Tag: california

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.

If you want to pick one bureaucracy in California that epitomizes the ignorance, fanaticism, arrogance, and corruption that plagues that state, look no further than the California Coastal Commission. Ran by an unelected 12-member board, this state agency has the power to stop virtually any activity they wish if it is within five miles of the Pacific Coast or in the ocean within three miles of land. For nearly a half century, along an 840-mile coastline stretching from Oregon to Mexico, the Coastal Commission has been a capricious tyrant.

One of the most consequential examples of the Coastal Commission’s recent abuse of power was their unanimous rejection of a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach in Southern California. This facility would have produced 55,000 acre-feet per year of fresh water from the ocean and had already painstakingly secured permits and approvals from a dizzying array of federal, state, regional, and local agencies. The company attempting to build the plant, Poseidon Water, spent over 20 years and more than $100 million fighting off environmentalist lawsuits and paying for innumerable engineering studies and permit applications. The plant would have been an exemplary model of how to safely desalinate ocean water with minimal environmental impact. But in May 2022, in a 12-0 decision, the California Coastal Commission killed the project.

It is hard to overemphasize the level of abuse and poor judgment this decision represents. Nowhere in the Coastal Commission’s ruling did they demonstrate that this alleged environmental impact would cause irreparable or even significant harm, much less take into account the overall cost versus benefit. Even if a few hundred acres of marine habitat were slightly degraded, such a minor and localized impact would have represented a minute fraction of the coastal habitat under their jurisdiction, in exchange for a permanent solution to the chronic water scarcity threatening hundreds of thousands of people living in nearby coastal cities.

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Third Trump assassination attempt thwarted when armed man arrested outside Coachella rally, sheriff says

A third assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump was thwarted at the last minute Saturday when local cops stopped a man armed with guns and fake passes outside his rally at Coachella Valley, the local sheriff said.

The suspect was caught about a mile from the rally venue with a phony-entry pass, according to police. He was also carrying a loaded shotgun, handgun and high capacity magazine.

“We probably stopped another assassination attempt,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said.

The suspect, identified as Vem Miller, was intercepted by police at a checkpoint about a half-mile from the rally entrance. He was carrying a fake phony press and VIP passes.

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California Democrats Block SpaceX Launches, Citing Elon Musk’s Support For Donald Trump

California officials are actively blocking Elon Musk’s SpaceX from launching rockets in the state because of his support for Donald Trump.

According to The Los Angeles Times, members of the California Coastal Commission, a state agency controlled by Governor Gavin Newsom, made no secret of the fact that their decision was based on Musk’s support for Trump and the Republican Party’s platform.

The report stated:

SpaceX’s plans to launch more rockets from the California coast were rejected by a state commission this week, with some officials citing Elon Musk’s political posts on X and raising concerns about the billionaire’s labor record at his companies.

The plan to increase the number of rocket blasts into space up to 50 a year was rejected by the California Coastal Commission on Thursday despite assurances from Space Force and Air Force officials that they would increase efforts to monitor the effects that rocket launches have on nearby wildlife.

The military also vowed to mitigate the reach of sonic booms that often span across 100 miles of coastline, an issue that has caused controversy. Members of the California Coastal Commission commended Space Force and Air Force representatives for reaching an agreement, but some cited their concerns about Musk, the owner of SpaceX, before rejecting the plan.

Among the issues raised were Musk’s decision to insert himself in the presidential race, his spreading of conspiracy theories, the labor record of his companies and derogatory comments he has made about the transgender community.

“We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” commission Chair Caryl Hart said.

The commission’s decision is also likely a retaliation for Musk’s decision to pull most of the company’s operations out of California.

Back in July, Musk said that the passage of a California law preventing from making rules requiring parental notification if a child identifies as transgender was the “final straw,” and he would be moving the company out of the state.

“This is the final straw,” Musk wrote at the time. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”

“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” he later followed up.

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Kamala Jailed Black Woman For Daughter’s School Absences When Child Had Sickle Cell Anemia

Former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently shined a light on testimony from a California mother who was jailed by Kamala Harris after the woman’s sickle cell anemia-stricken daughter missed too many school days.

During Harris’ time serving as the District Attorney of San Francisco, she decided to punish parents for their kids’ truancy after learning the state was missing out on around one billion dollars in revenue due to the absences.

RFK Jr. explained video of the mother telling her Kamala story is going “absolutely viral” online.

In the viral clip, the mother explained her daughter was in the hospital for 60 days due to her ailment.

