California
Negative Example of State Government


If you want to learn how to govern a state, look no further than California.  Then do everything they don't.

They say California is really a beautiful place.  I wouldn't know.  I've never been there and have no desire to visit.  But apparently the state richly deserves the derisive nickname of "the land of fruits and nuts."  So many terrible ideas have had their origins in California, and these ill-advised anti-capitalist ideas have a tendency to spread to the other 49 states.

If you're going to successfully manage a state, you'd be better off using Texas as an example.  The state of Texas must be doing something right, because that's where people are going as they leave California.

Years ago, I started a page about The California Energy Crunch of 2000, which was an energy crisis resulting entirely from rabid environmentalism, poor planning, price controls, and various other effects of leftist politics.  Californians oppose the development of every practical source of energy, but then, when there's not enough electricity to go around, they whimper when the lights go out.

The subsection about "Sanctuary Cities" has moved to a page of its own, located here.


Subtopics on this page:

Decades of leftist politics, resulting in a steady stream of bad ideas

Wildfires in Australia share the same set of contributing factors as the fires in California

Wildfires and intentional power outages

Homeless people supported by California taxpayers

High speed rail

Gun control

Mass exodus:  Individuals and companies are leaving California

California compared to Texas

The nanny state knows best

Wasted money

Taxes

Radical environmentalism and restrictive environmental laws





Decades of leftist politics
.... resulting in a steady stream of bad ideas.


Overview:
The Sovietization of American Life.  Examine California and ask a series of simple questions.  Why does the state that formerly served as a model to the nation regarding transportation now suffer inferior freeways while its multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project remains an utter boondoggle and failure?  Why was its safe and critically needed last-remaining nuclear power plant scheduled for shutdown (and only recently reversed) as the state faced summer brownouts?  Why did its forests go up in smoke predictably each summer, as its timber industry and the century-old science of forest management all but disappeared from the state?  Why do the state's criminals so often evade indictment, and if convicted are often not incarcerated — or are quickly paroled?  Why are its schools' test scores dismal, its gasoline the nation's highest-priced, and the streets of its major cities fetid and dangerous — in a fashion not true 50 years ago or elsewhere today?  In a word, the one-party state is Sovietized.  Public policy is no longer empirical but subservient to green, diversity, equity, and inclusion dogmas — and detached from the reality of daily middle-class existence.

San Diego county officials spend another $2 million so migrants can afford to travel during busy holiday season.  According to a new article from Emily Alvarenga at The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego county officials just approved doling out another $2 million to local entities, to assist illegal invaders with the high cost of travel that's typical during the holidays:  ["]Anticipating higher numbers of newly-arrived migrants than usual through the holidays, county supervisors agreed Tuesday to give $2 million in state migrant-support grants to help local aid groups fund higher travel costs.["]  How else can these people get where they need to go without taking taxpayer funds to subsidize their financial whims and desires?  Have you ever received a taxpayer-funded handout to offset the cost of your hotel room?  Has the government ever bought your plane ticket so you could get where you wanted to go?  Yeah, me neither.

Peter McCullough: Timing of CA Bird Flu State of Emergency Appears Deliberately Calculated.  [Video clip only.]

Newsom Declares State of Emergency Over Bird Flu; Is This What He'll Use to 'Trump-Proof' California?  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has loudly announced his intention to "Trump proof" the state ahead of Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2025.  Some of the things he wants to do will be extremely unpopular with the state's residents, and legislators who watched their districts vote for Trump (or saw big leaps in that direction) will be wary of publicly signing on to his radical agenda.  He's in a bit of a conundrum.  He's probably been longing for the unchecked power he had from March 2020 through February 28, 2023, when Californians lived under a State of Emergency for the COVID pandemic.

Please No Kamala as Governor of California.  I started to laugh, while at the same time feeling slightly sad, when I read Kamala Harris was considering running for governor of California.  That's the last thing that benighted state needs, not just because she got her start on the seamier side of the state's politics (most of it is seamy anyway), but because she won't go near the fiscal or social policies necessary to revive what Woody Guthrie long ago called a tarnished Garden of Eden. [...] Could Guthrie have anticipated the state would have half the nation's homeless, one-third the welfare recipients, 49th in home ownership, the highest rate of cost-adjusted poverty, an atrocious public school system with the state last in literacy, an aging infrastructure, and a projected budget deficit of $68 billion, to cite just a few without even mentioning crime?  Well, maybe.  The decline, in many ways the near death, of California is an American tragedy.

The Editor says...
[#1] Let the people of California elect whomever they please, and live with the consequences.  [#2] If you live in California, please stay there, unless you are willing to forsake and abandon the socialist Democrat party and everything it stands for.  [#3] Harris would be the easiest possible candidate to defeat:  She was only scrutinized for the first time in 2024, and all sorts of flaws and disqualifiers were uncovered, as she was handed the nomination without a vote and ran for President.

Here's Another Way California Just Found to Make Driving Difficult.  On January 1, life in San Francisco will get that much worse as the city prepares to lose as many as 14,000 parking spaces.  When I moved to the city in 1992, the parking situation was so bad that I looked into monthly parking at a garage "just" seven blocks from my apartment but blanched at the $110 fee for a reserved space.  I just checked, and that same garage now runs $415 — or $565 if you need it reserved.  San Francisco losing 14,000 parking spots is like pulling six of your teeth for no good reason.  Sure, you can do it, and you'd still be able to eat — but WHY?  The "why" is a new law imposed by the assembly in Sacramento, making it illegal to park within 20 feet of a crosswalk.  Statewide, California is expected to lose about 100,000 parking spaces, and it's an easy bet that the vast majority of those will be in the crowded cities where parking is already at a premium.

The Editor says...
The goal (of the Left, and that means it starts in California) is to make it impractical or impossible to own a private vehicle and travel wherever you choose.  It's all about control.

California threatens police; what else is new?  As Trump's incoming Border Czar Tom Homan has made clear, federal law, specifically 8 USC 1324, makes interference with federal officers or harboring illegal aliens felony offenses the Trump Administration will prosecute.  As Homan has also made clear, he intends to first focus on criminals and gang members.  That puts people like Newsom, Denver's Mayor and other D/s/c mayors and governors swearing not only to resist deportation efforts, but swearing to use public money to defend illegals, in the position of not only violating federal law, but doing it to keep vicious criminals in their cities and states.  Circa 2024, that might be a political problem.  Wasting public money on D/s/c priorities people don't want and coddling criminals are standard operating procedure for such people, but this time it appears there will be consequences for dim-witted virtue signaling.  When a few of them are dragged from their offices to jail, they might begin to see virtue in cooperation and actual public safety.

In San Diego, county sheriff vows to defy supervisors' resolution making the city a 'super sanctuary'.  [Scroll down]  And it was a strange move, too, given that San Diego is a border city and being bankrupted by the mass influx of illegals, coming by land and even by sea in greater numbers than any other part of the country.  Some 324,000 illegal border crossers have flowed into San Diego in fiscal 2024 alone.  In the past election, every other border city reacted strongly against open borders policies through their voting choice, but San Diego, which until a few days ago was still counting votes in a highly suspect process, somehow did not.  The three leftists on the Board of Supervisors, a majority of four, voted to make it even easier to come here and commit criminal acts, ending the risk of deportation for criminals.  Ostensibly, it was part of Gov. Gavin Newsom's plan to "Trump-proof" California.  But California already has bad laws that protect illegals within the sanctuary state.  This resolution went several steps further to protect criminals who've been caught commiting murder, child rape and cartel hits from deportation — a decision that made absolutely no sense, unless of course, one has some kind of stake in the illegal immigration rackets.  The NGO-industrial complex reportedly does, having reportedly advocated for the resolution.

I closed my store in San Francisco.  Bye bye city by the bay, as they call it.  Another organization has joined the ranks of rational people who can no longer support the irrational situation in the Bay Area.  What a shock.  Companies can no longer do business when theft is rampant and the thieves never get arrested.  In some cases, the judge puts them back out on the street in the name of social justice.  Of course, nothing will change as long as people keep voting for the ones who created this mess in the first place.  My friends tell me that voters are waking up and change is coming.  Well, I hope so, because you can't have a city where stores close because theft is rampant or an employee is attacked.

California's Next Crime Wave — Fuel Theft.  California already registers the most expensive fuel costs and highest taxes in America.  According to AAA, as of November 24, the average price per gallon in California was $4.45 while the national average was just $3.05.  According to a report by Fox News, USC Professor Michael Miche estimates that the 2025 increase will cost California's 31 million drivers up to $1000 dollars per year more to compensate for the increase.  A University of Pennsylvania study estimates that the CARB tax burden will increase to .85 cents per gallon by 2030.  There's a truism in law enforcement that when government makes complying with the law too difficult or too expensive non-compliance and even crime is inevitable.

California is preparing to resist the deportation of illegal aliens in any way it can.
San Diego Used to Be Sane.  When I was young, California was weird, but not insane.  You could see the insanity coming, but it seemed a long way away and entirely preventable.  And while San Francisco was weirdo heaven, San Diego seemed to be a middle-class bastion of sanity and a delightful community. [...] The lesson of San Diego is stark:  you cannot let progressives even get a foot in the door.  A small shift in power has led to a massive swing in policies because progressives' policies are based on a totalitarian ideology.  There is no compromise, no appeal to common sense, no sense of responding to the concerns of ordinary people.  It boils down to exercising power to make as much radical change as possible.

Newsom appoints Schiff to Senate to complete Butler term.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appointed Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to the Senate to complete the rest of appointee Sen. Laphonza Butler's (D) term.  The appointment means Schiff, who has served in the House since 2001 and won election to the Senate last month, will begin work in the upper chamber several weeks before the start of the next Congress in early January.  Butler replaced the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) in October 2023 and said she would not run for a full term, opening the race up to Schiff and others.  Schiff has emerged as one of President-elect Trump's top critics in the House.  He led Trump's first impeachment and has openly said his rhetoric reflects "dictator talk."  Butler announced her resignation effective Sunday, and Schiff was appointed by the governor.

How California Stole Trump's Popular Vote Majority.  December is here, the election has been over for a month, Trump has picked out his cabinet and California is still counting the votes.  And will go on counting them until the Dems win.  Considering Trump's landslide victory, California had a difficult task ahead of it, but it has already managed to flip the seats held by Rep. Mike Garcia, Rep. Michelle Steel and just stole the seat held by Rep. John Duarte.  In Duarte's 13th congressional district, California Dems have taken a month to count a little over 210,000 votes.  That's an impressive achievement considering that the proverbial Florida Man seems able to count the votes on Election night.  Even third world countries seem to do it.  It took Democrats 'counting' a full 3 weeks to get the Democrat challenger to finally take a lead.  Four weeks later, they are declaring victory after finally having 'found' enough ballots.  Garcia, Steel and Duarte were all leading on Election night until late-arriving mail drop ballots showed up.  California Democrats flipping three seats matches the dubious accomplishment of their New York counterparts who also flipped three seats.

California Fast Food Restaurants Shed Thousands of Jobs after $20 Minimum Wage Hike.  California's fast food industry shed more than 6,000 jobs after Democratic lawmakers passed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage for most fast food and counter service restaurants in the state, according to a new analysis of labor data.  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that between September 2023, when California governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, and June 2024, Golden State fast food employment dropped from 570,909 jobs to 564,743.  That's a loss of 6,166 jobs, or 1.1 percent, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Employment Policies Institute.  During that same period a year earlier, California fast food restaurants added 17,528 jobs, a 3.1 percent increase over those ten months in 2022 and 2023, the data show.

Gov. Gavin Newsom Wants $25 Million from CA Taxpayers to Engage in Lawfare against Trump.  As the 2024 presidential race fades from memory, potential candidates for 2028 plot their course.  California Governor Gavin Newsom is high on the list of potential candidates now, but he is term-limited out of office in 2026.  Therefore, he is acting to ensure his relevance by being a General in the War Against Trump.  And he wants $25 million dollars from the state's coffers to fund it.  California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday announced he is seeking up to $25 million in additional funding for legal fights with the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.  The announcement came on the first day of a special session of the California legislature dedicated to preparing the liberal state for the second term of conservative Trump.  If approved by the legislature, the California Department of Justice and state agencies would get the extra funding for court battles in areas such as reproductive rights, environmental protection and immigration.

The Corruption of Democracy, California Style.  Wishful thinking aside, California did not participate in the realignment that, on November 5, 2024, may have transformed American politics forever.  The positive spin on California's dismal failure to liberate itself from failing Democrat policies rests on what are, in the cold light of day, modest achievements. [...] To begin with, the fact that voters had to overrule a corrupt legislature and judiciary to compel law enforcement to once again enforce the law is no reason to celebrate.  It's just one first step, in just one area, against a party that wields layers upon layers of stupefying power in every area of policy.  The State Supreme Court is still packed with Democrat appointees.  The state bureaucracy, consisting of a bewildering and almost innumerable collection of regulatory agencies and commissions, is under the absolute control of public sector unions.  Every higher state office is occupied by Democrats, including activist Attorney General Rob Bonta, a machine politician who aims to succeed Newsom as California's next governor.

Gavin Newsom Convenes California Legislature to Pass $25 Million for Anti-Trump Lawsuits.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) convened the state legislature for a special session on Monday designed to "Trump-proof" the state, including by passing $25 million for use in lawsuits against the incoming administration.  As Breitbart News noted after the election in November, Newsom announced the special session — not to deal with pressing problems facing the state, but rather for the political purpose of leading the so-called "resistance" (i.e. opposition) to President-elect Donald Trump.

Media Was Fine With Milk and Egg Prices, Panics Over Guacamole Prices.  After years of telling Americans not to worry about high milk, bread and egg prices, the media is panicking over a threat to their staple: guacamole.  [Tweet] [...] Now maybe I'm a little biased because despite living for nearly a decade in Southern California, I'm not sure why anyone would even eat the stuff, but when your problem is being able to afford guacamole, instead of milk, bread and eggs, you have a coastal elite problem.  California used to produce a whole lot of avocadoes, but since Democrats took over and decided to wipe out the water supply for farmers and destroy dams to create artificial droughts, the avocados either come from Florida or Mexican cartels.

Where do they think gasoline comes from?
Oil field owner sues California over law that would end its Los Angeles-area operations.  The owner of an oil field in Los Angeles County is suing the state of California over a law that will require it to stop production and plug its wells or face costly fines.  Inglewood Oil Field owner Sentinel Peak argues in the lawsuit, filed this week, that the law, which was signed in September by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is unconstitutional, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.  It is was one of several laws aiming to reduce pollution by giving local governments more authority to restrict oil and gas operations by shutting down so-called idle wells, which are not in use but have not been properly sealed and closed, and fining companies for operating low-producing oil wells in the Inglewood field.  The 1,000-acre area southwest of downtown Los Angeles has approximately 820 unplugged wells, including 420 that are actively pumping.

California's AG Asks Residents to Snitch on Stores That Don't Comply With Gender-Neutral Toy Law.  California has many problems facing its residents, including earthquakes, wildfires, and housing crises.  People are dealing with heightened crime rates in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Homelessness has become a near-epidemic in the Golden State.  So, Californians should be comforted to know that Attorney General Rob Bonta is focused on making sure stores that sell children's products are including gender-neutral sections for their customers.  Bonta's office issued a press release on Tuesday aimed at informing residents on how to avoid shopping scams and other problems they might face as they swarm retail stores for the Christmas season.  However, in one section, the press release urges residents to snitch on retailers that fail to comply with a new state law requiring them to provide gender-neutral sections for toys and childcare products in accordance with Assembly Bill 1084.

California AG Asks Shoppers to Report Stores That Don't Have 'Gender Neutral' Kids Sections.  California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a list of suggestions Nov. 26 for shoppers to avoid scams during the holiday season and requested consumers file reports about department stores that lack gender-neutral children's sections.  State law, established by the passage of Assembly Bill 1084 in 2021, which took effect at the beginning of 2024, requires department stores with at least 500 employees across California locations to offer children's sections that do not separate items based on gender.  "By requiring large retailers to maintain a gender-neutral section, AB 1084 makes it more difficult for these retailers to engage in gender-based pricing discrimination and reduces the imposition of gender stereotypes on children," the attorney general's office wrote in a statement.

California coastal enclave near sanctuary city tries to 'Newsom-proof' itself.  The mayor of an affluent California coastal community criticized Democratic state lawmakers and expressed frustration over sanctuary state policies he alleges have allowed illegal immigration to flow uninterrupted after 21 migrants were recently taken into custody off the shores near his city.  Eighteen of the migrants who were detained a mile off the waters of Newport Beach earlier this month by the U.S. Coast Guard were from Mexico, while two were from Uzbekistan and one was from Russia.  They were handed over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.  Newport Beach Mayor Will O'Neill blamed California's Democratic-controlled legislature for passing sanctuary state laws aimed at shielding illegal immigrants from deportation while overlooking the potential, unintended financial and public safety implications.

California Allegedly Threatens Police Officers Over Deportation Compliance.  Bill Wells, the mayor of El Cajon, California, claimed in a Monday post on X that the State of California "is threatening to take pensions and charge police officers with felonies if they comply with federal deportation laws.  While the Trump administration is working to enforce immigration laws, California seems intent on blocking these efforts."  Wells makes it clear that El Cajon, a city of approximately 100,000 people located 17 miles east of San Diego, is not a sanctuary city and that his police officers "are being put in an impossible position." [...] If these disturbing claims are true, then the battle lines are already drawn for the first major showdown between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and sanctuary state/city leaders.  Defiance of this magnitude from the government of the largest sanctuary state in the country would have sweeping implications for President-elect Donald Trump's planned mass deportation agenda.

California businesses shocked by payroll tax hikes from $55B unemployment fraud.  Many California business owners are shocked by payroll tax increases incurred by the state's $55 billion COVID-19 pandemic-era unemployment and payroll benefits fraud — which is more than NASA's annual budget — incurred from automatically approving applications.  States that do not pay off unemployment benefit loans from the federal government, as California and a handful of other states have done since the pandemic, automatically are subject to rapidly increasing federal payroll tax increases until the debt is paid off.  Chef Andrew Gruel, who owns and runs Calico Fish House in Huntington Beach, took to X to explain his recent experience paying his workers in a post that has since garnered over 16 million views.  "We just ran payroll.  The payroll taxes were 2K higher than calculated.  We called the payroll company," said Gruel.  "They explained (in summary) that California has a budget shortfall, and the federal government wants money back that it lent California for UI that it 'lost.'  They are making up for it by having business owners pay it."

Newsom Buys $9.1 Million Bay Area Mansion in Ritzy Enclave with Shady LLC Formed Two Days Before Purchase.  After flooding his state with millions of illegals, Newsom bought a $9.1 [million] Bay Area mansion in a ritzy enclave so his children can attend an elitist school in Marin County.  The home, which was owned by Daniel Pritzker, cousin of Illinois Democrat governor JB Pritzker, was originally listed for $10 million, but Newsom got a sweetheart deal.  Newsom bought the mansion with MHBD Farms, LLC, an entity that was formed just two days before the purchase.  What's the source of the funds?

RV Sales To Be Banned Across Six States As California Climate Rules Take Effect.  Diesel motorhome sales are set to be halted in several states at the start of next year due to a new climate rule from California being enacted, according to RVtravel.  Motorhome sales are being prevented in California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey if the vehicles do not meet certain emission requirements based on regulations from the California Air Resources Board (CARB), according to RVtravel.  CARB amended its Advanced Clean Truck regulations on Oct. 24, which require all vehicles over 8,500 pounds to produce zero emissions.  Motorhome owners in the six states will not be allowed to register a recreational vehicle (RV) that is not in compliance with the climate regulation, according to RVtravel.

The Editor says...
The apparent purpose of this law is to inconvenience older white conservatives, because they are the only people driving around in diesel-engine RVs.

Is California turning red?  Tuesday's elections in California will have been difficult for Democrats to stomach.  A staggering 40% of Californians voted for Donald Trump, with Republicans leading in several of the most competitive house districts.  Even in San Francisco, the uber-progressive mayor London Breed has been voted out.  No wonder, then, that Governor Gavin Newsom has already called for a special session in the legislature to "Trump-proof" certain policies such as abortion and immigration.  On the same day, California voters also endorsed a significant shift toward stricter law-enforcement measures, with 71% approving Proposition 36, a statewide ballot initiative aimed at imposing harsher penalties for repeat theft and crimes involving fentanyl.  In doing so, they effectively rolled back some of the state's more controversial "soft-on-crime" policies.

Blue City Blues.  In the wake of the George Floyd riots, some cities that appear on the "America's most dangerous" list have experimented with defunding their police departments to various degrees.  An interesting approach to reducing the crime rate is to stop reporting crimes to the FBI altogether, or to change felonies to misdemeanors.  California has famously declared that any retail theft under $950 is classed as a misdemeanor.  This has resulted in countless videos of people calmly walking out of stores with armfuls of merchandise.  As a result, that state is seeing vast numbers of retail store closures.  Some residential areas have become "food deserts" such that the locals must travel ever farther distances to purchase groceries.  The rising tide of commercial office closures in downtown San Francisco, combined with increasing rates of homelessness, open drug use, and crime, is resulting in noticeable neglect in that area.

What is wrong with California?  Throughout the fabricated Russia hoax, [Adam] Schiff was part and parcel of that massive lie perpetrated on the American people re:  Trump's alleged conspiracy with Russia.  It was all made-up by Hillary Clinton and her cabal of thugs.  Every day throughout the criminally illegal persecution of Trump, Schiff appeared nightly on the cable news propaganda sites to lie to the public.  He said, night after night, that he had "seen the evidence" that Trump had colluded with Russia.  Not only was Schiff not legally allowed to reveal what he had ostensibly learned in the SCIF during all those secret meetings impervious to listening by spies, he committed so many breaches of the law, of the Constitution and of common decency, that his district promoted him to the Senate.  That is a travesty.  He was eventually censured by the House for his part in the hoax.  This man should be in prison for both perjury and treason.

Los Angeles Voters Overwhelmingly Oust Far-Left DA George Gascón.  Los Angelenos tired of increased crime and rampant homelessness overwhelmingly voted out soft-on-crime, far-left district attorney George Gascón on Tuesday in favor of Nathan Hochman, a prosecutor with a more moderate approach.  Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and a Republican-turned-independent, won the race with 61.5 percent of the vote to Gascón's 38.5 percent, according to Los Angeles County Registrar vote totals as of Wednesday morning.  The Associated Press called the race for Hochman early Wednesday.  Gascón's defeat is the latest in a string of losses for Golden State Democrats who were swept into office promising a progressive vision on crime and punishment.  In 2022, voters in San Francisco recalled their far-left prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, and then overwhelmingly passed a pair of tough-on-crime ballot measures earlier this year.  Preliminary results show that fed-up voters in Oakland and Alameda County also recalled mayor Sheng Thao and far-left district attorney Pamela Price on Tuesday over their soft-on-crime approach to the disorder in that community.

Kamala Harris's Democratic Betrayal.  There was a moment that occurred a few days before Election Day that few Americans heard about, but I doubt it would surprise them.  Kamala Harris was asked by a reporter how she would be voting on Proposition 36 in her home state of California.  Proposition 36 involved increasing certain penalties for drug and theft crimes.  Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that retail theft and open-air drug use have become high-profile issues in the Golden State.  Criminal-justice hawks and doves bitterly debated the issue, seeing it as a referendum on whether California would adopt tough-on-crime policies or continue to pursue a more reform-minded approach.  It was the perfect issue for Harris, who started her career in politics as San Francisco district attorney before rising to state attorney general.  If there's anything Harris knows, it's the debate over tradeoffs between punishment and rehabilitation, public safety and human rights.  And yet, rather than launching into a robust defense of the proposition, which would have helped her push back on Trumpian accusations that she is soft on crime, or attacking it, which would've been standing on principle against a measure some Californians regarded as draconian and excessive, Harris did the most Harris thing possible:  She dodged the question in an inartful way.

California's Prop 36 Passes, a Resounding Condemnation of the Soft-on-Crime Policies Destroying the State.  California has resoundingly voted "Yes" on Prop. 36, which reforms Prop. 47, a decades-old law that was supposed to usher in criminal justice reform but instead encouraged the escalation of crime.  Vice President and Democrat nominee Kamala Harris may have won the presidential race in the state, but by voting for Prop. 36, the citizens have rejected the policies she codified in place with her endorsement of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and her assistance in seeing Prop 47 passed when she served as California's Attorney General.

From DMV to IRS.  California Sen. Alex Padilla, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newson as the replacement for Kamala Harris, wants the Treasury Department to provide voter registration services for "people with limited English."  The senator nobody voted for is a key figure in enabling those not eligible to cast ballots.  This is hardly a new development.  As a State Department investigation discovered, false-documented illegals have voted in local, state, and federal elections for decades.  In 1996, illegals cast 784 votes against Republican Robert Dornan in a congressional race that Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 984 votes.  California Assembly Bill 60 (2013) authorized driver's licenses for those "who are unable to provide proof of legal presence in the United States."  Through the "motor voter" program, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) registers the illegals to vote, but Democrats won't say how many actually voted.  In 2015, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told the Los Angeles Times he expected "millions of new voters on the rolls" but wouldn't say how many were illegally present in the United States.

Harris Won't Say Where She Stands on California Ballot Measure to Reverse Soft-on-Crime Policies.  Vice President Kamala Harris will not reveal her position on a California ballot measure that would reverse soft-on-crime policies the state enacted a decade ago.  Harris, a former senator from California who began her career as a prosecutor, declined to answer when asked on Sunday whether she voted for Proposition 36, a ballot measure to strengthen punishments for certain drug and theft offenses.  "I'm not going to talk about the vote on that because honestly it's the Sunday before the election and I don't intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it," Harris said.

CA Gov. Newsom Throws Hollywood a Lifeline in Form of a Massive Tax Credit.  Times are getting desperate in California, especially in Hollywood. [...] Bidenflation and Hollywood obliviousness have hit hard, and production costs have skyrocketed, making it increasingly difficult for films to turn a profit. [...] Given the industry's importance to California, both in terms of revenues and prestige, Gov. Gavin Newsom has unveiled a proposal to more than double the annual amount of money allocated to California's film and TV tax credit program. [...] I wish the Democrats in the state would connect the adverse impact of excessive taxes on other industries, as well ash show other business enterprises the adoration and respect the film industry gets.

California's Unelected Tyrants.  Democrats claim that the MAGA movement constitutes a "threat to democracy."  Once you cut through their incessant rhetoric on race and gender, the threat the Democrats most fear is that an elected chief executive may actually try to control the executive branch.  And when candidate Trump aligns himself with capable businessmen, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, government bureaucrats aren't wrong to be afraid for their jobs along with the repressive policies they've imposed.  Voters who still haven't made up their minds which threat to take seriously — "protecting democracy" vs. "draining the swamp" — should ponder life in California, where Democrats, run by bureaucrats and billionaires, wield absolute power.  Decriminalized crime.  Record homelessness.  Punitive, impossible cost of living.  The highest taxes.  Failing schools.  Fleeing businesses.  And a state bureaucracy that is openly hostile towards unsubsidized home builders, oil and gas producers, farmers, loggers, ranchers, manufacturers, and any other productive, job-creating citizens.

A journey through Los Angeles offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction.  As you drive through the streets of the southside, and along Central Avenue, the historic main street of black LA, now mostly Hispanic, the ambience is increasingly reminiscent of Mexico City or Mumbai:  broken pavements; battered buildings; outdoor swap meets; food stalls serving customers much as one would see in the developing world.  Democrats, particularly in deep blue California and even bluer cities like Los Angeles, can clearly win elections.  But what they can't do is govern effectively.  Virtually every Democratic city in the land is now in decline.  Crime, especially of the violent variety, is rising.  That's shadowed by continued out-migration to less dense, more conservative areas, a trend that's seeing the country's biggest cities lose out economically.

SpaceX sues California agency, alleging political bias against Musk and regulatory overreach.  SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against a California agency this week after the body rejected a proposal to increase the company's launches from the state's coastline to 50 per year.  The California Coastal Commission (CCC) made its decision at an October 10 meeting, despite the U.S. Air Force (USAF) endorsing the plan on the grounds that more launches of Starlink and Starshield, the defense-focused unit, are critical to national security.  In the lawsuit, SpaceX says that the commission engaged in "naked political discrimination" when some commissioners cited the political activity of CEO Elon Musk, while also attempting to unlawfully regulate federal agency activities.  The CCC declined to comment for this story.

'Progressive' California [is] At War With Progress.  Much has been made, as it should have been, about the stark differences with Elon Musk's SpaceX and the once-great NASA's pathetic woke-DEI-politically correct existence.  Musk wins on merit, but in California, that's not what counts.  So Musk has been vilified because he dared to leave the progressive plantation.  SpaceX has been launching rockets from the Vandenberg Air Force base in Santa Barbara County for more than a decade.  It wants to increase the number of annual launches from six to 36, and maybe even more.  The Air Force has no problem with the plans.  The California Coastal Commission does.  It voted 6-4 last week to block the increase.  As one would expect, the opposition was based on Musk's political transformation.  He also has the temerity to be successful in a society that has increasingly come to devalue success and deem failure and the amenability to be offended to be virtues.  That will get him nowhere in California.

Harvard Kennedy School determines there's no negative impacts to California workers after minimum wage hike — study does not measure small businesses.  In a report from the Harvard Kennedy School on California's minimum wage increase, authors Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett and Kevin Bruey argue that there have been no adverse effects on hours, scheduling, or benefits from legislation requiring $20 an hour wage for fast-food worker, but those workers are all from large fast-food chains.  The study only looked at large fast-food companies and did not consider small businesses who would have much more difficulty in meeting the demands of the minimum wage law.  The report does not exhaustively list the fast-food outlets used as the basis of the report, only noting that "front line workers at some of the nation's largest firms — from McDonald's to Chipotle — contend with unstable schedules, limited benefits, and chronically low wages."  The authors laud California as being "at the vanguard of progressive and innovative protections for fast food workers" and insists the state raising the minimum wage by $4 on Apr. 1, 2024 to $20 was one of these progressive and innovative protections" and constituted the largest such wage increase in US history.

State of the Los Angeles DA Race — George Gascón Faces Likely Ouster.  After the news Tuesday, the disastrous George Gascón experiment in Los Angeles is almost certainly coming to an end on November 5.  A shocking poll showing a 30-point lead for challenger Nathan Hochman came out Tuesday morning, and a debate between the candidates Tuesday evening showed an incumbent playing defense.  Rampant burglaries, repeat offending murderers, reconsidering a lighter sentence for the Menendez brothers — none of the topics discussed were good for an elected District Attorney who has presided over a tumultuous period at the largest local prosecutor agency in the country.  Gascón's main defense on the campaign trail is to parrot garbage-in, garbage-out crime numbers that come from the politicized criminal justice realm.  He also attempts to paint Hochman as a Republican claiming to be an Independent.  In today's debate though, Gascón had to acknowledge that Los Angeles has gotten so bad that the whole county is either being victimized by crime or "fearful" it is coming.

Gov Newsom claims Big Oil is to blame for high gas prices, but new report blames climate policies.  California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has continuously denied that the state's policies have anything to do with sky-high gas prices the state's residents pay, arguing that it's "Big Oil" driving up gasoline prices.  But a new study shows policies have added as much as $1.91 per gallon to what Californians pay at the pump.  According to AAA, Americans on Saturday were paying on average $3.177 a gallon for gasoline.  Californians were paying $4.676 per gallon on average.  The gap can vary.  A year ago, the average national price was $3.814 per gallon, while Californians were paying $6.059 per gallon.  According to the Energy Policy Research Foundation analysis by researcher Max Pyziur, California has several policies impacting gasoline prices that are entirely unique to the state.

Federal Judge Humiliates Power-Hungry Gavin Newsom, Slaps Injunction on Anti-Parody Law.  We brought you the story of how a hilarious campaign parody video by the social media account "Mr Reagan" so triggered California Governor Gavin Newsom that he quickly signed a bill banning the production or dissemination of videos made with the use of artificial intelligence during election season.  Many pundits including myself immediately called it what it was:  unconstitutional.  On Wednesday [10/2/2024], a federal court agreed and slapped an injunction on the law.

Seeking to Cut Food Waste, California Bans 'Sell By' Labeling on Products.  Food products sold in California will no longer have a "sell by" stamp after July 1, 2026, after Gov. Gavin Newsom approved the nation's first law governing food labeling.  When it goes into effect, Assembly Bill 660 will require the use of two standard terms for food products that choose to use a date label — "best if used by" to indicate the quality date of food, or "use by" to indicate the safety of food.  Newsom said in a statement he also believed the new law, which he signed on Sept. 28, would better inform consumers and "significantly reduce food waste."

Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Barring Local Authorities from Requiring Voter ID.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Sunday that will bar local authorities from requiring photo ID to vote, which exceeds the state's requirements.  California is one of 14 Democrat-run states that do not require any ID to vote, despite requiring it for many other purposes.  Voters at polling places are checked off against voter rolls without further proof being required; voters who submit mail-in ballots must include their signatures on the envelopes that are checked by a machine against the signatures on file in voter registration records.  [Advertisement]  The City of Huntington Beach, one of the last conservative bastions in the state, which often opposes Democratic policies, planned to require photo ID for voting in 2024, after a ballot initiative passed to that effect in March.  [Advertisement]  The new law, SB 1174, "would prohibit a local government from enacting or enforcing any charter provision, ordinance, or regulation requiring a person to present identification for the purpose of voting or submitting a ballot at any polling place, vote center, or other location where ballots are cast or submitted, as specified."  [Advertisement]

Why Did Newsom Veto His Own Car Bill?  Here's something you don't see every day.  Normally the California legislature and the Governor's office work hand-in-glove like a well-oiled, liberal machine, cranking out one disastrous policy after another in the name of political correctness.  But that wasn't the case in Sacramento this week.  Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a new bill dealing (supposedly) with automobile safety measures, despite having previously supported the legislation.  The bill in question would have mandated all new cars in the state to monitor a driver's speed and issue a "beeping" alarm if the vehicle exceeded the posted speed limit by a significant margin.  Typically, Newsome loves issuing new mandates on auto manufacturers no matter what the impact on drivers and owners might be.  So what's different now?  Could it have something to do with there being an election just around the corner and his poll numbers appear to be showing some cracks in his formerly solid blue wall?

California Dems Want State-Owned Oil Refineries.  California has some of the highest gas prices in the country because it has a ton of taxes and because it demands special gasoline blends that come through one single refinery and are far more expensive.  This is not because oil companies are greedy (or at least a whole lot less greedy than your average politician which isn't saying much because California pols make piranhas seem discreet, that's why hundreds of them have been convicted of corruption in recent years) but because the Dems actively want to make gas too expensive.  And yet they insist on pretending that they're not the reason gas prices are high.  Gov. Gavin Newsom, who does shock at the consequences of his own policies better than any politician in the land, signed a bunch of bills raising energy prices while blasting oil companies for being greedy.

California, a Free State, Apologizes for Slavery as Newsom Signs Reparations Bills.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a series of "reparations" bills on Thursday, including a formal apology for slavery, even though the state entered the Union as a free state in 1850. [...] Newsom signed several other bills passed by the state legislature and pushed by reparations activists.  As Breitbart News noted, however, the bills did not include actual cash payments or a reparations fund, provoking protests.  The movement for reparations gained traction during the chaotic summer of 2020, when protests and riots spread across the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by police in Democrat-run Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Newsom signed legislation establishing a committee to study reparations.  After it made recommendations that included massive cash payments and racially separate schools, legislators toned down the proposals.  Newsom only included $12 million toward the reparations issue in his budget this year, which grappled with a near-$50 billion deficit.

California Passes Law to Ban All Plastic Bags in Grocery Stores.  On Sunday [9/22/2024], California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signed a bill into law that will ban the use of plastic bags at grocery stores all across the state.  [Advertisement]  As reported by Axios, the new law follows up on a previous law passed ten years prior which forced stores to start selling "thicker plastic carryout bags that were considered reusable and met certain recyclability standards," said State Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-Calif.), one of the legislators responsible for the new bill.  [Advertisement]  "The truth is almost none of those bags are reused or recycled," Blakespear claimed, without any evidence.  "And they end up in landfills or polluting the environment."  Radical environmentalists have repeatedly claimed that plastic bags make for one of the most commonly-found items in cleanup efforts at public places.  Anja Brandon, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy, claimed that "volunteers have cleaned up enough plastic bags to span the length of the Golden Gate Bridge nearly 30 times."  She also asserted that plastic bags "are not only one of the most common plastics polluting our beaches, but also one of the top five deadliest forms of plastic pollution to marine life."

The Editor says...
Out of all the millions of plastic grocery bags that are used every year, how many end up in the ocean?  Maybe 10 or 20 per million?  Would the governor of California prefer the return of good old paper grocery bags from 1965?  (I would.)

California Bans Election 'Deepfakes,' Celebrates Biological Ones.  California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday signed a law immediately banning the sharing of election-related "deepfake" videos, images, or audio, enforceable up to 120 days before an election and 60 days after an election.  He also signed two more laws, which take effect in January, requiring disclaimers on AI-generated political ads and requiring social media companies to remove deepfakes, or else courts will force them to do so. [...] The term "deepfake" describes electronic media that has been manipulated, altered, or entirely fabricated, but which is so true to life that it deceives people into thinking it is real. [...] My purpose here is not to litigate the debate between these two arguments, nor explore various compromises that could address the concerns of each.  Instead, I write to demonstrate the contrast between California's aggressive pursuit of one form of technological deepfake (electronic) and their unquestioning embrace of another form of technological deepfake (biological).  For that is what gender transition procedures are:  a biological deepfake.

Arrested by Kamala:  A Black Mother's Story.  [Scroll down]  In no small part, Harris ascended to power on the backs of minority women, women like Cheree Peoples, a victim of Harris's crackdown on truancy.  At the time, Harris was not shy about explaining the rationale for the crackdown.  California schools are funded according to average daily attendance, at the time about $30 per student per day.  Harris, whose supporters included teachers' unions, spoke openly about the need to increase school attendance in order to obtain more money from the state and federal governments.  In addressing this issue, Kamala once declared on camera, "I want money!"  Harris instituted a program in San Francisco beginning in 2007 to threaten parents with arrest and a year in jail if their children missed school.  When she became California State Attorney General in 2010, Harris took her "arrest the parents" program statewide.  She openly laughed on camera about mailing parents letters that threatened jail time, and boasted about sending her most vicious prosecutors from gang and homicide units to intimidate and prosecute parents who had been arrested.

Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Into Law Allowing The Government To Ban 'Deceptive' Social Media Posts.  CA Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bill into law that bans the distribution of "election communications that contain materially deceptive content."  According to his own statement, content from the Kamala Harris Campaign X account could be banned but most likely won't.  CNN recently released a report detailing all of the "deceptive" content coming from Kamala HQ.  "A social media account run by Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has been repeatedly deceptive."  "[Kamala HQ] has made a habit of misleadingly clipping and inaccurately captioning video clips to attack former President Donald Trump."  In Newsom's own statement, "deceptive content," as CNN described, is now banned.  [Video clip]

The Los Angeles Times blames Republicans for California's woes.  One of the hallmarks of narcissism is that when things go wrong, it's always someone else's fault.  Being a narcissist means never having to say you're sorry.  Nothing more perfectly illustrates this truism than an essay from yesterday's Los Angeles Times blaming Republicans for California's myriad woes.  While the author is correct that, when Republicans had the chance, they didn't make smart decisions, the reality is that it's the Democrats who have led California to the desperate place it's in now.  Steve Lopez's essay doesn't make the mistake of blaming Republicans for all the state's problems.  He concedes that Democrats have long controlled the former Golden State, which is plagued by homelessness, crime, out-of-control housing costs, and poverty.  He contends, however, "that none of that happened overnight, nor did it happen exclusively under Democratic leadership."  Lopez believes that Republican mismanagement during the times that Republicans controlled the government is as much to blame as Democrat mismanagement.  The easy challenge to that argument is that, since 1970, the legislature has had a Democrat majority, which became a vetoproof supermajority in 2018.

Positioning Kamala Harris, the California Candidate.  As California native Kamala Harris continues her word salad presidential campaign, Americans in the other 49 states might wonder how someone who can't speak without a teleprompter rose to this political level.  The key word is "California," a state so insanely blue that its super-Democrat majority legislature wants to give reparations to people who were never slaves paid by people who were never slave owners.  California joined the union in 1850 as a free state!  Currently, Governor Gavin "Hair Gel" Newsom has AB1840 sitting on his desk, a law that would help illegal aliens buy homes.  "If Governor Newsom signs AB 1840, someone who has broken the law to illegally enter our country will be eligible to enter the lottery for a 20% downpayment loan on a home — a loan that legal California residents will pay for," explains East Valley Republican Women Patriots (EVRWP) President Joy Miedecke, "This privilege is on top of free healthcare for illegal aliens that the California Democrats passed last year."

CA Senate Pro Tem Refuses to Convene Special Session Called By Governor.  As he promised, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a proclamation convening a special legislative session on Saturday after the state Assembly and Senate failed to pass a proposal he submitted on August 15 that would require the state's refineries to maintain reserves to allegedly prevent "price gouging" when there are supply shortages.  Of course, even analysts within Newsom's administration agreed that the measure would lead to a further increase in prices instead of bringing Californians any kind of relief at the pump.

Newsom Tells CA Lawmakers He'll Force Special Session If They Don't Pass His Bill to Increase Gas Prices.  Grasping for relevance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is in the midst of a bit of a temper tantrum this week with the legislature — threatening to convene a special session if they don't pass his proposal to further regulate California's oil and gas industry.  Industry analysts say that the proposal, which would force refineries to "maintain a minimum fuel reserve to avoid supply shortages," would lead to increased prices for drivers in California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Interest free, no down payment home loans for illegals?  California Democrat assemblymember Joaquin Arambula recently introduced Assembly Bill 1840, a piece of legislation that would extend a first-time homebuyer loan program to illegal aliens.  Should the bill become law, illegal aliens would be eligible for a new program that would offer them a loan worth 20% of the purchase price of the property[,] with no monthly payments.  And no interest would accrue on the loan.  Ever.  Instead, the loan would be paid back when the borrower either refinances or sells the property.  Can't happen, you opine?  Assembly Bill 1840 was approved by a key senate committee just this week.  Yes, California is now one step closer to giving illegal aliens interest-free home loans with zero down payment.  And preposterously generous repayment terms.

A San Francisco program to produce black male teachers instead threw away taxpayer money.  Democrat programs always sound good but, once in operation, they're consistently disastrous, whether because of inefficiency, graft, or being easy marks for grifters.  San Francisco just added another program to that list, with taxpayers having coughed up over $700,000 to get black men as teachers in local elementary schools — and ending up with almost nothing to show for that money.  Democrats believe that they, not the taxpayers who do the work and create actual wealth, know how to spend money virtuously and wisely.  There is no indication that this is the case.  The more money that Democrats get, the more they waste.

Climate madness is creating a nation of building code scofflaws.  REACH Codes are building ordinances that some local California governments have adopted.  They go far beyond the requirements of California's Energy and Green Building standards codes.  They are meant to reach "climate action" goals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and accelerate "decarbonization" by mandating all-electric new construction, upgrades to solar with remodeling projects, and electrical system upgrades to encourage electric appliance upgrades.  These plans take a huge chunk of out Californian's pocketbooks.  If you look at a California energy bill, you'll see that our electric rates are obscenely high.  And if you've ever suffered through one of California's increasingly frequent power outages, you'd be eternally thankful for elderly gas stoves and heaters that don't require electric switches to trigger them.

State Regulations Force Bankruptcy of California Solar Company.  On the one hand, the state of California has decided that it shall become an all-electric, all-renewable power state by, well, for practical purposes, next Thursday.  On the other hand, the state gives utilities a massive break on how much they pay home solar generators for their excess power, leading to the just announced bankruptcy of California-based solar system installer SunPower.  Welcome to schizophrenic Sacramento.

San Francisco Hotels Collapsing, Record Vacancy.  Hotels in San Francisco are experiencing massive financial losses as tourism to the city has continued to drop in the years after the pandemic and as quality of life issues including homelessness and crime continue to grow in the Golden Gate City.  In June, weekend hotel occupancy rates in the San Francisco-San Mateo were shown as being down by 22% since the same period in 2019, compared to just 4% nationally, data firm CoStar Group shows, reports The Daily Mail.  Many tourists are staying away because of several factors, including the expensive prices in San Francisco.

California: Next Stop, Venezuela.  The California Energy Commission (CEC) has proposed several government regulations of the petroleum industry in order to combat future gasoline price surges.  CEC regulators announced proposed government controls of the petroleum industry, ostensibly to combat future gasoline price surges.  CEC's proposed fiasco is unbelievable since it has a clear vision of the ultimate outcome:  Venezuela.  The CEC announcement comes as Chevron, one of the largest oil companies in the U.S., announced that it will relocate its operations to Houston, Texas, is moving out of San Ramon, California.  Its decision to leave follows years of aggressive environmental policy making from Democrats that hurt the company's business.  The CEC report is laughably called "Transportation Fuels Assessment:  Policy Options for a Reliable Supply of Affordable and Safe Transportation Fuels in California".  It's laughable because the report title includes the word 'Affordable.'

The Remarkable Transformation of Kamala Harris.  When William McKay killed Riverside Deputy Sheriff Isaiah Cordero during a traffic stop, the three-strike convicted felon was not in custody because of Harris's reduced bail rule, despite having been convicted of three previous violent crimes.  Reduced (or no) bail policy along with charge reductions (from felonies to misdemeanors), and no crime at all if theft, viz., shoplifting, less than $950 — these were all elements of Harris's pro-crime posture when she was District Attorney of San Francisco (2003-2010).  Her policies turned one of the most popular travel destinations into a dangerous, crime-, garbage-, and needle-infested, homeless dominated "unlivable hellhole."  She extended her pro-crime approach, adding defund the police, to all of California when she became that state's Attorney General (2010-2017).  Illegal immigration into the Golden State soared under her watch.  Between the open border and Harris's pro-crime attitude, gang violence in general, and particularly murders in Los Angeles, reached new highs.

Kamala Harris' Oakland Is a Disaster.  [Scroll down]  Oakland has every imaginable advantage of climate and geography.  The weather is immaculate [...] and the city has a major port that is practically a tax gold mine.  Yet, Oakland always seems to be on the verge of full-on implosion.  With the departure of the Oakland A's, a Major League Baseball team, at the end of this season, the city will lose its third and last major sports franchise in a decade.  The loss is symbolic of a city that feels like a collapsing settlement at the edge of the Roman Empire on the eve of the Dark Ages.  It's worth noting that without the last-minute sale of the dilapidated Oakland Coliseum, the city was looking at a budget shortfall of over $100 million.  The sale hardly solves the long-term problem.  Oakland is pondering doling out reparations to black residents, but a reparations panel said it needed $5 million just to draw up a plan.  This is a city that's used to treating taxpayers like a piggy bank for grifting.  Of course, Oakland has been associated with high crime rates for decades, but following the mayhem of 2020 the challenge became acute.  In 2021, the Oakland City Council in effect voted to defund its already beleaguered police department.  Crime exploded.

San Francisco's downtown Saks Fifth Avenue bans window shoppers from coming inside.  San Francisco has suffered another blow as one of the most luxurious department stores downtown is banning window shoppers.  Saks Fifth Avenue in Union Square has decided to change its customer experience by moving to 'appointment-only' this summer, according to KRON4.  Locals will have to pre-book appointments at the store located on 384 Post Street from August 28.

California: Groups Of Thugs Are Raiding Homes And Cars In The Suburbs.  Thieves were caught on camera breaking into at least 8 cars, 5 garages, and several homes.  Thieves targeted a neighborhood in the East Bay,[California] stealing garage openers from cars and breaking into homes.  Surveillance footage shows the group breaking into cars, garages, and homes, driving a white Honda Accord around 7 a.m. on Sunday.  In one instance, the thieves entered a home with a woman and children inside, but the woman chased them out after they tried to steal her car.  [Video clip]

California's New Law Lets Schools Keep Secrets from Parents.  Child predators follow a common playbook: target the victim, gain their trust, fill a need, and, crucially, isolate the child from her parents.  For several years, this has also been standard California state protocol with regard to schoolchildren questioning their gender identities.  On Monday, this scheme became law.  The "SAFETY Act," AB 1955, signed by California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, legally forbids schools from adopting any policy that would force them to disclose "any information related to a pupil's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil's consent."  Schools may not, as a matter of policy, inform parents of a child's new gender identity unless the child volunteers her approval.  The law also prohibits schools from punishing any school employee found to have "supported a pupil" hurtling down a path toward risky and irreversible hormones and surgeries.  The law effectively shuts down the local parents' rights movement in California by eliminating its most important tool: the ability to organize at the community level to stop schools from deceiving them.

If criminals are everywhere, blame the bystanders.
San Francisco to fight crime by ordering Tenderloin businesses to close earlier.  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a measure to impose a curfew on businesses in the city's Tenderloin District over concerns that open businesses are hotspots for crime, drug dealing and drug use.  The legislation also noted how the city's police officers are typically outnumbered by large groups of "people engaged in illegal activity," suggesting crime in the area's disarray has grown past law enforcement's ability to control.  "Large groups of people engaged in drug sales and use in the Tenderloin Public Safety Area generally form and congregate in the vicinity of retail businesses selling food and tobacco products that are open to the public during those hours," wrote Mayor London Breed in her legislation submitted to the Board of Supervisors.

Kamala's Legacies.  As California's attorney general in 2014, Harris named a proposition that changed thefts of property valued under $950 from felonies to misdemeanors.  Harris called it the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" but failed to explain how legalizing crime made schools and neighborhoods safer.  She has claimed she took no position on the act, but the ballot language has exposed that falsehood.  Proposition 47 launched a crime wave across the state, with 31,322 vehicle break-ins in San Francisco alone in 2017, a 24-percent increase from the previous year.  The measure empowered criminals to break into vehicles in broad daylight with bystanders present.  The arrest rate in San Francisco, where Harris previously served as district attorney, was less than two percent, and under Proposition 47 criminals could expect at the most a citation.  The consequences of the pro-crime measure were obvious to all but the willfully blind, but the attorney general kept on the quiet side.

Independent report:  As Newsom brags, all California job growth is in government.  California Governor Gavin Newsom touted the state's job growth in his State of the State Address last week, but a new report from a state agency found the state's private sector employment has been declining since 2022, with public sector hiring accounting for the entire state net increase in jobs.  California's state-funded, non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office found the private sector lost 154,000 jobs and the public and public-supported sector has gained 361,000 jobs since the peak of the state's labor market in September 2022.  This means on net, the state's 207,000 job increase in employment since September 2022 has been from growing government-related hiring.

LGBTQ Activists Freak Out Over California Bill That Makes It A Felony To Purchase A Child For Sex.  LGBTQ activists speak out against SB1414, a California bill that would make it a felony to purchase children for sex.  They claim it will affect LGBTQ people more.  When they tell you who they are, believe them.  [Video clip]

WalletHub ranks San Francisco 'worst run' city in America for the second year in a row.  San Francisco just took home WalletHub's "worst-run" city in America title for the second year in a row — which is hardly surprising, considering this is the place where you download a "poop map" before braving the city sidewalks, open-air drug markets and dirty tents fill the formerly clean Tenderloin district, and a walking tour with a sardonic sales pitch sold out weeks in advance — participants were promised an intimate experience with the urban decay of the "progressive" city, and offered the chance to "get close and personal with the Doom and Squalor of downtown San Francisco."

Adding Insult to Injury in San Francisco.  What happens in San Francisco if your insurance drops you because crime is out of control and your store is broken into for the fourth time?  You get a notice from the city that you better fix up your store before they come after you.  [Advertisement]  [Video clip]  Robbed by the criminals and financially raped by the city.  It's a perfect example of how the government prefers to police the law-abiding and ignore the criminals.  After all, criminals are dangerous and will fight back.

Californians With No Driver's License Or SSN Can Use A Credit Card Or Gym Membership To Vote.  In California, voters with no government ID can still vote so long as they show a gym membership, credit card, utility bill, or other low-security identification.  Individuals wishing to register to vote in California are prompted on the secretary of state's website to provide their driver's license identification number and/or the last four digits of their Social Security number.  But both sections give applicants the option to select a box indicating they lack that form of identification.  [Screenshot]  If an applicant checks both boxes, he would later be prompted to provide other identification, the California secretary of state's office told The Federalist.  Upon further inquiry, an office representative said individuals could provide proof of identity by showing items such as a credit card, a utility bill, or their gym membership.

California Mandates Trains That Don't Exist.  California has long been infamous for its regulatory regime, imposing harsh restrictions on businesses and individuals.  This pattern has been accelerating since climate change alarmism took hold in the state, with demands for carbon emission reductions serving as an excuse to restrict or ban everything from charcoal grills to gas stoves and more.  Vehicles of all sorts have been swept up in this craze, with electric cars, trucks, and buses becoming the mandatory modes of transportation.  Now, however, the state has its eyes on another form of transportation.  Under a new proposed rule, the operation of diesel freight trains older than 23 years will be banned so they must be replaced with electric trains.  That will certainly come as welcome news to climate change alarmists, but there's one small problem with this proposal.  There are currently no fully electric trains in commercial production and there is no estimated timeline for when such trains might be commercially available given the current state of the technology.  In other words, California is looking to mandate the use of trains that do not exist.

California Budget Deal Slashes Spending but Includes $12 Million for Reparations.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and state legislators struck a deal this weekend to close a $47 billion budget deficit — and agreed to spend $12 million to implement proposals to provide reparations for slavery. [...] CalMatters.org reported Saturday on the budget deal, which combines spending cuts and withdrawals from the state's "rainy day" fund to overcome the shortfall (which CalMatters says is even higher, at $56 billion): [...] The push for reparations began in 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, at both the state and local levels, in left-wing cities like San Francisco.  Proponents began recommending massive cash transfers, leading Newsom to back away cautiously from cash payments as a form of reparations.  Democrats continued pushing for reparations, despite the fact that the state's $100 billion budget surplus in 2022 had crashed to a massive deficit by 2024.

California's Minimum Wage Continues to Destroy Restaurants.  Would you rather have some jobs available at $12 an hour or no jobs available at $20 an hour?  The answer may vary depending on whether you're a business owner or job seeker — or politician or bureaucrat.  Regardless, the opening question, which is of the kind late economist Walter E. Williams often asked, should be pondered with news that California's new $20 minimum wage is continually claiming victims.  The latest is a San Francisco McDonald's franchisee who'd been in business for 30 years.  This pales in comparison, though, to one of the new minimum wage's first victims:  Rubio's Coastal Grill.  That chain is closing 48 Golden State locations — more than a third of its 134 remaining restaurants across California, Arizona, and Nevada.

Democracy Just Died a Painful Death in California.  Well, it sure looks like California is beyond saving now.  In a stunning anti-democratic move, the California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday to block an anti-tax initiative from appearing on the ballot.  This initiative, known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, was backed by the business community and sought to make it more difficult to increase taxes in California.  Among other things, it would have required the legislature to obtain voter approval for any new or increased state taxes.  There's nothing groundbreaking about it, as voters in other states have used the ballot box to approve or deny tax initiatives before.  But Gavin Newsom and the Democrat-controlled legislature were having none of it and filed a lawsuit to block the measure last fall, claiming that the initiative represented an illegal effort to amend the California Constitution and would hinder critical government operations.  And the California Supreme Court unanimously sided with Newsom.

California Jewelry Store Looted In Broad Daylight.  At what point do California voters finally realize that their Democratic Party leaders have abandoned trying to enforce the rule of law and shout "Enough!"?  The latest example of California's decline into a lawless state is a bold daylight robbery where 20 masked intruders looted a Sunnyvale jewelry store in broad daylight.

California Applies Broken Windows Theory in Reverse.  Thanks go to the erstwhile Golden State for warning us what we have to look forward to if we do not pry Democrats from power and reject leftism root and branch:  [Tweet with video clip]  Shoplifting is effectively legal in California.  Smashing through the front of a store so as to loot it is still against the law (until such law is found to have a disparate impact on Persons of Preferred Pigmentation), but by now it hardly matters.  By encouraging low-level crime, California has thrown the broken windows theory into reverse and then into overdrive.

Summer Surprise:  The Looming Biden Replacement.  In February, I predicted that it can't be Joe Biden representing the Democratic Party in November, and that he would be replaced sometime in the summer before the Democratic National Convention. [...] Who, after all, are the "many popular Democrats" that Nate Silver imagines Democrats to have on the bench?  Gavin Newsom?  California is a failing state at the moment, having gone from a $100 billion surplus after federal COVID stimulus to a $73 billion deficit in just two years.  It is currently enduring an unprecedented homelessness crisis while also experiencing an exodus of high-income taxpayers.  Meanwhile, it is welcoming illegal aliens and unskilled laborers who benefit from California's ambitious welfare state.

Be Prepared for Chaos.  I find it impossible to believe that President Biden will be the Democratic nominee, and if he is, that he can win.  What do the Democrats do?  They certainly can't substitute Kamala Harris for Biden; she's tanked in opinion polls even lower and faster than has Biden.  There are no nationally known non-geriatric substitutes in the wings, save for California governor Gavin Newsom, whose record for screwing up is at least as bad as Biden's.  Youth and a good haircut can only go so far outside Newsom's home state.  Even liberals are now conceding the West Coast has lost its way and become dysfunctional, and who is a better avatar of West Coast progressives than Newsom?

California's billionaire utopia may not be as eco-friendly as advertised.  Silicon Valley billionaires are still aggressively moving forward with their attempt to create a utopian, sustainable "city of yesterday" near San Francisco atop what they describe as "non-prime farmland."  However, an accredited land trust now claims California Forever's East Solano Plan is intentionally misleading local residents about the "detrimental harm" it will cause ecosystems, as well as its potential to "destroy some of the most self-reliant farmland and ranchland" in the state.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Caught Charging U.S. Taxpayers For Illegal Alien Healthcare.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been caught charging U.S. taxpayers for the healthcare bills of the state's illegal alien population.  According to local media, Newsom filed nearly $53 million worth of reimbursements that the state now must return to the federal government: [...] A review conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services inspector general's office revealed that California employed an "outdated calculation" method for claiming federal reimbursements between October 2018 and June 2019. This method failed to exclude services provided to noncitizens, which must be paid for by the state.

Is California Moving Toward Government-Owned Electricity?  The first obvious hurdle to "public ownership" — socialism — is the Fifth Amendment, which concludes, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."  Here are the valuations of the state's two largest private utilities:
  •   PG&E: $48 billion
  •   Southern California Edison: $82 billion
  •   Total: $130 billion
Where is the state of California supposed to get that kind of money?  Float a bond?  The state treasurer lists California's current state bond indebtedness at $71.7 billion.  And they've only started issuing the $6.4 billion in new bonds for Proposition 1, which voters passed on March 5.  In sum, a state takeover would effectively nearly triple state bond indebtedness.

Newsom's Budget Crisis:  Slashing Safety to Fund Climate Goals.  California Governor Gavin Newsom has put forward a budget that includes significant cuts to public safety funding, even as the state grapples with a massive deficit and pushes for aggressive climate goals focused on equity.  In his proposed budget, released in May, Newsom highlighted the necessity of "difficult decisions" to address the estimated $27.6 billion deficit expected to persist for years.  The proposal includes a $97 million reduction in trial court operations, $10 million from the Department of Justice's Division of Law Enforcement, and more than $80 million from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

First Defund or Abolish, Now Disarm the Police?  Southern California, particularly the San Diego area, has already been beset with more than its fair share of problems.  Illegal aliens are flooding the region, homelessness is out of control, and crime has been on the rise.  The police in both San Diego and Los Angeles have had their hands full.  But if one gun control group has its way, the cops' hands will be a bit more empty if they don't have any guns.  CBS News just concluded a two-year study into how the police buy their firearms and how they dispose of them when they reach the end of their service life.  They found that some of the old guns the police sold were later found at crime scenes.  Further, they investigated the gun companies that sell firearms to the police and determined that some of them have been cited for violations when they improperly sold weapons or ammunition.  Now, San Diego is considering a law that would ban the police from doing business with those companies.

Why Does California Keep Acting Like Its Own Country?  Two California governors have visited China and signed environmental accords as if they were the heads of state instead of the heads of a state.  Now the madness continues with the EU lobbying California over AI. [...] States do not get to run their own foreign policy.  They don't get to sign accords with foreign nations.  And yet California Democrats keep doing this sort of thing.

California Dems vote to continue protecting illegal alien pedophiles with 'sanctuary' policies.  California Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R) on Tuesday forced a vote regarding his bill, Assembly Bill 2641, which would end "sanctuary state" protections for illegal aliens convicted of sex crimes against children.  California's sanctuary policies prevent state authorities from turning over illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.  The restricted cooperation forces ICE to expend more of its own resources to locate and detain illegal aliens who have committed additional crimes.  Essayli proposed a motion on Tuesday that forced California lawmakers to vote on whether to hear his proposed bill.  Assembly Speaker pro Tempore Jim Wood (D) cut off Essayli's microphone while he was announcing the motion.  "Thank you, Mr. Speaker.  I move to suspend the rules and invoke the California constitution to withdraw Assembly Bill 2641, which will end sanctuary state protections for convicted illegal immigrant pedophiles," Essayli stated.  The speaker instructed Essayli to stop before turning off the assemblyman's microphone.

California ranks last in opportunity due to cost living:  U.S. News.  According to new state rankings, California ranks dead last in opportunity due to its high cost of living, says the U.S. News and World Report.  USNWR's report uses cost of living, economic opportunity, and equality to create its opportunity metric.  California's nation-worst cost of living was the main driver of the opportunity ranking, as its economic opportunity and income inequality were both better than more than half of American states'.  "California was the birthplace for opportunity where our ancestors came to seek a better life and pursue the California Dream," State Sen. Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, who was California Governor Newsom's opponent in the 2022 general election, told The Center Square.  "Housing, electricity, and gas continue to rise, and [Democrats'] solution is to tax, regulate, and mandate no matter the outcome."

The Democrats' Anti-Business Policies Create The Food Deserts They Decry.  A decade ago, California made shoplifting under $950 a misdemeanor, so shoplifting is de facto legal.  That basically means that you can steal $949 worth of merchandise every single day and likely never go to jail.  So, if you steal that $949 worth of goods every day and sell them for 25 cents on the dollar, you can generate an income of $86,000 a year tax-free! [...] In the hellhole that has become San Francisco, city supervisors have proposed a bill that would allow citizens to sue retailers if they close without giving the city six months' notice.  That means, basically, that after struggling to make a profit, when a store finally decides to bite the bullet and close its doors, the Democrats running the city will have decreed that the store must remain open for another six months, regardless of how much money it loses.

California Looks to Ban 'Clear' Service.  Are you a frequent flyer?  If so, you really should get Clear, a service that allows you to shorten your wait time in the TSA security line.  It costs $189 a year, so if you don't fly often, you might want to pay the time tax, but if you fly more than 2-3 times a year it is well worth it to simplify your airport experience and reduce aggravation.  [Tweet]  Aggravation, of course, is exactly what the DEI crowd wants people to experience, and since more White people are likely to buy Clear, two California legislators are looking to ban the service.  To be clear, Clear is not the same as the federal government's TSA pre-check, which gets you around even more barriers than Clear does.  Rather, the company uses biometric IDs to ensure the identity of the person preparing to fly.  It is sort of a pre-screening, in which you exchange money and agree to give a company your fingerprints and a retina scan in exchange for a shorter line experience.  Very dystopian, and yes, I pay for it.  I hate lines.

Blaming Victims:  San Francisco's Irrational Grocery Store Proposal.  A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dean Preston, recently proposed that grocery stores in the city that decided to close their doors, perhaps because of continual theft from their shelves and threats to their staff, should be forced to give six months' notice of their intention to close and try to find another store willing to take over from them; moreover, they would be liable to claims for compensation from local residents whose lives are adversely affected by their decision if they fail to comply.  When I read this, I laughed:  I thought it must be satire.  But no: the proposal was meant in deadly earnest.  These days, satire is policy. [...] I think 99 out of 100 people would still think that the best way to deal with widespread theft would be to catch and punish the thieves rather than grant them impunity and license to continue.  Mad as the idea may be to force stores to put up with theft rather than do something to reduce it in the first place, there is a certain contorted logic to it; namely, that the thieves are not so much criminals as victims, and that when they purloin goods they are not acting from greed, dishonesty, or other such disreputable motives, but are seeking compensation for all the wrongs that they have suffered for the past 400 years.  Their theft, in fact, is therapeutic; it is restorative justice.

California reparations bill on licensing unconstitutional say critics.  A California reparations bill prioritizing black applicants in state professional licensing is likely unconstitutional and violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protections clause under the 14th Amendment, says the Pacific Legal Foundation.  AB 2862, authored by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, D-Carson, would "require boards to prioritize African American applicants seeking licenses under these provisions, especially applicants who are descended from a person enslaved in the United States."  The bill was introduced in February as a broader package of reparations for Black Californians, a package that did not include direct cash payments.

San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly.  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a remarkable policy that would allow people to sue grocery stores that close too quickly.  Earlier this week, Supervisors Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin introduced an ordinance that, if passed, would require grocery stores to provide six months' written notice to the city before closing down.  Supermarket operators would also have to make "good faith" efforts to ensure the continued availability of groceries at their shuttered location, either through finding a successor store, helping residents form a grocery co-op, or any other plan they might work out by meeting with city and neighborhood residents.  Lest one thinks this is some heavy-handed City Hall intervention, the ordinance makes clear that owners still retain the ultimate power to close their store.  It also creates a number of exemptions to the six-month notice requirement.

Sacramento has a lot in common with Sodom and Gomorrah:
Sacramento declares itself a sanctuary city for transgender people.  The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to declare the California capital a "sanctuary city for transgender people."  The resolution, which takes effect immediately, ensures that no city resources will be used to criminalize trans people seeking transition-related care or to cooperate with jurisdictions seeking to enforce laws that criminalize the care elsewhere.  It comes as conservative lawmakers across the country have enacted laws to limit both surgical and nonsurgical forms of gender-affirming care for minors — including puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy — within the last handful of years.  Twenty-four states limit gender-affirming care for trans youths, according to LGBTQ think tank Movement Advancement Project.

Newsom exempts more 'friends' from $20/hour fast-food wage law.  Not too long ago, Gavin Newsom got caught with his hand in the cookie jar of political cronyism.  In response to a draconian law passed raising fast-food worker wages to $20 an hour, known as A.B. 1228, Newsom carved out a little exemption for his friends at Panera Bread on the laughable grounds that these establishments bake bread on the premises.  In reality, the owner of several Panera establishments was a high school buddy who was a really good donor to his campaigns.  Once caught, Newsom backed off, but right when he thought no one was looking, he went right back to the cookie jar again to carve out more little exemptions for his friends who donated well, as if word had gotten around, signing off on a "cleaned-up" bill known as A.B. 610.

Proposition 103 Backfires, State Farm to Cancel 72,000 California Policies.  Cap[p]ing insurance rates has the same effect as capping rents.  The former leads to an exodus of insurers.  The latter lead to an exodus of builders and repairs.

State Farm Cuts 72,000 California Policies, Citing Wildfire Risk.  State Farm General Insurance Co. will cut about 72,000 policies in California beginning in July, the latest move by the state's biggest insurer to cope with growing risks from wildfires and other natural disasters.  The move comes just nine months after State Farm announced plans to stop issuing new coverage in the most populous US state.  In the latest announcement on March 20, the company also cited reinsurance costs and constraints posed by decades-old insurance rules as reasons why it decided not to renew policies on 30,000 homes and 42,000 commercial apartments.  The cuts account for about 2% of the insurer's policies in the state.  State Farm said it reached its decision following an evaluation of the company's commitment to uphold its claims-paying capabilities and adhere to financial solvency laws.  "This decision was not made lightly and only after careful analysis of State Farm General's financial health," the company said in a statement.

Recalled San Francisco DA Says Victims Don't Have Rights Under the Constitution.  Crime victims don't have rights under the Constitution, former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled by voters in 2022 amid an escalation of crime, said during a conference here at UC Berkeley School of Law.  Boudin's surprising comment came as part of a larger debate between the Left and Right on criminal justice issues at the March 8 gathering, called "Justice Unveiled:  Debating Crime and Public Safety Conference."  [Video clip]  The ousted San Francisco prosecutor led a discussion with California district attorneys that also included Cully Stimson, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow who is a crime expert and former prosecutor.

Hollywood Studios Reap $25 Billion from States' Film Tax Credits; Taxpayers See Massive Losses.  Hollywood has reportedly received a whopping $25 billion in state tax incentives to date — a win for studios like Disney and Netflix but a big "L" for ordinary taxpayers, who are footing the bill for the giveaways.  Frequently championed by Democrats, state tax credits for movie and TV productions are intended to juice local economies by creating jobs and boosting revenue for small businesses that provide services like catering and transportation.  That, in turn, is supposed to generate more tax dollars.  But despite the $25 billion spent so far, states are seeing paltry returns on their investment — sometimes less than 20 cents on each dollar given away, according to studies cited in a New York Times report.

A week after primaries in California and they still haven't counted all the votes.  "Count all the votes!" as the lefties liked to say loudly.  That was their justification for mass mail-in ballots in California, ballot-harvesting by illegals, and extended voting for weeks and weeks.  Election Day?  No, election month.  They said it was to expand the franchise to "marginalized communities" and raise turnout.  Curiously, turnout has now hit a near-record low in a presidential primary year as this Secretary of State supplied data makes clear.  Before these new "innovations" were enacted, mostly in the era of COVID, it was not unusual to have turnout in such years in the 70% range.  Today, they got ... 34%, just slightly above 2022's 33.2%, which wasn't a presidential primary election year.  Now we're onto the extended counting. [...] They said they'd count all the votes — and as of today, they haven't counted all the votes.  Which is funny stuff, because supposedly less-developed nations like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, with much larger populations of voters, can count all its ballots overnight on 100% turnout in some cases, and still come up with a result that's fair and normal.

California city bans non-government flags, angering LGBTQ groups.  Voters in California's conservative Huntington Beach approved a measure that would restrict all non-government flags from being flown on city property, prompting backlash from LGBTQ advocates.  Measure B, authored by Huntington Beach City Councilman Pat Burns, passed with more than half of the city's vote, according to the latest tally on the county's registrar website.  The measure, for which voters cast their ballots on Super Tuesday, will prohibit breast cancer awareness, Pride, Confederate and all other non-U.S flags on city property.  Burns told Fox News Digital in an interview that the measure was not meant to be discriminatory against any group, but to encourage residents to unite under a common American identity.  Most of the backlash Burns said he has received has been from LGBTQ advocates.  I'm against the identity politics, I think it's divisive," Burns said Friday.  "I think it's demeaning to be honest, that flag, that I find is so insulting to LGBTQ.  And I know that they support it, but in my mind, it's demeaning that they need some kind of special recognition to feel like they're part of our community.  People are equal and those kinds of things are divisive."

California to help 'undocumented immigrants' purchase homes?  California Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula has introduced Assembly Bill 1840, aimed at expanding home ownership opportunities for "undocumented immigrants" in the state.  The bill would make illegal aliens eligible for first time homebuyer loans.  The bill, as originally introduced earlier this year, was aimed at low- and middle-income citizens, but Arambula apparently decided that was too exclusive, and therefore recently proposed his updated version.  This is yet another kick in the shorts to citizens, especially since the formerly Golden State has the highest priced housing — and by far the most homeless people — in the nation.  California is already the only state to fund comprehensive health care for undocumented immigrants.  And it has a stupefying projected budget deficit of $73 billion with an average personal debt of $84,730 ... which "undocumented immigrants" undoubtedly will not have to pay.  Illegal migrants pouring across our Southern border have allegedly been handed credit cards and cell phones.  In some cases, they are being put up in very nice hotels.  Moreover, residents and property owners in places like Boston, Denver and New York City have been asked to take these immigrants into their own homes.

Newsom Donor Greg Flynn Agrees to Pay $20 Minimum Wage Amid 'PaneraGate' Scandal.  Panera Bread franchisee and Newsom donor Greg Flynn announced on Wednesday that he would be complying with the AB 1228 $20 per hour wage law for fast food companies when it begins next month following over a week of backlash against him and Governor Gavin Newsom over allegations that he had originally been exempt to the law because of his donor ties with Newsom.  When AB 1228 was passed last year, all fast food companies were covered under the bill, directing them to make the new minimum wage for their industry only from $16 an hour to $20 an hour.  Initially there were only a few exemptions:  certain restaurants in grocery stores, and restaurants with on-site bakeries, with Panera Bread being the largest one exempted.  For months, this went without question, as the reasoning behind it seemed reasonable. [...] News outlets began looking into who owned these Panera Bread locations.  That's when it was discovered that Flynn, who owns well over a third of the exempted Panera Bread locations in the state, is a major donor of Governor Newsom, as well as a high school friend.

It Looks Like Another Soros DA in California Will Face a Recall Election.  It looks like another Soros DA in California will be facing a recall election.  As we've been reporting, proponents of an effort to recall Alameda County's District Attorney, Pamela Price, have been gathering signatures for months to place a recall election on the ballot.  On Monday those proponents turned in 123,387 signatures — 50,000 more than the 73,195 required.  Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupris now has ten days to run validation checks to ensure that the signatures are from registered Alameda County voters and certify the number of valid signatures submitted.  If his office certifies that at least 73,195 valid signatures were submitted, a recall election must be held.

Illegal Aliens to Get Interest-Free Home Loans Under New Democrat-Backed California Bill.  Illegal aliens will get interest-free home mortgage loans under a new California bill.  Democrat assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (Fresno) recently introduced Assembly Bill 1840 to extend a first-time homebuyer loan program to illegal aliens.  If the bill becomes law, illegal aliens will be eligible for a new program that offers a loan worth 20% of the purchase price of the residential property.  There are no monthly payments and no interest accrues on the loan.  Rather, the loan is paid back when the borrower refinances or sells the property.  The borrower will have to pay back the original loan plus a 20% increase in the value of the property.

Panera Bread Exempt From $20 Per Hour CA Minimum Wage Law, Because Newsom Protects His Wealthy Buddies.  In September 2023, California passed a $20 an-hour minimum wage increase, which had an immediate chilling effect over fast food and fast casual chain dining.  Many of these restaurants upped their already increased prices; some fired staff — like Pizza Hut did with its delivery drivers — and moved to more self-serve and robot checkout.  Some are even closing locations.  Unless you're Panera Bread.  In California, Greg Flynn owns multiple Panera Bread chains in the state.  Flynn also happens to be a "friend" of California Governor Gavin Newsom.  You do the math.  [Tweet]

Coincidentally...
Panera Bread to launch cheaper sandwiches, abandon dinner in 'largest menu transformation ever.  Panera Bread plans to expand its salad and sandwich options with the "largest menu transformation ever" — including many items for less than $10 — as it shifts away from dinner meals, the company announced Thursday.  The popular chain — which recently earned an exemption from California's new $20-an-hour minimum wage law — will add nine new menu items and enhance the recipes for 12 existing classics in a "new era" at the company, according to a press release.  The rollout at Panera's more than 2,100 locations is slated to begin April 4.

Longtime Newsom Donor Owns Panera Bread, Which is Exempt From California Minimum Wage Increase.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom fought to exempt fast-food chains from the new minimum wage increase if the company baked its own bread and sold it as a standalone item.  The minimum wage will increase to $20.  But why?  The first and only restaurant you think of is Panera Bread. [...] [Panera Bread owner Greg] Flynn is a regular donator to Newsom.  He gave $100,000 to fight against the recall.  Newsom got another $64,800 during his 2022 reelection campaign.  People close to Flynn told Bloomberg News he "has been known to tout his relationship with Newsom" and bragged "he can reach the governor via text."

New $20 minimum wage law in California set to take effect, but people notice an 'obscure' exemption.  Talk about fortuitous!  In a strange turn of events, one of Gavin Newsom's biggest donors hits the jackpot, and when the state-mandated $20 minimum wage for certain fast-food workers takes effect in April, this lucky duck employer won't be subject to complying with the increase, thanks to an "obscure" exemption in the statute. [...] Greg Flynn is a billionaire, one of Newsom's (and other Democrats') most loyal and longtime benefactors, and according to Bloomberg, "the largest restaurant franchisee in the US, if not the world."  Flynn's fast-food portfolio includes establishments like Taco Bell, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut[,] but his California fast-food portfolio is limited to one brand:  Panera Bread.  And, surprise surprise, the new law's "obscure exemption" seems only applicable to... Panera Bread.

Federal Judge Clobbers California's Silly Ban on Billy Clubs in Devastating Ruling.  A federal court has made a critical ruling related to the Second Amendment and the concept of self-defense.  The decision strikes at the heart of California laws intended to limit one's ability to protect themselves against violent criminals.  Judge Roger Benitez handed down a ruling in the case of Fouts v. Bonta on Friday, striking down a ban on citizens possessing or carrying billy clubs and other forms of less lethal weaponry.  In his decision, Benitez questioned the legality of the statute, which criminalized Californians simply for owning a billy club, a tool that is commonly used by members of law enforcement, but is also used by civilians for personal defense.  "Americans have an individual right to keep and bear arms, whether firearms or less lethal arms," the judge wrote, also arguing that "The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution 'guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.'"

California:  North Korea of the USA.  The Cold War presented the world with one of the largest controlled experiments in human history, which offered the contrast between East and West Germany, and North and South Korea.  Both historic nations were reduced to rubble in war and then partitioned, after which they pursued diametrically opposed policies for the next two generations, with starkly contrasting results.  Democratic capitalism rapidly made West Germany and South Korea into prosperous economic and cultural powerhouses, while East Germany and North Korea stagnated and remained mired in poverty and tyranny.  Today the United States is repeating a parallel controlled experiment, between "red states" and "blue states."  As was the case under Communism, Americans are voting with their feet, moving in large numbers from high-tax, high-regulation blue states to low-tax, business-friendly red states.  The data show red states are experiencing faster economic and personal income growth, and better social performance on a number of key indicators, such as crime, affordable housing, and public education.

San Francisco Totally Loses Its Mind By Electing A Chinese Woman Who Can't Vote Legally To The Elections Commission.  San Francisco's Board of Supervisors appointed the first non-citizen to the San Francisco Elections Commission last week.  The non-citizen appointee will now be responsible for helping oversee and develop policies for San Francisco's Department of Elections despite being currently ineligible to vote herself.  According to KQED, Kelly Wong, who is an outspoken advocate for immigrant rights, was sworn in last Wednesday at San Francisco City Hall by Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.  Wong is believed to be the city's first non-citizen to become a member of the San Francisco Elections Commission.  [Video clip]

San Francisco Admits First Non-citizen to Elections Board.  San Francisco has appointed a non-citizen to its elections commission for the first time, even though she cannot vote. [...] As Breitbart News has noted, non-citizens are allowed to vote in San Francisco in school board elections.  It is not clear how firm the separation is between those registered to vote for school board elections and those registered to vote for all other elections.  Democrat-run jurisdictions have attempted to expand voting rights to non-citizens, hoping to capitalize on the large number of immigrants — legal and illegal — that have entered the country thanks to loose Democratic Party border policies.

Barbara Lee Wants Outrageous $50 Minimum Wage.  Democratic House Rep Barbara Lee recently appeared on a debate stage and stated her case for a $50 federal minimum wage.  Lee has been a House Rep in a district mainly covering Oakland since 1998.  She was debating other candidates who were running for US Senate in California.  [Tweet]

The California Energy Scam:  Newsom's Actions Of "Leaking" Emissions To Poorer Developing Countries.  In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has been vocal about his commitment to reducing in-state greenhouse gas emissions, but much of his "success" has been accomplished by "leaking" those emissions to offshore locations with miniscule environmental regulations compared to California.  The state also has the highest poverty rate in the nation, the highest state income tax in the nation, the highest gas taxes in the nation, and record homelessness.  California is probably the most environmentally regulated location on the planet.  The state also has the highest poverty rate in the nation, the highest state income tax in the nation, the highest gas taxes in the nation, and record homelessness.

Yes, It Is Real:  Woke Kindergarten Destroying Bay Area School.  Woke Kindergarten.  It sounds like a bad joke.  But unfortunately, it is very real, and a Bay Area school is dropping $250,000 to this for-profit company to provide indoctrination to students who are already doing badly in school.  [Tweet]  It tells you something — nothing good, of course — that a school that is doing a horrendous job of giving kids a basic education is spending money to train teachers to turn children into woke warriors.  Given that reasoning skills are counterproductive when you want children mindlessly mouthing platitudes about indigenous rights, the elimination of work and rent, and the need to eliminate Israel, it makes perfect sense.  [Tweet]

Newsom Stands By 'Equitable' Electricity Bills as Opposition Builds.  California governor Gavin Newsom is standing by the state's soon-to-be-implemented "equitable" policy to base electricity bills on income, rather than usage, even as public and political opposition to the idea builds in the Democratic coalition.  A spokesman for the governor said on Tuesday that Newsom is looking forward to seeing a final proposal from the state's utilities commission "that is consistent with" the 2022 law that required the agency to devise an income-based billing system.  "California must combat climate change by rapidly expanding the use of clean electricity in our vehicles and buildings, while at the same time making it more affordable for low-income Californians," the spokesman said in a statement.  Newsom's commitment to California's income-based electricity billing plan followed a press conference by a group of Democratic lawmakers who want to reverse the policy, after they voted in its favor as part of a 2022 budget bill.  Citing public outcry, they condemned the plan as another price hike for Californians' astronomical energy bills that would punish conservation-minded households while also subjecting everyone to invasive income checks.

California toddler killer to walk free unless Gov. Newsom overrules parole board.  A California child killer who reportedly beat his girlfriend's 3-year-old son so badly he suffered dozens of traumatic injuries, broken bones and "pulverized" organs, is one step closer to walking free after state officials approved his parole despite a prosecutor's pledge to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.  The only chance to uphold that vow is now in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom.  Patrick Goodman, now 49, killed Elijah Sanderson in early December 2000. The medical examiner reportedly found that some of the injuries had been caused by swinging the child by his wrist into a wall repeatedly.  A parole hearing took place in December, where District Attorney Brooke Jenkins' office argued against Goodman's release.  Critics have become more vocal after the San Francisco Public Safety News site published the transcript Wednesday.

California Bill Calls for Tech to Make New Cars Unable to Speed.  Someday in the not too distant future, it might no longer be possible to drive a brand-new car faster than 80 mph in California.  That's because state senator Scott Wiener earlier this week proposed a new bill that aims to prevent certain new vehicles from going more than 10 mph over the speed limit.  In California, the maximum posted speed limit is 70 mph, meaning anything north of 80 mph would be off limits.  The Speeding and Fatality Emergency Reduction on California Streets — or SAFER California Streets, for short — is a package of bills that includes SB 961 that was published Tuesday, which essentially calls for speed governors on new cars and trucks built or sold in California starting with the 2027 model year.  These vehicles would be required to have an "intelligent speed limiter system" that electronically prevents the driver from speeding above the aforementioned threshold.

The Editor says...
Will a police car have such a limiter?  Of course not.  What about the governor's car?  How about Nancy Pelosi's car?  The new rules, just like the old rules, apply only to us, not to them.

Wait Until Rep. Eric Swalwell Finds Out Who Is Responsible for the Carjackings He's Terrified Of.  Congressman Eric Swalwell, who we occasionally must remind ourselves tried and failed miserably to run for President of the United States, has taken to social media to bemoan the state of crime in California. [...] But it's Swalwell's mention of "soft on violent-crime prosecutors" that intrigues me.  It's definitely a partisan issue.  I mean, you aren't seeing Republican prosecutors giving a slap on the wrist (or less) to misdemeanor offenders, nor are you seeing them refuse to prosecute some major crimes.  But you are seeing this from Democrat prosecutors, like Diana Becton of Alameda County, California.  Becton, if you'll recall, feels that officers need to consider whether or not looters "needed" the goods they were stealing.  As one might guess, if looters can get away with just stealing whatever goods they "need," they tend to escalate.  Escalation in stealing things usually tends to lead to stealing cars.  Surely Swalwell understands this, right?

Pro-abortion California state representative introduces bill to ban 'cruel' glue traps for rats and mice.  Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), a famously left-wing and pro-abortion member of Congress with a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, recently introduced a bill to outlaw glue traps designed to eliminate rodents ... because he considers them to be "cruel" and "inhumane."  The glue traps, that is.  Lieu took to social media to lobby for the criminalization of glue traps, the use of which he deems to be "ruthless:"  [Tweet]

California Crazy:  Woman Who Stabbed Date 108 Times, Killing Him, Gets Only 100 Hours of Community Service.  I live in California and frequently write about its crime problems stemming from disastrous progressive policies like Proposition 47 — which changed a slew of offenses from felonies to misdemeanors — and woke George Soros-backed district attorneys like LA's George Gascón.  But even my jaw dropped when I heard about this judge's decision in Ventura County.  Bryn Spejcher, now 33, got high on marijuana in 2018, stabbed her boyfriend over a hundred times, knifed her dog and then herself, and yet received no jail time because defense experts deemed that she experienced "cannabis-induced psychosis" — a conclusion which the judge amazingly agreed with.  To put it bluntly, this is absolute lunacy.

Police recruiting:  California self-destructs.  Americans are used to calling their local police and receiving a rapid response.  Or at least they were — in some places — some of the time.  A case in point is Alameda, California, which like the rest of California, is self-destructing: [...] It's often said California sets trends for the rest of America.  The current trends, however, would seem to be (1) buying U Haul stock is a very good idea, and (2) going to work anywhere in California as a police officer is a very, very bad idea.

A Government that Sows Division and Subsidizes Madness.  In the name of "social justice," San Francisco's Democrat-controlled government has responded to rising violent crime and general lawlessness in the city by attacking police officers as "white supremacists" (even the non-white ones) and reducing the penalties for and enforcement against violent crimes.  (As the economists say, when you want more of something, subsidize it.) Because citizens and businesses have been left defenseless against organized theft (and, in fact, are even told not to resist the robbers and thieves who assault them), businesses and entrepreneurs have had no choice but to move away.  Now that San Francisco's remaining residents (the ones who keep voting for poop-covered streets and subsidized crime) are finding it difficult to find (and maybe steal) basic necessities, they are very upset that grocery and convenience stores refuse to be perpetual victims.  Have Democrats learned a lesson?  Of course not.

Adam Schiff Wants to Save 'Democracy' by Abolishing the Electoral College and Packing the Supreme Court.  Rep. Adam Schiff has a new plan to save 'democracy' by abolishing the filibuster, getting rid of the Electoral College and packing the U.S. Supreme Court.  At this point, it's pretty clear that when Democrats talk about 'democracy' what they really mean is anything that the far left likes.  Schiff trying to present this as a defense of democracy is pure hilarity and he is the only one who doesn't get the joke.

We Are in an Abusive Relationship with Our Government.  California is now covering the costs of genital-mutilating surgeries for illegal aliens.  Leftism's slippery slope invariably leads to depraved absurdity.  Consider how Governor (receding) Hairdo and the Pyrite State's other communist saboteurs have greased the shifting ground under Californians' feet:
  [#1]   There is no illegal immigration crisis.
  [#2]   There may be a crisis, but California taxpayers won't be paying for it.
  [#3]   Taxpayers may have to foot the bill for the illegal immigration crisis, but California will do nothing to incentivize illegal immigration.
  [#4]   After further review, these aliens aren't "illegal," but rather "undocumented."
  [#5]   Health care is a human right.
  [#6]   California must provide "undocumented" aliens healthcare.
  [#7]   Mutilating the genitals to make them look like the opposite sex is health care.
  [#8]   California taxpayers must pay for "undocumented" aliens' genital surgery.
  [#9]   Californians who object to paying for undocumented aliens' genital surgery may be guilty of "hate" crimes and will be prosecuted.

California proposes mere $8.5 billion spending cut against $68 billion deficit.  California governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $292 billion state budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, driving economists to wonder why he plans only $8.5 billion in real spending cuts against what the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office says is a projected $68 billion deficit.  Newsom hit back against the LAO, claiming the state's deficit is only $37.8 billion.  "Those of you who are writing about a different number I hope are immediately correcting that number," said Newsom in a press event announcing the budget.  "We have been pretty [expletive] transparent with you by making the point publicly, not just privately, that that was not the number, but it continues to be reported as gospel."

Judge Orders California School District To Reinstate Teachers Who Refused To Lie To Parents Under Trans Policy.  A federal judge ruled Wednesday that two California teachers who were placed on administrative leave for refusing to hide students' gender transitions from parents should be reinstated.  Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West filed a lawsuit against the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) and the California State Board of Education in April last year over a policy that required educators to hide a child's preferred pronouns and gender identity if a student asks to keep parents in the dark.  Mirabelli and West were put on administrative leave in May, but a judge ruled this week that the district must reinstate the teachers.

Blue State Dems Introduce Law That Could Jail People For Using Gas Powered Lawn Mowers.  Two Democratic Washington state representatives pre-filed a bill on Dec. 5 that would make operating a gas-powered lawn mower or leaf blower a gross misdemeanor punishable by jail time, a fine or both.  State Reps.  Amy Walen and Liz Berry authored a bill to be considered in their state's upcoming legislative session that would ban "gasoline-powered and diesel-powered landscaping and other outdoor power equipment," a group that includes common lawn care tools like lawn mowers, weed whackers, pressure washers and snow blowers, among others.  Violating the new law would be punishable "by a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail for up to three hundred sixty-four days, or by both for each separate violation."

Making a crime out of something that is not a crime:
Washington state Democrat bill would jail people for using new gas leaf blowers.  Washington state Democrats are proposing to outlaw new gas-powered lawn equipment, like leaf blowers, with legislation that could land violators in jail. [...] Under the proposed law, the Washington state Department of Ecology would have a Jan. 1, 2026, deadline to "adopt rules to prohibit engine exhaust and evaporative emissions from new outdoor power equipment."  The bill carries limited exemptions for gas-powered equipment used by government agencies and for commercial or residential use when there is no "suitable zero emissions outdoor power equipment technology" available.

California Will Soon Fine Stores That Don't Have A 'Gender Neutral' Kids Toy Section.  A new California law slated to go into effect on January 1, 2024, will mandate stores that sell children's items to have a gender neutral section, according to a state government website.  The law applies to stores that sell "childcare items" or toys and employs a minimum of 500 employees across store locations, and it requires that they offer a section where "a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys," according to its text.  Stores that do not comply with the law could face a civil penalty and charged $250 after the first offense or $500 for later offenses.

Gavin Newsom Frees Gangster 154 Years Early.  A former gang member and convicted mass shooter was released after serving just eight years of his life sentence by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — and given a new job in the California State Capitol.  A Los Angeles Times puff piece aimed at softening the tale of violent offender Jarad Nava attempted to explain away his crimes by bringing up his rough childhood, and cited Newsom to make the case that he's a truly reformed member of society.  [Tweet]

Santa Ana, California, May Give Voting Rights to Illegal Aliens.  Voters in Santa Ana, California, a deep-blue city in Orange County, will soon decide whether or not to give local voting rights to potentially tens of thousands of foreign nationals, including illegal aliens.  Next year, during the November 5 election, voters in Santa Ana will be asked whether or not they want to approve giving the right to vote in municipal elections to foreign nationals, including illegal aliens, which would then go into effect by 2028.

Understanding the 'Always Blue' Mindset.  Republicans are invariably frustrated that facts don't move the dial in elections.  No matter how bad Democrats are, nothing changes. [...] [There is] a commonly expressed philosophy of this voting block:  "Always vote blue, no matter who."  In a nutshell, that slogan/explanation provides the answer that has confounded so many observers over the years.  They have puzzled over why California Democrat voters seem impervious to things like soaring homelessness, poverty, crime, taxes, and cost of living, a shrinking quality of life and population for the first time on record, the second worst public school system in the nation, massive unmet infrastructure needs now hovering near $1 [Trillion], state debt also measured in $Trillions, all topped with the leadership hypocrisy of things like maskless French Laundry dinners during mandated lockdowns.  Not only did Governor Newsom survive the recall vote, he did so with a whopping 62% of voters supporting him.  Many reasonable people scratch their heads and ask, "How does any logical person vote for more of this?"  What those people don't understand is that logic is not in play.

Records Show Adam Schiff Financed $1.7 Million Maryland Home As 'Prinicipal Residence'.  A California Republican House hopeful told RedState she uncovered a scheme by Rep. Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.), who is running for the California Senate seat vacated by the passing of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, where the congressman reported his Maryland home as his primary residence to secure a lower mortgage interest rate — meaning he either lied on a federally-insured loan document or from 2003 to 2021, he was not a resident of his Burbank district.  "I filed a complaint with the House Ethics Committee, and I did get an email receipt," said Christine Bish, who has worked as a real estate professional for two decades and who worked as an in-house investigator at a law firm.  "They did receive my submission, and I followed up with them, and they said, once it's submitted, they cannot give me any updates."

California Spent Over $4M On Gender-Related Surgeries For Prisoners In Past 6 Years.  California has spent more than $4 million in taxpayer dollars on gender-related surgeries for inmates around the state, including numerous death row inmates, since 2017.  The Washington Free Beacon released a report where it stated that millions of dollars have been spent on sex changes and other gender-related operations and procedures for 157 inmates since California became the first state to agree to pay for these types of operations for prisoners, with four of those criminals on death row.  According to the report, since 2017, California paid for 35 male convicts to surgically receive artificial vaginas and vulvas at a cost of $2.5 million to taxpayers, and 11 male prisoners received breast implants at a cost of more than $180,000.  The state government also paid more than $1 million for the removal of 40 female detainees' breasts.

Newsom signs $25 minimum wage law for all hospital workers, finds out afterward it will cost California $4 billion.  Governor Hairspray doesn't pay attention much to California's budget numbers when he signs off on a bill. [...] So now the state gets to pay the janitors, gardeners, Mexican cleaning ladies (yes, real ones, and they live in Mexico and commute), gift shop clerks, and anyone else in the employ of a hospital, $25 an hour, no exceptions, and no matter what the value of their jobs are in the free market.  What a great way to spend the state's revenue at a time of a $14 billion deficit.  Now Newsom gets an $18 billion deficit, but when you have a billion here, a billion there, who's counting?

California's Adam Schiff Has Actually Been Living In Maryland For Two Decades, Docs Show.  Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff has reportedly been living in Maryland for two decades, documents that surfaced Wednesday showed.  Mortgage records revealed Schiff claimed his 3,420 square foot property in Maryland as his primary residence, according to CNN.  The congressman also reportedly claimed his 650 square foot condo in Burbank, California, as his primary residence to reduce his $7,000 tax bill.  [Tweet]  Schiff did not take an exemption on his Maryland home, the outlet reported.  However, he reportedly signed documents stating both his Maryland and California properties were primary residences.  A spokesperson for Schiff, Marisol Samayoa, claims the congressman's primary residence is in California.

Adam Schiff, Who Wants to Replace Laphonza Butler of Maryland as California's Newest Senator, Lives in Maryland Too!  Could Maryland soon have another Senator claiming to be from California representing them in the near future?  Cristina Laila revealed last month that Gavin Newsom's senate replacement, radical Marxist lesbian Laphonza Butler, actually lives in the Old Line State rather the Golden State.  She was even registered to vote there last year.  Butler replaced the late Dianne Feinstein, who passed away in late September.  Butler announced last month she would not run for a for a full six-year term.  She will instead just serve out the remainder of Feinstein's term which expires in 2024.  It turns out lying pencil-neck Adam Schiff, who wants to replace Butler, has a very similar problem.  He too has claimed his primary residence as Maryland.

Oakland, California, is falling apart.  Last month, at a small church in East Oakland, Calif., hundreds of fed-up city residents gathered outside of a community safety meeting held by Mayor Sheng Thao and District Attorney Pamela Price.  The group was as diverse as it was united, and despite the reduction in their quality of life over the past year, there was a palpable energy of hope.  Seneca Scott, a community leader, hosted the get-together under the banner of his Neighbors Together Oakland (NTO) organization.  A one-time Oakland mayoral candidate, Scott formed the group in 2021 as a response to the influx of outside money and special interest groups that have contributed to his city's decline.

Gavin Newsom Pledges California Will Be Xi Jinping's 'Long-Term, Stable, and Strong Partner'.  Chinese state media continued to gush over visiting California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, hailing the Democrat's warm meeting with dictator Xi Jinping as a triumph of "mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation."  Newsom said that under his leadership, California is ready to become "China's long-term, stable, and strong partner." [...] A good deal of Newsom's enthusiasm for doing business with China revolved around climate change, electric vehicles (EV), and green energy technology.

A Dubious Legislative Move in California.  California lawmakers have really outdone themselves with another entry in the wacky law hall of fame.  You see, it's not their first rodeo in passing some head-scratching legislation, but this one takes the cake for unintended consequences.  The new California law that's all about decriminalizing loitering has inadvertently turned into a pop-up open-air market for prostitution that you won't find in the tourism brochures.  And guess what?  It's the very folks they claim to be protecting, the Black community, who might feel the brunt of it.  Black men, Black women, housing values, they're all in the mix, and it's hard not to think, "Is it time for some fresh faces in the legislature?"

Crime-Ridden Blue City Residents Underreported Crimes By Nearly 50%.  Nearly half of crime goes unreported in San Francisco, a poll published on Wednesday by local political research group GrowSF found.  The survey, which received 458 responses, found that although nearly a quarter of San Francisco residents have been the victim of a crime, 47% chose not to report the incident to the police, according to GrowSF.  Nearly 80% of respondents listed crime and public safety as a major concern for the city, while 65% said that they disapproved of how Democratic Mayor London Breed was responding to major issues in San Francisco.

Newly appointed California Sen. Laphonza Butler will not seek election to a full term in 2024.  Newly appointed California Democratic Sen. Laphonza Butler will not seek election to a full term in 2024.  Butler — who was named earlier this month by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to complete the remaining term of the late Dianne Feinstein — says in a statement she made the decision after considering "what kind of life I want to have, what kind of service I want to offer and what kind of voice I want to bring forward."

Due to Dem-Backed Law, Prostitution Spreads In California.  Californians are complaining about barely-clothed prostitutes roaming the streets in broad daylight, an issue heightened by Democratic Gov. Newsom signing Senate Bill 357, local officials say.  SB 357, which was authored by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener and backed by the ACLU, decriminalizes "loitering with intent to commit prostitution."  Critics say the law effectively decriminalizes prostitution in California.  National City Mayor Ron Morrison, an independent, recently criticized the law, telling Fox News that prostitutes are now "wearing less than what you would consider a scanty negligee" and "flaunting it in everybody's face."

The Editor says...
There is a very effective way to get scantily-clad whores out of the streets:  Stop voting for Socialist Democrats.

California to institute missing child alert system specifically for black youth.  NBC News has reported that California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed Senate Bill 673 into law, thus making the erstwhile Golden State the first to create a missing child alert system specifically for black children.  According to NBC: ["] [...] The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25.["]  Fantastic.  But what about missing black people under 12 or over 25?  Perhaps there needs to be a separate alert for each of those groups.  Twenty-one to twenty-five-year-olds don't seem like "youth" to me, yet those under 12 certainly are.

What if Laphonza Butler decides to run for the Senate seat?  The pipe dream of some Black women in California for the last three years has been getting one of their number into the United States Senate.  Black women have been there before, in the persons of Carole Moseley Braun of Illinois, who served from 1993 to 1999, and California's own Kamala Harris from 2016 until elected vice president in 2020.  But for almost four years after Harris' accession to the nation's nominal No. 2 political job, there were none.  That left a void Gov. Gavin Newsom three years ago vowed to fill if another vacancy arose in a California Senate seat — and he named Laphonza Butler quickly after the pioneering Dianne Feinstein's death in late September.  Butler was sworn in less than five days after Feinstein's demise.  Newsom thus kept one promise.  But by not requiring that Butler commit to being a mere caretaker, a seat filler, he broke another prior commitment.  Newsom left it to Butler to decide whether or not to seek a full term next year, breaking his commitment to name a mere interim senator.

CA Gov Newsom Lowers Consent Age to 12 for 'Gender Counseling' Without Parents 'OK'.  Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that permits children as young as 12 to reside in government-funded "residential shelter services" to undergo mental health treatment or counseling for their gender identity without parental consent or even being informed by doctors.  The bill, known as Assembly Bill 665, allows 12-year-olds to consent to such treatment if they are considered "mature enough to participate intelligently in the outpatient services or residential shelter services" and if they are the "alleged victim" of incest or child abuse who poses a risk to themselves or others — no proof of genuine harm is required.  The bill, signed by Newson over the weekend, further states that medical professionals must consult with the minor to determine "whether involvement of the minor's parent or guardian would be inappropriate."

Where is the red-state Laphonza Butler?  The way to change the fundamental imbalance between the parties is by reforming the way we select nominees.  Following the sudden death last week of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Governor Gavin Newsom needed to pick an interim replacement.  He had a large bench of Democrats from which to choose in the once Golden State.  So what did he do?  He went with the biggest leftist imaginable — a registered voter from Maryland, no less!  In Laphonza Butler, Newsom didn't find only a reliable leftist vote but also a ferocious voice and leader for every cause Democrats hold dear.  By selecting a lesbian activist who is the head of the most prominent pro-abortion organization in the country, Newsom figured he'd floor the gas pedal in a state where Democrats cannot lose and elevate an out-of-state resident who has never held office.  Why?  Because it serves their interests.

Newsom's bottomless cynicism reflected in his appointment of a black, lesbian, Maryland voter to fill remainder of Feinstein's Senate term.  It's impossible to be too cynical about Gavin Newsom, the Brylcreem-topped governor of California who lusts after the Democrats' nomination for president, even as he publicly mouths support for Biden.  This is a man who bedded his best friend's wife, after all.  Caligula looks on in envy at the brazenness of Newsom's designation of Laphonza Butler to fill the remainder of Dianne Feinstein's Senate term, expiring in January 2025.  As a way of mocking the institution, Caligula only joked about appointing his horse Incitatus as consul, a role reserved for senators, while Newsom has actually appointed a longtime Maryland resident and registered voter to represent California in the Senate, a body the Constitution designated to represent that sovereign states in the federal government.  Butler will take a big pay cut to join the Senate, which pays $174,000 for non-leadership solons.  The top-paid executive at Emily's List reportedly earns $950,000, almost five-and-a-half times what a Senator earns, and more than 30 times the average income in the United States.  But don't expect the usual critics of CEO compensation to utter a peep.

Newsom's 'First Black Lesbian' Senate Appointee Immediately Hit With Scandal, Cover-Up.  The recent death of former Sen. Dianne Feinstein left Gov. Gavin Newsom in a predicament.  Would he keep his promise to fill the seat with a black woman even though two white people (Adam Schiff and Katie Porter) are leading the 2024 race for the seat?  As RedState reported, the answer is yes.  Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler, whose only qualifications appear to be working on Kamala Harris' failed 2020 presidential campaign while being a "black lesbian."  Naturally, the California governor is touting the latter.  [Tweet with video clip]  I'm just really glad we select the most powerful people in the country based on race and who they sleep with.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such an approach?  What does merit have to do with governing competently anyway?  Let's ask Newsom, who apparently appointed a Maryland resident to the seat, birthing an immediate scandal.

Gavin Newsom Picks The Perfect Democrat.  Is it really that weird that Laphonza Butler, California Governor Gavin Newsom's pick to replace Diane Feinstein in the Senate, lives in Maryland?  Now, incidentally, this isn't one of those instances where a politician is spending an inordinate amount of time in DC (before leaving office and becoming a lobbyist and making it official).  Newsom's spokesperson confirms that Butler resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is registered to vote in that state.  We're just skipping the part where we pretend senators represent states rather than political parties. [...] At this point, any Democrat who doesn't treat skin color as at least partly determinative of a person's worth is going to be in trouble.  And it's not just moral preening over race.  Butler, Newsom notes, will be the first "lesbian Black woman to join Congress in US history."  In most news pieces on the appointment, we learn who Butler prefers to sleep with before we hear any of her accomplishments.

Newsom's appointment confirms that abortion is the heart of the Democratic Party.  It's normal, if mildly corrupt, for presidents to appoint their top fundraisers to ambassadorships.  It's remarkable that Democrats have transferred one of their top fundraisers to a U.S. Senate seat.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has announced he is appointing Laphonza Butler to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Dianne Feinstein's death.  Butler is one of the leaders of the abortion lobby, and as such she is one of the leading Democratic fundraisers.  She is the president of EMILY's List, which raises money for Democratic women who defend abortion. [Tweet]  "Fundraising juggernaut" is a good description of EMILY's List.  In the prior presidential election, EMILY's List spent $79.6 million.  It's one of the top ideological PACs in spending and fundraising, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  Its affiliated super PAC, called Women Vote!, spent another $47 million in the 2020 cycle.  But EMILY's List isn't merely a fundraising juggernaut.  The group is basically a gatekeeper for the Democratic Party.

California, the Great Destroyer.  California is a one-party state.  There are no statewide Republican elected officeholders.  Progressive Democrats also enjoy a supermajority in both houses of the legislature.  Only 12 of 52 congressional seats are held by Republicans.  And almost all of California leftwing politicians are funded or influenced by Silicon Valley — the richest corridor in civilizational history, with $9 trillion in market capitalization.  In sum, a now broke California became a medieval society of Leftwing ultra-rich and Leftwing ultra-poor.  On one end, there was no longer the skill or expertise to modernize the state.  And on the other, an elite became more interested in dreaming of heaven on earth for itself as it ensured a veritable hell for others.

Newsom to Appoint Laphonza Butler to Fill Feinstein's Senate Seat — She Lives In Maryland.  California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) will appoint Laphonza Butler to fill Feinstein's vacant Senate seat.  "California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint EMILY's List President Laphonza Butler to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, elevating the head of a fundraising juggernaut that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, according to a person familiar with the decision."  Politico reported.  Laphonza Butler lives in Maryland and registered to vote there last year!

A COVID Tyrant For President?  In addition to driving people from his state with policies that become more deranged with every passing year, Newsom was a malevolent pandemic warrior who should have been punished for his offenses.  Voters deserve to know just how vicious he was — and that he remains unrepentant.  It would be hard to argue that any another state mistreated its citizens more than California.  Given the opportunity thanks to the novel coronavirus outbreak, Newsom smoothly tapped into his just-below-the-surface authoritarianism (the same urge to dictate that afflicts nearly every Democrat in the nation).  When he issued his stay-at-home command in March 2020, which the Los Angeles Times called "unprecedented" in "modern California history," it was the first stomp of the heavy boot that Newsom would keep on Californians until February of this year.  Only then did he surrender his self-granted emergency powers — five months after he vetoed a bill that would have limited the authority governors can wield during a declared crisis.

Berkeley Retail Shutting Down Just Like San Francisco.  Rising crime, looting, and tolerance of drug-addled transients taking over the streets has led to an exodus of retail establishments from San Francisco.  Now another Democrat-controlled California city is enjoying the same exodus of retail establishments:  Berkeley.  Here YouTuber Metal Leo looks at streets near Cal Berkeley University, where store after store after store are closed, boarded up or for lease.  [Video clip]  Banks, pharmacies, cinemas, pizza chains: all closed.  The only thing that seems to be open are Starbucks.

California quietly passes bill repealing COVID 'medical misinformation' law.  California legislators have subtly passed a bill that would repeal a law targeting doctors who take a stand against mainstream COVID-19 narratives after previously labeling them as engaging in "medical misinformation."  Assembly Bill 2098, which Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last year, considers medical doctors and surgeons to be guilty of "unprofessional conduct" if they "disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines."  The legislation also subjected physicians found to have violated the law to disciplinary action from the Medical Board of California and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, including potential suspension of medical licenses.

California launches lawsuit against Big Oil, but only wants cash 'damages' not an end to production.  California is alleging a corrupt conspiracy in which fat cat capitalists prioritized profits before people and intentionally deceived the public about looming "catastrophic" climate change consequences they "knew" would manifest as a result of their product's use, but the state isn't even asking the court to prohibit the defendants from continuing this alleged criminal behavior?  Instead, Gavin Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and all the other Machiavellian civil servants will drop the lawfare just as long as the defendants agree to foot the bill for the recent spate of storm-related damages and finance a fund for future losses too?  This sounds eerily similar to... extortion.

The Bay Area is still struggling to recover from 'defund the police' (now they're hoping Texas can help).  Three years after "defund the police" became a BLM rallying cry, San Francisco and other Bay Area cities are still trying to recover from the brief popularity that phrase once had with mayors and city councils.  San Francisco is still down hundreds of police officers and has come up with a new plan to attract more recruits:  Go to Texas.  ["]The San Francisco Police Department is visiting four Texas university campuses through September as part of new recruiting efforts to find candidates outside of California.  For the first time, police officer candidates will be tested outside of California, with a written test, a physical ability test and an oral interview.["] [...] You really have to soak in the comedic aspect of far left San Francisco going to bright red Texas to try to find officers.  For six years, San Francisco had banned business with Texas.

It's Really Time for Parents to Move Their Families Out of California.  If you're a California resident and a parent, you really ought to leave the state now.  On Friday, the California Assembly passed AB 957, which means that a parent who doesn't "affirm" their child's "gender identity" could lose custody of that child.  AB 957 amends the state Family Code to include "a parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity or gender expression as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child."  The bill is now headed for Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk, where he will most certainly sign it.

Why can't this overlap "Pride Month?"
California State Assembly Declares August 'Transgender History Month'.  The California State Assembly voted Wednesday to declare August "Transgender History Month," the first of its kind in the nation.

California Dems Could Remove Visitation Rights for 'Non-Affirming' Parents.  California Democrats are threatening the visitation rights of divorced or separated parents who don't "affirm" their gender-confused child's identity under a last-minute change to a proposal meant to protect children from abusers.  The Democrats have put forward two bills that would change California family law to make "gender affirmation" part of a child's health, safety, and welfare, trying to pass them side-by-side.  The first, which was introduced earlier this year, would allow judges to remove custody from "non-affirming" parents.  The second would force custody judges deciding visitation rights to consider "a parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity or gender expression," according to language added to the bill last week that will take effect if the first proposal passes.

Why wind and solar power are running out of juice.  Alternative energy madness — and that's what it is — has had its biggest impact in California.  But New York and New Jersey have adopted most of that state's mandates.  Sales of new internal combustion vehicles will be banned beginning in 2035 in the states.  All of the electricity sold to retail consumers will have to be "zero-emissions."  Homeowners and building owners will be forced to replace gas- and oil-burning space and water heaters with electric heat pumps.  And, gas stoves will be regulated out of existence.  New York also will soon implement another California import: a carbon "cap-and-invest" program, which will impose a tax on fossil fuels sold by wholesalers and utilities.  The billions of dollars collected each year will provide a green slush fund, allowing the governor and legislators to hand out money to their politically favored cronies, as has so often been the case in the past.  Washington State began its "cap-and-invest" program in January of this year.  Modeled after California's, Governor Jay Inslee promised the program would have "minimal impact, if any.  We are talking about pennies."  Instead, the program has raised gasoline prices — almost 50 cents per gallon so far this year.

"Nonviolent Crime" Is a Myth.  Five days after sustaining serious injuries, a San Francisco store clerk named Yowhannes "John" Tewelde has died.  He was beaten with a baseball bat by a man whom he tried to stop from stealing beer from his store.  Tewelde's death marks yet another homicide in the Bay Area, which, between San Francisco and Oakland, has seen an enormous amount of crime and mayhem in recent years.  The nature of Tewelde's death illustrates an important reality that progressives working to ease up on supposedly nonviolent crimes don't seem to appreciate: even "minor" offenses like retail theft, open-air drug use, and smoking on subway platforms are frequently backed by a threat of violence.  Had Tewelde not intervened, allowing the thief to take what he wished, progressive prosecutors like former San Francisco district attorneys George Gascón and Chesa Boudin probably would have refused to prosecute him, citing the nonviolent nature of the offense.  All we'd have is a lowly shop owner forced to shoulder the cost of a few cheap beers.  No big deal, right?  Wrong.  The decision to ignore the theft would allow an individual who was in truth both willing and able to kill over $10 to remain on the street.  It would be only a matter of time before he did something terrible.

Bay Area Councilman Has Keys, Wallet Stolen While Speaking to Shopkeepers About Safety.  A councilman in California's Bay Area was speaking to shopkeepers about safety when he had his wallet and keys stolen, according to a report from CBS Bay Area.  Reportedly, Emeryville council member Kalimah Priforce rode his bike to Bay Street to spend the afternoon "visiting nearly every store to ask employees about their experience and sense of safety."  "A lot of stores that can't afford private guards, they need panic buttons, a direct line to the police, so they don't actually have to pick up the phone, call the police dispatch," explained Priforce.  While he was at the mall, Priforce phoned police because he discovered his wallet and keys were stolen from his bike bag.

California Dem-led committee advances bill to let killers serving life without parole request re-sentencing.  A bill that would allow killers serving a life sentence without parole to possibly be re-sentenced cleared a major hurdle Friday in California's Democratic-led state Legislature.  The state Assembly Appropriations Committee advanced Senate Bill 94, which now moves to the next phase of voting.  The bill would allow California prison inmates serving a sentence of life without parole (LWOP) for certain crimes to petition for re-sentencing if the offense occurred before June 5, 1990, and the completion of at least 25 years of their sentence.  Those convicted of first-degree murder of a police officer would be exempt.  Those who are re-sentenced would have the opportunity to someday go in front of a parole board, which could deny them release.

Los Angeles (Just Like California) Is Dying A Slow And Painful Death.  Just over a week ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared war on the recent smash-and-grab robbery trend infecting the county's retail stores.  She announced a new regional task force consisting of 22 investigators to focus entirely on curbing the shoplifting phenomenon sweeping Southern California.  Unfortunately, it seems lawless perpetrators did not get the message.  Since the task force — including officers from police departments across the region, along with state and federal support — was assembled, at least three more large group incidents have been reported.  On Tuesday of this past week, a video from the Citizen app showed five masked thieves ransacking a Dior counter inside a Macy's at the Shops of Santa Anita Mall.  They grabbed boxed sets of perfumes, threw them into trash bags, and ran away as onlookers gasped.  In a separate incident, also posted on the Citizen app, a video shows the aftermath of a flash-mob robbery at a Footlocker store on Melrose Avenue, one of the city's most popular shopping districts.

L.A. Mayor Bass:  Lack of Consequences for Crime Isn't Causing Retail Theft, 'Things Like This Happen' if There's Profit.  On Friday's broadcast of "The Issue Is," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass stated that the issue of retail theft in the city has "nothing to do" with a lack of consequences for crime in the city and "things like this happen" when there are profits.

California's Newsom Hints at Legislative Crackdown on Parental Rights.  California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) signaled Monday that Democratic lawmakers are crafting a last-minute legislative crackdown on school districts that alert parents if their child expresses a change in gender identity.  "I'll be meeting with the [assembly speaker and senate leader] this evening, we'll be discussing it," Newsom said during a speech about public school funding where he touted California as pro-parents' rights. "I know that the LGBT [legislative] caucus has some language they're working on.  I haven't had the privilege of looking at it.  It's a work in progress."  Newsom failed to give any further details on the forthcoming proposal.  His impromptu announcement was in response to a reporter who asked him to weigh in on two Southern California school districts that passed policies to notify parents if their children say they are transgender or nonbinary.  Representatives for Newsom and the state's top Democratic legislators did not respond to requests for comment.

Power Vacuum.  California Senate bill 233 [...] which has passed the Senate and is now winding its way through the Assembly — states that all new electric vehicles to be sold in California after 2030 be "bi-directional".  Because the state has decided to essentially go all electric without having the ability to actually provide enough electricity, the climate warriors have gotten a bit creative and now see the millions of EVs in the state as tiny batteries to make up for their incompetence.  Currently, not every EV can send power back to the grid (like home solar panels that ship excess power to their local utility.)  The bill — almost certain to pass because it's stupid and this is California -- would change that.  The bill, however, is only the first step in the process of being able to drain your EV as the actual technology to get the electricity back onto the grid, well, does not actually exist.  As with so many other Golden State climate-related projects, it is based on being able to do it someday... probably... maybe.

A Very Bad Week for Civilization in California.  A group of "up to 30" teens poured into a Nordstrom's store in Topanga, Calif., in a "smash and grab" looting that went off with military precision.  [Tweet with video clip] [...] Dear Californians:  It ain't rocket science figuring out what's happening in your beautiful state.  This is a direct result of lax enforcement of the law and a reluctance of prosecutors and district attorneys to uphold the basic values of civilization.

Gavin Newsom wants to make America Oakland.  The CNN report is just ghastly.  One woman is crying her heart out as she leaves a place she's spent her whole life is.  I should say, "Is forced to leave."  But I also wonder who she's been voting for all these years as things went south.  [Tweet with video clip]  Gangs are targeting Asian families.  We keep hearing that's a problem — a racist problem — but you never hear who's doing it, although we've all seen the videos.  And then, when perpetrators are caught in these racially targeted crimes?  What happens in Newsom's CA to offenders, when they are arrested for RACIST crimes against innocent people, usually elderly, who can't defend themselves?  [Tweet]

California Democrats Play Affirmative Action Games Over Feinstein Senate Seat.  Race-based preferences are taking over the competition for Dianne Feinstein's California Senate seat.  On Thursday, The New York Times revealed Feinstein surrendered power of attorney to her daughter in a report on the 90-year-old senator's failing health.  The longtime legacy lawmaker is unable to make legal decisions of her own while making major legal decisions for the country. [...] If she resigns, Gov. Gavin Newsom has already pledged to appoint a black woman to the seat.  Newsom made the commitment in 2021 after upsetting Democrats by appointing then-Secretary of State Alex Padilla, California's first Latino senator, to replace Kamala Harris after her election to vice president.  It's no coincidence, then, the most vocal supporters of Feinstein's resignation, such as California Rep. Ro Khanna, have endorsed Rep. Barbara Lee in the crowded Senate primary.  In fact, Khanna, who co-chairs Lee's campaign, was the first member of Congress to request Feinstein step down, according to The Hill.

California's new Marxist math.  California has approved new radical K-12 math standards that are openly a vehicle for Marxist ideology.  The stated goal is equity in math learning for non-whites and those from low-income families.  The framework notes that "black, latinx, indigenous, women and poor students" have been underrepresented in the curriculum throughout history."  Equity will be implemented in the curriculum by dumbing down and sugar-coating the lessons and infusing them with political issues and student organizing.

Orwellian or Kafkaesque?  Kafka's brainchildren are recklessly coughing up tyrannic edicts while using for an excuse the artificial hysteria being generated over reasonably normal weather.  The Biden administration has recently announced that all military vehicles will run on batteries as of 2030.  Since the purpose of fighting a war is to not lose, vast quantities of diesel-powered field generators will be needed to keep the caissons rolling along.  Governor Hair Gel of California has followed along by announcing a ban on the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.  The trick with this is to have enough lead time so the victims of such nonsense will have forgotten the original announcement — and will be more surprised than angry when they realize they've been screwed.  As of next January, California's already legislated ban on the sale of gas-powered gardening equipment will take effect.

Salesforce CEO Warns San Francisco's Downtown [is] "Never Going Back To The Way It Was".  San Francisco is a 'hellhole' that epitomizes everything wrong with how progressives govern cities.  That's because Democrats in City Hall believe that most criminals are victims — don't arrest them — which allows for open-air drug markets, homelessness, and violent crime to thrive.  Due to failed social justice reform policies, the business conditions in downtown San Francisco have become challenging.  Furthermore, the ongoing structural decline in demand for office space has thwarted any potential economic recovery in the area.  [Tweet with video clip]  Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce, the city's largest employer and anchor tenant in its tallest skyscraper, understands the metro area is in trouble.

How does the city bounce back from this?  One of the enduring mysteries of life is how people and societies can see disaster coming and do nothing to avoid it. [...] We are seeing this principle in real time with the collapse of cities like San Francisco and Portland.  They have been liberal bastions for so long that the idea of bucking the Democrat Party is unthinkable, no matter how bad things get.  And they are getting very very bad in both cities.  San Francisco has produced some of the most powerful politicians in California.  Off the top of my head, I can name the current governor, Gavin Newsom, the current VP, Kamala Harris, and of course Senator Diane Feinstein.  Many of the most powerful people in the legislature hail or hailed from the city, and the tradition of moving up the ladder from SF to the heights of power is ancient in political terms.  When the Democrat Party took its radical Left turn the city moved with it — led it, in fact — and the results have been disastrous.

The Classic Psychology Text That Predicted Today's Urban Decay.  It's a question that most Americans who follow the news ask themselves daily:  "How can the residents of so many of the nation's largest cities keep supporting local officials who tolerate the ongoing destruction of their communities?" [...] [Why ...] did San Franciscans elect a mayor, London Breed, whose obvious reluctance to crack down on criminal behavior has since forced the city's largest mall to close, two of its best hotels to declare bankruptcy, and tens of thousands of high-earning taxpayers to move away? [...] And why, in 2022, did Los Angelinos pick another progressive Democrat to be their next mayor, rather than the candidate who promised to finally do something about the city's exploding homelessness problem?

Another day, another business closure in San Francisco (you'll never guess why).  La Cocina opened in the Tenderloin in 2021.  The concept was a single space with a bunch of different food options.  It was always intended to be a temporary arrangement but not quite this temporary. [...] As with every other business that has closed this year, there are multiple reasons.  For one thing, the decline of foot traffic thanks to people working from home means there just isn't the lunch rush there might have been prior to the pandemic.  But the city's other well-known problems also played a role.

California Bill Would Let Judges 'Rectify Racial Bias' in Sentencing, for 'Reparations'.  The California state legislature is considering a bill that would allow judges to use sentencing in criminal cases to "rectify racial bias" in the criminal justice system as a whole.  The bill, AB 852, passed the State Assembly in May and is currently going through the committee process in the State Senate.  It notes that existing law already allows defendants to challenge their sentences as racially biased, but it would add that judges can consider race in sentencing.

A Covid Postmortem.  When the pandemic began, researchers in California were the first in the United States to analyze the threat accurately and offer sensible advice, urging focused protection for the elderly, while warning that school closures and lockdowns were futile and destructive.  But instead of heeding their expertise, the progressives dominating the state's public and private institutions launched campaigns to defame, ostracize, and silence them.  These experts, like so many other fleeing Californians, had to leave the state to find leaders who embraced scientific analysis and rational policies.  No other state infringed upon individual liberties more zealously.  California was the first to lock down and the last to end its state of emergency (at the end of February of this year).  It closed not only schools and businesses but also playgrounds, parks, and beaches.  A police boat in Malibu chased down a solitary surfer so that he could be arrested and handcuffed; another surfer was fined $1,000 for endangering precisely no one.  Church gatherings were outlawed for nearly a year, until the Supreme Court finally overturned the ban.  Other courts had to intervene to keep public schools in San Diego and Los Angeles from mandating vaccines for students.  California suffered one of the nation's worst spikes in unemployment during the pandemic, and it was one of the slowest to recover economically, despite the increased profits flowing to Silicon Valley.

California Is Set to Pass Laws Allowing for State-Sanctioned Kidnapping and Required 'Affirmation' of Gender-Confused Kids.  My home state of California is Bizzarroland, totally over the edge.  It was bad enough, but now it has crossed the Rubicon and blown up the bridge and burned the boats.  The Golden State is set to take away parental rights and create a police state where a court and judge must (not may) affirm a child's chosen made-up gender "identity."  But that same California requires permission for a minor to get a tattoo.  Make sense of it.  I can't.  Soon in California, if the Democrat super-majority gets its way, confused children can be taken from a parent(s) and chemically castrated and mutilated at the minor's request.  Think that sounds far-fetched?  It isn't.  Assemblymember named Wendy Carrillo is the author of AB 665.  Eight days ago, during open debate and discussion on her bill, she made the gallery erupt in spontaneous laughter when she said:  ["]We would never move policy that seeks to separate children from their parents.["]  The AP and USA Today are all in for the left, so, of course, they published articles claiming the arguments against are overblown.  No, they are not.  AB 665 will alter the legal landscape and specific language.  What does AB 665 say and ultimately do?  It's the state of California amending the Family Law Code to legally kidnap confused children.

The Endless Lies Democrats Tell In Defense Of Their Failed Californian Utopia.  Democrats and the corporate media in general have invested an intense amount of energy into a propaganda campaign that paints California as the central pillar of the US economy and American governance.  According to them, California is a socialist Utopia essentially holding the rest of the nation up on its shoulders, and without such blue states we would spiral into oblivion.  For the sake of focus, I will only break down California's mismanagement here.  Specifically, I think it's important to debunk many of the false fiscal claims made by Gavin Newsom; the same claims which are spreading like a cancer into leftist talking points all over the internet.

California Residents Fear New Bill Gives Mental Health Professionals Authority To 'Emancipate' 12 Year Olds From Parents.  California residents fear mental health professionals are one step closer to giving custody of minors 12 and older to the state after lawmakers advanced a bill on Tuesday that aligns with existing laws for children to receive certain services without parental consent.  On Tuesday, lawmakers in the state's Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Assembly Bill 665, which gives minors over the targeted age group authority to receive mental health services from counselors and therapists who could allegedly sign off on children checking into state-run youth shelters as long they provide evidence of serious physical or mental harm to themselves or others, or if they're a victim of incest or child abuse.  Although the bill's text does not explicitly contain language that changes the state's child welfare system or removal processes, some Californians allege the law — authored by Democrats Assembly Member Wendy Carrillo and State Senator Scott Wiener — indicates "parental separation and emancipation of minors."

Gavin Newsom's shadow campaign for president.  Democratic governors don't tend to jump at the chance for a sit-down interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.  They also don't tend to do tours of states they consider hostile to their own, like Florida.  But then there's California's Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom . He prefers the national stage to dealing with the rampant dysfunction happening in his own state.  And while Newsom claims he isn't running for president, the evidence suggests he actually is.  True, Newsom may not be mounting a primary campaign against a sitting president of his own party who has announced he is running again.  But Newsom is clearly running a shadow campaign just in case President Joe Biden doesn't fulfill his pledge to become the Democratic 2024 presidential nominee.

State Senator Tells Parents to Flee His Own State Amid Law That Would Take Kids Away From Non-'Affirming' Parents.  A California state senator told a gathered crowd of parents at the California Senate Judicial Committee to flee the state on June 13 during a hearing on a bill which would put parents who don't affirm their child's "gender transition" in danger of child abuse charges.  Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, is the lone Republican on California's Senate Judiciary Committee, and he has served in the California Legislature for 11 years.  He was also the lone voice warning against language in AB 957, which a Democratic senator had amended on June 5 to rewrite the California Family Code to list "gender affirmation" alongside a child's need for "health, safety, and welfare."

California Bill Would Charge Any Parent Who Doesn't Affirm Transgenderism With 'Child Abuse'.  A recently amended California bill would add "affirming" the sexual transition of a child to the state's standard for parental responsibility and child welfare — making any parent who doesn't affirm transgenderism for their child guilty of abuse under California state law.  AB 957 passed California's State Assembly on May 3, but a co-sponsor amended it after hours in California's State Senate on June 6.  Assembly Member Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, wrote the bill and introduced it on Feb. 14.  State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, co-sponsored it.  Wilson's child identifies as transgender.  Originally, AB 957 required courts to consider whether a child's parents were "gender-affirming" in custody cases.  Wiener's amendment completely rewrites California's standard of child care.

New Commiefornia Bill Would Take Custody Of Children Whose Parents Don't Give Them Sex Change Operations.  A newly revised California bill would treat parents' refusal to "affirm" their child's gender identity as a violation of health, safety, and welfare in the context of custody disputes.  The bill, which has already passed the State Assembly, would require judges adjudicating such disputes over transgender-identifying children to favor the parent who "affirms" the child's preferred identity.  [Video clip]

California to fall far short of energy needed to power EV mandate, report says.  California will fall 20% short of generating the necessary electricity to meet the state's 100 percent electric vehicle mandates, according to a new report released by the California free-market think tank, the Pacific Research Institute.  "California's green energy mandates will require more energy from the electricity grid instead of fossil fuels, making it less likely that the grid can generate the necessary power," Dr. Wayne Winegarden and Kerry Jackson, the study's authors, said in a press release.  "These policies jeopardize California's energy security and, without a miracle leap in technology, are setting us up for future energy shortages."  Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order in 2020 mandating that all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in California starting in 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles.

Time for the Elephant to Use Its Tusks.  [Scroll down]  California's progressive Governor Brylcreem, silver spoon wedged firmly in cheek above his pencil neck, somehow manages the political trifecta of being unmistakably fascist, oily, and blow-dried.  All of this makes him a heartthrob for the (D) electorate and a genuine threat to win the presidency, whether in 2024 or 2028.  From his "nation state of California" pretensions to his homeless industrial complex; from his corrupt deals with China to Sacramento's proposed trillions in "reparations" for non-slaves; from his constant racial scapegoating of white men and fear and loathing of Republicans to California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) registering illegal aliens to vote; from his maskless bacchanals bursting the mercury on the hypocrisy meter to his unfortunate gamine of a wife feeling compelled to testify about an assignation of some sort with a hoary, encrusted Harvey Weinstein, this ridiculous fop and poseur of a governor and the horrifically degraded state of California are assuredly a sneak preview into America's near and increasingly [dismal] future if America doesn't pull back from the cliff's edge right now.

New California Law Will Base Electricity Bills on Income Level.  A new law in California will force those who make more money to pay more for their electricity.  Under the new rules, higher-income earners will pay seven times more than low-income earners. [...] Customers will see the new changes starting in 2025.

California Advances Bill To Help Shoplifters Steal.  Shoplifting in California may get a lot easier, after the state Senate passed a controversial bill on May 31 that would make it illegal for store employees to confront thieves.  SB 553, authored by Democrat Senator David Cortese (San Jose), requires employers to maintain violent incident logs, provide active shooter and shoplifter training, and to discard policies requiring workers to confront suspected active shoplifters, the Epoch Times reports.

Radio Free America.  [Scroll down]  Look at what the nation's largest home insurer, State Farm, just did.  They dropped California, no longer writing new property insurance policies.  In our politically correct world, State Farm cited rising construction costs as a prime factor, but that also would apply to Florida, New York, and many other places.  The real reason can only be their loss history in general, and fraud in particular.  This has affected State Farm's ability to lay off exposure to the huge reinsurance market that all insurance companies access.  Homelessness, lawlessness, and overly pro-consumer courts are bankrupting not just insurance companies, but businesses large and small.

You Knew It Was Coming: CA Law Would Make It Child Abuse to Not Affirm Your Kid's 'Gender Identity'.  You knew a bill like this was coming, and you knew it would probably emanate from the California legislature because while the Golden State state crumbles, its leaders spend most of their waking hours obsessing over transgenderism and what kind of car you drive.  AB 957, the "Family law: gender identity" bill, passed California's State Assembly on May 3, but radical state Senator Scott Wiener (D-SF) added an amendment on June 6 that would change the state's standard of the well-being of a minor to "include a parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child."  In other words, you're guilty of child abuse if you refuse to call your son "Jane" and buy him dresses.  Authorities could take your kid away if you don't bend the knee.

California Bill Would Classify Not Affirming Child's Transgenderism As 'Child Abuse'.  A recently amended California bill would classify not affirming a child's gender identity by one or both parents as "child abuse."  AB 957 was introduced into the California legislature by Assemblymember Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) and state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).  The bill rewrites much of the state's family law and classifies "a parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child."  The bill amends Section 3011 of the Family Code, which deals with child custody disputes, and requires that a court determining the "best interests" of the child must consider affirmation of transgender identity.  If a parent were to deny the child's "gender identity," it would be a violation of the child's health, safety, and welfare — equivalent to child abuse.  Because the bill changes the definition of what constitutes the "health, safety, and welfare" of a child, any organization interacting with children — including schools, churches, and hospitals — would be required to affirm gender transitions in minors.

California Bill Would Redefine 'Infertility' To Give Men Access to Pregnancy Treatments.  California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would redefine the inability of men to get pregnant as "infertility" and entitle them to insurance-covered fertility treatments.  The legislation, which passed in the Senate late last month and is about to be taken up by the Assembly, would require employer-sponsored insurance plans to cover in vitro fertilization, including implantation in pregnancy surrogates.  Supporters of the legislation have touted it as an overdue step toward "fertility equality" for LGBT people.

This is the equivalent of legalizing shoplifting.
Bill to Stop Employees Confronting Shoplifters Passed by California Senate.  Lawmakers in California are hoping to push through controversial legislation that would ban retail staff from stopping thieves stealing from their stores.  Senate Bill 553, which was submitted by State Senator Dave Cortese, has been passed by the State Senate and will now progress to policy committees in the State Assembly.  Cortese hopes the proposed law will prevent workplace violence and protect staff from being forced by their employers to step-in during robberies.  But some store bosses are furious about the plans, with the California Retailers Association mocking the move as an open invitation for thieves "to come in and steal."

California Senate Approves $300 Weekly Checks for Unemployed Illegals.  The California Senate on Tuesday voted to pay $300 weekly checks to unemployed illegal immigrants even as the state faces a roughly $31.5 billion deficit and mass illegal immigration.  Democratic state senators passed Senate Bill 227 by Sen. María Elena Durazo (D.) with a 30-7 vote, sending the measure to the Assembly for approval.  The legislation would offer undocumented aliens up to 20 weeks of unemployment benefits if they meet minimal work requirements.  California's unemployment insurance fund, which was defrauded of some $31 billion during the COVID-19 pandemic, would be in charge of dispensing the checks.  California employers are on the hook for the fund's $20 billion debt in the form of higher payroll taxes that threaten employee-heavy small businesses and restaurants already devastated by California Democrats' strict COVID-19 lockdowns.

California Lawmakers Will Honor Anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Member.  California lawmakers plan to honor a member of the "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" despite backlash over the Los Angeles Dodgers also honoring the anti-Catholic drag group.  The "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" is an organization of men who dress in drag queen versions of Catholic religious habits and claim to have a "ministry," according to its website.  The California State Legislature's LGBTQ Caucus will honor Michael Williams, a member of the "Sisters" who goes by "Sister Roma" and uses "she/her" pronouns.  "For more than three decades, Sister Roma has been one of the most outspoken and globally recognized members of San Francisco's Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence," the caucus said in an announcement about its 2023 "Pride Honorees."

Government Corruption Has Succeeded In Turning America Into A Banana Republic.  Are you the type of person who works hard, saves money, and invests with the intent of accumulating lasting wealth?  If so, you've likely noticed that things don't quite add up between what you're regularly told about how the economy and financial markets work and what you actually experience. [...] To be perfectly frank, prices are corrupted by governments for the purpose of extracting capital from the economy and rearranging society in strange and unnatural ways.  In California, for instance, Assembly Bill No. 205, which was approved by Governor Newsom in 2022, requires power companies to charge customers a base fee that escalates by income bracket.  A recent proposal, would forcibly compel high income earners to pay a base fee that's over 400 percent more than low income earners.  This is in addition to the actual use rate.  Is it fair and just to penalize people with high incomes?  Does the government know how to spend money better than the people who earned it?  Sacramento thinks so.  As does Washington through its execution of federal income tax policies.

The Left Has Pushed the Envelope.  California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit.  Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar "reparations" payout to the state's Black residents.  No one has any idea where the money for that would come from.  No one can define who would qualify.  No one can explain why a state that never allowed slavery eight generations ago now owes selected Californians billions of dollars it does not have.  One of the reparations board leaders asserts Blacks might be willing to accept an "installment" plan of payments.

Gov. Newsom reportedly floated Oprah as a potential replacement for Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  California Governor Gavin Newsom has floated appointing media mogul Oprah Winfrey if Sen. Dianne Feinstein's seat becomes vacant amid deepening health concerns.  According to the Associated Press, Winfrey is among the names that Newsom is considering appointing should Feinstein willingly leave her seat.  The 89-year-old California Senator returned to Washington on May 10, after a shingles diagnosis and treatment that kept her out of action for 10 weeks.  And while the thought of slotting in a celebrity with no political experience into the high-profile seat may seem random, there may be some planning behind it.  In 2021, Newsom promised to appoint a Black woman to Feinstein's post if her seat became vacant.

Newsom Melts Down As Target Pulls Some 'Pride' Products Amid Outrage: 'Doesn't Stop Here'.  The governor of the largest state in the country is lashing out on Twitter at the CEO of Target over its decision to remove some of its "Pride" collection products.  On Tuesday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) tweeted, "CEO of Target Brian Cornell selling out the LGBTQ+ community to extremists is a real profile in courage."  "This isn't just a couple stores in the South.  There is a systematic attack on the gay community happening across the country.  Wake up America," he continued.  Finally, the tweet took a bizarre, fearmongering turn as Newsom claimed, "This doesn't stop here.  You're black?  You're Asian?  You're Jewish?  You're a woman?  You're next."  [Tweet]

Christian Broadcasters Join Pushback Against California's "Misinformation" Censorship Law.  The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) has announced that it has joined a lawsuit against a law in California, which its proponents say is aimed against online hate speech — but which is actually simple censorship.  The NRB, an association of Christian communicators, in this way joined other plaintiffs — The Babylon Bee, Tim Pool, and Minds, Inc. — in a bid to block the implementation of the law, AB 587.  Proposed by Democrat Jesse Gabriel and signed last September by California Governor Gavin Newsom, it mandates that companies behind social media platforms report what is deemed as hate speech, disinformation, radicalization, extremism, harassment and foreign political influence to the authorities, in this case, the California Attorney General.  The law envisages fines of up to $15,000 per day for each violation for those who fail to comply.

The Absurdities of Our Age.  How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?  The state currently faces a $31 billion annual deficit — and it's climbing.  The state's $100 billion high-speed rail project is inert, a veritable Stonehenge of concrete monoliths without a foot of track laid down.  California's income tax rates are already the highest in the nation.  Its sales taxes, electricity rates, and gas taxes and prices are among the steepest in the country.  And for what?  Crime, homelessness, and medieval decay characterize the once great downtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  It is now not safe to walk alone in any major California city after dark.  Shoplifting and smash-and-grab theft are no longer treated as real crimes.  The result is the mass flight of brand stores from our downtowns and inner cities, with all the accustomed cries of "racism," even as racist public prosecutors pick and choose whether to indict the arrested on the basis of race.  California infrastructure, once the best in the county, is now among the worst.  Decaying and crowded freeways, inadequate water storage, and pot-holed streets are the new norm.  Once robust gas, oil, mining, and timber industries are nearly inert.  The state's public schools are dysfunctional.

Gavin Newsom Backtracks: Open to Cash Reparations for Slavery, After All.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) now says he is open to the idea of cash reparations for slavery, after he indicated several days ago he was opposed to the idea, which was recommended by his own task force on the issue. [...] Fox News Digital reported that Newsom was declining to back the committee's forthcoming recommendations, saying that confronting the legacy of slavery "is about much more than cash payments."  Now, however, after a predictable media storm and backlash from the black activists whose hopes he had raised with the reparations task force, Newsom is moving back in the opposite direction.

The Counterattack of Reason.  The nonsensical notion fanned by California's Governor Gavin Newsom for votes that a state which never had slavery should compel those who never owned slaves to pay those who never were slaves, seems to have hit the rocks of reality.  The reparations panel he installed to look into this was endorsing payments as high as $1.2 million for every black California resident.  At this point, looking at a huge budget deficit, not incidentally due to the Democrat mismanagement of his state, Newsom blinked.  It was reported that he denied he meant "cash reparations" and then, in the face of blowback from disappointed grifters, his spokesman denied that he meant what had been reported.

CA Gov. Newsom Manages to Turn a Massive Budget Surplus Into a $32 Billion Deficit — in Just One Year.  [F]ew other states are running at a deficit, and at $306 billion California has the largest budget of them all.  Some critics argue that the fault lies with the state's progressive tax code which relies on wealthy taxpayers whose income fluctuates with the performance of the stock market.  You could also argue that, like our president, Newsom loves to spend but doesn't seem to be so good at math.  He proposed a variety of financial moves that he says will solve the problem: [...] Of course, the deficit has grown another $10 billion since he announced those plans, so their effectiveness is questionable.

California Gov. Newsom [is] Less Than Enthusiastic About Reparations Checks.  Legal Insurrection recently reported that the California Reparations Task Force formally recommended that the state offer payments of up to $1.2 million to every qualifying Black resident.  Apparently, the thought of writing checks that exceed the California budget was more than super-progressive Governor Gavin Newsom could take.  He has declined to endorse the reparations panel's payment plans.

Reparations: A Slow Motion Riot.  The California reparations controversy continues to spin out of control as we head for either a major confrontation or hyperinflation.  It appears that Governor Gavin Newsom will reject the latest proposal, but expectations have already been stoked to the point where politicians will have no graceful exit.  Less than two months ago it appeared that the California Reparations Task Force was set to recommend reparations payments in the amount of 640 billion dollars (despite California's total budget of less than half that amount).  That number has since increased to 800 billion dollars in what is reported as a "cautious" estimate.  Activists have denounced even this amount as insufficient while demanding 200 million dollars per person.  It is apparent that the demands will only go higher.  The numbers are staggering.  More staggering is the callousness with which those that know better throw these numbers around with little regard for math, morality, or realism of any kind.

Dems starting to discover that reparations demands are a political trap.  In California, which likes to see itself as a trend-maker for the rest of the nation, the Democrat-dominated Legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill, AB-3121, establishing a "Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans," effective October 2, 2020.  Nine members were to be appointed, 5 by the governor and 2 each by the leaders of the state house and senate.  But despite the law's mandate that "Members shall be drawn from diverse backgrounds to represent the interests of communities of color throughout the state," 8 of the 9 members were African Americans — which means that they also had a personal stake in the outcome of their deliberations.  Otherwise known as a "conflict of interest," as Daniel J. Flynn points out.  Is it any surprise, then, that the task force ended up with a set of recommendations that would bankrupt the state, costing an estimated $800 billion, two-and-a-half times the state's annual budget?

Shoplifters at San Francisco Target strike every 10 minutes.  Workers in a San Francisco Target store say they are being shoplifted every ten minutes, as the city faces an exodus of retail stores due to theft.  Employees say they have watched individuals actively 'shoveling' goods into bags before making off.  Multiple products including shampoo, deodorant, toothbrushes and some foods are now kept behind barriers that require staff to open them.

San Francisco's Doom Loop: What it's like to live in a city that no longer believes its problems can be fixed.  [Scroll down]  On Market, near 6th, a security guard stood in front of Blick art supply.  He'd just ejected a man who had been smoking fentanyl inside the store, a man his bosses suggested he should refer to as "an unhoused guest."  The guard, who described himself to me as "a cis white male who stands six feet tall," had previously worked security one block east at the Anthropologie.  But that, he said, was just for show.  He wasn't even supposed to try to stop shoplifters who, at other stores on Market Street, filled up bags, or sometimes even suitcases, with food they needed to feed themselves or their families or merchandise to sell on the black market on Mission Street.  But here, the guard told me, his co-workers' pay depended on sales.  His job was to make it tolerable for customers to shop.

Reparations Derangement Syndrome.  A panel in California, where rotten public policy ideas metastasize like a fungus growing in dark, slimy conditions, has approved paying reparations to descendants of slaves.  It is impossible to overstate just how insane this is.  The reparations task force, appointed by Boy Gov. Gavin Newsom, voted Saturday to recommend the state pay out as much as $800 billion to the descendants of enslaved or free black people who were in the U.S. by the end of the 19th century.  That's 2.5 times the size of California's annual budget.  Recipients could rake in as much as $1.2 million each.  Or more.  Much more.  Because San Francisco's reparations advisory committee has recommended the city's qualified African American residents be given a $5 million lump sum.

California Task Force Approves 1.1 Million In Reparations Per Black Person, Black Complain They Want 200 Million Each.  California's reparations task force has approved recommendations which could give black residents $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and discrimination.  California's reparations task force has approved recommendations which could give black residents $1.2 million each as compensation for slavery and discrimination.  [Video clip]

California reparations panel approves payments of up to $1.2 million to every Black resident.  The California Reparations Task Force formally recommended that the state offer payments of up to $1.2 million to every qualifying Black resident.  The task force held a public meeting in Oakland, California, on Saturday and voted on the final set of recommendations to be sent to the state's legislators.  The nine-member panel called on the state to offer its Black residents a formal apology in addition to the payments.  "Reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they have the potential to address long-standing racial disparities and inequalities," Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said after attending the meeting.

California Reparations: "Justice-Involved" Californians O.J. Simpson And Bill Cosby To Finally Get Their Just Deserts.  A California panel approved recommendations on Saturday that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to Black residents to address past injustices.  The proposals to state legislators are the nation's most sweeping effort to devise a program of reparations.  The nine-member Reparations Task Force, whose work is being closely monitored by politicians, historians and economists across the country, produced a detailed plan for how restitution should be handled to address a myriad of racist harms, including housing discrimination, mass incarceration and unequal access to health care.  Created through a bill signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in the wake of the nationwide racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the panel has spent more than a year conducting research and holding listening sessions from the Bay Area to San Diego.

California reparations task force votes to approve restitution plan.  California's reparations task force voted on Saturday in favor of a reparations program, the first of its kind in the United States.  The committee of nine members voted to give final approval a plan with detailed explanations for how restitution should be made to victims of systemic racism, housing discrimination, mass incarceration, and health care inequities.  The plan now goes to state legislature for approval.  If passed, it could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to black residents of the Golden State.

Activists demand higher payments from California reparations task force: '$200 million' per person.  Activists on Saturday demanded that the state of California pay millions of dollars to each Black resident in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery and subsequent discrimination, dismissing the mammoth proposals from California's reparations task force as too little.  The demands were made at a highly explosive official meeting of the task force, which was created by state legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020.  The committee was hearing comments from the public as it considers final recommendations to submit to the California Legislature, which will then decide whether to implement the measures and send them to Newsom's desk to be signed into law.  An activist identified as Reverend Tony Pierce was one of the most outspoken people at the gathering, making reference to the famous "40 acres and a mule" promise to former slaves when he took the podium.

The modern corrupt legislative way of doing business: Know nothing, fund everything!  This week the Democrat-controlled legislature of the state of California passed a bill allocating $150 million dollars from which cash-strapped hospitals could obtain loans to help pay their bills. [...] Loans will have to be repaid in six years, though it will be possible for the loan to be forgiven if the hospital meets certain requirements.  In another news report describing the process in which this bill was approved and passed included one particular quote that illustrated magnificently the modern manner in which almost all American legislatures now function, from small city councils to Congress in Washington, regardless of party.  As stated by one state senator during preliminary hearings before the bill passed:  "We don't know how many hospitals, we don't know which hospitals.  We don't know which areas those hospitals are (in), we don't know anything. [...]"

California reparations panel hints at $1.2 million payments to each Black resident.  Economists advising California's task force for reparations have estimated that it will cost $1.2 million per Black resident, paid over a lifetime.  California is one of multiple states debating the feasibility of economic reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were victimized by the Atlantic slave trade and its legacy, despite the fact California was designated as a free state when it joined the Union.  The push for reparations gained major momentum in 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, but it remains an economically and culturally controversial topic.  California, which frequently makes national headlines for experimental progressive policies, has recently reached an economic estimate.

California's Public School Exodus.  No issue is more pressing in California than education.  In late October, the state released scores for the first post-Covid-shutdown state standardized test, conducted earlier last year.  The results were horrendous.  Less than half of all students who took the Smarter Balanced test — 47.1 percent — met the state standard in English language arts, down 4 percentage points from 2018-19.  One-third of students met the standard in math, down 6.5 percentage points.  Only 16 percent of black students and 9.7 percent of English learners met standards in math.  Not only did test scores plummet; the state's chronic absenteeism rate has also skyrocketed.  The no-show rate leapt from 14.3 percent in 2020-21 to 30 percent in 2021-22.

Nordstrom closing 2 San Francisco stores, cites 'dynamics' of downtown area.  Nordstrom will close both of its downtown San Francisco stores in the coming months, citing the "dynamics" of the downtown market as the region continues to see a rash of retail thefts by brazen thieves.  In a memo to employees, Chief Stores Officer Jamie Nordstrom said the company will not renew its lease for its San Francisco Centre Nordstrom store and the Market Street Rack store across the street. [...] The Westfield mall, where the downtown Nordstrom is located, and its owner, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, said the closures "underscores the deteriorating situation in Downtown San Francisco," the San Francisco Standard reported.  "A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area," a mall spokesperson said.

The Real Gavin Newsom.  In 2004, Newsom was elected mayor of San Francisco and instantly made national news by "authorizing city officials to issue same-sex marriage licenses, in defiance of state law."  That was certainly another useful trait:  He had no qualms about breaking the law.  In 2009, Newsom took his first shot at running for governor of California.  Failing at that, in 2011, he ran for and won the office of lieutenant governor under Jerry Brown.  Yet another useful trait:  Newsom knows all about hanging onto political coattails.  Both Brown and Newsom were re-elected in 2014.  Since Brown couldn't run again in 2018, Tikkanen observed, "Newsom coasted to victory" in the general election and took office in 2019.  One of Newsom's first executive orders as governor was to do away with the death penalty.

West Hollywood Had the Genius Idea to Replace Cops With Safety Ambassadors and It's Not Working Out Too Well.  Notoriously liberal West Hollywood had the brilliant idea of replacing police officers with unarmed "safety ambassadors."  Let's take a peek at how that's worked out during an assault in progress.  [Video clip]

San Francisco Ends Boycott of 30 States with Conservative Laws after Limitations Proved Ineffective, Costly.  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to end a boycott of 30 states that passed conservatives laws after the rule proved costly and ineffective.  The board voted 7-4 to repeal a 2016 law that prohibited city employees from traveling to or doing business with companies in states that passed conservative laws.  The board of supervisors first enacted the law in an effort to punish states that had enacted what it viewed as restrictions on LGBT rights after the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.  Since 2015, the board had amended the law to include states that, in its view, had limited voting rights and abortion access.  "It's not achieving the goal we want to achieve," said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, the sponsor of the legislation to repeal the boycott.  "It is making our government less efficient."

Another day, another store closing in San Francisco (actually two).  Earlier this month I wrote about San Francisco's flagship Whole Foods supermarket which announced it was closing after just one year because of high theft and security issues for employees who worked there.  Today, SFGate reports another store downtown is closing after two decades. [...] Anthropologie didn't say why it was closing.  Is it inflation?  Was it the pandemic and the subsequent urban doom loop?  Or did it have to do with retail theft and threats against employees from deranged street people?  The reality is it could be all three at once but don't discount theft as a big factor.  San Francisco leads the nation in property crime.

DA accused of 'extreme departure from California law' with charges in 5-year-old girl's murder.  A radical California DA is under fire for going easy on three gangbangers charged with shooting a 5-year-old girl through the heart and killing her earlier this month.  Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price declined to add gun and gang enhancements to murder raps against the suspects — a "staggering" move which could significantly lessen their sentences.  "Not filing gun and gang enhancements in a case like this is an extreme departure from California criminal law practice," veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor Jason Lustig told The [New York] Post.  "It's extreme."  The Berkeley Scanner first reported the lack of enhancements alongside basic murder charges and called it a "break in precedent" and the "first time anything like it has happened in Alameda County" in such a serious case.

CA musing on mandating your EV be able to help power the grid.  This news is going to go in the Does California EVER Think Anything Through file, because I have seen no clear-cut proof that they do. [...] In a twisted way, this makes sense for a state that already can't keep the lights on — use all those lovely, honkin' yuge batteries in EVs sitting in driveways to take the load off the grid (vehicle-to-grid/V2G) or help consumers either keep their own electric bills down or function during an outage by powering their house with the Tesla in the driveway (vehicle-to-home/V2H).  As CA legislators think, "If it works for 5 people, we can make everyone do it."  What doesn't make sense is, again, CA can't keep the lights on.  Vicious circle.  For your car battery to be charged enough to run the house or help take the load off a failing grid, it has to be charged/juiced up to discharge.

California Goes Full Communist: Utilities to Base What They Charge on How Much You Make.  The state of California is implementing full Marxism before our very eyes under the guise of "equity."  And so now there can be no possible doubt if there ever was for anyone:  instituting Communism has been what "equity" initiatives have been about all along.  Now three of its most powerful utility companies are saying that they're going to charge based not on how much of their product was used, but on how much money the user makes.  In simpler times, if you bought something, you paid for it.  Rich or poor, tall or short, black or white, female or male, wise or foolish, everyone paid the same amount for a product.  But in our more enlightened era, we know how unjust that really is.  It deprives the poor of access to vital goods and services, and that injustice must be redressed.

California Electric Bills Will Be Based On How Much You Earn.  What's next, a proposal for supermarkets that can charge you based on your income for bread and eggs?  Also, Best Buy should charge you for a new phone based on your earnings.  Airline tickets?  There can be three tiers based on earnings.  Not that it matters how much California utilities charge for power that they can't deliver anyway to people fleeing the state as fast as they can.  If you like your Communism, you can keep your Communism.

CA Rep. Kiley Introduces Constitutional Amendment Requiring Election of U.S. Senators.  [Senator] Feinstein's term is up in 2024, and she's said she's not seeking re-election (though there was some confusion around that statement). [...] If Feinstein resigns before her term ends, under California law Gov. Gavin Newsom would have the power to appoint a replacement to serve until the next general election.  Newsom already promised to appoint a black woman to the seat if Feinstein resigns before 2024.  Since Lee (a black woman) has already declared her candidacy and has powerful endorsements, Newsom would be under massive pressure to appoint her.  Newsom already appointed one of the state's senators, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-because of course), and he likely relishes the idea of being able to appoint another since he uses them as political patronage jobs and ways to gain DEI brownie points.  California Republicans are getting weary of all of this appointing, which makes the climb toward electoral relevance in the state even more difficult.  Freshman Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) has now introduced a Constitutional Amendment providing that "U.S. Senators, like Members of the House, must always be elected rather than appointed."

The Editor says...
If the governor has "already promised to appoint a black woman to the seat," isn't that premeditated racial discrimination?

California Hits the Gas on Its Way to Failed Commie Statehood.  [Gavin] Newsom began his political career in San Francisco, the city that spawned bottom-feeding haters of liberty like Dianne Feinstein, Granny Boxwine Pelosi, and the cackling weirdo who is currently one heartbeat away from the presidency, Kamala Harris.  Under normal circumstances, the governor's vibe wouldn't affect so much of what goes on in the state.  The Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu Plague, however, gave Democrat governors like Newsom a taste of tyrannical power that they have been reluctant to give up.  The Golden State is now very much a reflection of its Soviet-esque chief executive.

Welcome to Gavin Newsom's California, Where the Looting Is Easy.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has eyes on running for president if Joe Biden somehow moves out of the way.  It's why Newsom has been attacking red states, and in particular, Florida, trying to pick a fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis.  He's hoping that will up his national profile. [...] What's funny is that places like Florida are doing far better than his state.  It's why people have fled California and other states like it by the hundreds of thousands.  He's spending a lot of money to attack other places while he doesn't seem to [care] about the mess that he and other Democrats have made in the Golden State.  Let's take a look at what he leaves behind whenever he leaves town — a completely out-of-control state, one which residents are fleeing.

California Quietly Pushes Scary New Law — The State Could Take Kids Away From "Non-Affirming" Parents.  California claims to be at the front of the progressive movement, and Gov. Gavin Newsom believes his state sets a precedent the entire country should follow.  Newsom has made these remarks numerous times in the past, and we'll likely hear them a lot more often if he runs for President in 2024.  "Turning America into Cali" might be his rallying cry.  But several million parents won't be on board with what they're trying to do in the Golden State now.  Currently, California lawmakers are considering a bill that would actually allow state officials to take kids away from families — and they wouldn't even have to tell the parents until afterward.

A note from inside Gulag California.  If it weren't so serious, Gavin Newsom's current assault on red states would be hilarious.  What he is peddling as "democracy" is totalitarianism in its worst form.  What's frightening is that there are millions of voters throughout America who will lap up what he's selling.  Why?  Because they are Zombie Voters; brain-dead people who do zero research and even less thinking before they vote.  They get their news from TikTok and Facebook.  They vote based on how they feel about a candidate instead of what they think about that candidate's positions.  It's sad but true.  California is full of them.  Most California voters don't know how to think because most were never taught. [...] Children from California public schools are by and large the people who keep California deep blue.  They show up at the polls and vote for candidates without knowing one single thing about them or giving one instant's thought to what that person will mean for them or their future.

How Low Can Blue Cities Sink?  Take San Francisco.  Things are so bad there that Whole Foods, an iconic liberal company, has shut its flagship store in that city after just one year of operation, due to rampant crime and drug use that, the company said, made it impossible to assure the safety of its employees.  But when it comes to commercial real estate, San Francisco, while very bad, is not the bottom of the barrel.  John Phelan reports on a series of corporate departures from Minneapolis and St. Paul.  The numbers are grim. [...] The reality is worse than these numbers indicate.  Large chunks of downtown Minneapolis (and St. Paul) are not recorded as vacant because someone is paying rent on them, but in fact no one is working in those offices.  Companies are simply waiting for their leases to expire.  Thus the situation is getting worse, not better.

As We Predicted, Gavin Newsom's Schtick Isn't Going Over Well With Democrats in Red States.  I've consistently made the observation that California Democrats have a very tough time getting traction outside of the state because they've never been challenged on their positions or been held accountable by the media in any way.  They don't even need to give campaign speeches or long-form interviews because at this point they don't need to.  So, like Kamala Harris, once the rest of the country gets to see what they're all about, they're not fans.  Gavin Newsom is the latest California political superstar to suffer this fate, and he hasn't even declared for POTUS yet.  Over the last week or so he's been traveling to red states, acting like the savior who'll be bringing enlightenment to the rubes stuck there.  Unsurprisingly, for anyone who's ever lived outside a narcissistic bubble, that doesn't go over well, especially in the South.

The Nightmare of Reparations.  The [California Reparations] Task Force is considering a payment of $360,000 each to 1.8 million black people in California.  The total cost would be $640 billion.  (California's total budget this year is only $286 billion — a number with which the Task Force is apparently unconcerned.)  Undoubtedly, many Republicans will argue that the proposal is "too high."  This argument will dominate the public debate, as it is the only anti-reparations argument that the national media will allow to break through the usual cloud of disinformation.  The result of such a debate will be a lower number (also unaffordable) that might be enacted as a compromise.  Try to imagine a number that would be affordable — either for California or the U.S. as a whole since the federal government is the ultimate source of payment.  The U.S. is over 30 trillion dollars in debt.  To make this proposal affordable, the payments would have to be reversed.  Instead of receiving money, the 1.8 million black people contemplated in California would have to pay to the U.S. government $360,000 per person per year for the next 50 years.  That would result in enough money to pay off the current U.S. debt.  Of course, that will not happen and the U.S. debt will never be repaid.  But it serves as a reminder that any amount of reparations would be too much.  There is no acceptable compromise.

LA County's proposal to 'decarcerate' jail population withdrawn after pushback from public, law enforcement.  A controversial proposal by Los Angeles County Board members to "decarcerate" jails was withdrawn from Tuesday's agenda after opposition from the public and law enforcement.  The agenda item was titled "Los Angeles County to take Actionable Next Steps to Depopulate and Decarcerate the Los Angeles County Jails."  Introduced by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis, the proposal outlined that it would "Declare the state of mental health services and overcrowding in the Los Angeles County jails a humanitarian crisis, requiring the County to move with all deliberate speed on meaningful solutions; and prioritize decreasing the number of individuals entering the Los Angeles County Jails."

Gavin Newsom is cornered by the reparations clown show he unleashed.  California's Governor Gavin Newsom finds himself in such an awkward position that he is refusing comment on a gathering storm that will not go away, and which has the possibility of turning his presidential ambitions to ashes.  Newsom is known to many as "Governor Brylcreem" for the large amount of greasy pomade he favors for his coiffure.  He will need all the lubricant he can come up with to slip through the trap he has constructed for himself. [...] Democrats totally control both houses of the legislature, and who among them would vote against reparations?  Blacks' share of California's population is well below the national average, but in a state utterly dominated by the left, it would take courage — and leadership from the governor — to go against the fad (and left wing obsession) of reparations.

'$5 million is too little:' Activists tell California reparations committee to aim higher.  Activists on Wednesday demanded that the state of California pay millions of dollars to each Black resident in reparations as a way to make amends for slavery and subsequent discrimination, dismissing the idea of payments of $5 million per person as "nothing" and "too little."  The demands were made at an in-person meeting of the California Reparations Task Force, which was created by state legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020.  The committee was hearing comments from the public as it considers final recommendations to submit to the California Legislature, which will then decide whether to implement the measures and send them to Newsom's desk to be signed into law.  The task force is considering a proposal to give just under $360,000 per person to approximately 1.8 million Black Californians who had an ancestor enslaved in the U.S., putting the total cost of the program at about $640 billion.

Dem Bill Will Allow School Psychologists to 'Kidnap' Kids as Young as 12 - Remove from Homes Without Parental Consent.  A California legislative proposal that its sponsor says will increase mental health services for children is being attacked by its opponents as "state-sanctioned kidnapping."  Democratic Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo said her bill fixes an issue that denies poor kids on the state's Medi-Cal insurance plan the same coverage as other children.  "[Assembly Bill] 665 is about making sure all young people, regardless if they have private health insurance or are Medi-Cal recipients, have access to mental health resources," Carrillo said, according to the Sierra Sun Times.

The Editor says...
This bill isn't about "access" or mental health or poor kids.  I suspect it's about transvestites, sex change operations, and grooming.

Realigning California Would Realign America.  California's role in influencing the future of the country is unparalleled.  In addition to its economic and demographic weight, California remains the epicenter of America's media and entertainment industry, as well as its high-tech industry.  Even if several American states defy the momentum of California's political class, laws governing California frequently end up becoming federal policy.  The abyss is coming for us all, and its epicenter is in California. [...] In general, ballot initiatives are a good way to keep California's progressive elites off balance and drain their treasuries.  Qualifying a ballot initiative in California today will cost proponents between $5 and $10 million.  But if it represents a serious threat to the environmentalist industrial complex, the woke tycoons, or the government unions, they will spend many times that amount to defeat it.

California Reparations Board Seeks to Resurrect 1860s Agency That Helped Freed Former Slaves.  First, as we recently reported, San Francisco is poised to hand out $5 million in pretend "reparations" — taxpayer money — to every black resident of the city.  And California was never a slave-owning state, mind you.  Now, the California Reparations Task Force is recommending reviving a modern version of the Freedmen's Bureau — an all-encompassing agency created in 1865 to assist previously enslaved black people — to administer any benefits related to the aforementioned taxpayer handouts.  Crazy?  We're talking about the People's Republic of Woke California, what do you think?

Will the Last One to Leave California Please Turn on the Lights.  [T]he latest shoe to drop is the failure of Silicon Valley Bank last week.  But fear not, like major U.S. corporations and some financial institutions that have been deemed as too big to fail, states like California now qualify to join that august body of TBTFs.  The Feds have now made 'an exception' and have propped up SVB, guaranteeing that all depositors will now get all their money back (so much for our banking regulations that only safeguarded up to $250K per depositor).  Why?  The Feds say that they fear 'contagion' (read: a run on banks) and that this action is justified and is not to be considered a 'bailout.'  Californians have once again been spared the pain of facing reality and the equal application of America's laws.  They are still free to continue to live comfortably in the land of eternal darkness and self-delusion.

California reparations panel RAISES amount it wants to give 1.8 million black people from $220,000 to $360,000 each.  Black Californians could be in line for $360,000 each as part of the state's plan to dish out 'reparations' to descendants of slaves.  Secretary of State Shirley Weber told a meeting today that California must 'admit its sins and change the narrative,' to pave the way for initiatives similar to ones already being considered in other states.  But there has been no detail about how the $650 billion project will be funded amid concerns over California's growing deficit which is expected to worsen due to a jobs blood bath in its tax-generating Silicon Valley.

Sequoia Capital executive admits 'even Democrats like me are fed up with San Francisco'.  I guess all that "culture" (human feces and heroin needles) and "excitement" (rampant crime) of life in a big city is getting a little old for Michael Moritz, a partner at Sequoia Capital.  But, don't you smug conservatives get any ideas, these blights aren't a byproduct of Democrat ideas — San Francisco is merely "held hostage" by "political classes."  In an essay published by The New York Times today, Moritz acknowledged the city was indeed "crippled" by "homeless encampments" and "drug addicts" before he blamed conservatives for rubbing Democrat noses in the mess. [...] He describes this phenomenon as "tyranny of the minority."  Is this a prelude to reinvigorated efforts to abolish the Electoral College?

America Is Becoming a Corrupt Country.  Shoplifting, flash robberies, and rampant crime have dramatically increased since so many jurisdictions have dramatically raised the dollar threshold of felony theft (in some places, stealing something worth $950 is a misdemeanor).  Police won't waste time arresting crooks who prosecutors won't prosecute.  The result is that petty theft on a grand scale has become a way of life for tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of people.  Target alone estimates that it lost $600 million last year to theft in the San Francisco Bay region.  Add to this the rises in carjacking, burglary, and mugging.  The rise in crime inherently means more criminals and more acceptance of living on someone else's money.

California's Predicted Fiscal Firestorm Has Arrived.  Democrats' profligate spending, greed, and lack of imagination on how to run America's most populous state have been disastrous.  An investment research group says California's "tax policy is killing the Golden Goose in the Golden State."  And that's not the only problem.  Governor Gavin Newsom sent billions of Joe Biden's specially printed, inflation-causing Covid money to voters for "inflation relief" before his latest election.  He teed up "free" kindergarten for four-year-olds, and gave out "free" healthcare to illegal aliens.  His reckless spending was the fiscal equivalent of putting on a pork chop suit and heading out to the closest dog park.  Now, of course, he'll be blaming this fiscal cliff on someone — anyone — else.  Newsom helped destroy contracting jobs and continued to waste money on the Train to Nowhere.

We Deserve Reparations From Stupid People.  The City of San Francisco, the bayside burg that gave us Nancy Pelosi and sidewalk toilets, is now proposing the ultimate in nonsense — a few million bucks of reparations for everyone whose grandparents came from the right continent at the right time.  Actually, it's more generous than that, because you may also be eligible if you were a victim of the Drug War — that is, if you were a scumbag drug dealer justly imprisoned for slinging poison before the narcotics were effectively legalized by the same leftists whose hometown proposes this giveaway.  Well, if a bunch of people who were never slaves should get free money from people who never owned slaves, I propose that the people forking over the dollars be the liberal San Francisco Democrats who never owned slaves.

Most of us agree that California is leading the nation — in the wrong direction.
California Secretary of State: We Can 'Lead the Nation' on Reparations.  California Secretary of State Dr. Shirley N. Weber said that the Golden State can "lead the nation" by passing reparations for the descendants of black slaves.  California entered the Union as a free state on Sep. 9, 1850.  The state has been considering reparations under a law proposed by Weber, then in the State Assembly, and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in 2020, during the height of the frenzy around the Black Lives Matter movement.  A committee was formed to consider proposals for reparations and to make recommendations to the legislature.  As Breitbart News has reported, reparations could amount to $230,000 per recipient, though some claim even that will not be enough.  The committee is due to report its final recommendations to the state legislature later this year for consideration.  California currently faces a budget deficit of roughly $22.5 billion.

If Reparations Are Owed, the Democratic Party Should Pay Them.  Let's analyze the issue of reparations from the standpoint of morality and practicality.  Most people believe that compensation for misdeeds should come from the people who caused the misdeeds.  For example, if John Smith and Joe Brown recklessly damage your car, you expect Smith and Brown (or their insurance companies) to pay for the repairs.  Normally, you would not expect the repairs to be financed by the entire town in which you live:  That would make no sense.  What if Joe Brown died shortly after the accident?  Would you expect his children or grandchildren to pay you?  Probably not.  Instead, your claim for compensation would be focused on the surviving reckless driver, John Smith.  We can apply this logic to the reparations issue.  Obviously, no person alive today existed during the slave era or as an adult in the subsequent Jim Crow or Ku Klux Klan eras.  However, there are certain responsible entities that existed then and now:
  •   The United State government
  •   Eleven slave states of the Confederacy plus four union slave states
  •   A handful of corporations with origins dating before the end of slavery
  •   The Democratic Party
I did not include the Republican Party for a very good reason:  It was formed in 1854 by a bunch of abolitionists for the express purpose of ending slavery, which was accomplished at enormous cost 11 years later.

'Defund the Police' LA City Council member asks LAPD for extra patrols around his office.  A newly-elected Los Angeles city councillor who campaigned on a pledge to abolish the police has been left red-faced after a staff member rang the LAPD to request protection for his broken-down car.  Hugo Soto-Martinez, a trade union activist and member of the Democratic Socialist party, was elected in December.  Soto-Martinez campaigned against 'armed militias occupying our neighborhoods,' saying that the existing policing system was 'completely corrupt, immoral, and needs to be changed drastically.'

Court Slaps Down California's Attempt To Muzzle Doctors Who Dissent From Covid Groupthink.  [Scroll down]  In passing the law, the California legislature made multiple "findings," including facts purveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that there is a much higher risk of death for unvaccinated individuals from Covid-19 than the vaccinated.  The legislature also found that "the spread of misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines has weakened public confidence and placed lives at serious risk" and that "major news outlets have reported that some of the most dangerous propagators of inaccurate information regarding the COVID-19 vaccines are licensed health care professionals."  Soon after Newsom signed AB 2098, a group of doctors and organizations representing doctors filed suit in federal court in California.

California's plan to power EVs has one glaring shortcoming.  You may have already heard about California Governor Gavin Newsom's announcement last year that his state will ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.  Restrictions on how many non-electric vehicles can be sold will begin in just three years.  This is making all of the climate alarmists very happy, of course, but there is a significantly large fly in the ointment of this plan.  In order to charge up roughly 12.5 million EVs on a daily basis, the state will need to have a lot of electricity available on the power grid.  But nobody seems to have run through all of the numbers with the Governor.  Some people who actually did the math work with the Institute for Energy Research, and they have some bad news for Governor Newsom.  The state's plan is based on "a myriad of assumptions" about its electrical grid, and a lot of those assumptions are simply unrealistic in a very big way.

California's fake water crisis.  This year, California was hit by not one but nine "atmospheric rivers" that drenched the state, flooded communities, and filled reservoirs. [...] However, California officials are saying that the massive storms have not solved the drought problem.  Water customers may be asked to continue conservation efforts.  Agricultural users can expect only 30 percent of regular water deliveries.  These drought provisions will continue despite the following:
  •   Tens of trillions of gallons of freshwater that dropped upon the state from the storms:
  •   A snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that is double the size of an average year;
  •   Many reservoirs, especially in the state's northern part, now have over 100 percent capacity;
  •   Rains so intense that they could have filled a reservoir the size of the massive Hetch Hetchy water system that supplies San Francisco once every 24 hours; and
  •   Water districts reporting underground storage replenished by billions of gallons of water.
All these factors should point to surpluses.  The long drought should be over.  Each atmospheric river provided its share to make California wet again.  But there is nothing like a good crisis to keep things liberal, especially in eco-friendly California.  The good news is that the rains dumped tens of trillions of gallons upon the parched land.  The bad news is that most of the water ended up in the Pacific Ocean.  California is in a state of a manufactured crisis.

Judge blocks California's covid misinformation law.  On January 25, the case of Hoeg v. Newsom prompted a federal judge to pause California's covid misinformation and disinformation law for violating the First and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.  Five doctors who are plaintiffs in the case say Assembly Bill 2098 violates their constitutional rights.  These include Drs.  Tracy Hoeg, Ram Duriseti, Aaron Kheriaty, Pete Mazolewski, and Azadeh Khatibi.  Gov. Gavin Newsom and other elected officials, including the president and members of the Medical Board of California, are named as defendants in the case (and there is also a second lawsuit, separate but related in nature, called Hoang v. Bonta that makes similar allegations).  AB 2098 puts a muzzle on California doctors, preventing them from providing information to their patients that the state deems to be "misinformation" or "disinformation."  Doctors who advise and treat their patients based on science rather than lies face the potential loss of their medical license under AB 2098.

The most dangerous legislator in America?  California State Senator Scott Wiener could be the most dangerous legislator in the nation.  That's the lesson I took away from a great piece by Abigail Shrier I just read in City Journal, one of the best magazines in America.  It shines a light on Weiner's one-man crusade to empower human traffickers in the State of California under the guise of protecting LGBTQIA+ rights. [...] And as Shrier describes in the opening to her piece, Weiner got a law passed that vastly expanded the street prostitution trade, by removing all penalties for a loitering law that gave police probable cause to arrest street prostitutes.  In practical terms that meant that police couldn't identify minors who were being trafficked and separate them from their abusive pimps.  The result has been drastic — the number of young women escaping sex slavery in California has dropped to near zero.

Federal Judge Uses Covid Regime Case To Attack Key Leftist Tactics.  A new California law that went into effect on January 1st is intended to punish doctors who spread "misinformation" about Covid — and especially about treatment options and the dangerous mRNA injections.  That law has been challenged in federal court.  In what follows I'll be drawing from an article in the Sacramento Bee, which was brought to my attention by Thomas Lifson.  Yesterday Judge William Shubb stayed enforcement of the law, while subjecting it to a withering critique.  What I found particularly encouraging is that a federal judge directly attacked a major shibboleth of Leftist ideology as well as one of the Left's key tactics in attacking the free flow of information to the American public.

California's COVID-19 Misinformation Law Blocked by Judge.  A federal judge in California on Jan. 25 paused the state's so-called COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation law that has been challenged by doctors in two lawsuits, claiming it violates their constitutional rights.  In Hoeg v. Newsom, five doctors alleged that the state law, AB 2098, is unconstitutional under the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.  The doctors, Tracy Hoeg, Ram Duriseti, Aaron Kheriaty, Pete Mazolewski, and Azadeh Khatibi, filed their lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials, including the president and members of the Medical Board of California.  A separate related lawsuit, Hoang v. Bonta, makes similar allegations.  The doctors say the law prevents them from providing information to their patients that may contradict what the law permits or prohibits.  They also alleged the law was used to intimidate and punish physicians who disagreed with prevailing views on COVID-19.

Reckless Reparations Reckoning.  Here are 10 reasons why the nation's — and especially California's — discussions of reparatory payouts are dangerous in a multiracial state, and why reparations are not viable either in an insolvent state or a bankrupt nation at large. [...] [#3] California is at the forefront of the reparation lobbying effort.  Yet it was neither a slave nor a Jim-Crow state.  On the eve of the Civil War, the federal census recorded only about 4,000 free black citizens residing in the free state of California, or about 1 percent of the nearly 400,000 residents in 1860.  The relatively new state remained part of the Union, in which no major battles of the war over slavery were waged.  The pathology did not exist anywhere in California and the population was overwhelmingly loyal to the Union.  In other words, reparations based on slavery is not a cohesive argument for the current-day 40 millions of California, in which over one-quarter of the residents were not even born in the United States. [...] [#9] There has not been slavery in the United States in some 158 years since the end of the Civil War.  If a generation can be defined as 25 years, there has not been a living American with personal experience of slavery in generations.

California's 'Misinformation' Law Targets 'Doctor Zero'.  A new and unconstitutional, Orwellian gag-order law took effect on Jan. 1.  Titled "Physicians and surgeons: unprofessional conduct," the law permits the Medical Board of California to discipline doctors who "disseminate" misinformation.  It's an obvious and direct attack on the First Amendment — freedom of speech — as well as the Fifth Amendment, which says an individual cannot be compelled by the government to provide incriminating information about himself, and the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection under the laws.  This law attempts to mandate a new and undefined standard known as "contemporary scientific consensus" and illegally suppress differing professional opinions counter to this consensus on COVID-19.  Differing professional opinions are of course protected from governmental interference and censorship by the First Amendment.  The importance of differing professional opinions is also enshrined in the practice of medicine by the longstanding right and traditional entitlement of patients to the time-honored "second opinion."  If everyone were forced to adopt the undefinable "contemporary scientific consensus," second opinions could be deemed to be "misinformation."

California's new digital license plates made cars trackable by hackers.  Reviver says it's mission is to "modernize" the driving experience, and the way it does that is by developing the world's first digital license plate and connected vehicle platform.  But security researchers looking into how safe that "modernization" is have found a way to poke significant holes in this design.  Some of the vulnerabilities discovered show that malicious outside actors can track GPS location of digital license plates owners.  Reviver rolled out digital license plates last October and is still the only company that sells them in California.  They are being marketed as legal to use across the US, while it is also becoming legal to buy them in more and more states.  Those who own such plates, or plan to do so, will be interested to hear that researcher Sam Curry shared in a blog post that it is possible for hackers to access the "super user" admin mode of any user, and from there on effectively remotely take over.

California's Crazy New Year: Five Radical Laws Go into Effect.  [#3] AB 2147: Decriminalizing Jaywalking Because of Racism — This law, called the "Freedom to Walk Act," presumes that jaywalking is a racist crime because it is supposedly enforced unevenly — by the nation's most left-wing state — in "communities of color" where people supposedly cannot afford to pay the fines.  The law prevents police from stopping people who are crossing the street illegally unless they are in danger. [...] [#5] SB 357:  Decriminalizing Loitering for Prostitution — This law, another by State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), decriminalizes loitering in public for the purpose of committing prostitution (which remains a crime).  It also allows those convicted of such loitering to petition courts for the dismissal and sealing of their cases.  The law aims to remove the social stigma of sex work; it also comes amid a statewide crime wave.

An Actual Threat to Our Democracy.  The ever-crazier California legislature has passed a law that, as the Wall Street Journal's editors describe it:  ["]...creates a state council to dictate wages, working conditions and benefits, among other things, for fast-food workers who aren't unionized.  The law is intended to coerce fast-food franchises to surrender to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).["]  Can that possibly be constitutional?  I don't know, but it any event it is a terrible idea:  ["]...the state council could issue edicts such as raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $22 a[n] hour.["]

Year in Review: California Got Even Crazier in 2022.  California Democrats love to say their state's laws lead the way.  But where, exactly, are they leading us?  Here are some guideposts.  [#2] The Safer Streets For All Act:  California's pimps can now operate in the open after legislators decriminalized streetside sex solicitation in the name of equity.  Supporters of the bill, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D.), sought this repeal of California's longtime anti-loitering law, claiming police used it to target minorities and transgender people.  Victims of sex trafficking opposed the new legislation, since the anti-loitering policy helped cops find exploited kids.

Black actor blasts $223,000 reparations payments suggested by California commission.  Actor Faizon Love has lashed out at the notion that black people in California will be given $223,000 in reparations, saying that the money will only be used to purchase luxury cars.  Love, 54, made the eye-opening response in an interview with YouTube channel Vlad TV as the debate over reparations for slavery in the Golden State continues.  The Meteor Man star said: '[...] That's another trick man, because that money's gonna go right back to Cadillac and right back to [Mercedes] Benz.'

The Editor says...
How true.  If you give someone $223,000 of someone else's money, they're likely to spend it foolishly.  Not just on a Cadillac, but on cigarettes, beer, tattoos, and lottery tickets.  The m0ney will be all gone in a few months, and the cars will be junk in 15 years.

San Bernardino County Residents Vote to Study Secession from Far-Left California.  San Bernardino County residents voted for officials to study the possibility of seceding from California as more grow increasingly tired of the state's far-left policies.  The county approved the advisory ballot proposal, which was voted upon in November, earlier this week, the Associated Press (AP) reported.  San Bernardino's Board of Supervisors' next step is likely to form a committee that will study if state and federal public funds were fairly distributed with local governments within the county.

Universal Basic Income Hits the Bay Area — If You're Black.  At least three guaranteed income initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area openly discriminate against white residents, limiting or entirely preventing their participation in programs that dole out no-strings-attached cash.  The programs — all of which are publicly funded — violate both the United States and the California state constitution, lawyers say, as well as civil rights laws that ban race discrimination in contracting and by the recipients of government funds.  The initiatives include the Black Economic Equity Movement, which provides $500 a month exclusively to "Black young adults," the Abundant Birth Project, which provides $1,000 a month to "Black and Pacific Islander mothers," and the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People program, which will dole out $1,200 a month and "prioritize enrollment" of transgender "Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC)."  They are financed by the National Institutes of Health, the California Department of Social Services, and the city of San Francisco, respectively.

Condo prices in San Francisco plummet as drug abuse and crime soar.  Luxury condo prices in the heart of downtown San Francisco have plummeted as drug abuse and crime have spiraled out control — and as many techies continue to work remotely.  Data analyzed by Compass shows the Golden Gate city — once pegged as the hottest real estate market globally — has since fallen fast.  The median sale price of a two-bedroom condo, for example, has fallen 16.5% since 2021, while sale prices in surrounding areas have slipped only 7%, according to the market report.

Civil Disobedience Starts Here.  As COVID-19 cases increase, the Los Angeles County public health director is threatening — yes, that's the right word — another indoor mask mandate.  It's a hob-nailed boot on the neck.  Angelenos need to resist, for themselves and the rest of the country.  "As COVID cases and other viruses continue to rise, the Southland is inching closer to a mask mandate," the Los Angeles CBS affiliate reported Sunday.  Barbara Ferrer, the county director of public health, who is not a physician, not a nurse, not even a paper shuffler at a doctor's office, but a social welfarist, said last week that "masking" is one of several "commonsense mitigation strategies" that "remains a very sensible approach."  Don't mistake mask mandates as harmless cases of officials acting in an abundance of caution or just covering their backsides, as government always does.  Mask mandates are open displays of outright meanness, a manifestation of authoritarian urges to control others.  There is no data, no reputable research that tells us mask mandates works.  In fact, the data tells the opposite.  Yet officials such as Ferrer and the Sacramento schools chamberlains are insisting that masks must go back on.

California voters may block the new fast food minimum wage law.  In August, the California legislature narrowly passed a new law designed to micromanage the fast food industry in that state known as the FAST Act.  (Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act.)  Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law on Labor Day.  The food and beverage industry started raising the alarm immediately, describing all of the negative effects this legislation could produce.  The law would allow the legislature to create an unelected board (the "Fast Food Council") that would oversee everything from benefits and wages to working hours.  But one industry group began collecting signatures to demand a referendum on the new law.  The deadline for submitting signatures was this Monday and it looks like they met the goal.

California seeks to punish oil companies with new penalty.  California lawmakers on Monday introduced legislation to penalize oil companies for alleged price gouging, setting up a showdown with an industry that has long wielded political influence in the Golden State.  At the urging of Gov. Gavin Newsom, California Senate Budget Chair Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, proposed a new bill that would levy a penalty on oil companies when their profits exceeded a legally-established threshold.  The money raised by the penalty would then be placed in a fund that would be directed back to taxpayers in the form of rebates.  But the initial bill language is vague, failing to define the profit threshold that oil companies would be penalized for exceeding and lacking an explanation of who would be eligible for the rebates.  Newsom said those specifics will be sorted out over the course of the special session.  The move comes two months after the Democratic governor first unveiled a plan to levy a windfall profits tax on oil companies that were running up record earnings while Californians were getting squeezed at the pump.

San Fran is a hellhole for a reason.  Earlier today I wrote about an infant who overdosed on fentanyl while playing in a park.  The child's nanny had taken her to the park for a walk and among the detritus left by druggies was enough fentanyl to cause a near-fatal overdose.  Luckily the EMTs arrived and saved her life.  This is modern San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi's shining city on a hill.  The park is a few blocks from Pelosi's scene of the crime home.  I stumbled across this new investigative report an hour after I finished writing that post, and it helps explain why San Francisco is a [...] mess.  [Tweet]  As I have said before, public employment in San Francisco isn't public service; it is nothing but another government grift.  Not that most of the taxpayers in San Francisco don't deserve to lose money to the confidence men; they are idiotic enough to keep voting for this [stuff].  Still, David Sjostedt of the San Francisco Standard deserves kudos for reporting the story.  If San Franciscans aren't engaged enough to care about the decline of their once-breathtaking city, at least people from more sane venues can learn from their experience.

California Releases Thousands of Convicted Pedophiles Within a Year of Conviction.  California has released thousands of convicted pedophiles after spending only a few months in prison.  Such pedophiles have been convicted of "a range of horrific acts, including raping kids under 14," according to the study investigation conducted by the U.K. Daily Mail.  More than 7,000 persons convicted of "lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age" have been released in the same year they were convicted.  Convicts who committed even more heinous crimes, such as sodomy and rape of children, also served short sentences.

Keywords:  Buying votes, money laundering, slush fund, graft.
Oakland Will Send Taxpayer Dollars To Residents So They Can Donate To Politicians.  Oakland, California, is set to give adult residents vouchers to donate to candidates for local office every other year, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.  Nearly 74% of the city's voters approved Measure W, mandating that the city biannually send four $25 dollar vouchers to residents 18 years of age and older for donations to mayoral, City Council or school board candidates, the outlet reported.  The program will be paid for with city general funds and include legal permanent residents who lack U.S. citizenship.

California Still Has More Than 250,000 Uncounted Ballots.  While Arizona's handling of the midterm election has been the focus of media outlets and pundits for some time, California still has more than 250,000 uncounted ballots across the state.  It's been more than two weeks since America voted in the 2022 midterms, yet the largest state in the country is still counting ballots.  The vast majority of the uncounted ballots are from people who voted by mail, with Sacramento County failing to count a whopping 84,000 mail-in ballots. [...] The remaining ballots represent a tiny fraction of the total votes cast in the Golden State in 2022, but it's prompted some to ask what is taking so long.  The answer is simple:  In 2020, during the pandemic, California, along with other states, began mailing ballots to all registered voters.  The practice became permanent in 2021, CNN reported, and ballots postmarked on or before Election Day must be accepted for up to seven days after the polls close.

Five Developments That Waited Until After the Midterms.  Did you notice that there have been many stories breaking recently that are inconvenient to the left-wing narrative?  I did.  And I noticed that they came out after the midterm elections were over — when they'd have no impact on the vote.  Wasn't that nice and convenient?  Here are four of those stories.  [#1] Newsom's budget deficit:  After back-to-back years of running surpluses, this week we learned that California is back in the red.  Back in May, the Golden State had a nearly $98 billion surplus, but new projections show that California will have a $25 billion deficit in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.  Luckily for Gov. Gavin Newsom, voters reelected him last week before the news broke.

Los Angeles and L.A. County buy into guaranteed income movement.  Following a national trend, Los Angeles and Los Angeles County have embraced the popular guaranteed income concept to combat poverty by offering low-income residents no-strings-attached money.  The city of Los Angeles offers a guaranteed income program to 3,200 participants chosen at random to receive $1,000 per month for 12 months.  Los Angeles County has responded with two guaranteed programs of its own.  The county's pilot guaranteed income program involves 1,000 participants who will receive $1,000 monthly payments for three years.  The budget is $16.3 million, and the county will use federal COVID-19 relief money to pay for the program, according to Los Angeles County.  The program began in August.

CEO blasts San Francisco as 'city of chaos,' closes store over rampant crime.  The CEO of a popular clothing brand Cotopaxi is closing the company's only San Francisco store due to "organized theft rings" and a lack of safety in the city, he announced this week.  CEO Davis Smith announced the closure in a lengthy post on social media, saying the location faces regular attacks by thieves with virtually no response from law enforcement.  "We are closing the store due to rampant organized theft and lack of safety for our team.  Our store is hit by organized theft rings several times per week.  They brazenly enter the store and grab thousands of dollars of product and walk out," Smith wrote.  "We started keeping the door locked and opening it only for customers, but even then, they'll have a woman go to the door, and then hiding individuals rush into the store as soon as the door opens.  Our team is terrified.  They feel unsafe.  Security guards don't help because these theft rings know that security guards won't/can't stop them," he added.

How 'woke' policies turned Downtown San Francisco into an urban drug-den.  Earlier this month, old-fashioned Xeroxed copies of a newspaper article appeared across the Mid-Market neighborhood in Downtown San Francisco.  The article, from the San Francisco Chronicle, featured the headline: "S.F. D.A. Brooke Jenkins says she'll consider murder charges for fentanyl dealers."  The article was taped to walls on neighborhood corners regularly frequented by drug dealers.  At least one of those Xerox copies had the headline translated into Spanish — all the better for the dealers in question, most of whom are Honduran nationals, to get the message.  The photocopies were distributed by Matt Dorsey, Supervisor for the district that includes the Mid-Market area, which is adjacent to the Tenderloin (in San Francisco, which is both a county and a city, Supervisors are the equivalent of City Council members in other cities).  Dorsey's office had organized a neighborhood clean-up and the Supervisor had handed the article for volunteers to promote.  Dorsey is himself a recovering addict and prior to becoming Supervisor, he was the Communications Director for the San Francisco Police Department.  Ridding the neighborhood of drug dealers is his number one priority — a goal he shares with new District Attorney Jenkins.

California's Water Supply Falls Victim to CRT.  California's agricultural production is as large as Texas and Iowa combined.  The state's Mediterranean climate and fertile valleys help make it the fifth largest supplier of food and fiber in the world.  It all depends on water.  Most of the state's crops rely on irrigation as opposed to rain.  Irrigation is regulated by a system of water rights held by public and private parties.  Notice these are "rights" and not "privileges."  The exercise of these rights to bring about beneficial uses of water such as growing food is a complicated area of law and policy.  History proves that giving the government control over the food supply is usually a recipe for famine.  Still, there are many environmental and so-called social justice organizations that would like to move all the privately held water rights to state control.  One way to do so is by influencing state water rights agencies through Critical Race Theory.

California makes it illegal for doctors to disagree with politicians.  Conformity of thought is now required whether it is online, on college campuses, or, if you are in California, in a physician-patient relationship.  PayPal recently introduced a $2,500 fine for anyone involved in "the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials" that — in "PayPal's sole discretion" — "promote misinformation."  After a firestorm of criticism, PayPal withdrew the policy, claiming the whole thing was a misunderstanding and was not official policy — hardly a convincing explanation from a site with a history of banning those it considers politically incorrect.  But California physicians have had no such relief.  Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed California Assembly Bill 2098, making it the first state to attempt to censor what physicians can say about COVID-19 to their patients.  This is a dangerous, and likely unconstitutional, effort that other states must resist.

Rubber-stamped elections, California style.  Welcome to the Grand Duchy of California, a place run so poorly that the streets and the homeless existing on them are both rotting, citizens have no expectation of public safety, our public schools ranked 38th for quality, and gas costs $6.49 a gallon (regular).  We've mandated a move toward electric power as "clean" energy, no matter the outrageous cost and total inefficiency.  We're heavily taxed, with income tax of up to 13% and about a 10% sales tax (that varies from county to county).  Police policy in the cities seems to be to wait 15 minutes before responding to an in-progress report, lest the officer be endangered.  Despite this path to destruction, voters have no real choice for governor this November.  You'd think, given these examples (and I could go on), that we'd have a vibrant contest for governor.  People were passionate enough to try a recall last year.  Maybe that failure took the starch out of their sails.  This year, we have a Republican candidate running, but you've probably never heard of him — he's basically invisible.  Gavin Newsom, the worst governor in the history of the state, is running virtually unopposed.  He didn't even bother putting a candidate statement in the official voter information guide.  Ask anyone on the street, and he has no idea who Newsom's opponent is.

California Decriminalizes Jaywalking Due to Alleged Racial Bias.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a law Friday that will decriminalize jaywalking across California, ending the familiar practice of police handing out tickets to pedestrians on the argument that the law is enforced more often against minorities than other people.  The new law, AB 2147, known as the "Freedom to Walk Act," could bring an end to a cultural difference that has marked otherwise libertine Californians as being uniquely deferential to laws governing pedestrian traffic.

The State of Dreams: Every utopia is a dystopia.  Especially California.  It's a cool dark night in California and all the lights are out.  Sloping rooftops dotted with solar panels gleam even more darkly than usual.  The air is still and not a single breeze stirs even the lightest wind turbine.  Somewhere out in the darkness Diablo Canyon, the aging nuclear plant, still running, is keeping what power there is on. [...] The great westward drive that began with Lewis and Clark has been steadily rolling backward.  Southern California is filled with moving trucks headed to Arizona, Texas and Nevada.  Those who can afford it, fly to Florida.  The Russians were here once and then the Spanish.  The American presence in California was more comprehensive and lasted longer, but may one day leave sagging Wells Fargo banks and decrepit mini malls filled with sushi places and nail salons the way the Spanish left their names and their missions up Highway 101.  It's a beautiful country, but so is Afghanistan and any number of otherwise unlivable places.

California wants to listen in at your next doctor's appointment.  There is a new bill making its way through the California Legislature that could punish doctors for straying from "the contemporary scientific consensus" for COVID-19:  California's AB 2098 would discipline physicians for disseminating or promoting "misinformation" or "disinformation" as it relates to COVID-19.  Aside from the problem that the "consensus" on COVID-19 is constantly changing, the bill's language is ambiguous and, as some California lawyers say, almost certainly infringes upon physicians' First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

SF grocery store shut down due to rat infestation created by the birdseed lady.  Who is up for another San Francisco story?  This one starts in a neighborhood called Glen Park where there's a local grocery store called Canyon Market.  It's a nice looking place.  Yesterday, Canyon Market was shuttered by the health department after the city found evidence of a "severe" rodent infestation. [...] The birdseed woman may not be homeless but it sure sounds as if she has some mental problems.  And just like every other person with mental problems wandering the streets of San Francisco (or Los Angeles), the city's default position is to do nothing until it creates a big enough crisis to make the local news.  Then, finally, the city might stir itself to do something about the actual problem.  In this particular case, it has taken two and a half years just to put out some rat bait.

Real Estate CEO In Major Democrat City Says He Can't Convince Clients to Buy Due to Unmitigated Crime.  San Francisco was once a crown jewel of California but is now a drug-infested, crime-ridden, tax-plagued example of how not to run a city.  It's a city with its own "poop map," so needed because the homeless in the city defecate in the wide-open wherever they feel like it.  According to Fox Business, the CEO of a real estate company says that he's at a point where convincing potential clients to move to or buy property in San Francisco is becoming very difficult.  So much so that he wrote a letter to the city after he, himself, was robbed in front of his own home in broad daylight at gunpoint.

Group Using West Virginia Model to Create "New California" Serves Gavin Newsome Notice of Constitutional Default.  A massive group of concerned citizens and constitutionalists have had enough of the unconstitutional insanity taking place in the state of California.  This group is using the West Virginia model to create a new state that will abide by the US Constitution separate from the state of California.  The New California group has been working for months and years to get away from the radical and unconstitutional actions taken by the current leadership in California.  This group has created its own committees in counties throughout the state.

Flashback: Gavin Newsom Shipped Homeless People Out of San Francisco With 'One-Way Tickets'.  Governor Gavin Newsom sent a letter to Merrick Garland on Thursday requesting the Attorney General look into "kidnapping" charges for those involved in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' effort to send illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard.  But if shipping people out of state to try and give them a better life amounts to "kidnapping," Newsom has some explaining to do.  In July of 2019, SFist published an article critiquing a program called 'Homeward Bound,' an effort initiated by Newsom as mayor of San Francisco in 2004.  The program paid for bus tickets out of town, presumably with the destination being to friends and family willing to take the homeless individual in.  SFist, however, described it as a program with a nice name which masks the fact that it "gives unsheltered San Franciscans a one-way Greyhound bus ticket out of town and asks them to please never come back."

Human Composting Is Now Legal in California, Leading the Way to 'Soylent Green'.  It comes to mind, because this 1973 futuristic movie was set in 2022.  Let that sink in.  It also comes to mind because thanks to Biden's economic agenda (or lack thereof), much of the dystopian ethos of that world is being baked into our everyday lives.  The World Economic Forum keeps pushing new forms of insect protein on us, and it was only a matter of time before cannibalism was happily presented as an idea whose time had come.  For the sake of the environment, even our death traditions are being restructured to fit the paradigm of you will own nothing and you will be happy with it.  It's wasteful to plant a headstone to memorialize your loved one, not to mention selfish.

California Governor Signs 'Most Aggressive' Package of Green Laws.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced a sweeping package of what he called the country's "most aggressive" climate measures to "accelerate the state's transition" to non-conventional energy sources.  The package includes 40 bills that appear to provide new green rules on laws related to things ranging from large-scale industry to the family home and private and public transportation.  The Democratic governor's office said in a statement the package of climate change-focused measures aims to cut pollution and target "big polluters."  It comes as America's most populous state has struggled to provide stable electricity for residents amid a heat wave, which saw the state asking residents to use less power and suggest the best times to use air conditioners or charge electric cars.

If You're Going to San Francisco...  No, stop!  Don't even think about going to San Francisco.  The place is a disaster area, possibly as bad as Portland.  If you think that is impossible, check out this photo essay in the Daily Mail.  The story is about the city's new "soft touch" approach to drug addiction and homelessness.  "Nobody's going to jail," city officials say.  No, they're going straight to the morgue.  San Francisco has seen nearly 1,700 fatal fentanyl overdoses so far in 2022.  The text is depressing, but the message is really in the dozens of photographs that accompany it.  Addicts openly shooting up; homeless encampments on the streets; filth everywhere.

Inside LA's out-of-control juvenile jails where violence rules in the Newsom era.  Imagine a jail where inmates rule over guards who fight for survival daily among killers, carjackers, and vicious gang members.  That's life every day inside Los Angeles County Juvenile Hall.  "Our juvenile halls are on the verge of collapse.  I really believe someone is going to get killed at some point," one official told the Washington Examiner.  A series of state and local laws designed to clear California lockups have reached down to juvenile facilities where inmates learn now that they can get away with anything short of murder, officials said.

California [is] on [the] Verge of Threatening [the] Licenses of Doctors Who Dissent on Covid-19.  California physicians who dissent from the prevailing view of Covid-19 and its vaccines could have their licenses revoked under a recently passed law.  California Assembly Bill 2098 states: "It shall constitute unprofessional conduct for a physician ... to disseminate misinformation or disinformation related to COVID-19, including false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines."  A finding of "unprofessional conduct" would force the state bodies that license and regulate doctors "to take action against" the accused, the bill notes.

It's a mental hospital without walls -- and without treatment.
Viral video shows homeless fighting in squalid conditions on San Francisco street.  A viral video making its rounds on social media offers a grim new snapshot of San Francisco's surging homelessness crises as two men can be seen brawling amid squalid conditions on a city sidewalk.  The shocking scene was filmed and posted to Twitter by J. Terrell Allen, who said he stumbled upon the wild fight in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on an evening walk.  Video, posted to Twitter Thursday, shows two men — one of whom is shirtless — wrestling on the ground that's littered with debris as the majority of other apparently homeless people look on with little interest.

Democrats Can't Even Deliver Water and Electricity.  Democrats are in complete control of California and can't deliver enough water and electricity to keep its citizens comfortable.  This is outrageous.  What's even more outrageous is the lack of outrage.  Too many Americans have been gaslighted into accepting what should be wholly unacceptable as normal — their own government's ongoing failure to provide them with the basic necessities that sustain life.  Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but there was a time when the least we expected from government was enough electricity and water.  Ask Mr. One-Term President Jimmy Carter about that.  The issue that derailed his presidency (along with the Iran hostage crisis) was gasoline shortages.

California governor signs bill to keep last reactors running.  California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Friday intended to open the way for the state's last operating nuclear power plant to run an additional five years, a move that he said was needed to ward off possible blackouts as the state transitions to solar and other renewable sources.  His endorsement came one day after the plan was approved in a lopsided vote in the state Assembly and Senate, and despite criticism from environmentalists that the plant was dangerous and should be shut down as scheduled by 2025.  Newsom has no direct authority over the twin-domed plant, which sits on a bluff above the Pacific midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  PG&E must obtain approval for a longer run from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees plant safety, as well as a string of state agencies.

Democrats [are] Making California [a] 'Refuge' Hub for Teen Sex Surgery.  California Democrats in the State Assembly and State Senate have advanced legislation that would make the state a sanctuary where out-of-state parents can take their children to undergo sex change procedures.  On Monday [8/29/2022], the legislative body passed Senate Bill (SB) 107 along party lines, with all 19 Republican assemblymembers voting against it and 60 Democrats supporting it.  State Senator Scott Weiner introduced the bill, and a release from his office asserted it would "provide refuge for trans kids and their families."

The revolution brewing in San Francisco's Castro district sounds familiar.  Olivia Murray wrote about the fact that business owners in San Francisco's Castro district are fed up that the city is doing nothing to stop the influx of homeless into the district, complete with bodies splayed on the sidewalk, litter and, of course, human waste.  For those of us who remember the city in the 1970s, this is a familiar tale — and one rife with possibilities.  Beginning in the 1960s, San Francisco had the biggest and most vibrant gay meccas in the world, located right on Castro Street, with the hub where Castro intersected with Market.  By the mid-1970s, we high school students often went there for the great old movies at the Castro Theater, to visit the cool boutiques, to eat at the trendy-but-still-affordable restaurants and, naturally, take in the street scene.  The hedonism was off the charts as mostly gay men and a few lesbian women, all fresh "out of the closet," reveled in their new freedoms.

Poll: 71% in California Back Proposition 1, Abortion Until Birth.  A new poll reveals that an overwhelming majority of registered voters in California approve Proposition 1, a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion until birth if passed by a referendum in November. [...] Proposition 1 appears to extend the right to abortion through birth.  The new poll, conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, suggests that 71% of registered voters approve of Proposition 1, and only 18% oppose it.

Businesses bite back: Newsom's COVID mandates suffer triple court defeats.  California courts dealt a blow this month against Gov. Gavin Newsom's COVID-19 mandates, which forced businesses to close and cleaned out churches for more than a year.  It's been two years since Newsom locked down America's leading economic powerhouse with a strict disaster declaration that slowed commerce and prompted a pandemic exodus.  A trio of rulings show that businesses are starting to see justice in the courts for alleged misery they say was unjustly imposed.  "It will be a chilling effect for the tyrants of the future," civil rights attorney Mark Meuser told the Washington Examiner.  "These [court rulings] are needed to rein in the abuse of emergency powers by tyrant Newsom."

Gascón Recall Campaign Will Review Rejected Signatures; Possible Legal Action.  The campaign to recall Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón will review the signatures that were rejected by county officials, a spokesperson told Breitbart News, one day after enough signatures were rejected to defeat the recall effort.  Gascón, who took office in December 2020 after being elected with the help of millions of dollars in spending by left-wing billionaire George Soros, has pursued radical "reform" policies that many voters blame for a surge of violent crime in L.A.  He is one of 75 "progressive" prosecutors Soros has installed across the country.  In July, the recall campaign handed in 26% more than the required target of 566,857 signatures.  But on Monday, county officials claimed that 27% of the signatures had been invalid for a variety of reasons, causing the recall effort to fail.

George Gascon recall effort fails to qualify for ballot in Los Angeles.  The effort to recall Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has failed to gain enough support for ballot qualification.  A total of only 520,050 of the 715,833 signatures collected in the recall effort were valid, the registrar-recorder's office in Los Angeles County announced.  The recall effort needed 566,857 signatures to qualify.  A breakdown of the signatures deemed invalid found 88,464 signatures belonged to people who were not registered, 43,595 were duplicated, 32,187 were from different addresses, 9,490 had mismatched signatures, 7,344 were canceled, 5,374 were from out-of-county addresses, and 9,331 were deemed invalid for other reasons, according to the office.

Huge California County Approves Measure of Possible Secession for 2022 Midterms.  The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors this week voted to add a November 2022 ballot measure that would allow the county to secede from California.  The measure, which was voted on 4-0 by the supervisors Wednesday [8/3/2022], would ask San Bernardino residents:  "Do the citizens of San Bernardino County want the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to study all options to obtain its fair share of state and federal resources, up to and including secession?" [...] Over the years, some California counties have evaluated the possibility of seceding from the Golden State due to monetary, cultural, and other differences.  In 2016, a failed ballot measure would have split California into six states, while a 2018 proposition that also failed would have created three new states.

Just Who Is This Gavin Newsom Guy?  California has America's highest state income tax, ranging up to 13.3% for high earners (and he wants to raise it further), plus a 1% "surcharge" tax for mental health services on those earning over $1 million.  On top of this, we have a 7.25% state sales tax — again, the highest in America — to which are added local taxes.  We also have America's high gas tax, which is meant to fix our crumbling highways and streets.  Yet these same highways and streets are crumbling just as fast as they were before, filled with potholes, teeming with garbage.  Despite the high tax rate and vast expenditures on education, California schools are failing.  California ranks 44th of 50 states on education quality and outcome.  Our K-12 curriculum is filled with Critical Race Theory doctrine.  Before I retired, I hired a few public high school graduates and can attest to their poor basic reading and math skills.

LA opened a fancy new bridge and locals are doing their best to shut it down every night.  Los Angeles recently opened a half-billion dollar bridge which connects the neighborhood of Boyle Heights to downtown LA.  The bridge is know as the Sixth Street Viaduct or, more commonly, the Sixth Street bridge and it was opened to traffic on July 10 but police have been forced to close it down four of the last five nights because of problems with some area residents: [...] It really is a pretty good looking bridge but for whatever reason it has become the hot spot to be seen and make videos.  Someone set up a barber chair and was giving a haircut in the middle of the bridge last week.  [Tweet]  That stunt went viral and probably encouraged a lot more people to show up and try to capture their own moment of glory on the bridge.  Two days ago the bridge saw it's [sic] first marriage proposal.  [Tweet]

New Los Angeles bridge opens, then quickly closes amid chaos.  The newest bridge in Los Angeles, a $588-million architectural marvel with views of the downtown skyline, opened to great fanfare on July 10.  It has already been closed, to great dismay, several times since then amid chaos and collisions.  The 6th Street Viaduct — which soars over the concrete-lined Los Angeles River to connect downtown to the historic Eastside — quickly became a hotspot for street racing, graffiti and illegal takeovers that draw hundreds of spectators to watch drivers perform dangerous stunts in their vehicles.

The Editor says...
This is exactly the behavior one should expect in a state that's all crime and no punishment.

Taxpayers on hook as Gascon brings in nation's highest-paid attorney in legal battle with his own prosecutors.  Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, whose own deputies sued him for permission to charge repeat offenders to the fullest extent of the law, has pulled out all the stops in his California Supreme Court appeal against them, retaining one of the nation's top lawyers.  Neal K. Katyal, a former Acting U.S. Solicitor General who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute and has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court dozens of times, is also reportedly one of the country's highest-paid attorneys.  Reuters reported in May that the Georgetown law professor and partner at Hogan Lovells was charging as much as $2,465 an hour to represent a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson in a bankruptcy case.  At the time, that was more than the $2,295 an hour former Attorney General Eric Holder was billing.

Gavin Newsom takes vacation to Montana — one of 22 states [to which] California bans state-funded travel.  Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is spending time with his family in Montana — a state on California's list of banned places to travel to using state funds.  The Office of the Governor said Newsom did not use state funds for the trip.  The ban on state-funded trips to Montana, along with 21 other states, is because of the state's anti-LGBTQ policies.  "The travel ban applies to expending state funds," Erin Mellon, the communications director for Newsom, told Insider.  "The Governor's travel is not being paid for by the state.  Connecting the two is irresponsible and falsely implies there is something untoward."  Newsom departed for a vacation to the Treasure State Friday but did not initially announce where he was traveling to.  He will return home on Monday, Mellon said.  Th

Newsom faceplant:  Vacation in Montana despite Newsom-ordered travel bar on official business.  So goes the Glorious 2024 Hope of Democrats — from the French Laundry frying pan into the LGBTQIA++ fire.  Gavin Newsom just aired an ad in Florida lecturing California's burgeoning ex-pat population in the Sunshine State how much freedom they're losing, especially in regard to sexual choices and women's rights.  After launching that salvo in clear anticipation of the 2024 election cycle, California's governor left for vacation — but his office stalled on answering questions as to where he went.  And for good reason, as CalMatters reporter Emily Hoeven discovered.  After griping about Florida's lack of liberty on such matters, Newsom went to Montana for his time off — a state that Newsom had barred California officials from traveling to conduct business on the very same issues Newsom highlighted in his lecture: [...]

It Sure Seems Gavin Newsom Broke CA Law by Making His Security Detail Travel to Montana.  As RedState's Cameron Arcand reported Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vacationed in Montana with his family over the 4th of July holiday — a state that is currently on the list of states to which California has banned state-sponsored travel because it's deemed to have anti-LGBTQ "discriminatory laws."  Well, he's on vacation, right?  That's private travel, ostensibly paid for by the Newsom family, and no big deal?  Not exactly.  Newsom is afforded a state-funded security detail through the California Highway Patrol (CHP), and there's no indication that those officers are not with him.  That apparently puts Newsom in violation of California's AB-1887, signed by Newsom's predecessor, Jerry Brown, in 2016.

California announces it will become the first state to give health insurance to undocumented immigrants.  Governor Gavin Newsom released attack ads on Monday urging Florida residents to move to California in the days after it became the first state to move to offer all illegal immigrants state-subsidized health insurance.  Newsom bought $105,000 worth of ad spots that started airing on Fox News in Florida, which is sparking speculation that he could mount a presidential run in 2024.  The ads urge Sunshine State residents who are fed up with their Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to head west.  DeSantis is rumored to be considering a 2024 run as well[,] despite former President Donald Trump likely to seek the nomination.

Californians Are Fleeing In Record Numbers, But Gavin Newsom Has This Solution.  The similarities between California Governor Gavin "Gruesome" Newsom and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are quite remarkable.  They both spend far too much time focusing on their hair and looking in the mirror.  They're both entirely self-absorbed and are thoroughly impressed with themselves.  And they're both completely incompetent, far-left clowns with virtually no morals.  Newsom and Trudeau are truly despicable human beings.  They also appear to be in a competition to see who's the biggest knucklehead.

California Lt. Governor Calls for Defiance of Supreme Court Decision.  The latest laugh riot comes from California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis — yes, she is a Democrat — coming out with this amazing comedy routine that, even by the network on which it aired standards, namely MSNBC, was a tad over the top. [...] What stands out even above Kounalakis' open advocation of defying the law, which as a Democrat in California she is well-versed, as anyone who's taken a gander at the southern border can testify, is her odd dismissal of Supreme Court justice Clarance Thomas.  Is it racist?  Not really, but it is interesting.

The Selfish Californian.  We hear plenty of reasons for the perfect storm that imploded California.  One-party, progressive government, of course.  Decades of unchecked illegal immigration, without doubt.  Years of mass flight out of state of the productive middle classes, certainly.  But perhaps the most important, but overlooked, reason has been the infusion of trillions of dollars of mostly tech capital into the state.  Unimaginable sums of market capital warped politics and led to a top-down, feudal society, run by progressive elites who are shielded from the ramifications of their own toxic ideologies.  More specifically, the common denominator was the emergence in California of a selfish, monied, left-wing political class.  In concrete terms, it cared little for others but masked that unconcern with abstract leftism, emulating medieval penance and indulgences to assuage guilt over its enjoyment of sheltered and very good lives.

The 8 Most Insane Proposals in California's 492-Page Reparations Report.  Black Californians could enjoy child support forgiveness, free college, free health care, fewer police, and a long-term "truth and reconciliation commission" should Golden State lawmakers pass the proposals outlined this week by the state's Reparations Task Force.  Following a 2020 law to study the subject, a panel of left-wing academics and policymakers on Wednesday released their findings on how California can remedy the harm against the state's black residents caused by slavery and discrimination.  All black Californians are eligible for the benefits of the program if they can prove they are "descendants of African Americans enslaved in the U.S. or of free Black people living in the country before the end of the 19th century."  A new state agency, called the California African American Freedmen Affairs Agency, would provide genealogical tests for residents.

Gabe and Steve:  Look at your city.  It's automatic.  Every shooting is followed by a Democrat U.S. senator giving a speech about gun control, or else someone in San Francisco preaching to the rest of us.  The latest is Gabe Kapler, the manager of the San Francisco Giants.  Gabe was once a top prospect, played here in Texas with the Rangers and then went into coaching.  This is what Kapler said: [...] I understand that Kapler is angry about what happened in Uvalde, Texas.  Who isn't?  Kapler follows Steve Kerr, the other local coach with Warriors, who once wanted to get police out of Oakland's schools.  Memo to Steve and Gabe:  How do you drive to work?  Have you checked the state of your city?  The decline of civil order?  The people on the streets?  The crime?  The fact that people are leaving your city and state?  The attacks on shops? [...] Uvalde was horrible.  San Francisco is horrible 24/7.

California law requiring women on corporate boards is unconstitutional, judge says.  A Los Angeles judge has ruled that California's landmark law requiring women on corporate boards is unconstitutional.  Superior Court Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis said the law that would have required boards to have up to three female directors by this year violated the right to equal treatment.  The ruling was dated Friday [5/13/2022].  The conservative legal group Judicial Watch had challenged the law, claiming it was illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution by mandating a gender-based quota.  The law was on shaky ground from the get-go with a legislative analysis saying it could be difficult to defend and then-Gov. Jerry Brown saying he was signing it despite the potential for it to be overturned by a court.

You can rent a 'bunk bed pod' in the Bay Area with 13 other people for $800 a month.  The housing crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area has gotten so bad that one startup is now offering renters the chance to live in a "bunk bed pod" with 13 other people for just $800 a month.  Brownstone Shared Housing posted an ad for anyone looking to live in Palo Alto, the birthplace of Silicon Valley and the home of Stanford University.  Tenants are given the opportunity to shack up in a house with 13 other people.  They sleep in a "bunk bed pod" while sharing two bathrooms.  The pods are "fully equipped" with electrical outlets, shelves for books, a rack from which one can hang clothes and laundry, hooks to hang plants and other decorations, and black curtains at the end of each pod for privacy.  Normally, the three-bedroom home would house a single family.

New San Diego Ordinance Changes the Definition of 'Woman'.  The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday [5/10/2022] adopted a new definition of "woman" that would reportedly allow biological males identifying as females to be included as women in jails, homeless shelters, and even domestic violence shelters.  Biological men in domestic violence shelters.  That sounds like a recipe for disaster.  The ordinance was passed on April 26 and officially ratified Tuesday, both by party-line, three to two votes.

San Diego County Passes Ordinance to Change Definition of 'Woman'.  The San Diego County Board of Supervisors has adopted a new definition of "woman" that would reportedly allow male-to-female transgender residents to demand inclusion as women in jails, homeless shelters, and domestic violence shelters.  The ordinance, passed by a 3-2 vote on April 26, and ratified on May 10 by the same margin, adopts the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international treaty adopted in 1979.  The treaty was signed by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1980, but it was never brought to the Senate for ratification.  But the ordinance goes further, expanding the definition of "woman" to include those who simply identify as women: [...]

Gavin Newsom:  California Taxpayers to Subsidize Abortion Tourism.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced plans Wednesday to spend an additional $57 million on abortions for uninsured, out-of-state residents who travel to the state to have abortions because of restrictions on abortion in their own states.  The announcement brings Newsom's proposed spending on out-of-state abortion tourism to $125 million, over and above what he proposed in January.  The new spending comes ahead of an anticipated decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the controversial 1973 ruling that established a "right" to abortion.  A leaked majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization would return authority over abortion to the separate states.

