But somehow this will not involve my PG&E bill getting lower.

Got to love the invariable results of govenment intervention in the economy.

California pays other states to take solar power.

//On 14 days during March, Arizona utilities got a gift from California: free solar power.

Well, actually better than free. California produced so much solar power on those days that it paid Arizona to take excess electricity its residents weren’t using to avoid overloading its own power lines.

It happened on eight days in January and nine in February as well. All told, those transactions helped save Arizona electricity customers millions of dollars this year, though grid operators declined to say exactly how much. And California also has paid other states to take power.

The number of days that California dumped its unused solar electricity would have been even higher if the state hadn’t ordered some solar plants to reduce production — even as natural gas power plants, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, continued generating electricity.//

Government can't do anything these days.

The new Bay Bridge has defects.

//A state senate report…charges that Caltrans bosses “gagged and banished” at least nine top bridge engineers, scientists, and other experts. In “closed-door meetings,” transportation department officials reportedly approved “extra millions” for “incentives,” “accelerations,” and “mitigations” to open the bridge by Labor Day last year. Their behavior, the report alleges, amounted to “an institutionalized, if not malicious, lack of transparency in the project. [...]

Several storms in recent years exposed parts of the bridge to flooding, and corrosion was evident even before the span opened to motorists. A few months before the bridge was scheduled to open last year, dozens of long metal support rods snapped. Metallurgical engineer Lisa Thomas testified that this was due to “hydrogen embrittlement,” a problem Caltrans invited by opting to use Grade BD steel, rather than the more robust Grade BC. Thomas says that hydrogen is to this type of steel “as Kryptonite is to Superman.”//

Hey!  Let's build a bullet train from Avenal to Corcoran!

Hunger Games 

In California, it's the productive inland versus the powerful coast:

Mr. Vidak's campaign theme was the bifurcation of California: the coastal liberal elites versus the Valley folks. "We're getting left behind here," he says. "They don't view us as important."

Case in point: The unemployment rate in Mr. Vidak's district is about 15%—two to three times as high as in the Bay Area—and exceeds 30% in some communities. The culprit? "Our water has been cut off by the far left," he says.

Regulations to protect smelt from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta water pumps have created a California water shortage, which is particularly acute in the Valley. This year farmers south of the delta will receive only 20% of their contracted allocations. An irking irony is that the smelt's biggest killer is the wastewater that Sacramento dumps into the delta.

"It's fish versus farmer," he says, and liberals are siding with the fish.

Other species-protection policies have removed thousands of acres of land from production, endangering the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers. Meanwhile, California's bullet train, beloved by liberals, will slash through Mr. Vidak's district and raze hundreds of farms, homes and businesses.

"We don't have clean drinking water in some areas of our district," Mr. Vidak says. "And they want to build an $80 billion bullet train!"

His election opponent, Ms. Perez, endorsed the bullet train "as the biggest jobs plan in California history." However, she campaigned principally on raising the state minimum wage to $9.25 from $8, an issue that plays well in union-dominated, urban areas but didn't resonate with the Valley's farmers and small business owners.

Notwithstanding her Hispanic heritage, Ms. Perez appeared out of touch with Valley voters' values and concerns. She raised twice as much money as Mr. Vidak, but 90% of her contributions came from outside the district.//

For the record, I noticed the "colonial inland" feature three decades ago, when I was applying to the University  of California and noticed that all but one campus (Davis) was within 5 miles from the Pacific ocean.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is no bad news...

...such as riots in Anaheim.

Boff, who is in Anaheim getting her new ice-skates, tells me that there have been riots in Anaheim for the last week over the police shooting of an unarmed youth.

Sure enough, here's the story:

Riot police fired bean bag rounds and pepper balls into a crowd of protestors late Tuesday outside City Hall as council members inside voted unanimously to ask the U.S. attorney's office to investigate recent officer-involved shootings, including one of an unarmed man.

About 250 riot police were called in by officials to quell the more than 600 demonstrators before restoring order. Twenty-four people were arrested in the unrest.

The back-to-back weekend shootings have sparked four days of protests. A crowd of protesters who were shut out of the council meeting because there was no more room grew violent, tossing rocks and bottles at police and ignoring warnings to disperse.

Officers formed lines to try to contain the crowd as residents set fire to trash cans, loudly taunted police and swarmed a Starbucks, breaking windows.

Police helicopters hovered from above as colorful fireworks from nearby Disneyland lit up the sky.

There is the problem with being able to select news - you miss the stuff in your back yard.

Here is an article on the reasons for the riot:

Huizar told The Daily Beast that she went to the location of the shooting Sunday morning to find out what happened to her son. While she was there, she said, residents poured out of apartments to tell her what they had seen. Huizar was told that Diaz was at a spigot washing his hands and getting a drink of water when the police officers appeared. According to the events as they are outlined in the lawsuit, two plainclothes officers approached Diaz, without telling him they were cops, around 4 p.m. As they began to chase him down an alleyway, Diaz ran toward the front of an apartment building. Diaz “was not brandishing a firearm, did not possess a firearm, and in no way was he a danger to himself or others,” according to the complaint.

Although there were children playing in the street, the officers shot Diaz on the back of his legs near his buttocks and he fell to the ground. When Diaz fell to his knees, his mother said, an officer shot him in the head and left him on the grass without calling for an ambulance. The complaint states that Diaz was not under the influence of alcohol, medication or controlled substances at the time he was shot.

Shot him in the head after he fell to his knees? My knee-jerk reaction is to say, "sounds bogus." Except:

A video sent anonymously to OC Weekly shows a wounded but still alive Diaz lying on the grass as uniformed police officers arrive on the scene. “He’s still alive man!” a man yells at the officers, who ignore the residents’ pleas for them to call an ambulance for Diaz. Then as an officer tries to cover the camera with his hand, a man reminds him in Spanish, “The law allows us to film,” and the officer backs off. A young woman also is heard challenging the officer: “Why did you have to shoot him in the head?” Later she says, “He wasn’t gonna jump.” Three minutes after the filming begins, an officer turns Diaz on his back. The recording ends before an ambulance is called or arrives. Diaz died in a hospital a few hours later.

With the advent of cell phone cameras, we are learning that "bogus" happens on an almost routine basis.