California’s planning bodies have shown themselves to be woefully inadequate when it comes to fast-tracking affordable housing — but when it comes to quick approvals of glittering sports arenas for billionaire team owners and millionaire players, they are amazingly fleet of foot.
The ABA’s decision to withdraw the measure in exchange for limited protection for a specific industry blindsided many interests in the Capitol, including taxpayer organizations which were excited for an opportunity to campaign for strong taxpayer protections in an absurdly high-tax state.
Whether the Taxpayer Protection Act would have passed will be the subject of speculation for years. But it’s now a moot point. What isn’t moot, however, is whether the deal itself, and the similar negotiated agreements on measures addressing issues related to lead paint and consumer privacy, are a reflection of good government or whether they lead to “extortion light.”
Geisha J. Williams, CEO and President, PG&E Corporation
With new blazes burning across Northern California and more than a dozen of last year’s wildfires freshly blamed on Pacific Gas and Electric Co., it’s an awkward time to consider pardoning power companies that start fires.
And yet that seems to be what the governor and lawmakers are determined to do.
Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature’s Democratic and Republican leaders said in a statement this week that a joint legislative committee will work to “update rules and regulations for utility services in light of changing climate and the increased severity and frequency of weather events.”
Like an earlier memo from the same bunch, the announcement adopts PG&E talking points blaming recent fires on global warming while glossing over the utility’s role.
The trouble is that close examination of last year’s fires has not produced a portrait of an innocent company that did everything right and faces billions of dollars in potential damages anyway.
State fire officials have found not only that PG&E’s equipment caused all 16 of the fires they have finished investigating but also that in most of those cases, the utility might have broken the law.
Sure, prosecutors risked walking away empty-handed if they pursued the case. That’s a risk with any case. The question is how great was that risk — and would it have been worth the gamble?
Moreover, the deal deprives the families and public of a trial that could have brought out the facts. It leaves them unable to ascertain the wisdom of never bringing charges against the building owner, Chor Ng.
The families still have a civil case against Almena, Ng, the city of Oakland, PG&E and others. Perhaps we’ll learn more from that case, which is scheduled to begin in October 2019.
Republican leaders are desperately trying to stave off the Democratic assault. They hope that having John Cox, a GOP candidate, on the ballot for governor, even if he has scant odds of winning, and a measure to repeal the state’s new gas taxes will spur enough Republican voting to save the seats.
They know that with GOP voter registration now lower than no-party-preference voters, losing several congressional districts would be a crushing blow, making the party completely irrelevant in California and completing its transformation into a one-party state.
Jose Ines Garcia Zarate came to America illegally and murdered Kate Steinle in cold blood. Luis Bracamontes came to America illegally, and murdered a Sacramento deputy in cold blood.
Who in their right mind would oppose a plan to keep these kinds of people out of our country?
Tisha M. Rajendra would.
Ms. Rajendra’s opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times takes President Trump to task for cleaning up the mess that is supposed to be our immigration system.
Her’s is a pathetic, even comical argument.
There is a darker, more sinister side to arguments like this. Ms. Rajendra, an elite university professor, hates President Trump and everyone who voted for him. Her hate has spawned a narrative that advocates for policies that put every decent person’s life at risk. In her mind, killers like Zarate and Bracamontes are victims, not villains.
The Fresno Bee is reporting that “several dozen” people called for Rep. Devin Nunes to step down as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
The rent-a-crowd was obviously organized by hapless Leftists in response to the release of a memo written by the Tulare Republican alleging anti-Trump bias by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice in an investigation of the Trump presidential campaign over concerns of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. President Donald Trump supported releasing the memo.
The memo exonerates the President and exposes the FBI agents responsible for the claims as frauds and hacks of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
With Nunes in the national spotlight, the so-called Fresno residents in his district who protested against the release of the Nunes memo say he is focusing on issues other than those that are important to residents of Congressional District 22.
If so, he’s right in line with these “resident’s” masters at the Democratic National Committee. This whole event is really a non-event, and a political scam by embarrassed Democrats in Washington D.C.
