Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Garland Jihadi’s Inspired by ISIS, Cats Included

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I watched this matter unfold myself on social media, then I worked the connections and tracked their posts carefully. Elton Simpson, born in Illinois was radicalized and was on his way to the jihad battleground until the FBI executed a sting operation a little more than a month ago. Elton got scared and concocted the Garland operation which too, the FBI knew about and broadcasted an alert.

The FBI had a rock solid case in 2006 against Simpson, but a liberal judge did not believe their case or investigation. The FBI continues to investigate at jihadis in all 50 states as noted by the director James Comey.

The information about Elton Simpson of Phoenix surfaced hours before the contest in Garland, Texas, which the FBI had already identified as a potential target for violence, Comey said.

The director said the agency then sent an intelligence bulletin to the Garland Police Department, including a picture and other information about Simpson, “even though we didn’t have reason to believe that he was going to attack the event. In fact, we didn’t have reason to believe that he had left Phoenix,” Comey said.

Other parts of the FBI uncovered the following leading up to the Garland attack.

Texas Attackers Communicated With Islamic State (ISIS) Operatives On Twitter

One of the two gunmen involved in the Garland, Texas shooting on May 3, 2015, targeting the “Draw Muhammad” event, telegraphed his intentions on Twitter. In the last message that one of the alleged gunmen posted to his account, he suggests that he was operating in the name of the Islamic State (ISIS). Other Twitter messages posted by known Islamic State members indicate that he was in contact with ISIS operatives. While the ISIS link remains uncertain at this moment, ISIS supporters were quick to praise the attack and honor the perpetrators as martyrs for the cause of jihad.

This screenshot shows the Twitter profile of one of the alleged perpetrators, with the social media handle of “Mutawakil” (“one who places his faith in Allah”). In his last tweet, he claims that both attackers had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and uses the hashtag #texasattack just hours prior to the event itself. His Twitter account shows him to be an online supporter of ISIS whose account had been frequently shut down for spreading jihadi content. He was followed by over 1,000 accounts, and tweeted regularly. He uses a picture of the late Yemeni-American preacher and Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki, killed in an American drone strike, as his profile.

His social media contacts include several known ISIS operatives. One possible direct contact, the Minnesotan Somali-American Mohamed Abdullahi Hussein, known as Mujahid Miski,[1] who is currently fighting with the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen in Somalia, tweeted immediately following the attack: “I’m gonna miss Mutawakil, he was truly a man of wisdom. I’m gonna miss his greeting every morning on Twitter.” Miski added “I’m gonna miss how he always used to talk speak of the Hoor Al Ayn [virgin of paradise promised to martyrs]. How he always said he wanted to meet her.” In a May 4 tweet, Miski wrote: “Our brother Mutawakil in 2008 wanted to Make #Hijrah to Somalia but a Murtad spied on him. Allah swt was preparing him for something better.”[2]

Mujahid Miski also claimed awareness of what the perpetrator had dreamed about prior to the attack. “Mutawakil saw himself in a dream walking in a road and a woman looking from the sky with a niqab. He was frightened the interpretation of his dream was that the #hoor Al-Ayn [virgins in paradise] were waiting for him eagerly and that he should hasten to meeting them too.” Such dreams are commonly told by jihadi fighters, and are often used to reinforce the operatives’ morale and resolve before they embark on suicide missions.

Also tweeting about Mutawakil and #hoor_al_ayn were Irish ISIS supporter “Abu Khalid” and another Western supporter, “Ibn Rushd AlLubnani.” Abu Khalid wrote: “brother @atawaakul was talking about #hoor_al_ayn for several days, he surely was planning for this. he was a revert [i.e. convert to Islam] (so far as I know).” Ibn Rushd AlLubnani wrote: “Just a few days ago @atawaakul was talking about Hoor al ayn on twitter and the sisters were getting upset with him. Little did they know…”

British ISIS fighter Junaid Hussain, who is known as Abu Hussain Al Britani, tweeted ominously hours before the attack and praised the two perpetrators after it occurred: “The knives have been sharpened; soon we will come to your streets with death and slaughter! #QaribanQariba [soon, soon] … Allahu Akbar! Two of our brothers just opened fire at the Prophet Muhammad art exhibition in Texas! #TexasAttack” He also advocated and threatened further attacks: “Kill Those That Insult The Prophet – #GarlandShooting … They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State – #garlandshooting #TexasAttack … If there is no check on the freedom of your speech, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions #GarlandShooting #TexasAttack.”

