On Wednesday

Bill author Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, crafted this legislation due to a surge in smartphone theft in recent years, where such thefts account for one-third of all robberies in the county. According to data reported by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, “smartphone theft accounted for 60 percent of all robberies in San Francisco and up to 75 percent of all robberies in Oakland.” Los Angeles also “experienced a 26 percent increase in smartphone thefts since 2011.”

Gascón blamed the wireless industry for failing “to safeguard its products,” resulting in victimized consumers.

Both Gascón and Sen. Leno contended that the industry’s previously voluntary measures placed “too great a burden on individual consumers to take action,” whereas mandated adoption of anti-theft solutions could “undercut the black market” since potential thieves would know that most stolen phones could be “bricked” and thus “far less valuable.”

SB962 was opposed by the business community, particularly the high-tech industry. The San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce wrote in opposition that “private sector solutions should be sought whenever possible to address public concerns.” SB962, they said, has a well-intentioned goal to decrease theft and increase privacy, but “would not achieve that ultimate outcome.” The chamber also pointed to the fact that most smartphone operating systems developed in Silicon Valley, including Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone, “already possess the capability to remotely lock, erase or disable … mobile devices.”

The Wireless Association, joined by smartphone manufacturers such as Motorola, Nokia and Huawei, as well as major carriers like AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, also wrote a letter in opposition warning of “negative consequences to consumer security and public safety.” According to the letter, the risks posed by SB962 included:

• Impractical state laws: “State regulation will never keep pace with innovation in the wireless ecosystem. What state lawmakers mandate as a solution today may not be the solution consumers demand or need tomorrow.”
• Limiting consumer choice: “Any mandated technology standard will quickly become outdated in the fast-moving wireless application world. Requiring a particular technology is also counter to the policies that have made the wireless industry one of the most important and vibrant sectors of our economy.”
• Hacking drawbacks: “If consumers can turn mobile devices into ‘bricks,’ so can hackers. As the L.A. Times has suggested, any technology that is mandated widely across the nation may be at a greater risk of security breaches and attacks.”

The association also addressed specific steps the wireless industry has taken in working with the FCC and law enforcement to actively address the issue.

Sen. Leno said in a prepared statement that smartphone theft is “already on the decline as more new phones come equipped with kill switches.” The release highlighted a Consumer Reports study from June showing that, in 2014, 2.1 million Americans had their phones stolen, down from 3.1 million in 2013. This 30 percent decrease could be attributed to the passage of SB962, but also the natural progression of technology and the industry’s cooperation with the FCC to protect consumers.

Since the passage of the bill, smartphone manufacturers indicated most phones sold in the U.S. would meet the California standard for kill switches, rather than creating a California-specific phone.

In a statement explaining the campaign, CDPH described two new TV ads emphasizing “the e-cigarette industry’s use of candy flavored ‘e-juice'” and “exposing the fact that big tobacco companies are in the e-cigarette business.”

The move bolstered momentum for broad crackdowns on vapes, which have been targeted by policymakers and activists who see them as just as bad as tobacco cigarettes — if not worse.

Playing politics

Political considerations have played into CDPH’s adverse judgment against vapes. New data recently showed that, last year, the use of e-cigs outpaced the use of tobacco cigarettes among teenagers and young adults.

Defenders of the freedom to vape argued this is good news. Vaping companies have claimed e-cigs help smokers abandon far more dangerous tobacco products, especially those, like traditional cigarettes, that emit high numbers of carcinogens.

But for prohibitionists, e-cigs presented a special hazard because of their accessibility and appeal to children. As the Los Angeles Daily News detailed, those drawbacks appeared to be the product of unregulated marketing, a more pleasurable use experience and apparent carelessness among adult consumers with children:

“Most startling to health officials was the spike in calls to California Poison Control centers related to exposures to accidental e-cigarette poisonings, including drinking the liquid inside. There were seven calls in 2012 to poison control. In 2014, those calls jumped to 243. More than 60 percent of all those e-cigarette related calls involved children 5 years and under.”

As NBC News reported, “bottles and cartridges that contain the liquid for e-cigs have been known to leak and tend not to be equipped with child-resistant caps, creating a potential source of poisoning through ingestion or just through skin contact.”

Although legislation and regulation could be tailored narrowly to focus on the threat of poisoning, public health officials issued a broad warning that comports with the prevailing view among prohibitionists.

