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Author: Leslie Eastman

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Leslie Eastman

I am an Environmental Health and Safety Professional, as well as a science/technical writer for a variety of news and professional publications. I have been a citizen activist since 2009, and am one of the co-founders of the San Diego-based group, Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 12, 2016 72 Comments
In June, I noted that interest in #CalExit, a #Brexit inspired movement in which California would secede from the union, was growing. National Review now reports on #CalExit, #OrgExit, #WasExit, and other secession campaigns coalescing within deep blue states where progressives are bemoaning the fact that billionaire businessman Donald Trump is now President Elect.
“Yes California,” a political action committee fighting for California’s independence from the union, is campaigning to qualify a secession initiative for the 2018 ballot, which in turn would force a special-election referendum on the question. The group had gained little traction since its founding in 2015, but received an outpouring of support for their movement in the aftermath of Trump’s victory.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 11, 2016 54 Comments
Mary Chastain reviewed the impressive list of candidates for Donald Trump's cabinet released by Buzzfeed, featuring well-known politicos such as Rudy Guiliani, Newt Gingrich, and Chris Christie, Ben Carson, and Sarah Palin. However, via Don Surber, comes proof that Trump intends to dramatically change the political climate with his appointments by naming someone with a bit less notoriety to a fairly significant position.
Trump picked Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, to head his transition team at the EPA.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 10, 2016 42 Comments
While my friends across the nation are celebrating conservative and Republican domination and all the free market, fiscal goodness that it brings, my home state took a slightly different path. As I predicted, retiring U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer is being replaced by Kamala Harris, one of the state Attorney Generals who planned to use RICO statutes to pursue firms that were "climate change deniers". I anticipate she will make Boxer look like a sane and reasonable politician in retrospect.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 08, 2016 37 Comments
A few weeks ago, I noted that the U.S. Navy's latest ship, a high-tech destroyer named the U.S.S. Zumwalt, sprung a leak on its maiden voyage. Now, it seems that there isn't enough money to fuel its big guns.
The U.S. Navy is slated to cancel the projectiles for the two big guns that outfit its newest and most advanced warship due to excessive costs that total an estimated $800,000 per round. The Long Range Land-Attack Projectile, or LRLAP, is the only guided precision ammunition designed to be fired by the USS Zumwalt, a land-attack destroyer that was created to hold two 155 millimeter/62-caliber Advanced Gun Systems that could, according to defense contractor Lockheed Martin, “defeat targets in the urban canyons of coastal cities with minimal collateral damage,” Defense News reported.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 06, 2016 7 Comments
At the beginning of 2016, I noted that the Ebola epidemic that began in 2014, which West Africa hard and resulted in several Americans being stricken by the often deadly virus, had subsided. Researchers are now reporting that the significant outbreak was the result of a mutation that made the virus easier to transmit and deadlier to human who were infected.
In one study led by 16 researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Broad Institute and elsewhere, genomic analyses pinpointed parts of the Ebola virus that changed during the west African outbreak. One genetic mutation, in particular, appeared to affect a key region of the pathogen where it binds to human cells.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 05, 2016 10 Comments
More troubling news is now coming from infectious disease experts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reporting that the first cases of a drug-resistant and potentially fatal fungal infection have occurred within the United States.
The fungus, Candida auris, is known to occur in health care settings such as hospitals and nursing homes. Seven cases occurred between May 2013 and August 2016 in four states: Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. As of August 31, four of these seven patients, all with bloodstream infections, died, though it is unclear whether their deaths were due to C. auris. The remaining six cases were identified after August and are still under investigation.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 04, 2016 33 Comments
Aleister blogged about James O'Keefe's video exposing a Chicago activist, who visited the White House 45 times since President Obama took office, and his description of how voters are bused into key precincts to influence results. Mary Chastain noted that Indiana officials are investigating possible voter fraud after people noticed their voter registration cards had incorrect information.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on November 02, 2016 13 Comments
Given how much I plan to drink after Nov. 8th, in either celebration or despair, I have been toying with the idea of opening a winery. The idea has merit, given that it may be the only way I see any of my tax dollars back! The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Value Added Producer grants (VAPG) has awarded nearly $10 million to wineries, distilleries, and other makers of fine, alcoholic beverages millions!
The recently released list of the 2016 VAPG awards includes $7,417,459 for those producing, marketing, and packaging wine.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 31, 2016 48 Comments
A few weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out a brand new "Climate Justice" program.
This initiative would be incomplete, however, if it did not target those most disproportionately impacted by climate change. It has been well documented that the impacts of a warming and increasingly unstable climate are already weighing more heavily on underserved, low-income, minority, and tribal communities.
As with Obamacare, Americans who believe that this new program is actually going to improve their lives will be...deeply disappointed.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 30, 2016 13 Comments
Two Florida universities and the University of Illinois have been battling outbreaks of hand, foot, and mouth disease that involve about three dozen cases in the last couple of months.
According to the National Institutes of Health, about 200,000 people in the U.S. get the disease each year, but Dr. Fenyong Liu, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley, says a lot more than that carry the viruses associated with the disease. “This represents a silent epidemic because people don’t know they have the virus, and we don’t know these people have the virus,” Dr. Liu said. Doctors say the disease is highly contagious, making daycare centers, and now colleges, ideal breeding grounds. “This fecal or oral transmission is really an issue when you have dining hall and all this share the dorm,” Dr. Liu said.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 29, 2016 36 Comments
It appears as if the elite media is actually participating in conservation efforts...by recycling old stories of humanity's impending doom. About one year ago, news outlets were reporting that the Earth has entered a sixth mass extinction phase, with animals now dying out at 100 times the normal rate. In my detailed analysis of the other 5 extinction level events, I noted than mankind played absolutely no role. In fact, the Permian extinction wiped out 95% of all lifeforms. Unless therapsids were driving S.U.V.'s or had air conditioning, it is difficult to condemn fossil fuels as the cause of such a massive loss of species. Obviously, we have not been sufficiently scared. So, now a new new report has been released asserting that over 60 percent of species will be gone in four short years.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 28, 2016 7 Comments
The recent batch of Wikileaks email featuring the wit and wisdom of John Podesta may not be as dramatic or entertaining as those featuring pleas to sober Hillary Clinton up after an afternoon drinking session. However, they do reveal what life will be like for climate science skeptics under her regime administration. Take the case of Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., who is on the faculty of the University of Colorado as a professor in the Environmental Studies Program. He used to write often about global warming issues. While Pielke is no skeptic of man-made warming, he did challenge a cherished climate alarmist talking point that global warming was making extreme weather more severe.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 27, 2016 70 Comments
When my super-talented colleague Mary Chastain wrote about the new tone of state Republican party ads, she posted that Hillary Clinton was the most probable winner. She would be right if the reports we were getting weren't being offered through a haze of "Gaslight," a point that conservative talk show host Tammy Bruce has been making often in recent days is that the elite media is manipulating the reports to distort reality to create a very specific outcome (e.g., 3 media organizations have given their employees orders to destroy Trump).

