Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report where California Gavin Newsom finally finds a wall he can get behind, Seattle firefighters discover the "cost of doing business," Portland finally finds an arrestee whose mug shot it will circulate, and Julia Roberts is getting out of town.
Pod people
First, however, let's find out about one of the most popular Halloween costumes dedicated to the leader of the People's Republic of California and saluting the mass exodus of its people to America.
Happy Halloween from the PODS team! Meet our smallest PODS enthusiast rocking the cutest container costume ever! 👻🎃 📸: Lindsay O.#HappyHalloween #TrickOrTreat #PODSContainer #PODS pic.twitter.com/ewghC7N7Br
— PODS Moving & Storage (@PODS) October 31, 2023
This photo also appeared on a Facebook page devoted to people who have escaped California and its woke theology, high taxes, and lack of liberty and a place where people ask the question, "If electric vehicles are so cool, so cheap, and so helpful, then why do they have to force us to drive one?"
Walls are for other people
Since our last West Coast, Messed Coast™ update, California governor Gavin Newsom has spent considerable time attempting to burnish his foreign policy creds in his shadow campaign for president.
He drove an electric truck/station wagon at the Chinese company making vehicles in Lancaster. He knocked over a kid while driving to the basket in a game of basketball. And he visited the Great Wall of China where he was lampooned back home over his inattention to his job as governor.
— dO YoU EvEn WaTch ThE ShOw (parody) (@TanmanIsHere) October 26, 2023
Maybe Newsom was looking for some of the COVID-19 emergency unemployment money he gave away to crooks in the "largest fraud scheme ever perpetrated on the taxpayers in the history of the United States."
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast™: UC Berkeley's Extra Credit for Nazis!
Cost of doing business
The left's way of fixing problems of their own creation is by requiring people of goodwill to change their lives to accommodate them. For example, in Washington, D.C., they refuse to chase stolen cars or put car thieves in jail, but they're quite happy to provide people living near the Capitol Building and other high-crime areas with tracking devices to put on their cars. This prevents nothing, of course, but it allows victims to know where their cars are even though cops can't do anything about it.
Another example is the Biden Administration refusing to secure the southern border and jail drug dealers but attempting to look like it's doing something by requiring schools to provide scores of cans of Narcan to arrest cases of fentanyl overdoses — the only arresting going on in this scenario.
And on the West Coast, Messed Coast™ city of Seattle, firefighters have been told that items stolen out of their trucks while they're on a call or at the store getting food for the firehouse is just "the cost of doing business."
A Seattle Fire Department (SFD) crew was inside a local Fred Meyer when a security guard rushed to warn them about people rummaging through their fire truck in the parking lot.
The firefighters noted the guard was "shaking" as he told them he had just been chased by a group of men after yelling at them in an attempt to interrupt the theft.
In another fire department theft report obtained by KOMO News, a fire official remarked on the alarming trend of thieves stealing from fire engines and fire stations in Seattle.
"It is an unfortunate state that is apparently now the cost of doing business in this part of the city,” the report states.
While the first responders were getting food for the firehouse chowhounds, thieves stole "a generator, two chainsaws, and two circular saws." But that's nothing compared to what happens at the training center, where fire officials report that thieves have stolen cars, gas, wood, and other equipment, including the jaws of life.
One fire official said, "They are stealing from our ability to help people."
Does the city sweep homeless encampments where these thieves come from and put them in jail? Of course not.
Welcome to the Terror Dome
Homelessness, lawlessness, woke theology, defunding cops, and other issues eating at the entire West Coast, Messed Coast™ and other cities in America are chronicled in the new book, "What's Killing America" by Jason Rantz.
Rantz is a Seattle radio talk host and is regularly seen on Fox News. Your humble West Coast, Messed Coast™ correspondent fills in for him sometimes on KTTH in Seattle. The two of us talked about his book and solutions for some of these problems on the Adult in the Room Podcast.
Related: Democrat Bagman and Crypto King Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty of Fraud
A homeless realist is arrested
Kevin Dahlgren gets out on the streets of both Portland and Seattle and talks to and helps people living on the streets, in tunnels, in parks, and in caves. He has been known to call BS on the superstructure that government and NGOs have built around the homeless issues which he openly calls the Homeless Industrial Complex.
The West Coast, Messed Coast™ report features his work on the streets, and my Adult in the Room Podcast finds him a most credible source on these issues.
But Dahlgren has been arrested and charged, with his mug shot mysteriously circulated (Multnomah County changed its mugshot policies to protect Antifa and BLM) for a variety of crimes against the City of Gresham where he was a consultant. And it looks like a complete political hit job.
Full Kevin Dahlgren indictment. The more I look into this, the more it looks like a political hit job. One of the alleged victims is the woman KATU reported Kevin was delivering food boxes to. Most of the other people I can’t find any trace of them, even though they have unusual… pic.twitter.com/7GU8D4plPY
— PDX Real (@PDXReal1) November 1, 2023
The Multnomah County DA's office got a grand jury to believe that Dahlgren "stole" from the city of Gresham where he was a "homeless services specialist" in 2020 and 2021. He's also charged with identity theft and official misconduct.
I don't know the story about these specific charges except what I read in the above indictment, but let's say that if one wanted to help homeless people one would need resources from the office. And to help homeless people one might need their information to sign them up for government programs. All I see are the bare allegations without the story behind them.
Multnomah County wouldn't even go after the guys selling fake IDs out of the old Su Casa parking lot to all the illegal aliens being let into the country so this prosecution seems a bit ... interesting.
One Deschutes County official where Dahlgren did a homeless count complained he hadn't found enough homeless people. That gives you an idea of the politics surrounding this. There's a lot of money involved.
Your West Coast, Messed Coast™ correspondent will be watching.
Et tu, Julia Roberts?
The decay of doom loopian proportions continues apace in San Francisco where even actress Julia Roberts wants to get the hell out of town. Roberts had to take half a million dollars less for her 1912, five-story, 6,315 square-foot Presidio Heights home with stunning Golden Gate Bridge views.
She listed her house on October 8 for $11.8 million, and sold it for $11.3 in fewer than 30 days, according to SF Gate. She bought it in 2020.
That didn't take long.
A class action lawsuit has already been filed against deep-pockets Alaska Airlines for the incident in which an off-duty pilot getting a free ride in the cockpit tried to crash the plane. He later admitted he was high on magic mushrooms when he tried to kill the pilots and 83 passengers.
Passengers boarded the plane in Everett, Wash. for a flight to San Francisco. The Seattle law firm filing on behalf of three of the passengers argues that Alaska Airlines should have known Joseph Emerson was suffering from mental problems.
Courtroom watch
The federal trial of David DePape, who attacked former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband in their Pacific Heights home, is nearing. A status hearing was held in late October where it was discussed that both Paul Pelosi and DePape may be required to testify.
Until the next West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, escape while you can, or vote better.
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