California Senate Votes 28-8 to Exempt Itself from California Gun Laws →
California Senate Votes 28-8 to Exempt Itself from California Gun LawsOne law for the serfs and one law for the nobles.
what the fuck california
And to think there are still people out there who trust politicians.
Per usual, the politics of Animal Farm:
Los Angeles Voters Choose to Cap Number of Pot Dispensaries →
I’m surrounded by ignorant, moralistic, state-worshipping bullies.
Californians Aren’t Buying Enough Gas. Solution: Raise Gas Taxes! →
California had a $157 million shortfall in gas tax-revenue for fiscal year 2012 and gas consumption by Californians has dropped by more than 1 billion gallons a year since 2006. So of course the state is going to respond by raising gas taxes. Jonathan Horn at the San Diego Union-Tribune has the forehead-slapping details:
The tax you pay on a gallon of gas will rise by 3.5 cents in California come July 1.
The state Board of Equalization voted 3-2 on Thursday to increase the excise tax about 10 percent, from 36 cents per gallon to 39.5 cents per gallon.
The increase is partly due to a $157 million shortfall in gas-tax revenue in fiscal 2012, and also a projection of less consumption by California drivers.
After the increase goes into effect, California will have the highest gas taxes in the nation at about 70.1 cents per gallon. The state is currently just behind New York.
Corrupt statist morons.
And this would be a good time to compare those 70.1 cents per gallon in taxes against the two cents per gallon the oil companies make in profit.
1. Guy gets assaulted.
2. Guy calls police.
3. When police arrive, guy complains that they took 45 minutes to get there (note: from my personal experience, it’s amazing they arrived at all)
4. Cop doesn’t like his authority questioned, and responds “Listen to me. First of all, I’m not on your time watch (sic).”
5. Cop then steps forward and gets in guy’s face.
6. Guy informs him he’s a soldier. Cop complains that guy stepped up to him (though it was the cop who got in the guy’s face).
7. Cop punches guy hard in the face and tells guy that he’s a marine.
8. Guy gets handcuffed by cop’s fat partner.
9. Cops never follow-up on people who assaulted guy in the first place.
10. Later, cop explains that “because you got all soldiered up on me… I had to use physical force to maintain control of the situation,” but he kindly won’t charge the guy.
(Source: youtube.com, via laliberty)
1. Guy gets assaulted.
2. Guy calls police.
3. When police arrive, guy complains that they took 45 minutes to get there (note: from my personal experience, it’s amazing they arrived at all)
4. Cop doesn’t like his authority questioned, and responds “Listen to me. First of all, I’m not on your time watch (sic).”
5. Cop then steps forward and gets in guy’s face.
6. Guy informs him he’s a soldier. Cop complains that guy stepped up to him (though it was the cop who got in the guy’s face).
7. Cop punches guy hard in the face and tells guy that he’s a marine.
8. Guy gets handcuffed by cop’s fat partner.
9. Cops never follow-up on people who assaulted guy in the first place.
10. Later, cop explains that “because you got all soldiered up on me… I had to use physical force to maintain control of the situation,” but he kindly won’t charge the guy.
(Source: youtube.com)
Calif. authoritarians seek to adopt nation’s toughest gun laws
When New York passed its outrageous gun control laws a few weeks ago, I told a friend that the leftist/statist morons in California would quickly compete to enact even stronger laws.
Among the measures [being pushed by democrats who control the state Legislature, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa] is one that would outlaw the future sale of semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. The restriction would prevent quick reloading by requiring bullets to be loaded one at a time.
What?! Let’s call this the “Excuse me, group of home invaders, would you mind not shooting me and my family with your illegal firearms equipped with extended magazines and give me a moment to reload my firearm one round at a time, please?” provision.
Lawmakers also want to make some prohibitions apply to current gun owners, not just to people who buy weapons in the future.
Because criminals are just the type of “current gun owners” who would concern themselves about this lack of a “grandfather exemption.”
