NC Media Watch

Sac Connect Mixer was most interesting and informative.

Russ Steele

Ellen and I went to the the first Sac Connect Mixer held at the Revolution Winery, which is only a half a block from the Sac Bee Building in 21st Street in Sacramento.  We had spent the day in Sacramento with some appointments and shopping at Fry’s and REI and then topped off our day in Sacramento with the Sac Connect Mixer.

When we arrived a bit early we were welcomed by Sean McMahon, who from our conversation is the technical guru who keeps San Connect glued together. He used to work in Grass Valley, before joining the Sac Connect team. Ellen also had a long conversation with Kevin McCarthy, who used to work at The Union, and about 2 years ago jointed the Sac Bee Staff. He still lives in Nevada City, and commutes to the city.

There were 50 some people attending the mixer with about 40 of the Sac Connect Partners and about 10 member of the San Bee Management Team.  Ellen and I were surprised how open and frank the Sac Bee Staff was. We discussed the many of the problems facing newspapers and the challenges ahead with Gary Strong, Senior Vice President, Finance, and one of the Marketing team.

 Also, I had a long conversation with Tom Negrete, who recruited me to Sac Connect, about where Sac Connect was headed and his goal for doubling the number of blogging partners and installing some new tools for aggregating content.  I also had great conversation with W.R. Chandler who posts at the Buckhorn Road blog about blogging on political issues.  He recently live blogged one of the Governor’s press conferences. 

Ellen and I also chatted with Paris Tompkin,  Sue at Sue’s Dog Blog and Jerry Kennedy who writes the Motivation 101 blog.  Interesting people with very different blogging motivation and goals.

One of the insights garnered from my conversation with Tom Negrete  is that Nevada County blogs are the most active participants in Sac Connect, with a lot of interactive readers who use the  Sac Connect site to jump between Nevada County blogs. I must admit, I am one of those jumper.  According Tom, the next Sac Connect Mixer might be in Nevada County, especially if he can recruit some more active Nevada County sites. I am sending him suggestions.

We tasted the Revolution Zinfandel, and found it most satisfying, and when we opened our goody bag after we got home, it contained a complementary bottle of the Revolution Zin. A very nice reward for participating in the San Connect Mixer.

Who will be paying off our unsustainable national debt

Russ Steele

My friend George Rebane, has an insightful look at our growing National Debt at Ruminations this morning.  We are on a unsustainable spending path, that can only lead to a total economic failure.

But, who is pay for that debt, where are the taxes coming from. The Congressional Budget Office has analyzed tax data for the year 2007; once again, the bottom line is that upper-income taxpayers pay much more than their fair share. This graph shows the percentage of household income paid in federal taxes (payroll, income, etc.) by each income quintile; click to enlarge:




That extreme progressivity comes mostly from the income tax, of course. This graph shows what percentage of household income is paid by each income quintile in each form of federal taxation. The blue line represents personal income taxes. The extreme progressivity of that tax is obvious:


This one shows the total of all federal taxes paid by each quintile, compared to income. Note how upper-income taxpayers subsidize all other groups:

One can argue about whether this sort of progressivity is immoral, but it is certainly bad public policy.  Now President Obama tells us that he intends to get serious about the federal deficit. I don't suppose anyone takes that pledge too seriously, but to the extent the Democrats propose any deficit-reduction measures, they will no doubt consist of higher taxes on those who are already over-taxed.

 Who do you think is going to take action to try and fix our dash to the poor house? 

H/T to Power Line for the above information

California Jobs Update: Proposition 23

Russ Steele

Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced today that the California Jobs Initiative to Suspend AB32 is Proposition 23.  Interesting that 23 is the reverse of 32.  An omen that California Voters will soon be reversing AB32?  

Is the Tea Party more than a fringe movement?

Russ Steele

Power Line has a interesting interview with Jon Lerner the Republican campaign consultant that helped Nikki Haley for Governor, and Tim Scott for Congress in South Carolina and Mike Lee for Senate in Utah. Jon has a polling company and has some thoughts in the influence of the Tea Party in these successful campaigns. Here is what Lerner had to say in Power Line’s TEA LEAVES IN LAST WEEK'S PRIMARIES post:

The primary election victories of Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Mike Lee last Tuesday all arrived under very different direct circumstances. Yet, despite their major differences, they all had an underlying similarity that speaks to the mindset of Republican voters across the nation in the Tea Party Era.

The mainstream media's caricature of the Tea Party movement as a fringe, or even racist, group of voters could not be further from reality. The Tea Party ethos goes well beyond just those who show up at rallies. The Obama administration has governed so far to the left that it has in a sense radicalized a majority of the Republican Party.

