Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part III

By Rich Kozlovich 

 

Yesterday I posted Part II, and I did what I'm doing a lot more now, and that's linking followup articles as updates at the end of my commentaries in order to make sure the whole story gets told.  But the number of commentaries about this became so large I decided to eliminate those links and use them, and a lot more besides, to create a second piece, a third piece, and at the rate this is going, there will most likely be a fourth piece.    

Last Saturday in, P&D and the Week That Was,  I stated:

As for the L.A. fire disaster, which my first article covers, as this unravels it's really gonna get ugly as these misfits finger point and blame each other, and even some will condemn the Democrat party.  Many I'm sure will try to project their blame on Trump, Republicans, conservatives, etc.  

Well, that's what's happening and it didn't really take much insight to conclude that what was going to happen.   One Democrat Senator claims this is just a preview of what's to come under Trump blaming big oil, global warming.

Okay, supposing that has any resemblance to reality, then one has to ask, why is it happening now? Biden has been President for four years, and the entire administration has breathed the fumes of the fever swamps of global warming activists and have acted accordingly.  If that's so, and it is, then can he explain why this isn't the fault of California Democrats, and the Democrat party and Biden?  

If they really believed climate change is responsible for all of this, and given California's wildfire and wind history they should have known this was a major possibility, so why weren't they prepared?  Where were the firebreaks?  Why wasn't brush cleared out?  Why were the reservoirs empty in spite of record rain fall? Where was the maintenance on the fire hydrants?  Even if they didn't believe in global warming given California's history that should have automatically been standard operating procedure. 

Mad Maxine knows who really is responsible. It's the rich.  The usual leftist meme:  Blame someone else for their failures. Gavin Newsome blames local leaders, and as it turns out....according to Newsome, he's blameless and demands answers, and besides it's really all Donald Trump's fault.  Yet it wasn't the local authorities or Trump who cut $100 Million from California's fire prevention budget in 2024, it wasn't local officials who fought the Trump administration that tried to stop the misdirection of water to alleged save any number of fish species.  It wasn't local officials or Trump who removed four hydroelectric dams that by their very nature were water reservoirs.  It was Newsome. 

Here's the one I really like.  FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell blames global warming....well... they all know the planet isn't warming so they've changed it to climate change.  The department that played politics ( Here and Here), with a history of throwing Americans under the bus, you would think their concerns would be fixing what they're doing that has been so disastrously wrong!  But it isn't, in spite of all that, it's real challenge and concern is disinformation.  (More Here)

They failed miserably to care for hurricane victims in North Carolina, claiming they didn't have sufficient funds to help them, and as it turns out FEMA's resources were going to illegal aliens. (More Here and Here)

 (End of the American Dream)—What we are witnessing in the mountains of North Carolina says a lot about where we are as a nation.  The federal response to Hurricane Helene has been absolutely abysmal, and hardly anyone is really surprised by this because the federal government can’t seem to do anything right these days.  

And it gets worse as this piece shows how politics was paramount with the Biden administration, not duty.   

A clip from a FEMA disaster preparedness meeting has sparked fresh outrage, shedding light on the Biden-Harris administration’s politically motivated handling of disaster response efforts. The footage, recorded in March 2023, shows FEMA Emergency Management Specialist Tyler Atkins prioritizing the needs of LGBTQIA+ communities over broader disaster relief efforts.

So, why am I bringing in all this FEMA stuff?  For the best reason in the world.  It demonstrates a pattern of activity.  A pattern of corruption and stupidity.   FEMA just kicked out 2000 hurricane survivors out of temporary housing into snowstorm and freezing temperatures.  What FEMA was and is doing,  is what what California has been doing.   

The reasons for California's failure to control this fire is nothing more than a demonstration of what the left are doing all over the nation.  Corruption, incompetence, stupidity, politics over duty and responsibility.   The Democrats have handed conservatives a major gift, and this may become a major turning point in American politics.  

The Fire Chief says her diversity push had nothing to do with this disaster.  Okay, I'm willing to accept that if she's willing to accept her incompetence and stupidity played a large role in this disaster.  She was part of the program that caused a lack of resources.  She knew fire hydrants would not work, she knew the reservoirs were dry, or not working, and she was responsible for that failure because her focus was on hiring more women and spending what resources she had on DEI training instead of fire prevention and control.  

California has rewritten the laws to make penalties for crime as painless as possible as a result looting is rampant, and now people are outraged, imagine that, so now there's a recall movement for Karen Bass.   Make no mistake, as Governor DeSantis notes, if Newsom, or for that matter Bass, were Republicans the media would be tearing their heads off.  But have no doubt the people of California and L.A. will elect someone just as worthless as these nitwits.

The people of California, totally supported by a corrupt media, elected Newsome twice and supported him against a recall.  Whether all that was fraudulent or not, he's their guy, and now they have to pay the price.  Schadenfreude.

Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 6:44 AM

Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part II

Barr and Newsome:  Are they guilty of negligent homicide, or depraved indifference?

By Rich Kozlovich

This is from the 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing" given by Ronald Reagan who became Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. 

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream – the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

How could California go from Ronald Reagan to Gavin Newsome and sink into such depravity?  On January 11, 2025 Todd Gregory and Erik Gregory posted this article, Newsom, Bass guilty of negligent homicide, outlining in the article the monstrous history of socialist tyrants.  Socialism is the mother philosophy of fascism, and communism, it's children, two sides of the same coin, along with all the other ism manifestations, such as environmentalism.  All of which are misanthropic. 

