December 7th, 2015
Finally, some news from California that doesn’t involve radical islamic jihadis killing innocent people…
California lost 9,000 business HQs and expansions, mostly to Texas, 7-year study says. “It’s typical for companies leaving California to experience operating cost savings of 20 up to 35 percent.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Remember those “temporary taxes” that made California’s state income taxes the highest in the country? Well, to the all-devouring maw of a broke welfare state, no tax is temporary.
Los Angeles County: center of American poverty:
The Census Bureau’s 2012 decision to begin releasing an alternative measure of poverty that included cost of living has appeared to have far-reaching effects in California as politicians, community leaders and residents react to the new measure’s depiction of the Golden State as the most impoverished place in America.
The fact that about 23 percent of state residents are barely getting by has helped fuel the push for a much higher minimum wage and prompted renewed interest in affordable housing programs. It’s also put the focus on regional economic disparities, especially the fact that Silicon Valley and San Francisco are the primary engine of state prosperity.
While the tech boom and the vast increase in housing prices it has triggered in the Bay Area are national news, prompting think pieces and thoughtful analyses, the poverty picture in the state’s largest population center isn’t covered nearly as fully. Although the fact is plain in Census Bureau data, it’s not commonly understood that Los Angeles County is the capital of U.S. poverty. A 2013 study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality based on 2011 data found 27 percent of the county’s 10 million residents were impoverished, the highest figure in the state and the highest of any large metro area in the U.S.
Why California’s cities are in trouble: “The problems here, as the bankruptcies of San Bernardino and other cities have shown, are mismanagement and high costs incurred as a result of the state’s public-employee unions.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
How CalPERS created a ticking time bomb. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
CalPERS also paid $3.4 billion in private equity firm fees since 1990, despite returns that were not that great. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
And CalPERS also has a huge problem with self-dealing and conflicts of interest. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Texas’ largest employer is Wal-Mart. California’s largest employer is the University of California system.
But I doubt Wal-Mart has 35,065 employees who make more than $100,000 a year…
What good is California’s open meetings law if officials still feel free to ignore it? “Six decades after Brown Act passage, elected leaders still hold illegal meetings.” (Note: The Brown Act is named after Assemblyman Ralph M. Brown, D-Modesto, not either Jerry Brown.) (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Though Texas is doing much better at fiscal restraint than California, TPPF notes that Texas’ could still use additional spending restraint:
“Though Texas legislators did an excellent job by holding the total budget below population growth plus inflation during the last session, the state’s weak spending limit remains a primary cause of excessive budget growth during the last decade,” said Heflin. “Legislators can strengthen the limit by capping the total budget, basing the growth on the lowest of three metrics, and requiring a supermajority vote to exceed it. These reforms would have helped keep more money in Texans pockets where it belongs.”
“All segments of Texas housing market show strong gains in 2015.”
Mojave solar project operator files for bankruptcy.
“Fresh off of a major expansion, iconic San Francisco craft brewery Magnolia Brewing Co. filed voluntarily for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.” So a brewery that opened in 1997 is “iconic”?
“Fuhu Holdings Inc, a maker of kid-friendly computer tablets, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to a court filing on Monday.” Eh, included for completeness. That sounds like a bad business model for a startup no matter what state it was in…
Fresno Democratic assemblyman resigns to make more money in the private sector. Evidently a year to wait until his term expires was just too long to avoid climbing aboard the revolving door gravy train…
Tags: bankruptcy, California, CalPERs, Democrats, Fresno, Los Angeles, pension crisis, San Francisco, Texas, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Democrats, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
December 4th, 2015
I have drafts of both a new Texas vs. California Update and a new LinkSwarm bubbling along, but the jihad-related news just keeps coming down the chute:
What has decades of Islamic immigration done to tolerant Sweden? Made life suck. “No Apartments, No Jobs, No Shopping Without a Gun.”
During the last few decades, Swedes have had to get used to the government (left and right wing parties alike) prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes. The high tax level (the average worker pays 42% income tax) was been accepted in the past, because people knew that if they got sick, or when they retired or otherwise needed government aid, they would get it.
Now, Swedes see the welfare system failing them. More and more senior citizens fall into the “indigent” category; close to 800,000 of Sweden’s 2.1 million retirees, despite having worked their whole lives, are forced to live on between 4,500 and 5,500 kronor ($545 – $665) a month. Meanwhile, seniors who immigrate to Sweden receive the so-called “elderly support subsidy” — usually a higher amount — even though they have never paid any taxes in Sweden.