Like New York, California also would require background checks for buying ammunition and would add to the list of prohibited weapons.
Those buying ammunition would have to pay a fee and undergo an initial background check by the state Department of Justice, similar to what is required now before buyers can purchase a weapon. Subsequent background checks would be done instantly by an ammunition seller checking the Justice Department’s records.
Because criminals buy their guns and ammo from Wal-Mart and Bass Pro Shops.
The legislation also would ban possession of magazines holding more than 10 bullets, even by those who now own them legally. All weapons would have to be registered.
And criminals will no doubt rush to comply.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, promised that gun proponents will fight the measures in court if they become law.
“It strikes me as if these folks are playing some sort of game of one-upsmanship with New York at the expense of law-abiding citizens, and that’s just unconscionable,” he said about lawmakers. …
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said he is confident Democrats can use their majorities in the Assembly and Senate to send the measures to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown this year. …
In other words, statists will once again cram their dangerous ideology down our collective throats.
Steinberg said the measures are designed to close numerous loopholes that gun manufacturers have exploited to get around California’s existing restrictions. …
It’s not a “loophole.” It’s not “getting around existing restrictions.” It’s, definitionally, complying with the law.
Other proposed measures in California would ban so-called “bullet buttons” that can be used to quickly detach and reload magazines in semi-automatic rifles, and update the legal definition of shotguns to prohibit a new version that can rapidly fire shotgun shells and .45-caliber ammunition.
A “bullet button,” for those fortunate enough to live in a freer state, is a mechanism that replaces the magazine release on a center-fire rifle which makes the magazine unremovable without a tool. This is what we already have to deal with in California. Does anyone truly believe that a person who is committed to killing will bother with a bullet button in the first place, much less blocking magazines to only 10 rounds (another California law already in the books)? No, only law-abiding citizens would have to deal with these restrictions. But now, even that is too much for the non-thinkers in Sacramento.
All these new laws will do nothing to prevent crime.
Those of you who have followed me through the years know that I try to maintain a certain level of decorum. I understand that the message can be lost if it is not presented properly.
(Incidentally, in one notable angry rant from 2010 - the only other angry rant I can remember right now - I predicted that the “brain-dead, nanny-statist, liberty-hating, government-dependent morons” of California would need to soon raise taxes due to what I called the “economic carpet-bombing the left’s policies have continued to defecate on the people.” The tax increases were voted on this last November. It only took two years.)
So, happily and by design, it is rare for me to lose my composure (for a dispassionate response to the gun control nonsense, I kindly ask that you click here).
But this… this just makes me angry. These idiots - these assholes - are pushing for laws that will make my family less safe. Forget about my liberty for a moment, my inherent right as a human being to do anything that’s peaceful - the actions of these benighted politicians will place my children in greater danger for the sake of their disgusting power-play. And let’s be clear, here: the more ignorant and naïve ones may earnestly believe they are pursuing good policy and hoping to make our communities safer, but the slightly less dumb ones understand that this is about power.
In any case, I note again: like all gun control, these laws will not curb crime. To the contrary, criminals will be empowered in the face of a less-armed populace. You see, there’s a “free rider benefit” disbursed amongst a population when a significant enough portion is able to defend itself. To borrow Penn Jillette’s thought experiment: if half the women in the world were given guns, even the half without guns would be less likely to be attacked. The same logic applies in reverse: even if some of us find ways to stay legally armed, there will be fewer of us and most of us will be not as sufficiently armed as we could be. As such, the balance shifts in favor of the criminals who now are countered with a weaker populace - and the result will be a higher incidence of crime. This is why Washington D.C. was the murder capital of the United States for many years when its gun laws were particularly severe, and things have gotten better since laws have become less controlling. Now, the leftist petrie dish that is Chicago is the murder capital of the U.S. - where the gun laws are among the strictest in the country.
