đ˝UNITED STATES POLITICS đŚ
<It Never Rains In Southern California(But Man It Burns) editionThread for the hellish discussion related to the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earthâ˘
đ đľ đ đ
đş
State Mandated Propaganda Livestreamsđş
⢠CNN:
https://www.livenewsnow.com/american/cnn-news-usa.html⢠MSNBC:
https://www.livenewsnow.com/american/msnbc.html⢠FOX:
https://www.livenewsnow.com/american/fox-news-channel.html⢠Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/live/usPrevious thread:
>>2105852 565 posts and 186 image replies omitted.>>2110779Thank you comrade.
>>2110781Another reason why the Chinese should run TikTok directly
https://perfectunion.us/how-this-billionaire-couple-stole-californias-water-supply/How This Billionaire Couple Stole Californiaâs Water Supply<In a series of secret meetings in 1994, the Resnicks seized control of Californiaâs public water supply. <Now theyâve built a business empire by selling it back to working people.
>While 40 million Californians suffer through unprecedented drought, one billionaire couple owns a massive share of the stateâs water system, largely seized in a series of secretive meetings two decades ago.> That system was largely paid for by the very taxpayers whose water these billionaires hold hostage.> Urban water systems are desperate for water, but in 2023 theyâll receive just 5% of what they requested from the state. Stewart and Lydia Resnick use 150 billion gallons a year.> Journalist: âI wonder how youâre thinking about water for your businesses?â> Lynda Resnick: âWeâre thinking about water 24/7. Okay? I donât want to get into a drought discussion right now because itâs really off topic but it is serious and a lot of people have suffered⌠Itâs a tough time for people with no rain. But you know, our climate is in terrible jeopardy but we donât wanna go there right now, we all know that, right.â> The Resnicks are the biggest farmers in Californiaâas of 2007 they owned four San Franciscoâs worth of farmland.> And nearly half of Americans buy at least one of their products: Their pistachios, their pomegranate Juice, their mandarins, their flowers> Itâs all under one massive umbrella: The Wonderful Company, a privately owned company worth at least 5 billion dollars. The majority owners, the Resnicks, are worth at least 8 billion.> How were they able to take over such a large percentage of what should be a shared public resource?> This is The Class Room from More Perfect Union, and today weâre looking at How The Resnicks Got Rich:> Lynda is a former child actress, the daughter of Jack Harris, a successful movie distributor of the 1950s, most well known for The Blob.> At 19 she founded her own advertising agency, and in her early 20s Lynda actually did something pretty cool: she assisted in the leak of The Pentagon Papers, the Department of Defense documents that showed just how cravenly evil the United Statesâ actions in Vietnam were.> Stewart was born to a middle class New Jersey family and started his first business, a janitorial service, in grad school.> He eventually acquired American Protection Services, a burglar alarm and security company. Lynda approached him about marketing services for the company, and they hit it off, not knowing that one day theyâd work together to take over most of Californiaâs water.> The lovebirds became business partners. They bought Teleflora, the flower delivery company, and The Franklin Mint, purveyors of inane little chotchkies.> Lynda was the marketing person, and Stewart was in charge of business Lynda told the LA times in 1993, âIâve always said that Stewart and I together make one perfect person, like little salt and pepper shakers.â> In the late 80s they found their primary industry: agriculture.> They got into the pistachio business. Lynda said, âWeâve done more for the pistachio than anyone ever since it was planted in the Garden of Eden. My husband should be canonized for all the work heâs done.â> They started branching into other productsâ almonds, pomegranates, citrus, wineâand acquiring more and more land to cover it, including some very important land in Kern County which granted them water rights in the area.> As the Resnicks were building their empire, the state of California was building new water infrastructure with taxpayer money.> Californiaâs natural water supply is very inconsistent: vastly differing amounts of rainfall means the state can go from surplus to drought and back very easily. So they build water banks to store water during surpluses to have during droughts.> One important storage facility is the Kern Water Bank, started in 1988. The facility was built with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, which couldâve been a good thing: the people of California wouldâve owned the water.> But there were two Californians thirstier than the rest, and they wanted more water: Lynda and Stewart Resnick, and they had a lot of political powerâweâll get to that.