Another American ISIS operative with the alias Abu Khalid Al-Amriki upon learning of the attack on Twitter, praised the attempt and threatened more to come. He tweeted: “This one should hit the front page! Dawlah [ISIS] is in America! Allahu akbar … How much do you love the Prophet? I’m sure the brothers earned their spot next to the messenger of Allah … The drawn Sword on the one that Insults the messenger of Allah. Let this be a wakeup call for all cartoonists. We are coming for you.” On March 29, Abu Khalid had claimed on Twitter that he was in contact with ISIS supporters in the USA and that one of them was prepared to carry out an operation.[3]

ISIS operative Abu Hamza Al-habashi tweeted after the attack: “Allahu Akbar The two Brothers attained shadah[martyrdom] in texas! The disbelievers will never understand our love for death. May Allah accept them.”

Online ISIS supporters immediately reacted to the Texas attack by praising the perpetrators and elevating them to the rank of martyrs in the cause of jihad. For example, ISIS supporter “Australi Witness,” who recently called for targeting Australian cartoonists,[4] tweeted: “May Allah reward the Garland mujahideen with a seat right next to the Prophet in Jannah [heaven].”

The pro-ISIS London-based sheikh Anjem Choudary also reacted to the event on Twitter, by justifying the attack as retribution for the insult to the prophet Muhammad: “Once again we see that people refuse to learn the lesson that insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a deadly pursuit … #garlandshooting the world should know that, for Muslims, the honor of the Messenger Muhammad is dearer to them than their own lives! … #garlandshooting we must learn the lessons from Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, Theo Van Gogh & Chalie Hebdo not to insult the Messenger Muhammad! … #garlandshooting Freedom of speech does not extend to insulting the Messenger Muhammad (saw) & hence provoking the anger of 1/4 of the world.”

“Muslimah 1,” a Dutch ISIS supporter, tweeted a photo of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who was keynote speaker at the Garland, Texas event, to “Al Ghareeb,” an American ISIS supporter, with the comment “Does Geert Wilders look like he is feeling ‘safe’ at the event??” Al Ghareeb had written: “They spend 10000 on security for this blasphemous event but then say they will not be scared. Lol. Your scared, the brothers made a point.”

DOJ Sends Bad Lawyers to Court, Good Thing

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Switchboard operator: Commissioner Koskinen, Loretta Lynch, Jack Lew, you are being paged to answer calls on lines 4,5 and 6.

Remember that pesky IRS targeting scandal that the White House said was phony? Remember groups that applied for tax exempt status were discriminated against at the direction of Lois Lerner? Remember Lerner going to the Department of Justice to get some legal advise when the IRS is actually under the Treasury Department who has lawyers and even the IRS has their own? Well, lawyers in Washington DC appear to have lousy skills at presenting an argument in this case…defense.

The DOJ actually argued it was okay to discriminate for a period of time. Really? Yes, discrimination IS fair….well not so much.

The IRS Goes to Court

The agency suggests it can discriminate for 270 days. Judges gasp.

It isn’t every day that judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals declare themselves “shocked.” But that happened on Monday when an animated three-judge panel eviscerated the IRS and Justice Department during oral argument in a case alleging the agency delayed the tax-exempt application of a pro-Israel group due to its policy views.

In December 2009, Pennsylvania-based Z Street applied for 501(c)(3) status to pursue its pro-Israel educational mission. In July 2010, when the group called to check on what was taking so long, an IRS agent said that auditors had been instructed to give special attention to groups connected with Israel, and that they had sent some of those applications to a special IRS unit for additional review.

Z Street sued the IRS for viewpoint discrimination (Z Street v. Koskinen), and in May 2014 a federal district judge rejected the IRS’s motion to dismiss. The IRS appealed, a maneuver that halted discovery that could prove to be highly embarrassing. Justice says Z Street’s case should be dismissed because the Anti-Injunction Act bars litigation about “the assessment or collection of tax.” Problem is, Z Street isn’t suing for its tax-exempt status. It’s suing on grounds that the IRS can’t discriminate based on point of view.

