(SACRAMENTO) – Despite strong objections from Senator Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale), the Senate Budget Committee approved Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to spend $6.4 million collecting the State Responsibility Area (SRA) fire tax today. Passed in 2011, the tax, which was passed in 2011, imposes a charge of up to $150 on each habitable structure in SRAs in order to finance the fire prevention efforts of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“Why are we approving millions of dollars and 57 new paid positions for a program that will be challenged and likely overturned in court?” LaMalfa asked. “The majority party has found so many loopholes to pass this illegal tax that I cannot imagine it will be upheld under any judicial scrutiny.”

LaMalfa, one of the most active opponents of the rural fire tax, warned committee members against collecting the tax prior to a formal determination regarding several legal questions about its passage. The tax was passed by a simple majority of the Legislature, in defiance of Proposition 26, the 2010 ballot initiative that requires a two-thirds vote for any increase in fees or taxes. The Governor has since raised eyebrows by using the unelected Board of Forestry and Fire Protection to further increase the tax after the Legislature refused to do so.

“Even setting aside the myriad legal issues, the actual implementation of this bill will be a disaster,” said LaMalfa. “This is levying a second or third set of taxes on rural Californians who already pay for local fire protection, for services they will never receive.”

LaMalfa has been joined by other lawmakers in co-authoring Assembly Bill 1506 to repeal the fire tax.

Senator Doug LaMalfa is a lifelong farmer representing the fourth Senate District including Shasta, Tehama, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Siskiyou, Sutter, Del Norte, Placer, Trinity, Yuba and Nevada counties.

Capital Press

Posted: Thursday, June 07, 2012 12:56 PM

RED BLUFF, Calif. – The U.S. Department of Agriculture has declared three counties in California to be primary natural disaster areas because of drought that has persisted since October.

Farmers and ranchers in Tehama, Marin and Alameda counties as well as 11 contiguous counties will be able to apply for disaster assistance to make up for losses.

Farm operators in those counties are eligible for low-interest emergency loans from the USDA’s Farm Service Agency if certain conditions are met, as well as help from the Emergency Conservation Program, Federal Crop Insurance and the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, according to a news release.

“Assistance at this point and time is critically important for producers in California, especially in helping them keep their farmland healthy for the remainder of the year,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement.

Additional information is available online at http://disaster.fsa.usda.gov/ .

The declaration comes after a dry spell lingered in much of the state from November until January, causing unseasonable fire danger that prompted the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to increase staffing in January.

Even after a healthy round of late-winter and early-spring rains, most areas in California are still well below their seasonal rainfall totals, according to the National Weather Service.

Non-irrigated pasture in the Central Valley was reported last week to range from fair to very poor, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Supplemental feeding of livestock has increased as a result.

– Tim Hearden

http://www.capitalpress.com/newsletter/mp-forest-insect-ruling-060712

By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI

Capital Press

Posted: Thursday, June 07, 2012 12:56 PM

A thinning project aimed at battling insects in a national forest is based on the “best available science” and should proceed, according to a federal appeals court.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the U.S. Forest Service didn’t abuse its discretion by allowing the 3,800-acre project in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California.

The agency planned to remove dead and dying trees to control the spread of insects and to thin overcrowded stands to reduce over-competition among trees, but environmentalists filed a lawsuit opposing the project.

A federal judge blocked the thinning in 2008, ruling that the Forest Service’s analysis of the project’s effects on the mule deer and the red-breasted nuthatch was insufficient.

The judge dissolved that injunction last year after the agency updated its environmental review, but the Conservation Congress and Klamath Forest Alliance appealed that ruling to the 9th Circuit.

The 9th Circuit found that the environmental groups have failed to cite any evidence that the agency’s analysis was “outdated or flawed” and has upheld the reversal of the injunction.

http://www.capitalpress.com/newsletter/TH-weather-wrap-w-photos-infobox-060512

By TIM HEARDEN

Capital Press

Posted: Thursday, June 07, 2012 2:00 PM

REDDING, Calif. — The Golden State remained mostly dry and warm in May, and most crops enjoyed the sunshine.

But a hotter-than-normal summer in the Central Valley may be on the way.

In the cherry orchards being harvested by the Orland-based Burlyson Farms, the dry spring may lead to an extended season, representative Brook Bekendam said.

