CA: 6 killed, including teen mother and baby in Goshen, sheriff says

GOSHEN, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – The Tulare County Sherriff’s Office is investigating the shooting deaths of six people in Goshen, according to Sheriff Mike Boudreaux. The sheriff says one of the victims was a six-month-old baby.

Deputies responded to the 6800 Block of Harvest Road around 3:30 a.m. for multiple shots heard and believed there was possibly an active shooter due to the number of rounds being fired, according to Sheriff Boudreaux.

Boudreaux says when deputies arrived, they found two victims dead in the street. As deputies searched the area, they found a third victim in the doorway of a home. One victim was still alive and was taken to the hospital after deputies performed CPR on him on scene. But he was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Deputies searched the area and found more victims including a 17-year-old mother and a six-month-old child who were shot and killed.



https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/crime/tulare-county-deputies-investigating-shots-fired-in-goshen/amp/

A Colossal Off-Year Election in Wisconsin

Arguably the most important election in America in 2023 is the April 4 contest for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The winner will determine whether conservatives or liberals hold a 4-to-3 majority in a critical presidential battleground state.

Wisconsin Democrats want to overturn the state’s 1849 law prohibiting abortion in nearly all cases and end an aggressive legislative gerrymander drawn by Republicans. This election is liberals’ last chance for a while; if conservatives win the seat, they will hold a majority on the court until at least 2026.

Conservatives have controlled the court since 2008. Though the court upheld Wisconsin’s 2020 election results, last year it ruled drop boxes illegal, allowed a purge of the voter rolls to take place and installed redistricting maps drawn by Republican legislators despite the objections of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.

The fight over democracy in Wisconsin won’t be cheap. The campaign is likely to be the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, with total spending expected to exceed $30 million. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the most expensive campaign for one judicial seat came in 2004 in Illinois, when $15 million was spent on a State Supreme Court race.

Who’s running? The liberals are Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell, county judges from Milwaukee and Madison. The conservatives are Daniel Kelly, a former State Supreme Court justice, and Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge. A nonpartisan primary on Feb. 21 will narrow the field to two.



https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/16/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court.html

Democratic leaders detail tax plans they say will lift Michiganders out of poverty

Hundreds of thousands of Michigan families could soon see thousands of more dollars in their pockets if the state legislature backs Democrats’ plan to repeal the state retirement tax and expand Michigan’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other Democratic leaders said during a press conference on Thursday.

“Rolling back the retirement tax saves half-a-million households $1000 a year,” Whitmer said during the press event at Heritage Hall, the visitor center at the Michigan State Capitol. “The vast majority of Michiganders will see real relief because of that. … Boosting the [EITC] delivers $3,000 to 700,000 homes. That is half the kids of Michigan who live in these households.”

For years, Democratic lawmakers have attempted to repeal the retirement tax implemented by former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and increase the EITC — a tax break for low- and moderate-income working Michiganders making less than about $59,000 — but have been unable to work out a deal under a Republican-led Legislature.

Now that Democrats control the governorship, Senate and House for the first time in 40 years, they said their immediate priorities include axing the pension tax and upping the EITC in an effort to lift families from poverty and help Michiganders save money in the face of inflation.

In 2011, Snyder signed the highly controversial legislation establishing the state’s retirement tax that applies a 4.25% income tax on pensions. That same year, Snyder proposed cutting the EITC from 20% to 6% — meaning qualifying Michiganders could claim a credit worth 6% of the federal amount on their taxes.




https://michiganadvance.com/2023/01/13/democratic-leaders-detail-tax-plans-they-say-will-lift-michiganders-out-of-poverty/

WI: Supreme Court election is a chance to beat the far right at its long game

Two weeks ago, in my interview with Evers on the eve of his second inauguration, I asked the governor about the court election. His response was emphatic.

“The race will decide all sorts of things. Whether we have gerrymandering, whether that continues,” Evers said. “Whether abortion goes back to the way it was (before last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights.) It’s hugely important and it’s a race that will determine the future of the state of Wisconsin.”

Evers criticized right-wing justices for their “least-change” ruling on gerrymandering. He chided them for ruling that “you can’t make any changes or they have to look really similar to what we have now. I mean, who in their right mind would think that was the right decision to make? … So, yes, that was hugely impactful and that’s why this next race is hugely impactful.”

State Sen. Kelda Roys, a Democrat who represents much of Madison, told me recently that constituents frequently bring up gerrymandering to her as their foremost issue.

