West Coast, Messed Coast™ — 9th Circuit Judges Promise More Tent Cities for Everyone!

Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ ~~homeless~~ drug camp, where you can still smoke your rent and live in a tent without the cops bothering you for the foreseeable future. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has doubled down on that “fanciful” and “egregious” Boise decision made in 2018 that put the onus on cities to find beds for homeless, drug-addicted urban campers before they could give them “the bum’s rush.”

Whose streets? Our streets!

The court’s liberal wing voted not to rehear the case en banc and left standing a previous ruling denouncing Grants Pass, Oregon’s, recent ordinances to outlaw urban tent cities as unconstitutional. The city sought to have a larger panel of judges to hear its appeal. Leftists on the court said no way, and conservative judges on the court asked, in so many words, the crazy judges if they’d bothered to look out the window lately to see what they’d done.

Reagan appointee Diarmuid O’Scannlain issued a dissenting statement calling the original ruling “a dubious holding premised on a fanciful interpretation of the 8th Amendment,” which “now effectively guarantees a personal federal constitutional ‘right’ for individuals to camp or to sleep on sidewalks and in parks, playgrounds, and other public places in defiance of traditional health, safety, and welfare laws.” His statement was signed by 13 conservative justices.

For those playing the home game, the 8th Amendment says, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

But there’s potentially great news. The most reversed court in the land is likely to be reversed when this case gets to the U.S. Supreme Court. The bad news is that those worse-off cities could become Thunderdome before a ruling overturning this insanity is issued.

No Kids, That’s Not Candy They’re Throwing

The 9th Circuit judges obviously missed the problems in Burien, Wash., where that city was forced to reroute its 100th anniversary Independence Day parade due to the dangerous homeless encampment blocking the downtown route. But don’t worry, Gov. Jay Inslee is on the case. He’s hoping to cram homeless people into motel rooms. The homeless-industrial complex is scooping them up in its quest for the “housing first” response to drug-addicted fentanyl smokers.

Some, who like to have the “freedom” to soak in their “redneck hot tubs,” don’t want to be warehoused and told what to do.

REFUSING HOUSING: I also talked to several people living along Wheeler Ave in #Olympia who refuse to go into hotels. You gotta listen to the reasons. Like I have said all along, "housing first" is warehousing people and only works for certain folks.pic.twitter.com/NhFXfb0rDo

— Jonathan Choe Journalist (Seattle) (@choeshow) July 6, 2023

Liars, Liars Everywhere on the West Coast, Messed Coast™

My PJ Media colleague Robert Spencer wrote this week about the startling and welcome federal court injunction against the Biden administration at multiple agencies—looking at you, FBI G-man Elvis Chan—who worked to censor Americans during COVID and other issues on social media. The censors came for conservatives or contrarians on issues from COVID to Hunter Biden’s crack pipe and laptop and selling access to his father in exchange for big money for “the big guy.”

The judge named names and issued a particularly icy observation about three groups working with the Biden administration to silence dissent. The Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, and the Stanford Internet Observatory had been “collaborating, coordinating, partnering, [and] switchboarding” with the Biden administration “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech.” They were only too happy to comply. What’s the name for that again? Fascism?

Those of you familiar with the Twitter files and the COVID-censorship complex will recognize those names. The “Election Integrity Project” is fully ensconced at Seattle’s University of Washington and the West Coast, Messed Coast™ also spawned the other censorship supporters, the Virality Project and the Stanford Internet Observatory, both housed at Stanford. Take a bow, commies.

The Punchline Writes Itself

Say Cheese, Oregon!

Project Veritas and James O’Keefe have won a major ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down Oregon’s law on recording someone undercover without their knowledge. The decision said, in part, “We conclude that Oregon’s law is a content-based restriction that violates the First Amendment right to free speech and is therefore invalid on its face…”

For Our VIPS: Biden Democrats Treat Conservatives Like ‘Uncle Dave’

O’Keefe now heads the O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) and issued a victorious video about the ruling. O’Keefe has done work in Oregon, which prompted the legal action.

Oregon’s one-party, autocratic political class is ripe for this kind of undercover operation.

Say cheese!

MAJOR IMPACT – Oregon State Recording Law NO LONGER EXISTS thanks to James O’Keefe lawsuit.

Newsom Watch

Two major insurance underwriters have left the state of California under Gavin Newsom’s watch.

State Farm and Allstate are no longer writing new homeowners insurance policies. Allstate said in a press release that “The cost to insure new home customers in California is far higher than the price they would pay for policies due to wildfires, higher costs for repairing homes and higher reinsurance premiums.”

The Associated Press reported that State Farm would “stop accepting applications for all business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance, citing inflation, a challenging reinsurance market and “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

Newsom was on a PR swing through Idaho to visit his former constituents who have fled California and to shop at a bookstore that specializes in “banned books.” Read PJ Media’s Athena Thorne’s analysis on the big fat political cow paddy Newsom stepped in during his self-own star turn.

Education: When Newsom finally takes over the Democrat nomination after Joe Biden falls down and can’t get up, don’t forget this study on California’s deplorable education system that was failing kids even before the COVID pandemic.

Dan Walters reports that California students “were weak in educational attainment before COVID-19 struck and fell even further behind during the pandemic.”

Before the pandemic, 51% of students met standards in English language arts (ELA) and it had dropped to 47%. In mathematics, proficiency declined from 40% to 33%.

“Only 35% of low-income students met state standards in ELA and 21% were proficient in math,” PPIC reported, “compared to 65% of higher-income students in ELA and 51% in math.”

Furthermore, PPIC noted, the nationwide test of reading and math proficiency “shows that California has consistently lagged behind most other states … 38th in math and 33rd in reading.”

Antifa and the Homeless

If you listened to or watched my recent Adult in the Room Podcast on homelessness, you heard the story of how Antifa sets up tents to attract druggies to stay awhile in Seattle and Portland. If you want to know the rationale, watch the video below.

But as the Major League Baseball All-Star game is set for Emerald City, Antifa is hoping for another display of the Summer of Love.

And look at the impact Antifa and the other commies have had in the People’s Republic of Portland. Oregon Catalyst reports that Portlanders desperately want to move out due to the danger, homeless camps, bad management, and, yes, Antifa—but nobody will buy their homes.

How would you like to buy a house next door to a government-sponsored homeless tent city? Or buy a home that is steps away from a place burglarized 17 times?