Worse, in 2013 the government decided that people staying in the country illegally have a right to virtually free health and dental care. So while the destitute Swedish senior citizen must choose between paying 100,000 kronor ($12,000) to get new teeth or living toothless, a person who does not even have the right to stay in Sweden can get his teeth fixed for 50 kronor ($6).
The injustice, the housing shortage, the chaos surrounding refugee housing units and the sharp slide of Swedish students in PISA tests — all these changes have caused the Swedes to become disillusioned.
(Hat tip: Zero Hedge.)
You know who those fun-loving newlyweds slaughtered in San Bernardino slaughtered? The same people who had thrown them a baby shower.
Startling insight from the paper of record: “Couple Kept Tight Lid on Plans for San Bernardino Shooting.” As opposed to all those Islamic terrorists who announce the time and location of their atrocity in advance. “Do you think Syed Forook carried out the massacre?” “Oh definitely! It was all he ever talked about!”
San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik passed an DHS background check. You can bet all those “Syrian refugees” will be vetted just as thoroughly…
Zero Hedge provides some background on the shooters.
As does Jihad Watch.
Political correctness and Islamic jihad. “If you see something, say nothing, or get branded a racist.”
No link, but just how did CAIR have a news conference with the family members within minutes of the official announcement of the San Bernardino jihadists’ identities?
33% of “Syrian Refugees” oppose destroying the Islamic State.
Hey, why not let the Saudis help out all those “Syrian Refugees“?
Former General Weasley Clark says that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are secretly helping the Islamic State. Clark is an ass, but he’s not wrong here.
Tips for journalists to obscure Islamic jihad in their stories. “Use non-descriptive identifiers so as to conceal the identity of the Muslim attacker(s), such as ‘Asian,’ ‘North African,’ or best of all, youths.’” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Tags: CAIR, Crime, Jihad, Media Watch, San Bernardino, Sweden, Syed Farook, Tashfeen Malik, Wesley Clark
Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »
December 3rd, 2015
Evidently the two San Bernardino gunmen were Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, both now dead from police gunfire. Farook’s name came up early from Twitter users listening to the police scanner.
Farook was evidently a state environmental employee.
To the surprise of absolutely no one except liberals, Farook was a devout Muslim. Says his father: “He was very religious. He would go to work, come back, go to pray, come back. He’s Muslim.”
Also: “Co-workers said Farook had traveled to Saudi Arabia and returned with a new wife he met online, according to reports.”
Yes, his motives are an insoluble mystery.
More than one observer noted that this attack doesn’t fit many classic patterns. And indeed it doesn’t.
But “workplace violence” incidents don’t end like this one did. “Honey, San Bernardino County has insulted me for the last time! Let’s both of us load up with guns and our already-prepared pipe bombs and go down there and shoot every last one of them, leaving our baby behind!”
Jim Geraghty has similar thoughts. “There was nothing impulsive about this.”
A law enforcement source told Fox News that the couple were each carrying an AR-15 rifle and a pistol when they were shot and killed by police after a brief chase in their black SUV about 2 miles from the initial shooting site. The source said the vehicle also contained so-called “rollout bags” with multiple pipe bombs, as well as additional ammunition. The couple also had GoPro cameras strapped to their body armor and wore tactical clothing, including vests stuffed with ammunition magazines.
“That’s a military tactic for a sustained fight,” the source told Fox News of the rollout bags.
That’s the sort of thing you bring if you want to make videos to terrorize other people, and rally others to their cause or ideology… it also would explain why they left the scene instead of staying to shoot it out with police at the social services facility. They intended to live to tell the tale, at least for a while.
This was a jihad attack Farook had obviously been planning (or at least contemplating) for a long time.
Blathering about climate change, passing pointless gun control legislation, and letting in more “Syrian refugees” will do absolutely nothing to prevent the next Syed Farook from going out in a blaze of radical Islamic martyrdom.
Tags: active shooter, Crime, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Radical Islam, San Bernardino, Saudi Arabia, Syed Farook
Posted in Crime, Jihad, Media Watch | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2015
It’s been a big week for Democratic Party corruption.
First, Democratic Speaker of New York’s Sheldon Silver was convicted of all the corruption charges against him:
“The Democratic speaker of the state Assembly for more than 20 years, Mr. Silver was found guilty by a 12-person federal jury in Manhattan of four counts of honest-services fraud, two counts of extortion and one count of money laundering.”
