I really think California as a State has taken the lead on many social issues and I believe it will continue to do so many years into the future. What I find disturbing as a culture and a society we Californian’s and American’s drop the ball when comes to caring for our own. Now this commentary will focus on water pumping permits, but I feel there is a larger big picture; and that would be natural resource extraction fees that are not being paid or very little is being paid to California and Californians. So as not to just beat up on the poor subsidized corporate farmers, let’s look at the so called “Water Banks” either are privately held or controlled by private for profit Delaware Corporations (to avoid paying California’s higher corporate taxes). Now these corporate controlled or dominated agencies and districts that store the public’s water underground for the corporate dominated water districts exchange and sell the public’s water as if it was their asset, it is not, but is bought and sold paying little or no tax revenues. I think this would be a good starting place to require pumping permits and extraction fees.

Now once again this opinion or commentary is not just to pick on the beleaguered corporate farmer; family Inc. or otherwise. Let’s really start taking a hard look at natural resource extracting companies to see if they are paying their fair share in taxes to Californians in proportion the corporation’s return on investment; and maybe we could extract more social responsibility from them for the people in the State of California whose resources they are exploiting, i.e. (water, gold, oil, lumber, war industries, etc).