Search Results for: to win the war

For the past several years, the summer months bring hot weather, fires and brownouts and blackouts.  Sadly, the limited electricity is also very expensive and in California no longer reliable.

“CA has adopted a bold energy suicide plan that will earn it a place alongside Venezuela. If CA stays on its current energy trajectory, many businesses will close or move out of state in the next 20 years. People will flee, and the real estate market will crash.

CA residents who can’t leave will face higher taxes, power rationing, and limited access to clean water. Weekly blackouts will likely force households and businesses to pay two electric bills: one to the utility, and another to black-market syndicates that operate diesel-fired generators.

Supporters of CA’s plan complain that it’s unfair to honor CA with a Darwin Award for an imagined future that hasn’t yet (and might not) come to pass. But Californians don’t have to wait 20 years to feel the pain. They’re feeling it now.”

One of the reasons families and businesses are leaving the State is the cost and unreliability of energy.  The last nuclear power plant is abput to be closed in the State—providing us with 10% of our needed electricity.  Of course, Newsom and the Democrats do not have a replacement for this 10%–so shortly we will have more regular blackouts and brownouts.  Newson is a textbook Luddite.

California Is Gearing Up to Win a Darwin Award

By Brian Gitt, Real Clear Energy,  4/27/22 

Utopian energy fantasies are turning California (CA) into a dystopian nightmare. CA’s energy policies amount to a bold suicide plan worthy of a collective Darwin award. 

Traditional Darwin Awards honor people who improve the human gene pool by unintentionally removing themselves from it—like the guy who fatally attempted DIY bungee jumping from a bridge shorter than his bungee cord.

I propose another category of Darwin Awards for entire groups of people (teams, companies, countries…) whose foolish behavior curtails their existence. Examples include Enron, Venezuela, and the former Soviet Union.

Venezuela, for instance, enacted policies that killed its economy. It went from being one of the world’s richest oil economies to being an economic and political wasteland with 77% of its population living in extreme poverty.

CA has adopted a bold energy suicide plan that will earn it a place alongside Venezuela. If CA stays on its current energy trajectory, many businesses will close or move out of state in the next 20 years. People will flee, and the real estate market will crash.

CA residents who can’t leave will face higher taxes, power rationing, and limited access to clean water. Weekly blackouts will likely force households and businesses to pay two electric bills: one to the utility, and another to black-market syndicates that operate diesel-fired generators.

Supporters of CA’s plan complain that it’s unfair to honor CA with a Darwin Award for an imagined future that hasn’t yet (and might not) come to pass. But Californians don’t have to wait 20 years to feel the pain. They’re feeling it now.

CA has the highest poverty rate in America, and rising energy cost is a growing part of the problem. From 2010 to 2020, CA’s electricity rates rose almost seven times faster than the US average. Over 3.3 million CA households have past-due utility bills that together total $1.2 billion.

CA’s decision to shift energy production to solar and wind has made energy prices soar and increased the fragility of its electrical grid. The unreliability of solar and wind power was among the three primary factors causing CA’s blackouts in 2020.

Things are going to get worse. CA leaders decided to prematurely shut down Diablo Canyon–the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant—even though nuclear power is the safest, most powerful, and most reliable way to generate low-emissions electricity.

Diablo Canyon accounts for nearly 10% of CA’s electricity production. Its 2025 shutdown will leave a gaping hole in CA’s baseload power. Policymakers hope to fill the hole with a mix of solar, wind, and batteries. But that hope is unrealistic for five reasons.

1. Solar and wind are unreliable. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.
2. Batteries cost too much. CA has only 3% of the battery storage it needs to replace 280 gigawatt-hours/day of natural gas during the summer. CA’s policies depend on a technological miracle to produce cheaper batteries.

 Using batteries to back up solar farms doubles the number of solar panels required. 

You need one set of panels to supply power to the grid while the sun is up, and another to charge batteries for when the sun goes down.

• CA can’t build transmission lines fast enough to meet its mandate of 100% renewable power by 2045. Current grid capacity needs to almost triple in size, but Californians fiercely oppose constructing power lines, which makes building them practically impossible.
• The cost of converting the grid to run on solar, wind, and batteries is $500B to $1T. Households will face a hard choice between paying thousands of dollars a month for electricity or suffering energy poverty.

