Panda pair ‘acclimating’ to new home at San Diego Zoo

• July 10, 2024

Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, the long-awaited giant pandas on loan to the San Diego Zoo from China, are adjusting to their new home after arriving June 27 — but aren’t quite ready to meet zoo visitors yet.

Zoo officials released “first-look photos” of the pair on Tuesday and provided a brief update on how their stay is going at the Balboa Park attraction, saying they are “acclimating well to their new home.” Veterinary staff from China and the zoo are closely tracking the pandas, monitoring their weight, appetite and other health indicators, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance said in a statement.

The zoo has not said exactly when the pandas will be viewable by the public, but it is expected to be several weeks down the line. They are the first pandas to enter the U.S. in 21 years.

The pandas, largely solitary creatures in the wild, are being housed in separate habitats, zoo officials said.

Yun Chuan, the male, is nearly 5 years old and is from the Wolong Shenshuping Panda Base. He already has links to San Diego. He is the son of Zhen Zhen, a panda born at the San Diego Zoo in 2007.

Zoo officials say he is easily identified by his long, slightly pointed nose. He seems “extremely comfortable” exploring the grass and climbing trees in his new habitat, officials said.

Officials hope that he will produce babies with Xin Bao, a female who is nearly 4 years old. She was born at the Wolong Shenshuping Panda Base.

Yun Chuan grabs a bite of fresh bamboo in his new home at the San Diego Zoo. He is part of a pair of pandas that recenly arrived from China. (San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance)

According to a zoo statement, she’s enjoying sunbathing and focusing on an unnamed favorite food. She has a large, round face and big fluffy ears, officials said.

“Over the past week, the San Diego Zoo worked closely with Chinese experts to cater to the dietary needs and preferences of the giant pandas,” the zoo said in a press release. The pandas were given a variety of fresh bamboo and also fed a local adaptation of wowotou (woe-woe-toe), a traditional Chinese bun also known as panda bread, the statement said

Yun Chuan and Xin Bao are the first pandas in San Diego since 2019.

In February, the zoo and Chinese officials signed a conservation agreement laying the groundwork for the 10-year panda loan. The zoo agreed to pay $1 million a year in exchange for the pair, with the hopes that they will reproduce. Money paid to China is earmarked for conservation, officials have said.

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The zoo has a long history of working with Chinese partners on conservation of the bears and their bamboo forest habitats. Pandas first came to the San Diego Zoo in 1987 under an exhibition loan and returned in 1996 under a conservation agreement focused on improving panda reproduction.

That program resulted in six cubs being born and scientists helping to develop techniques credited with keeping young pandas alive, including creating panda-milk formula.

Pandas were long considered endangered in the wild, but gains in panda health and forest protection allowed their status to be upgraded to vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2016.

Zoo officials say they’ll post information on the pandas on their website at sandiegozoo.org/giant-pandas.

​ Orange County Register 

Vote no on all ‘citizens’ initiative’ tax increases. Send a message that this scam must end.

• July 10, 2024

It’s one of the biggest swindles in California history, cheating state residents out of hundreds of millions of dollars, but don’t expect the government to do anything to stop it.

The government is behind it.

I’m speaking of massive theft through the use of the “Upland” loophole, which really should be called the “Upland” sinkhole at the rate it’s swallowing your money.

“Upland” is shorthand for a 2017 California Supreme Court decision that suggested, without really deciding, that the state constitution’s requirement of a two-thirds vote of the electorate to pass special-purpose taxes did not apply if the tax was proposed by a “citizens’ initiative.”

Who, you may wonder, are these “citizens” who are so anxious to raise their own taxes that they stand in front of supermarkets in the heat to collect signatures on petitions?

Consider the newest “Upland” tax proposal in Los Angeles County. It’s a citizens’ initiative that would increase annual property taxes by $60 per 1,000 square feet of a home, business or other structure located in the L.A. County Fire Protection District. Every year, the tax would adjust upward for inflation. The money would be directed to the L.A. County Fire Department for hiring and equipment.

