The IRS Targeted Conservatives Because It Could

This is the relevant quote from the article – and it directly bears on my situation with the SLO Planning Dept. and the Coastal Commission:

When public servants have the power to make life difficult for narrowly defined groups of people—their political enemies, or disfavored causes, or people on the wrong side of a national discussion—they’ll end up using, and abusing, that power. It’s all but inevitable, whatever the reason. Sometimes they’ll do it because they’re out to punish their foes. Sometimes because they honestly believe it’s the fairest and most reasonable way to do their jobs. Sometimes because they’re mean and petty people. Sometimes because they think they’re making the nation a better place for all. Sometimes because they’re instructed to do so from on high. Sometimes because they’re not given enough instruction. Sometimes because they’re just plain incompetent.

It’s not that the reasons don’t matter at all. They do. But in some ways the particular reasons miss the larger point. Power will find a reason. It always does.

Could California Make a Comeback?

Ironic, isn’t it?

Local family fights with California Coastal Commission to build a home on the coast near Avila Beach

A summary of the situation in California by Steven Hayward:

How Many Ways Can California Be Stupid?

Union Greed Drives California to Bankruptcy

Update: Judge Klein rules that Stockton can go bankrupt

At the same time that California cities are flirting with bankruptcy, in Texas, February 2013 may have been the best single month for job creation since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 1939.

Exponential increases in Texas oil output are translating into record increases in shovel-ready jobs: 4,000 a day in February

From the San Luis Obispo Tribune:

Pirate’s Cove before it was a nude beach 1965

This article really struck home for me because many of my friends and neighbors are in the oil business and they have all been leaving California. They have to leave California not because there isn’t oil, but because no one can get permits to drill, and even if they could get permits, the extra regulations make production unprofitable. It is a crazy situation where the largest shale oil formation in the US is in California, and the most expert oil industry professionals are also in California, but they are all leaving to work in Texas, North Dakota, Canada, or the satelite countries of the former USSR.

From Bloomberg: “The only thing California’s environmentally friendly Democratic legislators prefer to regulating private industry is spending public dollars. So it’s fascinating to watch them struggle with an unfolding dilemma.

The state can tap into a gusher of new revenue only if legislators resist the muscular green lobby and allow oil companies to take advantage of vast petroleum reserves in the Monterey Shale geologic formation that runs south and east fromSan Francisco.”

More here:

Californians Want Oil’s Tax Revenue Without the Oil

The Reverse-Joads of California

Also from the Weekly Standard:

Paradise Lost: California is not too big to fail

And finally, another take on the census data:

California becoming a feudal society

“California is rapidly becoming a near-feudal society. On one side is an older, educated, landed, wealthy elite that lives on California’s beautiful coasts. Then there is a much larger, younger, less-educated, indebted mass living inland, many of them working farm jobs at subsistence wages.” – Conn Carroll

 Pirate’s Cove nude beach joins SLO County’s park system

“More than three-quarters of the cost-of-living difference between Texas and California can be explained by housing costs. As Figure Six shows, Texas mostly dodged the real-estate bubble of the 2000s: the affordability of houses in large metro areas spiked in America as a whole but rose only modestly in Texas. A major reason that Texas real estate is so affordable is that the state lacks the draconian land-use restrictions that drive California housing prices into the stratosphere. The affordable housing attracts both people and businesses. Since 2000, 1 million more people have moved to Texas from other states than have left.”

The thing about land-use restrictions is that the state controls only some of them. In the case of San Luis Obispo County the land use policies are theoretically controlled by the County Supervisors. Different land use policies at the local level is why it takes about a week to get a permit in Kern County, California and it has taken me over 3 years (and counting) to get a permit in San Luis Obispo County, California.

Read the whole article here:

The Texas Growth Machine

Here is another related article about the Texas/California data – once again housing is the major difference:

Why Do People Leave California?

Here is a UCLA study about how long it takes to get a permit for commercial buildings in the different parts of the county. Of course, Coastal California is the worst.

How Long Did It Take To Plan That Building?

 And finally, this cartoon says it all ….