Chico Taxpayers Association

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/What-s-behind-Gavin-Newsom-s-advice-to-not-16393947.php

I got my recall ballot yesterday, it was most certainly a high point. I already knew what to do, but I’ve been hearing and reading a lot of confusing information about this recall.

My husband and I noticed right away – Gavin Newsom is not on this ballot. That is confusing, as we heard stories that he was indeed running, and that he had a little set-to with the Secretary of State over his party designation.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-12/newsom-wont-get-democrat-beside-his-name-on-recall-ballot-says-judge

Apparently you will have to write him in at the bottom of the ballot if you want to vote for him (in the event that the recall is successful). And the right-in rules are weird.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-08-16/will-your-write-in-vote-in-californias-recall-election-count

Here’s something I didn’t know – only candidates who have applied for write-in status will be counted in this election. This article says that candidates have until August 31 to apply for write-in status. That means the full list of eligible write-in candidates will not appear until early September.

Here’s an August 4 article from CalMatters that adds more confusion:

https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/08/newsom-recall-how-to-vote/

“You can write in any name you want. But for your vote to count, it must be someone from the certified list. Write-in candidates have until Aug. 31 to file. Any write-in votes for Newsom also won’t be counted.“

So, I assume Newsom has not applied to be a certified write-in candidate. In fact, Newsom apparently is telling his supporters just to vote No on the first question and IGNORE the second question. Here’s a blurb from the Democrats’ Twitter page.

The weirdest thing I’ve seen so far are signs distributed by the local Chico Democrats. They are associating this recall with something called Q’Anon – devil worshipping child molesters. This reminds me of the totally weird door hangers they were distributing in the last election. I’m floored – what the hell is happening to Chico Democrats?

The disarray in the Democratic party is one more reason to vote YES on this recall. Newsom and his party are tanking our state with their very, very strange agenda.

I can’t guess what will happen, I just know I’m voting YES for the RECALL and Kevin Kiley for Governor.

How soon we forget – did you really expect the state or the governor to really do anything about PG&E mismanagement when Newsom took over $200,000 from PG&E in the wake of the Camp Fire? And then proceeded to personally broker a deal to mitigate PG&E bankruptcy? Here’s that story from November 2019.

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/newsom-pge-broker-bankruptcy-deal/103-eab02ef6-d2c2-4977-b335-10461b0beea7

“‘If the suggestion is somehow I’m influenced by that, you’re wrong,’ Newsom said of the $208,400 PG&E donated to help him win office.”

“In announcing that his office would seek to “broker” a deal to end PG&E’s bankruptcy, Newsom has inserted himself into a massively complex fight that pits fire victims, governments, shareholders, and bondholders against each other. Tens of billions of dollars are at stake.”

“Some critics of PG&E believe the governor has given the company a gift in the form of this year’s hastily-passed legislation AB 1054, which is aimed at protecting power monopolies from financial trouble when they start future wildfires.“

Two years later, PG&E has started more fires, burned more towns, killed more people, but still continues business as usual with no consequences for bad behavior. They have even been allowed to raise rates substantially to cover their losses. Look at your damned bill! And now “flex time” – in the middle of a PG&E caused wildfire that forces us to shut our windows?

Oh well, geeshy sakes, what ya gonna do? Call Ghostbusters? Well, I’m voting to recall the asshole that has brought one of the most prosperous states in the union to a state of total dysfunction.

One concern I have about this recall is the number of candidates running in this circus. Most of them are completely unqualified, like Elder has admitted of himself, and some of them proven disasters, like Kevin Faulconer. Do we want the state of San Diego?

Cox is an obvious outsider who is not familiar with California’s economy or politics. He keeps citing the “train to nowhere” – the real issue right now is corruption. Here’s a recent article from ABC news about what was really going on at the French Laundry – it was a lot more than a bunch of elitist pigs having a high-end meal.

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/abc10-originals/pge-gavin-newsom-lobbiest/103-2fc7d4f4-a0e0-492d-ac1d-ec674e58a67b

“It was an unforced political error that immediately put Newsom on defense from the appearance of hypocrisy for going against his own COVID safety advice to Californians… Newsom apologized profusely for the dinner. He was only human, he said. And it was a birthday party for ‘a friend that I’ve known for almost 20 years’.”

People, including myself, were outraged over the hypocrisy, while we had no idea it was really about brokering a deal for PG&E. Boy do I feel dumb now!

“Newsom had inserted himself as ‘broker‘ of PG&E’s plan to exit bankruptcy. Bankruptcy documents show the company offered to support the plan only if its terms were ‘acceptable to the Governor’s Office.'”

After accepting campaign donations totaling $208,400 for his 2018 election. But he denies any influence? Why didn’t he just reject the money?

