Tag Archives: california

FORT BRAGG, CALIFORNIA.

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A couple of months ago, I wrote that a lot of U.S. military bases back east are named for Confederate generals. As several people pointed out, there are lots of places here in California that are named for Confederate generals as well. I think the most interesting of these places is the city of Fort Bragg, named for Confederate general Braxton Bragg. If you want to go somewhere for the weekend from the Bay Area, Fort Bragg is worth a trip. Although the city is very small, it has 2 major tourist attractions: Glass Beach and the Skunk Train. The Skunk Train is a 19th Century steam train that weaves through ancient redwood forests. Fort Bragg also has a beautiful coastline and great hiking trails.


California’s admission into the Union was a big factor leading to the Civil War.  Prior to 1850, all the new states in the southern half of the U.S., like Texas, were admitted as slave states, and all the new states in the northern half, like Michigan, were admitted as free states. However, California is in the southern half of the U.S., going right to the Mexican border. Slave state senators voted for California’s admission as a free state in 1850 in exchange for northern senators voting for the Fugitive Slave Act, something the slave owners badly wanted. But afterward, it dawned on the slave owners that California’s admission as a free state meant that they had no future in America’s westward expansion and that with time, slavery would disappear.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN SOUTHERN SCHOOLS.
Last month, I wrote that it seems ironic to me that many Southern states inflict harsh physical punishments on public school students for minor violations of school rules while at the same time prohibiting schools from requiring students to wear face masks. Since then, several people have told me about their experiences when they went to school in the South. A man I know well told me that he was paddled in junior high school in Texas for wearing a baseball cap backwards. The teacher claimed that it was evidence that he was in a gang. Southern politicians, including the governors of Texas and Florida, have banned face mask mandates in public schools on the grounds that “we are against government mandates”, but they defend beating up kids for minor violations of school rules. Am I the only person who thinks this seems illogical? I never hear TV newsmen questioning Southern politicians who oppose mask mandates but support corporal punishment.

P.S. – If every boy who wears a baseball cap backwards is in a gang, then there are a lot more gang members around here than I imagined!

COVID VACCINE VS. AN UNTUCKED SHIRT

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As you probably know, the governors of some southern states are prohibiting public schools from requiring kids and teachers to wear face masks. In Florida and Texas, this prohibition is statewide despite the fact that these states have the most new Covid cases in the country. Most hospitals in Texas and Florida have no available ICU beds. The governors of Florida and Texas say that the reason they are doing this is because they are “opposed to government mandates“, but these states have the nation’s toughest school behavior mandates in the country. In a number of southern states, a public school student who is caught wearing his shirt over his pants instead of tucked in is subject to corporal punishment by teachers and school staff. Thousands of kids in Texas public schools are spanked, paddled, or beaten every year for offenses such as wearing an untucked shirt or laughing in the cafeteria. In Mississippi, elementary school students have been sent to ‘juvie’ (a jail for juvenile criminals) for wearing the wrong color shoes. In Florida, children as young as 6 are subjected to corporal punishment. There are no regulations in Florida as to what instrument can be used to beat children with, and Florida schools do not need permission from parents to beat their kids. Southerners support these very harsh school mandates, but they become enraged when they are told to have their kids wear face masks at school because “we don’t believe in mandates.” Covid has killed over 600,000 Americans, but no child ever died from wearing an untucked shirt or laughing in the school cafeteria. The logic of these people escapes me. Southerners love their children and don’t want them to get sick and die. I don’t get it. No foolin’. I really don’t get it.

About California. Here in California, corporal punishment is prohibited in public schools. When I tell my students that in a number of southern states, teachers can beat students with a wood paddle or a leather belt for wearing an untucked shirt, they don’t believe me. I can see it in their faces. They ask other teachers in the school and their parents if it is true. Once they get confirmation that it is true, they go silent and stare at me. Some of my students told me later that they made their parents promise not to move to the South, at least not until all the kids in the house graduate high school. Some adults laugh when I tell them that, but I can assure you that none of my 13-year old students laughs when I tell them that kids their age are beaten in schools in the South every day for offenses such as ‘horseplay on a school bus’, ‘flatulence in class’, wearing mismatched socks, or wearing an untucked shirt. 

