California Governor Gavin Newsom is an unlikely ally in the fight against the anti-white critical race theory, but yesterday he shocked and confused his colleagues with a surprise veto of Assembly Bill 331.
AB 331, which passed 62 to 12 in California’s State Assembly, would’ve mandated students in the Golden State’s failing high schools to take a “Critical Ethnic Studies” class about the oppression and discrimination faced by one of four minority groups (African-Americans, “Latinx,” Native Americans and Asian-Americans) at the hands of white supremacists. A special emphasis on forcing white students to take these classes was emphasized in the law’s discussion.
While AB 331 was passed in January 2019, Newsom’s veto has the optical misfortune of coinciding with Donald Trump’s current campaign seeking to put an end to critical race theory in federally funded institutions. The bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman Jose Medina, lashed out at his fellow Democrat, calling the Governor’s move “a failure to push back against the racial rhetoric and bullying of Donald Trump.”
So why did he do it?
The answer lies in Newsom’s donors, who also happen to be members of prominent Jewish ethnic lobbies. For example, the American Jewish Committee responded to news of his decision with a “Bravo.”
Jewish groups protested AB 331 because, while they agreed with the anti-white message, they also resented the lack of an exemption for Jewish students. Under the law, Jews would be considered “white” and not allowed to choose Jewish Studies for their credit.
Roselyn Swig, a billionaire heiress, wrote an op-ed reflecting this sentiment four days ago. In the piece, she urges that the bill be altered.
According to Swig, critical race theory is “crucial to ensure a tradition of tolerance, understanding and respect – three of my core values – for future generations, while advancing justice for marginalized communities.” However, she furiously contested that “[An] initial draft of the educational plan had both excluded Jews and antisemitism education, and included anti-Jewish tropes in lyrics and anti-Israel boycotts.”
Swig concluded her open letter by stating that the “interests of the Jewish community are actually aligned with other ethnic studies groups. We should come together to advance our shared values, both in the classroom and beyond, for years to come.”
The proposed ethnic studies curriculum tried to adapt to these demands, but the end result only enraged Jews further. The final version on Newsom’s desk would’ve taught that Jews were beneficiaries of “white privilege,” which doomed it.
While non-white groups who supported the bill will blame Newsom’s own “white privilege” for its failure, the final decision was made outside of the Governor’s office.
Swig belongs to what California media has dubbed Newsom’s “Faithful Eight” — eight wealthy families who have given the Governor millions of dollars to transform him from mediocre dog catcher to a national figure with future presidential ambitions.
Of the Faithful Eight, the Swig’s are joined by four other elite Jewish dynasties: the Guggenheims, the Marcuses, the Fishers, and the Pritzkers.
While California has earned a reputation for its radical left policies, it also suffers from Progressive Except Palestine syndrome. In 2016, Governor Jerry Brown signed one of the most draconian and controversial anti-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) bills in the country.
The lesson for white privilege peddlers who saw AB 331 as a political lay up is simple: real power always strikes back.
Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires. About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable. It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical. Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger. Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.
Maximum temperatures are typically used by fire indexes to issue red flag warnings because it is the heat of midday that has the greatest drying effect. Minimum temperatures are often low enough to drop below the dewpoint at which time fuel moisture increases. So averaging minimum and maximum temperatures is inappropriate. In addition, referencing a higher global average temperature is meaningless. Only localmaximumtemperatures determine the dryness of surface fuels during every fire. As in Park and Abatzoglou 2019, the months of March through October are averaged to determine maximum temperatures during California’s dry season.
1) The August 2013 Rim Fire centered around Yosemite National Park, was California’s 5th largest fire.
2) The November 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest fire destroying the town of Paradise. It was also its 16th largest fire.
3) The 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire was California’s largest fire (since 1932 excluding 2020) .
4) In the October 2017 wine country fires, the Tubbs Fire was the 4th deadliest. It only burned 37,000 acres but high winds drove embers into the dwellings of the heavily populated outskirts of Santa Rosa.
Governor Newsom ignores the data to disgustingly hijacking the tragedy of California’s fires to push is climate change agenda. But he is not alone. There are climate scientists pushing catastrophes by ignoring the local maximum temperature trends. Bad analyses promote bad policies and obscure what needs to be done regards fuel management and creating defensible spaces in fire prone California. Newsom must focus on fuel management and fire suppression. As fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam echoed the experts’ growing consensus against fire suppression wrote, “The paradox of fire management in conifer forests is that, if in the short term we are effective at reducing fire occurrence below a certain level, then sooner or later catastrophically destructive wildfires will occur. Even the most efficient and technologically advanced firefighting efforts can only forestall this inevitable result.”
Further information about California’s wildfires are
How do we focus our resources to minimize the devastation caused by California’s wildfires? First, we can reduce ignitions. California’s deadliest fire, the Camp Fire and California’s 2nd largest fire, the Thomas Fire were ignited by faulty powerlines during high wind events. California’s sprawling power grid has rapidly expanded since 1970 to accommodate the influx of 20 million people. Accordingly, powerline-ignited fires increased area burnt by five times relative to the previous 20 years.
California’s largest fire (Mendocino Complex), its 3rd largest (Cedar Fire), 5th largest (Rim Fire), and 7th largest (Carr Fire), were all ignited by accidents or carelessness. Uncontrollably, more people cause more accidents, suggesting California’s wisest course of action requires creating more defensible space.
In contrast, the August 2020 fires, which will likely rank in the top 10 of burned area of California, were all naturally started by an onslaught of dry lighting. This prompted Governor Gavin Newsome to blindly blame climate change, implying we need to focus resources on minimizing CO2 concentrations to improve fire safety. But the science doesn’t support Newsome’s narrative.
