California gun sales up ahead of new gun control limits

An unarmed woman is a helpless woman.

Leftist Gun Grabbers on the March

• Loon Leftists keep pecking away at gun ownership rights. Only the 2nd Amendment prevents them from gun confiscation.

(Mercury News)  -  With six new gun control bills signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in July, sales of semi-automatic rifles have more than doubled in California over last year.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reports that the California Department of Justice shows 364,643 semi-automatic rifles had been sold by Dec. 9 whereas 153,931 rifles were sold last year.

Rifles with bullet buttons for the quick swap of ammunition magazines and other soon-to-be banned features have also skyrocketed. Statewide sales are up 40 percent by early December.

The new gun controls reclassified semi-automatic rifles that have certain features as assault weapons. The features added to the prohibited list include a protruding or forward pistol grip, a thumbhole stock, a folding stock or a flash suppressor. Assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989.

Nearly one million firearms were purchased in California as of Dec. 9, the most recent state data available, compared to more than 700,000 guns sold in all of 2015. Sales have likely soared beyond one million guns since then, the newspaper reported.

Steven Serna came into Pacific Outfitters sporting goods store in Ukiah last week to buy a semi-automatic rifle before new gun control legislation limits the gun’s features in California.

He wanted to purchase an AK-47 rifle but there were none to be found at the store. The deer hunter lamented that he should have purchased one earlier this year.

Todd Lyly also visited the store last week to talk with his friends behind the gun sales counter about the new laws.

Lyly said he will convert his weapons so they are complaint with the new regulations, most likely by installing a fixed stock. But he said it’s a superficial change that he expects will mostly impact law-abiding people and not violent criminals already disinclined to follow the law.

“It’s frustrating,” Lyly said.

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Democrats fund free lawyers for illegal aliens

Democrats:

"U.S. citizens can go to Hell"

• While American citizen homeless vets freeze on the streets during winter we see soulless Leftists Democrats fund free lawyers for illegal alien law breakers.

(Orange County Register)  -  Los Angeles County leaders have voted to set aside $3 million to help provide lawyers to immigrants facing deportation in response to the election of Donald Trump.

The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to set aside the funds over the next 18 months.

During a lengthy meeting, many residents voiced support for the plan as a matter of justice. Some opposed, saying there are more pressing needs like homelessness.

The money will go toward a $10 million immigrant legal services fund being created by the county, city of Los Angeles and private foundations.

Cities and counties in Democratic strongholds across the country have been funding immigration lawyers in response to Trump’s promises to boost deportations.

California state lawmakers have proposed a bill to provide lawyers to immigrants facing deportation.

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Democrats to permanently ban oil and gas drilling?

Lunatic Democrat Jerry Brown:

"Cars run on magic juice delivered by unicorns."

(Front Page Magazine)  -  California Gov. Jerry Brown wants President Barack Obama to permanently ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in the state – except of course, on Brown’s personal land.

In an attempt to lock in environmental protections before President-Elect Donald Trump takes office in January, Brown sent a letter this week to the president saying that allowing any new oil and gas drilling would be detrimental to climate change goals and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

President Barack Obama last month released a plan to ban any new drilling off the coasts of California, Oregon or Washington until 2022.

A six-year ban on oil and gas drilling wasn’t enough for California Gov. Jerry Brown, who will be gone from the Governor’s office in 2018.

Brown’s latest ploy is another in a long line of maneuvers to set California apart from the rest of the country on climate change policy, and is an end-run at Trump, who has said he plans environmental policy roll backs at the Environmental Protections Agency.

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Democrats are Insane
Loony Leftist Democrats use oil to drive their cars to their Comintern meetings. Those Democrats who bother to work for a living also use oil to get there. The entire economy runs on energy. But Leftists want to shut down the economy in the name of global warming.

Cops to grill citizens on what race they belong to

Back to the Future

"Are you now or have you ever been a Jew."

• In order to prevent "discrimination" insane Racist Leftists now want the Big Brother Police State to grill and catalog people about what race they belong to during traffic stops. It is just a matter of time until cops are ordered to demand the religion of those who are stopped.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  Police officers in California will soon track the race of those they pull over for traffic stops or encounter in the street, according to proposed guidelines released Friday by Democrat Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris.

