
California State Assembly - District 79
District 79 — California State Assembly
Get the facts on the California candidates running for election to the District 79 — California State Assembly
Find out their top 3 priorities, their experience, and who supports them.
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Shirley N. Weber
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- More Jobs, change California's punitive regulations...
- More Water, develop long delayed new reservoirs to...
- Proposition 13 protects our most vulnerable elderly...
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My Top 3 Priorities
- More Jobs, change California's punitive regulations that have driven 9,000 companies to other States.
- More Water, develop long delayed new reservoirs to provide more and less expensive water so the next drought won't cause another shortage. California can gather enough rain in the cyclical wet years to carry through the cyclical drought years.
- Proposition 13 protects our most vulnerable elderly and fixed income residents. I will fight against all efforts to modify or repeal Prop. 13.
Experience
Education
Biography
I left the US Air Force with an honorable discharge after a 4 year stint where I learned to fly civilian aircraft along with my other duties on airborne computer, sensor, navigation and weapons delivery systems.
After discharge I was accepted by the University of Arizona and completed a B.A. in Economics with minors in Accounting and Finance. I then applied and was accepted into the Graduate program at USC and received an MBA with majors in Quantitative Business Analysis and Real Estate.
I was honored to be the team leader of four other graduate students to win first place in a city wide Real Estate Development competition against UCLA, Pepperdine and other L.A. area universities. A first for USC at that time. Later I completed the undergraduate and Graduate curriculum in Computer Science at Cal State Northridge.
For a few years I worked for a major LA area Aircraft-Aerospace Defense contractor as a programmer and systems designer for internal business and manufacturing applications. I was lucky to become part of a team working on factory of the future applications that received an award for our combined effort from the top level of the corporation.
During that period of employment I was given a special award by the President of the corporation for saving the life of another employee that was choking to death.
Later an opportunity arose to join a young LA area Internet company with an international reputation and I took it. I received a stock option and spent a few years as a field engineer installing and debugging one of the first Internet Protocol applications that permitted communication between different Operating Systems over the Internet. This product had a big impact in those early days of the Internet.
Around that time I was approached by a very large software company to move to Washington State. The offer included a generous stock option, ¼ to be vested in each of the first 4 years, totaling thousands of shares. I declined the offer. My worst career mistake!
When I left the young Internet company its stock had fallen back to what it was when I joined – I made nothing on my stock options!
Coming to San Diego I was employed by a small company designing and bidding networked business computer systems integrated with phone systems and the Internet.
That led to employment with a San Diego company that provided DSL Internet connectivity hardware based in the phone company Central Offices. My job was in the test lab where customer systems were duplicated so that compatibility problems with other Internet vendor hardware could be isolated and corrected.
That position led to my employment as a Network Engineer contractor for an international pharmaceutical corporation in La Jolla. At that time the corporation was completing several buildings on its new campus and each had large Internet switches and routers that needed installation, configuring and testing.
After the Dot.com crash Network Engineering work dried up. I went into residential lending, earned a Real Estate broker’s license and spent several years interviewing borrowers and negotiating loans for residential clients across a bewildering array of lenders and programs.
I watched the financial collapse of 2007-08 from a front row seat. At first I was too busy doing loans to notice.
Then the lender collapses started to hit my office. Big companies, national companies, were giving 24 hour deadlines to complete loans, no courtesies were extended.
I retired afterwards but that devastating experience urged me to investigate what the hell happened.
Those causes have not gone away, the large banks have continued their risky behavior despite questionable post-crash Federal legislation. Our economy is more vulnerable now than in 2008.
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Questions & Answers
Questions from The League of Women Voters of California Education Fund and California Counts, a public media collaboration. (4)
In the 1970s I remember reading about the "New Ice Age". Predictions at the time called for a global freeze that would leave the Northern part of the US permanently in snow and ice by the 2000s. As the 1990s approached that prediction turned to "Global Warming" when the "New Ice Age" did not arrive on schedule.