The Ongoing Concern Of The State Of California Is In Question.  [In California,] there isn't one Republican statewide officeholder.  Republicans only have 11 of 53 Congressional seats.  The rest are Democrats.  Both houses of the state legislature have super majorities (Democrats).  The ninth federal appellate court is the most liberal in the nation.  So, they got what they wanted; the left did. [...] Because about four or five to 6 million voters — we don't know the exact number of the old Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, Arnold Schwarzenegger voters (32 years of Republican governors) — they moved.  And they moved because:
  •   paying the highest electricity, gas, sales, income tax in the nation.
  •   47/50 rated schools
  •   terrible infrastructure, 48th on roads and bridges.
  •   And California had high crime.
That was a bad deal compared to Texas, or Florida or Wyoming or Nevada.  And, then, we had $6 trillion dollars of market capitalized wealth that came in to Silicon Valley in 30 years, and that created a whole class of coastal millionaires, who were never subjected to the consequences or the ramifications (of bad public policy).

Why Gavin Newsom Is Creating A Water & Energy Disaster.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday claimed he was taking major action to address the drought affecting California and the West.  More than 90% of California is in severe drought, up from 65% just one year ago.  He said he had created an agreement that was a win-win-win for residents, farmers, and conservationists.  In truth, Newsom is starving California of both water and energy.  We are in the worst energy crisis in 50 years and yet Newsom is planning to shut down the largest single source of energy in California, Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.  Meanwhile, he has failed to build a single new large water project, despite the fact that California voters in 2014 passed a $2.7 billion water bond to pay for them.  Can't water conservation save us?  It can't.  Newsom declared a drought emergency last year and urged residents to reduce our water use by 15%.  We only did so by 6%.  It's true that mandatory restrictions between June 2015 and April 2016 reduced water use by 25%.  But the state was ultimately rescued in 2017 by large atmospheric river storms, not conservation.

Our third-world country on the West Coast.  A few years ago, a friend from Brazil visited Los Angeles and was appalled at what he saw.  He called it a third-world country, an amazing comment since my friend lives in São Paulo.  He said that L.A. is not what he remembered 25 years ago.  It was sad, or so he said.  Well, California is in decline, no matter how wonderful the climate is. [...] How does such a failed state survive?  Well, the rich live in well-protected gated communities and attend a climate change seminar often to feel relevant.  The poor, and whatever is left of the middle class, have to survive the crime, high cost of living, and a collapse of law and order.  Normally, such a political class would be thrown out of office by angry voters.  Incredibly, the Democrats have achieved the winning formula:  they win elections while refusing to take care of their constituents.  I don't know how they do it, but they do it.

California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers.  Even today amid a mounting exodus among those who can afford it, and with its appeal diminished to businesses and newcomers, California, legendary state of American dreams, continues to inspire optimism among progressive boosters.  Laura Tyson, the longtime Democratic economist now at the University of California at Berkeley, praises the state for creating "the way forward" to a more enlightened "market capitalism."  Like-minded analysts tout Silicon Valley's massive wealth generation as evidence of progressivism's promise.  The Los Angeles Times suggested approvingly that the Biden administration's goal is to "make America California again."  And, despite dark prospects in November's midterm elections, the President and his party still seem intent on proving it.  But most Californians, according to recent surveys, see things differently.  They point to rising poverty and inequality, believe the state is in recession and that it is headed in the wrong direction.  Parting with the state's cheerleaders, the New York Times' Ezra Klein, a reliable progressive and native Californian, says the Golden State's failures are "making liberals squirm."

Green-Lighting Infanticide in California.  The Democrat party of 2022 continues to push the bounds of its radical agenda, with particular focus on "abortion rights."  California Assembly Bill (A.B.) 2223 is the most egregious of the fourteen new abortion bills this year in California.  It is critical that A.B. 2223 not become law.  A.B. 2223 offers protections to people involved in the death of the unborn, as well as of recently born babies, from "the threat of criminal prosecution of pregnancy outcomes."  This bill, as written, would implicitly protect those involved in infanticide from criminal prosecution.

California proposes four-day work week for companies with more than 500 employees which would force firms to pay overtime to anyone working more than 32 hours per week.  California's Democratic-led Legislature wants to mandate a three-day weekend for all workers at large companies in the state.  A new bill being discussed in the state assembly would see the official working week reduced from 40 hours to 32 for companies with 500 employees of more.  Any work carried out beyond the 32-hour limit would run into overtime and be paid at time-and-a-half, while those working more than 12 hours a day or for more than seven days a week would be paid double their normal wage.

San Francisco Supervised Drug Use Site Operator Fabricated Data And Then City Officials Lied About It.  The operator of San Francisco's supervised drug use site fabricated the number of people who the site allegedly served, according to a San Francisco Department of Public Health executive, whose emails were released as part of California's Public Records Act.  "I think Gary is just making up random #s," wrote Dr. Rob Hoffman, Special Project Manager with the San Francisco Department of Health, in a February 8 email to other city employees including ones with the Department of Emergency Management and city homeless service agencies.  Gina McDonald, co-founder of Mothers Against Drug Deaths, filed the public records request, and was the first to report that of the 23,367 drug users who have visited the Tenderloin Linkage Center, just 18 have received drug treatment.

California's greenie 'food waste' law hits the reality wall.  In their never-ending quest to remake and remodel California into a greenie socialist paradise, the tsentral planners running California have once again blundered like boobs again, failing to anticipate the unintended consequences of their feel-good 'food waste' law.  The law, which went into effect this year, forbids restaurants and groceries, no matter where [...] they are, from discarding unused food and legally binds them to donate it to food banks instead.  No word from the report on whether the items are old or expired or unfit for human consumption.  We'll just have to take the greenie word for it that it's all a good thing.  But as usual, there are problems they didn't expect from all this virtue-signalling in the name of saving the earth: [...] The report states that just the cost of driving around and picking up unused food in rural areas is a monster money-eater in the era of Joe Biden's "I did that" gasoline costs, piled on top of California's huge fuel mandates and taxes that were all in place earlier.

California's "corporate diversity" law ruled unconstitutional.  Between 2018 and 2020, California passed two so-called "corporate diversity" bills intended to put more women and minorities on the boards of directors for corporations having headquarters in the state.  AB 826 required corporations to have an increasing number of women on their boards, up to as many as three if the board had six or more members.  Then came AB 979, which mandated that boards have at least one member of an "underrepresented community" by the end of 2021.  Companies found to not be in compliance would be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The latter bill ran into a major setback on Friday when Judge Terry Green of the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Ab 979 was unconstitutional, violating the state constitution's equal protection clause.

The Sheer Madness of Today's Left.  Here in California, Governor Gavin Newsom has gone mad.  He reigns over the most expensive gas and diesel prices in the history of the United States, at over $6 and $7 a gallon respectively in most parts of the state.  Californians suffer under the highest gas taxes in the nation and are shutting down nuclear plants.  They seek reductions in clean burning natural gas generators at a time of drought when hydroelectric production is constrained.  So what does Newsom do?  To fuel his state, and keep a shrinking middle class sustainable, does he tap California's huge gas and oil reserves?  They are the seventh largest of the 50 states and might bring down prices in a state that consumes more fossil fuels than any state but Texas.  No, that would be green heresy.  So instead Newsom has proposed spending $11 billion in subsidies to drivers — at $400 per registered vehicle — so that the state's drivers can buy more smelly, dirty gasoline and diesel fuel that they otherwise would not at the prohibitive, but secretly desirable, $6-7 a gallon price.

Who Are the Real Haters?  When Governor Gavin Newsom disappeared for a few weeks after receiving a COVID shot, the public worried: was he alive?  His wife did not like this curiosity.  You might think citizens have a right to know where their leaders are.  Nope.  She viewed the nosy public as haters.  Mrs. Newsom posted:  "When someone cancels something, maybe they're just in the office working; maybe in their free time they're at home with their family, at their kids' sports matches, or dining out with their wife.  Please stop hating and get a life."  Hating?  Who was hating?  Note how this situation works.  If you disagree with a liberal, in style or substance, you are therefore a hater.  She reminds me of Hillary.  Anybody who doesn't agree with her is a deplorable — i.e., someone who deserves to be hated.

First Openly 'Transgender' Judge Appointed to California Bench.  California has appointed its first openly 'transgender' judge, announced Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday [3/25/2022].  Judge Andi Mudryk, 58, who "transitioned" four years ago, is one of eight new appointees to serve on the Sacramento County Superior Court. [...] Social justice advocates throughout the state lauded the move as a victory for "diversity and equity."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to give tax breaks and up to $800 debit cards to all Golden State drivers as gas hits $5.88 a gallon.  California drivers shouldering the highest gas prices in the nation could soon get a tax break, free public transportation and up to $800 debit cards to help pay for fuel — but economics experts warn it'll drive up inflation even more.  The proposal was revealed Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, as gas prices have continued to soar in recent weeks from pandemic-induced inflation and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  'That direct relief will address the issue that we are all struggling to address and that is the issue of gas prices,' Newsom said in a video posted on Twitter this week.

Gavin Newsom Signs Law to Make Abortions Free in California.  Lawmakers are staying busy to make sure abortion on demand is the law of state as the United States Supreme Court revisits Roe v. Wade, including in California where women will be able to abort their unborn child for free.  [California Governor quote omitted for brevity, among other things.]  Senate Bill 245, named the Abortion Accessibility Act, prohibits insurance companies from charging a deductible, co-pay, or deductible for the procedure, which in California is available until "fetus viability."

California Democrats Float $400 Checks to Taxpayers After Hiking Gas Taxes.  California Democrats, who have raised gas taxes and vehicle license fees in recent years, are now proposing to send $400 checks to the state's taxpayers to help defray the high cost of fuel in the latest surge, which is hitting the state's drivers hard.  While the entire country is paying more for gasoline, thanks to surging post-pandemic demand, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Biden administration's hostility to oil and gas development, California's price is the highest in the nation.

Shoplifter struts behind [the] counter of [a] San Francisco Walgreens as staff watch helplessly, fills huge bag with stolen goods.  A San Francisco shoplifter was filmed filling a bag with stolen goods behind the counter of a Walgreens store as staff stood helplessly and watched.  The heist took place on Tuesday at a Walgreens in the Richmond area of the city, and saw the brazen shoplifter hurl bananas and cookies at one man who confronted him.  It is the latest in a long line of shocking shoplifting outrages to hit the famously-liberal Bay Area.

What if San Francisco Does Not Recover?  San Francisco looks worse now than I've ever seen it.  Like any major city, San Francisco had bad areas before 2020 — those rough areas you knew to avoid — but you could go anywhere else, basically unmolested.  Today is something entirely different.  The streets are dirty.  Homeless encampments, trash, and excrement can be found all over.  Car break-ins are so frequent that it has basically become a non-government-imposed tax for people who come here.  Of course, some areas are much worse than others, but almost all areas of the city suffer from this decay, and it is appalling.  Every year, the city seems to find new ways to dig deeper and deeper toward ruin.  But what happens to San Francisco if it really does not recover?  What if the financial woes, homeless encampments, rising crime, and dwindling police force are the new normal for this once great city?

Doctors sue California for threatening to punish them for not facilitating assisted suicide.  California doctors who object to assisted suicide are fighting an amended state law that implicates them in their patients' intentional deaths.  They are suing California officials, including Attorney General Rob Bonta, Department of Public Health Director Tomas Aragon, and Medical Board members to block SB 380, which made it easier for patients to commit suicide under the End of Life Options Act that took effect in 2016.  The original law issued a broad exemption for healthcare providers, granting them a liability shield for "refusing to inform" patients about their right to physician-assisted suicide and "not referring" patients to physicians who will assist in their suicides.  The amended law removed it, leaving providers vulnerable to "civil, criminal, administrative, disciplinary, employment, credentialing, professional discipline, contractual liability, or medical staff action, sanction, or penalty or other liability."

More word vomit, more racism, more pork.  California Governor Gavin Newsom announced his new SMARTER plan yesterday.  It purportedly moves our state forward to a COVID policy that acknowledges that the CCP virus is endemic rather than pandemic. [...] SMARTER stands for Shots, as in making more available; Masks, by promising to procure enough N95s for all; Awareness, in terms of having more-state infrastructure (my husband pointed out today that infrastructure replaces pork quite handily); Readiness, which again means throwing lots of money ($1.7 billion) at recruiting, training, hiring, and advancing "an ethnically and culturally inclusive HHS workforce." Then there's Testing, ramped up even more (why?); Education, AKA keeping kids in school (and vaccinated and masked), but also noting that $4.5 billion has been "devoted to improving mental and behavioral health for California's children and youth"; and Rx (treatment), which is again all about equity (distributing treatment resources and the non-specific "continuing evolution" of treatment).

California Tyrants Self-Identify:  Only The Vaxxed Can Work.  It's not law yet, but there is legislation in California that requires all workers, even independent contractors, to take the coronavirus vaccine. [...] "Long-awaited workplace coronavirus vaccine mandate legislation drops today," Politico reported Last week.  "The sweeping bill from Assembly member Buffy Wicks would apply to all employees and independent contractors, regardless of how big their employer is, and threatens penalties to noncompliant businesses."  Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland, must have missed the truckers in Canada whose fuse was lit by a government vaccine mandate, as well as the Biden White House's failure — thanks to the Supreme Court — to force businesses to require employees to be vaccinated and regularly tested.  But then, she is a lawmaker in California, a one-party state whose "leaders" care little about individual freedom.  She is also a member of the party whose voters "support harsh measures" against the unvaccinated.

Gov. Newsom announces no change to school masking policy because unions said no.  Last Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said changes to the state's school mask mandate would be coming soon.  The state's indoor mask mandate for the vaccinated ends Tuesday and the expectation reported at several news sites was that a change to the school policy would be announced today.  But today [2/14/2022] came and instead of announcing a change, Newsome sent California's HHS Secretary out to issue a two week delay: [...] So why the change?  There's really no doubt about that.  California's teacher's unions demanded more time and as always they got what they wanted.

Soros-Funded DA George Gascón Rationalizes Crime-Wave Epidemic.  Like other cities run by Democrats, Los Angeles is going through an epidemic of violent crime.  Its Soros-funded DA George Gascón has a lot of blood on his hands for increasing the mayhem.  When he was sworn in, he said his office would not prosecute a host of misdemeanor crimes, or seek the death penalty for even the most heinous murders.  No surprise that, as Broken Windows policing confirmed nearly two decades ago, tolerating "non-violent" crimes has increased violent ones.  "The data," as City Journal's Soledad Ursúa, reports on LA, "show staggering surges of homicides, gun violence, and sexual assaults, and one can see with one's own eyes the open-air drug scenes, rampant homelessness, streets lined with human excrement and needles, prostitution, filth, and squalor.  Last year saw 52 percent more homicides than in 2019; shooting incidents were up 59 percent over the same period, according to the LAPD."  Much of this violence has come at the hands of street-bums and addicts.

Chesa Boudin accused by San Francisco police chief of concealing evidence to frame a cop.  It's one thing for a leftist district attorney of Chesa Boudin's stripe to fail to do his job prosecuting violent crime and focus only on prosecuting cops for malfeasance.  We know about that part.  It's quite another to frame those cops because you can't find any truly bad ones, in a bid to achieve the grand Sorosian narrative of bad cop, good criminal.  That's what the San Francisco police chief is accusing Boudin of pulling.

California Train Robberies Recall Wild West Lawlessness.  According to Union Pacific Railroad's senior director of public affairs, Lupe Valdez, from October 2020 to October 2021, train robberies shot up by 356%.  Not only that, but the railroad company is considering diverting its trains around Los Angeles to avoid the rampant theft.  "Union Pacific Railroad says 90 containers on average are getting hit each day," The Wall Street Journal reported.  "Thieves climb onto the trains when they stop, use bolt cutters to break into containers and help themselves to the goods, discarding what they don't want or can't carry."  The result is undelivered packages and garbage strewn along the railroad tracks.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Jan. 20 visited the site of the wreckage and spoke about how terrible it all looked.  He acknowledged that the mess made California appear to be a "Third World country."

California State University Prepares To Permanently Drop SAT, ACT From Admissions Process.  California State University, the largest-four year university system in the country, is poised to eliminate SAT and ACT standardized tests from its undergraduate admissions process, following a trend in higher education over concerns that the exams are unfair to minority and low-income students.  The Board of Trustees for the 23-campus CSU system will vote in March on recommendations to end the testing requirements, which were presented at a meeting Wednesday and met with widespread enthusiasm.

Schadenfreude overload on virtue-signaling former mayor of San Luis Obispo who stepped down 'to fight climate change'.  Few things delight me more than watching climate cultists with Big Plans to change the way we live running headlong into reality and discovering that their ideas just don't work.  When those people are elected officials (or former ones) or when they hold leadership positions in NGOs, the schadenfreude meter redlines.  The story of Heidi Harmon, who stepped down from being mayor of San Luis Obispo, California last August to battle climate change, is one to savor.  For those unfamiliar with it, San Luis Obispo is a lovely coastal community of just under 50,000 people, founded as a Spanish mission town before the American Revolution, located roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  It is home to California Polytechnic State University ("Cal Poly"), a well regarded state university campus of about 22,000 students that accepts roughly one in four applicants.

Can Los Angeles Be Saved?  On Monday, off-duty LAPD officer Fernando Arroyos and his girlfriend were out in South L.A. looking at houses, in anticipation of getting married and settling down there.  Sure, it was after dark, and most Angelenos do not venture out at night these days, but Fernando was LAPD, highly trained in police work and educated at U.C. Berkeley, and thought he had it all down.  Then four gangbangers from the local crime organization (too highly advanced to be called a gang), Florencia 13, saw the silver chains around his neck and decided to rob him.  Arroyos told his girlfriend to run.  Shots rang out, at least one hit Arroyos, and he died on the way to the hospital. [...] Usually, when a cop is murdered, the city's mayor and D.A. come out and angrily vow to catch and prosecute the killers to the fullest extent, and they file charges.  After all, they are the apex of the law enforcement pyramid.  If they don't care, the people are in deep trouble.  This is the response from D.A. Gascon's office, though: a condolence tweet for the "death of an off-duty police officer" without even saying his name, without even admitting it was a murder.

Trash by the tracks
Union Pacific blasts Los Angeles DA for going soft on crime, considers rerouting trains amid rail car looting.  Major rail carrier Union Pacific is considering rerouting its trains after blasting Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon for going soft on crime amid a spike in rail car looting.  UP General Director of Public Affairs Adrian Guerrero wrote a letter detailing how at least 90 rail car containers are broken into each day, with criminals being caught and released only to come back and loot again.  "These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than twenty-four hours," Guerrero wrote.  "Even with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to UP by these same criminals.  In fact, criminals boast to [UP] officers that charges will be pled down to simple trespassing — which bears no serious consequence."


Soft-on-crime Los Angeles DA ripped after child molester faces little or no time.  Los Angeles' top prosecutor is under fire for allowing a transgender woman who sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl as a minor to face a no-jail wrist-slap sentence.  Hannah Tubbs, now 26, pleaded guilty to attacking the girl in a women's bathroom at a Denny's restaurant in 2014, two weeks before she turned 18, the Los Angeles Times reported.  LA District Attorney George Gascón filed charges against Tubbs in early 2020, not long after taking office.  But the progressive DA has refused to try juveniles as adults, citing studies that show adolescent brains aren't fully developed until age 25 and claiming that young offenders can be rehabilitated in juvenile facilities.

California Extends Indoor Mask Mandate.  California's mask mandate for indoor public settings will remain in place until at least Feb. 15, officials announced.  The state's Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly made the announcement on Jan. 5, citing a rise in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.  The statewide mandate was scheduled to expire on Jan. 15, one month after it was reintroduced.  Among the indoor public spaces affected are retail stores, restaurants, theaters, family entertainment centers, and government offices.  Ghaly said residents should consider wearing higher-grade masks, not simply scarves or loose-fitting cloth face-coverings.  He said many masks that people donned in the early days of the pandemic are "not as helpful today," urging people to consider masks that are well-fitted on the face without gaps or ventilators.

Here is what confuses me about San Francisco..  [Thread reader]  We have the most liberal, left-wing government & population in the country.  We have a $13B budget.  And we have 8,000 people sleeping in the rain this week. [...] Progressives tend to blame Republicans for almost everything.  Yet here we are — not a Republican in sight — and I think we may be the most deranged city on the planet.  Nowhere is there such inequality.  I have never seen destitution at this scale.

Today's deep question:  Do all California's education-equity execs live in Texas?  Answer:  Nope.  One of them lived in Philadelphia, for instance.  However, the latest California education executive to be discovered by Politico living out of state tendered her resignation ... from Dallas: [...] As a newly minted Texan, that irony makes my day.  Gavin Newsom made a big show of launching that ban — which most Texans likely appreciated — while his patronage regime paid at least one of its executives to live in Texas.

California's Zero-Bail Policies Have Been A Deadly Failure.  In 2020, as an emergency measure during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Judicial Council, hoping to prevent COVID's spread, had implemented zero-bail schedules to reduce jail populations.  Senate Bill 262 was later introduced in another of a series of attempts to eliminate most monetary bail.  For reasons having nothing to do with protecting health and safety, Senate Bill 262 would have made the schedules permanent.  In effect, if defendants could not afford bail, they would simply be released.  The grim reality of zero-bail policies became increasingly apparent as late summer turned to fall.  Dramatic expansions in crime.  Rampant retail theft.  Law enforcement and prosecutors unified in their complaint that the zero-bail schedule was a problem.  A big problem.  In fact, the Judicial Council had terminated the zero-bail schedule order even before its emergency authority expired, presumably because these policies failed.

No wonder why people and businesses are dumping California.  [Scroll down]  As to the loss of personal and economic freedom, consider the following examples.  As of the end of 2021, a publicly held company headquartered in California must have between one and three female board members, depending upon its size, or face a fine of $100,000.  The California Department of Education has proposed an "equitable math" framework.  California Political Review says the framework "promotes the concept that working to figure out a correct answer is an example of racism and white supremacy invading the classroom."  As of January 1, 2022, California's new bacon law is scheduled to take effect.  According to the Associated Press:  "Put simply, the law requires that breeding pigs, egg-laying chickens and veal calves be given enough space to stand and turn around.  For pigs, that means they no longer can be kept in narrow 'gestation crates' and must have 24 square feet of usable space."  Producers predict shortages and more expensive bacon and pork products.

Why Progressives Defend Drug Dealers.  If you asked most progressives if they'd be okay with having a highly-profitable, multi-billion dollar foreign corporation sell on their sidewalks a highly addictive product, which kills two people a day, most would say "no," and yet that's what San Francisco progressives are allowing by not shutting down the open air drug dealing by Honduran fentanyl dealers who work for a global cartel.  Why is that?  Why do people who claim to care so much about addicts, human dignity, and city life oppose shutting down the open drug scenes that are destroying them?

Why LA Must Show the Gascon the Door.  If Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon has his way, the City of Angels will have sex offenders and violent criminals in their teens roaming free, under the pretext that they are juveniles.  Never mind that they may be repeat offenders.  Never mind that such leniency will encourage gangs to get their work done by those who should be in school or on the playground.  Thankfully, there is growing outrage against Gascon's abominable ideas and a campaign to have him recalled is gathering steam.  It must succeed so that Los Angeles is spared the fate of San Francisco, which Gascon (as DA in 2011-19) left in shambles and, in the words of former San Francisco deputy DA Nancy Tung, with the reputation of a city "where you can commit a crime and get away with it."

He Thought He Was Going To Walk Out With Free Stuff, She And Her Firearm Had Another Idea.  Google "Shoplifting in San Francisco" and you will find more than 100,000 hits.  And you will find lots of YouTube videos, where you can watch a single thief, or an entire gang, walk into an SF Walgreens or CVS and empty the shelves.  Most walk in, go about their pilfering, and then walk out, though at least one thief rode their bike into the store and departed the same way, carefully navigating their two-wheeler down a narrow aisle.  We probably shouldn't call it shoplifting anymore, since that term connotes the idea of a person trying to conceal their crime.  In San Francisco, there is no attempt to conceal theft, and there is almost never any effort by store employees, including security personnel, to confront the thieves.  The most they do is record the thefts with their cell phones.  Why is shoplifting so rampant?  Because state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won't bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.

California education 'equity' official resigns because she lives in Texas.  The California Department of Education's equity project manager has resigned due to the fact she lives in Texas.  Pamela Kadakia worked for the California state department while living in Texas, according to Politico.  Additionally, the Lone Star State is on California's state-funded travel ban list.  California law mandates that state employees live there unless they need to live in another location for their work, such as lobbying in D.C.  Kadakia is the second California education equity official to depart in recent weeks.  The Golden State's first superintendent of equity, Daniel Lee, resigned earlier this month.  Politico reported how Lee lived in Philadelphia while collecting a salary of more than $161,000 from the state of California.

California Education Official, Exposed for Living in Texas, Resigns.  A second California education official has resigned after it was revealed she had been working in the government job while living in the state of Texas.  Pamela Kadakia has stepped down as California Department of Education equity project manager, and her departure has been confirmed by the department, Politico reported Thursday [12/23/2021].  "We sought to ensure that all our personnel were in line with the new guidance," a CDE statement read.  "In doing so, we accepted Ms. Kadakia's resignation."  Not only does the guidance require CDE officials to earn their government salary while working in the state, but the state also bans its employees from traveling to Texas and 17 other red states because they have laws the state disagrees with and deems "discriminatory," according to the report.

The Editor says...
Every state has laws that some of the other states don't.  That's the reason this country is a conglomerate of 50 separate states.  California bans travel to certain other states because the other states' laws aren't the same as California's.  Other states' laws are the other states' citizens' concern, not California's.

California 'Deputy Superintendent of Equity' Resigns After Illegal Hiring [is] Revealed.  A recent Politico investigation found that California's first Department of Education deputy superintendent of equity, Dr. Daniel Lee, was hired even though he "lives in Philadelphia and has a separate job there, more than 2,500 miles away" from the California schools he was charged with "fixing."  Afterward, California Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-06) sent a letter to the Government Operations Agency in Sacramento questioning the lawfulness of Lee's hiring. [...] Remarkably, only a few days later Lee resigned from the position.  However, if you're like me and don't live in woke world, you probably didn't even know there was such a position as a deputy superintendent of equity; nor is it likely you know what such a creature does.  Don't worry, no one really knows what he does.

Philadelphia resident who was high-ranking California Dept. of Education official resigns.  A high-ranking official in the California Department of Education has resigned after a report showed he had been collecting more than $160,000 on the taxpayers' dime while living and mostly working on the East Coast.  California's first-ever deputy superintendent of equity, Dr. Daniel Lee, has resigned, a spokesperson for the Department of Education confirmed Wednesday [12/15/2021].  The resignation comes after Politico first reported Lee is a Philadelphia resident who had been friends with California Superintendent Tony Thurmond for more than two decades.

Man Dies Of Heart Attack Because Paramedics Refuses To Enter His Building Due To Commiefornia COVID LAWS.  Paramedics in Southern California refused to enter a post-acute-care facility to treat a man in cardiac arrest last month because of "some COVID-19 law," according to a Rialto Police Department report.  Body camera footage shows an officer arriving at the Rialto Post Acute Care Center on the evening of Nov. 11 and greeting two paramedics from the Rialto Fire Department, who were standing outside with their masks on.  The first 30 seconds of the footage are muted, which is standard for many police body cameras, but the officer wrote in his report that the paramedics were there for an unrelated patient and said the facility was being "problematic."  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
If your fear of germs is that intense, you shouldn't be a paramedic.

In San Francisco, People Now Leave Their Trunks Open So Thieves Won't Smash Their Windows.  People in California are reportedly leaving their vehicles' trunks open to deter thieves from breaking their vehicles' windows.  Vehicle break-ins are reportedly on the rise in San Francisco and Oakland.  To keep potential thieves from damaging their property, some people are emptying out everything of value from their vehicle, unlocking their doors, and leaving the trunk open while they go about their business.  [Video clip]

America's Unamerican Smash-And-Grab.  [Scroll down]  Within the first section of Proposition 47 lies the primary driver of "smash and grabs."  Shoplifting is defined as "entering a commercial establishment with the intent to commit larceny while that establishment is open during regular business hours" where the value of the property does not exceed $950."  That is, according to the California penal code, if someone enters the store when employees are present (putting them at risk) and loots $950 worth of items (if not more, as seen in many of the smash-and-grab cases), they should be allowed to walk free without punishment.  This reclassification only allows criminals to get away with crimes instead of reducing crime itself.  For instance, on November 19th, 20 to 40 people organized a burglary at a San Francisco Louis Vuitton store.  It was not an act of opportunity but a raid organized to some extent through social media and messaging apps.  With only five officially arrested in the above case, criminals are growing bolder, leading to more smash and grab events, such as when 90 people raided a Nordstrom Rack at the Walnut Creek shopping facility on November 20th.  An estimated $100,000 worth of goods were stolen there.

San Francisco becomes first city to require sick leave for nannies, cleaners, gardeners.  The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday [12/14/2021] unanimously passed groundbreaking legislation to provide paid sick leave for cleaners, nannies, gardeners and other domestic workers.  The measure — the first of its kind in the country — would affect some 10,000 people in San Francisco who work in private homes to clean, cook, tend children, garden, do personal organizing, or provide non-medical care for disabled people or seniors.  This workforce is typically low-paid with many women and immigrants, supporters said.

Liberal California Politicians Promise To Be Tough On Crime As Thefts, Shootings Increase.  California Democrats are toughening their stance on crime amid increasing violence and homicides, with many politicians pledging to invest in law enforcement.  Crime in California has skyrocketed over the past two years, with homicides in San Francisco jumping 15% in 2021 compared to 2020, and over 50% compared to 2019. Statewide, homicides, property crime, violent crime and larcenies have all risen since before the pandemic.  Retail thefts in particular have plagued the state, most notably in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where organized gangs of criminals will break into and loot storefronts of their merchandise.

Even San Fran residents are getting sick of their liberal reforms.  To put it mildly, things haven't been going well in Nancy Pelosi's home stomping grounds of San Francisco.  The homelessness plague is out of control and crime has been on the rise in ways that even the most liberal and forgiving residents can no longer ignore.  The problem was compounded in multiple ways when Chesa Boudin was elected to be the District Attorney after running on a platform of getting rid of the police and promising to not prosecute "smaller crimes."  (Boudin is now facing a recall election.)  The filth and the property crime are driving some people to look for a way out and flee the city.  The Associated Press talked to several such beleaguered residents recently and heard horror stories that are increasingly familiar.

The California Crime Wave.  Many people in the multi-troubled state of California are living in fear.  It is bad enough that for almost two years the Democrats in charge of the state government have used the war on COVID as an excuse to expand their powers and abuse us with strict lockdowns, school closings and mandates.  But seven years ago the state's so-called progressives brought us Proposition 47, a sentencing "reform" measure that among other things essentially decriminalized retail theft by making stealing anything with a value of less than $950 a mere misdemeanor.  If you combine that dumb idea — which the Los Angeles Times points out "was co-authored by then-San Francisco — now Los Angeles — Dist.  Atty.  George Gascón and strongly supported by then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom" — with the even dumber idea of defunding the police, you will understand why California is in the midst of a crime wave.

Brazen crime, open drug use and trashed streets have some residents of tolerant San Francisco say they've had enough.  San Francisco's brazen crime, open drug use and trashed streets have made even the most progressive of the city's famed liberal residents demand a return to law and order as they seek to recall the woke district attorney.  News of attacks on Asian American seniors, burglarized restaurants, and boarded-up storefronts in the city's once-vibrant downtown greet the citizens of the City by the Bay on a near-daily basis.  And that was before a series of headline-grabbing crime stories in which mobs of looters smashed windows and grabbed luxury purses in the downtown Union Square shopping district.

Breaking the Maritime Shipping Impasse.  Two new laws in California have degraded the air quality in the Los Angeles area.  One is Assembly Bill 5 and a new California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulation banning older diesel trucks from operating in the state.  Assembly Bill 5 has basically outlawed independent truckers from hauling freight, thereby reducing the total number of trucks operating in the state.  This, combined with the banning of the older diesel trucks, has created a supply chain backlog. leaving large container vessels either at anchor or steaming in lazy circles off shore because the anchorages are too crowded to safely anchor there.  While at anchor or underway, these ships must run their engines to turn generators to power and maintain vital shipboard systems and doing so these ships emit huge quantities of oxides of Nitrogen (NOx), oxides of Sulfur (SOx), particulate pollution, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC).  The offshore sea breezes carry this polluted air into the Los Angeles basin, adding to an already significantly polluted air shed.

Oakland Unified among Calif. school districts phasing out D, F grades for high school students.  Some of California's largest school districts are trying an unconventional tactic to help students re-engage in school after distance learning and boost their chances of acceptance into the state's public colleges: by dropping D and F grades.  Los Angeles Unified, Oakland Unified, Sacramento City Unified, San Diego Unified and other districts are phasing out grades below a C for high school students.  If a student fails a test or doesn't complete their homework, they'll be able to retake the test and get more time to turn in assignments.  The idea is to encourage students to learn the course material and not be derailed by a low grade that could potentially disqualify them from admission to the University of California and California State University.

The Editor says...
What is so important about guaranteeing university admission for academic deadbeats?  What will happen to them at the university?  What will happen to us if a D-level sluggard ends up as an architect or a nurse?

California plans to be abortion sanctuary if Roe [is] overturned.  With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a "sanctuary" for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states.

California Needs To Stop Its Crime Spree Before It Goes National.  Californians have only themselves to blame.  They passed Proposition 47 in 2014 by a 60%-40% margin.  Among the measure's provisions is a sort of decriminalization of some thefts.  Members of the criminal class are well aware that Prop 47 allows them to steal as much as $950 worth of goods without being charged for a felony.  That's why some have been seen adding up their "takes" on calculators to be sure they don't exceed the threshold, and will be busted for only a misdemeanor if arrested at all.  The bandits have also been emboldened by prosecutors who are reluctant to prosecute — Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, George Gascon in Los Angeles — and a statewide no-cash-bail policy for suspects who can't afford the going rate.  While in many cases the policy supports our system's presumed-innocent principle, it also acts as a get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing repeat offenders to steal again.  Inspired by criminals' success in California, thieves have hit stores in Chicago and Minneapolis.  How long before every big city in the country is overwhelmed by similar crimes?

When intersectionality intersects with reality.  When drug dealers complain about the lack of law enforcement protection, the boomerang has come full circle and hit us in the back of the head.  Gangs of smash-and-grab thieves have targeted cannabis shops in the San Francisco Bay Area while firing 175 shots and stealing about $5 million's worth of products.  Alphonso "Tucky" Blunt, owner of a legal cannabis shop, criticized poor police protection and the bureaucratic details of business in Oakland:  "I was safer, and had more money, [selling] on the street, illegally."  Such is the economic reality of the Bay area.  The thieves resell the stolen pot on the streets.  City supervisor Rafael Mandeman said, "Sadly, the illegal market is flourishing by undercutting the prices of legal businesses, which is bad for our economy as illegal businesses pay no taxes."  For politicians, the sad part is the "no taxes" part.  For the owners, it is the loss of their business.

San Francisco restaurant that ordered cops out is poster child for the local wokester idiocy.  [Scroll down]  They actually turned cops, who would have been paying customers, away.  Restaurants the world over are famous for welcoming cops to their establishments.  Some give free food or discounts.  This is how the cop-and-donut legends got started.  Others do it to ensure that cops will always come if there's a problem.  Customers find the presence of police comforting historically, the same way anyone would if there was a wildfire in the area and the fire truck decided to park in one's driveway, as happened to my sister during the big Bonsall "Lilac" fire a couple of years ago.  When she saw the gargantuan CalFire truck parked at her residence on the nightly news, even with the sky red and the front-yard palm tree on fire, she knew it was going to be OK, and it was.  It's natural.  But not to these guys.

Nothing is Anybody's Fault.  [Scroll down]  San Francisco has been the worst-hit of many Democrat-run cities by organized retail theft rings stealing for profit millions of dollars in merchandise. [...] It's of a piece with Soros-funded D.A. Chesa Boudin's policy of releasing people from jail unless they threaten public safety.  His nonaccountability policies for crime this week forced the release of a woman who stole $40,000 worth of merchandise.  You could also hold accountable California voters who in 2014 approved Prop 47, a ballot measure that put the threshold for felony theft at $951 — a figure that's not cumulative.  You can rob $950 worth of stuff every day and walk out free as a bird.  Maybe smart merchants will just label everything in the shop $951.  Maybe Californians who can't find any available shops will rethink Prop 47 — along with the folks they elect to carry out the law.  Maybe shops in California cities will shutter and close; commercial property tax revenues will sink; and Californians will drive to Nevada to buy their necessities and use drone deliveries from fortified warehouses in state.

Why Looting Turned San Francisco Into A Ghost Town.  Usually at this time of year, San Francisco's luxury stores are decked with holiday garlands.  Instead, they're boarded up after widespread "flash mob" looting turned Union Square — the city's most fashionable shopping district — into an area resembling a blighted neighborhood in Detroit.  "It's a ghost town," said Michelle Tandler, a San Francisco native and high-tech entrepreneur, whose photos of the stores barricaded in plywood went viral on social media this week.  "Every store has a security guard.  People are going to lose their jobs.  And these things have a ripple effect."  Two weeks ago, San Francisco was the first of several progressive cities hit by smash-and-grab mobs of thieves, sometimes as many as 80 in a group.  Video from the San Francisco looting of Louis Vuitton shows criminals walking casually out of the store, goods in hand.  Other cities hit include Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis.

14 arrested over L.A. smash-and-grab thefts, but all released as leaders call for end to COVID no-bail policy.  Authorities in Los Angeles on Thursday [12/2/2021] announced more than a dozen arrests in recent smash-and-grab thefts at stores where nearly $340,000 worth of merchandise was stolen, part of a rash of organized retail crime in California.  Fourteen people were arrested in connection with 11 brazen robberies between November 18 and 28, but all were released from custody, police Chief Michel Moore said.  Most bailed out or met no-bail criteria, and one is a juvenile, he said.  At a joint news conference, both Moore and Mayor Eric Garcetti called for an end to a no-bail policy for some defendants aimed at reducing overcrowding at Los Angeles County jails during the coronavirus pandemic.

Looters steal $5 million of products from 15 cannabis shops in the San Francisco Bay Area in a single month:  One business.  Cannabis shops across the San Francisco Bay Area have been thrown into dire straits as gangs of thieves broke into more than 15 shops throughout November during the series of 'smash-and-grab' robberies that are plaguing California.  Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told reporters that 'hundreds' of vehicles targeted marijuana stores in Oakland last month, firing 175 shots and stealing about $5 million worth of products.  Alphonso 'Tucky' Blunt, owner of Blunts and Moore, told MJBizDaily that his store lost about $25,000 during a November 22 raid, where more than a dozen burglars ransacked the store.

California Faces Statewide Mandatory Water Restrictions as Drought Worsens.  California is currently facing mandatory water restrictions as drought grips the state.  "Despite a wet start to the water year, conditions have dried out since that first storm and we are still planning for a below-average water year," Karla Nemeth, director of the Department of Water Resources, said in a statement.  "That means we need to prepare now for a dry winter and severe drought conditions to continue through 2022."

L.A. Arrests 14 for 'Mass Looting,' but Lets All of Them Go.  Officials in Los Angeles announced Thursday with great fanfare that they had made 14 arrests in connection with recent "mass looting" events in the city — but all fourteen have since been released from jail, either with or without posting bail. [...] "Progressive" policies to reduce or eliminate bail have come under the spotlight recently, after a number of high-profile crimes allegedly committed by those released, including a mass murder in a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.  California has a particular problem:  not only is cash bail being removed, but the state is governed by Proposition 47 of 2014, which makes retail thefts of up to $950 misdemeanors instead of felonies, meaning that fewer are ever fully prosecuted.  Both Los Angeles and San Francisco have seen mass looting events in the past several weeks.

Having attacked truckers, California now has a new target.  One of my correspondents is an incredibly acute observer of the Democrats' non-stop assaults on the State of California, especially in the transportation industry.  He recently sent me an email about the fact that California didn't stop with its attack on trucking.  Instead, California Democrats are also going after the shipping industry.

Why Crime Is Out Of Control in San Francisco.  When Chesa Boudin ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2019, he said crime was caused by poverty, wealth inequality and inadequate government spending on social programs.  He called prostitution, open drug use and drug dealing "victimless crimes" and promised not to prosecute them.  The result has been an increase in crime so sharp that San Francisco's liberal residents are now paying for private security guards, taking self-defense classes, and supporting a recall of Mr. Boudin, with a vote set for June 2022.  Retailers like Walgreens and Target are closing stores in the city, citing rampant shoplifting.  Last week, a shockingly organized mob of looters ransacked a downtown Louis Vuitton store.  Mr. Boudin and his defenders say crime in San Francisco has actually declined under his watch.  The store closings had little to do with shoplifting, they insist; Walgreens announced in 2019 it would close stores as a cost-saving measure.

University of California system permanently abandons standardized testing for admissions.  Too many of the "wrong" people are gaining admission to the University of California's nine campuses.  The racial bean counters are therefore altering the process by which applicants are judged.  The nation's premier public university system is not going to base its admissions process on standardized testing of any sort.  "Test-free admissions" is to be the rule. [...] Admission will now rely on grades, student essays, and teacher recommendations.  All of these factors seem much more vulnerable to bad actors and manipulation.  The end of testing is brought to you by progressives who are convinced that standardized tests help maintain white supremacy.

California Sued Over Law Forcing Appointment of Minorities and LGBT to Corporate Boards.  A conservative think tank filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against California to halt a law that will force quotas on publicly held corporations headquartered in the state, requiring them to appoint board members based solely on their race and sexual orientation.  The legislation at issue is the fruit of last year's race riots that caused more than $2 billion in property damage and were organized nationwide by Black Lives Matter and Antifa.  The lawsuit, National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) v. Weber, was filed on Nov. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.  Defendant Shirley Weber, a radical left-wing academic before entering politics, is being sued in her official capacity as California secretary of state.  Until January of this year, the San Diego-area Democrat was a member of the California State Assembly, where she championed AB 3121, a law creating a task force to develop proposals to pay reparations to blacks to compensate them for having ancestors a century and a half ago who were enslaved.

California County Issues Mask Mandate for Private Homes Ahead of Thanksgiving.  Santa Cruz County in California issued a mask mandate for all indoor settings, including private homes, ahead of the holiday season.  The mandate went into effect at 11:59 p.m. on November 21 and requires "all individuals to wear a face covering when indoors regardless of vaccination status."  "Unfortunately, a potential winter surge appears to be a significant threat to the health and safety of our community," said Santa Cruz County Health Officer Dr. Gail Newel in the announcement.

The Editor says...
They're telling you what you can do inside your house because of a "potential winter surge" of a disease that's so terrible, many people don't even know they have it.  If you're going to live in fear of a "potential winter surge," you should at least be afraid of something that is likely to happen, and much more likely to affect us all.  Like a winter surge in the price of gasoline.

San Francisco's Mayor Has a 'Genius' Idea to Stop Looting Over the Holiday.  Some people still don't believe this, but Prop 47 is a law — deceptively titled 'Safe Schools and Neighborhoods Act' — that reduces many felonies to misdemeanors and provides for the early release of certain violent offenders and sex offenders.  One of the most unbelievable provisions of Prop 47 is one that makes it just a ticketable offense to steal up to $949 worth of goods from any given retailer on any given visit.  That's right — visit.  You can clean out the deodorant section at Walgreens, go back to your drug den, then come back an hour later and hit the diapers and feminine products if that's your jam.  You've seen the videos.  People do this.  They take what they want and casually walk away.  They know the law.  They know law enforcement has no ability to stop any of it.  It's not just San Francisco that is seeing this nonsense growing; it has pretty much permeated every part of the state by this point.  What's worse — the broken windows theory has most definitely applied to the chaos in California.  Criminals have become emboldened by the tacit permission to loot stores at will.  Now they are becoming organized and hitting larger targets.

Chesa Boudin gets religion on shoplifting.  There's nothing like a smarmy, smug leftist who's realized he's cooked his own goose.  That brings us to the case of Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco, who's effectively legalized shoplifting in the name of "criminal justice reform."  He's prompted massive store closures with ugly videos of broad-daylight robberies on large and small stores.  Boudin's refusal to prosecute has turned San Francisco into another socialist crime pit, Caracas.  And now, like his mentor Hugo Chávez, he's facing a voter recall.  This seems to be concentrating his mind, given that he's suddenly changing his tune — and comically enough, fooling no one.

Cultural Marxism, Are We Supposed to Ignore What All the San Francisco Looters Have in Common?  Perhaps there is a rule book somewhere that says you must not point out that all of the San Francisco looters who hit Nordstrom and Louis Vuitton are black.  There are hundreds of media reports talking about the brazen nature of the ongoing mob and rob situations, but no one seems to point out what they all have in common.  All of the people doing the robbing are black.  Here's an example of CBS outlining a massive mob-n-rob of Nordstroms just outside San Francisco.  [Video clip]

Dozens Of Looters Storm Nordstroms In Commiefornia — Where Else.  Dozens of looters swarmed into the Nordstrom store in downtown Walnut Creek Saturday night [11/20/2021], terrorizing shoppers, ripping off bag loads of merchandise and ransacking shelves before fleeing in a several vehicles waiting for them on the street.  Walnut Creek Lt. Ryan Hibbs told KPIX 5 that police began receiving calls about the looting at around 9 p.m.  He said there were approximately 80 individuals who ran into the store and began looting and smashing shelves.  Video shot at the scene shows the masked looters streaming out of the store, carrying bags and boxes, jumping into the cars.  Dozens of police vehicles also responded to the scene.  [Video clip]

Three California school districts vote to defy state's vaccine mandates for children, risk losing state aid.  Updated:  A third California school district has boted to resist the childten's vaccine mandate[.]  Two school districts in a mountainous rural county of California are leading the way in resisting a medical experiment on its children.  Calaveras County is rebelling against the State of California's plan to force children 5 [to] 11 years old to receive the experimental Covid pseudo-vaccines to protect against a virus which is of essentially no risk to otherwise healthy kids.  The county is neither heavily populated (estimated 45,000 souls) nor wealthy and lies at high altitude in the gold country of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and foothills.  It is so rural that there is only one incorporated town, Angels Camp, in the entire county.

San Francisco tourists are being warned not to rent cars.  People who have opted to go to San Francisco for vacation are being told not to rent vehicles.  Why?  Because of the extreme increase in vehicle burglaries in the city.  The reason behind the advice that is being given to tourists is easy — there are too many vehicle burglaries that are occurring in the city.  Criminals are going through town and breaking into different vehicles looking for quick items they can take off with and later sell or trade.

Gavin Newsom Extends Emergency Order Yet Again, Until March 2022.  On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) who two months ago survived his recall election, extended the COVID state of emergency yet again.  It will now extend until March 31, 2022, which is a full four and a half months from now, and a little over two years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic.  As Tom Tapp reported for Deadline, this is the third time that Newsom has issued such an extension.

California Fraudsters Get Rich Off Unemployment Benefits.  California has shelled out at least $20 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits since the beginning of the pandemic, with 11% of all benefits paid in the Golden State.  That is more than the 2021 budgets of Delaware, Maine, and Montana combined.  The $20 billion given to criminals who fraudulently collected benefits comes out of the more than $178 billion in unemployment benefits since the start of the pandemic, the Los Angeles Times reported.  State officials have blamed that on Congress' quick expansion of unemployment benefits that allowed people to get weekly checks without safeguards to stop people who weren't eligible.  California state officials approved at least $810 million in benefits in the names of people who were in prison, including dozens of infamous killers on death row, the Los Angeles Times reported, and even $21,000 in benefits were sent to an address in Roseville under the name and Social Security number of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

The Left's Bungled Revolution.  The supply chain debacle has been portrayed by media as one of those inexplicable black swans that come out of nowhere and are beyond human comprehension.  This is nonsense.  The sole cause of this "crisis" is a demented diktat from Gavin Newsom forbidding trucks more than three years old from loading at California ports.  The logic behind this is unknown, but presumably has something to do with Gaia being angry.  The end result is what we see: ships backed up off LA, containers piling up in the ports (or even dumped in hapless LA neighborhoods), and shortages as far as the eye can see.  Lost amid all the uproar are the nation's truckers, who must be boiling over with fury.  (Try to find a single quote from one in the legacy media.)  Florida governor Ron DeSantis has immediately leapt in to offer his state's ports to all comers, and will presumably be followed by other governors, so long-term, the situation will right itself, as tends to happen in capitalist economies.  But the wounds inflicted will last a long time — and California slides ever closer to the precipice.

Gavin Newsom's Double Jab of Covid booster and flu shot made him sick enough to cancel Scotland trip and disappear from public view for nearly two weeks.  California governor Gavin Newsom had an adverse reaction to getting the Covid booster and a flu shot within days of each other, leaving him with muscle weakness and fatigue, claim sources in the family's inner circle.  The governor was last seen in public on October 27, after receiving a COVID-19 booster shot in Oakland.  He had gotten a flu shot on October 22.  Newsom finally appeared in a photo attending Ivy Getty's star-studded wedding this past weekend after disappearing from the public eye for nearly two weeks.

Why San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin is unlikely to survive his recall.  How's George Soros feeling these days?  Seems his fair-haired boy, San Francisco's radical left-wing district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who's pretty much letting every thug in the city escape prosecution as San Francisco goes to hell, has drawn enough signatures to ensure his placement on a recall ballot come June 7, 2022 — and then some.

Where's Gavin Newsom been?  At Getty heiress's wedding.  The Twitter-sphere, The Daily Mail, and even The Sacramento Bee were looking everywhere for Gavin Newsom on Monday after the California governor canceled events and ducked out of sight for a few days.  Did he have COVID or a reaction to his recent booster shot?  Nope.  Newsom was at the Ivy Getty wedding on Saturday at City Hall, a guest and two media outlets say.  Getty is a billionaire oil heiress and great-granddaughter of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi officiated the 500-person wedding under the grand rotunda of the closed City Hall.

It Looks Like Gavin Newsom's Been Located — at an Ostentatious Getty Wedding.  As our Jennifer O'Connell reported earlier today, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-French Laundry) hasn't been seen in public since October 27, the day he received his COVID-19 vaccine booster.  Newsom was scheduled to fly to Glasgow to attend the COP26 climate change conference two days later, but his trip was abruptly canceled.  Initially some speculated that perhaps he realized how silly it was to fly across the globe to speak at a climate change conference when he could simply participate virtually.  Then, Newsom's office claimed he was attending to "unspecified family issues" and his office wouldn't elaborate when asked by the press.

San Francisco grocery store closing earlier due to shoplifting.  A 24-hour San Francisco grocery store will now be closing early due to excessive thefts at night, joining other retailers that have been forced to alter their hours due to rampant stealing.  The Safeway grocery in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco has moved from operating 24 hours a day to closing from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., KPIX reported.  The news station reported that customers were surprised by this decision. [...] This decision by the Castro Safeway comes less than a month after pharmacy retail giant Walgreens announced it would be closing some locations in San Francisco due to organized retail theft.  One San Francisco Walgreens that was closed last year was reportedly losing $1,000 to theft a day.

Brazen Thugs Just Walk Out Of Nike Store With Boxes Of Expensive Sneakers In California.  This is what happens when an entire state decides $950 or less is now a misdemeanor instead of a felony.  Watch as these thugs just casually walk out of a Nike store in California with expensive sneakers, knowing the worst that will happen to them is a slap on the wrist.  [Video clip]

Shippers fear 'catastrophic' fallout from 'crazy' California port fees.  The cure is worse than the disease, say critics of an emergency plan of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach backed by the Biden administration.  If you think port congestion is bad now, just wait for what comes next.  On Wednesday [10/27/2021], two days after the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announced a surprise emergency fee for containers lingering too long at terminals, the National Shippers Advisory Council (NSAC) held its inaugural meeting.  NSAC, created to advise the Federal Maritime Commission, is composed of 12 U.S. importers and 12 exporters.  Members include heavy hitters like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Office Depot and Ikea.  Council members had a lot to say about the California port fees — none of it good.

Former Soros Activist Explains How Progressive Policies Ruined San Francisco.  There's a crisis in San Francisco.  Homelessness has skyrocketed and drug use is rampant.  Michael Shellenberger moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on liberal causes, and even spent time working for George Soros' foundation.  He advocated the decriminalization of drugs and promoted drug treatment programs.  But, Shellenberger says, he began to worry when he saw the number of drug overdose deaths in America rise from 17,000 in 2000 to more than 70,000 by 2017.  "Clearly, we are in the midst of a massive drug crisis," Shellenberger says, "and it felt like nobody was offering a particularly clear explanation of it or offering very good solutions."  Out of frustration over the problems he was seeing in San Francisco and other liberal cities, Shellenberger became determined to diagnose the problems driving the homeless crisis and find solutions.  He presents the result of his research and investigation in his new book "San Fransicko:  Why Progressives Ruin Cities."

As Expected, Joe Biden Pledge To Speed Up California Ports Amounts to Absolutely Nothing.  In a rare act of journalism, NBC actually followed up on the October 13th grand proclamation of Joe Biden to speed up California ports.  What they found is exactly what everyone suspected, the grand prose from the White House was a political pantomime — absolutely nothing has changed.  [Video clip]  As noted, and as previously outlined, the issues with the backlog of the California ports have absolutely nothing to do with rapid unloading of ships and container vessels.  The issue is the inability of California truckers to move those containers.  The problem is a shortage of CA emission compliant internal transportation trucks to move the containers out of the port and into the U.S. mainland.

The California Version of The Green New Deal is What's Creating The Container Shipping Backlog.  Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog.  So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand.  The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand.  This has nothing to do with COVID-19.  The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago.  As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target all had taken actions years ago — long before COVID — because they knew this day would come.  It was not accidental that those companies showed up at the White House to discuss the issue, because there's now a full court press to hide it.

California Drove Truckers Out of Business.  Now Store Shelves Are Empty.  2019 was described as a "bloodbath" for the trucking industry with 640 trucking companies across the country filing for bankruptcy in just the first half of the year.  Thousands of truck drivers were left unemployed.  Many went into the expanding last mile delivery business, some as contractors for Amazon.  But California truckers and businesses had their own special woes.  Two years ago, Governor Newsom signed the Democrat supermajority's Assembly Bill 5 into law.  While AB5 was billed as a crackdown on Uber and Lyft, forcing the companies to treat l freelance contractors as employees, the gig economy companies pushed Proposition 22 so that they were the only ones exempt from the law.  (A Democrat judge has since illegally blocked the approved ballot measure while falsely claiming that it was unconstitutional.)  AB5 however was less about Uber than it was about outlawing freelance employees in order to force them into unions.  The union power grab inconvenienced Uber and Lyft, but crushed freelance workers in a variety of fields including journalism.  One of the fields was trucking.

Target's iconic downtown San Francisco store closing amid shoplifting frenzy.  Target is disputing a report that it is closing its iconic downtown San Francisco store amid claims the store is plagued by shoplifting threats costing the retailer at least $25,000.  The California Globe reported that Target is shuttering its store on Mission Street between Third and Fourth Streets.  But Target says the story isn't true.  A Target spokesperson said it is not closing the Mission Street store, but confirmed the retailer will close a different downtown San Francisco store on Bush Street in November because of underperforming sales.

Is Newsom Punishing Those Who Tried To Recall Him?  Ralph Waldo Emerson said "when you strike at a king, you must kill him." Gov. Gavin Newsom is no king, and last month's recall campaign was not intended to harm him physically.  But it's foolish to believe he won't respond as a monarch who narrowly missed losing his crown would.  The recall failure has emboldened the man.  He now feels he has a greater mandate than ever before to push through his blue-state agenda.  In the recall results, the governor saw a California where the opposition to progressive policies is so weak, and so utterly irrelevant to the work of the state's ruling class, that he and the legislature can roll right over those who see politics and policy differently.  They're a group to be punished for daring to challenge his office.

Can California Be Saved?  Part One.  California has so many problems, can it be saved?  I mean for regular Californians.  The tech billionaires and top government workers obviously have it good.  But the rest of us?  It's worth trying, anyway.  A timely new book offers a blueprint for advancing solutions to 10 problems.  Three are below.  I'll cover the other seven later.  This isn't a typical "bash California" book.  It's the best collection of solutions available today.  All the authors are experts.  I have worked with most of them, or they have been my sources.  "Saving California:  Solutions to the state's biggest policy problems" is edited by Steven Greenhut for the Pacific Research Institute in a nicely designed paperback or Kindle ebook.

The California Supply Crisis Was Entirely Predictable:  Just Ask Hayek.  In short, [Friedrich] Hayek and the "Chicago school" argue no central planning is adequate in anticipating and distributing economic resources in a society.  No individual despot or group of central planners have enough knowledge to act prudently and with foresight.  It will, instead, always result in inefficiencies, supply and demand distortions, and lowered economic growth.  In addition, because central planners, by definition, must take control away from individuals, it reduces the people to a form of "serfdom."  The people in a socialist system are coerced to comply.  We do not yet have a socialist political system in this country, though California may be as close as we've come with its governmental overreach in economic, employment, educational and social matters.

The California Version of The Green New Deal is What's Creating The Container Shipping Backlog.  Hundreds of requests for details on the specifics of the container shipping backlog.  So, I spent 3 days calling sources, digging for details and gathering information on the substantive issue at hand.  The epicenter of the problem is not what is being outlined by financial media, corporate media and politicians who have a specific interest in distracting from the issues at hand.  This has nothing to do with COVID-19.  The issues being discussed today relate to events that happened a long time ago.  As a matter of fact, it was so predictable that Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target all had taken actions years ago -long before COVID- because they knew this day would come.  It was not accidental that those companies showed up at the White House to discuss the issue, because there's now a full court press to hide it.  There is one very specific regional issue driving the problem. [...]

How California seriously messed up its drought problem.  At the beginning of the 20th century, both relied on well water to sustain their populations.  And both had ambitious plans to build aqueducts to import snow melt from the fairly distant Sierra Nevada mountains.  It was then that renowned naturalist John Muir formed the Sierra Club to fight the San Francisco project.  He was successful only in delaying the building of the O'Shaughnessy Dam that formed the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.  That delay allowed William Mulholland to be first by completing the Los Angeles-Owens Valley aqueduct in 1913.  When the gate releasing the water opened, Mulholland famously said, "Here it is.  Take it."  And thus, Los Angeles eclipsed San Francisco as the primate city of California.  In order for the L.A. city fathers to pass the construction bond for the aqueduct, they had to play up a major drought in the 1880s.  The bond was passed, but the drought was a fiction...that wasn't exposed until the late 1970s by Scot Stine, at that time a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley.  Stine's subsequent work nonetheless shows serious droughts in California's past.

Corrupt democrat Los Angeles city councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas indicted in federal corruption probe.  The New York Post is reporting that a high-level Los Angeles Democrat has been indicted in a federal corruption probe.  Councilman Mark Ridley Thomas, 66 along with former dean Marilyn Louise Flynn, 83 are expected to be arraigned in the next few days on charges of conspiracy, bribery, honest services mail fraud and honest services wire fraud.  The charges carry decades in prison if they are convicted, although honestly at their age, the chances of any type of lengthy sentence is questionable.

Lawn Companies Issue Blistering Response to Newsom After He Moves To Destroy Their Businesses.  Back in the days when humor writer Dave Barry had a regular newspaper column, he would frequently mention some outlandish thing that was actually true and follow it with the statement:  "I am not making this up."  Regarding a new law signed by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom:  I am not making this up.  California, the place where reality goes to die, has outlawed the sale of off-road gasoline engines beginning in 2024, according to The Washington Post.

Theft-plagued Walgreens shuts down five more stores in San Francisco:  At least 17 have already closed due to 'legalized shoplifting'.  Walgreens is shuttering another five of its stores in crime-ridden San Francisco because of rampant shoplifting by thieves who waltz past security guards and sell the items outside the drugstore chain's doors.  The national chain has closed 17 of its 70 San Francisco locations in the past two years because of the shelf raiders, who have swiped everything not behind lock and key.  Thefts in the chain's 53 remaining stores are five times the average for their stores elsewhere in the country, according to company officials.

Walgreens closing 5 more San Francisco stores due to theft.  Walgreens said Tuesday that it will be closing another five San Francisco locations, citing the ongoing rampant theft plaguing the city.  "Due to ongoing organized retail crime, we have made the difficult decision to close five stores across San Francisco," a Walgreens spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement.  "Each store will transfer prescriptions to a nearby Walgreens location within a mile radius and we expect to place the stores' team members in other nearby locations."

In just two days, California governor signs [a bunch of stuff] into law.  California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a number of 'woke' bills into law over the weekend including a ban on gas-powered leaf blowers to schools requiring students to be taught 'ethnic studies'.  One liberal-pleasing law will see gender-neutral children's sections being required in large toy stores while female students in schools and colleges will be provided free menstrual supplies in women's bathrooms.  Newsom hastily signed the flurry of new bills into law on Saturday night ahead of his Sunday night deadline for approving or vetoing new legislation for the year.

People's Republik Of California:  Say Goodbye To Your Gas Mowers And Lawn Implements.  You know, this is For Your Own Good.  That seems familiar.  The definition of Progressivism is "Nice Fascism".  That doesn't mean these are nice people, it means they'll run your life for you own good.  It makes sense when mom and dad do this when you're a kid.  Not when you're an adult.  But, hey, a goodly chunk of you moonbats in California keep voting for this stuff[.]

Gavin Newsom signs woke law forcing stores to have 'gender neutral' sections where traditional blue and pink toys and toothbrushes are banned.  California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a woke law on Saturday forcing stores to have 'gender neutral' sections where traditional blue and pink toys and toothbrushes are banned.  Large department stores must now display products like toys and toothbrushes in gender-neutral ways — a win for LGBT advocates who say the pink and blue hues of traditional marketing methods pressure children to conform to gender stereotypes.  The new law, however, does not completely outlaw traditional boys and girls sections at department stores.  Instead it says large stores must also have a gender neutral section to display 'a reasonable selection' of items 'regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys'.

California law bans small off-road gas engines, including lawnmowers and chainsaws.  California took another step toward its goal of ridding the state of all gas-powered engines thanks to a new bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday [10/9/2021].  The new law will ban the sale of all off-road, gas-powered engines, including generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers, chainsaws, weed trimmers, and even golf carts.  Under the new law, these machines must be zero-emissions, meaning they will have to be either battery-powered or plug-in, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Nero Newsom Fiddles With Ridiculous Laws, as California Continues to Implode.  Last week, Huntington Beach, CA suffered an oil spill, caused by an undersea fuel pipeline being pierced by a ship's anchor.  As I mentioned here, that damage could have been caused by one of the thousands of ships clogging the Southern California waters around the Port of Los Angeles.  This is currently under investigation.  In the meantime, the ships are waiting to be off loaded, but cannot because of the inefficiency of dock workers.  Thank you, Labor Unions.  Governor Gavin Newsom does not care about the causation, the fact that our supply chain of goods and services has been horrifically disrupted, and that hundreds of truckers, retailers, and average citizens are losing money by the day.  No, Governor Hair Gel is urgently concerned about a "greener future", and getting rid of fossil fuels by 2035.

New California law mandates that big retailers maintain gender-neutral kid aisles.  Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday [10/9/2021] signed a law that requires large California retailers to maintain gender neutral toy and childcare sections.  The new law, Assembly Bill 1084, requires that retailers with 500 or more employees in the state of California "maintain a gender neutral section or area, to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer, in which a reasonable selection of the items and toys for children that it sells shall be displayed, regardless of whether they have been traditionally marketed for either girls or for boys," according to the legislative counsel's digest.

California Gov Gavin Newsom signs law to eventually ban gas-powered lawn equipment.  California will soon ban the sale of new gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers after Governor Gavin Newsom signed off on the new law on Saturday [10/9/2021].  The move is aimed at curbing emissions from a category of small engines on pace to produce more pollution each year than passenger vehicles.  The gas-powered equipment to be banned uses small off-road engines, a broad category that includes generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers, chainsaws, weed trimmers and even golf carts.

California becomes first state to bring in compulsory ethnic studies for high school students.  California became the first state in the nation to make ethnic studies a required class for high school students after five years of debate.  The requirement would apply to students who graduate in 2030 and was created and approved by the state Board of Education in March after Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar measure last year until it was 'inclusive of all communities.'  During the bill signing on Friday [10/8/2021], Newsom said students 'must understand our nation's full history if we expect them to one day build a more just society.

If America's going to split apart, here's what will happen to you.  California — it's always California, isn't it? — recently banned any state-sponsored trips by its employees to Ohio.  This is based on a 2016 California law that imposes penalties on states that California officials deem to be discriminating against lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals, or transgender residents.  At issue is Ohio's new "conscience law," which allows medical providers to refuse to perform certain procedures, such as gender mutilation surgeries, if they violate a doctor's religious or moral beliefs.  The Land of Gavin Newsom now restricts state-financed travel to 18 other states which have a combined population of 116 million people.  And recently California slapped its travel restriction on states that require transgender athletes to participate in high school sports based on their sex.  This trend is spreading among other states and even to cities.  For ten years, Los Angeles has been restricting travel by city employees to Arizona because of its immigration policies.  City departments have also been told not to do business with Arizona firms.  A few years after that, L.A. added restriction on trips to North Carolina and Mississippi over their transgender bathroom laws.

California Now Bans State-funded Travel to One-third of America.  California's Democrats have now banned state-funded travel to so many states in protest at their legislation on social issues that the bans now cover one-third of the United States by population, after a new ban on Ohio was introduced last month.

Gov. Newsom mandates shots for ALL California students from 7th to 12th grade - but exempts staff.  Governor Gavin Newsom has been condemned for his 'wrong and cowardly' mandate which demands all California students from 7th to 12th grade get the COVID-19 vaccine but does not require their teachers to get the shot.  Social media erupted in outrage Friday night as people pointed out the alarming difference between the rules for children and staff, with many accusing the governor of being influenced by the powerful teachers' unions.  'Kids must get vaccine, but teacher don't have to.  The lesson?  Kids need a better union,' one person tweeted.

Newsom signs sweeping reforms, raises age for new cops to 21, can lose badge for 'racial bias'.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a number of sweeping police reform bills that take aim at alleged law enforcement misconduct and will allow officers to be stripped of their badges for "racial bias" and other deemed offenses.  On Thursday [9/30/2021], surrounded by what Newsom called "moral leadership" and the family members of those killed by law enforcement officers, he signed into law eight police reform bills claiming that they would increase transparency and accountability.  He was joined by California Attorney General Rob Bonta who proclaimed that there is a "crisis of trust" between citizens and officers.

Here's a way to guarantee 110 percent voter turnout:
California to mail every voter a ballot in future elections.  Every registered California voter will get a ballot mailed to them in future elections under a bill signed Monday [9/27/2021] by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.  The law makes permanent a change adopted during the pandemic for the 2020 election and the recent recall against Newsom.  California, the nation's most populous state, joins several other Western states in mailing all voters a ballot, including Utah, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.  Republicans who hold a minority in the state Legislature opposed the expansion of voting by mail.

California Gov. Newsom Signs Law Making Universal Vote-by-Mail Permanent in State.  Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a measure Monday [9/27/2021] that makes vote-by-mail permanent in California, coming after the tactic was used in 2020 and was left in place during this month's recall election.  The Democrat governor issued a statement as he signed Assembly Bill 37, which now requires the state to send ballots with prepaid return envelopes to all voters in statewide elections and local contests.  "As states across our country continue to enact undemocratic voter suppression laws, California is increasing voter access, expanding voting options, and bolstering elections integrity and transparency," Newsom said.

We're coming up on the bad part of the 'cycle of democracy'.  The cycle of democracy is attributed to Scottish economist Alexander Tytler:  ["]A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.["]  With the restoration of Gavin Newsom to his California governorship through the failing 2021 recall process, the state cements its trajectory of collapse.

California's Audit-Proof Scheme to Steal Elections.  [Scroll down]  As in 2020, ballots for the September 14 recall were mailed to every registered voter in the state, which includes at least one million illegals the DMV automatically registered to vote when they got driver's licenses.  Alex Padilla handled the "motor voter" program before Newsom tapped him for the Senate seat of Kamala Harris, when Joe Biden sniffed her out for his running mate.  Shirley Weber, San Diego Democrat, took over as secretary of state, and first tried to keep Larry Elder off the ballot, claiming that he failed to file the proper forms etc.  Elder sued and won, and that gave the black conservative a boost in the polls.  Newsom's handlers didn't like it.  "I have my own operation working," crowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the San Francisco Democrat is also "making calls to defeat the recall of our governor."  Newsom was once Pelosi's nephew by marriage, but the governor's connections are far more extensive.  Gavin Newsom's grandfather was a crony of the first Gov. Brown and his son, Gov. Jerry Brown, appointed Newsom's father to a judgeship.  When he announced the state of emergency in March of 2020, Newsom hailed the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, and ever since he has ruled as virtual autocrat.  Newsom signed a $1 billion deal for masks with a Chinese company and hid the details even from fellow Democrats.  Newsom locked down Californians while cavorting with colleagues sans mask at the upscale French Laundry.  While many public schools remained shuttered, Newsom sent his own children to an upscale private school.  And so on.

Newsom Says Biden Supported His Move to Abolish Suburbs in California.  California Governor Gavin Newsom's first move after he beat the recall effort in California was to sign legislation allowing lots to be subdivided which would effectively eliminate suburbs.  The legislation was obviously frowned upon by suburban voters.  As The New York Times reported, lawmakers were worried about "angering suburban voters, whose preferences for single-family home living have been regarded as politically sacrosanct."  SB 9 "was furiously opposed by homeowners and local government groups who said it 'crushes single-family zoning' and would be 'the beginning of the end of homeownership in California,'" the Times said.

Watch out, NIMBYs.  Newsom just dumped single-family zoning.  In one of his first moves after surviving the recall, Gov. Gavin Newsom took his boldest steps yet to fix California's housing shortage by signing a package of bills that will transform the state by getting rid of single-family zoning and making it easier to build the housing the state so desperately needs.  Of the three housing bills Newsom signed Thursday, the most consequential is Senate Bill 9 because it will allow up to four units of housing on a single-family lot.  Another, Senate Bill 10, creates a voluntary program that makes it easier for cities to upzone any urban or transit-adjacent parcel of land, including a single-family lot, to allow a building of 10 units or fewer.

Democrats have little to cheer about in California recall victory.  Democrats are crowing about California's Gov. Gavin Newsom surviving his recall election, and by a 64% to 35% margin. [...] Democrats outnumber Republicans in voter registrations 40-25, and Democrats who've been elected have made the state a shambles for decades.  In other words, it's not just from Newsom that the state is a mess, and there's no sense of a huge sudden crisis, which probably worked to Newsom's advantage.  Rolling blackouts, high energy prices, wildfires, unchecked crime, and homelessness have all become a way of life in California.  Republican voter registrations have declined because a lot of Republicans have fled.  So not that big a surprise that Newsom won.  Democrats shouldn't count on this as a national model.  Newsom in fact ran an ad hominem hate-Elder campaign, painting him solely as "Trump," and unfortunately, Elder could not fight it.  Newsom had cash from his billionaire patrons across the country that Elder could not match, as well as the support of the entire Democrat political machinery.  Newsom also had unions working hard to increase turnout, which means he's got favors to repay.

California's Democrat Machine Protects Newsom From Defeat.  The Democrat machine in California has been successful in defending Governor Gavin Newsom from defeat in Tuesday night's recall election.  On Monday night, President Joe Biden campaigned for Newsom in Long Beach and made the election a referendum on President Donald Trump.  Ahead of the election, Newsom's administration sent mail-in ballots to every registered voter in the state and used federal Wuhan coronavirus relief money to issue checks to voters.

California: A legit recall result but evidence of fraud remains.  Here are some examples of fraud in this go-round that have been reported from multiple sources:  Multiple ballots mailed to residents in the mass mail-in balloting — these were reported all over, often from duplicate registrations (I know someone in Glendale who got one of these) and registered residents who had moved away decades ago.  Ballot secrecy compromised as voter choices were visible from the holes in the ballot envelopes as well as through a flashlight.  That's incompetent design or more likely, quite intentional.  Actual problems casting ballots, for Republicans only, based on faulty or rigged election machinery.  This happened in the corruption-plagued San Fernando Valley and hasn't been addressed.  Evidence of tainteed voter rolls based on the 449,000 Californians who were dismissed from jury duty for not being citizens.  Leftist fact-checkers who have tried to dismiss this by saying illegals aren't allowed to vote beg the question of whether such people are registered — it turns out they are, because the Superior Court Judicial Branch of California has explicitly stated that it selects jury pools based on voter rolls.  It also says it gets those names from DMV registrations, which, the DMV supposedly has separated carefully citizen from noncitizen — which we know they haven't.

California Governor Newsom Survives Recall Election.  California voters overwhelmingly chose to keep Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in office in a recall election on Tuesday [9/14/2021].  Newsom was spared after a projection by the Associated Press showed that a majority of voters opted against recalling him.  With 61 percent of the estimated vote in, early returns showed that 5.3 million voters supported keeping Newsom in office, while 2.5 million Californians voted in favor of his removal.  In remarks Tuesday evening at the California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, Newsom said it "appears we are enjoying an overwhelmingly 'no' vote here tonight."

One-Party Rule:  When Corruption and Radicalism Collide.  New York and California are glaring examples of one-party rule gone bad, resulting in tyrannies of the hard left.  They are also contrasts of how the populace in one state is impotent to reject corrupt, one-party rule and how the populace of the other has availed itself of a constitutional pressure valve, the recall petition, for political self-correction.  Each state demonstrates the extreme dangers of one-party rule recognized 250 years ago by America's Founders and addressed by the U.S. Constitution through federalism at the national level. [...] Californians exercised their constitutional right to recall the unpopular Governor Gavin Newsom.  The September 14 election will determine whether Newsom stays or is replaced by a Republican, most likely talk-show host Larry Elder.  The reasons why Californians are giving Newsom an up or down vote are several:  huge encampments of the homeless, gasoline prices at $5 a gallon, fires raging, water scarce, drug use rampant, and schools among the worst in the nation.  Newsom also grossly mismanaged COVID shutdowns, hurting many small businesses.

[Some] California Republicans [have been] told they already voted[,] due to something 'wonky' with computers, KTLA reports.  Reports of voting issues are coming out of California in advance of Tuesday's special recall election when the fate of embattled Governor Gavin Newsom will be decided, leading to confusion and suspicion among some voters.  According to a local news report, residents who went to cast their votes at a Woodland Hills high school were shocked when they were told that they had already voted according to computers.  The problems occurred at an early voting site at El Camino Real Charter High School where several people were informed by staffers that they wouldn't be able to cast their ballots and were given provisional ballots instead.  Those who were turned away appear to have one thing in common — they are Republicans.

What 'Big Government' and individual liberty mean to me:  Larry Elder.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom [...] who used the coronavirus to abuse his authority, overstepped his role as governor, virtually locking down the entire state and shuttering businesses, while he enjoyed himself — mask-free and indoors — with friends and supporters at a world-famous fancy restaurant.  We saw the same with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at her hair salon in San Francisco.  Such hypocrisy merely adds insult to injury, however.  Nearly a third of California's restaurants have permanently closed due to COVID.  The state's unemployment rate is 7.6% — the second highest in the nation.  Nearly 69,000 Californians filed new jobless claims for the week ending August 14, the highest total in three months for the state.  One group disproportionately hurt by the type of repressive COVID policies are women — because they are often overrepresented in industries most affected by the shutdowns, such as tourism, cleaning and domestic services, and entertainment.  Ironically, Newsom fervently claims that he cares about women.  By contrast, I believe individuals do not need the government to tell them how to think and what to do.  The notion of individual liberty and personal responsibility is the complete opposite of big government.  The liberty to choose to get vaccinated, or how much to pay someone who agrees to work for me — and the responsibility for any negative outcome — is what allows a society to be healthy and strong.

Somebody Paid $3.7 Million Cash for CA Gov Newsom's Estate — But Who?  Somebody paid $3.7 million cash, through an LLC, for a 12,663 square foot, 8-acre estate in December 2018 that was then transferred (or gifted) to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife shortly before the First Couple obtained a $2.7 million cashout mortgage loan on the property.  A year after originally breaking that story we still don't know who that somebody is and whether the transaction was legal or not.  Newsom's spokesperson, Nathan Click, has given two diametrically opposed explanations as to the origin of the cash, and neither hold up to scrutiny.

Recall the California Ideology:  The Golden State is heading for a colossal train wreck.  California once was run by alternating conservatives and mostly centrist Democrats.  True, paleo-liberal governors like Pat Brown greatly expanded the welfare state.  But they also believed in pushing integration, building freeways, dams, aqueducts, and power plants, while preventing forest fires, directing the mentally ill into state hospitals, and ensuring the state enhanced the housing, timber, oil and gas, nuclear, and agricultural industries.  So why and how would anyone deliberately destroy that heritage?  Why allow California to have the highest aggregate basket of income, sales, property, and capital gains taxes in the nation, the highest gas and power prices in the continental United States, and nearly the worst schools and infrastructure, the largest populations of homeless, welfare recipients, illegal aliens, and, soon, criminals?

Biden heads to Cali, accused of working harder to save Gavin Newsom's skin than US hostages.  With the recall vote for California Governor Gavin Newsom now less than a week away, Democrats are frantically working to save his hide and even President Joe Biden will be pitching in as voters go to the polls to render their verdict on his political career.  In news confirming what many have speculated, Biden will emerge to hit the campaign trail for the embattled governor who faces a serious threat that could derail the dreams of the ambitious product of the corrupt San Francisco Democrat machine.  On Tuesday [9/7/2021], White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden would travel to the left coast "early next week" where he will join efforts to energize the party faithful and to prevent a nightmare scenario for Democrats if the recall is successful.

Unpopular Former CA Senator to Campaign for Unpopular Governor.  Speaking as a current Californian, I wouldn't treat the recall as a done deal.  Far from it.  Democrats have a huge organizational advantage that they can use to rig elections (think of the 2020 presidential race as the Californication of national elections) and a pretty big cultural advantage.  Newsom has bet that he can counter his unpopularity in the state by nationalizing the election.  It's why his ads don't tout his accomplishments.  Not only because they don't exist, but because the state machine has put all of its money on turning this into a national race so California voters don't think about what a mess the state is.  Newsom's biggest ad used to feature Elizabeth Warren decrying Texas.  A newer ad features Bernie Sanders.  Neither of them are especially pleasant, but they make Newsom seem personable by comparison.

It's a reverse shakedown.  It's also unsustainable.
San Fran to start paying known criminals monthly stipend to stop killing, eligible for bonuses.  One of America's "wokest" cities, San Francisco, intends to start paying high-risk criminals to not shoot each other.  Starting in October, 10 known criminals will receive a $300 stipend every month that they abstain from busting some caps.  The chosen criminals will also be eligible for a $200/month bonus if they meet certain milestones like obtaining a job.  "The idea is to provide the small number of San Franciscans who authorities believe are most at risk of shooting someone — or being shot — with an incentive to get help and stay out of trouble," according to the San Francisco Examiner.  "The initiative will pair participants with newly hired life coaches from the Street Violence Intervention Program, known as SVIP, who will help them make the right choices and access services.  The theory is that the up to $500 stipend will serve as an incentive to participate — and stay engaged," the paper notes.

The official explanation for California's suspicious recall election envelopes.  In California, Jacqueline Timmer of American Voters Alliance reports that, in at least three California counties, the return envelopes for the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom have circular punch-holes in them that allow a person to see whether a voter voted to retain Newsom or not.  In response, through a tweet, and through a later comment to Fox News, the clerk of one the counties (Los Angeles) said that the punch-holes assisted "accessibility for low vision voters to locate where to sign the envelope[.]"  Apparently, the clerk was saying that such voters could feel on the envelope where to sign.  But if a voter needs punch-holes for that, how was he able to complete the ballot in the first place? [...] Is this really an intentional scheme, or is it simply a case of innocent error?  Even if it were intentional, how would we ever know?  All we do know is that, under mail-in voting, such a question may arise; under direct, in-person voting, it cannot.

California's Recall Election Has Already Been Stolen.  California's gubernatorial recall election is officially September 14, but "Election Day" has ceased to have any meaning, Mail-in ballots were automatically sent to every registered voter on August 16.  Return postage is "free," pre-paid by California taxpayers.  The registration deadline was August 30, but you can still register to vote "conditionally" and cast your vote immediately, right up to and including on the 14th.  Mail ballots do not have to be received by "Election Day."  Ballots received up through September 21, a week after the election, will still count.  Which gives the people in power plenty of time to correct any "mistakes" revealed by the initial vote tallying on September 14.  You will recall that a drug-addled miscreant was recently apprehended in his car with 300 stolen mail-in ballots.  The police found these ballots not due to brilliant detective work but because someone reported a man passed out in his vehicle.  "Police are working with officials to ensure that all voters affected by the thefts get new ballots," reported the Los Angeles Times.

The Obscenity of Paroling Sirhan Sirhan, Assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.  Last week, a California parole board voted to allow the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian immigrant to shot and killed Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) immediately after he won the state's crucial presidential primary in June 1968.  The decision to accept the parole board's recommendation now goes to the governor — who could be Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), or a replacement, if Newsom loses the Sep. 14 recall election and does not decide on the parole before he leaves.

California Governor Worries His Recall is a Referendum on Joe Biden and Democrats.  The Atlantic Article interviewing the perpetually inept far-left advocate for all things big government, Gavin Newsom, doesn't specifically say the California governor is worried about his recall being a wider referendum on Joe Biden, but the gorilla in the room is visible through the fear the interview conveys.

The Editor says...
Every legitimate voter in California is well aware of the price of gas, which is enough to defeat the current governor.

Latest Alleged Election Fraud in California May Have Changed Election Outcome.  [Scroll down]  According to the complaint that was filed on Aug. 13, and which the government will ultimately have to prove, four of the defendants registered to vote at the home of another defendant, Jace Dawson, who was also a candidate for the City Council, even though they didn't live there, in order to vote in the election.  Another defendant registered to vote at Galvan's house despite also not actually living in Compton.  Dawson apparently saw an opportunity for mischief when Compton decided to have an all-mail election, responding to a text from another defendant giving him that news and saying Dawson should "come for that seat baby!"  Dawson responded "Yeeeees absolutely!!!!"  Dawson lost the primary election in April to Galvan and then apparently conspired with Galvan to help Galvan win the June general election.  The texts outlined in the criminal complaint among the various defendants about their possession of the absentee or mail-in ballots of voters are disturbing.  In one text, Dawson tells Galvan he has "the ballo[t]s but they didn't fill it out or sign it so I have to track them down to sign the ballot at least."  Galvan responded by telling Dawson to bring "them over."  In other words, Dawson apparently had possession of voters' blank absentee ballots, giving him and/or Galvan the opportunity to fill them out with the votes they wanted.  And this was not an isolated incident with one ballot.

White House Confirms:  Joe Biden to Campaign for Gavin Newsom in California Recall.  White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Wednesday that President Joe Biden still intends to campaign for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the Sep. 14 California recall election, despite the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan.  "I can confirm, the president does still plan to go and campaign for Governor Newsom in California ... that is still certainly his plan," Psaki said.  Psaki added that she did not have any particular dates or details about Biden's plans to travel to, and campaign in, California.  Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder (R) leads most opinion polls among potential replacements for Newsom, should he be recalled.  On Tuesday, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Elder dared Biden to campaign for Newsom: [...]

Larry Elder Dares Joe Biden to Campaign for Gavin Newsom.  Conservative radio host Larry Elder told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Tuesday evening that he would welcome the prospect of President Joe Biden campaigning for incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the recall election.  Biden issued a message of support for Newsom earlier this month. [...] Vice President Kamala Harris, a former U.S. Senator from the state, will campaign with Newsom in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday [8/27/2021].

Voter fraud concerns [are] mounting in tight California recall election.  Facing the political fight of his life and sinking polls indicating he could lose in the Sept. 14 recall election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now plagued by rising concerns over alleged voter fraud after the Secretary of State's Office sent out mail ballots to 20 million voters.  Earlier in the year, the state legislature passed a measure to send out mail ballots to every registered voter whether they asked for one or not.  Newsom's opponents argue this was done as a way to protect him from losing, suggesting the only way he could win was through fraud.  Two legislators sued Newsom last year over an executive order he issued changing election procedure.  The lawsuit is on appeal and expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.  One of the plaintiffs, State Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), is running to replace Newsom.

If you're on the fence about the Gavin Newsom recall...  [Thread reader] [H]ere are reasons with references why you should vote YES to recall Gavin Newsom:
  [#1]  $30 billion in EDD fraud.  According to an audit that blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration for "significant missteps and inaction" costing taxpayers $10.4 billion and counting.  To put in perspective, that's enough to pay every single public school teacher a 6 figure salary.
  [#2]  California has the highest poverty rate in the nation.  Under Newsom homelessness has increased by almost 7%.  There are now homeless camps under freeway overpasses and on vacant land throughout the state.
  [#3]  Newsom claimed the state conducted fire prevention work on 90,000 acres, but the state's own data shows the real number is actually only 11,399 acres resulting in the worst fire season on record.
  [#4]  Despite having the highest taxes in the nation & a $75 billion surplus Gavin Newsom looks to continue to increase taxes on Californians.
  [#5]  When Newsom told CA to shut down resulting in devastating permanent business closures he attended a fancy dinner at the elite French Laundry restaurant.  In attendance was one of Sacramento's most powerful lobbyists.
  [#6]  Newsom has put special interests before kids and kept schools closed.  Parents had to sue to force schools to reopen.  Meanwhile, Newsom sent his kids to private school.
  [#7]  Under Newsom's failed leadership, the exodus of jobs and productive citizens from California has accelerated.  Major companies have relocated and California lost a Congressional seat for the first time in history.
  [#8]  CA energy policies have failed:  Newsom has acknowledged that blackouts have resulted from California's failure to "predict and plan" but he has still signed legislation that has made the problem worse.
  [#9]  [...]
  [#10]  [...]

California Earthquakes Can't Do As Much Damage As Progressive, Blue State Government.  Here's where California is today after two decades of progressive, Blue State governance:
  •   Executive magazine has named California the worst state for business for 15 straight years.
  •   California imposes the heaviest regulatory burden on small businesses in the country.
  •   The business tax climate is worse only in New Jersey.
  •   Businesses of all sizes continue to flee the state.
  •   Property rights are being violated at an alarming pace.  Just ask the "Central Valley farmers who've had their land seized in the name of high-speed rail" and are still waiting to be compensated by the state.
  •   People are leaving in large numbers, and many who haven't yet are desperate to escape.
  •   That is if they are able to leave, because many of the roads and highways leading out are so cracked up they're hard to navigate.  Forty-one states have better systems.
  •   The state's unofficial "road diet" means that motorists have to spend more time on the crumbling tracks than they should because the state has the worst traffic congestion on Earth.
  •   Liberty continues to be crowded out by growing government authority.  The Cato Institute ranks California 48th in freedom among the states, a position it has occupied since 2011.
  •   The state has had the highest poverty level in the country in recent years.
  •   While California's public education system is failing, the state has gone to war with charter schools, which are not only popular with parents and students, they raise student achievement.
  •   The highest average gasoline price is found in California, which not coincidentally also has the highest gasoline tax in the nation.
  •   Even though it accounts for only 12% of the U.S. population, 25%-30% of the nation's homeless live in California.
  •   The runaway public employee pension system threatens to devour the state.

Prop. 22 is ruled unconstitutional, a blow to California gig economy law.  California's giant ride-hailing and delivery companies suffered a setback Friday [8/20/2021] as a state Superior Court judge invalidated a 2020 ballot proposition that allowed Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and other app-based businesses to classify their workers as independent contractors.  In a lawsuit brought by the Service Employees International Union and several drivers, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that Proposition 22 is unconstitutional and unenforceable.  That's in part because the law, Roesch wrote, infringes on the power of the Legislature explicitly granted by the state Constitution to regulate compensation for workers' injuries.

Can Larry Elder Save California?  The answer to the question posed by the title is "No," at least not alone, and I suspect Larry Elder would agree.  But the hack cliché is that every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and dumping Governor Hairstyle in favor of someone who is not a complete buffoon is a necessary first step.  Word on the street is that Larry Elder is the most likely to win if Question 1 ("Should we dump this idiot Newsom?") and move on to Question 2 ("Now that we're rid of that twit, who do we want to foist this thankless job upon?").  [...] The Democrats thought they were smart, and among their antics (like moving up the recall election to mid-September thinking it would help them but instead planting it right inside the Delta wave) was not entering any big-name Democrat for Question 2.

In California, your recall vote is not secret.  As the California recall referendum approaches, we know that the leftist California gang determined to entrench Gov. Gavin Newsom in power, no matter how unpopular he is with voters and no matter how much they want him out, has been busy.  So here's the latest rig they've cooked up, exposed very well by an apparently concerned liberal named Jennifer Asper.  [Video clip]  Seems the envelope to the state's mail-in ballots, which have already gone out except reportedly to people who signed the recall referendum petition, contains two holes.  Those two holes expose the contents of the one-vote ballot in exactly the right strategic place.  Asper's Instagram and Twitter video, done very well, demonstrate the problem.

Larry Elder vows to do away with vaccine, mask mandates in Calif. if elected governor.  Larry Elder, prominent conservative talk radio host and a leading candidate in the California gubernatorial recall election, vows to end mask and vaccine mandates in the Golden State if elected.  "When I become governor, assuming there are mandates for masks and statewide mandates for vaccines, they will be suspended right away," said Elder during a news conference on Zoom, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.  "This is America.  We have freedom in America."  While Elder himself has been vaccinated and believes "vaccines work" he said he doesn't believe the government should decide for people.  He thinks that the irreversible health care decision of whether or not to get a vaccine should be up to each person.  Elder indicated that he personally chose to get vaccinated under his doctor's advice due to his age, 69, and an underlying health condition.  Elder, who calls himself the "The Sage from South Central," also took to Twitter to confirm his position and make clear that any face mask or vaccine mandates in place will be "immediately revoked," not if, but when he is elected governor.

Elder Ignores Mainstream Media in First Online Press Conference.  Neither the Los Angeles Times nor Politico (both of whom had multiple reporters) and a host of other mainstream media suspects, including the Associated Press, got to ask a single question Friday at Larry Elder's first online Zoom press conference for the California gubernatorial recall.  The likes of the Bay Area Yu Channel, the Sing Tao Daily and Lynn Ku of KTSF did.  If you enjoy seeing MSM stuffed shirts being upended, it was quite a hoot.  A reporter from the LAT — I won't name him out of a courtesy he didn't seem to have himself — was throwing a tantrum in the Zoom chat room due to his receiving a lack of attention.  And if you sense a pro-Asian bias in all this, you are obviously correct and it was obviously deliberate on the part of the Elder campaign.  These seemingly small Asian outlets — considering the size of California's Asian community, they could be quite big in actuality — were given the only opportunities to ask questions.  And their questions were quite substantive.  It was rather like the reverse of a White House press conference, particularly during the Trump era, when question after question from CNN et al was of the "When did you stop beating your wife?" nature.

The LA Times begs Californians not to boot Newsom.  We're one month out from the California recall election and the polls have continued to tighten, though most of them predict Newsom surviving by a slim margin.  Perhaps it's the unexpected closeness of the vote that moved the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times to publish a beseeching letter to Californians, urging them to not be tempted into opting for some new blood in the Governor's mansion.  Their concern for the welfare of the state (or should we simply say "the welfare state?") seems touching, but the editors also don't do a very good job of hiding their real reason for wanting to keep him.  Also, when they get around to attempting to defend Newsom's performance as governor during his first term, it comes off as more of an apology for him than a defense.

Don't Call It a Comeback — Biden, Harris to Stump for Newsom.  [T]he man who shuttered businesses and dined at French Laundry of all places amid the wineries he shut down (except, of course, his own), has turned most of his state into a giant homeless encampment — complete with needles and excrement maps — and raised taxes to a level normally occupied by the Big Dipper is calling on an administration that has overseen ballooning inflation, a massive influx of illegal immigrants, and a hike in fuel prices that could eventually rival the '70s to save his backside?  And that isn't even a deep dive into the policies of the White House and Newsom's office.  Those are just the greatest hits.

Oakland Chinatown Leader Demands Gov. Newsom Declare State Of Emergency.  Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce President Carl Chan asked Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday to deploy California Highway Patrol officers to the city's troubled streets and declare a local state of emergency in an attempt to stem the rapidly rising tide of brazen robberies and violent assaults.  Chan and other officials spoke at a press event late Tuesday morning [8/10/2021] that called for additional measures in Oakland to curb crime, including the deployment of more law enforcement officers and installation of more surveillance cameras.

Newsom's Recall Problem Is with Hispanic Voters.  Two new independent polls on California's September 14 recall election have a startling explanation for why Governor Gavin Newsom is in trouble.  His support among minority communities is crumbling as issues such as crime, COVID restrictions, and a huge unemployment-benefits scandal dominate the race.  The Emerson College poll found that among likely voters, 48 percent favored keeping Newsom in office versus 46 percent who want him gone — a slim two-point margin.  In a new poll by SurveyUSA taken for three media outlets, the recall leads 51 percent to 40 percent.

California GOP Won't Endorse A Candidate In Special Election To Recall Democratic Gov. Newsom.  On Saturday morning, California Republican Party delegates opted to withhold an endorsement in the upcoming special recall election set for September 14 when Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom could be ousted from office.  Officials said the decision was made "with nearly 90 percent support" during a virtual meeting the day after two influential California Republicans reportedly encouraged members of the state GOP not to endorse a candidate.

Mayor of major U.S. city to pay nearly $23,000 for ethics violations.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed will personally pay $22,792 in fines imposed by the city's Ethics Commission for violating ethics standards while in office, according to various reports.  London Breed agreed to pay the fines imposed by the Ethics Commission, calling them "fair," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  The commission said the fines were "significant," as Breed had misused her mayoral title for her personal benefit.  The Ethics Commission fined Breed for several violations, including asking then-California Gov. Jerry Brown in October 2018 to release her brother Napoleon Brown from prison, where he was serving a 44-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter and armed robbery, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  Breed and family members sent the letter to Brown in October 2018, asking for the release of her brother for crimes for which she said he had faced excessive punishment.

In California, Recalls are not Just for the Governor.  Just about everyone in America is aware that California Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall election.  But California has a lot more recall news than simply the recall of its governor.  In fact, the state is in the midst of a genuine recallapalooza.  The state has recall challenges underway for not just the governor, but also two district attorneys and over 48 assorted mayors, city councilmen, and school board members.  And that recall count is only as of July.  It seems that it's not all love and harmony in the Golden State.

Poll: Gavin Newsom [is] Down [by] Double-Digits In [his] Recall Election.  Results of a new poll out Thursday show California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom deep underwater with little more than a month to go until voters cast their ballots in a statewide referendum.  According to a survey of 1,100 Californians conducted Aug. 2-4, more than half were in favor of Newsom's firing, while only 40 percent were opposed.  The poll, conducted by Survey USA with the San Diego Union Tribune, illustrated bipartisan support for the recall effort that was also showcased in the petitions drawing about a third of all signatures collected from Democrats and independents.  Republicans said they supported Newsom's removal by an 8:1 margin, while Democrats said the same 3:1.  The survey is raising the alarm for team Newsom with 40 days to go until recall day on Sept. 14, when voters will decide in a yes/no question whether the governor should remain in office or be removed.  Residents will then vote on a replacement.  Unless a majority vote for removal, the results of the second ballot will be meaningless except for a showing of who might be the front-runner in 2022.

54% Of Hispanic Voters In California Say They Would Vote To Recall Newsom.  More than half of Hispanics in California say they would vote to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to an Inside California Politics/Emerson College poll published Tuesday [8/3/2021].  The poll of 1,000 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, showed Californians are split on the issue with 46% in favor of recalling Newsom and 48% are against it.  Among Hispanics, 54% said they would vote to recall.  A majority of black and Asian respondents support keeping Newsom, while among whites, support for and opposition to removing the governor is evenly split, according to the poll.  Newsom's response to COVID-19, a rise in crime in his state, and an uptick in unemployment are the major reasons why some people want to recall him.  The special election is scheduled for Sept. 14, and 41 Californians are officially running against Newsom.

Soon, no one in California will be able to bring home the bacon.  In just five months, California may well be the first state in America that effectively bans any pork products.  This is because, back in 2018, voters approved an animal welfare proposition setting out space requirements standards for those who breed pigs, egg-laying chickens, and veal calves.  While chicken farmers and veal producers across America have mostly met those standards, it seems the hog farmers have had a harder time.  This is an interesting story because it touches upon the laws of unintended consequences and the effect a state like California has on the rest of America.

The Editor says...
Once again, Democrat voters have failed to look down the road before voting.  Once they get tired of the impending bacon shortage, there will be another vote, and the anti-bacon law will be repealed.  The lefties could have saved themselves a lot of trouble (which they have yet to experience) by thinking ahead.

Chesa Boudin stands up for shoplifters and drug dealers.  San Francisco's broad-daylight retail heists have shocked the nation in their brazenness.  They've triggered the closings of stores, such as Walgreens, and the shortening of hours from retail giants such as Target.  Forty-four percent of city is planning to move out, with 80% citing out-of-control crime.  But the shoplifters have got a defender, too — in San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.  So do the drug dealers.  The only problems out that Chesa sees are the victims.  Which tells us a lot about the state of moral bankruptcy of the wokester movement, and what the New Yorker dismisses as the "backlash."

Bacon in California May Soon Be More Hard to Find as Pig Rules Take Effect.  Thanks to a reworked menu and long hours, Jeannie Kim managed to keep her San Francisco restaurant alive during the coronavirus pandemic.  That makes it all the more frustrating that she fears her breakfast-focused diner could be ruined within months by new rules that could make one of her top menu items — bacon — hard to get in California. [...] Animal welfare organizations for years have been pushing for more humane treatment of farm animals but the California rules could be a rare case of consumers clearly paying a price for their beliefs.

California's recall is America's final warning.  On September 14, Californians of all political persuasions will answer two questions on their ballot:  1) Do you want to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom?  2) Whom do you want to replace him?  The fate of our nation will be determined by the outcome of those two questions.  How can I say that?  First, you have to know what's really going on, so let's pull back the curtain.  Months ago, Ric Grenell publicly said he had no interest in running for governor because Pelosi's daughter said there wasn't going to be a recall.  If it came down to it, Feinstein would have a sudden reason to retire, and Newsom would appoint himself to fill that Senate seat.  Yet here we are, with a recall election on the calendar.  What changed?  We the People.  The recall signature effort shocked the world just by forcing the vote to happen.  The establishment greatly underestimated how much Californians loathe this governor.  He's toast.  Damaged goods.  The challenge now is to mitigate his impact going forward.

The Dissident California Right Is the Future.  The new Left came to power convincing voters to let it run the state on behalf of multiple imagined victims and social inequities, but it has been so long since their leftist politics delivered anything of actual use to anyone that no honest person in the state can be ignorant of the actual political system and its objective anymore.  California is now composed of an enormous priestly class of state and municipal workers, together with myriad quasi-independent contractors and semi-private companies which are essentially dependent upon state government contracts and largesse for their economic survival, united with extremely profitable nonprofit activists and the already fantastically wealthy using the sympathetic story of the state's enormous homeless, poor, and immigrant population to ensure perpetual rule for themselves.  It doesn't matter that nothing ever gets better for this last group — that homelessness increases exponentially, or that the poor are increasingly without decent housing, energy, education, or healthcare.

SEIU to Newsom:  Stuff your vaccine mandate.  The civil war brewing between Democratic executives and the unions that elect them spread to California yesterday — and at the worst moment for Gavin Newsom.  Facing a recall election prompted by his incompetent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Newsom rushed to match Joe Biden's actions by imposing a vaccine-or-mask-and-test mandate on the state's workforce.  The union representing the largest number of those workers publicly blasted Newsom for his unilateral abrogation of the collective bargaining agreement and declared that they would refuse to cooperate.

California governor Gavin Newsom compares unvaccinated to drunk drivers.  California Governor Gavin Newsom has compared unvaccinated individuals to drunk drivers.  He appeared on CNN to discuss the recent spike in coronavirus cases due to the Delta variant.  As US health authorities are considering re-instating mask guidelines even for vaccinated adults due to the surge of cases, Mr Newsom claimed that individuals who refused to take the vaccine posed a risk to the public similar to drunk driving.  "It's like drunk drivers, you don't have the right to go out and drink and drive and put everybody else at risk including your own life," Mr Newsom said.

San Fran to spend $300,000 on designer garbage cans despite worsening homeless crisis.  Thanks to misplaced Democrat priorities on the local and state level, the entire state of California is slowly turning into a dumpster fire.  On the state level, Democrat-run cities like San Francisco are preparing to spend up to $300,000 for designer trash cans as crime continues to spike.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city's Board of Supervisors is convinced that the root of the city's endless crisis is all the trash and litter on the streets.  "Our streets and our sidewalks are a mess and the cans we have out there now are actually part of the problem," one supervisor, Matt Haney, said to the Chronicle.

Plummeting reservoir levels could soon force Oroville hydropower offline.  A major California hydroelectric power plant could soon stop generating power amid worsening drought conditions.  According to state water officials, the Edward Hyatt Powerplant at Lake Oroville could go offline as soon as August or September — a time frame that would coincide with a feared power crunch this summer.  The plant, which opened in the late 1960s, has never been forced offline by low lake levels before.  "I think it's a bit shocking," said Jordan Kern, a professor at the department of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University.  "The fact that it's projected to go offline just speaks to how severe the drought is," said Kern, who studies how power grids are impacted by extreme weather.

'Their Hands Are Tied': San Francisco Locals Demand Change To Stop Brazen Crime.  San Francisco local businesses and employees are calling for change as they describe increasingly brazen shoplifting and car break-ins.  Many residents told Fox News they believe changing California law Proposition 47 is the solution.  "The police are actually wonderful, their hands are tied, that's what's going on out here."  Gianni, a local who works in Fisherman's Wharf, told Fox News.  San Francisco Police Department's Public Information Officer, Robert Rueca explained "There's a threshold of 950 dollars that needs to be met in order for a misdemeanor to turn into a felony when it comes to theft."

Judge Orders California to Include Larry Elder on Recall Election Ballot.  Late Wednesday afternoon, attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon announced that a California judge has ordered Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber to include Republican Larry Elder on the final ballot for the September 14 gubernatorial recall election.  The ruling applies to two concurrent suits brought against Weber to remedy the fact that Elder was left off Monday's preliminary list of candidate names.  Dhillon and her colleague attorney Mark Meuser represented California voter Betty Chu while Larry Elder was represented by attorney Steve Baric:  [Tweet]

Newsom threatens:  We might be headed back to lockdowns and school closures if people don't get vaccinated.  It's an indirect threat.  He doesn't say anything will definitely happen, rather that Californians won't need to "worry" about in-class instruction and closing small businesses again if more people get vaccinated.  And if they don't, then...?  My memory's starting to fail in old age but I could have sworn that the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued guidance within the past two weeks that schools must reopen this fall.  No matter how bad the pandemic gets, depriving kids of any more classroom time is too dangerous to their development.  Make 'em mask up, spread out, open the windows, do whatever you've gotta do.  But keep them in class.  Evidently Newsom didn't get the memo.

License to shoplift:  Two thieves brazenly stroll out of TJ Maxx with armfuls of clothes.  Two men casually walked out of a Los Angeles area TJ Maxx with their arms full of what appears to be stolen goods as brazen shoplifters continue to rampage through California retail stores.  Viral video posted earlier this week shows two men carrying armfuls of jeans, jackets and other apparel as they casually saunter out of a TJ Maxx in the Granada Hills section of the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles.  'That looks great,' one man is heard saying in the video as the two men head toward the door with the stolen loot, making no haste as they leave.

This Is What's Become Of California Since They Decriminalized Shoplifting.  This is what is happening daily in California these days now that legislators voted in Prop 47, where thefts under $950 will not be prosecuted, so cops will not bother showing up.  The account shared a shocking video Tuesday of what they call an "organized shoplifting crew" hitting a TJ Maxx store in La Canada Flintridge, an L.A. environ.  The video shows two black men casually strolling out of the store with their arms full of merchandise still on their hangers.  One of the men carries a large, oversized duffle bag on his back, clearly filled with more items.

Pausing a minute to consider the damage leftism does to America.  In California, robberies of items worth less than $950 are misdemeanors, not felonies.  Moreover, in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, the prosecutors whom George Soros placed in office will not prosecute crimes.  They exist to protect criminals, not law-abiding citizens.  And that is how you end up with this video:  [Video clip]

This Shocking Video Shows Just How Brazen Crime In California Has Become.  California's slide into chaos has not been an accident.  A huge reason for the striking rise in homelessness and both petty and violent crime is Prop 47, a bill deceptively titled the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.  The actual bill couldn't be further from the title.  It reduces the penalties for felony crimes, allows for early release of violent criminals, changes some violent felonies to misdemeanors, and allows criminals to steal up to $950 dollars per day in property without prosecution.  As a result, police officers are less and less likely to respond to calls reporting petty theft, as there isn't much they can do with a suspect.

California is releasing 76K inmates early, including violent felons.  With little notice, California on Saturday is increasing early release credits for 76,000 inmates, including violent and repeat felons, as it further trims the population of what once was the nation's largest state correctional system.  More than 63,000 inmates convicted of violent crimes will be eligible for good behavior credits that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017.  That includes nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.

LAPD to stop charging criminals for many offenses.  Law enforcement and the incarceration of known criminals is such a 20th-century concept, right?  That seems to be the message once again coming out of Los Angeles now that ultra-liberal George Gascon is in charge of the county District Attorney's office.  The latest announcement coming from the LAPD is that more suspects who are arrested for a variety of non-violent crimes, including some felonies, will not be taken to court, prosecuted, or put in jail.  Instead, they will be "diverted" to community support programs and social services.  Rather than incarceration, the suspects will be provided with "care and treatment" without facing the stigma of being treated like a criminal.  And just as a reminder, this new policy is being put in place at the same time that the city is facing a historic surge in crimes of all types.

California pays Liberty Counsel $1.35 million to settle Harvest Rock lawsuit.  One year after Liberty Counsel sued Gov. Gavin Newsom on behalf of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry, the state of California paid a settlement of $1.35 million on July 15.  As a result of Liberty Counsel's lawsuit, a federal district court in May approved the first state-wide permanent injunction in the U.S. against COVID restrictions on churches and places of worship.  Under the statewide permanent injunction, all California churches were allowed to hold worship services without discriminatory restrictions.  The injunction also required the state of California to pay $1.35 million to Liberty Counsel to cover attorney's fees and other costs.  The money will be used to continue litigation on behalf of other churches against COVID restrictions, including a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, the nonprofit religious freedom organization said in a statement.

Why Joe Biden Won't Defend Women from Transgenders.  The issue of transgender 'rights' is hot right now because more people are beginning to understand that they are waging a rights war on women and girls.  Recently, at the Wi Spa in Los Angeles, a man escorted by two self-professed lesbian activists paraded his intact male genitalia around in the area of the spa supposedly reserved for the female clientele (including very young girls).  California Civil Code 51(b) is being interpreted as meaning that male indecent exposure is now legally acceptable.  Which means that adult males can parade around exposed in full view of young girls and claim this is a transgender 'right.'

After San Francisco shoplifting video goes viral, officials argue thefts aren't rampant.  A flurry of shoplifters in masks and hooded jackets sprinted from a downtown Neiman Marcus last week and into getaway cars with armfuls of designer handbags — a scene captured on video and raising fears that rings of thieves were hitting retail businesses.  The incident, which remains under investigation, was only the latest to give an impression of lawlessness running rampant in San Francisco's stores, where people have been caught on recordings openly swiping products seemingly without repercussion.  But city leaders are pushing back at that image after the release Monday [7/12/2021] of a midyear public safety report.  Police data shows overall thefts are down 9 percent in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2020, when the city was on lockdown and many businesses closed during the onset of the pandemic.

California issues school mask mandate and rescinds it within hours.  This turned out to be one of the quicker cases of a governmental about-face in recent memory.  Despite the CDC's recent guidance saying that it was safe to go back to in-person learning at schools and universities without the need for masks, the state of California decided to make up its own rules yesterday.  State health officials not only ignored the CDC guidance but went several steps further.  The new instructions would have forced schools to bar students from campus if they refused to wear a mask.  That lasted for approximately four hours.  Then Gavin Newsom and state public health Director Mark Ghaly apparently thought better of it.  They won't be issuing orders for colleges and universities, and the "mandate" for public K-12 schools will leave the decision up to the schools.  So in reality, there is no mandate at all.

San Francisco Political Leaders Out of Touch as City Descends Into Lawlessness.  If you don't like the explosion of violent crime, you're a racist.  That's the message sent by a top aide to the San Francisco district attorney to a self-described "Democrat" who had said on Twitter that the jump in crime had made people afraid for their lives and dubious about the city's future.  The Democrat tweeted that "every single one of my friends right now is considering leaving" San Francisco because of the big increase in crime, adding:  "My friends are scared for their children, and their husbands are scared for their wives."  Kate Chatfield, a senior director for San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, responded from a now-locked Twitter account: "'Husbands are scared for their wives' — your reminder that the 'crime surge' crowd shares the same ideology as The Birth of a Nation."

The Unlivable City.  People are fleeing California in general, and San Francisco in particular, in droves.  As to San Francisco, the fundamental problem is lawlessness.  Which means not just violent crime, which the city has in abundance, but a breakdown in the fundamental norms of civilization that make urban living possible.  The main problem is that San Francisco's far-left city administration has decided not to prosecute theft.  The result, naturally, is an epidemic of theft.  Thus Target, for example, is now closing its San Francisco stores at 6 p.m. [...] How low has San Francisco sunk?  Check out this video of thieves openly stealing handbags and similar products from a Neiman Marcus store:  [Video clip]

What's happening in San Francisco goes far beyond 'shoplifting'.  We're hearing a lot about the overwhelming number of murders and attempted murders in Chicago and New York.  San Francisco, however, has gone in a different direction.  It seems to have become the "shoplifting" capital of America.  This honor goes along with its long having been the capital of America for car break-ins.  It's so bad that I know suburbanites who refuse to drive in the City.  The latest "shoplifting" video is an impressive one, showing a whole gang of thieves racing out of San Francisco's Neiman Marcus store on Union Square, clutching what appears to be thousands of dollars in handbags.

California taxpayers to pay $1.3 billion to enroll more illegal immigrants in Medicaid.  California taxpayers will soon pay more in taxes to enroll more illegal immigrants in Medicaid, a plan that was part of a recently approved state budget.  Younger illegal immigrants are already enrolled in Medicaid, SNAP and other federally funded programs.  The plan proposed by California Democrats guarantees that low-income illegal immigrants older than age 50 will receive health insurance.  Coverage would take effect in 2022 and cost taxpayers $1.3 billion per year.  It follows a $213 billion taxpayer-funded plan proposed in 2019 to allow low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25 to enroll in Medicaid.  Democrats then estimated that adding 90,000 people to Medicaid would cost taxpayers $98 million per year.

The Genesis of Our American Collective Meltdown.  [Scroll down]  California is the worst run of our states.  But it is also always a helpful bellwether of where we are descending.  The state has plenty of oil and natural gas.  There are still remnants of a once thriving nuclear and hydroelectric industry.  But power outages are now commonplace — to the point that, like Third-Worlders, we merely shrug when the lights go out as if it were a green way of reducing carbon emissions.  Forty million people driving on roads and highways intended for 20 million people [...] Gas can range from $4.00 to over $5.00 a gallon; $100 fill-ups are common. [...] Californians are leaving in droves, but housing costs are still soaring. [...] High-speed rail is a tragic joke.  It is inert and unfinished.  The ostentatious half-built overpasses stand like modern graffiti-stained versions of Stonehenge. [...] Mention San Francisco to a Californian, and the same, monotonous warnings arise:  don't go there!  And if you must, don't park there — since smashing into a car and stealing its contents are viewed as understandable redistribution rather than criminal acts. [...] In California, logging an acre of timber is insurrectionary; 400,000 acres going up in smoke is "stuff happens."

Target, Walgreens make drastic changes due to increase in San Francisco thefts.  According to the California Retailer's Association three cities in our state are among the top 10 in the country when it comes to organized retail crime — Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento.  Already we are seeing the negative impact it is having in San Francisco with stores permanently shutting down or closing early.  It has become one of the most pressing issues in our city today.  Target has now acknowledged that San Francisco is the only city in America where they have decided to close some stores early because of the escalating retail crime.

California bans state travel to Florida, 4 more over anti-LGBTQ laws.  California officials have added Florida and four other states to a list of places where state-funded travel is banned over laws that purportedly discriminate against LGBTQ individuals.  State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, announced Monday that Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia had joined Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas on the no-go list, which was first created in 2016.  "When states discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans, California law requires our office to take action," Bonta said in a statement.  "These new additions to the state-funded travel restrictions list are about exactly that ... Rather than focusing on solving real issues, some politicians think it's in their best interest to demonize trans youth and block life-saving care.

What Was California Thinking?  Back in 2014, the political leadership of California became alarmed at the rapidly rising prison population in the state.  The state was also under court order to reduce the overcrowding in state prisons. [...] The first thing they did was pass Proposition 47 — the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.  That sounds like something everyone would want.  58% of Californians voted in favor of the measure. [...] Nothing in Prop 47 was designed to actually reduce crime.  It redefined drug use and theft of property valued at under $950 as misdemeanors rather than felonies.  Punishment would no longer be imprisonment, but a fine of $1,000.  The objective of prison population reduction was achieved by not incarcerating criminals, rather than by eliminating criminal behavior. [...] Prop 47 also allows those imprisoned under previous guidelines to petition for early release.  If a convict is in prison for stealing less than $950, he is now eligible for early release.  As many as 10,000 state prisoners have been released.

Amid Surging Crime Rates And Murders, Oakland City Council Votes To Defund Police.  Despite recently receiving $190 million from the Biden Administration, the City Council of Oakland, California voted Thursday to defund their police department by almost $18 million.  The city's crime rates have skyrocketed, seeing a 90 percent increase in murders, 88 percent increase in carjackings, and 70 percent increase in shootings all in the last year.  Sixty-five lives have been lost, and 1,300 robberies have been recorded, yet, the city redirected police funds toward the Department of Violence Prevention, "with the intention of improving public safety" via alternate means.  On Monday [6/28/2021], the Department of Violence Prevention's chief was interrupted during an on-camera interview by an attempted armed robbery.  The department's chief was being interviewed on the steps of Oakland City Hall, when they were attacked.  The suspects remain outstanding.

California Democrats seek to change rules ahead of Newsom recall.  California Democrats hope to pass an election reform bill that would help Gov. Gavin Newsom stave off a likely recall election later this year.  Assembly Bill 152, first proposed in the California State Assembly in January and currently under consideration by the state Senate, would "allow the Secretary of State to certify the sufficiency of the signatures before the Joint Legislative Budget Committee has had 30 days to review and comment on the estimate if the Legislature has appropriated funds it determines are reasonably necessary to conduct the recall election and has designated funds for that purpose in the Budget Act or another statute."  Under current state law, the Department of Finance issues a cost estimate, and then the Joint Legislative Budget Committee has 30 days to review and comment on the costs.

Why Newsom Needs to be Recalled.  [Scroll down]  A large part of the focus of the recall effort has been Newsom's response to the pandemic, which has seemed heavy-handed to many residents, with questionable lockdowns and other restrictions on daily life.  And, of course, there's the nausea-inducing spectacle of Newsom flouting his own lockdown to party it up at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the country, Napa's famous French Laundry.  While Newsom deserves all the scorn rained down on him for that incident, it is a sideshow, really.  Its only long-term value may be to awaken the residents of California to Newsom's shallow approach to governing the state and his reluctance to address California's chronic problems.  Finally, there's the issue of Newsom's dereliction as the head of California's administrative bureaucracy.  There hasn't been a lot of reporting on the billions of dollars in fraud discovered in California's unemployment insurance program, but it is an outrage and as the chief executive of the state, he bears ultimate responsibility.

The Solution To California's Water Crisis Lies Off Its Coast.  In California 1 to 1.5 acre-feet will supply a year's water for the average household.  Lake Shasta, the largest reservoir, holds 4,552,000 acre-feet.  It would cost about $1.4 million to add 634,000 acre-feet, enough to support 2 million people yearly, including adding more water to be added to agriculture.  However, the SWCB is environmentally opposed to any height addition to the Shasta dam.  Indeed, across California, deep-rooted environmentalism has made it difficult to put into practice solutions to increase water storage or produce new water through desalination.

California set to extend state eviction moratorium beyond June and cover 100% unpaid rent for struggling tenants.  Lawmakers in Sacramento are poised to extend statewide eviction protections beyond the end of June to ensure emergency rental aid reaches struggling tenants in time to cover potentially all of their unpaid rent during the pandemic, a move strongly backed by local renter advocates and met with resistance by many landlords.  The underlying issue is that state and county governments have been slow to distribute the $2.6 billion in federal funds to cover back rent.  In Sonoma County, officials have so far disbursed less than 10% of the $32 million set aside for its rental aid program.  Renter advocates fear that if a statewide moratorium on most evictions is not extended, many tenants won't receive assistance in time to stay in their homes and avoid crushing debt.

San Francisco cops say viral Walgreens shoplifting incident is par for the course.  San Francisco has become a shoplifter's paradise — with thieves like the one caught on video looting a Walgreens emboldened by relaxed punishment for the crime as businesses shutter, cops say.  The Walgreens heist, which happened right in front of a security guard, renewed the debate over a controversial city law called Proposition 47.  "What happened in that Walgreens has been going on in that city for quite a while," San Francisco police Lt. Tracy McCray said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" Wednesday.  "I'm used to it," McCray continued.  "I mean, we can have a greatest hits compilation of people just walking in and cleaning out the store shelves and security guards, the people who work there, just standing by helplessly because they can't do anything."

Police investigating attempt to steal SF school board recall petitions.  This actually happened about two weeks ago but it just got covered in the San Francisco Chronicle last Friday [6/11/2021].  The backstory here is that a group of parents in San Francisco have launched a recall petition aimed at three members of the school board.  Fed up with the board's focus on renaming schools (on the grounds that current names are racist) and ending merit based admissions to Lowell High School (on the grounds that meritocracy is racist), the group is trying get Board President Gabriela Lopez, former Board VP Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga recalled.  They have been collecting signatures to get the issue on the ballot.

Gov. Newsom won't lift virus 'state of emergency'.  While California will end most of its coronavirus restrictions on June 15, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday he will not lift the statewide "state of emergency" that gives him broad powers to either suspend or declare new rules and regulations.  California has been under a state of emergency since March 4, 2020.  Since then, Newsom has authorized billions of dollars in emergency spending and issued at least 47 executive orders to alter or suspend 200 state laws and regulations because of the virus, according to a resolution authored by Republican state senators.

California Gov. Newsom Releases His Political Prisoners.  June 15 should be celebrated as the Golden State Independence Day.  On this date, more than 15 long months after he issued his first imperial order limiting the movements of an ostensibly free people, Gov. Gavin Newsom reopened the state.  "Never Again" should replace "Eureka" on the Great Seal of California as a reminder of the misery inflicted by the governor.  It's arguable that no other state was more restrictive during the coronavirus pandemic.  WalletHub ranked California 45th in "fewest COVID-19 restrictions."  But because California has, at nearly 40 million, more residents than the five states (and District of Columbia) that were more restrictive, a case can be made that its lockdown rules were more stringent since they affected a greater number of people.  Newsom, sued 55 times by Californians who felt they had been unfairly bound by his commandments, took a heavy-handed approach to the coronavirus outbreak.  Columnist Steven Greenhut observed as early as May of last year that Newsom was acting as the "King of Sacramento" and Californians had little choice but to serve at his pleasure.

Slammed by COVID-19 Shutdown, San Luis Obispo Boosts Newsom Recall.  Though in-person service came and went at the Paso Robles winery Paix Sur Terre during the pandemic, alcohol consumption skyrocketed, making for winemaker Ryan Pease's "best year ever."  But despite personal gains, Pease couldn't shake the feeling of guilt when talking to neighbors who struggled to run restaurants and small businesses throughout San Luis Obispo County.  When the opportunity came to back a recall petition to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, the lifelong Democrat signed his name.  "Our mindset here is, because we're so isolated from other metropolitan areas, we take care of each other.  We create our own economy," said Pease, 37.  "Even though I'm a Democrat and blue, we don't like to be told what to do here."

Gavin Newsom Goes Back on His Word, State of Emergency Will Remain in Place After June 15 Deadline.  On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) alerted state residents that he was not going to lift he state of emergency on June 15, which was the proposed date.  Newsom made the announcement during a press conference while announcing winners of a vaccine lottery, "Vax for the Win," where those selected win $50,000 cash prizes.  By the way, it's taxable.  Welcome to California, the state with the highest income tax.  The casual reveal came during what Eric Ting of SF Gate called a "testy press conference" in his headline, also indicating in his piece that it was "often tense."  The exchange was between Newsom and AP reporter Adam Beam, who referenced the June 15 date.

California State Water Board is Manufacturing a Drought by Draining Reservoirs into the Ocean.  "In the last 14 days, 90% of Delta inflow went to sea.  It's equal to a year's supply of water for 1 million people.  #ManMadeDrought," Central Valley farmer Kristi Diener said.  Diener, a California water expert and farmer, has been warning steadily that water is unnecessarily being let out to sea as the state faces a normal dry year.  "Are we having a dry year?  Yes," Diener says.  "That is normal for us.  Should we be having water shortages in the start of our second dry year?  No.  Our reservoirs were designed to provide a steady five year supply for all users, and were filled to the top in June 2019."

If there's one thing a tyrant loves, it's a "state of emergency."
Gov. Newsom Won't Lift COVID 'State Of Emergency' When California Reopens.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday said he will not lift a state of emergency that gives him broad powers to impose or suspend rules involving the coronavirus when the state fully reopens its economy on June 15.  But he still intends to lift most mask and other restrictions on that date.  California has been under a state of emergency since March 4, 2020.  Since then, Newsom has authorized billions of dollars in emergency spending and issued at least 47 executive orders to alter or suspend 200 state laws and regulations because of the virus, according to a resolution authored by Republican state senators.

California Ordered to Pay $2 Million in Legal Fees to Church that Violated Coronavirus Restrictions.  After a lengthy court battle, the government of the state of California backed down in its efforts to enforce coronavirus restrictions on a church that continued hosting in-person worship services, and has now agreed in a settlement to pay the church's $2 million worth of legal fees, Breitbart reports.  When the state repeatedly attempted to enforce strict capacity limits, mask mandates, and other "social distancing" requirements on the San Diego-based Pentecostal church, the church's lawyers filed suit with the United States Supreme Court, winning all three suits.  This ultimately led to lawyers on behalf of the state of California agreeing to the settlement, which was approved by a federal judge.  Responding to the settlement, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, a legal group that represents churches facing suppression of their First Amendment rights, pointed out that while businesses such as Costco were limited to 50 percent capacity, while churches were forced to stay as low as 25 percent, and sometimes even lower.

Chesa Boudin blames lazy, racist cops for San Francisco's crime surge and his own unpopularity.  Apparently, all would be paradise in crime-pit San Francisco if it weren't for all those lazy, racist cops who are persecuting poor, heroic Chesa Boudin, the city's leftist do-nothing district attorney.  That's the word from young Chesa, stepson of Bill Ayers, son of a terrorist convicted of killing a black cop, and former Hugo Chávez adviser, who's suddenly found himself unpopular in the city and facing a voter recall.

Judge orders Calif gov Newsom to pay $1.35 million for illegally locking down church.  I am pretty certain that California taxpayers will have to cough up the money to pay for Gavin Newsom's misbehavior, even as cop-haters press to make police officers personally liable for judgments against their actions on the job.  Nonetheless, it is a satisfying development in the disposal of Newsom's unconstitutional shutdown of religious services in the name of COVID. [...] The order came as part of a settlement agreement between Harvest Rock Church, represented by Liberty Counsel, and the state of California that also included a permanent injunction against imposing restrictions on churches and other houses of worship.

CA Gov. Newsom Ordered to Pay $1.35M in Legal Fees for Shutting Down Churches.  This week, a California District Court approved the settlement of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry's lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom, establishing the first state-wide permanent injunction in the country against COVID restrictions on churches and places of worship.  The Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit religious rights law firm, represented Harvest Rock in their legal proceedings against the governor and the state.  Under the settlement agreement, discriminatory restrictions on worship and religious gatherings may no longer be applied to churches and places of worship.

Newsom Forced to Pay 1.35 Million in Church Lawsuit, Continues to Happily Gaslight.  Last week, a California District Court approved and entered a Settlement Agreement between Harvest Rock Church (HRC), Harvest International Ministries, and Governor Gavin Newsom.  HRC filed a lawsuit back in 2020 opposing the COVID restrictions that shut down in-person worship throughout the state.  The Supreme Court's April decision was the catalyst that allowed the settlement of a number of cases against Newsom and the State of California.

Facing Dry Year, CA State Water Board is Draining California Reservoirs.  "In the last 14 days, 90% of Delta inflow went to sea.  It's equal to a year's supply of water for 1 million people.  #ManMadeDrought," Central Valley farmer Kristi Diener said.  Diener, a California water expert and farmer, has been warning steadily that water is unnecessarily being let out to sea as the state faces a normal dry year.  "Are we having a dry year?  Yes," Diener says.  "That is normal for us.  Should we be having water shortages in the start of our second dry year?  No.  Our reservoirs were designed to provide a steady five year supply for all users, and were filled to the top in June 2019."

California Democratic lawmakers look to remove penalty for possessing firearm during crime.  Reform-minded activists in California vow to move forward after a bill that would have dramatically reduced, and in some cases eliminated, enhanced sentences for crimes committed while using a gun failed to advance through the legislature Thursday [5/20/2021].  "AB 1509 was held in the Appropriations committee and will not move forward this year," Greg Fidell, policy manager of Initiate Justice, wrote on Twitter.  "This is very painful — but we will be back stronger next year."  The state lawmakers who backed the Anti-Racism Sentencing Reform Act claim the existing law, which allows prosecutors to seek additional time behind bars, is racist — 89% of the roughly 40,000 inmates serving gun enhancement sentences in California are people of color, according to figures from Restore Justice.

Court Permanently Stops Gavin Newsom From Locking Down Churches.  Today, a California District Court entered an order approving Liberty Counsel's settlement of the lawsuit on behalf of Harvest Rock Church and Harvest International Ministry against California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  The full and final settlement was approved today the District Court and thus is the first state-wide permanent injunction in the country against COVID restrictions on churches and places of worship.  Once entered by the District Court, this full settlement will be the first state-wide permanent injunction in the country against COVID restrictions on churches and places of worship.  Under the agreed state-wide permanent injunction, all California churches may hold worship without discriminatory restrictions.  Under the settlement, California may no longer impose discriminatory restrictions upon houses of worship.  The governor must also pay Liberty Counsel $1,350,000 to reimburse attorney's fees and costs.

California Governor Newsom Using Federal COVID Bailout Money to Bail Himself Out of COVID Recall Effort.  California Governor Gavin Newsom is taking the federal COVID bailout money to new levels of manipulated intent by using the funds to bail himself out of a recall that is based on the COVID dictates he initiated.  Thus part of the reason why the highly political federal agencies lifted the COVID rules surfaces.  Politically the blue state shutdowns were backfiring, and the ramifications were getting more serious by the day.  The CDC responded to the political shift against JoeBama and lifted their mandates.  Simultaneously, Governor Newsom goes on a spending spree in California to provide bailout money to all the favored leftist causes.

Paywatch: Thanks to the Public Employee Union, Multiple LA Lifeguards Make Nearly $400K a Year.  As reported by Forbes, lifeguards in The Golden State can really clean up.  Per OpenTheBooks.com CEO Adam Andrzejewski, his organization found that, in 2019, 82 LA County guardians of the shore raked in more than $200,000.  Seven lifeguards reeled in more than $300,000.  And — look out, Mitch Buchannon — one swim-trunked savior pulled in $391,971.  Here's how Fernando Boiteux's earnings break down:  $205,619 in salary, $60,452 in perks, and $125,900 in benefits.

These incremental changes only go in one direction, and that is the direction of more government control of your life.
Gov. Newsom proposes kindergarten for 4-year-olds.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a "total transformation" of public schools in America's largest state Wednesday by offering pre-kindergarten to all 4-year-olds, opening up college savings accounts for low-income students and offering universal after-school care in disadvantaged communities.  Newsom announced the measures as part of a broad new education spending package made possible by the state's surprise budget surplus.

Red Pills Are Falling Down All Over the Golden State.  Californians are realizing how deeply deluded they have been about the condition of their state.  The first signs of enlightenment came when an intrepid band of dissidents tried yet again to gather enough signatures to force a recall election of Governor Gavin Newsom.  With no money, and four failed attempts already on record, nobody expected the fifth effort to succeed.  But a year later, this volunteer army of several thousand Californians gathered nearly 2.2 million signed petitions.  In early May, California's secretary of state will almost certainly announce certification of the signatures.  And later this year, California's feckless governor will be fighting for his political life.  Recalls are contagious.  Inspired by the Newsom recall, efforts are now underway to force recall elections in San Francisco and Los Angeles County, targeting the District Attorneys in those cities.

In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Who Are Gifted at Math.  California's Department of Education is working on a new framework for K-12 mathematics that discourages gifted students from enrolling in accelerated classes that study advanced concepts like calculus.  The draft of the framework is hundreds of pages long and covers a wide range of topics.  But its overriding concern is inequity.  The department is worried that too many students are sorted into different math tracks based on their natural abilities, which leads some to take calculus by their senior year of high school while others don't make it past basic algebra.  The department's solution is to prohibit any sorting until high school, keeping gifted kids in the same classrooms as their less mathematically inclined peers until at least grade nine.

Keeping the dangerous criminals out of prison isn't a winning plan.  All decent people want our prisons to be safe places.  One could, potentially, make prisons safer by removing the dangerous criminals from the prisons and releasing them onto the streets.  Yes, the logic is there.  The sense, the morality, and the justice, on the other hand, are totally absent.  Sadly, California is part of a growing trend of states that believe they are choosing freedom over punishment.  Instead, they are diminishing society's freedom by abandoning justice and safety.  Of course, offering second chances to those who earn them is a good thing.  Failing to penalize offenders adequately or deter them in the first place, though, is an invitation to cultural rot and mayhem.

California Granting Early Release to 76K Inmates — Including Some Pretty Nasty Dudes.  This just in from the no-longer-Golden State:  California is giving 76,000 inmates, including violent and repeat felons, the opportunity to leave prison earlier as the state aims to further trim the population of what once was the nation's largest state correctional system.  Shocked?  Me neither.  As reported by AP, more than 63,000 of the 76,000 inmates, who were convicted of violent crimes, will be eligible for "good behavior credits" that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017.  That includes nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.

76,000 California Violent, Repeat Felons Get Earlier Releases.  California is giving 76,000 inmates, including violent and repeat felons, the opportunity to leave prison earlier as the state aims to further trim the population of what once was the nation's largest state correctional system.  More than 63,000 inmates convicted of violent crimes will be eligible for good behavior credits that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017.  That includes nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.  The new rules take effect Saturday but it will be months or years before any inmates go free earlier.  Corrections officials say the goal is to reward inmates who better themselves while critics said the move will endanger the public.

76,000 California Inmates [are] Now Eligible for Earlier Releases.  California is giving 76,000 inmates, including violent and repeat felons, the opportunity to leave prison earlier as the state aims to further trim the population of what once was the nation's largest state correctional system.  More than 63,000 inmates convicted of violent crimes will be eligible for good behavior credits that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017.

Enough verified signatures submitted to qualify for recall of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom will likely face a recall election after the campaign to recall the Democrat reached the requisite number of signatures to qualify for the question to be placed on the ballot this year.  More than 1,626,000 verified signatures were collected, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber reported on Monday, which is more than 100,000 above what is needed to force a recount.  The window for signature collection ended in March, and since then, officials have conducted a lengthy signature verification process.  Voters will now have the opportunity to submit a written request to their county registrar of voters over the next 30 business days to have their name removed from the petition.

Chesa Boudin and now the dead baby.  It's getting harder and harder to justify San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin's let-'em-all-out prosecutorial policies.  He calls it 'restorative justice.'  In reality, it's bad guys go free.  Last December, the radical leftwing D.A. tried to extricate himself from the deaths of two innocent women hit by a drunken thug in a stolen car who mowed them down in a hit-and-run following a burglary.  The thug was a parolee who was only out on the streets because Chesa let him out of jail.  After that travesty, Chesa said that other people did it, claiming "systemic failure."  That excuse didn't work, and shortly afterward, triggered a public effort to recall him.

Public school enrollment plunges in California — and everywhere else.  Have the wokesters finally reached a tipping point?  Leftists of multiple stripes have been making public schools horrible places, and now students are bolting. [...] In California, it's white students who are bolting most.  The AP reports that they constitute 22% of school enrollment but account for half of the exits.  They're moving on to private schools, whose enrollments are up, or to homeschooling, which is available to anyone with a literate and motivated parent.  Or else just moving to a better state.  It suggests that poor black and Latino kids, who form far larger demographic groups within the California districts, might just be not bolting because economically, they can't.

Kroger Closing Ralphs And Food 4 Less In Long Beach Saturday Over Hero Pay Law.  Kroger is closing two of its stores, Ralphs and Food 4 Less, on Saturday after the City of Long Beach mandated that the company pay employees $4 extra an hour in "hero pay" amid the coronavirus pandemic.  As customers came by the store on Saturday [4/17/2021], there wasn't much left to buy and the shelves were visibly empty, but people in the neighborhood said they wanted to shop there one more time.

California Dems Want the Name, Address of Everyone Who Signs a Recall Petition.  California Democrats are doing it again.  Whenever they're afraid that the electorate might have a mind of its own and might be tired of their shenanigans — so much that a recall against one of them might be successful — they attempt to change the rules midstream.  They did this in 2017 when State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Orange County) was successfully recalled despite Democrats passing legislation that retroactively changed the number of signatures needed to qualify a recall petition. [...] Now Newman is back in the State Senate and has sponsored legislation that would allow politicians targeted by a recall to get a copy of the petition — including the names of everyone who signed it and their contact information.  Why would they need that?  Newman believes people who signed a recall petition against him were given false information about what they were signing and that he should have had an opportunity to correct that.

Supreme Court Rules Against California's Limits On In-Home Religious Gatherings.  The U.S. Supreme Court in a divided decision late Friday ruled in favor of lifting restrictions on in-home religious gatherings, overturning a lower court ruling that upheld Gov. Gavin Newsom's limits on people from different homes.  The 5-4 unsigned ruling follows other similar decisions recently regarding churches and the coronavirus pandemic.  The decision noted it was the fifth time the court has rejected the Ninth Circuit's analysis of California coronavirus restrictions.  Chief Justice John Roberts dissented but did not sign the dissenting statement submitted by justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.  The ruling stated that before it can limit religious gatherings, the government must prove they pose a greater danger than secular activities that remain open, such as shopping or attending movies.

Ex-Trump Official Launches Group Looking to Flip California Red.  When it comes to potential Republican challengers for Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a recall, Ric Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence under then-President Donald Trump, is a name that gets mentioned frequently.  Whether or not he runs is still up in the air, although he's reportedly been laying the groundwork.  However, talking to Fox News this week, Grenell detailed a more ambitious goal:  He wants to "Fix California."  That's at least the name of his new group, which he's launching to bring "permanent" change to the Golden State after the Democratic Party there has lurched to the left.

The Editor says...
I see this idea as quixotic at best.  California's political system is designed to keep Democrats in office forever, with very little competition.  Even if Republicans take over tomorrow, the mess that has been created by Democrats was the result of decades of mismanagement, and would take an enormous upheaval to rectify.  Homeless bums and drug addicts would have to be rounded up by the hundreds and locked up somewhere.  Illegal aliens would have to be uprooted and deported en masse.  All the state laws that have created a hostile environment for small business would have to be repealed.  None of that is going to happen.  California is on the road to ruin, and the brakes have failed.

California's migrant mess.  California, epicenter of the nation's illegal immigrant population and the first sanctuary state, hasn't seen its borders overrun due to the nearly complete border wall.  The state's economy had already been smothered by extended COVID-19 lockdowns, businesses fleeing to other states, and children kept home and out of school.  But relief was short-lived.  San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, all Democrats, worked out a plan to bring 1,450 minor girls to the San Diego Convention Center as a way to ease conditions in Texas.  More than 500 girls are now on-site, with the rest to arrive shortly.  And 70 brought COVID-19 with them.

The California Left's Abuse of IRS Info.  Judicial Watch is fighting to protect the First Amendment rights of non-profit donors across America from a new California law which "compels the disclosure of certain organization's donors [to its state government]."  "This challenge to California law has now made its way to the Supreme Court," Fitton explained last month.  Filing an amici curiae (friends of the court) brief, Judicial Watch is asking the Supreme Court to consider or take up the case.  "We're obviously asking for this California law to be overturned," Fitton continued.

The 'most terrifying story I have ever had to report': Glenn Beck reveals newly approved CA school curriculum.  California's Board of Education voted unanimously to approve a new, multimillion-dollar Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, which will be offered statewide with many of the state's largest school districts making it a requirement for graduation.  According to National Review, the curriculum is "probably the most radical, polemical, and ideologically loaded educational document ever offered up for public consideration in the free world."  On the radio program Tuesday [3/30/2021], Glenn Beck reacted to the newly approved curriculum, calling it "the craziest, most terrifying story I have ever had to report."

Against California's Ethnic-Studies Curriculum.  To graduate from high school in the state of California, students have to take just three years of English and two years of math.  Democrats in the state are now trying to add another subject to these paltry requirements, which are among the most lax and lenient in the nation.  Chemistry, biology, physics, history, geography, civics, and foreign languages have all been passed over.  As it turns out, the subject that California's political machine wants taught to all children in the state without exception is ethnic studies.  Today, the state's Board of Education will vote on whether or not to approve a model curriculum for this subject to be used in each and every Californian public school.  The state legislature has signaled its intention to make the curriculum mandatory if the Board of Education gives its approval.  If such a bill is signed into law, ethnic studies will be the only subject in California with the same pedagogical priority in K-12 classrooms as reading, writing, and arithmetic.

California county funds welfare program that excludes whites and males.  Something strange is going on out in Marin County, California.  The elected officials there have instituted a pilot program offering a universal basic income in the form of a monthly stipend to a limited number of participants.  That in and of itself isn't unique, as programs such as this have been tested in other places, such as Stockton, California.  A couple of aspects of this program, however, really are unique.  The most glaring among these is the fact that in order to qualify, participants have to be women.  No males need apply.  On top of that, the program is not available to white women, but only to women of color.

Los Angeles agency votes for $36M police funding boost as crime surges.  Officials in Los Angeles voted this week to re-fund their police amid an upswing in crime.  Less than a year after "defund the police" fervor swept across major cities from coast to coast, Los Angeles County Metro, the region's public transportation agency, voted Thursday [3/25/2021] to boost police funding by $36 million.  The vote passed 12-0, including a "yea" from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a major advocate of defund the police measures, who chairs the board.  The money will go toward the agency's law-enforcement contracts with the Los Angeles Police Department, Long Beach Police Department and Los Angeles Sherriff's Department.  Los Angeles has been among the nation's leading communities in efforts to defund the police.

The Editor says...
The inevitable "upswing in crime" could have been avoided if the county leadership had any amount of foresight, along with the backbone necessary to resist the mobs.

Whites need not apply.
Oakland launches guaranteed pay plan for low-income people of color.  The mayor of Oakland, California, on Tuesday [3/23/2021] announced a privately funded program that will give low-income families of color $500 per month with no rules on how they can spend it.  The program is the latest experiment with a "guaranteed income," an idea that giving poor people a set amount of money each month helps ease the stresses of poverty that often lead to poor health while hindering their ability to find full-time work.

Asian-Americans Worry About Democrat Bill 'Legalizing' Mugging.  Here's a snapshot of why these violent assaults keep happening.  And why they're happening so often in California and New York, in areas where crime has essentially been legalized.  The upsurge in store robberies in California was driven by pro-crime measures that essentially legalized shoplifting.  Now the Democrats want to all but legalize robbery. [...] SB82 specifically states that, "This bill would define the crime of petty theft in the first degree as taking the property from the person of another or from a commercial establishment by means of force or fear without the use of a deadly weapon or great bodily injury."  That means a mugging is now petty theft as long as the thugs don't use a gun or cause 'great bodily injury[.]'

California Police Reform Bill May Ban Christians From Law Enforcement.  California Assembly Bill 655 would require police departments to investigate whether not potential cops had "engaged in membership in a hate group, participation in hate group activities, or public expressions of hate."  It would make such activities "grounds for termination."  When Americans think of a "hate group," many minds would conjure up a domestic terrorist group motivated by racial animus like the Ku Klux Klan.  Yet some transgender activists and organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) use the term "hate group" as an epithet to demonize their political and ideological opposition.  The SPLC has become notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian groups as "hate groups" because they advocate against same-sex marriage or transgender activism.

Congressional Democrats push a job-killing law even Californians couldn't stand.  In the 2020 election, 63% of California voters backed President Biden.  On the same ballot, those voters essentially repealed a job-killing state law that Biden and Democrats now want to impose on a national level in the form of the PRO Act.  That California law, A.B. 5, attempted to force businesses that use contract and freelance workers into hiring them with employee benefits.  Instead, it predictably caused freelance work to dry up throughout the state.  News conglomerates cut loose their California-based freelancers.  A variety of independent contractors, such as truck drivers, professional service providers, and interpreters, suddenly faced financial ruin.  Legislators were forced to carve out multiple exceptions to their ill-considered law in a last-ditch effort to save it, but even that wasn't enough.  In the end, Uber and Lyft, the iconic ride-share applications that the law had originally targeted, came within a hair's breadth of shutting down all service in California.  A judge stepped in and blocked the law just in time.

CA Dept of Ed voting on curriculum that would encourage students to chant to Aztec god of sacrifice.  The California Department of Education (CDE) is set to vote on a new ethnic studies curriculum that reportedly calls for the "decolonization" of society in America and encourages students to chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice.  The curriculum will focus on "social consciousness" and cultures that have allegedly not gotten enough attention in textbooks.  That would include "African American, Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x, Native American, and Asian American and Pacific Islander studies," according to the CDE.  "By affirming the identities and contributions of marginalized groups in our society, ethnic studies helps students see themselves and each other as part of the narrative of the United States," the overview states.

San Francisco's Poop-Patrol Boss Made $380K, Didn't Do [His Job], And Has Been Charged With Corruption.  In 2019, we highlighted a tripling in reported human waste in the public way.  Citizens filed 10,644 complaints in 2014 and the number of complaints escalated to 30,996 cases by 2019. [...] Mohammed Nuru, the public works director and self-titled @MrCleanSF, was in charge of keeping city streets clean and oversaw a $500 million budget.  He was indicted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2020.  Nuru was charged with one count of alleged public corruption and is innocent until proven guilty.  "The complaint describes a web of corruption involving bribery, kickbacks, and side deals by one of San Francisco's highest-ranking city employees," said U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson.  "The public is entitled to honest work from public officials, free from manipulation for the official's own personal benefit and profit."

Soros' SF DA Chesa Boudin Tried Zero Murders and Only 2 Sex Assaults.  There's a pro-crimes arms race among Soros DAs bent on freeing the most criminals and convicting the fewest.  But even within that fishbowl, Chesa Boudin, Weatherman royalty backed by Soros, is something special.  The Marina Times, which California Democrats have been trying to stamp out, has the numbers and they're something special. [...] Just keep in mind, Chesa Boudin is the DA of San Francisco, not a small town in Iowa.  These are staggeringly insane numbers that paint a picture of a justice system that has essentially shut down.

Gavin Newsom, In Recall Hole, Keeps Digging.  California Governor Gavin Newsom gave his "State of the State" address last night [3/9/2021] and decided he wasn't giving his opponents and advocates for his recall enough ammunition.  So he obliged them by choosing to frame his campaign for "equity" as a question of not going back to "normal" when the pandemic ends because "normal accepts inequity."  Telling people that things will not "return to normal" after what they've been through is not a way to win friends and influence voters.  It is, in fact, another reason to sign a recall petition and vote the incompetent governor out of office.

Gavin Newsom's State of the State: 'I Have Made Mistakes ... but We Own Them'.  California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered his annual "State of the State" address from an empty Dodger Stadium on Tuesday night [3/9/2021], hoping to rally support as he faces a likely recall election in the coming months.  Newsom struck an optimistic tone, noting that the state's coronavirus numbers were improving.  And he admitted errors:  "We have made mistakes," he said.  "I have made mistakes.  But we own them.  We learn from them.  And we never stop trying."

The Editor says...
I suspect the governor is mistaken if he thinks such a lame statement is enough to keep him from being recalled.

Newsom recall leaders say they have enough signatures to trigger an election.  Leaders of the effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday [3/7/2021] they've collected 1.95 million signatures a little more than a week before the deadline, a number they believe will be more than enough to trigger a special recall election.  County and state elections officials still need to verify that nearly 1.5 million are valid signatures from registered California voters before the recall can qualify for the ballot.  But recall supporters said Sunday that they're confident they've collected enough.  The most recent signature verification numbers from the Secretary of State's Office found that about 83% of the signatures counted by early February were valid.  There's no guarantee that validity rate will hold for the remaining signatures, but if it does, proponents would reach the threshold needed to trigger a special recall election.

Newsom films pro-vaccine PSA inside restaurant that's closed due to pandemic restrictions.  Via Breitbart, is it really so hard for this guy to stay out of restaurants during a pandemic?  His night out at one a few months ago might end up costing him his job.  If that's not a reason to dine in until COVID is over, I don't know what is.  This PSA was filmed at Los Amigos restaurant in Fresno.  Fresno is in California's "purple tier," per Fox News, which means indoor dining isn't allowed.  Yet there was Newsom with comedian George Lopez, firing off this PSA about vaccinations inside the building.  Fox notes that he was at Los Amigos to discuss a relief grant received by the restaurant's owners to help them weather the economic storm until restrictions are finally lifted.  Okay, but why did they need to meet indoors to do that?

California Bill Would Give $1,000 Fines to Retailers With Separate 'Girls' and 'Boys' Toy Sections.  Retail stores in most of California are only allowed to operate at 25 percent capacity.  A new bill in the state legislature would ensure that whatever part of their shop is allowed to be open is as inclusive as possible.  Last week, Assembly Members Evan Low (D-Cupertino) and Cristina Garcia (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill that would require retailers to offer their toys and childcare products in a gender-neutral format.  Brick-and-mortar shops would have to display the majority of their products and clothing aimed at children in one undivided, unisex area on the sales floor.  They'd also be barred from putting up signage that would indicate whether a product was intended for a boy or girl.

Vox vs. Reality:  California unemployment fraud.  [Scroll down]  The problems with the California system weren't new ones and Vox pointed to California Assembly member David Chiu who it reported was "spearheading the charge" to improve it.  The article contains a link to this piece in the LA Times from last August.  It's headlined, "California lawmakers ask Newsom to act immediately on unemployment claims" and it describes a letter which Assembly member Chiu and a bipartisan group of lawmakers had sent to the governor. [...] You get the picture.  Chiu was telling the governor to get the money out the door fast and worry about the paperwork later.  And Vox was citing this as the kind of effort needed to fix the problems with the California system.  In the same piece we're also informed that one of the problems with some unemployment systems is an emphasis on detecting fraud.

Meet George Gascón, the Rogue Prosecutor Whose Policies Are Wreaking Havoc in Los Angeles.  If you have followed our rogue prosecutor series, no doubt you were disturbed by Boston's Rachael Rollins and her list of "15 crimes" you can now commit there, appalled at the anti-police policies of Philadelphia's Larry Krasner, disgusted by the actions of Baltimore's Marilyn Mosby, nauseated by the weekly death tolls caused by the apathy of Chicago's Kim Foxx, and disconcerted by the predictable anti-victim policies of Fairfax's Steve Descano.  The goal of each of these Soros-backed rogue prosecutors, as we wrote in our research paper on the topic, is to "fundamentally reverse engineer" the role of the prosecutor and to fundamentally transform our criminal justice system.  To that end, they have enacted policies that favor defendants, ignore drug laws, prohibit prosecutors from filing certain misdemeanors, and require prosecutors to cut sweetheart deals with many offenders.

California Suddenly Pushes Strict 'Signature Match' for Gavin Newsom Recall Drive.  California Governor Gavin Newsom, once considered a rising superstar in the Democratic Party, is suddenly facing a serious effort to get him removed from power.  The petition "Rescue California" has gathered over 1.5 million signatures, enough to qualify to put his recall up for a vote; but the State of California is poised to go into overdrive to throw out signatures that do not match exactly. [...] Robert Barnes, a constitutional attorney, notes that California resident Kanye West was removed from the 2020 election ticket due to signature-matching.  "How did Democrats kick Kanye West off the ballot in his home state?" he tweeted.  "By demanding a strict signature match.  Guess what rate of signatures were rejected by the election officials?  Over half.  Yet the signatures magically match for the general election?"  The Rescue California petition drive is thus pushing to drive far beyond the 1.4 million minumum for signatures and has set a target of at least 1.9 million, according to organizer Thomas Del Beccaro.

5.7 million Californians to receive $600 stimulus payments.  On Tuesday [2/23/2021], California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $7.6 billion coronavirus relief package providing aid to 5.7 million people.  Under the package, $600 one-time payments will go to qualifying Californians, including many who were left out of receiving federal stimulus funding.  "Regardless of your status, those who have been left behind in the federal stimulus, California is not going to leave you behind," said Newsom.

The Editor says...
Who was "left out of receiving federal stimulus funding?"  Illegal aliens.  Nobody else, as far as I know.

California, land of delusion.  The latest verbal gymnastics our local San Francisco Bay Area, 11 o'clock news team tried and failed to explain was why, when COVID cases are rapidly plummeting, we are not opening the state.  There are only five counties that have "graduated" out of the deadly Purple Tier as of this morning [2/21/2021].  After months of touting the so-called crisis in ICU capacity, now we get no mention of that issue.  Instead, we're treated to ten minutes of proud stories about massive new vaccination sites.  These are immediately followed by stories about the lack of available vaccine doses.  It's almost funny.  We are exhorted to do our duty and get vaccinated, for the common good, if we can find any vaccine.  I know people who desperately wanted it and had to drive for hours to locate doses.  Personally, I wouldn't get the vaccine.  But that's another story.

Gavin Newsom's crony capitalism racket.  Now that California's Gov. Gavin Newsom has a recall petition apparently reaching the threshold for ballot qualification, there's some renewed press interest in what he's about and what he really does.  Unlike, say, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose style seems to be bullying, machine politics, and use of snarling political muscle, Newsom's racket for maintaining power seems to be crony capitalism, or, perhaps more accurately, crony socialism.  This isn't surprising in a state with the highest inequality ratios in the nation — big billionaires in a couple of urban enclaves and a lot of impoverished and marginalized people pretty much everywhere else.  Reason magazine points out that Newsom has found a way to positively thrive on it and, with COVID restrictions, positively supercharge himself for it.

Donations 'Requested' by Newsom Exploded as His Emergency Powers Ballooned.  In 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office reported that individuals or organizations made $226 million in private donations to organizations at Newsom's request.  These "behested payments" were a record-setting haul eclipsing all prior donations on record by nearly $100 million.  While most donations supported COVID-19 relief efforts, a closer look suggests Newsom's fundraising was supercharged not just by the pandemic, but also by the broad emergency powers the Democratic governor has assumed because of it.  Behested payments are a unique feature of California politics.  State law defines a behested payment as a donation to a government program or charity made "at the request, suggestion, or solicitation of, or made in cooperation, consultation, coordination or concert" with a public official.  While payments of $5,000 or more are disclosed to the public, they remain an overlooked portion of politicians' finances, even though contributions often come from businesses with interests in the state government.  Last year, Newsom raised a combined $45 million from insurance giants Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente for Project Homekey, his housing initiative.  Newsom had selected Blue Shield CEO Paul Markovich to co-chair California's task force on COVID-19 testing.  In January, the governor again tapped Blue Shield, with assistance from Kaiser Permanente, to manage vaccine distribution across the state.

Funk & Wagnall's, 1964
Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of the English Language,
1964 International Edition, Volume One, page 548.


California's Multibillionaires Intend to Conquer the World.  As the oldest man ever to be elected U.S. president begins his administration, his immediate blizzard of executive actions suggests the energy of someone much younger.  The reason for this is obvious.  Joe Biden is not running the country.  He is a president in name only.  The edicts coming out of the Oval Office, along with the imminent legislative initiatives, are produced by the American equivalent of a Soviet politburo, with the political and financial power behind this politburo coming from California.  The political actors occupying key roles include Kamala Harris, whose role as the tie-breaker in the U.S. Senate makes her the most powerful vice president in recent memory, and Nancy Pelosi, who presides over the U.S. House of Representatives — both San Francisco Democrats.  These two politicians are only the most visible Californians in a group that includes cabinet secretaries, administrative appointees, and what is by far the largest state Democratic congressional caucus.  More significant is the fact that Californians also provide the financial power behind the Biden politburo, as well as the cultural power that propels the Democratic narrative.

California is collapsing.  The on-the-ground reality — as opposed to that portrayed in the media or popular culture — is more Dickensian than utopian.  Rather than the state where dreams are made, in reality California increasingly presents the prototype of a new feudalism fused oddly with a supposedly progressive model in which inequality is growing, not falling.  California now suffers the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate in the country, and the widest gap between middle and upper-middle income earners.  It also has one of the nation's highest Gini ratios, which measures the inequality of wealth distribution from the richest to poorest residents — and the disparity is growing.  Incredibly, California's level of inequality is greater than that of neighbouring Mexico, and closer to Central American countries like Guatemala and Honduras than developed nations like Canada and Norway.

Rural Californians are fighting to reclaim their state, even if that means starting their own.  Mark Baird is a third-generation Californian who hopes to one day be a first-generation Jeffersonian.  Baird, like many in California's sprawling, mostly rural north, is disillusioned with his state's Sacramento-based government, which he believes no longer represents northern interests.  That's why Baird and many others in the 23 counties above Sacramento have officially declared the reclamation of their state, even if it means breaking away and starting anew in the proposed 51st state of Jefferson, named for the third U.S. president.

Are you feeling safer yet?  A New York Post editorial quotes New York City police commissioner Dermot Shea:  "We have made staggering numbers of gun arrests, taking guns off the streets from felons, but when you look, three days later, four days later, those individuals are back on the street committing more gun violence."  The editorial continues by saying that years of often ill conceived criminal justice reform has set up a revolving door that frees even repeat offenders almost instantly.  And "[w]orse, because everyone knows the perp will be back in the neighborhood again — and the no-bail law lets the defense know right away who has talked — witnesses are ever-harder to come by."  Well, that's in one Democrat-run state.  What about California?  According to Hotair.com:  "Through a series of measures starting back in 2014, the state of California has made it increasingly easy for people to commit property theft and get away with it[.] ... Even in cases where they do manage to catch somebody stealing, it's too often not worth the trouble of taking them down to the station because they'll just be released immediately without bail anyway."  One result of this is that California businesses are shutting down for good.

Organizers Reportedly Hit Number Of Signatures Required To Force Recall Vote For Gavin Newsom.  Organizers behind the effort to recall California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom said late on Wednesday evening that they have reached the number of signatures required to force a recall election this year.  The multi-million dollar movement to oust Newsom from office comes in response to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.  California has had nearly a million more cases than the state with the second highest number, and just recently passed New York as the state that has had the most deaths from the pandemic.

'Woke' warriors at San Francisco school board deny gay white dad with a mixed-race daughter a place on volunteer parent committee because he is not diverse enough.  A gay white father of a mixed-race child has been denied a spot on the San Francisco Board of Education's volunteer parent committee because his race doesn't bring enough diversity to the group.  The issue of whether to allow Seth Brenzel to volunteer for the 15-person parent advisory council was debated for almost two hours on Tuesday night during a board meeting.  The parent advisory council, who had unanimously supported Brenzel to join their all-female committee, had submitted his name to be approved by the school board.  His candidacy, however, faced opposition from some board members and members of the public who argued that there wasn't enough diversity on the council — even though there are five seats currently empty.

DDA Jonathan Hatami Files a Harassment Lawsuit Against LA County District Attorney George Gascon.  Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon has only been in office a little over two months, but he is already a boil on the side of Lady Justice.  Gascon has not only raised the ire of the Deputy District Attorneys in his office, but of District Attorneys in other counties across the State.  Gascon's "Special Directives" are being disregarded by local and regional law enforcement, and the liberal-leaning District Attorneys Union has filed a restraining order against him.  Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Arnold, and Judge James C. Chalfant have recently neutered Gascon's policies of removing enhancements and special circumstances in criminal cases, and not enforcing three-strike allegations.

Several of D.A. George Gascón's reforms [have been] blocked by L.A. County judge.  Los Angeles County Dist.  Atty.  George Gascón was barred from implementing a significant part of his sprawling criminal justice reform platform Monday, after a judge ruled his plan to end the use of sentencing enhancements in thousands of criminal cases violates California law.  The order stemmed from a lawsuit filed late last year by the union that represents hundreds of L.A. County prosecutors, alleging some of Gascón's plans exceeded his legal authority and put line prosecutors in an ethical bind.  Sentencing enhancements can add several years to a defendant's time in prison if certain criteria are met, such as using a gun causing severe injury during the commission of a crime, or being a documented gang member.

Effort to recall Gavin Newsom moves closer to becoming a reality.  An effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom is nearing the number of signatures needed with over a month to go before the deadline.  "It's highly possible we could get to 1.5 or 1.6 [million signatures] by the end of this week," said Anne Dunsmore, the campaign manager and finance director of Rescue California, one of the two groups responsible for the recall effort.  The groups have collected 1.4 million of the 1,495,709 required to force a recall election but will likely have to collect more than the minimum as some signatures will be invalidated upon review.  Dunsmore's group is hoping it can collect 2 million total signatures ahead of the March 17 deadline, something she says she is confident the group can accomplish.

California's latest move to thwart its own law enforcement efforts.  The day may yet come when the California legislature proposes a new bill that will actually improve the lives of its citizens, my friends, but today is not that day.  The latest bit of madness to come out of the Golden State is known as Senate Bill 271, and it's clearly designed to make people less safe rather than safer.  Currently, anyone wishing to run for Sheriff in any of California's counties must have either a certification of competence from the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training or recent, equivalent salaried law enforcement experience.  Makes sense, right?  If you're going to put someone in charge of a major law enforcement agency, it might be nice if they actually knew something about law enforcement and the challenges that officers face out on the streets.  But SB-271 would eliminate that requirement entirely.  The stated reason is clear.  They want people who are interested in reforming, defunding or abolishing the police to be able to run for the position.

California politicians demand grocery stores pay workers more; groceries close instead.  Every business operates at a risk, and the risk-reward ratio was obviously closed to the point that it didn't make sense to put effort into a store with declining profits.  Is this so hard to understand?  Apparently, it is, because an emotionally driven, fact-bereft city councilperson going by the name of Mary Zendejas, who sponsored the bill, said that "it really saddens me that they'd rather take away 200 jobs instead of doing the right thing, which is paying hazard pay for these local grocery store workers who risk their lives everyday they come in and who are putting their lives on the line every second they're working."  There is so much wrong with this sentiment.  In Zendejas's world, there is now a moral obligation of private companies to pay whatever rate is deemed appropriate by leftists on a given day.  Today it's a $4-an-hour boost because everyone is a hero.  Tomorrow it's a national $15-an-hour increase.  These are entirely arbitrary numbers, and by Biden's logic, if there is no evidence that they upset the balance of supply and demand, then why stop there?

Are TVs Attracting the Pandemic?  Now that Joe Biden has been elected president of the United States and Calif.  Gov. Gavin Newsom is the target of a recall effort, the science on the "Flumanchu" has miraculously changed.  KTLA informs us, "After a two-month ban, Los Angeles County restaurants are once again welcoming customers for outdoor dining Friday."  The get-out-of-"Wuflu"-jail order includes restaurants, wineries and breweries.  Then the troll takes effect:  "But when the eateries reopen, they can't have televisions on, according to the county's new health officer order."  What's the science behind that senseless royal decree?  Nowhere else in the country are restaurants forbidden to operate their TVs.  Costco's electronics' departments have multiple TVs going from open to close, some with a screen as big as a bedsheet.  Yet there have been no reports of coronavirus outbreaks in Costco.  Why are televisions only potentially deadly when patrons are chewing?

Pelosi, Biden and Newsom Show How Grift and Fraud Makes the Democrat World go Round.  The big news out of California this week is that the utterly incompetent jackasses in the Newsom administration paid out no less than $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment payments since last April.  I say "no less than" because some reports peg the number at a cool $50 billion.  And that's just in one state. [...] Yeah, I guess when you're sending unemployment checks to crime organizations in China and Russia, your security measures could be said to be lacking.

Facebook Says No More Ads For Movement To Recall Gavin Newsom.  Fascbook is doubling down.  Since the violence at the Capitol our dear leader, the almighty Zuck, has sought out to silence dissent against his comrades in the Democrat party.  While of course Fascbook is free to do as they please as a private company, somehow claiming to be a free and open forum at the same time is a bit disingenuous.  Their actions continue to threaten the free exercise of speech by individuals and by the press, as numerous personal accounts have been suspended for alleged "hate speech" and seemingly innocuous articles posted by news organizations on only one side of the aisle (guess which side) are now being flagged by Fascbook's "fact checkers" as false or for other vague violations.

Carlsbad, CA Says No More to Lockdowns.  May It Be a National Model!  [Scroll down]  A different, more local revolt began last weekend in Carlsbad, CA, a town just north of San Diego.  Its restaurant and bar owners decided they're weren't going to take it anymore.  They're no longer going to allow witless politicians to destroy what they've worked so long to build.  They're going to open their businesses to eager customers.  Some will ask what California legislators right up to Governor Gavin Newsom will say.  Ideally the mini-revolt will wake these sick people up to the extraordinary damage they're doing, but if not it's worth reminding everyone that the very individuals in government who are presently limiting your right to work, operate your business, and live your life as you desire, used to not be in government.  Some even used to have regular jobs in the private sector.  The main thing is that they're not experts on medical matters, nor are they abnormally smart.  They just happen to be good at politics.  They're in no position to tell us how to live, or operate our businesses, or whether or not we should have a job to go to.  They're just people who want power, prestige and money, only they want it the easy way.

Gov. Newsom plans to cancel California's COVID-19 stay-at-home orders.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday [1/25/2021] plans to lift regional stay-at-home orders across the state — allowing restaurants to resume outdoor dining amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report.  Sources briefed on the governor's plans told the Los Angeles Times that all counties will return to a colored tier system that assigns local risk levels based on the number of cases and positivity rates.  Most counties will go into the "widespread" risk tier, which allows hair salons to provide limited services indoors but restricts many other nonessential indoor business operations.  Some elected officials and the restaurant industry have fought in and out of court to overturn the highly controversial outdoor dining ban, according to the newspaper.

Calif Gov Newsom appears to be retreating on Covid restriction as recall petition signatures surge.  [Scroll down]  Newsom is fighting for his political life in the face of a recall petition that already has garnered 80% of the signatures necessary for a recall election to be conducted by the state. [...] The immediate spark of the surge in signatures was the release of photographs of Newsom attending a lavish birthday party at the French Laundry in the Napa Valley, one of the most famous and expensive restaurants in America, with no mask and sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with his pals, including the honoree for the occasion, a lobbyist.  This in defiance of the lockdown orders he had imposed on lesser Californians.

SF DA Boudin Skips Memorial For Women Killed By Drunk Parolee — to Tweet About Inmates Not Receiving Vaccines.  On Friday afternoon [1/22/2021], a grieving mother who'd flown to San Francisco from Japan to collect her daughter's body and belongings spoke at a memorial for that daughter, which was held on a sidewalk near the intersection where a drunk parolee in a stolen car mowed her and another woman down on New Year's Eve.  After running over Hanaka Abe, 27, and Elizabeth Platt, 60, the parolee kept going, but was quickly apprehended by law enforcement.  The crash has been big news in San Francisco because the man who committed the horrific crime shouldn't have been on the street.  Troy McAllister, 45, was released from prison and placed on parole in April 2020 after serving five years for robbery.  He was arrested in November and December on felony charges, but instead of actually filing the charges the San Francisco DA's office simply notified McAllister's parole officer that he'd been arrested [...]

Why Is Gavin Newsom Hiding Coronavirus Data from the Public?  California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is hiding key coronavirus data from the public while inexplicably allowing several counties in the state to reopen.  Following a surge in November, Newsom unveiled new lockdown orders that divided the state into five regions, with each region locking down whenever ICU hospital capacity dipped below 15 percent.  Before long, about 98 percent of the state's population fell under the new restrictions.  Despite ICU capacity still south of 15 percent, the governor has lifted restrictions for 13 counties in the Greater Sacramento area, the AP reported.  State data updated daily shows the Sacramento region currently has an ICU capacity of around 7.8 percent at the time of this writing.

Effort to Recall California Governor Gavin Newsom Attracts More Than 1.2 Million Signatures.  The effort to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has attracted more than 1.2 million signatures.  Recall organizers have until March 17th to collect 1,495,709 signatures.  Californians are fed up with Newsom's authoritarian Covid lockdown orders that have destroyed thousands of small businesses.  Newsom came under fire after he ordered businesses to close while keeping his own winery, Plumpjack Winery open.

Biden's HHS Appointee Launches Civil Rights Investigation Of Nation's Largest Sheriff's Dept.  On Friday [1/22/2021], California's Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is also President Joe Biden's choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, announced that he is launching a civil rights probe into the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD).  The agency is the largest sheriff's department in the United States and operates America's biggest jail system.  According to a news release from Becerra's office, "the investigation will seek to determine whether LASD has engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing."

California state senator trying to legalize hard drugs.  Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has made good on his promise to begin his effort to "decriminalize all drug use" step by step with the introduction of several bills at the start of the new legislative session.  Senate Bill 57 creates "safe injection sites" where drug addicts can use illicit drugs under medical supervision.  Senate Bill 73 lowers the criminal penalties on users and dealers of heroin, opiates or opium derivatives, salts, cannabis, phencyclidine (PCP), and other dangerous drugs.  Still promised, but not yet introduced, is a bill Wiener says will legalize all psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms.

California Democrat floats $23 minimum wage.  California Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., asked his Twitter followers this week to consider the benefits of raising the minimum wage above $20 per hour.  In a since-deleted post captured by ProPublica, Khanna noted that raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour is expected to lift 1 million people out of poverty — while envisioning what an even steeper increase would do.  "Raising the minimum wage to $15 would lift 1 million people out of poverty.  Imagine how many more lives would be impacted if we matched the rate of productivity and made it $23/hr," the post read.  A spokesperson for Khanna's office did not return FOX Business' request for comment as to why the post was deleted.

It's no time for Biden to be California dreamin'.  We did a double take at the report this week that Joe Biden, once inaugurated as president, would treat California as the administration's "de facto think tank," placing it "center stage again in Washington's policy arena."  Surely, only Biden's enemies would spread such a vicious rumor about the new chief executive.  But the sources for the extraordinary story are supporters of Biden and his Californian running mate Kamala Harris.  The wonder is not that Biden would try to imitate California on policy — he's always been ready to try anything harebrained — but rather that his allies would admit they planned to do something so obviously foolhardy.

California COVID-19 benefits fraud could reach $9.8 billion.  California may have paid out nearly $10 billion in phony coronavirus unemployment claims — more than double the previous estimate — with some of that money going to organized crime in Russia, China and other countries, according to a security firm hired to investigate the fraud.  At least 10% of claims submitted to the state Employment Development Department before controls were installed in October may have been fraudulent, Blake Hall, founder and CEO of ID.me told the Los Angeles Times.  The Times on Friday [1/15/2021] said that would work out to $9.8 billion of the benefits paid from March through September.

A Successful Recall of California Gov. Newsom Could Portend a Disaster for Democrats in 2022.  As has long been transparently predictable, the eve of the inauguration of Joe Biden has coincided with the determination of state and local elected Democrat officials that the threat of a COVID-19 pandemic has passed, and economic and social life in Democrat-controlled cities and states can now begin to return to "normal". [...] Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot suddenly has a plan for reopening bars and restaurants in Chicago. [...] But one Governor who apparently has not received the message that the political imperative of knee-capping the economy to get rid of Donald Trump has now passed is California Governor Gavin Newsom.  He is maintaining the restrictions that have been in place for months, continuing to impose regulatory restrictions in California on a per county basis.

An L.A. councilman lied to the FBI. Probation officials say he deserves no jail time.  It was the first blockbuster case to surface in the federal corruption probe of Los Angeles City Hall — a multi-count indictment accusing former Councilman Mitchell Englander of taking envelopes of cash, lying to the FBI about that money and obstructing its investigation.  Englander, while serving in office, made false statements to FBI agents during three separate interviews, prosecutors said, providing untrue information about his dealings with a businessman who gave him $15,000 in two casino bathrooms.  The case was resolved quickly, with Englander pleading guilty to a single count of scheming to falsify material facts.  But now, prosecutors are voicing objections to the sentence recommended by federal probation officials: three years' probation, a $9,500 fine and no jail time or community service.

Re-Open Cal Now, Day 2: Sheriffs John D'Agostini and Scott Jones -- Constitutionality of the Lockdown Orders and the Rule of Law.  The necessary element of a "Police State" is cooperation from law enforcement to do just that:  "enforce" the orders given, no matter how burdensome, unreasonable, and more importantly, unconstitutional.  Thankfully, there are Sheriffs in certain California Counties who take seriously their oath to the Constitution, the rule of law, and their commitment to serve the people over and above a Governor's or unelected bureaucrat's executive orders or restrictions. [...] Then he laid out simpler questions that even a 6th grader could understand:
  •   What amount of force is appropriate to enforce health orders?
  •   If someone is resisting compliance to health orders, what sort of force is appropriate for us to use against that person?
  •   Are we supposed to cite someone or release them if they are violating health orders or are we supposed to book them in jail?
  •   What if we see a public official violating health orders?  As we've seen on the news, are we supposed to issue a warrant for that public official?
People in the audience actually yelled, "Yes!" to the last question, then everyone dissolved in laughter and applause.  Newsom's French Laundry debacle looms large in our legend.

Docs reveal Governor Newsom's secret $1B CCP mask deal.  A conservative legal watchdog group has announced that it received hundreds of pages of documents revealing the contract materials and communications related to a $1 billion contract for face masks between the California Office of Emergency Services (OES) and the Chinese Communist Party linked BYD.  BYD reportedly has been barred by law from some federal contracts for providing faulty electric vehicles and lithium batteries to U.S. buyers.  The documents, all 848 pages of which can be viewed here, reveal that an OES legal representative admits that the state deviated from their normal procurement process for this contract.  Additionally, in the contract with the OES, BYD uses a different name, Global Healthcare Product Solutions, LLC., and BYD provides no liability or warranty for the masks if they are faulty.

Elected DA's Throughout California Slam LA County DA Gascon's Policies, Refuse to Grant Jurisdiction.  Now it's not just the majority of his 1,000 subordinates who are publicly and vehemently opposed to new Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon's policy directives.  Three elected California District Attorneys (all female, interestingly enough) have slammed Gascon's policies, and two of them sent letters directly to Gascon refusing to allow him to prosecute any cases that arose in their counties.

New California COVID Orders: Residents Can Travel No More Than 120 Miles From Their Homes.  Despite insanely restrictive lockdowns for 10 months, travel restrictions, quarantine requirements, business closures, mask mandates and school closures, California has some of the worst COVID numbers in the nation.  The state currently has a total of just over 3,800 COVID fatalities.  Of course, in a state of 40 million that is .0095% of the population, but we're really not allowed to put perspective on COVID-19 numbers these days.  That little tidbit was for the curious.  In a state like this one, there is no such thing as policy failure.  If a policy isn't working, we just get more of it.  On Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health announced new "guidance" for people in California who have the nerve to want to wander around their free country.  CDPH wants Californians to stay within 120 miles of their residences except for "essential" travel.

Petition to Recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom Exceeds 1 Million Signatures.  The petition to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom exceeded one million signatures this week.  "The people are being heard loud and clear, and it is not a matter of IF we are going to reach our goal necessary that will trigger a recall election of Newsom, it is just when we cross the finish line," Orrin Heatlie, the lead proponent of the effort to remove the Democrat, in a statement.  There are approximately nine weeks for organizers to gather 500,000 additional signatures, which would put the petition on the ballot for Californians to vote on.  March 17 is the deadline.  Heatlie called the recall campaign a "literal steamroller and Gavin Newsom's failed policies are being runover and flatten [sic] by the People of California who will no longer be held hostage to his dictatorial failed policies."  Newsom's office hasn't responded to requests for comment on the petition.

Soros Soars, GOP Cowards Cower.  I devoted my Dec. 15 column to newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and his benefactor George Soros.  Gascón has one goal:  to put the people of L.A. at the mercy of criminals.  He's the face of anarcho-tyranny, and George Soros is the wallet. [...] As I wrote in my Dec. 15 column, a key element in Gascón's victory was the fact that the local GOP didn't lift a finger to oppose him.

The riskiest American county to live in might surprise you.  There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States.  If I were to ask you which one of them was the riskiest place to live, you might be tempted to say it would be a county encompassing Baltimore or Portland.  Perhaps New York City and Chicago would make your list.  In some cases, you might be correct, but not for the reasons you think, at least according to a new study compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  You see, my initial reaction was to think about places with the highest violent crime rates, gang violence and street mobs.  But what FEMA was looking at was the odds of a natural disaster striking and wreaking havoc on residents.  And coming in at the top spot on the National Risk Index was Los Angeles County.  The reasons have nothing to do with the Crips and the Bloods or their incompetent government, however.

Los Angeles County Prosecutors Sue Gascon For Not Enforcing The Law.  Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon hasn't even been in office for a month yet but he's been making more headlines than the pandemic.  Unfortunately for Gascon (and the citizens of his county), few of those breaking news items have been of the good variety.  The wildly liberal, anti-cop DA has been working overtime to empty the jails and prevent the prosecution of criminals, even as crime rates have been surging in the City of Angels.  The latest news out of his office won't be changing that pattern at all.  His own prosecutors are going to court to ask a judge to block their new boss's orders and prevent them from having to break the law themselves by carrying out his directives.  And it looks like they have a pretty solid case.

San Francisco will give $5,000 to help your small business, unless you're a white guy.  No check for the privileged.  At least that's the plan in San Francisco where they're passing out $5k grants to small businesses, but making sure only the right kind of people get the relief.  They say they are using this as an opportunity to advance the city's "equity goals."  In a press release from the mayor, she says they are prioritizing "minority-owned businesses including women-owned, immigrant-owned, people of color-owned businesses," with the money.  For those unfamiliar with history, this is a practice formerly known as "discrimination."  Maybe after these white male business owners watch their livelihoods crumble to nothing around them, they can take some time to examine their privilege.

San Francisco Proves It's In Full Societal Regression by Embracing Pre-Civil Rights Era Methods.  San Francisco apparently forgot that we in America judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin, but the radical left that has taken over the city has long abandoned the idea that virtues we've learned over the past decades mean anything.  According to a press release by San Francisco Mayor London Breed, money is to be distributed to struggling businesses across the city.  The catch?  Priority will be given to businesses according to race and sex.

LA Orders Everyone to Stay Home; Asks Hollywood to Maybe Pause.  If anyone needed any further reminders that not only are we not all in this together, but a handful of powerful special interests are calling all the shots.  The essential and non-essential categories are gigantic scams.  In California, not only is Hollywood considered essential, but while people are being ordered to stay home, Hollywood is being asked nicely if it wouldn't possibly consider pausing production. [...] This isn't the treatment that restaurants are getting.  It's also not the treatment that so many other businesses are on the receiving end of.  Small businesses that are told to close and don't close, are harassed by inspectors.  [B]ut Hollywood is politely requested to maybe please consider pausing production.  Don't expect the entertainment industry, which pays the bills of California Democrats, to abide by this any more than they abided by the early proposed curfew for filming, which was almost immediately rescinded.  We're not all in this together.

4 California Small Business Owners Share Their Struggles to Survive Under Lockdowns.  California small businesses are crumbling under the weight of a new stay-at-home order and a lack of meaningful financial assistance.  Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, issued a new region-based lockdown order for California on Dec. 3, forcing more California businesses to close their doors or severely limit operations.  "We are at a tipping point in our fight against the virus, and we need to take decisive action now to prevent California's hospital system from being overwhelmed in the coming weeks," Newsom said in a statement announcing the new restrictions.

The Editor says...
Various governors and county kingpins have been saying things like, "We are at a tipping point in our fight against the virus," for almost a year now.  According to them, we're always at a critical moment in history:  We must act immediately if we are to forestall disaster!  This moment is critical!  Don't ask any questions, just do as we say!  It's only for a few (more) weeks!  Trust us!

California Supreme Court Rules Thousands Of Sex Offenders Are Eligible For Early Release.  On Monday [12/28/2020], the California Supreme Court ruled that thousands of inmates convicted of non-forcible sex crimes may be eligible for early release under a ballot measure that was overwhelmingly approved by voters four years ago.  The initiative, called Proposition 57, was written by then-Governor Jerry Brown (D) and passed by nearly two-thirds of the electorate.  It was crafted to reduce the state's prison population, saying any person found guilty of a "nonviolent felony offense" would be eligible for early parole.  Brown said it was never intended to cover sex offenders.  However, the original language did not exempt them from consideration.  Lower appeals courts had ruled that nonviolent sex offenders could not be excluded, and the high court affirmed those rulings.

California is clobbering small businesses with a retroactive tax grab.  Isabel Rubinas of Glen Ellyn, Ill., operates Lollipop Seeds, a virtual boutique that sells clothing for young children online.  And like many small specialty businesses, its sales have slumped badly during the COVID-19 pandemic.  It's also being clobbered by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, the state agency that oversees the collection of sales and use taxes.  This month the CDTFA froze Rubinas' business bank account in Illinois in an effort to collect thousands of dollars in taxes on sales that Lollipop Seeds made to California shoppers through Amazon.com in 2017, 2018 and 2019.  The freeze threatens to push Lollipop Seeds out of business.  And her dilemma is not unique.

California Gives Criminals Vaccine Before Elderly.  Criminals are currently the top victim class among Democrats.  And that means privileging killers, muggers, and rapists above everyone else.  California, as usual, leads the way in the pro-crime dystopia.

The Sovietization of California.  [Scroll down]  Yet, here I am, sitting in a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed and small businesses have been destroyed in unprecedented numbers.  During these last five days in Florida, a state governed by the pro-freedom party, I went anywhere I wanted.  First and foremost, I could eat both inside and outside restaurants.  At one of them, when I stood up to take photos of people dining, a patron who recognized me walked over and said, "I assume you're just taking pictures of people eating in a restaurant."  That's exactly what I was doing.  I even took my two grandchildren to a bowling alley, which was filled with people enjoying themselves playing myriad arcade games as well as bowling.  None of that is allowed almost anywhere in California.  It is becoming a police state, rooted in deception and irrationality.  Restaurants have been shut down (except for takeout orders), even for outdoor dining, for no scientific reason.  After ordering Los Angeles county restaurants closed, the health authorities of Los Angeles county acknowledged in court that they had no evidence that outdoor dining was dangerous; they ordered restaurants closed, even to outdoor dining, solely in order to keep people home.  The left's claim to "follow the science" is a lie.  The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as "anti-science."

Recalling Gavin Newsom.  Governor Gavin Newsom is a disaster.  Newsom is hypocritical, incompetent, and a non-thinker.  How bad does California have to get before people will consider someone who has an "R" after their name?  Just look at his actions over the past year.  American Thinker interviewed many who think that the governor needs to be recalled.  Orrin Heatlie is the lead proponent of the nonpartisan recall effort.  He feels that the governor is acting as a tyrant, taking action over and over against the will of the people.  He thinks, with plnety of evidence, that the governor is out of touch with reality: the bill that put independent contractors out of work, the bill to reduce penalties for certain sex crimes, the worsening of the homeless problem, mismanaging the gas tax, the high-speed rail line to nowhere, fumbling fire management, and of course his handling of the pandemic, just to name a few of his missteps.  Under the state law for recalls, a hard copy of the petition must be signed in ink, rather than handling it online.  Heatlie is hoping every Californian will sign the petition.  The court has granted an extension until March 17th because they are halfway there but need about 900,000 more signatures.  Tom Del Beccaro is working in synch with Heatlie in an effort to recall Newsom.  Del Beccaro agrees with Heatlie on all the reasons why Newsom should be recalled.

California Dems Shut Down State Over Lack of ICU Beds, After Adding Only 7% More ICU Beds in 8 Months.  Governor Newsom's latest shutdown order closes down small businesses and warns residents to stay at home if their area's number of available beds in intensive care units drops below 15%.  "By invoking a Stay at Home Order for regions where ICU capacity falls below 15 percent, we can flatten the curve as we've done before and reduce stress on our health care system," Governor Newsom, fresh from partying at the French Laundry, declared.  Spring had given way to summer and then to autumn and winter, and California Democrats are still using the pretext of preserving "ICU capacity" and "flattening the curve".  The rationale of shutting down an entire state, not so much for the sake of stopping the virus, but for keeping enough beds open in intensive care units, never made much sense even back then.  It's insane now.

Is Small Business Aware of California's $21 Billion Surplus?  A report from the bipartisan Legislative Analyst's Office says California's savings account could grow to more than $18 billion by the end of 2021.  California had a record $21.5 billion surplus in the state budget in 2018.  Newsom and the Democratic-controlled state Legislature spent more than half of that money on paying down debts and boosting reserves.  About $4 billion of it went to support ongoing programs while the rest was used for one-time projects.  Where did it go exactly and where is it going?  Small business owners deserve to know.  As Congress debates more funding, a contentious point was federal dollars bailing out states[, and] we see now that Pelosi is lying as California does not need a bailout.

Motion Filed To Depose Gov. Newsom Over Calif.  Protest Bans At Capitol.  The complaints continue to pile up for California Governor Gavin Newsom.  Not only is Newsom combating a massive recall effort across the state, but some are calling on him to testify about the ban on protests he made at the Capitol last spring.  A motion requesting a deposition was filed by plaintiffs Ron Givens and Christine Bish.  Both are involved in a lawsuit that began in April when California Highway Patrol refused to issue permits for demonstrators at the Sacramento Capitol.  CHP claimed the decision was made in the interest of public safety amid the pandemic.  As it's a civil case, attorneys for the state argued that Newsom, the former highway patrol commissioner, and the public health director cannot be deposed because all witnesses currently or previously held public office.

California Sheriff Rejects Court Order To Reduce Inmate Population, Blasts The ACLU.  The sheriff of Orange County, California, said on Wednesday that he would fight a recent order issued by a local superior court judge to significantly reduce the number of inmates housed in the county's jail system due to COVID-19 concerns.  According to FOX 11 News, Sheriff Don Barnes "is refusing to release any more" incarcerated people despite the mandate.  "These people who remain in the jail, they may have diabetes, but they're also charged with murder," Barnes told the outlet during an online interview.  "Or they may be over 65, but may be a child molester."  Sheriff Barnes posted an open letter to social media on Wednesday afternoon announcing his intention to appeal last Friday's directive by Judge Peter Wilson to cut the detainee population in all congregate living areas by 50%.  The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in April by the America Civil Liberties Union seeking to protect medically vulnerable people from coronavirus infection.

California Sheriff Refuses To Release 1,800 Inmates After Judge's Order.  A California sheriff is refusing to comply with a judge's order to release 1,800 inmates from Orange County jails, including individuals who have been imprisoned for murder, due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.  County Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson on Friday ordered the release of 50 percent — or 1,858 inmates out of 3,716 — to curb the transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus.  "I have no intention of releasing any of these individuals from my custody," said Sheriff Don Barnes, pushing back against the order.  "We are going to file an appeal and we're going to fight it and if the judge has any intent of releasing any one of these individuals, he will have to go through line by line, name by name, and tell me which ones he is ordering released."

With his star dimmed, California's Newsom could face recall.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has had a rough year.  The next one might be even tougher as a recall effort appears to be gaining momentum, fueled partly by outrage over the first-term Democrat dining with friends at an opulent restaurant while telling state residents to spurn social gatherings and stay home.  It's not uncommon in California for residents to seek recalls but they rarely get on the ballot — and even fewer succeed.  Several launched against Newsom faded but another attempt is drawing greater attention as his fortunes change while he enters a critical stretch in his governorship.

Inside Soros DA George Gascon's Office:  Deputy DA's Threatened, Intimidated to Uphold New Policies.  Soros-funded Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, as we've reported, made major waves during his first week in office.  On day one, he issued nine Special Directives instituting "criminals first" policies like failing to prosecute many misdemeanors, a blanket prohibition on seeking the death penalty or life without parole, and a ban on charging juveniles as adults.  Throughout the week, victims, law enforcement officers, and court personnel were shocked to see the results of those policies in action in the courtroom (including a failure to charge enhancements or "strikes" against a man accused of decapitating two of his children).

Judge to California's 3rd Largest County:  On Account of COVID, Release Half Your Convicts.  How do you empty a large county's jail system by half?  That's a question currently demanding an answer, as a West Coast judge has ordered that very thing.  As reported by The Daily Wire, on Friday, Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson dictated Sheriff Don Barnes must liquidate Orange County's jail system by 50%.  The decision comes following the American Civil Liberties Union's April lawsuit demanding the release of disabled and vulnerable inmates in light of the pandemic.

New DA Gascon to decline prosecution on range of low-level crimes.  The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office will no longer prosecute a range of misdemeanor crimes, from resisting arrest to drug possession to making criminal threats, according to a memo issued this week by new DA George Gascon. [...] The memo spells out misdemeanors which should be declined or dismissed before arraignment, with a number of exceptions at the discretion of the prosecutor.  Among them:  Trespassing, disturbing the peace, driving with no license or a suspended license, making criminal threats, drug possession, drinking in public, loitering to commit prostitution and resisting arrest, among others.

As The CA Recall Grows and Small Businesses Revolt, Newsom Gaslights and Says he Has "Great Reverence" for Small Business.  Governor Gavin Newsom is feeling the heat of a growing Recall effort that already has over 800,000 signatures, small businesses that are refusing to go through a second lockdown, and County Sheriffs who are refusing to enforce this latest Stay-At-Home effort and are essentially telling him to go pound sand. [...] When confronted with his hostile policies toward small business via some regulation he has allowed the legislature to vote in and that he signs, or another tax, he does a song and dance about his "humble" small business beginnings and how much he "respects" them.  Nobody is buying it anymore.

Tyranny Reversed:  California Judge Slaps Down Newsom Over Religious-Worship Shutdowns.  Just how huge a precedent will the recent Supreme Court decision in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn turn out to be?  We can take one measure from a California court late yesterday [12/10/2020] in Father Trevor Burfitt v Gavin Newsom.  In a stinging rebuke to Gov. Newsom, Judge Gregory Pulskamp imposed an injunction against enforcement of California's planned COVID-19 restrictions.  Using Brooklyn as a guide, Pulskamp ripped California's arbitrary decision to shut down houses of worship while allowing commercial businesses to remain open.  Any such limitation on an explicit and textual constitutional right requires a strict scrutiny standard, Pulskamp ruled and cited Brooklyn for support.  But Pulskamp wonders whether the restrictions even pass a smell test.

White males are no longer considered.  Isn't that racial discrimination?
LA Times editor to Feinstein:  Be "selfless" so Newsom doesn't have to choose between a Black or Latino replacement for Harris.  "Selfless," in this case, means "get out of our way so we can indulge our identity-politics wishes."  This plea from LA Times editor Erika Smith coincidentally comes at the same time as today's big New Yorker piece about Dianne Feinstein's alleged mental-acuity decline.  One has to wonder whether this might be motivating the Capitol Hill sources who talked with Jane Mayer, too. [...] The problem, as Smith sees it, is that Gavin Newsom has to pick someone to fill out Kamala Harris' remaining Senate term.  The opening has created a food fight between the two key ethnic demographics of the Democratic Party in California.  Black party leaders see the Harris seat as theirs, while Latino leaders have grown tired of waiting for their turn at California's Senate representation.

LA District Attorney Whistleblower:  Gascon's Sentencing Special Directive Is Illegal.  New Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has had the most active first week on the job of probably any officeholder ever, anywhere.  On Day One he issued nine Special Directives to his staff, instituting a wet dream of Black Lives Matter and Antifa justice policies — and decreed that those policies should be implemented in all pending cases and even up to 20,000 cases in which the criminals were already sentenced.  On Day Two he dropped charges against a "protester" accused of trying to wreck a train (you read that right) during a protest against the LA Sheriff's Department after deputies shot and killed a known gang member and drug dealer, Dijon Kizzee, who'd pulled a gun on them.  We can't wait to see what the rest of the week will bring.

New Los Angeles DA Snubs Staff, Meets With BLM, Will Implement Radical Progressive Agenda.  The worst fears about the new district attorney in Los Angeles County, George Gascón, are already materializing.  After defeating the incumbent DA on November 3, Gascón was sworn in on Monday [12/7/2020].  Gascón announced that his office would immediately end cash bail for many offenses, refuse to pursue the death penalty, and cease trying juveniles as adults for violent offenses.

California Court Order Frees 250 Criminal Illegal Aliens into U.S..  Criminal illegal aliens who were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody due to a court order in Adelanto, California, have been re-arrested for child sex crimes, burglary, drug possession, and drunk driving.  By October, ICE released more than 250 illegal aliens from their Adelanto detention facility after a court order mandated that they free up space.  Those released were put in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program that places GPS ankle bracelets on each illegal alien as they are freed into the interior of the United States.

LA Restaurant Owner Rips Garcetti Hypocrisy:  Why Shut Me Down While Allowing A Hollywood Canteen In My Parking Lot?  Earlier this week, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti banned outdoor service at restaurants in response to the COVID-19 transmission spike.  That includes Pineapple Hill Grill and Saloon in Sherman Oaks, whose owner Angela Marsden sunk $80,000 into social-distanced outdoor dining infrastructure and had planned to reopen today.  Marsden went to the store yesterday to collect a few items for a planned protest, but got a big surprise when she arrived at the parking lot adjacent to her dining patio.  [Video clip]

Bar Owner Forced To Close Her Business in LA Livid After Movie Studio Gets Approval for Food Tent Next Door.  Bar Owner:  "And I walked into my parking lot and obviously Mayor Garcetti has approve this, has approve this being set up.  This is being set up for a movie company."  [Video clip]

Supreme Court sides with church challenging Calif.'s COVID-19 restrictions.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday [12/3/2020] ruled against a pandemic-related order by California Gov. Gavin Newsom banning some indoor religious services, agreeing with critics that it is unconstitutional.  In a one-page order, the high court granted a petition from lawyers for Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, Calif., seeking to set aside a lower court ruling upholding Newsom's ban.

California Secedes from Black America.  [Scroll down]  Proposition 16, which would have allowed for favoritism of nonwhites in public employment, education, and contracting, lost by a wide margin.  Yet the backers of Prop. 16 outspent the opposition $30 million to $2 million.  And what a list of backers it was!  The California Democrat Party and every Democrat officeholder in the state championed Prop. 16, as did every major newspaper.  Every leftist "social justice" organization — the ACLU, NAACP, NOW, the ADL, BLM, even the Sierra Club and the PTA — backed Prop. 16.  So did the Chamber of Commerce, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Microsoft, Uber, Dropbox, Reddit, Lyft, Yelp, AirBnB, Instacart, Gap, Levi's, United Airlines, Wells Fargo, the 49ers, the Giants, and the Oakland A's.  Soros backed it.  The Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative backed it.  Ava DuVernay backed it.  Kaiser, Blue Shield, and PG&E backed it.  All those heavy hitters.  All that money, and in a "blue state" no less.  And yet... it wasn't even close.  The big bucks, the big endorsements, the push from big business and big tech, came to nothing.

Governor Preen.  If Hollywood were to cast a governor and future president, and if a straight white male were still politically acceptable, he would look like California's Gavin Newsom.  The 53-year-old governor, a former mayor of San Francisco, Newsom handsomely epitomizes the preening politics of the California elite class that has nurtured and financed his career from the beginning.  Like aristocrats of the past, Newsom seems oblivious to the realities felt by constituents among the lower orders.  In the face of massive wildfires, he postures on climate change, conflating fires with an angry mother Earth — as opposed to poor land management — and uses the conflagration to justify a radical policy of switching to all-electric power over the next decade, with the elimination of gas-powered cars by 2035. In the midst of a near economic free-fall, he favors raising taxes and works to tighten pandemic lockdowns; and, with the state losing its ability to train workers, he backs an education system where almost three out of five California high schoolers graduate unprepared for either college or a career.

Who Paid For the (Alleged) $15,000 Wine Bill Gavin Newsom and Friends Racked Up at French Laundry?  [Scroll down]  Newsom can receive up to $500/year in gifts from someone who's not a registered state lobbyist.  Could they get around that restriction by claiming it was Newsom's wife who received the gift, and not the Governor?  Nope.  A gift to Jennifer Siebel Newsom is considered a gift to Gavin Newsom for the purposes of FPPC reporting.  If someone else paid for Newsom's dinner, the only possible way that could be done without skirting required financial disclosure rules would be if his longtime friend, the birthday boy, paid for the dinner, and if none of the lobbyist birthday boy's clients had business currently before the state.  Given that executives from the California Medical Association, clients of lobbyist birthday boy, were in attendance, and that we're in the middle of a pandemic, claiming that exemption might not work.  But who knows.  This is Teflon Gavin we're talking about.

Gov. Newsom's Regime Is Crumbling.  The era of one-man rule in California is over.  A California Superior Court has ruled in favor of me and fellow legislator James Gallagher in our lawsuit challenging Gov. Gavin Newsom's abuse of power.  The judge ruled that Newsom violated the state constitution by unilaterally ordering that all registered voters be sent mail-in ballots.  More importantly, she found good cause for a permanent injunction restraining Newsom from issuing any further unconstitutional orders that make "new statutory law or legislative policy."  The court rejected Newsom's extraordinary claim that a state of emergency centralizes the state's powers in the hands of the governor, thus turning California into an autocracy.  This is the unlawful basis on which Newsom has collapsed our system of checks and balances, issuing 58 executive orders and changing over 400 laws unilaterally.

Gavin Newsom's apology for flouting his mask and social distancing regs make him the most obvious liar since Joe Isuzu.  I am enjoying the squirming of Nancy Pelosi's nephew, California Governor Gavin Newsom, now that he has been exposed as completely disregarding the COVID guidelines he is trying to force 40 million Californians to follow.  The very same man who told us that when dining out we should put a mask on in-between bites, that we should have no more than 10 people (from no more than 3 households) at our outdoor Thanksgiving celebrations was spotted and photographed violating all of his strictures on the rest of us.  Even worse, the party was held at The French Laundry, one of the fanciest and most famous restaurants in the world.  And it was a 50th birthday party for one of his old friends, who just happens to be a lobbyist.  Also in attendance:  The CEO and chief lobbyist of the California Medical Association, who like Newsom obviously don't believe the mask and social distancing regulations are genuinely important.  You've probably seen the utterly phony "apology" he made to Californians at a press conference.  But take a good look at his smiles as he lies like a Persian rug.  He seems to think that the rubes, who are expected to give up their family gatherings at Thanksgiving, are so dumb that they will buy it.

Gavin Newsom Manufactures a COVID Crisis to Make California Miserable Again.  Fresh on the heels of the Sacramento Bee's criticism of Gavin Newsom's multi-family extravaganza at the famous French Laundry, a swanky $350-a-person-before-the-wine-is-ordered restaurant in Yountville, California, and after having his wrist slapped by the state Judiciary for exceeding his constitutional authority in issuing emergency lockdown orders, he's decided that he really doesn't care what the plebs of his state think or what the law says about his executive limitations.  He's locking the state down again.  The reason, as he and the media would have you believe, is that California is experiencing a surge in positive COVID-19 tests, having just crossed the one million mark in cases.  You're supposed to focus on that big, scary number and not Gavin Newsom's blatant hypocrisy or his unlawful executive overreach, and certainly not the many questions swirling about the looming prospect of the Trump legal team's potentially exposing massive election fraud, which could have an enormous impact on the future of our republic.

Rules For Us and Rules For Them.  Of all the quotable lines in George Orwell's Animal Farm, few resonate as much as this one:  "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." [...] That quotation has been referred to often in recent days after Gov. Gavin Newsom — fresh off of issuing a new set of edicts admonishing Californians to dine alone at home and curtail their Thanksgiving celebrations — was caught dining with his wife and 10 other friends at a birthday party for a prominent lobbyist at the French Laundry in Yountville.  It's bad enough for the governor to seemingly violate his own edicts, but to do so in Napa Valley, at one of the nation's toniest restaurants, certainly gave off the wrong vibe.

Don't [Bring California's Problems To] The Rest Of America.  California's political class is widely regarded as among the most corrupt, irresponsible, hypocritical, hard left and incompetent of any comparable group of state politicians in the country, which is saying a lot.  The troubles have been on full display this week.  A week after imposing sweeping new restaurant closures across much of the state and telling Californians not to gather in groups for Thanksgiving, California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted on Monday that he attended a birthday party for an old friend at an ultra-swank Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry.  Never mind that the party for his buddy, himself a lobbyist, also included a bunch of medical industry lobbyists.  The photos show not only more people in attendance than allowed under state guidelines, neither the governor nor his wife were wearing masks.

Gavin Newsom's Thanksgiving hypocrisy:  Witness at 3-star Michelin restaurant says governor ate inside and NOT outdoors like he claims.  California governor Gavin Newsom dined indoors when he joined friends for a birthday dinner earlier this month, a witness has claimed, challenging the governor's account of the celebrations.  The witness, a woman who has not been identified, said she was eating at the French Laundry restaurant on the same night as Newsom — who was dining in a private room with 11 other people.  She said a sliding glass door to the room was initially left open, but was pulled across because the governor and his party were being 'very loud'.

Newsom considering statewide curfew as he orders emergency business shutdowns.  Nearly three-quarters of California counties must now operate under the state's most stringent pandemic restrictions, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday, and health officials are considering a statewide curfew as coronavirus cases surge more dramatically than they did during a summer spike.  Indoor dining, gyms and movie theaters, among other businesses, must either remain closed or shut down in 41 of the state's 58 counties.  The governor said he is "sounding the alarm" due to "the fastest increase California has seen" since the pandemic began.  Coronavirus cases have doubled in the last 10 days across the state, which hit the grim milestone of 1 million coronavirus cases last week.

The California Elections Pandemic.  The once Golden State, renowned for creating and exporting much of what constitutes American popular culture, now exports a vote-fraud rich, elections-stealing contagion across the nation. [...] A consequence of Californizing elections will be rampant cynicism.  Sullen distrust will take hold.  Voters, in droves, may elect not to vote.  Yet nonparticipation may be the best case.  In time, the nation may devolve into warring political factions, who thuggishly vie to control the levers of power.  Does that seem surreal?  Investigate Latin America, where countries are colored with rigged elections and associated violence.

California judge rules Gov. Gavin Newsom overstepped authority with mail ballot order.  A California judge has ruled that Gov. Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority when he issued an executive order requiring vote-by-mail ballots sent to all registered voters, according to reports.  Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman ruled Friday [11/13/2020] that Newsom did not have the authority to amend or change existing election law — even during a pandemic.  The ruling put a permanent injunction on Newsom, prohibiting him from changing existing law under the California Emergency Services Act (CESA), according to KCRA.  The ruling does not affect the results of the 2020 general election.

One-Party Democrat Rule Is Killing California, And It's Coming For The Country.  [Scroll down]  COVID sucked the air out of the room in the presidential debates, and in the media in general.  However, my home state was never debilitated by the Wuhan virus, which likely hit the West Coast in the early months of this year before spreading through the rest of the country, and never overwhelmed our hospitals.  The real epidemic we are witnessing on our streets daily and with which so many of us have firsthand experience is the drug epidemic.  Corona victims are not falling down dead on our streets, like they did in videos from China; opiate addicts are.  During our never-ending lockdown, drug overdoses in San Francisco reached two a day.  For comparison, San Francisco has seen a total of 149 COVID deaths.  While nearly all coronavirus patients eventually recover, few druggies do, so they stay on our streets until death, blocking off entire sections of the city and taking over public transportation.

Newsom's Latest COVID Regs [are] Nuttier Than a Holiday Fruitcake.  Not many Californians will be trekking over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house for the holidays this year if Gov. Gavin Newsom has his way.  According to guidelines issued by his office, Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations in the Golden State can include members of no more than three households, including everyone present — hosts as well as guests.  Granny will obviously have to be a little more careful about which set of aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews she invites this year.  And for those who do wrangle an invitation, forget about singing any Christmas carols — or music of any kind, for that matter.  Newsom's edict directs that:
  •   instrumental music will be allowed, but only if the musicians maintain at least a six-foot physical distance between themselves (and all musicians must be from one of the three households; playing of wind instruments is strongly discouraged);
  •   everyone singing or chanting should wear a face covering at all times;
  •   all those singing, shouting, chanting or dancing should maintain physical distancing beyond six feet; and,
  •   they are strongly encouraged to do so quietly (at or below the volume of a normal speaking voice).

Liberal California Emigrants are Toxic.  Since 2012, California has overwhelmingly sent more transplants to Arizona than any other state.  When surveyed, escaping Californians cite high taxes, high crime rates, unaffordable housing, out-of-control homelessness, and high unemployment rates as their top reasons for fleeing.  Who is responsible for creating such an alarming living environment within the state?  California liberals.  A November, 2020 report produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University stated that California has 395,608 regulatory restrictions.  The sheer volume and scope of California regulations creates such a compliance nightmare that they kill entire industries, send housing prices to unattainable heights, and restrict even commonplace liberties for which conservative leaning states are known.  Piled onto California's endless river of regulations are its nonsensical laws and policies.  Twenty major metropolitan cities or counties in California have established laws, ordinances, regulations, or other practices that shield illegal immigrants from prosecution after committing a crime.

Judge rules California Gov. Newsom's vote-by-mail order was improper.  A California judge ruled that Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order requiring mail-in ballots to be sent to every registered voter in the state was unconstitutional.  Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman issued her ruling on Monday [11/2/2020], which also contained a permanent injunction, instructing the governor not to issue further orders that would be similarly improper.  Tuesday's election will be unaffected by the ruling because a vote-by-mail order was ultimately passed by the state's Legislature.

Judge rules California's Newsom overstepped his authority with election order.  A California judge on Monday [11/2/2020] issued a tentative ruling in favor of two Republican state lawmakers who had filed an abuse of power lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.  Executive Order N-67-20, which Newsom signed in June, required that counties mail all eligible voters vote-by-mail ballots before Election Day and regulated the number of polling stations.  Assemblymembers James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, and Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, challenged Newsom's order in court, arguing that Newsom's Emergency Services Act — implemented in March amid the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic — prevented the governor from issuing more executive orders or creating new laws.

California governor sends his children to private school as local public schools remain closed.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom is sending his children to attend modified in-person instruction at a private school even as the public schools that serve his local district remain closed for now.  Newsom's children are "phasing back into school," he told media on Friday [10/30/2020], "and we are phasing out of our very challenging distance learning that we've been doing, so many parents are doing up and down the state."  The governor and his wife Jennifer Newsom have four children.  They were in private school prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

CA Governor Gavin Newsom Ignores Crime Surge yet Claims Preparation for Post-Election Chaos.  The headline in the Hill yesterday, "California governor preparing state for civil unrest following election," is laughable.  Governor Gavin Newsom's idea of any form of preparedness is to stay at home and wear a mask.  If anything, his policies of the last year have guaranteed the civil unrest, rather than any measures to quell it. [...] Of course, King Gavin gave no specifics about exactly what he planned to do to prepare for any potential election night chaos.  Chief Dominick Rivetti of the Beverly Hills Police Department has already announced that he will close down Rodeo Drive on Election Day and the day after, and his police department will be on high alert from the Halloween weekend through Tuesday [11/3/2020].

King Newsom bans indoor gatherings for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  California won't allow indoor family gatherings for the holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving, and outdoor gatherings are limited to three families for a maximum of two hours.  This is arbitrary and tyrannical.  "Gatherings that include more than 3 households are prohibited.  This includes everyone present, including hosts and guests.  Remember, the smaller the number of people, the safer," reads the "Guidance for Private Gatherings," issued by the California Department of Public Health on October 9.

SF DA Chesa Boudin surveys crime victims on how to make life easier for their attackers.  Chesa Boudin, the radical left-wing San Francisco District Attorney on whose watch San Francisco has become a crime-infested Caracas-like hellhole, is starting to draw criticism from crime victims for his unwillingness to prosecute crimes.  And adding insult to injury, he's now using them as fodder for a survey on how to make their attackers' lives better. [...] The aim of course is to use the responses to advance his political career, smothering out the victims' real concerns in order to advance his let-'em-out political agenda in a quest for higher office.  Always the P.R. man, Chesa is focused on gaslighting the public for his own self-aggrandisement, claiming he's prosecuting criminals, while he's mainly attempting to get the victims of crimes he never prosecuted to answer his survey with carefully worded options on what his priorities should be, leaving off the option of 'prosecuting violent crime' and taking violent thugs off the streets as choices.

L.A. County Sends Health Department Workers To Fine Church That Sued Newsom.  A Catholic church in Los Angeles County is alleging that the local government dispatched two health department officials to harass them in retaliation for their priest suing Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials.  On Oct. 15, two health officials showed up at Our Lady of the Angels Church in Arcadia, California, a congregation affiliated with the dissident Society of St. Pius X.  The officials watched approximately 11 parishioners leave the building from the sidewalk and then cited them for holding indoor worship services in violation of COVID-19 restrictions, according to a copy of the citation forwarded to The Daily Wire.  The citation carried with it a $1,000 fine.

California's Gavin Newsom goes bonkers issuing Thanksgiving COVID orders.  For someone whose previous career was in San Francisco's trendy restaurant industry, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom has some bizarre ideas about why people gather; what a comfortable dining experience is; and how people, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, will do what they do.  Nope, he's got some weird stuff up, motivated, he says, by a supposed new wave of COVID: [...] Anyone with a lick of common sense knows that neither he nor his constituents are going to observe these ridiculous diktats on the country's biggest family holiday from the comfort of their own homes.  The arbitrariness of these regulations is incredible.  Two hours together?  Why not one point five hours instead?  Thousands of lives could be saved!

The Grinch Who Stole Thanksgiving.  Governor Gavin Newsom's Department of Health has issued an updated "Guidance for Private Gatherings" in time for Thanksgiving.  Basically, fun is illegal in California:  ["]Gatherings that include more than 3 households are prohibited.  This includes everyone present, including hosts and guests.["]  So if you have three kids, you can invite two of them.  ["]All gatherings must be held outside.  Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized.["]  This would not work well in Minnesota.

California Just Declared War On Thanksgiving With Kafka-Level Regulations.  Gov. Gavin Newsom just gave Californians more regulations for an early Christmas present — and anyone hoping to celebrate the holidays with family better hope there's a gift receipt.  Just in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities, when most families gather with loved ones, California's Democrat governor has issued a new set of regulations that bans gatherings of more than three households.  Additionally, no indoor gatherings are permitted, so don't plan on eating around the dining room table unless you lug it out into your backyard.  Newsom's ban on gatherings of more than three households means that a family with more than two grown children can only have two visit at the same time.  According to the Pew Research Center, almost two-thirds of mothers in their young forties in 1976 had three or more children.  If those mothers are grandmothers now and their children are grown, that means up to two-thirds of families would be banned from bringing all their children under one roof for the holidays.

Close To Half A Million Ballots [have been] Sent To California Voters Who Have Moved Or Died.  Why do you suppose California Republicans are setting up their own ballot drop boxes at churches and gun shops to offer voters a safe way to ensure their votes make it to election officials for counting?  Do you suppose they have some concerns about how well the mass mail-in voting system will perform when it's put to the full test on November 3rd?  Perish the thought.  I'm sure everything will be fine.  Well... nearly everything.  But we might not be entirely confident about the eventual fate of roughly 400,000 ballots that went out this month.  That's because their voter rolls don't appear to have been tended very well over the years and that huge slug of ballots went to people who had either moved out of the state or taken up residence in cemeteries.

Freshman House Democrat offers the GOP a pickup opportunity amid crumbling campaign.  California's 21st Congressional District was the last district to be called in the 2018 election, with Democrat T.J. Cox defeating incumbent Republican David Valadao one month after election day.  In a year of crazy election news, their rematch has become even more chaotic.  Cox started his 2018 run in California's 10th District, abandoning the crowded primary after the only Democrat running against Valadao dropped out.  Cox's carpetbagging didn't seem to matter too much as he landed the endorsement of the Fresno Bee, the district's largest paper.  Valadao had won his district in 2016 by nearly the same margin as Hillary Clinton had, but the 2018 Democratic wave proved too much to survive.

California Democrat Legislature Passed a Stupid "Vote Harvesting" Law and Are Now Paying the Price.  To begin with, California has the most ridiculously lax ballot harvesting law ever imagined.  They passed it in late Nov. 2016 after Donald Trump won the Presidency, and they clearly had in mind making use of it in a variety of nefarious ways in 2018.  They did so to great benefit, flipping several Congressional races in traditionally GOP districts that had become purple over the course of several election cycles.  The basic practice, as employed by Democrats, was to know the home address of every Democrat who requested an absentee ballot in the 2018 election.  One way they did that was by aggressively pushing registered Democrat voters to ask for absentee ballots and track those who did by their home address given when they sought the ballot through the party.  In the days leading up to the election, an army of volunteers — many of them union members from all parts of the labor movement in California, started knocking on the doors of those voters.  Many were elderly or otherwise housebound.

How California Is Turning Into a State Governed by Identity Politics.  If you thought racial identity politics were just a fleeting flirtation of the radical left, California's new laws suggest otherwise.  On Sept. 30, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into state law a bill setting up a nine-member board to study the amount of reparations that should be owed to black people for slavery and Jim Crow. [...] But that's hardly the only racially divisive law California has passed this year, since the Legislature convened in a coronavirus-racked session in June.  The same day, Newsom signed a bill to establish diversity quotas on corporate boards for racial minorities.  Corporations with between four and nine board members will now be required to have at least two racial minorities, while corporations with more than nine board members will be required to have at least three represented.

Gov. Newsom Says He Is in 'No Hurry' to Reopen Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood.  Don't expect Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood and Knott's Berry Farm to open anytime soon, according to California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference Wednesday [10/7/2020].  He said there is "no hurry in putting out guidelines," but state officials are continuing to work with amusement parks in California after the pandemic prompted closures in March.  He called the process "very complex," adding, "We don't anticipate, in the immediate term, any of these larger theme parks opening until we see more stability in terms of the data."

Ignoring Current Problems, California Cooks up Illogical Reparations Bill.  Apparently, when California's one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.  California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous.  Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed rail project?  When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures and scorched 4 million acres of forest, in response the governor thundered about global warming.  But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green polices that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.  When gasoline, sales and income taxes rose, and yet state schools became even worse, infrastructure remained decrepit and deficits grew, California demanded that federal COVID-19 money bail out its own financial mismanagement.

Masks Are Turning America Into Northern California.  [Scroll down]  Palo Alto, like much of Northern California, was a cesspool of fear and grievance.  The work being done was obviously incredible; the coolest and most useful technology on the planet was all being born up and down the Bay Area.  But the culture outside of the cushy campuses and start-ups was one of persistent paranoia.  You couldn't cross a street in Palo Alto without hearing voices warning you of the dangers that lurk about.  No, seriously.  They had little recordings in the crosswalks that were on a 24×7 loop warning of general dangers.  It was creepy. [...] And with the help of masks, that's how Jake Tapper and Anthony Fauci (the posterboys for their leftist institutions) want all of America to be.  And there are plenty of people across the country who would gladly move into that kind of reality.

Gavin Newsom goes 'Bananas': 'Don't forget to keep your mask on in between bites'.  So Gavin Newsom of California has gotten excited about masks again, just as Joe Biden and assorted leftists have made it mask-wearing the most recitable part of the Democrats' party platform in the wake of President Trump's diagnosis of COVID.  Joe Biden is out preaching for the wearing of masks, but for Newsom, merely wearing them at the grocery store is no longer enough. [...] It's also a day late and a dollar short, being ordered a time when COVID cases are way down in California and deaths are precipitously declining. [...] A ridiculous order like this, detrimental to public health, is nothing short of the whims of a dictator drunk on power.  It's like a scene from Woody Allen's 1971 Bananas about a fictional tropical dictator who looks like Fidel Castro.

Newsom's office tells Californians to wear masks 'in between bites' of food when dining with members from same household in public.  Gov. Gavin Newsom's office told California residents they should wear masks "in between bites" of food while dining in public spaces with people from the same household.  "Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend?  Don't forget to keep your mask on in between bites," the office of the governor tweeted over the weekend.  "Do your part to keep those around you healthy," the tweet added.

The Editor says...
Fortunately, a tweet is not a law.

California governor's office tells diners to wear masks 'in between bites'.  The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom has told residents in the Golden State that if they go out to eat, they should be wearing a mask "in between bites" to protect themselves from COVID-19. [...] For emphasis, the tweet shows an image of someone at a dining seat wearing a mask, then not wearing a mask while taking a bite, and then putting the mask on again.  However, the image then advises people to "minimize the number of times you take your mask off."  California has allowed limited indoor dining to resume in a number of counties.  San Francisco allowed indoor dining last week at 25% capacity.  California has had more than 800,000 cases and more than 16,000 deaths due to the virus.

The Editor says...
That is not true.  The total number of deaths from Covid-19 is less than 10,000 nationwide.  The number of people who have died with the virus (not from it) is much higher.

Oops!  What an unfortunate error!  Better luck in 2024.
L.A. County:  Over 2,000 mail-in ballots sent without the option to vote for president.  Nearly 2,100 mail-in ballots were sent to voters in Los Angeles without the option to vote for the next president of the United States, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office declared them "faulty ballots," the report noted.  "While this has impacted a very small number of Los Angeles County voters ... we nevertheless apologize to those affected by the mistake," said Michael Sanchez, a spokesman for the county clerk's office, according to the LA Times.

The Editor says...
This tells you one thing about the Los Angeles County election officials:  Nobody checks the ballots before they are sent out.  Or worse, they knew there was an omission and thought nobody would notice.  Or worse still, they hate President Trump so much that they were willing to interfere in the election.  In any case, I can confidently predict the number of county officials who will lose their jobs as a result of this:  Zero.

Gavin Newsom Edges Ahead in the Country's Dumbest Governor Competition.  COVID-19 has certainly exposed one of two things.  Either some of the dumbest people in the country are leading our states, or they are so hyperpartisan they will beclown themselves to toe the Democrats' preferred narrative on the virus.  The latest ridiculous instructions come from Gavin Newsom's office:  ["]Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend?  Don't forget to keep your mask on in between bites.["] [...] One of the primary reasons that masking is controversial is because people don't know how to use [them].  Apparently, this lack of knowledge goes straight up to the governor's office in California.  As a former healthcare worker trained on how to don and doff personal protective equipment (PPE) properly, this is painfully stupid.