On top of all that, CA’s electric grid wasn’t designed to charge millions of electric vehicles. 

But the state will require nearly 1 million new cars and passenger trucks sold in CA each year to be zero-emission by 2035.

More than 50 CA cities and counties have adopted building codes to restrict natural gas. Banning natural gas and attempting to electrify everything concentrates energy risks on the grid–a grid that wasn’t designed to shoulder the additional load now carried by natural gas during the winter.

CA currently imports about 28% of its electricity from other states. On hot days, the neighboring states will need the energy themselves, so CA will be forced to cut power to homes and businesses.

Expensive energy also means expensive water. Nearly 20% of CA’s electricity use goes to pump and treat water. Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley won’t be able to afford to irrigate their crops. CA will go from being the breadbasket of the world to importing most of its food. 

CA’s energy policy is supposed to be a model for the world. It is. It’s a model of what not to do. CA’s energy policies all but guarantee high energy prices, power blackouts, and a crashing economy. These policies are why CA truly deserves a Darwin Award. Every day spent chasing energy fantasies causes unnecessary suffering.

What CA Needs To Do:

• Renew licenses for Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant 
• End subsidies and incentives for solar and wind
• Build new efficient natural gas power plants (and hydro and geothermal where possible)
• Reform regulations and build nuclear power plants
• Invest in energy R&D

If CA takes these steps, it can avoid disaster.

Modesto is a wonderful, quiet, but growing community.  Housing, until recently was comparatively cheap versus the rest of California.  Now that San Fran is closing down, people can work remotely instead of going to an office, the city has experienced a housing boom—pricing out locals who want to stay in town.

“In Modesto, the housing inventory has been shorting by over 1,000 units a year since the recession, said Daniel Del Real, a broker associate with PMZ Real Estate.

Add to that a nationwide rise in lumber and construction costs, which in turn increases selling prices even further, and homeownership for couples like Jones and her fiancé looks increasingly out of reach. For a young couple on a budget of roughly $250,000 to $300,000, securing a house in a market where the median sales prices routinely exceed $400,000 is a challenge.

“We need to find the right house for us and something that we’re comfortable in, rather than getting stuck in something that we can’t afford later on down the road,” she said.

While this story is about Modesto, the price of homes in San Diego has risen 25% in just the past year.  California has become totally unaffordable.

An unwinnable bidding war: How Modesto’s housing crisis prices out would-be homebuyers

By Kristina Karisch, Modesto Bee,  7/22/21

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For Tiffiny Jones and her fiance, the past few months have been marked by milestones. The couple is expecting their first child in the next few weeks, and they’ve been looking to buy their first home together.

But months of house-hunting have proved frustrating: With high prices and even higher demand, finding a home in or around Modesto feels like an impossible task. After scouring homes online for months and attending showings, only to see multiple offers on properties that went well above the asking price, Jones and her fiance have put their dream on the back burner.

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 “There’s not a lot of three-bedroom houses available,” she said. “The housing markets are not where they were a few years ago.”

Jones and her fiance’s experience is mirrored by many individuals and families in Modesto and across the country. A nationwide inventory shortage has sent housing prices skyrocketing, and the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a surge of movement from higher- to lower-priced regions as people look for houses with more space to raise their families.

According to a recent FreddieMac report, the U.S. had a housing supply deficit of 3.8 million units as of the fourth quarter of 2020. Between 2018 and 2020, the housing stock deficit increased by approximately 52%, the report found.

In Modesto, the housing inventory has been shorting by over 1,000 units a year since the recession, said Daniel Del Real, a broker associate with PMZ Real Estate.

Add to that a nationwide rise in lumber and construction costs, which in turn increases selling prices even further, and homeownership for couples like Jones and her fiance looks increasingly out of reach. For a young couple on a budget of roughly $250,000 to $300,000, securing a house in a market where the median sales prices routinely exceed $400,000 is a challenge.

“We need to find the right house for us and something that we’re comfortable in, rather than getting stuck in something that we can’t afford later on down the road,” she said.

In June, the median home prices in both Stanislaus County and Modesto reached over $400,000. Across the county, the median selling price for homes was $429,000, with a median price in Modesto at $415,000, according to data from TrendVision.

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For Del Real, these conditions spell out an uncertain future for Modesto and the Central Valley.