The citizens promoting this initiative happen to be the L.A. County firefighters’ union.

This new parcel tax would raise approximately $150 million per year. You might think the L.A. County Board of Supervisors should prioritize hiring and equipment for the fire department, and cut something else in the county’s $46.7 billion budget. But why should they, when the firefighters’ union can crawl through the “Upland” loophole to the ballot?

And here’s the scam: even though this tax increase is proposed by government employees for government services, as a “citizens’ initiative” under the state Supreme Court’s fabricated “Upland” standard, the tax increase will need only 50%-plus-one-vote to pass, instead of two-thirds.

In March 2020, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors put a similar parcel tax proposal on the ballot. It needed a two-thirds vote, 66.67%, because it was proposed by “the government.” Measure FD won the approval of only 52.59% of voters, with 47.41% voting no. It failed.

If the supervisors had put the same proposal on a clipboard and headed to the supermarket to collect signatures to put it on the ballot, it would have slipped through the “Upland” loophole without any problem. In fact, that happened in San Francisco in 2018. Two of the county supervisors ran an initiative campaign for a tax on commercial property leases to pay for childcare and early education programs. It received the barest majority vote, and the supervisors declared it passed because it was a “citizens’ initiative.”

This was challenged in court, but the appellate court said it was fine.

It’s not fine. The state constitution says tax increases of this kind need a two-thirds vote. But the state Supreme Court has so far refused to review any of the appellate courts’ rulings in the San Francisco case and similar cases around the state. The “Upland” standard remains fuzzy and fictional.

But wait, there’s more.

A genuine citizens’ initiative, not from government employees, sought to close the “Upland” loophole. Over 1.4 million voters signed petitions to place the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act on the statewide ballot this November.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature filed a lawsuit to have it taken off the ballot, and that’s exactly what the California Supreme Court did. Respect for “citizens’ initiatives” only applies to tax increases.

Now any union of government employees can write its own tax increase, direct all the revenue to its own benefit, pay for signature collection to get it on the ballot, buy enough advertising to bamboozle half the voters and start collecting your money.

In June, the firefighters’ union turned in the signatures to qualify its measure for the November election. Their tax hike proposal will join another “Upland” tax increase on the L.A. County ballot, a “citizens’ initiative” that doubles and makes permanent the county’s “temporary” Measure H sales tax for homelessness programs.

Both would pass with 50%-plus-one-vote instead of the 66.67% the constitution requires.

Vote no on all “citizens’ initiative” tax increases. Send a message that this scam must end.

Write [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

Senate Bill 1047 will crush AI innovation in California

• July 10, 2024

​ Orange County Register 

John Stossel: Biden and Trump fight about everything, except tariffs

• July 10, 2024

Joe Biden and Donald Trump fight about everything.

But they agree about one thing: tariffs, the subject of my new video.

Trump imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and other products from China.

Then Biden took office and slapped a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.

Now Trump says, if elected, he’ll impose the tariff on all Chinese cars.

This is a destructive competition.

The idea of a tariff sounds good. Protect American businesses from foreigners! Protect American workers from cheap foreign labor!

That’s the seen benefit for Americans.

The unseen harm is worse.

First, tariffs are a hidden tax. They make everything cost more. Yet few consumers see that inflation is increased by tariffs.

American steelmakers love Trump’s tax on Chinese steel, but every American who uses steel has to pay more.

The U.S. International Trade Commission says that Trump’s tariffs helped increase domestic production of steel, but production in other, dependent industries dropped by a greater amount.

A second unseen harm: protected companies get lazy.

Instead of devoting their energy to customer satisfaction and innovation, it’s easier and often more profitable to lobby politicians, pushing for more tariff protections.

When I was young, Ford and GM improved their cars because they found they had to compete with Toyota, BMW, Honda, etc.

