Tag Archive for: California

Not a Single U.S. State Is Requiring Kids to Get Vaccinated to Attend Public School. Why?

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Economics may offer a clue as to why not one state is mandating vaccination to attend school in the 2022-2023 school year, even though many government officials support coercive vaccination policies.

September has arrived and many children are back in public schools (though fewer than previous years).

At a recent event, one parent joked to me we’re now officially in “vaccine season.” The comment made me laugh, but there’s at least a kernel of truth to it. It’s not unusual for states to require that children receive an array of vaccinations—from polio, diphtheria, and chickenpox to measles, mumps, and meningitis—to be enrolled in a public school system.

One vaccine that parents will not find on any state’s required list in 2022 are the Covid-19 shots, which have been a source of great debate in the US and other countries.

While a few US cities continue to push vaccine mandates to attend, Pew Charitable Trusts pointed out earlier this year that states have been surprisingly wary of mandating Covid shots for children.

“[Only] two states—California and Louisiana—have added COVID-19 vaccines to the list of immunizations mandated for schoolchildren,” Michael Ollove pointed out in January. “Both requirements would be enforced next school year, and then only if the vaccines receive full authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

Things have changed since then.

In May, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the Louisiana Department of Health would not require children attending the state’s daycares or K-12 schools to provide proof of vaccination. California, which in October 2021 became the first state to announce Covid vaccine requirements for school, announced in April that it would not require vaccination, noting the vaccines had not at that time been approved by the FDA for all school-age children. (They are now.)

The fact that not a single US state is requiring students to be vaccinated against Covid to attend K-12 school is probably a bit surprising to readers. (It was to this author.)

I’d like to think that policymakers and politicians finally woke up to the fact that vaccine mandates are immoral, inhumane, and a clear violation of bodily integrity. But that seems unlikely considering that many vaccine mandates remain in place, particularly at the federal and municipal levels.

It’s also possible that lawmakers have realized vaccinated individuals can still get sick and spread the virus, and therefore concluded vaccinations are a matter of personal health, not public health. Yet once again this theory is undermined by the presence of other vaccine mandates that remain in place. Some may contend that we’ve simply beaten the virus and mandates are no longer necessary, but official statistics show Covid deaths and cases remain stubbornly high.

So what’s the answer?

What’s most likely is that political considerations are at play. Yet this thesis too, at first blush, appears to be undermined by the reality that polls show Americans support Covid vaccine mandates in schools.

Some basic economics, however, can help us see that the politics are more complicated than that.

Public Choice Theory is a field of economics pioneered by the Nobel Prize-winning economist James M. Buchanan and economist Gordon Tullock. It rests on a simple assumption: politicians and bureaucrats make decisions primarily based on self-interest and incentives just like everyone else, not out of an altruistic goal of serving “the public good.” (This is why public choice economists have dubbed it “politics without romance.”)

I’ve previously pointed out that politicians were incentivized during the pandemic to embrace Covid restrictions even if they didn’t work because of the political climate in 2020. The absence of government regulations was viewed as actual violence by some public health experts, and those who didn’t embrace strict interventions were accused of genocide.

Moreover, the costs of these regulations tended to be dispersed, delayed, and hidden from view. Depression, drug overdoses, lost learning, and speech impediments were among the consequences of NPIs (Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions) imposed by governments. But the results of these policies were relatively “unseen” (to use a term from the 19th century economist Frederic Bastiat), at least compared to Covid deaths, which public health officials, the media, and even ordinary citizens tracked obsessively.

The costs of NPIs were quite serious, but they were quite low politically for the reasons stated above. The political costs of keeping a state open were much higher. No politician wants to explain why Mrs. Jackson, the 60-year-old math teacher, died from Covid while schools in your state remained open. (It would be just as tragic if Mrs. Jackson had died at home when schools were closed, but at least no politician would be blamed for her death in this case.)

In other words, the incentive structure early in the pandemic encouraged interventions, even if those interventions were ineffective and ultimately ended up doing more harm than good.

The incentive structure for vaccines is very different, particularly for young people.

Children can and do die from Covid, of course, but their risk is extremely low compared to other age groups. Even more important, perhaps, is that the costs of mandatory vaccination are not delayed, dispersed, or hidden from view. They are immediate, concentrated, and highly visible.

The sad reality is that vaccine injuries, though rare, do occur, as the CDC notes. And when they occur, they are the opposite of “unseen,” which means the political repercussions have the potential to be swift—and severe.

After all, when a young person dies after taking a vaccine designed to protect him, it’s a tragedy. When a young person dies of myocarditis after taking a vaccine he was forced to take to attend school, it’s a tragic event and a political disaster with a wide radius, even if some studies show the risk of myocarditis is greater after Covid infection than after Covid vaccination.

All of this analysis is dark and a bit troubling, of course. Now you see why they call public choice theory “politics without romance.”

But it might help explain why even state leaders comfortable with mandatory vaccination and vaccine passports have been reluctant to compel children to get the shot, even if they truly believe it could save lives.

Whether mandatory vaccination would have done more harm than good is a question we’ll never know, though it’s a debate that will likely continue for years to come. But because vaccines have the power to both save lives and claim lives, the decision to accept or refuse them can only morally be made by one person: the individual (or parents, if the decision concerns a child).

So at least state leaders are getting it right this time, even if they are doing so for the wrong reasons.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Public Schools Are Spending Money Like Crazy, Despite Sharp Enrollment Declines

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This pattern of spending is unsustainable. These schools are bleeding money.

The public education system has been failing students for years. From misappropriating funds to providing inadequate lessons and passing illiterate students; public schools are losing support. Despite this they continue receiving extensive budgets which do not properly represent enrollment rates, attendance numbers, or staffing issues.

While it is true that 2020 was an extremely difficult year for these taxpayer-funded institutions, those who blame the Covid-19 pandemic are using it as a scapegoat. Before the extensive government pandemic response, the nation was experiencing a teacher shortage and a political takeover of public schools — the likes of which had never been experienced — which has only increased during the political battle over public health issues.

Since 2013 conflicts between teachers and school boards have been reported. This specifically hindered interest in the teaching profession.

In 2015 student interest in the teaching profession dropped by 5 percent in just a year and has continued to decline. Although arguments over teacher pay have been brought to the forefront of the situation, elementary and secondary school teachers made an average of over $63,000 during the 2019-2020 school year, and since then districts have increased pay and added massive bonuses to attract educators back to the profession, inflating budgets, yet still the teacher shortage remains.

