Is a Desalination Plant “Systemic Racism”?

“California American Water withdrew its application to the California Coastal Commission for a permit to construct a desalination plant in the Monterey Bay,” reported Josh Copitch of KSBW, so the Commission canceled its September 17 meeting. Opponents of the desalination plant hailed the Commission’s new policy on “environmental justice” for nixing the project.

Marina city planning commission member Kathy Biala told KSBW “disadvantaged communities, communities of color in specific, are often victimized by larger organizations that often build environmentally damaging projects in those areas.” Marina mayor Bruce Delgado said his city would have received no water from the project but been saddled by “all the adverse impacts.” Delgado claimed 66 percent of his constituents are “non-white,” and “it doesn’t get any more textbook perfect of an example to exemplify what systemic racism looks like.” To say the least, that charge is highly dubious, unlike the water needs on the Monterey Peninsula.

“For over a century, the Monterey Peninsula relied on the Carmel River as its primary source of water,” former California real estate commissioner Jeff Davi wrote in January. “But the State Water Board has issued orders that will preclude most of that use in the future.” Last September, the California Public Utilities Commission “unanimously granted approval” for the desalination plant and found no significant environmental impacts.

In September of 2019, Coastal Commission staff recommended denial of the permit. Foes then doubled down on the “environmental justice” angle, and now the plant is off the table. So are $260 million in new economic output for the region and some 1,800 jobs, and as Davi told KSBW, “There’s a lot of things that would benefit from the peninsula having a normal amount of water.” Housing would surely be one of them, and the state is currently experiencing a housing crisis.

The real back story here is the California Coastal Commission, an unelected body that overrides scores of elected governments on land-use issues. For decades, the Commission has run roughshod over property rights and its regulatory zealotry now blocks improvement of the water supply. Monterey Peninsula residents have a case that the Coastal Commission, not a desalination plant, is the true injustice inherent in the system.

SOURCE

Why 2020 is so important

What happened this year in Virginia should scare every conservative into voting November 3

Scot Faulkner

Anyone still doubting what will happen if the Democrats take the White House and the Senate this November needs to look at what happened this year in Virginia.

In November 2019, Democrats won the governorship and control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1993. While they had a 10-seat majority in the House of Delegates, their margin in the State Senate was a razor-thin two seats.

As 2020 dawned, the newly sworn-in Democrats moved with lightning speed on a broad legislative front. It was a relentless Leftist Juggernaut.

During the 60-day legislative session, Democrats passed 1,900 bills. The governor signed every one of them into law. Nearly every Leftist dream came true.

First they eviscerated gun rights. The gun control bills were so groundbreaking that Governor Ralph Northam held a special signing ceremony. The bills expanded background checks to include private sales, created severe penalties for leaving firearms near children, including inside a private home, and limited handgun sales to one a month. They also created laws that will let anyone “red flag” others as being a “threat” to public safety and having their guns confiscated.

More importantly, as Virginia is a “commonwealth,” other new laws empowered local governments to regulate the possession, carrying, storage or transport of firearms, ammunition, components or any combination of those things, and to ban guns in public spaces, including public buildings, parks and recreation centers, and during permitted events.

Local governments are even authorized to establish stricter gun control laws than exist at the federal and state level.

The Democrats and Northam ignored the reality that gun-free zones ensure that only law-ignoring criminals will be armed in public places – giving killers time to maim and murder numerous law-abiding, innocent parents and children before police arrive. The Democrats did nothing to increase penalties for using guns in committing crimes.

A second wave assailed Virginia history and culture. Lee-Jackson Day was eliminated as a state holiday. All protections for Confederate monuments ended, even for soldiers who died during the Civil War.

Then came social legislation. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was ratified decades after its ratification deadline, providing the 38th state needed for final adoption, though court challenges may thwart attempts to force the ERA into the Constitution.

The “Virginia Values Act” added sexual orientation and gender identity to all Virginia anti-discrimination laws. It grants the attorney general the power to take action against anyone “engaged in a pattern or practice of resistance” to rights guaranteed by the new laws.

