Tag: california

Gov. Newsom’s Revised Budget Still Doesn’t Add Up

Gov. Gavin Newsom raised his estimate of the state’s budget deficit from $38 billion in his January budget proposal to $44.9 billion in his May Revision released May 10. The plan would spend $187 billion from the general fund for fiscal year 2024–25, which begins on July 1. The California Constitution mandates the budget must be passed by lawmakers by June 15.

But the $44.9 billion immediately is reduced by $17.3 billion, the revised budget explains, thanks to a deal he made a month ago with Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and Senate President pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg).

That leaves $27.6 billion. We’ll have to wait until the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office releases its own analysis next week to get a more accurate picture. In February, the analyst’s office pegged the deficit at $73 billion. Whatever the actual enormity of the deficit, it’s a shocking flip from the $97 trillion surplus two years ago.

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Liberal Cesspol: California’s Far-left District Attorneys Reportedly Won’t Prosecute Any Child Predator They Turn In

In a recent viral sting operation by a group of prominent YouTubers, including Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, an alarming allegation has surfaced that California’s District Attorneys will not prosecute individuals caught in these stings, despite clear evidence of predatory behavior towards minors.

Last Tuesday, the online series “Catching Child Predators,” led by Zdorovetskiy along with DJ Deorro and Bradley Martyn, released a disturbing episode where Herschel Weingrod, a veteran Hollywood producer known for his work on ‘1996 Space Jam’, was caught on camera in a compromising situation.

Weingrod, who introduced himself as “Boris,” was filmed at a local restaurant with a young girl who, according to him, claimed to be 23 based on her dating profile. However, during the confrontation, it was revealed she had informed him of her actual underage status.

The confrontation escalated as Weingrod attempted to dismiss the severity of his actions, claiming that talking and flirting with a minor was “not a big deal.” The situation intensified when Weingrod tried to leave the scene, only to be pursued by Zdorovetskiy and Martyn, who resorted to firing pink and blue gunpowder cannons.

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Teens forced out of exclusive California Catholic school for doing ‘blackface’ are awarded $1 million after proving it was green acne medication

Two California teens who were forced to withdraw from an elite Catholic high school over accusations of blackface have been awarded $1 million and tuition reimbursement.

A Santa Clara County jury sided with the teens, identified by the initials A.H. and H.H., on two claims concerning breach of oral contract and lack of due process.

The boys sued Saint Francis High School in August 2020 after photos circulated of them sporting acne treatment masks.

The controversy started when the boys were accused of performing blackface and were ultimately pressured into withdrawing from the prestigious Mountain View school.

‘It was quite clear the jury believed these were innocent face masks,’ attorney Krista Baughman told the San Francisco Chronicle after Monday’s judgement.

‘They are young kids, their internet trail is going to haunt them for the next 60 years. Now they don’t have to worry about that.’

The teens lost on three other claims alleging breach of contract, defamation and a violation of free speech.

The plaintiffs initially sought $20 million when they filed suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court, three years after they and a friend – who attended another school and was not included in the lawsuit – snapped a selfie while donning acne treatment masks.

In the offending photo, the boys’ faces were covered in dark green medication. A photo taken a day earlier revealed that they had tried on white face masks as well. 

According to documents reviewed by DailyMail.com, another SFHS student obtained a copy of the photograph from a friend’s Spotify account and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020.

The photo resurfaced on the same day recent SFHS graduates created a meme pertaining to the murder of George Floyd, which sparked its own outrage and controversy.

The student insinuated that the teens were using ‘blackface’ and deemed the photo ‘another example’ of racist SFHS students, before urging everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community.

On June 4, 2020, Dean of Students Ray Hisatake called the boys’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph.

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California’s Catastrophic Minimum-Wage Surge: A Recipe for Disaster Unfolds

The Golden State stubbornly disregards warning signs surrounding the wage hike policies advocated by progressive unions.

According to National Review, California recently rolled out a groundbreaking $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers. However, labor unions, and their radical activist allies, are now pushing hard to expand this wage rate into other industries.

In examining California’s wage policies, it becomes obvious that the likely outcomes have a predictable path. One notable case study highlights the consequences of a near-$20 minimum-wage model, which unfolded within the state’s purview.

In 2021, Unite Here Local 11, a prominent labor organization situated in Los Angeles, orchestrated a series of actions that resulted in a $17.64 minimum wage for hotel employees within West Hollywood. This wage floor represented the highest across the nation. 

Not content with this achievement, the union swiftly expanded its advocacy efforts towards larger targets. These efforts eventually resulted in the adoption of this wage standard across all sectors within the municipality.

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California Cops Locked an Innocent Man in a Sex Offender Unit for 3 Days

In 2021, Whittier, California, police arrested Victor Manuel Martinez Wario on an outstanding warrant related to a 2012 child molestation conviction. The only problem? Police had arrested the wrong person. However, despite Wario frequently telling police he didn’t have any warrants out for his arrest, they didn’t bother to check—leaving Wario imprisoned for five days. 