"Global Warming" failed to be warm enough by the 2010s a new label was created, "Climate Change". Now we are at a point where everyone can agree. Yes, the Climate Changes.
The "Climate Change" cause is assumed by certain political arguments to be from man-made CO2. In geologic history there were times when atmospheric CO2 rose at a high rate and affected world climate. However those instances were caused by multiple large volcanic eruptions across the planet. Studies have shown that one volcano eruption is multiple times larger in CO2 production than the combined world car, animal and factory exhausts.
So CO2 can alter Climate, but man-made sources are far too small to produce sufficient climate changing CO2 as we observe from the earth's geologic history.
The primary motivator to all of earth's climate is the Sun. That is what science shows. The Sun does not have a steady production of energy as the "Climate Change" model and it's supporters seem to assume. It waxes and wanes in cycles of varying lengths. There is a Maunder 22 year cycle. There are longer cycles. These long and short Sun cycles where energy output rises and falls are the primary drivers of earth's temperature.
To make a long story short, there are many things in the "Climate Change" model that need modification before it can be reliable for predictions. As we have seen the 1970s "New Ice Age" prediction was completely wrong, then "Global Warming" prediction fell short to become "Climate Change". Only after the Climate Change model's predictions have proven accurate can legislation be based on it. But not before.
California Water on the other hand is not nearly as dire as most in the Legislature think. A 2004 Berkeley study showed that California receives on average 192 million acre-feet (MAF) of water every year during it's 4 to 6 year Wet and Dry cycle. A 2010 study by the US Geological Survey showed California consumed only 42 million acre-feet (MAF) for all purposes: Residential, Commercial, Agricultural and Industrial.
So 192 MAF - 42 MAF = 150 MAF surplus. Of that the Berkeley study showed 71 MAF ran off to the ocean. The remaining 79 MAF per year is left on the land or under it. So even after consuming 42 MAF per year there is still 79 MAF remaining per year on average. I published detailed analysis on my Website MooreForAssembly.com.
A couple of months after publishing my results several Newspapers reported that Stanford scientists had discovered a new aquifer below the Central Valley. It's fresh water storage was estimated at 2 Billion acre-feet. Enough to supply California for 47 years without one drop of rain. See MooreForAssembly.com.
California has a Water Management Problem, not a Water Problem.
The voting public, the citizenry in a free nation, has a civic responsibility and authority to fire corrupt officials at the next election. In California the citizens have another option, Recall. If the corruption of a public official is grevious then there is no need to wait for the next election. Only a few States have the Recall power, California is one.
What many voters want is a State government that will operate within the law and without corruption and without citizen supervision or attention. The Founders never expected such a thing, that is why they gave the citizens authority over their elected officials.
For thousands of years society has had robbers, rapists and murderers. For thousands of years society has punished such offenders. Yet every generation produces a new crop of robbers, rapists and murderers. Should we just disband our police forces and surrender since centuries of effort haven't been able to stop the crimes?
Of course not. We can only contain and manage the problem but never eliminate it. In the case of violent crime the managing authority is with a formal police force. In the case of corrupt, unresponsive or ineffective politicians the authority is with the citizenry. The politicians will always need citizen supervision.
The Founders knew this. It was true in their day and it is equally true in our day. It is a constant in human nature. The politicians have power over your children, property, income, taxes and even your life. To balance the equation the Founders gave the citizens electoral power over the politicians. Who better to choose than the very citizens that would be subject to the bad behavior of the politicians?
In other words if the citizens were not motivated enough to monitor and control their politicians then no one would be.
Asking the politicians to control their money corrupted counterparts is very much like sending the foxes to guard the chicken coop. Something we have all witnessed in the last few weeks and months of this Presidential contest.
The American Constitution provides a formal way to remove any office holder at any time, including the President. First the individual is Impeached, then tried in Congress. If the Impeachment is upheld at trial the individual is removed from office. At that point even an ex-President is subject to civil and/or criminal trial in the State and/or Federal courts. Punishment can be as severe as imprisonment or even execution.