Abortion rights were dramatically expanded. New laws rolled back existing provisions, eliminated the 24-hour waiting period before an abortion, ended a requirement that women seeking an abortion undergo counseling and an ultrasound, eliminated the requirement that abortions be provided by a physician, allowing nurse practitioners to perform them, and abolished building code requirements on facilities where abortions are performed.

Virginia’s felony larceny threshold was raised from $500 to $1,000. Sponsors stated this will lead to fewer Virginians with felony convictions on their records.

Possession of marijuana was decriminalized and replaced with a $25 civil penalty.

The minimum wage went to $9.50 per hour. This will increase to $11 in 2022, $12 in 2023 and by another $1.50 in 2025 and 2026. The increases will likely cost thousands of jobs.

Virginia also increased its gasoline tax 5 cents a year for two consecutive years, while electric cars will continue getting subsidies, free use of highways and free access to HOV lanes.

The Democrats also established a new tax on plastic bags – just before businesses of every description began requiring them to prevent the spread of COVID from reusable bags.

They also imposed the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which will cover seascapes with hundreds of 850-foot-tall wind turbines and landscapes with hundreds of square miles of solar panels, backed up by thousands of half-ton batteries – all built with raw materials from China.

Finally, they changed the rules for voting. Virginians no longer need to show a photo ID to vote, and no longer need to provide a reason for wanting an absentee ballot.

Virginia also became part of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, awarding the state’s electoral votes to the national winner of the presidential popular vote, instead of the state’s own popular vote.

Democrats have an even longer wish list at the national level: a “Green New Deal” that would replace all fossil fuels with wind, solar, biofuel and battery power; higher taxes; higher minimum wages; national gun control measures; and more.

They are invoking racism and advancing the “1619 Project,” which asserts “America is a slave nation,” to promote reparations and other laws that will eliminate America as we know it. The Left wants to erase freedom of speech in favor of “woke” sensibilities and political correctness and, of course, erase the right to bear arms and protect ourselves and our families from rampant, growing violence.

The biggest national movement of all is ending “systemic, institutional racism” and “white privilege.” But they also want to eliminate the Electoral College, make U.S. Senate seats based on population, grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and pack the Supreme Court.

Every one of these “reforms” is designed to solidify the Left’s power forever.

The only thing standing in the way of Democrats recreating the Virginia Juggernaut at the national level is the U.S. Senate’s filibuster. That’s why they are already crusading to end the filibuster. Even though it has been integral to the Senate since its founding, it is being portrayed as a recent racist manifestation.

The filibuster is the only protection for minority rights in Congress. Up to now, both parties have embraced it, as they know one day they may be out of power and need it.

The Left is banking on the November election giving them eternal power.

What happened in Virginia gives them profound hope that they will succeed. It should also scare every American who believes in this country to vote this year to defend our proud history, traditions, promises and opportunities.

Via email

‘Further evidence’ Tony Abbott influencing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on asylum seeker plan

Britain has looked to house asylum seekers on volcanic outcrop island refugee centres 6500km away from their shores, in what some officials have blamed on Australia’s unwanted influence on its former mother country.

Home Office officials were asked to explore building asylum processing centres in the South Atlantic on Ascension Island and St Helena, to discourage the annual 34,000 migrants registering for asylum on the UK.

According to Whitehall, the idea of using remote islands, that sit between the coast of Africa and Brazil, was based on Australia’s boat stopping program using Nauru and Papua New Guinea centres to discourage arrivals.

No decision has been made but the request by the British Home Secretary Priti Patel for her department to scope the option has been cited as “further evidence” of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s influence on British PM Boris Johnson.

Mr Abbott was recently appointed as trade adviser to the Johnson government and met with Ms Patel recently although her departmental scoping began prior to the meeting.

Mr Abbott’s unpaid appointment as a trade envoy earlier this month has already attracted criticism from both sides of UK politics, with the outspoken former Australian politician branded an unwanted “agent of foreign influence” by the British press. This is despite his expertise in negotiating tricky trade circles in the Asia Pacific, something Mr Johnson has said was desperately needed by his government in a post-Brexit world.

Mr Abbott’s strong stance on immigration are well known both in Australia and in Britain where he made headlines as prime minister 2013-2015 as are his connections in the conservative politics in both the UK and the US.