Dr. Ron Chapman, State Health Officer and director of the California Department of Public Health, said that “many people do not know that they pose many of the same health risks as traditional cigarettes and other tobacco products.” In January, he called for a “bold public education campaign” to roll back e-cig gains in market share. Anti-smoking advocates working in the policy arena have been all but unanimous in treating e-cigs like an integral part of the same problem as tobacco products.

Safety over freedom

Despite the unfolding research concerning the differences between e-cig effects and those of tobacco cigarettes, prohibitionists in the political arena have used heightened rhetoric of their own to advance vape bans.

Earlier this year, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, underscored how far many officials have been willing to go in departing from the scientific record. In January, he introduced Senate Bill 140, a bill that would ban e-cigs at hospitals, restaurants, schools and workplaces.

“No tobacco product should be exempt from California’s smoke-free laws simply because it’s sold in a modern or trendy disguise,” he warned. Yet, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum observed, e-cigs neither emit smoke nor burn tobacco. Instead, they heat a device which allows the user to exhale a vapor.

SB140 will go into committee hearings this spring, behind a full-steam-ahead approach to cracking down on vapes. As CalWatchdog.com reported previously, the so-called “precautionary principle” — better safe than sorry — has inspired a spate of municipal regulations that treat e-cigs the same way as tobacco cigarettes, despite widespread ignorance and uncertainty as to how the products differ.

By Katy Grimes

Touting “community values” and the need to reduce crime, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, wants the Crossroads of the West gun show tossed out of the Cow Palace in South San Francisco.

But a closer look at the issues suggests that Leno’s “values” might not reflect the larger community and shows little substance to the claim that crime is linked to the gun show. Instead, the real goal appears to be to give Leno and other San Francisco Democrats a chance to demonstrate their hatred for gun rights by running one of the last remaining legal gun venues out of town.

Leno’s SB 475 would ban the gun show. If the measure passed and Gov. Jerry Brown were willing to sign it, the Legislature would be able to intervene because the Cow Palace is owned by the state and managed by the Department of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Fairs and Expositions.

Such a ban would be against the state’s financial interests. According to the Department of Finance, the Crossroads of the West gun show brings in $150,000 to $180,000 in rent every year for the Cow Palace, in addition to the state and local tax revenue the event generates.

Leno’s claims undercut — and mocked — in testimony

On Wednesday, SB 475 was heard by the Assembly Appropriations Committee in an often-testy hearing. Leno once again declared that the community surrounding the Cow Palace in South San Francisco does not want the gun shows. Here is the succinct version of his argument from his website:

“For years, residents, community organizations and elected leaders from the neighborhoods surrounding Cow Palace have asked to have a voice in the decision to hold gun shows in their backyards, but they have been ignored. Meanwhile, firearms related crimes persist in these communities, tearing apart the lives of innocent families who reside in the surrounding area. We must give local communities a say in determining whether they want gun shows in their neighborhoods, especially when they live in daily fear of gun violence.”

The Cow Palace is located in Bayview-Hunters Point, which has been overrun with gangs and drugs since the 1970s, and has a high rate of murder, violent crime and poverty. Though it has only a small fraction of San Francisco’s entire population, the area has 40 percent of San Francisco’s homicides, according to Leno.

Yet as testimony showed, the high murder rate has never been tied to gun sales at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show. In fact, there have been no reported incidents involving gun violence at the gun show.

And the idea that the Cow Palace’s booking decisions should reflect “community values” triggered joking and barbs at the hearing, given that Leno is mum about the annual Erotic Exotic Ball and the Cannabis Festival, also held annually at the venue.

Ban would create huge headaches for gun owners

John Lovell, representing the California Police Chiefs Association, said banning the Crossroads of the West gun show from the Cow Palace would send anyone wanting to buy or sell a gun to “Nevada,” since there’s nowhere else in San Francisco left to make a gun transfer.

Lovell said California has the strictest and safest gun-show laws in the country. “The Cow Palace gun show has as much to do with gun violence as the Exotic Erotic Ball has to do with marriage infidelity,” Lovell said.

“You want to limit choices to consumers,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, to Leno. Donnelly pointed out people pay to get into the gun show at the Cow Palace and wait in line for two hours.

“Obviously there is a demand for this,” Donnelly said. “No one is holding a gun to their heads to go to the gun show.”

“You want it in your front yard? I’ll support that,” Leno retorted. “The community doesn’t want it. I represent the values of the neighborhood.”

“How do you know the community doesn’t want it, with a two-hour line?” Donnelly asked.

Leno said the parents of a nearby middle school signed a petition.

