Starting a new year, California and New York are leading the country in peculiar decisions. California voted to give a laying hen almost twice as much floor space as she has been accustomed to. So egg producers were kinda forced to get rid of half their Leghorns (probably sold ‘em to Col. Sanders) and now there is a severe shortage of eggs.

See, the voters were fooled into thinking that if you give an old hen twice as much space she’ll lay twice as many eggs. So why don’t they just buy eggs from another state? Well, the California legislators took it upon themselves to pass a law that farmers in the other 49 states had to get rid of half their hens, too. That is, if they wanted to sell eggs in California.

Now, whether Californians will ever vote to eliminate half the hogs, I got my doubts. They might give up some eggs, but not bacon.

California also banned plastic bags from grocery stores. The store can give you a choice of empty cardboard boxes, which works fine if you have a cart full of groceries. (Sam’s Club has been doing this for years.) Of course, if all you wanted was a dozen eggs, and now you can only get half a dozen, just put ‘em in your purse.

In New York the governor banned hydraulic fracturing for gas and oil wells. I wonder if he also banned gas and oil (and gasoline) from fracked wells in other states from crossing New York borders.

President Obama started this whole idea a few years ago when he decided to eliminate electricity generated from coal. He knew the price would jump, but I read today that as those power plants shut down in a couple of years we are likely to have blackouts.

Who knew that 2015 is an election year? Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, Joe Biden and a dozen others are already gearing up for a run with a finish line 22 months away.  Ohio is in the thick of this super marathon. Republicans have announced they will hold their convention in Cleveland. And there’s a 50-50 chance Democrats will meet in Columbus.

Back in the 1920s and 30s Will Rogers proclaimed proudly that he had helped keep the Presidential Conventions out of his state of Oklahoma. So I feel like I have let down my fellow Ohioans.  The only previous convention in Ohio, or at least the most recent, was the Republican convention in 1924. Will was there, and I’ll tell you more about it later.