More on Silver from Steve Malanga of City Journal:
For years, New York State has ranked among the most litigation-friendly places in America. (Those unlucky enough to get caught up in the state’s civil justice system call it “Sue” York.) Lawsuit reform has bypassed New York largely because one of the state’s most powerful politicians, former assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, was himself a plaintiff’s attorney who benefited from the system he helped create. Over the years, Silver not only blocked attempts to change unique features of New York’s civil justice system, but he also appointed other trial lawyers to key legislative positions, including on the crucial Assembly Judiciary Committee. So it’s not shocking that when Silver himself finally fell from grace, the case revolved around state grants Silver arranged to a cancer researcher, who then referred mesothelioma patients back to the former speaker’s law firm so that they could become clients in the lucrative asbestos-litigation business.
Snip.
Silver thought the people’s money was his money. For years, he helped lead a regime in which legislators from both parties received millions of dollars to distribute as “earmarks”—money handed out directly by elected officials to favored organizations outside of the state’s regular contracting or granting process. The New York Times dubbed Silver the “king of earmarks” because he used them as a way of exercising power over members of his political caucus. In doing so, Silver was accountable to no one. He handed out millions of dollars of state money, for instance, to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, an organization run by William Rapfogel, the husband of Silver’s longtime chief of staff. Judy Rapfogel sat in on meetings about funding for her husband’s group, according to press accounts. In 2013, William pled guilty to stealing some $3 million over a nearly 20-year period from the largely government-funded Met Council. He served 14 months of a 3- to 10-year sentence in an upstate prison and recently entered a supervised work-release program.
In New York, the earmark process is so corrupt that politicians can create their own nonprofits and then finance them with taxpayer money—a remarkably blatant display of conflict-of-interest.
Meanwhile, in Rahm Emmanual’s Chicago:
THERE’S been a cover-up in Chicago. The city’s leaders have now brought charges against a police officer, Jason Van Dyke, for the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. But for more than a year, Chicago officials delayed the criminal process, and might well have postponed prosecution indefinitely, had it not been for a state court forcing their hand.
They prevented the public from viewing crucial incriminating evidence — first one police car’s dashboard camera video; now, we learn, five such videos in total. And these senior officials turned a blind eye to the fact that 86 minutes of other video surveillance footage of the crime scene was unaccountably missing.
Snip.
The video of a police shooting like this in Chicago could have buried Mr. Emanuel’s chances for re-election. And it would likely have ended the career of the police superintendent, Garry F. McCarthy.
And so the wheels of justice virtually ground to a halt. Mayor Emanuel refused to make the dash-cam video public, going to court to prevent its release. The city argued that releasing the video would taint the investigation of the case, but even the attorney general of Illinois urged the city to make it available.
Then the city waited until April 15 — one week after Mr. Emanuel was re-elected — to get final approval of a pre-emptive $5 million settlement with Mr. McDonald’s family, a settlement that had been substantially agreed upon weeks earlier. Still, the city’s lawyers made sure to include a clause that kept the dash-cam video confidential.
Compared to those scandals, allegations of garden variety marital infidelity with a lobbyist by Texas Democratic State Senator Carlos Uresti is relatively small peanuts… (Hat tip: Push Junction.)
Tags: Carlos Uresti, corrupt scumbags, corruption, Crime, Democrats, New York, Rahm Emanuel, Sheldon Silver
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
December 1st, 2015
This week in Paris there’s evidently a summit to address what “world leaders” feel is a pressing crisis, namely that the governments they lead somehow aren’t able to exercise more control over our lives and take more of our money.
As Mark Steyn noted, the focus on “the problem on climate change” is a matter of mental displacement for Western elites who are unable to deal with the real problem of radical Islam.
So here’s a Global Warming news roundup:
Judith Curry, climate heretic:
This debate will be conducted on the basis that there is a known, mechanistic relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how world average temperatures will rise.
Unfortunately, as Curry has shown, there isn’t. Any such projection is meaningless, unless it accounts for natural variability and gives a value for ‘climate sensitivity’ —i.e., how much hotter the world will get if the level of CO2 doubles. Until 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. But in its latest, 2013 report, the IPCC abandoned this, because the uncertainties are so great. Its ‘likely’ range is now vast — 1.5°C to 4.5°C.
This isn’t all. According to Curry, the claims being made by policymakers suggest they are still making new policy from the old, now discarded assumptions. Recent research suggests the climate sensitivity is significantly less than 3˚C. ‘There’s growing evidence that climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the spectrum, yet this has been totally ignored in the policy debate,’ Curry told me. ‘Even if the sensitivity is 2.5˚C, not 3˚C, that makes a substantial difference as to how fast we might get to a world that’s 2˚C warmer. A sensitivity of 2.5˚C makes it much less likely we will see 2˚C warming during the 21st century. There are so many uncertainties, but the policy people say the target is fixed. And if you question this, you will be slagged off as a denier.’