Trust in authorities as an alternative to self-defense is grossly misplaced, an opinion borne of ignorance and naïveté. The police simply cannot be trusted for protection. Warren v. District of Columbia held that the police are under absolutely no obligation to provide police services to individuals, even if a dispatcher promises help to be on the way. But even if we assume some hypothetical police angel who is not corrupt or lazy and is completely selfless and respectful and concerned only about protecting innocents - even this mythical creature can’t stop a crime in progress faster than the victim who is already at the scene. The Newton police took twenty minutes to arrive to a shooting in (naturally) a gun-free zone filled with the most precious among us. If it took twenty minutes for police to come to the aid of countless innocent and defenseless children in a small town, how long will it take for them to get to you?
I don’t have to wonder what it’s like to face criminals. As I’ve recounted, I’ve had two attempted late-night break-ins in the last year. I’ve had a gun pointed at me three times. Two of those times I was on the phone with the police and the police never showed - even when one of those times ended with the gun being fired at me while on the phone!
And these laws won’t stop crime. A criminal won’t decide to forgo committing a crime because he’s concerned about committing the much lesser non-violent crime of owning an inanimate object.
So to the politicians in California and around the country who are pushing for ways to make my life less free and my family less safe - and to all of the statists who ignorantly support them - I say: fuck you.
How dare you claim authority over my life and the lives of my wife and children? And how dare you use your illegitimate authority to endanger my family?
I’ll sum up this argument the way I have many times before:
Prohibition has never succeeded in eradicating that which was prohibited. The more difficult it is for peaceful, law-abiding individuals to acquire a good, the more the supply of that good falls into the hands of criminals. And someone who is willing to murder is not afraid of committing the much less grievous crime of acquiring an illegal firearm.
The way to mitigate senseless violence like that of Newtown is not to tip the scales in favor of criminals by disarming their victims.
I’d possibly consider giving up the firearms that would protect me, my wife, and my daughters as soon as someone figures out a way to eradicate the earth of rapists, muggers, murderers, and tyrants.
When statist impulses are used to disarm the sane and peaceful, only the insane and violent will be armed - and fewer will be safe.
Army Corps Bulldozes 40 Acres of Prime L.A. Wetlands Because of Bums and Gay Sex →
The Sepulveda Dam Basin, the San Fernando Valley oasis where the Los Angeles River gathers for its brief sprint into the Pacific, is one of the great green spaces within the suburban grid of Southern California. Or, I should say, was.From the LA Weekly comes a story that beggars belief: Just before Christmas, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, without really consulting anybody, bulldozed more than 40 acres of the “prime wildlife and vegetative habitat,” partly for reasons of social cleansing:
Corps officials insisted the federal flood-control agency had no choice, in part because cruising gay men and homeless campers had flocked there and endangered the public.
Local law enforcement on the bums-and-gay-sex beat have no idea what the Corps is talking about:
That rationale is news to West Valley Division Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Anne-Marie Fuller, who for six months has overseen vice patrols in Sepulveda Basin in Encino. Fuller tells L.A. Weekly she’s unaware of homeless or lewd-behavior problems beyond those commonly seen in parks and woods patrolled by LAPD. “It sounds kind of strange,” Fuller says, adding she’d “never heard anything” about a mounting threat to public safety. […]
Meanwhile, Deputy City Attorney Raffy Astvasadoorian says he has prosecuted only seven minor cases there, for misdemeanor illegal camping, with most fines set at just $100. Corps spokesman Dave Palmer insisted to the Weekly that the complaints it got from law enforcement were “verbal,” including from the LAPD and from the City Attorney’s Office — but Astvasadoorian denies that city attorneys complained. […]
A statement from Corps Operations Branch chief Tomas Beauchamp-Hernandez claims that the Corps received public-safety complaints from the city of L.A.’s obscure Office of Public Safety within the Department of General Services, which until Jan. 1 had law enforcement responsibility for the Sepulveda Dam Basin area.
See the Weekly’s infuriating before-and-after photos here. As ever, there are few things more terrifying in Southern California than bureaucrats armed with bulldozers.
