The 115th U.S. Congress aims for budgetary chaos in California public services by 2020

DON'T READ THE CAPTION - QUICK, WHO ARE THESE THREE GUYS?

At the federal government level, the U.S. House of Representatives has the most impact on determining the direction domestic policy - not the President or the Supreme Court. And while the U.S. Senate participates equally with the House in approving legislation and budgets, House members usually set a course by voting first on budget matters and measures that impact the budget significantly.

Unlike the guys in the picture above, you probably have no trouble identifying the President of the Rust Belt in the photo to the left. That is because you have been taught in school and by the media that he's the most important man in the World. On the other hand, if you read the U.S. Constitution you may be surprised to learn that the only powers assigned by the Founding Fathers to the President with regard to domestic policy (which is established by laws adopted by Congress) are as follows:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; ...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed....

As it turns out, over the centuries Congress has adopted laws that give the President additional roles in the policy process. For instance, the current budget creation and spending implementation process was established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, and by other budget legislation.

The process of the President submitting a formal annual budget request to Congress was authorized by the 1921 Act adopted by Congress. While that shifted leadership momentum, that could be eliminated tomorrow by Congress (though it would probably require a veto override vote).

Looking at that picture at the top you probably had trouble identifying Representatives Greg Walden of Oregon and Keven McCarthy of California who are flanking House Speaker Paul Ryan. In fact even if you are a resident of Oregon or California you probably did not recognize either one. It is ironic that both had more influence on the details of the proposed American Health Care Act (AHCA) than the guy in the little picture above left whose activities the media (and maybe you?) pay attention to all the time.

The AHCA as written today would cost California $20 billion in federal subsidies lost that support healthcare for the working class and the poor. To replace that money, the State of California personal income tax revenue would have to be increased by about 25%. The voters of California would have to approve that. That would be resisted.

Still many are suggesting we "go it alone" with regard to healthcare policy by implementing a California "single-payer" plan.

Speaking of the voters, there was an election this week in the City of Los Angeles. About 11% of the voters turned out. Fortunately, the few that voted turned down a ballot measure that would have prevented development in a City already struggling with skyrocketing housing costs.

And they approved a measure that would fund modernization and expansion of public transit. Pushed by the reelected Mayor Eric Garcetti, the $121 billion transit initiative would fund hundreds of miles of new rail connections, bus-rapid transit lines, and robust bike infrastructure improvements over the next 40 years. But the plans would need ongoing additional transit funding from the federal government.

As explained in Hey Transit Fans: Worry About Congress, Not Trump:

...President Trump has threatened to defund any cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities; L.A. remains a magnet for immigrants, and nearly one in ten people living in the county is believed to be undocumented. Though [Mayor Eric}Garcetti has refused to use the term “sanctuary city” outright, he has pledged to make “all Angelenos feel safe, secure and welcome in our community” and has criticized Trump’s travel bans and immigration policies. o accomplish his “signature initiative,” ...the mayor will need to negotiate a delicate relationship with the White House.

...Legally speaking, the president probably can’t withhold infrastructure funds on the basis of local immigration policies. More importantly, it’s Congress that deals with how transportation is funded....

...Rather than anticipating retribution for clashing with Trumpian ideology, cities should just prepare for serious transit funding cuts in general. Unless longstanding federal formulas are changed, the threadbare Highway Trust Fund will still pass onto states a handful of dollars to be used for public transportation. But ... signature grant programs that have supported transit—such as TIGER and TIFIA—may get cut. After all, the Republican Party’s official platform calls for a total elimination of federal subsidies to public transportation.

Healthcare and public transportation are only a part of the Congressional budget iceberg threatening the California ship of state.

Over the next four years Congress will grin, accept, file, and consider the budget requests from the President as they always do. Those three guys in the picture above will not only determine what will happen to the President's requests, it will determine the future success of Garcetti's transportation vision and the future as envisioned by other California governmental leaders.

