Bad Water

Most people are rather ignorant of politics and economics and prefer to stay that way. They're the reason that democracy doesn't work. A person who understands politics and economics can vote properly, but two ignorant people outvote the one who put in the work to understand what their vote will do. This is why our Empire is failing. We are decadent and stupid.

 

Our empire civilization is built on oil, on cheap energy and all the machines that use it, like cars and powerplants and tractors to grow our food. We don't have to use our muscles to get big things done. But the cheap oil has been extracted, and all we have left is expensive oil. It costs a lot more. America buys a lot of its oil from Venezuela and Nigeria, Canada and Mexico. NAFTA was a deal to get discounted oil sold across the borders. Venezuela went Marxist and hates us, but they sell us their oil anyway. And Nigeria is run by Islamic kidnappers in the North while xtians in the South are the ones been kidnapped and machinegunned by those same Muslims. The northern Muslims in Nigeria were caught hauling fake ballots across their southern border in the last election, but won anyway despite more "people" voting than actually live in the country. It is a civil war, and the USA pays for the weapons and the massacres and the slavery by buying the oil. This is expensive oil, and its exchanged for blood.

 

There is an alternative. In the last decade, fracking of oil shale in North Dakota in the Bakken formation has gradually increase the supply of domestic oil. While a fully operating US economy requires 20 million barrels of oil per day, only half the people who could be working are, so we're getting by on 14 million barrels per day. That means we're still importing oil. However there's a Saudi Arabia of Oil underneath California, and all we have to do to get it is to take all the drinking water, all the irrigation water, and push the entire population of the state to leave. That's all. It will take hundreds of drilling rigs and decades of effort to frack the entire formation. Keep in mind the area involved is bigger that the entire state of Rhode Island, 1750 square miles, and quite thick so potentially the water estimate and the number of wells involved might be a lot more than my napkin estimate. It could be ten or one hundred times more wells and water demands. And the more crews operating, the more water is needed at any one time. They could conceivably and realistically demand LA's entire water supply, the Feather River and Lake Oroville and all the Central Valley reservoirs normally used for agriculture could be bribed/taken for fracking purposes.

 

The Wikipedia article states that most of the formation is between 5000 feet and 15000 feet deep, and is the primary source rock for most of the state's oilfields. Normally I'd chuckle about threat of faultline movement due to drilling, but most of the big faults converge around 10 km depth, which is 33,000 feet. The drilling areas are deep enough to get into some of the faults. And oil likes to follow faults and folds. So yes, there is potential for earthquakes. Of course, with no drinking water nobody will be hurt by the quakes because we'd all have left before then.  

 

Leaking benzene into the groundwater thanks to fracking, and the 92.4 million gallons of benzene contaminated water lost per wellhead site is a serious threat to health, long term. And with that large area you'd need something like That isn't to say it is impossible to prevent this, but its very expensive. And oil is all about money. You don't do it if it costs more to extract than it is worth to sell. If you wanted to minimize the benzene contamination you'd want to flush the well with clean water several times over after the process, and hope it doesn't leak. You'd also drill surrounding wells and pressurize them so there'd be a flow that would hopefully drag the contaminated water back to the central well. This is tricky and chaos mechanics happens. Some will be missed. Kids will still die.

 

Of course, if the population is gone, and there's no people, there's nobody to complain or get sick from benzene contaminated water. That is optimistic. I wonder what it would take to evict convince 33,000,000 people to leave the best weather in the nation? If you charge them a fortune for showers, clean clothes, and lawns, that would go some way. This rock underlies the largest two of the four cities in the state, LA and San Francisco. There will be drilling rigs in the middle of city lots, and there will be gas blowouts, fires, and explosions. There will also be radioactive radon and argon gas leaks, and sulfur dioxide (rotten eggs) leaks are not just bad smelling but more toxic than cyanide. And the gas, once it gets into aquifers, could cause some excitement at wellheads and water treatment plants. People on wells might see their water tanks explode, or their taps catch fire like we saw in Pennsylvania. Its a health and safety danger, but its a necessary resource to keep the Dollar from crashing and en-pooring all those rich Eastern bastards that screwed up the currency in the first place, than sold US T-bills to the Chinese, Japanese, and EU. All of whom want the oil and can pay more for it than we can. So the oil IS COMING OUT, and so what if Californians die?

 

I suppose you could convince some of the population to move outside the contaminated area if you could increase taxes drastically in the fracking areas so the Sacramento Valley looks comparatively cheaper. Sac Valley is north of the fracking and upstream, so no kids die from leukemia like in Oakland and San Francisco and LA. If you own land over the fracking areas, be aware you do NOT have mining rights just because you own the surface. They can legally drill and tunnel under you and Too Bad if you don't like it. If your livelihood is tied to water rights, be prepared for a legal fight to hang onto that, and be ready to accept a low-ball offer from some investor who will turn it over for a profit to another investor who eventually leases it to the fracking companies. They need all they can get.

