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Dirty Little Secret: Unemployment in CA Is High Because of Vaccine Mandates and AB5

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Gaslighting Gavin Newsom has been on a crowfest since escaping his own unemployment, boasting about the rate that California has created jobs.

Beyond keeping his job, Hair Gel has little to crow about. Homelessness is still an exacerbating issue, wildfires are still raging, and California’s unemployment rate is still high: at 7.5 percent. This is one percentage point lower than last month’s 7.6 percent.

The state is creating jobs at, according to Newsom, a record rate, yet unemployment is high. Por que?!

Cal Matters reports on this conundrum:

Although the Golden State created a whopping 44% of the nation’s new jobs last month, its unemployment rate remained the second-highest in the country at 7.5%, according to figures released Friday by the state Employment Development Department. That’s essentially unchanged from the 7.6% unemployment rate California notched in both July and June — and hardly different from the 7.7% rate in May, a month before the state ended most coronavirus restrictions and fully reopened its economy.

It goes on to blame lack of child care, overwhelmed human resources departments, and other factors:

Some experts had predicted that the federal government’s Sept. 4 cutoff of expanded unemployment benefits for 2.2 million Californians would prompt people to reenter the workforce, but there hasn’t been a noticeable shift so far. Around 55,000 Californians filed new jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 11, a decrease of fewer than 3,000 people from the week before, federal data show. And the Golden State lost more than 6,000 education and health services payroll jobs in August, exacerbating an already dire nurse shortage.

Not one mention of two things: Vaccine mandates or the fallout from Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) being signed into law.

In a glowing story in the Los Angeles Times, a small arts company in Boyle Heights has come back to life with in-person classes and workshops, after the pandemic forced it to close its doors and go online. However, the owner of the arts company makes this huge admission that, as usual, the L.A. Times fails to explore.

The bill’s requirements have put extra stress on small, nonprofit theaters, where performers and those behind the scenes typically volunteer their time in exchange for experience, exposure and, on occasion, a small stipend. Emmanuel Deleage, executive director at Casa 0101, says the new law could generate permanent closures, no matter how well-intentioned.

“There’s been a good amount of relief money out there, and we’ve been able to access that. So we’ll get through the pandemic,” he says. “AB 5 is another story.”

L.A. Times ends the telling there, without a mention that this company is only one of a million small businesses in California that this law has decimated.

Businesses that used to offer quality employment for skilled professionals and artists are hamstrung thanks to this law. Skilled professionals, like the ones above, who need or desire to work remotely are also blocked. Yet, two local media outlets refuse to even bring this up as a factor in the high unemployment. It’s a horrible disconnect, and shows that Newsom’s “homegrown team” is still at work in assisting him in his delusional flossing about California being Number 1. California is still leading the way in career destruction.

Then there are those vaccine mandates that Hair Gel is so proud of. As of today, we have the Los Angeles Police Department officers and staff, Los Angeles Fire Department firefighters, students and a professor in the California UC system suing the State over the mandates. California healthcare and government workers, who are required to be vaccinated by the end of this month or face termination, are also not hurrying to comply, and many are actively resisting.

As one Sacramento health worker stated,

Since the mandate applies statewide, workers cannot go work at another hospital without vaccine requirements nearby. Brown is frustrated that hospital administrators and lawmakers, who have “zero covid exposure,” are the ones making those decisions.

“Hospitals across the country posted signs that said ‘Health care heroes work here.’ Where is the reward for our heroes?” he asked. “Right now, the hospitals are telling us the reward for the heroes: ‘If you don’t get the vaccine, you’re fired.’”

Cal Matters did report that traveling nurses are refusing assignments in California because of the mandate.

California‘s new vaccine mandate for health care workers is also compounding a staffing shortage that predated the pandemic but has worsened amid widespread burnout from 18 long months of treating COVID-19 patients. Pushed to the breaking point, many understaffed hospitals are seeking to hire temporary, traveling nurses — only to have some of them turn down California assignments because they don’t want to get vaccinated, CalMatters’ Kristen Hwang reports.

Dr. Tom Sugarman, an East Bay emergency physician and senior director of government affairs at Vituity, a physicians’ group: “Nurses are getting paid premiums to work in Texas and Florida where (COVID is) surging right now. Those nurses have to come from somewhere, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some are coming from California.”