“If we maintain the status quo, you’re going to see an exodus of young people,” he said. “We’re going to lose residents to cities … that streamline the process and make it happen. They’re just going to go down the street.”

A crisis a decade in the making

In the Central Valley, the 2008 financial crisis decimated the housing market. California was among the states most heavily hit by the housing bubble — precipitated by mass mortgage lending, dubious subprime operations and ballooning home values.

California’s housing prices suffered their fastest and steepest fall in 25 years in 2007, sinking 6.6% in a year.

Locally, home prices dropped more than 15% in 2007 in the areas of Merced, Modesto and Stockton, marking, according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California, “the largest one‐year decline of any California metro area in at least 30 years.” These declines reversed some of the pre-crash gains in home prices.

The ensuing recession hit the Central Valley especially hard. The financial crisis caused the local unemployment rate — which is normally above average compared to the rest of the state — to skyrocket. Modesto hit joblessness rates of over 17% during the recession, and the city, along with Stockton and Fresno, ranked among the top 10 “weakest performing” metro regions nationwide.

At the same time, construction nearly stopped.

In Modesto, housing permits fell 63% from 2004 to 2007, according to the PPIC report.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Modesto was issuing between 400 and 1,800 permits annually, with a spike around the turn of the millennium, according to city data.

In 2006, the city issued 415 housing permits; in 2007, the number went up to 574. By 2008, only 113 permits were issued citywide, and the numbers dropped into the double digits by 2009. It took until 2016, over half a decade later, for Modesto to once again issue over 100 permits.

In 2020, the city awarded 224.

This decade-long pause in construction has taken its toll on the region. Del Real estimates the city is short over 11,000 housing units, and with the current rate of development, it’s nowhere close to being able to fill the gap.

New homes are quickly being bought at The Trails in the Village One neighborhood in Modesto, Calif., on Friday, July 16, 2021. Andy Alfaro aalfaro@modbee.com

New plans to revitalize old processes

Jessica Hill, Modesto’s community development manager, said the city is reevaluating its housing priorities as it works to update its general plan, or long-term outlook for the city.

Modesto is bringing on a consultant firm to look into city processes and assess opportunities to streamline development and help facilitate housing affordability.

According to the proposal, the general plan will address key issues such as expanding Modesto’s economic base, clarifying future growth areas and implementing the city’s recent downtown master plan, among others. Hill said the plan will serve as a “roadmap for us to really look at how we can improve our internal processes and how we can be proactive in different policy decisions that are coming down on the federal and state level.”

“We do recognize we’re constrained right now by the current boundaries of the city of Modesto and we understand that we still want to research and find different growth areas,” she said.

This overhaul of the general plan will allow Modesto to re-prioritize what kind of housing is developed, said Councilman Chris Ricci, because the current plans and goals have been in place for years.

Current projects in the pipeline tend toward sprawling developments of single-family homes, he said, which don’t always fit the community’s housing needs.

“These things have been planned over many decades, and so they reflect the values of the decades in which they were created,” Ricci said. “That filters all the way down from the plan to the planning commission to the developers, so that even the projects we’re working on today reflect that vision.”

The recession, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, have fundamentally changed housing needs. With work from home at an all-time high and thousands looking for more affordable, larger homes for their families, Modesto is seeing an influx of transplants from other parts of the state — largely the Bay Area and Sacramento.

Michael Zagaris, the president of PMZ Real Estate, said this pattern creates “a conflict in which a lot of the local people are being priced out of housing by the people from the Bay Area. It’s a cascade effect.”

Bay Area buyers bring with them more purchasing power, and low interest rates are allowing buyers to access homes that would otherwise be out of their price ranges. With a lack of supply, homes can attract multiple offers in a matter of hours once they’re on the market, and most come in above the asking price.

But Modesto, which along with other Central Valley towns has historically served as a commuter city for Bay Area workers, won’t necessarily serve that function forever.

Ricci said priorities for development need to shift away from serving “cities that work great with single-family homes” where “you get in your car and you drive to work 100 miles away.”

That model is ending, and cities need to focus more on affordability and livability, as well as adaptability to new types of housing. Ricci is a proponent of infill development — or rezoning and developing land already within a city’s boundaries — and mixed-use development, “places where you can have retail, residential and office kind of together, working together to create more livable spaces.”

