Posted on 02/09/2003 11:10:13 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:41:49 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Like every politician in California, Gary Podesto knows water is a hot- button issue. So, as mayor of Stockton, he wants to make one thing very clear: He is not privatizing the city's water supply. Sure, the 60-year-old Republican believes in private enterprise; before entering politics six years ago, he grew rich operating a chain of discount grocery stores. But he also knows how amoral the marketplace can be.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
If you can say public private partnership, you can say facism too! That mayor should tell the truth to his constituents! He is no Republican in my view, but a sellout.
BTW, any country going before the IMF and World bank for loans has to document future planned water privatization plans in order to qualify for loans. The country defaults and the water rights are then sold to the highest bidder. Much of Africa now has water piped up to each hut. Of course it is capped off and locked because they can't pay for it, but that will be worked out later.....
And you can always move somewhere nice (think North Carolina Piedmont) and dig a deep well.
Those "public assets" were largely stolen by political means from the farmers and ranchers who originally owned them, thus enriching urban land developers, almost exactly ala Agenda21 (think Owens Valley and LADWP). Now, just because a government stole them doesn't mean that citizens were the intended beneficiaries, or do you think that the biggest real estate holders in this State (Southern Pacific and the Times/Mirror Corporation) achieved that status by virtue of their objective merits? Do you really think that such developers aren't the principal beneficiaries of the very system you so fear?
Then there are the more than suspect mechanics of socialist ownership. When the delivery assets are publicly owned, those who can vote themselves lower rates in the short run will do so, leaving taxpayers to eventually pick up the tab for a system that is more expensive to operate while delivering less. This is precisely the case in the City of San Francisco. The existing public assets in the Hetch Hetchy system are dilapidated to the point of becoming hazardous so I don't know how you can assert socialist control on the grounds of public health. Do you really trust the County of Santa Cruz enough to efficiently deliver safe drinking water?
Whether a private water system is problematic or not depends upon who owns it and whether it is a monopoly. There is multinational corporate, and then there is local corporate closed under charter. There is nothing to prevent the citizens of Stcokton from controlling water delivery by voting their stock. It is at least one way that farmers can get paid for collection, subsurface storage, transmission, and delivery. Ever thought of that?
The reason public ownership has looked as good as it has is simply historical. Such works of engineering take a long time to deteriorate. They could have lasted a hell of a lot longer, been more just to farmers and ranchers (thus doing a lot to preserve open space without stealing that too), and had sufficient capital to upgrade to meet new demands if they weren't run by politics.
Build a huge fricking pipeline from the Pacific, have a north-south artery that run up and down the state, and construct regional waste-water treatment plants, then have smaller arteries that serves each metro area.
Problem solved!!!
This is patently false and borders upon the kind of slander I have heard as an undercurrent in this County (I do have witnesses to that effect whom you would consider eminent). I was recruited by Lisa, who went through much of what I did (I'll withhold her last name unless she wants me to release it to you, I say it because I think you know who she is and her name is on the A21 website as is mine (without my assent)) to bring sanity to that group and prevent much of the damage they would do (rather than sit on the edges and carp). I grabbed the damned thing because I was simply able to outwork the idiots and made the document into something that made Jeannie Nordland choke. When Jeannie took it into secret with her friends and rewrote the whole section, I refused to sign it and fought the changes line by line. Were they left alone it would have been FAR worse than it ended up being. If you like, I can supply witnesses you would find credible to that effect. That's why Lisa and I got rolled when it came to the end when others you would call patriots ran away or hid.
I will answer the rest of this this evening. When it comes to ideas I have supplied bucketloads of which you have never bothered to avail yourself, preferring to believe those who would have us go back to the system that gave us Love Canal. Suffice it to say that I know FAR more about municipal finance and bond projects than you realize, as my dad was a prominent public bond financing consultant in this State for forty years.
Public private partnership in this article means the redistribution of citizen financed infrastructure and resources that are vital to the security of this nation to multinational corporations. The taxpayer is thoroughly and completely ripped off of his assets, his progeny will not be assured of an ample, affordable safe water supply, and local control and self determination will fall victim as citizens become customers of their own water utilities.
I responded
I am no fan of fascism as you know, but I think just as little of your socialist preference.
Your term "Socialist ownership" is defined as the means of production owned by all workers.
That is public ownership of the means of production, effectively owned and operated by government whether they retain title or not. Soviet communism, social democracy, and fascism are all forms of socialism.