Some researchers blame global warming, regardless of increased ignitions. They argue warmer temperatures dry out the vegetation more quickly, so more of California burns. Indeed, warmer drier weather creates a higher fire danger. But fire experts only found that correlation within forests. They found no such correlation along California’s central coast where the August 2020 lightning fires have been raging. The experts stated, as California’s summer drought proceeds, “grasslands and coastal chaparral are usually already hot, so they are not as sensitive to the extra heat from global warming.” And it was grasslands and chaparral the lightning ignited.
More resources must be focused on managing invasive grasses, or California will continue to experience larger fast-moving fires, regardless of climate change. Grasslands and chaparral provide an abundance of insensitive “fine fuels” that dry out within a day. Grasses grow quickly and unless managed provide more fuel for hotter fires. Fine fuels act as kindling that can ignite larger logs in cooler habitat. Invasive grasses increased ground fuels in desert regions, promoting more frequent fires that were once uncommon because the deserts’ lacked enough fuel. Along California’s coast invasive grasses have likewise usurped areas of shrublands. Furthermore, grasses provide a corridor for grassland fires to spread into chaparral and forests. The greater the abundance of grasses the faster and further fires spread.
Finally does dry lightning increase with climate change? Dry lightning usually occurs when the lower 1000 feet of the atmosphere is warm and dry and is overlain by unstable air at mid-elevation between 1000 and 5000 feet. The greatest occurrence of dry lightning happens in New Mexico and Arizona. Moisture pumped northward from the Gulf of California and Mexico causes mid-elevation air to become unstable and turbulent, generating lightning and precipitation. However, while the lightning reaches the ground the precipitation doesn’t, evaporating in the dry desert air. In the Sierra Nevada, dry lightning causes 69% of the lightning fires, peaking in August. But lightning is uncommon along California’s coast because the ocean provides a cool marine layer that inhibits convective turbulence.
However, in August 2020 a high-pressure system centered over the Southwest pushed the marine layer offshore. Simultaneously the high-pressure system carried air northward along the California coast, while entraining a seasonally unusual layer of moisture from a decaying tropical storm and setting the stage for dry lightning. Such coastal events are so uncommon and erratic weather models have great difficulty simulating and predicting them. Thus, it’s impossible to attribute coastal dry lightning to climate change and resources would be best spent on fuel management.
Over the last several months, Americans have witnessed an increase in media propaganda regarding the “dangers” of “anti-vaxxers,” the “proven science of vaccines,” and the “tragedies” that ensue from the failure to vaccinate. That propaganda blitz has resulted in massive hysteria stemming from similar levels of ignorance.
Also resulting from the push by Big Pharma-funded corporate media outlets is the emotional and panicked campaign of pro-vaxxers, vaccine pushers, and adherents to the relatively recent new religion of “scientism” – the religious belief in anything labeled as science or scientific, regardless of whether or not that concept directly contradicts observable reality and experience or even regardless of whether or not it is actually scientific.
The so-called vaccine debate – which is not truly a debate since a debate requires the participation of two opposing sides – is generally nothing more than a shouting and shaming campaign against parents who have come to the conclusion that vaccines are not safe, effective, or neither.
Indeed, it is the unbridled emotion of the pro-vaccine camp that has been provoked and subsequently harnessed into a powerhouse of vitriol and social pressure that is then presented as a public health crisis. The howling of the trendy masses, glued to their televisions, sitcoms, and NPR, is then presented as an organic public outcry in the media, resulting in the conveniently timed response of politicians and lawmakers.
Of course, with the creation of the false debate, there is also the political polarization of the issue – the left must be pitted against the right – in a typical but tried and true method of divide and conquer strategy.
Originally, holding questions regarding the safety or effectiveness of vaccinations was something that bridged political boundaries. Granted, the individuals who held these views were a minority. However, those numbers were growing and could be found in the midst of liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, and even those completely unaligned to any ideology.
Now, however, that is beginning to change. The Big Pharma companies that fund the mainstream media and the political parasites infecting the federal and state capitols have managed to turn this debate into a partisan issue.
The propaganda campaign has been successful among members of all political denominations, but particularly so among the left. This is because the left is made up of a population that is well-trained to believe anything presented to them under the guise of science in much the same way as the right who are designed to believe anything presented in a religious context.
The result of this massive absorption of indoctrination is that we have the passage of bills mandating that children be vaccinated by force of law in California and even the attempt to force adults to be vaccinated as well.
With mandates coming out of California, North Carolina, and Vermont, clearly there is a nationwide agenda at foot.
But while those on the left continue to attack Koch Industries and ALEC for funding a number of horrific economic policies and divisive domestic campaigns, painting any idea they oppose coming from the Republican camps as a “Koch-funded” program (it often is), the reality is that the leftists are the biggest dupes in the vaccine game.
This is because, while leftists hawk vaccines and pride themselves on their obedience to doctors and “scientists,” they are doing nothing more than falling into line with a massive Koch-funded and ALEC-facilitated propaganda campaign.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
For those who may not be familiar with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the council is considered a “non-profit organization” made up of Conservative state legislators and corporate private sector “partners.” This mixture of government officials and corporate agents then meet regularly, replete with funding from major corporations all across the world to discuss, plan, write, and submit legislation that is beneficial to the corporations.
In one sense, ALEC is a massive corporate lobbying firm. In another, however, ALEC is much more, since much of the legislation submitted by the attentive congressman is actually written for the Senator or Representative by the agents of the organization. It is an organization that provides funding and direction (marching orders) for Congressmen, particularly those at the state level.
While slimy billionaires like George Soros act as the guiding force behind much of the American left, ALEC and KOCH Industries tend to fill the same void for the right; although, in truth, most of the corporations that make up ALEC are those who also fund Democratic candidates. Presentation, however, in a carefully crafted political theatre like the United States, is paramount.
For decades, the American Legislative Exchange Council has been a force in shaping conservative policies at the state level. Today, its impact is even more pervasive. Its legislative ideas are resonating in practically every area of state government, from education and health to energy, environment and tax policy. The group, which brings together legislators with representatives from corporations, think tanks and foundations to craft model bills, has rung up an impressive score. Roughly 1,000 bills based on ALEC language are introduced in an average year, with about 20 percent getting enacted.