The new rules, established by the passage of Assembly Bill 953 in 2015, are designed to help understand biases in policing efforts across the state. 

"Racial and identity profiling weaken public trust and have debilitating effects on communities," Harris said in a statement. "These regulations and data will help law enforcement improve policing practices and strengthen accountability.”

Aside from demographic information on race, gender and age of the person stopped, officers will have to record and collect the location, duration and reason for each stop under the proposed regulations. 

Officers also will be required to document the actions they take and the result of the encounter. The attorney general's office will make the data public by each law enforcement agency through its criminal justice data website, OpenJustice. 

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What do the Race Police do?
California Democrats want cops to grill model-actress Naomi Campbell about her race.  She is of Afro-Jamaican and Chinese ancestry. So which "race" is to be entered on government forms and which race would be the one that is "discriminated" against?

Racist Democrats
Racist Democrat policies want Californians like Jessica Alba to be grilled by cops about her race. Jessica is of Danish, Welsh, German, English, Mexican and French ancestry.  So which "race" is to be entered on government forms and which race would be the one that is "discriminated" against?

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.

Democrats regulate cow farts

Democrats look to turn California

into Communist Venezuela

Leftists try to shut down food production 

in the name of global warming

(AP) — California is taking its fight against global warming to the farm.

The nation's leading agricultural state is now targeting greenhouse gases produced by dairy cows and other livestock.

Despite strong opposition from farmers, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation in September that for the first time regulates heat-trapping gases from livestock operations and landfills.

Cattle and other farm animals are major sources of methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a heat-trapping gas. Methane is released when they belch, pass gas and make manure.

"If we can reduce emissions of methane, we can really help to slow global warming," said Ryan McCarthy, a science adviser for the California Air Resources Board, which is drawing up rules to implement the new law.

Livestock are responsible for 14.5 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, with beef and dairy production accounting for the bulk of it, according to a 2013 United Nations report.

Since the passage of its landmark global warming law in 2006, California has been reducing carbon emissions from cars, trucks, homes and factories, while boosting production of renewable energy.

In the nation's largest milk-producing state, the new law aims to reduce methane emissions from dairies and livestock operations to 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030, McCarthy said. State officials are developing the regulations, which take effect in 2024.

"We expect that this package ... and everything we're doing on climate, does show an effective model forward for others," McCarthy said.

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Leftists look to tax Netflix

“Government! Three fourths parasitic and the 

other fourth Stupid fumbling.” 

― Robert A. Heinlein

Stranger in a Strange Land

(New York Times)  -  Dozens of California cities looking to shore up revenues are flirting with a new idea — tax your “Gilmore Girls” binge.

Pasadena was among the first to say publicly this fall that it wanted to tax video streaming services like Netflix, a step that could make up for lost tax revenue from growing numbers of cord-cutters.

At 9.4 percent, the so-called Netflix tax would treat streaming services as a traditional utility, the city said. If you use multiple services — for example, Hulu, Amazon Video and HBO — it would be added to each bill.

The move in Pasadena, with a population of about 140,000, has drawn consternation from technology companies and consumers who worry that it could be copied across the state.

“Websites and apps are not utilities and it defies logic to tax them like electricity, water or gas,” said Noah Theran, spokesman for the Internet Association, a trade group.

No California city has yet to begin collecting the tax. But roughly 40 cities, among them Glendale, Santa Barbara, Stockton and Sacramento, have gotten guidance from municipal consultants on how they might.

One question officials would need to resolve is where to stop, analysts say. If streaming video is taxable, then what about music, podcasts or video games?

“It opens a big Pandora’s box,” said Paul Verna, an analyst at eMarketer, a technology research company.

Mr. Verna said many of the streaming video tax proposals in California have bubbled up under the radar. If there is to be a larger debate, it will erupt when people start seeing their bills, he said.

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Democrat "Super-Majorities" in the People's Republic of California

Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar)

A Leftist Dictatorship is One Seat Away

• The votes are still being counted. GOP Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang is ahead by only a handful of votes for a State Senate race. A Democrat win creates a Leftist super-majority in the legislature.
• The GOP is a nearly worthless group that lives on the campaign bribes of wealthy special interest groups. But a Democrat Leftist super-dictatorship is scary.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  The Senate race between Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) and Democrat Josh Newman has narrowed significantly, making the Democrats' chances of securing a supermajority in both houses of the Legislature suddenly much more likely.