I live very close to the basin area. My wife walks basin’s surrounding parks with the kids practically every day. Sometimes twice a day. And she has for about two years. While there may be the occasional unsavory character, she’s never thought there was some “general public endangerment” in the area, otherwise she wouldn’t make that walk so often. And we’ve definitely never felt overwhelmed by any wanton… um… gayness (or, really, noticed “gay” activity of any sort).
I had no idea that greater-than-usual government B.S. and incompetence was responsible for the recent devastation of this area. Can’t say I’m surprised. With regards to the morons who presume to rule my family’s lives and aim to centrally plan the minutiae of our existence for their own selfish whims: nothing they do truly surprises me.
We find that the San Francisco County [plastic bag] ban is associated with a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illnesses. This implies an increase of 5.5 annual deaths for the county.
—
“Grocery Bag Bans and Foodborne Illness” study by Jonathan Klick of University of Pennsylvania Law School and the Property and Environment Research Center and Joshua D. Wright of the George Mason University School of Law.
As Bastiat would note: there is the seen and the unseen.
California gun sales jump; gun injuries, deaths fall
Just like a previous post, this is not to necessarily imply causation. Crime is too complex to reduce to a single bit of data. There are cultural, political, and historical components that help inform individuals within a society. The point is to show that the causation claimed by the gun control advocates to be demonstrably false. Those who believe the simplistic notion that fewer guns would yield less crime are time and again shown to be wrong.
Los Angeles City Council endorses 'Meatless Mondays' →
From the City Council that declared war on trans-fats and fast-food restaurants comes the latest way to make residents feel, well, guilty about what they eat.
The Los Angeles council, in a 14-0 vote on Friday, adopted a resolution urging residents to adopt a personal pledge to have a “meatless Monday.”
While it does not have the force of law and police will not be checking what you brought to work for lunch, city officials said they hope it will start a trend, make residents healthier and reduce the impact on the environment.
Is nothing sacred?
It’s not enforced by threat of violence… yet. First, I’m sure, will be the schools - where government control is strongest. Some will voluntarily enact “Meatless Mondays” out of ideological solidarity, though others will do so to win the good graces of superiors. Eventually, entire districts will mandate vegetarian-only meals once a month, and eventually once a week. No doubt there are food providers who would be happy to comply. (Though considering what they use as “meat” in government schools, maybe I shouldn’t complain…) And is it that far-fetched - when governments already ban sodas over a certain size and demand certain nutritional requirements in happy meals - for the über-statist city council of Los Angeles in the über-statist state of California (whose foie gras ban went into affect a few months ago, and in which Democrats now have super-majorities in both the state assembly and the state senate) to mandate such a thing in the name of health and the environment?
And of course, all talk of “health” is laughable since for many “meatless” just means a giant plate of macaroni and cheese or pizza - gut bombs of processed, gluten-rich, corn-syrup-saturated carbs. A truly healthy meal, instead, emphasizes what human beings are most biologically tuned to eat, including healthy animal proteins and fats.
Anyway, I rummaged through my stash in the work refrigerator and, in protest, this was my lunch today:
Forgive my brief lapse in decorum, but… Suck my balls, LA City Council.
On Condoms, Porn, and Billboards: Proposition B in Los Angeles
I pass this sign every morning on my way to work, and I still can’t get over how bizarre it is. At first glance, it may seem to be promoting a “No on B” stance. After all, it is relaying that pornographers, the people most affected by this law and who this law is intended to protect, are against it. But if you look at the fine print, it is paid for by the “Yes on B” campaign. What the ad is telling you is that pornographers “Say No on B,” and I guess the “Yes on B” people assume that no sane person would knowingly have any opinion in common with a pornographer. Which I suppose might be a legitimate tactic in some dry county in Alabama or something, but this is on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood.