This protest is nothing more than a scam we here at CalNews.com are happy to expose.
Great news! The Los Angeles Times reports that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’ announced Friday that he would step down in June, before the end of his second and final five-year term.
The white elites at the Times immediately sang is praise. “Even though he is not elected, he is a savvy politician who correctly read what the mayor, the Police Commission and the people of Los Angeles wanted from him and what to an extent he was able to deliver: low crime, no scandals, little controversy. He became adept at the regular radio interview and the soundbite on immigration enforcement and criminal justice reform.”
Seriously? This is a guy who has lead one of the nation’s most brutal criminal enterprises, terrorizing the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, and people of color? WTF? Don’t the reporters at the Times read their own newspaper?
Angelenos of color need to know where the Times stands on police brutality directed at them. Now they do.
San Diego County politics are in for an overhaul. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, isn’t running for a 10th term. Four Republican county supervisors — Greg Cox, Bill Horn, Dianne Jacob and Ron Roberts — are termed out after more than 20 years. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, faces a serious campaign finance scandal that could cost him his job after nearly a decade. And longtime county GOP chairman Tony Krvaric said he may also quit this year.
Being racist jerks, and just plain stupid, isn’t working for California Republicans any longer.
The San Diego Union-Tribune poses the obvious question, this turnover presents a wave of new Republicans with a basic question: Will they be content to run in safe seats and stick to the standard party script? Or will they get “in the arena,” as Teddy Roosevelt would say, and slug it out with California’s dominant Democrats to try to force change?
The U-T hopes new GOP voices that will begin to emerge locally have a level of sophistication about their politics that can be missing in a party addicted to simplistic litmus tests. Such voices have potential to give Republicans far more influence than they now wield — and to give California voters both more nuanced decisions to make and a much-needed opportunity to pick pragmatism over dogmatism.
We’re not so sure. More likely, and new set of racist jerks will emerge to occupy whatever safe GOP districts are left.
Elizabeth Goitein, a Leftist from NYU, slams Nancy Pelosi for not doing enough to protect privacy rights in the San Francisco Chronicle.
As Edward Snowden’s disclosures revealed, the CIA, FBI and NSA routinely search for Americans’ phone calls and emails.
Democrats like Pelosi simply look the other way. Why? They love the Police State as much as Republicans do.
The U.S. House of Representatives could soon vote to do something truly historic and deeply dangerous: authorize the warrantless surveillance of Americans. That’s unless Democratic leaders — starting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — speak out.
Don’t count on it.
The bill would reauthorize a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This powerful law allows the National Security Agency to collect emails and phone calls without a warrant or evidence of wrongdoing, but only if the target of surveillance is a foreigner overseas.
This surveillance inevitably sweeps in enormous amounts of Americans’ communications. The law requires the government to “minimize” the retention and sharing of such “incidentally” acquired data. Instead, as Edward Snowden’s disclosures revealed, the CIA, FBI and NSA routinely search their collections for Americans’ phone calls and emails — a practice known as “backdoor searches.”
Pelosi and other Democratic Party leaders have remained conspicuously silent on the faux-reform bills, even as Republicans such as Ted Poe of Texas have denounced them.
Their reticence is endangering their constituents’ rights. Congress passed this law to enable detection of foreign threats, not warrantless surveillance of Americans.
According to the bleating Republicans at the Orange County Register, an effort is underway to persuade voters to “reform” Proposition 13 and raise property taxes.
“The California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act of 2018” was filed in mid-December with the attorney general’s office. It aims to raise $11 billion per year by removing Prop. 13 protections from industrial and commercial properties, reassessing them based on the unrealized, paper profits from rising real estate values.
According to the Register, it is reckless to impose a massive tax increase on nearly all California businesses, simultaneously and repeatedly.
They say that if raising taxes was the solution to every problem, California would have no problems. The Golden State boasts the nation’s highest income tax rate and sales tax rate, and we’re within an eyelash of defeating Pennsylvania for the title of highest gas taxes.
You’d think that by now these bleating hearts would figure out that the way to change California’s tax policy is by winning elections and controlling the legislature and the governor’s office.