New students entering the teaching profession continues to decline as teachers unions and school boards not only battle themselves, but parents as well. Instead of listening to the communities they serve, these powerful organizations are pushing their own political ideologies in the classroom. Educational focus has shifted from teaching core classes like math, science, and history, to identity-based practices which promote critical race theory (CRT) and gender theory.

The National School Board Association itself has fought to persuade schools to adopt CRT and the 1619 project. These race-focused lessons have yet to produce successful results. Because of this, families have disputed replacing sound lessons with untested classroom theories. When expressing their concerns at school board meetings these parents were silenced, and even publicly smeared as “domestic terrorists.”

In addition, during the pandemic various school boards and teachers unions fought to keep children isolated and masked long after it was deemed safe for them to return to in-person learning. Yet, educators still wished to receive full pay as students suffered from widespread learning loss and achievement gaps. It was even discovered that the American Federation of Teachers influenced CDC reopening guidelines, indicating that their power held sway over school health policies, arguably even more than factual public health data.

Parents quickly recognized the harmful effects of lockdowns and long-term masking. Schools which remained locked down longer saw the sharpest enrollment declines. These are, coincidentally, in highly progressive areas where CRT and other identity based lessons have been adopted by teachers and districts.

In 2019 math was deemed a “racist” subject in the state of Washington. By 2021, 70% of students in the area were failing math and more than half failed English. In nearby Oregon, reading and writing requirements have been removed to offer more “equitable” education experiences, and even test taking was deemed “racist” by the National Education Association.

In addition, the Biden Administration is leading the Department of Education to bring race to the forefront of American education on a national level. Instead of allowing states to choose what is best for their populations, government grants are now being awarded based on the implementation of identity-based education practices.

Public school officials have been quick to blame the pandemic for increasing student failures, but teaching equity over performance has yet to lead students to academic excellence. Learning loss is plaguing students across the nation, and instead of utilizing COVID relief money to ensure that students achievement gaps are filled in before Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ESSR) expire, progressive states have allocated masses of these taxpayer dollars for identity based lessons.

Taxpayer funded ESSR money was swiftly approved and distributed with little to no oversight during the pandemic. Because of this, less than half of public schools have used COVID relief money to update HVAC units and reduce viral illness transmissions. Instead, districts in New York, California, Illinois, and Minnesota openly spent their pandemic dollars on political endeavors.

The California Department of Education received $15.1 billion in ESSR funding. Instead of focusing all of these taxpayer dollars on public health concerns the state funneled portions of this money into “implicit bias training,” “ethnic studies,” and “LGBTQ+ cultural competency.”

Similarly, New York gained $9 billion in emergency funding. This money was not primarily focused on keeping students healthy or improving classroom air quality but, “anti-racism,” “anti-bias,” “socio-emotional learning,” and “diversity, equity, inclusion,” lessons.

Illinois has also utilized masses of pandemic-relief money to institute equity plans with a specific focus on “anti-racism.” Minnesota took their $1.15 billion in ESSR funds and decided to use a portion of this massive payout for “culturally responsive” training and addressing “gender bias,” with a focus on gender affirmation.

COVID relief funds have been abused and directed to non-pandemic related educational services. All the while, students continue to fail at record rates and leave the public education system entirely.

Public schools are funded by local, state, and federal taxes. Funding is determined by varying factors which usually include student performance, enrollment rates, and attendance. Yet despite experiencing drops in all of these criteria, somehow states are still increasing budgets.

California — which has lost 2.6% of public school students since the start of the pandemic — has approved the largest education budget in the state’s history. This massive increase comes as California’s largest public school district has experienced a 40% chronic absenteeism rate. This reflects a national trend.

A third of Chicago schools are at least half empty, but that didn’t stop the Chicago Board of Education from increasing their 2022 budget from what was approved in 2021. In Washington DC, public school reading and math proficiency has dropped, and enrollment has stagnated, but the mayor proposed a 5.9% budget increase.

Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and other states have all continued spending more despite serving fewer students. These public schools are bleeding money and costing taxpayers billions in debt that will eventually have to be repaid.

Public schools received record amounts of funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this, school boards and teachers unions have allowed politics to dominate their policies and teaching practices. As a result, student success rates have suffered, and families are walking away from the system while lawmakers are passing budget increases that only further tax communities.

This pattern of spending is unsustainable. These schools are bleeding money. There is currently no end in sight as districts continue this trend into the 2022-2023 school year and beyond.

AUTHOR

Jessica Marie Baumgartner

Jessica is an education news reporter, homeschooling mother of 4, and author of “Homeschooling on a Budget,” whose work has been featured by: “The Epoch Times,” “The Federalist,” “The New American,” “The American Spectator,” “American Thinker,” “St. Louis Post Dispatch,” and many more.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Admin Handed California The Power To Mandate EVs Nationwide

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  • California instituted a new regulation on Thursday that will ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035; the rule, which was permitted by the Biden administration, could accelerate the nationwide transition to electric cars.
  • “I don’t think Congress gave that authority to California, specifically to set their own standards for greenhouse gases,” former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • “Blue states will follow California’s lead and hand manufacturers a mandate to make only EVs, regardless of what is economically or physically possible,” Steve Milloy, a member of former President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, told the DCNF.

California has passed a new regulation that will ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles; the new emissions rule, which was permitted by the Biden administration, will have wide-ranging effects beyond California and could accelerate the nationwide transition to electric cars.

California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) finalized a rule Thursday that will outlaw the sale of gas-fueled cars by 2035. The law may push an increasing number of states to adopt similar rules and force Americans to exclusively buy electric vehicles (EVs) as numerous Democrat-run states such as New York, Massachusetts and Maryland routinely adopt California’s “clean car” standards, according to data from the Maryland Department of the Environment.

President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restored California’s Clean Air Act waiver in March, which gave the state legal authority to set its strict vehicle emissions standards, according to a press release. The Trump administration formally revoked the waiver in September 2019, stating that California did not need specific emissions standards as the environmental problems caused by emissions were not unique to the state.

“During the Trump administration, we tried to codify and articulate that California did not have the authority to set greenhouse gas standards,” former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I don’t think Congress gave that authority to California, specifically to set their own standards for greenhouse gases.”

Furthermore, 17 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit in May against the EPA after it reinstated California’s waiver, according to legal filings.

“This leaves California with a slice of its sovereign authority that Congress withdraws from every other state,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey told the DCNF about the EPA’s ruling. “The EPA cannot selectively waive the Act’s preemption for California alone because that favoritism violates the states’ equal sovereignty.”

