PUC jacks up fees on solar panels

Big Utility Companies Try to 

Chip Away at Solar Power

(Las Vegas Review Journal)  -  California has delivered a narrow victory to the solar industry by maintaining a policy that has underpinned rooftop solar's dramatic growth while introducing fees that were smaller than utilities requested.

After two years of rancorous debate, California's Public Utilities Commission upheld net metering by a vote of 3-to-2 on Thursday, allowing homeowners with solar panels to keep selling the excess power they generate back to their utility at the full retail rate.

Homeowners with solar panels cheer net metering as it lowers their power bills. But net metering has been criticized by utilities and some ratepayer advocates for rewarding solar users while leaving others to shoulder the cost of maintaining the electricity grid.

The decision was being watched far beyond the Golden State by states and utilities that are working to integrate ever larger amounts of rooftop solar onto their power grids.

Most states have passed laws allowing net metering, but a 40 percent drop in the cost of residential solar installations in the last five years has prompted some to review those policies amid calls by utilities to roll them back. Most recently in Nevada, regulators last month approved changes to the state's net metering policy that prompted some solar companies to stop doing business there.

The narrow victory in California reflected what the Commission said was the difficult job of balancing its desire to support the growth of rooftop solar while making sure solar customers pay their fair share.

"I will be the first to say that I think we really have a ways to go before we have a really enduring rooftop strategy," said PUC President Michael Picker, who voted in favor of extending the policy.

In response to critics, the PUC did make some changes that will drive up the cost of going solar.

Solar customers will have to pay a new fee of between $75 and $150 to connect a system to the grid, and will be required to move to time-based utility rates, paying more for power during peak hours. They will also be required to pay monthly fees of about $6 for certain utility programs.

The revised structure serves as somewhat of a placeholder, as the PUC will reconsider net metering again in 2019.

Net metering, which has been in place for 20 years in California, has been critical to making it affordable to go solar. It is largely responsible for the rise of major rooftop solar installation companies like SolarCity Corp and Sunrun Inc.

Solar company shares soared following the decision, with SolarCity's stock up nearly 8.4 percent. Sunrun's stock was up more than 20 percent.

Industry groups like the California Solar Energy Industries Association and environmentalists applauded the decision.

Two commission members who voted against the proposal indicated the PUC had gone too far in supporting the industry when it backed away at the eleventh hour from imposing transmission charges on solar owners.

The state's three investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, initially argued for fixed charges for solar customers, but in the last month authored a new proposal that would preserve net metering but reduce the rate at which solar customers are compensated for the excess power they produce.

PG&E spokesman Donald Cutler said the utility was "extremely disappointed" in the decision.

Read More . . . .

Escaped California inmate was ordered deported in 1998, but never left

The Eternally Broken Immigration System

Democrat or Republican. No matter who is 

in charge nothing is ever fixed.

(Fox News)  -  One of the three violent convicts who escaped from a Southern California jail Friday had been ordered deported to his native Vietnam in 1998, but was able to remain in the U.S. and rack up more criminal convictions.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday that Bac Duong, 43, came to the United States legally in 1991 but was ordered removed seven years later after he served time in state prison for a 1997 burglary conviction. However, the Orange County Register reported that Vietnam routinely refused requests from the U.S. to accept Duong and other deportees.

Duong escaped from the Orange County jail on Friday along with Jonathan Tieu, 20, and Hossein Nayeri, 37, by sawing through a quarter-inch thick grill on a dormitory wall and climbing through plumbing tunnels to reach an unguarded area of the roof. There, the men moved aside razor wire and rappelled to the ground using bed linen.

Immigration officials said they took Duong into custody a second time in 2003 and released him the following year. He continued to check in with authorities as required until 2014, the statement said.

In the intervening years, Duong also faced a series of charges involving burglary and drug possession and did stints in state prison. Last year, he was charged with attempted murder and assault in the shooting of a man outside a home in Santa Ana.

Federal officials can't keep immigrants locked up indefinitely while they await deportation. Most must be released after six months, except those accused of posing a terrorist threat or deemed especially dangerous.

In 2008, Vietnam agreed to provide travel documents for deportees, but only those who entered the U.S. since July 1995, eaning it didn't apply to Duong.

Duong's case is is one of thousands involving criminal immigrants who federal authorities want to deport but haven't been able to because their native countries wouldn't take them back.

In 2012, ex-convict Binh Thai Luc was charged with killing five people in San Francisco after Vietnam didn't issue the travel documents needed to repatriate him.

