From 24-time losers, to free rein for looters, it’s time for the West Coast, Messed Coast™ update! Your humble correspondent has combed the West Coast, Messed Coast™ for the best tidbits, factoids, and full-blown reports to give you the best insight on what you can expect in your part of the world shortly. Every bad idea usually comes from here, so don’t say you weren’t warned. Let’s begin, shall we?
California schemin’
California’s supermajority Democrat legislature is a living, breathing cautionary tale for why full-time legislatures are such a bad idea. There’s no aspect of your life busy-body lawmakers don’t feel the need to refashion into another widget from the dumb idea factory.
Now they’ve taken on the issue of California shopping.
Thieves looting thousands of dollars worth of power tools from Home Depot in California 😳 pic.twitter.com/yaJLwDgbOM
— BAY AREA STATE OF MIND (@YayAreaNews) August 31, 2023
What you’re seeing here is what defunded police can’t call looting, lest someone call them racists. But California Democrats put the finishing touches on a bill to punish employers if their employees — even security guards — dare resist these shoppers.
Senate Bill 553 started as an idea to go after employers for failing to have escape plans for victims of workplace shooters and ended up a bill to punish employees for resisting looters.
The result will be more looting.
Instead of embroidering around the edges and making employers share blame for criminals committing crimes, these lawmakers might consider the words of Assemblyman James Gallagher: “Enough is enough…we have to make crime illegal again in California.”
California’s public school secret gender reveal party
This week at PJ Media I reported about two bills advancing out of the legislature that seek to cram transgender ideology down the throats of parents and children who believe in biology.
On the same day, the state Assembly declared August transgender history month, it moved forward a bill ordering judges to give custodial rights only to parents who affirm a kid’s wish to be a pirate, dinosaur, cat, or the opposite sex.
On the day that the state Assembly approved transgender month, they passed AB 957, a measure to direct judges to favor parents who “affirm” a child’s self-diagnosed gender confusion. This means that religious parents are screwed.
[…] The Pacific Justice Institute Center for Public Policy writes that if AB 957 is signed into law it would stand as a “nefarious attempt to leverage the natural love and affection that a parent has for his or her child in order to coerce a pledge of allegiance to government orthodoxy on transgenderism.”
For California Democrats, pledging “allegiance to government orthodoxy on transgenderism” is a feature, not a bug, of the two bills.
One of our astute commenters, Estefan, summed up the calamity.
California Dem Party, where evil is cultivated, celebrated, empowered, and sown like weeds among the unsuspecting populace. Almost certainly this bill will pass the state senate and be signed into law by progressive enthusiast Gov. Newsom. Once it’s law, a brutal wedge will be available to all school teachers, social workers, spouses, and ex-spouses (including transgender activists) to confuse and manipulate vulnerable children and, in particular, teenagers, many of whom are prone to rebel against their own parents as the adolescents work through puberty and other aspects of maturing.
Let’s hope the US Supreme Court determines this progressive cluster bomb to be an unconstitutional violation of our rights to privacy, and our First Amendment rights to free speech, of association, and to practice religion, and any other pertinent protections still remaining to Americans.
‘Make crime illegal again’
Washington’s Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson and their Democrat legislative majority have set the tone for some of the easiest-on-criminals laws in the country. For example, police can’t chase criminals leaving the scene of a felony.
This is such a dumb idea that Oregon appears to be slowly implementing it on an ad hoc basis. Washington County officials recently ordered a sheriff’s deputy to quit a chase of a criminal whose jacket consisted of 36 different mug shots, 17 convictions, and a recent three-year prison sentence. The deputy quit instead.
We understand that sometimes police chases end in crashes and even death. But these Democrat dumb ideas also have real-world consequences. They mean some innocent people must die to accommodate the Democrats’ luxury beliefs about criminals.
A 24-time felon who should have been in prison or, at the very least, jail was free and took time out of his felonious day to commit a murder in Spokane.
Arrest of 24-time felon for murder shows the consequences of 'Defund the Police' and lenient laws. It's beyond time to prioritize public safety and support law enforcement with the necessary resources. #waleg #RestorePublicSafetyhttps://t.co/IRcoMIcD0Z pic.twitter.com/5T9gBtS0Wx
— WA Senate Republicans (@WashingtonSRC) September 8, 2023
We understand the concept of qualified immunity, but that is meant to cover the unforeseen consequences of official action. These Democrats’ actions, however, have a foreseeable, real-world outcome: dead people. When officials make decisions that deprive others of their rights, or know will create more crime and a body count, they should be held personally liable for the disaster that follows.
