Crazy Environmentalists want to cut down Jack London's tree

The 400-year-old tree in Jack London State Park

Insane Environmentalists

Crazy ass environmentalists want to cut down a 400 year old

tree because a branch might fall down someday.

(The Union)  -  A centuries-old oak tree that provided shade and inspiration to writer and adventurer Jack London when he lived in Sonoma County will be allowed to stand for a little longer after lab tests showed it is healthier than California park officials originally thought.

The decaying oak was scheduled to be taken down as a safety precaution last month because it is infected with a fungal disease. Officials at Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen worried that a branch could fall off and injure a visitor or damage the cottage where London lived and wrote from 1905 until his death in 1916.

 

The operative words are could fall.  The tree might go on for another 50 years giving pleasure to thousands of people.  But the Green Police want to control every aspect of nature and kill the tree on their schedule rather than let nature take its course. 

 

The end was so close that park rangers hosted several events this year to honor the tree, including a Native American blessing ceremony, a dramatic storytelling and having children harvest its acorns for replanting elsewhere.

 

But park boosters sought a reprieve, turning to a University of California, Berkeley expert in forest pathology who concluded that “Jack’s Oak” had another two to 10 years before it would have to be removed as long as it was regularly monitored. Three arborists had determined earlier that the tree was beyond saving.

 

“We couldn’t be more thrilled,” said Jack London Park Partners executive director Tjiska Van Wyk, whose group manages the 39-acre park that includes the cottage and the ruins of a house that was destroyed by fire in 1913.

 

“In the season of joy, we consider this a great gift.”

 

Watch Out!
That tree could attack at any moment.

California's Greatest Writer
John Griffith "Jack" London (1876 – 1916) was born in San Francisco.  London was an author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.
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He is best remembered as the author of The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire".  He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf. 
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He died on his ranch in Glen Ellen, California at the age of 40.

Proposal - Divide up California into six states

Breaking up is hard to do

• California is way too big.  San Diego has no connection to, or any interest in, Fresno, Oakland, Santa Barbara or Napa Valley and vice versa. 
• Let's start a conversation about some form of bringing government closer to the people.

(Daily Democrat)  -  Lots of folks believe California is ungovernable. Venture capitalist Tim Draper has a solution: Six Californias, including one called Silicon Valley.

Draper, a maverick tech investor who once poured $20 million into a statewide school voucher initiative, on Monday laid out his case for a proposed ballot measure that, if passed by voters, would demand Congress slice and dice the nation's most populous state.

"We're simply too big and bloated," Draper declared in a news conference from Draper University of Heroes, the San Mateo school for aspiring startup CEOs he opened earlier this year.

Veteran political observers were quick and unanimous in assessing the plan's odds of success at zero. At the same time, they said Draper's modest proposal could spark discussion about how to fix the state's manifold problems, such as bursting prisons and jockeying over water rights.

"The sheer size of California raises questions about representation and accountability. A single state Senate district has more people than all of South Dakota," said John J. Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, east of Los Angeles.

But even though it seems dangerous to bet against a quirky idea catching fire with voters in a state that recalled its governor and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Pitney noted that Congressional Democrats would never go along with creating four new Senate seats in California's deeply conservative inland and southern counties. Article IV of the U.S. Constitution reserves for Congress the right to admit new states into the Union.

Draper, who recently dialed back his role at Draper Fisher Jurvetson to focus on his new university and other efforts, suggested that Congress might react to his plan more with "indifference" than resistance.

He argued that the status quo in Sacramento, which regularly features budget gridlock and statehouse gamesmanship, "is not cutting it for our schools, our businesses, our infrastructure or our people."

Why not a State of Silicon Valley?

Dan Schnur, a former Republican political strategist who now runs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, noted that although Draper's 2000 voucher initiative went down in flames, "it also helped force a much broader conversation about school reform. This could very well end up promoting a conversation about rerouting power from the state to local governments."

