A California Republican

The thoughts and prayers of all people are with the families and soldiers at Fort Hood.

They suffered a brutal attack today. One of their own, a Major, attacked soldiers at a graduation ceremony. Regardless of the reasons, this is a brutal attack. On their homebase, where the soldiers come to be “home” to be safe after being in a tough war situation where there is no safety. A base is where soldiers place their families to be safe while they are gone. A base is a family. For one of their own to attack them, is a tragedy and a huge psychological blow.

It doesn’t help that the person who attacked is a convert to Islam. This just makes it worse for the soldiers. There are soldiers who are in training - basic training an advanced training- at Fort Hood. For them, this is a first lesson in how tragedy hits home. It is a lesson they didn’t think they would learn before they were fully trained.

Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

The water bond is headed to the voters. The price tag for the Legislature’s water reform … $11.14 billion.

It is amazing that the Legislature even agreed on a water reform package. $125 million of this goes to the California Department of Forestry for forest restoration. How is this related to water reform? It is not. That means that this bond is filled with pork. It doesn’t surprise anyone. This Legislature is incapable of acting in the best interests of the state. Instead, they present a “solution” and fill the solution with pork. Then they ask the voters to approve the bond, hoping that they won’t notice there is pork and money for unrelated projects in the bond.

There is a lot of money in the bond for watershed restoration. Watershed restoration? How is that water reform? The restoration of watersheds doesn’t lead to more water, or saving water. It simply restores things to the way they were years ago. There is money for water conservation, and restrictions on water use in the bill that authorizes the bond. None of these things have to do with water reform, and nothing with water storage.

Bonds mortage the future. Instead of paying as you go, bonds ask voters to approve loans to the state government. Then the state government has to pay high interest rates, especially because California’s credit rating is in the dumps, and must pay back the bond eventually. The average cost of a bond, the total cost once it is paid off, is almost three times what the bond was approved for.

What are people not understanding? Bonds cost more money than they state they will. The great thing about bonds is that there is a line in all bonds that the “Director of Finance can levy fees that he needs to inorder to pay for the bond debt,” or something to that effect. The Director of Finance should simply say, “if the bond is passed, I will levy a sales tax of x% across the state for repayment of this debt.” That should be done for every bond that passes between now and forever. Bonds cost a lot of money. If something needs to be done, let’s get together, fund it, and do it with money that we have, not money that we wish we had.

$11.14 billion. For what?