As of Friday afternoon, as outstanding votes continued to be counted, Chang's lead over Newman had been cut to just 187 votes in the 29th Senate District, which includes parts of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

The day after the election, Chang enjoyed a nearly 3,900-vote advantage, but that lead shrank dramatically as mail and provisional ballots were tallied this week.

Democrats already have secured a supermajority in the Assembly, but doing the same in the state Senate, where they needed to flip only one seat, seemed unlikely until Friday's vote totals were reported.

With a supermajority, a political party can raise taxes, place measures on the statewide ballot, enact laws immediately with an “urgency” clause and override a governor’s veto.

It could be more than a week before the final tally is made available: Orange County, which accounts for the biggest bloc of voters in the district, says it has about 13,000 ballots left to count in the race. San Bernardino County needs to count about 2,000 ballots, according to officials.

"I don't think all the votes will be counted before Thanksgiving Day," said Jim Nygren, a consultant for Chang. "We'll just keep watching the votes."

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Senate District 29 is comprised of portions of Los Angeles County,
Orange County and San Bernardino County. 

California Democrats bet big on an anti-Trump strategy. It didn't work

The GOP Really Defeated Themselves

• Republicans could have put the funding for Jerry Brown's corrupt High Speed Rail on the ballot to give their candidates a rallying point, but as usual the GOP caved and did jack shit.
• If the GOP actually stood for something they might, just maybe, attract voters.

(Los Angeles Times)  -  Although Donald Trump’s victory stunned true-blue California, Democratic strategists in the state are grappling with another reality: Relying on anti-Trump sentiment as a strategy to launch more Democrats into the state Legislature doesn’t appear to have delivered as they’d hoped.

In the final weeks before the election, Democratic party leaders and consultants doubled down on the effort to tie GOP candidates to Trump in campaigns up and down the state, placing his name and image on mailers, television ads and lawn signs.

So far, although it appears Democrats will pick up three seats in the Assembly, there were four races in which the anti-Trump strategy was used and didn’t work. And the Democratic victors appear to be winning by closer margins than pollsters had expected. 

“The overall impact was kind of a dud,” said Andrew Acosta, a consultant for Democrat Dawn Ortiz-Legg. In the race for the Assembly, Ortiz-Legg compared her Republican opponent, Jordan Cunningham, to Trump, emphasizing his stances on women’s reproductive issues.

Ortiz-Legg lost to Cunningham by nearly 10 points in the 35th Assembly District on the Central Coast, despite the fact that state Democrats vastly outspent Republicans to help her. 

“We rolled with the Trump hit, and it obviously didn’t have the impact we were hoping it would,” Acosta said.

Assemblywoman Catharine Baker (R-Dublin) survived a challenge from Democrat Cheryl Cook-Kallio, even after her rival took pains to compare the socially moderate Republican to Trump on gun policy and equal pay. Democrats ignored that Baker had said early on she would not vote for Trump. The Republican incumbent won by 12 points even though Democrats enjoy a 12-point advantage in voter registration in her Bay Area district.

The “Trump effect” also failed in Democratic attempts to flip U.S. House seats. The most vulnerable Republican, Rep. Steve Knight of Palmdale, who denounced Trump and said he couldn’t vote for his party’s nominee, coasted to reelection with an 8-point victory. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had spent big in an attempt to link Knight to Trump. The strategy also failed in two Central Valley districts. 

In Southern California, where the tactic was aggressively pursued, Republican Dante Acosta prevailed in his Assembly race despite his opponent’s frequent efforts to compare him to Trump. Assemblyman Marc Steinorth (R-Rancho Cucamonga) is ahead by 4 points and, if trends hold, will likely hold on to his seat against Democratic challenger Abigail Medina, who called Trump and Steinorth “two sides of the same coin.”

“Honestly, it was just a really lazy way of political consulting,” said Jessica Patterson, CEO of the California Trailblazers program, which grooms Republican candidates for office.