It’s a sea change, she said.

“Ten years ago, when the gerrymandering was taking place, I think it was really hard to sort of get people to understand what gerrymandering was, how it operated, why it was bad,” she said.

“Now, it is by far the number one issue other than abortion. Pre-Roe (the overturning of Roe. v. Wade), it was the number one issue that I heard about all the time from my constituents, out in the grocery store, anywhere in the state. It was not just in Madison, where my constituents are very badly hurt by gerrymandering.




https://captimes.com/af9b5d76-a584-54ad-9226-7c9d7a806d12.html

PA: Allegheny County Voters Will Decide Control of the State House on Feb. 7

Majority control of the state House of Representatives will soon be decided thanks to a Pennsylvania court’s ruling Friday that special elections to fill three vacancies will be held together Feb. 7.

A three-judge Commonwealth Court panel sided with the House’s Democratic floor leader, Rep. Joanna McClinton (Philadelphia), who had set the election date for all three of the Allegheny County seats. Rep. Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) filed a lawsuit to delay two of the special elections until the May primary....

The three vacancies have left Republicans with a temporary 101-99 majority, but the GOP may lose a member later this month. Republican state Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver of Northumberland County hopes to win a state Senate special election and fill a seat held most recently by John Gordner, a Republican who resigned mid-term to become a Senate lawyer.

Democrats must win all three seats in the special election to hold on to their one-seat majority. Each of the seats has been held by Democrats for about 40 years, with voters supporting them by significant margins.

The narrow partisan breakdown in the House led members last week to elect Rep. Mark Rozzi (D-Berks) as a self-styled independent speaker, on the strength of all Democratic votes and 16 Republicans.




https://keystonenewsroom.com/story/allegheny-county-voters-will-decide-control-of-the-state-house-on-feb-7-after-court-oks-special-election-dates/

WI: 'The most important election nobody's ever heard of'

Control of the Wisconsin state Supreme Court is on the ballot this spring, and the contest could decide the fate of abortion rights, redistricting and more in the critical swing state.

Should a more liberal-leaning jurist win the job in the April election, it would flip the balance of the state’s highest court for at least two years.

There are significant policy outcomes hanging on the result. The court chose the state’s political maps for the decade after the Democratic governor and Republican Legislature deadlocked, and it’s likely to hear a case challenging Wisconsin’s 19th-century law banning almost all abortions in the near future. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court also decided major cases on election laws and voting rights before and after the 2020 presidential election.

“The 2023 Wisconsin state Supreme Court race is the most important election that nobody’s ever heard of,” said Ben Wikler, the chair of the state Democratic Party. “It has implications that will affect national politics for years to come, really at every level of government.”

Party organizations and ideological outside groups — both sides of abortion debate, for example, as well as labor groups — are planning to spend millions on advertising and activating extensive field networks. It will be the latest multimillion-dollar judicial race in recent years, which reflects both the outsize importance of the outcome and the increasing focus on contests further down the ticket — and away from Washington.

The court currently has a 4-3 conservative majority. But one of the conservative-held seats is open after Justice Patience Roggensack decided not to seek another term. Further scrambling the politics, another conservative justice — Brian Hagedorn, who was elected in 2019 — has sided with the liberal justices in the past on some high-profile cases.





https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/16/wisconsin-state-supreme-court-race-abortion-00077958

Tweet of the Day

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR MILITARY VETERANS. PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR MILITARY VETERANS. PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG.

California sand artist brings moments of Zen to storm-battered coast

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (KRON) – California’s coastline keeps getting sledgehammered by atmospheric rivers that have left residents wondering when January’s storms will end.

Santa Cruz County’s beautiful beaches look like disaster zones with destruction from flooding, monster ocean waves, tide surges and wind. Capitola was hit hard when its wharf split in half, homes flooded, and oceanfront restaurants were thrashed.

During a recent lull between storms, storm-weary Capitola residents wandered down to their beloved beach and discovered something unexpected. A man was bounding across the sand with a rake. For hours, he artistically carved the word “persevere” hundreds of times in a giant, geometric, Zen-inspiring design.

tormy waves periodically washed away a section of sand he was working on. But Brighton Denevan, 30, of Santa Cruz, appeared unfazed and continued raking.

“I had my headphones in. I was very focused, going as fast as I could. The drawing is like a big dance,” Denevan told Nexstar’s KRON.



https://www.abc4.com/news/national/california-sand-artist-brings-moments-of-zen-to-storm-battered-coast/