That’s just academia, emergency services, and healthcare. The service industry is taking particularly hard hits as well, with hostess and wait staff required to be vaccinated and wear a mask for 10-15 hour shifts, or being required to play mask police for venues that require indoor masking. My colleague Becca Lower reported about the Emmys, and their perfect picture of the caste system that exists in California, where celebrities, politicians, and those who have access get to go around unmasked, while the people doing the work behind the scenes are required to be masked. Many individuals who used to work in these service industries are refusing to participate in this crooked game.

In a bid to attract new workers, the beloved Sacramento-area sushi restaurant Mikuni expanded benefits and hosted a job fair — but saw only three applicants. Eight of its nine locations will now close Mondays due to the staffing shortage.

California Globe is one media outlet that does an unvarnished layout on the brutal stats of California unemployment. It’s not pretty.

Last month, California ranked in 3-way tie for second worst of the 50 states in highest unemployment ranking in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This month California ranks at 50th for highest unemployment in the U.S, only ahead of Nevada.

While most states remained fairly static from last month, California did improve very slightly from 7.6% to 7.5% unemployment.

The ten states with the highest unemployment are Democrat-run States.

California is second to last of that 10 worst. Nevada is at 7.7. As long as His Hairfulness remains willfully oblivious to his horrible policies, this will not change any time soon.

Bizarre Six-Minute Video of London Breed Explaining Mask Mandate Violation Makes Her Look Even Worse

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We reported last week on how San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D), who has implemented a very strict mask mandate, was caught by a local reporter during an indoor club outing without one.

To quickly recap, Mariecar Mendoza, who is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior arts and entertainment editor, wrote in her article that “most patrons inside the subterranean venue [called the “Black Cat”], which serves food and drinks, did not wear a mask as mandated by the city of San Francisco.”

Breed, who would later claim she was there to celebrate a return to live music for the club, “had a table of drinks in front of her and was often holding one” but “spent the night dancing, singing along and posing for photographs without a face covering,” Mendoza also noted.

Though Breed says she’s fully vaccinated along with her friends who were with her, that doesn’t matter, according to the mandate.

“Everyone, including people who are fully vaccinated, must wear a well-fitted mask in indoor public settings at all times except,” the order states, “people may remove their well-fitted mask while actively eating or drinking.”

Making matters worse for Breed, which we also reported, was in how she responded later in the week as the outrage grew, telling journalists that she and her friend girls “don’t need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing.”

Hmmm, that’s kinda sorta the point those who are against mask mandates have been making for quite some time now, isn’t it?

Beyond wild, however, was her full response. You need to watch the full six-plus minute video of her being asked by several reporters to explain her actions. My eyes got bigger the deeper into the interview she got. Here are some of the quotes, but please watch the video for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. At various points, she insinuated it was worth violating her mask mandate to see two of the three members of the R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné! performing again because it was supposedly historic and she couldn’t help herself and she would be making no apologies for that and stuff. Seriously:

“From my perspective, I was there, I was eating and I was drinking, and I was sitting with my friends and everyone who came in there was vaccinated,” Breed said. “So the fact that we have turned this into a story about being maskless, No: I’m not going to sip and put my mask on, sip and put my mask on, sip and put mask on, eat and put my mask on. While I’m eating and I’m drinking I’m going to keep my mask off. And yes, while we’re drinking, like everyone else there, we were all having a good time and again, all vaccinated.”

[…]

“When I took a picture, as I do in any case or do an interview, yes I take my mask off when I take a picture,” she said. “I’m vaccinated. I don’t need to wear a mask to take a picture every single time. I don’t want to.”

[…]

“The message I want to get out is: Support our nightlife venues, support our restaurants, go out and enjoy yourself,” she said. “Make sure you are vaccinated because of the requirements, but don’t feel as though you have to be micro-managed about mask wearing. We don’t need the fun police to come in and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing. We know what we need to do to protect ourselves.”

It’s like she’s completely baffled as to why people are upset and the media keeps asking her questions about it. Watch:

As far as having to put a mask on between sipping on your drink and eating, I agree that in and of itself shouldn’t be a violation of her mandate, but eating and drinking wasn’t all she was doing. She was posing for photos, getting up and dancing and singing, and then she defended herself by saying in so many words that the “spirit” of the event moved her or whatever.

Not acceptable.

