A Palm Springs retiree on YouTube released a video recently in which he acknowledged that California is one of the most expensive places in the world in which to live.
He spoke of how retirees have moved out of our country, one living in a spacious two- or three-bedroom waterfront condo in Thailand for $1,000 per month. Some American retirees have moved to the Philippines where the folks are friendly and Americans can live like kings.
But the man I watch did not drill down into WHY California is so expensive to live. Probably because he supports the one-party rule that is able to make California as unaffordable as they can. To quote Jeff Foxworthy, that’s a special kind of stupid.
Our economy is based on supply and demand. Regulations and ridiculous environmental standards are why housing cannot be provided in ample supply.
Take gasoline. I rolled up to Chevron gas pumps last week and was greeted by a sign that read: “Nearly 25 percent of your gas money goes to state taxes and fees.” It then had a QR code to scan to reveal something you can do about it.
You can do something about it. Turn California red. Elect a Trump-like governor and quit electing Democrats to the state Legislature and replace them with common sense conservatives.
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Those Democrats in Sacramento are at it again. AB 1421 would implement a new mileage tax. Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio says it would cost each driver $900 to $1,200 per year.
Gas tax revenues are not declining as there is an automatic increase every July 1. But Sacramento is also diverting gas tax revenues away from road repairs.
Proponents say the mileage tax would be 2.6 cents per mile. DeMaio says guess again, 9 cents per mile and at the average driver moving 15,000 miles per year, that’s $1,350 per year.
Proponents of a new mileage tax say it would replace the gas tax – yeah, right.
Sacramento is addicted to more and more and more taxation.
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Two major oil refineries are shutting down in California, and instead of taking responsibility, Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to clean it up with a letter.
Valero says it may close its Benicia refinery by April 2026, cutting 9 percent of California’s fuel supply. Phillips 66 is shutting down its Los Angeles facility this year, taking out another 8 percent. Together, nearly a fifth of the state’s in-state refining capacity will evaporate.
The failing governor sent a letter pleading with the same industry he’s been driving out to stay put.
Newsom pushed SB X1-2 and AB X2-1, laws that piled on costs, mandates, and red tape.
Newsom has consistently blamed “greedy oil companies” for high prices, while California leads the nation in gas taxes and hidden fees.
Now he pretends like he’s the one trying to stabilize the market.
If you ask Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, Newsom and his cohorts are “the problem.”
“This is the guy who declared war on California’s fuel supply, and now he’s acting like a concerned bystander,” said Gallagher. “You don’t get to spend years blaming refineries, driving them out, and then write a letter hoping no one notices. That’s not leadership. That’s damage control.”
Again, a special kind of stupid.
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Victor Davis Hanson, a brilliant political scientist, believes that California is in an “existential freefall.”
He attacks Newson for being focused on issues like trans athletes while ignoring the monstrous issues facing the state and last time I looked Ceres and Stanislaus County are in California so we should take heed.
Consider the Newsom record:
The state started 2024 with a $76 billion budget deficit.
We have the highest income tax rate at 13.3 percent.
Gas tax is nearly 70 cents per gallon.
California has among the highest sales and property taxes.
Over half of all births in California are covered by Medi-Cal and the state has spent almost $11 billion for indigent health care, much of it for folks who snuck across the border. “You are now broke,” Hanson tells Newsom in a video posted a month ago. “Even that was not enough. You are asking to borrow $3.4 billion from the general fund … to pay for the health care of people who were largely allowed to come into California illegally.”
Hanson asks what Newsom’s plan is to help the multi-million shortfall caused because nearly 20 percent of PG&E customers cannot afford to pay their monthly bills. Raising rates is not an answer because we already pay 70 to 80 percent higher energy bills than any other states.
He also asks how California is among the five states with the worst conditions of roads and freeways when we have the highest gas tax in the nation.
Newsom also took nearly a quarter of a million dollars of the bond money intended to add more water storage projects (reservoirs) so that he could remove four dams on the Klamath River. He has also delayed the Los Banos Grandes Reservoir, the Sites Reservoir and Temperance Flat projects which would have added five million acre-feet of storage.
The problems just go on. About 27 percent of people living in California were born outside the US and what about integration and assimilation and civic education which Hanson says our schools are not doing. “Our school test scores are among the bottom 10 in the United States.”
All of this has done three things, he notes:
• 10 million to 15 million have left California or considering it;
• We have more illegal aliens than any state because California is a magnet for them without any plan to pay for them let alone house them in a state that is too expensive and doesn’t have enough houses.
• Twenty percent of Californians lives below the poverty line.
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This is going to be one of those “they can send a man to the moon but they can’t ….” statements.
Why can’t authorities find a way to nail these scammers who send out bogus texts after you pass through any of the Bay Area toll areas? The last time I was in the Bay Area was in January but I’m still getting these annoying texts threatening me to pay a fine I don’t owe. Lots of people fall for them. The one I got on Friday was from jiaheicong1987@barrier-43.hair. Now does that sound like a legit government agency to you?
Don’t fall for their scams, folks.
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According to a press release we received last week, a Latino civil rights group is suing Stanislaus County and its officials over county redistricting maps claiming that it violates the federal Voting Rights Act and dilutes the voting strength of Latino voters.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) filed a challenge to the county’s 2021 Board of Supervisors and Board of Education redistricting plans on behalf of four voters. FOUR VOTERS!