THE PASTRY WAR or HOW THE UNITED STATES GOT CALIFORNIA FROM MEXICO.

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As you may know, I enjoy telling history stories that sound so improbable that people assume that I made them up. The Pastry War is one of those stories. How did the United States get California from Mexico? Believe it or not, it was because somebody swiped some French pastries from a bakery in Mexico City in 1832. In 1832, a French pastry chef named Monsieur Remontel wrote a letter to King Louis-Phillipe of France. Monsieur Remontel stated that he owned a small bakery on the outskirts of Mexico City and that one day, some Mexican officers looted his bakery and stole his pastries. Monsieur Remontel asked the king to force the Mexican government to pay him 60,000 pesos for the stolen French pastries and damage to his shop. This was a wildly inflated valuation of the pastries. Back in those days, a Mexican peso was a large silver coin. It contained just under 1 ounce of silver. 1 peso was a day’s wages in Mexico City. This means that Monsieur Remontel was claiming that the damage to this pastry shop and the stolen French pastries were worth 50,000 ounces of silver. That was, of course, preposterous. How could the inventory of a French pastry shop have been worth 50,000 ounces of silver? The appraised value of the bakery itself was under 1,000 pesos.


The Pastry War. The story of the stolen French pastries was widely circulated in newspapers across France. In 1838, King Louis-Phillipe of France demanded that Mexico immediately pay France 600,000 pesos for a long list of dubious claims, beginning with 60,000 pesos for the stolen French pastries. The Mexican government couldn’t have paid France 600,000 pesos even if they wanted to. They didn’t have 600,000 pesos. So, the king of France ordered the invasion of Mexico. Below is a painting of the Battle of Veracuz, in which the French navy bombarded the city’s fort, reducing it to rubble. The commander of the French fleet, Admiral Baudin, then threatened to open fire on the city itself unless the Mexican government immediately agreed to pay France 60,000 pesos for the French pastries. The Mexican government had no choice but to agree, thus ending the Pastry War. However, the Pastry War also led to Santa Anna becoming the dictator of Mexico again. Santa Anna had ruled Mexico before, but after losing the War of Texas Independence, Santa Anna had been forced out of power. After becoming dictator of Mexico as a result of the Pastry War, Santa Anna once again pursued disastrously bad foreign policies with the United States, which led to the Mexican War, which Santa Anna also lost. Santa Anna was a terrible general, but he didn’t know it. He called himself the “Napoleon of the West.” Well, that is how the United States got California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah; and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. However, that wasn’t the end of the Pastry War.

The Second Pastry War. (aka The Second French Intervention) Even though the Mexican government had agreed to pay France for the stolen French pastries, they never did pay for them. As the years passed, the amount of money that France claimed that Mexico owed them grew enormously because the French kept adding interest to the debt and at very high rates. In 1861, France invaded Mexico again, ostensibly to collect the debt. Emperor Louis Napoleon of France installed an Austrian duke, the Emperor Maximilian, as head of a puppet government in Mexico City. In this second war, France had powerful allies. Many European countries sent armies to Mexico to help the French collect the money. In addition to the European armies, several thousand Confederate soldiers also fought for France. However, this time things were different. Santa Anna was gone, and Mexico was now led by President Benito Juarez, an astute politician and military strategist. The Second Pastry War was much bloodier than the first. Over 50,000 Mexicans were killed in the second French intervention, including over 10,000 Mexican civilians who were simply shot by the French. However, this time the French lost the war and were forced out of Mexico for good, and the Mexicans executed Emperor Maximilian. Hostilities between France and Mexico continued even after the French army left Mexico. Mexico had still not paid for the stolen French pastries. In 1880, the French government finally accepted that this nonsense had gone on long enough and dropped their demand that Mexico pay for the French pastries that were stolen almost 50 years earlier. I think this story illustrates how a stubborn and arrogant government can allow a small incident to spiral out of control. That has happened many times in history. Now – be honest – you’ve never heard of the Pastry War before, have you? I have never met a Mexican history buff who had ever heard of the Pastry War before, and there are a lot of Mexican history buffs here in California. I wonder how many of you are going to look up the Pastry War on Google to see if I made up this improbable story. 