A man wanted to open an ice cream shop, unfortunately he was in San Francisco.  It's difficult to open a business in some parts of the country because of all the red tape involved.  One of the places where that's definitely the case is San Francisco.  Last Friday the San Francisco Chronicle published a column outlining Jason Yu's attempt to open an ice cream shop in the city and the months and months of delays he has faced trying to take his project through various slow-moving departments.  Yu decided he wanted to open a shop selling green tea flavored ice cream back in 2018.  Eventually, he found an empty storefront and in June 2019 he signed a lease which cost him $7,300 per month.  He knew it would take a few months to open but he was prepared for that.  He hired an architect to make plans for new electrical and plumbing but there were no structural changes needed and no changes to the outside of the building.  Six months later, in June 2019, he submitted his plans to the Department of Building Inspection.  And that's when his real nightmare began.

California Is a Cautionary Tale for America.  Anyone with the means to flee Detroit, does so.  Likewise, the Golden State hemorrhages residents, as they build their lives in differently managed states. [...] California bounds from one crisis to another, with most of them being self-imposed.  The latest one involves the raging wildfires that turned our air into a putrid soup.  Obviously, heat waves and high winds were the proximate cause, but poor land management, ill-conceived liability and insurance laws, and the misuse of existing firefighting budgets are the fundamental problems.  The last crisis involved homelessness.  Just because COVID-19 pushed it off of the front pages doesn't mean that it's become any less severe.

L.A. Ordered to Pay NRA Six Figures After Losing First Amendment Case.  The Washington Free Beacon reports, a federal court ordered the city of Los Angeles to pay the NRA's lawyer fees of approximately $150,000, just months after he ruled a city ordinance violated the gun-rights group's First Amendment rights.  The City of Los Angeles tried to penalize any contractor with ties to the NRA.  The NRA sued over the ordinance and federal district court judge Stephen Wilson ruled it was an unconstitutional violation of the NRA's First Amendment rights.  The city eventually repealed it and on Tuesday, the judge ordered city officials to pay the NRA's attorney fees totaling about $150,000.

Bob Iger quits California economic task force as Disney lays off 28,000 workers.  Disney chairman Bob Iger quit California Gov. Gavin Newsom's coronavirus recovery task force just two days after the Mouse House said it was cutting 28,000 jobs at its US parks business.  A Disney rep wouldn't say why or exactly when Iger resigned from the task force, which was formed in April, according to the Sacramento Bee, which first reported the news late Thursday [10/1/2020].  Disney didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The [New York] Post.

California governor signs corporate boardroom diversity law.  Hundreds of California-based corporations must have directors from racial or sexual minorities on their boards under a first-in-the-nation bill signed Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.  The diversity legislation is similar to a 2018 measure that required boardrooms to have at least one female director by 2019.  Like that measure, it could face court challenges from conservative groups who view it as a discriminatory quota.  Supporters evoked both the coronavirus pandemic that is disproportionately affecting minorities and weeks of unrest and calls for inclusion that followed the slaying of George Floyd in May in the custody of Minneapolis police.

EPA chief to Newsom:  You don't have the power to ban gas-powered vehicles.  EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler rebuked California governor Gavin Newsom yesterday [9/28/2020] for his executive order barring sales of gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035.  California no longer has the authority to impose such regulations, Wheeler reminded Newsom, and it also lacks the power, literally:

Newsom OKs sterilizing treatments for teens.  Despite the medical evidence and moral outcry, Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the signing of a bill that allows gender clinics to provide transgender drugs and surgery known to sterilize children and adults.  Newsom praised AB 2218 for "strengthening protections for LGBTQ+ Californians" and providing an "additional step forward" in "our march towards equality," in a weekend press release.  "By rejecting the concerns of doctors and parents, and siding with LGBT activists, Governor Newsom is yet again ignoring the heartbreak his policies will unleash," said Jonathan Keller, President of California Family Council.

California: The Golden State in Utter Decay.  With increasing homelessness, a soft approach to criminal prosecution, and the ongoing embracing of illegal immigration, violent crimes are increasing after having seen a reduction the past few years.  According to The Trace, "homicides are sharply up this year" in California as a whole, and cities such as Oakland, with a 26% increase, have seen a significant increase in the number of murders.  With the jump in violent crimes, what steps has California's government taken to reduce certain crimes?  They recently passed the controversial bill S.B. 145, which will ultimately end up reducing accountability and sentences for adults who sexually assault children as young as 14.  What a brilliant idea.  Apparently, California's leadership believes that the pedophile community had been treated unfairly.

Group Robs A CVS In Broad Daylight As Employees And Manager Just Watch.  Ever since California decriminalized what the state considers 'petty crime', this sort of brazen robberies of stores has become more and more common.  Add mask laws to the mix, which conceals criminals' identities, you can bet on a lot more of these broad daylight heists.  [Video clip]

California Wants Me to Vote, Even Though I Haven't Lived There for Over 8 Years.  States across the country are experimenting with a mass switch to mail-in elections in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  But is it wise for states to make such a big change, especially in light of messy voter rolls around the country?  What I was sent earlier this month by election officials in Alameda County, California, makes me worried that ballots going to the wrong locations will be a significant concern this year.  The Alameda County Registrar of Voters notified me by mail at my parents' address in Oakland that I would receive a ballot when the state sends them out Oct. 5.  This is following Gov. Gavin Newsom's executive order that all California voters receive a mail-in ballot before the Nov. 3 election.

Pregnant Black, Pacific Islander women in San Francisco to receive $1,000 monthly supplement.  Approximately 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander women in San Francisco will receive a $1,000 monthly supplement during their pregnancies and for the first six months of their babies' lives, the city's mayor announced.  Mayor London Breed's (D) office said on Monday that the Abundant Birth Project is the first of its kind in the country.  The project's goal is to eventually provide a supplement for as long as two years post-pregnancy. [...] Black infants are nearly twice as likely to be born prematurely than white infants in San Francisco.  Pacific Islander infants have the second-highest preterm birth rate in the city, according to the mayor's office.  Black families also account for half of maternal deaths in the city and 15 percent of infant deaths, although they represent just 4 percent of all births.

The Editor says...
[#1] There is a lot of discussion about mothers and babies, but no mention of the babies' fathers in the article above.  [#2] What's so special about Pacific Islander women?  Which Pacific islands?  Are these women U.S. citizens?  [#3] If black babies are so important, why are so many black babies aborted in San Francisco, with the enthusiastic support of some of the same left-wing do-gooders?

California imposes racial quotas on corporate boards.  California's legislature is mandating racial quotas for corporate boards.  "Experts say" that "runs afoul of constitutional principles," according to the Wall Street Journal.  "New legislation passed over the weekend would mandate that publicly-traded companies headquartered in the state must have at least one director from a minority community by the close of 2021.  There are more than 500 public companies based in California in the Russell 3000, which accounts for the vast majority of companies."

Poll: Californians oppose gender mutilation and sterilization bill.  Sixty-four percent of California voters do not want Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill to pay for transgender drugs and surgeries known to sterilize minors and adults, according to a new poll.  The survey, conducted by Spry Strategies in conjunction with the Women's Liberation Front, shows that conservative Christians and radical feminists, who have joined forces to oppose AB 2218, are more in step with California voters than state legislators.  The controversial bill passed the Assembly 54-10 and the Senate 28-9 late last month, and now sits on Newsom's desk awaiting his decision.

LA County's Public Health Director says what we suspected about the lockdown.  [Scroll down]  Los Angeles County is America's most populous county, the largest government entity in America that is not a state or the federal government, and the third-largest metropolitan economy in the world.  It's also entirely Democrat-run, as evidenced by poverty, drugs, and homelessness, as well as its vast wealth inequality.  Los Angeles students still cannot go to school but must, instead, do online learning.  We already know that part of the problem is that the teachers' union had some pretty stringent demands, few related to the students' physical and mental well-being.  However, it turns out the continued school closures are also because of politics.  We know this because LA County's Public Health Director, Barbara Ferrer, admitted as much when speaking to a gathering of school nurses and other school administrators: [...] There is no scientific connection between the election and the Wuhan virus.  There is, however, a cynical connection between the lockdown and the election.  The Democrats know that, and Ferrer finally said it out loud.

Los Angeles County bans trick-or-treating this Halloween due to coronavirus.  Traditional Halloween activities won't be allowed for residents in Los Angeles County this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to local health officials.  The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced a ban on door-to-door trick-or-treating, carnivals, festivals, live entertainment and haunted houses.  "Door to door trick or treating is not allowed because it can be very difficult to maintain proper social distancing on porches and at front doors especially in neighborhoods that are popular with trick or treaters," officials said in a news release detailing guidelines for the annual tradition.

Update:
Los Angeles quickly reverses trick-or-treat ban.  Los Angeles pulled a Halloween switcheroo on Wednesday — first banning, and then quickly unbanning, trick-or-treating.  Less than a day after saying the door-to-door candy grab is banned due to coronavirus concerns, county officials changed course and said the popular children's tradition is now just "not recommended."  The revision came after parents and businesses "went apoplectic with outrage," Deadline reported, citing a press briefing by LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer.  Also not recommended — but no longer outright banned — are LA's popular "trunk-or-treat" events, in which costumed kids go car to car instead of door to door.

California to Offer Drive-Thru Voting for November Election in Orange County.  Orange County, California, is offering voters the option to submit a drive-thru ballot this November election season to stem the spread of the coronavirus.  The county will use the Honda Center in Anaheim as a staging location, allowing voters to cast their ballots from their cars or in person inside the arena, the Daily Pilot reported.

California DA's new policy to consider looters' 'needs' before charging them.  A California district attorney is requiring her prosecutors to consider looters' "needs" when weighing criminal charges against them.  The new mandate, set forth by Contra Costa County District Attorney Diane Becton, makes it tougher to prosecute looting cases in the county, which sits just outside San Francisco.  Investigators must now consider "was this theft offense substantially motivated by the state of emergency, or simply a theft offense which occurred contemporaneously to the declared state of emergency?," according to the policy reported by local outlet East County Today.

California Legislature Passes Bill Reducing Penalties for Oral, Anal Sex with Willing Children.  California lawmakers passed a bill Monday that would reduce penalties for adults who have oral or anal sex with a willing minor child if the sex offender is within ten years of the age of the victim.  The bill now heads to the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

California legislature passes bill easing sex offender registry requirements for sodomy with minors.  California legislators passed a law Monday easing sex offender registry rules for those who commit sodomy or other sex acts with minors in order to end "discrimination against LGBTQ young people on the sex offender registry."  The bill, which now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk, would "exempt from mandatory registration under the act a person convicted of certain offenses involving minors if the person is not more than 10 years older than the minor and if that offense is the only one requiring the person to register," according to the bill.

Californiastan Continues Its War on Christians.  [Scroll down]  But even if a genuine pandemic rather than COVID-Con raged, pastors should never close churches.  Both liberty and the Lord demand that we defy such dictatorship.

California bill to form reparations task force advances after 33-3 state Senate vote.  State senators in California overwhelmingly supported setting up a task force to study potential reparations for slavery in a bipartisan vote Saturday [8/29/2020].  The panel would study the effects slavery had on California and recommend to the legislature no later than 2023 what type of compensation would be appropriate, how it might be dispersed and who could be eligible to receive it.  The task force could also recommend other forms of redress besides money.

Having a party is a crime now?
TikTok celebrities criminally charged after LA house parties.  TikTok celebrities Bryce Hall and Blake Gray are facing criminal charges after they hosted recent parties in the Hollywood Hills despite the city's ban on large gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said Friday [8/28/2020].  The Los Angeles city attorney's office filed misdemeanor charges Thursday against Hall and Gray.  The internet celebrities with millions of followers on TikTok share a home and allegedly held two parties less than a week apart.

In California, cops banned from pro-police speech but pro-BLM speech is mandatory.  A California Highway Patrol division in Southern California prohibited officers this month from displaying Thin Blue Line items, meant to honor law enforcement.  Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department is decorating its precincts with materials celebrating Black Lives Matter, an organization calling for the defunding of the police.  The CHP memo, a roll call briefing document with the Border Division dated Aug. 14, directed officers to "remove all Thin Blue Line paraphernalia, including anything resembling it ... immediately.  This includes any paraphernalia hung anywhere in the office, stickers/patches on State or personal property that may be seen by the public during the course of duties, and email signature blocks."  The Thin Blue Line, depicted as a black and white U.S. flag with a blue stripe, represents the sacrifices that law enforcement make to protect the public and prevent civil unrest.  Civilians display the symbol to show their support for the nation's authorities.  Progressive activists, however, liken the symbol to white supremacy and police misconduct.  A California police officer who reviewed the document said it amounted to an official order because of the use of the word "shall."  "It's all political so I understand why they sent it out," he said.

California Gov. Newsom failed to take promised pay cut, newspaper finds.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been drawing his full monthly salary despite asking state workers in May to take a pay cut to alleviate the state's burden in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.  Though elected state officials are exempt from such pay cuts, Newsom pledged that he would voluntarily slash his salary when he asked state workers to make that same sacrifice.  But a Thursday [8/20/2020] report from the Sacramento Bee revealed that Newsom has continued drawing his full monthly salary of $17,479.  A spokesman for Newsom's office blamed the matter on an "administrative error."

Killing Los Angeles.  Things are so bad in so many American cities that our mainstream media outlets do not have the space or the time to cover it all.  Even if they wanted to cover it all, which they clearly don't want to do.  After all, the decline and fall of America's great cities does not make Donald Trump look bad.  And the only news that is fit to print these days is news that makes Trump look bad.  As Democrat run cities collapse before our eyes, the media assure us that there's nothing worth watching there.  New York, Chicago, Portland, Seattle... down the drink, as they say.  And the news media are trying to cover up the story, or, at the least, blame it on white Trump supporters.  Anyway, today's story of decline and fall concerns Los Angeles.

Broke California wants to fund youth sterilizations and sex changes.  The California Senate will consider legislation soon to use taxpayer funds to pay for hormone blockers and sex change operations for minors.  The bill, after passing the Senate Health Committee by a 7-1 vote last week, now moves to the Senate Appropriation Committee and then to the floor of the Senate before the end of the month.  As noted by numerous health experts, the use of cross-sex hormones and surgeries for adolescents would permanently destroy their reproductive systems, a fact which AB2218 backers seem inclined to ignore.

With Kamala Harris as VP pick, Gavin Newsom's White House hopes have stalled.  Maybe you've noticed:  Gov. Gavin Newsom no longer looks like a promising future presidential prospect.  He has been leaped over and left behind by a California ally, Sen. Kamala Harris.  Since Newsom was elected governor in 2018, the expectation has been that he would seize the first opportunity after this year to run for president.  Newsom, 52, wasn't ready this year.  But if President Trump won reelection, the Oval Office would be open in 2024.  And if a Democrat ousted Trump, there'd be another opportunity in 2028.

Hollywood Apocalypse.  Gold's Gym has become synonymous with the Hollywood Dream. [...] Yet today Gold's sits amid post-apocalyptic scenes which have consumed much of LA, turning the City of Dreams into an urban nightmare from which people are fleeing in droves.  A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on all sides.  Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies — all just three blocks from multi-million-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific.  Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes.  TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning jog or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens.

Los Angeles:  Why politicians' COVID bullying attacks will work.  Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has learned how to govern like a third-world dictator.  His threat to shut down the water and power to large house parties that violate the city's coronavirus guidelines is right out of the totalitarian government handbook. [...] Starting on Friday [8/7/2020], Mayor Garcetti announced that the city would shut off the power and water to houses, businesses, and other venues that violated the strict corona virus safety guidelines.  This is in response to a large house party that police attempted to shut down.  It turns out these parties are cropping up because the bars and nightclubs are closed as the city institutes greater restrictions as reported cases increase. [...] And it will work.  In the Third World, which is what many of these cities have come to resemble, practical and authoritarian solutions prevail, especially when there is no one to enforce the rule of law.

Local Politicians:  America's Achilles Heel.  Capping a long, impressive streak of dumb proclamations and declarations, including suggesting that members of the LAPD put down their batons and "walk hand-in-hand" with the same rioters who were then torching LAPD vehicles, attacking officers, and looting numerous businesses, Garcetti recently declared that water and power would be shut off to any residence caught hosting a "large house party."  What exactly constitutes a gathering that is too "large?" Can/should a mayor shut off water and power to privately owned residences during the dog days of summer, two utilities that the State of California and Garcetti's own Housing Authority have explicitly deemed essential services necessary for habitation?

Crowd in California blasts Gov. Newsom for not reopening the state.  Hundreds of President Trump supporters descended onto the streets of Beverly Hills to protest property destruction and the 'villainization' of police while two similar demonstrations were held in Texas. [...] On Saturday [8/8/2020], a crowd of around 200 Americans carried signs reading 'Trump 2020' as they marched from West Hollywood to Beverly Hills.  Footage showed several protesters waving American flags, signs reading 'United We Stand,' Thin Blue Line American flags celebrating law enforcement and a plethora of 'Make America Great Again' paraphernalia.

L.A. County Supervisors Vote to Put Defunding Police on November Ballot.  The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a proposal on Tuesday to amend the city's charter — which will be presented to voters on November 3 via ballot — to remove $880 million from law enforcement and "reinvest" the money in "direct community investment" and "alternatives to incarceration."

The Editor says...
Yes, put it on the ballot in November, and in the absence of massive election fraud, it will fail.  While you're at it, put coronavirus lockdowns on the ballot, too.

San Fran is crawling with drugs.  DA shows more concern for dealers.  District attorney Chesa Boudin acknowledges that the Tenderloin District of the city is plagued by drug sellers from Honduras, but frets that arresting them isn't really worth it.  Boudin, a former public defender who vowed as a candidate to prosecute fewer criminals, is not inclined to address how the surge in drug sales during Covid lockdowns was affecting city residents, and instead focused on the plight of the drug dealers themselves.  Many were trafficked and their families were at risk at home if they cooperated with authorities, Boudin said in a webinar last week.

California's Woke Hypocrisy.  No state wears its multicultural veneer more ostentatiously than California.  The Golden State's leaders believe that they lead a progressive paradise, ushering in what theorists Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca call "a new progressive era." Others see California as deserving of nationhood; it reflects, as a New York Times columnist put it, "the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society."  In response to the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced plans to defund the police — a move applauded by Senator Kamala Harris, a prospective Democratic vice presidential candidate, despite the city's steep rise in homicides.  San Francisco mayor London Breed wants to do the same in her increasingly crime-ridden, disordered city.  This follows state attorney general Xavier Becerra's numerous immigration-related lawsuits against the Trump administration, even as his state has become a sanctuary for illegal immigrants — complete with driver's licenses for some 1 million and free health care.

Gavin Newsom's $3.7 Million Estate Was Gifted to Him in 2019; 3 Months Later He Got a $2.7 Million Tax Free Cash-Out.  One thing that's become extraordinarily clear to Californians in 2020 is that there's one set of rules for Gov. Gavin Newsom, and there's another set of rules for the rest of us.  He preaches that we're all in this together and that we have to sacrifice to "meet this moment," yet he's not missing a paycheck.  As California businesses struggle, he sends a $1 billion contract for masks to a Chinese company.  When he shut down wineries throughout 80 percent of California, he kept his open.  While the dream of owning a home is increasingly out of reach for California's families, it appears that Newsom received a $3.7 million estate from an LLC owned by his cousin then, a few months later took out a $2.695 million (tax-free) cash-out mortgage on it — and didn't report the gift on any of his financial disclosure forms.

Gavin Newsom Rages at Trump Discounting Illegal Aliens for States' Representation.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday [7/21/2020] decried President Donald Trump's executive order which will exclude Illegal aliens from being counted for purposes of congressional apportioning.  "Counting every person in our country through the Census is a principle so foundational that it is written into our Constitution," Newsom said in a statement.  "This latest action by the administration to exclude undocumented immigrants when determining representation in Congress, rooted in racism and xenophobia, is a blatant attack on our institutions and our neighbors."

The Editor says...
Well, governor, they may be your neighbors (very distantly, I suspect), but if they are here illegally they are not entitled to representation in the Congress.  Anyone other than a public school student should be expected to know that.

City removes 'Black Lives Matter' street mural because of 'MAGA 2020' request.  Street graffiti for me, but not for thee.  That's what lawmakers in Redwood City, California basically told a Trump supporter who wanted to paint "MAGA 2020" on the same street where left-wing activists had painted a Black Lives Matter mural.  Last week, Redwood City (which is located on the San Francisco peninsula) washed away the "Black Lives Matter" mural after a local attorney — a Trump supporter — argued that since the street was now a public forum, she should be allowed to paint "MAGA 2020" on it.

California City Chooses No Speech over MAGA Speech.  When faced with the choice of giving a Donald Trump supporter the exact same right to free expression as the left-wing terrorist group Black Lives Matter, Redwood City, California, chose to outlaw everyone's speech.  How revealing.  As Breitbart News reported Monday, Redwood City was so eager to allow one of its residents to paint a Black Lives Matter mural on city property, the city — and therefore the taxpayers — provided him with some of the materials.

Los Angeles mayor says city is 'on the brink' of declaring another stay-at-home order.  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday [7/19/2020] that Los Angeles is "on the brink" of another stay-at-home order.  Los Angeles County has seen a surge of cases recently, with new record high hospitalizations and infections.  The city has more than 150,000 cases.  "A lot of things went wrong," Garcetti said.  He pointed out that cases haven't increased as quickly in LA as in some cities, but said there is "no national leadership" in efforts to slow or stop the pandemic.  "It was politicized when it should have been unified."

California Gov. Newsom Helps Chinese Get $1 Billion in COVID Aid.  [...] I've learned my lesson this time:  Don't give Democratic governors the benefit of the doubt.  I thought I'd learned it the first time.  When New York's Andrew Cuomo looked like he was showing strong leadership in the opening week or two of the coronavirus crisis, I thought maybe we could put aside our petty differences and praise a politician from the other side.  In fact, I did just that.  And then it all ended in tears.  It wasn't the rambling, empurpled news conferences that made the much-criticized presidential media briefings look like relative models of restraint.  No, for me the moment I made a clean break was when I learned the much-hailed hand sanitizer production program Cuomo was fond of touting consisted of little more than inmates rebottling an outside product inside the Empire State's prisons in order to make the governor look good.

Berkeley Bans Police-Conducted Traffic Stops, Will Send in Unarmed Civilians.  Berkeley, California has approved a plan that prohibits police officers from conducting traffics stops.  The plan, proposed by the mayor and approved in a virtual city council meeting early Wednesday morning [7/15/2020], is just one part of a major "defund the police" overhaul planned by the city, Fox News reported.  The move to separate traffic enforcement from police work is believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S, according to the report.  Instead of having trained officers conducting traffic stops, the new policy will send in unarmed civilian city workers to deal with traffic offenders.  Police unions for Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco said in a joint statement that serious violations such as speeding, reckless driving, and driving under the influence — are dangerous offenses and confronting violators can be dangerous work best handled by sworn officers.

California to Release 18,000 Prisoners by End of August to 'Slow the Spread of COVID-19'.  According to the California Department of Corrections, the state is set to release up to 18,000 prisoners by the end of August to 'slow the spread of COVID-19.'  Officials in California say releasing prisoners will help protect the "health and safety of the incarcerated population."  "These actions are taken to provide for the health and safety of the incarcerated population and staff," Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Ralph Diaz said in a news release.  "We aim to implement these decompression measures in a way that aligns both public health and public safety."

Nine politicians can stop teen sterilizations in California, but will they?  The fate of a bill to fund transgender treatments that permanently destroy the reproductive systems of minors is now in the hands of nine California State Senators.  AB 2218, authored by Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D) Los Angeles with principal co-author Senator Scott Wiener (D) San Francisco, will be heard before the nine members Senate Health Committee when they return to the capitol at the end of the month.  The bill has already made its way through the Democrat-dominated state Assembly with little debate and approved largely along party lines.  It establishes an "LGBT Transgender Wellness Fund," to provide grants to nonprofits, hospitals, health care clinics (like Planned Parenthood), and other medical providers to pay for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mastectomies for minors, as well as cross-sex hormones and "sex-change" operations for adults.

COVID Madness — Comrade Newsom Shuts Down California Indoor Activities.  This is nuts.  In an effort to fundamentally destroy the livelihoods of millions of California small businesses, Comrade Governor Gavin Newsom has declared that all indoor activities must shut down to top the spread of COVID-19.  The overwhelming majority of dictates around COVID-19 mitigation are not laws.  There was no debate; no input from representative government; and no option for the public to weigh-in on the decisions.

Newsom shuts bars, indoor dining and most gyms, churches amid rise in virus cases.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday extended the closure of bars and indoor dining statewide and ordered gyms, churches and hair salons closed in most places as coronavirus cases keep rising in the nation's most populated state.  On July 1, Newsom ordered 19 counties with a surging number of confirmed infections to close bars and indoor operations at restaurants, wineries, zoos and family entertainment centers like bowling alleys and miniature golf.

Gavin Newsom gives Californians a glimpse of their future.  Once upon a time, California's Governor Gavin Newsom, the leftist boy wonder of America's largest and most leftist state, was considered to be a top future contender for the White House.  That future is not so clear now that he's made it clear to Californians that every time the Wuhan virus rears its head, he's again going to shut down their places of work and imprison them in their homes.

California may release 10% of inmates in pandemic response.  California officials will soon release another 2,100 inmates from state prisons in response to the coronavirus pandemic and in all now plans to release a total of more than 10,000 inmates, or nearly 10 percent of prisoners, as Gov. Gavin Newsom responds to intensifying pressure from advocates, lawmakers and federal judges.

California Legislators Violate Our Constitutional Rights.  In multiple ways Gov. Newsom has become a monarch — a benevolent monarch, but a monarch nonetheless.  I am amazed at how many aspects of that document the governor has violated.  He would of course argue that his acts are for the public good, but he has tossed the Constitution out the window.  For example, Article 1, Section 8, says that Congress alone has the authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states."  Yet Gov. Newsom has unilaterally shut down varieties of commerce and restricted travel, even excursions from one's home.  Much of this commerce becomes interstate.

State Lawmakers Urge Newsom to Stop Transferring People in Prison to ICE in Pandemic.  Dozens of state lawmakers called on Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday [7/6/2020] to stop California prison officials from transferring people to federal immigration detention during the coronavirus pandemic.  In a letter signed by 44 members of the state Senate and Assembly — as well as 18 local elected officials, including Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland and Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton — the political leaders said ending the transfers is urgently needed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 between detention systems in California.

After calling for no fireworks for California's 4th of July, Gavin Newsom was in for a surprise.  Amid a new outbreak of the coronavirus, California's Gavin Newsom was adamant that no firework celebrations be done on the Fourth of July, because the public simply could not be trusted to socially distance. [...] Illegal fireworks were once the province of illegal immigrants bringing in the lawless ways of Mexico, but now it appears that everyone is doing them, thumbing their nose at the law same as is done in Mexico and beyond.  It goes to show that when the state overreaches, and puts out an unreasonable demand, widespread disobedience is going to be the result.  It happens in Mexico, now it's happening here.

With the Wuhan virus, Gavin Newsom discovers the perils of crying 'Wolf'.  In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom put California in lockdown to flatten the Wuhan virus curve.  Newsom, like Gov. Cuomo, placed virus patients in nursing homes, which may have contributed to the 2,531 resident and 93 care worker deaths in those homes.  The government also had a hand in the virus's rampage through San Quentin prison, which killed three death row inmates.  In other words, Democrat policies in California managed to produce 42% of the state's 6,263 virus fatalities.  With its lockdown, which initially was to last for two weeks and that instead continued for months, Newsom weakened the California economy, drove its citizens to despair, prevented people from getting healthcare for other potentially deadly conditions, and deprived citizens of their constitutional rights.

California's Governor Forbids Christians From Singing in Church Houses.  Golden State Christians have been ordered by California's governor to stop singing in church.  This is a direct assault on the First Amendment, [...] The new guidance for places of worship was issued on July 1.  "Discontinue singing (in rehearsals, services, etc.), chanting, and other practices and performances where there is increased likelihood for transmission from contaminated exhaled droplets.  Consider practicing these activities through alternative methods (such as internet streaming) that ensure individual congregation members perform these activities separately in their own homes," the 14-page order reads.  The previous guidelines only encouraged churches to "strongly consider" ending corporate worship, the Sacramento Bee reported.  The governor's office did not indicate how he intends to enforce the law.  Can you imagine the optics of National Guard troops storming into California church houses and arresting choir members for singing, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God"?

Newsom Bans Singing In Houses Of Worship After Downplaying Spread Of Coronavirus At Protests.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has issued new restrictions limiting the reopening of the economy in nearly 20 counties across the Golden State.  One of the more controversial measures introduced Thursday will ban singing and chanting at houses of worships, which are already restricted to allowing 25% of guests or just 100 worshippers (whichever is lower). The Sacramento Bee reported that in late May, Newsom simply encouraged houses of worship to "strongly consider discontinuing singing, group recitation, and other practices and performances."

Recall Gavin 2020.  Everywhere you look, the failures of Governor Newsom are obvious and appalling to everyone.  For this reason, the Recall Gavin 2020 campaign is not conservative or liberal, or right or left, or Republican or Democrat.  This is a mass uprising.  Our Recall Gavin campaign is building a grassroots organization with over 80,000 California voters already signed up as volunteers to sign and circulate recall petitions.  That number is growing every week.  And this is just the beginning.  Are you tired of being locked up, unable to make a living, at the same time as California's prisons are being emptied?  Do you wonder why Gavin Newsom's cronies are building "supportive housing" for the homeless at a cost of over a half-million dollars per unit, instead of just getting them help in less expensive facilities?  Then join the Recall Gavin 2020 movement.

Gov Newsom orders closing of Calif restaurants, wineries — but HIS remains open.  In what is seen as a major rollback, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered the closures of numerous businesses across 19 counties in California to counter a surge in coronavirus cases.  The order will be enforced for at least three weeks, and includes restaurants, wineries and tasting rooms, movie theaters, family entertainment centers, zoos and museums, cardrooms, and bars, Fox 26 reported.  While a number of Central Valley counties are included, Napa County, where Gov. Newsom owns a winery and tasting room is not among the counties affected and the business remains open as of the July 1, 2020 order, according to the Fox affiliate.

San Francisco will end mug shots release, citing racial bias.  San Francisco police will stop making public the mug shots of people who have been arrested unless they pose a threat to the public, as part of an effort to stop perpetuating racial stereotypes, the city's police chief announced Wednesday [7/1/2020].  San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department will no longer release booking photos of suspects to the media or allow officers to post them online.  The policy takes effect Wednesday.

Los Angeles school police chief releases powerful resignation statement after board slashes funding.  Los Angeles School Police Chief Todd Chamberlain resigned following a decision by the school board to cut millions in funding and remove officers from campuses.  Chamberlain, who stepped into the job just last year, turned in his resignation on Wednesday [7/1/2020], according to district spokeswoman Shannon Haber, the Los Angeles Times reported.  With over 35 years in law enforcement, Chamberlain made the decision one day after the school board gave in to what he called a "potentially life-threatening" choice to cut the school police budget by $25 million.

In the Name of Tolerance, California Blacklists Idaho.  In a bizarre show of authoritarianism — even for them — California state officials have decided to ban state-funded travel to Idaho because of its transgender law.  In a press release, California's attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said:  "Where states legislate discrimination, California unambiguously speaks out.  The state of Idaho has taken drastic steps to undermine the rights of the transgender community, preventing people from playing sports in school or having documentation that reflects their identity."  In his comments Monday [6/22/2020], Becerra was referring to legislation signed by Idaho Gov. Brad Little that banned biological males who say they identify as girls or women from participating in female sports at public schools, colleges, and universities.  House Bill 500, the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, passed by a significant margin in Idaho's House and Senate.  It wasn't even controversial among Idaho residents.

A meaty issue:  California tries to override the commerce clause.  In late 2018, California voters passed Proposition 12, banning the in-state sale of any pork or veal (regardless of origin) from an animal that had been "confined in a cruel manner," defined as that which prevents an animal from lying down or turning around freely. [...] Yet, the issue here is not just that Proposition 12 is bad policy.  It's also likely unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's commerce clause precedents, including its "extraterritorial doctrine."  In Baldwin v.  G.A.F Seelig, Inc., the court ruled that a New York milk distributor could not be forced to pay New York minimum prices for milk supplied by Vermont farms.  "New York has no power to project its legislation into Vermont," the court declared, before noting that the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power to regulate commerce because of "the mutual jealousies and aggressions of the States, taking form in customs barriers and other economic retaliation" existing under the Articles of Confederation.

Mailing It In.  Assembly Bill 860, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on June 18, is premised on ensuring safety in the era of the coronavirus.  Yet Wisconsinites voted in person in April, and the predicted spike in coronavirus cases from that public assembly never materialized.  The state's caseload did climb, but no steep increase occurred in the days and weeks after the primary, just a steady rise that has continued, partly driven by expanded testing.  Apparently the same can be said for the locations where George Floyd marches, encouraged by the media and many public officials, were held.  The pandemic, it appears, was a useful crisis — voting by mail has long been a priority among progressives, and the coronavirus outbreak provided sufficient cover to institute it.

Oakland Abolishes School Police Department.  The Oakland Unified School District abolished its own police force at a school board meeting on Wednesday night, bowing to the wishes of radical left-wing activists and the Black Lives Matter movement.  The decision came a day after the Los Angeles Unified School District board could not agree on a similar proposal.  It follows nationwide demands from activists, including many Democrats, to defund or abolish the police.

What Happens When the Madness Ends?  What will California's multimillionaire Governor Gavin Newsom do when his silly press conferences end, but his 13.3 percent income tax rate and 47-cent gas tax still don't come close to closing his $50 billion annual deficit?  Give more adolescent lectures about how the virus and lockdown are "reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism"?

There's a reason racial tension is rising in America - it's by design.  In California, Democrats are moving to repeal Proposition 209. Proposition 209 explicitly bans racial discrimination in hiring and education.  In other words, Democrats in California are now fighting for discrimination.  This is not considered strange in 2020.  No one even mentions it.  A couple of weeks ago, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky announced plans to bring universal health insurance to his state, but not for all citizens, just for people with the right skin color.  Everyone else would pay, but only certain ethnic groups would benefit.  Andy Beshear is still in office.  No one has tried to impeach him for suggesting this because ideas like this are everywhere now.  They're totally unchallenged.  This is the most divisive possible way to run a country.  If you wanted to make certain that your children would hate each other, you would hold them to different standards, and they certainly would.  There is a reason that racial tension is rising in this country — it's by design.

Mask-wearing is becoming increasingly politicized.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced Thursday [6/18/2020] that mask-wearing is compulsory in most public settings, making California the 11th state to mandate that people wear masks.  Public spaces include every workspace, public transit, and any facility in which people receive medical care.  President Trump, meanwhile, has discounted the benefits of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Panic In Beverly Hills:  Emergency Order Bans Protests In Residential Areas.  The rich and famous are all about protesting and declaring themselves down with the struggle until protesters forget their place and invade residential areas of Beverly Hills.  Then the masks drop.  It's the ultimate Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) — the City of Beverly Hills issued an emergency order Saturday night [6/13/2020] that bans public gatherings of more than 10 people in residential areas between 9 PM and 8 AM.  What brought this on?  Well, it seems a group calling themselves "Occupy" disrupted the beauty sleep of locals in their posh neighborhood on June 12 between the hours of 10 PM until 1 AM.  The group used bullhorns and "amplified music".  The residents want their tranquility back.  The emergency order remains in effect until further notice.

California City Officials Admit to Accepting Bribes.  A former Calexico City, California councilman along with a former commissioner on the city's Economic Development and Financial Advisory Commission, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to corruption charges, admitting that they accepted cash bribes in exchange for promises of official action by the city.  David Romero and Bruno Suarez Soto entered their pleas before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard G. Skomal, who set sentencing for Sept. 4, 2020, before U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo.  Romero and Soto, who were charged in federal court in May, were allowed to remain free on $10,000 personal appearance bonds secured by their own signatures.

Judge Smacks Down Gavin Newsom's Election Executive Order:  "Impermissible Use of Legislative Powers".  Throughout the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and shutdowns the nation's Democrat governors have shown us just how dictatorial their aspirations are by issuing reams of overreaching executive orders they claim are allowable due to the public health emergency.  California's Gavin Newsom has been one of the worst offenders, but an order issued Friday [6/12/2020] by Sutter County Superior Court Judge Perry Parker could put a stop to a number of items on Newsom's wish list.  Two GOP members of the California State Assembly, Kevin Kiley and James Gallagher, filed suit Thursday seeking to invalidate Newsom's Executive Order N-67-20 pertaining to the November general election and requesting "interim declaratory relief and a temporary restraining order." [...] Friday morning Parker issued a temporary restraining order suspending implementation of the executive order, saying it was "an impermissible use of legislative powers in violation of the California Constitution and the laws of the State of California."

Some in LAPD Slam City Council Over Private Security Details Amid Budget Cut.  While LA City Council President Nury Martinez was filing a motion last week seeking to cut $150 million from the LAPD budget, she had an LAPD unit standing watch outside her home providing her family with a private security detail since April. [...] "It's kind of ironic.  Here she is demanding $150 million be reallocated from the police budget, but yet she has security at her house by the Los Angeles Police Department," said Det.  Jamie McBride, who serves as director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the LAPD's union.

Kamala Harris, calling for $150 million LAPD defunding, also used LAPD as her private security detail.  A Los Angeles city councilwoman was exposed as a hypocrite for introducing a bill to cut $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department budget, while maintaining an LAPD private detail at her home for herself.  Security for me, but not for thee, see, the leftist political elites always gets their takings first.  Guess who else is just as hypocritical?  Sure enough, Kamala Harris, Democratic vice presidential frontrunner, who's loudly endorsed these $150 million police defundings, supporting the idea, along with her political ally, Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was last seen calling the LAPD 'killers.'

Gavin Newsom to close 200-person veteran's home after budgeting handouts to illegal aliens.  Grandstanding Calif.  Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly wants to close a 200-resident veterans nursing home in a budget-cutting measure while at the same time enthusiastically handing out about $75 million in direct cash benefits to illegal aliens living in the state.  In an extreme example of questionable priorities to say the least, Newsom, a far-left Democrat who is enabled by a Democrat-controlled legislature, targeted the Veterans Home of California-Barstow for closure to save $2.6 million (or perhaps less) as the formerly Golden State faces a corona-virus-induced budget crisis.  For Democrats, illegal immigrants are among their primary constituencies, particularlyin California where, as noted above, they essentially run a one-party dictatorship in state that could be the epicenter of voter fraud.

Wealthy buyers reportedly in 'mad rush' to leave San Francisco.  Amid the depths of a global pandemic and financial downturn, the demand for real estate is unexpectedly rocketing in wealthy regions outside San Francisco, reports Bloomberg.  Agents say that demand is soaring in affluent areas around the Bay Area such as Napa, Marin and further afield in Carmel, as people who have the means look to get away from the city.

LA Mayor Garcetti Calls His Cops 'Killers.' The 'Killers' Just Sent a Reply to the 'Unstable' Mayor.  Mayors and governors across the land have run to the cameras and microphones to be among the first to kneel in supplication to the riotous mobs in the streets.  They eagerly do what the Leftists at Black Lives Matter (BLM) and George Soros call for, such as defunding police departments.  They call for rule changes so that cops are defanged in the face of riotous antifa and BLM mobs. [...] Just two weeks ago, mayors and governors across the land were lauding their first responders for keeping the peace during COVID.  Those days are over.  The mob has spoken.

'Abolish The Police' Is A Slogan For The Destruction Of America.  If you thought "abolish the police" — or it's more moderate iteration, "defund the police" — was just some asinine slogan blue-check journalists, woke academics, and pandering public officials post on Twitter to show they support the Black Lives Matter movement, then you're not keeping up with the revolution.  This week Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, announced the city would be slashing the police department's budget by $100 to $150 million and instead "reinvesting in black communities and communities of color." The cuts to the LA police will make up the bulk of $250 million in funds to be reallocated to "end racism in our city," Garcetti said.

LAPD Rips Into Councilwoman Over Reactionary Department Cuts:  "We'll Take Care Of It At The Ballot Box".  America is in a free fall and none of our state and local leaders seem to have a clue how to fix it.  Minneapolis got the brilliant idea to completely eradicate their police department and replace it with some "citizen patrol" weirdness and what could possibly go wrong with that?  Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti made sure the media got lots of pictures of him kneeling just before he announced the City of Angels would cut $250 million from its policing budget to give to "communities of color."  If you think he meant that he'd be handing out the cash personally to black business and home owners who just had their livelihoods burned to the ground by looters and rioters, you are wrong.  He will be handing that cash directly over to Black Lives Matter.  Where it goes from there is anyone's guess but hey, at least Garcetti will feel like a good person.  Understandably LAPD is not pleased.  Not only were they deliberately prevented from stepping in to protect communities from Antifa during the first days of the riot, they have been maligned and insulted by their own leadership.

As 'defund LAPD' becomes a rallying cry, Garcetti will seek cuts up to $150 million.  When Los Angeles was plunged into a budget crisis earlier this year, progressive activists demanded that the City Council slash spending at the Police Department, saying it's wrong to boost funding for officers while cutting other urgently needed services.  The debate over police spending at City Hall has only intensified after several days of protests against police brutality, the LAPD's response to those demonstrations and the looting that sometimes followed.  Activists with Black Lives Matter, Ground Game LA and other grassroots groups say incidents in recent days where officers have used aggressive tactics including projectiles and batons only reinforce the need to defund the LAPD.

Eric Garcetti bows to rioters, vows to cut police budget.  Los Angeles is lost.  As a resident of Southern California, I can tell you with a heavy heart that we lost.  Los Angeles, arguably the heart of the west coast of America, has been demolished by leftist policies for years.  But in the face of riots over George Floyd's murder, Mayor Eric Garcetti has done the exact opposite of what he should be doing.  Instead of cracking down on crime, he's pulling money out of law enforcement.  On top of that, he's making ludicrous moves like declaring a moratorium on putting people in the gang data base.  As many leftist mayors and governors across the country are doing, Garcetti is making law enforcement out to be the bad guys, only the Los Angeles Mayor is doing everything he can to be the most "woke" mayor of them all.

America in the 21st Century: 20 Long Years of Constant Brainwashing.  The campaign to brainwash America about the Wuhan Virus has basically run its course along with the virus itself, and has now been replaced by a brainwashing campaign to convince us that we should all run out to the nearest riot and take a knee, just like Joe Biden did in that black church on Sunday. [...] In Los Angeles yesterday [6/3/2020], the National Guard there took a knee before the rioters, which means the rioters are now in charge of Los Angeles, which is presumably how Mayor Eric Garcetti wanted it anyway.

Garcetti:  LAPD budget to be cut by $150M to fund programs in black communities.  Amid nationwide protests ignited by the police-involved killing of George Floyd early last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that up to $150 million will be cut from the L.A. Police Department as part of relocating some $250 million from the city's budget to fund programs in communities of color.

The Editor says...
Programs?  What kind of programs?  What does that really mean?

California Tried to Bail Out Illegal Aliens - and It's a Disaster.  California's illegal alien population is its shadow economy and with many of the industries that employ them shut down, the Democrats who depend on ghost districts populated by illegals decided that something had to be urgently done to keep the illegal aliens from fleeing back across the border.  The Democrats figured that giving them checks would be cheaper than building a wall to keep them in.  But who knew that a $125 million stimulus program for illegal aliens would become such a disaster?  Illegal aliens were eligible to apply for up to $1,000 with $75 million coming from the California taxpayers bailing out illegals who don't pay taxes.  And another $50 million was supposed to be donated by wealthy lefties.  But while the taxpayers of the state were forced to put up their $75 million, the wealthy politically correct elites who have poured fortunes into electing Democrats didn't pay up.

Newsom Fiat:  No California Protest Can Have More Than 100 People.  Regressive Supreme Leader Gavin Newsom is angry.  On Saturday more than 2,000 showed up at the Capitol to protest his dictatorship, issuing 40 Executive Orders and changing close to 200 State laws, without a vote of the Legislature or even telling them in advance.  He signed over 400 NO BID contracts — some for firms owned by the Chinese Communist Party.  People are angry — so they protest.  Now, in the name of "safety and health", Newsom has issued another illegal edict — no protest can have more than 100 people.  Watch as that edict is violated in every corner of the State.  This is no different than what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to the people of Hong Kong.

Ballot harvesting bounty:  How Dems apparently used election law change to rout California Republicans.  A minor change in California's election laws may have had a major effect on last month's midterm elections that saw Democrats steamroll their Republican rivals and claim all but seven of the Golden State's 53 House seats.  Despite holding substantial leads on Election Day, many Republican candidates in California saw their advantage shrink, and then disappear, as late-arriving Democratic votes were counted in the weeks following the election.  While no hard evidence is available, many observers point to the Democrats use of "ballot harvesting" as a key to their success in the elections.

Hundreds protest in Sacramento against stay-at-home order.  Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the state Capitol on Saturday [5/23/2020] to protest against California's stay-at-home orders even as residents entered the Memorial Day weekend with newly expanded options for beachgoing, barbecuing and shopping.  The rally to demand that Gov. Gavin Newsom lift his restrictions on business, religious gatherings and other activities took on the atmosphere of a political rally and festival on a closed-off street.

California Democrats Want to Bring Racial Preferences Back.  Rather than focus on COVID-19 or the economic recovery, California liberals insist on pushing their pet issues.  The "stimulus" bill rammed through the House this month by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco was a liberal wish list of subsidies and spending.  Now other California Democrats are ramming through an effort to repeal the state's ban on racial preferences.  Two things often happen when a single political party dominates a state the way Democrats dominate California.  First, an echo chamber of the dominant party convinces its leaders they can steamroll over any opposition.  Second, that conviction leads to political overreach.  Caucasian Americans are now only 19 percent of UC students, down from 38 percent a quarter century ago — this change reflects the increasing ethnic diversity of Californians.

Gavin Newsom responds to Justice Department warning over church closures.  After receiving a formal warning from the United States Justice Department over church closures, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his state is "weeks away" from allowing in-person religious services to resume.  A group of federal attorneys wrote a letter to Newsom warning him that prolonged church closures likely violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment due to the fact that similar non-religious businesses are receiving the green light to reopen in Stage 2.

Darrell Issa, Judicial Watch Sue Gavin Newsom over Vote by Mail.  Former Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Judicial Watch sued California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday [5/21/2020] over his May 8 executive order allowing all voters in the state to vote by mail — whether they had formally requested to do so, or not.  Newsom's order cites the threat of coronavirus:  because "it is unknown to what degree COVID-19 will pose a threat to public health in November," mail-in ballots must be sent to everyone — but in-person voting must also be provided.

California's Budget Bust-Up.  Every state and municipal budget in America will take a big hit because of the coronavirus lockdowns, but no public purse is in as much trouble as California's.  Its Department of Finance recently estimated that the Golden State could face a $54 billion shortfall in the fiscal year beginning July 1, which surely must be the largest deficit any state has ever accumulated, surpassing the $40 billion hole that nearly swallowed Sacramento in 2008.  Still, though Governor Gavin Newsome said last weekend that the staggering deficit was "a direct result of Covid-19," that's clearly not true.  Critics have long warned that the state's tax base is volatile, being increasingly reliant on wealthy residents and vulnerable to sharp contraction in the next recession.  Combine that with California's spending spree — including expenditures to fix problems that the state's own bad policies have worsened — and the swing from prosperity to penury isn't hard to understand.

Illegal Aliens Jam Phone Lines as California Offers $500 Each in Coronavirus Relief.  The State of California is offering $500 each to illegal aliens as part of a $75 million coronavirus relief program — even as it asks federal taxpayers for help paying for its $54 billion deficit.  The program, which launched on Monday [5/18/2020], saw phone lines jammed as "undocumented immigrants," who are ineligible for the federal aid provided thus far, called a state hotline.

Tyranny as far as the eye can see.  California governor Gavin Newsom is now warning of the potential for a third and fourth wave of the coronavirus, stating that we must remain humble by what we still don't know about it.  While there may be a lot that we don't know about this sickening virus that was thrust upon the world by communist China, we do know that what is unfolding is unsustainable and unconstitutional.  Our society is nearing a state of partial collapse due to protracted mitigation in blue states as the Constitution is trampled upon and set on fire.  Newsom, like Dr. Fauci, appears to view our lives through the singular lens of this virus.  But life is more complex than that (duh), and Newson is ignoring the larger reality (or at least pretending to) in order to hold onto power.  Citing what we still don't know about the virus leaves the door wide open for him to continue to rule like an evil emperor.

California: Give Us Money Or We'll Fire Cops and Firefighters.  Governor Newsom is behind in the Most Loathsome Governor in America race, largely because he hasn't managed to kill as many nursing home residents as rivals like Cuomo and Murphy.  But here he is trying to take first responders hostage. [...] Cops and firefighters are the most expendable employees in California.  Not the billion dollar homeless services infrastructure.  Not all the social justice and diversity personnel.  Not, for that matter, the vast useless corps of educational administrators.  Nope.  We're gonna fire cops and firefighters because we decided to shut down the state and the rest of the country won't send us money.

Judicial Watch sues to stop Newsom from giving 75 million tax dollars to illegals.  Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch is asking a California Court to appeals to issue a temporary restraining order to stop Governor Newsom from paying out $75 million tax dollars to people here illegally.  The Lower Court found that JW's lawsuit is likely to succeed on the merits since Newsom has no right to dole out the money, but illegal aliens need the money and that outweighs everything.  Today's [5/18/2020] filing asks the Court of Appeal to command the Superior Court to issue the restraining order against California Governor Gavin Newsom and his Director of the California Department of Social Services Kim Johnson, enjoining them from making what is now an imminent, May 18, 2020, illegal expenditure of $79.8 million of taxpayers' funds to illegal aliens pending the final determination of the taxpayer action brought by Judicial Watch in the lower court.

California is offering $500 cash payments to unauthorized immigrants who don't qualify for stimulus checks or unemployment benefits.  California is rolling out a program on Monday that will give $500 cash payments to unauthorized immigrants shut out of traditional government aid programs because of their immigration status.  The New York Times reported the $75 million taxpayer-funded program funded will be conducted by phone to reduce in-person contacts.  It's expected to distribute cash to 150,000 people and the maximum amount awarded per household is $1,000.  "California is the most diverse state in the nation.  Our diversity makes us stronger and more resilient," Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement last month about the program.  "Every Californian, including our undocumented neighbors and friends, should know that California is here to support them during this crisis.  We are all in this together."

The Editor says...
[#1]  Yes, they're "shut out" because of their "immigration status," to wit, they are not supposed to be here at all.  [#2] "We're all in this together" is the new Big Brother catch phrase designed and intended to stifle dissent.  You may notice Big Brother repeating this catch phrase over and over in every grocery store.

Gavin Newsom:  First responders 'first ones laid off' unless California gets federal COVID-19 funds.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom says first responders will be the "first ones laid" off unless federal bucks arrive in the Golden State in the near future.  The Democrat appeared to be playing a political game of chicken with Republicans in Congress over the weekend during a discussion about the coronavirus pandemic with CNN's Jake Tapper.  Mr. Newsom specifically had a message for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans when asked about a $3 trillion relief bill being "dead on arrival."

There's Something Happening Here.  Thousands of flag-waving Californians descended upon the State Capitol Friday [5/15/2020] for a protest of Gov. Gavin Newsom's statewide stay-at-home lockdown order, which has caused millions of residents to lose their jobs and businesses," wrote Katy Grimes in the California Globe.  Down in Huntington Beach in Orange County, as Fox News explained, protesters were backing up traffic for a mile on Pacific Coast Highway, while others staged rallies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.  What could have prompted these Californians to get out in the streets?  Governor Gavin Newsom had declared them "nonessential" and they showed up with signs reading "All jobs are essential."  So, basically they want their lives back.  This is not what their governor wants, however.  On Wednesday, Newsom told reporters, "we believe we are weeks, not months, away from making meaningful modifications to that indicator," a reference to his shelter-in-place order.  The San Francisco Democrat didn't say what the modifications would be or when he would make them, and he didn't want people expressing their opposition in public.

Dems discovering that with sanctuary cities, what goes around, comes around.  Atwater, California, has declared itself a sanctuary city — sanctuary from tyrannical government draining the lifeblood from the people.  If leftist tyrants can provide safe haven to illegal invaders, why not have sanctuary cities that protect Americans from our newly anointed dictators?  So this rural city of fewer than 30,000 people located in the center of California has decided to free itself from the suffocating chokehold of the state.  At the end of April, the City Council voted unanimously to open businesses and churches.

California town declares itself 'sanctuary city' for businesses, opens up in defiance of stay-at-home order.  A central California city has declared itself a "sanctuary city" for businesses and will open up in defiance of the state's stay-at-home order.  The city council in Atwater passed a resolution Friday allowing businesses to open despite Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's order for businesses to remain closed, according to ABC30's Vanessa Vasconcelos.

California City To Allow Reopenings, Declares Itself A 'Sanctuary City' For Business.  The central California city of Atwater has declared itself a "sanctuary city" for businesses.  The Friday [5/15/2020] resolution passed by the Atwater City Council allows business owners to open, openly defying Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom's coronavirus-related stay-at-home order.  The resolution affirms "the city's commitment" to "fundamental" human rights.  Churches and other nonprofits are included in the resolution, according to ABC30's Vanessa Vasconcelos.

California governor:  Shrink prisons to help cut budget.  Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to significantly shrink the footprint of California's prison system, partly because of massive budget cuts prompted by the pandemic but also because of philosophy.  The revised budget he sent to state lawmakers this week envisions closing two state prisons in the coming years; cutting nearly one in five of the 43 inmate firefighter camps; and eventually closing all three state-run juvenile prisons.

California Democrats say 10-year rent-relief plan 'not a giveaway'.  California Democrats on Tuesday proposed giving tenants struggling during the coronavirus pandemic 10 years to pay their rent.  The state would purchase unpaid rents and allow renters a decade, starting in 2024, to pay it back without interest, under the proposal by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, tthe Sacramento Bee reported.  Landlords would receive a tax credit dependent on committing to not evict tenants.  "This is not a giveaway," Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford said, according to The Associated Press.  "Our goal is to keep tenants houses and keep landlords out of foreclosure."

California Revives Affirmative Action.  On May 5, just a day after the California Legislature reconvened, an assembly hearing was held for the controversial Assembly Constitutional Amendment NO. 5 (ACA-5) in the Committee of Public Employment and Retirement.  With a long session of contested public comments over the phone, ACA-5 was passed with a 6-to-1 vote under the moralistic appeal of "hope for all."  While purporting to increase diversity and representation, ACA-5 fails to meaningfully address structural issues behind achievement gaps and racial discrepancies for both political and philosophical reasons.  Instead, the bill proposes a statewide reinstitution of government preferences in public employment, education, and contracting along rigid racial lines.  The utopian and myopic scheme, wrapped around feel-good rhetoric with a steep price tag, will not only fall short of establishing long-lasting diversity, but can further compromise true equality and the merit-based principle, both of which are bedrocks of American democracy.

California: Gavin Newsom Orders Vote-by-Mail for November Election.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday signed an executive order permitting all registered voters in the Golden State to vote by mail in the upcoming presidential election, citing concerns stemming from the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.  "I signed an executive order that will allow every registered voter in California to receive a mail-in ballot," Newsom said.  "That mail-in ballot is important but it's not an exclusive substitute to physical locations."

The Editor says...
In other words, you're being encouraged to vote in person, in addition to mailing in your ballot, and any other ballots you find in the trash can at the post office, or in your neighbor's mailbox, or in the dumpster at an apartment complex.

San Francisco DA Says His Father, Convicted Murderer And Former Member Of Terrorist Group, Should Get Out Of Prison.  San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin believes his father, convicted murderer and former Weather Underground member David Gilbert, should be released from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Gilbert and Boudin's mother, Kathy Boudin, were convicted of murder in 1983 for serving as getaway drivers during a bank robbery that left three people dead at the hands of their co-conspirators.

California Is Ready to Get Rid of Gavin Newsom.  Across California on May 1, tens of thousands protested in defiance of statewide lockdown orders.  In Sacramento, the west lawn of the state capitol building was filled with protesters, with thousands more marching along the sidewalk surrounding the capitol grounds.  Additional thousands driving their cars and honking their horns created three hours of total gridlock on the streets that loop around the capitol.  Noteworthy protests have taken place in San Diego, Encinitas, Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, Paso Robles, Santa Rosa, and even tiny Lakeport on the shores of Clear Lake.  There is no end in sight.  While the media has typecast these growing protests as populated by right-wing extremists, Trump supporters, and remnants of a geriatric Tea Party movement, the reality in California is different.  In Laguna Beach, the protest was organized by surfers.  Overall, these protests included people who claimed never to have been involved in politics, people who identified themselves as former Democrats, and young people.  Thousands and thousands of youth:  children, teenagers, college students, twentysomethings.  A generation is waking up.

Is California Thinking About Coronavirus Internment Camps?  Gavin Newsom, governor of the "nation-state" of California, is raising what he calls an "army" of 20,000 government employees who will trace the spread of coronavirus across the state.  Those found guilty, or rather, infected, are likely to run into an uncomfortable change in their lives.  In Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, a pilot program was launched this week to trace infections and exposure, according to County Health Director Dr. Robert Levin.  When infected persons are found, he said, they are "immediately isolated."  As more people are tested, Levin continued, "we will find more and more people who have COVID-19."  "We will isolate every one of them, and we will find every one of their contacts, and we will make sure that they stayed quarantined, and we'll check in with them every day."  Seems innocuous, even helpful.  But: [...]

Liberal District Attorney Boasts 'I'm Keeping San Francisco Safer by Emptying the Jail'.  San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is bragging about his city's jailbreak policies that have been implemented throughout the coronavirus pandemic, claiming in a Los Angeles Times op/ed that he is "keeping San Francisco safer by emptying the jail."

Uber, Lyft Sued by California in Major Gig-Economy Crackdown.  Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. were sued by California for allegedly violating a new state law designed to give gig-economy workers the benefits of employees.  While expected, the lawsuit filed Tuesday [5/5/2020] in state court marks a serious threat to the business model of an array of companies that save on labor costs by classifying workers as independent contractors.  If the companies ultimately lose the suit, they could be forced to pay for overtime, health care and other benefits.

Free O.C.  California governor Gavin Newsom's executive order closing the beaches of Orange County, Calif., is what you get when you govern by Twitter:  A news photo showing a crowded Orange County beach makes the social-media rounds, provoking the predictable outrage storm; Governor Newsom, rather than investigate, issues an executive order to placate the social-media circus; that executive order is based on powers that the governor does not enjoy, and the Democratic governor singles out the historically Republican cities of Orange County.  It is not even clear that there was a real problem for Newsom to solve.  One photograph did indeed show an Orange County beach looking like spring break; other photographs showed a much more dispersed and socially distanced crowd.

Orange County DA 'outraged' after commissioner releases 7 dangerous sex offenders due to COVID-19 restrictions.  Orange County, Calif.  District Attorney Todd Spitzer stated Saturday [5/2/2020] that he is "outraged" after the state ordered the release of seven high-risk sex offenders from the county's jails over concerns they could contract coronavirus.  Appearing on "Fox & Friends Weekend" with host Jason Chaffetz, Spitzer said that the issue at hand is not just in Orange County or California, but "is a ruse that has been pulled on the American public, on jails and custodial facilities all over the nation."

Gov. Newsom Puts Politics Over Data in California Shutdown.  Los Angeles County, which has implemented the most draconian beach closures in the country, has in excess of 1,000 coronavirus deaths.  Orange County, which has consistently taken a less restrictive approach, has had 45 deaths going into this weekend.  Orange County's population of 3.3 million is larger than 22 states.  If it were a state, Orange County's death rate of 0.0014% would be the 49th lowest in the country.  The primary hospital in Newport Beach has a 475-beds capacity and has never treated more than 25 people for coronavirus issues at any given time.  The leaders of that hospital system believe that the curve has flattened, and that Orange County needs to responsibly reopen.

Judicial Watch Sues California to Stop Governor Newsom's Initiative to Provide $75 Million in Cash Benefits to Illegal Aliens.  Judicial Watch announced it filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles on behalf of two California taxpayers, Robin Crest and Howard Myers, asking the court to stop the state from expending $75 million of taxpayer funds to provide direct cash assistance to unlawfully present aliens.  The lawsuit alleges California Governor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority and violated federal law when, without affirmative state legislative approval, he took executive action to create the "Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project" and provide cash benefits to illegal aliens who otherwise are ineligible for state or federal insurance or other benefits due to their unlawful presence in the United States.

Thousands of protesters flock to Huntington Beach following state-ordered OC beach closures.  Large crowds opposing the state's coronavirus stay-at-home mandate took to the streets of downtown Huntington Beach on Friday [5/1/2020], a day after the governor closed Orange County beaches and drew frustration and criticism from some residents and city leaders.  Protesters gathered near the Huntington Beach pier shortly before noon, with the crowd eventually swelling to some 2,500-3,000 people, according to Huntington Beach police Chief Robert Handy.  The tightly packed crowd, with most people not wearing protective masks, repeatedly chanted "U.S.A." as they waited for the demonstration to begin.

California Cities Vote To Sue Governor For Closing Their Beaches.  The cities of Huntington Beach and Dana Point have voted to take legal action against the state of California after Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said he would close all beaches and state parks inside of their cities and the rest of Orange County.  According to The Los Angeles Times, Huntington Beach voted 5-2 in a last-minute meeting in favor of seeking an injunction against the governor, who announced in Thursday's coronavirus press conference that the state would close all beaches in Orange County in response to "alarm bells," including packed crowds and a lack of reportedly improper physical distancing.

Governor Grundy puts Orange County, but not San Diego County, on restriction.  Just a few hours ago, I got back from La Jolla, a rich and deep-blue enclave of the city of San Diego that's the home of Mitt Romney.  The just-after-sunset beach traipse was to see the bioluminescence event.  Beach waves turn glow-in-the-dark at night as a result of the red tide, and it's a rare and completely yowza thing to see.  Of course it drew a crowd.  Street parking was competitive.  The cars just kept coming and coming on Coast Boulevard near Wipeout Beach, and visitors bunched up at stoplights to use crosswalks — no slipping across the streets real quick to get to the shore view from the cliffs.  Here's a bit of the pre-weekend flavor, and this was far from the most crowded scene I saw.  You can see that the groups have masks, look more like friends than families, and aren't socially distancing.

Gavin Newsom, beach cop taking on all California.  California's Gov. Gavin Newsom is shutting down the beaches, just as the entire population of California goes stir-crazy and the sunniest weekend of the year beckons. [...] Unless city officials intend to deploy every police officer to politicing the beaches, it's very unlikely to be the sort of order that's going to work.  Already there are signs the order will never be heeded.  The opening of the beaches, about a week ago, was brought on by public pressure to open the public space, and that's just for starters.  The surfer enclaves of Encinitas and Huntington Beach have already seen fierce protests and calls to end the lockdown.

No California-wide beach shutdown:  Gavin Newsom went for narrow closure.  State officials pushed to close all beaches and state parks in California to try to prevent overcrowding they feared could spread the coronavirus, but Gov. Gavin Newsom decided Thursday only to temporarily close beaches in Orange County, an administration official said.  Newsom said at a news conference he was ordering a "hard close" in Orange County after beaches in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach drew tens of thousands of visitors during a heat wave last weekend.  He said he was particularly concerned about the beach activity because Orange County has more coronavirus cases and hospitalizations than many other areas.

The Editor says...
What happened to "the virus knows no borders?"

CA Gov Newsom [is] Only Closing Beaches in (Conservative) Orange County.  In a move that makes him look even more petty and dictatorial than before, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that he's announcing state parks and beach closures only in Orange County this weekend instead of closing state parks and state beaches throughout the entire state as he'd planned, and which my colleague Kira Davis reported.  The reasoning outlined by Newsom in the press conference was nonsensical and inconsistent.  More likely is that Newsom wants to punish Orange County officials, whom he sees as uncooperative (despite his public claims), particularly Supervisor and former Assemblymember Don Wagner.  Orange County was one of the Republican Party's last strongholds in the state until the 2018 election, in which Democrats swept all seven House seats in the county.

Newsom to close all California beaches, state parks over coronavirus: memo.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom will be closing all beaches and state parks across the state starting Friday to help slow the spread of the coronavirus, according to a memo sent to California police chiefs on Wednesday [4/29/2020].  The decision comes after Newsom called out the massive crowds that flocked to Newport Beach in Orange County last weekend during a heat wave.  Newsom called the beach crowds an example of "what not to do" to make progress toward easing restrictions in the statewide stay-at-home order.

CA Gov Newsom Warns Sun-Loving Newport Beachgoers "Aggressive" Measures Coming.  In a livestreamed update on the Golden State's response to COVID-19 this afternoon [4/27/2020], California Governor Gavin Newsom threw down the gauntlet to sun-worshippers in his state, who he was disappointed appeared to be enjoying life over the weekend.  That's something that just can't stand, man!  Newsom began his speech with a smile, by thanking "the 40 million" Californians who "over the course of the last number of weeks have not only bent the curve... but stabilized it."  But the governor's smile only lasted about 24 seconds, when he said this: [...]

California to close all beaches after crowds ignore social distancing rules.  California will reportedly close all beaches and state parks beginning Friday [5/1/2020] after swells of beachgoers fled to the shore last weekend in defiance of social distancing rules.  The state's governor, Gavin Newsom, will formally announce the decision Thursday, according to a memo outlining the move obtained by FOX 11.  "After well-publicized media coverage of overcrowded beaches this past weekend, in violation of Governor Newson's shelter in place order, the governor will be announcing tomorrow that beaches and all state parks in California will be closed, effective Friday, May 1," said the notification, which was sent out to all California police chiefs on Wednesday.

San Francisco Bay Area Extends Lock-Down Order Throughout May.  It is being reported the San Francisco Bay area will remain in a state of forced lock-down with an extension of the stay-at-home orders throughout May.  Considering this is the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this decision highlights an expectation that the federal government will bail out local and state governments.  We anticipated this type of approach where Blue states & Blue regions will keep their economies closed as long as possible to inflict maximum political damage.  Simply, if San Francisco were not confident they will gain a federal bailout they would not be keeping their economic system closed for another entire month.

To Help Out with the Pandemic and Unemployment, California Will Now Pay Seniors to Order From Restaurants.  If you're a restaurant-lovin' California senior citizen and lookin' to make a few extra bucks, you're in luck.  Assuming you fit the profile, the state will now pay you to wine and dine yourself — if you order your grub.  On Friday [4/24/2020], Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new program wherein local, state, and federal money (so if you're local, will you be triple-taxed for this?) will be paid out to eligible seniors who order food from nearby restaurants.

Newsom Ordered by CA Supreme Court to Defend $75 Million Giveaway to Illegals.  Californians struggling to make ends meet during extended coronavirus shutdowns were not amused when their governor, Gavin Newsom, announced the creation of a public-private partnership to give away $125 million ($500/person) in pandemic relief grants to illegal immigrants who are ineligible to receive unemployment benefits or federal stimulus checks (because they are not here legally, duh).  Newsom further explained that of the $125 million in funding, $75 million would come from taxpayer funds (without explaining any legislative process appropriating such funds) and that "a group of charities" had promised to chip in $50 million.

Democrats' Fascism Shines Through.  On April 14, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he's planning to give $125 million in public and private funds to 150,000 adults living in the state illegally.  Newsom understands that illegal immigration is the future of the Democratic party.  Californians are ordered to stay at home.  Illegal aliens are welcome to come there any time.  Everything that Newsom and his party have done for illegals — sanctuary cities, free health care, driver's licenses, in-state tuition — will encourage more to come here in violation of our immigration laws.  Fascists don't believe in the rule of law, unless it benefits them directly.

Newsom won't share details on $1B mask deal with China.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing pushback as state lawmakers have begun demanding details of his nearly $1 billion deal to receive 200 million masks per month from a Chinese manufacturer.  Just two weeks after announcing the deal, Newsom has remained largely mum on the specifics.  Advisers to the California Democrat have declined requests for comment from the Los Angeles Times about the agreement, which was inked with Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD — which stands for Build Your Dreams — earlier this month.  BYD was formed in 1995 as a battery manufacturer.  In 2008, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 24.8% stake in the company.

California's 'Reopening' Economic Task Force Is As Absurd As It Gets.  California Governor Gavin Newsom has introduced his new economic task force to begin plans for reopening the economy.  The task force is 80 members and will include:  [#1] Former Governor Gray Davis, who — in a rare event of complete voter unity — was recalled from the governorship for his utter incompetence.  [#2] Former Governor Jerry Brown, who brought us our disastrous pension liability.  [#3] Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave us the current Democrat super majority by bringing us the insane notion of "jungle primaries."  [#4] Failed presidential candidate and very rich man Tom Steyer, who proudly supports a New Green Deal and is very vocal about working to end vital business in the energy sector.  Let's not forget that Newsom said recently he views this crisis as a chance to usher in a "new era" of progressive policies.

How Much Do The Pelosi's Have Invested In China?  Pelosi may present herself as the defender of the little guy.  She is anything but.  In 2018 her net worth was roughly $160 million.  She is married to Paul Pelosi who runs a top tier investment and real estate firm in San Francisco.  Over the course of decades, as Nancy has risen through the ranks of the Democratic Party, the Pelosi's have gotten fabulously wealthy.  There have been any number of allegations over the decades that Nancy and her husband have profited in ways that are clearly illegal from the access a senior politician enjoys.  Over a span of years, Nancy Pelosi used her influence to steer more than $1 billion to the expansion of a light rail line into a San Francisco neighborhood where her husband owned commercial property and in which business associates of his then purchased additional properties.  The value of real estate in the area exploded with the arrival of light rail, and the Pelosi's made a killing.  There has also been an almost unending number of allegations that Paul Pelosi has benefited from what is known as insider trading.  That is, he has made sometimes enormous purchases of stocks based on information allegedly provided to him by Nancy, who was privy to sensitive, non-public information by way of her position.

Newsom: California unemployment center hours extended, $125M fund created for undocumented immigrants.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday [4/15/2020] said he has extended the unemployment call center hours to help the record 2.7 million Californians who have filed claims and created a fund to help undocumented immigrants, who comprise 10% of the state's workforce.  The Employment Development Department's call center will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, rather than closing at noon Monday through Friday.  Newsom extended the hours through an executive order.

Because the state has a HUGE budget surplus...
California will pay illegal immigrants not included in coronavirus stimulus.  California will be the first state to send money to illegal immigrants who did not qualify for assistance under the $2.2 trillion federal coronavirus stimulus package passed last month.  Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced the allocation of $75 million in taxpayer funds for $500 payments to 150,000 adult immigrants who are reeling from the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Editor says...
Wouldn't it be far less expensive to deport them all?  But that would require some concern about wasting the taxpayers' money.

Illegal Immigrants in Los Angeles Can Apply for Pre-Paid Debit Cards.  Los Angeles will be doling out pre-paid debit cards to residents who have faced economic hardship due to the coronavirus lockdown, and living in the country illegally won't disqualify you from getting the cash.  Los Angeles officials have begun accepting applications for a no-fee debit card that provides cash to residents who were already living under the poverty line before the coronavirus crisis began and have since had their incomes dramatically reduced because of the outbreak, KTLA5 reported.

Gavin Newsom Declares California a "Nation-State," Suggesting It is Independent of Federal Authority.  Look, either formally secede — with my enthusiastic Bon voyage! — or get ready for invocation of the Insurrection Act and civil war by the usual means.  We're not going to have this [nonsense] where every state has to buckle under leftwing federal diktats but that liberal states are free to secede-in-part whenever the federal government is not leftwing.  If America isn't working for you anymore — Leave.  We can work out the details later.  I suggest that all border counties be permitted to vote to leave or stay on a county-by-county basis.  We don't need to keep states intact when we're dividing the country.  Then I suggest we mutually agree that any citizen of one America has the right to move to the other America as a citizen within five years of division.  After five years, you're a foreign immigrant like any other, and the countries can choose to accept or reject your request for citizenship as they like.  The five year period will permit a lot of self-sorting.

California governor planning coronavirus aid for illegal immigrants.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature are working on a coronavirus aid plan for the state's illegal immigrants and others not covered by the federal government's $2.2 trillion relief package.  Newsom, a Democrat, disclosed the plans Tuesday [4/7/2020], according to The Associated Press.  "Californians care deeply about undocumented residents in this state," the governor, a former mayor of San Francisco, said.

Newsom is Giving Emergency Grants to Illegal Alien Small Business Owners.  On Friday [4/3/2020], a reporter from Telemundo asked California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom what emergency relief he would be providing for illegal aliens amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  "No state in America does more to help residents regardless of their immigration status," the governor rightly assured the reporter.  Newsom first bragged about the state's healthcare coverage for illegal aliens before explaining how his administration is now helping illegal alien small business owners obtain grants while a large part of the American economy remains shut down.

California to release 3,500 inmates early as coronavirus spreads inside prisons.  California is granting early release to 3,500 inmates in an effort to reduce crowding as coronavirus infections begin spreading through the state prison system.  Lawyers for Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday told a panel of federal judges the state is taking "extraordinary and unprecedented protective measures" to slow the spread of the virus and protect those who live and work within California's 35 prisons.  The accelerated parole policy — affecting inmates due to be released over the next 60 days — comes in the face of pressure to do much more.

LA County Sheriff Orders Closure of Gun Stores, Releases 1,700 Inmates.  Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has released 1,700 inmates from county facilities and is ordering gun stores in the county closed.  Fox 11 reports the gun store closures are part of the coronavirus stay-at-home order while the release of the inmates is an attempt to slow the spread of the virus in county facilities.

Gov. Gavin Newsom says state won't issue guidance on whether gun stores are essential businesses.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom will not offer official guidance on whether gun stores can be classified as essential businesses and remain open during the state's shelter-in-place order.  Newsom was asked about the issue after Los Angeles County reversed course on a move to close gun stores amid the spread of coronavirus in the region and the county's shelter-in-place order.  L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva initially ordered the closing of gun stores, but legal counsel for the county determined gun stores are essential businesses and must remain open.  Villanueva then rescinded the order.

LA Sheriff Suspends Efforts To Close Gun Stores.  Confusion swirled as the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Tuesday temporarily suspended its efforts to close gun stores during the coronavirus outbreak.  The decision was made as the county counsel's office works to clarify whether gun stores are considered essential businesses under California Gov. Gavin Newsom's statewide order, a sheriff's spokesperson confirmed to CBS2 Tuesday night [3/24/2020].

California's Stay-at-Home Order Is a Legal Mess.  California Governor Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order may well be necessary as a matter of public health in the face of the new coronavirus — I will leave that to epidemiologists to determine.  But viewed as a legal declaration, it's a total mess. [...] The order is also drafted so badly that it creates contradictions with the state's own website explaining it, with the governor's own speech rolling it out, and with common sense.  As written, the order does not say clearly that Californians can leave their homes to buy food or medicine or other necessities.  It doesn't say whether they can go out to help family members or friends who are themselves vulnerable or otherwise in need.  It is silent on going out for exercise.  Although context suggests all these may be permitted, the formal legal implication of the text would be that all are prohibited.

Newsom executive order allows California to commandeer hotels, motels to house coronavirus patients.  Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Democrat, released an executive order on Thursday [3/12/2020] that includes the authority for Sacramento to take over hotels and motels for medical use for coronavirus patients, in a move he said will help the state of 40 million prepare for any widespread outbreak.  Some patients in the state have already been moved to hotels.  The Desert Sun reported that a 120-room hotel in San Carlos, which is near San Francisco, has been already tapped to house passengers from the Grand Princess cruise ship.  The first-term governor told reporters that besides hotels and motels, state officials are also scouting for potential lodging in "mothballed" facilities and state parks.  The executive order, according to the report, has been designed to allow the state's Health and Human Services Agency and the Office of Emergency Services to commandeer private property for coronavirus treatment.

Government Outlaws Freelance Work.  Freelance jobs are "feudalism," says California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez.  She persuaded California's legislature to pass a new law reclassifying freelance workers as employees.  That means many people who hire them must now give them benefits like overtime, unemployment insurance, etc.  Politicians said it would help freelancers a lot.  Of course, much of the media agreed. [...] Young reporters just don't understand that stifling economic freedom always creates nasty side effects.

California Is a Cruel Medieval State.  One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality.  What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous.  The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance — gender or race — has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers.  We don't pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.  A paradox ensues that Californians both have a high, indeed smug, view of themselves and yet do a lot of damage to their fellow human beings.

California's Gig Law Comes For the Scooters, Destroys Independent "Juicers".  California's "gig economy" law — AB5 — continues to have disastrous consequences across the state.  The list of jobs affected or outright destroyed is huge and growing every day.  The wedding industry is collapsing.  Festivals are closing.  Theaters and music venues are closing.  A nursing shortage is now upon us because qualified nurses can no longer pick up extra side-jobs in areas like hospice care.  The law has even killed Christmas:  mall Santas can no longer contract their services.

Calif. Bill Would Fine Stores With "Boys" and "Girls" Departments.  [Scroll down]  But should [Evan] Low's bill become law, a retailer could actually have some fun with it.  I'd comply and combine the sections, for instance, but then label different displays as "blue" or "pink."  Were it questioned by a government bureaucrat, I'd ask how he could be so closed-minded as to associate a color with a sex.  Better still might be to label displays as "Little XY" or "Little XX."  Upon interrogation, I'd expound upon how "experts" maintain that one can be genotypically male but phenotypically female.  "How could you be such a bigot, sir (or is it madam?), as to assume that the girls entering my establishment don't have an XY chromosome configuration?"  As for Low, he justified his bill with the usual lowbrow leftist boilerplate.

New California Bill Requires Retailers Create 'Gender-Neutral' Aisles For Children.  A new bill introduced in the California Assembly would require retailers to create "gender-neutral" floor-spaces for children's merchandise, with the goal of banning sex-specific labeling labeling such as "girls aisles" and "boys aisles."  The bill proposed by Democratic Assemblyman Evan Low, requires all retail department stores with 500 employees or more to comply with the newfound gender standards of the Left.

The Editor says...
In a free country, businesses are allowed to arrange their stores in any manner they choose.

Sorry, Democrats:  Party's Over.  It makes me smile to know that fewer people are watching CNN than have fled from California in the last few years.  These days even Jed Clampett wouldn't be convinced that Californy is the place he ought to be.  He would have the sense to take his money to Texas where the taxes are reasonable and you won't be flash-mobbed by SJWs chanting that you're an eco-criminal for striking it rich in the energy sector.  Modest as Jed's education may have been, I think he would have understood that energy is a good thing and letting junkies poop in the aisle at Costco is a bad thing.  Even cousin Jethro would have winced at the mountain of filth that Pelosi and her party have made.

New California bill would require gender neutral sections in retail stores.  A new California bill would require some retailers to have gender neutral floor space inside their stores, Politico reports.  The bill, called Assembly Bill 2826, was introduced by Assemblymember Evan Low, a Democrat from Campbell.  According to Politico, retailers would be able to sell the same products, as long as they dedicate space where customers can find clothes and toys regardless of whether the items have been marketed to boys or girls.

Housing crisis: Berkeley law would put renters first.  City officials say the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act would give tenants more leverage and help them stay housed in one of the country's most expensive real estate markets, which has pushed rents sky high and contributed to a growing homeless crisis.  The median home price in Berkeley was $1.3 million last year, nearly doubled from $704,000 in 2013, [Berkeley Mayor Jesse] Arreguin said.

Gavin Newsom Says Doctors Should Write Prescriptions For Housing.  Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that medical doctors should be able to prescribe housing in the same way they prescribe medication to sick people Wednesday during his 2020 State of the State Address.  "Health care and housing can no longer be divorced.  After all, what's more fundamental to a person's well-being than a roof over their head?" Newsom asked during the address.  "Doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing the same way they do for insulin and antibiotics."  The crowd erupted in applause.

AB5 Backfire:  California's poorly designed "gig-work" law is already having unintended consequences.  AB5 took effect on January 1, and it's already causing trouble.  A limit on the number of articles that freelance writers could produce for one publication resulted in layoffs for some California journalists and a First Amendment lawsuit from others.  Workers in more than 135 occupations claim that losing contractor status hurts them, while independent theater and arts groups are facing thousands of dollars in costs they can't afford because they must now treat staff as employees.  Lorena Gonzalez, the assemblywoman who wrote AB5, has introduced another law to remove the article cap for writers and address the status of musicians.  A sign of poor legislation is the need to rewrite it immediately after it takes effect.

A California-style Brexit.  Since AB5 took effect on January 1, hundreds of thousands of Californians are finding their businesses in tatters.  Musicians can't join bands for a one-night gig, chefs can't join forces with caterers, nurses can't work at various hospitals, and writers must cap their submissions per media outlet to 35 per year.  Under the law, these freelancers can no longer conduct the same business-to-business transactions they have for years or even decades.  Clients with whom they fostered valuable relationships are gone — as are their successful careers and incomes.  An overwhelming majority of professionals in fields affected by AB5 identify as liberals and have generally voted along the blue line.  Today, however, many are so disillusioned with their representatives that they're changing political loyalties.

Congressman Calls on California to Fire Pension Official Tied to Chinese Spy Program.  A Republican lawmaker urged California to fire a top pension fund official because he participated in a Chinese program that the FBI has called "non-traditional espionage against the United States."  Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to investigate Yu Ben Meng, the chief investment officer at California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), for his "long and cozy relationship" with the Chinese Communist Party.  The letter also decried CalPERS's investment in Chinese companies that built up the regime's military presence in contested waters of the South China Sea and produced surveillance equipment used for China's brutal crackdown in Xinjiang.  "Governor Newsom, if it were up to me, I would fire Mr. Meng immediately," Banks said in a letter to the governor.

San Francisco's mayor admits to affair and accepting gifts from the city's disgraced homelessness chief.  San Francisco's mayor has admitted to having a fling with and to accepting thousands of dollars in unreported gifts from the city's disgraced former homelessness chief who is now at the center of an FBI corruption probe for accepting kickbacks.  Mayor London Breed admitted on Friday to briefly dating Mohammed Nuru, San Francisco's former Director of Public Works, around 20 years ago, leading to calls for her resignation from the city's top job.  Nuru, 58, resigned from his post earlier this week after he was arrested and charged by the FBI in January for a series of alleged public corruption schemes.

SF Mayor London Breed says she 'dated' now-indicted poop-patrol chief Mohammed Nuru.  Apparently, Kamala Harris wasn't the only ambitious and comely San Francisco female pol who "dated" a San Francisco political pooh-bah to advance her career.  Harris dated San Francisco mayor Willie Brown.  Now San Francisco mayor London Breed says she dated Mohammed Nuru, San Francisco's entrenched director of public works (famous for its "poop patrols"), taking a $5,600 "gift" from him and "forgetting" to disclose it. [...] Nuru's now under indictment for kickbacks, pay to play, bribery, wire fraud, and use of public services for private gain in what's called San Francisco's biggest political scandal in years. [...] The pair have known each other, apparently intimately, for 20 years.  And Nuru is a very powerful, entrenched fixture on the scene in San Francisco politics.

Maxine Waters:  CA Should Have More Say In Primary Because Of Big Money Raised At Beverly Hills Parties.  For years now, Democrats have been claiming they want big money out of politics.  Yet Maxine Waters just claimed on national television that California should have more sway in the Democrat primary process because of all the big cash generated for Democrats at fancy parties in Beverly Hills.

San Francisco car break-ins are so common that the city's district attorney is proposing reimbursing residents whose windows are smashed.  San Francisco's district attorney is proposing creating an auto-burglary-assistance fund that would reimburse residents for the cost required to repair shattered windows from break-ins.  The DA, Chesa Boudin, is proposing using $1.5 million from the mayor's office to fill the fund.  If it passes, it could be the country's first fund of this kind.

Texas Sues California Over Economic Sanctions on Religious States.  One of the more bizarre elements of our cold civil war is California's imposition of economic sanctions on any states that provide any element of religious freedom.  California has currently imposed economic sanctions on eleven states.  And then it messed with Texas.

Sorry, you cannot compel Americans to vote.  Democratic California Assemblyman Marc Levine has introduced a clearly unconstitutional bill which mandates that anyone registered to vote must attend a voting booth and file a response.  Levine says his intended law is justified and necessary because "democracy is not a spectator sport — it requires the active participation of all its citizens ... Those rights come with a responsibility by registered voters to cast their ballot and make sure that their voice is heard by their government."  While registered voters would not have to select a candidate in order to conform with Levine's desired law, they would have to file a ballot return, even if unmarked.  But as I say, this bill is patently unconstitutional.

Orange County Has Released Thousands Of Criminal Illegal Aliens Because Of California's Sanctuary Law.  The Orange County Sheriff's Department has been forced to release thousands of criminal illegal aliens in the past two years, with both the sheriff's department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement blaming California's statewide sanctuary law.  California's SB 54, legislation that largely restricts cooperation between ICE and law enforcement, went into effect in January 2018.  Since that time, Orange County has released over 2,100 illegal aliens back into the community despite ICE detainers placed on every single one of them, the agency announced in a Wednesday press release.  The sheriff's department released 1,106 inmates without notifying ICE in 2018 and released another 1,015 again in 2019 without notifying the agency.

California's primary vote count could take longer than ever.  Californians start voting Monday in a high-profile Democratic presidential primary that has no clear front-runner and could take longer to count than any previous election in a state already notorious for slow ballot counting.

Coastal States Are in the Fight of Their Lives.  Is the Rest of America Listening?  AB5 — otherwise known as the "Gig Economy" bill is much more dangerous and not just for us, but everyone in the nation.  This bill makes independent contracting illegal.  It is absolutely the most communist legislation I have ever seen passed in my lifetime as an American.  It was aimed to get at Uber and Lyft and instead entrapped anyone who contracts their services.  And I do mean anyone.  I spoke to a man who had to close his theater production because how can you hire 42 seasonal actors as W-2 employees every few months and then fire them and then rehire and on and on?  You can't.  Independent theater will die.  Linguists, courtroom reporters, translators, transcribers, truckers, rideshare drivers, musicians, caterers, bartenders, writers, freelance journalists... anyone who earns money by contracting their services is now out of work or about to be.  It is the most massive and disturbing overreach I have ever seen, and yet hardly anyone else in the country is paying attention.

How the Golden State Embraced Corporate Socialism.  Gavin Newsom, the lily white, urbane, coiffed scion of San Francisco's posh royalty, is California's highest-ranking Democrat.  He presides over a party that has taken progressive ideals beyond absurdity to the brink of tyranny, a socialist party that openly disparages whiteness and wealth.  One would think that the party of Gavin Newsom is bent on destroying everything Gavin Newsom represents.  So what's going on?  To understand the rise of Newsom, and every other hyper-privileged Democrat who even today remain in firm control of the progressive movement, it is necessary to define a 21st-century version of corporate socialism.  This goes well beyond the use of the term merely to describe government subsidies for, say, the oil and gas industry, or, for that matter, the wind and solar industry.

Oklahoma governor bans state-funded travel to California after being put on Golden State's blacklist.  The governor of Oklahoma has banned all state-funded travel to California after officials there placed a similar ban on travel to his state.  Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is in his first term, announced the ban in an executive order on Thursday, barring all non-essential travel by state employees to the Golden State, with exceptions for business recruiting trips, college sports games and trips by schools to participate in out-of-state programs.

Oakland Becomes First California City To Ban Background Checks For Prospective Renters.  Following a unanimous vote by the city council Tuesday night, Oakland has now become the first city in California to ban criminal background checks on potential renters.  "Indescribable emotions and feelings," said John Jones III of Oakland, who got out of prison in 2012 and struggled to find a place to live in Oakland despite his well-paying job as an aviation mechanic.  Jones said he's among the many who left prison only to end up on the streets, contributing to Oakland's homeless crisis.  That's why he's been lobbying hard for the Oakland City Council to pass the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance, which says landlords will no longer be allowed to turn down potential renters because of criminal convictions.

California Now Pushing Free Health Care for Illegal Immigrant Seniors.  California has waged a war on the concept of citizenship by essentially sidestepping the will of the American people and intentionally undermining immigration laws.  Worse, by extending social welfare to those illegal immigrants, the state is signaling that the concept of citizenship itself is meaningless.  It's clear that California's craziness doesn't stop, as [Governor] Newsom and the state's Democrats have doubled down to extend free health care coverage to even greater numbers of illegal immigrants.  Newsom's latest proposed budget now aims to extend free health care coverage to illegal immigrants 65 years old and older as a part of the state's Medi-Cal program.  This would add $80.5 million to the budget this year and $350 million annually once fully implemented, according to Politico.

Tents, Homelessness, and Misery: 9 Things I Saw in San Francisco.  Home to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional district, San Francisco is reliably and overwhelmingly blue in every election (with perhaps a few votes going to the Green Party).  In just the past year, the city's Board of Supervisors declared the National Rifle Association to be a "domestic terrorist organization," and the school board voted first to paint over, and then to hide, a mural of George Washington in one of the city's high schools — a mural, incidentally, painted by a leftist who strove to show both Washington's greatness and flaws.  Such actions are just par for the course for San Francisco, a city of more than 884,000 that in the past decade also banned fast-food restaurants from including toys with most children's meals; prohibited city-funded travel by local employees to 22 pro-life states; raised the minimum wage from $9.79 to $15.59 an hour; and, after banning plastic bags in 2007, first set a 10-cent fee for each nonreusable bag at stores, and then a 25-cent fee per bag.  Yes, leftist insanity has long been the norm for San Francisco.

First, the purges:  Comrade Chesa Boudin fires prosecutors for ... prosecuting.  What would it be like if Hugo Chávez and Bill Ayers ran the city prosecutor's office?  San Franciscans are about to find out, now that Ayers's stepson, Chesa Boudin, son of Weather Underground terrorists and translator to none other than Hugo himself, has made his first move as San Francisco district attorney.  He's kicked off his term with purges for insufficient revolutionary fervor, taking a page from Andrei Vyshinsky, Stalin's famous show trial prosecutor who enforced ideological purity. [...] Bottom line:  Chesa has no use for such prosecutors who prosecute, and the only thing he wants prosecuted is "the system," the idea of there being laws against crimes.  It goes to show the depth of ideological conformity being demanded now in what's clearly going to be a highly politicized D.A.'s office.  Professionalism is the enemy of the people now.

San Francisco, solid blue city of — empty storefronts and missing young people.  San Francisco is getting to be a hellhole and not just because crooks are having a field day, or a vast homeless army has prompted new tech 'innovations' in poop-map apps.  It's actually becoming a city with a hollowed out look, redolent of some place like Steubenville, Ohio or maybe Utica, New York, during the bad years, empty storefronts and missing young people.  So much for the trope that leftwing cities, with their walkable boulevards full of food trucks, handmade crafts, knitting shops, bookstores, artisan cheese shops, gourmet restaurants, and cafes are more lively and liveable than rightwing places.  For awhile, that did seem to be the story.  But it's coming to an end.  Sure, there's vast wealth.  But despite California being in an economic boom, the place is starting to look like Venezuela.

Abortions are okay, but stray dogs must be preserved.
'We want to be a no-kill state.' Newsom calls for end to animal euthanasia in California.  Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California to stop euthanizing animals, and he's ready to put taxpayer money toward the cause.  "We want to be a no-kill state," Newsom said during a press conference where he presented his 2020-21 budget.  Specifically, Newsom's budget calls for a $50 million one-time general fund allocation to the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program to develop a grant program for animal shelters, with a goal of helping local communities "achieve the state's policy goal that no adoptable or treatable dog or cat should be euthanized," according to the budget summary.

Does California Want to Secede?  On Friday [1/10/2020], Governor Gavin Newsom will present the state's budget for the next fiscal year.  In it, he will propose that the state of California sell its own brand of prescription drugs in order to "increase competition in the generic drug marketplace and lower the cost of medications by having Sacramento contract drugmakers to manufacture certain prescriptions under a state label." [...] Because California is so large, with such a huge economy and so many people, the state's dominance generally steers industry and other governments in the direction it wants.  No company that does business with state governments can afford to ignore what California is doing.

Bloomberg sees California as model for U.S.  The Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City mayor likes a lot of what he sees in the Golden State and thinks its efforts on climate change, gun control and criminal justice reform sets a benchmark for other states to emulate.  "I think that California can serve as a great example for the rest of this country," Bloomberg told supporters at the opening of his Angeles headquarters.

Workers Resist California's Newest Bad Law.  As of Jan. 2, Uber and Lyft drivers, independent truckers, freelance writers, photographers, artists and musicians and the companies who hire their services have to abide by AB 5.  The law, which was originally concocted to destroy the business models of Uber and Lyft and has exemptions for 50 professions, is a cynical and transparent gift to unions from the same Democrats who have been wrecking my one-party state for decades.  AB 5's proud mother, leftwing Democrat Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, claims it's intended to protect part-timers and freelancers from being "exploited" by their evil, greedy employers.  Her law is supposed to provide independent contractors with the same benefits and workplace protections that full-time employees get and — most important to the Democrats — therefore make it possible for them to unionize.

New California Law Prohibits Showering and Doing Laundry on the Same Day.  "So all of the sudden I can smoke marijuana as much as I want but I can't take a shower?," newsman Mark Kriski said.  "Unbelievable.  That's where our state has gone."  KTLA news anchors and reporters debated on LIVE TV the stupidity of a new California law that effectively prohibits showering and doing laundry on the same day.

A tale of two states in decline.  Taxpayers in California and New York shoulder some of the heaviest tax burdens in the nation, and now new data show the two have something else in common:  Their growth rates have slowed.  It's probably no coincidence.  According to the California Department of Finance, during the year that ended June 30, more people left the Golden State than moved in — the first time that's happened since 2010. [...] One obvious reason:  As the Los Angeles Times notes, the Golden State has one of the highest tax burdens in America.  Here in New York, meanwhile, taxpayers also bear some of the nation's highest tax burdens.  And guess what:  This state has long been watching its share of the national population shrink.  No, taxes alone aren't to blame:  Both states, for example, are famous for their progressive policies, hostility to businesses and onerous mandates.

California Preening.  In truth, the Golden State is becoming a semi-feudal kingdom, with the nation's widest gap between middle and upper incomes — 72 percent, compared with the U.S. average of 57 percent — and its highest poverty rate.  Roughly half of America's homeless live in Los Angeles or San Francisco, which now has the highest property crime rate among major cities.  California hasn't yet become a full-scale dystopia, of course, but it's heading in a troubling direction.

New California law to provide subsidized healthcare for undocumented immigrants.  Under the new law SB 104 California will offer government subsidized health benefits for undocumented immigrants under the age of 26.  Previously only undocumented immigrant children could apply.  It's part of new funding for MediCal.  Gov. Gavin Newsom says there will be "An additional $450 a month in subsidies reducing premiums by 25%.  No state in America does that."  Sarah Dar from the California Immigrant Policy Center says this will make a healthier community.

Least-Educated State: 2,471,189 California Residents 25 and Older Never Completed 9th Grade; Highest Percentage in Nation.  California once again ranked No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have at least graduated from high school, according to new five-year estimates (2014-2018) released Thursday by the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.  California, as CNSNews.com reported last year, also ranked No. 1 for the percentage who never completed ninth grade and No. 50 for the percentage who had graduated from high school in the five-year estimates (2013-2017) the Census Bureau released in December 2018.  In California, according to the new five-year estimate, 2,471,189 residents 25 and older had never completed ninth grade.

The Editor says...
So much for the claim that "immigrants make our communities stronger."

Car burglaries in some California cities are at crisis levels.  Prosecutors say their hands are tied.  An epidemic of car burglaries in San Francisco over the last few years has led one Democratic lawmaker to propose plugging a loophole in state law that allows some break-ins to go unpunished, but the Legislature has balked at prosecutors' requests to make obtaining convictions easier.  The proposal, which would eliminate a requirement that prosecutors prove a car's doors were locked at the time of a break-in, has been shelved two years in a row in legislative committees.  Lawmakers struggling with prison crowding and public pressure to enact criminal justice reform have been reluctant to do anything to put more people behind bars.

Why the Law?  The latest and most high-profile district attorney race victory went to none other than the stinking, crime infested city of San Francisco.  Does the name Chesa Boudin ring a bell?  No not to me either, at first.  Not until it was revealed he is the son of 1960s radical leftist, American terrorist bomber Bill Ayers.  It matters not that Boudin, a defense attorney, has never prosecuted a single case.  I bet he'll make a great district attorney for victims of crimes (sarc.).  Boudin has already stated he will not prosecute public urination, prostitution and "quality of life crimes" for the homeless.  What about quality of life for the hardworking tax payers and business owners?  Supporters of Boudin claim he wasn't financed by George Soros, but this statement is disingenuous.

Thought San Francisco's Quality Of Life Couldn't Get Worse?  Think Again.  San Francisco garnered national headlines with the election of its new district attorney, a progressive, which means there will be zero progress made in the homelessness crisis, and little if any made toward reducing crime in the city and county.  Chesa Boudin, a one-time deputy public defender who has never tried a case, was elected in a close race, and will assume office in January.  Before he had a chance to decide if the new drapes in his office were going to be socialist red or blue state blue, Boudin announced that he would not prosecute quality-of-life crimes such as "public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc."  We assume public defecating on streets and sidewalks, today's San Francisco "treat," will also go unprosecuted.

California DMV Makes 50 Million Dollars a Year Selling Drivers' Info to Private Companies.  A California Department of Motor Vehicles document revealed that the government agency is generating $50 million a year by selling drivers' personal information to private companies.  According to a report from VICE, which received the document through a public records request, revenue from selling information — which includes names, physical addresses, and car registration information — has climbed from $41 million in fiscal year 2013-2014 to $51 million in 2018-2019.  In an email explaining the numbers, the California DMV did not specify which private companies have purchased the data, but said the list may include insurance companies, vehicle manufacturers, and prospective employers.

Most city workers pay $0 in healthcare premiums.  Garcetti said he'd change that.  He hasn't.  In a major policy reversal that critics say will cost the city and taxpayers millions of dollars, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has abandoned his long-stated goal of getting the city's public employee unions to pay a portion of their healthcare costs.  Under contracts signed this year that were supported by the mayor, many of City Hall's largest unions will continue to contribute nothing toward their healthcare premiums.  Garcetti also backed agreements with several smaller unions, allowing those employees who had been contributing 10% of their premiums to stop paying in January.

Correcting Voters' Mistakes.  Californians must no longer have recourse to the recall election.  If Golden Staters still have the recall, surely they'd be using it to oust their useless mayors who have allowed their once-beautiful cities to degenerate into filth and ruin.  They'd also be mounting a recall of their new governor, Gavin Newsom.  Back in 2003, before the mass exodus to Texas, there were still enough decent Californians remaining to recall and oust Gov. Gray Davis.  Davis's replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger, might have become a terrific governor had he been paired with a decent legislature.  But the Governator didn't have a decent legislature; it was populated with progressives.

What Happened to California Republicans?  [Scroll down]  A cynic might argue that once a federal judge allowed undocumented immigrants to enjoy the full array of state services and entitlements, there were incentives for millions of other immigrants to enter the U.S. illegally, and California in particular.  Statistics suggests they did just that — often to the chagrin of Democratic politicians, the United Farm Workers and other liberal groups who worried about the negative effects of illegal immigration on entry-level wages, unionization and poor citizens' access to overtaxed social services. [...] The final irony?  Those most hurt — and growing the most angry — are the immigrants who once fled to a different California that now no longer exists.

California's Burning.  California's young and bold new progressive governor Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, probably figured he'd be thrust into the national limelight after signing a host of must-do liberal measures ranging from statewide rent control to a new union-crafted law that seeks to essentially ban companies from using outside contractors.  He also signed a ban on the sale of animal furs, stopped state agencies from leasing public lands for any oil-and-gas-related infrastructure (to stop the Trump administration from expanding resource "exploitation" on neighboring federal lands) — and even signed a law forbidding hotels from handing out those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

Son of Two Unrepentant Terrorists Wins DA San Fran Race.  "Chesa Boudin has won the election to become San Francisco's next district attorney," CBS News reported late Saturday.  "The people of San Francisco have sent a powerful and clear message," Boudin said in a statement.  "It's time for radical change to how we envision justice.  I'm humbled to be a part of this movement that is unwavering in its demand for transformation."  People in the vast hinterland to the east might wonder who Chesa is, exactly, and what kind of transformation he has in mind.  Bernie Sanders was first to congratulate the victor, and San Francisco voters knew Chesa served as a translator for the regime of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  Still, a full understanding must start with Chesa's mother, Kathy Boudin, a Weather Underground terrorist.

Lucky San Francisco:  With Chesa Boudin as DA, good luck getting a cop when you want one.  Well, Chesa Boudin has finally done it: he's gotten himself into the San Francisco D.A.'s seat, after a lifetime of standing up for crooks and mastering criminal "justice" from Bill Ayers's stepdad berth and Hugo Chávez's knee.  Like the way criminal justice works in Caracas?  In San Francisco, Hugo Chávez's trusted adviser is now there to help.  He's there to "transform," as he says.  That's his brand, as the Bay Area tech marketing hipsters say.  This won't work out too well if you've got bums vomiting at your doorstep, gang members shooting with muzzle flashes 'round corners, and junkies setting up camp on your sidewalk.  We've already seen the boulder-warfare some of the homeowners are putting up in a desperate bid to stop it.  Such people can probably now look forward to getting arrested.

San Francisco Voters Elect Radical District Attorney, Son of Cop-killing Terrorists.  Progressive candidate Chesa Boudin wants to free criminals but prosecute police and ICE agents for doing their jobs.  It's no surprise Boudin hates cops so much.  His parents did, too.  Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were terrorists in the Weather Underground who murdered two police officers and a security guard during a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored security car outside New York City.  There should be a law that children of terrorists who share their parents' worldview are barred from holding public office, especially the role of the chief law enforcement officer.  Boudin's dad is still in prison so he can't kill any more cops, but his mother is out.  Naturally, she is an assistant professor at Columbia University.  After his parents killed the cops, Boudin was sent to live with two other terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.  Dohrn declared war on the United States and was on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted for skipping funeral of deputy allegedly killed by illegal immigrants.  The same day a federal grand jury indicted two illegal immigrants accused of murdering Deputy Brian Ishmael, El Dorado Sheriff John D'Agostini took aim at California's drug and sanctuary policies, singling out Gov. Gavin Newsom for skipping his funeral in favor of a meeting with the state's beleaguered power provider.

Newsom runs up against US Justice Department rules in pardoning immigrants.  Attorney General William Barr is trying to deport some legal immigrants who were convicted of crimes many years ago.  Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to spare some of the same immigrants from deportation by pardoning them.  It's shaping up as another round in the Trump administration vs. California.  The immigrants are legal U.S. residents who, because they have not become citizens, face potential deportation for past crimes that were punishable by sentences of a year or more.  Barr, overturning long-standing decisions by immigration courts, declared last month that migrants convicted of long-ago crimes could be deported even when their home states had retroactively reduced or erased their sentences.

San Francisco Supervisor Chants [in Opposition to] the [Police Officers Association] During DA Candidate's Campaign Rally.  Heading into 2020, it seems we've entered into an age in which anyone, from Twitter troll to elected public official, can say whatever strikes their fancy no matter how abhorrent, destructive or violent, from any microphone they can manage to find, and with near impunity.  Oh, sorry.  I mean, any liberal.  Conservatives can't do that.  Take, for example, San Francisco Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer, who, after clunking her way up to the stage to stump for left-wing district attorney candidate Chesa Boudin, used her moment at the podium to rant against the city's 2,000-member police union by leading the audience in the chant, [...]

English Is the International Language of Success — Except in California.  It's been two decades, but I still remember the excitement of helping to pass California's Proposition 227, which I thought would rescue Spanish-speaking kids from an education ghetto of frustration and failure.  It was an uphill battle.  We fought an education bureaucracy including California's powerful teachers' unions, book publishers who received lucrative government contracts, and even Jerry Perenchio, the late Republican billionaire CEO of Univision, who donated $1.5 million to the efforts to maintain California's "bilingual" education system.  We won.  Sixty-one percent of Californians were ready for a change.  Amid chants of racism and cultural insensitivity, Latino parents would tell me they knew that education and learning English in their adopted country were key to their kids' futures.  Unfortunately, the victory wouldn't last.

Power and Gas Cutoffs in Blue States Represent a Failure of Governance.  California — a state that by itself constitutes the world's fifth-largest economy, is endowed with vast stores of human and natural resources, and has one of the planet's most amenable climates for human habitation — is failing.  The Golden State is host to one of the country's worst homelessness epidemics.  It's a state in which 19th century diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis are making a comeback.  More people are moving out of the state than into it.  Its rates of violent crime are on the rise.  It has more failing schools than any other state in the Union.  And now, true to basket-case form, California is home to massive, rolling power outages.  But unlike in the developing world, these blackouts are not a result of resource deficiency but the voluntary imposition of darkness on the public.

California's Prop 47 leads to [a] rise in shoplifting, thefts, [and] criminal activity across [the] state.  These brazen acts of petty theft and shoplifting are a dangerous and all-too-common consequence of Proposition 47, a referendum passed five years ago that critics say effectively gives shoplifters and addicts the green light to commit crimes as long as the merchandise they steal or the drugs they take are less than $950 in value.  The decision to downgrade theft of property valued below the arbitrary figure from felony to misdemeanor, together with selective enforcement that focuses on more "serious" crimes, has resulted in thieves knowing they can brazenly shoplift and merchants knowing the police will not respond to their complaints, say critics.

Is California Becoming Premodern?  California is now a one-party state.  Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature.  Only seven of the state's 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans.  The result is that there is no credible check on a mostly coastal majority.  Huge global wealth in high-tech, finance, trade and academia poured into the coastal corridor, creating a new nobility with unprecedented riches.  Unfortunately, the new aristocracy adopted mindsets antithetical to the general welfare of Californians living outside their coastal enclaves.  The nobodies have struggled to buy high-priced gas, pay exorbitant power bills and deal with shoddy infrastructure — all of which resulted from the policies of the distant somebodies.

California to train poll workers how to interact with transgender voters.  All poll workers in California will be trained on how to properly interact with and assist transgender and gender-nonconforming voters when they cast ballots.  California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) announced the new initiative last week, saying his office is partnering with the Equality California Institute ahead of next year's presidential primary.

Is California's governor really this clueless about high gas prices and power outages?  California Gov. Gavin Newsom finally noticed that his state has the highest gas prices in the nation, and he's angry.  So angry, in fact, he ordered his Attorney General to investigate the decades-long mystery.  "There is no identifiable evidence to justify these premium prices," Newsom wrote in a letter to state Attorney General Xavier Becerra.  "If oil companies are engaging in false advertising or price fixing, then legal action should be taken to protect the public."  Newsom correctly identified the symptom but remains clueless about the cause.  He at least pretends to be.

Why California's AB-5 is a threat to the American way of life.  I am freelancing this article.  Doing so means that I work from home, set my own schedule and have most days of the week free to write books.  While books provide the bulk of my income, freelancing provides substantial extra money that my family and I have come to expect.  Barring any unforeseen change in circumstances, over the next year I'll freelance dozens of articles at a rate of one or occasionally two a week.  If I did that in California, I'd be opening up my employers to legal penalties.  Bill AB-5, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, has just passed, limiting California freelancers to submitting 35 articles to a publication a year without being hired by that company.  Thirty-five may seem like a lot, but that limit makes a weekly column impossible, let alone working for online companies where you might submit a short article or two daily and reach that limit within a month.

How California's new gig economy law could put freelancers out of business.  If I lived in California, I'd be staring down unemployment.  A new law governing freelance work was signed into law late last month.  It isn't scheduled to take effect until January, but if panicking freelancers aren't able to force a change before then, many will be banned from doing their jobs.  It's a classic case of well-intended but functionally destructive regulation:  In the name of protecting workers, Assembly Bill 5 will prohibit some them from working.  In the resultant chaos, a lucky few will secure full-time jobs while the rest are "helped" right out of a stable income stream.  A.B. 5's primary target is gig employers like ridesharing apps Uber and Lyft, whose drivers are classified as contract workers, not employees.  That means they aren't entitled to benefits like health insurance or paid time off even if they're working full-time hours, which A.B. 5 seeks to change.

California's legal weed profits going up in smoke.  Legal marijuana in California as a business was supposed to be a no-brainer.  How could it not be profitable in a liberal state pushing 40 million residents where some of the best weed in the world has been grown for decades?  But nearly three years after Proposition 64, the law legalizing the adult use of the drug, was passed, California cannabis producers are not seeing the windfalls predicted. [...] The California law gives local governments the right to regulate the pot shops so towns can prohibit them.  A whopping 80% of the state's towns and cities have turned legal pot shops down.

Rev. Franklin Graham Condemns San Francisco Ban on Travel to Pro-Life States.  Christian evangelist Rev. Franklin Graham said progressive leaders in San Francisco who have banned travel for city employees to states that have enacted abortion restrictions "want everyone to swallow the lie that abortion is a woman's right."

The Editor says...
Let the San Francisco bureaucrats stay in California for the rest of their miserable lives.  I can't see how this travel ban has any negative effects.  What can't they accomplish over the phone?

California's War on Citizenship.  California — a one-party state dominated by progressives — has become the model for where progressivism will go when completely unchecked.  Now, even the basic concept of citizenship is under full-blown assault as the state has moved on from being a "sanctuary state" for illegal immigrants to outright insisting that noncitizens have the same access to the levers of power as citizens.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to serve on government boards and commissions.  He also signed another bill that would make it illegal to make immigration-related arrests at courthouses.

San Francisco bans city employees from business travel to 22 states with pro-life laws.  The City of San Francisco has added 22 states with pro-life laws to a blacklist that prevents city employees from traveling to those states using city funds or dealing with businesses based in them.

California says independents can vote in Democrats' 2020 primary, but not Republicans'.  California's more than 5.6 million independent voters will be allowed to vote in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, but not in the Republican contest, Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced Monday [10/21/2019].

California governor pardons three convicted immigrants to help block deportations.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday [10/18/2019] he's pardoning three immigrants who've been convicted of crimes as part of an effort to protect them from deportation to their home countries.  The three men — originally from El Salvador, Iran and Cambodia — broke the law as teens or young adults, served their sentences and have taken steps to rehabilitate themselves, the governor's office said.

California legalizes eating roadkill.  Awash in feces, blackouts, wildfires, opioids, junkyard highways, homelessness, illegals, measles, typhus, and leprosy, California's one-party blue Legislature and its far-left governor have nevertheless gotten around to the important things.

California opens state boards to undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens.  Undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens will be allowed to serve on state boards and commissions after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills Saturday [10/12/2019] intended to integrate immigrants further into society.  SB225 by Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, expands eligibility for state appointments to any California resident over the age of 18.  In a signing message, Newsom said applicants deserved to be considered on their merits, rather than their immigration status.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Forcing Public Universities to Dispense Abortion Drugs.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law that requires public colleges and universities in the state to distribute abortion drugs, effectively turning the schools into first-trimester abortion clinics.  On Friday [10/11/2019], Newsom signed SB 24, which was championed in the State Senate by Sen. Connie Leyva (D) as a reproductive rights issue.

California adopts nation's broadest gun seizure laws.  California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 15 gun-related bills into law Friday, tightening the state's already-stringent Second Amendment restrictions.  One of the bills, which expands a so-called "red flag" law to allow co-workers, employers and educators to seek gun violence restraining orders against firearms owners they fear are a danger to themselves and others, was vetoed twice by Newsom's predecessor, Jerry Brown.  Newsom also signed a companion bill allowing the gun violence restraining orders to last one and five years, although the gun owners could petition to end those restrictions earlier.  The bill also allows judges to issue search warrants at the same time as they grant the orders.  The warrants can be used immediately if the gun owners are served with the relinquishment orders but fail to turn over the firearms or ammunition.

Say Goodbye to Charter Schools.  There's no way to reform public schools, in California or elsewhere, given that they are government monopolies that are dominated by unions.  They will put kids first, as one former teachers' union official reportedly said, after the kids start paying dues.  People who think that such schools can be improved through new reforms and more money probably believed that the Soviet economy could have been fixed with a better-developed five-year plan.  The only way to deal with that reality is to escape.  In 1992, California passed one of the nation's most far-reaching school-reform experiments, by making it easy to create publicly funded alternative schools where kids could flee.  The original law authorized the establishment of 100 charters.  The state now has more than 1,300 of them, and they educate 11 percent of the state's students.

Democrats [are] turning California into a third-world hellhole.  While they try to blame climate change and the infrastructure, the reality is that neither of those has caused any significant changes in the last ten years — but now, suddenly, due to Democrat policies, Californians have to start living in the 18th century.  The Democrats who run California also refuse to build more water storage capacity even though the state's population has dramatically increased, ensuring that water has to be rationed during droughts.  Democrats are turning California into a third-world country economically.  The income inequality between the über-rich Silicon Valley workers and the rest of Californians is huge, just like in third-world countries, while the elites live in luxury and the rest live in squalor.

Federal Judge Halts California Law Requiring Trump to Release Tax Returns in Order to Appear on 2020 Primary Ballot.  US District Judge Morrison England on Tuesday issued a temporary injunction against a California law which required Trump to release his tax returns in order to appear on the 2020 primary ballot.  Last month, the federal judge temporarily suspended the law and announced he would be releasing a formal written injunction by October 1st.  On Tuesday [10/1/2019], Judge Morrison, a George W. Bush appointee, released a written opinion and argued the law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom violated the Presidential Qualifications Clause contained in Article II of the US Constitution and violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause as set forth in the 14th Amendment.

California Shocked To Find Bill Decriminalizing Retail Theft Resulted In... More Retail Theft.  A few years ago, California passed one in a series of bills aimed at emptying the jails and prisons.  Proposition 47 carried the disingenuous name of "the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act and its stated purpose was to keep non-violent offenders out of jail.  To achieve this goal, the state decriminalized a number of lesser offenses, including retail theft.  The law raised the value of the amount of merchandise someone could steal while still only being charged with a misdemeanor to nearly one thousand dollars.  To the great surprise of the government, people noticed this change and began taking advantage of it.  They have now recorded multiple years of steadily increasing, organized robbery.  These plots are known as "mass grab and dash" thefts and they generally involve large numbers of young people all entering a store at the same time, grabbing armfuls of merchandise and dashing back out to their vehicles and hitting the highway.  Not only are robberies on the rise, but arrests and prosecutions are down.  Who could possibly have predicted this?

Gavin Newsom calls for impeaching Trump, gets slapped with recall petition from California's locals.  California's far-left governor, Gavin Newsom, is out there with the best of them, loudly calling for the impeachment of President Trump.  It's nothing new for him, given that he ran for governor in 2017 on this platform. [...] From his point of view, it makes sense, because even though he's been on the job for only about a year, he's shown that he's always been more interested in sounding woke than actually governing.  Just tour the poop-strewn, disease-ridden streets of any California blue city with a high Newsom vote count for a whiff of it.

Federal Judge Blocks California Law That Would Force Trump To Disclose Tax Returns.  A federal judge temporarily blocked California's law requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to gain a spot on the primary ballot Thursday [9/19/2019].  The California law would require any candidate running for president or governor to give the IRS tax forms for the past five years, after which portions of them would be edited for public viewing, the Los Angeles Times reported.  This could be an issue for President Donald Trump as he runs for president again in 2020 because he has refused to disclose his tax returns, despite efforts by Democrats to force his hand.

California judge blocks law requiring Trump to submit tax returns to compete in state's 2020 primary.  A federal judge in California Thursday granted the Trump campaign's request to block a new law that requires presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to run in the state's primary elections.  The law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in July would have left the sitting president off of the ballot in California's March 2020 primary unless he submitted five years' worth of his tax returns by a Nov. 26 deadline, the Los Angeles Times reported.  Under SB 27, Trump would be included on the general election ballot in November 2020.  Oppoenents [sic] of the law argue depressed GOP voter turnout in the primary could discourage voters from showing up to vote for the president in the main race.

Federal Judge:  This Tax-Return Requirement For California's Presidential Primaries Smells Unconstitutional.  Indeed it does, and the injunction issued by US district court Judge Morrison England Jr represents a victory for Donald Trump — if a temporary one.  California had passed a law requiring all presidential primary candidates in the state to publicly release the last five years of their income tax returns to qualify for the ballot.  A former fringe candidate joined Donald Trump in challenging the law for its super-constitutional efforts to add state-level qualifiers to federal office, and Judge England issued an injunction against its enforcement.

The Editor says...
This is what's known as a bill of attainder.

California adds Iowa to 'travel ban' over refusal to fund gender transitions.  California announced last week that it has added Iowa to the list of states on its ever-expanding "travel ban" list because of that state's new prohibition against funding gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid.  The announcement by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra means that as of Oct. 4, California will no longer offer taxpayer-funded trips to Iowa for any public employee or student at a state-run university.  Becerra's authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights.  The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi.

The Editor says...
California is attempting interfere with the other states entirely for the purpose of endorsing and legitimizing homosexuality.

Gov. Newsom Commutes Sentences of 21 Violent Criminals Incarcerated in CA Prisons, Including 4 Murderers with Life Sentences.  Far-left California Governor Gavin Newsom commuted sentences of 21 violent criminals including 4 murderers with life sentences without possibility of parole.  One of the murderers was arrested in 1993 for fatally shooting a man during a carjacking and another was incarcerated in 1991 for killing an armed guard during a robbery.  A man who served 31 years of 2 life sentences for a double murder in 1988 was also given clemency by Newsom.

California Introduces Bill to Ban ICE Detention Centers, Private Prisons.  The state of California is cracking down on "private for-profit prisons" after introducing a bill to ban the facilities.  Moreover, it means shutting down U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's privately run detention centers.  The bill AB-42 passed the state assembly Wednesday [9/11/2019] with 65 votes in favorable votes.  According to Newsweek, it would mean shutting down four detention centers holding "up to 4,500 inmates."

The Left's determination to destroy us from within.  Governor Newsom of California has reached into the gutter for a new and obscene low.  So dishonorable is this man that he signed into law a bill that "struck down a more than century-old law that required any able-bodied persons 18 years of age or older to assist a police officer who requested help during an arrest." [...] Newsom, and the rest of the Democrat governors and mayors that destroyed their own states and cities, have not only ruined the municipalities that they control, but have destroyed countless lives — namely, of those who barely subsist on the streets of these cities:  Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago.  They willingly promulgate the drug use of their homeless (they pass out free syringes) and seem to tolerate the vast homeless encampments and all they entail:  discarded needles, public defecation, crime, disease — in short, the destruction of the cities they've been allowed to take over and ruin.

Gov Newsom signs bill, now legal for citizens to refuse police officers' request for help.  Gov. Gavin Newsom just made it legal for anyone in the state of California to refuse to help a police officer requesting assistance.  The California Democrat on Tuesday [9/3/2019] signed into law a bill that struck down a more than century-old law which required any "able-bodied person 18 years of age or older" to assist a police officer who requested help during an arrest, The Sacramento Bee reported.

California's Newsom signs bill allowing citizen to refuse to help a police officer.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, on Tuesday [9/3/2019] signed a bill that no longer requires any "able-bodied person 18 years of age or older" in the state to help an officer who requests assistance during an arrest.  The Sacramento Bee reported that the old law, the California Posse Comitatus Act of 1872, was common in the country's early days, but Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the old law a "vestige of a bygone era."  The law was employed to help catch runaway slaves, the report said.  The old law made it a misdemeanor that carried a fine of up to $1,000 for refusing to help a police officer who requested assistance during an arrest.

The Editor says...
If the only purpose for that law was to have citizens assist the police with the capture of runaway slaves, there might be some reasonable basis for repealing it.  Surely the elected officials of California don't believe such a thing.  Governor Newsom's action reeks of race-based political opportunism, and the unintended consequences are not many days away.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors Declares NRA a Domestic Terrorist Organization.  San Francisco's legislative body has challenged other American cities and states to follow its lead and formally condemn the National Rifle Association (NRA).  The Californian city's board of supervisors passed a resolution on Tuesday officially labeling the gun rights' group a domestic terrorist organization. [...] It said the NRA "musters its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence."

San Francisco Declares NRA a 'Domestic Terrorist Organization'.  San Francisco, the "sanctuary city" for illegal aliens — now crowded with homeless people camping and defecating on sidewalks — has just declared the National Rifle Association a "domestic terrorist organization."  The resolution, which the Board of Supervisors passed unanimously Tuesday, urges the rest of the country to "do the same."  The resolution accuses the NRA or mustering "its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence."

Crony Capitalism on Steroids.  California lawmakers want to bring back central-planning agencies that squander taxpayer dollars on corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain — in the name of fixing a housing shortage that these agencies helped create.

California's War on Cars.  Traffic has long been horrific throughout California, especially in the Los Angeles basin and the Bay Area.  But like every bad thing in this state, it just keeps getting worse.  The 2018 INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard tops the ranking of most congested cities, with drivers spending an annual average of 104 hours stuck in gridlock.  Other California cities made the ranks of 50 most congested cities across the globe.  The obvious solution is to, well, build more roads, even though decades of neglect — and reams of environmental impediments such as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — would make that a daunting task if state officials wanted to do so.  But they have no interest in doing so.  Their goal is to coerce us into giving up our cars or at least driving much less.  They've caused the crisis and are not about to let it go to waste.

Armchair quarterbacks:
California Governor Signs Use-of-Deadly Force Bill Aimed at 'Changing the Culture of Policing'.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced on Monday [8/19/2019] that California is now a "model for the rest of the nation" when it comes to the use of deadly force by police officers.  Newsom on Monday signed Assembly Bill No. 392, which says police officers may "use deadly force only when necessary in defense of human life."  According to the text of the bill, the "authority to use physical force...is a serious responsibility that shall be exercised judiciously and with respect for human rights and dignity and for the sanctity of every human life."

Cosmic Injustice.  In the last years of Arnold Schwarzenegger's governorship, Arnold more or less gave up on the existential crises of illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, soaring taxes, water shortages, decrepit roads and bridges, homelessness, plummeting public school performance, and a huge exodus out of state of middle-class Californians.  Instead he began to lecture the state, the nation, and indeed the world on the need for massive wind and solar projects and assorted green fantasies.

California prefers 'free range rats' over humans.  Proposed poison ban.  California is prepared to sacrifice human lives for the sake of wildlife apparently.  The wise Progressives have let fester a growing health risk in allowing their rat population to explode with no interest in controlling their expanding population.  The Democrats want to ban rat poison.  You can't call them lazy.  Once a female rat reproduces, she could have 15,000 descendants by the end of just one year!  Note:  Your rat mileage may vary.

'Flagrantly illegal.'  Trump sues California over new law targeting his tax returns.  President Donald Trump, the California Republican Party, and the national GOP joined together Tuesday [8/6/2019] to sue California over a new tax-return law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last week.  The law requires Trump and other presidential candidates to release the last five years of their tax returns to get their names on the state's 2020 primary ballot.

California's Gavin Newsom torched as red-hot hypocrite for calling Trump's wall wasteful.  California's leftist governor, Gavin Newsom, got it in the teeth on Twitter after he tried to decry President Trump's border wall as, of all things, government waste. [...] And it didn't end well for him.  He drew about 6,000 replies, virtually all of them negative, with a large number of them clearly from the locals.

Berkeley becomes first US city to ban natural gas in new buildings.  Berkeley became the first city nationwide to ban the use of natural gas in new low-rise residential buildings in a unanimous vote Tuesday by the City Council. [...] In June 2018, the council declared a climate emergency and called for a review of Berkeley's greenhouse emission reduction strategies.  The city determined in a report last year that gas-related emissions have increased due to an 18% population growth since 2000.

The Editor says...
I wonder if the Berkeley politicians understand that they share the atmosphere with 7.7 billion other people, most of whom would love to have cheap and abundant natural gas available, rather than the firewood, coal, or dung they're currently using.  The city council's action is not just symbolic:  It affects the construction of already-unaffordable new houses.

In California, don't call them 'public servants,' call them 'the government gang'.  As a Californian of more than three decades, I have watched the highways deteriorate, with no new construction of freeways (or reservoirs for that matter) while the population soared.  I have watched the schools go from bad to horrendous.  Meanwhile, taxes have soared to levels that are driving out middle class taxpayers in very large numbers.  The rest of us who are not members of the government gang watch as the gang members get rich.

California Gives Green Light to Health Care for Illegal Aliens.  California is the first state to allow taxpayer-funded health care benefits to go towards people residing in the U.S. illegally.  Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law on Tuesday which would allow low-income adults under the age of 25 to receive state Medicaid benefits through its Medi-Cal program regardless of immigration status.

Democrats take their next step to destroy the USA.  California has approved a new budget expanding Medi-Cal coverage to illegal aliens up to the age of 26.  This will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, even without factoring in the costs created by the obvious incentive the program will create for illegals to move to California.  Moreover, the formerly Golden State is bringing back the individual mandate, in part to fund the Medi-Cal expansion for non-residents of California.  This means that residents of the state who don't want to — or need to — buy health insurance, as well as those who can't afford it, will have their money confiscated by the government to provide health care to illegal aliens.

California Assembly Approves Resolution That Calls for Church Acceptance of LGBTQ.  The California State Assembly voted 9-2 to send to the state senate a resolution calling on "religious leaders to counsel on LGBTQ matters from a place of love, compassion, and knowledge of the psychological and other harms of conversion therapy."  While no one would argue with the aim of being more loving and more compassionate in our counsel of our fellow man, the people's representatives do not possess any authority in the arena of religious practice.

California Democrats Propose Bill to Allow Illegal Immigrants to Hold Party Leadership Positions.  Democratic lawmakers in California have introduced a bill that will allow illegal immigrants to hold leadership positions within the Democrat Party on the state and local level, Breitbart reports.  Current state law limits noncitizen participation in party politics, but the bill, SB 288, would change that, letting noncitizens, including illegal immigrants like Dreamers, serve as state convention delegates and county committee leaders within the Democratic Party, which will allow them to be involved with party platform and other issues.

California Democrats Push Bill Allowing Illegals Party Roles: 'They're Already Leaders'.  A bill proposed last week by California lawmakers could grant illegal aliens the ability to serve in Democrat Party leadership positions locally and statewide.  The new bill, SB 288, would allow them to be part of shaping the party's platform, including serving as state convention delegates and county committee leaders.

The Plan to "Make America, American Again".  California Dems made sure the people of Mexico and other foreign countries understood the borders were open, no one would ever be sent back, and Democrats would give them every form of welfare for free.  Then they gave illegals drivers licenses.  They registered illegals automatically at DMV.  They made sure there was no Voter ID at the polls.  Recognize the plan?  Gavin Newsom gave it away.  This is now the national plan for Democrats.  Make the whole country into California.

California's Gov. Gavin Newsom puts out a video for illegals on how to obstruct ICE.  I thought it was satire, something cooked up by his political enemies.  You couldn't put out a less attractive video than the one Gavin Newsom did for illegal aliens on Twitter, advising them himself on how to obstruct ICE from any deportation maneuvers. [...] Leave aside the fact that he's the governor of a U.S. state, supposedly there to represent the interests of that state's citizens rather than those of the foreigners who come here without papers, quite illegally, and run up the tab using his state's services.

Hillary's People's Republic of California Jungle Primary Voter Suppression.  In the 2018 midterm general election California voters had the choice for US Senate on the general election ballot between liberal Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein or even more liberal Democrat opponent.  There were no Republicans on the US Senate General Election ballot in 2018.  Two years earlier, in 2016, liberal Democrat Kamala Harris was elected US Senator by defeating Liberal Democrat opponent Loretta Sanchez in the general election.  Again, There were no Republican candidates on the general election ballot for Senator in 2016.

California's Progressive Betrayal.  The recent California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco exposed the divide between the state's progressive and working-class voters.  Progressives, in their militant certitude, support left-wing policies that often don't affect them; it's the working class that suffers the consequences of these proposals.  But the Green New Deal, widely embraced by party leaders, pushed too far, triggering a backlash at the convention.  The state's private-sector labor unions, notably the building trades, organized a "Blue Collar Revolution" protest against the Democrats' climate legislation.  The Democrats are calling for the elimination of fossil fuels by 2030, which would result in California's immiseration, especially for workers in the state's energy-production sector, the nation's fourth-largest.  In 2012, the oil and gas industry employed over 400,000 Californians, but these workers — unionized and well-paid — can expect pink slips with the green package.

California Says, 'Go West Young Illegals, Go West'.  Doctors and hospitals are in the gunsights of many Democrats who want Medicare-for-all as a draconian price control scheme by government over all medical care in the US.  Hospitals are told they charge too much and doctors are vilified for earning too much.  What a relief that a sugar daddy has appeared, a rich boyfriend, a benefactor with a fat wallet, ready to bestow his financial largess on financially strapped healthcare providers.  This sugar daddy is named Gavin, tall and handsome with good hair.  I speak of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who finalized a deal with the California legislature, "to provide full health benefits to low-income illegal immigrants under the age of 26."

Can California Be Saved, or Is It Too Late?  How did this state, once the envy of all others, become the pathetic, indebted loser state it is today?  The answer is simple, single-party Democratic rule. [...] State taxes in California are the highest in the nation, as are our sales taxes.  We fall nearly last in education.  We have the most homeless, the most illegal migrants.  The state spends $30 [billion] on illegal immigration per year.  Like all cities run by progressives, our entire state is a disaster of Democratic making.

California lawmakers weigh budget proposals to cover health care for illegal immigrants.  California lawmakers are weighing proposals this week that would offer government-funded health care to adult illegal immigrants but are at odds over how far to go.  Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed $98 million a year to cover low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25, but the state Assembly's bill would cover all illegal immigrants over the age of 19 living in California — a proposal that would cost an estimated $3.4 billion.

California to pay full health benefits for illegal immigrants.  Democrats in the [California] state Legislature reached an agreement Sunday afternoon [6/9/2019] as part of a broader plan to spend $213 billion of state and federal tax money over the next year.  The agreement means low-income adults between the ages of 19 and 25 living in California illegally would be eligible for California's Medicaid program, the joint state and federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled.

The dystopian nightmare that is California has been brought to you by... Democrats.  Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times reported a week ago on the obscene condition of downtown Los Angeles, "A mountain of rotting, oozing, stinking trash ... stretching a good 20 yards along a skid row alley.  Rats popped their heads out of the debris like they were in a game of Whac-A-Mole, then scampered for cover as a tractor with a scoop lurched toward them. ... The trash problem is not confined to any one street, but this particular location on the 800 block of Ceres Avenue is surrounded by food distribution companies that sell to shoppers, vendors, stores and restaurants.  I counted seven within a block, so you have to wonder — given the colonies of football-size rats — about the potential contamination of the food supply chain and the spread of disease."  What does the city say when confronted about the slow, or nonexistent, pace of cleanup?

Berkeley loves its sanctuary label, but a housing crisis is testing its liberal values.  This eccentric Northern California enclave was a sanctuary long before the designation became a must-have merit badge for any left-leaning city.  Berkeley politicians proclaimed the place a refuge for Navy sailors resisting deployment to the Vietnam War nearly a half-century ago.  It was the birth of a movement to protect the outcast — and, in some cases, the outlaw — from rules that this beat-of-its-own-drum city and its followers found immoral, most recently the deportation of undocumented immigrants.  But California's housing crisis is testing whether Berkeley can remain that kind of place.

SF supes get 12% pay raise while everyone else at City Hall gets a lot less.  San Francisco's supervisors will be getting a 12% raise this year, more than three times the size of those being given to other elected officials and city employees.  The raise was approved by a 3-1 vote of the Civil Service Commission on Monday [5/20/2019] and represents a $15,016 pay hike, bringing the board members' salaries to $140,148 this year — plus benefits.

Los Angeles Prohibits Employees From Traveling to Alabama Because It Banned Abortions.  Los Angeles County has imposed a one-year travel ban to Alabama in response to the state's new abortion law, which is the most restrictive in the country.  Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solia, author of the motion, said the state's law is an "attack not only confined to the residents of those states, but an act of aggression upon all of us."  "We must stand in solidarity and in opposition against extremist and unconstitutional laws that put the health and wellbeing of families at risk," Solis said.  "The constitutional and human right to a safe and legal abortion is part of the very fabric of the United States."

California lawmakers weigh budget proposals to cover health care for illegal immigrants.  California lawmakers are weighing proposals this week that would offer government-funded health care to adult illegal immigrants but are at odds over how far to go.  Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed $98 million a year to cover low-income illegal immigrants between the ages of 19 and 25, but the state Assembly's bill would cover all illegal immigrants over the age of 19 living in California — a proposal that would cost an estimated $3.4 billion.

Sacramento's Biggest Gasbags.  Don't be alarmed by soaring California gasoline prices, which have topped $4 a gallon at most gas stations around the state.  Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders are on the job, as they sniff out the culprit behind rising prices.  They are pretty sure it has something to do with bad corporate behavior, based on their latest public statements.  Stay tuned — but you might not want to buy that giant gas-sucking SUV just yet.  The cause of the high prices is obvious to those of us familiar with the state's gasoline-related policies.  In 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through his signature increase in gas taxes to fund the road-infrastructure improvements that his administration had neglected as it ramped up social spending.  The law adds 12 cents to each gallon of gasoline and 20 cents to each gallon of diesel and could add far more to the price in coming decades.

Trump, Pareto, and the Fall of the Elites.  Encouraging mass immigration of illegals who compete for lower-level jobs does not help the underprivileged, rather it creates a new group of voters that will support the Democrats.  It also helps privileged groups by supplying cheap labor.  Take, for example, wealthy Marin County, California.  Marin is largely populated by well-to-do and highly educated professional people.  An underclass of often illegal immigrants provides affordable services such as yard work and babysitting.  In the 2012 presidential election, Marin voted 74% for Obama.  In the 2016 election, Marin voted 77% for Hillary and only 16% for Trump.  Another wealthy California county, Santa Clara County, is the heart of Silicon Valley.  In the 2016 election, Santa Clara County voted only 21% for Trump.  Fresno County, California, a county that is majority Hispanic with a very high poverty rate, voted 43% for Trump.  California as a whole voted 32% for Trump.  The nation as a whole voted 46% for Trump.  In the borough of Manhattan, in New York City, one of the wealthiest places in the country, only 10% of the votes went for Trump.  Clearly the privileged class votes Democratic and strongly opposes Trump.  In places inhabited by elites, the Democrats dominate.

California moves to keep Trump off 2020 primary ballot.  The California Legislature is trying again to force presidential candidates to publicly disclose their tax returns, hoping a new Democratic governor known for his clashes with President Donald Trump won't block them this time.

California Politicians Hiked Gas Tax, Now Demand Investigation Into State's $4 Per Gallon Gas Prices.  As lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom supported a 2017 bill increasing the state's gas taxes.  When running for governor in 2018, he opposed a ballot initiative that would have repealed that same increase.  It's 2019, and Newson, now the state's governor, is demanding an investigation into why the state's gas prices are so high.  On Tuesday [4/23/2019], the governor sent a letter to the California Energy Commission (CEC) asking that the state agency investigate the Golden State's roughly $4.03 per gallon gas prices, currently the highest in the country (and well above the national average of $2.86 per gallon).

What 'Free Money' Means to Me.  Officials in Stockton, Calif., a hard-pressed agricultural and industrial city 75 miles northeast of San Jose, are enjoying the glow of media attention from their ongoing, first-in-America program to provide residents with a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. [...] This is about more than helping a few residents in a mid-size city pay medical bills, buy groceries, repair the car, or spend the weekend in the Sierra foothills gambling at the Jackson Rancheria Indian casino (there are no limits on how the money is spent, after all).  It's about setting the stage for a national political "discussion" that might eventually involve large, direct taxpayer payments to lower-income residents.  The research and storytelling will be used to soften us up for the hard sell, which will come in various state or federal proposals, and will sometimes be linked to plans for reparations.

California.Gov.Con.  If Gavin Newsom runs for president, [Eleni] Kounalakis may run for governor, or even higher office.  In that quest, Eleni will again deploy daddy's money and promotional support from Markos, who believes that a woman's proper place is in the White House.  Eleni gets all this, plus California's imported electoral college, from places like El Salvador and Mexico.  For Clinton cronies, California offers the best of all possible worlds.

Government 'Oversight' Is a Very Bad Joke.  [Scroll down]  The 67-page audit of [the California] DMV found a "reactive culture that has adversely impacted the field office customer experience," outdated management structures, a third of customer-service windows closed even as people waited in lines that went around the DMV field offices — and pretty much everything else that anyone who has visited a California DMV office would know.  The audit suggested changes, but the agency reacted in normal fashion and requested more money.  DMV offices, which I've described as a cross between bus stations and Soviet bread lines, have been like this since time immemorial (although they're better in some states) and will always be this way.  We must deal with the agency if we want to drive.  There are no customers that must be satisfied because we have no other choice.

Money in the Toilet — The Billion Dollar Cost of Public Bathrooms.  The fastest rising item in the country isn't gold or bitcoin, it's the cost of a public bathroom.  In '08, a San Francisco Weekly article fumed that a park restroom in Golden Gate Park was costing taxpayers $531,219.  Fast forward, a decade later the cost of a park restroom in the Golden Gate Boathouse had ballooned to $2 million or $4,700 per square foot.  The modern bathroom had a third All-Gender option that the '08 bathroom didn't.  But adding a non-gender shouldn't have quadrupled the price.  Inflation would have kept the cost well below a million.  Why did a 15-foot by 28-foot bathroom cost millions?  Part of the answer may be that San Fran privileges minority businesses and requires that 15% of work hours be carried out by "disadvantaged" workers.

As Trump vows to shut the border to illegals, Gavin Newsom makes a suspicious trip to El Salvador.  [Scroll down]  One can just picture how this trip looks from the Salvadoran side of things.  Here come Big Daddy, the California governor, the gringo who's already laid out a banquet of goodies for Salvadorans in California, from free health care to free education, to sanctuary state protections to enable illegals to work, coming there supposedly to find out how he can offer...even more goodies to Salvador's uneducated lower middle classes.  The idea is to get even more of them to come over.  Big Daddy comes down with the Santa sack full of goodies.

California executes a 'moratorium' on the death penalty.  During the past eight years, California voters have twice reiterated their support for the death penalty by defeating propositions seeking to overturn it.  If anyone was confused about Californians' understanding of the death penalty representing an important part of justice, in 2016 they even passed a proposition calling for the speeding up of executions by shortening the decades-long appeals process.  In other words, Californians want the death penalty, and they want to it happen faster and more often.

Gavin Newsom Doesn't Care about Crime Victims.  On March 13, California governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order granting a reprieve to all 737 convicted murderers awaiting execution in the Golden State. [...] All 737 reprieved death-row inmates had been found guilty of murder by a jury of their peers, beyond any reasonable doubt.  The convicted murderers had also exhausted all the possibilities of the appeal process, which in the California criminal justice system is quite extensive.  Gavin Newsom is not an attorney and not a judge.  The governor did not attend the trials and produced no new exculpatory evidence in any of the cases.  Those awaiting execution include Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and killed twelve-year-old Polly Klaas, and "Tool Box Killer" Lawrence Bittaker, who raped and killed five teen girls in 1979 after torturing them with pliers and screwdrivers.

Killing the Death Penalty via Edict.  To my conservative friends who like when chief executives push the envelope on "national emergencies" and executive orders, I offer you California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  Last week, he grabbed national headlines for his decision to grant reprieves to all 737 prisoners on California's death row based on his own personal feelings: [...] Governors have the power to pardon people and give reprieves.  But just as advocates for limited government believe that presidents should let Congress take the lead on spending matters, they too should prefer that governors stick to the spirit and not just the letter of the law.  Such reprieves are meant for particular cases — not as a means to change public policy.

California Drug Legalization Leads to Political Corruption.  California is going full narcosocialist and there's a price to pay for that.  The price is deeper corruption and criminality. [...] While part of the LA Times story tilt claims that this is about "black market" drug dealers, most of these examples appear to involve those that were legal or trying to go legal.  But that takes us to the baffling difference between a black market drug dealer and a legal drug dealer is that the latter is paying off the government.  Now we have drug businesses getting in trouble for paying off government officials in the wrong sort of way.  We want drug dealers to legalize by legally paying off the government.

Gov. Newsom to order halt to California's death penalty.  Gov. Gavin Newsom is suspending the death penalty in California, calling it discriminatory and immoral, and is granting reprieves to the 737 condemned inmates on the nation's largest Death Row.  "I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people," Newsom said in a statement accompanying an executive order, to be issued Wednesday [3/13/2019], declaring a moratorium on capital punishment in the state.  "The death penalty is inconsistent with our bedrock values and strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Californian."

California's Rendezvous With Reality.  Californians brag that their state is the world's fifth-largest economy.  They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods.  Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic and technological dominance of West Coast culture.  Californians also see their progressive, one-party state as a neo-socialist model for a nation moving hard to the left.

California's Gov. Newsom inherits a steaming load of scandal from Jerry Brown.  California's Gov. Gavin Newsom has inherited a steaming load of financial scandals from Jerry Brown regarding high-speed rail and the Oroville Dam.  Gavin Newsom is the first Democrat California governor to follow a sitting Democrat governor in over a century.  Newsom campaigned as an ally of Gov. Jerry Brown by trumpeting how Brown eight years earlier had overcome a crisis projected by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office to included a $6.4-billion current budget deficit, a $19-billion deficit for the following year, and another five years of $20-billion-plus deficits.

North Carolina vote fraud case shows just why Congress should ban ballot-harvesting nationwide.  [Scroll down]  Sure enough, in California, this same ballot-harvesting that was illegally practiced in North Carolina is completely legal and completely responsible for deep-red Orange County suddenly going blue in the last congressional election.  Candidate after candidate who had been leading in the 2018 midterm count all of a sudden saw those large leads reversed, with all of them shifting to the Democratic side, with leftists taking all the congressional slots.

Gov. Gavin Newsom touts proposed $25 million in California aid to asylum seekers.  Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials in San Diego on Thursday [1/31/2019] touted a proposed $25 million in state funding to address a growing humanitarian crisis involving migrant families seeking asylum in the U.S. and blamed the Trump administration for manufacturing a problem at the border.  With prodding from San Diego lawmakers, Newsom has called for spending $20 million over three years to aid local nonprofits and community organizations that provide services to asylum-seeking migrant families.

The Editor says...
President Trump did not "manufacture" the problem of uncontrolled illegal immigration across the Mexican border.  That problem has existed for decades, but in recent years has been exacerbated by the Democrats, who offer numerous incentives for immigrants.

See more under Welfare programs attract illegal aliens and other immigrants.

California's Gavin Newsom Proposes Tax on Drinking Water in First Budget.  California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed his first budget for the state on Friday [1/11/2019], and it includes a tax on drinking water.  The budget, titled "California for All," declares drinking water a "fundamental right," and adds:  "The Budget includes short-term measures to bring immediate relief to communities without safe drinking water and also proposes an ongoing sustainable funding source to address this problem into the future."

The Editor says...
Wait a minute.  If drinking water is a "fundamental right," why should it be taxed?  Indeed, why does your city government send you a utility bill and charge you for water, if it's a right?  No, in reality, food and water and housing and medicine are not "fundamental rights," regardless of the number of politicians who say they are.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom seeks to add more illegal immigrants to state health care plan.  Newly sworn-in California Gov. Gavin Newsom, vowing to provide "sanctuary to all who seek it," has proposed extending state health care coverage to more illegal immigrants living within the Golden State's borders.  Hours after assuming office, Mr. Newsom released sweeping health care proposals to raise the age limit for illegal aliens covered by Medi-Cal from 19 to 26, which would make California "the first state in the nation to cover young undocumented adults through a state Medicaid program," according to a Monday [1/7/2019] release from the governor's office.

Cpl. Singh Was Laid to Rest.  Guess Which Politicians Were Conveniently Absent.  Just when we thought politicians in California couldn't get any more horrible, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom proved us wrong.  Apparently the reason he was absent from Cpl.  Singh's funeral yesterday was because he was too busy watching the Sacramento Kings play basketball.

Jerry Brown "Legacy": Highest Poverty in Nation, Highest Homelessness/Worst Affordable Housing.  We are a few days away from the end of the Brown Administration.  His legacy is clear, if you listen to the Democrats.  They claim California has the most poverty in the nation — true.  We have a shortage of homes — true.  We have a massive homelessness problem — true.  All of this has become his legacy.  Add to this the $200 billion train boondoggle, his cutting off water for farmers and the worst roads and freeways in the nation — California is a Third world State.

Fighting Trump and Freedom, California Creates 1,000 New 2018 Laws.  That the Land of Fruits and Nuts is legislating from soup to nuts is significant because, while often forgotten, a law generally is a removal of a freedom.  After all, laws virtually always state that there's something we must or mustn't do.  Thus, the more laws we have, the less free we are from governmental control.  And given that governments continually enact more laws but hardly ever rescind any, this means that every year we're progressively less free.  So what liberties were robbed in California this time around?

The Grapes of Wrath — in Reverse.  [I]n the last decade and a half, about 6 million Californians over the age of 25 left the state; in the last 30 years, perhaps 10 million fled.  There are no accurate statistics on the political ideologies of the departed or even their actual numbers.  But most studies suggest that the reasons for radical outmigration were quality-of-life complaints, soaring home prices and taxes, poor state services, failing infrastructure and schools, and rising crime. [...] According to one study, at least 13,000 companies fled the state over the last decade.

Democrats: A plague on the nation.  Governor Brown has effectively destroyed California, now benighted by rampant homelessness and the crime that accompanies a population of illiterate, drug-addicted, gang-affiliated, criminally inclined persons adrift on our streets.  And now another young officer has been killed by an illegal alien thanks to the left's obsession with protecting the throngs of migrants crossing the border into the U.S.  It should be obvious to every American by now that our progressive left does not have the best interest of Americans at heart.

California Spends $100 Million to Maximize Census Cash Jackpot.  California is spending over $100 million preparing for the 2020 Census to maintain its top spot to maximize the federal population spending jackpot.  The key for California to keep growing its top spot in state and local government spending that hit $587.9 billion this year is maximizing its number of legal and illegal residents who currently justify $107.5 billion in direct federal transfers and about $376 billion of indirect transfers to pay for federal salaries, income support, student financial aid, U.C. grants, corporate subsidies, and a slew of other items.  California has allocated $100.3 million for "outreach" this year to maximize the number of state residents to be counted in the 2020 U.S. Census.  Only 10 other states have allocated any cash for "outreach."  California's funding is over 27 times the $2.3 million by number-two Georgia and 66 times the $1.5 million funded by number-three Illinois.

San Francisco mayor trying to get brother, a convicted killer, out of lockup 20 years early.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed sent a letter to departing Gov. Jerry Brown in late October asking him to "consider leniency" and commute the sentence of her older brother, who has served nearly two decades of a 44-year sentence on a manslaughter conviction, according to reports.  The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that the mayor has joined other members of her family in requesting an early release from prison for Napoleon Brown, who struggled with drugs from a young age.

Jerry Brown's 'Twin Tunnels' Project on Hold.  The project, officially called the California Waterfix, aims to divert water from the Sacramento River underneath the California Delta to storage facilities further south, from which water can be pumped to southern California.  The "twin tunnels" were to be Brown's major infrastructure legacy, in addition to the California High-Speed Rail system, which faces significant financial and engineering hurdles.  But it faced intense local opposition from the communities in the Delta, who faced considerable disruption to their lives.  The project was also opposed by many environmental groups, and farming groups that were meant to benefit — at a price — showed lukewarm support.

DA Gascón carried guns on planes, then whistle-blower was fired, suit says.  A former senior investigator says he was fired for blowing the whistle on his boss, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who he alleged carried a gun while flying — in violation of federal law.  Gascón reacted with a "pattern of retaliation and harassment" that culminated in the termination of senior investigator Henry G. McKenzie on Oct. 30, 2017, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Study: More than 7-in-10 California Immigrant Households Are on Welfare.  More than 7-in-10 households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.  The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.  Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.

After California's ballot harvest:  What is to be done?  The ballot-harvesting issue, which gave Democrats an absolute monopoly of power in even Orange County, signals a sort of the bottom dropping out in California.  Now that Democrats have discovered they can flip any race based on selective collections of mail-in ballots by Democratic door-knockers from voters who didn't ask for them, their one-party state of the past 20 years in California has gotten even more entrenched in power.  One gets the sense that the landscape has changed and what the voters want no longer matters.  Voting is no longer about you, or what you think or the decisions you make, it's now all about that unasked-for piece of paper on the kitchen table known as a ballot and how Democrats can get their hands on it.  You are incidental.  The creepy Democratic machine, with its 1980s PRI-style politics, rigged this state this way, and in so doing would make Hugo Chávez or Daniel Ortega envious.  PRI Mexico was, after all, once called "the perfect dictatorship."  Now the title has moved on to California.  It amounts to stolen democracy, which ultimately cries out for revolution.

The Cloward-Piven strategy:  Overload the system to intentionally break it.
California Democrats plan to extend Medicaid to illegal immigrants.  State Assembly member Joaquin Arambula, a Democrat and a doctor, announced the plans Monday [12/3/2018] as the legislature convened at the state capitol, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Should the bill advance, California would become the first state to extend Medicaid coverage regardless of immigration status.  State projections for last year's bill found that 1.8 million people in California are uninsured and reside there illegally; roughly 1.2 million would qualify for Medi-Cal, the name of the state's Medicaid program.

Trump:  The Last President?  The Governor isn't the Governor of California, especially when he won in a 57% to 43% victory.  The Governor is the Governor of the Left, and will represent the Left, not the electorate in general.  The swing vote, which has moderated elections nationally is absent in California.  The swing vote means that the most uninterested people have the levers of power.  That category of people simply does not exist in California.  Party leader?  Sure.  Governor?  Well, in name only.  In reality, the recently elected Governor is the Democratic Party leader.

Pelosi tells audience, 'San Francisco values, that's what we're about'.  Has Nancy Pelosi joined the GOP team anxious to scare voters away from voting for the donkey party?  The pejorative use of the expression "San Francisco values," to indicate a loss of decency, tradition, and sanity, has at least two decades of history, and arguably almost three and a half, since Jeanne Kirkpatrick denounced "San Francisco Democrats" at the 1984 Republican Convention.  Today, San Francisco is the exemplar of a city that has driven out the middle class and features the worst-looking income gap between rich and poor.  San Francisco's poor languish in its streets in the worst display of the degradation of poverty this side of Calcutta.  San Francisco's homelessness, its open drug use, and the spread of human feces on the sidewalks there have made being a pedestrian there a health risk.

Gavin Newsom Helped Mother's Assisted Suicide.  A recent article in the New Yorker extolling the (probable) next Governor of California reveals that Gavin Newsom helped his mother commit assisted suicide. [...] When I first read the piece, I assumed she didn't die in California because assisted suicide was a felony there in 2002, and Newsom was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors sworn to uphold the law.  Wrong.  She died in San Francisco.

California city council candidate is caught dropping off his wheelchair-bound mom, 86, so she can panhandle.  A nonpartisan candidate for city council in Southern California has been accused of dropping off his elderly, wheelchair-bound mother to panhandle for the last decade, even though they're not homeless.  David Chey has been caught on camera leaving Soon Chey, 86, in her wheelchair in the downtown district of Laguna Beach with a sign that reads, 'please, help me.'  'They have a brand new car, live in a condo in Irvine, yet beg for our help,' local business owner Heidi Miller told DailyMail.com.

California Ranks as Poorest State, One of the Worst for Income Inequality.  Despite all the wealth in the state and the Democrat control of state government, California actually ranks as the poorest state in the country after costs of living are factored in.  A whopping 19 percent of Californians live below the poverty line.  While California represents just 12 percent of the nation's population, Californians represent a third of all Americans on welfare.  The average monthly cost of rent in the state is 43 percent higher than the national average.  Nearly a third of Californians spend more than half of their earnings on housing.  The situation is made worse by skyrocketing energy costs.  "Residents who can afford rent or a mortgage are on the hook for electricity rates burdened by green initiatives and regulation that grew 500 percent faster than the national average from 2011 to 2017."

San Francisco to Allow Illegal Aliens to Vote.  In July, the Department of Elections issued voter registration forms to illegal aliens to vote for members of the San Francisco Board of Education in the 2018 election, reported ABC7 News.  Now that the illegals are registered and ready, they will be voting in November.

The piously politically correct blue state that bankrolls Putin.  CalPERS, the $326-billion California state pension fund for some two million state cops, firefighters, and bureaucrats, has never been shy about its trumpeting its political correctness.  It's positively famous for its pullouts of tobacco investments, Turkey investments, apartheid South Africa investments, and coal investments, and so famous that you probably would never have heard of the fund were it not for its pullouts.  It's not that they are that awful in themselves — they often try to push back on calls to divest.  But they've always been seen by leftists as a tool to oppose President Trump.  So in general, name the lefty cause, and out they pull.  Well, with one little exception:  Putin's Russia.  On that one, they've shelled out nearly half a billion dollars to the Russian government (not companies, but the government) through its bond buys.  And hey, they're one of Russia's top foreign investors, top ten among foreigners.

Rich San Francisco businesses could face homelessness tax.  San Francisco has come to be known around the world as a place for aggressive panhandling, open-air drug use and sprawling tent camps, the dirt and despair all the more remarkable for the city's immense wealth.

Jerry Brown's get-out-of-jail-free card in California.  Here's a story that's making the news in San Diego as a local district attorney protests, but it's actually a state problem that goes back to the usual lefty suspects, starting with Gov. Jerry Brown.  Thousands of murder convictions are likely to be vacated due to a change in state law that effectively says that if you were the guy sitting in the shotgun seat of the car as the other guy pulled the trigger, you get off scot-free — you're no longer convicted of murder, too.  The County of San Diego alone is set to release about 150 such charmers onto the streets, and the other 57 counties are going to have to do similar.  All told, about 800 of them are reportedly going to get let out.

San Francisco:  Land of the Living Dead.  Effectively, there's nothing in this news story that you don't know already.  Anyone who has followed the news and who reads this blog knows full well that downtown San Francisco has been given over to drug addicts and the homeless.  In the most liberal blue city in America, Nancy Pelosi's home town, you cannot walk the streets in many neighborhoods.  What's news is the place it appeared:  The New York Times.  The paper of record sent a reporter and a photographer out to document the nightmare that is the streets of San Francisco.  They did not pull any punches.  They told it like it is.

The One-Party State.  [Scroll down]  Dan Walters, a longtime political journalist in Sacramento, will tell you it was the end of the Cold War that really brought about Democratic dominance.  He points to the decline of the defense and aerospace industries, major employers in Southern California, which prompted an exodus of Republican voters — middle-class, white, and suburban — to cheaper states.  Los Angeles County regularly went for the GOP in elections.  It's simple arithmetic, says Walters.  When the GOP lost Los Angeles, it turned California over completely to the Democrats.  Today, the state is a liberal's dream.  It's multicultural.  It's largely urbanized.  It is socially and environmentally progressive.  People here frequently boast, without a trace of smugness, that if you want to see America in 10 years, look at California.

Weak passwords banned in California from 2020.  Default passwords such as "admin" and "password" will be illegal for electronics firms to use in California from 2020.  The state has passed a law that sets higher security standards for net-connected devices made or sold in the region.  It demands that each gadget be given a unique password when it is made.

California's Socialist Oligarchy:  Making the State Unaffordable.  Nowhere are the consequences of California's oligarchical socialism more evident than in the cost of housing.  State legislation has made it nearly impossible for developers to construct new housing outside the so-called "urban growth boundary."  Instead, development is redirected into the footprint of existing urban areas.  While there is a natural tendency as population increases to see higher density redevelopment in urban cores, by restricting outward expansion of urban areas, the value of the limited remaining eligible land becomes artificially inflated.  But established landowners and large development firms benefit from these restrictions.  They are able to withstand years, if not decades, of expensive permitting delays and endless litigation.  They are able to afford millions in permit fees because these costs are offset by their ability to sell residence units — from high-rise condos to detached single family dwellings — at prices far beyond what they would cost in a normal market.  These billionaire business interests get richer, while ordinary Californians who want to own or develop land cannot afford to go through the permit process.

The One-Party State.  The state [of California] has the most liberal environmental laws and regulations in the country, which hamper the development of affordable housing.  A San Francisco Chronicle investigation in 2017 showed rising housing costs driving lower-income Californians out of their homes and into the streets.  Homelessness has skyrocketed in both the cities and the rural areas of the state.  While 12 percent of the U.S. population is in California, 25 percent of the country's homeless live there.  From Sacramento to San Diego, you can't help but notice the multitudes of people living on the street.  Look at the housing shortage and homelessness, the decline of manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs, and the growth of a tech economy that rewards disruption over predictability, and you see why some are suspicious of the California way.

California will require women on corporate boards under bill signed by Brown.  California became the first state in the country to require that women be included on companies' boards of directors, as Gov. Jerry Brown literally sent a message to Washington on Sunday [9/30/2018] in signing legislation that corporate associations opposed as unconstitutional.  Brown signed SB826 into law after it passed the Assembly and the Senate last month.  The bill mandates that all publicly traded California companies have at least one woman on their boards by the end of 2019.

The Editor says...
Notice how much of California's official business is transacted on Sundays.

California Passes Law Allowing 12-Year-Olds To Get Tax-Paid Transgender Treatments.  You have to be 16 obtain a driver's license in California, 18 to buy a rifle, engage in consensual sex, or get married without parental consent, and 21 to buy a handgun, alcohol, or marijuana.  But in the nation's most progressive state, you only need to be 12 years old to privately seek and consent to treatment for gender transitioning.

America, don't be like California.  Once again, California has the highest poverty rate in America.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent report, the Golden State's Supplemental Poverty Measure averaged 19 percent between 2015 and 2017.  Nationwide, poverty dropped in 2017 from 14.7 percent to 14.1 percent, but California's rate was proportionately 35 percent higher than the national average.  In spite of (or perhaps to divert attention from) its high poverty rate, California's left-wing political class continues its unrelenting sermonizing to the rest of us.

California DMV Gives Illegal Voters a Surge.  Last week California's Department of Motor Vehicles sent 23,000 "erroneous" voter registrations to the office of Secretary of State Alex Padilla, who maintains the list of registered voters.  The DMV blamed it technical errors and said none of the erroneous registrations involved undocumented immigrants.  Padilla was "extremely disappointed and deeply frustrated" and the DMV assured him it wouldn't happen again.  Legitimate voters have good reason to believe Padilla was not disappointed but delighted.  The odds are strong that illegals make up most if not all of the newly registered voters.  The registrations of illegals will be happening again, in greater numbers, as the November election approaches.  The day after the 23,000 registrations made news, it emerged that from late April to early August, the DMV registered 182,000 "new voters," with the largest number, 112,000, choosing "no party."  Neither the DMV nor Padilla would explain the numbers but the trend is evident and all by design.

San Fran Green Lights Illegals To Vote.  Our country has twisted itself in knots over the possibility of foreigners (ie:  Russia) having unduly influenced our elections (even though recounts and investigations have confirmed that the outcome was NOT changed by foreign interference).  You'd think that would be reminder enough as to just how precious the individual value of a lawful voter is, and how it must be safeguarded against anything that would erode the value of that one vote.

California moves toward corporate gender quotas, ignoring Norway's failure.  Supporters of California's move toward the nation's first-ever corporate gender quotas have insisted the bill will be good for business, but that's not what happened in Norway.  After the Norwegian Parliament required that women make up 40 percent of publicly traded corporate boards in 2006, stock prices plunged and firm values dropped as boards added less experienced female directors, while the numbers of public firms decreased and private companies increased.  "The quota led to younger and less experienced boards, increases in leverage and acquisitions, and deterioration in operating performance, consistent with less capable boards," said the 2012 paper by USC professor Kenneth R. Ahern and University of Michigan professor Amy K. Dittmar.

Trump on the Ground.  For months, I've been driving on different routes through the vast San Joaquin Valley back and forth from the California coast — and through the usually economically depressed small towns on and near the Highway 99 corridor through the Central Valley.  The poverty rate in many valley counties is higher than in West Virginia.  It is a world away from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the Stanford or Caltech campus, Malibu, and Pacific Heights.  In an overregulated, overtaxed state of open borders and sanctuary cities, with the nation's near highest electricity and gasoline prices, and facing a looming state and local pension unfunded liability of well over $300 billion, one might not expect much of an uptick from the supposed Trump economic revival.  California's calcified strategy, after all, is that global lucre pouring into coastal high-tech and finance will more than balance out the economic damage wrought by state government.  Sacramento is a sort of court jester to Menlo Park.

A last-ditch effort to pull California back from the brink.  I fully understand the hatred and contempt many, if not most, conservatives feel toward California.  A state blessed with so many advantages has surrendered to left-wing madness and, worst of all, pretends it has something to teach the rest of America.  In the thirty-some years I have lived here, California has gone from Reagan Country to thrusting people on the order of Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom onto the national stage.  Of the two, Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco (and former husband of Kimberly Guilfoyle, late of Fox News and currently rumored to be an intimate friend of Donald Trump, Jr.), is in a position to do more harm in the immediate future, as he is running for governor of California on a platform of state-paid universal health care, including for illegal aliens who manage to cross the state border, from Mexico or Nevada or Oregon.

California, Poverty Capital.  According to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure — which accounts for the cost of housing, food, utilities, and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income — nearly one out of four Californians is poor.  Given robust job growth in the state and the prosperity generated by several industries, especially the supercharged tech sector, the question arises as to why California has so many poor people, especially when the state's per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5 percent, compared with 6.27 percent).  It's not as if California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty.  Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause, for decades now.

Why California's Gavin Newsom campaigns for free health care for illegals.  Gavin Newsom, leading candidate for governor of California, and a Democrat, has a new goodie on offer:  free health care for the state's three million illegals.  The former mayor of San Francisco said so in this podcast, explaining that there is no reason not to "wait around" to extend Medi-Cal coverage to anyone who asks, regardless of immigration status.

California craziness:  Congress may have to stop state from giving 'free' health care to illegal immigrants.  California has escalating crime, cities teaming with homeless people, clogged and crumbling roads, massive unpaid bills, some of America's highest taxes, and some of its worst public school systems.  So what's the plan by Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Party's candidate for governor, to improve the situation?  On Tuesday he suggested giving free health care to illegal immigrants.  Speaking on a left-wing podcast, the former mayor of San Francisco said:  "I did universal health care when I was mayor, fully implemented, regardless of pre-existing condition, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status.  I'd like to see that extended to the rest of the state.  San Francisco is the only universal health-care plan for all undocumented residents in America."

Gavin Newsom:  I'm Bringing Single Payer To Everyone In California, Regardless Of Immigration Status.  Gavin Newsom is currently running for Governor in California and, barring something dramatic, he is going to win.  So when he says he plans to bring single payer to California as Governor, there's a very good chance he'll get his shot.  Today, Newsom appeared on the Pod Save America podcast where he was asked about his health care plans.  Newsom made clear he wants a single paper system that is for everyone in the state regardless of immigration status.  "I'd like to see if we can control our own destiny," Newsom said.  He continued, "I'm not naive about it.  I did universal health care when I was Mayor [of San Francisco], fully implemented regardless of pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status.

Dem Gubernatorial Candidate:  Gov't Should Pay for Universal Health Care for Illegal Immigrants.  Gavin Newsom, Democratic candidate for governor of California, said on liberal podcast "Pod Save America" that the state government should pay for universal health care for illegal immigrants.  In the episode, released Tuesday, the candidate and current lieutenant governor of California touted his involvement in San Francisco having "the only universal health care plan for all undocumented residents in America."  "I did universal health care when I was mayor — fully implemented, regardless of pre-existing condition, ability to pay, and regardless of your immigration status.  San Francisco is the only universal health care plan for all undocumented residents in America.  Very proud of that," Newsom said.  "I'd like to see that extended to the rest of the state."

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose.  [Scroll down]  And, of course, there's virtually no area of our lives — outside our sexual behavior and reproductive "choices" — that should be free from state interference.  It should be no surprise, then, that the libertarian Cato Institute's latest "Freedom in the 50 States" report finds California nearly at the bottom, in 48th place.  New York and Hawaii were worse, but California has been remarkably consistent in its ranking over the past 16 years.  Whenever there's some think tank report comparing the states for some bad thing, I always start at the bottom to find my home state.  Not surprisingly, we have the highest taxes in the country, even with 1978's Proposition 13 putting the kibosh on uncontrolled property-tax hikes.  We have a high level of public debt, [of] course.  As Cato points out, the state actually has one of the lowest percentages of government employees (11.2 percent of private employment).  But the reason is simple:  California pays its employees such astoundingly high pay and benefit packages that it simply can't afford to hire any more of them.

California Gov. Jerry Brown Sets Record of 1,018 Pardons in 8 Years.  California Gov. Jerry Brown used his executive powers to issue 36 gubernatorial pardons on Friday, to hit a record of 1,018 pardons in eight years in office.  Although 22 of those were for murder and 13 for attempted murder or manslaughter, Brown said each of the pardons he provided went to individuals that had had "demonstrated exemplary behavior" and lived "productive and law-abiding lives" following their convictions and time served in prison, according to the Fresno Bee.

California Initiative Filed to End Proposition 13 Protections for Commercial Properties.  Funded by Silicon Valley deep pockets — including the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, the personal charity of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan; a coalition of teachers unions; the League of Women Voters; affordable housing advocates; and other "social justice warriors" organized as "Schools and Communities First," — the activists submitted the signatures to the Secretary of State on August 14 to place an initiative on the 2020 ballot to increase California commercial property tax revenue by $11 billion.

Milk Or Water:  California Bill Aims To Curb Kids' Soda Drinking At Restaurants.  A new state bill would give kids two options with their meals at restaurants — water or milk.  Senate Bill 1192 would make water or milk the default drink for kids meals in a push to reduce obesity and access to sugary drinks for children.  The bill passed the Assembly and is on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk.  If he signs it, California would be the first state in the nation to have such a law.

A Tale of Three Cities.  San Francisco is being overrun with the homeless and illegal aliens due to its sanctuary city status and virtue-signaling leadership.  The streets are littered with human feces, hypodermic needles, and syringes, turning the once beautiful "City by the Bay" into a cesspool.  What's the response of San Francisco leaders?  Banning plastic straws.

California lawmakers grill DMV official over ballooning wait times.  The leader of the state Department of Motor Vehicles apologized on Tuesday for a recent steep increase in hours-long wait times at the agency's locations across California, as complaints over excessive delays sparked new scrutiny from legislators.  "The wait times you are experiencing are not what we ever want our customers to go through," said DMV Director Jean Shiomoto, who testified at an Assembly hearing convened to address the issue following months of public frustration.

Secret DMV office serves lawmakers, Capitol staffers.  In California, long lines are a fact of life at Department of Motor Vehicles offices across the state, but for California lawmakers and their legislative staffers, there's an alternative.  KCRA has learned of a DMV office that is not open to the public.  It's located inside the Legislative Office Building on N Street, adjacent to the state Capitol.

The Mask Slips In Santa Barbara.  A little noticed detail in Santa Barbara's recent drive to criminalize plastic straws, which culminated in the Santa Barbara city council taking testimony from a nine-year-old about the planetary menace, has come to light in recent days.  During that council session, councilman Jesse Dominguez said the following in response to citizens who asked "what's next?":  "Unfortunately, common sense is just not common.  We have to regulate every aspect of people's lives."  Take that one in for a moment, for it expresses the core impulse of liberalism today.

'We Have to Regulate Every Aspect of People's Lives'.  A Santa Barbara city councilman inadvertently let slip the primary purpose of progressivism in 21st century America.  The city recently criminalized the use of plastic straws.  Speaking to that issue, Councilman Jesse Dominguez said, "Unfortunately, common sense is just not common.  We have to regulate every aspect of people's lives."  Got that?  "We" are smarter than you and know what's best for you better than you do.  Perhaps realizing that his comment revealed a fundamental truth of progressive thought, Dominguez tried to walk back his gaffe: [...]

California Wants to Reinvent the Power Grid.  So What Could Go Wrong?  Two decades ago, when California deregulated the delivery of electric power, lawmakers, regulators and even some environmentalists hailed the decision as a way to lower consumers' bills.  The strategy proved disastrous.  The plan resulted in an energy crisis that sent power bills soaring, prompted billions in penalties against utilities and banks for manipulating the new electricity market, and led Congress to enact laws to help prevent it all from happening again.  Now the state's leaders have a new proposal for an energy makeover, this time to create a single authority to manage the electric grid for most or all of the West.  This plan, too, promises to cut costs for consumers — by as much as $1.5 billion a year — while helping to bolster use of carbon-free power sources.

California's Tax War On Business Owners — Part 1.  In the early 1990s, the U.S. economy was hit by a triple whammy:  1) the Savings & Loan Crisis, 2) high oil prices as the result of the first Gulf War, and 3) a good-sized recession.  Following that recession, the U.S. economy experienced slow growth.  So, recognizing that middle market companies are the primary source of economic growth, Congress amended the Internal Revenue Code to incentivize the creation of new companies — "mainstreet" companies and lower middle market companies.  Subject to certain restrictions, upon sale of the company, founding owners would be able to exclude up to a certain amount of gain.  With California's tax code "conforming" to the Internal Revenue Code, the same pro-growth incentive would have been available on a business owner's California income tax return.  But, given the title of this article, it couldn't be that simple — and it's not.

San Francisco:  The City of Bans.  Who would have guessed that cafeterias would even be a public-policy issue?  I've worked at companies with them and without them.  But I would have found it more likely for lefties to require such things rather than prohibit them.  Many workers, even in well-paid industries where such cafeterias are common, struggle financially given the high cost of living in the Bay Area.  Here's a chance for the city to help assure that they get a healthy meal while they work those long hours doing whatever IT people do.  What did I miss?  "The supervisors introduced the legislation because they say tech companies' employees are hurting local restaurants by taking advantage of the perk and eating in-house, rather than patronizing neighborhood eating establishments," reported Smart Cities Dive.

'Calexit' supporters revamp campaign with plan to convert half of California into 'autonomous Native American nation'.  Organizers of a long-running initiative to secure California's secession from the United States now say they want to give away nearly half of the state, including all of its federal land, to form an "autonomous Native American nation."  "Calexit," as the proposal for California's secession is known, was given the green light by the state government earlier this year to begin collecting signatures to place the measure on the November ballot.  Advocates had until mid-October to gather 365,880 signatures of registered voters to put it up for a statewide vote.

California Is Not as Big or Blue As You Think.  The National Popular Vote plan is an interstate compact in which the compacting states agree to award their electoral votes to the person who gets the most votes in all 50 states.  It is based on Art. I, Sec. 2 of the Constitution which grants state legislatures the plenary (and exclusive) power to award electors, and the founders' expectation that states would use that power to maximize their influence in the selection of the president.  The first thing I hear, when the proposal is presented, is that "California is so big, it will run the country" (mainly because I am from California) if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact takes effect.  My conservative friends use California as an example of "what not to do" when it comes to public policy, and so, if California is going to run the country under the state statutes implementing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, then, they say, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is dangerous.

California's 'foreclosure capital' to give away $500 a month to residents in experimental welfare program.  A California city is set to become the first in the nation to embark on an experiment of Universal Basic Income, paying 100 residents $500 a month without any conditions.  The program's purpose is to eventually ensure that no one in Stockton, with a population of 300,000, lives in poverty.  The receivers of the cash will be able to spend the money on anything they want without any strings attached.  It will launch by 2019 and the 100 fortunate residents will receive the cash for a full 18 months as part of its testing phase before deciding whether to roll it out across Stockton.

Cost of anti-ICE protests prompts California county to forgo $3M federal contract.  Citing the cost of managing anti-ICE protests outside one of its facilities, authorities in a Northern California county this week severed a $3 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allowed the federal agency to detain illegal immigrants in one of its cities.  Contra Costa County, across the bay from San Francisco, thus became the second county in the region this month to cut ties with ICE, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  The county's West County Detention Facility, in Richmond, which averaged 200 immigrant detainees a day, had drawn protesters for months.  At a news conference, Sheriff David Livingston suggested the demonstrations played a large role in the contract's termination.

Is California's Democratic Party swinging too far left?  By Nov. 7, Democrats will learn if their left turn steered them to victory or took them off a cliff.  The state party's endorsement of Kevin de León, a self-proclaimed socialist's upset of an establishment Democrat in a New York City congressional primary and talk of abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and enacting single-payer health care show an embrace of progressive politics that heartens liberal activists enraged by conservative policies pursued by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.

California's Pointless Net Neutrality Efforts.  California is moving ahead with some of the most ambitious — and pointless — net neutrality laws in the country that will only make the patchwork laws springing up around the U.S even murkier.  California's bill offers stronger language than the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) rules established under the Obama administration and repealed this spring.  The state legislation not only prevents internet service providers from throttling speeds or blocking websites, but it also bans excessive zero-rating practices of ISPs exempting its own services from data caps while counting the usage of third-party apps against the limits.

California governor signs soda tax ban into law.  California cities and counties are banned from taxing sodas and other sugary drinks for the next 12 years under a bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.  The deal was rushed through the legislature and to the governor's desk on Thursday.  In exchange for the law, the nonalcoholic beverage industry is withdrawing a ballot measure that had been slated for November.  It would have raised the voter threshold to approve local sales tax increases on any item, not just soda taxes, from a majority vote to a supermajority vote.  Signatures were gathered for the ballot through a campaign funded by the beverage industry.

San Francisco: Poster-Child For The Failure Of U.S. Cities' Blue Model.  By any standard, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  So why has it suddenly become an unappealing place to visit and to live? [...] San Francisco proudly calls itself a "progressive" city.  It follows what writer and scholar Walter Russell Mead calls the progressive "Blue Model" of governance.  Yet, the policies it follows — high taxes, inane regulations, petty nanny-state authoritarianism, tolerance for rising lawlessness and disorder on its streets in the name of "compassion" — are the very ones that have driven middle-class and working-class citizens out.  Only the rich and the so-called homeless, who have been welcomed into the city and are a growing issue, can afford to live in the city.

California's Oligarchs and Agitators.  If one were to distill the essence of California's Democratic party into a one-page document, it would be hard to beat a recent mail piece showing the SEIU's candidate endorsements for California's top jobs.  According to its website, the Service Employees International Union Local 1000 (SEIU) "is a united front of 96,000 working people employed by the State of California, making Local 1000 the largest public sector union in California and one of the largest in the country."

Look What California Thinks is an Emergency Bill.  California is a Socialist nightmare with oppressive government regulations and high taxes killing the middle class.  Housing is so costly that it's greatly adding to the number of homeless.  The open borders and sanctuary cities policies have allowed killers, perverts, and drug dealers to get protection everywhere in the state.  With all the problems they have, they rushed through a bill that could make you laugh.  According to the Washington Examiner, the oh-so-urgent bill that had to be rushed through bans California cities and counties from taxing sodas and other sugary drinks for 12 years.  Are you surprised that a nanny state banned taxes?  Don't be.  The reason they did it was to keep high taxes on everything else!

Court reinstates California law allowing terminally ill people to end their lives.  The law allows adults to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs if a doctor has determined that they have six months or less to live.

The Editor says...
The writers of this law apparently assume that doctors know everything, which they don't, and that doctors' diagnoses are always right, which they aren't.

California school board votes to name elementary school after illegal immigrant activist/journalist.  At a divisive time for U.S. immigration policies, a California school board has decided to name a new elementary school after an award-winning journalist who disclosed in 2011 that he had been living in the U.S. illegally.

Thefts rise after California reduces criminal penalties.  California voters' decision to reduce penalties for drug and property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting and other theft, researchers reported.

Ridiculous Bay Area housing costs may be reflected in a large drop in births.  A harbinger of the absurdly high cost of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area may be visible in the region's maternity wings.  San Francisco is a city of few children.  You're more likely to see a French bulldog roaming Alamo Square Park than packs of kids frolicking among the Victorians.  The lack of youngsters is indicative of a larger issue in the city:  the absurdly high cost of housing.  According to a new study, when housing prices go up, the birth rate goes down.

Soros push to elect progressive DAs in California fails to attract voters.  New York billionaire George Soros' multimillion-dollar effort to reshape California's criminal justice system by propping up progressive district attorney candidates backfired Tuesday [6/5/2018], with most of his candidates suffering major defeats.  Soros, together with other wealthy liberal donors and groups, spent millions on would-be prosecutors who favor lower incarceration rates, crackdowns on police misconduct and changes in a bail system that they argue discriminates against the poor.  But most of the money went to waste as their candidates lost to more traditional law-and-order prosecutors who didn't share progressive views or have hostile attitudes toward police.

America's King of Poverty.  I know it is not a pleasant topic but let's take just a moment and think about poverty in this country.  Which state do you think has the highest poverty rate?  Must be Mississippi or Alabama or one of those Southern states.  No it ain't.  The state with the highest poverty rate is... wait for it, CALIFORNIA!!!  Yep, our progressive, income redistributing state which accounts for 12% of the country's population is home to about 1 in 3 of all U.S. welfare recipients.  Our poverty rate exceeds 20% when the national average is around 15%.  It is not as though California policy makers have neglected to wage their assault on poverty.  Since 1992 California has spent nearly $1 trillion on benefit programs.  Clearly it hasn't worked.  Then again paying poor people to be poor never does.

The lawless, porn-respecting, MS-13-loving, humorless American left.  [Nancy] Pelosi says the low unemployment is meaningless, the tax cuts are "crumbs," and that consumer confidence is low despite it being at an 18-year high.  They see, hear, think, and propagate what they want to be true, not what is true.  Even California voters made a tiny dent in the left's socialist grasp on the state.  No one expected Republican John Cox to come in second.  All Californians should be horrified by what has become of their once golden state.  Thanks to the polices of Gov. Brown, ex-senator Boxer, Feinstein, Kamala Harris, A.G. Becerra, etc.  (it is a one-party Marxist state), California is a disaster of incalculable proportions, drowning in the homeless, the illegal migrants, traffic, and the highest gas prices in the country.

California Desperately Needs A State Electoral College.  This November a Republican — businessman John Cox — will be one of two gubernatorial candidates in the state of California.  This is significant because of the Golden State's unique "jungle primary" system in which the top-two vote-getters proceed to a run-off election regardless of party.  The "jungle primary" was championed by former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  His reasoning was that eliminating party-identification in a race would give Republican candidates a better chance in a deeply blue state.  Of course, the effect was just the opposite.  With so many blue voters, the controversial system virtually guarantees that the top two candidates are Democrats.  The result has been that many voters not aligned with the Democrat platform have been repeatedly forced to choose between candidates that don't in any way represent them.

California Attorney General adds Oklahoma to growing travel ban list.  I am so old that I remember when California Attorney General Xavier Becerra was fighting against travel bans.  Let's get in the Wayback Machine and turn the dial to March, 2017:  ["]California Atty.  Gen. Xavier Becerra issued a statement Monday [6/4/2018] saying President Trump's decision to rescind a travel ban bogged down in court challenges 'confirms what we all knew:  the travel ban was unconstitutional and un-American.'["]  Becerra, a social justice warrior and leading general in the War on Trump, relies on one of the tried-and-tested tools of progressive activism:  The Double Standard.  This week, he issued his own travel ban on that red bastion of traditional values and implemented a travel ban on Oklahoma.

Oklahoma officials unfazed after landing on California's state-travel blacklist.  Oklahomans weren't exactly crying in their sweet tea after learning that their state has been added to California's blacklist on state-sponsored travel.  "There appears to be more and more Californians sharing our values as we are seeing more Californians move to Oklahoma," said Michael McNutt, spokesman for Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, in a statement.  "With our state's economy being as strong as it is, we won't miss a few Californians traveling on state business showing up in our state."

Prop 68: A Yes Vote is a Reward for Bad Behavior.  This adds about $400 of new debt onto your family's tab, that you'll repay in future taxes plus interest.  It promises to be used to prepare for droughts.  Remember the $5 billion that was supposed to be used on new reservoirs a few years ago?  It wasn't.  The best way to prepare for droughts is to store water from wet years so that we have it in dry ones.

With free health care for illegals, California Democrats hand a big campaign contribution to the GOP's Cox.  For Democrats, succoring illegals and doling out nationalized "free" health care are signature issues.  What better way to enact that agenda than to offer California's abundant illegal aliens free state health care?  That's the scheme they've cooked up, in their relentless push to make California a West Coast imitation of socialist Venezuela.  It's so bad that it's likely to draw California voters toward Republicans.

California rebukes Trump with health care push for immigrants.  California is poised to become the first state in the nation to offer full health coverage to undocumented adults even as the Trump administration intensifies its crackdown by separating families at the border.  The proposal — which would build on Gov. Jerry Brown's 2015 decision to extend health coverage to all children, regardless of immigration status — is one of the most daring examples yet of blue-state Democrats thumbing their nose at President Donald Trump as they pursue diametrically opposed policies, whether on immigration, climate change, legalized marijuana or health care.

California assisted death law overturned in court.  A judge in Riverside County on Tuesday overturned California's controversial assisted death law nearly two years after it took effect, ruling that the Legislature improperly passed the measure during a special session on health care funding.

Report finds cases of STDs reach all-time high in California.  The number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in California reached a record high last year and officials are particularly concerned by a spike in stillbirths due to congenital syphilis, state health authorities said Monday [5/14/2018].

California Bill Seeks to Replace Washington or Lincoln's Birthday Holidays with 'May Day'.  A Democrat California assemblyman introduced a bill seeking to make "May Day," or International Workers Day, a state holiday that would replace President George Washington's or President Abraham Lincoln's birthday.  Assemblyman Miguel Santiago's (D-Los Angeles) legislation calls for consolidating the two presidents' birthdays to be observed on the third Monday in February as a single "President's Day" holiday, but it also calls for the state to observe May 1 as "International Workers Day."

Leftist pol in California proposes scrapping Washington's Birthday in favor of Marxist May Day.  Leftists are notoriously touchy whenever anyone questions their patriotism, and the mask seems to be off with a California assemblyman's proposal to scrap Lincoln's or Washington's birthdays as holidays and replace them with the communist May Day.  Surreal as this sounds, it's true.

California Bill Wants To Drop Washington/Lincoln's Birthday And Replace It With Communist Holiday.  The California Assembly discussed Thursday [5/10/2018] a bill that would replace Abraham Lincoln or George Washington's birthday with International Socialist Workers' Day as a paid holiday.  California Democrat Assemblyman Miguel Santiago introduced Bill AB-3042, which would allow schools to replace Washington Day and Lincoln Day with Presidents' Day and install an "International Workers' Day" — conventionally known as "May Day" — as a second holiday.  "I'm aghast that a bill like this would be able to get through committee," California Republican Assemblyman Matthew Harper said to the Assembly.  "Are we in competition to be the laughing stock of the United States?"

The Editor says...
Yes, such a competition is apparently underway, and California is far ahead, although New York is catching up.

California Demands That Christians 'Evolve'.  There's a new legislative proposal banning all conversion therapy as a fraudulent business practice — by not just mental health providers but anyone.  Since the "independent fact-checkers" are quick to swarm around conservative "misinformation," FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and Snopes have all cried "False" at the idea that this bill is a threat to the sale of the Bible.  They declared that a threat against Bible sales is nowhere in the text of California Assembly Bill 2943, offered by gay assembly member Evan Low.  That is correct ... on its face.  It doesn't mention the Bible.  However, the bill would amend the state Consumer Legal Remedies Act, adding the ability to sue for damages for "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."  Any efforts to change someone's sexual orientation "in a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer are unlawful."  That's more than therapy.  It's any kind of an argument.

California Voters Oppose Arming Teachers to Shoot Back if Under Attack.  By a wide margin California voters support more gun control and oppose arming teachers to shoot back if under attack.  The opposition to armed teachers was uncovered via a Berkeley-IGS Poll and reported by the Sacramento Bee.  The poll found 61 percent of voters opposed arming teachers while only 37 percent supported it.  When viewed by political affiliation, 83 percent of Democrats opposed allowing teachers to be armed to protect themselves and their students, while 75 percent of Republicans supported the idea.

Christians' Munich Moment in California.  Scarcely any moment in American history is as important for America's Christians as the developing crises over religious freedom now happening in California.  The legislature of Sacramento not only is underhandedly banning books opposed to the doctrines of the transgender religion (including the Bible), but also has threatened Christians' rights to free assembly and freedom of speech.  According to its website, Summit Ministries, an organization devoted to advising Christian youths on how to live out a Christian worldview, has canceled its scheduled appearances at Biola University in Los Angeles "due to concerns that California will forbid some of what it teaches."  Summit's concern is real.

How Homeschoolers Defeated California's Push to Take Power From Parents.  They came by the hundreds, one newspaper said — "perhaps thousands."  Some traveled hours, others waited hours, all for the opportunity to protest one of the most outrageous homeschooling bills ever introduced:  California's AB 2756.  Spilling out into crammed hallways and overflow rooms, families poured into the Statehouse just for the opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking out on a measure that would give the government more power over parents who educate at home.  Initially, the bill tried to mandate fire inspections of all homeschooling families (which, not surprisingly, firefighters rejected).  Then the proposal was amended — this time to force homeschooling families to give out private information about the names and address of homeschooling families.

They Keep Telling Us Who They Are.  The California legislature is processing a bill to ban and criminalize all speech, all writing, that goes against "LGBTQ priorities".  Assembly Bill 2943, which has already sailed through two committees, would criminalize "efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions."  It seems to be aimed at practicing psychologists, psychiatrists, or counselors whose clients ask them to help them get rid of unwanted sexual attractions; but the bill is so vaguely written that it could be used against virtually anybody — commentators who dissent from the agenda of Organized Sodomy, parents who teach their children that there are only two "genders," and Biblically orthodox churches where homosexual acting-out is presented as a sin.

Yes, California Is on the Verge of Banning Some Christian Books, Here's How.  Late last week, I wrote an article that caused a bit of a furious reaction in social-justice Twitter.  Activists claimed I was lying, arguing in bad faith, and/or exaggerating the effect of California's AB 2943, a bill that purports to declare "sexual orientation change efforts" to be an "unlawful business practice."  I claimed the bill was so broad that it could even ban books.  And I'm right.  It can and would.

California Bill Would Criminalize Speech, Books Opposing LGBT Agenda.  In a direct assault on the freedoms of speech and religion, the California Assembly on Thursday [4/19/2018] overwhelmingly approved a bill that would, in effect, prohibit the dissemination of traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and transgenderism.  The Assembly voted 50-14 to criminalize "a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer" that consists of "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."  The bill defines "sexual orientation change efforts" as "any practices that seek to change an individual's sexual orientation.  This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex."

New California Bill Would Mean Banning the Bible.  The bill in question is California Assembly Bill 2943.  It would treat as a criminal violation of the state's consumer fraud act "the sale or lease of goods or services to any consumer" that consists of "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."  Don't be misled into thinking that this bill bans only professional counselors from trying to alter same-sex attractions.  It goes well beyond that.

California launches an attack against churches!?  A California State Assembly is gearing up to vote on new bill that could ban the sale of books and punish churches that encourage children to stick to traditional gender norms.  Yes, you read that right — they want to ban books that say things like, "Girls wear dresses" and shutter churches that encourage boys to wear slacks.  Assembly Bill 2943 would make it "unlawful business practice" to engage in "a transaction intended to result or that results in the sale or lease of good of services to any consumer" that engages in "sexual orientation change efforts with an individual."

California's crazy-intrusive politicians can't keep their hands off anything — Next up?  Homeschoolers!  [Scroll down]  The recently introduced Assembly Bills 2756 and 2926 are cases in point.  This first, AB 2756, requires fire marshals to perform in-home inspections of home-schoolers every year, implying that somehow home-educators are less fire-safe than other individuals.  This is, of course, egregiously discriminatory on its face.  But wait.  The second one is even worse!  With AB 2926, Assembly Member Susan Eggman proposes forming an appointed committee to "investigate" homeschooling.  The "instruction" committee would subsequently share its findings so that the California legislature might consider how best to regulate those families.  Because there isn't anything a bureaucrat loves more than a new regulation!  And these particular bureaucrats are already doing such a fine job of regulating our public schools that roughly half of California public school students surveyed reported experiencing bullying.

California Has Highest Poverty Rate In America.  Democrats in California have consistently rejected forcing work requirements on the able-bodied individuals who receive welfare.  Forcing those who can work to look for a job and/or maintain employment before receiving benefits is a policy unpalatable for the democrats who control the state.  Americans in California are mostly jobless and the ones who can find work are actually having their money taken through the highest state income tax in the union to support immigrants, the majority of which are on welfare.

Why do Democrats love tax hikes so much?  California is already seeing residents and businesses flee the state because of its sky-high taxes.  Yet unbelievably, two Democratic state assemblymen have proposed to more than double the state business tax — hiking it from 8.84 percent to 18.84 percent on businesses with annual net incomes of more than $1 million.  This would be the highest state corporate tax rate in America.  The rationale for the giant tax hike?  Denying the companies tax savings from the federal income tax cuts recently signed into law by President Trump.  Soak the rich!  Billions in new tax revenue for the state!  What could possibly be wrong with that?

California's latest contradictions — Welcoming criminals but warning about 'dangerous' coffee.  Imagine a state that passes a law welcoming, embracing and protecting criminals, directly endangering citizens.  Then imagine that same state passing laws, and judges issuing orders that make no sense except to micromanage people's lives in the name of keeping them safe.  A contradiction indeed, and especially ripe in California.  The same week that a number of cities and counties in California sued their own state over the dangerous law making the state a "sanctuary" for illegal alien criminals, a judge issued a ruling to save Californians from themselves and their coffee-drinking habit.

Can America Survive the Latest Plague?  The left survives within a self-made mirage that uses well written speeches containing caring and poetic language and emotional appeals that appear to be on the side of good, protecting the weak and needy in society.  But in fact, the left exploits and manipulates both weak and poor to continue to remain in power.  Consider the infected American cities of Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago, where the left has total control and can implement whatever programs it wants, and look at the result:  perpetual devastation, crime, and misery.  California, a once wealthy and successful state, is now an insolvent laughingstock of the world.

California Democrat Introduces Bill to Force Websites to Use 'Fact-Checkers'.  California State Senator Dr. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) has proposed a bill, the "Online False Information Act," that would require anyone who posts news on the Internet to verify their information through "fact-checkers."  The bill, filed quietly in late February as SB 1424, requires all California-based websites to develop a plan to fight "fake news," to use "fact-checkers," and to warn readers — including via social media — of "false information."

The Editor says...
Why stop at social media?  Why not require the same of broadcasters and newspapers?  Is CNN always 100% accurate?  Is MSNBC never misleading?  Is The New York Times not biased?

The Justice Department Sues California.  On Monday [4/2/2018], the Department of Justice filed suit against the state of California, challenging a state law that purports to prevent the federal government from selling federal lands without the permission of a state agency.  Passed by the California legislature in October 2017, Senate Bill 50 declares that, with limited exceptions, "conveyances of federal public lands in California are void" unless the State Lands Commission is provided a "right of first refusal" or "the right to arrange for the transfer of the federal public land to another entity."  The statute also prohibits purchasers of federal land from recording the deed to the newly acquired property without an accompanying "certificate of compliance" from the state commission and provides for a $5,000 civil penalty for buyers who violate this provision.

'Remarkably stupid': Calif Dems push 'first of its kind' legislation restricting when a cop can use his gun.  Talk about handcuffing police, California Democrats are pushing an unprecedented law to limit when a cop can use his/her weapon.  Following the shooting death of an unarmed black man in Sacramento last month by police, state lawmakers have proposed legislation that raises the threshold for when an officer may open fire, Huffington Post reported.

Trump is right — California is out of control.  When President Trump recently visited California, he came away with the sense that it "is totally out of control." If he arrived at that conclusion from just a single visit, imagine how many who live in the state feel.  To be fair, California itself isn't out of control.  There are many among the 40 million who honorably and honestly go about their daily business.  Outside of Antifa riots and some infantile behavior on college campuses, there are no mobs in the streets; crime is up but not unrestrained; there are multiple efforts brewing to break up the state, but none are threatening violent insurgencies (though there is a Calexit movement that calls for the state to leave the union).  What is out of control is California's ruling class.  Much of its political agenda is hostile to basic human liberty and mocks the limits on what government should be allowed to do in an ostensibly free society.

Is The Golden State Trying To Secede?  There may be hope in California yet.  Despite the state's political descent into madness by illegally declaring itself a "sanctuary state," the resistance it growing.  California has a political and legal fight on its hands, one it can't win.

Is California Governor Jerry Brown Mentally Ill?  The entire country is talking about the collapse of California due to decades of insane liberal policies.  And what is Governor Brown's response?  He implemented hundreds more destructive liberal rules, regulations, and giveaways to illegals.  An article listing the top ten stupidest new California laws includes "Single-User Restrooms," "Controlling Cow Flatulence," "Legalizing Child Prostitution," and "Felons Voting."  Governor Brown signed a new law making California a sanctuary state, doubling down on his bizarre quest to undermine American citizens. [...] Numerous California families have suffered devastating losses of family members killed by illegals with long felony records who have been deported several times and welcomed back with open arms by Brown.  One mom whose son was killed by an illegal with two DUIs and two felonies said Brown should be arrested for treason.

California Appoints Illegal Alien to State Office.  California has its first illegal alien in state office, after Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) appointed Lizbeth Mateo to the California Student Opportunity and Access Program Project Grant Advisory Committee.  Mateo, an attorney, was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. illegally at the age of 14 with her parents, who are also illegal aliens, according to the Sacramento Bee.

San Francisco Is Suffering From The Excesses Of Its Own Liberalism.  I live in a reasonably decent section of San Francisco, and from what I gathered in speaking to many others, everyone has had his or her version of San Franciscan traumas.  San Francisco, one of the richest cities in the country and home to a booming center of intellectual capital, has suffered from the excesses of its own liberalism.  Bloated and inefficient spending, combined with a gross shortage of housing only worsened by rent-control antics and a fat city bureaucracy, has left a city in utter disrepair. [...] The relative "coronation" of Democrats each election on the local and state level has led to a general erosion of performance from the reigning party, which rarely feels the pressure to perform, given the absence of a legitimately competitive rival party.

Is California becoming America's Taiwan?  Taiwan is an independent nation — in its ambitions, its economy, its democracy.  But many countries refuse to recognize it as a separate country, deferring to mainland China, which claims Taiwan as a possession and responds with threats when Taiwan goes its own way.  California shares aspects of this conundrum.  Our state has the ambitions, economy, and democracy of a leading nation.  But it remains very much a part of the United States, which responds with threats when California goes its own way.

California Has Become a Disgraceful State.  At one time, California was the envy of America, attracting people from around the nation to move to a state offering opportunity and the chance to pursue ambitious dreams.  With scenic beauty, the Pacific Ocean coastline, the major cities of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, California recruited entrepreneurs looking for economic growth.  As the home of Hollywood and multitudes of celebrities, California presented an enticing potential to enjoy "lifestyles of the rich and famous."  Today, California has become an economic and cultural disaster.  The state is home to over 114,000 homeless people, one quarter of the total in the nation.  In San Francisco, a health crisis has developed as the homeless have created a mess in the downtown area, littering it with fecal matter, spent needles and piles of trash.

I hope Democrats defend sanctuary cities.  It's bad policy, and it'll cost them.  The Justice Department is now challenging several laws in California that not only interfere with the nation's immigration policies but also place American citizens and law enforcement personnel at risk.  The idea that laws can be ignored and that state and local politicians can affirmatively warn lawbreakers of how to escape apprehension is incredible.  It is indefensible.  We either have laws, or we don't.  And if our elected leaders don't want to uphold the law, they can either change them or resign.  The law is not optional once you have made a pledge to uphold the duties of your office.  Open-border radicals in California and other liberal strongholds must be held accountable.  Of course, liberals would have you believe that they are only interested in protecting the poor, the oppressed and the hardworking who have nowhere else to go.  But in many cases, their actions allow dangerous and sometimes repeat criminals to be shielded from deportation or prison.

Dear California:  Call Me When the Commies Leave.  I don't care what the libs do to the likes of New York, Chicago, or the Pacific Northwest.  Let the progressive loons have cities and states that are already cold, wet and miserable.  But, as I often asked audiences, why should we let them have a place as glorious as California?  Apparently, no one was listening.  When the Democrats gained a super-majority stranglehold on the California legislature, they didn't waste any time letting their far-left freak flag fly.  As soon as some bills were floated, then passed, people began asking me in private and in public interviews about the legislative madness issuing forth from Sacramento.  I thought most of it was boilerplate liberal lunacy that wouldn't stand up to any strict legal scrutiny, which made me shrug it off.

How a list of 23 crimes now dominates California's debate over prison punishment.  California has a long history of mixing crime and punishment with raw politics.  But outrage doesn't always translate into coherent policy, and unintended consequences can spark even more public anger.  With that in mind, consider the last two years of debate over what should, and should not, be a "violent" crime.  That debate begins with the index of crimes in section 667.5 of the California Penal Code.  The list was first enacted in 1976, and has been tinkered with so many times it's hard to say whether it's a fair representation of the most heinous crimes.

California has worst 'quality of life' in US, study says.  Awards season is in full swing in California, and the Golden State just took home a booby prize of its own.  California ranks dead last among U.S. states in quality of life, according to a study by U.S. News, ranking behind New Jersey (49th) and Indiana (48th).  The ignominious honor reflects California's low marks in the sub-categories of environmental quality and social engagement.  The latter category measures voting participation and community bonds.  Californians scored poorly in part because they're simply insufferable, U.S. News suggested.

U.S. News Crowns California Worst State for 'Quality of Life'.  The U.S. News & World Report has named California the worst state for "quality of life," largely due to the high cost of living.  U.S. News ranks the 50 U.S. states each year on eight major social and economic categories to determine an overall competitive ranking.  California received an overall score of 32 in 2018, based on sub-category rankings for a Health Care (11); Education (26); Economy (4); Opportunity (46); Infrastructure (38); Crime and Corrections (28); Fiscal Stability (43); and Quality of Life (50).  U.S. News found California's high cost of living to be its biggest detriment, despite its having the largest economy in the nation.  San Jose and San Francisco both ranked in the 20 top places to live in U.S., but two communities were also in the most expensive for housing.

Pelosi the 'most right-wing'? Only in San Francisco.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is regarded by most Republicans as a far-left liberal.  But a recent column identifies the San Francisco Democrat as the "most right-wing" candidate running in her district this year.  Emily Cadei, a correspondent for the Sacramento Bee, wrote Monday [2/26/2018] that Pelosi — who'll turn 78 on March 26 — will be forced to fight off three opponents, all coming at her from the left, when she seeks re-election later this year.

Dianne Feinstein No Longer Left-Wing Enough for California.  This is a woman who was once mayor of San Francisco, who has argued for the confiscation of guns from law-abiding gun owners, and whose lifetime ACU rating is under 10%.  (Meaning she has voted conservatively less than 10% of the time.)  But Kevin de Leon is an even bigger anti-gun zealot, a man so far left he introduced environmental regulation so radical (banning all fossil fuels in California) not even the hard-left Democrat legislature would go for it.  (Probably because existing renewable energy bills have already made California's electric bills look like Michigan's car insurance premiums.  Worse, actually.

Democratic Lunacy on Full Display in California.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has promised everything she can for the young illegal aliens and her increasingly restive left-leaning caucus.  The House members are grousing privately about how their leader is ruining their brand across the country.  As for the illegal aliens and their activist enablers, they overwhelmed one of her press conferences in San Francisco.  They badgered her US Senate colleagues, including Chuck Schumer by protesting outside of his home in New York State.  Two weeks ago, Pelosi stood for 8 hours to demand that a clean DREAM Act be attached to the latest budget-spending bill.  Nothing happened.  Meanwhile, since 2016 the Democratic Party has moved further left than anyone would have anticipated since 2016.  They will embrace every letter in the LGBTQAI etc. list, they want to repeal the Second Amendment, abolish the First, get rid of the United States Constitution.

San Francisco Prisons Implement Reforms Giving Transgenders Special Treatments.  San Francisco prisons formally announced they are implementing a policy for transgenders that will respect their gender preferences, house them in the cells of their chosen identity, and offer other gender identity services.  The San Francisco Sheriff's Department announced Wednesday [2/21/2018] that inmates who identify as transgender, gender variant or non-binary will be able to choose a name and gender identity upon entering the prison.  They will also get to determine if a man or woman will search them before they're admitted into the prison, according to CBS San Fransisco.

Diseased Streets.  How dirty is San Francisco?  An NBC Bay Area Investigation reveals a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco.

California's Paradox:  More Immigration, More Poverty.  California is a land of untold opulence.  Hollywood's glitter dazzles the gawking masses, while the world's most profitable companies, Google, Apple, and Facebook, funnel cash into the Golden State from every corner of the earth.  And yet California is also desperately poor.  One-in-five Californians live in poverty, the state's income inequality is worse than Mexico's, and untold thousands live on the streets.  California is a dystopia.  How can so much wealth and poverty coexist?  This is the California paradox.  It was not always this way.  California used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle class.  Now it is a playground for the rich and a prison for the poor.  How did the Golden State become America's poverty capital?

Tucker: Violent Criminal Illegals Now a 'Protected Class' in California.  Illegal aliens — including violent criminals — have become a protected class in California, Fox News host Tucker Carlson declared Tuesday [2/13/2018], reacting to the state's new sanctuary policy:  "It doesn't matter even if they have a history of crime, even violent crime.  In California, illegal aliens are now a protected class.  And even more significant, the state itself is now in direct opposition to this country's most basic laws."  Carlson listed several ways California's laws give special treatment to illegal aliens: [...]

California Will Block Oil And Coal Shipments, Risks Constitutional Battle.  California officials plan on preventing the federal government from transporting oil and gas using existing pipelines in the state, according to a report Wednesday [2/7/2018] from The San Francisco Chronicle.  Officials on the California Coastal Commission are urging the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to rescind plans allowing companies to drill for oil off the coast.  They are still hoping for an exemption from the oil drilling plan, that Florida has received.

Starting Today, San Francisco Is Erasing Everybody's Misdemeanor Pot Convictions.  San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced today [1/31/2018] that his office will proactively expunge and seal the records of misdemeanor marijuana offenders, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.  The office will also resentence offenders who received a felony pot conviction.  Proposition 64, the 2016 referendum item that legalized recreational marijuana in California, allows pot offenders to petition for resentencing if their crime would have received a different penalty, or no penalty at all, under the new law.

California's Soft Secession Accelerates.  California's progressive government is one part healthy federalism and one part unhealthy separatism.  If (and this is a big if) the state can temper its soft secession, California's progressives may actually — in all their radicalism — show us a path out of our dangerous national polarization.  But first, let's chronicle what California is doing.  Its resistance to the White House is well known.  The state government has filed 26 separate lawsuits against the Trump administration.  That's roughly one new complaint every two weeks, with challenges touching at least 17 different subject areas.  Moreover, California is now a "sanctuary state" and therefore sharply limits the extent to which its citizens or public entities can voluntarily cooperate with federal immigration authorities.  It's even considered imposing penalties on companies that worked to build a Trump border wall.

Eek!  A man!  In the case of San Francisco city policy, it isn't so much how many heroin needles should be distributed outside the quinoa cafes, or what punishment to exact upon sippers of straws.  It isn't about what to do with car break-ins, which have spiked to fever proportions and are growing at 26% annually.  Nor is the debate about housing, where vibrantly successful Democrat policy has caused "inflation adjusted construction costs [to] increase in San Francisco over the last 16 years by 60% not including changes in land values."  All of these policies are right on the mark.  The trouble is the skin color and sex of the people in city hall.

New California law will automatically register illegal immigrants to vote... and it all begins on April Fool's Day!  A new law in California that goes into effect this spring will automatically register people to vote — including immigrants who are in the country illegally.  In 2015, the state passed a law called the California New Motor Voter Act to increase voter rolls by simplifying the process to register to vote.  The legislation, which goes into effect April 1, will automatically register people who apply for a new driver's license or new state ID at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Why are so many people poor in the Golden State?  It's not as if California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty.  Sacramento and local governments have spent massive amounts in the cause, for decades now.  Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive benefits, according to the California Policy Center.  California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and "other public welfare," according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation's welfare recipients.  The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.

California AG: 'We will prosecute' employers who violate sanctuary laws.  California Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned employers Thursday of legal repercussions if they assist federal immigration officials in an impending crackdown in the sanctuary state, The Sacramento Bee reported.  Under a new state law — the Immigration Worker Protection Act — employers and businesses could face fines of up to $10,000 if they provide employee information to U.S. Immigration Customs, Becerra said.  If employers "start giving up information about their employees or access to their employees in ways that contradict our new California laws, they subject themselves to actions by my office.  We will prosecute those who violate the law," he said at a news conference.

California Democrats want businesses to give half their tax-cut savings to state.  California lawmakers are targeting the expected windfall that companies in the state would see under the federal tax overhaul with a bill that would require businesses to turn over half to the state.  A proposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment by Assemblymen Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, would create a tax surcharge on California companies making more than $1 million so that half of their federal tax cut would instead go to programs that benefit low-income and middle-class families.

Crazed California AG Threatens Charges Against Employers Aiding ICE Raids On Illegal Aliens.  In a shocking admission Thursday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D-CA) threatened his office will charge employees cooperating with ICE raids on illegal aliens. [...] The news comes amid Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen telling the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday [1/16/2018] that her Department is preparing to arrest leaders of sanctuary cities.

'We will prosecute' employers who help immigration sweeps, California AG says.  The state's top cop issued a warning to California employers Thursday [1/18/2018] that businesses face legal repercussions, including fines up to $10,000, if they assist federal immigration authorities with a potential widespread immigration crackdown.  "It's important, given these rumors that are out there, to let people know — more specifically today, employers — that if they voluntarily start giving up information about their employees or access to their employees in ways that contradict our new California laws, they subject themselves to actions by my office," state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at a news conference.  "We will prosecute those who violate the law."

The Editor says...
The AG is very selective about the laws he will defend.  "We will prosecute those who violate the law," he says.  But that doesn't mean he will prosecute those who are not supposed to be in this country.

Does the California Model Really Work?  The alleged success of the California model is one of the more intense controversies in the nerdier corners of public-policy debate.  For many progressives, California's metastasizing liberalism proves you can have Scandinavian-style social policies and tax rates and still have robust economic growth.  For conservatives, California is like a bumblebee.  On paper, [it] shouldn't be able to fly — and yet it does.  Thus the cottage industry on the right of prophesizing California's inevitable demise.

Making California Mexico Again.  After the November 2016 election, California governor Jerry Brown, a three-time presidential loser, denounced the victorious Donald Trump and pledged that the Golden State would go its own way, perhaps even launching its own satellites.  Brown's attorney general Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton's short list as a running mate, also defies the federal government.  Senate boss Kevin de León, which is not the name on his birth certificate and voter rolls, authored the state's sanctuary legislation that has made false-documented illegals, even criminals, a privileged, protected class.  In early January, after the legislation kicked in, California's Assembly speaker Anthony Rendon took things to a new level.  "There is no sensible place for barriers between California and Mexico," said Rendon, heading south with fellow Democrats on a four-day mission to Mexico.

San Francisco Requires Poop Maps To Help Pedestrians Avoid Human Waste.  For those who have maintained that San Francisco is full of ... whatever, there is now living proof.  How much poop is there on the streets of the City by the Bay?  Would you believe there is an online map to track human feces on the city's streets?  There is.  According to Fox News, one area of the city reported a 140% rise in feces.  As Jay Caruso of RedState noted, "Public urination is so widespread it has damaged subway elevators and escalators, building walls and power poles."  When did the gleaming jewel that was San Francisco become a repository for poop?  Mayor Willie Brown terminated ordinances; city district Attorney Terence Hallinan would not prosecute "victimless" crimes involving drugs and prostitution.

What's the Matter with California?  The progressives who control every aspect of the state's government are not necessarily stupid people, but they are malign.  They understand that increasing welfare spending only encourages the arrival of more recipients on whom to spend it, and the high likelihood that those new constituents will vote Democrat as soon as they are able, legally or otherwise.  Already, some 55 percent of "immigrants" receive means-tested benefits, while only 30 percent of native Californians do so.  California's army of bureaucrats contributes as well, as does the state's highly restrictive land-use ordinances and environmental restrictions, which drive up the cost of housing in what is already the nation's most expensive real-estate market.

Why California is the 'poverty capital of the America'.  An excellent op-ed in the L.A. Times today by Kerry Jackson is on why California — with its liberal politics and generous welfare system — is the "poverty capital of America."  According to the Census Bureau, one out of five California residents is poor.  This despite the state's per capita GDP rising twice as fast in the last five years as the national average.  From 1992 to 2015, state and local governments spent nearly $1 trillion to help the poor.  The state, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation's welfare recipients.  Jackson then reaches the not so astonishing conclusion:  "The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse."

Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?  Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country?  Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor.  That's according to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.  Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it's worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state's per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%).

Hate-speech Laws USA? California Prosecutes Man for Anti-Muslim Posts.  California is already flouting federal immigration law with its "sanctuary" status.  Now it's also ignoring the most American of laws — the First Amendment — prosecuting a man simply for posting five anti-Muslim messages to Facebook.  The hapless defendant is 41-year-old Mark Feigin, who expressed his opinions at the Islamic Center of Southern California's (ICSC) Facebook page in 2016.  Feigin is certainly an acerbic, acid-tongued, foul-mouthed fellow, and he admits to sending the messages.  But while many may not like their substance and/or style, they're clearly an example of constitutionally protected speech.

Rainbow Textbooks Adopted in California.  Late last year, the California board of education brought to an end a decades-long campaign to emphasize lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender historical figures in state social-studies/history textbooks, approving K-8 volumes that make identity politics of all kinds the core of the subject.  California has had enormous influence on the nation's history textbooks in the past, and single-interest groups have long flocked to Sacramento to try to gain expanded, favorable inclusion.  The LGBT lobby has been notably assertive. [...] In 2006, Sen. Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica — the state's first openly gay legislator — introduced a bill that would require textbooks to include LGBT contributions to state and national history.

California federal court rules high school football player can't be ordered to stand for national anthem.  A California federal court has ruled that a high school football player cannot be ordered to stand for the national anthem before games.  The decision, made by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California on Dec. 21, struck down statutes enforced by the San Pasqual Valley Unified School District, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday [12/30/2017].  The district prohibited students from "kneeling, sitting or similar forms of political protest" at sporting events and "required students and coaches to "stand and remove hats/helmets during the playing or singing of the national anthem," according to court documents.

California Prosecuting Man For Anti-Muslim Insults.  Here in the United States of America, the California Attorney General is actually prosecuting a man for Internet insults.

Six Insane California Laws That Will Be Implemented On Monday.  [#3] Employers can't ask applicants abouttheir salary history:  Private employers — yes, private employers — can't ask people who want money from them silly questions like how much money they've made in the past or are making at their current job.  It will be interesting to see the inevitable unintended consequences of AB 168.  It will be at least a little more difficult for a company to gauge what a reasonable offer looks like without knowing what an applicant is currently making or recently made.  Sure, employers will ask questions like, "What would you like to make?" and smart applicants will clarify their expectations at some point in the interview process.  But, really, it's not the government's business how an employer and an applicant work out any mutually benecial agreement.

Gov. Jerry Brown Pardons Immigrant Felons Facing Deportation.  In California governor Jerry Brown's endless attempts to drag California to third world nation status, he is now pardoning immigrants convicted of felonies in order to save them from being deported.

California becomes 'sanctuary state' as Gov. Brown defies Trump administration.  California became a "sanctuary state" on Thursday [12/21/2017] as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation protecting illegal immigrants in defiance of the Trump administration.  The bill, approved by the state's legislature last month, bars police from asking people about their immigration status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities in most cases starting Jan. 1.

Mileage Tax Could Drive More Middle-class Residents From California.  A proposal to charge California drivers for every mile they drive threatens to bring an end to a way of life in the Golden State.  For decades, the California lifestyle was almost synonymous with Californians' love affair with the automobile.  The Golden State's freeways were legendary, and Californians' fascination with cars was celebrated in a number of car-themed songs during the 1960s (e.g., "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena," "Little Deuce Coupe").  The scenes of teenagers cruising in their cars in American Graffiti were based on the memories of the film's director, George Lucas, during his own teenage years in early 1960s Modesto.  But the combination of impossibly heavy traffic on those beloved freeways, the state's imposition of ultra-strict automobile emissions requirements, and increasingly higher gasoline taxes have diminished considerably the joy that Californians experienced driving their cars.

Report:  California's $15 Minimum Wage Will Destroy 400,000 Jobs.  California's massive state-wide jump to a $15 minimum wage could conservatively cost around 400,000 potential jobs, according to a new Employment Policy Institute study.  "California Dreamin' of Higher Wages," strives to evaluate what the state's jump to a $15 minimum wage will mean when it fully kicks in in 2022 by attempting to contextualize it with the empirical effects of previous minimum wage increases in the state going back to 1990.  The results are pretty dire.  They believe that by the time the minimum wage fully kicks in the state will have lost 400,000 jobs as a consequence.  These job losses will not be evenly distributed throughout the state's workforce.  They will hit food service, retail, and agriculture jobs the hardest.  Overall, this a four percent loss of jobs out of workforce estimated at around 10 million.

Some Real Talk For Conservatives About 2018.  We conservatives need to get our heads right about the mid-terms or liberals will end up guzzling patriot tears and their gloating will be flat-out intolerable.  We're not doomed in 2018 — I mean, it's not like tax reform or pulling out of the Paris Climate Scam, which have already killed millions of people, including me and you.  But, if we fail to get on course for victory then we're going to see Nancy Pelosi and the Gropeocrats back in charge and trying to make America into California.  Trust me.  You do not want to live in the United States of California.

California still hasn't paid a dime of the $1.2 billion in claims from people whose homes and businesses were destroyed by Oroville Dam crisis.  California has not paid any of the $1.2 billion claims stemming from the Oroville Dam crisis, it has emerged.  The main spillway of the nation's tallest dam was heavily damaged in February, after heavy rains forced the dam operators to continue using it[.]  The flows exacerbated damage to the structure, eventually carving a massive gash through the concrete spillway.

California Sued by Students & Parents for Failing to Teach Literacy.  A group of parents and students has filed what it hopes will be a landmark lawsuit against the State of California for its public schools failing to teach literacy.  Public Counsel and the prestigious Law Firm of Morrison & Foerster sued the State of California, the State Board of Education, the State Department of Education, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson for their collective failure to provide every child in the state access to literacy as required under the California Constitution.

Poll: CA Dems in Trouble Over High Costs, Jobs, Taxes & Illegal Aliens.  California Democrats could be in trouble in 2018, with the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll finding registered voters' top concerns are the traditionally Republican issues of high cost of living, jobs, taxes, and illegal immigrants.  The USC poll found that the most important concerns for voters are the high cost of living, at 21.8 percent; followed by jobs, at 9.9 percent; taxes and fees, at 8.9 percent; and illegal immigration, at 6.9 percent.

Politico: Jerry Brown, President of the Independent Republic of California.  David Siders writes in Politico that California Governor Jerry Brown, as he visits Europe en route to the United Nations climate talks, is functioning rather more like the leader of a country distinct from the United States than merely the governor of one of fifty states within that powerful union.

Average price per gallon up 17 cents in Los Angeles since gas tax took effect.  The average price for a gallon of gas in Los Angeles County is up 17 cents compared to last week after a new 12-cent gas tax was tacked on at the pump.  In Orange County, the average price-per-gallon is 18 cents more than it was one week ago.

