I Went Back To California. My Home Town Looks Like A War Zone

California - A State of Insanity

Democrats spend billions on a high speed train 

that no one will ride and even more on 
illegal aliens, but they ignore poverty

of Americans of all colors.

 

San Bernardino factory to close, citing California costs

(The Sun)  -  D&W Fine Pack, which makes foil and hard paper food packaging items, will cease manufacturing operations at its San Bernardino facility, citing the high cost of operating a factory in California.

The California Employment Development Department was notified Wednesday that 94 workers would be terminated on July 19.

The distribution arm of the Georgia Boulevard facility will remain in operation, according to a company statement. Frances Rizzo, director of communications, said in an email received Monday, April 29 that will consist of six team members and one support team member.

The Wood Dale, Ill.-based company has a factory in Fort Wayne, Ind. and will consolidate its manufacturing at that location. According to the statement, some manufacturing and administrative employees in San Bernardino will have a chance to apply for jobs in Fort Wayne.

The Indiana factory will hire an additional 100 workers, the company said. Rizzo said employees who opt to relocate would receive a moving allowance that is dictated by the company’s relocation policy and that employees would be paid market rate for work in Fort Wayne.

“The rising cost of manufacturing in California combined with a shift in market dynamics for single-use disposable packaging were factors we considered in making our decision to consolidate these operations,” the statement read.

D&W Fine Pack makes containers used for carry-out food items as well as utensils, straws and stirrers.

SBsun.com

An entire California town dedicated to Pot

(Bloomberg)  -  American Green Inc., a maker of cannabis products, is taking an unusual step to attract new customers as it capitalizes on California legalizing marijuana: It’s buying an entire town.

The company has acquired the tiny burg of Nipton, California Nipton, for about $5 million and plans to invest as much as $2.5 million over the next 18 months to create a pot-friendly tourist destination. The purchase includes 120 acres of land with a general store, a hotel, a school building and mineral baths.

American Green, based in Tempe, Arizona, will use the existing structures and build new ones -- powered by renewable energy -- to revitalize the town, said project manager Stephen Shearin. Ideally, the outpost will spawn imitators, he said.

“We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?’” he said.

The move shows how far marijuana has moved out of the shadows despite an uncertain federal policy outlook. With pot now legalized for recreational and medical use in California, Nevada and six other states, one in five American adults can consume the formerly taboo plant as they please. That’s created an opportunity for companies to try to make cannabis a more mainstream product.

Read More . . . .

Nipton Hotel in the early 1930s.

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

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Los Angeles Area

Inland Empire Area

Hospital safety grade.org

Orange County Area

San Diego Area

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."

Read More . . . .

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

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.

Read More . . . .

The 47th Assembly District in San Bernardino

Obama imports Muslims to Redlands, California

Democrats Import "Refugees" into SoCal

Democrats prove yet again that they don't 

give a crap about American citizens

(Breitbart News)  -  The area around San Bernardino, California was the site of intense debates about Muslim immigration in the immediate days before Wednesday night’s horrific mass shooting.

Police searched a home in Redlands, California, fifteen minutes away from where the shooting occurred as part of its investigation into the suspects. Thus far, the name Syed Farook has been given as a suspect in the case.

The U.S. State Department recently chose Redlands as the proposed site of a Syrian refugee settlement due to its already active Middle Eastern immigrant community. Catholic Charities was identified as a broker for the federal government program.

Citizens in Redlands, California took action in response to the area’s Muslim immigration threat, appearing before the town’s mayor in a public forum in October to voice their concerns.

Groups including Redlands Tea Party, Redlands Townhall, and Redlands Tea Party Patriots expressed concern about this issue, and two op-eds (HERE AND HERE) appeared in local publications.

The situation got so heated that the Islamic Center of Redlands held an “Open Mosque Day” in mid-October to try to quell the community’s concerns.

“I don’t care to be politically correct any longer. This is just a plan for disaster,” one concerned woman told town officials at the public forum in video footage obtained by Breitbart News.

Read More . . . .

Democrat Jerry Brown refuses to help San Bernardino

Jerry Brown: "Screw You."

• The city of San Bernandino voted Democrat and was rewarded with a big FU by Jerry Brown.

(San Bernardino Sun)  -  Gov. Jerry Brown has given his response to the optimistic request for help on six different fronts that Mayor Carey Davis and his allies made in a trip to Sacramento.

The answer is no.

That’s according to a news release sent by Davis’ chief of staff, Christopher Lopez, who said the city will continue to implement its bankruptcy exit plan.