“Decarbonization will not change the temperature or climate picture for our planet. Decarbonization benefits one group: those whose livelihoods depend on your belief in their story.”
Speaking of Steyn, Michael Mann’s suit against him (and Steyn’s countersuit) continues to drag on with no end in sight.
One of the world’s largest sources of CO2: Barack Obama. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
The beepocalypse has been cancelled: U.S. honeybee hits 20-year high. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
Tags: Anthropogenic Global Warming, Global Warming, Mark Steyn, Michael Mann
Posted in Global Warming | No Comments »
November 30th, 2015
So go ahead, bankrupt your nation to keep your failing welfare state afloat a little longer! What’s the worst that could happen?
Well, how about turning your daughters into prostitutes to survive?
Young Greek women are selling sex for the price of a sandwich as six years of painful austerity* have pushed the European country to the financial brink, a new study showed Friday.
The study, which compiled data on more than 17,000 sex workers operating in Greece, found that Greek women now dominate the country’s prostitution industry, replacing Eastern European women, and that the sex on sale in Greece is some of the cheapest on offer in Europe.
“Some women just do it for a cheese pie, or a sandwich they need to eat because they are hungry,” Gregory Laxos, a sociology professor at the Panteion University in Athens, told the London Times newspaper. “Others [do it] to pay taxes, bills, for urgent expenses or a quick [drug] fix.”
Correction: It wasn’t “six years of painful austerity” that brought hem to this pass, it was six years of avoiding painful austerity, and refusing to cut government outlays until they matched receipts, that turned all of Greece into Whore Island.
(Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Tags: European Debt Crisis, Greece, PIIGS, prostitution, Welfare State
Posted in Welfare State | No Comments »
November 27th, 2015
Here’s a Black Friday LinkSwarm you can while away your time with while waiting 5 hours in line to save 78¢ off a turkey baster:
Obama’s greatest legacy: downsizing the Democratic Party:
In January, Republicans will occupy 32 of the nation’s governorships, 10 more than they did in 2009. Democratic losses in state legislatures under Mr. Obama rank among the worst in the last 115 years, with 816 Democratic lawmakers losing their jobs and Republican control of legislatures doubling since the president took office — more seats lost than under any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“Republicans have more chambers today than they have ever had in the history of the party,” said Tim Storey, an analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “So they are in a dominant and historic position of strength in the states.”
Which of the GOP’s candidates beat Hillary? All of them.
Cruz is surging,
No, Ted Cruz did not support illegal alien amnesty (unlike Marco Rubio).
Ted Cruz’s plausible path to the Presidency.
More ObamaCare rate hikes coming down the pike. Houston has zero PPO plans through ObamaCare, and Dallas is suffering the largest rate hikes.
This month’s victims getting specially reamed by ObamaCare are (rolls dice)…graduate students, who by law can no longer be covered by university insurance programs. Oh, the irony…
Crimea power grid knocked offline.
Russia to seek economic revenge against Turkey over downed jet. Ukraine says “Cry me a river.”
The Antarctic has been cooling the last six years.
Black America’s addiction to conspiracy theories.
Spy Jonathan Pollard released. His supporters want Obama to rescind the conditions of his parole so he can move to Israel. It’s a tough case for Obama: He loves letting traitors off easy, but he hates Israel…
Hillary Clinton may be soft on terrorism, but she’s tough on the real threats to our nation: comedians making fun of her:
In what appears to be a first for a serious presidential contender, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going after five comedians who made fun of the former Secretary of State in standup skits at a popular Hollywood comedy club.
A video of the short performance, which is less than three minutes, is posted on the website of the renowned club, Laugh Factory, and the Clinton campaign has tried to censor it. Besides demanding that the video be taken down, the Clinton campaign has demanded the personal contact information of the performers that appear in the recording. This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”
Crew member on radical feminist “campus rape epidemic” film The Hunting Ground alters Wikipedia to conform to film’s skewed view of events, in violation of Wikipedia policy.
Eric S. Raymond examines a recent police shooting a lot of people are talking about: “I would have said this was what cops call a ‘good shoot’ if it had stopped at the first two bullets. It didn’t. I don’t think this was murder one, but it was at least criminally negligent homicide and those who covered it up should be prosecuted along with Van Dyke.” Unlike, he points out, the fully justified Michael Brown shooting. Also this: “And that racial spin? Plain bullshit. Those cops were facing an angel-dusted thug brandishing a weapon; that was pretty much bound to end badly whether the thug was black, white, or purple polka-dotted.”