The mom, Cheree Peoples, was eventually arrested over her daughter’s 60-day hospital stay despite the fact she had already graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA.

Kennedy said, “Kamala Harris sent police to her house and handcuffed the mother and jailed her. She lost her job, she lost her home. She had to live in hotels thereafter. The police, when they arrested her she said to them, you can see her on the tape. She said, ‘Are you really going to handcuff me?’ She was wearing her pajamas. She was dragged out of bed, handcuffed behind her back. The police said, ‘If you want to complain, complain to Kamala Harris.’”

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Newsom Quietly Bans Voter ID Rules in California

In a controversial move that has intensified the debate over election integrity, California Governor Gavin Newsom has somewhat quietly signed legislation prohibiting local governments from implementing voter identification requirements at polling places. 

The new law directly challenges efforts by some municipalities to enhance election security measures, ZeroHedge reported.

The legislation, spearheaded by Democratic Senator Dave Min of Orange County, specifically targets a voter-approved measure in Huntington Beach that mandated photo identification at polling locations. 

This legislative action marks the latest development in an ongoing conflict between state Democratic leadership and conservative local governments over election administration.

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Life in Kamala’s California

It’s election season, and because California is a one-party state, we don’t see very many campaign ads for Kamala Harris. But ballot initiatives are another story. One hotly contested ballot initiative, Proposition 33, if approved by voters, will enable California’s cities and counties to impose rent control. How the rent control advocates make their case is typical. Greed and oppression against hapless, helpless, innocent victims. But the government is here to help!

Ads in favor of Prop. 33 are masterpieces in emotional imagery. One after another, a diverse collection of beleaguered tenants appear on the television screen, each of them repeating the phrase “The rent’s too high.” Another ad promoting a yes vote on Prop. 33 follows the same pattern, but this time, one after another, a collection of forlorn tenants asks, “Where will I live?” while superimposed on the screen is written, “Average Rent, $2,800.”

In both cases, viewers are advised to “vote for rent control.”

The naked dishonesty of these ads is lost on most Californians. They have been conditioned to believe that high home prices and high monthly rents are the result of price gouging by greedy landlords when in reality there is a housing shortage because the Democratic majority in the state legislature has passed countless laws that make it almost impossible to get permits to build homes. No wonder the median price for a home in California is $904,000.

Vote for Kamala Harris and the machine she represents, and watch this happen to the whole country.

If there were a competitive market for housing in California, such as there still is in most so-called red states, housing would be affordable for middle-income people to rent or buy. But it is government greed and overreach, not only at the state level but in every city and county, that has created the housing shortage.

The same phenomenon occurs with gasoline in California, where more than a third of the price per gallon goes to cover taxes, almost all of them for state programs. But instead of backing off of its regulatory war on refineries and in-state producers, the governor is holding hearings on “price gouging” by the refineries, alleging that they engage in deliberate shutdowns for maintenance in order to create shortages and high prices. Never mind that California’s gasoline price fluctuations track in precise alignment with fluctuations in the price of crude oil.

In every essential sector of California’s economy—starting with the fundamentals of energy, water, food, transportation, and housing—out-of-control government regulations have paralyzed investment and innovation. They have rendered the state unaffordable for low and middle-income households, and in response, the state expanded its aid programs and subsidies.

What has happened in California is going to happen to the entire nation if Kamala Harris is elected president, because she is a quintessential example of someone who is a product of the state’s Democratic political machine. What has happened in California is an alliance of unionized state bureaucrats with politically connected businesses seeking government subsidies. Other special interests also benefit—environmentalist lobbyists, social justice activists, public service NGOs, trial lawyers—but the core relationship is a partnership between a government that serves itself and crony businesses that have the economies of scale to withstand the punitive regulations and thrive on the subsidies.

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Student Wearing Black Paint On Face Isn’t Protected By First Amendment: Judge

A middle school student who wore black paint on his face during a California football game is not protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, according to a federal judge.

The student, dubbed J.A. in court papers, his parents, and his lawyers have not shown that wearing the black paint is expressive conduct shielded by the First Amendment, U.S. District Judge Linda Lopez said in a Sept. 30 ruling.

J.A. said he put on the paint during the game to show team spirit, but that doesn’t meet the bar established in other rulings, including a 2019 decision that found “First Amendment protection is only granted to the act of wearing particular clothing or insignias where circumstances establish that an unmistakable communication is being made,” Lopez wrote.