Read More . . . .

Opponents of rooftop solar are lobbying the PUC to impose fees

There are solar panel companies right now using the current tax system to install solar panels on individual homes at no cost to the home owner.  My son works for one of these companies.  It is not unusal for his company to install the panels reducing a person's power bill from about $300 a month to $60.

Big Business Wants New Taxes

• As a John Muir-Theodore Roosevelt style Conservative I find myself on the side of many Democrats who are pushing for rooftop solar panels while the Big Business public utilities want higher taxes and fees.

BY ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA

Special to The Sacramento Bee

Today, California has more solar rooftops than anywhere else in the country. Thousands of solar companies call the state home, employing more than 54,000 workers. In fact, more Californians now work in solar than for the state’s five largest utilities combined. Customers across the state are projected to save billions of dollars on their electricity bills. This is a true California success story.

When I was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2005, it was clear to me that the state’s and the city’s coal-heavy power mix had to change if we were to move toward a more sustainable future. Los Angeles is a city with more than 300 days of sunshine, with an appetite for bold actions. I set the path for the L.A. Department of Water and Power to reach 20 percent renewables by 2010, and we achieved it. I also announced L.A. would stop using coal-fired power by 2025 and replace it with clean energy sources, including more rooftop solar.

On average, families save 10 to 20 percent on their electric bills, which puts more money back in their pockets. More and more, the solar revolution is being driven by the middle and lower middle class: according to the Center for American Progress, roughly 60 percent of rooftop solar installations occur in homes with incomes ranging from $40,000 to $90,000.I support rooftop solar because it is good for the environment and it creates jobs – local jobs closer to where people live. California has increased solar jobs over the past decade, and what’s driving this job growth is solar’s appeal to a broad spectrum of Californians.

Regardless of whether a family has gone solar, all Californians benefit from rooftop solar because it increases clean energy generated in our communities, reducing the need to build costly new power plants to keep up with the energy demand. It eases the strain on the electric grid during peak demand hours, which can affect pricing during the hottest days of the year. And going solar saves everyone money.

While we see the immediate impacts of rooftop solar on a customer’s bill, we also know that increasing solar and clean energy production reduces climate impacts, promotes water conservation, builds a more resilient power system and protects public health.

For some of California’s most disadvantaged communities, cleaner energy means better health. California has some of the highest asthma rates in the nation, causing our children to miss an estimated 1.47 million school days every year. The White House estimates that across the country employing cleaner energy solutions, such as solar, can result in avoiding 3,600 premature deaths, 1,700 heart attacks and 90,000 asthma attacks each year.

Let’s create pathways, not roadblocks, for meaningful local solar growth. The California Public Utilities Commission’s recent proposed decision on the future of rooftop solar wisely continues the successful net metering policy and rejects utility proposals to end net metering and undermine customer choice. Opponents of rooftop solar are lobbying the PUC to change course and impose more fees on new solar customers. The PUC must stand firm against these attacks.

We need to support and encourage the growth of local rooftop solar rather than making it harder for customers to embrace clean energy. Now, more than ever, California needs to think big when it comes to our energy production – and by thinking big, I mean thinking small, with rooftop solar.

I urge the PUC to continue to embrace the positive impacts rooftop solar has on California’s communities and support its continued growth.

Antonio Villaraigosa is the former mayor of Los Angeles.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article55773985.html#storylink=cpyAntonio Villaraigosa is the former mayor of Los Angeles.

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Yes to Solar Power
You can provide billions in tax breaks to giant corporations to build coal or oil based plants that produce energy, or you can allow individual home owners to put up their own solar panels and lower their power bills.  Empowering the individual is a truly Conservative position.

Monsanto sues to keep herbicide off California list of carcinogens

Will we ever know the truth?

• It is "crazy" back to nature types vs Big Business selling $4.8 Billion worth of this one single product last year.  Both sides will spin facts.
• I do know that antibiotics injected into cattle have been absorbed by humans.

(Reuters)  -  Monsanto Co stepped up its defense of a widely used weed killer on Thursday by filing a lawsuit in California seeking to prevent glyphosate, the main ingredient in its Roundup herbicide, from being added to the state's list of known carcinogens.

The seed and agrochemicals company said it filed the suit against the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and the agency's acting director, Lauren Zeise, in California state court, according to the filing seen by Reuters.

California law requires the state to keep a list of cancer-causing chemicals to inform residents of their risks.