Towns and cities in America have historically been formed under charters or municipalities. The concept of a municipal government is supported by the Constitution and emphasises local control and the idea of SELF DETERMINATION. That includes historical rights to resources, which include water and land rights. The creation of a municipality doesn't mean that property owners lose their rights automatically. When people actively participate in self government, the result is that freedom and individual rights are preserved.
Let's see, municipal assets are owned by all citizens but controlled by a government entity, Check. Municipal districts possess the power of eminent domain to take property forcibly from its owners, Check (how is that SELF DETERMINATION?). Municipal districts are operated by bureaucrats protected by civil service, Check. Municipalities possess police power to levy and collect taxes and fees by which to fund projects and having little to no accountability for efficiency, Check. Municipalities possess what is very close to sovereign immunity to protect them from liability (which of course means that they tend to take foolish risks), Check.
The only difference between democratic socialism and your idea of municipal ownership appears to me to be scale. So, if the nation of San Marino nationalizes its utilities, in your view that's socialism, but LADWP, serving millions of individuals, isn't?
Let's examine LADWP to see how that fits your model of "self-government."
In 1902, to open more western land to settlement and irrigation, Congress created the United States Reclamation Service. The Owens Valley was one of the first places considered for a government-sponsored irrigation system. Simultaneously, however, William Mulholland, Los Angeles superintendent of water, took note of the quality, quantity, and proximity of Owens Valley water. Well aware that more water was necessary for Los Angeles' growth, Mulholland and others garnered political and economic support for a Los Angeles water project by implying in speeches, interviews, and articles that Los Angeles teetered on the brink of a water crisis. Letting Owens Valley ranchers and farmers believe they were selling their land to the U.S. Reclamation Service for the Owens Valley irrigation project, engineers J.B. Lippincott and Fred Eaton bought vast amounts of land and associated water rights in the valley for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The Reclamation Service subsequently scuttled the irrigation project. Instead of returning reclamation service land in the Owens Valley to the public domain for homesteading, Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot--with the encouragement of President Teddy Roosevelt-- made reclamation land (mostly treeless) a part of the Inyo National Forest under the auspices of "the greatest good for the greatest number."
Over the protests of valley farmers and ranchers, Los Angeles completed the first aqueduct from the valley to Los Angeles in 1913 and filled it with surface water from the Owens River and from reductions in irrigation. LADWP continued to acquire land and water rights as valley farmers gave up their dead and dying crops and orchards and moved. By 1924, Owens Lake and approximately fifty miles of the Owens River were dry. By the 1930s, Los Angeles owned approximately 95 percent of all farm and ranch land in the valley. In 1940, LADWP completed construction on an 11-mile underground tunnel connecting Mono Basin with the Owens River in Long Valley, and in 1963, LADWP approved plans for a second aqueduct with a capacity of 300 cubic feet per second, bringing the total proposed aqueduct capacity to 780 cubic feet per second. To fill the second aqueduct, which was completed in 1970, DWP proposed reducing irrigation in Inyo and Mono counties, diverting more surface water from Inyo and Mono counties (including surface water going to Mono Lake), and pumping groundwater from the Owens Valley. In late 1970, the California legislature passed the California Environmental Quality Act, which, among other measures, required agencies to at least consider environmental consequences of their actions in the form of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). In 1972, when Los Angeles announced increases in groundwater pumping, Inyo County took advantage of the act and sued LADWP to force the agency to file an EIR. LADWP responded by installing water meters in residences and threatening to cut off water to agricultural and recreational lessees. In court, Los Angeles claimed it didn't have to provide an EIR because it had completed the aqueduct before the California Environmental Quality Act was passed, but Inyo County argued successfully that groundwater pumping was a separate action from building the aqueduct. Foiled, Los Angeles completed two EIRs, one in 1976 and a second in 1979. Both reports were rejected as inadequate by the courts.
Source: http://www.owensriver.org/history.htm
They used political POWER to steal the value of the land from its owners (its water collection attributes) to enrich the land developers in LA. Oh, the citizens of LA got cheap water (which later resulted in the further transport of water South AT BELOW THE COST OF PUMPING IT via the California Water Project (guess who pays for that?)), manufacturers got cheap housing for employees, and the Times/Mirror Corporation and the Chandler family got rich, but everybody else got screwed, including the taxpayers of Arkansas footing the capital for the CWP.
The pattern continues to this day. Much of California's fiscal crisis is composed of electrical power the LADWP bought from Arizona coal fired plants, or under sweetheart deals blessed by the State (note the number of legislators from LA) and resold to the rest of the state for a VERY fat profit. It made Dickie Riordan look good, but you're paying for it now, and you'll really pay for it later. Of the worst cases of illegal price manipulation during the power crisis, four fifths of the perpetrators were public entities.
