Tag: california

Dem bill in California would mandate judges to consider race when doling out prison sentences

A Democrat-backed bill making its way through the California Legislature would require judges in the state to consider a convicted criminal’s race when determining how long to sentence them to prison.

Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, the Democratic chair of the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, quietly introduced Bill 852 in February. The Assembly went on to pass the little-known legislation in May, and the measure is currently being considered in the state Senate. 

The bill would add a section to the Penal Code of California requiring courts, whenever they have the authority to determine a prison sentence, to “rectify” alleged racial bias in the criminal justice system by taking into account how historically persecuted minorities are affected differently than others.

“It is the intent of the Legislature to rectify the racial bias that has historically permeated our criminal justice system as documented by the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” the proposed new section to the Penal Code reads. “Whenever the court has discretion to determine the appropriate sentence according to relevant statutes and the sentencing rules of the Judicial Council, the court presiding over a criminal matter shall consider the disparate impact on historically disenfranchised and system-impacted populations.”

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Taxpayers Pony Up for Transit Systems They’ll Never Use

The last time I considered using public transit was in San Francisco last month, where I dreaded the thought of climbing up the long incline from Chinatown to Nob Hill. I decided to make the calorie-burning trek on foot after realizing I needed to pre-purchase my ticket on the touristy cable car. I can’t recall the last time I actually took transit. When is the last time you hopped on a bus or light-rail line to get to work or anywhere at all?

If your answer also is “years ago,” then we’re in good company. The Southern California Association of Governments found the “median” resident of SCAG’s six counties (Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, and Imperial) made zero transit trips in a year. The “average” resident made 35 annual transit trips, which isn’t impressive given I made six trips in my truck and motorcycle yesterday.

SCAG finds only 2 percent of the region’s population uses transit “very frequently” and that’s concentrated among the poorest residents. That’s not to say transit isn’t important. It makes sense in urban centers, for certain commutes (think Metrolink) and, again, as a last resort for people who can’t afford cars. Those SCAG numbers come from 2018—before the pandemic, which caused ridership to plummet. It’s only recovered moderately.

Yet before Monday’s budget deal, transit supporters were predicting doom if Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t agree to bail out these systems. He resisted for months, but finally agreed to a $5.1-billion package that provides additional operating subsidies and construction dollars. That spares transit systems from facing difficult choices regarding which lines to keep operating, which projects to fund and which departments to trim. Perish the thought.

“Like many public transportation systems around the country, some of California’s transit agencies are reeling from pandemic-induced declines in ridership and the risk that federal COVID aid will dry up,” wrote Farhad Manjoo in a New York Times op-ed backing a California bailout. “Transit agencies are preparing to adjust their budgets and services to new travel patterns, but implementing those plans will take time – and in the short term they are pretty strapped.”

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‘Time for a Divorce’: California Reparations Task Force Meeting Gets Heated

A California Reparations Task Force meeting got heated this week when several people began publicly denouncing the United States for its role in slavery, with one even calling for a “divorce.”

The final meeting of the Reparations Task Force in Sacramento occurred a little over a month after the nine-member panel recommended that California state legislators pay black residents of the state up to $1.2 million in reparations for slavery and past discrimination. During the public speaking segment, people did not hold back their opinions. One man, named Reggie Romanie, believed the recommended $1.2 million would never be enough.

“This reparations task force, I appreciate y’all, but you all opened up a whole can of worms. I’m going to tell you this: reparations is about ‘repair.’ To me, I qualify. I’m going to tell you how you repair this,” he said, as reported by Fox News. “First of all, America, from the evidence that they gave us, you’re guilty.”

Referencing the debunked 1619 Project, which made the false claim that America had been founded specifically to protect slavery, Romaine accused the United States of essentially marrying black Americans and now owe them a divorce settlement.

“You kidnapped us! Put a hate crime on us! That’s the first one. Now you came here with all the other atrocities. When you brought us here, you raped our men, women, and kids. So, therefore, you married us!” he said. “Don’t treat us like no cheap piece of meat! So, therefore, our last name’s ‘American!’ So now’s the time for a divorce! What do you get in divorce? You get half the money, half the land, alimony, child support, attorney fees, and everything else! So that’s what we want!”

Don Tamaki, a Japanese-American attorney and member of the task force, said that he sees parallels between the black American fight for reparations and the Japanese-American fight for reparations.

“If it wasn’t for the Black Civil Rights Movement, where would we be?” Tamaki told NBC News. “That whole movement changed the culture a lot. And it changed us. And so it began this movement toward redress and reparations.”