In Orange County, for example, Assemblywoman Young Kim (R-Fullerton) is losing to Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva. With ballots still being counted, Kim trails by just 1,500 votes in a district that has added more than 14,000 registered Democrats since January alone and where the Democratic voter registration edge has grown to 9 percentage points from less than 2 in 2014. Quirk-Silva made Trump such a central part of her campaign that she filed papers with the FEC as an independent expenditure committee opposing him.

Democrat Al Muratsuchi defeated Assemblyman David Hadley after spending months tying the Republican to Trump through lawn signs and the hadleytrump.com website. Although unofficial results showed Muratsuchi winning the coastal L.A. County district by 6 points, voter registration favors Democrats 41% to 30%, a gap that’s widened by 3 points since two years ago.

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Mike Antonovich did not lose because of Trump. He lost because GOP
registration in his Glendale-Pasadena area has been in free fall for years.

Pretend Elections in The People's Republic of California

California Leftists Live 

in an Alternate Reality

Leftist Loon Democrats obediently Goosestep for an ultra-corrupt Hillary Clinton.

The question is do Leftists have a soul?

With other choices available on the ballot how can any decent person cast a vote to put a known criminal in the White House? How do these morons sleep at night?

A Pretend U.S. Senate "Election"

Voters were allowed to select which open borders Democrat Leftist would be allowed to represent them in Washington. All other political parties and independents were banned from the general election ballot.

From California Secretary of State

California secession group to hold meet-up at State Capitol

For a huge 25 days the California Republic was an independent nation.

An Independent California

• The drive for smaller government that is closer to the people is worldwide. Scotland looks at independence from Britain, Catalonia from Spain, the Kurds from Turkey or the now broken up former Yugoslavia.
• So why not California? I have an open mind.

(San Francisco Chronicle)  -  An organization hoping to facilitate the secession of California from the Union is holding a meet and greet on the Capitol steps in Sacramento next Wednesday, November 9, 2016, or, the day after the presidential election.

The Yes California Independence Campaign, which is based in San Diego, is aiming to qualify a citizen's initiative in 2018 to get a referendum for secession on the ballot in 2019. They'll be in Sacramento to garner support for their initiative. 

"In our view," a statement on its website reads, "the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values, and our continued statehood means California will continue subsidizing the other states to our own detriment, and to the detriment of our children."

Mexico in 1840 with an independent Texas.
Borders are not written in stone so why not an independent California?

And it appears the organization has been considering its strategy for quite a while now. On its site, you'll find a link to a 33-page "Blue Book" wherein the organization answers any hypothetical questions about the state becoming its own country. The details for the secession — dubbed the #CalExit — include such topics such as "Will we join the United Nations?" and "Will we have our own Olympic team?".

While the notion of an independent California does seem well-intended — points about immigration, environmental concerns, and education are thoughtful — the practicality of such a proposal is tenuous at best.

Will this secession campaign be viable? In a word: No. As we know from the Civil War, just because a state wants to secede doesn't mean the Union will let it. As Washington Post writer Philip Bump wrote earlier this year, Congress simply would not, for many reasons, allow it.

"There's no mechanism for Congress to simply say, 'Sure, off you go.' Once you're in, you're in," he wrote. "The United States was born an expansionist enterprise, and the idea of contraction, it seems, never really came up."

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Special interests buy legislative seats

Government of, by and for 

the Special Interests

• Million and millions of special interest dollars is being poured into California state Assembly races. 
• The only "choice" voters are given is which one of the bought and paid for candidates to anoint. One thing for sure, the new Assemblymen will eagerly represent the Oligarchs who paid for their campaigns. The voters back home are an optional extra.

35th California Assembly District

(San Luis Obispo Tribune)  -  In the race for the Republican-leaning 35th California Assembly District, Democratic candidate Dawn Ortiz-Legg raised nearly $170,000 more than her Republican opponent, Jordan Cunningham, and outspent Cunningham by about $106,000 in the three-month span from July 1 through Sept. 24 (the state filing period differs from the federal one).

Ortiz-Legg reported raising $530,807 during the three-month period, nearly 80 percent of the total $680,058 she’s raised. Ortiz-Legg also spent more this period than any other — $361,044 of the total $498,874 she’s spent the entire race.

Ortiz-Legg, a San Luis Obispo-based solar energy consultant, ended the period with more cash on hand than Cunningham, with $189,944. She reported $3,820 in debts.

