The Cap and Trade Sleight of Hand

If it's Wednesday, then the issue is Health Care. Right?
And it is. ABC is doing an infomercial for Barack Obama and the Dems health care initiative.

And this is a major problem. Last night the Engineering Geek and I were at the Independence Grill making signs with New Mexicans for Liberty for the protest that will take place outside of our local ABC TV affiliate--KOAT. This will take place on the corner of Commanche and Carlisle in Albuquerque for you locals. They will gather (I have to work, but the EG will be there) at 6 PM and you can stay as long as you want.


I must say that the Engineering Geek gets pretty creative with his signs. I made one that said:
"If you liked Pravda, you'll love ABC!" The EG looked at it and got out a red sharpie and made the letter 'C' in ABC into a hammer and cycle, Soviet style. (Yes, I know, anyone born after about 1985 is unlikely to even remember the Soviet Union).
His own sign says: ABC: In bed with the Feds!


But I digress. The socialized medicine initiative is big, it is important, and it is NOT being voted on this week. What is?

Cap and Trade.

David Copperfield, move over! Obama is a master of misdirection. While he is getting the patriot organizations all geared up about healthcare, he and the Dems are hoping to get Cap and Trade passed in the House on Friday with minimal fuss. Thus the summer, Friday schedule.


Cap and Trade is a way to commit fiscal suicide, causing great increases in energy prices that will hurt everyone throughout the economy, but will have minimal effect on global temperature. (I have posted my thoughts on the issue of Global Climate change here and here. I do not agree with Al Gore on this issue. The science is not at all settled, nor does it dictate specific political action). The Heritage Foundation analysts say this about Cap and Trade:

" Though the proposed legislation would have little impact on world temperatures, it is a massive energy tax in disguise that promises job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.
Ultimately, this bill would result in government-set caps on energy use that damage the economy and hobble growth--the very growth that supports investment and innovation. Analysis of the economic impact of Waxman-Markey projects that by 2035 the bill would:

--Reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.4 trillion;
--Destroy 1,145,000 jobs on average, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 2,479,000 jobs;
--Raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation;
--Raise inflation-adjusted gasoline prices by 58 percent;
--Raise residential natural gas prices by 55 percent;
--Raise an average family's annual energy bill by $1,241; and
--Result in an increase of $28,728 in additional federal debt per person, again after adjusting for inflation."


For more information, follow the link above. The real purpose of this bill is to provide the federal government with more revenue, although this is short-sighted. With whole industries destroyed and double-digit unemployment, who will have the money to pay more taxes?
Congress--to put it bluntly--doesn't understand that money represents productivity and wealth. They think it's magic.


In any case, the sponsors are very unlikely to bring the bill to the floor for a vote if they think there is substantial opposition. Thus, few are talking about it.


Call your nonrepresenting representatives. Make sure they know that there is opposition out there. Let them know that you are watching both hands.
Pay great attention to the man behind the curtain.
Don't let them pass another unread bill in the middle of the night!




Hat Tap: The Gates of Vienna.

Summer Solstice Sunrise 2009

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

On Saturday night, just before midnight MDT (05:45 GMT, Sunday morning), the Earth passed the Northern Hemisphere Summer Solstice point in its orbit around the sun. On Sunday morning, the Engineering Geek, the dogs and I walked up to the top of Via Sedillo to welcome the first sunrise of astronomical summer.

Before the sun came fairly over the trees, north of east, we could see its light steal across the Juan Tomas valley below. In the picture, the foreground was still in the shadow of the Via Sedillo Ridge upon which we were standing.

A few minutes later, the earth

turning imperceptibly east,

we saw the sun begin to edge up

over the trees as we faced east,

across the ridge.

Welcome, Star of Life, Center of the Year!

Welcome, Summer!

For comparison, here is the Vernal Equinox sunrise, taken on March 21, 2009. Here the sun is rising due east. Above, it is rising 23 degrees 27 minutes north of due east.

And the Wheel of the Year keeps on turning!