Governor Jerry Brown
(AP File Photo)

A “cornerstone” of that plan, Lopez said, is contracting out for some services, including fire protection, something the city has repeatedly sought to pressure Cal Fire to provide.

“Governor Brown’s office has recently made San Bernardino aware that Cal Fire will not provide a proposal and that our additional requests will not be considered,” Lopez wrote Monday evening.

The county fire department and a private firm called Centerra did submit proposals to run the city’s Fire Department, which the city thinks could save it $7 million or more per year.

The city asked Brown to force Cal Fire to submit a bid, despite explicit refusals from the state fire agency’s chief, and for help with several other issues, in a five-page letter signed by Davis, the city manager, the city attorney and all of the City Council members except John Valdivia.

Davis and Councilwoman Virginia Marquez then lobbied the governor’s chief deputy legislative affairs director and local government adviser, with the help of bipartisan state legislators representing the area: Assemblyman Marc Steinorth, R-Rancho Cucamonga in person, and other support from Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino, state Sen. Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga and state Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino.

Their requests involved a California Public Employees’ Retirement System penalty, the threatened decertification of the San Bernardino Employment and Training Agency, a loan, a bill that would facilitate contracting with county fire, help with the dissolution of the redevelopment agency, and clarification on its tax agreement with Amazon.

Brown’s office could not be reached Tuesday, while San Bernardino reportedly moved forward with its plans.

Read More . . . .

Piping water from a national forest during a drought

A State of Crazy People

Bottling National Park water and shipping it out 

of California during a drought

(The Desert Sun)  -  Miles from the nearest paved road in the San Bernardino National Forest, two sounds fill a rocky canyon: a babbling stream and the hissing of water flowing through a stainless steel pipe.

From wells that tap into springs high on the mountainside, water gushes down through the pipe to a roadside tank. From there, it is transferred to tanker trucks, hauled to a bottling plant and sold as Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.

Nestle Waters North America holds a longstanding right to use this water from the national forest near San Bernardino. But the U.S. Forest Service hasn't been keeping an eye on whether the taking of water is harming Strawberry Creek and the wildlife that depends on it. In fact, Nestle's permit to transport water across the national forest expired in 1988. It hasn't been reviewed since, and the Forest Service hasn't examined the ecological effects of drawing tens of millions of gallons each year from the springs.

Even with California deep in drought, the federal agency hasn't assessed the impacts of the bottled water business on springs and streams in two watersheds that sustain sensitive habitats in the national forest. The lack of oversight is symptomatic of a Forest Service limited by tight budgets and focused on other issues, and of a regulatory system in California that allows the bottled water industry to operate with little independent tracking of the potential toll on the environment.

Water flows down Strawberry Creek in the mountains north of San Bernardino.
(Photo: Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun)

In an investigation of the industry's water footprint in the San Bernardino National Forest and other parts of California, The Desert Sun found that:

• No state agency is tracking exactly how much water is used by all of the bottled water plants in California, or monitoring the effects on water supplies and ecosystems statewide. The California Department of Public Health regulates 108 bottled water plants in the state, collecting information on water quality and the sources tapped. But the agency says it does not require companies to report how much water they use.
• That information, when collected piecemeal by state or local agencies, often isn't easily accessible to the public. In some cases, the amounts of water used are considered confidential and not publicly released.
• Even as Nestle Waters has been submitting required reports on its water use, the Forest Service has not been closely tracking the amounts of water leaving the San Bernardino National Forest and has not assessed the impacts on the environment.
• While the Forest Service has allowed Nestle to keep using an expired permit for nearly three decades, the agency has cracked down on other water users in the national forest. Several years ago, for instance, dozens of cabin owners were required to stop drawing water from a creek when their permits came up for renewal. Nestle has faced no such restrictions.
• Only this year, after a group of critics raised concerns in letters and after The Desert Sun inquired about the expired permit, did Forest Service officials announce plans to take up the issue and carry out an environmental analysis.

A growing debate over Nestle's use of water from the San Bernardino National Forest parallels other arguments in places from the San Gorgonio Pass to Mount Shasta. And those debates have turned more contentious as a fourth year of drought weighs on California's depleted water supplies.

Bottled water companies in California are typically subject to environmental reviews only when a permit for a new project triggers a formal study. Otherwise, the impacts of bottling plants on creeks and aquifers often aren't scrutinized by government agencies.

Read more at the Desert Sun.com

Bottles of water move on a conveyor belt at the Nestle Waters
North America bottling plant in Ontario.
(Photo: Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun)

Inland Empire is the second fastest growing region in California

Riverside County

Growing and Growing

• Yes there is growth, but no one likes to talk about water.  You cannot keep building water guzzling business and cites in a desert.  At some point the drought will drive the entire California economy into a depression unless meaningful actions are taken.