“The police chiefs pointed out the Erotic Exotic Ball,” Donnelly said, noting the irony of Leno worrying about the interests of a nearby school only when guns were involved.

“Neighbors care so much about this,” Leno added. “They just don’t want it in their front yard.”

But Leno never made a connection between the gun show and violent crime in the area.

An ongoing crusade by anti-gun San Francisco pols

Leno’s crusade is nothing new. For a decade, Leno has wanted to boot the gun show out of the Cow Palace, including twice before offering bills to that end that failed to win passage. The measures were identical to legislation by former state Sen. Jackie Speier, a Democratic lawmaker from Hillsborough. Speier’s bill was introduced in 2004 but failed to get through the Assembly.

Speier, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-District Attorney Kamala Harris were all supportive of banning the gun show from the Cow Palace. “Gun shows at the Cow Palace threaten our most vulnerable residents,” Newsom said in 2007, Inside Bay Area reported.

If that were the case, then there would have been crime victims coming forward to back Leno’s legislation and testifying at the hearing. There were not.

Leno’s anti-gun show rhetoric may be in keeping with his anti-gun ideology, but it isn’t backed up by reality.

By Katy Grimes

What do leisure suits and gun shows have in common? More than you might think. It turns out that some members of the California Senate don’t particularly like either. But I’ll bet in this Legislature, gun shows are despised more.

But this is about constitutional rights, and not the right to wear ugly, pastel, stinky polyester clothing with the knees permanently stretched out.

At issue is whether the California Legislature can dictate who rents the Cow Palace. After taking a vote Thursday on SB 475 by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, the majority of senators think they should be able to decide.

Leno said the community surrounding the Cow Palace in South San Francisco does not want gun shows at the entertainment and exposition center. According to Leno, local residents have taken the issue up with San Mateo and San Francisco counties. But the Cow Palace is owned by the State of California, leaving the counties without final jurisdiction over the facility.

“This is about community values,” Leno said.

Senators have once again trampled on the Constitution.

There was one exception to the Democratic majority in support of Leno’s bill. “I hope we don’t begin to say ‘what I do and don’t like’ simply because we don’t like someone’s activity,” said Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood. “I don’t like guys who wear leisure suits, so they should be banned from renting the Cow Palace?”

“There is no evidence that people who left the gun show shot up San Francisco or committed crimes,” Wright added.

But Leno said with a middle school nearby, the Cow Palace gun show is causing the neighborhood undo trauma. “Many of the students at the middle school are dealing with post traumatic stress disorder,” Leno said. “That’s how violent the neighborhood is.”

What Leno did not say is the area surrounding the Cow Palace has a history of year round violence, which has nothing to do with the four gun shows a year.

“Their condition is exacerbated because of the gun shows,” Leno added. “It’s about community values.”

Community values probably have very little to do with Leno’s bill, and more to do with gun control activists inappropriately and cruelly using a violent neighborhood as a convenient prop. And Leno did not tell his Senate colleagues that  the Cow Palace is the same facility that hosts an annual marijuana users 420 Celebration,  and the Erotic Exotic Ball, dubbed “the wildest party on earth.”

Crossroads of the West Gun Shows take place four times a year inside the Cow Palace. Sen Ted Gaines, R-Rocklin, said there are no records or reports of guns sold at the show ever used in a crime.

This isn’t about community values, it’s about activist hysteria and hype.

A recent story in the San Jose Mercury News explained more. “But critics say it is offensive to hold the Bay Area’s most prominent gun show in the vicinity of poor and working-class neighborhoods, including Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco, that are plagued by gun violence. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said Friday there have been 75 gun-related crimes in the past six months within 2 miles of the Cow Palace.”

The rest of the story

Since the 1970’s Bayview-Hunters Point, also the location of a decommissioned naval shipyard, has been overrun with gangs, drugs, high murder rate, violent crime, discrimination, police harassment, and poverty. The area has one of the highest crime rates in all of San Francisco, despite having only a small fraction of San Francisco’s entire population. Some reports have found nearly 30 percent of San Francisco’s homicides occur in this area.

Is this because of the Crossroads of the West gun show, held at the Cow Palace four times each year?

Instead of blaming a constitutionally protected right with which they don’t agree, Leno, along with the area’s other state and U.S. elected representatives, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, and U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, also Democrats, may want to ask why these residents have been forced to live under such violent, abysmal conditions for so many years.

TIP to Leno: It’s not about the Cow Palace gun show, or the people who frequent it.