 

In the face of the fracking threat, the useless delta tunnel and the bullet train that stops every 30 miles so is slow, from nowhere to nowhere, seems pretty pointless. If the levees fail and the farms go under because their topsoil fertility is ruined by sediment and silt, well, those are water rights easier to buy for the frackers, aren't they? So why fix the levees? And with the water being poisoned, nobody is going to be eating salmon that came from the San Joaquin River. And radioactive water that flushes out of the wells, full of benzene, isn't fit for agriculture or drinking in LA, so LA is going to lose the entire California Aqueduct system, which supplies 82% of their drinking water. And Owens Valley supplies most of the rest, water they're losing in a legal fight over deaths from the silt on Owens Lake, something they're supposed to prevent blowing around in a legal decision LA lost a few years ago. They aren't complying and LA Water and Power is looking at facing murder charges for willful negligent homicide. Can a water agency go on death row when it isn't a person? This leaves LA with its natural rainfall for water supply, which will only provide 150,000 people worth of water thanks to normally getting 12 inches a year in the LA basin. Ground water in LA is already contaminated by oil, spills of toxic waste from the airplane and defense industries, and natural heavy metals. The sea is likewise contaminated by sewage in the current and bays and salt, of course. When fracking gets serious there will be benzene leaking into the sea as well. This is all kinds of disaster but it can't really be prevented. The oil is too valuable. Without the oil, those in power lose control, lose their wealth. And they don't care who has to die provided they retain power a bit longer.

 

If the state of California divides and water rights are successfully renegotiated, more bribes will flow around and there might be some armed responses from Southern States demanding access to water they used to get pumped to them for free. Water wars could go hot, with artillery and SWAT and snipers and explosives. It could get ugly. You think this is a joke, of course, but we've already fought actual wars over water supply. Israel is at war with Jordan and Syria over water. Pakistan and India are at war over the Indus river water supply, a tributary that comes out of Kashmir. Wars were fought over the Nile in the 1980's. A serious treaty designates how much water has to exit the USA into Mexico before the Colorado river hits the Sea of Cortez, and how clean that water is. We had to build a nuclear reactor in Arizona just to desalinate the river for meet the terms of the treaty. It cost billions, and is now shut down due to old age, so LA had to give up its share of the Colorado river and its primary water supply is now threatened by Fracking contamination. Isn't that awesome?

 

Water is such a big deal in the West because we are desert states and we can't live without it. Places without water are empty. Those with it are obvious and frequently populated, often densely, following the water courses. Rivers flowing through rain shadow (banana belts) of mountains make great places for agriculture. The Owens Valley was one of these before LA destroyed it in 1925. Folks here understand the value of water, and in the post-oil world, fracking is going to wreck what we have left all to keep a few fat bastards rich a little bit longer. Thanks, ever so much.

More Rain

We had rain last night, second storm in May. It came down hard and soft for hours, but only gave us half an inch. Probably won't get more today, but it is possible there will be further storms this month. The way the weather is going, it seems that a storm pounds in Oregon and Washington, then flows down into Northern California off of the Pacific. And that still leaves us open for a Pineapple Express from Hawaii in the summer, since normal flow in summer is from that direction anyway. Or down from the North Pacific, which you really notice out at the coast since the North Wind is so bitterly cold and stirs up the surface water and drags the nutrients off the sea bottom, feeding the fish, chilling the water so it can hold more dissolved gases for the plankton and fish to eat, and keeping the California coast cold and foggy all summer. But those Southwest winds do come sometimes. It would be amusing if we got rain every couple weeks, all summer. Very unusual, but interesting. Probably would cause extra fires from all the shrubs growing more and the associated lightning storms. But we'll see. For now, we're still behind on our rainfall totals for the season, and still in drought, and El Nino generally results in big rains, starting earlier, so maybe we'll get a serious storm in August, like we used to, complete with fires and flooding and big hail storms and potentially snow in the high Sierra. Maybe.

 

Even if we get rain storms a few times a month all summer, which would be VERY unusual since it is normally very dry from May to late October, I would still ride a scooter or drive a convertible here. I will continue to drive with my windows down and sunroof open since that's what I own. It must be tough living in the Midwest where hailstones and tornadoes are a serious threat all summer, unlike here in California. We don't really get tornadoes, since our Valley isn't wide enough to grow big twisters (F0's happen very rarely), and our hail storms might tear leaves on trees but they won't dent your car or kill you. And there's often a tall tree to catch the lightning so getting hit by lightning in California's rare thunderstorms takes real effort. And now that the East is noticing earthquakes (foreshocks to another Charlotte or New Madrid quake?) I have to wonder how they'll handle it if the big ones hit there? Will they move to California? Will they leave the country? Will they rebuild in shame after mocking my state for a century? Do they really think they'll be welcome here?

