California Press Releases, An April Fool’s Paradise

Each year on April 1st, also known as April Fools Day, I try to write a piece of satire to showcase some of the absurdities encountered in agricultural irrigation in California. I generally start the piece early in the year as an effort to allow time for rewrites. The challenge is jocularity. I certainly don’t expect everyone to get tickled by the same things I do. But if I don’t find it funny how will anyone else? I’m then faced with the stinging taste of humility when jokes fall flat. Also, it gives me a chance to weed out unintended mixed metaphors.

In the past there have been pieces that take a look at behind the scenes on discussions about how President Trump is causing crop circles, farming causes climate change and unreleased press releases from Co-Presidents Kamala Cameltoe and Alexandria Occasional Cortex. To my surprise I’ve had folks take the April 1st reports serious or even take offense.

This time I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a piece on using high speed rail through the Delta Tunnel to transport juvenile salmon past non-native predacious bass. But I didn’t get around to it and here it is April 1st as I type.

Careful What You Sign Up For

Back in July of 2023 I signed up for press releases from Governor Gavin Newsom, thinking that’d be a good way to keep track of and learn about what’s happening with the man who holds the highest office in California. I may not be the most sophisticated observer but neither do I consider myself politically naïve. But I certainly wasn’t expecting to get as many as I did. I have more than 400 of the little fellers in my inbox multiplying like tribbles. Surely, I could find something to write about in the midst of such plentiful, publicly-provided fodder.

I started out with good intentions of extracting some satire out of the press releases. But by the time I’d  reviewed just the myriad of March 2024 offerings I was in a grumpy mood. Everything presented was so dangerously close to satire I was afraid of being dumped into the same plagiaristic box as a Harvard University President.

Press releases posing as so many Valentines Day cards to his honor, pour in weekly as hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are given to the Bay Area for crime fighting. We’ve been snookered to pass propositions rolling back the definitions of what a crime is while simultaneously reducing the consequences of committing crimes. So, at the same time the government has made things worse it crows about fixing the problems it caused. All on our dime. On most issues the elites have even been able to assemble a chorus of choose your issue, justice activists to call fiscal restraint greed and selfishness. Remnants of capitalism colonization or some such.

As an example: on Good Friday, March 29th press releases started rolling into my inbox at 6:19am and by 5:00pm I’d received four separate releases. Oakland is getting 480 “high-tech” cameras to aid law enforcement. Normally that’d give me the creeps with government looking over our shoulders but my plans to visit crime infested Oakland are nonexistent so I can only hope it helps and the idea doesn’t spread. The Guv also welcomed home Viet Nam Veterans at 12:53pm (seems 50-years late but it’s a step in the right direction.) At 1:16pm Newsom was offering a $50,000 reward each for four killings in Southern California. This $200,000 was offered as a help for the local law enforcement agencies. By 5:00pm sharp Newsom sent notice he’d appointed or reappointed seven people to everything from fair boards to transportation commissions. None were Republican. A busy day all around.

This caps the earlier efforts in the week to combat the opioid crisis by scooping up half million fentanyl pills at the border (while noting his distain for drug traffickers and big pharma), until big pharma needed protection against anti-abortion activists who somehow got the 5th Circuit to side against science in regulating Mifepristone, a drug used in “medication abortions.” The Guv goes on to boast of his pro-abortion bona-fides and celebrates there were 12,000 more abortions in California than expected between April of 2022 and June of 2023. He also appointed four non-Republican superior court judges.

He started the week by announcing he’d signed into law AB 610 by Assemblyman Chris Holden, a Democrat from Pasadena, making some but not all fast food outlets pay $20 per hour minimum wage. Now you know why the price of your hamburgers just went up. Sometimes the first three letters of an elected title can sum it up.

The prior week he made a deal with the legislature where the Guv, state Senator pro Tem Mike McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas all verbally patted each other on the bottom as a sign of mutual respect for addressing the budget deficit. Not solving it – but addressing it.

