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Los Angeles Police Department DUI Saturation Patrol Locations
Wednesday, June 14 DUI Saturation Patrol from 5 PM to 1 AM in Pacific Area
Thursday, June 15 DUI Saturation Patrol from 3 PM to 11 PM in Rampart Area
Friday, June 16 DUI Saturation Patrol from 3 PM to 11 PM in Southwest Area DUI Checkpoint from 6 PM to 11 PM at Sunset Boulevard and Coronado Street DUI Checkpoint from 6 PM to 11 PM at Imperial Highway and Main Street DUI Checkpoint from 6 PM to 11 PM at Van Nuys Boulevard and Remick Avenue DUI Checkpoint from 6 PM to 11 PM at Sunset Boulevard and Orange Grove Avenue
Saturday, June 17 DUI Saturation Patrol from 5 PM to 1 AM in Rampart Area DUI Saturation Patrol from 5 PM to 1 AM in South Bureau
If It’s Not Open Warfare, It’s Collusive Lawfare
As the Biden Administration wages war on fossil fuels, a number of cities and states are pursuing climate change lawsuits against oil and gas producers, refiners and sellers in state courts – where they hope they’ll face more sympathetic judges and juries than in federal courtrooms, and thus have a better chance of securing multi-billion-dollar awards for damages allegedly caused by the companies’ fossil fuel production and use.
Many legal analysts believe the cases properly belong in federal courts, in part because they deal with cross-state, national and even international greenhouse gas emissions. However, without saying why, the US Supreme Court has declined to hear appeals from the oil companies.
In this article, it explores why this decision is hard to understand and outlines many of the legal, climate and ecological reasons why the litigation raises serious questions and challenges for our courts, regulators and legislators.
(Environmentalist lawsuits reach new heights of absurdity and threats to American energy)
The Biden Administration continues waging war on fossil fuels, aided by environmentalists, politicians, and corporations chasing subsidies, competitive advantages, power and profits. They want to “fundamentally transform” America’s energy and economic systems, prevent “climate cataclysms,” and ensure “environmental justice” for some (by inflicting injustices on others).
Their weapons include withdrawing huge areas from economic activities; banning leasing, drilling and pipelines; and imposing regulatory standards so costly or technologically impossible that coal-fired power plants, internal-combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, furnaces and water heaters must be abandoned.
This open warfare is augmented and amplified by more clandestine “lawfare.”
Environmentalists have long employed lawsuits to impose by court decree what they cannot achieve via ballot boxes or legislation. The litigation often redefines sloppily or deliberately vague statutory language, to impose more onerous standards that can block or bankrupt oil, gas and mining projects – and then ignored for land- and resource-intensive wind and solar projects.
An especially pernicious strategy is “sue-and-settle” lawsuits, wherein environmentalists collude with friendly federal agencies to create a “disagreement” over a policy or regulation, and sue in friendly courts. The parties then agree to a settlement that’s been negotiated behind closed doors, leaving the public and impacted third parties with no opportunity to address the case’s legal or evidentiary merits.
Now ultra-progressive states and cities are charging onto this battlefield with more destructive lawsuits.
Delaware and Rhode Island have joined Baltimore, Honolulu, New York City, San Francisco, and other jurisdictions in filing climate change lawsuits against oil and gas producers, refiners and sellers in state courts – where they believe they will face more sympathetic judges and juries than in federal courtrooms.
The arguments for transferring the cases to federal jurisdiction are compelling – and were presented persuasively by John Yoo, C. Boyden Gray and other experts who reviewed the differing Courts of Appeals decisions, and the policy and legal questions surrounding them:
Fossil fuel “greenhouse gas” emissions alleged to cause climate change cross state lines and must therefore be governed by federal agencies. Sea level rise, flooding and other damages allegedly caused by those emissions must likewise be attributed to multiple sources in multiple states, and thus must also be the purview of federal laws and agencies.
No state, much less any city, should be permitted to set or manipulate national energy, climate or environmental policies and hold other jurisdictions to their agendas. Different legal opinions among various federal courts require Supreme Court intervention.
BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Suncor Energy and other oil company defendants made these and additional arguments in asking the US Supreme Court to reaffirm that cases addressing climate change claims are inherently governed by federal law and should be transferred from state to federal courts.
However, the Supremes inexplicably opted not to review the cases at this time. That means these and other cities and states will continue suing energy companies – perhaps securing verdicts and multi-billion-dollar damage awards.
The litigation will create a legal, constitutional, scientific and public policy nightmare for the nation, businesses, consumers, courts and states, especially after verdicts have been rendered and bills tendered to scapegoat companies for payment. An already confusing and impenetrable judicial and permitting jungle will become even more perilous.