Just keep in mind that nearly all the predictions about quakes in California are completely wrong. A stopped clock is right twice a day, so rarely someone gets it right by accident, but mostly its just paranoid nuts making claims that are quickly shown wrong. I know a guy who predicts currency crashes about every two weeks, and has been predicting this for about 18 years. With the high frequency, he's sometimes right, about other currencies, but overall its crying wolf over and over. I learned not to make so many predictions, and to be cynical when other people make them. Most of the time, they're wrong.

 

It is possible, therefore, that we will have more drought, and that the El Nino won't give us rain after all. This would be a shame, but it is possible. The upside is that's even more nice weather for bicycling, scooters, motorcycles, and convertibles to ride around in. And really nice weather for high Sierra hiking. So enjoy that.

North San Juan Opium Risk

Legal marijuana has crashed the price of Weed. Growers, who only have so much land, for so many plants, aren't able to make ends meet anymore. They're getting desperate. Some are trying to make hash hish, and some of those trying get burned in explosions, since the oil is flammable. One idiot has been arrested twice for this. Others need skin grafts for some bad burns.

Those who can't make their finances work in an economy with Cheap Pot will shift from Pot to Opium production, because it's a high dollar crop that will easily grow here. Deputies look grimmer than ever, btw. You have to SHOOT heroin junkies. They tend to lunge with knives. I'd be shocked if there aren't already test fields being cultivated, right now, up in North San Juan. They're poor, not entirely stupid. Heroin is a terrible addictive drug, and there's always demand for it, and it's easy to make more. The first time is always free. There's been a few OD's at the local emergency room, but so far they say it isn't local production. So far.

And I'm so glad I'm into Motorcycles and scooters instead of drugs...

When this eventually happens this town becomes the trading hub for North San Juan's opium on the Ridge north of the Yuba River, I will think hard about whether to stay here. If the cops shoot the junkies, I'll stay. If the courts argue endlessly and people get killed, I'll leave. You can't be tolerant with Heroin. It makes people really nuts.

What can they do to avoid this? I think North San Juan should Incorporate. They should get a water and power utility going locally and treat their sewage so the South Yuba stops going green from sewer-algae all summer. It's their own fault their kids get sick, using that bad water. Them and Washington (town of, California) have leaky septic systems that gets into their drinking water. They get sick from that. It's hurting their kids and putting cholera and potentially typhoid on their food crops. They pump untreated river water out of the canyon, you see, to water themselves, their crops, and their veggies. Contaminated water. The same water they use to grow drugs and pay their taxes. Those taxes should be going for public utilities.

It will cost money for them to incorporate, and to pave the main road, and to install pipes for water and sewer, and bring in electric power. It won't be cheap, but it won't be impossibly expensive either. Keeping their violence under control, and offering a more stable set of utilities might prevent Opium taking over the town and a surge of violence coming with it.

North San Juan built a local library, not associated with the county library, for their kids. Good. And there's a fire station, I think. And a tiny market called Mother Truckers. A converted house, if I recall properly. Its been over ten years since I'd been there. The roads up the Ridge are mostly gravel and dirt. Some properties have utility power, but many are on generators or solar, and miserable living conditions.

The pot farmers import poor white educated junkies with disappointing college degrees as labor for their pot harvests, paying them in room and board (slavery), and a small salary after the harvest, and pot to either use or sell. Some of these are trying to make pot oil, a type of Hashhish for higher markup, a way to use inferior pot. Some people have been burned or started fires that resulted in arrests, such as in Truckee and a guy that got caught, twice, here in Grass Valley.

Pot farm labor is all off the books and room and board isn't the same thing as pay. It is slavery. It can be worse too. Strong pot use and deliberate seduction finds women end up providing other services on their backs or knees until the harvest is over. Then they turn up on the County Welfare Rolls as single mothers with tattoos, no support. You see those young distracted mothers all over town. Some still have the affections of their seducers, and more children, but few marry since these are fake-hippies. The hippies I grew up around ran up against the same economic problems as the new ones: growing legal crops won't pay the bills. And I guess being high all the time makes for poor decision making when it comes to sex. Funny how working on a pot farm leads to children. It is foolish, but it is what these women choose.