"Negligent homicide is a criminal charge brought against a person who, through criminal negligence, allows another person to die".

"Depraved indifference is a state of mind in which someone acts with a reckless disregard for human life and the value of human life.  In the United States, depraved indifference is a legal term that can be used to describe a type of murder known as depraved-heart murder. Depraved-heart murder occurs when someone acts with depraved indifference to human life and their actions result in death, even if they didn't intend to kill."

 

He went on to discuss the monstrous horrors Mao imposed on the people of China, including outright murders and planned mass starvation, and his brand of DEI where farmers were told they were going to be surgeons and surgeons were forced to be farmers.  

California is America's Maoist China, as the authors go on to say:

In modern America, the closest thing to Mao’s and Obama’s progressive Utopia is to be found in the sad, violent, debauched state of California.,...How can California’s voters continue to vote for the likes of DEI mayor Karen Bass, a dyed-in-the-wool racist who idolized Fidel Castro and shrugged off warnings of imminent fire danger in Los Angeles in order to go party in West Africa on the taxpayers’ dime? ..........

Newsom’s decidedly unscientific fantasy about apocalyptic anthropogenic global warming..... the smelt fish lives while people die in preventable, government-caused wildfires......because Gavin Newsom keeps flushing trillions of gallons of rainwater out to sea rather than building up and maintaining California’s reservoirs to fight fires

The articles goes on to make what I think is a really cogent observation asking:

What about the idealistic if misguided waitress in South Central LA who donated a hard-earned $50 to the Kamala Harris campaign, only to see Kamala give that money to billionaire Oprah Winfrey or other celebrities from the progressive Überklasse?  Is there some cognitive dissonance for the waitress, or will she mindlessly vote for Karen Bass for mayor again, and Kamala for governor in 2026?

These are radical leftists who are directly responsible for billions of dollars in damage and the death of over a dozen people.  I can only image how horrible those deaths must have been.   

Will all this cause Californians change the views and habits? I don't think so, but the rest of the nation is watching, and it seems clear Americas are finding it inconceivable how anyone in a leadership position can be so incompetent, so stupid, so vile, and so self serving as these nitwits in California have been.  This disaster could very well become a major turning point in American politics.  This drives home the reality of what leftism is and has always has been; irrational, misanthropic, and morally defective.

So, are they guilty of negligent homicide or depraved indifference?  They're guilty of something that merits punishment, and which ever carries the most punishment gets my vote.  Gavin Newsom must be held accountable, A mere resignation is not enough.

One more thing.  Has anyone  seen an explanation as to why Mayor Barr was in Africa in the first place, and was she there on the public's dime?    

This isn't just California, this is leftism, this is the insanity of the Democrat party in America. 

Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 1:29 AM

Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part I

By Rich Kozlovich

It appears Hollywood has received a "warm" welcome to the world, the world they helped to create, one they lovingly embraced, the secular religious world of leftism.  Everywhere else that embrace represented disaster, and we have over 235 years of history to prove it.  No lights in Cuba, no water in L.A. and after sixty years of communist control of Cuba a third of their houses are in ruins, and they've supported all of this insanity everywhere.   So, yet they're not all warm and happy? 

Instead they're outraged, outraged I tell you, ranting and demanding the resignation of these people in charge in California (Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here,) And these are the same kind of nitwits Hollywood wants running the nation.  Imagine that!  

And just because it's their ox that's being gored, or in this case their houses being destroyed with all the things they treasure, they're outraged.  Remarkable.  Well,  I say.... schadenfreude!  They brought this on themselves, but this will help prevent this from being brought on the nation. I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.

Will Hollywood, and California abandon their leftist dipsticks, and turn MAGA? Nah, I don't think so because there's always a lunatic like Jim Jarmusch who knows those really responsible are ‘climate deniers’, i.e., conservatives, whites, along with traditional Christians and Jews, and it wouldn't be long before the invertebrates in Hollywood and the rest of the leftist nutrolls would follow suit.   Bernie Sanders, who thought the Soviet Union was paradise, also claims global warming is the cause, but scientists are finally bucking this mass scientific hysterical fraud say, climate change isn't the cause.   

But, hey, c'mon man, we really know who's at fault.   It's the Jews.  Radical Left-Wing Code Pink Links California Wildfires to Gaza Conflict.  What would these poor insane leftists do if there were no Jews to blame for their failures? 

Believe it or not, there is an upside to this, and perhaps we should all stop picking on these politicians and officials in California.  They’ve provided an incredibly important service to the nation, and the world. So, let me explain.

Let's take a look at the official incompetence of the unelected leadership.

