Valley Headlines

Do Portuguese hold the key?

LA Times. How CA’s Portuguese community may tip the balance of power in Congress.
Synopsis: Reporter Faith Pinho traveled to the week-long Festa in Thornton to take in the bullfights, seven masses, a parade, the crowning of queens and lots of partying. The story notes that Republicans must hold onto four seats to keep their power, and they’re counting on John Duarte and David Valadao to hold two. There are 350,000 Portuguese, mostly from the Azores. But they are not monolithic. Among the first quoted is Christine Nunes of Hilmar, who says many Portuguese have forgotten that when they first arrived in CA, the Portuguese were cleaning hotel rooms and milking cows. She’s voting for Kamala Harris and Adam Gray.

More on elections, politics …  

GV Wire. Where is early Fresno voter turnout strongest? How are Dems, GOP faring?
Synopsis: David Taub looks at early-voting returns across Fresno County. Voters have returned 17% of their ballots in CA-13 already and registered Democrats have a 5-point edge. That’s a lower turnout than in other parts of Fresno. Oddly, Taub notes, Republicans are 30% of the district but make up 38% of the returns. Democrats make up 41% of all voters, but 43% of the ballots returned so far.

Politico. Can Gavin Newsom help in House races?
Synopsis: There’s a reason you’re not seeing Gavin Newsom in the Valley; he’s not especially popular among many Valley voters. His approval rate is 47% statewide, but in the Valley, he is blamed for everything from higher gas prices to higher crime and Valley Fever. One attack ad from John Duarte tries to link Newsom’s policies to Adam Gray; same with David Valadao in Tulare County.
MAD Note. Maybe the governor has been laying low, but there has been a steady progression of elected leaders coming to Merced, Modesto, Lathrop and elsewhere to help bolster Adam Gray and other Valley Democrats – John Garamendi, Adam Schiff, Sara Jacobs, Pete Aguilar, Jim Costa, Dennis Cardoza, etc. who have dropped in to shake hands, knock doors and raise spirits. This week, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis will be in Modesto.

Westside groundwater plan OK’d

Modesto Bee. To avoid state intervention, Stanislaus Co OKs plan to reduce groundwater pumping.
Synopsis: Supervisors approved reduced pumping on the West Side, which is located in the critically over-drafted Delta-Mendota Groundwater Subbasin. Del Puerto WD, West Stanislaus ID and Patterson ID are all involved in the plan, which was developed by EKI Environment & Water. Included are monitoring and pumping reductions of 9,000-acre feet. Anthea Hansen, GM of Del Puerto, says only a small amount of subsidence has occurred so far.  
MAD Note: No mention of similar problems on the east side of the County where Supervisor Withrow is a partner with one of the largest landowners and pumpers.

Hurricanes, California style

PPIC. CA has its own hurricanes – and we are just as vulnerable to flooding as the Southeast.
Synopsis: The PPIC likens our atmospheric river storms to Helen and Milton. Yes, those ARs lack the high winds, but they’re plenty destructive.
MAD Take: No doubt, our flooding is destructive. But 250 died in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. It’s not the same.

Good farming helps the climate

FERN’s Ag Insider. Higher ag productivity may be cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions.
Synopsis: UC Berkeley Prof. Aaron Smith – Distinguished Chair of Ag Resource Economics -- wrote in his blog Tuesday that “investing more in research and development to increase agricultural productivity could provide a true win-win scenario of reducing climate change emissions while also increasing global welfare.” He says the three methods of climate impact identified for ag – conservation tillage, carbon sequestration, cover cropping – are actually more expensive than they are effective and yield little in increased production and cost more. Worse, a rapidly changing climate will overtake any gains.
MAD Note: If you go to his blog, Prof. Smith notes that crops absorb 17 GT (gigatons) of carbon through photosynthesis, which is double what we emit by burning fossil fuels. He says ag R&D has already reduced carbon emissions at a cost of $15 a ton – much lower than the cost of any of the practices being pushed. Interesting read.

Money for mental health, but whose?

Turlock Journal. Brain therapy contract goes to mayor’s key campaign donor.
Synopsis: Reporter Joe Cortez looks at the $640K deal to bring Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to first responders in Turlock, and finds that the money will be paid to Dr. Romena Karyakous, founder of Genesis Behavior Center. Dr. K has contributed $12,000 to Mayor Amy Bublak’s campaign dating back to 2016. Two members of her family chipped in $4,000 each. The last of those contributions came in 2021, meaning the company was eligible to do business with Turlock. Stan State Prof. Steven Routh says political contributions are a form of protected speech, so it looks tawdry but really isn’t. Mayor Amy pointed out that she supplied the “evidence” of the contributions through finance reports and that her ethics “are not a question.”
MAD Note: While a lot of folks are skeptical of anything that starts with the word “transcranial,” the Mayo Clinic, Harvard and others have validated the effectiveness of this treatment – though no one has yet explained why it works.