It shouldn't be a choice the rest of us pay for, however. Some of those kids grow up pretty wild, and others stabilize and decide they want better for themselves than keeping secrets in fear of the Law coming down. Growing pot is still technically illegal, and sometimes results in serious prison sentences. I see both kinds of kids at the Library. I sometimes help them find books. I hope they make better choices. I don't want North San Juan to end up like Oakland, full of institutionalized crime and abuse. Most of the folks on the Ridge wanted to start subsistence farming. If only they could do it, legally, and not have taxes to pay, but they'd cheat if they did. Too many reasons to get away with it, mostly for more profits. They need to be a proper town.

With public utilities, water, and sanitation, the area of off-the-grid homesteaders that turned to pot growing to pay their bills (and taxes) would be taxed more, but they'd get sick less, and be a lot less desperate, and less likely to risk the lives of their families growing and selling drugs. They need to grow up and stop being petulant children, playing at self sufficiency when their vehicles drive them back to civilization for groceries and gasoline and medicines to treat the diseases they pump out of the river. The Environmental Health Dept issues reports on that water. Cholera and Typhoid, still, in that water. This is the modern world. This is why I'm so unimpressed with Tiny Houses and their stinky composting toilet boxes. A wooden tent is still a tent. Have better standards. And build cheap public showers so those who insist on homesteading can wash once in a while instead of stinking up the town. Please bathe with soap.

I also worry about other towns in the same position, growing dope and shifting to opium because dope doesn't pay anymore and there's no industry and wages are too low to justify the fuel costs of commuting to work. Those towns will have to figure this out, same as we do. North San Juan is a local problem where I live. Same with Chicago Park, also a major pot growing region between here and Colfax. They, too, must have some utilities brought in to reduce the costs of living and raise their living standards. Maybe then they'll give up growing dope?

Or am I being naïve again?

Toll Roads to Replace Interstate Highways

The Whitehouse wants to see if American drivers would be willing to see all US Interstate highways turned into State toll roads. They suggested inefficient union run govt toll roads. The Republicans took the bait and countered with privately run toll roads. And the Conservatives pointed out they should just keep them as they are and stop directing road repair funds to social services (which is happening). This is NOT a good thing. Here in the West, Interstates are often the ONLY road between towns, and the desert dwellers already pay too much for everything.

 

If we get all interstates turned into toll roads, they can charge whatever they want with the transponders, and in places where there's no alternative to get on and off the interstate to leave town, because there are no other roads, it will be a huge tax increase. This will hurt the poor and rural most. Yet another attack on the country peasants. Yet another benefit for the Elite and their limousines. Sigh. Bastards. It will probably happen, too.

Why would they do something so dumb as create travel monopolies? This is creating prisons with escape fees. They can charge whatever they want, and you either pay or you are trapped. Is this Soviet Russia? Does the Horse Ride You? You must be colossally EVIL to think this is a good idea.

 

The interstate highways are expensive, and getting out of responsibility of paying for one of the few thing the govt does that helps everybody. Dumping their one great accomplishment into private hands for destruction is the sort of thing you expect from a govt drowning in debts. The Federal Govt owes trillions in monetized debt to the Chinese and Europeans. If they shift spending responsibilities onto the states that huge expense stops being their problem. 

 

The states have to raise taxes, since state responsibility means no more federal matching funds for those costs. Tax payers, forced to pay to use the highways that were build and maintained with tax dollars start wondering why they pay any Federal taxes at all, and start clamoring for outlawing the IRS, state by state. Turning those roads into toll roads won't be accepted here in the West. We aren't used to corruption like Easterners. This is still What You Know country West of the Rockies. We only allow Who You Knows in Hollywood, and mostly as the bad example they provide since they're totally helpless outside the Movie industry, which remains less financially successful than the video game industry. And how sad is that? 

 

So much hinges on the movement of goods and services via the roads and highways and interstates. A big part of why I write this blog is my realization of how crucial this all is. What's worse, people will avoid the interstates as the ripoff they are, and build alternate routes to keep the money away from the greedy turnpike monopolies.

 

How would you feel paying 40 cents a mile from a toll booth to travel on this road? Is 40 cents a mile not that bad? How about a dollar a mile. How about 5 dollars a mile? For this. And keep in mind the toll booth transponder signal can be stolen and the debt of the stolen code applied to your taxes via IRS enforcement, your responsibility to report the theft of the code because govt is never wrong and it is literally against the law to sue them. Feeling happy yet? Still satisfied with how your tax dollars are spent?

 

I am very much against toll roads, and I'm very much against the misuse of existing road taxes for ANYTHING but fixing roads. I'm in favor of cutting social services and shooting miscreants. I will vote that way too. California would be better off being our own country than dealing with this chiseling evil crap.

