Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Revolt Brews In Counties – Frustration has been spreading since last week, when the state controller vowed to delay payments to counties for health and social services. “When we hear things like, ‘We’re out of cash and you’re going to have to borrow the money,’ it doesn’t make us very happy,” Yolo County Supervisors’ Chairman Mike McGowan said.
California Farmers Face Impending Drought – State water officials in October said they expected farmers’ water allocation to be about 15 percent of their contracted amount, but it could be less. Many farmers expect the federal allocation to be “zero percent.” […] A finger-size fish called the delta smelt is on the verge of extinction, so a federal judge has restricted pumping that kills the fish, reducing the amount of water that flows south to farmers in canals.
Ahhhh the incredible lightness of socialism.
After all Big Government is good government. We all know that. It helps to spread the pie around to a lot of folks and that is, well it is just fair.
Isn’t it Joe ?
Someday, after all the horrid humans are gone, the smelts will erect a memorial to the great sacrifices we made so they could have a future.
My son who works in Lake Tahoe said the locals expect up to 2000 farmers to go out of business in California due to the drought going on right now. The government doesn’t help the problem at the least…
VDH is a son of the soil who knows toil. Hanson also knows vineyards. Find/read VDH’s biography.
…-
“February 7th, 2009 7:28 pm
Our Brave New World
The Apocalyptic Style
Be careful when one uses the superlative case—best, most, -est, etc.—or evokes end-of-the-world imagery. The new Secretary of Energy Chu, who seems eminently qualified and is a Nobel Prize Winner, strangely just declared, ‘We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California’, and went on to declare vineyards all but doomed here—apparently due to global warming.
True, we’ve had this year (and part of last) a mini-drought. In my 50 years of memory of California there have been many; usually they last for a year or two, then we get matching wet years. (In some years in lieu of Sierra irrigation water, I have turned on our electric pumps (15 hp/1000 gallons a minute) in May and turned them off in late August—24/7. And over a 10-year span of dry/wet years, the seasons balance out (e.g., the water table in my front yard varies from 35 feet in wet years to 50 in dry; and my great-great-grandmother’s abandoned 6-inch well, that in the 19th century used to provide hand-pumped water for the house, still, after 130 years, has water in its casing that goes down only 50 feet.)
More germanely,”
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/
Since vineyards aren’t really part of the food supply, they really don’t rate all this fuss.
Marijuana grows well in semi-arrid conditions, so why not convert all those vineyards to hemp fields?
The problem is not the delta smelt, but too many people and poor planning.
Thank you Gore Suzuki Man Bad Cult.
Too many sane people saw through the Kool Aide method so now the Eco-Nuts are trying the Man Bad Cult way.
Give it a break, will ya – birth rates around the world are falling dramatically. Population growth rates will be turning negative in another generation or so. Thus eliminating a major plank of Eco-Terrorism. Problem solved.
But then, as Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore has been saying for years, the Eco-Fanatics do NOT want their pet peeves solved. Would be out of business. So they just ramp up the stupidity to a new level of absurdness.
*
that’s funny… they’ve apparently got the moolah to subsidise
a single, unemployed, sometime student’s 14 test-tube
indulgences.
what’s up with that?
*
Canada’s Department Of Oceans And Fisheries tried a similar stunt in Manitoba about ten years ago.
Well maintained drainage ditches are the life-blood of the Red River Valley. Without them, food production is often killed due to flooding.
Oceans & Fisheries (yes, in the middle of the continent !) had Suzuki Punk Disciples patrolling the small, intermittently wet or buried in snow, ditches. Armed with SUVs and cell phones, the Rent Seekers were looking for fish. Any kind of fish. A FISH !! No more maintenance. Sanctuary.
The department backed off when confrontations seemed imminent. I do not know what has happened the last 5 years.
California’s problem is too much government. When state reps are ousted by term limits, their buddies just find them a nice sinecure in the Ministry of Steam. CalGovCo no longer serves the people, the people serve Sacramento.
Having mandated that you can’t drill for oil and you can’t have any tailpipe emissions California now wants to stop growing food. They already quit making movies there. The next plan is to repeal the Law of Gravity.
When the big one comes, and everything west of San Andreas sinks beneath the waves, it will be a red letter day for America.
The infinite value of a fish (with no commercial value) imposed by the state is what happens when the church (of Gaia) is combined with the state.
Alternatively one could privatize these resources and their purveyance and let the market resolve the issue. Maybe the actual cost of irrigating these deserts is too high to support commercial agriculture. We may never know.