New housing development will be built along Oakdale Road with the northern boundary being Claratina Avenue in Modesto, Calif., on Friday, July 16, 2021. Andy Alfaro aalfaro@modbee.com

‘A political and legal quagmire’

Even with plans for new types of development, those being built right now are facing their own challenges.

In Modesto, both the recession, as well as complicated rules and regulations regarding the drawn-out process of entitlement — annexing and preparing land for development — have come together to create a pipeline issue. Zagaris said this makes the housing crisis in Modesto worse “than in most other parts of the country.”

“In terms of the supply of entitled land, it is a political and legal quagmire we have here that is not going to go away,” he said. “It is so challenging that many folks who own land in what is called the ‘path of growth’ in Modesto … have decided we’re not going to pursue this.”

Jaylen French, Modesto’s economic development director, said that in terms of overhead costs, developing new land is always risky for a city. Since entitled land needs to be fitted with sewer lines, sidewalks and other utilities — which then have to be maintained in perpetuity — embarking on a large-scale development typically results in a “net negative” for a city’s budget.

“You don’t typically see (city) incentives for residential (development),” French said. “What the city would want to do is make the process as streamlined as possible, as easy as possible.”

Zagaris and PMZ are in the process of developing Tivoli, a roughly 454-acre proposed mix of homes, stores, offices, an elementary school and parkland.

The project has been in development for over a decade. When the City Council approved the development in 2008, plans included as many as 3,193 new homes ranging in size from apartments and condominiums to regular houses and small estates.

Twelve years later, Tivoli has yet to break ground.

Zagaris said he expects the project — alongside Village One in Modesto — to be among the last large-scale development projects in the city. He said fellow developers are wary of investing in projects that could take over a decade to complete and that run risks of complications in every step of the process.

Without any significant changes, Zagaris said he doesn’t “think we’re going to solve the imbalance between the needs of the families in the area and the supply, ever.”

For Zagaris, Tivoli will be the last large project in a decades-long career in Modesto. He’s in his 70s now and no longer interested in the prospect of embarking on another 10- or 15-year development process.

“I don’t want to be 95 years old when the next neighborhood happens,” he said.

Joe Biden has made it clear—elect him on November 3 or November 4 will see an all out fighting Civil War.  Even the Washington Post is using its newspaper to promote “IT IS BIDEN OR WAR theory.  They want us to be bullied into voting for someone that just a couple of days ago begged a racist, Jew hating, Jacob Blake Sr.

“The op-ed, titled “What’s the worst that could happen?” is written by Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University. In it, Brooks notes that the Transition Integrity Project, which she co-founded, “built a series of war games,” gathered participants “and asked them to imagine what they’d do in a range of election and transition scenarios.”

“A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis,” according to Brooks.

This is how Venezuela was lost to freedom—the threat of civil war.  Now the people are in massive poverty and enslaved.  That is what Joe Biden wants for us.   Say NO to Biden, say NO to violence.  Say NO to Democrats.

Washington Post Op-Ed Suggests Americans May Need To Prepare For War On Election Night If Biden Doesn’t Win In A Landslide

Shelby Talcott, Daily Caller,   9/3/20   

A Washington Post op-ed published Thursday suggested Americans should prepare for war if the election result is anything but a landslide for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The op-ed, titled “What’s the worst that could happen?” is written by Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University. In it, Brooks notes that the Transition Integrity Project, which she co-founded, “built a series of war games,” gathered participants “and asked them to imagine what they’d do in a range of election and transition scenarios.”

“A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis,” according to Brooks.

The op-ed goes into detail regarding “four scenarios experts consider most likely” in terms of the 2020 election.

“We explored the four scenarios experts consider most likely: a narrow Biden win; a big Biden win, with a decisive lead in both the electoral college and the popular vote; a Trump win with an electoral college lead but a large popular-vote loss, as in 2016; and finally, a period of extended uncertainty as we saw in the 2000 election,” Brooks wrote.

Since asking Biden and President Donald Trump was not possible, the project relied on “participants with similar backgrounds.” Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson and and conservative commentator Bill Kristol were among those on the GOP side. All have been described as “never Trump” or “not Trump Republicans,” the Boston Globe reported.

