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Texas vs. California Update for June 28, 2016

Tuesday, June 28th, 2016

Welcome to another Texas vs. California update!

  • “California’s skyrocketing housing costs, taxes prompt exodus of residents.” “During the 12 months ending June 30, the number of people leaving California for another state exceeded by 61,100 the number who moved here from elsewhere in the U.S.” Plus this: “The majority of the people we are seeing are moving to states that don’t have state income taxes.” And this “My husband’s salary would be in the six figures, but six figures is not enough to cover the rent, day care (and) food prices.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • The middle class can no longer afford to live in the Bay Area.
  • “Orange County’s public city employees earned $144,817 on average last year.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • In a completely unrelated story, lavish pension hikes have resulted in exploding levels of Orange County debt. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “City employees working full-time in Long Beach earned an average of $128,731 in total compensation last year.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “A survey of 45 cities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties shows the average full-time city worker received $127,730 in pay and benefits last year.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • On paper, Nevada County, California, is technically insolvent (which is the best kind of insolvent.) (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • As good as Texas is doing compared to California’s profligacy, the people at the Texas Public Policy Foundation think the budget is still growing way too fast.
  • “Jacobs Engineering Group, one of the world’s largest engineering companies, is preparing to move employees from its Pasadena [CA] headquarters to Dallas, becoming the latest major corporation to relocate significant operations from California to Texas.”
  • “A California-based orthopedic goods manufacturer and distributor has decided to move its Ohio-based distribution hub to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, which will give the company a place to significantly expand operations and possibly relocate its West Coast headquarters. The company, Santa Paula, California-based Hely & Weber, has signed a lease totaling nearly 40,000 square feet of space at 755 Regent Blvd. in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.”
  • Still more companies leaving California. Plus why the “Bernie Sanders effect” will result in a veto-proof majority for Democrats in the California legislature. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “Bankrupt San Bernardino, union fight over settlement payments.” Clip and save this headline, as you’ll be able to use it again and again over the coming years…
  • Marin County pension reformer launches GoFundMe campaign to sue the county over pension increases. Though his $198,000 request strikes me as excessively optimistic…
  • Texas scores three of the top five cities (Houston, Austin, San Antonio) for U-Haul destinations. (Hat tip: Ted Cruz on Facebook.)
  • California Democrats and Social Justice Warriors conspire to drive Christian colleges out of the state. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Once again, California leads the nation…in car thefts.
  • Which lead to this: “More than 71 percent of all recovered stolen cars in 2005 in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California were stolen by illegal aliens or by ‘transport coyotes,’ those who bring in illegals across the Mexican border.”
  • “Paul Tanaka, once one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in Los Angeles County, was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison for interfering with an FBI investigation into jail abuses by sheriff’s deputies.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Oakland police chief resigns because at least 14 Oakland police officers (and 10 other law enforcement officers had sex with the same underage girl. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • And the guy Oakland found to replace him? He lasted…five days.
  • Bay Area law enforcement agencies have lost 944 guns since 2010. Maybe that’s the “gun control” Democrats should be focusing on… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Californians face rolling blackouts this summer…some of which could last as much as 14 days.
  • Shuttered California hospital files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
  • You could count this Silicon Valley robot pizza technology startup as a win for California, but the subtext here as that many human California pizza workers will never work a day under that new $15 minimum wage…

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Leland Yee Prison Update

    Saturday, June 25th, 2016

    This is slightly oldish news. If you follow this blog, you know that former California Democratic State Senator Leland Yee was was sentenced to five years of prison after pleading guilty to one count of racketeering. However, until today I was not aware where he ended up doing his time, assuming he would be sent to one of the many federal prisons in California.

    Nope. Actually ended up at FCI Ft. Worth, a low-security prison (maybe that was part of his plea agreement).