“I don’t think we knew who we were. The term ‘Asian American’ was not coined yet. And we called ourselves ‘Orientals,’ and we just assumed we were second-class citizens,” Tamaki contnued. “What woke us up was Martin Luther King on national television, leading peaceful demonstrators and being sicced on by dogs and being beaten by police with clubs … just to be able to go to a school, just to be able to sit in a restaurant or be in an integrated bus. And that was followed by a more militant call for Black power.”

California state Sen. Steven Bradford, a task force member, said on Thursday that reparations “likely won’t happen with one legislative cycle or two legislative cycles, or one bill,” according to USA Today.

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Remains found in California mountains where actor Julian Sands went missing

Hikers have found human remains in Southern California’s Mount Baldy wilderness, the mountainous area where British-born film actor Julian Sands went missing in January, local authorities said late on Saturday.

The hikers contacted Fontana Station officials at about 10 a.m. on Saturday to report the discovery of the body, which was taken to the coroner’s office for identification, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

Sands was reported missing on Jan. 13 after he had gone hiking alone in the Baldy Bowl area of the San Gabriel Mountains, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Los Angeles.

A search was immediately launched in the area, but ground teams were pulled out a day later due to avalanche risks and poor trail conditions.

The Baldy Bowl, a large sloping area below the crest of the Mount Baldy ski area, is a popular destination for skiers, climbers and backpackers. Sands was believed to be an experienced hiker, officials said at the time of his disappearance.

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Newly Released Emails Show California Dental Director Altered Study To Remove Negative Conclusions on Fluoride

Americans are currently locked in an information war. The methods of this infowar are known as 5th Generation Warfare, and two of the most consequential battlefields are the internet and social media.

In this infowar Americans struggle on a daily basis to make sense of the constantly conflicting narratives streaming from various biased corporate media outlets, as well as the “official” party line spewed out the mouths of the government puppets and lackeys.

Amidst this confusion, Americans are also told that we are living in a period of “anti-science aggression”, a phrase popularized by Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. Hotez is also the author of the upcoming book The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.

According to Hotez, there is a rise of Americans who stubbornly refuse to accept “the science” as dogma and continue to expect scientists and studies to be free of corporate bias and conflicts of interest.

Unfortunately for Hotez, more Americans are questioning the golden calves of “modern science”, including the COVID-19 panic, vaccinations, virology, and water fluoridation

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Men accused of mutilating corpse won’t face trial, a casualty of Antioch police scandal

Contra Costa County prosecutors have dismissed felony charges against two men accused of mutilating a woman’s corpse — the latest case to be fouled by a racist text message scandal that rocked the Antioch Police Department.

Ashton Montalvo and Deangelo Boone were arrested and charged in October 2022 with arson and mutilation after the burned body of Mykaella Sharlman, 25, was found near a hiking trail in Antioch.

Sharlman’s autopsy ruled out homicide, but Montalvo and Boone were charged with setting Sharlman’s body on fire and putting it in a garbage can, according to the Mercury News in San Jose.

Sharlman‘s death was attributed to a fentanyl overdose, according to Bay Area television station KNTV.

In April, the Mercury News reported on an FBI and county prosecutor’s office investigation into the Antioch Police Department that revealed dozens of officers had been sending racist and homophobic messages to one another for years, using anti-Black slurs and other derogatory terms.

The report sent shock waves through the department, with more than 40 officers implicated in the scandal.

The case against Montalvo and Boone “relied heavily” on investigations by several Antioch police officers who were associated with the racist texts, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office said last week in a statement.

The officers were not identified.

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California’s Latest Tax-the-Rich Scheme: Electric Bills Based on Income

Electric power customers typically pay more if they use more. Under a new law, customers of California’s three largest private utilities will be charged a fixed fee based on their incomes, not just how much power they use. The chief motivation behind this scheme is to provide some relief to low-income customers who are being hammered by escalating electricity rates as the Golden State transitions from fossil fuels to wind and solar power.

The average cost of electricity to residential customers in California is now  $0.27 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). The U.S. average is around $0.16 per kWh. The state’s three big private utilities are proposing to the California Public Utilities Commission to add Income Graduated Fixed Charges (IGFCs) to all of their residential rate schedules. The idea is to pay for the various fixed costs, including those associated with connecting customers to their grids, billing, and meter reading. In addition, they want the fixed fee to cover “the costs of wildfire mitigation and vegetation management, reliability improvements, safety and risk management distribution costs, ongoing distribution operations and maintenance, many regulatory balancing accounts, and various programs and policy mandates through its distribution rates.”