Since the Solstice, the Monsoon season has begun. Yesterday, I had to turn back, could not cross an arroyo, due to a cloudburst that hit the west end of Tijeras Canyon, suddenly, as we drove to town.

IRD: Are You a Real Teacher? Or Do You Just Homeschool?

Last year, teaching for the Institute for Reading Development was all-encompassing.
This year, it is part of what I'm doing. There are other parts as well.

The work itself has become more interesting because I understand the curriculum enough now to modify it (slightly) as needed to fit the real people seated in front of me. And this means that I have begun to think about individual students more, and try to figure out what makes them tick--at least as far as their reading goes. For example, is that middle school kid who is trying to outcool everyone a problem-child? Or is he sorely lacking in confidence in his abilities?

Whereas last year, I was struggling mightily to just master the curriculum, so that I only had time for a few fleeting thoughts about students, this year as I sat down to write my Book Level Assessments (pre-Reading through Grade 5), and my Book Level Recommendations (Grade 6 - Adult), I enjoyed being able to summon the face of each student (with help from my seating chart) and with it a sense of the reader and the person.

There are still some things that I am still surprised and nonplussed by when I encounter them. For example, people parading into class late week after week, even though they have paid tuition for the course, and even more puzzling, people who pay and then don't show up. Period. Strange.

Adults these days!

And then there are the parents who walk in with a chip on their shoulder. Despite my string of degrees, I will never be good enough to teach their Johnny or Suzy, the one going into honors English, you know. They demand: "Are you a real teacher?!"

I am always tempted to say, "Why, no! I'm a holographic teacher. You know, like the doctor on Star Trek Voyager." But then, I would hope that most people who love Star Trek would not be that dismissive and disrespectful. There are quite a few parents I have encountered who don't have their manners very solidly pinned on.

This year, I had a parent overhear my conversation with two homeschooled students about how I homeschooled my own son. She didn't talk to me. She didn't clarify her notions. She called the company and complained that I obviously "couldn't handle the class" because I was a "homeschooled teacher." Of course I couldn't, but it would have been great to walk up to her and talk about Abigail Adams, one of the most intellectually astute women in American history, who was also a "homeschool teacher."

By the way, the two homeschooled kids in that class, the ones deprived of "real" teaching? They are among the best readers in the class. Figures.

I have no idea what the IRD teacher support staff think about complaints like this one. My teacher supervisor asked me directly: "Are you a homeschool teacher?" Well, yes, but like most homeschool moms, or like moms in general, that's not all I have done my whole life.

It is at these kinds of moments that I have to repress that part of my that wants to list all of my degrees, honors, publications, and my annual income. But it would be dishonorable of me to play that kind of "one-up the Joneses" game. So I just smile and say, "Yes, I'm a real teacher. Yes, I did homeschool my son. And I still miss it."

And that is true.
I still miss it very much.

Been There, Done That. Got the Cartoon.

This cartoon is from the Chicago Tribune, published in 1934. The guy on the ass is Rexford Tugwell, a New Deal agricultural economist. The other people in the wagon are also members of FDR's 'brain trust"--Ivy League social scientists and economists.

The sign on the side of the wagon says: "YOUNG PINKIES FROM COLUMBIA AND HARVARD"

The sign on the back of it says: "DEPLETING THE RESOURCES OF THE SOUNDEST GOVERNMENT IN THE WORLD"

Stalin stands in the right foreground saying: "HOW RED THE SUNRISE IS GETTING" as the Brain Trustees throw bags of money into the mud.

At the bottom left, Karl Marx is seen painting a sign that says:

"PLAN OF ACTION FOR U.S.

________________________

SPEND! SPEND! SPEND

UNDER THE GUISE OF

RECOVERY--BUST THE

GOVERNMENT-- BLAME

THE CAPITALISTS FOR

THE FAILURE--

JUNK THE

CONSTITUTION

AND DECLARE

A

DICTATORSHIP"

To the side, Marx comments: "IT WORKED IN RUSSIA!"

What's that old crack about "those who fail to learn from history . . .?"