Moreover, the attorneys general argue that California’s waiver puts a “burden of compliance on auto-manufacturers” as automakers will have to cater to both California’s new rules and the mainline federal regulations, according to legal documents.

The state’s ban will require 100% of new cars sold in California, the country’s largest auto market, to be free of fossil fuel emissions by 2035. Interim targets also require 35% of vehicles sold in the state by 2026 to produce zero emissions, rising to 68% by 2030.

“It’s 100% by 2035, but it’s 35% by 2026, California has between 11% and 13% EVs as its total share of cars,” Wheeler said. “It’s unrealistic … they can’t get to 35% EVs by 2026 let alone 68% by 2030.”

California hopes to enforce this rule through a mandate which could penalize automakers up to $20,000 per vehicle if they fail to meet the state’s sales quotas, a CARB spokesman told the DCNF.

“The California ban represents an irresponsible and likely illegal approach to rulemaking, given the highly integrated interstate nature of the auto industry, one national standard is extremely important,” Mandy Gunasekara, former chief of staff of the EPA, told the DCNF. “California is attempting to create a legally dubious workaround where vehicle standards are set by liberal politics instead of technical realities.”

The 14 Democrat-led states, including California, make up roughly a third of the U.S. auto market, according to NPR.

“Blue states will follow California’s lead and hand manufacturers a mandate to make only EVs, regardless of what is economically or physically possible,” Steve Milloy, a member of former President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, told the DCNF. “You’re going to force people to buy a more expensive car that will last half the time.”

The average price of a new electric car is approximately $66,000, according to Kelley Blue Book.

“If automakers are only making electric cars because of the rule and government subsidies, then there won’t be any gas cars on the market,” Milloy stated.

The EPA also reinstated and enhanced an Obama-era federal fuel regulation in December 2021 that is less strict than California’s proposed standards, stating that passenger cars must have a fuel economy of 55 mpg by 2026, up from the current 40 mpg, according to an EPA regulatory update. Both the California and government regulations will support the Biden administration’s aggressive climate agenda, which seeks to phase out fossil fuels and promote “clean energy” technologies.

“It’s being done for PR purposes … the electricity infrastructure isn’t there and it’s not anticipated to be there,” Wheeler stated. “Nobody in the electricity industry will tell you that they will be able to power a state fleet consisting of only EVs by 2035.”

The average number of EVs sold in the U.S. was roughly 607,000 in 2021 while the total number of cars purchased was about 3.34 million, according to Statista.

Newsom’s office and the EPA did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

JACK MCEVOY

Energy and environmental reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Data Show California Is a Living Example of the Good Intentions Fallacy

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“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.”

During a speech at Harvard several years ago, Charlie Munger related a story about a surgeon who removed “bushel baskets full of normal gallbladders” from patients. The doctor was eventually removed, but much later than he should have been.

Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, wondered what motivated the doctor, so he asked a surgeon who participated in the removal of the physician.

“He thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn’t get that organ out rapidly enough,” the physician explained.

The doctor was not motivated by profit or sadism; he very much believed he was doing right.

The anecdote is a perfect illustration of the righteousness fallacy, which Barry Brownstein noted is rampant in modern politics and a key driver of democratic socialism.

The Righteousness Fallacy (also known as the fallacy of good intentions) is described by author Dr. Bo Bennett as the idea that one is correct because their intentions are pure.

It recently occurred to me that California is a perfect example of this fallacy. Consider these three facts about the Golden State:

  1. California spends about $98.5 billion annually on welfare—the most in the US—but has the highest poverty rate in America.
  2. California has the highest income tax rate in the US, at 13.3 percent, but the fourth greatest income inequality of the 50 states.
  3. California has one of the most regulated housing markets in America, yet it has the highest homeless population in American and ranks 49th (per capita) in housing supply.

That politicians would persist with harmful policies should come as little surprise. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once observed the uncanny proclivity of politicians “to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman described the danger of such thinking.

[The threat comes] … from men of good intentions and good will who wish to reform us. Impatient with the slowness of persuasion and example to achieve the great social changes they envision, they’re anxious to use the power of the state to achieve their ends and confident in their ability to do so. Yet… Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

I don’t doubt that California lawmakers, like the physician who was removing healthy gall bladders, believe they are doing the right thing. Yet they, like the physician, need to wake up to reality and realize they aren’t making people better.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Hamas-linked CAIR enraged after San Jose city council rejects mayor’s Qatar trip over Sharia misogyny

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Hamas-linked CAIR is demanding that the San Jose City Council now submit to its “education” about Islam, which would be on the order of “Don’t believe your lying eyes, believe our smooth deceptions.” They’re enraged here again that people they thought were reliably Leftist — city council members in a far-Left city in a far-Left state — would be so “Islamophobic” as to notice Sharia misogyny. The Leftist-Islamic alliance is once again showing signs of strain.

The ferociously antisemitic Billoo has called upon Muslims to oppose “even the polite Zionist.”

CAIR-SFBA Says Islamophobia from San Jose City Council Members ‘Unacceptable,’ Calls for Meeting to Offer Education on Islam

by Ismail Allison, Hamas-linked CAIR, June 10, 2022:

(SANTA CLARA, CA, 6/10/2022) – The San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA) today condemned Islamophobic rhetoric by San Jose City Council members related to Mayor Sam Liccardo’s planned trip to Qatar. CAIR-SFBA also called for a meeting with City Council members to offer education on Islam.

Mayor Liccardo’s plans to travel to the Qatari capital of Doha were rejected by the City Council through a 8-3 vote over alleged human rights concerns. The mayor was reportedly invited by authorities in Doha to attend Qatar Foundation’s Environment and Energy Research Institute from 11-13 June to learn about the institute’s water conservation efforts.

Some council members reportedly cited Islam’s legal code, the shariah, in their arguments against the mayor’s trip. One council member reportedly said she would be scared to go to Qatar as a woman. The mayor reportedly said there were elements of Islamic law in Qatar’s legal system indicating the state is unjust.

The city council has previously approved visits to Israel as well as Saudi Arabia, despite human rights allegations from numerous organizations.

In a statement, CAIR-SFBA Executive Director Zahra Billoo said:

“The Islamophobic rhetoric employed by San Jose officials is completely unacceptable. The arguments used against the Mayor’s trip to Qatar contain some of the oldest anti-Muslim tropes in the book, and the fact that the city council claimed to be concerned over human rights abuses while approving visits to serial human rights abusers Israel and Saudi Arabia is deeply hypocritical. 

