California Coastal Commission keeps grabbing land

Calwatchdog has a good primer on the California Coastal Commission.  

What do you get when you have a powerful state commission of 11 unremarkable people, which produces nothing, but regularly takes money and property from taxpaying citizens, while currying favors with others?

I just defined the California Coastal Commission.

However, for 40 years the California the Coastal Commission has managed to fly under the radar of most residents and communities outside of the coast. And it has done this with the help of Democratic lawmakers.

Update:  I just read in the comments that more about CCC is forthcoming.

California, Here We Stay Reasons not to flee an imploding state

I can sort of understand where VDH is coming from.  But on the flip side....this is nothing short of delusional.  And it pains me greatly to say such a thing since I think of him so highly.  Before I go any farther let me draw a (very) small comparison.

I live within the 610 Loop in Houston.  This puts me within about 5 minutes of downtown.  Honestly, this doesn't mean much in a city like Houston that is spread thinly over a gigantic portion of Harris County.  But in terms of traffic it means quite a bit.  I'm within a 15-20 minute drive to work which is also within the 610 Loop - actually, just right outside the Loop.  If I have to visit a contractor's office and since I'm traveling out of the city (most of these engineering offices are located outside the Loop) I'm usually going against the traffic, so again, my commute is easy.  I only filly my gas tank twice a month.  If I stayed at work for lunch instead of going home, I would only fill up once a month.

It's because of all this I am so very glad I live in the city.  For about 10 years I lived in the Clear Lake area which is southeast of downtown and depending on where I worked, my commute was anywhere from 45 minutes to almost 2 hours.  Finally, I had had enough and moved.

Without a doubt my quality of life has improved.  But there is a large financial price to pay for this peace of mind.  After a few years of no property appreciation, downtown properties are starting to move up in value. This means in a short time my taxes will increase.

I noticed my old homestead in Clear Lake went on the market for $140k.  In general, prices in the Clear Lake area are substantially cheaper than within the Loop I-610.  A similar house in my neighborhood goes for half a million.

A friend of mine told me that his financial analyst told him that Houston is going to be the next LA.  I was afraid of that.  This thought had been gnawing at the back of my mind for some time.

What this all means is I will at some point have to make a decision when the financial advantage has disappeared.  As my property appreciates and my tax burden becomes unbearable, I must decide what that monetary amount is.

And it may not be just the monetary aspect.  It may be a life and limb issue as well.

For VDH, this moment has not come.  Since he seems to be fairly well off, this "number" may not be reached for some time, I imagine.  The magnitude of the vandalism and burglary on his property probably seems something just above an annoyance.  If this were to happen to me at where I am in life, it would be heart rendering and I would start counting the costs and making plans to move.

But for him, at some point, that moment will come and he must decide what to do.  Because, from what I can tell, things will get a lot worse before they get better.

I think what struck me was his final paragraph:

The four-part solution for California is clear: don’t raise the state’s crushing taxes any higher; reform public-employee compensation; make use of ample natural resources; and stop the flow of illegal aliens. Just focus on those four areas—as California did so well in the past—and in time, the state will return to its bounty of a few decades ago. Many of us intend to stay and see that it does.

That's it?  That will fix things?  VDH, I wish that were really true!!  And from what I have read, there is nothing...NOTHING that is being done to reach your goals.  With the possible exception of pension reform CA is doing all it can in the OPPOSITE direction!  I wish I could point to the articles I have written on the subject, but I accidentally blew them away.  (I'm such an idiot...)

I doubt he would ever stoop so low as to read my depressing blog.  So, I can say what I want and not worry about any of it reaching him.  I think it would embarrass me if it did.  But I have been following CA now for almost two years.  I started my blog in November/December 2010.  I have spent countless hours reading reading reading and then reading some more and believe me the problems are DEEP and WIDE (...there's a fountain flowing....ahem.  sorry).

Will CA finally unchain itself and become the Super Entity it is destined to be?  Hey, miracles do happen.  But as I stated in my blog entry The United States of California, it will take a crash that would be heard around the world to bring it about.

Chevron: "The opportunity to spend further capital to mitigate stack emissions of CO2 are -- they're just about tapped out."

I read on down in the Chevron 3rd Quarter Earnings Call transcripts for the pertinent parts about CA.  If you think you had it bad a few weeks ago, think again.  They use the term CARBOB which is the special CA reformulated gasoline. You can just read the bolded parts.  That'll pretty much let you know what you're in for.

Our next question comes from Jason Gammel with Macquarie. 

Jason Gammel - Macquarie Research At the risk of exasperating Mike on the California issues, Mike, have you done any -- or do you have any estimates on what the potential incremental cost is going to be from complying with the greenhouse emissions? And, I guess, I'm thinking both in terms of any environmental CapEx that you have to put into the business and any uplift in the operating expense, although recognizing you might be able to pass that on to the consumer. And then I guess really what I'm leading to, do you get to a situation where you may be better off sourcing CARBOB outside of California and then just shipping it to your refineries?