Except, at the beginning of the Great Depression, the U.S. government was in the black--thus "the soundest government in the world." This time we are so far in the red that the Pols don't even try to explain how we will repay it. We can't. We're not even SPEND! SPEND! SPENDing our own money.

Just one question. Are we doomed to repeat total war, too?

Edited once for clarity.EHL

Long Warm Days, Short Cool Nights, Early Summer Wildflowers

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

We have come to summer, though the nights are cool, and we have yet to turn on our swamp coolers. On our morning walks, I wear a jacket until the sun comes over the ridge, and then the intesity of the rays soon has it tied around my waist. We are seeing so many wildflowers. Some are new on my list, and some I identified last year but couldn't resist their beauty.


The meadow and the trees, the pale blue horizon deeping into that startling New Mexico blue, all speak of the change of season. Summer has come to the high meadow.

Last year I identified #16. Opuntia polycantha, the prickly pear cactus, but it was not in flower. Now it is, and you can see the resemblance of the Cacti to the rose family.

Near the top of the bank is the lavender flower:

37: Phlox hoodii. Carpet Phlox (a.k.a.

Santa Fe Phlox)

In the gravel beneath is:

38. Trogopodon dubius. Yellow Salsify.

One flower had been in seed the night before,

but the rain washed it away before morning.

In many places in the meadows, we find:
39. Erysium capitatum. Western Wallflower.
It is in the Brassicaceae, the Mustard Family.
It has the spicy smell of a mustard.

Blooming in the lower meadow is:

40. Bahia absinthfolia. Sageleaf Bahia.

I've seen this in April south of T or C, but

never until June does it bloom here!

At the edges of the meadow and among the pinyon and juniper tree, there is:
41: Agastache pallidiflora. Mountain Hyssop (sometimes called Giant Hyssop). This is a member of the mint family. You can see last years talks in the foreground, pale and dried.

The paintbrushes are back! This one, growing beneath

a pinyon, has found a beautiful home. I counted

this last year, this is #18. Castilleja applegatei.

Indian Paintbrush, a member of the snapdragon family,

Scrophulariaceae.

That's all for this week! Late Saturday night, just before midnight, the Summer Solstice will happen in our time zone! We are quickly headed to the longest day of the year!

California Central Valley Farmers' Deal with the Devil

Yesterday I posted an entry about the fight between the farmers and the fish, in which I intended to also discuss the farmer's deal with the devil. However, due to various interruptions (my family expects to be fed at dinner time, as do the animals) and discursions in the text I actually wrote, I didn't do so. To be honest, I found the writing going a certain way and went with it, and as the post had gotten quite long, I thought that another post would be a more suitable way to discuss that aspect of the problem. In the meantime, alert blogger Monica of Spark a Synapse fame wrote an extensive and well-argued comment that you can read here. It was so good, and will keep me so on track that I will be using portions of it.

Monica wrote:
"Cutting off the water supply for a fish is ridiculous, I agree with that part. But the historical and political context here needs to be taken into account as well."

This is very true. As much as I would like to discuss situtations in which one party to the dispute is as pure as the driven snow, it is getting more and more difficult to find them. The farmers in question, and their predecessors are not free-market capitalists who have never taken handouts from the government. Unfortunately out of ignorance or desire to get something for nothing, as people are wont to do when they can, most Americans had made deals with the government devil.

Monica says: "There's no such thing as a free lunch. Or, there is when you deal with the feds. ;)"

Unfortunately for our California farmers, there's no such thing as a free deal with the feds, either. In fact, they have made deals with two devils, the state government (California) and the federal government. Further, they had either not read their Faust, or they forgot that the devil would come calling to collect sooner or later.

The California Aqueduct is a government project that is maintained by the California Department of Water Resources. Because it is a government-run project, rather than a private Acequia Association, demands for the water are apportioned politically, and the costs are born by the taxpayers. From it's inception to the present, the California Aqueduct, the purpose of which is to move water from the Sierras in the north to the dry Central Valley for agriculture, as well as to cities for municipal use, has given very favorable, subsidized rates to farmers and charged municipalities much higher rates, so that the taxpayers pay twice: once for the subsidies and once again for the use of their own water.

