New Office

My office is moving.  The new address is 500 Wall Street, Suite 3 in Auburn.

How to Combat Terrorism

Today Osama Bin Laden announced an alliance with a new group of domestic Anti-Americans known as environmentalists.  The terrorist has declared global warming an enemy, and identified the United States as the party most responsible for it.  Here’s the story: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100129/D9DHDH582.html

Here’s the plan to defeat Osama:

What: A Tire Burning Party
Where: Sierra Club Headquarters
When: July 4th, 2010

BYOT (bring your own tires)

Budgeting

Budgeting is not that hard, so after listening to 5 minutes of the State of the Union speech last night I had to respond.  The President, sensing the people’s anger over reckless government spending, has vowed to freeze “non-defense” discretionary spending.  But don’t worry, this freeze won’t include social security, medicare, bailouts, health care, and a slew of other programs.  The freeze covers a small portion of the overall budget that grew a modest 25% in 2009.  But then the President offers this condition: 

I know that some in my own party will argue that we cannot address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting. I agree, which is why this freeze will not take effect until next year, when the economy is stronger. 

I heard laughter over the radio at this point, so someone else also finds this humorous.  He sounds like the alcoholic promising to quit drinking tomorrow, or the gambler who needs to make one more bet, the crack-head who needs one more fix, the overweight guy who will start his exercise regime tomorrow, or the lazy student planning one more fun semester before focusing more diligently on school.  Does the President really think he’s fooling anyone?

I’m guessing Obama’s speechwriter started his career at SNL.

My wife is spitting tacks

She posted this already on our family blog, so my apologies to our loyal followers:

Some of you may have heard me ranting before about the covert screwing women get when they apply for a birth certificate for their child in the state of CA. You finally have your sweet baby in your arms after the most intense struggle of your earthly life. You’re flying high on the adrenaline and oxytocin as you gaze into the most perfect face it’s ever been your pleasure to behold, and a nurse shoves a paper in your face, asking you to hurry up and pick a name and sign the birth certificate. What you ladies don’t know is that the same paper that you sign also has your full name, your mother’s maiden name, your social security number, your home address AND your mailing address, your phone number, your height and weight at your first prenatal check up, your height and weight at your last prenatal check up, your last menstrual period, any “terminations” (miscarriages), all the details of your birth; vaginal, vbac, cesarian, induction, forceps, drugs, vacuum, Strep B positive or negative, antibiotics administered during labor, etc, etc, etc. But don’t worry! They totally protect your privacy! If you’re a drug addict or you’ve had 14 abortions or you have 5 STD’s they won’t make you put it on there.

I found all this out when I went to get a birth certificate for Liberty (kid number 3). Since there was no midwife or doctor present at the birth, I had to do all the paper work myself. I tried to leave my personal information off the worksheet, but the vital statistics team just got all the information from my OBGYN. I protested, but soon found there was nothing I could do unless I was ready to bankrupt my family by taking it to court. When I got pregnant with Nathan (number 4), I thought I got wise. I went to the county clinic when I was about 3 months pregnant and got a pregnancy verification. Since I had never been there before, the state couldn’t steal my supposedly confidential medical records. When I finally got around to getting Nathan’s birth certificate (two weeks before the deadline), I gave the vital statistics office my little paper and I figured that was that. What was my surprise when I looked over the worksheet the vital stats lady gave me and saw that she had put some of my “private” information on Nathan’s birth certificate. This was information she should not have known! I asked her WHY that information was there, and she told me it was still in the computer from Liberty’s birth certificate.

I live under a totalitarian regime. That’s the only explanation for the state government keeping a file of my VERY personal medical information.

So I’m hyperventilating about this again because I just got this message on my answering machine. We applied for Nathan’s birth certificate on Monday last week. He turns one next Weds.  Adding the pictures to the audio helped me calm down a little:

Hi, this message is for Megan Mavy. This is Norda Mcmillion with the California Newborn Screening Program. You recently completed an application to receive a birth certificate for your son Nathan and you indicated on the form that the baby did not have a newborn screening, so I’m just calling just to offer you the opportunity to get one done. If you don’t want to get one done we still need to talk. So if you could call me, I’d appreciate it. My phone number is 1-888-353-6530.

She’s definitely going to get a phone call from me. She called me from 559-353-3000. When I Googled that number, I learned that it comes from the California Department of Health Care and Children’s Services.