However, these complex pollution issues are made vastly more complicated by the basic question of whether carbon dioxide (which humans and animals exhale and plants require to grow, “green” our planet and help ensure record crop yields) should ever be labeled a “dangerous pollutant.” Even more so by the impossibility of separating “greenhouse gas” emissions from a few US petroleum companies from:
* all other American oil and gas, coal, agricultural, industrial, transportation and other emissions;
* human activities worldwide, including thousands of coal-fired power plants in China, India and dozens of other countries that have no obligation or intention of reducing their fossil fuel use anytime soon, thus increasing carbon dioxide levels (deliberately and misleadingly called “carbon pollution”) in Earth’s global atmosphere for decades to come;
* greenhouse gas emissions (and toxic air pollution) from mining, minerals processing and manufacturing to make the wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, grid-scale backup batteries, transformers and transmission lines required for a “clean, green, renewable, sustainable” energy future; and
* climate changes caused by natural forces throughout Earth past history, now and in the future.
As litigant cities and states pursue billions in penalties and damages from these companies – supposedly to cover the costs of building levees and stormwater impoundments, raising roads and bridges, and otherwise protecting communities from “increasing sea level rise” and “more frequent and intense storms” – they will also have to address other inconvenient truths.
For example, seas have risen naturally 400 feet since the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago. They are now rising at an easily manageable 7-12 inches per century – and much of the perceived sea level rise is actually due to land subsidence in coastal cities worldwide, not rising seas.
The litigants and courts will also encounter the bitter reality that the “fundamental transformation” they so earnestly seek means covering the planet with wind turbines, solar panels, transmission lines … and the quarries and mines to build them. America already lacks sufficient EV charging stations and step-up and step-down transformers for new homes and a functional grid. Millions more will be needed in short order to reach Net Zero – which means thousands of new mines, quarries, processing plants and factories.
Toyota Motor Corp. calculates that “more than 300 new lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite mines are needed to meet the expected battery demand by 2035.” That’s essentially just for new EVs, and getting them approved and developed would likely take decades. A US energy transformation – to say nothing of a global transformation – would require thousands of mines, and thousands of processing facilities.
The process of converting cobalt, lithium, aluminum, iron, rare earths, manganese, nickel and other ores into high-end metals is fossil-fuel-intensive, greenhouse-gas-emitting and dirty. “Reaching the nickel means cutting down swaths of rainforest,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “Refining it … involves extreme heat and high pressure, producing waste slurry that’s hard to dispose of.” Using little children to mine cobalt and processing rare earth elements involve legendary ecological and human rights abuses.
Worse, all this is only the beginning of the planetary desecration. We’re talking millions of onshore and offshore wind turbines, billions of solar panels, hundreds of thousands of miles of new transmission lines, billions of half-ton battery modules – and all that goes into making them. We’ll have to replace fertilizers for crops and feed stocks for thousands of products, by planting millions more acres in food and fuel crops, destroying more wildlife habitats. Turbine blades chop millions of birds and bats from the sky every year. Offshore turbines disorient whales and dolphins, causing many to beach themselves and die.
Then we’ll have to bury the broken, worn-out and obsolete panels, turbine blades and other equipment. The world has already installed some 100,000 wind turbines and 2.5 billion solar panels. In whose backyards will the landfills go for all this trash – and the massive lakes for the waste slurries?
There is nothing clean, green, renewable, sustainable or climate-friendly about any of this.
The Supreme Court – and courts, regulators and legislators everywhere – have a lot of work to do.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights
Cody Wyoming Police Chief and City Officials In Cover-up Mode to Protect Bad Cop, Officer Blake Stinson
More information to be released that indicate a massive cover up is taking place in Cody Wyoming. Chief Baker is trying to change the narrative, but good luck, he is fighting a loosing battle against the media. The facts remain the same Stinson is a BAD COP, DIRTY COP, CORRUPT COP. So public do not trust this cop and it is already proven on video that Blake Stinson is a bold liar or habitual liar. This Officer is a threat to public safety and security. More evidence to be released against Stinson and the Chief of Cody Wyoming, Chuck Baker coming.
Biden Administration Environmental Injustice
President Biden’s recent Executive Order requires that all federal agencies emphasize “environmental justice” in all their decision-making. Not surprisingly, the EPA wasted little time in issuing a press release that repeatedly cites justice, equity and children as rationales for eliminating coal and gas power plants, internal-combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters – all of which it says contribute to global warming.