Climate Loonies

Climate Alarmism is a great confidence game. You can play along and get all sorts of funding for hookers coed research assistants, attend good parties with the good booze, and pay for drugs cigars of the finest quality, all by pretending the sky is falling and being willing to falsify research data to show that's happening any second now, so long as the grants keep coming. It's a great science con game because so few people want to do science. They want religion.

It's valuable to me in particular because when I was paranoid and obsessed with peak oil leading to abrupt social change like riots, food hoarding, fuel shortages, Road Warrior and cats and dogs living together in harmony... real end of the world stuff. When I was scared of the whole thing, before I reached Acceptance where most of us landed after hard study of Peak Oil and years of getting used to it, only then did I realize Climate Alarmism is the same thing. It's a chance for people to feed their paranoia. And I think paranoia is a natural human reaction to that first wrinkle or gray hair or that weight you can't get rid of. Its realizing your own mortality after your teenage years and the bloom of your 20's is over. Facing that long slow grind to working towards retirement and waiting for death. And you have the money to donate. Do it for the children. Idiot.

We've had Climate Alarmism for decades. The current one is just more religious hogwash. In the 1970's, the world was slightly cooling, so a couple of con-men claimed the next ice age was coming any minute now and give them money to "study" it and research how to blame people for this. They said burning coal made soot that reflected heat back into space, making it colder. Mount Saint Helens erupted, and it was cooler for a couple years. Then nothing happened. The same guy then recruited various people and Al Gore to claim the planet was warming, using the same bad data tweaked another way. "Well I was wrong before, but I'm totally right this time, if you're just give me more money to study it." If this were Finance, he'd have been arrested for fraud, but it's Climate "research" and doesn't matter.

After Global Cooling, there was fear over the Ozone Hole. It is important to recall that before 1987, we'd never looked at ozone layers before. So this was the first time we'd looked, and first time we'd seen the hole. So its not like it just appeared. It just the first time we'd looked and there it was. For all we know, that hole has been over Antarctica since the dawn of time. Maybe the Magnetic field damages it, or moves it away. It didn't grow and swallow the Earth, like Gore claimed it would. Its stable. Whoops! But few people remember that, and nobody calls him on his 1990's nonsense. He's got so much more nonsense now.

How about the depletion of the Amazon Rainforest, all being predicted to be cut down by 2005. Remember that claim from 1992? No more Amazon, thousands of species lost, possibly millions we didn't even know were there, forever. And we'd all asphyxiate because the forest makes the air clean for the whole planet. Uh nope. Algae in the sea is a much larger source for oxygen, and North American trees are processing more oxygen than the Amazon because our trees are younger and closer to the CO2 anyway.

Also, slash and burn land is only used 3-5 years, then abandoned, where neighboring forest and buried seeds, no longer being manually pulled by farmers, grow quickly back into jungle. Most of the land slashed a few years ago is already regrowing jungle. It will take longer for the big trees to grow back, but the younger trees and growth are absorbing more CO2 than mature forest does. Also, slash and burn is a pain the butt, so any method of improving the soil is welcomed. This is tricky in the amazon because its got some unusual soils in places, and some of the continent doesn't drain for beans, and other parts don't get rain for half the year so irrigation is hard to accomplish. The amazon farmers just want to make a living and keep their families fed. The freaks claiming the jungle was all cut down years ago, based on the claims from 1992, are just feeding their paranoia and need anti-psychotic medications, and perhaps see some random jungle pictures with date stamps on them showing them it is still there, thanks very much.

The anti-jungle freaks also claimed that arable land is being lost. Arable means useful for farming. They suck at statistics. It isn't lost. It isn't being used. Mechanization works best on nice square or round pieces of land, with good cheap irrigation and regular surfaces so you don't get crop ruined by runoff. Contour plowing is work too, requires effort. So you use the land that works best with the plow, and ignore the corners and strips. This land was used when people were pulling plows behind oxen or mules, but not with big diesel combines. The freaks call those leftover bits "lost" because they are freakish, paranoid, idiots. I feel sorry for them, but they don't get it.

