Tag: California

Dragon launch abort tests scheduled

9:45 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has scheduled its Dragon launch abort tests for November and January.

The Hawthorne, California-based company plans to conduct a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in November, followed by an in-flight abort test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in January, Garrett Reisman, SpaceX Dragon Rider program manager, said here Aug. 6 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2014 conference.

In the pad-abort test, Dragon will be mounted to a mocked-up SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and use its hydrazine-fueled SuperDraco thrusters to boost itself up and away from the pad, as it might need to do in the event of a major problem just before or during liftoff. The in-flight test will attempt to repeat the feat at altitude.

In related news, two former SpaceX employees who were terminated in July when the company laid off about 400 people in an annual restructuring of its workforce have sued the company for not giving them ample notice as required by California law.

The California law is pretty clear, which means these employees will likely win, which also sounds to me like a good reason to shift SpaceX’s entire operation to Texas and its new spaceport in Brownsville.

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Obamacare causes wait time in California emergency rooms to skyrocket

9:17 am

Finding out what’s in it: Because their doctors are no longer accepting their Obamacare health plans, patients are flocking to emergency rooms in California, thus increasing the average wait time for treatment to five hours.

I think this quote from the article summarizes the situation quite nicely:

California doctor Robert Subers told his local news station he cannot accept some Obamacare insurance because the payments are so low he would end up owing money out of his own pocket for each visit. “If it was supposed to increase access to care, Obamacare, and if it was supposed to bring down healthcare costs, I’m trying to find out where it’s done either,” he said.

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Two California residents have filed a class action suit against their health insurance company for misrepresenting the doctors and hospitals that their plan would include.

8:05 pm

Finding out what’s not in it: Two California residents have filed a class action suit against their health insurance company for misrepresenting the doctors and hospitals that their plan would include.

The lawsuit accuses Blue Shield of advertising “one of the largest networks in the state” – with more than 60,000 physicians and 351 hospitals – and of failing to disclose that the networks for certain plans were substantially smaller. After receiving medical treatment numerous times between January and March, Harrington and Talon later discovered that their providers were not covered, forcing them to pay the charges out-of-pocket, the complaint said. The lawsuit alleged claims of false advertising, unfair business practices and breach of contract under California law.

We must remember that though Obamacare itself is not the subject of this suit, the law is still the root cause of the problem. It forced these individuals to buy insurance they might not have wanted, and it forced the insurance companies to restructure and narrow their insurance plans to meet the dictates of the law.

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The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.

1:21 am

The treasure trove of gold coins found by a California couple on their property might be the gold coins stolen from a 1901 heist of the San Francisco mint.

This article also explains why the couple has remained anonymous, as they fear the federal government is now going to step in and steal their find from them.

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Gun manufacturers flee California over its microstamping law.

10:28 am

Banning guns by proxy: Gun manufacturers flee California over its microstamping law.

Smith & Wesson announced it will stop selling its handguns in California rather than manufacture them to comply with the new microstamping law. The other publicly traded firearms manufacturer in the U.S., Sturm, Ruger, also said this month that it will stop new sales to California. The announcement late Wednesday came a week after the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, filed suit against California for requiring that all new semi-automatic pistols that are not already on the state’s approved gun roster have the microstamping technology.

Microstamping is a patented process that, in theory, would have a unique code on the tip of a gun’s firing pin that would engrave that information on the casing when fired.

In other words, while the California legislature might want to make believe the technology is practical, the people who have to build and sell the guns know otherwise and can’t do it. So, this law essentially becomes a backdoor ban on guns and the second amendment. If you make it illegal to manufacture and sell guns, it doesn’t matter whether you have a right to own one.

Note also the basic dishonesty of the legislators who passed this law. They knew it was impractical, and did it not to put microstamping on ammo, but to make it impossible to sell guns. Or to put it more bluntly, they lied about what they were doing.

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“I have closed all my businesses in Ventura County, California.”

11:30 am

Sign of the times: “I have closed all my businesses in Ventura County, California.”

And the business owner is happy about it!

Never have I operated in a more difficult environment. Ventura County combines a difficult government environment with a difficult employee base with a difficult customer base.

Freedom not only requires that each person be free to follow their own dreams, it also demands that everyone else respect that desire and effort. If you read the story above, you will discover that in this part of California at least, no one respects this business owner’s desire and effort. Instead, from the government to his customers, everyone was out to destroy him, no matter what he tried to do.