“In each scenario, Team Trump — the players assigned to simulate the Trump campaign and its elected and appointed allies — was ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate, and Team Biden struggled to get out of reaction mode,” according to Brooks.

Each exercise resulted in both Democrat and Republican participants calling for “supporters to take to the streets,” the op-ed continued.

“Team Biden repeatedly called for peaceful protests, while Team Trump encouraged provocateurs to incite violence, then used the resulting chaos to justify sending federalized Guard units or active-duty military personnel into American cities to ‘restore order,’ leading to still more violence. (The exercises underscored the tremendous power enjoyed by an incumbent president: Biden can call a news conference, but Trump can call in the 82nd Airborne,)” Brooks wrote.

According to the op-ed, despite noting that the “war games” largely resulted in mass violence and chaos, it “doesn’t predict the future.” Brooks finished by laying out ways to prevent an apparent upcoming war, from protecting the electoral process to military powers preparing for a “possibility that politicians will seek to manipulate or misuse their coercive powers.”

“Mass mobilization is no guarantee that our democracy will survive — but if things go as badly as our exercises suggest they might, a sustained, nonviolent protest movement may be America’s best and final hope,” Brooks wrote.

The Hollywood melt down may be complete.  Jamie Leigh Curtis, famous for her sexy/non sex characters in the movies believes the Republican Party is going to hijack Post Office trucks, to steal the absentee ballots so they can not be counted.  What is she smoking?  Has her therapist signed off on allowing her to be outside an institution?  President Trump is wrong.  We do not need a fence along our U.S. Mexican borders.

Instead he needs a fence around Hollywood, to prevent the mental disease from spreading to legitimate society.  There are so many mental cases—on the streets and in the movie studios, that like he stopped travel from China to protect us, he needs to do the same to Hollywood.

““I swear, in broad daylight, the driver of the red truck had a red cap on with white letters,” she tweeted nearly 560,000 fans while attaching an image of a damaged USPS vehicle. “Conspiracy? Outright attempt at stealing the election by denying the access of the @USPS ? Let’s not let it happen! @JoeBiden.”

Ms. Curtis, an ardent supporter of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s campaign, faced immediate backlash. 

Some responses include: 

• Nick Searcy: “These Democrats have lost their minds.”
• Jason Rantz: “Jamie Lee Curtis is absolutely, ridiculously insane. Just completely and utterly insane.”
• Cameron Gray: “Is this what eating too much @Activia does to one’s brain?”
• Frank Hart: “One of the most revealing and disappointing things about Twitter is learning how many actors I once liked are completely insane.”

Does Activa eat your brain?  Maybe that is what happened to Curtis.  Bottom line, she is a sick person—needs help.

Jamie Lee Curtis warns of Trump fans stealing mail trucks to win 2020: ‘Let’s not let it happen!’

By Douglas Ernst – The Washington Times, 8/12/20   

Celebrity activist Jamie Lee Curtis says she’s worried that President Trump’s supporters may steal the 2020 election by making off with United States Postal Service trucks. 

The “Halloween” star left Twitter users confused on Tuesday after peddling a conspiracy theory of enormous size and scope. 

“I swear, in broad daylight, the driver of the red truck had a red cap on with white letters,” she tweeted nearly 560,000 fans while attaching an image of a damaged USPS vehicle. “Conspiracy? Outright attempt at stealing the election by denying the access of the @USPS ? Let’s not let it happen! @JoeBiden.”

Ms. Curtis, an ardent supporter of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s campaign, faced immediate backlash. 

Some responses include: 

• Nick Searcy: “These Democrats have lost their minds.”
• Jason Rantz: “Jamie Lee Curtis is absolutely, ridiculously insane. Just completely and utterly insane.”
• Cameron Gray: “Is this what eating too much @Activia does to one’s brain?”
• Frank Hart: “One of the most revealing and disappointing things about Twitter is learning how many actors I once liked are completely insane.”

The actress’ comment came against a political backdrop in which Mr. Trump has threatened to sue over a hastily made vote-by-mail bill crafted during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Mr. Trump blasted the Nevada bill as an “illegal late-night coup” attempt by Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat. 

The president, however, defended Florida’s vote-by-mail efforts because its system has been successfully tested.

“Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True,” Mr. Trump tweeted Aug. 4. “Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail!”