How did another government agency get this information? I did not volunteer to have my phone number shared.

I want people to lose their jobs over this.

What do you think, is she a pushover like me or what?

Should California Declare Bankruptcy?

Rasumussen Reports recently conducted a nation-wide poll asking whether the federal government should bail out California, or allow the state to fall into bankruptcy.  You can see the results here: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/january_2010/55_say_better_for_california_to_go_bankrupt_than_be_bailed_out

The vast majority of those polled believe the State should learn to live within its means, and no bailout should be offered.  The poll was conducted after Governor Schwarzenegger announced he is seeking an $8 billion dollar bailout for the state. 

My prediction:  Despite public opinion, California will get the bailout.  What better way to grow the federal government, than to take control of individual states?  Aren’t you excited to see who Obama taps to be our new governor after he fires Schwarzenegger?

Middle Fork Resources

The requests for more information about the Middle Fork Project are growing in number, so  I’ve posted a collection of printed information on a separate page here on this blog.  You can access it here, or through the link on the left of this page.

Thank you all for your interest and support on this issue!

Abel Maldonado’s bedside table

I returned last week from a conference in San Diego for the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). The Placer County Water Agency spends lots of money and time (and therefore more money) on ACWA. I’ve missed the first two conferences since my election and was hesitant to go this time since ACWA has been supporting legislative efforts to steal Placer County water.

The trip proved worthwhile despite a not-so subtle propaganda campaign aimed at convincing Northern California water agencies to support a bond campaign that will undermine the water rights of those Northern California water agencies. The propaganda campaign seemed to work, I spoke with a few board members of various agencies at the end of the week who were convinced during the week to support the bond.

Part of the campaign included a performance by Governor Schwarzenegger. The governor introduced “his good friend” state senator Abel Maldonado. You can tell a man by the company he keeps (Christians have an exception to this rule, but I don’t think it applies to self-serving politicians).

My friend Aaron Klein had a recent blog post about Abel Maldonado that hits pretty close to the way I feel about the assemblyman who epitomizes nearly everything we all despise in politicians. I say nearly everything because to my knowledge, he has not yet been exposed for cheating on his wife.

Maldonado made a speech to the association immediately following a lunch meeting (why anyone would schedule such a rotten politician immediately following a meal…). I left before his speech was over but not before Abel Maldonado could offer these two thoughts: 1) “My parents taught me to never compromise your principles.” My response, “you should have listened to your parents.” 2) ”Voting for open primaries will solve all of California’s problems.” My response “BOOOOOOO!!! BOOOOOOO!!!” He then compared an open primary for legislators to how county supervisors and city counselors are elected, which is nonsense.

In California, county supervisor is a non-partisan office. When you run for county supervisor there is no “D” or “R” next to your name on the ballot. An open primary doesn’t change this; it simply eliminates the traditional right members of political parties have had to choose who will represent them on the ballot. Eliminating the “R” or “D” on ballots is an excellent idea. If voters would like to know which candidate the party faithful are supporting, they should have to look it up. However, Maldonado doesn’t want this. He simply wants to strip party members of their right to choose their own party representatives. That way, Democrats can choose who will lead the Republican Party, and vice versa.

I wonder if Abel Maldonado has any discernible guiding principles. His only consistency seems to be selling himself and his votes to the highest bidder. And as compensation for his favors, Schwarzenegger has left a Lieutenant Governor appointment on Maldonado’s bedside table.

One final note:  This post was born out of frustration.  I flew to San Diego for a WATER CONFERENCE and to keep informed on WATER ISSUES.  It was a great conference, the classes were informative and helpful.  But I was obviously more than a little miffed at having the conference interrupted by the tripe from two self-serving and dishonest politicians.  Next conference, let’s stick to water.

Cactus Fields

Any sport lovers out there?  I thoroughly enjoy sports like soccer and ultimate Frisbee that require lots of grass and running.  Grass is soft to run and fall on, easy on the body, and the running is great exercise. Unfortunately if the extreme environmental movement has any say, these healthy sports will be a thing of the past.  Grass is wasteful, didn’t you know?

Here is an item I presented at the PCWA November 5^th board meeting:

We have a program to pay people to replace their lawn with rocks or other approved materials (I’m guessing cacti would work?). I don’t know what the origins of this program for the agency are, I’ve heard two different stories.  One is that we accidentally applied for a grant to implement this, and since we got a grant to pay for part of the program we went forward with it.  The other explanation I heard is that we just wanted to try it out.

