Category: Politics

The headline today, Governor Brown waived some environmental reviews on emergency construction at Oroville Dam. But look at the last paragraph in the story.

Authorities say designs for the redone main spillway are about 60 percent complete. State water officials still aren’t releasing an estimated price tag for the rush repairs, but say they hope to award contracts for the work by April 17.

Fact 1
OK, it’s close of business on April 6th. The state Department of Water Resources says the plans for the fix (temporary one per previous media reports) are 60 percent completed.

Fact 2
They hope to awards contracts by April 17th.

They are finishing the plans, soliciting bids, and deciding who will be awarded the contract seven business days from now? What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Conclusion
Either the fix is in on who will be awarded this contract or these guys are dumber than dirt to think they can get a bid price with unfinished plans. Oh, change order is spelled $$$$$$

Steve Camp did a song many years ago about “playing marbles with diamonds”. Camp was lamenting the fact that the Church seems to squander its opportunities and not take its job seriously. In like manner, the State of California is failing to take the issues relating to the Oroville dam seriously.

As I’ve stated before, nobody in State government has ever been involved in the construction of any large scale water storage project. There is no institutional memory in the government bureaucracy of how to successfully do such a project.  All anyone knows is that a mountain of paperwork is required before such a project can be undertaken; a process that can take decades to complete.  In their mind, a fix is not possible if they go thru normal channels; however, nobody wants to cede their part of the regulations to get the job done.

I submit that the situation is much more dire than you realize. Governor Brown has assembled a crack team of experts and this is what they have floated as a solution:

One temporary recommendation is building an angled flip just above the collapse site. If water needs to be released from the lake down the spillway, the flip would launch the water away from the hole, preventing further erosion.
Link: Making water jump the gap

Really? That’s the best you’ve got?

History lesson: we tried that before in California. It was called hydraulic mining.
Link: California Gold Rush hydraulic mining

It was outlawed in 1884 because of the devastation that it caused to California’s waterways and agricultural land. Now our crack state engineers want to use the same technique on an ever larger scale to save the Oroville Dam? What could possibly go wrong launching 100,000 cubic feet of water per second into the air? Amazing.

OK, so the government can’t do it, what about the private sector? I submit that in a litigious state like California that no insurance company will cover such a project. Look we already had one evacuation for 200,000 people; plus many more would be affected if the dam had further failure. Folks there are tens of billions in potential liability and whoever touches that dam will own it until the end of time. Unless the state gives the contractors a special exemption from liability, why would anyone want to participate in such a repair job?

Then there is the issue of state jobs requiring that prevailing wages be paid. In normal times, prevailing wages add forty percent to the cost of constructing a public school. Can you imagine how much this government mandated wage inflation—in one of the poorest regions of the state—is going to add to the price of any potential fix? Does Oroville even have the infrastructure in place to support the demand for concrete and related materials? I really doubt it.

Dear readers, there are thousands more similar infrastructure issues in this state that are currently being ignored by government. Oh and you have been paying taxes for decades to fix many of them but the money is diverted elsewhere. If and when “the Big One” happens, then you will know just how truly mismanaged this state has been.

Whatever happens to the spillway, I promise that it will be an excuse to raise taxes and somehow the money won’t really improve things all that much. Likely it will start out as a temporary tax that will still be in effect a century from now.

Anthology series like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Amazing Stories often start with a world like ours and then tweak one aspect in order to allow a character to participate in some fantastic adventure that otherwise would be totally improbable. The results are often extreme; either to the good or bad for the person that is the focus of the story.

Rarely do we get to witness a real life adventure that is on par with these types of stories. I know there have been others. I had a great uncle named Charles that entered the US Army at the ripe age of 14 in May of 1941. In December of that year, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and my uncle spent the war fighting in the Pacific. He was discharged in 1946 and still not 21 years old and thus not even old enough to vote.