OEHHA said in September that it planned to add glyphosate to the list after the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified it as a probable human carcinogen last March.

Spraying poison on the food we eat.
Sure we can raise more crops but at what price?

Monsanto has disputed assessment, citing decades of studies deeming glyphosate safe, including a 2007 study by OEHHA that concluded the chemical was unlikely to cause cancer.

"The IARC classification of glyphosate is inconsistent with the findings of regulatory bodies in the United States and around the world, and it is not a sound basis for any regulatory action," said Phil Miller, Monsanto's vice president of regulatory affairs.

Monsanto's lawsuit argues that listing glyphosate under Proposition 65, as the state's law is known, based on IARC's classification cedes regulatory authority to an "unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable, and foreign body" that is not subject to oversight by any state or federal entity.

OEHHA did not comment, as it had not seen the lawsuit.

The case is Monsanto Company v. Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, et al, case number 16-CECG-00183 in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Fresno.

Roundup is used by farmers around the world, generating Monsanto $4.8 billion in fiscal 2015 revenue. Genetically modified seeds designed to tolerate glyphosate are immensely popular among corn and soybean growers.

But questions from environmentalists and other critics about the safety of the herbicide have dogged Monsanto for years.

Since IARC's classification last year, Monsanto has been named in numerous lawsuits accusing the company of knowing of the dangers of glyphosate for decades.

Read More . . . .

Supreme Court justices are about to tip the scales in California politics

Shaking up California Elections

A Supreme Court ruling could limit the 

influence of non-voting immigrants.

(Los Angeles Daily News)  -  California politics could be shaken up this spring when the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decisions in two potentially landmark cases.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution thought they were keeping the judiciary out of politics, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Today the Supreme Court exercises so much power over our lives that if one of the justices mentions retirement, half the country experiences chest pains. And the stress is not unwarranted: Policies that were created by judges can be reversed by judges.

Right now the Supreme Court is considering whether to change the rules that control state redistricting, and whether to abolish mandatory union dues for public employees. The impact of the two decisions could make California’s predictable elections a lot less predictable.

In the redistricting case, Evenwel v. Abbott, the issue is whether Texas should be allowed — perhaps even required — to draw its legislative district boundaries based on eligible voters instead of total population.

The 5th State Assembly District
California state legislate seats are the largest in the U.S. with 500,000 people in each.
They are far, far too large for anyone to represent the people or to campaign in.

For example, an Assembly district might have a population of half a million people but far fewer citizens who are eligible to vote. The court’s ruling could result in the district’s boundaries being redrawn to take in new geographical areas with more citizens and fewer immigrants. The decision could scramble the political map in Texas and potentially in other states with a high proportion of non-citizens, including California.

Until the mid-20th century, the federal courts stayed out of state redistricting. That changed when Chief Justice Earl Warren decided to get involved.

As governor of California in the 1940s, Warren had opposed a plan to draw district lines based on population instead of geographical area. At the time, rural Senate districts with fewer voters had the same political power as urban districts jammed with voters. The votes of city residents were, in a sense, unequal to the votes of rural residents. Los Angeles was outvoted on everything.

As chief justice, Warren had second thoughts about the fairness of that arrangement. In two landmark decisions, Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, the court imposed a “one person, one vote” standard that required voting districts to have roughly equal populations.

But the Evenwel case could be a new landmark.

Read More . . . .

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A Legislature that Represents the People
In California the 80 State Assembly members represent districts of 500,000 people. With super-sized districts only millionaires or candidates willing to be bought off by big special interest money can win election to office.
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Meanwhile in Pennsylvania the 203 members of their lower house represent districts of only 63,000 people.  Average people have the ability to seek and win public office.
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It is way past time to reform the California legislature.
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Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Democrats may expand ban on assault rifles

They are coming for your guns

(San Jose Mercury News)  -  California's Democrat attorney general is backing a renewed effort to expand the state's ban on assault rifles in the wake of recent mass shootings.

The bill introduced Thursday by Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu of San Francisco would bar the sale or transfer of most semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines.

Attorney General Kamala Harris says AB1663 would close a legal loophole that allows firearms manufacturers to include "bullet buttons" that let firearm owners rapidly exchange empty ammunition magazines for ones full of bullets.

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed similar legislation in 2014.

A narrower bill, AB1664 by Democratic Assemblymen Marc Levine and Phillip Ting, would only outlaw bullet buttons.

Lawmakers are planning to introduce numerous gun control bills this year following a deadly terror attack involving assault rifles in San Bernardino last month.