1. L.A. Fire Captain: Some Supplies Aren’t Designed for Firefighting
2. Firetrucks Use Garden Hoses From Residential Homes to Fill Up Water Tanks as Hydrants Run Dry (VIDEO)
3. Environmentalism-Obsessed LA Doesn't Have Enough Water to Fight Fire Effectively
4. LA Fire Chief Warned Budget Cuts Would Impact Responses to Major Emergencies Weeks Before Fires
5. Years Before LA Inferno, Commiefornia’s Fire and Water Management Policies Raised Fears of Catastrophe
6. Last Year a Fireman Told Joe Rogan That With the Right Wind and Fire, LA Would Burn to the Ground [VIDEO]
7. Firestorm of incompetence in Los Angeles: Water company admits their big reservoir to fight fires was bone dry 
8. Marlow: LAFD Prioritizes Diversity over Preparedness…
9. L.A. Officials Complain There Aren’t Enough Firefighters – After Firing Hundreds Who Refused to Take COVID Vaccine

Official incompetence and stupidity was universal, and on going, and in spite of all the history and warnings about California's fires and "devil wind storms", stupidity was embraced as wisdom.... an all too common thread for leftists. 

For years there’s been a lot of rhetoric back and forth between conservatives and leftists, but conservatives no longer need to argue.  California has in so many ways provided proof leftism, represented by Democrats and RINO’s in America, is a failed secular religion ruled by historically ignorant, emotion mongering brainless nitwits, incompetent fools, and corrupt misfits.  See, definition does lead to clarity!

Now a look at the incompetence level by the elected officials.

1. LA Mayor Karen Bass Was MIA in Africa While Her City Burned
2. Maybe That's Why Mayor Karen Bass Kept Her Mouth Shut About Her Absence in Handling the LA County Fires 
3.  Dem Rep. Sherman: ‘Political’ to Blame L.A. Fire Budget Cuts for Impacts of Fire
4. Newsom on Water Situation: ‘Local Folks Are Trying to Figure That Out’
5.  Palisades Fire Incinerates Future Career of Mayor Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Aspirations 
6. Watch: Gavin Newsom Thanks L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Away in Africa, for Help by Phone During Fire 
7. 'Never enough diversity': Watch as L.A. Fire Department spent years pushing super-woke policies
8.  No Water, No Mayor, But Plenty Of Diversity
9.  MADDENING: Watch Adam Carolla Explain How He Applied to be a Los Angeles Firefighter But Was Turned Away for Being a White Male (VIDEO)

Amerian Thinker puts out a Weekly Digest, and Andrea Widburg made some extermely cogent observations:

The Democrat politicians they trusted to protect them from reality’s consequences failed. Obsessed with social justice, climate change, DEI, CRT, LGBTQ+, ..... Gavin Newsom cut the fire remediation budget, although he did make free medical care available for illegal aliens.........

Mayor Karen Bass (a Maoist who once believed in violently overthrowing the American government) found money for a trip to Ghana after cutting the fire department budget.  As for the fire department itself........ The fire chief, Kristina Crowley, believed that her priority as chief wasn’t dealing with fires; it was getting more women on the force......Kristine Larson, the “Equity Bureau” chief, had tough words for men foolish enough to find themselves physically incapacitated during a fire with only women firefighters available to help out: 

“He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”

What about the California Republicans?  From what my conservative friends from California involved in CAGOP say (who are not on the leadership's happy list) the party leadership is filled with RINO's and act just as corruptly as Democrats to hold on to power. They share in this fiasco just as sure night follows day. If what the author is asking for is going to happen, there would have to be a massive revolt in the CAGOP. We'll see, but given what they've tolerated, their anti-conservative biases, along with their TDS issues, I'm inclined to think holding your breath until that happens really isn't a very good idea.

So, back to my point about thanking California, and the reason why we need to thank Californians, even the dead ones, for continuing to vote  for these misfits.  We can now assuredly say if California is doing something they think is really great, we know it's really a bad idea.  So, now anyone choosing to do the opposite to what they're doing in California can be confident they're making the correct decision.   That's priceless, and it's incontestable history!  So, from now on all conservatives have to say to ranting leftists is, “tell me about the water in L.A".

Thank you California, and keep up the good work!  I thank you, the nation thanks you, and the delta smelt thank you also. 

Update:  

•  L.A. Descends Into Chaos as Looters Exploit Wildfires
•  National Guard deploys to stop looters.
•  Newsom, Bass guilty of negligent homicide 

Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 12:24 AM

Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Investigates Bag Full of Ballots Found In California Mountains

By Anthony Scott November 12, 2022 

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters alongside the United States Postal Service is investigating a large bag full of ballots found in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ballots were found inside a deep ravine by a woman who was riding her motorcycle.  Julie Neiman the woman who spotted the ballots told KSBW: “They were trying to make it look like people wouldn’t find them. That’s the way I saw it. They were dumped over the edge of the road down this deep ravine. It goes pretty far and it’s very steep.”............ “How? How did it get from the mailbox to Santa Cruz?”.......To Read More...

 

Save California, Ban Environmentalists

Hold the straws, legalize the rats.

September 9, 2019 Daniel Greenfield 

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............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. It’s probably a good thing then that receipts don’t go inside baby bottles. Or inside babies...................Perhaps Ting ought to consider raising awareness about the 16,000 complaints of filth and waste in his own city. The human waste spread by his constituents is a lot more toxic than paper receipts. The same Democrats who shrug at a hepatitis outbreak gasp at the toxicity of store receipts..................

Nobody in Santa Monica, Allen’s home turf, has actually died of plastic poisoning. Instead, its homeless population is dying of drugs and alcohol, meth, PCP, and a beating with a bolt cutter by Ramon Escobar.............And, if you’re an environmentalist, people dying of preventable diseases is good for the environment,...........Killing babies is the only thing that can’t be banned in California...............To Read More....