Here is candidate Kevin Kiley responded in 2020:

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2020/02/newsom-california-legislature-must-ban-pge-from-giving-campaign-contributions/

“For decades, Pacific Gas and Electric has methodically executed what the New York Times called its “political playbook”: giving millions and getting its way.

This continued after PG&E’s first bankruptcy in 2004. It persisted after six felony convictions in 2016. And now, even after catastrophic wildfires and devastating blackouts, the playbook is bound to remain the utility’s most valuable asset—unless we make them throw out that book.”

“I have introduced Assembly Bill 2079 to prohibit investor-owned utilities from donating to the campaigns of state politicians.”

Newsom, meanwhile, uses his position to influence California Public Utility Commission in favor of PG&E. From Kevin Kiley’s website,

Newsom’s Catastrophic Corruption

“Now, a whistleblower has come forward at the PUC. Former Executive Director Alice Stebbins says Newsom took ‘complete control’ over the agency’s oversight of PG&E and she was ordered to sign a safety certificate against her will. “

Here’s a week-old story from ABC News:

“SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Three days after Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated his 2018 election victory, one of his major corporate campaign donors caused a mass killing.“

“The Pacific Gas and Electric Company pleaded guilty in June 2020 to felony involuntary manslaughter for killing 84 Californians in the 2018 Camp Fire.”

“PG&E’s officials walked out of court to go back to work on turning a profit, aided by state policies Newsom crafted to help the company.”

“In the months after the crime, Newsom not only signed new financial protections for PG&E into law, his office hired private lawyers in New York who wrote the legislative language.”

Please read that article further, you can read the actual court documents.

“The documents were obtained as part of ABC10’s news series FIRE – POWER – MONEY: How Governor Gavin Newsom Protected PG&E, which investigated how California gave financial protections to PG&E by the state government in the wake of crimes.  

“AB 1054 resulted in PG&E obtaining official state safety certificates for two fire seasons since the Camp Fire.

“The law was written by the lawyers under a contract to represent Newsom’s office in PG&E’s bankruptcy, state records show.”

And here we are, living with the consequences of corrupt government – after murdering 85 people in their homes, PG&E has been allowed to start a new fire at the same location, burning down more towns, 4 people missing as of now, and how many cancer victims to come in the future? We’re breathing wood smoke. People who never touched a cigarette in their lives will die from lung cancer because of a corrupt governor.

So, I signed the petition, and I’m going to vote for Kiley, who is the only candidate bringing real issues to the conversation.

Reader Stephen Jackson submitted the following comment, and I wanted to make sure people see this information.

Juanita, I visited the Butte County Board of Supervisors this last Tuesday to present them with their own county death statistics from 2014-2021. Interesting to note that for the years 2014-2019, there were an average of 61 diabetes, 29 hypertension, 52 liver disease, 26 nephritis, 32 Parkinson’s, 54 flu/pneumonia, and 44 suicide deaths each year. When we arrived at 2020, we no longer reported these deaths….now we simply have a pandemic that’s claimed 204 people over 20 months. COVID arrived and miraculously, all other diseases “went away”? In reality, we know what happened in 2020, all these deaths from all these previously mentioned causes were reported under the primary cause of morbidity as “Covid” instead of reporting that these were deaths from Parkinson’s disease, liver disease, or hypertension, with COVID listed as the “co-morbidity” or secondary cause of death. Why did our county do this? Because of the money the medical industry was paid to categorize them this way! If this doesn’t feel criminal, it should. County leadership is allowing the numbers to be played like this, because they like the ability to control a man-made epidemic and operate with the people “locked down” and “locked out” of the workings of local government, this must end!

This is something my husband and friends noticed immediately. Early in the pandemic, we had checked statistics that showed influenza killed as many as 150,000 people a year. Now all we can find are charts from the American Medical Association or the Center for Disease Control, and those are showing far lower numbers, all the way back to 2015. Look at this chart from the AMA.

This chart shows only about 50,000 deaths a year from influenze, while they have over 345,000 deaths from COVID in one year. Stephen Jackson has provided statistics from Butte County for the same period and asserts the numbers were fudged to get money. If you’ve kept up on the numbers, as I have, you might think so too.

The county board of supervisors just took $20 million in PG&E settlement money to pay down their pension deficit. I believe the board and their staffers in the Health Department are out of touch with their sense of morality, and yeah, I believe they would fudge numbers to get money.

Enjoying the air quality? Smells like CANCER! Well, when you get your terminal lung cancer diagnosis, you can thank the US Forest Service and Cal Fire. It’s official – USFS policy is LET IT BURN. They call it “management”, which sounds appropriate, when you consider, they just MANAGED to burn down another town.

Greenville was a damned nice town. Not only did my husband lay a lot of flooring in that area, but I have relatives scattered all over the little towns between Chester and Quincy. What Cal Fire has done is criminal.