I swear, in broad daylight, the driver of the red truck had a red cap on with white letters. Conspiracy? Outright attempt at stealing the election by denying the access of the @USPS ? Let’s not let it happen! @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/gG765Caldm

— Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) August 11, 2020

If a person who closed down Hollywood Blvd Saturday night, or the Bay Bridge over the weekend, how do the tracers/trackers find all those people?  Plus these folks have already shown a disregard for government, rules and the laws—think any of them would be willing to be isolated for two weeks by government?  The hiring of tracers/trackers is not for health purposes—remember they did not do that with the AIDS epidemic.  No this is about more taxes and bigger government.

“County health officials across the nation say they are encountering anger, hostility, and mistrust from the public that could upend reopening efforts and hasten the spread of coronavirus.

We’ve already seen this phenomenon play out with health officers like Orange County’s Dr. Nichole Quick and Ohio’s Dr. Amy Acton. Both resigned amid rising pressure—even physical threats—from members of the public. Quick and Acton were targeted over face masks and stay-at-home orders. But as states reopen, local officials are encountering the same hostility against contact tracing too.

Okanogan, Washington Community Health Director Lauri Jones had to get security cameras installed at her home after threats against her began circulating online. They were kicked off by her attempt to contact a coronavirus patient and advise them to self-isolate for 14 days per CDC guidelines.

In this climate you would need a police officer to go with each tracer/tracker—but that could be construed as being racist—plus cops are quitting.  Send a social worker with each privacy invader—see how long that lasts.  This is just another pretend effort to make believe government is doing something.

Growing Animus Toward Contact Tracing Puts Local Health Officials and the Public at Risk

California County News, 06/15/2020  

County health officials across the nation say they are encountering anger, hostility, and mistrust from the public that could upend reopening efforts and hasten the spread of coronavirus.

We’ve already seen this phenomenon play out with health officers like Orange County’s Dr. Nichole Quick and Ohio’s Dr. Amy Acton. Both resigned amid rising pressure—even physical threats—from members of the public. Quick and Acton were targeted over face masks and stay-at-home orders. But as states reopen, local officials are encountering the same hostility against contact tracing too.

Okanogan, Washington Community Health Director Lauri Jones had to get security cameras installed at her home after threats against her began circulating online. They were kicked off by her attempt to contact a coronavirus patient and advise them to self-isolate for 14 days per CDC guidelines.

“The accusations started flying, that we were spying [on that family], that we had put them under house arrest,” Jones told NPR. “It got totally twisted and people thought we violated their civil liberties.”

Theresa Anselmo, Executive Director of the Colorado Association of Local Public Health Officials, said 70% of her members have received threats and several local health directors in the state have resigned.

Contact tracing efforts will increase as states fully reopen. Experts say those efforts are key to returning to some sense of normalcy. With social media, conspiracy theorists, and some right wing news outlets fanning the flames, health officials worry the mistrust and hostility could get much worse. If it gets bad enough, those tasked with preventing the spread of the virus could lose one of their strongest tools.

Go to a gas station and you are told you will get cancer, due to a Prop. 65 warning sign.  Go to most office buildings, you will see the same sign.  Buy wine, you will see the sign.  No facts behind the sign—it is just the law—everything causes cancer, hence a sign to buy nothing, eat nothing, use nothing and go nowhere—otherwise you will die of cancer.  Of course, this is just a money maker for government—to fine those that do not put up such a sign.  Until Starbucks fought back—laughed at the silly joke and said NO.  Now, the government agency will re-consider claiming coffee causes cancer.

Years ago alar caused the killing of the apple crop in numerous States.  That it caused cancer was a lie—but cost billions to the public and businesses.  The DDT pesticide scam by Rachel Carson cost a lot of money and millions of African lives—was she a racist or just ignorant?  Either way people died thanks to her scam.  Now California has Prop. 65 signs everywhere and most people totally ignore them—many do not even see them any more.

“As for how the Prop. 65 warnings have changed? The original notices simply declared that a chemical known to cause cancer or reproductive harm was present in a product. Among other things, the new warnings must state that a product can “expose” consumers to harmful chemicals, name at least one of the chemicals, include a triangular yellow alarm symbol, and refer to additional and detailed information on a website maintained by the proposition’s administering agency, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Those warnings can apply to almost anything—fuels and solvents and coffee, of course, but also high-end fashion accessories, jewelry, furniture and cosmetics.

