Democrats target 7 congressional seats held by GOP

The Making of a One-Party State

(Los Angeles Times)  -  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has released a list of top targets looking ahead to the 2018 elections, and California's Republican delegation is a big part of it.

Of the 61 Republicans Democrats are looking to unseat nationwide, seven are Californians:

• CA-10: Jeff Denham (R-Turlock)
• CA-21: David Valadao (R-Hanford)
• CA-25: Steve Knight (R-Palmdale)
• CA-39: Ed Royce (R-Fullerton)
• CA-45: Mimi Walters (R-Irvine)
• CA-48: Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa)
• CA-49: Darrell Issa (R-Vista)

All of these lawmakers represent districts carried by Hillary Clinton in the general election, with Valadao's district voting for Clinton over Trump by double-digit margins. Many of them seemed to win despite Trump in 2016 , out-polling him by at least several percentage points.

Issa and Denham won by the closest margins of the group, with Issa eking out a 51-49 win over Doug Applegate, who has already said he'll run again in 2018 . Denham overcame two-time challenger Michael Eggman by less than five percentage points.

Denham, Issa and Valadao were also among the top spenders in California on a per-vote basis in the November election, spending well above $30 per each vote they received.

Read More . . . .

California's 25th congressional district election, 2016
Primary election
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Republican	Steve Knight (incumbent)	63,769	48.3
	Democratic	Bryan Caforio	38,382	29.0
	Democratic	Lou Vince	20,327	15.4
	Republican	Jeffrey Moffatt	9,620	7.3
	No party preference	Jeff Bomberger (write-in)	44	0.0
Total votes			132,142	100.0
General election
	Republican	Steve Knight (incumbent)	138,755	53.1
	Democratic	Bryan Caforio	122,406	46.9
Total votes			261,161	100.0
	Republican hold

GOP incumbents could not be defeated in a landslide Democrat year in California. It is doubtful that Dems would win seats in an off year election when their voters are more likely to stay home.

Formerly Republican Palm Springs
.
The Middle Class Abandons the GOP
Middle class Congressional districts around California have abandoned the Republican Party.  Formerly GOP districts from Sacramento to Santa Barbara to Ventura to Palm Springs and San Diego rejected the GOP and sent Democrats to both Washington and Sacramento.

Scientology neighborhood bucks Hollywood, goes for Trump

An Island of Conservatism in Hollywood

LOS ANGELES (Washington Examiner)  —  It surprised no one last fall when Los Angeles and California at large overwhelmingly backed Hillary Clinton in her failed bid for the presidency. Just seven of the city’s 1,700 precincts went for Donald Trump.

But while nearly all of the surrounding region voted for the Democratic former secretary of State, one little chunk of Hollywood best known for the Church of Scientology’s “Big Blue” complex went red, picking the Republican billionaire instead.

The precinct, wedged between Hollywood Boulevard and Fountain Avenue, tipped to Trump by just three votes, 347-344. It marked the first time since at least 2000 that the area went Republican. In 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Gov. Mitt Romney by 81 votes, 316-235.

“I honestly can’t begin to fathom how or why that happened,” said Erin Lee, a precinct voter and one of several Clinton supporters who said they were shocked to learn that Trump had carried their neighborhood.

“How can that be?” asked Lemuel Balagot, another local voter. “I went for Hillary, and everyone I know besides me went for Hillary. … Who were the Scientologists for?”

Church of Scientology sign and logo on Hollywood Boulevard

Good question, and one that’s not easily answered — voting records don’t reflect how individual ballots are cast. The church, like other tax-exempt religious groups and nonprofit organizations, is barred by law from participating in political campaigns and assiduously avoids taking sides in elections.

“The Church does not engage in election activities and cannot do so,” Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw said in an emailed statement. “Such decisions are not a matter of faith. The Creed of the Church makes clear that Scientology is open to all. This would include anyone regardless of their race, color, creed or political affiliation.”

Church members and others in the neighborhood said there was little advertising or campaigning for either presidential candidate, and none they knew of related to the church. Nor did voters with stated Scientology ties appear to contribute significantly to either side: One man, who listed his occupation as “public relations” for the church, contributed $28 to Trump’s campaign, election records show.