In my primary polling, I have taken to asking this question: "Do you consider yourself to be more closely aligned with the traditional Republican Party, or with the Tea Party movement that has arisen in the past year?" Consistently around half of Republican primary voters now align with the Tea Party. By definition, that goes well beyond a "fringe" group. The Tea Party is all about a series of issues surrounding size-of-government concerns: bailouts, deficits, earmarks, health care takeovers.

In Utah, Mike Lee was able to defeat convention opponent 18-year Senate incumbent Bob Bennett, and primary opponent Tim Bridgewater, by focusing on those very issues. Of course, the radicalizing influence of Obama's governing has not affected Republicans alone. A Democratic U.S. Senator was defeated in a primary this year in Pennsylvania, and another nearly so in Arkansas, because they were not sufficiently liberal for their party's primary voters.

The South Carolina results should definitively put to rest any notion of the Tea Party movement being racist. Indian-American Nikki Haley, and African-American Tim Scott won resounding victories among the South Carolina GOP electorate (one of the most conservative in the nation), and they did so with the open backing of local Tea Party organizations. Republican voters overwhelmingly chose candidates who clearly agreed with the Tea Party philosophy irrespective of race or gender.

Haley campaigned with Sarah Palin and called for term limits and opposed taking Obama stimulus money. Tim Scott wrote the bill in the South Carolina legislature to reject Obamacare, and ran TV ads decrying earmarks, even as his runoff opponent Paul Thurmond (son of legendary Senator Strom Thurmond) played the "bring home the bacon" argument against Scott's anti-earmark position. The Scott campaign was mindful of the potential difficulties that could arise in this campaign because of race, and yet in our polling, there never was any evidence that it was a problem.

The truth is that it's so easy for the media to cast anti-Obama positions in racial terms, but race has nothing to do with it. It's about the massive growth of government, and that's what is galvanizing both the Tea Party movement and Republican primary outcomes.

The best news is that these concerns about government growth, as well as economic stagnancy, go beyond just Republicans. Independents and other groups of swing voters are largely in sync with Republican attitudes on these issues today. It is not dissimilar from how Independents and Democrats were in sync in their views about the Iraq War in 2006 and 2008, with disastrous electoral consequences for the GOP. I suspect we will see a similar shellacking at the polls for Democrats in November.

[My emphasis added]

This is a very different view from what our local Nevada County Democrats, and their fellow travelers, are saying about the Tea Party.  It will interesting to see the comments on this post.

I was very pleased to learn that the Tea Party Patriots have come out with strong support for the California Jobs - Suspend AB32 Initiative.  The success of the Jobs Initiative will be a measure of their influence in California.

More Nevada County Businesses up for sale.

Russ Steele

As I reported here the Walker’s building is for sale. The Union report the Holbrook Hotel is for sale at fire sale prices,  and now Jeff Pelline reports Tess’ Kitchen and the Owl Club are for sale.  If I were a business owner and was planning on retiring any time in the next five years, I would be selling my business now also, because on 1 Jan 2011 the Capital Gains Tax goes from 15% to 39%, since the Democrats refuse to extend the Bush Tax cuts.

My guess we are going to see a lot more property and business on the market as people try to protect their assets from the tax man.  It is interesting that one of the reasons that Charles Litton sold his tube make company in the Bay Area and move his Engineering Laboratory to Grass Valley was to shelter the wealth he had developed in his tube making business from the government. In 1971 Litton move his business to Dayton, Nevada go avoid the progressive California taxes.  He was a very savvy business man, and I expect many other local business people are looking to avoid the tax man as well. 

Sun spot numbers running backward

Russ Steele

Just when it looked like Cycle 24 was going to take off the sunspot numbers turned around and started declining.  As some scientist have finally concluded we really do not know what is happening on the sun. 


In the past, disappearing sun spots has been a precursor to long term periods of colder winters and summers.  The Dalton Minimum was the most recent period from  1790 to 1830, weather stations experienced an average drop of 2.0C for 20 years.  The Maunder Minimum was also a  prolonged period of minimum sunspots from about 1645 to 1715, a period know as the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. Some years,  rivers remained frozen well into summer.

The exact mechanism for the cooling is not know, but the historical records show that fewer spots leads to a colder climate.  The current sunspots trends could indicate some long term cooling is on the horizon if history is a valid indicator.

There is some irony here, Mother Nature is turning done the earths thermostat and our government is setting in motion programs and legislation that will take control of our thermostats, all to stop the earth from warming from CO2 emissions.  Either way, there are long term economic impacts.  Stay tuned.

First it was Joe the Plumber and now the Kopp the Custard Man

Russ Steele

Power Line has the story. VP Biden stopping by a custard stand and chatted with the Custard Man. 
When he asked the proprietor how much the custard cost, the proprietor answered, "Nothing, just lower our taxes." Here is the exchange:

Everyone involved laughed it off, but a serious point lingered. A simple way to think about the Democratic Party is, you're the human being, they're the tapeworm. Yet they claim a weird sort of parasite's moral superiority over you: if you point out that they have their hand in your pocket, you're a "smartass." The Democratic Party needs to be torn, root and branch, from our public life.