Now, Wario is suing, claiming that police negligence amounted to a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. The officer’s actions caused Wario to suffer “emotional and mental trauma,” according to the suit. “He also missed time at work, and was unable to provide care to his disabled fiancée.”

In March 2021, Wario was pulled over by several Whittier police officers for a minor traffic violation. During the stop, police mistakenly found that he had an active warrant out for his arrest. Even though Wario denied that he had any active warrants, he was still arrested and booked into a nearby jail.

According to the lawsuit, during the booking process, police told Wario that the warrant originated from Wario’s failure to register as a sex offender and “check in with the probation department” after a 2012 conviction for child molestation. Wario again “adamantly told them that they had the wrong person,” the complaint reads. But, again, no one decided to double-check that the police had arrested the correct person.

Two days later, Wario was transferred to another jail. This time, “he was assigned special housing for custodies with child molestation cases, given a specially colored jumpsuit indicating his status as a sex offender, and a wristband was placed on his wrist also showing that his case involved child molestation,” the suit reads. “Because of his perceived status as a convicted child molester, Mr. Wario was in serious jeopardy of being attacked by fellow inmates.”

That day, he was taken to be arraigned. During a brief discussion with his attorney, he again insisted that he was the wrong person. However, when the attorney relayed this to Judge Mary Lou Villar, she set a $30,000 bail and refused to release Wario.  

“She ordered a fingerprints expert to appear in court the following week to take his fingerprints and verify his identity,” the suit reads. 

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Race to the Bottom: The State Competing with California to be the ‘Left’s Progressive Utopia’

When hearing about the woes of blue states, names like California and New York immediately come to mind, but we may need to add a new name to the list of places Democratic officials are ruining: Illinois.

The Daily Caller reported on Thursday that new data indicates the state our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, once called home is in a downward spiral.

While California is still leading the nation with the worst unemployment rate in the country at 5.3 percent, Illionois is not far behind in fifth with 4.8 percent.

The comparisons don’t stop there. With the 8th highest tax burden and high crime rates, many Illinoisans are opting to simply leave the state for greener pastures — as Californians have been doing.

Bryce Hill, director of fiscal and economic research at the Illinois Policy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “The Census Bureau has reported that residents are leaving the state en masse to the tune of hundreds of thousands every single year, so much so that the state’s population has actually been declining for the past 10 years.”

As of July 2023, Illinois population was 12,549,689. That number was down 32,826 from 2022. Census data showed this fall has been steady, as the population as of April 1, 2020, was 12,813,469.

Heartland Institute Senior Fellow S.T. Karnick cited a few reasons for this decline. “Opinion polls cite high taxes as the top reason people want to leave Illinois, with crime and safety second. Illinois has the fourth-most regulations among the 50 states, which raises prices and kills jobs.”

Violent crime in Chicago went up 18 percent in 2023 compared to ten years prior, with arrests dropping 33 percent over the same time.

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California’s Perpetual Drought Is Manmade And Intentional

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) last week released its next five-year plan for the State Water Project—Update 2023. After years of meetings, California’s premier water agency has decided to focus on “three intersecting themes: addressing climate urgency, strengthening watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.”

Water supplies for California’s 40 million people and the planet’s most productive agriculture have third- to fifth-level priority.

There is nothing new here, except to publicly admit to betraying the public trust. Really?

Over several decades, the public has been deceived into voting for water bonds that have little new water in them—phony promises to build new water storage and aqueducts. About 12 percent of bond funds are spent on new water storage. The rest of the bond funds have been squandered on scores of local and special-interest environmental projects, e.g., tearing down four Klamath-area dams—killing fish to save them—and opposing substantial new water projects, e.g., raising Shasta Dam and building Auburn Dam.

Further, by California law, water must be equitably distributed, pumped “equally”—half to human beings (if you count agriculture) and half to fish (the water-short Pacific Ocean, 187 quadrillion gallons). During the big rains of 2024, about 90 percent of the water was flushed to the Pacific through the gills of perhaps a half dozen delta smelt.

Farmers call it a manmade drought.

The politicos halted humans “taking” water, “diverting” it, from fish. Under the U.S. Constitution, the taking of private property requires just compensation—not mass confiscation. Water rights are a complex species of property.

“Our findings show that atmospheric river activity exceeds what has occurred since instrumental record keeping began,” said Clarke Knight, a U.S. Geological Survey research geographer.

Still, DWR scheduled 2024 meetings of the Drought Resilience Interagency & Partners (DRIP) Collaborative for April, July, and October.

The DRIP fantasy continues despite a deluge of 2024 water from two winters of giant “rivers in the sky” dumping excesses of water and creating massive floods and landslides.

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UCLA Med School Launches Review Of ‘Health Equity’ Course But Warns That Whistleblowers Could Be Disciplined

The University of California, Los Angeles medical school is launching a probe of its controversial “health equity” class—and warning whistleblowers they could be punished if any more information leaks about it.