California:  Proof That Everything The Liberals Run Turns [Bad].  [Scroll down]  It seems to be a habit of government leadership on the far Left to make everything they govern worse than they found it.  It's not only a habit, it seems to be a requirement.  If you challenge them they double down!  Again, why?  California Democrats want a free college education for all, including illegals.  Free healthcare for all, including illegals.  They want more taxes and, according to Governor Brown, Californians that don't want to pay more taxes are selfish.  Democrats who run this state don't want to explain what they did with the tens of millions of dollars they took from Californians in the guise of taxes then redirected away from the projects they collected it for.  And now, not only do they want Californian's to pay again, but they also want the Federal government to bail them out.  Yup, it's everyone's fault but theirs!  And we all get to pay for it.

California, the sanctuary state, will reap the whirlwind.  Earlier this month, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 54, a historic state law that thumbs his state's nose at federal authority.  Beginning in January, the law states, California officially becomes a so-called sanctuary state.  The term "sanctuary" is, of course, not univocal.  It was once used to describe a sensible law enforcement strategy, by which otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants who report crimes or cooperate with the police are not asked about their immigration status, lest they hesitate to help authorities in the future.  Unfortunately, that is not what "sanctuary" means in this case.

California first state to legally recognize third gender option.  California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Sunday [10/15/2017] signed new legislation that will allow state residents to choose a gender option other than male or female on official documents.  The legislation, a top priority of civil rights groups, also makes it easier for transgender people to change their gender identification on birth certificates or driver's licenses.

New California law allows jail time for using wrong gender pronoun, sponsor denies that would happen.  California health care workers who "willfully and repeatedly" decline to use a senior transgender patient's "preferred name or pronouns" could face punishments ranging from a fine to jail time under a newly signed law. [...] The bill itself is aimed at protecting transgender and other LGBT individuals in hospitals, retirement homes and assisted living facilities.  The bill would ensure those facilities accommodate transgender people and their needs, including letting them decide which gender-specific bathroom they prefer to use.  "It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to take any of the following actions wholly or partially on the basis of a person's actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status," the bill reads.

California Sues Trump For Granting Employer 'Choice' on Obama Birth Control Mandate.  California wasted no time filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration, claiming it discriminated against women when it rescinded the Obama-era mandate that requires employers to pay for birth control in their healthcare plans.

Knowingly exposing others to HIV will no longer be a felony in California.  Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Friday that lowers from a felony to a misdemeanor the crime of knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing the infection.  The measure also applies to those who give blood without telling the blood bank that they are HIV-positive.  Modern medicine allows those with HIV to live longer lives and nearly eliminates the possibility of transmission, according to state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego), authors of the bill.

California to become a 'sanctuary state' in 2018.  Gov. Jerry Brown placed new limitations on state and local law enforcement's ability to help the federal government enforce immigration violations by signing California's controversial "sanctuary state" bill into law on Thursday [10/5/2017].  Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León introduced Senate Bill 54 weeks after the 2016 election to stifle President Donald Trump's campaign pledge to ramp up deportations and prevent the federal government from using California police officers to accomplish his goal.

Leftists Never Fight.  [Scroll down]  California passed Prop 8, with Blacks supporting it at the 70%+ level, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.  Prop 8 passed with 52% of the voters supporting it.  Yet the Democrat governor and the Democrat attorney general refused to defend the law as they were required by their oath of office.  That alone shows that Democrats are fascists; it's not up to the governor to decide which laws are constitutional or not; that's the job of the courts.  However, the state courts supported the legality of Prop 8.  Not to be deterred, Democrats took it to a federal court where a closeted gay judge who stood to benefit from ruling against Prop 8 suppressed the will of the people of California.

Bill advancing universal free school meals for California's hungriest kids heads to Assembly.  A bill approved in Assembly Appropriations this past week would expand free and reduced breakfast and lunch for hundreds of thousands of students on Medi-Cal.  SB 138 — the "Feed the Kids Act" will address childhood hunger by removing a massive layer of bureaucratic red tape from the State school meal program enrollment process and by serving all students in very high poverty schools for free.  The legislation would develop a universal enrollment process by ensuring that all school districts utilize Medi-Cal data to seamlessly enroll income-eligible students in free and reduced-price school meals.

With 220 languages spoken in California, courts face an interpreter shortage.  Federal law enforcement began investigating California's courts seven years ago after receiving complaints that two Korean-speaking women in Los Angeles had been denied court interpreters.  Courts in other states also were examined and faulted.  Along with California, they began working to comply with U.S civil rights law, which bars discrimination based on national origin.  Failure to act meant the possible loss of federal money.  But nowhere has the task been so challenging as in California, the most linguistically diverse state in the nation.

California Tries to Leverage Hurricane Harvey to Fund $20 Billion Flood Control.  California hopes to leverage the attention on Hurricane Harvey flooding to convince the federal government to fund some of the $20 billion needed to repair the dilapidated Central Valley flood control infrastructure.  Harvey has killed at least 34 and caused over $190 billion in damage thus far.  The 1,000-year flood is expected to cost the U.S. economy about 1 percent of GDP, or $190 billion, according AccuWeather.

California Crime Wave Follows Criminal Justice Reform.  In November 2014, California voters approved Proposition 47, which downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor.  As Debra Saunders reminds us, proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety.  Unfortunately, this utterly counterintuitive notion has not panned out.  In San Francisco, according to a police spokesman, theft from cars is up 47 percent this year over the same period in 2014.  Auto theft is up by 17 percent.  Robberies are up 23 percent.  And aggravated assaults are up 2 percent.  (To be fair, burglaries are down 5 percent).  How about Los Angeles?  It has seen a 12.7 percent increase in the overall crime this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Violent offenses are up 20.6 percent; property crimes by 11 percent.

California initiative would legalize psychedelic mushrooms.  California would become the first state in the nation to legalize psychedelic mushrooms if a long-shot ballot initiative passes muster with voters next year.  The measure is backed by a legalization activist who says he kicked his heroin habit with the help of a mushroom trip in Death Valley.  It would exempt Californians over the age of 21 from a state law that criminalizes mushrooms containing psilocybin, the compound that gives some mushrooms psychedelic properties.  "There is a cultural fascination with mushrooms that goes really deep," said Kevin Saunders, the activist behind the initiative.  "The soccer moms are all pretty much, for lack of a better term, high now, and some of them are taking mushrooms."

California Set To Be First State To Add "Gender X" Designation To Licenses.  Up until now, state issued identification cards around the country have limited gender designations to 'male' and 'female' because, well, biological science has historically taught us that those were the only two options.  But that hateful and narrowed-minded micro-aggression perpetrated by our genetic code will no longer be tolerated in the state of California, whether it's a scientifically proven fact or not.  As the San Francisco Chronicle points out today [8/29/2017], California's legislature is currently considering SB 179 that will add a new "nonbinary" gender designation to the state's identification cards.

ACORN Sues California to Allow More Illegals to Vote.  An ACORN offshoot and other left-wing pressure groups are suing California in federal court because the state hasn't made it easy enough for Democrats to flood voter rolls with illegal aliens and foreign nationals who aren't legally eligible to vote.  Throughout the years Mickey Mouse, Mary Poppins, and celebrities living and dead were registered to vote because now-defunct ACORN and its allied groups were allowed to pollute the voter rolls.

California Could Start Jailing People Who Don't Use Transgender Pronouns.  A bill that passed the California state senate and is now moving through the Assembly could threaten jail time for anyone who refuses to use a transgender person's preferred pronoun.  The law is currently limited in its effects to nursing homes and intermediate-care facilities, but if passed, those who "willfully and repeatedly" refuse "to use a transgender resident's preferred name or pronouns" could be slapped with a $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison, according to the California Heath and Safety code.  The state senate passed the bill 26-12 at the end of May.  Since then, the Assembly Judiciary committee recommended the bill unanimously and the General Assembly held its first hearing on the legislation Wednesday [8/23/2017].

Calexit III? New ballot measure plots route to California independence.  On Thursday, people unhappy with California's place in the United States filed yet another proposed ballot measure that could lead to the Golden State striking out on its own.  This time, the goal is convening a U.S. constitutional convention to overhaul what proponents call a moldy national blueprint out of step with life in California.  The measure says a reworked Constitution should include a provision creating a "clear and reasonable path for states to achieve complete independence from the United States should any state so choose."  No state has become independent under the existing U.S. Constitution.

On Illegal Immigration, California Decides They Really Like The 10th Amendment.  If you remember back to the debate over Arizona's SB1070, a law that allowed law enforcement to enforce federal law as written, California, California law makers, and California papers took the stance that immigration was the purview of the federal government, and that states couldn't change that in the least.  Today, though, as we discuss illegal aliens, California wants to do its own thing[.]

California Can't Fix Its Housing Problems.  Even California's liberal Democrats are starting to understand that the state's housing crisis is fundamentally a supply-and-demand problem.  Home prices have soared to astronomical levels, with a median price above $750,000 in the nine-county Bay Area and nearly $700,000 in Orange County.  Years of growth controls and local regulations have restricted housing supply and added as much as 40 percent to the price of every new home that's built.  Housing is the key reason California has a 24 percent poverty rate (using the U.S. Census Bureau's new cost-of-living-adjusted index), the highest in the nation.

Socialists create youth shortages in California.  Socialism has long been associated with shortages, and nowhere is that more evident than in California, land of surf, sun, skiing, skateboarding, and other youth-oriented pursuits.  The socialists have managed to chase out the youth.

A Guide to How Bad the Democratic Party Is Right Now.  In the Golden State, the progressive wing of the party is irate that California Democrats shelved a $400 billion state-based single-payer initiative.  Death threats were hurled at state lawmakers for tabling the measure, which met a legislative death because it had no funding mechanisms within the bill.  Also, the leadership election to lead the state's Democratic Party has led to a contested election, where the establishment figure won, but the Bernie Sanders supporting insurgent has failed to concede.

Democrats Rigging Election in Broad Daylight.  Here in California, the Democratic leadership is busy rigging rules in an election.  The issue is covered on the front pages.  But Democrats control every lever of power, so nothing can derail their efforts to save a vulnerable Democratic senator from a recall.  Now the state's ethics watchdog, the California Fair Political Practices Commission, is in on the action.

Judicial Watch threatens to sue California - after finding 11 counties with more registered voters than eligible citizens.  Dems will often argue that such fraud is "not widespread," but they're loathe to define what, exactly, 'widespread' means.  How many bogus votes need to be cast before blue states care?  Enter Judicial Watch.  They're threatening to sue the state of California because Governor Moonbeam's voter rolls have gone completely off the rails.  In 11 counties, Judicial Watch found that there were more registered voters than citizens of legal age.  Sometimes by as much as 144%[.]

Still Think Our Elections Are Fair?: 11 California Counties Have More Registered Voters Than Voting Age Adults.  Right now there are plenty of Democrats who think Russia hacked our elections, but they'll laugh at Trump's accusation that illegal immigrants stole the popular vote from him (which is very likely).  The truth is that our elections are seriously compromised, and not by the Russians.  The latest example of this fact comes from California, where it was recently discovered that there are 11 counties that have more registered voters than eligible voters.

L.A. County hands $1.3 billion to illegals for welfare.  Los Angeles County is a massive draw for illegals, with more than a million flocking there and setting up home — and now we know why.  Not only is it hallowed sanctuary ground; it's also, apparently, taxpayer-dole-out central.  Look at this, from Robert Rector with the Heritage Foundation:  "They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend," he said, speaking of the costs of education, police, fire, medical and housing that illegals get, compared to what they pay back by way of taxes.  This isn't conjecture.  It's based on analysis of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services database.  Among the findings:  In 2015, more than 58,000 families received $602 million in benefits.  In 2016, more than 64,000 families received $675 million.

California Risks Billions in Sanctuary City Suit Against Trump Administration.  California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is launching a preemptive legal assault against the Trump Administration's promise to pull tens of billions of dollars of federal funding from "sanctuary cities" that do not cooperate in enforcement against illegal aliens.  Attorney General Becerra is leading a coalition of 300 cities, 18 counties, and the State of California that intend to sue the Trump Administration over U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' plan to begin cutting off funding to jurisdictions tagged by the U.S. Justice Department as "sanctuary cities" that harbor illegal aliens from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Judicial Watch Warns California: 11 Counties Have More Voters than Voting-Age Citizens.  Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization, has sent a letter to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla on behalf of the Election Integrity Project, noting that there are 11 counties in the state with more registered voters, and alleging that the state may be out of compliance with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Feinstein Says We Can't Increase Immigration Enforcement Because No One Will Pick Our Fruit.  California Sen. Dianne Feinstein warned that President Donald Trump's immigration plan would severely cripple the agriculture industry in a Wednesday evening [8/2/2017] interview.  "We're the largest agricultural producer in America[.]  It's a $50 billion industry.  We employ tens of thousands of agricultural workers," The Democratic senator said on CNN.  "They are among a class that this would be prohibited.  It would cripple agriculture if they didn't have the people coming in to do this work[.]"

Boss tells state workers:  Kick ICE out of California labor offices.  California's top labor law enforcer wants federal immigration agents to stay away from offices where state investigators weigh claims about underpaid employees and workplace retaliation.  Labor Commissioner Julie Su last month directed her staff to turn away Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unless the federal officers have warrants.  Her directive followed three instances over the past 10 months in which immigration agents sought information about California workers who had filed claims against employers.  In two cases, immigration agents attempted to attend hearings where investigators discuss claims with workers and their employers, Su said.  In all three cases, the agents left when they were asked, she said.

L.A. County Paid Out $1.3 Billion In Welfare To Illegal Aliens.  On the bright side, it's expected that the Los Angeles County will spend $200 million less in 2017, as fewer illegal aliens arrive and more have left, mostly due to allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to do their job, to enforce the laws that are on the books, unfettered by politicians and political appointees.  We keep being told that illegal aliens are a boon for our economy.  Well, the illegals are getting $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend.  It sure seems that they are more of a drain on taxpayer money that giving more back.

Tucker Debates 'Calexit' Supporter Who Calls CA 'Not the US'.  Tucker Carlson reported that the United States may lose a star on its flag for the first time ever, if "Calexit" becomes reality.  Carlson said the Calexit movement wants California to become an independent country through a ballot initiative in 2018 that would require 585,000 signatures to get started.  Shankar Singam, a supporter of Calexit and vice president of the California Freedom Coalition, told Carlson such a split does not have to be "hostile."

California is working to avoid a shortage of legalized marijuana, state pot czar says.  With Nevada suffering a shortage of legalized marijuana, California's state pot czar said Wednesday [7/19/2017] that efforts are being made in her state to make sure sufficient licenses go to farmers, testers and distributors to supply retailers.  Providing temporary, four-month licenses to support some businesses including growers is planned "so we don't have a break in the supply chain," Lori Ajax, chief of the Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, said in testimony at a legislative hearing.  Legal sales began July 1 in Nevada, but it immediately became clear there was not enough supply to meet demand, in part because unique rules provide alcohol wholesalers exclusive distributor rights.  California does not have the same limits on who can distribute cannabis.

California's Judicial Council racial sensitivity bureaucrats dress up as black convicts for office party.  If anyone needed proof that California is over-larded with do-nothing, malevolent bureaucrats, maybe the Judicial Council's Halloween party, which featured racial sensitivity bosses dressed in blackface and turning their cubicles into jail cells, is just that example.  Sure enough, it's an agency that oversees racial sensitivity programs for California's court system.

33 Percent of American Welfare Recipients Live in California.  The liberal state of California is a prime example of why liberal policies must not be adopted anywhere around the country as one-third of America's welfare recipients reside in the state.

California Democrats Target Conservative College Students.  California state senator Josh Newman, Fullerton Democrat, was the key vote to approve Jerry Brown's recent $5.2 billion tax hike that jacks up what Californians will pay for gasoline, diesel fuel, and vehicle fees.  At the California State University in Fullerton, College Republicans Amanda McGuire, Ryan Hoskins and Brooke Paz led efforts to recall Newman.  The state Democratic Party responded by changing the rules on recall elections and targeting the three students with a lawsuit.  "This lawsuit intends to stop the petition from circulating and halt the recall process, falsely citing deceptive messaging as grounds for suing," explains a press release from the College Republicans.  According to the Republicans' secretary Ryan Hoskins.  "This lawsuit is the definition of frivolous and more than an obstruction of the very processes that every Californian should hold dear."

Will California Ever Thrive Again?  The basket of California state taxes — sales, income and gasoline — rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.  After years of drought, California has not built a single new reservoir.  Instead, scarce fresh aqueduct water is still being diverted to sea.  Thousands of rural central California homes, in Dust Bowl fashion, have been abandoned due to a sinking aquifer and dry wells.  One in three American welfare recipients resides in California.  Almost a quarter of the state population lives below or near the poverty line.  Yet the state's gas and electricity prices are among the nation's highest.  One in four state residents was not born in the U.S.

California Democratic Party Sues Conservative College Students In Unprecedented Move.  Three members of the Cal State Fullerton College Republicans have been named in a lawsuit backed by the California Democratic Party in retaliation for their work to recall State Senator Josh Newman, who was the pivotal vote in support of April's $52 billion gas tax increase.

California Dems panic over their tax hike.  Democrats control both houses of the California State Legislature with 2/3 majorities, allowing them to pass any bills they wish, with no possibility of obstruction from the powerless GOP.  As Democrats will when they feel empowered, they recently passed a major hike in gasoline taxes that will take over $5 billion a year more from the pockets of motorists.

Tucker on SF's $190K Payout to Illegal Immigrant: 'You Shouldn't Pay a Criminal for Breaking the Law'.  An illegal immigrant is set to be awarded $190,000 from San Francisco after police turned him over to immigration authorities, which is a violation of the city's sanctuary policy.  Pedro Figueroa-Zarceno, who is from El Salvador and was living in the U.S. illegally, walked into a police station on December 2, 2015, to recover his stolen car.  When he left the station, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immediately took him into custody.  Figueroa-Zarceno recently reached the massive settlement agreement with the city attorney's office.  The agreement must be approved by the city's Board of Supervisors.

111 terminally ill end lives under new California law.  California health officials reported Tuesday that 111 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in the first six months after a 2016 law made the option legal in the nation's most populous state.  The data was part of the California Department of Public Health's first report on the law since it went into effect June 9, 2016.  According to the data generated from forms doctors were required to submit between June 9 and Dec. 31, 2016, a total of 191 people received life-ending drugs after being diagnosed with having less than six months to live and 111 people took them and died.

Texas, three more states on California's banned travel list.  California is restricting publicly funded travel to four more states because of recent laws that leaders here view as discriminatory against gay and transgender people.  All totaled, California now bans most state-funded travel to eight states.  The new additions to California's restricted travel list are Texas, Alabama, Kentucky and South Dakota.  They join Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee as states already subjected to the ban.  California Attorney Xavier Becerra announced the new states at a Thursday press conference, where he was joined by representatives from ACLU Northern California and Equality California.  "We will not spend taxpayer dollars in states that discriminate," Becerra said.

Minimum Wage Madness Begins to Kill Off California's Restaurant Industry.  The restaurant industry is a canary in California's coalmine of moonbattery.  Minimum wage insanity is killing it: [...] It's bad enough in big cities on the coast.  Wages, like prices, are lower inland and in smaller towns.  That means that one-size-fits-all central planning is even more unsupportable regarding the minimum wage.  Unemployment is already significantly higher away from the coast in California.

California's descent to socialism.  California is widely celebrated as the fount of technical, cultural and political innovation.  Now we seem primed to outdo even ourselves, creating a new kind of socialism that, in the end, more resembles feudalism than social democracy. [...] This new progressive synthesis promises not upward mobility and independence, but rather the prospect of turning most Californians into either tax slaves or dependent serfs.

Half-baked single-payer health plan amounts to political stunt.  On Thursday [6/1/2017], the California state Senate made the bold move of voting to create a single-payer health system without having any idea of how to pay for it.  Ostensibly spurred by concerns over the future of the Affordable Care Act at the federal level, Senate Bill 562 by Sens. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, would create a single-payer system which would cover health expenses for every resident in California.  Considering the magnitude of such a proposal, the very least that is owed is a thorough accounting of how exactly such a program would be paid for.  After all, according to estimates from a legislative analysis provided to the Senate Appropriations Committee on May 22, the proposal is anticipated to cost $400 billion per year, more than double the state budget.

Hey, California, Ready To Spend $400 Billion For Your Single-Payer Disaster?  California's so-called progressive Democrats, fresh off their classy "flipping off" of Donald Trump at their state convention, now want to flip off the entire state by imposing a reckless, economy-destroying single-payer health care system on the state's citizens.  If voters don't stop this madness they'll get what they deserve.

Report: California Single Payer Healthcare Will Double State Expenditures.  The state of California seems determined to go broke.  They want to institute a single payer healthcare system but the cost would be astronomic.  In fact, it would be more than the state's budget.

California Considers Sanctuary State Legislation to Protect Pot Industry.  California lawmakers are talking about doing for their state's new marijuana industry what they are also trying to do for illegal immigrants: create a sanctuary state where local police are ordered not to cooperate with federal authorities.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the man who has the power to unleash enforcement of the federal anti-marijuana law that could shut down the multibillion marijuana industry in California and every other state where smoking weed for the fun of it is legal.

Democrats Love Affair With Communism.  A bill narrowly passed the house in California, repealing part of the law enacted during the Cold War era in our country's history when communists were really active and infiltrating our government, attempting to overthrow it.  The bill proposed to eliminate the section which allowed the firing of public employees if they were members of the Communist Party.  The bill now goes to the Senate and its author, Democrat Assemblyman Rob Bonta, hopes that it will pass.  "Assemblyman Randy Voepel, a Southern California Republican who fought in the Vietnam War, said communists in North Korea and China are still a threat."  Assemblyman Travis Allen, also a Republican, said that "this bill is blatantly offensive to all Californians.  Communism stands for everything that the United States stands against."

California moves to let Communists work in government.  The California government may soon employ openly Communist people in its ranks.  The state assembly passed a bill Monday that would repeal a policy that had made being a member of the Communist Party a fireable offense.  The legislation was supported along party lines with most Republicans opposing it while Democrats mainly favored the policy.  It would overturn a bill was signed into law during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s when Americans worried Russian spies were trying to take over the country.

California State Assembly Votes to Make Communism Great Again.  Being a communist would no longer be a fireable offense for California government employees under a bill passed by the state Assembly.  Lawmakers narrowly approved the bill Monday [5/8/2017].

California Democrats Make Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day Disappear.  Monday April 24 was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day and in Los Angeles thousands marched in the street outside the Turkish consulate.  Up in Sacramento, ruling Democrats ignored the Armenians and instead held "Muslim Day at the Capitol," hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

California's Road To Single-Payer Ruin.  Never let it be said that California doesn't march to the beat of a different drummer.  While the rest of the country has had second, third and even fourth thoughts about having a single-payer health care system, the Golden State boldly marches forward into fiscal oblivion.

California Is Seceding from the Constitution.  The entire nation has of course watched as the city of Berkeley and the University of California, Berkeley ceded control over free speech to violent left-wing mobs.  Both the city and the campus have placed the safety of rioters over the liberty of their conservative citizens, refusing to protect that liberty on the dubious grounds that someone might get hurt.  Thus, city and school leaders have knowingly and intentionally granted a heckler's veto to the far-left, in effect making the First Amendment a dead letter at one of the nation's (and the world's) most prominent universities.  The rot extends far beyond Berkeley.  Just this week, the California assembly's judiciary committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of AB 569, a bill that would prohibit religious employers from enforcing entirely normal rules of Christian conduct on their employees.  Thus, it would be illegal for Catholic schools to require that their employees choose life rather than get an abortion.

California's latest move to "fight the wall" is truly something out of La La Land.  There are still budget battles and (probably) blockades from the 9th Circuit to come, but sooner or later the President is going to get some work started on the border wall.  But if and when he does, California is laying some landmines in advance for any private contractors who dare to bid on the job and pour a single yard of concrete.  In a move being dubbed, "Build it and be banned," California legislators are proposing to impose a permanent ban for government contracts on any company who takes part in the project.

California gas tax hike prompts fierce backlash from the right.  A 12-cent gas tax hike recently approved by California's Democratic leaders has prompted a huge backlash on the right, with a grassroots coalition vowing to ensure it never takes effect.  A combination of AM-radio talk show hosts, a consumer advocacy group and a GOP assemblywoman have joined forces to battle the measure — set to kick in this November — that would give California the dubious honor of the second-highest gas tax in the nation at 73.2 cents per gallon.  Only Pennsylvania residents will pay more, with a 77.7-cent tax.

Berkeley Mayor Is Member of Militant Leftist Organization's Facebook Group.  The mayor of Berkeley, California, is a Facebook member of a leftist militant organization that has been linked to violent incidents in the city.  Mayor Jesse Arreguin's personal page shows he's a Facebook member of Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).  According to a 2001 article in the East Bay Express, BAMN, founded in 1995, is "allegedly a front group for an obscure Detroit-based Trotskyist political party called the Revolutionary Workers League." Even by UC Berkeley standards, students considered the group extreme.

Single Payer Is Fool's Gold For California.  While the latest Republican attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare may have failed, Democrats in California and in D.C. are just getting started in their effort to eliminate the health law.  Unfortunately, they're angling to replace ObamaCare with something even worse.

Police arrests are plummeting across California, fueling alarm and questions.  In 2013, something changed on the streets of Los Angeles.  Police officers began making fewer arrests.  The following year, the Los Angeles Police Department's arrest numbers dipped even lower and continued to fall, dropping by 25% from 2013 to 2015.  The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the San Diego Police Department also saw significant drops in arrests during that period.

California has fewer arrests, but not necessarily less crime.  The number of arrests by police in California has plunged in recent years, but that doesn't necessarily represent good news on crime, according to an analysis published Saturday [4/1/2017].

Los Angeles Middle School Faces Budget Cut For Having Too Many White People.  Los Angeles parents are outraged after their middle school announced budget cuts because there are too many white students, according to Sunday [3/26/2017] reports.  Walter Reed Middle School announced there would be layoffs and larger classes because the school's white student body is too big, reports ABC 7.  The Los Angeles Unified School District gives schools money only if white students make up no more than thirty percent of the student population.

California's Chief Justice:  Enforcing Immigration Laws Goes Against The Rule Of Law.  Since when is moving to another country against the law?  And since when do we enforce the laws we have on the books?

Nigel Farage and the 'Bad Boys of Brexit' set their sights on splitting California in two.  The 'Bad Boys of Brexit' who led the campaign to break Britain away from the European Union have taken on a new exit challenge:  splitting California into two states.  Former UKip leader Nigel Farage and Leave backer Arron Banks have just returned from the United States, where they helped raise $1million (£800,000) for a 'Calexit' campaign, which would split California into two eastern and western regions.  There are several 'Calexit' campaigns competing for a referendum in the United States, with one aiming to remove the state from America entirely as a response to President Donald Trump being elected last year.

CA Bill Would Make Not Disclosing HIV+ Status to Partner Just a Misdemeanor.  People who are HIV positive have long been required to disclose this status before engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse.  Considering the life-threatening condition caused by HIV, it stands to reason that potential partners have a right to know, since the disease is easily passed through sexual contact.  However, in what is being described as a test of just how much feelings have changed on the disease, a group of lawmakers in California have presented a bill that will make it no longer a felony to engage in unprotected sex without disclosing the condition to their partner, instead making it a misdemeanor.  Because of "the stigma."

What does it take to be a librarian in San Francisco?  1) You have to know how to shelve books.  2) You have to know how to check out books.  and 3) You have to know how to inject heroin addicts with anti-narcotics drugs.

San Francisco's withdrawal from national terror intelligence network hikes risks, officials say.  San Francisco has taken its defiance of the feds to a new level, ending its cooperation with the FBI in an anti-terror initiative begun after 9/11 — a move crtitics say could get innocent people killed.  Critics say the sanctuary city by the bay's latest decision to forego cooperation with Washington, by dropping out of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, could put lives at risk.  The JTTF has been credited with foiling 93 Islamist terrorist attacks and plots against the U.S. since 2001, including 12 this year, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation.  There are another 1,000 investigations into suspected terror activity nationwide.

Five festering problems the Democrats cynically ignore.  [#5] The connection between illegal immigration and California's electoral power:  California declared itself a sanctuary state and now houses a quarter of the nation's illegal immigrants.  The elected officials at all levels of that state government will openly defy any attempts to enforce existing federal law that could reduce the number of illegal immigrants.  The massive presence of illegals distorts our representative system.  There are at least 4 million illegals in California.  It requires a special liberal variety of naïvité to believe that none of them votes.  Even if none does, they are all counted in the census, which determines congressional representation and some federal funding allocations.  If only citizens were counted, California would have five fewer congressional seats and electoral votes.  Those seats would go to, for example, Ohio (2), Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  The Democrats who've declared California a sanctuary state know exactly what they are doing.

California's 12,209,605 Medicaid/CHIP Enrollees Outnumber Populations of 44 States.  In the fall of 2013, the Obamacare exchanges opened to enroll people in health insurance plans for 2014.  The average number of Medicaid/CHIP enrollees in California in July-September 2013 — the last quarter before the Obamacare exchanges opened — was 7,755,381, according to CMS.  By November 2016, the latest month for which CMS numbers are available, the number of Medicaid/CHIP enrollees in California was 12,209,605.  That is a three-year increase of 4,454,224 — or 57.43 percent.

California Goes One Step Beyond ObamaCare, Proposes Single-Payer Healthcare System to Include Illegal Aliens.  California Democrats made a surprise move late Friday to foil President Trump's promise to repeal ObamaCare — by introducing a stand-alone, single-payer healthcare system in California.  The Mercury News reported that two California lawmakers Friday introduced legislation to replace private insurance with a government-run health care system covering all 38 million Californians — including its undocumented residents.

The Oroville Dam disaster is yet another example of California's decline.  A year ago, politicians and experts were predicting a near-permanent statewide drought, a "new normal" desert climate.  The most vivid example of how wrong they were is that California's majestic Oroville Dam is currently in danger of spillway failure in a season of record snow and rainfall.  That could spell catastrophe for thousands who live below it and for the state of California at large that depends on its stored water.  The poor condition of the dam is almost too good a metaphor for the condition of the state as a whole; its possible failure is a reflection of California's civic decline.

California spent on high-speed rail and illegal immigrants, but ignored Oroville Dam.  The flood danger from the Oroville Dam receded Monday, but California was hit by a wave of criticism for failing to heed warnings about risks to the spillway at a time when the state spent generously on illegal immigrants and high-speed rail.  California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, came under fire amid reports that federal and state officials for years rebuffed or ignored calls to fortify the massive 50-year-old dam, which provides water to more than 20 million farmers and residential consumers.  "What's Governor Brown doing?" former state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Republican, asked in a Monday [2/13/2017] post on Facebook.  "The same thing he's been doing for decades — obstructing progress."

California Goes Confederate.  "Calexit" supporters brag that they will have enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure calling for California's secession from the United States. [...] [California] hosts the largest numbers of impoverished and the greatest number of rich people of any state in the country.  Eager for cheap service labor, California has welcomed in nearly a quarter of the nation's undocumented immigrants.  California has more residents living in poverty than any other state.  It is home to one third of all the nation's welfare recipients.  The income of California's wealthy seems to make them immune from the effects of the highest basket of sales, income, and gas taxes in the nation.  The poor look to subsidies and social services to get by.  Over the last 30 years, California's middle classes have increasingly fled the state.

California Lawmakers Want 'Third Gender Option' for Drivers' Licenses.  Legislation introduced in California would create a third gender option on drivers' licenses and expedite the process for individuals to change their sex on their birth certificate without undergoing a sex change.  The "Gender Recognition Act," sponsored by state senators Toni Atkins of San Diego and Scott Weiner of San Francisco, would add "nonbinary" to the list of male and female genders on state identification documents.

California Democrats propose adding third, nonbinary gender option for driver's licenses and other official documents.  California driver's licenses and birth certificates could have a third option for gender in addition to male or female under legislation unveiled Thursday [1/26/2017] by Democratic lawmakers.  The bill by state Sens. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would establish a new nonbinary gender marker for official state documents.  Lawmakers framed the measure as an expansion of rights for transgender, intersex and other people who do not identify as male or female.

California's Recipe for Voter Fraud on a Massive Scale.  The media have exhibited a pathological determination to ignore any possibility of voter fraud, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary.

California Lt. Gov:  We'll Stop Trump's Wall with Environmental Suits.  President-Elect Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall along with U.S.-Mexico Border will be challenged through environmental lawsuits, according to California's second-highest official.  California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with 'The Golden State Podcast' that he would use specific environmental laws in the state to stop the border wall from being built, at least in southern California.

The Editor says...
In this case, environmental laws are being used as weapons.  The matter at hand has nothing to do with the protection of the environment.  One thing politicians and environmentalists do well:  they obstruct and impede their enemies' progress.

California's Picky-Choosey Attitude to Complying with Federal Immigration Laws.  California, the would-be renegade state that has declared itself a statewide sanctuary for illegal aliens, has hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to "defend" it against expected actions from the incoming Trump administration (such as, presumably, withholding federal funds for its sanctuary status); and has a referendum petition circulating that would direct it to secede from the Union.  Yet the state finally has found an immigration-related law that it can love.

Janet Napolitano Triples, Quadruples Down On Supporting Illegal Aliens.  University of California President Janet Napolitano has tripled down on her support for illegal aliens in the United States.  She has also openly challenged the incoming Trump Administration on the policy of deporting illegal aliens.  In a recent speech Napolitano stated that the University of California system supports illegal alien students and will provide them with millions of dollars in financial aid.

The Great California Earthquake of 2018: First State To Default.  I would like to direct your attention to something boring but infinitely informative regarding the nature of this mismanaged state.  Employers who utilize labor pay into the FUTA, or the federal unemployment tax, at a rate of 6% and are credited back an offset of 5.4% that they previously paid the state, leaving a small federal liability of only 0.6%.  However, if the state-run U.I. trust gets overdrawn, as it did in California for going on its third year now, it automatically pulls an emergency loan out from the federal government to service the underfunded account.  And if that is not repaid by November 10, and it defaults, then the government forces employers to pay it.  They just defaulted.  Our company received a mystery bill in the mail two weeks ago, explaining our new $15,000 owed.  We got a shock, as it was not expected.  I presume that many employers won't be able to pay it.

It's Still a Mad, Mad California.  Abstract idealism on behalf of the distant is a powerful psychological narcotic that allows caring progressives to dull the guilt they feel about their own privilege and riches.  Nowhere is this paradox truer than in California, a dysfunctional natural paradise in which a group of coastal and governing magnificoes virtue-signal from the world's most exclusive and beautiful enclaves.  The state is currently experiencing another perfect storm of increased crime, decreased incarceration, still ongoing illegal immigration, and record poverty.  All that is energized by a strapped middle class that is still fleeing the overregulated and overtaxed state, while the arriving poor take their places in hopes of generous entitlements, jobs servicing the elite, and government employment.

CalExit!  Now that America is on the road to free government, the Progressives are talking about secession again.  The big one is CalExit, a movement to have California break off from the rest of the country.  This has been spurred by the election, where normal Americans broke mostly for Trump, but Californians voted in heavy numbers for the anti-American candidate.  If you look at the bill of particulars on the CalExit site, the inability to dictate election results to the rest of the country is one reason they want to leave. [...] The major benefit of losing California is we would lose their trillion in bad debt that threatens to destroy the bond market.  California has been able to kick its problems down the road because of its statehood.  It is the stinky pile of sub-prime mortgages in the AAA rated MBS.  Independence would force some responsibility on California.  It could also force reform on the Cult of Modern Liberalism, which has thrived by shifting the costs of its polices onto others.  If not, the rest of us would be free of them anyway, which is what matters.

L.A. city and county creating $10-million legal defense fund for immigrants facing deportation under Trump.  Los Angeles city and county leaders on Monday [12/19/2016] unveiled a $10-million fund to provide legal assistance for residents facing deportation, the region's boldest move yet as it prepares for an expected crackdown on illegal immigration by Donald Trump.  If approved by lawmakers, Los Angeles' two top government agencies could find themselves in the position of using public funds to challenge policies sought by the White House and Republican Congress.

California's Gift to Its Neighbors:  Expanded Cigarette Smuggling Opportunities.  For too many years, Arizona has led the pack — or at least taxed the hell out of it — with among the higher cigarette taxes in the West.  "A cigarette tax higher than in neighboring states and cheaper prices on American Indian reservations have helped fuel a growing black market for cigarettes in Arizona," the Cronkite News Service reported in 2014.  It's true that few of us actually paid that $2.00 per pack tariff for a pack of smokes; with every single state bordering us stealing less from smokers and a long, handy border with Mexico, half of all of the cigarettes sold in the state are smuggled from elsewhere, according to research by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Tax Foundation.  Many Arizonans avoid getting mugged by enjoying life on the receiving end of smuggling routes.  But we could be benefiting by running goods in the other direction.

CA's Senator Boxer Attempts To Block Her Own Bill.  California Tea Party activists have long battled the bureaucrats and politicians over policies related to water.  One of the most well-known of the myriad of issues is the diversion of water from farms in the Central Valley (a major source of this nation's fruits and nuts... outside of San Francisco, that is).  One goal of this reallocation of a prime agricultural resource is the protection of a bait fish known as the Delta Smelt.  Last week, the House of Representatives easily passed a major water bill that includes emergency aid for Flint, Mich., and boosts U.S. ports, dams and waterways.  This bill, known as the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), was initially co-authored by the notorious Senator Barbara Boxer, who infamously derided a Brigadier General for referring to her as "ma'am".

California to release "non-violent" rapists, shooters, hostage takers.  Whenever a proposition comes on the ballot in California to release criminals from jail, it always passes, since the criminals already outside of jail outnumber the law abiding citizens.  That's why it will come as no surprise when California voters vote for Proposition 57 which will release "non-violent" criminals.  The only problem is that California has a very expansive definition of "non-violent" in its legal code: [...]

Ditching Electoral College would allow California to impose imperial rule on a colonial America.  California has been called the Left Coast for quite a while.  Just about everyone in Silicon Valley except Peter Thiel and in Hollywood except Pat Sajak supported Clinton.  White middle class families have been pretty well priced out of the state by high taxes and housing costs, and the Hispanic and Asian immigrants who have replaced them vote far more Democratic.  Those developments have put California increasingly out of line with the national average.  In 2012, six states and D.C. were more Democratic.  In 2008 it was eight states and D.C.; in 2004 it was seven.  Now it is only one, and not by much.

The Anti-Trump Riots Are a Smoke Screen.  Many seem bewildered by the anti-Trump riots and demonstrations. [...] They know full well that they aren't going to overturn the election.  These privately funded forces are being used to create pressure to destroy the Electoral College so they won't have to deal with it next election.  This is how the Left operates.  Make a big deal over here to force the hidden agenda over there.  The plan is to make enough trouble that Congress will move to abolish the EC to get some peace.  For clues as to who is behind this effort, one only has to watch to see which member of Congress proposes such action.  The answer of course is California Senator Barbara Boxer.

California jumps the shark.  This election confirmed, if it was needed, the death spiral of the state's Republican Party.  Thanks, in part, to Donald Trump — and his magnetic anti-appeal among Latinos, women and the educated — the GOP did even worse here in the presidential race than in 2012, when it couldn't muster 40 percent support, and has lost several legislative seats, allowing the Democrats to re-establish their coveted two-thirds supermajority in the Assembly — and possibly in the Senate as well.  The progressives also won most of the major propositions — most critically, the extension of a high income tax rate on the state's affluent population through 2030.  We may have more freedom to smoke pot, but it won't be so easy to start a business, buy a house or build a personal nest egg, if you are anything other than a trustifarian or a Silicon Valley mogul, or are related to one.

California Voters to Decide Whether Schools May Teach Students in Spanish.  Voters in California will weigh in Tuesday on a decades-old debate about bilingual education in the state's public school system.  The outcome ultimately could determine whether California schools will continue to be required to teach in English, or may use Spanish or another language.  Although largely overlooked in a crowded election season, the issue has split Californians into two camps, those who believe the country benefits from a multilingual society and those who believe such policies hurt students and serve only to further ethnic and racial divides.

CA Attorney General:  Use Of Term 'Illegal Alien' Is Offensive, Must Stop Treating 'Undocumented' As Criminals.  This is the chief law enforcement officer in California.

Food Stamp Craze:  U.S. Spends $3.6 Billion to Give $70 Billion in Benefits.  Not only does the government spend a breathtaking $70 billion a year to give a record number of people food stamps, it wastes billions more to administer the bloated welfare program.  Some states spend a lot more than others to distribute the free food vouchers and the discrepancies are downright outrageous.  The government dedicates $3.6 billion annually just to administer food stamps (renamed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to eliminate stigma), according to a federal audit that includes mind-boggling figures.  For instance, California, the state with by far the largest food-stamp roll, spends a lot more than the national average to execute the federal nutrition program.  The Golden State doles out an average of $34.06 a month for each of its 2 million food stamp cases while other states, like Ohio, spend only $9.55.  Some California counties are off the charts with administration costs.

The 7 Ugliest Propositions on the California Ballot.  [For example,] Prop. 57 — Jerry Brown's "Let's Put Violent Criminals Back On The Street" Act is a terrible measure.  Don't be fooled by the false and misleading ballot title and summary that leftist Attorney General Kamala Harris put on this one — it will reduce prison sentences for many, many violent criminals and put them back on the streets.  Worst of all — the sentencing "reforms" in it are retroactive — so victims of violent crimes trying to recapture some dignity and meaning in their lives will be re-victimized because of this cruel and dangerous ballot measure.

LAPD Officers Ordered To Shoot Only After Non Lethal Options Exhausted.  Los Angeles Police officers must now exhaust all forms of non-lethal means before shooting a suspect.  The L.A. Police Commission approved a wide array of law enforcement reforms Tuesday including training for officers to help in de-escalation and verbal skills when faced with a violent perpetrator.  According to Police One, the academy already teaches recruits to use all non-lethal means prior to shooting their service weapon, but establishing a policy at the department level means LEO's may be punished for not using another means instead of their firearm.

Ethnic cleansing?  California town now less than 10 percent white.  Ethnic cleansing used to be a bad thing.  But in America, when it happens to white people, it's called progress and the "new face of California."  The town of Santa Ana has been almost 100% purged of white people.  They were pushed out not by tanks and machine guns, but by a massive influx of people speaking a different language and bearing a different culture who expected everyone to adapt to their norms.  Today Santa Ana is nearly 80% Hispanic and less than 10% white.  We have a city in America that now demographically perfectly mirrors many cities in Mexico.

If Proposition 55 passes, the state budget will rely even more on California's highest earners.  If voters approve Proposition 55, the state will continue depending on [Paul] Taybi and other wealthy Californians to fund a significant portion of schools, parks, road repairs, police, prisons and many other government services.  Those paying the higher rates, which kick in for single and joint filers making more than $263,000 and $526,000 a year respectively, contributed almost $34 billion in income taxes in 2014, roughly a third of all state general fund revenue.  California's reliance on the wealthiest taxpayers means the state is especially vulnerable to their bottom lines.

California petitions to become first state to offer ObamaCare to illegal immigrants.  California's health care exchange is requesting that it be allowed a waiver from ObamaCare regulations in order to allow illegal immigrants to buy insurance on the exchange — which would make California the first state to extend ObamaCare to illegal immigrants.  In a Sept. 30 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, Covered California's Executive Director Peter Lee said that the Affordable Care Act has been "tremendously successful" in the state and has cut the rate of uninsured in half.

What Could Go Wrong:  California Lets Felons In Jail Vote.  Forget about the fact that the great majority of felons vote Democrat; California Governor Jerry Brown had no political motivations at all when he signed AB 2466 on Wednesday [9/28/2016] allowing thousands of felons in California to vote.  Starting January 2017, convicted felons still in jail will be able to cast their vote.

Liberals rejoice over legalization of child prostitution in California.  Social justice warriors everywhere rejoiced at the news that California has decriminalized, or effectively legalized, child prostitution.  After all, prostitution is basically a victimless crime, right?  And progressives have spoken loudly about emptying jails of "non-violent" offenders.

California governor signs bill allowing felons to vote from their jail cells.  Convicted felons serving jail sentences in California county jails will now get to participate in an activity besides three meals a day and recreation time:  voting in elections.  Governor Jerry Brown signed new legislation into effect as part of a reform backers say will help prisoners transition back into society while still serving time for their crimes.  The bill he signed would let thousands of felons doing time in county jails to vote in California elections, the LA Times reported.

BART tax could quadruple original claim.  It turns out that the average property tax bill required to support BART's proposed $3.5 billion bond measure on the November ballot could be as much as four times what the transit agency claimed.  Two months ago, I reported that the taxes needed to pay off that bond borrowing would be about double BART's public estimate.  Well, it could be even twice that.  That's because legal language in Measure RR allows BART to issue bonds at up to the state limit of 12 percent interest, far higher than assumed for the previous estimates.

California Could Let Felons Behind Bars Vote, Despite What the State Constitution Says.  California Gov. Jerry Brown is considering whether to sign a bill that would allow tens of thousands of incarcerated felons to vote, while continuing to deny the vote to others.  The Legislature sent a bill to Brown's desk that would restore voting rights to an estimated 50,000 convicted felons who are behind bars in county jails, but not to felons who are serving their sentence in prisons.

SF official suggests taking slaveholders' names off schools.  George Washington, the guy on the quarter, could soon be facing the ax in San Francisco as surely as his fabled cherry tree.  The president of the San Francisco school board thinks it's time to consider renaming schools that bear the names of slave owners — including Washington and his friends and fellow presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe.  Board President Matt Haney said Tuesday [9/6/2016] he will introduce a resolution before the board this month to clarify the rules for renaming San Francisco schools with an eye to encouraging the communities at Washington High School, along with Jefferson and Monroe elementary schools, to consider whether they want to make a change.

Left's California Dream Built on Ignorance.  The Democrat-owned legislature — the ones that are not in jail or under indictment — passed a bill that would gradually raise the minimum wage from $10 to $15 in 2022.  The poll says 64 percent of Californians support that.  That is while 66% of them believe that people will be laid off and 65 percent say that businesses will leave the state.  What would have been interesting is if the people who took the poll would have asked poll participants:  Would you support the increase if your son or daughter were laid off?  Would you support it if your spouse's business relocated to Utah, North Carolina or Texas?  It is always easy to say that policies are good when they are affecting the other person or their family.

One California city is paying people not to commit crimes.  A San Francisco suburb is testing a controversial strategy to combat the gun violence that's plagued the community — paying people not to commit crimes.  The experiment known as "Advance Peace" is being conducted in Richmond, Calif., and works like this:  The 18-month fellowship hires convicted felons to "court" troubled youth — who so far have avoided arrest due to lack of evidence — with offers of cash and out-of-town vacations if they mend their ways.  If, after six months, a "fellow" in the voluntary program begins to achieve specific goals, they can earn up to $1,000 a month.

A Victory for Religious Freedom at Christian Universities in California.  A California lawmaker who is sponsoring a bill that would have allowed the use of taxpayer dollars to punish and publicly shame Christian universities for operating according to their beliefs has removed an offending provision from the legislation.  In announcing his legislation in April, state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D), sponsor of SB 1146, had referred to his action of denying First Amendment rights to religious schools as closing a "loophole that allows private universities to discriminate against students and staff based on their gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation."

California bill SB 1146 threatens minorities and the poor.  Current California law exempts religious schools from nondiscrimination laws in cases where applying these laws "would not be consistent with the religious tenets of that organization."  This is sensible and reflects our nation's founding principles of religious freedom.  For years now, this policy has worked well, enabling church-run colleges and universities to hire personnel and establish policies and expectations regarding religious practice and personal conduct that reflect their beliefs and values.  SB 1146 proposes to drastically narrow that historic exemption so that it would only protect seminaries or other schools that train clergy and ministers.

Muslim Appreciation Month.  The State of California is planning to proclaim August Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month.  Why?  Because CAIR wants them to!  Turns out, California isn't Mexifornia after all.  It's Caliph-ornia.

Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month.  Remember the false report that Obama was going to name November to be National Muslim Appreciation Month?  The terrorist facilitators at CAIR apparently do — except for them, the fake story isn't satire; it's an excellent suggestion.  California is run by the sort of people who might agree. [...] Readers may recall that just last year 14 people were killed and 22 seriously injured in a Muslim terror attack right there in California.  But no month will be set aside to honor victims of Islam, because that would be Islamophobic.

Here's the US city with the highest pot use.  San Francisco has a new claim to fame:  The city has the highest rate of marijuana use in the country, according to a new survey.  In the survey, which was conducted from 2012 to 2014 nationwide, 15.5 percent of people in San Francisco said they had used marijuana in the past month.  That's much higher than the national average of 7.7 percent.  Perhaps not surprisingly, parts of Colorado (where recreational marijuana use is legal) also had high rates of marijuana use.  About 14.8 percent of people in the northeastern part of the state, the Denver area, and the northwestern and southwestern parts of the state reported using marijuana in the past month.

Will California Ever Thrive Again?  There was more of the same-old, same-old California news recently.  Some 62 percent of state roads have been rated poor or mediocre.  There were more predications of huge cost overruns and yearly losses on high-speed rail — before the first mile of track has been laid.  One-third of Bay Area residents were polled as hoping to leave the area soon.  Such pessimism is daily fare, and for good reason.  The basket of California state taxes — sales, income, and gasoline — rates among the highest in the U.S.  Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.  After years of drought, California has not built a single new reservoir.  Instead, scarce fresh aqueduct water is still being diverted to sea.  Thousands of rural central-California homes, in Dust Bowl fashion, have been abandoned because of a sinking aquifer and dry wells.  One in three American welfare recipients resides in California.  Almost a quarter of the state population lives below or near the poverty line.  Yet the state's gas and electricity prices are among the nation's highest.

California Reps Urge Obama To Stop California From Giving Illegals Obamacare.  House Republicans representing California pressured the Obama administration to stop its plan to expand Obamacare to illegal immigrants in the state Wednesday [6/30/2016].  Rep. Darrell Issa spearheaded the effort in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services signed by a number of California representatives slamming the plan's potential to further stagnate the economy and increase the burden on taxpayers in the state.  The California legislation would allow for a waiver permitting illegal immigrants in the state to buy private health insurance through the Obamacare exchange — allowing an estimated 390,000 more people the option to purchase plans.

Californians Will Decide Whether to Legalize Cannabis This Fall.  Yesterday [6/28/2016] the Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) officially qualified for this November's ballot in California. [...] Like the legalization measures approved by voters in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, the AUMA would let adults 21 or older possess up to an ounce of marijuana at a time.  Like all of those states except Washington, it also allows sharing (up to an ounce) and home cultivation (up to six plants per household).  Unlike the four states that have legalized marijuana so far, the AUMA explicitly allows deliveries to consumers and on-site consumption at businesses licensed for that purpose.  Both of those options would be subject to approval by local governments, which also could ban marijuana businesses entirely and regulate (but not ban) home cultivation.

PG&E to close Diablo Canyon, California's last nuclear power plant.  California's last nuclear power plant will be phased out by 2025, under a joint proposal announced Tuesday morning by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and labor and environmental groups.  Under the proposal, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County would be retired by PG&E after its current Nuclear Regulatory Commission operating licenses expire in November 2024 and August 2025. The power produced by Diablo Canyon's two nuclear reactors would be replaced with investment in a greenhouse-gas-free portfolio of energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage, PG&E said in a statement.

Blackout: California In Power Grid Emergency:  "All Customers Should Expect 14 Days Without Power".  The power grid is under direct threat as a result of the unprecedented, but little reported, massive natural gas leaks at Alisco Canyon that was ongoing for four months as an intense summer heat wave sets in.  California will have its first test of plans to keep the lights on this summer.  With record-setting heat and air conditioning demand expected in Southern California, the state's power grid operator issued a so-called "flex alert," urging consumers to conserve energy to help prevent rotating power outages — which could occur regardless.

Blackout California.  The shutdown of the leaking Aliso Canyon underground gas storage facility has caused a loss of about 70bcf of stored gas that Southern California utilities have historically counted on to see them through the hot, high-demand summer months.  The California Independent Service Operator (CAISO), which manages the California grid, estimates that as a result all customers should expect to be without power for a total of 14 days this summer.  Some 21 million Southern Californians stand to be directly affected.  Are blackouts on such a scale likely?  It seems they are.

The Editor says...
Yep, the lights and the air conditioning won't work for a few days — in the hottest part of the year — but they sure got rid of all those nuclear power plants, didn't they?  Yessir, they sure managed to outlaw coal in their state.  I'll bet they wish they could wash their dishes, but they sure saved Mother Earth from certain destruction.

San Francisco Charter Amendment Would Grant Illegal Immigrants a Vote in Local Schools.  A potential San Francisco ballot proposal could give illegal immigrants a voice in Bay Area schools.  A charter amendment by San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar is intended to grant illegal immigrants with children in school the right to vote in San Francisco Unified School District school board elections.  Two similar measures were presented in the past, but they were rejected by voters.  "The time is right for San Francisco to make history, to pave the way for immigrant parents to have a say in the policy decisions that impact their child's education and who gets to sit on the Board of Education," Mar said in a statement.

California to ask feds to allow undocumented immigrants to use Obamacare.  California could become the first state to ask the federal government to let undocumented immigrants buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.  Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed legislation Friday that attempts to allow people in the country illegally to purchase the insurance through Covered California without costing the state or federal government anything.

Federal judge rules California transgender inmates must get some female items.  A federal judge ruled Thursday [6/9/2016] that California prison officials must let transgender inmates have more female-oriented commissary items including nightgowns, robes, sandals, scarves and necklaces as part of a settlement that will make the stat the first to pay for an inmate's sex reassignment surgery.  California agreed in August to provide some items to transgender inmates who are housed in male prisons, aside from providing surgery to 56-year-old Shiloh Quine.  U.S. Magistrate Judge Nandor Vadas decided that the policy didn't go far enough.  He said transgender inmates housed in men's prisons should have many of the same items provided to female inmates.  Shiloh's attorneys argued that the state was keeping some items from transgender prisoners "based solely upon gender norms" rather than security concerns.

The End of the Free-Speech Consensus.  What happens when the consensus for free speech evaporates and those with political power become willing to use any means necessary to silence people who hold unpopular views?  We'll probably soon receive the answer in California, as the state's dominant Democrats set the stage for prosecutors to take action against climate-change "deniers."  "A landmark California bill... would make it illegal to engage in climate-change dissent clearing the way for lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies, think tanks and others that have 'deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change,'" explains a Washington Times report.  The bill, S.B. 1161, passed through two committees but ultimately was shelved.  But like most "landmark" bills, this one will keep coming back until it passes.  The bill even comes with an Orwellian name, "The California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act."

San Francisco Moves to Open Voting to Illegals.  San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Eric Mar says the political climate is right to grant illegal immigrants the right to vote.  While even notoriously liberal San Francisco voters have rejected past efforts to grant voting privileges to illegals, Fox News reports that Mar thinks the backlash against Donald Trump will yield a strong turn-out of Latino and anti-Trump voters to the polls to pass his proposed charter amendment.

LGBT Bill Threatens California's Religious Schools.  A California state bill its sponsors say will prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity at private universities is threatening to expose faith-based schools to enormous legal threats, school officials warn.  SB 1146, introduced in February by state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, which passed the state Senate May 26, is designed to close "a little-known loophole" in California law under which private colleges can make admission, housing, and faculty decisions based on gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation, according to a press release from Lara's office.  Lara is part of the state Legislature's seven-member California Legislative Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, which advocates for LGBT rights.

One law for us, another for you.  The California state Senate voted 28-8 Wednesday [6/8/2016] to exempt itself from the pointless gun-control laws that apply to the rest of the populace.  Legislators apparently think they alone are worthy to pack heat on the streets for personal protection, and the masses ought to wait until the police arrive.  This is just one of many bills Golden State politicians used this legislative session to set themselves apart from the little people, the ones who pay their inflated salaries.  Annual compensation for legislators averages about $140,000, not counting luxurious perks such as taxpayer-funded cars and free gasoline.  By comparison, the average Californian earns $50,000 a year, and the unemployment rate is 11.9 percent — far above the national average.  Exact salaries for state assemblymen and senators are obscured by the use of a "per diem" payment scheme that shelters a significant chunk of income from taxation.

San Francisco to try yet again to give illegal immigrants voting rights.  After two failed bids to grant voting rights to illegal immigrants, some San Francisco officials believe they have found the man who can make it happen:  Donald Trump.  A proposed charter amendment drafted by Board of Supervisors member Eric Mar would give illegal immigrants with kids in the public school system the right to vote in school elections.  Voters have rejected two previous ballot proposals, but Mar is betting on anti-Trump sentiment to carry the pro-illegal immigrant proposal if he can get it on the November ballot.

If You Share Undercover Exposés of Planned Parenthood, You Could End Up in a California Jail.  The California legislature is considering a bill that would make it impossible to expose Planned Parenthood with recordings unless they give their permission, but it is even worse than that.  Anyone who publishes, shares, emails the recordings would also be held liable for criminal prosecution.  The bill moved to the State Senate last week.  This is a serious effort.  Abortion mills are the latest protected class.

California's Crazy Election Quirks Limit Voter Choices and Create Chaos.  New polls show that the Democratic primary in California is neck and neck between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  If the election is close, and Hillary narrowly wins, it could be because arcane and suspect rules gave her an artificial advantage.  A Hillary win would rob Sanders of the ability to claim momentum and would blunt his efforts to fight for the nomination up until the Democratic convention.  California has made such a royal mess of its entire primary system that it needs to do a complete overhaul to restore the credibility of the system.

Trump is Correct about the California Drought.  On Friday, May 27, the prospective Republican candidate for president Donald Trump went to the city of Fresno, the capital of California's farming community, and declared: "there is no drought!"  This seemingly brash statement was met with ridicule and scorn across the blogosphere — how could anyone make such a so-called "stupid" statement when everyone knows that California has experienced a historically high dry spell since 2013?  But was Trump right?  Arguably yes.  Here's why.

Three Excellent Examples of Investigative Journalism on Migration Topics.  There has been all too little investigative reporting regarding immigration matters, but there were two remarkable exceptions to that last month, and a third late last year.  These three long, well researched articles dealt with scandals in a huge California visa mill, multiple problems in the EB-5 program, and in the H-2B program for temporary alien non-agricultural workers, perhaps the most ignored of the migration trouble spots.

California Senate sidelines bill to prosecute climate change skeptics.  A landmark bill allowing for the prosecution of climate change dissent effectively died Thursday [6/2/2016] after the California Senate failed to take it up before the deadline.  Senate Bill 1161, or the California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016, would have authorized prosecutors to sue fossil fuel companies, think tanks and others that have "deceived or misled the public on the risks of climate change."  The measure, which cleared two Senate committees, provided a four-year window in the statute of limitations on violations of the state's Unfair Competition Law, allowing legal action to be brought until Jan. 1 on charges of climate change "fraud" extending back indefinitely.

California moves to criminalize undercover filming at Planned Parenthood.  In the wake of an undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood's alleged fetal trafficking operation, the California state legislature is considering a bill that would criminalize publishing secretly recorded video footage of "health care providers."  AB 1671, which has been backed by Planned Parenthood, would criminalize the publication of confidential interactions with state-licensed medical personnel, including abortionists and clinician staff, punishable by up to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine per violation.

The Dead are Alive and Voting in California.  The only question is how many Undead-Americans will vote for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.  Because the dead are voting.  And we must not deny the franchise to undead Democrats.  That would be wrong and un-American.  It would put us on the wrong side of history.  California can lead the way to the restoration of voting rights for the dead, right after voting rights for felons.

Feds to Pay California to Finance FREE MediCaid Health Care for Illegal Aliens.  The responsibility of the Fed is to keep illegal aliens out of this country — instead Obama is importing them and giving them "free" health care — while cause honest citizens to pay higher taxes, receive lower quality health care and to crowd the system so honest Americans must wait while the Obama imports get their care.

California's Political Water Wars Heat Up.  Water wars are historic undertakings in California.  Countless other publications have written recently about the proposed ballot measure that would redirect High Speed Rail bond money for water-related projects and prioritize the use of water, But what makes this story interesting is the coalition of opponents, their motivations and techniques being employed.  The Committee to Stop the Special Interest Water Grab, led by David Guy, president of the Northern California Water Association, Tim Johnson, president of the California Rice Commission and a "contract administrator" at California Rice Industry Association, and political operative Steve Maviglio of Forza Communications and big supporter of High Speed Rail, have launched an all-out assault campaign against the California Water Priorities Initiative.

Lawmakers reject John Wayne Day over racism concerns.  What a California lawmaker intended as a benign resolution honoring a late, world-renowned movie icon exploded into an emotional debate over decades-old racist comments.

California Looks to Cover Illegal Immigrants Under Obamacare.  In an unprecedented move, California legislators look to extend Obamacare health coverage to the state's estimated 2.6 million illegal immigrant population.  If passed and signed into law, California would be the first state in the nation to request illegal immigrants be covered through a state exchange, the Los Angeles Times reported.  It is against the law for California to allow illegal immigrants to enroll in Covered California, the state's Obamacare health insurance exchange, Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO of the pro-free-market Pacific Research Institute, told The Daily Signal in an emailed response.  "The law does not allow illegals to enroll in the state exchanges or the federal exchange Healthcare.gov," Pipes said.

CalPERS Could Get Hands on Billions in Private-Sector Retirement Funds.  Instead of addressing the estimated $600 billion in unfunded liabilities in California's beleaguered public-employee pension system, Democrats in Sacramento have instead decided to "solve" a growing pension crisis in the private sector.  In 2012, Governor Jerry Brown signed a measure that created an investment board and authorized a "feasibility study" of various options for a state-backed private-pension system.  That study came out last month, and the legislature is now vetting bills that would put its recommendations into action.  The plans under consideration would mandate participation in the new state-run retirement system for firms with five or more workers, though the workers themselves could opt out.  Employers that don't comply would face fines and other penalties.

21st Century California Reverts Back to the Wild West.  [Scroll down]  Today I generalize that about every old rural farmhouse in these environs can be characterized by three traits:  a) the house is a rental and not connected with the corporate fields around it; b) there are two to three families, in illegal fashion, living in ramshackle trailers and sheds on the property; c) the authorities don't dare enforce zoning or health laws, on the grounds that enforcement is a bad investment of their limited time and budget.  If I find a dead dog dumped on the alleyway (as I have three or four times over the last 12 months), with a rope around his neck and his insides exposed from dog fighting, I bury him and pass on calling the animal-control people.  In fairness to them, what would they do, run an investigation into rural dog fighting — in a state in which felons are routinely released from prisons and jails, and sanctuary cities offer amnesties?  I suppose a Queensland with his face ripped off is small potatoes.  (Does multiculturalism trump the ASPCA or PETA?)  Nor do I ever contact the state EPA or the county when monthly I collect baby carriages, car seats, tires, used paint cans, old Christmas trees, mattresses, and dirty diapers dumped on the side of the road — despite occasional junk mail signifying the address of the polluter.

San Francisco Torn as Some See 'Street Behavior' Worsen.  From her apartment at the foot of the celebrated zigzags of Lombard Street, Judith Calson has twice peered out her window as thieves smashed their way into cars and snatched whatever they could.  She has seen foreign tourists cry after cash and passports were stolen.  She shudders when she recounts the story of the Thai tourist who was shot because he resisted thieves taking his camera.  And that is her tally from the last year alone. [...] Recent data from the F.B.I. show that San Francisco has the highest per-capita property crime rate of the nation's top 50 cities.

Love Finds a Way in Oakland.  This month, Oakland's City Council voted 5-3 to adopt "Love Life" as the city's motto. [...] "Love Life" is the brainchild of Donald Lacy, whose daughter LoEshe — the name means "Love Life" in Nigerian — was killed near McClymonds High School in 1997.  The 16-year-old died in the sort of senseless random gang-turf shooting that has taken too many young black lives in Oakland. [...] Enter racial politics.  Because Schaaf and some motto foes are white, while McElhaney and some other supporters are black, "Love Life" fans suggested that opponents lacked empathy for victims of street violence.

Religious group sues San Francisco over open-air urinal.  A religious organization has filed a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco to remove an open-air urinal it calls unsanitary and indecent from a popular park.  The Chinese Christian Union of San Francisco filed a civil complaint last week demanding the city remove the concrete circular urinal from the iconic Dolores Park.  The group says the urinal, which is out in the open and screened only with plants for privacy, "emanates offensive odors," "has no hand-washing facilities" and "it's offensive to manners and morals."

Should California AG Harris Be Investigated for Tax Code Violations?  California attorney general Kamala Harris is the state's top charity regulator, overseeing California's Registry of Charitable Trusts.  Ms. Harris has decided to bypass federal law expressly requiring her to obtain Schedule B information directly from the IRS on a case-by-case basis if she has a legitimate need for donor information to enforce her state's charitable solicitation laws.  Instead of abiding by federal law, she's employing a dragnet method, demanding that all charities registering with her office submit their Schedule B donor lists to the Registry in order to solicit contributions from Californians.

San Francisco Passes Fully Paid Parental Leave Bill.  San Francisco could soon become the first city in the nation to provide both parents with six weeks of fully-paid parental leave after a birth or adoption.  The measure, which was unanimously passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday [4/5/2016], will now require the signatures of Gov. Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.  Both have indicated they will sign.

Casualties of a Living Wage: A California Bookstore Owner's Minimum Wage Story.  After more than a decade at the helm of her bookstore, Ann Kinner faces an uncertain future because of new measures at the city and state level to raise the minimum wage.  On June 7, San Diego residents will vote on a ballot measure to raise the city's minimum wage to $11.50 an hour in 2017.  This proposal, coupled with a bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday raising the state minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022, has left Kinner in knots.

California Department Of Justice Raids David Daleiden's Home.  The California Department of Justice raided the home of David Daleiden, the pro-life journalist behind the undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood's harvesting and sale of human organs from aborted children.  Daleiden explained in a Facebook post that authorities with the California Department of Justice raided his home Tuesday afternoon and seized all video footage of Planned Parenthood employees' involvement in selling organs from aborted babies — including damning footage which has yet to be released.  Daleiden noted that the California Department of Justice serves under the authority of California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who has benefited politically from Planned Parenthood: [...]

Planned Parenthood: David Daleiden Speaks out on Home Raid.  Undercover investigator David Daleiden's home in California was raided Tuesday [4/5/2016] by officials under the office of California Attorney General Kamala Harris.  Harris has been investigating Daleiden for months, after his video exposé of Planned Parenthood's alleged baby-parts scheme.  His videos allegedly showed Planned Parenthood personnel actively negotiating the sale of the livers, lungs, hearts and other organs of aborted unborn children.

Abortion Activist Claims Planned Parenthood Videos Caused Raid At His Home.  An anti-abortion activist who made undercover videos at Planned Parenthood clinics said in a social media posting that California Department of Justice agents raided his home Tuesday [4/5/2016].

California to Pay $5400 to Make Poor Sick People Dead.  California Medical — its version of Medicaid — will pay $5400 for the drugs to make the suicidal terminally ill poor, dead.  Worse, Medical recipients don't have access to good cancer treatment and doesn't pay well for palliative care.

California is first state to approve $15 minimum wage.  California has become the first state in the nation to approve a statewide $15 minimum wage.  Both the State Assembly and State Senate passed the measure on Thursday afternoon [3/31/2016].  Governor Jerry Brown said he would sign it on Monday.  "No one who is working full time in California should live in poverty due to a low wage," said Democratic State Senator Mark Leno, who cosponsored the bill.

Heaven Help California's Non-Urban Cities Under a $15 Minimum Wage.  If anybody is wondering why so many California residents outside of the big cities want to break away and make their own states, just take note of the news today that California legislators have made a deal with the all-powerful unions to jack up the minimum wage for all industries and all employers across the state to $15 by 2022 and then tie future increases to inflation.  Small business in California will have until 2023 to comply.  There are 13 counties in California that still have double-digit unemployment figures, according to the state's own data.  The data isn't seasonally adjusted, so keep in mind that unemployment naturally rises at the start of a new year.  But even taking into account an adjustment there are significant populations in the state struggling to find work.  None of these high unemployment counties are connected to the big cities.

San Francisco mayor bans city workers from traveling to North Carolina.  San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement Friday [3/25/2016] he doesn't want any city workers to travel to North Carolina unless necessary in wake of its legislation which blocks anti-discrimination for gay, lesbian and transgender people.  "We are standing united as San Franciscans to condemn North Carolina's new discriminatory law that turns back the clock on protecting the rights of all Americans including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals," Lee said in the statement.

Palo Alto residents who earn up to $250,000 a year to qualify for subsized housing.  The well-heeled California neighborhood, where a plot of land recently sold for $2.7 million, is home to some of America's richest entrepreneurs who work a few miles away in Silicon Valley.  With house price averages an eye-watering $3 million, even those earning $250,000-a-year are spending two-thirds of their monthly salary (around $14,000) paying off their mortgage.  It means workers such as teachers, janitors, firefighters, social workers, police officers and more are not paid enough to afford the local rent, driving up congestion as they commute in.

California AG Kamala Harris wants your private information from the IRS.  Charity donor information on Schedule B is protected under federal law as confidential.  Charities and their donors worry that imperious, uber-liberal Ms. Harris will leak this confidential information to their ideological opponents and her allies.  Among its various acts of lawlessness and lawbreaking, Lois Lerner's IRS was caught leaking this type of confidential donor information of the National Organization for Marriage to its opponents.

The Weirdness of Illegal Immigration.  When someone ignores a federal statute, then it is naturally easy to flout more.  In Los Angeles, half the traffic accidents are hit-and-run collisions.  I can attest first-hand that running from an accident or abandoning a wrecked vehicle is certainly a common occurrence in rural California.  Last night on a rural road, a driver behind me (intoxicated?  Malicious?  Crazy?) apparently tried to rear-end me, then turned off his lights, sped up, and at the next stop sign pulled over swearing out the window in Spanish.  In this age and in these environs, why would one call a sheriff for a minor everyday occurrence like that?  The point is simply that when there is no federal law, no one has any idea how several million arrive in the U.S., much less what exactly they were doing before their illegal arrival. [...] To read the local Fresno Bee is to collate a daily tally of stabbings, shootings, gang violence, carjackings, thefts, and chop shops — without any exegesis why this is so.  Cuts in law enforcement?  Therapeutic approach to the law?  A complete failure to integrate and assimilate the second generation of illegal immigrants?  The inability to offer jobs in a command state economy?

CA's Knee-Jerk Bill Forbids Travel to Un-PC States.  Hopefully, this Californian lawmaker puts more thought into the other bills he introduces.  This week, Evan Low, a Democrat, introduced a bill that would ban California state employees from traveling to states that passed a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.  "No one wants to send employees into an environment where they would be uncomfortable," Low reportedly said, as if hurt feelings are enough to hamper the state's ability to cooperate with other members of the union.  But here's the kicker:  the lawmaker doesn't know how many states his little bill would affect.  Furthermore, the bill would only apply to government employees. [...] This isn't the first time Low introduced a bill for the gay-rights community.  Last May, Low co-authored a resolution with two other California lawmakers responding to the FDA's blood donor guidelines that forbid sexually active homosexuals from donating blood.

California's violation of federal civil rights laws.  In August 2014, the California Department of Managed Health Care, suddenly and without prior notice, issued a mandate to private market healthcare plans in California requiring them to cover all abortions as a "basic health care service" — including late-term and gender selective abortions.  (Prior to this mandate, California limited coverage to medically necessary abortions.)  The new mandate violates a longstanding federal civil rights law — the Weldon Amendment.  Congress first enacted Weldon in 2002 to protect healthcare providers and insurers from governmental discrimination on the basis that they choose not to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.  The victims of this type of governmental discrimination have only one recourse:  file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights (OCR).  This has proven entirely futile.

California is considering a travel ban on states with anti-gay laws.  Like always, lawmakers jammed a mountain of bills into the legislative queue just ahead of the Feb. 19 deadline to introduce them.  Many of them affect state employees.  Some would install new laws and regulations that pile on workload (it happens every year to DMV staff) or by altering some aspect of how state government itself conducts business.  Now, with the 30-day waiting period to start hearing those measures just ahead, here's one to watch:  Assembly Bill 1887 by Assemblyman Evan Low, a Democrat from Campbell.  Low wants to prohibit state employees from government-funded travel to states that have "a law in effect that sanctions or requires discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression," according to his bill's language.

The Editor says...
Is homosexuality really that important to California politicians?  No, but control certainly is.  The government wants unlimited power to control the way we act and think, and the ability to make us associate with those whom we would prefer to avoid.

The New California Crime Wave.  Something amazing has happened in California.  First, a brief background:  Crime rates across the state, after a long period of steady decline, had reached fifty-year lows in 2014.  Then, that November, a 60 percent majority of California voters — presumably incapable of accepting such good news without a measure of collective guilt — decided that it would be a really enlightened idea to pass Proposition 47, a ballot initiative bearing the cheery name "The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act."  The purpose of this measure was to downgrade many types of drug possession and property crimes from felonies (punishable by more than a year in prison) to misdemeanors (which often entail no prison time at all).  For the benefit of squeamish skeptics, the self-assured proponents of Prop 47 condescended to explain that these reduced penalties would not only alleviate prison overcrowding, but would also make California's streets safer by placing drug offenders into warm-and-fuzzy treatment and counseling programs, rather than into disagreeable prison cells.  If you think this sounds like a familiar old tune, you're quite correct.  It was #1 on the left-wing hit parade throughout the 1960s, when it became the theme song of skyrocketing crime rates across the United States.  And now the Golden Oldie is back, in the Golden State.  The tangible results of Prop 47 were both immediate and breathtaking.  Within a year, there were some 14,000 fewer inmates in California's state prisons and local jails, just as the Proposition's backers had promised.  But the other half of their promise — improved public safety — somehow failed to materialize.

San Francisco Public Library hosts drag queen story hour for children.  What do drag queens and children have in common?  They both find joy in wrapping themselves in feather boas and all things shiny and glittery.  A San Francisco nonprofit recognizes this shared interest in dressing up and is joining forces with the San Francisco Public Library to bring drag queens and children together.  Radar Productions, a group giving voice to queer writers and artists, will be hosting Honey Mahogany at the Eureka Valley Harvey Milk Memorial Library, March 12, noon to 2 p.m, in the heart of the Castro District.  Dressed in fabulous drag-queen garb and full makeup, Honey will be reading stories, painting children's faces and passing out cookies.

New California Law Forces Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers to Advertise Abortions.  Did you hear about the new bill that California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law? [...] The bill he signed (AB775), named the Reproductive Fact Act, aims to punish pro-life pregnancy centers, which offer women and girls compassionate alternatives to abortion.  Under penalty of ruinous fines for every "violation," the law orders the pro-life centers to post notices and tell mothers that they can abort their babies and have California taxpayers foot the bill via the state's expansive Medi-Cal program.

City workers in San Diego barred from uttering 'biased' term 'Founding Fathers'.  The traditional reference to America's patriotic patriarchs is considered gender biased, and a city manual banning the term was reinforced this week with verbal orders, according to legal watchdog group, Pacific Justice Institute.  "At a time set aside to honor American icons to whom we owe our constitutional freedoms, it is offensive and indefensible that the City of San Diego is directing employees not to even mention the Founding Fathers," Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said in a statement provided to FoxNews.com.  The warning against referring to Washington, Jefferson, Adams and company as "Founding Fathers" first appeared in a section of a city-issued manual titled, "Bias-Free Language."

After Hiring 1,000 New DMV Bureaucrats, California Issues 605,000 Licenses To Illegals.  After spending $141 million to hire nearly 1,000 new Department of Motor Vehicle employees to process driver's license applications in the wake of AB60 — the California law to issue driver's licenses to 1.5 million illegal immigrants — the results are in, and it's clear the bureaucrats have kept busy.  Tuesday [2/9/2016], the DMV said it had issued 605,000 shiny new driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, with the full 1.5 million expected to be in place in the next two years.  The total accounted for more than half of the licenses issued in 2015.  But that's not searchable in a database, accounting to True The Vote.

California's "unprecedented mass forgiveness" of convicts raises more than a few questions.  In case you hadn't heard, California's governor has been on something of a binge in terms of releasing convicts from prison and reforming the system to be more fair to everyone.  Prison reform and rehabilitation vs isolation is all the rage these days it seems.  The Washington Post ran a feature this week on how wonderfully this has been going and it certainly makes a grade A effort to paint a happy face on these proposals.

You Can Now Urinate in Public in San Francisco.  San Francisco has installed an outdoor urinal in Dolores Park near the Mission District as part of the more than $20 million renovation of the recreation area in an attempt to combat a "rampant" public urination issue.  "The more options we can give them to relieve themselves, the better for the parkgoers," San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener told the Associated Press.

San Francisco park debuts open-air urinal.  San Francisco's iconic Dolores Park is now home to the city's first open-air urinal, the latest move to combat the destructive scourge of public urination in the City by the Bay.

Kamala Harris crosses lines of both privacy and the law.  California Attorney General Kamala Harris must be so ambitious that she is willing to tempt fate of multiple civil lawsuits and even criminal charges so she can intimidate her ideological opponents — and even her supporters.  Ms. Harris oversees licensing of charities across the country that ask Californians for contributions.  She's also a candidate for the United States Senate.  In disregard of the 1958 landmark civil rights decision NAACP v. Alabama and post-Watergate reforms to the Internal Revenue Code to protect tax information privacy, Ms. Harris is now telling charities and other nonprofit organizations that in order to get from her a charitable solicitation license they must first provide her office a confidential federal tax schedule listing their most valuable donors.

Under Obamacare, Medi-Cal ballooned to cover 1 in 3 Californians.  California officials never anticipated how many people would sign up for state-run health insurance under Obamacare.  The state's health plan for the poor, known as Medi-Cal, now covers 12.7 million people, 1 of every 3 Californians.

Never Enough Abortions in California.  California is such a pro-abortion state that:  1. It allows non-doctor nurse practitioners to terminate fetal life.  2. Its voters have twice refused to vote in a "parent notification" law, requiring that parents of underage girls be told — not approve, just notified — that their daughter had an abortion.  And now:  3. Crisis pregnancy centers — that help women choose to give birth by providing counseling and material support — will be required to post notices of where abortions can be obtained with phone numbers, as well as that they might be obtained for free.

America's Can't-Do State: California's Man-Made Drought Continues.  The first desalination plant in a state dragging itself through a drought has finally opened — a welcome event but also instructive in how nearly impossible it is to build anything useful in California. [...] The Carlsbad desalination plant was proposed in 1998 and took almost 18 years to build.  But only three of those years were actually spent building.  The rest were wasted on politics and the usual Golden State regulatory and bureaucratic tangle.  One of the plant's investors told a California writer that the duplicative state approval process alone delayed the project by at least a decade and added about 10% to total costs.

San Francisco Is Needle City.  In 1997, I went to a "needle exchange" in San Francisco to see firsthand how the "harm reduction program" prevented the spread of HIV among addicts. [...] Under the new order, San Francisco Department of Public Health spokeswoman Rachael Kagan explained, "you don't need a needle to get a needle."  Users who show up at a "syringe access" center can get a "starter kit" of 20 needles.  If they want more than 20 needles, they have to present used needles.  I walked into a nearby facility and walked away with my own starter kit in a discreet plain brown bag.  San Francisco now asks users to leave their discarded syringes in drop boxes at public toilets, pharmacies and clinics.  I got a "sharps" disposal box with my 20-needle kit.  Alas, there's another oft-used disposal venue — city streets and sidewalks.  If you walk around the city, then you've seen the used needles.

Half of immigrants in state illegally could be eligible for Medi-Cal expansion, study finds.  Half of Californians in the country illegally would be eligible for the state's healthcare program for the poor if it were expanded under a proposal by legislators, a new report finds.  Some California politicians are pushing to open up the $91-billion Medi-Cal program to people here illegally, since such immigrants are not allowed to sign up for insurance under Obamacare.

All 20 'Worst Small Cities in America' in California.  The annual WalletHub's 2015 "Best & Worst Small Cities in America" found that all 20 of the worst small cities in America to live in are in California.

California: A state of death.  Shortly after signing a bill allowing assisted suicide in California, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed another measure that forces pregnancy crisis centers to "offer information about affordable contraception, abortion and prenatal care."  The information is to be displayed in the form of a sign tacked to the crisis center's door and must include a phone number to the nearest county services office where family free or low-cost family planning services can be obtained.  Deceptively labeled the Reproductive FACT Act, the measure requires women seeking help with an unplanned pregnancy to be informed of alternatives, including abortions, which the pregnancy crisis centers do not perform.

Does the government want you to die?  Gov. Brown and his Democratic Party majority in the California state Legislature have benevolently given people the "right to die."  Assisted suicide is now legal in California, but we have to ask ourselves:  What is the government's incentive to help people die?[...] The government does not need give anyone permission to commit suicide.  And that leads to the question:  What motivates a government to give you permission to end your life and assist you in the process?

Jerry Brown Cooks Up A Recipe For California Voter Fraud.  Just months after handing out California driver's licenses to illegals, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a law to automatically register every driver to vote.  Supposedly, it's to raise turnout.  More likely, it's inviting fraud.  So how does opening up U.S. presidential elections to the votes of any of the citizens of El Salvador, Armenia, Mexico or China sound?  Foreigners have complained for years about wanting to vote in U.S. elections and in California.  And now they may get their wish — unless California's Gov. Jerry Brown is somehow kept from enacting AB 1461, a bill to automatically register every recipient of a California driver's license to vote.

Non-Citizens Will Now Vote in At Least One State.  Governor Jerry Brown just sold out the American vote in California.  He signed a new version of the Motor Voter Act that will register every eligible California citizen who acquires a driver's license or renews a license at the Department of Motor Vehicles to vote.  This is after he made all illegal aliens eligible for diver's licenses.  Eleven states allow illegal aliens to get driver's licenses.

Gov. Brown Approves Automatic Voter Registration at DMV for Californians.  Targeting California's recent record-low voter turnout, Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed a measure that would eventually allow Californians to be automatically registered to vote when they go to the DMV to obtain or renew a driver's license.  The measure, which would also allow Californians to opt out of registering, was introduced in response to the dismal 42% turnout in the November 2014 statewide election.

California opens the door to more voter fraud with new motor voter law.  California's Governor had a busy weekend, breaking out his pen and signing nearly two dozen bills into law.  Most of them centered on the voting process in the Golden State, but while liberals are taking a victory lap there are hints that these maneuvers are going to signal trouble down the line.  The big ticket item in the legislative package was the "New Motor Voter Law."  This brainstorm will make voter registration automatic for any person receiving a new driver's license or renewing an existing one.

Cutting ozone will require radical transformation of California's trucking industry.  At a laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, a big rig spins its wheels on massive rollers as a metal tube funnels its exhaust into an array of air quality sensors.  Engineers track the roaring truck's emissions from a bank of computer screens.  The brand-new diesel truck is among the cleanest on the road, the engineers at the California Air Resources Board testing lab say.  Even so, its 550-horsepower engine spews out more than 20 times the smog-forming nitrogen oxides of a typical gasoline-powered car — and that won't be good enough for the state to meet stricter federal smog limits adopted this month.

California to become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives.  California will become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to legally end their lives using doctor-prescribed drugs after Gov. Jerry Brown announced Monday [10/5/2015] he had signed one of the most emotionally charged bills of the year.

California mom claims retailer booted her for complaining about man in girls' restroom.  A California mom who says she was recently kicked out of a sporting goods store after alerting a manager that man had frightened her young daughter in the women's restroom is demanding answers — and a policy change — from the Washington-based chain.  The woman, who spoke to FoxNews.com but asked not to be identified, said she was shopping with her 12-year-old daughter and the girl's younger friend when her daughter told her what had happened moments earlier at an REI sporting goods store during a shopping trip in late August.

The 'Affordable Housing' Fraud.  Nowhere has there been so much hand-wringing over a lack of "affordable housing," as among politicians and others in coastal California.  And nobody has done more to make housing unaffordable than those same politicians and their supporters.  A recent survey showed that the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco was just over $3,500.  Some people are paying $1,800 a month just to rent a bunk bed in a San Francisco apartment.  It is not just in San Francisco that putting a roof over your head can take a big chunk out of your pay check.  The whole Bay Area is like that.

California gas prices
Everything Wrong with California in One Photo.  Nationwide gasoline prices are below $3 a gallon.  But here in California it is not unusual to see prices still over $4 a gallon.  So what do liberals here want to do?  Pass a law that mandates reducing gasoline consumption by 50 percent by the year 2030 — just 15 years from now.  This proved too much even for some Democrats — the ones who represent actual poor and (previously) working people in the Central Valley, unlike the West LA and Silicon Valley and San Francisco Democrats who represent smug rich people who drive Teslas.  These old-style Democrats said they would not vote for the bill.


California issuing free diplomas to high school students who flunked out.  Plenty of state school systems are struggling with ways to not only keep up with national mandates and restrictions, but to boost their graduation rates so they can maintain their funding and reduce criticism from the public.  California seems to have come up a rather unique, back door approach to the problem.  You could always take tens of thousands of former high school students who flunked out and simply give them a diploma anyway.

California Will Give Free High School Diplomas To Kids Who Flunked Out.  The California High School Exit Exam (CASHEE) was created in 2004, and is intended to make sure that students have a rudimentary grasp of English and mathematics before being awarded a high school diploma, and to counter the phenomenon of students receiving passing grades while learning almost nothing.  The test is hardly complex.  The math test, for instance, only covers 8th grade-level material and can be passed if students answer 55 percent of questions correctly.

University of California considering recognizing a "right" to be "free from ... expressions of intolerance".  The policy specifically condemns the expression of particular viewpoints as "intolerant," as having "no place at the University of California," and a violation of others' rights to be "free from ... expressions of intolerance."  For instance, articulating a view that people with various intellectual disabilities are incapable of various intellectual tasks, or people with various physical disabilities are incapable of various physical tasks, would be condemned by the authority of the University. Articulating a view that there are cultural (or even biological) differences between ethnic and racial groups in various fields — condemned by the authority of the University, without regard to the arguments for or against the particular assertion.  It's just an up-front categorical rule; whatever you want to say along these lines, we don't want to hear it, we don't care what your arguments are, we'll condemn it, and faculty and students have a right not to hear it.

California Assembly Approves Assisted Suicide Bill.  The ghost of Brittany Maynard came back for yet another haunting Wednesday [9/9/2015] when the California Assembly voted to allow physician-assisted suicide by a vote of 43-34.  After having lost in the California Senate back in June due to efforts largely from the Roman Catholic Church, the merchants of death simply regrouped and returned to the lower house of the legislature to approve the End of Life Option Act.

Median total compensation for Redwood City firefighters — at least $226,365.  Back in February 2014 the California Policy Center publicly announced the Transparent California website, developed in partnership with the Nevada Policy Research Institute.  An article covering this announcement was posted on the Forbes Magazine website, entitled "Hundreds Of California Government Employees Are Paid Over $400,000 A Year," which a review of 2013 Transparent California data (2014 data is still being assembled) easily confirms.  As a matter of fact, in 2013, total compensation in excess of $400,000 was paid to 1,292 public servants in California.  A staggering 2,818 of California's public employees collected total compensation in excess of $300,000 in 2013.

Bums Bury San Francisco in Feces.  San Francisco is also a center of leftism.  The liberals running the city have laid out a red carpet for dysfunctional street people, who come from all over the country to collect their freebies and crap on the sidewalk.  Combined with the policy of no longer incarcerating any but the most obviously violent lunatics, this has reduced the city to a cross between a mental institution and a sewer.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein Wants Obama to Wall-off 1 million Acres in Desert.  U.S. Senator Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked President Barack Obama on Friday [8/21/2015] to bypass Congress and use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create three new national monuments in the California desert.  The move would extend federal protection over more than 1 million acres of mountain ranges, sandy expanses and forests running roughly between Palm Springs and the Nevada border.

No one showed up for California's green jobs rush.  In 2012, California voters were peppered with grandiose promises, such that they could not resist approving Proposition 39. [...] Naturally, it did not work at all.  On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the program has "created" just 1,700 jobs in three years — just under 600 jobs per year or roughly five percent of what was promised, at the cost of $175,000 per job.  Even that paltry figure fails to account for opportunity costs — i.e. jobs lost statewide because of the forced diversion of economic resources away from productive industries and toward green energy.  The number of net jobs created is likely zero or less than zero, which is to say that probably a few hundred or a few thousand jobs have been destroyed so far at a cost of $300 million.

California moves to provide interpreters in all court cases.  Legal advocates say throughout the state, litigants in divorce, child custody, eviction and other civil cases who have difficulty with English are going into court without qualified interpreters.

California's SB3, the Minimum Wage Hike.  California has embarked upon a dangerous experiment.  The Democrats who secured total control of the statehouse have been the most productive group of legislators at passing bills in the last 50 years.  Most of these bills were passed stealthily to avoid media scrutiny.  The last minimum wage hike was rammed through without much media attention.  The same with the Sick Leave Law that went into effect in July of 2015.  These two new costs, when combined with the federal ACA have increased the cost of labor roughly 35% overnight.  None of these assaults on California businesses were sensibly staggered, nor was the business community even consulted.  It's as if the feeling that exists under the Capital building is a childlike free-for-all to greedily get as much vote-buying, pro-labor legislation in before the window closes.  And now comes SB3, which is to amend the last minimum wage and take it higher, much much higher, for the entire state.

The Collapse of California.  The place they once called the Golden State is providing a sobering look at America's possible Third World future. [...] California now has the highest rate of poverty in the country.  The drought, which is also not being helped by the rapid increase in population, is now drying up entire rivers.  Not surprisingly, the "watchdog press" is chiefly concerned with making sure people don't connect the dots between an overcrowded, Third World demographic profile and a Third World way of life.

Without immigration reform, California citizenship will have to do.  It started with in-state tuition.  Then came driver's licenses, new rules designed to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children.  And on Monday [8/10/2015], in a gesture heavy with symbolism, came a new law to erase the word "alien" from California's labor code.  Together, these piecemeal measures have taken on a significance greater than their individual parts — a fundamental shift in the relationship between California and its residents who live in the country illegally.  The various benefits, rights and protections add up to something experts liken to a kind of California citizenship.

Gov. Brown doesn't want California to use this word for immigrants.  Gov. Jerry Brown signed a trio of immigration-related measures Monday [8/10/2015], including one removing the word "alien" from California's labor code because it is seen as a disparaging term for those not born in the United States.  Brown also signed into law legislation allowing noncitizens in high school to serve as election poll workers and protecting the rights of immigrant minors in civil lawsuits.

Red Flags Of Corruption Over Huntington Park.  In a page-one headline, the Los Angeles Times hailed the appointment of illegal immigrants to two Huntington Park, Calif., civic commissions as a milestone that "charts a bold path for immigrants."  It was booster journalism at its worst, gushing about illegals gaining participatory "rights" in U.S. public life that had supposedly been unjustly denied them.  It also stood in stark contrast with the multiple local press reports — KPCC, KTLA, CBS-LA and more — which reported the event as primarily cause for angry protests.

Thousands of California convicts to regain voting rights.  California restored voting rights Tuesday [8/4/2015] to tens of thousands of criminals serving sentences under community supervision, reversing a decision by a state official that they could not participate in elections.  Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced the settlement between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union of California, which sued on behalf of nearly 60,000 convicts who became ineligible to vote when then Secretary of State Debra Bowen determined in 2014 that community supervision was equivalent to parole.

California's Medi-Cal explosion.  California is coming face to face with the reality of one of its biggest Obamacare successes:  the explosion in Medi-Cal enrollment.  The numbers — 2.2 million enrollees since January — surprised healthcare experts and created unforeseen challenges for state officials.  Altogether, there are now about 11 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries, constituting nearly 30% of the state's population.

Audit Finds Massive Financial Mismanagement In West Covina.  It was a bumbling city that didn't know how much it was collecting or spending.  It signed large contracts without proper bidding and hired administrators without vetting their qualifications.  Its city manager spent lavishly on meals and arrangements for council members with the city credit card.  And it lost $1 million by selling a developer land it wasn't legally allowed to sell.  Those were the findings of a state audit released Thursday [7/9/2015] that blistered the management of West Covina, whose roiling politics usually make few ripples outside its east San Gabriel Valley boundaries.

California Is A Microcosm Of American Mediocrity.  California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years.  The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought.  Yet it has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979.  That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state's storage reserves — a critical project that was almost canceled by endless environmental lawsuits and protests.  Although California has almost doubled in population since the dam's construction, its politicians apparently decided that completing more northern and Sierra Nevada water projects was passe.  So the parched state now prays for rain and snow rather than building reservoirs to ensure that the next drought won't shut down the state.

California regulators approve higher electricity rates for most residents.  Electric bills are set to rise over the next few years for most household customers served by California's major investor-owned utilities, including Southern California Edison.  The increases are a result of sweeping changes approved Friday [7/2/2015] by the California Public Utilities Commission — the first statewide rate overhaul since the 2000-01 energy crisis.  Modest and moderate consumers of electricity will bear a greater share of costs, while many larger users of electricity will see their bills shrink or increase less rapidly.

CA Water Board Prioritizes Fish Over People.  As severe drought conditions in California continue to worsen, state officials have started to roll out with new regulations to prioritize various water interests.  On Wednesday [6/24/2015], the State Water Resources Control Board adopted new emergency regulations to protect endangered and threatened fish.  Low flows in four tributaries of the Russian River cause "high temperatures, low oxygen levels and isolated pools of water that can kill fish," such as the coho salmon and steelhead trout.

California budget deal to make state first in nation to offer health care to undocumented kids.  The $115.4 billion agreement announced Tuesday [6/16/2015] is expected to win easy approval from the [California] Senate and Assembly before the fiscal year begins July 1, and its immigrant health care provisions were touted by its backers as a necessity in the face of federal inaction.

The Editor says...
Sometimes there's a reason for "federal inaction."  In fact, "federal inaction" is often the best we can hope for.

Goodnight, California.  8:00 PM[:]  I'm on the upstairs balcony looking out over miles of lush countryside.  It's quite scenic, something in between verdant Tuscany and the aridness of Sicily.  I can hear the ag pumps of the surrounding farms everywhere churning 24/7.  In a normal year they would never be turned on, as river water irrigated the fields and recharged the water table.  Then come two sirens.  Will the power go off?  Quite often, someone after too much to drink goes airborne and hits a power pole on these rural roads.  I got back inside in case things go dark to review the mail.  The local irrigation district has not delivered water in four years (what do ditch tenders do when canals and ditches are empty?) and now wants a tax hike to keep up with increased expenses.  In fact, half the mail seems to be drought information from various agencies.

Has the federal government ever had sex?  Law professors Stephen J. Schulhofer and Erin Murphy are trying to update the criminal code when it comes to sex offenses, believing current definitions of rape and sexual assault are antiquated.  The focus of their draft is on what constitutes consent.  It adopts the "yes means yes," or "affirmative consent" model that was passed in California last year.  The California law applies only to college campuses, however.

The Editor says...
Really, I try to keep this web site "family friendly," but when you keep track of all the things liberals do, in places like California, and then put it on a web page, it's not easy to avoid topics like promiscuity.

California's Unsustainable Comeback.  Sometime this year, the Federal Reserve is expected to increase interest rates.  When that happens, many experts believe the market will correct as investors exit equities.  Any setback in the stock market will eviscerate California's income taxes.

California's sexual re-education camps are coming soon.  Not content to redefine consent to mean asking permission before every step of the sexual process, California is now on the path to teaching high school students the proper way to have sex — because human nature is now wrong. [...] This means that every time two college students have sex they have to act like they've never met before and ask for approval for everything from the first kiss and touch through intercourse.  I tried multiple times to ask the sponsor of the California bill, State Sen. Kevin de Leon, how someone could prove they obtained consent under his law, but only received press releases and quoted paragraphs from the bill.

California Senate OKs health coverage for many immigrants here illegally.  The state Senate on Tuesday [6/2/2015] approved a hotly debated measure that would allow many immigrants in the state illegally to sign up for special healthcare programs that would offer the same benefits as Medi-Cal.  The action comes just days after lawmakers significantly scaled back the plan, which originally would have offered state-subsidized Medi-Cal to people in the country without authorization.

Water crisis puts California Democrats on defense.  Wherever he goes, Tom Del Beccaro asks California voters which they would prefer:  high-speed rail or more water.  Invariably, the answer is the same.  "Everybody says water," said Mr. Del Beccaro, a Republican who's running for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2016.  "I think every dime that exists should be allocated there.  [But] we are spending more than 15 times the amount on a train than we are on new water.  "In my speeches, I also ask people to raise their hand if they think we have a train crisis," he adds.

Audit finds millions in overtime pay at L.A. transportation department.  Last year, the average employee who paints stripes on roads and installs street signs for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation made $48,100 in overtime, almost six times what most other city workers received.  Four supervisors claimed $70,000 in OT, and one manager drew $155,319, effectively tripling his salary.  Those and other findings were in a transportation department audit issued Tuesday by City Controller Ron Galperin.  It revealed in particular that workers in the paint and sign division collected what Galperin characterized as "staggering" amounts of overtime, costing the city $3.3 million in a single year and raising concerns that some of the extra pay might have been claimed improperly.

In Los Angeles, unions make an offer companies can't refuse.  From the truth is stranger than fiction except if you're in Los Angeles and/or dealing with union personnel file we learn what happens when reality slaps high-sounding abstract liberal theory in the face.  In this instance, reality wins.  Sort of.

Los Angeles becomes the biggest city yet to approve a $15 minimum wage.  The Los Angeles City Council voted overwhelmingly Tuesday [5/19/2015] to raise the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, up from the current $9 an hour, making the city the largest in the country to set a target that has gone from almost absurdly ambitious to mainstream in the span of a few years.  The bill, which will need to clear a final vote, passed by a margin of 14-1.

Blue state infrastructure.  A month ago, we spent a spring break week in southern California.  The weather was glorious, and we had a wonderful time.  But we were appalled by the third-world condition of California's roads and highways.  California's highways are not just decrepit and pocked with potholes, they are downright dangerous.  Billions of dollars would be required to bring California's roads, bridges, cloverleafs and related infrastructure up to the level that is taken for granted in, say, South Dakota.  But California's Democrats have higher priorities, whether it is doling out dollars to the party's supporters, funding environmental projects that will never see the light of day, or finding new ways to attract illegal immigrants.

California Rings The Mission Bell For Voter Fraud.  A bill to automatically register all drivers is speeding through the California legislature.  In a state that already offers driver's licenses to millions of illegals, this is an invitation to massive fraud.  Advanced by Democrats, Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, AB 1461 automatically registers anyone applying for a California driver's license as a voter in local, state and federal elections.  It's all in the interest of supposedly increasing voter participation.  This has the hideous look of a back-door bill to encourage illegal immigrants to vote in elections they have no right to vote in, in a country they have no loyalty to.

Starbucks' Ethos water comes from drought-stricken California.  Starbucks' Ethos bottled water, while promising to help children around the world "get clean water," is quietly helping to drain drought-ravaged California of its precious H2O, according to a report.  The $1.95-a-bottle water is sourced, in part, from a bottling plant in Merced, Calif., which is ranked in the "exceptional drought" category by the US Drought Monitor, according to the report.

Port of Los Angeles police chief indicted for corruption.  The police chief for the Port of Los Angeles has been charged with corruption in an alleged kickback and bribery scheme.

An ironic drought in California.  The present four-year California drought is not novel — even if President Barack Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common.  Predictable California dry spells — like those of 1929-34, 1976-77 and 1987-92 — more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures.  What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought — well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early 1990s.  Much of the growth is due to massive and recent immigration.

California's class-based water woes.  If you can put aside for the moment the New York Times' stubborn use of the "farmers use 80% of the water in California" canard, this article isn't too bad.  It certainly notes the deep class divisions that are taking place in the state.  To put it simply:  the rich buy their way out of the restrictions and everybody else can't.

No, Farmers Don't Use 80 Percent of California's Water.  This is a textbook example of how the media perpetuates a false narrative based on a phony statistic.  Farmers do not use 80 percent of California's water.  In reality, 50 percent of the water that is captured by the state's dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, and other infrastructure is diverted for environmental causes.  Farmers, in fact, use 40 percent of the water supply.  Environmentalists have manufactured the 80 percent statistic by deliberately excluding environmental diversions from their calculations.  Furthermore, in many years there are additional millions of acre-feet of water that are simply flushed into the ocean due to a lack of storage capacity — a situation partly explained by environmental groups' opposition to new water-storage projects.

Global-Warming Guacamole.  That California's catastrophic drought is a result of global warming has become a commonplace of contemporary political rhetoric.  That truism isn't true:  Most scientific accounts of California's current dry spell link recent low precipitation to naturally occurring atmospheric cycles, not to global warming.  Indeed, most of the global-warming models relied upon by those advocating more-invasive environmental policies predict that warming would leave California with wetter winters — winter precipitation being critical to the snowpack-dependent state — rather than the drier winters at the root of the state's current water crisis.

Red ink could kill Covered California.  Indeed, there's no more money coming from Washington after the state exhausts the $1.1 billion it received from the federal government to get the Obamacare exchange up and running.  And state law prohibits Sacramento from spending any money to keep the exchange afloat.  That presents an existential crisis for Covered California, which is facing a nearly $80 [sic] budget deficit for its 2015-16 fiscal year.

Insiders Detail Culture of Secrecy at California's Obamacare Exchange.  Aiden Hill's introduction to the secretive culture at Covered California came in his first days on the job.  He had just been hired to head up the agency's $120 million call center effort when he emailed a superior April 18, 2013, and got a text message in reply:  ["]Please refrain from writing a lot of draft contract language in government email ... And don't clarify via email ... No email.["]

Big Idea: California Is So Over.  California has met the future, and it really doesn't work.  As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises.  As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state's middle- and working classes.

Critics say California drought caused by misguided environment policies.  In an average year, California gets enough snow and rain to put 200 million acres under a foot of water, but environmental opposition to dams over the last several decades has allowed the majority of the freshwater to flow into the ocean, even as the state's population exploded to nearly 40 million people.  The current drought has left farms parched and residents under strict water consumption orders, but some say it didn't have to be that way.

Californians can now be fined for long showers!  I reported that California Governor Jerry Brown unveiled the state's first water restrictions in response to the "mega-drought".  As I foresaw, the rules have turned out to be more about revenue generation than resource protection.  What I did not predict is that my teen son and his lengthy showers would make him the latest environmental villain.

Liberals blamed for California drought.  For California Gov. Jerry Brown to crack down on shower-taking and toilet-flushing to save precious quarts of water as millions of gallons flow into the Pacific Ocean doesn't make a lot of sense to Travis Allen. [...] With everyday Californians now on the hook for drastic conservation measures, Republicans say the time has come to focus on the real culprit:  a state and federal regulatory framework, fueled by environmental litigation, that requires a certain aquatic environment for at-risk fish while making it nearly impossible to build dams and other water-storage projects.

How the Environmentalists are Destroying California.  In 2007, they mobilized around saving the Delta Smelt, a three-inch baitfish, as an outgrowth of a policy that for decades put animal life and vegetation ahead of drinking water and food.  The Delta Smelt requires a rare and somewhat precise mixture of fresh and salt water.  It is by any measure a fragile species.  In August 2007, Federal Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the fresh water pumped into the Central Valley, the lifeblood of its economic base, threatened the survival of the Delta Smelt.  He ordered a severe reduction in the water directed to Central Valley agriculture.  The ruling (subsequently reversed for sloppy science and then upheld) resulted in a loss of thousands of jobs and acres of farmland. [...] The fight over the Delta Smelt [...] is a fight between people who value a baitfish over productive farmland and America's food resources.

A hot water issue in the California drought discussion.  The California governor's recent proclamation that Californians must cut water usage by 25% certainly caught the attention of Californians and pundits nationwide.  Featuring threats of fines of up to $500 per day, and even restrictions on personal shower habits, Governor Brown wasted little time getting right to class warfare over our green lawns.  Unfortunately, he and the ruling Democratic Party once again resorted to draconian rationing measures and heavy-handed fees, while offering no leadership and no real solutions to California's current water crisis.

The browning of California's green movement.  Indeed, an adequate water supply isn't a luxury issue for Californians, and no serious attempt has been made by liberals viewing the environment with alarm to deal with it.  In part, this is due to the fact that lack of moisture can't be immediately linked to climate change.  And unlike California's initiatives to reduce so-called environmental threats through various governmental actions, the options for dealing with droughts are few.  The only real alternative is drastic conservation that would impact significantly on the lives of citizens.  An alternative such as desalination of ocean waters isn't feasible because it's a long-term project, and the residue supposedly left in the Pacific from implementation would adversely affect marine life.

More on the California Water Waster Fink Squads.  Remember that thing I wrote yesterday about how Long Beach, California was going Full Metal Snitching on 'water wasters?'  Guess what!  Yup, it's going statewide.

California Water Authorities To Use New Tool In Fight Against Water Wasters.  Water authorities are using a new tool in a major effort to crack down on people and businesses wasting water in light of new water restrictions issued by Gov. Jerry Brown to fight the drought.  The Long Beach Water Department says sprinklers at a McDonald's restaurant on Bellflower Boulevard went on for 45 minutes at a time, twice a night, for an undefined number of nights.  Complaints continued to mount as water pooled and wasted.  The department, however, could do little about the wasting.  That was before the smart meter.

The Editor says...
It's easy enough to wield this weapon against McDonald's without much public outcry, but when it is used against residential water customers, watch out!

Governor Moonbeam Regulates Bathroom Activities.  Changing behavior is what liberal fascists are all about.  For them change — specifically, coerced change — is an end in itself.  Stalin figured it out long ago:  control food, control people.  But Democrats are doing him one better.  Control water, control food production and people.  How will the authorities know if you took too long in the shower?  One way is if your neighbors rat you out, just as in any other police state.  Another is the smart meter: [...]

Should California Spend 4 Billion Gallons to Save a Few Fish?  In the the [sic] heart of California's drought-parched Central Valley, fruit and vegetable supplier to the nation, a water district is defying a federal order to give some endangered trout a 3.9 billion gallon water ride out to sea.  And it could be the first skirmish in a much wider conflict.  The Endangered Species Act protects steelhead trout, a small population of which are attempting a recovery in the Stanislaus River, which flows out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains into Modesto, in the San Joaquin Valley.  So earlier this week a federal fisheries agency — it's unclear which one, and there are several — told the California branch of the Bureau of Reclamation (another water agency) that the fish needed more water to get out to the Pacific.  The bureau in turn passed the order to the South San Joaquin Irrigation District, telling them to let a pulse of water through the dam on the Stanislaus.

Feds order parched California farm district to use 9 billion gallons of water to save 29 fish.  These eco-Marxists are completely insane.  Off their rockers.

Marijuana Plants Soak Up Billions of Gallons of Water in California.  California's terrible drought has become — like just about everything else in the United States — a political issue.  Many liberals have taken to blaming anthropogenic climate change for the drought, while some conservatives have placed the blame at the feet of "liberal environmentalists."  The political point-scoring is tiring and just plain silly, given that the drought is almost certainly a result of natural processes — processes that we humans, conservatives and liberals alike, have precious little to do with.  Another problem is that our partisan pugilists are conflating two separate issues:  the drought, which is the lack of rainfall that California has suffered over the past four years, and the water shortages, which may indeed have some man-made causes.

California Lawmakers Present Bills to Protect Undocumented Immigrants.  A group of California lawmakers on Tuesday [4/7/2015] presented a package of measures to strengthen protection of undocumented immigrants and thus alleviate the "political paralysis" in Congress over approving immigration reform.  "In California, there are about 40 million residents... of Mexican, Central American and Asian origin. So, today we're presenting a package of 10 measures to protect undocumented immigrants," Kevin de Leon, the Democratic president pro tempore of the California Senate, told Efe.

Torrance Police Settle for Illegally Destroyed Guns.  California, especially California cities, have had a bad reputation for decades, of legally stealing firearms.  This was primarily done with police officers confiscating firearms that they came across, without any crime being committed.  Department policy was then to refuse to return the firearm unless a court ordered them to do so.  As the process of obtaining a court order would ordinarily be much more costly than the price of a firearm, most people who had their firearms stolen by police simply did not bother in attempting to obtain a court order.

Carly Fiorina blames liberal environmentalists for Calif. water crisis.  Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is blaming California's water crisis on "liberal environmentalists" who are "willing to sacrifice other people's lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology."  "With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could be avoided," Ms. Fiorina said in an interview Monday [4/6/2015] on Glenn Beck's radio show, The Blaze reported.  "Despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California's population has doubled."

The Drought: California Apocalypto.  I think that we've come full circle in California:  from the premodern Wild West of the 19th century to a decadent postmodernism that is every bit as feral, though the roughness of ascension is always preferable to its counterpart in decline.  The day before Easter, Sacramento tried to stage the world's largest public Easter egg hunt.  From news reports it seems quickly to have devolved into a Darwinian free-for-all, where the ochlos swarmed the few who played by the rules.

An Engineered Drought.  We're suffering the ramifications of the "small is beautiful," "spaceship earth" ideology of our cocooned elites.  Californians have adopted the ancient peasant mentality of a limited good, in which various interests must fight it out for the always scarce scraps.  Long ago we jettisoned the can-do visions of our agrarian forebears, who knew California far better than we do and trusted nature far less.  Now, like good peasants, we are at one another's throats for the last drops of a finite supply.

California is in one of its worst-ever droughts because people are growing too much weed.  The current drought in California, one of the most severe on record, could have been exacerbated by marijuana cultivation, scientists say.  Some marijuana farms are sucking more water from the ground than can be replaced, threatening the state's water entire supply, according to a study published in the Public Library of Science journal.  The amount of water being used to cultivate marijuana was said to be "unsustainable" in the report.

Rain Dances in California.  On February 14, 2014, President Barack Obama arrived on Air Force One in Fresno, California, with Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein aboard. [...] The Democratic entourage, ringed by Secret Service, posed in the fallow field for Associated Press and the television cameras.  It had no clue how to solve California's water problems.  It could have been doing rain dances, for all the good it was doing.  The fact is, the four were doing rain dances for MSM — all of them — Obama, Boxer, Feinstein, and Brown. [...] A White House that has hijacked drought to serve its ideological ends makes sound water allocation more difficult to achieve.

California Accredits Nation's First Muslim College ... Founded By Jihadists.  The same California college board that accredited Stanford and Berkeley has certified the nation's first Muslim college in what the left is cheering as a breakthrough for diversity.  In fact, it's a breakthrough for jihadism.  The Western Association of Schools and Colleges last week officially — and naively — recognized Zaytuna College, making the Islamist school eligible to receive federal grants and accept foreign Muslim students on visas.  But before liberals celebrate too loudly, they should know that Zaytuna was founded by pro-jihadists who hate America and Jews and want to turn America into an Islamic state.

The Scorching of California by the Green Radical Left.  In the 1970s, coastal elites squelched California's near-century-long commitment to building dams, reservoirs, and canals, even as the Golden State's population ballooned.  Court-ordered drainage of man-made lakes, meant to restore fish to the 1,100-square-mile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, partly caused central California's reservoir water to dry up.  Not content with preventing construction of new water infrastructure, environmentalists reverse-engineered existing projects to divert precious water away from agriculture, privileging the needs of fish over the needs of people.  Then they alleged that global warming, not their own foolish policies, had caused the current crisis.

Two Planned Parenthood workers who taught high school sex-ed, revealed to be sex-toy instructor and 'pleasure activist'.  Parents with students at one California high school recently learned that two Planned Parenthood employees who taught their impressionable children sex education also held down some controversial side jobs.  One of the sex-ed instructors at Acalanes Union High School in Lafayette also taught a class on sex toys at a nearby shop while the other identified herself as a 'pleasure activist' on her now-deleted Twitter profile.  The job history of the two teachers was revealed after parents learned about the school's partnership with Planned Parenthood and demanded the curriculum be changed.

Common Core Follies: California report cards to include grades for 'grit', 'gratitude', 'sensitivity to others'.  The entire state of California pubic education system is to begin grading students on matters a teacher cannot possibly know or evaluate objectively.  In a sign of descent into full indoctrination camp mode, the Common Cores standards adopted by the state are calling on teachers to grade students on their "grit, gratitude, and sensitivity to others."

Rapper Tiny Doo facing long prison sentence over lyrics.  Song lyrics that glorify violence are hardly uncommon.  But a prosecutor in California says one rapper's violent lyrics go beyond creative license to conspiracy.  San Diego-based rapper Tiny Doo has already spent eight months in prison, and faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted under a little-known California statute that makes it illegal to benefit from gang activities.

The Editor says...
Is it not true that every television news show in Los Angeles and Oakland and San Diego features occasional stories about gang activity?  Do those TV stations therefore benefit from gang activities?

California bars judges from belonging to Boy Scouts.  California's Supreme Court voted Friday to prohibit state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts on grounds that the group discriminates against gays.  The court said its seven justices unanimously voted to heed a recommendation by its ethics advisory committee barring judges' affiliation with the organization.  In 1996 the state Supreme Court banned judges from belonging to groups that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but made an exception for nonprofit youth organizations.

California health care on suicide watch.  California, thanks to Obamacare and its exchange, Covered California, has no one to blame but itself.  The state is imposing costly rules and regulations on the health care system, causing a death spiral in health care delivery.

Gender-neutral single-stall restrooms now required in West Hollywood.  West Hollywood law requiring all single-stall restrooms in businesses and public places to be gender-neutral will go into effect this week.  The law, which will have no impact on multiple-stall restrooms, mandates that any facility designed for use by no more than one person not be restricted to a specific sex or gender identity by signage, design or installation of fixtures.

Police stop pursuing nearly 79,000 fugitives.  Nationwide, police and prosecutors quietly told the FBI they had abandoned their pursuit of nearly 79,000 accused felons during the past year and a half, a USA TODAY investigation found.  They have given up chasing people charged with armed robbery and raping children, usually without informing their victims.  Police in one county in California reported they would no longer pursue three of their most-wanted fugitives and a man charged with a murder for which prosecutors have sought the death penalty.

California pushes to expand immigrant health care.  President Barack Obama's executive order to spare some immigrants from deportation has galvanized Democrats, immigration groups and health care advocates in California to push for expanding health coverage to a segment of the population that remains uninsured.

California bill would require retailers, restaurants to pay their employees double on holidays.  A California lawmaker said she will introduce a bill that would double the pay of employees who work over Thanksgiving and Christmas.  "I've watched how the retailers and restaurateurs continue to expand their hours and open up on these holidays that are traditionally family holidays," Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez told the Sacramento Bee.  "What people are being called in to do now is a real slap in the face of family values, frankly."

Opposing viewpoint:
Why I Don't Mind Working Retail Thanksgiving Day.  For the last two or three years, people have been complaining about Black Friday starting earlier and earlier and claim to feel badly for poor oppressed retail workers who have to work on Thanksgiving Day rather than spend it with their families.  So here's my take, as an actual retail employee who does work on Thanksgiving.

Obama is not doing enough to wreck the country.  I believe that the economy can potentially absorb five million additional gardeners and nannies. The challenge will be to create a corresponding number of rich young liberals to hire them.  I was relieved to hear that California Governor Edmund Gerald "Jerry" "Moonbeam" Brown, Jr., who has welcomed all five million amnesty recipients to his state, has proposed a new Middle Class tax that will subsidize wealthy left-wing yuppies to bridge the gap between a livable wage for illegal immigrants and that which liberals are willing to pay them.  Brown sees this as a first step in his campaign to become the Democratic Party's candidate for President of Mexico in 2016.

California Orders Churches To Fund Abortions — Or Else.  For the past four years, the Obama administration and its friends on the Left were careful to claim that they still strongly support religious liberty while arguing that Hobby Lobby's Green family, Conestoga Wood Specialties' Hahn family, and others like them must lose.  Principally, they contended, religious liberty protections could not be applied to Hobby Lobby because (1) It is a for-profit corporation, (2) It isn't a church (and thus not a true "religious employer," and (3) It is wrong on the science — Plan B, a copper intrauterine device, et cetera, they claimed, do not cause abortions.  They implied, if not claimed outright, that they would surely support religious freedom in another case, but Hobby Lobby was unworthy to claim its protections.  The State of California is now calling their bluff.

One more reason to flee California:
San Diego agrees to turn recycled wastewater into drinking water.  Acknowledging California's parched new reality, the city of San Diego has embraced a once-toxic idea:  turning sewer water into drinking water.

California's next big political fight: Plastic grocery bags.  Go to a grocery store in California and buy all the milk, eggs and vegetables you want.  But there's one thing you won't find at the checkout line, beginning July 1, 2015:  Plastic bags to carry your stuff home.  Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Tuesday signed into law a ban on single-use plastic bags, making California the first state to prohibit stores from using the ubiquitous carry-alls.  Shoppers will be charged 10 cents for every paper bag and heavy-duty plastic bag they use.

California's Plastic Bag Ban And A State's Death Wish.  California, as is its wont, enacted another bunch of silly laws this week, topped by a ban on the plastic bags that we all find so handy. [...] Nobody likes a "torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast ocean itself," as Brown says.  Yet plastic bags still end up where they shouldn't be.  The answer, however, isn't to ban the bags, which people use not only for groceries but for everything from toting lunches to picking up pet droppings.  The solution is to penalize those who foul the commons, not just with plastic bags but with all kinds of other litter.  Californians actually may be worse off with the ban.  It could, for example, actually make people sick, since the reusable bags that shoppers are being urged to switch to can harbor food-borne illnesses.

California Voters to Decide on Sending Fewer Criminals to Prison.  California voters appear poised to scale back the heavy reliance on incarceration they once embraced, with a measure that would transform several lower-level, nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors punishable by brief jail stays, if that, rather than time in a state penitentiary.  The referendum on Nov. 4 is part of a national reappraisal of mass incarceration.

California becomes first state to ban plastic bags.  Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed legislation imposing the nation's first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags, driven to action by a buildup of litter and damage to aquatic ecosystems.

California Gives $3 Million to Groups Providing Free Legal Aid to Illegal Aliens.  California Gov. Jerry Brown is channeling the "progressive spirit" of California in his latest act as governor.  Turns out he just signed a bill that would give $3 million in grants to non-profits that would offer unaccompanied alien minors legal counsel- which is $1 million more than what the federal government planned to give in grants nationwide.

California School Purging Library of ANY Book with a Christian Author or Theme.  Ask me again why my children are homeschooled.

Why not $20 an hour?  Or $50?
Los Angeles approves $15.37 minimum wage for hotel workers.  The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday [9/24/2014] to raise the minimum wage for hotel workers to $15.37, one of the highest wage requirements in the country.  Hotel workers in yellow shirts packed City Hall as the council voted 12 to 3 to approve the measure, which will go into effect for hotels with at least 300 rooms beginning in July.  Hotels with 150 rooms or more will have to meet the wage requirement a year later.

Brown signs package of bills to encourage voting.  Months after statewide voter turnout hit a historic low of 25% in this year's primary election, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday [9/26/2014] signed eight bills aimed at getting more Californians to participate in the political process.  He also signed dozens of other bills Friday — a hodgepodge that included new rights for gay and transgender Californians, a requirement that state prisons expand the availability of condoms to inmates and measures that promote the "farm to fork" movement to increase consumer access to fresh food.

Jerry Brown at UN Climate Change Summit: 'Carbon Pollution Kills!'  Arriving in NYC aboard the People's Climate Train, which travelled across the country from Emeryville California, Sister Ayya Santussika, a Buddhist nun, said that climate change is a "moral issue" and affects everyone of us. [...] Gov. Brown signed some bills on Sunday [9/21/2014] that mandates an increase in the amount of electric cars for California, reduces the time it takes to get rooftop solar panel permits, and establishes new regulations to restrict atmospheric pollutants.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not carbon, for the same reason that water is not hydrogen.  Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere supports life.  It is not a threat.  It is not pollution.

"What do you call a man who claims voters' choices have no place in government?"
Brown's Final Nail In Prop. 187 Is Really A Blow To California's Voters.  [I]n 1994, millions of California's voters, by a margin of 59% to 41%, voted in favor of denying "free" welfare, education and other benefits to illegal immigrants on the clear logic that a burglar who breaks into someone else's home doesn't have the right to eat the owner's food.  It was a legitimate decision for a people to make, given that in any democratic system, the participants have the right to control the purse.  But [Governor] Brown's statements and those of his political allies, including those in the press, suggest an imperial contempt for the will of California's voters.

Pension 'spiking' to cost CalPERS nearly $800 million, controller says.  Taxpayers and local governments are on the hook to pay nearly $800 million stemming from "legal" pension spiking over the next two decades, the state controller said Tuesday [9/9/2014].  The price tag came as Controller John Chiang issued a new audit of the California Public Employees' Retirement System.  The audit of 11 state and local government agencies found no illegal pension spiking but concluded that the country's largest public retirement fund makes itself vulnerable to the practice by not aggressively reviewing its 3,100 member agencies' payroll records.

Nearly 1 in 10 California workers are here illegally, study finds.  A report released Wednesday [9/3/2014] by researchers at USC found that immigrants who are in California illegally make up nearly 10% of the state's workforce and contribute $130 billion annually to its gross domestic product.  The study, which was conducted in conjunction with the California Immigrant Policy Center, was based on census data and other statistics, including data from the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security.  It looked at a variety of ways the estimated 2.6 million immigrants living in California without permission participate in state life.

California Rep. On Drought: Democrats Believe 'Fish Are More Important Than People'.  Rep. David Valadao (R-Bakersfield) lashed out at Democrats, including congressional opponent Amanda Renteria, on California's urgent drought problem, saying Democrat policies will fail to provide relief for millions of Central Valley residents living with severe water shortages. [...] Valadao is not the only one in the district blasting the allocation of water resources.  Area farmers are angry after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began releasing 25,000 acre-feet of water from Northern California's Trinity Lake to help protect the native salmon population on Saturday [8/30/2014], even as farmers have repeatedly asked for more water to help grow food.

CA Lawmakers Aim To Ban English Only Instruction in Public Schools.  On Tuesday [8/26/2014], a few hours after Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto said that Illegal Aliens deserve justice in the USA and Gov. Jerry Brown welcomed all illegal immigrants to California, lawmakers in Sacramento passed a proposed ballot measure seeking to dismantle the English-only mandate for public schools and increase multilingual education programs.

Gov. Jerry Brown Reveals That California Has Just Seceded From the Union and is Now Part of Mexico.  This Democrat Party is completely out of control.  It has succeeded in its century-long quest to fundamentally  transform  destroy our form of government.

Liberals love freedom of expression — until they disagree with it.
CA Looks To Ban Confederate Flag.  A bill sits on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk to ban California from displaying or selling the Confederate flag or objects with images of it.  The state's Legislature passed the bill nearly unanimously last week.  Assemblyman Isadore Hall III, D-Compton, introduced the legislation after his mother discovered the Capitol gift shop sold a replica of Confederate money that contained a picture of the flag, according to the L.A. Times.  The lone dissenting vote among the 67 cast was from former California GOP gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly of Twin Peaks.  He argued the bill would infringe on free speech.

Gov. Jerry Brown To Mexican Illegals: 'You're All Welcome In California.  On Monday evening [8/25/2014], California Governor Jerry Brown said all Mexicans, including illegal immigrants, are welcome in California.  According to the Los Angeles Times, while introducing Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who said America is "the other Mexico," Brown "spoke about the interwoven histories of Mexico and California."  He "nodded to the immigrants in the room, saying it didn't matter if they had permission to be in the United States."  "You're all welcome in California," Brown reportedly said.

Another Dumb Idea From Los Angeles.  The city of Los Angeles is considering paying voters to encourage turnout.  Needless to say, it's a ridiculous idea that will reward low-information voting, foster political demagogues and breed corruption.

California AG Kamala Harris to appeal ruling against death penalty.  A federal judge's "flawed" decision declaring California's enforcement of the death penalty unconstitutional will be appealed, state Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris announced Thursday [8/21/2014].  Harris will ask the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn last month's ruling by U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, who said decades-long delays and uncertainty about whether inmates will be executed violated the Constitution's ban on cruel or unusual punishment.  Harris personally opposes the death penalty but promised voters she would enforce it.

CA Supreme Court Rejects Dems' Anti-'Citizens United' Ballot Measure.  On Monday [8/11/2014], the California Supreme Court blocked an "advisory" ballot measure that Democrats had hoped to include on the November ballot, with a view to increasing turnout among apathetic voters.  The non-binding measure, Proposition 49, asked voters if they felt the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling should be reversed.

Jerry Brown: Affluent Families Not Producing' Children.  Giving what was dubbed the "California Welcome," Gov. Jerry Brown told attendees at the 31st Annual National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Conference in June that affluent families seemed to not be "producing" children in the state.  "I don't know what the affluent families are doing," Brown said.  "They're not producing or something, because half the kids in schools are from low-income families."

The Editor says...
Get a clue, Governor.  ALL of the kids in public schools are from low-income families.  Anybody with any money sends their kids to private schools.  Like Mr. and Mrs. Obama, for example.

California Releases Thousands of 'Lifers' from Prison.  California continues to stretch the imaginations of non-liberals.  One unthinkable policy is Governor Brown's policy by which thousands of presumably dangerous prisoners originally sentenced by juries to life sentences in the slammer are being set free.  A Friday [8/8/2014] radio segment on the California Report was downright cheery about cons being released into local communities. [...] In other words, don't be scared, little citizens — the murderers and rapists have been taught techniques in anger management.

Is Big Labor Keeping The L.A. Water Dept. From Replacing Old Pipes?  Not an outlandish question.  The water main that broke near UCLA last week was ninety years old, which isn't unusual here in the City of Angels.  The only things more common than fault lines running under this city are ancient water pipes.  It's a situation that even the mayor admits isn't going to get better soon.  As is typical with bureaucracies, the problem is blamed on a lack of money.  As is also typical with bureaucracies, it is really more a problem of prioritization and budgeting than available funds.

Diaper duty for Calif. taxpayers? Bill would create new welfare program.  California is weighing a first-of-its-kind welfare program that would subsidize diapers for needy families, though some lawmakers say the plan's a stinker.  Assembly Bill 1516, written by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat from San Diego, would create the taxpayer-backed program within the state's existing welfare network, called CalWORKs (California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids).  Families that qualify for CalWORKS could be eligible for $80 a month to buy diapers for children under the age of 2.

One of Obama's big ideas for reforming health care failed a test in California.  "We need to bundle payments so you aren't paid for every single treatment you offer a patient with a chronic condition like diabetes, but instead paid well for how you treat the overall disease," Obama told the crowd of physicians.  Obama was articulating what would become one of the key payment reforms in his health care law — a proposal aimed at giving incentives to providers to control costs by rewarding them for providing less expensive care.  But a study published in the journal Health Affairs looked at an ambitious three-year pilot program of bundled payments in California that was funded by a $2.9 million grant from Obama's 2009 economic stimulus package — and found that the program was such a massive failure, it could hardly get off the ground.

Health premiums soared, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones says.  The cost of health insurance for individuals skyrocketed this year in California, with some paying almost twice what they did last year, the state's insurance commissioner said.  But Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones predicted that insurers will ease up in the coming year to prevent California voters from approving tough new rate controls on the November statewide ballot as Proposition 45.  Insurers and opponents of Proposition 45 dismissed Jones' comments as misleading and politically motivated.

The Editor resorts to mocking derision:
That's brilliant!  As long as they're at it, why not limit the price of gasoline to a dollar per gallon?

Divided they stand? Billionaire in push to carve up California into six states.  A billionaire tech investor says he has enough backing to put on the ballot a plan to split California into six states.  Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested in such tech companies as Twitter, HotMail, Skype and Tesla, told Reuters he has the 808,000 signatures needed on a petition to force the measure onto a public referendum in November 2016.

Almonds Are Sucking the Life Out of California.  The new California gold rush is a bit, well, nutty: According to USDA predictions reported Monday [7/14/2014], farmers will harvest a record 2.1 billion pounds of almonds this year.  That's great news for almond-lovers, but not-so-great news for California, which produces 80 percent of the world's almonds.  A single almond requires 1.1 gallons of water to produce, and seeing as the state is currently in the middle of a devastating drought, that's water farmers have to drill deep for — 2,500 feet deep, in fact.

California Removes 'Husband' and 'Wife' from California Marriage Law.  One word can make all the difference when it comes to definitions.  Exhibit A:  exchange the words "husband and wife" for a more inclusive term, and you have the phrase "I now pronounce you spouses."  In the state of California, they are paying special attention to keep their vernacular as progressive as possible.  Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill Monday [7/7/2014] to formally make marriage gender-neutral to reflect the state's allowance of same-sex unions.

California's Hydromania.  We had a wonderful water storage system for 23 million people in 1980.  But it proved completely inadequate for the 40 million plus of 2014, who assumed household and drinking water, irrigation supplies, and clean hydroelectric power came out of thin air.

Well drilling boom in the West.  Erected on the edge of hundreds of acres of crops in Kern County, Calif., crews are currently working around the clock on a massive well.  At first glance, you may think they're drilling for oil.  But this project is digging for something of a different value.  Third generation farmer Devon Yurosek and his family have invested heavily in the two thousand foot water well on their farmland.  In the midst of the worst drought in California's history, the Yuroseks need water to help grow pistachios, pomegranates and cherries.  Their well is just one of a number popping up throughout the area.

Californians Keep Up With Joneses' Water Use.  In five months since the drought emergency was declared, Californians have cut their water consumption only 5 percent compared with recent years, according to state officials — a far cry from the 20 percent that Gov. Jerry Brown called for in January.  So, faced with apparent indifference to stern warnings from state leaders and media alarms, cities across California have encouraged residents to tattle on their neighbors for wasting water — and the residents have responded in droves.  Sacramento, for instance, has received more than 6,000 reports of water waste this year, up twentyfold from last year.

Advocates of splitting California into six states gathering signatures.  Advocates for Six Californias, a plan to split the Golden State into a half dozen separate states, are holding a petition drive this weekend to get their plan on the ballot in 2016.  The idea is the brainchild of Timothy Draper, a venture capitalist from Menlo Park — or as he hopes to some day call it, the state of Silicon Valley.  Draper has sunk $2 million into signature gathering for the proposal.

Vergara Case Is California's Education Earthquake.  [Scroll down]  Teachers gain lifetime tenure after just 18 months, before their training is even done.  It's almost impossible to dismiss them, no matter what their transgressions — perversion, drug dealing, child pornography, sexual assault, you name it.  The regulations are so cumbersome, it's impossible to fire anyone.  There's also a layoff system that ensures that seniority trumps performance, resulting in top-performing teachers being laid off over under-performing deadwood who've just been on the job longer.  It's a Mafia-like protection racket for the worst of the worst.

California Tops List of 10 States With Highest Taxes.  The Tax Foundation has ranked the states by their state income tax rates and among the highest are California, Hawaii, and Oregon.

CA Legislators Are Highest Paid in USA.  Stateline's data, which indicated California legislators are averaging a base salary of $90,526 per year, is a few months old, and that base salary will be raised to $95,291 in December as a result of a decision last year by the California Citizens Compensation Commission.  The Commission is also considering a further raise.  In addition, the legislators receive an additional tax-free "per diem" of $141.86 per day every day the Legislature is in session.  The closest average salary to the California legislators is in Pennsylvania, where the average salary is $84,012.

Environmentalists Cheer California's Latest Plan to Sink Its Economy.  Environmentalists are gleeful at the news reported last week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration that the amount of recoverable oil from California's Monterey Shale formation — predicted to be the nation's largest reserve of oil — is a whopping 96-percent below original production estimates.  In response, more than 100 environmental groups signed a letter to the California Legislature calling for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and other "stimulation" techniques that ultimately would be needed to develop this oil field.  They say the new estimates are "undercutting the misguided rationale" for allowing fracking before more studies are done.

Vergara v. California: The Most Important Court Case You've Never Heard Of.  This school year, parents learned a tough lesson:  The only force on behalf of the public interest is an interested public.  And sometimes the students show us the way.  Nine public school children have been courageously taking on the government in California, where their right to a sound education is rooted in the Constitution.  A judge's decision is expected soon, and their lawsuit is being watched closely in education circles.

California takes first step toward curtailing water rights.  Some farmers and community water districts in drought-hit California could soon face limits on their ability to use water from strained streams that flow into the Sacramento River.  The California Water Resources Control Board adopted regulations on Wednesday to limit water use during summer months, the driest season and the time of year when farmers are most likely to need water to irrigate their crops.

Southern California City May Drop Lawsuit Against Sriracha Sauce Maker.  The mayor of Irwindale said he will ask the City Council to drop the public-nuisance order and lawsuit against the maker of Sriracha hot sauce, possibly bringing the months-long conflict to an end.  The move comes after members of Gov. Jerry Brown's office visited the sauce factory.

The Editor says...
The factory had been recently visited by elected officials from Texas who were actively trying to lure the factory away from California.  That would be a really good reason to drop the lawsuit.

Sriracha CEO Compares California to Communist Vietnam.  David Tran is the founder and CEO of Huy Fong Foods, the maker of the famously tasty Sriracha hot sauce.  Grappling for months with regulators and politicians in southern California about the spicy scents that his factory emits, Tran recently compared meddlesome government to that of a communist country.  It might sound hyperbolic, but he does know a thing or two about living under the nightmarish bureaucracy of a red utopia.  NPR explains that Tran "escaped" Socialist Republic of Vietnam and "its many intrusions" three decades ago to start a new life in The Land of the Free.

Sriracha battle over: Victory for chili as council throws out 'public nuisance' declaration and lawsuit against hugely popular hot sauce factory.  In a victory for chilli fans around the world, a town that is home to the fiercely popular Sriracha hot sauce company has removed its status as a "public nuisance" and thrown out a lawsuit that threatened to halt its production.  The simple piquant condiment that inspired a global community of foodies — and whole books of dedicated recipes — had been in undeniably hot water following complaints from local residents.

In California we don't trust.  It may come as little surprise that Californians are not very trusting of their state government.  After all, Californians have had to deal with more than our fair share of budget crises, tax increases, corruption, mismanaged agencies and boondoggle projects.  Given that California residents have been conditioned for many years to accept this as the normal state of affairs, it may astound some of us to learn that most other state governments have earned far greater levels of trust from their citizens.

Atheists win prayer battle against California city council.  Atheists who complained about pre-meeting prayers conducted by members of the Pismo Beach City Council in California can now claim a win.  Council members say they're going to stop saying prayers at public meetings and that the volunteer chaplain will no longer be invited to give the opening invocations, The Blaze reported.  They've also agreed to pay a symbolic settlement of $1 to each of the the two plaintiffs — and another $47,500 to cover the two plaintiffs' legal fees.

Bill Encourages Schools To Teach About Racial Significance Of Obama's Presidency.  A bill that passed the Assembly with unanimous bipartisan support Thursday encourages California schools to teach students about the racial significance of Barack Obama's presidency.

Calif. moves to ban judges affiliated with Boy Scouts.  California is proposing to ban members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) from serving as judges because the Boy Scouts do not allow gay troop leaders, The Daily Caller has learned.  In a move with major legal implications, The California Supreme Court Advisory Committee on The Code of Judicial Ethics has proposed to classify the Boy Scouts as practicing "invidious discrimination" against gays, which would end the group's exemption to anti-discriminatory ethics rules and would prohibit judges from being affiliated with the group.

Two Dems Accuse Party Leaders in CA-33 of Changing Rules to Favor Wealthy Insiders.  Two Democratic Party candidates in the primary race for California's 33rd congressional district in West Los Angeles have accused local party officials of using an arbitrary fundraising minimum to favor established insiders — then raising that minimum at the last moment to exclude them from a recent candidates' forum.

California Unemployment Holds Steady at Dismal 8.1%.  In March, according to the Los Angeles Times, the rate was 8.1%. In February, it was exactly the same.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the state only added 11,800 net new jobs in March, many of them in construction, government, education, and health services. [...] While California remained miserable, unemployment rates in 17 other states rose.

Drought-stricken Calif. farmers to get more water.  Drought-stricken California farmers and cities are set to get more water as state and federal officials ease water cutbacks due to recent rain and snow, officials announced on Friday [4/18/2014].

Asians Derail Affirmative Action In California.  The express train hurtling to return racial preference admissions to California — in the form of State Constitutional Amendment 5, which if placed on the ballot and approved by voters would have overturned Prop. 209  — has just been derailed by an outburst of opposition from Asian Americans.  The eruption of opposition caught SCA 5's Democratic sponsors by surprise and caused a crucial three Asian American senators to withdraw their support, depriving the measure of the two thirds senate majority required to place an initiative on the ballot.

Racial spoils system starting to fall apart in California.  California's ruling Democrats are in danger of splintering their coalition over an attempt to re-introduce affirmative action, which has been banned ever since the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which banned the use of racial preferences by the state, including in higher education.

California Democrats Await Fallout After 3 Are Caught Up in Scandals.  One state senator was charged with conspiring to traffic in arms from the Philippines, and taking bribes from undercover F.B.I. agents including one who posed as a marijuana dealer.  Another was accused of taking bribes from federal agents impersonating Hollywood film executives.  And a third was convicted of perjury and voter fraud after lying about where he lived when he ran for office.  All three are Democratic state senators from California, and their recent legal problems have brought rare bad news to a party that has come to thoroughly dominate politics in this state but now looks besieged by high-profile corruption cases.

Why did 287,000-plus Californians vote for Leland Yee?  One of the odder stats of Election Night:  As of Wednesday morning, 287,590 Californians had cast ballots for indicted state Sen. Leland Yee for secretary of state.  That's good for nearly 10 percent of the vote.  That's also more votes than five other secretary of state candidates who haven't been indicted received.

The poster boy for liberal hypocrisy ignored by national media, but outrages San Francisco.  The liberal media are trying to ignore his arrest, but California State Senator Leland Yee is such an amusing piñata of liberal hypocrisy that even his home town liberal newspaper is joining in the mockery fun. [...] Outlets like CNN which ignore this embarrassment to liberals do so at their peril.

Corruption Costs Dems Their Supermajority in California.  Two years ago, California Democrats celebrated victory in a decades-long struggle to win a supermajority in the Legislature, where a two-thirds majority is required for any tax increase.  It was the latest chapter in a long descent into inconsequence by California Republicans, who hold no statewide offices and party registration of only 29.3 percent of the voters.  But corruption has achieved what the Republicans could not.  The supermajority is now down the drain as three of the Golden State's 27 Democratic state senators have within the past two months been convicted or indicted on charges ranging from bribery to gun-running.

Gov. Jerry Brown calls for Democratic senators to resign.  Gov. Jerry Brown called on three scandal-plagued state senators to resign on Friday, speaking out for the first time on a series of criminal cases that have sapped Democrats' power in the Capitol and tarnished the Legislature's image.

California Dems Worried Their Corruption Scandals Will Benefit GOP.  The unethical and illegal behavior of Democratic state senators in California, where Democrats have total control of the state legislature, is giving the state's Democratic Party concerns that the GOP may use the misbehavior to regain power.  Since the beginning of 2014, every month has featured a Democratic state senator either being arrested or convicted.  The latest arrest came Wednesday, as Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco was arrested on federal corruption charges.

California state senator arrested in FBI raids along with Asian gang leader known as 'Shrimp Boy'.  State Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond Chow, were taken into custody after a series of raids by federal and gang task force officials, but the charges against them remained undisclosed.

California state senator Leland Yee arrested in FBI sweep.  A longtime California politician who was praised for his efforts to make government more transparent and authored gun control legislation was arrested Wednesday, accused of conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud.  The allegations against State Sen. Leland Yee were outlined in an FBI affidavit in support of a criminal complaint against him and 25 other people.  The affidavit was unsealed on Wednesday, as Yee was scheduled to appear in court.

California state senator arrested in FBI sweep.  A prominent California lawmaker was arrested on Wednesday in an FBI sweep that netted 26 people, a high-profile case that could affect statewide elections and brings to three the number of Democratic state senators who face criminal charges this year.

California city approves highest-in-state $12.30 minimum wage.  The Richmond City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday [3/18/2014] in favor of an ordinance that would raise minimum hourly pay in the city to $12.30 an hour by 2017.

California Seeks to Redefine Consensual Campus Sex as Rape.  In endorsing a bill in the California legislature that would require "affirmative consent" before sex can occur on campus, the editorial boards of the Sacramento and Fresno Bee and the Daily Californian advocated that sex be treated as "sexual assault" unless the participants discuss it "out loud" before sex, and "demonstrate they obtained verbal 'affirmative consent' before engaging in sexual activity." [...] Defining sex as rape merely because there was no verbal discussion in advance trivializes rape and brands innocent people as rapists (including some people who themselves have been sexually victimized in the past).  Disturbingly, it's not just sex they want to regulate, but also "sexual activity" in general.

A law so stupid California legislature seeks to repeal it two months after it took effect.  California's state legislature is seeking to repeal an idiotic law that took effect January 1st.  It turns out that some feel-good regulatory efforts generate enough blowback that they can actually be reversed.

Gas Prices May Jump From California Emissions Law.  California's greenhouse gas reduction law already has shaken up the state's industrial sector, costing it more than $1.5 billion in pollution permit fees.

Grieving California mom takes down cross on road after group's protest, more appear.  A grieving California mom who, under pressure from an atheist group, went to the site where her son was killed to remove a memorial cross was met at the scene by a throng of supporters who planted crosses of their own.  "They said they have to take that one down," Doug Johnson, a Riverside resident who traveled to the site with his daughter and six home-made crosses, told The Riverside Press-Enterprise.  "But they didn't say anything about putting another one up."

California's Drought Isn't Due To Global Warming, But Politics.  President Obama visited California's drought-hit Central Valley Friday, offering handouts and blaming global warming.  But the state's water shortage is due to the left's refusal to deal with the state's water needs.

California auto buyers favor Toyota Prius; rest of U.S. prefers trucks.  Toyota's Prius was the best-selling vehicle in the state for the second consecutive year in 2013, highlighting California's radically different taste in automobiles.  Nationally, Ford's F-Series truck has been the bestselling vehicle for more than three decades.  The Prius ranked 16th in sales nationally.

Court overturns restrictions on concealed guns in much of California.  In a significant victory for gun owners, a divided federal appeals court Thursday [2/13/2014] struck down California rules that permit counties to restrict as they see fit the right to carry a concealed weapon in public.  The 2-1 ruling by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel would overturn restrictions on carrying concealed handguns, primarily affecting California's most populated regions, including Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco.

Parched California's Worst Water Enemy: Its Governor.  California Gov. Jerry Brown has blasted as "unwelcome and divisive" a desperately needed drought-relief bill in Congress that will likely win in the House soon.  That's rich coming from a man who's done nothing.

Kiddie Porn Does Not Count as "Moral Turpitude" to S.F. Govt.  A former high-ranking San Francisco government employee convicted of felony possession of child pornography will continue to receive his government pension because, according to city regulations, evidence of "moral turpitude" is required to revoke a pension yet viewing violent kiddie porn does not qualify as moral turpitude.

Caltrans accused of trying to hide Bay Bridge problems.  A Caltrans engineer and an outside expert working on the Bay Bridge eastern span accused agency officials of discounting warnings about cracked welds on the bridge, and telling them not to put their concerns in writing to keep them from becoming public, according to a report commissioned for a state Senate committee.

California Agency Plans 'Green' Car Vouchers for the Poor.  One longtime critic of federal transportation spending once concluded that it would be less expensive for the government to buy every new transit rider a Jaguar XJ8 than it would be to build certain new rail systems.  Unfortunately, California officials may not have realized that the idea of buying people new cars wasn't a serious proposal as much as a way to illustrate a point about excessive spending.

California Adopts Failed Venezuelan Model Of Energy Management.  In California, energy officials warn that the state and others like it face a catastrophic collapse of its power grid due to the many green energy schemes that have made managing energy flow difficult.  "Energy officials worry a lot these days about the stability of the massive patchwork of wires, substations and algorithms that keep electricity flowing," reported Evan Halpert in Tuesday's [12/03/2013] Los Angeles Times, citing wind, solar and geothermal energy coming online.  At a minimum, higher costs would be a certainty as officials attempt to mitigate the effects of their own green energy policies, if not a total grid collapse.

Slow Motion Gun Confiscation in California.  California has established gun confiscation squads that move through California confiscating guns that were registered.  As predicted in the essay "Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation" written in 2000, gun confiscation is not being implemented in massive door to door searches, though such confiscations have happened in recent history, such as in the Philippines in 1972, and even during a flood in Canada this year (2013).

Do single-family homes threaten the planet?  A plan to squeeze most residents of the San Francisco Bay Area into multifamily housing offers a test case of whether land-use bureaucracies nationwide, encouraged by the Obama administration, should be allowed to transform American lifestyles under the pretext of combating climate change.  Currently, 56 percent of households in the nine-county Bay Area live in single-family homes.  That number would drop to 48 percent by 2030, under a high-density development blueprint called Plan Bay Area, recently enacted by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the region's Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

California's alternative-energy program under scrutiny.  California is spending nearly $15 million to build 10 hydrogen fueling stations, even though just 227 hydrogen-powered vehicles exist in the state today.  It's a hefty bet on the future, given that government officials have been trying for nine years, with little success, to get automakers to build more hydrogen cars.  The project is part of a sprawling but little-known state program that packs a powerful financial punch:  It spent $1.6 billion last year on a myriad of energy-efficiency and alternative-energy projects.

California's Brown Signs Bill Permitting Non-Physician Abortions.  The legislation, which had been pushed vigorously by Planned Parenthood, had been strongly opposed by pro-life groups and some physicians, arguing that it amounted to legalizing back-alley abortions for profit.

Brown signs bill to allow children more than two legal parents.  Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday that will allow children in California to have more than two legal parents, a measure opposed by some conservative groups as an attack on the traditional family.  Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said he authored the measure to address the changes in family structure in California, including situations in which same-sex couples have a child with an opposite-sex biological parent.

Showing Contempt For Its Citizens, California Issues Driver's Licenses To Illegals.  California's new law letting illegal aliens have driver's licenses represents a shift in ruling-class priorities from the interests of citizens to those of politically well-organized pressure groups.

Brown vetoes bill to allow non-citizens on juries.  Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have made California the first state in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty.

Jerry Brown: Illegal Immigrant Driver's Licenses [are] 'Only the First Step'.  It's been a whirlwind month for Gov. Jerry Brown — four weeks in which the California chief executive's desk saw an anti-paparazzi bill and a bill to allow non-physicians to perform abortions, and he himself lofty praise in Rolling Stone.  The latest bill to pass his desk, granting illegal immigrants the ability to apply for driver's licenses in the state, is "only the first step" of a national movement, the governor told a crowd yesterday [10/2/2013].

Gov. Brown signs another bill easing conditions for immigrants.  Law enforcement officials in California who arrest immigrants in the country illegally will be prohibited from detaining them for transfer to federal authorities unless they committed a serious crime under one of several bills signed Saturday by Gov. Jerry Brown to ease conditions for immigrants.

California grants driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.  California's governor signed a bill Thursday [10/3/2013] granting illegal immigrants driver's licenses, in a decision immigrant rights groups hailed as a major step forward for their movement.  The country's largest state becomes the latest to reverse course and grant legal driving privileges to illegal immigrants.

For California's Illegal Immigrants, a Great Week.  On September 4, in a shocking vote to undermine safety and to erode federal immigration law enforcement, the California Assembly passed AB 4, the so-called TRUST Act.  AB 4 would prohibit state and local police from honoring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers in all but the most extreme cases.  An ICE detainer advises a state or local law enforcement agency that it seeks custody of a criminal alien for arrest and removal.  However, when ordered by the state to ignore ICE detainers, local jails must release criminals back onto the street where they can continue their lives of crime.

Don't tell mom the babysitter's unionized.  If Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has his way, your babysitter soon could join a union and cost you a lot more.  The San Francisco Democrat has authored several domestic-worker unionization bills that have been vetoed by California governors.  Now he's back with Assembly Bill 241, which just passed both houses of the Legislature and is awaiting a signature or veto from Gov. Jerry Brown.

California becomes first state in nation to regulate ride-sharing.  California regulators have approved the nation's and state's first rules for fast-growing ride-sharing companies that connect passengers to drivers via smartphones.

California passes 'job killer' increase in minimum wage to $10.  While the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the wage increase will affect more than 2.3 million California workers, groups like the California Chamber of Commerce opposed the bill, calling it a "job killer" that will drive up business costs "worse than any predicted rate of inflation increase."

California governor to sign driver's license bill for illegal immigrants.  California Governor Jerry Brown said on Friday he would sign a bill authorizing the state to provide driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, a last-minute reversal of his position.

Ice cream parlor permit hassles chilling.  Tuesday is inspection day for building owner John Vicars.  He's got a commercial property on College Avenue, right in the heart of Oakland's busiest shopping district.  His quest is simple:  to see an ice cream parlor opened on the ground floor of the building.  But his journey has been a regulatory nightmare.  It's taken him nine months to prepare 1,700 square feet of retail space to the city's satisfaction — at least to where they were satisfied enough to actually come out to inspect it.

California Raises Minimum Wage to $10 an Hour.  The California legislature has passed a bill that will raise the state's minimum wage to $10 an hour within three years, giving California one of the highest state minimum wage rates in America.

California Legislature OKs minimum wage boost.  A bill that would boost California's minimum wage to $10 an hour by 2016 won approval by the state Legislature on Thursday [9/12/2013] and was sent to Gov. Jerry Brown, who said he would sign it.  The measure would raise the current $8 minimum wage to $9 an hour next July 1 and to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016.

CA Mulls Allowing Non-Citizens to Work Polling Stations as Translators.  The State of California is seriously considering allowing non-citizens work at polls throughout the state during elections.  The Sacramento Bee reported weeks ago that the California Legislature has passed a bill that would let non-citizens who are "lawful permanent residents who meet all the other requirements for being eligible to vote except for citizenship" work at the polls.

California poised to implement first electronic license plates.  The idea is that rather than have a static piece of printed metal adorned with stickers to display proper registration, the plate would be a screen that could wirelessly (likely over a mobile data network) receive updates from a central server to display that same information.  In an example shown by a South Carolina vendor, messages such as "STOLEN," "EXPIRED," or something similar could also be displayed on a license plate.

The Editor says...
It sure is comforting to know that such a system could never be hacked by some guy with a laptop and a transmitter to make the plates display offensive words, or somebody else's license plate number.  Why would somebody do that?  Because license plate readers are the only means of toll collection on many highways.  Bank robbers would love to be able to change the plate number every half mile.  Once again, the California legislature has come up with a brilliant idea that has been carefully thought out.

America the Trivial.  At the end of two years of near-record drought in California, the fate of hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigated farmlands, which feed millions of Americans and earn billions of dollars in critical foreign exchange, hinges on a snow-filled winter in the Sierra Nevada.  You might never know of that razor's edge from the state legislature.  Rather than discussing new dams and canals, it debated whether transgendered youth in public schools could use the bathrooms of their choice and whether residents should need a permit to buy ammunition.

California insurance commissioner: We could "have a real disaster on our hands" with identify theft, fraud, and abuse.  California rushed headlong into the implementation of ObamaCare, eager to be the first model state to show off the many wonderful ways in which the law was ostensibly meant to work. [...] Besides the very glaring problems of sharply higher insurance premiums and major insurers fleeing the individual insurance market for via-employer insurance only, their "Covered California" exchange's administrators are realizing that there's another predicament in the works.

Fraud fear raised in California's health exchange.  As California prepares to launch its health care exchange, consumer groups are worried the uninsured could fall victim to fraud, identity theft or other crimes at the hands of some of the very people who are supposed to help them enroll.

Delta Project: California's Latest Environmental Boondoggle.  Judges have routinely stopped the water flows out of the Delta toward the dry but agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley and toward Southern California's massive metropolises, to help a tiny endangered baitfish known as the Delta Smelt.  The smelt is viewed as the canary in a coal mine, a bellwether for the ecological health of the waterways.  Millions of smelt are killed each year as they get caught in the giant pumps near Tracy, near the south end of the Delta. Environmentalists also express concerns about the level of saltwater that moves inland from the Pacific Ocean.

California Board Seeks to Ban Iconic Beach Firepits.  California's South Coast Air Quality Management District is proposing to give cities the authority to outlaw fire pits within their jurisdictions if they find the fires are nuisances.  The proposal jeopardizes one of the iconic images of California's surfer culture, where surfers often end the day around a fire pit on the beach.  The government proposal reflects American Lung Association opposition to beach fires, claiming they release too much air pollution.

Fracturing in California.  Few issues divide Democrats more than energy policy, as we've learned as unions and environmentalists fight over the Keystone XL pipeline.  More evidence now comes from California, where greens have lost an attempt to ban oil and gas hydraulic fracturing.  Democratic leaders brought their fracking moratorium bill to the Assembly floor last week, and their rank and file revolted.  The bill lost 37-24, with 12 Democrats joining 25 Republicans to defeat it.

California bill would fine big firms whose workers get Medi-Cal.  For years, politicians and labor unions have pilloried Wal-Mart and other large employers for paying workers so little that many qualify for government health insurance at taxpayers' expense.  Now critics fear the public will get stuck with an even bigger tab as California and other states expand Medicaid as part of the federal healthcare law.

Irvine, Calif., City Workers Average $143,691 in Total Compensation.  Employees of the City of Irvine, Calif., received total compensation averaging $143,691 in 2012, according to a study published by the California Public Policy Center.  Median total compensation, which means half of the Irvine city employees received less than this amount, and half received more, was $133,782 during 2012.

Calif. bill would let non-citizens serve on juries.  The California Assembly passed a bill on Thursday [4/25/2013] that would make the state the first in the nation to allow non-citizens who are in the country legally to serve on jury duty.

"Three-strike" lifers get a second chance in Calif. prisons.  California prisons are so overcrowded that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the conditions amount to cruel and unusual punishment.  The state is caught between a tight budget and its "three strikes" law, which imposes a life sentence after convictions. Last Fall, voters approved a plan to release some of those lifers.  Proposition 36 allows three-strikers to ask judges to let them out early.

California Group Mails Condoms to 12-Year-Olds.  The CFHC [California Family Health Council], a non-profit organization, has set up a website advertising its "Condom Access Project," where teens as young as 12 years old can receive free condoms in the mail.

To cut STD rate, California considers condoms in prison.  California prisoners have unprotected sexual contact, forced or consensual, even if both are illegal, and this reality often leads to the spread of HIV and other diseases in prisons and in communities where felons are paroled.

The Editor says...
Apparently the State of California is saying that prison rape is inevitable, so you'd better have a condom on hand.

America's most dishonest neighborhoods revealed.  America's top tax dodging hotspots have been revealed with about a third of fraudsters in California.  Neighborhoods including Beverly Hills and Newport Beach in California, New Carrollton, Maryland and College Park, Georgia, were among the potential tax evasion clusters targeted for auditing, according to confidential IRS data.  They were identified by the National Taxpayer Advocate using the IRS's confidential tax return data.  In all, researchers identified areas of possible tax cheats in more than 350 communities in 24 states.

CA Crime Skyrockets in Wake of Brown's Prison Release Plan.  In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law California Assembly Bill 109, a piece of legislation designed to relieve overcrowded prisons in accordance with a Supreme Court decision.  AB 109 enshrined "realignment" into law — a plan to place supposedly "non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders" in county jails rather than state prisons.  In other words, local governments were handed the problem of prisoners the state didn't want to hold.

California 'Lumber Products Assessment' a tax by any other name.  The clowns who frequent Sacramento's seedy bars and whorehouses, otherwise known as the members of the California State Legislature, have pulled off another midnight raid deep into the pocketbooks of all Californians.  At least street thugs and bank robbers are a one-time occurrence; [...]

To the left, California is now the model for America.  California's dominant Democrats can now raise taxes, float debt and expand government at will.  Republican "obstructionism" forced the state's liberal leaders to control themselves, but that control is over.  Every hare-brained idea will have at a high likelihood of passing.  Democrats already are pushing a host of new taxes and proposals that will make it easier for local officials to raise taxes, also.  So the taxing and spending has just begun.

State auditor: California's net worth at negative $127.2 billion.  Were California's state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.  The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state's negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue.

California tied with Rhode Island for highest jobless rate.  California's jobless rate was unchanged at 9.8% in January, and that lack of improvement put the Golden State in a tie with Rhode Island for the worst unemployment in the land.

Golden State's green jobs bust.  President Obama, of course, has completely failed to deliver on this promise of 5 million new green-collar jobs.  The entire U.S. economy has created only 1.2 million jobs since Obama was sworn into office, many of them in the fossil fuel extraction, production and distribution sector.  But in Obama's defense, most of his green jobs agenda was killed.  Cap-and-trade and renewable electricity mandates never made it through Congress.  High-speed rail was killed off by governors in Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin.  But where the rest of the nation has rejected all or most of these proposals, California has embraced them all.

Green state chokes off its middle class.  Los Angeles' water-fueled growth permanently altered entire habitats, including, most famously, the Owens Valley, which once supported a lake and farming community.  It is now a desert.  Unfortunately, California environmentalists are trying to turn much of the Central Valley's farmland back into desert too.  Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, federal courts have ordered farmers to divert hundreds of billions of gallons of water away from crops and into the Sacramento River, where it is supposed to help revive the delta smelt.

California's expensive education failure.  According to RAND Corp., as late as the 1970s California's public schools still had an "excellent" reputation.  Then, in 1975, Brown (in his first stint as California's governor) signed the Rodda Act, giving government unions the power to take money directly out of government employees' paychecks.  The California Teachers Association quickly poured this new revenue stream into an organizing drive, more than doubling the union's ranks.  The Golden State's politics have never been the same since — nor has the quality of its public schools.

California at Twilight.  We keep trying to understand the enigma of California, mostly why it still breathes for a while longer, given the efforts to destroy the sources of its success.  Let's try to navigate through its sociology and politics to grasp why something that should not survive is surviving quite well — at least in some places.

California Dept. of Transportation: 'Be Sure to Black Out the 'United States' and [the] Motto'.  For three years, a private citizen named Steve LeBard has led the effort to build a privately funded memorial in Orcutt, California — a tranquil small town located on the Golden State's gorgeous Central Coast — to honor military veterans.  And for the better part of those three years, he has run into a toxic blend of political correctness, anti-Americanism, and bureaucratic senselessness.  Today, the memorial, which was to be built with private funds on a small piece of public land, remains unbuilt.

California testing limits of gun-control rules in wake of Newtown shooting.  California already has the most restrictive gun laws in the nation.  Buying a handgun requires registration, a safety certificate, a 10-day waiting period and a rigorous background check.  All direct person-to-person sales are banned and concealed-carry permits are rare.  But now, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, lawmakers in the Golden State have launched into a new legislative frenzy to restrict firearms further.

California parks officials deliberately hid money, report says.  Fear of embarrassment and budget cuts led California parks officials to intentionally conceal millions of dollars in a department account, according to an investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office.  The report, released Friday [1/4/2013], is the most detailed official narrative yet regarding the root of the accounting scandal at the parks department.

For his next crisis.  Saving the planet isn't easy — or cheap — especially in California.  The state's anti-global-warming cap-and-trade program is the latest gimmick to leave it with yet another big hole to fill in its budget.  The Golden State's new carbon-trading program is the world's second largest, after the European Union's.  The stated goal is to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and another 80 percent by 2050.  But California held its very first "carbon credit" auction last month — and it was a big disappointment.

Study: CA Worst-Governed State in America.  According to a new study from 24/7 Wall Street, California is the worst run state in the nation ... for the second year in a row.  The best run state is North Dakota.

The 11 Death Spiral States.  Eleven states made Forbes' list of danger spots for investors including California, New York, Illinois, and Ohio.  They warned (and with the cliff it is even more critical), if you have muni bonds in these states — clean up your portfolio; if your career takes you there — rent, don't buy!

Pulling billions out of thin air.  As home to the entertainment industry and the land of make-believe, California is known for embracing fads.  The latest rage among the Democrats who just won a supermajority sway in the Sacramento Statehouse may prove to be the most costly.  California is starting its own cap-and-trade program, which taxes carbon-dioxide emissions and other "greenhouse" gases through a convoluted permit system.  The Golden State could end up suffocating its golden goose with this scheme.

California's Road to Perdition.  California was once the envy of everyone.  But this promised land is now being controlled by a super-majority of leftists, and the liberal, pro-union Democrats have only one answer to California's woes:  to raise taxes.

No Meat on Mondays in Los Angeles.  The Los Angeles City Council is urging all residents to observe "meatless Mondays" from now on.  A resolution adopted on Oct. 24 reads:  "Be it resolved, that the Council of the City of Los Angeles hereby declares all Mondays as 'Meatless Mondays' in support of comprehensive sustainability efforts as well as to further encourage residents to eat a more varied plant-based diet to protect their health and protect animals."

California Grants Tesla $10 Million To Build The Model X Electric SUV.  California regulators on Wednesday [10/10/2012] approved a $10 million grant to Tesla Motors to help manufacture its next electric car, the Model X sport utility vehicle.  Tesla will pony up $50 million to match the California Energy Commission grant, which will be used to expand manufacturing capacity at its factory in Fremont, Calif., and to purchase equipment to make components for the Model X.

A Modest Proposal.  California was once the land of opportunity, but it is going down the tubes.  Several of California's prominent cities have declared bankruptcy, such as Vallejo, Stockton, Mammoth Lakes and San Bernardino.  Others are on the precipice, and that includes Los Angeles, California's largest city.  California's 2012 budget deficit is expected to top $28 billion, and its state debt is $618 billion.  That's more than twice the size of New York's state debt, which itself is the second-highest in the nation.

The Obama Paradox.  The bluest state is polling at a 20 to 24 point lead for Barack Obama.  Who cares that it is struggling with nearly 11% unemployment and facing a $16 billion budget shortfall?  What does it matter that its public schools rated variously from 45th to 49th in the nation and that it is home to one-third of the nation's welfare recipients, forty percent of the nation's illegal aliens, and the largest prison population in the country?  If Ohio supposedly has a million Obama-phones, I shudder to wonder how many are in California.

And Will a Jesse James or Billy the Kid Elementary School Follow?  California public schools for some time in many surveys of national testing have ranked 48th or 49th in the nation in math and science, and, inter alia, are part of the various impediments to robust economic growth in California.  No matter — California school boards have better things to worry about.

California's chickens have come home to roost.  [Governor] Schwarzenegger's proposals would have increased eligibility for teacher tenure from two years to five years in the classroom, made the use of union dues for political campaign contributions voluntary, imposed state budgetary spending limits and redrawn the state's school district funding formula, and reformed the states' redistricting system.  The establishment couldn't have that, and so, in short order, the referenda were soundly defeated at the ballot box. [...] Fast forward to 2012, when California's debt has swollen to more than $117 billion according to data assembled by State Budget Solutions.  Its unfunded union pension liabilities total more than $500 billion.

LAPD Chief Tells Officers to Ignore Federal Illegal Immigrant Law.  In Los Angeles, where the distinctions between the citizen and the non-citizen are often little more than abstractions, they are one step closer to vanishing altogether.  That such a thing should occur in Los Angeles comes as no surprise to anyone paying even the slightest attention to recent trends in the city's governance.  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is famously sympathetic to the cause of illegal immigrants, and most members of the city council hold similar views.

California Governor Brown vetoes bill that allowed towns to release undocumented immigrants.  California's governor has vetoed a bill that would have allowed police and sheriffs to free undocumented immigrants from custody once they became eligible for release even if federal immigration authorities had asked to hold them for possible deportation proceedings.

Millions in SF health fees don't go to workers.  Restaurants and other businesses in this food-loving tourist mecca collected almost $14 million dollars in extra fees last year from their patrons, as they sought to comply with the progressive city's landmark universal health-care ordinance.

The not-so Golden State of America.  In the 1850s droves of gold-hunters hoping to make it rich rushed into what would later be established as the Golden State.  The pristine beaches, vast mountains and plenty of opportunity persuaded some to stay in the state.  But now, California is facing a different kind of rush — one that is causing people to pick up and leave.  The state boasts a population of more than 37 million.  However, the Orange County Register reports that 870,550 people left the state between 2005 and 2009.  "That's like the whole city of San Francisco just up and left," the article states.  What is chasing people away?

California law barring parents from 'curing' gay children moves through legislature.  A first-of-its-kind state law that would restrict parents from trying to "cure" their minor children's same-sex attractions seems headed to the governor's desk.  If both state houses can agree on the final language, the legislation, which would ban all sexual orientation change effort (SOCE) treatment for minors, will be sent to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature sometime in September.  But, so far, there has been no indication from his office on whether he will sign the bill into law.

California to Issue Driver's Licenses to Illegal Immigrants.  The California state Assembly on Thursday [8/30/2012] voted in favor of a bill that would permit the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants who are eligible for work permits under a new policy handed down from the Obama administration.  The bill is on its way to Governor Jerry Brown's desk to be signed into law.  Fox News reports, "Democratic Assemblyman Gil Cedillo of Los Angeles said he wrote AB 2189 to make roads safer, and allow young immigrants to drive to school and work."  The bill passed in California's Assembly by a vote of 55-15 after it passed in California's Senate on Wednesday by a vote of 25-7.  The only other states to issue driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants are New Mexico, Utah, and Washington.

California poised to grant driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants.  California is on the verge of allowing hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to receive driver's licenses for the first time in nearly two decades.  The key question is how to do it.  The issue of granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants has raged in the Legislature for much of the past decade, without resolution, but fighting is largely moot now due to a new federal policy.

Bias alert!
The "new federal policy" is the policy of only one man:  Barack H. Obama.

There is no California.  There is no such state.  Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, each equally dysfunctional in quite different ways.  Apart they are unworldly, together a disaster.

California: First in Liberalism, Last in Everything Else.  With decades of success earned with seemingly little effort, California seems to have decided that it can rest on its laurels.  But the days when the state could live off of its looks are quickly drawing to a close, as a bevy of recent statistics show.

Justice Department opposes illegal immigrant's bid to practice law.  An illegal Mexican immigrant who wants to be licensed to practice law in California has received support from the state's top law enforcement officer, the State Bar of California, civil rights groups, county bar associations and law professors  — but not from the Obama administration.  In a brief to the California Supreme Court, the U.S. Department of Justice said federal law prohibits giving a public benefit, such as a bar license, to an "unlawfully present alien."

California: Blue Twilight on the Pacific.  California is in a hole but can't seem to stop its compulsive digging.  Schools, universities, prisons, pensions, cities and towns:  the state has lost the ability to manage even the most basic elements of communal living.  But foie gras is now illegal there, grandiose plans for white elephant fast trains built with borrowed money waft through the air, and the state continues to boost the self esteem of affluent and cause-oriented gentry liberals by scattering scarce resources to the four winds, hunting unicorns when the cupboard is bare.

A Golden State train wreck.  State Sen. Joe Simitian's district office near Stanford's campus is nestled among shops sporting excruciatingly cute names (A Street Bike Named Desire, Mom's the Word maternity wear) intended to make the progressive gentry comfortable with upscale consumption by presenting it as whimsical.  This community surely has its share of advanced thinkers who think trains are wonderful because they are not cars (rampant individualism; people going wherever and whenever they want, unsupervised).

San Bernardino Files Emergency Bankruptcy Petition.  San Bernardino on Wednesday became the third California city to declare insolvency, joining Stockton and Mammoth Lakes after officials say they filed an emergency petition for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Gastronomical Prohibitionists.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his listeners that a man with a beam in his eye ought not to criticize another with a mere speck in his.  The message:  sort out your own crippling shortcomings before presuming to meddle in someone else's.  It's good advice for an individual; it would be even better advice for the state of California.  Good counsel, however, has a way of falling on deaf ears in the Golden State.

Bottled Water Going the Way of the 20-ounce Soda.  The latest law to encourage use of refillable containers comes out of San Francisco.  Their ultimate goal is to ban bottled water.  San Francisco is a hardcore environmentalist city and they do not like plastic water bottles.  The first step they are taking is to require new buildings with water fountains to install special bottle-filling taps.  That would be the same water that comes out of your kitchen sink which is what bottled water drinkers don't want to drink.  They also don't want anything to do with public fountains where so many have been before.

San Fran Area Drivers Could be Forced to Install GPS Devices That Tax Their Travel.  On Thursday evening [7/19/2012], a controversial study in the San Francisco Bay Area will be voted upon that could require drivers to allow GPS devices to be installed inside their car.  The ultimate goal?  Not to see where they're going, but to evaluate how much they're driving — and consider taxing them for it. [...] The proposed Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax could cost as much as a dime per mile.

Penniless in Paradise.  On the front door of the San Bernardino city hall is a sign that reads:  "Out of Order."  Broke city, broken door:  There's a certain pleasing symmetry in the fact that the San Bernardino city council meets behind a door that, like the city government itself, does not work and is in need of replacement.  On this particular evening in late July, the council has met to make public what everybody already knows:  Intellectually bankrupt, morally bankrupt — the city is under criminal investigation for sundry financial shenanigans — San Bernardino is above all old-fashioned bankrupt bankrupt, a pitiful penniless pauper that cannot even afford a cup of coffee:  Seriously — the coffee guy wants cash up front now and has stopped serving the municipal office building until the city makes good on its latte liabilities.

Welcome to California: America without Republicans.  [Scroll down]  What would America look like if the Republican "fever" did break?  We already know.  It would look a lot like the state of California, where no non-cyborg Republican has been governor since 1996.  Democrats have also enjoyed complete control of the state legislature since 1997.  And they have governed exactly the way you'd expect Democrats to govern.  Spending has more than doubled, from $45.4 billion in 1996 to more than $92.5 billion today.  Income, sales and car taxes have all been hiked.  As a result, California has the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven income tax brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate.

City of San Francisco Bans Apple Computers.  San Francisco has earned a reputation for being, in certain regards, the nation's most permissive city, but even the City by the Bay has certain limits.  Take, for instance, one's choice of computers:  If you work for the city, you will not be allowed to procure an Apple using city funds.  Why?  Because the computer industry giant with its headquarters less than an hour away from San Francisco is not "green" enough.

California Eyes Multiple Parenting Law.  California, the battleground state for the arguments for and against same-sex marriage, is now considering an unconventional law that would allow children to be legally granted more than two parents.

Hey California: Meet Wisconsin.  In November of 2010 Californians rejected a candidate for Governor who pledged to do much of what Scott Walker has done, and instead elected a Governor who is bought and paid for by labor unions.

Labor Unions Suffer Defeat on Taxpayer Revolt.  Californians, struggling with an $18 billion budget deficit, stuck with a Sacramento political class owned by Democrats who in turn are owned by labor unions, are facing a massive tax increase in November that will give California the unenviable distinction of having the highest per capita tax burden in the Country.  Even modest efforts to reign in spending or do serious pension reform are easily thwarted by big labor lobbyists.

California's Proposition 32: Ending Union Dominance Of California Politics.  Is union money distorting California electoral politics?  Many think so.  After all, public sector and trade unions are among the biggest donors in California elections.  In the years 2000-2010 the California Teachers Association (CTA) was the single largest contributor to California politics, giving twice as much as the second-largest contributor, the California State Council of Service Employees.

California is about to hit the wall.  The demography of California today is the demography of America tomorrow, just as the social and fiscal policies of California in the last decade mirror those of the U.S. government today.  One-third of all U.S. wage-earners today have been amnestied from paying U.S. income taxes, as the top 1 percent haul fully 40 percent of that huge load.  So, too, in California, the well-to-do and the wealthy are hammered, which is why many have quietly closed their businesses, packed and gone back over the mountains whence their fathers came.

California Still Dead.  [Scroll down]  That "new state law intended to reduce bankruptcy filings" was a transparent ploy by government employee unions to prevent cities from using insolvency protection to get out of crushing pension contracts.  And it may not even have been necessary.  As Steven Greenhut wrote after the city of Vallejo went belly up in 2010, even municipal bankruptcy doesn't seem to get taxpayers out of their solemn obligation to pay former government employees not to work.

California Digging.  Ignoring the first rule of holes, a bankrupt state passing out IOUs welcomes an EPA waiver allowing it to further kill its economy.  Too bad the state can't stop the air pollution imported from a growing China.

Coffers Empty, California Pays With I.O.U.'s.  An ever-widening budget gap joined with intractable political paralysis to deliver California its biggest fiscal blow in decades on Thursday [7/2/2009], when the state's controller began printing i.o.u.'s in lieu of cash to pay taxpayers, vendors and local governments.  It was only the second time the state had adopted the emergency payment method since the Great Depression.  The National Conference of State Legislatures had no record of any other state's ever using them.

School system lays off "Teacher of the Year".  A California woman who was named her school district's "Teacher of the Year" has a new title — "job seeker."  The district laid off Michelle Apperson along with thousands of other educators across the state.  California has a budget crisis and this is how officials are dealing with it.

The Editor says...
You might be saying to yourself, "That doesn't make any sense.  Why would they do that?  And the answer is ... the teachers' union!

'Teacher of the Year' Fired for Lack of Union Seniority.  It doesn't matter anymore how good you are at your job if you live in the failing state of California; if you're on a lower rung of the ladder in terms of seniority, you're toast.  Michelle Apperson, a teacher at the Sutterville Elementary School in Sacramento who was named "teacher of the year" by the school district, was fired because she was outranked in seniority.

Another Outrage in California.  As of today [6/1/2012], it is legal in California to give hormone blockers to an 11 year-old boy in order to delay the onset of puberty, but it could soon be illegal for a 17 year-old with unwanted same-sex attractions to receive professional counseling, even with parental consent.

California budget proposal would end a science requirement.  A little-noticed proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown to eliminate the second year of science as a high school graduation requirement is sparking concern among educators who fear it could deepen the academic divide among students and further erode the state's scientific and technological leadership.  The recommendation in Brown's revised May budget is aimed at freeing the state from reimbursing local school districts for the $250-million annual cost of the second-year science course.  The state has not made any payouts to school districts since the requirement was ruled a mandate in 2005, so California owes public school systems $2.5 billion in unpaid claims.

California's Train to Nowhere.  Some politicians can't resist throwing good money after bad on these money-losing schemes.  The latest example is from the People's Republic of California, where Governor Jerry Brown is acting as if he wants the state to become a basket case.

Can California Be Fixed?  Recently, I was driving down pot-holed, two-lane, non-freeway 101 near Monterey (unchanged since the 1960s) when the radio blared that on a recent science test administered to public schools, California scored 47th in the nation.  As I looked at the congested traffic on the decrepit highway and digested the idea that our public schools are competitive only with Mississippi and Alabama, I wondered — is that what we get for a more than 10 percent income tax, 10 percent state and local sales taxes, and the highest gas taxes in the nation?

California's Budget Woes: No One Ever Mentions Work Disincentives, Welfare Fraud, or Taxpayer Flight.  Governor Jerry Brown is browbeating residents to pass tax initiatives in November which include "a quarter-cent increase in the state sales tax for four years and a seven-year hike on incomes of $250,000 or more that will range from 1 to 3 percentage points."  The totally predictable problem (and, from all appearances, a bit contrived; the state's controller saw this coming several months ago, and was largely ignored) is that tax revenues aren't coming in as expected.  Media treatment of the problem acts as if this all some kind of uncontrollable act of God which is a by-product of the recession and weak recovery.

California: America's Welfare Queen.  California is the nation's welfare queen:  The state accounts for one-third of America's welfare recipients, though it only contains one-eighth of the population, and there's no good reason for it. [...] The main reason that California is so dependent on welfare is its uniquely lax enforcement of the provisions of the 1996 welfare reforms. As part of the creation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the federal government put in place a set of regulations on welfare payments to help or encourage recipients to return to work, such as the five-year lifetime limit on benefits. California, however, is one of nine states that don't unconditionally enforce this supposedly nationwide provision.

Golden State turns to lead, now leads poverty rankings.  The Golden State has reached a poverty rate that is now twice as bad as West Virginia's and substantially worse than the rates of poverty in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Texas, according to a new measure of poverty developed by the federal Census Bureau.  Democrat-run California earned its last-place rank under the federal government's new measure of poverty, which incorporates more detailed analyses of welfare payments and the local costs of food, gasoline and housing.

It Looks Like Tax Revenue In California Is Coming Up WILDLY Short Of Expectations.  A tipster just sent us this, and it does indeed look like April tax revenue in California is way below expectations.

Los Angeles insolvency predictable and preventable.  When the nation's second largest city teeters on the verge of bankruptcy, local elected officials — and especially taxpayers elsewhere — ought to take it as a wake-up call and ponder the evident public policy blunders that laid the groundwork for such an unnecessary scenario.  Los Angeles' potential bankruptcy and $238 million budget shortfall were predictable and preventable.

Socialism Won't Fix California's Struggling Public Utilities.  We know of the poor quality of products and services provided by government monopolies.  Yet officials in Stanton and Claremont think otherwise.  They have discussed spending tens of millions of tax dollars to "buy" their water systems from a private water company that doesn't want to sell them.  To make matters worse, their efforts would require the use — some would say the abuse — of the power of eminent domain to acquire the properties by force.  Taxpayers will be on the hook for all of this.

Beware The Predatory State Of California — Even If You Don't Live There.  [Apparently] the state of California, desperate for revenue, is churning out dubious income tax claims stretching back years and collecting the money without due process.  This is theft, pure and simple, and charging the account owner $100 for transacting the theft is also theft.

Harris distorts democracy to aid unions.  We expect judges, no matter their political stripes, to apply the law as written.  We expect election officials to battle election fraud no matter their personal preference for the outcome.  Likewise, we expect state attorney generals, who are the head of California's "Justice" Department, after all, to provide fair title and summaries of all initiatives submitted to that office — even ones the AG personally doesn't like.  Without any civic spiritedness, people eventually will lose faith that they can make change by following the rules.  [California Attorney General Kamala] Harris, however, is a close ally of the public sector unions.

Trying to 'Stop the Bleeding' from Environmental Overreach.  Central California Republicans — and farmers across the state — won a small victory last night in a House committee in a battle that has seen scores of communities devastated by environmental regulatory overreach.  The Delta smelt is a tiny fish that lives is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley River Delta.  In response to the fish's threatened status, influenced by its sensitivity to environmental conditions and the large-scale pumping operations necessary to send water south, a 2007 court order citing the Endangered Species Act severely cut back water deliveries through the agricultural Central Valley.

Mortgage Deal Props Up California House of Cards.  Why should a taxpayer in Houston or Wichita bail out irresponsible California homeowners, banks and the state's public employees' retirement fund?  Yet that's exactly what the Obama administration is looking to do in its latest effort to shore up a housing market that continues to sag as large percentages of Americans remain underwater in their mortgages.

California counties get mail-order condom program.  Teenagers in several counties can get condoms in the mail for free under a program launched this week and supported by state public health officials.

An example of how government can become an obstacle to economic recovery:  It's hard to get a handle on how many businesses have been discouraged by such a permitting and regulation regime, but you have to assume they are plenty.  It should not take two years for a government to say "okay" to a business.  Nor should there be exorbitant fees associated with it.

San Francisco Red Tape Nearly Strangles Small Businesses.  The leftists in charge of the City by the Bay have made it next to impossible for anyone to start a small business in that town.  Just ask Juliet Pries.  In January Pries opened the Ice Cream Bar, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco.  But before she could start serving up hot fudge sundaes and banana splits, she was forced to spend two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars — supplied by family and friends — navigating the city's labyrinthine planning codes and otherwise satisfying the bureaucrats' whims.

We're in the red ... so let's borrow.  A conservative activist says California intends to continue the borrow-spend-borrow cincreased spending more money inflationycle despite an announcement that the state is officially out of cash.  In a letter to legislative budget leaders, State Controller John Chiang said California will run out of cash on March 1 unless something is done quickly.  Chiang suggested that the state should delay payments and borrow around $3.3 billion because tax revenues are $2.6 billion lower than lawmakers assumed.

Electric Cars: Doubling Down On Dumb.  Once again, the regulators in California have decided to lead the nation in terms of vehicle emission standards, proposing to require that 15.4 percent of all vehicles sold by 2025 must be electric cars, plug-in hybrid cars, or (currently non-existent) fuel cell cars.  In case you're wondering why this all sounds familiar, it's because California is re-running the same delusional program that it ran in 1990...

California Issues Clown Car Mandate.  Golden State regulators have passed sweeping emission standards requiring one in seven new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. ... [I]f we've learned anything in recent years, it's that industrial policy and telling consumers what they need and must have vs. what they want and find useful doesn't work.  Only the marketplace can accurately pick winners and losers.  The government, having no competition, usually picks losers.  We have also learned that climate change is an overhyped fantasy based on ideology rather than science.

America's worst regulatory agency outdoes itself.  California continues its leading role as the national laughingstock of regulatory absurdity.  This week, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), forged another link in its unbroken chain of disastrous environmental policies.

Every Year Boondoggles Pile Up in California.  The left-wing idea that it's good for government to always wildly increase spending is dying a quick death these days.  But this good sense has not made it to every state in the union yet — two disastrous states in particular; California and Illinois.  These two states have not learned the lesson about the ruinous government spending that is causing the country to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.  Apparently, Illinois and California are vying for worst-state status.  Moody's Investment service, for instance, has rated Illinois the worst, but Standard & Poor's says it's California.

What Conservatives and the GOP Dare Not Say about Immigration.  The fact is that upon being naturalized, our modern-day immigrants generally vote Democrat by wide margins — irrespective of whether upon arrival they were labeled legal or illegal.  Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore.

Nation's largest welfare state makes deep cuts.  Advocates of welfare reform in California often cite one, eye-popping statistic as they have pressed for cuts and changes to the program in recent years:  The state has one-eighth of the nation's population but one-third of all welfare recipients.

Workers give up in Los Angeles.  In Los Angeles, the falling unemployment rate is slightly misleading, just as it has been for the country overall.  When surveyed by the government, fewer L.A. residents say they're unemployed compared to a year ago.  But it's not because they're finding jobs.  It's because they're dropping out of the labor force altogether.

It's California business as usual as debt, taxes grow.  [Scroll down]  This sorry state of affairs is indicative of business as usual in California and provides a basis from which to examine the state's irresponsible budget practices as a whole.  California's current budget process relies heavily on the use of budget gimmicks, especially number shifting and projection altering that can create the illusion of a balanced budget.

This Is the Nightmare of an Obama Second Term.  If you were wondering what living in Obama's second term would be like, wonder no longer.  We in California are living there now.  California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democratic Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions.  The unemployment rate is 12%.  California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it "Medi-Cal."  Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, and smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago.

Govt. Funds Campaign To Reduce Food Stamp Stigma.  The effort to boost the food stamp rolls was announced this month [October, 2010] in California, where more than 3 million residents benefit from the federal program each month.  Evidently, state and federal officials believe the number is way too low for the virtually bankrupt state with a population of about 37 million.

SF Becomes First US City to Top $10 Minimum Wage.  The city's hourly wage for its lowest-paid workers will hit $10.24 [on 1/1/2012], more than $2 above the California minimum wage and nearly $3 more than the working wage set by the federal government.

Choking on Obamacare.  Time was, American businesses could surmount such regulatory officiousness.  But government's metabolic urge to boss people around has grown exponentially and today CKE's California restaurants are governed by 57 categories of regulations.  One compels employees and even managers to take breaks during the busiest hours, lest one of California's 200,000 lawyers comes trolling for business at the expense of business.

California Student Sues Teacher, District Over C+ Grade.  Bowen Bethards, 17, was a sophomore in Peggy Carlock's chemistry class at Albany High School in Albany, Calif., outside of San Francisco, in the 2010-11 school year when she gave him the C+ grade at the center of the suit, according to court records first reported by the Albany Patch.  Bethards, in a lawsuit filed with his mother, Laureen, in Contra Costa County Superior Court last month, claims that he has suffered severe physical and emotional suffering, damage to his academic reputation, and diminished chances of getting into his college of choice because of the grade.

California — toxic for business.  Last year, the medical technology firm Numira Biosciences packed its bags and left Irvine for Salt Lake City.  When asked about the firm's departure, its chief executive praised Utah's quality of life but also blamed California's business environment for the move.  "The tipping point was when someone from the Orange County tax [assessor] wanted to see our facility to tax every piece of equipment I had," Michael Beeuwsaert told the Orange County Register.

California's jobs engine broke down well before the financial crisis.  Everybody knows that California's economy has struggled mightily since the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession.  The state's current unemployment rate, 12.1 percent, is a full 3 percentage points above the national rate. ... But a study commissioned by City Journal using the National Establishment Time Series database, which has tracked job creation and migration from 1992 through 2008 (so far) in a way that government statistics can't, reveals the disturbing truth.

California's Economic Suicide.  The 262 pages of regulations implementing California's 2006 global warming legislation, Assembly Bill 32, approved by CARB last Thursday [10/20/2011], will probably reduce employment more than it reduces emissions.  The only thing it will cap is economic growth by bleeding a patient that is already hemorrhaging red ink.

California Employment at Record Low 55.4 Percent.  The percentage of working-age Californians with jobs has fallen to a record low, and employment may not return to pre-recession levels until the second half of the decade, according to a research group.  Just 55.4 percent of working-age Californians, defined as those 16 or older, had a job in July...

California unemployment rises in July to 12%.  California's unemployment rate climbs two-tenths of a percentage point in July, the U.S. Department of Labor says, to 12%.  The state has the second-highest jobless rate in the nation, exceeded only by Nevada at 12.9%.

San Francisco goldfish ban exposes America's liberal nutjobs.  [Scroll down]  The proposal will probably be kicked into the long-grass, as was the commission's proposed ban on the sale of kittens and puppies last year.  Other things the city has considered outlawing are MacDonald's Happy Meals, supersizing in fast food chains and circumcision.  Obviously, smoking in public places was stopped years ago.  The goldfish ban might seem like a silly story, but it does expose several liberal pathologies.

California's Book Ban.  The California state legislature has passed a book-banning law.  Nobody is calling the book ban a book ban because the books the book ban bans offend homosexuals.  If the legislature had extended legislative protection to the hurt feelings of, say, Mormons or evangelical Christians, then everyone would have agreed that it's a book ban.  But it doesn't, so don't call the book ban a book ban.  You just might get banned, too.

California becomes first state in nation to ban 'gay cure' therapy for children.  California has become the first state in the nation to ban therapy that tries to turn gay teens straight.  Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday [9/30/2012] that he has signed Senate Bill 1172, which prohibits children under age 18 from undergoing "sexual orientation change efforts."  The law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, prohibits state-licensed therapists from engaging in these practices with minors.

The Editor says...
If there is such a therapy, and it works, that proves that homosexuality is a choice, not a genetic condition, as so many homosexuals claim.  If this therapy doesn't work, why is it so vigorously opposed?

One law for us, another for you.  The California state Senate voted 28-8 Wednesday [6/1/2011] to exempt itself from the pointless gun-control laws that apply to the rest of the populace.  Legislators apparently think they alone are worthy to pack heat on the streets for personal protection, and the masses ought to wait until the police arrive.

Chief executives say California worst place in the nation to do business.  For the seventh year in a row, a survey of chief executives has ranked California as the nation's worst state in which to do business.  More than 500 U.S. CEOs polled by Greenwich, Conn.-based Chief Executive magazine based their opinions on numerous factors, including regulations, tax policies, work force quality, education resources, quality of living and infrastructure.

California Balks at Public Display of American Flag.  In the small town of Orcutt, California, a private association has raised donations to erect a flagpole and monument between a highway exit and a park-and-ride lot, at the entrance to the community's Old Town section.  The pole would hang the American flag, encircled by five pillars, one each for the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.  The California Department of Transportation (CalTrans), however, has stymied the effort, calling it an impermissible act of "public expression."

California Democrats rally around unions.  Framing the union battles taking place across the nation as a fundamental attack on working Americans, Democratic leaders on Saturday accused Republicans of scapegoating public employees for political gain.  "They are intent on dismantling the very economic ladder that lifted our middle class and made California the richest and greatest state in the greatest nation in the world," Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris told thousands of delegates and supporters gathered at the Democrats' annual convention in Sacramento.

The Editor says...
When you look at the state's net worth, California is not the richest state in the country, by any means.  California is broke, and nearly all the blame should be assigned to left-wing tax-and-spend Democrats.

Second Amendment Takes Double Shot in California.  A double-whammy came down today against gun rights advocates in California.  First, the California Assembly voted to prohibit the open carry of unloaded handguns.  Current law had allowed unloaded weapons to be carried openly in public.  "You are disarming our citizens" while doing little to disarm criminals, said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber.  "It is not just the right to keep, it is the right to bear arms," said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks.

Guns for us, not for you.  Some of the most far-out anti-gun laws are found on the left coast, but that could change — for privileged politicians.  A California state Senate committee will consider a bill next week that grants legislators permission to carry concealed firearms.  The measure highlights the growing rift between the bureaucratic class and taxpayers who don't have the luxury of exempting themselves from bad laws.

America's Most Miserable Cities.  California's troubles helped it land eight of the 20 spots on [Forbes Magazine's] annual list of America's Most Miserable Cities, with Stockton ranking first for the second time in three years.

California's Problem Is In Its Head.  California Gov. Jerry Brown must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall.  But right now it seems almost a hopeless task since the state's disastrous budget is a symptom, not the cause, of California's much larger nightmare.  Take unemployment.  It currently runs 12.6% in California, the nation's second-highest rate.  Take livability.  A recent Forbes magazine survey listing the most miserable 20 cities in the nation ranked four California municipalities among the index's five worst places to live.

Go Bankrupt, California, Please.  We're now 25 billion dollars in the red in California.  The governor along with his Democrat controlled legislature will never do the right thing.  They're the same folks who brought you this mess.  When Governor Brown was previously the governor he signed the Dills Act in 1978 that gave civil servants the right to collective bargaining.  He did this on his very first day in office as governor.  This revolutionary enactment was the beginning of the end or our state.

Bootleg Lightbulbs Coming to California.  Old reliable, the 100-watt light bulb — safe, cheap, and bright enough to read, write, cook, shave, and put on your makeup by, will be gone January 1.  The California Energy Commission in September 2010 published its 226-page Appliance Efficiency Regulations, whereby the 100-watt incandescent light bulb will be outlawed at midnight on December 31, 2010.  Californians with self-imposed rationing, running out of both energy and common sense, have declared that consuming electrical power is a social vice.  Electric power must be curbed, along with banning Dr. Pepper and Happy Meals.  And it's not just light bulbs.  These appliance standards will regulate and ban hundreds of products including...

CARB's Carbon Capers.  In a nearly unanimous vote, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) just approved a statewide cap-and-trade scheme to limit emissions of CO2 from six hundred major industrial plants, starting in 2012.  Proposition 23 on the California ballot, defeated in November, was an attempt to at least delay the state's Cap-and-Trade law, AB-32, until California's record unemployment eased.  However, the slanted description appearing on both the official Voter Guide and the ballot, written by then-State Attorney General Jerry Brown and his office, the well-funded "No-on-23" campaign, and some very heavy media bias, had Californians believing that Prop. 23 would thwart efforts to curb air pollution — i.e., smog.  So Prop 23 went down in flames, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs, and perhaps a million.

Off-the-Books America.  Last week, Victor Davis Hanson wrote about the hollowed-out society in the Central Valley around his native Fresno, California. ... The elementary school that he attended as a child is now 94 percent Hispanic and well below standards in English and math.  The rural roads are "fast turning into rubble."  The irrigation cutoffs have idled tens of thousands of acres, and unemployment is 15 to 20 percent.  There are many rural "trailer-house compounds" filled with junked cars, lean-tos, and trash, but for some reason, the regulatory state does not reach out and regulate them.

Missing the California of My Youth.  In what seems like a lifetime ago, Barack Obama promised to fundamentally transform the nation.  California is what a truly progressive government transformation looks like.  Thus, in a sensible America, the decline of California would be the canary call in a coal mine for the nation.

Mascot Politics.  Dr. Victor Davis Hanson's quietly chilling article, "Two Californias," in National Review Online, ought to be read by every American who is concerned about where this country is headed.  California is leading the way, but what is happening in California is happening elsewhere — and is a slow poison that is being largely ignored.

California sings the Blue State Blues.  Over 20 years have passed since a Republican presidential candidate carried California.  Democrats have essentially run the state since the early 1990s.  How has that worked out for Californians?  By virtually any measure, not very well.  First, though, let's get one thing straight.  Much the way frozen food manufacturers call their processed sludge nuggets "chicken," Schwarzenegger calls himself a "Republican."  His election was an aberration, more, without question, thanks to his fame than his party affiliation.

Time to allow states to go bankrupt.  The idea that taxpayers in more sensible states like Indiana and Texas should have to bail out wealthy Democratic strongholds unable to operate responsibly is explosive.  Mark Steyn has even warned that secession talk could get serious in the face of such looting of the prudent.

California, the neocolonial state.  California imports more cheap labor from a third world country than any other state.  California exports her prisoners.  The state of California essentially outsources a substantial amount of its energy production, importing more of its electricity than any other state.  If California were a country, the liberals in academia would be outraged at this neocolonial behavior.  Ironically it has been liberal policies that have lead to California becoming a neocolonial state.

Residential electricity forecast

More climate idiocy from California.  If the looming spectre of rising electricity prices due to CARB's upcoming "cap and trade" isn't enough, now the Department of Water resources has opted to be less efficient by giving low cost electricity the boot.

Could California Sink The Obama Presidency?  California — the most populous state in our nation — is bankrupt.  Just as is the case in Washington, D.C., nobody in The Golden State dares to say the word "bankrupt" to describe the state government right now, but it is still nonetheless true.  However, since Californians collectively defied the national trend of abandoning the bankrupting Obama-styled economic policies in the recent election, and instead voted for more of the same, the 31st state in our union is now on the fast-track for economic collapse.

California's Assorted Rocks and Hard Places.  News came out on Thursday [11/11/2010] that the California budget deficit is actually closer to $25 billion, twice what we are told.  This follows from last year's $42 billion shortfall, which was closed by all sorts of one-time tax increases and gimmicks.  Here is our general dilemma in a nutshell.

How Do California and the Titanic Differ?  OK, riddle fans, here's a toughie:  What's the difference between California voters and the passengers on the Titanic?  The passengers on the Titanic didn't vote to hit the iceberg.  Most Americans understand that California is sinking.  What is almost incredible is that it has voted to sink.

California Wins Dumbest State Award in Landslide.  In the coming years, the unions, who have been bilking Californians in a protection-racket type scheme, will be taking to the streets in massive, destructive temper tantrums just like those out-in-the-cold workers in other failed socialist states across the big pond.  It won't be pretty.  All the while Californians have been lining the greedy pockets of union masters, they've also saddled their economy with the greenest of the green anti-pollution laws, which they've just voted overwhelmingly to keep in place.

San Francisco Defends Helpless Citizens From The Scourge of Happy Meals.  CNN is reporting the San Francisco board of supervisors will formally approve a ban on most McDonald's Happy Meals today, thus addressing the most serious issue facing the otherwise untroubled city.  The board isn't just tepidly endorsing this measure — they're expected to produce enough votes to over-ride a promised veto from Mayor Gavin Newsom.  The ordinance is intended to control the distribution of toys with unhealthy food, which has become known as the "food justice movement."

California: The Lindsay Lohan of States.  Listen up, California.  The other 48 states — your cousin New York excluded — are sick of your bratty arrogance. ... You've racked up nearly $70 billion in general obligation debt, and that doesn't include your $500 billion unfunded pension liability.  Your own analysts predict you'll face a hole of at least $80 billion over the next four years.  Your government's run by a brothel of environmentalists, lawyers, public-sector unions and legislative bums.  When they're not taxing or spending, they're creating regulations and commissions like the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology and the California Blueberry Commission.  Many businesses would leave if it weren't for your sunny climate.

Coasting to the Left.  If this week's election returns demonstrate that the vast majority of the country is moving to the right, why do the West Coast and the Northeast continue to embrace liberalism, especially when it has led to economic disaster?  Both California and New York are on the verge of bankruptcy and, according to Forbes magazine, are hostile to business by way of high taxation and strict regulation of commerce.  California currently owes $158 billion, and New York is holding $60 billion in debt.

California Dreamin'.  In a blast from the past, California voters bucked the national voting trend and returned Democrat Jerry Brown to the Governor's office he occupied in the 1970s.  While the Attorney General votes are still being counted, all other statewide offices went to Democrats.  Voters also removed the two-thirds vote requirement to pass the state budget, handing the heavily Democrat state legislature a blank check.  California is now a one-party state.  The voters want it that way.

California Dreamin'.  I would like to feel elated about the elections last Tuesday, but alas, I live in California.  As the rest of the nation lurches back toward common sense, California defiantly stands as a testament to the power of delusion. ... The fact that voters keep returning to failed policies and politicians speaks to the power of propaganda, disseminated through the schools and the media.  However, it is also a dismal lesson in human nature, epitomized by Jesus' observation about a dog returning to its own vomit.

The 'Golden State' Still Doesn't Get It.  The midterm elections turned into a sweeping repudiation of the Democrats' failed status quo — except, that is, in California.  There, not only did the Democrats not lose, they gained clout.

The Brown Wall.  [Scroll down]  But the accomplishments stopped in the 1970s with the election of Governor Jerry Brown.  Mr. Brown expropriated the budget money that had been allocated for infrastructure — much of it raised by motor fuel taxes — and diverted it to his own leftist causes.  Aqueducts and freeways were canceled, including some that already were under construction.  Brown also blocked private construction of power plants.  His anti-American Dream was this:  If you don't build it; they won't come.  But they came anyway, and now Californians waste millions of gallons of fuel in traffic jams.

The Inexplicables.  California may still have 1 billion recoverable, but untapped, barrels of oil, over a half-million acres of productive farmland taken out of production to help the three-inch delta smelt, and a great deal of natural mineral wealth and timber, but we deem ourselves wealthy enough not to need any of that, so smart are our professors, politicians, journalists, and community organizers in figuring out ways to redistribute the ill-gotten gains of agriculture, Silicon Valley, the Napa wine industry, and what manufacturing is left in California.

California Circles the Drain.  The government of the once Golden State is a lead-pipe cinch to lurch into insolvency any month now.  The California State government is an estimated $19 billion in the hole.  No exact figure is possible since no budget (constitutionally required on July 1) has yet been adopted by the state legislature.  Revenues are down and spending is up.  The state continues to hire during a "hiring freeze."  To solve the crisis, the Democratic majority in the legislature demands higher taxes on top of already high taxes which are driving jobs and businesses out of the state.

California's Green Nightmare.  California is the nation's laboratory in green job initiatives of the type that so many politicians in Washington, D.C., and the states see as America's economic passport to the future.  The Golden State was first in the nation in renewable energy standards, it is the home of the most stringent cap and trade legislation (called AB 32) to reduce carbon emissions, and it has poured hundreds of millions of state tax dollars into renewable energy research.  So where are all the green jobs?  A new 2010 study by the University of California-Berkeley comes to the sobering conclusion that "the green economy accounts for just 1 percent of California's jobs."

Wanted:  Grown-up governance.  At some point, the grown-ups are going to have to take over.  We're being governed by a gang of perpetual adolescents from the most liberal enclaves in America. ... The city [of San Francisco], which has thrown the Boy Scouts out of public facilities, has issued tips on how to bake "safe" marijuana-laced goodies.  It's not clear how this will contribute to the general welfare, except to create more voters with the functioning brains of 11-year-olds who keep getting hungry.  This should make it easier to recruit for one of the political parties.

Full speed ahead on health care for all.  I thought maybe this was a joke, but I researched it and found it to be utterly, jaw-droppingly, stupefyingly true:  The California Senate voted 22-14 on Jan. 28 to create what one group is calling a "Medicare for all" health-care system that would cost "about" $200 billion a year. ... Isn't this the same California that has close to a $20 billion budget deficit and is currently asking for a handout of $6.9 billion from the federal government to tide them over?

Imagine No God in Our Nation's Classrooms.  All high school math teacher Bradley Johnson wanted to do was honor our nation's history and religious heritage the same way he always had.  For twenty five years, a red, white and blue-striped banner adorned his classroom walls with national maxims such as "In God We Trust," "One Nation Under God," "God Bless America," and "God Shed his Grace On Thee."  A second banner accompanied it, containing an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, "All Men are Created Equal and They Are Endowed by Their Creator."  But displaying a portion of the Declaration of Independence and other national mottos was just too offensive to the Poway Unified School District in San Diego.

De Facto Shariah Law in America.  In the State of California, 7th-grade students at Excelsior Middle School in Discovery Bay, California adopted Muslim names, prayed on prayer rugs, and celebrated Ramadan under a state-mandated curriculum that requires instruction about various religions.  In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court again declined to hear legal challenges by concerned Excelsior parents, who complained that the instruction was actually religious indoctrination and that Christianity and Judaism were not given equal time and exposure.

Not one nickel for California.  There isn't a single compelling reason to provide the girly-man of American gubernatorial fiscal responsibility, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a nickel from our federal coffers.  His failing California remains the poster-child for liberal fiscal insanity and it's time for the free-range chickens to come home to roost.

Let California drown, voters say.  Most Americans oppose a bailout for California, according to a Rasmussen survey.  Just 27 percent of voters believe the state should receive federal bailout money while 55 percent think the state should go bankrupt.  (For the record, states cannot declare bankruptcy.)

The Editor says...
Okay, so states can't declare bankruptcy.  So what?  You don't have to declare bankruptcy to be bankrupt.

The Long March From California to Copenhagen.  On the one, are those who believe personal freedom and liberty trump egalitarianism and fraternity. ... On the other side are those who wish a large government to ensure an equality of result.  Their notion is that personal responsibility, talent, behavior, luck, fate, etc. do not so much determine why one is well off and another not so.

California:  Running a failed state can sure be expensive.  Among the many problems California faces now:  The near-junk rating on its bonds means the state pays more in interest.  In 2020, Reuters reports, the state will pay more than $10 billion on interest alone.

California is Liberalism's "Canary in the Coal Mine".  If residents of the other 49 states haven't focused on California's plight yet, they should.  In a real sense, California has become liberalism's "canary in the coal mine."  It is an instructive — and frightening — warning of the toll exacted by the kind of leftism now in vogue in Washington, D.C..  Put simply, California is in desperate fiscal straits because it has become a place where government works for only two constituencies:  Those who need public assistance, and unions.  Sacramento is so busy responding to the needs of the one and the demands of the other that the legitimate expectations of regular, taxpaying citizens have been completely ignored.

Public Sector Unions Tarnish the Golden State.  It's an ugly fact of life in California.  Public sector unions are slowly, painfully and inexorably choking the life out of the (once) Golden State.  Fully 54% of state government workers — that's almost 1.8 million people — are unionized.  And the unions' primary reason for existence is maintaining the privileges that state employees enjoy, at any cost to the rest of the state.

The sad story of how public employee unions have all but ruined California.  City Journal's Steve Malanga offers the most detailed and succinct history yet on how public sector unions grew from being toothless employee associations to having a virtually lock on all of the key power levers in California and how they've used that power to enrich themselves while all but ruining a once-goldern state.  As Malanga explains, what has already happened in California is well underway across the rest of the nation and in Washington, D.C.

The Beholden State:  How public-sector unions broke California.  The unions' political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector.  The state's public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation.  Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries.  State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life.  Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation's and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations.  This toxic combination — high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes — has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

Accounting for California's Suicide.  [Scroll down]  Californians count on the wealth of farming but would prefer their rivers to remain wild rather than tapped.  They like tasteful redwood decks but demand someone else fell their trees for the wood.  Californians drive imported SUVs but would rather that you drill for oil off your shores rather than they off theirs.  They pride themselves on their liberal welfare programs, but drive out with confiscatory taxes the few left to pay for them.  Californians expect cheap imported labor to tend their lawns and clean their houses, but are incensed at sky-high welfare and entitlement costs that accompany illegal immigration.  Lock 'em up, they say — but the state is bankrupted by new prisons, constant inmate lawsuits, and unionized employees.  In short, after Californians sue, restrict, mandate, obstruct, and lecture, they also get angry that there is suddenly not enough food, fuel, water, and money to act like the gods that they think they have become.

Drill, Arnold, Drill!  California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is begging for a bailout to close an $11 billion budget gap.  He should be pressing for an oil revenue-sharing deal instead.

Controlling Pests or Controlling Competition?  The Pacific Legal Foundation challenges a California licensing law that would require a 30-year business veteran to become an apprentice.

California Makes Cars Less Affordable:  California today became the first state in the nation to restrict automobile emissions of carbon dioxide, the same gas humans exhale.  The auto industry pointed out, to no avail, that the measure would make cars even more expensive and pressure people to buy death traps they don't feel safe driving.

California:  An Obituary.  Only raw and unrestrained liberalism could have destroyed the world's 8th-largest economy.  Boasting unparalleled assets in agriculture, high technology, entertainment, and tourism, and blessed with ample energy resources, deep-water ports and ideal weather, California has nonetheless managed to turn itself into a perfect dystopia.

California Democrat proposes mandatory gun registration.  A California Democrat is proposing a new law requiring residents to register their shotguns and rifles or go to jail, CBSNews.com has learned.

California Teacher Union Rallies Around Bad Ideas.  The California Teachers Association (CTA), the state's largest teachers union and National Education Association affiliate, organized a statewide rally of teachers and students on March 4 to protest education spending cuts.  The CTA's "solution" indicates it is out of touch with economic and educational reality.

California Dems Won't Honor Boy Scouts?  Thousands of Boy Scouts across California will be gathering this weekend to celebrate the 100th anniversary of scouting in the Golden State — but they won't have the blessing of Democrats in the California Legislature.

Oakland allows industrial-scale marijuana farms.  Oakland's City Council late Tuesday adopted regulations permitting industrial-scale marijuana farms, a plan that some small farmers argued would squeeze them out of the industry they helped to build.  To address concerns from smaller farmers, the council pledged to create regulations on regulating small- and medium-size marijuana farms this year.

Cracking California's Egg Rules.  About 150,000 hens at egg producer J.S. West Inc. appear to have scored an upgrade.  They cluck and cackle in an air-conditioned henhouse that got a $3.2 million renovation this year. ... California's egg farmers are struggling to comply with Proposition 2, the state's new guidelines on how egg-laying chickens can be kept.

California:  New Is Not Necessarily Improved.  Meg Whitman would like to build a new California.  Not me.  If I had to choose, I'd opt not to build a new California, but rather to restore the "old California."  That is, I'd revive the California Republic of Old, when men married women, when murderous thugs were given the noose rather than probation, and when babies in utero were kept safe from abortion practitioners.  The regenerate California I have in mind is a place where a man's handshake is as binding as a written contract, where chastity is given a place of honor, and where citizens look to God and to their neighbors in times of trouble rather than to the Welfare State.

There's No Budget, but California Is All Over the Foreign-Cow Issue.  On the brink of insolvency, California may have to pay its bills with IOUs soon.  A budget was due three months ago, and the legislature hasn't passed one.  The lawmakers can, however, point to a list of other achievements this year.  Awaiting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature, for example, is a bill that would bar the state from filming cows in New Zealand.  It's the fruit of five committee votes and eight legislative analyses.  California lawmakers also voted to form a lobster commission.  They created "Motorcycle Awareness Month," not to mention a "Cuss Free Week."

Red Herring Politics.  [Scroll down]  One appointment by Governor Jerry Brown ought to tell us a lot about his ideology.  His most famous — or infamous — appointment was making Rose Bird chief justice of the California supreme court.  She over-ruled 64 consecutive death penalty verdicts and upheld none.  Apparently no judge or jury could ever give a murderer a trial perfect enough to suit Rose Bird.  To hear Rose Bird and her supporters tell it, she was just "upholding the law."  But, fortunately, the California voters saw right through that pretense, and realized that she was doing just the opposite — imposing her own personal opposition to the death penalty in the guise of interpreting the law.

Sherman's March.  A California congressman wants to eliminate right-to-work laws in 22 states where workers don't have to join unions.  If even-higher unemployment is his goal, he has the right idea.

You can put a tuxedo on a pig, but it's still a pig.
Food stamp program gets a new name: CalFresh.  California's food stamp program has a new name, which officials hope will encourage more people to apply for the nutrition benefit:  CalFresh.  The new name and logo — an abstract representation of the diverse produce available in California — was launched Saturday [10/23/2010] at an event in Long Beach sponsored by first lady Maria Shriver to provide free medical, financial and educational services to low-income women.

California judge:  handgun ammo laws unconstitutional.  A judge has ruled that key sections of a California law restricting the sale of handgun ammunition cannot be enforced because they are unconstitutional.

OC Couple Threatened With $500-Per-Meeting Fines For Home Bible Study.  An Orange County couple has been ordered to stop holding a Bible study in their home on the grounds that the meeting violates a city ordinance as a "church" and not as a private gathering.  Homeowners Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, of San Juan Capistrano, were fined $300 earlier this month for holding what city officials called "a regular gathering of more than three people".  That type of meeting would require a conditional use permit as defined by the city, according to Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), the couple's legal representation.

California bans use of tanning beds by minors.  Minors in the state of California will no longer be allowed to use tanning beds after Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Sunday prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from using ultraviolet tanning devices.

California Bans Tanning Bed Use By Minors... But Abortions Are OK.  California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill today [10/9/2011] that bans tanning bed use by minors. ... In 1997 a California court overturned a state law that required girls get the approval of a parent or judge before having an abortion.

California Law Would Permit Midwives, Other Non-Physicians to Perform Abortions.  The California Senate passed a bill September 6 that would make it legal for non-physician medical professionals such as midwives to perform abortions under a statewide training program.  The measure now awaits Democratic Governor Jerry Brown's signature.

Abortionists don't need a doctor's license: bill rammed through California Senate.  Senate Bill 623, introduced by Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, extends a program run by the University of California at San Francisco, in which nurse practitioners, midwives, and doctors' assistants are trained to perform abortions without any further training in medicine.  Kehoe argues the bill is necessary because there aren't enough doctors performing abortions in California.

Criminalizing business:  part II.  A recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle vividly illustrates the anti-business mindset of many Californians.  It dealt with the fact that Wal-Mart lost a referendum to allow the retailer to put a store in Inglewood, California.  According to the Chronicle columnist, Wal-Mart was "trying to bully its way into another targeted community."  Putting an issue to a vote is called "bullying" when business does it, and the community where it wants to locate is called a "target."

California's New Frisbee Law [is] Just [the] Latest Attempt to Raise Cash.  This week, Los Angeles County okayed a new regulation banning the throwing of Frisbees or footballs on the beaches — which, of course, destroys the purpose of living in Southern California in the first place.  The first offense will earn you a hefty $100 fine; the second, $200; the third and beyond, $500.  You can, of course, apply for a permit.  For parents with industrious children, holes deeper than 18 inches are also banned — so get your kids the cheap plastic shovels or pay a fine.

LA County OKs $1,000 Fine For Throwing Football, Frisbee On Beaches.  When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to know about some updated rules.  The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to lift an all-out ban on playing with footballs, other balls and Frisbees on the beach, according to a media statement released by the L.A. County Department of Beaches and Harbors.

Los Angeles County Bans Frisbees on Beaches.  The moonbat micromanagers ruling La-La Land must finally be running out of things to ban.  Now they're suppressing fun on the beach.

Hermosa Beach meter maids making nearly $100K?  When contemplating the many reasons cities in California and elsewhere are venturing closer to bankruptcy, look no further than the relatively lucrative and often-unjustifiable salaries bestowed on municipal employees — and the lofty pension benefits attached to the high pay.  One of the latest examples comes from the California coastal city of Hermosa Beach, where some community service staffers who collect money from parking meters and manage their operations — positions once widely known as "meter maids" — are making nearly $100,000 a year in total compensation, according to city documents.

SF to cover uninsured's gender reassignment.  In 2001, San Francisco became the first city in the country to cover the cost of sex change surgeries for transgender city employees.  In 2007, it became the first city in the country to provide health care for all uninsured residents through its Healthy San Francisco program.  Now, San Francisco is combining those firsts into yet another pioneering move by becoming the first city in the country to cover the cost of gender reassignment surgeries for its uninsured residents.

$822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway.  Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters.  The state's 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.  Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction.

Highest-Paid California Trooper Is Chief Banking $484,000.  California Highway Patrol division chief Jeff Talbott retired last year as the best-paid officer in the 12 most-populous U.S. states, collecting $483,581 in salary, pension and other compensation.  Talbott, 53, received $280,259 for accrued leave and vacation time and took a new job running the public-safety department at a private university in Southern California.  He also began collecting an annual pension of $174,888 from the state.

California, where a cop can make $483,581 in one year.  Thanks again to massive pension liabilities, the state has been unable to keep up with the growth of its prison population, resulting in overcrowding, which in turn resulted in the court-ordered early release of thousands of inmates, many of whom are already on crime sprees.

California in Chaos.  California actually has fewer state government employees per capita than the national average, but its employees are the best-paid in America.  This often has a negative effect on government services.  It is hard, for example, to hire enough cops to keep violent crime down in Oakland if the city can't afford the six-figure compensation packages of the existing officers.

With billions in the bank, Blue Shield of California loses its state tax-exempt status.  Authorities have revoked the tax-exempt status of nonprofit Blue Shield of California, potentially putting it on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in state taxes each year.  The move by the California Franchise Tax Board comes as the state's third-largest health insurer faces fresh criticism over its rate hikes, executive pay and $4.2 billion in financial reserves.  The state quietly stripped the San Francisco insurer of its exemption from California income taxes in August.  The company held that since its founding in 1939.

Israel Invests in Desalinization; California Builds High-Speed Rail.  California is reeling from a drought, rather like the one suffered by Israel in 1998-2002.  California, with an 840-mile coastline on the world's largest ocean, has a water shortage; Israel, with a mere 170-mile coast line, does not.  Israel invests in desalinization; California is building a high-speed train at a cost of somewhere between $68 billion and $90 billion, the most expensive public works project in the nation's history with no completion date in sight, but finds the $1 billion price tag on its first desalinization plant too high to bear, even though its 50 million gallon per day output would meet the daily requirements of something like 280,000 of the modest-income consumers now the hardest hit by the rationing system in place.

With new climate legislation, Gov. Brown gets even with the oil industry.  Dominant Democrats in Sacramento hang together more often than not, and that produces victories when only a simple majority vote is required.  And that's usually.  Republicans these days are mostly irrelevant in California's Capitol.


Wildfires in Australia seem to share the same set of contributing factors as the fires in California

The Editor says...
The fires in California and in Australia share many traits:  In each case, the fires were initially blamed on global warming, more than anything else.  In California, that is still the case.  But in each case, the root of the problem is years of mismanagement, resulting in the accumulation of dry brush.

Terrifying footage of photographer's journey through heart of wildfire burning in California.  Terrifying footage of a photographer's drive through the heart of the Gamble Fire which has burnt over 1,000 acres in California's Napa County.  Craig Philpott managed to record his journey through the blaze which has destroyed many trees and started to burn parts of the road.  This footage was filmed on August 18.  [Video clip]

How a World Without Borders Became a Ward With No Exit.  A New York Times reporter argues that "the fires that have burned across Australia are not just destroying lives, or turning forests as large as nations into ashen moonscapes [they mean] the end of Australia as we know it." [...] "We have seen," she added, "the unfolding wings of climate change."

Arson, mischief and recklessness: 87 percent of fires are man-made.  There are, on average, 62,000 fires in Australia every year.  Only a very small number strike far from populated areas and satellite studies tell us that lightning is responsible for only 13 percent.  Not so the current fires threatening to engulf Queensland and NSW.  There were no lightning strikes on most of the days when the fires first started in September.  Although there have been since, these fires — joining up to create a new form of mega-fire — are almost all man-made.