Totally normal in Portland
As I reported in PJ Media about Portland’s doom loop recently, the city’s latest attempt to clean itself up will require millions more in tax dollars, according to Mayor Ted Wheeler. But as I argue in another piece nearby, it won’t take millions more spent to clean up Portland, as I explain over here.
Related: No, Portland, More Money Won’t Fix Your City, But Less Money Just Might
It seems like open-air drug dealing and “personal-use” drug possession aren’t working out so well — for everyone. The poor schmuck who owns the excellent burger place where these two drugged-out clowns pulled their antics is getting PR for all the wrong reasons. Get your eye bleach ready if you decide to watch this:
Guy on bike throws bike at naked guy downtown Portland pic.twitter.com/BIX2gjbmjv
— Wtfportland (@Wtfportland1) September 5, 2023
Great job, Mayor Defunder.
Oregon on full stop
Oregon voters passed unconstitutional Measure 114, requiring a permit to buy a gun, and banning the sale, manufacture, or transfer of magazines holding more than ten rounds of ammo. Though a court battle ensues, both the federal and state governments have decided that Oregonians should be deprived of their Second Amendment rights while the case is being adjudicated.
Oregon-based federal judge, Karin Immergut, the Fani Willis of the federal bench, ruled that the measure that requires a permit to engage in exercising a civil right is totally constitutional.
The Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF) has fought for gun rights on three fronts since the passage of this measure. The group has fought in federal where it lost; state court, where there’s a hearing on September 18; and now in the federal appeals court’s 9th Circuit, where all parties have been notified of an appeal by gun rights advocates.
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast™ – How’s That Police Defunding Working Out, Seattle? Asians Targeted by Gang With Tasers
Meanwhile, the FBI and Oregon’s Sheriff’s Organization have colluded to prevent the sale or transfer of any gun or conduct any background check in Oregon, thus depriving Oregonians of their Second Amendment rights.
OFF writes on its website that the intention to stop gun sales right now has been “made clear by one of our plaintiffs in the Federal trial [that] Measure 114 will completely end the legal sale of firearms in Oregon.” As OFF Director Kevin Starrett puts it, “We know it, the legislature knows it, and anyone who can read knows it. The only people who cannot understand it wear black robes and sit on the bench in Federal Court.”
“It’s not complicated,” Starrett writes. “As the [Sheriff’s] letter points out, Measure 114 requires a fingerprint background check by the FBI,” and “the FBI refuses to do them. Period, full stop.”
Send money to help Oregon battle these gun grabbers because you’re next.
Newsom watch
Who turned out the lights? Not Gavin Newsom — yet. The man waiting for Joe Biden to forget to take his brain cocktail so he can mumble coherently is trying to keep the lights on long enough so no one notices his calamitous energy policies.
Newsom has slowed his roll on his unachievable “green energy” plans to keep his “dirty” energy sources on long enough to fake out the electorate.
Here’s a current map of outages in California right now. Every day we have an outage somewhere because the infrastructure was never upgraded to accommodate the new population. pic.twitter.com/zTHprH2xYG
— Elle (@Elle0govnr) September 3, 2023
More insurance companies bug out of Gavin Newsom’s West Coast, Messed Coast™ Utopian Paradise. It’s due to the state’s inability to manage its forests and waters and choosing to watch their climate goddess Gaia take her land back in a fiery inferno. Of Course, that means houses, farms, livestock, and all manner of outbuildings get swept up, too. “Hello, Allstate? The house just went up in flames… Hello? Hello?”
Insurance companies are saying no mas, raising the costs of all types of insurance on millions of Californians.
So my car insurance tripled this last month so I called to find out why & was told that unfortunately there is a huge insurance crisis going on in CA right now and it’s only getting worse.
Every week, another insurance company either pulls out of CA or stops taking new clients.…
— thatstarwarsgirl (@thatstarwarsgrl) September 6, 2023
State Farm, Farmers, Safeco, AmGUARD, Liberty Mutual, and Falls Lake are not writing new homeowners policies or leaving the state. Allstate has stopped writing homeowners’ insurance policies as well.
It’s not just the fires causing havoc in the insurance industry, of course. The lawlessness allowed by state and local Democrats has driven Safeco to drop 950 policies in the Bay Area. Safeco’s parent company Liberty Mutual says it will stop offering business-owner policies in the fall.
Free speech is on a doom loop. The social media companies, at the behest of Democrats, have been preventing you from seeing our brand of opinion journalism for years now. They’re trying to starve us into compliance — or non-existence. PJ Media has been censored, disappeared, thrashed, and throttled by social media companies at the behest of political Leftists. It’s wrong and un-American. That’s where you come in. Are you sick of this yet?
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