July 2019

The current situation with PG&E, Southern California Edison and others

A few articles that give us the basics of the negotiations between the state and the largest shareholder owned electrical utilities at the moment. --blj

 

6-23-19

Sacramento Bee

Newsom unveils $24 billion plan to tackle wildfires, PG&E bankruptcy

A coalition of wildfire victims said it supports the proposal

By Dale Kasler and Bryan Anderson | Sacramento Bee

Happy Fourth of July

Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

 

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

I had a nightmare on this Independence Day

 

I had a nightmare today. It was that two score and seventeen years after Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I have a dream speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Independence Day, this jingo in the White House vomited down upon us a chunky torrent of militarism complete with special effects (tanks and aircraft) from the same podium.

I awoke from this nightmare and found hope again in Dr. King’s concluding remarks at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, when the country was in the middle of the Civil Rights struggle and at the beginning of the Vietnam War. -- wmh

Where Trump is as steady as a rock

"We don't really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept," Darroch wrote in one memo. "We don't really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept," Darroch wrote in one memo. – Katz, AP, July 7, 2019

Why only the UK ambassador's emails were leaked

A Badlands Journal Scoop

Our intrepid investigators in Washington DC have informed us that, although the ambassadors of several other nations admit publicly to have sent the same sort of emails to their governments as the UK ambassador sent to his, the reason none of these other emails were revealed was because there is no one in the Trump administration who can translate them.

-- blj

If the governor is serious ...

"Regulations are only as good as their enforcement," said Andrew Grinberg, California oil and gas manager for the environmental group Clean Water Action. "Unfortunately, DOGGR has already shown that they are unable to enforce existing laws."

The agency is working to "strengthen compliance and enforcement," said state oil and gas supervisor Steve Bohlen.

The real Republican

Abraham Lincoln

Peoria, Illinois: October 16, 1854

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say.

As I desire to present my own connected view of this subject, my remarks will not be, specifically, an answer to Judge Douglas; yet, as I proceed, the main points he has presented will arise, and will receive such respectful attention as I may be able to give them.

Gov. signs clean water bill for low income communities

 

Good for Gov. Newsom, state senators Caballero, Monning, Hurtado, Assemblyman Bloom, Dolores Huerta, and the Fresno-based Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. In a year like this it is terrific news to see that anything decent is being done for farmworkers. --blj

 

Tombstone Territory, about one mile south of Sanger, is a four-block rural community with nearly 40 homes, all on domestic wells.

Microplastics in the SF Bay and beyond

7-25-19

Water Education Foundation

A Study of Microplastics in San Francisco Bay Could Help Cleanup Strategies Elsewhere

Gary Pitzer

 

Blasted by sun and beaten by waves, plastic bottles and bags shed fibers and tiny flecks of microplastic debris that litter the San Francisco Bay where they can choke the marine life that inadvertently consumes it.