However, neither EPA nor the EO considered a host of inconvenient realities in their “environmental justice” contortions, because the agency and White House are pushing an agenda, not trying to provide honest, scientific evidence. My article describes a number of those realities.
(Federal agencies proclaim ‘climate justice’ to justify controlling every aspect of our lives)
By: Paul Driessen
President Biden recently issued a 5,400-word executive order directing all federal agencies to emphasize “environmental justice” in every decision they make.
After ducking questions for weeks on what remediation, remuneration and environmental justice the administration is providing East Palestine, Ohio residents following a toxic railway chemical spill, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained the EO in her inimitable style:
The President has “the most ambitious climate agenda than any other president in history, and one way that you can look at this today is that he’s continuing to deliver on that ambitious agenda, and he’s not done yet. This is a continuing continuation of what he’s promised the American people.”
In plain English, the order enables each agency to implement this infinitely malleable “justice” concept to justify whatever policies and regulations it is implementing in the name of abating the “climate crisis” and “fundamentally transforming” America’s energy and economic systems. It also allows agencies to ignore any “justice” issues that might interfere with their plans.
The Environmental Protection Agency quickly issued a press release citing justice and “equity” rationales for eliminating coal and gas power plants, internal-combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters – all of which it says contribute to global warming.
EPA claims “children are uniquely vulnerable” to climate-related impacts like rising temperatures that can cause “lifelong consequences” for their concentration, learning, academic achievement and earnings potential. Moreover, these effects “disproportionately fall on children who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color, low income, without health insurance, and/or have limited English proficiency.”
Of course, air conditioning reduces high temperatures in schools and homes, thereby avoiding these far-fetched problems. During wintertime, gas furnaces (or reliable, affordable coal or gas-generated electric heat) keep students warm when outdoor temperatures plummet to deadly lows.
However, both cooling and heating systems will become unavailable or unaffordable to these same classes of people in the wake of government decrees that coal and gas be banished, and electricity provided by expensive, weather-dependent wind and solar. That’s already happening in Europe.
The Economist reported that 68,000 people died in Europe this past winter because energy prices have rocketed so high that many families can no longer afford to heat their homes properly.
Meanwhile, EPA asserts that closing coal and gas power plants would prevent 1,300 “premature deaths” by 2042 from global warming. That’s a hypothetical 65 deaths annually.
Allowing for Europe versus US population differences, more than 30,000 Americans would die needlessly every year, if energy prices soar as high as they have in Europe. Minority and low and middle income families would be disproportionately affected and least able to afford proper winter heating. Without affordable, dependable AC, thousands more would likely die during sweltering summers. Just keeping lights on and computers running requires reliable, affordable electricity.
EPA didn’t consider these realities in its news release, regulations or “environmental justice” contortions, because the agency is pushing an agenda, not providing honest, scientific evidence. The agency and Biden EO routinely ignore inconvenient realities like the following, as well.
Eliminating coal and gas power plants will triple America’s need for electricity generation, to replace that power and provide battery backup storage. Rushing to do this before America has sufficient reliable alternative electricity supplies will destabilize power grids, causing repeated blackouts, disproportionately affecting families that cannot afford emergency backup generators (most of which require fossil fuels).
EPA rules dramatically reducing tailpipe emissions will force families to buy electric cars that average over $65,000 in price – and light, medium, heavy-duty and long-haul trucks that could cost twice as much as gasoline or diesel versions. Blue-collar families will be hammered hardest.
Farmers will be compelled to pay far more for electric tractors, and for natural-gas-based fertilizers and pesticides that will likewise be much more expensive. Food prices will soar still higher, forcing disadvantaged families to choose between food, heat, clothing and other needs.
Families and landlords will also be required to replace high-efficiency gas furnaces with pricey electric systems … or expensive heat pumps that don’t even work well in sub-freezing weather.
Middle class families will see their living standards plummet. Poor households will be unable to improve their lives. Rural communities will become increasingly isolated, turned into energy colonies for heavily Democrat urban voting blocs, with wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines horizon to horizon.
Federal agencies will likely just parrot the Bank of England’s callous, imperious attitude: People just “need to accept that they’re worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power.” Ruling elites will do fine. Why would they worry about us commoners?
Soaring prices for intermittent electricity will force many factories and businesses to close. Workers will have to take low-pay jobs installing, maintaining, repairing and replacing wind turbines, solar panels and other equipment – and hauling worn out, obsolete and broken parts and dead battery modules to enormous rural landfills.
