Author: Californiacontrarian

Google has apparently bought 1200 acres of land upon which they will eventually build a data center. This piece of property is just a few miles south of Tesla’s 3200 acres where it is building its 10 million square feet battery factory. At this point you are probably saying, “Good for California, as these big companies will bring many, many new jobs and a much needed new business tax base into the Golden State”.

“Whoa there, big fella!”

Google has bought this large parcel of land, not in California, but just east of Reno, Nevada, in the 107,000 acre Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which is home to over 100 companies. These companies range from A (Aqua Metals Inc.) to Z ( Zulily Inc.) and include American Red Cross, eBay Commerce,  PPG (Pittsburgh Paints), and a Wal-Mart Distribution Center.

Why Nevada, and why not California? After all Reno is in the middle of nowhere, and is basically desert. The answer is actually quite simple: Nevada is business friendly whereas California is not. Nevada has a favorable tax structure, a legal system that works in favor of business, as well as business friendly laws. In terms of being ‘Entrepreneur Friendly’, Nevada ranks 3^rd (behind only North Dakota and Texas) whereas California ranks a dismal 49th, only ahead of New Jersey and Washington D.C.

If you need more reasons why businesses love Nevada, look on a Nevada Business website where it touts one of the main reasons why companies should come to Nevada . . . “We’re close to California!”

So if you are young and want to improve your prospects for the future –

“Go east, young man, go east!”

A simple short quiz to start off with today.

You don’t need a college degree to get these right – in fact, any of you ordinary folk will probably do better.

Please answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following four simple questions:

1. If someone eats pizza once, will he/she likely eat it again?

2. Is pizza high in calories?

3. Does ‘meat-lover’s’ pizza have more calories than a ‘veggie’ pizza’?

4. If one overindulges in high caloric foods, might he/she gain weight?

Now if you answered ‘no’ to any of these questions, be careful as someone may nominate you to serve in the California Legislature. If you answered ‘yes’ to all of these questions, then you might wonder why the FDA feels that it is necessary that pizza places with 20 or more locations across the U.S. must put a myriad of caloric information not only on each menu, but also on each advertisement or flyer that lists a phone number. Some group, who thinks it knows better than us ordinary folk, obviously feels that Americans in general need help and guidance when ordering a pizza.

If I like sausage on my pizza, am I going to switch to pepperoni because there is one less calorie per slice in a large, thin-crust pizza? If I am a vegetarian, am I going to exclude onions or mushrooms because each adds 2 additional calories per slice? Call me, ‘crazy’, but my answer to each of the last two questions is not only, ‘No’, but also ‘WTF, are you kidding me’!

At this point one might ask which group could have thought up this nonsense. This over 100-page FDA rule is required by the Affordable Care Act . . . You know the “you’ll have to pass it to see what’s in it” law that was passed solely and entirely by Democrats. But it even gets worse, as this mumbo-jumbo also covers movie theaters, grocery stores, and breweries!  The Food Marketing Institute, a supermarket trade association, says that compliance will cost at least $1 billion.

Who do you think is going to pay for this?

If you guessed, ‘us ordinary folk’, you would be right!

FYI- this law is due to go into effect, after multiple delays, on May 5th of this year. So my advice to all ordinary folk, “if you are planning to go out for a brew and a pizza before taking in a movie, do it before May 5^th”!

ISIS or Cuba/No.Korea ?

As I was reading an excerpt from a newspaper, I was having some difficulty trying to decide if the philosophy of ISIS is in fact much different from that of the leaders in some communist countries. I have extracted four quotes from this newspaper editorial, and I am hoping that some readers may be able to aid me in separating their tenets. Are the following ISIS inspired or is this from a communist newspaper?

1. “We all have problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society.”

To me this sounds more like ISIS in essence telling the readers that the views with which we were brought up, are indeed mistaken, but that they were the victims because their society was indoctrinating them.

2. “It is vital that we encourage people to correct and learn from their mistakes rather than berate them for a lack of education they could not control.”

Now to me almost sounds like something from a communist manifesto explaining to the people that the government will not hold the uneducated masses responsible for their misconstrued views because they were the unwitting victims of a biased education system.

3. “This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech, or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted.”

This one was really tough for me. Was this the communist regime of Cuba warning their citizens that speaking out against the government might result in jail for an indefinite period of time, or was this ISIS warning Christians that their failure to convert to Islam could result in torture and death?

4. “It is important to note that our preference for education over beration regards students who may not have been given a chance to learn.”

This appears to apply to both ISIS and communist regimes . . . meaning that we will give you one chance to learn the right way, but if you do not learn, then you will be punished – as we know best.