I bet Gavin Newsom still goes into government buildings with the Prop. 65 warning sign.  I venture that radicals like Pelosi, Harris and Feinstein have not changed their activities due to these signs.  In reality, this is about the growth of government, union jobs and government revenues—almost nothing to do with the health of Californians.

Online wine yes, coffee no: Scrambling to keep up with California’s new Prop. 65 toxic warnings

By Glen Martin, CalMatters,  3/22/19

Cancer with your caffeine?  Judging from the bleary-eyed java addicts queued up every morning at California’s 2,800 Starbucks, it’s a non-issue. Most folks don’t even notice the signs warning that the coffee and pastries contain acrylamide, a carcinogenic chemical produced when the beans are roasted and the croissants are baked.

And even those who do read those advisories ignore them, calculating that some things—well, that first morning cup of coffee, anyway—are worth the risks.

After all, California is studded with those warning signs. You see them at gas stations, bars, even Disneyland. Their omnipresence is dictated by Proposition 65, the 33-year-old voter-approved initiative that requires businesses to post warnings on products containing dangerous compounds.

In recent months, the state has opted to require “new and improved” warnings with more details, and to apply them to something that didn’t even exist when Prop. 65 first took effect: online markets.

The new rules also expand responsibility for the warnings to the entire “supply chain” associated with a product, from manufacturer to distributor to retailer.

As a result, visits to the state’s Prop. 65 website have skyrocketed—both from businesses and from the citizen “bounty hunters” who can make money by spotting and reporting violators.

But even as the measure has expanded to cover, say, online wine sales and marijuana dispensaries, it has run aground on the coffee warnings. After much pushback and debate about the potential health benefits of java, the state regulatory agency that oversees the proposition has a pending rule making the warnings unnecessary where coffee beans and brew are sold.

As for how the Prop. 65 warnings have changed? The original notices simply declared that a chemical known to cause cancer or reproductive harm was present in a product. Among other things, the new warnings must state that a product can “expose” consumers to harmful chemicals, name at least one of the chemicals, include a triangular yellow alarm symbol, and refer to additional and detailed information on a website maintained by the proposition’s administering agency, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Those warnings can apply to almost anything—fuels and solvents and coffee, of course, but also high-end fashion accessories, jewelry, furniture and cosmetics.

By 2018, Proposition 65 was noteworthy for two things: the ubiquity of the warnings and the general indifference of the public when confronted with them. It was unthinkable, for example, that anyone who needed a fill-up would run screeching from a gas station simply because there was a sign about carcinogenic chemicals positioned over the pump.

But the amendments seem to have spurned renewed interest in the regulation. They were adopted after a UC Davis researchers interviewed more than 1,500 people at DMV offices and found that more than 75 percent preferred the new proposed warnings over the old ones, and 66 percent supported warnings that specifically named a toxic chemical.

“During June 2018, before the new warnings took effect, the site had 107,000 users, 132,000 sessions and 348,000 page views,” said Sam Delson, OEHHA’s deputy director for external and legislative affairs. “During the peak shopping period from November 17, 2018 to December 16 2018, traffic surged to 874,000 users, 920,000 sessions and 1,573,000 page views.”

Many of the visits were from businesses looking for details on compliance, he said. Proposition 65 doesn’t directly punish manufacturers or retailers for hawking products that contain dangerous chemicals above state-decreed thresholds. As long as businesses comply with the warnings, they can sell most wares. But executives abhor the thought of warning labels appended to their high-gloss lipsticks or coffee tables—so much so that they often reformulate their products so a warning isn’t needed.

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Other inquiries came from another group: bounty hunters, or “citizen enforcers” In Prop 65-speak. It turns out there’s money in them thar toxics. The proposition allows private citizens to sue manufacturers, distributors or retailers of non-compliant products and keep a portion of any settlements or fines.

Bounty hunters typically buy products that don’t have any warnings, pay a lab to test them for listed chemicals, then serve the purveyor with a 60-day notice if the items are not in compliance.  Such a notice gives local district attorneys or the state attorney general the option of pursuing the case.  Except in very rare and highly publicized cases, however, prosecutors pass due to heavy workloads. The citizen enforcer can then sue, presenting the business with the choice of a court fight or settlement. And in the vast majority of cases, businesses opt for settling, says John J. Allen, a partner with Allen Matkins Leck Gamble Mallory & Natsis, a Los Angeles-based law firm that defends plaintiffs in Proposition 65 cases.