The whole issue becomes even more convoluted because the farmers, who own businesses, pay business taxes on their profits to the state, as well as personal income taxes, with the right hand, while taking the subsidies (in the form of water prices far below market value) with the left. And this is all at the state level. When the feds get involved, as they have, by delivering federal money collected from people all over the country to benefit certain sectors of the California economy.

At the same time, the federal government has taken it upon itself to control the use of water in the west, sometimes stripping older, private water associations of their water property rights and giving them carte blanche to local, state and regional governmental agencies that are more easily controlled. The private water cooperative to which Ragamuffin House belongs, and from which we purchase our water, has gone through several name changes and a number of legal maneuvers to purchase and maintain water rights because the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County,, through the Mid-Region Council of Governments, wants to annex our water.

(In general, water law in the Western United States can become quite complicated. The private purchase of land, for example, does not necessarily give the owner the mineral or water rights for these resources on that land. In some locations, a land-owner may be able to collect rainwater that falls on their roofs, but they may not have the groundwater rights to dig wells, for example. To further complicate things, individual states have negotiated treaties with one another about how much water they may use from their rivers that flow into or from other states. These treaties have generally been short-sighted in that they do not take into account recurring weather/climate phenomena like drought).

In California (and the rest of the West), population growth, drought and competing water usage (urban, recreational, agricultural, environmental) have predictably* come together to create the situation the Central Valley is experiencing today. And nobody who uses water is innocent in the matter of accepting government subsidies and handouts; further, individual property owners and Land Grant communities have often been forced to accept governmental authority over their older, more communitarian water arrangements, which worked quite well for the kind of small, regionally commercial farming that was traditional in these parts. (See the article about Acequias, linked above). The concerns of people who farm in small-population states, like New Mexico, are often ignored when the people of larger states, like Texas and California, appropriate property rights by force through the federal government. In New Mexico property rights disputes (including water and mineral rights) also date back to the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, and are not considered resolved in the eyes of the descendents of the original settlers, who are still quite suspicious of the federal government. (For a very interesting fictional treatment of 'colonization' of Northern New Mexico by Texans, and the ensuing water 'wars', see John Nichol's novel, The Milagro-Beanfield War).

(Property deeds here include the ownership history of the land purchased; thus when I received my title search from the title company for my first home in Rio Rancho, the transactions were listed back to the original Black's Arroyo Landgrant documented by King Philip of Spain in the 1500s. The title for this house was much the same, going back to the Sedillo Land Grant in the 1600s).

So the California farmers are not innocent. At the same time, I do have more sympathy for them than Monica does, because I suspect that although they are not innocent, in some cases, they were likely forced to make deals with the devil against their better judgement in order to continue farming or hold onto their land. Some of them--especially those whose land and orchards had been in the family for generations--were likely forced to give up their ground-water rights at the point of a government gun.

There are other concerns, as well. Food security is going to become a larger issue in the United States because the productivity of farms has been squandered by nearly a century of federal meddling (going back to the New Deal), that has been destructive to the initiative and independence of American farmers. (McLean County, Illinois, where I hale from, is an exception because most of the farmers there owned their land outright before the New Deal. But Iowa was nearly destroyed by FDR's policies. My children's great-grandfather, born on an Iowa farm, and died in 2000 at the ripe old age of 110, never got over his hatred of that president and his destructive policies).

I am not sure I can forsee a good solution to these problems. Any solution is going to require painful accomodations to reality. The State of California has some of the most meddlesome and restrictive environmental regulation in the United States. It is said that the California state government even wants to determine the size of citizen's big-screen television sets. (I'm not sure if that's really a joke!). Due to repressive government and increasingly burdensome taxation, wealth is fleeing that state at an unprecendented rate, and property is becoming usalable due to unrealistic values. California is on the verge of total financial collapse.