Pouw said that nothing in the Los Angeles Times’ analysis of results “suggests a significant difference to the general leanings of the American people,” noting that Trump won by just a few votes, with neither candidate landing a majority. She also said the Times’ findings “inaccurately suggest a unique trend about a single religion.”

“Scientologists live and work in many other precincts in Los Angeles,” Pouw said. “The Church remained neutral in the presidential election as we always do. We support this country’s electoral process and America’s representative form of government, and respect the right of parishioners, our staff and clergy to vote for the candidate of their choice.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Of the roughly 1,100 voters registered in the precinct, about half list addresses of Scientology properties. More than 250 voters listed addresses on L. Ron Hubbard Way, named for the science fiction writer who founded the church in 1954 and parlayed his self-help system, Dianetics, into a worldwide religion without a deity.

Some 170 voters in the precinct listed phone numbers at Scientology organizations as their primary numbers, according to the Times’ analysis. Although phone numbers are not required, statewide voter registration records show the most common one listed in California belongs to the church. So does the second most common number. And the fifth. And the sixth.

“Church staff members list whatever phone numbers they choose,” Pouw said. “I couldn’t speak for them. Many, but not all, have cellphones. Perhaps you should look at the voting trends of the religious orders of other faiths to see what phone number they may list or whether they vote.”

Few of those contacted by telephone or on public sidewalks near the landmark Scientology building, a former hospital on Fountain Avenue that serves as the church’s West Coast headquarters, would speak for the record about their votes.

Two women who identified themselves as church representatives approached a Times reporter on several occasions and told her she was making parishioners feel “harassed and uncomfortable” by asking questions — and then hovered nearby. A few times, church security guards rolled up on their bicycles. One suggested to a church member that he move along to his next course.

“We don’t talk to the press,” the member said.

Several spoke with reporters on condition of anonymity or using only their first names. None said there was any concerted effort by the church, its members or staffers to push for one candidate over the other.

“Scientologists are very conservative socially,” said one church member, who voted for Clinton. “Scientologists are very conservative in terms of economics and business. It really does make sense that it would be more aligned with the Republican Party.”

He said he based his perceptions of the political leanings of the church and its members on conversations with acquaintances, as well as Scientologists’ postings on Facebook and Twitter.

“They were divided between pro-Trump stuff that’s anti-government and seeing Hillary as part of the establishment, seeing Hillary as part of the elite,” he said. “Part of it was pro-Trump. A lot of it was more anti-Hillary.”

Among those who did proffer a theory for publication was James Kronwall, a registered Republican who lives on L. Ron Hubbard Way, and said he knew why the precinct went for Trump.

“Scientology is the No. 1 foe of psychiatry,” he said, adding that he and others in the church perceive Clinton to be an advocate for psychiatric programs.

Kronwall, a carpenter who said he’s been a member of the church for 40 years, didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. Instead, he was one of about 50 in the area who cast their ballots for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.

“I wanted to make at least some kind of statement if I could,” he said.

Read More . . . .

California has the nation’s highest poverty rate

Shanty town in Fresno

Insane California

• What is the point of living in the "Golden State" if most of the money you make goes to rent or to the bank for your home loan?

(Politifact)  -  California’s job and economic growth has outpaced much of the nation in recent years. That growth, however, has not eliminated one of the state’s biggest challenges: poverty.

This week, State Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes called poverty California’s No. 1 priority during a forum of legislative leaders in Sacramento.

Mayes, who represents parts of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, claimed the state’s poverty rate is higher than any state in the nation when considering factors such as cost-of-living.

"If you look at the official poverty measure in California, we’re about average with the rest of the country," Mayes said. "But if you use the supplemental poverty measure, we are in the lead. We have the highest poverty rate in the nation -- higher than New Mexico, higher than any of the southern states, Louisiana, Alabama, higher than Idaho."

We decided to fact-check whether the report Mayes cited really shows that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

Read More
Silicon Valley's cops destroy the homes of the homeless

Our research

From 2013 to 2015, California had America’s 17th-highest poverty rate, 15 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure. That measure uses income levels to determine poverty, but does not consider differences in cost-of-living among states. It lists the official poverty threshold for a two-adult, two-child family at $24,036 in 2015.