Draper, wearing a red necktie promoting BizWorld, the nonprofit he launched to teach kids about entrepreneurship, said he plans in coming weeks to begin gathering the roughly 1 million voter signatures needed to place the measure on the November 2015 state ballot. He said people are already flocking to his Spartan website, http://www.sixcalifornias.info/, which he said will soon contain more details about the plan.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given that Draper's investments in companies like Skype and Hotmail have reportedly made him a billionaire, he proposes that one of the new states be called Silicon Valley. It would include San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties, as well as nontech hotbeds San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

The State of South California
If not a six way split then how about
two or three new states?

As for the wine country, sorry Bay Area: Napa, Sonoma and even Marin counties would become part of new North California.

Then again, Draper wrote in the ballot proposal that was submitted last week to the state Attorney General's Office, counties would have the option to switch states, "creating competition which will lead to more responsive governance."

The other states he proposes to carve from the carcass of the once Golden State are:

• South California
• Central California
• Coastal California
• Jefferson -- the same name as an entity first proposed in the 1940s that would have included parts of Southern Oregon and Northern California.

"I think every one of these states will become wealthy as a result," said Draper, 55, who lives in Atherton. "The current system has a horrible problem of haves and have-nots."

Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager, a longtime political science professor, allowed himself to imagine that if Draper's vision somehow became law, "You could pass some pretty remarkable legislation." Rather than having to tussle with issues from far-flung counties and ship tax dollars to Sacramento, "Silicon Valley as a state could make all the decisions that were in our own best interest."

Asked by this newspaper how much of his own fortune he plans to sink into his latest political crusade, Draper deadpanned: "As little as possible." Then he added, "I'll make sure it gets on the ballot, so that Californians have a chance to make the decision."

See our other article:Siskiyou County supports withdrawal from California

California Is Giving Tesla Another Huge Tax Break

"Corruptus in Extremis"

• Democrats exempt a "politically correct" electric car maker from taxes. 
• Wealthy Liberals want to protect their ultra expensive $70,000 plus toy electric green car while the average politically incorrect business has to pay the full tax load to support endless government spending programs.

California will give Tesla Motors a $34.7 million tax break to expand the company’s production of electric cars and powertrains in the state, officials announced Tuesday.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, won’t have to pay sales and use taxes on new manufacturing equipment worth up to $415 million. The equipment will help Tesla more than double the number of Model S sedans it builds at its Fremont factory, as well as assemble more electric powertrains for customers such as Daimler and Toyota.



Tesla expects to build 21,500 sedans this year. The new equipment would help expand annual production by 35,000 cars reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

California is one of the few states to tax the purchase of manufacturing equipment, a policy that California business associations have spent years trying to change. But the state does grant exemptions for clean-tech companies as a way to encourage the industry’s growth. The exemptions are issued by the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, chaired by State Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

Tesla has received the exemptions before, on equipment worth up to $612 million. That equipment helped the company retool the former New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont — which Tesla bought in 2010 — and launch the Model S last year. It also will help the company produce its next car,  the Model X crossover SUV.

Tax breaks for green energy companies,
but full taxes for everyone else.

The state estimates that with the new purchases, Tesla will add 112 permanent jobs. And by increasing employment and, presumably, car sales, the authority predicts that California will take in more than enough additional tax revenue to make up for the exemption. A report by the authority’s staff predicts a $24.4 million net benefit to the state.

“I’m pleased we could take this action to encourage Tesla to expand its electric vehicle production in California, which will create green jobs and improve our air quality,” Lockyer said Tuesday, in a prepared statement.

That amounts to a $34.7 million tax break to produce more of a vehicle whose sticker price starts above $70,000.

California is worried about companies like Tesla picking up stakes and heading elsewhere.

Businessweek notes that new manufacturing jobs in the state have risen less than 1 percent since 2010, compared with nearly 5 percent nationally. Gov. Jerry Brown has been chipping away at the tax already, and Tesla is just the latest example.

Totally Screwed by Democrats
If you just want to open an average small business and create jobs and wealth
then Democrats screw you over with endless taxes and regulations.  The only
businesses Democrats really give a damn about are the politically correct
"green energy" firms which they shower with free loans, subsidies and tax breaks.

Election Reform - Businessman wants to expand the California legislature

Restoring Democracy To California

• A flawed plan to restore democracy to California may appear on the 2014 ballot.  Flawed, but at least someone is trying to do something to end the corruption of our elections.

A San Diego businessman is campaigning to expand California’s 120-member legislature to the size of a small town.