ARE CALIFORNIA’S FOREST FIRES DUE TO POOR FOREST MANAGEMENT?

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President Trump has repeatedly said that the forest fires in California are the result of ‘poor forest management’ and have nothing to do with global warming, which he claims is a hoax. The big problem with this argument is that it presumes that the state of California controls its forests, but that isn’t true. Most of the forest land in California is owned by the Federal government, not the state. The largest landowner in California is the U.S. Forest Service. They own almost 25% of all the land in the state. See the map below showing how much land in California is owned by the U.S. Forest Service. However, that isn’t all. If you add in the land owned by other Federal agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Park Service, the U.S. Armed Forces, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, etc; the Federal government owns almost 50% of all the land in California and an even higher percent of the state’s forests. All of these are Federal agencies, and therefore, under the direct control of President Trump, not Governor Newsom. So – if California’s forest fires are the result of ‘poor forest management’, who is responsible for that? Is it the state of California, which owns 3% of the state’s forests, or is it the Federal government, which owns over 60% of the state’s forests? I don’t understand why I never hear reporters or news commentators pointing out the math problem with the ‘poor forest management’ argument.

MARK’S FOREST FIRE ADVICE.


Is your car covered with ash? Forest fire ash is caustic (alkaline) and can damage your car’s finish. Hose the ash off your car from the top down. I have a car washing brush that you can borrow. It attaches to a garden hose. Washing your car with just a hose will remove loose dust and dirt, but without a brush or sponge, you aren’t going to get the stuck-on dust off your car. That’s why all car washes have brushes. If your hose needs a nozzle or a washer, let me know. I always have them in stock. If your hose is leaking or squirting water at either end, it is probably missing a washer. Washers sometimes fall out and get lost. Windshield Wipers. The rainy season will soon be here. Now would be a good time to test your windshield wipers. We haven’t had any rain in 6 months. Windshield wiper blades are cheap and easy to replace.

HERE’S WHY STATEWIDE RENT CONTROL IN CALIFORNIA IS BAD NEWS FOR THE POOR.

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The California state legislature just passed statewide rent control. It goes into effect January 1, 2020. If you want to know what’s the problem with rent control, just take Econ. 101 at Cal. Whenever there is a shortage of a commodity, the price of that commodity will go up. (That’s in ‘Microeconomic Theory’,  the Econ. 101 textbook.) When the government fixes the price of a commodity, including rental housing, at a price that is below the market rate, it creates a shortage and make an existing shortage worse. (That’s also in ‘Microeconomic Theory.’) The truth is that it is hard to find a noted economist anywhere who supports rent control, even here in Berkeley.

Why is the rent in California so damn high? We have a huge rental housing shortage in California, and it is getting worse every year. In 1970, the population of California was 20 million. Today, it is 40 million. In 1945, the population of California was only 8 million. That means that for every 1 person who lived in California in 1945, there are now 5 people living here. Up until the 1960s, new apartment construction kept up with population growth, but then a gap started developing, and the resulting shortage has grown with time. This happened for a long list of reasons: the NIMBY movement ‘Not In My Back Yard’ started here. I know people who are perfectly willing to concede that we need to build a lot more housing, but they just don’t want that housing built near them. We also have high permit fees, restrictive zoning regulations, historic landmarking, environmental laws – including greenhouse gas emission restrictions, and lawsuits – lots and lots of lawsuits. And now we have to add to that list statewide rent control.

We need to build 200,000 new housing units in California every year just to keep up with population growth, but we are building less than 100,000 units a year, and this has been going on for over 20 years. Here in the Bay Area, the shortage is even worse. In San Mateo County, the heart of Silicon Valley, for every 4 jobs created over the past 10 years, 1 housing unit was built. It is this gap between supply and demand for housing in California that explains why house prices and rents are so high. We need to build a lot more rental housing in California, but who is going to build that housing and where will the money come from to build it? Rent control is not an incentive to build rental housing. It is a disincentive.