Wildfire Transcends Continents and Centuries.  Australia is currently in its summer season.  And, for non-Australians, that translates to "fire season."  This year, these fires have caught international attention and are being portrayed as much worse than what we've seen in the past.  Yet the wildfires happening now in Australia, and those months earlier in California, are not novel and share much in common.

Australia fires map
What caused the Australian fires?  Global warming?  Obstruction of fire prevention burns?  Arson?  The season's fires have been intense and widespread, but not nearly as much as reported by some media that made it seem as though virtually the entire continent was ablaze.  Eighteen million acres destroyed is a disaster by any measure, but that acreage represents less than 1 percent of Australia's landmass, and less than 6% of its forests.  No one denies the fires were made worse by dry conditions resulting from a drought and record hot temperatures.  But, as measured by the amount of forestland destroyed, the 18 million acres for this year's fires pale in comparison to the 290 million acres burned to the ground during the 1974 bushfire season.


Australian Police Arrest 183 Arsonists for Bushfires.  Australian police investigating the bushfires have arrested more than 180 alleged arsonists since the start of 2019. But apparently they forgot to send the memo to Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, both of whom insisted in their Golden Globes acceptance speeches that the Australian bushfires were in fact caused by 'climate change.'

The California drought of 2011-15.  Here's an undeniable part of California's drought history the doomsayers try to hide at all costs.  Studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence have documented multiple extreme droughts in what is now California over the last 1,000+ years, including several that lasted more than 20 years — that's four times longer than the relatively puny 5-year drought of 2011-15.  Twenty years is a long time, but some California droughts lasted even longer.  Much longer.  One that began in 850 A.D. is thought by scientists to have droned on for a mind-numbing 240 years, and that megadrought occurred more than a millennium before the climate crisis industry invented itself out of whole cloth in the 1980s.  The drought of 850 wasn't alone.  Fifty years before it began, another mega-drought, one that lasted 180 years, was just winding down.

Appeasement: The Root Cause of the Australian Mega-Fires.  It's impossible to reduce the number of sociopaths in a society to absolute zero.  And even one sociopath can ignite several fires in proximate locations that can join up into a single crown fire.  How?  Because, the fuel — the forest canopy, runs for miles as a single, unbroken circuit.  And it is governments who are, by stealth, opposing the significant breaking of these fire circuits.  The fuel loads pile up waiting for a hot summer ignition.  This Australian fire season was preceded by years of drought:  the fuel was plenty, it was dry, it was unbroken — making the disaster inevitable — the arsonist's power had been multiplied tenfold by those entrusted to protect us.  In 2017, Newsweek admitted that ISIS celebrated the wildfires in California, and that ISIS "supporters suggested laying gasoline-filled bottles in the woods to inflict further damage" in their newsletter.  Why are we making it easier for terrorists to create inextinguishable fires?

Arson, mischief and recklessness: 87 percent of fires are man-made.  There are, on average, 62,000 fires in Australia every year.  Only a very small number strike far from populated areas and satellite studies tell us that lightning is responsible for only 13 percent.  Not so the current fires threatening to engulf Queensland and NSW.  There were no lightning strikes on most of the days when the fires first started in September.  Although there have been since, these fires — joining up to create a new form of mega-fire — are almost all man-made.

The Australian Wildfires Are About Arsonists — Not Climate Change.  In the last couple of months, as many as 200 wildfires have destroyed Australia all over the continent.  Due to the number of fires and location, law enforcement determined that the blazes were intentionally set, and 183 arsonists have been arrested for the crime so far.  The Left tends to ignore the truth and push lies that work for their political agenda — this time, it was Climate Change.  The Left blames humans, specifically those who do not believe in the political ideology of human-made Climate Change.  Leftists pushed the narrative that we, as humans are not doing enough to stop the earth from heating up.  Climate deniers are blamed.  There is one problem: arsonists set the fires.  People driving cars, flying in airplanes, and overeating red meat have nothing to do with the flames.

Fight fire with fire: controlled burning could have protected Australia.  By modern standards, my grandfather would probably be considered an environmental criminal.  To clear land for his farmhouse in north-eastern Victoria — and for his milking sheds, pig pens, chicken sheds, blacksmith shop and other outbuildings — he cleared hundreds of trees.  And he cleared thousands more for his wheat fields, cattle paddocks and shearing sheds.  Old man Hobbs would probably be found guilty of cultural appropriation, too, because he adopted the Aboriginal method of land-clearing.  He burned all of those trees.  He also established fire-delaying dirt paths through surrounding bushland.  This was once standard practice throughout rural Australia, where the pre-settlement indigenous population had long conducted controlled burns of overgrown flora — known as 'fuel' in current fire-management talk.  They knew an absence of controlled burns would invite uncontrolled burns — such as the gigantic wildfires that have ravaged much of this drought-hit nation since September.

There's Only One Way To Make Bushfires Less Powerful:  Take Out The Stuff That Burns.  As monstrous blazes overwhelm Australia's south-east, the need for a national bushfire policy has never been more urgent.  Active land management such as hazard-reduction burning and forest thinning must lie at the core of any such policy.  Done well, controlled burning limits a bushfire's spread and makes suppression easier, by reducing the amount of flammable material.  Clearing or thinning vegetation on roadsides and other areas also helps maintain fuel breaks, allowing firefighters access to forests in an emergency.  As former fire chiefs recently pointed out, of all factors driving a fire's severity — temperature, wind speed, topography, fuel moisture and fuel load — fuel load is the only one humans can influence.

Are Australia Bushfires Worsening from Human-Caused Climate Change? 
  [#1] Global wildfire activity has decreased in recent decades, making any localized increase (or decrease) in wildfire activity difficult to attribute to 'global climate change'.
  [#2] Like California, Australia is prone to bushfires every year during the dry season.  Ample fuel and dry weather exists for devastating fires each year, even without excessive heat or drought, as illustrated by the record number of hectares burned (over 100 million) during 1974-75 when above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures existed.
  [#3] Australian average temperatures in 2019 were well above what global warming theory can explain, illustrating the importance of natural year-to-year variability in weather patterns (e.g. drought and excessively high temperatures).
  [#4] Australia precipitation was at a record low in 2019, but climate models predict no long-term trend in Australia precipitation, while the observed trend has been upward, not downward.  This again highlights the importance of natural climate variability to fire weather conditions, as opposed to human-induced climate change.
  [#5] While reductions in prescribed burning have probably contributed to the irregular increase in the number of years with large bush fires, a five-fold increase in population in the last 100 years has greatly increased potential ignition sources, both accidental and purposeful.

The Green Agenda Is Exacerbating Australia's Wildfire Problem.  The unfolding tragedy in Australia is being interpreted as an apocalyptic portent of a "climate emergency":  justification for the drastic prescriptions of Extinction Rebellion to "close down the capitalist system".  Heart-rending tweets from the fire zone convey the raw anger of farmers burnt out of their homes.  But their interpretation is strikingly different.  Far from begging everybody to embrace the green agenda, many are blaming the greens for exacerbating the fires by meddling in the time-honoured practice of burning off excess vegetation to mitigate wildfires.  All over the world farmers are being prevented by "experts" in government quangos from carrying out controlled burning to manage habitats prone to catching fire.

Submission to Mr Tony Pearce, Inspector General for Emergency Management.  There are some irrefutable facts about the drastic state of the bushfire threat to Southern Australia.  These are...
  [#1] We have a failed fire management policy and practice in Southern Australia especially Victoria.  The failed fire management is resulting in an increasing threat to our forest environment (especially tree deaths), water supplies, life and property loss and a severe decrease in our quality of life.
  [#2] The thermal scale of wildfire in Victoria exceeds by a factor of 20 our ability to extinguish.
  [#3] Disaster scale wildfires occur about once in every 30 years, but will become more frequent as fuel levels continue to rise.
  [#4] "Blow up" fire weather causes disaster fires when ignitions and fuel are present.
  [#5] Ignitions cannot be prevented.

Report: Arson Epidemic, Not Climate Change, Behind Australia's Bushfires.  Australian law enforcement has arrested over 180 people for arson in connection with the nation's raging bushfires, as alarmists try to pin the blazes on "climate change."  All of the 183 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of this year's bushfire season, the Australian reported Tuesday, adding that 29 fires were deliberately started in the Shoalhaven region of southeast New South Wales (NSW) in just three months.

The Insane True Cause Of Australia's Bush Fires.  According to Hallam, the Aboriginal peoples spent up to 30% of their time on fire management, and their efforts were rewarded by a perfect symbiosis between peoples and their environment.  Then the first boats of "globalists" came and with them the growing inability to deal with the Australian bush.  Much of the Australian bush is not a dense forest, but many thin to thick woody shrubs and bushes, usually very dry, especially during the summer, mostly grassless, often eucalypt trees, that are extremely flammable.

Delingpole: Environmentalists Made Australia's Bush Fires Worse.  [Scroll down]  So, to be clear, there is zero evidence of any change in climatic conditions that might have increased the likelihood or severity of these bush fires.  This is not — repeat NOT — a man-made climate change story, and anyone who claims otherwise is either a gullible idiot or a lying charlatan.  There is, nonetheless, good reason to believe that the stupidity and irresponsibility of man is at least partly to blame for this disaster — just not quite in the way that the left-liberal MSM and the green wankerati would have you believe.  Man-made culprit #1:  all the firebugs who have been deliberately starting fires in New South Wales, Queensland, and elsewhere.  You won't be surprised that their involvement has had very little coverage in the left-liberal MSM.

Australia rainfall
Australia Fires, And Misfires.  I kept hearing so much about the Australian bushfires being the result of or driven by "climate change" or "global warming" that I thought I'd take a look at just what's happened to the rainfall there.  Here are a hundred and nineteen years of Australian rainfall.  [Chart]  Here's the curious part.  The earth has been undergoing a mild warming pretty steadily since 1970, about the last half-century.  But although the last couple years have been dry, the last half-century in Australia has been wetter than the previous half-century.  Not dryer.  Wetter.  And a lot wetter.  In fact, anyone under about sixty years old has never experienced dry Australia.


Australia's Epic Fires Caused By Bad Forestry And Arson, Not Climate Change.  Like California, Australia limits clearing and controlled burning of forest fuel build-up, and reports indicate that almost half the bushfires this season were set by people. [...] In a nutshell, reports indicate that people have been deliberately lighting almost half the bushfires this season.

Hijacking Australian 2019 Bushfire Tragedies to Fearmonger Climate Change.  MSN's climate fearmongers dishonestly claim "Australia has experienced steadily worse droughts."  Climate fearmongers argue warmer temperatures will evaporate surface moisture more quickly and exacerbate droughts.  But they have the tail wagging the dog.  Australia's Bureau of Meteorology's illustration shows the 1920s and 30s had experienced much worse droughts than recent decades.  Furthermore, during periods of low precipitation, drought conditions CAUSE higher temperatures.  Without normal soil moisture to evaporate, solar radiation is no longer consumed as latent heat of evaporation, but instead, rapidly raises land temperatures.

Don't blame climate change for Australian wildfires.  If all you read was the liberal press, you'd think the Australian bush fires are Mother Earth's punishment for the heresy of allowing global warming.  Reality is a little different — actually, entirely different.  The current wave of wildfires running rampant across the Australian countryside certainly isn't aided by dry weather and heat, but it's actually the result of environmentalists' naivete, not climate change.  The problem is the same one the United States has with forest fires: people simply not understanding how the environment works.  In both cases, the countryside has evolved to deal with and prosper from frequent and low-level fires.  But if these are suppressed, then the large and hot fires, taking out the canopy, for example, will eventually happen and entirely devastate the flora and the fauna.  It's been environmentalists insisting we suppress all examples and incidences of wildfires.  Therefore, blame for the current damage should be laid at their door.

Scientist David Packham on what's really causing the bushfires.  As former State Fire Chiefs call for a summit on bushfires, expert and scientist David Packham explains that it has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with fuel-loads.

Flashback to 2015:
Bushfire scientist David Packham warns of huge blaze threat, urges increase in fuel reduction burns.  Forest fuel levels have worsened over the past 30 years because of "misguided green ideology", vested interests, political failure and mismanagement, creating a massive bushfire threat, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist has warned.  Victoria's "failed fire management policy" is an increasing threat to human life, water supplies, property and the forest environment, David Packham said in a submission to the state's Inspector-General for Emergency Management.  And he argued that unless the annual fuel reduction burning target, currently at a minimum of 5 percent of public land, "is doubled or preferably tripled, a massive bushfire disaster will occur.  The forest and alpine environment will decay and be damaged possibly beyond repair and homes and people [will be] incinerated."  He said forest fuel levels had climbed to their most dangerous level in thousands of years.

The Truth About the Australian Bushfires.  It has nothing to do with climate change.  [Video clip]

Aussie Fires ARE Caused by Man — It's Called Arson and Green Policy.  It turns out that the fires raging in Australia are climate-related.  They're caused by a climate of hate, irresponsibility, and incompetence manifesting itself in arson, feckless fire handling, and environmentalist policies creating forest tinderboxes.  What's more, that two Muslim teens have just been charged with lighting a fire is a reminder that jihadists have prescribed such action as a terror method. [...] In fact, one man-caused fire incident is raising eyebrows.  "Western Sydney teen Fadi Zraika — one of the two teens accused of lighting a grass fire at a Guildford park while bushfires ravaged NSW — laughed outside court today after appearing on multiple charges," reports the Daily Telegraph.  "Police allege Fadi and Abraham Zreika, both 18, set off fireworks that sparked a grass fire at Bright Park, Guildford, on December 22," the paper continues.

In Australia, fires expose green folly.  Australia is [experiencing] some of the worst bushfires in its history.  Greens blame climate change, but it's a cover-up.  In reality, they have themselves to blame.  From here in Australia, it can only be called green folly.  Green folly locked up 11% of Australia in a tinderbox of bushfire fuel, much of which is now burnt or burning.  Green folly closed forest tracks and gates; expelled foresters and timber-workers; and prevented property-owners from removing flammable fuel from their own land and adjacent roads, parks, and forests.  Those responsible for these follies should face Class Action.  Green folly promotes electric vehicles, but not one fire truck, dozer, water bomber, helicopter, ambulance, or naval vessel ran on batteries.  They all used hydro-carbon fuels — diesel, petrol, or avgas.  And with so many power lines down, these electric toys could not have recharged their batteries anyway.

The disastrous fires in Australia are man-caused, but they're not climate change.  Leftists around the world are at it again, blaming "anthropogenic" (i.e., man-caused) climate change for the Australian fires.  While it's true that the fires are "man-caused," they're not anthropogenic in the way the Left thinks they are.  At the Golden Globes, the glitterati focused on the fires raging in Australia.  Russell Crowe, the famous climatologist...er, the actor who left school at 16, confirmed that the fire was all about climate change, so reparative action is urgently needed: [...] Meanwhile, ABC made a laughingstock out of itself with a map superimposing Australia across the United States, implying that an area equal to 25% of America was on fire, even as ABC acknowledged that the fire was, in fact, only as big as Maryland.

If you want to stop wildfires, put qualified people back in charge of forests.  There was a time when Australian foresters kept Australian forests safe and productive.  They maintained access tracks bridges and fire breaks, undertook prescribed burning, cleared flammable litter from the forest floor, cut suckers, manned fire lookouts, and maintained their own fire-fighting crews in decentralized districts.  University-trained professional foresters were supported by tough, experienced rangers who learned their job in the bush.  Almost every advance in bushfire management in Australia, from the science of fire behavior to aerial burning, was thanks to our foresters.  Into the 1980s, they were regarded as international leaders.  To pay for good forest management, sections of the forest were logged, allowing ground space and sunlight for the swift re-growth of new trees.

The information war about astonishing arson figures.  Rapidly the word about the astonishing rate of arson and man-made accidents is spreading, but it doesn't help "the cause" (which for left-leaning journo's appears to be getting left-leaning politicians elected).  For example, the awful Binna Burra fire in September was blamed on climate change.  Instead it turned out to be caused by two teenagers with cigarette butts.  Who looks silly pushing a carbon tax agenda to stop fires?

Fighting Fires with Fire [In Australia].  [Scroll down]  First, governments created fire hazards called national parks, where fire sticks, matches, graziers, and foresters were locked out, and access roads were abandoned or padlocked.  Green-loving urbanites built houses right beside them and planted trees in their yards.  The open forests and grasslands were invaded by eucalypt regrowth, woody weeds, tangled undergrowth, dry grass, logs, dead leaves, twigs, bark, and litter — all perfect fuel for a wildfire holocaust.  These tinderboxes of forest fuel became magnets for arsonists, and occasionally even disgruntled neighbors, or were lit by wind-blown embers or dry lightning.  With high winds, high temperatures, and heavy fuel loads, some fires will race through the tree tops of oil-rich eucalypt forests. [...] Central management and control of burn-off policy and firefighting across entire states have failed completely.  Too often, the people in charge did not understand bushfire history and science and they were too influenced by Green ideology.

Yes, It's True — It Appears Up To 90% Of Australian Brushfires Started By People / Arsonists.  Right now is summer in Australia and every summer that country faces annual bushfires.  This year the number of those fires has suddenly increased.  The radical left was quick to blame "climate change" for the increase in fires.  Ah, but now Australian authorities are pointing to something far more likely — people who have been starting these fires on purpose.


Wildfires and intentional power outages

Introduction by The Editor:
The notion that wildfires are caused by global warming, failure to sign international treaties, or right-wing politics, is absurd.  Left-wing environmentalists pretend to know more about forest management than logging companies, and when they prevent the occasional clearing and cleanup of the woods, all sorts of combustible fuel accumulates, waiting for the next lightning strike or uncontrolled campfire to set it off.

California has occasional power blackouts during wildfire events, in order to stop the spread of the fires.  But California also has barely enough electric power available on a good day.  An adequate distribution system appears to be in place, so the problem is either inadequate supply or excessive demand, or both.  California is the home of many radical left-wing environmentalists who oppose every practical energy source, especially nuclear power.  They prefer solar and wind power, which are intermittent.  They have a baseless fear of carbon dioxide, which China doesn't seem to share.  One solution to California's energy shortage would be to increase the supply of electricity, even if it means burning coal and natural gas.  The power has to come from somewhere.  The other part of the shortage is excessive demand for electricity.  The population increases constantly, and that either leads to homelessness or increased residential demand for power.  But the leftists in California (who assume the power will always be available) squander a lot of power on non-essential uses, like marijuana farming, electric cars, and bitcoin mining.

None of these activities were a problem until a few years ago, because almost nobody used electricity that way.  But now, marijuana farming is legal and widespread, and uses a lot of power. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Electric cars are unpopular, but the Biden administration wants to force them on us anyway, and the power to recharge all those additional cars is not yet available.

Bitcoin mining uses a lot of power, too. [1] [2] [3]

If these are goals you want to pursue, go ahead, but don't complain when the power grid collapses.


Turbine fire burns 260+ acres east of Tehachapi.  On Monday, August 12th, Kern County Fire Department, received reports of a wind turbine on fire on Tehachapi Willow Springs Road half a mile south of Oak Creek Road.  When crews arrived on scene, they found a fully involved wind turbine with 2 acres of brush, with afternoon winds picking up, the fire started moving S/E towards Tehachapi Willow Springs Road, at approximately 12:30 PM CHP in Kern County Fire Department closed Tehachapi Willow Springs Road the fire later was stopped at Tehachapi Willow Springs Road.  The current size is 266 acres.  [Video clip]

CalFIRE confirms that illegals are setting wildfires out in San Diego's back country.  [Scroll down]  They set up campfires wherever they want.  They set wildfires to attract border agents to pick them up and transport them to their destinations of choice.  They burn down border vehicles because they don't like the Border Patrol.  It's shocking what they will do whenever they want something, given the danger of the fire risk and just how big and catastrophic these fires can get once they get out of control.  Sound like the kind of people who might rape and murder, too, once they go through catch-and-release?  And nobody in the Biden administration, let alone his border czar, are doing a thing about the border, not on the sea-side, where illegals ride in through the surf and run through the beachgoers' picnics and beach ball parties, as we have seen, and not on the badlands side where illegals set wildfires intentionally and apparently all of them get away with it.

How to Keep the Lights On.  Americans have rightfully come to expect reliable electricity and the grid has made this possible.  Yet some legislators are valuing other goals above maintaining reliability.  Predictably, reliability has begun to suffer.  Legislators at all levels of government should respect the nine principles for electrical grid soundness identified in this paper.  In so doing, they will be helping to ensure the long-term efficacy of all parts of the American Bulk Power System.  This system is comprised of the three separate interconnections in the US:  the Western, Eastern, and Texas interconnections.  Avoiding blackouts and other reliability issues should be the highest priority of lawmakers when it comes to electricity because the human cost of blackouts is incredibly high.

Thousands of Californians Lose Power in Cutoffs Due to High Winds.  The Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) cut power to nearly 2,000 households in northern California on Tuesday due to high heat and winds that raise the risk of downed power lines, which in turn lead to sparks that can ignite wildfires.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency Wednesday [7/3/2024] in Butte County in response to the Thompson fire, a wildfire that has burned over 3,000 acres and threatens to become deadlier if spread by continued high winds.

Over 12,000 Acres Near Los Angeles is on Fire — More Than 1,200 People Evacuated So Far.  A massive wildfire just outside Los Angeles, California, has spread to 12,265 acres and was only two percent contained on Sunday afternoon [6/16/2024].  The Post Fire is moving towards Hungry Valley Park, where California State Park Services have evacuated approximately 1,200 people.  [Tweet with video clip]  Evacuation warnings have also been issued south of Pyramid Lake between Old Ridge Route and the Los Angeles County line, which includes Paradise Ranch Estate.  [Tweet]

Green college degrees and phony climate calamities.  [Scroll down]  Then there are the wildfires.  They are more numerous than ever, but not because of fossil fuels and global warming.  Fires have become frequent because of the predominant "earth first" attitude embraced by the federal government and most state agencies.  No longer are our forests and wildlands provided with proper care and stewardship.  Instead, a preservationist philosophy has been put in place allowing our natural habitat to grow wildly out of control, providing insane amounts of fuel when fires do occur.

California Homeowners:  Insured No More Amid Fire Danger.  America's largest and, for some owners, only option for a home insurer is pulling back its operations in the state of California, leaving many with no more options to secure their property's value amid wildfire danger in the state reaching new heights.  As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, after saying in May of last year that it wasn't giving out any new California contracts, news broke in March that 72,000 State Farm policies in the state would not be renewed. [...] State Farm's move speaks volumes to homes in wooded areas of California now being considered so likely to be destroyed that the usual calculations of insurance companies have stopped working out[,] at least for those high-end properties that are now having their contracts discontinued.

The Editor says...
If the insurance companies are backing out, they know something is coming.  It's their job to know what's just around the corner.

Climate hysteria tailspin reaches terminal velocity(?)  They told us an increase in wildfires was a harbinger of the "climate crisis" but now, with wildfires down substantially over the last two years because of a deluge of precipitation, they have to adjust fire, and pivot, claiming all the rain putting out the wildfires is also bad, because now vegetations will grow, and create a risk of fire.  There's no winning against the "green" agenda.  Since all of history, hasn't rain brought life to flora?  Yet, against all odds (thriving plant life), we're still here!  Would the state be better off if it didn't get the vegetation and the record rain?  Maybe, when vegetation dries out, the state should ignore the bureaucrats and "environmentalists" and clear out the underbrush before it becomes a tinderbox.  Maybe, instead of dumping billions into vote-buying schemes like welcoming endless hordes of illegals, the state uses the taxes it collects to build the proper infrastructure — if the climate crisis really is as existential as they claim it to be.

Another Hugo Chavez-style idea on electricity rates from California's one-party regime.  Cash-strapped California has proposed to set electricity rates based on one's income, not one's consumption.  What could go wrong? [...] So if you've been foolish enough to invest in solar energy as the state encouraged you to do in the name of saving the planet, hoping that $7,000 investment in the roof plates you shelled out for would eventually pay for itself through lower electricity rates, well, too bad about you.  The danger here is that California is more likely than ever to see electricity shortages, given that the cost incentive to use less will be gone with this new proposed policy.  People will just leave the power on, given that there is no difference in the rate for doing so.  With that kind of incentive to overconsumption, from the state with the most green mandates and highest electricity costs in the nation, you can be there won't be electricity when it's going to be needed.  The coming heat waves, wild fires, and cold waves are going to be something else.

California is having a tough Time With Electricity.  The infrastructure hasn't kept up with the state's population needs itself, less mind the grandiose plans, mandates, and deadlines imposed on citizens and utilities alike.  They're also hamstrung by regressive progressive policies as far as proper fire control for the semi-arid desert scrub most of them inhabit.  Every year CA burns.  Every year aging powerlines fall into scrub and brush that was never cleared or control burned off to minimize that very outcome.  And instead of using proper fire suppression techniques?  Every year it's lather, rinse, repeat.  The aging lines and poles stay the same, and the power to customers gets turned off "just in case" when the Santa Anas start to blow. [...] Much like Newsom's botched administration of the state, the grid itself is in chaos.  The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has been forced to curtail electricity in the lines because CAs build out of wind and solar hasn't been matched with the new transmission lines needed to carry the extra capacity, particularly when it's produced in low-usage periods.

California Has Another Planet-Saving Idea.  Making electricity is easy.  Figuring out how to make enough electricity without violating leftist dogma is quite a bit harder.  California's population has grown an astounding 162 percent since 1958.  Yet the state hasn't built a new power plant (other than wind or solar) since the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant came online in 1985.  The state simply does not have the electrical generating capacity to meet its current needs — making it more dependent on imported power than any other state in the Union.  California currently imports between 20 and 30 percent of its power from other states.  The "save the planet" zealots have become dependent addicts, ensuring continued profitability for the evil pushers of environmentally destructive energy.  That dependence on other states is a simple engineering problem to solve.  If you don't have enough electricity, just build more power plants. [...] The problem is California's energy policy.  The state hasn't built a new power plant in almost 40 years because it has committed to reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.

Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2.  [Tweet with video clip]

LA Times energy writer: What if we accepted occasional blackouts to solve climate change?  Sammy Roth is an energy & environment reporter for the LA Times.  Last week he asked a serious question on Twitter:  Would it really be so bad if we had occasional blackouts as the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels sooner?  [Tweet]  I'm not an energy writer for a major newspaper but this immediately strikes me as a terrible idea.  Yesterday he wrote an entire column about this starting with this rephrased version of his question:  ["]What's more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?["]

The Editor says...
[#1] There is no climate crisis, so the answer to that last question is "keeping the lights on."  [#2] Switching over to windmills and solar panel will only help America's enemies.  They want us to have unreliable power.  [#3] China and India don't have intentional outages, and neither country cares about carbon dioxide emissions.  [#4] Cuba has blackouts all the time,* and it has made no difference to the climate, locally or globally.  [#5] If power outages are planned, what's the best time of the week to pull the plug?  Solar panels don't work at night, so it will have to be done in daylight.  Sunday morning?  What about the churches and weekend sports in the big government-funded stadium?  Saturday morning?  What about the gas stations, hospitals, broadcasters, and nursing homes that need continuous power?  Obviously each of them will need to run a big diesel-powered generator to stay in business (and keep patients alive).  Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of the switch to windmill power?  How many TV stations are in California?  Approximately 106 full power stations, and 205 low-power stations, not counting the sub-channels.  Most of them have a local studio and all of them have a transmitter.  Even if the transmitters for different stations are in the same building, they don't share the cost of any resources, especially generator power, because they are in ruthless competition with each other.  TV stations make a bunch of money every minute they're on the air, and I can assure you that none of them will bite the bullet and sit in the dark while the power is intentionally turned off.  Also consider the amount of energy being consumed by marijuana farming.  That crop is grown under artificial light 24 hours a day.  Is anyone in that business going to sacrifice their competitive edge by sitting through a blackout every week?  Certainly not.  The same is true of the motion picture industry, and any other competitive enterprise.  Time is money.  Are the airport terminals and control towers exempt from this lunacy?  Do you want to be in a hospital when the power goes off?  What about the county jail, the police station, or the penitentiary?  All of the places listed above have backup generators already.  Some of them are as big and as loud as locomotives.  And you can safely presume that the wealthy liberal elite have generators for their 10,000 square foot houses.  A scheduled weekly (or daily!) blackout would just make people angry.  It wouldn't do much to win Democrat votes.  And it wouldn't do any good to have blackouts in California if no other state follows suit, and especially if no other industrialized country cooperates.  All this avoidable inconvenience will accomplish NOTHING.  You may have to live through The Great Energy Transition to Renewable Power, but a few years later, I predict you will see an uprising called Put Everything Back the Way it Was.

Get Used to Living With 'Blackouts' to Save the Planet.  Naive conservatives point to the leftist obsession with electric cars even while the grid is being moved away from reliable energy sources like oil, coal and gas, to fundamentally unreliable ones like wind and solar, and then point to the blackouts in California.  "How is this going to work?" they argue, thinking that they've made a convincing point, while fundamentally misunderstanding (as conservatives often do) that they haven't found a logical weakness, they've uncovered the enemy's plan.  Shoving everything into an unreliable power grid, especially personal transportation, isn't a bug, it's a feature.  That's the whole point of electric cars, and the proliferation of always online vehicles that require a power grid and can be remotely shut down.  All of this is Cloward-Piven for energy.  Failure isn't just inevitable, it's the goal.  As the blackouts grow, they will tell you, as I predicted, to shut up and take it for the good of the planet.

Related:
Democrats whine about Con Ed hikes caused by their own dumb policies.  Better sit down before you open your next Con Ed bill:  Rates are set to soar, starting next month — and double over the next two years.  If you're a progressive, you can't complain.  What did you think would happen, based on your anti-fossil-fuel, big-spending, anti-business agenda?  On Thursday, the state's Public Service Commission OK'd hikes of 9.1% for electricity and 8.4% for gas, starting in August, along with additional jumps though 2025.  At that point, typical bills will have doubled, from about $70 a month to $140 — or an extra $840 a year.

The Editor says...
Maybe electric cars aren't such a great idea after all.  Maybe it's not a good idea to eliminate coal-fired power plants.  Maybe your windmills will stop on the hottest day of the summer, or freeze on the coldest day.  Maybe your solar panels won't work at night — oh wait, that's a certainty.  Maybe you should just leave things the way they were 30 years ago.

Wildfires and Progressive Climate-Change Deniers.  The reality is that even if U.S. banks stopped financing fossil-fuel projects today, global CO2 emissions would rise for decades owing to growing coal production in India and China.  Another inconvenient truth is that government policies to reduce CO2 emissions will be swamped by wildfire emissions.  University of California researchers last year calculated that wildfire emissions in 2020 were two times higher than the state's greenhouse gas reductions from 2003 to 2019.  California wildfires in 2020 were the state's second largest source of CO2 emissions after transportation and generated double the greenhouse gases of all the state's power plants.  Another study this spring in the journal Science estimated that burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021 released 1.76 billion tons of CO2, nearly twice as much as global aviation that year.  That's also more than four times New York State's annual emissions and about three times as much as the Inflation Reduction Act's projected reductions in 2030.

California Can Either Charge Its EV Fleet Or Keep The Lights On.  Can California transition to a portfolio of 100% renewable energy sources and still generate enough electricity to meet the state's future needs, including the addition of millions of electric cars on the road?  Using the state's historical trends to project forward, the answer to these questions is no.  Californians will face acute electricity shortages soon if policymakers insist on implementing its current suite of policies.  California is already incapable of generating enough electricity, importing 30% of its current electricity needs from other states.  With respect to current generation sources, nearly 60% of California's in-state electricity generation is produced by natural gas and nuclear power plants.  Including conventional hydroelectric generation, which does not count as a renewable source for purposes of California's policies, nearly two-thirds of the state's current electricity comes from disfavored generation sources.  It is doubtful that California will be able to generate sufficient electricity to meet future energy needs using only the favored generation sources; and it is not even close.

Shocker: 96% of U.S. climate data is corrupted.  You probably heard how AOC was quick to blame the clouds of smoke wafting down from the Canadian wildfires last week on climate change.  As you likely expected without even needing to check, that turns out to be nonsense.  But the underlying facts that prove its nonsensical nature turn out to be well rooted in science. [...] You should check out the work of veteran meteorologist Anthony Watts of the Heartland Institute.  He's been studying the weather and the climate in general for a very long time.  He travels around the country inspecting meteorological equipment and studies historical weather data from around the world.  One of the first findings he would like the public to be aware of is that not only are wildfires common in many parts of North America, but the reality is that in the 21st century, they have actually been less numerous than they were in the past.  They're just getting more attention from the press and on social media.

Let's talk climate scares and wildfires.  The latest panic climate talk is amplified because of the smoke from Canadian fires that is drifting to the East, as all American weather does, to produce smoke in East Coast cities and create air quality advisories and pearl-clutching.  California wildfires in the recent past did not produce any measurable uptick in deaths or illnesses, but no matter:  another crisis is currently besetting the lefty havens of the East Coast. [...] Finally, the authors ignore the major reasons for an increase in wildfires: arson, more arson, and the tinderbox created by poor forestry practices, and restriction of logging and harvesting of forests that decreases density.  Dense forests cause wildfires to be more frequent and of greater magnitude.  This paper is a part of a pattern — a poorly formulated claim of factoids is blown up into a basis for a scare.  But a reasonable analysis of the science shows the claims to be inadequately formulated.  Fossil fuel use and increased CO2 in the air are not the cause of any valid prediction of increased wildfire frequency or severity.

The Corruption of Climate Science.  In California, wildlife biologists and forest ecologists who spend their lives studying and managing these timberlands unanimously agree that tree density has increased, thanks to "non-climatic factors such as the prohibition of Indigenous burning, and legacies of fire suppression."  The increase is not subtle.  Without small, naturally occurring fires that clear underbrush and smaller trees, forests become overgrown.  Controlled burns and responsible logging are absolutely necessary to maintain forest health.  According to a study conducted in 2020 by UC Davis and USDA, California's mid-elevation Ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests used to average 60 trees per acre, and now they average 170 trees per acre according to conservative estimates. [...] California's forests are tinderboxes because environmentalists made it nearly impossible to get permits to do controlled burns and because environmentalists decimated the timber industry.  In the face of relentless regulatory and litigious harassment, California's timber industry has shrunk from harvesting 6 billion board feet per year as recently as the 1990s to less than 2 billion board feet in recent years.  Meanwhile, California's fire suppression industrial complex has grown to gargantuan proportions, pouring billions of dollars into putting fires out before they can spread.

Study: California Wildfires in One Year Erased 16 Years of Emissions Cuts.  The raging California wildfires of 2020 created enough carbon emissions to offset 16 years of reductions through the state's green policies — twice over — according to a UCLA study published by Environmental Pollution.  As Breitbart News reported at the time, the wildfire season in 2020 was so intense that smoke from the fires reached cities on the East Coast of the United States.

Is California a Luddite Conspiracy?  California politicians continue to pass policies that, by all accounts, appear to be deliberately aimed at substantially reducing its residents' ability to have reliable, on-demand electricity. [...] California has, over the years, been a leader in "decarbonizing" their state.  In their enthusiasm, Californians rapidly shut down coal, oil, and gas power plants over the years, at a rate that the installation of renewable replacements simply could not keep up with.  Nuclear is on the chopping block as well, though the Diablo Canyon nuclear power station has just had its execution deferred for another few years.  Diablo Canyon supplies California with 9 percent of its electricity, and represents 15 percent of its non-fossil fuel energy.  It's worth noting that the only reason Diablo Canyon was slated to close in the first place was because Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, embarked on a long quest to force Pacific Gas & Electric to close it prematurely.  Electricity prices in California have risen six times faster than the rest of the country since 2011, and are more than double the cost of neighboring states' rates.

Dodging Blackouts, California Faces New Questions on Its Power Supply.  California finds itself on edge more than ever with a lingering fear: the threat of rolling blackouts for years to come.  Despite adding new power plants, building huge battery storage systems and restarting some shuttered fossil fuel generators over the past couple of years, California relies heavily on energy from other states — the cavalry rushing over a distant hill.  Sometimes the support does not show up when expected or at all.  That was the case this month, when millions of residents got cellphone alerts urging them to cut their energy use as the state teetered close to blackouts in blazing heat.  As climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent, the peril has only increased.

The Editor says...
[#1] Climate change has not made "extreme weather events more frequent," and hot weather is nothing new.  The problem is not the weather.  The problem is California's bull-headed resistance to every practical source of energy, and the irrational fear of carbon dioxide.  More specifically, the problem is that the politicians all represent the same socialist party, and that party listens too much to the rabid earth-worshiping environmentalist fruitcakes.  [#2] If the neighboring states cut off their power feeds into California, it will get really interesting.

California is learning that solar doesn't work without battery storage.  California got through the biggest heat wave of the year without having to order any blackout but only just barely.  Gov. Newsom is praising the state's shift to renewable energy as if avoiding the blackouts is proof that the shift to renewables is working. [...] We actually did have blackouts in some places on the hottest days but those were ordered by the power companies not the state.  I wonder to what extent those outages helped the state's independent regulator avoid ordering rolling blackouts.  In any case, everyone agrees we came really close.  Wednesday the Washington Post published a story arguing that the real lesson Newsom and others should have learned from barely avoiding blackouts this summer is that solar without battery storage really doesn't work very well.

California: NFL Opener, Rock Concerts Continue Despite Energy Crisis.  Major concerns and sporting events are continuing to be held across California despite the ongoing energy crisis, with fans flocking to Oracle Park in San Francisco Wednesday for a rock concert, and the L.A. Rams due to open the NFL season at home Thursday.  As Breitbart News has reported, California is entering its eighth consecutive day of "Flex Alerts," during which consumers are asked to save electricity in the afternoon and evening hours.  An energy emergency is possible on Thursday, including possible blackouts.

California Residents Forced to Prepare for Rolling Blackouts as State Leadership Pushes 'Green' Initiatives.  The operator of California's power grid is advising state residents to prepare for rolling outages because of a heatwave.  Governor Gavin Newsom constantly brags about the state's commitment to green energy, but he can't even keep the power on.  How will they power all the electric cars once they ban gas-powered vehicles if they can't keep the power on?

Greenie paradise California goes on rolling blackouts.  Just days after signing a greenie law mandating that Californians buy only electric cars by 2035 — and calling it a model for the nation — Gov. Gavin Newsom is pleading with Californians to turn off their electricity to prevent the electrical grid from blowing out.  In some Bay Area cities — Alameda, Healdsburg, and Old Palo Alto — the rolling blackouts have already started.  It's a policy failure unlike any other, from a guy who makes no secret of wanting to run the entire country based on his state's energy model.  Those ads he's taken out in Florida, urging those who fled to come back to California, are looking pathetic right now.  Florida, after all, still allows air-conditioning.

You must drive electric cars -- but please do not charge them.
California Extends 'Flex Alert,' Warns Drivers Not to Charge Electric Cars.  Authorities in California extended a "Flex Alert" telling residents to conserve energy, including not charging their electric vehicles, on Sunday afternoon and evening.  The alert has been in effect for several days in the midst of a heat wave that is slated to last through Labor Day.  The California Independent System Operator, the manager of the state's power grid, issued the statewide Flex Alert from 4 to 9 p.m.  Residents are urged to set their thermostats to 78 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, avoid using major appliances, avoid charging electric vehicles, and turning off unnecessary lights. "Additional Flex Alerts will likely be called as heat will only intensify through Tuesday, with little relief from triple-digit temperatures seen over the next several days," the operator wrote.  "Daytime high temperatures are forecast at 10-20 degrees above normal in much of the state through the Labor Day weekend and into next week, and record-breaking heat is projected in some parts of California."

Officials Beg Californians to Use Less Electricity as Blackouts Loom.  Officials are asking Californians to use less electricity as the state faces record demand for energy on Tuesday, creating the possibility for rolling blackouts in the midst of a heat wave.  On Tuesday, as the state faces a seventh consecutive "Flex Alert," in which residents will be asked to conserve electricity between the hours of 4:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., officials say that efforts to save energy must be doubled or tripled to be effective.  The California Independent System Operator (ISO) declared an "Energy Emergency Alert" at level 2 on Monday, one level below the stage at which blackouts would have been required.  It brought four natural gas plants online to help hope with demand, as solar and wind power cannot meet the state's needs in a crunch.

The Editor says...
Solar and wind are inadequate "in a crunch," and California is headed for a non-stop crunch.  It was all completely avoidable, and the crunch will be entirely the fault of the socialist Democrats.

California power grid declares Flex Alert for Wednesday, asks for electricity conservation.  The manager of California's power grid has issued a statewide Flex Alert for Wednesday, asking residents and businesses to cut back on power usage to prevent strain on the system.  The California Independent System Operator is calling on Californians to save power between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday.

This article is very much like an infomercial for generators.
The Often Overlooked Costs of an Extended Power Outage.  While the inconvenience of a power loss is real enough by itself, the true monetary costs that are possible when a prolonged outage hits can't be understated.  In fact, according to a report put together by Kohler Generators, American households face approximately $150 billion in power outage-related expenses each year.  So where do these costs come from?  In their survey, Briggs & Stratton looked at both how common certain power outage expenses were and their average cost.  The most common expense was spoiled food, which 40 percent of survey respondents faced at an average cost of $160, during just one power outage.  The second most frequent cost was for emergency supplies such as flashlights, candles and firewood; 29 percent of those surveyed reported such spending at an average of $76 per household.  Facing a prolonged period of time without power, many American homeowners looked for alternate solutions.  For 16 percent of the survey's respondents, this meant picking up a portable generator with an average price tag of $650.  An additional eight percent of those questioned opted to get a hotel room at $108 per night on average.

France to turn lights off at night.  French President Emmanuel Macron [...] is telling French citizens to engage in energy "sobriety" and to prepare for even higher food prices.  Macron added, "From now on, I will ask public bodies, and all companies that can, to consume less.  We will create a program and try to use lighting less in the evenings.  We are launching a load reduction and sobriety program.  We have to prepare for a scenario in which we have to give up Russian gas completely." [...] And France is by no means alone.  California, the erstwhile Golden State, the Land of Milk and Honey — and Hollywood — says it expects periodic blackouts this summer as the power runs low.  In fact, California has struggled to keep the power on the past two summers, due to progressive policies that range from the nonsensical to the insane.  France is not engaged in war with Russia but is using the war as an excuse to demand energy "sobriety" from her citizens.  California is not fighting Russia either.

Fossil fuels are far better than blackouts.  As the world watched, French President Emmanuel Macron explained the basics of supply and demand in oil markets to President Biden this week.  Video of the encounter made it obvious:  Energy experts need to begin loudly restating the basic truth that reliable energy is essential to human health and well-being.  Macron's Energy 101 tutorial with Biden reinforced the reality that the world is grappling with a growing energy crisis, and the Middle East won't be able to bail out markets.  The U.S. would do well to heed this fact.  It should implement protective measures for oil and gas markets, as well as for electricity markets, before it's too late.  And make no mistake, "too late" is bearing down on us.  For example, last month a Michigan utility closed an 811-megawatt nuclear plant almost a decade before its operating permit expired.  Last week, the Michigan Public Service Commission took it a step further by approving a request by Consumers Energy, a major utility, to close its last remaining coal plant by 2025.  That's 15 years ahead of schedule.  The closure will mean 1,560 megawatts of reliable capacity lost so the company can meet its wholly voluntary goal of net-zero CO2 emissions by 2040.

Like a third-world country, California is facing rolling power blackouts.  Unless states and countries are willing to transition almost entirely to nuclear power, so-called "green" energy is a chimera.  In the old days, "green" energy was the norm and life was Hobbesian: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  It was fossil fuel that brought us into a world of plenty but the greenies have been having their way with our fossil-fuel-powered grid and, inevitably, the lights are going off.  California, for example, boldly decided to go "green," closing down existing nuclear power plants and refineries, only to discover that the lights go out when you do that, so now the only option is [...] returning to that much-despised fossil fuel.

Green Energy Chickens Coming Home to Roost.  In California, the California Political Review reports, demolition of four dams will soon begin, "with no replacement for the water and energy they provide."  Compounding this blunder, in two years the state's last nuclear power plant, which provides 10% of the state's energy, will be shut down without any plans to replace that loss.  And even worse, the Democrats who run the state are sticking with plans to banish gas-powered vehicles from the state by 2035, replacing them with 8 million electric vehicles in a state already incapable of keeping the lights on in hot weather or during wildfires that damage transmission lines.  According to one study, achieving this goal of 30 million EVs would require electric power companies with 2-3 million customers to invest between $1700 and $5800 in grid upgrades per vehicle, costs that will no doubt be passed along to customers.

California's electrical grid has an EV problem.  California energy officials issued a sobering warning this month, telling residents to brace for potential blackouts as the state's energy grid faces capacity constraints heading into the summer months.  And since the state has committed to phase out all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 — well ahead of federal targets — the additional load from electric vehicle (EV) charging could add more strain to the electric grid.  "Let's say we were to have a substantial number of [electric] vehicles charging at home as everybody dreams," Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, who authored a recent study looking at the strain electric vehicle adoption is expected to place on the power grid, told Yahoo Finance.  "Today's grid may not be able to support it.  It all boils down to:  Are you charging during the time solar power is on?"

The Editor says...
Here's the bottom line, if you haven't figured it out already:  If you rely on solar panels, you can't drive an electric car in the winter, when the days are short.  If you rely on windmills, you can't charge an electric car at night, when the wind all but ceases.  You can't charge your electric car at the same time that you and everybody else in town wants to use electric appliances; that is, right after you get home from work.  At last, when the time is right, you'll need a few hours to get the car fully charged.  Compare this to the time it takes to fill up the gas tank on a gas engine automobile.  "Renewable energy" and electric cars are incompatible.

Newsom's electric car nirvana collides with reality.  Gavin Newsom is bi-polar.  He wants to get us into all electric homes and cars.  At the same time he is limiting and destroying energy sources — causing brownouts and blackouts.  If we had 8 million more EV cars and 2 million all electric homes, we would have to ration electricity to a few hours a days and maybe one charge of your EV each week.  Newsom is providing the foundation of the collapse of the California economy. [...] This year's increase in electric car sales was, no doubt, spurred in part by a steep hike in gasoline prices, as well as subsidies — which poses an interesting dichotomy.  Newsom has decried those fuel price spikes and wants the state to offset them with payments to motorists, which would reduce some of their motivation to buy electric cars."  Not only would there be a severe limit on the energy you can use, but the cost of available energy will skyrocket.

Electric grid operators warn of potential summer blackouts.  While some major cities are already seeing their lights go off due to electricity use overload, grid operators and energy advocates gave a warning to states closing their coal-fired power plants even quicker than they can build new ones.  "Any plans to remove nuclear plants or coal power plants or natural gas plants that are slated to be closed, that has to be completely suspended," Power the Future executive director Daniel Turner told FOX Business' Jeff Flock Tuesday [5/10/2022].  Eighty coal-fired power plants are slated to close across 14 states in the next six years, Flock mentioned in his report, which poses a threat as some blackouts have already begun and coal and nuclear power still source 41% of the country's electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Electricity Shortage Warnings Grow Across U.S..  From California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, a gap that could lead to rolling blackouts during heat waves or other peak periods as soon as this year.  California's grid operator said Friday that it anticipates a shortfall in supplies this summer, especially if extreme heat, wildfires or delays in bringing new power sources online exacerbate the constraints.  The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, which oversees a large regional grid spanning much of the Midwest, said late last month that capacity shortages may force it to take emergency measures to meet summer demand and flagged the risk of outages.  In Texas, where a number of power plants lately went offline for maintenance, the grid operator warned of tight conditions during a heat wave expected to last into the next week.

California Warns of Possible Summer Blackouts as Power Runs Low.  California energy officials warned the state may be at risk of blackouts for the next three summers due to power supply shortages and extreme weather.  The state could be short about 1,700 megawatts this summer — enough power for about 1.3 million homes — and that gap may widen to about 1,800 megawatts by 2025, officials said Friday during a media call.  These forecasts don't include other factors such as extreme regional heat waves or wildfires that can take down power lines, they said.

The Editor says...
If it's safe to assume there will be "extreme weather" months from now, perhaps it isn't extreme at all.

California says it needs more power to keep the lights on.  California energy officials on Friday [5/6/2022] issued a sober forecast for the state's electrical grid, saying it lacks sufficient capacity to keep the lights on this summer and beyond if heatwaves, wildfires or other extreme events take their toll.  The update from leaders from three state agencies and the office of Governor Gavin Newsom comes in response to a string of challenges with the ambitious transition away from fossil fuels, including rolling blackouts during a summer heat wave in 2020.

Gov. Newsom:  Maybe it was a mistake to shut down California's last nuclear plant.  You may not remember it, especially if you don't live here in California, but the state had rolling blackouts back in 2020. The culprit was a heat wave which meant lots of people were using air conditioners to keep indoor temperatures under control.  And as the sun went down and the state's solar power supplies dried up, there weren't enough back up supplies to replace it.  After that debacle California regulators decided to let some existing natural gas power plants stay open a few extra years.  But the state had already decided several years earlier to shut down the last remaining nuclear plants which would cease to operate when their current licenses expired rather than try to extend those licenses.

Wind & Solar 'Transition' Mean End of Reliable & Affordable Power.  If you live in California, by now you've probably seen the ads, either on prime time television or online, exhorting you to "Power Down 4 to 9PM." [...] The misanthropic cruelty of these laws ought to be obvious.  Normal people need more electricity between 4 and 9 PM, and no amount of public education can overcome that circadian fact. [...] Normal people may also be forgiven if they don't want to jump through the preposterous hoops required of "programmable" appliances, such as washing machines that will defer ignition until the spot price of electricity drops below a specified threshold.  The fact that every major appliance now requires internet connectivity and comes with an instruction manual that rivals Lord of the Rings in scope and word-count, is not a sign of progress.  It is fetishistic excess.  Future generations will marvel at the absurdity of this maddening, mandated attention to technology-driven minutia, and attribute it to the hubris of our times.

Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall?  [Scroll down]  I have written several posts highly critical of California's pie-in-the-sky green energy plans, which include a 2045 "zero carbon" target. [...] However, California does have a deep secret to help it stave off the possibility of hitting the renewable energy wall:  it imports a very high percentage of its power from neighboring states.  Some of the imports are fossil fuel based (coal and natural gas from Arizona and Nevada), and some are reliable non-fossil fuel based sources (nuclear from Arizona and hydro from Oregon and Washington). [...] In 2018 California imported about 32% of its electricity (91,000 GWH out of 285,000 GWH), and in 2020 about 30% (82,000 GWH out of 273,000 GWH).  According to data from the EIA, California imports far more electricity from other states than does any other state (although there are a few states that import more on a percentage basis).  The ability to import large amounts of electricity from neighboring states means that California has a high degree of insurance against its own energy folly.  As long as Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have some electricity to sell, blackouts can be staved off even though California's wind and solar generators may be completely quiet.  You may say that this is cheating in the game of "zero emissions" electricity, which it is, but don't count on California's politicians to level with the voters.

With Its Power Grid Under Pressure, California Asks Residents to Avoid Charging Electric Vehicles.  Amid a West Coast heat wave that includes triple-digit temperatures, California's power grid operators have called on residents to not use as much electricity so as to put less strain on the state's beleaguered grid.  In the past week, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) told residents several times to voluntarily conserve energy, including asking them on social media to stop charging their electric vehicles (EVs) during peak usage times.  The operator also warned users to "[avoid] use of large appliances and turning off extra lights."  "This usually happens in the evening hours when solar generation is going offline and consumers are returning home and switching on air conditioners, lights, and appliances," wrote the ISO. And on June 18, the California Flex Alert Twitter page wrote that "now is the perfect time to do a load of laundry," and urged residents to "remember to use major appliances, charge cars and devices before #FlexAlert begins at 6 p.m. today."

The Editor says...
[#1] Relatively few people drive an electric car, even in California.  What happens when everybody has an electric car?  [#2]  When there is an insufficient supply of electricity, conservation is not a long-term solution.  The only long-term solution is an increase in generating capacity, which means the combustion of coal or natural gas, or the use of nuclear energy.  Please make your selection soon.

University professor is charged with starting four California wildfires.  A former college professor was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly starting four wildfires in Northern California earlier this year, near the deadly Dixie Fire.  Gary Stephen Maynard, 47, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of arson to federal property, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California said in a statement.  The blazes threatened to trap firefighters as they battled the massive Dixie blaze — the second-largest wildfire in California history — nearby, prosecutors said.  Maynard's alleged arson spree included blazes he started in July and August behind crews fighting the Dixie fire, scorching more than 1,500 square miles and destroying more than 1,000 structures, court documents showed.

High winds prompt PG&E to shut power to 25,000 in California.  Pacific Gas & Electric began shutting off power to about 25,000 customers in central and northern California Monday and Southern California Edison warned it may do the same for up to 9,000 of its customers as high winds toppled trees, downed power lines and ignited fires that forced people to flee from their homes.  At least a half dozen mostly small fires broke out across the state, challenging firefighters as they tried to contain the blazes amid the blustering wind.

Forestry student-turned-shaman, 30, faces nine years in jail for 'starting California's Fawn Fire'.  A former forestry student-turned-shaman and yoga teacher has been charged with starting a huge California wildfire that has destroyed 41 homes — and was being investigated in connection with other fires — after claiming the blaze was triggered accidentally while she tried to boil bear urine so she could drink it.  Alexandra Souverneva, of Palo Alto, was charged Friday with felony arson to wildland with an enhancement because of a declared state of emergency in California, Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett said.  The 8,500 acre blaze the 30 year-old is accused of starting has wrecked 41 homes, and 90 other structures.  Souverneva pleaded not guilty but could face up to nine years in state prison if convicted.  She is also suspected of starting additional fires in Shasta County and throughout the state, Bridgett said.

What is it about academics and arson?  You've heard of "going postal:? Maybe the next odious term should be "going academic."  We're seeing an awful lot of arson as a cause for California's wildfires and at treasured institutions being perpetrated by academics.  Here's the latest going on near Redding, California from the Washington Post: [...] Nearly all of the accused have signs of drug abuse in their pictures as do these three, a lot of them are serial setters, and many have mental health issues.  But it's starting to stand out that some of the worst fire-starters are from the cool ivy halls of academia, as if something in the culture is telling the angry ones among them to go burn something.  What is it?  How is it that a profession that set such stake on telling America how to live seems to have so little capacity for cleaning house?

California's Top Grid Operator Asks Feds To Burn More Fossil Fuels To Avert Blackouts.  California's power grid transition to renewable energy sources appears to be backfiring.  The push into clean energy is not producing enough power to meet demand during hot summer days, and it's becoming harder for the Golden State to avoid rolling blackouts.  A stunning new revelation in the state's top grid operator, California Independent System Operator, filing to US Department of Energy (DoE), titled "Request for Emergency Order Pursuant to Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act," requested the federal government to declare an "electric reliability emergency" so it can use more fossil fuel power generation to prevent blackouts.

The Editor says...
If California has an "electric reliability emergency," it's entirely the fault of the state and federal government, due to their obsession with carbon dioxide, and it's an emergency with no end in sight.  If you haven't noticed, the state and federal governments thrive on perpetual emergencies, like terrorism, pandemics, immigration, homelessness, and global warming.

California wises up and chooses natural gas.  The Golden State has been trying for years to get rid of all of its fossil fuel generation capacity.  Spreading a mythological doom-and-gloom narrative about catastrophic, world-ending climate change, California's government has nonetheless moved toward shuttering all of its carbon-free nuclear power plants in favor of creating a grid based almost entirely on wind and solar power.  There is just one problem with this:  It cannot be done, at least not with existing technology.  Not only has this forced upon Californians electricity prices 80% higher than the national average, but it has also saddled them with a power grid that relies far too heavily on intermittent (that is, unreliable) sources of electricity.  Wind power only works when the wind blows.  Solar cannot generate electricity at night.

US forest area burned since 1926
Two Charts Destroy Big Lie About 'Climate Change' And Wildfires.  It's that time of year again, the season of headlines routinely screaming about "record" amounts of acreage burned from out-of-control wildfires caused by, of course, "climate change."  But is it true?  Is global warming driving a surge in wildfires?  The answer is no.  The media started again this week with the release of the United Nation's latest dire climate change report, based on the same faulty models and filled with more apocalyptic predictions that won't come true. [...] It's become an annual summer mantra from the media, this time driven by large wildfires that happen to coincide with the release of the U.N. report.  The truth is, in the U.S. we are not at a "record" for wildfire burning by a longshot.  As the charts below show, wildfire burns were far worse in the early- to mid-20th century, with massive amounts of acreage charred before there was any significant global warming to speak of.


California Wildfire Destroys Entire Town; Thousands Forced to Evacuate.  Wildfires in Northern California have forced more than 16,000 evacuations and destroyed the town of Greenville, located in Plumas County.  The Dixie Fire as of Aug. 5 is 35 percent contained and has burned more than 322,000 acres, according to federal officials.  The blaze ripped through the small town of Greenville, located about 110 miles northeast of Sacramento, on the evening of Aug. 4.  The town, which dates back to California's Gold Rush era, has a population of about 1,000.  "Last night, firefighters, including aerial resources, aggressively attacked large flame fronts in an effort to defend structures.  As fire entered the Greenville area, firefighting efforts shifted to assist law enforcement in evacuation efforts," according to a bulletin posted on the federal government's Incident Information System.

California issues Power Alert amid hot temperatures.  The California Independent System Operator (ISO) has issued a statewide Power Alert for Wednesday, July 28th from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., due to predicted high energy demand amid hot temperatures.  Cal ISO tweeted "Due to heat and tight supply conditions, the California ISO has issued a statewide #FlexAlert for Wednesday, July 28, from 4-9 p.m. encouraging consumers to conserve energy to help alleviate stress on the #powergrid."

The Editor says...
If the state has "tight supply conditions," whose fault is that?  How many natural gas-fired power plants have been decommissioned in a feeble attempt to save the earth from global warming?  This might be a good time to build a couple of nuclear power plants.  Or, for faster results, coal-fired power plants.

Couple whose gender reveal sparked deadly wildfire face manslaughter charges.  A California couple whose gender reveal pyrotechnic show started a massive inferno that killed a fireman last year have each been hit with involuntary manslaughter charges.  Refugio Manuel Jimenez Jr. and Angela Renee Jimenez pleaded not guilty to the felony charge and 29 other counts related to the September 2020 El Dorado Fire on Monday [7/19/2021], officials said.  The wildfire was allegedly started by the couple's smoke-generating pyrotechnic device that ignited dry grass at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains, 75 miles east of LA.  The Jimenezes tried to put out the blaze with bottled water, but it was quickly stoked by strong winds and dry conditions, authorities said.

Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy.  [Scroll down]  Until the past few years blackouts and brownouts were almost unheard of.  What's changed?  The answer is easy to find.  According to Robert Bruce, progressive politicians and their enabling voters have created a disastrous combination of "soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability."  What's bizarre is that it has all been deliberate.  The left is obsessed with weaning humanity off its reliance on fossil fuels.  Californians are now the proud possessors of the highest income-tax rates, highest sales-tax rates, highest gasoline prices, and highest housing costs in the country.  California already has laws on the books that mandate reducing "greenhouse emissions" 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050.  It is irresponsible to mandate an end to fossil fuel use when there is no viable substitute in place, at least not one they're willing to entertain.  If nuclear energy is off the table, blackouts will become a way of life.  California will become a ghost state.  Only leftists will be happy.

Devin Nunes trying to rescue California from insanity.  California is, as the old quip goes, "the land of fruits and nuts."  But with Gavin Newsom facing a recall election, the plan to shut down the nuclear power plant that provides almost 10% of the state's electric power is obvious madness. [...] Of course, Nunes's plan will go only as far as Nancy Pelosi permits, and with her speakership hostage to the left-wing crazies of all stripes in the Democrat caucus, she will deep-six it.  The greenies don't seem to care if people in the Central Valley die of heat exposure with no air-conditioning.  They don't care if businesses shut down when electricity is not available.  They are fanatics.  They don't even care that nuclear power emits no CO2.  But I do wonder how long Californians will put up with blackouts and staggering electricity bills.

Nunes seeks to stop California from shuttering last nuclear plant amidst energy crisis.  California's push for clean energy has already created hardship for consumers, from a 40% decade-long climb in electricity costs to rolling blackouts that loom as a threat every heat wave.  Now the state is poised to exacerbate that crisis with plans to retire its last remaining, zero-carbon emissions nuclear plant in 2025.  The planned closure of Diablo Canyon, approved by the state in 2018, will take offline another 2200 megawatts of electricity production — nearly 10% of the state's needs — with no ready replacement.  As many as 3 million consumers could be impacted.  Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), one of the senior members of the state's congressional delegation, told Just the News he is moving to stop the closure.

The Editor says...
If the supply of electricity can't keep up with the demand, California has several options, none of which are likely to be popular with the political left:  On the supply side:  [#1] Nuclear energy, [#2] Coal, [#3] Natural gas.  California is learning the hard way that electric power sources should be available 24/7; otherwise, you live in Cuba.  On the demand side, look at all the place where electricity is being squandered:  [#1] Electric cars, [#2]  Marijuana farming, [#3]  A glut of 24-hour radio and TV stations, half of which have very few if any listeners.

California Asks Utility for More Electricity Amid Shift to Green Energy.  California state energy officials have asked the state's top grid operator to contract for additional power capacity in the months of July and August due to concerns it won't meet the demand during evenings.  In a letter, the heads of the California Energy Commission and California Public Utilities Commission asked the California Independent System Operator (ISO) to provide more power supplies via its tariff-based authority to obtain more resources during the two months and possibly September if conditions don't improve.  "California is using all available tools to increase electricity reliability this summer," the letter stated, citing "unprecedented heat events, which are occurring throughout the West in combination with drought conditions that reduce hydroelectric capacity."

The Editor says...
The state government knows how much electricity will be required (and how much might be required in the event of hot or cold weather), and it knows how much generating capacity is on line; and yet it still allows (or demands) the shutdown of coal-fired power plants for the sole purpose of avoiding carbon dioxide emissions.  Intentional power outages are entirely the fault of radical environmentalists and their irrational fear of carbon dioxide.

Joe Biden's Clueless Plan to Fight Wildfires.  "We know this is becoming a regular cycle," the president said, "and we know it's getting worse.  The truth is, we're playing catch-up.  This is an area that's been under-resourced, but that's going to change if we have anything to do with it."  There is so much so very ignorant about what Joe Biden said.  First, wildfire is not becoming a regular cycle.  It already is.  Has been forever since the beginning of fire and time.  Fire is how Nature cleanses itself and launches the next cycle, all on a schedule that ignores humans.  Wildfires are getting worse, not because of global warming or climate change or whatever the green catchphrase is this summer.  Wildfires are getting worse because humans insist on letting fuels build up, then fighting the fires, snuffing out flames before they can do their job.

The Real Reason They Blame Heat Deaths, Blackouts, and Forest Fires on Climate Change Is Because They're Causing Them.  It's true that there have been more heat waves in the United States since 1960, and that higher temperatures dry out the dead wood in forests, contributing to a greater area burned by forest fires.  "Climate dries the [wood] fuels out and extends the fire season from 4-6 months to nearly year-round," US Forest Service scientist Malcolm North explained to me last summer.  But what determines whether people die in heat waves is whether or not they have air conditioning, not whether temperatures rose to 111° instead of 109°.  Proof of that comes from the fact that heat-related deaths declined in the US by 50% to 75% since 1960 thanks entirely to air conditioning, even as heat waves grew in frequency, intensity, and length.  What determines whether a fire in a forest is high-intensity or low-intensity is the amount of wood fuel.  Climate change is "not the cause of the intensity of the [mountain forest] fires," stressed North.  "The cause of that is fire suppression and the existing debt of wood fuel."

Blackouts Loom in California as Electricity Prices Are 'Absolutely Exploding'.  Two inexorable energy trends are underway in California:  soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability — and both trends bode ill for the state's low- and middle-income consumers.  Last week, the state's grid operator, the California Independent System Operator, issued a "flex alert" that asked the state's consumers to reduce their power use "to reduce stress on the grid and avoid power outages."  The California Independent System Operator's warning of impending electricity shortages heralds another blackout-riddled summer at the same time California's electricity prices are skyrocketing.  In 2020, California's electricity prices jumped by 7.5%, making it the biggest price increase of any state in the country last year and nearly seven times the increase that was seen in the United States as a whole.

California will spend $500 million this year to thin its 33 million acres of forests to lessen the chance of wildfires.  California is adopting former Donald Trump's plan to thin out the state's 33 million acres of forests with controlled burns and raking the woodland floor — after state officials essentially laughed off the former president's idea a few years ago.  Trump had suggested in 2018 that the Golden State start sweeping its forest floors of debris that often aids in the spread of wildfires.  But by Aug. 2020, at the peak of the state's wildfire season, his suggestion became an ultimatum when he withheld wildfire financial aid on the basis of California's failure to clear its forests of dead trees, branches and leaves, Politico reported at the time.

California Will Now Fight Wildfires — by Trimming Back Forests.  [Scroll down]  I will note that the timing is quite convenient for Newsom.  The recall election is likely to occur at the height of the state's wildfire season.  No matter how ardent their eco-activism might be, voters are unlikely to continue supporting Newsom's "green" policies as their homes, businesses, and neighborhoods are charred.  File this item under:  "Trump was right.  Again."

Climate Change Drought Fairy Tale Season Is Here.  It's that time of year again!  Summer, when things get hot and dry and certain seasonal extreme weather events naturally occur — as do alarming claims about them.  When hurricanes form during "hurricane season," expect climate alarmists to claim human-caused climate change is creating them, even though hurricanes have always formed at this time of year (thus the existence of the term "hurricane season").  When wildfires break out during "wildfire season," scorching thousands of acres of mismanaged, overgrown forests, expect climate alarmists to claim human-caused climate change is causing them, even though wildfires have always been sparked at this time of year (thus the existence of the term "wildfire season").  The third in the trifecta of weather-related horror stories we can expect to read about every summer is drought.  Droughts are normal and natural.  At any point in time, portions of the United States and the world suffer from a drought of some length and severity.

Texas, California Call for Power Restraint During Heatwave.  Texas and California urged consumers to conserve energy this week to reduce stress on the grid and avoid outages as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners to escape a scorching heatwave blanketing the U.S. Southwest.  High temperatures were expected to top 110 degrees Fahrenheit through the weekend in parts of several states including California, Arizona, and Nevada.  "The public's help is essential when extreme weather or other factors beyond our control put undue stress on the electric grid," said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California ISO, which operates the grid in most of California.  Over the past year, Texas and California imposed rotating or controlled outages to prevent more widespread collapses of their power systems — California during a heatwave in August 2020 and Texas during a brutal freeze in February 2021.

California Tells Public to Prepare for Heatwave, Power Prices Soar.  The California power grid operator told the public to prepare to conserve energy next week if needed as homes and businesses crank up their air conditioners to escape what is forecast to be a brutal heatwave.  Already, power prices across the U.S. West spiked to their highest since the February freeze when natural gas pipelines and wind turbines froze in Texas leaving millions without power.  The California ISO, which operates the state's power grid, said in a release that "It is still too early to know the precise impact that next week's high temperatures will have on the electric grid."

California May Face Round Two Of Energy Shortages This Summer.  Last summer, when a heat wave rolled across the western United States, California residents experienced energy blackouts as a result of a difficult-to-manage power grid.  Even after that experience, which put residents' health at risk due to excessive heat exposure, California continued its push to ban fracking, shut down nuclear power plants, and rely solely on renewable energy.  Now, anew report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) states that "California is at risk of energy emergencies during periods of normal peak summer demand and high risk when above-normal demand is widespread in the west."  The report says that there is a 400-megawatt shortfall expected at peak demand.  This shortfall will come despite an addition of over 3 gigawatts, the majority of which will come from solar power, and an additional 675 megawatts of new battery storage systems.  These increases are still expected not to be enough when California needs energy most and show that California hasn't learned its lesson.

National Interagency Fire Center Disappears 'Inconvenient' U.S. Wildfire Data.  The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) has been the keeper of U.S. wildfire data for decades, tracking both the number of wildfires and acreage burned all the way back to 1926.  After making the entire dataset public for decades, in a blatant act of cherry-picking, NIFC "disappeared" a vast portion of it.  Now, NIFC only shows wildfire data from 1983.  Fortunately, the internet never forgets, which means the entire dataset is preserved on the world wide web.  Data prior to 1983 show U.S. wildfires were far worse 100 years ago, both in frequency and total acreage burned, than they are today.  By disappearing all data prior to 1983, which just happens to be the lowest point in the dataset for the number of fires, NIFC data now show a positive slope of worsening wildfire aligning with increased global temperatures.  This truncated dataset is convenient for claiming "climate change is making wildfires worse," but flawed because it lacks the context of the full dataset.

California power projections underscore difficulty of Biden climate targets.  California will have to deploy renewable power at record-breaking speed over the next few decades to meet its target for carbon-free electricity by 2045, a transformation that state agencies say in a new report this week is technically achievable but immensely challenging.  The scale of deployment California alone will need to achieve underscores the hurdles facing President Biden and his team as he calls for eliminating carbon from the power sector by 2035, 10 years earlier than California's target.  The effort would require the biggest transformation of the electricity sector since it was built.

Reality Check Regarding Utility-Scale Battery Systems During a One-Day Wind/Solar Lull.  Hopefully, California learned an expensive lesson, due to relying on weather-dependent, season-dependent, wind and solar electricity to such an extent, it decided to close down power plants, that produce reliable, not variable, not intermittent, low-CO2, low-cost electricity, 24/7/365, regardless of weather or season.  Typically, California imports electricity from nearby states to cover any wind/solar electricity short-falls.  This was not possible, because the US Southwest had a major, multi-day, heat wave.  As a result, electricity imports to California were curtailed by the exporting states.  Prior to the heat wave, as a part of climate change fighting, California had unwisely closed down 15 of its 19 high-efficiency, low-CO2, gas power plants, on the Pacific coast.  Those plants had not been kept in reserve, i.e., staffed, fueled and kept in good working order to immediately provide electricity, just in case of a major heat wave.  The result was, California had multiple days with rolling black-outs, i.e., no air-conditioning during periods with temperatures up to 115°F.  Living conditions were made even worse by the smoke of large-scale forest fires.

Today's California Energy Embarrassment.  Yesterday we noted the embarrassment announced in understated fashion by the U.S. Department of Energy that California imported 25 percent of its electricity in 2019.  It seems almost as if someone at the very excellent Energy Information Administration has a thing about California's silliness, because today's EIA "Today in Energy" brief has another understated but devastating smackdown for California's energy pretensions.  In one sentence, today's brief essentially says, "Without lots of natural gas-fired power, California is screwed."  Of course that's not the actual language — these are government analysts were talking about.  But it's not hard to read between the lines.

California got $1.3 billion in wildfire relief.  Victims have received nothing.  California has received more than $1.3 billion in federal aid to rebuild after the 2017 wine country wildfires, the 2018 Camp fire in Butte County and other disasters from those years.  But disaster-affected homeowners and renters have yet to receive a single penny.  The cause: years-long federal and state bureaucratic delays.  As a result, renters like [Linda] Adrain are going without permanent housing while homeowners are unable to cobble together enough money to rebuild their homes.  In the Butte County town of Paradise, which was heavily damaged in the Camp fire, disaster victims are still living in cars and recreational vehicles on their properties as they await further financial assistance.

California utility may cut power to 1 million people.  Pacific Gas & Electric may cut power to over 1 million people on Sunday to prevent the chance of sparking wildfires as extreme fire weather returns to the region, the utility announced Friday.  The nation's largest utility said it could black out customers in 38 counties — including most of the San Francisco Bay Area — as weather forecasts called for a return of bone-dry, gusty weather that carries the threat of downing or fouling power lines or other equipment that in recent years have been blamed for igniting massive and deadly blazes in central and Northern California.

NBC: Say, You Know Who Turned Out To Be Right About Forest Fires?  Recall this discussion at the first presidential debate?  This turned into one of Donald Trump's more surprising moments, in which he exhibited preparation on a key piece of policy before facing off against Joe Biden.  Moderator Chris Wallace wanted to introduce climate change into the debate, and used the forest fires on the West Coast to frame the question.  Trump pushed back against the idea that climate change was responsible, and instead blamed bad forest management for the crisis:  [Transcript]  Biden actually avoided the forest-management issue in his answer, as the two of them got caught up in a testy exchange over the Green New Deal instead.  Instead, media outlets and pundits rushed to fill the gap by declaring this a form of climate-change denial.

Neglected Forest Management, Not Climate Change, Is Why California Is On Fire.  [Scroll down]  Further examination of the issue, however, shows that mitigation through prescribed burns and mechanical thinning could prevent the widespread destruction caused by these western wildfires.  In the past, conservationist policies in these states, especially California, have prevented the proper management needed to keep people and their land safe causing more intense and prolonged wildfires, not climate change.  Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that mitigation techniques such as clearing tinder material in these forests through prescribed burns can lower the intensity of these fires.  According to Michael Shellenberger, author, journalist, and environmental activist, claiming that climate change is the reason for the wildfires is misleading and prevents real, preventative solutions from being implemented.  "Climate change is real, but this monomaniacal focus on whether to use this obsession with it has meant that we've neglected the health of our forests and really missed an opportunity for conservation as well," Shellenberger recently told The Federalist.

California wildfires blamed on something else besides climate change.  This year, California's wildfires are being called the worst in state's history.  The governor and others claim climate change is the chief culprit.  But Lisa Fletcher has been tracking the golden state's fires for several years and finds the real problem might be something else.

PG&E plans to cut power to 89,000 customers in 16 California counties due to weather causing fire risks.  Pacific Gas & Electric plans to cut power to 89,000 customers in parts of 16 counties beginning early Sunday as dry, unseasonably hot conditions and strong winds continue to increase fire danger across much of Northern California, officials announced Saturday evening.  The shut-off will be in three phases and last until late Monday, officials said.

Largest California wildfire threatens marijuana growing area.  Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger U.S. wildfires to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California much drier.  A drier California means plants are more flammable.

The Editor says...
If "climate change has made California much drier," why hasn't it affected every other state?  Or at least the entire west coast?

Civilization Requires Collective Common Sense.  Large swaths of the American West are now charred by out-of-control wildfires. [...] A few veteran forest managers have been proverbial voices in the wilderness in recent years.  They warned that ignoring dead trees, limiting the sort of domestic animal grazing that reduces dead brush and dry foliage, forbidding timber companies from harvesting decaying timber, and preventing periodic controlled burns were collectively a prescription for the very disasters that now cloud Western skies with fires, smoke and air pollution.  In other words, pragmatic people once understood that tens of millions of dead trees were not to be left alone as mulch for premodern ecosystems.  In the present, the dried-up vegetation has served as veritable napalm, causing traditional fall wildfires to blow up into biblical conflagrations that consume homes, property and people.

California: The Golden State in Utter Decay.  The current crisis in California that is getting the most national attention is the plague of wildfires throughout much of the northern part of the state.  Such fires have ravaged the area for millennia, long before the presence of any European settlers, but that has not stopped California leftists and their media from pointing fingers at climate change and President Trump.  Avoiding responsibility for a crisis by blaming anyone and anything with even a remote chance of culpability is the California way — which leads to a failure to develop real solutions.  None of California's leaders, least of all Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, have accepted any responsibility for the government's role in the fires.  Evidence clearly shows that the decision by the state to revive "fire suppression" efforts, a practice that essentially delays the inevitable and results in even larger wildfires (and was mostly discontinued in the 1960s), has been a major contributor to the magnitude of this year's fires.  But has the government of California even paused to reconsider the strategy?  Sadly, no.

Newsom plays both sides in forest management fight as wildfires rage.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pointed out that the state's wildfires are located primarily on federal land — and he's right — but now he and other Democratic governors are trying to block the Trump administration's effort to speed up the clearing of overgrown, tinder-dry forests.  Twenty-three states, including California, Oregon and Washington, sued last month to stop the National Environmental Policy Act modernization, which would thin the regulatory thicket and red tape blamed for slowing down federal projects, including forest management on the government's extensive Western lands.  The NEPA lawsuit came as no surprise, given that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has sued the Trump administration 100 times, but critics accused California Democrats of putting their loyalty to the environmental movement and focus on climate change ahead of proven strategies for forest health.

It's Not About Climate Change.  It's no secret that dryer [or drier] wood burns more readily than wet wood.  Nor is it news that hotter, dryer weather will dry things faster.  What seems to be a secret from less self-evident to some is that parts of the West Coast get really hot and dry, over and over.  According to studies on past droughts, the recent ones in California are not even close to being the longest.  Some droughts have lasted more than a century.  It seems the past 100 years have actually been relatively wet.  Even if a one-degree-warmer world led to warmer West Coast forests, the high intensity of the recent wildfires can't be attributed to air temperatures being 109 degrees instead of 108.  The much bigger problem is fuel loading — the amount of dead wood and other organic matter on forest floors, compounded by a higher density of small trees.

Sorry, solar panels won't stop California's fires.  The massive fires raging in California are being blamed squarely on climate change.  Alongside ominous photographs of orange skies, the front page of the Sunday Los Angeles Times blared:  "California's Climate Apocalypse." Golden State Gov. Gavin Newsom says the cause is climate change.  Anyone who thinks differently, he insists, is in denial.  The governor is right that climate change is real, man-made and something we need to deal with smartly.  But the claim that the fires are caused by climate change is grossly misleading.  Translated into policy, it would steer the state to the worst way to help future Californians.  To understand why, it helps to know that California wildfires used to be much bigger.  This past decade, California has seen an average burnt area of 775,000 acres.  Before 1800, however, California typically saw between 4.4 and 11.9 million acres burn every year.

How environmentalists destroyed California's forests.  Once upon a time, forests in California were logged, grazed, and competently managed.  It wasn't always perfect, but generally it worked.  Fires, which are a natural part of that ecosystem, were generally small — not just benign but beneficial.  Land management focused on keeping the forest healthy for all involved, whether they were loggers, ranchers, fishermen, hunters, homeowners, or backpackers.  But then things started to change.  Groups such as the Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council began to drive a myopic agenda of protecting environmental interests at all costs.  Logging was shut down.  Grazing was banned.  Controlled burning and undergrowth clearance were challenged and subjected to draconian regulations.  Fires were put out as quickly as possible.  So the trees grew closer and closer together.  Undergrowth, unchecked by grazing, cutting, or burning, grew thick and tall enough to reach the branches of mature trees.  The forests became thick and overgrown, but man, they sure looked nice and green from a scenic overlook.

Don't fall for simplistic claims about wildfires and global warming.  [Scroll down]  Every fire is different.  The reasons each fire turns out to be milder or more dangerous than the others can include a wide variety of causes and effects.  Random day-to-day wind patterns can turn a seemingly harmless blaze into a massive conflagration.  The frequency and severity of fire can also be affected by long-term drought patterns that predate modern mass carbon emissions by centuries.  Oceanic weather patterns such as "La Nina" can also change the pattern and course of Western U.S. wildfires, and man's increasing encroachment on natural habitats tends to make them more damaging to human life and property.  Does that mean global warming doesn't affect wildfires?  Of course not.  We assume it has some effect.

The Editor says...
Until the last few sentences, the writer was making sense.  But then he [or she] lost me.  There is no extraordinary global warming.  Therefore global warming is not a factor in the California wildfires.  Until there is about 400 degrees of warming, hot weather won't ignite trees.

Six accused of starting Oregon blazes amid devastating wildfire season.  At least six men in Oregon have been accused of intentionally setting blazes during the state's devastating wildfire season, according to a report.  There is no evidence that the suspects were motivated by politics, despite conspiracies that such an animus has fueled the fires that have burned more than a million acres, OregonLive reported.  Instead, some of the blazes were attributed to petty beef, relationship troubles and enjoying the "smell of smoke," officials said.  One of the alleged arsonists, Jedediah Ezekiel Fulton, 39, was discovered setting fires July 28 in the woods outside Glide after he became upset with a member of a local forest protection organization, the outlet reported.

California's Disastrous Forest Mismanagement.  Fire plays a natural role in regulating the lifecycles of trees and vegetation.  In the pre-industrial era, more than 4 million acres burned in California annually.  "Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period," according to environmental scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.  Fortunately, we now have the knowledge and technology to diminish the frequency and extent of wildfires.  Prescribed burns and proactive clearing of dead vegetation are known to reduce the speed and intensity of fires by diminishing the stock of combustible material, but federal and state agencies have long put a monomaniacal emphasis on suppression, rather than prevention, of fires.

Western Wildfires Are Due to Arson and Stupidity, Not Climate Change.  Unfortunately, we are living in a world where facts don't matter much anymore.  For instance, the wildfires that have swept across the western United States over the past few weeks are being almost universally blamed on climate change, even though the facts tell otherwise.  The fires in California and Oregon are not due to climate change.  They are due to arson and sheer stupidity on the part of many, including those who are responsible for the environmental stewardship that is supposed to prevent them in the first place.

9-in-10 wildfires are set by humans.  Dear Facebook, Before you flag this as fake news, my source is the National Weather Service.  NWS reported that 87% of the wildfires were caused by humans this year — 7,072 in California alone.  Not all were arson, of course, because humans are pretty careless.  But enough are arson to cause concern in light of Democrats setting cities aflame this summer.  The last thing we want is the Antifa arm of the Democrat Party expanding into rural areas.

National Weather Service reveals 87% of all wildfires this year have been caused by humans.  The Almeda fire in Oregon that has so far killed two is now under investigation as a potential arson attack after a body was discovered near the start of the blaze.  Ashland Police Chief Tighe O'Meara announced Thursday a criminal investigation has been opened into the cause of the fire saying he believes the circumstances around the fire are 'suspicious'.  Investigators are looking into the possible connection between the blaze and the death of an unidentified individual, whose body was found near the origin of the fire.  This comes as the National Weather Service (NWS) revealed a staggering 87 percent of all wildfires that have ravaged America this year were caused by humans.

It Turns Out a Number of Fires on the West Coast Aren't Because of 'Climate Change'.  The left continually tells us that "climate change" is the reason behind wildfires.  In fact, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee (D) even went so far as saying we should call them "climate fires."  Most of the West Coast — Washington State, Oregon, California, and Idaho — are on fire.  While the left is pushing their climate change theory, police are arresting arsonists for sparking these dangerous fires.  A 41-year-old man was arrested in Oregon for starting one of the two origins of the Almeda fire, located just outside of Medford.  Oregon State Fire Marshal's office spokesman Rich Tyler said Michael Jarrod Bakkela started one of the fires, which eventually merged to create one giant wildfire. [...] Bakkela is being held on 15 counts of criminal mischief and 14 counts of reckless endangerment.

Wildfires Will Become Worse Thanks To Decades-Old Liberal Policies, Says Fire Expert.  Former President Bill Clinton made a significant change to federal land management nearly 30 years ago that created the conditions necessary for massive wildfires to consume portions of the West Coast, according to one fire expert who predicted the problem years ago.  Shortly before leaving office in 2001, Clinton limited the ability of the United States Forest Service to thin out a dense thicket of foliage and downed trees on federal land to bring the West into a pristine state, Bob Zybach, an experienced forester with a PhD in environmental science, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.  The former president's decision created a ticking time bomb, Zybach argues.  "If you don't start managing these forests, then they are going to start burning up.  Thirty years later, they are still ignoring it," said Zybach, who spent more than 20 years as a reforestation contractor.  He was referring to warnings he made years ago, telling officials that warding off prescribed burns in Oregon and California creates kindling fuelling fires.  Such rules make it more difficult to deploy prescribed burns, which are controlled burns designed to cull all of the underbrush in forests to lessen the chance of massive fires, Zybach noted.

Fire Fanaticism.  The real reason for the large fires is the overloading of our western forests over the last several decades, which can be laid at the feet of excessive and misguided fire suppression starting almost a century ago, and environmentalist opposition to any pro-active forest management on public lands.  Environmentalists without fail run to the courthouse to block every Forest Service forest thinning plans, delaying and sometime blocking sensible forest management.

Antifa Claims To Have Ignited The Fires Burning America.  It's a terrible thing for the American public to be so stupid to think that any of this has to do with climate, and to be so cloistered and gullible that you must believe the FedGov when they tell you this has nothing to do with the communist revolution.  When the enemy tells you exactly what he's doing and why, and when people refuse to believe it, the enemy is winning.

No Canadian fires
I guess the fires lack Canadian passports.  [It could be that most of the fires in the western U.S. are cases of arson.  If there are no such fires in Canada or Mexico, that would strengthen the argument.  But it is also possible that Canada doesn't have a system to report the locations of such fires.]


Four people [have been] arrested for arson for deliberately starting blazes along West Coast.  Four people have been arrested for arson for deliberately starting blazes along the West Coast as the death toll from the devastating wildfires climbed to 29 and Oregon officials warned they are prepare for a 'mass fatality event'.  Two men in Washington state, one man in Oregon and one woman in California are facing arson charges for setting fires in areas that were already grappling with deadly blazes.  At least 20 have been killed in California, eight in Oregon and one in Washington state as thousands of firefighters struggle to bring the blazes under control and the governors of California and Oregon told residents to expect more fatalities in the coming days.

The Editor says...
Oh!  So it wasn't global warming after all.  Shocking.

The Green Road to Blackouts.  California leads the way to electricity blackouts, closely followed by South Australia.  They both created this problem by taxing, banning, delaying or demolishing reliable coal, nuclear, gas or hydro generators while subsidising and promoting unreliable electricity from the sickly green twins — solar and wind.  All supposed to solve a global warming crisis that exists only in academic computer models.  Energy policy should be driven by proven reliability, efficiency and cost, not by green politics.  Wind and solar will always be prone to blackouts for three reasons. [...]

Wildfires in California emit more CO2 annually than cars.  Since California has lost nearly 1.67 million acres to wildfires through August 31 this year and based on the assumptions above, about 131.2 million tons of carbon dioxide have been emitted to the environment in eight months due to wildfires.  California had 15.1 million vehicles registered in 2018.  Assume all are fuel burning for this exercise.  According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, fossil fueled cars emit 4.6 metric tons per year (22 mpg and 11,500 miles driven per year basis).  That means California cars emit 76.4 million tons (not metric) of carbon dioxide annually.  California is on a track to double the annual emissions of vehicles by wildfires in 2020.

Left-Wing Agitator Arrested for Starting Fire in Washington, Suspected of Starting Two Other Wildfires.  A Washington man with a history of left-wing agitation was arrested Wednesday evening [9/9/2020] after he allegedly started a fire in the brush along a highway near Tacoma.  Jeffrey Acord, 36, was charged for reckless burning in the second degree.  He is now reportedly also a suspect in two other Washington wildfires. [...] The suspected antifa militant has a history of anti-police protesting and encounters with law enforcement, court records show.  According to his Facebook, Acord also attended a Black Lives Matter march in Seattle on June 5 of this year.

Barack Obama's Latest Reason to Vote for Joe Biden Is Actually a Reason to Vote Trump.  Barack Obama, the Left's erstwhile patron saint, appears to have taken his deputy Rahm Emanuel's advice to heart:  "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."  On Wednesday [9/9/2020], Obama rushed to blame climate change for the wildfires ravaging the West Coast, insisting that Californians' "lives" depend on Joe Biden beating Donald Trump in November.  As usual, Obama has the entire situation backward:  Climate change isn't the culprit behind the infernos, poor forest management is — and the climate regulations Obama champions have prevented the controlled burns necessary for keeping the fires in check.

Environmentalists Destroyed California's Forests.  Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change.  But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that "clearing undergrowth would save trees," and that "years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires."  But very little was done.  And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States. [...] Year after year, environmentalists litigated and lobbied to stop efforts to clear the forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal, and controlled burns.  Meanwhile, natural fires were suppressed and the forests became more and more overgrown.  The excessive biomass competed for the same water, soil, and light a healthier forest would have used, rendering all of the trees and underbrush unhealthy.  It wasn't just excess biomass that accumulated, but dried out and dead biomass.  What happened among California's tall stands of Redwood and Ponderosa Pine also happened in its extensive chaparral.  Fire suppression along with too many environmentalist-inspired bureaucratic barriers to controlled burns and undergrowth removal turned the hillsides and canyons of Southern California into tinderboxes.

To stop wildland fires, forestry, not climate policy, is the priority.  Smoke from forest fires filled the air in Western Washington and immediately the finger of blame was pointed at climate change.  Prior to the recent fires, the 2020 fire season had been extremely quiet.  No matter how the season ends, however, blaming climate change is politics, not science.  Not all the lands burned in the last week are forests, but forestland is a major source of the smoke we are seeing.  The science is quite clear that timber harvests — including commercial timber harvests — are necessary to reduce the number of fire-prone, unhealthy forests.

Scenes From The Endtimes.  Not to get all biblical on you, but have you checked out these scenes from the West Coast? [Numerous photos]

After rolling blackouts, California regulators voted to let gas powered plants stay open a few more years.  There were rolling blackouts in California last month on two consecutive days.  The reason for the blackouts wasn't a mystery.  There was a heatwave across the region and as the sun went down and California's solar generation started to fade, the California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) simply couldn't find enough power from other sources to meet the demand.  The blackouts were ordered to prevent the entire grid from entering a brownout.  Several outlets including NPR and the Wall Street Journal made the point that California's push for green energy was partly responsible for the situation.  In fact, as the LA Times pointed out, the California Public Utilities Commission had been warning about this exact scenario since last year.

The Decline and Fall of California in Two Maps.  It was known for nearly a week that we were in for record-breaking heat this weekend, and remember that as it is a holiday weekend, most industry (that is still left in the state) is shut down, which ought to have made it easier to secure enough power for citizens. [...] You too can have a decrepit grid like this when you pay twice the national average for electricity that doesn't work when you need it.

Massive California wildfire sparked by smoke-making machine at gender reveal party [according to] officials.  One of the massive California wildfires that erupted this weekend was sparked by a smoke-making device at a gender-reveal party, according to authorities.  The fire started Saturday morning in San Bernardino County's El Dorado Ranch Park, east of Los Angeles.  A "smoke generating pyrotechnic device" used at the party caused the fire, Cal Fire said in a news release that also warned residents that a fire can quickly start amid the state's especially hot and dry conditions this time of year.  No charges have been filed in connection with the start of the blaze, which has now spread across roughly 7,050 acres and resulted in more than 500 emergency workers being sent to the area to fight the fire and evacuate residents and park visitors.

Family behind party that sparked California wildfire could owe millions.  The family behind the gender reveal party that sparked a California wildfire could be hit with charges — and a massive bill to cover the costs of putting out the blazes, authorities said.  Cal Fire spokesman Bennet Milloy said the group could be on the hook for millions to cover the hundreds of firefighters, helicopters and planes employed to tackle the El Dorado Fire, the Daily Mail reported.  They also could face a "variety of charges," including arson, which carries a sentence of up to nine years, Milloy said.

The Editor says...
Yeah, but is it a boy or a girl, or something in between?

California burning.  In a remarkably honest Mother Jones article, Elizabeth Shogren explained that the wildfires that have been terrorizing Northern California in the late 2010s have been caused by more than a century of fire suppression, resulting in overgrowth which supplied fires with plenty of fuel to burn through.  For thousands of years previously, Native Americans managed the land with controlled burns, creating secure habitats and preferable hunting conditions — what was necessary for continuation of their way of life.  Traditional practices stand in contrast to our own environmental policies.  According to a Reason Foundation study, the Clinton-era anti-logging policies resulted in runaway growth of tree density.  When in the 1990s the Spotted Owl was placed on the endangered species list, culling plummeted and wildfires became increasingly catastrophic throughout the West.  I think the Spotted Owl is very cute, of course, but it would be nice if we could find a way to live in harmony with this flock.  I doubt the birds like the forest fires either.  In the meantime, California politicians have resorted to their favorite demagogic tropes:  blaming climate change and corporations.

Blackouts and Fires Caused by California's Ineffective Green Policies.  In the soft warmth of spring the swallows famously return to Capistrano, but in recent years they are followed by what seems inevitable summer power outages and fires.  This is not as pleasant an experience for Californians as the return of our favored feathered companions.  Every summer, usually around this time of year, we get our inevitable heat waves.  In the past, we used to endure them without fearing our lights — and computers — would be shut down, and our houses left in ruins.  No more.  Almost every year we do not just have a fire season, we have a conflagration.  Millions of acres get scorched across the state, accompanied by mass evacuations.  Meanwhile, electricity is cut off to millions more, and the state, already reeling from an extraordinary economic decline, with the sixth-highest unemployment rate among the states, continues its pell-mell rush into the 12th Century.

The Plague of Renewable Portfolio Standards.  Wind and solar are feasible only because the operators of the grid agree to do everything possible to accept whatever amount of wind or solar is coming their way at any time.  They assume this posture toward wind and solar because that is required by various regulations and contracts.  All the other sources of power are ordered to decrease or increase output as needed to balance the amount of wind or solar power flowing at any moment.  If wind and solar are minor players, the burden of accommodating their erratic nature is small.  If they become big players, the burden starts to be a serious problem.  In some places, like California, it's starting to get serious.

California Apocalypto.  It is now August in California.  So we can expect the following from our postmodern state government.  There are the now-normal raging wildfires in the coastal and Sierra foothills.  And they will be greeted as if they are not characteristic threats of 500 years of settled history, but leveraged as proof of global warming as well as the state's abject inability to put them out.  When the inept state can't extinguish them as it has in the past, it suggests that it's more "natural" to let them burn.  Jerry Brown's team told us that the drought's toll — millions of dead trees and tens of millions of acres of parched grass and calcified shrubs on hillsides — provided a natural source of food and shelter for bugs and birds and thus need not be grazed or thinned or harvested.  And so the wages of drought could be in a sense good for an "ecosystem" that otherwise proved to be green napalm for the people of foothill communities.

An old Indian trick.  As wise stewards of the land, North America's Indians routinely started forest fires.  They wanted grazing grounds for the animals they hunted and open spaces to live and hunt on.  So before Columbus arrived, there was a lot less forested land than we have today.  The Europeans put an end to the Indian fires, and for centuries, they harvested the forests for timber.  But that has ended in many parts of the country, California in particular.  After the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco was rebuilt using lumber from the Santa Cruz forest, just south of the city.  But I don't believe it's been harvested since. [...] If the Indians managed the land, the fires they started would have resulted in the firebreaks necessary to stop the spread of a forest fire.  Or if this forest had been managed according to the best practice, limited timber cutting would have been allowed, creating man-made firebreaks.  But because the state of California is governed by lunatics, it just burns.

What Is The Cause Of The Recent Power Blackouts In California?  You may have read in the past few days that residents of California have been experiencing rolling power blackouts.  This has occurred in the middle of a strong heat wave, meaning that large numbers of people have had their air conditioning, light, refrigeration, and everything else dependent on electricity, go out just when they are most needed.  The blackouts have not been the result of technical failures of the grid, but rather have been intentionally imposed by the electricity system operator (known as CAISO — California Independent System Operator) via the various local utilities.  So what has caused these blackouts?  The official explanation is that the heat wave is the cause.  It has just gotten so unusually hot that demand has risen beyond the capacity of the system.  Many articles in the media reporting on the situation go further to associate the unusual heat with "climate change."  This explanation is complete[ly false].  Yes, there is a strong heat wave going on, at least in certain areas of the state, but it is not unusual in historical context.

Democrats Promise to Bring California-Style Blackouts to Everyone.  Gotta say, it was bold of Democratic Party convention organizers to let voters know they plan on passing federal energy policies that would transform the rest of the country into California.  The Golden State is experiencing rolling blackouts even as the Democrats speak.  Millions of people are having their electrical power turned off in the middle of a heat wave — more specifically, their air conditioners.  Blackouts aren't merely an inconvenience, it is an economic drag and dangerous to vulnerable populations.

Green California has the nation's worst power grid.  More than a million Californians suffered power blackouts last Friday evening [8/14/2020].  When high temperatures caused customer demand to exceed the power available, California electrical utilities used rotating outages to force a reduction in demand.  The California grid is the worst in the nation, with green energy policies pursued by the state likely furthering reduced grid reliability.  At 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Pacific Gas and Electric, California's biggest utility, began shutting off power in rolling outages to force a reduction in demand.  Southern California Edison also denied power to homes, beginning just before 7 p.m.  Shutoffs impacted a rotating group of up to 2 million customers until 11 p.m.  The California Independent System Operator declared a Stage Three Electrical Emergency, the first such emergency since 2001. Spot electricity prices soared to more than $1,000 per megawatt-hour, more than 10 times the usual price.

Why California's Climate Policies Are Causing Electricity Blackouts.  Millions of Californians were denied electrical power and thus air conditioning during a heatwave, raising the risk of heatstroke and death, particularly among the elderly and sick.  The blackouts come at a time when people, particularly the elderly, are forced to remain indoors due to Covid-19.  At first, the state's electrical grid operator last night asked customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use.  But after power reserves fell to dangerous levels it declared a "Stage 3 emergency" cutting off power to people across the state at 6:30 pm.  The immediate reason for the black-outs was the failure of a 500-megawatt power plant and an out-of-service 750-megawatt unit not being available.

California forced to defend green goals amid blackouts.  Rolling blackouts have forced California to defend its ambitious renewable energy plans.  In recent days, Republican politicians have blamed the blackouts on California's efforts to limit fossil fuel energy use and phase out nuclear energy.  The outages were imposed on a rotating basis over the weekend amid a severe heat wave made worse by climate change.  "This week in California, there were rolling blackouts because the radical Democrats have mandated impossible restrictions on energy production," President Trump said Thursday during remarks in Old Forge, Pennsylvania.  Trump has also sought to link California's woes with the climate policy plans of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.  Biden, in his revamped climate plans unveiled in July, sets a target to eliminate carbon emissions from the power sector by 2035.  That's even more ambitious than California's goal, which targets 100% carbon-free power by 2045.

Wildfires, Blackouts, High Gas Prices:  Californians Fight Familiar Foes Amid Pandemic.  Californians are struggling with raging wildfires, roving blackouts, and sky high gas taxes while simultaneously dealing with government-imposed economic lockdowns and a pandemic that has so far killed more than 11,000 people in the state.  Northern California had roughly 33 active wildfires Wednesday that had burned more than 141,000 acres as they spread, media reports show.  The ongoing fires are accompanied by an intense heatwave, Reuters reported, that has prompted citizens to crank up their air conditioners, placing pressure on California's already-taxed energy grid and triggering roving blackouts.

Californian Blackout Fury:  "It's Not Just the Heat, It's Also the Anti-Nuclear Power Stupidity".  The utter failure of renewables to deliver during the Californian heatwave appears to be creating a surge of interest in reliable energy. [...] Renewables have failed to deliver this time, and will do so again.  Californian anger at the blackouts will eventually spill over into action, the scrapping of renewables in favour of reliable energy sources.  The only question is, how many blackouts it will take before Californian voters get the message?

For Their Own Safety — Amid a Heat Wave — LA Mayor Shuts Off Power to a Party-Hosting Home.  In Los Angeles, it's lights out for those who don't listen to the mayor.  In case you've not heard, LA's in the midst of a heat wave.  And if you haven't before felt the West Coast's severe summer simmer, imagine there's an oven heated to 350 degrees.  And your spleen is inside.  Nonetheless, on Wednesday [8/19/2020], Mayor Eric Garcetti shut off some residents' power — and, therefore, their AC.  Why?  Public health and safety.  As reported by The Daily Wire, a group of TikTok personalities share an abode in the Hollywood Hills.  And according to police, they've recently hosted at least two shameless shindigs.  That, of course, goes against the city's COVID clampdown.

The Editor says...
The Covid crackdowns are all about compliance and submission.  They have nothing to do with public health.  Maybe they did for the first few weeks, but they don't now.

Rolling blackouts, no Uber, businesses flee — California is Democrats' dream for America.  After spending the bulk of his lieutenant governorship waging war against California's last remaining nuclear power plant, Gov. Gavin Newsom is begging residents to turn up their thermostats as the state battles excruciating heat waves, roaring wildfires, and now, state-sanctioned blackouts to preserve its worst-in-America power grid.  California's power is not as carbon-efficient as clean nuclear energy, nor is it as cheap as traditional mass fossil fuels.  If you're looking to drink your problems away at your favorite dive bar, too bad; Newsom shut the indoor dining rooms.  If you want to sit on a patio, you have to seek out the establishments that survived the state's shutdown.  Soon enough, you might be better off just binging in your basement, as the California machine has mobilized to abolish the ride-sharing apps that revolutionized the state.

CAISO President:  California Power Grid teetering close to the edge of collapse.  I sent an email to a relative earlier today predicting that politicians in California would start leaning on system operators to reduce their safety margin or contingency power in order to avoid rolling blackouts.  I had no idea they were teetering this close to the edge already.  In response to rolling blackouts over the weekend, California ISO President Steve Berber warned that California must maintain its current electricity reserves or risk 'collapse of the entire system of California and perhaps the entire West.'

California's Power Failure Is A Frightening Preview Of Democrats' 'Green New Deal'.  Among the nightmares ready to descend on America, should the Democrats win in November, is the so-called Green New Deal.  It promises lots of renewable green energy at a "modest" $2 trillion cost.  Just one more scary, extreme policy idea out of the all-digital 2020 Democratic National Convention.  Sound good to you?  If so, take a look at California, where some of the worst of these ideas are already being tried, with disastrous results.  The state, once known for its plentiful, cheap and reliable energy supplies, is now dealing with rolling blackouts as its green energy infrastructure buckles under the strain of summer heat.  This week, as the DNC holds its virtual convention, some 3 million California homes could be periodically without power as some areas experience 100-degree-plus heat.  In addition to major discomfort and inconvenience, such blackouts if sustained can be dangerous to health — especially for the elderly and kids.

Green energy push blamed in California's rolling blackouts.  California's electricity grid picked an inconvenient moment to stumble, at least for Democrats seeking to drum up support this week for Joseph R. Biden's $2 trillion green-energy plan at the Democratic National Convention.  The Golden State's ambitious renewable portfolio standard is coming under fire as the state's energy grid buckles under the strain of an oppressive heatwave, prompting rolling blackouts that have left millions without power as the state moves to replace nuclear and natural gas as energy sources with solar and wind.  California seeks to generate 60% of electricity via renewables by 2030, but Mr. Biden's Green New Deal is even more aggressive, calling for a 100% carbon-free grid by 2035 "to meet the existential threat of climate change while creating millions of jobs with a choice to join a union."

California is reduced to third-world status.  Although I left California some time ago, I'm still connected to alerts from the emergency services in my former Bay Area home.  That's how I first learned that California has been suffering from rolling blackouts as citizens try to cope with a heat wave. [...] Once upon a time, California had a power grid that was large enough to serve the state's population.  As the population grew, though, the grid did not.  Additionally, California had five nuclear power plants that helped provide stable energy.  Two years ago, though, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to close the last nuclear power plant in California, which PG&E owned, although that plant will remain online until 2025.

Here's Why California Can't Keep The Power on During Heat Wave — and Newsom's Deflecting.  [Scroll down]  Rolling blackouts affected more than 200,000 customers in the Bay Area Saturday night, but were averted Sunday.  By Monday morning the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the entity that oversees the state's power grid, warned that "millions" of Californians would be affected by rolling blackouts Monday afternoon, and Gov. Newsom sprung into action.  Just kidding.  Gov. Newsom leaped into "Blame" mode.  Since demand was less than what was seen in July 2006, and no blackouts were needed then, why do we need them now?  Newsom knows the answer — the stupid energy policies that he and Gov. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown before him enacted — but instead promised an "investigation," likely headed by a blue-ribbon panel, since he's fond of such committees.

California Issues First Rolling Blackouts Since 2001, As Heat Wave Bakes Western U.S..  California electricity providers instituted rolling blackouts Friday night [8/14/2020] — the first since 2001 — as an intense and prolonged heat wave settled over much of the Western U.S.  Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have experienced brief power outages through the evening, after the body that manages most of the state's electric utilities declared a Stage 3 emergency to help reduce stress on the larger grid.  Electricity demand surged through the day as temperatures topped the triple digits in many parts of the state and people cranked up fans and air-conditioning units to try and stay cool.  The emergency order was rescinded before midnight and power was fully restored to all affected households, the California Independent System Operator said in a tweet.

PG&E starts rotating power outages impacting up to 250,000 customers at a time.  San Francisco-based power provider PG&E Corp said on Friday it has started rotating power outages at the direction of California's grid operator, impacting about 200,000 to 250,000 customers at a time, given the strain on the power grid during the statewide heatwave.  The company said in a statement it is not calling a public safety power shut-off, which is conducted during specific high fire threat conditions.  PG&E said its outages, directed by the California Independent System Operator, are expected to impact up to 250,000 customers at a time in rotations of one hour each.

California Will Use Diesel This Summer to Help Keep Lights On.  Despite environmental concerns, California will allow PG&E Corp. to use diesel-powered mobile generators to keep some electricity flowing when the utility proactively cuts power to prevent live wires from sparking fires in high wind.  State regulators signed off Thursday [6/11/2020] on PG&E's plan to use about 450 megawatts of diesel generation to power homes, businesses, hospitals and other critical facilities as part of the utility's effort to reduce disruptions during the shutoffs.  Last fall, regulators criticized PG&E for intentionally blacking out millions of customers to prevent power lines from sparking fires during dry, windy conditions.

When Silicon Valley Goes Dark This Time, There Will Be No Refuge.  Blackouts that hit millions of Californians in 2019 could be doubly calamitous this year with tech giants Google, Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. among the many companies keeping offices closed until the fall or later in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic.  If utilities cut power again, home offices set up during the pandemic could go dark and stay dark for days, and they'll have no corporate offices to flee to for power.  In October 2019, more than 3 million people were affected by a series of rolling blackouts over more than a week as PG&E Corp. and Edison International tried to prevent live wires from sparking wildfires.  Call it a collision of crises.  Blackouts could limit California's push to revive an economy largely paralyzed by stay-at-home orders this spring.  The state, utilities and individual companies are all seeking ways to deal with blackouts before a wildfire season forecast to be worse than normal.

California's governor says he's ready to take over embattled PG&E.  One year after filing for bankruptcy, PG&E has worked out deals to borrow money and guarantee more than $25 billion in payouts to wildfire victims, insurers and local municipalities.  It's even come to terms with bondholders.  As a result, its shares have skyrocketed 37 percent so far in January.  Mizuho upgraded the stock this week to a "buy."  That optimism may be premature.  The company has to exit Chapter 11 by a crucial June 30 deadline, and there is one huge remaining obstacle:  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has long talked about a state takeover of the company.

Experts blame humans starting blazes for 'major shift' in cause of US wildfires.  The number of human-caused wildfires has increased in recent decades, sparking a shift in what is 'normal' for the devastating blazes, research has found.  The new study of wildfires in America between 1984 and 2016 has found that the leading cause is 'shifting away from lightning and towards human activity'.  In the past, the strongest fires were caused by natural ignition types, like lightning strikes or El Niño winds, which also tended to be seasonal and easier to predict.  Human-caused, or anthropogenic, fires can be caused intentionally, by arson, or accidentally, for example by dropped cigarettes, fireworks or other negligence.

Climate Experts Suggest Trump Was Right When He Blamed California's Wildfires On Land Management.  Climate experts are apparently backing President Donald Trump's repeated arguments that California's wildfires were a result of poor land management rather than climate change-driven, E&E reported Thursday [1/9/2020].  Roughly 75% of damage stemming from California's wildfires was a result of "the way we manage lands and develop our landscape," Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at the University of California, Berkeley, said Wednesday at a conference in Washington.  Wildfires used to burn through 4.5 million acres a year in the 18th century, when indigenous communities populated California's countryside, Stephens noted.  "Fire was almost as important as rain to ecosystems," he added.  Stephens was not the only researcher at the National Council for Science and the Environment to made that point.

How power shutoffs are changing California's way of life.  At all levels of government — from state officials to small-town mayors — California leaders are in uncharted territory, and scrambling to adjust their plans and operations to the realities of regular disruption.  For now, their only answer to calamitous wildfires is shutting off power to millions of residents in advance, which residents now lament as a man-made disaster.  Mike McGuire, the state senator representing the Santa Rosa area devastated by fires in 2017, said California is "the canary in the coal mine" as climate change threatens to upend life across the world.  Residents in some of California's most bucolic settings are stuck figuring it out on their own, rich and poor, urban and rural alike.

PG&E begins new mass power shutoff likely to affect up to 450,000 people.  California's largest power utility began shutting off power Wednesday [11/20/2019] to hundreds of thousands of people in 18 northern and central counties in the state as the region faces extreme fire weather that has lasted since October.  Up to 450,000 people could be affected by the outage, according to the LA Times.  A virtually rainless fall has left brush bone-dry and forecasts called for low humidity and winds gusting at times to 55 mph.

California Burns, Gavin Newsom Fiddles.  "Forest management" is not an original concept with the current administration.  The clearing of debris from forest floors, the considered culling of trees to create fire-breaks, and the building of better access roads to and from forested areas make abundant good sense.  So does the idea of not locating rural communities too close to the wilderness, and of making housing closer in to urban areas more affordable.  But even as the president emphasizes such cautionary measures, he is dismissed as an ignorant nuisance.  Those who are allowed an opinion on the subject must first pledge allegiance to "global warming" as Public Enemy Number One.  (Next to Trump himself, of course!)  On the other hand, those who question the extent of man's role in climate change are labeled "flat earthers" by a global warming establishment that unscientifically cherry-picks opinions among scientists and excludes those that contradict the party line.

California's Burning.  Public utility companies are the antithesis of the free market.  They combine the worst of both worlds — a profit motive married to complete government regulation and control.  These are government-granted monopolies that operate at the behest of regulators and often are indeed poorly managed. [...] The other big issue has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with climate-change policies.  It involves inadequate brush clearance, which has provided fuel for the fires.  To its credit, the Newsom administration is trying to increase some brush-clearance measures, but its difficulty in doing so speaks to the broader problem.  "In March, the governor declared a state of emergency that exempted the projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, a law mandating an in-depth analysis of a development's impacts on land, water, species and other elements," Scientific American explained.  "Clearances under CEQA can take months or years, Newsom aides said.  State officials argued they're still conducting analyses to ensure projects don't hurt species or natural or tribal resources."

Was There Another Reason for Electricity Shutdowns in California?  The blades of the wind turbine are airfoils, just like the wings of an airplane.  Adjusting the pitch (angle) of the blades allows the rotor to maintain constant speed, which, in turn, allows the generator to maintain the constant speed it needs to safely deliver power to the grid.  However, there's a limit to blade pitch adjustment.  When the wind is blowing so hard that pitch adjustment is no longer possible, the turbine shuts down.  That's the cut-out speed.  Now consider how California's power generation profile has changed. [...] By 2018, the state's renewable portfolio had jumped to 43.8 percent of total generation, with wind and solar now accounting for 17.9 percent of total generation.  That's a lot of power to depend on from inherently unreliable sources.  Thus, it wouldn't be at all surprising to learn that PG&E didn't stop delivering power out of fear of starting fires, but because it knew it wouldn't have power to deliver once high winds shut down all those wind turbines.

Is California Becoming Premodern?  More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.  Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment.  The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.

How Big-Government Regulation Contributed to California's Wildfires.  Fires are nothing new in California, and there's something of an interesting history to them that used to not be nearly as tragic as we see today.  Chuck DeVore, vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, reminds his readers at Forbes that as "a citizen soldier in the California National Guard for two decades, I often heard the gallows humor that California's four seasons were:  flood, fire, earthquake, and riot."  DeVore takes to task the editorial board at the Sacramento Bee for their commentary around the Carr Fire of 2018, in which they suggested that the recent fires are the result of "climate change, for real and in real time.  We were warned that the atmospheric buildup of man-made greenhouse gas would eventually be an existential threat."  "The problem with the Bee's editorial is that making a passionate argument is no substitute for the truth," DeVore writes.

Gavin Newsome.  Your Carbon Offsets Are Burning.  Those who leave their energy-guzzling multi-million-dollar mansions when they fly off on their private jets to save-the-planet climate change conferences like to ease their consciences and explain their hypocrisy by pointing to their carbon offsets like paying for trees to be planted somewhere that might mature in a hundred years or so.  There are a lot of trees in California and a good number of them are on fire, thanks to environmental regulations and policies that are supposed to protect the environment but are in fact destroying it.  The irony in California that the very trees that are supposed to be sucking up those nasty carbon emissions are now a major producer of carbon emissions.

Here's How State Regulators Played A Role In California's Rolling Blackouts, Wildfires.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other critics are blasting the public utility company responsible for rolling blackouts, but some experts argue regulators' obsession with climate change is partially to blame.  Newsom suggested Friday [11/1/2019] taking over Pacific Gas & Electric, a public utility company that shut off electricity recently to nearly 1 million customers to prevent potential wildfires.  The California Democrat argued that PG&E's greed and corruption are leading to the massive blackouts.  "It's about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change.  It's about corporate greed meeting climate change.  It's about decades of mismanagement," Newsom told reporters on Oct. 25.

California Is Becoming Unlivable.  Right now, wildfires are scorching tens of thousands of acres in California, choking the air with smoke, spurring widespread prophylactic blackouts, and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.  Right now, roughly 130,000 Californians are homeless, and millions more are shelling out far more in rent than they can afford, commuting into expensive cities from faraway suburbs and towns, or doubling up in houses and apartments.  Wildfires and lack of affordable housing — these are two of the most visible and urgent crises facing California, raising the question of whether the country's dreamiest, most optimistic state is fast becoming unlivable.  Climate change is turning it into a tinderbox; [...]

The Editor says...
Whoa, there!  The state was turned into a tinderbox by tree-hugging left-wing Democrats who mismanaged the state for decades.  The climate has not changed.  Does anyone really believe that the climate in California is hot enough to ignite trees?

California's Gavin Newsom, now running scared.  [Scroll down]  PG&E has no money to put its electrical wires under the ground after all the "green mandates" the socialists in the California state assembly have foisted on them, forcing them to convert to pricey, unreliable and wire-transmitted solar and wind power instead of efficient, reliable, cheap fossil fuels.  That's a money pit right there.  Now PG&E has even less money to make even that happen and still supply reliable electricity what with all the billions in lawsuit payouts it must make to residents who have lost their homes in past wildfires based on this lack of investment.  Why did that happen?  Not just the greenie mandates for wind and solar power from the state central planners, the company also was forbidden to clear brush from its electrical lines.  Another greenie diktat from the top that didn't end well.

California Democrats waste billions on useless climate alarmist schemes while the state burns uncontrollably.  The Wall Street Journal published a superb article that exposes the government lunacy in California where its climate alarmist propaganda driven Democratic politicians have wasted tens of billions of dollars on energy schemes that are totally useless in having any meaningful impacts on global emissions levels while ignoring the statewide wildfire disaster that is destroying massive amounts of property, thousands of homes and taking hundreds of lives.

California blackouts are a self-inflicted mess — Don't just blame PG&E for the new Dark Ages.  California, the richest state in the nation — and one that's often portrayed as the progressive harbinger of the future for the rest of the country — has been hit with its latest Third World-style disaster.  On top of high poverty rates, skyrocketing homelessness, rising crime, and the return of medieval-sounding diseases, the state has been hit by a series of rolling, widespread blackouts.  Millions of Californians, many in the most densely populated parts of the country have had their power shut off by the utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric. [...] Though it's easy to criticize PG&E, which hardly looks good in this whole mess, there is a lot of blame to go around — and no, it doesn't have anything to do with "climate change."

PG&E Warns: 10 Years Of Power Shut Offs Coming To Californians.  California residents are facing up to a decade of widespread, precautionary, power shut-offs until Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., the bankrupt utility giant, will be able to prevent its power transmission lines from sparking fires, the company's top official said.  Californians could experience power shut-offs for the next ten years.  Chief Executive William D. Johnson said at an emergency meeting Friday of the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco, that ten years is a probable timeline.  "I think this is probably a 10-year timeline to get to a point where it's really ratcheted down significantly."  Of course, that isn't sitting well with Californians or politicians.

The Editor says...
In other words, the problem will persist for at least ten years, or until politicians with some common sense take over and start managing the forests more effectively.  In the meantime, you should shop for a generator, or install a Tesla Powerwall!

California Faces "Biggest Blackout Ever" As 2.5 Million PG&E Customers May Have No Power For Days.  Earlier this week we joked that with PG&E now scrambling to enforce intentional blackouts every time there are powerful winds for fears the bankrupt company's aged infrastructure could cause a new fire, "every time the wind blows California will become Venezuela."  Turns out it wasn't a joke.

California's blackouts are a cautionary tale, warns former CA Republican Party Chairman.  California power company PG&E is coming for residents' tax money and you could be next, former Chairman of the California Republican Party Tom Del Beccaro warned Saturday [10/26/2019]. [...] Arguing that "Democrats seeking their party's 2020 presidential nomination have already embraced some of the same Big Government and radical environmental policies that have brought blackouts to California — and could bring power outages and shortages to our entire nation should one of them become the next president."

California Is Burning and It's Not Because of 'Climate Change'.  California power company PG&E is preparing to pull the plug on 850,000 of its customers.  PG&E has been deliberately cutting power to its customers in an effort to avoid wildfires.  It isn't working.  Massive wildfires erupted in areas where PG&E provides service.  The Tick Fire has burned down several homes and caused the evacuation of more than 40,000 people so far, and other wildfires are burning throughout the state.  In Sonoma County, the Kincade Fire has already torched 34 square miles and destroyed 49 homes.  That fire was likely caused by a broken transmission line belonging to PG&E.  But PG&E's equipment couldn't start these huge wildfires without a bunch of dead brush fueling the flames.  As Chuck Devore writes in Forbes, "the outrageous cost to remove a few dead trees from private land is a consequence of California's Byzantine environmental regulatory patchwork."  It's not climate change that's responsible for these massive fires, "it's decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush."

Wildfires Caused By Bad Environmental Policy Are Causing California Forests To Be Net CO2 Emitters.  This is California's big secret:  it's not climate change that's burning up the forests, killing people, and destroying hundreds of homes; it's decades of environmental mismanagement that has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush. [...] The irony is that forest management is so bad on public lands that a new report, ordered by the California legislature in 2010, shows that the portion of California's National Forests protected from timber harvesting is now a net contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide due to fires and trees killed by insects and disease.  Every year about 3.8 billion board feet of new timber grows in the Golden State, capturing almost one metric ton of CO2 per acre in the productive timberland areas.  Trees grow until they die, burn, or get harvested.  If harvesting declines, tree mortality and fires increase.  It's the tyranny of math.

11 Empty Climate Claims.  Claim [#5]: Global Warming has increased U.S. Wildfires.  Fact:  Wildfires have been decreasing since 1800s.  The increase in damage in recent years is due to population growth in vulnerable areas and poor forest management.

End of Discussion:  MSNBC Declares CA Wildfires Caused by Climate Change, Nothing Else.  As wildfires ravage California again, after last year's deadliest wildfire season on record, the media wants you to remember:  This is climate change's fault.  MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi explained this to his liberal audience on Tuesday's [10/29/2019] MSNBC Live With Velshi and Ruhle, by touting data from a climate alarmist organization, and not offering any other viewpoints into his explainer segment.  Co-host Stephanie Ruhle began by gushing over the sheer number of wildfires the state has been facing lately, plus the extended burning season.  With that prompt, Velshi responded, "It does make you wonder, right?" adding, "Why are these fires getting worse and worse every year?"  Of course, he had the reason ready:  climate change.

Of Electricity and Ideology.  [Scroll down]  "For decades," [Kay] Grimes wrote, "traditional forest management was scientific and successful — that is until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the overhaul of sound federal forest management through abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the 're-wilding, no-use movement.'"  U.S. Representative Tom McClintock, whose Northern California district includes the Yosemite Valley and the Tahoe National Forest, told Grimes that the U.S. Forest Service 40 years ago departed from "well-established and time-tested forest management practices."  "We replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect," McClintock explained.  "Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to 'save the environment.'  The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts, and our federal agencies ever since."

No Evidence That Climate Change Causes Weather Extremes: [Part 5] Wildfires.  Probably the most fearsome of the weather extremes commonly blamed on human-caused climate change are tornadoes — the previous topic in this series — and wildfires.  Both can arrive with little or no warning, making it difficult or impossible to flee, are often deadly, and typically destroy hundreds of homes and other structures.  But just like tornadoes, there is no scientific evidence that the frequency or severity of wildfires are on the rise in a warming world.  You wouldn't know that, however, from the mass hysteria generated by the mainstream media and climate activists every time a wildfire breaks out, especially in naturally dry climates such as those in California, Australia or Spain.  While it's true that the number of acres burned annually in the U.S. has gone up over the last 20 years or so, the present burned area is still only a small fraction of what it was back in the record 1930s, as seen in [...] data compiled by the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center.

Green Policies Turned California A Charred Black.  More than half of California's roughly 105 million acres are owned by the federal and state governments.  It is on these sprawling parcels that the wildfires tend to rage before devouring private land, homes, and businesses.  Public lands "have proved far more vulnerable to forest fires than properties owned by private groups," Hoover Institution scholar Richard Epstein wrote in California's Forest Fire Tragedy. [...] The loudest voices assign blame for the fires to man-made climate change.  But the human activity primarily responsible for the destructive spread of wildfires is public policy favoring burned timber over harvested timber.  While maybe well-intended, laws inspired by the 1970s environmentalist movement, which is determined to make sure saw blades and trees never meet, have stoked the furnaces.

Hero Citizen Tackles Suspected Arsonist Setting Wildfire in Los Angeles.  Legal Insurrection readers may recall that in the autumn of 2017, a series of wildfires broke out in Southern California.  One of those blazes threatened the famed Getty Center Museum.  On Easter Sunday this year [4/21/2019], a suspected arsonist, who set off fires in the Sepulveda Pass near the Getty Center, was taken into custody after a an alert citizen saw the man lighting the fires and tackled him. [...] The suspect has been identified as Steven William Adkison, a 31-year-old transient.

False flag environmentalism is dangerous for America and the world.  California suffered some of the worst wildfires in the State's history in mid-2018.  Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is in bankruptcy over the damages where entire towns went up in flames over faulty electrical infrastructure and high winds, which led to devastating wildfire.  But the real culprits causing this destruction were environmental regulations, green organizations and high-powered, faux environmentalists like Tom Steyer stopping excess brush and dead trees from being cleared throughout California cities, towns, forests and wilderness areas.

Did forced focus on green energy lead to California's devastating wildfires?  California's bureaucratic behemoth, the Air Resource Board, implements its "cap and trade" scheme to control carbon emissions.  However, the carbon emissions from the wildfires dwarfed those from standard anthropogenic sources.  The 2018 fires released the rough equivalent of about 68 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, about the same amount of carbon emissions as are produced in a year to provide electricity to the state.

California fire map
California's Wildfire History — in one map.  Here is an interesting interactive graphic that depicts perimeters of more than 100 years of California wildfires recorded by Cal Fire and the U.S. Geological Survey.  The map [left] shows all the cumulative fires from 1878 to 2018.  It seems as if there is very little of California that has not been touched by wildfire.  Large areas of desert in the southeast are mostly untouched due to lack of vegetation.


Judge: California Wildfires Caused By Uninsulated Power Conductors NOT Climate.  U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that equipment owned by the utility company Pacific Gas and Electric was the cause of some wildfires due to tree limbs and other debris knocking uninsulated power conductors together, NBC News has reported.

The Editor says...
Only a few power lines are insulated, and most of those are underground, so "uninsulated power lines" is not an unusual situation.  If tree limbs are in contact with the lines, that's because the utility hasn't routinely trimmed the trees.  I don't know how things work in California, but in Texas, the utility companies have tree trimming crews in residential neighborhoods all the time.  It could be that environmental activists in California have made this unpopular or illegal, but that's just a guess.

Climate Change:  The Poetry of Dreams and the Prose of Reality.  Recent fires in Southern California demonstrated that Mother Nature can produce in several days more greenhouse gases than all the cars in the region in a whole year.  California's yearly fires have been known since the Spanish conquistadors first visited it in 1542.  If we add volcanoes spitting into the air millions of tons of CO2 every year for millions of years, then according to the proponents' theory, we should already be living on small islands surrounded by an ocean of melted Arctic ice.

Big Government Helped Create the Horrendous Nature of the Cali Fires.  A new report revealed that incompetent state regulators in The California Public Utilities Commission failed to implement plans required by state law that could have prevented the devastating California wildfires.  Senate Bill 1028 required the three big California power companies, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, to provide detailed strategies for reducing fire threats, according to The San Diego Tribune.  The California Public Utilities Commission was supposed to review the filings, make comments, and follow up to ensure they followed the plans.  They NEVER DID!  They did NOT issue directives to the power companies, and it's been more than two years since the law was passed.

Democrats use vote fraud to play their last hand: global warming.  By reopening the old playbook of making global warming (the flip side of the 1970s anticipated ice age, also caused by man's meddling with the environment) a crisis is the best strategy left to the Left.  In order to execute their gameplan, using and abusing the natural world is not beyond their scruples or, rather, lack thereof.  Throwing communities into chaos by devastating them with flood and fire — please be reminded of the near collapse of the Oroville Dam last year and now the all-consuming fires wiping out whole towns — through mismanagement of resources, states such as California have placed millions of citizens in jeopardy.  Yet it goes further according to some credible reports deriving from survivors of the Camp Fire, Woolsey Fire and the conflagrations that wiped out the wine country just last year.  Following the lead of democrat legislators trying to place all the blame on power companies, the media conveniently forgot their initial reporting of the illegal immigrant who was caught setting some of the major burns in Northern California.  They also have turned a blind eye to the change of fire patterns and how many blazes began by simply bursting into flame, no spark or ember witnessed anywhere about.

Watch the gender-reveal explosion that ignited a 47,000-acre wildfire.  A border patrol agent's gender reveal party took an explosive turn and caused a 47,000 acre wildfire.  Dennis Dickey pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of U.S. Forest Service regulations for starting the Sawmill Fire.  He has to pay more than $8 million in restitution according to the Department of Justice.  [Video clip]

Even California Cannot Defy Nature Forever.  [Scroll down]  Last year, we saw near-normal levels of precipitation.  If our life-giving reservoirs of the state's vast California Water Project and federal Central Valley Project are currently not full, it is mostly because millions of acre-feet of stored water were released to flow into the San Francisco Bay estuaries and the delta — contradicting most of the original mandates of the water projects of providing flood control, power generation, lake recreation, and irrigation for California residents. [...] Left unsaid is that more than 130 million trees died throughout the state's foothills and mountain ranges during the drought of 2011-2016 and were not removed from the forest floor, providing an immensity of natural kindling for fires.  To walk in a Sierra Nevada forest during summers requires navigating not just over fallen limbs and branches, but also rotting trees — all amid dead brush and dead but still-towering brown pines.  Gone are the periodic meadows and open spaces of the 1960s and 1970s, when logging companies harvested trees, thinned out the forests, replanted what was cut, and cleaned up the forest floor.  Yet given California's stringent anti-logging regulations of the last 20 years, there is no real California timber industry left, at least as it once was.  And scavenging even dead trees prompts a great debate, as environmentalists lecture on the advantages of letting the dead wood be.  Or, as Sierra Club organizer Daniel Barad put it in a January 2018 Sacramento Bee op-ed:  "Dead trees are vital components of the forest ecosystem and should be removed only when necessary."

How Governor Jerry Brown Burned California — And Why President Trump Was 100% Right.  Nine years.  That's how long a it took a California agency to create a fire zone map.  Seven of those years were under the governorship of Jerry Brown.  The fire map was to be a tool for agencies to monitor and manage areas most prone to fires started by utility companies/power lines.  In short, it would require those utility companies to clear out dangerously dry vegetation, the very practice President Trump said should he been done to prevent the very kinds of disastrous fires that swept across California taking lives and property.  The media lambasted the president for his remarks.  As is often the case, the media was wrong and President Trump was 100% right.

California Burning:  How the Greens Turned the Golden State Brown.  Opinions vary regarding how much of this disaster could have been avoided, but nobody disputes that more could have been done.  Everyone agrees, for example, that overall, aggressive fire suppression has been a mistake.  Most everyone agrees that good prevention measures include forest thinning (especially around power lines), selective logging, controlled burns, and power line upgrades.  And everyone agrees that residents in fire prone areas need to create defensible space and fire-harden their homes.  Opinions also vary as to whether or not environmentalists stood in the way of these prevention measures.  In a blistering critique published earlier this week on the California-focused Flash Report, investigative journalist Katy Grimes cataloged the negligence resulting from environmentalist overreach.

Actually, even California says Trump is right about the wildfires.  President Trump's critics are belittling him for not buying the lefty narrative that global warming is to blame for the California wildfires.  Instead, Trump points to decades of mistakes by government agencies that caused the woodlands to become overly dense and blanketed with highly flammable dead wood and underbrush.  He's exactly right.  Just ask California officials.  Two months ago, the state legislature enacted a measure that would expedite the removal of dead trees and use "prescribed burns" to thin forests.  In other words:  the very same reforms that Trump is now being mocked for proposing.  The September law followed a Gov. Jerry Brown executive order earlier this year that also called for "controlled fires" to improve forest health.  This scientific approach isn't easily conveyed in Trump's preferred mode of communication, the 280-character tweet.  But University of California forest expert Yana Valachovic conceded in a Washington Post interview that Trump's "general sentiment is correct — that we need to manage fuels."  That is, to get rid of dangerous buildups of dead and dying trees.

Sec. Ryan Zinke Backs Trump:  Years of Mismanagement Led to California Fires.  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke backed President Donald Trump on the years of forest mismanagement that led to the California fires as Zinke joined Breitbart News Sunday radio with host Amanda House.  He suggested that even photos of the devastation don't do justice to what it was like to see it in person.  Pointing to years of neglect and dead and dying timber, he observed, "It was like a flamethrower of embers shooting through the forests."

Trump Was Right:  Jerry Brown Eased California Logging Rules Back In August.  Months ago, California Gov. Jerry Brown urged state lawmakers to loosen restrictive logging regulations put in place to appease environmentalists — a move that appears to have confirmed that President Trump's recent critiques of state logging practices was correct.  The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported back in August that Brown was proposing one of the most significant changes to the state's logging rules in nearly half a century.

Loggers support Trump's claim that wildfires caused by 'poor forest management'.  A national logging organization is offering support to President Trump following catastrophic wildfires in California and a political debate over the causes of the destructive blazes.  "President Trump blamed poor forest management for wildfires in California and throughout the West, and there is truth to statements he has made," said Daniel Dructor, executive vice president of the American Loggers Council, a coalition of state and regional associations that represents independent contract loggers.

How Misguided Environmentalism Is To Blame For California's Wildfires.  Part of the reason it is so difficult to manage California forests is the bureaucratic milieu.  The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of land, has 28,000 employees, and has an annual outlay of $7 billion a year, according to a 2017 Analytical Perspective from the budget of the U.S. government.  For decades, environmental protection schemes have usurped common sense.  For example, most fire ecologists say that the surest way of preventing massive forest fires is to use prescribed burns.  The California Environmental Protection Agency states that "prescribed burning is the intentional use of fire to reduce wildfire hazards, clear downed trees, control plant diseases, improve rangeland and wildlife habitats, and restore natural ecosystems."  Prescribed burns keep forests healthy by burning up the underbrush that accumulates on the forest floor and by thinning trees.  Yet for decades the Forest Service has suppressed most fires.  According to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection executive summary:  "Land and fire management have in many cases increased fire hazard.

Apaches stave off wildfires with timber industry, active forest management.  The catastrophic blazes that thrive in eastern Arizona's thickly forested yet arid landscape have a way of fizzling once they jump from the dense national forests to the Apache reservations, and that's not by chance.  On a scorching summer day with fire danger at the extreme level, forestry superintendent Michael Gutierrez and his crew spent the morning chain-sawing the overgrown junipers surrounding Seneca Lake on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation.  Soil conservationist Paul Buck discussed his experiments in fighting tough alligator juniper using the terrestrial version of the herbicide Round-Up, and forest manager Dee Randall explained how the scrubby trees could be converted into slabs and sold for furniture as part the tribal timber business.

California's Devastating Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us.  California is once again on fire.  Northern California's Carr Fire has killed six people, two of them firefighters, and continues to burn out of control, claiming more than 700 homes and about 100,000 acres.  As a citizen-soldier in the California Army National Guard for two decades, I often heard the gallows humor quip that California's four seasons were:  flood, fire, earthquake and riot.  But, what was once an expected part of living in the Golden State is now blamed on larger forces.  A crisis, we are told, should never go to waste.  In that vein, the Sacramento Bee editorial board blamed the Carr Fire foursquare on a man-caused buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  In an editorial headlined, "The Carr Fire is a terrifying glimpse into California's future," they write, "This is climate change, for real and in real time.  We were warned that the atmospheric buildup of man-made greenhouse gas would eventually be an existential threat."

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says 'environmental terrorist groups' enabled wildfires.  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's claim that "environmental terrorist groups" created the conditions that enabled California's wildfires triggered substantial blowback from environmental groups, who chastised the Trump administration official for downplaying the role of climate change in the blazes.  Zinke said in a radio interview with Breitbart News that environmental extremists were preventing the government from properly managing forests — leaving excessive fuel on the ground for the deadly blazes.  The statement is just the latest as the Trump administration moves aggressively to open more public land to natural resource extraction, including logging.

Ryan Zinke takes ax to climate change narrative in push to save forests from wildfires.  Here in the town dubbed the "gateway to the Sierras," the haze from the Ferguson Fire is fading as Yosemite National Park prepares to reopen, but the debate over how to stop wildfires from razing the state again next year continues to smolder.  California's catastrophic wildfire season has illuminated the yearslong stalemate between those who want to cut back the overgrown, beetle-infested national forests and environmentalists who have axed efforts to fell more trees, blaming the destructive fires on climate change.

Adam Schiff gets schooled on his California green canards.  See, the left has been spreading the flammable rubbish that as California burns, it's not the green left's fault.  It's global warming's fault, see, so let's have more green regulation.  California's Jerry Brown, who runs the place, is the prime propagator of this dreck, but [Adam] Schiff is happy to be his dutiful parrot.  [Kimberley] Strassel presented him with a Deep State document showing that even the Deep Staters could see that the problem with the fires was too much uncleared fuel for them left lying around, what with 129 million uncleared dead trees.  Those trees are left up to keep the environmental wackos happy.  Yet truth never deterred Schiff, who snottily hectored President Trump in claiming that environmental regulations had nothing to do with the sudden upswing in vast forest fires, which are threatening California's suburbs.  ["]Environmental protections have nothing to do with the wildfires in CA.  Climate change does.  We're not going to let you use fires as an excuse to clear-cut our forests.["]  Umm, Adam?  The fires are clear-cutting California's forests.  No need to get Trump involved, let alone blame him.  Clear-cutting is happening whether you like it or not; all you can do is choose whether you want it done orderly or you like the current free-for-all system, blaming global warming.

California Fires:  Government Policies, Not Global Warming.  As large swaths of California are yet again on fire, environmentalist groups, the leftist media, and Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown are quick to blame climate change.  But the burning in California has more to do with misguided and short-sighted environmental regulations than with weather or climate. [...] The Endangered Species Act has made it nearly impossible for private-property owners to clear dead brush from their own land because it may destroy habitats of protected species.  From 1993 until 2003, residents of Riverside County were prohibited from removing brush from their properties because such brush had become a habitat for the endangered kangaroo rat.  When a wildfire broke out there in 2003, the dry, dead brush served as kindling as the blaze destroyed 2,700 homes and killed 27 people.  The rat's habitat was also destroyed.  So, in what can charitably be described as a misguided attempt to save the environment from the ravages of human activities, government regulations have made the fires worse.

How Federal Policies, Not Just Warmer Weather, Have Made Wildfires Worse.  [Scroll down]  WildfireToday.com acknowledges that warmer and drier weather make fires more difficult to suppress, but adds that important man-made factors exist that could be far more influential on wildfires.  These include:  [#1] 100 years of fire suppression making forests denser, for fires to burn with greater intensity;  [#2] fighting large fires less aggressively for safety reasons;  [#3] environmental demands to let fires burn naturally; and  [#4] initially responding with less equipment and personnel to fires.  The biggest man-made change in fighting wildfires appears to have been the U.S. Forest Service slashing the average number of large air tankers on exclusive use contracts by over 70 percent — from 44 in 2002 to 13 in 2018, according to the Fire Aviation website.

It's Not Climate Change that is Fueling Destructive Wildfires.  The environmental movement got all excited about preserving our forests and put enormous pressure on governmental agencies to stop cutting down trees, stop logging, and stop building logging roads into the beautiful forests.  Logging provided lumber for building homes, and the price of lumber went way up, so nobody is building "starter homes" anymore.  Ending logging meant that forests were not thinned as they were when logs were harvested, which means the trees are too close together, and there's more deadwood and brush, which means more fire danger.  There are always consequences for your actions.

California burns:  The "new normal" thanks to Obama Era Environmental Regulations.  This past week, the New York Times reported on California's wildfires stating that "Since 2012, according to state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning — a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup."  What's the significance of 2012?  It is interesting that the New York Times mentioned the 2012 date, but only attributed the wildfire increases to "the recent historic drought," and "rising temperatures," caused by climate change.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As California burns, many Californians have been asking why the dramatic increase in wildfires in the last five years?  Except for Governor Jerry Brown.  Governor Brown claims that devastating fires are the "new normal."  Supporting Obama-era regulations have resulted in the new normal:  an endless and devastating fire season.

Democrats [are] turning California into a third-world hellhole.  Democrats are turning California into a third-world hellhole without electricity, water, and freedom.  Due to Democrats' love for trees, at least 800,000 Californians will be without power for several days.  Instead of properly managing California forests to reduce the chances of big fires, Democrats are saying Californians have to go without lights, refrigerators, and air-conditioning.  Democrats could also avoid this by not making the power company financially liable for all forest fire damages, but since PG&E is a company, not an illegal alien, the Democrats couldn't care less about doing what's best for California.

California burns:  The "new normal" thanks to Obama Era Environmental Regulations.  This past week, the New York Times reported on California's wildfires stating that "Since 2012, according to state emergency management officials, there has not been a month without a wildfire burning — a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup."  What's the significance of 2012?  It is interesting that the New York Times mentioned the 2012 date, but only attributed the wildfire increases to "the recent historic drought," and "rising temperatures," caused by climate change.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As California burns, many Californians have been asking why the dramatic increase in wildfires in the last five years?  Except for Governor Jerry Brown.  Governor Brown claims that devastating fires are the "new normal."  Supporting Obama-era regulations have resulted in the new normal:  an endless and devastating fire season.

A New Dark Age:  California's Blackouts Are Self-Inflicted.  California, the richest state in the nation — and one that's often portrayed as the progressive harbinger of the future for the rest of the country — has been hit with its latest Third World-style disaster.  On top of high poverty rates, skyrocketing homelessness, rising crime, and the return of medieval-sounding diseases, the state — specifically, the San Francisco Bay Area — has been hit with a mass blackout.  About 1 million people in one of the most densely populated parts of the country have had their power shut off by the utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric.  The local utility, PG&E, initiated the blackout in an effort to limit the potential for mass wildfires, which ravaged the state in 2018 and bankrupted the company.

At Least We're Not Cuba!  I'm so old that I remember when the prime responsibility of your state's Public Service Commission was ensuring the public utilities under their jurisdiction were physically and financially capable of delivering the services they were chartered to provide.  Accordingly, the PSC role was to balance citizens' need for reliable services and reasonable rates with the need for utilities to earn a reasonable return on investment.  When both sides of this contract begin to operate outside the parameters of their respective charters, i.e. the utility fails to provide basic maintenance services to maintain the integrity of transmission lines and the PSC to verify they have done so[,] and instead begin to pursue and promote a "green energy" agenda, this is what happens[.]

California's Gavin Newsom calls power outages needed.  Socialism, including greenie socialism, is always about blaming Those Greedy Capitalists for whatever hideous policies the government cooks up, which inevitably prompts an unintended consequence.  California's Gov. Gavin Newsom is right there with the best of them, blaming the wreckers and hoarders for California's massive power outages, taking northern California back to a state of nature and, in the full greenie spirit, telling us it's needed, necessary, all for our own good.

The Lights Are Out in California, And That Was the Plan All Along.  The power is out in Northern California.  More than 1 million Californians are now without electricity, one of modern life's essentials that is frequently taken for granted.  The blackout was done on purpose — to prevent sparks from powerlines that could ignite deadly wildfires.  Before planned blackouts are through in two or three days, as many as 3 million Californians may go without power.  On the surface, the blackout and its causes are simple to understand.  But the deeper causes are complicated, span decades of public policy, and dozens of overlapping unintended — and intended — consequences of decisions, both related and unrelated.

PG&E Power Outage Shut Off:  Agency explains why turning power back on could take 5 days.  Pacific Gas and Electric says it could take as long as five days to turn the power back on for nearly 800,000 customers across California.  It's part of preemptive power shutdown due to fire danger, impacting the Bay Area and surrounding counties.  The utility says re-energizing power lines takes time.  Crews will need to inspect every power line by land and air before restoring power.

California's Devastating Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us.  In 2005 while a freshman California Assemblyman, I had the chance to visit Northern California and meet with the forest product industry professionals who grew, managed, and harvested trees on private and public lands.  They told me of a worrisome trend started years earlier where both federal and state regulators were making it more and more difficult for them to do their jobs.  As a result, timber industry employment gradually collapsed, falling in 2017 to half of what it was 20 years earlier, with imports from Canada, China, and other nations filling domestic need.  As timber harvesting permit fees went up and environmental challenges multiplied, the people who earned a living felling and planting trees looked for other lines of work.  The combustible fuel load in the forest predictably soared.  No longer were forest management professionals clearing brush and thinning trees.  But, fire suppression efforts continued.  The result was accurately forecast by my forest management industry hosts in Siskiyou County in 2005: larger, more devastating fires — fires so hot that they sterilized the soil, making regrowth difficult and altering the landscape.  More importantly, fires that increasingly threatened lives and homes as they became hotter and more difficult to bring under control.

California Fires:  Government Policies, Not Global Warming.  As large swaths of California are yet again on fire, environmentalist groups, the leftist media, and Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown are quick to blame climate change.  But the burning in California has more to do with misguided and short-sighted environmental regulations than with weather or climate. [...] The Endangered Species Act has made it nearly impossible for private-property owners to clear dead brush from their own land because it may destroy habitats of protected species.  From 1993 until 2003, residents of Riverside County were prohibited from removing brush from their properties because such brush had become a habitat for the endangered kangaroo rat.  When a wildfire broke out there in 2003, the dry, dead brush served as kindling as the blaze destroyed 2,700 homes and killed 27 people.  The rat's habitat was also destroyed.  So, in what can charitably be described as a misguided attempt to save the environment from the ravages of human activities, government regulations have made the fires worse.

Fire and Water in California.  Liberals exploit natural disasters — drought, hurricane, blizzard, you name it — to promote their anti-fossil fuels agenda.  Yet now they're outraged that President Trump is daring to fight fire with fire by making a connection between California's wildfires and destructive green policies. [...] Governor Jerry Brown keeps lecturing Californians that they need to adapt to a new "climate normal," yet the state government has done little to prepare for warmer and drier times if that is the future.  Lawmakers instead have subordinated fire prevention to pleasing the green lobby.

Fire and fury:  How government failures make wildfires even worse.  While East Coasters are heading off for their August vacations, many families out West are worried that if they leave their home, it may not be standing when they return.  That's the reality when there have been 4,500 wildfires this year so far. [...] Everyone is quick to blame global warming for this and all other natural disasters.  But changes to local weather in this or that part of the country are by no means part of the same scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused in large part by human activity.  Western droughts and forest fires have been around a long time, and so has climate change, but the fires have gotten much worse very recently, and government mismanagement of forests is part of the reason.

Jerry Brown blames everyone but himself for California wildfires.  Jerry Brown is at it again.  Blaming Californians for the devastating series of California wildfires month, he went Full Moonbeam and declared the problem a function of global warming, calling it a new normal about which nothing is to be done.  As if wildfires that sweep away homes in California's unique Mediteranean microclimates have never happened before this past week.

Why the California Wildfires Are Not Due to So-called Climate Change.  Climate alarmists such as California Governor Jerry Brown would like us to believe that global warming is causing (and worsening) the recent spate of wildfires in the Golden State.  Unfortunately for Governor Brown, the facts and the science simply don't line up with his opinion.  Wildfires are natural occurrences that have been happening since flora first appeared on the Earth.  Scientists and others involved in land and forest management not only accept that such fires will happen as part of the natural ecosystem, they also see them as beneficial in certain ways.  Wildfires occurring naturally reduce fuel loads such as downed trees, fallen limbs, brush, leaves and other combustible material.  When fires burn naturally, they release nutrients into the soil which would otherwise be wasted in leaves and undergrowth.  Some habitats — such as the California Chaparral — actually depend on fire to a certain extent.  Periodic fires burn off species of plants that are not native and less fire resistant, which gives the native species a leg up in the competition for space.

California wildfires are burning down public utilities.  California's Democrat-controlled Legislature has mastered the game of deviously nudging public utility regulators to raise fees and surcharges to pay for its progressive environmental initiatives rather than suffering the voter backlash from raising taxes.  California residents, due to abundant hydro resources and being the nation's third largest oil-producer, used to have some of America's lowest retail electricity rates.  But residents paid 18.32 cents per kilowatt-hour (/kWh) in 2018, about 47 percent more than the national average of 12.47 cents/kWh.  Much of that staggering $14.8-billion-a-year extra cost was siphoned off through environmental mandates and crony spending.

Environmentalist Policies Are Exacerbating Wildfires.  It's Time to Rethink Forest Management.  [Scroll down]  As a Reason Foundation study noted, the U.S. Forest Service, which is tasked with managing public wildland, once had success in minimizing widespread fires in the early 20th century.  But many of these successful methods were abandoned in large part because of efforts by environmental activists.  The Forest Service became more costly and less effective as it increasingly "rewarded forest managers for losing money on environmentally questionable practices," wrote Randal O'Toole, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute.  Spending on the Forest Service has risen drastically, but these additional resources have been misused and haven't solved the underlying issues.




Homeless people supported (or at least tolerated) by California taxpayers

Nearly Half Of Los Angeles Homeless Budget Wasn't Spent:  Report.  Nearly half of Los Angeles, California's $1.3 billion homelessness budget for fiscal year 2023-2024 wasn't spent, according to the city Controller's report.  Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia discovered that only $599 million had been spent, with an additional $195 million marked to be spent, and $512,690,810 million not marked for anything, according to the report.  Recently, Los Angeles residents seem poised to approve Measure A, which would add a .5% county-level sales tax, with revenues going towards homeless programs, according to the unofficial election results count.

San Francisco Suddenly Wants to Clear Out the Homeless.  The situation out on the streets in San Francisco has been alarming (to say the least) for long enough now that it's almost become a footnote in the wreckage that the Biden administration has left in its wake, particularly when combined with the pro-crime, anti-police impulses of Gavin Newsom's governorship.  By this point, you've all seen the stories and we've covered them here often.  Homeless encampments clog up the streets while addicts overdose on the public sidewalks.  Petty crimes combined with some that are far more serious have plagued formerly prime real estate.  But now there are signs of a rapid transformation taking place.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed, taking advantage of a recent Supreme Court ruling regarding ordinances forbidding public camping, has been cracking down on the encampments and clearing them out.  But what could have brought on this sudden change of heart after the problem had been festering for years?  Could it have something to do with the upcoming elections?

LA County Has Decided It Won't Comply with Gov. Newsom's Homeless Order.  In the wake of a Supreme Court case which overturned a 9th Circuit decision on public camping, Gov. Newsom got aggressive on cleaning up homeless camps.  Just over a week ago he signed an executive order calling on other state officials to clean up their rooms, so to speak. [...] Some cities, including San Francisco, got right to it.  Mayor London Breed ordered aggressive sweeps of homeless camps with outreach efforts backed by police.  This is exactly the sort of effort that the 9th Circuit had long prevented. [...] Homeless advocates have noted that city shelters are already near capacity but the reality is that most of the people living in these camps won't accept an offer of shelter even if it's available.  Most of them are outside because they want to be outside.  And sure enough only 10% of the people who were in these camps have accepted offers of shelter.  Mayor Breed is also using another strategy to get people off the streets, one that has been employed by San Francisco and other cities for years:  If you're homeless, the mayor has a free, one-way bus ticket for you.

Cleaning Out The Homeless Encampments Just In Time For The Election.  Imagine being a homeless guy in the state of California.  For most of the year, you're untouchable.  You can sleep completely naked right outside of an art gallery, and if the gallery owner sprays you with a hose to get you to move, he's the one who gets arrested — as happened recently.  The district attorney will issue statements about how "unhoused folks" have the right to sleep wherever they want, wearing — or not wearing — whatever clothes they want.  On top of that, the state provides millions of free syringes to help facilitate your drug habit — complete with "safe injection sites" that function like open-air drug markets.  Plus the weather's always nice.  So generally speaking, as a homeless person in the Golden State, you have it pretty good.  But every once in a while, on a dime, California's government completely changes its approach.  It's quite a role reversal.  The politicians suddenly become the schizophrenic ones.  They decide, without any warning, that all homeless encampments have to be dismantled.  They hose down the sidewalks themselves.  They clear the place out like it's Tiananmen Square.  And they issue statements about the importance of orderly streets and ending the scourge of lewd behavior in public libraries.

Newsom Will Remove Homeless Encampments across California after Supreme Court Decision.  California governor Gavin Newsom directed state officials to remove homeless encampments across the Golden State on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled in June that local governments have a right to ban public camping and impose fines for violators.  Newsom announced the guidance in an executive order, advising cities to crack down on encampments on public property while providing social services and housing alternatives.  The order, first reported by the New York Times, represents a sharp departure from the accommodative homelessness policies adopted by progressive state governments over the last decade.

Homeless Account for 12% of Fire Calls in Los Angeles.  In a typical day in the city of Los Angeles, the fire department will go on about 1,500 calls for service.  That's fires, medical issues, cats in trees and everything else.  Also on a typical day, the city's homeless population of about 75,000 will account for about 180 of those calls.  That's 12% of every fire department call.  For perspective, the homeless make up about 2% (a horrible number in and of itself) of the city's population but are the cause of 12% of the fire calls for service.

Los Angeles Will Require Photo ID For Homeless Luxury Hotel Living But Not Voting.  Los Angeles just opened a state-of-the-art luxury hotel for the city's homeless and, unlike voting, will require a photo ID to participate.  On Wednesday, city officials opened the brand new 19-story residential high-rise with 278 units that cost as much to build as a five-star resort.  To lease an apartment in the downtown luxury tower, however, homeless residents must provide their "photo identification, and social security card."  Repeat Los Angeles voters, however, don't need any photo ID to turn in their ballots.  [Advertisement]  [Tweet]  California is one of 12 states, plus the District of Columbia, with no voter ID law on the books.  Residents must only present their identification for their first-time voting.  According to the California Globe, a conservative statewide paper, "The project cost about $165 million dollars and the studio apartments are essentially the equivalent of what one would find at a decent 'extended stay' hotel — large room kitchenette, bed, tables, chairs, bathroom, TV, etc."  "At $594,000 a unit, that works out be a bit over $1,000 per-square-foot to build," the Globe reported.

How many illegal aliens arrive in San Diego only to become homeless?  President Joe Biden is limiting asylum claims, but a lack of federal aid still risks leaving some on the street.  For the past few years, Catholic Charities has had shelter space for about 1,800 asylum seekers in San Diego and Imperial counties.  That total dropped by half last summer when some pandemic-era funding through the state wound down, according to Appaswamy "Vino" Pajanor, CEO of Catholic Charities, Diocese of San Diego.  While more vulnerable arrivals are still taken in, like the elderly, there's often not room for healthy single adults, many of whom may struggle to navigate a new country's transportation system even when they have housing lined up.

The Age of Micro.  [Scroll down]  California assemblyman Matt Haney is a trifecta for the purposes of this essay.  The San Francisco Democrat has a background in non-profits, education, and law.  In more than a decade of public activism, he has distinguished himself for a failed effort to rename his hometown's George Washington High School and for a $1.7M Noe Valley public toilet.  The latter, a project for which Haney personally secured funding, was almost derailed when a New York Times exposé questioned the cost of the project.  Feeling the heat, Haney re-positioned himself as one of the toilet's biggest critics, demanding to know why the project cost so much.  A letter from the city's manager of the Recreation and Parks Department pointed to key guidance passed while Haney was a member of the Board of Supervisors.  A feel-good ordinance, for example, restricting San Francisco's ability to contract with states that restrict abortion access added time and labor to the cost.  What I want to focus on is that 1) Haney did not know how much a public toilet should cost (about $200,000) and 2) his preoccupation with national debates wasted taxpayer time and money.

Report: $165 Million Luxury Apartment Building to Open for Los Angeles Homeless Population.  A taxpayer-funded luxury apartment building is reportedly set to open in Los Angeles's Skid Row neighborhood to provide hundreds of homeless people with housing and high-end amenities.  The 278-unit, 19-story tower is going to open in a matter of weeks, and is meant to be a "self-contained environment that will insulate its formerly homeless residents from the squalor and hopelessness around them," the Los Angeles Times reported.

It isn't "free food" if it's "taxpayer-funded."
San Francisco opens city's first $5 million taxpayer-funded free food 'market'.  San Francisco opened its first $5.5 million free food "market", where approved residents can show a benefits eligibility card, put what they want in their carts, check out to keep track of outgoing inventory, and leave without paying.  The Bayview-Hunters Point facility aims to be a food pantry alternative that replicates the supermarket experience in an area where many grocery stores have come but few have remained due to high crime.  The 4000-square foot District 10 Market is the first of San Francisco's food empowerment "markets" funded by the San Francisco's Human Services Agency.  Eligible individuals receive a Costo-like benefits card that allows use of the facility once per month.  Eligibility is limited to individuals who live within one of three zip codes, are verified social services clients, have dependents under 25 or a qualified food-related illness, and be referred by one of eleven community organizations in the market's referral network.

The Editor says...
In other words, whoever is declared the biggest victim gets the "free" food.

Widow speaks after husband murdered outside California home during fight between homeless men.  This is a tragic, yet all too common, pattern emerging in Newsom's state.  Nicolas Gandara, a father of six children, was killed execution-style outside of his home after trying to stop a fight between two homeless men.  [Tweet with video clip]  Why [...] are we allowing these homeless encampments to exist in California?

Stop signs replace traffic lights at 'busy' Oakland intersection, reportedly on account of area homeless.  The City of Oakland, California, has replaced traffic lights with stop signs at one intersection, and some area residents believe criminal behavior on the part of local homeless persons led to the potentially dangerous change, KPIX reported.  Earlier this month, the intersection of E. 12th Street and 16th Avenue, about two miles east of Downtown Oakland, went from a traffic light to a four-way stop.  A Fox News report described the intersection as "busy," and KPIX-TV video shows the intersection teeming with businesses and vehicles.  According to the sources who spoke with KPIX, the city made the change to stop signs because people living in a nearby homeless encampment have been stealing copper wire from electrical boxes connected to the traffic lights at the intersection.  As a result, the lights malfunctioned for months, often blinking red or blacking out entirely, KPIX reported.

The Editor says...
Instead of rounding up and incarcerating the thieves, whether homeless or otherwise, the city put another Band-Aid on the problem and made the intersection more dangerous for everyone else.

San Francisco Will Be Spending 5 Million Per Year On Free Booze for the Homeless.  San Francisco has been spending $5 million a year for four years on a taxpayer-funded program that hands out bottles of beer, glasses of wine, and shots of vodka to homeless alcoholics.  Under the 'managed alcohol program', nurses distribute shots of vodka and beer multiple times a day as part of patients' healthcare plans[.]  [Video clip]

San Francisco Exemplifies Leftist Logic Perfectly With Program to Help Alcoholic Bums Get Free Vodka Shots.  The City of San Francisco has decided to take a rather peculiar approach to address the issue of homeless alcoholics.  They've initiated a "Managed Alcohol Program," which, in the most cynical sense, can be summed up as providing free beer and vodka shots to homeless individuals suffering from alcohol addiction.  This program, funded by the taxpayer's hard-earned dollars, is a part of a little-known pilot program.  Experts claim that this program can save lives or at least prolong them.  But let's be honest here, it's not like the city is investing in their recovery or sobriety.  Instead, they're simply making sure these individuals stay off the streets and out of emergency services, which apparently saves the city a few bucks.

San Francisco Slammed For Spending Millions Of Dollars For Vodka And Beer For Homeless Alcoholics.  San Francisco is spending around $5 million a year to give vodka shots and glasses of beer to homeless people with severe alcohol addiction in an effort to cut down on calls to police and hospital stays, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.  The city's "managed alcohol program" started during the COVID pandemic, but came under fire earlier this week after Adam Nathan, the chair of the Salvation Army San Francisco Advisory Board, posted a thread on X, saying he "stumbled upon the building where they have this program."

S.F. program gives homeless people free booze.  Here's why the city says it's helpful.  For a small slice of San Francisco's homeless population that struggles with severe alcohol addiction, nurses offer treatment not in a pill, but in a shot of vodka or a glass of beer.  It may sound counterintuitive, experts say, but it helps keep people off the streets and out of emergency rooms, jails — or the morgue.  San Francisco set up a "managed alcohol program" four years ago as a way to care for vulnerable homeless people who drank excessive amounts of alcohol and were among the city's highest users of emergency services.

California Didn't Track Effects Of $24 Billion Homelessness Spending.  A new state audit found that the California Interagency Council on Homelessness stopped tracking whether its programs were working in June 2021 and has no consistent way of measuring the outcomes of its spending.  Only two of the five programs analyzed in the audit are "likely cost-effective."  The other three have not collected enough data to prove that their initiatives are useful.

Nonprofit Tasked With Tackling Homelessness In San Francisco Accused Of Stealing $100k From City.  San Francisco's city attorney on Monday accused a nonprofit that has received tens of millions of public dollars to provide homeless services of stealing public funds.  Providence Foundation, led by Patricia Doyle, allegedly "took over $100,000 of public money meant to benefit people experiencing homelessness" by submitting fraudulent invoices to San Francisco, according to a press release from the city attorney's office.  Doyle's foundation has received roughly $100 million in contracts from the city, though its tax forms don't include information on how much of its revenue went toward executive compensation, as is standard practice among nonprofits.  "There's a difference between having challenges with financial compliance and intentionally defrauding the City and its taxpayers," City Attorney David Chiu said.  "This nonprofit took over $100,000 of public money meant to benefit people experiencing homelessness.  That cannot be tolerated."  Providence Foundation operates the Oasis Hotel in the city as a shelter for homeless families.

The Editor says...
Notice that homeless bums are now called "people experiencing homelessness," to put it in a passive voice, as if the vagrants are the victims of homelessness, as opposed to deadbeats and addicts reaping what they have sown.

Long Beach Hotel Housing "Homeless" Sparks Tuberculosis Outbreak.  A health crisis has emerged for Democrat officials in Long Beach, California, following a tuberculosis outbreak linked to a hotel housing 'homeless' people, according to Fox News.  On Thursday, health officials declared a public health emergency after an alarming tuberculosis outbreak was reported at an unnamed hotel housing.  The city has so far confirmed 14 cases of tuberculosis in people "associated with a single room occupancy hotel."  Nine of them were hospitalized with one fatal case.  Another 170 people were "likely exposed" to the deadly bacteria.

California city OK's $1M per unit homeless housing project after audit found state wasted billions on crisis.  Santa Monica city officials last week approved a multimillion-dollar apartment unit for the homeless just days after the release of an audit which found California could not account for the $24 billion it spent on the state's burgeoning homeless crisis.  The 122-unit building for the homeless will include a mix of studio, one, two and three-bedroom apartments, along with ground floor retail and residential and commercial parking spaces.  A design concept available on the city's website shows that the multi-apartment unit will cost more than $123 million, for a cost of just over $1 million each for the 122 apartments.  A second design concept would have cost even more, north of $200 million for 196 units.

How companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps.  [Scroll down]  In total, private firms have been paid at least $100 [million] to clear homeless camps, an investigation by the Guardian and Type Investigations has found.  The 14 municipalities and public agencies from which spending details could be obtained represent a small slice of such spending in the state.  Astrid Stromberg, who oversees encampment cleanups for Tucker, said its business has expanded dramatically since 2020.  The company had about a dozen laborers working full-time on encampment cleanup.  Now there are 30, and its clients include roughly a dozen municipalities and public agencies across Silicon Valley.  "[Tucker] basically created the industry here," she said.  "I could talk about it for hours."

Billions Disappear Into the Black Hole Of California Homeless Programs.  I've covered the homeless industrial complex here several times, both here in Austin and in California.  Now California itself has done an audit on its homeless programs, only to find billion unaccounted for. [...] I'm sure the programs are considered a "success" by Democrats because they provide a giant bucket to dole out graft and fraud to the leftwing activists working in the Homeless Industrial Complex.  But I have a deep suspicion that things are even worse than we think.  Remember the effort to recall Newsom, and how Democrats from across the country sprang immediately to his aid?  At the time, Scott Adams said that protecting Newsom was "the top process in the system."  I suspect that California's homeless programs are not just a channel for graft and fraud to left-wing activists in California, but a way to rake off money directly to Democratic Party campaigns and coffers nationwide.  (Though certainly not the only source.  Remember how $850 million in the hands of New York City Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio's wife just sort of magically disappeared?)

No Wonder Gavin Newsom Didn't Want an Audit to Track $24 Billion in Homeless Spending.  Gavin Newsom's California put billions of tax dollars into a cannon, aimed it in the general direction of homeless "expert" NGOs, lit the fuse, and walked away.  The BOOM came when someone started asking questions about where the $24 billion went.  That day of reckoning is finally here.  And we learn that Gavin Newsom and his Democrat super-majority in this one-party state have no idea where it went or whether it did any good whatsoever.  A new state audit — fought tooth and nail by Newsom, according to former state legislator turned Congressman Kevin Kiley, who called for the audit — has revealed that California was not tracking the spending.  The state has a $73 billion deficit for the year under Gavin Newsom.

Environmental watchdog sues San Francisco for 1.2 billion gallons of raw sewage and trash-filled runoff entering the bay each year.  San Francisco has long been at the forefront of all things progressive: it was one of the first locales to begin decriminalizing marijuana, which of course devolved into the druggie free-for-all it now is; home to pederasts like Harvey Milk, the LGBTQ++ community, no matter how obscene (Folsom Street Fair) is always celebrated; it's home to social programs like GIFT, which isn't just ordinary welfare, but a handout that can pay out as much as $21,600 per enrollee and is exclusively for "trans" people; and the city has an official "Poop Patrol" department to clean up all the human fecal matter plopped around the sidewalks thanks to the sizable vagrant population.  And predictably, all that progressivism only reaps total destruction, coming back to bite the city in the rear-end in grand fashion; a longstanding nonprofit committed to the environmental health of the bay filed a lawsuit against the city's utility commission for 1.2 billion gallons per year of sewage and trash-filled runoff flowing into the San Francisco Bay.  [Tweet]

Fuming San Diego residents lash out at city officials over vagrants living in their cars and RVs.  Residents of a San Diego suburb known for its seclusion from the busy downtown and beachfront views is furious as a group of vagrants have started living in their cars and RVs on the streets of the neighborhood.  San Diego County is one of the largest segments of California's homeless population, with more than 10,000.  Locals in Pacific Beach say that the vagrants have moved from the city's downtown to their neighborhood and are openly defying laws banning them from camping out in their vehicles.

Los Angeles City Council Member Pushing for New 'Department of Homelessness'.  American cities across the country are experiencing a massive uptick in homelessness, but perhaps none more than Los Angeles, California.  Skid Row used to be confined to a one block area but now tents and other makeshift shelters can be seen throughout the city.  Billions of dollars have been spent trying to address this issue but it only seems to get worse, and now one member of the city council wants to create a new city department to focus on the problem.  How many more millions will be wasted as this new government entity fails to solve the problem?

California Officials Clear Homeless Encampments for the Wrong Reasons, Again.  California officials are doing it again.  Homeless encampments in Downtown Sacramento were cleared to accommodate the filming of a new movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio.  Homeless camps are common near Cesar Chavez Park.  Sacramento officials gave the homeless 24 hours to leave the area and take their belongings with them.

Garbage from homeless population clogs storm drains, floods San Diego County homes.  Here in San Diego, we get very little rain.  But when we do get it, it's a torrent.  Even it isn't a torrent by, say, Florida standards, it's a torrent to us, enough to create disruptions. [...] So they've been tolerating homeless tent encampments for years, despite laws against illegal camping, and instead of ensure that those messes made are cleaned up, city officials let them clog the storm drains, which creates flooding conditions for tax-paying residents who paid for the drains, and whose lives don't revolve around obtaining illegal drugs.  That's what the bum encampments are about.  And as far as the City goes, apparently nobody's in charge, nobody regulates that big chunks of litter and garbage from these homeless encampments might affect the flood control in place to save homes.

Blue State Flushes Plans For $1.7 Million Public Toilet.  A $1.7 million planned public restroom in a San Francisco neighborhood is unfinished over a year after it was announced.  The city obtained $1.7 million in taxpayer funds in October 2022 to build the high-end bathroom in the Noe Valley Town Square, which lacked such a facility.  But taxpayer outrage and bureaucratic red tape have ground its construction to a halt, and now what remains are patches of dirt and mulch where an alternative modular option has yet to be built, The New York Times reported on Thursday.  "Why isn't there a toilet here?" a Noe Valley resident told NYT.  "I just don't get it.  Nobody does.  It's yet another example of the city that can't."  [Tweet]

Things in San Francisco Have Gotten 'Back to Normal' Since All the Dignitaries Left.  Joe Biden has been taking a lot of vacation lately, even more so than usual.  He was at Camp David over Christmas with members of his extended family, including his son Hunter.  [Tweet]  That comes after Hunter Biden defied a subpoena from the House and essentially gave them the finger from the steps of the Capitol, and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre admitted Joe Biden knew about Hunter's statement ahead of time.  As I wrote, this raised the question of possible obstruction by Joe Biden and raised another possible impeachable offense.  Now, the House Oversight Committee is also looking into that.

Electing a black female mayor doesn't automatically fix anything.
Homeless In Karen Bass' Los Angeles.  This week, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass celebrated her first year in office, and highlighted the "success" of her Inside Safe project.  However, as the Globe and other outlets have pointed out, her program has been far from a success, with LA's homeless problem growing even worse under her tenure.  Homelessness has gone up 10% under her watch, with only 255 homeless people out of 46,000 getting permanent housing through a $67 million program.  While 21,000 were housed in some way, shape, or form, almost all of these were temporary slots, with no statistics showing how many stayed in shelter long-term or went back on the streets.

San Francisco Cleaned Up For Xi Visit.  Now, Things Are Back to Normal.  If there's anything that indicates a politician or group of politicians isn't taking something seriously, it's when they apply a Band-Aid over a problem when it's noticeable, and then let things go back to the way they were.  That's what happened in San Francisco when the city cleaned up their homeless encampments and open-air drug bazaars during the visit of the Chinese dictator Xi.  Now, according to one San Francisco business owner, it's once more business as usual in the city by the Bay.

San Francisco Democrat says homelessness crisis in his district is 'absolutely the result of capitalism'.  San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston claimed the city's homelessness problems were "absolutely the result of capitalism," and it was "counterproductive" to arrest people openly doing drugs.  Preston's District 5 includes the Tenderloin District, an area known for its open-air drug market.  Nearly half of the city's homeless population lived in this district in 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  The Democratic Socialist supervisor argued his district was particularly affected by homelessness because of the country's economic structure.  "I think what you're seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at the bottom rungs," the local leader reportedly remarked in a new documentary by the UK outlet, UnHerd.

Mayor Karen Bass's $67 Million Homeless Program Has Only Housed 255 So Far.  A year after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spearheaded her "Inside Safe" program to house the city's homeless, results look shaky.  Bass has shelled out roughly $67 million on the program but only moved 255 of L.A.'s 46,000 unhoused individuals into permanent housing, so far.  Naturally, she told NBC's I-Team that she was "not satisfied with those numbers."

I'm a little surprised they're still alive.
We Found 'Em!  Here's Where Gavin Newsom Hid the Homeless From Xi.  Ever since Gavin Newsom moved hundreds of fentanyl-addled homeless squatters so that there would be a pretty backdrop to kiss the ring of Chinese Dictator for Life Xi Jinping and other "fancy leaders," the question everyone has been asking is: where did they go?  The people who claim that 1) walls don't work, and, 2) walls are racist erected walls to keep out the homeless addicts while the meetings continue through Friday are liberal.  City Hall, the Governor's Mansion, and the White House pretended not to notice the irony.  [Tweet with video clip]  And they pretended not to notice where the homeless went.  So where did they go?  The San Jose Mercury News has at least partially answered the question.  It turns out the homeless "people were just forced to go to the alleys," said Javier Bremond, a human rights organizer with the San Francisco advocacy group Coalition on Homelessness.  "And a lot of people are under the freeway."  An APEC representative from Thailand told the Mercury News he was still shocked at the number of homeless street addicts that remained after the so-called cleanup.

China exposes California's moral corruption.  California Democrats spent billions over the past decade on dozens of programs to solve the state's homelessness crisis, only to see more homeless people on the street than ever.  Then, overnight, many of the homeless suddenly disappeared.  Turns out the solution to homelessness, at least in Democratic-controlled San Francisco, is a simple visit by a genocidal dictator.  When China's Xi Jinping meets with President Joe Biden in the city by the bay, unlike most tourists who visit, he won't see a single tent.  They've all been cleared out.  "I know folks are saying, 'Oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town,'" Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) said at a press conference last week.  "That's true because it's true." [...] That California Democrats would be so willing to snap their fingers and clear homeless encampments just to impress some rich guy would be bad enough.  That they are doing it for an authoritarian kleptocrat like Xi is even worse, especially considering that no one has done more to put more homeless people on San Francisco's streets than Xi and his fentanyl-exporting minions.

The Editor says...
Where are all the bums now?  In a hotel?  In a mental hospital?  In a FEMA camp?  Homeless people put themselves in jeopardy in several way by living on the street.  If they have cut their ties with all their relatives, and the local government has the sudden need to "relocate" them, as in the example above, the homeless bums could "disappear" permanently.

We Now Know What Caused That Devastating LA Freeway Fire.  "Bad actors" caused the fire, according to State Fire Marshal Daniel Berlant.  Some unknown arsonist is believed to have started Saturday's blaze, but that's not the "bad actor" to whom Berlant was referring.  You see, the city government leases underpass space to people and companies for storage.  In this case, "bad actors" filled the underpass with wooden pallets and containers of alcohol-based hand sanitizer.  In my report on Monday (and at the top of this story), you can see the pallets stacked so high under the freeway that they're almost touching the underside of the elevated road.  The photos were courtesy of Google Street View, so it isn't like the towers of literal kindling were some dark secret.  The city is currently in a legal battle with a company called Airspace that leased the underpass storage area.  Let us pause here to consider the ill-considered wonder of stuffing underpasses full of kindling and flammable goo.  Let us pause again to consider the bone-crushing stupidity of allowing unpoliced homeless encampments filled with vagrants, addicts, and the mentally ill to cohabitate with pallets and accelerants.

Misguided environmentalists have made our cities filthy.  If you've visited a big city in recent years, you've probably noticed that the streets are strewn with trash, litter is scattered all over the sidewalks, the buildings are covered in graffiti, and off-putting smells seem to emanate from every corner.  Take San Francisco for example, which not that long ago was considered one of the most beautiful cities in America.  Today, the Golden City is one of the filthiest, with a "dirtiness index of 189.03, ranking 9th among the 40 cities included in the report" and a "litter index of 210.2," which ranks fifth.  San Francisco's streets are riddled with garbage, needles, and human feces.  Its sidewalks are overrun with homeless encampments.  And its public spaces, once enjoyed by tourists, have become open-air drug markets in which vagrants can do as they please.

Bum encampment fire shuts down major Los Angeles highway artery.  [Scroll down]  Ahh, a pallet fire, they said.  A storage-area fire, they said.  A rent dispute with a bad tenant...  According to the local presses, it was bums camping out under the Santa Monica freeway with no zoning enforcement whatsoever.  Some were said to be stealing electricity.  Others were reportedly using propane tanks for cooking.  [Numerous tweets]  But as the press puts it "cause unknown." [...] Sure, there will be an investigation.  California's Gov. Gavin Newsom says it will be quick.  But based on what we have seen elsewhere, if the results are not what they want, it will be an extended investigation, one with no disclosures owing to the investigation, like the Nashville shooter case.  That said, it's pretty obvious that allowing a bum encampment full of illegal drug users is just a matter of time before some kind of disaster occurs.  And that raises questions about the wisdom of this.  Does a disaster have to occur before they can clear a bum encampment and place drug addicts either in jail or involuntary rehab until they clean up?

Democrats Will Clean San Francisco for Dictators but Not Voters.  It took a Chinese dictator to get the city of San Francisco, California, cleaned up after five years of deterioration.  The Democrats who run San Francisco and California finally, Finally, FINALLY cleaned up that city's filthy streets and removed the dystopian homeless encampments.  At long last, San Francisco has been beautified in a dozen ways.  Yes, after some five years of increasingly dangerous streets littered with dirty needles, feces, trash, and filthy tents, not to mention aggressive vagrants, drug dealers, the deranged and addicted, the city took action.  Why?  Because China's dictator, President Xi Jinping, is coming to town for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.  And if anyone still harbors doubts about just how much contempt Democrats hold for American citizens, watch Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) admit that the arrival of Xi is why they finally cleaned the city.

Los Angeles I-10 shut down indefinitely after massive fire.  One of the busiest stretches of interstate in the country is now closed indefinitely in both directions because of a massive fire in Los Angeles, the city's mayor Karen Bass confirmed Monday.  The shuttered section of I-10 is routinely used by 300,000 daily drivers and its sudden closure has officials raising the alarm over the impending impact.

The Great San Fran Cleanup Begins.  When we previously learned the details of the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference (APEC) currently kicking off in San Francisco, I asked what seemed like an obvious question.  San Francisco is a complete mess these days, with boarded-up buildings and homeless drug addicts littering the sidewalks.  Graffiti abounds.  Did anyone plan to clean the downtown area up before thousands of foreign dignitaries began arriving?  It turns out that they did have some plans in place.  They started clearing the paths that the visitors would travel, bringing in additional law enforcement, and "sweeping" the homeless camps away.  This has some of the locals upset, particularly the aforementioned homeless people.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Announces Plan to 'Master Lease' Hotels for Consolidating Homeless Encampments.  Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass recently issued an order allowing the use of residential hotel rooms, typically reserved for low-income, disabled, and elderly residents, as temporary shelters for the homeless.  This move, part of the Inside Safe initiative, aims to address the city's homelessness crisis by providing immediate shelter, despite potentially conflicting with a 2008 city law designed to protect these residential units. [...] Legal experts and housing advocates have expressed concerns about the plan's long-term implications for permanent housing availability.  Despite clearing numerous street encampments and housing over 1,600 people in temporary shelters, the challenge of finding permanent solutions remains significant.

Potemkin San Francisco sweeps its bums out of sight ahead of China potentate Xi Jinping's APEC visit.  So the City of San Francisco can clean up its act ... when it wants to.  And now that it's going to be hosting luminaries such as China's Xi Jinping, suddenly, the place isn't a homeless, drug-addicted, shoplifting-plagued, assault-and-robbery dump any more.  Funny how that happens.  So they could have cleaned it up all along, but they didn't — because the only people who were affected by the disaster were mere taxpayers who lived there, major retailers and restaurants, and ordinary tourists who just wanted to give the city their money so they could see the place.  That was too much to ask.  But let China's Chairman of the Community Party of China, Xi Jinping, with all his communist-regime police-state security apparat drop by, and all of a sudden, the place has become Potemkin Village II.

Drug addicts, homeless plaguing San Francisco's downtown miraculously disappear ahead of Biden, Xi Jinping summit.  Drug addicts, dealers and homeless who have plagued San Francisco's downtown have miraculously disappeared this week as the city cleans up for a huge international event.  Sources tell The Post the homeless have been pushed to other parts of the city in preparation for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which starts tomorrow and runs through Nov. 17.  However, residents and business owners said city officials' attempts to "herd" transients and drug addicts is only a "Band-Aid" to a severe problem as drug overdoses continue to plague the city.

Teachers' union in California threatens to strike if homeless people can't camp in parking lots.  The Fresno Teachers Association, a union with around 4,000 members, is headed towards a strike, largely because the superintendent of the Fresno Unified School District, Robert Nelson, hasn't budged on allowing school parking lots to become homeless camps; as Nelson says, the proposal isn't within the district's "area of expertise."  But according to the president of the union, Manuel Bonilla, it is; from a new report at The Washington Free Beacon:  The Fresno Teachers Association laid out the policy in a contract proposal, which calls to 'open high school parking lots to homeless families to park their car.'  The union acknowledges the move would require 'paid security' at a cost of at least $500,000, one of many expensive proposals union president Manuel Bonilla is pursuing in an attempt to address what he calls 'societal things.'  "Families" huh?  Are these the same people who called the thousands of military-aged men pouring across our border "families" too?

San Francisco Prepares to Clear Homeless Camps after Court Clarifies Definition of 'Involuntarily Homeless'.  San Francisco leaders are preparing to ramp up efforts to clean up and clear out homeless camps in the city after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals clarified that people who decline shelter should not be classified as "involuntarily homeless."  The clarification could also be critical for other western cities, which have struggled with the proliferation of homeless encampments on sidewalks and in public parks in the wake of two Ninth Circuit rulings — Martin v.  City of Boise and Johnson v.  City of Grants Pass — that limited the enforcement of camping bans on people who have nowhere to go.  San Francisco mayor London Breed announced Monday that the clarification provides the city with a "path forward" to enforce laws against "voluntarily homeless individuals."  The clarification by the Ninth Circuit comes nearly a year after the city was sued by a coalition of advocates for the homeless who claimed that the city violated state and federal laws, as well as its own policies on clearing homeless camps and trashing people's belongings.

Another Day, Another Body-Bag For Another Dead Junkie In San Francisco, 473 So Far This Year.  473 people in San Francisco have died due to overdose so far this year, 18 of them allegedly coming in a single day last week.  So, what is San Francisco Democrat mayor London Breed actually doing to solve this matter?  [Video clip]

Sacramento's homeless problem is one of the nation's worst.  Sacramento's homeless problem has grown worse than ever before.  Walk around PRI's offices in Midtown and you'll be greeted by frustrated individuals with varying degrees of illness or addiction while trying to pass down grime-filled sidewalks and get around tent encampments.  You may not realize it, but Sacramento's homeless problem is one of the nation's worst.  Homeless grew to about 9,300 in the 2022 Sacramento County point in time homeless count measurement, which was a 67 percent increase over the 2019 figures.  Last year, the number of homeless in Sacramento was found to be even higher than San Francisco's count.  Frustrated residents are expecting action and strong leadership from city officials to address the problem, but all there seems to be are press conferences and soundbites.  Though the city has enacted ordinances prohibiting camping on sidewalks, the city isn't really enforcing its own laws.

Historic LA hotel devolves into housing projects, repairs cost taxpayers more than $11.5 million.  Built in 1926, The Mayfair Hotel in downtown Los Angeles was a historical treasure, a unique marriage between the glamor of Old Hollywood and the elan of the Roaring Twenties, and then California Democrats got ahold of it.  The Mayfair once hosted the first ever Academy Awards after-party, but now it houses Skid Row. [...] (How could anyone think inviting drug-addled derelicts into a luxury hotel wouldn't end up this way?)  Like stereotypical crazy bums, the transients housed at the Mayfair "punched through walls," trashed appliances and bathrooms, smashed windows to throw objects onto the street below, and left fentanyl-covered tinfoil sheets strewn about.  And, in predictable fashion, the idiotic decisions of the left aren't limited to only affecting leftists, and the havoc spilled out onto the street.

Free parking for the homeless in CA.  Did you know that homeless people enjoy a constitutional right to free parking?  That's the main takeaway from a California Court of Appeals opinion issued Friday that ruled cities that tow cars with five or more unpaid parking tickets violate the 4th Amendment's prohibition of search and seizure without a warrant.  The Coalition on Homelessness sued the City and County of San Francisco seeking an injunction against towing scofflaw cars that piled up parking tickets, and the trial court had denied the petition.  But the Court of Appeals reversed, because "appellant [Coalition on Homelessness] presented declarations regarding the severe impacts of vehicle tows on unhoused San Francisco residents."

Why Homelessness in California is Worse Than In Other States.  If you've wondered why homelessness in California seems so much worse than in other states, Siyamak Khorrami's interview with El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson for California Insider provides some answers:  [Video clip]

Homeless continue to take over LA's iconic Venice Beach boardwalk.  Homeless encampments are back in Venice Beach, after nearly 200 people were cleared from the iconic boardwalk last summer.  Almost a year later, footage from the Los Angeles town show dozens of tents back up, and some 120 vagrants overtaking the beach once again.  Residents are now complaining about a renewed stream of garbage littering the promenade, as well as elaborate processions erected by individuals camping outside.

San Diego opens first 'safe sleeping site' tents for homeless people after council voted to ban homeless encampments.  San Diego opened its first of two 'safe-sleeping' areas in the border-city just weeks after the San Diego City Council voted to ban homeless encampments.  Democrat Mayor Todd Gloria announced the plan to open the areas in June as a way to combat the city's homeless crisis, which has been exacerbated by opioids.  San Diego has more than 2,000 individuals living on the streets and in 2019, the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that the county had the fourth-highest homeless population in the country.

Homelessness up 10% in LA despite a flood of money for programs.  If LA County's homeless population were its own city, it would be the 124th largest city in the entire state.  Every year the city does a homeless count designed to help keep track of whether the problem is getting better or worse.  This year, despite a flood of money directly at programs, the news was pretty bad.  ["]Unsheltered homelessness — which refers to people living outdoors in vehicles, tents and makeshift shelters like propped-up tarps — is up 40% over the past five years, rising to 55,155 people countywide...["] [...] It's pretty hard to argue that LA hasn't focused on the problem enough or devoted enough money to dealing with it.  And yet the numbers get worse every year.

Number of homeless residents in Los Angeles County jumps by 9% in annual count.  The number of homeless residents counted in Los Angeles County has spiked again, increasing by 9% since last year in the latest marker of how deep the crisis is of people sleeping in cars, encampments or shelters in California.  Results released Thursday from a federally required tally conducted in January found 75,518 people were homeless on any given night across LA County, compared with 69,144 in 2022.  About 46,260 were within the city of Los Angeles, where public frustration has grown as tents have proliferated on sidewalks and in parks.

San Francisco struggles with spiking crime, rampant homelessness and brazen drug use.  News of Park Hotels & Resorts' plan to surrender ownership of two of San Francisco's largest hotels is the beginning of what could potentially become a mass exodus of hotels from the city as 30 additional properties are facing massive loans due over the next two years.  The company behind the hotels announced Monday it had stopped making payments on its $725million loan that is due in November for the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 hotels.  Though Park Hotels owns the largest and fourth largest hotels in San Francisco, they are by no means the only hotels suffering and going under as loan repayment date close in.

San Francisco's doom loop accelerates.  The owner of 2 major San Francisco Hotels, including the city's largest hostelry, has announced that it is walking away from its mortgage on the two properties, surrendering them to the lender. [...] "Concerns over street conditions" is a delicate way of describing the takeover of much of downtown SF by drug addicts, currently termed "the unhoused" as if the main problem were high rents, when in fact the thousands of vagrants ruining the city are attracted from all over the country by the tolerance and active financial and social services support they receive.  They leave feces and urine on the streets, shooting up in front of the dwindling crowds of passers-by who have learned to avoid what was not very long ago one of the most attractive and vibrant cities in the world.  The high office vacancy rates, the lower return of workers to offices, and the reduced convention schedule that trouble Park's management are all closely related to the takeover of downtown (and other neighborhoods) by bums and junkies.

Just how gross was it at that San Francisco Whole Foods?  Whole Foods on Monday shut down its ritzy new flagship store in San Francisco, after just a year in operation, citing crime and safety concerns. [...]Obviously, the bums were taking over, or, as another commentator noted, Whole Foods had become "a food bank for the druggies and homeless."  Another said it was "never a good sign to see your grocery store filled with cops and security."  Fox News commentator Geraldo Rivera noted that what went on in that store and throughout the crumbling city amounted to an utter rejection of civilization.  Every now and then, Geraldo gets one right.  Who would want to shop at such a place, particularly for food?  When the bums are allowed in repeatedly, bringing in sanitation issues with them, and can make drug-addled spectacles of themselves, customers go other places.  That's why Whole Foods just shut the place down.

SF Mayor announced a crack-down on open-air drug markets, but was shouted down and had a brick thrown at her.  The city of San Francisco was having a normal one yesterday.  One observer called it a "circus" and that seems entirely fair given what happened.  So the story here is that San Francisco's rate of violent crime is relatively low for a big city but it's rate of robberies, shoplifting, car break-ins and drug overdoses (268 people have died so far in 2023) have all skyrocketed in recent years.  Visitors to the city aren't likely to be murdered but they are likely to trip over a zombified fentanyl addict while someone else is breaking out their car windows.  A lot of people are sick of it.

London Breed holds presser in SF junkie nest to denounce fentanyl, gets chased out by violent, screaming mob.  Breed's city has been turned into a crime-and-homeless-infested hellhole on her watch — a feces-strewn open-air drug market in many quarters where junkies, addicts, criminals, vagrants, and bums all gather together for their drug deals, panhandling, and shoplifting projects.  This particular hellhole, at United Nations Plaza, has always been a center of mayhem — I remember it as a trash-strewn, urine-soaked, junkie redoubt when I lived in the city 30 years ago.  It hasn't changed any, except that an infusion of city money to NGOs to "help" the homeless has made it a lot nastier.  Anyone who's ever lived in that city would know that that's not the place you go for a well-heeled press conference announcing all the new government money you are going to be spending to end crime in the city.  You don't go into a tiger's lair to talk about how you'll be taming the tigers.

Massive 2-Mile Long Homeless Encampment Plagues Posh Marin County, CA.  In April, I wrote about the many dilapidated RVs with homeless people living inside them that plague neighborhoods in Los Angeles and bring crime and filth to the surrounding streets.  I told the story of how one RV exploded in a fiery ball (powered by propane tanks that were presumably used to make meth) barely two blocks from my residence.  As bad as that situation is, it's nothing compared to what residents in Marin County, California wake up to each morning — both the NY Post and the Daily Mail reported Friday on the massive, two-mile-long homeless camp with dozens of RVs parked alongside Binford Road in the pricey neighborhood of Novato: [...]

San Francisco's homeless hotels beset by health violations, violence and overdose deaths.  The San Francisco Chronicle investigated the city's efforts to give homeless people housing in former hotel rooms and found that many of the rooms are often vacant.  In some hotels up to half the rooms are vacant.  The Chronicle blames the problem primarily on the mayor's referral process, but the story itself suggests significant problems with the tenants and with the nonprofits the city pays to keep the buildings maintained.

San Fran drops charges against crowbar attacker.  Earlier this month, former San Francisco Fire Commissioner Don Carmignani was attacked by a homeless person with a crowbar.  The attacker, Garrett Doty, was one of a group of vagrants who had been blocking Carmignani's mother's driveway and acting in a threatening fashion.  The attack sent the former fire chief to the hospital for emergency surgery with a hole in the back of his skull.  He also had a broken jaw and required fifty stitches.  This looked like a fairly open-and-shut case, but last night the San Fran District Attorney's office suddenly dropped the charges against Doty and dismissed the case.  How is this happening in a major American city?

How bad has it gotten in San Fran?  This bad.  San Francisco is only one of many once-beautiful cities that have gone to hell in a handbasket after years of supermajority Democratic rule and soft-on-crime policies.  This largely explains the number of people fleeing the Bay area, leading to the lowest population seen there in more than a decade.  But while homelessness and crime in general are making the city unlivable for many, one area where they are really being hit revolves around the ongoing fentanyl crisis.  It seems like the drug is everywhere at this point and people are literally dropping dead in the streets.  In response, Governor Gavin Newsom has resorted to something he previously refused to do.  He's sending in the National Guard to help shut down the flow of the deadly drug.

Just how gross was it at that San Francisco Whole Foods?  Whole Foods on Monday shut down its ritzy new flagship store in San Francisco, after just a year in operation, citing crime and safety concerns.  I wrote about that astonishing event yesterday, brought on by the city's failure to enforce its own laws, noting that the company had a good customer base and had shelled out big to make the place attractive, but that was no match for the chaos the one-party government had allowed the area to fall into. [...] Obviously, the bums were taking over, or, as another commentator noted, Whole Foods had become "a food bank for the druggies and homeless."  Another said it was "never a good sign to see your grocery store filled with cops and security.["]  Fox News commentator Gerald[o] Rivera noted that what went on in that store and throughout the crumbling city amounted to an utter rejection of civilization.

Downtown S.F. on the brink: It's worse than it looks.  The downtown area, the city's primary economic driver, is teetering on the edge, facing challenges greater than previously known, new data shows.  The wounds suffered by the economic core are deep, and city officials have yet to come up with a plan to make the fundamental changes that some economists and business leaders argue could make the area thrive again.  "A general economic decline is what we're trying to avoid," said Wade Rose, president of Advance SF, a business group that advocates on behalf of several major employers in San Francisco.  The group is working with the city on short-term ideas to bring more people back downtown, but Rose agrees that the problem needs a rethink in the long run.

San Francisco, RIP?  [S]omething like three-quarters of San Franciscans who deserted the city during covid have not returned.  The same phenomenon has been observed in cities like Portland and Minneapolis, while other cities, like Salt Lake City, have rapidly bounced back.  But Salt Lake City is not run by liberal goofballs. [...] When you go downtown and you don't feel safe and you see people "using the street as a toilet," you stop going downtown.  There is nothing mysterious about this.

Downtown San Diego condo owners grow weary as homeless incidents escalate.  As he pushed the stroller with his two young children up Ninth Avenue during his mid-day walk in downtown San Diego, Jarvis Leverson stopped at the intersection of F Street.  "This is where I have to divert my route," he said.  "I can go that way," gesturing his head in one direction, "or that way."  Across the street, the sidewalk was crammed with tents and makeshift canvas shelters erected by the homeless people who have lived there for weeks, even months.  Discarded cartons of food and piles of trash were scattered outside the tents, in the gutter and on the street.  Leverson opted to avoid Ninth Avenue and turned left on F Street, then took a right on Eighth Avenue.  Once again, he found the sidewalk impassable, and he rolled the stroller onto the street to avoid tents and people.  It's a daily occurrence for Leverson, who lives in the Parkloft condominiums on Island Avenue.

Have you heard about the proposed $1.7 million toilet in San Francisco?  We know that San Francisco has been the open defecation capital of the U.S.  for more than a decade.  This once-fine city has been ruined by the misgovernance of the Democrats.  In other words, all progress has been ruined by 'progressive' politics.  One of the solutions to this crisis which causes the surroundings to be unhygienic and unsafe for walking is to build public toilets that are freely accessible.  This is exactly what the powers that be in San Francisco set forth to do.

Have you heard about the proposed $1.7 million toilet in San Francisco?  We know that San Francisco has been the open defecation capital of the U.S. for more than a decade.  This once-fine city has been ruined by the misgovernance of the Democrats.  In other words, all progress has been ruined by 'progressive' politics.  One of the solutions to this crisis which causes the surroundings to be unhygienic and unsafe for walking is to build public toilets that are freely accessible.  This is exactly what the powers that be in San Francisco set forth to do.

Biden installed: What could possibly go wrong?  Crime is up all over the nation because the left is pro-criminal.  Criminals are coddled, and turned loose to prey on citizens again.  Los Angeles district attorney is a case in point:  George Gascón never met a violent criminal he didn't want to set free.  Downtown LA is no longer safe to enjoy, nor is it the thriving hub of culture it once was; it has been taken over by the homeless population (as has San Francisco).  The homeless, a population almost entirely mentally ill and/or drug addicted, are often a danger to those who cross their paths.  They need psychiatric care, but in California they get syringes.  They're left to taunt the public, to defecate on the streets, and ruin the cities they inhabit.  Like so many other Democrat-run hellscapes, LA and SF are unlikely to recover without a political shift.

Tensions flare as crews dismantle several homeless encampments on Skid Row.  Tensions flared Monday morning as crews dismantled several homeless encampments on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles while police officers stood guard.  Video from AIR7 HD showed a dump truck's crane grabbing one encampment's canopy tent, which had apparently been constructed with a raised floor and walls.  All of the debris was then hoisted into the truck and hauled away.  That sparked an angry reaction from some bystanders, who stood behind yellow police tape at the intersection of Fifth and San Pedro streets.

EV skid row!  How LA's 'Electric Avenue' has become overrun with homeless.  A conservative commentator has warned electric vehicle drivers in Los Angeles that charging stations for their $60,000 cars are littered with homeless encampments.  Alexandra Datig shared a video of her driving in downtown LA on Wednesday, with one of the local Blink EV charging stations surrounded by trash and tents.  'When you live in Los Angeles, it's better to have a charging station at home for that $60,000 EV,' Datig wrote on Twitter.

Santa Monica becomes unliveable.  Seems the bums, who are normally always present in the city, have gotten a strengthened entitlement mentality and are now aggressively going after shops, customers, foot traffic, and anyone in their vicinity.  Pay them money for drugs, or they'll cut you. [...] Apparently, no one can go out at night.  Daytime is probably O.K., provided you avoid the panhandlers and passed-out bums, but at night, the city turns into an obstacle course to avoid assaults and killings.  It's got a crime rate now like Compton's.

Federal judge blocks San Francisco from clearing homeless camps.  I've written about the Boise decision before but it has been a while.  Back in 2018 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in a case called Martin v Boise.  The judges concluded that laws punishing homeless behavior, such as sleeping on sidewalks, was a violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment unless the city could provide an alternative. [...] San Francisco has been trying to clean up its streets after years complaints from residents and businesses but the city was sued by the ACLU over the sweeps back in September.

24 Hours in Nancy Pelosi's District Will Kill You - This is NOT America.  Democrat rule has destroyed California.  We travelled to the district of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to see what life is like for her constituents.  What we found not only shocked us, but put our own lives in danger.  [Video clip]

America's Growing Political Impotence.  [Scroll down]  Then there are the homeless encampments that now plague urban landscapes.  Especially in California, they are virtually small cities filled with the mentally ill who exhibit little respect for public decency or elementary hygiene.  Rat-attracting garbage is everywhere and streets are used as public toilets.  These homeless destroy local businesses and turn neighborhoods into "no-go" zones.  In San Francisco, luxury downtown hotels have removed all lobby furniture for fear of being overrun by squatters.  LA recently counted some 42,000 homeless residents.  Of the utmost importance, cities blithely ignore residents' demands calling for their removal.  Instead cities try to cure the problem by even greater spending on everything from substance abuse programs to job training, which, unsurprisingly, only seems to exacerbate the problem.

California could end homelessness by 2035 with $8.1B per year, report says.  Over the past two weeks, officials in the city and county of Los Angeles have taken actions to address the region's homelessness crisis, from L.A. Mayor Karen Bass declaring a state of emergency on homelessness to the county Board of Supervisors voting Tuesday, Dec. 20, to partner with the city in its efforts.  Now, a report out this week is drawing attention to the role the state can play in getting people off the streets.  The state could end homelessness in California by 2035 if it invested $8.1 billion annually in each of the next 12 years — $6.9 billion more than its current average annual investment — to pay for housing and support services for those facing homelessness, according to the report.

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-ight.  And for only a few billion more per year, California could eliminate all poverty, hunger, ignorance, disease, prejudice, confusion, addiction, crime, obesity, poor TV reception, laziness, and bad weather.

A year after opening in Los Angeles, a 600-room hotel for the homeless is still mostly empty: Report.  Amajor homeless housing project in Los Angeles is reportedly struggling to attract tenants a year after it opened, according to media reports.  The Cecil Hotel, built in 1924 and long known for its proximity to Los Angeles's notorious Skid Row district, was debuted in December of 2021 as a re-imagined housing complex for homeless city residents.  Yet "two-thirds of the Cecil remains unoccupied" after a year, according to the Los Angeles Times, with roughly 400 rooms sitting vacant there.  The Times claimed the project was beset with "a slow-moving bureaucracy and multiple failure points."  The Cecil is "one of the few affordable housing projects in Los Angeles of [its] size that is fully privately financed."

The Wasteland of Leftist Compassion.  Compassion is one of the greatest of human virtues.  But effective compassion comes with an obligation to do more than what merely feels and sounds good. [...] In many cases, the consequences of unbalanced compassion are obvious, as anyone can see if they visit the coastal cities of California.  It was compassion that motivated state legislators to decriminalize hard drug addiction, now dubbed "substance use disorder."  Compassion was the moral justification to empty California's prisons and downgrade property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.  Compassion compelled politicians and judges to rewrite laws that kept mentally ill people safely off the streets.  Compassion was the bludgeon that beat down objections to the disastrous "housing first" rule, which denies funding for drug treatment or job training until free housing — with no conditions for entry — are provided to homeless people.  And "compassion" pressured local and state authorities to forego inexpensive shelters in favor of more "equitable" apartment complexes, brand new and located in expensive neighborhoods, at a cost of over $500,000 per unit.  None of this is compassionate, of course.

This is what it takes for Los Angeles to clear a homeless encampment.  For a while during the runup to the elections last month, it looked as if former Republican real estate developer Rick Caruso might pull off a miracle and defeat Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass to become the next Mayor of Los Angeles.  In the end, Bass squeaked out a six-point victory and will be inaugurated as the first female Mayor in the city's history.  Out on the campaign trail, Bass made a point of repeatedly promising to tackle the city's endemic homelessness crisis.  Not coincidentally, a large group of homeless people have been living in an encampment that activists set up right next to City Hall earlier this year, trying to draw the attention of the Mayor and the City Council to the problem.  That wouldn't make for very good visuals for the new Mayor's inauguration, however, so the city leaped into action by packing them all up in buses on Thursday and shipping them elsewhere.

San Francisco's Tenderloin Center closes - did it do any good?  Earlier this year San Francisco declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin district.  Part of that effort involved the creation of a new "linkage center" so named because it was intended to link the homeless and drug addicts on the streets to needed services: [...] Shortly after it was set up, Michael Shellenberger wrote that the Linkage Center had become the city's leading open-air drug market: [...] The center's last day was Sunday.  So did it accomplish anything?  The San Francisco Chronicle reports the answer is that it was a mixed bag at best.  It may have helped a few hundred homeless people get through the day but there's not much evidence it had an impact on homelessness overall.

San Francisco Hotels Demand City Compensate for Damage by Homeless.  San Francisco hotels are demanding millions of dollars from the city to compensate them for damage incurred while housing the homeless under a municipal government program launched during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Under the program, known as "Shelter-in-Place" (SIP), hotels were used to move homeless people off the streets for fear of spreading the coronavirus in tent cities.  Ironically, as COVID became better understood, officials began recommending against clearing homeless encampments, because the virus spread less easily outdoors.  However, the practice of housing the homeless in hotels was embraced by Democratic officials in state and local government, though it was expensive, as a temporary way of tackling an ongoing homeless crisis.

San Francisco Flushing $1.7M to Construct One Public Toilet.  The City by the Bay is not known for being well-run or fiscally responsible.  Homelessness, a drug overdose crisis, spiking crime, and ample sidewalk fecal matter have made it a punchline of what leftist "utopias" actually end up becoming in practice when radical Democrat policies are implemented.  Now, San Francisco is working on trying to address one issue by constructing a public toilet — that will apparently cost $1.7 million and won't be finished until 2025.  Even more comically, California state Assemblyman Matt Haney was set to celebrate the boondoggle with a press conference, but he was forced to cancel his potty party after public backlash.  The million-plus dollar price tag is being covered by state funds secured by Haney collected from Golden State taxpayers in order to build, unbelievably, "just one toilet in 150 square feet of space," according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Bill Walton calls out Mayor Todd Gloria for allowing the homeless to destroy San Diego.  As we all know, San Diego's homeless crisis is only getting worse under the leadership of Mayor Todd Gloria, who continues to pretend like he is working to fix the issue.  But all his efforts have failed.  In downtown San Diego alone, there is a record high 1,609 homeless residents.  Back in July 2022, KUSI reported that there was a record number of deaths in our homeless population, and literally nothing has been done.

The Sovietization of American Life.  Everyone knows that the status of our homeless population in Los Angeles or San Francisco is medieval, dangerous, and unhealthy.  And everyone knows that any serious attempt to remedy the situation would cause one to be labeled an apostate, counterrevolutionary, and enemy of the people.

You Pay Super-High Taxes.  You Deserve Nice Things.  Why Don't You Demand Them?  We Californians pay more for taxes than anyone else in America.  We have a nearly $100 billion surplus.  And yet we have the worst public services.  Just take crime and homelessness.  You can't walk safely through many neighborhoods in our largest cities.  Street addicts feel entitled to sleep, smoke meth, and terrorize passengers on mass transit and public parks.  And despite spending more on homelessness and mental health, per capita, than any other state, homelessness increased 31% in California and declined 18% in the rest of the U.S., over the last ten years.

The number of homeless people dying on the streets of LA is going up.  The NY Times published a story today [4/18/2022] about the rising number of homeless people who are dying on the streets.  In a county as large and populous as Los Angeles, there was an average of five deaths per day last year.  Some of this death toll is connected to the surge of fentanyl as a cheap street drug. [...] The death toll is particularly high in California where an estimated 4,800 homeless people died on the street last year.  Almost every conceivable cause of death is much more likely for people on the street.

California's big cities are shrinking.  Last year the state of California announced its first population decline in state history.  Yesterday, newly published census data showed there have been significant population declines in major US cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. [...] There was some additional data last December which showed it's not just that people are leaving California.  It's also that fewer people are moving here.  The timing of all of this, July 2020 to July 2021, is clearly timed to the pandemic.

People In California Libraries Aren't Safe From the Homeless.  Police in Anaheim are looking for a man they say attacked a library employee unprovoked.  The incident happened at the Anaheim Central Library back on March 3.  According to police, around 6:15 p.m. a male employee was approached by another man, and shoved to the ground.  Police say the employee fell back and hit his head on the tile floor, causing him to cut his head and even lose consciousness.  He was transported to a local hospital.  [Video clip]

Free stuff for the homeless doesn't work out the way Oakland's 'tiny houses' advocates thought it would.  Seems the idea of "free homes" for the homeless, touted as a panacea to end the problem, isn't quite working out the way its advocates said it would.  In Oakland, at a concentrated community of "tiny homes," given out by the city to the homeless, the result was this, according to The Oaklandside:  ["]A fire Monday morning incinerated three tiny-home shelters at a city-run transitional-housing site at E. 12th Street and 2nd Avenue, across from Lake Merritt.  Nobody was injured, according to authorities, but five people who were living in the scorched shelters were displaced.  A fourth tiny-home was damaged as well.["] [...] The press accounts state that the buildings, which were built cheaply as a sort of transitional housing for the homeless, were in themselves a fire hazard, flaming up fast when someone inside one does something dangerous enough to start a house fire.  And it didn't take too long for this to happen, given that the encampment was just opened last December.  Some activists blamed the proximity of the homes to one another.  Others blamed the fact that the buildings were not sufficiently fireproof.

Los Angeles is Spending Up To $837,000 for [Each] Housing Unit for the Homeless.  In 2016, voters in California approved a $1.2 billion program to build housing for the homeless. [...] Californians should be applauded for their compassion and generosity.  But six years later, only 1,200 units have been built out of the 10,300 that have been paid for.  One project under development would cost $837,000 for each housing unit, according to a report published by Los Angeles city controller Ron Galperin.  Another 14% of units exceeded $700,000 in cost.

Among the homeless in San Francisco, the "vast majority" are homeless due to addiction.  [Thread reader]  People say high rent causes homelessness but Ben, who has been homeless in San Francisco for 7 years, says the "vast majority" are homeless due to addiction.  Just 6-7% are from SF.  Ben says he "boosts" (shoplifts) and breaks into cars to pay for his $60/day heroin habit. [...] Ben's is a common story from honest homeless.  Not everybody on the street is as honest.  Many naive liberal journalists are hoodwinked by people who tell them what they want to hear, ie, that they're just down on their luck, can't afford the rent, that it's not about the drugs etc[.]  We should do what they do in Netherlands and Portugal, where homeless are required to stay in shelters and arrested for using drugs publicly, as the head of Portugal's program explains: [...]

San Francisco residents are being asked to house a homeless person in their own homes.  Homelessness in the Bay Area has become such a problem people are being urged to give their spare rooms over to the homeless.  Some charities have urged local families — who are sick of seeing the homeless crisis on their doorsteps — to do something about it personally by taking unhoused people into their own homes and spare rooms — and some schemes have little to no compensation.  Christi Carpenter, executive director of East Bay nonprofit Safe Time, which places homeless families and college students in spare bedrooms, for one-six months, told Mercury News:  "This is something that someone can do when they just feel that despair of '[...], I just can't stand seeing these poor people on the streets near my home.'"  Since 2017, the group has made more than 60 placements.

The Editor says...
[#1] The group has made 60 "placements" in the last five years.  That's one per month.  With hundreds of homeless people in the streets, that's not a solution.  [#2] Bleeding heart liberals apparently don't know the adage, "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile."  It's far better to leave the homeless bum out on the sidewalk, rather than invite him to live in the spare bedroom, because (aside from the mess he makes in the first 30 minutes) sooner or later he will either steal everything in the house to pay for drugs, or he will burn down the house while smoking crack, or he will someday claim partial ownership of the house.  The homeless guy is probably homeless because of his history of faulty decisions.  He will almost certainly refuse to listen to constructive criticism or sound advice.  Use your head.  [#3] If enough people sign up for this program, it will result in a condition in which the rest of the citizens won't be able to refuse to participate.  Much like the way cell phones, when they became ubiquitous, led to the extinction of coin-operated telephones.  Or the way debit cards are displacing cash.  Eventually, the overwhelming majority rules, and everyone else must play along.

San Francisco's open air drug market proves [the] city's woke effort to connect homeless addicts to rehab is not working.  A new 'linkage center' aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities opened in San Francisco last week — but distressing images show an open air illicit drug consumption site that is now littered with needles and crowded with addicts shooting up in broad daylight.  Images taken by DailyMail.com show a woman slumped over in a wheelchair, her pants down around her ankles, preparing to inject a needle into her thigh.  The woman sitting on the ground next to her has a needle to her neck.  Many others are sitting on the ground among trash, empty food containers and dirty blankets, as they fumble in with drug paraphernalia in the cold weather.

L.A. City Council Okays 'Affordable Housing' Project on Edge of Pricey Venice Beach Neighborhood.  Homeless and people with low incomes will soon be housed next to the iconic and expensive Venice Beach neighborhood after the Los Angeles City Council approved last week a 136-unit apartment building.  The project, which will be built on city property that is now a parking lot, will cover 2.7 acres and the Venice Dell Community project will cost $75 million.

LA residents say homelessness crisis is city's biggest problem.  Los Angeles residents say the city's homelessness crisis is the biggest problem it currently faces, with many saying they feel unsafe as a result — and that they're now considering moving.  A whopping 94 percent of people living in the City of Angels say homelessness is a serious or very serious problem.  It was the biggest concern among residents polled, ahead of housing affordability, or traffic, air quality and climate change.

Residents in Los Angeles have to deal with violent Homeless Daily, Here's an Example.  Lifelong residents of California are fleeing for red states in droves because of what you see in this video.  The homeless epidemic has reached levels unseen in this country since the great depression.  While the media continues to claim inflation isn't hurting people and is actually a good thing (New York Times article) the truth is millions are losing their jobs and ending up homeless since Biden took over.  This video shows just a single example of how bad the homeless are to live around.  Once prosperous areas now look like third world nations.  Los Angeles could be considered the capitol of the desperate.  [Video clip]

Terrified residents of luxury San Fran condo building see an adjoining alleyway become city's biggest homeless encampment.  Residents of a San Francisco condo building where units sell for $1 million say they're living in fear after an adjoining alleyway became the city's biggest homeless encampment.  The massive tent city — occupied by a feces-hurling man and an assortment of other untoward characters — is paces away from The Artani, an eight-story Van Ness Avenue complex where residents say they're being spooked by a growing number of vagrant neighbors.  Condo resident Amber Lusko said the encampment, exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, has drawn rats, thieves, and mentally unstable adults who are turning their neighborhood into a state of bedlam.

Los Angeles railroad lined with homeless encampments sees rash of cargo container burglaries.  The backlog of cargo containers making their way from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach saw widespread burglaries as they were carried on trains through an area of tracks lined by homeless encampments.  Thousands of boxes were seen laying near the train tracks "as far as the eye could see" in Los Angeles' Lincoln Park, NBC4 reported.  A FedEx container and several others had their doors wide open and boxes tipping over.  The area is lined by homeless encampments on either side of the tracks.  The outlet also spotted two men jumping off of a moving train and carrying what appeared to be bolt cutters.

Los Angeles bans homeless encampments in 54 spots across city.  The city of Los Angeles outlawed homeless encampments Wednesday at 54 locations across the city.  The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-2 to ban the actions of sleeping, sitting, or lying at the specified spots throughout three city districts.  The measure also outlaws homeless camps within 500 feet of schools, parks, libraries, and daycare facilities.  The homeless in the restricted areas will be given notice at least 14 days prior to their removal with signs, and "outreach teams will continue to engage anyone remaining on the site," the Los Angeles Times reported.  Placing the signs at the 54 approved locations will cost the city roughly $2 million.  Homelessness has risen to a severe problem in Los Angeles throughout the pandemic, analysis shows.  Some officials in the city say the ordinance is akin to violence against the homeless.

The Democrats War on Blacks Keeps Growing in the Pandemic.  Readers will — excuse the redundancy — recall that one made two votes in that election, the first deciding whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom and the second for whom to replace him if recalled.  [Larry] Elder won the latter in a landslide.  But just who were the people (along with the predictable corruption) who blocked his way from the governor's office by voting to preserve Newsom?  I submit that many of them were what we used to call "limousine liberals" and might today be called "Tesla-crats."  They are the rich, often mega-rich, almost always white, people who drive by the myriad horrific homeless encampments of California, trying not to look, as they head for the next trendy restaurant or their magnificent home.  And what is the largest group on a percentage basis in those homeless encampments?  Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that it's blacks.

Family of 5 allegedly attacked by two homeless people with machete in Malibu; dad loses eye.  An argument between a dad and two homeless people on a beach in Malibu took an extremely violent turn over the weekend, ending with the father losing an eye.  The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department responded to a call on Dan Blocker Beach on Sunday.  Deputies were told a man was with four family members when they were approached by two suspects, both believed to be homeless.  The two homeless people confronted the dad, saying they were not allowed in the area, sparking an argument between the three people.  One of the suspects, later identified as Richard Franck, whipped out a machete and began slashing the dad multiple times.

The Reason They're Letting Fentanyl Kill Kids Is Because They Think Drug Dealers Are The Real Victims.  Tomorrow at 2 pm, I will join a Livermore, California mother named Jacqui Berlinn in a protest against dangerous drug dealers who may end up killing her son.  They could kill him indirectly, by selling him fentanyl, or directly, as a consequence of his failing to pay them.  Twice already he has been stabbed, and nearly died.  Our first two protests were in San Francisco and Venice Beach and this time we will protest in Sacramento.  Parents whose kids were killed by fentanyl will join her.  One of them, Jaime Puerta, lost his 16 year-old son, Daniel, to fentanyl poisoning in April last year.  Daniel took a pill he thought was a prescription opioid.  When the parents come together, it is powerful.  Our Venice Beach protest helped motivate the L.A. City Council voting to shut down the open drug scene and homeless encampments.  Just putting homeless people in hotel rooms is only a temporary fix that won't last.  But our protest proved that we can force the politicians to act.

Woman sues LA after she was hit by car and suffered brain injury when she was forced to step into busy Hollywood street because of homeless encampment on sidewalk.  A Los Angeles woman struck by a car after being forced to step into a busy street because a homeless encampment blocked the sidewalk has slapped the city, county and state with a lawsuit.  Debra Todd, 64, was hit by a Nissan at the 101 Freeway overpass on Gower Street in Hollywood on Oct. 4, 2020, while attempting to deliver food and water to individuals living at the freeway encampment.  She sustained injuries to her head, hip, back, arm and leg, according to the lawsuit filed Monday at the Los Angeles Superior Court.

After Years Of Mad Max Violence On Venice Beach, Police With AR-15s Clear Out The Homeless.  Venice Beach has gone viral again amid its surge in homelessness.  A TikTok video shared widely across social media on Tuesday shows Los Angeles Police Department officers with assault rifles detaining a group of homeless people after responding to reports of a man with a gun at Venice Beach.  [Video clip]

Venice Beach Has Devloved To The Point It Resembles A Scene Out Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.  Watch as this group of mentally deranged homeless men go at each other while sane people try to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary on Venice Beach.  Venice Beach has been occupied and destroyed by massive homeless encampments for years now and no one seems to really tackle the issue.  [Video clip]

Venice Beach Doesn't Have a Homelessness Crisis.  Last weekend, the New York Times Magazine ran an article on homelessness in Los Angeles. [...] The article zeroes in on Venice Beach, part of the Venice area of Los Angeles.  Venice Beach is a once-gritty area that's now "gentrified."  Except: it wasn't that gritty.  Twenty-five years ago, Lowe reports, the going rate for a house was $300,000.  In 1996, the median home price in the U.S. was $112,000.  If Venice Beach was ever the itinerant artist's paradise that nostalgists depict it as, that was a long time ago.  Today, the same house in Venice Beach goes for $2 million — a sign that its residents ought to consider some well-planned construction so that theirs doesn't become a stagnant community.  In any case, though, such new housing won't fix the homeless crisis.  Nowhere in her 6,000-word article does Lowe find an example of the archetypal homeless person of casual understanding: a down-on-his luck, working-class man or woman who had a house in Venice Beach — whether rented or owned — and lost it after getting fired, having a spouse die, or suffering a disability or illness.  That's not to say that such cases don't exist, but they're certainly not the norm for the hundreds of people who have pitched tents and cardboard boxes or built plywood shanties along the beach, boardwalk, and sidewalks.

Gavin Newsom invites world's homeless to California.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged to house and feed the world's homeless population this week during a whirlwind "Comeback California" tour that is designed to stave off a September recall by angry voters.  The Golden State is already cracking under the weight of the nation's largest homeless population and one of the worst economic climates post-COVID-19.  With millions of middle-class residents and business owners fleeing to red states, those left behind have seen a burgeoning lower class emerge.  Gasoline is pushing $5 a gallon, 18 million homeless pack into all the blue cities, and dilapidated freeways are strewn with trash.

$20,000 trash cans?  S.F. looks to roll out costly prototypes for pilot on street corners.  San Francisco elected officials struggling to deal with complaints about garbage piling up on the city's sidewalks and streets have been waiting three years for a solution — only to get sticker shock when they heard the details this week.  Addressing the problem requires a good trash can, but on Wednesday, a committee of the Board of Supervisors wrestled with how to replace many substandard bins when it learned that a batch of new, custom-made design prototypes will cost $12,000 to $20,000 apiece.  When mass-produced, the cost per can will drop to an estimated $2,000 to $3,000.  Still, supervisors balked at the price to get there.  Supervisor Matt Haney said: "$20,000 a can is ridiculous."  Yet San Francisco's garbage wars are serious business.