In the State of California the State Senate and Assembly can Impeach the Governor or any member of the State Senate or Assembly. Once Impeached the individual can be tried in State Court.
California's Recall law allows the people to remove any individual from office. This is somewhat equivalent to Impeachment. Once removed from office the individual can be tried in State Court.
"A people that wants to be ignorant and free ... wants what never has been and never will be." Thomas Jefferson, if my memory is correct.
Raising the minimum wage affects more than just low end private sector employees. It also affects unionized public sector employees.
The effects on each group are very different. The media focuses the voter's attention on low end private sector jobs such as fast food restaurants. The sympathy for these workers is easy to generate and the voting public always goes along with raising the minimum wage. The delicate balance between revenue and expenses that the private sector business owner must maintain to keep the business afloat is upset and can lead to unforseen conequences, such as automation or closure.
Almost immediately after the recent minimum wage increase was passed one San Diego restaurant chain immediately closed it doors. The hundreds of local Home Town Buffet employees had no warning, the restaurants were open one day and literally closed the next. Their large and prominent empty retail space shows like a missing tooth in local shopping centers.
Another restaurant chain, Coco's, has slowly closed several of it's San Diego locations since the minimum wage increase. Hundreds more employees were left without jobs but at least not as quickly as Home Town Buffet employees.
Where do those food service workers go? Their profession is laying off workers, their jobs are disappearing. The answer becomes obvious, they are forced on to Unemployment Compensation, paid by the same voters who as taxpayers provide that Unemployment Insurance and other Welfare benefits.
What happens to the local Sales Tax revenue that all those closed restaurants used to generate for the city or county? It's gone. Who will have to make up for that loss in local Sales Tax revenue? --- you guessed it, those well meaning, sympathetic, minimum wage supporting voters who are also local taxpayers.
The advertised benefits to restaurant workers are equally perverse. Higher costs for each employee mean businesses will have to hire fewer employees along with adding 25 cents to each burger. This is the one economic point that the media accurately anticipates. To compensate the journalists may reveal that no one should expect fast food pay to support a family.
Well, if the journalists would look at a few fast food restaurants they would realize that the staff changes quickly. The people working at the fast food place today are not the same faces from last year. With one exception of course --- the manager and maybe a couple of cooks. The workers never intended to support a family but just get a temporary entry level job.
All that the emotional plea to voters for "fair pay" has done is shrink the tax base, cause hundreds to become unemployed and hollow-out a once profitable part of the local economy while increasing the tax burden on those same sympathetic "fair pay" voters.
Doesn't somebody gain from all this pain?
Well, "Yes" indeed. The public employees who got a pay bump at every rung without asking for a raise from their bosses --- the voting public.
That is one slick "sting" operation.
First, -the High Speed rail project which has languished for years and continually grown in estimated costs to completion should be shelved. There is no demonstrated need for it that is not met with existing modern transportation. It's costs are in the tens of billions of dollars and the return to indiviudal taxpayers when it becomes usable is speculative at best. It is a wonderful 19th Century solution for an era goneby.
Second, -there is an underground dual tunnel project estimated to cost between $16 Billion and $23 Billion that will move water from the Northeast San Joaquin River end of the Delta to the Southwest end where the State Water Project pipeline to Southern California begins.
The pipes will be huge, big enough to drive a car or truck through. There is a major problem with this idea. For centuries the San Joaquin River Delta has been moving that same water from its' Northeast end to its' Southwest end for --- free!
Why, exactly, would the California Taxpayer want to pay up to $23 Billion, most likely more, for a service that is done by Mother Nature for free???
Well the first business-like answer given by proponents is to move water to thirsty Southern California. Remember we're in a drought and So. Cal. needs that water!! There is a problem with that idea. You see, building the underground tunnels doesn't add one drop of water to the State's storage capacity. Those tunnels may even drain the existing storage capacity faster. Then we'll sooner see more pictures of empty reservoirs.
So what should be done? Well --- build more storage facilities instead of tunnels, ie; Dams and Lakes. They won't cost nearly as much as the tunnels and ahem... they will solve the problem.
