As I’ve said before, the famous part of Proposition 13 – the part that protected existing homeowners from being gouged by their own rising home values – should be kept.  Large cash taxes, when cash or liquid assets are not changing hands, are destabilizing and force the unnecessary sale of homes.  For most people, their home is not a cash earning asset.  But maybe there should be a large tax on home equity loans!  That, at least, would discourage them.

Other parts of Proposition 13 – the commercial tax rates, for example, and the two thirds vote requirement – are quite negotiable, as far as I’m concerned.

Related: “Overturning of Prop. 13 sought in lawsuit” by Bob Egelko at SFGate.com

Joel Kotkin, director of one of our favorite sites, Newgeography.com, has exposed how Obama has alienated people on all sides, even though he will probably win the election.  I notice, now that I think about it, that while the Occupy Movement has not spent a lot of time denouncing Obama, they have not greeted him with the fulsome praise that we heard in 2008. Once again, Obama’s “allergy to antithesis,” which I wrote about quite a while ago is not serving him well.

Kotkin supports bringing back the Works Progress Administration; I think, at the very least, we could revive the Civilian Conservation Corps.   Read the rest of this entry »

It has been discovered that the prickly pear cactus sucks up selenium, regarded as a pollutant in the West San Joaquin Valley, slowly enough to not be toxic but enough to be of benefit to selenium-deficient diets.  In small quantities, it seems, selenium is actually an essential nutrient for human beings.  Now, if we can get the people of Europe, Asia, and Australia to develop a taste for nopales, we have achieved both a natural way to help the environment and a new exportable agricultural product.

Related: “Cactus may offer cure for poisoned Valley cropland” by Mark Grossi at SacBee.com

Is there any connection between the fact that Salinas has the gang problem that it does, and the fact that Monterey County’s restrictions on the building of housing are very strict?  I can see why the inhabitants of the Monterey Peninsula might want to protect the coastal strip.  But if they apply their policies to the whole county, it becomes very difficult to build any housing.  I saw a proposal 40 years ago from Ralph Nader’s think tank that would encourage the building of Italian style hill towns along the hills along both sides of the South Santa Clara Valley, thus leaving the lowlands along the river for agriculture; such a plan could be applied to the Salinas Valley as well.  I don’t have the expertise to draw the connection between restricted housing and the gang situation in Salinas, but surely the situation is worth looking at.  What kind of novels would a John Steinbeck write, if he were growing up in Salinas today?

Related: “In a Gang-Ridden City, New Efforts to Fight Crime While Cutting Costs” by Erica Goode at NYTimes.com

Victor Davis Hanson, in this attached essay, claims that President Obama has a postmodern vision of law.  I am not necessarily going to argue that point. I have maintained, already, that President Obama has what I call an allergy to antithesis.  But I did feel moved to comment on the whole Postmodern in Law, or Law and Economics, thing.

The basic law, I believe to be revealed; whether in our hearts as Romans 1 says, or explicitly as described in the first five books of the Bible – the fact that other religions and philosophies have a similar, though not identical ethic argues for the Romans 1 point of view.  At the same time, it is a fact that many of the rules and laws that are actually in fact enacted are to the advantage of Read the rest of this entry »

The attached article criticizes the effect of ‘greenbelts’ in Britain, and calls for ‘green patches’ instead of ‘green belts.’  The paradox is that a lot of what people move out to the suburbs for is precisely what these anti-suburban NIMBYs are trying to protect.  And, more to the point, when people do move out to the suburbs, they often join the ranks of the NIMBYs and try to pull up the drawbridge behind themselves.  I commented on this in my post earlier on “Why Non-Suburbanites Distrust Suburbanites.”  This is the paradox of suburbia, and there is no real way to resolve it.  The best idea is the ‘green patches’ that this article proposes.

In Orange County we have one true greenbelt, which separates the very un-OC town of Laguna Beach from the rest of the county [there are only three roads into Laguna Beach from the rest of the county], and I suppose the Cleveland National Forest, on the other side, is a greenbelt too.  Otherwise, we have a pretty good collection of green patches, especially in the south county; and there is the gigantic Blue Belt, otherwise known as the Pacific Ocean, on the county’s southwest side.

Related: “Three Cheers for Urban Sprawl” by Martin Durkin at NewGeography.com

I am prepared to admit that the California Bullet Train may prove to be a failure, even though France, Spain, Germany, and China have them!  I voted for the train originally, not so much to eliminate automobiles, but as an alternative to airplanes, where you have to jump through so many security hoops to get on them [this, I admit, is not the airlines’ fault] and the airlines schedule connections so tight that they can only be made if it’s 70 degrees and no wind!  In the presence of any other weather or other conditions, their extremely fragile schedule shatters.  I don’t like fragility anyhow; it seems to me there should always be some wiggle room.  But I guess that’s not ‘efficient.’

Now in the Wall Street Journal we read that airplanes flying westward from Europe to America have, because of high level winds, had to make unscheduled fuel stops at places like Read the rest of this entry »