Scalia trashes California in Gay marriage ruling

Justice Anthony Kennedy

Ripping Sacramento's Kennedy

• Kennedy was appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan and has come down on both the Conservative and Liberal side of issues.
• It has been argued that "libertarian principles play prominent roles in Justice Kennedy's judicial opinions in several areas of the law," especially "privacy rights, race, and free speech."  (Wikipedia)
• The Gay marriage ruling has set off Justice Antonin Scalia and social Conservatives into full melt down mode.

(Breitbart News)  -  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took a swipe at California in his dissent of Friday’s landmark 5-4 ruling that made gay marriage a constitutionally protected right under the Fourteenth Amendment and legal in all 50 states.

In his now-infamous opinion, Scalia wrote that “a system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy,” adding:

Judges are selected precisely for their skills as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not (or should not be) relevant. Not surprisingly then, the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east-and west-coast states. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner, or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count).

Of course, California counted very much on Friday; the deciding vote in the Court’s decision on gay marriage came from Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native.

Unhinged?
Justice Antonin Scalia

“The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest,” Kennedy wrote in his opinion.

In many ways, Kennedy’s opinion reflects the longstanding public opinion shift toward the approval of gay marriage that got its start in the Golden State.

As The Sacramento Bee points out, then-San Francisco mayor, and now-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, was the first in the country to order city officials to perform gay weddings in 2004. Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, was passed in California in 2008, then overturned just a few years later.

“At long last, marriage equality in the United States,” San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee reportedly told a cheering crowd Friday, after the Court handed down its decision. “We started that movement. We started that movement right here in San Francisco.”

At a news conference on Friday, California Attorney General Kamala Harris called the day “an incredible day in history,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“California is validated. We are validated,” Harris said. “Each day that one of those couples have to go without being able to have their marriage and their love legally recognized … is one day too long.”

Harris also reserved some sharp words for Scalia: “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.”

“Justice Scalia has caused many people to question the dignity of the Court when he makes statements such as the statements he’s made in connection with this case,” Harris added. “And that’s unfortunate.”

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Personally I could care less if Gays want to marry.
There are real issues to worry about.

61% of California is non-white

The Future is Here

• Even though American poverty is increasing, neither political party has any interest in controlling the border.  For good or ill California is the new face of bipartisan open borders policies.  Soon the entire country will look like California.

California not only has the highest population of any state, but is home to the largest populations of four major ethic groups, a new Census Bureau report reveals.

California has more whites, Latinos, Asians and American Indians than any other state, the Census Bureau says, and its combined nonwhite population – 61.5 percent of 39 million Californians – is the second highest of any state. Hawaii is first.

Latinos have become California’s largest ethnic group at 15 million, followed closely by single-race whites at 14.9 million. Although Hawaii is the nation’s only Asian-majority state, California has its largest Asian population, 6.3 million.

Los Angeles County not has only the largest Latino population of any county at 4.9 million, but the largest Asian community, 1.7 million, and the largest American Indian population, 235,000.

California has a relatively small black population, about 6.5 percent of its total, and it, like the state’s white population, has been shrinking in relative terms as those of Latinos and Asians surge due to immigration and relatively high birth rates.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article25485157.html#storylink=cpy

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Democrat Jerry Brown refuses to help San Bernardino

Jerry Brown: "Screw You."

• The city of San Bernandino voted Democrat and was rewarded with a big FU by Jerry Brown.

(San Bernardino Sun)  -  Gov. Jerry Brown has given his response to the optimistic request for help on six different fronts that Mayor Carey Davis and his allies made in a trip to Sacramento.

The answer is no.

That’s according to a news release sent by Davis’ chief of staff, Christopher Lopez, who said the city will continue to implement its bankruptcy exit plan.

Governor Jerry Brown
(AP File Photo)

A “cornerstone” of that plan, Lopez said, is contracting out for some services, including fire protection, something the city has repeatedly sought to pressure Cal Fire to provide.