> In 1994 state water officials, water infrastructure contractors, and agricultural landowners with water rights arranged a secretive meeting at a resort in Monterey Bay California.> These groups, a mix of private companies and public agencies, rewrote Californiaâs water laws without any input from voters, taxpayers, or legislators. The new laws, called The Monterey Plus Agreement or The Monterey Amendments were devastating for working Californians and great for agriculture billionaires.> The original law had âurban preferenceâ a long-standing rule that in times of drought the state water board would give urban areasâwhere people liveâaccess to state water supplies before agricultural interests. Monterey axed that. That means that in times of drought the water systems for normal Californians would have to buy water from the private companies, because they werenât getting it from the state.> The new agreement also loosened regulations on âpaper water.â Thatâs water that doesnât necessarily actually exist anywhere but on paper: the full quantities of water that providers could have, but donât actually need to have. Today 5x as much water has been promised and sold as actually exists.> And importantly, the meeting changed ownership of the Kern Water Bank. What once belonged to the state was transferred to a few private water contractors. One of which was Westside Mutual, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wonderful Foods. The Wonderful employee who runs Westside, Bill Phillimore, is the chairman of the âpublicâ organization that manages the Kern Water Bank.> Boom. One secret meeting and the Resnicks owned nearly 60% of an important California water resource, built with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.> The new ownership combined with the rules on paper and surplus water meant that during times of drought the Resnicks could sell Kern water back to the state water systems.> They took Californian taxpayersâ water and sold it back to themâ both literally as the water supply, and also to grow expensive food like gourmet pistachios and pomegranate juice. They converted the peoplesâ water into products many canât afford.> And thatâs just one waterbank, the Resnicks also have control of other water boards and have been sued for directing more water towards their properties.> So how do they get away with this Chinatown-level chicanery? With philanthropy!> The Resnicks donate millions of dollars to politicians and research institutions, which help them secure control over water systems, and even get more water and more taxpayer funding.> One important project is the proposed California Delta Tunnel, a taxpayer funded project which would send water from Northern California to Central, where the Resnicksâ farms are. Theyâve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on California and federal legislation and politicians who support the tunnel project.> But their favorite politician is Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Energy and Water subcommittee. Sheâs a close personal friend of the Resnicks, attending their holiday parties in Aspen and maintaining their financial interests.> A quick look through bills sheâs sponsored show several which would direct money to Kern-adjacent water projects. The Resnicks even ask her for things directly:> When a pesky study about endangering salmon and shad fisheries threatened the Delta Tunnel, Stewart wrote a letter to Feinstein demanding a new study. She immediately forwarded it to the Obama administration, who agreed to spend 750 thousand dollars on a new study. It returned the same results as the first one. You canât buy science! But the Resnicks have tried:> They are among the top donors to the University of California system, with their donations focusing on agricultural and ecological studies. The Resnicks have basically bought entire departments who put out studies on how water systems should be managed, and where funding should go. That leads to even more federal and state taxpayer dollars being used to fix up what the Resnicks profit off of.> This is all bad for California even in a capitalistic sense: agriculture uses 80% of Californiaâs water, but only represents 2% of its GDP.> The Resnicks water monopoly is just one way their quest for wealth hurts the rest of us. They lobby for increased tensions with Iran to keep embargos on superior Iranian pistachios. Their giant crops lead to monocultures which kills important pollinators. They siphon taxpayer dollars into the charter schools they own, set up to train children to work on their farms. And of course, like any company of this size, they exploit their workers. >>2110802Same.
Itâs honestly really fucking cool the Chinese state annually Luigis their CEOâs like sacrifices to a communist God.
Unique IPs: 21