Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

Donald Trump says that CNN, the New York Times, and pretty much every other mainstream news organization are "fake news." In November 2016 CNN, the New York Times, et al reported that Donald Trump was elected President. In January 2017 CNN, the New York Times, et al reported that Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. If CNN, the New York Times, et al are fake news then those things never happened and Donald Trump is lying when he says he is the President. But if Donald Trump is really the President then he is lying when he says CNN, the New York Times, et al are fake news. Either way, Donald Trump is a liar.

I recently caused a commotion in the Monterey Herald's letters section. On Tuesday August 29 th the Herald printed a letter from Michael Baer of Monterey expressing his disappointment with the Mayors' Water Authority, specifically their apparent inability to bring Cal Am's ever increasing water bills under control. So far so good. Then in regard to Cal Am's proposed desalination plant Baer complained that the Water Authority could “not even be bothered to seriously consider a plan B, just in case this project goes the way of all previous Cal Am new water supply projects: failure.” This is where I saw a problem. Two, actually, but I chose to respond to only one. The one I ignored was the alleged lack of a “plan B.” The Water Authority designated the project called Deep Water Desal as a backup plan. They directed the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District to help develop the project on a parallel track with Cal Am's project in case the ...

Whooda thunk that my main website, The Monterey Peninsula Toy Box , was twenty years old already? Not me, apparently, because I just realized it a couple of days ago! Yup, the Toy Box was established in July of 1997. I don't recall the exact date it first appeared in cyberspace, just the month, and that only because I published it at the bottom of my home page early on. The whole thing started on a whim. In early 1997 I signed up with America Online after I realized that my previous internet service provider, Prodigy, was going the way of the dodo. AOL was actually my second choice. I intended to use a Monterey based ISP called Redshift, as they were highly regarded hereabouts. I installed Redshift's software, fired up the modem, and got nowhere. I spent three fruitless days going round and round with Redshift technical support. Finally, in desperation, I grabbed one of those junk-mailed AOL floppy disks that was floating around my desk. I popped it in and was up and run...

Trump tweets dumb tweets from the Oval, Trumty Dumpty's tweets are spiteful, All of his lawyers and all of his kin, Couldn't make Trump's tweets coherent again.  

Well, they're back! A local group of activists called Public Water Now thinks that doing the same thing over again will have a different result. That thing involves yet another ballot measure asking Monterey Peninsula voters if we want to buy out the privately owned local water company, California-American Water (Cal-Am), and turn it into a publicly owned utility. After two failed attempts in recent years, PWN seems to think this time will be different.   They may have a point. In the two years since their last attempt, Measure O, failed, Cal-Am took Peninsula ratepayers for a ride with a wholly unethical rate increase. During the drought Peninsula water customers did their best to conserve water, resulting in less water passing through our water meters which in turn resulted in less money flowing into Cal-Am's bottom line. Cal-Am never claimed that they were losing money, but they did argue before the California Public Utilities Commission that their profits were not as ...