“Governor Brown’s office has recently made San Bernardino aware that Cal Fire will not provide a proposal and that our additional requests will not be considered,” Lopez wrote Monday evening.

The county fire department and a private firm called Centerra did submit proposals to run the city’s Fire Department, which the city thinks could save it $7 million or more per year.

The city asked Brown to force Cal Fire to submit a bid, despite explicit refusals from the state fire agency’s chief, and for help with several other issues, in a five-page letter signed by Davis, the city manager, the city attorney and all of the City Council members except John Valdivia.

Davis and Councilwoman Virginia Marquez then lobbied the governor’s chief deputy legislative affairs director and local government adviser, with the help of bipartisan state legislators representing the area: Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, R-Rancho Cucamonga in person, and other support from Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino, state Sen. Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga and state Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino.

Their requests involved a California Public Employees’ Retirement System penalty, the threatened decertification of the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency, a loan, a bill that would facilitate contracting with county fire, help with the dissolution of the redevelopment agency, and clarification on its tax agreement with Amazon.

Brown’s office could not be reached Tuesday, while San Bernardino reportedly moved forward with its plans.

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Wealthy California communities use more water than everyone else

Natural California landscaping that does not suck down rivers of water.

California Water Waisters

• Californian's have traditionally used water as if they were living in rainy Seattle.  It is not so much about rich vs. poor, but rather dumb vs. smart.
• While the drought rages on, California cities keep building more and more water sucking housing tracts and businesses.  After all, water is "magic".  You just turn on the tap and it will always come out.

(Contra Costa Times)  -  Only 24 miles separate the San Francisco East Bay communities of San Lorenzo and Diablo. But when it comes to California's relentless drought, they are a world apart.

Both communities receive their water from the same source -- the East Bay Municipal Utility District -- and both are bound by the same conservation rules and rates. But the residents of San Lorenzo, a working-class Alameda County suburb along Interstate 880, use a mere 51 gallons of water per person a day. In Diablo, an affluent community just over the hills in Contra Costa County known for its country club and tree-lined private streets, residents use nearly seven times more water -- 345 gallons per person per day.

The massive difference highlights an issue that has become more clear across California as the drought has worsened: Wealthy areas are using dramatically more water than lower-income areas.

Whether it's East Palo Alto and Hillsborough, Beverly Hills and Compton, or Richmond and Orinda, a huge disparity in residential water use is posing a challenge for water agencies as they try to curb consumption and write rules that treat all customers fairly. The divide is the focus of the latest installment in this newspaper's series "A State of Drought."

Robby Cella,16, of Diablo, carries a bucket holding three days worth of shower water that
he has collected to help water his mothers potted plants in Diablo, Calif., on Saturday,
June 13, 2015. The Cella family as stopped watering their front lawn, to the left, to help
conserve water during the drought. (DAN ROSENSTRAUCH)

"If I moved to Diablo tomorrow on a similar or even a slightly larger lot, I cannot conceive how I could use 350 gallons of water today with what I have learned about saving water," said San Lorenzo resident Steve Kirk, who has cranked down water use at his three-bedroom house to 26 gallons a day.

The pattern shows up throughout the state. A study released last year of residential water use in Southern California found wealthier Los Angeles neighborhoods consumed three times more water than less affluent ones. Although local climate and landscape type also played a role, a homeowner's income was a primary factor in how much water he or she used, the study found.

"Wealthy communities are using more water because they can. They have bigger houses and bigger lots. They can pay for it," said Stephanie Pincetl, a UCLA professor who worked on the study. "It's a historic pattern. People change habits reluctantly."

While the disparity between communities has become clear in monthly water consumption reports that the State Water Resources Control Board now requires from more than 400 water providers across California, EBMUD reports its water use as one overall number for 1.3 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

But this newspaper requested a breakdown of residential use by community, revealing for the first time the chasm here from one area to the other.

Overall, the newspaper's analysis showed that in 2014, all 27 communities in the district averaged 73 gallons per person per day. But the more affluent neighborhoods in warmer suburbs are using far more.