Proposition B would, in an effort to curb STD’s and promote safe sex, require porn actors to wear condoms during filming. Actually, it requires that porn-makers apply for health permits from a government agency that can be revoked if they do not comply with the condom rule, among others. Yet again, government interferes with the consensual exchanges of free people for their own good. If this was something the porn industry or the porn-patronizing public wanted, it would already be taking place. And, because it is in their best interest to run a clean operation, the porn industry has checks in place to ensure their actors stay safe (and shooting shutdowns are prevented). Indeed, because of its regular screenings (every 14-30 days), there hasn’t been a case of HIV in the industry since 2004 - and porn stars have lower infection rates than the public at large.
But like all laws that meddle in the peaceful interactions of free people, if this proposition passes there will be unintended consequences. Instead of the desired outcome (of increased condom-use in porn), most filmmakers will simply move their operations where they can more accurately craft that which their customers demand: bareback shtupping. Many of the same meddlesome statists will no doubt weep at the lost tax “revenue” such departing businesses will represent.
Of course, this proposition isn’t only about potential health risks to the tiny community of porn actors and their sex partners. There’s also an element of legislating morality, one bureaucratic paper-cut at a time.
So I guess it’s fitting that stupid people use stupid billboards to promote stupid laws…
Power vs. Market in California →
Bloomberg is running a very instructive article on Power vs. Market.
The Market can be pushed around for awhile by petty tyrants. But, in the end, it always wins.
California is now facing $5 gasoline prices. And, wouldn’t you know, crisis is forcing repeals:Gasoline closing in on a record $5 a gallon prompted Governor Jerry Brown to direct California regulators to relax smog controls so oil refineries could increase supplies of cheaper fuel.Great example of central planning hitting a brick wall.
The local news (KABC 7) just reported on this - and made Brown out to be a savior.
Correspondent Elex Michaelson reported (sic), after some state-supportive propaganda on public transportation: “Why would prices fall? More supply is now available! With Governor Brown’s help, California won fast approval to immediately stop requiring stations to sell the expensive “summer blend,” allowing “winter blends” to go on sale three weeks early. … Experts say that that could increase the supply by 10%.”
With Governor Brown’s “help,” he said. And who is “California” in his reporting? No thoughts on why approval was required? No discussion on why different blends are forced? And no, he didn’t note that the supply was being artificially hampered by government mandates. That 10% increase in supply is only meant to be seen as a product of heroic efforts by the head of the state.
Despicable.
Here comes another layer of bureaucracy:
The California Air Resources Board yesterday granted refineries permission to make an early shift to winter-blend gasoline, typically not sold until after Oct. 31. Due to the composition of the gasoline, refiners can produce more of the winter blend than the summer blend.An “Air Resources Board” needs to ‘grant permission’?
IntheU.S.S.RCalifornia they do.
Here’s another way that bureaucrats have boxed themselves in. And keep in mind that this is the state with the most motorists in the entire country:California is dependent on its own refineries for gasoline because the state is mostly cut off from oil-products pipelines spanning the rest of the country. Refiners outside California are generally not equipped to supply the cleaner-burning gasoline required in the state.Gas stations are also running out of gas!
I learned long ago, from reading Gary North, that whenever you hear of a shortage, ask the following question:
“At what price?”
In other words, are gas stations afraid of raising prices to an even higher market level? Will the central planners come after them for “price gouging”?
You can bet your last dollar they would.
And, predictably, notoriously unthinking and state-loving Senators Boxer and Feinstein are pushing for a federal investigation on possible price manipulation (“malicious trading schemes,” per Feinstein’s letter to the FTC).
So the market is once again roaring with a vengeance in California.
The U.S. Federal Government and Federal Reserve should take notice. They’ve rubbed the market’s nose into the ground for an extremely long time.
At some point the market bites back… and it bites back hard!
And it should be noted that there are eight times more taxes collected on every gallon of gas than there is profit to the oil company: for every dollar of profit, there are eight dollars in taxes. As I noted earlier this year: “it is the state - with its taxes, tariffs, inflation, limits to production, foreign policy failings, and corporatist protectionism - that is most responsible for [high gasoline prices].”
