Californians are Putting Their Money Down on a Sure Bet: Guns

From The BearingArms

Just two weeks short weeks after Governor Jerry Brown showed his hand by signing a number of gun control measures into law, Californians are putting their money down on a sure bet: AR-15 rifles.

“The California compliant rifles right now are non-existent. There is nothing out there,” said Ray Parga, owner of Del Valle Gunsmithing in Marina, CA.

Parga told local reporters that sales of AR-15 style firearms are through the roof. Not only are the guns he had in stock completely sold out, but replenishment orders were sold before they’ll ever touch store shelves.

“We’re getting right now, probably 20 calls a day and we are a small shop,” said Parga. “Generally they just want to be able to have one before they aren’t allowed to buy them anymore.”

The Law of unintended consequences.

California Bites the Bullet with Background Checks

From The American Thinker Blog:

If strong gun laws worked, Chicago would be the safest place on the planet. Gun laws didn’t work at Ft. Hood, in Orlando, or in San Bernardino, where the wife of one of those slain noted that the killers knew their victims couldn’t shoot back and a gun in a good guy’s hand would have made a difference:

In the past, California’s gun control laws already closed many of the so-called “loopholes” related to gun purchases. In fact, some of the weapons owned by the San Bernadino shooters, Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeem Malik, were legally bought within the state by a friend named Enrique Marquez. The man is pleading not guilty to providing material support to the two shooters, but he’s also being charged as a co-conspirator in the terrorist plot…

Amy Wetzel is the widow of San Bernardino shooting victim Michael Wetzel and she is also applying for a concealed carry weapons permit. During a recent interview, she speculated that the outcome of the San Bernardino terrorist attack could have been very different if someone had been carrying a concealed gun.

“What if someone in that room (at the Inland Regional Center) had had a permit to carry (a concealed weapon),” she said.

Yes, Governor Brown, what if? Guns used at San Bernardino were purchased legally and so too was the ammo. Making it difficult for the shooters to get ammo or reload quickly makes no sense if you make it impossible for victims to shoot back at all. What if, as Sayed Farouk reloaded his weapon, someone with a concealed carry weapon had used theirs to kill him?

Liberal Logic!

Jerry Brown -- We’re Coming for Your High-Capacity Magazines

From Breitbart California:

Regarding the ammunition background checks, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence told the New York Times that the hope is they will serve as a backdoor tool for finding guns that aren’t on the books — something gun control advocates have been trying to do on the national level for decades. The Brady Campaign’s Amanda Wilcox said,

It can give us a handle on who has illegal guns in the state, as well as limiting access to ammunition by dangerous people who may have illegal guns.

However, there is a difference between “illegal guns” and non-registered guns, which may include legal guns (and legal gun owners) that are not in the state government’s database.

The quote from the Brady Campaign spokesperson should leave little doubt the forced registration list will leads to a master list that will eventually lead to confiscation.

California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco

From Bloomberg News via H/T at Instapundit:

From Virginia Postrel

The total construction cost estimate has now more than doubled to $68 billion from the original $33 billion, despite trims in the routes planned. The first, easiest-to-build, segment of the system — the “train to nowhere” through a relatively empty stretch of the Central Valley — is running at least four years behind schedule and still hasn’t acquired all the needed land. Predicted ticket prices to travel from LA to the Bay have shot from $50 to more than $80. State funding is running short. Last month’s cap-and-trade auction for greenhouse gases, expected to provide $150 million for the train, yielded a mere $2.5 million. And no investors are lining up to fill the $43 billion construction-budget gap.

Creating the High Speed Rail was more inportant to Moonbeam than fixing everything else in California Government priorities.

With a lot of crony capitalists involved too, it was doomed from the start.