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Texas | No Comments »

    This Week in Clinton Corruption for June 23, 2016

    Thursday, June 23rd, 2016

    This week’s roundup of Clinton Corruption is being headlined by Guccifer 2.0 revelations. The stuff released so far is interesting, but (and I say this as someone who thinks Hillary Clinton should be in prison) pretty weak sauce.

    Oh sure, it’s nice to have documented proof that the DNC and the media were out to support Clinton and to screw Bernie Sanders, but everyone already knew that.

    There are dozens of Clinton shoes (especially from Hillary’s own email server and the Clinton Foundation) still to drop…

  • Leaked Memo Teaches Clinton Staffers How To Break Campaign Finance Laws And Get Away With It. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Rush Limbaugh thinks that Donald Trump’s speech slamming Clinton’s corruption was effective. “She is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”
  • Here’s the text of that speech. Excerpt:

    Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft.

    She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.

    Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public.

    Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001.

    They totally own her, and that will never change.

  • Clinton’s incompetence caused the State Department to turn off email protection for State systems to accommodate her. Interestingly, the sentence “They were trying urgently to resolve an apparent conflict between the server’s built-in email delivery features with a version of “ScanMail for Exchange” security software from Trend Micro Inc. that had been installed on her server.” has been removed from the original AP story…
  • “Clinton IT specialist invokes 5th more than 125 times in deposition.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Judicial Watch Releases State Department Inspector General Investigation Records Related to Hillary Clinton Emails.” But I’m not seeing a “Download here” link… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 17, 2016

    Friday, June 17th, 2016

    Today is a quadruple witching hour for markets, so try not to freak out if there’s more than the usual market volatility today.

  • “Obama Is Bringing 100 Syrian Refugees Into U.S. Every Day.”
  • And Syrian refugees are blowing big holes in Sweden’s welfare budget. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The rich aren’t paying their “fair share,” they’re paying everyone’s share. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Swiss overwhelmingly turn down “guaranteed income,” the latest pie-in-the-sky socialist scheme to rob every Peter to pay every Paul.
  • David Horowitz believes that Donald Trump’s post-Orlando foreign policy speech is a game changer. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Not a game-changer: Continued vapid liberal cheer-leading for multiculturalism at all costs. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Orlando wasn’t about ‘gun violence’ or ‘homophobia.’ It was about Islam. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Yet another MSM journalist caught lying about guns.
  • “Why it’s called a ‘modern sporting rifle‘ and not an ‘assault weapon.'” (Hat tip: Instapundit, who notes “Remember, none of this is about saving lives. It’s about the cultural domination of the people in flyover country, by their coastal ‘betters’ who get a near-erotic thrill out of such domination, and who are reduced to blind rage whenever their efforts at domination fail.”)
  • Aside: Is the Washington Examiner paying Ashe Schow enough? She’s like some indefatigable writing machine…
  • The Corrosive Politics of the New York Times Editorial Board Led to the Orlando Shooting. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Right now the debate seems choked with people who don’t know, are proud of not knowing, and think you’re a redneck gun-nut asshole if you want them to know because they feel very strongly about this.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • No charges for officer Brad Miller. He’s the one who shot the “unarmed teen” who had driving his Jeep through a plate glass window and was in the process of vandalizing cars.
  • And here’s a police shooting where the use of lethal force was clearly justified.
  • JFK and LSD. Meh. It’s not that I think Kennedy wouldn’t have dropped acid given a chance, but Timothy Leary was basically a con man, and we already know that Nina Burleigh is irrational.
  • Wow, believe it or not, still another reason to never visit Oklahoma. “I’m going to need your driver’s license and all the money on your prepaid debit cards.”
  • “The prohibition of comments that are considered biased or hateful is an explicit denial of freedom of speech.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Australia’s women’s Olympic soccer team defeated by teenage boys.
  • Are shipping containers the future of farming?
  • Your auditor finds huge cost discrepancies in Houston ISD construction costs. Does HISD: A.) Call in an outside auditor, B.) Launch a criminal investigation or C.) Suspend the auditor who found the problems?
  • New UT President Greg Fenves is a vast improvement over Bill Powers merely by being mediocre.
  • Land’s End decides to commit suicide.
  • Father buys car for son to go to college. Son decides to smoke pot and hang with no-good friends instead. Father sells car.
  • You’re not authorized to know the dire secrets of the Amtrak snack car! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Affluent buyers snapping up Hill Country land and building mansions.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »

    Austin Police Blotter Roundup

    Thursday, June 16th, 2016

    More Dwight’s bailiwick than mine (and I think he’s covered two of these), but several stories of interest have popped up:

  • Suspected I-35 rock thrower arrested. “The Austin Police Department has made an arrest in the rock assailant case. Patrick Eugene Johnson a former tow trucker of Austin was arrested on Thursday by APD. Johnson has been charged with Attempted Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Third Degree Felony. He is currently being held in the Travis County Jail. Bond is set at $250,000.”
  • Austin woman killed in dog attack. Seems like she entered their yard on a business matter. Address is 12316 Fay Street, which is only a couple of blocks off East Parmer, but it looks pretty rural on Google Maps. It’s considerably different than a woman in Dallas being killed by a pack of wild dogs
  • Austin closes their DNA lab due to concerns about being able to meet new regulatory standards.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime | No Comments »

    This Week in Hillary Clinton Corruption

    Wednesday, June 15th, 2016

    Looks like I’m going to have enough news to make this a regular weekly posting…

  • “Saudi Arabia Has Funded 20% Of Hillary’s Presidential Campaign, Saudi Crown Prince Claims.” That, of course, is an addition to the already generous funds the Saudis sent to the Clinton Foundation. And naturally the report was taken down and Hillary’s mouthpieces at the Poedesta groups were frantically trying to convince people that “there’s nothing to see here.”
  • “I happen to believe when it comes to American industries or foreign oligarchs sending large checks to politicians they’re not going it out of the kindness of their hearts. They want favors and in the case of the Clintons, we’re talking about massive amounts of money and we’re talking about favorable action in return.”
  • Julian Assange says Wikileaks will publish enough dirt on Hillary Clinton to indict her.
  • Did Clinton’s state department block an investigation into the Orlando gay nightclub shooter’s mosque?
  • Democrats have “chosen the corrupt, opaque, power hungry, self-serving, aloof, greedy, politically soulless, congenital liar they so richly deserve.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • EmailGate: “This appears to be a clear violation of federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals.”
  • What qualifications did Rajiv K. Fernando have to sit on the International Security Advisory Board? Simple: He gave the Clinton Foundation money.
  • How that unflattering picture of Secretary of State Gambino checking her Blackberry was the beginning of the end for Hillary.
  • State Department admits it’s missing all emails from Clinton toady Bryan Pagliano.
  • A quick primer on Clinton scandals. The miss several (where’s Sandy Berger stuffing classified information into his pants?) and soft-peddle others.
  • How Hillary’s tools shut out Bernie Sanders supporters in California: by explicitly denying them Democratic Party ballots.
  • Hillary enters incubation period. “As soon as we informed Hillary that she had reached the number of delegates necessary to secure the Democratic nomination, she thanked the staff and then promptly began secreting a thick, resinous substance from her oral gland and fashioning it into a protective casing around herself.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Never mind weekly. There’s probably enough dirt coming out on Hillary that I could make this a daily roundup, if I only had the time…

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

    Lawsuit Filed to Remove Jana Duty

    Tuesday, June 14th, 2016

    Via Dwight comes news that things are moving swiftly on removing Williamson County DA Jana Duty from office:

    Two Williamson County residents sued District Attorney Jana Duty on Monday, seeking to force her out of office.

    The Texas Constitution, according to the lawsuit, provides that county officials may be removed for incompetency and official misconduct.