She and her friends should be fined for this just like any average citizen in San Francisco would be. She should also repeal her mask mandate, considering she inadvertently made the case perfectly during her interview that people know what they need to do to protect themselves and don’t need a helping hand from the “fun police.”

Related: A Closer Look at ‘Recall’ Tea Leaves and Other Data Reveals Big 2022 Warning Signs for Democrats

No Mandate, Just Headache: How to Torment Dictator Newsom

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As my colleague Brandon Morse wrote this morning in Newsom Proves He Learned Nothing from the Recall, Hints He’s Dropping the Hammer on Californians, His Hairfulness thinks that the fact that he “won” the Recall indicates that he now has a mandate to move forward with COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates.

I have said it before—he really needs to lay off the sauce.

Newsom told CBS News:

“Don’t be timid. Lean in,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about formal authority of setting the tone and tenor on masks — on vaccines and masks. But it’s the moral authority that we have: that we’re on the right side of history and we’re doing the right thing to save people’s lives.”

Yes, Hair Gel, come closer so we can bloody your nose. Because that is what your supposed “moral authority” is going to get you.

Just yesterday, Newsom waxed philosophical with FoxLA, saying that he feels a “deep sense of responsibility not just for those who voted no, but those who voted yes.”

We know full well what his sense of responsibility means: treat those who wanted him gone like brain-addled children who just need to be dictated to even more, in order to teach us the right way of thinking.

Go plotz on your throne. While we continue to fight to get our state back and get on with our lives.

His Hairfulness is as delusional as ever, assuming that just because people chose the lesser of two evils, that they want him to increase the pain.

Los Angeles and San Francisco County will no doubt fall in line, as will San Diego; the idiots truly run those asylums. The rest of the state who voted to see him recalled? Along with that bloody nose, they’ll probably give him the middle finger. It’s already happening.

After Dementia Joe did his garbled vaccine mandate, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco made it known in a Sheriff’s department podcast that he would not enforce any vaccine mandates issued by the federal government or the state:

Describing himself as “the last line of defense from tyrannical government overreach,” Bianco on Monday doubled down on statements he made during a Thursday episode of the department’s podcast, “RSO Roundup,” in which he said he believes vaccines are a personal choice.

“The government has no ability and no authority to mandate your health choices,” Bianco said in a statement. “I will not enforce the vaccine mandate on Sheriff’s Department employees.”

Back in August, when most of the Bay area counties were reinstituting indoor mask mandates, Solano County said, they’d let science and common sense rule.

How refreshing.

In Solano County, there is no mandate, just a recommendation.

“The data doesn’t support the need for such a mandate,” said Solano County Health Director Dr. Bela Matyas. “This disease in our county is very clearly spreading during and through social events with people who are going to parties, barbecues, picnics, and campouts.” Dr. Matyas described some of the transmission events to be “sharing of food, sharing of cigarettes, playing beer pong, activities that are clearly going to transmit the virus very effectively and then there are larger gatherings where people are essentially on top of each other.”

Dr. Matyas says indoor public spaces are not where they have seen COVID-19 transmission, therefore he doesn’t believe an indoor mask mandate would help.

“I’ll use a metaphor, you know we’re filling up a tank with gas to fix a flat tire. It’s not going to fix the flat tire.”

That metaphor fits the entire pandemic response in my opinion. What’s the over/under on how long Dr. Bela Matyas will keep his job?

Newsom knows he is the one on the wrong side of history; yet he continues to gaslight, bluster, preen, and do what he does best—bloviate.

“I was recalled to no small degree because of our approach to this pandemic,” he said.

Newsom will soon learn that it’s not going to be like it was back in March 2020, when no one knew much about COVID-19 or how to mitigate it. The American people, and smart Californians know COVID now. It’s not some scary bogeyman that we need these “health experts” to parse out and spoon feed to us. We know where to find accurate data, how to read said data, and which doctors and unelected bureaucrats are on a power trip and merely interested in lining their pockets and maintaining the status quo, and which ones are truly interested in maintaining people’s health and saving lives.

There are also legal precedents that have been set, and are being set. California has paid out more than 4 million for 10 lawsuits that Newsom lost in 2020-2021. These lawsuits were mostly from last year’s shutdown of churches, but also involved other public gathering places.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The state of California has settled at least 10 lawsuits this year related to public health orders during the coronavirus pandemic, agreeing to pay more than $4 million to cover the costs of lawyers who sued over restrictions on religious services, schools, strip clubs and tattoo parlors.