My Take - The Little Black Book of Communism claims the socialist monsters of the 20th century killed 100 million innocent people, and that started in 1917.  It's estimated the environmental movement, which really got started in the 60's, killed 100 million people from malaria with the ban on DDT alone, and that's only in the 20th century.  That doesn't count all the other preventable diseases DDT and all the other pesticides they've managed to have removed from the market.  When you examine all the position taken by environmentalists you find the death toll keeps climbing. 
To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.

Shakedown Artists: How Activists, Lawyers Collude to Threaten Science

By Special to ACSH — April 11, 2019  @ The American Council on Science and Health

 California is a trendsetter.

It’s home to world-class wine, championship basketball teams, beautiful weather, and legendary cities like San Francisco. But my home state, sadly, is also a trendsetter when it comes to wrongheaded public health policy. There’s no better example of this than Proposition 65, a law that has cost California businesses close to $300 million as of 2016.

Originally approved by voters in 1986, the law empowers the state government to regulate the use of chemicals, over 800 and counting, that it deems toxic to human health and the environment. Scientific shortcomings aside, the language of Prop. 65 has exposed California’s businesses to an unending onslaught of legal trouble, because anybody can “enforce” the law by filing suit against an allegedly offending business.

The problem, though, isn’t just a handful of kooky anti-science groups and “bounty hunter” environmental lawyers. Instead, Prop. 65 has created a self-perpetuating industrial complex of attorneys, consultants, and activists on both sides of the debate who profit at the expense of California businesses and consumers.

The Activist-Legal Complex

The demand for legal and compliance services around the law is so extensive that Prop. 65 Clearinghouse hosts an annual conference at which “stakeholders” keep current on California’s ever-evolving chemical regulations and strategize for the coming year. It’s like an industry trade show for ambulance chasers.

A quick glance at the conference’s list of sponsors confirms this accusation: an odd mix of powerful defense law firms, trade associations, and a nonprofit group that files Prop. 65 lawsuits as a means of fundraising. You may wonder why firms that defend businesses in Prop. 65 lawsuits are co-sponsoring events with an organization that files those lawsuits in the first place. Well, it’s all part of the arrangement.

Businesses sued under Prop. 65 have very few options when mounting a defense. They can fight the lawsuit if they have attorneys, but the associated legal fees are usually unmanageable. The penalty for violating Prop. 65 is $2,500 for every day the business is out of compliance. Then, of course, the company has to pay their attorneys, as well as the plaintiff’s attorneys if they lose. Add to that the wasted time and lost productivity of a protracted legal battle, and many businesses conclude that fighting back isn’t a realistic option.

As a result, companies often choose a different strategy. They join a trade group in which their entire industry is represented by a large defense firm that specializes in Prop. 65 lawsuits, like the ones sponsoring the conference mentioned above. These “opt-in defendants” pay a retainer to the defense firm and a smaller, negotiated penalty for violating Prop. 65, and the settlement remains open to other businesses in the industry who may be sued under Prop. 65 in the future.

Basically, it’s an insurance racket.

As one law firm says, “Defense attorneys get hired, recruit a lot of other defendants, settle the case and collect fees from everyone involved.” In regard to the opt-in settlements, the firm notes, “Defense counsel and plaintiff's counsel effectively teamed up against the interests of any new defendant.” Others, including a former California Attorney General, have caught on to this pattern of collusion in Prop. 65 lawsuits.

The Anti-Chemical Crusaders

None of this would be possible without the help of a radical environmentalist community that provides a “science” foundation for this activist-legal complex. The mission of the Center for Environmental Health (CEH), a nonprofit with a pleasant sounding name, is to “protect people from toxic chemicals … and to demand and support business practices that are safe for human health and the environment.” That’s a lovely sentiment, but in practice, it means that CEH sues any California business that it can get away with.

The group’s “legal action” webpage lists just a few examples of the anti-science quackery it promotes in court. CEH opposes the use of electronic cigarettes, fracking, and so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA. Not only is there no science to justify the group’s zealous legal crusades, the research we do have tells us that the technologies CEH attacks have benefited all of us.

Electronic cigarettes, for example, are 95 percent safer than tobacco, according to the best evidence available. On a similar note, the EPA says that fracking has minimal environmental impacts, and the natural gas it yields is a relatively clean source of energy since it releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than other fossil fuels. BPA, too, has an impressive track record. It is used in the production of vitally important medical devices, food storage containers, eyeglasses, and even DVDs. When used appropriately, research shows that it has no detrimental effect on human health.

California’s legal system is a toxic mess. It was designed this way in order for activists and lawyers to scare consumers and extract money from businesses. If scientists and pro-science activists don’t speak up, activists and lawyers will hijack science in California. That’s a trend the rest of the country can do without.

Cameron J. English is Senior Agricultural Genetics and Special Projects Editor at the Genetic Literacy Project.

 

Blaming climate – ignoring incompetence

California wildfires incinerate people, wildlife and habitats. Politicians blame climate change.

Paul Driessen

Two more raging infernos in California have burned an area nearly ten times the size of Washington, DC. Wildlife and habitats have been torched. Over 8,000 homes and businesses, and nearly the entire town of Paradise, are now ashes and rubble. Cars were partly charred and melted as they escaped the flames, others completely incinerated, sometimes with occupants still inside. Well over 60 people have perished. Over 50,000 are homeless. Hundreds remain missing.