That’s too much like work for this crowd. Bleating is so much easier and makes them feel so good.
As the Trump administration ratchets up criminal prosecutions and efforts to deport undocumented immigrants and legal residents with criminal convictions, the San Francisco Chronicle opines that Gov. Jerry Brown has doubled-down on exercising his power to grant clemency and demonstrate his belief in the power of redemption.
On Saturday, the governor issued 132 pardons and 19 commutations, including pardons to two men, Mony Neth of Modesto and Rottanak Kong of Davis, whose past criminal convictions made them targets for deportation to Cambodia.
In April, he pardoned three veterans who had served honorably in the U.S. military but then were deported to Mexico after serving time for various crimes. A pardon technically creates a path to avoid deportation.
With these actions, Brown has granted 1,059 pardons and 37 commutations during his last two terms as governor, far outstripping his predecessors, Govs. Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger (15 pardons, 14 commutations combined), and his father, Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (467 pardons, 55 commutations).
So the crime tsunami sweeping California, and especially the Bay Area, should come as no real surprise to anyone.
As President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans congratulate themselves for passing their corporate tax cut bill, California policy experts are left to contemplate ways to ease the pain for working California families.
All of the sudden, the elites who have been raising taxes and fees on Californians for decades have become tax fighters. It’s the real #taxscam.
Quickly forgotten in the crusade against President Trump and his tax bill is the fact that more than 63 percent of the voters last year approved Proposition 55, which added upper income tax brackets to the state Constitution.
Then there’s the gas tax which just spiked, nailing every California motorist.
California voters need to sit back and be happy they have another chance to pay more taxes to the government. It’s how they roll.
Democrats desperate to disturb the gathering momentum for Republicans’ tax cuts adopted the “Corker kickback” as their battle cry. The target, Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, and others argued vehemently that a provision likely to favor his particular investments was not what persuaded him to drop his opposition to the bill last week.
The trouble for him, many of his fellow Republican lawmakers, and President Trump is that the legislation would, in fact, enrich them while doing less or nothing for the causes they claim to represent, including fiscal responsibility and the working and middle classes.
Corker, the only Republican who voted against the Senate’s version of the bill, may well have been motivated instead by pressure to go along with legislation that looks increasingly unstoppable. But he announced his change of heart on the day that House and Senate negotiators unveiled a compromise bill with added benefits for real estate holdings — a boon to Corker.
The nation’s largest pension system is expected to adopt a funding plan this week that anticipates shortfalls during the next decade and then banks on exceptional investment returns over the following half century to make up the difference.
It’s an absurd strategy designed to placate labor unions, who want more public money available now for raises, and local government officials who are struggling to make annual installment payments on past debt CalPERS has rung up.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System currently has a $153 billion unfunded liability, with only 68 percent of the assets it should have, largely because of similar, past hubris about investment returns.
Russians voting in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin [didn’t hand] the election to the Republican candidate by a bit more than 80,000 votes.
Those were not Russians voting in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, handing the election to the Republican candidate by a bit more than 80,000 votes.
They were American men and women. As were the 62,984,825 others who decided that such a troublesome, inflammatory figure expressed their desires and dreams.
Trump could be impeached or resign, or his policies could simply implode under the weight of their malice, divisiveness and mendacity, and the country would still be defined and pressed by the same conditions and dread that enabled his rise.
America would still need to engage in a process of national self-scrutiny to fathom how such a nightmare could have been avoided, how it can be prevented from happening again.
For decades, California’s landmark environmental law has worked in a decidedly un-environmental way.
Enacted in 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, was supposed to create an environmental review process for building projects and, in theory at least, ensure that new developments did a minimum of harm to the communities where they were located.
In many ways, it has been successful. But one of the law’s requirements is an analysis of a project’s impact on transportation.
California now realizes it needs in order to reduce its dependence on cars and cut the greenhouse gases responsible for global climate change.
After touting California’s climate leadership to the world at the United Nations climate conference in Germany, Gov. Jerry Brown addressed a home crowd last week at the ClimateTECH conference in San Francisco.