“It’s been pretty good,” she said as she helped customers at a farmers’ market here June 2. “We’ve actually had a really long bloom because there hasn’t been any rain. This will probably be one of our longest seasons because I talked to my boss today and there are still some green ones on the trees.”

A high-pressure ridge has been dominating the West Coast, pushing valley temperatures into triple digits on May 31 for the first time this season. Most areas received little if any rain for the month, although most reservoirs remained nearly full.

The late spring has been a sharp contrast to last year, when persistent rain in northern areas lasted into June and led to delayed fall harvests for many crops.

According to a weekly crop weather report from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service in Sacramento:

* The planting of rice fields is nearly complete, while high temperatures last week helped wheat fields continue to dry and alfalfa continued to be cut, raked and baled.

* A variety of fruit crops, including plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, apples and pears, are developing well. Pomegranates and olives were blooming last week, as blueberries, blackberries and strawberries were being picked and shipped.

* The almond crop was progressing last week. There were some reports of limbs breaking because of a heavy load. Walnuts were being sprayed for codling moth, while pistachios were about two weeks from shell hardening.

About the only thing that has suffered because of the weather has been nonirrigated pastures on the valley floor, whose quality ranged from “fair” to “very poor,” according to the report. Supplemental feeding increased as a result.

After two mild summers, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center envisions higher-than-normal temperatures for the Sacramento area and San Joaquin Valley, with northern areas expected to get normal temperatures.

The West has emerged from the La Niña atmospheric condition that is marked by storms centered on the Northwest, and indications are that El Niño’s southern-based storms may be coming this winter, said Kathy Hoxsie, a National Weather Service warning coordinator in Sacramento.

“The big question is going to be how strong,” Hoxsie said. “Now it’s kind of a weak El Niño at best. For us in Northern California, it points to a normal season.”

May rainfall

Here are the May and seasonal rainfall totals and comparisons to normal for selected California cities, according to the National Weather Service. Totals are as of May 31:

Redding: Month to date 0.05 inches (normal 1.85 inches); season to date 22.8 inches (normal 33.93 inches)

Eureka: Month to date 0.77 inches (normal 1.78 inches); season to date 38.81 inches (normal 39.58 inches)

Sacramento: Month to date trace inches (normal 0.68 inches); season to date 12.18 inches (normal 18.31 inches)

Modesto: Month to date 0.19 inches (normal 0.63 inches); season to date 8.63 inches (normal 12.99 inches)

Salinas: Month to date 0 inches (normal 0.01 inches); season to date 10.26 inches (normal 12.75 inches)

Fresno: Month to date 0 inches (normal 0.43 inches); season to date 8.15 inches (normal 11.29 inches)

Reservoir levels

Here are the percentages of capacity for California reservoirs as of Tuesday, June 5, according to the Department of Water Resources’ California Data Exchange Center:

Trinity Lake: 95 percent

Shasta Lake: 94 percent

Lake Oroville: 99 percent

New Bullards Bar Reservoir: 98 percent

Folsom Lake: 95 percent

New Melones Reservoir: 76 percent

Lake McClure: 75 percent

Millerton Lake: 84 percent

Pine Flat Reservoir: 79 percent

Lake Isabella: 37 percent

San Luis Reservoir: 62 percent

Where is the outrage?

For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if — had drones existed at the time — King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect that Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as one who is urging the use of violence against the government.

Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes, and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. The folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.

Don’t believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long as the “recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil War, the federal government will deploy military personnel inside the United States and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them “to collect information about U.S. persons.”

Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in America? I don’t know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are complaining.

-

It gets worse. If the military personnel see something of interest from a drone, they may apply to a military judge or “military commander” for permission to conduct a physical search of the private property that intrigues them. And, any “incidentally acquired information” can be retained or turned over to local law enforcement. What’s next? Prosecutions before military tribunals in the U.S.?

The quoted phrases above are extracted from a now-public 30-page memorandum issued by President Obama’s Secretary of the Air Force on April 23, 2012. The purpose of the memorandum is stated as “balancing … obtaining intelligence information … and protecting individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution…” Note the primacy of intelligence gathering over freedom protection, and note the peculiar use of the word “balancing.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/07/where-is-outrage/#ixzz1x7vrsYAQ