President Trump expressed deep support for the thousands of courageous firefighters battling the conflagrations, urged residents to evacuate quickly and expedited disaster assistance to the ravaged communities. He also sent a poorly crafted tweet: “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

The tweet is “partisan,” “ill-informed” and “insensitive” to those who are suffering, state politicians and celebrities railed – before engaging in their own ill-informed, partisan insensitivity.

"This is not the ‘new normal.’ This is the ‘new abnormal,’ Governor Jerry Brown asserted. “And this new abnormal will continue. Dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they’re going to intensify.” We have to “do more” on forest management, he continued. “But managing all the forests everywhere we can does not stop climate change. And those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing and will continue to witness in the coming years.” This chart refutes his climate claims.

Resorting to “manmade climate change” has become the favorite, most politically expedient tactic for deflecting attention away from the abject, ideological, even criminally incompetent forest management practices demanded by politicians, regulators, judges and environmentalists in recent decades.

The hard, incontrovertible reality is that California is and always has been a largely arid state, afflicted on repeated occasions by prolonged droughts, interspersed with periods of intense rainfall, and buffeted almost every autumn by powerful winds that can whip forest fires into infernos.

43% of California timberlands are privately owned, 1% are state owned, and all of them are governed by state laws, regulations and regulators. The remaining 56% are federally owned and managed, largely by preservation-oriented, change-resistant bureaucrats, subject to constant litigation by environmentalists.

This past summer brought unusual rainfall that spurred plant growth. It was followed by hot weather that dried foliage out and set the stage for conflagrations in thick, poorly managed brush and trees.

In this context, it doesn’t much matter if the state is also now confronting climate change, whether natural or manmade – or that California’s or the world’s average temperatures may have risen 0.01, 0.1, 0.5 or even 1.0 degree in recent decades. It doesn’t matter if humans or nature caused the recent fires.

Instead of casting blame, responsible parties need to come together, and deal with the situation at hand. That means first extinguishing these fires and helping devastated families rebuild their lives. Thankfully, everyone is committed to doing that. But it also means better forest management, which is not happening.

In 2016, Governor Brown vetoed a bipartisan wildfire management bill that had unanimously passed the state Assembly and Senate. For decades, radical environmentalists have demanded – and legislators, regulators and judges have approved – “wildlands preservation” and “fires are natural” policies. Tree thinning has been banned, resulting in thousands of skinny, fire-susceptible trees growing where only a few hundred should be present. Even removing diseased, dead and burned trees has been prohibited.

All that timber could have gone to sawmills, to create jobs … and lumber for homes. Instead, the mills and jobs are gone. It could also have fueled biomass electricity generating plants; but most are also closed. State and federal forests in California now host over 129 million dead trees that cannot be touched!

In 2009, Clinton-appointed Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the Bush era US Forest Service had not fully analyzed the effects of potential timber harvesting on endangered plants and animals. In 2015, Obama-appointed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson rejected concerns that new, highly restrictive Obama-era forest plans would further harm local economies and increase the risk of forest fires.

Did those judges and pressure groups, or the politicians and regulators who support them, ever ponder how thoroughly the inevitable infernos exterminate habitats, immolate endangered plants and animals, leave surviving animals starving, and incinerate organic matter in the thin soils? Did they consider how subsequent downpours and snowmelts denude hillsides, wash soils into streambeds, and ensure that trees and biodiversity won’t recover for decades?

Did they gave a moment’s thought to the way horrific conflagrations obliterate communities and kill firefighters, parents and children who get trapped by sudden walls of fast-moving flames? Not likely.

But now many of them seem ready to blame Pacific Gas& amp; Electric, whose power lines may have may have caused a spark that ignited the current deadly inferno on private lands in Northern California. Let no one forget that these pressure groups and government employees share the blame – by causing and perpetuating the conditions that set the stage for this horrendous destruction and loss of life.

Governor Brown recently said that, especially during this “new abnormal,” you have to “do prevention” and “have escape routes” and adapt to “a changed world that not so many people were aware of or were thinking about.” These actions are part of his job – the job of regulators, politicians and judges.

Not only have they been derelict in their duties. They have colluded to prevent tree thinning and dead tree removal. They’ve contested recent initiatives by the Interior Department and Forest Service to revise and reverse policies that invite deadly infernos in the 56% of California forests that are under direct federal control. They’ve perpetuated what Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) calls “ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a cadre of ideological zealots.”

In too many areas, tree and brush clearing, dead and diseased tree removal, and the construction of fire breaks and additional escape routes are prohibited – or must go through decades-long study, review, approval and litigation processes. Only a fool or ideologue would fail to foresee the inevitable results.

In many cases, companies are not even allowed to salvage blackened trees that might be left standing after a conflagration has passed through an area. In stark contrast to these areas, privately and tribally managed forests outside the once-Golden State are actively managed to prevent major fires like those that have devastated vast national forest areas in California and other Western states.

In California, if private landowners want to burn leaves and tree limbs to reduce fire hazards, they must first obtain air-quality permits from local air districts, burn permits from local fire agencies, and other permits depending on the location, size, type and timing of a proposed burn, air and ground moisture levels, and other factors. That’s all well and good, if the rules prevent fires that could turn into infernos.