The three judges—Chief Judge Merrick Garland,David Tatel and David Sentelle—were incredulous. You say they want a tax exemption, but that’s not the complaint, Judge Sentelle admonished government lawyer Teresa McLaughlin: “They are not in court seeking to restrain the assessment or collection of a tax, they are in court seeking a constitutionally fair process.”

The suit should also be foreclosed, the government argued, because under Section 7428(b)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code groups may sue to obtain their tax-exempt status if no action has been taken for 270 days, and that should be an alternative to Z Street’s approach.

“You don’t really mean that, right? Because the next couple words would be the IRS is free to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint, religion, race [for 270 days]. You don’t actually think that?” Judge Garland said. “Imagine the IRS announces today a policy that says as follows: No application by a Jewish group or an African-American group will be considered until one day short of the period under the statute . . . Is it your view that that cannot be challenged?”

The judges also asked why the government had buried the key precedent in a footnote in its brief. In Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl, the Supreme Court decided that the language of the Anti-Injunction Act did not preclude cases like Z Street’s. In a previous case before the D.C. Circuit, Judge Garland noted, the court also “rejected” the exact arguments the government was making, “so in a way we have already decided every issue before us today, against you.”

Poor Ms. McLaughlin was sent to argue the indefensible so the IRS can delay discovery until the waning days of the Obama Administration. “If I were you, I would go back and ask your superiors whether they want us to represent that the government’s position in this case is that the government is free to unconstitutionally discriminate against its citizens for 270 days,” said Judge Garland.

Ms. McLaughlin replied, “Well, I will take that back.” The Beltway media may be bored, but the IRS scandal is a long way from over.

HUD, the Coming Next Financial Crisis

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Do you know the Castro twins, Julian and Joaquin? Well, both have been fully groomed by powerbrokers in the Obama administration and the mentoring continues. In fact, the twins are rightly classified as the ‘enemies within’.

Julian is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Joaquin is a U.S.Congressman. Julian is especially dangerous and there is chatter about his vying for a vice-presidential run. Meanwhile, Julian is in large measure part of the Latino immigration movement while working his wonder-lust at HUD.

So what about the coming financial crisis? Just think back to the housing crisis, to the toxic mortgages, to the bailouts and the massive layoffs.

The Government Is Definitely Back in the ‘Affordable Housing’ Game

by: John Ligon

More than six years out from a government-driven housing bubble, the chief regulator at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Mel Watt, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary, Julian Castro are respectively clearing a path to expand the “credit box” for government-backed home loans.

Two recent examples: Fannie Mae recently started a program guaranteeing loans with as little as 3 percent down payments, and, earlier this year, the Federal Housing Administration reduced by 50 basis points the annual mortgage insurance premiums it charges borrowers.

We have been down this path before. Using the U.S. housing finance system to try to achieve political ends of broader and “affordable” housing goals ultimately undermines taxpayer safety and the opportunity to build meaningful equity for homeowners.

After all, it was only less than two decades ago that Andrew Cuomo, then-Housing secretary under the Clinton administration, announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest housing finance companies at that time, would be required to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages over the next 10 years to provide affordable housing for about 28.1 million low- and moderate-income families.

In the same announcement, Cuomo went on to say that “this action will transform the lives of millions of families across our country by giving them new opportunities to buy homes or move into apartments with rents they can afford … it will help ease the terrible shortage of affordable housing plaguing far too many communities.”

To be fair, political leaders in both Democrat and Republican administrations have repeatedly called for arbitrary, vague goals aimed at achieving a “homeownership society” and expanding “affordable housing” even when most qualified homeowners already owned homes.

A great irony, though, is that these affordable housing initiatives have had the exact opposite of their intended impact: These programs encourage higher levels of debt, increased housing prices (and lower affordability) in many markets, and greater risk within the overall housing finance system.

Affordable housing advocates tend to focus on high rental costs and widespread slack in the first-time home purchase market as main justification for expanded government support, but establishing new government credit programs and expanding existing ones has repeatedly failed to fix these problems.

To be sure, there are numerous factors weighing on the overall housing market outlook, and certainly a main influence is the sluggish first-time purchase market. This market, in particular for younger individuals, is hampered by high levels of non-mortgage debt, weak employment and income opportunities, low labor mobility (some held back by federal mortgage modification programs), and high home prices in some metropolitan areas.