Diablo, with 345 gallons per person per day, was the heaviest user, followed by Alamo with 250, Lafayette with 181 and Danville-Blackhawk with 163. Among the lowest residential users were San Lorenzo, with 51 gallons, Berkeley with 52, San Pablo with 54 and Oakland with 57.

To be sure, weather plays an important role. The further inland an area is from San Francisco Bay and its fog, the warmer the temperatures. That explains some of the disparities, but not all of them.

"The same square footage of turf will need about 30 percent more water east of the hills than west of the hills," said Abby Figueroa, a spokeswoman for EBMUD. "But we're seeing per-capita use five or seven times higher in some places. We'd like to see those numbers come down."

Even near the bay, wealthy communities use more. Upscale Piedmont used 110 gallons per person in 2014, nearly double what working-class Richmond used, just 12 miles away.

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A warning sign on a dried-out beach at Folsom Lake

Sen. Richard Pan given $95,000 to push vaccine bill

Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento)

"Corruptus in Extremis"

A Corrupt Bastard?  You decide if getting $95,000 

to push through a bill is bribery or not.

(Sacramento Bee)  -  A subplot to the vociferous debate over the student vaccination bill moving through California’s Capitol is opponents’ allegations that the effort reflects the influence of the pharmaceutical industry.

Critics of Senate Bill 277, which would eliminate the personal belief and religious exemptions for schoolchildren, accuse the measure’s supporters in the Legislature of doing the bidding of donors who make vaccines and other pharmaceuticals.

The bill’s proponents and drug companies dismiss the charge. The companies’ lobbyist filings for the first quarter of this year as well as legislative committee reports show no connection between the pharmaceutical industry and SB 277.

“We aren’t pushing this bill behind the scenes,” said Priscilla VanderVeer, the senior director for communications for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, the industry’s main trade group. The group has no taken no position on SB 277, although the group has long backed vaccinations as sound public health policy, she said.

Other legislation has a more direct bearing on the industry, and it is an active political player. Pharmaceutical companies and their trade groups gave more than $2 million to current members of the Legislature in 2013-2014, about 2 percent of the total raised, records show. 

Nine of the top 20 recipients are either legislative leaders or serve on either the Assembly or Senate health committees. Receiving more than $95,000, the top recipient of industry campaign cash is Sen. Richard Pan, a Sacramento Democrat and doctor who is carrying the vaccine bill.

In addition, the industry donated more than $500,000 to outside campaign spending groups that helped elect some current members last year.

Pharmaceutical companies also spent nearly $3 million more during the 2013-2014 legislative session lobbying the Legislature, the governor, the state pharmacists’ board and other agencies, according to state filings.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article24913978.html#storylink=cpy

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Legal Bribery
If you hand a Senator a suitcase of cash in return for him ramming through a bill benefiting your company you can go to jail.  But it is legal bribery to hand a Senator a check made out to his "campaign" committee for the same amount of money to ram through the same bill.

Democrats hide spending for high-speed rail

A Legislature of Crooked Whores

• Democrats work to hide corrupt high speed rail spending from the public view . . . and the moronic Sheeple voters keep re-electing them.

(KCRA News)  -  A measure approved by legislative Democrats this week cuts the reporting requirements for the agency that oversees California's $68 billion high-speed rail program, requiring spending reports to the Legislature every two years instead twice per year, prompting critics to charge that oversight is being scaled back.

The changes were included in bills that passed Monday out of the Senate and Assembly, both of which are controlled by Democrats.

"This budget trailer bill is gutting oversight and accountability requirements that were inserted when this Legislature committed itself to funding high-speed rail back in 2012," said Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford. "This Legislature is supposed to strive for more oversight, not limit it."

Republicans also sought Monday to block $500 million in state funding for high-speed rail that was part of a budget deal reached last year. But Democrats thwarted those efforts.

Lisa-Marie Alley, a spokeswoman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said the change will make reporting more efficient, and the Legislature will still have access to detailed business plans that the agency is required to compile in even-numbered years. The legislative reports will come in odd-numbered years.