Today, we are witnessing one of the greatest stories of the 21st Century; the Presidency of Donald J Trump. Barack Obama divided the country more than anyone since Richard Nixon; however, Trump has united both parties in their hatred of him. Why? Trump actually expects the members of Congress to do their job and serve the people not themselves. This is the modern day version of Mr. Smith goes to the White House.

Trump is everything that Arnold Schwarzenegger promised California voters in his first run for governor and never delivered.  Trump is truly unique. What he promised during his campaign, he is delivering when in office. Folks, I can’t begin to tell you how rare and refreshing that this is. Both parties hate him for this. Trump is fighting an uphill battle against all three branches of government, plus the Federal Reserve, and the media. Make no mistake, this is total war. It’s Trump and about half the voting public versus the status quo.

Next time you read about the kings in the Old Testament tearing down the Ashura Poles and pagan high places, maybe you will understand the type of resistance that they faced and boldness it took for them to do this. I believe Trump is tearing down many similar strongholds in our nation. Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony’s idea that a change in law is a change in religion is clearly validated by Trump’s presidency.

Law, culture, and religion are all intertwined. Pluralism is just a temporary cease-fire until one faction gains a winning advantage over others. The faction that views government as their god tried to press their advantage to victory and crush the opposition; especially, Christians; this is the legacy of Barack Obama. 

Trump has been compared to Cyrus or Constantine—and this may be a fair comparison—because he is a defender of The Faith while he himself may not be a believer. I for one am praying for Donald Trump and hoping that he succeeds.

Link:  Melania Trump attacked for reciting ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ at campaign rally

As I wrote to Mr. Winton earlier this week, the political divide in our country is spiritual; Christianity versus Secular Humanism. Man likes to put himself in the place of God.

This is the spiritual divide:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. I Joh 2: 15-17

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.  Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.  Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1: 18-32

The Left is screaming like demons because they are following the doctrine of demons. Their god is government (and power). Trump is dedicated to tearing down many of their strongholds and they aren’t happy. I don’t know where Trump is spiritually, but I’m confident that God is using him to clean-up the mess that has poisoned our country for so many years.

OK, so you may be wondering why I write about this issue after the mandatory evacuation order has been lifted. In short, the danger has not passed; we will be living with this issue for several years.

I know when I find myself on the same side as the Sierra Club that the guys in Sacramento have really screwed-up.

Link: Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago
Voters have authorized tens of billions of dollars in water bonds to be sold in California and no new water storage has been planned let alone built. In fact last I heard the only activity that government was considering was tearing down existing dams servicing San Francisco and far northern California.

Link: Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

Consider this from 2009:

In recent months, officials in Oregon, Washington and even California have agreed to spend millions to dismantle colossal dams built decades ago in order to protect native fish species, following legal tussles over water between the federal government, environmentalists, Indian tribes and farmers.

Link: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs $11.1 billion California water bond measure.

Or this from 2008:

Meanwhile, on the California-Oregon border, in the wake of a dramatic, nationally reported fish kill in 2002, the unlikely coalition of fishermen, American Indians and environmentalists has successfully made its case to tear down four dams on the Klamath River. In this case, the courts, the state and Schwarzenegger himself have indicated support for dam removal.

Link: Schwarzenegger Pushes to Build New Dams While an Unlikely Coalition Battles to Tear Down Existing Ones

So voters have authorized billions for water and all we have gotten is agreements to reduce water storage. Meanwhile, maintenance on existing facilities has been somewhere between nil and minimal. Why?

Much of the money in these so called water bonds was never for water storage or infrastructure. Critics tried to point that out but the Party in power drowned-out their criticism. Second, don’t forget how government does budgets. Money dedicated to water simply frees up more funds from the General Fund that can then be spent elsewhere. It does not mean that any additional money will actually be spent on water projects. It just grows government and nothing more.

Now for Oroville Dam; Folks this is a huge mess.

As we all know from seeing the photos, there are two separate problems with the dam now. The main spillway and the emergency spillway.