Despite any of the best stated intentions to assist individuals with “affordable rent” or “affordable mortgages,” all of this direct and indirect government interference in the housing finance system ultimately biases individuals toward certain market segments and particular types of debt instruments, increasing financial risk to homeowners and taxpayers in the process.

 

Eco-Terrorists Meet Your new Machine Challenge

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States in the West have been experiencing an epic water issue, of this there is no debate. Water use has been regulated and limited for the sake of a fish with no cause for protection and a plant or two that has no value. The consequence is business, farming and daily life suffering restrictions with wide ranging national implications. Every citizen wants to be a good steward of the environment and often is. Sure there are violators, however we have the EPA who has extreme mandates and laws for them right? Yes and they are extreme.

There are radical environmental groups that go so far as to cause civil disobedience all wrapped up under graduated causes of climate change.

California needs water and has for decades so some desalinization machines were purchased to mitigate a problem. No one could decide of the rules of use until now. But the rules of themselves up for a long debate where the solution of using brine or sea water for human use will not be forth-coming anytime soon.

Enter the battle of more bureaucracy, debate, protests, rules and legislative measures. In a nation that is establishing protective classes of people, such is the same with plant life and the Delta smelt, a fish of zero consequence. Who will win? What if that fish eats the plant and corrupts the water supply? The state of California meets it final destiny…more DIRT. Tax rainwater, shower with your dog, but only for 3 minutes. Share towels and socks with other family members to slow down the laundry duty. Hang a scarlet letter on the palm tree for excessive water consumption and ask the DEA and Secret Service to investigate the promiscuous behavior of fish, plants and lizards….wink….

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California regulators on Wednesday adopted the first statewide rules for the permitting of seawater desalination projects that are expected to proliferate as drought-stricken communities increasingly turn to the ocean to supplement their drinking supplies.

The action, which sets uniform standards for minimizing harm to marine life, was welcomed by developers of the state’s two largest desalination projects as bringing much-needed certainty and clarity to the regulatory approval process.

“It reaffirms that the Pacific Ocean is part of the drinking water resources for the state of California,” Poseidon Water executive Scott Maloni told Reuters after the rule was enacted on a voice vote in Sacramento by the State Water Resources Control Board.

The measure leaves the permitting process in the hands of the state’s regional water boards while establishing a single framework for them to follow in evaluating applications to build seawater treatment plants, expand existing ones and renew old permits.

But regional decisions could now be appealed to the state board for review if opponents of a project felt a permit was wrongly approved.

Before Wednesday’s action, developers and regulators of desalination plants had no specific guidance for meeting federal and state clean water standards, complicating review of the projects, state water board spokesman George Kostyrko said.

Desalination has emerged as a promising technology in the face of a record dry spell now gripping California for a fourth straight year, depleting its reservoirs and aquifers and raising the costs of importing water from elsewhere.

Critics have cited ecological drawbacks, such as harm to marine life from intake pipes that suck water into the treatment systems and the concentrated brine discharge from the plants.

The newly approved plan sets specific brine salinity limits and rules for diffusing the discharge as it is pumped back into to the ocean.

It also requires seawater to be drawn into the plants through pipes that are sunk into beach wells or buried beneath the sea floor, where possible. Such subsurface intakes are viewed as more environmentally friendly.

The Western Hemisphere’s biggest desalination plant, a $1 billion project under construction since 2012 in the coastal city of Carlsbad, California, is due to open in November.

It will deliver up to 50 million gallons (190 million liters) of water a day to San Diego County, enough to supply roughly 112,000 households, or about 10 percent of San Diego County’s drinking water needs, according to Poseidon.

Approval is being sought for a final permit to begin construction of a second plant of similar size in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles, next year.

About a dozen much smaller desalting plants have already been built along the coast, state water officials said.

On Tuesday, the state water board enacted California’s first rules for mandatory statewide cutbacks in municipal water use . The emergency regulations, which require some communities to trim water consumption by as much as 36 percent, were approved unanimously just weeks after Democratic Governor Jerry Brown stood in a dry mountain meadow and ordered statewide rationing.