The “red mercury” scam is back. And the Islamic State is the latest patsy to fall for it. Plus some loony local embellishments:
‘‘Red mercury has a red color, and there is mercury that has the color of dark blood,’’ he said. ‘‘And there is green mercury, which is used for sexual enhancement, and silver mercury is used for medical purposes. The most expensive type is called Blood of the Slaves, which is the darkest type. Magicians use it to summon jinni.’’
Andre Glucksmann dies.
What War on Christmas?
Winners and Losers from Houston’s election (better late than never).
Refugio Mayor Joey Heard arrested on drug charges. Refugio is a town between Victoria and Corpus,
Texas Democratic State Ron Rep. Reynolds convicted of barratry.
Annals of criminal genius: Trying to assault someone while in the courtroom for your third attempted murder trial. “At some point in time, you’ve got to stop shooting people.”
The Bring Back Mystery Science Theater 3000 kickstarter not only hit their goal, the just passed $3 million and are bringing on Felicia Day as the next mad scientist.
I laughed.
Tags: 2016 Election, 2016 Presidential Race, Andre Glucksmann, Antarctica, black, comedy, Crime, Dallas, Democratic Party, Democrats, Eric S. Raymond, feminism, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Hillary Clinton, Houston, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Jihad, Jonathan Pollard, Laugh Factory, LinkSwarm, Marco Rubio, MST3K, ObamaCare, red mercury, Republicans, Russia, Social Justice Warriors, Ted Cruz, Turkey, Ukraine, victimhood, War on Christmas, Wikipedia
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
November 26th, 2015
And now something lite for the holidays: How to Talk About Star Wars at Thanksgiving With Your Ignorant, Rebellion-Backing Uncle, which touches on such important points as:
The Jedi Are a Racist Space Aristocracy
Ted Cruz
Hitler
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Tags: Hitler, Parody, Ted Cruz, Thanksgiving
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
November 25th, 2015
Our free, independent press does what our free, independent always seems to do: take marching orders from the Democratic Party:
Thanks to some fabulous work by American Commitment’s Phil Kerpen digging through on Tuesday e-mails from Clinton State Department staffer Philippe Reines, he found that suspended CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott had communicated with Reines on multiple occasions to the point of taking marching orders over what she tweeted.
Amidst the e-mails obtained by Gawker (which included Politico’s Mike Allen promising soft pieces on Chelsea Clinton), Kerpen unearthed a series of instances where Labott (in words of Kerpen) “tweet[ed] on request” for the Clinton camp, ranging from so-called acts of transparency in her State Department to when exactly Clinton would depart her post in 2013.
This will no doubt be a great shock to anyone who didn’t already consider CNN an extension of the Democratic Party…
Tags: CNN, Democrats, Elise Labott, Hillary Clinton, media bias, Media Watch
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | No Comments »
November 24th, 2015
More links from the big bucket of Jihad news:
Obama’s Pentagon: We’re winning the war against the Islamic State! Whistleblowers: That’s because you’re cooking the books.
Scenes from the Pretend War: Obama blocks 75% of airstrikes against the Islamic State. Forget dying for a mistake, Obama is willing to risk American lives for a sham war he has no intention of winning.
Greeks say that it’s virtually impossible to screen terrorists out among incoming “refugees.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali says that feminists are focused on “trivial bullshit” rather than fighting real threats to women like radical Islam.
Third Paris stadium jihadist identified as a “refugee” who came through Greece.
Syrian refugees: neither Syrians nor refugees. Discuss…
Obama’s approach to the Islamic State is entirely too wimpy for that noted right-wing troglodyte war-monger Dianne Feinstein.
MSNBC’s poster boy for how horrible the no-fly list has been arrested in Turkey for being part of an Islamic State cell. It’s almost as though the liberal media have been lying to us about Islam being a religion of peace…
Must be frustrating for the Islamic State to repeatedly detail the Koranic justifications for their actions, only for liberals to go: “No, this has nothing to do with religion. You guys are just using religion as a front for social and geopolitical reasons.”
Larry Correia doesn’t foresee a happy ending:
Europe has been following the liberal, progressive, pseudo-socialist path a lot longer than we have. Instead of doing little things that make sense all along, they’ll let the problem get really big and stupid, and then it is guillotines, gulags, and cattle cars. There’s a lot of really pissed off Europeans right now, and over the centuries we’ve got plenty of examples of what masses of pissed off Europeans do when pushed.
Tags: 11/13 Paris Attacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Border Controls, Dianne Feinstein, Greece, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Larry Correia, Military, MSNBC, Paris, Syria, Turkey
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military | No Comments »