“Clean, renewable, sustainable” energy technologies require vastly more non-renewable, unsustainable metals, minerals and other raw materials than their fossil fuel counterparts. The overseas mining, processing and manufacturing operations run on fossil fuels and emit vast quantities of carbon dioxide and toxic air and water pollutants, generally under minimal or no laws governing pollution … or slave and child labor, workplace safety, health, or other environmental justice and human rights issues.
The supply chains and even finished product chains increasingly run through China, which is also taking over electric vehicle markets. Especially under a Biden Administration that opposes almost any mining or processing in the USA, China will only increase its dominance of cobalt, graphite, lithium, nickel and other critical material supplies, all but necessitating tepid responses to Chinese (and Russian) military and territorial ambitions. The injustices inflicted on Asian and African communities are serious and obvious.
Yet even doubling or tripling today’s global mining levels would not meet the soaring materials demands for the millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, millions of heating systems and transformers, and hundreds of thousands of miles of new transmission lines that an American Net-Zero economy would require. Soaring demand for insufficient supplies will send prices skyward.
A global energy transformation would likely be catastrophic for affordable energy, economies, jobs, living standards, shortened human life spans, human rights, wildlife and environmental quality.
Abundant, reliable, affordable, mostly fossil fuel energy has liberated people from back-breaking toil. The energy scarcity and de-development promoted and imposed by Biden and other Western governments is rolling living standards, health and personal freedoms backward, in the name of “climate justice.” The adverse effects will be worst for women, the poor and people of color, especially beyond US borders.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wrote in The Doctrine of Fascism: “The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its actions felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social and educational institutions, and all the political, economic and spiritual forces of the nation.” [emphasis added]
That description sounds all too appropriate for the situation America and the world increasingly confront today. The gravest threat to our living standards, freedoms and true justice is not from climate change. It is from dictatorial edicts imposed in the name of controlling Earth’s perpetually fickle climate.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.
Cody Police Chief Finally Address Public Regarding Officer Blake Stinson’s Conduct
To: From: Subject:
MEDIA
PUBLIC INFORMATION
OFFICER COMPLAINT – FOLLOW UP INFORMATION
POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF CODY
REPORT UNDER
CPD OG 23-009 May 24, 2023
We are aware of the viral videos of the traffic stop made by a Cody Police Officer earlier this year involving a minor. Many in the public have shared their concerns that the officer’s actions during that encounter were inconsistent with the standards of conduct expected from our law enforcement personnel.
A formal complaint was filed approximately two weeks ago regarding the incident and the department is conducting an Administrative Investigation of the allegations and a complete review of the interaction in its entirety. The City of Cody and the Cody Police Department have a well-established process for reviewing an officer’s actions to determine whether they were consistent with our established standards. This investigation is underway and we are committed to performing a thorough review to ensure accountability. We will not be able to release the results of that investigation and any action that may be taken as a result of that investigation due to state laws which restrict the disclosure of that information.
We are committed to taking appropriate corrective actions should the findings of the investigation determine that the employee’s conduct was inappropriate, excessive or inconsistent with the responsibilities of the role. We appreciate the community’s patience and understanding as we work diligently to review this matter. We also ask the community to understand that some videos and social media content which show portions of the video have been edited and narrated to show selective parts of the interaction, and do not necessarily tell the whole story.
In some of the comments and social media content on this matter, there are allegations that the charges against the minor were dismissed because the officer made false statements in his report. This is inaccurate. Any charges that have been dismissed were dismissed by the Park County Attorney’s office for procedural reasons so that the charges can be dealt with at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner.
Maintaining the confidence of the community we serve is of the highest importance to the City of Cody. We know that any encounter with any City employee —positive, neutral or negative—can impact the confidence and trust of the public in your local government. We are dedicated to upholding the community’s confidence through a diligent review of the matter.
If any Cody resident wishes to provide comments or information pertinent to the investigation, they may do so by calling (307) 527-8709 or emailing submitcomments@codywy.gov.
Chuck Baker, Chief of Police
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Cody Police Department Officer Blake Stinson Caught Being A Dirty Cop
This Cody Police Department Officer Blake Stinson is an unethical Officer and the public should exercise extreme caution when coming in contact with Officer Blake Stinson. Officer Blake Stinson needs to be sued for making a false arrest.
Even the Prosecution dismissed the charges as this was a false arrest. This officer is a danger to the public as he makes up and embellishes his arrests.
SHAME ON YOU Officer Blake Stinson. You ARE A DIRTY COP! And a danger to the public safety and well being.
Cody Police Officer Blake Stinson, your hands are DIRTY.