John Cox’s Rescue California was approved Thursday to circulate petitions for a ballot measure that would expand the state’s Assembly and Senate to a total of 12,000 members. Assembly members would represent 5,000 people and senators would represent 10,000 people.

State Senators in California currently represent roughly 950,000 people, meaning they and counterparts in Texas have larger districts than members of the U.S. House. Roughly 475,000 people live in each California Assembly district reports the Washington Post.

The group says its proposal targets special interests.

“One of my favorite expressions is we don’t elect policy leaders in the legislature, we elect professional fundraisers,” Cox, 56, told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Cox was also once president of the Cook County Republican Party in Illinois and the first Republican to formally seek the party’s 2008 nomination for president of the United States, according to NBC’s San Diego affiliate.

The proposal to expand California’s legislature may seem like it would make representation unrealistically local, but there are members in other states with fewer residents.

• In New Hampshire, the state with the largest legislative body with 390 members in the lower chamber. Each House member represents about 3,300 people.
• In Vermont, each district houses roughly 4,175 residents with 150 members in the lower house. In no state, however, do members of the upper chamber represent fewer than 10,000 residents, as is proposed under the plan.
• Senators in North Dakota represent roughly 14,890 residents and has 47 members.
• Even larger sates like Pennsylvania have better representation.  Their lower house has 203 members with each district representing a modest 62,128 people.
• In Indiana their 100 member lower house represents 65,846 people per district. 

Under the California proposal, every hundred legislators would elect one among them to represent their interests in the state capital— thus maintaining a 120-member body in Sacramento. To qualify the measure for the ballot, the group will have to collect 807,615 signatures from registered voters by May 19.

Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Insanity.  In California each of the 80 Assembly members represents a massive and unmanageable 475,000 people. But in the lower house of Pennsylvania (above) there are 203 members with each district representing a modest 62,128 people.

California - The best legislature money can buy.
Because of the huge size of California's legislative districts our "representatives" are totally bought and paid for by special interest Billionaire Cartels of big business and labor.  Millions of dollars are spent by corrupt special interest groups looking to buy their very own legislator.
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If you reform the State Assembly with some level of higher membership and smaller districts then the average person will be able to run for office without mountains of corrupt campaign money.
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My suggestion is cap Assembly seats at 100,000 people - about the size of a small city.  Running for the Assembly would be much like running for a local city council seat.  This would grow the California Assembly from 80 to about 360 members.
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This is neither a liberal nor a conservative idea.  This is about bipartisan democracy and legislators as free from the corruption of big money as possible.   

Insane court fines companies $1.1 Billion for selling legal products

Fined for selling legal products

• The ruling penalizes the manufacturers for “the truthful advertising of lawful products, done at a time when government officials routinely specified those products for use in residential buildings."
• Democrat run San Francisco and Los Angeles County joined the court case hoping to suck down the "free" money the court would extort from paint companies. 

Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and ConAgra Grocery Products LLC were ordered by a judge to pay $1.1 billion to replace or contain lead paint in millions of homes after losing a public-nuisance lawsuit brought by 10 California cities and counties.

Nut-case Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg in San Jose, California, tentatively ruled against the companies after a non-jury trial that lasted about five weeks. Two other defendants, Atlantic Richfield Co., a Los Angeles-based unit of BP Plc (BP/), and Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont Co., won dismissal of the claims against them reports Businessweek.

The local governments that sued, including Los Angeles County and the cities like San Francisco, broke the companies’ streak of victories in similar suits in seven other states. Los Angeles County will get $605 million for lead abatement in the ruling.

The companies were given 15 days to object to the ruling.

Bonnie J. Campbell, a spokeswoman for the paint manufacturers, said in an e-mailed statement that Kleinberg’s decision is “at odds with California law and judicial decisions across the country that have uniformly rejected similar public nuisance claims.”

The ruling penalizes the manufacturers for “the truthful advertising of lawful products, done at a time when government officials routinely specified those products for use in residential buildings,” and “rewards scofflaw landlords who are responsible for the risk to children from poorly maintained lead paint,” according to the statement.

The companies will file objections with the trial judge, Campbell said. If those aren’t accepted, the defendants will ask for a new trial or mistrial, and if that’s rejected, they will appeal, she said.