High-Speed Rail Is a Fast Train to Fiscal Ruin, in California and Elsewhere

From John Fund at National Review:

Only California, where no liberal boondoggle is ever too wasteful to reject, has charged ahead with its plan to build a train between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Voters in 2008 narrowly approved initial bonds to finance the project, but that was when it was projected to cost $33 billion and travel 220 miles per hour. Now it has lost the support of key figures such as Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, a likely successor to Governor Jerry Brown in 2018, and Quentin Kopp, former head of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Kopp says the current plan is a betrayal of what was approved by voters. He says it has morphed into a “slow-speed” project that is likely to cost upwards of $80 billion, or 40 times the federal government’s annual subsidy for all of Amtrak. But train supporters refuse to give up. Last year, they broke ground on an initial 119-mile segment of the train’s route in the state’s sparsely settled Central Valley. The main reason they forged ahead with the ground-breaking was to avoid having to return Obama stimulus money, which the state had pledged to do if nothing was built. The first segment of track will run from Madera to Bakersfield, a stretch that fewer than 3 percent of the line’s potential ridership can use. It is essentially a train from nowhere to nowhere, ridden by almost no one.

It's called the "Browndoggle" for a reason.

California -- The Ultimate Nanny State

From The Federalist:

In California, a 15-year-old girl can abort a viable baby without telling her parents, but starting now a married 20-year-old with a job and kids can’t buy a pack of cigarettes. Or get a drink. That same 15-year-old girl is banned from getting an indoor tan, and a woman must obtain, and give, “affirmative consent” before kissing someone during her college years.

No one can use foam takeout containers or plastic carryout bags or play online poker. This is a state that wanted to ban you from eating the livers of waterfowl. If the state discovers you’ve purchased raw milk, a confiscation team may visit your home to impound the supply. The sale of caffeinated beer is forbidden. E-cigarettes are now treated as if they were tobacco, even if they are not.

In San Francisco, where it’s illegal to light your own fireplace during Christmas, if you fail to recycle your trash correctly you can be fined up to $500, but you can’t get a toy with your Happy Meal because they’re banned. In Los Angeles, you have to wear a condom to make a porno, but you can have unprotected sex in Caligula-style orgies as long as you don’t film it.

Yes, we live in a messed up State.

2,986 Shooting Victims in Gun-Controlled Chicago During 2015

From Breitbart's Big Government: Too short to except:

On January 1, the Chicago Tribune reported that the number of shooting victims in gun-controlled Chicago for 2015 was 2,986.

Mind you, Chicago has a “violence tax” that raises the price of every gun and bullet sold at retail, an “assault weapons” ban, limits on the number of gun stores and the locations of those stores, and what the New York Times describes as handgun restrictions that let city leaders “get as close as they could get legally to a ban without a ban.”

The result? According to the Chicago Tribune, there has been nearly 3,000 shooting victims in one year’s time.

And the Tribune reports approximate 470 homicides for Chicago in 2015, which means gun-controlled Chicago had “the most violent year of all major U.S. cities.” It is the worst year the city has seen since 2012, “when 500 people were killed.”

On October 27, President Obama tried to blame Indiana and Wisconsin for the gun control failure in Chicago. His line of reasoning was that the pro-Second Amendment stance of Indiana and Wisconsin led to guns flooding into Chicago from out of state. Bretibart News previously reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) made a similar move on September 17, when he blamed southern states for New York City’s soaring rate of firearm-related homicides.

The Dear Leader blaming Wisconsin and Indiana for the gun control fail makes about as much sense as Kalifornia Gov. Jerry 'Moonbeam' Brown blaming Nevada and Arizona's gun control laws for the terrorist shooting in San Bernardino. All the gun used in the San Bernardino shooting were legally purchased in Kalifornia, after a universal background check and a 10 day waiting period.

"Unstoppable" California Gas Leak Now Being Called Worst Catastrophe Since BP Spill

From Zero Hedge via H/T at Instapundit:

Since initially reporting on California's Alison Canyon gas leak, more details have emerged on the scale (and potential for no solution) of the problem as the infamous Erin Brockovich writes, "the enormity of the Aliso Canyon gas leak cannot be overstated. Gas is escaping through a ruptured pipe more than 8,000 feet underground, and it shows no signs of stopping," as according to the California Air Resources Board, methane - a greenhouse gas 72 times more impactful in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide - has been escaping from the Aliso Canyon site with force equivalent “to a volcanic eruption” for about two months now.

