California Issues ...
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L.A. City Council seeks lawsuit over bussing of migrants from Texas
Los Angeles City Council leaders filed two separate motions on Wednesday pushing for legal action against Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott over the busing of migrants to the region.
A total of 11 buses carrying asylum seekers have arrived in L.A. since June, with the latest getting to Union Station on Wednesday. The last bus carried 35 asylum seekers from Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Venezuela and even Russia.
The council members voted unanimously on both motions, with one calling for a probe investigating whether Abbott’s actions violated any criminal laws, like kidnapping and human trafficking. Some council leaders argue many families traveled on lengthy bus rides with little or no food and water.
“The message is clear that the city of Los Angeles will not accept this kind of behavior,” Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez said. “The governors are doing this for political points and that’s unacceptable. You cannot be playing with people’s lives in that way, and so if they did something unlawful, we want to make sure that we uncover it and we take any proper steps.”
In response, Abbott’s spokesperson slammed council leaders, calling them hypocrites after the council recently voted to have Los Angeles become a sanctuary city, tightening policies involving the use of city resources for federal immigration enforcement.
Every individual who arrived here in L.A. did so voluntarily, and buses had ample food and water, Abbott’s office indicated.
Gavin Newsom Pushing To Fill Up Gas Facility He Campaigned On Shutting Down
The reported push to replenish the gas storage facility is the latest in a string of decisions from the Newsom administration to fall back on fossil fuel infrastructure after making ambitious plans to embrace a green energy transition. California state officials voted earlier in August to extend the lives of three Southern California fossil fuel-fired power plants to protect against energy shortages, a decision which followed a September 2022 move to extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility for many of the same reasons.
“Governor Newsom is committed to keeping the lights on while maintaining affordability for all Californians,” a spokesperson for Newsom’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “At the same time, the governor has advanced the nation’s most aggressive transition away from fossil fuels and has taken action to make it easier to build the clean energy projects our state needs.”
California will require its utility companies to procure 60% of sales from green energy by 2030, and the state has committed to achieving 100% green energy by 2045, according to the California Energy Commission.
California’s grid operator issued “Flex Alerts” over a ten-day period in September 2022, which urged Californians to turn up their thermostats during the late afternoon and evening to conserve energy amid a heatwave that pushed the state’s power grid to the brink. More recently, a top Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official warned Congress in June that “catastrophic consequences” may await Americans if the country continues to retire fossil fuel-fired power plants before green energy alternatives are ready to make up the lost capacity.
California Democratic Legislators Push For Diversity Audits Of Gubernatorial Appointments
Democratic legislators in California are pushing to establish diversity audits of gubernatorial appointments.
Such audits would occur with the passage of their proposed legislation: Senate Bill 702, which would require an annual report on the demographics of individuals appointed by the governor to serve on the over 400 boards and commissions in the state. The annual diversity audits would include an appointee’s age, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, disability status, race, region, party affiliation, veteran status, and sexual orientation.
The bill is steadily advancing; it passed out of committee last week.
The Washington Free Beacon ran an awful story yesterday headlined, “California Dems Pass Bill To Allow Custody Judges To Consider 'Gender Affirmation’.”
The bill passed the California Assembly yesterday in a lopsided, party-line vote (57-16), making family-court judges prefer parents in custody disputes who "affirm" their children. The bill now sails over to almost-recalled Governor Newsom’s desk for signature, and he is expected to sign it with great relish.
Before the vote, Legislators took to the microphone and somberly declared that parents “have a duty to affirm our children.” The bill requires judges, when considering the best interests of a child, to more strongly score the parent who “affirms” their child’s insane belief they are a different gender.
To me, this is a natural outgrowth of a trend I saw developing during the pandemic, when my office would regularly get calls from panicked parents in custody disputes when judges were considering parent preferences for covid vaccination. Some judges were weighting pro-jab parents more highly in custody disputes. Sadly, there wasn’t much we could do. Judges are required to consider the “best interests of the child,” and too often during the pandemic that came down to whether the judge personally thought vaccination was in the child’s best interest or not.
As you can imagine, the outcomes of these cases were highly inconsistent, since judges’ personal vaccination opinions varied. Desperate parents seeking to protect their kids from jabs would call the office, hoping that we could somehow put the vaccines on trial in their custody case and convince the judge the vaccines are dangerous. But the problem always was that the “best interests” standard is so fuzzy that a smart judge could just bury the jab issue inside a global “best interest” finding.