Lead Paint Disclosure Form
For many, many years home buyers were given written disclosures and
warnings about the possible use of lead paint prior to 1978 in properties.
Those worried about lead were fully warned in writing.
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But insane liberal judges just can't wait to rape "evil" businesses for
daring to sell products that were totally legal decades and decades ago. 

California seizing private property for bullet train.

Welcome to Fascism

• The High Speed Rail Authority will have access to the property and can start construction even before the state owns it.
• "Everybody is scared of the state of California coming to your house and saying we're going to take this, we're going to take your parking lot or your business, and they don't know what to do."  - - - Frank Olivera, Bullet train opponent.

A State People's Board gave approval Friday for the California High-Speed Rail Authority to start the process of seizing its first piece of property through eminent domain for a $68 billion bullet train.
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The unelected State Public Works Board voted 3-0 to approve a request from the authority to try to seize a 2.5-acre parcel in Fresno that is needed to build an underground trench for the project. The authority has declared an impasse with the owner of property.
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Fresno County records value the property at $2.4 million. It includes a 20,000-square-foot commercial building that is leased to the state Department of Corrections reports the Monterey Herald.

  Rail officials said they have been unable to reach an agreement with owner Frank Solomon Jr. after making an initial offer in May. Details of the offers have not been made public. .Solomon did not appear at the hearing and a phone listing under that name in Fresno could not receive messages. .Don Grebe, director of real property for the rail authority, said the parcel has been pegged as critical to acquire early because of the complicated construction needed to be done there. He said the rail authority is still open to negotiations with the owner.

The action by the board allows the rail authority to file paperwork in court asking a judge to determine the fair market value of the property as well as compensation the owner is entitled to for relocation.

The legal action also could allow the rail authority to access the property and start construction even before the state owns it.

Frank Olivera, co-chairman of the group Citizens for High-Speed Rail Accountability, told the board it would be premature to let the state acquire the property, given recent legal and administrative setbacks for the project.

Last month, a Sacramento County judge invalidated the state's funding plan and said it must have 300 miles of environmental clearances in place to meet the terms of Proposition 1A, the bond measure voters approved to sell nearly $10 billion in bonds for high-speed rail.

"I question the necessity to even take this parcel when the rail authority may not even be able to pay for it," Olivera said.

Grebe said the authority has closed escrow on five of the 380 parcels needed to complete the first nearly 30-mile stretch from Madera to Fresno.

"Overall we have people that have been signing agreements. I think it's been going quite positively, slowly," he said. Still, he estimated that as many as 20 percent of the properties could end up going through the eminent domain process.

Olivera, the rail opponent, said the prospect of eminent domain has cast a pall over many residents and business owners in the train's proposed path.

Everybody is scared of the state of California coming to your house and saying we're going to take this, we're going to take your parking lot or your business, and they don't know what to do," he said.

Grebe said if the project were scrapped at some point and the property was no longer needed, state law gives the original owner the first option to buy it back.

 

Obama's IRS targets California Conservative Group

Obama's IRS Gestapo at Work

• The targeting of Conservative groups by Obama's Fascist IRS has not stopped.  These Fucking Bastards will do anything to crush Freedom of Speech.

A conservative advocacy group in Sacramento says the IRS erroneously yanked its nonprofit status this summer, hampering the group's ability to raise money this year.

"I don't know if it's incompetence or if we were targeted. I honestly don't know," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute. "But I find it interesting."

The faith-based group opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. It has been active this year in pushing a referendum to overturn Assembly Bill 1266, which allows transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that reflect the gender they identify with, rather than the gender of their birth reports the Sacramento Bee.

Other conservative groups complained this summer that they were receiving undue scrutiny from the IRS when applying for nonprofit status. Groups affiliated with the tea party said the Obama administration was targeting them because of their political orientation.

Federal tax authorities grant groups nonprofit status if they primarily engage in "social welfare" activities. But many of those groups are also active in politics, creating a murky area in the world of campaign finance. The Obama administration last month proposed a new set of rules to clarify the kinds of political activity nonprofit groups can perform, and California's political watchdog agency fined two political nonprofits this fall for not properly reporting campaign donations.

