Tag: Jerry Brown

Commentary: Outlaw Public Sector Unions

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Money doesn’t guarantee victory in political campaigns. For proof, look no further than Meg Whitman, the California billionaire who in 2010 squandered $179 million in her futile campaign to beat Jerry Brown and become that state’s next governor.

When money is married to institutional power, however, it makes all the difference. This is why, 10 years after the Whitman debacle, Mark Zuckerberg was able to purchase the presidential election outcome in 2020 for $419 million. Whitman’s money paid consultants and bought ads on television. Zuckerberg’s money went to supplement the activities of election offices in swing states – election offices that employed workers represented by unions that overwhelmingly favor Democrats over Republicans.

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After Warnock Win, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to Propose Ranked Choice ‘Instant Runoff’ System

Susan Berry, PhD

Controversial Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) is planning to present several electoral system proposals, including ranked choice voting, to state lawmakers following the runoff between Senator Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R), which handed a win to Warnock.

In an interview with the New York Times following the runoff election, Raffensperger said he would offer three proposals to Georgia lawmakers, including one to establish a “ranked-choice instant runoff” system, whose main goal would be to eliminate having voters return to the polls after the general election, and the costs associated with doing so.

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Commentary: Why I’m Never Going Back to California

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by George Rasley   Recently, Dr. Drew Pinsky spoke with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade about the horrific conditions on the streets of Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city, before making the frightening prediction, “There will be a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles.” Pinsky described to Kilmeade what he believes to be the almost medieval conditions in the City of Angels and compared local politicians to Nero, the infamous Roman Emperor who allegedly fiddled while his nation burned. “We have tens and tens of thousands of people living in tents. Horrible conditions. Sanitation. Rats have taken over the city. We’re the only city in the country, Los Angeles, without a rodent control program. We have multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus. We’re gonna have a louse-borne illness. If measles breaks into that population, we have tuberculosis exploding. Literally, our politicians are like Nero. It’s worse than Nero,” Pinsky said. Homelessness and trash are a growing problem for residents in Los Angeles and as the garbage piles up, so do the rats, fueling concerns about flea-borne typhus, according to a report this week. Pinsky said the city’s homeless situation and sanitation crisis are out of hand and politicians…

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DC Think Tank Calls on NBC to Stop Blacking Out Climate Skeptics

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by Chris White   A Washington-based think tank published an ad Tuesday pressing NBC News to stop blacklisting climate skeptics from debating aspects of global warming on the channel’s broadcasts. The Competitive Enterprise Institute created an ad campaign pushing NBC’s Meet the Press to include climate skeptics in future broadcasts discussing aspects of global warming. NBC refused to run a televised version of the 30-second ad on its Jan. 20 episode, according to a CEI press statement. “NBC has made it perfectly clear they have no interest in hosting an open debate on climate change or policy alternatives for the environment, as evidenced by their decision to reject both guests on-air and paid ads during the program to give expert views shared by millions of Americans,” CEI President Kent Lassman noted in a press statement Tuesday morning. The ads, which will run in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, push back against Meet the Press host Chuck Todd’s decision to exclude so-called climate alarmists and calls for what CEI says is a real and open debate about the impacts of climate alarmism. Todd kicked off a Dec. 30 program with a promise to the audience: The show will…

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Commentary: Protecting Cop Killers, Ignoring Their Victims

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by Lloyd Billingsley   “Shots fired!” radioed Newman, California, police officer Ronil Singh after pulling over a suspected drunk driver the day after Christmas. Those were the last words of Cpl. Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji. His killer turned out to be someone who “doesn’t belong here,” as Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said. “He is a criminal.” Outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown offered condolences to Singh’s family and said flags at the capitol would fly at half-staff in his honor. “Our hearts are with the entire community of Newman and law enforcement officers across the state who risk their lives every day to protect and serve the people of California,” Brown said. The governor mentioned nothing about the shooter, and neither did Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Considering the grandstanding and pandering of both politicians on immigration, both have good reasons to keep quiet. Gustavo Perez Arriaga—or whatever his real name is—has gang connections and two previous DUI arrests. As former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told Fox News, the September 2017 Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act would have given authorities the ability to take immigration enforcement action against the shooter, even if he had…

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Report: Years of Bad Land Management Led to One of California’s Most Devastating Wildfires

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by Jason Hopkins   An in-depth investigation found that federal, state and local governments were aware of California’s vulnerability to wildfires, but failed to take the necessary steps to prevent its devastation. California residents have recently been forced to deal with some of the worst wildfires in the state’s history. Over the course of a 13-month period that began in October 2017, four major fires scorched California. The fires ultimately burned 700,000 acres of land, destroying nearly 27,000 properties and killing over 100 people. The devastation has left leaders wondering who — or what — is to blame. California and the Trump administration have sparred heavily over what was responsible for the fires. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and environmental activists have directed blame at climate change, claiming that rising temperatures make the fires more brutal. California officials are currently investigating whether a malfunction in an electric utility’s equipment may have caused one of the fires. Mounting evidence suggest the wildfires were in large part a result of regulatory failure. ProPublica, an investigative outlet based in New York, reviewed records and conducted dozens of interviews concerning one of these deadly fires: the Carr Fire. Its team ultimately concluded that “every level…

