Koch Group Claims California Endangers Donors by Demanding Names

A 180 Degree Turn

• I no longer believe in disclosing contributions.  Disclosure has done nothing to stop corruption.  But disclosure opens up opportunities for the corrupt Elites running government at retaliate against those who oppose them.

(Bloomberg) -- A Koch brothers advocacy group contends California Attorney General Kamala Harris has no business demanding the names and addresses of its donors, who might face “grotesque threats” if identified.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation, co-founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, promotes limited government and free markets and conservative causes. Compelling disclosure of the nonprofit organization’s contributors may put them at risk of being targeted by the group’s opponents and intimidate would-be donors, the foundation is set to argue Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles.

“Grotesque threats have been leveled against known associates of the foundation, ranging from threats to kill or maim, to threats to firebomb buildings,” the organization said in its request to block California from seeking the information while it fights the state in court.

The political network overseen by the Kochs aims to raise almost $1 billion in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The fundraising goal of $889 million was announced on Jan. 26 at a Koch-organized summit of 450 wealthy donors and small-government activists in Palm Springs, California.

The brothers are ranked on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the world’s fifth- and sixth-richest people with a combined net worth of $100 billion.

State proposes 21 percent gas tax cut?

From the "I'll believe it when I see it" department

(San Diego Union Tribune)  -  San Diegans enjoying relief at the pump these days can expect a little more this summer, this time thanks to the state of California.

The Board of Equalization released a proposal on Friday to reduce the per-gallon tax Californians pay on regular gas by 7.5 cents per gallon, a 21 percent cut from the current 36-cent excise tax. The new rate of 28.5 cents per gallon could be approved Feb. 24 and take effect July 1, the start of the 2015-16 fiscal year. Californians will still pay some of the highest gas taxes in the nation, based on sales tax, federal taxes, and other fees.

“A gas tax cut of this magnitude would be great news for California drivers,” board member George Runner said in a statement. “The proposed cut stems from falling gas prices and the resulting over collection of tax.”

On Friday, a regular gallon of gas cost $2.77 in San Diego County, tax included, the Auto Club reports. So a driver who travels 15,000 miles a year at an average 20 miles per gallon buys 750 gallons a year, saving $56.25 over the year with the reduced tax rate. Alan Gin, economist at the University of San Diego, said each penny saved on gasoline equates to an extra million dollars for consumers to spend.

“It’s not big if you look at the overall economy of San Diego, in terms of its gross regional project,” he said. “It’s just a little bit of a help.”

The board has been charged with setting the excise tax rate under a complex system approved in 2010 by the state legislature and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the fuel-tax swap. The system allowed the state to take some money away from fixing roads to put toward future appropriations. To do this, California reduced the sales tax rate from 8.25 percent to 2.25 percent, and then made up for it by nearly doubling the excise tax rate from 18 cents per gallon to about 35 cents per gallon.

The new system was required to generate the same amount of money as the old system would have, which has led to adjustments each year. Taxable sales of gasoline fell each year from fiscal 2005 to 2013, finally increasing 0.9 percent to 14.57 billion gallons from fiscal 2013 to fiscal 2014.

Because of the ebb and flow in consumption and price, the board can do what’s called a “look back” and see how much tax revenue was actually raised in the two previous fiscal years versus what would have been collected under the previous system. It can then adjust the excise rate moving forward either upward or downward, based on prior activity as well as estimations on future price and consumption.

“The excise rate is set to replace exactly what was lost under the old sales tax system,” said Steve Gill, a professor of accountancy at San Diego State University. “In the short run, the tax can differ due to price estimates being off but it is required to be reconciled the next year.”

Read More . . . .

GOP struggles finding U.S. Senate candidate

Why Even Bother?

• GOP voter registration keeps falling.  Simply, why should people vote for a big government loving GOP when they can get a full strength big government loving Democrat Party?

(From Cal Watchdog)  -  With California Sen. Barbara Boxer retiring in 2016, Democrats have enthused over their deep bench of ambitious politicians ready and willing to replace her.

Republicans, by contrast, have been more timid. A few party figures have stepped forward, but bold-faced names have not, leaving a big opening for someone with a good network and deep pockets.

Indicative of the state GOP’s challenges and opportunities, Neel Kashkari declined to run for the seat Boxer will vacate in the U.S. Senate. In fact, he did not even go public himself with the news, allowing adviser Aaron McLear to tell CNN that he would not make a bid.

Last November, Kashkari lost a bid to unseat Gov. Jerry Brown, 60 percent to 40 percent.