Or one could preserve the genetic material or keep the useless fish in an aquarium to be financed by the farmers.
The first step is to separate the church (of Gaia) and the state.
Some areas of California *do* have real water resource issues, most of them due to the fact that the population has risen beyond what the state can support, and planning was poor in some areas.
California is in a mess. Some of the environmental policies certainly don’t help. But in the case of water the problem is much bigger than a few misguided policies.
“The first step is to separate the church (of Gaia) and the state.”
That says it all !!!
We, in Alberta, have plenty of tailings ponds that Silicone Valley could work on. Once cleaned, there’s your water.
Not Practical? I was afraid of that…
ron in kelowna:
I can’t speak for Manitoba, but here in Ontario, Oceans and Fisheries are running amok. At a pre- construction meeting this morning a farmer was informed by the drainage superintendent, that a section of his bush is labeled sensitive then was asked did you know that? The farmer said “no” .
I have seen fishery officials stop work just because of a missed signature, and show up to a dry ditch in hip waders, after we have waited two days for the “proper” go ahead or someone with the guts to make a decision, but we still charge the municipality for lost time which of course gets charged towards the rate payers. It’s getting worse and now they are talking of an endangered species act and two hundred more inspectors for that I believe. I could go on and on but Oceans and Fisheries here in Ontario are out to lunch, make progress miserable, and are at best a nuisance. It’s changed so much here in six years you wouldn’t believe the nonsense coming from “on-high”, that in the end turns out to be very costly for the tax payer, and its not just fish, on one job out for tender last year there was a species of clam to find and relocate before work was done.
Fire them all and McGuinty too – Too much power and unimpeded self importance.
My state is also delaying tax refunds for 1 month for Individual and Business Entity taxpayers.
http://www.ftb.ca.gov/refund_delay_2008.shtml
Did you catch the Governator on CNN the other night…California has a $65 Billion debt and Mr. Deer in the headlights Arnold started talking about a ‘comprehensive plan’…that’s political doublespeak for I’m not going to do anything.
The chisel-faced rightoid rightard thinks lowering taxes is the answer. I don’t how you conservatives sleep at night!
not wrong enough:
Fiscal conservatives want spending to be cut, governments to be reduced in size, THEN taxes to be cut.
The drooling leftoids think that the supply of tax money is infinite and that people will work just as hard when you confiscate their rewards and create a situation where not working is as rewarding as working.
I wonder how slack jawed leftards get their shirts buttoned in the morning.
How to commit societal suicide by stupidity could be the headline here. With no crops what are they going to eat? Of course this is the idea. Break the farmers, than steal their land for eco-nuts or State officials. Using green policy for robbery. Expect a lot of this in the future.
This is just the new way of appropriate land by developers with state officials agreeing for a higher tax base. Property rights erosion ,along with a Fairness doctrine to shut voices up. Will mean plenty of money with kickbacks for Government by the greenies with their robbery in waiting pals in monetary gluttony . The Era of Osama descends. As America becomes his socialist urinal.
JMO
Just to add to Mugs post at 1:54….
The Endangered Species Act was passed into law in Ontario at the end of May 2008. Under it even if you accidentally kill/destroy one of the 185 named species on the list you are liable for a 250,000.00$ fine (1 million for corporations). It isn’t that these species are endangered in the sense they are about to become extinct it is that they are rare to find them in this province.
It is total eco-nut nonsense passed into law.
let them eat fish, er smelt
ron in kelowna wrote: “Armed with SUVs and cell phones, the Rent Seekers were looking for fish.”
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking:
“In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to make money by manipulating the economic and/or legal environment rather than by trade and production of wealth. The term comes from the notion of economic rent, but in modern use of the term, rent seeking is more often associated with government regulation and misuse of governmental authority than with land rents as defined by David Ricardo.”
As pathetic as all this really is,take solace in the knowledge that ‘real’ change is forthcoming when joe the taxpayer finally has it up to ‘here’ and does something about it.
History shows that every now and then some ‘corrective’ measures are indeed a necessary evil.
Here in Vermont, the state is protecting the “New England Cottontail” The only way you can tell one from a regular Eastern Cottontail is with a genetic test.
So what they have really declared protected is a genetic marker, nothing more.
california. the 8th biggest economy about to go in the shitter. as california goes so goes the u.s. hold on folks it is going to get very rough out there. government is about to create the conditions for a serious revolution. those who take and do not produce will cease to exist. it will not be pleasant.
P.J. O’Rourke explains California:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv24n1/pjorourke.pdf
“California is in the midst of an enormous
stupidity crisis.”