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Commentary: The Costs of Presidential Candor

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by Victor Davis Hanson   Predictably, Donald Trump was attacked both by the establishment and the media as “crude,” “in-presidential,” and “gratuitous” for a recent series of blunt and graphic statements on a variety of current policies. Oddly, the implied charge this time around was not that Trump makes up stuff, but that he said things that were factual but should not be spoken. Trump’s tweets and ex tempore editorials may have been indiscreet and politically unwise, but they were also mostly accurate assessments. That paradox revisits the perennial question that is the hallmark of the Trump presidency of what exactly is presidential crudity and what are the liabilities of presidential candor? Concerning the catastrophic California Camp Fire (150,000 acres) and the Woolsey conflagration (100,000 acres), which in turn followed prior devastating California fires in spring and summer of 2018 (perhaps charring 1 million acres in all), Trump tweeted: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!” Certainly, while flames…

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Commentary: How the Greens Turned the Golden State Brown

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by Edward Ring   In October 2016, in a coordinated act of terrorism that received fleeting attention from the press, environmentalist activists broke into remote flow stations and turned off the valves on pipelines carrying crude oil from Canada into the United States. Working simultaneously in Washington, Montana, Minnesota, and North Dakota, the eco-terrorists disrupted pipelines that together transport 2.8 million barrels of oil per day, approximately 15 percent of U.S. consumption. The pretext for this action was to protest the alleged catastrophe of global warming. These are the foot soldiers of environmental extremism. These are the minions whose militancy receives nods and winks from opportunistic politicians and green investors who make climate alarmism the currency of their political and commercial success. More recently, and far more tragic, are the latest round of California wildfires that have consumed nearly a quarter million acres, killed at least 87 people, and caused damages estimated in excess of $10 billion. Opinions vary regarding how much of this disaster could have been avoided, but nobody disputes that more could have been done. Everyone agrees, for example, that overall, aggressive fire suppression has been a mistake. Most everyone agrees that good prevention measures include forest…

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Ryan Zinke Blames Radical Environmentalists For Deadly California Wildfires

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by Michael Bastasch   Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed “radical environmentalists” for the deadly wildfires raging across California. “When we’re prevented from managing our forests by these radical environmentalists — they’ve had lawsuit after lawsuit, they have somehow promulgated to let nature take its course — this is the consequence of letting nature take its course,” Zinke said in an interview on the Breitbart News Sunday radio show. Wildfires scorched roughly 250,000 acres of California, destroying more than 12,000 structures and taking 80 lives. Authorities say there are still 1,200 people unaccounted for in the wake of the fires. “We need to go back to prescribed burns late in the season so you don’t have these catastrophic burns, remove the dead and dying timber, sustainable harvests, get the small mom and pop mills back where they’re grazing the forest and return to healthy forests,” Zinke said. “You look at Finland. I had an opportunity to live in Germany. Germany has the Black Forest — their forests are healthy, they don’t have the catastrophic burns because they manage the forests.” “And I will lay this on the foot of those environmental radicals that have prevented us from managing the forests for years. And you know…

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Jerry Brown Blames Those Who Deny Global Warming for Deadly Wildfires

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by Michael Bastasch   California Gov. Jerry Brown said “those who deny” man-made global warming are “definitely contributing” to the deadly, devastating wildfires forcing thousands of residents out of their homes. Brown made the comments during a Sunday press conference where he warned that global warming created a “new abnormal” for the state, including fueling deadly wildfires. The Democrat said better forest management was only a partial solution to the problem. “Managing the forests in every way we can does not stop climate change, and those who deny that are definitely contributing to the tragedies that we’re now witnessing, and will continue to witness in the coming years,” Brown said. “The chickens are coming home to roost. This is real here,” Brown said before saying he wanted people to “pull together” to tackle the problem. Three major fires scorched more than 200,000 acres, mostly in Northern California, since Thursday, according to Cal Fire. Firefighters only contained about one-quarter of raging infernos, which left at least 31 dead. The 111,000-acre Camp Fire became the most destructive in state history, destroying more than 6,800 structures and displacing tens of thousands of people. The fire spread quickly due to bone-dry conditions and fast-moving…

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The LA Times Inadvertently Admits Trump Is Right About What’s Causing California’s Massive Wildfires

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by Tim Pierce   Adopting more active forest management policies such as increased thinning of trees and conducting controlled burns will help mitigate damage from future wildfires, the Los Angeles Times editorial board writes. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke began advocating similar policy prescriptions earlier in 2018 after President Donald Trump blamed California’s “bad environmental laws” for creating a wildfire-prone environment. California forests have grown drier and less healthy from overcrowded trees, infestations of bark beetles and the effects of climate change, the LA Times writes. California’s restrictions on active forest management have contributed to the poor and worsening conditions of the forests, allowing them to grow uninhibited while suppressing fires that would normally naturally control the forests’ growth. “Fire is not necessarily bad for forests. California used to burn with regularity, and low-intensity fires are vital in some ecosystems to clear excess brush and small trees from the landscape,” the editorial board writes. “But there’s been a change in fire behavior over the last century, as the state and federal government began dousing the blazes. Decades of fire suppression have allowed forests to grow dense with trees.” “Combined with drought, insect infestations and the stress of a warming climate, those management…

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