SB 475 was passed almost entirely along party lines, 25-13. Sen. Wright was the only Democrat to vote against it.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — Anti-gun lawmakers in the California state Senate and Assembly have been busy advancing legislation to further control guns.

On March 7, the state Senate passed SJR 1, a resolution by state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis. It urges the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to enact a comprehensive gun violence prevention policy, including prohibiting the sale of military-style assault weapons and “high-capacity magazines.” It also encouraged strengthening criminal background checks.

The resolution essentially was another California finger-wagging measure aimed at shaming the rest of the country into following the Golden State’s lead. Wolk and colleagues are feeling emboldened by President Barack Obama’s recent executive orders purportedly aimed at reducing gun violence. Obama even called the issue a “public health crisis.”

“The president is determined to resurrect a previously failed Clinton tactic to build public support for stringent gun control gun regulations premised upon trumped-up ‘guns as a public disease’ rationale based upon federally-funded medical pseudo-research,” Forbes’ Larry Bell recently wrote.

Obama declared:

“While year after year, those who oppose even modest gun-safety measures have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it.”

Said Bell, “Perhaps the president has forgotten that the CDC has previously been funded, then later defunded, regarding medical research for gun violence.  His directive, if funded again by Congress, would end a virtual 17-year ban which stipulates, quite appropriately, that none of CDC’s federal financing can be used to advocate or promote gun control…exactly what CDC was originally doing.”

Meanwhile, back in California…

“SJR 1 doesn’t change California law,” said Wolk. “Rather, it aims to bring federal law in line with California law, which already prohibits the possession of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, requires universal background checks, and a 10-day waiting or ‘cooling- off’ period for the purchase and transfer of firearms.”

SJR 1 “urges” the President and Congress to take the necessary steps to ensure all states report to the federal background check system. But the resolution is just a resolution, and doesn’t specify how to enforce this requirement. It “urges.”

“Since few states regulate assault weapons and high-capacity assault magazines, and because California’s borders are porous, Californians continue to be victimized by weapons purchased elsewhere and brought illegally into our state,” said Wolk, using the same tired “porous border” argument as her colleagues who oppose gun ownership.

Wolk said she is authoring the resolution at the behest of Napa area Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson, a Vietnam War veteran and sport hunter, who was appointed by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco to head the Democratic Caucus’s Gun Violence Prevention Task Force in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“Thompson likes to tout his firearms bona fides: hunter, gun owner and a tour in Vietnam with an assault rifle,” wrote my CalWatchdog.com colleague Dave Roberts. “But the National Rifle Association doesn’t consider Thompson a gun rights supporter, scoring him just 17 percent on gun rights votes in 2012. There’s also not a lot of gun rights support on the rest of the task force — eight of its 12 members received scores of zero by the NRA.”

“This measure supports the efforts of the President, Congressman Thompson, and others who are working to take comprehensive federal action to prevent gun violence while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” Wolk said on the Senate floor during debate Thursday. “Without a comprehensive federal approach to curbing gun violence, our laws will fall short of providing the security our citizens expect.”

The San Francisco treatment

The state Senate also recently passed SB 140, by Senator Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, which would allow the Department of Justice to take illegal firearms away from convicted felons, the mentally unstable and parolees. But existing laws already ban guns for such people.

SB 140 would appropriate $24 million from the Dealers’ Record of Sale Special Account to the Department of Justice to address the backlog in the Armed Prohibited Persons System.

SB 140 allows the California Department of Justice to use “existing resources” to enhance the identification and confiscation of handguns and assault weapons in the hands of convicted felons, persons who are determined to be mentally unstable, and others who have criminal backgrounds that prevent them from legally possessing guns. That’s how the Democratic-controlled Senate wants this bill described.

However, the Firearms Policy Coalition describes SB 140 a little differently:

“Takes millions of unconstitutionally-collected Dealer Record of Sales funds to compensate for the failure of more than 500 local law enforcement agencies not enforcing existing gun laws. Uses Dealer Record of Sales funds to pay for CA DOJ expansion, including raids and confiscation of weapons from those whom the State deems to be prohibited based on unreliable data from an untrustworthy list.”

“Our reinvestment in this statewide identification program will help eliminate a troubling backlog and growing mountain of illegal weapons, which threatens public safety in our communities and prevents us from enforcing existing firearms laws,” Leno said.

But the Firearms Policy Coalition said, “This bill would require DOJ to create reports politicians would use to advance their anti-gun agenda and does not set limits on how DOJ may use the re-appropriated funds.”