I think it would be a good start for California to assert the 10th Amendment and get the feds out of the water picture. I am, however, very uncertain of the legalities involved. But if this could be done, then the next step would be to privatize the California Aqueduct. Perhaps with modifications for size, the Acequia and/or Water Association models would work for California. This would likely mean that farmers in the Central Valley would have to change the types of crops they grow, and how they use their water. Municipalities would also be charging more for water, and people would have to forgo frequent showers, green lawns and lush golf-courses, or pay more for these amenities (Those of us in the Inter-Mountain West have considered Californians spoiled and privileged by federal favoritism for some time; thus the ubiquitous bumper stickers: Don't Californicate _____ [name of mountain state]). Clearly, government has some role in these water issues, if only to adjudicate a process of transferring water rights into private hands and then adjudicating disputes in the future.

If water rights were in the hands of private associations, I don't think there would be any nonsense about diverting water from productive use for the (dubious) benefit of a fish.

California's Central Valley: Don't Let That Desert Bloom!

Hang onto your hats, folks, this story could be right out of Atlas Shrugged!

Today as I was shelving books in my Guest Room/Library, I heard a short news item on a local AM station from Albuquerque about a protest along I-5 in California's Central Valley. Evidently, some farmers had driven their tractors onto the the freeway near Fresno, and although they were in the slow lane only, it caused an accident. This is what the Fresno Fox station is reporting, but the real story is not about the accident, it's about why the farmers were driving their tractors onto the freeway at all. It was a water protest.
To understand it all, indulge me with a digression about the Great Central Valley itself, and its current problems.

I will start with a paragraph from my August 2007 Travelogue about the Central Valley:

"California's Central Valley is a geological wonder of the world. The Central Valley is a great sliver of oceanic crust that got stuck in the Sierran Subduction Zone, stopping the conveyor of ocean crust under the continent in that place, and causing subduction to begin further west, at the Franciscan Subduction Zone. On that stuck piece of oceanic bedrock, alluvium from the Sierras and river sediments have formed an amazing flat, fertile valley that stretches several hundred miles from the Tehachipi mountains in the south, to the rise of the Klamath north of Redding, California. It is incredible in it's flatness, it's immensity and fertility. Although there is not much to see geologically speaking, just alluvial fans here and there, and some stray volcanoes near Colusa, it is still impressive in a way that words cannot describe."

But the Central Valley, running between the Sierras, and fault blocks to the east and the Coast Range to the west, has no large natural rivers that run through it south of Sacramento. The Sacramento River enters the Central Valley near Redding, but flows west of Sacramento, joining the waters of the San Joaquin River to create a great delta at Suisun Bay, which is a northern extension of San Francisco Bay.


In order to make the Central Valley fertile south of Sacramento, water is pumped across the hills south of Sacramento, and then flows or is pumped through a series of canals and irrigation ditches down to Tehachipi, nearly 300 miles south. The picture to the left shows a pumping station south of Stockton.

This is an amazing feat of engineering that has made the Central Valley one of the great food producing places in the west, supplying the United States with much of its vegetables, fruit and nuts.







During the past three years, there has been a great drought in the Central Valley, making the farmers and the farm workers there more dependent than ever on the flow of water coming out of the north.

In the summer of 2007, when we drove through, the drought was in it's second summer, and dust storms like this one we drove through near between I-5 and Bakersfield, had become increasingly common. A desert dweller myself, I had still never seen a sight quite like this, because instead of sand, the dust-storm was made up of the fine soil fractions, coming from the silts and topsoils of the Central Valley.




In what some are calling an agricultural disaster on par with that of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, unemployment has grown to 20 - 50% in the Central Valley. People there are experiencing true misery and hardship.

But the final blow to the business of the fields and orchards is not the drought. They were hanging on and making do. And it was not the economic crisis, though that hurt.

The final blow is something that has so rarely made the national news that most Americans are not aware of it.