    “Duty’s serial violations of court orders and the laws of the State of Texas, her history and pattern of dishonesty and untrustworthiness, and her dereliction and abandonment of her responsibilities of the office of the District Attorney have compromised the integrity and the effectiveness of the office of the District Attorney and the Williamson County criminal justice system,” the lawsuit said.

    The two Williamson County residents in question are Elizabeth Latham Schleder and Thomas Joseph Madden.

    The lawsuit itself offers an extensive list of Duty’s legal transgressions. Rather than listing all six pages from the PDF, here’s the Statesman summary:

    The lawsuit filed Monday says Duty broke the law when she made untrue statements to defense lawyers that time stamps were not available showing the sequence of events on a video in the Crispin Harmel capital murder case.

    “The District Court found the Duty’s representations regarding the video were untrue and that Duty knew they were untrue when she made the representations,” the lawsuit said.

    It accuses Duty of official oppression, aggravated perjury and tampering with physical evidence by not telling the truth about the time stamps.

    The lawsuit says Duty’s other acts of incompetence and official misconduct include being found guilty of contempt of court on Aug. 10, 2015, and being sentenced to 10 days in jail.

    Duty also broke a gag order in the Harmel case by speaking to a television station and a Georgetown newspaper, and then lied on May 29, 2015, saying she had not spoken to them, the lawsuit said.

    It said Duty has also abandoned her responsibilities as district attorney since she lost her re- election in November 2015 but continues to collect her $152,000 per year salary, the lawsuit said.

    “On information and belief, since November 2015, Duty has been unavailable and inaccessible to law enforcement, judges, court staff, county officials, and District Attorney office staff,” the lawsuit said.

    The only thing I don’t understand is the November 2015 date, since Duty lost to Shawn Dick in the Republican primary in March of this year.

    As for Duty neglecting her duties, her sister admitted there are days when she doesn’t go into the office. Certainly there are jobs where you can do most or all of your work remotely, but I don’t think that District Attorney is one of them.

    Regarding the other charges against Duty, I suspect that this particular case may be the straw that broke the camel’s back for some of those calling for her removal:

    On or about May 23, 2016, the State Bar of Texas suspended Mark Brunner – First Assistant to District Attorney Duty – from the practice of law (suspension probated for one year subject to compliance with the terms of probation) for professional misconduct, to-wit: untruthful communications to the District Court in his capacity as First Assistant District Attorney for Williamson County, Texas in conjunction with the prosecution of State of Texas v. Jessee Celedon Gamboa for aggravated robbery of the Schwertner State Bank in October 2013. Specifically, the State Bar found that Brunner lied to Williamson County District Judge Donna King in February 2015 about having contacted the victims in the State of Texas v. Gamboa aggravated robbery prosecution and having secured the victims’ approval of the plea bargain agreement between the District Attorney’s office and Gamboa’s criminal defense attorney when the victims in this case had not, in fact, approved the plea bargain and Brunner had not, in fact, contacted the victims or obtained their approval of the plea bargain.

    Yeah, when your DA lies about having obtained your consent to a plea bargain with the thug who robbed your bank, I can see someone taking that personally.

    Here’s a piece on the arrest of the Schwertner State Bank robber. And still more here. Though several news stories mention Gamboa as possibly being the “ZZ Top Bandit,” prison records show that he’s only serving time for the Schwertner heist.

    Duty supporters have said that all this is a big waste of time and that Duty will be out of office before the case ever comes to trial. However, I’m guessing that Duty is so unpopular around the Williamson County courthouse that they’ll manage to get the case fast-tracked…

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | No Comments »

    More Orlando Gay Shooter Info

    Monday, June 13th, 2016

    More information about radical Muslim Omar Mateen’s gay nightclub murder spree continues to trickle out.

  • Mateen was quite religious and regularly attended Mosque.
  • “Gilroy, a former Fort Pierce police officer, said Mateen frequently made homophobic and racial comments. Gilroy said he complained to his employer several times but it did nothing because he was Muslim.”
  • Zero Hedge has some background on Mateen and his employer:

    Omar Mateen – who as we reported earlier was licensed as a security guard and also holds a firearms license – was employed by the US subsidiary of G4S plc, a British multinational security services company, whose US-headquarters are located in Jupiter, Fla, and which also happens to be the world’s largest security company by revenue….