But another big-name Republican who has played in California politics has opted against a Senate bid for a much different reason. Carly Fiorina failed to beat Boxer in 2010.

Now the former Hewlett-Packard CEO’s ambitions are higher. She has enough money to start a campaign to succeed President Barack Obama.

Fiorina’s ability to parlay a Senate loss into a national campaign has underscored the wisdom of Kashkari’s determination to sit out 2016. As Tim Alberta observed at National Journal, the Golden State has given driven politicos on the right a powerful path to national significance:

“Though she could not overcome California’s liberal electorate in her 2010 Senate race, Fiorina showed significant improvement on the stump over the life of the campaign. Her 10-point loss did not tarnish her stature as a rising star among Republican women; in fact, her opportunities and exposure have steadily increased. She served as a vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2012. Her successful takeover of the [American Conservative Union] Foundation board last year was the clearest indication yet of her political chops — and ambition.”

Kashkari’s own gubernatorial run was widely seen as a way to build authentic party goodwill and significant name recognition. Those were two resources best put to use in winnable races, or in the quest for a position in a future Republican administration in Washington, D.C. Kashkari served in the Treasury Department of President George W. Bush.

A Shifting Demographic

Fiorina’s loss to Boxer and Kashkari’s loss to Brown dramatized the demographic difficulties facing California Republicans with an eye on the Senate. The state’s demographic changes have continued to shift in a direction that doesn’t initially favor the GOP.

“Most of California’s new voters are Hispanic, and they tend to register as Democrats or as independents,” Southern California Public Radio reported. “Republican voter registration has withered to 28 percent, while Democrats hold 43 percent.”

Nevertheless, the upside-down numbers might “create an opportunity for the GOP. Some analysts have suggested that a big field of Democrats could dilute the party’s vote in the Senate primary, allowing one or two Republicans — Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside is among those considering a bid — to slip into a November runoff.”

As it turns out, Chavez, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps., admitted his interest has been driven by the encouragement of state party figures. “Chavez, whose district includes much of north coastal San Diego County, said leaders in the state’s Republican Party asked him to consider running. He said he doesn’t have a timetable for when he’ll make a decision,” U-T San Diego reported.

Read More . . . .

My personal choice is starting a new
political party that stands for something.

PG&E to increase your bill to pay for other people's electric car needs

Corruptus in Extremis

• PG &E, SoCal Edison and San Diego Gary & Electric pump millions of dollars into the campaigns of political hacks.  The hacks in turn grant them a monopoly.
• Now the utility monopoly wants to increase your electric bill to fund charging stations for wealthy electric cars owners.  (Note that gas stations are paid for by privately raised funds.)

(Greentech Media)  -  Pacific Gas & Electric filed a proposal yesterday for $654 million in ratepayer dollars to build 25,000 electric vehicle charging stations across its service area in northern and central California.

If approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, the program will be the largest deployment of electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the country. California, the leading market for plug-in cars in the United States, currently has about 6,000 public charging stations.

Consumer advocates, however, including the Utility Reform Network (TURN), are concerned that the program puts an unfair cost burden on ratepayers for infrastructure that only a small percentage of customers will use. A typical residential customer would pay an additional 70 cents per month to cover the costs of the program from 2018 to 2022.

"We are very skeptical about the value of investing so much ratepayer money and betting it all on electric vehicles," Mark Toney, executive director of TURN, told the San Jose Mercury News.

PG&E estimates it will incur $551 million in capital costs and $103 million in operating expenses over the course of the five-year program. Pending approval, installation would begin in 2017.

The utility says it’s justified in asking ratepayers to finance the program because it supports the state’s larger sustainability agenda, which will benefit all Californians.

The other two big regulated utilities in California -- Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric -- also recently submitted proposals to build EV charging infrastructure in their territories.

Romano said ChargePoint supports SCE’s filing, in which the utility would install the electrical infrastructure, offer a rebate for charging stations, and have control over compatibility requirements that third-party providers must meet, but would not own the chargers or select which companies to work with.

“I think the very appropriate role of the utility is to help get the power to the box,” said John Boesel, president and CEO of CALSTART, a public-private partnership promoting clean transportation. “But I think then, at that point, it should be open to the market to figure out who they want to actually buy their electricity from.”

.
Rich People
Making you pay more for your electric bill so they can have charging stations for their overpriced electric cars.

Stupidity - World's largest solar plant opens in California desert

U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, right, and Georges Antoun, COO of First Solar,
tour the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight Solar Farm near Desert Center on Monday. (Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

The project is not bad . . . only dumb

• Solar is exactly the way to go.  But this project is a joke.  The world's largest solar plant powers as "massive" 160,000 homes in a state with nearly 40,000,000 people.  Simply, there is no way to build enough of these plants to power the People's Republic. The way to go is to put solar panels on each individual home.