“We call on city council members and Mayor Liccardo to meet with representatives of our organization and the Muslim community for dialogue and education on Islam and to correct some of the misunderstandings apparent from this incident.”

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

High Gas Prices are Caused by Governments, Not Companies

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When Governor Newsom and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met to announce a deal between the tiny country and the broken state, it was another example of California illegally enacting its own foreign policy. And a reminder of why California gas prices are so high.

The memorandum had California promising to be “carbon neutral” by 2045 and to promote the “environmental integrity of carbon pricing instruments”. California’s crooked carbon pricing schemes have become notorious for both their worthlessness and their corruption.

And California drivers are paying the price.

A report from Stillwater Associates last year found that California consumers were paying an extra $1.19 a gallon. This year the added costs include a 51 cent state excise tax, an 18 cent sales tax, 20 cents for Fuels Under the Cap, part of the state’s corrupt environmental cap and trade program and 17 cents for the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Californians are paying a $1.41 federal and state tax markup on $3 bucks of crude.

Or almost half.

Biden and other Democrats have blamed corporate profits, but the gas stations and suppliers are making a mere 33 cents a gallon or less than a third of the state’s added $1.08 in various taxes. Even the refiners are only making 72 cents. The biggest piece of the pie is coming from the taxes, many of them hidden, imposed by Democrats in the name of saving the planet.

While Newsom and Big Green describe some of these taxes as “allowances” and “credits” as part of a “marketplace”, they are really a corrupt scheme to force consumers to pay money to special interests and politically connected companies under the guise of “saving the planet”.

The Left now attacks Elon Musk, but California’s environmental regulations kept Tesla profitable. For example, in 2020, Tesla reported $428 million in sales from “regulatory credits” amounting to “four times Tesla’s $104 million of net profit for the quarter”. In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla sold $518 million in “credits” and Autoweek noted that it was making “more money selling credits and bitcoin than cars.” Credits are like bitcoins the government forces you to buy.

Regulatory credits are a corrupt environmental scam in which car makers who sell regular cars to ordinary people have to buy “credits” from electric car makers like Tesla, who sell to the rich, and then pass on the high costs on to working class and middle class car buyers.

The dirty truth about California’s electric car market is that it’s subsidized by people who can’t afford them. And the same situation applies to gas prices with their burden of green taxes.

Democrats sold the fuel taxes as penalties on polluters. They claimed that imposing them would “make the polluters pay”. Few Californians seemed to understand that by “polluters”, the Sacramento political establishment meant the single mother picking up her son from school, the supermarket cashier commuting to work, and everyone else who can’t afford a Tesla.

The California average gas price is now over $6 a gallon, compared to $4.60 for the rest of the country, because Democrats are making ordinary drivers, whom they call “polluters”, pay.

Gov. Newsom is touting his new deal with New Zealand, even though most California environmentalists have turned on the corrupt green scam that’s killing the state.

ProPublica, a leftist group, noted that, “California’s oil and gas industry actually rose 3.5% since cap and trade began.” While the idea that there’s anything wrong with carbon is an environmentalist hoax that props up corrupt green special interests, the Brown-Newsom green tax isn’t even coming close to accomplishing the stated goals that is the basis for those taxes.

A Bloomberg article last month began by arguing that, “California’s carbon market was supposed to be a model for the US, harnessing the power of capitalism to fight climate change in the world’s fifth-biggest economy. But nearly 10 years after ‘cap and trade’ began, there’s little proof the system has had much direct impact on curbing planet-warming pollutants.”

Before bitcoin, environmentalists created an imaginary “carbon currency” and a marketplace around it that forced ordinary consumers to fund corporate bribery of top Democrats. Some of the biggest companies in the country boast of going “carbon neutral” by 2030, 2045 or 2980, when what that actually means is that they’re buying “carbon offsets” and changing nothing.

The carbon scam has made the right sorts of people rich and everyone else much poorer.

California began trading “emissions” in the 90s with the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM).A decade later, Anne Sholtz, an environmental law academic and emissions broker who helped set up the program, had been arrested by the EPA on wire fraud charges.

Sholtz had all but invented the modern electronic pollution marketplace. She met with Al Gore and gave plenty of interviews until she was arrested for trying to trade credits she didn’t have.

But can there be fraud when the whole thing is a scam?

Big Green created a massive industry based on trading indulgences from government environmental mandates. An industry now worth billions, is being touted to investors as having the potential to hit $100 billion or $200 billion or infinity by 2030. It’s an industry that, unlike those it’s using the government and leftist activists to shake down, is worth nothing, produces nothing, and exists purely as a rent-seeking parasite destroying American living standards.

Each company and investor joining the regulatory Ponzi scheme is now motivated to pressure governments, local and national, to impose more taxes and push more companies into the market so that those who got in earlier will steal more from those who come in later. This perverse socialist mockery of capitalism is depicted as “saving the planet” even though it has failed to do anything to move the dial even on the environmental hoax that justifies its existence.

And that is one reason why California’s gas prices are some of the highest in the nation.

But like vegans, legal shoplifting, and shopping bag bans, what starts in California, doesn’t stay there. Biden and Senate Democrats have tried to impose a national carbon tax on Americans.

Had Senator Manchin not rejected last year’s proposed carbon tax, the whole country would have been hit with a tax of at least another 18 cents per gallon. Senator Whitehouse’s proposal would have added about 14 cents a gallon, but would have increased “5 percent above inflation annually.” That kicker, also a part of California’s gas taxes, is what’s really making them rise.

And that’s just for starters.

The Obama administration was proposing a carbon tax that would have added over 40 cents per gallon. The EU’s $75 per ton carbon tax applied here would mean over 60 cents more per gallon. A former Carter adviser has proposed a tax that would be closer to 90 cents.

And it would only go up from there.

California is a cautionary tale that when environmentalists, leftists, and other Democrats claim that they want to “make polluters pay”, they mean you.

Driving by a Los Angeles gas station last week, I saw that the price was approaching 7 bucks.

They’re making us pay. Every single day.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

RELATED ARTICLE: White House disarray: Low approval ratings rattle Biden, ‘frighten’ Democrats

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Massive Drug Smuggling Tunnel Found Between Mexico And U.S.

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Authorities discovered a large cross-border drug smuggling tunnel in California, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California announced Monday.

The tunnel, linking Otay Mesa, California and Tijuana, Mexico, was 1,744 feet long, 61 feet deep and 4 feet in diameter, and had reinforced walls, a rail system and electricity, according to the Attorney’s Office. The tunnel was about 350 feet from the border with Mexico, U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said during a press conference.

Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) agents discovered the tunnel Friday while on surveillance of a residence that was used for cocaine smuggling in March, according to the Attorney’s Office. As a result of the bust, six people were charged with conspiring to distribute 1,762 pounds of cocaine.

“There is no more light at the end of this narco-tunnel. We will take down every subterranean smuggling route we find to keep illicit drugs from reaching our streets and destroying our families and communities,” Grossman said in a statement.

Authorities were able to make several arrests while following vehicles going in and out of the warehouse to pick up drugs, according to a complaint. Agents pulled over the individuals, finding narcotics in their cars.

“The San Diego law enforcement community has multiple investigative task forces that highly prioritize tunnel detection- exemplified by this tunnel discovery by the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) San Diego led Costa Pacifico Money Laundering Task Force. The San Diego law enforcement community throughout the years has consistently shown its ability to detect and remediate tunnels while bringing those responsible to justice,” HSI San Diego Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz said in a statement.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Increasing number of public schools feature secret ‘gender transition closets’

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The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus boasted “We’ll convert your children….We’re coming for your children.” They said they were going to convert them to tolerance and knowledge, they said. Yeah, sure, that was it. That was it all along.

More Secret Gender Transition Closets Discovered in Public Schools

by Alice Giordano, Epoch Times, April 22, 2022:

They started in colleges, but trans closets—rooms stocked with transgender clothes and accessories for students to change into after arriving to school and back out of before going home—are being discovered in public schools with some indication they are being kept a secret from parents.

In a recent TikTok video, a California teacher implies that the trans closet he started at the high school where he works is meant to be kept from parents.

“The goal of the transition closet is for our students to wear the clothes that their parents approve of, come to school and then swap out into the clothes that fit who they truly are,” the teacher said.

The California Family Council and others eventually confirmed the identity of the teacher as Oakland Unified School District Spanish teacher Thomas Martin-Edwards, who is also the founder of “Queer Teacher Fellowship.”

Martin-Edwards, the teacher who runs the trans closet, is also transgender. He has posted videos of himself in the classroom showing off the stilettos he wears to school….

Amare Roush, founder of The Transition Closet, told The Epoch Times that her organization does support keeping the existence of trans closets at schools secret from parents, because of the abuse she says children often face at home if they disclose to their parents they are transgender.

“We do provide a safe space for kids whose parents are not accepting, because it’s known to help lower the suicide rate,” said Roush who is also a certified advocate for domestic violence victims.

“These kids are going to do it anyway, we just want a way to provide them with a way to do it safely to where they’re not wearing clothes that are too small for them, or doing so in a way that’s going to get them hurt by their parents.”…

“This is grooming,” tweeted one Colorado man, “Police should come to the classroom and arrest whoever the teacher is in this classroom.”…

Marshall University, the University of Arkansas, Penn State, and the University of California are among colleges that have been operating trans closets for years.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Two Americas: Chasm Grows Between Red And Blue States On Hot-Button Social Issues

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  • Polarization on social issues is creating dramatically different legal landscapes between red and blue states. 
  • Republican-led states are passing laws limiting abortion and restricting child sex change procedures, while Democrat-led states are expanding abortion access and styling themselves as havens for transgender children fleeing red states.
  • “The divide between the American Left and Right on whether or not children should be sexualized in schools will continue to grow until the Left suffer real political consequences for their radical agenda,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Red and blue states are rapidly moving further apart on hot-button social issues as lawmakers and activists shift their focus to topics like abortion and transgenderism.

Republican-led states are passing waves of laws limiting elective abortions and sex change treatments for children, while blue states attempt to become havens for transgender children and abortion-seekers. Legislative efforts to impose 15-week abortion limits, restrict sexuality and gender ideology in classrooms and limit transgender participation in women’s sports have cropped up in GOP-led states across the country; each of these measures has recently passed in Florida alone.

“The policies that we champion are really common-sense positions that have broad support from among the average Floridian,” a spokesman for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Children shouldn’t be indoctrinated or sexualized in the classroom. Parents have rights when it comes to their child’s education. Life is life and worth protecting, whether in the womb or outside of it. On these matters, we take a stand.”

Florida recently banned abortions after 15 weeks, restricted classroom instruction on sex and gender and required athletes to participate in divisions corresponding to their biological sex. The state’s new Parental Rights in Education law, which critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law, banned classroom lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation for kindergarten through third grade, sparking outrage from prominent Democrats, LGBT activists and the corporate media.

DeSantis also signed a bill creating support programs to encourage fatherhood and released a proclamation declaring a female swimmer the winner of an NCAA championship race she lost to a biological male athlete who identifies as a transgender woman.

Terry Schilling, president of the pro-family political advocacy organization American Principles Project (APP), told the Daily Caller News Foundation that frustrated parents were a driving force behind many of these legislative efforts. APP has been active in promoting legislation targeting certain forms of gender education and Critical Race Theory (CRT) lessons in schools.

“Over the last couple years, as schools shut down and children were forced to ‘learn’ via Zoom, parents were given a glimpse at what was actually taking place in the classroom,” he said. “They weren’t happy about what they saw: indoctrination into radical racial and sexual ideologies while the important subjects — math, reading, science — were left by the wayside.”

‘California’s door is always open’

While Republican state lawmakers have pushed a socially conservative agenda, blue states have fired back with their own social policies, advancing legal abortion up to the point of birth and promoting sex change treatments for children who believe they are transgender.

As Texas attempted to prosecute child sex change procedures as a form of child abuse and Alabama passed a bill banning sex change treatments for minors, California lawmakers introduced a bill that would make the state a “place of refuge” for families putting their children through medical sex changes.

“Trans kids and their families should be celebrated – not targeted by the state! They are heroes,” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “To fearful families in Texas right now – California’s door is always open to you.”

California also introduced legislation to fund abortion tourism in anticipation of more women traveling to the state as Republican-led states passed numerous new abortion restrictions in 2021 and 2022.

Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, meanwhile, supported a bill requiring sex-segregated restrooms as well as a bill banning sex change procedures for children.

“Enough of this woke radical nonsense that preys on our kids,” Ivey said. “We’re going to focus on protecting our kids and keeping our schools focused on being a place where students learn the fundamentals.”

Jon Michaels, a law professor who studies government at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The New York Times that the waves of contrasting bills tackling social issues were driving a wedge between red and blue states.

“We’re further and further polarizing and fragmenting, so that blue states and red states are becoming not only a little different but radically different,” he said.