    But where it gets more disturbing is that as Judicial Watch reported several days ago, in a post titled, “DHS Quietly Moving, Releasing Vanloads Of Illegal Aliens Away From Border”, border patrol sources said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents. As a reminder, the government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.

    And this is where the Mateen-G4S link emerges: as JW reported previously, a security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is the abovementioned G4S, the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida.

  • Islamic State radio calls Mateen ‘a soldier of the caliphate.’
  • Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, hosted a “shoestring” talk show in which he regularly unleashed anti-U.S. tirades and once praised the Taliban.
  • The timeline of the shooting shows, at the very least, massive misjudgment on the part of the police. The shooting started at 2:02 AM, but police don’t call in the SWAT team until 3 AM? And it’s another two hours before they storm the club? And all this after the shooter had called 911 to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State?
  • Reddit’s main news group evidently decided to censor mentions of the shooting once it became known that the shooter was a radical Muslim. They even censored posts providing information on blood donations.
  • Schindler’s pissed:

    For years, too many Americans – including the lion’s share of our elite media and most of our politicians — have been content to deny the obvious, namely that quite a few Muslims espouse beliefs that are deeply at odds with what the vast majority of Americans believe. Some of those Muslims openly advocate violence and, if they are otherwise maladjusted, the odds they may murder in the name of Islam increase commensurately. We need to have a robust national debate on this important issue. Donald Trump has opened the door to that discussion, in his customary brusque, ham-handed way. More tact is required, but we cannot put off talking about radical Islam and jihadism any longer.

    After the Bataclan massacre last autumn, the French government in effect went to war with radical Islam, pledging a “merciless” response to terrorism. This wasn’t just talk. Mass arrests of suspected radicals followed, dealing a serious blow to ISIS networks in the country. Paris meant business, finally.

    In the aftermath of our own Bataclan, President Obama has offered his usual platitudes about “hate” and “guns.” This is escapism-as-counterterrorism-policy. Americans must demand better, including a reality-based assessment of our terrorism threat, from our next commander-in-chief. If we cannot name our enemy, we are already halfway to losing the war.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Milo Yiannopoulos weighs in: “The Christian Right may not be totally down with homos, and Trump may say things that hurt our delicate feelings, but they aren’t going to kill us or put us in camps. Only Islam would do that — the same Islam that, bizarrely, now stands at the top of the left’s hierarchy of victimhood.”
  • More quotes from the Koran and various hadiths condemning homosexuality and sodomy.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Jihad, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »

    “Orlando Nightclub Shooter Called 911 to Pledge Allegiance to ISIS”

    Sunday, June 12th, 2016

    Breaking news:

    The gunman who opened fire at a gay Florida nightclub early Sunday, shooting over 100 people, had called 911 moments before to pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, law enforcement sources told NBC News.

    But as investigators try to determine if extremism motivated Omar Mateen, 29, to attack the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, his family believes he was pushed over the edge by pure hate against the LGBT community.

    Various law enforcement officials have identified the shooter as Mateen, who was born in New York and lived in Port St. Lucie on Florida’s eastern shores.

    The attack, which claimed at least 50 lives, is considered the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. While authorities are still investigating what motivated the gunman, the shooting is being considered an act of terrorism.

    Some “JV Team”…

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    Posted in Crime, Jihad | No Comments »

    “Gays Must Die Says Speaker At Orlando Mosque”

    Sunday, June 12th, 2016

    Well, this video from April would seem to be newly relevant in light of Omar Mateen’s mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, wouldn’t it?

    (Hat tip: Ioawahawk’s Twitter feed.)

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    Posted in Crime, Jihad, video | No Comments »

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