The agency has declared that global warming is real and is taking measures to combat it.  In addition to sponsoring events with local environmental groups, we have agreed to implement best management practices (BMP’s) as prescribed by the Water Forum, and the California Urban Water Conservation Council.  The water forum is a group of environmental organizations, water utilities, and developers and real estate companies.  The CUWCC is an environmentalist group that claims as its members many water utilities.  This group regularly receives credit from newspapers throughout the state for new laws and regulations that impose water use penalization mandates on water utilities and their customers. 

The BMP’s require us to do things like: 1)Pay our customers to replace their old toilets with ones that use less water.  2)Pay our customers to replace washing machines  3)Implement a tiered rate structure that penalizes customers as their water use increases, no matter the cost to the agency. 4)Conduct home water surveys, where PCWA employees go into our customer homes and identify wasteful appliances and practices. 5)As part of our customer water audits, we pay our employees to replace shower and faucet heads with low-flow devices.  6) implement programs with nebulous purposes such as, “water education” which requires us to send employees into school classrooms to teach students to turn the water off while they brush their teeth.

More than once I’ve expressed my frustration with these BMP’s and how they distract from our mission of delivering water.  I’m especially disturbed by the arbitrary ones that have no metrics to determine compliance or measure effectiveness.

Our policy of paying people $1 per square foot to replace lawns with rocks doesn’t qualify as one of the Best Management Practices the agency has agreed to implement.  It does nothing to fulfill our mission of delivering a clean, reliable, and affordable supply of water to our customers.  If anything it takes away from our mission, since our other ratepayers are the ones paying for the program.  And because 90% of our costs are fixed, the subsidized reduction of water use will increase the agencies per-unit cost of water treatment.  And of course, the question that hasn’t been answered, “Who gets the benefit of the water that is saved?”  Does it go to Southern California, out to sea, or to developers on one end of the County?  It strikes me that whoever is getting the benefits of this saved water, ought to be the ones paying for the program instead of existing ratepayers.

We shouldn’t support funding programs that penalize our water customers for using water.  We shouldn’t be willing to support placing additional burdens on the backs of our ratepayers. 

This item was a small portion of our overall 2009 budget, but is a perfect example of the kinds of cuts we can make to lighten the financial burdens of our ratepayers.  Our total 2009 budget for this item was nearly $50,000.  $10,000 of that was supposed to be reimbursed by the State. ($29,000 of this was a 1-14-09 contract with Cheryl Buckwalter to oversee the program)

I then made a motion to prohibit the expenditure of any water sale revenues or property taxes be spent on the lawn replacement program.  There was no second.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe that all lawns are necessarily wasteful,  and I have no desire to play soccer on fields of rocks or cacti.

Rising Seas

My apologies to those waiting for more on PCWA, I’m six posts behind on some exciting, but difficult to explain, updates.  They’re coming.

In the mean time, this headline today was too good to pass up.  Is the Governor serious?  Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils dramatic climate change map which shows flooded San Francisco of the future .

If the ocean is really going to rise and inundate San Francisco, then San Francisco needs to act NOW!  If they don’t immediately begin removing all of the infrastructure, roads, buildings, vehicles, and junk, when the floods come the sea will be polluted in a terrible way.  We cannot let this happen. 

I’ve got an idea.  Owning land in San Francisco is now a serious liability.  Can you imagine being responsible for the removal of buildings from your land that will one day be under water and no longer have any value?  It hurts me to see others faced with such serious financial concerns, so I’m volunteering to help.  Since all properties in San Fran are now liabilities instead of assets, there must not be much of a market for the real estate.  I propose that all landowners in San Francisco turn their properties over to me, they don’t have to pay me a dime, and I’ll assume personal responsibility for having all the potential pollutants removed before inundation occurs.  I offer the same business arragenment to any land owner whose property is similarly threatened.

What, no takers.  And why is that?

Rep. McClintock Announces Next Town Hall Meeting in Lincoln

U.S. Representative Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay) today announced he will hold a town hall meeting with constituents November 14th in Lincoln.

When:
Saturday November 14th
10:00am

Where:
Sun City Orchard Creek Lodge
965 Orchard Creek Lane
Lincoln, CA 95648