What California just did was cement that judges must consider the gender affirmation issue, and they have to consider “affirming” to be a positive. It probably won’t change anything that a liberal judge would have done anyway, applying the ‘best interests’ standard. It only handcuffs conservative judges.
If you stay in California, be careful who you have kids with.
☕️ BACK PAY ☙ Saturday, September 9, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Big Missouri v. Biden win; Pelosi re-running; vaccine advisor advises against boosters; turbo flu in Australia; New Mexico outlaws guns; UN declares climate apocalypse here; great news from NYC; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
It's Really Time for Parents to Move Their Families Out of California
If you’re a California resident and a parent, you really ought to leave the state now. On Friday, the California Assembly passed AB 957, which means that a parent who doesn’t “affirm” their child’s “gender identity” could lose custody of that child.
AB 957 amends the state Family Code to include “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression as part of the health, safety, and welfare of the child.”
The bill is now headed for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, where he will most certainly sign it.
A recent comprehensive study found that there is no medical benefit for young people to receive so-called “gender-affirming care.” A study conducted by the UK nonprofit organization Sex Matters found that the alleged benefits of “gender-affirming care” are “no greater than a placebo effect.” While the United States seems to doubling down on this insanity, our European friends have started to realize the dangers.
In July of last year, England’s only transgender clinic closed due to concerns that doctors were performing surgeries without considering children’s mental health. Several other European countries, including Sweden, Finland, and France, have all dialed back on pushing transgender “treatments” for children because they have begun to recognize the harm it does to kids. Studies also show that as many as 90% of young people who “identify” as transgender but are not encouraged to transition (socially or medically) will no longer identify as such upon reaching adulthood.
Finally, in more terrific legal news, yesterday the LA Times ran a story headlined, “Controversial law punishing doctors who spread COVID misinformation on track to be undone.” Gosh. That was fast!
A few days ago, California bill SB815 was sneakily amended to include a provision to repeal AB2098, the state’s currently-enjoined doctor censorship law. Everything you need to know is in the LA Times’s description of that law as “a well-intentioned poorly worded and ultimately doomed effort to curb the most flagrant cases of COVID-related falsehoods by people wielding medical licenses.”
Haha, “people wielding medical licenses.” Just say ‘doctors,’ morons.
The LA Times reported there are four separate pending lawsuits attacking AB 2098. The state clearly doesn't like its chances of winning, especially since one group of plaintiffs has already obtained a preliminary injunction against the unconstitutional law. Judge William Shubb of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that the law’s “unclear phrasing and structure” could have a “chilling effect,” and even called the law “grammatically incoherent.”
Last year when the law was passed, the censorship law was critical and essential to save the lives of patients too stupid to make up their own minds. But now, all of a sudden, woke California legislators don’t think the original bill was even necessary. Much ado about nothing, and so forth. As they say, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
For example, the article reported one of the bill’s original authors, Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), seemed “unbothered” by AB 2098’s looming disappearance from state law. “Fortunately, with this update, the Medical Board of California will continue to maintain the authority to hold medical licensees accountable for deviating from the standard of care and misinforming their patients about COVID-19 treatments,” Low casually remarked in a statement.
And that’s progress.
☕️ CHILLING EFFECTS ☙ Tuesday, September 12, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
NYT makes painful admission about boosters; G20 summit angers Ukraine with weak war statement; clock starts on the Proxy War; Ukraine chases soldiers; Bob Peters mic cut off; Newsom interview; more.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Newsom Spending $267 Million to Tackle ‘Organized Retail Theft’
Maybe leftists shouldn’t have caved to demands to defund police or vilify law enforcment.
You reap what you sow.
The situation in Oakland is so dire that the local NAACP chapter condemned local officials for the rise in crime because of”‘the movement to defund the police,’ the ‘District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people,’ and ‘anti-police rhetoric.'”
“We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs,” explained the chapter. “Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too.”
In February 2022, then-Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf admitted that the “defund the police” movement “went too far:”
Los Angeles started to rethink its position on defunding the police in 2022. In 2020, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to slash $150 million from the police budget.
What happened? The obvious:
California Officially Gives Up on Travel Bans to Conservative States
The Sacramento Bee reported:
The bans covered one-third of the United States at one point. San Francisco also dropped its own boycotts of conservative states because they were ineffective and stood to cost the city millions in additional costs.
