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Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Its Tuesday, Sept. 14. Im Justin Ray.

Yesterday I told you 5 things every voter should know about the California recall election. We also have a California Politics newsletter (which you should be subscribed to for times like these).

Today, I want to talk about unfounded voter fraud claims that threaten the recall election and may have an enduring legacy on the states democratic process.

Election fraud campaigns

We have noted before that nearly half a dozen California groups are running election fraud campaigns. The state Republican Party has launched its own fraud program, as have leaders of several conservative political action committees. They are competing for the attention and donations of a common conservative base. But one group stands out: poll observer logs from four counties Orange, San Diego, Fresno and San Luis Obispo show the vote watchers hail almost exclusively from the Election Integrity Project.

On first pass, the organization appears to be dedicated to the noble cause of ensuring our elections are fair, but the reality is quite different. The organization, which grew out of the tea party movement, says it has trained some 4,000 observers to police the recall. The actual number will probably be much smaller, though some registrars are concerned the groups claims will discourage people from voting and thus undermine confidence in the election process. (The organizations officials did not respond to requests to comment for our original story.)

It should be noted that in November, volunteers from the Election Integrity Project caused disruptions at the polls, sometimes intimidating voters, according to election logs, emails and records filed in federal court.

Signature challenges

At ballot processing centers, volunteer observers keep a close eye on those approving the signatures on unopened ballots and sometimes challenge the validity of the signatures, a practice that is banned in some counties and has been declared illegal by at least one judge.

Secretary of state guidelines for the recall election tell counties that observers are prohibited from challenging voters, but the document is silent on whether that includes the validation of a voters signature. A Times investigation has raised questions about the legality of this practice.

Orange County Registrar Neal Kelley told The Times that he has seen observers decide which ballots to challenge based on voter surnames and other demographics that allowed them to guess a voters leanings.

The Times wants to hear about your experience voting in person at an L.A. County vote center. Share your thoughts in the form at the link.

Here are some last-minute happenings in the race:

And now, heres whats happening across California.

Note: Some of the sites we link to may limit the number of stories you can access without subscribing.

Inland Empire parents of 5 die of COVID-19 weeks apart. Davy Macias, a 37-year-old registered nurse from Yucaipa, succumbed to COVID-19 on Aug. 26, eight days after delivering a baby girl she never got to hold because she was on a ventilator. Her husband Daniel, 39, also was stricken by COVID-19 and spent his last days in a hospital intensive care unit. He died Thursday, leaving behind the couples five children, ages 7 and younger. Los Angeles Times

Hollywood says its antiracism push is not a fad. Is the industry keeping its promises? When massive protests erupted nationwide in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the entertainment industry was initially slow to respond. But after a stinging rebuke from CNN anchor Don Lemon, major entertainment companies sprung into action, promising big changes. Has Hollywood made good on its word? Heres what entertainment companies have and have not done. Los Angeles Times

A person displays Netflix on a tablet.

(Elise Amendola / Associated Press)

A British actress has been missing since last week. Tanya Fear, who has been living in Los Angeles for the last two months, was reported missing by her family Thursday. Friends and fans have been raising awareness of Fears disappearance to get more information across social media by using the hashtag, #FindTanyaFear. Fear appeared in a 2018 episode of the sci-fi drama Doctor Who, according to the BBC. She was also seen in the movie Kick-Ass 2" and had recently started doing stand-up comedy (Update: She has been found). BBC

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Larry Elder and the danger of the model minority candidate. Times columnist Frank Shyong discusses what he sees as the gubernatorial front-runners position in the GOP. Fielding a model minority candidate will probably become a common electoral strategy for the largely white Republican Party as it attempts to maintain control of a rapidly diversifying nation, Shyong says. He then discusses the origins of the term model minority, explaining that journalists and academics began applying the term to Asian Americans in the 1960s to explain why Japanese and Chinese Americans were attaining financial success. Los Angeles Times