Turlock Journal. County receives millions in state funds for foster youth with behavioral conditions.
Synopsis: Through a state grant, the Hope Forward program will offer services to youth in jeopardy on a secure campus south of Turlock. That campus has been controversial. But Supervisor Vito Chiesa pushed past the fears of community members to remind people there is “need in the community. … Kids have been staying in the hospital or being shipped out to Sacramento or some other area. So, down in south Turlock there’s going to be this facility that is much needed.” It means at-risk youth will be closer to support systems – i.e., family – to help them recover.
MAD Take. It’s interesting that Turlock enthusiastically endorsed spending money on improving the mental health of well-paid first responders by providing TMS to them for free but balked at helping kids who literally have nothing. Hopefully, the benefits will become clear in both cases.

Criticism for the Air Board

Cal Matters. CA’s transition off carbon fuels could upset gas supply, prices.
Synopsis: Dan Walters, as he often does, takes the worst-case view of the world’s transition away from fossil fuels. He vaguely chastises Gov. Newsom for characterizing refiners as price-gougers, saying most of the differences in California’s price and the price in other states “are caused by taxes, fees and regulatory mandates.” Meanwhile, the Air Board – which is incredibly callous in its approach to Californians who must purchase 20 or 30 gallons of gas a week just to get to work – has refused to set aside additional fees that will jack the price another 47 cents per gallon. He offers no blame or vitriol for the refineries who are trying to punish the state.
MAD Take. Dan has consumed the petrol-Kool Aid. The nation’s foremost expert on energy production and pricing, UC Berkeley’s Severin Borenstein, first identified the “mystery surcharge” paid by Californians two decades ago. At the time, the price of a gallon of gas included 10 cents that couldn’t be explained by higher taxes, fees or the additional production costs. Now, that “surcharge” is around 55 cents. Call it a “mystery” or call it “gouging,” it’s the same thing. Does that excuse the Air Board for its imposition of higher fees? No.

Methane digesters work, save them

Cal Matters. To support CA farms, state regulators need to stay the course on this climate program.
Synopsis: Fresno dairy farmer Sal Rodriguez writes about how the farm he manages milks more cows while producing significantly less greenhouse gas with less water and far fewer chemicals than 20 years ago. Methane digesters are an important part of the effort to make dairy farming greener. The state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard plays an important role in making digesters economically feasible. Now, a lot of people say they’re not effective enough are trying to get the digester subsidies removed. We can’t let that happen.
MAD Note: Amen.

Cal Matters. This key CA climate program doesn’t need a rubber stamp, it needs an overhaul.
Synopsis: Danny Cullenward is a professor in Pennsylvania and vice chair of our state’s cap-and-trade program. He writes that bio-fuel subsidies – i.e., ethanol -- are overstated and should be removed from the Low Carbon Fuel Standard program where they suck up most of the funding. Instead, the incentive money should go to electric vehicles. Importantly, he debunks the thought that we can’t predict the impact of LCFS credits on gas prices. He says it will cost at least 26 cents a gallon and could go to 85.

Bird flu: Colorado cows OK …

Farms.com. The last of Colorado’s dairy cows infected with bird flu are out of quarantine.
Synopsis: Dr. Maggie Baldwin, the state vet, is “very pleased” to report that Colorado’s cows are bird-flu free. Eradicating bird flu in six months “is pretty remarkable. I’m really proud of how our state handled this.” More than 75% of the state’s herds were impacted by bird flu. The reason it spread so fast was that equipment and workers carried it from dairy to dairy.

But it’s getting worse in CA

Cal Matters. Bird flu jumped from cows to people; now advocates want more farmworkers tested.
Synopsis: The state has found 16 cases of bird flu in humans, all in dairy workers. There are likely more, considering only 39 workers have actually been tested. The human symptoms are mild, with the worst being conjunctivitis; none has required hospitalization. A United Farm Workers rep says, “Workers are actively avoiding testing, I can assure you.” No wonder. If diagnosed, they are quarantined for 10 days and don’t get paid. The story says infected cows have been found on 178 dairies so far, about 45 more than last week. The state has “deployed 5,000 doses of seasonal flu vaccine for farmworkers.”
MAD Note: Not discussed in this story is whether or not humans, once infected and still contagious, can pass the disease back to cows. If that’s the case, and it likely is, then farmers should be happy to pay infected workers to stay away from their cows for 10 days. Many sickened cows never recover their production capacity and end up being culled. Since heifers cost around $2,000, exposing them to disease seems like bad business.