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 26, 2016 38 Comments
In reference to Election 2016, I have recently observed that the best proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life is the fact that none of it has wanted to actually contact us, yet. However, a new scientific report theorizes that strange modulations among a small star cluster may be be coming from extraterrestrial intelligence that is looking to alert us to their existence.
The new study reports the finding of specific modulations in just 234 out of the 2.5 million stars that have been observed during a survey of the sky. The work found that a tiny fraction of them seemed to be behaving strangely.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 23, 2016 12 Comments
According to its mission statement, the Environmental Protection Agency acts is protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment. However, since its formation in 1970, the statement may have secretly been amended to include that the agency must also want to go out on a limb for that area. It is at least one explanation for the EPA Inspector General indicating that the organization acted too slowly to address the lead contamination discovered in the Flint, Michigan water supply.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had the authority and information to take decisive action on the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water in June of 2015 -- seven months before it actually acted, a federal watchdog said Thursday. The Office of Inspector General for the EPA said the agency should have issued an emergency order to protect Flint residents from the contaminated water in the summer of 2015. The EPA didn't issue such an order until Jan. 21 of this year.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 23, 2016 36 Comments
About one-year ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the state's assisted-suicide bill into law. It fully went into effect this June, with the opening of the first clinic. While there is no data on the number of California assisted-suicides, Oregon recorded over 130 last year as part of their legalized physician-assisted death program. Now, one young mother says her insurance company denied her coverage for chemotherapy treatment after originally agreeing to provide the fiscal support for it, but indicated it would be willing to pay for assisted suicide instead.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 23, 2016 40 Comments
The members of the California National Guard are awesome. These soldiers are on the frontlines of the huge wildfires this state frequently experiences. They have been called upon to deal with the riots and civil unrest that sometimes plague our cities. They have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan during our "War on Terror". Now, the Pentagon is asking the men and women to repay enlistment bonuses they received.
Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war. Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.
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