Protesters disrupt celebration of L.A. City Halls new civil rights department. Demonstrators upset over Los Angeles City Halls homelessness and policing policies disrupted the celebration of a new city department Monday, drowning out the remarks of Mayor Eric Garcetti and others. More than a dozen protesters chanted, yelled and used a bullhorn to shout expletives at officials who had gathered for the opening of the Civil and Human Rights and Equity Departments new office across from City Hall. Garcetti left shortly after demonstrators began yelling and other participants finished the news event inside, away from the protesters. Los Angeles Times

Judge makes ruling over Scott Peterson testimony in Kristin Smart case. The hearing in the disappearance and murder of Kristin Smart has taken many odd turns; one of the strangest was the mention of Scott Peterson, who is serving a life sentence after being found guilty in the 2002 murders of his wife Laci Peterson and their unborn child. Defense attorneys attempted to put him up as a suspect in the case, but Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen ruled any testimony related to Peterson is inadmissible. Recordnet

U.S. Capitol Police say they arrested a California man who had multiple knives in his truck, which had a swastika and other white supremacist symbols painted on it, near the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. Officers took note of a Dodge Dakota pickup about midnight Sunday. When they pulled over the vehicle, they noticed the weapons. The driver, identified as 44-year-old Donald Craighead of Oceanside, was arrested. Los Angeles Times

Wildfires rage in Sequoia National Park, threatening groves of giant trees and forcing closures. A pair of lightning-sparked fires that took hold in rugged terrain in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks exploded over the weekend, forcing evacuations and park closures, while firefighters made gains on the massive Dixie and Caldor fires burning to the north. The Paradise and Colony fires in the national parks, at 1,037 acres with no containment, sent smoke billowing over the popular tourist destination and forced the closure of much of Sequoia National Park while the Kings Canyon side remained open, according to Mark Ruggiero, a public information officer for the national parks. Los Angeles Times

Renting a car remains a pain. On a trip to visit Disneyland with his children, John Jimenez of San Jose reserved a compact car from Dollar Rent a Car at Los Angeles International Airport. What he got when he landed was a headache. Due to a vehicle shortage, the car rental agency offered him a van that he said reeked of cigarettes and marijuana. A global microchip shortage that has cut production of new cars continues to deal a heavy blow to car rental companies, but most of the pain is being felt by travelers who find themselves waiting in long lines, paying nearly double the rates of earlier this year, being denied the vehicle they reserved or ending up with a car with lots of wear and tear. Los Angeles Times

USC fires football coach Clay Helton. Sports columnist Bill Plaschke wrote a brutal column after USCs loss to Stanford on Saturday night calling for USC coach Clay Heltons removal. Well, that happened. In a message posted to Twitter on Monday, USC Athletic Director Mike Bohn announced his decision to make a change in the leadership of our football program and thanked Helton for his time as coach. Los Angeles Times

USC coach Clay Helton talks to his players.

(Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)

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Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games in our new game center at latimes.com/games.

Los Angeles: 84. San Diego: 77. San Francisco: Cloudy, 70. San Jose: See this doggo make a friend, 85. Fresno: 99. Sacramento: 97.

Todays California memory is from Wendy Meier:

We were a boating family, going from Evinrude and Mercury outboards to beautiful Chris Crafts. Everybody waterskiied. By the 1960s we settled in at Lake Tulloch, a reservoir near Sonora. Every summer weekend was spent at the lake. Besides skiing and generally running free, we hung out at the marinas. Mitchs, as we called it, had pinball, nickel candy bars and a juke box. Surf songs were big. The local employer was an asbestos mine, above the lake. At the end of the day, workers came in with white dust on them. I still wonder how they fared.

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

Follow this link:
Recall election: The people behind voter fraud claims - Los Angeles Times

EDENTON The Edenton Tea Party Chapter of the National Society of Daughters of the Revolution will celebrate Constitution Week with an event Saturday at the Historic 1767 Chowan County Courthouse in Edenton.