Read More . . . .

Charlton Heston -
From My Cold, Dead Hands!

Illegal aliens get 50% of driver's licenses in California

(World Net Daily)  -  California’s roadways just got a lot more crowded – with illegal immigrants.

Nearly half of all new non-commercial licenses issued in California in 2015 went to illegal immigrants. A new Department of Motor Vehicles program granted 605,000 new driver’s licenses out of 1.4 million to illegal immigrants.

“This was a major undertaking and never before had the department implemented a program such as this one,” Artemio Armenta, spokesman for the Department of Motor Vehicles, told the Orange County Register Jan. 8. “We were surprised, but not unprepared.”

A local member of the Tea Party Patriots told the newspaper that California’s program is another instance where the needs of American citizens are trumped by the wants of illegal immigrants.

“It certainly overloads the system,” said Ann Coil, a coordinator for the group. “There is concern in this country, and it’s reflected in this election, that there’s more compassion for people who are not citizens than those who are.”

The licenses are called “AB 60 licenses” in reference to the bill that codified the program into law.

The paper reported longer lines than usual this year, which angered those over 70 who must appear at the DMV in person to renew their license.

“I paid my dues. I’ve been a model citizen. I don’t feel I should have to wait in line for hours, behind newly arrived people who are here illegally,” 77-year-old Kent Moore said.

Moore said he had “mixed feelings” because he otherwise felt illegal immigrants with jobs “shouldn’t be denied” services designed for Americans.

The conservative website HotAir noted on Monday that a program guide for illegal immigrants with felony convictions, gang-related history or three or more misdemeanor offenses was crafted by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It is a personal decision whether or not you should apply for a driver’s license, based on your individual situation and needs. While having an AB 60 license can protect you from being arrested for not having a license (and possibly referred to ICE), if you are in one of the categories above, you should consult with a licensed and trusted attorney before you apply for a license,” the ACLU warned.

“That’s some pretty amazing stuff right there,” the website responded. “The ACLU is publishing legal advice for criminals letting them know the risks inherent in a government program so they can avoid being arrested for knowingly breaking the law.”

DMV Director Jean Shiomoto deemed the program a success because it allegedly makes California’s roads safer.

Read More . . . .

Democrat: "End Tampon Tax as Gender Injustice"

Retard Alert!

• Oh the Horror!  Poor women have to pay taxes on feminine hygiene products. The injustice of it all. What an unfair world we live in.
• The fact that men have to pay taxes on their hygiene products escapes the tiny brain this this Democrat clown.

(Portland Press Herald)  -  The so-called “tampon tax,” the issue Cristina Garcia now finds herself championing, isn’t one she just stumbled upon; the California Democrat Assemblywoman said she has been thinking about this “gender injustice” for awhile.

“I think a lot of women have at some point, thought about it, you know?” Garcia said this week.

Last year, Garcia kicked around the idea of introducing legislation that would make feminine hygiene products exempt from sales taxes in America’s most populous state.

She didn’t pull the trigger just then. But at a meeting in October, she heard from women in her district, and they talked a lot about their daily struggles and “how it all adds up,” she said.

On average, according to Garcia’s office, women in California pay about $7 per month for 40 years for tampons and sanitary napkins. Statewide, it adds up to more than $20 million annually.

These products, her office said, “are a basic necessity” that should not be taxed; it’s especially “unjust” since the tax only impacts women who are already suffering on the wrong end of the gender wage gap.

And so this week, on the first day of California’s 2016 legislative session, Garcia announced Assembly Bill 1561, which proposed an end to the tampon tax.

“I just want people to realize this is not insignificant,” said Garcia, a Democrat. “Especially if you’re on a tight budget.

“And this is just the first step on a long discussion we need to be having,” she added.

Tampons (and similar products) are tax-exempt in only a handful of states, including Maryland and New Jersey.

“Basically we are being taxed for being women,” Garcia said in announcing the bill. “This is a step in the right direction to fix this gender injustice.”

Read More . . . .

California unveils bids for high-speed rail construction

Bipartisan Corruption

• The phony Republican Party claims to oppose the corrupt high speed rail boondoggle, but the GOP Congress keeps the cash flowing.

(The Hill)  -  California officials this week unveiled bids for construction of a controversial high-speed railway that is being partially financed by the federal government. 

The California High-Speed Rail Authority said California Rail Builders has offered to build a 22-mile segment of the high-speed railway for $347 million, which is less than the agency's previous estimate of $400-$500 million. 