CDC’s and FDA’s latest COVID-19 vaccine guidance…Lifting the fog – at least a little
Setting the record straight: (At this point, most people are understandably confused about COVID-19 vaccines – and for good reason, many don’t trust what they read or hear. COVID-19 fatigue is rampant, and the public’s response to encouragement to get mRNA bivalent COVID-19 vaccines has been tepid.
Into this fraught environment come recent announcements from the FDA and CDC that Emergency Use Authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines have been amended to supposedly “simplify” vaccine schedules for most people. That’s perhaps questionable, but it’s also clear that the somewhat conflicting announcements will likely confuse matters even more.
However, despite COVID fatigue, it’s important that people try to understand what’s happening now, sort through the major discrepancy between the two agencies’ guidance, get some grasp of what might underlie the discrepancy, and reflect on what’s likely to come next.
Long-time FDA observer Dvorah Richman offers her expertise and analysis in this timely article. Thank you for posting it, quoting from it, and forwarding it to your friends and colleagues.)
Written by: Dvorah Richman
Most people are confused about COVID-19 vaccines, and many don’t trust what they hear. COVID-19 fatigue is rampant, and the response to mRNA bivalent COVID-19 vaccines has been tepid.
Into this fraught environment comes the Food and Drug’s April 18 announcement (and after that an announcement one from the Centers for Disease Control) that the Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 bivalent mRNA vaccines have been amended to “simplify” vaccine schedules for most people.
Putting fatigue aside, it’s worth spending a few moments to understand what’s happening now.
Important Context and Background
To dispel some confusion, the COVID-19 bivalent formulations discussed in the government’s April 2023 announcements are identical to the bivalent boosters offered in the fall of 2022: they target the original COVID-19 strain, as well as Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 strains.
The EUAs have been amended only to change dosing schedules, not to change vaccine composition.
While rarely explained, it’s important to know that in certain emergencies FDA can, by law, issue EUAs for use of medical products that are not approved, cleared or licensed … or to authorize unapproved uses of approved medical products.
EUAs can be issued only when there are no adequate, approved and available alternatives; when the product “may be effective”; and where the “known and potential benefits” of the product, when used to diagnose, prevent, or treat the identified disease or condition, outweigh the product’s “known and potential risks.”
EUA products do not undergo the same type of review as FDA-approved products, and FDA’s decision relies on the “totality of scientific evidence available.”
This is a lower level of evidence than that needed for FDA “approval.” Despite what you might hear or believe, EUA products are neither “investigational” nor are they deemed “safe and effective.”
Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s monovalent vaccines are no longer available in the United States. The companies’ bivalent COVID-19 vaccines are now the mainstay of vaccine administration. Novavax and Janssen’s COVID-19 vaccines are still available in the U.S. but are used infrequently.
Government Announcements
According to the FDA: most of the U.S. population five years and older has antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (from vaccination or infection) that can “serve as a foundation” (whatever this might mean) for protection provided by bivalent vaccines. COVID-19 continues to be a “very real risk for many people,” and vaccines prevent severe illness, hospitalization and death.
Reflecting research and post-market data (summarized in FDA’s announcement), healthy people between the ages of 6 and 64 who have already received a bivalent vaccine don’t need another one. Those in this age group who have never received a Covid-19 vaccine, or have only gotten the older, monovalent version, “may” get a bivalent vaccine.
Unvaccinated children six months through five years old “may” get bivalent doses, considering their vaccine and vaccine history.
FDA also relies on research and data to support its conclusion that people 65 and older “may” get a second bivalent dose at least four months after their initial bivalent dose; and that individuals (five and older) “with certain kinds of immunocompromise” who have received one bivalent COVID-19 vaccine “may” get another one at least two months later, and “may” get additional bivalent doses at their health provider’s discretion.
Vaccine eligibility for immunocompromised children six months to four years depends on the vaccine previously received.
Despite concluding that COVID-19 poses a “very real risk for many people,” and that vaccines prevent the most serious consequences of COVID-19, FDA simply encourages individuals “to consider staying current with vaccination …” and studiously avoids suggesting that people “should” get vaccinated.
According to the CDC: On the other hand, while the CDC’s announcement generally tracks FDA’s, the CDC “recommends that everyone six years and older receive an updated (bivalent) mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of whether they previously completed their (monovalent) primary series.”
Questions Abound
Unfortunately, there is no explanation for FDA’s reluctance to push vaccines, or for the CDC’s relative bullishness.
FDA’s reluctance may reflect conflicting data, immensely complicated issues and ongoing disagreement among experts. This includes questions about how long vaccines protect against severe illness and death, and reports of adverse events (including myocarditis risk to young men).