Britons are now reacting with fury at the “illegal migrant” centres being proposed and again blaming Australia for instilling the idea.

There were no such protests when the British government cited Australia’s successful Medicare as a model being considered for its ailing NHS public healthcare system.

The British press has confirmed Whitehall had been looking at the option at the directing of Ms Patel but she now appeared to be going cold on the idea.

This was in part due to scoping by the Foreign Office unable to mirror the Royal Australian Navy’s ability to assist in re-directing ships, mainly because the British islands were so far away from the UK.

SOURCE

UK: Why won’t the opposition oppose this Covid authoritarianism?

MPs, judges and much of civil society are as committed to curtailing our freedoms as the government is, if not more so.

The lockdown has destroyed our freedoms, decimated the economy and done extraordinary damage to the public’s health. It represents the single greatest policy failure of the millennium so far. And today the government wheeled out its scientists – equipped with the Covid version of the dodgy dossier – to prepare the ground to do it all over again. The first question that springs to mind is: where is the opposition to this madness going to come from?

Certainly not from the official opposition, that’s for sure. At the weekend, on The Andrew Marr Show, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said something rather astonishing: ‘Whatever measure the government takes, we will support it.’ You heard that right. Whatever measure the government takes. Even in advance of hearing what they might be. Has a leader of the opposition ever been so trusting and deferential to his supposed opponent?

And what about our parliamentarians, who usually carp on endlessly about their duty to ‘hold the government to account’? On the one hand, the government has more or less absolved itself of any parliamentary scrutiny in relation to the virus measures – suspending parliament back in March (to no recorded protest whatsoever from MPs) while introducing sweeping new laws via ministerial decree, sometimes publishing their content just 30 minutes before they come into force. But on the other hand, it’s not clear that many MPs are up to the task of seriously questioning the government’s approach.

Many MPs – including the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus – think that the lockdown did not go far enough. It has become common to hear MPs recommend a ‘Zero Covid’ policy, meaning that restrictions should remain until the virus is eliminated entirely.

In fact, the Labour Party and the left have been among the most ardent defenders of lockdown. Anyone who raises concerns about civil liberties is dismissed as a right-wing libertarian. Meanwhile, anyone who raises concerns about the economy is condemned as greedy. This is despite the fact that lockdown is impacting most severely on the working class in the developed world and on the poorest of the poor in developing countries, while enriching the world’s wealthiest. Though many so-called left-wingers once hysterically condemned the Tory government as ‘fascist’, they are leading the clamour for it to be given more repressive powers.

And what of the supposedly ‘pro-freedom’ Tories? Some backbenchers have started to raise questions about the lack of parliamentary scrutiny as well as the extraordinary powers conferred to police and ministers in the Coronavirus Act. But clearly, most MPs of every party are as committed to lockdown as the government is, if not more so.

What about the judiciary? Over the past several years, judges have tried to position themselves as the defenders of the British constitution and of our representative democracy. But the contrast between our judiciary’s keenness to hear Gina Miller and Jolyon Maugham QC’s attempts to overturn Brexit with its reluctance to hear Simon Dolan’s legal challenge against the lockdown could not be more evident. Dolan’s legal challenge was refused at first, and though its appeal has been successful, it was delayed until October. The legal challenges our judges were keen to hear set out to overturn the largest democratic vote in British history. The one they don’t particularly want to hear has set out to overturn the greatest removal of our freedoms in history. Though former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption has been heroically challenging the virus restrictions, the actual courts have little interest in defending our hard-won liberties.

Aside from the judges, Britain has an entire industry of human-rights lawyers and human-rights NGOs who, with some honourable exceptions, appear to have taken a Trappist vow of silence. Though many on ‘legal Twitter’ were aghast at a clause in the government’s Internal Market Bill potentially breaking international law, the abuse of Covid powers by both ministers and police has barely raised an eyebrow. Arguably, civil society more broadly has been found wanting.

The lesson from all this is that our democratic institutions, our political parties and our civil society are simply not interested in defending our freedoms. If we want the endless threat of lockdowns to end, we will have to fight for this ourselves. Who’s with me?

SOURCE

********************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American “liberals” often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America’s educational system — particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if “liberals” had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. Email me (John Ray) here.
`
************************************