The 10 settlements, which total nearly $4.36 million for attorneys’ fees and costs, all name Gov. Gavin Newsom as a defendant and were obtained through a public records request to his office by the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit organization that promotes free speech and government transparency.

Speaking of the First Amendment Coalition, they are petitioning the California Supreme Court to give citizens the right to access pandemic-related data that is being collected across the state.

You see, Newsom and his health officials have never revealed their methods in ascertaining how they come to their conclusions about case rates, variants, and hospitalizations. They refuse to disclose that voodoo that they do.

As Executive Director David Snyder outlined in his letter on their website:

This data, which is collected and reported by a large number of employers, is key to understanding how the pandemic has and continues to affect the health and safety of workers at plants, grocery stores, offices and more.

The public deserves to know and Newsom’s forward push to clamp down even further with vaccine mandates and restrictions on the unvaccinated will only strengthen the case that the public has that right.

I can’t wait.

Precedents will make any future lawsuits more credible. How much money does California really have? If the zone is flooded with lawsuits, it will run out pretty quickly. Can plaintiffs start targeting Hair Gel’s assets and campaign coffers?

Asking for a friend.

If Newsom insists on doubling down on stupid, the citizens of California can spend the next year and a half suing him to high heaven, doing serious damage to whatever he thinks his mandate will produce.

After being bloodied, how pretty will he look for re-election in 2022? How about those aspirations for higher office?

One lawsuit in process: The Los Angeles Police Department, of all places. Six officers are suing over the vaccine mandates laid down by Hair Gel:

Los Angeles police department (LAPD) employees have sued over requirements they get vaccinated for Covid-19, alleging that the department has created a “hostile work environment” for the unvaccinated and that the mandate violates employees’ privacy and civil rights.

Word on the street is that this case is strong. Any time you bring in civil rights, you have a boat load of precedent to back it up. Not to mention, how will Governor Equity and Diversity look if he keeps trampling on the civil rights of his citizens?

In a higher education lawsuit, a University of California Irvine professor is suing over vaccine mandates and insisting his natural immunity from having contracted COVID and survived should be recognized.

“I feel like I’m being treated unequally,” Aaron Kheriaty, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California, Irvine, said, SBG reported. “If my immunity is as good, indeed, very likely better, than that conferred by the vaccine, there doesn’t seem to be any rational basis for discriminating against my form of immunity and requiring me to get a different form of immunity.”

Kheriaty, who serves as director of UCI’s Medical Ethics Program and is a member of the UC Office of the President Critical Care Bioethics Working Group, said he contracted the virus in July 2020 and had raised concerns over the vaccine mandate to school leaders. However, he said he was met “mostly with radio silence” before he filed the lawsuit.

A George Mason University professor filed a similar lawsuit and won. More precedent established, so expect to see more cases like this too.

Other faculty members joined Kheriaty on the effectiveness of natural immunity in a legal brief and cited research showing that people who have previously contracted COVID-19 may experience worse side effects from the vaccine than those who never contracted the virus.

“It violates medical ethics to expose someone to this risk when they have robust, durable immunity that actually neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 upon exposure,” the faculty members wrote.

The more Newsom pushes forward with his “moral authority”, the more he can expect to get this type of pushback.

Finally, Newsom continues to turn a blind eye to illegals flooding our Southern border and entering California. Illegals who are barely being tested and not being traced for COVID-19. However, he is insisting that taxpaying citizens who do not have proof of vaccination lose their ability to interact publicly and lose their livelihoods.

Go ahead, Hair Gel. Keep insisting you have a mandate and that the people want more draconian measures to your own peril.

We look forward to your death by a thousand papercuts.

The Republican “Pick Up Our Toys and Go Home” Mentality Has to Go

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Let me start by saying that I flat-out disagree with the “retreat” mentality the right exhibits in any given situation where the odds are stacked against it. Yesterday, my colleague Jeff Charles wrote a piece addressing the many calls to leave California and making it clear that abandoning the state won’t lead to victory there. This paragraph, in particular, really hit home.

“We don’t lose because the left is some all-powerful leviathan. We lose because we don’t fight smart. In many instances, we don’t fight at all. The GOP has become accustomed to campaigning only in areas in which they can win fairly easily,” he wrote.

And he’s right, and I don’t need to just focus on California to show you how right he is. Instead, I’m going to pull the camera back to show you just how bad the right indulges in the retreat mentality.