Priorities: San Francisco Prepares to Blow $300,000 on Designer Trash Cans, as Homeless Crisis Worsens.  Not surprisingly, homelessness and crime are up big time in Democrat-run cities across the country, including in San Francisco, where criminals have been caught on video brazenly stealing from drugstores in the middle of the day in plain view of other customers and even security guards in some instances.  In some cases, violent crimes that were reported to police were found to have been committed by a homeless person.  It's gotten so bad in the city that a recent poll showed close to 40% of San Franciscans were making plans to relocate in the near future out of frustration.  With all of that in mind, you'd think the city would make good use of its resources by coming up with creative ways to combat the two issues that have become the most concerning to its residents.  Unfortunately, that's not what's happening.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city is prepared to blow $300,000 on fancy prototype trash cans (up to $20k each for 15 of them) because people weren't crazy about the existing green ones.

Furious Venice Beach residents say enough is enough as the homeless continue to swarm the boardwalk.  Less than a week after a massive clean-up of homeless encampments on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, new arrivals continue to swarm the area, DailyMail.com can reveal.  City officials promised they would return at the end of July to finish the job, but residents and shop owners say enough is enough, and tell DailyMail.com that last week's sweep was 'all for show'.  Last week, a concerned resident who asked not to be identified captured a couple on video taking up camp near the popular boardwalk.  'You can clearly see a man and a woman unloading their car at about 7 pm,' they said.  'The car had an Arkansas license plate, and they just went about their business, lugging their belongings and setting up a tent on the sand like it was no big deal.'

Does this mean other states can ship their vagrants to California?
Newsom: Out-of-state homeless welcome to 'new beginnings' in California.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he's not worried about a bill meant to combat homelessness exacerbating the problem because the state embraces everyone looking for "new beginnings."  The Democrat made the comment when asked about the possible unintended consequences of signing the $12 billion AB-140 housing bill.  Officials are required to "develop a framework for the California Dream For All Program, the goals of which would ... [make] home[ ]ownership more affordable."  "To the extent that people want to come here for new beginnings and all income levels, that's part of the California dream and we have a responsibility to accommodate and enliven and inspire, and the California dream is still alive and well," Mr. Newsom said Monday [7/19/2021] when asked if the Golden State — mired in a homeless crisis — might become a magnet for similar out-of-state populations.

Amid homeless crisis, California cities shell out huge sums for municipal tent encampments.  Numerous U.S. cities facing crisis levels of homelessness are shelling out millions of dollars to house local homeless populations in tent encampments, with per-tent costs in some cases rivaling the average monthly rent of the cities in question.  In a targeted response to homeless issues confronting the Los Angeles neighborhood of East Hollywood, city officials set aside a large parking lot with room for dozens of tents, which the city dubbed a "Safe Sleep Village."  Residents there are reportedly given access to food, restrooms and showers, and services such as counseling.  That project has raised eyebrows for its reported price tag:  A little over $2,100 per person per month, or very nearly the average cost to rent an apartment in Los Angeles.

San Francisco is paying $60,000 Per Tent for a homeless encampment and now city officials want an additional $20 million.  San Francisco's homelessness department is seeking $20 million in additional funding to extend an encampment program that already funds tents that cost over $60,000 a year.  This week, officials from San Francisco's Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing went before the the Board of Supervisors' Budget and Appropriations Committee and requested $20 million over the next two years to keep six 'Safe Sleeping Village' tent encampments running.  The city's six encampment sites provide tents for the homeless as well as three meals a day, around-the-clock security and bathrooms and showers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The Editor says...
The most obvious difference between a mental hospital and a homeless camp with "three meals a day, around-the-clock security and bathrooms and showers," is that the homeless camp is outdoors.  Wouldn't everybody be better off if the homeless were put inside a nice big building?  Permanently?

Los Angeles Sheriff Urges State of Emergency on Homelessness.  In an unusual move, Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva has sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors urging them to declare a local state of emergency to address the spiraling homelessness crisis in the county, citing an increase in crime, lack of sanitation, and struggling businesses.  "We've been inundated with calls, with concerns, with images from the news, from people picking up the phone, emailing, sending us letters, about what's going on in Venice," Villanueva told reporters during a press conference inside the Justice Hall on June 23.  "And that is a microcosm of what's going on throughout the entire county of Los Angeles."  "Enough is enough, we need to kick this into high gear," he said.  There's an estimated 200 homeless people on the Venice Beach Boardwalk and 2,000 throughout the neighborhood, making it the second largest concentration of homeless people after Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

Bug infestations, tent-lined streets:  California's homelessness crisis is at a tipping point.  Tent-lined streets with belongings scattered everywhere.  Infected wounds with bugs living inside.  A man who hasn't showered in over a decade.  An 80-year-old woman who can't feed herself.  People who ride the metro rail lines because the trains are a safer place to sleep.  California's homeless problem has been out of control for decades.  Then came COVID-19.  The result has been a deadly combination of medical crisis, human hopelessness and bureaucratic red tape as the state, reeling from the effects of the virus, tries to rebound with a plan for the 160,000 homeless people.  That number eclipses any other state — and accounts for half of the country's entire unsheltered population.

The Editor says...
California's homeless population was already out of control before anybody heard of Covid-19.

The Tragic Demise of Venice Beach.  [Scroll down]  During a recent trip to Venice, [LA County Sheriff Alex] Villanueva said the tents need to be cleared by Independence Day, after reports of crime, arson, and filth went unaddressed for months.  He blames elected leaders for not handling the issue.  "When I was out there in Venice, I talked to a shop owner, and he was fit to be tied," Villanueva told The Epoch Times.  "He's tired of politicians, tired of people in the city doing nothing.  And it's impacting his ability for customers to come in, [with] the cost of people trying to break into his business and people causing scenes, fights, [and] outside fires.  It's like a third-world country."  But not all locals approve of the sweep.  Some activists quickly criticized the move on social media.  "Why is this @LASDHQ dressed like this to do outreach?  Why do they have guns?" the People's City Council asked on Twitter.  For some residents, the uptick in recent violent attacks by the homeless on workers, residents, and the elderly are justification enough.

San Francisco Shows Leftist Policies Can't Solve Homelessness.  San Francisco is coming undone.  In recent years, the city has manifested a series of visible and persistent inequalities, with a spoils-to-the-victor world for its technological elite and a chaotic, brutalized world for its dispossessed.  In the city's Tenderloin district, men openly hawk drugs on the street corners, desperate addicts are crumpled across the sidewalks, and first responders dart through the chaos to revive overdose victims.  The city has become a web of contradictions.  There are thousands of new millionaires and, by the latest estimates, 18,000 people in and out of homelessness.  The headquarters of Uber, Twitter, and Square are blocks away from the open-air drug markets of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and SoMa.  Wealthy families attending an art opening at the Civic Center have to cross through the tent encampments that line the sidewalks.

Recall Builds Against Mike Bonin as L.A. Residents Reject Plan to House Homeless Near Beach.  Los Angeles residents are signing petitions for the recall of city council member Mike Bonin, as public outrage against his efforts to house the city's homeless at the beach continues to grow.  The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on the deteriorating conditions near Venice Beach, which has always attracted eccentric people but has become so unlivable that residents are afraid to walk there or even to look at what is happening in tent cities on their doorstep.

Why is Hunter Biden moving from his $25,000 a month Venice digs?  In a pretty intriguing development, Joe Biden's son, Hunter, is moving from his tony Venice, California, digs. [...] And the neighbors had welcomed him, not because they like his politics and celebrity status, but because of the Secret Service agents he brings in tow.  Supposedly, the agents' presence helps keep the crime and squalor and panhandling associated with the homeless down.

Moving truck is seen at Hunter Biden's $5.4 million rental home in Venice Beach.  [Scroll down]  Secret Service officers sitting outside of Hunter's home have had to contend with the stench from a small encampment on the other side of a parking lot.  The tent city itself has its dramas just like any other human settlement.  Last month a 30-year-old woman from Virginia gave birth in one of the oceanfront camps, the Venice Current reported.  A homeless man was shot and injured on April 28.  The gunman calmly walked away.  The victim is not cooperating with police.  Earlier the same week a tent was deliberately set on fire.  One local woman talks of how she was chased by a man with a sword.

Venice Beach Now Looks Like Mad Max During A Zombie Apocolypse Thanks To The Homeless Epidemic.  Residents in Los Angeles' coastal Venice neighborhood are calling for action over homeless encampments in the area that have been connected to a string of crimes, including shootings, fights, fires and drug use.  The city as a whole is grappling with a homeless crisis that has only gotten worse in recent years.  Over five years, the homeless population has increased by half, according to a January report released by the Luskin Center for History and Policy at the University of California in Los Angeles.  In Venice, some of the more violent incidents alarming residents and business owners include an April 28 shooting in which a man was shot but survived.  No suspects have been identified, the Los Angeles Police Department told Fox News.  Another includes a Monday [5/31/2021] explosion inside an encampment that caused a fire.  [Video clip]

Does 'Housing First' Help Homeless?  Here's What Happened in Los Angeles.  In 2016, influential political leaders, activists, and media outlets in Los Angeles said they had a simple solution to homelessness:  Build more housing.  Echoing an argument heard across the country, they claimed that rising rents have thrown people onto the streets and that by directly providing free "permanent supportive housing," cities can reduce the number of people on the streets and save costs on emergency services.  In response, 77% of Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 units for the city's homeless.  That commitment made Los Angeles the most significant testing ground for the "Housing First" approach that has become the dominant policy idea on homelessness for West Coast cities.

The Editor says...
Spending $1.2 billion to build 10,000 "housing units" — which are probably just apartments or refurbished shipping containers — comes out to $120,000 each.  The homeless, many of whom are out on the streets for very good reasons, will inevitably ruin all 10,000 units in the normal course of being irresponsible bums.  The only reason this billion-dollar boondoggle was approved — or even proposed — is that left-wing do-gooders have no foresight.  They think all their benevolent plans, no matter how implausible, will work perfectly.

LA is Burning.  It's surprising, but letting crazy junkies camp out on your street doesn't lead to good things.  Beyond drug overdoses, typhus, and a high rate of violent assaults... there are fires.  A whole lot of fires.  ["]As the homeless crisis continues to grow in the city of Los Angeles, the fire department is responding to an increasing number of fires at encampments.  In 2018, there was an average of seven fires a day at encampments and in 2021, that number has more than tripled to 25.  Fires involving the few hundred homeless who live at the Venice Beach boardwalk has been such a problem, the L.A. Fire Department has added a fast-response vehicle on patrol to put fires out before they spread.["]  A few hundred homeless.  A whole lot of fires.  On a constant basis.  But that's what happens when you subsidize crazy junkies and shut down the criminal justice system.

LA residents revolt over shanty town plans.  Thousands of Los Angeles residents are in revolt over plans to house the homeless in tents and temporary cabins near popular beaches and parks throughout the city.  Councilmember Mike Bonin summitted a motion to add more shelters in areas such as the Los Angeles International Airport, Marina del Rey and Pacific Palisades.  Bonin, who represents affluent communities including Venice, Westchester and Brentwood, argues that the 'temporary solutions' will 'get people off the streets and into homes'.  But more than 19,000 people have signed a petition to stop the plans.  The petition asserts that the proposed camps are not a solution to homelessness and would bring the problems of drugs, mental illness, crime and danger into the communities where the tent cities would rise.

Homeless camps may soon come to LA celebrity neighborhoods.  Los Angeles's ever-expanding homeless problem is now likely landing on the doorstep of celebrity-filled beachfront neighborhoods as the beleaguered City Council looks for ways to alleviate some of the stress on world-famous Venice Beach.  The 2-mile strip of Venice, where actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and many others have pumped iron on an outdoor makeshift seaside gym, has now been claimed by thousands of homeless living in a tent city.  Venice is only 3 square miles, and an estimated 4,000 homeless live there, said Soledad Ursua, a member of the Venice Neighborhood Council's Board of Directors.

Homeless Camps Are Taking Over the West Coast.  Democrat cities have allowed hundreds of homeless encampments to pop up along the West Coast.  Homelessness isn't new to places like San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, Sacramento, and so on.  I was in Portland 12 years ago for a comedy gig.  The park in front of the club looked like a scene from Michael Jackson's Thriller video.  Today it looks like the Walking Dead. [...] A local barbershop owner was attacked by a homeless man and his pit bull.  The victim, Kevin Buttress, was knocked unconscious by a skateboard.  Before you know it we will see a swarm of recalcitrant, shaggy-bearded homeless dudes riding Segues through crowds on the boardwalk.  The skateboard-swinging attacker was arrested but was returned to the Venice Beach boardwalk within days because of jailhouse Covid restrictions.  Buttress said shootings, stabbings, and violent crime are now common on the boardwalk of one of Los Angele's most famous beaches.

Venice's world-famous beach and boardwalk have [had a] huge increase in robberies.  Residents of Venice Beach in Los Angeles say soaring crime rates and the exploding homeless population have made life in the elite beachside community unbearable.  A 'catastrophic' increase in homelessness in Los Angeles has seen hundreds of tents line the beach's famous boardwalk.  Business owners say they are being forced to close their doors and longterm residents are afraid to leave their homes after dark after being subjected to violent attacks and intimidation.

San Diego pulls migrant tent city plan after media coverage and calls it a mistake.  Immediately after the Washington Examiner reported that San Diego County was soliciting farmers for land for a migrant tent city, red-faced officials called the offer a mistake and told recipients to "please disregard" it.  The county officials blamed the state of California and said the term "tent city" was mistakenly used to describe "a soft structure build out" to house a COVID testing center.  Local activist Carl DeMaio said he suspects the county backpedaled after realizing that the news coverage would be a public relations nightmare.

The Shaky Foundations of L.A.'s Housing 'Entitlement' for the Homeless.  In 2016 influential political leaders, activists, and media outlets in Los Angeles said they had a simple solution to homelessness: build more housing.  Echoing an argument heard across the country, they claimed that rising rents have thrown people onto the streets and that by directly providing free "permanent supportive housing," cities can reduce the number of people on the streets and save costs on emergency services.  In response, 77 percent of Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 units for the city's homeless.  That commitment made Los Angeles the most significant testing ground for the "Housing First" approach that has become the dominant policy idea on homelessness for West Coast cities.  Even before the passage of the bond, the concept's creator, Sam Tsemberis, was lavished with praise by the national media.  In 2015, the Washington Post wrote that Tsemberis had "all but solved chronic homelessness" and that his research "commands the support of most scholars."  In the years since, "Housing First" has taken even greater hold in California and the across the West.

San Diego County wants to build migrant tent city on private farmlands.  The county of San Diego is seeking to build a migrant tent city on individually owned farmland to house "immigrants coming across the border," according to an email reviewed by the Washington Examiner.  This is in addition to a mini-city constructed within the San Diego Convention Center last month, which welcomed 1,450 migrant children who came through the Texas border.  On Tuesday, the county created a $5 million fund to provide free legal services for migrants to fight deportation.  It's not clear where the population would come from because the Biden administration has said the California border is closed.

The Bay Area has descended into a post-apocalyptic hell-scape.  [Scroll down]  Even though I'd heard about the poop maps, San Francisco's decay didn't really strike me under three years ago, when a friend and I were in theater district one evening, walking back to our car.  We were on the edge of the Tenderloin but heading to a street that used to be safe enough.  In the 1990s, it might have a handful of homeless people, so we didn't weren't worried.  However, as we started down the street, my friend and I realized that it was wall-to-wall humanity:  No tents; just dozens of people on both sides of the street, sitting and lying there in their vomit and excrement, with needles scattered about.  When I'm near the homeless, I don't look at them because the paranoid ones get set off if you make eye contact.  My friend, however, grew up in a small town and believes that you must recognize the homeless as human beings (which is very decent for the ones who aren't paranoid).

Pediatrician's dog dies in suspected arson that destroyed her home in 'lawless' Venice Beach.  A California doctor has spoken out after losing her eight-month-old puppy in a Venice Beach house fire that is now being investigated as arson amid a growing homeless crisis plaguing the area.  Dr. Courtney Gillenwater, a pediatrician and US Navy veteran, was not at her one-story bungalow last Wednesday, when it suddenly went up in flames, trapping and killing her Husky-mix, Togo. [...] One week on, the cause of the fire is still unknown and remains under investigation by the The LA Fire Department's Arson Division and the LAPD's Major Crimes Division.  Residents, however, are now pointing to a nearby homeless encampment in the now 'lawless' beachside community.

Clinton Judge Declares Himself Supreme Ruler of Los Angeles.  It's inevitable that as conservative judges minimize their authority lefty judges maximize it.  As the Left tosses aside the Constitution and checks and balances, not to mention the minor matter of the rule of law, we end up with the rule of officials asserting their absolute power because of the moral authority of their politics.  The moral arc of the universe bends towards tyranny, after all.  And social justice.  Two ways of saying the same thing.  California is the capital of the new judicial ruling class where lefty judges assert absolute power over everything.  One of the more disgusting examples is Clinton federal judge, David Carter, who has been issuing decrees about the crazed junkie vagrant population that lefties call the homeless or more recently, the unhoused.

Federal Judge:  L.A. Must House Every Homeless Person on Skid Row by Oct. 18.  U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday [4/20/2021] ordering the city and county of Los Angeles to ensure that every homeless person living in the notorious Skid Row district has housing by October 18 this year. [...] Elsewhere in the decision, the Judge Carter — a Bill Clinton appointee — cited claims of "systemic racism," and argued that homelessness is partly a result of historical racial discrimination.  In an unusually complex set of instructions, Judge Carter also ordered $1 billion earmarked by the city for spending on the homeless, announced Monday evening as part of L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti's "Justice Budget," to be placed in an escrow account.  He also ordered a 90-day audit of city and county spending on the homeless, and a 30-day "audit of any funds committed to mental health (MH) and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment."

Somewhat related:
Oakland to offer guaranteed income, but only for minority families.  Officials in Oakland, California, announced the launch of a guaranteed income pilot program this week that will provide direct monthly payments to low-income minority families in the city.  The initiative, which is one of the largest guaranteed income experiments to be conducted in the United States to date, aims to find out if providing regular payments low-income families will lift them from their economic plight.  The program, called Oakland Resilient Families, will send 600 families in the city $500-a-month payments over the next 18 months as part of an effort to eliminate racial wealth inequalities in the city, which the program argues is the result of "ongoing systemic racism."

The Editor says...
[#1] Yes, widespread poverty could be the result of systemic racism.  But it's more likely the result of drug use, illegitimate children, incompetent education, and a lifetime of bad decisions.  [#2] Notice the misuse of the word family:  It apparently means unmarried women and their illegitimate children, with no men in the picture.  [#3] If white people are excluded from this program, that's "ongoing systemic racism" right there!

Oakland launches one of the largest guaranteed income programs in the country.  Oakland plans to start a guaranteed income program this spring for 600 residents — one of the largest such programs in the country, city officials said — as Bay Area leaders search for solutions to rising poverty and inequality in the wake of the pandemic.  Through the pilot program, residents will receive $500 a month for at least 18 months with no strings attached, Mayor Libby Schaaf said at a Tuesday news conference.  Checks could be in residents' hands by this spring or summer.  Low-income families — with at least one child under 18 — who are Black, indigenous or people of color will be randomly selected through an application process to vet eligibility, Schaaf said.  Officials said those groups suffer from the greatest wealth disparity, according to data on Oakland's population.  More than 70,000 people — or 16.7% of Oakland's population — live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.

125 low-income mothers of color in Marin County can receive $1K a month in guaranteed income.  Mirroring similar efforts in cities such as Stockton and Oakland, Marin County supervisors this week approved participating in a universal basic income experiment to give 125 low-income mothers of color $1,000 a month for two years.  The county will spend $400,000 and the remaining $3 million will come from the Marin Community Foundation, the Marin Independent Journal reported.  To qualify, the women must have a child under the age of 18.  Participants will be selected at random from among 4,600 people who have already received direct cash aid from the foundation with the help of the Family Independence Initiative.

Oakland California Begins $500/Month Payments to Low Income Residents, White People Not Allowed.  Oakland California is beginning a pilot for giving low income families $500/month with no strings attached for up to 600 families.  The goal is to bridge the income disparity gap; however, poor white residents are not permitted to apply for the program.

Crackdown at Echo Park homeless encampment begins as LAPD moves in, clashes with protesters.  Authorities on Wednesday night [3/24/2021] moved to close down a homeless encampment in Echo Park that has become a highly charged test of city leaders' struggle to balance constituents' demands for clean streets and public spaces with the ever-growing tragedy of people who have no homes.  Scores of police moved into the area, where they were met by more than 200 protesters who oppose the sweep.  The Los Angeles Police Department repeatedly told protesters to leave, and by early Thursday morning, the crowd had dwindled and the protest had mostly wound down.

San Francisco set up homeless tent villages during the pandemic.  Now, the city is paying more than $5,000 per month for each tent.  The City by the Bay has been dealing with serious homelessness for years, and during the pandemic things have gotten markedly worse.  San Francisco has gone beyond having its everyday poop-in-the-streets problem and rampant drug and alcohol abuse among its homeless population — which, by the way, was enabled when the city's health department announced it would provide free drugs and alcohol to homeless people staying at city-leased hotels in order to keep them from breaking pandemic quarantine requirements.  Now the city is realizing the financial hit it is taking with the longstanding homeless camps it authorized last May with its "safe-sleeping villages" as the state shuttered indoor homeless facilities.  The villages are a network of tent encampments spread across the city that were OK'd at the same time that it began placing hundreds of homeless in hotel rooms and RVs, MarketWatch reported last spring.  Now the financial chickens are coming home to roost.

San Francisco is paying $5,000 per month for each homeless tent.  Homelessness is really expensive for the people who are paying for it.  Last year, San Francisco set up six "safe sleeping villages" during the pandemic, including one right outside City Hall.  Basically these sites are sanctioned tent camps where the homeless live on city property with bathrooms and free meals.  It turns out the city is paying $5,000 per month for each tent.

Activists say 'Barney & Friends' theme song playing on repeat at vacant San Pedro property for weeks is anti-homeless harassment.  The theme song from "Barney & Friends" has been blaring 24 hours a day for weeks on Palos Verdes Street in San Pedro.  There are about two dozen homeless individuals who have pitched tents on the sidewalk there, and they say the blaring kids' music is a not-so-subtle way to get them to move.  "It's psychological," said Danielle Nunez of Street Watch LA, a mutual aid organization that helps the homeless.  "It is to keep people up.  They can't have a quiet space and it's playing at nighttime so that people literally cannot sleep."  The vacant property is run by Jerico Development, Inc., and is used for filming.

San Francisco's "Progressive" Drug Policies Kill Hundreds Annually.  Last year, 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco.  To put this in perspective, 173 people died from COVID-19, which is identified as the primary public health crisis in the Bay Area.  For years, San Francisco has tacitly encouraged drug abuse with remarkably lenient policies, and those policies are now inadvertently killing hundreds of people annually.  San Francisco uses a policy approach called "harm reduction," which stresses "culturally competent, non-judgmental treatment that demonstrates respect and dignity for the individual."  But this approach, as it is practiced within San Francisco, is inhumane and cruel.  It is destroying the dignity of the lives that some could have with more sensible policies.  In addition to overdose deaths skyrocketing, drug abuse has increased in San Francisco, and it is becoming more difficult for addicts to affect positive change.

Proposed corporate tax hike in California would aid homeless.  A California coalition is proposing legislation to boost taxes on wealthy multinational corporations to raise more than $2 billion a year to house tens of thousands of homeless people, addressing what has become a worsening problem in the country's most populous state.  Supporters say Assembly Bill 71 would reinvent California's approach to solving homelessness — providing for the first time an ongoing, sufficient state funding source to get people off the streets.  Opponents say it would contribute to the perception that California is hostile to business.

San Francisco To Hire Social Workers Instead Of Cops To Handle Homelessness, Drug Addiction, And Mental Illness On Public Transit.  San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has six vacancies for police officers but plans instead to fill those positions with social workers to handle issues involving the homeless and those with mental illness or drug addiction.  The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the public transit system has $2 million in its budget to fill the vacancies (for an average salary and benefits package worth about $333,000) but will instead hire a supervisor and "20 crisis intervention specialists," the outlet reported.  Last year, the board approved a plan that only added 10 specialists to BART's bureau of progressive policing.

Overdose Deaths Far Exceed COVID-19 Deaths In San Francisco.  The number of San Francisco residents who have died from drug overdoses during the past year far exceeds the number who have died from COVID-19.  A record high number of 621 people died from overdoses in 2020 compared to the 173 who have died from COVID-19, according to statistics reported by The Associated Press.  In 2019, 441 people died from drug overdoses in the city, which gives 2020 the grim distinction of having experienced a staggering increase of more than 40%.  The overdose statistics of 2019 were a 70% increase from those in 2018.

San Francisco Dems Threaten Paper for Reporting on Homeless Mess.  When you can't fix the problem, you can always shoot the messenger.  Whether it's election fraud, my topic yesterday, or eliminating crime reporting, also my topic yesterday, or the homeless mess, Democrats are increasingly trying to shoot the messengers and impose a broad spectrum censorship locally and nationally.  And San Francisco, as usual, points the way.

California, There It Goes.  [Scroll down]  Patrick's Roadhouse is still there, but Santa Monica, like the rest of the city, is a shell.  As I wrote a few months ago, 120 stores were smashed and looted in the business district during the May/June Floyd riots.  To this day, it's a ghost town with plywood on nearly every window.  You know what else is everywhere?  Homeless people.  Not just glassy-eyed gutter punks lounging in decrepit tents.  I mean ranting, fully naked zombies defecating and peeing on every corner.  It's been called Skid Row by the Sea for years, but today Skid Marks by the Sea is more accurate.  It looks like someone opened the prison in Aliens 3 and let the inmates out at Wilshire and Ocean Avenue.  (Side note:  the median price of a home in Santa Monica is $3,750,000, making it the third most expensive ZIP code in America.)

San Francisco, Homeless Encampment.  San Francisco's hotels and motels are slowly emptying of the homeless people that the city placed there during the Covid-19 pandemic.  The city simply can't afford the $260 per night, per person, price tag of housing approximately 2,000 people — just a portion of the estimated 8,000 people who live on the street.  Where will they go?  Elected officials have come up with a new plan:  turn the whole city into a network of homeless encampments.  In June, city officials and departments developed a list of 42 potential sites that could be equipped with spaces for tents and mobile bathrooms.  The urban campers, most with addiction and mental health issues, would be provided with free delivered meals and other services.  Several sites were erected, including one outside City Hall and one in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood.  Among the other proposed locations:  25 public elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as a Boys and Girls Club, city parks, and recreation areas.

The Real Cost of Homelessness.  In 2016, Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti proclaimed, as might an emperor or king, he would empower citizens to "transform their streets and urban corridors into vibrant, walkable spaces that reflect the unique characteristics of their communities."  As of September 2020, Los Angeles has solved its homeless problem.  The approximate 60,000 homeless encamped on Los Angeles' streets, urban corridors, parks, and freeway underpasses vanished to be replaced by approximately 60,000 unhoused residents.  Empowered by Garcetti's hands-off the homeless order of protection issued for "public health and safety reasons," these unhoused are reimagining their lives free of health and safety regulations and taxation applicable to the housed.

San Francisco Residents On Edge Over Rising Number Of Home Burglaries.  "Our next-door neighbor got broken into and they had already experienced another break-in a month prior to that," said Ginny Fang, who lives in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.  A spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department said they're getting more reports of break-ins recently through the garage.  "We're doing all we can to step up patrols and to ultimately arrest those who are committing these crimes," said SFPD Officer Robert Rueca.  Fang said thieves several weeks ago stole four of her family's bicycles by breaking and entering.

California: The Golden State in Utter Decay.  Wildfires, unfortunately, are among the least of California's woes.  Homelessness in the state has become a major problem, and one that is having a significant impact on the quality of life for taxpayers.  According to a San Francisco Chronicle article published last December, "[w]hile the latest counts compiled by the federal government show that America's homeless population is growing again after more than a decade of declines, the entire national increase and more can be attributed to California alone."  In other words, homelessness continues to be on the decline in the U.S. if we exclude California.  So how does California plan on addressing the problem?  A bill passed by the state's Legislature earlier this month will empower Governor Newsom to appoint a "Homelessness Czar."  Government actions, including regulations which aggressively target landlords and programs that provide handouts enticing the homeless to settle in the state, have perpetuated the homeless situation, but more taxpayer dollars and government interference is always the solution for California.  Got a problem?  Throw money at it, and let the government make it worse.

Video: San Fran man smokes meth while skateboarding with mattress as a sail.  Just another day in San Francisco, with mentally challenged drug addicts being among the few using the streets and parks of the Paris of the Pacific.  Jaded city residents have become so accustomed to strange human sights they hardly shrug, but it's become so bad that the mostly liberal inhabitants are starting to turn on their progressive leaders.  @SFGotham, an independent researcher who exposes the city's crime, corruption and policy failures on Twitter, saw something this week that made the crusader look twice.  [Video clip]

San Francisco's Deathly Compassion.  San Francisco has a serious drug problem, particularly among its homeless population.  Roughly 8,000 people live on the city's sidewalks or in its alleyways, public parks, and playgrounds.  People with needles in their arms and legs, holding glass pipes and lighters, are a regular sight.  Users go limp in doorways and tents, or they career about, dazed and distraught, or angry and violent.  Dealers selling heroin, Fentanyl, methamphetamine, and crack are ubiquitous.  So, too, are the advocates for "harm reduction," which holds that widespread drug use should be accepted but its worst effects mitigated.  Organizations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Drug Users Union, and even the Department of Public Health, in partnership with The DOPE Project, focus almost exclusively on "safe drug use."  In fact, the Drug Users Union's goal is "to create a safe environment where people can use & enjoy drugs as well as receive services."  This attitude led to today's humanitarian crisis:  thousands of people living on San Francisco's streets, languishing in an endless cycle of homelessness and addiction.

Insufferable San Francisco.  Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the American city hardly exists at all. [...] I had figured I could stick around forever.  Then I took my daughter to see The Nutcracker.  The two blocks we had to walk from the train station to War Memorial Opera House made a greater impression on my nine-year-old than any magical offering from the SF Ballet.  The city greeted her with the army of cracked nuts, the ubiquitous 'zombies' who aimlessly roam our streets.  The need to be hyperaware of their presence while pirouetting to avoid discarded syringes and human excrement left her depressed and terrified for days.  My daughter refuses to go to the ballet at the War Zone Opera House ever again.

Hazmat crew cleans up homeless mess at luxury San Fran hotel.  One of the premier West Coast hotels required a hazardous materials cleanup crew, the result of the city's policy of housing the homeless on the taxpayer's dime during the Covid crisis.  The Intercontinental Mark Hopkins, a luxury hotel atop swanky Nob Hill, dispatched unruly guests to another undisclosed property.  Afterwards, a hazmat team showed up to tidy up the premises, according to ace KRON reporter Erica Sandberg.  "The guests wouldn't abide by the rules.  The city paid Ubers and cabs moved them to a different luxury hotel," she said.

The Editor says...
Homeless bums never "abide by the rules."  That's why they're homeless!

Meth lab found at San Francisco hotel room used as city COVID-19 shelter.  Police arrested two adults accused of operating a low level meth lab at a San Francisco hotel designated as a safe shelter for people on quarantine, at risk for COVID19, or without housing.  The call came in about a strong chemical odor coming from a hotel room and officers responded to the Civic Center Motor Inn about 2:30 p.m. on Saturday [8/1/2020].  Police and residents had to wait for a hazmat team to determine the safety of the site.

Police shut down alleged meth lab in SF hotel reportedly being used as COVID-19 shelter.  The San Francisco Police Department arrested two individuals Saturday [8/1/2020] for allegedly operating a meth lab in the guest room of a hotel in the 300 block of Ninth Street in the city's Civic Center neighborhood, officials said.  Multiple news outlets reported the incident occurred at the Civic Center Motor Inn, which is being used to offer temporary shelter for people without housing and at risk for COVID-19.

San Francisco drafts museum staff as drug gophers for homeless.  An interesting development since the Covid lockdowns in the City on the Bay has been the clandestine placement of homeless people in luxury hotels, such as the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill.  As it turns out, the government is using unlikely public employees who otherwise would have been furloughed to serve as vice couriers for them.  One such city staffer, for example, was a curator with the San Francisco city museums before the shut down, said an informed city source who requested anonymity.

San Francisco reporter details 'disaster' of city's 'hotels for homeless' program: 'It is pandemonium'.  Thousands of homeless people have been housed in San Francisco's empty hotels in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.  However, City Journal contributor Erica Sandberg told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Wednesday [7/15/2020] the policy has been an "absolute disaster,"  "It's solving exactly nothing and as a matter of fact, it's making all the problems worse," said Sandberg, who described the scene inside the hotels as "about as bad as you can imagine, only exponentially worse."  "You are talking drug-fueled parties, overdoses, deaths, people are being assaulted.  You have sexual assaults going on, it is pandemonium," she said.  "It is extremely bad and it needs to stop."

San Francisco sends guests to luxury Nob Hill hotel ... in a jail bus.  San Francisco is housing 'emergency workers' at the Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill, one of the finest and most storied luxury hotels on the West Coast.  It seems some arrive in jail buses with metal screens and bars on them, as this exclusive PressCalifornia.com photo suggests.  And after they check in, the city pays for their alcohol and marijuana deliveries.  Who are these guests and why are they there?  The municipal government, under the guise of housing essential COVID medical teams and responders, is covertly placing the homeless in city hotels.

After a lawsuit by residents, San Francisco finally cleans homeless camps out of the Tenderloin district.  The coronavirus pandemic was (and still is) a potential disaster for the homeless.  In San Francisco, the city was forced to reduce the number of homeless people in each of the city's shelters to prevent them from becoming hotspots for the virus.  But doing that meant a lot more people living on the streets.  In the Tenderloin district, the number of tents went from 158 on March 3 to 391 by May 1.  Even the police officers who normally handle drug-dealing in the area were pulled out creating a defacto lawless zone, a homeless version of Seattle's CHOP.  And just as happened with CHOP, local residents quickly got fed up and filed a lawsuit against the city.

Sanctioned SF tent camp riles Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.  The cascade of tents hitting San Francisco's liberal Haight-Ashbury has stunned merchants and residents alike, and led to an outcry over the city's decision to set up a "safe sleeping site" at one of the neighborhood's busiest intersections.  "We have had a problem with homelessness for some time, but this is the first time we are seeing tents in the neighborhood," said resident Michelle Leighton, spokeswoman for Safe Healthy Haight, a neighborhood group formed this month to respond to the city's plan to put a sanctioned tent camp on the site of the old McDonald's restaurant at Haight and Stanyan streets just across from Golden Gate Park.

San Fransisco socially distances its homeless encampments amid coronavirus pandemic.  San Fransisco is giving homeless encampments the social distance treatment.  The city is joining others around the world in begrudgingly authorizing its homeless encampments by marking safely distanced spaces for tents and other makeshift shelters.  In San Fransisco's Civic Center, about 80 tents are now lined in tidy rows on a wide street near San Francisco City Hall, part of a "safe sleeping village" opened last week.  The village is one of two Mayor London Breed has planned to open, with another coming to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

Free Booze, Pot, and Smokes for San Francisco's Homeless.  San Francisco officials deny direct involvement in a controversial program, funded by private sources, that provides free alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes to homeless people living in the city's hotels during the Covid-19 outbreak.  After news about the special deliveries was leaked and caused embarrassment on social media, the city's Department of Public Health issued a statement claiming that "rumors that guests of San Francisco's alternative housing program are receiving taxpayer-funded deliveries of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are false."  Except they're not false.  DPH, which administers and oversees the program, is staffed by city workers, including doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, and security personnel.  The department manages, stores, and distributes the substances.  Employee time is involved.  Thus, the program is financed by taxpayers, even if an outside group provides some of the funding.  According to DPH spokesperson Jenna Lane, the philanthropists who helped purchase the substances wish to remain anonymous.

San Francisco neighborhood sues over 300 percent jump of homeless sidewalk tents during coronavirus outbreak.  San Francisco is being sued by a law school and residents and businesses in the inner-city Tenderloin District who argue sidewalks are "unsanitary, unsafe, and often impassable" as homeless people crowd streets amid the coronavirus pandemic.  The number of tents and makeshift structures in the Tenderloin has tripled since January, as homeless shelters are forced to operate at low capacity in order to enforce stringent social distancing requirements, reports say.  The federal lawsuit, filed last week in part by the University of California Hastings College of Law, does not seek financial damages but instead demands the city clean up streets littered with drug needles and human waste.  The litigants are also seeking help for people living in sidewalk tents, saying they are at increased risk of COVID-19.

Homeless People In San Francisco Hotel Rooms Are Being Given Free Alcohol And Drugs.  The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) confirmed in a tweet Tuesday that homeless people put up in hotels are being given free alcohol and drugs.  A Twitter user named "T Wolf" who calls himself a "formerly homeless addict," sent a tweet this week saying he's heard reports of homeless people getting free alcohol, marijuana and methadone.  "I just found out that homeless placed in hotels in SF are being delivered Alcohol, Weed and Methadone because they identified as an addict/alcoholic for FREE.  You're supposed to be offering treatment.  This is enabling and is wrong on many levels," he said.

Coronavirus Isn't Slowing the Destruction of San Francisco.  In almost any situation, learning through direct personal experience is preferable to learning from photos, videos, or a verbal description of another person's experience. [...] Knowing this, San Francisco-based writer Erica Sandberg has been organizing what she calls "see for yourself/think for yourself" walks through her city so regular residents can take in the sights, sounds, and smells of the homeless crisis for themselves and not rely upon the curated experiences of activists, politicians, and the mainstream media.  Even more importantly, her tours are not narrated, allowing participants to draw their own conclusions about what they're viewing.  What they're all seeing is terrifying and a city "spiraling out of control."  San Francisco residents have been subject to a "shelter in place" order since March 17, but most of the restrictions in the order don't apply to people "experiencing homelessness."  From what Sandberg has witnessed, drug dealing and abuse hasn't been affected in any way.

Supes vote to acquire more hotel rooms to shelter homeless.  San Francisco must quickly secure thousands of more hotel rooms to shelter the homeless amid the spread of coronavirus under legislation approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.  The board's vote comes just days after 92 unhoused people tested positive for the disease after an outbreak at one city shelter.  Board members have clashed with Mayor London Breed and her administration for weeks over the best strategy for how to thin out the shelter populations.  They have called for those living on the street to be moved into hotel rooms so that they can shelter-in-place, as those who are housed have done under a public health order since March 17.

Because money is plentiful, and most vagrants are clean, sober, responsible citizens:
SF plans to lease 7,000 hotel rooms to isolate homeless people from the coronavirus.  San Francisco now plans to lease 7,000 hotel rooms to provide shelter for homeless people as well as first responders and health care workers battling the spread of the coronovirus, city officials said Wednesday [4/8/2020].  This would more than triple the rooms now under contract.  The city already has committed $35 million for the next three months to lease the first batch of units.  The overall effort would cost San Francisco roughly $105 million — some but not all of which would be reimbursed by the federal and state governments.

SF Ditches Plan To House Homeless At Moscone Center During Pandemic In Favor Of Hotel Rooms.  San Francisco officials have reversed a plan to shelter homeless people at the Moscone West Convention Center.  Instead, the city will continue with a plan to place homeless people at hotels in an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, said Trent Rohrer, director of the city's Human Services Agency.

Bet Your Life — Vote for Democrats.  I can only imagine what the [Wuhan virus] death toll will be in California.  San Francisco has immune-suppressed HIV-AIDs affected citizens (about 12,985 people living with HIV in San Francisco) and thousands of homeless people living on the streets.  So far, the homeless do not seem particularly affected, but if (or once) it makes an appearance there, I suspect it will take a substantial toll.  I suppose many of these people are already quite unhealthy, live cheek by jowl outdoors on feces-heaped streets, and lack access to means to practice proper hygiene.

The New Favelas.  Progressives routinely denounce economic inequality, yet the nation's most liberal cities offer the most dramatic illustrations of it, with tech-driven wealth at the top and addiction-driven homelessness at the bottom.  In the past five years, some streets in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle have started to resemble Latin American favelas, or shantytowns, with thousands sleeping in tents, shacks, and packing crates.  One United Nations official recently compared West Coast encampments to the slums of New Delhi.  California governor Gavin Newsom has declared homelessness a "state of emergency."  And yet, as the coronavirus pandemic persists, West Coast cities have legalized and provided services to these encampments, rather than enacting emergency shelter and moving people off the streets.  This reckless decision follows a disturbing trend.  Last year, Oakland began supplying 22 officially sanctioned homeless encampments with services, sanitation, and supplies.

Coronavirus: L.A. to Move Homeless into Neighborhood Recreation Centers.  Mayor Eric Garcetti is going ahead with a plan to move thousands of homeless people in Los Angeles into recreation centers in residential neighborhoods as part of the city's response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Rumors have been circulating among residents, and were confirmed on Saturday by the L.A. Times.

The Editor says...
During the current lockdown, you and I can't go to church, or to a wedding or a funeral, but the homeless bums are being moved into "recreation centers" where they will presumably all live in one room.

Few homeless off California's streets as virus spreads.  Homeless people in California congregated in parks, popped into each other's tents on sidewalks and packed closely together to get food Friday, routine scenes that took on different and dangerous significance as state officials try to contain spread of the coronavirus.

A Real-Life Story of How Coronavirus Hysteria Oppresses People.  Commentators have noted the dishonest reporting of statistics to buttress the false claim that deaths from the coronavirus (hereafter, COVID-19) are far in excess of mortality from the common flu when in fact the opposite is likely the case. [...] I was indeed shocked when Nathan called me on March 17 to report that the wedding and reception, for which all the invitations had gone out and for which they had planned for over a year, were being canceled on the "Order of the Health Officer of the County of Riverside."  I obtained a copy of the so-called "order" that "prohibits" gatherings of ten or more individuals in the County of Riverside.  According to the text of the decree, "Violation of ... this Order is a crime punishable by fine, imprisonment or both."  The edict exempts gatherings of government officials, including those at the Health Department and their colleagues who drafted the order.  Another curious exemption from the order is those involved in "congregate living settings."  I suppose that's to cover Riverside County, California's resident population of homeless bums, who are stuck living in "congregate living settings" in their feces- and needle-infested encampments.

Because there's so much extra cash on hand...
California plans to house homeless in hotels during coronavirus pandemic.  Gov. Gavin Newsom estimates 60,000 homeless people will be infected with COVID-19 in the coming months and those people will need a place to recover in isolation.  On Wednesday [3/18/2020] Newsom allocated $150 million in emergency funding to deal with the crisis and announced a plan to house the homeless in hotels and motels across the state.  The state would lease the property and local counties would control the operations.  According to the governor's office, 950 sites have been identified across 53 counties.

Citing coronavirus, homeless families seize 12 vacant homes in Los Angeles.  A group of homeless and housing-insecure Angelenos seized more vacant, publicly owned homes in El Sereno on Wednesday [3/18/2020], arguing that government officials have failed to provide the shelter that's necessary for them to remain healthy during the coronavirus pandemic.  The occupation followed a similar takeover Saturday, when two families and a man moved into one of the neighborhood's dozens of empty homes — all owned by Caltrans.  The state agency bought them years ago as part of a now-failed plan to extend the 710 Freeway.

Watch Why People Are 'Fleeing California' — It Ain't Pretty.  Yes, those lumps of clothes really are people sleeping on the streets.  Cable car rides are often ruined by the unmistakable whiff of sun-soaked urine.  Small business owners — which employ 40% of the workforce — are held down by masochistic regulators.  And people are getting [...] out of California.  They're fleeing.  A new Prager University video called "Fleeing California" — which will probably be censored by one of the tech giants [soon] — highlights the lowlights of California and explains why so many are heading for Texas.

Language warning:  Non-stop profanity on the part of the cameraman.  Turn the sound off.
Democrat and Disease Infested San Francisco — where people bring dead animals to restaurants.  A crazy guy brought a dead raccoon into McDonald's.  [Video clip]

As Trump wins praise for effective coronavirus response, blue cities do opposite, threatening its spread it through homelessness.  The left's blue cities do all they can to encourage and reward homelessness, amounting to the country's great enabler of homelessness as a lifestyle.  Blue cities employ and are expanding gargantuan bureaucracies dedicated to "servicing" the homelessness, which encourages a hunt for more "clients."  San Francisco alone spends $77,000 per homeless "client."  They also refuse to enforce quality of life laws, such as those against vagrancy, public camping, drug use, public alcohol consumption, prostitution, and public urination and defecation, promoting homelessness even more.  Some are encouraging squatting on private property.  Others are permitting the homeless to take over public parks and spaces.  Some, such as Bill de Blasio's New York, are secretly busing the homeless to other cities to keep them from creating problems in their own cities.  It's a massive tax on those who own the overpriced homes in those cities, but taxes are the left's bread and butter.  It's a money merry-go-round, all done in the name of "compassion."

The Tired and Poor Are Already Here.  Twelve thousand children are homeless here in California, and our homeless population has risen to 151,000.  Last year, California was single-handedly responsible for the national increase in homelessness. [...] What does it say about our leaders, and our nation, that a closed fist for struggling Americans and an open hand for those who break our immigration laws is a winning political strategy?

GOP challenger says Schiff has done nothing to fight homeless crisis in California district.  ep.  Adam Schiff's Republican challenger accused the Democrat on Friday of ignoring the homelessness crisis in his California district.  "He's done nothing, or virtually nothing, for our district," Eric Early, who announced his candidacy to represent California's 28th Congressional District in July, told Fox News.  "Certainly not a darn thing for homelessness."  "It's a mess out here, it's terrible," he added.  Early, a Los Angeles attorney, made his comments about Schiff while walking through parts of Echo Park and Hollywood, meeting with homeless people and listening to their stories about their situations.

Mike Slater:  Newsom's call for 'housing prescriptions' to solve homelessness 'fundamentally misses' problem.  California radio host Mike Slater responded Sunday [2/23/2020] to Gov. Gavin Newsom's suggestion that doctors "should be able" to prescribe housing like they do medicine, calling it "so off the charts that you don't even know where to begin."  Newsom, a Democrat, initially expressed the idea during his State of the State address last Wednesday, arguing that housing and health care were intertwined.  "The Democrats have been really good at coming up with proposals that are so ridiculous, so off the charts, that you don't even know where to begin... like, deconstructing what they're talking about," Slater told "Fox & Friends" Sunday.

On Leaving the Golden State.  The fabled Ventura Highway is all that separates my artist loft from the beach where surfing first came to the United States. [...] Once my coffee is brewed, my cat and I go hang out on the patio where I may or may not have to chase someone away that is stealing electricity as for some crazy reason all the homeless have smart phones and other electric gadgets but few means to charge them.  From my patio on the 2nd floor landing, I can look down into the central courtyard and, if early enough in the day, sometimes see people crawling out of the bushes so as to relieve themselves against a wall.  Making this problem worse is the fact that I live around a bunch of retired hippies and there is no one on Earth less capable of doing anything than a hippie.  One thing that many of them have not figured out is that they should lock down their WiFi.  Frankly, the quickest way to attract the kind of person that would steal a cat toy, potted plant, bicycle or everything out of your car is to have a neighbor or two broadcasting free WiFi.

Homeless People Are Without Toilets and Going in the Streets.  We Asked the Mayor of LA Why.  Statistics estimate 36,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles, but the city isn't providing bathrooms to most of them.  As the NBCLA I-Team has found, the tons of human waste landing on city streets are creating an urgent public health threat.  In one act caught on camera, a homeless man is seen waking up on South Hope Street.  He unbuckles his belt, walks over to the front door of a business, pulls down his pants, and defecates right on the door mat in broad daylight.

Taking Property for Fun and Profit.  After a group of homeless moms simply moved into a vacant three-bedroom house in Oakland owned by a company that invests in local real estate, local progressives turned them into folk heroes.  These women weren't squatters who took something that wasn't theirs, but valiant protesters who were standing up for their communities against — all together now — corporate speculators.  As one of these Oakland moms said, "Housing is a human right.  I pay bills there.  I pay water, PG&E, internet.  We live there.  We want to purchase the home; it needs to belong back in the hands of the community.  It was stolen through the foreclosure crisis."  That certainly puts a new spin on the term "property ownership."

The Democrat Left is cruel and sadistic.  Anyone who has driven the streets of downtown Los Angeles or walked the streets of San Francisco should vote out every single person currently in office, for they have allowed the crisis to grow without doing a thing but surrender their constituents to the terrible impact on their quality of life.  Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are among the worst offenders.  Neither of them cares about his own district; they care only about keeping the power they have in D.C.

Decriminalization of drugs fueling meth and homelessness in California.  The same people who demand that Congress and state governments spend even more money to "combat" the twin drug and homelessness crises never seem to connect the dots back to their decriminalization policies or admit that they are causing a rise in crime.  One journalist in California is not scared to pin the tail on the donkey — in the case of the Golden State, the infamous Prop 47.  Right around 2014-2015 is when the drug crisis exploded nationwide, including in California, roughly around the same time homelessness soared, particularly in the Golden State, along with the rise in theft and other crimes.  What else happened around the same time?  California passed Prop 47, which downgraded drug and theft crimes.  The result was a logical consequence to an illogical policy.  Bill Lamb, VP and general manager of Fox 11 in Los Angeles, delivered a TV commentary last week pinning the blame for the homeless and drug problems squarely on Prop 47.

Dr. Drew Pinsky hits Adam Schiff on homeless crisis in his own district: 'He's asleep at the wheel'.  Senate impeachment trial manager Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is "asleep at the wheel" when it comes to his own district and is ignoring issues that matter, like the state's homeless crisis, Dr. Drew.  Pinsky said Thursday [1/30/2020].  Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, Pinsky said he started thinking that maybe he should run against Schiff because, every day he doesn't do something, three more homeless people die in the county of Los Angeles.  While Pinsky said he is "categorically not running" for Schiff's seat, he couldn't ignore the crisis unfolding in front of him.

Why Are Liberal Cities Such a Mess?  Many major U.S. cities run by liberal Democrats are in rough shape.  They are afflicted by the problems of homelessness, violent crime, gangs, and unemployment to a far greater degree than the country as a whole. [...] San Francisco actually has maps so people can track where the worst incidences of human waste are on the sidewalks.  The homeless population now approaches 7000 and there is no law prohibiting sleeping on the streets, sidewalks, or other public places.  Discarded syringes are everywhere.  San Francisco's property crime rate is the highest in the nation and "smash and grab" thefts involving broken car windows are so commonplace that repair shops have waiting lists.  The DA's office no longer prosecutes "victimless" crimes like prostitution or drug possession, resulting in a massive influx of drug dealers into the city.

As California's homeless people camp out on railroad tracks, train-related deaths are rising.  California's railroad tracks are now lined with men and women sleeping in tents or under cardboard boxes, from the underpasses of Oakland and L.A. to the farmlands of the Central Valley.  As a result, train deaths have become the latest side effect of the state's vast unmet need for affordable shelter, according to experts who have linked the homeless crisis to the steady uptick in train deaths in California.  The state annually leads the nation in pedestrian railroad fatalities, even when accounting for its larger population.

San Francisco homeless crisis is a sad and terrible thing to see:  Maria Bartiromo.  FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo describes the homeless crisis as she witnessed it when visiting San Francisco, California and discusses the policy issues that have created the problem.  [Video clip]

18 Signs That The Social Decay In America Is Worse Than It Has Ever Been Before.  [#15] Tucker Carlson says that downtown San Francisco is now filthier than downtown Mumbai, India.

San Francisco homeless crisis worries some attendees at JPMorgan summit: 'The Bill Clinton of cities'.  JPMorgan is holding its annual health care conference in San Francisco this week.  But some attendees — when gazing out the windows of their $2,000-a-night hotel rooms or past the doors of another champagne-infused party — have reportedly noticed the city has lost ground in its fight against homelessness.  "I feel unsafe walking around at night, especially as a young woman," Selin Kurnaz, a co-founder of Massive Bio, told Bloomberg.  Other executives at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference have gone on social media to voice their concerns about the city's decline and have posted about watching city officials clean human excrement off the streets.

Homeless Mom Calls Offer To Help Squatters Occupying Oakland House 'An Insult'.  One of the homeless mothers who has been living in a vacant West Oakland house since Nov. 18 scoffed Saturday night [1/11/2020] at an offer by the house's owner to pay to move them out and shelter them for the next two months, calling the offer "an insult."  Earlier Saturday, the property owner planning to have two homeless mothers evicted next week from a West Oakland home offered on Saturday to pay to shelter them for the next two months.  Real estate investment firm Wedgewood Properties is offering to foot the bill for their move and to pay a nonprofit to house the women for the next two months, a spokesman said.

California waterways [are] polluted with alarming levels of dangerous fecal bacteria due to homelessness.  California's beaches, rivers, and streams have become contaminated with alarming levels of dangerous fecal bacteria thanks to the liberal state's escalating homelessness crisis.  President Trump recently spotlighted the terrifying epidemic on Twitter, [...] Predictably, the Left mocked Trump, saying he was wrong.  A San Francisco official even disputed his allegations.  However, experts say Trump is correct:  California's waterways are becoming increasingly polluted with disease-promoting bacteria because homeless people defecate and bathe in public rivers and streams.  This is dangerous not only for them, but for the public at large because the bacteria can cause an infectious disease epidemic.

Here's a Look Inside LA's New $600,000 to $700,000 Condos for the Homeless.  Sure, most of us can't afford a $600,000 condo in a trendy neighborhood, in one of the most expensive places to live in the country.  But if you're homeless in Los Angeles, a condo can be yours!  The new condo development is the first of 118 projects to be built over the next six years to house the homeless and other needy people in Los Angeles, California, according to the mayor's office.

A media that fails to report the biggest stories is no fit custodian.  In a year in which the homelessness crisis has been front and center of media attention, it seems that not everyone is pulling heir weight.  While there was a national improvement, the Golden State dragged down the numbers. [...] And this from the state represented by two of the Democratic Party's top dogs.  Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi both represent California, and in many ways, represent their party on the national stage.  These are the folks that are determined to shape the country if their team wins in 2020.

Homelessness Crisis in the Not So Golden State.  The nation of hope, hard work, wealth, and unlimited potential is reeling from a new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report that claims our priorities do not include the care of the most vulnerable of our society.  During the season when charitable giving is on the minds of the people, the homeless population rates low on the humanitarian programs list.  The ironic and incredibly inconvenient truth is California leads the way, adding an implausible 16.4% of unsheltered families, veterans, and elder Americans attempting to survive on the streets.  The report also highlights a boost of 21,306 homeless people in the Golden State compared to last year, which essentially renders the progress other states have worked diligently to achieve null and void.  The unsheltered population decreased dramatically in 29 states — including Washington, D.C.  It should've been a banner year to celebrate, but California skewed the curve.

Ben Carson: I hoped to find more 'urgency in the leadership' in California on homelessness.  Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said Thursday that California's government is not showing "urgency" in finding constructive solutions to the state's homelessness epidemic.  Carson told Ed Henry exclusively on "The Story" that the U.S. has made great strides over the last 10 years to reduce homelessness — if the figures omitted the Golden State.  "It's truly amazing.  We've actually been making very good progress over the course of the last decade, in terms of homelessness, except in California," he said.

Homelessness crisis:  From houseboats to boulders, unconventional methods used to tackle problem in 2019.  [Scroll down]  The homeless situation in Oakland, Calif., is pretty grim.  The city has seen a 47 percent increase in homelessness in the past two years and elected leaders like Councilman Noel Gallo say the situation is only getting worse.  Currently, city council members are considering a proposal that would house 1,000 homeless people living in the Bay Area on a cruise ship.  The idea was introduced by City Council President Rebecca Kaplan who said her plan "could be a great way to house a lot of people quickly" and added that "cruise ships have been used for emergency housing after natural disasters and for extra housing for things like the Olympics."  Kaplan is expected to present her full proposal to the council in January and claims her plan will be at "no or low" cost to the city because the people on aboard would pay for their rooms based on their income.

The Editor says...
[#1] Most of the homeless have an income of zero, or near-zero.  Many have an income based largely or entirely on theft.  This idea will not pay for itself.  [#2] This is not "emergency housing."  It will not be temporary.  The bums will come aboard and stay for the rest of their miserable lives if no pressure is applied.  [#3] This 1,000-passenger ship will fill up immediately, and another one will be demanded.  [#4] Subsequent ships will fill up quickly with illegal aliens.  That might not be a bad thing.  Maybe they could all go on a nice cruise:  A one-way voyage to Yucatán!.

'Really bad job': Trump rips California governor over state's homeless population.  President Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom traded barbs over the growing homeless population in the state.  Following the Democratic debate last week, Newsom blamed the president's Department of Housing and Urban Development, led by Secretary Ben Carson, for the rise in homelessness in his state. [...] Trump didn't take Newsom's remarks lying down.  He fired back on Christmas Day, tweeting, "Governor Gavin N has done a really bad job on taking care of the homeless population in California.  If he can't fix the problem, the Federal Govt. will get involved!"

California Governor Gavin Newsom Blames Homelessness On President Trump.  California Governor Gavin Newsom says that California's failure to curb rising homelessness in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco is the fault of President Donald Trump and the Trump Administration, not a stalemate in the California legislature or failed progressive efforts to curb the rise of tent cities and transient populations.  Speaking in Sacramento, California, last week, Newsom claimed that Trump is deliberately withholding "key information" that California needs in order to properly address the homelessness problem, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  "California is making historic investments now to help our communities fight homelessness," Newsom said.  "But we have work to do and we need the federal government to do its part."

Dorm Housing, Communal TVs, Underground Tunnels Envisioned For 'All-Inclusive' $3 Billion, 300-Acre City For The Homeless.  [Scroll down]  Residents would be provided RFID-enabled wristbands to gain access to their dorm rooms as well as perform tasks such as job check-in, purchasing items with credits, medicine consumption, and more.  Each of the four neighborhoods will have their own cafeteria and kitchen and multiple scheduled eating times to accommodate a 150,000-person population, according to [Daune] Nason.  The neighborhoods will also be fitted with tiered seating for residents to watch TV in a community setting within their neighborhood.

The Editor says...
That's great, except for a few details:  [#1] The taxpayers will pay for it all, as soon as the "crowdfunding" crowd tires of paying, or taxpayers will finish the work when private contributions dry up during construction.  [#2] This place is really going to need a lot of employees — mostly cops and janitors — because homeless bums have a reputation for defecating wherever they please.  [#3] The only thing this project will accomplish is that the residents will no longer be technically homeless.  Nothing about this project will encourage anyone to grow out of it.  [#4]  If U.S. citizenship is not required for residency, the whole place will soon be overrun by illegal aliens.  [#6]  Everyone will be provided with RFID-enabled wristbands.  But homeless bums are not exactly the most responsible adults in town; and before long, one of them will lose his wristband or barter it for drugs.  Then many more will do the same.  Then the government will make this announcement:  To keep you from losing your RFID chip, we will just inject it under your skin, just like we do for pets and livestock.  Then you won't be able to lose it.  If this scenario doesn't sound familiar, you haven't read the book of Revelation, Chapter 13.  [#7]  The proposed Homeless Mall can be built in the middle of nowhere.  It doesn't have to be in the middle of a city.  It doesn't have to be interconnected with tunnels.  It doesn't have to be a work of architechtural beauty.  The people who would be living there are currently living (and defecating) in the streets.  They don't have to live near their places of employment because they have none.  [#8]  Many homeless people are mentally ill and should be locked up.  Many of them are criminals and sociopaths.  Many of them don't want to be told where to live, and can't be forced to move into the Homeless Mall.  How are any of these people going to peacefully co-exist with indigent but otherwise normal families?  [#9]  If there are people living in the streets because apartment rent is too high, or the price of a house is too high, that's probably because of decades of Democratic Party union-pandering tree-hugging big-government regulations.  These conditions were created by the same people who now want to solve the problem by pouring more money on it.  [#10]  Watching TV doesn't help anything, especially if the TV is tuned to CNN.

California Governor Blames Trump, Republican Party for State's Homeless Problems.  Like every other problem facing California, the governor takes zero responsibility and calls on others to take action.  Democrats have been at the helm in California as the homeless problem has spiraled completely out of control.  But somehow it's the Republican Party and Trump's fault.

California's Approach To Homelessness:  That's Not How This Works.  California's festering experience with homelessness is a similar story.  Despite all the spending, and the pleas and plans for additional money, homelessness has spiked 30% since 2017 in San Francisco, grew 16% in the city of Los Angeles and 12% in the county over 2018, and swelled 42% in San Jose over two years.  In Alameda County, the number of homeless has jumped 43% since 2017.  The homeless population has been climbing sharply in Sacramento, and Santa Clara and Kern counties, as well.  Even Sonoma County, known for its wines, not urban problems, has a mile-long tent city.  The misery has reached the point that nearly half of the nation's homeless who sleep on the streets and in other public places are in California.  None can doubt homelessness in California is a genuine crisis.  Human urine and feces litter San Francisco streets (and at least one Safeway aisle), and diseases that plagued man during the Medieval period, as well running-wild rats and accumulating trash, are exhausting Los Angeles.  Violence has reached a point that even veterans of the street haven't seen before.

Dr. Marc Siegel:  San Francisco 'awash in human waste'.  Fox News medical correspondent Dr. Marc Siegel says San Francisco residents should be worried about the homeless crisis' effect on their health after video surfaced of a homeless man defecating in the middle of an aisle at a local grocery store.  "Isn't it ironic that a city of germaphobes, of exercise-conscious, environmentally conscious [people] ... are now in a city that's awash in human waste, which is spreading hepatitis A outbreaks every year," Siegel said on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Tuesday [12/17/2019].  "Big outbreaks of hepatitis A, rats in the streets feeding off of the garbage in sewage, typhus, typhoid fever, rotten bacterial infections and even the plague may be coming."

Homeless Drug Addicts Are Now [Defecating] in the Supermarket Aisles.  San Francisco has more drug addicts than public high school students.  The homeless problem is out of control.

California struggles under the weight of 130,000 people living on the streets.  Officials in Santa Rosa are set to unveil emergency proposals to shelter people in fairgrounds as the city - and the state - struggles with a homeless emergency where more than 130,000 people are living on the streets across California.  In Santa Rosa, around 185 people have set up a mile-long camp along the Joe Rodota Trail, next to Highway 12.  The proposed plan, set to be unveiled on Tuesday, will allow some of those living in the camp and the rest of the 3,000 homeless people in Sonoma County to move into the fairgrounds, The Press Democrat reports.  Leaders in the city, struggling with the biggest homeless camp in its history, are said to have been inspired by how the fairgrounds were used during wildfires and flooding.

Citing crappy streets, Oracle moves annual conference from San Francisco to Las Vegas.  I guess needle-strewn streets and Greta Thunberg murals are not the tourist draws that one would expect!  Citing dirty streets and high hotel costs, Oracle has decided to move its important annual conference from San Francisco. [...] The SFTA estimates the total loss of $64,000,000 a year to the local economy due to this decision.  Oracle's event is the second major conference that has relocated due to public health concerns.

Oakland official wants to house 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship.  A San Francisco Bay Area city official wants to explore the possibility of using a cruise ship to house up to 1,000 homeless people as the state continues to struggle with the homelessness crisis.  Oakland City Council President Rebecca Kaplan told a council meeting on Tuesday that the ship would be brought to the Port of Oakland, but port officials said Wednesday [12/11/2019] the move would be 'untenable'.  'We respect President Kaplan's desire to address homelessness but Port of Oakland docks are designed to work cargo ships, there isn't the infrastructure to berth a cruise ship,' port spokesman Mike Zampa said.

The Editor says...
[#1]  Who owns this ship?
[#2]  Is this a ship that will never be used for paying passengers again, after this experiment concludes?
[#3]  Who qualifies for admission to this program?
[#4]  Who will feed the thousand people?
[#5]  Are these the same people who are currently defecating in the streets and leaving used needles everywhere?
[#6]  Couldn't the same thing be accomplished with a barge instead of a cruise ship?

San Francisco's 'poor street conditions' a factor in city's loss of $64M Oracle tech conference: reports.  Oracle, a major Silicon Valley tech company, will move its annual OpenWorld conference to Las Vegas next year due to San Francisco's expensive hotel rates and the city's "poor street conditions," according to reports.  The loss of OpenWorld, which has been held in San Francisco for about 20 years, is raising new concerns about whether the city's struggles with homelessness, open drug use and street violence may be scaring off tourism and other business, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  "For the industry, for the city, to have a major conference leave us impacts all of us," Kevin Carroll, chief executive of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, which represents hotel owners, told the newspaper.

Immigrant doctor launches recall petition against California Gov. Newsom.  A San Diego doctor who emigrated from South America is pushing to oust California Gov. Gavin Newsom, arguing the state's left-wing leadership has allowed cities to become "overrun by homelessness."  "I came here legally at age 11.  Having grown up in extreme poverty and being homeless to now being one of San Diego's most prominent physicians, that's the American Dream, that's the California dream.  And that's what Gov. Newsom and left-wingers in the legislature are progressively destroying," James Veltmeyer said on "Fox & Friends" Monday [12/2/2019].  Homelessness is a growing problem in California.  For example, the homeless population in San Francisco has grown to more than 17,000, a 30 percent jump from last year, according to a city database.

A bill would make it harder to control California's thriving rats.  What is behind the rat boom?  Thanks to the end of California's long drought, more fruit has fallen from trees or is tossed into the compost piles that rats love.  Lengthening warm seasons have increased rodent breeding.  Also to blame are policies that have restricted homebuilding in California and thereby driven up rents.  Homelessness is soaring as a result — California is home to 12% of Americans but nearly half the country's "unsheltered", according to federal statistics.  The resulting outdoor defecation feeds roaches for rats to eat.  Clutter and food in homeless encampments offer rats hiding places and additional grub.

San Francisco's Poop Problem.  The City of San Francisco's Department of Public Works responded to tens of thousands of "human or animal waste" reports in the first 10 months of 2019, according to the city data.  The department responded to 25,084 such cases from January through October of this year, according to the city's 311 data portal.  The city is averaging more than 80 waste cases reported to the department every day in 2019 and is on pace to surpass last year's number of excrement reports, the publicly available records show.

Taking off the woke glasses.  Now, we are living in a time in which those committing crimes will not likely face up to consequences befitting their transgressions.  In California, it appears that homelessness and petty crime go together.  All kinds of offenses are occurring with little or no accountability for those involved.  New York is suspending bond and bail for criminality, including assault, arson, bribery, resisting arrest and so much more.  Radical mobs are outright intimidating and assaulting those who don't agree with their philosophy and are mostly getting away with their heinous behavior and actions.  The tiniest bit of common sense would indicate that bad behavior and disregard for law cannot be corrected with inaction.  In other words, bad behavior without consequences begets more bad behavior.  This is elementary stuff, right?

Homeless man hurls bucket of diarrhea at woman near Hollywood Walk of Fame.  A homeless man dumped a bucket of "hot" diarrhea on a Los Angeles woman near the Hollywood Walk of Fame — an unprovoked attack that's left her with PTSD, she said this week.  Heidi Van Tassel said she was about to drive home from a Thai restaurant near the famed tourist area in April when the alleged assailant, Jere Blessings, dragged her out of her vehicle, news station NBC4 reported.  He pulled her into the middle of the street, where he dumped a bucket of feces over her head, she said.

Homeless crimes in L.A. skyrocket [and] devolve into feces attacks.  Crimes committed by homeless persons in Los Angeles — along with the depravity of the attacks — are skyrocketing.  A local NBC affiliate's "Streets of Shame" series tallied the numbers over the past two years while interviewing a victim who was recently covered in human waste.  "It was diarrhea.  Hot liquid.  I was soaked, and it was coming off my eyelashes and into my eyes," victim Heidi Van Tassel said during an interview that aired Monday.  "Paramedics who came to treat me said there was so much of it on me, that it looked like the man was saving it up for a month."  The station said there were 6,528 homeless attacks in 2017, along with another 9,846 crimes reported in 2018.

Oakland's homeless stats soar as pressure grows from residents, businesses for a solution.  Oakland has seen a 47 percent jump in homelessness — one of the largest surges of any California city, according to a one-night street count released in July.  The count, which used federal guidelines, showed Oakland had 4,071 homeless people in 2019, up from 2,761 in 2017.  The increase puts the city's per capita homeless rate higher than neighboring San Francisco and Berkeley and comes at a time when several West Coast cities are struggling with a homeless crisis that's being driven by rising rents, drug addiction, mental illness and pushback from progressives.  The Point-In-Time Count also found that the number of people living in their vehicles had more than doubled, skyrocketing 131 percent.  At the beginning of the year, there were 1,430 people living in their vehicles, up from 618 in 2017.  Roughly half called their cars and vans home while the others sought shelter in recreational vehicles.

Welcome to 'Hotel California'.  After more than 20 years here, the landscape has changed.  Rarely does a day pass when I do not encounter the genderless homeless and their dogs encamped at a traffic signal or in the littered brush at the edge of a parking lot.  Errant shopping carts routinely make their way from local markets to freeway underpasses, where they function as the support columns for an endless tract of tent homes.  Sleeping bags, plastic bags, poly tarps, and cardboard are the cooperative building materials of the street.  With a burgeoning homeless population of some 50,000, Los Angeles now boasts one of the largest unsheltered communities in the United States.  It is a rough group of heroin addicts, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and folks who are simply down and out in Tinseltown.

Is California Becoming Premodern?  Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable.  In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases.  Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.

The Derangement Syndromes of Our Time.  Who doesn't feel compassion?  Who wouldn't do whatever they can to help someone in need?  But there are intractable problems with compassion gone wild.  In practice, misguided compassion breeds debauchery and dependence.  Anyone wishing to see the former is invited to drive the streets of San Francisco, where they may smell human excrement, tons of which are deposited each week on the sidewalks and gutters by the city's nearly 10,000 homeless.  They may witness thousands of intravenous drug addicts buying and injecting this poison in state-sanctioned acts of slow-motion suicide.  Anyone wishing to see the latter is invited to tour pretty much any legacy housing project in America, where welfare checks and free rent made the presence of a father not merely unnecessary but economically disadvantageous.

Former San Francisco mayoral candidate:  Years of liberal policies have caused homelessness 'tragedy'.  Liberal policies in San Francisco are inflating California's homeless crisis and driving longtime residents out of the city, former mayoral candidate Richie Greenberg said Thursday [10/17/2019].  Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt, Greenberg said that as the state government has moved farther and farther to the left over the years — adapting socialist ideals — the homeless population has only grown.

This city in Idaho is why L.A. can't legally clear its streets of homeless encampments.  The homeless men and women who live in Idaho's largest city are well-nigh invisible.  You might see a line waiting for the main library doors to open.  Or a solitary shape, wrapped in a blanket, sleeping at the base of a bridge along the Boise River.  Or maybe a grizzled veteran holding a cardboard sign at a busy corner.  But just one.  The difference between homelessness in Los Angeles and homelessness in Boise is stark — as in orders of magnitude stark.  There is no skid row here, no Tenderloin like San Francisco's, no American River Parkway as in Sacramento.  Yet, it is this midsize city with its relatively manageable homeless population that is setting the enforcement standards for its much bigger counterparts in the West.

The Homeless Myth:  It's not about the real estate, it's about the drug use and mental illness.  Los Angeles used to be known as the epicenter of the entertainment industry, nutty health fads, and compulsive narcissism.  These days, it's ground zero for the homeless crisis and its myths.  Every underpass harbors grimy tent cities with their own colonies of rats and roaches.  Schizophrenics wander the most fashionable streets shouting at the sky.  Human waste and needles litter downtown streets.  Typhus and Hepatitis A spread out from these oases of misery into the general population.  It's not that the city doesn't care.  If anything, Los Angeles cares too much.  Voters have passed multiple propositions spending over $4.6 billion on the homeless.  They raised their own sales tax.  They built homeless housing at as much as $500,000 per unit.  That's enough to buy a mansion in some parts of America.  Did that solve the problem?  Try walking through one of those tent cities and you'll find out.

Crazy and Woke on the Western Front of Progressive Insanity.  Thanks to progressive ideology as expressed in laws and court rulings, in California today you cannot arrest and hold vagrants for petty theft or possession of hard drugs; you cannot move them out of public spaces unless you can provide them with free and "permanent supportive housing;" you cannot commit demonstrably insane people to asylums; and publicly funded shelters must offer food and urgent care without any preconditions whatsoever.  Testimonials from residents of Venice Beach provide ample evidence of what happens when you impose these progressive policies on an urban area bordered on the west by some of the most inviting beaches and agreeable weather in the world.  An estimated 1,200 homeless people have set up permanent encampments in this three square mile beach town.  They almost never use actual toilets.

Audit Finds Cost of Building Supportive Housing in L.A. Exceeds Median Price of a Market-Rate Condo.  High fees, excessive regulation, and NIMBY ("not in my backyard") opposition to new housing have contributed to Los Angeles' worsening homelessness crisis.  Those same things are now frustrating the city's efforts to construct thousands of units of affordable and supportive housing, where social services can be offered on-site.  On Tuesday [10/8/2019], Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin released a damning audit of the performance of Prop.  HHH, a $1.2 billion bond issue passed overwhelmingly in 2016 to help finance the construction of 10,000 units of housing for homeless and low-income residents.

Some of Los Angeles' homeless could get apartments that cost more than private homes, study finds.  Having made a deep financial commitment to create housing for some of its 27,000 unsheltered homeless people, Los Angeles is falling short in building new apartments to take thousands of people off the streets, a new study finds.  Nearly three years after city voters approved a $1.2 billion construction program over 10 years, the city has yet to see the first building completed.  Average per-apartment costs have zoomed more than $100,000 past prior predictions, the study by city Controller Ron Galperin finds.

San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless.  Everyone's on drugs here ... and stealing," an ex-felon named Shaku explains as he rips open a blue Popsicle wrapper with his teeth.  Shaku is standing in an encampment of tents, trash, and bicycles, across from San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church.  Another encampment-dweller lights a green crack pipe and passes it around.  A few paces down the street, a gaunt man swipes a credit card through a series of parking meters to see if it has been reported stolen yet.  For the last three decades, San Francisco has conducted a real-life experiment in what happens when a society stops enforcing bourgeois norms of behavior.  The city has done so in the name of compassion toward the homeless.  The results have been the opposite:  street squalor and misery have increased, even as government expenditures have ballooned.

Homelessness Isn't Just a Humanitarian Problem.  California has a homelessness crisis, but Californians don't agree about what it is.  To homeless advocates, social service providers, many politicians and most journalists, it's a humanitarian problem — a social tragedy of rapidly increasing numbers of men, women and families living without shelter, vulnerable to crime, disease and degradation.  This state of affairs, they believe, is a "moral disaster."  For pedestrians pushed into the street by blocked sidewalks, women afraid of unruly men screaming obscenities, patio diners beset by panhandlers and homeowners discovering human feces in their yards, it's an environmental catastrophe — the neighborhood equivalent of an oil spill.  They want someone to clean it up and prevent it from happening again.

San Francisco removes boulders meant to deter homeless campers because they were 'not big enough'.  The city of San Francisco on Monday [9/30/2019] removed about two dozen small boulders from a residential side street after a group of neighbors had them installed last week in an effort to deter homeless people from camping out on along the sidewalk amid the city's ongoing crisis.  San Francisco's Public Works removed the rocks set up along Clinton Park in the city's Mission Dolores neighborhood.  Residents last week said they pooled their funds to keep drug users from having a space to shoot up as they camp out overnight.

San Francisco residents use rocks to block homeless camping.  Fed up with what they see as the city's failure to combat homelessness and rampant drug use, the neighbors had boulders delivered to their sidewalk to block people from pitching tents on their street.  That started a fight that shows the frustration with an unprecedented homelessness crisis in California.

San Francisco residents line sidewalk with boulders to block homeless camps.  California has returned to its "Wild West" roots, as individuals strive to civilize the coast using their wits and initiative.  Case-in-point:  Residents of a San Francisco side street have trucked in boulders to discourage homeless camping near their homes.

Dems Will Make Homelessness Worse.  If Democrats capture the White House in 2020, your own neighborhood is likely to look like the disease-ridden tent slums taking over Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren insists it's wrong to ban living on the streets and in public parks.  Bernie Sanders is calling for a 3% cap on annual rent hikes, the kind of poisonous rent control law that deters new housing construction and worsens homelessness.

Scott Pressler's Group Cleaned Up L.A. Homeless Camp In 9 Hours; Removed 50 Tons Of Garbage.  Conservative activist Scott Presler continued to deliver on his pledge to clean up Democrat-led cities across the country.  He tackled his biggest project yet on Saturday [9/21/2019].  Wearing hazmat suits, he and a group of 200 volunteers spent nine hours removing 50 tons of garbage from an L.A. homeless camp.  The photographs show a remarkable transformation.

Carson outrages HUD staffers with comments about transgender homeless.  Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson made comments about transgender people that outraged some staffers at the HUD office in San Francisco, causing at least one of them to walk out of the room.  During a HUD meeting, Carson warned about "big, hairy men" posing as women to get into battered women's shelters, according to several sources who spoke to the Washington Post.  The remarks made several of the 50 present HUD staffers visibly upset and led one woman to walk out of the meeting, though an official who spoke to the Post clarified that Carson was not trying to single out transgender women with his comments.

Ben Carson Defends Putting Homeless Women Before Transgender Dogma.  Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson issued an agency-wide email Friday [9/20/2019] attacking a "blatant mischaracterization" of his comments about transgenderism during his visit to California this week, which reportedly offended bureaucrats in San Francisco. [...] Carson's concern — that women could be at risk from being housed together with those who are biologically male but who say that their gender identity is female — is not unique.

Trump admin's scathing letter rejecting Newsom's request for funds:  Clean up your act first!  Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson toured Los Angeles to get a first-hand view of the city's homeless epidemic.  His visit came after the state asked for federal money to help clean its disease-infested streets.  Trump has been vocal about California's disastrous situation, vowing something must be done to stop it.  California Gov. Newsom seized the moment and fired off a letter to President Trump demanding more money — so the local government can fix what it created.

California's Request for Federal Funding to Combat Homelessness Rejected by Trump Administration.  As the homelessness crisis in California escalates, state officials requested increased federal funding to combat the issue, only to be rejected by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, as reported by ABC.  The request letter was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and "mayors of the state's 13 largest cities."  The letter points out California's recent increase in spending on welfare programs, and claims that the "[Trump] Administration has proposed significant cuts to public housing and programs like the Community Development Block Grant."

Trump, Carson reject California's request for federal help on homelessness.  At the same time that President Donald Trump and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson are promising federal action to intervene in homelessness in California, they're rejecting requests from local officials for help and escalating the blame game between the federal government and the state.  California Gov. Newsom and local leaders[,] including mayors of the state's 13 largest cities[,] wrote to Trump this week to ask for more federal funds to expand programs like housing vouchers that help people get off the street into stable living situations.

Trump says EPA will cite San Francisco for pollution stemming from homelessness issues.  President Trump on Wednesday [9/18/2019] said he expects the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to slap San Francisco with a violation notice in the coming days related to pollution associated with the city's homeless people.  Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump again took aim at Los Angeles and San Francisco over the volume of homeless people in each city.  But he escalated his rhetoric, saying an announcement citing San Francisco for environmental violations would come in the next week.

The Broken Promise of American Cities.  Hope for a better future in California is rapidly becoming a stillborn dream, as the connection between decay and the politics of progressivism becomes painfully clear.  The proponents of this secular theology may be getting a wakeup call soon, as the Golden State's cities teeter on the edge of bubonic oblivion, with rats teeming through the streets of Los Angeles, even forcing temporary, partial closures of City Hall.  Skid Row has unfurled its filthy tendrils into the halls of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division station, with officers falling ill as vermin lay siege to their precinct.  But the explosion of the rat population, catalyzed by the feculence of homeless encampments across the state, has not deterred lawmakers from advancing a bill to ban rat poison in the name of human health and environmental concerns.  In the progressive mind, even mentioning the risk of disease caused by these policies is somehow tantamount to racist dog-whistling.  San Francisco, the rainbow flagship of our brave new world, even has a "no-kill, catch-and-release" policy for rodents.

Why California Keeps Making Homelessness Worse.  On Tuesday, fifteen officials from the White House toured Skid Row in Los Angeles with the head of a local homeless shelter.  "Four or five of them were from the Environmental Protection Agency," Rev. Andy Bales of Union Mission church told me.  "That's because human waste flows into storm sewers."  California is home to some of the world's toughest environmental and public health laws, but skyrocketing homelessness has created an environmental and public health disaster.  The 44,000 people living, eating, and defecating on the streets of L.A. have brought rats and medieval diseases including typhus.  Garbage is everywhere.  Experts fear the return of cholera and leprosy.

Report: Trump Wants To Shut Down California Homeless Camps.  President Donald Trump is reportedly fed up with the homeless camps that dot the California landscape and wants to move the residents into some form of transitional housing.  The camps are not only an eyesore but contribute to lawlessness.  The problem has intensified over the summer and Trump is apparently ready to move beyond criticizing the state's lack of response to proving solutions, sources told the Washington Post Tuesday [9/10/2019].

San Francisco shopkeeper considers closing his store after being bitten by a homeless person for the second time in four months.  A San Francisco shop owner who was been bitten by a homeless man for the second in time in months says he will close his store rather than put up with the 'nuisance'.  Gilles DeSaulniers, 67, said he was trying to subdue a homeless man who had pushed his sister after she tried to eject him for the second time that day from their South of Market store.  But while holding onto him, the man 'twisted his head' and bit the shopkeeper's arm in an attempt to escape.

With more homeless riding San Francisco trains, crime is up and ridership is down.  Not surprisingly, the numbers are highest in the winter when the number of homeless people is nearly 300 per every hundred train cars.  The increase in the number of homeless riding the trains coincides with an increase in reported crimes, including violent crimes.  In June, the Chronicle reported robberies were up 128 percent over five years while aggravated assaults were up 83 percent.  Those figures appeared in a Grand Jury report which specifically cited homelessness as a major contributor to declining ridership.  And that's the big problem for BART.  The train system was never intended to be a living space for the homeless but that's what it is becoming.

Los Angeles homeless dying in droves.  We've covered a number of stories here dealing with the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles which has been out of control and growing for several years now.  Most of these tales have to do with drug addiction, mental illness, crimes committed both by and against the homeless and people using the streets as their bathrooms.  But there's another, even darker element to this story featured in the LA Times this week.  As it turns out, the homeless are not just living on the streets.  They're dying on them and in large numbers.

Sacramento's business owners tell how they confront naked junkies and streets covered in feces, urine and syringes.  Cali Carlisle admits she is a heroin addict — 'but in a healthy way,' she insists, even if the visual evidence belies that claim.  Her nose is the brightest shade of red imaginable.  She constantly picks at scabs all over her body.  Her home is a makeshift bed beneath Interstate 80 in Sacramento.  And Monday was her 26th birthday.  Not that you would ever guess.  Anyone looking at her would think she is at least 15 years older.

Former Los Angeles city administrative officer: homeless problem 'going to get worse before it gets better'.  A former Los Angeles city administrative officer stepping down from a committee overseeing a homelessness program said this week the citywide problem is going to get worse before it gets better, according to a report. [...] Between 50,000 and 60,000 people sleep on the streets in Los Angeles County every night, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — a number second only to New York City.

California salon owner claims the homelessness crisis is forcing her to relocate after 15 years.  A hair salon owner in California says she will be forced to move her business due to the problems of homeless people sleeping outside her shop.  Elizabeth Novak, who owns a hair salon in downtown Sacramento, posted a video on Twitter on Friday describing how she often finds people camping in tents across her front door.  She told how the vagrancy crisis gripping the state is affecting long-standing business owners and that her shop has been broken into and she has even been attacked.  Novak, who has run her salon for 15 years, said in her social media message that she often has to clean-up urine, feces and needles left by rough sleepers on her doorstep.

Frustrated California Woman Has Scathing Message For Gavin Newsom After Homeless Chaos Destroys Her Small Business.  A frustrated California woman took to Twitter on Friday to blast governor Gavin Newsom's disastrous policies that have created a desperate homeless problem.  The woman [...] was clearly upset as she posted a video detailing why she may be forced to close the doors of her business.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's claim about the homeless was so absurd even Politifact couldn't spin it.  Back in June, California Gov. Gavin Newsom made an incredible claim about homeless people in his state.  Asked why the homeless population hadn't declined when he was Mayor of San Francisco, Newsom said, "The vast majority (of San Francisco's homeless people) also come in from — and we know this — from Texas.  Just (an) interesting fact."  Newsom's claim was discounted by the LA Times last month but Politifact decided to investigate independently.  This week the least reliable fact-checker in the business agreed that Newsom's statement was absurd, giving it a "Pants on Fire" rating.

Bubonic Plague May Join Homelessness, Rats on List of Crises in Los Angeles.  Los Angeles's homelessness problems could soon turn into a much larger health crisis as the state is failing to address its growing rodent problem, Dr. Drew Pinsky, celebrity doctor and media personality, told Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.  During an interview on Periscope, Dr. Drew, as he's commonly known, told Adams that just after Los Angeles had to deal with with a typhus outbreak, the city should brace for an imminent outbreak of the bubonic plague — the same disease that killed 60% of the European human population in the late Middle Ages.

Socialist utopia of Berkeley.  Already a bastion of the Left, in 2016 Berkeley, CA, a "sanctuary" city, tilted further to the left when residents voted as mayor 32-year-old Jesse Arregu'n, who had no prior government or administrative experience and had never held a private-sector job.  Although Arreguin is a homeless advocate "passionately committed to social justice," Berkeley's homeless marked his election as mayor by smearing feces on and around city hall.  Under Arreguin's far-left city government, Berkeley's homeless population increased 13% in just two years.

Homeless Surge Hits Oakland, Silicon Valley, San Francisco Suburbs.  San Francisco saw its homeless population rise by 17% in the last two years, but the rise in many surrounding counties has been worse.  A report Monday [7/22/2019] by Curbed San Francisco summarizing the figures noted:  "Five out of nine Bay Area Counties — i.e., all of those not located in the North Bay — saw their homeless counts spike during the same period, with each other county showing worse homelessness surges than SF."

Video Captures Shocking Extent Of L.A. Homeless Crisis In 4 Minutes.  The latest video by popular man-on-the-street interviewer Austen Fletcher efficiently captures the alarming homeless situation in the city of Los Angeles, particularly the infamous "Skid Row," wherein reside thousands of homeless people — most of whom are either suffering severe psychological problems or substance addiction, and among whom hundreds of sexual predators roam.

Amid Homelessness Crisis, SF Residents Sue To Block New Shelter.  Remember when we talked about the 30% increase in homelessness in San Francisco?  At the time I suggested that some combination of public and private investment might be needed to combat the problem.  As it turns out, just such a proposal is moving forward, with construction getting underway on a 200-bed temporary shelter located near the Giants baseball stadium.  Great news, right?  You might think so, but a large group of local residents doesn't agree.  Called "Safe Embarcadero for All," the group raised more than $100K, not to help the homeless, but to bring a lawsuit aimed at stopping construction of the shelter.  They're claiming everything from improper permit approval to a failure to study environmental impacts caused by the project.  But to listen to their spokespeople, what they really mean is they don't want a bunch of homeless people hanging around.

San Francisco: wealthy opponents of new shelter claim homeless are bad for environment.  The wealthy San Francisco residents who launched a crowdfunding campaign to block construction of a new homeless shelter in their waterfront neighborhood are employing a new tactic: arguing that homeless people are bad for the environment.  In a lawsuit filed against the city of San Francisco and the California State Lands Commission, the residents called for the project to undergo an environmental review before breaking ground.  "This project will have a significant effect on the environment due to these unusual circumstances, including by attracting additional homeless persons, open drug and alcohol use, crime, daily emergency calls, public urination and defecation, and other nuisances," the lawsuit states.

Desperate to get rid of homeless people, some are using prickly plants, fences, barriers.  L.A. has struggled to stymie the growing number of obstructions that residents and business owners are creating to target homeless people.  There are now about 59,000 people without homes in L.A. County.  Within the city of Los Angeles, the population soared 16% this year to more than 36,000 — the majority of whom are living outdoors on city streets.  In parts of South L.A., business owners have built chain link fences around their buildings.  Venice has seen a proliferation of sidewalk planters.  In Koreatown, orange mesh fences are so common that a Twitter account documenting their existence has sprouted up.  Still other Angelenos have taken to planting rosebushes and pointy cactuses in the "furniture zone," the city's designation for the sometimes paved and sometimes grassy area between the sidewalk and street.  That's where obstacles are being placed the most, usually without permission from the city.

The Editor says...
If you hose down the bums with a firehose, you'll probably have to do that "without permission from the city" also.  It is obvious that the city is not inclined to take any meaningful action against even the most presumptuous homeless squatters.  It will probably be necessary for someone to force the issue:  Some property owner is going to apply pressure to remove a homeless bum, inflicting discomfort to such a degree that the property owner will get arrested.  Then we will all find out what property rights really mean in California.

63-year-old woman in critical condition after random attack by homeless man in California.  A 63-year-old woman taking a break at work was beaten in an alley so badly that she was unrecognizable.  She was admitted to a hospital in critical condition.  The attacker was identified by witnesses and arrested.  He is 51-year-old Hector Manuel Ulloa, a homeless man who had recently been released from jail and who has many prior convictions.  NBC 4 reports he has now been charged with attempted murder.

LA allocates millions for trash clean up as NBC affiliate uncovers another rat-infested garbage pile.  The recent spate of negative press attention on LA's trash and rat infestation problem has apparently lit a fire under Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.  Last week, LA committed an additional $6.5 million for homeless clean-up efforts.  The additional money will fund 10 new crews with nearly 50 new sanitation workers.

The Editor says...
That's $130,000 per worker.  Yes, I understand it's in California, and the crews are cleaning up rat-infested trash piles, but that still seems like a lot of money.

Democrat homeless disaster killing San Francisco, Los Angeles, & Seattle.  A rising wave of homelessness is growing and spreading in the major Democrat controlled cities on the Left Coast.  Spreading disease, drug addiction, and social disorder in its wake.  From Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles the quality of life is plummeting.  Democrat municipal and state authorities seem oblivious, placing the rights of the homeless above their duty to their citizens, taxpayers, and public safety.

Violent Crime Up Sharply In San Francisco BART Stations.  The San Francisco Chronicle reports that crime has more than doubled in San Francisco's BART stations since 2014.  The report highlighting the rise in violent crime also suggested that as many as 15% of people riding the trains are not paying fares. [...] That grand jury report identified four factors causing a decline in BART ridership (down 8% since 2016), first and foremost among them was homelessness. [...] If the homeless are living on the trains and sleeping on the trains, it's a good bet they are stealing to support their habits on the trains as well.

Bubonic Plague In Los Angeles?  Is California On The Verge Of Becoming A Third-World State?  A lot has happened.  We're still dealing with the border crisis, the Democratic debates are about to begin, and Iran is rattling the war sabers.  The city of Los Angeles should be thankful there are so many distractions.  The Democrat-run urban center has become a total disgrace.  And that's very common among the Left coast.  Tucker Carlson had historian Victor Davis Hanson on last week, where the latter said that California is on the verge of becoming the nation's first Third World state.  From trash being illegally dumped to city hall becoming a rat-infested den in the city of LA, it all points to the decay suffered when Democrats run things.

California:  Here Be Monsters.  California has endured its share of Old Testament calamities in the modern world.  Yet at times it seems that it will surely succumb to disasters created by its own hand.  There are real monsters loose in the streets.  Rats, "an army" of them "millions strong," reports KOMO News, have "overthrown" Los Angeles.  Not long ago, "officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building," said California Healthline.  "And where there are rats," says KOMO reporter Eric Johnson, "there is disease." [...] Maybe the rats were attracted to the "garbage mountain" that has bloomed in the city and produced quite a few unflattering, but deserving, comments.  Hepatitis A, which is spread through feces, and can be prevented through healthy hygiene and modern sanitation, is also enjoying an afterlife, sickening more than 1,000 in Southern California, which includes San Diego, in the last two years.  It's been suggested by one physician that the bubonic plague is lurking somewhere in all this.

Los Angeles street
With the Left in charge, Seattle and Los Angeles are dying.  It's no secret to anyone paying attention that the liberalism of the left and all its virtues control America's West Coast.  However, the warm and fuzzy "progressive" aura that seems so attractive to unschooled is a sham.  Sadly, to such voters, the phrase "somebody said so" is often the only proof they need to justify their ballot choices.  But, as has is far too evident here in Seattle and in Los Angeles, such myopia has a price.  The price of the Left in Charge.


Why Are There So Many Homeless in Los Angeles?  Now everybody knows about the 36,000 homeless on the streets of LA, over 60,000 in the county, replete with human feces and syringes littering the sidewalks, along with rats, typhus and even rumors of bubonic plague.  And those figures are what we're told.  No one, if you can trust the comments sections in the LA Times or the Next Door app for my old Hollywood neighborhood, remotely believes them.  They could be three or four times the number.  And how do you take a census of the homeless anyway?  They are inherently nomadic. [...] Shelters, some of them well built, have been constructed all over the city but the homeless don't want to stay in them.  The reason is these shelters are drug-free zones and the homeless of LA (and San Francisco and Seattle) are anything but drug-free.  Most are addicts.

Los Angeles shows the state how not to address homelessness.  It was a mistake to settle two lawsuits brought on behalf of homeless people by agreeing to create a right to sleep on the sidewalks (Jones v. Los Angeles) and to store mounds of personal property on the public right-of-way (Mitchell v. Los Angeles).  But Garcetti is the particular target of public rage.  He pushed for the approval of two tax increases for homeless housing and services in 2016 and 2017, and the problem has only gotten worse.  The recent Point in Time Count found that 36,300 people are homeless in the city of Los Angeles, an increase of 16 percent from 2018.  In 2017, the count was about 34,000, and that was a 20 percent jump from the previous year, when the problem was already disturbing enough that voters approved Measure HHH, a tax increase to build homeless housing.

Scenes from the collapse of a city that's lost control.  What century is this?  Is it the 21st century in the largest city of a state that ranks among the world's most robust economies, or did someone turn back the calendar a few hundred years?  We've got thousands of people huddled on the streets, many of them withering away with physical and mental disease.  Sidewalks have disappeared, hidden by tents and the kinds of makeshift shanties you see in Third World places.  Typhoid and typhus are in the news, and an army of rodents is on the move.

What's the matter with California?  California wants to look after its people, so it keeps expanding its social safety net.  It also wants to welcome all comers and so embraces illegal immigrants and protects them in sanctuary cities.  To see how this is working out, visit Skid Row in L.A. or neighborhoods in San Francisco or elsewhere where homeless camps are spreading.  Caring for all Californians is made harder by the state importing as many non-Americans as possible.

Medieval diseases spreading in Los Angeles prove twisted Democrat priorities endanger public health.  Americans don't have to look as far as Venezuela to see the massive failure of a government incapable of delivering the basics of what people need from their government.  A brief look at California shows how the twisted priorities of Democrat political leadership are creating a dangerous environment for the residents of the Golden State.  While combatting climate change remains a top priority for Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the streets of California's cities are filled with homeless camps, garbage, and disease-spreading rats.  In a throwback to medieval times, Los Angeles is facing an infectious disease epidemic caused by flea-borne disease linked to rat-infested streets.

Welcome to Garcetti's L.A.: heaps of trash, hordes of rats and very little leadership.  Los Angeles looks as if it's digging out from a hurricane, with hordes on the streets, tents everywhere and armies of rodents on the march, inciting fears of disease.  We learned from Dakota Smith and David Zahniser in last week's avalanche of Mad Max news that the rat circus at City Hall was tied to homeless people using the grates around the building as bathrooms. [...] And why do public officials seem so timid about pointing out that a lot of the trash is from the ever-growing numbers of homeless people they haven't been able to help, whether they're physically or mentally disabled, addicted, bomb-rattled from combat or evicted from the shrinking number of available rentals?

Mohammed, the Dirty Democrat in Charge of 'Cleaning Up' San Francisco.  San Francisco has the highest rents in the country.  At an average of $3,690 for a one bedroom, it's more expensive than New York City, Hong Kong, Paris and London. [...] Despite that, the City by the Bay is drowning in its own filth.  San Fran is covered in human waste.  There have been 118,352 cases of human waste on the streets of San Francisco since 2011.  That's also when Mohammed Nuru took over as the head of the city's Department of Public Works.  The Nigerian immigrant who calls himself Mr. Clean has been promising to clean up San Francisco back to the Willie Brown days.  Brown, the notoriously corrupt city boss, had picked Nuru as his point man, after some assistance on political campaigns, appointing him DPW deputy director in 2000. [...] But Mr. Clean was a protégé of Mayor Brown and complaints quickly rose from DPW employees about corruption, discrimination and intimidation.

Staggering homeless count stuns LA officials.  The stunning increase in homelessness announced in Los Angeles this week — up 16% over last year citywide — was an almost incomprehensible conundrum given the nation's booming economy and the hundreds of millions of dollars that city, county and state officials have directed toward the problem. [...] The new homeless count released Tuesday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority showed nearly 59,000 people living in the streets across Los Angeles County, a 12% increase over the prior year; and 36,300 homeless people within the city limits of LA, a 16% increase over last year's count.

How do we deal with America's mental illness crisis?  California is no longer the paradise it was under Governor Reagan.  Radical leftism has taken root.  It is all but a separate country in many ways.  It has its own immigration policy, illegal under federal law.  At one point, its governor even floated the idea that the state should produce its own virtual currency in the form of accounting tricks, an action uncomfortably close to secession.  Radical leftist policies in California have put on public display the embarrassing appearance of a third-world hell-hole.  Swathes of the state, mostly in big cities, are heavily populated by semi-conscious (or even unconscious) drug addicts, and entire city blocks seem to be covered in garbage and human feces.  The problem is getting worse.  A harsh comedian suggested that conditions are so bad that illegal aliens might return to their native countries as refugees from America.

Filth from homeless camps is luring rats to L.A. City Hall, report says.  When faced with complaints earlier this year from city workers about rats infesting L.A. City Hall, most city officials said little about whether the problem was connected to several homeless camps right outside.  But a newly uncovered report from a pest control company hired by the city has raised fresh questions about whether officials wrongly downplayed that possibility during discussions at City Council meetings.  CatsUSA Pest Control, brought in to assess areas outside City Hall and nearby buildings, warned that homeless people create "harborage for rodents," according to the report issued Dec. 28 and obtained last month through a public records request by a frequent critic of City Hall.

Inside the squalor on 'Skid Row' as typhoid scare grips Los Angeles.  With rats running everywhere among piles of decaying garbage, these shocking images of a tent city look like a sordid third world shanty — but are actually downtown Los Angeles.  The horrifying photos show what the Los Angeles Times calls "collapse of a city that's lost control" — and what is believed to have left at least one LAPD cop with typhoid.

Ten Plagues of California Are Turning The Golden State into a Third-World Hell Hole.  In your typical Third-World megalopolis, basic city functions fall into disrepair, while once-eradicated diseases run rampant — and the local bigwig boasts about saving the world.  Los Angeles is quickly becoming a typical Third-World megalopolis, and the rest of the state isn't far behind.  Yesterday [6/2/2019] the New York Post reported "rats running everywhere among piles of decaying garbage," in a "sprawling 50-block area that is believed to be the base for around 4,200 homeless people."

Shocking new pictures from downtown LA capture the huge problem it faces with trash and rats amid fear of typhoid fever outbreak among LAPD.  These shocking pictures from downtown Los Angeles capture the growing problem it faces with trash and rodents in a desperate city also trying to contain a typhoid fever outbreak linked to worsening sanitary conditions.  A decision to not cap the total amount of property that homeless people can keep on Skid Row was announced last Wednesday and it sparked fury among some officials who say it will 'only perpetuate the public health crisis that already exists' there.

Dr. Drew says LA public health in 'complete breakdown': 'No city on Earth tolerates this'.  The public health situation in the nation's second-largest city is in "a complete breakdown," Dr. Drew Pinsky said Thursday night on "The Ingraham Angle."  "We have a complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now," Pinsky told host Laura Ingraham.  "We have the three prongs of airborne disease, tuberculosis is exploding, (and) rodent-borne.  We are one of the only cities in the country that doesn't have a rodent control program, and sanitation has broken down."

'Sky-High' Trash Piles Found In Los Angeles, Raising Concerns About Typhus.  Apparently, problems with waste are not limited to San Francisco.  NBC4 reported Monday [5/20/2019] that "sky-high" piles of rotting trash were found around Los Angeles, leading some to worry about a new typhus outbreak.  "Even the city's most notorious trash pile, located between downtown LA's busy Fashion and Produce districts, continues to be a magnet for rats after it was cleaned up months ago.  The rodents can carry typhus-infected fleas, which can spread the disease to humans through bacteria rubbed into the eyes or cuts and scrapes on the skin, resulting in severe flu-like symptoms," the outlet reported.  [Video clip]

San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll.  San Francisco is the nation's leader in property crime.  Burglary, larceny, shoplifting, and vandalism are included under this ugly umbrella.  The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over 30,000 reports were filed, and the current average is 51 per day.  Other low-level offenses, including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant.  Many in law enforcement blame the crime wave on Proposition 47, which in 2014 downgraded possession of illegal narcotics for personal use and theft of anything under $950 in value from felonies to misdemeanors.  Anti-incarceration advocates disagree with that argument, but theft is indisputably booming, and narcotics activity is exploding on sidewalks, parks, and playgrounds.  When compounded with other troubles for which the city is now infamous (human feces, filth, and homelessness, which is up 17 percent since 2017), San Franciscans find themselves surrounded by squalor and disorder.

California's Housing Bubble's So Bad, 100s Forced To Live On Boats.  California's housing affordability crisis is getting worse.  Affordability in San Francisco is now at 10-year lows, and only one in five households can afford to purchase a median-priced single-family home in the Bay Area.  The crisis has driven many people onto the water, living on makeshift boats, outside marinas, and wealthy communities.  The floating homeless population in wealthy Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Strait from San Francisco, has doubled in the last five years to over 100.  The community of 200 barges, sailboats, and other vessels comprise of people who are employed but can't afford to live on land, jobless folks, the homeless, and some people who are mentally ill.

California homelessness is so out of control, people are turning to boats — Dems are clueless.  California is the country's wealthiest and most highly taxed state, but its politicians have utterly failed to tackle the state's most basic problem:  homelessness.  Estimates place California's homeless population at close to 130,000.  To grasp the magnitude of that figure, imagine the entire population of New Haven, Connecticut or Charleston, South Carolina living on the streets.  Much has been written about the problems of feces on San Francisco's streets and needles on the streets in downtown Los Angeles.  But the problem has expanded far beyond those cities.  It has now reached virtually all parts of the state, including, according to reports, the state's water.  In Sausalito just north of San Francisco, neighbors are sparring with local politicians over a homeless population floating off its shores in makeshift boats!

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to double spending on homelessness — to $1 billion.  Insisting that a fiscally responsible state government can also aid those in need, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent California lawmakers a revised budget Thursday that builds on his efforts to address poverty and homelessness while forecasting the largest tax revenue windfall in state history.  That windfall, Newsom said, will trigger the first-ever payment into a special cash reserve fund for schools and community colleges — a $389-million deposit stashed away specifically for education needs during a future recession.  He also proposed an increase in spending on helping the homeless, raising the total state investment in the upcoming budget year to $1 billion.

Do Most Homeless People In Seattle Have A Substance Abuse Problem?  In the wake of the "Seattle is Dying" news special which aired on KOMO last month, there was some coordinated pushback from Seattle elites.  A PR firm was hired to help coordinate talking points in opposition to the conclusions of the special and in favor of some of the programs already operating in the city.  Those talking points were then rolled out in a series of seemingly unconnected articles at news outlets like the Seattle Times and Crosscut.  One of the arguments made repeatedly in these pieces is that drug use (and also mental illness) are just one part of the problem.

In poop-covered San Francisco, the super-rich prey on the left's merely wealthy.  San Francisco is a city covered in excrement, and now even the wealthy inhabitants of its Embarcadero are going to experience more of it, up close to home and quite personal. [...] Maybe they should have thought of that before they elected an incompetent weakling like Mayor London Breed based on color considerations, or passed Proposition C in that same election, taxing big businesses to pay for More Homeless programs.  The residents aren't the most sympathetic people out there, given their voting patterns.  All the same, this could be some kind of watershed, widening a new fault line on the left, given that tech billionaires were the ones behind this, making a sort of warfare on the merely wealthy.  After all, in San Francisco, there's no one else left.

Squatting takes on a new meaning in San Francisco.  If you're not a resident of the area and are planning to visit the famous City by the Bay but don't have the locals' notorious open-mindedness, where logic falls out and anything else crawls in attitude and want to avoid the excrement, [Adam] Andrzejewski has helpfully included the ZIP codes with the most of it, along with an interactive map of its locations.  Other than this, enjoy your visit!

San Francisco sees 'brownout' amid spike in public pooping, reports say.  San Francisco's streets have long had a problem with human waste, but new reports show that the Bay Area's public bowel movements are worse than ever.  The poop-data was released by Open the Books, a nonprofit government watchdog, which includes all cases closed by the San Francisco Department of Public Works since 2011, Business Insider reported.  There were over 5,000 documented cases in 2011, according to the data.  In 2018, that number rose more than fivefold to over 28,000 reported cases.

This San Francisco Public Pooping Map Is Gross And Also Fascinating.  A group called Open the Books plotted tens of thousands of reported public pooping incidents on a map of San Francisco.  The result looks like a cloud of sewage blanketing the city.

Plan for homeless center in Pelosi's district leads to raucous public meeting; SF mayor jeered.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed was heckled and jeered during a raucous community meeting Wednesday to discuss a controversial homeless center proposal along the city's waterfront that has attracted dueling online fundraisers from critics and supporters.  "Homelessness is the number one problem that we face in our city.  You cannot be upset about homelessness and then when I propose a real solution, then you're upset about it," Breed said while trying to discuss plans to build a 200-bed Homeless Navigation Center in the city's Embarcadero section.  The area is part of California's 12th Congressional District, represented by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

San Franciscans raise $46,000 to stop homeless shelter in wealthy area.  When residents from one of San Francisco's most desirable neighborhoods launched a crowdfunding appeal to block a new homeless shelter, the controversial tactic drew an angry response from the city's mayor.  Their campaign on GoFundMe, best known as a site that hosts fundraisers for medical expenses or victims of natural disasters, has raised around $70,000 from hedge fund managers, executives and authors, which will be used to pay for an attorney.  But it also spurred supporters of the shelter to try to beat them at their own game.  Since launching on Thursday, a rival GoFundMe has amassed over $73,000.  And it had drawn hefty contributions of $10,000 each from the Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and from the company GoFundMe itself.

Wealthy 'NIMBY' libs in Pelosi's SF district raise $60G to fight center for city's homeless.  Rich San Francisco residents in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional district have collected more than $60,000 after starting an online crowdsourcing campaign to wage a legal challenge against a proposed center for the city's homeless.  The campaign, called "Safe Embarcadero for All," was launched March 20 after San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed a 200-bed homeless Navigation Center in the city's most desirable location, the Embarcadero along the coast of San Francisco Bay, earlier this month.  "The planned location for Mayor Breed's #megashelter is home to thousands of families, visited by millions of tourists and at the center of some of San Francisco's most iconic events, including the San Francisco Marathon, San Francisco Giants stadium and on one of the busiest bicyclist paths in the city," reads the site posted by the group opposing the construction.

Leftists Have Turned San Francisco Into A Nightmare Of Drugs And Homelessness.  There's no denying that San Francisco is one of America's most beautiful and recognizable cities, but it has been racked with problems thanks to leftist policies that have driven drug addiction and homelessness through the roof.  The Daily Wire's Kassy Dillon and Colton Haas traveled to the city by the bay and spoke to experts and homeless people about the conditions that have encouraged the spread of drugs, disease, and more.  During their trip, they could see the awful condition the city is currently in.

I Went To San Francisco.  What Happened To One Of America's Most Beautiful Cities?  Erica Sandberg, a community advocate and journalist, broke it down for us:  "Right now the major issue — people always call it homelessness — but the major issue is drugs."  While San Francisco has always battled homelessness and currently has about 7,000 homeless people, the drug issue is exacerbating the problem.  The city currently hands out more than 400,000 syringes each month but only 246,000 are returned, leaving 154,000 syringes left on the streets.  We spent our first day walking around the Tenderloin District, only to see our fellow Americans defecating on the sidewalk, shooting up in broad daylight, and overall living in third-world conditions.  In one children's playground we visited, there were wrappers that once held drugs and caps of syringes.

The Crying of Lot 330.  The prospect of a 225-bed homeless shelter on the Embarcadero, one of San Francisco's most scenic and economically vital areas, took residents by surprise.  Only eight days earlier, the proposal had been unveiled to turn what is now a parking lot — Seawall Lot 330 — into the largest homeless shelter of its type in the city.  Neighbors arrived en masse at the Port Commission hearing to express their views.  It was standing-room only, with people crowded on floors and in aisles, and spilling out the door. [...] All spoke passionately about their ties to the neighborhood and how the shelter would erode safety and quality of life.  They worried that it would intensify drug use and other illegal activity and draw additional homeless people onto their property, leaving more needles and feces behind.

L.A. settles homeless rights case, likely limiting ability to clear skid row streets.  The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday [3/6/2019] agreed to settle a pivotal and contentious case on the property rights of homeless people — a decision that is likely to limit the seizure and destruction of encampments on skid row.  The 10-2 vote authorizes City Attorney Mike Feuer to settle a 2016 lawsuit, Carl Mitchell v. Los Angeles, brought by civil rights lawyers on behalf of homeless people and two skid row anti-poverty groups.  Downtown business groups had opposed such a deal, arguing that settling the case would deter redevelopment, and leave skid row and the people who live on its sidewalks mired in squalor.

Rats, Fleas, And Garbage Caused A Typhus Outbreak In Los Angeles.  Typhus is a bacterial infection which is spread by lice, chiggers, and fleas.  Usually, those pests find a home on rats.  The rats in most cases have a population boom because of excessive garbage.  And the disease infects people who come in contact with the rats.  That's what is driving the disease in Los Angeles where an outbreak has been traced to homeless encampments.

Slum by the Bay.  [Scroll down]  San Francisco authorities mostly leave the mentally ill to fend for themselves on the street.  Other vagrants complain about them.  "They make it bad for people like us that hang out with a sign," one beggar told us.  San Francisco is a pretty good place to "hang out with a sign."  People are rarely arrested for vagrancy, aggressive panhandling or going to the bathroom in front of people's homes.  In 2015, there were 60,491 complaints to police, but only 125 people were arrested.  Public drug use is generally ignored.  One woman told us, "It's nasty seeing people shoot up — right in front of you.  Police don't do anything about it!  They'll get somebody for drinking a beer but walk right past people using needles."

Typhus Epidemic Spreads Across Liberal Utopia of Los Angeles Due to Mountains of Trash, Growing Homeless Population.  A typhus epidemic is worsening in the liberal utopia of Los Angeles, California due to a growing homeless population and mountains of rat-infested trash.  Nothing says "progressive" more than a medieval infectious disease like typhus fever spreading through a city in the year 2019.

Typhus Is Spreading in Liberal, Rat-Infested LA County.  There are a lot of rats in LA, and, NO, for once we don't mean the politicians although many qualify.  We mean the little furry creatures who live in squalor and spread diseases.  Last September, a documentary called 'Rats' was screened as a Landmark Theatres Exclusive Midnight Event.  It was frightening because it's real.  Infestations of rats are seen in major cities and elsewhere, and when garbage is left to rot in homeless areas, they become a more serious threat to life.

The Destruction of Venice Beach Epitomizes California's Idiocracy.  Venice Beach, California, used to be one of California's great places. [...] Today, Venice Beach is off limits to families who used to spend their Saturdays on the sand.  It's too dangerous.  On the sand, beached seaweed now mingles with syringes, feces, broken glass, and other trash, and the ocean has become the biggest outdoor toilet in the city.  More than 1,000 vagrants now consider Venice Beach their permanent home.  At the same time as real estate values exploded all along the California coast, the homeless population soared.  In Venice, where the median price of a home is $2.1 million, makeshift shelters line the streets and alleys, as the affluent and the indigent fitfully coexist.

The high price of refusing to face facts about the homeless.  Along with homeless encampments come deadly outbreaks of hepatitis A, typhus and other communicable diseases, driven by attending drug addiction.  Some parts of the city [of San Diego] are littered with syringes.  A desperate San Diego now steam cleans its streets and sidewalks.  Even in expensive neighborhoods, unguarded greenery is often strewn with trash and toilet paper, revealing where homeless people have spent the night.  The city tries to keep the squalor at bay with improved shelter programs.  It even plans to provide 500 bins where the homeless can stash their belongings, but that effort alone will cost the city about $2 million a year in overtime for the cops who guard the lockers.

Homeless Surge Puts Hollywood's Progressive Ideals to the Test.  With swelling transient encampments abutting seven-figure homes, the beachside enclave has emerged as a flashpoint for the inequality shaping Los Angeles — and a real-world test case for the liberal ideology of the area's showbiz residents.

Los Angeles Vice Office Protected By Fence to Keep Out Homeless.  A new report detailing the growing scourge of homelessness in Los Angeles indicates that while many in the media and coastal liberals mock the idea of a border wall for America, they are fine with using fences to maintain their bubbles and keep homeless people out.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles office of Vice News is protected by a fence to keep out the homeless from building tent cities.

Wealth, Poverty, and Flight:  The Same Old State of California.  [B]oth legal and illegal immigration have also radically changed the demography of the state.  It is not just that about 40 percent of the nation's 11 [to] 20 million immigrants live in California, a state in which now one in four residents was not born in the United States.  Rather, it is the result of two or three generations of mass influxes of impoverished residents who on average arrive without a high-school diploma, English proficiency, capital, or often legality.  California now hosts one of three Americans who are on some sort of federal, state, or local welfare supplement.  About a fifth of the state lives below the poverty level.  Half of all births in California were paid for by the state-run Medi-Cal program, and 30 percent of Medi-Cal births were to mothers of undocumented immigration status.  The San Ysidro border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego is the world's busiest, where some 70 million people cross on foot and in cars into and out of California each year.

Residents of San Francisco are now documenting squalor of city's homelessness epidemic.  San Francisco has been battling an ongoing homelessness epidemic for years, but mounting piles of human feces in its streets have become intolerable for many residents — causing citizens to launch their own campaigns exposing the stinky (and dangerous) troubles of the Golden City.  Disgusted business owners and residents are using social media to show the magnitude of the tech-town's indigent encampments in hopes that officials will do more to end rampant public drug use and defecation on the sidewalks.

San Francisco resident says it's a war zone, others post poop and drug pics!  In another postcard from one of America's most liberal cities, San Francisco, residents are now posting poop pics from the homeless in order to protest the [dystopia] that city has become.

The impact homelessness and the opioid crisis are having on San Francisco streets.  Outside the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in downtown San Francisco, a woman urinates on the sidewalk and smokes a crack pipe.  Inside her purse are about a dozen used heroin needles.  She shoots heroin up to 10 times per day, she says.

Including police OT, storage for homeless people's belongings costs more than an SRO hotel room.  San Diego police expect to pay $2 million in overtime to officers patrolling the neighborhood around the storage center for homeless people that opened in Sherman Heights earlier this year.  The budget projection, which was included in a quarterly monitoring report released last month, pushes the total program expense past $3.7 million this year.  Including the patrols, it means costs associated with the 500 storage bins amount to $600 per bin per month — more than a studio apartment in many single-room occupancy hotels.

One percent of the population commits one eighth of the aggravated assaults in a city of four million.
Los Angeles Doubled its Homeless Budget, Doubled Homeless Crime.  It wasn't all that long ago that the nation watched transfixed in horror as fires tore apart California, destroying homes and claiming lives.  In all the debates about global warming and forestry management, one singular cause of the fire was left unaddressed.  Global warming wasn't starting the fires.  People were. [...] This November, the Los Angeles Zoo had to evacuate its animals over a fire in yet another homeless encampment.  That fire not only endangered lives, but diverted resources from fighting the much more serious fires in Ventura County.  But instead of shutting down the encampments, Mayor Garcetti, who has done more to legalize and subsidize homelessness in Los Angeles than any of his predecessors, sent "outreach workers" from the expanding behemoth of the LA Homeless Services Agency to ask them to please move.  That worked about as well as expected.

Homeless Crime in LA is Up 50%.  You get more of what you subsidize.  When you subsidize homelessness as Los Angeles, New York and a number of other cities driving a boom in homelessness have been doing, you get more of it.  And you also get more of the crime that comes with it.

Homeless Crime Jumps Nearly 50 Percent in Los Angeles, LAPD Says.  The number of crimes in which homeless individuals were listed as suspects increased by nearly 50 percent in the city of Los Angeles in 2018.  Crime data provided by the Los Angeles Police Department showed there were 8,906 crime reports between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1 this year in which a homeless person was listed as the suspect, compared with 5,976 for the same time period in 2017.  LAPD officials said most concerning were the disproportionate number of homeless individuals listed as suspects in physical attacks that cause serious injuries, described as, "aggravated assaults," in police records.

Los Angeles Mayor Shouted Down by Protesters During Speech.  Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti was forced to end a speech at the University of Southern California on Monday prematurely after protesters began shouting over him about his administration's treatment of the city's homeless population.  The speech, which was intended to be a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, was interrupted after just a few minutes by a man who accused Garcetti of preventing the homeless population from organizing a local government.

Why won't liberals admit their homeless policies don't work?  It's appropriate that the UN special rapporteur devoted to adequate housing has visited encampments in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai — and San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley.  The homeless situation in those cities and others around the country is positively Third World, a blight that shows the persistence of human folly, and misery, despite what we take to be our steady progress to greater enlightenment and prosperity.  San Francisco is a crown jewel of the new economy, and a sink of vagrancy.

Typhus cases hit 100 in Los Angeles as feral cats and rats spread disease among the homeless.  The number of flea-born Typhus cases in Los Angeles has hit 107.  So far this year 72 patients have been recorded by Los Angeles County Department of Public Health with a further 15 in Long Beach and 20 in Pasadena.  In the 2000s there were around 20 cases recorded per year and analysts are putting the dramatic rise down to a 47 percent increase in homelessness since 2012.  One official in Long Beach told NBC News that almost half a million potential cases are 'under investigation.'

San Jose to pay homeless $15 an hour to pick up trash.  San Jose, Calif., is combating its litter problem by paying 25 homeless residents to pick up trash around the city's "hotspots."  Downtown Streets Team and Goodwill, which initiated the program, said the idea was to ultimately help participants get back on their feet, the Mercury News reported.

San Francisco:  Now so bad, it'll make you cry.  Twentieth-century San Francisco, Herb Caen's beloved Baghdad by the Bay, has ceased to exist.  It has been replaced by a city where the sidewalks around Market Street are, in places, caked in feces, urine, and vomit.  The stink as you emerge from the BART batters you like frozen sleet, shocking and overwhelming.  The hordes of homeless, sprawled in doorways and sleeping on the sidewalks, are a bitterly eclectic mixture of the mentally deranged; burnt out druggies; dead-eyed hippies; con artists; pickpockets; and hundreds of simply lost, forgotten souls. [...] As I walked the three blocks back to the BART, I was panhandled four times, plus two clumsy pickpocket attempts.  I didn't see a single cop in a car or on foot.  What could they do?  What finally broke my heart were the kids and women, also lying in the streets, drugged, shell-shocked, begging for food.

SF judge throws out charges against homeless people camping on sidewalk.  A San Francisco judge dismissed criminal charges Thursday against three homeless people who were arrested for camping or sleeping on the streets, a decision that follows a federal appeals court ruling barring cities from prosecuting such cases when no shelters are available.  District Attorney George Gascón, who has announced a new policy of charging people with illegal camping only when they reject an offer of an available shelter, did not challenge the dismissals.  But Gascón and Public Defender Jeff Adachi's office appear to be at odds on what a city has to do to make shelters "available."

SF police impound homeless man's car for unpaid parking tickets.  Judge says give it back.  A federal judge has ordered San Francisco police to return a homeless man's car that they towed and impounded because of thousands of dollars in unpaid parking tickets that the owner couldn't afford to pay.  Police cited a state law that allows them to tow vehicles with more than five overdue parking tickets.  But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of Oakland said Wednesday that, unless officers have a judicial warrant, no known legal precedent "can justify the seizure and retention of a vehicle if its owner cannot afford to pay the parking tickets."  The ruling has prompted homeless advocates to call on police to change their towing practices.

True Blue Liberal California Now Leads The Nation In Poverty.  It was recently revealed that the home of Jerry Brown, Hollywood, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris is now the most poverty stricken state in the country.  Anyone who has seen the sprawling homeless encampments of greater Los Angeles and San Francisco probably knew this would be the outcome.

I Left My Shoes In San Francisco.  Enter the search term "San Francisco feces map" into Google and it comes back with 1,040,000 results.  Yeah, it's a thing.  San Francisco was always grungy — back in the 1980s, I believe it was comic Bobby Slayton who called it "the city that makes its own gravy" — but it has gone from merely unwashed to actively unflushed.  Sure, it's funny to the rest of us, in a horrifying and disgusting kind of way, just like the fact that the socialist geniuses in Venezuela are forcing the famished locals to gnaw on its zoo's zebras and gnus for sustenance.  You look at these examples of leftism in action and you have to laugh, but what's not funny is that this is not some sort of aberration.  This is the future our liberal elite wants for us, and it's doing everything it can to make it a reeking reality.

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose.  [Scroll down]  At a time when San Franciscans are dealing with mounds of human feces that foul that once-lovely city, lawmakers spent their summer stopping restaurants and convenience stores from giving out or selling plastic straws.  They also limited the use of packaged condiments.  Not long ago, officials banned the sale of flavored tobacco products, which means that smokers who are trying to quit the habit are out of luck.  The city's decision to hand out needles to addicts actually is a decent idea, but it's bizarre to simultaneously subsidize heroin needles and ban far-more mundane products such as ketchup packages.  It's easy to roll one's eyes at San Francisco, but a bill that would forbid restaurants from handing out plastic straws unless requested by the customer has just landed on the governor's desk.  Furthermore, a second bill that just landed on his desk requires fast-food restaurants to offer water or milk as the default option on any children's meals.  Advocates for the latter see it as a strike against childhood obesity, but it's really just a means to meddle in parents' minor life decisions.  Parents can still order soda for their kids, but restaurants could face $500 fines for providing a soda with the meal.  This is an almost literal example of the "nanny state."

A Perfect Storm Threatens America's Survival.  Except for the rich, American cities are becoming increasingly unlivable as illegal and homeless populations threaten to overwhelm city budgets.  It's so bad in San Francisco that the city has funded poop patrols as that once lovely City by the Bay has become a nightmare to citizens and visitors alike.  Large groups are canceling conventions.  Los Angeles has doubled its homeless budget to $450 million. Los Angeles County plans to spend $374 million.  That's 1 percent of a budget meant to service a population of over 10 million going to just 53,193 people.

San Francisco creates 'Poop Patrol' to clean up city's feces-ridden sidewalks.  San Francisco's decrepit, feces-ridden sidewalks are the residents' No. 1 complaint — so the city's newly elected mayor is creating a new clean up patrol to deal with "No. 2."  The California city, which has been battling increasing homelessness over the last couple of years, launched a new pilot program called the "Poop Patrol," which is set to scour targeted neighborhoods looking for human waste.  The city's 311 service has received nearly 14,600 calls about piles of poop, other human waste and dog feces since the beginning of the year.

San Fran Averages 78 Poop in the Street Calls a Day, Others in the Transit System.  San Francisco has been working on their homeless problem and have succeeded in cutting the tent encampments in half by offering shelter to the drug addicts, mentally ill, and others lining the streets.  The behavior of the homeless hasn't improved, however.  The San Francisco Chronicle reports that they are averaging about 78 poop in the street calls a day.  There are about 45 syringes in the street calls a day.  There are more on the trains.  The transit system is littered with syringes, poop, blood, urine, and so on.  Since April janitors have cleaned up more than 13,000 dirty needles left behind at the Civic Center and Powell Street stations.

If You're Going To San Francisco... Think Again.  San Francisco has about 7,500 homeless individuals and is spending $280 million on homeless services for them.  Some simple math reveals that the city could give each homeless resident just over $37,000 per year, a figure well above the minimum wage in most other places, and call it a day.  If you take out the salaries of all the bureaucrats administering these "homeless services," there would likely be more than $100,000 available for each homeless person.  But you know that won't happen in a Democrat-run city, an administrative state, like San Francisco.  How can the city discourage the homeless from using the sidewalks as their toilets?  In their minds, spend more money.

Video appears to show homeless man using drugs on BART train in San Francisco.  A video of a homeless man apparently using drugs on a BART train in San Francisco last month has become another footnote in the city's struggles with quality-of-life issues.  Local news anchor Reggie Aqui posted footage of the man smoking an illegal substance on the BART train right before Powell Street station. [...] The video underscores a dangerous trend occurring in the city.  In April, commuter Shannon Gafford filmed dozens of drug users slumped over and others shooting up at the Civic Center BART and Muni stations.

San Francisco continues to spend big in fight against homelessness — but is it working?  It's a problem that's costing the city of San Francisco hundreds of millions of dollars annually to try to solve — and for its new mayor, something that's starting to become increasingly smelly too.  London Breed says the amount of feces scattered on the streets of the wealthy city in recent months is among the worst she has ever seen, and San Francisco reportedly is set to spend nearly $280 million in its next budget fighting homelessness — an average of $37,300 for each of the city's estimated 7,499 homeless residents.

New SF mayor will try asking homeless to be nice, instead of penalizing them for pooping on the streets.  San Francisco has a brand new mayor, Ms. London Breed, the result of the untimely death of Mayor Ed Lee, and it does not look good for the city coming to grips with a crisis on its streets.  The accumulation of human waste and contaminated drug needles posing a severe threat to the health of its residents and visitors is also a challenge to the survival if the city's biggest industry in terms of employment:  tourism.  A huge medical convention has announced that it will no longer visit San Francisco owing to the health and safety hazards the streets now pose.

The Left-wing Paradise of San Francisco.  Represented in Congress by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and run for years by almost all Democrats, San Francisco should be a mecca for the left.  But the city is fast becoming one of the worst places in the U.S. to live.  The homeless problem is out of control.  Experts say it "could exceed some of the dirtiest slums in the world."  There are around 7,500 homeless people in the city.  Human feces is strewn across public areas.  The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit examined over 150 blocks of downtown San Francisco and found 96 blocks littered with feces.  San Francisco's new mayor, London Breed, observed, "there are more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here."  She says that a cleaning crew will clean up an area, but "right after they leave, maybe an hour or two later, the place is filled with trash again."

SF Mayor Says Her City is Drowning in Poop: 'There's More Feces - Than I've Ever Seen'.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the streets of her city are flooded with the excrement of the homeless in an interview Friday [7/13/2018].  Breed, a Democrat who was inaugurated as San Francisco's mayor Wednesday [7/11/2018], urged homeless advocacy groups that receive money from the city to teach homeless people to "clean up after themselves."  "There is more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here," Breed told KNTV.  "That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we're talking about from humans."

San Francisco Is Absolutely Covered in Fecal Matter.  Recently elected San Francisco Mayor London Breed says that the city she loves is absolutely covered in fecal matter and "we are not just talking about from dogs — we're talking about from humans."  Talking about human feces, folks!  Particularly, feces from humans experiencing homelessness right now.  Apparently, the city is so overrun by poverty that people are using virtually all public spaces as their toilet because they cannot afford proper lavatories.  To this extent, Mayor Breed is asking that homelessness advocacy groups and non-profit encourage those they are helping to clean up after themselves.

San Francisco's crisis looks like New York's future.  What happened in San Francisco is obvious.  It stopped prosecuting quality-of-life offenses and, unsurprisingly, the quality of life for the city's residents and visitors decreased sharply.  In 2015, San Francisco courts stopped enforcing bench warrants for such offenses.  Police continued writing up tickets for public drunkenness or sleeping in parks, but when the accused failed to show up to their court appearance a judge simply dismissed the outstanding warrant.  New York started following San Francisco's lead in 2016 when Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. announced his office would no longer be prosecuting offenses such as public urination.  Both cities have accepted that they'll continue to have a large number of people living on their streets and inevitably using their sidewalks as a toilet.

Increasingly Putrid City by the Bay.  [Scroll down]  I love the city [of San Francisco] and find its decrepit situation depressing.  At least everyone is noticing its tawdriness.  "Trash bags full of approximately 20 pounds of human poop were left on the sidewalk over the weekend in downtown San Francisco," the Fresno Bee reported on Wednesday [7/4/2018].  "It's the latest — and perhaps most alarming — sign of the increased filthiness of one of the most popular cities in the United States."  Those smelly, possibly leaking bags were left in the downscale Tenderloin, but large swaths of upscale areas now resemble an outdoor sewer with human feces, open-air drug use, and other signs of the breakdown of civic order.  The problem of homelessness and drug abuse isn't confined to San Francisco, of course. [...] In fairness, I've seen similar situations throughout the country.  But in San Francisco the disorder isn't confined to alleys and bushes.  The encampments are in plain view and spreading.  The panhandlers can be frighteningly aggressive.

20 Pounds Of Human Feces Left On San Francisco Sidewalk.  According to the Fresno Bee, a trash bag filled with roughly 20 pounds of human feces was left sitting on the sidewalk over the weekend in downtown San Francisco.  "It's the latest — and perhaps most alarming — sign of the increased filthiness of one of the most popular cities in the United States," reports FB.  "The bags of human poop were said to be left in San Francisco's Tenderloin district."

San Francisco Logs Over 16,000 Feces Complaints in One Week.  A website and related app that allows local residents to request maintenance or non-emergency services from the city has received 16,015 complaints with the keyword 'feces' in the last week at the time of this writing, and many pertain to human waste in public places.  Additionally, words and phrases synonymous with 'feces' are found in thousands more grievances.  Many of the complaints also connect the fecal matter to vagrants and homeless encampments — a sight all too common now across California.

SF's appalling street life repels residents — now it's driven away a convention.  In a move that is alarming San Francisco's biggest industry, a major medical association is pulling its annual convention out of the city — saying its members no longer feel safe.  "It's the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s," said Joe D'Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, the city's convention bureau.  D'Alessandro declined to name the medical association, saying the bureau still hopes to bring the group back in the future.

The Editor says...
The Editor and Mrs. Editor went to San Antonio in mid-June for the Republican state convention, and it was surprisingly enjoyable.  It was rather hot outside, and there were some Austin-style eccentrics on the streets, but the area around the convention center is constantly patrolled by the police as well as a bunch of street-cleaning custodians like you'd see in an amusement park.  Forget California, people.  Bring your convention to Texas.

Left Coast Lawlessness.  Seattle's predicament is emblematic of the broader crises faced by many progressive West Coast cities, where local leaders have forced law enforcement to take a hands-off approach to policing unsanctioned tent cities and vagrancy at the expense of public safety and health.  San Francisco, long considered a model of progressive urban policy, is plagued by filth, chaos, and public-safety hazards.  Local leaders plan to spend an incredible $305 million on combatting homelessness for the current fiscal year alone, but disorder spreads as the city fails to enforce the rule of law and basic sanitary measures.  Block-by-block surveillance reveals the deterioration of downtown San Francisco.  Of 153 city blocks surveyed, 41 contained used drug needles and 96 had human feces present.  Tourists are dismayed to leave their downtown hotels, to be confronted by mentally ill and aggressive homeless people who are taking control of the streets.  University of California Berkeley professor Lee Riley, an expert on infectious disease, observes that some of San Francisco's streets are dirtier than Third World slums.

San Francisco Is, Quite Literally, a Toilet.  [Scroll down]  The "breaking point" for the main source for the story, a 46-year-old computer programmer named Ernst Schoen-Rene, was the discovery in April of "a black suitcase with wheels on the corner that had clearly been used as a toilet by homeless people."  "I actually started crying, I got so frustrated," Schoen-Rene tells the Chronicle reporter.  "I flipped out.  I started writing to everybody."  The trouble for these good San Francisco progressives is reconciling their ideology with reality.

Poop. Needles.  Rats.  Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge.  "I don't mind a reasonable amount of urban grit," explained [Ernst] Schoen-Rene, a native of Chico who's lived in San Francisco since 1994, always opting for edgy neighborhoods.  He and his wife bought their Isis Street condo in 2010 for $748,000, and by the time he sent the email, he had come to regret it.  He felt stuck, unable to afford anything else in today's nutty housing market or the far higher property taxes that would come with a new purchase.

If You're Going to San Francisco.  You'll find lots of aggressive vagrants, discarded needles, and a few dead bodies there.

San Francisco Tourists Shocked By Aggressive Vagrants, Discarded Needles, Dead Bodies.  San Francisco[,] a Democratic stronghold known for cable cars, quaint architecture and its diverse culture, has become a bastion of squalor and crime as city dwellers and visitors alike dodge aggressive, drug-addled vagrants.

Tourists visiting San Francisco question if they're in 'bad side of town'.  Recent social media posts by tourists visiting San Francisco casts a troubling light on the City by the Bay over its homeless issue, open drug use and filthy streets.  Since the beginning of the year, reports have surfaced of hypodermic needles dotting the streets, piles of human feces and expanding shanty towns for the increasing homeless population — and now tourists are noticing, SFGate reported.  "Is this normal or am I in a 'bad part of town?'" an Australian Reddit user asked the San Francisco Reddit community Wednesday.  "Why is this city so terrifying?" a Canadian visitor asked on Reddit Sunday [6/10/2018].

Used Needles Littering San Francisco Streets As Heroin Crisis Grips NorCal.  San Francisco residents are complaining about a record number of used and discarded syringes littering the streets, as a growing heroin epidemic grips Northern California.  The city distributes nearly 5 million needles each year through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users who might otherwise share needles.

San Francisco's many free syringes are littering its streets.  San Francisco hands out millions of syringes a year to drug users but has little control over how they are discarded and that's contributing to thousands of complaints.

About those needles littering the streets of San Francisco... The city gave them out.  For all of City Hall's tough talk of late about getting needles off the streets, the city itself is responsible for helping fuel the problem — handing out millions of syringes a year with little or no controls over their return.  And while the easy access to clean syringes is intended to protect public health, the city's residents are not happy with the situation.

Asian immigrants put their foot down at liberals dumping homeless at their door in the O.C.  Liberals were in for a surprise when legal Asian immigrant families fought back at their efforts to dump the homeless of Orange County into their ICity of Irvine community, thinking that since they were Asians, they wouldn't complain. [...] The people they didn't want dumped into their community to mix it up with their school children and tiger moms were these:  [Photo at left]  According to MyNewsLA.com, the cleanup of this Santa Ana River camp has left 404 tons of garbage, 13,950 needles, and 5,279 pounds of human waste.  You kind of wonder who had to count those needles and weigh all the vomit and excrement.  Sound like great neighbors for property values and schoolchildren safety.  Which of course is why they protested.

Homeless 'mansion' pops up near Space Needle.  A group of homeless people built a tent "mansion" in a small patch of grass between Third Avenue and Broad Street.  It's a half a block from Seattle's most famous tourist attraction and surrounded by multi-million dollar high-rise condos.

Calif. Big Cities Face Public Health Issues Caused by Rise in Homelessness.  Two of California's biggest and richest cities are facing a public health issue, which centers around the growing homeless problem.

San Francisco Is Suffering From The Excesses Of Its Own Liberalism.  In November of 2017 alone, 6,211 needles were collected while via the 311 App, 1,498 requests were made to clean up human feces.  The public defecation problem has become so intolerable in San Francisco that private citizens have built an online map to track the concentrations of poop in the city, so that pedestrians may know to avoid certain areas.  And it's not just poop.  The overwhelming smell of urine on parts of Mission Street and Market Street would make your nose bleed.  I recall the first time I rode BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Francisco's subway system) and was nearly knocked over by the sheer stench of the station.  I was surprised to learn that exiting the station supplied little to no relief — the urine smell hangs heavy in the more populated areas of the city and is nearly inescapable.  In a dark twist of humor, the city has had to replace numerous different street poles due to urine eroding the foundation.  What drives a large part of the human waste issue is San Francisco's homeless population.  The homeless epidemic in San Francisco is tragic and frightening — in a 47-square mile city, we have around 7,500 homeless people, meaning there are approximately 160 homeless people per square mile.

Homeless encampment relocation plan has California residents outraged.  A plan to house hundreds of homeless people in a tent city near a popular Southern California park was met with fierce public resistance, forcing an upcoming vote to rescind the scheme.  The Orange County Board of Supervisors is set to meet Tuesday to figure out where to relocate people, after a federal judge forced the county to come up with a plan to house the homeless population located along the Santa Ana River.  One proposal would place about 400 people near the county-owned Orange County Great Park in Irvine, located 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles.  The park, which is home to a farmers market and a hot air balloon ride, is popular with families on weekends.

California Has Become a Disgraceful State.  At one time, California was the envy of America, attracting people from around the nation to move to a state offering opportunity and the chance to pursue ambitious dreams.  With scenic beauty, the Pacific Ocean coastline, the major cities of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, California recruited entrepreneurs looking for economic growth.  As the home of Hollywood and multitudes of celebrities, California presented an enticing potential to enjoy "lifestyles of the rich and famous."  Today, California has become an economic and cultural disaster.  The state is home to over 114,000 homeless people, one quarter of the total in the nation.  In San Francisco, a health crisis has developed as the homeless have created a mess in the downtown area, littering it with fecal matter, spent needles and piles of trash.

How can a place with 58,000 homeless people continue to function?  Homelessness affects the lives of all Angelenos, not just those forced to live on the streets.  And it does so almost daily, in ways large and small.  Consider the pairs of thick gloves that George Abou-Daoud has stashed inside the nine restaurants he owns on the east side of Hollywood.  When a homeless person accosts his customers, Abou-Daoud says, he can no longer count on the police for help; unless there's an imminent threat to safety, he contends, they don't respond quickly and can't just haul the person away.  So he's had to take matters into his own hands, literally, by physically ejecting problematic homeless people himself.  That's why he has the gloves — to keep his hands clean.

The Politics of San Francisco's Homelessness Problem.  About a year ago, in January 2017, Leilani Farha visited the city of San Francisco and was appalled at the extent of the substandard housing conditions suffered by San Francisco's homeless population. [...] This is particularly disturbing when one considers that California is the most populous and the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world.  San Francisco has made some effort to deal with homelessness.  The city spent $275 million on homelessness in the fiscal year that ended in June 2017 and is expanding that to $305 million for the year that ends in June 2018.  But that is not enough, since there is a long waiting list for nighttime shelters.  Visitors to San Francisco are appalled to see persons on sidewalks committing drug crimes such as injecting themselves with needles.  And the city has areas now fouled by the smell of human waste.

Orange County's Largest Homeless Camp Cleared Out.  Last September I wrote about a homeless camp which had grown up along the bike path which stretches along the Santa Ana River in Orange County, California.  Residents in the area complained about trash, human waste, and crime.  People living in the camps were constantly in fear of violence from those nearby, many of whom have substance abuse or mental health problems.  Last week, after a lengthy legal battle involving the ACLU, a judge ruled that Orange County could begin to clear out the camps so long as people were given a place to go.

'National disgrace': Community fights back as California overrun by homelessness, human waste, needles.  The specter of homeless encampments steadily expanding across the downtown streets of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco — bringing with them a public health crisis — has one southern California community taking tough action to dismantle a two-mile-long camp just a short drive from Disneyland.  In a departure from the approach taken by other local governments in the state, officials in Orange County, Calif., have started to clear out the camp — by moving occupants and hauling away literally tons of trash and hazardous waste.

6 Points to Consider in the Debate About Homelessness.  Homelessness isn't just an Orange County problem, of course.  It's a growing mess throughout California and the nation.  I've seen communities of all sizes and political dispositions wrestle unsuccessfully with it for decades.  Cities such as San Francisco that throw money at the problem become magnets for homelessness, with sections of the city resembling an outdoor sewer.  Other communities, including Los Angeles, have tried to more aggressively roust the people sleeping under freeways, along riverbeds and in public parks.

L.A. County's homeless problem is worsening despite billions from tax measures.  Los Angeles County's homeless population is increasing faster than the supply of new housing, even with the addition of thousands of beds in the last two years and millions of dollars beginning to flow in from two ballot measures targeting the crisis, according to a long-awaited report by the region's homelessness agency. [...] As a result, a $73-million annual shortfall in funding for the county's comprehensive homelessness program could more than triple, a [Los Angeles] Times analysis of the report found.

Los Angeles votes to tax itself to raise billions to support the homeless.  Homelessness advocates in America's second largest city were savoring a seeming double victory after Los Angeles voters appeared to choose to tax themselves to raise more than $3.5 [billion] for homeless services over the next decade, and comprehensively knocked down a second measure that would have slammed the brakes on many housing developments.  Tuesday's [3/7/2017] election was the second in a row in which voters aligned with LA's political leadership in calling for a massive funding effort to move tens of thousands of homeless people into permanent housing and provide the "wraparound" services they need to overcome addiction, mental health and other challenges.

Seattle Underbelly Exposed as Homeless Camp Violence Flares.  So dangerous is this city's biggest homeless camp, called the Jungle — three ragged miles stitched along the underbelly of Interstate 5 — that if a fire broke out there today, firefighters would not be allowed in without an armed police escort.  State lawmakers are considering a razor-wire fence around the camp, separating it from the city at a cost of $1 million.

San Francisco homeless remain in 'unhealthy' tent city despite order to vacate.  About 30 tents remained in place Friday [2/26/2016] as the deadline for homeless people to vacate a San Francisco tent city came and went without any action.  The homeless living in the encampment had until 5 p.m. Friday to clear out, Sam Dodge, the mayor's point person on homelessness, said.  City officials and the San Francisco Police have not said what they intend to do with the tent residents.

San Francisco homeless crisis sparks bitter debate over the tents lining its streets.  "A city of tents" — that is how a local government official chose to describe San Francisco, fuelling a bitter divide in a city that is dealing with a mounting number of homeless people.  Scott Wiener, who is on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is determined to close down the tents for homeless people on the city pavements.  Homeless charities, however, say these inhabitants have nowhere else to go.  In a Medium blog, Mr Wiener said:  "Permitting these encampments is neither humane nor progressive."

L.A. lawmakers to declare 'state of emergency,' commit more than $100 million to fight homelessness.  Los Angeles elected leaders announced Tuesday [9/22/2015] that they will declare a "state of emergency" on the growing homelessness problem in the city and commit $100 million toward housing and other services for homeless people.  The proposal, which was presented at a City Hall press conference attended by City Council members and Mayor Eric Garcetti, coincides with a Garcetti administration proposal, issued late Monday, that aims to free up nearly $13 million in newly anticipated excess tax revenue for short-term housing initiatives.

The Editor says...
Homeless people in the streets is a chronic problem, but it's not an emergency.  It is a condition that has developed over several decades, as a result of left-wing nanny-state policy, driven by emotion rather than reason.

Big Apple Versus Big Toilet.  Not long ago, I asked [San Francisco] Mayor Ed Lee what he sees as contributing factors to San Francisco's high P.U. quotient.  His answer:  The drought means less rain to wash away human waste.  Other cities have winters that prompt street people to move to better climates.  Development has claimed space that used to house homeless encampments.  He also credited "historic levels of drug use" from "people who don't get held responsible for their behavior."  Lee has a solid point on each of those factors.  I would add another:  pride.  San Franciscans are proud of the city's vaunted tolerance.  Lest they seem intolerant, many locals have been reluctant to complain about the pervasive smell of urine and occasional glimpses of public defecation until conditions become impossible to ignore.

San Francisco uses paint to fight public urination.  Public urination has gotten so bad in San Francisco that the city has painted nine walls with a repellant paint that makes pee spray back on the offender.

L.A. councilman takes aim at tiny homes on wheels.  Tiny wooden homes on wheels, roughly the size of garden sheds, have popped up on San Pedro streets as a temporary way to house the homeless. [...] But after a handful of similar structures appeared in San Pedro, Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino said he wants them removed immediately, calling them "a threat in many ways to our public safety."

Avert Your Eyes and Hold Your Nose.  Downtown San Francisco feels like a large public toilet without enough janitors.  More than once this year, I've seen men drop their pants in public places — including at Fifth and Market — to leave a smelly mess on the sidewalk.  You can walk for blocks and never escape the stench of stale urine.  At lunchtime, I see street people passed out on high-traffic sidewalks, and I am afraid to walk around them.  The homeless have been a problem in San Francisco for as far back as anyone remembers, but to me it seems this year is the worst.

$213 million earmarked to track L.A. homeless by computer, house 1,400.  A coalition of public and private agencies announced Tuesday that it is funneling $213 million to house 1,400 homeless people and to expand a tracking and placement system it hopes will end chronic and veteran homelessness in Los Angeles County over the next two years.  The placement tool, called the coordinated entry system, is designed to replace a confusing patchwork of entry points to homeless housing and services with a single computerized portal that reaches every corner of the county.

The Editor says...
That's $152,000 per homeless person — enough to buy a house for each of them.

Rise in gay homeless people threatens San Francisco's name as gay-friendly mecca.  Thanks to the equality rights work of pioneers such as the politician and activist Harvey Milk, San Francisco has a reputation as the gay capital of the world.  But as the city recovers from its 43rd gay Pride festival at the weekend, attended by more than 1.5 million people, it must confront an uncomfortable issue.

Paradise Lost: CA to Provide Free Cell Phones for Homeless.  In California, the unemployment rate may be above 10.2%, and the state debt may be above $16 billion, the state's GDP may be in serious trouble and businesses may be leaving in droves due to ever-increasing tax rates, but that isn't going to stop the gravy train for the state's poor and dispossessed.  The California Public Utilities Commission is all set to greenlight a new program that would give homeless and low-income people free cell phones — call them Obamaphones — with free service.

Homeless People Shower on New Bus in San Francisco.  In May, San Francisco introduced the "Hook-up Truck," providing intimate space for couples on the go.  Now, the city is welcoming the "Lava Mae," a public shower on a bus, aimed at the city's large homeless population.  San Francisco has been fighting a losing battle with homelessness for decades.  City officials concede that they have made little progress over the years despite massive spending, amounting to $34 per homeless person per day.

Oh, good!  Now they have the right to urinate in the street.
California lawmaker proposes 'homeless bill of rights'.  California law protects its residents from discrimination based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation.  Now a state lawmaker is pushing to add another category to the list:  homelessness.  New legislation titled the "Homeless Bill of Rights" by Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco is meant to keep communities from rousting people who have nowhere to turn.

The Editor says...
Somehow the writer failed to include words like vagrant and vagabond, and only the commenters used words like drifter and bum and panhandling.  Homeless people generally are homeless for a reason — usually a lifetime of bad decisions.  This makes them poor candidates for long-term employment, which is apparently the motivation for the proposed legislation discussed in the article above.  Please keep in mind that many of the chronically homeless who need protection are really in need of incarceration for their own good.  Street-corner beggars pay no taxes, so if they bring in $20 an hour, they're probably better off than you.  Even the ones who claim to be hungry will throw away food if someone gives it to them.  Give a couple of bananas to a "hungry" roadside beggar and see what he or she does with them.

The Road to Hell.  [The San Francisco Chronicle] was practically drooling over a bizarre, new program being launched in San Francisco.  The city will be giving a homeless person a four-legged friend to foster:  a homeless pup from the pound.  But the transient won't get the pick of the litter, but a "problematic" dog.  And since California is overflowing with money (LOL), the city will generously throw in a stipend to care for the pet.  What could possibly go wrong here?  First off, raise your hands if you think that many of these street people will actually use the added income for the benefit of their new best friends?  When the call of booze and cocaine beckons, what will happen to Rover's Purina?

California Deficit Soars to $16 Billion — Governor Wants Tax Hikes.  Democrat Governor Jerry Brown announced the devastating news today [5/12/2012] on a web video.  Brown says there will be even deeper cuts, mostly to education, if voters do not approve tax hikes in November.

Your Money or Your Schools.  As a child, I was fond of adventure stories about the exploits of pirates, highwaymen, and miscreants of all sorts.  In every such tale there was the moment when the dashing if disreputable protagonist confronts a gaggle of respectable folk and proclaims, "Stand and deliver.  Your money or your life!"  At the age of eight, armed with capguns and sporting a red bandana, I thought those were words to live by.  Today, they are just words for politicians to live by. [...] That seems to be what Gov. Jerry Brown is up to in the Golden State.  On May 12, Brown posted his own "money or your life" extortion video online.

The Editor says...
Oh dear.  If only California's politicians could think of something to cut from the budget.  Like this:


High speed rail:

California's $11 Billion Rail Bridge That Doesn't Go Anywhere.  California is taking heat for celebrating the completion of a high-speed rail bridge that has cost taxpayers $11 billion and took nine years to build — and goes nowhere[.]  Critics — including Tesla founder Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus — are ripping the California High-Speed Rail Authority after it boasted about last year's completion of a "Fresno River Viaduct," a mere sliver of the state's long-delayed, bullet-train project attempting to link San Francisco to Los Angeles.  "This is the most remarkable human achievement ever," joked Markus, the creator of the jokey cryptocurrency, on X Friday.  [Tweet]

"People Will Be Teleporting Between Planets" Before California Finishes High-Speed Rail Project.  X users mocked the California High-Speed Rail Authority's post on the social media platform, which celebrated building a bridge that goes nowhere.  "The Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County is one of the first completed high-speed rail structures.  At nearly 1,600 feet long, high-speed trains will travel over the riverbed and will run parallel with the BNSF Railroad," CAHSR wrote on X.  [Tweet]  Billy Markus, the co-founder of Dogecoin, joked, "This is the most remarkable human achievement ever, 1600 feet of high-speed rail after 9 years and 11 billion dollars."  [Tweet]  Venture capitalist David Sacks said, "Building products on time and on budget requires a monomaniacal leader who kicks asses to make things run right.  Government, which is based on lobbying, backscratching and committee-based decision-making, is uniquely unsuited for this."  [Tweet]  "People will be teleporting between planets by the time California achieves high speed rail service from Merced to Bakersfield," one X user quipped.  [Tweet]  Another user said the partially built Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail project could accommodate the homeless and migrants.  [Tweet]

Private Company Building $12B High-Speed Rail from L.A. to Vegas.  Work is set to begin Monday on a $12 billion high-speed passenger rail line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area, with officials projecting millions of ticket-buyers will be boarding trains by 2028.  Brightline West, whose sister company already operates a fast train between Miami and Orlando in Florida, aims to lay 218 miles of new track between a terminal to be built just south of the Las Vegas Strip and another new facility in Rancho Cucamonga, California.  Almost the full distance is to be built in the median of Interstate 15, with a station stop in San Bernardino County's Victorville area.  In a statement, Brightline Holdings founder and Chairperson Wes Edens called the moment "the foundation for a new industry."

The Editor says...
The train goes 186 mph, so your gambling begins before you get to Las Vegas.

High-speed rail from Nevada to California breaks ground for planned 2028 opening.  The Transportation Secretary on Monday was on hand to break ground with other officials on what will be America's next high-speed railway.  "I'm convinced that the first time Americans actually experience American high-speed rail on U.S. soil, there's going to be no going back and people are going to expect and demand it all across the country," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNBC Monday.

The Editor says...
"Breaking ground" is very cheap, and is often the last phase of construction that is mentioned until the project is completed, years later, if at all.

California's high speed rail to nowhere.  California, one of the brokest states, is facing a $68 billion dollar budget deficit for 2024. [...] California's high speed rail to nowhere is darkly hilarious.  Back in 2008, voters approved a mere $33 billion for a "high speed rail" (HSR) system, supposedly from Los Angeles to San Francisco.  The project was always an obscene boondoggle and has become no less in 16 years.  Traveling that route, which will almost certainly never be completed, was to take no less than three hours.  Even in 2008, one could cheaply fly between those cities in less than half the time.  HSR would be no cheaper, but take much longer.  A reasonable person would ask why anyone would think high speed rail a good idea.  It was never necessary.  Because ego, paying off Democrat constituencies, lining Democrat pockets, and green of course.  Circa 2024, the LA to SF section is all but abandoned, there is no HSR service anywhere, and the unfinished and disconnected HSR infrastructure between Merced and Bakersfield resembles the wasted ruins of a long-dead society, mysteriously lost to time.  Who needs or wants any train at any speed between those two places?

Biden Puts Us On A Fast Train To Nowhere.  "At long last, we're building the first high-speed rail project in our nation's history.  And it's starting here."  That was President Joe Biden announcing last week that us taxpayers will be ponying up $3 billion to help a private company build a bullet train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas so gambleholics can start losing money more quickly.  The L.A. to Vegas train will supposedly be finished in time for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028 — just four and half years from now.  Well, anything is possible.  A private company is planning to build the thing and claims to have the route and rights-of-way all figured out.  But when you consider that Biden put up $7.5 billion to get private companies to put EV chargers all over the country and two years later not a single one has been built, constructing more than four miles of complex high-speed electrified rail each and every month seems a bit optimistic.  (It took eight years to build an 11-mile extension to the Washington, D.C., Metro Silver Line.)

Off The Rails!  Scam-Trak Joe's EPA Punches Newsom's 'Electric' Ticket.  Fact:  California's government-imposed electric system is so bad, the main supplier, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), cannot handle the demand, already asked electric car owners to cut back on their charges, has acknowledged that its use of government land for power lines increases the risk of wildfires, and sees the state desperately trying to get other inputs of electric power from places like Arizona, and a power project running into conflicts with American Indian tribal rights.  Fact:  Gavin Newsom's pet "high-speed rail" project, designed to connect "northern California" with "southern California," is nowhere near completion, is titanically over-budget, and represents one of the biggest state boondoggles in US history.  Fact:  The federal Environmental Protection Agency, started under Richard "I-Am-Not-A-Crook" Nixon has no real constitutionally enumerated justification, is a big, authoritarian bully, prevents innumerable peaceful activities by imposing prohibitions on our use of private property, and punishes citizens and business owners for engaging in peaceful activity that has not harmed anyone.  And with those facts established, we see more idiocy from the feds and California.

California, the Great Destroyer.  In 1996, the California legislature created the high speed rail authority.  In 2008, voters passed a $33 billion bond to build an envisioned 800 mile project eventually to link Sacramento with San Diego.  Fifteen years later, a scaled-down plan from Bakersfield to Merced remains not even half finished.  Yet the envisioned costs will exceed that of the original estimate for the entire project.  The rail authority now estimates that just the modest 178 mile route — only about a fifth of the authorized distance — will not be completed at least until 2030.  Past high speed estimates of both time and cost targets have been widely wrong and perhaps deliberately misleading.  Total costs for the entire project are now estimated at nearly $130 billion.  Many expect that figure to double in the next quarter-century.  Planners also concede there will likely not be much high speed rider demand from San Joaquin Valley residents willing to pay $86 to travel at a supposed 200 mph from Bakersfield to Merced.

On the other hand...
What if they complete California High Speed Rail?  What happens if the only part of California High Speed Rail ever built is between Merced and Bakersfield... and it's successful?  And I mean landscape-changing, growth-driving successful?  Stranger things have happened — Las Vegas comes to mind.  If you had told someone in the 1920's that Las Vegas was going to be a city of two million people and one of the most visited places on earth, you'd have been laughed at and dismissed as crazy.  Same thing with Vail in the 1960's.  Most folks had doubts that people would make the journey along U.S. 6, from Denver, and doubted I-70 could even be built.  And Vail utterly failed at planning for success, and now they have a perpetual housing crisis for workers as a result.  What happens if HSR paves the way for Merced to explode to a city with a high density urban core of 400,000 people? [...] Does California have a plan for this possible outcome?  It would be the perfect test bed for building their carbon free utopia.  Problem is, they will need to completely destroy everything that exists in those towns to do it.  It won't really work if all those people are car dependent when they get off the electric train.  The other thing is water. [...]

California's HSR scar.  Although the California High Speed Rail "project" hasn't been officially declared dead, it's pretty obvious that it will only be a matter of time before this happens.  Officially the project has been "scaled back" to running only between Merced and Bakersfield, possibly the least desirable city pair to link with bullet trains on the planet.  YouTuber "the Four Foot" flew a drone over the entire 119-mile route last year and posted a two-hour video.  The images are very telling.  The site looks more like an abandoned movie set of a high-speed rail construction site, than an actual construction site.  There is a lot of rusting rebar, both in piles and sticking out of half-done concrete.  There's not a whole lot of porta potties, only two locations had a high density of toilets.  This is an indication of how many workers are (or aren't) involved.  The other thing:  There was no actual work happening in the video.

More than $600 million [has been] spent on environmental reviews for [a] high-speed train that isn't built yet.  The state of California has spent more than $600 million on environmental reviews for a high-speed rail project that has not yet been completed, according to documents obtained and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.  The state shelled out a total of $618,038,924.01 for numerous companies involved in construction to conduct environmental reviews for the state's high-speed railway project, the records show.  California voters approved the funding of the undertaking to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco and the Central Valley with high-speed rail in 2008, but it has encountered delays and budget overruns in the 15 years since California voters initially approved issuing bonds to finance the project.

California high speed rail is a slow motion fail.  In just "7-10" more years high speed rail "will debut" in California's Central Valley!  And you'd better plan on spending all your time riding back and forth to Bakersfield, because it cost a fortune to bring this level of climate change virtue-signaling to you!  Some $22.8 billion so far, on the easiest section to build.  How long exactly will it take for the line to break even?  California estimated the ticket price between Merced and Bakersfield to be between $48 and $78.  We'll go with the higher number.  In this little mental exercise, we will assume a few things; that California will run four trains on the route, those trains will be provided free of charge to California High Speed Rail (CHSR), each train carries 360 people, every train is full, trains run 24/7 every 15 minutes without ever stopping for maintenance, that there are absolutely no operating costs, 100% of ticket sales go to service the debt, which has 0% interest, that each one way takes an hour, and electricity is free.

California's high-speed rail is running out of money.  In 2008, California voted yes on a $9 billion bond authorization to build the nation's first high-speed railway.  The plan is to construct an electric train that will connect Los Angeles with the Central Valley and then San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes.  But 15 years later, there is not a single mile of track laid, and executives involved say there isn't enough money to finish the project.  The latest estimates from the California High-Speed Rail Authority suggest it will cost between $88 billion and $128 billion to complete the entire system from LA to San Francisco.  Inflation and higher construction costs have contributed to the high price tag.  The project has spent $9.8 billion so far, according to Brian Kelly, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

The Bullet Train Epitomizes Golden State Corruption.  This is one of history's greatness thefts.  If completed, $200 billion would have been taken from taxpayers and transferred to unions and greedy corporations.  In exchange for that money the train to nowhere will leave behind slums, deficits, a train with no money operate, no passengers and by 2040, the possible completion date, outmoded technology. [...] These are staggering numbers, a testament to a staggering waste of financial and material resources.  For this first segment of track, Californians are going to pay $206 million per mile, and that's if there aren't any more overruns.

The end of BART? California's bullet train isn't the only rail system in deep trouble.  Earlier this month we learned that California's ruinously expensive bullet train system had gone up in price once again.  The full system is now expected to cost $128 billion and that's if it's completed sometime in 2040.  The other bad news about the bullet train was just as worrisome.  A new estimate of anticipated ridership for the finished system showed a drop of about 25%.  Declining ridership isn't just a problem for the rail system of the distant future.  It's also a huge problem for systems that already exist and none has been hit quite as bad as BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system which connects the Bay Area.

The passengers want to get off this train, even before it is built.
California high-speed rail costs [are] going up and projected ridership [is] going down.  Last February the California High-Speed Rail Authority announced that the price for the state's planned bullet train had gone up from $100 billion to $105 billion.  A few months later they clarified it was actually going to be $113 billion.  Yesterday there were more reports about delays and price increases. [...] In case you've forgotten, this entire project was originally pitched to voters 15 years ago at a cost of $33 billion.  The fact that the estimated cost has gone up $28 billion in the last 13 months gives you an idea where we are at this point.  As mentioned above, the first section is still 7-10 years away from being opened but completion of the line from LA to San Francisco doesn't even have a projected deadline anymore.

BART Seeks Another $2.3B in Federal Funds for CA Train.  The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is now asking for another $2.3 billion from the federal government to see high-speed trains running from San Francisco to San Jose as part of the already years-delayed, over budget Bay Area Rapid Transit project, according to The Mercury News.  The total cost of this section of California's high-speed rail project has exploded to $9.3 billion, 35 percent higher than the last estimate of $6.9 billion and almost twice what it was estimated to cost in 2014, the Mercury News reported.  And it's unclear whether that $9.3 billion figure will go up again.

California's $113 Billion Bullet Train to Nowhere.  [Scroll down] The fastest train in America is an Amtrak which tops out at around 100 MPH.  In a 14-year span, Amtrak had 222 deaths.  The Sunday New York Times contained an article on California's boondoggle of a bullet train.  Californians passed a bond initiative in 2008 to build a bullet train.  The track was to run from Los Angeles to San Francisco at a projected cost of $33 billion.  It was anticipated to complete in 2020.  How fast is California's bullet train?  It travels at zero miles per hour.  It hasn't been built.  The projected cost went from $33 billion to $113 billion, and only the most Pollyannaish politicians claim that California will have a bullet train anytime soon if ever[.]  Why hasn't it been built?  Dysfunctional California politics. [...] There is too much waste and indecision in California.  The California project is so dysfunctional that California was issuing and accepting bid contracts before they had acquired the land to build on.  Farmers in the central valley were not that keen on having their land split by an elevated rail line.  They sued and that added to the delay and layered on more billions.

NY Times: How California's high speed rail project became a 'loser'.  The very short answer, as revealed in this story published yesterday by the NY Times, is politics.  The attempt to build the first bullet train in the US between San Francisco and Los Angeles almost immediately turned into a boondoggle thanks to decisions that made no sense in terms of efficiency or ridership but only in terms of satisfying powerful politicians. [...] The cost increases are something we've been writing about here at Hot Air for more than a decade.  The initial budget for the project (back in 2008) was $33 billion with a completion date of 2020.  But earlier this year the California High Speed Rail Authority announced the budget had gone up to $105 billion and then a few months later raised it again to $113 billion.  When will it be finished?  Well...  ["]The rail authority said it has accelerated the pace of construction on the starter system, but at the current spending rate of $1.8 million a day, according to projections widely used by engineers and project managers, the train could not be completed in this century.["]

Slow Minds Run Over at High Speed.  Well, well, look at what we have here:  the New York Times has finally caught up with what every sensible person knew at least ten years ago — California's high-speed rail project is a joke.  "America's first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare," the Times says in a long feature today.

How California's Bullet Train Went Off the Rails.  The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex.  SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system.  The company's recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF.  The company pulled out in 2011.  "There were so many things that went wrong," Mr. McNamara said.  "SNCF was very angry.  They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional.  They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system."  Morocco's bullet train started service in 2018.  The goal in California in 2008 was to carry passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2 hours 40 minutes, putting it among the fastest trains in the world in average speed.

California has weaponized transportation against its own population.  In 2008, California voters approved what was supposed to be a $33 billion high-speed rail project to connect Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco.  What they are actually getting is a project that may still never connect those cities but will cost at least $113 billion and won't be completed until at least 2030.  In the meantime, California's legislature is as determined as ever to make affordable transportation illegal, going so far as to ban gasoline-powered automobiles.  The high-speed rail project is a predictable rat's nest of rent-seeking by politically connected contractors.  Assuming it is actually ever finished, it will require constant operating subsidies and maintenance costs.  This California crazy train was back in the news last week because it received one of many environmental green lights required for its completion, which will come no sooner than 2033.  However, be prepared for disappointment — this project has consistently blown through every cost estimate and time projection that has been applied to it so far.

Give it up, already!
Costs of California's troubled bullet train rise again, by an estimated $5 billion.  California bullet train officials on Tuesday [2/8/2022] released a new draft project blueprint that acknowledges that costs have risen roughly $5 billion but seeks to address several issues that have generated blowback.  The 2022 business plan estimates that the full, 500-mile, high-speed system between Los Angeles and San Francisco will cost as much as $105 billion, up from $100 billion two years ago.  In 2008, when voters approved a bond to help build the railroad, the authority estimated that the system would cost $33 billion.  In its latest blueprint, the California High Speed Rail Authority abandoned a plan to save money by building only a single track for an initial 171-mile operating system between Bakersfield and Merced; instead, it plans to build a two-track system.

Feds Restore $929 Million in Funds for California's Billion-Dollar Bullet Train Boondoggle.  California's wasteful high-speed rail project is getting a predictable boost under train-loving President Joe Biden.  On Thursday, the Biden administration announced it was restoring $929 million in grants that had been revoked by the U.S. Department of Transportation under President Donald Trump.  Trump used the terrible state of the rail project — years behind schedule, billions over budget, and without a realistic plan for actually connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco — as a reason to shut the funding down.  His feud with California political leadership certainly played a role in the decision, but the reality is that the entire train project has been an expensive disaster that has lined a bunch of contractors' and consultants' pockets.  California sued the Trump administration to try to get the money back.  Yesterday's [6/10/2021] announcement is the result of a settlement agreement between California and the Biden administration to restore the grant.

Feds agree to restore $1B to California for bullet train.  The federal government has agreed to restore roughly $1 billion in funding for a bullet train project in California.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Thursday night that the Transportation Department would provide nearly $929 million for the state's high-speed rail project.  Newsom said the money would help workers complete the initial operating segment of the project, which would be the nation's first high-speed rail system.  "Tonight's action by the federal government is further proof that California and the Biden-Harris Administration share a common vision — clean, electrified transportation that will serve generations to come.  Restoring nearly $929 million in grant funding back to California's High-Speed Rail project will continue to spur job creation, advance the project and move the state one step closer to getting trains running in California as soon as possible," said Newsom.

The Editor says...
Remember, "clean, electrified transportation" is only as clean as the power plant making the electricity.

Introduction by The Editor:
California has now given up on its intra-state high-speed rail line.  The taxpayers are stuck with the tab, but nobody else cares, because this was a service for which there was no demand.  The lesson is simple:  If there is a demand for high-speed rail service, and a sufficient number of passengers are willing to pay the high ticket price, a private company will build the system.  It's called capitalism.  The California method is an abject failure, which should be a harsh lesson about socialism, but the politicians don't get it.

California bullet train project to seek additional $4.1B amid delays and rising costs.  The California bullet train project will seek $4.1 billion in additional funding in order to finish construction in the state's Central Valley.  The additional money would be sourced from a bond fund that voters approved in 2008, according to a Monday report from the Los Angeles Times, citing newly released documents from the bullet train authority.  The report said an Assembly Transportation Committee hearing is expected to take place in the coming weeks.  The new disclosures reveal not only an increase in the cost of the project but also a delay in its projected timeline.  The Central Valley system, which will cover 171 miles and reach from Merced to Bakersfield, was supposed to be completed by 2028.  Its new opening date has been pushed to 2030.

California again delays bullet train first stage, begs feds for more time to avoid funding cutoff.  The fiasco of California's pathetic attempt to build a high-speed rail (HSR) line between Los Angeles and San Francisco continues to generate far more embarrassment than actual completed track.  Once again, for what seems like the umpteenth time, California is unable to meet the deadlines imposed by the federal government as a condition of receiving federal aid — in other words, subsidies from other states for building what should be commonly known as "Brown's Folly," after Jerry Brown, who go the itch to build it after riding bullet trains in Japan and Europe.

'Horrible sequence of mistakes': How bullet train contractors botched a bridge project.  A series of errors by contractors and consultants on the California bullet train venture caused support cables to fail on a massive bridge, triggering an order to stop work that further delayed a project already years behind schedule, the Los Angeles Times has learned.  The bridge is longer than two football fields and is needed to shuttle vehicles over the future bullet train right of way and existing BNSF freight tracks in Madera County.  Authorities have yet to finalize a plan to repair the bridge.  Late last year, crews installed temporary steel supports to prevent it from collapsing.  Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Times under a public records request show the steel supports snapped as a result of neglect, work damage, miscommunications and possible design problems.

How We Pale to Previous Generations.  We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.  Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?  Californians tried to build a high-speed rail line.  But after more than a decade of government incompetence, lawsuits, cost overruns, and constant bureaucratic squabbling, they have all but given up.  The result is a half-built overpass over the skyline of Fresno — and not yet a foot of track laid.

Bullet Train Workers Reportedly Told To Suppress Bad News, Lawmaker Reacts.  People working on California's high speed rail have reportedly been told to keep their mouths shut and not openly talk about about any bad news related to the project.  Several high-profile members of the construction management team in Fresno said the company overseeing the project told them not to say anything about why the project has repeatedly fallen behind schedule and why the cost has exploded, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.  However, that supervising company claims the article is wrong.  California Assemblymember Jim Patterson, a longtime opponent of the project, believes this is further evidence of wrongdoing within the High-Speed Rail Authority.  "This is something that I think is so serious that it calls into question criminal behavior," said Patterson.

California bullet train adds another $1.3 billion to projected price tag.  The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Wednesday bumped its overall cost estimate for completing the rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco to $80.3 billion, blaming inflationary increases and better cost projections for a $1.3-billion boost that still is smaller than in previous years.  After years of embarrassing cost overruns and delays, managers of California's ambitious bullet-train project insisted that they are on pace to meet a preliminary 2022 federal deadline for laying track along the first segment in the Central Valley.  But that will use up virtually all the money the project has available.

California Off the Rails, State a Disaster Zone.  When former California Gov. Jerry Brown announced his ill-conceived, ill-fated high-speed train that no one wanted, and no one ever thought would be completed, he unwittingly sent the message that the once Golden State would soon be spiraling into disaster.  Before current Gov. Gavin Newsom killed the train, California had squandered $5 billion on the boondoggle, and cost projections soared billions more from the original estimate.  New York Times' analysts pegged the train's final total at a staggering $100 billion.  Brown envisioned himself as a forward-thinking leader who would secure California's self-proclaimed position as the nation's preeminent cutting-edge state.  Brown put California on the cutting-edge, all right, but of catastrophe.

High-speed rail route took land from farmers.  The money they're owed hasn't arrived.  John Diepersloot squinted under a bright Central Valley sun, pointing to the damage to his fruit orchard that came with the California bullet train.  He lost 70 acres of prime land.  Rail contractors left mounds of rubble along his neat rows.  Irrigation hoses are askew.  A sophisticated canopy system for a kiwi field, supported by massive steel cables, was torn down.  But what really irritates Diepersloot is the $250,000 that he paid out of his own pocket for relocating wells, removing trees, building a road and other expenses.

Can California Be Saved, or Is It Too Late?  Jerry Brown's imaginary high-speed rail that was to initially run from Bakersfield to Merced in Central California is a bust.  The cost was projected to be $77 [billion] but has forecast to be $98 [billion]!  It most likely will never be completed.  Billions have been wasted.

California 'hi speed rail' plan now pondering old fashioned diesel trains to salvage something from the failed project.  Nobody with any authority over it can admit that Jerry Brown's pet project, a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, is a multi-billion dollar fiasco and pull the plug to avoid squandering additional billions of dollars from taxpayers.  Governor Gavin Newsom has "temporarily" downsized the project, promising to build only the 165 mile segment from Merced to Bakersfield in the flat Central Valley, a trip that few people would ever make at the sort of fares necessary to sustain high speed rail service, a premium-priced commodity everywhere in the world with high speed rail.  (The barely high-speed Acela trains between DC and Boston charge fares comparable to airlines.)  Very few executives need to travel from Merced to Bakersfield quickly.

Trump Cancels California Rail Boondoggle Funding.  In a move that is certain to enrage the perpetually-enraged political left and our fake news media, the Trump Administration today moved to rescind a portion of the $3.5 billion in federal funds previously dedicated to California's disastrous high-speed rail boondoggle.

Taxpayers Can't Dodge Bullet Train.  [Scroll down]  Eleven years later, the critics have been mostly right.  A [Los Angeles] Times news story this week, based on an internal draft of the High Speed Rail Authority's forthcoming report to the Legislature, found, "The cost of building a 119-mile section of the California bullet train in the Central Valley is projected to increase by $1.8 billion."  Note that the cost overruns are in the simplest place to build, along a flat agricultural plain.  And just how many people are itching to ride this downsized rail line from Bakersfield to Merced? [...] The project is not going to do anything about climate change, but is more likely to be an underused monument to government waste.

Ballooning Costs, Missed Deadlines Derail California High-Speed Rail Project.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he is pulling the plug on the state's massive high-speed rail project after it incurred enormous cost overruns that pushed the potential price tag to more than $77 billion and put the project more than a decade behind schedule.  The controversial project championed by Newsom's predecessor, Jerry Brown, was intended to link Los Angeles to San Francisco.  Voters approved a ballot measure in 2008 to finance and build the approximately 520-mile rail line.  At the time, it was estimated the project would cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020.  Officials said they hoped to connect the line to San Diego and Sacramento eventually.

Canceled! California's billion-dollar boondoggle train.  The train never made practical sense in a state where automobiles, though vilified, are by far the principal mode of transportation.  After purchasing an expensive (though subsidized) train ticket, what were the few who chose to ride the train to do once they reached their destination — rent a car?  California already spent over $5 billion on the train, but estimates to finish the project have now exploded to a staggering $77 billion!  The completion date has been pushed back all the way to 2033.

US DOT cancels $929 million in grants for California's aborted high-speed rail project.  California's top officials spear-headed a lawsuit to end the implementation of President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration.  Now, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) has cancelled millions in grants for the high speed rail project that has been substantially scaled back by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Trump's plan to take back $2.5 billion in California's high-speed rail funding 'unprecedented'.  The Trump administration's decision to cancel a $929-million grant to California's troubled high-speed rail project and claw back $2.5 billion in funds already spent has thrust the federal government into uncharted legal territory and poses an existential threat to the state's largest investment ever.  Never before, experts say, has the federal government attempted to take back such a large sum of money from California, particularly after it was spent under federal supervision.

Trump Takes Back $1 Billion from California; Gavin Newsom Complains: 'Political Retribution'.  The Trump administration announced Tuesday [2/19/2019] that it was canceling a federal grant to California worth nearly $1 billion after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the cancelation of the state's high-speed rail project last week.  Newsom used his "State of the State" address Feb. 12 to cancel the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles project, saying it "would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long" to complete.  However, he told legislators he wanted to complete the portion of the bullet train under construction in the rural Central Valley, lest the state lose federal dollars granted to California by President Barack Obama as part of the 2009 stimulus:  "I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump," Newsom said.

Trump administration to cancel $929 million in California high-speed rail funding.  The fate of California's high-speed rail project was cast into further doubt Tuesday when the federal government announced plans to cancel $929 million in grant funds, a move U.S. officials linked to violations of the grant agreement but some view as political payback.  The action marks an escalation in the battle between President Trump and the state of California since Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that the project lacked a path to complete a statewide system and vowed to scale back the $77-billion mega-project.  The Transportation Department also said it was "actively exploring every legal option" to get back an additional $2.5-billion grant that is being used to finance the construction of 119 miles of rail line in the Central Valley.

Trump Admin To Newsom:  We're Coming For The High-Speed Rail Money, Pal.  Gavin Newsom may want to keep the federal subsidies for California's stunted high-speed rail project, but the Trump administration wants the cash back.  After Newsom reset the project from a connection between the state's two largest metropolises to a ten-figure project to connect two cities with a combined population of under 600,000, the new governor also declared that he'd hang onto $3.5 billion from Washington.  It didn't take long for collectors to come knocking.

CA Gov. Newsom Just Delivered a Huge Blow to AOC's 'Green New Deal'.  During his State of the State address, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday said his administration is putting a halt to the highly anticipated high-speed rail that would travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  "Let's be real.  The current project, as planned, would cost too much and respectfully take too long.  There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency," Newsom said during his first address.  The cost of building the train, at last estimate, was put at $77 billion and wouldn't be completed until 2033, the Associated Press reported.

Gavin Newsom calls SF-to-LA high-speed rail unrealistic, pushes for route from Bakersfield to Merced.  During Gov. Gavin Newsom's first State of the State speech Tuesday, he surprised listeners by announcing he would put the quest for high-speed rail connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles championed by his predecessor far on the back burner.  Instead, Newsom offered a consolation prize:  high-speed rail between Bakersfield and Merced.

California's High Speed Rail Finally Stops Pining for the Fjords.  By the time [Governor] Newsom pulled the plug on the boondoggle, it had already swelled to $77 to $98 billion in projected costs for the unlikely goal of reducing automotive travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  The original cost was estimated to be $25 billion.  The good news is that the most incredibly expensive part of this colossal waste of taxpayer money is now cancelled.  No more worrying about paying for extremely expensive land or 13.5 mile tunnels or how to span active earthquake faults.  This is progress!

Could California's Doomed Bullet Train Fund Trump's Border Wall?  California Gov. Gavin Newsom just pulled the plug on the state's bullet train boondoggle.  President Trump should demand the $3.5 billion the federal government dumped into this black hole back, so he can put it to better use building the border wall.

Trump Demands Gavin Newsom Return $3.5 Billion for Canceled Bullet Train; Newsom:  It's 'California's Money' Now.  President Donald Trump demanded Wednesday evening that the State of California return $3.5 billion in federal funds after Gov. Gavin Newsom canceled most of the state's high-speed rail project, saying it was too expensive.  "California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars," the president tweeted.  "They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars.  We want that money back now.  Whole project is a 'green' disaster!"

California Further Proves that Public High-Speed Rail Projects Are Stupid.  California governor Gavin Newsom has now abandoned the high-speed railway that would have linked Los Angeles and San Francisco.  The ballot measure was proposed in 2008, then estimated to cost $33 billion, with an expected completion date of 2020.  Before being scrapped, the expected cost to complete the railway was $77 billion, and the timeline for completion stretched to 2033. [...] This particular project involved one high-speed railway connecting two cities less than 400 miles apart.  Construction of this railway began in 2013, and we have to imagine that, given what we've seen, a completion date of 2033 and a price tag of $77 billion is a wildly generous expectation.

Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously.  The bullet train is dead.  Mostly.  California's new governor, the prim and grim Gavin Newsom, announced that the project would be taken off its $650-million-a-month life-support apparatus and euthanized.  The end of the project leaves Californians with no way to travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco except a 90-minute, $149 flight.  (Or driving.) [...] This is the "problem" that California has tried to solve with a $77 billion boondoggle.  At the time of its demise, the bullet train was years behind schedule, had spent more than seven times its originally allocated budget, and, of course, carried no passengers.

California scrapping plan for $77B high-speed rail from LA to San Francisco.  California is scrapping current plans to build a $77 billion high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to California due to high costs.  The state's governor, Gavin Newsom, said during his State of the State address on Tuesday that the proposal would "cost too much" and "take too long."

By Law, California High Speed Rail May Be Doomed To Fail.  For $100 billion Jerry Brown, Arnold and Gavin in are going to give you a train from Bakersfield to Madera!!  Of course they do not have the $100 billion and no idea where they money to build or operate the system — so very few riders will come from Bakersfield to go to Madera (a great community).  The 99 freeway will continue to have lots of cars using it — the train to nowhere will not operate due to lack of operating cash.

The Boondoggle Continues.  Well, a few remaining Republicans in Sacramento managed to get an audit done.  The price tag is up to 77 billion dollars.

Rushed construction cost high-speed rail $600 million and delays mount.  California's High Speed Rail Authority is still paying for a costly decision five years ago to begin construction in the Central Valley without securing land and before it had completed key plans, according to a report published on Thursday [11/15/2018] by State Auditor Elaine Howle.  Howle's office estimated that the rushed construction contributed to $600 million in cost overruns just for segments in the Central Valley.  They may require as much as $1.6 billion more.

California's $77 billion bullet train will be one of the state's great embarrassments:  Larry Ellison.  Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are on the same page when it comes to California's $77 billion high-speed rail project.  "Trains leave when you don't want to leave, from a place you don't want to leave from, and take you to a place you don't want to go to, at a time you don't want to get there, and then you have to get into a car and go wherever you're going.  It is a crazy system," said Ellison during an exclusive interview with Maria Bartiromo on "Mornings with Maria" on Thursday [10/25/2018].  Ellison, who said he hasn't spoken to Musk about the train, noted that their views are in-line.

Gavin Newsom's Bullet Train To Nowhere.  Gavin Newsom is the Democratic candidate for Governor of California who is widely expected to win next month thanks to the state's overwhelming blue tilt.  This week Newsom was asked about his plans for California's bullet train project and he said he would settle for building half of it as a way to rescue the project that is already way over budget.

Californians To Try To Kill High-Speed Rail Project By Referendum.  Remember that high-speed rail project that was going to bring California's infrastructure into the 21st century?  The last we really heard about it was back in April when an audit was scheduled to take stock of just how far in the hole they were and if it could ever be finished.  Of course, that's been the story of this project from the beginning.  One delay after another compounded by flawed budget estimates and construction schedules.  Mix in a bit of political incompetence and malfeasance and you've got a recipe for disaster.  This running boondoggle has been dragging on for ages, creating a black pit of despair where Californians' tax dollars go to die.  But now that may be about to change.  Fresh off their advances in attempting to recall the recent gas tax package, one group is now working on a referendum plan to stop the entire mess and redirect the money to fixing their roads.

Inflation and delays could add billions more to bullet train project costs.  The California bullet train project has cost state taxpayers an average $3.1 million a day over the last year — a construction spending rate higher than that for the Bay Bridge, Boston's Big Dig or any U.S. transportation project in recent history.  But still it's not enough, planners say.  In order to hit its 2033 deadline and $77-billion budget, the California High Speed Rail Authority will have to increase daily spending by up to nine times over the next four years or risk putting the already-delayed system further behind.

The Bullet Train No California Candidate Wants To Talk About.  The open primary for the California governor's race is coming up in a couple of weeks and there's a packed field of no less than 27 candidates on the ballot. [...] These folks are all out on the campaign trail and the Democrats are all competing to demonstrate which one of them hates President Trump the most and will be the best leader of the #RESIST movement.  On top of that, they all have to figure out how to deal with a housing crisis, disastrous roads in need of repair, an ongoing drought, wildfires, mudslides and a state economy which is somehow still in the black for the moment but is predicted to hit a wall by 2020.  But there's one thing you aren't hearing about from any of them.  Nobody is talking about the long-delayed and massively over budget bullet train.  Why do you suppose that is?

High speed rail construction
The Fatally Flawed Centerpiece of California's Transportation Future.  California's transportation future is bright.  In every area of transportation innovation, California-based companies are leading the way.  Consortiums of major global companies have offices throughout the San Francisco Bay area, pioneering self-driving cars that consolidate technologies from not just automakers, but cell phone manufacturers, chip designers, PC makers, telecoms, and software companies.  In Southern California from the aerospace hub surrounding LAX to the Mojave desert, heavily funded consortiums experiment with everything from passenger drones to hyperloop technologies to hypersonic transports.  It's all happening here.  It's wondrous.  Meanwhile, instead of preparing the roads for smart cars, or designing hubs that integrate buses and cars-on-demand with aerial drones and hyperloop systems, the centerpiece of California's transportation future is a train that isn't very fast, being built at what is probably the highest cost-per-mile in the history of transportation, which hardly anyone will ever ride.


Hyperloop Is Running Circles Around California's 'High Speed' Rail.  Just five years ago, Elon Musk proposed his breakthrough "hyperloop" transportation idea, and there is already talk of building it in major urban areas.  Over those same five years, California's government-funded high-speed rail project has seen nothing but cost overruns and delays.

Feds To Audit CA High-Speed Rail Project As Funding Flounders.  With a new study out showing that California doesn't have the funding to complete even the first phase of their high-speed rail project, the Inspector General for the Department of Transportation will open the books to see how federal monies have been spent: [...] That's bad news for a project that has already had plenty of bad news over the last several years.  The IG will apparently focus mainly on how the FRA has performed in reporting on California's progress rather than the performance of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

The great California train wreck.  Let me just say from the outset that I still miss California. [...] Somehow, we got along fine without a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.  A maniacal pipe dream of Gov. Jerry Brown, its price tag was increased last week to $77.3 billion.  The train's projected opening date has been pushed back another four years, to 2033.  When this thing is done, they claim, you will be able to zip between Southern California and Baghdad by the Bay in only three hours.  Minus any time spent restoring track after a particularly bad earthquake.

Jerry Brown's half-fast 'bullet train' front man admits Californians deserve another vote on the project.  In 2008, California voters were duped into narrowly approving (with 52.6% of the vote) a $9.95 billion bond issue for construction of a purported "bullet train" linking San Francisco and Los Angeles, based in specious cost estimates and promises that could not be (and have not been) fulfilled.

California's Bullet Train To Fiscal Oblivion.  California's bullet train project, also known as Jerry Brown's Folly, has turned into a fiscal nightmare for the Golden State.  Not only are the cost estimates soaring, but the time table has once more been shifted back.  Based on current estimates, it may turn out to be the biggest fraud in the history of public works.

Cost for California bullet train system rises to $77.3 billion.  The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $77.3 billion and could rise as high as $98.1 billion — an uptick of at least $13 billion from estimates two years ago.  The rail authority also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Francisco and Bakersfield would be 2029 — four years later than the previous projection.  The full system would not begin operating until 2033.  The disclosures are contained in a 114-page business plan that was issued in draft form Friday [3/9/2018] by the rail authority before public hearings and formal submission to the Legislature in about 60 days.

California bullet train costs soar to $77B; opening delayed.  The projected cost of California's bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles has jumped to $77 billion and the completion date has been pushed back four years to 2033, according to a business plan released Friday [3/9/2018].  The plan by the California High-Speed Rail Authority presents the latest setbacks for a project that's been beleaguered by delays and cost overruns since voters first gave it the green[ ]light in 2008.

Vacant lots, empty homes and dying orchards on bullet train route attract squatters, vandals and thieves.  Charlene Hook cherished her home of 30 years north of Corcoran, where pomegranate and pistachio orchards stretched for miles.  So choosing to burn it down last year was a difficult decision.  She and her husband had no plans to leave their 2½ acres until the day the state bullet train authority said its rails would go through their bedroom.  Not long after the couple moved out, thieves broke into the house and stripped almost everything of value — even taking the doors off her husband's shop where he restored classic cars.  Soon her former longtime neighbor's homes were being burglarized and vandalized.

Electricity Cost:  CA vs U.S. — and TX.  California has high income taxes.  Texas has none.  The workers in Texas do not have to pay bribes to work — in many places in California they have to pay extortion.  California is building a high speed rail from L.A. to San Fran, for $200 billion of taxpayers money.  Texas is building a high speed rail from Houston to Dallas, approximately 300 miles for NO tax dollars — all private funds.  Local cities will build the stations in exchange for development around the stations.

Will Unfinished Train Overpasses Become California's Stonehenge?  Californians thought high-speed rail was a great idea when they voted for it in 2008.  The state is overwhelmingly progressive.  Silicon Valley reflects California's confidence in new-age technology.  Californians are among the highest-taxed citizens in the nation.  They apparently are not opposed to borrowing and spending for ambitious government projects — especially to alleviate crowded freeways.  Planners assured voters that the cost for the first 520 miles was going to be an "affordable" $33 billion. [...] But projected costs have soared even before one foot of track has been laid.  The entire project's estimated costs, according to various projections, may have nearly doubled.

California's bullet train (and biggest boondoggle) is over budget by billions.  It's billions of dollars over budget and seven years behind schedule, and appears to have no plausible way of living up to its goal of getting riders across the state in three hours or less.  Welcome to what's arguably the nation's largest infrastructure project and California's biggest boondoggle.  The highly hyped bullet train has been a challenge from the start.  No one thought it would be technically, financially and politically easy, but the way the project has been mishandled has some Californians fed up and demanding answers.

CA High-Speed Rail Contractor Gets 18% Raise After Missing Completion Date.  California High-Speed Rail agreed to increase payments to its construction manager by 18 percent after failing to complete its first 32-mile section within the seven-year deadline.  President Obama and his Democrat congressional majority voted in 2010 to fund the California High Speed Rail (Cal HSR) with $2.5 billion under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as the centerpiece of a national network of 10 intercity corridors in California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, The Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, and New England.  Cal HSR contractually agreed to provide bullet train service with top speeds of 150 miles-per-hour over the 118-mile section between Madera and Bakersfield by September 30, 2017, or give the money back to the U.S. Treasury.

McCarthy: Time to Send California's Sputtering High-Speed Rail Project to the Scrap Yard.  After billions of dollars in cost overruns and missed deadlines, California's top Republican in Congress is again training his fire on his state's high-speed rail project, arguing that the mammoth $2.5 billion Obama-era stimulus boondoggle is still struggling to get off the ground and should be scrapped altogether.  House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has long opposed the state's plans for a bullet train linking San Francisco and Los Angeles even though the backbone of the rail system was supposed to run through his hometown of Bakersfield.  With construction of the main line of the project, straight through the state's Central Valley, set to miss a Sept. 30 deadline, McCarthy says it's past time to end the "colossal waste of precious taxpayer dollars."

How the Trump administration can stop the bullet train.  The only kind of news the troubled $64 billion California bullet train project seems to generate is bad news.  In January, a Federal Railroad Administration analysis was leaked that projected the initial 118-mile, $6.4 billion segment of the project would run 50 percent over budget.  Then last week, a Los Angeles Times report revealed that the project's price tag may continue to be pushed higher and higher by "the complex engineering needed for passenger safety."

HSR cartoon
Why High-Speed Rail Should Be Audited Before Caltrain Receives Federal Funds.  The California HSR project started in November 2008, when voters approved Proposition 1A establishing a $9 billion bond measure which included rigid restrictions on project administration and protections for taxpayers funding it.  Today, nine years later, not one inch of track has been laid.  Initially, the voters were told that the project would cost $33 billion; it was anticipated that about 1/3 would come from the bond; $10 billion from the feds; and the remaining money from enthusiastic private investors eager to invest in a winner.


The price of safety on California's bullet train is only now becoming apparent.  Engineers on California's high-speed rail project have worried for nine years about the sort of train wreck that occurred in New York last October.  Six hundred rail passengers were rolling across Long Island at 50 mph on a Saturday night when a maintenance train on a parallel track derailed and sideswiped their commuter train, injuring 33 and leaving others wandering in the dark through twisted wreckage.  Although construction on California's high-speed rail is already underway, designers are still sorting out safety's place in a delicate balance that also requires staying on budget and getting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco on time.  One safety concern playing out at the moment stems from the fact that the bullet trains will run in some places at 220 mph, alongside lines carrying everything from toxic chemicals to military tanks.

California's Boondoggle Bullet Train Goes Off The (Fiscal) Rails.  The Golden State's vaunted bullet train project, planned to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles, may be in its financial death throes.  If so, it's probably the best fiscal news for the Golden State in years.

Two construction firms seek an extra $300 million for bullet train work.  Two huge construction firms that are helping to build about 54 miles of bullet train structures in the Central Valley are seeking an additional $300 million on their fixed-price contracts, the Los Angeles Times has learned.  The increases, if the state ultimately agrees to cover them, would further bloat the bill for what has been touted as the easiest and most predictable section of the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system.  The potential increases lend credence to the findings of a December risk assessment by the Federal Railroad Administration that costs for building the full 118 miles of work in the Central Valley could jump by 50%, or $3.6 billion, above current estimates.

High-Speed Train Going Nowhere Fast.  Six years have chugged by since the federal government awarded billions of dollars for California's high-speed passenger train but not a single track has been laid.  The "bullet train" promised to make the 520 mile trip from San Francisco to the Los Angeles area in less than three hours by traveling over 200 miles per hour. [...] With a price tag of nearly $100 billion, this rail system is the single largest public works project currently underway in the U.S.  Already billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, the only ones being taken for a ride by the train are taxpayers.

Obama Has Little To Show For His Lavish Spending On Roads, Green Energy And E-Cars.  Early in his administration, Obama fantasized about creating a network of high-speed rail lines across the country.  He poured $8 billion worth of stimulus money into the project, hoping to get rail lines started in 10 regions.  Only one has seriously pursued Obama's dream — California — which got $3.5 billion in federal grants.  But its effort is foundering amid skyrocketing costs and endless construction delays.

California's bullet train is hurtling toward a multibillion-dollar overrun, a confidential federal report warns.  California's bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more.  And that's just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by The [Los Angeles] Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion.

Jerry Brown's bullet train fiasco and Trump.  California governor Jerry Brown has staked out the turf as President-Elect Trump's opponent, hiring Eric Holder to gin up a legal strategy and appointing Congressman Xavier Bacera as his A.G. to oppose anticipated Trump policies in sanctuary cities, the environment, and what some call California's "values."  But I have to wonder if Brown doesn't have a vulnerable flank in this battle:  the looming financial collapse of his most cherished project, the so-called "bullet train" between the Bay Area and Los Angeles.  Yesterday [1/13/2017], the Los Angeles Times published information from a "confidential" Federal Railroad Administration report that was leaked to it revealing absolute incompetence and out-of-control overspending on the first segment under construction.  The report by Ralph Vartabedian should be read in its entirety to grasp the level of chaos in the project.

California's bullet train on the track to extinction.  The windswept deserts east of California's Sierra Nevada are crisscrossed with thousands of miles of abandoned railroad beds, a legacy of the region's gold and silver boom town days.  Hundreds of now defunct railroad companies, with picturesque names like Tonopah and Tidewater, Va., and Truckee and Carson, Colo., operated until the gold played out or truck transport grew more common and less expensive.  Over the jagged spine of California's granite backbone, 100 miles to the west, a new railroad track is being laid.  But, unlike its narrow gauge cousins that sprang up 150 years ago, this railroad relies entirely on government funding and will likely never be completed.

California's $64 Billion Bullet Train To Nowhere Gets Delayed — Again.  In the late 1800s, it took railroad companies six years to lay 1,907 miles of track for what was to become the Transcontinental Railroad (or as Barack Obama calls it, the Intercontinental Railroad).  Building that railroad line required tunneling through mountains — at one foot a day — building bridges — including one that spanned 700 feet — and doing all the work almost entirely by hand.  As best, it will now take seven years for California to lay 119 miles of track — on relatively flat ground in the middle of nowhere.  That news came from a contract revision that the Obama administration approved late last week.

California's Ongoing Suicide Watch.  [Scroll down]  Such geniuses we have running California.  Thank goodness we're building high-speed rail.  It'll only take three times as long at twice the price of Southwest Air Lines to get up and down the state.

California Voters Want More Water and Less Bullet Train.  Less than a year ago, climate scientists were heralding the "Godzilla El Niño," which would generate historic rainfalls that could help alleviate California's mega-drought.  Climate reality has failed to confirm climate theory, as the term "dud" is now being used to describe the weather pattern.[...] At this point, it looks as if California is going to have to continue implementing a wide array of water-saving measures, which include "cash-for-grass" and drought-shaming neighbors.  However, courtesy of our proposition system, Californians may get a chance to divert funds from a loser project into sensible infrastructure construction that may actually alleviate some our state's water crisis.

Plagued by delays, California high-speed rail heads back to court.  Eight years after they approved funding for it, construction is years behind schedule and legal, financial and logistical delays plague the $68 billion project.

California's Bullet Train Will Take Even Longer To Go Nowhere.  California's high-speed rail project will never make its current 2022 arrival time, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Doesn't this strike anyone in charge of this costly boondoggle as ironic?  The Los Angeles Times does a commendable job of providing a reality check to the increasingly out-of-touch project.  After reviewing project documents and talking to various experts, the paper concluded, "The deadline and budget targets will almost certainly be missed," and state officials have "underestimated the challenges ahead."

Funding and subsidies worry potential partners in California's bullet train project.  Major construction, equipment and engineering firms around the world, responding to a solicitation to form a partnership with the California high-speed rail project, have raised serious concerns about the state's shortage of funding, the potential need for long-term operating subsidies and whether the project can meet the current construction schedule.  The comments were included in 36 responses sent by the international firms to the California High-Speed Rail Authority after it requested suggestions on how to complete the $68-billion project.

Chinese firms want to build, finance California high-speed train.  A team of Chinese firms, along with the Export-Import Bank of China, wants to build and finance a large part of California's proposed 800-mile high-speed rail project.

$68-billion California bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline targets.  The monumental task of building California's bullet train will require punching 36 miles of tunnels through the geologically complex mountains north of Los Angeles.  Crews will have to cross the tectonic boundary that separates the North American and Pacific plates, boring through a jumble of fractured rock formations and a maze of earthquake faults, some of which are not mapped.  It will be the most ambitious tunneling project in the nation's history.

Dianne Feinstein's Husband Awarded Massive Fortune in Rail Boondoggle.  What a remarkable coincidence.  A guy who was just handed $1 billion of other people's money in the latest rail boondoggle happens to be married to someone we know: [...] The purpose of government spending in a socialistic corruptocracy like ours is to "spread the wealth around" — i.e., confiscate it from those who create it for redistribution to our rulers and those in their favor.  For this reason, it is totally unnecessary for rail and green energy projects to make any economic sense whatsoever.  All by itself this explains why capitalism works and socialism does not work.

Dianne Feinstein's husband wins near-billion dollar California 'high speed rail' contract.  To the surprise of absolutely no one familiar with the ways of Corruptifornia, the one-party state completely in the hands of the Democrats, a consortium whose lead firm is controlled by Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was awarded a nearly billion-dollar contract for the construction of the first phase of the so-called high-speed rail line to link San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Those paying attention to the project call it the "half-fast" rail line because it will share trackage with conventional commuter rail trains in the sprawling Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, lowering its average speed to levels achieved by American railways a century ago.

The closest high-speed rail will come to Sacramento?  The contractor for California's high-speed rail system is having an event on the Capitol grounds, featuring a model car that is "Connectin Cities at 220 miles per hour."  For $68 billion, they ought to be able to afford a "g" (in connecting).  Furthermore, this train will never go 220 mph — not with a blended route that goes slowly through populated areas on Caltrain lines.

California's High-Speed Rail Kicks Off Without Money To Finish It.  It finally happened last week:  California officially broke ground on its "high-speed" rail line, the wasteful $68 billion (and counting) project that promises to become the biggest public works boondoggle in the history of the U.S.  And that's saying a lot.

Construction Begins On California's $68 Billion High-Speed Rail Line.  One of the biggest transportation projects the country has ever seen broke ground Monday in Fresno, Calif.  In theory, building the much-delayed high speed rail line would allow a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours, with speeds of over 200 miles an hour.  The milestone comes six years after voters first approved an almost $10 billion bond act to fund the project.  But that bond, plus about $3 billion in federal funds, still leaves the project about $55 billion short of the cost to get the line up and running by 2030.

California leaders set for high-speed rail groundbreaking Tuesday.  California on Tuesday [1/6/2015] will break ground in Fresno on its ambitious but controversial high-speed rail project, marking another milestone for Governor Jerry Brown and for foreign manufacturers waiting to bid on lucrative train contracts.

Washington Governor Imposes Cap-and-Trade Through Executive Order.  Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee is not waiting for the state legislature to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but instead has issued an executive order to implement a cap-and-trade program, eliminate coal power and fund green energy projects. [...] Inlsee argues that more action is needed if the state is to meet climate goals passed by the legislature in 2008.  Those goals call for the state to lower its carbon dioxide emissions by certain amounts by 2020.

California eyes plan to speed bullet train using cap-and-trade program proceeds.  As envisioned, California's $68 billion bullet-train system, the nation's first, would take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco at speeds of more than 200 miles an hour.  The project, though, has been beset by planning delays, fluctuating cost estimates and court challenges that have threatened to kill or delay it indefinitely.  Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed using one-third of funds raised annually through cap-and-trade auctions to help pay for high-speed rail.

High-Speed Rail Decision Is [a] Victory for [the] Rule of Law.  California Judge Michael Kenny has barred state bond funding for the California high-speed rail system, finding "the state's High-Speed Rail Authority failed to follow voter-approved requirements designed to prevent reckless spending."  These protections had been important in securing voter approval of a $10 billion bond issue in 2008.  Judge Kenny's decision means California government officials cannot ignore the state's laws, even when its leadership finds them politically inexpedient.  The ruling forbids the state from arbitrarily casting aside legally binding promises.

52% want bullet train stopped, poll finds.  A majority of voters want the California bullet train project stopped and consider it a waste of money, even as state political leaders have struggled to bolster public support and make key compromises to satisfy critics, a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found.  Statewide, 52% of the respondents said the $68-billion project to link Los Angeles and San Francisco by trains traveling up to 220 mph should be halted.  Just 43% said it should go forward.

U.S. Taxpayers to Bailout Rail Project with $42 Billion.  After getting slammed with higher taxes, Americans throughout the U.S. will be on the hook for the multi-billion-dollar infusion necessary to complete a grossly mismanaged high-speed rail system in California.  Even those who have never been to the state and have no association with it will contribute because federal lawmakers have essentially agreed to fund the project, which will end up costing a monstrous $68.4 billion to finish and hundreds of millions of dollars annually to operate and maintain.  The high-speed rail system will run 520 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles and is scheduled to be completed by 2028.

Why fast trains are a waste of money.  California wants about $19 billion for an 800-mile track from Anaheim to San Francisco.  Constructing all 13 corridors could easily approach $200 billion.  Most (or all) of that would have to come from government.  What would we get for this huge investment?  Not much.  Here's what we wouldn't get:  any meaningful reduction in traffic congestion, greenhouse-gas emissions, air travel, or oil consumption and imports.  Nada, zip.  If you can do fourth-grade math, you can understand why.

A Golden State train wreck.  At one point, an estimate of 44 million riders a year — subsequently revised downward, substantially — assumed gasoline costing $40 a gallon. [...] In 2008, Californians passed an initiative authorizing $9.95 billion in bonds to build what they were told would be a $33 billion high-speed rail system.  California, constantly lurching from one budget crisis to a worse one, could not nearly afford even that, and soon the price was re-estimated at around $100 billion.

California Goes Off the Rails with High Speed Train.  The State of California was already facing a $19 billion budget deficit, shorted public schools $8 billion, and was set to release imprisoned rapists into "community probation" when the Legislature approved selling $4.6 billion in new state bonds to build 130 miles of railroad track through some of the most uninhabited farm country in Central California.

How Insider Politics Saved California's Train to Nowhere.  The rail authority promised voters that the train wouldn't require a subsidy and that the feds and private sector would pick up most of the $33 billion tab.  Expecting a free ride, voters leapt on board and approved the initiative in November 2008.  Not long afterward, the authority raised the price to $43 billion.  Investors refused to plunk down money without a revenue guarantee — that is, a subsidy — from the state, which wasn't forthcoming.  California's attorney general, whom we now call Gov. Jerry Brown, declined to investigate the bait-and-switch.

Getting Nowhere, Very Fast.  California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt.  But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.  Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.  But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.

The governor can strong-arm companies with the state's new Thermageddon Law.
California To Pay For High Speed Rail With Extortion.  The governor told ABC 7's "Eyewitness Newsmakers" program that environmental impact fees paid by industries that emit large amounts of greenhouse gas will help fund the big train project.

California Struggling to Find High-Speed Rail Funds.  California's plans for high-speed rail, which envision tracks connecting Southern California to the Bay Area with riders traveling at speeds of 220 miles per hour, suffered a setback in mid-September as Congress cut billions of dollars from the Federal Railroad Administration's budget.  President Barack Obama, who is pushing high-speed rail projects in select states, sought $8 billion in funding for fiscal 2012.  House Appropriations subcommittee members, however, cut nearly $7 billion from that request.  The bulk of the remaining $1 billion is already allocated for Amtrak operations.

Dubious Claims for High-Speed Rail:  No high-speed rail line has been built from scratch in the United States.  But historically, urban passenger rail projects have, on average, gone 40 percent over their projected costs.  At the same time, U.S. passenger rail planners typically overestimate ridership by an average of about 100 percent.  California's high-speed rail authority is projecting that the San Francisco to Los Angeles line will be carrying two to three times more passengers by 2020 than Amtrak's entire Boston to Washington corridor currently carries.  A Reason Foundation review of the state rail authority's plan called the ridership projections "the most unrealistic projections produced for a major transport project anywhere in the world."

Congressional panel launches probe of California's high-speed rail project.  A congressional committee has launched a wide-ranging examination of the California high-speed rail project, including possible conflicts of interest and how the agency overseeing it plans to spend billions of dollars in federal assistance.

It's 'Next Stop 1970' For California High-Speed Rail.  Gov. Jerry Brown is doing all he can to save his state's ill-conceived high-speed rail project, but he's no magician.  He's finding that there's no way to cut the project's cost other than to make it smaller and less speedy — in short, even less like the scheme that voters approved in 2008.  He has just endorsed a new business plan that lowers the system's projected price tag from $98 billion to $68 billion.  This is still well above the $40 billion estimate of 2008, and the project is scaled back.

California high-speed rail takes a new hit.  The latest blow to California's plan to connect north and south with an ambitious network of high-speed rail lines came Monday [4/9/2012] in Washington.  Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California announced that the oversight committee he chairs will investigate crucial federal funding of the project.  That followed two studies — one by and independent panel, one by the state auditor — that called the plan risky.  Polls show faltering support among California voters because of rising costs.

High-speed spending: Bullet train may need $3.5 million a day.  If California starts building a 130-mile segment of high-speed rail late this year as planned, it will enter into a risky race against a deadline set up under federal law.  The bullet train track through the Central Valley would cost $6 billion and have to be completed by September 2017, or else potentially lose some of its federal funding.  It would mean spending as much as $3.5 million every calendar day, holidays and weekends included — the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history, according to industry and academic experts.

Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie.  In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a "time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices."  Plainly the choices weren't tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion — nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January.

California high speed rail project going pretty much as expected.  The proposed service hopes to whisk commuters from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a matter of hours without all that bother of using the existing regional air service to do the same thing faster.  Earlier this year, Ed noted that some observers felt that the financing for this effort was looking "increasingly risky."  This weekend the Wall Street Journal reports that our earlier estimation was in error.  The financing isn't "risky" at all... it's an unmitigated disaster.

Poll: Voters turn against California bullet train.  A new poll finds California voters are experiencing buyers' remorse over a proposed $68 billion bullet train project, as the number of lawsuits against the rail system grows.

Environmental objections in path of bullet train.  The California bullet train is promoted as an important environmental investment for the future, but over the next decade the heavy construction project would potentially harm air quality, aquatic life and endangered species across the Central Valley.  Eleven endangered species, including the San Joaquin kit fox, would be affected, according to federal biologists.  Massive emissions from diesel-powered heavy equipment could foul the already filthy air.  Dozens of rivers, canals and wetlands fed from the rugged peaks of the Sierra Nevada would be crossed, creating other knotty issues.

Assembly approves high-speed rail funding.  The [California] Assembly passed $8 billion in funding for high-speed rail and other projects on Thursday [7/5/2012], sending the bill back to the state Senate for final approval.

Cash-Strapped California OKs Funding for High-Speed Rail.  California lawmakers approved billions of dollars Friday in construction financing for the initial segment of the nation's first dedicated high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Environmental objections in path of bullet train.  The California bullet train is promoted as an important environmental investment for the future, but over the next decade the heavy construction project would potentially harm air quality, aquatic life and endangered species across the Central Valley.  Eleven endangered species, including the San Joaquin kit fox, would be affected, according to federal biologists.  Massive emissions from diesel-powered heavy equipment could foul the already filthy air.

Bias alert!
Alarmists always paint the worst possible picture to describe events that haven't happened yet:  The project would potentially pollute the air.  It could foul the already filthy air.  Really?  The air in California is filthy, after years and years of the strictest air pollution laws in the world?  And if already filthy air is "fouled", who would notice?  The primary obstacle to the bullet train is economics, not air quality.  Bullet trains are luxury items for the benefit of the upper class, paid for by everyone.

California High-Speed Rail: Unsafe at Any Speed.  Democratic California state Sen. Joe Simitian probably is best-known as the author of California's bill to ban the use of hand-held cellphones while driving.  After Friday's vote, Simitian may be best-known as the Democrat who warned his colleagues not to issue $4.6 billion in bonds for big-ticket high-speed rail.  "Any of us who talk to our folks know that they're asking the same questions," Simitian reasoned.  "They're saying, 'Really?  You made these cuts.  We're threatened with more.  And you want to build a high-speed train?'"  The state Senate, nonetheless, passed the bill with 21 votes.  Gov. Jerry Brown praised lawmakers for their "bold action."  Bold or foolhardy?

California's Railroad Job.  California's state legislature on Friday green-lighted funding for its $68 billion (or more) bullet train, which in 30 years may connect San Francisco and Anaheim.  Since the state has only enough cash in hand to build about 100 miles of track, the train will more likely dead end in Bakersfield, about 130 miles south of Fresno, where the first segment is supposed to begin.  Coincidence?

How Insider Politics Saved California's Train to Nowhere.  Environmentalism may be religion to some on the left, but its high priests aren't all pure and righteous.  Consider the not-so-immaculate conception of California's bullet train.  Last week, the state's legislature authorized $4.7 billion in bonds to start construction on high-speed rail, which had been stalled in Sacramento for more than a decade due to logistical and political malfunctions.  This train is now out of the station — though it's almost certain to break down soon.

Bay Area faces new high-speed rail costs.  Now that Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation to allow the state to spend billions on high-speed rail, Bay Area residents had better brace for the real ride — a push for $650 million in toll hikes and new San Francisco taxes.

Obama's $107 billion transportation plan: Trains and roads to nowhere.  [Scroll down]  Then there is the $47 billion that Obama wants to spend on brand new high-speed rail projects across the country.  One need only look at how his signature rail project in California is progressing to get a sense of how well this money will be spent.  More than three years after Obama's stimulus funded California's high-speed rail dream, the project's first phase hasn't even broken ground.  Even if the first section of track is ever completed, all it would do is it would connect the Central Valley town of Madera (population 60,000) with Charles Manson's prison home in Corcoran (population 24,000).

All Aboard California's high-speed train to nowhere.  [Scroll down]  Legally, California's high-speed rail project should be dead in its tracks, because it's en route to operating subsidies, too — another no-no.  "California's Democrat supermajority are pulling all the levers and changing the rules, as a payoff to the public unions that elected them," Katy Grimes, investigator at the free-market Pacific Research Institute, tells The Daily Caller.  The GAO report doubts private investment will come without such "revenue guarantees."  There's no model for public-private partnerships in the U.S.  They've failed before in Texas and Florida.

Diane Feinstein's husband's company lands big high-speed rail contract.  The group lead by Tutor Perini bid $985,000,000 to build the initial 29-mile stretch, roughly from Fresno to Madera, which doesn't include the costs for electrification and land purchase.  And, as Laer points out at Crazifornia, they started with this section because it's the cheapest.  (I can't wait to see what the bids are to lay track through the mountain passes...)

Dianne Feinstein's Husband Bags High-Speed Rail Construction Contract.  Sen. Diane Feinstein's husband Richard Blum won a construction contract for California's high-speed rail project, reports the California Political Review.  Author Laer Pearce says Perini-Zachary-Parsons, a construction group partially owned by Blum's investment firm, Blum Capital, and their investors, bagged the nearly billion dollar contract.

California High Speed Rail Falls Short of Expectations.  Various proposals have envisioned a high speed rail system that spans the United States.  In California, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has already begun implementing its decades-old plan to connect Northern California with Southern California.  However, the rail system would lose more than $100 million per year, say Joseph Vranich, Wendell Cox and Adrian Moore in a new study for the Reason Foundation.

California High-Speed Rail: An Updated Due Diligence Report.  Reason Foundation's 2008 report, The California High Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report, warned that plans by the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA or Authority) issued prior to and during 2008 were inaccurate, misleading and not in compliance with California statutes.  As well, it found that the Authority's financing plan overstated projected revenues and private financing, and understated capital requirements and operating subsidies needed from taxpayers.

The California High-Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report.  With the high costs of building in California and the history of cost overruns on rail projects, the final price tag for the complete high-speed rail system will actually be $65 to $81 billion, according to the Reason Foundation report.  And while the Rail Authority forecasts between 65 and 96 million intercity riders by 2030, the due diligence report finds these projections are dramatically inflated.

High-Speed Train in California Is Caught in a Political Storm.  Gov. Jerry Brown of California is riding into an election year on a wave of popularity and an upturn in the state's fortunes.  But a project that has become a personal crusade for him over the past two years — a 520-mile high-speed train line from Los Angeles to San Francisco — is in trouble, reeling from a court ruling that undermined its financing, and from slipping public support and opponents' rising calls to shut it down.

CA High-Speed Rail Lowers Revenue Projections.  In a new business plan submitted to state legislators last week, the California High-Speed Rail Authority offered lower revenue projections than it had two years before, predicting that revenue will be "5 percent lower than originally projected by 2025 and 10 percent lower by 2040," according to a report by Sacramento's KCRA.com.


Gun control:

Calicrats fixing to require insurers to obtain information about personal firearms, then turn the information over to the Daddy Gov.  The Second Amendment doesn't grant a person the right to bear arms — the Second Amendment recognizes an individual's God-given right to self-defense, and prohibits the American government from infringing upon that right.  Well in other news that isn't news, Commiefornia is ignoring all that law and precedent; on Friday, Democrat Assemblyman Mike Gipson put forth a bill that would require insurance companies to ask a litany of very specific questions regarding personal firearms an applicant may or may not have.  Then, these insurers would need to hand this information over to state agencies and lawmakers. [...] Mind you, these are the same Democrats who think law enforcement asking about a person's citizenship status, or an employer asking a job candidate if he/she has a criminal history, are unacceptable lines of inquiry.  The state just wants to know if you have guns or gun safes and how many, and how you store said firearms — for your safety of course!

Federal Judges Strikes Down California Background Checks For Ammo.  When a circuit court as notoriously liberal feels compelled to send cases back to lower court in light of Bruen, the the Second Amendment is winning.  On the downside, the Democratic Party in general, and California Democrats in particular, have proven that no amount of rulings will prevent them from pursuing the goal of complete disarmament of law-abiding citizens.  Expect California Democrats to respond by passing a whole slew of gun-grabbing legislation that continues to ignore the clear guidelines of Bruen.

Federal judge blocks California law that would have banned carrying firearms in most public places.  A federal judge on Wednesday blocked a California law that would have banned carrying firearms in most public places, ruling that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and deprives people of their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.  The law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September was set to take effect Jan. 1.  It would have prohibited people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos.  The ban would apply whether the person has a permit to carry a concealed weapon or not.  One exception would be for privately owned businesses that put up signs saying people are allowed to bring guns on their premises.

California Imposing Restrictions on Carrying Guns Despite SCOTUS Ruling.  In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court upheld the Second Amendment right to carry guns for self-defense outside of the home.  But California is looking to circumvent that right by imposing dubious restrictions on where citizens can carry guns.  Other states have tried this route and each has been struck down by various courts.  But that didn't stop Governor Gavin Newsom and Democrats in the state legislature from trying.  S.B. 2, signed into law by Newsom in September and effective January 1, 2024, recognizes the right of individuals to carry firearms for self-protection.  But it limits the discretion of licensing authorities to a ludicrous degree.  In fact, S.B. 2 notes that the changes made legal in Bruen would allow "individuals to carry firearms in most public areas," according to Reason.com's Jacob Sullum.  Very true, so what's the problem?  Too much freedom.