But the proponents will object --- what about the smelt? That's not something malodorous, but a small bait fish that is native to the San Joaquin Delta. The rumor was, that when sucked into the gates of the pipeline at the Southwest end the wide-eyed little Nemos would emerge as Nemo puree. However a court case over this determined that there was no evidence of such cullinary maltreatment.
We are in California, so lack of evidence has never gotten in the way of a good story. So let's allocate $1 million or $2 million for a Delta Smelt nursery. Release the hatchlings into the Delta whenever the population declines. That's a good business solution that satisfies everyone for a fraction of the Tunnels costs.
Third, -Politicians, political scientists and lawyers create climate change legislation and regulations. Unfortunately politicians, political scientists and lawyers make very bad physical scientists. We saw from the Climate Change answer above, that theory is still not settled science. It needs more work before the politicians, political scientists and lawyers can use it for their purposes. Despite that rather large problem, the politicians and lawyers march forth producing the expected bad legislation and regulations. That should be stopped and the resources dedicated to it should likewise be terminated.
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Political Beliefs
Political Philosophy
I am not a professional politician but a retired businessman. It seems clear that the professionals aren't addressing the pressing concerns of our citizens in the 79th Assembly District. Our young families need more economic opportunities, jobs, not fewer. Unfortunately current California legislation has imposed regulations that have driven 9,000 companies to other states and the jobs left California with them. Those regulations must be changed to reverse the flow of jobs back into California.
Our middle and lower income families are enduring sharply increasing costs for the necessities of life, such as water, food, gasoline and electricity. Sacramento has become perversely insensitive to the increasing financial burden its water policies, utility taxes and fees put on the average income earners. Those water policies must be modified for the benefit of middle and lower income residents and food producers, the utility taxes and fees likewise reduced.
Proposition 13 provides security to our elderly and fixed income residents. Yet Sacramento remains tone deaf to their needs and wants to whittle away at Prop. 13 to gather more revenue from those least able to afford it. This is cruel and I won't support any legislation to modify or repeal Prop. 13.
I respect and cherish the Constitution and that includes the 2nd Amendment. Sacramento should focus its efforts on criminal arrest, prosecution and incarceration not law abiding gun owners. It isn't the law abiding who are committing the murders, rapes, robberies and terrorist attacks.
One legislator cannot change laws alone but can give a voice to the forgotten citizens and remind, even browbeat legislators to do their sworn duty to the people that elected them. Several legislators together can change laws. So urge your friends in other districts to elect more like me.
Help us to awaken Sacramento from its insensitivity to the detrimental effects its regulatory policies and taxes are having on our residents.
Position Papers
California's Water "Crisis"
Is There A California Water Crisis?
Dramatic pictures of dry California reservoirs and snowless mountainsides are convincing evidence we are in a period of drought. California has always vacillated between wet and dry years in a cycle that is about 4 to 6 years long. We are now in the dry part of that 4 to 6 year cycle. There has always been a wet period following the drought period.
A drought period does not necessarily mean a water shortage must follow.
California has a water management problem, not a water shortage problem. California rainfall surpluses in the wet years of the 4 to 6 year cycle are multiple times the deficit of water in the drought years. Save water in the wet years and there will be more than enough water to spend in the drought years. It is a simple, straightforward plan.
The confusion begins when politicians, newspapers and TV reporters look only at the most recent year or two of rainfall. The Governor shows mountains that have no snow, the newspapers run photos of reservoirs going dry and the human imagination extrapolates a straight-line into the future. Panic ensues - we are running out of water!!!
In reality rainfall in California is not a one year straight line up or down, but a 4 to 6 year cycle, rising and falling in a curve between a historical high and low point on a graph. California must manage water on the 4 to 6 year cycle that nature has given us.
Look at rainfall tables over the last 50 to 100 years, plot the data and the rainfall pattern will appear. Every cycle will be slightly different, but it is sufficient to manage our State’s water supplies for the drought years. Managing water resources means water surpluses are accumulated in wet years to cover water shortages in the drought years.
