Category: California

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Racism and Reparations, Oh My!

Over the past 10 days or so I’ve been seeing articles about California paying reparations to black folks.

I was pleased to see that beach front land LA County had stolen from an African American family had finally been returned to the family. There is no excuse for anyone to lose their property, either land, or personal possessions, simply because of the color of their skin. LA County righted a wrong they committed long ago, and it was about damn time. 

There was a time when racism was rampant, horrific, and wrong on its face. The only reason LA County had been able to take this family’s land was because racism was at the time, tacitly approved of and LA County had the power of City Hall and people who could corrupt the law. 

This once again proves the old saying, “You can’t fight City Hall”

Less pleasing is the California Reparations board. If this board was looking for similar instances of injustice as described above. Then I’d be totally on board. The problem is, California Reparation seems to be more about cash payments. Cash payments made from our tax dollars in a state that didn’t have African slavery. 

For me this raises some questions. 

Will California be paying reparations to members of the Native Tribes whose ancestors were in fact enslaved and whose servitude built Churches up and down the state under Spanish or Mexican rule?

Will California pay reparations to the descendants of Irish children taken off the streets of Dublin and sold into slavery in American slave markets right along with slaves from Africa?

How is California going to determine who gets these reparations? Will they use DNA sequencing? Or will the state resort to simply looking at the color of a person’s skin? The former is invasive, the latter is going to automatically exclude groups of people who through no fault of their own might not be dark enough. What about people who may be albino?

There was a time when America had something called the one drop rule. If a person had any ancestor who was African they were considered Black regardless of their appearance. Interestingly, when the NAZIs were trying to come up with a method to single out Jews for extermination, NAZI’s felt that the one drop rule was too extreme. They chose a genealogical method based on a Jewish family member being some number of generations back. Five generations, no problem. Only four generations back? Sorry you’re going to the camps. I wonder what criteria the California Reparations board will use.

Then there was the African American activist who said in print, anything less than $800,000 per person would result in severe consequences. Wow! That sounds more like an old MAFIA protection racket. What severe consequences? Riots, looting, buildings burning? Oh, in other words a typical Wednesday in Los Angeles.

When I read that article, my first thought was how about zero dollars? Your terms are completely acceptable. Burn down your neighborhoods or the entire city. Just realize that your actions have consequences and one of those consequences would likely be that you’ll not have a place to plug in that 75” TV you stole from the Best Buy. You can also look forward to 20 years of no-one investing in businesses or buildings in the neighborhoods you destroy. Y’all might want to loot some tents from the REI or Walmart while you’re at it.

There was another piece reported out of San Francisco about a pilot program where the city leadership was making payments of 1000 a month for two years available to poverty stricken people.

Great! Help those people get their footing and work their way out of poverty.  But reading the fine print, this is only available to African Americans. Apparently poverty is only poverty if you’re the right color. White people living in poverty and squalor is of no concern to the leadership of San Francisco.

San Francisco is also making similar payments available to pregnant poor single women. Again Great! But the fine print again specifies only African American need apply. This particular plan is being implemented in Los Angeles, and other smaller cities throughout the state. 

I’m sorry, but this is racism on its face. Poverty is poverty, pregnant is pregnant, regardless of the color of your skin.

I thought we had laws to prevent discrimination of any kind. 

Clearly I missed a memo on the nuance of racial discrimination. 

Growing up I was taught that any discrimination was bad and not to be tolerated.

Since these days it’s enough to simply identify as a woman to be called and treated like a woman.  I find myself wondering is it enough to identify as African American to be treated like an African American and therefore be eligible for these cash payments? How about if I identified as a black woman and pregnant?

“My baby daddy ran off with some skinny white girl! I need a grand a month to raise this baby!” 

I doubt it would work. 

This kind of thing is how racism is perpetuated.

For years African Americans have protested and in some cases rioted over being treated as less than. Leaders in government have been solicitous and forgiving, they’ve promised to make funding available and bring an end to racism in exchange for votes.

What will those leaders do or say when the shoe is on the other foot? How will they respond to white people protesting and rioting against clearly racist behavior targeted at them?

Or will we have the Southern Poverty Law Center designating impoverished white communities as white supremacist terror cells, then calling for these communities to meet the same fate as Ruby Ridge, or Waco? 

I find that I’m not particularly surprised when I hear white people saying things like, “We need to move someplace where the demographics are more favorable.” Which is nothing more than a polite way of saying, We need to move someplace where there are only white people.