I have been expecting statewide rent control for a long time. It’s the reason why I never bought an apartment house. I prefer to rent houses and condos, which are exempt from rent control. I once owned a 3 unit property in Oakland, but I converted it to condos. Now that we have statewide rent control, I expect that a lot of apartment house owners across the state will convert buildings to condos and then sell them to owner-occupants, but that will just make the rental housing shortage even worse.


What happens to the poor? Statewide rent control in California is especially bad news for the poor. Whenever there is a shortage of a commodity that everybody wants, like housing, who gets it? Do the poor really get an equal shot at it with the rich? Suppose a landlord has an apartment for rent, and he receives 10 or 20 applications for it. Who is he going to rent to? How will he choose among the many people who want it? Will he rent this apartment to a wealthy applicant who can easily afford to pay the rent, or will he rent the apartment to a much poorer applicant, someone who can pay the rent, but only with difficulty? You know the answers to these questions. Whenever there is a shortage of something that everybody wants, it is the rich who get it first, and the poor who get it last, if they get any at all. Throughout the history of the world, this has never changed. You may not like that, but it’s the way things are.


Trump’s Trade War With China Is Making Things Worse. The California Building Industry Association estimates that President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports have increased the cost of building a new home in California by $30,000, a figure that they expect will rise. The National Association of Home Builders agrees, pointing out that over 500 types of products commonly used in housing construction are imported from China, including appliances, lighting, countertops, cabinets, tiles, nails, and laminates. The price of some lines of Chinese kitchen and bathroom cabinets has doubled since the trade war began. Needless to say, these costs are ultimately passed along to the people who live in newly constructed houses and apartments.

DISNEYLAND IN CALIFORNIA BEATS DISNEY WORLD IN FLORIDA.

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Disney World is much, much bigger than Disneyland in California, but I think Disneyland beats Disney World hands down. It’s the climate. When Walt Disney bought the land that became Disney World, it was a tropical swamp, which is why Disney got the land cheap and why it wasn’t already developed or being used by others. Walt Disney dramatically reshaped the land, but he couldn’t do a thing about the climate. In summer, the high season at Disney World, it is hot and muggy, and it rains 20 days a month. In July, the humidity often exceeds 90%. In other words, climatically, it is still a tropical swamp. Disney World is also expensive. I know families that visited Disney World in summer and spent $10,000 for a week there, and it rained every day. When it stops raining, it doesn’t dry out. Someone who went to Disney World last summer said to me: “When you leave your hotel, it feels like you are walking into a sauna.” On the other hand, at Disneyland in L.A., it never rains in the summer.


Alligators! Take a look at the photo below. There are alligator warning signs like this all over Disney World. These signs are there because they need them. Disney employees have captured hundreds – literally hundreds – of alligators at Disney World, some weighing several hundred pounds. Guests at Disney World hotels frequently report seeing alligators. You may recall that a couple of years ago a 2-year old child was killed by an alligator at Disney World. After that, Disney put up more warning signs, but there is no way to rid of the alligators. I’m sure that Disney would if they could, but they can’t. That is because it is impossible to get rid of alligators in an ideal alligator habitat like the land inside and around Disney World. The American alligator has been living in Florida for over 100 million years. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other animals 65 million years ago failed to wipe out any of the 20 or so species of alligators and crocodiles that were alive at that time. Most are alive today and virtually unchanged. That is how tough these critters are. Today, there are over 1 million alligators in Florida. Think about that – 1 million alligators just in Florida. And what about Disneyland in California? There are no alligator warning signs at Disneyland. They don’t need them. If you are in Los Angeles and you want to see an alligator, you have to go to the zoo. In California, we think that’s where alligators belong!

DONALD TRUMP IS JUST PLAIN WRONG ABOUT CALIFORNIA FOREST FIRES.

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President Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut off FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) funds for California firefighters. Trump claims that California’s forest fires are the result of poor forest management by the state. In January, Trump tweeted: “Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest (sic) fires that, with proper Forrest (sic) Management, would never happen. Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”

There are 2 big problems with Donald Trump’s argument.