Current rules require the reports from the authority in March and November. But Alley said the March reports are due at the same time the agency is accepting public comments for its business plan, meaning the documents submitted to the Legislature quickly become outdated.

The bill also eliminates the requirement that the agency provide regular updates on staffing.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which has joined lawsuits against the project, criticized the change. "I would say that is a huge step backward in government transparency, and if anything, the high-speed rail project has shown itself to be in desperate need of more transparency, not less," he said.

Coupal said the project will be unable to meet the promises made to voters when they approved $10 billion in financing for it in 2008.

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California legislators working late at night to raise campaign money from high speed rail supporters.

Democrat Joe Baca switches to GOP

Former Congressman Joe Baca

The GOP welcomes Joe Baca

• The former Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus leaves the Democrat Party.
• Meanwhile, a former GOP Assemblyman goes to work for the Democrats.

(Sacramento Bee)  -  Two former state legislators from Southern California switched political teams, so to speak, last week.

Former Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, a Ventura County Republican who made a strong bid for Congress last year, challenging Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley, was chosen by Eric Garcetti, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, to be a deputy mayor handling homeland security and public safety issues.

Joe Baca, who was a Democratic assemblyman, senator and congressman for several decades, representing San Bernardino County, announced that he was switching parties and becoming a Republican.

Gorell brings his experience as a Ventura County prosecutor and a military intelligence officer to his new position, which pays $182,768 a year. By accepting Garcetti’s appointment, he passes up an opportunity to run for the Ventura County Board of Supervisors next year.

Baca was a “blue dog” Democrat in Congress, often at odds with liberals. He said his switch of parties “follows my core Christian values and how I voted the majority of the time.”

It also follows two losses to Democratic rivals in congressional races in 2012 and 2014.  Read More . . . .

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article24516031.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article24516031.html#storylink=cRead More . . . . 

Paychecks Always Come First
Former GOP Assemblyman Jeff Gorell abandons his Ventura County
voters to go to work for the Democrat Mayor of Los Angeles. 

“Smear the queer” - Attacks on a Gay Republican candidate

Attacks on San Diego's DeMaio Were Lies

• One of the latest weapons against candidates are last minute unprovable charges of "sexual harrassment". 

(The Daily Beast)  -  After a ‘Smear the queer’ campaign, an openly gay Republican says ‘Bye, Felicia’ to politics.

“Smear the queer” is how former Republican candidate Carl DeMaio describes the effort that ended congressional ambitions.

He’s still not over it.

Seven months ago DeMaio conceded to Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), ending a nasty campaign for California’s 52nd congressional district representing San Diego. It was a campaign filled with accusations from a former aide of alleged sexual misconduct—charges that hobbled his campaign in its final weeks.

Last week, Todd Bosnich, the former aide, admitted to manufacturing emails he used to support his claim that DeMaio sexually harassed him, and plead guilty to obstruction of justice.

The admission was a cold comfort to DeMaio.

“The impact this has had on my family, it was very rough,” DeMaio told The Daily Beast in an interview. “But I’m very please to see at least some level of justice delivered with these charges.”

“You can’t go back and have a do-over on an election,” he said. “That’s just not how the system works and I get that. “

But that doesn’t mean he isn’t still angry.

He’s angry about how his opponent used tactics he describes as a cynical ploy to scare away conservative voters by making them uncomfortable with the fact DeMaio is gay.

“It absolutely was generated to go after our conservatives voters,” DeMaio said. “What [Peters] needed to do was not go to the middle, he needed to try to dissuade far right voters, older voters, social conservative voters, from voting for the gay guy.”

DeMaio said conservative voters were willing to overlook the fact he was gay, if there wasn’t an “ick factor,” which is why, he said, one was created.

“You can be gay, but you can’t be one of those gays,” he said.  “And that’s why this allegation was so vicious, so disgusting and so harmful. Because Mr. Peters played on the notion of ‘Oh, he’s a sexual deviant.’ … That’s why this was frustrating.”