And things don't bode well for that future.

Literally, across California's state and local governments, there are billions of dollars of future infrastructure improvement and operational governmental expenditures that will be hampered if not eliminated by a lack of federal funding.

This will begin somewhat in the federal fiscal year that runs from October 2017 to September 2018. By the 2019-20 fiscal year, without significant leadership from California officials we may be looking at State and local budgetary chaos.

Unfortunately it may be the result of California Empirical Egalitarian Progressivism which has the goal of assuring the long term survival and success of California and Californians. Consider the desire to prevent Californians from dying unnecessarily because of lack of access to healthcare, a goal contrary to the Neoliberal ideology of the guys in the pictures above.

In June 2013 Governor Jerry Brown signed bills radically implementing Medicaid Expansion. That did away with many of the barriers that prevented people from enrolling in Medi-Cal by, among other things, eliminating an asset test for enrollees and allowing childless adults to enroll instead of forcing them to seek subsidized private coverage through Covered California, California's Obamacare health insurance exchange.

Last year the LA Times noted:

California, however, wholeheartedly embraced the Affordable Care Act.

“The ACA has not been perfect, there have been challenges,” said Sabrina Corlette, a senior research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms. But “if there was one state where it was really working well ... it was California.”

The state enrolled millions in Medi-Cal, and 13.6 million people — one in every three state residents — is covered by the program. Insurance premiums have not increased here as much as they have elsewhere, and the exchange still offers many options so consumers can shop around.

The percentage of uninsured working-age adults in California had dropped by more than half to 11% last year, according to federal data. Beyond signing up large numbers for coverage, state officials had also started improving the way medical care is delivered to patients, Corlette said.

When considering what the Affordable Care Act could accomplish, she said, “California was held up as the gold standard.”

Perhaps being one of only five Democratic states among the 50 (as noted in the first post in this blog) should have made us a bit more cautious.

Being so Democratic in elections and policies, we sometimes forget that without California the U.S. voted Republican in the 2016 Congressional and Presidential elections. There is a certain irony that two of the three Republican Representatives pictured at the top are from California and Oregon, two of the five remaining Democratic states.

It's almost as if Paul Ryan was making a point on behalf of the Neoliberal movement. reminding us that the California delegation to the 115th United States Congress may include 39 Democrats, including minority leader Nancy Pelosi, but it also has 14 Republicans who are among the House Republican majority, including majority leader Kevin McCarthy. In his mind, it's all about that House Republican majority.

Maybe in the end we should "go it alone" but as discussed in #Calexit. Perhaps 170 years of invidious doubtful scorn is enough, not just on healthcare.

Blundering into war with North Korea Fools in the White House are dangerous to California, Oregon, and Washington

As noted in the first post in this blog, "What Trump's 'America First' speech means to Californians is that to continue to survive and thrive, we must embrace a 'California First' attitude for the next four years."

I said that because the Rust Belt President was elected by people in states not "within arms reach" of North Korean strategic or tactical nuclear weapons as indicated on the map above.

For some reason those folks seem afraid of brown skinned people from 3000 miles away carrying out a Oklahoma-City-type bombing, which was actually done by white-skinned Irish American Timothy McVeigh and  Michigan farm-boy Terry Nichols.

Californian's need to shift the nation's focus off of some petty thugs in the Middle East and onto real nations in the Pacific Rim, nations that have real war capabilities, nations that are a threat, before our children can only be remembered like we remember the shadows of Hiroshima.

As I noted in May of last year "the wild card for us [California, Oregon, and Washington} is North Korea which currently has nuclear warheads and missiles." And as I explained:

For us, the nation of North Korea which is working on longer range missiles is the potential threat to millions of Pacific Rim lives, not some ragtag groups of Middle Easterners that seem to dominate the political discussion in this Presidential election year.

And the economic and military power People's Republic of China is of far more concern than Putin's Russia.

And so Donald Trump got elected by spreading fear of ISIS and the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) among the ignorant.