While obviously I only took excerpts from this editorial, what you have here conveys the true message of the piece.

Okay, time to decide. Was this from a newspaper in a communist regime (Cuba/No. Korea) or was this ISIS inspired?

If you said, “communist regime” . . . wrong!

If you said, “ISIS inspired” . . .   also wrong!

Actually, these quotes are from the Wellesley News, a student newspaper at Wellesley College, a private women’s liberal arts college west of Boston, in Wellesley Ma. While many “institutions of higher learning” are producing snowflakes, in Wellesley there is a blizzard!

Elmer Vasko

Mention “Elmer Vasko” in 1961 in Chicago, and nobody would have a clue as to whom you were referring, but mention “Moose Vasko”, and everyone would know. Like most men nicknamed “Moose”, Elmer was big, but different from most men called “Moose”, as he could skate, and in fact he could skate quite well. Moose Vasko played defense on the 1961 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.  He wasn’t a high scorer like Bobby Hull or Stan Mikita or an exceptionally smooth skater like Pierre Pilote or Todd Sloan. However, he was a very important piece of this championship team for he (along with Reggie Fleming) was the “enforcer”.

For those unfamiliar with hockey, the job of the enforcer in hockey is to respond to dirty or violent play by the opposition (Wikipedia). Moose would protect his teammates, maintain order, and retaliate, especially if the bullies on the other team took cheap shots against his smaller teammates. While Bobby Hull (5’10, 195lbs) could take care of himself, undersized Stan Mikita (5’9″, 169lbs) and slender Todd Sloan (5’10”, 152 lbs) knew that Moose (6’2″, 200lbs) had their back. Hockey is a very rough sport, and, the smaller guys on any team
would take quite an unrelenting beating unless their own feared and respected enforcer had their back. The presence of an enforcer on a hockey team in essence was telling the other team, “Be careful because your actions will have consequences”. Everyone on the other teams knew that if they crossed the line against the smaller Blackhawk players that Moose would kick their ass. In fact he did his job quite well – well enough that the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in 1961.
Well now one might say, “Interesting, but actually who cares about Elmer Vasko, aka Moose, and the 1961 Blackhawks other than some near-senile old Chicago hockey fans”? Actually an interesting analogy can be drawn between the 1961 Chicago Blackhawks and today’s world situation. Just as hockey is a very rough game, our world is a very rough place. If an opportunity arises, the bullies on the hockey rink will go out of their way to pick on and then beat up on the little guys, just as the world’s “bullies” abuse those who cannot fight back. Just as the bad guys can become more and more emboldened on the ice, the bad guys on the world stage become more emboldened when they realize that they can act without fear of retaliation.
Russia, Assad, North Korea, and ISIS are the “bullies” of the world. For the past 8 years they have been able to act with impunity as they learned that no one could, or would, stand up to them. Russia took Crimea without any consequence. Assad gassed his own people in 2012, and there was no enforcement of a “red line”. For years, North Korea marched on with its nuclear program, as it knew that no one would attempt to stop them. ISIS was a “JV team”, yet it took land and slaughtered innocents as the good guys in the world just stood by.
There was no enforcer, and you don’t win the Stanley Cup without an enforcer!

Finally after years of kowtowing to all the world’s bullies, we finally have an enforcer, who in essence is saying, “Be very careful because your actions will have consequences. If you gas innocent women and children, we might fire off cruise missiles into your airfield. If you kill an American Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan, we might drop a MOAB to destroy your underground caves.”

Maybe now that our team has an enforcer, we can win the Stanley Cup.

Headlines that you won’ see anyplace else:

Ex Professional Poker Player Suspects a Bluff

When United Airlines needed 4 volunteers, three people agreed to give up their seat at the table. One person, David, thought that the airline might have been bluffing and, as he had already put his chips on the table, he decided to play the hand that he was dealt. However the odds were against him as there was a full house! He then saw 3 of a kind, and they were coming straight at him. He decided to stand pat. He played his flush, however the house was not bluffing and they were the bullies at that table. In the end, although the airline won that hand, he will probably win the big money tournament!

 

Do All Lives Matter ?

After the recent:
“Security guards drag olderVietnamese-American off of United plane”,

I wonder how many signs we will see saying:
“Vietnamese lives matter.”
or
“Grandpas’ lives matter.”

Let me know if you see any such signs, as so far I have seen . . . Zero!

The Friendly Skies?