The program, which gets underway at 10 a.m., will include a welcome by Edenton Tea Party Chapter Regent Sandra Sperry, the posting of the colors by the John A. Holmes JROTC, the Pledge of Allegiance by chapter member Virginia Wood, and the singing of the national anthem by Sidney Lassiter.

Prayers will be given by the Rev. Junior White of Ballards Bridge Baptist Church, and patriotic music will be offered by members of Kimberley Dunlows music class from the Chowan Middle School.

Annette Wright, the Edenton Tea Party Chapters 2020 Community Service Award Winner, will be the guest speaker. Wright will provide biographical information about North Carolinas three signers of the U.S. Constitution: William Blount, Richard Dobbs Spaight and Hugh Williamson. Her focus, however, will be Williamson, who was a resident of Edenton at the time.

The Junior White family will provide additional patriotic music, which will be followed by Edenton Tea Party Chapter members Deborah Spence who will talk about the history of the Hugh Williamson Monument.

The Rev. White will provide the benediction, which will be followed by Johnny Cashs rendition of The Ragged Old Flag. Music by the Junior White family will precede the JROTC retiring of the colors. There will then be a wreath laying ceremony at the Hugh Williamson Monument.

This year marks the 66th anniversary of Constitution Week. NSDAR Past President General Gertrude S. Carraway, who is also an Honorary NC State Regent, was responsible for the annual designation of Sept. 17-23 as Constitution Week. The DAR made its own resolution for Constitution Week, which was adopted April 21, 1955.

Visit link:
Local NSDAR chapter to mark Constitution Week - The Daily Advance

In a press statement Tuesday, Gov. Brad Little once again encouraged Idahoans to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Despite this, Idaho is currently tied for last in the nation for percentage vaccinated, tied with Montana and Alabama.

The statement from Gov. Little came after the North Central and Panhandle Public Health Districts activated the Crisis standards of care in their districts. The Crisis Standards of Care are a set of rules and guidelines to help healthcare providers make decisions when there is a health crisis or similar public disaster. The move was requested by Kootenai Heath in Coeur dAlene.

Currently, 40% of Idaho residents are fully vaccinated, according to information from the Center for Disease Control, being one of the lowest in the nation. Idaho is far behind the other states in the Northwest. Washington has a 61% vaccination rate across the state, and Oregon has a 59% vaccination rate. Both states are above the national average of 53%.

Gritman Medical Center is also urging Moscow residents to get vaccinated. Currently, 46% of Latah County residents are vaccinated, making the county the fifth in the state by percentage. Blaine County is currently the highest vaccinated county in Idaho, being 65% vaccinated. Blaine County is the only Idaho county with over a 50% vaccination rate.

According to Brianna Bodily, the public information officer for South Central Public Health, the district in which Blaine County resides, the effort to vaccinate was largely motivated by the members of the community.

Blaine county has a large population of retired individuals, as well as highly-educated individuals, Bodily said, Because of the high-risk population, Blaine County got access to the vaccine earlier this year, and the vaccination rates stayed high because of a highly educated population who is reading the science on the vaccines.

This was also compounded by how hard Blaine County was hit at the beginning of the Pandemic. Back in April 2020, Blaine County experienced an average of 44 new cases a day, which severely impacted the small community, and made them more open to the new vaccine.

People in Latah county, however, are more hesitant of the vaccine and its effects. Tia Wiese, a junior at the University of Idaho, is one of those people.

Theres not many years that its been out and available, and it is newly produced, Wiese said. She also has been looking at a lot of other sources for vaccine information.

One of the organizations publishing that information has been Americas Frontline Doctors, a group of doctors who claim that their rights are being taken from them. The independence to care for their patients without interference from government, media, and the medical establishment, as stated on their website. Many of their pieces support not getting vaccinated, and instead developing a natural immunity through exposure, as well as combating the virus with various supplements.

The organization has roots with the Council for National Policy and the Tea Party Patriots, both being far-right organizations with heavy ties to the Trump family, as seen when both former President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. shared a press conference by the organization on social media.