The main spillway has at least two problems that combined to tear the thing to pieces…and the damage is continuing to compound on this part of the dam’s structure. Not only is there a hole 180 feet wide and 30 feet deep—as of a few weeks ago—but this hole is continuing to erode due to use. The spillway can’t be used anywhere near capacity without totally destroying itself.

 

 

What makes it worse is that in some photos, it appears that water is freely flowing under the spillway! If you noticed the photos with the spillway shutoff a few weeks ago, water was coming out of the hole and continuing down the spillway. At a quick glance on the Internet, I can’t find the angle that I think is illustrating this but I’m concerned that this is the case. If there are issues under the spillway due to whatever cause, the calculations for repair just got even more complicated.

The patch job from a few summers ago, has clearly failed and it looks to me as if the entire thing may need to be redone. Whatever repair is selected, it will need to be done in a matter of months not the years that typically accompany government red tape on projects of this scope. In the summer they can only drain water from the hydroelectric plant so once it begins raining next fall that spillway better be ready to roll.

The emergency spillway is clearly a problem and I fear that it may need to be deployed again before summer arrives. The rock bags and other measures taken seem more for show than because they are anything resembling a fix.

In the end, it appears that the choice will be destroy the spillway by increasing the discharge and thus increasing the damage it sustains or loosing control of the structure by deploying the emergency spillway. Hobson’s choice anyone?

My other concern is also a practical one. No engineer on the State’s payroll has ever been involved in overseeing the building or construction of a dam. In fact, I would wager that none of the folks doing the real engineering work to fix these problems was even born when the last dam was being approved for construction. C.C. Myers may not be the guy for this repair but you need someone that can work that quickly.

The irony is that Jerry Brown’s rainy day fund may be needed to save us from rain.

The Best advice that I can offer is stock some emergency rations and be ready to get out of dodge at the first sign of trouble.

 

After awaking from my New Year’s celebration I decided to do a little catchup reading. One article that caught my eye was about a pension crisis in Dallas, Texas.  The first thing that came to mind was this must be the county workers retirement pension system, I was wrong; this is the police and firefighters retirement pension system.  A very small pension fund by comparison to some such as CALPers.  However the problem in Dallas is strange, in a sense because Dallas has a booming downtown, cranes and skyscraper construction dot the skyline.  People have been moving to Dallas in droves, this is not the case study of a braying Midwestern city struggling with population loss, and the mill or warehouse closing down.  This really caught my eye.

Government and private sector accountants have been tussling in Dallas over how large the deficit in the pension funding crisis is, however they do agree on one thing, it’s between one and five billion dollars! Yeah, Billion, like Million but with a “B”.  Dallas appointed a pension board about thirty years ago to oversee the investments of this fund; most states and municipalities do this.  These board members are supposed to have a fiduciary duty to put the financial needs of the members over any short term profits or accounting gimmicks…they failed.  I will go in to their misdeeds later; in the meantime the city is now facing a monumental crisis of epic proportions.

The pension system in most states and municipalities all work the same, work so many years, and contribute a small portion of your check, roughly 1% and you will get a defined payout amount each month for the remainder of your life once you retire.  This is true with most pension plans; they are set up in a defined benefit manner not a defined contribution manner.  This becomes a problem when the union designs a contract where employees can retire at 50 and collect full benefits until death some 30 years later.  The problem is the pension fund essentially becomes a Ponzi scheme as new money is added from current workers that go to pay out the benefits to retired workers.

The fund receives money each month collected from current workers’ pay, and then hopes to invest the money, earn a decent return, and pay out benefits to those collecting retirement.  The main problem is these funds always use pie in the sky projections for investment return, with some such as CALPers saying they expect around 7.5% a year!  As per usual they didn’t come close to 7.5%, they actually did .41% which is well, awful especially considering the market is at all-time highs.  Enough about California; now back to Dallas.

Dallas got creative about a decade ago, they created an option for retired members called (DROP) deferred retirement option program.  This option allowed retired members to put their pension check in a separate account, which would be a savings account, with a 10% interest annually credited to it.  If you’re scoring at home, once again this is a characteristic of a Ponzi scheme promising pie in the sky returns, risk free mind you.  Many retirees participated and I cannot say I blame them, as a 10% risk free return that is likely guaranteed by the municipality or the state is a great option.  Then as one would expect problems began to arise, since you can’t guarantee 10% returns while the fund was only projecting to earn 7%.

