California paid Arizona to take its excess solar power

I Say Yes to Solar

• As something of a Conservative Environmentalist I say yes to solar. During this current heat wave Californians with solar panels have been able to run their central air without fear of overloading and blacking out part of their city.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.

Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren’t using to avoid overloading its own power lines.

It happened on eight days in January and nine in February as well. All told, those transactions helped save Arizona electricity customers millions of dollars this year, though grid operators declined to say exactly how much. And California also has paid other states to take power.

The number of days that California dumped its unused solar electricity would have been even higher if the state hadn’t ordered some solar plants to reduce production — even as natural gas power plants, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, continued generating electricity.

Solar and wind power production was curtailed a relatively small amount — about 3% in the first quarter of 2017 — but that’s more than double the same period last year. And the surge in solar power could push the number even higher in the future.

The California Legislature has mandated that one-half of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030; today it’s about one-fourth. That goal once was considered wildly optimistic. But solar panels have become much more efficient and less expensive. So solar power is now often the same price or cheaper than most other types of electricity, and production has soared so much that the target now looks laughably easy to achieve.

Read More . . . .

Democrats block deportation of illegals while pushing pot

Democrats Want to Keep You High

and Protect Illegals

(ABC News)  -  California lawmakers voted Thursday to set rules for the state's nascent marijuana industry and to quash the growth of federal immigration detention as part of a $125 billion state budget lawmakers approved for the next fiscal year.

Lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown a measure merging the state's longstanding medical marijuana law with the much more permissive rules voters approved last year to legalize pot sales to people 21 and older. The state will develop standards for organic marijuana, allow pot samples at county fairs and permit home deliveries.

The Legislature also backed a measure to limit new beds for immigration detention, dealing a blow to the Trump administration's efforts to boost deportation. The measure prevents local governments from signing or expanding contracts with federal authorities for immigration detention facilities. It also calls for the state's attorney general to review conditions at the centers.

The marijuana and immigration provisions are pieces of a one-year budget plan that increases money for education and social services while imposing new financial restrictions on the University of California following a scathing audit. It cleared the Assembly and Senate mostly along party lines with only a handful of Republicans in support.

Brown, a Democrat, has called the budget "balanced and progressive." Legislative Democrats said it would help alleviate poverty while building up savings for a future economic downturn.

Read More . . . .

GOP Registration Collapses in California

California Looks to Become Venezuela

It might help if the GOP actually stood for something

instead of being "Democrat Lite"

(Sacramento Bee)  -  Good luck finding a California city these days where most voters are Republicans.

Fifteen years ago, Republicans comprised more than half of the voters in 66 of California’s 482 cities. Today, they are a majority in just 14 cities, according to the latest data from the California Secretary of State.

The population of those 14 cities represent less than 1 percent of the state’s city dwellers.

By contrast, the number of cities where most voters are Democrats has remained fairly steady at around 140 during the last 15 years.

No political party captures more than 50 percent of voters in 328 California cities, largely due to voters that decline to state a party preference. Democrats outnumber Republicans in 201 of those 328 cities.

In the Sacramento region, more than 50 percent of voters in Loomis, Roseville, Lincoln, Rocklin and Folsom were Republicans 15 years ago. Today, only Loomis can make that claim.

For instance, 52 percent of Folsom voters were Republicans 15 years ago; today that figure has fallen to 41 percent. About 30 percent of Folsom voters are Democrats, similar to fifteen years ago, and the rest are unaffiliated or members of third parties.

California has become increasingly liberal over the last two decades, with a plurality consistently favoring Democratic presidential candidates. In 1997, Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state Assembly by a margin of 43 to 37. Today, that margin stands at 55 to 25.

These maps show California cities where more than 50 percent of voters were registered Republican in March 2002 and February 2017.

Read More . . . .

Click to enlarge
The collapse of the GOP

California Bullet Train Gets Greenhouse Gas Funding

Follow The Money

• The political hacks will steal from any pot of cash they can find in order to fund the train to nowhere and keep the $$$$ flowing to their campaign contributors.

(AP) — California regulators did not abuse their discretion when they decided to pay for the state's high-speed rail project with money from a greenhouse gas emissions program, a Sacramento County judge said in a ruling made final on Monday.

The Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, which opposes the bullet train, argued that constructing the $64 billion project would create more pollution than it would eliminate for at least a decade.

The state has argued high-speed rail will help it meet its greenhouse gas-reduction targets.

But the lawsuit by the group based in San Rafael contended that the California Air Resources Board underplayed the bullet train's harmful environmental effects and exaggerated its environmental benefits. The board relied on the California High-Speed Rail Authority's environmental analysis and failed to account for the tons of cement to be used in construction, the lawsuit argued.

Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang ruled that the decision by the California Air Resources Board was not arbitrary and capricious.

The state has argued that the bullet train will reduce emissions by taking vehicles off state roads.

Read More . . . .