For three decades, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the meeting’s host, has brought together corporations (including Pfizer (PFE), AT&T (T), and ExxonMobil (XOM)) and state legislators to write what it calls model bills—pieces of legislation the industries would like to become law. Often this means protecting favored tax treatment or keeping regulations at bay. ALEC has also approved model bills on social issues, including gun control and voter registration. The bills then get passed around among the 1,800 mostly Republican legislators who are ALEC members. They introduce the model bills about 1,000 times a year in state capitols around the country, the group says. About 200 become law. ALEC pays for the meetings through membership fees (called donations) that corporations pay. The legislators receive travel stipends (called scholarships) to attend the meetings. ALEC is registered with the IRS as a nonprofit that provides a public service, not as a lobbyist that seeks to influence.
This offers two benefits: Corporate members can deduct yearly dues, which run up to $25,000—more if they want to sponsor meetings; and ALEC doesn’t have to disclose the names of legislators and executives who attend. That’s important, because if ALEC operated with complete openness it would have difficulty operating at all. ALEC has attracted a wide and wealthy range of supporters in part because it’s done its work behind closed doors. Membership lists were secret. The origins of the model bills were secret. Part of ALEC’s mission is to present industry-backed legislation as grass-roots work. If this were to become clear to everyone, there’d be no reason for corporations to use it.
While ALEC has pushed a number of bills regarding divisive wedge issues (it has to keep up its conservative veneer), it focuses mostly on economic issues promoting free market, Austrian school, deregulation, free trade, and other policies supported by major banks and corporations.
But ALEC is also a major pusher of laws regarding medical issues – not merely in the context of the American healthcare system, but also in the context of personal choice.
Despite all the rhetoric of ALEC and its puppets in Congress, the position of the organization and its puppets is not necessarily in favor of personal choice. This much has been made clear in the form of mandates and force of law, particularly in the area of vaccination.
Below are a very small few of pharmaceutical companies that are part of ALEC’s operations.
Astellas Pharma Inc.
Bayer
Dupont (Dupont Merck Pharmaceuticals)
Eli Lilly
Endo Pharmaceuticals
Express Scripts
GlaxoSmithKline
Hoechst- Roussell Pharmaceutical Corporation
Hoffman La-Roche
Imperial Chemical Industries Pharmaceuticals
Johnson & Johnson
Mylan Pharmaceuticals
Novo Nordisk
Pharmacia and UpJohn
Purdue Pharma
Pfizer
Solvay Pharmaceutical
Takeda Pharmaceutical
TEVA Pharmaceuticals
TogetherRX Access (made up of ABBVIE, GSK, Janssen, Lifescan, Pfizer, Stiefel, Viiv Healthcare, Vistakon Pharmaceuticals)
The UpJohn Co.
These names are only a small few of the myriad of pharmaceutical companies, vaccine manufacturers, and other interested parties who are listed as members of ALEC. Many of these companies are concealed even further by a veil of umbrella “organizations” acting as front operations.
ALEC And Vaccines
With such a massive list of major pharmaceutical companies amidst ALEC’s ranks, it should come as no real surprise that ALEC would be one of the driving forces behind the recent spate of “mandatory vaccine bills” popping up all across the country. Indeed, its motto should be “Personal Choice For Corporations. Government Enforced Mandates For People.”
Remember, it was ALEC that crafted the “model” legislation “Immunization of Minors On TANF,” legislation that would have required parents on TANF assistance to require proof that their children were fully vaccinated according to the “recommended” levels. If those families did not show proof of their child’s vaccination, those families would lose their TANF benefits.
While exemptions were left intact in this “model” legislation, ALEC has stepped up its attack on parental rights by going after the exemption status in later bills.
For instance, consider the attempt to remove Vermont citizens’ rights to a philosophical exemption to vaccination known as SB 199, a bill that caught many in Vermont by complete surprise. Of course, when one takes a look at the key players and possible motivations, it becomes more obvious as to how this bill came to be and why.
S199 was introduced in the state Senate by Kevin Mullin, who is VT chair of the Pharma-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and was introduced in the state House by Representative George Till, M.D., at the request of Harry Chen, M.D., Vermont’s Health Commissioner. Dr. Chen, who was a Vermont state representative and former chair of the Vermont House Health Care Committee for four years, has publicly downplayed vaccine risks.
S199 was supported by the VT Dept. of Health and state government supported institutions, such as the University of Vermont, as well as medical trade associations that receive money from pharmaceutical corporations selling vaccines in the U.S., including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), March of Dimes, Every Child by Two and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Other organizations endorsing elimination of the philosophical exemption included the Vermont Academy of Family Physicians, Fletcher Allen, Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Voices for VT Children, Vermont Pharmacists Association, Rutland Medical Center, and Vermont Medical Society.
Here ALEC’s Vermont chairman, Republican Sen. Kevin Mullin, introduced S.199, a bill seeking to end the “philosophical exemption” in the childhood vaccine laws. A Republican introducing a health care bill, one that removes a parent’s rights, one that obliges all children to participate in a health care plan. … An ugly duckling if ever there was one! Just doesn’t look like all the rest.
The duckling looks even uglier in the light of Vermont’s exemplary health statistics. We rank right up there on general health, low incidence of infectious diseases, and low child mortality. What’s the problem, what motivates such a bill? Well, several corporations have recently publicly cut their ties with ALEC over ALEC’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, underscoring the reality that ALEC is funded by corporations, and we may guess has their interests at heart more than your child’s well-being.
One might be tempted to argue that the vaccine bill submitted in Vermont was merely an anomaly. That is, one would be tempted to make this argument if the Vermont bill was the only such bill submitted and supported by ALEC and its members.