Peters, in an interview, denied having anything to do with the allegations and said DeMaio was still refusing to take responsibility for his actions.

“What he’s saying is entirely untrue,” Peters told The Daily Beast. “The authorities did not make any opinion on whether Mr. Bosnich’s sexual harassment [allegations] were true or false.”

(No sexual harassment charges were ever filed against DeMaio.)

DeMaio said the stigma of being an openly gay Republican still remains, but it’s a glass ceiling for someone else to crack.

“The challenge of being a gay Republican, not supported by the gay community, they don’t like the fact that you are Republican,” he said. “That’s the ultimate betrayal, is being a Republican.”

“If I were a gay Democrat and a Republican tried doing what Scott Peters did to me, there would be rioting in the streets in the middle of the election,” he said. “But it’s ok to do it to a Republican because, you know, we really don’t want you to break through that glass ceiling. And so that was very challenging.”

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Abortion is to blame for California drought says GOP legislator

Crazy People are Everywhere

• I don't which in worse:  The crazy loons on the Left or the crazy loons on the Right?

(Huffington Post)  -  Scientists are still exploring the causes of California's historic drought, but one local lawmaker thinks it might all come down to one thing: God's wrath over abortion.

While speaking at the California ProLife Legislative Banquet last week, California Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R) suggested a theory that the state's worst drought in 1,200 years may be divine retribution for California providing women with access to abortions, RH Reality Check reported.

“Texas was in a long period of drought until Governor Perry signed the fetal pain bill,” she told the audience. “It rained that night. Now God has his hold on California.”

Grove was likely referring to House Bill 2, RH Reality Check noted, a Texas abortion bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by Roe v. Wade.

Grove did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation that she made the statement at the event, but she elaborated on her theory in a Facebook comment.

"I believe --and most Americans believe --that God’s hand is in the affairs of man, and certainly was in the formation of this country," she wrote. "Is this drought caused by God? Nobody knows. But biblical history shows a consequence to man’s actions."

Pro-life activists in Kern County, the district Grove represents, didn't stand behind Grove's idea.

“We are huge fans of Shannon Grove and all her efforts in Sacramento on behalf of life,” Marylee Shrider, executive director of Right to Life of Kern County, told The Bakersfield Californian. “That being said, we have not made a connection between the drought and abortion here in California.”

Pro-Choice Kern County called her comments "absolute lunacy" and made this mock-up of a T-shirt.

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Shannon Grove's 34th Assembly District

Democrats to jack up business taxes

The Marxists Want More Taxes

• To Democrat Socialists there will never ever be enough money to satisfy the "needs" of different voter blocks.  The question of the day is do Republicans have any back bone at all to stand up against the endless calls to re-distribute the wealth?

(Reading Record Searchlight)  -  California businesses would pay billions more in property taxes under a longshot bid by two Democratic lawmakers to unravel some of the voter-approved tax limits in Proposition 13.

A coalition of unions and liberal groups joined state senators Wednesday to support a constitutional amendment that would roll back property tax limits on some companies and real estate owners.

Voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978 to curb the rise of property taxes on homes and other real estate. The proposed amendment, SCA5, would require commercial and industrial properties to be taxed at regularly assessed values, not just values assessed when buildings and land change ownership. Some businesses are able to avoid property tax increases through corporate restructuring.

"We have large corporations and property investors that have used loopholes in the law to avoid paying their fair share," Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, said at a news conference with her co-author, Sen. Lori Hancock, D-Berkeley.

The senators estimated their measure would raise billions of dollars annually for education and other public services. Business groups counter that the proposed overhaul would add to an already high tax burden and hinder economic growth.

"California, even with Prop 13, is a high property tax state," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which is named for the champion of Proposition 13. "There's no compelling reason given the tax revenues that are now flowing into the state."

Any effort to change the landmark property tax reform faces tough odds. It has long been considered untouchable in California politics and has never been changed.