In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, attorneys argue that the adopted maps were drawn in such a way as to deny Latino voters an opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice. Attorneys say the maps violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
That act has been highly abused and should be rewritten.
But hold on here. Nobody’s rights to vote for candidates of their choice are being denied.
Apparently MALDEF is troubled that there are still white guys on the Board of Supervisors. If you’re only concerned about ethnicity of public officials then you are in essence, a racist.
Latinos have increasingly been elected to offices in California, both state and local. The truth is that the Ceres City Council has only one white member when two decades ago it was entirely white.
The Latino lawyers, say the district maps are problematic in Latinos getting elected, citing that in six supervisory elections in three districts since 2012, the Latino candidate lost five elections. Here’s an idea: run some good Latino candidates. You ran a lousy candidate in former Modesty City Councilman Tony Madrigal who was defeated for a reason.
Latinos already have representation on the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. Their names are Channce Condit, Buck Condit, Vito Chiesa, Mani Grewal and Terry Withrow. They ran and conducted successful campaigns. This notion that people won’t have representation unless someone shares their skin color seems unreasonable and racist.
To say that a candidate of minority ethnic background is disadvantaged based solely on color is an affront to a successful system of elected government. Bur if you look at the makeup of the Board of Supervisors, it’s not all white. Technically Channce Condit is part Latino. Mani Grewal is a Sikh.
What next? A black advocacy group becoming upset because there’s never been any local black supervisor?
I find it offensive when groups like MALDEF suggest only officials of their same ethnicity can represent constituents of a certain ethnicity in government office. What does that even mean? Curry special favors? Ignore certain laws like, oh, let’s say immigration law.
Latino residents have the same needs as any other resident. We all use the same parks, drink from same water systems, flush toilets into the same sewer system, drive the same streets and are victimized by the same crimes. But we should be using the English language to communicate with our elected officials. If there is a language barrier between populace and elected officials, that’s the fault of those who have yet to assimilate to American culture.
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I’ve a great amount of disdain for most criminal attorneys – at least the ones who knowingly defend guilty people. They are paid to twist the truth, exaggerate, develop ways to get guilty people free from the consequences of their crimes.
As you probably know, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s office unsuccessfully prosecuted a number of persons relating to the 2013 murder of Korey Kaufman of Turlock. Kaufman disappeared in Turlock in March 2013 and his skull was found over a year later in the Stanislaus National Forest.
Someone, for sure, murdered Kaufman. The DA’s office and police investigators were convinced that the dirty deed involved Daljit Atwal and Baljit Athwal, owners of a liquor store named the Pop-N- Cork at the behest of friend Frank Carson, who was a property owner tired of being ripped off by a metal thief or thieves. The case was politically charged because Carson was a defense attorney.
We reviewed the lengthy investigation documents and were certain that a conviction would have been forthcoming. I have acquaintances close to the investigation who believed that Carson and the Athwals were guilty as hell. After a 17-month jury trial, Carson and the Athwals were acquitted in 2019 by a jury after two days of deliberation.
As we saw in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, sometimes juries get it wrong. All it takes is one juror to acquit a murderer.
After the loss, the Oakland law firm of Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli and Brewer went after the DA’s office and managed to get a settlement of $22.5 million, approved by the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors. According to the law firm’s press release, Carson – who died in 2020 at age 66 – was the target of a “retaliatory investigation cooked up against him by the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s office in retaliation for his high-profile successes in the courtroom and his accusations of corruption against District Attorney Birgit Fladager and her investigative staff.”
So this law firm would have us believe that Fladager maliciously sought to frame Carson because he had won various defense cases and because he ran against her unsuccessfully for D.A. in June 2014 when he didn’t have a chance of winning (she won 70.85 percent of the vote to his 28.85 percent). That’s a pretty far-fetched charge.
We covered the case and suspected prosecutors were on the right track going after Carson and the Athwals. They believed Carson was fed up with thefts committed by neighbor Mike Cooley. They called witness Sabrina Romero, who lived near Cooley on Lander Avenue, who testified about witnessing an altercation between Cooley and a man believed to be Carson in March 2012. They were screaming at one another and she heard the man (believed to be Carson) say, “If I catch you in my yard I’ll kill you and no one will ever find you.” Romero was unable, however, to positively confirm Carson was the man who uttered the death threat.
The investigation also looked into cell phone data connecting the Athwals to a drive in the Stanislaus National Forest and the alleged arson burning of a pickup afterward.
The law firm’s rather pointed press release termed all eight persons were innocent (found innocent) while labeling the murder victim a “young petty thief and methamphetamine addict.” Even the murderers of meth addicts deserve some justice, don’t they?
So what do we take away? I’m not sure, but here are some troubling thoughts I have:
1). Kaufman’s murderer – or murderers – got away with it.
2). Taxpayers are the big losers. $22.5 million is going to people who were once prosecuted as suspects.
3). Either the entire DA’s office was corrupt – as were the many police detectives from multiple jurisdictions who investigated the case – or they presented honest facts and an honest case and a jury shot them down.
I’m left unsettled by the whole thing. Maybe in time we’ll get more information that I believe we are all entitled to have. But since the DA already thought she had her suspects, this case is dead.
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