‘What happens to Roe’

Numerous Republican-led states passed 15-week abortion limits after the Supreme Court took up a case surrounding Mississippi’s 15-week limit in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. The case gives the Court an opportunity to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade or change the generally understood legal definition of fetal viability, which would allow states to make stricter abortion laws.

Several other states have passed even stricter abortion limits; Texas banned most abortions after six weeks, the point at which a fetal heartbeat can be detected, along with Idaho and South Carolina. Oklahoma passed a ban on abortion at all points in pregnancy except in medical emergencies threatening the life of the mother April 12, Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion limit April 14, and Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a similar bill March 31.

The Republican-dominated Kentucky legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of an abortion bill April 14, making a 15-week abortion limit law and requiring proper treatment of human remains following certain fetal deaths.

Meanwhile, Democrat-led states are expanding abortion access even further. Maryland lawmakers passed legislation enshrining abortion as a constitutional right March 11 and overrode Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a bill pouring millions of dollars into abortion trainings for non-physicians April 9.

Colorado legalized abortion throughout the entire duration of a pregnancy April 4, and Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed a lawsuit to make abortion a constitutional right in the state April 7.

“No matter what happens to Roe, I am going to fight like hell and use all the tools I have as governor to ensure reproductive freedom is protected,” Whitmer said upon filing the suit. “That’s a fight worth having.”

Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, told the DCNF that the chasm between Republican-led states and Democrat-led states would only widen as parents’ newfound political involvement continues to drive politics in the upcoming midterms.

“The divide between the American Left and Right on whether or not children should be sexualized in schools will continue to grow until the Left suffer real political consequences for their radical agenda,” Schilling said.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social issues and culture reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

California: Muslim tries to join ISIS, says he’d try again if acquitted, gets 20 years

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He might have had a better chance of being acquitted if he had worked harder to fool the infidel authorities, telling them that he now realized that ISIS was un-Islamic and all the other nonsense that we so often hear from jihadis in court. And those infidel authorities are so ignorant, and so very eager to be fooled. But Augustine was honest with them, and will have a few years in prison at least to think about that and work on his prison dawah.

California man who tried to join ISIS sentenced to 20 years

by Gabrielle Fonrouge, New York Post, April 7, 2022:

A California man who tried to join ISIS and wanted to encourage more English speakers to be part of the terror group was sentenced to 20 years behind bars, Brooklyn federal prosecutors announced.

Bernard Augustine, 25, represented himself during his one-week trial in August and told jurors that if he was acquitted, he’d try once again to join the terror group, prosecutors said after his Wednesday sentencing….

Around the time Augustine turned 18 while living in Keyes, a small rural community outside of Modesto, he made plans to travel in February 2016 to Tunisia from San Francisco with the goal of joining ISIS across the border in Libya.

In the months leading up to his trip, Augustine spent time watching ISIS propaganda videos that glorified the terror group’s violence and googling questions like “how to safely join ISIS,” prosecutors said.

The wannabe terrorist also visited websites on the ISIS recruitment process, including one titled: “How does a Westerner join ISIS? Is there a recruitment or application process?”

Augustine went through with his February 2016 trip to Tunisia, but before he could cross the border into Libya, he was detained for two years and then returned to the US in 2018.

During his trial, Augustine testified that he still wanted to join ISIS and described videos of the group beheading Syrian captives as “good” and “really cool.” He said he intended to help the group by providing English-language voiceovers for their propaganda videos.

Prosecutors asked him to confirm testimony he gave that he “would do it all again and would go back today” if given the chance and Augustine replied, “No, tomorrow, when they let me off.”…

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: ‘The People’s Convoy’ Heading to Washington, D.C.

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Canadian-Inspired Truck Convoy to Save USA to D.C.!

Democrats are readying their dungeons and gulags.

G-d protect us.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘The People’s Convoy’ Heading to Washington, Organizers Unveil Their Plans

By Enrico Trigoso, The Epoch Times, February 17, 2022:

A trucker-led convoy will kick off on Feb. 23 from the Barstow area in California, and head eastbound toward the capital of the constitutional republic—Washington D.C.—to peacefully protest to end the federal government’s emergency powers (pdf) declared since March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and restore freedoms protected by the Constitution.

Barstow is a city about 100 miles from Los Angeles where truckers often converge since it’s a major crossroads.

The large convoy goes by the name “The People’s Convoy” and will be non-partisan and cross-cultural in nature.

At the start of the convoy, an estimated 500 to 1,000 trucks will gather and depart eastward for Kingman, Arizona. The next morning, they will depart from that location and head east on Interstate 40 toward Lupton, Arizona. On Feb. 25, they plan to arrive at Glenrio, Texas.

The exact locations have not yet been specified due to the need to maintain operational security and to leave time to coordinate with local municipalities.

More details on the routes will be released two or three days in advance “as safety dictates, but you can expect us to travel along I-40 and work our way up towards D.C.,” Brian Brase, one of the core truckers that are organizing The People’s Convoy, told The Epoch Times.

Brase has been involved with various protests against over-regulation in the trucking industry for five years already.

Multiple groups will be joining the convoy as they drive toward the capital.

“It might be truckers that started it—standing up. But this is ‘The People’s Convoy’ for a reason. This is for every American, no matter where you come from or your personal background,” Brase said. “This is for every person to be a part of. This is not a left issue or a right issue. This is an American issue. And this convoy is for everyone. Moms in soccer vans, to motorcycles, to buses full of hippies, it [doesn’t] matter. This is for everyone that believes in their personal freedoms as a human being, and as an American, their personal freedoms that are protected by the Constitution of the United States.”

“It [doesn’t] matter what you drive, bring the golf carts, bring the mopeds, bring everybody, this is for everyone,” he added. “It’s the people’s convoy! It’s for the people.”

Brase said that official updates will be posted on thepeoplesconvoy.org, as well as their Facebook page and their Gettr page.

After seeing the problems the Canadian convoy had with their GoFundMe page, they set up three different means to receive donations via credit card, PayPal, or cryptocurrency. The donations are being handled through the nonprofit American Foundation for Civil Liberties & Freedom which is being supported through private banking as well as accountants and lawyers that will track the donations and place them accordingly.

Some of their plans are still being held “pretty close to the chest,” but the organizers will be issuing updates as the event takes shape.

Another goal of the movement is to hold officials accountable for the actions they took in the name of public health during the pandemic. Brase explained they would like to see “congressional hearings, as to several things: why the actions were taken that were taken, what science did they use to [back up] their actions.”