It is 42 days since he was sworn in and the headlines that follow are not about a rag-tag bunch of Middle Eastern thugs, they are about Pacific Rim nations:

Were these the headlines you saw today leading to stories you read this week?

Or maybe you are a follower of Steve Bannon's Breitbart News:

But most Americans probably did not read the Breitbart stories either.

Almost no Americans read the story above from the Yonhap News. In fact, almost no Americans would know that the "Yonhap News Agency plays a central role in the South Korean press by delivering news to its customers as well as newspapers, broadcasters, government agencies, businesses and Internet portals on a real-time basis."

So you missed these headlines from people who live next door to North Korea:

Click on headline image to read the story!

In November  I offered:

I only mention my background as a native Californian because here is a list of nations of the world (and in some cases their states, provinces, or other political subdivisions) that have Pacific Ocean (or adjoining seas, bays, etc.) beachfront properties plus a map designed to give one a graphical feel for this world view:

Click on image to see a larger version!

Notice there is no Europe or Africa or Middle East or Indian Subcontinent on the map. It is absolutely necessary to show this reality - it is a reality. The narrowest distance between mainland Asia and the United States - specifically between Russia and Alaska - is approximately 55 miles.

The narrowest distance between Europe (Ireland) and the United States is approximately 2,600 miles, about the same distance between North Korea and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The distance between the United States and Syria is double that.

Would it be troubling to know that at least 15% of the world's Muslims live in areas on this map as opposed to knowing less than 20% live in the Middle East-North Africa region? It isn't very troubling to me. Here's why....

Three nations on this map which are not friendly to the U.S. have submarines, missiles, and atomic weapons. At least one of these nations, North Korea, is run by a crazy despot....

Yes, it is troubling to me that millions of U.S. Pacific Rim citizens are within striking range of those nuclear weapons but Americans living east of the Rockies think the international threat to the U.S. is a bunch of Middle Eastern thugs who have mastered the internet.

On October 12 an opinion piece written by Ohio Governor John Kasich on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) appeared in the Washington Post.... I was surprised when I read his opinion:

Don’t be fooled by divisive talk in the presidential campaign that the TPP is only a debate about trade. At its very core, this agreement is about making sure the United States continues to strengthen its essential alliances and is willing to sustain its standing as the global leader — something we have done for more than half a century.

While China and Russia — and dangerous client states such as North Korea and Iran — jockey to outmaneuver everyone else and gain a dominant hand for their global schemes, there are fast-growing, independent nations looking to partner with the United States and thereby bring their strategic, economic and political values into alignment with ours. That list begins with the initial TPP partners, but as many as 10 additional economies have expressed interest in joining.

The last thing we need is for these thriving markets to come to believe they can’t count on U.S. support, pushing them instead into economic and geopolitical relationships with China or Russia. In the event of our inaction and loss of resolve, the United States will surrender global leadership to our most aggressive rivals, dictators who have the most to gain: Vladimir Putin, Russia’s latter-day Stalin; and Xi Jinping, the most repressive Communist Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

Does it bother me that the likes of Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Donald Trump from New York City - unlike Governor Kasich - failed to tell Americans that the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement among twelve of the Pacific Rim countries was specifically designed to reduce the economic and geopolitical influence of China and Russia in the Pacific Rim region, plus continue to fence in North Korea?

You're damned right it does because Vermonters and New Yorkers are an additional 3,000 miles from these risks. So are the Ohio and Georgia voters who elected a Presidential candidate who has financial interests in Russia and China....

Which bring us to this map, the initial version of which was actually published by the East Coast/Atlantc oriented Wall Street Journal but the second, modified version emphasizes reality assuming the missiles would be aimed at significant strategic targets in the U.S:

There is some speculation about the progress of North Korean missile capabilities which ends up giving us a graphic that looks like this:

That, of course, ignores the fact that North Korea has submarines.including six ballistic missile submarines. As noted in a recent Popular Science article:

North Korea is currently pursuing a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which went from a spectacular failure of a test in December 2015 to a modestly successful 300-mile flight in a test in August 2016.

