California Has Work to Do. A Lot of Work to Do.

The California Air Resources Board today approved the trailblazing Advanced Clean Cars II rule that sets California on a path to rapidly growing the zero-emission car, pickup truck and SUV market and deliver cleaner air and massive reductions in climate-warming pollution.

The rule establishes a year-by-year roadmap so that by 2035 100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Compare that to this:

Californians are being asked to conserve power for the fourth day in a row as the state's grid operator expects another strain on the energy grid.

The California Independent System Operator, or Cal ISO, announced that a Flex Alert was extended to Saturday. The alerts have previously been issued for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

With a Flex Alert, residents are urged to conserve electricity from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. each day as energy use is expected to increase amid a long stretch of high temperatures, the California Independent System Operator said in a release.

First off, "plug-in hybrids" are not zero-emission vehicles. Defining them as such is a slap in the face of reality.

Second, California has about a million electric vehicles. (It might seem like more; I have a relative to says that Teslas are like a plague, as the percentage of assholes driving them is even higher than for Beemers.) The state has somewhere north of 30 million registered motor vehicles. While a lot of those vehicles aren't going away (cars in parts of the state last damn near forever), getting to where Newsome wants to be will require a shitload more EVs.

How is that going to work, if the summers are getting hotter and hotter, heat waves are going to be more intense and of longer duration, and people are going to be asked not to charge their cars when they're home from work?

California is going to have to improve both their electricity production capability and the electric grid and do it goddamned fast. In this day of NIMBYism and BANANAism, it's going to take a lot of litigation to get those projects approved. Thirteen years is not very much time.

I've read articles touting hydrogen-powered vehicles. Sure, hydrogen would be pretty close to a ZEV vehicle, as it owuld only emit water vapor. But getting the production plants, storage facilities and fueling stations up and running in thirteen years? Not going to happen. Everyone who lives near any one of those things will be screaming about the Hindenberg.

Add to that, the mundane issue of road taxes. They were simple to collect from fueled vehicles (x cents per gallon). But how will they collect it from EVs?

Keep this in mind: Whatever they've projected in the past for how conditions will be in 2100 as far as climate, let alone sea-level rise, it's an even bet that we are going to be there in less than thirty years. That's because for the last 30+ years, whenever there has been a discussion of maybe doing something to prevent it, the extractive energy industries have been spreading disinformation that would make a tobacco industry executive blush. We have likely passed the point of no return for a lot of the bad shit that's going to happen, even if we were magically able to to zero global emissions today.

So this is my prediction for the history books of the 24th Century: No matter what we have done since the end of the Second World War, be it going to the Moon, cure polio, eliminate smalllpox, develop computers from machines the size of a building to ones that can worn on one's wrist, none of that will matter. The only thing that people will know about us is that we knew that we were fucking up the climate, that we were exterminating other species by the millions, and we did nothing to avert any of that.

Trump's Catastrophic Mistake

Back when Trump thought the COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax:

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, says that Trump administration officials declined an offer of early congressional funding assistance that he and other senators made on Feb. 5 during a meeting to discuss the coronavirus.

The officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said they “didn’t need emergency funding, that they would be able to handle it within existing appropriations,” Murphy recalled in an interview with Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast.

“What an awful, horrible catastrophic mistake that was,” Murphy said.

It was, indeed. Trump wasted weeks, trying to jawbone a virus as well as the stock market.

The virus is relentless. It does not respond to hopes, prayers or rage-tweeting. Insults spewed at a MAGA rally only served to delay American preparedness. Trump slept and said it was all a hoax while the virus sank its prongs into this nation.

Trump was not the only politician to dismantle preparations for a pandemic in the moronic belief that one would never happen. Gov. Brown in California did even worse than Trump. The state had three 200-bed mobile hospitals, 50 million N95 masks and 2,400 ventilators. Jerry Brown scrapped all of that. So Californians who lose loved ones to this pandemic should feel free to look up Jerry Brown and inform him that he has the blood of maybe thousands of people on his hands.

Heckuvajob, Jerry.

Dear California: Fuck You

Some pack of raving busybodies convinced a low-wattage judge in California that coffee can cause cancer.

Nobody else, other than those loons, is apparently concerned.

I tend to wonder how much those clowns are going to make from bringing their litigation.

Because it'll be too expensive to make California-specific shit, we ar all going to be inundated with labels warning us that not only is hot coffee is hot, but there is some risk of it causing cancer. even though there is, apparently, no studies that show that the chemical the mouth-breathing pants-wetters are complaining about is of any risk.

