Moss Landing's Vistra facility is the largest battery storage facility in California, which had a horrific fire last month that burned for days; Morro Bay has a planned battery storage facility, but which will use a newer technology that is less prone to failure and more powerful; battery storage in California is growing, and saved the grid during a recent heat spike, supplying more power to the grid than nuclear enery; battery technology has evolved; using Morro Bay as an example, the Energy Commission reviews and approves battery storage facilities, which have an option to go through local channels...if it's in the coastal zone, it has to go through the Coastal Commission (who take their role seriously); NIMBY? Cannot allow wealthy communities on the coast to push to lower socioeconomic communities; need to assure public that it's safe and transparent; Laird is vetting a bill on Lithium Battery Standards that would cover EVs, batteries in cars, home battery walls; bill introduction deadline is Feb. 21st - when a bill is submitted, starts a 30 day clock when the bill is "printed" before it can be amended; a bill that might end up being "Gut-and-Amend" is referred to as a Moveable Spot Bill; Special Session...LA Fires....Emergency Declaration...Homeowner's Insurance.

Interviewed by "Dangerous Dan" Orange and "Dylan-the-Mentee" Stevez

New legislative session started last Monday...it's usually low key, but the fires in LA got in the middle of it, resulting in some political showboating vs. governing; climate change is the real culprit, not a lack of water (which is disinformation); learnings from our CZU fire applied to the rest of the state, and the LA fires - clean up may involve toxic materials; Santa Cruz measures for future fires; defensible space plus fire resistant building materials; homeowner's insurance and insurance companies dropping people as soon as they can after a fire - which happened in Santa Cruz County, with no choice by California FARE, which is half the coverage at twice the price; insurers cannot write climate change into policies...how to protect customers when there's no way that rates won't go up; California's broken homeowner's insurance.

Been in Ashville, North Carolina, 30 years....North Carolina gets hurricanes, but they always affect the coast - Ashville is a 6 hour drive from the coast! Hurrican Helene hit last September 27 / 28, and Chuck flew home from Scotland the day before it hit; the local online newspaper warned of "Catastrophic winds & flooding!"; the 3-4 days before the hurricane Ashville got 15" of rain, which saturated the soil...Chuck lives on a mountain, having bought a house back in the day before the real estate boom; homeowner's insurance does not cover floods or landslides, for that you need flood insurance, which was prohibitively expensive, and why would you need it if you lived on the side of a mountain?!?! Chuck has 2 landslides on his property which will be very expensive to clean up; FEMA covers the roof over your head, but not if you can't get to your roof, or if you have landslides; Chuck has posted a new song on YouTube about the hurricane and the aftermath: "Sound of the Wind and the Rain" - posted 4 days ago!!; very little income from streaming, some income from when songs are picked up in film or TV, but mostly live shows.

Harry & the Hitmen is a 6-piece band that's been playing together for almost 20 years, starting in Santa Cruz near KZSC on Gulf Club Drive at the edge of the Pogonip - Button joined a few years ago; New Year's Eve co-bill with Wolf Jett at Felton Music Hall...at their New Year's Eve shows, after the countdown and the celebration, Harry & the Hitmen debut a new set, which could be an iconic album in its entirety; 5 of the 6 sing, with a shout out to Nicholas, Scott and Ryan for the arrangements; discussion of covers of R+B and Soul (Stax records, Motown) and originals.

Today is Maureen McCartney's last day in Gail's office before retiring! Maureen is District Manager; Assemblymember Pellerin's district includes Santa Cruz to the Yacht Harbor / Nisene Marks, the northern half of Santa Cruz County, and quite a bit of Santa Clara County from Santa Clara to Almaden and Morgan Hill; although Maureen is retiring from her state job, she's not going far, as she'll have a "side hustle" on Kim deSerpa's staff (newly elected County Supervisor); Maureen started as an intern "working for pennies", then became a staff member for a congressman in Washington DC, later moving to Santa Cruz and becoming a staff member for a Palo Alto state senator; Special Session, where California legislature "Hopes for the best but prepares for the worst"; deep dive into staff, and how they maintain institutional knowledge.

Thom came to Santa Cruz in the 1970s to attend U.C. Santa Cruz, where he majored in (but did not graduate in) Aesthetic Studies (he was one of the last majors); John moved to Santa Cruz in the 1980s, and he now teaches at Cabrillo College (our local community college), digital design, web design; there are 3 iterations of the Comic News: the Santa Cruz Comic News, delivered locally with partial ad support, the Comic News, mailed to subscribers and subscription supported, and TheComicNews.com, subscription supported; Thom was interested in editorial cartoons and tried to sell his own one at a time; he learned about synidcates which, to an editorial cartoonist, are like a record label to a musician; after being inspired by a book of editorial cartoons at Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park, on April Fool's Day 1984 he put out his first bi-weekly paper including stringing together editorial cartoons; helped introduce Nina Paley, who John says was first published in Santa Cruz in the Monthly Planet, a monthly newspaper of the Nuclear Freeze Movement (but Nina might not have been paid); changes in circulation and office space and the internet; Comic News makes money, but not much - both Thom and John have other means of support; the Santa Cruz Comic News was the first, with 7 direct spin offs and dozens of other close followers, including the nationally distributed Funny Times, whose founders came to Santa Cruz in 1985 to check out our Comic News before going back to Cleveland and starting their monthly humor periodical; print is not a growing medium - the future is digital (but AI image generation threatens human artist and cartoonists).