Furthermore, you can make new arable land. Making soil is something humans are good at. The Polderlands in Holland used to be shallow sea bottom. They were diked, the sea water was pumped out, they were deliberately flooded and soaked by fresh water several times until all the salt was gone, and then the Dutch got to work. They brought in clay and silt to mix with the sand, and lots of manure and compost. They turned sandy sea bottom into soil and kept at it for 450 years, until they could grow flowers, which are the highest dollar, highest density, highest fertility crop you can grow other than opium, which is also a flower. Fixing soil is a science, one I know how to do because I learned it in college. Every farmer in America, every competent one, knows this too, which is why I don't work in that field. They already know all about it. Plants need certain things to grow best, and getting your soil to provide those things requires mechanical and chemical effort, and if managed right will become relatively stable, allowing you to put time into improving more land the same way. Repeat, with the right materials, and you can plant a great deal. I suspect we'll harvest the dry lake beds in Nevada prior to flooding them and draining them of their salts for planned wildlife preserves, water skiing, and fishing resorts, because all the gypsum is valuable for fixing clay soils down in the flood plains or below volcanos. Maximum money and use of resources. And it doesn't require strong central govts. It requires capitalism and profit motive. There is money to be made. Preservationists will object to the loss of the Southwestern Deserts to development and irrigation projects, but real estate money in the trillions trumps a few loonies. Sorry. Take pictures. Build a museum. Retire. Boat ramps are income generating. And bait shops make more money than museums.

The water in the lakes can also provide water for fields to grow veggies, trees for the new desert towns and soccer fields, hydroelectric dams, etc. Nevada will bloom one day, and it will be filled with man-restored lakes, fed by irrigation canals using water from the Columbia river 600 miles away. This is a good balance, and restores habitat for fish, being left to die out by the indifference and poor management skills of current environmentalists and freaks, and migratory birds who need these lakes and stopover points and DID come back when temporary lakes were built near Las Vegas. If you fill the lakes, the birds will come. And that increased bird population is good. Hunting season, and local restaurants that will cook them for you, and remove all the pellets. A bass boat can also be used with bird hunting. I will point out, however, that providing all these lakes will probably increase local precipitation and thunderstorms because the summer heat has water it can evaporate with lakes there to provide for those clouds. This in turn will provide lightning across Nevada and into Utah and Wyoming and Western Colorado, which will make them greener too. This is the sort of climate change you actually want, if you want to make the land we've got able to support a lot more people living in it. It is a cheaper and gentler form of Terraforming. A huge civil engineering project that makes homes and jobs and food for 80 million people. When do Climate Loonies make homes for people? All they every talk about is death and destruction. That's a big clue they are loonies.

More and more I am becoming a fan of civil engineering development projects. I met a guy last weekend who is working on the project to restore the narrow gauge railroad route from Colfax to Nevada City, which served the mines back in the old days. They still have the engine and most of the route still exists. Needs to be restored, and the engine restored, legally, but there's a Chinese utility company that wants to build the route with water, natural gas, and power mains under the tracks in order to sell it along the route because all the houses there are on propane, which is expensive and requires truck deliveries. This would be cheaper and efficient. The tracks would be 3-rails, one between for the narrow gauge, and the wider set for standard trains to run maintenance and potentially a commuter train of more modern design or actual freight. The Chinese often make me nervous, but they DID build the railroads here in 1856 onwards, along with the Irish. So they deserve some trust on this. And this town needs all the fun tourist attractions it can get.

We're too low for the snow, but the roads are fun for riding a flock or Harleys or an open top convertible and a picnic lunch with your girl in the passenger seat. Up twisting 49, through the trees, along the Yuba river, to the top of the Sierras above Downieville. When the oil is gone, that will be harder to do, but I suspect bicyclists will try. Unless the Black Bears start hunting the roads. But that's another subject.

Someday the ice age will return. The glaciers will start growing in the Sierras and there will be news reports about them coming down the mountain, about them getting thicker and starting to creep. About trails being closed, and summer snowfalls and blizzards adding to the snowpack, and the geologists studying them because Climate Loonies all committed suicide when the glaciers grew, in a sudden burst of honesty and shock. And perhaps helped there when presented with the bills for all the climate money they'd taken for years of lies. Ahem. Academic fraud comes with a bill, not just a jail sentence. I wish those "scientists" would remember that.

Another Nice Weekend

Thursday I washed my car. I even detailed the alloy wheels. Turns out this was a good idea. It now brakes and steers like it is new. Apparently there was a fair bit of brake dust on them, making them slip a bit, which makes the wheels shimmy at speed under braking. That is a nerve wracking sensation. It was hot.

Friday I detailed the inside of the car, discovering you can remove grey munge from tan leather with a damp sponge because the munge is water soluble. Dry the leather, reapply the leather protector and its much nicer. Got up about two dozen of my ex-wife's long red hairs stuck to the car's rugs and under seats. You end up pulling those out by hand. The vac only helps identify them. Much better. Found various bits of food trash that came from her as well. Its been 3.5 years since she's been in my car, but these were nooks and crannies this dirt was stuck in. Now that those crannies are clean, really clean, it is like a new car inside. And the brakes working properly means it drives like a new car outside too. It was hot.