England said the IRS revoked her group's nonprofit status over the summer on grounds that it had failed to file all necessary paperwork. The action was in error, she said, because the organization had properly filed everything, but it took several months to sort out the mistake.

In the meantime, Capitol Resource Institute was unable to solicit donations. England said she skipped her salary for six months so that she could keep paying her staff while donations were not coming in.

An IRS spokesman said the agency cannot comment on specific cases. England provided a letter the IRS sent Capitol Resource Institute on Dec. 5 that says, "We have confirmed that you were erroneously put" on the list that revokes nonprofit status.

England is highlighting the snafu in an end-of-year fundraising appeal, saying "we hope that our donors rise to the occasion and see the harm that has been done." 

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/12/conservative-group-reports-irs-snafu.html#storylink=cpy

Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute,
testifies in the Capitol in March 2007.
(Sacramento Bee/ Brian Baer)

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/12/conservative-group-reports-irs-snafu.html#storylink=cpy

California Democrats brace for low 2014 turnout

Skeletor Runs for Re-Election

Democrats are worried that unenthusiastic Leftist voters might stay home allowing the GOP to win seats in the legislature.

Just because California Democrats hold every statewide office and a supermajority in the Legislature doesn't mean they're not worried about 2014.

Some Democratic insiders fret that, essentially, life may be too good for the party right now. Their lurking fear: Without a high-profile presidential election or a big-name Republican challenger lined up yet against Gov. Jerry Brown, Democratic voters won't be interested enough to cast ballots in November. If that happens, the GOP could pick off a few seats in the Legislature, wrecking the Democrats' two-thirds majority and damaging Brown's ability to move his agenda.

Adding to Democratic insiders' anxiety is that social and religious conservatives are close to qualifying a ballot measure to overturn a new law that grants rights to transgender students. That could boost GOP turnout. And if the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama's signature health care law, continues to stumble, that could bring a few more Republicans to the polls reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

While the rest of California may not tune in to the election until weeks before residents cast ballots, the political class thinks about this kind of stuff now - a year before election day - because this is the time when campaigns are formed, major donors are solicited and ballot measures are circulated.
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'Concern out there'

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"Definitely I think there's a concern out there," said Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster in San Francisco who takes regular surveys on statewide and national issues. "In a low-turnout election, those factors could be enough to shift the balance."

Turnout among registered voters in California has averaged 73 percent in the past seven presidential elections, going back to 1988. Turnout during the past seven gubernatorial contests - all in nonpresidential years - has averaged 57 percent, according to the secretary of state's office.

"This year is definitely going to offer some turnout challenges to Democrats," said Kevin Spillane, a veteran Republican consultant who is not affiliated with any statewide candidates for next year. "Their voters are not necessarily motivated."

This month, Democrats got a preview of their 2014 nightmare as they nearly fumbled away a safe Assembly seat and suffered a setback in the San Diego mayor's race, both in low-turnout elections.
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In the 45th Assembly District special election race in the San Fernando Valley, well-funded Democrat Matt Dababneh defeated Republican Susan Shelley by just 329 votes.

Democrats hold a 2-to-1 advantage in registered voters in the district, but turnout was a mere 10 percent.

California Obamacare exchange is giving out your private information

 "Corruptus in Extremis"

• Corrupt drone government workers have given your private Obamacare info to "selected" private businesses so you can be telemarketed.
• Even under normal circumstances your "private" data on the Internet leaks like a sieve through stupidity, corruption or hacking.  Under Democrat Socialism your sensitive private medical information should be available to about 3.7 billion people on any given day.

Widespread fears that Obamacare exchanges would fail to guard customer information are already coming true in California, where the state exchange is giving selected insurance agents customer contact information, resulting in unwanted calls and emails to Californians who have checked out the exchange but declined to buy insurance.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Covered California, which Obamacare proponents have held up as a rare example of a functioning state health care exchange, provides names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of customers who did not ask to be contacted.

“[Y]our contact information was provided to me by Covered California since your application is not yet finalized, however, you have been determined as eligible by Covered California,” an email sent to one outraged Californian began.

Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee told the paper that the unwanted contacts were necessary because the exchange is falling behind in its enrollment goals.