The Latest Scam from California’s Public-Sector Unions →
AB 2451 is built on the fiction, perpetrated by unions eager to use emotional claims to divert more tax dollars to their members, that police officers and firefighters have such dangerous jobs that they die early and leave their families destitute.
But based on data from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the longest-living category of public employee is a police officer, followed closely behind by firefighters. They live, on average, well into their 80s, which is one of the reasons the state has such a large unfunded pension liability. Public-safety workers receive, by far, the most generous pension and health-care benefits. In California, they can retire with 90 percent of their final year’s pay at age 50—and spouses receive generous benefits too. Police and firefighters don’t come near the top of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most-dangerous jobs.
The Democrats are always talking about shared sacrifice, yet the same-old, same-old takes place in the Capitol—powerful interest groups keep pushing for, and often getting, more.
The state is out of cash. [Gov. Jerry] Brown reminds us of that every chance he can. Cities are teetering on bankruptcy, thanks largely to pensions, medical benefits, and other compensation paid to municipal employees. Taxpayers and job-creators are fleeing the state. Legislators should be reforming the system so that California can be competitive again. Instead, they want to keep comforting the comfortable (union members) and afflicting the afflicted (taxpayers).
California’s Failed Policies Are Driving Away Businesses and Residents →
I’ve found little to be hopeful about in the current political season, with polls showing Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax-increase plan (Prop. 30) holding a solid lead, an initiative that would chip away at union power (Prop. 32) failing, and President Obama holding a 24-point lead in the presidential race. Polling results on all three above-mentioned matters are not surprising, but they do suggest how far we are from the paradigm shift needed to get California back on a better track.
The most troubling thing I’ve seen is the delusion embraced by the state’s dominant Democrats, who really believe that California is only one massive tax increase away from being fixed.
“Maybe I know too much about this stuff, but we’re in a recovery, a slow recovery, and it’ll keep recovering with any luck,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in early September. “And if the Republicans would get out of the way and let, you know, the stimulus and the investment go forward, such as the Democrats have proposed, we’ll be better off.”
The state’s problems don’t bother me nearly as much as knowing that voters and officials here are in denial about the problem and have no clue how to fix it. It’s getting harder to blame Republicans for this any more, especially in California where they are an endangered species.
If voters approve Proposition 30, California’s income-tax rates will be the highest in the nation—21 percent above the second-highest state of Hawaii and 34 percent above the third-highest state of Oregon, according to anti-tax activist Richard Rider of San Diego. California is high on the list of most other taxes and regulations, and its wasteful public services are not reform-able because of union power.
Business owners talk not just about the costs, but about harassment by myriad government tax and regulatory agencies that often treat them like criminals. Freedom is on the decline as government gains more authority to micromanage virtually everything. Just check out the kind of bills the governor is now signing into law. (I love Steve Breen’s cartoon, which says, “If you’re a Californian and want to start a small business, there are a number of different routes you could take.” It then shows the various Interstate highways that lead to other states.) …
A new study from the Manhattan Institute called “The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look” offers a reality check. Yes, Californians are fleeing mostly for pro-growth states with a better tax and regulatory climate. California used to be a destination state, but has outsourced 3.4 million residents in the past 22 years.
“The data suggest that many cost drivers—taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs—are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus.” As authors Tom Gray and Robert Scardamalia explain, Californians are fleeing “chronic economic adversity,” congestion, and “constant fiscal instability” at the state and local governmental level, which “can be seen as tax hikes waiting to happen.”
All these reasons, even congestion, have a strong public-policy component. Businesses and individuals get tired of being viewed mainly as an ATM machine for government. If the state’s political leaders, most of whom come directly out of “public service” or the union movement, talked to business owners (and not just the crony capitalists they meet at the Capitol), they might learn about the trials of doing business here.