In California, Perjury is All in a Day's Work for State Social Workers

That would seem to be the point that the attorneys for Orange County are defending on appeal.

From the you-can't-make-up-this-crap file, county officials are paying Lynberg & Watkins, a private Southern California law firm specializing in defending cops in excessive force lawsuits, untold sums to claim the social workers couldn't have "clearly" known that dishonesty wasn't acceptable in court and, as a back up, even if they did know, they should enjoy immunity for their misdeeds because they were government employees.

A panel at the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week ruled on Orange County's appeal of federal judge Josephine L. Staton's refusal last year to grant immunity to the bureaucrats in Preslie Hardwick v. County of Orange, a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages. In short, judges Stephen S. Trott, John B. Owens and Michelle T. Friedland were not amused. They affirmed Staton's decision.

But to grasp the ridiculousness of the [county] government's stance, read key, Oct. 7, 2016 exchanges between the panel and Pancy Lin, a partner at Lynberg & Watkins.

Click on the link and you can read them.

This, from the opinion itself, is telling:

No official with an IQ greater than room temperature in Alaska could claim that he or she did not know that the conduct at the center of this case violated both state and federal law.

That's just judicial gold, even though I don't know if houses in Alaska are poorly-heated. But I'll defer to the court on that point.

Interesting What Will Get One Suspended as a Teacher in California

Comment on the historical parallels between the rise to power of Hitler and Trump: Suspension.

Make some comment about lynching all black people as an example of equality in action: Not so much.

Lot of Rotten Apples in the Oakland PD

The Oakland Police Department lost its third police chief in eight days as it struggles with allegations that a number of officers had sex with a teenage prostitute and exchanged racist text messages.

Mayor Libby Schaaf said acting Police Chief Paul Figueroa was on the job for two days before stepping down on Friday but said his decision was not connected to the two scandals.

Has to be something else there for him to resign only two days on the job.

At this rate, the governor's going to have to send in the staties and the National Guard to patrol the streets.

If Your Dream is to Shoot People, Become a SoCal Cop

2,000 people have been shot by Southern California cops in the last dozen years. Charges were only filed against one cop and he was acquitted. LA itself-- 1,300 people shot by cops since `00 and zero prosecutions.

I, for one, find it very hard to believe that all of those shootings were good ones. But that's what happens when the cops investigate themselves.

It should come as no surprise. Even the Feebies can't be trusted to investigate their own shootings.

News for Morons; California Edition

$68-billion California bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline targets.

I'd take that as a fucking given. The replacement to the Oakland Bay Bridge was ten years late, built with substandard steel from China and cost almost seven times as much as originally planned. It was so bad that CalTrans actively sought to muzzle critics of the project, who were bringing to light problems with both quality and corruption.

Keep in mind, that's for two bridges to replace ones that were already there, for a total length of 4½ miles. The CA High-Speed Railroad people think that it'll only cost ten times as much as was spent on one bridge project to build a 300 mile-long high-speed railroad and that they can do it in less time than it took CalTrans to build that bridge.

They're not smoking crack. They're following the playbook used by other government projects, notably the F-35, in which they spend oodles of money and then go back for more, saying: "Look how much we've spent so far! It'll all be wasted if we don't finish the job!"

The morons are not those running the project. The morons here are the politicans and the people who wiill swallow that line of bilgewater without gulping even once.

Cops Shoot Man For Recording Them

Cops in California shot a man for recording them with a cell phone.

Because, as they say "they were in fear for their lives". Apparently, the cops there can't tell the difference between this:

and this:

Eye exams should be ordered for all of those trigger-happy jerkoffs. Followed by indictments.

Not Much Coverage For The Story About Cops Killing People in CA

Black men have been killed by police in California at eight times the rate of other residents over the past decade, according to records released under the first in a series of new state initiatives to disclose data on the use of deadly force by law enforcement.

Statistics published by the California attorney general, Kamala Harris, stated that about 19% of almost 1,000 homicides by law enforcement recorded between 2005 and 2014 were against African American men, who made up only about 3% of the state’s population.

Part of the devolution of the issue of the treatment of minorities by law enforcement has been driven by the Twitterization of the debate. I suspect that if the saying had been "Black Lives Also Matter", that there would have been harder for the Right Wing Noise Machine to get their collective panties in a wad.