Newsom had repeatedly flouted the bans himself, traveling to “red” states for both personal and political reasons.
Most of the so-called “anti-LGBTQ” legislation covered issues such as protecting women’s sports from transgender competitors who were biologically male; restricting transgender drugs and surgery for minors; and reinforcing the use of traditional male and female bathrooms, rather than allowing transgender people to choose either option.
Sneakers
Just sneakin' around....
‘Targeted Act’: L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Shot And Killed In Ambush Attack, Officials Say
According to the Times, which reviewed unreleased surveillance footage of the attack, a black car slowly pulled up next to Clinkunbroomer’s cruiser, briefly stopped, and then sped off. Deputy Clinkunbroomer’s vehicle then “drifts forward a foot or two and stops moving,” the report said. Sheriff Luna says homicide investigators are still analyzing the footage.
Police have not released any information on what may have led to the shooting, but Luna assured residents the assailant would be found.
“Every resource that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has to bear is going after you,” Luna said. “We need to get this guy off the street – guy or guys. He’s a public safety threat. He ambushed and killed – murdered – one of our deputies,” he later added.
California goes to war with oil and gas giants over climate change 'deception'
Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a new lawsuit targeting Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and the American Petroleum Institute (API) for allegedly "engaging in a decades-long campaign of deception and creating statewide climate change-related harms in California."
"For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet," Newsom said in a statement. "California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages — wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells.
"With this lawsuit, California is taking action to hold big polluters accountable and deliver the justice our people deserve."
The complaint filed in San Francisco court Friday alleges big oil and gas companies have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage to California by deceiving the public.
California has sought the creation of an abatement fund to pay for future damages caused by climate-related disasters in the state, the filing showed.
API, an industry trade group, said climate policy is for Congress to debate and decide, not the court system.
California's lawsuit says oil giants downplayed climate change. Here's what to know
The lawsuit comes after years of extreme weather events have battered California's economy and killed its residents. In just the past year, California has been inundated with record heat, explosive wildfires, unusual bouts of severe rain and snow, and a rising sea level that's threatened the state's shorelines — disasters that studies say were made more likely or more intense due to climate change.
California filed its lawsuit against Exxon and other oil and gas companies just a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that executives at Exxon continued in recent years to raise doubts internally about the dangers of climate change and the need to cut back on oil and gas use, even as the company publicly conceded that burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming.
Those efforts inside of Exxon, which continued until 2016, according to the Journal, were happening at the same time that scientists at the company were modeling troubling increases in carbon dioxide emissions without big reductions in fossil fuel consumption. The Journal cited internal company documents that were part of a New York state lawsuit and interviews with former executives.
In response to the Journal article, an Exxon spokesperson told NPR that the company has repeatedly acknowledged that "climate change is real, and we have an entire business dedicated to reducing emissions — both our own and others."
Wiles said in a statement this week that the documents the Journal uncovered will probably be used against Exxon in court.
What are the allegations?
In the 135-page California complaint, the state claims that oil and gas executives knew at least since the 1960s that greenhouse gasses produced by fossil fuels would warm the planet and change the climate. According to the suit, industry-funded reports themselves directly linked fossil fuel consumption to rising global temperatures, as well as damages to the air, land and water.Despite this, oil companies intentionally suppressed the information from the public and policymakers, even investing billions to cast doubt and spread disinformation on climate change, the state alleges.
"Their deception caused a delayed societal response to global warming," the complaint said. "And their misconduct has resulted in tremendous costs to people, property, and natural resources, which continue to unfold each day."
The state further charges that the oil companies continue to deceive the public today about the science and reality of climate change, adding that the industry's investments in clean fuels and renewable energy are "nonexistent or miniscule" in comparison to the resources devoted to expanding their fossil fuel production.
I wish OIL Companies would just pull out of Cali-FU and stop selling Oil and Gas
Newsom aims to crush 'Big Oil' but flew jet to a conference in NYC he could have attended via Zoom
"This weekend the Gov unnecessarily flew 1000s of miles, burning 1000s of gallons of jet fuel to hold a press conference in NYC to announce he was suing the companies that make it possible for him to fly 1000s of miles and burn 1000s of gallons of jet fuel in support his lifestyle and political activism," the post continued.