In California, the infamous and fascist SB 277 which unfortunately became law was introduced by another vaccine fanatic and high priest of the religion of scientism, Richard Pan. Ben Allen, however, the second State Senator to introduce the legislation into the California state Senate is himself connected to ALEC. As Maureen Cruise of LA Progressive wrote in regards to Allen’s funding,
Among other wealthy conservative donors are William E. Oberndorf, a California billionaire investor who funds conservative causes such as the privatization of education which he promotes via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). He has contributed to the Karl Rove PAC and to Jeb Bush and the GW Bush Foundation. The Fisher Family of Gap and a dozen other corporations are fans of privatization of the public sector and charter schools.
Oberndorf, the ALEC big wig, is a major donor of Allen.
Cruise also points out that a sizable portion of Allen’s campaign contributions come directly from pharmaceutical interests.
A similar story is discovered in North Carolina, where notoriously arrogant and corrupt Senator Jeff Tarte – in between fits of whining and rage – introduced a bill that would have removed all vaccine exemption rights (except for medical exemptions) from parents and children, including homeschool children.
As if his last name did not accurately describe his disposition, Senator Tarte was one of the main sponsors of the NC bill SB 346, a bill that would have eliminated the “religious exemption” clause in the recommended vaccine schedule for children entering NC public schools. He was also a main contender for the title of worst public relations interaction with a constituent in the state of North Carolina in the last several years.
In keeping with the trend of recent events, however, Tarte is also a member of the ALEC organization, a feather in his cap that he was not shy in advertising in his weekly newsletter. Tarte not only is a member, but an active participant taking part in speaking events and even a seat on the ALEC Education Council.
Conclusion
The goal of forced vaccination has been in existence for quite some time, going back to a number of elite think tanks decades ago and the halls of pharmaceutical companies. Major pharmaceutical companies, for many obvious (or should be obvious ) reasons would also like to mandate vaccination. Increased profits from the vaccine sales and the treatment of resulting disease, as well as the cover-up of vaccine risks by a population free of a control group are but a few of the reasons such corporations are supporting the vaccine mandates.
After all, as Bertrand Russell stated as far back as 1953,
Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .
But, while the push to mandate vaccines for children and adults is by no means an ALEC-centric conspiracy, this recent push for such laws was indeed formulated in ALEC councils.
For this reason, it is highly ironic that the political left should be the half of the paradigm that takes up the charge for mandatory vaccination laws. After all, it is the left (at the lower levels) who seems to live by the motto “If ALEC supports it, we oppose it.” This time, all it took was some clever propaganda, trendy nudging, and social shaming and the left was marching right behind ALEC as militantly as if they were Republicans all along.
The entire vaccine debate can scarcely even be labeled a debate. It is an exercise in social shaming, shouting down opposing views, and religious devotion to television and anyone wearing a lab coat or claiming to be an expert.
With the culprit behind the recent mandatory vaccine/eliminate exemption push now revealed, it is time to begin working toward repealing these laws and making sure that no similar bill is ever politically viable.
The Jessen’s rural farm home in central California sat on a dead-end street, surrounded by almond orchards.
On June 11, 2016, David Jessen said while he was out, the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department called to tell him someone had broken into his home. Several hours later he would return to find his home destroyed after a SWAT team, two helicopters, a K-9 unit and a fire truck barreled toward his front lawn to arrest the burglar.
On Thursday, the Ninth Circuit upheld a ruling that Fresno County and the city of Clovis are not liable for negligence claimed by David and his wife Gretchen Jessen’s lawsuit, because the damage to their home was caused by the officer’s “discretionary acts.”
The Jessens claimed in their 2017 lawsuit that the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department and Clovis Police Department happened upon the ideal setting for a training exercise at their home when they received a call from a construction crew about a man who was found sleeping in a nearby vacant house.
The man left without any protest, but the construction workers say they heard the sound of glass breaking and say the man broke into the Jessen’s home, according to the civil complaint.
The lawsuit claimed the dead-end home was the perfect setting for a training exercise because there would be no nearby neighbors or civilians who would congregate to watch the SWAT team and helicopters converge.
David Jessen said after he arrived at his home and told an officer that two unloaded shotguns and a loaded .357 magnum were hidden in the house, the officer told him the man inside threatened to shoot anyone who entered. Jessen and his family were asked to wait elsewhere.
After taking his family to a friend’s house 10 minutes away, Jessen drove back to unload some farm equipment and found law enforcement cars lining the road to his house for a quarter of a mile, plus two ambulances, a fire truck and two helicopters circling above.
This use of police force would eventually destroy the home, according to the complaint. Jessen said just before police cleared out, an officer handed him a card and said, “We have insurance for this.”
Police ripped out several wrought iron doors, according to the complaint, and pulled out a wall off the foundation, teargased six rooms, shattered a glass sliding door, broke several windows and 90 feet of fencing and flash-bombed two more rooms.
The Jessens say the man, identified later as Chanley Un, stole an ice cream bar, some milk and half a tomato.
The sheriff’s department claimed in a 2017 statement that officers found Un in a room within reach of the guns.
The couple sought $150,000 due to the damage to their home, which they said could no longer be lived in due to the excessive teargas use and other damage.
The appellate panel made up of U.S. Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, a Bill Clinton appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Milan Smith Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Eugene Siler Jr., a George H.W. Bush appointee, sitting by designation from the Sixth Circuit, upheld the ruling in an unpublished and unsigned memorandum.
The panel agreed that the Jessens did not establish a triable issue on the municipal actions taken by the officers and that the departments “do not have a custom of turning simple operations into full-scale training operations,” which the district court ruled out due to a lack of evidence.
“The record evidence shows that defendants have a general policy of obtaining warrants prior to entry, of using reasonable force, and for the reasonable use of tear gas. The Jessens failed to establish a triable issue that any of these policies caused any constitutional injuries, or that there was a ‘persistent and widespread’ violation of these policies amounting to an unconstitutional custom or practice,” the panel wrote.
The panel said the Jessens also could not prove that the two police departments who arrived at their home to retrieve the barricaded man did not have the proper training.