We should all be glad that no 100% tariffs existed then.

Trump’s big tariffs on steel didn’t even help U.S. Steel. It’s now trying to sell itself to a Japanese steel company.

By contrast, trade benefits most everyone.

Flying today is cheaper than ever.

Fifty years ago, a flight from Los Angeles to Boston cost about $1,000.

Today, you can book the same trip for just over $100.

Trade makes that possible. Manufacturers buy airplane parts from all over the world.

Boeing’s newest plane depends on Italian manufacturers for its engine. Its wings come from Germany and France. Floor beams are sourced from the United Arab Emirates, and the plane’s doors come from Vietnam.

A tariff on any of these parts would make flying more expensive for all of us.

(Boeing’s recent safety problems weren’t caused by trade. That was all American.)

Of course, not everyone flies. But everyone enjoys the fruits of trade.

Do you eat fresh produce in winter?

Our avocadoes come from Mexico. Grapes from Peru and Chile. Bananas from Guatemala and Ecuador.

Attempts to meddle in these voluntary exchanges disrupt our lives and lower our standard of living.

Biden and Trump don’t get that.

Goldman Sachs’ chief economist predicts that Trump’s plan to “put a ring around the country” would raise our inflation rate another 1.1%.

Biden once pretended to understand trade.

“Trump doesn’t get the basics,” he said in 2019. “He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.”

Biden promised to remove Trump’s tariffs.

But once in office, he caved to special interests and increased them.

The Tax Foundation says tariffs imposed by the last two presidents equal a $625 tax on every U.S. household.

Of course, the justification for tariffs is protecting American industry and American jobs.

Trump said his tariffs were a part of his “duty to protect the interests of working men and women, farmers, ranchers, businesses and our country itself.”

Biden now says his tariff proposals are “strategic and targeted actions that are going to protect American workers.”

It’s true that trade sometimes crushes American companies and takes jobs from some Americans.

But that opens up new opportunities.

When NAFTA took effect, 100,000 automotive workers in Michigan lost jobs.

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But soon, total sales of cars and car parts went up. Most former auto workers applied their skills in more productive ways elsewhere … mostly in specialties where Americans produce most efficiently: high-end machinery, energy, movies, music, medicine, internet startups.

Not only do Americans make more money producing those things, but the jobs are safer and less physically demanding.

Despite “America first” fearmongering about growing international trade, it hasn’t reduced total wages or the total number of American jobs. Unemployment remains near an all-time low.

Yes, cheap imports hurt some American companies. Politically connected industries will always try to persuade ignorant politicians to “protect” them.

But tariffs hurt many more Americans than they help.

Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom.

​ Orange County Register 

High-speed rail waste continues

• July 10, 2024

A Google search for “California high-speed rail” and “boondoggle’ returned 31,900 results. One linked to a New York Post story, “California mocked over high-speed rail bridge to nowhere,” after the project boasted its completion of the Fresno River Viaduct.

Then on June 27 the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which runs the project, announced its Board of Directors cleared Final Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) approvals for the segment between Palmdale and Burbank.

That completed all approvals for the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco section, the largest for the project, “with only the Los Angeles to Anaheim section remaining in Phase 1” of construction.

CEO Brian Kelly called it “a transformative project for the state of California as a whole, and today’s approval is a major milestone for connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than three hours.”

The problem remains that the funding for the project is as unrealistic as when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger talked voters into approving Proposition 1A in 2008.

Sixteen years ago voters were promised, as they read in the initiative’s fiscal impact statement, “State costs of about $19.4 billion, assuming 30 years to pay off both principal ($9.95 billion) and interest ($9.5 billion) costs of the bonds.” It was supposed to be completed by 2020.

However, on March 12 the Legislative Analyst’s Office analyzed the project’s 2024 Draft Business Plan and found the cost had ballooned to $107.6 billion. The plan included grabbing $3.3 billion in federal funds, and “identifies a target” of getting another $4.7 billion from federal taxpayers.