I’ve asked this question on various social media sites, but nobody ever comes back with an answer. If the Dixie Fire is growing by thousands of acres per day, how the hell can they say it’s “contained”? Well, my neighbor, who is retired law enforcement, told me, “that means, ‘burned’, it won’t burn again… not right away anyway…”

According to this article from Wildfire Today,

Forest Service Chief says wildfires will be suppressed, rather than “managed”, for now

our new USFS chief, Randy Moore, is going to change this policy.

“In an August 2 letter to the field, new US Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said that because there is in a “national crisis”, they will not “manage fires for resource benefit”. In other words, instead of allowing fires to burn in order to replicate natural conditions and improve the ecosystem, they will put them out — at least to the best of their ability. “

Given the resources, money, and manpower – including inmates from prisons – this fire should have been out already. They’ve admitted they are allowing it to burn, even increasing the burn area (and the toxic smoke) by setting “back fires”.

Another article on the same page says the vegetation in the Dixie Fire has not burned for over 40 years. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but I know, when I was a kid, which was over 40 years ago, they did “controlled” burns in the winter, having cleared and stacked dead and diseased vegetation over the spring and summer. Who in their right mind would try to “control” or “manage” a fire in the conditions we’re facing right now, instead of during winter rains?

Apparently, USFS had a historic policy called the “10 am Rule” – meaning, put the fire out by 10 am on the second day. But every time there’s a new chief for USFS or Cal Fire, policy changes. In 2008, Cal Fire officially stopped doing fire prevention, saying this was up to the various counties and other local agencies. That was it, and now here we are.

I know, I’ll get some nasty comments on this one – go for it idiots. What the problem is right now, is all these cowboys are on overtime. They work 48 hour shifts, do the math. We’ve watched them pour in from departments all over the state, from as far away as Hawaii! It’s an overtime party, is all it is, and we’re paying for it in more ways than one.

RECALL NEWSOM!

I got a note from a friend of mine regarding a proposed federal mileage tax. I’d heard something about it, and yesterday I read that California is already working on it.

The hold-up is that they don’t know how to collect it. You know, our silly civil liberties. They aren’t allowed to track us, are they?

I hear you – silly Juanita! Just today I got an email from Google, a complete report as to where I had been on my vacation. Even a roadside produce shack. I suddenly realized – we’d used Google maps to get around to various destinations. That’s like putting a tracking device behind your tire!

So welcome to 1984, Big Brother is watching, and don’t trust Big Sis either. I’m going to assume new cars will have the same technology standard, if they don’t already.

State of California’s rationale for the mileage tax is pretty thin – proponents claim that as more people purchase electric cars, gas sales will go down and the Gas Tax will be moot. Then there won’t be any money for road maintenance. Again they throw that at us.

Here’s one problem with that line – gas and diesel are used well beyond cars. As for my family, all of our landscaping equipment, our tractor, our generator, and other items we need in our daily routine require gas. Big rigs that haul our goods, workers that haul their own tools and equipment all use gas. And how about those firefighters – I don’t see them driving electric vehicles in their daily migration between the Dixie fire front and their night quarters in Chico. Those giant bulldozers they tote back and forth all run on petroleum, as do the enormous rigs that haul them. And the planes that fly all the way to and from Sacramento and Chico all use gas.

Furthermore, instead of taxing people TWICE, why couldn’t electric car drivers make up the difference with higher registration fees? When I told a friend of mine that he reminded me that gas is over $4.50 a gallon right now, and over 50 cents of that is the gas tax. According to CBS News California has the highest gas tax in the country. And it goes up exponentially every January.

Powering California Network, “A Coalition of Californians Advocating for Economic Mobility for Working Families,” also points out that both the Gas Tax and this proposed mileage tax are both regressive, meaning, they hit working and poor people harder because they have to drive farther to work.

https://poweringcalifornia.com/powering-california-network/

https://poweringcalifornia.com/analysis-vehicle-miles-traveled-vmt-tax/

“California also has the highest housing costs in the country. California residents who cannot afford to live close to their work have to drive long distances to get to their place of employment, and as a result, they would have to pay more VMT taxes than those who can afford pricier homes near city centers. In many cases, these commuters driving longer distances are blue collar working families. And those working for minimum wage will be the most impacted. Many hardworking Californians living paycheck to paycheck cannot fill their tanks due to the high cost of fuel. The VMT would be an additional financial burden on them.“

Not all people work at the same location every day, some have to drive to various locations in one day. Public transportation is not an option. But, our gas taxes go to pay for trains, busses and bike trails that only serve a fraction of the population. Those people use the roads, but only those of us who buy gas pay for the maintenance? That’s whack.

Now Biden has a proposal for a national mileage tax. Both California proponents and national proponents are saying that a mileage tax could replace the gas taxes now in place, but there’s no guarantee.

It’s a good time to let your representatives know you’re paying attention.