The fund was beginning to see trouble in 2008, and as a result the board of directors decided to make investments in real estate as opposed to stocks or equities.  Investing in real estate is extremely risky, and the bets placed by the Dallas pension fund blew up right in their face.  This was to be expected. (If X was tasked with generating a massive investment return, I admit I would have done something similar.)  The fund began buying up real estate all over the world, a winery and hotel in Napa, and quite a few investments in foreign countries that were supposed to make up the difference and generate a return that could pay off the obligations to retirees.  This solution is not an issue until the value of the real estate holdings drops, and predictably it did.  The fund took over $500 million in write-offs over a two year period from 2014-2015.  Which is not a problem until those expecting to receive pension benefits find out they may not be receiving said benefits, then mayhem ensues.  Mayhem indeed did ensue later in 2016.  Further adding fuel to the fire were an agreement to raise the cost of living adjustment by 4% a year rather than pegging the rate to inflation which would have saved over 15-20%.

Remember those DROP accounts? The pension system had over 500 worth more than 1 million dollars, as a result of the shortfall; retirees began pulling all their money out of the system. Who can blame them?  It was money and benefits they had earned.  As a result, the mayor of Dallas, pension board leaders, and the state have been looking for a solution, including the temporary halting of withdrawals from the plan.  Which as per usual from governments and the CRA these days, answers nothing.  Panic has set in among retirees and as a result lawsuits have started flying in Dallas, as well as an FBI investigation as well as an SEC investigation.  The mayor of Dallas predictably wants a state bailout, which predictably the state government told him politely no thank you.  Now he wants to raise property tax by 130% on Dallas residents.  Remember this is Dallas, not a small decaying city, but one that is lined with skyscrapers.  Stay tuned, and I will report as more details come available.

X

The best entertainment on television during the last few weeks has been the Donald Trump show. Trump is the straight man in this farcical comedy. Unlike politicians that say what is necessary to get elected and then have nothing to show for a lifetime of “public service”, Trump goes to the nation’s capital and does what he promised and all hell breaks loose. Why, because both the political class and the media are shocked that he really meant all those things he said. Furthermore, Trump has the “stones” to actually follow thru on his promises and doesn’t care what they think. To them, this guy is worse than Reagan and that was a very low time for them.

109 people get caught in the crossfire of Trump’s immigration order and the international socialists and those likeminded travelers—with generous funding by George Soros—act like Trump just reinstated internment camps. (For those that forgot, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, and internment camps were all Democrat policies implemented against fellow Americans, not immigrants wanting to come to this country.) The ACLU reported has raised over 24 million dollars off of this non-event.

Trump fired the acting director at the Department of Justice over her refusal to defend his policy. Trust me; she will land on her feet with some cushy job in academia teaching at some liberal law school. She was on her way out so taking a cheap shot at Trump and getting fired was a resume enhancement for her. Ditto for the Pentagon bureaucrat a few days ago that said male and female Marines should sleep next to each other when in the field. Women don’t belong in combat, period.

Today, the next part of the campaign against Trump will be rolled-out, milliseconds after the Supreme Court nominee is announced. It won’t matter who it is, the campaign in a box is already part of the standard playlist of Liberal tactics. I hope Trump picks Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore just to tweak the whole lot of them but I doubt that will be his play. Frankly, I hope he picks someone like John Eastman and not a sitting judge. That would be fun to watch.

Just remember that the street theater that you are witnessing is primarily to cause the weak kneed Republicans (Ryan, McCain, Graham, et al) to cave and surrender to the will of the Liberal minority. If Republicans stick with Trump, the Liberal agenda is toast. Trump will roll them back to the Stone Age. Again, look for Trump to call on the American people if the Republicans get too wobbly and spineless.