In the wake of Friday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump yesterday issued a policy statement calling for America to bar all Muslims – even tourists – from entering the country. Trump’s comments were denounced by his Republican and Democratic rivals, but found support among his fans. What to make of The Donald and his impact on the Republican brand in 2016? Mark Barabak and Kurtis Lee, Los Angeles Times:
“’I don’t think anything will hurt him for at least another four or five weeks, when there’s a chance voters will start asking a different question,’ said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of a nonpartisan guide to the nation's politics. ‘Instead of saying, “Who’s interesting, who’s entertaining?” they may start asking themselves, “Who do I want as president?"’”…
“The question is what lasting impact his inflammatory rhetoric will have on the Republican Party as it struggles to broaden its appeal beyond its core constituency of older white voters.
“’It’s not like the election is tomorrow,’ Rothenberg said. ‘But if next September, Donald Trump remains a high-profile figure that represents the Republican Party — even if he’s not the nominee — that would be a problem.’”
While Donald Trump has used the San Bernardino shooting to vilify Muslims, Governor Brown linked the tragedy to lax gun laws in neighboring states – incorrectly, as it turns out. Jeremy White, Sacramento Bee:
“While he does not directly attribute the shootings to gun laws in other states, his statement creates an association between the laws and the San Bernardino tragedy, which is somewhat misleading. Also, while there is a connection between a state’s gun laws and gun exports, studies tracking the flow of firearms across state lines do not show an explicit link to terrorists.
“Authorities have said the four guns used in the San Bernardino assault were purchased legally in California. In this case, laws in neighboring states had no bearing on how the assailants obtained their weapons.”
But don’t worry Jerry, Skelton’s got your back. From the Los Angeles Times:
“We're told the assault rifles fired at the office party were purchased legally. That's the problem. They should have been illegal.
“California, Chicago and Washington, D.C., can pass tough gun laws. But they'll always be the victims of lax bordering states where bad guys can go load up.
“So blame us because we haven't pressured Congress to pass strong nationwide laws — such as banning large-capacity ammunition magazines and requiring universal background checks.”
California’s drought restrictions are set to expire in February, but the governor and state water officials are urging an extension. Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee:
“Scores of representatives of local agencies urged the State Water Resources Control Board to revise its system of enforcing Gov. Jerry Brown’s order to reduce statewide urban water consumption by 25 percent. Last month the governor said the cutbacks, which are due to expire in mid-February, should be extended through the end of October, assuming the drought hasn’t ended, and the water board is considering whether to tweak the rules.”
Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), promoted the state’s clean energy bonafides in an address to members of Parliament in the UK last week, noting that California’s job growth had outpaced the rest of the US while simultaneoulsly reducing greenhouse gases. Politifact rated his claim “mostly true.”
“We limited our fact check to whether California has grown jobs faster than ‘the rest of the nation.’ We did not evaluate the impact the state’s clean energy policies have had on job growth, a question raised by the second part of De León’s statement.
“Economists we spoke with agree that California’s job growth rate has been higher than the nation’s overall average — for several years. Last year, the state’s job growth rate was more than a percentage point higher than the country’s.”
The California Public Utilities Commission has levied a nearly $17 million fine on Southern California Edison for failure to disclose contacts with the CPUC and with providing misleading testimony related to the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Chuck McFadden, Capitol Weekly:
“The California Public Utilities Commission has begun to dig its way out of a monumental problem in public perception by imposing a $16.74 million fine on Southern California Edison.
“On a 4-0 voice vote, the five-member commission levied the unprecedented fine as punishment for failing to disclose a series of meetings and emails, and for providing misleading testimony pertaining to the costs of shutting down the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Southern California Edison owns 70 percent of the station, located on the north San Diego County coast.
“The fine was the culmination of years of questions, suspicions and wrangling. The commission’s approval of the unprecedented penalty took just a bit more than five minutes during a Thursday meeting at the CPUC’s San Francisco headquarters.”
Have you, like so many of us, wondered what a Hyperloop is and why Elon Musk wants to spend billions building one? Alexander Chee has your answers in a long and fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal:
“There’s a future we’ve seen in science fiction for so long it almost seems like the past: people whisked from one place to another inside tube trains that crisscross the landscape.
“But imagine you could board one and travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a half-hour. As you sit down in an engineless pod the size of a bus, your seat remembers you and adjusts the entertainment settings. The pod accelerates to 760 miles per hour, a velocity made possible by the near-vacuum inside the tube. There’s no engine noise—the nearest thing to an engine is the tube, a smart tube that measures speed and location. The pod has been pressurized to minimize the G forces’ effects on a passenger; the trip is as comfortable as a flight. All of this is solar-powered.
“There won’t even be time for beverage service.
“This is the dream billionaire inventor Elon Musk unleashed on Aug. 12, 2013, when he posted a white paper on the website of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., also known as SpaceX. Titled ‘Hyperloop Alpha,’ the paper contained notes toward what Musk called the fifth mode of transport—the other four being planes, trains, automobiles and boats. California’s proposal for a high-speed rail project had offended Musk’s sense of the state that has historically dreamed up America’s future.”
We started with Donald Trump and we’ll end with Donald Trump- here’s an insult-to-injury story of Trump vs. rival and one-time presumed frontrunner Jeb Bush (who trails The Donald in the polls by +/- 20 points):
“The website JebBush.com now re-directs to Trump’s campaign website, DonaldJTrump.com, where viewers see Donald holding up a peace sign and his campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again.’
Ouch.
