LAPD spent millions on ‘green’ electric BMWs used for joyrides to nail salons, day lunches: report

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Two years after the LAPD touted a multimillion-dollar purchase of a fleet of eco-friendly electric BMWS, the vehicles are being used for personal trips to grab lunch and — in one instance — a visit to a nail salon, according to a local report.

BMW announced in 2016 that it had beaten Tesla and won a contract to supply the department with 100 all-electric plug-in vehicles to be used exclusively for community outreach and police business.

But a CBS investigative team, which reviewed mileage logs and followed the BMWs when they left LAPD garages, found that officers appeared to have a loose interpretation of those guidelines.

One BMW went straight to a Yoshinoya drive-thru and returned to a police station, CBS reported. Another headed for Loyola Marymount University and picked up someone for a lunch date, and a third deployed to a nail salon for an hour-long manicure.

CBS reported that its investigative team followed Annemarie Sauer, commanding officer of LAPD fiscal operations, as she used a department-issued electric BMW to drive to a nail salon. Sauer, who reportedly spent more than an hour inside the salon and had been seen getting her nails done, said she had “no comment” when she was confronted by a CBS crew. – READ MORE

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Democrats fear the Trump administration’s re-reinstatement of citizenship questions on the 2020 U.S. Census will cost California a Congressional seat and billions in funding.

The number of U.S. House of Representative seats was fixed by law in 1911 at 435. The “enumeration” requires at that each state have at least one Representative, and the other Representatives are allocated according to population as determined by the U.S. Census every ten years. Based on the 2010 Census data, California received the most, at 53.

But Politico reports that could change with the Department of Justice sending a letter on December 12 to the Census Bureau asking that the citizenship question eliminated in 2010 during the Obama administration be reinstated for the 2020 Census.

According to the Justice Department’s General Counsel, Arthur E. Gary, “This data is critical to the Department’s enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.” He added, “To fully enforce those requirements, the Department needs a reliable calculation of the citizen voting-age population in localities where voting rights violations are alleged or suspected.”

The Obama administration discontinued the 1970-2000 “long form” questionnaire that asked citizenship questions. Democrats claim that it was appropriately replaced by the American Community Survey (ACS). But the Justice Department stresses that ACS is a “samples survey that is sent to only around one in every thirty-eight households each year.” – READ MORE

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A “New California” movement says it wants to split the coastal state in half, letting “right-wingers” create their own economy and governmental structure separate from the leftists who rule in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed say they’re leading a movement to break off rural and southern California territories, occupied mostly by people who aren’t thrilled with the rules and regulations — and especially the taxes — levied by politicians closer to the coasts.

According to Fox News, the movement declares that, “after years of over taxation, regulation, and mono party politics the State of California and many of its 58 Counties have become ungovernable,” and that those same counties are now “under a tyrannical form of government that does not follow” basic “Constitutional requirements.”

“There’s something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed,” the movement’s leaders told CBS News. – READ MORE

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California’s Democrat-controlled state government wants to re-classify state taxes as charitable contributions to avoid the new $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions in President Donald Trump’s new tax reform.

For decades, California Democrats have demanded higher and more progressive tax rates as a social justice cure to address income inequality. But they are appalled that President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act progressively hurts the state’s highest income earners by capping SALT deductibility.

Gov. Jerry Brown called limiting SALT deductibility to about an upper middle-class income level as “evil in the extreme,” and hissed at Trump’s Republican allies for “acting like a bunch of Mafia thugs.” California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) snarled, “Republicans in Washington have once again zeroed in on California to punish us and make our state the single biggest loser in their reckless tax scheme.”

California is the most populous state, but only has the fourth-highest percentage of residents that claim SALT deduction, at 34.5 percent. The Golden State’s “per-filer” average SALT deduction is a middle-class $12,682. But due to rich coastal and multi-property owners, California has the highest “per claimant” SALT deduction of any state, at $36,802. For California’s rich, tax reform means an effective increase in state taxes. – READ MORE

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Last week, signs cropped up at five California border crossings announcing a new “welcome policy” for illegal immigrants and gang members seeking shelter in the state. Unsurprisingly, the State of California was not amused and now those signs are coming down and officials want to know who exposed their plan for the state to unwitting interstate drivers on their way into California from Las Vegas.

The signs had a number of joke messages on them, from “nannies and gardeners make Malibu great!” to “welcome illegal immigrants and MS-13 gang members.” Several mentioned that “Democrats need the votes,” implying that border-jumpers would prove useful in the upcoming elections.

Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation, now says all five of the signs which were scattered along I-15 and I-40, have been taken down. It wasn’t a hard job. The signs were just paper, taped over an existing welcome sign beckoning tourists to a welcome center. – READ MORE\

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