The problem is, if white people were to carve out a couple of states and cede the rest of the country to people of color, that would be called racism. It would never be tolerated and particularly so, if white people built for themselves a nice place. This is not to say white people are more capable than anyone else, but we already have the example suburbia provided. 

At one time moving to the suburbs was called “White Flight”. The cores of cities were given over to people who, at the time,  were legitimately on the wrong side of the racial equation. People of color were ghettoized and then rightfully got angry at being mistreated and forgotten. The common explanation for these ghettos being crime ridden was these folks were desperate, and impoverished.

I suspect that while there was, at the time,  certainly a racial component to white flight, there was something else. White people simply got tired of trying. When it became easier to move to suburbia where everything was new, clean, planned and safe. Places where education was good and crime was largely unheard of, white people chose the path of least resistance.

I’m not afraid of living with people of color, I’m just tired of playing some kind of appeasement game where the goal posts are always in sight but moved at the last minute. I’ve worked with people who are actually from Africa. They have always been kind, hardworking people like myself, with similar values and expectations. On more than one occasion Africans have asked what the hell is up with African Americans? I’ve answered, that I haven’t a clue.

I find myself getting quite tired of trying anymore. I’m sick of being called names. So sick of it that I’ve actually looked into moving to a completely different country. Call it the ultimate white flight.

I’ve also considered getting a job in Antarctica. This would take me out of the USA and put me in a small community where everyone is dependent on each other for survival. I’ve been curious to find out if, in that kind of situation, the whole racism narrative falls apart and people are just people again.

I don’t believe in racism. I think it’s stupid and destructive. That being said, my experiences with people of color in California have taught me that I’m apparently in the minority regardless of race. 

It’s because of these lived experiences that I want to go somewhere and live among people that look just like me. I want to eliminate the racial stuff and if someone who looks just like me commits a crime, they get the same justice as everyone else.

I don’t want to live someplace where I, or anyone else, is favored or punished simply because of the color of their skin or ethnicity. Until ten or fifteen years ago, I thought that was where America was headed. Now I feel like we’ve taken a step 50 years into the past and are in the process of inverting all the rules too.

In my opinion, stepping back in time and inverting the rules is nothing more than revenge. It’s not a step toward equality at all. 

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My GOD! I hate Bureaucratic little despots!

The saga of the solar panel installation may be coming to an end.

That’s a good thing. I’m really kinda over it. As in losing my ability to give a shit!

This morning, the final inspection is supposed to take place. The representative from the panel installation company has been out. He’s doing some final tweaks which is a good thing.

But first thing this morning he hands me a clipboard with a a county form on it asking me to sign to attest that I have smoke a CO2 sensors in my house. The paperwork also wanted to verify that the water heater is grounded. It’s natural gas, and the pipes in the house are copper going to ground. So uh yeah! The water heater is freaking grounded!

I ask him what any of this has to do with the dang solar panels on the roof.

He’s not sure, it’s just something The County requires.

I look at the form and tell him I’m going to get my glasses to be able to throughly read the document he’s handing me, so that I know what I’m actually signing.

When I come back, the first thing I notice is that the documents have someone else’s name and address on them. So I ain’t signing shit.

But it got me to thinking.

The invasiveness of regulations has been a royal pain in my ass since this house was rebuilt, and even before then.

When I bought this house, there was a fire suppression system installed. This was mandated by the County when the house was originally built in 1992. For 15 years or so, I paid $300.00 every year to have someone come out and inspect the system. This was to prevent the antifreeze from draining out of the suppression system back into the main water lines.

When the house burned, the fire alarms worked, the fire suppression system didn’t. One of the inspectors had left the dang valves closed so that fancy assed fire suppression system was offline. (That’s what comes from constantly fiddling with something. The possibility of mistakes increases.)

When we rebuilt the house, the county mandated that he have 6 CFB fixtures built into the ceiling of the house (This was more lights than we had total in the house prior to it burning.) Supposedly this was to make the house more energy efficient. I asked the building inspector how having more lights in the house made the house more energy efficient. Those lights still pulled, (at the time 40W). 

Five years later someone in the State of California noticed that compact fluorescent bulbs contained mercury vapor. Fluorescent lights have always contained mercury vapor. That’s how they work. OMG! These bulbs if improperly disposed of can be environmentally dangerous! 

A few years after that, someone else realized that as these bulbs age they can emit high levels of UV, which might be hazardous. Again, DUH! It’s not rocket science. Pass a current at a specific frequency through mercury vapor and it emits UV light, coat the inside of a glass tube with a fluorescent material that glows when exposed to UV light and you get visible light.