So where is the wall to wall coverage?

Might it have to do with the fact that Jerry Brown's sister, former gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Brown is on the Board of Directors for SoCal Gas?

Jerry Brown Wants Syria Refugees; Promises ‘Fully Vetted’

From Breitbart California:

On Monday, California Gov. Jerry Brown stated California would help accept Syrian refugees, and argued that they would be “fully vetted in a sophisticated and utterly reliable way.”

Brown told the Desert Sun, “I intend to work closely with the President so that he can both uphold America’s traditional role as a place of asylum, but also ensure that anyone seeking refuge in America is fully vetted in a sophisticated and utterly reliable way. You can be sure that we will do everything in our power to protect the people of our state.”

In September, the Obama administration stated it would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next 12 months.

Brown’s willingness to accept Syrian refugees is an about-face from his attitude in the 1970s towards Vietnamese refugees. At the time, Brown allegedly complained that the federal government wanted to “dump Vietnamese” on California.

Of course he wants them 'dumped into our state,' he sees the Federal dollars that will accompany all those refugees.

Oil Scandal -- Whistleblower Emerges Against Jerry Brown

From Breitbart California:

A worker in the state oil and gas regulatory agency lodged a whistleblower’s complaint over being ordered to prepare a state map of the oil and gas potential, history and geology of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s family ranch, the worker and her attorney said Monday.

Jennie Catalano, a mapping specialist who has been with the state Department of Conservation for 18 years, brought the complaint. She contends that she faced unspecified retaliation after being suspected of lodging the complaint over being directed to do the personal work for Brown, said her attorney, William Rehwald.

“I was asked to help her in part because she does feel that she’s being retaliated against because she’s a whistleblower,” Rehwald said.

State records obtained by The Associated Press show Brown in June 2014 directed senior officials at the Department of Conservation’s oil and gas regulatory agency to map, research and assess the oil, gas and mineral history and potential of his 2,700-acre family ranch in Northern California near Williams.

State law prohibits elected officials from using state resources for personal purposes. Spokesmen for Brown and the oil and gas agency say the governor is allowed to access public records the same as any member of the public, and say that oil and gas regulators routinely do such research for the public.

However, four oil-industry professionals and three former officials whose tenure with the state oil and gas agency spanned from the 1980s to 2013 told the AP they know of no other instance where the state performed that scale of satellite-imaged geology and drilling map, development assessment and compiling of state records for a private individual.

Impeach!

Jerry Brown’s Oil Scandal Excuses Don’t Wash

From Breitbart California:

California Gov. Jerry Brown’s explanations about why state experts were sent to survey his family’s private land for oil and gas face increasing skepticism.

Brown’s office maintains: 1. that he received no special treatment, and merely used services available to every California resident; 2. that he was “interested in the history and geology of his family ranch in Colusa County—not drilling for oil or gas”; and 3. that he had merely requested public records, not a detailed study.

Those claims are increasingly in doubt.

As the Los Angeles Times notes in an editorial Friday, Brown asked Steve Bohlen, head of the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, to conduct the survey a mere nine days after he had started the job. He also received a report just two days later–“an uncommon alacrity in state government”–and also “received a satellite map drawn up especially for him.”

In addition, the Associated Press has defended its initial report, insisting Brown was interested in oil and gas potential, not mere historical information.

The Times concludes–it is not clear how–that Brown was not “getting thousands of dollars of free expert help at the expense of taxpayers.” However, it adds: “It’s inappropriate for the governor to call the head of an agency for help with personal business, especially someone he had just installed in the job nine days before. It also was wrong for his aides to follow up with the agency to ensure that there would be a map and other specific information.”

Impeach Him!

Attorney -- Jerry Brown Should ‘Just Confess’ in Oil Scandal

From Breitbart California:

Patricia Oliver, the attorney who uncovered Jerry Brown’s use of state oil and gas experts to search for oil on his family’s private property, told Breitbart News on Thursday that the California governor should “just confess.”

Like that will ever happen. However, every politician should know the cover-up will be treated as worse than the crime.