“Even assuming, without deciding, that defendants’ training policies are inadequate, there is no evidence that ‘the need for more or different training [was] so obvious’ that defendants were deliberately indifferent to the Jessens’ rights,” the panel wrote.
The fact that an officer sought to explain and justify each piece of property damage after the incident shows the officer exercised some discretion in his role as the operation team leader and there was no evidence that one officer had final policymaking authority delegated to him, according to the 6-page memo.
Under the case Conway v. County of Tuolumne, the California Court of Appeal found “discretionary act immunity applies to the selection of the means to effectuate an arrest, including the decision to deploy a SWAT team in effectuating an arrest, and the subsequent decision to deploy tear gas.”
“Under Conway, Defendants are immune from liability, and the district court properly granted summary judgment for Defendants on the Jessens’ negligence claim,” the panel wrote.
In a statement for Fresno County, a spokesperson said they are “very pleased with the decision by the Ninth Circuit again confirming that the Sheriff’s Office acted reasonably and in the interest of public safety under all the circumstances.”
Emails sent to the Jessen’s attorney were not immediately answered for comment.
Should Americans follow China in a massive commitment to supposedly eco-friendly battery-electric buses (BEBs)? California has mandated a “carbon-free” bus system by 2040 and will buy only battery or fuel cell-powered buses after 2029. Other states and cities are following suit.
Vehicle decisions are typically based on cost and performance. Cost includes selling price plus maintenance, while performance now includes perceived environmental impacts – which for some is the only issue that matters. But that perception ignores some huge ecological (and human rights) issues.
China today has 420,000 BEBs on the road, with plans to reach 600,000 by 2025. The rest of the world has maybe 5,000 of these expensive, short-range buses. However, the Chinese still get 70% of their energy from coal, so are their BEBs really that green? Are they safe? And are they really ethical?
Battery costs are the main reason BEBs today are much more expensive than buses that run on diesel or compressed natural gas. But bus makers say electric buses require less maintenance, and climate activists say the lower net “carbon footprint” (carbon dioxide emissions) justifies paying a little more.
China gets around the up-front cost problem by establishing national mandates, heavily subsidizing bus (and battery) manufacturers, and rewarding cities that replace entire bus fleets at one time. This ensures that their factories benefit from economies of scale – and that the transition will be swift and complete.
Beijing simply dodges the environmental costs by ignoring the fossil fuels, horrific pollution and human illnesses involved in mining, ore processing and manufacturing processes associated with building the buses. California and other “renewable” energy advocates do likewise. In fact, those costs will skyrocket as China, and the world emphasize electric vehicle, wind, solar and battery technologies.
Meanwhile, the USA and EU nations focus on subsidizing passenger cars. Thus, there are far more zero-emission passenger cars on the road today in the U.S. and Europe than public transit vehicles. No wonder Westerners still view electric vehicles as subsidized luxuries for the “woke wealthy,” who boast about lowering their carbon footprint, despite also often needing fossil fuel electricity to charge batteries.
The huge costs for fast-charging stations across Europe, let alone the vast United States, pose more huge challenges for future expansion of the electric vehicle market. But transit vehicles, even school buses, run regular routes, and if the routes are short enough, the bus can be recharged overnight in the garages.
Tax credits, free HOV lane access, free charging stations and other subsidies for the rich are seen by most as terrible policies. Yet another, says University of California–Davis researcher Hanjiro Ambrose, is the Federal Transit Administration funding formulas that favor short-term cost-efficiency over long-term innovation. “Those funding mechanisms haven’t been aligned with trying to stimulate policy change,” Ambrose says. “The cheapest technology available isn’t usually the newest technology available.”
To work around high upfront battery costs, innovative capitalists are creating new financial products that allow fleet owners to finance battery purchases. Treating battery costs the same way as fuel costs – as ongoing expenses – meets federal guidelines. Matt Horton, chief commercial officer for U.S. BEB maker Proterra, says, “The importance of the private capital coming into this market cannot be understated.”
Green advocates admit the primary reason people choose EVs is their belief that electric cars and buses, even with electricity generated from fossil fuels, are good for the environment. The Union of Concerned Scientists claims BEBs are 2.5 times cleaner in terms of lifespan emissions than diesel buses. That is highly questionable. Moreover, BEBs with today’s strongest batteries can take a full load no more than 150 miles in good weather. That’s fine for airport shuttles, maybe even for short public transit routes.
However, electric battery life is shorter than the 12-year vehicle life that many transit and school bus systems rely upon in their budgets. Battery replacement for BEBs is very expensive and unpredictable.
And then there are the horror stories. Los Angeles Metro purchased BEBs from Chinese-owned BYD Ltd. but yanked the first five off the road within a few months. Agency staff called the buses “unsuitable,” poorly made, and unreliable for more than 100 miles. Albuquerque returned seven out of its 16 BYD buses, citing cracks, leaking fluid, axle problems and inability to hold charges.
French journalist Alon Levy reported that BEB sales teams in Vancouver admitted their buses could not run for an entire day without recharging during layovers. Worse, in Minneapolis, bus performance suffers tremendously in cold weather: at 20o F buses cannot last all day; on Super Bowl Sunday, at 5o F, a battery bus lasted only 40 minutes and traveled barely 16 miles. Imagine being in a BEB in a blizzard.
In largely rural Maine, lawmakers proposed converting all school buses to BEBs. But Maine Heritage Policy Center policy analyst Adam Crepeau found that BEBs can travel no more than 135 miles per charge (in good weather), while diesel buses go up to 400 miles and can be refilled quickly almost anywhere. “This,” he said, “will severely impact the ability of schools to use them for longer trips, for sporting events, field trips and other experiences for students.” Or in bitterly cold Maine winters.
The economic and practical bottom line is simple. Activists and sales teams are pressing American cities, school boards and other public entities to follow China and convert their fleets to BEBs, calling them “the wave of the future.” Even in California, where lengthy power outages have become routine, this climate and anti-fossil ideology dominates. Given the growing vulnerability of our electric grid, among other concerns, cost and performance may not be the only considerations in making such an irreversible choice.