So rather than follow his dream, he is shutting down and getting out. Very sad.

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Without permission California’s Obamacare exchange distributed the contact information of tens of thousands of people who had visited their website.

8:31 am

O joy. Without permission California’s Obamacare exchange distributed the contact information of tens of thousands of people who had visited their website.

I love this quote from the guy in charge:

Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, acknowledged that these consumers did not ask to be contacted by the state or its certified insurance agents. But he said the outreach program still complies with privacy laws and it was reviewed by the exchange’s legal counsel. “I can imagine some people may be upset,” Lee said in an interview Friday. “But I can see a lot of people will be comforted and relieved at getting the help they need to navigate a confusing process.”

To be so cavalier about handing out people’s contact information without permission suggests that they are likely to be as cavalier about poking into people’s confidential medical information without permission.

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Seven out of ten doctors in California are refusing to participate in Obamacare.

2:02 pm

O joy: Seven out of ten doctors in California are refusing to participate in Obamacare.

It isn’t surprising the doctors are rebelling. California refuses to pay them realistic fees. The factoid, however, that is really startling from this article is this:

[The doctors] also pointing out that Covered California’s website lists many doctors as participants when they aren’t. “Some physicians have been put in the network and they were included basically without their permission,” Lisa Folberg said. She is a CMA’s vice president of medical and regulatory Policy. “They may be listed as actually participating, but not of their own volition,” said Donald Waters, executive director of the Alameda-Contra Costa Medical Association. [emphasis mine]

Par for the course. Everything about Obamacare has been fraud and deception. This just adds another layer to that dishonesty.

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The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant.”

10:47 am

Modern American freedom: The UC Berkeley student government has banned the term “illegal immigrant.”

And what happens if someone ignores this ban? Will they send them to a concentration camp?

Considering the overwhelming support for the ban (with only one abstention), I wouldn’t be surprised if that is exactly what these students would like to do. And I expect them to try in the coming years as they move into positions of power.

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A university supervisor orders a student at Sonoma State University in California to remove her cross necklace because “it might offend others.”

10:31 am

A university supervisor orders a student at Sonoma State University in California to remove her cross necklace because “it might offend others.”

The university has responded properly, apologizing and stating that the supervisor was “completely wrong.” However, it remains horrifying that there are individuals in power in a university that somehow don’t understand the very basics of religious liberty.

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An audit of California’s fiscal state has found it to be $127 billion in the red.

9:54 am

The day of reckoning looms: An audit of California’s fiscal state has found it to be $127 billion in the red.

Were California’s state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits. The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state’s negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue. [emphasis mine]

None of this is a surprise. California voters chose Jerry Brown and the Democrats to lead them into more debt.

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A Democratic voter discovers he’s actually a tea party racist.

4:48 pm

A Democratic voter discovers he’s actually a tea party racist.

Today was a bad day. After meeting with my tax accountant, I am now cutting a very large check to the State of California, all of which resulted from Proposition 30 and the “retroactive tax” that was levied on my 2012 income. This despite the fact that I already paid my 2012 taxes back in September.

While the law stipulates that I must surrender this money, I refuse to acknowledge this as a tax at all. This is not a tax. This is an asset seizure plain and simple. The term “retroactive tax” is a despicable euphemism. It is no different than when Hugo Chavez used the benign-sounding “nationalize” to describe his seizure of private property in Venezuela.

He then notes that he is not a tea party member or even a Republican and that he voted for Obama twice.

Wanna bet that in the next election he’ll still vote Democratic? Based on the history of the past three decades, I expect that even after this experience, he will still refuse to abandon the faction he has adopted (the Democratic Party) and change his vote.

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A zoning board and the LAPD have shut down a thirty-year-old successful burger stand, apparently because they think it attracts crime.

10:05 pm

We’re here to help you: A zoning board and the LAPD have shut down a thirty-year-old successful burger stand, apparently because they think it attracts crime.

Watch the video at the link. The result of this brain-dead action will be an abandoned building in an abandoned neighborhood. Good going, California!

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California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

9:12 am

Success! California now has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

California’s state legislature and governorship have both been held by the Democrats for years. Both have repeatedly raised taxes. Both have repeatedly failed to balance the state’s budget. And both have been and continue to be eager to increase government regulation on the state’s citizenry. What could go wrong?

Update: In related news, Los Angeles’ film and television industry has lost 16,100 jobs in past seven years, mostly due to businesses leaving the state.

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