I said this was one of those days where some of my posts become additional chapters in on-going sagas…or fantasies.
This looks like it’s going to be another in ‘What California Elected Officials Will Do to Get Out of the Responsibility for Actually Governing.’
Granted, that’s a working title – I’m going to have to knock it down to something pithier and more manageable – with a Beege-ish twist, of course.
But this works for now.
To recap, yesterday’s episode of officials behaving badly had to do with San Francisco’s loathsome, verminous state senator Scott Wiener. The flaming degenerate had proposed that the state, instead of turning lose of its risible $50M Trump-proofing fund or exercising due diligence in handling any monies coming from Washington for fire relief, sue the beejeebus out of oil companies for indirectly causing the Los Angeles fires by causing climate change. Not only the state should pursue claims, says Wiener’s legislation, but insurance companies should also be able to sue, say, Exxon-Mobil for covered claims in natural disasters that don’t have to do with a house shaking off a cliff…although I have faith they’ll tie that in somehow eventually.
There is nothing climate change isn’t responsible for, you know.
…CA lawmakers are jumping on their old reliable whipping boy – mean old oil companies – like flies on three-day-old roadkill.
This should work out great. Rather than do anything substantive to fix the state or help those already in dire circumstances because CA legislators suck so bad they blow, that sterling representative of San Francisco values, State Senator Scott Wiener, is co-sponsoring legislation this very day to soak the oil companies yet again.
Although I sure hope Wiener didn’t read his own San Francisco Chronicle today, because their op-ed could come back to bite his big plans in the tuchus. They are adamant they know who the villain is…are…whatever.
There’s one key villain in the L.A. wildfires. Any student of history knows who it is
The loss of property in the Los Angeles fires — put to one side, just for now, the tragic loss of life — is yet another natural tragedy for Californians. For those few property owners who will survive with resources enough to rebuild, the years ahead will be a hellscape beyond the those we’ve seen in the images of the burned areas in Pacific Palisades and the areas of the other fires.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken one minuscule step to alleviate the distress of those whose properties have been lost or damaged. As the New York Times recently observed, California’s environmental review and land-use laws are the most sclerotic in the country. Those reviews, and the years of lawsuits they invariably entail, and the endless permits that must be obtained, all requiring the payment of exorbitant fees, would mean most properties will never be rebuilt.
Add to that the hell that owners of property in the “coastal zone” would face. The California Coastal Commission is notoriously disdainful of private property rights, notwithstanding they are enshrined in the state’s Constitution, as well as the United States Constitution. In the past three decades, the state’s Coastal Commission has pushed an agenda of “planned retreat,” which is its euphemism for requiring people in the coastal zone to move inland. Anywhere inland.
…There is global warming. Rising seas are a result, as are extraordinary weather and fire events. And if there are anthropogenic causes of global warming — and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that there are — there is one clear villain in it all.
WAIT, WHUT, MAYDAY!
This is a circular firing squad of epic beauty.
Because the state encouraged the oil companies, the state ruined the climate.
God, I love that place. It never quits the crazy…also as I noted yesterday.
In an update to the grinning gargoyle mayor’s promises of being able to get to your house, get that place cleaned out, start rebuilding…and another day, another delay.
‘BUT THE PRESIDENT SAID!’
Doesn’t cut it with the gate guards. Get in line, son.
Karen Bass and whoever is spinning the @MayorOfLA posts as fast and you can, people can’t get to their houses in the Palisades. We are sick of your total incompetence.
Just hand the keys over to @RickCarusoLA.
Also, @realDonaldTrump @POTUS, perhaps you can send someone to… https://t.co/H9BN3JVyDO— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) January 28, 2025
How ’bout them apples?
Sure hope the folks in Sacramento are over the hump as far as stupid stuff and finally realizing they have a crisis on their han…nope.
This is what the California Secretary of State is busy with at the moment.
Pressing issues.
So, Californians want to own the problems that the Democratic Party has deliberately caused for them without any help from U.S. taxpayers? Okay. pic.twitter.com/Kelw6j3TyP
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) January 28, 2025
She can’t be bothered helping you with your piddly burned-out beach house.
She’s looking at the big picture, and she is thinking really big.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber has approved a campaign to gather signatures petitioning for a vote on whether the Golden State should leave the U.S. and become an independent country.
Newsweek contacted Marcus Evans, who is running the campaign, and the White House for comment via email on Saturday outside regular office hours.
California is by some margin the wealthiest and most populous state in the union. According to the International Monetary Fund’s 2023 World Economic Outlook, California had the fifth largest economy in the world, placing it behind Japan and ahead of India and the United Kingdom.
Calexit, a group that campaigns for Californian independence, described Trump’s presidential election win in November as “an attack on everything California cares about” and argued that it strengthened the state’s case for secession. In 2024, the Texas Republican Party included in its policy platform a call for a referendum on the state becoming “an independent nation.”
Including Texas in the article is sort of a red herring for one reason: Texas could survive on its own if it ever left.
Good luck, California. For all their wealth and the ‘5th biggest economy,’ they are bleeding the people who make the wealth and destroying the middle-class workers who do the labor on all levels to keep that economy rolling. They’re chasing every industry out of the state that could sustain them if they became the Bear Republic again.
Think about it – they used to pump, refine, and sell all their own oil products and generated enough electricity through their nuclear plants to sell to other states – now they import it. They’ve throttled their agriculture with water restrictions and environmental rules. California is crushing businesses and residents alike with taxes, regulations, and fees that discourage growth now while giving away the farm free to every victim group that shows up at the statehouse with a foreign accent and a sob story.
That it would be a challenge is probably an understatement.
For a state that has independence pretensions, they do seem awfully fixated on what the federal government can provide right now.
The worst part of this demented charade?
It’s all TDS-driven and comes with a – you knew it had to be – CA deficit-spending $10M price tag if they get enough signatures and a cool $2M a year budget.
…The proposal would create a commission to “report on California’s viability as independent country.” It would also provide $10 million as a one-off payment for the commission and election and an additional $2 million from state coffers to run the commission each year.
…Calexit wrote on its website on November 6: “Californians did not put their full faith and trust behind the Calexit option in 2016. Now it is 2024, and Trump is back, and he will come with even more tools and skill and supporters than last time. Do we need to wait until 2028 to realize that this is the trajectory of the country we share borders with.“
HOLY SMOKING DOPE
I say let ’em go at this point.
Or would that be cruel and…well…they’re already unusual, but I guess maybe we have some moral duty to watch after the deranged among us?
Nah.
Let ’em go.
Where do I sign?