They will let you carry a gun, until the first time you use it.
LA Homeowner Who Opened Fire on Armed Robbers at His House Has Carry Permit Revoked.  The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department notified Vince Ricci, the Los Angeles Mid-City homeowner who opened fire on armed suspects who tried to get into his house, that his carry permit had been revoked.  Last Sunday, Ricci was returning to his home when he turned the tide on two would-be-armed robbers when he drew his own licensed concealed firearm and opened fire on them.  Ricci had just returned to his home after going to the gym when the two armed robbers ran into his front yard and confronted him at his front door.  They tried to force their way into the home as Ricci was unlocking the front door.  The two suspects had already produced handguns and had pointed them at him when Ricci, who said that he "thought he was going to die," produced his own handgun and opened fire on both suspects.  Although no suspects were hit by his rounds, his actions immediately caused the two suspects to flee the area.

Newsom Signs Extreme Gun Control Measures Into Law.  On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed several gun control measures into law, one of which restricts where gun owners can carry their firearms.  According to the Los Angeles Times, one of the laws Newsom signed, S.B. 2, came in response to the Supreme Court's New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen ruling last year, which struck down a gun control law in New York.  The new law "seriously limits who can obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm" and details more than two dozen "sensitive" locations where guns cannot be carried.  This includes child care centers, public transit, museums, zoos, medical facilities, among many others.

Federal court strikes down California ban on gun magazines for second time.  A federal judge yet again declared California's ban on gun magazines unconstitutional Friday.  The ban was first instituted in a 2000 measure signed into law by then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, and prohibited state residents from buying or selling magazines that hold 10 or more rounds.  U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez struck it down after previously striking it in 2019.  The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Benitez's ruling in 2021, arguing that the ban fell in line with the state's efforts to reduce gun violence and is compatible with the Second Amendment.  Then, the Supreme Court vacated the appeals court ruling and ordered new proceedings consistent with the decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.  Benitez cited the case in his decision because it clarified that gun control laws must be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." The judge claimed this magazine ban was not.

San Diego judge blocks key parts of California's strict handgun law.  A San Diego federal judge has issued a ruling that blocks four provisions of California's strict handgun law, becoming the second U.S. district judge within two weeks to rule that parts of the state's Unsafe Handgun Act likely violate the Second Amendment.  Judge Dana Sabraw's ruling in the San Diego case could potentially open the door for Californians to purchase hundreds of types of semiautomatic pistols that state officials currently deem "unsafe" and thus do not include on a roster of approved handguns.  But the judge issued a stay on his decision, giving Attorney General Rob Bonta time to appeal the ruling.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Controversial California Handgun Roster Law on 2nd Amendment Grounds.  On Monday, March 20, District Judge Cormac Carney in Santa Anna, California struck down the state's Handgun Roster gun control law finding it violated the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  This is the latest blow to gun control advocates striking down state gun laws following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 expanding gun rights.  The repeal will take effect fourteen days following the ruling.  California's Unsafe Handgun Act required all new semiautomatic handguns sold to Californians to have unique safety features not required in other states effectively freezing the technology available and preventing handgun modern safer handguns designs from being available to Californians.  The law was later amended to include a requirement for microstamping ammunition, which has never been implemented.

Federal Judge Blocks Enforcement of California Handgun Regulation.  A federal judge on Monday [3/20/2023] blocked enforcement of a decades-old California law that requires newly developed handguns to have particular safety features, ruling the regulation overly stringent and a violation of the Second Amendment.  California's Unsafe Handgun Act, enacted in 2001, aims to prevent accidental discharges through various safety standards.  The legislation mandates that certain handguns have a chamber-load indicator and a magazine-disconnect mechanism that prevents a handgun from being fired if the magazine is not fully inserted.  To assist with gun-crime investigations, the firearms also must have a microstamping mechanism, which allows the transfer of microscopic imprints of the handgun's make, model, and serial number onto shell casings when the gun is fired.

Poll: Two-Thirds of CA Adults Say Gun Control [is] More Important than Gun Rights.  A survey released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California shows two-thirds of California adults believe gun control is more important than gun rights.  The survey was conducted January 13-20, 2023, and 1,539 California adults were surveyed. [...] The responses: 65 percent of respondents said it is more important "to control gun ownership" while 34 percent said it is more important "to protect the right of Americans to own guns."

How Do You Ban Something That Is Already Illegal?  Many gun-control advocates are insisting that the proper response to the Monterey Park mass shooting is to put a nationwide ban on the gun the shooter used, even though that firearm is already illegal in California, and there is no way he could have legally acquired it.

California Now Allows Private Residents to Sue Gunmakers.  California's SB 1327 went into effect on January 1, 2023, allowing private residents in the state to file suits against gun manufacturers who violate the state's "assault weapons" ban or ban on gun sales to anyone under 21.  The Los Angeles Times reported that supporters of the new law view the lawsuit option as a way of "enlisting an army of grass-roots enforcers" to safeguard the state's "assault weapons" ban and minimum age requirement.

District Attorney Gascon won't charge gun crimes but promotes California gun control laws.  District Attorney George Gascon has backed recent gun control legislation in California in order to keep Los Angeles residents safe — yet has a policy against prosecuting defendants on gun charges.  Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed several bills Friday that place restrictions on sales and ownership of weapons, including those that are fake, commonly called ghost guns.  Gascon praised Newsom in a tweet.  "Thank you, @cagovernor Newsom, for signing several important bills to protect Californians from #gunviolence, including four bills supported by my office," he tweeted.

New California law allows civil litigation against gun manufacturers.  A California bill signed into law Tuesday will allow residents to sue the manufacturers of guns that are used in crimes.  A 2005 federal law prevents gun manufacturers from civil litigation when their products are used in crimes.  The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom said the new state law uses an exemption to the federal law that allows firearms makers or sellers to be sued for violating state laws on the sale or marketing of guns.

Woke California AG Tells Gun-Permitting Officials to Deny Applicants Based on Politics.  After the Supreme Court's landmark Second Amendment ruling in June, California's attorney general encouraged law enforcement officials in the state to deny firearm carry permits to individuals with a history of "hatred and racism" — whether expressed in social media posts or elsewhere.  The problem, critics say, is that in these politically polarized times defining hatred and racism is problematic, leading to definitions that disfavor the beliefs of conservatives and others who don't toe the woke or politically correct line.  Allowing these concepts to be used in the gun-permitting process is a recipe for abuse, they say, and could lead to violations of gun-permit applicants' Second and First Amendment rights.

California Agencies Told to End 'Good Cause' Requirement for Concealed Weapons Permit.  Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has advised California law enforcement agencies that the "good cause" requirement for issuing a concealed weapons permit is likely unconstitutional and should no longer be used.  The advice came in a legal alert on Friday to "all California district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs, county counsels and city attorneys" and follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday overturning New York State's "proper cause" requirement.

State looking to force gun owners to buy liability insurance, and lawmakers are saying it's because... cars.  California is seeking to become the first state in the US to require liability insurance for gun owners.  "Guns kill more people than cars," Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, said in a statement.  "Yet gun owners are not required to carry liability insurance like car owners must.  Why should taxpayers, survivors, families, employers, and communities bear the $280 billion annual cost of gun violence?  It's time for gun owners to shoulder their fair share."

The Editor says...
Not even a Democrat politician from Berkeley believes that a hoodlum in an L.A. gang is going to buy liability insurance for his stolen gun.  This is just a tax that will affect only those who obey the law.

Appeals court invokes the Founding Fathers in striking down California's ban on semi-automatic gun sales to people under 21.  A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California's ban on the sale of semi-automatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional.  In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and that a San Diego judge should have blocked what it called 'an almost total ban on semi-automatic centerfire rifles for young adults.'  'America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army,' Judge Ryan Nelson wrote, 'Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice — the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.'

Unconstitutional? CA bill would permit citizens to enforce weapons ban, sue gunmakers.  In an attempt to skirt the U.S. Constitution and challenge the Supreme Court, a new bill in California would allow private citizens to go after gun makers in the same way Texas lets them target abortion providers.  [Tweet]  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) proposed Friday letting private citizens in his state sue gun makers to stop them from selling assault weapons, comparing the bill to one in Texas that lets its residents sue abortion providers to stop the procedures.  At a news conference in Del Mar, Newsom said he thought the Texas law was wrong and that the Supreme Court's decision in December to let it stay in effect while it goes through appeal was "absurd" and "outrageous".

San Jose To Tax Law-Abiding Gun Owners For The Actions Of Criminals.  The Democratic Party's war against the second amendment opens a new front thanks to the San Jose City Council's decision to tax law-abiding gun owners for the actions of criminals: [...] Chief Justice John Marshall said that the power to tax is the power to destroy, and here the attempt is to destroy lawful gun ownership by imposing collective guilt on the law-abiding for the actions of the criminal and turning law-abiding gun owners into criminals for refusing to comply with an unconstitutional, punitive tax.  The endgame, as always, complete civilian gun confiscation.

San Jose plans to be first U.S. city requiring firearms owners to pay back taxpayers for gun violence.  A month after a gunman killed nine workers at a rail yard in San Jose, the city is taking steps to become the first in the nation to require firearms owners to buy insurance and pay fees to relieve taxpayers of the costs of responding to gun violence.  The San Jose City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night [6/29/2021] to draft an ordinance that would order gun owners in the city to obtain insurance and pay an annual fee to subsidize police responses, ambulances, medical treatment and other municipal expenses related to shootings, injuries and deaths.  The amount of the fee hasn't been determined, but Mayor Sam Liccardo said Wednesday it would probably be "a couple dozen dollars" and would not be charged to those who could not afford it.  He said insurers have advised the city that including gun coverage on their policies would add little or nothing to typical premium costs.

Judge Overturns California's 32 year ban on assault rifles after ruling it violates Second Amendment right to bear arms.  A federal judge has overturned California's three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, ruling that it violates the constitutional right to bear arms.  U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled Friday that the state's definition of illegal military-style rifles unlawfully deprives law-abiding Californians of weapons commonly allowed in most other states.  He handed down the two page ruling in response to a lawsuit filed against the State of California by James Miller, Patrick Russ, Ryan Peterson and the the San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee.

California's Assault Weapons Ban Violates Second Amendment:  Judge.  California's ban on so-called assault weapons violates the Second Amendment, a federal judge ruled Friday [6/4/2021].  The government through the law "bans an entire class of very popular hardware — firearms that are lawful under federal law and under the laws of most states and that are commonly held by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes," U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, a George W. Bush nominee, wrote in his 94-page ruling in Miller et al. v Bonta et al.  "Under no level of heightened scrutiny can the law survive," he added.  California laws prohibit the manufacture, use, or sale of an "assault weapon," defined as a semiautomatic rifle with certain characteristics such as a fixed magazine that has the capacity to hold more than 10 rounds.  People who violate the laws face a felony or a misdemeanor and could land prison sentences of up to eight years.

California judge overturns "assault weapons" ban.  California has had a ban on so-called "assault rifles" such as the AR-15 for more than thirty years.  The law has been challenged multiple times but has always seemed to hold up in the end.  That changed last night when U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez ruled that the law was unconstitutional.  He issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law.  The judge's choice of words in his ruling clearly triggered both Governor Gavin Newsom and State Attorney General Rob Bonta, both of whom vowed to appeal the ruling.

Judge rules California's ban on assault weapons unconstitutional.  A federal judge on Friday struck down California's ban on assault weapons as unconstitutional but left plenty of time for the state to file an appeal.  Judge Roger T. Benitez, who has favored pro-gun groups in past rulings, described the AR-15 rifle, used in many of the nation's deadliest mass shootings, as an ideal weapon.  "Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment," he wrote in Friday's [6/4/2021] decision.  "Yet, the State of California makes it a crime to have an AR15 type rifle," Benitez continued.  "Therefore, this Court declares the California statutes to be unconstitutional."  He praised the AR-15 as a rifle that should be formally protected by the law for its "militia readiness."

California: Legislature Adjourns, Anti-Gun Bills Headed to the Governor!.  Late last night, the California Legislature adjourned the 2020 Legislative Session.  Three anti-gun bills, AB 2362, AB 2847, and SB 914, passed the Legislature and will now be enrolled to Governor Newsom for his consideration.

Huge Gun Victory in 9th Circuit Court.  Send Thank You Notes to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  California's high-capacity magazine limitations for guns "infringes on [the] fundamental right to self defense" and is therefore unconstitutional, according to a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals.  Yes, the court previously known as the "9th Circus" for being the most Leftist, most overturned, and most wrong court in the land, ruled in favor of the rights of gun owners on Friday afternoon [8/14/2020].  California deemed that the use or sale of magazines with a higher capacity than ten bullets (LCMs) are illegal.  Voters passed the measure.  The three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit Court ruled that the limitation is unconstitutional.

Federal Appeals Court Rules California's Ban on High-Capacity Magazines Unconstitutional.  A federal appeals court on Friday overturned California's ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, ruling that the prohibition violates the Second Amendment.  "Even well-intentioned laws must pass constitutional muster," Appellate Judge Kenneth Lee wrote for the majority on the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, adding that California's ban "strikes at the core of the Second Amendment — the right to armed self-defense."  California's ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets is "so sweeping that half of all magazines in America are now unlawful to own in California," Lee wrote.

Backdoor handgun ban up for a vote in California.  A proposed amendment to California's Handguns Certified for Sale law seems like a minor change at first, but Second Amendment advocates warn that it would amount to a de facto ban on handgun sales in the state.  AB 2847, would relax the state's difficult microstamping requirements, but at the same time, it would remove three older handgun models for every new handgun it adds to the official roster of those safe for sale.  "In theory it makes the California microstamping or handgun roster easier for manufacturers to comply with," said gun rights activist Reno May.  "What it really is is a backdoor handgun ban that would slowly remove guns and make it so that guns could not be added in the future.  This is a bad bill," he cautioned on Thursday.

California's Ammo Background Checks Misfire.  California's attempts to discourage gun ownership hit a bump Thursday.  U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez granted a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing its background checks on ammunition purchases.  The initiative, which was spearheaded by Gavin Newsom when he was the lieutenant governor, passed in 2016 with 63 percent of the vote.  The background checks have failed miserably, succeeding only in preventing law-abiding citizens from buying ammunition.  Between July 2019 and January 2020, 101,047 non-prohibited Californians were prevented from buying bullets.  By contrast, just 188 prohibited people were denied.  That means that for every prohibited person whose purchase was rejected, 537 law-abiding citizens were denied.

NRA, other gun rights groups sue four Bay Area counties over gun store closures.  A group of local residents, gun stores and gun rights organizations including the NRA have filed a federal lawsuit against four Bay Area counties for mandating that gun stores close as "non-essential businesses" during the region's coronavirus outbreak.  The lawsuit, filed with the U.S. District Court for Northern California Tuesday, alleges that local officials from Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties violated the United State Constitution's Second and Fourteenth Amendments by ordering that gun stores be closed.  "California's local governments cannot simply suspend the Constitution," the lawsuit states.  "Authorities may not, by decree or otherwise, enact and/or enforce a suspension or deprivation of constitutional liberties.  And they certainly may not use a public health crisis as political cover to impose bans and restrictions on rights they do not like."

L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva Says Gun Dealers Are 'Nonessential.' The Department of Homeland Security Disagrees.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) has joined other gun rights groups in challenging COVID-19 control measures that ban the sale of firearms.  In a federal lawsuit filed on Friday [3/27/2020], the NRA argues that California Gov. Gavin Newsom's March 19 business closure order, which Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has interpreted as covering gun dealers, violates the Second Amendment and the right to due process.  Villanueva's interpretation is not only constitutionally questionable but seemingly untenable in light of new guidance from the federal Department of Homeland Security.  In an advisory issued on Saturday, the department added firearm retailers to its definition of the "essential critical infrastructure workforce."  The order by Newsom (D) specifically exempted "federal critical infrastructure sectors."

NRA Sues California Officials for Closing Gun Stores Amid Virus.  The National Rifle Association accused California's governor and the sheriff of Los Angeles County in a lawsuit of taking away constitutional rights to firearms by shutting gun stores during the coronavirus outbreak.  "The circumstances posed by the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak are noteworthy, but do not excuse unlawful government infringements upon freedom," the NRA said in a complaint it filed Friday in Los Angeles federal court along with two individuals, a retail shop and three other firearms advocacy groups.  Guns have been flying off store shelves in recent weeks in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic even as states are divided over whether gun stores should stay open like pharmacies and gas stations, according to a recent New York Times report.  Ohio, Illinois and Michigan have deemed firearms retailers "essential," while New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have not, the Times reported.  New Jersey was sued this week for closing stores.

Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Restricting Rifle Purchases by Californians.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation Friday to limit rifle purchases by Californians.  The Sacramento Bee reports the legislation limiting rifle purchases was sponsored by Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge).  The Bee also reports similar legislation was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on three different occasions.  But Newsom signed it, thereby expanding California's one-handgun-a-month rule to include semiautomatic centerfire long guns as well.

California Governor Approves Broadest Gun Seizure Laws In US.  Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved some of the strictest gun laws and gun seizure powers in the U.S. Friday [10/11/2019], signing into law 15 different pieces of gun legislation.  Newsom has reinforced a "red flag" law that enables educators, employers and co-workers to inform on gun owners and request that a restraining order be placed on them — if they are believed to be a danger to themselves or society, according to the Associated Press.

California adopts nation's broadest gun seizure laws.  California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 15 gun-related bills into law Friday, tightening the state's already-stringent Second Amendment restrictions.  One of the bills, which expands a so-called "red flag" law to allow co-workers, employers and educators to seek gun violence restraining orders against firearms owners they fear are a danger to themselves and others, was vetoed twice by Newsom's predecessor, Jerry Brown.  Newsom also signed a companion bill allowing the gun violence restraining orders to last one and five years, although the gun owners could petition to end those restrictions earlier.  The bill also allows judges to issue search warrants at the same time as they grant the orders.  The warrants can be used immediately if the gun owners are served with the relinquishment orders but fail to turn over the firearms or ammunition.

NRA 1, San Francisco Board of Supervisors 0.  Remember last month when San Francisco's Board of Supervisors passed a resolution declaring the National Rifle Association a domestic terrorist organization and ordered city employees to "take every reasonable step to limit" business interactions with the NRA and its supporters?  The one that our David French labeled "a retaliatory public attack on constitutionally protected speech"?  The NRA sued, and lo and behold, San Francisco is backing down, before the suit even went to court.

San Francisco backs down after NRA challenges its designation as 'terrorist organization'.  Derangement is in the air as progressives, driven to distraction by not just Trump's election and successes but their own failures, act out their rage with no consideration of the downsides.  An excellent example of Non-Trump Progressive Derangement Syndrome (NTPDS) is offered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, embarrassed by their city's descent into filth and squalor, lashed out of the National Rifle Association instead of doing anything about the homeless population that is making sidewalks dangerous to traverse and spreading disease and crime.

Dear San Francisco.  The City of San Francisco recently adopted a resolution labeling the National Rifle Association a "domestic terrorist organization" and threatening to boycott anyone who does business with the NRA. In response to this despicable act, the NRA, the nation's largest and most effective civil rights organization, has produced this video.  [Video clip]

Here we go.  NRA sues San Francisco.  Last week we discussed the embarrassing decision by the San Francisco City Council to label the National Rifle Association a "domestic terrorist organization."  While that was bad enough to start with, they went several steps further, declaring that they would "limit business interactions with the NRA and its supporters."  This was clearly a bridge too far for the NRA.  They initially released a statement calling this action "a reckless assault on a law-abiding organization, it's members, and the freedoms they all stand for."  But they aren't stopping there.  Now the case may be heading to court.

NRA Sues San Francisco for Declaring It a "Domestic Terrorist Organization".  The National Rifle Association filed suit against the city of San Francisco Monday after the city declared the gun rights group a "domestic terrorist organization."  The city's board of supervisors unanimously approved the resolution that was introduced six weeks ago after three people were shot and killed at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif.  After its passage last week, the board acknowledged the non[-]binding resolution had little practical effect beyond its portrayal of the NRA, which the board hopes will spur the city to curtail relationships with companies that do business with the NRA.

NRA sues San Francisco over city declaring it a domestic terrorist organization.  The National Rifle Association on Monday sued the city of San Francisco over a declaration deeming the lobbying group a "domestic terrorist organization," according to The Associated Press.  The city Board of Supervisors passed the resolution last week, with Supervisor Catherine Stefani saying she was moved to draft it following August's shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival.  In the lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, the NRA accused the city of maintaining a blacklist, asking the court to "instruct elected officials that freedom of speech means you cannot silence or punish those with whom you disagree."

What San Francisco's Declaration Of The NRA As A Terrorist Group Says About America Today.  On Tuesday [9/3/2019], San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously declared the National Rifle Association to be a "domestic terrorist organization" and urged the city to re-evaluate its financial commitments to organizations that conduct business with the interest group.  City leaders labeled the gun rights group that represents nearly five million members a "terrorist" group in response to several mass shootings that took place this summer, including one that took place at a food festival in Gilroy, California killing three people just south of San Francisco.

How 'Secret Obsession' Exposes California's Dumb Gun Laws.  Unfortunately, California's current gun laws prevent any sort of meaningful self-defense for the state's most vulnerable populations.  Pursuant to California penal codes, it is illegal for citizens to open carry firearms in any instance and concealed carry laws are extremely restrictive.  Currently, a county sheriff or municipal police chief may issue a concealed weapons permit (CCW), provided a citizen can prove he is of "good moral character," is a resident in the county or city, has completed an eight-hour training course, and has a "good cause to justify the permit."  As a matter of precedent, California law enforcement, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, have maintained that carrying a concealed weapon is a privilege rather than a constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Here Is Why a Federal Judge Nixed California's Ban on 'Large Capacity Magazines'.  On Friday evening [3/29/2019], a federal judge in San Diego blocked enforcement of California's ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, deeming it inconsistent with the Second Amendment right to keep arms for self-defense.  U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez concluded that "California's law prohibiting acquisition and possession of magazines able to hold any more than 10 rounds places a severe restriction on the core right of self-defense of the home such that it amounts to a destruction of the right and is unconstitutional under any level of scrutiny."  Benitez, who in 2017 issued a stay that prevented the law from taking effect, also agreed with the plaintiffs that the ban amounts to an unconstitutional taking of property without compensation.

NRA seeks to topple 2 strict California gun laws.  More than two years after California voters made it illegal to possess high-capacity gun magazines commonly used in mass shootings, the National Rifle Association has tied the measure up in court.  Now the gun lobby has set its sights on a nearly 2-decade-old law that banned the sale of those devices in the state.  That law, which took effect in 2000, has made it illegal to buy or sell magazines that can hold more than 10 cartridges.  Proposition 63, sponsored by then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and approved by the voters in 2016, would require anyone who owns the magazines to turn them in, send them out of state or remake them to comply with the law.

Gun Control Fail:  California Firearm Homicides Up 18 Percent.  California, a state with every gun control imaginable, witnessed an 18 percent rise in firearm homicides from 2014 to 2016.  This rise in firearm homicides comes despite the fact that Democrats, gun control groups, and the establishment media constantly claim that states with the strictest gun controls see lower rates of violence and death.  California has universal background checks, gun registration requirements, red flag laws (i.e., Gun Violence Restraining Orders), a ten-day waiting period for gun purchases, an "assault weapons" ban, a one-gun-per-month limit on handgun purchases, a minimum firearm purchase age of 21, a ban on campus carry, a "good cause" restriction for concealed carry permit issuance, and controls on the purchase of ammunition.

Los Angeles Considers Ordinance That Will Force City Contractors To Disclose Any NRA Ties.  It's California.  It's a garbage deep-blue state, but it's alarming nonetheless.  Los Angeles city hall is moving forward with an ordinance that would force contractors to disclose any ties to the National Rifle Association.  They also have a similar regulation concerning contractors that are involved in the construction of President Trump's much-anticipated border wall.  It doesn't bar these contractors from working within the city limits.

California law prompts spike in assault weapon registrations: report.  A recently-enacted California gun law that broadened what firearms must be registered with the state prompted a 43 percent spike in assault weapons registration and a lawsuit by gun rights advocates, The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday [7/18/2018].  The 2016 law banned the sale of semi-automatic assault rifles with so-called "bullet buttons" — a feature on some rifles that enables faster replacement of ammunition.  "Bullet button" rifles purchased before the law were required to be registered with the state by June 2018.

CA Lawmakers Seek to Expand Gun Confiscation, Limit Number of Firearms Residents Can Buy.  California lawmakers are pushing numerous gun control measures including an expansion of confiscatory orders and limits on the number of firearms residents can buy each month.  Many of the lawmakers are claiming school shootings in Florida and Texas as the impetus for more gun control on law-abiding Californians.  The Mercury News reports that Assemblyman Rob Bonita (D-18) is pushing controls to bar 18-20-year olds from buying firearms.

2 New Court Decisions are Quietly Eliminating Californians' Second Amendment Rights.  Two new federal court decisions highlight a harsh new reality:  California has effectively repealed the Second Amendment inside its borders.  In the first case, decided yesterday [5/9/23018], a district judge ruled against the National Rifle Association's state affiliate in a challenge to onerous new California rules targeting popular semi-automatic rifles.  That 2016 law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), is called the Assault Weapons Control Act.  "Even an outright ban on certain types of semiautomatic weapons does not substantially burden the Second Amendment right," wrote Judge Josephine Staton, a Barack Obama appointee in Santa Ana, California.

Dem Rep. Swalwell:  We Need To Ban & Buy Back Assault Weapons.  A California Democrat writes in USA Today — it's not enough to ban so-called assault weapons.  He says the U.S. must reinstate the assault weapons ban of 1994 and institute a forced buyback.  One America's Jonathan Blaisdell has the latest liberal agenda to take America's fire arms.

2nd Amendment Foundation Issues Travel Advisory:  Your Gun Rights Are No Good in California.  On August 7, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) issued its first ever travel advisory warning American gun owners not to go to California unless they are willing to enter the state disarmed or risk going to jail.  The gun rights group is "warning law-abiding armed citizens that their civil rights could be in jeopardy due to that state's restrictive gun control laws."

Losing Their Gun Rights With Barely a Whimper.  Gun-rights activists often express the view that Americans will not easily give up their rights to gun ownership even if the laws eventually outlaw — or at least greatly restrict — the freedom of individuals to own firearms.  The scenario they depict is bleak but simple:  When armed agents come to their doors to confiscate people's arsenals, some of those people can be expected to fight back. [...] The experience in California, in particular, suggests an entirely different scenario.  From what I've seen, the public often will support aggressive new restrictions.  Gun owners will meekly hand over their weapons to agents.  Gun-rights groups will quietly protest, but have little sway.  Republican legislators will make things worse as they try to prove their commitment to taking guns out of the hands of "criminals."  The erosion of our fundamental gun rights will take place so slowly that few will protest too much.

Federal Judge Blocks California Gun Magazine Confiscation Scheme.  A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on Thursday that blocks California from enforcing their gun magazine confiscation law.  U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez said in his ruling that the law, which would make it illegal to possess any gun magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, likely violates the Second Amendment rights of the plaintiffs in the case.  He ordered that California immediately stop enforcing the law pending further legal action.

Federal judge blocks California ban on high-capacity magazines.  A federal judge has temporarily blocked a voter-approved California law that would have forced gun owners to get rid of high-capacity ammunition magazines by this Saturday [7/1/2017].  U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who is based in San Diego, issued a preliminary injunction Thursday that found the law was likely unconstitutional because it prevented people from using firearms that employed "whatever common magazine size he or she judges best suits the situation."  The law would have barred people from possessing magazines containing more than 10 bullets.

Clovis Family Wins Lawsuit, Forcing California DOJ to Return 500 Guns.  A Clovis family won a court case against the California Department of Justice that forces the state agency to return 500 guns it had confiscated from Albert Sheakalee.  The CA DOJ raided Sheakalee's house in 2015, alleging he was listed in the state's Armed Prohibited Persons (APPS) database.  Sheakalee's attorney won the case by arguing that the CA DOJ had not notified Sheakalee that he was on the APPS.  Moreover, his attorney, Mark Coleman, stated that "the justice department broke a promise to Sheakalee to keep the raid confidential until a court hearing determined whether he was mentally fit to own guns."  According to the Fresno Bee, Sheakalee was arrested, but he "had no prior criminal history." [...] No charges were ever brought against Sheakelee; nonetheless, the CA DOJ held onto the guns.

DOJ Seized 541 Guns From This Man With No Charges Filed, but He Fought and Got Them All Back!.  A California Federal Firearms License holder who had his entire firearms collection of 541 guns seized with no charges filed against him, has had his guns returned.  Albert Sheakalee, who lives in the Clovis area, went through mental health treatment in 2014.  He has had a clean criminal record all of his life and owns a retirement home.  He is a retired budget director of Fresno Community Hospital, and has held a FFL for more than two decades.  However, under the Obama administration, the Justice Department went after his guns without any charges or guilt of any crime being obtained, a clear violation of the Fifth Amendments protections that he not be deprived of his rights (specifically the right to keep and bear arms).  A press release at the time by then-state Attorney General, now Senator Kamala Harris barred him from owning guns and brought about a 12-hour raid on his home by the Bureau of Firearms Special Agents on November 12, 2015.  He was subsequently arrested for allegedly possessing illegal firearms.

California's 'Assault Rifle' Law Goes Into Effect Jan. 1.  California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law last July that will redefine what is and isn't an assault rifle.  It goes into effect Jan. 1 and will affect many thousands of California gun owners.  The most common example of what California defines as an assault rifle is the standard AR15.  Starting in 2017, no one will be able to legally buy or sell one in that state.  "People have been kind of holding off," Terry Fong, of Rocklin Armory, told FOX40.  "The last 30 days have been absolutely crazy.  Phone calls, probably 50-60 phone calls a day, just looking for specific brands of AR's.  Now, they're looking for any AR's."

Calif. Proposition Requires Permit to Buy Bullets.  California residents will be voting tomorrow on a measure that would require individuals to purchase a permit to but bullets and for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to regulate the purchases.  The measure, Proposition 63, would require individuals to pay up to $50 for an ammunition purchase authorization permit in order to buy ammunition.

CA Lawmakers Quietly Exempt Themselves From Gun Laws.  Even by California standards this is stunning.  The lawmakers of the state love to write gun control laws.  They love to give speeches about the need for strict gun laws.  They love to enforce gun laws that restrict the average Californian from enjoying the Second Amendment rights they deserve.

Gun rights activists say they won't comply with California's new laws.  Fifty or so gun activists gathered Saturday morning at Sacramento's Cesar Chavez Plaza to protest Gov. Jerry Brown's signing of six gun control measures they said would turn "law-abiding citizens into criminals."  One bill Brown signed will expand the state's assault weapons ban to include "bullet-button" rifles, which allow users to quickly dislodge a magazine of ammunition by pressing a button.  Others prohibit citizens from possessing magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and require background checks on people purchasing ammunition.

California governor signs stringent gun bills, vetoes others.  Gov. Jerry Brown signed six stringent gun-control measures Friday [7/1/2016] that will require people to turn in high-capacity magazines and mandate background checks for ammunition sales, as California Democrats seek to strengthen gun laws that are already among the strictest in the nation.

Gov. Jerry Brown signs six gun-control bills, vetoes five.  Californians wishing to buy ammunition will have to undergo a background check beginning in 2019 similar to those already required for gun purchases, under one of six gun-control bills signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday [7/1/2016].  The governor vetoed five gun bills, including the only bill Republicans supported, AB 1176, which would have made it a felony to steal a gun or buy a stolen gun, regardless of its value.

California Targets Second Amendment-protected Rights.  California leglslators are hearing extremist bills to severely restrict gun rights, some so radical that even liberal Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed them in the past.  For example, Senate Bill 880 would outright ban millions of constitutionally protected firearms that have no connection to crime.  Brown vetoed a similar measure in 2013.  The bill would turn all "semiautomatic centerfire rifles that do not have a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept no more than 10 rounds" into "assault weapons."  The anti-gun rights fanatics love the designation "assault weapon," because it is such an inflammatory term.  By applying the description to semiautomatic rifles, they can attempt to ban perfectly legal weapons.

Police May Confiscate Guns without Notice to Owner Starting January 1.  Beginning January 1, police in California may confiscate firearms from gun owners thought to be a danger to themselves or others without giving the owner any notice.  This is the result of the implementation of "gun violence restraining orders" (GVROs), which go into effect New Year's Day.  According to KPCC, GVROs "could be issued without prior knowledge of the person.  In other words, a judge could issue the order without ever hearing from the person in question, if there are reasonable grounds to believe the person is a threat based on accounts from the family and police."  And since the order can be issued without the gun owner even being present to defend him or herself, confiscation can commence without any notice to the gun owner once the order is issued.

Here Are All The Gun Laws That Didn't Stop The San Bernardino Shooters.  As the left continues to move in lockstep in their calls for more gun control in the wake of the San Bernardino attack, it's important to note that there were already multiple gun laws in place in the state that failed to stop the shooters.  Here's the list. [...]

California's strict gun laws failed to stop mass shooting.  The deadly shooting in San Bernardino happened in a state with some of the nation's toughest gun laws:  California bars assault weapons, blocks the sale of large-capacity magazines and requires universal background checks for all gun purchases.

California Already Has Obama's Fantasy Gun Control Utopia.  For months and repeatedly after national atrocities involving the use of a firearm to kill innocent people, President Obama has called for "common-sense" gun control measures.  His White House has repeatedly put out the talking point that universal background checks are necessary to prevent future violence.  The terror attack in San Bernardino is no different.  Hours before we even knew who the suspects were, President Obama called for new gun control measures.

CA Lt. Governor Will Introduce Ballot Initiative for Background Checks to Purchase Ammunition.  The lieutenant governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is proposing a ballot initiative that would create some sensible gun laws.  Just kidding, they're not sensible.  Newsom's initiative will ask voters to "strengthen the state's gun laws by restricting ammunition sales, requiring owners to turn in assault-style magazines that have a large capacity and requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to law enforcement."  If the initiative is passed, California will be the first state to require background checks to purchase ammunition.  The proposal is sponsored by the anti-gun crew at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Gov. Brown Signs Bill Allowing 'Temporary' Firearm Confiscation.  California Governor Jerry Brown has signed 'AB 1014, the legislation allowing "temporary" confiscation of firearms via "Gun Violence Restraining Orders" from persons "determined by the courts to be a threat to themselves or others." [...] The new law allows families to petition a court for the seizure of guns from a family member, and then empowers police to confiscate firearms from that family member.

Report: California Lead Ban to Triple Ammo Prices.  California's upcoming ban on the use of traditional lead ammunition could triple the price of all ammunition in the state, forcing many gun owners to give up shooting, according to a report by a firearm trade association.

Calif. state senator arrested for alleged gun-running was gun-control advocate.  California state Sen. Leland Yee (D) was arrested Wednesday at his home in San Francisco and accused of — among many, many other things — offering to procure some seriously illegal weapons.  The irony:  Yee was one of the driving forces behind some of the toughest gun-control legislation in the country during his tenure in the state Senate.

Dem gun control advocate charged with gun-running.  The irony police are going to need reinforcements to handle the tsunami being generated in San Francisco.  State Senator Leland Yee appeared in federal court yesterday in shackles, and faced a lengthy indictment for a series of corruption charges, including shocking allegations of gun-running — including shoulder-fired rocket launchers.  An undercover FBI agent met repeatedly with Lee, a prominent gun control advocate who had authored legislation to expand the definition of "assault weapons."

Gun Control Groups Fear Sen. Yee's Indictment Will Make Gun Control More Difficult to Pass.  Gun control groups working to push further gun control in California worry that state senator Leland Yee's indictment on arms trafficking "may slow the legislature's consideration of gun restrictions this year."  According to AP California News, on March 27 organizers of more legislation said "the charges filed against... Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, could cloud the future of two of his gun control bills."

Gun Rights Advocates Pretty Impressed with the Mindblowing Scale of Leland Yee's Hypocrisy.  By day, California Democrat Leland Yee was an outspoken gun control advocate.  But by night, he is alleged to have been a broker for Russian arms dealers to arm Islamic militants, for piles of cold, hard cash.  That dual life hasn't been lost on Yee's enemies on gun control. [...] Isn't Leland Yee an excellent argument for keeping and strengthening the Second Amendment?  The Second Amendment is not and never was about hunting.  It's about an armed populace being a check on out-of-control, tyrannical government and also about national defense.  This is a man who used his political power to disarm Americans, while he was allegedly arming America's enemies.  It's treasonous.

AB 1014: California Democrats Wage War on the Constitution.  Two California Democrats in the State Assembly, Nancy Skinner and Das Williams, have authored what may well be the most draconian and flagrantly unconstitutional bill in the state's, and maybe even the nation's, history.  AB 1014 provides for the addition to the California Penal Code of provisions involving "gun violence restraining orders" and associated "firearm seizure warrants."

Stop SB53, the Ammo Registration and Eventual Gun Confiscation Bill.  The war over SB 53 is heating up in Sacramento and now anti-gun advocates are attempting to split gun owners by trying to buy the support of hunters.  The newest amended version of SB 53 will continue to BAN the mail and internet sales of ammunition to firearms owners in California, unless you have a hunting license.  Supporters of SB 53 think that they can pretend to be "pro-hunting" while they are still violating the rights of firearms owners statewide.

Gun flight: Smith & Wesson quits California over stamping requirement.  A new gun law proponents say helps law enforcement has driven Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger out of California, and affirmed the suspicions of firearms rights advocates that the measure is really about making handguns obsolete.  The two companies have announced they will stop selling their wares in the nation's most populous state rather than try to comply with a law that requires some handguns to have technology that imprints a tiny stamp on the bullet so it can be traced back to the gun.

Smith & Wesson to stop selling guns in California due to microstamping law.  Smith & Wesson announced it will stop selling its handguns in California rather than manufacture them to comply with the new microstamping law.  The other publicly traded firearms manufacturer in the U.S., Sturm, Ruger, also said this month that it will stop new sales to California.  The announcement late Wednesday [1/22/2014] came a week after the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, filed suit against California for requiring that all new semi-automatic pistols that are not already on the state's approved gun roster have the microstamping technology.

California — Living Proof of the Slippery Slope of Rational Apathy.  The California slippery slope of anti-freedom legislation — whatever the political agenda — has been a model for the rest of the nation.  This is the ceaseless, incremental strategy of the California gun control movement that continues to this day.  On gun control, thankfully, the rest of the nation has mostly failed to follow.  But here in the Golden State, the Golden Rule of gun control has always been to swipe freedoms one small step at a time.  Over, and over, and over again.

Jerry Brown signs lead ammo ban, vetoes bill to ban semi-automatic rifles.  Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Friday banning the use of lead ammunition in hunting, but he vetoed the most controversial gun control bill the Legislature sent to him this year, a proposal to ban the sale of certain semi-automatic rifles.  The bills were among the highest profile in a package of gun control bills Brown acted on Friday.  He signed legislation requiring long gun purchasers to take a firearm safety class and adding criminal liability for firearm storage that endangers a child, but he vetoed bills that would have limited the transfer of unsafe handguns and let Oakland enact its own, stricter gun control laws.

California's great gun grab: State's sweeping gun control bills target firearms, ammo — and hunting.  Breaking new ground in the state-level battle over firearms, the Democratic-dominated California state legislature has taken gun control into uncharted territory with a flurry of new bills that target not just firearms and ammunition, but also recreational hunting.  Among the dozen gun-control bills sitting on California Gov. Jerry Brown's desk are measures that would outlaw lead ammunition for hunting as well as common types of hunting rifles under the umbrella of an assault-weapons ban.

What politicians can't take from you — your right to carry a gun.  Homicides in Oakland are up 27 percent so far this year.  In preparation for a mayoral run, a state senator and FBI suspect is resurrecting his worn arguments favoring gun control.  California and the Bay Area have tinkered with gun control for decades, and yet Oakland falls further into chaos.  Despite politicians' efforts to eliminate private firearm ownership, homicide is nearly a daily event in Oaktown.

Are California Democrats creating ground zero for the next revolutionary war?  In effect, California Democrats are looking to ban every common semi-automatic rifle, outlaw the ownership of standard magazines entirely, ban the popular Taurus Judge revolver, prevent individuals from allowing friends and relatives to fire legal guns, force handgun owners through bureaucratic hoops every year to merely maintain legal possession of their guns (the obvious intent is to make handgun ownership prohibitive), would eliminate the Second Amendment rights of anyone living with someone who is a banned person, and hire more CA DOJ employees to confiscate an ever-growing list of prohibited persons.

CA Dems Show They Just Want To Grab Guns.  Along with making sure that it is really, really difficult for law abiding citizens to have the means to protect themselves and their families with any sort of gun.

California Seizes Guns as Owners Lose Right to Keep Arms.  Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles.  They were looking for a gun owner who'd recently spent two days in a mental hospital.

California governor signs bill to speed up gun seizures.  Gov. Jerry Brown announced Wednesday that he has signed legislation expanding the ability of state agents to seize firearms from nearly 20,000 Californians who are not allowed to have them.


Individuals and companies are leaving California.

Newsom's office says people are flocking to California; data says it's #1 for exits.  While California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office says the state has seen a "surge" in people moving to the state, data from the same source shows California has the highest net out-migration of any state in the nation.  Newsom's office recently sent The Center Square an email regarding the publication's "close, detailed coverage of California's population movements," encouraging reporters to examine a Newsweek piece titled, "California Sees Surge in People Moving to the State," noting the National Association of Realtors said California was among the most popular states for Americans to move to in 2024. [...] Another NAR report from October found that California had the highest net out-migration of jobs — 18,485 — in the third quarter of 2023, and had 29% net out-migration per capita than Illinois, which had the second-most.  The Newsweek piece has since been updated to note that the increase in Californians moving to the state was from a 2022 report, and that for 2024 "California did not see high net migration numbers."

Fleeing Florida!  To begin, the idea that Florida is losing residents is simply not true.  Of course, some residents are always leaving, and others are migrating into the state, but the net result is that Florida gained 2.7 million residents (14.7%) from 2010 to 2020 — more in numeric terms than any other state except Texas. [...] If there is a mass exodus taking place, it is from California, New York, and Illinois.  These states have become less attractive because of the high cost of living, crime, high taxes, regulation, and government intrusion into the lives of their citizens.  The numbers do not lie:  since 2020, California has lost population (200,000 from 2020 to 2022), New York has lost 1.4 million over the past decade (more than any other state), and Illinois lost 853,000 residents from 2010 to 2019 and continues to lose them.  The contrast between Florida and California is especially revealing.  San Francisco and Los Angeles have become plagued with homelessness, violent crime, shoplifting, a lack of affordable housing, failing public education, a high cost of living, and intrusive governance — and these conditions are not being addressed.  Rules in place to eliminate the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 will only make life in California more expensive and less free.  Gov. Newsom's talk of defying Trump's reforms on immigration and crime won't make things better.

56% Of Californians Have Considered A Move Away From California According To A New Poll.  A new poll of California residents released this week found that 56% of Californians have considered moving away from the state, with the main reason being cost of living.  California's state population nearly reached 40 million in the 2010's, but began losing people at the end of the decade because of high taxes, a decline in conditions, lost job opportunities, business regulations, safety concerns, the cost of living, and other reasons.  COVID quickened the process, giving many the excuse needed to move away because of remote work.  According to the 2020 U.S. Census, California's population that year was at roughly 39.5 million.  But California's population decreased dramatically in the next several years.  Hundreds of thousands of people left the state.  At the same time, immigration was largely curbed by the pandemic, with fewer families choosing to start families during the same time.  As a result, even with inter-state immigration, California continued to lose people.

The Editor says...
If you're a Democrat, please move to New Mexico, not Texas.  Thanks.

Phillips 66 is closing Wilmington-area refineries after more than a century, marking the end of an era.  Over more than 100 years, the Wilmington and Carson oil refineries have pumped out millions of barrels of gasoline, filling the thirsty cars of Southern California's freeway-driving motorists.  Now, in an abrupt move that reflects the tectonic industry shifts driven by climate change, the transition to electric vehicles and demands for cleaner air, Phillips 66 announced Wednesday that late next year it is closing the twin refinery complex that produces about 8% of the state's gasoline.  The Houston company, which has operated the refineries since its 2012 spin off from ConocoPhillips, said it would replace their output with sources "inside and outside its refining network" and with renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuels from its San Francisco Bay Area refinery.

The Failure of Black Leadership in Government.  [Scroll down]  Rampant crime, and excessive taxation at both the state and local levels, combined with "Californication" style regulation have caused businesses to close and citizens to flee.  It's very expensive to rent a U-Haul out of California and very cheap to rent one going back.  A study released by the San Francisco Standard (2019-mid 2023) indicates a sharp decline in retail operations.  In Union Square, once a tourist mecca, open stores declined from 207 to 107.  There are more than 31 million square feet of empty office space in the city, a staggering number equating to an approximate vacancy factor of 36%.  It is almost unbelievable.  However, the good news is that since 2018, San Francisco has a black mayor — London Breed.  This is a sampling of the major companies that have left San Francisco:
  [#1]   Meta
  [#2]   X
  [#3]   Snap
  [#4]   PayPal
  [#5]   Airbnb
  [#6]   Slack
  [#7]   Salesforce
  [#8]   Block
  [#9]   Autodesk
  [#10]   Chime
In mid-2023, Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California, shared why large and small companies were leaving the City by the Bay:  ["]The overwhelming facts prove business and residents are fleeing San Francisco due to the crime wave and a spike in homelessness.  And you can blame liberal politicians in San Francisco for enacting fatally flawed laws that enable crime and promote homelessness.["]

California says it lost $2 billion in state income taxes from earners leaving.  California's Legislative Analyst's Office says the state lost approximately $2.3 billion in state personal income taxes due to outmigration in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.  With Newsom claiming the state's population grew in 2023, the net decrease in taxpayers and taxpayer dependents for fiscal year 2022-2023 suggests California could be losing productive individuals and their families as it gains non-tax-filers.  "Recently released figures from the IRS show that California continues to lose taxpayers to other states at a heightened rate that began during the pandemic," wrote the LAO.  "Foregone income tax collections due to outmigration reflected 1.6% of income tax revenue in 2022-23, up from about 0.5% in the years prior to the pandemic.  Should this elevated trend continue, outmigration could drag annual income tax growth below its long-term average."

And People In California Are Wondering Why All The Big Chains Are Closing Down Or Moving.  Stop complaining about the prices of goods, California.  Apparently, in your state, a lot of things are free.  [Video clip]

Oil giant Chevron relocating headquarters from California to Texas.  Energy giant Chevron announced it is relocating its headquarters from San Ramon in California to Houston, Texas.  Chevron said it has approximately 2,000 employees in California and will be relocating all corporate staff not supporting its continuing California operations to Houston in the next five years.  While Chevron did not say anything about California in its announcement, it did say it is moving to Houston, the home of America's energy sector, to "to co-locate with other senior leaders and enable better collaboration and engagement with executives, employees, and business partners."

Elon Musk Torches CA Policies As He Moves X and SpaceX HQ Out of California.  On Tuesday, billionaire Elon Musk announced on X that he is fed up, and the final California straw was drawn for him following the latest delusional legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).  Musk announced that he is moving the headquarters of his social media company, X, and aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company, SpaceX, from California to Texas.  [Tweets]  The final straw that Musk is referring to is AB1955, which would ban schools from requiring parental notification if a child identifies as transgender.  That is a massive overstep.  The California bureaucrats think they have control over children now.  Newsom and his cronies believe it is okay for things to be kept a secret from the children's parents or guardians.  That's the message they are sending by passing this ludicrous bill.

Outmigration cost California $24B in departed incomes as poorer people move in.  Outmigration to other states cost California $24 billion in outgoing personal incomes across 2021 and 2022, according to new IRS data.  Departing Californians were significantly wealthier and more likely to have children or spouses than incoming Americans, suggesting wealthy families are leaving the state as poorer individuals come to seek their California dream.  California lost a net 144,203 tax filers in the two years, representing $24 billion in lost personal adjusted gross income for the state.  Those leaving the state had 38% more dependents or joint filers on their tax returns and an average AGI of $130,946, while those coming in had an average AGI of $111,689, or about 15% less income than those leaving.

The Editor says...
Apparently it's only called "emigration" if you leave the country as well as the state.

Comedian Adam Carolla Is Ditching His Native California, Calls Out 'Narcissistic.  Comedian Adam Carolla says he will be leaving California just has soon as his twin teenagers graduate from high school.  Further, the former "Man Show" star said a large part of the problem with his native state is its current governor, "narcissistic" Democrat Gavin Newsom.  "I have twins, and they're in their senior year of high school and I couldn't — I didn't want to pick up and, you know, tear up their roots, you know?  So people always go, 'When are you leaving?'  And I go, 'I will be attending their high school graduation in a U-Haul,'" Carolla told conservative podcast host Sage Steele during an interview published last week.  He added that he doesn't even know where he'll move to, suggesting maybe Texas, Florida, one of the Carolinas, or Tennessee.

The Editor says...
Texas has plenty of comedians.  Try Oklahoma — they could use a few.

The California Exodus May Be Just Beginning.  Relocation firm moveBuddha looked at searches for 100,000 moves just this year, and five of the top ten were people looking to get out of the Golden State for almost anywhere else.  "5 of the top 10 exit metros are in California, the firm reported on Monday.  "Los Angeles has the highest interest in outbound moves, with 42% more outbound inquiries than runner-up San Francisco.  Per capita, the prize goes to San Francisco."  The Mercury News reported way back in 2012, "California was supposed to have about 40 million people by now, according to population projections made before the Great Recession, but a slowdown in births and immigration has forced the state's demographers to push back that expected milestone by at least six years."  Instead, Sacramento's Department of Finance estimated that "Forty million people will live in California by the end of 2018 and 50 million by 2048."

'Are You Moving Out Of California?'.  Today, leaving California is part of the conversation.  Almost every Californian knows someone who has left the state and others (including themselves) who are thinking about relocating.  How fast can you say Texas, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee, South Carolina ... It's ABC as people want to live Anywhere But California due to lurid high taxes, escalating crime, the nation's highest poverty rate, the influx of illegal migrants who are given freebies, plus an exploding homeless population, to name a few reasons to leave.  Gavin Newsom is U-Haul's salesman of the year — every year!

California somehow manages to keep getting worse.  California continues to reap the consequences of disastrous left-wing policy decisions, but it's hard to feel bad for voters who keep affirming Democratic control.  In April, the minimum wage for employees of fast food chains with more than 60 locations increased to $20 per hour.  Of course, this has resulted in job losses, reduced hours, and food becoming more expensive.  Blaze Pizza announced it is moving its headquarters from California to Georgia, Pizza Hut has laid off 1,200 delivery drivers, and In-N-Out was forced to raise its prices.  One chain, Rubio's Coastal Grill, said that it was closing 48 California locations because of the "rising cost of doing business" in the state.

Rubio's Coastal Grill, a popular taco chain, closes 48 California locations because it's unaffordable to do business in the state.  Rubio's Coastal Grill, a California chain is shutting down nearly fifty locations because they are "overtaxed, overburdened, and gasoline [prices are] higher."  [Tweet with video clip]  Rubio's Coastal Grill filed for Chapter 11 back in 2020 because of Gavin Newsom's restrictive lockdowns.  Then the state raised the minimum wage and effectively finished them off.  High taxes, extreme regulations, and the increased cost of living in San Diego led to the business's failures.

Reports: California exodus continues, southeastern states as primary destinations.  As the California exodus continues, a new migration trend is occurring, with southeastern and Appalachian states taking the top spots as inbound migration destinations, according to new reports.  According to a new Consumer Affairs 2024 Migration Trends report, "California's mass exodus continues to ensue," with the South and Southeast region of the country being the "hottest regions for people moving."  The states where the most residents said they were planning to leave are California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington.  The most popular states with growth for inbound migration are North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Texas.

Blue line getting thinner in West Coast states as police take refuge in Idaho.  The Gem State has become a popular moving destination for both retired and active-duty police officers, a trend Horst and Idaho Fraternal Order of Police President Bryan Lovell broadly attribute to a more positive climate.  "They come to Idaho where they can enjoy their career and make a difference," Lovell told Fox News Digital.  "They see that, in large part, our communities are supportive of law enforcement and public safety."  Cities large and small across the country suffered severe staffing shortages on the heels of anti-police protests in 2020.  Four years later, some departments still can't stop the bleeding.  Seattle's police staffing is at its lowest level since the 1990s, according to a March KING 5 report.  Earlier this year in California, the Alameda Police Department offered a $75,000 signing bonus — the highest in the nation — on top of a six-figure starting salary to try to entice new officers.

California hemorrhages its law enforcement officers to a red state.  Men and women whose job may require them to lay their lives on the line, who handle some of the scummiest and darkest realities in the history of humanity, want to be respected and supported by their employers and community?  No kidding.  And it's not just a few cops here and there — deep blue pro-crime cities are hemorrhaging law enforcement officers: [...] But, what I find doubly obnoxious is that instead of implementing policies that work, like the tough-on-crime policies of red states, the government uses taxpayer dollars — like the $75,000 bonus in Alameda, California — to woo new officers.  The people responsible for this don't pay, in the slightest, and it's enraging.

New report:  California ranks 'dead last' in 'opportunity'.  According to Kenneth Schrupp at The Center Square, a new analysis from the U.S. News and World Report agency found that California ranked "dead last" among the 50 states when it comes time to "opportunity."  In other news water is still wet.  What could have possibly indicated that California wasn't the friendliest location for anyone wanting to build a life of prosperity and freedom?  Was it the state's nearly seventy-billion-dollar deficit?  Was it the mass exodus that has seen hundreds of thousands of people flee the state for friendlier locales, a trend which has resulted in a net negative for legal population and hit the tax-happy state where it hurts, i.e. fleeing revenues?  Was it the flight of more than 350 big businesses, a handful of which were Fortune 1,000 companies like Tesla, HP Enterprise, and Oracle?

Does Anyone In California Have An Ounce Of Brilliance.  California is a mismanaged mess, so more people are leaving the state than migrating to it.  For the first time in our history, California lost members of its congressional legislation as people left for Texas, Tennessee, and Florida.  With some of the highest tax rates for individuals and businesses, the exodus has been happening for years, and the backfill has not.  California is hemorrhaging tax-paying residents and filling the gap with illegal migrants.  It's not a good economic trade-off, but California's problems are far more rooted than a shrinking population.  California's elected officials are the worst enemy of a struggling state, which is a waste for a state with such incredible promise.  The Golden State is tarnished, and the folks in charge are exasperating the situation instead of taking stock and corrective actions.  They have redefined the neighborhood with massive tent cities popping up on the main streets of big cities.

Hundreds of cops flee California to Texas blaming Golden State's 'soft-on-crime' policies.  Hundreds of California cops are fleeing to Texas to escape 'soft-on-crime' policies they say have made their jobs 'pointless', DailyMail.com can reveal.  Rank-and-file officers up to department chiefs have hit out at state legislators, claiming a succession of 'anti-law enforcement' policies have made their work impossible.  Overworked and unsupported, they have instead taken up jobs in Texas and other states that are seen as tough on crime.

Google Ends Lease on Massive Office Complex in Heart of San Francisco.  Tech giant Google is reportedly preparing to exit its 300,000-square-foot office at One Market Plaza in San Francisco when its lease expires in April 2025.  The San Francisco Chronicle reports that One Market Plaza, a prominent downtown office complex boasting stunning views of San Francisco Bay, is bracing for the departure of its second major tenant in just a year.  Google, which has occupied the expansive office space since 2018, will be moving out once its lease expires next April, as confirmed by a company spokesperson on Tuesday.  This move follows the recent exit of Visa, which relocated its employees to Mission Rock.

Rap Legend Richie Rich Has Had It, Announces He's Moving.  One of Tupac Shakur's closest homeboys isn't feeling much "California Love" these days — Richie Rich, a seasoned veteran of the rap game, is deflecting from the entire Golden State! [...] The Oakland-born rapper says living in Cali has become too expensive for his blood ... the cost of living has gone up while the chances of survival have slimmed — no reason to stick around any longer.  [Video clip]

Biden Is Driving Heavy Domestic Migration.  The Census Bureau recently released its latest report on "domestic" migration and the results demonstrate that Americans are on the move.  And we're talking about a lot of them.  This particular study is interesting because it doesn't just measure the flow of population between states.  It breaks the numbers down to the county level, capturing those who relocate but remain in their home state.  At Issues and Insights, the editorial board breaks down the figures and discovers that a significant percentage of these domestic migrants had one thing in common.  The majority were moving out of counties that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and into counties that voted for Donald Trump.  This is clearly not a coincidence. [...] You probably won't be surprised to learn that eight of the ten counties seeing the greatest population gains are located in Texas and Florida, with Polk County, Florida seeing the largest increase in 2023.

Americans [are] Still Fleeing Blue States, Moving to Texas and Florida.  Americans are still fleeing Democratic run states in their droves and moving to more conservative parts of the country, the latest census data shows.  Over the year 2022 to 2023, Los Angeles County in California, Cooky County in Illinois and Kings County in New York all experienced population declines of 119,000, 58,000 and 55,000 respectively.  Miami-Dade County in Florida came fifth in the list, potentially because of the high prices caused by Florida's skyrocketing popularity.  The main beneficiaries of domestic migration were Polk County in Florida, Montgomery County in Texas and Pasco County in Florida with gains of 26,000, 25,000 and 24,000 respectively.

Get Out of California While You Can or You Will Never Leave.  California's predictively significant budget deficit is a whopping $68 billion.  Legislatures spend money on things that do nothing to improve the well-being of their residents — quite the opposite.  The lawmakers who caused the problem think that the way to solve it is to tax the productive people in the state to death, even if they try to leave or allegedly underreport their assets.  Individuals and businesses that try to leave will be subject to a one-time tax based on the value of their assets, including property and investments.  They think they can fill the budget hole dug by these non-stop big-spending socialists with a wealth tax that involves annual taxation based on all of their assets.  If they have a valuable painting, it will be taxed every year.  If they have a house, they will be taxed on its increased value even though they are not selling.

[A] San Francisco investor landlord [is] ditching [property] due to plunging occupancy blamed on crime.  San Francisco's residential property market has hit troubled waters as a major investor landlord announced the sell-off of a large section of its rental empire this week.  Landlord Mosser Companies defaulted on a 2018 loan for $88 million that was underwritten by its 459 rental units across 12 buildings in San Francisco.  The company's creditor has now hired real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield to sell the multifamily home properties, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.  Mosser Companies took on the debt pre-pandemic with low occupancy rates, but as the city by the bay grapples with a post-Covid doom loop occupancies have risen as families move out to escape rising crime.

Moving to Red America.  It's instructive to observe where Americans are moving, and where they are leaving.  Such comparisons are particularly revealing when made during, or immediately following, a crisis, such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic.  States dealt with that crisis quite differently.  Movement statistics from recent years help to establish which of the 50 "laboratories of democracy" responded best to the pandemic. [...] Among large states (those with a population above the 50-state average), the net-domestic-migration winner over the 13-quarter period after Covid-19's arrival was Florida.  The Sunshine State added a net tally of 819,000 Americans over that span. [...] The large-state runner-up:  Texas.  It added 80 percent as many people as Florida (656,000).  The state that lost the most was California, which shed 1.2 million people through net domestic outmigration — the rough equivalent of San Francisco and Oakland's combined populations.

Denny's closes Oakland restaurant that's been open for 54 years because California city is now so dangerous.  A 54-year-old branch of Denny's has closed its doors in Oakland amid threats to 'the safety and wellbeing' of staff and customers, as the Bay Area city struggles to contain soaring crime.  With robbery up by 37 percent year-on-year, burglary up 24 percent and motor vehicle theft rising 45 percent to reach an all-time record, those who live and work in the city do not feel safe.  Violent crimes have also spiked by 21 percent in 12 months.  And on Tuesday, Clorox[,] which has its global headquarters in Oakland[,] began providing security escorts for people walking to and from the train station.

The A's are not the only ones leaving Oakland.  As you may know, the Oakland A's are moving to Las Vegas.  I was hoping that they'd move to San Antonio, but that's for another conversation.  The A's are moving because Oakland is a failed city and another exhibit in the museum of Democrat urban failures.  So who is leaving Oakland now?  Let's find out:  ["]In-N-Out is permanently closing one of its restaurants for the first time ever, announcing that its Oakland location will soon shutter because of rampant crime in the California city.[... "]  Talk about decline.  We know that a city or society is in trouble when a fast-food restaurant is closing because of theft or an unsafe place to work in.  It begs the question:  How did this happen?  Who allowed this to happen?  We can start with the culture that produces young people who steal for fun.  Yes, for fun.  Have you seen the videos?  They are young people lacking any values or morality.

Wealthy Californians are ditching their LA mansions in droves.  Californians are packing up their LA mansions and flocking to states where you can get more bang for your buck and avoid extortionate taxes, rampant crime and the Golden State's homelessness crisis.  Celebrities, families and CEOs are all among California's richest residents who are skipping town to avoid the recently enforced 'mansion tax'.  The policy, which taxes an extra four per cent on homes sold for more that $5 million and a 5.5 percent tax on homes above $10 million, went into effect on April 1, 2023, and many Californians took it as their sign to leave.

California Once Again Leads the Country in Outgoing U-Hauls.  California used to be one of the country's top incoming destinations.  People from around the country flocked to the spectacular weather, natural beauty, recreational opportunities and thriving industries.  But that was before it became a one party state, with that one party dead set on driving as many people away as possible.  For several years now, California has near the top of the leaderboard in population loss, thanks in large part to Gavin Newsom and his authoritarian overreach during the COVID pandemic.

Blue states don't build.  Blue states are losing seats because they are losing people relative to the U.S. average, while red states are gaining people relative to the average. [...] Blue states like California and New York have high housing costs in part because these states tend to house "superstar" industry clusters like Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street.  These clusters draw in high-earning knowledge workers and price out lower-income and middle-income people.  But California is losing population at all income levels, with high earners actually more likely to leave.  And more importantly, if they wanted, blue states could just build more houses for the lower-income and middle-income people, canceling out the effect of increased demand.  They don't.

California Unexpectedly Hit by Bad Luck As Top Wealth Producers Flee the State.  After nearly two centuries of uninterrupted economic and population growth, California has hit a pothole in the road.  There had been a lot of warning signs that the Democrats' hostility to success and achievement was coming home to roost but the first finite, undeniable warning was when California lost a House seat in the 2020 reapportionment.  This was the first time in history that California had lost a House seat and marked the end of a run of gains that started with a one-seat gain in the 1860 Census and culminated in a series of 5-7 seat gains between 1910 and 1980. [...] According to the LA Times, the pain is beginning to be felt as the outflow of high-earners (and maximum tax rate payers) is replaced by an inflow of people dependent upon public services.

Census Data:  California Population Drops Again; Below 39 Million.  The population of the State of California has fallen again — below 39 million people, according to new data from the U.S. Census. [...] California's population losses through domestic migration were partially offset by international immigration and in-state births.

California Forced To Cut Spending After Wealthy Taxpayers Flee State.  California directed state agencies Tuesday to reduce their spending levels in the wake of a projected massive budget shortfall and wealthy taxpayers leaving the state.  "It is vitally important that state government is efficient, effective, and only expends funds that are necessary to the critical operation and security of the state," wrote California Department of Finance director Joe Stephenshaw in a budget letter.  "As such, all state entities must take immediate action to reduce expenditures and identify all operational savings achieved."  Stephenshaw directed state entities to cut expenses by taking such actions as not entering into any new non-critical goods and services contracts, halting non-essential information technology purchases, and only purchasing fleet vehicles that are mission-critical or emergency-related.  "All areas of department operations shall be evaluated and scrutinized to decrease costs including, but not limited to, subscription renewals, training costs, or furniture purchases," Stephenshaw wrote.

California, the Great Destroyer.  The state's public unions and bloated bureaucracies guaranteed Soviet-style overhead, incompetence, and unaccountability.  The more California raised its income taxes — currently the nation's highest topping out at 13.3 percent — the more it borrowed, spent, and ran up huge annual budget deficits.  The nation's highest gasoline taxes along with steep sales and property taxes — coupled with unaffordable fuel and housing, a homeless epidemic, dismal public schools, out-of-control crime, and mass, illegal immigration — soon all led to a bifurcated state of rich and poor.  The middle class either became poor or fled.  Indeed, businesses and millions of the middle class hightailed it out of California over the last three decades in one of the greatest state population exoduses in our nation's history.  But they also took with them the very prior experience, expertise, and capital that had once made California the nation's envy.

Democrat-Run California Predicted to Lose Five House Seats by 2030.  Democrat-run California could lose five congressional districts in 2030 due to population loss.  Tee hee.  This news comes from Decision Desk HQ, which looked at the data and concluded, "If current trends continue, the state could lose as many as five congressional districts in the 2030 reapportionment cycle."  Now you know one of the many reasons Democrats are flooding America with illegals and want to make them citizens.

Sheryl Crow Says Move From California to Tennessee 'Saved My Life'.  Californians are increasingly fleeing the state for places like Florida, Texas and Tennessee.  Better housing markets, lower crime rates and lower cost of living are all reasons for The Golden State's shrinking population.  But according to Sheryl Crow, the move actually saved her life.  Performing at the Sea.Hear.Now Music Festival in New Jersey this weekend, the Grammy-winning artist extended empathy for those in the crowd experiencing difficult times.  "I know how hard it is for especially young people — and I don't know if anybody was pained by struggles like I did when I was young — but these are some tricky waters to navigate now," Crow told her fans.  "I'll just tell you that, for me, getting out in nature really saved my life."

Related:
A Third of Seattle Residents Are Considering Leaving, Citing Crime and Costs.  One-third of Seattle residents are considering packing up and moving elsewhere, largely citing home prices and crime, according to a Seattle Times/Suffolk University poll conducted in June.  Roughly 33 percent of Seattle residents surveyed say they are seriously considering moving out of the city, while 67 percent say they are not.

California's exodus picks up steam as data shows 111,000 residents [have] ditched the West Coast.  About 300 Californians moved to Texas each day in 2021 — a staggering 111,000 people, newly released data shows.  That is double the 63,000 that made the same move in 2012, according to a new report from Storage Café, which examined California-Texas migration patterns over nearly a decade.  Of those that moved in 2021, nearly half were millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and headed to counties around major cities such as Austin, Houston and Dallas.

Two-Thirds of Californians Say They Are Considering Leaving the State.  A new poll revealed that almost two-thirds of California residents have considered moving out of the state recently.  The survey highlights mounting frustrations that Californians are feeling over their state's policies related to escalating living costs, rising crime, increased political polarization, and parental rights concerns.  The survey found that 40% of state residents say "they are somewhat or very serious about leaving," with another 24% "saying they are thinking about it, but not too seriously."  The top reason respondents gave for wanting to leave the Golden State was affordability, with 61% saying living costs are too high.

Golden State Turns Bronze: 4 in 10 Californians Considering Running for the Exits.  A new poll by Strategies 360, a consortium of the Los Angeles Times and several non-profits, should concern Gov. Gavin Newsom and the leftist politicians running the Golden State into the ground: four in 10 residents are actively considering leaving California for greener pastures.  That's hardly a surprise considering that homelessness, crime, an anti-business environment, insane woke laws, and sky-high taxes — which create an unattainable cost of living — have all made life in paradise not quite so idyllic as it once was.

Dean Cain is the latest to flee California selling his $7.25M home to move to Nevada.  Superman actor Dean Cain has become the latest Hollywood star to flee California for states that are friendlier to the film industry, such as Nevada, Texas and Louisiana.  Cain appeared on Fox and Friends on Wednesday [6/7/2023] to say he had been driven from his $7.25 million home in Malibu to Las Vegas, where he said there is less traffic and lower taxes, and added that his peers are leaving 'in droves'.  'I love California.  It's the most beautiful state.  Everything's wonderful about it except for the policies,' Cain told Fox News' Brian Kilmeade.  'The policies are just terrible.  The fiscal policies, the soft-on-crime policies, the homelessness policies.'

Dying San Francisco Sustains Another Massive Blow.  Not too long ago, San Francisco was still a remarkably beautiful city, although even then it could change on a dime.  One could be in the midst of a leisurely stroll down a gorgeous street filled with chic cafes, turn a corner, and find oneself without warning in the middle of a large crowd of menacing homeless drug addicts.  Now, after decades of far-Left misrule that has picked up speed in the wake of the COVID hysteria, the city's dirty, degrading, and dangerous areas are growing rapidly and taking the whole place over, and the city's remaining sane people are fleeing.  The end is near for the Golden Gate City:  the day is approaching when its ruins will bear silent witness to the ways in which Leftism destroys human societies.  In anticipation of that day, a luxury hotel chain is leaving town.

State Farm to stop insuring new homes in California, citing catastrophic wildfires and inflation.  America's biggest home insurance company has announced it will no longer insure houses in California, saying that the risk from wildfires was too great and the cost of rebuilding too high.  State Farm, the nation's biggest car and home insurer by premium volume, said existing customers would not be affected.  But [beginning] Saturday [5/26/2023], no new home insurance policies will be issued.  The company will continue offering auto insurance.

No Exit: Trapped in California's labyrinthine bureaucracy.  I have spent the past 18 months writing, calling, filing, submitting, signing, notarizing, petitioning, and mailing information to the California Secretary of State, the California Attorney General, and others — all in the hope of closing down a single corporation.  Filings are accepted, rejected, or forwarded to another department.  Letters assure me that the process is almost finished, but then other letters come with new regulations and requirements.  A recorded message instructs me to leave a voice mail; nobody calls back.  The message from California is unmistakable:  no exit.  What could the reasons for this be?  First, garden-variety bureaucratic incompetence.  California is a vast state with a sprawling, insulated public sector.  My mother spent her career working as an attorney for the state and concluded, after decades of service, that the agencies actively undermined their stated missions and harmed the quality of life for residents.  A second reason is greed.  As many upwardly mobile residents flee the state because of exorbitant costs, high taxes, and urban dysfunction, California has sought to entrap them in a bureaucratic net.

'Leaving California: The Untold Story' Explores Reasons Behind the State's Mass Exodus.  "People are leaving [California] to go to places that once were known as 'hell hot Texas' or 'desert Nevada' that have become paradises in their mind — and we took paradise and turned it into hell," said one researcher in EpochTV's new documentary "Leaving California: The Untold Story," which premiered on April 21.  More than 700,000 people left California from April 2020 to July 2022, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.  The fact that hundreds of thousands left, "in light of California being such a wonderful place is ... unbelievable!" another researcher said in the film.  The remarks by Victor Davis Hanson, a historian at the Hoover Institute, and Jim Doti, president emeritus and professor of economics at Chapman University, encapsulate the biggest, unprecedented question facing Californians: why are people leaving the paradise?

It Sure Looks Like the Oakland A's Are Joining the Great California Exodus.  Although the final agreements are still to come, it is now all but certain that the MLB's Oakland A's will shortly join the NFL's Raiders in relocating to Las Vegas.  The team has entered into an agreement to purchase land near the Strip for a new ballpark, which, if all goes to plan, will open in 2027. [...] Let the finger-pointing begin.  We start with A's owner John Fisher, a billionaire who cried poor once too often for all parties concerned.  It is difficult to remember the A's were in the postseason as recently as 2020, even with the team's penchant for trading away any talent on the roster for prospects rather than paying players the current market rate.  The team is now easily the worst in baseball.  Fisher is willing to foot most of the bill for a new stadium, but his demand that local government pay for most or all of the infrastructure has derailed any hopes for the team to remain in Oakland.

2.6 Million Fled Counties That Voted For Biden.  Last week, we commented on recent population data showing that people have been fleeing urban areas, noting that these are mostly Democratically controlled, and we pointed out that people have also been moving from blue states to red.  But we wanted to go deeper and get more precise numbers.  So, we matched Census net migration data from mid-2020 through mid-2022 for all the nation's 3,000-plus counties (or their equivalents) and compared that with how these counties voted in 2020.  Our working assumption is that the results of the incredibly divisive 2020 election would be a good barometer of the devoutly held political views in those counties.  What we found was striking: There has been a vast migration out of counties that voted for Joe Biden into those counties that voted to reelect Donald Trump.

The Editor says...
Yes, move to Texas if you like, but leave California thinking behind.

A note from inside Gulag California.  California was once the Golden State.  That was more than forty years ago, when Ronald Reagan was governor.  In the 1980s, under Governor Jerry Brown, Sr., the state shifted slightly left.  During the 1990s, under Jerry Brown, Jr., things began to come apart, but it was still livable.  With Gray Davis, the slide continued, and he was recalled.  Since Gavin Newsom took office, California has achieved terminal decline.  It has become unlivable.  Since 2020, 500,000 people have moved out of the state.  More are leaving every day.  Because of that mass exodus, California lost a congressional seat based on the 2020 Census.  Getting a U-Haul is hard to impossible because none is to be found.  They were rented by the lucky ones who can afford to leave for one-way journeys to anywhere else.  Drug use is rampant.  It's out in the open, and no one does a single thing about it.  In fact, there are laws that prohibit law enforcement from stopping it — assuming, of course, that the city in which it's taking place hasn't defunded its police force.

Half a Million People Left California Between 2020 and 2022.  California lost roughly half a million people between the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic and mid-2022.  KTLA reported that between April 2020 and July 2022, California's population dropped by roughly 500,000, amounting to about one percent of the state's total population.  The outlet noted this decline in population has been most acute in the counties of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  A February report by the large real estate brokerage Redfin found more homebuyers looked to leave San Francisco and Los Angeles than any other U.S. metro the previous month.

California lost over 500,000 residents in the last two years.  California's population has dropped by more than 500,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, and the exodus doesn't show any signs of ending.  The Los Angeles Times reported that between April 2020 and July 2022, the number of residents leaving exceeded the number of people moving in... by over 700,000.  [Tweet]  Paul Ong, director at a research institution known as the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, argued that one major reason for the state's population decline is high housing prices. [...] Between July 2021 and July 2022, California lost more than 200,000 people, according to data from California's Department of Finance.  About half of the people were from Los Angeles County.  Many Californians have settled in neighboring states like Nevada and Utah.  However, Utah is dissuading them from moving to the Beehive State.  Utah's Republican governor Spencer Cox said that he would love for Californians to remain in their self-created hellscape.

Here are the states Americans are moving to — and the states they are ditching.  The pandemic sparked a restlessness in American life, with many families opting to move in search of more space or a lower cost of living.  That trend continued in 2022, with hundreds of thousands of people uprooting their lives and moving to new states. [...] The states that attracted the most new residents in 2022 are Florida, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina, followed by other states in the South and West. [...] There could be another reason why Southern and Western states drew more residents last year:  Low taxes, according to the Tax Foundation.  Some high-tax states, like California and New York, lost residents in 2022.  Florida was the biggest net gainer last year, with about 319,000 people migrating into the state, the NAR analysis found.  California lost the most residents, with 343,000 leaving the state for other regions.

The Editor says...
A rebuttal to the article above can be found here: "CBS News brushes off the idea that higher taxes in blue states are contributing to this mass exodus, and it fails to mention at all crime, COVID-lockdown policies, and the like as reasons for the growing number of 'leftugees.'"

As Millions Flee Blue States, Red States Need To Remind Them Why.  New Census data show that roughly half of the states had net gains in population in 2022, and the other half net losses, thanks to what's called internal migration.  The winners were almost entirely red states, the losers blue.  There's a huge opportunity for conservatives, if they seize it. [...] This isn't a new trend.  People have been fleeing leftist strongholds such as California, New York, and Illinois for many years.  What's interesting about the new data is that they come in the wake of COVID, when the different approaches taken by states could not have been starker.  California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and the like used COVID to exercise maximum control over their residents — with mandates, curfews, lockdowns, and school closures.

Jerry Garcia marijuana brand pulls out of California amid thriving black market, high taxes.  The legal cannabis brand launched by the family of late Grateful Dead star Jerry Garcia has stopped operations in California amid a thriving black market for marijuana and a challenging environment for legitimate businesses.  A spokesperson for Garcia Hand Picked, which the deceased guitarist's family launched in 2020, confirmed to SFGATE that the business has left the Golden State and didn't specify a return date.

More U-Haul Trucks Left California Than Any Other State In 2022, Texas Top Destination: Study.  More moving trucks left from California than any other state in 2022 for the third year in a row, while more Americans are flocking to Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, a new study published on Jan. 3 has found.  The study was conducted by the moving truck rental company, U-Haul, and found that Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas were the preferred destinations for one-way moving trucks in 2022, with those states ranking as the top growth states on the annual U-Haul Growth Index.

DeSantis Goes to War.  People do not uproot themselves and leave the rhythms of home "for light and transient causes."  These people are not coming to Florida just for the weather.  They are fleeing the woke regime of blue America — an abusive, lawless, totalitarian regime which is waging war against American principles and the American way of life. [...] In evoking Churchill's speech, DeSantis lets us know that the woke regime is bearing down on America.  In the urgent cadences of war, DeSantis tells us that America will not survive unless she defeats the woke regime.  He believes this regime is so evil and powerful that he can, without bathos, compare it to the Nazi regime.

300,000 People Moved Out of California from 2021 to 2022, Most of Any State.  The U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday that 300,000 people left California in 2022, more than left any other state, amid a general slow increase in the U.S. population as the country recovered from COVID-19.  The estimates cover the period from July 2021 to July 2022.  It was the third consecutive annual decline for California, the Sacramento Bee noted, though births outnumbered deaths.

American Airlines is closing its San Francisco crew base and asking 400 flight attendants to leave California or leave the airline.  In closing its San Francisco base, citing economic factors and shifting customer demand, American presented 400 flight attendants with a choice that many said felt impossible to make:  leave the airline or leave the state.  The base is home to some of the carrier's most senior flight attendants, two-thirds of whom have been at the airline for 13 years or more, according to the union representing American Airlines flight attendants.  By January 31, they must select an airport from a list of the airline's hubs outside of California to work out of.  For those who can't or won't, the only options are to retire early (if eligible) or resign, the union told Insider.

As Usual, I Was Wrong.  [Scroll down] More than that, though, America is balkanizing.  They're moving with their feet.  Conservative people in New York and California are moving to Florida and Texas.  They're getting out of Dodge and that's making the places they leave behind more Democrat, not less.  The people of New York and Illinois and California will continue to drive out the middle class.  There will be rich and poor.  The poor will be drugged out, homeless wretches and crime will continue to increase.  These places should be left to their own devices.  Conservatives should take note and they should move to safer havens.

Florida [is] bracing for [a] new influx of residents fleeing blue states after [the] Dems' election success.  Continuing years of scorching population growth, Florida is bracing for a fresh batch of disgruntled citizens fed up with spiraling crime and high taxes to move in from Democratic strongholds.  Figures obtained by The [New York] Post show that through August, a record 41,885 New Yorkers already swapped their licenses for the Florida version, a commonly used indicator of demographic trends.  That figure was 21,277 for California, 16,970 for Pennsylvania and 16,846 for Illinois.  Sunshine State observers said after Tuesday saw Democratic leaders re-elected or voted in — coupled with Gov. Ron DeSantis's landslide entrenchment — they expect the exodus to Florida will continue.

Yet Another Industry Ditching Greasy Gavin's California for a Free State.  The Athletics' drawn-out battle with the city of Oakland may be coming to a conclusion sooner than many fans imagined as California continues to be a hot topic in sports.  As many stars and businesses are leaving the state, others are considering doing the same.  For a few years now, Athletics ownership has not been clear whether they intend to stay in Oakland or move to one of the many big markets which do not currently have a baseball team.  In 2024, the Athletics will no longer be contractually obligated to play games in RingCentral Coliseum.  Even so, talks between ownership and the city of Oakland with regard to contracting a new stadium have stalled.

Mark Wahlberg Joins California's Mass Exodus.  Actor and film producer Mark Wahlberg joined the growing list of A-list Hollywood celebrities fleeing California.  During an interview Tuesday on the CBS talk show "The Talk," the movie star said he moved out of the Golden State and into Nevada to give his children "a better life."  "I moved to California many years ago to pursue acting and I've only made a couple of movies in the entire time that I was there," Wahlberg said.  "So, to be able to give my kids a better life and follow and pursue their dreams, whether it be my daughter as an equestrian, my son as a basketball player, my younger son as a golfer, this made a lot more sense for us."

Oil Giant Sells California Office As It Ditches State For Texas.  Chevron is selling its global headquarters in California as it continues to move its operations and employees to Texas, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.  The oil giant sold 92 acres of offices in San Ramon as its workers continue to relocate to its Houston campus, where it has three times the number of employees that California has, according to the WSJ.  Chevron will follow in the footsteps of other large companies like Tesla and American Airlines that have left California in recent years for various reasons.

Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom Says People Are Fleeing California Because of Trump's Policies.  Hundreds of thousands of people have left California since the Covid pandemic began in what many are calling "The California Exodus."  In 2021, California lost a congressional seat for the first time due to the decreasing population.  However, according to California's Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom:
  •   It's not because of high taxes.
  •   It's not because of unconstitutional Covid mask and vaccine mandates.
  •   It's not because of record homelessness.
  •   It's not because millions of illegal aliens receive better healthcare and perks than taxpaying citizens.
  •   It's not because of rolling blackouts during heatwaves.
  •   It's not because the sale of gas-powered cars was banned by 2035 when CA can't even keep the lights on.
Gavin Newsom said people are fleeing his state for red states like Idaho, Texas, Arizona and Florida, because of Trump's policies.

The American way needs defending against a corrupt ruling class.  Over the last few years, the statistics are startling.  Since COVID, more adjusted gross income has moved into the state of Florida than has ever moved into any one state over a similar time period in American history.  In fact, since COVID, the next closest state to Florida in terms of receiving adjusted gross income was the state of Texas, which is not too shabby.  But Florida has seen almost four times as much adjusted gross income moving to Florida as has moved into Texas.  What are the states that are hemorrhaging wealth?  California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey — you know the list.  Florida has also led the nation in net in-migration since COVID.  Who has lost people?  Same cast of characters.  California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois.  California had never lost people in the history of its statehood, up until the last couple of years, and yet you've seen hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people flee.

Poll: Over one-third of San Franciscans plan to leave crime-ridden 'sanctuary city'.  The San Francisco Chronicle conducted a comprehensive survey between June and July of over 1,650 people to "measure attitudes on what's working, what isn't, performance of city government, the future of the city and more."  Respondents overwhelming indicated that a great deal isn't working, the city is performing poorly, the future looks bleak, and it may not be worth hanging around much longer.  65% of respondents said the city, run by Democrat Mayor London Breed, was worse than when they first moved there.  Only 10% said it was better.  Women reportedly found the city to be worse than did their male counterparts, with 69% reporting a significant deterioration (representing a seven-point gendered change) and only 7% noting there being signs of improvement.  35% of respondents believe things will only be worse two years from now.

California has weaponized transportation against its own population.  California is already seeing a population exodus, mostly middle-income or wealthy people in their peak earning years (age 25 to 64), to states where there are better opportunities and lower living costs, such as Texas, Idaho, and Utah.  In absolute terms, the Golden State lost the population of Springfield, Missouri, in 2021 (173,000).  But it lost even more — the rough population equivalent of Buffalo (277,000) — to net domestic migration in that same year.  Based on the policies its legislature keeps passing, California seems determined to become a state where the only remaining residents are the unemployed homeless and the filthy rich.  When they aren't trying to push residents out of the state, they seem most interested in discouraging new residents from moving there.

Californians are moving to Mexico City and not everyone is thrilled about it.  You've probably heard something by now about the horde of Californians who've been leaving the state and moving to states like Idaho, Oregon and especially Texas.  Because of the high property values in California, these people often move into the nicest neighborhoods in their new city or town of choice.  And because there are so many of these transplants they often drive up the local property values.  That's not always appreciated by the locals.  Today the LA Times reports there's a similar problem in Mexico City where Americans, many of them from California, are fleeing not just their state but their country in order to take advantage of the much lower property values in Mexico City.

California cities are bleeding residents.  How long will the trend last?  During the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed like everyone knew a co-worker fleeing the Bay Area.  Now, a new report out of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago shows just how much the exodus is gaining steam.  Only Illinois ranked worse off than the Golden State when it came to moving vans heading for the border during the pandemic, according to the report, which focused on data from the moving company United Van Lines.  In 2018-19, 56% of moves in California were families fleeing the state.  In 2020-21, that figure jumped to nearly 60%.

Get Me Out Of Here!  Data Shows California Exodus Isn't Subsiding, It's Accelerating.  [Scroll down]  The reasons for the California exodus couldn't be clearer.  As crime and homelessness are turning the state into a hellhole for residents, Newsom is focused on social equity.  As state spending and taxation skyrocket, Newsom wants to spend more money to become the nation's leader in abortions.  And as the rest of the country has finally recognized the reality of COVID's politicization, Newsom wants to keep hammering away at vaccine mandates and scaring his citizens.

71 US Cities Are Now Paying Tech Workers to Abandon Silicon Valley.  And It's Working.  "A growing number of cities and towns all over the U.S. are handing out cash grants and other perks aimed at drawing skilled employees of faraway companies to live there and work remotely," reports the Wall Street Journal:  ["]A handful of such programs have existed for years, but they have started gaining traction during the pandemic — and have really taken off in just the past year or so.  Back in October there were at least 24 such programs in the U.S. Today there are 71, according to the Indianapolis-based company MakeMyMove, which is contracted by cities and towns to set up such programs.["]

The Façade Of California's Economy Is About To Crumble.  The economic and political news coming out of California is consistently dismal these days, and yet state politicians and bureaucrats continuously insist that things have never been better.  Furthermore, they really know how to spin their data.  For example, CA has been losing more people to relocation in the past few years than at any time in the past century.  Try to research this subject matter and you will be buried in an avalanche of pro-Cal fluff pieces from the local media designed to obscure the problem.  State numbers indicate a loss of 117,000 people in 2021 alone (on top of huge losses in 2019 and 2020), but this number does not mention context.  Over 280,000 people LEFT the state in 2021 for a number of reasons, though covid lockdowns and vax mandates seem to be high on the list.

Remain At Your Own Risk!  Another Major Business Operator Pulls Out Of Chicago.  The phenomenon known as The Blue State Exodus has been well-documented, with citizens in states like California, New York, and Illinois loading up their U-Hauls and heading south at record rates to Florida, Texas, and the Carolinas.  In the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, and with skyrocketing inflation amplifying the impact of excessive tax rates, personal freedom and financial considerations are the primary motivators for suburbanites.  But for the city dwellers, it's more than just tyrannical vaccine policies and high property taxes driving their decisions to bail out.  It's the decay of the rule of law and its absurd acceptance of it by elected officials.  Blue cities are becoming reminiscent of Gotham City, pre-Batman, only Commissioner Gordon thinks things are going just swimmingly.

Chevron selling Bay Area headquarters, paying for employees relocate to Houston.  Plenty of tech companies have moved their headquarters out of the Bay Area in recent years, from startups like Coinbase to industry pioneers like Hewlett Packard and Oracle.  Elon Musk has been one particularly outspoken voice decrying California's business conditions.  Now, one of the East Bay's legacy companies is joining the trend.  Chevron announced it is shuttering its San Ramon global headquarters and even encouraging some employees to move to Houston, the Wall Street Journal reported.  The oil company will cover relocation costs for those voluntarily leaving for the Texas office, which has been growing and employs nearly 6,000 people.  Meanwhile, the San Ramon office buildings have experienced dwindling numbers in recent years.

A mass exodus from the Democrats' America.  As the Washington Examiner reported this week, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic has done nothing to arrest the trend of people fleeing large cities in liberal coastal states for more pleasant and orderly locales, particularly in the Mountain West and the Sun Belt.  A mixture of unreasonable pandemic restrictions, rising crime, lawlessness, and hostility toward employers has forced this continued urban exodus. [...] It is hardly a coincidence that all 15 of the 15 fastest-growing cities and towns between July 2020 and July 2021 are in states that Republicans govern:  Arizona, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Idaho.  And 14 out of the 15 fastest-declining cities during the same period were in states that Democrats governed at the time.  What towns and cities gaining population generally have in common both before and during COVID-19 is that they live under laws made by Republicans.  What towns and cities losing population have in common is that they live under laws made by Democrats.  Not all Democratic states and cities are equally anti-business, but COVID-19 helped bring out the totalitarian side of many state and city governments, driving away and keeping away many former and prospective residents.

Tens of Thousands Flee San Francisco As Liberal Leaders Struggle With Crime and Homelessness.  More than 50,000 residents left San Francisco last year, the highest population decrease of any major U.S. city.  Between July 2020 and July 2021, 54,813 people exited the Bay Area — a 6.3 percent decline resulting in San Francisco's smallest population in a decade.  High housing costs, rising crime, and rampant public vagrancy likely fueled the exodus, as residents have soured on the Golden City's liberal leadership.  Voters in a June recall election ousted radical prosecutor Chesa Boudin for his soft-on-crime approach.  Two-thirds of Asian Americans opposed Boudin, spurred on by his failure to quell attacks against seniors in their communities.  Driven by worries over public safety, a majority of Bay Area voters disapprove of Democratic mayor London Breed, according to a June San Francisco Examiner poll.  Breed slashed the city's police budget by $120 million in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd's death but reversed course 18 months later, making an emergency request to beef up law enforcement funding as crime soared.

Report: Thousands of Californians Flee to Mexico in Search of More Affordable Living.  Housing prices and rampant inflation under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newson (D-CA) are driving thousands of Californians to search for a more affordable life in Mexico.  "I would say at least half are coming down from California," Darrell Graham of Baja123 Real Estate Group told CNBC.  "Suddenly the cost of taxes, the crime rates, the politics, all the things that people are unhappy with in California are coming down to Mexico."

The Editor says...
Self-deportation is always really good news, especially if the émigrés are supposed to be in Mexico anyway.  Notice that the illegal aliens are escaping from California, because living in California is worse than living in Mexico!

Smithfield Foods to shutter California meat-packing plant.  Meat-packing giant Smithfield Foods said Friday it will close its only California plant next year, citing the escalating cost of doing business in the state.  The Farmer John meat-packing plant in Vernon, an industrial suburb south of Los Angeles, will shut down in February, with its 1,800 employees receiving severance and job placement support along with bonuses for those who choose to stay on the job until the closure, said Jim Monroe, vice president of corporate affairs.  Some workers, who on average earn about $21 per hour, also will have opportunities to relocate to other facilities owned by the Virginia-based Smithfield Foods Inc.

Fleeing dysfunctional America.  America is sorting itself out by class and kind, back to blood and political pedigree.  The demographic trend favors the so-called red states and the metro nodes inside these dominions.  Austin, Reno, and Nashville beckon.  Meanwhile, academic towns like Eugene, Chapel Hill, and Burlington draw gentry blues trying to escape crazy and crime but who are not in tune with Tulsa or Fargo.  For big-city emigrants, fatigue with misgovernment, ill-spent government largesse, and racial disorder are part of the picture.  As much as they are seeking uncrowded real estate, runaways are searching for courts, authorities, teachers, and stable neighbors whom they can trust.  Lockdowns and masks, power-juiced officials and public unions, looting and street violence, vagrants and junkies in ragged tents, and crime — lots of crime — have contributed to the flight, white and non-white.  [Paywall]

Why Americans Are Fleeing Liberal States.  According to a new survey that studies the migration patterns of Americans within the United States, liberal-run New Jersey led the nation with 70 percent of all people involved in moves fleeing the Garden State (compared to just 30 percent who migrated in).  Illinois, home of the crime-ridden liberal haven of Chicago, came in second with 67 percent of moves resulting in residents leaving the state and just 27 percent involving inbound moves.  New York, another liberal hotbed, came in third on the list.  In total 63 percent of movers kissed the Empire State goodbye, while just 37 percent decided to move in.  Connecticut wasn't much better.  More than 60 percent of all moves were outbound, while just 39.9 percent were inbound.  Rounding out the top five is California, with 60 percent of moves involving people leaving the state and just 40 percent involving inbound moves.

The Editor says...
Use caution when reading an article like the one immediately above, which discusses percentages without talking about raw quantities.  California has more (people) to lose (in a mass exodus) than other states, so it could well be true that California has seen the greatest number of people departing.

Don't bring your blues to our red states.  Moving to a red state is a relief for blue staters, but if they cannot connect their blue state pathologies to voting for Democrats, they are again going to vote for the same party that gave them their blue state blues.  It is imperative that blue-staters recognize that escaping to a red state to avoid blue state problems will do them no good if they persist in voting for Democrats, who, at first opportunity, will vote for the same blue policies they left their blue states to avoid.  It is imperative that every blue-stater who is not Republican not vote Democrat if they enjoy red state living.  Don't bring your blue state liberal policies to your new red state.

Texas Population Boom Fuels Growing Backlash in Lone Star State.  About 40% of Texans say the surge in newcomers in recent years has been a net negative, versus 34% who view it as good, according to a poll released Wednesday [5/4/2022] by the University of Texas and Texas Politics Project.  Among Texans who said they're aware of the surge in population, it's the highest share who view it negatively since polling began in 2019.  The survey suggests a disconnect between the politicians who frequently tout the hordes of people moving to the state as evidence of successful policies and the residents who feel the effects of more congested roads, higher property prices and overcrowded schools.  Texas' population grew more than any other U.S. state in the decade through 2020, and the boom has continued since then as companies like Tesla Inc. and Oracle Corp. have moved their headquarters to the Lone Star State.

California's population falls by more than 100,000 for [the] second year in a row.  The population of California continues to shrink, as residents flee the state's high cost of living and rising crime.  California's population declined again in 2021 for the second consecutive year, state officials said Monday, the result of a slowdown in births and immigration coupled with an increase in deaths and people leaving the state.  Critics point to the steady stream of people leaving California as an indictment on the state's policies, which are set by Governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow Democrats in the state legislature.

Texas lawmaker says state will 'roll out the red carpet' if Elon Musk moves Twitter to Lone Star State.  One Texas lawmaker says the state will "roll out the red carpet" for Tesla CEO Elon Musk in its attempts to lure the world's richest man to move Twitter's headquarters from California to the Lone Star State.  Texas State Representative Tan Parker told FOX Business that Musk should "absolutely" consider moving Twitter from California to Texas, just like he did with Tesla.  Musk recently entered an agreement with Twitter to buy the social media outlet for $44 billion.  "Elon made a tremendous decision, the right choice, when he brought Tesla to Texas, when he brought SpaceX to Texas.  I think it's no different in his decision making here for Twitter, he realizes that Texas is the most business friendly state in America, that we are open for business," Parker said.

Great idea, but only if the current staff stays in California.
Red states vying to entice Elon Musk to relocate Twitter HQ.  Now that Twitter is under new management, there are increasing calls for billionaire owner Elon Musk to move the company's headquarters to a red state.  That idea probably won't sit well with many of its San Francisco-based, progressive-posturing employees who reportedly are melting down over the visionary and often eccentric entrepreneur's stunning $44 billion purchase of the influential social media platform in the name of free expression.  Parenthetically, the pro-censorship political/media establishment, as well as the blue-check brigade generally, are also experiencing a collective panic attack over the acquisition.  This same cohort had no problem, however, with the purchase of The Washington Post by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.

DeSantis Comments About People From 'Dumpster Fire' San Francisco Moving to Florida.  One of the reasons many Republican and independent voters alike are so attracted to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is his propensity to go bottom-line and say exactly what he thinks when he thinks it, in common-sense, everyday language, with zero sugar-coating tossed in to soften his message.  Desantis's recent comments about San Francisco provide a perfect example.  During a discussion with supporters on Monday, the popular governor addressed concerns about whether new Florida residents from Democratic states could change the political demographics of the Sunshine State.  As reported by The Washington Examiner, DeSantis assured the gathering that Florida has actually seen a greater surge in Republican voters than Democrat voters.

DeSantis Warns That Democrats Fleeing California "Dumpster Fire" Will Move to Florida.  As the mass exodus of citizens and businesses fleeing Blue areas continues, Red states across the nation are bracing for a massive influx of new people who are seeking to escape the leftist policies that democrats have used to make big cities across the United States practically unlivable.  Thanks to the jaw-dropping spike in crime and authoritarian public health measures, among other arbitrary nonsense and 'big government' interference, millions have fled leftist-controlled areas in favor of the freer, red areas.  And the mass migration is only intensifying.  Californians above all others, however, are packing their bags en masse and fleeing the state for redder pastures.

California public school enrollment spirals, dropping by 110,000 students this year.  California public school enrollment has dropped for the fifth year in a row — a decline of more than 110,000 students — as K-12 campuses struggle against pandemic disruptions and a shrinking population of school-age kids amid wide concerns that the decrease is so large that educators can't account for the missing children.  California enrollment stood at 5,892,240 when measured in the fall of 2021, a 1.8% decline, according to state data released Monday.  It is the first time since 2000 that the state's K-12 population has dipped below 6 million, with large urban districts accounting for one-third of the drop.

Escape From NY & LA: The Exodus From Blue Cities And States Is Simply Staggering.  California is a place where gas is expensive, and human life is cheap.  It's a state where you can make money by betting your car will be broken in if you leave it outside.  It's a state where harming an animal carries heavier penalty than killing a child.  It's a state that wants to dictate its values to the rest of the world, while its own house stinks to high heaven.  Newsom's corruption would put to shame anything Zelensky can dream of — and just like Russian state media can't find a fault with Putin, the US media finds "no evidence" of Gavin ever doing anything wrong.  California under Newsom's rule is practically Russia without nuclear weapons.

The pandemic city exodus revealed:  New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago lost the most residents.  New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and other large cities lost the most residents during the pandemic city exodus last year as about 75 percent of U.S. counties experienced a loss in population, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau.  The agency revealed on Thursday [3/24/2022] that American's fled metropolitan areas between April 2020 to July 2021 in favor of the South West, with Dallas, Houston, Austin and Phoenix among those to see the largest growth last year.  The Census Bureau said:  'In 2021, fewer births, an aging population and increased mortality — intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic — contributed to a rise in natural [population] decrease' across the country,' but particular hitting big cities the hardest.'

In 1st full year of pandemic, biggest metros lost residents.  After returning to metro San Francisco following a college football career, Anthony Giusti felt like his hometown was passing him by.  The high cost of living, driven by a constantly transforming tech industry, ensured that even with two jobs he would never save enough money to buy a house.  So he started looking elsewhere, settling on Houston just last year.  "In Houston, I can be a blue-collar entrepreneur.  With the Houston housing market, it made sense to come here," said Giusti, who started a house-painting business.  Giusti was one of tens of thousands of residents who vacated some of the nation's biggest, most densely-populated and costly metropolitan areas in favor of Sunbelt destinations during the first full year of the pandemic, from mid-2020 to mid-2021, according to new data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Why are so many Californians moving to Utah?  It's no secret that Utah is growing, and many say that Californians are to blame.  According to data from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, our state saw a population growth rate of 1.8% between 2020 and 2021, which is the highest since 2017.  This averages out to about 160 residents per day, Emily Harris, the Gardner Institute's senior demographer, said in a press statement.  According to a June 2021 report published by Harris, California is bringing the most domestic in-migrants to Utah, accounting for a whopping 16.6%.

Report: More Than 600K People [are] Leaving New York And California For Lower-Taxed States.  A new report released on Monday [1/10/2022] revealed more than 600,000 people have left New York and California during the pandemic for lower-taxed states as the two Democrat-led states continue to extend strong COVID-19 restrictions.  CNBC shared the information during its "Squawk Box" program on Monday that noted the correlation between population and tax rates.

America's U-Haul Revolution.  Not everyone in Blue State America is moving to a far healthier Red State.  It only seems that way.  But enough are doing so to say, without a doubt, it is one of the most significant trends in America today.  A revolution of sorts.  It's long been known in demography and population economics that people leave areas known for authoritarian tyranny, stagnation, stultification, crime and excessive regulation in order to find the opposite somewhere else: economic freedom, dynamism, social diversity and good government.  It's a big reason why literally hundreds of millions of people around the world have expressed their desire to emigrate to the U.S.  But it's also true within countries, too.  Amid a backdrop of slow overall population growth, a problem in itself, comes the mass exodus of more than a million Americans moving largely from Blue States to Red States, expressing dissatisfaction with high taxes, rampant crime, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, excessive state government regulations, a politically stifling "woke" culture, and lack of economic opportunity and freedom.

The States With The Highest Percentage of Outbound Moves Have Something In Common.  [Scroll down]  New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Connecticut, and California all have more people moving OUT than moving in.  The CNBC reporter notes that all these states are "expensive" and have "high taxes," and people want "a less hectic lifestyle."  But, as we discussed in yesterday's article, there are plenty of additional reasons to flee these states.  Unreasonable Covid restrictions and surging crime are two other major factors.  Another thing that these states definitely have in common is leadership.  Every single state listed in the top 5 where people are leaving en masse is led by the Democrat Party.

Not enough U-Haul trucks for fleeing Californians in 2021 amid ongoing blue-to-red flight: report.  A new report released Monday revealed California saw the greatest net loss in U-Haul migration in 2021, the second consecutive year the Golden State ranked 50th in the nation for U-Haul one-way migration.  The U-Haul Growth Index, an annual report that determines growth by calculating the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks entering a state versus leaving in a calendar year, found that California had the largest net losses in one-way U-Haul trucks in 2021, followed by Illinois in 49th place.  According to the report, California remained the top state for out-migration in 2021, but its net loss of U-Haul trucks "wasn't as severe as 2020."  Analysts believe this is partly because U-Haul "ran out of inventory to meet customer demand for outbound equipment."

The Texas vs. California Challenge.  [Scroll down]  In Texas, you can get a palace for $800,000.  In California, you can get a shack for $800,000.  If you can find one for sale.  And it would be in Bakersfield.  Advantage:  Texas.  In California you have to wear masks in most places and, in some, show your vaxx papers.  In Texas, no.  They have no truck with that fascist nonsense.  Maybe 20% of people mask up in regular stores, though it's 50% in Whole Foods.  Stereotypes are true!  Advantage:  Texas.  Beers.  Texas has Shiner Bock.  California has undrinkable bespoke IPAs brewed by hipster doofuses who no one will ever love.  Advantage:  Texas. [...] Since I am a blue state lawyer and California is run for my benefit, I'll hang there for a while.  But everyone else ought to flee.

Census: Americans Flee Left-Wing Lockdown States for Open, Red States.  Blue states that have repeatedly imposed mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and lockdowns over the last year have lost population to red states that have done away with such policies.  Newly released data from the United States Census Bureau reveals that while blue states like California and New York have increasingly lost population from July 2020 to July 2021, red states such as Texas and Florida have seen population increases.

Escape From LA: More Container Business Flees To East Coast.  If so many container ships are stuck in the Pacific Ocean, waiting for weeks for a berth in Los Angeles or Long Beach, why not reschedule calls to another port? [...] It's not that simple, given how much warehousing and transloading capacity is built around the Southern California gateway — and congestion is affecting every port in America.  Even so, shippers and carriers are indeed moving to sidestep Los Angeles/Long Beach.  In the ongoing battle for Asian imports between the West Coast and East Coast, the momentum is once again swinging back to the east.

The rate at which people stopped moving to California surprised researchers.  The number of people moving to California has significantly dropped since the pandemic started last year, while the number of people fleeing the state continues to rise, according to a new study.  "I guess I was a little bit surprised to see that entrances had fallen so much.  It wasn't so much that we saw it in a particular area.  For me, the surprise was that this was a statewide phenomenon," co-author of the study from California Police Lab, Evan White, told KCRA.  The study found a 38% decrease in people moving to California at the end of September 2021 compared to the end of March 2020.  The study found a 12% increase in residents moving out of state.

Leaving California.  I ran into an old California buddy online Sunday.  He asked me why I moved to Texas.  We didn't have a lot of time, so I gave him the shortest explanation I could:  "It's not California."  For the 10 or so friends, all former Californians, who have moved near us in Texas in the last year or so, no further explanation is needed.  In Texas 80 looters don't pull their cars up to swankiest department stores and loot the place in broad daylight with impunity.  San Francisco is different, and has been for a long time, nearly as long as it has allowed urinating and defecating and sleeping and shooting up heroin on public sidewalks.  That town's mayor said this week they are finally going to "crack down." Will police arrest the thieves?  Well, we will have to see about that.  It's still a misdemeanor in California to steal anything under $950 in value.

NY Times:  It's not hard to see why people are moving to Texas.  There's an opinion piece in today's NY Times titled "Everyone's Moving to Texas.  Here's Why." [...] I've mentioned before that two of my friends moved out of state in the past two years.  One friend who struggled to buy a house in California moved to upstate New York and bought a house on five acres.  Another friend sold his townhouse across the street from the beach and bought a brand new house in a beautiful planned development on the east coast.  He also had enough money left over to buy a brand new Model S.  I've also had two neighbors on my street leave the state.  One moved to Ohio and the other to Nevada.  Both are living in much larger homes an paying less in taxes now.  If you live in California this exodus east is something you probably here people talk about pretty often.

Tesla's Elon Musk suggests Texas HQ move inspired by tweet from California Democrat.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Friday suggested that his decision to move the automaker's headquarters from Fremont, California, to Austin, Texas, was inspired by a Democratic assemblywoman [...] in 2020.  Musk made the announcement Thursday during a shareholder meeting, citing affordability, space and convenience as some of the reasons behind the move, adding that Tesla will also continue to expand in California.  On Friday, the billionaire engineer responded to an article from Tesla news website Tesmanian.com titled, "Tesla Moved its HQ to Texas Following Explicit Offer from California Assemblywoman," saying, "Exactly."  Musk has been hinting at the move since May of 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions temporarily shut down Tesla's operations in Fremont.  He called the restrictions "fascist," prompting harsh words from a Democratic state assemblywoman.

Elon Musk announces Tesla is moving its headquarters to Texas.  Today was Tesla's annual shareholder meeting.  In past years the meeting has been held at the company's factory in Fremont, California.  This year it was held at the gigafactory in Austin, Texas.  It turns out there was a reason for that.  After the business portion of the meeting, Elon Musk got up and talked about all of the company's good numbers.  Car production is up, revenue is up, the Model 3 is a best-seller in its segment and they expect the Model Y to be the best selling car in the world soon.

Elon Musk says Tesla will move HQ from California to Texas.  Tesla will relocate its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, though the electric car maker will keep expanding its manufacturing capacity in the Golden State, CEO Elon Musk said Thursday [10/7/2021].  Musk, who last year said he was moving to Texas from California, gave no timeline for the move when he addressed shareholders at Tesla's annual meeting.  In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Musk clashed with San Francisco Bay Area health authorities trying to enforce shelter-in-place orders.  At the time, he threatened to relocate Tesla's operations to Texas or Nevada.

Tesla moves headquarters from California to Texas.  Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, CEO Elon Musk announced at the company's shareholder meeting on Thursday [10/7/2021].  The meeting took place at Tesla's vehicle assembly plant under construction outside of Austin on a property that borders the Colorado River, near the city's airport.  However, the company plans to increase production in its California plant regardless of the headquarters move.  "To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California," Musk said.  "Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%.  If you go to our Fremont factory it's jammed."

Idle hands do the devilish Dems' work.  The hardest working states, as measured by WalletHub, are predominantly Republican.  The lowest 10 in the rankings are mostly run by Democrats.  Probably not a surprise since they were lavish with unemployment benefits and other work disincentives.  Democrat-run states and cities rarely score well in various quality of life ratings.  Notably, the U-Haul ranking of states by migration growth shows that people are fleeing blue states for red states, usually for economic reasons.  They intend to work hard and benefit from the fruits of their labor.  The dignity and sense of purpose that accompany hard work can be tied to long-lasting happiness — which conservatives enjoy more than liberals — versus the fleeting, instant gratification the ingordigious lefties pursue.

The Real Story of the California Recall.  Forget what you hear most pundits saying about last week's recall election that failed to unseat California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  The real story is the slow — but gaining-in-speed — exodus from California to states with lower or no state taxes.  This mass exit likely reduced the number of people who might have voted to oust Newsom.  Then there's the rising cost of just about everything, including gasoline.  At nearly $6 a gallon at some stations in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Los Angeles, California has the highest average price for gas in the nation.  There are also other forces at work. [...] A Hoover Institution/Stanford University report found that people are leaving the state at an even faster pace than in recent years.  Most critically, it said, California has lost 74 business headquarters in only the first six months of this year.  This compares to 62 companies that had relocated in all of 2020.  Where are they going?  Mostly to Texas, where there is no state [income] tax, gas prices are much lower, and you can buy a house (depending on where you choose to live) at prices far below many areas of California.  In case you think this can be blamed on the pandemic, researchers used data starting in 2018 to show the three-year exodus.  The San Francisco Bay Area accounted for five of the 10 state counties that had the most company departures.  A total of 47 companies left.

Gone Is the Romance of California.  Perhaps if all the disgruntled voters who left California in recent years were still there to favor the recall of Gavin Newsom, his political career would have ended last Tuesday.  During the 2010s, about 6.1 million people moved from California to other states, while 4.9 million came from other places to California.  The demographics of the leave-takers is unclear, but the new arrivals include many from foreign countries, along with wealthy corporate types who could afford the move.  Declining birth rates among young people in California and more deaths due to the increasing numbers of elderly also played a part in lowering California's population[.]  Such "exchange of prisoners," as it were, perfectly suits the goals of the Democrat party, which is to keep California a deep blue political stronghold and to strengthen its national clout by cosseting the minority and white liberal vote.

Stanford Study:  More Businesses Have Already Fled California This Year Than in All of 2020.  California is in decline.  The Golden State lost population in 2020 for the first time in decades, and the exodus included celebrity entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.  A long list of businesses, some as well known as Disney, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle, and Toyota, have either relocated or sent some jobs outside of the state in recent years. [... A new] study also reports that the rate at which businesses are leaving the state is rapidly accelerating.  For the first six months of 2021, the rate is nearly twice as high as it was last year.  That means more businesses have already left California this year than in all of 2020.

Report: 9 Of The 10 Worst Cities For First-Time Home Buyers Are In California.  A new report reveals that cities in California are among the worst for first-time home buyers.  Using twenty-two metrics related to affordability, real estate market conditions, and quality of life, personal finance company WalletHub revealed that all of the ten worst cities are in Democrat-run states.  Nine are in California.

A Collapsing San Francisco Is About to Lose Nearly Half Its Residents and Democrats Are Only Fueling the Fire.  To say that San Francisco is in decline would be an understatement.  The city that once captured the hearts and minds of everyone who saw it is a shadow of what it once was thanks to skyrocketing crime, rampant drug addiction, and Democrat policies that continue to worsen every problem it has.  Now, San Francisco residents are so tired of drowning in the issues that nearly half of them are planning to pack up and leave.  According to CBS San Francisco, the city's Chamber of Commerce conducted a poll with more than five hundred registered voters and found that over 40 percent of the residents said they planned to move out of the city in the next few years.

Move to Texas if you like, but don't bring California with you.
Families Fleeing California Bay Area Causing Housing Frenzy in Austin, Texas.  Californians are fleeing the state to live where they can find more affordable housing, better schools, and a more rural lifestyle.  A large percentage of them are choosing Austin, Texas.  The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the phenomenon of more people opting for permanent telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the trend of people choosing to live in GOP-led states that didn't impose draconian lockdowns.

Native Californian Who Is Leaving California: 'My Heart Is Broken'.  Some Californians are packing up boxes, loading them into their vans, and moving away from their state.  Data suggests that 167,000 Americans are leaving California, which puts California at the top of the list of states with this mass migration.  Several native Californians told The Epoch Times that what has driven them to move to other states is mainly the political climate and declining quality of life and education.  Peter Kam, president of Coldwell Banker George Realty, said some Californians choose to sell their properties partially because they are moving to another state with cheaper house prices and lower state income taxes.  Francine Verbarg was born and raised in Northern California.  Before retiring, she worked for the Irvine City Council in Orange County, California, with former state legislators on border issues.  She will be moving to Idaho with her family.  "We're leaving next week.  We will still own property here, but it breaks my heart to leave."

Golden Exodus:  California shrank by 165,000 taxpayers, $8.8 billion in gross income.  California residents of all ages and incomes are leaving for more tax friendly climates, and they're taking billions of dollars in annual income with them.  The Internal Revenue Service recently released its latest taxpayer migration figures from tax years 2018 and 2019. They reflect migratory taxpayers who had filed in a different state or county between 2017 and 2018, of which 8 million did in that timespan.  California, the nation's most-populous state, lost more tax filers and dependents on net than any other state.  Minus incoming filers, California shed a net 165,355 tax filers and dependents between the two tax years, representing a loss of $8.8 billion in net adjusted gross income.

The Great Conservative Migration.  The results of the 2020 census are in, and the Democrats are looking very nervous.  It turns out that red states are growing and blue states are shrinking. [...] My home state of Idaho is a perfect example of the migration.  It has experienced a 17% growth in its population over the past 10 years — the second highest in the nation (Utah was first).  For most of the decade, the growth rate hovered around 1.5% annually.  However, in 2020 the rate spiked to 2.9% — almost twice the normal rate.  Does it have anything to do with California being nearby?  Maybe rampant homelessness, spiking crime rates, and oppressive COVID restrictions weren't that popular with Californians after all.  It seems locking the state down didn't work any better for California than it did for Cuba — though an escape from Newsomstan is a bit safer than giving the one-finger goodbye to the Castros.  A look at Idaho's growth data reveals that California was indeed the big culprit — but not alone.

Gov. Ron DeSantis: 'Overwhelming' Number of People Moving to Florida Registering As Republican.  Many people moving to Florida are registering as Republicans because lockdowns in blue states caused them to reevaluate being a Democrat, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday [5/26/2021].  "So it's interesting with Florida, like, the media at the beginning of this said, 'Florida is bad,' and I think it's because they wanted to damage Trump in Florida, wanted to damage me, so they just kept saying it was bad, even though the facts didn't say it," he said during a town hall event on Fox News Channel's Hannity.

Democrat Policies Have Created a Blue-State Exodus.  Americans can't escape from blue states fast enough.  Even before the COVID pandemic, they were fleeing Democrat-led states for red ones in droves.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2010 and 2019, California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois lost a combined four million residents.  Meanwhile, the top five states that saw the greatest influx of new residents were the Republican-led states of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio, and Arizona.  It does not hurt that Florida, Texas, and Tennessee also have no income tax.  But the pandemic, in conjunction with disastrous Democrat policies, has only accelerated the blue-state exodus.  It turns out that draconian lockdowns in the form of school, restaurant, and business closures; massive spikes in violent crime; few entertainment options; higher taxes; and scarce job opportunities do not make for a desirable living environment or a suitable place to raise a family.

Thousands of families flee [from California] to Republican Texas and Florida.  Scott Thatcher and his wife Angela were born in California and love the sun-kissed Golden State.  But two months ago they sold their home, packed up their belongings and travelled 1,700 miles with their three sons to start a new life in Texas.  Despite earning good salaries with secure jobs as a driver and a nurse, the family's combined income of about $140,000 a year was not enough to prosper in their town of Modesto, about 90 minutes east of San Francisco.  'We were surviving but not thriving,' said Scott, 35.  'We were getting by but it felt like we would never really get ahead.'

Tarnished California:  The Golden State is bleeding people for the first time, including me.  For the first time in its 171-year history, the state of California lost population last year.  In fact, it lost so many people in recent years that after 17 decades of growth, the most populous state will lose one of its 53 congressional seats in this upcoming redistricting and one of its 55 Electoral Votes.  I'm one of the newer exiles, an economic/political refugee among the more than 182,000 who've abandoned the no-longer-so-Golden State in the last 16 months.

If red states don't reform Electoral College, it's mob rule in America.  We all witnessed the shocking moment on Election Day when Arizona instantly turned blue, for the second time in 76 years.  The way Arizona voted in the presidential election was determined solely by Phoenix.  Phoenix voted blue, so the Electoral College went blue.  In other words, every red county in Arizona had zero say in who was to become president, simply because the urban population officially overcame the rural population.  Once this happens, it's blue forever.  Take California as an example, or the state of Oregon.  Both are ruled by their cities, while both have enormous swaths of unrepresented conservative regions.  This is the fate of every red state in the nation, most alarmingly in deep red states adjacent to deep blue states.  Idaho will be the next flipped election.  Just like Phoenix once was, Boise is now the fastest growing city in the nation.  Where are Boise's immigrants coming from?  California.

People Want Out of California, and the Numbers Show It.  California has been a state since 1850.  That means that in early September, it will have been 171 years since that move to statehood.  Officials haven't been counting population figures that long, but they've been keeping up with it for quite a while.  On Friday, California's Finance Department revealed something interesting.  For the first time since at least 1900, the state's population actually decreased.  Almost 200,000 people — 182,000, to be exact — left, leaving the population at just below 39.5 million, according to Yahoo News.  Like with most things, excuses are being made for the decline.

California Fleeing:  Democrats delude themselves about why their state is losing people.  The 2020 Census results are a complete embarrassment to California's ruling Democrats.  Despite opening the floodgates to millions of illegal aliens, making the state the home to one out of four foreigners who break into the country without authorization, the state has made substandard gains in population over the last decade.  The population that the state did gain over the last decade was well below the 7.4% national average, according to the New York Times, and really bad compared to places like number-one Texas.  As a result, the state is losing a congressional seat, for the first time in its 170-year history.  It's happening despite the 6.1% gain because the number of congressional seats is capped at 435.  Any state that gains a seat does so at the expense of another.

Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset — What Does This Mean For The Future?  The past year I have been writing extensively about what I call the "great conservative migration":  a shift in US demographics not seen since the Great Depression.  Approximately 8.9 million Americans have relocated since the beginning of the covid lockdowns according to the US Postal service, and a large portion of these people are leaving left-leaning blue states for conservative red states in the west and the south.  States like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey were at the top of the list of states people wanted to escape.  The response from leftist states has been amusing.  California, for instance, has tried to obscure the data on population loss and has dismissed the existence of the migration.  They claim that the state population is actually rising, but fail to mention that most of California's population "gains" have been from babies born along with an increase in illegal immigration.  This has not offset the 267,000 individuals and families that left the state in the last three months 2020 alone.  That's an entire city of people, gone in 90 days.  And where are these people going?  Places like Idaho, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, etc.  ALL red states that are fighting back against draconian covid mandates and other unconstitutional measures.

Biden's California Dream.  I was surprised to read (in The Los Angeles Times) that the Biden administration's "role model for America" is... California!  He wants to "Make America California."  That is a terrible idea.  Californians now rush to move out of California.  Some hopeful folks still move there, but so many more leave that California now loses more than 10,000 citizens every month.  In fact, the state will soon lose a congressional seat.  Why do Californians leave?  "Exorbitant tax rates, high crime rates, the failing public school systems, the exorbitant cost of living," says reporter Kristen Tate in my new video.  So many Californians move away that there's now even a shortage of U-Hauls.  Renting one to go from Los Angeles to Houston costs four times as much as it does to go from Houston to LA.  "People are just emptying out!" says Tate.

San Francisco Hemorrhaging Residents To Texas And Florida:  Study.  The liberal city of San Francisco, California, is losing residents at a record pace, many of whom are migrating to states such as Texas and Florida, according to a recent study.  San Francisco has lost more residents between 2019 and 2020 than any other major U.S. city, according to data compiled by the commercial realty firm CBRE Group and reported by Business Insider.  The study discovered that the number of those fleeing San Francisco to Texas spiked 32.1%, and those making the trek to Florida skyrocketed by 46.2%.

Sayonara California:  Corporate Relocation Experts Expect Best Year Ever!  Tesla joins a formidable list of high-tech companies fleeing bad government and relocating to Texas, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Oracle Corp.  McKesson Corp., and expansions of Apple, Google and Facebook.  There is a new name for the trend:  "Techsodus."  Musk will be the first to admit that insults are hardly the tipping point for a CEO deciding to relocate to another state.  The best reason is summed up by a relocation specialist cashing in on the trend:  "California's regulatory environment is the most costly, complex and uncertain in the nation," Joseph Vranich recently said.  And it's gotten worse.  The laws have become so confusing and so complex that California has earned the dubious distinction as rated among the top "judicial hellholes" in the nation, according to CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine.  It has reached a point to where the lawmakers fail to understand what's in the laws — all 10,000s of new pages.

The Trouble with Open Borders.  The usual maxim here in Texas is that people pulling U-Hauls from California are welcome to bring their worldly goods as far as they like as long as they leave their Californian politics in New Mexico, which already has them.  There are more than a few Texans who believe that we are building a wall along the wrong river — that it's the Red River that needs fortifying, and that our westernmost city should have its name changed to:  "Prohibido El Paso."  In reality, there is some reason to believe that the median Californian relocating to Texas is more conservative (or at least more likely to be registered as a Republican) than the median Texan.  But we have seen this kind of thing before:  Powered in no small part by moneyed coastal refugees, the clout of the Denver-Boulder-Aspen axis eventually came to dominate all of Colorado politics.  A similar story has played out in Arizona.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
California Lawmakers Want Wealth Tax That Will Follow Taxpayers When They Inevitably Move to Cheaper States.  As people leave the State of California in record numbers, Progressive lawmakers in that state are moving ahead with plans to enact a wealth tax that will tax a person's net worth and even follow them out of state should they move.  Many businesses and wealthy executives are leaving the State of California because of an overreaching tax code that is bleeding the states population of their ability to accrue wealth.  But that's not stopping some state lawmakers from supporting a wealth tax proposal, even as a growing number of Californians are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), to be recalled.  The California legislature left the door open last session to enact a wealth tax proposal that would apply up to a 0.4 percent tax on the amount of a state resident's net worth over $30 million dollars.

So Many People Fled California It Could Lose a Congressional Seat in Census.  Eureka!  We found that gold you hear about in California.  And it just left.  California lost so many people in the last decade that when the census numbers are all tabulated, it could lose a congressional seat.  Even the state's Rose Bowl game just left for Texas.  The San Diego Union-Tribune reports the California Department of Finance says the state grew by only 21,200 residents in the past year, the lowest since 1900.

Everybody In California Is Moving to Texas.  Regular BattleSwarm readers already know about Tesla, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan moving from California to Texas.  It looks like those were just the first pebbles of the avalanches of companies and people looking to get [...] out of the formerly golden state.  Eager to enjoy such rarefied amenities as low taxes, sane government, a sane regulatory environment, open restaurants and regular access to electricity, other companies that have recently announced they're moving their headquarters [...] include: [...]

Relocation by Tesla's Musk and Oracle Corp. follows 687,000 other Californians who've moved to Texas in last decade.  If you spend enough time in Texas, you'll quickly become comfortable with phrases like "y'all," "bless your heart" and "howdy."  But in recent years, there's a saying that's been almost as prevalent:  "Don't California My Texas."  The phrase, borne of the massive migration of Californians to Texas over the last decade, captures conservative Texans' political and economic concerns about a very real migration pattern — a trek that several high profile celebrities and business leaders joined in this year.  Joe Rogan's decision to leave California for Texas became a point of conversation and speculation for months until the UFC host and comedian finally confirmed the move.

From Elon Musk to Oracle — the coronavirus accelerates California exodus.  The coronavirus is accelerating a significant tech exodus out of California, with Oracle announcing Friday [12/11/2020] that it has moved its headquarters from Redwood City to Austin, Texas.  The move came just days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced he'd be moving from Los Angeles to Austin.  Other tech giants that have recently left California include Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and newly public software giant Palantir.

Oracle moves headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin.  Oracle Corp. said it has moved its headquarters to Texas, from its home state of California to give employees more flexibility on where they do their jobs.  The move to Austin from Redwood City "means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time," Oracle said Friday in a regulatory filing.  The company will continue "to support" its other U.S. office locations in Santa Monica, California, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, Massachusetts, according to the filing.

Elon Musk Is GTT.  When people left their homes and headed west to the Texas frontier, they'd often leave a simple carving in a prominent tree or another spot on their property that consisted of three letters:  GTT.  Gone to Texas. [...] About 1,000 people move to Texas per day, as has been the case for a decade or more, making it 29 million strong — and counting.  Elon Musk, the inventor, corporate titan, and space-farer confirmed Tuesday [12/8/2020] that he, like so many before him, has gone to Texas because California, where he still has "massive" SpaceX and Tesla operations, is intolerant of freedom and just about played out.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has told friends and associates he plans to move to Texas.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk put his California houses on the market this year while he was sparring with state lawmakers over Covid-19 restrictions.  He's simultaneously been expanding operations in Texas and cozying up to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.  Now, several of his close friends and associates say that Musk has told them he's planning to move to the Lone Star State.  The people with knowledge of his plans asked not to be named because their conversations were private.  Musk, the world's second-wealthiest person behind Amazon's Jeff Bezos, is in Texas frequently already.  He spends most of his time between Austin, where Tesla and his tunnel start-up Boring Company have operations, and a coastal village called Boca Chica, home to a SpaceX facility.  SpaceX started operating in Texas in 2003.

Elon Musk Is Reportedly Moving To Texas.  While there is no official change of residency yet, Musk will be the latest in a line of celebrities (that includes people like Joe Rogan) in the process of defecting from California in favor of Texas.  "Several close friends" of Musk have reportedly said that Musk intends on moving to Texas, CNBC reported on Friday [12/4/2020].

California's Economic Refugees Ruined Arizona in the 2020 Election.  Who can blame Californians and Washingtonians for wanting to breathe free, sun-saturated and dusty air in Arizona?  We can, actually.  People fleeing those states as well a handful of others appear to be responsible for Arizona's turn to Leftism in the 2020 General Election.  The Seattle Times reports that the refugees from California, Washington, Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Minnesota, Nevada, Florida, and Utah, in that order, fled to the state with Cactus League baseball, more conservative politics, the Grand Canyon, and the Red Rocks of Sedona.  And then they approved legal pot, the state's highest tax increase ever, and put Democrats in the highest offices — the Senate and White House — to ensure their new home will be every bit as expensive and over-regulated as the one from which they fled.

California, There It Goes.  Another wonderful family we know is leaving for good this week.  Except the U-Haul they reserved months ago is suddenly unavailable.  They were told there is not a single U-Haul in California right now, but they are welcome to fly to Dallas to pick one up.  So they can drive it to Los Angeles, pack it, and drive it to Nashville.  No prob!  The PODS and the moving trucks are all sold out, too.  Current tally of families I know who either have left, or are about to leave southern California: six.  And I don't know that many people.  Today at the hair salon, my non-political stylist told me that at least 10 of her clients recently told her they're moving to places like Texas and Idaho.  This is at a tiny salon with one chair!  One of her clients said they're leaving with the entire extended family, and they plan to get houses in the same neighborhood.  My hairstylist just bought her first house here last year but said, "if they shut me down again, I'm out of here."

Tech icon criticizes San Francisco, announces move to Florida: 'Impossible to stay here'.  Bay Area tech icon Keith Rabois announced he's leaving San Francisco permanently — and he is criticizing the city on his way out.  Rabois, an early executive at PayPal, Square, LinkedIn and more, told Fortune he is "moving imminently" because he's finding it "impossible to stay" in San Francisco.  After living in the Bay Area for 20 years, he said he plans on moving to Florida.

'Customers are calling us crying': scams and soaring prices as Californians move out.  Record numbers of residents have been leaving California in recent years, but in 2020 the growth of remote work, the lure of cheaper housing and a summer of unprecedented wildfires has accelerated the trend.  As a result, the moving business in San Francisco's Bay Area is booming, but the surge has come with its own set of problems.  Moving trucks are hard to find, prices to get out of the Bay are being pushed sky-high, and the supply side of the market — with high starting costs and because movers are required to obtain state licenses — has been slow to respond.  The shortage has created openings for an underground moving economy complete with scammers who take advantage of desperate California escapees, left without easy options.

When Democrats Hate What They Vote For.  Californians are fleeing in record numbers for red states like Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.  New York City is emptying out as people with means relocate; many are going to Florida.  For reasons only the Heavens know, there are normal people still living in Portland.  It is not hard to see what is happening:  People are fed up with the overreach of Democrat-monopolized government.  Their policies are inhibiting the possibility of retaining personal independence and achieving any sense of self-fulfillment.  This is on top of not being able to provide basic safety to citizens.  Once these blue state refugees resettle, will they reflect on what drove them out and change their own beliefs and value systems?  Based on my interactions with them, I am not optimistic.

Gene Simmons puts his longtime Beverly Hills mansion up for sale.  Gene Simmons is leaving the Southern California life after nearly four decades.  The legendary KISS singer and bassist has decided to pick up and move his family to Washington State, citing high property taxes in California as a motivating factor.  As a result, he's put his 16,000-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion, which includes seven bedrooms, up for sale for $22 million.

The Editor says...
Why not keep going and move to British Columbia?

How California expats are helping turn Texas into a battleground state.  Pushed by the soaring cost of living, more than 700,000 Californians have moved to the Lone Star state since 2008.  It's part of the reason historically bright red Texas has turned surprisingly purple in 2020.

San Francisco tax revenue plunge points to resident exodus.  San Francisco experienced a 43% year-over-year decline in sales tax revenues during the pandemic, which has been credited to an exodus from the expensive city.  San Francisco's chief economist Ted Egan attributed the drop in revenue that occurred between April and June to a flight of individuals from the city, rather than a decline in activity due to the pandemic.  Egan told Fox News that while areas throughout California experienced a decline in sales tax revenues, other cities saw an uptick in online sales — but San Francisco did not.

Why I'm Leaving California.  My family and my company are leaving California. [...] We're leaving because all the benefits of California have steadily eroded — and then suddenly collapsed.  Meanwhile, all the costs of California have steadily increased — and then suddenly skyrocketed.  It can be difficult to spot the incremental encroachment of a terrible disease, but once the final ravages set in, it becomes obvious that the illness is fatal.  So, too, with California, where bad governance has turned a would-be paradise into a burgeoning dystopia.  When my family moved to North Hollywood, I was 11.  We lived in a safe, clean suburb.  Yes, Los Angeles had serious crime and homelessness problems, but those were problems relegated to pockets of the city — problems that, with good governance, we thought could eventually be healed.  Instead, the government allowed those problems to metastasize.

California: The Golden State in Utter Decay.  California industries have recognized the signals and are taking action.  High-profile companies and leaders have announced their plans to leave the state or have openly proclaimed their considerations for the idea.  Media outlet The Daily Wire, with co-owner Ben Shapiro, recently announced its plan to move to Nashville; podcast giant Joe Rogan is taking his ball and moving to Texas; and Elon Musk is moving Tesla's headquarters out-of-state, and possibly manufacturing operations as well.  Other businesses will surely follow, as the hostility toward industry through taxes and oppressive regulations continues unimpeded.  State lawmakers are not intimidated by the idea of losing millions of dollars in revenue and have recently taken the bold step of adding a layer of government regulations to existing and would-be businesses.

Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire [is] leaving California: 'Terrible governance has consequences'.  The Daily Wire is moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Nashville, Tenn., later this year, the conservative media company, which was co-founded by Ben Shapiro, announced on Tuesday [9/15/2020].  "We've been asked over and over and over again when we would leave California.  The answer:  now.  See you in Nashville, gang!" Shapiro wrote to his more than 3.1 million followers on Twitter.  "I've lived my entire life in California.  Within weeks, we'll be taking our 75 jobs and leaving.  We're not the first.  And we certainly won't be the last.  Terrible governance has consequences," he added in a subsequent post.

More people are leaving California than ever before, driven out by worsening wildfires, politics and the skyrocketing cost of living.  More people are leaving California than arriving as the state reels from devastating wildfires that only worsen by the year, power outages, poor air quality, and a burgeoning cost of living.  The California dream may be fading as the idyllic oceanfront state sees warming temperatures, burning blazes, challenges in controlling the coronavirus pandemic, and sky-high real estate prices.  Monica Gupta Mehta and her husband said that this year's furious fires that darkened the skies over their Palo Alto home made them consider moving their family elsewhere.

California is a failed state.  How do we know?  They're moving to Arizona in droves.  Driving across Arizona, it's hard not to notice a surge in California license plates.  The reason for this is becoming more apparent every day.  California is a failed state.  After nearly a decade of one-party rule, the once-Golden State is tarnished, possibly beyond repair.  Listing all the problems facing our neighbors across the Colorado River would require several books, so I'll only highlight a few.  The fifth-largest economy in the world and home to many of the greatest technology companies on Earth can't keep the lights on.  The state's three largest utilities turned off power to more than 410,000 homes and businesses last Friday, then again to half as many Saturday [8/22/2020].  Gov. Gavin Newsom sprung to action on Monday by announcing more blackouts.  "We failed to predict and plan these shortages," the governor said.  "And that's simply unacceptable."  But accept it he did, noting that the state's near-religious promotion of solar and wind power left a gap in the reliability of its power grid.  You don't say.

The 2020 San Francisco exodus is real, and historic, report shows.  A new report confirms what many have been talking about for weeks:  There is an exodus out of San Francisco, and the numbers are staggering.  Online real estate company Zillow released new statistics shining a stark light on the issue this week.  Their "2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report" reveals that inventory has risen a whopping 96% year-on-year, as empty homes in the city flood the market like nowhere else in America.

Tesla Austin Factory Now Official.  The long rumored and threatened (if you're California) Austin-area Telsa Gigafactory is now official: [...] The site is evidently going to be out at SH-130 and Harold Green Road northeast of the airport, at the site previously owned by Martin Marietta.

Tesla picks Texas for its largest auto assembly plant.  Tesla has picked Texas as the site for its largest auto assembly plant where it has vowed to employ at least 5,000 workers and will get more than $60million in tax breaks from Travis County and a local school district over the next decade.  Work on the plant, which will be over 4 million square feet, is already underway, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company's second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday evening [7/22/2020].

Greenie king Elon Musk holds California's petty tyrants' feet to the fire.  Elon Musk, CEO and founder of greenie auto manufacturer Tesla Motors, has stuck a thumb in the eye of California's petty tyrants.  Same as the beauty parlor owner in Dallas, Musk announced Monday [5/11/2020] that he's restarting operations at his Fremont-based Tesla plant, whether the Alameda County shutdown satraps like it or not.

Elon Musk Threatens To Flee Virus Infecting California — And, No, It Isn't COVID-19.  California has gone through waves of corporate out-migration as local regulatory burdens, high tax rates and a generally unfriendly business environment spur disgusted owners and CEOs to head for more-business-friendly states, including Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Texas.  [Tesla founder Elon] Musk is a good example of this thinking.  He's angered, as are many business owners, by the high-handed local mandarins who have decreed his factory must remain shut indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic.  This has become a serious problem as states struggle to reopen and get their economies moving again.  With 33 million people now jobless nationwide, it's an open question whether the economic damage done by the outbreak will exceed the human toll of the virus.

Elon Musk says Tesla will sue 'irrational' Alameda County, relocate headquarters.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter Saturday morning [5/9/2020]to announce his company will file a lawsuit against Alameda County over its shelter-in-place order that does not allow for the return of manufacturing along with the rest of the state.  "Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately," he tweeted.  "The unelected & ignorant 'Interim Health Officer' of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!"

Elon Musk Melts Down, Says He's Suing Alameda County & Moving Tesla Out Of California.  Recall just days ago we reported that Tesla was sending people back to work at its Fremont factory in Alameda County before the area's lockdown expired.  Then, late last week, Alameda County responded by telling Musk that he could not re-open his factory.  "We have not given the green light.  We have been working with them looking at some of their safety plans.  But no, we have not said that it is appropriate to move forward," Erica Pan, interim health officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department, said on an online town hall meeting on Friday [5/8/2020].  That was enough to trigger a total Elon Musk meltdown.

The Editor says...
Please come to Texas, but only if you are willing to renounce everything that makes California different from Texas.  Also you must promise never to vote for a Democrat again.  Otherwise, you'll turn Texas into California, and you'll be right back where you started.

Elon Musk says Tesla HQ 'will move to Texas or Nevada immediately' after California county health official says factory can't reopen.  Elon Musk has announced that he plans to move the Tesla HQ to Texas and Nevada 'immediately' after a California county health official said that the plant could not reopen.  The disgruntled CEO took to a comment thread on Twitter to share that he was also planning to file a lawsuit against Alameda County.  Musk's fury was directed towards Alameda County Health Officer Erica Pan, who on Friday announced that the Fremont company would not be able to reopen, despite California Governor Gavin Newsom lifting some coronavirus restrictions.

Elon Musk says Tesla to move headquarters to Texas 'immediately' amid COVID-19 shutdown in California.  Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Saturday [5/9/2020] said the electric car manufacturer will move its headquarters and future programs to Texas and Nevada "immediately," in response to Alameda County — where the company's Fremont, Calif., plant is based — advising Tesla to remain closed until June 1 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

California's political divisions widen as Republicans, businesses want out.  Half of the state's registered voters said they have either given serious or some thought to leaving the state, according to a recent survey from the University of California Berkeley's Institute of Government Studies.  And it's Republicans and conservatives who are three times as likely to be considering leaving than their liberal and Democratic counterparts.  The top reasons for their discontent were high housing costs — a complaint felt across the political divide — followed by high taxes and the state's political culture, which were largely cited by Republicans. [...] According to IRS data, California lost about $8 billion in 2018 thanks to the outflow of residents.

Why Texans Don't Want Any More Californians.  Talk of a "California Exodus" is sweeping the country — and so are anxieties about its effects on the rest of the West.  In October, the Boise mayoral candidate Wayne Richey proposed at an election forum to build a $26 billion wall to keep out people moving from the Golden State.  A viral Wall Street Journal article recounted the plight of a small Idaho town buckling under the stress of thousands of inbound Californians.  And this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a warning on Twitter to Californians moving to his state:  "Remember those high taxes, burdensome regulations, & socialistic agenda advanced in CA?  We don't believe in that." [...] But is the California Exodus real?  From one perspective, the answer is very clearly yes.  In 2012, California gained 113,000 people on net through domestic and international migration.

How More Conservative Cities Are Benefitting From California's Demise.  According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, California's population grew by 141,300 people between July 1, 2018, and July 1, 2019.  Despite a positive "net international migration," there was "negative domestic net migration," resulting in a loss of 39,500 residents.  California now has "more people leaving the state than moving in [legally] from abroad or from other states."  The main beneficiaries of this outmigration are Arizona, Colorado, Nevada — roughly 50,000 Californians moved to Nevada in just one year:  July 2017 to July 2018 — Oregon, Texas, and Washington state. [...] The Lone Star State seems to be benefitting from California businesses, large and small, relocating to the booming cities of Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and others.  For example, the Charles Schwab Corporation is moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Westlake, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, in the next 18 to 36 months.

The blue-state exodus gains momentum.  Seven states are projected to gain one or more congressional seats after the 2020 election; 10 states are projected lose one seat.  The red-state leader is Texas, with a projected pickup of three congressional seats following the 2020 census — and that after gaining four congressional seats after the 2010 election.  Florida will pick up two seats, and Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will each gain one, according to the analysis.  All 10 losing states — Alabama, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia — lose only one seat.  Of the seven states gaining seats, five voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

So Many People Have Fled California The State May Lose Multiple Seats In Congress.  California is poised to lose multiple congressional seats after the 2020 census for the first time in the state's history, thanks to an exodus of more than 200,000 people between 2018 and 2019, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Top destinations include Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Colorado.

California lost more than 200,000 people to other states in 2019.  More than 200,000 people left California, on net, between 2018 and 2019 to move elsewhere in the country, the Census Bureau reported Monday, making it the nation's leader in out-migration.  California was one of only three states to have population losses greater than 100,000.  The others were New York at 181,000 and Illinois at 105,000.  The net out-migration was not enough to reduce California's total population, which stands at about 39 million, but it contributed to an overall slowdown.

California Sees Slowest Population Growth Since 1900.  California's population inched toward 40 million last year, but the state experienced the slowest rate of population growth since 1900.  Why is that?  What's not to like about California?  The weather is awesome, the scenery is breathtaking, the people are beautiful, and there's abundance everywhere.  Except in housing.  California is a fabulous place to live — if you're a millionaire. [...] Jobs are plentiful, the economy is OK, but homelessness went up a staggering 16.7 percent and even if you have a job, good luck finding a place you can afford to live.

California is a wondrous place. I'm leaving.  [Scroll down]  Shortsighted Californian voters get what they elect — a loopy super-majority that lets billions in approved water bonds for reservoirs sit idle during an historic drought, so trillions of gallons of welcome rains flow to the ocean later.  But, [...] they're on top of the tiny shampoo bottle crisis.  And forge ahead on the multi-billion dollar high-speed railroad for the countless thousands who want to get from Bakersfield to Merced quickly.  And thanks to new legislation, Californians are finally free to legally reject any police officer's plea for help.  L.A. County paid homeowners millions to tear out lawns to conserve water, apparently oblivious that every day every 600 square feet of grass produces oxygen for one person, fighting the smog the county must spend billions to ameliorate.  Then, there are taxes.  California has the second highest gas tax at 61 cents, but the governor is working hard to catch up with Pennsylvania.  Texas somehow survives with a 20-cent gas tax, Arizona with 19.

"It's Cozy" - LA Imports Are Paying $800/Month To 'Live In A Coffin'.  Kay Wilson [...] packed up her life in a hurry and moved to Los Angeles, only to find that what she paid in Pennsylvania for a nice studio apartment would only get her a 2.9-square-meter box in California.

35 Reasons Why You Should Move Away From California.  [I]f an entire state ever needed to completely start over it is the state of California.  At this point it has become the epicenter for just about everything that is wrong with America, and each year it just keeps coming up with new ways to become an even worse cesspool of social decay and depravity.  Millions of people have already left the state, and millions more are thinking of leaving.  One recent survey found that 47 percent of all Californians are thinking about moving out of the state in the next five years, and a different survey discovered that 53 percent of those currently living in the state would like to leave.  If about half the people in your state are seriously considering leaving, it is safe to say that things have gone horribly wrong.

LA buyers top the list of out-of-towners shopping for Dallas-area homes.  If you're trying to sell a house in Dallas, chances are someone in Los Angeles is looking at it.  The largest number of out-of-town internet page views of Dallas-area homes are coming from Los Angeles property shoppers, according to a new study by Zillow.  While more than 71% of the eyes on Dallas home listings are by local folks, LA residents are most often web surfing for homes here compared with other out-of-towners, Zillow found in a look at its web traffic.

The Editor says...
Of course you want to move to Texas, because you would be better represented by Ted Cruz than by Diane Feinstein.  I can see how you might get tired of sanctuary cities, sluggish freeways, expensive gasoline, and mentally ill people defecating in the streets.  (I filled up my car the other day for just under $2.11 per gallon.)  But when you get here, leave your California thinking behind.  You're probably moving to Texas because California is a dysfunctional mess, and that mess is entirely the fault of the lying, baby-killing, tax-and-spend, socialist tyrants who have mismanaged California for decades.

Updated 2/3/2020:
Apparently there is a gas war going on in Midlothian, Texas.  A couple of days ago, I filled up my car (the one with the Ted Cruz bumper sticker) for only $1.889 per gallon.  So y'all come to Texas, but only if you are willing to renounce California and every loony idea that put California in the condition it's in.

Conservative Californians Leaving In Droves For "America First, Law And Order" Red States.  California conservatives are leaving the state in droves over what the LA Times describes as their "disenchantment with deep-blue California's liberal political culture," not to mention "high taxes, lukewarm support for local law enforcement, and policies they believe have thrown open the doors to illegal immigration."

Rising California gasoline prices highlight growing divide in US.  The price at the pump was more than $4 a gallon in Vista, Calif., when Scott Hissem recently embarked on a trip to Texas celebrate his 40th birthday.  When the delivery associate for Amazon.com Inc. arrived in the Lone Star state, he got an unexpected present:  Gasoline cost just $2 and change.  The gap has Mr. Hissem considering a move to escape California's high cost of living.  "It makes life hard," Mr. Hissem said of California, which is the most populous U.S. state and the one with the highest gasoline prices.

What made me leave California for Texas — and why I have no regrets.  In 2011, along with my family, I was one of about 562,000 people who moved out of California (468,000 moved in).  A little more than 1-in-10 Californians who left that year made their way to Texas.  We were among them. [...] As with most of the tens of thousands of Californians who have moved to the Lone Star State annually in recent years, we did so for opportunity borne of greater freedom: lower taxes, greater private property rights and less government to tell you what to do.

San Francisco is losing residents because it's too expensive for nearly everyone.  Social media influencer Sarah Tripp and her husband, Robbie Tripp, moved to San Francisco in 2016 brimming with optimism. [...] But after a year-long hunt for suitable housing in San Francisco only turned up "places for $1 million that looked like rundown shacks and needed a remodel," the couple packed up and moved to Phoenix.  They went from paying San Francisco rents of $2,500 for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment that was far from shopping and other amenities, to purchasing a newly constructed 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bathroom home where they'll raise their newly arrived baby boy.

Escape from CA: Why Workers, Taxpayers, and Businesses Should Leave.  California's inability to prevent wildfires has led to a massive power shutdown that has left hundreds of thousands of people without power, refrigeration and, if they are dependent on wells, running water.  This, along with the state's high taxes and cost of living, $4 or more a gallon gasoline, and the fact that its major cities are turning into open sewers where sidewalks serve as gender-neutral toilets, is a strong argument for workers, taxpayers, and businesses to go elsewhere. [...] The city mascot [of San Francisco] is now the hepatitis virus (all three versions, A, B, and C) noting that the disease is transmitted by excrement and also discarded hypodermic needles, while the equally appropriate plague-carrying rat has already been taken by Baltimore.  San Francisco is indeed an "outhouse city" [...] in terms of more than sanitation.  The cost of living is more than three times than the average in the United States.

California is actively working to drive middle class voters out of the state.  Someday, in some fantasy world, legislators and governors will be required to understand basic economics.  In California, that day is nowhere in sight.  With the passage of a bill designed to force untold thousands of independent contractors to reclassify as employees, California moves closer to the brink economic.  Many parts of California are really quite beautiful.  As a longtime resident, the blue skies, great weather and unbeatable landscape, from the coast to the mountains, make it hard to contemplate ever leaving.  The California Legislature, on the other hand, is compelling all but the rich and members of unions to leave.

74 Percent Of Conservative Californians Are Looking Into Leaving The State.  More than half of California voters have thought about moving out of state, according to a new poll from the Institute of Governmental Studies at U.C. Berkeley.  A full 74 percent of the state's very conservative voters say they're looking into moving, and 84 percent of those cite California's political culture as their rationale for leaving.  Unsurprisingly, the high cost of housing is mentioned by 71 percent of California voters who have considered moving out-of-state.  More than half of voters ages 18 to 39 have thought about moving out of state, with more than 80 percent of that group citing high housing costs as the reason.

Even the illegals are fleeing California — and half the state's voters want out, too.  California, whose new leftist governor, Gavin Newsom, has big ambitions to be the counter-president for now, and eventually replace President Trump, has this one little problem that always comes of socialist rule:  The locals are fleeing.

Who wants to leave California?  Young voters can't afford housing, and conservatives feel alienated.  Just over half of California's registered voters have considered leaving the state, with soaring housing costs cited as the most common reason for wanting to move, according to a new poll.  Young voters were especially likely to cite unaffordable housing as a reason for leaving, according to the latest latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times.  But a different group, conservatives, also frequently suggested they wanted to leave — and for a very different reason:  They feel alienated from the state's political culture.  Republicans and conservative voters were nearly three times as likely to have seriously considered moving as their Democratic or liberal counterparts — 40% compared with 14%, the poll found.  The conservative voters mentioned taxes and California's political climate as a reason for leaving more frequently than they cited housing.

California Is The Future The Liberal Elite Wants For You.  California has morphed from paradise into a garbage state run by garbage people for their own garbage benefit and amusement.  The "garbage" part is literal — once the Sierra Nevada mountains symbolized the state; now, towering heaps of trash and human waste do. [...] Where once people flocked to make their dreams come true, you now pay multiples more for a U-Haul heading out than heading in.  The great California middle class, made up of the Normal people whose hard work and ingenuity made it the Golden State (even though Hollywood types got the publicity), is fleeing to places where they can afford to live, and where the government doesn't hate them.

Ten Minutes in California.  Until he decamped for Oregon shortly before his 70th birthday, my father had spent his entire life (minus a stint in the army) in California.  The prospect of trying to live on a retiree's fixed income in his native Orange County, however, proved the breaking point.  I'd taken my leave of the state shortly before he did, heading to Tennessee once I realized that I could never afford to buy a home where I grew up.  We thus became California-diaspora stereotypes.

California's population growth is the slowest in recorded history.  California's 2018 population growth was the slowest in state history, new demographic data show — underscoring shifting immigration patterns, declining birthrates and economic strains that are making it harder for some to afford living here.  The state added 186,807 residents last year, bringing the estimated total population to 39,927,315 as of Jan. 1, according to estimates released by the state Department of Finance on Wednesday.  The overall growth rate slipped to 0.47% last year from 0.78% in 2017, the slowest since data collection started in 1900, department spokesman H.D. Palmer said.  Births in the state were down by more than 18,000 compared with the previous year.

Going to (Leave) California.  You can't go a week without another report of businesses and people leaving California because of the high cost of housing.  Today it's the Wall Street Journal's turn, in a story headlined, "California Has the Jobs but Not Enough Homes."  The problem — a self-inflicted problem if there ever was one — is that the hot economy is creating jobs, but developers can't build enough affordable living space.  The WSJ reports that "companies are expanding outside the state or moving outright as an affordable-housing crisis casts a shadow on the booming economy."

Three Cheers for the Labor Market.  If your prospects are tapped out in the place you are, then move.  Go where the action is.  That isn't always easy.  Neither is being disabled or a convicted felon trying to make a new life for himself.  Nobody's asking you to take a Conestoga wagon through Indian country to homestead a farm in the western territories.  Just get on with it.

Texas business leaders travel to West Coast to poach more California companies.  A group of Texas business leaders is traveling this week to the state's favorite place to lure away companies:  California.  The three-day trip to San Francisco is the latest effort by Texas to snag corporate offices, company headquarters and jobs from its West Coast rival.  For years, California has been a favorite punching bag of Texas politicians who describe the Lone Star State as a refuge from California's burdensome regulations, hefty taxes and higher cost of living.

The Editor says...
To poach is to illegally hunt or catch (game or fish) on land that is not one's own, or in contravention of official protection.  What the Texas business leaders are doing in California is presumably legal.

Majority of California Residents Want to Leave:  Poll.  A new poll reveals that 53% of California residents are considering leaving the Golden State because of the high cost of living.  The "Trust Barometer" poll, by Edelman Intelligence, was conducted January 4-20 among 1,500 California residents, with a margin of error of 2.5%.  A special oversample of 400 tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area was also conducted, with a margin of error of 4.8%.  The results are sobering.  Nearly two-thirds, 62%, of respondents said they believed the best days of California were in the past.

California Companies Flee Business-Hostile State In Droves.  California's business environment has gone from bad to worse, with thousands of businesses pulling up stakes and moving elsewhere.  But don't take our word for it.  Just ask the 1,800 companies that either relocated or "disinvested" in the formerly Golden State in 2016.

1,800 companies left California in a year — with most bound for Texas.  A record number of companies are leaving California for states with a better business climate, and a new report shows that Texas remains their No. 1 destination.  See why they are being urged to leave the state (it's not just because of taxes).

More People Are Leaving California.  But Still Not Enough.  Despite their best efforts, California's governing Democrats have been unable to spur a sufficient exodus of its over-populated areas.  Last year, new figures show, only 130,000 more people fled the state than entered it.  And 142,000 the year before that.  This has been going on for more than 15 years now.  But it still hasn't made a dent in the over-crowded conditions of the most populous state's metropolitan areas or in its population of 39.6 million people.

The Great Migration.  [The writer] Was reading some data from the Cato Institute.  It has to do with Tax Reform and Interstate Migration.  The problem is the data is a little too fresh.  Tax reform was only passed in 2017, so 2018 is really the first year that people are feeling the effects of it.  One of the major effects is SALT.  That's the ability of citizens to deduct state and local taxes from their federal taxes.  In the past, it's always been allowable.  Now, it is not and high tax states are trying to find an end run around it.  They have even resorted to the courts, trying to characterize taxes we pay for public schools as charities.  Of course, the other tact might be to act responsibly and reduce the tax burden on citizens but who knows a politician that would want to do that?  There is no clear relationship between the level of taxation and the quality of government services or the quality of public schools.

A generation plans an exodus from California.  California is the great role model for America, particularly if you read the Eastern press.  Yet few boosters have yet to confront the fact that the state is continuing to hemorrhage people at a higher rate, with particular losses among the family-formation age demographic critical to California's future.  Since the recovery began in 2010, California's net domestic out-migration, according to the American community survey, has almost tripled to 140,000 annually.  Over that time, the state has lost half a million net migrants with the bulk of that coming from the Los Angeles-Orange County area.

Millionaires Flee California After Tax Hike.  According to new research released by Charles Varner, associate director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, California lost an estimated 138 high-income individuals following passage of the Proposition 30 income tax increase championed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and approved by Golden State voters in 2012.  This new research by Varner updates a previous paper released six years ago that looked at domestic migration to and from California following a 2004 income tax hike.  "One reason we wanted to update our previous paper is that this tax change in 2012 is the largest state tax change that we have seen in the U.S. for the last three decades," Varner said.

See how many Californians moved to Dallas in just 3 months last year.  Dallas-Fort Worth was one of the top destinations for domestic migrants from California in 2017, according to a recent study.  There were 1,051 moves from coastal California, the home of some of the country's toughest housing markets, to Dallas in the first quarter of 2017, according to Alexandra Lee, a housing analyst with the real estate listing and research site Trulia, which did the study.  Out of 19,132 moves out of the region during that time period, 5.5 percent went to D-FW.  The largest destination was the similarly affordable — in relative terms — Las Vegas, which took on 8.1 percent of those interstate migrants during the first three months of last year.

Why nearly half of San Francisco Bay Area residents plan to leave.  Nearly half of San Francisco Bay Area voters plan to leave the region in the next few years, fed up with exorbitant housing costs and the long commutes caused by the lack of available homes near their workplaces.  Less than 48 hours before polls open for the California election, the business-sponsored Bay Area Council advocacy group released its annual survey of registered voters in the nine-county Bay Area showing that 46 percent are likely to move away, the highest percentage in three years.

New Yorkers and Californians can't stop moving to Texas.  According to a new U.S. Census Bureau report, of the 15 fastest-growing cities larger than 50,000 people, seven are in Texas including the top three:  Frisco, New Braunfels, and Pflugerville.  Frisco's growth rate was 8.2 percent, some 11 times faster than the national rate of 0.7 percent.  Of the cities with the greatest population gain from July 1, 2016 to July 1, 2017, San Antonio, Texas, took the prize, adding some 66 people every day.  Texas had the most cities in the top 15 of this category as well with five making the list and three of the top five overall in addition to San Antonio:  Dallas, Fort Worth, Frisco, and Austin.

California:  Who's Leaving?  Who's Coming?  A new report on migration from a left-of-center outfit, Next 10, is very revealing: middle class and low income people are moving out of California in droves, while upper income people and fancy professionals are moving in.

California [is] not the model for America it thinks it is.  Today, domestic net out-migration, even after declining in the early years of the recession, has more than doubled between 2013 and 2016.  Even worse, according to a recent UC Berkeley study, over a quarter of Californians are considering a move, half of them out of the state, with the strongest proclivity found among people under the age of 50.  And contrary to some progressive commentary, those leaving are not necessarily old or losers; according to IRS data, out-migrant households had a higher average income than those households that stayed, or of households that moved in to the state.

GOP's SALT cap may speed exodus from high-tax states, report says.  Over the past decade, about 3.5 million Americans have relocated from high-tax blue states like California and those in the Northeast, to low-tax red states like Texas and Arizona — and the change is likely to accelerate.  So say Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, co-authors of a report from the American Legislative Exchange Council, in a Wall Street Journal essay.  They say that the Republican Party tax bill's cap on the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) could ramp up the pace by which Americans relocate in their own economic interest.  Laffer and Moore estimate that both California and New York will lose on net about 800,000 over the next three years, roughly double from the previous three years, while Connecticut, New Jersey and Minnesota combined with lose around 500,000 people in the same period.

'Not Being Viewed as an Enemy' Propels California Company's Move to Texas, says CEO.  The top executive of a Southern California private charter airline says the Golden State's hostile business environment propelled his company's decision to relocate to Texas.  "Not being viewed as an enemy, but being viewed as an asset is so refreshing," said Alex Wilcox, Chief Executive Officer of JetSuite Inc., who, on Thursday, spoke to the Dallas Business Journal.  He described the air carrier's decision to move to North Texas this summer as a "welcome change."

Californication blues.  [Scroll down]  Although 80,000 people were added to the population, more people moved out of California, particularly to Texas and Florida, than moved in from other states, particularly the cold-weather Northeast.  Worse, those leaving further drained the state's middle class, taking with them the long-admired entrepreneurial pulse of the state.

Californians Leaving For Greener Pastures In Droves.  Based on the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics from July 2016 to July 2017, Californians are leaving the state in droves.  As Jed Kolko, chief economist with employment website Indeed.com, pointed out regarding the data, "The rate at which California has been losing people to other states has accelerated in the past couple of years, in part because of rising housing costs ... more people moved out of California to other states than moved in from other states.  In other words, California lost people due to domestic migration."  There are apparently three prime destinations for the migrating Californians:  Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.  The census showed that during the period it covered, 79,000 people moved to Texas, 63,000 moved to Arizona, and 38,000 migrated to Nevada.  Interestingly, as Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of research and consulting firm Beacon Economics in Los Angeles, noted when looking at the data, "lower income Californians are the ones who are leaving, not higher income."

WSJ: Tech Workers Plan On Leaving Silicon Valley In Droves.  A number of workers in Silicon Valley are planning to leave the tech hub due to a discomfort stemming from a uniform way of thinking in the industry and region, according to The Wall Street Journal.  The workers already are or plan on indirectly following the lead of Peter Thiel, a President Donald Trump-supporting venture capitalist.  The billionaire entrepreneur recently announced he is leaving Silicon Valley for the slightly less liberal Los Angeles area to escape an allegedly pervasive discrimination against conservatives and some libertarians.  Citing a number of influential investors, and a couple of tech workers and startup entrepreneurs, the WSJ reports Thiel's geographic "defection" is emblematic of an apparently larger trend.

Wondering Which States Americans Hate to Live In?  Ask U-Haul.  Renting a truck from San Francisco to Dallas costs $3,206 and back $1,128 (the difference is $2,078, a 184% surcharge.)  For comparison, renting the same truck from New York to San Francisco costs $3,409, and back $3,058 (the difference is $351, a surcharge of 11%).

Wealthy exodus to escape new tax rules worries California Democrats.  The Republican-backed federal tax bill flipped the tables on a never-ending question for California politicians:  Will high taxes lead the state's wealthiest residents to flee the Golden State for the comparable tax havens of Florida, Nevada and Texas?  Republicans reliably raise that alarm when Democrats advocate for tax increases, like the 2012 and 2016 ballot initiatives that levied a new income tax on very high-earning residents.  But now, with the federal tax bill cutting off deductions that benefited well-off Californians, the state's Democrats suddenly are singing the GOP song about a potential millionaire exodus.

New Company Helps Americans Flee Blue States to Largest Red State.  Former Congressional candidate and Iraq veteran Paul Chabot can help you move from a blue state to the biggest red one.  On May 23, Chabot announced on Twitter that he had started a company called Conservative Move to help those looking to leave liberal land for conservative country.  According to Chabot, the new company's website received over 3,700 visitors within four hours of launching, and 500 families have signed up so far. [...] So far, Texas and Arizona have been the most popular locations that conservatives have wanted to move to, he said.

Twitter employee making $160,000 in San Francisco says he's scraping by.  It's expensive to live in San Francisco — even if you make six figures.  In an article published earlier this year, The Guardian reported on an anonymous Twitter employee in his 40s who says that, even on a $160,000 annual salary, he's barely scraping by in Silicon Valley.

California exports its poor to Texas, other states, while wealthier people move in.  California exports more than commodities such as movies, new technologies and produce.  It also exports truck drivers, cooks and cashiers.  Every year from 2000 through 2015, more people left California than moved in from other states.  This migration was not spread evenly across all income groups, a Sacramento Bee review of U.S. Census Bureau data found.  The people leaving tend to be relatively poor, and many lack college degrees.  Move higher up the income spectrum, and slightly more people are coming than going.

California to Texas
California Is Exporting Its Poor To Texas.  California exports more than commodities such as movies, new technologies and produce.  As The Sacramento Bee reports, it also exports truck drivers, cooks and cashiers.


Nestle Leaves California Over Liberal Policies.  California is known as a haven for liberal policies, being a very anti-business, anti-capitalist place.  This week, conglomerate Nestle, will be moving its headquarters from Glendale, California to Rosslyn, Virginia.  As the company moved thousands of jobs away from Californians, this will no doubt affect their local economy.  While Nestle cites other reasons on their website, it is no secret that California over-taxes and over-regulates, making it difficult for many businesses to stay there.

Leaving for Las Vegas:  California's minimum wage law leaves businesses no choice.  Los Angeles County used to have more than 5,000 apparel factories; today, my company is one of roughly 2,000 — and many (e.g.  American Apparel) are looking for a way out.  One Los Angeles Times headline, quoting a California State University economist, warned that "the exodus has begun."

Why a lot of people are moving out of California.  A lot of people are moving out of California because they can't afford to live there anymore.  For every home buyer coming into the state, there are three Californians selling and moving elsewhere, according to data analysis firm CoreLogic.  "There is clearly a relationship between the migration patterns and home prices," said Sam Khater, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic.  "The middle and lower middle can no longer afford to live in California."  California's housing market is one of the most expensive in the nation, wigth a median home price of $428,000 across the state.  Prices have shot up 71% since 2011.  And a number of its local markets are prohibitively expensive.  Of the five priciest housing markets in the country, four are in California, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors.  San Jose tops the list with a median home price of $1 million.

When You Come Here, Please Don't Vote for the Same [Things] That Ruined the Place You Are Leaving.  I can't tell you now many people I know here in Arizona that tell horror stories about California and how they had to get out, and then, almost in the same breath, complain that the only problem with Arizona is that it does not have all the laws in place that made California unlivable in the first place.  The will say, for example, they left California for Arizona because homes here are so much more affordable, and then complain that Phoenix doesn't have tight enough zoning, or has no open space requirements, or has no affordability set-asides, or whatever.

Ashley Furniture slashes production in Inland Empire, lays off 840 workers.  The company says the majority of production at the site east of Los Angeles is going to other U.S. plants to create more efficiency.

American Apparel said to be considering moving manufacturing out of California.  The Los Angeles clothing maker, which emerged from bankruptcy in February, is contemplating a move to a state such as Tennessee, North Carolina or South Carolina, where the minimum wage is $7.25, said one source, who requested anonymity due to pending litigation.  That would be a significant savings once California's minimum wage climbs to $15 an hour in 2020.

Cisco Systems will lay off 5,500 workers.  Cisco Systems Inc. said Wednesday [7/17/2016] that it would cut about 5,500 jobs as part of a restructuring plan that the networking company said was necessary to help it focus more on high-growth areas such at security and cloud technologies.  Cisco said the cuts, which will begin in the company's current, fiscal first quarter, would amount to about 7% of its total workforce.  Reports earlier in the day said Cisco was likely to cut as many as 14,000 jobs.  No details were immediately given as to how many jobs the San Jose-based company plans on shedding in the Bay Area.

American Apparel struggles to afford to keep calling LA home.  American Apparel's days as a Los Angeles-based manufacturer are numbered, sources close to the company told The [New York] Post on Monday [8/15/2016].  The 27-year-old teen retailer, which boasts on its Web site that its togs are "Designed, Cut and Sewn in Los Angeles," is making plans to pull up stakes and move east — possibly to North Carolina or Tennessee, where the minimum wage is $7.25.  In California, the minimum wage is set to rise to $15 by 2020.

Astronomical Housing Market, High Taxes Prompt Exodus of California Residents.  It's not like this is new or anything, although this time they're reporting from the heart of the progressive Silicon Valley la la land.

As More High-Paying Jobs Leave California, State's Press Is Unconcerned.  Another major employer has decided to join the long list of companies moving jobs from California to more business-friendly states.  This time, it's $12 billion titan Jacobs Engineering, which is moving its "corporate operations," almost definitely meaning its headquarters, from Pasadena to Dallas, Texas.  Press reaction, especially outside of business-oriented outlets, has ranged from nonexistent to muted to, in the case of the Los Angeles Times, a bit snarky.  One key point here is that the move appears to have taken California's governments completely by surprise, given that a number of corporate administrative employees are already working in Dallas.

Jamba Juice will move headquarters from Bay Area to Texas.  More than 25 years after the first Jamba Juice shop opened in San Luis Obispo, the owner of the smoothie company announced plans to move its headquarters from California to Texas within eight months.  Jamba Inc. will close its Emeryville, Calif., office and establish a new corporate home in Frisco, Texas, about 30 miles north of Dallas.  In a statement, Chief Executive David Pace said Jamba was looking for places that had "competitive operating costs," access to "skilled restaurant talent" and an "attractive cost of living," along with a central location for further expansion.

Number of Californians Moving to Texas Hits Highest Level in Nearly a Decade.  The number of Californians leaving the state and moving to Texas is at its highest level in nearly a decade, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service.  According to IRS migration data, which uses individual income tax returns to record year-to-year address changes, over 250,000 California residents moved out of the state between 2013 and 2014, the latest period for which data was available.  The tax returns reported more than $21 billion in adjusted gross income to the IRS.  Of the returns, 33,626 reported address changes from California to Texas, which has been the top destination for individuals leaving California since 2007.  Californians who moved to Texas between 2013 and 2014 reported $2.19 billion in adjusted gross income.

The California Exodus Accelerates.  There's lots of data, especially the comparison of rental rates for moving trucks into and out of California, to show the steady exodus of prosperous Californians and their businesses.  The truck rental companies will almost give you a one-way truck to move from Texas to California, but charge a lot for a one-way truck from California elsewhere, which tells a lot.

A New Year's Present for California Trial Lawyers.  As businesses and people flee from California to escape the notoriously inhospitable business environment and the high costs of living, the state's government is moving, based on dubious statistics, to enact another impossibly broad, costly regulation:  a "Fair Pay Act" requiring businesses to prove that "they pay both genders equally for 'substantially similar' work."

Texas Top Destination for Migrating Taxpayers in 2013, New York Biggest Loser.  Texas was the top destination for American taxpayers on the move between 2012 and 2013, with 152,477 people moving to the Lone Star State from other parts of the country.  Texas' in-country migrants accounted for "more than half of the net migration into the South," according to a report released last week by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).  In contrast, New York lost the largest number of taxpayers during that same time period, with 113,861 taxpaying residents leaving the Empire State.

Nancy Pelosi Just Might be Insane.  Dollars go farther in Texas than they do in California, in part because Texas doesn't tax its citizens violently and with prejudice.  That's why so many of Pelosi's fellow Californians and their companies are fleeing her state for Texas.  It happens every day.

The politicized IRS is keeping this trend quiet:
IRS Delaying Release of Data on People Leaving High-Tax States.  IRS data on internal migration showing how many people have moved to and from which states generally shows people leaving high-taxed states and states with high unemployment to states doing better in those categories.  Now Obama's IRS is seeking to delay release of these statistics for another 12 months.  For decades economists and lawmakers both have used this IRS data as a marker for which states are succeeding in America, but the Obama administration has show its disdain for this important metric.

Nestle to close Valley food plant.  Nestle USA will close a San Fernando Valley production plant that makes Hot Pockets by early October, shifting operations to an existing plant in rural Kentucky where costs are cheaper.  The move will eliminate 360 jobs at the Chatsworth plant, which has been making the frozen sandwiches since 1988.  A spokeswoman for Nestle USA, based in Glendale, said Wednesday [8/6/2014] that the consolidation at the Kentucky plant gives the company more room to expand and a more centrally located distribution point.

Elon Musk Plays California for Tax Breaks, Then Moves SpaceX Operations to Texas.  A smiling Governor Rick Perry of Texas announced that Space Exploration and Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) will build the world's first private commercial rocket launch facility on an isolated beach near Brownsville, Texas.  Texas appear to have "bought the deal" by offering an $100 million economic incentive package. [...] The move will initially add 300 high-paying jobs to the community that was rated the poorest city in America.

California Wages Economic War With Sriracha Hot Sauce Factory.  Los Angeles is buzzing over the possible exit of Sriracha sauce maker Huy Fong to friendlier territory in Texas.  But why shouldn't it go?  L.A. is so unfriendly it makes Detroit look good, according to two studies.

Defense Company, 530 Jobs To Leave California.  Pratt & Whitney AeroPower, a subdivision of the defense contractor that makes auxiliary power units and expendable turbojet engines for military aircraft, announced on Thursday that it would be moving its San Diego facility to Florida, Georgia or Texas, according to a report from the San Diego Union-Tribune.  The facility employs 530 people, although it was not immediately clear whether the company would send some or all of the employees east.

Toyota to California: 'Don't Mess with Texas'.  Toyota has had its U.S. headquarters and marketing operations based in Torrance, California (a suburb of LA) for almost 60 years — time enough to witness California's descent into a neo-socialist hell of high income taxes, high property taxes, high sales taxes, high regulations, and high home prices, all combined with breathtakingly bad government services.  Toyota will be moving its division to a location in Plano, a northern suburb of Dallas.

Wretched Refuse.  It's no surprise that more of the people who move to Texas come from California than from any other state; more of the people who move to California come from Texas than from any other state.  California, Texas, Florida, and New York exchange a great many people among themselves, because they have a great many people to exchange.  What is interesting in the IRS data is this:  The people moving from California to Texas have significantly higher incomes than those making the opposite trek:  about $56,000 per tax return for the Texas-bound vs. about $50,000 per tax return for the California-bound.

It's not just people...
Thousands of California Cattle Heading for Texas.  The severe drought in California has created a problem for cattle ranchers, many of whom are selling their herds across state lines.  Reuters reports that as many as 100,000 cattle have left the state in the past four months alone.  Nearly half of those, about 47,000, have headed to Texas.  The rest will primarily go to Nebraska and Nevada.

Toyota move gives Perry win for possible '16 run.  With eight months left in office, Gov. Rick Perry is away from Texas almost as much as he's home — hitting the road hard to tout his state as America's best place to do business.

Toyota's Plano move to bring 4,000 jobs from California, New York and Kentucky.  Toyota plans to start moving people to its new U.S. headquarters in Plano starting this summer.  The headquarters relocation — confirmed Monday afternoon [4/28/2014] — will bring about 4,000 jobs from California, Kentucky and New York.  The worldwide automaker said it will consolidate its three separate North American headquarters for manufacturing, sales and marketing, and corporate operations to a state-of-the-art campus to be built in Plano.

Texas 'Poaches Toyota HQ from California.  That report is from the L.A. Times, which must have had to choke back tears while writing up Toyotas big move.  Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been making a show of traveling to New York and California to convince businesses in those blue states to move to business-friendly Texas.  Its working.

Toyota withdrawal a bombshell, economic blow to California city.  Toyota Motor Corp's decision to move its North American sales headquarters from California to Texas was met by disbelief in Torrance, this Los Angeles exurb where the Japanese car manufacturer has run its U.S. operations since 1982.

Rick Perry Has Last Laugh as Toyota Moves to Texas.  My question is not why Toyota is leaving, but why it took them so long to make the move.  The economic advantages to both the company and its employees are quite compelling.

Illinois Job Creators Head for the Exits.  The Wall Street Journal recently looked at data from Allied Van Lines concerning where wealthy households were moving to and from.  The report found that Illinois and Pennsylvania have more wealthy households leaving than arriving, and California leads the nation for the net number of wealthy households migrating away.  The states gaining the most?  Florida and Texas.  So what do East Coast, Midwest and West Coast states like Pennsylvania, Illinois and California have in common?  All three are high-tax states, said Joseph Henchman, a vice president at the Tax Foundation.  On the other hand, Florida and Texas are much lower tax states.

California positively gets a negative from Tesla on battery factory.  California pollution-control policies enable Tesla to rake in tens of millions of dollars each year from selling environmental credits to other automakers — a key source of Tesla's revenue.  But is this a case of unrequited love?  When it comes to building a $4-billion to $5-billion battery factory that will employ 6,500 workers, Tesla is shunning the Golden State.  The automaker is looking at 500- to 1,000-acre sites in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas.

Texas was a big winner in interstate migration from 2000 to 2010, gaining $17.6 billion in new personal income.  Texas was one of the big winners in the interstate movement of people and their related income in the last decade, according to new data from the Tax Foundation.

California, net exporter — of residents.  A net 3.4 million people have fled California over the past two decades, largely including the young and the restless because of the lack of jobs and affordable living situations — which could quickly be trending towards an accelerated demographic crisis for the heavy welfare state [...]

California becoming a feudal society.  [Scroll down]  On one side is an older, educated, landed, wealthy elite that lives on California's beautiful coasts.  Then there is a much larger, younger, less-educated, indebted mass living inland, many of them working farm jobs at subsistence wages.  The good news is that both of these groups seem content supporting a Democratic Party whose policies reinforce these trends.  And if any of the current Californians don't like what the new California has become, they are free to leave.  The bad news is that millions of middle-class families already have, and the trend is likely to continue.

California Moves To Texas (And Arizona And Nevada).  The Census Bureau says that California had a net loss of 100,000 people last year.  Many headed for Texas (58,992), while Arizona (49,635), Nevada (40,114), Washington (38,421) and Oregon (34,214) all took in fleeing Californians.

An Embarrassing Metric Disappears.  Blue states with high state and local tax burdens have come out looking bad in recent years.  California and New York have been embarrassed publicly, as a steady exodus is underway from both.  Regarding California, the free-market Manhattan Institute for Policy Research concluded in September that "this exodus represents a huge reversal to established patterns of domestic migration, and suggests that the Golden State is no longer perceived by most Americans as the land where dreams come true."

Taxing "The Rich" Working Out Swimmingly In California.  California ... state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.  Democrats thought they could hammer "the rich" by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation.  But it now appears that high income earners have already "voted with their feet" by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.

Obama Policies Copy Moribund California, Not Texas.  Anyone who thinks that President Obama's economic policies will spur strong growth should consider U-Haul rates between California and Texas.  Renting a 20-foot truck one-way from San Francisco to San Antonio, for example, will cost $1,693.  But the U-Haul tab to go in the opposite direction is just $983.

Prepare for Demise of California.  California's Liberal Supermajority is about to run the state into the ground and taxpayers are going to get all the government they ever wanted. [...] Big government and absurdly strong unions destroyed Greece and Spain.  Expect no less for California.  Many large California corporations that can flee, will flee.

Bankrupt California.  California may face the nation's largest budget deficit at $16 billion.  It may struggle with the nation's second-highest unemployment rate at 10.6 percent.  It will soon vote whether to levy the nation's highest income and sales taxes, as if to encourage others to join the 2,000-plus high earners who are leaving the state each week.  The new taxes will be our way of saying, "Good riddance."  And if California is home to one-third of the nation's welfare recipients and the largest number of illegal aliens, it is nonetheless apparently happy and thus solidly for Obama, by a +24 percent margin in the latest Field poll.

Why are people fleeing California?  The most troubling thing I've seen is the delusion embraced by the state's dominant Democrats, who really believe that California is only one massive tax increase away from being fixed. [...] The state's problems don't bother me nearly as much as knowing that voters and officials here are in denial about the problem and have no clue how to fix it.  It's getting harder to blame Republicans for this any more, especially in California where they are an endangered species.

Hundreds of Thousands Flee Democrat-Run California.  The report found that between 1960 and 1990, 4.2 million Americans moved to California and helped accelerate California's booming economy.  Since 1990, though, California has lost nearly all of that gain, with net domestic out-migration averaging 225,00 residents a year.  Between 2000 and 2010, out-migration has resulted in lost income of 5.67 billion to Nevada, $4.96 billion to Arizona, $4.07 [sic] to Texas, and $3.85 billion to Oregon.

The Great Golden State Business Exodus.  One would think that given the serious nature of [California's] problems, the legislature would focus on solutions at the exclusion of all else.  Instead, lawmakers — what would we ever do without them? — found the time in 2011 to trespass even deeper into Californians' personal lives.  Topping off Sacramento's monument to foolishness is a law requiring children younger than 8, except for those taller than 4 feet 9 inches, to sit in booster seats in cars.  Previous law let kids leave their boosters at 6.  Now children who had moved out of cars seats are being forced back into them.  Actually, the law is more authoritarian — and offensive and infuriating — than it is silly.

The Editor says...
This is another example of incremental changes in restictive laws, and once again, the changes only move in one direction.

Business Exodus from California Accelerates.  California's infrastructure is crowded and crumbling.  The school system is in a death spiral.  The universities are overpriced and bloated with unions and bureaucrats.  The tax base is narrow and focused on the rich, many of whom are leaving.  The state's environmental laws have crippled a can-do culture with can-never-do paralysis.  An estimated 5 million residents are illegally in the state.  The official unemployment rate is 12.5%.  Counting those who have given up searching for a job and those who are working reduced hours or part time, the rate is closer to 20%.  In parts of Los Angeles, and in the water-starved Central Valley, unemployment ranges from 20% to 40%.  More than 3 million California residents receive food stamps, up 47% since 2007.

Crashing and Burning, California Style .  Part of what is slowly destroying California is its move from a land of plenty to a land of locusts.  The state taxes and regulates resident companies to such an extreme extent it has driven many of them, and many tax-paying citizens, to other states.  For decades California was a place to migrate to.  Now it's suffering an exodus.  The fault lies in a political shift from being a conservative, low-tax state to a statist, high-tax nanny state.

Progressive Paradise.  Under [Mayor Gavin] Newsom's reign, noted for imposing costly health care and "green" mandates, the city has experienced a serious business exodus that commenced long before the onset of the recession.  City nannies hadn't done much since banning plastic shopping bags a few years ago.  But nannyism gets pent-up too, so last month it released a gusher.  First target:  cell phones, whose sellers were required to calibrate the amount of radiation emitted and post it at the point of sale.

Exodus: California Tax Revenue Plunges by 22%.  California politicians seem delusional in their continued delusion that high taxes have not savaged the State's economy.  Each month's disappointment is written off as due to some one-time event. [...] The more likely reason tax collections continue falling is that businesses and successful people are leaving California for the better tax rates available in more pro-business states.

Will the Last Job Creator to Leave California Please Turn Off the Lights?  I've written before about whether California is the Greece of America, in part because of crazy policies such as overpaid bureaucrats and expensive forms of political correctness, And we all know that California has one of the nation's greediest governments, imposing confiscatory tax rates on a shrinking pool of productive citizens.  So it is hardly surprising that the Golden State is falling behind, losing jobs and investment to more sensible states such as Texas.

Businesses Exit California and Illinois.  Businesses have tad it with poor business conditions in two of the most dysfunctional states in the union, California and Illinois. ... California and Illinois have many things in common:
  •   Harsh business environments
  •   High tax rates
  •   Both states are among the most pro-union states
  •   Both states lack right-to-work laws
That California and Illinois suffer from business flight and high unemployment should not be surprising.

Voting with Their Feet.  The latest published data from the 2010 census show how people are moving from place to place within the United States.  In general, people are voting with their feet against places where the liberal, welfare-state policies favored by the intelligentsia are most deeply entrenched.  When you break it down by race and ethnicity, it is all too painfully clear what is happening.  Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the liberal, welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy.

California Blazes Wrong Trail On Tax Hikes For Rich.  According to a new report from the Golden State's Franchise Tax Board, the top 1% of earners paid $25.7 billion in state income taxes in 2007.  Two years later, the most recent for which data are available, that figure dropped by half — to $12.3 billion.  Researchers note that the economic downturn contributed to this drop.  But that's not the only cause.  A huge number of high-income taxpayers have simply left the state.  Between 1992 and 2008, California suffered a net loss of 869,000 tax filers.  About 3.5 million moved into California, while 4.4 million left.

More college-bound Californians are heading out of state.  Fed up with tuition increases and frustrated by rejection at packed California universities, more high school graduates than ever are ditching the state to attend college.  Boise State saw its freshmen enrollment from California rise tenfold during the last decade.  Arizona State doubled its enrollment of freshmen from California.  The University of Oregon has quadrupled it, with freshman enrollment from California growing from 280 in 2000 to 1,100 in 2010.

Californians flee for better-run states, study finds.  Californians are fleeing in droves to live in better-managed states, according to a conservative research group.  The long-running exodus from the cash-strapped Golden State is an old story, but a new study by The Manhattan Institute finds that the biggest beneficiaries of the population drain are Texas, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Georgia and South Carolina.  Lower cost of living, less government debt and a more business-friendly culture are the main drivers, according to the study.

84 companies added to 'leaving California' list.  A list of companies moving out of or expanding outside California has grown by 84 since the start of the year, says Joe Vranich, Irvine consultant who specializes in relocating companies.

Campbell Soup Leaving California.  California's state song will soon be changed from "California, Here I Come!" to "California, There It Goes!"  An American icon, the Campbell Soup Company, is closing its plant in Sacramento, leaving 700 people without jobs.  The plant was built in 1947, and some of its workers have worked there for forty years or more.

They're leaving other Democrat-ruled states as well — for the same reasons.
Van Lines Data Show People Fleeing States With Big Fiscal Problems.  Citizens and businesses are fleeing states with fiscal problems — that is one apparent message from the latest annual report from United Van Lines.  The company's study of 2012 interstate shipments, released in December, showed significant continuing flight from states with high state government debt loads as measured by the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA).  For example, the top five states for the share of outbound interstate shipments in the latest UVL survey were, in order from one to five — New Jersey, Illinois, West Virginia, New York, and New Mexico.


California compared to Texas:

The Editor is somewhat biased, having living in Texas all his life, and never having been to California.  Even so, it isn't necessary to make the trip to California to make this comparison.

Fact-Checked: Gavin Newsom Shouldn't Have Dared Us.  [Scroll down]  Here are the comparisons:
  •   The rates in the middle of California's 10 personal income tax brackets are 8% (starting at $92,788 in annual adjusted income for married couples filing jointly) and 9.3% (starting at $117,268 in annual income), says the Tax Foundation. [...] Texas has no income tax.
  •   Fuel taxes, hardest on lower- and middle-income Americans, are punitive in California, where the combined state taxes on gasoline are 67 cents per gallon.  That's more than three times the levy (20 cents per gallon) in Texas.
  •   Vehicle registrations are $51.75 per vehicle in Texas.  In California, the fees are several hundred dollars for a modest car a middle-class family would drive.
  •   The lower and middle classes are also disproportionately impacted by sales taxes, since they take a larger share of their incomes compared to the wealthy.  Here, there's little difference between the two states.  The Tax Foundation figures the combined state and average local sales taxes in California are 8.68%, ninth highest in the nation.  Texas is 14th at 8.19%.
  •   It's true that property taxes are higher in Texas.  Thanks to California's Proposition 13, the state ranks no worse than 20th.  The effective rate is about 1%, when other fees and taxes are figured in.  Texas rate is about twice that — 1.9%.  But any advantage to Californians is negated by the state's housing crisis.  The median-price home in California was $811,170 in July, according to the California Realtors Association, while the Texas Quarterly Housing Report reports the median-price home there is $300,490.

Joe Rogan's Texas move rejects Hollywood's 'stultifying conformity,' ex-California lawmaker says.  Former California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore told "Fox & Friends" Monday that comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan's announced move to Texas from California likely stems from a desire to get away from the "stultifying conformity that demands that everybody speak and think the same."  "I'm going to go to Texas," Rogan said on "The Joe Rogan Experience Pocast" last week.  "I just want to go somewhere in the center of the country, somewhere [where] it's easy to travel to both places and somewhere where you have a little bit more freedom."  Rogan added that he thinks that Los Angeles is "overcrowded" and suggested "it's a real issue when you look at the number of people that are catching COVID because of this overpopulation issue, when you look at the traffic, when you look at the economic despair, when you look at the homelessness problem that's accelerated radically over the last six, seven, ten years."

Joe Rogan is leaving Los Angeles and moving to Texas because there's more freedom there.  Joe Rogan, host of one of the most popular podcasts on the planet, said that he decided to move from Los Angeles, California, to Texas because he wanted "a little bit more freedom."  Rogen explained further the decisions behind his move during his podcast conversation with guest Joe De Sena, the CEO and founder of Spartan and the Death Race.  "I'm outta here," said Rogan when De Sana asked him about moving.  "I'm gonna go to Texas."  "I just want to go somewhere in the center of the country, somewhere it's easier to travel to both places, and somewhere where you have a little bit more freedom," he explained.

San Francisco [CA] vs.  Frisco [TX].  Amusingly, San Francisco is the opposite of Frisco, Tex., a sprawling Dallas exurb that has grown from 33,000 to 188,000 in this century.  In contrast to highly gay San Francisco, Frisco, the weekday home to the Dallas Cowboys, has been called "the Best Place to Raise an Athlete."  Ironically, while everybody in San Francisco hates when you call it by its unloved nickname "Frisco," Republican-voting Frisco is much better at narrowing racial divides than is liberal San Francisco.  Frisco has a white-black gap of only 1.4 years.  Frisco is San Francisco's friendlier, less dysfunctional right-wing opposite.  While San Francisco occupies perhaps the world's most perfect spot for a city, Frisco is randomly plopped down on the prairie.  San Francisco is an adult Disneyland with the lowest percentage of children of any city, while Frisco specializes in raising the next generation.

The Great White Culture War.  [Scroll down]  To understand different outcomes of the white culture war, consider California and Texas.  Both states are firmly majority-minority.  Yet the leaders of both states are still disproportionately white and male; they're just culturally very different kinds of white males.  Conservative white Americans eagerly move to majority-minority Texas.  Those same people would be far more reluctant to live in majority-minority California, because of its profoundly different treatment of religious freedoms, gun rights, and of course tax rates.

Here's How Much You Need To Earn To Live In Alameda County 2018.  San Francisco ranked first in the nation as the most expensive metro area with a basic budget of $148,439 a year for a two-parent, two-child household.  On the flipside, that same household would only need to earn $58,906 to live comfortably in Brownsville, Texas, the least expensive metro area in the country.

California government mandates send electricity prices skyrocketing, but Texas free market policies keep prices low.  California's rush to impose harsh government mandates cutting carbon dioxide emissions in the generation of electricity is raising the electricity bills of families and businesses across the state.  Poor families are suffering the most.  In sharp contrast, Texas is successfully taking a free-market approach that is increasing the use of clean renewable energy and lowering electricity bills in the state.  The tale of two states offers a lesson for the nation.

Liberal California fails at fighting poverty, conservative Texas succeeds.  Liberal California and conservative Texas are different in many ways — including their poverty rates.  California's poverty rate is 20.4 percent and the Texas rate is only 14.7 percent, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for the regional cost of living, out-of-pocket medical expenses and other items.  Why the dramatic difference in poverty between California and Texas — proportionately 38.8 percent higher in the Golden State, and affecting the lives of millions of people?  And what can we as a nation learn from the success of Texas and the failure of California to hold down their poverty rates?

Houston Is The Best Of America.  Berkeley Is The Worst.  Here's Why.  Over the weekend, we saw the best of America:  Americans helping Americans in Houston.  Race, creed, color — none of it mattered.  Americans were in need, and other Americans moved to help them.  Meanwhile, in Berkeley, we saw the worst of America:  Americans, garbed in black, helmeted, wearing bandannas over their faces, assaulting peaceful protesters merely there to exercise their free speech rights.  We saw the police stand down.  We saw assaults in the streets.  So, what's the difference between Americans in Houston and Americans in Berkeley?  The existential threat.

California conservatives, tired of state's liberal politics, find friendlier abodes in Texas.  [Paul] Chabot, a 43-year-old Republican and native of Southern California, in recent years had become increasingly frustrated with what he saw as a liberal shift in his home state and the effects it was having on his family's life.  After two failed congressional runs, Chabot decided it was time to bail on the Golden State and move to the Lone Star State — specifically, Collin County in north Texas — in January.  "When I was growing up in a Republican state, we had safe towns and great schools," Chabot told Fox News.  "But California has done a 180.  It's not a family-friendly state anymore so we decided to move to Texas.

Texas Booms (+3.9%) as California Flatlines (0.1%); Mining, Manufacturing Drive Growth.  Texas, the nation's second most populous state, had the fastest growing economy in the nation in the first quarter of this year with its state GDP growing at a real annual rate of 3.9 percent, according to data released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  By contrast, California, the nation's most populous state, ranked 42nd out of 50 states for first quarter economic growth, with its GDP growing at a real annual rate of just 0.1 percent.

America's Future Is Texas.  Texas has been growing at a stupefying rate for decades.  The only state with more residents is California, and the number of Texans is projected to double by 2050, to 54.4 million, almost as many people as in California and New York combined.  Three Texas cities — Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio — are already among the top ten most populous in the country.  The eleventh largest is Austin, the capital, where I live.  For the past five years, it has been one of the fastest-growing large cities in America; it now has nearly a million people, dwarfing the college town I fell in love with almost forty years ago.  Because Texas represents so much of modern America — the South, the West, the plains, the border, the Latino community, the divide between rural areas and cities — what happens here tends to disproportionately affect the rest of the nation.

Texas vs.  California Update for May 22, 2017.  Stop me if you've heard this before:  Texas is once again ranked the best state for business, while California is ranked the worst.

Texas vs.  California Update for February 15, 2017:  Why California can't repair its infrastructure:  "California's government, like the federal government and most other state and local governments, spends its money on salaries, benefits, pensions, and other forms of employee compensation.  The numbers are contentious — for obvious political reasons — but it is estimated that something between half and 80 percent of California's state and local spending ultimately goes to employee compensation."  Put another way:  "Governor Moonbeam and the other leftist kooks in charge are flushing a staggering $10 billion down an unneeded high-speed rail project, on top of the still more staggering $25.3 billion per year they spend on the illegal aliens they have gone out of their way to welcome."

Texas Bests California In Economic Opportunity.  PolitiFact released an article in the Statesman that rated this claim as "true."  However, as in sports, one or two years of winning seasons by California doesn't come close to the extraordinary success in Texas during the last decade of what could be considered an economic opportunity dynasty.  One of every five people live in these two states.  One of every four dollars of production nationwide are produced there.  Ranking each state against countries, California would rank sixth and Texas would rank 10th.  The list could go on.  Given their size and importance, Americans really need both states to prosper.  After descending into a deep valley during the recession, California's economy has recently grown at a faster rate than in Texas, where the drop in oil prices and higher value of the dollar have negatively affected the mining and manufacturing sectors.  However, during the last decade, the productive, real private sector growth has increased by 13.6 percent in California compared with a robust 29.1 percent in Texas.

The States Gaining and Losing the Most Migrants — and Money.  When comparing the health of state economies, we usually look at employment and incomes.  Another critical indicator worth closer attention is where Americans choose to move, and the places they are leaving. [...] To measure the states that are most attractive to Americans on the move, we developed an "attraction" ratio that measures the number of domestic in-migrants per 100 out-migrants.  A state that has a rating of 100 would be perfectly balanced between those leaving and coming.  Overall, the biggest winner — both in absolute numbers and in our ranking — is Texas.

Texas vs.  California Update for September 14, 2016.  "The biggest problem faced by the State of California is not 'climate change' or 'poverty it is the overreaching power of California government itself, namely the California Legislature and Administration, and the threats that this Democrat establishment poses to California's future, particularly with regard to the economy and individual liberty.  California Democrats are celebrating the passage of new climate change legislation that provides California government with broad, sweeping new powers to drastically curb greenhouse gas reductions without regard to economic impact or the basic rights of businesses and individuals."

Texas vs.  California Update for July 25, 2016.  [#1] June marked the 114th month that Texas was at or below the national unemployment average.  Texas also created 246,600 jobs in the service sector.  [#2] Once again Texas ranks as the best state for business, and California ranks worst.

20.1%: Calif.  Metro Area Has Nation's Highest Unemployment Rate.  El Centro, California bills itself as one of Southern California's "most promising new commercial and industrial regions."  But it had a 20.1 percent unemployment rate in April, by far the highest of the 387 U.S. metropolitan areas surveyed by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That 20.1 percent unemployment rate is more than four times the national unemployment rate of 5.0 percent (seasonally adjusted).  The only other metropolitan area to come close to El Centro's jobless rate was Yuma, Arizona, where the unemployment rate was 18.7 in April.  El Centro and Yuma, both near the Mexican border, are located in contiguous counties.

Texas vs.  California Update.  Overall, Texas had four of the five fastest growing large counties, and seven of the top twenty.  California had none. [...] It's like a whole bunch of Texas vs.  California roundup statistics all in one big green ball of fail.  Read the whole thing.

Nearly 500,000 People 'Gone to Texas,' Says U.S. Census Bureau.  On March 24, the U.S. Census Bureau released statistics that tracked the state's explosive population growth.  Four Texas metro areas added more people in the one year period from July 1, 2014 to July 1, 2015 than in any other state in the nation except for Texas as a whole, which gained approximately 490,000 new residents.  Topping the list, the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugarland metropolitan area experienced the greatest population increase during this period, adding about 159,000 residents.  Following closely was the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metroplex, with 145,000 new people.

America's city rankings set for Texas-sized shake up; Houston to edge past Chicago.  Hidden in the haze of the petrochemical plants and beyond the seemingly endless traffic jams, a Texas city has grown so large that it is poised to pass Chicago as the third biggest in the United States in the next decade.  Houston has been one of the fastest-growing U.S. cities for years, fueled by an energy industry that provided the backbone of the economy, low taxes and prospects of employment that have attracted job seekers.

You're Killing Me: Regulations, Government Unions, And Taxes Quash Small Business.  Thumbtack.com published their latest annual survey of 17,633 small business owners to determine the states that are the most — and least — welcoming to small business.  This year, and the previous three years the survey was completed, Texas and Utah were rated by small business owners as the best states for small business.  New Hampshire also received an A+ grade this year.  At the bottom, with an F rating for the past four years, were California and Rhode Island.  They were joined this year by Connecticut and Illinois.

Texas emerges as top destination for Californians fleeing state.  Californians fled the state in unprecedented numbers over the last decade, and their primary destination was Texas, according to an analysis issued Monday [8/31/2015].  About 5 million Californians departed the Golden State between 2004 and 2013, while 3.9 million arrived from other states for a net population loss of roughly 1.1 million, the Sacramento Bee reported Monday [8/31/2015] using tax-return data from the Internal Revenue Service.

Of The Four Majority-Minority States in America, Minorities Do Best In Texas.  There are four "majority-minority" states in the U.S.:  California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas.  The well-being of minorities in these states, as well as of the soon-to-be plurality of white, non-Hispanics, is instructive for policy makers.  Of these four demographic versions of America's future, it's only in Texas where all four of the largest racial or ethnic groups have below average Supplemental Poverty rates.

Texas Is Booming, but CNN Doesn't Want You to Know Why.  Much of my writing is focused on the real-world impact of government policy, and this is why I repeatedly look at the relative economic performance of big government jurisdictions and small government jurisdictions.  But I don't just highlight differences between nations.  Yes, it's educational to look at North Korea vs. South Korea or Chile vs. Venezuela vs. Argentina, but I also think you can learn a lot by looking at what's happening with different states in America.  So we've looked at high-tax states that are languishing, such as California and Illinois, and compared them to zero-income-tax states such as Texas.

Texas has added one million jobs since 2007 vs. only 24,900 jobs in California.  By May of 2011, Texas had regained all of the jobs lost during the Great Recession.  In contrast, it took California three years longer, until April of this year, to regain the state jobs lost due to the effects of the recession.  Since the Lone Star State regained all of the lost recession-related payroll jobs by May 2011, the state has since then added more than one million new jobs, bringing the state's employment level to a new record high in May 2014 of 11.53 million jobs.

Report on how each state treats its small businesses turns out exactly as expected.  Mike Shedlock at Global Economic Analysis points us to an extensive study comparing each state on how well it treats its small businesses.  The results are only surprising if you're Paul Krugman, Thomas Piketty or that homeless guy sleeping behind the dumpster at 7/11.

Houston's jobless rate dips to 4.6 percent.  The Houston area unemployment rate dipped to 4.6 percent in April, down from 5.2 percent in March, the Texas Workforce Commission reported Friday [5/16/2014].  The rate is not adjusted for seasonal factors such as holidays and school schedules.  The statewide rate, however, is adjusted for the typical hiring and firing patterns that occur each year and in Texas, the unemployment rate fell to 5.2 percent in April.  The statewide unemployment rate was 5.5 percent in March.

California vs. Texas in one chart.  The chart [in this article] displays 1-unit housing starts for the entire state of California and the Houston metro area annually from 2011-2013 and year-to-date through March for 2014.  During the period from January 2011 to March 2014, there have been slightly more single-family housing starts in Houston (95,037) than in California for the entire state (94,993).  In this single chart, we can understand the dynamism of the booming, expanding Texas economy and housing market compared to the stagnation of the California economy and the housing market there for new construction.

Debunking The 'Texas Miracle' Debunkers.  When not making excuses for President Obama's dismal economic record, liberals try to explain away Texas' stellar growth.  But what choice do they have?  The Lone Star State proves limited government works.

Texas leads nation in job growth, adding 322,400 workers in last year.  Texas once again is leading the nation in job growth — at least through January — and economists say trends for the rest of the year look promising.  The state added 33,900 jobs in January and 322,400 for the 12 months ending in January, ranking No. 1 for both periods, according to information released Monday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

California energy companies are moving to Texas.  And what, do we suppose, might be one of the hugely driving factors behind this robuster-than-everyone-else level of equitable job creation?  It couldn't possibly be that Texas has been conscientiously developing their energy reserves — like, for example, the Eagle Ford Shale, could it?  While other states — like, say, California — have been quixotically ignoring their own resources in favor of their politically preferred pet projects?

Don't 'Turn Texas into a Liberal Swamp'.  Over the past decade, Texas has been an economic powerhouse.  The state has created 3 out of every 10 American jobs over the last decade and recently surpassed California in tech export sales. [...] Today, political operatives are swarming the Lone Star State to turn Texas into a liberal swamp.  At the same time, the Obama Administration is trying to make Texas buckle under a torrent of federal rules and regulations.

Texas surpasses California as top tech exporter.  Texas is tops for tech exports, a new report says.  Companies in Texas making semiconductors, telecommunications devices, computers, and other items shipped more than $45 billion in products to other countries in 2012, according to a report by the TechAmerica Foundation, a lobbying and advocacy firm representing the technology industries.  That's a $3 billion rise from 2011.

Americans Keep Moving to States With Low Taxes and Housing Costs.  Between 1970 and 2010, the population of New York state increased from 18 million to 19 million.  In that same period, the population of Texas increased from 11 million to 25 million.

Texas vs. California: 6-0, 6-0, 6-0.  What should be the Federer vs. Nadal of state-level competition has become a lopsided trouncing:  Texas has humiliated its opponent in straight sets.  The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis is out with its state-by-state economic growth numbers for 2012, and Texas is dancing the two-step all over California's "recovery."

Americans Are Migrating To More Free Republican States.  The "Freedom in the 50 States" study measured economic and personal freedom using a wide range of criteria, including tax rates, government spending and debt, regulatory burdens, and state laws covering land use, union organizing, gun control, education choice and more.  It found that the freest states tended to be conservative "red" states, while the least free were liberal "blue" states.  The freest state overall, the researchers concluded, was North Dakota, followed by South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.  The least free state by far was New York, followed by California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Rhode Island.

The Red-State Path to Prosperity.  You can tell a lot about prosperity in America by observing the places people are moving to and where they are packing up and moving from. [...] Among the 10 fastest-growing metro areas last year were Raleigh, Austin, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.  All of these are in low-tax, business-friendly red states.  Blue-state areas such as Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Providence and Rochester were among the biggest population losers.

The Perpetual Campaign: How Obama's Left-Wing Partisans Plan to Invade and Destroy Texas.  If either California or Texas were their own country, they would rank in the global top 20 and outmuscle most other countries on earth.  But California, a Democrat stronghold, suffers from unemployment about two points above the national average. [...] Texas, a Republican stronghold and right-to-work state, has unemployment well below the national average, its books are balanced, and it's always at or near the top in population growth over the past decade.

California vs. Texas.  In recent years, much has been made about the economic success of Texas and the decline of California.  Many have pointed to California's tax and regulatory burdens and the more business friendly policies of Texas as a primary reason.  These certainly are a fundamental reason, and one statistic captures the essence of the difference between the nation's two most populous states.

Texas Ranked Top Exporting State for 11th Consecutive Year.  Texas is ranked as the number one exporting state for the 11th year in a row, according to 2012 annual trade data released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce.  "The fact that Texas is ranked the nation's top exporter for the 11th year in a row further demonstrates that our strong economic climate provides a broad range of opportunities for businesses to succeed," Gov. Perry said.

Texas Is America's Top State for Business 2012.  Texas has done it again.  The Lone Star State makes a triumphant return as America's Top State for Business — its third time at the top of our rankings.

America looks like Texas, not like California.  If you draw a triangle whose points are Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, enclosing Austin, you've just drawn a map of the economic and jobs engine of North America.  Texas prospers not just because of oil and gas, but thanks to a diversified and sophisticated economy.  It has attracted large numbers of both immigrants and domestic migrants for a quarter-century.  One in 12 Americans lives there.  America is getting to look a lot more like Texas, and that's one trend that I hope continues.

Texas vs. California, Revisited.  California is often a trendsetter in the realm of left-wing policymaking, while Texas legislators keep their government small.  The results speak for themselves.

Texas vs. California.  One in five Americans calls California or Texas home.  The two most populous states have a lot in common:  a long coast, a sunny climate, a diverse population, plenty of oil in the ground, and Mexico to the south.  Where they diverge is in their governance. ... I moved to Texas late last year, joining the 2 million Californians who have packed up for greener pastures in the past ten years, with Texas the most common destination.

Texas Employment Update.  The Texas economy continues to expand.  Texas added 7,100 jobs overall in October.  Private job growth in October was robust with 15,900 new jobs added, offset by a loss of 8,900 government jobs.  Year-to-date, the state has gained 186,000 total jobs and 241,700 private jobs.

California taxes away jobs while Texas adds them.  In 2008, 70 percent of all the jobs in the country were created in Texas.  In 2009, all of America's top five job-creating cities were in Texas.  More recently, "Texas created 129,000 new jobs in the last year — over one-half of all the new jobs in the U.S.  In contrast, California lost 112,000 jobs during the same period," according to ... a new report by the Texas Public Policy Foundation released in October.

Houston, We Have a Solution.  The policies that Houston and Texas have followed are proof of concept for the conservative vision of government, which is, essentially, to keep the government off the people's backs and let a free society find its own way to prosperity.

California vs. Texas:  The Verdict Is In.  Texas, increasingly, is the economic and intellectual leader of the U.S. During the last 18 months before the current recession took hold, while the country as a whole was still creating jobs, more than half of those jobs were created in a single state:  Texas.  Texas has usurped the leadership position that, decades ago, belonged to California.  Today California is in decline, likely irreversibly so.

The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm.  One out of every five Americans is either a Californian or a Texan.  California became the nation's most populous state in 1962; Texas climbed into second place in 1994. ... According to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau, for the fiscal year ending in 2006, Americans paid an average of $4,001 per person in state and local taxes.  But Californians paid $4,517 per person, well above that national average, while Texans paid $3,235.

A Governor Who Prays or Preys?  Conservative commentator Bill Bennett says that anyone looking for democracy, good government, business and job growth, the best medical care, a lower cost of living and taxes should look to Texas as the model and to Rick Perry as the model governor.  Then there's California, left with a $26 billion budget deficit courtesy of its disgraced former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who fathered a "love child" with the family maid.

What Texas can teach us:  If you want to see a place where the private sector in America has been booming and generating jobs, you should look at Texas.  That's my take from these absolutely fascinating numbers compiled from Bureau of Labor Statistics figures by The Business Journals, tracking the increase or decrease in private sector jobs in the ten years between April 2001 and April 2011.

Texas economy called better than most states'.  Standard & Poor's gave Texas government bonds an AA+ rating on Thursday [5/5/2011] and said the state's economy will likely recover quicker than most other states.

California Dreamin' — of Jobs in Texas.  It wasn't your usual legislative hearing.  A group of largely Republican California lawmakers and Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled here last week to hear from businesses that have left their state to set up shop in Texas.  "We came to learn why they would pick up their roots and move in order to grow their businesses," says GOP Assemblyman Dan Logue, who organized the trip.  "Why does Chief Executive magazine rate California the worst state for job and business growth and Texas the best state?"  The contrast is undeniable.

If you move to Texas, leave your Democrat politics behind.
Importing Disaster: Demographic Changes Mean Democrat Future.  At a gathering some years ago, I had a political conversation with a man who had recently arrived here from Denmark.  He was advocating his home country's socialist system, which, of course, led to profound disagreement. ... When asked if he wanted to return home, his answer was no.  This is a common phenomenon.  We see it, for instance, in liberal northerners who move to the South for the lower taxes and cost of living and greater freedom, but then continue to vote for the kind of politicians who made the Northeast a nice place to leave.

Texas Has Had The Best Idea, New Census Data Make Clear.  The Census Bureau released county and city populations for the last of the 50 states from the 2010 census last week, ahead of schedule.  Behind the columns of numbers are many vivid stories of how our nation has been changing — and some lessons for public policy as well.

California unions stand in the way of a Texas-sized success.  In the first half of 2010, Texas saw more small business growth than any other state in the country.  During that period, it also added 178,000 jobs — twice as many as any other state.  Texas was also one of only five states to add manufacturing jobs.  California, on the other hand, lost more than 113,000 jobs from August 2009 to August 2010.  And while Texas has seen steady job growth in recent years, California was losing jobs well before the economic downturn began in 2008.  Since 2005, California has lost just under 1.3 million jobs.

Texas booms while California busts.  Among the states, it has become clear there are two competing visions of political economy in America, embodied by California and Texas.  One vision involves the economic devastation that comes of an overregulated economy.  The other reveals the prosperity unleashed by smaller government.

Census: Fast Growth in States With No Income Tax.  The great engine of growth in America is not the Northeast Megalopolis, which was growing faster than average in the mid-20th century, or California, which grew lustily in the succeeding half-century.  It is Texas.  Its population grew 21 percent in the last decade, from nearly 21 million to more than 25 million.  That was more rapid growth than in any states except for four much smaller ones (Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho).  Texas' diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states.

Texans Won't Be Driven to California's CO2 Craziness:  SUV-driving California legislators passed a bill on July 1 [2002] to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new vehicles.  How is California going to meet these requirements?  Well, the politicians there don't really care; the automobile industry will have to figure it out and consumers will have to pay for it.

California Should Copy Texas.  Last Wednesday [12/2/2009], Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change.  His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide into an economic and budgetary abyss.

America as Texas vs. California.  Texans on average believe in laissez-faire markets with an emphasis on individual responsibility.  Since the '80s, California's policy-makers have favored central planning solutions and a reliance on a government social safety net.  This unrelenting commitment to big government has led to a huge tax burden and triggered a mass exodus of jobs. ... Second, Californians have largely treated environmentalism as a "religious sacrament" rather than as one component among many in maximizing people's quality of life.

Texas population booms amid lean times.  While bubbles burst around the nation, Texas booms.  U.S. Census estimates released Wednesday [12/23/2009] show that Texas added more residents than any other state in the year ending July 1.  The Lone Star State has 478,000 more people than it did a year ago — roughly the equivalent of packing up all of Fresno, Calif., and moving it here.  Why the growth?  Try looking for work in Fresno, where the unemployment rate is nearly 16 percent.

California is overregulated, overtaxed, and just plain over.  Unemployment is higher than 12.2 percent as of September.  Business costs are almost 23 percent higher than other states on average.  Migration out of the state is at an all time high.  A map by United Van Lines shows a strong demand for moving trucks as residents leave California for other destinations, particularly Texas.  More Californians would leave if they could sell their houses, but the Golden State's real estate market has tanked as well.  It has the fourth-highest foreclosure rate of any state.

Texas Shows Its Swagger in New Population Estimates.  [Scroll down]  Texas over the decades has had low taxes (and no state income tax), low public spending and regulations that encourage job growth.  It didn't have much of a housing bubble or a housing price bust.  Under Govs. George W. Bush and Rick Perry, it has placed tight limits on tort lawsuits, and has seen an influx of both corporate headquarters and medical doctors.

Low-tax Texas beats big-government California.  [Over the last ten years,] Texas has been teaching some lessons to which the rest of the nation should pay heed.  They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation's second most populous state, with the most populous, California.  Both were once Mexican territory, secured for the United States in the 1840s.  Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century.  Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.  But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress — or lack of it — over the last decade.

Global Warming on Trial.  In the past few years, there have been many court cases concerning the actions of governments to the alleged threat of global warming.  The latest has been filed by Texas against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with respect to the Endangerment Finding of Carbon Dioxide (CO2).  Texas has filed two petitions in federal court.  The first is a request for review of the endangerment finding, which is intended to examine the science behind global warming.

How Texas Escaped the Housing Crisis.  It's one of the great mysteries of the mortgage crisis:  Why did Texas — Texas, of all places! — escape the real estate bust?  Only a dozen states have lower mortgage foreclosure and default rates, and all of them are rural places like Montana and South Dakota, where they couldn't have a real estate boom if they tried.

Obama's Quiet War on Red States.  President Obama is quietly but gleefully sticking it to red states, which by virtue of less government, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and open shops are typically better off than blue states of the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Californian phyla. ... For years, states like New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and California have all marched lockstep in accord with liberal orthodoxies — with similar disastrous results.

Dallas:  Fastest growing U.S. city.  The booming Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area added more residents during the past decade than any other city in the United States. ... Dallas's attractions include a very favorable business climate, according to Mayor Tom Leppert.  There's no corporate income tax, building costs are relatively reasonable and regulations are minimal.  "It's a great place to do business," he said, "especially attractive for companies from high-tax states."

The EPA's Anti-Prosperity Agenda.  On Labor Day, President Obama pledged to "keep fighting every single day, every single hour, every single minute to turn this economy around and put people back to work."  If job creation is such an overarching priority, the president might take a closer look at the recent barrage of job-suffocating actions from his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The president might also look at Texas, where job creation and environmental improvement have occurred simultaneously and at a pace far above the national average.

California sings the Blue State Blues.  Indeed, by virtually every business measure conceivable Texas is better than California.  Texas has a lower unemployment rate (8.1 to California's 12.4), it exports more than any other state in the union (a record previously held by California), and it has a lower home foreclosure rate (California is fourth highest in the nation compared to Texas's ranking of 29th).  Texas also imposes fewer regulations on its businesses than does California.  Apparently, being friendly to business rather than hostile to it has its advantages.

California Fleeing.  Just when you thought things couldn't get worse on the left coast, along comes more bad news for the Golden State.  Across the country, Republican state legislatures and governors are adopting a new economic development strategy:  Raid California for its jobs and businesses.  At least three Republican governors have said as much in interviews.  The idea is to offer lower taxes, a more business-friendly atmosphere and the right to be left alone from overzealous regulators.

The Texas Jobs Panic.  The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported this summer that Texas created 37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began in June 2009.  Texas by far outpaced every other state, including those with large populations like New York and California and those with faster-growing economies, like North Dakota.  Other states have lower unemployment rates than Texas's 8.2%, though that is below the national average and the state is also adding jobs faster than any other.

Americans love to hate California: poll.  California, home of Hollywood, the Golden Gate Bridge and more people than any other state in the union, is also the most disliked of the 50 states, a new poll shows. ... Republicans said Texas and Alaska were their favorite states, while Democrats liked Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington.

Job creation
Recovery? Just 16 States Have Gained Jobs Under Obama.  Just 16 states have seen job growth since President Obama took office, according to state employment data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The remaining states have lost a combined 1.4 million jobs since January 2009.  Even 34 months after the recession officially ended in June 2009, there are still 11 states that have fewer people working now than at the start of the recovery.  Meanwhile, 20 states have unemployment rates at or above 8%, including nine with unemployment at 9% or higher, according to the BLS.

Texas Leads Best States For Future Job Growth.  Rick Perry ascended from Lieutenant Governor to Governor of Texas in December 2000 when then-governor George Bush resigned after being elected the 43rd President of the United States.  Perry will retire in January with the tenth longest gubernatorial tenure in U.S. history.  Perry made job creation one of his principle mantras, and he has overseen remarkable employment gains under his watch with 2.1 million jobs added during his tenure.  The total represents 30% of the jobs added in the U.S. since 2000 and more than twice as many as any other state.

Texas job growth outpaces rest of U.S. combined.  Since the recession began in December 2007, 1.2 million net jobs have been created in Texas.  Only 700,000 net jobs have been created in the other 49 states combined.  The remarkable employment growth in Texas looks even bigger considering its size relative to the rest of the U.S. Total non-farm employment has grown by 11.5 percent in Texas since December 2007.  Employment in the rest of the United States has grown only 0.6 percent.  Until September 2014, total employment growth in the rest of the United States since December 2007 was still negative.

Fluctuating Oil Prices Won't Slow The Texas Economy Down.  Texas has been a bright spot in an otherwise dim U.S. economy for years.   Consider that Texas employs 1,444,290 more people than when the recession started in 2007, according to the latest state-level employment report; excluding Texas from the nation's job creation equation, there are 276,290 fewer people employed in the same period.  Rapid job growth helped lower the unemployment rate to 4.6%, which has now been at or below the national average and California's rate for at least eight years.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart


The nanny state knows best:

A Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier is nanny-state government writ large.  A report about the endlessly rising costs of a suicide barrier for the Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin perfectly illustrates why it's questionable whether the government should take it upon itself to swaddle its citizens in an effort to protect them from all physical harm. [...] And while every suicide is a tragedy, taxpayers must ask, in a dangerous world and one in which human nature assures that some people will make bad, sad decisions, should taxpayers have been forced to pay $213.5 million to save an average of 23 people per year?

The Editor says...
If someone leaps off the bridge and gets snagged in the suicide-prevention nets, will that person get mental health treatment, or will he or she just be released to try it somewhere else?

Upscale gated Calif. community threatens fines for brown lawns despite drought.  A homeowners association for an upscale, gated community in the San Francisco Bay Area has threatened to fine homeowners for brown lawns and landscaping despite California's continuing drought emergency.

CA says mobile food vending trucks a 'threat' to kids.  The California legislature continues to act as the hard left's petri dish for testing totalitarian policies.  AB 1678, introduced last Tuesday [2/14/2012], would ban mobile food and beverage trucks within 1,500 feet of elementary and secondary schools.

New 2010 laws:  Cooking to texting.  From same-sex marriage in New Hampshire to payday loans in Kentucky, new state laws taking effect on New Year's Day will change the way people live.  California becomes the first state to bar restaurants from cooking with trans fat — partially hydrogenated oils that have been linked to strokes and heart disease.

The tyranny of visions:  part II.  California has long had more than its fair share of busybodies with a vision of the world in which it is necessary for them to force other people to do Good Things.  One of the latest examples is a recent ruling by one of the many busybody commissions in California that people who build houses, or just remodel their homes, will in the future have to have more fluorescent lights and even install motion sensors to control lights – all in the name of saving energy.

Totally Committed:  What would we do without the California Legislature?  How could we survive without the guidance of environmentalists?  Oh how our lives would be meaningless without the Legislature taking care of our every need.  Who else can protect us from ourselves?

It's Official — Belmont Bans Smoking In Some Homes.  Thought to be the first of its kind in California, the ordinance declares secondhand smoke a public nuisance and extends the city's current smoking ban to include multi-unit, multi-story residences.  Though Belmont and some other California cities already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont is the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units.