“Based on the current record, it is not likely that [the] plaintiff can prevail on the merits of his First Amendment claim, nor are there serious questions about it. It ‘is possible to find some kernel of expression in almost every activity a person undertakes,’ such as ‘walking,’ ’meeting one’s friends,‘ or ’coming together to engage in recreational dancing‘ and other sports, ’but such a kernel is not sufficient to bring the activity within the protection of the First Amendment,’” she added later, citing from other rulings.

J.A. was suspended for two days by Muirlands Middle School, which said he was wearing blackface despite the black paint being used often by athletes, and accused him or his friends of uttering racial slurs during the October 2023 game.

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Judge blocks California deepfakes law that sparked Musk-Newsom row

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked a California measure restricting the use of digitally altered political “deepfakes” just two weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law.

The ruling is a blow to a push by the state’s leading Democrats to rein in misleading content on social media ahead of Election Day.

Chris Kohls, known as “Mr Reagan” on X, sued to prevent the state from enforcing the law after posting an AI-generated video of a Harris campaign ad on the social media site. He claimed the video was protected by the First Amendment because it was a parody.

The judge agreed.

“Most of [the law] acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel,” Senior U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez wrote, calling it “a blunt tool hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas.” He carved out an exception for a “not unduly burdensome” portion of the law that requires verbal disclosure of digitally altered content in audio-only recordings.

Theodore Frank, an attorney for Kohls, said in a statement they were “gratified that the district court agreed with our analysis.”

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8 Years After Legalizing Pot, California Will Finally Allow Cannabis Cafés

When he endorsed marijuana legalization in Florida last August, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump emphasized the importance of regulations to protect bystanders from exposure to pot smoke. “We need the State Legislature to responsibly create laws that prohibit the use of [cannabis] in public spaces,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities.” Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), has expressed similar concerns, saying “we haven’t quite figured out how this new regime coexists with not polluting our public spaces.”

Expanding the legal options for cannabis consumption outside the home, as California is finally doing eight years after legalizing recreational use, is one promising way to address such complaints. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year vetoed a bill that would have authorized Amsterdam-style cannabis cafés in California, signed a revised version into law. Assembly Bill 1775 allows dispensaries, with local permission, to sell hot food and nonalcoholic beverages along with marijuana products. Such businesses will also be allowed to host “live musical or other performances,” as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol routinely do.

State law previously allowed on-site consumption at specially licensed pot shops, but their culinary options were limited to prepackaged snacks and drinks. California marijuana merchants hope the new dispensation will help them compete against unlicensed pot dealers who do not have to collect taxes or comply with burdensome state and local regulations. “Cannabis cafés are going to be a huge part of the future of cannabis in our state and help to beat back the illegal drug market,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney (D–San Francisco), the bill’s sponsor.

California’s new flexibility is an important step toward solving a puzzle that was typically overlooked in the early days of legalization: Once people could legally buy marijuana, where could they legally consume it? The main answer was at home, which was not practical for visitors from other states, might not be allowed in rentals, and precluded consumption in many social settings. That gap inspired creative solutions, such as members-only clubs and cannabis-friendly bus tours, that in turn inspired crackdowns by disapproving local authorities.

Since then, early legalizers such as Colorado and Alaska have been gradually coming around, amending their rules to allow cannabis consumption outside of private residences. Some states that legalized marijuana later, such as Massachusetts and Illinois, at least notionally allowed on-site consumption from the beginning. But regulatory approval of specific businesses has been slow, and the options in most places remain few and far between.

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Mayor of California Charter City Defies Newsom’s Ban on Voter ID Laws ‘That Law Does Not Apply to Us’

A California mayor is defiant after Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law in direct response to the city’s attempt to secure elections.

The saga began on March 5, when Huntington Beach voters weighed in and passed ballot measure 1, the Voter ID and Election Rules Amendment.

According to Ballotpedia, the charter amendment authorized the city to require voter identification for elections and allowed infrastructure to support the initiative.

In 2023, then-Mayor Tony Strickland supported the measure in the face of pressure from local and state Democrats seeking to torpedo it.

“Our democracy does not work if people do not have faith in the election results,” Strickland told Voice of OC. “Anytime you can put safeguards in I think it’s important to do so people have faith in our election outcomes.”

Huntington Beach voters passed the measure with 53.4 percent approving the measure and 46.6 percent rejecting it. The increased election security was set to begin in 2026.

After the initiative passed, state legislators were quick to react to Huntington Beach voter’s approval of the measure and moved to crush it entirely.

In April, California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber sued the city over what it called an “unlawful” voter ID amendment.

The two officials said, without evidence, that the measure would hurt the poor, elderly and “people of color.”

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