That money will be tough to get with Republicans in Congress questioning more funding. On May 29, Sens. Ted Cruz of, R-Texas, and Rep. Sam Graves, R-Missouri, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg maintaining “there is no reasonable path forward for successful completion of the project.”

As they continue their August recess, legislators ought to ask constituents whether more taxpayer funding ought to go to this boondoggle, or to filling potholes.

​ Orange County Register 

Huntington Beach voters to decide on housing charter amendment this November

• July 10, 2024

Huntington Beach will ask voters this November if residents should have a role in approving future housing development plans.

The proposed charter amendment would create a law requiring voter approval to carry out city-initiated zoning changes when there are “significant and unavoidable” environmental impacts. Environmental impacts could include more vehicle traffic, noise and greater utility usage.

The law would mainly affect future efforts to amend the city’s housing element, the blueprint every California city has that lays out where new housing development can occur. Councilmember Casey McKeon at a special City Council meeting on Monday, July 7, emphasized that the charter amendment would not affect private developers seeking zoning changes for their projects.

The ballot measure also declares that local planning is an area “beyond the reach of state control.” McKeon, a proponent of the charter amendment, said it puts residents in power on housing plans rather than the decision being left to the City Council.

Critics warned that if the charter amendment is approved by voters, the city faces financial penalties from the state for its continued defiance to plan for more housing, and the effort could backfire and lessen local control.

Huntington Beach has refused to adopt a state-mandated housing element that would allow developers to build at least 13,368 housing units this decade.

McKeon said the push for the charter amendment came out of the discussions over the city’s housing element last year. To implement the housing element, the City Council would have to adopt a statement of overriding considerations that found the benefits of new housing outweighed the environmental effects.

“I personally was appalled by that,” McKeon said Monday.

The City Council voted 4-0-3 in favor of putting the charter amendment on November ballots, six days after the first council discussions over the measure.

Councilmembers Rhonda Bolton, Dan Kalmick and Natalie Moser were absent from the meeting. In a statement, the three labeled the process to put the charter amendment on people’s ballots as rushed, lacking “robust public input,” and a “desperate attempt” to avoid complying with state housing laws.

They warned the charter amendment’s ultimate legacy will be putting the city at risk of fiscal insolvency. Cities that don’t have a housing element in place risk fines of up to $600,000 a month from the state and are subject to builder’s remedy law, where developers can in some situations bypass local zoning and build large housing projects.

“(The) hasty process and disregard for unintended consequences means this charter amendment will, in the end, harm the city for years to come, much like many of this council majority’s actions,” the three said in a statement read during Monday’s meeting by the city clerk.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday also condemned the city’s proposed charter amendment.

“Huntington Beach’s new effort to circumvent state law and avoid building housing is an illegal stunt,” the governor’s office posted. “We’ll continue to hold all communities accountable as we work to build more housing in California.”

The charter amendment’s text says “city planning and zoning is a local, municipal affair, beyond the reach of state control.”

Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, said in an email that “Huntington Beach’s new initiative declaring city zoning ‘beyond the reach of state control’ conflicts with half a century of decisions by state appellate courts which have established that charter cities cannot ignore state law on the critical statewide issue of housing availability and affordability. This is yet another ridiculous stunt by Huntington Beach that will unfortunately be a waste of time and taxpayers’ money, as it will likely be swatted down in court if the voters ultimately approve this.”

The city and state have clashed on several issues over the last year and a half. The state has sued the city in separate lawsuits over its failure to adopt a housing element and for its plans to ask voters to show ID in future city elections starting in 2026 (voters approved that ballot measure in March).

A judge in May ruled in favor of the state and said Huntington Beach had violated the law when it didn’t adopt a compliant housing element.