“I can imagine some people may be upset,” Lee offered.

The Golden State maintains a network of 7,700 technically private insurance agents to promote its health care exchange. The Times contacted agents who expressed outrage or conceded that the calls could be irksome to customers. The president of the California Association of Health Underwriters told the paper he was “shocked and dumbfounded” by the news and had assumed the customers on the call list requested contact.

“For a government agency to release this information to an outside person is a major issue,” a Ventura County tech consultant, who received an unwanted outreach, told the paper.

Lee told the Times Covered California does not share sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and maintained that the practice is legal.

Loon Judge overturns a democratic election - The will of the People has no meaning

Palmdale is in the northern Mojave Desert of Los Angeles County. 

"Evil" Racist City Elects Black Councilman

• Palmdale is the first California city to have its election system upended in court by Democrat Leftist Loons looking to elect more brain-dead "community organizers" like themselves to office. 
• In a racial Pogrom that would make Hitler proud, Leftists scream to divide Americans by race, because in their sick minds race trumps all.
• Also ignore the fact that the "racist" people of Palmdale just elected a African American to the city council. 

A wacko loon Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in a quest for some insane Liberal "racial justice" has declared the 2013 election in the city of Palmdale null and void.

The fact that those "common people" dared to hold a free election means nothing to these Leftist bastards.

This nutcase judge earlier this year found the city of Palmdale to be in "violation" of the California Voting Rights Act, has ordered the city to hold a new by-district election for its four City Council posts.

In a ruling dated last week, Judge Mark V. Mooney ordered that the special election, to replace the balloting for council seats held last month, is to be conducted June 3, the same day as the California primary.


Idiot Judge Mark V. Mooney
Leftist political hacks and their judges want
to divide everyone into racial groups.
(AP File Photo)

Future elections are to be held in November of even-numbered years, to dovetail with state and federal balloting, in the expectation that such coordination will increase voter turnout reports the Los Angeles Times.
 

The judge allowed Palmdale to continue to elect its mayor by voters throughout the city. That means Mayor James Ledford's recent reelection will not be affected by the ruling.

A Palmdale official on Monday reaffirmed the city's intention to appeal the trial court's finding that the practice of electing council members at large, rather than by geographic district, deprives minorities of an opportunity to elect candidates they feel can best represent them.

"We're still analyzing the opinion and our options," Assistant City Atty. Noel Doran said Monday. "We've needed this ruling ... so we can appeal the entire matter."

As yet unclear is what, if any, effect a pending appellate court decision on whether to certify last month's election will have on the case.

The city's election system has been under attack since last year, when several minority residents filed suit claiming that the method of electing officials from across the city diluted their ability to participate in government. About two-thirds of residents are minorities, but voters had chosen only one Latino for office since its 1962 incorporation.

Last month, Fred Thompson of Palmdale was elected its first African American council member, whose status, along with that of his three council colleagues, has been thrown into doubt by the court's edict. Mooney ruled that none of the current council members can serve past July 9, 2014, presumably allowing enough time for the special election to be conducted and the results certified.


New City Councilman Elect
Served 7 years on the City of Palmdale Planning
Commission; 20 years on the Palmdale School
Board; Former Dean at Antelope Valley
College; Palmdale High School Hall of Fame
Inductee; Member of Kiwanis Palmdale
West and Antelope Valley College Foundation;
Supporter of Special Olympics Antelope Valley.
(Facebook.com)

The judge rejected the city's proposed new districts in favor of a plan offered by the plaintiffs, which will give the city two Latino-majority districts and another with substantial numbers of black and Latino residents.

"The current members of the Palmdale City Council were elected through an unlawful election," Mooney wrote. "The citizens of the city of Palmdale are entitled to have a council that truly represents all members of the community."

City officials have maintained throughout the court process that its election system does not hinder minorities. They blamed a lack of experience, community involvement or a viable campaign for minorities' failure to win office.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they were "generally pleased" with the ruling, although they had sought to create a fifth council district and have the mayor's post rotate among the members rather than elected separately.

The ruling makes Palmdale the first California city to have its election system upended in court under the 12-year-old state Voting Rights Act. Many other local governments with significant minority populations but few or no minority representatives have switched voluntarily to elections by geographic district or have done so to settle lawsuits.