Droughts will no longer mean that Californians have to suffer water shortages.
The majority of California’s rain falls in the northern part of the state. According to the 2014 study by the Southwest Climate Science Center*, rainfall in the north can be 50 inches per year in “drought” years up to 100 inches per year in wet years. That is equivalent to rainfall in the world’s tropical forests.
A six year cycle of Northern California rainfall could rise in the 1st year from 50 inches per year to perhaps 75 inches in the 2nd year, to a peak of 100 inches in the 3rd year. On the downside of the curve, rainfall might fall to 80 inches in 4th year, to 65 inches in the 5th year to finally down to 50 inches in the 6th year.
If one looked only at years 4 and 5, a straight line assumption would induce panic at the drop of 15 inches per year (80 – 65 = 15). One could wrongly conclude that rainfall would go to zero in just 4.3 years (65/15 = 4.3) with a straight line assumption. In reality the cycle would start again rising from 50 inches back to 100 inches restarting nature’s long term historical cycle.
80% of California’s water consumption is in the southern part of the state where rainfall averages only 5 inches per year. California built a distribution system called the State Water Project (SWP) that moves millions of acre-feet to the dry Southern California counties from the San Joaquin River delta in Northern California.
An Accounting of All of California’s Rainfall
Large amounts of water are accounted in acre-feet. One acre-foot of water is approximately equivalent to 1 football field evenly covered with 1 foot of water. Approximately 4 California residences can be supplied for 1 year with a single acre-foot of water.
The entire State receives 192 million acre-feet (MAF) of rain water on average per year according to a 2004 Berkeley California* study. The estimated yearly uncaptured fresh water runoff (flows to the ocean) is 71 MAF per year by the same study.
In 2010 the US Geological Survey (USGS)* estimated total State water consumption for ALL uses at 42 MAF per year. California’s average yearly rainfall is over 450% larger than its’ average yearly water consumption! (192 MAF / 42 MAF = 4.5)
California has a 150 MAF water surplus per year on average (192 MAF – 42 MAF = 150 MAF). California’s average yearly water surplus is 300% larger than the average yearly consumption of water for ALL uses. Of this surplus, 71 MAF is lost in runoff to the ocean. California’s average yearly runoff is 69% larger than its total consumption. (71 MAF / 42 MAF = 169%)
The remainder of average yearly rainfall is 79 MAF (192 – 42 – 71 = 79 MAF) that is retained by the ground then sinks into the aquifers. California is “banking” more water in its natural ground reservoirs (aquifers) than it is consuming by about 88% per year.
It is estimated* that every almond requires 1.1 gallons of water to grow to maturity and every tomato requires 3.3 gallons. The almond and tomato are each much smaller than the volume of water used to grow them. The full grown almond and tomato retain only a very small portion of the water poured on the respective plant over the growth period.
The farmer takes his allocation of water from one part of California and pours it onto the ground in another part of California. A little of that water is absorbed by his crops but the major portion goes right back into the ground after a little evaporation loss. This is the portion the farmer returns to the aquifer below his property.
Everyone just assumes that once the farmer gets his water it is then lost forever. While that may be true for residential, municipal, commercial and industrial water users it is clearly NOT TRUE for agricultural water users. Almost all of the farmer’s water is returned to nature making him the most environmentally efficient conservator of California’s water users. Yet it is always agriculture that bears the criticism of Sacramento politicians for using too much water!
Recharging California’s Aquifers
Farmers purportedly receive 80% of the State's average yearly rainfall. However, by the USGS study irrigation actually gets only 61%* of total average California consumption. If we assume 15% evaporation loss we can estimate the yearly amount of water returned by California agriculture to its’ aquifers at 21.7 MAF*.
Recall that 79 MAF per year from nature’s rainfall that does not run off into the ocean. The total estimated water that is returned to California’s ground water supply per year is 100.7 MAF (79 MAF + 21.7 MAF = 100.7 MAF). That is 240% more water than is consumed by all of California per year!