Michael K. Wirth - Executive Vice President of Global Refining Marketing Lubricants Supply and Trading

Well, there's a wide range of potential incremental costs, Jason. And the reality is, our refineries are amongst the most energy-efficient refineries in the world. And our stationary source emissions are very, very low. The opportunity to spend further capital to mitigate stack emissions of CO2 are -- they're just about tapped out. And so your choices are go into the market to buy credits, and that could be something that we'll see where the market price goes on that.

But we really don't have a lot of opportunity, other than cutting runs and restricting supply. And there are some who believe that is the ultimate way that we'll see people comply, is just reducing their coupons, which tightens up the market, which runs the price risk.

When you get -- if you get fuels under the cap and trade, which is anticipated out towards the middle of this decade, the costs explode. And that's where you go from costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year to costs in the billions of dollars a year. And frankly, all of this stuff has got to go through to the market. We cannot absorb it, and I don't intend to absorb it.

And so the expectation is that as we see hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of increased costs, that translates through into the price of the product and that was the basis for my comment earlier that California's consumers will continue to pay a higher premium than the rest of the country. And that is the policy path that we are on.

The issue of CARBOB imports is one that we're very sensitive to because if those imports are not subject to some of the same obligations that manufacturers are, then you've got a competitive disadvantage. And that's a subject of discussion with the regulators. And if in fact it were more economic to import than to manufacture, and that's very well what we could do, that's got real implications for jobs and investment. So it's still an evolving and uncertain environment and frankly, we're trying to help people understand that the implications of these things, if it stays on the track that it's on right now, the implications are all bad.

Jason Gammel - Macquarie Research As a former California resident, you've got my sympathies.

PJTV: Instavision: Camille Paglia on the Sneering Art Establishment

This is a jaw dropping interview that just astonished me.  This woman is a true Liberal.  Her comments about O'bamacare:  It's a Stalinist intrusion.  She used words like "Statist" to describe O'bama.

Amazing.

"Genetically Engineered" In California: A Food Label We Don't Need

So, to the handful of CA'ians who read my blog, this is my last attempt to sway you.

Genetic modification has been with us for millennia. It is ubiquitous and includes much more than the relatively simple changes associated with crossing one tomato plant with another. Breeders regularly move genes between wholly unrelated species. Scientists long ago discovered, for example, how to give crop plants new traits by forcibly mating them with unrelated wild species known to contain natural pesticides, carcinogens, and anti-nutrients. On average, we consume dozens of these varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains every day.

Breeders also routinely use radiation or chemical mutagens on seeds to scramble a plant’s DNA to generate new traits. More than 2,250 of these “mutant” varieties have been bred in the United States and at least 50 other countries. They include some of our most popular fruits and vegetables, such as Ruby Red grapefruit and most of the durum wheat varieties used to make pasta.

That history might be a little unsettling to some, but these are conventional breeding methods, not GE. They are subject to no mandatory testing, and as now, they would not have to be labeled under the terms of Proposition 37.

The genetic changes that result from any conventional technique are far less precise, predictable, and controllable than those associated with modern genetic engineering. That is why dozens of scientific bodies, ranging from the National Academy of Sciences to the UN’s World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization, agree that genetic engineering is at least as safe as, and often safer than conventional breeding.

It is also why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require blanket labeling of GE foods. The FDA doesn’t take a laissez-faire approach to novel foods, however. The feds do require an intensive review and can require labeling if foods differ significantly from their conventional counterparts in ways related to safety or proper use – such as a reduction in nutrients, the introduction of an allergen where consumers would not expect it, or a change in customary storage or preparation characteristics.

I dare say, many of the ORGANI growers may be completely surprised when they are notified they must label THEIR produce as GMO as well!

New documents prove falsification in EPA air study; JunkScience renews retraction request

What's coming out is a government agency that should be founded on evidence is going by its feelings. How pathetic.

JunkScience.com has uncovered new documents conclusively proving that EPA researchers materially falsified a September 2011 study published in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).

While the September 2011 study (“Case Report“) claimed to link exposure to concentrated particulate matter (PM) to cardiac arrhythmia by virtue of a single incidence of cardiac arrhythmia in a 58-year old obese woman with heart disease during her experimental exposure to a high level of PM, the new documents show that cardiac arrhythmia also developed in two subjects similarly exposed to clean air.

THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA R.I.P.

Wow.  This guy has some history with CA.  Adnw ith Gov Moonbeam especially.  And a long, long memory.

Governor, WHAT are you going to do??

However, to return to the purpose of this missive. As I stated, I am writing to thank you. You have reaffirmed my faith that justice does exist. Call it “God”, “Buddha”, Karma, Hubris/Nemesis, “What goes around comes around”, “Ying/Yang”, Allah, or whatever you wish. You see, Jerry, as near as I can tell, YOU created or initiated most of these problems. It is only justice that YOU wrestle with them. Good luck trying to solve them with the employees at your disposal.