Together, many Idahoans are left unsure if they should take the vaccine amongst overwhelming and conflicting information. Yet the CDC as well as Idaho Public Health still recommends vaccination for all Idahoans 12 and older. The CDC states that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective and have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

For students who are looking to get vaccinated or have further questions, please consult the University COVID-19 Dashboard at https://www.uidaho.edu/vandal-health-clinic/coronavirus/dashboard.

Abigail Spencer can be reached at [emailprotected] or on twitter at @SeaSnake31

Continued here:
Idaho has Fallen Behind in Vaccination Rates - Argonaut

Among the joys of reading a history of taxes: learning that todays fights over taxes are not new. Civilizations 20 years ago, 200 years ago and 2,000 years ago all struggled with how best to replenish public coffers. Many of the topics in this book also relate to debates in 2021 debates. Fairness. Enforcement and collection. The linkage between taxes, government debt and inflation.

Im weird and want to talk about taxes, like, all the time.

The key to any tax plan and any regime, for that matter is fairness.

Keen and Slemrod highlight one form of fairness known as vertical equity, which compares how taxes affect both the rich and the poor. Theres also horizontal equity, which is fairness among taxpayers in similar economic situations. Throughout history, the legitimacy of a government rests on whether the governed feel both types of equity exist.

President Joe Biden staked his campaign, and now stakes his presidency, on two big tax ideas: First, that a tax hike for households making more than $400,000 is fair the latest test of vertical equity in the United States. Second, that a flat 15 percent corporate tax globally is horizontally fair across countries. If the Biden administration cannot convince Congress to raise taxes on household incomes above $400,000, everything else becomes harder.

On ExpressNews.com: Taylor: Biden's bold plans and the laws of financial physics

Previous post-World War generations of Americans swallowed high income tax rates. Between 1942 and 1954, the top income tax rate fluctuated between 82 percent and 94 percent, hitting incomes between $200,000 and $400,000. In the shared national sacrifice of that era, baseline notions of horizontal and vertical equity were different.

The British Peoples Budget of 1909 a kind of Green New Deal of a previous century explicitly embraced a redistributive income tax. Then-Prime Minister Lloyd George compared the cost of a nobleman to the cost of building the British navy with a memorable argument: A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts and they are just as great a terror and they last longer. He had a way with words, as well as a willingness to weaponize class resentments.

My theory on taxes is that people will tolerate a lot as long as they think its fair, both vertically and horizontally. Keen and Slemrods analysis very much supports this view. Taxes perceived to be fair can be on almost anything, and in any amount. Unfair taxes, by contrast, bring down regimes.

Of course, the fairest tax is always the one paid by someone else. Thats why foreign tariffs are popular. Its why hotel occupancy taxes are so popular because only visitors pay. Its why speed traps targeting nonresidents work so well. Keen and Slemrod offer the example of Palmer, outside Dallas on the route to Houston a city with a population of 2,023 whose police wrote 1,080 speeding tickets in 2015.

Tax collection and enforcement is another theme from Keen and Slemrods history. The English Peasants Revolt of 1381. French King Louis XIVs exemption for the French nobility from wealth taxes. The Boston Tea Party of 1773. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers disastrous poll tax of 1990.

Tax enforcement has a way of bringing down governments when it goes poorly. Its also a big story in 2021.

The Biden administration has proposed investing $80 billion in the IRS over the next 10 years. To bolster its case, the Treasury Department argued that Americans underpay their taxes by $600 billion per year, or approximately $7 trillion over the next decade.

One very 2021 aspect of this story is the rise of untracked financial transactions, from cryptocurrencies to nonbank payment apps such as Venmo, to offshore entities. If history is any guide, the IRS and other tax authorities will, over time, figure out how to aggressively shut down the tax gap these unreported cash flows allow.