During the same period, California had the highest poverty rate, 20.6 percent, according to the census’ Supplemental Poverty Measure. That study does account for cost-of-living, including taxes, housing and medical costs, and is considered by researchers a more accurate reflection of poverty. For a two-adult, two-child family in California, the poverty threshold was an average of $30,000, depending on the region in the state, according to a 2014 analysis by Public Policy Institute of California.

Looking at state poverty rates, the second highest is Florida’s 19 percent, followed by New York’s and Louisiana’s shared 17.9 percent rate. The national average is 15.1 percent using the supplemental measure.

"I think Assemblymember Mayes’ comments are accurate," said Chris Hoene, executive director of the left-leaning California Budget Policy Center, which has closely studied poverty in the state.

Hoene said the high poverty rate in the supplemental report is driven by California’s stratospheric housing costs. He added that use of the supplemental measure has gained wide acceptance among researchers.

"I think in most quarters, that’s not disputed," he said.

Marybeth Mattingly, a researcher at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality added by email: "Basically, yes, this statement is (sadly) accurate."

Read More . . . .

Homeless in San Francisco

California bullet train blasts through budget projections

Typical Los Angeles traffic jam.
Instead of building a statewide high speed rail that no one will ride, that money should have built urban rail systems to get cars off the freeways.

Not even started yet, and already $3.6 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule

(Legal Insurraction)  -  I have chronicled the saga of the California bullet train and its construction since 2012.

• California’s bond dreams become High Speed fiscal nightmare
• California Judge’s Ruling May Save State from Bullet Train
• California Voters Want More Water and Less Bullet Train

A report obtained by The Los Angeles Times confirms my concerns about the project’s fiscal drain on our state. The review shows that this monstrosity will cost $3.6 billion more than original budget projection.

A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by The Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion. 

The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property. 

The California High-Speed Rail Authority originally anticipated completing the Central Valley track by this year, but the federal risk analysis estimates that that won’t happen until 2024, placing the project seven years behind schedule.

Even more disturbing is that the estimated overrun is merely for the easiest leg of the track to be constructed. I shudder to think about how many more taxpayer dollars will be squandered to build the entire system.

Officials overseeing this project are quick to dismiss the report:

The rail authority’s chief executive, Jeff Morales, insisted to the Times that the project would cost less than the feds projected. 

“The point of doing this analysis is to identify the challenges and work through them,” he said. “They are not conclusions and not findings.”

G

Read More . . . .

Los Angeles had the finest public transportation system in the world
until the government tore it out in order to spend money on buses.

The Los Angeles Red Car Rail System Built in 1901.
.
Government Insanity
#1)  First you build an extensive light rail system.
#2)  Then you tear down that extensive light rail system.
#3)  Now you raise taxes to build another rail system
to replace the light rail system you just tore down.
.
Yes, the Government is run by idiots.

Pacific Electric had over 500 miles of inter urban track in Los Angeles in the early 1900's. The image shows the "Red Cars" stacked for sinking in Los Angeles Harbor - sunk ostensibly for "fish habitat", but really sunk for General Motors Corporation profit.

Is your hospital trying to kill you?

Using an "A" to "F" grading system Hospital safety grade.org
publishes the safety scores for hospitals in California.

14 Hospitals penalized by California Department of Public Health

(Los Angeles Daily News)  -  More than a dozen California hospitals, including two in the San Fernando Valley, were fined nearly $1 million in penalties by the state’s health department for everything from failing to prevent patient deaths to causing serious injury during surgery.

Pacifica Hospital of the Valley, in Sun Valley, faces a $75,000 penalty because the facility failed to maintain exit alarms that could have prevented a patient from leaving his room and jumping from the roof to his death in 2013, according to an inspection report conducted by the California Department of Public Health. The fine was the hospital’s second “immediate jeopardy” administrative penalty.

State health inspectors said in their report a patient who was agitated was able to leave his room. He then “entered the stairwell and gained access to the roof top through the unlocked door (door alarm was not functioning), dropped from the roof top landing onto the patio concrete below causing his death.”

Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys was penalized $50,000 by state officials because a patient sustained burns on her right earlobe, right lower neck and right chest wall during a surgery in which a laser was used in a highly oxygenated room.

Requests for statements from officials at Valley Presbyterian and Pacifica Hospital went unanswered Friday.