Such a 300-mile flight would allow a submarine to sit comfortable 150 miles offshore to strike every major city and port on this map located west of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges:

What is not within range of any North Korean nuclear weapons is any Rust Belt, East Coast or Gulf Coast state or the people therein. While naturally people fear strategic nuclear weapons mounted on intercontinental missiles, North Korean submarines and warships can carry tactical nuclear weapons. As explained in Wikipedia (emphasis added):

There is no precise definition of the "tactical" category, neither considering range nor yield of the nuclear weapon. The yield of tactical nuclear weapons is generally lower than that of strategic nuclear weapons, but larger ones are still very powerful, and some variable-yield warheads serve in both roles, for example the W89 200 kiloton (1/5Mt) warhead armed both the tactical Sea Lance anti-submarine rocket propelled depth charge and the strategic bomber launched SRAM II stand off missile. Modern tactical nuclear warheads have yields up to the tens of kilotons, or potentially hundreds, several times that of the weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki [both estimated at 18± kilotons].

It is difficult to overemphasize the complexity of the situation in the Pacific Rim. It could easily become a Cuban Missile Crisis level situation. Donald Trump and Steve Bannon are not Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who since the age of 16 has been a politics nerd, is no Kenneth O'Donnell who spent World War II in the US Army Air Corps (1942–1945).

China, which has plenty of ICBM's that can hit anywhere in the United States plus their own submarines with nukes, is disturbed about our plans for placing Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles, a United States Army anti-ballistic missile system designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase, in their backyard. Per Wikipedia:

In May 2014, the Pentagon revealed it was studying sites to base THAAD batteries in South Korea. In February 2016, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed concerns that deployment of THAAD in South Korea, despite being directed at North Korea, could jeopardize China's "legitimate national security interests." The major controversy among Chinese officials is that they believe the purpose of the THAAD system, "which detects and intercepts incoming missiles at high altitudes, is actually to track missiles launched from China" not from North Korea. In July 2016, American and South Korean military officials agreed to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in the country to counter North Korea's growing threats and use of ballistic missile and nuclear tests; each THAAD unit consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors, a fire control and communications unit, and an AN/TPY-2 radar.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is crazy, of course. The Chinese know this. They also know the American THAAD system is not designed to defend against ICBM's - we have no defense for that. They also know the reliability of the THAAD system in warfare conditions has not been tested.

But they do have disputes with neighboring countries involving the South China Sea as explained in the November post previously mentioned. It's complicated.

Most of Trump's supporters don't understand the Pacific Rim. If they did, they would not have opposed the TPP. The Rust Belt and most of the other states whose Electoral College members voted for Trump have put fools in charge of protecting the Pacific Rim including California and Oregon and Washington.

It's as if Americans are ignorant of the fact that WWI, which led to the European theater of WWII,  began as the July Crisis with incompetents blundering their way into creating the worlds most violent century killing 160± million people. Along with East-of-the-Rockies-Americans ignorance of the Pacific Rim which has been continuous since California was admitted to the Union, there is almost no chance of adequate monitoring of the fools in the White House. The President of the Rust Belt said Thursday while standing on an aircraft carrier:

We will give our military the tools you need to prevent war and, if required, to fight war and only do one thing. You know what that is: Win. Win! We’re going to start winning again!

What exactly the voters in the Rust Belt and The South have in mind for the 21st Century is unclear, but if they care about the next generations they had better become familiar with the Pacific Rim. Because there are no winners when you kill 160± million people.

For 3rd Graders and Donald Trump Where the water in a river comes from

In another move against the health and welfare of the people of California, the President of the Rust Belt today signed an order to start the process of eliminating the effective protection of our water.