OK, so LADWP is bad. Think this an isolated case? Is it only because LADWP is big? Consider something local: the San Lorenzo Valley Water District and their handling of the Waterman Gap watershed. The forest in Waterman Gap is DANGEROUSLY overgrown. There is so much fuel in there that a fire will very likely turn the ground into a ceramic. Roger Burch offered the District $8 million to log it. When the local enviros got wind of this, they howled. Bud McCrary, one of the finest foresters in the world, offered them $12 million to log it with the district retaining ownership. The District hired a consultant to determine what to do. She tried to SELL the land to the Sempervirens Fund for $3 million, and get the citizens of the District to carry the paper (I think later they ended up getting more, but it still wasn't market value, they gave up the asset, and the risk to that land remains). Meanwhile, the physical plant of the Water District is so dangerously dilapidated that it is becoming a serious liability as a health hazard. Oh, but the local Sierra Club cheese did very well out of the deal as a consultant.
They operate under rules that are defined by the US Constitution and state charters. If citizens cared, and required that their elected officials act constitutionally, then municipal systems fit right into the framework of private property ownership and responsible citizenship.
The hallmark of socialism is political corruption, lack of accountability, and misallocated capital because government possesses the power to control property without real accountability. Your assertion that vigilant citizens can provide proper oversight simply doesn't jibe with historical facts (consider how many Angelinos worry about who sits on the board of LADWP). That socialist system is distinct from a republic, where the property owner is supreme. We'll touch on that later. As far as operating under the Constitution is concerned, it's quite arguable that the threat of eminent domain by such municipal interests depresses market value so greatly that the "just compensation" required by the Constitution is ignored. I would argue that eminent domain as it is exercised is unconstitutional and there is plenty of data to prove it.
So I called your preference for a municipal system socialist, which is what it is in the usual political sense. You called that an insult; I simply think it accurate. That is why I used the case of Hetch Hetchy. Not once of course did you respond to the data I offered. There are similar cases aplenty as you saw above.
So I repeat
Whether a private water system is problematic or not depends upon who owns it and whether it is a monopoly. There is multinational corporate, and then there is local corporate closed under charter. There is nothing to prevent the citizens of Stcokton from controlling water delivery by voting their stock. It is at least one way that farmers can get paid for collection, subsurface storage, transmission, and delivery. Ever thought of that?
To which you responded:
It is not necessary for you to throw insults at me or anyone else opposing the sell off of taxpayer financed assets so a multinational corporation can take them over!
What does your response have to do with what I wrote? As if multinational ownership was my goal! Then, when I offered hard evidence that your accusation that I supported the Agenda21 was false, you would not recant, and instead ignored it.
As I said earlier, my dad was a prominent public bond financing consultant in this State for forty years. Let me give you an example of what that implies. I don't suppose you have ever watched the way flood control bonds are floated and paid for. What they accomplish is to make land that is unsuitable for development buildable. They tax everybody in the district, not merely those who are affected or the beneficiaries. One job in Riverside was $3 billion dollars worth. The taxpayers footed the bill, but Times/Mirror made out like a bandit. Consider that when I-15 was put through Rancho California they built a TEN LANE FREEWAY where there was NO HOUSES OE DEVELOPMENT AT ALL. It was paid for by the gas taxes of the entire State, not the investors in real estate in that valley. My gas taxes are supposed to go for road maintenance, not enriching Southern Pacific. It's corruption, plain and simple.
The reason we can’t do much about it with our votes is that the control of roads is convoluted into so many other things government does. I remind you that it is my goal that government do less.
Do you know what? I don't believe the system gave us Love Canal, it was individuals not upholding the integrity of their office that did it, and citizens who turned a blind eye to the failures of the office holders.
It was individuals with no personal liability for their decisions, because the public owned the risk to the waterways. Further, because there were several companies with similar chemistries employing numerous clandestine disposal techniques, it was impossible to test river water to determine who was doing the polluting without violating company property rights. That was the system. It didn't work. The fix was to put laws in place that violate the property rights. That isn't working either and the problems are considerably more subtle.
Putting the job of controlling the water quality into the hands of bureaucrats ultimately doesn't work, and for numerous reasons I describe in gory detail in the book. It boils down to the fact that that control becomes a corrupt patronage system that allows politicians to sell their influence over rulemaking to enrich the larger companies at the expense of either their competition or alternative industries producing substitute goods. It is a system virtually impervious to oversight.