Brase said they are calling for “Senate hearings and things like judicial hearings through the Senate and the House, to get to the bottom of the source of the COVID-19 pandemic, how it started, where it started exactly, and who’s responsible for the steps of [the] mandates and shutting down people that have scientific facts that contradict what the CDC or the World Health Organization has said.”

Dr. Ryan Cole, founder of Cole Diagnostics, has voiced his support publicly for the convoy to Washington.

“A team of 17,000 doctors is standing in support of us. We’re excited to see that,” Brase said, “the white coat standing with the blue-collar,” referring to a petition to review the COVID-19 narrative signed by over 17,000 doctors, led by Dr. Robert Malone.

The truckers have security protocols still under development, as well as a code of conduct for participants, which will be uploaded to their website in the upcoming days. They also have contingency plans in the event that they are blocked along the way.

Brase believes that there are already troublemakers trying to infiltrate the convoy.

“The bottom line here is we’re not doing anything illegal. We’re standing up for our rights. We are Americans and we have the right to assemble. And we’re doing a march. It’s no different than any of the peaceful marches that have happened over the generations of the United States’s history,” Brase said.

“We’ve been doing everything that we can to promote a peaceful environment. We’re not out to overthrow the government or change election results … We’re not that. We’re here simply to be respected as Americans that want our Constitution of the United States respected, that’s what we want.”

They want the emergency powers act activated in response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus to be nullified, because otherwise, even if mandates are lifted, they can easily be reinstated.

“If we can stop [the emergency powers], they have to fight to get that act back in place, and at that point, everybody will be prepared to stand up and fight that act coming back into place.”

Human rights attorney Leigh Dundas is working as a clearinghouse for information in order to effectuate the goals of the convoy in a “100 percent peaceful, law-abiding,” and “successful” way.

Dundas told The Epoch Times that the goal of the protest is to handle the situation at “the root level.”

“The message is really that the abuse of emergency powers that we’ve seen multiple states and the feds engaged in over the last almost two years has to stop. The state of emergency needs to end, there is no emergency anymore,” Dundas said.

“Because to just end a mandate here and a mandate there, we’re just playing whack a mole and we’re not getting to the root cause of the problem, which is the emergency powers that were triggered back in March of 2020. So those need to come to an end and we need to return to a state of normalcy. We need to restore freedom and accountability for any actors that were not behaving well at the governmental level.”

She said they’re not expecting police blockades along the way.

“We’re going through mainly red states,” Dundas said.

“We’re not expecting these states to blockade us because it would create a bit of a traffic jam for the state and we’re expecting to work with local and state jurisdictions to ensure the seamless flow of traffic as we proceed through the U.S.”

The convoy was inspired by the Freedom Convoy 2022 that began in Canada after the country’s Public Health Agency announced that only fully vaccinated truck drivers can only cross the U.S.–Canada border starting Jan. 15, and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced similar requirements starting Jan. 22 for non-U.S. national truckers crossing into the United States.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Joe and Gavin’s New Normal — Train Robbery, Looting, Vandalism, Protests = Lawlessness

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We are now in an age when robbing and looting stores have become the new normal in California. America is now lawless thanks to Democrats.

When you defund the police you empower the criminal.

LOOTING, VANDALISM, PROTESTS: On May 31st, 2020 in San Diego, California we witnessed widespread looting, protests and rioters setting a store on fire at La Mesa Springs Shopping Center.

ROBBERY: On January 13th, 2022 we are witnessing train robbery.

The Bottom Line

Michael Finch wrote this poem in 2020. After seeing the story on the looting of the trains in the rail yards of Los Angeles his words struck us again once again, sadly.

Whence America?

by Michael Finch

Heading northbound, the 170 Freeway, trash heaps and waste, fall down and pile high on roads embankment, tents and filth, human costs and destroyed lives, of illness, drugs and wasted dreams.

Shattered might and factories hollow, rust belt and shredded lawns, boarded up stores, empty lots and broken glass and spent lives and churches barren, of jobs sold off and towns crushed and forgotten.

Global riches and coastal castles of wealth unseen since Rome’s finest of palaces, high upon hills of gold and towers gleaming over the Bay and harbors to the ends of earth, those eyes, hearts and souls gaze over the horizon with loyalties sailed off to faraway lands.

The revolt of the elites.

Spent lives, overdosed and buried in misery and ruin, long forgotten and none forgiven, a heartland once the citadel of power and might, the fortress, the big shoulders of the power of Atlas, of our might unchallenged, the arsenal of democracy, now discarded and shipped to a middle kingdom afar, new empires of fortunes, enriching few and for whose bidding?

This is America?

Coming back to a downtown of refuse, filth and thousands of hopeless lives, wasted and allowed, condoned from our elites and betters, of drugs and crime and to wallow in misery, America once, but America no more, cry our beloved land of God’s fading blessings.

This is a fallen greatness.

Michael Finch is the President of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the author of Finding Home, a book of poems.

Enough said. We are now witnesses to the great fall of America’s greatness.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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@KoopaNot_ vows on Twitter to ‘act upon my desires to kill ALL JEWS,’ says he’ll shoot up Los Angeles synagogue

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Apparently just an attention seeker, as he set a date of January 3 which passed without incident, but he should be investigated. Instead, he still rants on Twitter, while numerous defenders of freedom have been banned or shadowbanned.

Twitter User Vows to Kill Jews at LA Synagogues

by Hana Levi Julian, Jewish Press, January 3, 2022:

A Twitter user with the handle “Bowser @KoopaNot_” is threatening to murder Jews at synagogues in Los Angeles.

In the first tweet that appears to have now been deleted, “Bowser” wrote:

“in 2022 i’m gonna finally act upon my desires to kill ALL JEWS JANUARY 3, 2022 IM GONNA SHOOT UP THE SYNAGOGUE AT 5711 Monte Vista St Los Angeles, CA 90042 Highland Park MAY GOD PROTECT BUT HE DOESN’T LIKE JEWS ALLAH SHALL PREVAIL”

Twitter user threatens to “kill all Jews” and “shoot up the synagogue.” Jan. 3, 2022

A second tweet that was still up when JewishPress.com checked Twitter on January 3, 2022 at 9:50 pm Israel time, listed the synagogues where “Bowser” tweeted” “already got my bodies lined up”

A separate Twitter user replied to the tweet with a list of handles he appeared to have notified, including Twitter itself, the FBI, LAPD headquarters, FBI Los Angeles, Jewish talk show host Ben Shapiro, Chabad Lubavitch, and Jewish activists Ezra Friedlander and Yossi Gestetner.