SCA5 requires support from two-thirds of the Assembly and the Senate, including Republicans and moderate Democrats who are averse to changing property tax rules. It would then go before voters.

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Telling the Marxists to shove it

Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann were the most vocal and visible advocates of Proposition 13. Officially named the "People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation," and known popularly as the "Jarvis-Gann Amendment," Proposition 13 was listed on the ballot through the California ballot initiative process.

By Proposition 13, the annual real estate tax on a parcel of property is limited to 1% of its assessed value. This "assessed value," may be increased only by a maximum of 2% per year, until and unless the property has a change of ownership. 

California’s Vanishing Clouds Could Intensify Drought

Overpopulation and the Drought

• Zero Population Growth  -  I have totally come around to zero population growth.  Enough people have come to the People's Republic.
• Now we see man made urban heat islands as one of many factors in California's drought. And California is rapidly becoming one giant heat island as every possible open space in the Bay Area or Southern California is being paved over with concrete and asphalt.

(KQED News)  -  Fog season is with us once again. And whether it’s the ground-level “pea soup” of legend or the looming overcast known as the marine layer, there’s a reason it’s called California’s natural air-conditioning: fog and clouds are vital cogs in keeping the coastal thermostat turned down.

But that advantage could be disappearing.

KQED Science Editor Craig Miller talks with climate scientist Park Williams about his recently published work on California’s vanishing clouds.  Williams is an assistant research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, but the gray mantle of the California’s summer coastline keeps drawing him back here — and it’s not just the romance of it. It turns out that fog — any kind of cloud, actually — is a great regulator not just of heat, but of drought.

Park Williams: Yeah, fog regulates drought. It does it in a couple of ways. In ecosystems, fog drops water directly on plants. And when the water collects on the plants, it then drops into the soil and is available for the plants to use. Fog, and clouds that are higher than fog, also shade the sun, and that allows plants more time to use the water they’ve collected from the fog. In cities, fog and clouds that are higher than fog — overcast clouds — are important as well, because they regulate surface temps.

Craig Miller: And it seems like cities are where the problem is.

PW: We looked at Southern California and found that in large cities — L.A. and San Diego — the heights of low clouds during summertime have been increasing; they’ve been rising away from the city.

CM: Why would that be?

PW: Cities have been warming, and essentially you need to go higher into the atmosphere before you finally get to where it’s cool enough to have water droplets condense and clouds can form.

CM: This is sounding like the “urban heat island” effect at work here. Is there a smoking gun for that?

PW: The minimum temperature at night has been rising rapidly. During the daytime we’ve seen slow warming, but not nearly at the pace that nighttime warming is. That’s the fingerprint of the urban heat island that we expect. The urban heat island effect really is a nighttime phenomenon because cement takes a long time to get rid of its heat, and that causes nighttime temperatures to rise.

CM: And where urbanization reaches inland, like, say, the Inland Empire region east of L.A., this phenomenon seems to follow. For example, looking at readings from airports, you found there’s 87 percent less fog in Ontario since 1950, and that overall cloud cover — technically the “frequency” of clouds — has been reduced by about half. That’s stunning.

PW: That means Ontario is getting a lot more sunlight in the morning hours, which is then feeding back to heat up Ontario and make clouds less likely in the future.

CM: You’re describing a kind of vicious cycle.

PW: Clouds will become thinner over Los Angeles. That allows more sunlight to be absorbed by the ground, which causes more surface heat, which causes clouds to have to form higher up, which causes clouds to be thinner, which perpetuates this process of more sunlight, higher clouds — and eventually more sunlight, no clouds.

Read More . . . .

Science of Fog: Science on the SPOT

San Francisco's fickle summer weather has earned it the nickname "Fog City." Science on the SPOT asks UC Berkeley's Todd Dawson to clear up the mysterious origins of this weather phenomenon, and share his research on how fog is integral to our state's ecology.

Coastal Fog and the Drought
There’s 87 percent less fog in Ontario since 1950, and that overall cloud cover — technically the “frequency” of clouds — has been reduced by about half.