“Unless there’s an absolute necessity to fight, it’s just easier and cheaper to settle,” says Allen. “If a business goes to court and doesn’t prevail, it risks paying the plaintiff’s legal fees and fines of up to $2,500 per day of exposure for each person who used the product. So if you’re talking, say, hair gel or plastic wristwatch bands, that’s potentially a great many exposures.”

Settlements typically range from $25,000 to $40,000, though some can reach six figures, said Tom Jonaitis, a toxicologist and the founder of RegTox, a consulting firm that deals with Proposition 65 issues. Plaintiffs also agree to reformulate their products or post warning labels.

When everything shakes out, attorney’s fees usually take 80 to 90 percent of such payouts. The remaining 10 to 20 percent comprises a stipulated penalty, with 75 percent of that figure going to the state and the remaining 25 percent going to the enforcer.

In 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the state attorney general’s office recorded 688 Proposition 65 settlements totaling nearly $25.8 million.

Usually, an enforcer has multiple cases running at the same time, Allen says. “They’ll go to a mall or go online and look for a particularly line of merchandise, buy five or 10 items, get them tested, see which has listed chemicals and what the concentrations are, then issue notices.”

Wine merchants face new requirements to ensure their online transactions don’t run afoul of California’s Prop. 65 toxics warnings.

Many of the recent notices have targeted online wine retailers, says Ryan Landis, a principal of Polsinelli, a California law firm that defends businesses involved in Proposition 65 cases.  Alcohol is a listed compound under the regulation, and its hazards must be noted in any sale conducted in the digital realm.

Alcoholic beverage sellers “now have to update their warnings to cover online and internet sales,” says Landis. “They were accustomed to simply including the warnings on the physical packaging.”

Regardless of whatever hassles Proposition 65’s warnings cause for businesses, the bottom line, supporters say,  is that they work. When retailers reformulate a product to comply with California state law, they invariably sell that product nationwide, says David Roe, who drafted the original language of Proposition 65 while working as an attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.

“It makes no marketing sense to peddle a ‘clean’ product in California and a ‘dirty’ one in the other 49 states,” says Roe. “Proposition 65 has been the single most successful law in the country over the last 30 years in reducing unnecessary exposure to toxic chemicals. The great untold story of 65 is that its impact has been largely invisible. Thousands of products have been reformulated to reduce toxicity. But no one realizes that because these products don’t have warnings. The more 65 succeeds, the fewer indications there are of that success.  The ultimate goal of the proposition is to have no warnings, to have no evidence that its goals have been achieved.”

Allen agrees with that assessment—grudgingly, and to a point.

“If Proposition 65 has done anything beneficial, it’s reducing the number and concentrations of chemicals used in consumer products,” he says, “but it has achieved that in an awkward and inelegant fashion. There are ways of doing that without relying on an army of private enforcers who want to line their pockets. It’s like killing an ant with a sledge hammer.”

Speaking for the state, Delson acknowledges that “not everyone is a fan, but we believe Proposition 65 is an effective tool to help people make informed decisions, and perhaps more importantly, it has stimulated companies to make products safer by eliminating or reducing chemicals to avoid a warning.”

But then there’s coffee. The argument is that people are exposed to acrylamide from a variety of sources, not just cappuccinos. And the threshold limits established for the chemical under the regulation don’t necessarily correlate to greater peril. In multiple studies, coffee consumption is linked to lower cancer, diabetes and heart disease rates—lurking acrylamide notwithstanding.

When Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle ruled last year that acrylamide exposure was covered under Proposition 65 and that warnings were mandated for coffee, it prompted a backlash from free enterprisers carping about nanny state overreach.

The state, however—perhaps recognizing the political risks that could arise from denying a population their morning caffeination—is trying to ditch the warning. A pending regulation would clarify that exposure to chemicals via coffee consumption doesn’t pose a significant cancer risk and therefore doesn’t require Prop. 65 warnings. “We have been sued over the issue,” Delson acknowledged in an email, “but we expect to adopt it by June, 2019.”