(ONTARIO)  -   The Inland Empire has returned to its place as one of the fastest growing economies in the state, said John Husing, chief economist of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership business advocacy group, at his annual State of the Region address.

Husing told the crowd of 400 leaders and members of the business community that the region had recovered the number of jobs it had lost during the recession.

“I think when you have 400 people come together and you hear such a positive message, with people applauding when we talk about the number of jobs being created in logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare, that’s all positive,” said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the IEEP, which sponsored the event. “A job is the best thing people can have, and in a region like ours, the more jobs we have means that our quality of life is going to get better and better.”

California's Inland Empire
San Bernardino and Riverside Counties

Husing also was happy to tell the audience that the Inland Empire, comprised of both San Bernardino and Riverside counties, added more jobs than any other area of California, except for Los Angeles, beating out the Bay area — another economic powerhouse in the state.

“It means we’re turning to the role we have historically had for the last 15 to 20 years,” Husing said. “We have often been one of the strongest economies in the state. We lost that because of the housing downturn of the great recession, but we’ve now gained it back.”

Husing forecasts the region will add about 51,200 jobs this year, with a growth rate of about 3.9 percent. That’s coming after 53,117 added last year, and 51,075 in 2013, he said.

“It will be the first time we’ve ever had three years in a row with growth over 50,000,” Husing said. “We’ve all lamented the fact that the economic recovery has been so slow. In fact, what it has done is put us on a very solid foundation where you can get continual growth of this size.”

The region’s logistics sector, or the jobs related to the warehousing and transportation of goods to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach throughout the Inland Empire, carried the most job growth in the past year, Husing said.

He said a strong dollar, while hurting manufacturing because of weak exports, is actually helping the Inland Empire, because increased imports benefit the region’s logistics business with more goods coming through.

Also helping the industry is the continual growth of online shopping, which has led to an increase of distribution warehouse centers, such as the large Amazon fulfillment centers in Redlands and San Bernardino. Experts say the region should expect more to come in the future.

“The one that’s really the growth engine is logistics,” Husing said. “Like I said, if anybody is going to oppose logistics, they’ve got to walk around naked and not use any electronics.”

Read more at San Bernardino County Sun.

Crime
The Inland Empire's other growth industry.

$2 million price tag for an election with one candidate

Then-Assembly Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield,
and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner.

It's Just Tax Money

• The Los Angeles County portion of the bill runs to $1.4 million.  San Bernardino has not said with their cost is.

(Santa Clarita Valley Signal)  -  A special election with a price tag of more than $1 million is on for March, even though only one candidate filed to put her name on the ballot, state and county elections officials said.

The name of Republican Sharon Runner will be the only one to appear on on the certified list of candidates sent out by the California Secretary of State’s office.

The special primary election for the 21st Senate District seat vacated by Congressman Steve Knight is scheduled March 17, according to state and county elections officials.

“It’s mandated we still have an election, even though there’s one candidate,” said Regina Ip, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Office of Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

The special election carries about a $1.4 million price tag in Los Angeles County alone, Ip said. 

Election officials in San Bernardino County could not be reached for information on the cost of the election for them.

The 21st district covers most of the Santa Clarita and Victor valleys as well as the Antelope Valley south of the Kern County line. The district also stretches into San Bernardino County.

Part of the rationale for continuing with the election is that someone could mount a write-in campaign for the seat.

As of Thursday, Ip said, nobody had pulled papers in L.A. County to run as a write-in candidate.

Whether there’s a write-in candidate or not, the same general rules for the special election apply. 

Should Runner, a former state Senator and Assemblywoman, win more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary election, she will be deemed elected.

Write-in candidates can only run in the primary election. They could advance to a special general election if they are one of the top two vote-getters and no candidate receives a majority of the vote.

The 21st Senate District seat was left vacant after Knight, R-Palmdale, resigned earlier this month to take his new seat in Congress.

Although a number of candidates had expressed possible interest in running in the special election to fill the remaining two years of Knight’s term, Runner was the only one to do so.

Runner served in the 36th Assembly District from 2002 to 2008 and then in the 17th Senate District from 2011 to 2012. She opted not to seek re-election in 2012 after undergoing a double lung transplant as part of the treatment for limited scleroderma, or CREST syndrome, which is an autoimmune condition.

The 21st Senate District takes in the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita in
Los Angeles County and Victor Valley in San Bernardino County.