A handful of others, including Anaheim and Whittier, are facing trials after deciding to defend their practice of electing council members citywide.

The Insanity of Liberal Racism
Actor Dwayne Johnson's father is of Black Nova Scotian origin, and his mother is of Samoan heritage.  The insane racists of the Left are not sure what to do with Americans of mixed race who do not fit into their fantasy world of "pure blood" racial groupings.
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The Leftists wring their hands, do you put The Rock in the segregated so-called "Black" election district.  Do you hold out for a segregated "Asian" election district.  Or because The Rock is a mainstream American, do you put him in with those evil racist "Whites".

Republican Jeff Gorell taking on freshman Rep. Julia Brownley

Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (right), R-Camarillo, and his wife Laura.

The GOP Strikes Back

• Republicans lost the solidly middle class 26th District in the 2012 Obama landslide victory to a Democrat carpetbagger from West Los Angeles who never lived a day of her life in the district.

Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, plans to challenge freshman Democratic Rep. Julia Brownley in the 26th Congressional District, foregoing a final term in the Legislature's lower chamber and putting his seat in jeopardy.

In a statement announcing the decision, Gorell lamented the gamesmanship and gridlock that is gripping Washington.

"We deserve a congressional representative who will focus on uniting the community," he said. "In the Legislature, I have built a reputation as an independent leader capable of working across the aisle," reports the Sacramento Bee.

"By placing people above parties, we achieved results on the important issues facing the district such as protecting homes in Port Hueneme against beach erosion; helping position our port to be more globally competitive and energy efficient; enacting new state tax incentives to protect our local manufacturing jobs; and launching the bipartisan 'Gold Team California' to attract new jobs."

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/republican-jeff-gorell-taking-on-freshman-rep-julia-brownley.html#storylink=cpy

The district is 40% Democrat, 35% Republicans and
25% independent and smaller political parties.

Gorell's entry appears to signal the path forward for fellow Republican Tony Strickland, a former state senator who lost to Brownley in 2012 and could seek the seat of GOP Rep. Buck McKeon should he retire.

The move also allows Democrats to mount an earlier-than-expected challenge for the 44th Assembly District, which has a slight Democratic registration advantage and has already drawn interest from several potential candidates.

A Navy reservist and former county prosecutor, Gorell was deployed to Afghanistan just a few months after he took office in 2011. He won reelection despite his district being redrawn in a way that increased its Democratic registration. Gorrell, the chairman of his party's outreach efforts, also worked in the administration of former GOP Governor Pete Wilson.

With the district's large share of unaffiliated voters, Democratic-aligned Super PACs spent heavily during the 2012 primary to rough up independent Linda Parks, a Ventura County supervisor and former Republican, to ensure that Brownley made it into the November runoff. She defeated Strickland by 5.5 percentage points.

Looking ahead to 2014, Gorell warned that Navy Base Ventura County would almost certainly be threatened for closure, taking with it thousands of jobs.

The federal health care overhaul may also figure predominately in the race.

"Local families are losing their insurance, premiums are skyrocketing, and many Californians will soon be losing their choice of doctors," Gorell said, adding that he's running to "fix the health care mess in Washington."  

California's 26th congressional district election, 2012
Primary election
Party		Candidate	Votes	Percentage
	Republican	Tony Strickland	49,043	44.1%
	Democratic	Julia Brownley	29,892	26.9%
	No party preference	Linda Parks	20,301	18.3%
	Democratic	Jess Herrera	7,244	6.5%
	Democratic	David Cruz Thayne	2,809	2.5%
	Democratic	Alex Maxwell Goldberg	1,880	1.7%
Totals			111,169	100.0%
General election
	Democratic	Julia Brownley	139,072	52.7%
	Republican	Tony Strickland	124,863	47.3%
Totals			263,935	100.0%
	Democratic gain from Republican

 

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/11/republican-jeff-gorell-taking-on-freshman-rep-julia-brownley.html#storylink=cpy

Middle class areas like Ventura County are ground zero for the Republican Party.  If the GOP cannot attract the middle class then the party is literally over.
For more go to Jeff Gorell for Congress.