The order directs the rollback of a 2015 environmental regulation that was issued issued under the Clean Water Act of 1972 to give the federal government authority to regulate pollution in smaller streams and rivers that flow into larger bodies of water like the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River, Puget Sound, and the San Francisco Bay.

The rule would have given protection to 60 percent of the US’s bodies of water, including wetlands. The rule was attacked by oil and gas developers, farmers, pesticide and fertilizer makers, and golf course owners, which claimed the regulation infringes on property owners’ rights and is bad for the economy. In 2015, the American Farm Bureau Federation led a lawsuit against the rule, arguing it puts the burden on farmers to get a permit for using fertilizers near ditches and streams. The case has been in the courts ever since, and the rule has never actually been implemented.

Trump's order basically puts defending the legal case on hold, directing the EPA to revise the rule. It was a clear action to continue the process of the Deconstruction of the Administrative State as advocated by Neoliberal Presidential Strategist Steve Bannon.

There was a typical Trump signing event:

“It’s a horrible, horrible rule. Has sort of a nice name, but everything else is bad,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony, surrounded by Vice President Pence, first lady Melania Trump and top opponents of the regulation, including newly installed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio.).

Farmers, homebuilders and county commissioners were also present.

“The Clean Water Act says that the EPA can regulate navigable waters, meaning waters that truly affect interstate commerce. But a few years ago, the EPA decided that navigable waters can mean nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer’s land, or any place else that they decide,” Trump said before signing the order.

It is reflective of Trump's ignorance, of course. Here's what I would expect third graders to understand.

Most of the water that river systems ultimately deliver to the ocean...

...and that floats the barges...

...comes from such locations as headwater streams...

 

...but in between the headwater streams, other waterways that ultimately run into navigable waters are polluted by agricultural irrigation runoff filled with pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer...

and runoff from improper development carrying petroleum waste and sewage...

and industrial waste...

which besides killing wildlife gets into our drinking water...

...which in my opinion should be third grade level knowledge. I'm not sure where Trump thinks that nasty water in the puddle outside Trump Towers goes, but it goes somewhere.

California has a significant water quality regulatory program a lot of which depends upon federal regulations the enforcement of which has been delegated to agencies such as the State Water Resources Control Board and the Regional Water Quality Control Boards.

Fortunately, California's navigable waters are wholly within the boundaries of our State. That, combined with proposed new legislation, announced Thursday by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and his colleagues,as an attempt to ensure federal rules on air quality, water protection, endangered species and worker safety would stay on the books in California as explained in the last post California opens environmental defensive front in Trumpism's anti-California War will be enough to protect our children.

As I urged in a post in another blog we must not suffer fools gladly and never forget Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity:

1. Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
3. A person is stupid if they cause damage to another person or group of people without experiencing personal gain, or even worse causing damage to themselves in the process.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people; they constantly forget that at any time anywhere, and in any circumstance, dealing with or associating themselves with stupid individuals invariably constitutes a costly error.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person there is.

The Trump Administration is full of foolish people led by a fool who apparently lacks a third grade understanding of stream and river systems.

Most importantly despite what the news media says about how it will take time for these orders to actually become effective, we must understand that our defenses must be in place well before that can happen. In fact we must act as soon as possible as just as the implementation of the federal regulations has been stopped by a lawsuit making its way through the courts, the State will undoubted see such a lawsuit.

Understand that if we in California can get our act together soon enough to protect our waters we can feel badly for the people around Puget Sound if they don't get their act together soon enough. But we cannot keep the stupid people along the Mississippi River and its tributaries from harming themselves. We tried November 8, 2016, and they declared war on San Francisco Values.

This week Bannon promises a dystopian future California opens environmental defensive front in Trumpism's anti-California War

Steve Bannon is the Trumpist ideologue, the official who teaches us Trumpism - which is not the ideology of Donald Trump but an ideological interpretation of Trump's speeches to support Trump Administration actions.