The environmental and ethical bottom line is equally simple – but routinely gets shunted aside.
Electric vehicles require about three times more copper than internal combustion equivalents – plus lithium, cobalt and other metals for their batteries. Wind turbines need some 200 times more steel, copper, plastics, rare earths, concrete and other materials per megawatt than combined-cycle gas turbines. Photovoltaic solar panels have similar materials requirements. 100% “renewable, sustainable” Green New Deal electricity systems on US or Chinese scales would require millions of turbines, billions of solar panels and billions of half-ton Tesla-style battery packs for cars, buses and backup electricity storage.
Those technologies, on those scales, would require mining at levels unprecedented in world history! And the environmental and human rights record we’ve seen for those high-tech metals is terrifying.
Lithium comes mostly from Tibet and the Argentina-Bolivia-Chile “lithium triangle,” where contaminated lands and waters are poisoning fish, livestock, wildlife and people. Most cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 40,000 children and their parents slave in open pits and dark, narrow tunnels – and get exposed constantly to filthy, toxic, radioactive mud, dust, water and air. Broken bones, suffocation, blood and respiratory diseases, birth defects, cancer and paralysis are commonplace.
Nearly all the world’s rare earth elements come from Inner Mongolia. Mining the ores involves pumping acid into the ground and processing them with more acids and chemicals. Black sludge from the operations is piped to a huge foul-smelling “lake” that is surrounded by formerly productive farmlands that are now so toxic that nothing can grow on them, and people and wildlife have just moved away. Here too, severe skin and respiratory diseases, cancers and other terrible illnesses have become commonplace.
In many of these cases, the mining and processing operations are run by Chinese companies, under minimal to nonexistent pollution control, workplace safety, fair wage, child labor or other basic standards that American, Canadian, Australian and European companies are expected to follow.
And this is just for today’s “renewable, sustainable, ethical, Earth-friendly, green” technologies. Just imagine what we are likely to see if China, California, New York, Europe and countless other places start mandating a fossil-fuel-free future – and then shut down nuclear power, to boot. Where will we get all the raw materials? Where will we put all the wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and transmission lines?
The prospect is horrifying. And it’s all justified by exaggerated fears of a climate apocalypse. Crazy!
The Los Angeles Times ran yet another scientifically unsupported climate alarmist sea level rise propaganda article supporting the position that government entities in the state need to mandate relocation of coastal properties away from the coast based upon speculation and conjecture derived from unvalidated and failed computer model outcomes of future sea level rise.
State government mandated relocation actions potentially involves politicians dictating control of homeowner and business property values of tens of thousands of properties representing billions of dollars in property value located along the 840 mile California coastline resulting in Draconian economic impacts being foisted upon these property owners as determined by the state’s climate alarmist government politicians.
The Times article notes: “Lawmakers have told cities they must start addressing climate adaptation in their planning, but have otherwise shied away from issuing mandatory directions. The California Coastal Commission, through modest grants and some general guidance, has been encouraging local officials to consider “everything in the toolkit” — including the controversial option of relocating oceanfront properties and critical infrastructure away from the water — when updating city policies.”
The Times article bases its climate change hyped sea level rise alarmist propaganda on computer model output derived from a 2017 California report that utilized UN IPCC AR5 report future emission scenarios that are characterized by the UN as being simply “illustrative” and “plausible” with no probabilities associated with the assumptions employed in these scenarios meaning outcomes using these scenarios amount to nothing but conjecture and speculation.
The Times article utilizes climate alarmist characterizations of California’s future sea level rise concerns as follows:
“The rising sea might feel like a slow-moving disaster, they said, but this is a social, economic and environmental catastrophe that the state cannot afford to ignore. By the end of this century, the sea could rise more than 9 feet in California — possibly more if the great ice sheets collapse sooner than expected.”
The California sea level report attempts to assign probabilities to the ranges of sea level rise calculated by computer models using the various UN IPCC AR 5 emissions scenarios by combining these speculative scenarios with the UN reports assessments by its alarmist writers of “level of confidence” and “assessed likelihood” qualifiers assigned to the reports outcomes.
Thus the California sea level rise report outcomes represent opinions based upon speculation and conjecture regarding future claims about California’s coastal sea level rise.
As noted in a WUWT article at the time of the UN IPCC AR 5 report: “The UN IPCC has completed its three part (WGI, WGII, WGIII) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) process where future climate findings are portrayed using “level of confidence” and “assessed likelihood” qualifiers that attempt to cast these outcomes in a cloak of scientific certainty.”
As always the Times the article fails to note that coastal sea level rise has been occurring along the California coastline for tens of thousands of years based on natural climate behavior since the last ice age with the rate of sea level rise remaining at low levels for at least the last 8,000 years.
Additionally the Times article as always conceals and suppresses the more than 30 year failure of climate alarmist scientists claims of accelerating sea level rise made before Congress in 1988 where their computer models showed that sea level rise would increase by between 1 to 4 feet by mid century with this outcome completely unsupported by global tide gauge data that reflects no coastal sea level rise acceleration occurring during the last three decades.
The climate alarmist embarrassing failure demonstrated by extensive NOAA tide gauge data measurements that do NOT reflect acceleration of coastal sea level rise as hyped by failed climate alarmist computer models over the last more than 30 years is illustrated by the 120 year long tide gauge measurement sea level rise data recorded at San Francisco shown below with this long record of steady sea level rise of course unaddressed by the Times alarmist article.
The Times article mentions the usual idiotic assertion, as clearly displayed below, that California coastal sea level rise could increase by 9 to 10 feet by the end of the century based on pure speculative from computer models. This flawed claim is about the same rate of sea level rise increase hyped by climate alarmist “scientists” testifying in 1988 before Congress with that assertion shown to be flawed and failed over the last three decades.