Her larger contributors this period include the California Democratic Party, the Democratic Central Committee for Marin County, the campaign committees for various Democratic state assembly members, and PACs for various education and labor unions, including the California State University Employees Union.

Cunningham, a Templeton-based attorney, raised nearly 70 percent of his total $524,055 contributions in the last three-month filing period — $361,704. He spent $254,747, leaving him with a balance of $178,246 and an outstanding debt of $20,962.

Cunningham’s donors in the last period include the California Republican Party, the Republican Party of San Luis Obispo County, PACs representing several labor unions, companies such as Phillips 66 and Phillip Morris USA, and individuals including San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow and Assessor Tom Bordonaro.

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See more big spending
sacbee.com

The central coast's 35th Assembly District

How three surfers in a garage turned California's grizzly into a fashion icon

Willie Travis makes T-shirts at The Dolphin Shirt Company. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

That Can Do Spirit Still Exists

(Los Angeles Times)  -  As often happens in the annals of California innovation, the story of how one of the state’s last grizzly bears came to be a global fashion icon begins in an 8-by-8 foot garage.

In the early 1980s, three young surfers — Kevin Greenwood, Mark Travis and Andrew Batty — set up shop in the Central Coast beach town of Cayucos, seeking to join forces in the T-shirt trade. They named their enterprise Dolphin Shirt. Co., decorating their apparel with images of orcas, sea lions and, yes, dolphins.

It was tough going at first: To purchase supplies, the partners often pooled their pocket change. In time, though, Dolphin Shirt expanded, first into a barn, and then to a small shop here near the railroad station.

Enter the bear.

Kevin Greenwood, Willie Travis and his parents Martie and
Mark Travis, left to right, all manage The Dolphin
Shirt Company. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

“I noticed that animals were selling,” recalled Don Pimentel, a self-employed architect dabbling in T-shirt design. “I said, ‘Wow, I can do that.’”

In 1985 Pimentel painted a bear, working off an outline of the grizzly that marches across the California flag. He presented it to Dolphin and then headed to Hawaii.

While Pimentel was away, the partners expanded on his design. His rendition of the bear, with his signature found just below its rear, right paw, remained. But now a red star hovered over the bear’s snout and a bar ran across the bottom, underscoring the legend “California Republic.”

In short, the shirt makers had more or less replicated the California state flag, whose design is rooted in the banner of the so-called Bear Flag Revolt of 1846. They sold eight dozen shirts right off the bat.

“It just started going,” Greenwood said, “and going and going. And it’s still going.”

Thirty years later, the no longer quite-so-young surfers — Greenwood gives his age as 59 and a half and three quarters — find themselves riding a fresh wave of global enthusiasm for all things California. The trend goes far beyond bear-flag themed T-shirts and related knick-knacks and spin-offs.

“California as a brand is incredibly valuable overseas,” said economist Kevin Klowden, who directs the Milken Institute’s California Center in Santa Monica. “It probably does better outside the state than inside.”

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Another phony Democrat vs Democrat "election"

Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown and challenger Eloise Reyes

"Corruptus in Extremis"

• California's phony "election reform" has given us this Democrat vs Democrat contest - one of 16 such races in the state.
• Not only do voters have no meaningful choices on their ballots, but the candidates are nothing more than the bought and paid for lackeys of outside special interest groups.
• Local voters have no real choice. They only have the right to vote for bought off candidate "A" or bought off candidate "B".

(89.3 KPCC)  -  As Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battle for the White House, races further down the ballot in California are getting heated — and expensive.

Outside groups are spending millions in local races to help their favored candidates reach Sacramento. This year, no state race has seen more outside spending than the 47th Assembly District in the Inland Empire.

There, outside groups have thrown more than $3.7 million into the election, with more than $1.4 million of that coming since the primary. Oil industry and labor groups have been the biggest spenders.

This working class, largely Latino and African-American area includes Colton, Fontana and San Bernardino. The election pits two Democrats against each other, attorney Eloise Reyes and incumbent Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, who was first elected to the seat in 2012.

Their contest hinges on economic and environmental issues. "The region desperately needs jobs, but it also has significant environmental concerns that need to be addressed," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, who teaches political science at the University of California, Riverside.

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The 47th Assembly District in San Bernardino