Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson      Red Bluff Daily News 10/15/2024

    Local, state, Kamala-fornia items

About the glitch in the round-a-bout project on South Main Street: It may seem trivial that clay, despite many decades of use for the I-5 off ramp without such issues, may experience compaction under the proposed circular replacement of the former T-shaped intersection.

We have, for many years, observed a major train overpass under construction in La Pine, Oregon. The heavily trafficked US 97 needs to go over the rail tracks; decades ago, both handled a fraction of the current volume. It’s a beautifully engineered multi-lane ramp on either side of the large gap for the trains.

Just one glitch: They failed to adequately analyze the soil under the massive ramp structures, which now sit like two monoliths, or something designed for one of Evel Knievel’s dare devil stunts. In the years since discovering the instability of the soil, the structures have “subsided/sunk” a number of inches, with predictions of future sinking. The old saying applies: Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

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I am, on principle, opposed to requests for funds, at the local, state or national level (are we over 30 trillion dollars in debt yet?) unless, in the local case, the books can be opened, examined and analyzed to see what has been done with the existing funding. Let taxpayers be informed of what has changed such that revenues, which used to be sufficient, are no longer adequate. What expenditures have gone up, or been “bootstrapped” onto existing categories, creating this apparent shortfall?

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Not to get too mathematical, but I recall that the average home price locally was generally below $100,000 when I first began my inglorious decade-and-a-half in the real estate business. Internet calculators convert that to around $212,000 in 2024. And yet, another Internet search reveals that local homes average well over $300,000; compared to the average/median home price in California of $900,000+, that’s not bad.

That still shows “affordability” is a problem even here in the hinterlands. In fact, the same housing project that would take weeks to get approved and a year or two to build in other states—can, in parts of our not-so-fair state, take years to get approved and decades to finish. Not to mention the project-killing environmental studies, impact statements, as well as the litigious nature of opponents. Thank politics!

Like housing, gas and energy in the former Golden State is unaffordable. If your goal was for residents to exist on the precipice of being broke, you couldn’t have more effective policies than what Gov. Newsom, and his legislative and regulatory Democrats, have foisted on us.

“Chevron Exec Nukes Gavin Newsom Over Oil, Gas Storage Scheme” (Redstate.com). Chevron’s Andy Walz roasts the delusional Big Regulatory “new requirement that gas and oil companies should be subjected to a minimum storage requirement to avoid shortages and the concomitant price spikes.” He condemned it saying, “The California government remains unique in its focus on marketplace interference, with negative effects on consumers, resulting in the highest U.S. gasoline prices…California has investigated the industry numerous times for price gouging and come up with no evidence or charges.”

Bureaucrats ignorant in refining to oversee safety standards? Are these the same geniuses who are pushing a potential 47 cent hike in gas prices? Who formulated the ludicrous concept of “road diets” to inconvenience drivers into mass transit, or onto bicycles?

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More of “Kamala’s California sojourn”: 1) “F for Fail—Performance Review of Kamala’s Stint As San Francisco City Attorney Revealed.” Bob Hoge finds, in an unearthed document, that Ms. Harris’ evaluation in 11 categories, was “below average” in 5, “average” in 2 and “above average” in only 3. she was “5 out of 5” for “Your advice memoranda, letters… and documents are easy to read and understand and are free of legalese and jargon.” Perhaps said documents were written by someone other than the same Kamala Harris that now struggles to speak coherently, while answering in “word salads.”

2) “Kamala Finally Reveals What Kind of Gun She Has—and Now She's Got a Big Problem” (Victoria Taft). Having now specified that she owns a Glock hand gun, the problem is that, as attorney general of California, Kamala Harris declared that gun to be “unsafe” because they “do not have a compliant chamber load indicator, a magazine disconnect and lacked microstamping” (gun law attorney Kostas Moros). “She supported the Unsafe Handgun Act and expanded it in 2013.” An injunction was secured against the law in 2023.

3) RFK, Jr. has told a true story of how Kamala started imprisoning parents in California whose kids missed school—the first woman she locked up was a black mother whose daughter had sickle cell anemia.

4) After Muslim terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered 14 Americans in San Bernardino, including blacks, Asians and Hispanics, attorney general Harris failed to name a single victim and failed to condemn the attack even as gun violence. How, exactly, does that demonstrate the “high character” of Kamala Harris? Draw you own conclusions.