California Nightmares

For John, BLUF:  One of the great things about these United States is that the individual states provide places to experiment.  When I was young California experimented and it is good.  Today California experiments and it is a warning to other states.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Yes, California Has Effectively Banned Showering And Doing Laundry On The Same Day

Here is the sub-headline:

Snopes, Facebook, and others purporting to ‘fact check’ conservative frustrations with California’s new water-restrictions law are the ones misleading about its effects.

From The Federalist, by Ms Inez Feltscher Stepman, 11 June 2018.

Here are the first three paragraphs:

The latest in Facebook-policed “fake news” is a claim echoing through the conservative Twittersphere, including from my own account, that two bills outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown signed impose such draconian water use standards that fines could be imposed for taking a shower and running laundry on the same day.  Snopes rated these assertions as “mostly false,” and Facebook flagged stories about them as fake news.

But Snopes, Facebook, and others purporting to “fact check” conservative frustrations with the law are the ones misleading about its effects.  The way these allegedly neutral fact-checkers present repackaged liberal assumptions as hard fact is a great illustration of how the Left pulls off the kind of logical ju-jitsu that allows them to label conservative arguments as fake news in order to dismiss them.

In this particular case, none of these “debunking” articles actually dispute the three most crucial facts: there is a daily per-person 55-gallon limit ratcheting down to 50 gallons over the course of a decade, fines will be imposed upon violation, and, for at least some users, a reasonable-length shower and running the wash will put them over.  In fact, most of the articles in question actually confirm these three vital points, usually squashed into a final paragraph that contradicts the headline.  Nevertheless, they conclude that conservatives are spreading false information.

From there, Ms Stepman goes on to show how Snopes and Facebook suffer from innumeracy.

But, the thing I really liked about this post by Mr Ed Driscoll, at the InstaPundit, is this:

P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that “You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba.  That’s all you need to know about communism.”

Too right.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff