There is no doubt in my mind that California is the bellwether of American politics. Governed with the same type of progressive socialist democrats, cronyism, corruption, self-protection of the justice infrastructure, and hidden messages that are found in the Obama Administration.

However, where we see some light in the tunnel with the potential of a Republican victory – unfortunately here in California the GOP is not only dead – they are democrats in disguise or have been bought and paid for by the progressive special interests.

[My comments in bracketed blue italics.]

Why has the California Attorney General ignored progressive socialist democrat corruption on her watch as she prepares to become a progressive socialist democrat in the United States Senate?

Corruption allegations getting closer to Gov. Brown: Thomas Elias

Gov. Jerry Brown has tried for many months to ignore the growing scent of corruption now afflicting his administration, instead pushing the worldwide battle against climate change even as he virtually ignored the world’s largest methane leak while it spewed greenhouse gases for months in his back yard.

[Notwithstanding that the science of climate change has been perverted into a method to enlarge and increase government control and to engage in socialist wealth distribution schemes, we have seen unelected officials create administrative rules and regulations out of junk science that cannot hold up to scrutiny.]

But serious conflict of interest allegations now reach directly into his office, targeting his chief of staff, Nancy McFadden, the top Sacramento official for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for many years before she took a $1.04 million golden handshake in 2011 before rejoining Brown, for whom she worked in the 1970s. (The payment was essentially a bonus).

[Sort of like Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff who had a serious conflict of interest as she accepted money from the United States State Department, special interests like the Clinton Foundation, and commercial consulting clients.]

Not only did McFadden take PG&E’s money, but disclosure forms show she owned about $100,000 worth of PG&E stock and many potentially lucrative stock options through her early months back with Brown. During this time, she was allegedly a key part of the appointment process for new members of the state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates PG&E and other California utilities, a normal chief of staff function. There is no evidence McFadden recused herself from utility matters. This, of course, raises the question of whether her golden handshake was really a prepayment for future services.

[Recusal is a fiction. Influence is influence whether or not someone formally participates in the process. And, how many times have we seen government officials being given a pass and allowed to file “amendments and corrections” when wrongdoing is discovered?]

But emails among the 70,000 obtained by San Bruno city officials after the 2010 PG&E gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people there indicate her old friends at PG&E believed she was involved.

[Those pesky emails that are the basis of many discoveries of influence peddling and outright wrongdoing are increasingly being covered-up by out-of-channel communications not subject to the various public records acts and freedom of information laws.]

In early 2011, PG&E executive Brian Cherry — now under criminal investigation along with former PUC President Michael Peevey — advised someone seeking a high PUC post via email to get help from McFadden, whom he called “the backdoor route” to getting appointed.

[Is this one of those never-ending investigations that kick the can down the road to another administration which is too busy to proceed or is this part of the “everybody is dirty, so we are going to do nothing” process?]

The pileup of ethical problems in Brown’s administration seems to grow every few weeks, with the McFadden charges merely the newest. They join obvious conflicts of interest and examples of cronyism exercised by the Energy Commission, exposed in this column in 2014. Add the proven collusion between Peevey and executives of Southern California Edison Co. in assessing consumers more than 70 percent of the cost of the 2012 failure of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station, caused by an Edison blunder.

[Edison executives apparently changed the design specifications of the heat exchanger to increase productivity and was totally responsible for the debacle. Why should Edison’s shareholders and executives not pay for the entire mess?]

Then see Brown’s almost total indifference to the massive methane leak at a Southern California Gas Co. storage facility near Porter Ranch in Los Angeles, when his sister Kathleen draws six figures yearly as a director of SoCal’s parent company. Her position alone should raise conflict-of-interest questions whenever Brown decides utility policy. The Porter Ranch leak spewed more greenhouse gases than many months of driving by all the cars in the Los Angeles Basin, but Brown said little about it.

[This is the first time that I have heard that Brown’s sister sat on the Board of the utility’s parent company.]

Taken together, it appears there could be a pattern of corruption at high levels of state government, and a consistent Brown practice of ignoring or condoning both corruption and safety lapses.

[There is little doubt in my mind that the progressive socialist democrats in California is an example of organized crime and should be prosecuted under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.]

Source: Corruption allegations getting closer to Gov. Brown: Thomas Elias

Why should anybody be surprised that California’s progressive socialist democrats are using the same encryption and technology used by terrorists?

San Francisco lawmakers use a secret messaging app to keep chats from prying public eyes

Telegram, a self-destructing messaging app, has become popular among San Francisco public officials as a way to evade public records laws, says a report in The Information.

California law says that texts and emails are considered part of the public record if they relate to public business, according to a guide from the city attorney. 

Telegram lets users set messages to self-destruct on the devices used for the chat, so they cannot be seen after a certain time period.

Several San Francisco supervisors — the city council members who make many of the city's laws — are reportedly using the app, and one unnamed government staff member said in the report that they were encouraged to use the app as a way of bypassing public records.  

Telegram rose to notoriety after it was apparently used by ISIS members to spread propaganda. Telegram shut down almost 80 such channels last November. 

Source: San Francisco lawmakers use Telegram app - Business Insider

Bottom line …

Much like our federal government, California politics under the progressive socialist democrats and the RINO republicans has become just as much a cesspool of political corruption.

And, it is the people of California, through their partisanship that permit themselves to be robbed blind of their money and their freedoms. From environmental laws that raise taxes, the price of goods, and remove individual choice from the marketplace to the outright destruction of jobs and our social safety nets by illegal aliens, it is all by design – supported by the low-information voter who believes that supporting the progressive socialist democrats is the same as supporting a sports team.

We are so screwed.

-- steve