This post gives me a chance to post some videos of songs I like. When I was growing up, California was the promised land. In my first job with 3M back in 1984 when they asked “Where do you want a sales territory?” I preffed the entire state of California. I got a territory in Chicago which has its own problems. The common thread between the two is terrifically terrible decisions. Many of them with one-party rule.
Over the past couple of days, I drove to California and back. My daughter is pregnant and we took some stuff to them. I also dropped my wife off.
California used to be a dreamland. I don’t have to go into the reasons why it was, and why that dreamland was destroyed here. If you are astute, you can figure it out pretty easily. California started to go bad back when Jerry Brown was governor, the first time. That would have been 1975 to 1983.
When I was a kid, my parents took me to San Francisco. We drove down the coast to LA and went to Disneyland. There was no Disney World then. It was 1971. The Pacific Coast Highway was littered with hippies and broken-down cars painted all kinds of colors. There were surfers and mountains! I thought it was cool.
I was talking to my buddy who has lived there since 1987. He recalled Labor Day that year as being super, super hot. A lot of people that live along the coast don’t have air conditioning. They rely on the Pacific Ocean breeze for cool. Of course, traders remember what happened in October of that year and if you weren’t born yet, look at a chart.
My daughter and son-in-law are in that predicament. No a/c. I feel for them and my wife.
Unfortunately, just like the people that think the recent Memphis, Tennessee murder spree means we have to get guns off the streets, most people I ran into think this is due to “climate change”. It’s not. It’s due to stupidity.
California’s energy grid sucks. They went “green” instead of big bad nuclear and they are paying the dividend for it. Even amidst this heat wave and suffering, they won’t say they are wrong. Nope. They need more solar. Idiots.
By the way, nuclear power is the greenest energy. Using it won’t break the backs of poor and middle-class people. It’s the only way forward for an on-demand information economy. No reliable constant source of energy, no economic growth. Comprende?
I will tell you that I’d rather deal with 100-degree temperatures rather than below-zero temperatures and I speak from experience with both. It’s easier to take clothes off and find shade than it is to find enough clothes to put on to keep from freezing.
Europe is going to get to test that theory this winter. Will green energy keep you warm? Similar to the California bureaucrats, Europe’s bureaucrats embraced the climate change fallacy and green energy as the solution. Germany is especially vulnerable. Of course, there was that Trump speech at the UN back in 2018 where the German delegation openly laughed at Trump. My friend Jeff Minch wrote about it here if you care to delve deeper into it.
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration continues to trumpet green energy and ban exploration or development of the stuff that works. They just aren’t serious people.
Europe is so screwed. The energy price ceilings they put in force won’t do anything except create shortages and rationing-similar to that $35 insulin policy our socialist friends are shouting about.
These people that are in charge now have no idea how the common peoples carry out their lives. They are highly insulated from it and when the food shortage happens or the lights go out, they don’t have to worry about it. In America, they must be voted out in November.
Any politician who doesn’t use the word “nuclear” when talking about building up America’s energy grid should be given a pink slip.
Any politician that doesn’t talk about exploring for more oil, gas, and other fossil fuels should be given a pink slip.
Any politician that is against mining for copper which is needed for things like electric cars, electric tools, and yes, windmills, needs to be given a pink slip.
Any politician that is against mining for lithium in the United States should be given a pink slip.
Any politician that is against putting desalination plants along the California coast so they can get all the freshwater they want should be given a pink slip.
I think we know which political party supports energy, and which party just doles out subsidies to cronies for stuff that doesn’t work.
When I read Twitter, the only issue I see tweets about from one party is abortion. That issue has been so highly politicized it’s all they think about. When they had the chance and control of Congress, they did nothing about it. Don’t forget that if you are a supporter. They abandoned you when they had the chance and it counted.
Now that the Supreme Court has given that issue to the voters to decide like a good democratic republic should, whatever they think is a non-issue since they don’t get to decide for us anymore.
If all you can talk about is killing babies, no matter what day you do it that’s what you are doing, maybe you should find another line of work other than representing people.
We have some huge issues in front of us. Energy, economic growth, crushing inflation, educating our children, recovering from poor decisions during Covid, and protecting our borders both physical and technological.
Meanwhile, a lot of people can’t focus on that, they want to crush the free enterprise, capitalistic way of life that has served us well for over 200 years.
I moved to California from Washington State in the early 2000s. Before that, I remember being on phone calls with co-workers in California and hearing alerts for them that an upcoming brownout/power cut back was coming over a company loudspeaker that I could hear over the phone. I shook my head thinking what a crazy thing! Gee, it's only been 20+ years. And they face the EXACT same problem today. If their politicians can't fix it within that time, something is very wrong. And also, as of 3 years ago, I am no longer a California resident.
Fantastic Zepplin song...yes, October 1987, I was trading at the Mid-Am and checking CBOE trades after hours. I kind of figured something was up in September when a cabbie picked me up in back of the Board late-night and started telling me about all his stock investments. Next spring in '88 we had a huge heat wave and drought and I got the opportunity to go into the big pit in the CBOT ag room and thus launched the next 25 years of a wonderful worklife for which I will be forever grateful.
One crazy thing regarding nuclear power.....my now neighbor in Dallas is a former deputy Secretary of Energy under GW Bush and currently CEO of a nuclear energy concern producing small footprint nuclear reactors based on entirely new technology, impossible to meltdown, highly efficient, miniscule waste, etc. He said the big hurdle is not the technology or research, its the NRC and their antiquated regulatory regime based in last century. We could have the long-promised (relatively) cheap, modular & clean energy, but our own government stands in the way. Guess there's not enough graft to go around.