The dean of the medical school, Steven Dubinett, announced Friday that his office had formed a task force to review all first-year courses, including “Structural Racism and Health Equity,” after the Washington Free Beacon published materials from the mandatory class. But the school isn’t happy about having its hand forced.

In an email to students and faculty, Dubinett implied that the leaks were an “attempt to intimidate” the medical school and hinted that future leakers could face discipline—especially if they record lectures. 

“Recording class sessions is not permitted without express consent from the instructor and class participants,” Dubinett wrote. That warning appears to be a reference to an earlier incident in which a guest lecturer, Lisa Gray Garcia, led the required course in chants of “Free, Free Palestine” as well as a prayer to “Mamma Earth,” part of which was caught on tape and thrust the course into the national spotlight.  

“Doxxing or publishing, posting or identifying private information of faculty, staff, trainees or students in any public forum, including social media, is contrary to UCLA policy and our core values of mutual respect and inclusion,” Dubinett continued. “Guidelines for overseeing invited guest speakers are being developed that will address adherence to our policies.”

The veiled threats come days after the full syllabus for the course went viral online and sparked outrage from prominent doctors—including former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey Flier—who said it was filled with unscientific claptrap and called for an investigation. Leaked readings claimed that weight loss is a “hopeless endeavor,” described “anti-capitalist politics” as a tenet of “disability justice,” and advocated for abolishing the police. 

The syllabus was designed with input from Shamsher Samra, a professor of emergency medicine who has endorsed “Palestinians’ right to return” and published research on the “health of border abolition.” Though the course initially included an exercise that separated students by race, that lesson was canceled in January after it became the subject of a local civil rights complaint.

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California Senate Puts Selective Service Bill ‘In Suspense’

After hearings on its policy and fiscal implications, the California Senate has deferred action on a bill to automatically register draft-age applicants for driver’s licenses and state IDs with the Selective Service System (SSS) for a possible future military draft, by placing the bill on the Senate Appropriations Committee “suspense file”. This means that unless the Senate Appropriations Committee decides by May 17, 2024, to call up the bill and forward it to the state Senate floor, the bill will be dead.

The Acting Director of the Selective Service System (who had been on the West Coast to swear in a new Washington State Director of Selective Service) and the Deputy Associate SSS Director for Legislative Affairs spent several days in Sacramento lobbying state Senators in support of SB-1081. The Acting SSS Director was the lead witness in support of SB-1081 at the Senate Transportation Committee hearing on April 9th.

The Senate Transportation Committee voted 12-2 (with one Democratic and one Republican member in opposition, and another Democratic member not voting) to send SB-1081 on to the Senate Appropriations Committee, which held its own perfunctory hearing on April 22nd before placing SB-1081 on its “suspense file” by unanimous consent.

In California, bills that would result in significant costs to the state are placed on the “suspense file” to allow fiscal priorities for the state budget to be determined. Decisions as to which bills to call up for further action, and which to allow to die “in suspense”, are typically made behind closed doors by State senate leaders – especially the Senate President pro tem – and the Chair and members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

SB-1081 could be called up from the suspense file and sent to the state Senate floor at any time, but most likely it will be considered along with all the other bills in the suspense file at a “suspense hearing” shortly before the May 17th deadline.

The lobbying visit to Sacramento by the top national officials of the SSS reflects the existential importance of this bill to the attempt by the SSS to rescue the system from failure and save their agency and their own jobs from elimination. Especially since the repeal of laws that used to condition Federal and California financial aid for higher education on draft registration, the SSS depends primarily on state laws like SB-1081 to coerce or trick young men into signing up for a possible future draft when they think they are merely signing up for a driver’s license, without legal counsel and often without realizing what is happening or its potential life-or-death consequences.

California has rejected bills like this at least seven times since 2000, but the Selective Slavery System and supporters of military conscription won’t give up.

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Second California Senate Committee Approves Bill To Legalize Psychedelic Service Centers

A second California Senate committee has approved a bill to legalize psychedelic service centers where adults 21 and older could access psilocybin, MDMA, mescaline and DMT in a supervised environment with trained facilitators.

About a week after an initial panel cleared the legislation, the Senate Public Safety Committee passed the measure from Sen. Scott Wiener (D) in a 3-2 vote on Tuesday. It next heads to the Appropriations Committee.

The “Regulated Therapeutic Access to Psychedelics Act” has been drafted in a way that’s meant to be responsive to concerns voiced by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) last year when he vetoed a broader proposal that included provisions to legalize low-level possession of substances such as psilocybin.

Instead, the new bill that’s now being unveiled would provide regulated access to psychedelics in a facilitated setting, without removing criminal penalties for possession outside of that context. It does not lay out any specific qualifying medical conditions that a person must have in order to access the services.

The measure had already undergone a series of mostly technical amendments before reaching committee. Wiener also agreed to revise the legislation at last week’s hearing to make it so psychedelics facilitators would need to have an existing professional health license, such as those for psychiatrists, social workers, drug and alcohol counselors and nurse practitioners.

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