Saturday is one of my volunteering days. It was warm. I worked at the library, but not until after I'd had a long chat with a man hoping to buy used books. Turns out I should have directed him to Pine Street Library, but I didn't know. Anyway, he's working as a civil engineer on the narrow gauge railroad with a group of Chinese investors who want to sell public utilities, including water and natural gas, along the route. The guy in question was very knowledgeable, and now that I know many of the locals go to my alma mater for college, for unknown reasons, I wasn't disturbed by his knowing the details of the ugliness where I grew up. My home town attracted Alfred Hitchcock to make several of his movies because the seedy underbelly of corruption was inspirational, as was the various Victorian houses that survived the 1906 Earthquake. MacDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa was used in Rear Window. The mansions and Victorians and Bungalows on the next street are very pretty. I would live there if I was a millionaire. Its that pretty. Despite being ON the faultline.

Sunday Dad and I had breakfast together, then a hike around the neighborhood to settle our stomachs. A nice but slightly chilly morning. Later we bought fertilizer and tomato plants at two different garden stores and proceeded to dig up a trench in the yard to plant them, put in the watering system (drip irrigation) and will plant them Monday before the rain comes. The two trees that went down from root rot have fed the strawberries well, even to the point of the strawberries roots digging into the buried wood. Usually, rotting wood sucks up a lot of nitrogen in the soil to fuel the growth of fungus, but I think its actually finished that and the fungus is doing its job so there's a lot more potential value there now. The strawberries certainly think so.

Monday. It is chilly this morning, not quite 50'F, and a strong delta breeze whipping off the pacific, up the Valley and into the foothills. You'd be surprised that from a point about 100 feet from here, I can see into the valley and tell if its foggy or not, and sunsets through the trees reveal astonishing colors over the Coast Range, about 80 miles away. CARB is useless most of the time, and the enemy of civil rights, but it has helped make the air cleaner in California. I still think we need cheaper Vespas and more safety training classes, cheaper, so more people can ride them without having to pay a third party $300 just to operate one legally. These need to be cheap enough so Mexican maids can ride to work on them, and impoverished students with useless degrees, conned into them by wishfully deluded parents who were endlessly told that "College is the answer!!" (two !! is a sign of insanity) by their own stupid parents and are absolutely wrong, those young people can get around via scooter instead of failing to make car payments on their part time minimum wage jobs, particularly since Barista jobs are going away now. Nobody has money for $5 coffee anymore. We are returning to 1970's levels of poverty. Forget cruelty about hipsters and other name calling. I'm talking actual hopeless poverty being forced on an generation ready to give back. I expect there will be more of them volunteering at the library with me given time. The Millenials are at a point where literary awareness will soon return. Maybe they'll even write. Editorials and novels and reviews. They can use their opinions for the greater good. After all, these are kids that grew up with too much of everything and managed to survive it all anyway. They deserve their chance.

Borders

Currently, the mob of Californians are rather fed up with each other, and there's a movement to divide the state. A billionaire in Silicon valley wants to divide California into six states.

He's separated Marin Country from the state with San Francisco, where Marin County people work. They rarely go north for anything. They've connected Marin County and Sonoma County to this one and Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, which only makes sense if you join them based on the presence of hippies and vacation spots. He's joined the Central Valley through the Sierras over to the desert side of 395. There's other big flaws to this map. It is silly how badly it joins unlike people together. If ever there was a way to fail at dividing the state to like interests, this is it. My map makes more sense.

I worked with county lines, interests, watersheds, similar plants and occupations. But most folks would say it is too much. The sane option is to divide it into three parts, with LA and San Diego as Southern California, Bakersfield north to San Francisco and possibly Sacramento as Central California, and apparently Yuba City/Marysville (they are divided by a river but that's really all) north for Northern California. This would be a fair and equitable division of the state, really.

Note that bordering counties should reserve the right to vote to join a the neighboring state, provided that the borders are continuous. We can't do this checkerboard, after all. And knowing that Placer County has already voted to join Jefferson state while Nevada County HASN'T, makes this complicated. Inyo County will almost certainly vote to join Central to cut off water supplies to LA and restore their local farming with the water, as well as stop all the deaths from silt inhalation down at Owens Lake caused by LA watering their driveways with that same water.

That dust kills people. If the lake had water in it, the problem would go away. And migratory birds would get their sanctuary back, which they are required to have, by law. A law which isn't being enforced because there are 12 million voters, only some of them legal, who are happier killing birds and the people near the lake bed so they can have clean cars and green lawns in LA. See why I think the worst of people? It is because they ARE the worst.

I think that California is going to divide, finally. Maybe not the backer's map, but perhaps the 3-part division I've put above. There are too many reasons to divide, and too few to stay together. There are, however, rather important legal consequences that aren't discussed but should be.