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California moves to provide surrogates to gay male couples in the name of ‘fertility equality’

California Bill SB 729 seeks to redefine “infertility” to be a status, as opposed to a medical condition. Changing the definition to “a person’s inability to reproduce either as an individual or with their partner without medical intervention” would classify gay men as infertile. 

The bill, which passed the Senate last month, would require insurance companies to cover in-vitro fertilization procedures. With the change in definition, this would also include forcing the firms to cover surrogacy for gay males. 

Co-author of the bill Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D) said the bill “will ensure that queer couples no longer have to pay more out of pocket to start families than non-queer families.” She continued, “This bill is critical to achieving full-lived equality for LGBTQ+ people, as well as advancing well-rounded and comprehensive health care for all Californians.”

An organization called Men Having Babies boasted that the bill will “remove financial barriers” for gay men who wish to rent a woman’s womb to have a child who has the DNA of one of the males in the relationship. 

The group states on its website, “Central to our fight for more equitable access to parenting options is what we know from our combined experiences: The anguish and yearning that same-sex couples and singles feel due to their inability to reproduce without medical intervention is equal to the anguish of heterosexual couples who suffer from ‘medical infertility.'” 

According to the Free Beacon, the opposition to SB 729 comes from California business and insurance groups who claim that it will raise insurance premiums by more than $330 million a year. Others point to the erosion of the traditional family structure.

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California Bill Would Punish Parents Who Don’t ‘Affirm’ Their Child’s Gender Identity

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. Earlier this week the authors released an updated version that specifically defines “the health, safety, and welfare” of a child to include “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity”—a change that the bill’s opponents worry will open the door to non-affirmation being treated as abuse.

“When you say that gender affirmation is in the child’s best interest for health, safety, and welfare, it takes nothing to say [non-affirmation] is now abuse—because you’re not taking care of the health, safety, and welfare if you’re not affirming them,” said Erin Friday, a San Francisco attorney and co-lead of the parent coalition Our Duty.

The amended bill, known as A.B. 957, is the latest in a slate of legislation to enshrine left-wing gender ideology in California law. State senator Scott Wiener (D.), who coauthored A.B. 957 with Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D.), is simultaneously advancing a separate bill that would require foster parents to promise to “affirm” trans-identifying children. In 2022, he introduced a first-in-the-nation law enshrining California as a “haven” where out-of-state minors can obtain sex changes without their parents’ consent.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R.) declared last year that helping kids get sex changes is child abuse.

Wilson’s spokesman disputed that the latest revision changes much about the bill and noted that A.B. 957 only relates to family law, not criminal law.

“It’s not saying [affirmation] is the most important factor or determining factor,” the spokesman, Taylor Woolfork, said. “It’s one of many factors that the judge should consider while working out a custody agreement.”

Wiener’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

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California Lawmakers Want To Make Tech Companies Subsidize News Media

California lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to make Google and Facebook subsidize traditional media. Legislation from state Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D–Oakland) would require some digital platforms “to remit a journalism usage fee payment…equal to a percentage…of the covered platform’s advertising revenue generated during that month multiplied by the eligible digital journalism provider’s allocation share.”

Essentially, A.B. 886—dubbed the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA)—would make entities like Google and Facebook pay to link and send traffic to media websites, despite the fact that media outlets get as much if not more out of this arrangement.

This sort of “link tax” not only makes no sense but is “actively harmful to the open web” and “based on a ridiculously confused understanding of basically everything,” writes Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick. More:

In short form: if any website does not want to get traffic from Google or Facebook, they have the power to control that by using robots.txt or redirects. It’s easy.

The problem is that they want the traffic. They want it so bad that they hire “search engine optimization” experts to help them get more traffic.

The problem is that they don’t just want the traffic, they also want to get paid for that traffic.

This is backwards in so many ways. It’s basically saying that they should get paid to have other companies send them traffic.

It also breaks the most fundamental concept of the open web — the link — by saying that the government can force some websites to pay for linking to other websites (and, on top of that, force the paying websites to have to host those links, even if they don’t want to).

Everything about this is filthy and corrupt. It’s literally Rep. Buffy Wicks and others in the California legislature saying “we’re forcing companies we dislike to give money to companies we like.”

Under the CJPA’s terms, online platforms would be subject to the link tax if they have at least 50,000,000 monthly active users or subscribers in the U.S. or are owned or controlled “by a person with either…United States net annual sales or a market capitalization greater than five hundred fifty billion dollars ($550,000,000,000), adjusted annually for inflation” or “at least 1,000,000,000 worldwide monthly active users on the online platform.”

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