It is a system that is also producing that elite fascism of Agenda21 even as we speak. Its principal advantage to the big players is that it tends to socialize risk. I could go on at enormous length about this and show you why (for example) 911 would have been impossible but for government regulation, but I think it a bit much for this thread.
There is no and never has been a better system of government than the Amercian Constitutional Republic, if it is followed.
What system of government are you proposing?
The type of government I would advocate would have allowed the farmers of the Owens Valley to market their water collection services to the citizens of LA: a republic that respects their UNALIENABLE private property rights, one that cannot steal that property value by democratic means (a collectivist means). It is, after all, why the founders of this nation abhorred democracy and gave us a republic.
So when confronted with the disparity between your beliefs and your preference for public control of property, you wrap yourself in the flag, not realizing that the system of government for which you have expressed a preference only became popular at around the turn of the last century. That was when Fabian socialism was a BIG fad and before the consequences of socialism were well understood. The United States had a functioning Socialist Party at the time. Many of those big water projects were built with WPA funds. Whether you prefer it or not, it was public ownership of the means of production, not private property. It thus has little to do with the system our Founders intended, and everything to do with the feudal fascist system toward which we are headed today, in part because you are unaware of who bought the bonds to build them.
You see, it has been a classic pattern that the financial elite has used the siren song of public ownership to use tax-free bonds to help consolidate ownership of private property in the hands of government, knowing full well that it would fail and that they would take over later on the cheap with monopoly ownership of that public contract. Think of how much they would have had to pay all those farmers for their water rights instead. So instead of doing that, they torque the courts to allow eminent domain, wait for the public to steal the resource, watch the system tank, and buy the leavings on the cheap, which is where we are now. It may have taken fifty to a hundred years, but to the owners of that kind of multinational concern, it isn't really that long.
So which Constitution are you talking about, the one our Founders intended or the one we have now that has income taxes, eminent domain, federal citizenship, and corporate land ownership? I think the original Constitution (pre 14th Amendment) was just fine with a few tweaks (for example) to get rid of treaties passed by unanimous consent without the full Senate present, one of the key weaknesses of the Constitution, along with our assumed adoption of the entire English legal system. On that, some other time.
That list doesn't include watersheds, dams, piping systems, and treatment plants, does it? Now, as to your quote...
Washington didn't include one cause of effective exclusion of both the people AND their elected representatives in the decision making process: technical complexity. You see, in his day, there wasn't anything technical that a schooled citizen couldn't comprehend. Given the circumstances of this day, the model you cite breaks down because there is no way for the people to monitor the performance of their leaders if they can't understand the issues.
As (democratic) claims proliferate, the legislatures and courts are overwhelmed with cases that are technical and difficult to prove. They rely upon opinions from supposedly disinterested experts regarding the impacts of (industrial process) byproducts. Neither legislators or courts have the power to enforce a judgement; that power lies exclusively with the executive branch of government. The demand for expediency seduces legislatures and the courts to default upon their Constitutional responsibility, to the only civic agency with relevant expertise and police power. Control of use and, thus ownership of that use, is effectively transferred to the executive branch of government.[Snip]
This politically-sponsored dissolution of the Separation of Powers Principle, combines all three branches of government into one, that can derive power and funding by manufacturing claims on the use of property. The more externalities are regulated, the more power accrues to the agency to control the use of the producing asset to turn its use to corrupt purpose. When agency control is sufficient to alienate the interest of the agent from the democratic majority, the asset has then degenerated into a socialized commons.
From that Source
Your post to me:
"I was there to try to put a stop to these environmental wackjobs ruining the local forests. I had no idea what the Agenda21 was when I was requested to attend by a friend of mine who was an advocate for the timber industry.You were recruited by then went along with someone else who had no idea what it was? You had no idea what it was, yet you "grabbed the damn thing" with the intent to stop the "whackjobs" and "to bring sanity to that group".
Sounds like you have a problem keeping your story straight.
It's interesting that you advocate private ownership of municipal properties yet in each case you use in your examples of government corruption to confiscate private property, there's a huge corporation at the root of it....Which is exactly what you're advocating.
“SAN DIEGO -Governor Pete Wilson today signed historic legislation,AB 1890 by Assemblyman Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga),which will break up California ’s utility monopoly,open the state ’s $21 billion electricity market to competition and guarantee a 20 percent rate cut for residential and small business customers by the year 2002.”
Governor Wilson press release,9/23/1996
That's not what it says. You can't even read.
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