Computer models created and utilized by climate alarmist propagandists for political purposes are incapable of accurately representing global climate either regionally or globally regardless of the climate metric being evaluated including global temperatures which are grossly overestimated by these models.
California’s purely politically driven climate alarmist government needs to abandon the use of incompetent, inaccurate and failed sea level rise computer models and instead utilize actual measured coastal sea level rise data to establish meaningful, justifiable and cost effective government climate policy actions.
According to the official, widely reported story, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) shut down substantial portions of its electric transmission system in northern California as a precautionary measure.
Citing high wind speeds they described as “historic,” the utility claims that if they didn’t turn off the grid, wind-caused damage to their infrastructure could start more wildfires in the area.
Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps. This tale presumes that the folks who designed and maintain PG&E’s transmission system are unaware of or ignored the need to design it to withstand severe weather events, and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) allowed the utility to do so.
Ignorance and incompetence happens, to be sure, but there’s much about this story that doesn’t smell right—and it’s disappointing that most journalists and elected officials are apparently accepting it without question. […]
… if badly designed and poorly maintained infrastructure is not the reason PG&E cut power to millions of Californians, what might have prompted them to do so? Could it be that PG&E’s heavy reliance on renewable energy means they don’t have the power to send when an “historic” weather event occurs?
Wind Speed Limits
The two most popular forms of renewable energy come with operating limitations. With solar power the constraint is obvious: the availability of sunlight. One does not generate solar power at night and energy generation drops off with increasing degrees of cloud cover during the day.
The main operating constraint of wind power is, of course, wind speed. At the low end of the scale, you need about a 6 or 7 mph wind to get a turbine moving. This is called the “cut-in speed.” To generate maximum power, about a 30 mph wind is typically required. But, if the wind speed is too high, the wind turbine will shut down. This is called the “cut-out speed,” and it’s about 55 mph for most modern wind turbines. […]
Now consider how California’s power generation profile has changed. According to Energy Information Administration data, the state generated 74.3 percent of its electricity from traditional sources—fossil fuels and nuclear—in 2001. Hydroelectric, geothermal, and biomass-generated power accounted for most of the remaining 25.7 percent, with wind and solar providing only 1.98 percent of the total.
By 2018, the state’s renewable portfolio had jumped to 43.8 percent of total generation, with wind and solar now accounting for 17.9 percent of total generation. That’s a lot of power to depend on from inherently unreliable sources. Thus, it would not be at all surprising to learn that PG&E didn’t stop delivering power out of fear of starting fires, but because it knew it wouldn’t have power to deliver once high winds shut down all those wind turbines. – Read full article
Add California’s wildfires to the list of problems caused by US President Donald Trump. The state’s former governor has warned Trump and his fellow Republicans that “the blood is on your soul”… for denying climate change.
“California’s burning while the deniers make a joke out of the standards that protect us all. The blood is on your soul here and I hope you wake up,” former governor Jerry Brown snarled, during a House Oversight Committee hearing on the Trump administration’s recent decision to bar California from setting its own auto emissions standards. “This is not politics, this is life, this is morality… this is real,” he continued.
“Climate change is real, it’s happening, and you and everyone else will recognize that.”
Brown likened Trump and his fellow climate change skeptics to believers in “flat Earth,” claiming climate change is directly responsible for the wildfires currently engulfing swathes of California. While at least two of this year’s fires are actually believed to have been caused by malfunctioning PG&E power lines – like last year’s devastating Camp Fire, which wiped out an entire town – Brown has glossed over the notoriously mismanaged utility to pin the blame on hotter, drier weather. The only solution? “Limiting our carbon pollution,” he told reporters in 2015, defying climate scientists who suggested that that year’s fires were not caused by anything of the sort.
The House called Brown and other “experts” to testify against the White House’s decision to quash the waiver that had allowed California to set its own vehicle emissions standards and effectively control the whole country’s auto industry. Car companies can hardly afford to manufacture two separate versions of the same vehicle, and California has more drivers than any other state, so they can’t ignore the stricter emissions rules either.
Democrats, including current California governor Gavin Newsom, have slammed the move as “reckless and politically motivated,” a symbol of Big Oil’s iron grip on the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators. The White House, however, has claimed that stricter emissions standards make vehicles more expensive, meaning fewer people will drive these energy-efficient cars. The rule change is due to take effect next month.
In September, California’s legislature passed AB 922, a bill legalizing the payment to women for their eggs for research purposes. Additionally, next year, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is expected to return to the voters to secure passage of an initiative that will supply billions of dollars to fund entrepreneurial bioresearch. If Governor Newsom does not veto AB 922, CIRM will have a green light to fund research that will not only jeopardize women’s health through egg extraction but will enable the controversial genetic manipulation of human embryos. (Already, there are bioentrepreneurs who have created genetically engineered human embryos for implantation.)
This human genetic engineering would be massively amplified by vastly expanding the market in women’s eggs, the raw material necessary for the industrialization of human production. (see Stuart A. Newman: “Our Assembly-Line Future?CounterPunch, July 28, 2018 ). AB 922 and the expected repeat funding of CIRM constitute the leading edge of a juggernaut roaring down the road to techno-eugenics.
When instituted in 2004, CIRM was specifically prohibited from funding research that paid women for eggs. Only reimbursement for expenses directly associated with donation was allowed. Federal guidelines similarly reflected caution and continue to do so. According to the National Academy of Sciences 2010, “no payments, cash or in kind, should be provided for donating oocytes [i.e., egg cells] for research purposes.” AB 922 constitutes an end-run around these well-justified provisions.