But do the bureaucrats make any attempt to factor in the horrendous air pollution and utter destruction from the monstrous fires their decrees cause by delaying or blocking brush clearing or controlled burns?  

As to climate change, what actual evidence can alarmists provide to show that today’s climate and weather conditions are predominantly due to fossil fuel use – or would be significantly different if the state or USA went 100% renewable, especially when the developing world continues to increase its coal, oil and gas use to lift billions out of poverty? Can they prove energy and climate edicts would enable the state to control the timing, frequency and severity of future climate fluctuations, rains, droughts, winds, and other weather events? Will Governor-elect Gavin Newsom seek common ground on forest issues?

We clearly need less hidebound ideology, greater compassion and respect for human and animal life – and greater willingness to find bipartisan ways to deal with the perpetually arid conditions in California and throughout the West, via responsible and scientific management of our forest heritage.

Above all, we need to remember that people live in these areas and need to be protected. And right now, we should all lend a hand to those who have lost their homes, livelihoods and family members – perhaps by donating to the Red Cross or the WattsUpWithThat.com Camp fire relief fund.

Paul Driessen is policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of articles and books on energy, natural resource, climate change, health, environmental and human rights issues.

Roundup on trial: Everything you need to know about the glyphosate herbicide controversy

Joe Schwarcz | McGill University | September 5, 2018

A California jury awarded two hundred and eighty nine million dollars …. to a former groundskeeper for a California school district who claims that he contracted non-Hodgkins lymphoma from exposure to a commercial preparation of glyphosate …. The jury decision elicited extensive commentaries from experts and non-experts, both pro and con ….

First of all, let’s point out that this trial dealt with occupational exposure to glyphosate and had nothing to do with trace amounts of the chemical in our food supply. Nevertheless, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) …. took the opportunity to …. publish a report about traces of glyphosate in oat products and suggested that these were a threat to health.

The highest concentration EWG found was 760 parts per billion. That would mean that a small child eating 100 grams of the cereal would consume 0.076 milligrams of glyphosate ….The 0.076 mg consumed is 1/66th of this …. By comparison, Health Canada has set a maximum residue level of glyphosate in oats at 15,000 parts per billion!

[S]cience is on the side of glyphosate’s benefits outweighing its risks, but emotion is on the side of the plaintiff. And we have often seen that emotion trumps science. Furthermore, the defendant in this lawsuit, Monsanto, was essentially challenged to prove that Mr. Johnson’s lymphoma was not caused by glyphosate. That is an impossible task.........To Read More.....

California approves measure to pass on wildfire costs

By JONATHAN J. COOPER, Associated Press        

 

The California Legislature voted Friday to allow power companies to raise electric bills to cover the cost of lawsuits from last year's deadly wildfires amid fears that Pacific Gas & Electric Co., would otherwise face financial ruin.

The measure is part of a wide-ranging plan to reduce the threat of wildfires, which have killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes in recent years.

Consumer advocates and large energy users blasted legislation they say is a bailout for PG&E, which expects to pay billions of dollars due to fires started by the company's equipment in Northern California last year. The company would be allowed to charge their customers even if the fires are linked to mismanagement by the company............To Read More....

My Take - It is amazing how they totally ignore the real cause of these massive conflagrations - their greenie inspired mismanagement of the forests. 

Junk Science and Leftist Folklore Have Set California Ablaze

How left-wing "global warming" policies are torching the West Coast.

August 17, 2018 Bruce Thornton 106

The Left Coast is burning. Oregon is fighting 13 wildfires encompassing 185,000 acres. California is battling 19 fires, including tornados of fire called "fire whirls," which have gobbled up 577,000 acres and left eight dead. A good progressive who never lets a crisis go to waste, Governor Jerry Brown told Californians, “With climate change, some scientists are saying that Southern California is literally burning up.” He warned that man-made global warming created a “new normal,” and that “more serious predictions of warming and fires to occur later in the century, 2040 or 2050, [are] now occurring in real time.”

A few days later Brown had a tweet-duel with President Trump, who in contrast claimed, “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws,” like those against thinning and clearing forests: “Tree clear to stop fire spreading!” Seems like on this issue, the allegedly doltish Trump has the better argument than the Berkeley and Yale-trained Brown.....To Read More....
 

Environmentalists’ Latest Attempts to Save the Planet May Be the Last Straw

By John Stonestreet | August 13, 2018

You’d think incredibly harsh laws designed to protect the planet would—you know—protect the planet. But that’s not typically the case.  Sometimes, caring for the environment requires making important sacrifices. Far more often, however, the calls to action we’re told will save the planet spawn needlessly inconvenient laws with little if any benefit. That’s the case with this new campaign to ban plastic straws.

Last month, Santa Barbara made national news and invited not a little bit of ridicule by passing an ordinance which could send restaurant employees to jail for up to six months for giving out plastic straws.

