Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/05/2015

   Meter reader, Lincoln, water woes

There are several items and issues today: I must acknowledge the helpful analysis of a PG&E technician sent to try to resolve what I thought was, perhaps, a metering trick to charge me up to 15 kilowatt hours (kwh) of electricity I was not, in fact, using daily. When I am out of town in the winter, nothing uses power but 2 refrigerators—water heater is off at the breaker box; central heater is off; none of the watering is on, etc. Yet, my meter readings showed that I had “used” over 30 kwh per day—for 2 fridges that together couldn’t account for more than 8 kwh.

While they have earned the moniker “Plunder, Gouge and Extort” for rates that go up far faster than inflation by my calculations, PG&E’s friendly expert “Pat” tested my meter (accurate to within 0.4 percent) while turning breakers off and on. He saw that the circuit for my well was spinning while my tank was topped out at 70 psi (normal is 40 to 60 psi).

So, my well pump was on nearly constantly, using about 1,000 watts an hour. Our pump guy from Alsco came out post haste, found parts that had corroded and malfunctioned producing what’s called a “water logged” tank. That means there’s insufficient air to allow for proper cycling on and off. All is now in order—daily usage declined by about 15 kwh, for a likely reduction of $60-100 on my monthly bill. Thanks, PG&E and Alsco.

I owe some recognition to our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, assassinated 150 years ago. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio took to some opinion pages to prolifically praise Lincoln for his devotion to America’s founding principles. He created the Republican Party, whose current candidates and spokesmen would be well advised to expound and promote those principles.

Republicans, Rubio says, should use “Lincoln’s many statements that clearly run against the redistributionist ethic at the heart of modern liberalism…Lincoln wrote that ‘Property is the fruit of labor—property is desirable—it is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.’

“By demanding America live up to its calling as a nation where our rights come from God, and where government exists to protect those rights without prejudice, Lincoln took it upon his generation to test, as he put it, ‘whether that nation, or any nation so conceived or so dedicated, can long endure.’ Today in many respects, public opinion about the principles of free government is in a worse state than it was before the Civil War.

“The mainstream of political science today teaches that the idea of natural rights is nonsensical. Today’s heresy about equality is that rights belong to groups, not to individuals. Reforming our government along the lines designed by the Founders may require a division of the house no less severe than that caused by Lincoln’s ‘house divided’ speech…The American Revolution and the Civil War are never over. Every time the people forget what they mean, they have to be fought again.”

Regarding California’s water woes, consider that, while our state’s population has doubled, well-planned and necessary water storage infrastructure—commonly called dams—were derailed by environmental extremists who began prevailing in Sacramento back during Jerry Brown’s first terms as Governor. The $60-70 billion price for the foolish “high speed rail” would construct 30 to 40 dams like what is being promised for the Sites and Temperance Flat reservoir. Those two alone could store over 2 million acre-feet of water—enough for 2 million households. Temperance Flat, for example, is just an additional dam above an existing reservoir, Millerton, in the San Joaquin drainage.

With space running out, I must make this factual correction to a repeated misstatement: Farmers don’t use 80 percent of the water; they use 40 percent compared to 10 percent for residential use. Fully 50 percent—one half of all water stored and conveyed—is dedicated to “environmental” purposes. Think of the flushing of streams for dubious purposes, releasing water to try to fine-tune the Delta for the benefit of bait fish known as smelt, and attempts to restore salmon to San Joaquin river habitats.

That’s all well and good when we have the water to spare—however, until these feel-good, unnecessary uses of water are curtailed, Brown et al shouldn’t lecture and punish us for us over water restrictions. It is a further phony argument that agriculture only accounts for 2 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. That figure ignores the economic impact of payrolls, consumer purchases, supplies, equipment spending and repair, etc.

You can look up “No, Farmers Don’t Use 80 Percent of California’s Water; The statistic is manufactured by environmentalists to distract from the incredible damage their policies have caused,” by Devin Nunes. Also, “Why California’s Drought Was Completely Preventable,” by Victor Davis Hansen. Both are posted at my blog: donpolson.blogspot.com under the “California” label.