See here is the real problem (click for a larger image). 
 

And according to our local middle of the road blogger and commentators the Democrats are on the rise in Nevada County,  and come the next election Democrats are going to kick a**! Right! Not with a reputation like this one. 

SmartMeter Update: I wish it really was for the customers!

Russ Steele

According to PG&E SmartMeter brochures they are here to help customers save money. What they do not say is, to do that customers must modify their lifestyle to meet those savings goals.  Right, here are some excerpts  from a story posted by the Environmental Defense Fund last Thursday, the 26th of June. Detail here.

"Today's PUC decision shows yet again that California is creating a model that other states can follow to save ratepayers money, grow the economy and protect the environment," said Lauren Navarro, Environmental Defense Fund, which was a party in the smart grid proceeding. "Utilities now have clear guidelines for developing smart grid plans that are able help California meets its energy and environmental goals."

See, it all about California meeting those pesky CO2 reduction goals and providing customers with tool so they can social engineer their lifestyle to meet the goals.

Studies have shown that a smart grid can reduce household utility bills 10 percent when customers have access to tools, technologies and real-time information that can help them better manage energy use.

By providing ratepayers with information about how much electricity they use at different times of the day, utilities can help customers save electricity during critical times. This "demand response" process leads to cost savings, reduced energy use and cleaner air. If just five percent of customers shift their use, the most expensive and polluting peak power plants will come online less often and prices for all customers will drop substantially.

See,  if customers do not comply, they will raise your rates until you do comply!

Maximizing these benefits will require a smart grid that can facilitate: expanded deployment of renewable and distributed power sources; greater use and charging of electric vehicles and new energy storage technologies; and greater reliance on demand-side resources, especially those that serve as an alternative to new peaking power plants.

What they just said, it that they can use the smart meters to adjust the load. Who creates that load, right customers. So, rather than produce more CO2 spewing power plants they will turn up your AC thermostat or your furnace thermostat down to adjust the load.  Or, turn off that big screen TV that is eating up their watts.

Nevada County Implements City Watch Emergency Services

PRESS RELEASE

Cell Phone Number and Email Address can now be added to the Nevada County Emergency Notification System Nevada City, CA – With Wildfire Season now in full-swing, the Nevada County Office of Emergency Services (OES) is offering additional ways for residents of Nevada County (both incorporated and un-incorporated areas) to be notified of emergencies such as wildfires threatening your neighborhood.

In order to be notified via the county’s CityWatch Emergency Notification System via your cell phone, Voice over IP (VoIP), cell phone text messaging, or personal email, residents of Nevada County will need to manually add their information. If you have a residential or business phone number utilizing AT&T or a local cable company, this phone number is already accessible via CityWatch as part of a public safety data base. To assure your additional contact information is included, go to our website: http://www.mynevadacounty.com/oes/

Nevada County contracts with Avtex Solutions, utilizing their CityWatch Emergency Notification platform. The system can only be activated by County public safety personnel. For more information about the CityWatch system, you can access their website by visiting www.citywatch.com .

Examples of when the CityWatch system may be used are:

• Evacuation Orders
• Natural Disasters
• Safety Alerts
• Missing Persons

For additional questions or comments, contact the Nevada County Office of Emergency Services at [email protected] or 530-265-1515

Opposition to AB32 Suspension is not shooting straight

Russ Steele

The fax machine are humming way at the Stop Dirty Energy Proposition headquarter trying to re-frame the suspend AB32 Initiative into a dirty air proposition and misrepresenting the economic studies showing the economic damage to California’s economy.

 AB 32 has nothing to do with changing California clean air laws and regulations, it has to do with restricting CO2 emissions.  Restrictions that will strangle California’s economy.

According to recent flier put out by Stop Dirty Energy Group:

Projections of economic doom and gloom resulting from AB32 have been throughly debunked by independent economists and Legislative Analysis.

Really, lets take a look at what they said and do some fact checking.

Those seeking to repeal AB 32 cling to several studies by a Sacramento professor claiming economic doom and gloom. However the Legislative Analyst recently evaluated these studies and concluded:

Our review of this study indicates that it contains a number of serious short comings that render its estimates of the annual economic cost of state regulations essentially useless.

They target “several studies by a Sacramento Professor.” Really the only study I can find is a single study by Varshney and Tootelian at Sac State University, and they say "this study" What happened the multiple studies?  Yes, the Legislative Analyst had some issues with this study. And, yes they found some serious short coming in the study, due to the data provided by CARB. The study team was not given sufficient and accurate data. No wonder it was a flawed study.