1. Most really big forest fires in California start on Federal land, not land owned by the state of California. That’s not surprising since the Federal government owns 48% of all the land in California, including most of the forest land in the state. For example, this past summer’s Carr Fire started in a recreation area owned by the United States Forest Service. The fire then moved onto private land and then into the city of Redding itself, where the fire destroyed over 1,000 houses. The most destructive and deadliest wildfire in California’s history was this past summer’s Camp Fire, which also started on land owned by the U.S. Forest Service. It was the world’s costliest natural disaster in 2018. A long list of Federal agencies own big chunks of California real estate in addition to the Forest Service, including the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All of these agencies are under the direct control of President Trump. While it is true that forests in California have been and are being badly managed, most of these forests are under the control of the president of the United States, not the governor of California.

2. Climate change and global warming are major factors in California’s forest fires. Over the past 100 years, the average temperature in California has risen by 3 degrees. In addition, the average annual rainfall in California has fallen. This warmer, drier air sucks water out of plants and the soil, leaving trees and grass drier than they used to be. The California fire season used to be late summer, but now, it is nearly all year round. California used to get some rain in late October that wet things down, but now, the rain doesn’t come until November or December. Global warming is not a controversial theory within the scientific community, but unfortunately, President Trump and most of the people in his cabinet believe that it is.

Sonny Perdue. The U.S. Forest Service is under the control of the Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue. Perdue believes that global warming is a hoax. He calls global warming “junk science” and “a running joke.” Perdue is also one of the neo-Confederates in Trump’s cabinet. For as long as I can remember, neo-Confederates have always frustrated me. I grew up in Maryland, which was a slave state until the end of the Civil War. When Perdue talks about slavery and the Civil War, he sounds like the pro-Confederate schoolteachers I had when I was a kid. When Perdue was governor of Georgia, he tried to put the Confederate battle flag back into the Georgia state flag, and he made April ‘Confederate Heritage Month’. Perdue believes that most slaves supported the Confederacy and that large numbers of them fought for the Confederacy too. Perdue’s claim that there was widespread support for the Confederacy among the slaves has come under a lot of criticism from historians, just as his speeches on global warming have come under a lot of criticism from climate scientists. When I was living in Maryland, I knew white people who shared Sonny Perdue’s belief that black people didn’t mind being slaves and that during the Civil War, their sympathies were with their owners and the Confederacy, just like in ‘Gone With The Wind’; however, I have never met a black person in my life who shared that view.

THE CALIFORNIA HOUSING CRISIS. All explained with just one statistic.

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We need to build 200,000 housing units in California every year to keep up with population, but we are only building 80,000, and this has been going on for 20 years. This one fact explains everything. It explains why rent is so high, why house prices are so high, why people are doubling up in apartments, why recent college graduates in California move back home with their parents, and why even high paid software engineers in Silicon Valley are living in RVs. All this is happening because we are building less than half the number of housing units that we need to keep up with population. Why is this happening?
 
NIMBYism. It’s all due to NIMBYism. California is where the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) movement began. While everyone in California knows that we need to build more housing, everybody wants that housing to be built someplace else, not near them. You can see the effect of this very clearly at BART stations. When our subway system was built 50 years ago, everyone assumed that high density housing would be built around BART stations, but for the most part, that never happened. The area immediately around most BART stations looks exactly like it did 50 years ago. Why? Because the people who live near BART stations want new housing to be built at somebody else’s BART station, not their BART station. Just stand in the middle of the parking lot at the North Berkeley BART station and look around. All the buildings you see are old, built before the subway was constructed. The same is true at the Ashby, Rockridge, Orinda, Lafayette, and most other stations in the BART system. Why? It isn’t because real estate developers wouldn’t like to build high-rise apartment houses and condos near BART stations in desirable neighborhoods. It is because the people who already live in those neighborhoods won’t let them. Unless this attitude changes, and I see no evidence that it is changing, California’s housing crisis will only get worse. It is sad. This is, after all, aside from the high cost of housing, the best place in the world to live.

WHY IS RENT SO HIGH IN CALIFORNIA?