(The Desert Sun)  -  Riverside County is now home to the world's largest solar power plant.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell joined state officials near Desert Center on Monday to commission the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar project, which generates enough electricity to power 160,000 average California homes. Desert Sunlight received a federal loan of nearly $1.5 billion, and Jewell called the project's completion an example of the loan guarantee program's tremendous importance.

"When you are stepping out with new technology, when you are trying something that has been untested before, a loan guarantee program from an organization like the Department of Energy is what provides you, as a lender, that certainty that you can step up and support the project," Jewell told The Desert Sun.

Conservative lawmakers have derided the loan guarantee program, arguing that it's wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Critics have pointed to the program's $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a Fremont-based solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

But the Department of Energy reported last year that it expects to make a profit of $5 billion to $6 billion from the program. The department funded five traditional, large-scale solar farms, and Desert Sunlight marks the last of those projects to go online.

"They're all rock-solid, money is good, living up to every kind of condition we put in the loan documents in terms of performance, in terms of commercial operation," Peter Davidson, executive director of the Department of Energy's loan programs office, said in an interview last week.

The loan guarantee program did more than fund five solar photovoltaic projects, Davidson added: It helped launch the large-scale solar industry. In 2009, there were no traditional solar farms in the United States larger than 100 megawatts. Now, 17 such projects have been financed, according to a Department of Energy report released Monday.

Solar panels "existed before as a technology, but that technology hadn't been deployed at a large scale," Davidson said. "Once we've done that, the government steps aside to let the private markets take over."

Desert Sunlight employed an average of 440 people during more than three years of construction, and it now has about 15 full-time employees. Money provided by the project's owners — as part of an agreement negotiated with Riverside County — is also being used to fund $400,000 in improvements to the community center in nearby Desert Center.

"The debate's over — we're going to be moving to more renewable energy," Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said. "We are ideally situated, here in eastern Riverside County, to host this kind of development in the future."

This is the future
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.  The panels are installed reducing a person's power bill from about $300 a month to $60.
.
Normally big corporations get the tax breaks to build huge solar and conventional power plants and then charge the public high power rates.  Under this system the average family gets to put the savings of solar power directly in their pockets in the form of reduced monthly bills.

Another Democrat tax increase for "road repairs"

Assembly Speaker Toni "Woof" Atkins

Yet Another Leftist Slush Fund

Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins proposed a plan Wednesday for funding road maintenance with $1.8 billion in fees on California drivers.

The fees would total roughly $52 annually for most people behind the wheel, according to preliminary details released by the speaker's office.

"California's roads and transportation infrastructure simply aren't in the shape they need to be in order to keep people and goods moving," said Atkins (D-San Diego), who announced the proposal during a forum on transportation policies in Sacramento.

Atkins' proposal would require a two-thirds vote for legislative approval because it creates a new fee. That means she would need support from Republicans who are often skeptical about raising additional revenue but have expressed interest in funding infrastructure projects reports the L.A. Times.

"Transportation has traditionally been a bipartisan issue, and I believe we can pass this plan and provide a new funding stream in a fair and comprehensive way," she said.

The new fee, called a "road user charge that could be tacked on to insurance bills,"  or vehicle registration charges. The $1.8 billion generated annually would be used in two different ways, according to Atkins' office.

Roughly $800 million would go directly to road improvements. The additional $1 billion would free up money in the general fund and allow truck weight fees to be spent on maintenance, their original purpose before they were redirected to help cover debt costs.

Billions spent on a bullet train to nowhere,
but little spent on roads that people actually use.

$2 million price tag for an election with one candidate

Then-Assembly Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield,
and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner.

It's Just Tax Money

• The Los Angeles County portion of the bill runs to $1.4 million.  San Bernardino has not said with their cost is.

(Santa Clarita Valley Signal)  -  A special election with a price tag of more than $1 million is on for March, even though only one candidate filed to put her name on the ballot, state and county elections officials said.

The name of Republican Sharon Runner will be the only one to appear on on the certified list of candidates sent out by the California Secretary of State’s office.

The special primary election for the 21st Senate District seat vacated by Congressman Steve Knight is scheduled March 17, according to state and county elections officials.

“It’s mandated we still have an election, even though there’s one candidate,” said Regina Ip, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Office of Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

The special election carries about a $1.4 million price tag in Los Angeles County alone, Ip said. 

Election officials in San Bernardino County could not be reached for information on the cost of the election for them.