For ages, we on the right have considered certain battlefields completely unwinnable, and this includes the mainstream media and cultural wars such as movies, television, and video games. If you attempt to engage conservatives in a discussion about the entertainment industry you’ll have far too many people either tuning out or vocally shooting down any talk we might have about it in the first place.

“This discussion is moot! The left owns Hollywood! Just #turnitoff! There are more important things to talk about! Etc., etc., etc.”

I, and many others, from Dana Loesch to Andrew Breitbart, have made it very clear that the culture war is just as important, if not more important than the political war. However, conservatives have given it up for lost and have no desire to show up to fight there, thinking that any battle we dive into will result in a loss.

And you know what? They’re right.

We’re going to lose and we’re going to lose a lot. They’re so entrenched that driving them out will take years of hard-fought battles ranging from the legal to the physical. People will suffer character assassinations, cancelation, heartbreak, and threats to their well-being…but it’s a battle worth fighting because America is worth fighting for.

The final goal of the culture war isn’t to make someone pull a lever for a certain side, it’s for the very heart of the citizen. Currently, conservatives are appealing to an emotion that the left is starving out of Americans, and soon there won’t be anything left to appeal to. Gone will be the desire to keep freedom, capitalism, and true equality alive.

These losing battles need to be fought, but losing battles doesn’t mean losing the war. You can ask George Washington about that.

At some point, the constant pressure will cause holes in the defense to develop. Footholds will appear and methods of dealing with various attacks will be perfected. Hard targets will slowly soften and morale will drop in our enemies. Fortresses will change hands as minds change and hearts are affected.

As Charles made very clear, even Texas, a hard-red state, almost started to turning purple thanks to the left’s lack of fear in fighting seemingly unwinnable battles. They have a winning mentality and despite their losses, they don’t quit. They keep going. At some point, Texas will go purple, and then at some point further down the line, it will go blue.

But if they can do it, we can do it, we just need to learn our lessons about what does and doesn’t work. We need to stop fighting with old tactics that no longer have the effects they once did, and find new ways of conducting battle. We need to change as a party. We need to increase our aggression and stop fighting defense.

But most importantly, we need to stop picking up our toys and going home if the fight looks too difficult or if we lose a few battles because soon there won’t be a home to take our toys to.

Newsom Proves He Learned Nothing from the Recall, Hints He's Dropping the Hammer on Californians

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California Governor Gavin Newsom may have survived the recall effort but apparently, he learned nothing from the episode and he’s expressed his desire to buckle down on the main reason his job was threatened in the first place.

According to CBS News, Newsom’s recall victory gave him the idea that what the voters really want is tougher lockdowns and measures when it comes to COVID-19. In fact, he believed it was a message for all Democrats to “stiffen our spines and lean into keeping people safe and healthy.”

“Don’t be timid. Lean in,” he told CBS. “Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about formal authority of setting the tone and tenor on masks — on vaccines and masks. But it’s the moral authority that we have: that we’re on the right side of history and we’re doing the right thing to save people’s lives.”

Funny enough, Newsom was aware that the draconian measures he took during the pandemic were what put his job in danger in the first place, but with his survival, he’s taken it as a mandate to mandate.

Despite the stringent lockdown measures, California continuously proved to be one of the worst states in terms of COVID hospitalizations, outpacing even the states Democrats looked down on for not taking the virus seriously enough. For instance, Florida and Texas combined still didn’t match up to the number of hospitalizations California saw.

(READ: Graph Showing Difference in Case Rates Between Florida and California Is a Wake-Up Call for America)

Because of his orders, California underwent a period of stagnation even worse than usual as its economy sank further into the mud. To boot, Newsom continued to prove he wasn’t just a bad leader making bad decisions, but that he wasn’t concerned with following his own rules either as he appeared at a high-end restaurant amidst his lockdown.

It’s here we see the results of giving authoritarians like Newsom power. Despite the fact that Californians united to try to push him out, his recall survival lead him to believe that want people really want is more lockdowns and a tighter grip on their lives. It’s likely that more or less any reelection of hard-left authoritarians will trigger the same thought process.

What this means for Californians going forward remains to be seen, but judging by the past, we have a pretty good idea and it will involve even more suffering for the already suffering California citizens.

But while Newsom may have learned nothing, the rest of us can learn a lot from what he does next.