A third tweet that also remained on Twitter showed a man who may have been the author, with an antisemitic caricature of a Hassidic Jew….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

California Effectively Ends Fracking, Cites ‘Urgent Climate Effects’

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California has gradually weaned itself off fossil fuel fracking well ahead of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2024 ban of the oil and gas extraction method.

The California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), the agency that oversees new permits, has denied 109 new permits from fossil fuel firms this year, according to Department of Conservation data. State regulators have approved just 12 permits in 2021, the most recent of which came in February.

Uduak-Joe Ntuk, the state’s oil and gas supervisor, said he couldn’t approve new fracking grants “in good conscience” in a September letter to the energy firm Aera Energy, The Associated Press reported. Ntuk cited the “increasingly urgent climate effects of fossil-fuel production” and “the continuing impacts of climate change and hydraulic fracturing on public health and natural resources.”

“Unfortunately, the State of California continues to take arbitrary actions that deliver little positive benefits for our fight against climate change but imposes big impacts on Californians – to our finances, to our freedoms, essentially to how we live and work every day,” Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) President and CEO Catherine Reheis-Boyd said in a statement last month.

“Real solutions do not come through arbitrary bans, mandates, and the whim of elected leaders,” she said.

On Oct. 8, the WSPA sued the Newsom administration over the mass denial of fracking permits. One month earlier, the Kern County Board of Supervisors also filed suit, challenging the state’s authority to ban access to oil and gas resources, according to The Bakersfield Californian.

“The decisions (Newsom) has made to unilaterally come after the oil and gas industry in violation of standing rules and standing law, that’s been established by the state Legislature, has been a gross overreach of his power,” Board Chairman Phillip Peters said after the suit was filed in September.

In April, Newsom ordered CalGEM to end new fracking permits by January 2024. He also asked the California Air Resources Board to conduct an analysis of how the state could completely wean off fossil fuel extraction by 2045.

The governor said the state “needs to move beyond oil.”

“In California, this is an industry that is used to getting its way,” Hollin Kretzmann, a senior attorney at environmental group the Center for Biological Diversity, told The San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday. “It is a sign that the tide is starting to turn, and the state is starting to prioritize public health and the environment over the profits of the oil industry.”

While California’s crude oil consumption has stayed level over the last several decades, it has become more reliant on foreign producers, state data showed. More than half of the state’s oil over the last ten years was imported.

Meanwhile, gasoline prices, which are tied to the cost of oil, have surged nationwide to multi-year highs, according to the Energy Information Administration. California has experienced the largest increase with prices hitting $4.79 per gallon on average.

COLUMN BY

THOMAS CATENACCI

Energy and environmental reporter. Follow Thomas on Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

FREE V. SLAVE STATES: Masked, Lockdown California’s COVID Rate Is Now TWICE Florida’s

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More news you will never hear in then Democrat state run press.

Masked California’s COVID rate is now twice Florida’s

California has mask requirements and a higher vaccination rate than Florida

By Emma Colton | Fox News November 9, 2021:

Enriched Literacy Education Mary Cantwell and Brooke Ooten on research revealing children literacy suffering nationwide.

California’s coronavirus rate is double that of Florida, despite mask mandates and recommendations to prevent the spread of the virus.

“You’re paying for your success, which is weird,” Ali H. Mokdad, professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington, told the Mercury News when asked why Californians aren’t “reaping more reward for their adherence to health guidance.”

“You succeed in controlling the virus, and now you’re having infections.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom talks during a news conference at Universal Studios in Universal City, California. On Wednesday, he signed a bill into law intended to combat organized retail theft.  (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

FLORIDA HOSPITAL CELEBRATES ZERO COVID PATIENTS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2020

Cases in California are no longer falling, with the rate increasing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s red “high” level of virus transmission stemming from the delta variant, the outlet reported.

But Southern states such as Texas and Florida – where state leaders do not enforce face mask policies or support other strict mandates – are in the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level.

California’s vaccination rate is higher than states such as Texas and Florida, but that still hasn’t stopped the outbreaks. Sixty-two percent of California’s total population is fully vaccinated, while Florida reports 60% and Texas 54%.

FLORIDA COVID CASES, DEATH RATE AMONG LOWEST IN THE COUNTRY

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California leaders put some of the most strict coronavirus measures in place last year, which have continued into 2021.

In the Bay Area, health officials reimposed indoor face mask orders and won’t lift the measures until the area falls below the CDC’s orange “substantial” transmission level for three weeks or more. So far, most of the Bay Area counties still remain in the orange zone, besides San Francisco, which is in the yellow zone, the outlet reported.

California saw fewer cases of the delta variant over the summer with the state’s higher vaccination rate. Those who were not vaccinated and have recovered from the virus now also have immunity, the outlet reported, and the virus has a more difficult time spreading.

DESANTIS: WE ARE ACTIVELY RECRUITING OUT-OF-STATE POLICE OFFICERS OUT OF JOB DUE TO VACCINE MANDATES

“These regions are now being partly protected by high prior infection rates,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the medical department at the University of California-San Francisco. “But these people whose immunity comes from COVID-19 are not very well protected, and their immunity will wane with time.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference before newly appointed state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida, on Sept. 22, 2021.

Wachter added that with low booster shot rates and waning immunity, “the end result is that we’ve plateaued in our improvements, both nationally and in California, and it’s likely we’ll soon see some significant upticks.”

“California has done very well over the past few months, but we still have too many unvaccinated people,” he added. “People are spending more time inside and being more active, and masking is going down.”

Florida, meanwhile, hit another new benchmark last week. The first hospital in the state to treat a COVID patient last year, Doctor’s Hospital, announced that for the first time since the pandemic, it has no virus patients in its care.

“This is great news! For two weeks and counting, Florida has had the lowest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the entire country – with no mandates, vaccine passports, or lockdowns. Overall, COVID hospitalizations have been declining for more than 70 days straight, and we’re at an all time low in terms of the number of COVID patients hospitalized statewide,” Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told Fox News on Monday when asked for comment about Doctor’s Hospital in Sarasota.

“Gov. DeSantis is proud of Florida’s success with launching monoclonal antibody treatment sites throughout the state, which made a huge impact on lowering hospitalizations and saving lives. Early treatment – getting the monoclonal antibodies as soon as possible after testing positive or experiencing symptoms – cuts the risk of hospitalization by 70% or more,” Pushaw added.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Media DEAD SILENT ON How Florida COVID Cases Are Down 88% In Last 6 Months

Florida Has LOWEST COVID Case Rate in United States

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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