The California Department of Justice has identified 19,784 Californians who illegally own firearms. The new bills would do nothing to help reduce that number. Instead, law-abiding Californians would be prosecuted for defending themselves.

By Katy Grimes

Like geese migrating South for the winter, every year a combination of journalists, editorial boards, and “experts” join California’s liberal politicians in calling for the repeal of Proposition 13. They can’t stand the 1978 ballot initiative which revolutionized the property tax system in California.

The latest clarion call comes from Democratic Sen. Mark Leno from San Francisco, who announced last week that he plans on introducing a constitutional amendment that would turn Prop. 13 on its head. Leno’s amendment would allow local parcel taxes for schools to pass with 55 percent of the vote, instead of the two-thirds currently required by Prop. 13.

“This change in law would give voters the power to make decisions about public education at the local level, allowing schools much-needed flexibility to improve instruction, fund libraries, music, the arts or other programs, or hire more teachers to reduce student-to-teacher ratios,” Leno said in a statement.

Despite the annual arguments predictably attacking Prop. 13, “The $55 billion in property tax revenues is 11 times what they were after Proposition 13’s passage,” Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters reported.

This is more than the growth in state income and sales tax revenues during that period, despite the rate limit, according to Walters.

Ignoring reality

But Democrats and members of the media continue to ignore what led up to the 1978 taxpayer revolt. Prior to Prop. 13, property taxes doubled in 10 years, with some elderly Californians literally taxed out of their homes. There was no limit on annual property tax increases, and no end in sight.

California’s greedy government refused to help property owners even though the state was running a surplus.

In 1978, Prop. 13 was passed overwhelmingly by angry voters, 65 percent to 35 percent.

Prop. 13 cut the property tax rate from an average of three percent of a property’s value to 1 percent, and required a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature to pass any tax increase in the state.

Prop. 13 returned property assessments to 1975 levels and capped annual property tax increases at 2 percent.

Prop. 13 caused a major shift in thinking in the state, as many property owners began to question the outrageous growth in property taxes that had been foisted upon them.

Assaults on the voter initiative

A 2011 cover story in the Economist magazine was just one of many attacks on Prop. 13. The Economist reported that, in 2011, California was at the end of its fiscal year with a huge budget hole, but incorrectly blamed Prop. 13.

The argument always used by Democrats and liberal media is that, because voters agreed overwhelmingly to make property taxes predictable and more affordable, the California Legislature is unable to balance the annual state budget.

This argument is a truckload of baloney. The Legislature had already refused to balance the annual budget several years in a row before Prop. 13 was passed. The voter initiative just became an easy and convenient fall guy.

Déjà vu all over again

Leading up to the passage of Prop. 13, tax reform advocates had tried unsuccessfully to pass tax reductions and reforms. California’s liberal Democratic Legislature, and equally liberal Gov. Jerry Brown, refused to deal, which led to one of the biggest tax revolution since the Boston Tea Party.

Brown was an outspoken opponent of Prop. 13, but became a survivalist and changed his tune quickly when it came time to run for re-election. Brown declared himself a “born-again tax-cutter.”

Many California taxpayers today wish Brown would embrace his “born-again” era.

The elderly were hardest hit, and will be again

According to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, named after tax fighter Howard Jarvis who spearheaded Prop. 13, prior to its passage, “Some properties were reassessed 50 percent to 100 percent higher in just one year, so their owners’ tax bills skyrocketed, often beyond the homeowners’ ability to pay their property taxes!”

In one year in Los Angeles County alone, more than 400,000 people were unable to pay their property taxes.

Seniors and the elderly were among the hardest hit prior to Prop. 13. Although many had paid off their mortgages, they still were faced with losing their homes because they couldn’t afford to pay skyrocketing property tax bills.

Out-of-control spending, and misspent priorities

The current efforts to undermine Prop. 13 are an ill-fated attempt to fund misplaced priorities.

In 2012, the Legislature recklessly voted to fund the $68 billion-and-growing high-speed rail project. The Legislature agreed to fund the first stretch of high-speed rail for $8 billion. The “train-to-nowhere” will start with 130 miles from Madera to Bakersfield.

In October, the California Air Resources Board held the first carbon credit auction. This tax on business will not result in lower carbon emissions in California, nor will this program do anything to end global warming. But businesses will pay anyway.

The recklessness with which California lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown are driving this dangerous vehicle, will undoubtedly end up in a fiery crash… and they are planning on dragging the state’s cash-strapped citizens behind the car.