Shock -- Jerry Brown Used State Experts to Seek Oil on Family Land

From Breitbart California:

California governor Jerry Brown used state experts to prepare a 51-page report on the prospects for oil development on his family’s private land in Northern California, according to an Associated Press investigation released early Thursday morning.

“Senior staffers in the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency over at least two days produced a 51-page historical report and geological assessment, plus a personalized satellite-imaged geological and oil and gas drilling map for the area around Brown’s family ranchland near the town of Williams,” the AP reported.

This is shocking (not), a democrat Governor uses State resources to do work on his personal property.

Brown’s office declined to comment, referring the AP instead to the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, which said that the agency had responded to the governor’s request for information as it would have for any other citizen.

Riiiiiight!

I would demand the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources provide proof of this being done for ANY OTHER PRIVATE citizen!

Everything Wrong With California in One Photo

From Steven Hayward at National Review:

Nationwide gasoline prices are below $3 a gallon. But here in California it is not unusual to see prices still over $4 a gallon. So what do liberal here want to do? Pass a law that mandates reducing gasoline consumption by 50 percent by the year 2030—just 15 years from now.
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Sponsors of the bill could not say how a 50% reduction in gasoline consumption would be accomplished. Higher prices? Rationing? Mandates that we all drive Teslas and Priuses? Even an economic illiterate could figure out that at the very least it would mean higher gasoline prices for people who cannot afford Teslas.

So Gov. Jerry Brown killed this part of the bill. But in typical Obama fashion, he says he will pursue the same goal with administrative regulations through the Air Resources Board.

The Primary Sponsor of the Bill was State Senator Kevin De'Leon, who represents some of the poorest people in the State. But he was encouraged by the likes of Tom Steyer, a multi-billioniare Green Warrior, who ironically got rich via coal.

Jerry Brown Flouted Gay Marriage Law. Why Not A Kentucky Clerk?

From The Daily Caller:

As is now well-known, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis stopped issuing marriage licenses after the Supreme Court ruled in June that states are required to recognize same-sex nuptials. But the fury aimed at Davis has been disproportionate to the actual facts of the situation, and shows galling – and revealing – inconsistency on the part of her critics.

In particular, where was the outcry when Attorney General and later Governor of California, Jerry Brown, refused to mount a defense of gay-marriage ban Proposition 8? Representing the state in court was at the center of his job. Yet he put his personal preferences – some influenced by his liberal version of Catholicism – ahead of the clear dictates of his state’s voters, who had been forced to use the initiative process when politicians failed them.

The Washington Post underscored this double standard today (surely by accident) in its editorial lambasting Davis’s stance.

“… an essential principle on which government depends. Soldiers must fight wars they may disapprove of. Lawyers who choose to work at the Justice Department must apply and defend laws they wish had not been enacted.”

I wonder if The Washington (Com)Post's Editorial Board had the same stand when Jerry Brown, ignored his elected duties?

If you make a fuss that clerks have to perform duties they abhor, you should certainly expect Justice Department officials to defend laws they oppose. Yet the Post never criticized Brown for his inaction on Proposition 8, and in fact repeatedly editorialized for the initiative to be struck down.

I'm sure no one is shocked by this revelation.

Obama to hit the water guzzling links in drought-stricken California

From Rick Moran at The American Thinker:

Palm Springs is one of those idyllic California communities that was created so that rich people would have a secluded place to play.  Restaurants, night clubs, tennis clubs are among the best in California, and it has some of the finest golf courses in the U.S. with some of the most beautiful layouts.

As long as there's enough water to keep them green.

Alas, such is not the case as a severe drought has struck California and Governor Jerry Brown has placed severe restrictions on water usage...for ordinary people. But Palm Springs is not "ordinary" in any way, hence water usage there is off the charts.

While the rest of the state is parched, President Obama will play golf this weekend on courses that are still mostly green.
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Of course, it's not like anything important is going on in the world for the president to take a little time off. The nation is reeling from a horrific racist shooting in South Carolina, but nothing must stand in the way of our president's determination to polish his short game.

It's always, all about him.