So, is California running out of water? Emphatically NO! There is plenty of water in California, even during the drought years! We recharge the ground water supplies at 2.4 times the rate we consume the water! Total average California rainfall is over 400% greater than annual water consumption for ALL uses.
Was there good reason for destroying 1 million fertile acres of San Joaquin Valley trees and crops to allegedly save more water? No, we are already saving an estimated 240% more water per year than we consume for ALL uses.
New Aquifer Just Discovered 6/27/2016
Now hydrologists have found vast hidden aquifer under the Central Valley (ie: under the farmers croplands!). Mary Kang from Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Services* believes the water should be “protected”. I believe this translates as: California taxpayers should not be allowed to drink, bathe, water their lawns or crops with it.
Stanford scientist Jackson* calls the hidden aquifers it a “windfall” of fresh water. Most of the fresh water is at 3,250 feet and above, which is shallow by modern oil drilling methods. Oil rigs can drill for water too and often hit water by accident.
The calculations above assume rain and farm water recharging California aquifers at about 100.7 MAF per year. The hidden aquifer(s) just discovered by Stanford may very well contain the decades of accumulated fresh water in the magnitudes we calculated.
Nothing underwrites the conclusion that there is no shortage of water in California as simply and succinctly as did the Sacramento Bee in it’s 6/27/16 headline*:
“We’ve Got Plenty of Water”
*see MooreForAssembly.com for exact data, references and other important details plus solutions, under “Issues” and “Water Crisis Fixed” tabs.
Integrity In the Election Process
The two types of Election Vulnerabilities
There are two types of Election Vulnerabilities: Procedural and Computerized Tabulation Fraud:
1) Procedural Vulnerabilities come from security holes in the California Laws that govern voting procedures used by the Secretary of State and Registrars of Voters in each county regarding Voter Registration, Voting By Mail, Polling Stations, Ballot Security, Ballot Counting, Statistical Testing of Computer Ballot Totals and Certification of Election Results
2) Computer Tabulation (Vulnerabilities) Fraud is the illegal manipulation of the Computer hardware and/or software that counts and accumulates vote totals by scanning each ballot for each election item: Candidates and Propositions.
Bear in mind that the corrections for each type of security vulnerability, Procedural and Computerized Tabulation, require different solutions ie: one legal, the other technology. Correcting one set does not correct the other. Both must be corrected to insure the integrity of the entire election system.
Further bear in mind that efficiency is NOT the highest concern, INTEGRITY is. It does no good to count the votes quickly at the least expense if the final count is compromised!
Many popular electronic solutions are peddled across the nation that are easy for the voter to use and calculate the results very fast but provide no secure way to test the validity of those “fast” counts. It does no good to recount ballots using the same potentially corrupted computer hardware and software. A valid, secure test of computer generated election totals can only be done by testing vote totals without using those same machines that generated the original totals.
The most reliable voting systems, those with the highest INTEGRITY, use PAPER BALLOTS that are retained after the election so that overall system testing and recounts can be done by hand for specific, individual races. STATISTICAL TESTING by hand count of PAPER BALLOTS for comparison with Computer generated totals is an essential check on the integrity of the entire system Computer Tabulators and their internal tabulation software.
It is very easy for one person to modify or delete a million records on a computer. It is not so easy for one person or several persons to modify or destroy 1,000 boxes of paper ballots stored in a warehouse.
California law requires ROVs to do a 1% hand-count of ballots randomly chosen across all the ballots for each election. The relative totals generated by the hand count are compared with that generated by the computerized tabulating machines. If there is a statistically significant difference between the hand count and the computer count then the computers must be investigated. This delays the ROV’s certification of the election.
California law also requires it’s ROVs to retain the paper ballots from each election for 24 months.
The statistical hand count and paper ballot retention period are elements of a voting system that has INTEGRITY. Yes, integrity adds costs to a voting system but it is absolutely essential. California law is no doubt ahead of many states in this regard but it is far from perfect.