The Treasury notes that for ordinary wage earners getting a W-2, very little income goes unreported. As a result, noncompliance stands at about 1 percent. For high income earners with a more complex set of investments, including private partnership and professional tax preparation help noncompliance can reach 55 percent. These are fighting words. They obviously link quite closely with the issue of vertical equity.

If the Treasury report is correct, a beefed-up IRS could improve tax collection by $1.7 trillion in the next decade. That would have obvious benefits for tackling the growing federal debt.

In the broad sweep of history, a most obvious pattern explored by Keen and Slemrod is the problem of indebted governments, which, over and over again, get that way through war. The authors dig into British, French and American histories, which establish this pattern most strongly. So, if you dont like paying taxes, you should probably start by opposing the wars that make taxation necessary.

On ExpressNews.com: Taylor: Applying a Smart Money analysis to the costly failure in Afghanistan

At the conclusion of the 20-year Afghanistan War, weve got some accumulated government debt.

While criticizing it as overly simple, Keen and Slemrod point to the concept of Ricardian Equivalence, which says accumulated government debt is simply all our future taxes that need to be paid. This isnt quite true, in part because other people may pay our debt. Its also not true in the sense that future inflation changes the value of what we will need to pay.

And with this insight, we get the dirty secret of the relationship between heavily indebted countries, taxes and inflation. Future inflation acts as a semi-visible tax on savers and people on fixed incomes. Tax enough savers through the mechanism of inflation, and the government debt melts away through the years.

This tax via inflation will fall on savers and people on a fixed income, to the benefit of both owners of hard assets and borrowers. It can either seem fair or unfair, depending on how you are situated.

Michael Taylor is a columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and author of The Financial Rules for New College Graduates.

michael@michaelthesmart

money.com |twitter.com/michael_taylor

Originally posted here:
Taylor: A fun book about taxes? Yep, and it prompted a flood of ideas about citizenship and fairness - San Antonio Express-News

In addition to the haunted house based on the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, there is also a themed food booth for Halloween Horror Nights 30 at Universal Studios Florida.

Grilled Cheese brisket, pepper jack cheese, onions, tomatoes on country loaf

These sandwiches are all really good. Theyre very greasy and buttery, but thats probably why theyre so good. You can smell the melted cheese in the air as you get close to this tent.

They are panini-pressed-style sandwiches with nice bread.

The brisket is awesome. Again, its pretty greasy but good. The sauce added a nice flavor, although were not sure if it was pepper jack cheese or not. We didnt really taste that.

bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapeo poppers with cheddar cheese on country loaf

We loved the creaminess of the jalapeo cream cheese. The smooth cream cheese with the slice of cheddar made this extra cheesy and perfect, and the bacon stood out more with each bite. We recommend this one.

tempeh, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, 1000 Island dressing on rye bread

This is vegan, but non-vegans will enjoy it too.

We couldnt find any sauerkraut, but that was okay.

There wasnt much of the dressing; we just got a taste of it in our first few bites.

Mostly we just tasted the tempeh and cheese, but they were delicious.

traditional grilled cheese

This sandwich was very greasy/buttery, but again, thats probably why its so delicious. Its a crispy, panini-style grilled cheese. Not too cheesy, just right. A little overpriced for a basic grilled cheese, but wed eat it again.

Stuffed Brisket paired with Poison Tea Party

Myers Original Dark Rum with Honest Tea half tea & half lemonade, blue curaao, huckleberry, lemon, a dash of allspice bitters topped with a dehydrated orange, served chilled

Poison Tea Party, along with Ghoul Juice, is available at all of the bar tents.

We werent fans of the Poison Tea Party. We would skip it and go for the Ghoul Juice from another tent, or the Texas heat margarita from the Texas Chainsaw booth.

The Haunting of Hill House themed food booth can be found in Woody Woodpecker KidZone, as indicated by the orange star on the map below.

For more Universal Studios news from around the world, follow Universal Parks News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Read the original:
REVIEW: 'The Haunting of Hill House' Themed Food Booth Serves Savory Sandwiches at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights 30 - wdwnt.com