It’s simple science. Pity we apparently don’t teach Science anymore.

At the time I was laughing because it was another case of unintended consequences due to petty bureaucrats deciding they had a good idea with absolutely zero knowledge of the underpinning science and therefore no understanding of the potential consequences. I also had a good laugh at the sudden plethora of UV sensors that hit the market to make sure you were safe from the evil older CFBs the State demanded you put in your house.

My sensor, was my glasses. Yeah, my Photo-chromic eyeglasses. See, they darken due to UV light so if I suspected that a CFB was aging or the fluorescent coating was getting flaky, I’d hold my eyeglasses near the bulb. If they got dark, I knew it was time to change the bulb.

Again, if you know how things work at a basic level, you can save yourself $29.95! Unfortunately, retrofitting the fixtures to LED costs a lot of money. Although, all of the other lights in the house with standard A26 screw in sockets have been updated to LED and if those lights are on full blast they use less power than the fluorescent fixtures. 

Move forward a couple of years and the County comes through telling us that we have to remove plants at the very edge of our property line from our landscaping because these plants can burn. Uh yeah sure, but the plants in question have been in that position on the property for 20 years. Oh and they survived the actual house fire that burned the house to the ground. Not to mention that ALL plants can burn!

Another expense, due to bureaucrats. I just know one day these morons are going to figure out that native Pine Trees can burn and demand the removal of trees from my property.

FYI, some of these trees have been here since before the house was. I also water them regularly because I happen to like trees. That’s becoming more difficult due to water restrictions in California, however I’ve adapted.

In Winter, I pile the snow up around the trees and in my yard in general. It doesn’t last the whole summer, but the trees are watered by this process throughout the spring and into early summer.

Again, not rocket science, just using the natural elements and conditions to my, (and the trees,) advantage.

It’s really common sense. 

Move forward 10 years after the house was rebuilt, and the fire suppression system FAILS, flooding my living room. Oh, we’d been having it inspected every year like usual. Guess what? While the specialized Fire Suppression contractor was repairing the system, they discovered that the system had been installed incorrectly in the first place and the petty bureaucrat of a building inspector has missed the fault. At this point in time however, I got to pay for the repair and fight with the insurance company about it.

Ahhh, my tax dollars at work!

I probably wouldn’t be so annoyed except that county inspectors kept blowing off their appointments when the house was being rebuilt. It was so frequent that about 3 months got added onto the building cycle and not one of them ever thought to apologize about missing appointments.

So here we are, trying to get the solar panels finished. Once again I’m being held up because of a country inspector who probably doesn’t have a clue about the actual power going through the cables or how the system works in detail. This is the building equivalent of TSA bag checks, or the masking controversy with COVID or half a dozen other examples of hand waving without actually doing something functional.

That’s the sad part of this, we’re trying to “Go Green,” after all. Isn’t that what gruesome Newsome & Sniffy Joe want us to do?  Note the panels have been on the roof since June 2022.

Today the solar panel company sent their guy out and he arrived on time, we’re still waiting for the County Inspector to show up. At this point that county jackass is two hours late after specifying a two hour window. The difference between a business, and bureaucrats feeding on the tax payer dime is striking!

I doubt that the panels will be operational today, and it might not be until Spring of 2023 at this point. I could still be surprised, but I’m not foolish enough to hold my breath.

I’m debating about giving the county jackass a dressing down when they get here. If you’re going to make an appointment, you keep it. If you’re going to be late, you call. It’s just common courtesy.

On the one hand that might prevent me from getting the panels online, and could subject me to a bunch more County bullshit. On the other hand, if no-one calls jackasses out for being jackasses, they’ll never change except to get worse.

The County person arrived. She was late but didn’t bother to apologize. I kept my mouth shut and went back inside the house. 

A half hour later, the solar guy says the inspection is good, and that the panels are online. 

I guess I could have held my breath! I’m calling this a good day.

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I’m over it! 3 months and not 1 usable watt generated.

The other half decided to have solar panels installed on the roof.

Panels

Their reasoning was that Edison and PGE were trying to work out some B.S. where they would no longer have to buy any excess Kilowatts from homeowners whose solar panels generated power in excess of their usage during the day.

To my way of thinking this is blatant theft. Even if Edison or PG&E wanted to put free panels on my roof, I’d still charge them space rental based on SqFt. I’m sure we could work out some arrangement where they paid for the usage of my roof space in electricity. That being said I’m equally sure they’d find a way to make the power so expensive that the space rental would be negligible.