Seattle has also sipped this environmental Kool-Aid, imposing a $250 fine on straw-distributing outlaws. Not to be outdone, San Francisco’s city council voted unanimously to adopt a similar ban. Other efforts to criminalize plastic straws are underway in New York City, Portland, and Washington, D.C. Now, even if we think the penalties are ridiculous, a case can be made for serious steps that would stop an environmental crisis. That case cannot be made here, however...........And, as Susan Freinkel wrote several years ago in the New York Times, plastic doesn’t have to be a pollutant. This marvelous substance was originally “hailed for its potential to reduce mankind’s heavy environmental footprint,” replacing commodities like paper, which exact a high toll on nature. (Remember the “paper or plastic” decision at the grocery store)..........To Read More.....

This Is How All Government ‘Works’

From the raging wildfires to the fracas over Department of Motor Vehicle lines, California policy makers aren’t about to learn the right lessons.

Steven Greenhut August 9, 2018

During one of my first fire seasons in Southern California nearly two decades ago, my neighbors and I received a notice from the county fire department warning us to keep our lawns cut and watered and to clear vegetation away from around our houses. We all had a vested interest in not having our properties burnt to a crisp, so we maintained them pretty well. But the notice caught my attention because my street backed to undeveloped acreage, which was the county’s responsibility to maintain. The dried weeds were as tall as corn stalks, thus leaving fields of tinder.

On behalf of my neighborhood, I contacted the fire department. Nothing happened. I stopped by the firehouse. No one ever showed up at our neighborhood. I called the county’s weed abatement agency, which assured us they’d handle it (but never even asked for the address). I made many calls to the fire department’s offices, but to no avail. Finally, I called my county supervisor and within 24 hours the property was crawling with fire officials. Within a week, the property was cut thanks to getting a powerful elected official involved.

This story is a reminder of how government “works.” ..............To Read More

Virtue Signaling, Plastic Straws, and Political Humor

August 4, 2018 by Dan Mitchell

 

Since I focus on public finance, I think California is crazy because of punitive taxes and reckless spending policies.  But I can understand why other people think California is crazy, period.  This is a state, after all, where politicians come up with bizarre ideas such as regulating babysitting and banning Happy Meals.

Not to mention banning other things as well.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that the Golden State is leading the way in attacking the horrible scourge of plastic straws.

Plastic straws are quickly becoming a takeout taboo. Starbucks has vowed to get its iconic green sippers completely off store shelves by 2020, while Seattle banned all plastic utensils, including straws, from bars and businesses city-wide earlier this month. San Francisco quickly followed suit this week and passed an ordinance that, once approved, will ban plastic straws beginning in July of 2019… It may seem as though the quarter-of-an-inch diameter drinking straw is the least of our worries. But environmentalists say the fight’s got to start somewhere. “We look at straws as one of the gateway issues to help people start thinking about the global plastic pollution problem,” Plastic Pollution Coalition CEO Dianna Cohen told Business Insider.

If I’m willing to claim earmarks are the gateway drug for big spending, then I can’t complain when other people come up with imaginative claims about other types of “gateways.”

In any event, there is a legitimate reason to be concerned about plastic.

Some straws drift out to sea, becoming just one more piece of the 79 thousand-ton colossal floating iceberg of trash called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists who’ve studied the patch, a trash heap wider than two whole Texases that bobs somewhere between Hawaii and California, have discovered it’s essentially a watery pit of litter and illegal dumps that’s trapped in the ocean currents, and it is basically all plastic. …The anti-straw movement may have first picked up steam because…Texas A&M graduate student Christine Figgener…noticed something encrusted in the nose of one of the male turtles. …The team soon figured out it was actually a “plastic straw stuck in his nose,” and removed it, hoping the extraction might help give him some more breathing time on Earth.

But the people on the left side of the country are not actually solving this problem.

Plastic pollution is basically a problem caused by developing countries.

So the politicians in Seattle and San Francisco are making the Nanny State more intrusive without achieving anything.

A classic case of virtue signaling.

But look at the bright side. It’s already generated some great political satire.
Starting with this little girl.

I imagine the plastic straw will be a gateway for operating an unlicensed lemonade stand!

And if SWAT teams run out of harmless pot smokers to harass, they now have new target to justify their budgets. (Editor's Note: Libertarians are opposed to laws against illegal drugs. It's impossible to classify Libertarians as liberal or conservative since they're playing both sides of the ping pong table.  They remind me of Everett Dirksen who was "fiscally conservative and socially liberal", which I find counterintuitive.  RK)

 

And the gun grabbers will appreciate the importance of dealing with high-capacity straw dispensers.

Though it’s unclear how the left will deal with the danger of concealed straws.

Especially since some of those straw nuts will become dealers.

I’ve saved the best for last. For those old enough to remember OJ Simpson and the white Bronco, this image of a renegade toddler will bring back memories.

Remember, if you outlaw straws, only outlaws will have straws.

Next thing you know, they’ll try to outlaw tanks.

It’s a slippery slope!

San Francisco Bans Everything

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments Thursday, August 02, 2018 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Here are a few things that are effectively legal in San Francisco: drugs, public defecation and shoplifting. And here are some of the things that are banned or will be banned in the City by the Bay.

Straws. Fur coats. Bottled water. Eating at work. Vaping liquids. Upholstered furniture. Plastic bags. Pet stores. Electric scooters. Coffee cups and packing peanuts. Tropical fish. The McDonald’s Happy Meal.

If you can think of something, San Francisco has already banned it. Or will be banning it soon.

North Korea with a tech industry and some leftover Victorian architecture (which it’s banning tour buses from visiting) has reacted to the collapse of living conditions and fleeing tourists by banning everything.