This week at CPAC Bannon offered the term "Deconstruction of the Administrative State" which is "alt-words" for eliminating that bumbling, imperfect bureaucracy that enforces regulations protecting you and your children from such things as:

• preventing an Ebola outbreak;
• job discrimination based on (in alphabetical order) age, ethnicity, race, sex, sexual preference, or unrelated disability;
• school building safety during a hurricane or earthquake;
• residential construction standards;
• workplace safety;
• bacterial contamination of food in stores and restaurants.

Let's be blunt about it. Most of these regulations are in place because businesses failed to protect their customers and employees from potential harm. All these regulations cost money. None of these pictures below are of the upper 1%:

 

At the same time Trumpism advocates the use of law enforcement to assail, detain, or round up people who "seem" Mexican or Middle Eastern or the son of Muhammid Ali or anyone else they deem suspicious...

...which along with many, many other news stories about federal police detaining Americans should by now make people think...

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Meanwhile, back in California...
As we learned this week from the LA Times:

California lawmakers want to build a regulatory wall around the state, opening a new front in their brewing war with President Trump as they try to prevent any rollbacks in federal rules from weakening environmental protections here.

The new legislation, announced Thursday by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and his colleagues, is an attempt to ensure federal rules on air quality, water protection, endangered species and worker safety would stay on the books in California even if they’re loosened in Washington. Federal standards in place before Trump took office would become enforceable by state officials in California.

Another measure would try to prevent Washington from selling federal land in California to private developers without first offering it to state officials. A third proposal would protect federal workers, such as engineers and lawyers, from losing state certifications and licenses if they blow the whistle on problems at their agencies.

The sweeping package of legislation could be a prelude to drawn-out legal battles between California and Washington, and they arrive as President Trump prepares to loosen federal environmental regulations.

“California will undoubtedly test the limits of what it’s possible for a state to do,” said Cara Horowitz, co-director of UCLA's Environmental Law Clinic. The state, she said, “has made very clear that it sees itself as the environmental resistance in the United States.”

The signing by Governor Jerry Brown of Executive Order S-13-08 began in 2008 our Safeguarding California biosphere protection effort. The following series of posts explore how we Californians have joined the rest of the world overcoming an antiscience trend and what it means for the future well-being of our children and grandchildren:

1. In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind since we want our descendants to survive
2. In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind - such as the words global and climate
3. In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind by discussing biosphere science
4. In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind: about lie, error, digital and information
5. In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind: avoiding the ideology of Neoliberalism
6. In California we are overcoming words that blind and bind: the trap of the technology promise

With this proposed package of new legislation, the Legislature is launching a preemptive strike across a broad front of environmental issues in opposition to the Neoliberals in the Administration of the President of the United States of the Rust Belt. Once passed, this legislation should permit Californians to protect the future of our children and grandchildren by

1. cooperating with people in other Pacific Rim nations that don't look like white America to attempt to reduce the impact of Climate Change and 
2. by planning and carrying out adaptation programs to the inevitable impacts of climate change.

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Meanwhile, back in the Rust Belt...
Many in middle America simply did not, and some still do not, think that Trump intended to carry out his promise to eliminate environmental protections. The following articles indicate completed actions to carry out Destruction of the Administrative State that impact on The Rust Belt, not California. This is what Rust Belt Americans apparently want, but we simply cannot permit this level of irreversible ignorance to be imposed on California's environment in order to make a few rich people richer:

Click on image to learn that what goes into

Appalachian streams ends up in the Mississippi!

Click on image to learn that the listing of these bees threatened

the sales of most widely used insecticide class with sales

of $2.6 billion soon to be dominated by Monsanto after mergers!

This, and much more planned by the Neoliberal Trumpists for America's environment, will not "just all work out ten years from now." Especially if you are a rusty patched bumblebee or live somewhere downstream from a river receiving this waste containing arsenic, lead, manganese, iron, sodium, strontium and sulfate maybe on another further downstream river that is your school's water supply, you need to be acting now.