California: Meet your Destiny, Outlook Grim

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Finally, someone here has fully summarized the water and infrastructure, the farming and enterprise issues in the ‘now’ and immediate future. Survival matrix forecast…GRIM. The ‘green’ thing and the Delta smelt fish….are a protected agenda over humans thriving. Bring on the 3 minute showers, the dead lawns, cars that need washing and big fines for violations….$10,000? the Golden State is brown and broke. The Big Idea: California Is So Over by: Joel Kotkin

California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior.
California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes. The water situation reflects this breakdown in the starkest way. Everyone who follows California knew it was inevitable we would suffer a long-term drought. Most of the state—including the Bay Area as well as greater Los Angeles—is semi-arid, and could barely support more than a tiny fraction of its current population. California’s response to aridity has always been primarily an engineering one that followed the old Roman model of siphoning water from the high country to service cities and farms. But since the 1970s, California’s water system has become the prisoner of politics and posturing. The great aqueducts connecting the population centers with the great Sierra snowpack are all products of an earlier era—the Los Angeles aqueduct (1913), Hetch-Hetchy (1923), the Central Valley Project (1937), and the California Aqueduct (1974). The primary opposition to expansion has been the green left, which rejects water storage projects as irrelevant. Yet at the same time greens and their allies in academia and the mainstream press are those most likely to see the current drought as part of a climate change-induced reduction in snowpack. That many scientists disagree with this assessment is almost beside the point. Whether climate change will make things better or worse is certainly an important concern, but California was going to have problems meeting its water needs under any circumstances. Not Meeting the Challenges. It’s not like we haven’t been around this particular block before. In the 1860s, a severe drought all but destroyed LA’s once-flourishing cattle industry. This drought was followed by torrential rains that caused their own havoc. The state has suffered three major droughts since I have lived here—in the mid ’70s, the mid ’80s and again today—but long ago (even before I got there) some real whoppers occurred, including dry periods that lasted upwards of 200 years. This, like the threat of earthquakes, is part of the price we pay to live in this most beautiful and usually temperate of states. The real issue is how to meet this challenge, and here the response has been slow and lacking in vision. Not all of this is to be blamed on the greens, who dominate the state politically. California agriculture, for example, was among the last in the nation to agree to monitoring of groundwater. Farmers have also been slow to adjust their crops toward less water-dependent varieties; they continue to plant alfalfa, cotton, and other crops that may be better grown in more water-rich areas. Many cities, too, have been slow to meet the challenge. Some long resisted metering of water use. Other places have been slow to encourage drought-resistant landscaping, which is already pretty de rigeur in more aridity-conscious desert cities like Tucson. This process may take time, but it is already showing value in places like Los Angeles where water agencies provide incentives. But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money. And there needs to be, at least for the short term, an end to dumping water into San Francisco Bay for the purpose of restoring a long-gone salmon run, or to the Delta, in order to save a bait-fish, the Delta smelt, which may already be close to extinct. This dumping of water has continued even as the state has faced a potentially crippling water shortage; nothing is too good for our fish, or to salve the hyper-heated consciousness of the environmental illuminati. The Political Equation The biggest reason California has been so slow, and uncharacteristically feckless, in meeting this existential challenge lies with psychology and ends with political power. The generation that built the sinews of modern California—most notably the late Governor Pat Brown Sr., the current governor’s father—sprang from the old progressive spirit which saw in infrastructure development a chance not only to create new wealth, but also provide opportunity to working- and middle-class Californians. Indeed, if you look at California’s greatest achievements as a society, the Pat Brown legacy stands at the core. The California Aqueduct turned vast stretches of the Central Valley into one of the most productive farming regions in the world. The freeway system, now in often shocking disrepair, allowed for the construction of mass suburbia that offered millions a quality of life never experienced by previous generations. At the same time the development of energy resources—California still boasts the nation’s third-largest oil production—helped create a huge industrial base that included aerospace, semiconductors, and a host of specialized industries, from logistics to garment manufacturing. In contrast, Jerry Brown has waged a kind of Oedipal struggle against his father’s legacy. Like many Californians, he recoiled against the sometimes haphazard and even ugly form of development that plowed through much of the state. Cutting off water is arguably the most effective way to stop all development, and promote Brown’s stated goal of eliminating suburban “sprawl.” It is typical that his first