And get them in a wad, they did. Nobody makes the assumption that saying "save the whales" means that it's OK to slaughter every other sea mammal. But that's precisely the assumption that the Wingnuts have been making.

Another Day, Another Police Outrage

This time, some cops in California last Friday took it upon themselves to mete out a little bit of private justice once the perp was in custody and handcuffed.

Their problem was that a news helo was overhead. News helicopters in southern California are almost ubiquitous, so they may not have even paid attention. The camera crew captured the beating.

How much longer are we willing to put up with this shit, people?

(H/T)

UPDATE: The cops involved are on mandatory paid vacation and the Feebies are looking into it. Because of course the local department can be trusted to impartially investigate itself, right?

A Modest Proposal for a New California Initiative

Since some clown named Matt McLaughlin has filed for a referendum on his lunatic idea to permit private citizens to kill gay people, I have a proposal:

Somebody in California should pony up $200 and file a for a referendum vote on the proposition that Mr. McLaughlin be hunted down and killed, with the State of California putting a $500,000 bounty on his head.

That ought to get the Soft-Rock Militia out and looking for him.

Doesn't Every School System Need a Tank?

Hey, kiddies! Your teachers have a tank! So behave!

The San Diego Unified School District Police Department has acquired its own vehicle, known as a MRAP, and expect it to be operational by October.

San Diego thinks they can use it in an emergency. They seem to think they can use it in an earthquake, because it can pull down a wall, but what good is that? They'd have a structurally-compromised building and then Barney Fife is going to start to yank down walls? Without any knowledge of structural engineering?

Are they smoking crack?

The San Diego School Police are trying to calm everyone down. "It's not a tank!"" "We'll paint a big Red Cross on it!" "We'll have teddy bears inside!"

Bullshit. You don't need an armored infantry fighting vehicle to deliver medical supplies and teddy bears. A truck would do the job, or a fucking ambulance. And painting it white and slapping on a Red Cross doesn't make it any less militarized.

For if that was the case, this gun would be legal to buy in California:

Fruits and Veggies

A lot of them come from California, where things are not good:

Meanwhile, what scientists have forecast would happen is happening: Permafrost is melting and releasing methane.

With all of the dithering about what to do about climate change, we may be at a point where we've dithered our way past the point where climate change can be mitigated and so we, and future generations, are going to be along for the ride. The so-called Greatest Generation, the Boomers, the Millennials and everyone in between will be reviled for centuries to come as the "Do Nothingers", the folks who stood around while the evidence mounted and just let it happen. And quite probably, certain last names will disappear from common usage, as they'll be too associated with the obstructionists who didn't care because they were too busy making a short-term profit at the expense of, well, every other living thing.

I'm thinking of this because a colleague just became a grandparent. Hell of a world we're leaving that kid.

Commence Operation Cover-Up... Execute!-- CHP Edition

Maybe the Chippies are doing an honest investigation of this incident. And maybe they're ensuring that the hard evidence conveniently disappears.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An attorney says California Highway Patrol investigators have seized medical records of a woman seen on video being repeatedly punched by one of the agency's officers on the side of a Los Angeles freeway.

Chris Arevalo, executive administrator for psychiatric services at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, confirmed Wednesday that the CHP had served a search warrant on Tuesday.

I bet on the latter. For everyone knows that the best way to control somebody who is in distress is to knock them to the ground, sit on their chest and repeatedly punch them in the head.

I predict that this will be as open and honest as the FBI investigating itself.

"Sorry About the Water, Officer!" (and Other Police Fuckery)

If you are a Chippie, you might not want to get within squirting range of a firehose for awhile:

Details are still emerging on an arrest that took place Tuesday night involving an officer of the California Highway Patrol and a Chula Vista firefighter. There was an alleged dispute over the location of a parked firetruck. A meeting is supposed to take place today between fire and police officials to determine what happened.

The unnamed firefighter was allegedly asked to move the firetruck which was presumably blocking traffic. Preliminary reports are that he did not refuse but responded by saying that he had to follow the chain of command and could not make that decision. The officer apparently told him that he would move the truck immediately or be arrested. When the firefighter refused he was cuffed and detained for about 30 minutes.

Now, let's go to this:

Eight Los Angeles police officers who mistakenly riddled a pickup truck with bullets during a manhunt for cop-turned-killer Christopher Dorner last year will be allowed to return to the field after they get additional training, Police Chief Charlie Beck said.

Two women were delivering newspapers. They threw a plastic-wrapped paper out of their truck onto a driveway. Nervous and trigger-happy LAPD cops confused the sound of a newspaper hitting the cement with gunfire and riddled the newsladies' truck with bullets.