Republicans in California and Washington have questioned the viability of the Golden State's high-speed rail proposal, but officials with the agency overseeing construction of the railway said the private sector bids are proof of the line's viability. 

“We continue to attract world leading design and construction firms who want to be a part of high-speed rail in California,” California High-Speed Rail Authority Authority CEO Jeff Morales said in a statement.

“People are already and will continue to see major construction projects underway on over 100 miles of infrastructure in the Central Valley as we move this program forward,” Morales continued. 

The proposed California line, which would link San Francisco, Los Angeles and other major California cities, was part of an ambitious proposal from President Obama to build a nationwide network of trains that would rival popular European railways. 

The California high-speed rail project has received more than $3 billion in federal dollars, but it has been beset with delays and funding problems. 

The state's high-speed rail authority said this week that California Rail Builders, who it said is comprised of a company called Ferrovial Agroman US Corp., was selected from five proposals that were submitted in a competitive bidding process. 

The agency said the company has been involved in more than 65 high-speed rail projects worldwide and won eight projects totaling $8 billion in the U.S. in recent years. 

Read More . . . .

Nuns fight to keep their marijuana-based business

MERCED, Calif. -- (ABC News)  - 

The "Sisters of the Valley" have been producing salves and tonics made with cannabis. While their products won't make anyone high, they are fighting to keep the city council from putting them out of business.

The new year marks the first anniversary of a marijuana-based business in Merced. The sisters are not members of a religious order but they say they are on a spiritual quest to heal the sick with their cannabis cures.

Sister Kate and Sister Darcey are tending their small crop of marijuana plants in the garage of
the home they share in Merced. They consider themselves nuns, but are not Catholic, or traditionally religious.

They produce a variety of products made from the cannabinoids or CBD's found in the marijuana
plant. Their plants do not contain THC, the substance that creates the marijuana high. They believe creating these healing substances is a spiritual quest.

"We spend no time on bended knee, but when we make our medicine it's a prayerful environment it's a prayerful time," said Sister Kate, medical marijuana grower.

Videos of their operation, set to music have become popular on the Internet. It's Sister Kate's business -- Sister Darcey is her apprentice.

"It's more for me about the sisterhood and the feminist movement... to live an work with other women and to do a positive thing for the community -- and obviously for the world since we ship it everywhere," said Sister Darcey, apprentice.

They sell their product online at Etsy, a web market known for handmade, handcrafted items. They claim their substances offer a treatment for a lot of problems.

"We make CBD oil which takes away seizures, and a million other things," said Sister Kate. "And we make a salve, that's a multi purpose salve... and we found out that it cures migraines, hangovers, earaches, diaper rash tooth aches."

But their production is threatened. The Merced City Council is considering a proposed ban on all marijuana cultivation.

"Yes it's frustrating to me because there are all of these people with negative attitudes about something that is truly God's gift," said Sister Darcey.

The city council will consider banning all marijuana growing in Merced next week. The sisters and their supporters are hoping to keep what they do legal. "Embrace, regulate and tax, that's all we want them to do," said Sister Kate.

The Planning Commission recently voted to continue allowing medical marijuana distribution in Merced, but the city council is under pressure to put a ban in place before more lenient state regulations take effect in March.

Read More . . . .

House races in California: The thrill is gone

"Corruptus in Extremis"

• The media does not get it. They think real elections take place in California and are "shocked" when voter turnout continues to fall and voters abandon the two major parties to register as independents.
• With the monster size of California districts only millionaires, or candidates willing to be bought and paid for by millionaires, have any chance at winning office.
• The people are given a phony "choice" of which bought off stooge to vote for in November.

(Contra Costa Times)  -  When it comes to California congressional races, the thrill is gone. Again.

It's a far cry from 2012, when after years of mostly deadly dull contests for House seats, the newly redistricted Golden State suddenly had as many as a dozen districts that the Democratic and Republican parties believed to be in play. Excited that it could help decide Capitol Hill's balance of power, California welcomed its newfound clout -- and a chance to soak up some lavish campaign spending instead of just serving as the nation's political ATM.

But now the political landscape looks downright barren.

"There seem to be fewer competitive seats," said Kyle Kondik, a congressional elections expert at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, noting that 2016 will be the third cycle with those redrawn district lines. "People have a better idea of what the districts are like and, while some of them seem competitive on paper, the incumbent party in every seat in the state has a bit of an advantage right now."