target for cutbacks this year has been the “lawns” of the middle–class suburbanite, a species for which he has shown little interest or tolerance. But it’s not just water that exemplifies the current “era of limits” psychology. Energy development has always been in green crosshairs and their harassment has all but succeeded in helping drive much of the oil and gas industry, including corporate headquarters, out of the state. Not building roads—arguably to be replaced by trains—has not exactly reduced traffic but given California the honor of having eight of the top 20 cities nationally with poor roads; the percentage of Los Angeles-area residents who take transit has, if anything, declined slightly since train-building began. All we are left with are impossible freeways, crumbling streets, and ever more difficulty doing anything that requires traveling. The Road to Feudalism These policies have had numerous impacts, like weakening California’s industrial sector, which cannot afford energy prices that can be twice as high as in competing states. Some of those who might have worked in the factories, warehouses, and farms of California now help swell the numbers of the welfare recipients, who remarkably make up one-third of the nation’s total. As recently as the 1970s and ’80s, the percentage of people living in poverty in California was below the national average; California today, based on cost of living, has the highest poverty rate in the country. Of course, the rich and entitled, particularly in Silicon Valley have achieved unprecedented riches, but those middle-class Californians once served by Pat have largely been abandoned by his son. California, long a relative beacon of equality and opportunity, now has the fourth-highest rate of inequality in the country. For those who, like me, bought their first home over 30 years ago, high housing prices, exacerbated by regulation, are a personal piggybank. But it’s doubtful either of my daughters will ever be able to buy a house here. What about “green jobs”? California leads in total number of green jobs, simply by dint of size, but on a per-capita basis, a recent Brookings study notes, California is about average. In wind energy, in fact, California is not even in first place; that honor goes to, of all places, Texas, which boasts twice California’s level of production. Today even  The New York Times has described Governor Jerry Brown’s promise about creating a half-million green jobs as something of a “pipe dream.” Even surviving solar firms, busy in part to meet the state’s strict renewable mandates, acknowledge that they won’t be doing much of the manufacturing here, anyway. The Cost of Narcissism Ultimately this is a story of a state that has gotten tired, having lost its “animal spirits” for the policy equivalent of a vegan diet. Increasingly it’s all about how the elites in the state—who cluster along the expensive coastal areas—feel about themselves. Even Brown knows that his environmental agenda will do little, or nothing, to combat climate change, given the already minimal impact of the state on carbon emissions compared to escalating fossil fuel use in China, India and elsewhere. But the cosmopolitan former Jesuit gives more priority to his spiritual service to Gaia than the needs of his non-affluent constituents. But progressive narcissism is, as some conservatives assert, not the main problem. California greens are, to be sure, active, articulate, well-organized, and well-financed. What they lack is an effective counterpoint from the business class, who would be expected to challenge some of their policies. But the business leadership often seems to be more concerned with how to adjust the status quo to serve privileged large businesses, including some in agriculture, than boosting the overall economy. The greens, and their public-sector allies, can dominate not because they are so effective as that their potential opposition is weak, intimidated, and self-obsessed. What we are witnessing the breakdown of a once-expansive, open society into one dominated by a small group of plutocrats, largely in Silicon Valley, with an “amen” crew among the low-information donors of Hollywood, the public unions, the green lobby, and wealthy real estate developers favored by Brown’s pro-density policies. This coalition backs Brown and helps maintain the state’s essentially one-party system. No one is more adamant about reducing people’s carbon footprint than the jet set of Silicon Valley or the state’s planning elite, even if they choose not to live in a manner that they instruct all others. This fundamentally hypocritical regime remains in place because it works—for the powerful and well-placed. Less understandable is why many Hispanic politicians, such as Assembly Speaker Kevin de Leon, also prioritize “climate change” as his leading issue, without thinking much about how these policies might worsen the massive poverty in his de-industrializing L.A. district—until you realize that de Leon is bankrolled by Tom Steyer and others from the green uberclass. So, in the end, we are producing a California that is the polar opposite of Pat Brown’s creation. True, it has some virtues: greener, cleaner, and more “progressive” on social issues. But it’s also becoming increasingly feudal, defined by a super-affluent coastal class and an increasingly impoverished interior. As water prices rise, and farms and lawns are abandoned, there’s little thought about how to create a better future for the bulk of Californians. Like medieval peasants, millions of Californians have been force to submit to the theology of our elected high priest and his acolytes, leaving behind any aspirations that the Golden State can work for them too.