and nothing happens,” Collins said.


Geologists working on the USGS’s Landslide Initiation Project have been monitoring four sites in the Bay Area – Marin County, San Bruno, Pacifica and Castro Valley – since 2009.


The Castro Valley monitor showed elevated pressure levels at the time of the derailment, according to Collins.


Collins says if pressure levels stay elevated, they make recommendations to the National Weather Service to issue warnings. This time, however, the monitoring station was too far from the Niles Canyon slope to detect a slide. Collins says the Castro Valley slope has similar attributes to the Niles Canyon slope; however, he can’t be sure of the exact conditions.


Usually, there needs to be about a half inch of rain per hour in order to cause already-saturated soils to slide; however, Niles Canyon saw about a tenth of an inch per hour at the time of the derailment, according to the National Weather Service.


While Collins says geologists can’t predict mudslides, he says to expect them in the Bay Area this season.


As the rain falls, scientists continue to learn more from the monitoring sites. The state has been in drought for much of the time the project has been up and running.


“These days, it will be wet enough so we can learn something to make a difference,” Collins said.



Source: Warning Signs Were There Prior to Landslide That Caused Train Derailment: Geologists | NBC Bay Area http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Warning-Signs-Were-There-Prior-to-Landslide-Geologists-371475911.html#ixzz4dsJN81Ui
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