The 21st district covers most of the Santa Clarita and Victor valleys as well as the Antelope Valley south of the Kern County line. The district also stretches into San Bernardino County.

Part of the rationale for continuing with the election is that someone could mount a write-in campaign for the seat.

As of Thursday, Ip said, nobody had pulled papers in L.A. County to run as a write-in candidate.

Whether there’s a write-in candidate or not, the same general rules for the special election apply. 

Should Runner, a former state Senator and Assemblywoman, win more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary election, she will be deemed elected.

Write-in candidates can only run in the primary election. They could advance to a special general election if they are one of the top two vote-getters and no candidate receives a majority of the vote.

The 21st Senate District seat was left vacant after Knight, R-Palmdale, resigned earlier this month to take his new seat in Congress.

Although a number of candidates had expressed possible interest in running in the special election to fill the remaining two years of Knight’s term, Runner was the only one to do so.

Runner served in the 36th Assembly District from 2002 to 2008 and then in the 17th Senate District from 2011 to 2012. She opted not to seek re-election in 2012 after undergoing a double lung transplant as part of the treatment for limited scleroderma, or CREST syndrome, which is an autoimmune condition.

The 21st Senate District takes in the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita in
Los Angeles County and Victor Valley in San Bernardino County.

California drought: Sierra snowpack at record lows

Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources, left, leads his group out to measure snow levels near Echo Summit.

Too Many People

• The political hacks from both parties want to keep importing endless millions of new water sucking people into California.  More water sucking farms. More water sucking businesses.  More water sucking housing tracts and golf courses.  
• There is no real thought given as to where all this "magic" new water is supposed to come from.  So rather than changing policies on growth people turn to raping what is left of California's natural beauty for short term gain.
• I am not becoming a leftist in my old age, but what is wrong with zero population growth???  Anyone who drove the nearly wide open 405 freeway 30 years ago knows what has happened to the quality of life in our People's Republic.  

(San Jose Mercury News)  -  As California caps what may be its driest January on record, Frank Gehrke will lead a bevy of surveyors on Thursday to a predetermined spot on Echo Summit in an exercise that has become a monthly downer in the documentation of the state's historic drought.

As a thirsty state anxiously stands by for the results, the crew will drive some aluminum rods into the snow to measure how deep it is then weigh the white powder to calculate its water content.

At least that's how the monthly winter ritual will play out on the nightly news. But the photo-op belies the complexity of the coordinated effort to size up the state's snowpack around the clock.

Today, snow sensors scattered through the Sierra, satellite imagery and aerial flybys augment the 106-year-old "manual survey." The technology helps to provide a clearer update of California's water conditions that water agencies depend on to perform the increasingly crucial job of managing our diminishing water supply for the rest of the year.

Bidwell Marina at Lake Oroville

"I think they'd be amazed," Gehrke, chief of California's Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, said of his predecessors. "The capabilities are much greater than anyone could have imagined back then."

What won't amaze Gehrke this year is the predictability of Thursday's results. This year, the Sierra snowpack -- which usually provides 30 percent of California's water -- is critically low, less than 30 percent of normal for this time of year, the snow sensors show. December's storms began filling up reservoirs, but they were too warm to turn rain into an abundance of snow.

The public sees only one of the many manual surveys done last week and this week, when a small army is fanning out to over 200 sites across the Sierra range to extract "snow cores." The teams are part of a cooperative of 53 municipalities, public utilities, federal agencies, water districts, irrigation districts and private companies with vested interests in predicting the spring melt of mountain snow into California rivers and reservoirs.

The snow cores the teams collect and weigh will reveal the amount of frozen water held in the mountains. Their main tool, a hollow metal cylinder, differs little from what their predecessors used over a century ago to sample the snow. "The manual snow surveys program are still the backbone of our water supply forecasting," Gehrke said.

Like dozens of other water providers, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Bay Area's primary water supplier, relies on the snowpack data to predict the amount of snow melt that will flow into Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.


Read More . . . .

Folsom Lake near Sacramento

The problem in NOT lack of rain
You cannot keep importing endless millions of water using people
into California which is mostly a desert.

The Cheap Date That Was California’s 2014 Race for Governor

By John Myers
KQED News

It’s a headline you almost never see in California politics, and probably won’t see again for a very long time: a landslide win in a statewide election where campaign spending hit a record low.

In an era where political campaigns burn cash like a Winnebago guzzles gas, this was a contest won by a campaign that sipped its cash like a Toyota Prius.

Final documents filed both by Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger, Neel Kashkari, show the two men spent almost $13.3 million … combined … on their race for the top job in the nation’s most populous state.