Critics of the climate change movement have often pointed out that those who are often the most vocal advocates for getting rid of fossil fuels often fly on private jets and like Al Gore, have massive carbon footprints. It is not clear whether Newsom made his trip via a private jet, or flew on a commercial airliner.
Time Magazine published an article last year discussing that celebrities who travel by private jet and have yachts are the biggest contributors to climate change. Examples include Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian. Swift reportedly used her private jet, a $40 million Dassault Falcon 900 for close to 170 flights between January and June of last year, according to data collection website Yard.
Their research noted that Taylor's jet had an average flight time in 2022 of merely 80 minutes and an scant average of 139.36 miles per flight. Kardashian flies a Gulfstream G650ER, a $61 million jet with performance that allows the plane to fly at Mach .9, nearly the speed of sound.
Newsom also announced earlier this week that he will sign a climate bill that would require thousands of major U.S. companies to publicly state their greenhouse gas emissions on their websites. In the last campaign cycle, Newsom received more than $675,800 in political donations from "clean" energy companies, California Secretary of State records show.
His proposed legislation would require U.S. companies with more than $1 billion in revenue that do business in California to disclose their "emissions of greenhouse gases, criteria pollutants, and toxic air contaminants for each facility," per the bill.
The California Chamber of Commerce told NBC News this month that the act is "a costly mandate that will negatively impact businesses of all sizes in California and will not directly reduce emissions."
The California Chamber of Commerce told NBC News this month that the act is "a costly mandate that will negatively impact businesses of all sizes in California and will not directly reduce emissions."
"The fact that a single state like California would do this is both potentially troubling and potentially promising," Harvard Environmental Economics Director Robert Stavins told Just The News. "It could be the case that a company that is valued at $1 billion has $35 of activity in California but is nevertheless affected." Stavins added his view that if more states adopted similar laws it would improve environmental regulation nationwide.
California's ban on gun magazines struck down in federal court for the second time
The ban forbade California residents from buying or selling magazines that have 10 or more rounds. It was previously struck down in 2019 by Judge Roger T. Benitez, but was overturned in 2021.
Later, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the appeals court ruling and ordered new proceedings consistent with the decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, according to the Washington Examiner.
Benitez said in his most recent ruling that the magazine ban was not consistent with California's laws regulating firearms.
"The history and tradition of the Second Amendment clearly supports state laws against the use or misuse of firearms with unlawful intent, but not the disarmament of the law-abiding citizen," he wrote in a 71-page decision, according to Reuters.
California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta vowed to appeal the decision.
"I am going to immediately appeal to correct this dangerous decision," he wrote on X, formerly called Twitter. "We vow to fight to keep Californians safe from weapon enhancements that cause mass casualties."
San Francisco Prepares to Clear Homeless Camps after Court Clarifies Definition of ‘Involuntarily Homeless’
The clarification by the Ninth Circuit comes nearly a year after the city was sued by a coalition of advocates for the homeless who claimed that the city violated state and federal laws, as well as its own policies on clearing homeless camps and trashing people’s belongings.
National Review reported earlier this year that San Francisco has been hit with hundreds of questionable complaints from homeless residents seeking $10,000 payouts from the city, allegedly for trashing their “priceless” belongings and for their pain and suffering.
In December, U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu issued a temporary injunction in the case that limited the city’s ability to enforce laws against sitting, lying, or sleeping in public for people who are “involuntarily homeless.” In the wake of the injunction, the city was limited to clearing camps for health and safety reasons and to provide access to sidewalks, and only after providing a 72-hour notice, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Last year, the city counted 7,754 homeless people living in the city, and more than half of them were unsheltered. Their camps are often littered with garbage and debris.
Breed said on Monday that the city “engages thousands of unhoused people in encampments each year by offering shelter and services,” and that the city has made “substantial investments” in its stock of supportive housing and shelters. But some people on the streets don’t want to be sheltered, and they use tent encampments “not primarily for housing but to conduct illegal behavior like drug dealing, human trafficking, and theft,” Breed said.
For months now, lawyers for the city and the Coalition on Homelessness have been arguing in court over who should be considered “involuntarily homeless.”
“It does not make sense that a person who rejects a shelter offer or has a shelter bed but chooses to maintain a tent on the street should be considered ‘involuntarily homeless,’” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in August, before the court’s clarification.