In 2012, the widely respected Cook Political Report saw three California House races as toss-ups and five more as competitive. Now it lists no California House seats as toss-ups, and only four as currently competitive: the seats held by Ami Bera, D-Elk Grove, in the Seventh District; Jeff Denham, R-Atwater, in the 10th; David Valadao, R-Hanford, in the 21st; and Steve Knight, R-Lancaster, in the 25th. Five other Democratic seats are deemed not yet competitive, but with the potential to become so.

B-o-o-o-r-ing

Another reliable political prognosticator, the "Crystal Ball" maintained by Kondik's center, also sees no California toss-ups. It concurs that Bera's, Denham's and Valadao's districts are somewhat competitive, and adds the seats held by Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, and the retiring Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.

So depending on who you ask, the nation's most populous state has only four or five districts in play -- not exactly an electoral bonanza. How did California go from being a pivotal battlefield for control of Congress back to a relative snooze?

"Demography and incumbency," said Bruce Cain, director of Stanford University's Bill Lane Center for the American West.

By demography, Cain means there is "clumping of different racial and income groups in California, and that creates large swaths of geography that are either blue or red" with little chance for an upset, even with a citizens commission -- created by voters with Proposition 11 in 2008 and expanded two years later to cover congressional districts with Proposition 20 -- drawing district lines instead of the partisan Legislature.

Congress General election
	Republican	Tom McClintock (incumbent)	126,784	60.0
	Republican	Art Moore	84,350	40.0
Total votes			211,134	100.0
	Republican hold

The phony election "reforms" in California many times gave the voters one party races. Voter choice is an illusion.

Congress General election
	Democratic	Mike Honda (incumbent)	69,561	51.8
	Democratic	Ro Khanna	64,847	48.2
Total votes			134,408	100.0
	Democratic hold

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"There is no way in the world that you're going to make key parts of the Bay Area or key parts of downtown Los Angeles into competitive seats without drawing some horribly contorted districts," he said. "And when you get into office, independent voters can be swayed by projects you fund, mailings you send, familiarity, money -- all these things give incumbents a real advantage over challengers."

Although there might be scattered surprises or upsets, "on average the elections will get more boring as you get to the end of the decade ... because good challengers will wait on the sidelines" for the next redistricting, Cain said. "The best time for a really competitive election is one or two cycles after the redistricting deck has been shuffled."

That's how Lew Ferrin sees it.

The 61-year-old Sutter County resident supported Republican Kim Dolbow Vann in her 2012 race against Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove. The contest was considered competitive. But despite financial backing from the National Republican Congressional Committee, Vann lost by 8 percentage points.

Now the Third Congressional District isn't even considered competitive.

Ferrin, a high school teacher and swimming coach, didn't even know that Republican N. Eugene Cleek, a trauma surgeon from Orland, has launched a campaign to unseat Garamendi.

"Garamendi has turned out to be not as awful as I feared, in that he seems to understand the need to preserve the agricultural base of this part of the state," Ferrin said. "He's not a terribly hate-able candidate."

Ferrin, a registered Republican who sees himself as a centrist "Reagan Democrat," wishes it could be a real race. But he believes the state's independent redistricting process favored the state's liberal majority, and many Republicans have yet to learn that "you're never going to get elected in this state if you come across as a knee-jerk social conservative in a general election... You can just pack it up, go home and let the Democrat win."

Kondik agreed that the GOP has a tough row to hoe in many California districts.

He said Republicans took their best shot in 2012 but, when the dust settled, five incumbents (three Democrats and two Republicans) had kept their seats while Democrats beat three GOP incumbents, won three more formerly GOP open seats, and held onto one open seat.

Republicans "have just fallen short so many times -- under the old maps and under the new maps -- that I don't know if they're focused on these seats like they were in the past," Kondik said.

"They already have a gigantic majority to defend across the nation, and they can even suffer losses in California and it wouldn't hurt their bottom line all that much," he added, noting that a high-turnout presidential election favors Democrats here. "If Republicans are going to go after California seats, they had a better shot during the midterms -- and even then they couldn't come through in any of those districts last time."

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Free Elections in Scotland

Maybe we could try free elections in the U.S.

Scottish Parliament

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Phony Election "Reforms"
The political elites "reformed" California elections by effectively banning all small opposition parties and independent candidates from general election ballots.
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But in the rest of the world truly free elections exist.  The Scottish Parliament (above) uses a combination of district seats and members elected by proportional representation.  Bottom line - your vote matters in Scotland with five different political parties elected and three independent candidates.
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Scottish Parliament Election