Simultaneously, Edison has been raising rates and re jiggering their Tier rates such that the only time you’re not paying the most expensive Tier is early in the morning and very late at night. Basically it’s like they’re doing everything in their power to screw their customers.

This is happening throughout the year but it’s especially annoying because the only high usage appliances we have are the refrigerator, the A/C unit, dishwasher, and the washer. The Fridge we can’t do too much about. The A/C is rarely on, the washer and dishwasher are only used with full loads.

More often than not we hand wash the dishes.

Every single light in this house is LED, or fluorescent. The lights are only on in the room we occupy. Even our ceiling fans are EneryStar Compliant at the highest level we could purchase. We’ve dialed our power consumption down to bare minimum and yet the Electric bill kept going up. I was all set to put padlocks on all the external wall sockets because we were wondering if someone was stealing power from the house. It wasn’t until I started running comparisons between bills that I realized that wasn’t happening. Our power consumption is very constant and predictable.

Our path lights and even the exterior Christmas lights, (In season) are solar powered.

I’d sort of given up on Solar panels on the house because snow on those panels in the wintertime coupled with the general overcast would make the panels useless for 3 to 4 months a year. The other half pointed out that much of the rest of the year, if we could put enough panels on the roof we’d bank the excess power during the Summer and possibly not have to pay much of an electric bill during the Winter.

I saw the merit of this logic and agreed that panels could potentially do us some good. Because the panels were installed prior to the date Edison and PG&E were going to implement their nefarious plan, we got in under the wire and will be banking our excess and Edison will have to pay us prevailing rates according to their own Tier schedule.

So we went ahead with the installation. The panels were installed in June.  Edison will have to pay us prevailing rates according to their own Tier schedule. You can bet your ass, we’ll be calling them out on any discrepancies or delinquent credits or payments. After all essentially, we’re an independent power company now…

You’d think all of this would be great. It would if everything was actually connected. Here we are in September and the panels are still not producing power for household use. The panels have the potential and god knows they’re getting tons of light during the day but this installation and interconnect to our house circuits is still not complete.

Some electricians were out today to install a subpanel.

Now we find that we’re going to have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for Edison to get off their asses and inspect / approve the actual connection. Before we can turn the damn things on.

That’s annoying, so is the hole in the exterior wall where these connections were added.

Apparently, the installation company is going to send out carpenters to patch the hole and pretty things up. Great! More waiting!

By the time these panels are online, it’s going to be Winter. So they’ll do very little good. Perhaps we’ll start to see a return on the investment by Spring of 2023, if we’re lucky. At this rate, I’m beginning to think we’re not going to have these things online until next Summer.

I don’t want to install backup batteries until we know the panels are working as expected and that the power distribution is so automatic that we don’t notice the changeover from Solar to Edison at night. Only then will I consider backup batteries, so that when the inevitable rolling blackouts hit California, we’ll be able to keep running. I’m looking at UPS (Uninterruptible Power System) systems now for the more delicate electronics.

I just saw the guy up the street Tesla on the back of a tow truck again. That has become at least a monthly event. I think it’s being towed to a charging station.  If he follows the normal routine, the car will be driving back up to the guy’s house in a couple of hours.

I don’t know why the car doesn’t charge at his house, but obviously something isn’t working right. Perhaps he should consider buying a new house in a new neighborhood where the power infrastructure can handle his car? His house was built in the 1950s it may be that the place just can’t handle to power requirements. Alternatively, he could just go buy a gas powered vehicle.

Perhaps I could point out that I’ve got some solar panels on the roof that aren’t doing anybody any good? Nah, I’d probably have to have the electricians back out to install another panel specifically for his car. God knows what kind of inspection process that would entail.

Then there’s the risk of his Tesla deciding to ignite some of its batteries in my driveway. Yeah, not interested.

The really weird thing about having solar panels up here is that people are always asking if our house is off the grid. When I say “no, we don’t have the battery backup option and are still reliant on Edison when the sun goes down,” I get this blank look.

Then I have to explain that the panels only generate power they don’t store it. This is usually followed by a blank look and them repeating the question. I’m constantly astounded at how little people understand about simple science.

The next person who puts me through this I’m going to clamp jumper cables to their nipples and connect ‘em to the solar panels. At least that would be a test proving that the panels are actually working. Yeah, I still don’t know if they’re working.