Adam Wood, senior vice president of the Building Industry Association of Southern California’s Orange County Chapter, in a letter, told the council that the charter amendment doesn’t excuse the city from meeting its housing element requirements and raised concerns that it could reduce local control.

“Thus, if the state requires a compliant housing element, enforcement actions will be brought against the city regardless of who is responsible for approving the housing element,” Wood wrote.

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​ Orange County Register 

Frumpy Mom: Things you kids should know while I’m away

• July 10, 2024

I’m planning to take a few trips this summer without you, my beloved children, so it seems like a good time to give you some tips on how to run the household without me.

1. Keep the animals alive. As you have noticed, we have two sentient beings in our house that can’t feed themselves, nor fill their water bowls. Now, our cat Cairo will not be shy about letting you know when he’s hungry or needs any other type of attention. In fact, the challenge will be to stop him from yowling as if he hasn’t been fed for weeks. However, our dog, Lil Wayne, doesn’t usually bark when he’s hungry. He just looks really sad and walks around the kitchen, aimlessly licking the floor in case someone dropped something edible on it.  When you open the refrigerator, Lil Wayne will come running, because I usually give him a carrot stick, which he thinks is filet mignon.  Additionally, I’ve come home many times and discovered the small beasts’ water bowl is empty. Again, they can’t nudge you and tell you they’re thirsty. So just plan on refilling it at least once a day.

2. How to change the toilet paper. You may use up all the toilet paper on the bathroom roll while I’m gone, and I know you don’t know how to change it, because it’s been empty the last 1,102 times I went in there. The last time I went to Costco, I bought one of those giant cases of bathroom tissue that will barely fit in my car, so we should be good for awhile. The rolls are stacked in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Pull out a roll, remove the utterly useless and annoying paper cover, discard it in the trash can (not on the floor), remove the flexible roller from the middle of the toilet paper holder and insert the paper roll onto it. Then, snap it back into the holder. This should take no more than 15 seconds. If it takes longer, you’re drunk. And, yes, it’s the cheap single-ply tissue. If you want the cushy, soft double-ply, feel free to buy it yourself.

3. How to turn off the lights. Again, I realize that this is a skill you haven’t yet mastered, even though you’re young adults and can rewire a computer in 15 minutes. The clue to realizing that there’s an electrical outlet that needs to be turned off is when you look around at night, and you can see stuff. If you’re in a room and you can see, this means that there’s a light shining that needs to be extinguished. Walk around until you find a light switch that is in the “up” position, which means it’s on. Extend one finger and push the switch into the “down” position, which will turn it off. If it’s the television that’s left on, look around the entire living room and find out what you did with the remote, then push the power button. That will turn it off. In the event you can’t find the remote, just click the off button on the power strip next to the television.

I realize you don’t feel any need to turn off electronic devices of any kind, but every dollar I have to spend on the power bill is a dollar you can’t swipe out of my wallet while I’m in the other room.

4. Take out the trash. We’ve only lived in this house since 2006, so you’ve had a mere 936 weeks to remember that the trash cans have to be on the curb on Monday night. Every Monday night. Even when it’s personally inconvenient for you. You don’t have many recurring jobs to do to support our household, but this is one of them. Even if 936 were not enough weeks to learn this ritual, the fact that all the neighbors have put their trash cans out should be a visual aid to your memory. When I get home, I would be delighted to discover that the trash has been emptied and that the kitchen trash can has also been taken out. Hey, it could happen.

5. Don’t overfill the washer. Remember when you called me long distance in Nepal in what was for me the middle of the night, just to tell me the washer was leaking? And I told you to call the plumber, who came over and charged me $110 to tell you that you overfilled it, so don’t do that anymore? It’s not actually necessary for you to shove every piece of clothing you own into the washer in one load, along with the 187 towels you dirtied in one week. In fact, just because an item is on your floor doesn’t even mean it’s dirty. Pick it up and evaluate whether it actually needs to be washed, or you were just too lazy to put it away.