Pants On Fire Burn Better With Gas

On March 20th the Guv backed a Los Angeles Times editorial calling big oil liars and not to put too fine a point on it, “. . . money-grubbing polluters and planet-wreckers”, “. . . targeting California’s Latinos.” Not targeting, I observe, California’s Latinx. (I also observe just a few short years ago typing Latinx would cause Microsoft Word to spaz and slap a wavy redline under the word indicating a misspelling. Now evidently, it’s acceptable although I know absolutely no one outside of the grievance industry who uses it.)

Here’s something else interesting from the editorial, “It is true that a portion of what Californians pay at the pump goes to state and local taxes and fees, which fund road repair, pollution reduction projects and other public benefits. But an even greater percentage of the per-gallon cost goes to the oil industry for refining, distribution and marketing and as profit, according to the California Energy Commission.”

Would it be better if the majority of the cost of a gallon of gas or anything else went to taxes? Also, glad to see the California Energy Commission realizes a business would need to pay for refining, distribution and marketing while making a profit. And as for the spending of those tax dollars – California’s roads are ranked fourth worst in the nation.

The editors go on to state, “We don’t know exactly what all that money being sucked up by oil refiners, distributors and retailers is paying for because those details have long been shrouded in mystery.” Excuse me but didn’t the editorial just cite the California Energy Commission explaining a percentage of the per-gallon cost goes to the oil industry to pay for refining, distribution and marketing and as profit? Is it a mystery to the Governor endorsed L.A. Times that a company has to make a profit to provide goods and services?

Could this be in response to Chevron recently writing the California Energy Commission a comment letter? Chevron wrote due to permitting “challenges” and other policies it has chosen to reduce spending in California by hundreds of millions of dollars including investing in renewable energy.

Finally – Nowruz Day

Just the day before the Guv proclaimed March 19th Nowruz Day. About time someone brought the 3,000 year old Persian name for new year’s back into vogue. So tedious calling the Vernal Equinox the first day of spring when you can use something shrouded in mystery for most of the people living in California who don’t know the ancient Persian alphabetical symbols from the standard Latinx alphabetical symbols.

Going back further in time press release-wise not Persian alphabet-wise, lots more appointments, no Republicans, you can only take this diversity thing so far. On March 1st Nicholas Hardeman, of Sacramento, was appointed Chair of the Fast Food Council, the council that overlooks the $20 per hour fast food automation incentive program.

Park It For Now

Also on March 1st the Guv was all tingly over there now being more than 100,000 public and shared electric vehicle chargers. The release went on to announce the sales of zero emission vehicles have “skyrocketed” more than 1,000 percent in the last decade.

Wow, really? How about this, “Telephone calls skyrocket after Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.” That 1,000-percent increase could mean they sold one car then 100 a year for the past 10-years. Also, I do hope the rockets were zero emission too. The release states there are also 500,000 private chargers. So, some simple journalist math yields about 600,000 charging opportunities for electric cars.

According to the 2021 census there are more than 14.2 million cars in California. If all of the vehicles in the state actually become electric by 2035 and had to share those 600,000 chargers you’d have to hook up a different car to every station every hour for all of them to get a little juice. But it takes on average two to five hours to charge an electric car. That’s a big if because that means the owners of the half a million private chargers would have to agree to let folks who don’t live at their house in their garage. And private chargers can take more than five hours to recharge as much as a public charger can charge in 45-minutes.

So, more simple, journalist math reveals it’s all a big mess because there is no way to astronomically augment the electrical grid infrastructure to a size anywhere near big enough to actually fuel the battery charged delusions of the state in cutting emissions that will have any impact on California’s weather let alone the global climate.

As much fun as it wasn’t going through press releases from the Governor’s office, I have to end it here. Maybe we’ll take further dive in the future. Go be good to yourselves and each other.

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