The final blow to agriculture in the Central Valley is the federal government. First, the pumps were shut down in 2007 for the Delta Smelt, a minnow that has been listed as endangered or threatened. It is endemic to the San Joaquin - Sacramento River Delta, and Federal Judge ruled that the water for agriculture in the Central Valley had to be released in Suisun Bay instead. However, there are differences of opinion about whether the threat to the fish has been overstated, and whether or not it is the water taken for agriculture that is responsible. There has also been some question about whether the Delta Smelt continues to have a unique genome, or if the population has interbred with other common minnows.

In February of this year, the people of the Central Valley were informed that they would receive zero water allocation for the season and that pumping would remain closed down. This means that there is no water to grow the crops, a loss of 60,000 jobs. The people of the Central Valley understand this to mean that in the eyes of federal government, they are not as important as a tiny minnow that looks exactly like the minnows they use for bait.

As a biologist, I believe that biological diversity is important. However, I have never thought it should be or even could be protected by laws, however well meaning, that pit the economies of whole states and countries against a single species. I also wonder whether or not the earth is losing biological diversity at the high rate that is bandied about. Where did the number come from? Does it take into account the fact that there are a myriad of species never identified? Or that species do adapt to changing environments? In fact, this last is the hallmark of evolution.

And as I have spent this evening looking into this story, I can't help but remember Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. In it she describes the destruction of whole regional economies due to the political considerations of a few self-righteous individuals. One segment tells of the food insecurity that burdened the whole nation brought on by a manufactured famine. It was different in the particulars than this one about to take place in California, but the results will be the same:

"The wads of worthless paper money were growing heavier in the pockets of the nation, but there was less and less for that money to buy. In September, a bushel of wheat had cost eleven dollars; it had cost thirty dollars in November; it had cost one hundred in December . . . while the printing presses of the government treasury were running a race with starvation and losing. " (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Centennial Edition, p. 1082).

This is exactly what will happen to food prices in this nation as a result of the insane farm and environmental policies of this government.

Ms. Rand's novel was prescient not because the author was a fortune teller, but because she could see clearly what happens to people when they place no value on their own lives. What is happening in California now is the result of a federal government out of control; one that exists not to " . . . establish justice, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty . . .", but rather exists to aggrandize its own power through political gamesmanship that can only end in tragedy for the productive people who are forced to give up their livelihoods at the behest of a looting politician.

A few things to ponder from an evolutionary biologist:

1. In the natural world, it makes no evolutionary sense for an individual to do anything for "the good of the species." What benefits the species is for individuals to maximize their individual fitness (differential reproduction), thus increasing diversity in the gene pool. However, individuals do not consciously choose this, rather they live their lives using the tools provided by their own natures, equisitely adapted and adapting to the niches the species fills, in order to benefit themselves and their offspring, who will propel their genes into the future.

2. It makes even less sense--if that is logically possible--for individual members of a species to decrease their own fitness for the supposed benefit of another, as the federal government is forcing the farming people of California's Central Valley to do.

There are good evolutionary reasons why human beings ought to value their own lives highest, then the lives of their close genetic relatives, and then lives other humans, above those of other species.

And human beings are unique in that our large and complex brains, which betray a unique evolutionary heritage, stand us alone among all the species on the earth. We are capable of reason, and we understand our own mortality. This is our gift, taken from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, to cite metaphor. This makes us uniquely responsible for our choices.

I have had a very difficult time understanding the real agenda behind political environmentalism, just as I have had a hard time understanding that there are people within our government who do not value human existence. But now I understand that both of them have the same agenda. Neither value their own lives so much as they value temporary power, unearned adulation, and total control over others. It is becoming clear to me that they'd rather die than give that up. And they'll die happy if they take the rest of us with them.

In the meantime, brace yourselves. California is about to be hit with the perfect storm. A man-made agricultural disaster and financial default. If the adage is true that as goes California, so goes the nation, then there are rough waters ahead.

NOTE: Below is a You-Tube Video from the California Farm Bureau Federation. If you go to the You-Tube site you will find all of the information you have probably not heard on the news. These farmers are not asking for a bail-out. They only want to use the water from one of the most ingeneous engineering projects of all time to feed the rest of us the food to which we have become accustomed to buying at decent prices.