It appears that so far United Airlines has the faux pas of the 21st century thanks to a  Sunday night (4/9/17)  video showing security dragging a man off one of its airplanes. The CEO of United Airlines then compounded the problem by saying that the passenger was “disruptive and belligerent”, and praised his staff as going “above and beyond”!

Let’s get this straight – the passenger was a 69 year old grandpa!

Coincidentally the day after this incident, I received a card in the mail offering me 50,000 bonus miles on United Airlines if I got a United Visa Card. I read the small print, but did not find the part about involuntarily giving up my seat on a United flight for no apparent reason. I also could not find the part stating that it was okay to drag me down the airplane aisle at the apparent whim of some United employee, who was going “above and beyond”.

So far I am going to pass on this credit card.

The other thing is that the victim was a Vietnamese-American physician, Dr. David Dao, who was trying to insure that he could get back to Louisville to see his scheduled Monday morning patients. Obviously United felt that it was much more important that its employees get to Louisville for a scheduled Monday flight than Dr. Dao for his scheduled patients.

So much for “The Friendly Skies”!

I live in a blue state – a very, very blue state, California, and I am not blue. In fact I am far from blue. I am not even close to purple. I am red, and thus a Contrarian in my blue state.

It is fitting that my first blog is coming so close to that dreaded April 15 tax deadline, as the Democrats in California have just passed a big tax increase in order to try to cover-up for their incompetence in handling the state’s budget in reference to infrastructure. Here in California there is a $59 billion backlog on deferred state highway maintenance as well as a $78 billion backlog on local streets and roads, as the funds that should have been used for these issues seem to have disappeared!

Well of course, the only solution for Democrats is to raise taxes and that is what they have just done.

When I say “Democrats”, I mean just that, as there was only one Republican vote for this tax hike bill. This lone Republican senator (R, Canella, Ceres) voted for this bill only after he had cajoled Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, into adding $500 million of pork for his district in the form of a commuter line from San Jose to his Central Valley district and a parkway linking U.C. Merced to highway 99. (As one of my friends sarcastically told me in the past, ” We are all basically prostitutes, and all we haggle about is our price!”) Mr. Canella’s vote theoretically gives this tax hike “bipartisan support”, and while those in the Central Valley will be enjoying the pork, the rest of us in California will be paying for it!

In the sense of fairness, I should mention that one Democratic assemblyman (D,Sales, Bakersfield) and one Democratic senator (D, Glazer, Orinda) voted against this bill. I do not know either of these gentlemen, but I assume that they are men of principle, as they refused to lie down as did their Democratic counterparts. Madame Lorena Gonzales-Fletcher (D, San Diego) apparently castigated Mr. Sales saying, “You sold them out” (referring to her Democratic lemmings) when in reality he had refused to sell out his constituents.

To all the people in California one of the important things to remember is that this tax hike barely passed in the assembly – getting the minimum two-thirds ‘yes’ votes. What this means is that if your local Democratic assemblyman had voted “No”, this bill would not have passed, and so basically your local Democratic assemblyman is directly responsible for your personal increased taxes – for the next 10 years!! I would hope that everyone remembers this when they show up again asking you for their vote in the next election.

Vote them out!

One more thing that is often missed when the Democrats vote on just about everything is how they actually hurt the poor the most. As Republican Senator Ted Gaines said, “We’re not taxing champagne and caviar here. Transportation is a basic need to live and work and raise a family.” Who is going to be hurt the most with these new taxes?

Those with electric cars will not be taxed until 2020 and then only at a rate of $100 per year. Those who can afford electric cars will not blink at the $100 per year, and don’t they use the roads and highways the same as the rest of us? Worse still, in the next two years they will be using the roads and highways that the rest of us will be paying for – and using them for free! How many of the poor in California will be driving electric cars? ZERO!

As the poor are forced to drive only what they can afford to buy, they are by necessity driving mostly older used cars that get the poorest gas mileage, and thus will be paying this additional 12 cents a gallon much more frequently than those who can afford new cars or hybrids.

But potentially even worse the tax increase on diesel fuel will go up over 100% from 16 cents to 36 cents a gallon. I would doubt that many Democrats in the state legislature drive cars that require diesel fuel, and perhaps they thought, “no big deal, as hardly anyone drives a car that uses diesel fuel”. However, most of our food is transported by diesel fueled trucks . . . so get ready for an increase in food prices. Again those who are driving Teslas will most likely not blink at this increase in food prices. However, those who are barely scraping by will now be eating more beans and rice, and less protein because that will be all they can afford.

Actually hurting the poor is a recurrent, often unforeseen theme in a lot legislation proposed by the Democrats, and for sure this will come up again.

 

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