Meanwhile, Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park also faces a $50,000 fine for “failing to ensure the health and safety of a patient when it did not follow procedures for safe distribution and administration of medication,” according to a statement issued by the department.

The penalty comes as a result of an incident at the hospital in November 2012 in which a nurse administered the incorrect medication to a pregnant mother. As a result, the baby’s heartbeat slowed abnormally, and the mother was forced to deliver via an emergency cesarean-section procedure.

The mistake put the unborn baby at risk for bleeding in the eye, irregular heartbeat, seizures and slow heartbeat, according to a department report.

Read More . . . .

San Francisco Bay Area

Hospital safety grade.org

Sacramento Area

Central Valley Area

\

Los Angeles Area

Inland Empire Area

Hospital safety grade.org

Orange County Area

San Diego Area

Bye Bye California Republican Party

A crowd gathers to view the corpse of the rare and
nearly extinct California Republican elephant.

The Incredible Vanishing GOP

• While the column below is from a Leftist point of view the voter registration numbers do not lie. The GOP is slipping into 3rd place behind independent voters.
• The collapse of the California GOP is partly due to the fact that the party does not stand for anything. 
• For example, in the last election the GOP refused to put a proposition on the ballot defunding the insane, unpopular and corrupt high speed rail system. (GOP donors are also feeding at the high speed rail trough.) With no major issue to rally the public the GOP collapsed giving Democrats super-majorities in the legislature.
• Call me a "crazy" Blogger but if you do not stand for anything why should people vote for you?

(Orange County Register)  -  The election results were in more than month ago. Except in California and a couple of other states, Republican Donald Trump drew a robust number of presidential votes, enough to put him in the White House even if it fell well short of a plurality.

But there was nothing robust about the performance of his party mates here in America’s largest state.

They lost seats in the state Legislature and barely held onto a piddling 14 out of 53 seats in California’s congressional delegation. Unless things change soon, they only promise to get worse and worse over the next few years for the state GOP.

If past is prologue, the state’s Republican Party will soon become the third choice of Californians registered to vote — and 78 percent of those eligible to register are in fact registered — fully 19.4 million of us, according to the count delivered by Secretary of State Alex Padilla four days before November’s Election Day.

California Secretary of State

That overall number is up about 1.2 million over the last four years, despite forecasts that far fewer people would sign up to vote this time because outgoing President Obama was not on the fall ballot.

And yet the Republican number is way down. Over those same four years, the state’s GOP lost 312,000 voters even as population climbed and Trump spent much of May campaigning here, at many stops encouraging his supporters to register Republican.

This was obviously not enough. For as Republican registration nosedived to just 26 percent of registered voters, Democratic registration was up about 775,000, for a net gain of more than 1.1 million voters over their Republican rivals in just four years.

In registration numbers, that created a huge shift into the “no party preference” (NPP) category, now the No. 3 choice for registered voters at 24.2 percent of registrants, barely 300,000 voters behind the Republican tally.

Over four years, the NPP total is now about 25 percent above its level of four years ago, gaining more than 900,000 voters, the largest increase of any political group, or in this case, a non-group.

There’s some comfort here for Democrats, who have seen many thousands of Republican voters convert to their column or drift into NPP-land.

But more of them are choosing to switch to the NPP column than into the Democratic fold, which translates as a warning to the Dems: Don’t get smug.

For the GOP isn’t losing voters just because of its brand. It’s hurting because it’s out of step with the majority of Californians, whose fall votes favored gun controls, legalized marijuana and higher tobacco taxes, just a few causes Republican Party officials refused to back.

If a party gets too out of step with the voters its candidates seek to represent, it is doomed.

But many Republicans, voters and officials alike, prefer to stick to their very conservative guns, refusing to bend even a little on hard-line stances they’ve long held. “We wouldn’t be offering a choice if we changed,” said one party official.

In effect, they’re borrowing a line from the 19th Century Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay, who said “I’d rather be right than president” — and never became president despite three national runs.

Like Clay, the GOP will keep losing elections unless and until it bends at least a little. And if it won’t bend to fit the preferences of the clear majority of California voters, it soon may have runoff spots in even fewer races than it did this fall.

That’s the real meaning of all those complicated voter registration numbers.

Read More . . . .