Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

The same day we got the print version of Sunday New York Times at home, a cool feature was online for free. Called “Budget puzzle: You fix the deficit,” it is here.

It’s a good exercise to help understand that with “no pain” comes “no gain,” something we’ve been discussing on this blog over the weekend when it comes the budget balancing act.

Last year, I linked to a similar online feature from the L.A. Times for fixing the state budget deficit. It is here.

Exit question: Are print newspapers becoming more and more irrelevant as new online-only features are introduced?

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Editor’s note: I grabbed a bag of Mandarins at SPD yesterday, the first of the season. We’re big fans Mandarin fans. They’re healthy, taste good and are “local.” On Saturday, I squeezed a glass of fresh Mandarin juice, and added a shot of Stoli while I watched the Cal-Oregon football game. This morning we’ll have a glass for breakfast (sans Stoli). We make salads with them too. Here’s an article from Sierra FoodWineArt about next weekend’s Mandarin Festival, some background on Mandarins and a hyperlink to a Mandarin orchard guide for Placer County:

NOW IS THE TIME TO SAVOR HEARTY SOUPS AND STEWS along with the bright taste of citrus, which will carry us through the winter.

The Mandarin groves of Penryn, Newcastle and Loomis are greening up, soon to be covered with Owari Satsuma Mandarins, our sweet winter treat.

The success of the Mandarin is a 21st-century manifestation of a unique horticultural history that began more than a hundred years ago. In the 1880s Joel Parker Whitney led the effort to establish the Placer County Citrus Colony, which eventually encompassed more than 7,000 acres.

By 1891, enticed by reasonable land prices and the dream of profits from citrus, more than 50 English families had settled in the area, causing it to be known as the “English Colony.”

Citrus continues to thrive in the region’s climate with the Mandarin the star of the show.

The Mountain Mandarin Festival celebrates the start of Mandarin season each year. The 18th-annual festival takes place November 19-21 at the Gold Country Fairgrounds in Auburn.

Tens of thousands come out for this family-oriented weekend full of great food, crafts, live entertainment, Alpacas for children to pet—and lots of Mandarins.

Pilz Produce at Hillcrest, Westview Growers and Miller’s Citrus Grove are long-time festival participants, selling hundreds of pounds of the sweet fruit to eager buyers during the long weekend event.

After the festival, mandarin enthusiasts are invited to visit the orchards through January to stock up on Mandarins for enjoyment at home and as gifts.

Thomas Ranch is one of the many growers open for the season that offer packing and shipping, so that your family and friends can enjoy the sweet Owari Satsuma Mandarins.

A Mandarin Orchard guide for Placer County is here.

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The co-chairs of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform have included this “valentine” in their lengthly proposal: A 15 cent gas tax hike by 2013 to help reduce the national deficit.

Though it might rile up RV owners — I know some right-minded ones around here — some are starting to voice support for the measure.

“Then there’s the provision to raise gasoline taxes gradually by 15 cents per gallon between 2013 and 2015 – an idea worth exploring,” writes right-leaning columnist Deborah Sanders in the S.F. Chronicle this morning.

“It’s a tax increase that would achieve some of the energy efficiencies that Democrats have tried to force through regulation. It’s a consumption tax that everyone would pay, including the 36 percent of income-tax filers who, according to the Tax Foundation, paid no income tax in 2008.”

“Given all the circumstances, then, it’s really about time a 15 cent increase at the pump is implemented,” writes AltTransport. “At worst, it will force people to take public transportation or drive less.”

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Global warming denialists Anthony Watts and Russ Steele are gleefully pointing to an editorial in the Marysville Appeal-Democrat that bashes the California Air Resources Board and its chief, Mary Nichols.

“A prime job-killing, business-punishing scheme is the insistence on achieving radical environmental goals, despite their real-world economic liabilities,” it reads.

“Small town gets it: The ‘green dreem’ in California is bankruptcy, CARB is arrogant, state lawmaker’s clueless,” Watts writes.

Speaking of bankruptcy, the Marysville newspaper’s parent — Freedom Communications — filed for bankruptcy last year, downplaying the announcement, as I reported previously. It exited Chapter 11 earlier this year.

Speaking of arrogant, “En route to bankruptcy, Freedom execs pocked $2.6 million in bonuses,” one outlet — HeatCity.org — reported.

And speaking of clueless, Marysville could badly use some economic diversity, including a “green” job or two. A list of major employers is here. Marysville’s population has declined nearly 7 percent since 2000; its unemployment rate is more than 18 percent, and recent job growth is negative, according to “Best Places to live in Marysville, Calif.”

In fact, it has the third-highest unemployment in the nation.

A mail facility with about 120 workers in Olivehurst could wind up closing.

Marysville — and the Appeal-Democrat — is right in the heart of Dan Logue country. Logue was a principal backer of Prop. 23, which sought to rescind AB23.

Instead of bashing CARB, Logue and the newspaper’s management ought to be focusing inward and working together on innovative economic development plans for a depressed region. For years, it has been too dependent on “boom and bust” cycles of construction and real estate, strip malls and — ironically — government (including Beale Air Force Base, not just the post office).

A “Grow Yuba-Sutter” initiative was rolled out with much fanfare earlier this year. It even rolled out a Facebook page. But sadly, it only has 102 members.

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“Americans are often misinformed, occasionally downright dumb, and easily misled by juicy-sounding rumors,” Alternet writes. “But while the right wing is taking full advantage of this reality, the Left worries that calling out lies is ‘rude.’”

“We’ve gone far beyond Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” into a more “truth-be-damned” environment; what Rick Perlstein described in the Daily Beast as a “mendocracy. As in, rule by liars.”

The article, with links to the supporting documentation, is here.

Here are some examples, according to Alternet.

•Polling data during and after last week’s midterm elections suggested that many Americans genuinely believe President Obama has raised their taxes — even though the reality is that our president actually lowered them for most of us.

•Half of new Congressmen don’t believe in the reality of global warming.

•”The new Congress will probably try to restore millions of dollars of funding for scientifically inaccurate, largely disastrous abstinence-only curriculum in schools, many of which have been shown to spread lies like ‘condoms don’t work’ and ‘abortion causes cancer.’”

•Nearly one-fifth of Americans think Obama is a Muslim.

•One quarter of Americans “don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution while less than 40 percent do.”

•”Earlier this year, nearly 40 percent of Americans still believed the Sarah Palin-supported lie about “death panels” being included in health care reform.

•”As of just a few years ago, about half of Americans still suspected a connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of Sept. 11, a lie that was reinforced by none opther than Dick Chaney.”

•”A majority of ‘young Americans’ cannot identify Iraq or Afghanistan — the places their peers are fighting and dying — on a map.”

•”Two out of five Americans, despite the whole separation of church and state being a foundation of our democracy thing, think teachers should be able to lead prayer in classrooms.”

•”Many Americans still believe in witchcraft, ESP and other supernatural phenomena. Does that explain why Christine O’Donnell was so quick to deny her ‘dabbling?’”

•Twenty percent of Americans still believed that the sun revolves around the earth. “That’s just sad, considering that even the Vatican has let Galileo off the hook for being right,” Alternet writes.

•”Only about half of Americans realize that Judaism is the oldest of the three monotheistic religions. Other examples of wild misunderstanding about religion and the separation of church and state can be found in this fall’s Pew survey on Americans’ religious knowledge.”

• “In 2006 more Americans were able to name two of the ‘seven dwarves’ than two of the Supreme Court justices. And that was before Kagan and Sotomayor showed up.”

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