I could keep going for another hour or two, but I know you’ve already become bored and wandered off to look for your phone charger. So try not to burn the house down or break any of the major appliances, and I’ll be back next week.

Love, Mom

Related links

Frumpy Mom: Trying to outsmart the trickiest store
https://www.ocregister.com/2020/07/22/frumpy-middle-aged-mom-how-i-accidentally-ended-up-in-nepal/
Frumpy Mom: Why the cat is the head of the househol
Frumpy Mom: A fork, a fork! My kingdom for a fork! Or a towel.
I quit being my kids’ maid
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: I might get around to cleaning. Right after this nap.

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​ Orange County Register 

Punishing poverty: The Supreme Court’s criminal approach to homelessness

• July 10, 2024

Teresa was one of the first unhoused individuals I met during fieldwork in Orange County for my dissertation at the University of California, Irvine. She is an elderly, disabled widow who lost her RV when law enforcement impounded it due to unpaid fines. When she finally scraped together enough money to reclaim it, she couldn’t because she lacked adequate identification.

In her younger days, Teresa appeared on TV game shows and owned a restaurant in her rural Northern California hometown. When I met her in 2019, after losing her son and husband, she lived alone on the street and struggled with addiction, yet maintained a warm, high-spirited personality. Her story starkly illustrates how punitive policies render the mere act of surviving a crime.

The Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson marks a troubling shift. By ruling in favor of Grants Pass, the majority has sanctioned criminalizing homelessness, allowing cities to penalize individuals for sleeping in public spaces even when no shelter is available. This decision overturns a Ninth Circuit ruling, which held that anti-camping ordinances violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

This spring, along with 57 social scientists, I co-authored an amicus brief to the Supreme Court. It distills what our collective research shows: criminalizing homelessness does not reduce its incidence but has the opposite effect. It creates a cycle of arrest, incarceration, and release without addressing underlying issues that lead to homelessness.

By permitting punitive policies such as fines and arrest, the decision dismisses the conditions underlying homelessness, such as the widespread lack of affordable housing, insufficient mental health and addiction services, and economic inequality. Instead of addressing these root causes, the ruling exacerbates the problem by pushing people who are struggling further into the margins of society.

In the majority’s opinion, Justice Gorsuch asserts that the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Martin v. Boise “limited the tools available to local governments for tackling” homelessness. However, my research in Orange County shows that local governments use their police powers to banish the unhoused rather than help them out of homelessness.

The decision also threatens to derail efforts to tackle homelessness with humane, effective public policy. In California, strides have been made. Over the last three years, California has served 25 percent more individuals experiencing homelessness and added over 30,000 beds. These strides are often invisible to the public because the crisis is so massive that any gains are, by comparison, hard to detect.

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My own research has addressed this disconnect: the public sees their money being invested in solving an issue they do not see improving and are rightly frustrated. However, these individuals are often the same ones ready to protest creating affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, or shelters in their neighborhoods. We cannot have it both ways. We either want to solve homelessness—understanding that housing is the only solution—or we don’t. Unfortunately, this ruling empowers municipalities to revert to punitive measures supported by many public officials, like California’s Governor Gavin Newsom who submitted a brief which supported the arguments made by Grants Pass.

Given these challenges, it is crucial to advocate for state-level solutions that create housing for unhoused individuals, including those unable to pay for it. We should push for legislation that ensures access to housing and policies that mitigate the consequences of having no home. Policies that perpetuate poverty and racial inequity are not a solution to our housing problem. Housing is.

Teresa’s story epitomizes the failure of criminalizing homelessness. As Justice Sotomayor put it in her powerful dissent, “Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime.” Teresa’s only infraction was trying to survive. We must do better, and that begins with providing housing, not handcuffs.

Deyanira Nevarez Martinez is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University and a UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute Faculty Expert. She has authored several studies on homelessness in California.

​ Orange County Register