1. All new states assume some debt from the old state. Including pensions, municipal bonds, other bonds, and prior debts. The division of debt probably won't be fair. Expect bad blood and unfair trade afterwards.
2. All states are required to maintain interstate commerce laws, including free travel on the Interstate Highway System, which they must maintain. Toll roads on the interstates will probably result in Jefferson, because they don't have the tax base to pay for I-5 themselves.
3. New states will almost certainly demand to renegotiate water rights, since water is mostly in the NORTH, but has been flowing South at Northern Expense (taxes and pumping costs). Wars have been fought over water rights.
4. Once they are separate states, they will need separate social services, and not all of those are affordable for each new state. Some aren't even relevant, and all will use the opportunity to cut them.
5. Land seizure is likely, both of BLM public lands for sale for quick cash, and new building standards to suit the locals. Insurance companies will struggle to adapt, so fees will go all over the place.
6. New states will offer incentives to businesses to relocate or stay there not previously available with the prior central govt of California. With smaller govt, more personal favoritism will be possible, for the right fiduciary incentive. Bribery goes all the way down to the bottom.
7. No central govt means prisoner transfers, as prisons are one of the more expensive social services. Unpopular prisoners may find their death row emptying through the graveyard just to cut costs, since new states have little incentive to care about propriety for prisoners legal rights, particularly when there's new constitutions being put together by the 3 new govts. Excellent time for the firing squads, lethal injection, electric chair, and gas chamber. Clean slate empties prisons without burdening the public with trained convicts preying on them in already troubling times. The low end criminals get transferred back to their state of origin from the prison they were placed in, so a Socal crook goes from central to socal. He is there problem. Some will escape. Many will be killed. Few will be released.
8. Oil companies will favor the division, as they don't have to deal with one monolithic govt and can bribe their way into Central California special rights for water access and fracking licenses for the Monterey Formation oil. Oil money paying for oil access will likely make this division happen that much quicker. They want the oil. It is worth trillions. There is a Saudi Arabia worth of oil under there. That is A LOT OF OIL. That is civilization saving quantities, at the expense of agriculture and civil rights in California. Expect totalitarian violence to keep us out of the way of that project. This is HUGELY IMPORTANT to the entire division, to the politics. We are easier to control when we're divided.
   
9. Long term, California remains about its water supply. Lack of repair to the levee system means the rivers will break loose in flood, eventually, temporarily flooding and "destroying" farm land. This is temporary, but temporary could be 20 years or more. My time-scale is centuries.
10. Jefferson state wants to divide from California because their only real industries are in agriculture and controlling the water supply. And while there's common agriculture, the one with money is pot. Jefferson state wants fully legalized and public pot, to be grown with minimal risk, and sold openly like in Colorado and Washington state. Since Gov. Moonbeam has said "Not only no, but hell no." they want a new state where it is legal. The problem with this is once there's more pot than users, the price falls. Eventually the price is so low that there's no money in growing it, not really. And then what? Well, switch crops to Opium, of course. And suddenly Jefferson is growing opium and dealing with Opium violence and slavery, same as Kashmir and SE Asia, and that's a place we don't want to go, but will reach anyway because Pot IS a gateway drug. Same as alcohol and tobacco and coffee and potato chips and candy. I don't think this can be stopped, and I expect to hear about opium poppies being found at the local pot-growers this fall. After all, pot prices are falling. And people gotta eat.
11. The price of oil refining is high because California won't allow new refineries to be built without doing lots of environmental impact reports, written by communists looking for bribes, and approved by more communists looking for bribes, then spun in the media by yet more communists looking for bribes, and objected to by fake environmental groups looking for bribes. See the common thread? So they don't build new refineries. And our gasoline costs more. Tar in roads is a byproduct of oil refining. The high-sulfur tar used to be a waste product and cheap, so making roads with it was a useful outcome. Now, we refine tar into gasoline for big profits, and tar for roads is expensive, not cheap. A divided California, shipping tar oil from fracking the Monterey Formation to China for hard currency, won't be paving roads they don't have to, which means we're going to end up with a lot of gravel and dirt roads. I don't think this can be avoided.
12. There is an El Nino in the Pacific this year. This affects weather worldwide, but El Nino typically causes really heavy flooding in California. El Nino often comes after years of drought, like we've been having. When the floods come this fall, I expect there to be some excitement, lots of landslides, and probably levees breaking, dams overfilling into the spillways, roads washing out, and perhaps really heavy snows in the Sierras. These expenses and disasters will impact how voters respond in November.

As you can see, dividing California has many unintended consequences. And there are factions with MONEY who see real advantage to pushing this forward, perhaps to the detriment of those told it will help them, but will probably harm as much or more. That's the nature of politics. It's the wolves voting with the lamb what to eat for lunch.