They get "additional training".

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you thought somebody was trying to kill you. Say you're on edge. You hear a "plop" and see a truck pull up.

If you were to pick up your gun and shoot up the truck, I confidently predict that, even in a "stand yer ground" state, you'd be wearing one of those flattering orange DOC jumpsuits for at least several years. Because what you did would not have passed the "reasonableness" test".

But if you're a cop on the LAPD, you apparently don't have to worry about whether or not your actions were reasonable. You can shoot up a couple of civilians, suffer through your slap-on-the-wrist, and go back to work.

UC Freshman Orientation to Include Cavity Searches

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security, will step down from her post to lead the University of California system.

Because nothing qualifies someone to deal with "academic freedom" as someone who has run what is probably the one Federal cabinet department that is most opposed to individual freedom and liberty.

Seal Beach Asswipe

As you no doubt know by now, the Asswipe of Seal Beach was in a child custody battle with his ex-wife. So, doing what enraged men occasionally do to try to resolve such a situation, he drove to her place of employment and shot her to death, along with seven other people. Then he surrendered peacefully, rather than doing the right thing and putting a round into his worthless brain.

The defense is going to argue that he was insane. As I understand it, California follows the M'Naughten Rule, which holds that a person is insane if he cannot distinguish between right and wrong or that he didn't understand the nature of his act. Good luck with that one. Asswipe wrapped himself in body armor, so it's going to be hard, in my view, to argue that he didn't know the nature of his act. And good luck arguing that he didn't understand it was wrong to walk into a beauty salon and gun down eight people. They'd have to dig up the mouldering corpse of Johnnie Motherfucking Cochran to argue that one and I don't know if even he could do it.

Second, Asswipe was under a restraining order barring him from possessing firearms. By holding onto those guns, Asswipe violated Federal and state law. They might be able to send him away for a long time based on that, alone. But that's the thing about laws, the cops can't be everywhere and if someone wants to break the law, mostly the cops are cleaning-up after the fact.

Third, the ex-wife, Michelle Fornier, expected Asswipe to try to kill her. It is impossible to say whether she would have chosen to arm herself, but the truth of the matter is that in California, that option is generally not legally available.

California has issued 33,000 concealed carry permits. Ohio has issued over a quarter-million since 2004 and has just over a third of the population of California. Connecticut, a tiny state, has issued concealed carry permits long before the modern movement to liberalize concealed carry; they number them sequentially, and they've issued close to a million of them. It'd be a fair bet that at least 100,000 or 200,000 of them are active in a state of just over two million adults. The state isn't exactly awash with rivers of blood.*

Finally, now to a point that I've seen made elsewhere and it is, to my mind, irrelevant: The political leanings of Asswipe.

In this photo, the police are searching Asswipe's truck:

This is an enlargement of the license plate frame on the truck:

It would be easy to argue that this guy exemplified the stereotypical image of a Tea partier as "an angry white male with guns", but that would be an oversimplification. When it comes to rhetoric about guns, the vast majority of the Teabaggers are blowhards. Those angry white guys are about as likely to go shoot someone as they would be to go suck off George Clooney. The Tea party has not descended into egging on murder, at least, not yet.** So, in my opinion, trying to link the Tea party to this Asswipe is a low blow.***
__________________________
* That doesn't stop the chiefs of police or the gun control advocates from issuing their dire predictions every time the issue comes up in a state that is contemplating liberalizing their gun laws.
** The difference between the Tea party and the anti-choice people is that the Tea party isn't winking at acts of violence. The anti-abortion fanatics do, by contrast, encourage their less-than-stable supporters to go commit acts of murder.
*** If the situation was reversed, you can bet good money that the Wingnuts would be trying to link Asswipe to Occupy Wall Street.

Wrong Again, Jerry Brown

Gov. Jerry Brown announced early Monday that he had outlawed the open carrying of handguns in public in California, a controversial practice that top law enforcement officials had denounced as dangerous.
...
"I listened to the California police chiefs," Brown said in a statement.

Bad move, Jerry, you gutless weasel.

Police chiefs are the wrong people to listen to on almost any subject that I can think of. Police chiefs, especially large city chiefs, are about as solid an anti-freedom, anti-liberty and pro-statist group that exists.

Police chiefs have fought every concealed-carry bill that I know of. Police chiefs would happily see a law passed that would nullify the Fourth Amendment.