Everything except the behavior that’s making San Francisco unlivable.

During the Gold Rush, legend had it that the streets of San Francisco were paved with gold. These days they’re layered with human waste after the socialist city legalized public urination and defecation. A bag of 20 pounds of human waste was deposited on the street. Urine corroded a pole so badly that it fell on a car almost killing the driver. But don’t think that you can get away with anything in San Francisco.

San Francisco decriminalized public defecation, but criminalized plastic straws. While bench warrants for public urination are discarded, the straw fines are real and expensive. A California statewide bill goes further with a threat of six months in the county jail for giving a man a straw. When drugs are legal and straws aren’t, the Mexican cartels will soon switch to smuggling drinking straws into California.

Why ban straws? Because straws, according to the San Francisco ordinance, “may threaten public health” and are bad for the environment? Piles of human waste in the street are great for public health and the environment. But a Chicago medical association disagreed and cancelled its planned conference.

When Chicago thinks your city is dirty and dangerous hellhole, you really have a problem.

But America’s greatest experiment with socialism is coping with its collapse by banning everything. The straw ban isn't the last straw. It’s one of a series of San Fran bans that would make Kim Jong-un wince.

The straw ban was the brainchild of Supervisor Katy Tang. Katy was excused from the straw vote because she had to take her bar exam. She had previously won a proposal to ban sales of fur coats. In her press release, Katy noted that, "fur farming contributes to water and air pollution" because each mink produces "44 pounds of feces in the mink’s lifetime."

The press release doesn’t state how many pounds the Board of Supervisors produces a year. Or how much the homeless population that San Francisco’s insane government has cultivated does.

Statistically speaking, Katy Tang would be personally responsible for around 342 pounds of waste a year. Or 7 times more than a mink could manage over its entire existence. The entire Board of Supervisors, which in true Stalinist style votes 11-0 on its insane bans (except when Katy has to take an exam), would directly account for around 3,700 pounds of waste. Or worse than an entire mink farm.

But that’s not accounting for the true legacy of the Board of Supervisors.

The homeless population of San Francisco increased by around 1,000 in six years. Complaints about human waste rose from 5,685 in 2011 to 18,211 in 2016. A 1,000 increase would mean an extra 342,000 pounds of human waste. San Francisco pols clamored that all the mink farms in this country produce a million pounds of waste a year. The homeless population that they cultivated does that in only a few months with an estimated annual output of well over 2 million pounds.

Mink are rabid, deranged animals that bite everything in sight. But millions of them running loose around Frisco would still do less damage than the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

San Francisco’s budget topped $11 billion for the first time. An increase of almost a billion. Annual spending on the homeless is expected to rise to over $300 million.

None of this would be possible without the tech industry that the city is trying to alienate. And if North Korea with a tech industry loses the dot com firms that feed its tax base, it’ll just be North Korea.

And it’s working hard to make that happen.

Another brilliant ban from the board brains would outlaw new workplace cafeterias.

“You can’t have an industrial kitchen in your office building,” declared Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who along with Supervisor Ahsha Safai, was one of the geniuses behind the idea.

When workers eat in cafeterias, it deprives the restaurateurs of customers. The same lefties who banned straws because of their environmental impact, want to mandate the existence of a thousand restaurants, which were formerly serving those straws, without regard to their environmental impact.

What’s the environmental impact of a straw or an employee taking an Uber for lunch? It’s as disproportionate as the environment impacts of Katy Tang, Aaron Peskin and Ahsha Safai compared to a thousand minks whose senseless aggression is at least the product of instinct, not leftist ideology.

But the great hand of socialism gives and takes away. It just doesn’t make any sense while it’s doing so.

Once the decree passes, the only people entitled to a free lunch in San Francisco will be the same ones defecating on the street. But the workers who actually subsidize the mess aren’t allowed a free lunch.

Socialism will offer you a free lunch. But not if you pay taxes and use the bathroom.

"I urge the Board to focus on making our streets safe. Perhaps then, workers would feel better about leaving their workplace for lunch without having to actively dodge tent camps, human feces, and needles," one San Francisco letter writer suggested.

But that runs contrary to the entire philosophy that turned San Fran into an overtaxed and overregulated public sewer where every problem is solved with a new ban.

“It’s more heavily regulated than the water you’re getting in bottles," a senior advisor to the mayor's office insisted of San Francisco's water in defense of a water bottle ban.

But not everybody wants more regulated water. Some people just want the water that they want.

And the vaping liquids, the goldfish, the upholstered furniture, the plastic bags, fur coats and coffee cups of their choice. Some people just want to drink their bottled water through a straw. They want to wear a fur coat while shopping for tropical fish and upholstered furniture. And then light up a cigarette.

There’s no room for that attitude in San Francisco where each social problem is met with a new ban.

Are restaurants unhappy about the bans on coffee cups, foam containers and straws? Just ban workplace cafeterias to drive customers to them. Are workers and companies fleeing San Fran? Put up a wall made of recycled waste and trash topped with armed homeless encampments to keep them from escaping. Then direct the survivors to eat out at the strawless, coffee-cup less, salt-less and sugar-free vegan restaurant of their mandated choice offering tasteless meals with no more than 40 calories.

It worked for North Korea. It’s bound to work for San Francisco.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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