Kashkari accounted for slightly more of that spending than the victorious incumbent governor, spending $7.13 million to Brown’s $6.15 million (a small amount of that total was spent in 2013). Official campaign finance documents were filed by both men over the course of the past 24 hours.

And it turned out to not be much of a race in the final analysis, with Brown coasting to a 20-percentage-point win on Election Day.

Almost half of Kashkari’s campaign cash, $3.1 million, came from the GOP newcomer himself. Brown, who also raised money for a campaign to pass two ballot measures, is still sitting on about $23.4 million between that campaign’s bank account and the one for his re-election. What he’ll do with that money remains the source of a great deal of speculation.

The race was never one that dominated the airwaves, which have become a mainstay of competitive California elections. In fact, campaign records show that Kashkari spent most of his money — more than $4 million — just to win the second spot on the fall ballot in the primary campaign against GOP challenger Tim Donnelly.

It can be said that the campaign mirrored Gov. Jerry Brown both personally and politically: frugal, spartan, simple. But there’s no mistaking this for what it really was: a surprisingly cheap race.

How cheap? A review of campaign finance records and news accounts finds the last time a race for governor cost this little was in 1978, when Jerry Brown won a second term by defeating Republican Evelle Younger. That race was characterized in reports from the era as costing “less than $14 million.”

The chart above shows spending in each regular four-year gubernatorial cycle from 1978 through 2014. The total spending gradually rose for California campaigns from 1986 ($22.5 million) through 1994 ($46.1 million).

The race of 2002 was the first big cash bonanza, where Gov. Gray Davis alone spent $78 million. And no race (and maybe no race ever again) will look like the one in 2010, where GOP challenger Meg Whitman spent $178.5 million — most of it her own money — along with almost $37 million spent by Brown.

So what did it cost to get the votes? Take the total votes cast and the money spent, and you find the 2014 gubernatorial race cost about $1.81 per vote. That, too, is an amazing piece of data … considering news stories from 1986 calculated the race that year (Gov. George Deukmejian beating Democrat Tom Bradley) at $3.04 per vote.

But comparing the 2014 gubernatorial spending with that from 1978 isn’t really fair… to 1978. After all, adjusting for inflation, the final race of the ’70s would have been equal to almost $51 million in campaign spending today.

No, a better comparison would be other 2014 races — like the heated contest in Orange County for the 34th state Senate. Total cost, when you tally candidates and independent expenditures: about $11.1 million, close to the Brown-Kashkari battle. And we may see even bigger spending on the statewide level once final campaign reports are filed from the intense fight for state superintendent of public instruction.

Bottom line: This was an anomaly of a gubernatorial race, something pointed out late last year in just how few votes were cast (which also broke a record that went back to, wait for it, 1978). The reasons for it? Well, maybe we’ll get some insight on Saturday, when political consultants from both the Brown and Kashkari camp participate in a Q&A election post-mortem at UC Berkeley.

California wild salmon harvest continues to dwindle with drought

Saving California

• As a Conservative John Muir conservationist I believe we need to protect our environment and food supply.  It disgusts me to see both parties put temporary gain ahead of long term planning.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  It’s still a little too early to tell for sure, but the news on the California wild salmon front is not good. A combination of low water levels in streams because of the drought and high summer temperatures resulted in a massive die-off of young salmon in Northern California.

This week the California Department of Fish and Game, in cooperation with its federal counterparts, will begin releasing young hatchery trout into tributaries of the Sacramento River. That’s something that happens almost every year, but this time the number of young salmon being released is three times the average.

More than 600,000 Chinook salmon fry are being released below Keswick Dam on the Sacramento River after biologists say warm water killed 95% of the existing salmon eggs this summer.

“We have never seen anything like this,” says Jordan Traverso of the Department of Fish and Game. “We’ve been experiencing bad years because of the drought, so we were prepared. In this particular instance, without hatchery production, there would be very, very few naturally spawned winter-run salmon in 2017.”

California salmon have had a rough several years. Long a staple fishery, the number of fish caught plummeted because of a devil’s brew of issues including water allocation, drought and ocean conditions that reduced the amount of krill — similar to baby shrimp — that the salmon feed on.

The catch, which peaked at around 7 million pounds in 2003, dropped to a little more than 1 million in 2006 and for all intents and purposes vanished entirely from 2008 to 2010.

Read More . . . .

Just Because
Just because a businessman wants to farm in a desert or build water sucking homes and golf courses does not mean he has the right to drain dry the natural rivers and lakes of California leaving us a dry dust bowl.