Anti-smoking Efforts Go Too Far.  How far has the anti-smoking movement come in just the past four years?  Much further than many of its most ardent activists would have dreamed of in the 1970s, when the notion of smoking bans first surfaced and was met largely with derision. … Of course, as with most limitations on personal freedom, California leads the way.

California City Says Secondhand Smoke is a Nuisance.  Smokers, beware:  This bedroom community near San Francisco may soon put you in the same category as rodents, junk cars and weeds.

Officials in California Town Say Smoking Ban Is Working.  Ten weeks after they enacted the most draconian smoking ban in the nation, city officials in Calabasas, Calif., say the rules are having the desired impact — reducing exposure to the secondhand smoke that can accumulate when smokers congregate outdoors and near building entrances.


Private property issues:

The left's vision:  Santa Monica, California, has decreed a fine of $2,500 a day for not cutting your hedges!  Has someone discovered some terrible health hazard or other danger from hedges that are too high?  Not at all.  The politicians who run Santa Monica have simply decided that people should not be able to build a high wall of hedges around themselves.

Barbara Boxer's World of Development Restriction and "Affordable Housing":  "Liberal" Senators — and many others — have repeatedly wrung their hands over a lack of "affordable housing" in California.  Meanwhile, they are doing all they can to prevent any housing from being built on ever more vast areas of land.

How Californians are being escheated.  Escheat is a feudal concept that arose from the despotism of the Dark Ages.  It stemmed from the principle that property rights depend upon the sufferance of the sovereign, and when a person dies or disappears without heirs, his property reverts to the feudal lord.  California revived this medieval doctrine in 1959 and began seizing personal assets on the smarmy pretext that after a few years of account or safe-deposit box inactivity, property is obviously "lost," and the state needs to "protect" it by selling it off and depositing the proceeds into the general fund.  Today in California, no one's property is safe.


Tyranny lite:

Public service or self-service?  In a free market, as Forbes magazine says, your reward is a function of how much you contribute to the economy, but in a regulated market it's how much you contribute to politicians.  Sound familiar?  It should, especially to Californians.  In New York, it is the reason a taxi cab license is worth $600,000 (because of fares rigged by paid-off politicians).  In California, the cost of a vast range of services gets skewed by high pay and benefits for public employees.

Speeding, Parking Tickets on Rise as Government Revenue Source.  Drivers across the country, beware — a heftier fine could be coming to a dashboard near you.  Faced with rising deficits and dwindling revenues, many states and local municipalities are turning to increased traffic and parking fines to fill their coffers.  In California, the cost of a "fix-it ticket" nearly tripled on Jan. 1, meaning that drivers in the Golden State can pay up to $100 for having a broken headlight — an infraction that didn't even garner a citation years ago.

California: No Gun Photos Allowed.  A nine-year-old is almost suspended from a Los Angeles Unified School District school because a substitute teacher discovered photographs of him and his brother shooting firearms.  The photos were taken when their aunt, a police firearms instructor, took them for some safety training.

California city shuts down girl's lemonade stand.  Eight-year-old Daniela Earnest has made lemonade out of lemons in more ways than one this week.  Hoping to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland, the Tulare girl opened a lemonade stand Monday [8/3/2009].  But because Daniela didn't have a business license, the city of Tulare shut it down the same day.

What ever happened to respecting our elders?  An 82-year-old California woman says an officer cited her for taking too long to cross an intersection.  Mayvis Coyle insists when she entered the crosswalk the signal was green, but it turned red before she reached the other side where an officer was waiting with a $114 ticket.  "He treated me like a six year old, like I don't know what I'm doing," Coyle said.

California police state:  The totalitarians are fully in control of America's largest state.  The California Supreme Court ruled 4-3 last Thursday [1/24/2002] that police in the state may search cars if a driver fails to produce a license or registration, regardless of whether the officer has a warrant.

California Assembly Expunges Santa Barbara Drilling Vote.  The California State Assembly is refusing to provide the names of assemblymen who voted to ban oil recovery off the coast of Santa Barbara.  Twenty-eight members supported the ban, but their votes cannot be found in the official state database.  Assembly leaders expunged the votes in order to spare lawmakers running for re-election an official record of their controversial decision.

The Editor says...
How can we have a representative government if the legislators conduct secret ballots?

Brown calls 1996 anti-affirmative action law unconstitutional.  Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has told the California Supreme Court that Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action measure passed by voters in 1996, violates the U.S. Constitution.  The state attorney general's stance marks the second time in six months that he has determined that ballot measures approved by California voters were unconstitutional.

Tyranny In the Name of Progress:
California court bans religious objections to same-sex pregnancies.  Once again, judges in California have taken sides in the culture wars.  On Monday [8/18/2008], in North Coast Women's Care v. Benitez, the Golden State's highest court ruled that doctors may not rely on their religious principles to refuse in-vitro fertilization for same-sex couples.  The decision runs roughshod over the First Amendment's free-exercise clause, seeking to supplant Judeo-Christian principles with the state-imposed religion of secularism.  This is a false choice under the federal Constitution, which makes room for both.

California's bumbler in a black robe.  After reading Walker's decision, Ed Whelan, a constitutional law authority and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, concluded that Walker was "intoxicated by his own bias."  Yet, this latest decision marks the third time Walker has been rebuked by appellate courts since he was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan.

California golden for legal shakedowns.  California has earned another dubious distinction, this one laid at the doorstep of a "predatory" legal community.  The state, particularly Los Angeles and Humboldt counties, was declared the nation's second-worst "judicial hellhole" by the American Tort Reform Association.


Wasted money:

Time Bomb:  Almost 80,000 People In California Are Collecting Six-Figure Taxpayer Funded Pensions.  California is at ground zero of a future financial implosion.  The number of people in the state collecting massive taxpayer funded pensions is simply unsustainable.

South San Francisco ferry loaded with subsidies.  That new ferry line to South San Francisco opened to a lot of fanfare, offering rides to and from Oakland and Alameda in less than 55 minutes.  What's not being talked about is that for every $14 round-trip ticket sold, the public will be kicking in a subsidy of nearly $100.  People who pay taxes and tolls will be picking up the bill for an armada of costs for the new ferry over the next 20 years.

Half-Billion in Hollywood Corporate Welfare Passes In Sacramento.  You and I are not only helping to pay the salaries of the top one-percent, we're paying for product that attacks our country, our values, our faith, and who we are.  We're paying for propaganda.  And this is how the entire system of our government is corrupted.  Tax loopholes and these kinds of carve-outs only encourage Big Business to spend money on lobbyists instead of putting it towards improving the product so they don't need government handouts.

Yet Another State Computer Fiasco.  The Sacramento Bee reported this week that the California Public Employees' Retirement System was having so many problems with its new $514 million computer system that some retirees are getting notices that their health insurance policies are being canceled because of CalPERS' nonpayment of premiums.  That's only the start.  Thousands of retirees or survivors of retirees are struggling to get correct payments or any payments at all.

Why Your Highway Has Potholes.  The Senate has passed a two-year $109 billion bill sponsored by Barbara Boxer of California that bails out the highway trust fund with general revenues, including some $12 billion for such nonessentials as the National Endowment for the Oceans and the Land and Water Conservation Fund.  The bill requires little or no reform.  The prevailing Senate view is the more concrete that gets poured, the more jobs back home.  So more "shovel-ready" nonstimulus.

L.A. can't explain $7 million in fuel bills.  Controller's audit finds that millions of gallons of taxpayer-funded city fuel was pumped in recent years with no record of where it went.

Another California City may be Going Under.  In December of last year, RecordNet asked whether union pensions would ultimately drive the city of Stockton, California, into bankruptcy. ... This week CBS Sacramento reported that Stockton was considering precisely that:  ["]The possibility of filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection.  If it happens, Stockton would be the largest California city to go bankrupt.["]  It would follow in the footsteps of Vallejo, California, which was itself "the largest city to declare bankruptcy when it did so in 2008."

The California wind boondoggle.  The "renewable credit" scam described by [Larry] Bell is a more advanced example of Obamanomics:  nothing is being produced at all.  Better still, the California taxpayers getting fleeced to subsidize this scam won't even know what hit them.  An increasing portion of our economy-crushing tax burden is hidden this way, behind a complex screen of mandates and regulations that make it very difficult for the taxpayer to know precisely whose hand is shoved into his pocket.

Bullet train's $98-billion cost could be its biggest obstacle.  The ambitious plan to connect Anaheim and San Francisco with high-speed trains has encountered plenty of obstacles, including intensifying resistance from wealthy and poor communities lying in the track's path.

Bullet train cost estimates rise to $98.5 billion.  California's bullet train will cost an estimated $98.5 billion to build over the next 22 years, a price nearly double any previous projection and one likely to trigger political sticker shock, according to a business plan scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday [11/1/2011].  In a key change, the state has decided to stretch out the construction schedule by 13 years, completing the Southern California-to-Bay Area high speed rail in 2033 rather than 2020.

Buyers' remorse for California's 'bullet train to nowhere'.  Ambitious plans for a fast track linking Los Angeles and San Francisco at speeds of up to 220 mph in just over two-and-a-half hours were slimly approved by 53 percent in a statewide ballot in 2008.  That allowed the state to raise $10 billion from bonds and secured an injection of $3.5 billion in stimulus money from the Obama administration.  There is currently no direct train route between the two.  Construction is expected to begin later this year in the middle of California's Central Valley near Merced, a town of 80,000 people known for having one of the highest home foreclosure rates in America.

A State of Total Insanity.  It turns out that the chief psychologist for the state's prison system earned $838,706 — last year alone!  To be precise, the shrink earned somewhere between $261,408 and $308,640 in salary, with the remainder coming from bonuses or cashing in unused sick leave.  This is not an anomalous case.  Of the ten highest-paid California state employees (all earning more than a half-million bucks a year), seven worked for California's grotesquely dysfunctional prison system.  Of those, four were prison doctors or dentists.

California pays prisons guards for attending Las Vegas convention.  The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has set aside about $350,000 to pay several hundred corrections officers while they attend their union's annual convention later this month in Las Vegas.  The arrangement with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is unique among the state's collective bargaining agreements.

The Boondoggle Express.  The largest construction boondoggle in recorded human history continues to unfold in the Central Valley of California.  The initial segment of Obama's pet project, a high-speed rail line from Merced to Bakersfield, just had its first announced cost overrun.  With costs jumping from $7.1 billion to a staggering $13.9 billion, the project now has doubled in price even before a single shovelful of earth is turned.  Now that is the seat-of-the-pants, lets just make up a number, government contracting that the Democrats and the unions so dearly love.

Hi-speed train to financial ruin in California.  Federal spending for high-speed rail is coming under close Congressional scrutiny.  Both political parties have begun to recognize the enormous capital costs required for another Solyndra style payoff; in this case the billions of Federal dollars needed to fund a lucrative union-only jobs program.

California, The "Failed State".  Do a web search with the words "failed state" and names like Somalia, Haiti, and Sudan will appear on your computer screen.  Unfortunately, the 31st state in our union — California — is looking more and more like a "failed state" as well.

California makes huge payouts for some workers' unused time off.  Contracts cap unused vacation balances at 80 days but allow exemptions for those who are needed in emergencies or who perform 'critical' work.  Some have retired with six-figure compensation checks.

California High-Speed Rail Still on Track to Nowhere.  The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) in California has released a devastating report on the California High-Speed Rail project.  The report highlights the follies of the project managers and the crippling fiscal impact the project will continue to have on state and federal-level coffers.  The California High-Speed Rail Act, which is now in its 15th year since being passed in 1996, established the California High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) and detailed a plan to establish high-speed rail in California by 2020.  The project has been bogged down by numerous delays and constant calls for additional funding.

More about high-speed rail boondoggles.

California's triple whammy.  California triple whammy required spendaholics at government's helm running up perpetual double-digit, billion-dollar annual budget deficits papered over in the current year, to be fretted over in the next.  Following close behind was an addictive need to issue billions in government bonds, which are nothing more than drawing cash on a promise to pay it back.

"Hi, I'm California, And I'm Addicted to Spending.  With less than 2 months in office, Governor Brown has already hinted that California's famous "Proposition 13" might need to be undone.  In case you've forgotten, this was a landmark ballot proposition that drew a record number of voters to the precincts in 1978.  It passed in a landslide, and imposed a statewide limit on the rate at which local counties and cities could levy property taxes.

California Declares Fiscal Emergency.  Jerry Brown, California's governor, declared a state of fiscal emergency on Thursday [1/20/2011] for the government of the most populous US state to press lawmakers to tackle its $25.4 billion budget gap.  Democrat Brown's declaration follows a similar one made last month by his predecessor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor.

$69 million in California welfare money drawn out of state.  More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami.

Creating Poverty Through 'Social Justice'.  In the story about social justice not working in San Francisco, we witness the creation of special interest groups, via legislation and regulation, which are literally inserted into the free market process to create wealth for entities that would otherwise not be needed in the free market Capitalist economic system.  By virtue of San Francisco's social justice legislation and regulation, wealth has been extracted from the taxpayers, unnecessarily, via the process of government procurement, to reward the unproductive.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is Progressive, Socialist, Marxist, wealth redistribution fashioned for the Capitalist economic system.  It's here and it is happening... right now.

Why California Is Bankrupt.  By now, the entire world has heard that California can no longer pay its bills.  The amount of money going out exceeds the amount coming in. ... To the outsider, California's dilemma is paradoxical.  After all, this is home to Silicon Valley and high technology.  Geniuses are everywhere, and the state is renowned for being on the cutting edge on all issues from sex to science.  Brilliance abounds, EXCEPT in state government because California is cursed with a gaggle of extreme tax and spend liberals in the State Assembly.

California School Spending Soared ... On Administrators.  California schools, like the rest of state and local government, have pleaded poverty as the recession and housing bust abruptly ended the tax-revenue boom.  But a study of 52 California school districts by Pepperdine University showed that K-12 spending rose 21.9% from fiscal 2003-2004 to 2008-2009, outpacing state income growth and inflation.  On a per-student basis, spending jumped 25.8%, because attendance declined 3.1%.

Giving Failure a Pass.  The Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in California, spends $10 million a year to "house," with full pay and benefits, about 160 teachers deemed unsuitable for the classroom, according to "Failure Gets a Pass," a recent series in the Los Angeles Times.  "If I had my way, I would fire [all of them], and they would not get another d----- penny," LAUSD superintendent Ramon C. Cortines told the Times.  "They're milking the system."

California School Spends $10G a Year to Teach AP Spanish to Kids Who Speak Spanish.  A middle school in Southern California is spending $10,000 a year to teach Advanced Placement Spanish to 35 of its 650 students — and all but one of them are already fluent in Spanish.  Thirty-four of the kids in the AP class are from Mexico or are the children of Mexican immigrants.  They all grew up speaking Spanish at home.

California Supreme Court OKs In-State Tuition for Illegal Immigrants.  Illegal immigrants can get in-state tuition at California colleges if they graduated from a high school in the state, the California Supreme Court ruled.  "The ruling is the first of its kind in the nation," the Los Angeles Times' Maura Dolan and Larry Gordon report, and though just ten other states offer such benefits, this ruling makes challenges to those laws less likely.

Financial Aid for Illegal Students OK'd.  The Assembly Higher Education Committee approved two bills on Tuesday [3/15/2011] allowing college students who are in the state illegally to receive financial aid.  Dubbed the California Dream Act, AB130 allows illegal immigrants to receive privately funded college scholarships, and AB131 allows them to receive taxpayer-funded financial aid such as Cal Grants.  Currently, illegal students who spend at least three years in California high schools pay only the in-state tuition rate — a significant cost savings over legal citizens from other states who are attending California colleges.  That benefit was provided by AB540, which passed in 2001.

Taxpayers Oppose the "Billion-Dollar Fish Fry" Project.  Special interests are pushing S. 27 as a way to "settle" their two-decade-old lawsuit against the federal government (specifically, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) to restore the salmon population to the historical outlines of San Joaquin River.  Even though the targeted segment of riverbed has been dry for 75 years (thanks in part to a dam California voters approved in 1933), these same activists are prepared to spend considerable taxpayer resources in an attempt to bring back a minimum of 500 salmon to the area.

California bill would give newborns $500.  Happy birthday, baby, here's $500, courtesy of California taxpayers.  The state's Legislature is considering a plan for taxpayers to provide a tax-free, long-term investment account to every baby born in California, regardless of his or her parents' financial or immigration status.

$1-Billion Affordable Housing Bond Measure May Go to Voters in L.A..  A $1-billion bond measure that would help provide housing for thousands of low-income residents and enable others to become first-time homeowners is likely to appear on the Los Angeles ballot in November.

Why Buying Government Bonds is a Bad Investment for Yourself, and Our Future:  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spends 80% of its budget on administrative overhead, while private charities are prosecuted for fraud if more than 20-30% of donations goes for staff.  In California, there are an average of 132 administrators for every 100 teachers in the public schools, while there are only 18 per 100 teachers in the parochial schools.  Average cost per high-school student:  $5200 public vs. $2200 private.

What Should We Expect from Smaller Classes?  In a thoughtful review of studies of class size and academic performance in last November's Scientific American, Ronald G. Ehrenberg and colleagues point out class-size reduction has one obvious drawback:  "It costs plenty."  They note the state of California alone has spent more than $1.5 billion annually over the past several years to reduce class sizes to 20 or fewer in kindergarten through third grade …with only a "tiny effect."

California At The Breaking Point.  A new Stanford study says California's public-employee retirement funds are $500 billion in the hole.  It's news that unions and their candidate, Jerry Brown, don't want to hear.

Public-sector employees are the new fat cats.  In California, 9,111 retired government workers have pensions of more than $100,000.  One retiree draws an annual pension of $509,664.  Among retired teachers, 3,065 receive more than $100,000.  One gets $285,460.  Pensions for retired state workers and teachers will rise 2 percent this year, though Social Security recipients aren't getting any cost-of-living increase.  The increase in California isn't tied to inflation.

Pension Tsunami:  That approaching wave of pension debt is a lot bigger than it looks.  The purpose of this site is to provide an overview of the multiple pension crises that are about to drown America's taxpayers.  Our primary focus is on California, but we also track other states, corporate pensions, social security and international trends.

In a Welfare State, How Much Is 'Enough'?  California is imploding.  Public-sector unions there, and across the country, are swallowing budgets.  In California alone, pension costs have gone up 2,000 percent in a decade.  At the national level, Obamacare has done little to fix — and much to hurt — America's long-term entitlement mess.  Already, America's structural deficit has tripled since 2007.  Economist Price Fishback has just published a paper finding that America spends more on social welfare than socialist Sweden (though we spend it differently).

Trickle-Down Misery in L.A.  The city is chin-deep in California's trickle-down misery, and last week Richard Riordan, who was L.A. mayor from 1993 to 2001, coauthored with Alexander Rubalcava — an investment adviser — a Wall Street Journal column declaring the city's fiscal crisis "terminal."

Schwarzenegger budget would eliminate welfare.  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked lawmakers Friday to eliminate the state's welfare program starting in October and dramatically scale back in-home care for the elderly and disabled as part of his May budget revision to close a $19.1 billion deficit.

Bye Bye, CalWORKs.  In the early 1990s, Bill Clinton campaigned on a promise to "end welfare as we know it."  Republicans in Congress called his bluff, and the result — the landmark 1996 welfare-reform bill — ushered in a decade of plummeting welfare rolls and declining poverty.  Now California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, no one's idea of a staunch conservative, has done Clinton one better:  He has called for the end of cash welfare in California, period.

Credit card caper is L.A. County's next bombshell.  Some Probation Department employees apparently have been ripping off taxpayers, buying personal items such as TVs, video games and barbecue grills on county-issued credit cards.

Derelict Legislature.  As states start to rein in pension costs, California's legislature remains lost in space, nixing even a modest reform to save itself $110 billion over 30 years.  Are there any signs of intelligent life out there?

The Next Big Crisis:  State Bankruptcies.  Many say that the situation in Greece is a harbinger of what is coming to the United States.  They are right.  But first it will come to states like New York, California and Michigan, which are stretched way beyond their means and deeply in debt.

The Editor says...
Please note that New York, California and Michigan are three of the so-called "blue states".  Wherever Democrats predominate, prosperity cannot endure, because liberals abhor capitalism.

California judge denies Schwarzenegger's minimum wage order.  Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette today [7/16/2010] denied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request to immediately compel State Controller John Chiang to pay state employees minimum wage.

800k Salary For California City Manager; 100k For Part Time Employees.  Bell is one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County, and it pays its city manager about $800,000. ... His salary is double what city managers make in surrounding areas, as is the $457,000 salary that Bell city pays it chief of police.

For Whom Bell, California Tolls.  It tolls, of course, for public employees and for Democrats, the party almost exclusively linked to big labor, big government, and big labor in big government.  Bell, California, a small municipality in Los Angeles County with a population of 40,000, has come to symbolize public employee rot.  Bell's average resident earns under $30,000 per year, and its unemployment rate hovers around 16%, even higher than the high statewide rate for California (over 12%).  Yet we learned from the Los Angeles Times that Bell was run by Chief Administration Officer Robert Rizzo (D), bringing down a salary of $800,000, and by Police Chief Randy Adams, earning $457,000.  There must certainly be a lot of streets being swept and drunk drivers being ticketed in this clean and orderly piece of America.

Prosecutors detail steps Bell leaders allegedly took to hide high salaries.  Court documents accuse former City Administrator Robert Rizzo of ordering an employee to draft false contracts and other records to conceal how much he and council members made.

This Bell Is the Chime of Freedom.  The saying goes, you get what you pay for.  To the working class citizens of Bell city, California, their hard-earned cash got them a sleazy, overpaid and corrupt government run by Democrats.  The government officials got rich.  Today [9/21/2010], thankfully, eight of them — every single one a Democrat — also got arrested.

Media white-washes Bell, California jail-birds' party status.  They're gone, wearing jumpsuits, all eight former officials of Bell, the modest California city whose citizens, for 25 years, were plundered by shamelessly corrupt Democrats.

Corruption As Usual.  In addition to Bell and Irwindale, two other Los Angeles suburbs have recently been disgraced by public corruption.  The former mayor of Temple City recently pleaded no contest to bribery and other charges and will do 16 months.  In Vernon, a tiny town of 100 residents, city managers were making salaries of $1.6 million and enjoying perks like first-class air travel and $800-per-night hotel rooms.

Californina town that fired all employees and outsourced all services is thriving.  It's not exactly a mystery why California is in such trouble.  From the local governments to the statehouse, it's one of the worst governed states in America.

Change Club Med Environment at Club Fed.  Unleashing criminals from American jails onto American streets is determinately criminal.  But still, the debate on American incarceration continues to flare up due to tough economic times and because our country spends roughly $50 billion annually to incarcerate public nuisances and dangerous thugs.  Shockingly, the annual cost per prisoner in California is $50,000.  No wonder there has been a violent push for the privatization of prisons and the revamping of the American legal system.

New K-12 school in Los Angeles costs taxpayers $578 million.  There's been an ongoing budget crisis in Los Angeles this year.  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was at one point threatening to shut city services down two days a week to make ends meet.  Despite this, it does not appear that the city has been cutting back.

L.A.'s 'Taj Mahal' School's Real Cost.  For anyone who ever doubted bureaucrats' ability to spend, one need look only at Los Angeles' newest public school, the most expensive ever built.  If only the education inside was as rich.  With a price tag of $578 million, the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools is an impressive building — perhaps indicative of what some call the Los Angeles Unified School District's edifice complex.

How does a $578 million school get built amid cuts, layoffs in L.A.?  A football-field-sized lawn — lined with walks and trees — stretches from the street to a five-story, glass-front building in this otherwise scruffy neighborhood just west of downtown skyscrapers.

Let states go bankrupt.  After two years of bailouts, "stimulus" spending, TARP and earmarks, the country took a deep breath and is now beginning a discussion about the unsustainable trajectory of federal expenditures and the reforms necessary to right the country's fiscal ship.  This is all good and healthy.  However, Washington is not the only place with an overspending problem.

Shovel Ready in San Fran: $205,075 to 'Translocate' One Shrub from Path of Stimulus Project.  The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to "translocate" a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

Government Work: $205,000 to Move a Shrub.  In 2010 $205,075 was spent to "translocate (that's govspeak for "move") a single bush that was apparently in the way a highway renovation project that was partially funded by stimulus money.  No, I'm not kidding.  $205,075 to move a bush. [...] The plant in question is called a Franciscan manzanita and is extinct.  Except where it is found growing in people's yards in California.  And nurseries where they retail for about 16 bucks.

Nothing Left to Cut! California Spends $205,000 to Move $15 Shrub.  Reeling from devastating budget cuts driven by austerity extremists, California in 2010 still managed to spend $205,075 to move a plant.


Taxes:

Democrat-Run California About to Get Hit with 50 Cent per Gallon Gas Tax.  In today's edition of Getting What You Vote For, the dummies in California are about to get hit with a 50 cent per gallon gas tax.  Remember, California voters have handed the Democrat party full power over the former Golden State.  Democrats run everything from the governorship on down.  Democrats not only hold majorities in the state legislature, they hold veto-proof majorities. [...] According to Triple-A, the average cost of a gallon of gas in California today is $5.29.  That's nearly $1.70 more than the national average.  In some parts of California, gas costs $6.32 per gallon.

California's New Electricity-Income Tax Is Only Weeks Away.  In a couple of weeks, California's Public Utilities Commission will vote on whether or not to adopt a new fixed charge for electricity, one that will likely be based on income.  When I first wrote about this proposal a year ago, the utilities were suggesting that fee could be as high as $85 a month for some households.  That's not including whatever the utilities charge for actual usage of electricity.  The new fixed fee as proposed was essentially an income tax being paid via your electric bill.  Since then, the proposal has been scaled back quite a bit but some version of it now seems likely to pass.

Will 'Billionaire Tax' Be Death Knell For California's Troubled Economy?  These days, it's hard to keep up with the once-upon-a-time Golden State's foolish policies.  They come in such number and profusion, you can't even track them all.  That's why the one-party state's latest tax proposal is such an attention-getter:  It would damage the state's economy, perhaps beyond repair.  The proposal is, as a matter of economics, foolish beyond belief.  In brief, the Democrats who have taken over the state now propose a "wealth tax" on the richest Californians, who are already fleeing the increasingly socialist state in alarming numbers.

California Lawmakers Move to Tax People Who Have Left the State.  California lawmakers appear intent on making the Eagles song Hotel California a reality[,] at least when it comes to taxes for those who try to flee the state.  At the Hotel California, "you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!" With soaring costs and a massive $24 billion deficit, the state is also facing an exodus of people leaving the state.  The solution?  Convert the state into a tax Venus flytrap:  not only impose a wealth tax on those caught in the state but tax those who try to leave.  The new bill introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Alex Lee would impose an extra annual 1.5% tax on those with a "worldwide net worth" above $1 billion, starting as early as January 2024.  The law has a cynical bait-and-switch provision.  The billionaire tax is just meant for the initial packaging and passage.  It can therefore be sold as a "billionaire's tax."  However, in two years, the threshold drops to a worldwide net worth exceeding $50 million.

Uncollected sales taxes and vehicle license fees.  Thanks to its lenient shoplifting laws, California (or, as I think of it, Commiefornia) is almost certainly losing substantial revenue.  Yet the same state that fanatically collects vehicle registration fees seems unperturbed by these other losses.  In Arizona, the sales tax is called a "transaction privilege tax," and retail businesses are required to collect that tax when selling taxable items if they are to keep their business license.  (Yes, the sales tax is really called "transaction privilege tax.")  State sales tax, when combined with city or town taxes and any other local entities that join the sales tax grift, usually total more than 10% in most communities.  One of the local small cities even charges a 3% sales tax on otherwise tax-exempt groceries.  The merchants' obligation to fund the government with every sale of taxable goods leads me to conclude that, when a thief steals from the retailer, not only is the retailer taking a loss but so are the government entities that do not receive their taxes.

California Decides This Is a Great Time to Raise the State Gasoline Tax.  This morning [6/20/2022], the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline has dropped a few pennies from the all-time high on June 14; on that date it was $5.01, and this morning it is $4.98, according to the American Automobile Association.  Certain states are much higher; in California, the statewide average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $6.39.  Naturally, at the end of the month, the state government of California will increase the state tax on gasoline, from 51 cents per gallon to 53.9 cents.  California has the highest taxes on gasoline.  This is separate from the environmental regulations that make gasoline more expensive in California:  ["]California's reformulated gasoline program is more stringent than that of the federal government — California gasoline must use a different formula in warmer weather in an effort to curb pollution.  As a result, gas prices in the state are typically higher and more variable because few supply sources outside of the state are able to offer California's unique blend of gasoline.["] [...] As the recent supply chain crisis helped illustrate, more than 40 percent of the container cargo in the U.S. passes through California ports.  Meaning that everything you buy that passes through California is influenced by the price of diesel fuel in the Golden State.

California to raise its gas tax, already the highest in the nation.  California lawmakers appear unlikely to pause the annual summer increase in the state's gasoline tax ahead of a May 1 deadline, Gov. Gavin Newsom's office said on Monday [425/2022]. Newsom, a Democrat, had previously expressed support for helping California motorists experiencing pain at the pump by waiting to implement a 5.6% tax hike scheduled to take effect on July 1.  The tax is used to fund roads and other infrastructure projects; the state's Legislative Analyst's Office projected the tax will generate about $8.8 billion in revenue during the 2021-22 fiscal year.

Aggressive new California tax hike proposal could accelerate exodus from state.  A new healthcare proposal that would nearly double California's tax revenue has the potential to push more people out of the state.  The ambitious legislative proposal would create a single-payer healthcare system and use the increased taxes to fund it.  While the legislation faces an uphill battle, Gov. Gavin Newsom has publicly voiced support for single-payer systems in the past.  He has yet to weigh in on the new legislation.

California considering insane plan to double its (already high) taxes.  California already has some of the highest taxes in the United States and is losing residents as a result.  Yet Golden State liberals aren't deterred.  They're now pursuing a state constitutional amendment that could double California's taxes.  The proposed amendment, ACA 11, would hike several key taxes to fund a state-level government healthcare scheme.  According to the right-leaning Tax Foundation, it would increase the average household's taxes by an astonishing $12,250.  It's estimated that the amendment would increase state revenue by $163 billion a year, which is more revenue than California had ever seen in an entire year before 2020.  (That means it's effectively doubling the state's taxes.)

California's government is wiping out its pot growers.  When California made pot legal, the theory was that pot had become such a normalized part of California culture that it should be treated like alcohol:  Adults should be able to buy and use it legally subject to restrictions.  However, California also decided to turn pot into a profit center...for California.  Therefore, it imposes a cultivation tax on growers as well as a 15% excise tax rate on consumers for any legal pot purchases.  California also controls the allowed mark-up rate, which stands at 80%.  With the state having imposed these stringent price controls on legal marijuana, is it any surprise that pot growers are going broke?

San Francisco considers traffic congestion fee that would only apply to 'rich' drivers making more than $46,000 a year.  San Francisco is considering a congestion pricing plan that would charge motorists for entering the busy downtown core — but only if they make more than $46,000 per year.  The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is leading the city's study on the proposal to charge a fee to any drivers who enter the downtown zone, details of which were reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.  London has used a similar congestion charge scheme for nearly a decade, but it does not include an income threshold.  New York City is currently considering a daily charge of $14 for motorists who enter certain parts of Manhattan.

California's Gas Prices Highest in the US Before Independence Day.  As Independence Day approaches, California's gas prices have hit a record-high since 2014.  According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), the national average gas price on July 1 is $3.123 per gallon but California's average price for regular gas was $4.284, which was $1.535 higher than in Mississippi.  The Golden state's average price of a gallon of premium gas was $4.595. [...] California had an automatic gas tax hike on July 1 that means drivers now have to pay 51.1 cents per gallon in state taxes — the highest gas tax in the country.

California Democrats Propose A Wealth Tax Which Taxes You Even After You Leave The State.  The pandemic has put a $50 billion dent in California's finances and Democrats are busy coming up with new ways to raise more tax money.  Plans to consider a tax hike on those making more than $1 million was just put off until next year, but now a California Assemblyman has proposed a wealth tax on top earners: [...] To be clear, property would not be considered as part of total wealth because it's already taxed by property taxes, but they have to report it anyway.  UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez co-wrote a paper about the new tax.  It makes clear that the wealthy would not be able to flee the state to avoid it because the wealth tax would continue for 10 years after someone leaves the state.

'Mystery surcharge' and gas taxes boost California gasoline prices by about $1.26 per gallon.  With Southern California gas prices topping $4 for the first time since 2015, many have been quick to place the blame on refinery problems and a switch to the summer blend of gas.  Both clearly figure into the mix.  But the Golden State's broad array of gas taxes and a "mystery surcharge" no one can quite explain placed California motorists at a disadvantage to begin with.  Here's a breakdown of what we pay in gasoline taxes, according to the California Energy Commission.  All numbers except the final category have been rounded to the nearest penny and were effective as of March.  The combined Cap & Trade and low Carbon Fuels Standard costs were effective April 12.

Critics argue Gov. Newsom is diverting gas tax money to projects voters did not approve of.  [Scroll down]  "Instead of building capacity on our highways to move people and freight, Governor Newsom is funding his pet rail projects throughout the state," state Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, said.  "This theft of funds meant to improve our roadways is a glimpse into the future of transportation in our state and Newsom continues to execute his September 2019 Climate Change Executive Order.  The Central Valley is just the beginning.  Other road projects will likely be next."  "This is theft of our gas taxes by Executive Order," Patterson added.

NY and CA spend billions more in taxes than TX and FL — and get worse results.  America's four largest states — California, Texas, Florida and New York — have a lot in common.  They are iconic, dynamic and diverse.  Each could be formidable countries themselves.  And, yet, they are also very different in their politics and governance.  California and New York are dominated by Democrats who have implemented the nation's highest and sixth-highest marginal income tax rates, respectively, to help finance large social programs and bureaucracies.  (New York's rate rises to second-highest if New York City income tax is included.)  Texas and Florida, meanwhile, have been governed mostly by conservative Republicans for decades; they are among the few states that levy no income tax on workers, while maintaining leaner social programs.

American Dystopia:  California's high taxes still aren't enough to pay for basic services in San Francisco.  San Francisco residents pay some of the highest taxes in the country, but more than a dozen neighborhoods still levy mandatory fees on property owners to finance services the city is failing to provide.  "We already pay the city taxes.  We've always paid," says Gilles DeSaulnier, who runs a grocery store previously profiled in Tucker Carlson Tonight's "American Dystopia" series.  "Starting this year in January, we're paying an extra thousand dollars a year, each real estate owner in this whole district, to help pay to keep the streets clean."  Eighteen San Francisco neighborhoods have voted to create "Community Benefit Districts," which charge mandatory fees to property owners in order to provide services like private policing, graffiti removal, and sidewalk clean up.

California hikes tax rates on legal marijuana businesses again.  California is increasing business tax rates on legal marijuana, a move that stunned struggling companies that have been pleading with the state to do just the opposite.  Hefty marijuana taxes that can approach 50 percent in some communities have been blamed for pushing shoppers into California's tax-free illegal market, which is thriving.

Newsom's Gas-Tax Switcheroo.  The gas tax was sold as a means to fix and expand freeways, but S.B. 1's fine print gave state officials much latitude to spend the money in other ways.  Voters should have known better but, hey, this is California.  Voters' own culpability didn't stop them from getting angry after Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed an executive order diverting road funds to his pet rail projects.

California [will] have [the] highest gas prices in [the] nation when [their] new gas tax kicks in [on] July 1.  When the new gas tax kicks in July 1, California will have the highest gas tax in the country.  The new gas tax will add an additional 5.6 cents per gallon of gas.  Consumer Watchdog President Jaime Court argues even though the new gas tax is expected to generate more than $50 billion over the next decade for much-needed road repairs, road infrastructure and transit upgrades, consumers shouldn't be stuck with the bill.

California Governor Wonders Why Gas Prices Are So High In State With High Gas Taxes.  California Governor Gavin Newsom has noticed something amiss in his home state and [...] he wants some answers.  What is that's put a bee under his bonnet?  Gas prices in the Golden State are too high and people are grousing about it.  People who vote.  So the Governor is swooping into action, determined to solve this vexing mystery.

California Gas Tax Goes UP 5.6 Cents on July 1.  Gasoline prices at the pump have climbed for eight weeks in a row, and California is expected to soon pay an average of more than $4 a gallon for the first time in almost five years, according to GasBuddy.  "The national average gas price has now risen for 2 months straight, tacking on a total of 50 cents per gallon in the last 90 days," said Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis for fuel-price tracker GasBuddy.  That's the longest run of consecutive weekly gains since 2015.  It also means Americans will pay nearly $200 million more at the pump today than back in early January, he said.  The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded stood at $2.745 early Monday afternoon [4/8/2019], according to GasBuddy.  That's up 27.3 cents a gallon from last month's average of $2.472.

California Has Become America's Cannibal State.  For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation.  About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax.  The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out.  No one believed that.  California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin.  California recently raised gas taxes by 40 percent and now has the second-highest gas taxes in the United States.  California has the ninth-highest combined state and local sales taxes in the country, but its state sales tax of 7.3 percent is America's highest.  As of April 1, California is now applying that high state sales tax to goods that residents buy online from out-of-state sellers.

Sacramento wants to tax soda, tires, guns, water, pain pills, lawyers, car batteries...  There are a whole bunch of taxing ideas in the Capitol:  on new tires, firearms, water, prescription painkillers, lawyers, car batteries, corporations based on their CEO pay, estates worth more than $3.5 million, oil and gas extraction.  The list goes on.  The oil and gas extraction tax is long overdue.  We're the only major oil-producing state without one.  It would raise an estimated $1.5 billion a year.

The Editor says...
I guess the LA Times writer thinks an oil and gas extraction tax is a painless money-maker that will have no effect on the price of gasoline or electricity.

California May Be Coming for You.  Those of us who live in California are used to the state's aggressive tax-collection policies.  Despite record-setting budgets, the state never has enough revenue to fund all the programs it wants to create or expand so the tax authorities have to shake every last dime out of residents' pockets.  But now, thanks to confusion over how to collect online sales taxes, California's tax-collection agency may be coming for you — even if you sell a few items from your kitchen table in Kansas.  The newly created California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) has been sending collection letters to small businesses that sell products via online retail platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon.  The agency claims that such third-party sellers owe eight years of back taxes because they are considered to have a physical presence in the Golden State.  The agency threatens tens of thousands of dollars in fines and imprisonment of up to three years.

San Francisco Voters Back 'Robin Hood' Tax On Business.  San Francisco voters passed Proposition C yesterday [11/7/2018] with a 60% majority, Recode reports.  The proposition establishes a tax between 0.175% and 0.69% on the gross income of businesses reporting over $50 million in annual turnover, along with a 1.5% payroll tax for certain companies with $1 billion in turnover to fund housing and homeless services.  The city predicts it will generate between $250 million and $300 million to help needy causes.

Enraged Californians rebel against Gov. Brown's massive tax hike on cars and gas.  In California, a state known for its love of driving, high-priced gasoline and history of tax revolts, a rebellion is brewing against Gov. Jerry Brown's massive gas-and-car tax increase.  In the two weeks since the Democrat signed Senate Bill 1, opponents have launched an initiative drive to repeal the $52.4 billion transportation package as well as a recall campaign to eject a vulnerable Democratic state senator who is seen as the deciding vote for the law.

Taxifornia Does It Again.  California's far-left government has done it again.  Not realizing its real problems are excessive spending on misplaced priorities, excessive taxes, too much debt and a far-too generous welfare state, its legislature working in cahoots with Gov. Jerry "tax-and-spend" Brown has pushed through the largest tax hike in state history.

California Prepares to Enact the Highest Gas Tax in the Country.  The California Senate Democrats has approved a multi-billion-dollar increase in the state's gas tax to pay for road and infrastructure projects.  The so-called Road Repair and Accountability Act would ratchet up the state's gas tax by 12 cents a gallon, and raise the tax on diesel fuel by 20 cents a gallon.  It also etches out an additional charge to annual vehicle license fees ranging from $25 to $175 depending on the car's value.  The Senate passed the bill, 27-11 on Thursday [4/6/2017].  Republicans did not support the measure.

Pasadena Planning to Introduce 9.4% 'Netflix Tax'.  The city council of Pasadena, California has come under fire recently after announcing a plan to implement 9.4% tax on video streaming services — a Netflix tax.  CBS reports that the tax, which was designed to generate revenue that had been lost due to the recent trend of people "cutting the cord" and cancelling cable TV services, was met with widespread disapproval from Pasadena residents.  The new law is based around a 2008 ruling that allowed the city council to tax cell phones as they taxed home landlines, this however set an unforeseen precedent that allows the city to apply a similar tax to digital streaming services.  As many as forty other California cities have a similar law.

Proposition 55 would extend "temporary" tax for 12 years.  When Gov. Jerry Brown and his allies urged voters to adopt a temporary income tax on the wealthiest Californians and a statewide sales tax on everyone four years ago, the deal was billed as a short-term salve for a state mired in debt and on the verge of insolvency.

The Editor says...
Remember this when the next "temporary" tax is proposed.

Unaffordable California — It Doesn't Have To Be This Way.  Here's a documented comparison of California taxes and economic climate with the rest of the states.  The news is bad, and getting worse. [...] CA has the highest state sales tax rate in the nation.  7.5% (does not include local sales taxes). [...] CA has the nation's 5th highest "gas pump" tax at 59.0 cents/gallon (January, 2016).  But add in the unique 10-12 cent CA "cap and trade" cost per gallon, and CA is #1 (about the same as Pennsylvania). [...] Average 2012 CA impact fee for single-family residence was $31,100, 90% higher than next worst state. [...] CA has now instituted the highest "cap and trade" tax in the nation — indeed, the ONLY such U.S.  tax.

California governor's highway plan includes $65 driver fee.  More than two months after calling a special session to address California's transportation funding backlog, Gov. Jerry Brown has begun circulating a list of administration proposals on how to pay for it, including a $65 annual fee for drivers and increases in the diesel and gas taxes tied to inflation.

More Californians Will Flee State After Recent Tax Increases.  California Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday said California would start a tax-increase wave across the nation, but recent history suggests California's tax increases will only accelerate the number of people who will leave California to other states with better tax climates.  When asked whether California was going to start a "tax-increase sweep" across the nation on CNN's "State of the Union," Brown agreed.

A Nightmare of Collapse.  My home county has been clobbered by the recession.  Taking the unemployment numbers at face value, the March 2012 rate was 11.1%.  Next month the county will vote on a measure that promises to keep our libraries open.  The implied threat is if voters don't extend the 1/8% sales tax they approved in 1998, libraries will close.  Since the measure extends an existing tax, its prime selling point is that it doesn't raise taxes.

A "Third Income Tax" To Fund Public Education?  California, with an average statewide unemployment rate of over 12% (in some regions the rate is over 20%) and a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion, is considering the imposition of a third income tax.  The additional income tax rate would vary, according to which region of the state one lives in, and would be imposed directly by school districts and county governments.  Many of California's public school districts (there are over 1000 of them) are themselves broke, just like the state government.

Texas Shines Big in the 2010 Census.  The Census Bureau last week released county and city populations for the last of the 50 states from the 2010 Census last week, ahead of schedule. Behind the columns of numbers are many vivid stories of how our nation has been changing — and some lessons for public policy, as well. ... The lesson is that high taxes and strong public employee unions tend to stifle growth and produce a two-tier society like coastal California's.  The eight states with no state income tax grew 18 percent in the last decade.  The other states (including the District of Columbia) grew just 8 percent.

Will California Tax Itself to Prosperity?  [Scroll down]  Ideology still trumps reality in California, even in this new, "post Arnold" era.  And so it was that, less than twenty-four hours after his inauguration, Governor Jerry Brown began laying the groundwork for raising taxes in California, rather than cutting government spending.  The problem with the state budget, so the Governor reasoned, was not that politicians had spent too much or that government agencies are wasteful.  No, no, Californians aren't taxed enough — they've been given an "unfair" break on their property taxes via the state's famous, 32-year-old "Proposition 13," and if that could be undone, then the state budget would be fixed.

California Stealin'.  Desperation grabs for revenue are nothing new in politics, but California is once again leading the way in creative financing.  To help close yet another gaping budget deficit, now estimated to be $7 billion this year and reach as high as $20 billion next, Sacramento lawmakers have authorized a 10% increase in the amount of taxes withheld from worker paychecks starting November 1 and through 2010.

Tax Increases, Coming To A Theater Near You.  In only 100 days and change, President Barack Obama has committed $6.5 trillion to waste, fraud and abuse.  That's $6,500,000,000,000.00, which is more than all the costs of World War I and World War II combined.  And you think it can't get worse?  Believe me, IT CAN.  Things have gotten so bad that, even in my home state of California, a Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is urging support for a massive $16 billion tax hike which is deceptively masquerading as a measure to put a lid on out-of-control government spending.  You read that right:  A massive tax-hike — Proposition 1A — is being peddled to the people as a measure to control spending.

RINO alert!
California governor wants to tax golf, auto repairs.  In California, Schwarzenegger wants to help close a nearly $42 billion budget deficit by taxing rounds of golf, auto repairs, veterinary care, amusement park and sporting event admissions and appliance and furniture repairs.  Democratic Gov. David Paterson in New York has proposed levies on MP3 downloads, taxi rides, movies, concerts, sporting events, and personal services such as haircuts, manicures and massages.  Schwarzenegger's fellow Republican in Utah, Gov. Jon Huntsman, has shelved a proposal to tax attorney and accounting services but promises to bring it back next year.

The Editor says...
Why not tax illegitimate children, illegal immigrants, and those hubcaps that rotate backwards?

Sides square off in fight to hike tax on tobacco.  Come November, Californians will be asked to impose the biggest tax increase ever on tobacco products, a change that healthcare advocates believe will reduce cigarette consumption, but some officials think will increase cigarette smuggling.

Benedict Arnold.  Just over five years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger swept into power in California, vowing to crush the "spending addicts" responsible for the state's crushing budget deficit and to thwart Sacramento Democrats who saw taxpayers as ATMs. "The people of California have been punished enough.  From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they are taxed.  Then they go and get a coffee, they are taxed.  They get into their car, they are taxed.  They go to the gas station, they are taxed. ..."

Lawmakers consider $1.50-per-pack cigarette tax hike.  For years tobacco companies have successfully fought off attempts by California lawmakers and health groups to increase the cigarette tax.  But next month, as the state grapples with the worst financial crisis in recent history, that may change.  Lawmakers will consider a proposal to hike cigarette taxes by $1.50 per pack and raise $1.2 billion annually.  During the last decade, cigarette makers have spent tens of millions of dollars to kill 14 straight attempts to make smokers pay more.

Smokers face a hit as tobacco taxes spike.  However they satisfy their nicotine cravings, tobacco users are facing a big hit as the single largest federal tobacco tax increase ever takes effect Wednesday [4/1/2009].  Tobacco companies and public health advocates, longtime foes in the nicotine battles, are trying to turn the situation to their advantage.  The major cigarette makers raised prices a couple of weeks ago, partly to offset any drop in profits once the per-pack tax climbs from 39 cents to $1.01.


Lawyers:

Target sued:  website not accessible to the blind.  The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), represented by Berkeley's Disability Rights Advocates as well as two law firms, has sued discounter Target, alleging that it violates California disabled-rights law because its website is not operable by blind computer users.

ADA Lawsuit Abuse:  Businesses of all sizes and types … have been targeted by what they call "ADA frequent filers" who file look-alike lawsuits where a single plaintiff and his/her lawyers file lawsuits alleging the same violation against numerous small businesses in a particular area. … For example, one plaintiff specializes in alleging toilet paper dispenser heights don't meet the ADA-required 40 inches, causing him emotional pain, humiliation and physical injuries.  He has filed more than 700 ADA lawsuits in California and collected millions from California small businesses in settlements.  Another plaintiff has filed more than 1,300 ADA access lawsuits since 1998; many against small, family-owned Northern California wineries.  Another plaintiff targeted more than 300 businesses in San Diego, using the same attorney to file all the cases.

Why Lawsuit Abuse Continues in California:  California's business climate suffered another blow [in May 2005] when the Senate judiciary committee killed SB 855, a measure that would have closed another loophole for unscrupulous attorneys who shake down California's small businesses.

Frivolous Lawsuits in California:  A rapidly emerging source of frivolous, shakedown lawsuits is the Americans with Disabilities Act, more specifically the California version of that federal law.  Restaurants, hotels, and businesses of all types have become targets of lawsuits for ADA violations.  The major problems include an inability of businesses to get certification that their business complies with the law, a lack of protection from future lawsuits when the violation is settled, and no time to fix a violation before a plaintiff sues.  These problems discourage compliance with ADA because a plaintiff can sue anyway.


Radical environmentalism and restrictive environmental laws:

EPA greenlights Cali EVs.  With a little more than a month left in his term, President Biden is certainly not holding back from issuing controversial pardons, rules, and waivers as he packs up his belongings before heading back to Delaware.  On December 18, the Biden administration approved two waivers for California's Advanced Clean Cars II Regulations.  Specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted "two requests from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for waivers to implement and enforce its Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) regulations for light-duty vehicles, and its 'Omnibus' low-NOx regulation for heavy-duty highway and off-road vehicles and engines."  Although these waivers might seem innocuous, they are extremely far-reaching.  In essence, they allow California to ban the sales of all new gasoline-powered automobiles by 2035.

Fury as California gets green light to ban all gas cars in Democrat state.  Automakers are furious after California moved forward with plan to ban the sale of all gas-powered cars by 2035.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday granted two requests from California to enforce strict standards for vehicle emissions after it found opponents were not able to meet the legal burden to how it was inconsistent with the federal Clean Air Act.  'California has longstanding authority to request waivers from EPA to protect its residents from dangerous air pollution coming from mobile sources like cars and trucks,' EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

'Climate' Policies in a Harris Administration.  Ground zero for the war on conventional energy in the United States is in Kern County, California.  It is home to some of the largest oil fields in the United States, with estimated reserves totaling more than 27 billion barrels.  Most of these reserves contain what is considered heavy oil, making it more difficult to extract and refine, but as a result, Californians have developed what are among the cleanest and most sophisticated extraction and refining technologies in the world.  All of that is melting away under a relentless regulatory onslaught.  Despite sitting on ample reserves, today, California imports 75 percent of its oil and 90 percent of its natural gas.  And despite subjecting taxpayers and energy consumers to literally hundreds of billions in extra costs in order to replace oil with renewables, 50 percent of California's total energy production is fueled by petroleum, with another 30 percent coming from natural gas.  That total, 80 percent from fossil fuel, is a mere two percent better than the global average.  In 2023, 82 percent of worldwide energy production came from fossil fuels.

California police agencies going green with Teslas complain they're 'nearly unusable' as squad cars.  California police departments are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Teslas to comply with the state's zero-emissions mandate — only for some to find them "nearly unusable" as squad cars.  Multiple municipalities have started buying modified electric cars since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in 2020 ordering that all vehicles sold in California be zero-emission by 2035.  The city of Irvine even spent a whopping $150,000 on just one tricked-out Tesla Cybertruck, drawing the ire of taxpayers because it is not for regular patrol but more to turn heads in anti-drug D.A.R.E. programs, according to LAist.

California bill mandating health warning labels on gas stove sales passes in state legislature.  Gas powered stoves in California could now come with a health warning label similar to what you'd find on a pack of cigarettes or other tobacco products, according to a new proposed law in the state.  California lawmakers passed a bill at the end of August that would make it illegal to sell a gas stove that is manufactured or sold online on or after Jan. 1, 2025, or sold in a store on or after Jan. 1, 2026, "unless the gas stove bears an adhesive label attached in a conspicuous location," according to the text of the bill.  Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to sign the bill into law, NPR reported.

State Officials Tell Californians to Stop Outdoor Grilling over Air Quality Concerns.  The State of California ratcheted up its nanny-statism another degree, by asking Californians to stop outdoor grilling because of air quality concerns. [...] Of course, the real problem is actually the wildfires[,] which are springing up from a combination of bad land managementand forcing utilities to divert funds used for fire mitigation to fuel green energy utopia policies.  The use of candles, incense, and pan-frying is also discouraged. [...] Currently, I am monitoring a brush fire that is broken out close to the home of a family friend. [...] The fire is still not contained, and if the wind kicks up... well, it could be problematic.  And I am sure that fire is putting out more carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and particulates than all the grilling and pan-frying going on in the state.  The fact that state officials are focusing on candles and outdoor grills demonstrates perfectly the silliness and incompetence of California's officials and politicians.

California Mandates Trains That Don't Exist.  California has long been infamous for its regulatory regime, imposing harsh restrictions on businesses and individuals.  This pattern has been accelerating since climate change alarmism took hold in the state, with demands for carbon emission reductions serving as an excuse to restrict or ban everything from charcoal grills to gas stoves and more.  Vehicles of all sorts have been swept up in this craze, with electric cars, trucks, and buses becoming the mandatory modes of transportation.  Now, however, the state has its eyes on another form of transportation.  Under a new proposed rule, the operation of diesel freight trains older than 23 years will be banned so they must be replaced with electric trains.  That will certainly come as welcome news to climate change alarmists, but there's one small problem with this proposal.  There are currently no fully electric trains in commercial production and there is no estimated timeline for when such trains might be commercially available given the current state of the technology.  In other words, California is looking to mandate the use of trains that do not exist.

You strain at a gnat while you swallow a camel.
The nation's filthiest beach is here.  Blame Biden, Newsom.  By any objective standard, the southern coast of San Diego County is enduring a long-running environmental nightmare.  Decades of billions of gallons of untreated human waste flowing north from broken sewage infrastructure in Tijuana have sickened a vast number of surfers and swimmers and many Navy SEALs training at Coronado.  Especially because of ailments reported by border agents, some doctors worry that the health threat goes far beyond active ocean users to include those who spend extended time in coastal areas and breathe air that often smells like a filthy portable toilet.  Now there is fresh confirmation of how uniquely awful this problem is.  The Surfrider Foundation has released a report on 567 sites in which it tested water for unsafe bacteria levels and found Imperial Beach — which has been closed for more than two years — had far and away the dirtiest water in the United States.

California takes the crown for the nation's filthiest beaches.  Does California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ever stop talking about his state's "climate leadership"? [...] Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a hit-it-out-of-the-ballpark editorial on Newsom's (and Joe Biden's) much-touted "climate leadership." [...] Newsom in his speech to the pope blamed Big Oil and corporate greed for all the pollution he's doing something about.  He ought to be looking to the Mexican government, which is polluting the heck out of San Diego, with poor, battered Imperial Beach being so polluted by Tijuana's sewage outflow the beaches there have been closed for two literally stinking years.

California Sets New Rule for Chevron, Gas Price Is Expected to Rise.  In a recent interview, energy expert Ronald Stein discussed California's shifting energy landscape and the challenges of transitioning away from fossil fuels.  As a former engineer and author on energy issues, Mr. Stein provided insightful perspective on the complex trade-offs involved.  California has made reducing oil production and dependence on foreign imports a priority.  However, Mr. Stein notes this has unintended consequences, like lost revenue for cities and increased costs passed onto consumers.  While aiming to curb emissions, Mr. Stein argues the state's policies may simply outsource them elsewhere through increased imports.  When it comes to renewable energy, Mr. Stein acknowledged the role of wind and solar but highlighted their limitations compared to fossil fuels.  As electricity alone cannot replace the vast array of products derived from oil, a total transition away from oil may not be realistic given society's material demands.

Newsom Wants Fed Bailout After Green Scheme Kills 830K Salmon.  "Bring the salmon home.  Remove the Klamath dams," read a banner protesters displayed in California years ago.  Now the dams have been removed — and, as a result, approximately 830,000 juvenile salmon [died].  This was unforeseen by the greentopian dam destroyers, and Golden State Governor Gavin Newsom, who backed the project, now wants federal disaster aid and economic assistance.  Oh, this doesn't mean Newsom's administration is taking any responsibility.  Instead, its officials are blaming, in part, wait for it ... climate change!  Yet the un-dammed water gets muddier still.  The California Department of Fish and Wildlife claims the dead salmon were "excess" fish and that overall populations won't be affected.  Despite this, salmon fishing off California's coast has been banned for the second year running, "in response to near-historically low stock abundance forecasts for the fall Chinook runs of salmon originating from the Sacramento and Klamath rivers," explains California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis.

Over 800,000 Chinook Salmon [are] Dead Days After Release from California's 'State-of-the-Art' Hatchery.  Despite the great lengths we go to save endangered species and ensure we create sustainable methods of farming and harvesting, those efforts still can fail catastrophically when we're faced with unforeseen obstacles.  And it appears that, as reported on March 2 by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), over 800,000 Chinook salmon are now dead due to those unforeseen circumstances.  Though they were carefully hatched, cared for and released in California's new, $35 million "state of the art" Fall Creek Fish Hatchery in Siskiyou County, it wasn't enough to save them from presumably succumbing to gas bubble disease in the Klamath River, according to the CDFW.

Drain the Reservoirs, Return California's Stolen Land.  The destruction of dams on the Klamath River provides an encouraging precedent for progressives throughout California.  As was breathlessly reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere, indigenous tribes are now able to recover their sacred land and revive their ancestral villages and way of life.  It is time for California's progressive supermajority to do the right thing and return all stolen land to the first peoples.  They can start by draining the rest of California's reservoirs.  Not only is demolishing California's dams, draining all of its reservoirs, and returning the restored riverfront property to their rightful claimants an appropriate reparatory gesture, but it will also set the rivers themselves free.  Unshackled, they will again be welcoming habitats for salmon and other aquatic life, able to send torrents of nurturing fresh water into California's Central Valley and ultimately into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

California Demolished [a] Dam to Save Salmon [but] Killed the Salmon Instead.  California, which is in a state of perpetually self-inflicted drought, restricts all sorts of practical water solutions based they would hurt some living creature somewhere.  (People, especially farmers, don't count.)  And along the way the state decided to demolish a dam to help some salmon.  The destruction was celebrated by environmentalists and rubber-stamped by the media. [...] Tribal leaders, environmentalists, and state officials are the only people who count in California.  $500 million was spent to make California a worse place.  For human beings.  And for salmon too. [...] Maybe I'm a bit of a skeptical fellow, but I don't believe that anyone actually cared about the salmon.  No more than I think that the border wall lawsuits were really about the welfare of a bug.  The purpose of these projects is not about fish or bugs.  The fish or bugs are a pretext for the actual goal which is wrecking America.  Measured by this standard, wrecking dams and killing hundreds of thousands of salmon is doubly a success.

California's Impossible War on Oil and Gas.  Determined to save the world from climate change, California has nearly shut down its oil and gas industry, though the Golden State currently gets 50 percent of its total energy from oil and another 34 percent from gas.  The state's most recent move was a decision by California's Geologic Energy Management Division to deny new hydraulic fracturing permits on oil and gas wells.  The assault on oil and gas has been unrelenting.  In September 2023, California attorney general Rob Bonta sued Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP for allegedly causing climate change-related damages and deceiving the public.  A year before that, in September 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation to ban new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of any occupied structure — a restriction so likely to kill the industry that more than 623,000 registered voters have endorsed a referendum to repeal it this November.

The Editor says...
California's legislative effort to eliminate climate change presumes that all the causes of world-wide climate change are located in California.  In other words, California's propsed solutions are based on the assumption that climate change is entirely their fault.  Turning California (back) into an 18th-century wasteland won't have any impact on the climate anywhere else.  Apparently nobody in the state government has engaged in rational thought about that causes and effects of unstoppable and imperceptiby gradual changes in the world-wide climate.

California's green mania continues to make life difficult for its residents.  I first saw aseptic containers when I was in Europe in the early 1980s and thought they were wonderful.  They meant soups, juices, eggs, and other products that would last as long as canned goods but that wouldn't taste of the can, even while making food easier to store and ship. [...] We're all familiar with the bans already in place in California:  paper bags, single-use plastic bags, straws, plastic utensils — they've all been put on the chopping block.  The latest targets are containers that cannot be recycled or composted: [...] According to CalRecycle, aseptic containers will soon be verboten.  The ramifications are serious. [...] Whether California laws affect others across America will also play out this year now that its anti-animal cruelty law is going into effect.  Moving forward, all animal goods sold in California must have been raised in an environment optimal for the animals' mental health and well-being.

The SEC Oversteps its Powers on Climate Change.  Nearly two years ago, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule that would force publicly traded companies to take climate change seriously by reporting on how climate change might materially affect their operations.  The mandatory reports were to include, among other things, what actions they are taking to fight climate change, to anticipate and mitigate its potential impacts, to report on their emissions, and the emissions created throughout their supply chain, and any efforts they were taking to reduce emissions.  This was a purely political action pushed by the commission's three Democrat appointees.  Facing fierce backlash from investors, the public, and Congress, the SEC has delayed, for the moment, formally imposing the rule.  During the SEC's delay, California, ever the leader in inane, job-destroying, consumer-costing policies, stepped in and passed its own similar law.  As will be the case should the SEC finalize its rule, business and farm groups sued to block the law, in part, because it usurps the federal government's constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce by applying to companies headquartered outside the state, if they do business in California.

California magical thinking will derail America.  The unelected California Air Resources Board, which has been working for years to force the rest of the country to ban internal combustion engines in cars and trucks, now wants to control the nation's railroads.  If approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, a board proposal to phase-out diesel locomotives will affect rail service throughout the U.S. as interstate railroads divert billions of dollars from safety, maintenance and congestion projects.  It could also put some California shortline railroads that carry farm commodities and supplies out of business.  It must be stopped.  Under the proposed rule, beginning in 2030 diesel locomotives operating in California can't be older than 23 years.  New engines on freight trains must be zero emission by 2035.

2024 Promises the Expansion of the Green Energy Scam.  [Scroll down]  On this side of the pond, we have California banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and a wave of blue states lining up behind them.  This at the same time the state is asking existing electric car owners not to charge their cars while leaning on fossil fuels to stave off the return of rolling blackouts.  The reality is that the green energy revolution is a fiction.  Green energy is incapable of providing the energy requirements developed nations require and the green energy movement is a cult.  In fealty to that cult, Western nations are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars every year on "green energy" programs — most of which fail.

Federal court deals knockout punch to blue city's Biden-backed effort to ban gas stoves.  A federal appellate court ruled Tuesday that it would not reconsider an earlier decision that prevents the city of Berkeley, California, from enforcing its de facto ban on installing gas-powered appliances in new buildings.  Berkeley, one of the most liberal cities in America, enacted the policy in 2019, marketing it as a means of countering climate change while others railed against it as a de facto gas stove ban.  The California Restaurant Association sued the city over the ordinance, losing its challenge in federal court initially before a three-judge panel vindicated the trade group in April 2023, a decision the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opted against revisiting on Tuesday.  "By completely prohibiting the installation of natural gas piping within newly constructed buildings, the City of Berkeley has waded into a domain preempted by Congress," Patrick Bumatay, a circuit judge on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and member of the panel, wrote in his opinion.

Newsom's California Is Showing Us What The Green Energy Transition Looks Like — And It Isn't Pretty.  California has long pushed the envelope when it comes to environmental regulation, whether in land-use, emissions, harmful substance disclosures, renewable energy requirements and more.  The state offers a preview of where the climate agenda will take us.  Earlier this year the California legislature passed, and Governor Newsom signed, laws requiring new emissions reporting requirements for businesses with sales of over $1 billion operating in the state.  These onerous reporting requirements add to the dozens of other costly environmental regulations such as banning the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines and requiring solar panels on all new houses.  But these regulations make California a worse place to live, especially for the poor.  They are not costless and the bill is coming due.  These environmental regulations make everything more expensive, from housing to electricity to food to transportation.

California's EV Conundrums.  The crude oil industry's time in California is limited, and the oil-refining industry is behaving as any industry would in comparable circumstances, by transitioning its operations away from gasoline to activities that will prove to be more profitable in the long run.  And as crude oil supply falls further, much higher gasoline prices will become a way of life for Californians, as the conundrums associated with EV mandates may be growing.  Standard economic logic indicates that high California gas prices should encourage fuels supply to be shipped to California from other states.  But this doesn't happen because no other state formulates California's unique gasoline blend.  In addition, the West Coast fuels market is isolated from other supply/demand centers as California is an energy island.

Unintended Consequences:  The California Electric Truck Mandate.  If you own a trucking company that picks up shipments from California ports, you now have to deal with the consequences of a new law designed to reduce your carbon footprint.  Trucking is one of the vital ingredients in our infrastructure that virtually all parts of the economy rely on.  About two-fifths of all containerized imports to the US come through one of California's twelve commercial ports.  According to a recent report in National Review, beginning January 1, any trucker doing "drayage" (the technical term for transporting stuff to or from a seaport) in California can only buy zero-emission vehicles, although they can hang on to their existing diesel fleet for a while.  Trucks don't last forever, however, and evidently the court of wisdom otherwise known as the California legislature decided this was the best way to get truckers used to the additional coming mandate that in 2035, all trucks entering California seaports and intermodal rail yards (where the containers are loaded onto trains) must be zero-emission types.

California's Heat-Pump Fantasy.  Electric-powered heat pumps, once an obscure appliance, are being hyped as the key to decarbonizing homes and buildings in California.  Regulators in Sacramento and in the Bay Area are phasing out gas-furnace sales, and two upscale communities now require heat-pump retrofits when air conditioners wear out.  But as with so many things "green," advocates underestimate the true costs and burdens of these policies, while ignoring their adverse health and climate consequences.  In summer, a heat pump works like an air conditioner, using refrigerant to transfer heat outdoors for cooling.  In winter, it can run in reverse, moving heat into a home.  Activists insist that trading gas furnaces for heat pumps will cut costs and improve health while protecting the climate.  The cost benefits are as yet illusory.

California scheming.  If you liked the coronavirus lockdowns, you'll love the coming climate lockdowns.  Leftists sure liked the former, noting that animals reclaimed some urban areas and the skies were clearer and bluer.  Government pandemic policies forced millions of Americans to work from home, and this could become the permanent norm if special carbon taxes are put in place. [...] Drive to work in a car?  You are subject to special taxes.  Travel by plane?  Ditto.  Moreover, your children will be impacted by climate lockdowns, too.  For example, schools may frequently impose online only school days.  In the U.S., California-style rolling blackouts will become the norm across the fruited plain due to failed green energy policies.  With the abolition of "fossil fuels" and nuclear power, consumers will be prevented from purchasing new gasoline-powered cars, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, and chainsaws.  Nor will many soon be able to obtain or afford gas stoves, water heaters, and air-conditioners.  California will ban the sale of gasoline cars in less than 13 years, because, you know, the internal combustion engine is E-V-I-L.  Despite the fact that it has arguably led to more freedom and prosperity than any other invention in the history of the world.

Budgets blown: Wind [is] not exactly the net bargain they advertised.  The wind and sun are free, we were and are told.  One only has to wire something up that transmits the harnessed power and everyone will rejoice we did so.  We're still hearing that now — cast your ears towards the painful pleadings of advocates for offshore wind farms in California.  The onshore ones they have have been working out so well for CA consumers, no?  "Oh, if we only get umptyphrats amount more turbines, everything will work out!"  It's all [nonsense], as I noted in a June post about Gavin Newsom already scrambling to lock on external sources of energy to keep power flowing to his state this summer.  His plans, by the way, will be put to the test this coming week, cuz it's going to be hot.  CA residents' electric bills will reflect all those savings from renewables.

Incorporating Out-of-State Regulations is Unconstitutional.  Besides Washington D.C., as many as 14 states — the CARB states, so called after the California Air Resources Board — apply the bluebook, California's stringent air pollution control laws.  In most of them, lawmakers have neither legislated on the matter nor consulted citizens.  This anomaly is being challenged as unconstitutional by Peters Brothers Inc., a trucking firm based in Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania.  The family business owns a fleet of refrigerated trucks.

Goodbye gas.  New all-electric homes show how to live without fossil fuels.  From the outside, the rows of tile-roof houses in a new community in Menifee don't look much different from those in other subdivisions cropping up in this fast-growing city in Riverside County.  But on the inside, these all-electric homes are revolutionary, offering a glimpse of the zero-emission future we should be hurtling toward to fight climate change and adapt to its effects.  All the houses in the Durango and Oak Shade at Shadow Mountain communities, two adjacent KB Home subdivisions I visited in May for an opening event, were built without natural gas hookups or appliances.  Each of the 219 homes comes with rooftop solar panels, heat pumps for heating and cooling, induction cooktops and other energy-efficient electric appliances, and a smart electrical panel that manages energy use.  In the garage is a battery storage system that can power the home during an outage and in the evenings when the cost of electricity from the grid is higher.

The Editor says...
[#1] Oh, what a wonderful idea, but where does the electricity come from?  A big power plant in another state perhaps?  One that runs on coal?  [#2] The solar panels on this house will work for about ten years.  What then?  [#3] The climate will always change, gradually, but there is no sense in fighting it.  Adapt.  [#4] Please tell me more about the "effects" of climate change.  What effects have you noticed?  [#5] There is no "zero-emission future."  Emissions of what?  Go ahead and say, "carbon dioxide," and we'll all know how tiny your problems are.  [#6] Your electric appliances won't work on a night when the wind isn't blowing and your batteries are dead.  [#7] Batteries consume more power than they give back, and in California, there is never a good time to charge them.

July 4 Fireworks Canceled Due to Climate Change Activists.  Woke Los Angeles sacrificed the celebration of the Fourth of July this year on the altar of climate change gods by canceling several fireworks on the birthday of the American nation because of new environmental regulations.  As of May 25, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board started forcing all fireworks vendors to obtain a permit for their public displays and use biodegradable plastics after adopting a countywide order.  The Washington Examiner reported that the decision was made to curb ocean pollution that was caused by plastic debris following all fireworks shows.  Even though most shows in the area will obtain their permits, at least five shows will be canceled over the holiday weekend because one firework company — Pyro Spectaculars by Souza — didn't bow down to the climate change mob by refusing to comply with the new rules over its employees' safety concerns.

Summertime in SoCal, and with green recycling, here come the rats, roaches, flies and maggots.  [H]ere in San Diego, where we are under a state mandate to recycle our green garbage — food scraps, food-soiled paper, and yard clippings — fresh new environmental problems are abounding.  According to local T.V. station KFMB:  ["] [...] Some people said they're concerned the waste could attract rodents and other animals.  "We understand it's something that people have to get used to and put into practice," said Director of Environmental Services Department, Renee Robertson.["]  Did I hear that right?  Did she just say we need to get used to having rats and roaches around the old middle-America ranch house now going for a million dollars on the market, with property taxes indexed to it?  I think that's what she's saying, because people are reporting problems because they use the government system.

It Was Always Only About Power With the Left.  California has been building massive solar farms in pristine deserts and rural areas.  Many spread over thousands of acres and require disruptive supporting infrastructure.  In the American Midwest, these new generations of solar farms are unlike anything in our recent past.  Often in size larger than Manhattan, they take out of production tens of thousands of acres of prime farmland.  What is curious about all these next-generation projects is the relative silence of environmentalists to the radical disruptions and dangers they pose to fragile and pristine natural landscapes, rare species of flora and fauna, and quality of life for surrounding rural communities.  In the case of hundreds of thousands of lost farm acres, prior liberal advocacy for preserving America's heartland, and its precious family farm acreage and those who work it, likewise go out the window.  Yet if any clean-burning natural gas plant, affordable housing development, a border wall, retirement community, or farming operation caused as much havoc to the environment as solar — and often wind — farms, there would arise leftist outrage replete with environmentalist-driven court injunctions.  In other words, left-wing environmentalism is calibrated only by whether the Left or the Right is reengineering the landscape.

California to Ban Diesel Truck Sales by 2036.  California suffers from a homelessness crisis, a drug epidemic, high taxes, and affordability issues, but there's one thing the state's residents won't have to worry about in the future: diesel trucks.  That's because state regulators on Friday approved a rule that would forbid the sales of diesel vehicles by 2036 and require all trucks to be zero emissions by 2042.  The California Air Resources Board also unanimously approved the Advanced Clean Fleets rule which will require delivery and garbage trucks to be electric.

This won't increase the price of groceries, will it?
CARB Approves Drastic New Locomotive Emission Regulations.  The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced on Thursday that they have approved new locomotive regulations designed to significantly cut back on emissions emitted from trains in the state, including banning the use of all trains built before 2007 in 2030.  California has introduced many restrictions on cars and trucks in the last several years, including a new gas-powered car sale ban set to be fully implemented in 2035 and requiring that half of all new sales of heavy duty trucks need to be electric by 2035.  While a few other states have so far followed California's lead on the car and truck laws, no one had been willing to apply similar rules to trains.  However, that changed Thursday, with California becoming the first major state to implement emissions-based restrictions on trains.

Deciphering the Government's Invisible Ink.  Have you heard about California's environmental tar baby?  California has 14 million vehicles, but is the fastest-growing purchaser of electric vehicles (one million to date) — this is more than the following ten states combined.  California is on track to ban internal combustion engines by 2035, which is only 12 years away!  Enter the tar baby!  California is shuttering coal, hydroelectric, nuclear power, and some natural gas plants, all while having conniptions over wind farms killing migratory birds and disturbing peoples' sleep — amidst rolling blackouts to boot!  From where is the essential electricity going to come?  What about tomorrow?  Where's the deep dive into exactly how all this will pan out?  Inquiring minds don't seem to want you to know.

Federal Court Blocks California City's Gas Stove Ban, Turning Up The Heat on Democrats.  A federal appeals court on Monday overturned a California city's first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas hookups in new buildings, saying it violates federal law.  The three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal sided with a coalition of California restaurants, who argued that the City of Berkeley's ordinance essentially bans gas appliances in violation of a 1975 directive that gives Congress control over restrictions on appliances.  The unanimous ruling is a major blow to California Democrats' green energy push, and could clear the way for legal challenges to similar bans around the country.  Democrats have increasingly moved to ban gas stoves while attempting to downplay their efforts.  New York is poised to become the first state to ban gas stoves, and California is working towards a statewide ban of its own.  The White House has denied that President Joe Biden supports banning gas stoves while the Energy Department works to restrict their sale.  Blue state attorneys general and environmental groups lined up to support the ban in court, in a sign of the case's national implications.

Ninth Circuit Throws Out Berkeley Ban on Gas Stoves.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tossed a Berkeley, California, ban on gas stoves on Monday, saying that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempted state and local authorities in regulating natural gas. [...] The Biden administration has taken steps toward eliminating gas stoves — though it briefly pretended otherwise — ostensibly to prevent asthma, but actually as part of a broader push against fossil fuel production.

Balboa Island Ferry May Close Due to California's Zero-Emission Regulation.  A California regulation requiring the historic Balboa Island Ferry in Newport Beach to install electric engines might put them out of business.  The California Air Resources Board, or CARB, is requiring the 104-year-old company to meet zero-emission standards and use electric engines by the end of 2025.  "It's probably not going to happen.  It's probably impossible," Seymour Beek, owner of the Balboa Island Ferry, told The Epoch Times.  Beek has been meeting with members of CARB, asking them to postpone the regulation, but such efforts have thus far been unsuccessful.

When Will This Climate Madness End?  What do gas ranges, Dutch farmers, and moose have in common?  In a normal everyday context, very little.  But in the world of apocalyptic climate change, everything. [...] In 2021, Biden signed an executive order banning the federal government from purchasing gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 and requiring federal contracts for all goods and services to be carbon-neutral by 2050.  Despite claims to the contrary, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has already begun the process of banning gas stoves by approving an official Request for Information on the hazards related to them.  At the same time, California is charging ahead with its own environmental plans.  The state will ban the sale of gas-powered water heaters and furnaces by 2030.  In addition, it and six other states intend to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.  Last Monday, the United Nations released a report saying, "The world is rapidly approaching catastrophic levels of heating."  U.N. secretary-general António Guterres said developed countries should attempt to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 instead of 2050.

The Editor says...
Any assertion that the "world is rapidly approaching catastrophic levels of heating" is an outright lie.  The rate of global warming is near zero.  There is no urgnet need to shut down gasoline engines and coal-powered industry.  There is no climate emergency.  There is no crisis.  The U.N. is looking for ways to perpetuate its existence, and the tyrants at the U.N. assume (and hope) that you know nothing about global warming.

The EPA Plays Along With California's Attempts to Ruin the Supply Chain.  You've got to hand it to California.  Even though the luster has dulled on the Golden State, the leftists there are going to stick to their principles.  You name a left-wing dogma, and California has most likely devoted itself to it.  This, of course, includes the radical climate agenda, which California has now even extended to the nation's already struggling supply chain.  California has declared war on diesel vehicles, from pickups to buses to tractor-trailers, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has greenlit the state's plan to limit the sale of diesel vehicles.

California Regulators Ban Gas Appliances In San Francisco Bay Area.  California regulators voted Wednesday [3/15/2023] to ban gas furnaces and water heaters in one of the state's most populated regions, a move that will likely require locals to undergo costly home renovations.  The Bay Area Air Quality District Board, a panel of appointees tasked with curbing pollutants for nine California counties, voted Wednesday to block the installation of gas-powered appliances beginning in 2027.  The board acknowledged that homeowners will have to spend thousands of dollars to install electric appliances and that the pivot away from natural gas will increase energy costs.  The ban comes as Democrats nationwide set their sights on natural gas.  The Biden administration has proposed a rule change that would effectively ban the sale of half of all gas stoves in the United States, a move Democrats had claimed was not on the table.

California bill would bar, fine businesses for using paper receipts.  A bill in California's state assembly takes aim at paper receipts and if passed, would ban businesses from handing customers receipts unless they specifically ask for it.  In the reintroduced "Skip the Slip" bill, businesses would be charged up to $300 if they continue to pass out paper receipts.  Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, introduced Assembly Bill 1347, and shared that his bill is an easy way to reduce paper waste in the state while addressing consumers' frustrations with excessively long receipts.  "When we get coffee to-go or a pack of gum, most of us don't want or need a physical receipt.  It's time we provide customers with the option to get no receipt or a digital receipt.  It doesn't make sense to kill so many trees and produce billions pounds of carbon emissions," Ting said in a press release.  "AB 1347 gives customers a choice and still provides for customers to request a paper receipt when they need it."

Outlawing Diesel Trucks Makes No 'Green' Sense.  A serious question that should precede such a major decision is, does it make sense to deploy electrically powered trucks on a large scale over diesels, especially for long-haul use?  Assuming the consequent increase in electric power demands are met and recharging infrastructure is built — hardly a small feat — there are still a number of other factors to consider, such as recharge time, range (on a full charge), economics (including battery replacement and cargo displacement due to battery size and weight), energy efficiency, and environmental impact.  Proponents of electric vehicles concede that impact is sensitive to the way in which electricity is generated.  Big diesel trucks can carry 300-gallon fuel tanks and have an average range of over 2,100 miles.  Refilling a diesel tank takes relatively little time compared to battery charging, which is prohibitively slow with standard electric charging.  A fundamental problem with battery charging is the state of charge approaches full charge inverse exponentially.  That means the battery achieves a partial charge quickly, but charging decreases proportionally to the state of charge, and a full charge can take many hours.  As a result, high-power fast direct current charging (DCFC) has been developed to mitigate the delay, but it is expensive and still not widely available.

Out of state, out of mind.  A CalMatters investigation finds that environmentally stringent California sends nearly half its toxic waste across its borders, often to states with weaker rules.  One of the biggest out-of-state dumpers:  the state's own hazardous waste watchdog.

California's Green Debacle.  Climate change, which serves as the all-purpose villain for every adverse event today, is the driving force behind California's energy policies.  Whether in response to summer drought and wildfires, winter rains and mudslides, or alleged price-gouging by climate-denying oil companies, the state has adopted energy policies that will supposedly vanquish climate change, much as Hollywood's heroes vanquish evildoers.  The state's history of climate-related regulation extends back two decades.  In 2004, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order directing state agencies to build a hydrogen-fueling network on state highways by 2010.  It never happened.  Today, 53 such stations are in operation, concentrated around the Bay Area and Los Angeles, to serve the approximately 10,000 hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles in the state.  The average cost to build each station was about $2 million.  That works out to about $10,000 per vehicle, excluding the cost of the hydrogen itself.

California bans 70,000 tractor-trailers amid supply chain crisis.  Do you remember way back in November when we were teetering on the edge of running out of diesel fuel?  Thankfully, reduced demand and some temporary increases from our remaining refineries pushed off that crisis for a while.  But it was an important reminder that the nation's supply chain still runs almost entirely on diesel and if we run out, no products will be moving anywhere for a while.  Out in California this month they're looking at a different but related crisis.  Instead of a shortage of fuel, the state will be looking at a shortage of trucks.  All tractor-trailers and buses made before 2010 are now banned from the state's highways.  That adds up to an estimated 200,000 vehicles, including more than 70,000 tractor-trailers.  And you probably don't need me to tell you why.  It's because of climate change, of course.

Large Trucks and Buses Made Before 2010 [are] Now Banned From California Roadways.  Big rigs and buses made before 2010 are now banned from operating on California roadways.  The law, which went into effect on New Year's Day, was part of a set of clean air regulations the California Air Resources Board passed nearly 15 years ago.  According to truck lobbying groups, the new law will prohibit about 10 percent of the commercial motor vehicles that are operating in the state.

Year in Review: California Got Even Crazier in 2022.  California Democrats love to say their state's laws lead the way.  But where, exactly, are they leading us?  Here are some guideposts.  [#1] The California Climate Crisis Act:  In August, the state legislature approved a plan to reduce carbon emissions by at least 85 percent by 2045.  Critics predict the plan will cost about $4 trillion, add $50,000 to the cost of every new home, endanger "hundreds of thousands of jobs," and could intensify the number of companies leaving the state.  It's unclear if the rules will apply to Democratic politicians' wineries, which climate activists say hurt the climate by sucking up water, using pesticides, and employing gas-powered tractors.  California also banned the sale of gas-powered cars starting in 2035.

Bye-bye trucks?  California air regulators to consider phasing out diesel big rigs.  California truck drivers and environmental groups presented their concerns about a proposal under consideration by state air regulators to phase out the sale of medium and heavy-duty gas-powered vehicles within the next 20 years.  The California Air Resources Board held its first public hearing this week to receive feedback from the public on the proposal, which the board will likely consider in Spring 2023.  If adopted, all new medium and heavy-duty vehicles sold in the Golden State will be required to be zero-emission by 2040.  Additionally, the proposal outlines a phased approach to adding zero-emission vehicles to certain fleets at the state and federal levels.  Under the proposal, half of the vehicles added to state and local government fleets must be zero-emission starting in 2024 and 100% by 2027.

Supreme Court to decide if CA can use pigs to impose its left-wing agenda on America.  The state of California simply refuses to leave the rest of us alone.  Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard more than two hours of oral arguments (more than in the case overturning Roe v. Wade) concerning pigs and how much space should be allotted for a sow to give birth and wean her piglets.  In 2018, California voters approved a proposition that banned the sale of any pork not produced at a farm that provided at least 24 square feet of space per sow.  While there is always an argument to be made against animal cruelty, the problem here is a matter of practicality.  Only four percent of pig farms currently meet California's new standard.  Boutique pork — as it were — is available at stores like Whole Foods for around $8 a pound.  If applied nationwide, California's law would raise the price of pork by an estimated 9.2 percent; current record inflation and already-high food prices [notwithstanding].  Believe it or not, the Biden regime is reportedly siding with the pork farmers, not California.

L.A. Times: California Policymakers Have Failed for Decades on Gas Prices.  The reliably left-wing Los Angeles Times has published an unusually candid analysis:  that California's policymakers, given ample warnings about the state's vulnerability to high gas prices, have failed to do anything to address the basic problems that cause them. [...] But as a spokesman for Valero, the company that operates two of the state's 11 refineries, recently noted in a letter to the California Energy Commission, "market drivers of supply and demand, together with government-imposed costs and specifications," are the main reasons for high prices in California, and cited a recent federal judicial decision that dismissed claims of price collusion in the industry.  Moreover, he added, "California is the most challenging market to serve in the United States" because of regulations that require a unique blend of gasoline; because of its environmental regulations; and because state policymakers have made it difficult to operate refineries, limiting supply in a crisis.

Please use all-electric appliances — but only between midnight and sunrise.  Don't worry, the power grid won't collapse!
California moves to ban natural gas furnaces and heaters by 2030.  California is committing to a plan that will make it the first U.S. state to phase out gas-fueled furnaces and water heaters in homes, a move environmentalists are betting will provide a template for other states.  The Golden State will ban the sale of all new natural gas-fired space heaters and water-heating appliances by 2030, under a proposal unanimously approved by the California Air Resources Board on Thursday.  "We need to take every action we can to deliver on our commitments to protect public health from the adverse impacts of air pollution, and this strategy identifies how we can do just that," board Chair Liane Randolph said.  "While this strategy will clean the air for all Californians, it will also lead to reduced emissions in the many low-income and disadvantaged communities that experience greater levels of persistent air pollution.

California Will Allow Human Composting After Death to Combat Climate Change.  The far-left state of California further embraced neo-paganism this week when Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law allowing the practice of composting dead human beings to better combat climate change.  Citing the high CO2 emissions associated with cremation, the bill will give people the option to give their dead remains over to a process known as natural organic reduction (NOR) should they not want to be buried or cremated.  "The process involves placing the body inside a long, reusable steel container along with wood chips and flowers to aerate it — allowing microbes and bacteria to break down the remains," according to the Daily Mail.  "One month later, the remains will fully decompose and be turned into soil."  The act of cremation reportedly accounts for 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

The Editor says...
[#1] Are they trying to claim that gradual decomposition by "microbes and bacteria" does not produce carbon dioxide?  [#2] In 2016, China produced 10,432,751,400 tons of CO2.  If it's true that "[t]he act of cremation reportedly accounts for 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year," a quick calculation shows that China will emit that much CO2 in less than 20 minutes.

California's Net-Zero Energy Model Is Already A Disaster — So Why Should The Rest Of The U.S. Copy It?  Americans are now being told that California's crazy energy policies would be a good model for the rest of the nation.  Have these people seen what's going on there?  California's plan to ban all gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 and replace them with electric vehicles "could be" a model for the rest of the nation, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said.  She didn't mean that as a warning, but you should know:  It is one.  "I think California really is leaning in.  And of course, the federal government has a goal of — the president has announced — by 2030 that half of the vehicles in the U.S., the new ones sold would be electric," Granholm added.  Get that?  She's saying the federal government, already trying to destroy the auto industry and ruin the oil industry through insane regulations and restrictions that have pushed energy costs to prohibitive levels, hasn't gone far enough.

California Goes Over the Edge.  We've known for a long time that California is the land of fruits and nuts.  Many of us have thought that it would be difficult for them become more insane.  But recent actions by the Democrats in Sacramento lead us to understand that there is no limit to leftist insanity.  And that shows that the same applies in D.C.  As long as Democrats are in power, no one is safe.  The Solons of Sacramento have already passed regulations that will ban the sale of gasoline or diesel cars in thirteen years.  But that's not enough.  In four years, over a third of all new cars sold will have to be electric.  It doesn't matter that electrics cost more than gas-powered cars.  It just sounds so good and righteous.  We're going to clear all the pollution out of our air!

California's Ban of Gas-Powered Vehicles Likely Illegal, Unrealistic.  California plans to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.  In 2021, California required 12 percent of total new vehicle sales to be powered by batteries or hydrogen.  By 2026, their goal is to reach 35 percent.  By 2030, 68 percent.  And in 2035, 100 percent powered by batteries or hydrogen. [...] According to the Independent Women's Forum, banning gas-powered cars is likely unconstitutional.  Mandy Gunasekara states:  "First, it could violate the Commerce Clause as it creates unreasonable burdens on interstate commerce, i.e. the manufacture and sale of vehicles.  The Supreme Court has long held that the Commerce Clause has been a "self-executing limitation" on the power of States to enact laws which restrict interstate commerce.  Second, under the Clean Air Act, California is required to receive a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in order to set its own, more stringent, emissions standards."

The Editor says...
If all cars are "powered by batteries or hydrogen," that won't really fix anything.  What's the power source for charging all those batteries?  How much power would be needed to produce enough hydrogen to run an automobile for a month?  Is there a Permian Basin of hydrogen somewhere?  In a state that already has occasional power blackouts, where is all that newly-demanded power going to come from?

Two More States Follow California's Decision To Ban Gas Car Sales By 2035.  It's only a day since we reported on California's intention to outlaw sales of new combustion-engined vehicles from 2035, and already the ripples are being felt across the nation.  The California Air Resources Board (CARB) that governs motor vehicle emissions for the state adopted new rules that will require 35% of the new cars sold in the state are electric or plug-in hybrids by 2026, with that percentage rising to 68% by 2030 and 100% by 2035.  California has a waiver from the federal government to set its own air quality rules, and other states are allowed to opt into its regulations, which are typically more stringent than the national standards.

California to unveil plan tomorrow that will see sale of new gas cars banned by 2035.  California is set to roll out its long-awaited ban on new gasoline cars on Thursday, which is part of its rule to have all new cars sold by 2035 to be electric only in an effort to fight climate change.  Governor Gavin Newsom first announced the ban in 2020 as a means to reduce the amount of smog-induced pollution in the air, which will improve the state's air quality that is the worst in the US.  The move will also make California the first in the world to mandate zero-emission vehicles on its roads — but many other states and countries have joined the movement, but have not yet began the ban.

California moves toward banning new cars running only on gas by 2035.  California is set to move closer to banning the sale of new cars running only on gasoline by 2035, a major step in the car-loving state's fight against climate change.  The expected embrace of the policy by the state's Air Resources Board during a meeting scheduled for Thursday comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) set a target in 2020 for cleaning up California's auto fleet.  The proposed regulation would set strict deadlines for meeting that goal, forcing automakers to step up production of cleaner vehicles considerably, starting in 2026.  The requirements would only speed forward from there, until only zero-emission passenger cars, pickup trucks and SUVs as well as a limited number of plug-in hybrids are allowed to be sold in the state by 2035.

The Editor says...
[#1] No legislation will ever control the weather, or keep the climate from changing.  [#2] If California is the only state taking action to reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere, what good will it do if the other 49 states don't take the same action?  What good will it do if China and India keep pumping out CO2?  [#3] If it is still legal to drive a gas-engine car in California after 2026, what's to prevent someone from buying such a car in a neighboring state? [#4] California already deals with power outages every year.  When everybody is driving electric cars, what will happen to the power grid?

Environmentalism is an Environmental Hazard.  20 years after voters rejected 'toilet-to-tap' water, Los Angeles Democrats brag that they will be the first city in the state to pipe toilet water to faucets for the sake of the environment.  As part of the city's version of the Green New Deal, a majority of Los Angeles water will be 'toilet-to-tap'.  California Democrats, who refuse to build new dams or do anything to expand water resources, are set to spend at least $12 billion on what they describe as "locally sourced" water which certainly sounds nicer than toilet water.  The environmentalist elites will go on drinking bottled water and it will be the city's poor drinking out of the toilet.  Environmentalists insist that nothing can go wrong even though a 2019 NIH hosted survey noted that "there have been relatively few health-based studies evaluating the microbial risks associated with potable reuse" and that California wants to achieve "a benchmark level of public health protection of 1 infection in 10,000 people per year".  That's 1,000 people in Los Angeles County.

California governor calls for no new gas plants in climate fight.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced steps Friday [7/22/2022] to speed up the clean-energy transition and fight climate change, including an end to building gas-burning power plants, even as the move away from fossil fuels has threatened his state with blackouts and forced him to reconsider nuclear power.  Newsom said he would work with Sacramento legislators to pass a law requiring California to reach carbon neutrality, a goal set by his predecessor Jerry Brown in an executive order.  In a letter to the state's top climate change regulator, the Democratic governor also called for building offshore wind farms, deploying 6 million home heat pumps, requiring the aviation industry to increase its use of clean fuels, and setting firm targets for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using land management and machines designed for the task.  Perhaps most important, Newsom told the head of the California Air Resources Board that he doesn't want new natural-gas plants built in the state.

The Editor says...
The avoidance of carbon dioxide emissions and the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are both futile.  Any and all money spent on these activities is wasted.  China and India aren't wasting their time with projects like this, and they share the same atmosphere.

California cities ban new gas stations in battle to combat climate change.  Without realizing they were starting a movement in green energy policy, leaders of a small Sonoma Valley city seem to have done just that when they questioned the approval process for a new gas station — eventually halting its development and others in the future.  "We didn't know what we were doing, actually," said Petaluma Councilwoman D'Lynda Fischer, who led the charge last year to prohibit new gas stations in the city of 60,000.  "We didn't know we were the first in the world when we banned gas stations."  Since Petaluma's decision, four other cities in the Bay Area have followed suit, and now, leaders in California's most car-centric metropolis are hoping to bring the climate-conscious policy to Southern California.

Where Science Ends and Morality Begins.  Environmentalists' desire to halt development of the natural landscape is plainly visible in their restricting of the water supply in California.  Since 1970, the population of California has increased 100 percent, but the volume of water in her reservoirs has increased only 26 percent.  The last major dam in California was built 42 years ago.  Environmentalists fight the construction of every new water project, including even desalination plants, which could be a source of virtually unlimited water for Californians.  But more water would mean more people, more wealth, and more transformation of the landscape.  (It would be a mistake to attribute California's water shortage to radical environmentalists; in California, garden-variety environmentalists have simply enjoyed more power to enact the standard green agenda than their comrades elsewhere.)

In SoCal, the comrades target the taps of 'water wasters' for restrictions.  In drought-plagued Southern California, the comrades have ways of making you obey.  Fresh after nixing a new plan for a desalination plant to provide water to residents during these water-lean times, they'd rather target individual water-wasters at residences.  They're putting "flow restrictors" on residential taps to stomp out "water-wasters," same way Stalin's men worked to stomp out wreckers and hoarders.  Apparently, paying higher bills for excess water use is simply not enough.  Coercion is better.

The Editor says...
Perhaps California would have plenty of water if they'd stop releasing fresh water into the ocean for the benefit of the Delta Smelt.  (Very few people have ever seen a Delta Smelt and most of them probably wouldn't care to see another one.)  Providing water isn't the Left's primary concern.  Their primary concern is control.

California Court Declares Bees Are Actually Fish.  A California appeals court ruled Tuesday that bees can be classified as fish under the state's Endangered Species Act (CESA) in a blow to agriculture groups.  The Sacramento-based three-judge panel ruled that four species of bumble bees found across California are technically fish since they are invertebrates, according to the decision in a case concerning the species' protected status that pitted the state government against agriculture groups.  The court added that the term fish shouldn't be confined to "aquatic" invertebrates under the CESA.  "We acknowledge the scope of the definition is ambiguous but also recognize we are not interpreting the definition on a blank slate," the appellate court's ruling stated.  "The legislative history supports the liberal interpretation of the Act (the lens through which we are required to construe the Act) that the Commission may list any invertebrate as an endangered or threatened species."

Engineered Famine:  California diverting water flows into the ocean, depriving rice farmers of necessary irrigation to grow food.  All across California, residents are being told to scrimp and save water because of historic drought conditions.  Meanwhile, state officials are dumping freshwater into the ocean while intentionally depriving rice farmers of the water they need to grow food.  Colusa County in Northern California is the top producer of rice in the Sacramento Valley.  The area generates more than 150,000 acres of rice in a normal year — but as you can probably tell by now, 2022 is anything but a normal year.  Officials there say that only a fraction of the usual rice crop will be grown there this year, delivering a massive financial blow to rice farmers, workers and suppliers. [...] Meanwhile, 50 percent of California's water flows right out into the Pacific Ocean, a policy that was enacted for "environmental" purposes to save the Delta smelt, an "endangered" fish species.

Can California Really Achieve 85% Carbon-Free Electricity By 2030?  In the contest to be the most virtuous of all the states on the "carbon-free" electricity metric, the race is on between California and New York.  In 2018 California enacted a bill going by the name "SB100," which set a mandatory target of 60% of electricity from "renewables" by 2030 (and 100% by 2045).  Not to be outdone, New York responded by enacting its "Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act" in 2019, setting its own statutory targets of 70% of electricity from renewables by 2030 (and 100% by 2040).  So is any of this real?  Or is it just so much posturing to show conformity with current fashions, all of which will be forgotten by the time the now-seemingly-distant deadlines approach?  As to New York, I have had multiple posts explaining how the supposedly mandatory goals are completely unrealistic as to both feasibility and cost, and how the people charged with achieving the goals have no idea what they are doing.  Is California any less clueless?

Hundreds of oil wells to close in Long Beach under city efforts to go green.  In 1921, oil was discovered in Long Beach, California, and the city became one of the nation's biggest boomtowns — drilling 1,450 wells.  The port city once produced one-fifth of the nation's oil supply, more than 60 million barrels per year.  That has been scaled back to about 8 million barrels per year, and city officials hope it will dwindle to zero by 2035.  Now, a proposal to spend $1.2 billion to seal up operational oil wells has been discussed by the city's environmental committee.

Imagining Regime Change Without Tears.  [Scroll down]  Then there's California, going full-steam ahead to a fossil-fuel-free future, where the state goals include:
  [#1]   "getting 33% of our electricity from renewable resources by 2030."
  [#2]   "achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2045."
Suppose these goals are a) impossible, and b) crash the California economy.  Are you "Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Twitter, Google, Intel, and a host of other social media and technology companies," plus Hollywood plus the gubmint sector going to sacrifice your lives, your fortunes and your sacred honor if it turns out that carbon neutrality is the cruelest and the stupidest idea since Stalin's Five-Year Plan that starved the Ukraine?

California's Nuke Follies.  Of all of the endless follies of California these days — I know, it's hard to enumerate all of them let alone put them in rank order — closing our last nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon ranks perhaps at the top of the list.  It provides more than 10 percent of California's electricity, and can run 24/7, unlike wind and solar power.  As one of the last nuclear power plants built and brought online in the 1980s, it easily has another 40 years of potential service left in it, if not more.  The perverse energy policy of California, which excludes nuclear along with any new dams from its legal definition and mandates for clean or "renewable" energy, virtually compelled the closure of Diablo Canyon, and the corporate socialists who run PG&E simply lied to the public that they can make up the shortfall with wind and solar power and magic batteries.  In fact, they will make up electricity shortfalls in large part with natural gas and power imports from other states.

Food waste becomes California's newest climate change target.  Banana peels, chicken bones and leftover veggies won't have a place in California trashcans under the nation's largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program that's set to take effect in January.  The effort is designed to keep landfills in the most populous U.S. state clear of food waste that damages the atmosphere as it decays.  When food scraps and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

The Editor says...
[#1] If your garbage rots in your garden, or it rots in the landfill, what's the difference?  [#2] Rotting garbage is nothing new.  If decaying food scraps cause global warming (and they don't), the process didn't start in the last few years.  Decaying vegetation can be found all over the world.

Los Angeles bans condiment packets in restaurants to overcome "extreme climate challenges".  The city of Los Angeles has moved to ban restaurants from distributing condiment packets as part of its efforts to fight an imaginary threat called climate change.  Fox Business reported that a new ordinance passed by L.A. officials bans restaurants with 26 employees or more from giving out packets of ketchup and mustard to customers.  Customers must specifically request for the condiments before restaurants can issue them.  The ordinance approved Nov. 15 will apply to all restaurants in the city by April 2022.  Aside from condiment packets, the ban also extends to plastic utensils, napkins, splash sticks and toothpicks.  Erring restaurants will only receive warnings for the first and second violations.  For the third and succeeding violations, they will be fined an administrative penalty of $25 per day — with an annual limit of $300.  According to a Nov. 16 press release, L.A. city council members Paul Krekorian and Paul Koretz were responsible for the ordinance.  "Larger restaurants in L.A. are now officially partners in the effort to address the environmental catastrophe caused by the disposal of millions of pounds of plastic waste along our beautiful California coastline.  Their compliance is critical as we aggressively counter what has been a major contribution to the climate crisis," Krekorian said.

The Editor says...
[#1] There is no climate crisis.  [#2] Let's see the pictures of "millions of pounds of plastic waste along [the] California coastline.  Millions of pounds?  Really?  [#3] Why are napkins and toothpicks banned?

Because the napkins go straight from the restaurant's trash can to the Indian Ocean.
Diners now have to ask for plastic utensils and napkins in Los Angeles.  Customers at Los Angeles restaurants will only get plastic utensils and napkins if they ask for them, under a new ordinance taking effect Monday that aims to reduce waste.  The rule requires all restaurants with more than 26 employees to remove all single-use plastic utensil dispensers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

When ideology drives legislation, common sense often ignored when it comes to fossil fuel.  There can be few better examples of ideologically convinced politicians running head-on into reality than a new California law known in the Legislature as AB 1346.  This bill, signed into law in September by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is the personification of today's faddish hostility to everything fossil fuel by the Democrats who dominate California government.  These ideologues want to ban natural gas appliances from new construction.  They want new cars to be all-electric before 2040, even if few have the range to travel from one end of California to another without long stops for recharging.  And they are getting their way.

Gas stoves and water heaters face a climate change reckoning.  In 2019, Berkeley became the first city in the country to ban gas stoves and water heaters in all new construction in order to cut down greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.  Since then, dozens of others, including Seattle, San Francisco and New York, have followed suit with similar restrictions and President Biden has laid out an ambitious plan to help Americans ditch gas appliances and heaters in favor of electric ones.

The Editor says...
For those of you who have just tuned in, here is the other side of the argument about gas appliances:  [#1] Man-made "greenhouse gas emissions" are not necessarily "causing climate change;"  [#1A] Even if they are, the benefits are well worth it;  [#1B] The climate changes all the time anyway, no matter what we do;  [#1C] Nothing we do about "greenhouse gas emissions" makes any difference if China emits more than anybody else;  [#1D] Nothing we do about "greenhouse gas emissions" makes any difference if all the volcanos and termites in the world emit far more CO2 than we do;  [#1E] the rate of global warming is near zero at the moment, and whatever the rate of global warming may be, it's to tiny and too slow to notice;  [#2] The electricity which will power your new electric appliances (made in China by slaves) will have to come from a power plant, which means the "greenhouse gas emissions" will merely move to the power plant, and you've gained nothing, even if there's a problem to be solved, which there isn't.

Bill banning small, gas-powered engines and generators heads to Governor's desk.  A bill is now on Governor Gavin Newsom's desk that could disproportionately impact families in the Central Valley and nearby foothill and mountain communities.  Assembly Bill 1346 would end the production of gas-powered small, off-road engines — used in lawn and garden equipment and generators — by January 1, 2024.  Authors of the bill say small off-road engines produced more emissions than cars in 2020.  It would replace the gas-powered engines with zero emission battery technology.

The Editor says...
It's safe to say that the authors of the bill are lying when they claim that "small off-road engines produced more emissions than cars in 2020."  There are 280 million cars on the road, and perhaps one tenth as many lawnmowers in use.  The annual US market for lawnmowers is 13 billion dollars.  If the average price of a lawnmower is $500, there are 26 million of them sold every year.  But they aren't in daily use like automobiles are.  Even so, small gasoline engines are used for more that leaf blowers and lawn mowers.  When the power goes out for several days, which is far more likely in California than any other state, batteries aren't going to power your house for more than a few minutes.  You'll need a generator, and the generator needs an engine.  Think ahead, or suffer.  Stop voting for tree-hugging Democrats.

Because the price of gas is so low...
Los Angeles County votes to phase out oil and gas drilling.  Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday [9/15/2021] to phase out oil and gas drilling and ban new drill sites in the unincorporated areas of the nation's most populous county.  Over 1,600 active and idle oil and gas wells in the county could be shuttered after the 5-0 vote by the board of supervisors.  A timetable for the phaseout will be decided after the county determines the fastest way to legally shut down the wells.  Among the sites is the Inglewood Oil Field, one of the largest U.S. urban oil fields.  The sprawling, 1,000-acre (405-hectare) site, owned and operated by Sentinel Peak Resources, contains over half the oil and gas wells in the county's unincorporated areas.  The field produced 2.5 million to 3.1 million barrels of oil a year over the past decade, according to the company.

Leaf blowers?  That's a problem?  Your life is so tough!
Bay Area cities prepare to restrict gas leaf blowers.  A statewide ban could be next.  Two more Bay Area cities took sides in the region's long-running crusade against gasoline-powered leaf blowers in recent weeks, with officials in Novato and Hayward moving toward banning the contraptions, increasingly derided as noise, smoke-belching nuisances.  Oakland, too, has vowed to get serious about enforcing its rules against their use.  And the entire war may swiftly come to a head if a state Assembly bill seeking to ban new leaf blower sales statewide wins approval.  "I'm happy to see them banned," said Al Mendall, a member of the Hayward Planning Commission, which voted 4-3 recently to outlaw their use in residential areas beginning in 2023.  "They're incredibly loud and obnoxious."

San Francisco bars natural gas in new building construction starting next year.  New homes and buildings in San Francisco won't be able to use natural gas or other fossil fuels for their heating and appliances beginning in June of next year.  Instead, all new construction in the city must use only electricity for heating, cooling, cooking, and other activities, according to a new city ordinance passed unanimously on Tuesday by the city's Board of Supervisors.  "It is necessary and appropriate to stop construction of new natural gas infrastructure in San Francisco in order to reduce the unique impacts San Francisco will endure from global warming," the ordinance said.

The Editor says...
[#1]  There is no extraordinary global warming.  [#2] In your lifetime, there will be no extraordinary global warming.  [#3] Global cooling is far more likely.  [#4] San Francisco is not affected by the weather any differently than other cities.  [#5]  Global warming (and cooling) takes place at a rate of one or two degrees per century.  It is not a problem that needs fixing.  Shutting down capitalism won't improve the weather.  Adapt or migrate as necessary.

A New Abnormal of Rolling Blackouts Under Biden Energy Plan.  In concert with the aspirational Green New Deal co-sponsored by his running mate Senator Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Biden's plan calls for humongous expenditures in renewable energy, including installing 500 million solar panels and manufacturing 60,000 wind turbines.  Add to this that Biden proposes to have taxpayers finance a half-million electric car chargers across America — along with funding to help car makers convert their factories to electric vehicle (EV) production.  Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newson has now ordered his state to ban new gas vehicles by 2035 in order to weaponize its gigantic car market as a hammer to force automakers to concentrate on EVs.  All of this, of course, will shift even greater energy demand from petroleum to the electrical power sector.  Producing and recharging those EVs will require that energy sufficiency is constantly available.  That wasn't the case when that August heatwave left millions of perspiring Californians in the dark as power demand outstripped supplies.

Gavin Newsom:  If You Like Your Car, You Can Keep Your Car.  When Barack Obama told the country that under Obamacare "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it," he was dinged for telling the PolitiFact Lie of the Year.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom made a similar promise when he signed last week an executive order that will outlaw the sale of new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars by 2035.  "You can still keep your internal-combustion engine car," he said.  "You can still have a market for used cars.  You can still trade and transfer those cars — we're not taking anything away."  Obama knew better, or at least he should have, than to make his promise about health care plans.  But Newsom is likely telling the truth, as far as he knows.  Outside of an override by the Legislature on possible future legislation that would contradict him, he has the authority to keep his promise as long as he's governor.  But he has no control of what happens after he leaves office.

Mandating electric vehicles without a plan will be devastating to California's economy.  Before sky diving, you need to plan ahead by having a parachute before you jump.  California Governor Newsom's recent suicidal jump onto the EV train has a minimum of eight (8) lack-of-a-plan ramifications from his recent Executive order to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 that will be devastating to the state's economy and environment.

As rats swarm California cities, Gov. Newsom bans popular poison to protect wildlife.  California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Tuesday that seeks to protect mountain lions and other wildlife from being poisoned by a popular form of pesticide.  The move raises questions about how the state will manage its growing urban rat population, which some experts say is surging due to the spread of homeless camps across California.  Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1788, which bans, with few exceptions, the use of what are known as "second generation anticoagulant rodenticides" until state pesticide regulators develop plans to ensure they're not harmful to wildlife.

EPA: California's Ban on Gas-Powered Cars Is Possibly Illegal.  Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler on Monday warned California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) that his plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 raises "significant questions of legality," Breitbart reports.  In a letter sent to Newsom, Wheeler questioned how the state could add millions of electric vehicles despite having "a record of rolling blackouts."  He said it "begs the question of how you expect to run an electric car fleet that will come with significant increases in electricity demand, when you can't even keep the lights on today."  Newsom has yet to reply to the EPA.

California ban on gas cars a preview of what liberals want nationally.  Who can fail to be attracted to the Tesla?  That sleek, silent-running electric vehicle seems more common on the road every day.  The introduction of the Model 3 has put this fascinating, tech-heavy brand of car into the same price category as the more expensive nonluxury conventional vehicles.  As a result, Tesla can barely build them fast enough to keep up with demand.  Nor is Tesla the only make of electric car generating broad interest.  Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, Ford, Mazda, Mercedes, Nissan, and other automakers are all expected to come out with new fully electric models in the next year or two.  Even so, there are limits to this revolution.  Electric vehicles are still very expensive for the low-income consumer who can't do without wheels.  Even for consumers willing to pay more for added range, they are less suitable than conventional cars for certain long-range uses.

California's Gavin Newsom Bans Gas-powered Vehicles, Effective 2035.  California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday [9/23/2020] that the state will ban sales of gas-powered vehicles, effective in 2035.  Newsom said that the "audacious" goal was necessary to achieve the state's goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045.  Newsom said that his new executive order would "eliminate" the sales of "internal combustion engines" and move to electric vehicles — a move that he said would create jobs and allow California to "dominate" the market, and address climate change.  Those who currently own gas-powered vehicles would still be allowed to operate them and to sell them on the used market.

The Editor says...
Presumably, one could still purchase a gas-powered car in Nevada or Arizona and drive it to California, so the governor has just cut the throats of all the new car dealers in California.  Brilliant.

California's Disastrous Forest Mismanagement.  At some point in the next 30 years, global temperatures are expected to rise 1.5°C above their pre-industrial levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  If we doubled the average fuel efficiency of all the cars on the planet, decreased the amount of global automotive travel by one half, increased solar-energy usage 100-fold, and increased wind-power capacity by ten times, we would go half of the way toward averting that temperature increase, assuming all the projections are correct and nothing else in the world changes in the interim.  A tall task, but that is how California governor Gavin Newsom plans to combat the wildfires consuming his state.

The Editor says...
If California experienced 400 degrees of warming, that might ignite trees and brush, but while "global temperatures are expected to rise," they haven't yet.  There is no extraordinary global warming or cooling, and the climate is not starting fires in California.

California State Water Project Draws Ire of Environmentalists.  Four environmental groups sued the state of California in state court Wednesday, claiming the complex series of dams, channels, aqueducts and pumps responsible for transferring water from Northern California to the south state are killing fish.  "It's time for the state to be honest about the damage being done to the delta ecosystem and our native fish by the unsustainable water diversions of the State Water Project," said Jeff Miller, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.

There are homeless bums defecating in the streets, but California is more concerned with bugs and snails.
California Sues Trump Administration Over 'Failure to Protect Species'.  Reuters reports, California is suing the Trump administration for the administration's failure to protect endangered species in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.  The lawsuit by the state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency filed suit on Thursday against the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.  The attorney general said in a statement, "California won't silently spectate as the Trump Administration adopts scientifically challenged biological opinions that push species to extinction and harm our natural resources and waterways."

San Francisco Restaurants Adding "Climate Change" Surcharge to Bill.  Despite its reputation as a tourist draw, San Francisco saw more than 400 restaurants closed during 2019. [...] Well, it turns out that there may soon be another reason for diners to reconsider their eating options.  Some restaurants are adding a "climate change" surcharge to the bill.

Gotta save all that water for the Delta Smelt!
California Passes Insane New Law Limiting Personal Water Usage With Massive Fines.  The news coming out of California gets crazier every week.  Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law which just went into effect that limits personal water usage.  People can even be hit with massive fines if they exceed their limit by doing laundry and taking a shower on the same day.  This was recently discussed on KTLA News and the reporters seemed shocked to learn the details.

San Franciscans, Knee-Deep In Feces and Needles, Vow To Ban Disposable Cups.  San Francisco, the same city swimming in human feces, urine and needles, is moving towards banning disposable paper cups in order to save the world from the environmental apocalypse.

California to sue over federal rules governing water.  California officials say they will sue the Trump administration over its rules governing water in the fragile San Joaquin Delta.  The federal government released the new rules last month, which would govern the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.  The new rules committed to sending more water to farmers despite warnings from environmental groups that it would imperil endangered species in the state's rivers.

San Diego's Green New Deal Showcase Unwittingly Reveals an Expensive Future.  A couple of weeks ago, functionaries from the San Diego's Metropolitan Transport System (MTS) proudly rolled out one of six new electric buses that they had bought.  These million dollar babies compete with their Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) siblings whose capital cost is nearly half that of the "Green New Deal" machines. [...] In my humble opinion, this move to what are known as EV (electric vehicle) buses is part of a conditioning program for passengers to get them used to higher fares, gradually escalated.  Let's face it:  There is no rational cost basis for this decision otherwise. [...] The price of CNG in November 2019 in Southern California is about $2.00 per gallon.  The "energy," a.k.a. heating value of a gallon of CNG is 92.5% of a gallon of diesel.  In other words, since the CNG bus gets 4.51 miles per DGE, the bus would get 4.17 miles per gallon of CNG.  That means the CNG-powered bus fuel cost would be $0.48 per mile.  In other words, the "fuel cost" for the EV bus is 15% higher than that of the CNG bus.

U.S. Cities Ban Natural Gas to Combat Climate Change; Gas Ranges on Chopping Block.  The fight against climate change is coming to our kitchens — and our bathrooms and laundry rooms.  Cities across the United States are banning the use of natural gas in new construction; others are considering such a ban.  That could mean the end of gas ranges, heating systems and clothes dryers in new homes.  Berkeley was first.  Officials in the Northern California city voted unanimously in July to ban natural gas in newly constructed buildings, becoming the first city in the country to do so, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

California bucks Trump administration lightbulb rollback with tougher state standard.  A California board voted to enact tougher energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs, pushing back against a rollback from the Trump administration.  A new rule from the Department of Energy (DOE) eliminates energy efficiency standards for half the bulbs on the market, a move critics say will make the U.S. a dumping ground for energy-sucking, cost-ineffective bulbs.

The Editor says...
If certain light bulbs are "cost-ineffective," how would they be "dumped" here?  Goods are "dumped" by lowering the price to an irresistible bargain, undercutting the competition.  That's a winning situation for the consumer, since the consumer knows [#1] cheap light bulbs might not be very reliable, and [#2] there are other choices on the store shelves.

Another great idea from the tree-hugging hippies who brought you 1.6-gallon toilets:
No more fire in the kitchen:  Cities are banning natural gas in homes to save the planet.  Fix global warming or cook dinner on a gas stove?  That's the choice for people in 13 cities and one county in California that have enacted new zoning codes encouraging or requiring all-electric new construction.  The codes, most of them passed since June, are meant to keep builders from running natural gas lines to new homes and apartments, with an eye toward creating fewer legacy gas hookups as the nation shifts to carbon-neutral energy sources.  For proponents, it's a change that must be made to fight climate change.  For natural gas companies, it's a threat to their existence.  And for some cooks who love to prepare food with flame, it's an unthinkable loss.

U.S. Sues California For Entering Agreement With Quebec To Control Emissions.  Last week, the U.S. sued the state of California along with other state entities for entering an agreement with Canadian province, Quebec, back in 2013.  The agreement was to control emissions linked to climate change and the issue being that the state had no right to conduct foreign policy.  According to the Justice Department, the state of California, state officials, the California Air Resources Board, and the Western Climate Initiative Inc. entered into the 2013 agreement without congressional approval.  In the lawsuit, President Donald Trump's administration makes the argument that the constitution prohibits states from making treaties or pacts with foreign powers.

General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Toyota Split With Industry, Side With Trump Administration Over Emissions Fight.  General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota sided with the Trump administration in a battle over emissions against the state of California.  The Trump administration proposed to lower emissions standards set during the Obama administration, according to The New York Times.  California responded to the proposal by announcing the state would continue to enforce the Obama administration laws on fuel economy standards for automobiles.

Why Do Environmentalists Seem Determined To Torment, Rather Than Convince?  [Scroll down]  Now, the lines are much slower because bagging has become an ordeal thanks to the "Earth-protecting" plastic-bag ban the state had passed a few years ago.  Consider what happens now.  Store employees can't simply place your food in the needed bags.  They have to ask how many bags shoppers want to buy.  "As many as needed," I always say, given that I don't really care if the $150 transaction costs another buck.  It's basically just another tax we pay to live in a former paradise.  But that's not how it works now.  The employees dispense bags parsimoniously.  Who can blame cashiers given the guff they might get if they sell someone an unnecessary bag?  Bagging used to be an artform, where baggers carefully separated, say, the eggs from the bottle of Chivas Regal.  Now they cram as much stuff as possible in a single bag.  Heaven forbid you get stuck behind someone who pulls out a trove of bacteria-laden, reusable sacks.

California bans hotels from using tiny plastic bottles.  Hotels in California will have to stop giving guests small plastic shampoo bottles under a new law.  Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday [10/9/2019] he had signed a law banning hotels from giving guests plastic bottles filled with shampoo, conditioner or soap.  The law takes effect in 2023 for hotels with more than 50 rooms and 2024 for hotels with less than 50 rooms.  Violators could be fined $500 for a first offense and $2,000 for subsequent violations.  The law follows similar actions by some of the world's largest hotel chains.

Tesla cop car
Cop's Tesla runs out of battery power during high-speed chase.  A police officer's Tesla ran out of battery power in the middle of a high-speed chase in California last week, reports said Wednesday [9/25/2019].  The cop from the Fremont Police Department was pursuing a suspect in a department-issued Tesla Model S car last Friday when he suddenly noticed he was running low, the Mercury News reported.  As the officer and the suspect hit speeds of 120 miles per hour, the cop radioed that he would have to drop the pursuit.  "I am down to six miles of battery on the Tesla so I may lose it here in a sec," the cop said on the radio, according to the report.

The Editor says...
Yes, and for every second he talks on the radio, he has a little less juice in the battery.


Test message
Calif. Police Officer Loses High Speed Chase when Battery of His Electric Cruiser Dies.  A California police officer lost a suspect in traffic after the battery in his electric patrol car conked out before he was able to nab the crook he was chasing in a high-speed chase.  A recording of police radio calls shows that a Fremont, California, officer was chasing a suspect at speeds of upwards to 120 miles per hour.  But the chase did not go well for the police, according to the Mercury News.

The Editor says...
A criminal — probably guilty of a violent crime — got away.  But at least the police car didn't wreck the earth by emitting carbon dioxide, and that's what California considers a top priority.  If it's not a priority, why are the cops driving electric cars?

[Photo:  A 1971 Plymouth Satellite, perhaps with a 440-cubic-inch V8.]


Another city bans natural gas in new construction projects.  Despite the fact that natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels hands down (and now the cheapest), liberals continue to oppose it.  The "keep it in the ground" folks scored another victory this week when the city of San Jose California voted to ban natural gas lines and appliances in all new construction projects going forward.  This is allegedly part of the state-mandated goal of going 100% "carbon-free" by 2045.  Of course, as with all things, the devil is in the details.

The Editor says...
The emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is what this is all about.  Natural gas is abundant (in the U.S.) thanks in large part to fracking — no thanks to Obama who tried his best to stop fracking — and natural gas combustion emits no smoke.  Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and every other country in the world is burning up hydrocarbons faster than the U.S., or they would if they could!

California raises the caution flag on 'green jobs'.  California's mixed record of using public investments and environmental mandates to create "green jobs" raises serious questions about the promises of some Democratic presidential candidates to use economy-transforming investments in environmentally friendly technologies to put millions of people to work.  Many of the initiatives touted by the candidates in their environmental plans are already in place in California, and some of them having been promoted as important engines of job creation.  But California stopped counting green jobs in 2013, struggling to separate truly new jobs from existing employment growth.

DOT, EPA announce 'one, and only one' national fuel standard.  The Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency Thursday announced that there will be "one, and only one" national fuel standard, a move made to cut the costs of vehicles and bar California from making stricter standards.  In a release and in a briefing today [9/19/2019], the department said, "This action will help ensure that there will be one, and only one, set of national fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles."  The department, in the release shared in advance with [the Washington Examiner], also took a shot at California which will lose its waiver to require different fuel standards, a model followed by a dozen other states.

California's Fuel Mileage Standards, Revoked.  President Donald Trump says his administration is revoking California's authority to set auto mileage standards stricter than those issued by federal regulators.  In a tweet, Trump said his move would result in less expensive and safer cars.  He insisted that new cars would be cleaner, even as they burn more gasoline than they would have under Obama-era fuel efficiency standards he wants to replace.  California's authority to set its own, tougher emissions standards goes back to a waiver issued by Congress during passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970.  Even before the announcement revoking that authority, California and environmental groups said they planned legal action.  California officials and environmental groups are criticizing the Trump administration's decision to revoke the state's authority to set auto mileage standards.

Trump Is Right to Ditch the California Auto Waiver.  The Trump administration is pushing ahead with a plan we endorsed previously.  It will revoke California's ability to set separate greenhouse-gas standards for cars — so that a single policy will apply to the entire country, and so that California can't use the threat of a bifurcated regulatory regime to influence that policy in a way other states cannot.  We are fans of federalism.  But Congress, understandably not wanting automakers to have to comply with 50 different sets of regulations, has generally preempted state regulation in this area — with the exception that California, and California alone, may apply for a waiver to create its own emission rules to address "compelling and extraordinary conditions." Other states may then adopt these rules if they choose.  "Compelling and extraordinary conditions" was intended as a reference to smog.  And in contrast to Californian smog, there is nothing compelling and extraordinary about Californian climate change.

EPA to revoke California's power to limit vehicle emissions.  The Trump administration on Wednesday will revoke California's power to enforce more stringent limits on vehicle carbon pollution than the federal government, sparking a battle with the state that has led a revolt against the EPA's rollbacks of dozens of environmental regulations.  The long-expected move seeks to neuter California's resistance to President Donald Trump's proposed rewrite of the Obama-era rules that would have required automakers to accelerate the deployment of more fuel-efficient cars and light trucks, a high priority in the state that has led the nation in efforts to fight climate change.

The Editor says...
How are those "efforts to fight climate change" working out?  Did the climate stop changing? SWRpb3RzIQ==

Save California, Ban Environmentalists.  The 6-foot-tall man dressed as a giant receipt stood on a stool next to the emblem of the State Capitol in Sacramento.  He was there because Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Fran wanted to ban receipts.  California had a great ban streak going.  It had already banned plastic bags, straws and dog breeders.  Assemblyman Ting, who had only been known for wearing bow ties, had declared war on receipts.  And Ting had his aide wear a giant receipt to show how bad receipts were for the environment.  And how better to crusade for the environment than by printing up a receipt 100,000 times normal size?  According to Ting's people, receipts not only wasted trees and water, but were actually toxic.  The San Francisco Democrat explained that receipts were coated in chemicals that weren't allowed in baby bottles. [...] The same Democrats who shrug at a hepatitis outbreak gasp at the toxicity of store receipts.

EPA Wants to Revoke California Auto Regulation Powers.  The Trump administration is preparing a plan to strip California's authority to set tougher auto efficiency regulations than the federal government, even while agencies continue finalizing a rollback of national standards, according to a person familiar with the matter.  The matter is still under consideration and no final decision to proceed has been made but is expected in the coming days, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

Why Are Automakers Caving To California's Radical Greens?  Anyone who thinks that big business hates regulation should look at what's happening in the auto industry today.  While the Trump administration is pushing much-needed regulatory relief, four major carmakers are embracing California's plans to kill the internal combustion engine.  The issue involves federal fuel economy mandates, a vestige of the 1970s "energy crisis" that forced carmakers to meet increasingly strict fuel economy standards for their new cars.  These "corporate average fuel economy" standards resulted in a radical downsizing of the American car fleet back then, and were instrumental in destroying the U.S. auto industry's lead in the car business.

The Trump Obsession Comes for California's Water.  Tomorrow, the Golden State's Democrat-run, veto-proof legislature returns from its summer break and is expected to quickly take up S.B. 1, the "California Environmental, Public Health, and Workers Defense Act of 2019."  It has been proposed for one reason:  Donald Trump is president.  Under his administration, long-standing EPA regulations and analyses, and bureaucratic (state and federal) actions, related to water have been rethought, reviewed, and relaxed.  Which comes to the progressive Left as a threat:  All that water-denying is now at risk.  Hence the bill.  Its consequence will be to preempt any possible forthcoming federal regulations that would result in people and farms (instead of, seriously, the Pacific Ocean) getting more, already available water.

Due to lawsuits and environmental red tape, nothing can be built in California — except sports arenas!
Welcome to California.  [Scroll down]  It's not just hard-core environmentalists who use CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] to block development.  CEQA is also a favored tool of businesses that use it to try to handicap competition (the Parking Spot sued LAX a few years ago over plans to connect a rail line to the airport, for instance); developers who attempt to hinder rival projects; NIMBYs who don't want anything new built near them; and unions that try to force developers to exclude non-union workers from construction projects.  Yet while CEQA deters housing construction, the policymakers manage to carve out exemptions or secure fast-track approvals for projects important to them, such as basketball arenas and football stadiums.

Also posted under Taxpayer-funded stadiums.

California spends $178 million per fish to bring back salmon.  Leftie greenies recently hailed the return of ... five ... salmon, swimming upstream to the San Joaquin river to spawn.  Paradise restored!  In water-starved California, that was quite an achievement, given that each salmon required 50,000 gallons of water to get the job done, coming at a price tag of $890 million at the low end and $2 billion at the high.  And that water came out of the hides of California's farmers, who got very little of the water they were promised, and paid for, as a result.  That's some use of resources to get those five salmon to swim upstream.

California restaurants may add climate change surcharge: 'We as chefs want to do the right thing'.  Dining out may get more expensive in California.  As part of an initiative aimed at combating climate change, restaurants will have the option to adhere to the Restore California Renewable Restaurant program and add a one percent surcharge to diners' bills.  The extra money will go to support environmentally friendly farming practices.

California may ban hotels from giving guests tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion.  The bill would ban "lodging establishments", including hotels, motels, resorts, bed and breakfasts, and vacation rentals, from offering small plastic bottles holding 12 ounces or under of product in rooms or public spaces.  Instead, the establishments could offer "bulk dispensers" that could be used by a number of people.  The goal is to cut down on the amount of plastic containers thrown away by guests and operators.  The law wouldn't apply to nursing homes, hospitals, long-term rentals, or hosted rentals.

California Could Be Coming For Your Kitchen Stove Next (Plus Your Water Heater, Clothes Dryer, Etc.).  California is essentially a one-party state at this point so whatever Democrats want to do is what is going to happen.  One of the things they are apparently thinking about doing now is getting rid of natural gas appliances in homes and businesses.  The idea is to replace millions of gas stoves, gas dryers and gas heaters with replacements that run on electricity to help fight climate change.

The Editor says...
Switching to electric appliances is simply brilliant, except that much of the electricity required would be imported (see next article), and that electricity would be generated by burning coal and natural gas.  None of this would prevent the climate from changing.

No State Imports More Electricity Than California.  California has taken bold action by shuttering its coal plants, planning to shut down the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant so it can increase its share of renewable energy, or that's what the Greenies out there want to believe.  In reality, the Golden State simply imports electricity generated by coal, natural gas, and nuclear facilities from Arizona and Nevada and pretends they are "green energy" leaders.  In fact, no other state imports more electricity than does California.

Climate Junk Science and the Utter Nonsense of Twelve Years to Destruction.  California has just endured one of its rainiest winters in memory.  More than 18 trillion gallons of water fell in February alone.  Similarly, it experienced an abundantly wet winter only two years ago in 2016-1017.  Yet between 80 and 90 percent of all that rainwater is lost and wasted, runoff into the Pacific.  Why?  Because, despite money allocated by voters, the Climate Change Theologians have resisted building more reservoirs and aquifers, persuaded that Climate Change assures that California will be in sustained drought forevermore.  So they instead blew tens of millions on a high-speed rail boondoggle that they now have canceled, while losing all that precious precipitation and still with no new water construction.

Despite California's long drought, trillions of gallons of rainwater [are] wastefully flowing into sea.  California's rainy season could be the wettest in 40 years, but experts say the state is missing a major opportunity by failing to collect the trillions of gallons of storm runoff that currently flows wastefully into the ocean.  "We will never capture it all, but we need to do a better job of capturing what we can," said Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.  In February alone, an estimated 18 trillion gallons of water fell on the state.  In urban areas and coastal cities, 80 percent ends up diverted into the ocean, as Los Angeles and other cities built long concrete channels for flood control.  The Los Angeles River, for example, is a 51-mile-long canal as wide as a football field.  Almost none of the water seeps into the underground aquifer.

The Green New Deal Versus Rural America.  California has mandated that utilities must get at least 60 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030.  Last year Mark Nelson and Michael Shellenberger, of the Berkeley-based think tank Environmental Progress, released a report that showed that between 2011 and 2017, electricity prices in California rose at more than five times the rate in the rest of the U.S.

Berkeley Restaurants To Charge Fee For Disposable Cups.  One California city is pushing residents to switch to reusable cups by imposing a new tax.  On Wednesday, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to force restaurants and coffee shops to charge a 25-cent fee for their disposable cups.  The Democrat controlled city council is hopeful the tax will reduce the city's paper and plastic waste, and encourage people to bring their own reusable cups while dining out.  Restaurants will reportedly be allowed to keep the funds raised from the fees to be used however they want.

California set to seize 1,100 miles of coastline.  The California Coastal Commission is set to empower local government to take thousands of properties through eminent domain along 1,100 miles of coastline to prepare for sea level rise.  Despite California being battered by 4-8 inches of torrential rain and flooding from an El Niño weather cycle, E&E News reported that the State of California in late January will authorize eminent domain authority for local jurisdictions to implement a "managed retreat" policy that will allow taking and demolishing coastal homes and businesses.  The California Coastal Commission circulated an 87-page "Draft Residential Adaptation Guidance" in March regarding how communities could proactively address sea level rise impacts through Local Coastal Programs (LCPs).  Although the CCC draft did not adopt specific retreat guidance, the California Special Districts magazine expects that the CCC will predict a sea level rise of 2.5-5.5 feet and the elimination of 31-67 percent of Southern California beaches by the year 2100.

The Editor says...
Do the California politicians really think there's an impending disaster resulting from rising sea levels?  (There isn't.)  Or do they just want to own all the beaches?

The Biggest Junk Science of 2018.  [#5] In California, Coffee Is a Carcinogen. Coffee contains a tiny amount of the chemical acrylamide (on average, a half a millionth of a gram in a cup of roasted coffee).  Based mostly on animal and in vitro studies, acrylamide has been found to be a potential risk factor for cancer in very high doses.  Therefore coffee causes cancer and requires a warning label.  Such was the apparent logic of California Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle in a ruling this past spring.  Scientists and experts almost universally decried the move as a gross overextension of the precautionary principle, but to no avail.  Coffee is immensely unlikely to cause cancer, but in California, the popular drink now comes accompanied by a scary and misleading warning label.

Carbon prices — Set to KILL California economy, families and businesses.  If you are staying in California be prepared for a government policy to skyrocket the cost of doing business in this Third World State.  The current price is $14.65.  "As required by legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017 extending the state's cap-and-trade program through 2030, the state Air Resources Board has proposed a new ceiling on the price of carbon credits, per ton, at auction.  Until now, California has not set a price at the high end.  Regulators have proposed a ceiling of $61.25, which, if approved, would take effect in 2021. [...] That is right — they want to increase the price by four times.  But, they say it will never happen.  Social Security started at 1%.  They wanted a maximum of 2%, but told it could never get that high — today it is closer to 15%.

California mandates solar panels for homes built in 2020 and later.  California lawmakers on Wednesday officially approved a measure that mandates all homes built in the Golden State in 2020 and beyond be solar-powered.  The new standards were approved earlier this year and voted on unanimously by the California Building Standards Commission, the Orange County Register reported.  Officials heralded the move as a "historical undertaking" that "will be a beacon of light for the rest of the country."

California Gov. Jerry Brown Issues Another Bogus Global Warming Prediction.  Mark your calendars.  In five years, everyone will believe the global warming doomsday scenarios repeated ad nauseam by environmentalists.  That's according to California Gov. Jerry Brown.  More likely, it be another in a long line of climate change "tipping points" that never arrive.

LA's Measure W would charge property owners to help recycle rainwater.  Proponents say it's all about rainwater.  "Traditionally every drop that drops here we've engineered to wash out to the ocean so we need to capture and clean the water that falls here and put it to good use," says Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.  To pay for all this Measure W would place a new tax on property.  The tax would be on what is called "impermeable area" such as your house your driveway, concrete patios.  Anything that stops rainwater from going into the ground.

California Imposes Tough New Rules For Efficient Toilets, Faucets.  State officials took emergency action on the drought Wednesday [4/8/2015], imposing tough new standards for toilets, urinals and faucets sold in California starting January 1st.  In an unprecedented move by the California Energy Commission, made possible by the Gov. Jerry Brown's executive action last week, retailers won't be allowed to sell any of their remaining less efficient models after that date.

Declare San Francisco Critical Habitat for Grizzly Bears?  Drive through San Francisco on any given day and you are likely to see more than a few grizzly bears.  No, they will not be soiling sidewalks in the Tenderloin or chasing high-tech billionaires down Market Street.  But they will be flapping in the wind above City Hall and other public buildings.  The grizzly, you see, is California's state animal and adorns its state flag.  Yet not a single wild grizzly has been seen in the state in nearly a hundred years.

We Must All Sacrifice for the Environment (But I meant you — not me!)  The city [of San Francisco] has banned plastic straws, grocery bags, and Styrofoam, and even required solar panels on private buildings.  If it is on the environmental industry wish list, San Francisco is leading the way.  Even so, when activists there insist on leaving more water in the rivers, to protect salmon, they mean water from Central Valley farmers — not their own water.  State regulators have obliged, and water restrictions have been imposed on farms to the south for 25 years.  Hundreds of billions of gallons of water previously used for irrigation have been flushed to the ocean every year, rather than sent through the California Aqueduct to the Central Valley.  Nevertheless, salmon remain endangered.  So now, the California Water Resources Control Board proposes further restrictions, this time including water that is part of the municipal supply of San Francisco.  Public hearings are generating lots of angry responses.

Since there's plenty of money available...
Gov. 'Moonbeam' says California to launch climate satellite.  California Gov. Jerry Brown said Friday [9/14/2018] that [...] state officials will work with the San Francisco-based company Planet Labs to develop a satellite to track climate-change causing pollutants.

The Deep State, Obama, and Destroying America.  Vitriolic hatred of President Trump has sprung America into an Afghanistan-like "state of collapse, civil conflict, ethnic and disintegration locked in a self-perpetuating cycle that may be simply beyond outside resolution."  An example is California versus America over energy.  California has chosen 100% renewable energy by 2045 when it's proven that renewable energy doesn't work on a scalable, affordable basis now or in the coming decades without immense fossil fuel backup and billions in taxpayer subsidies.  Thankfully, the United States embraced fracking, allowing the U.S. to overtake Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world's number-one oil producer.

In California, Human Breath Is [seen as] a Cancer Risk.  Last Wednesday, the FDA threw its hat into California's eternal does-or-doesn't-coffee-cause-cancer fight.  "Requiring a cancer warning on coffee, based on the presence of acrylamide, would be more likely to mislead consumers than to inform," the federal agency's statement read.  That's because scientists are in near uniform agreement that coffee doesn't cause cancer — its safety is reinforced by some of the most comprehensive data available.  But since coffee contains a chemical called acrylamide, California's Proposition 65 law requires the beverages to bear a warning.  The law is broken, and its inconsistency is just part of the reason why Californians pay these warnings little mind.  So in August's waning days, the rules governing Proposition 65 warnings changed to make them more informative.  Now, rather than vague notices about cancer and reproductive harm, California law requires manufacturers to identify which specific chemical on the state's list of roughly 900 carcinogens and reproductive toxins an item might expose consumers to.

Catering to [a] Single Wolf Puts California in [Superior] Courtroom.  [Scroll down]  The California version of the federal [ESA] law isn't much different, but it now is being challenged in court over bureaucrats' decision to launch all their protections on behalf of a single gray wolf, which lives in neighboring Oregon.  The CESA designated the gray wolf as endangered last year, but the California Cattlemen's Association and the California Farm Bureau, pointing out that the rules forbid them from even "chasing [a] wolf to the border of his or her property," sued the California Fish and Game Commission, the Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Protection Information Center, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and Cascadia Wildlands.

The Editor says...
The Pacific Legal Foundation asserts that "The Gray Wolf's listing is illegal because it is based on the presence of a non-native subspecies of wolf."

Tom McClintock:  Trump 'Is Absolutely Right' About CA's Environmental Laws.  Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said President Donald Trump "is absolutely right" to link California's wildfires to the Golden State's poor management of water and forest resources. [...] "Our water policy is ludicrous," said McClintock.  "We have not built a major reservoir over a million-acre feed of storage since the New Melones was opened in 1979.  Meanwhile, the state's population has nearly doubled."

San Francisco:  The City of Bans.  On July 19, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to forbid restaurants, bars, and convenience stores from handing out or selling straws.  The city joins a growing list of progressive enclaves to do so, including Seattle, Malibu, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara.  Most cities impose a fine for such verboten behavior.  But Santa Barbara's ordinance, which goes into effect next year, imposes a fine of up to $1,000 and imprisonment of up to six months.  [...] What's the official point of it?  It's designed to cut down on the plastic waste that ends up in the ocean.  But as Reason's Christian Britschgi recently reported, plastic straws "account for about 2,000 tons of the 9 million tons of plastic that are entering the ocean each year."  That's a tiny amount.  And he noted that Starbucks, which recently announced that it will stop using straws, is introducing new lids that actually use more plastic than the old ones.  There's no gain and activists are complaining about the elimination of a product that helps many disabled people drink from cups.

Wise Giants and Arrogant Dwarves.  [S]ince 2008, during the peak of drought, 1.4 trillion gallons of water have been dumped into the Pacific.  And why?  Affluent progressive environmentalists, who don't have to provide their own food, and who fancy themselves the possessors of ecological and global warming "science," are harming an essential industry and driving up food and energy costs in order to protect the Delta Smelt, a two-inch bait-fish.  There is no scientific demonstration of how the extinction of the Delta Smelt would harm humans or threaten their existence, any more than the extinction of 99% of all the species that ever existed has held back the human race.  Instead, bad environmental "science," old nature-love clichés, and a Disneyfied understanding of humanity's relationship to nature are driving the smartest people in history into doing things an illiterate farmer in 1850 had too much common sense to do.

Activists push for statewide plastic straw and styrofoam food container ban.  Activists from Environment California and the Surfrider Foundation gathered at Goleta Beach Park Friday morning to push legislators to pass statewide measures to protect California's coastline.  The laws would address plastic straws and food packaging in the state of California.  Julia McLaughlin works with environment California's Isla Vista office and helped organize the event.  She says the organization has been working all summer to advocate for a state-wide ban on polystyrene, more commonly known as styrofoam, as well as limiting single-use plastic straw consumption.

California — so advanced they can keep the lights on quite a lot of the time.  In LA temperatures are forecast to reach as high as 32C (90F) on Monday [7/23/2018] and 36C (97F) on Wednesday.  (They call this a heatwave?)  But gas is running so short that Californians are being asked to turn off non-essential lights and not use their biggest appliances from 5pm to 9pm.  Welcome to the future, where you need to plan ahead to run your washing machine or oven.

California's Climate Extremism.  Environmental extremism increasingly dominates California.  The state is making a concerted attack on energy companies in the courts; a bill is pending in the legislature to fine waiters $1,000 — or jail them — if they offer people plastic straws; and UCLA issued a report describing pets as a climate threat.  The state has taken upon itself the mission of limiting the flatulence of cows and other farm animals.  As the self-described capital of the anti-Trump resistance, California presents itself as the herald of a green, more socially and racially just society.  That view has been utterly devastated by a new report from Chapman University, in which coauthors David Friedman and Jennifer Hernandez demonstrate that California's draconian anti-climate-change regime has exacerbated economic, geographic, and racial inequality.  And to make things worse, California's efforts to save the planet have actually done little more than divert greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG) to other states and countries.

California's Costly Global Warming Campaign Turns Out To Be Worse Than Useless.  For more than a decade, California has won high praise from environmentalists for its stringent greenhouse gas restrictions.  But a new report shows that despite the enormous costs of this effort, the state is doing a worse job at cutting CO2 emissions than the rest of the country, while badly hurting its working families.

Judge throws out SF and Oakland climate suits against big oil.  A federal judge Monday [6/25/2018] tossed out two groundbreaking lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland that sought to hold some of the world's largest oil companies liable for climate change.  In an exhaustive, 16-page ruling that touched on such scientific matters as the ice age and early observations of carbon dioxide, U.S. District Judge William Alsup acknowledged the problem of a warming planet but said it is just too big for the courts to solve.  The cities are trying to get five oil and gas giants, including Bay Area-based Chevron, to help cover the costs of dealing with sea-level rise, like picking up the tab for seawalls.

The Editor says...
If the sea level is rising a few millimeters per year, how big should the wall be?

California's Delta Tunnels:  An Unnecessary $15 billion, 15-Year Jobs Program.  When Jerry Brown was elected for his third term, he ran with it in 2011 now claiming the tunnels were needed to protect the Delta Smelt, a non-indigenous fish.  "To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008," Wall Street Journal columnist Allysia Finley wrote in 2015.  "That would have been enough to sustain 6.4 million Californians for six years."  During his 2016 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to "open up the water" in drought-stricken California, acknowledging that the "drought" was political.

California's new water restrictions send residents fleeing to saner states.  "Please sir, I want some more," is no longer a sentiment just for Oliver Twist in the orphanage.  A new law in California limits how much water can be used by each household.  Now their showers, how many flushes, and how often they can do their laundry will be under the watchful eye of the state government.  This from politicians who have pushed policies creating homeless and drug abuse crises throughout the state.  They have now decided to clamp down on the use of the most basic needs of civilized living.  As the blog Zero Hedge put it, "it's now against the law to do laundry and shower on the same day in the Sunshine State," and they're not exaggerating.  Under the guise of addressing "climate change," the new bill rations water to a degree that makes it impossible to maintain a healthy home environment.

Hypocrisy: Oakland, Suing Oil Companies Over Climate Change, Fined By EPA For Polluting San Francisco Bay.  Talk about being caught with your pants down:  the city of Oakland, which is suing oil companies over "climate change," has been fined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for polluting San Francisco Bay.  As Heartland.org reports, in late April, the EPA fined Oakland and the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) $360,000 for permitting untreated sewage to flow into the San Francisco Bay.  Oakland has been hit with fines before for sewage discharges; in 2014, EBMUD and the seven communities it serves, including Oakland and Berkeley, paid $1.5 million in civil penalties and were required to repair 1,500 miles of pipes over a 21-year period.

California's Self-Inflicted Housing Disaster Couldn't Get Worse — Or Could It?  California is a virtual one-party state, and suffers for it.  A case in point:  At the final forum for gubernatorial candidates before the June 5 state primary, lavish promises were made by Democratic candidates to build "millions" of new homes to end the state's housing crisis.  But the fact is, California's far-left politicians created the problem, and don't have a clue about how to solve it.  As the headlines above show, the same politicians that vow to build "millions" of new homes to keep state citizens from leaving will now require solar panels on new houses.  They claim that'll add just $9,500 per house, but of course that's way low.  Making homes less affordable is no way to end a housing shortage.

California Bureaucrats Will Soon Require Solar Panels on New Homes:  But Is It Safe?  The California Energy Commission, a group of unelected bureaucrats, is poised to approve new changes to the state building code.  Among these changes is a requirement that all new housing be equipped with rooftop solar panels in an attempt to cut down on fossil-fuel usage and greenhouse gases, which many scientists believe contribute to climate change.  Expected to be approved today [5/10/2018], the change to the building code would take effect in 2020.  Current estimates are that the required solar panels will add an additional cost of $8,000-$12,000 per house.  California would be the first state to make such a requirement, although it is also being discussed in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.

California becomes first state to mandate solar panels on new homes.  California has become the first state in the nation to mandate solar panels for all new homes, in a move to cut greenhouse gas emissions that critics say will end up raising home prices in the already expensive market.  In a unanimous 5-0 vote Wednesday [5/9/2018], the California Energy Commission approved the policy.  The regulation will require all homes and apartments built after 2020 to have solar panels, adding an average of roughly $10,000 to construction costs for a single-family home.

California, Land Of The Mandatory Solar Panels.  Thinking of building or purchasing a newly constructed home in California?  Even assuming you can somehow afford to own one in one of the most brutal real estate markets in the country, get ready for the cost to go up further.  The state government is preparing to pass a new law which will mandate that every new house, condo or other building up to three stories high must have solar panels installed and comply with a "net-zero energy" profile.  (This means that they have to produce enough of their own solar power to offset all electricity off the grid and natural gas consumed over the course of a year.)  Even more remarkably, they want everyone to be in compliance in under two years.  What this will do to the California real estate market, particularly for aspiring, low-income homeowners remains a mystery.

California to require solar panels on most new homes.  There's no question that solar power is entering the mainstream, but California is about to give it a giant boost.  The state's Energy Commission is expected to approve new energy standards that would require solar panels on the roofs of nearly all new homes, condos and apartment buildings from 2020 onward.  There will be exemptions for homes that either can't fit solar panels or would be blocked by taller buildings or trees, but you'll otherwise have to go green if your property is brand new.

California city wants to charge for every disposable takeout container.  While many cities across the world are banning plastic grocery bags in an effort to cut back on waste, one city in California is taking it one step further by targeting disposable containers and cups.  Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arregu'n held an event Tuesday [4/24/2018] at the local recycling yard to introduce the legislation, which would encourage people to bring their own reusable containers and cups to restaurants and coffee shops or be charged an extra 25 cents.  The Disposable-Free Dining plan would also require to-go containers to be 100 percent compostable or recyclable, chosen from a pre-approved list.

Lefty mayors' frivolous climate change lawsuits need to stop.  Who or what is actually responsible for "global warming" and how should the individuals, businesses or industry sectors be held accountable?  If you listen to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the California mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and others, the entire blame rests exclusively with our oil and natural gas industry.  Conveniently, these money-hungry mayors and their equally greedy trial lawyers accuse only the largest, most profitable oil and natural gas companies of wrongdoing.  Their municipal lawsuits allege that global warming is a local, "public nuisance" issue and the sole perpetrators of our planet's "warming" are no farther away than the local refinery or natural gas plant.  Sound unfair?  Add this insane reasoning to the fact that dozens of other industrialized nations are apparently blameless for any of the planet's climate-related woes.  Operators of airlines, asphalt factories, cement plants, auto dealerships and heavy machinery in New York or California are likewise off the hook for any climate change-related issues.

Coffee must carry cancer warning, California judge rules.  Bad news, coffee drinkers:  A California judge has ruled that coffee companies across the state will have to carry a cancer warning label because of a carcinogen that is present in the brewed beverage.  Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle sided with a nonprofit's case against dozens of coffee companies, including Starbucks, Peets and other chains, saying that businesses that sold coffee were in violation of a state regulation requiring businesses with at least 10 employees to disclose the prevalence of carcinogens and toxic chemicals.  "While plaintiff offered evidence that consumption of coffee increases the risk of harm to the fetus, to infants, to children and to adults, defendants' medical and epidemiology experts testified that they had no opinion on causation," Berle wrote.  "Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health."

The Courts against Proposition 65.  Around 1.8 million tons of glyphosate has been used across the U.S. since 1974.  Such a commonly used chemical has obviously demanded a rigorous health and safety assessment.  It has repeatedly been certified as non-threatening to humans from regulatory bodies all over the world, including in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.  The controversy over the substance arose when IARC — a semi-autonomous branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) based in Lyon, France, which was recently slammed by House Science Committee members for its "manipulation of scientific data" and "shoddy work" — found it "probably carcinogenic" to humans.  Despite the fact that this remains the only major study to reach such a conclusion, IARC's ruling meant that glyphosate was automatically added to California's Proposition 65 list, a lengthy catalogue of supposed carcinogens.

California to add recycled sewer water to the state reservoirs.  California's water regulation agency approved new measures Tuesday that will allow recycled water — water that once ran through the sewers — to be added to the state's reservoirs, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.  The new rules are expected to be implemented by 2023.  "This is a type of indirect potable use — it's not treated recycle water that goes directly to someone's house," said Miryam Barajas at the Water Board.  "It's highly treated."  She says the new regulations could potentially affect all 36 of California's reservoirs that serve as the main source of the state's municipal drinking water.

Busybodies battle outbreaks of freedom.  The majority leader of California's state Assembly has introduced legislation that would impose a fine of up to $1,000 on any waiter or waitress who offers a plastic drinking straw to a customer without being asked.  The Washington Post notes that this is part of a growing anti-straw movement, which is driven by alarm over the 500 million straws that are used every single day — which is almost certainly a fake number, seeing as how it is based on an unconfirmed phone survey by a 9-year-old boy.  (Yes, really.)

Is Trump's EPA chief bluffing?  Or will he gut California's tough emissions standards?  California officials and clean air advocates are increasingly concerned the Trump administration may attempt to unravel a key program to drive down greenhouse gas emissions from automobile fleets while also jeopardizing the ability of California and other states to set pollution standards stronger than federal rules.  Backed by automakers, Trump officials are in talks with their California counterparts to weaken tough vehicle tailpipe standards approved by the Obama administration.  The standards are aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, but could also help reduce emissions that cause smog and particulate pollution, and 13 other states have adopted them, including Washington, Pennsylvania and New York.

San Francisco Politician Wants to Outlaw Gas-Powered Cars.  Sacramento is threatening to outlaw a freedom Californians have enjoyed for more than a century through a bill introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting, of San Francisco.  If it's passed and signed, new gasoline-powered cars will become the state's new undocumented immigrants.  Government will refuse to register them.  Should it become law, Assembly Bill 1745 would, beginning Jan. 1, 2040, "prohibit the department from accepting an application for original registration of a motor vehicle unless the vehicle is a zero-emissions vehicle."  Commercial vehicles weighing 10,001 pounds or more when fully loaded are exempt as are vehicles brought in from other states.  While the San Francisco Democrat insists a transition to electric vehicles is necessary to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions, the argument has more smoke than fire.  Speculation that man is overheating his planet due to Industrial Age atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is far from settled science.

Having solved all other problems...
California Considers $1,000 Fine for Waiters Offering Unsolicited Plastic Straws.  Ian Calderon wants restaurateurs to think long and hard before giving you a straw.  Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California's lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one.  Under Calderon's law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

California's Soft Secession Accelerates.  Earlier this week Twitter briefly lit up with news of yet another California progressive excess.  The state's Democratic house majority leader has submitted a bill that imposes criminal penalties on waiters who offer their customers plastic straws. [...] It's not worth spending too much time on this absurd bill (and I do mean absurd — Reason investigated and found that the justification for it rests on research conducted by a nine-year old), but it's a useful segue to a far more significant point.  California is in the midst of an experiment in progressive governance and active resistance that is combining to create a simultaneously dangerous and tantalizing experiment in state autonomy.

California Bill Seeks Ban on Fossil-Fueled Vehicles by 2040.  California would ban the sale of new cars and trucks powered by fossil fuels in 2040 under legislation introduced Wednesday in the state legislature.  "We're at an inflection point: we've got to address the harmful emissions that cause climate change," Democratic Assemblymember Phil Ting, the bill's author, said in a statement.  If the measure becomes law, by January 1, 2040, all new passenger vehicles sold in California would have to be so-called zero emission vehicles such as battery-electric or hydrogen fuel cell cars.  More cars are sold each year in California than in any other state — and more than in some countries.

To Save Us From An Over-heated Planet, California Mostly Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs.  It's the same argument as when the federal law was passed in 2007:  it's not an actual ban, but, by putting in place such strong requirements, the law effectively banned incandescent light bulbs.  California is two years ahead of the federal law[.]

Governor Moonbeam Takes Long Fossil Fueled Flight To Say The Earth Is "On The Road To Hell".  If we are, isn't his giant carbon footprint to blame?

Ban Gas-Powered Cars?  California Is Thinking About It.  It isn't enough for California to contemplate its own state-run single payer health care system that would require, at a minimum, tripling the state budget.  Now a lawmaker wants to have the state ban gasoline-powered cars by the year 2040.  I certainly hope California follows through and tries this.  If nothing else, it will provide wonderful black market opportunities.  Think of all the meth labs that will convert to mini-refineries, not to mention the smuggling.  It is doubtful we can legally confiscate existing cars, so look for California's rolling stock to become the equivalent of all those 57 Chevys and Buicks we see on the streets of Havana.

California's enacted and potential bans:  From internal combustion engines to plastic bags.  California became the first state in the U.S. to ban single-use plastic bags in 2015, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.  Businesses that continue to offer the bags have to charge customers a fee.

California's enacted and potential bans:  From internal combustion engines to plastic bags.  Cars with internal combustion engines could soon be banned in California.  Mary Nichols, the California Air Resources Board chair, told Bloomberg that Gov. Jerry Brown is interested in a potential ban.  However, she said banning cars with internal combustion engines wouldn't happen in the next 10 years.

Car Ban:  Yet Another Gaseous Proposal.  California Assemblyman Phil Ting managed to get some positive coverage in newspapers across the state and in major news publications across the country last week.  That was quite a feat for the little-known San Francisco Democrat[. ...] Ting announced plans to next year introduce a bill that would outlaw the sale of cars powered by internal-combustion engines after 2040.  It doesn't appear to be his idea, actually.  He was following the lead of Mary Nichols, head of the ham-fisted California Air Resources Board.

California's Latest Bad Idea — Outlaw Gas-Powered Cars.  California is considering a ban on the sale of gasoline-powered cars.  If state officials go this route, it will have little effect on CO2 emissions, but will harm consumers and kill California's economy.

California lawmaker wants to ban gas car sales after 2040.  France and the United Kingdom are doing it.  So is India.  And now one lawmaker would like California to follow their lead in phasing out gasoline- and diesel-fueled vehicles.  When the Legislature returns in January, Assemblyman Phil Ting plans to introduce a bill that would ban the sale of new cars powered by internal-combustion engines after 2040.  The San Francisco Democrat said it's essential to get California drivers into an electric fleet if the state is going to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets, since the transportation sector accounts for more than a third of all emissions.

Experts Mock California Enviro Push To Ban Fossil Fuel Vehicles In The State.  Analysts and conservatives believe a Democrat-led plan to propose a ban on gas-powered cars in California later this year is a pie-in-the-sky scheme that ignores important factors about the state's auto industry.  Assemblyman Phil Ting plans to introduce a bill in January that would ban the sale of gas-powered cars produced after 2040.  The Democratic lawmaker said California drivers must adopt electric vehicles if the state is going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — but some are scoffing at the push.  "The market is moving this way.  The entire world is moving this way.  At some point you need to set a goal and put a line in the sand," Ting told reporters Friday.  Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club have joined his push to wipe out the state's fossil fuel industry.

California Senate Scraps $3 Billion Electric-Vehicle Subsidy Bill.  The California legislature scrapped a $3 billion spending bill aimed at boosting tax subsidies for electric vehicles that could have been a boon to Tesla.  The late Friday [9/1/2017] move came after criticism that the bill was short on details and failed to demonstrate exactly where the money would come from to pay for it.  The state Finance Department had opposed a previous version of the bill because it appropriated billions of dollars "without identifying a funding source."  The bill's original language called for funds to come from additional taxes on utilities, but that language was stripped out earlier in the legislative process.

Green Delusions and the Wind Bully.  California has passed a law that 50% of its electricity is to be renewable by 2030.  Taken seriously, that would be technically impossible.  But California has a method of turning non-renewable electricity into renewable electricity by legal fiat.  Instead of importing electricity, "Renewable Energy Certificates" can be imported from someone generating and selling renewable electricity outside California.  The abstract "renewable attribute" comes with the certificate and can be used to legally turn non-renewable electricity into renewable electricity.  It's modern alchemy.

California Counties Sue Oil Companies Over "Rising Seas" From Hotcoldwetdry.  San Francisco is [experiencing] a mere 1.94 mm per year in [sea level] rise, equating to .64 feet of rise over 100 years.  This pretty much covers for both the Marin and San Mateo areas.

California Sues Oil Companies For Rising Sea Levels.  Three California counties sued 37 of the world's largest oil and coal companies Monday for damages related to global warming-induced sea level rise.  Marin County, San Mateo County and Imperial Beach filed separate, but virtually identical, lawsuits claiming that oil companies bear responsibility for the sea level rise harming in coastal counties.  County lawyers claim flooding is more frequent and beaches are eroding more rapidly.  The counties want reimbursement for current and future financial losses from sea level rise, in addition to punitive damages.  The plaintiffs don't set a specific number for damages, but estimate they'll need at least $54 billion dollars over the coming decades.

Had Hillary Clinton Won the Election...  Had HRC won, she would be implementing thousands of new regulations on businesses to further hamstring the economy.  She would let the fascist freaks at the Environmental Protection Agency have their way with every aspect of our daily lives:  Our cars, our showerheads, our toilets, our rainwater in our yards, etc.  She would, like the EPA under Obama, privilege any species, no matter how insignificant, over humans.  Central California has been devastated by the environmentalists' reverence for the delta smelt!  Thousands of farm workers lost their jobs thanks to this lefty decision, turning a lush agricultural valley into a brown wasteland in the name of "going green."  This is the American left today.

'People Will Die... Seas Will Rise': CA's Brown Signs Energy Deal with China.  Tucker Carlson debated a Bay Area radio host over his support for Gov. Jerry Brown's (D-Calif.) clean energy accord with China.  Brown previously slammed President Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris accord, warning that "people will die, habitats will be destroyed and the seas will rise."  Carlson pointed out that it is unconstitutional for a state to usurp federal powers and act on its own when dealing with other nations.  KGO's Ethan Bearman said the agreement signed with President Xi Jinping is nonbinding and therefore still legal.

Jerry Brown Plays President; Signs Climate Deal with China.  California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new climate change agreement between the State of California and the People's Republic of China on Tuesday [6/6/2017].  The gesture continued Brown's efforts to expand ties with China, as well as his diplomatic campaign to push for more action on climate change.  It came in the immediate aftermath of President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords.

The Green Guillotine.  If you've ever wondered what happens when Berkeley-grade environmentalists finally seize control of all the levers of government power, let me introduce you to my town of Hermosa Beach, California. [...] Environmental purists believe that burning carbon in any of its various forms ultimately causes the seas to rise and the polar caps to melt.  They believe carbon emissions cause the rainlessness that is turning central California into fallow hardscape. [...] Predictably, the first step towards "carbon neutrality" calls for getting rid of the city's cars.  According to PLAN Hermosa, transportation accounts for 54 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the city, so it is important to "disincentivize conventionally fueled automobile use."

The Best and Worst Places for Breathable Air in the U.S.  Los Angeles maintains its rank as the city with the worst ozone pollution.  The City of Angels has remained at the top of the worst pollution list for 17 out of the 18-year history of the report.  Bakersfield is holding steady as the city with the worst short-term particle pollution and Visalia-Porterfield-Hanford rounds out a California trifecta in the pollution rankings by becoming the most-polluted city for year-round particle pollution for the first time this year.  California also retains its ranking with seven of the 10 most-polluted metropolitan areas and 11 of the worst 25 cities.

Lawsuit Seeks to Remove Gray Wolf from CA Endangered Species List.  A lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) on behalf of California farmers and ranchers alleges a state commission's 2014 decision to list gray wolves as an endangered species is illegal.  The suit, filed in San Diego County Superior Court on January 31, says the listing was illegal because, among other things, the gray wolves at issue are a non-native species originally from Canada, not a subspecies originally native to California.  Accordingly, the wolves that entered California are not protected under the 1970 California Endangered Species Act.

California Passes a New Climate Law to Regulate Cow Methane.  Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown has just signed a law to require dairy farmers to reduce bovine methane emissions. [...] The number of Californian people and businesses fleeing overregulation and high costs reached a record high last year.  I doubt the new cow [emissions] law will do anything to reassure people who haven't yet joined the great Californian exodus.

California sets its sights on cows in effort to combat climate change.  The nation's leading agricultural state is now targeting greenhouse gases produced by dairy cows and other livestock.

Cow emissions can now be regulated in California.  California Gov. Jerry Brown kept up his assault on climate change Monday [9/19/2016], pushing through a law meant to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from dairy farms and landfills. [...] Brown's approval of Senate Bill 1383 goes after short-lived climate pollutants, which include methane, black carbon, and HFC gases, per the AP.

Crazy California Legislators Approve Cow [Emission] Legislation to Curb Gas Emissions.  Cows could literally be exploding thanks to new legislation.  If this wasn't California you would know it was a spoof.  However, nothing is too strange for California. [...] Costs will be passed on to consumers of course.  No one mentions what the price of a gallon of milk will rise to after this goes into full effect, but you can bet it won't be cheaper.

Nestle Pays Only $524 to Extract 27,000,000 Gallons of California Drinking Water.  Nestle has found itself more and more frequently in the glare of the California drought-shame spotlight than it would arguably care to be — though not frequently enough, apparently, for the megacorporation to have spontaneously sprouted a conscience.  Drought-shaming worked sufficiently enough for Starbucks to stop bottling water in the now-arid state entirely, uprooting its operations all the way to Pennsylvania.  But Nestle simply shrugged off public outrage and then upped the ante by increasing its draw from natural springs — most notoriously in the San Bernardino National Forest — with an absurdly expired permit.  Because profit, of course.

Now California's Climate Cops are Going After the Cows.  California is sliding slowly into the abyss.  It's not enough that 9,000 companies have packed up and moved to more tax-friendly states.  The Bay Area is so expensive that few can afford to live there.  Progressives run the place like their own personal slot machine.  The California Air Resources Board has issued regulations to cut the state's greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, but the board is getting worried about their climate agenda.  It could all be ruined by natural phenomena.  They've gone after the oil producers, the manufacturers and now they are going after the cows.  It's methane, which "according to the board is a 'short-lived climate pollutant with an outsized impact on climate change in the near term.'"  "Cow manure and 'enteric fermentation' (flatulence) account for half of the state's methane emissions."

The Editor says...
Methane from cows is not a pollutant.  It is part of a natural cycle that has been going on for as long as cows, termites and volcanoes have been around.  And if cows are responsible for half of the methane emissions in the state, then the state doesn't have a serious problem.  There will always be cows, and the cows will do what cows do.  In any case, if California reduces its methane emissions to zero, but Mexico and Nevada do not, then what has been gained?

More about cows and methane.

Thorny issues challenge California's commitment to renewable energy goals.  As California pushes forward on its ambitious goal to produce 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, it will confront a wide range of potentially troubling economic, technical and political questions — though there remains strong support among public officials for the state's climate program.  The state is demonstrating to the rest of the nation and the world that it has the deep political willpower to address climate change, but it has yet to fully understand the impacts of the program on low-income residents, economic growth and electrical grid reliability.

California land officials sign off on closing nuclear plant.  California land officials dropped their longstanding environmental objections to the state's last nuclear power plant and signed off Tuesday [6/28/2016] on a deal to close the Central Coast facility nearly 20 years ahead of its previously planned termination.

The Editor says...
That makes perfect sense, because the population of California isn't increasing, and the summer isn't hot there, and the new bullet train runs on pixie dust.

Officials Vote for Mandatory Solar Panels on New Buildings in San Francisco.  This week, a new law mandating the installation of solar panels on new buildings was passed with a unanimous vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  The new bill, which goes into effect in January 2017, requires that all new buildings — commercial or residential — be fixed with solar panels if the building stands at 10 stories or less.  Builders are required to ensure that at least 15% of the roof on new structures be "solar ready," meaning they cannot be shaded or obstructed from sunlight.

California Regulations Force Taxpayers to Support Ineffective Solar Plant.  Research claims that renewable energy is more cost effective than fossil fuels at producing electricity.  But at the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California, taxpayers are actually losing out on their money.  Ivanpah, the 377-megawatt, world's largest solar thermal plant located in the Mojave Desert, fell short of production in 2014 and 2015.  Managers attributed the shortfall to less sunny weather than expected, but the plant's problems extend far past weather forecasts.  Despite being owned by three private companies — Google, BrightSource Energy Inc. and NRG Energy — the plant received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy.  It is paid four to five times more per-megawatt hour than natural gas plants.

Critics of California water-tunnel project claim it's gov't waste to save tiny smelt.  Even as it squeezes taxpayers to repair bridges and roads, cash-strapped California is planning a $15 billion water tunnel designed, at least in part, to save a tiny fish that may already be extinct.  The "WaterFix" Twin Tunnels project, championed by Gov. Jerry Brown but opposed by environmental groups and taxpayers alike, would bore 150 feet underground to the side of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.  The plan is to divert fresh water for thirsty farms and communities throughout the state without disturbing the habitat of protected species that live in the delta, including the finger-long delta smelt.  "To a large extent, this seemingly innocuous little fish controls much of what we can or cannot do in the delta," said Robert Shibatani, managing partner and principal hydrologist at the California-based Shibatani Group International.

California's drive to save water is killing trees, hurting utilities and raising taxes.  Eight months after California's governor ordered cities to cut water consumption by a quarter, residents and businesses have exceeded expectations.  But no good deed goes unpunished.  Now, the state's furious conservation drive is not only threatening trees but also resulting in sluggish sewer lines and possible increases in water and tax bills.  In declaring a drought emergency in April, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said watering emerald-green grass every day "is a thing of the past."  He neglected to say trees were exempt, so residents, businesses and local governments stopped watering them, too.  Now the state is losing millions of trees that beautify their cities, improve air quality, offer shade in areas where temperatures can reach 100 degrees and provide habitat for untold numbers of squirrels, birds and other animals.

Obama admin allocates water for endangered fish, leaves California farmers high and dry.  Despite wetter-than-average weather in California, some farmers are looking at another year of a zero federal water allocation even as the billions of gallons of water continue to be dumped into the ocean in order to save a three-inch fish.  The worst part for many lawmakers at Wednesday's [2/24/2016] House subcommittee hearing is that the Delta smelt remains as vulnerable as ever after the loss of 1.4 trillion gallons of water since 2008 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Critics of California water-tunnel project claim it's gov't waste to save tiny smelt.  Even as it squeezes taxpayers to repair bridges and roads, cash-strapped California is planning a $15 billion water tunnel designed, at least in part, to save a tiny fish that may already be extinct.  The "WaterFix" Twin Tunnels project, championed by Gov. Jerry Brown but opposed by environmental groups and taxpayers alike, would bore 150 feet underground to the side of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.  The plan is to divert fresh water for thirsty farms and communities throughout the state without disturbing the habitat of protected species that live in the delta, including the finger-long delta smelt.  "To a large extent, this seemingly innocuous little fish controls much of what we can or cannot do in the delta," said Robert Shibatani, managing partner and principal hydrologist at the California-based Shibatani Group International.

The Editor asks...
What is so important about that fish?  If the Delta Smelt is already near extinction, what other animal is starving as a result?  Why aren't the left-wing environmentalists happy to see survival of the fittest in action?

California district reported incorrect numbers while 'shaming' water wasters.  East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, recently released lists of more than 4,200 customers accused of violating the water usage limit imposed to combat the lingering drought.  That limit is roughly 1,000 gallons per household each day.  However, an investigation from the Contra Costa Times revealed that some figures were off by 1,000 or more.  One retired woman was listed as using more than 5,000 gallons per day when the real number was just over 1,000, the newspaper reports.

California pushes for warning labels at the pump: Drivers, you're hurting the planet!.  Can you guess where such an idea sprouted from?  Because I can.  The city of Berkeley, with San Francisco possibly soon to follow, has voted to push forward with a plan to affix warning labels to gas pumps.  Their purpose?  To subtly shame drivers for contributing to climate change.

Solar is in, biomass energy is out — and farmers are struggling to dispose of woody waste.  It should have been a good year for turning wood and waste into electrons.  A record-setting drought forced growers to bulldoze thousands of acres of trees, and hardly anyone in the Central Valley has permission to light bonfires anymore.  But more than trees have withered in California's sun.  The state's biomass energy plants are folding in rapid succession, unable to compete with heavily subsidized solar farms, many of which have sprouted up amid the fields and orchards of the San Joaquin Valley.  Paul Parreira is painfully aware of the irony.  The third-generation grower and almond processor is running out of dirt roads where he can spread ground-up almond shells, even as he expands a one-megawatt solar array on six acres of his family's property in Los Banos.

Are Dead Fish Worth More Than Struggling Farmers?  The hellish drought in California has casualties.  It tried to destroy farmers, and has in some cases, but guess what it really destroyed?  The Delta Smelt.  The much admired, or reviled, species depending on your perspective has declined beyond the point of organic regeneration.  This would hardly be newsworthy, were it not for the fact that environmentalists and their supporters in government have redistributed the dwindling baitfish's suffering to human beings within and beyond the borders of California.

Even the LA Times thinks California Governor Brown's latest Climate Claim is Nonsense.  I personally think it is disgusting that the Governor appears to be using local tragedies to promote his political agenda.  A better use of the Governors time might be listening to and acting on the advice of fire experts, rather than seizing on photogenic disasters as a PR opportunity to promote his scientifically unsupported political agenda.

Californians upset that they can't sell their green energy homes.  Trouble has reared its head for Californians who enrolled in a special government program designed to allow them to use taxpayer funds to upgrade their homes with solar panels, wind turbines, unicorn flatulence converters and any number of other green energy improvements.  Tens of thousands of Californians signed up for the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program which provided them with funding for installing such energy efficient goodies over the past several years, but now they're finding their homes stalled on the market when they want to sell them.

A Liberal's Ten Commandments.  West Coast liberals should do something to alleviate the effect of the drought, given that they have cancelled most of the secondary phases of the California Water Project and released several million acre-feet of stored reservoir water into the ocean:  "I pledge that I will not use any water that is stored in, and transferred at great costs from, a man-made, artificial reservoir, especially those at great distances built in sensitive areas such as Yosemite National Park."  There could even be an additional corollary:  "I pledge that I will not waste precious water on my lawn or ornamental plants."

California's Drought: A Democrat-Made Crisis.  [Scroll down]  It is caused by a series of policies — some from the past, many that are ongoing — which has prioritized environmental demands above the basic provision of water resources to the public.  More than half of the state's water resources simply flow out the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.  Even now, in the Sierra foothills state officials empty reservoirs to protect "unimpeded" river flows to benefit small numbers of non-endangered hatchery fish.  The California Coastal Commission, the powerful agency with control of development along the shoreline, is holding up a privately planned desalination plant over concerns about its impact on plankton.  The environmental-friendly commission want to force the developers to build a pumping system that destroys the economics of the plant.

California's climate fight comes down to late negotiations.  Gov. Jerry Brown has made climate change the centerpiece of his final tenure by laying out the most aggressive benchmark in North America, which would reduce California's carbon footprint and boost the state's renewable energy use to 50 percent in 15 years.

CA Gov Jerry Brown's war on cars and suburbs.  Not only Moonbeam, mind you, but most of the socialist Democrats in the California state legislature who use the fanatical Green religion as an excuse to strip people of their means of independent transportation and single family homes.

Gov. Jerry Brown takes aim at oil companies over 'highly destructive' product.  Gov. Jerry Brown, who is in the middle of a political battle over climate-change legislation, took aim at oil companies Monday, saying they sell a "highly destructive" product.  "The oil industry is in deep trouble," the governor told reporters Monday at a news conference on the shores of Lake Tahoe, where he was attending an annual meeting about the area's environment.  Oil companies "have a product that is highly destructive, while highly valuable at the same time.  And we're trying to work out the right policies," he said.

The Editor says...
How do you suppose the governor got to Lake Tahoe?  Not by bicycle, one can surmise.  More likely by way of gas-guzzling limo or gas-guzzling jet.  Maybe both.

Obama Hatches A Vast, Left-Wing, Green Conspiracy.  California Gov. Jerry Brown rips oil companies for their "highly destructive product," while President Obama calls the Koch brothers un-American. [...] Obama apparently sees nothing wrong with burning 25,000 gallons of fuel jetting to Las Vegas to attend Sen. Harry Reid's conference to push uneconomical "green" alternatives to fossil fuels while demonizing those who disagree with him.  Par for the course. Obama has set a goal of slashing CO2 emissions 26% by 2025, proposing that alternative energy sources such as solar and wind will serve as replacements — a key part of his much broader plan to "fundamentally transform" America.  The problem, contrary to Brown's foolish remarks, is that fossil fuels are anything but "destructive."  They are in fact the very source of our industrial economy — and our high standard of living.

L.A. Mayor: Thirsty California Needs Cool Black Balls.  Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's plan to slow California's drought by covering a reservoir with 96 million "shade balls" is sparking debate among experts, who say that the black balls could lead to disaster.  According to Fox News, Garcetti said that the balls, which cost $34.5 million, would block the evaporation of 300 million gallons of reservoir water.  The plan is projected to save taxpayers $250 million.  Despite the projected savings, experts have dubbed the balls a "disaster."  Matt MacLeod, founder of the California biotech firm Modern Moon Farms, said that the black color of the balls would create a "bacterial nightmare."  "Black spheres resting in the hot sun will form a thermal blanket speeding evaporation as well as providing a huge amount of new surface area for the hot water to breed bacteria," said MacLeod.

LA 'black ball' reservoir rollout potential 'disaster' in the making, say experts.  LA's scheme to cover a reservoir under 96 million "shade balls" may not be all it is touted to be, experts told FoxNews.com, with some critics going so far as to refer to the plan as a "potential disaster."  The city made national headlines last week when Mayor Eric Garcetti and Department of Water officials dumped $34.5 million worth of the tiny, black plastic balls into the city's 175-acre Van Norman Complex reservoir in the Sylmar section.  Garcetti said the balls would create a surface layer that would block 300 million gallons from evaporating amid the state's crippling drought and save taxpayers $250 million.  Experts differed over the best color for the tiny plastic balls, with one telling FoxNews.com they should have been white and another saying a chrome color would be optimal.  But all agreed that the worst color for the job is the one LA chose.

State Still Releasing Water to Save a Few Fish.  Gov. Jerry Brown met with San Diego civic leaders last Tuesday [8/11/2015 (?)], where they discussed the state's water-conservation standards as the drought grinds on.  The governor "hinted" at giving the region's water users "some flexibility in complying with California's rigorous ... mandates," according to a Union-Tribune report.  We'll likely see flexibility for urban water districts that are trying to conserve scarce resources — and come up with new sources.  But 450 miles north of San Diego, local officials are accusing the Brown administration of being inflexible in a bitter spat between farmers and the environmental-oriented State Water Resources Control Board.

L.A. will add bike and bus lanes, cut car lanes in sweeping policy shift.  Over the decades, Los Angeles has bulldozed homes, paved through tranquil canyons, toppled countless trees and even flattened some hillsides, all in the name of keeping automobile traffic flowing as fast as possible.  On Tuesday [8/11/2015], city leaders decided to slow things down.  They endorsed a sweeping policy that would rework some of the city's mightiest boulevards, adding more lanes for buses and bikes and, in some places, leaving fewer for cars.  The goal is to improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians while also luring more people out of their cars.

California will soon have toughest shower head requirements in nation.  The flow of water from shower heads and bathroom faucets in California will be sharply reduced under strict new limits approved Wednesday [8/12/2015] by the state Energy Commission.  Current rules, established in 1994 at the federal level, allow a maximum flow of 2.5 gallons per minute from a shower head.  Effective next July, the limit will fall to 2.0 gallons per minute and will be reduced again in July 2018, to 1.8 gallons, giving California the toughest standard of any U.S. state.

Let's Worry about a Real Threat.  These days, there is a lot of tampering with the electric grid.  People who wouldn't know a generator from a turbine are suddenly making no small plans to reform it.  We now have good electricity and bad electricity.  Good electricity is generated without emitting carbon dioxide (CO2).  But that rule is not rigid, because nuclear electricity, and hydro electricity, if it involves a dam, are both bad electricity, even though they don't emit CO2.  I'm not making this up.  I'm repeating the California legal definition of renewable electricity.

Law Would Mandate Solar Panels on All S.F. Building Rooftops.  A new resolution to be introduced next week in San Francisco would require the owners of most new apartment buildings in the city to install solar panels or gardens on the buildings' rooftops.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle, city Board of Supervisors President David Chiu will introduce the Solar Vision 2020 resolution next week, a resolution that would apply to both commercial and residential buildings.

Brown signs bill to urge more drivers into eco-friendly vehicles.  Seeking to put more California drivers in electric cars, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Sunday [9/21/2014] providing financial incentives and other perks to entice consumers to buy the environmentally friendly vehicles.  The push for low-emission cars, combined with the governor's approval of climate-conscious measures such as one to encourage residential solar energy use, comes days before he is set to appear at the United Nations Climate Summit in New York City, where he is expected to tout the state's efforts to combat climate change.

California passes plastic bag ban, would be first such law in U.S.  The California state legislature enacted a ban on plastic grocery bags on Friday [8/29/2014] near the end of its two-year session, a measure that if signed into law would become the first of its kind in America.  A number of cities and counties in California and other U.S. states, including Hawaii's Maui County, have made it illegal for grocery stores to pack purchases in plastic.

Renewable Electricity: a Technological Rip-Off, and an Environmental Loser.  In California, electricity sales were $35 billion in 2012.  The average retail price of electricity in California is around 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.  This compares to about 8 cents in states that have not found the renewable energy religion.  The differential gives the California renewable energy mafia about $15 billion a year with which to reward its friends and supporters.  That's just for the electricity sector.

The Costs of the Environmentalism Cult.  California is in the third year of a drought, but the problem isn't a lack of water.  The snowfall in the Sierra provides enough to help us ride out the years of drought.  All we need to do is store it.  But California hasn't built a new dam in 35 years.  Worse than that, every year we dump 1.6 million acre-feet of water — about enough to serve 3.2 million families for a year — into the Pacific Ocean in order to protect an allegedly "endangered" 3-inch bait-fish called the Delta smelt.

Caution: This Warning May Be Useless.  For more than 25 years Californians haven't been able to pump gas, go to the grocery store or even buy coffee at Starbucks without seeing a sign with wording such as:  "WARNING: This Area Contains A Chemical Known To The State of California To Cause Cancer." [...] However, I recently examined cancer rates and discovered no evidence that Proposition 65 has lowered cancer incidence among Californians.  There isn't a single empirical study that demonstrates any public-health benefits.

California poised to become first state to impose full ban on lead bullets.  California is on the verge of becoming the first state to impose a full ban on hunting with lead bullets — with environmentalists and gun-rights advocates squaring off as Gov. Jerry Brown decides whether to sign the legislation.  The state already has a ban on lead-bullet hunting in eight counties with an endangered condor population.  But the new proposal, overwhelmingly approved this month [September 2013] by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly, would impose a statewide ban on all hunting.

California's Middle Class Faces Slow Death by Green Laws.  An environmental law in California, designed with the best of intentions of course, has helped wreck middle class prospects — and state lawmakers are finally taking note.  The California Environmental Quality Act, signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1970 and beloved by environmental groups, mandates strenuous reviews of the environmental effects of all proposed construction projects.  While greens have claimed that the law has protected California's natural beauty from rapacious developers, lawmakers are coming around to the viewpoint that it has been abused to the detriment of citizens, as the New York Times reports: [...]

California's Smoke Signals.  Like so many other emergencies in California, this one is government-made and a warning about its green political obsessions. [...] To hit the renewable mandate, utilities are building long transmission lines to deliver power from distant solar and wind projects to population centers.  Most large-scale solar plants in California are being built in dry, sunny desert and valley regions.  Wind farms are concentrated in the mountains.  Both are fire-prone.

Global Warming Programs Force Hike in California Power Bills.  The California Public Utilities Commission approved large rate hikes in electricity prices due in part to high costs associated with the state's global warming restrictions.  The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved a 12 percent hike in San Diego Gas & Electric Co. rates and a 10 percent hike in Southern California Gas Co. rates.  CPUC and power company officials said the rate hikes were necessary to install smart grid technologies, comply with federal and state environmental restrictions, maintain infrastructure, and comply with global warming restrictions.

California's anti-coal agenda is adverse to human health and welfare.  Coal based energy is a key factor in global socio-economic development, transforming agrarian societies to modern industrial ones.  This societal transformation, driven by the accumulation of income and wealth, eliminates many contagious diseases, reduces child mortality, and lengthens adult life expectancy.  Throughout the world, rapid emergence from poverty has proceeded as countries develop electricity networks based on coal.

Idiot Dems in California trying to kill fracking despite massive potential for jobs and energy.  Estimates are that there's billions of barrels of oil in the Monterey Shale formation and accessing that could provide millions of jobs.  But Democrats are proposing everything from banning fracking to burdening it with heavy regulations.

Chevron Defies California On Carbon Emissions.  Chevron is leading a lobbying and public relations campaign to undercut the California mandate aimed at curbing global warming, two years after the state started phasing it in.  Research on commercially viable climate-friendly products has come to naught, stymied by the poor economics of coaxing hydrocarbons from plants' stubborn cell walls, according to Chevron officials.

California Environmental Law Needs Reform, Not Excuses.  Ask business owners what they hate most about the Golden State, and you're likely to get an earful about regulation.  Taxes, rents, utilities and housing are all costly, but they are at least predictable.  What hurts most is the threat of the unknown — being blindsided by lawsuits or watching projects get mired in unforeseen delays.  California is hassle central, and everyone pays the cost.  One law in particular, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), exemplifies what's wrong with the state's regulatory regime.

Renewable Energy: Bringing Blackouts Back to California?  The epidemic of power outages and "rolling blackouts" which nearly shut down California in the early 2000s may be returning.  Back then, the culprits were unscrupulous energy providers like Enron and a poorly-thought out process of deregulation.  This time, renewable energy would be to blame, as the state has pushed to increase the use of solar and wind energy without ensuring that there is enough traditional power generation to keep the grid stable on cloudy, windless days.

A Good Day for Academic Freedom.  Within the past 24 hours, courts from both coasts handed down important rulings in two academic-freedom cases, both times rejecting university efforts to dismiss cases brought by conservative academic critics.  The first decision denied the core of the defendants' motion to dismiss a case brought by Professor James Enstrom [...].  Enstrom not only blew the whistle on junk science behind recent proposed California diesel emissions restrictions, he discovered the state's lead "scientist" had purchased his degree from a fictitious "Thornhill University" and that many members of the state's Scientific Review Panel had overstayed term limits by decades.

California is "greening" itself toward a third world electrical grid.  Alas, California's ecotwits have forced most of the state's fossil fueled power plants into mothballs.  The ones that are still limping along will likely be shuttered by 2020 thanks to onerous and prohibitively expensive upgrades required under the Clean Air Act.  So what will happen on cloudy, windless days?

Big banks weigh risks, rewards of California's new CO2 market.  Major banks are weighing whether to wade into the California carbon market, which experts believe could grow into a $40 billion a year market by 2020, but one that is also loaded with risk and uncertainty.

Why Geothermal Energy Is Stalled in California.  The Geothermal Energy Association is working with California energy authorities to help restart the flow of state utility power purchase agreements made with geothermal electricity generators, after close to a year's doldrums.  Karl Gawell, executive director of the Washington-based GEA, said, "There is no question that geothermal is stalled in California. [...]"

Throwing cold water on the cherished tradition of beach bonfires.  Every weekend, hundreds of people stream down Imperial Highway as early as 6 a.m. to grab one of Dockweiler's 60 fire rings, roast marshmallows and listen to the surf as the light fades away.  Bureaucrats and homeowners, however, are robbing us of this romantic legacy.  Of the 108 state parks and beaches in California, only 24 allow fires, and some have early curfews.

Proposed ban would snuff beach bonfires in San Francisco.  For as long as anyone can remember, building a fire on the beach has been one of the simple pleasures of life by the sea.  But if the Park Service has its way, the tradition will soon be extinguished at Ocean Beach, the last stretch in San Francisco and one of the few beaches statewide where bonfires still burn legally.

San Francisco bans wood burning on Christmas Eve.  No chestnuts on an open fire this Christmas Eve.  Bay Area officials have banned residents from burning wood, indoors and outdoors, on Tuesday — and might extend the ban into Christmas Day — as part of an air quality initiative.  The order came from a governmental body called the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

California Prepares to Auction Carbon Credits.  The central component of California's Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) is taking effect this year, and with the state facing a $15.7 billion deficit, political leaders have ended a long debate over how to spend revenue the act is expected to generate.  The central component of the measure is "cap and trade," a complex system that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated in the state by capping the amount of the emissions businesses may produce.

State agency confiscates stuffed wolverine, red-tailed hawk at California bar.  A stuffed wolverine and red-tailed hawk have been removed from a bar in California's El Dorado County, some 50 years after the animals were first put on display, an employee told FoxNews.com.  An official from the California Department of Fish and Game, after receiving a tip, removed the animals on Tuesday [5/8/2012] from the Georgetown Hotel and Saloon in Georgetown, bartender Anthony Fox said.

The government can't make its projects work if it must conform to its own environmental red tape.
California bullet train chief seeks environmental exemptions.  The chief of the state bullet train authority said Tuesday that he hopes to obtain some type of relief from environmental laws that would eliminate a risk that the 130-mile initial construction project could be stopped by an injunction, a potentially growing prospect as agriculture interests in the Central Valley gear up for a legal fight.

California's Green Mirage.  On April 19, Next 10, a California-based cheerleader for all things green, issued a press release announcing the publication of the 2012 California Green Innovation Index, their fourth in a series of annual reports. [...] A brief review of Next 10's press release and attendant report, which resulted in a glowing story in at least one major California paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, shows some embarrassing holes — if only people would look beyond the hype.

CA Congressional Office: "The environment is much more important than jobs".  I wanted to take the time to introduce Californians to Karen Bass.  Her biography should raise red flags to Californians who expect their representatives to focus on job creation — especially as Gallup reports that the real unemployment rate is over 9% and the "underemployment" rate is close to 20%.

Democrats In California Declare War On Farmers.  To leftist food scolds, eating more vegetables is important.  So why are California's two Democratic senators having a cow about a water bill that would let their Central Valley's farmers grow more veggies?

California imposes energy standards on chargers for mobile devices.  California's cellphones, tablet computers, power tools and hundreds of other portable electronic devices will be required to have energy-stingy battery chargers beginning next year.  The California Energy Commission, by a 3-0 vote Thursday [1/12/2012], approved first-in-the-nation efficiency standards designed to drive stakes through the hearts of about 170 million so-called vampire charging systems that waste as much as 60% of the electricity they suck from outlets.

The Editor says...
How can anyone say with any certainty that any power has been "wasted"?  The "wasted" power resulting from less than 100% efficiency is dissipated as heat.  That is only "wasted" energy in places where air conditioning is in use.  In all other cases, that heat contributes to the warmth of the house (or other building), supplementing the heating system.  In any event, the power "wasted" amounts to only a few watts.  The transformer outside your house "wastes" more power than that, even if you turn off all your lights and appliances.  It is an undeniable and unavoidable fact that all electric appliances and all power-generating systems are less than 100% efficient.  Conservation is not an energy source.  If California is desperate enough for electric power to go to this extreme, the solution is increased energy production.

California Global Warming Law Choking Food Processors.  As California's unemployment rate hovers above 12 percent, even the state's Democratic leaders — notorious for regulating, taxing and complaining about California's business community — are talking about jobs.  They are championing the occasional job expansion in Silicon Valley (i.e., a new Dell research and development center) and proposing their jobs plans, even if such plans ignore the reasons businesses aren't growing here.

California's Green Power Crisis.  Among the many difficulties that the state of California has been facing, one in particular is looming larger and larger:  the power problem.  The state is slowly coming to grips with the fact that its preferred sources of electric power — wind and solar — are neither cheap nor reliable.  Yet, California is committed by law to increasing the use of wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy.  The economics don't come close to supporting this model.

California Adopts 'Cap-and-Trade' Plan.  California formally adopted the nation's most comprehensive so-called "cap-and-trade" system Thursday [11/20/2011], an experiment by the world's eighth-largest economy that is designed to provide financial incentives for polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Delta Water Rules Smelt of Extremism.  If you want to understand the fundamental things wrong with our nation and California, in particular, you ought to peruse the 140-page opinion recently issued by Judge Oliver Wanger in the "Consolidated Delta Smelt Cases."  It describes many of the most frustrating elements in our society — abuses of federal authority, bureaucratic micromanagement of our lives and political zealotry masquerading as science.  The case also shows the indifference to the insanity by most Americans, who wouldn't know a Delta smelt from a cod fillet.

California's Green Jihad.  Ideas matter, particularly when colored by religious fanaticism, wreaking havoc even in the most favored of places.  Take, for instance, Iran, a country blessed with a rich heritage and enormous physical and human resources, but which, thanks to its theocratic regime, is largely an economic basket case and rogue state.  Then there's California, rich in everything from oil and food to international trade and technology, but still skimming along the bottom of the national economy.

California may ban takeout food in foam containers.  Getting takeout food in foam containers would be a thing of the past under a bill approved by the state Senate.

Crazifornia: Delta smelt refuse to die in pumps.  In Tracy, California, where the massive California Water Project pumps stand ready to move up to 15,450 cubic feet of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water southward every single second, it's been a busy spring.  The pumps have been a mere shadow of their old selves ever since U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger began ratcheting them down in 2007 in response to environmentalist lawsuits brought under the auspices of the Delta smelt.

The California Greenout: Creating artificial demand for the politically connected.  Impatient with the lagging pace of California's economic collapse, Governor Jerry Brown decided to speed things up today [4/12/2011].  The Associated Press reports Brown "signed legislation requiring California utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources, giving the state the most aggressive alternative energy mandate in the U.S."  This is an increase from current laws that require California utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources.

Light-bulb banning begins.  The cost of illuminating your home is about to go up significantly.  Most Americans take for granted that when they flip a switch, darkness immediately gives way to a warm, natural light.  That's no longer possible in California, where a regulation that took effect Jan. 1 only allows the sale of harsh, cold compact fluorescents above a certain wattage.

California's environmental regulations cause economic blackout.  The origin of the modern environmental movement and the creation of Earth Day are often said to have their origins in the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.  "Californians have largely treated environmentalism as a 'religious sacrament' rather than as one component among many in maximizing people's quality of life," note the editors of Trends magazine, commenting on California's decline.  Nowhere is this more evident than the state's hostility to energy production.

Saving California Almost Half a Billion a Year — Easy.  [The California Energy Commission issues] regulations — lots and lots of regulations.  They tell you what to use to light your home, how thick your insulation must be, what type of washer/dryer you can buy, how big your pool pump can be, how big your windows can be, whether you can leave your porch lights on at night — 176 pages for buildings alone.  While a few could be justified for safety reasons or for hidden features for subsequent occupants/owners, most are intrusive and no business of government.  The underlying premise is that the collective interests, as determined by the people at the CEC, overrule any rational consideration of cost and benefit by a free citizen or inhabitant of the state of California.  Or maybe it is just because they think we're stupid?

CALGreen: Regulatory Nirvana.  Average Californians want a thriving economy, accountable schools, reliable police and fire services, a functioning penal system, and fiscal responsibility from the state.  Sacramento is giving them instead a new set of regulations — for a dormant industry — which will employ hundreds of public servants to keep the CALGreen promise of reducing global GHG emissions .0096 percent by 2020.  Meanwhile, the public is invited to rejoice that more of the cost of green regulation will be borne by the taxpayer.  I'm not sure the art of regulation for regulation's sake can be perfected much more than this.

California banning 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.  The state of liberal bastion, California, will start phasing out the 100-watt incandescent light bulb on Jan. 1, 2011.  By the beginning of the year 2012, it will be gone from sale in stores.  Specialty lights that use less than 40 watts and more than 150 watts, and three-way bulbs are exempt, but will later be required to use less energy.

Orange officials sue couple who removed their lawn.  Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts.  But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water.

Environmental red tape hurts families in California
Fish Don't Vote.  The Republican Party has long been fishing for an issue that will reach out to Hispanic and other minority voters.  Now, a three-inch fish may be the key to establishing common ground between that voting bloc and the GOP.

California adopts first regulation to limit greenhouse gas emissions from fuel.  California took aim today at the oil industry and its effect on global warming, adopting the world's first regulation to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the fuel that runs cars and trucks.  The state Air Resources Board voted 9-1 in favor of the complex new rule, which is expected to slash the state's gasoline consumption by a quarter in the next decade.

California May Ban Black Cars.  The California legislature is considering regulating the color of cars and reflectivity of paint to reduce the energy requirements to cool them. ... The problem isn't the color per se, but the reflectivity of the paint overall.  And dark colors just don't reflect well, so they are likely out.  "Jet black remains an issue," says the report.

Update:
California Car Paint Proposal Parked For Now.  California has backed down from a proposal on new cars' paint coatings.  The state said it's looking for ways to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions by improving cars' efficiency.  One way to do that is by making cars more reflective so that their air-condition systems don't have to work as hard.

California appears poised to be first to ban power-guzzling big-screen TVs.  The influential lobby group Consumer Electronics Assn. is fighting what appears to be a losing battle to dissuade California regulators from passing the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions.

California considering banning giant TVs.  Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's governor, has supported controversial proposals by the California's energy commission to impose strict energy consumption limits on TVs with screens that are more than 40 inches wide.  The commission claims that California's estimated 35 million televisions and related gadgets account for about 10 percent of household energy consumption in the state.

California To Ban TV:  But Not For a Good Reason.  Why is the California Energy Commission (CEC), a Gov. Jerry Brown creation, wanting to ban television sets?  Well, it seems that a honking 48-inch plasma screen, that bright symbol of the bygone days of conspicuous consumption and purveyor of drooling vacuity, uses too much electricity, and electricity production makes too much greenhouse gas emissions (at least in America, where half of our electricity comes from coal — in France, a plasma screen would emit nary a CO2 molecule as the TVs there are nuclear powered).

California Gas Stations Shut Under Expensive Mandate.  Nearly 100 California gas stations are being forced out of business by a statewide mandate requiring them to implement expensive new equipment to reduce vapor emissions at the pump.  The mandate, issued by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), is known as Phase II of the state's Enhanced Vapor Recovery program.  It requires gas station owners to purchase and install devices to prevent vapors from escaping when customers fill their cars.

California's 'Green Jobs' Experiment Isn't Going Well.  Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was all smiles in 2006 when he signed into law the toughest anti-global-warming regulations of any state.  Mr. Schwarzenegger and his green supporters boasted that the regulations would steer California into a prosperous era of green jobs, renewable energy, and technological leadership.  Instead, since 2007 — in anticipation of the new mandates — California has led the nation in job losses.

California threat to sue US govt over ship, aircraft emissions.  California said Thursday [8/31/2008] it planned to sue the US government for failing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, aircraft, construction and agricultural equipment.  In the latest legal threat from the state against the Environmental Protection Agency, California's Attorney General Jerry Brown said the body was "wantonly ignoring" its duty to set pollution standards.

California's Potemkin Environmentalism:  [Governor] Schwarzenegger's reputation as an environmental trailblazer is in keeping with California's recent history and self-perception. … In truth, however, the Golden State's energy leadership is a mirage.  California's environmental policies have made it heavily dependent on other states for power; generated some of the highest, business-crippling energy costs in the country; and left it vulnerable to periodic electricity shortages.  Its economic growth has occurred not because of, but despite, those policies, which would be disastrous if extended to the rest of the country.

Who Will Control Your Thermostat?  In California, we have 236 pages of state-mandated standards for building energy efficiency, known as Title 24. … What should be controversial in the proposed revisions to Title 24 is the requirement for what is called a "programmable communicating thermostat" or PCT.  Every new home and every change to existing homes' central heating and air conditioning systems will required to be fitted with a PCT beginning next year following the issuance of the revision.  Each PCT will be fitted with a "non-removable " FM receiver that will allow the power authorities to increase your air conditioning temperature setpoint or decrease your heater temperature setpoint to any value they chose.  During "price events" those changes are limited to ±4°F. and you would be able to manually override the changes.  During "emergency events" the new setpoints can be whatever the power authority desires and you would not be able to alter them.  In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control.

The Editor says...
I can think of a couple of ways to defeat that FM receiver without touching it.  And I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before some hacker figures out how to shut off (or turn on) every air conditioner in town.

California Seeks Thermostat Control.  Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

The Editor continues...
Scroll down to the end of the article to see a quote from Nicole Tam, a spokeswoman for PG&E, who claims that the thermostat control signals are hacker-proof because they "are encrypted and encoded".  What a relief!  We all know that no encryption scheme has ever been cracked by hackers.

California Proposes Taking Control of Thermostats.  The California Energy Commission has proposed requiring thermostats that allow the government to control the temperature of homes and businesses in case of high energy prices or shortages, a measure that some critics are calling "draconian."

California Hotels Go Green With Low-Flow Toilets, Solar Lights.  Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer.  Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of "An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

How Elite Environmentalists Impoverish Blue-Collar Americans:  The great Central Valley of California has never been an easy place.  Dry and almost uninhabitable by nature, the state's engineering marvels brought water down from the north and the high Sierra, turning semi-desert into some of the richest farmland in the world. ... The depression conditions in the great valley reflect more than a mere water shortage.  They are the direct result of conscious actions by environmental activists to usher in a new era of scarcity.

Al Gore visits Berkeley, charges up Prop. 87 rally.  Former Vice President Al Gore appeared in Berkeley on Monday [10/23/2006] to lend his celebrity and reputation as a crusader against global warming to a measure on California's Nov. 7 ballot that would tax oil companies to raise $4 billion for green energy projects.

Kit Bond goes into battle on a lawn mower.  Environmental groups heralded California's move three years ago to adopt new pollution standards for small engines.  The standards could require use of catalytic converters, which have cleaned up cars and trucks, to be added to lawn mowers as well.

California's Man-Made Drought.  California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley — farmers.  Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America's premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

Obama's Failure to Help May Spring from Racism.  Why are the communities of Fresno County suffering so deeply?  Because in December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America's vegetables, no longer needed water.  The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they're still paying bills for it.  Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead.  All because the federal government thinks that smelt — tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish — are more important than human beings.

It's farmers vs. fish for California water.  Supporters of California agriculture called on the Obama administration and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday to lift water restrictions that were imposed to protect the endangered delta smelt, saying the fish is putting farmers out of business.

Editor's note:
Many more examples of ridiculous environmental laws can be found here.

Top Ten Green Auto Headlines of 2009.  California proposed a "Cool Cars Standard" that effectively banned black cars so that they would reflect 20 percent of "impinging solar energy" and reduce emissions via less AC use.  Public outrage led to the rule's withdrawal.

On the other hand...
Will Californians Repeal Cap-And-Trade?  A California legislator pushes a November ballot initiative to free the state from the job-killing shackles of a 2006 law designed to fight climate change.  The other choice is freezing in the unemployment line.  At last report, California's unemployment rate was 12.3%, with 2.25 million residents looking for work.

Effort underway to suspend California's global-warming law.  Republican politicians and conservative activists are launching a ballot campaign to suspend California's landmark global-warming law, in what they hope will serve as a showcase for a national backlash against climate regulations.  Supporters say they have "solid commitments" of nearly $600,000 to pay signature gatherers for a November initiative aimed at delaying curbs on the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and factories until the state's unemployment rate drops.

California's Toxic Air Scare Machine:  James Enstrom, southern California native, earned a Ph.D. in elementary particle nuclear physics at Stanford, then received postdoctoral training in epidemiology and a Masters in Public Health from UCLA. ... In 2005, Enstrom published his results of a robust and current (50,000 people, 1973-2002) study on the effects of small particle air pollution in California.  He found no premature death effect in California from small particle air pollution.  California's air pollution of the '50s and '60s has declined for thirty years, and Enstrom was also familiar with the improvement in air quality and the conundrum of increasing rates of asthma that was being misrepresented by CARB.

Grape Growing Collides With Fish Protection in California.  Grape growers in Northern California's cool, fertile Sonoma County wine region are stomping mad at a new plan to limit the amount of water vineyards can pump from local rivers and streams to protect crops from frost — a proposed regulation meant to safeguard coho salmon, a species on the brink of local extinction.

Backing off on environmental perfection.  It will go down as a landmark decision.  U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wagner ruled this week that people have rights.  That may sound a bit daffy but in the wacky world of California water politics people take second class citizen status behind fish and even vegetation.

Water Sanity For Central California.  A federal judge has struck a blow for California's water-deprived Central Valley, ruling that draconian federal water cutbacks violate human rights because — surprise! — people also belong in the ecosystem.

A Not-So-Golden State.  As California's pumped-up governator prepares to push a costly cap-and-trade law on the state's manufacturers, CEOs are sending a not-so-subtle message to him:  Your state stinks.

California approves extensive carbon-trading scheme.  California has approved an extensive carbon-trading plan aimed at cutting greenhouse emissions.  State regulators passed a "cap-and-trade" framework to let companies buy and sell permits, giving them an incentive to emit fewer gases.  The aim is to create the second-largest market in the field, after Europe's.

California government hits rock bottom - keeps digging.  California's Air Resources Board passed a cap and trade regulation for the state's top 600 industrial facilities that will almost certainly bring economic activity in the state to a near standstill.

Cap-And-Trade Tosses An Anchor To Drowning California Economy.  On Friday [12/17/2010], the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the bureaucracy charged with implementing AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, adopted a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions by about 15% by 2020.  CARB's regulations go into effect in 2012.  The unelected officials at CARB intend to reorder California's use of energy.  In so doing they blandly declaim that their rules will create jobs while admitting to higher energy costs and a slowing economy.  Somehow, this formula is transmogrified by CARB analysts into net job creation.  Given the immutable laws of math, one is forced to calculate that CARB's actions will "create" low-paying jobs at the expense of good jobs.

Manmade famine in America.  It seems inconceivable, but people in America are going hungry en masse due to a famine caused by political authorities.  Fresno, California is not yet a sister city of Kiev, Ukraine, but the two cities, capitals of rich agricultural regions, share a history of mass hunger caused by central governments indifferent to the suffering of their people, in the pursuit of ideological goals.

Fresno, Zimbabwe.  Fresno, California, stands as the de facto capital of California's mighty Central Valley, the breadbasket of America. ... Yet far from being a paradise, Fresno is starting to resemble Zimbabwe or 1930s Ukraine, a victim of a famine machine that is entirely man-made, not by red communists this time, but by greens.  State and federal officials, driven by the agenda of environmental extremists, have made it extremely difficult for the valley's farms, introducing costly environmental regulations and cutting off critical water supplies to save the Delta smelt, a bait fish.  It's all driving the economy to collapse.

Did someone mention Zimbabwe?


Dumbed-down schools:

California Dumbs Down Tests.  When it comes to education trends, as California goes, so goes the nation.  Which is all the more reason to be concerned about the latest effort in California to dumb down standards.  The University of California's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) has launched another salvo in its long-running war against the SAT, the test used by many colleges and universities to assess academic achievement among high school seniors.  This is only the latest in a series of moves by BOARS against the SAT, but this one may be a stalking horse to eliminate standardized tests in general, especially if they conflict with the goal of promoting racial and ethnic diversity.

The Return of the Fuzzies?  In the 1990s, the Math Wars pitted two philosophies against each other.  One side argued for content-based standards — that elementary school students must memorize multiplication tables by third grade.  The other side argued for students to discover math, unfettered by "drill and kill" exercises.  When the new 1994 California Learning Assessment Test trained test graders to award a higher score to a child with a wrong answer (but good essay) than to a student who successfully solved a math problem, but without a cute explanation, the battle was on.

Dumbed Down and Out in High School:  Some San Jose area teachers are dumping the D as a passing grade.  They say students who are doing the minimum to get by will just have to work a little harder.  California's public universities won't accept anything below C- on an academic transcript.

Math Instruction Doesn't Add Up.  California's standards call for students to learn algebra in eighth grade.  Yet the graduation exam was postponed because so many students were flunking the math portion of the test, which required only a 55 percent [score].  Only the hardest questions required high school math skills.

Book review:  The Language Police —  How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn.  Before Anton Chekhov and Mark Twain can be used in school readers and exams, they must be vetted by a bias and sensitivity committee.  The New York State Education Department omitted mentioning Jews in an Isaac Bashevis Singer story about prewar Poland, or blacks in Annie Dillard's memoir of growing up in a racially mixed town.  California rejected a reading book because The Little Engine That Could was male.  Diane Ravitch maintains that America's students are compelled to read insipid texts that have been censored and bowdlerized, issued by publishers who willingly cut controversial material from their books — a case of the bland leading the bland.

California math scores among nation's worst.  About 30 percent of fourth-graders and 23 percent of eight-graders in California tested proficient math tests from the National Assessment of Education Progress, ranking the state near the bottom nationally. ... Nationwide, 38 percent of fourth-graders and 33 percent of eighth-graders performed at proficient levels.

School grant program wastes billions.  Just how much improvement of low-accomplishing public schools have Californians purchased with the $1.25 billion in their taxes spent on No Child Left Behind special programs?  The disturbing answer, apparently:  "little if any academic improvement."


Schools used as leftist indoctrination centers:

Get Global Warming Out of Our Schools.  Because of the recent revelations of "Climategate" (see source materials below) and my experience raising two children in private and public schools in California, I believe we need to start a nationwide campaign to get "global warming" immediately removed from the curriculum of our schools.  We cannot wait for politicians or activists to do any more damage to our future generation.  "Global warming" is not just an objectionable and discredited scientific theory.  Teachers are grafting the loony climate-change premise onto lifestyle, religion, and politics in "science" classrooms.  It cannot stand.

California Offers Textbook Case of Political Correctness:  A textbook review process in California has changed or eliminated references to everything from the Founding Fathers to hot dogs, leaving many to charge the state with distorting history in the name of political correctness.

Save The Children (From Global Warming Propaganda).  Green schooling was surreptitiously introduced years ago when teachers began espousing benign environmental distractions like "Earth Day."  But trendy nontoxic slogans like "reduce, reuse, recycle" eventually opened the door to the destructive propaganda of teaching Al Gore's scientifically-challenged movie in science classes.  Which soon facilitated a California Law mandating unbalanced Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theories be included in public school curricula.  And that paved the way for today's second installment of a malignant little program cleverly crafted to indoctrinate our impressionable youth on a chillingly massive scale.

California State Senate Approves New Global Warming Curriculum.  The bill was controversial in the Senate because it simply requires "climate change" to be taught, without requiring balance between the positions of alarmists and skeptics.  "I find it disturbing that this mandate to teach this theory is not accompanied by a requirement that the discussion be science-based and include a critical analysis of all sides of the subject," state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), said during the Senate debate, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

Letters from Sixth Grade Students Reveal Global Warming Indoctrination.  If you doubt some teachers are trying to brainwash schoolchildren with global warming alarmism, take a look inside the sixth grade classroom of teacher Michael Steria at David A. Brown Middle School in Wildomar, California.  Twenty-five sixth graders teamed up to write eight letters to The Heartland Institute describing what they had been taught about global warming.  Steria sent the letters to the institute in March.

Bill would require California's science curriculum to cover climate change.  Reading, writing and … global warming?  A Silicon Valley lawmaker is gaining momentum with a bill that would require "climate change" to be among the science topics that all California public school students are taught.  The measure, by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would mandate that future science textbooks approved for California public schools include climate change.

Fairy Tales Don't Come True.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled recently that parents had no right to know about a very graphic sex survey given out to elementary school students in California.  In fact, the court said that parents have no right to claim sole responsibility for their children's sex education. ... Schools often give information without parental notice about multiple access points to enter such behavior through "gay" community groups, homosexual school clubs, local health clinics, Internet chat rooms, and politically correct youth organizations and clubs.

Gay Curriculum Proposal Riles Elementary School Parents.  A group of parents in a California school district say they are being bullied by school administrators into accepting a new curriculum that addresses bullying, respect and acceptance — and that includes compulsory lessons about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community that will be taught to children as young as 5 years old.

California Elementary School Parents Blindsided by Homosexual "Coming Out Day".  Parents of students attending an elementary school in Hayward, California, are in a frenzy after learning the school allegedly made no effort to inform them their children were to participate in today's homosexual "Coming Out Day" school event, reports the Pacific Justice Institute ... .

The California homosexual activists' assault on schoolchildren:  On May 11, the California State Senate passed Senate Bill 1437.  The bill demands "no teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that reflects adversely upon persons because of their … gender … [or] sexual orientation." ... If a boy decides to come to school in a dress, teachers may not even request that he change clothes.

Pinch Me If I Am Paranoid.  A bill is close to passing in California that would make all government (public) schools mandate a "positive" portrayal of homosexuality in their textbooks and literature.  However, many of these same schools will not allow the mention of the word Christmas or Easter for fear that it will in some way "indoctrinate" the kids into Christianity.

25 Reasons To Dislike Liberals.  [#2]  Because the closest thing to Sodom and Gomorrah in the modern world is San Francisco and Berkeley.

Under the radar:  Gay-rights groups are quietly but aggressively advancing their agenda.  While the news media focused on immigration last week, California Democrats focused on completing the transmutation of public-school social science curricula into a punctuated series of pro-homosexuality tracts.

Bill Would Force Schools to Support Homosexuality.  Gender-neutral bathrooms in public schools?  Girls running for prom king?  Those are just a few of the possibilities which could result if the California Legislature passes SB 1437 which would force schools to adopt an exclusively pro-homosexual message.

"There Will Be No Apology".  Those are the words of the mother of Matt Dariano, one of the five kids at Live Oak High School in the San Francisco Bay Area who were sent home for having the temerity to wear American flag tee shirts on the "Mexican heritage day" of Cinco de Mayo.  "There will not be an apology," Mrs. Dariano told the camera crew outside the school.

California Students Sent Home for Wearing U.S. Flags on Cinco de Mayo.  Administrators at a California high school sent five students home on Wednesday [5/5/2010] after they refused to remove their American flag T-shirts and bandannas — garments the school officials deemed "incendiary" on Cinco de Mayo.

Calif. School Bans American Flag Clothing For Non-Existent Mexican Holiday?  For the Gilroy Dispatch Lindsay Bryant reports that five young students of Live Oak High School in Gillroy, California were kicked out of school on Cinco de Mayo because they dared to wear the venerable American colors while all the Mexican students were wearing the Green, White and Red colors of the Mexican flag.  According to Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez these evil American children were "starting a fight."


Other bad ideas:

Gov. Brown gives green light to driverless cars in California.  California took the fast lane to the future on Tuesday [9/25/2012] when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that lets self-driving cars onto public roads.  Brown rode to the signing ceremony at Google Inc headquarters in the passenger seat of a vehicle that steered itself, a Prius modified by Google.

Genetically modified foods: Why does California insist on finding a problem where nobody else does?  On the state's ballot in November, Californians will be voting on Proposition 37 — an initiative that would require all foods produced with or from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to carry mandatory warning labels.  Oh, sure, it all sounds well and good and simple enough, except that such a measure would impose significant expenses on (often small) businesses; would cost the way-past-completely-broke Californian government up to over a million dollars to regulate the practice; and, oh yeah — is completely pointless because there is not a single documented case of "adverse health consequences" due to genetically engineered foods.

California Caves to Illegals.  It appears that in California, those who are here illegally get the privileges.  Rules and laws that legal residents had to abide by have been changed to accommodate those here illegally.  What was once fair and equitable for legal California residents is now not acceptable for illegal immigrants.

Popular California Flag Mural Deemed Graffiti, Painted Over.  California residents are up in arms that a flag mural — paying homage to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — was painted over after the state ruled it was graffiti.

Organic Failure.  Henry Waxman is at it again.  The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade-climate change bill, which has been called the largest tax bill in history because it would levy a national tax on energy use, narrowly passed the House in late June and is still pending in the Senate, but the California Democrat has already moved on to his next bad idea:  trying to save the nation's populace by making farmlands sterile, so that only organic foods can be grown.

Obama has little to show for '09.  California, as every Californian will tell you, is the origin of the fads and fancies that inevitably spread across the continent; San Francisco is where the Pied Piper of Southside Chicago might have led the cult to a suitable jumping-off place.  This is where the true believers of the left exude the most noxious fumes.

California prison case goes to Supreme Court.  Agreeing to hear an appeal from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday [6/14/2010] it will decide whether the state can be forced to release 46,000 inmates — more than one-fourth of its prison population — to relieve overcrowding.  The justices said they would hear the case in the fall and rule early next year.

Where does California put 33,000 released inmates?  Hasn't California suffered enough?  Apparently not, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.  In the name of reducing prison overcrowding and preserving a "standard of decency," the high court this week handed down a decision that could set the stage for something indecent:  the release of tens of thousands of prisoners back into society.

The Factory of Selective Moral Outrage.  Democrats in Congress recently went all-out to try to pass the Dream Act, an amnesty for illegal-alien students willing to enroll — and stay — in college.  Most of those who opposed it were derided as heartless at best, racist at worse.  An insolvent California — still struggling with its $15 billion budget shortfall — is trying to advance its own version of the bill that would contravene federal immigration law and cost millions of dollars.  At around the same time, the state has announced plans to release about 40,000 prison inmates due to a shortage of funds needed to address overcrowding.  Highly taxed Californians can borrow money to send illegal aliens to school, but not to keep felons in prison.

California License Plates May Go Digital.  California drivers may soon come bumper to bumper with the latest product of the digital age:  ad-blaring license plates.  State lawmakers are considering a bill allowing the state to begin researching the use of electronic license plates for vehicles.  The device would mimic a standard license plate when the vehicle is moving but would switch to digital messages when it is stopped for more than four seconds in traffic or at a red light.

The Editor says...
Isn't California where all those "urban blight" activists live, who hate to see advertising all over the landscape?  The people who hate to see others stoop to the level of "anything for a buck"?  Apparently it's okay for big government to be so mercenary.  It sounds as if the advertising is going to be on every license plate, and the products or services thus promoted will be chosen by the state.  What if the state decides to advertise something the driver finds repugnant?  How will the driver know?

Suffer These Crimes in Oakland?  Don't Call the Cops  Oakland's police chief is making some dire claims about what his force will and will not respond to if layoffs go as planned.  Chief Anthony Batts listed exactly 44 situations that his officers will no longer respond to and they include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.  He says if you live and Oakland and one of the above happens to you, you need to let police know on-line.

But What If They Take My Computer?  Facing a budget shortfall, the city of Oakland is about to lay off 80 police officers.  This is hardly a wallop they can shrug off in a city where the murder rate is more than three times the national average.  So, in the event that last-minute negotiations fail to avert these layoffs, citizens in Oakland are being informed that if they should suffer any of the misfortunes on a list of 44 situations that once brought a police response, no officer will come to their door to take a report, much less try to do something about it.  Reports about incidents on the list will have to be made online, police say.  Given that burglary and theft are on the list, one must wonder what options will be available to a man whose computer is stolen.


Other commentary on California's decline:

California, There It Went.  Flying over Los Angeles on an annual summer visit, I peer through smog so thick that the coastline is hard to see.  It is only three in the afternoon, but the cars are backed up for miles on the freeways, which remain largely in the same state of disrepair that greeted me last year.  The state is literally deteriorating before my eyes.

Waving California goodbye.  More people are moving out of the state than are moving in.  It's the economy, of course, especially housing costs.

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Updated December 20, 2024.

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