The Center for Genetics and Society (CGS), Friends of the Earth, Alliance for Humane Biotechnology, many women’s advocacy groups, including Our Bodies Ourselves, and reproductive justice groups, including Black Women for Wellness and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, came out in opposition to AB 922. But this bill is only the most recent attempt of bio-entrepreneurial interests and well-funded lobbying over the course of more than a decade, to expand access to women’s eggs. The physically invasive egg retrieval process has resulted in serious complications for many women who have donated eggs and its short-term and long-term health risks have not been adequately studied. Moreover, these risks are shouldered inequitably. As a CGS and Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research fact sheet on the bill underscores:
“Paying women for their eggs for research creates an “undue incentive” for women of limited financial means to participate in a procedure that has not been shown to be safe. Since low-income women are disproportionately women of color and immigrants, they are likely to be the most affected. They may also have limited access to medical care should they experience adverse health effects beyond the current standard of care for egg providers, and less likely to benefit from any scientific advances that may result from the research.”
Finally, the push to commercialize eggs has been accompanied by claims that research in human reparative medicine will be thwarted without it. But such claims should not be accepted uncritically. While ethical considerations may see some lines of investigation foreclosed, the historical record shows that scientists resourcefully find other avenues to reach desired goals. Consider, for example, the once prevailing scientific imperative that brought CIRM into existence in 2004: that human embryos, not funded as research materials by the Federal government, were the only source of stem cells that could turn into a wide variety of reparative cell types. But just two years later Dr. Shinya Yamanaka introduced the scientific community to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. These cells have much the same properties as embryonic stem cells but were made from mature tissues. Importantly, they do not require the harvesting of women’s eggs. Yamanaka won the Nobel Prize for his work in 2012. Virtually all stem cell biologists now use iPS cells instead of the embryonic ones. This includes recipients of CIRM funds as well, notwithstanding the fact that the raison d’etre of CIRM, the fact that the federal government would not fund research on the most versatile stem cells (at the time those derived from embryos), no longer exists in the era of iPCs. Why then, is the demand for women’s eggs for bioresearch growing?
One highly controversial reason is to fund research seeking to create gene edited embryos. This is something that CIRM has considered, as recounted in Biotech Juggernaut: Hope, Hype, and Hidden Agendas of Entrepreneurial BioScience. Surely the public, which pays for CIRM funded research, has the right to steer it away from techno-eugenicist uses. Blocking AB 922 would be a start.
Time is running out. The governor has until October 13 to veto or sign bills. It is not known when he might get to AB 922. Please contact Governor Newsom’s office to call for a veto of AB 922.
THE SANTA SUSANA FIELD LABORATORY (ROCKETDYNE) BURNED IN THE WOOLSEY FIRE, THREATENING TOXIC EXPOSURES FROM CONTAMINATED DUST, SMOKE, ASH AND SOIL. THE DEPARTMENT OF TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL DENIES RISK THAT IT CREATED BY DELAYING THE LONG PROMISED CLEANUP.
Last night, the Woolsey fire burned the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), a former nuclear and rocket engine testing site. Footage from local television showed flames surrounding rocket test stands, and the fire’s progress through to Oak Park indicates that much of the toxic site burned.
A statement released by the California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said that its staff, “do not believe the fire has caused any releases of hazardous materials that would pose a risk to people exposed to the smoke.” The statement failed to assuage community concerns given DTSC’s longtime pattern of misinformation about SSFL’s contamination and its repeated broken promises to clean it up.
“We can’t trust anything that DTSC says,” said West Hills resident Melissa Bumstead, whose young daughter has twice survived leukemia that she blames on SSFL and who has mapped 50 other cases of rare pediatric cancers near the site. Bumstead organized a group called “Parents vs. SSFL” and launched a Change.org petition demanding full cleanup of SSFL that has been signed by over 410,000 people. “DTSC repeatedly minimizes risk from SSFL and has broken every promise it ever made about the SSFL cleanup. Communities throughout the state have also been failed by DTSC. The public has no confidence in this troubled agency,” said Bumstead.
Nuclear reactor accidents, including a famous partial meltdown, tens of thousands of rocket engine tests, and sloppy environmental practices have left SSFL polluted with widespread radioactive and chemical contamination. Government-funded studies indicate increased cancers for offsite populations associated with proximity to the site, and that contamination migrates offsite over EPA levels of concern. In 2010, DTSC signed agreements with the Department of Energy and NASA that committed them to clean up all detectable contamination in their operational areas by 2017. DTSC also in 2010 committed to require Boeing, which owns most of the site, to cleanup to comparable standards. But the cleanup has not yet begun, and DTSC is currently considering proposals that will leave much, if not all, of SSFL’s contamination on site permanently.
Dr. Robert Dodge, President of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, shares the community’s concerns. “We know what substances are on the site and how hazardous they are. We’re talking about incredibly dangerous radionuclides and toxic chemicals such a trichloroethylene, perchlorate, dioxins and heavy metals. These toxic materials are in SSFL’s soil and vegetation, and when it burns and becomes airborne in smoke and ash, there is real possibility of heightened exposure for area residents.”
Dodge said protective measures recommended during any fire, such as staying indoors and wearing protective face masks, are even more important given the risks associated with SSFL’s contamination. Community members are organizing a campaign on social media to demand that DTSC release a public statement revealing the potential risks of exposure to SSFL contamination related to the fire.
But for residents such as Bumstead, worries will remain until SSFL is fully cleaned up. “When I look at that fire, all I see is other parents’ future heartache,” said Bumstead, “And what I feel is anger that if the DTSC had kept its word, we wouldn’t have these concerns, because the site would be cleaned up by now.”
# # #
Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles (PSR-LA) is the largest chapter of the national organization Physicians for Social Responsibility and has worked for the full cleanup of SSFL for over 30 years.. PSR-LA advocates for policies and practices that protect public health from nuclear and environmental threats and eliminate health disparities.
Parents vs. SSFL is a grassroots group of concerned parents and residents who demand compliance with cleanup agreements signed in 2010 that require a full cleanup of all radioactive and chemical contamination at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
Contact: Denise Duffield, 310-339-9676 or dduffield@psr-la.org, Melissa Bumstead 818-298-3192* or melissabumstead@sbcglobal.net,
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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