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The chart below explains it all. It tells the whole sad story. We need to build 180,000 new housing units in California every year to keep up with population growth, but we are only building 80,000, and this has been going on for 20 years. All of the housing problems we have in California, all of them, can be traced back to this one simple fact. Every year, our housing shortage gets worse, and this ever-worsening housing shortage explains why rents keep rising faster than inflation, why the vacancy rate is so low, why people are doubling up in apartments and houses, why people are paying a higher and higher percentage of their income on housing, why college graduates in California move back home with their parents after they graduate, and why thousands of people in the Bay Area are living in RVs, tents, cars, and trucks. Unless we build enough housing to keep up with population, all of these problems will just get worse.

California’s Population Explosion. In 1945, the population of California was 8 million. Today it is 40 million. That means that for every 1 person who was living in California at the end of World War 2, there are now 5 people living here. I live in a house that was built in 1902. In 1902, the population of California was 1.5 million. That means that for every 1 person who lived in California when my house was built, there are now 26 people living in this state. Like most people in the Bay Area, I am not happy about this tremendous population growth. I too wish that fewer people were moving to California, but they are coming here whether we like it or not. And its easy to see why they are coming. This truly is the Golden State! Suppose you were living in a city in a Rust Belt state full of closed factories, where the unemployment rate was 20% and the minimum wage was still $7.25 an hour. Wouldn’t you want to pack your bags and move to California? The unemployment rate in California is 4%, and the minimum wage in California will soon be $15.00 an hour.

America’s Black Hole. My sister Judy once called California ‘America’s Black Hole.’ I never forgot that because it’s true. What she meant was that moving to California is like entering a Black Hole. Nothing that enters a Black Hole comes back out. Once people move to California, they never go back to where they came from.

Adios Baltimore! I grew up in Baltimore, a Rust Belt city. The population of Baltimore peaked in 1950 and has been declining ever since. The heavy industries that once supported Baltimore’s prosperous working class are gone. Baltimore’s shipyards that once employed 50,000 people are gone. The Glen L. Martin aircraft factory that once employed another 50,000 people is also long-gone. The Bethlehem steel mill that once produced 10,000 tons of steel a day is gone. As the jobs dried up, so did Baltimore’s population. Thousands of row houses in Baltimore with their famous white marble stoops are just rotting away. All of Baltimore’s once-fashionable downtown department stores are now abandoned. There are dozens of cities just like Baltimore all over this country, once bustling industrial centers that have been in decline for generations. Without the jobs, what is to keep people in Baltimore? Baltimore is hot and muggy in summer and can be bitterly cold in winter. There are no interesting geographical features in Baltimore like mountains or waterfalls or palm tree lined beaches. We can’t stop people from leaving places like Baltimore and moving to California, and it is a fantasy to imagine that people won’t come here from places like Baltimore if we just don’t build housing for them.

Not In My Back Yard. We need more housing, a lot more housing in California, housing that ordinary working people can afford, but we’re not building it. Most of the city councils around the Bay Area are dominated by NIMBYs. (Not In My Back Yard). These politicians and the voters who elected them support laws that discourage new housing from being built, like downzoning, height limits, and and inclusionary housing laws. They also support laws that encourage landlords to remove existing rental units from the market, like rent and eviction control laws. Rent control gives owners of rental properties, particularly small rental properties, a financial incentive to get rid of their tenants and sell their properties to owner-occupants or to use their rentals for other purposes, like turning apartments into AirBNB rentals or offices. We need to accept this one fact – a lot of people are coming to California whether we like it or not. We are only hurting ourselves by discouraging developers from building new housing and by encouraging landlords to go out of business.

New in the Chocolate Room.

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California Granola. I am making a new granola mix. It contains almonds, raisins, walnuts, and dates. I call it California Granola because nearly all of all the almonds raisins, walnuts, and daCaliforniaGranolates grown in the United States come in California. I have it in 8 ounce and 16 ounce jars. Most people, even people here in California, don’t realize how much of our nation’s food comes from California. Nearly 100% of the following crops come from California: apricots, artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, figs, garlic, grapes, kiwifruit, nectarines, olives, clingstone peaches, pistachios, plums, pomegranates, and strawberries.