However, just as in Germany, demonstrators gathered with banners denouncing the governor’s oil-friendly policies. Many of these activists are from the communities hardest hit by oil and gas operations in our state.
That raises a critical question: How badly does Brown’s support for oil production mar California’s climate leadership? To answer that, the Center for Biological Diversity recently analyzed oil production in the Golden State to determine how dirty and climate-damaging crude production really is.
As movie fans have been hit by an onslaught of stories about powerful Hollywood men sexually harassing and abusing others, one entertainment critic suggested a radical idea: Just cancel the Oscars.
“If the ceremony goes on as planned, everything about it is going to remind us of the ‘Pervnado’ that has left Tinseltown reeling,” wrote Kyle Smith, a critic for the New York Post and the National Review.
Maybe Smith was just being cheeky. But I have to admit, I’ve been in enough of a down-on-Hollywood mood lately to wonder if it would be the right thing to do.
The Republicans in Congress are on the verge of enacting a historic tax reform program that will lead to radical change in California politics.
The law taking shape will eliminate much of the federal deductions for state taxes and mortgage interest.
California voters initially will react with fury, but when the dust settles, they will then turn on state and local governments to ask how all this tax money is being spent and who approved these programs and taxes.
California taxpayers have been a sleeping giant since 1978, the year of Proposition 13, the last, great, statewide tax revolt. But the coming federal tax bill will create a national political earthquake, rumbling from California.
The Supreme Court on Monday again weighed in on President Trump’s executive action restricting travel from certain Muslim-majority countries, allowing the most recent (and third) iteration of his order on the topic to go into effect temporarily while the lower courts consider it.
Leftists continue to freak-out.
No matter the stage of litigation, however, the legal and public debate will likely continue to focus on whether controversial comments by the president relating to the travel orders yet absent from the text nonetheless render them improper forms of religious discrimination.
According to the violent Left-wing in America, there is no need to look beyond the documents themselves to be troubled on that front. For although Muslims are nowhere referred to by name, the orders appear to make them their object in a particularly misplaced and inflammatory way: in their curious call for a study on “so-called ‘honor killings’” in the United States.
You see, honor-killings are just fine with Leftists.
A legal advocacy group has asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into Rep. Duncan Hunter’s endorsement of private vaping products in blatant disregard of the House Ethics Rules.
A letter this week from the American Democracy Legal Fund claims Hunter, R-Alpine, is too close to the vaping and electronic cigarette industries. The group often targets Republicans but has also filed complaints against liberals such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The advocacy group said in a statement that Hunter has crossed an ethical line.
The rules are there to ensure that Members of Congress don’t use their positions of power to favor specific companies, brands or industries or to benefit themselves or their personal interests.
It’s no secret the vaping industry owns Hunter.
Hunter has violated the letter and spirit of rules against such activity and the Office of Congressional Ethics must investigate his blatant flouting of these rules immediately.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi struggled to answer questions Sunday about harassment allegations against Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Why the struggle?
After waffling on harassment charges against a longtime colleague, all of the sudden Pelosi now wants Rep. John Conyers to resign after a first-person account of his pressuring a woman for sex. It’s the right call, though overdue.
Pelosi’s turnabout underscores several realities. Insider politics trails the media and business worlds in punishing offenders. Personal ties can overrule stark warning signs of trouble. The ingrown world of elected officialdom is built for self-protection, and needs changing.
Gov. Jerry Brown is the only politician in California willing to confront the issue of pensions and, in the process, take on public employee unions, among California’s best-financed and most powerful political players. That’s good for taxpayers and for the financial stability of the state and local governments.
The California Republicans are nowhere to be found.
It’s suddenly become obvious how the Legislature, ever so progressive and always ready to tell the rest of us how to live, has managed to tap dance around policing itself against the most basic of workplace hazards: creeps who would lord positions of power over underlings in service of their own needs. Leaders don’t ask and they make it hard for women to tell.
Only one thing can save the Republicans from themselves: the Democrats. Although they have shown remarkable unity as part of the anti-Trump resistance, the Democrats themselves suffer deep-seated divisions. Most critically they are moving left at a time when more voters seek something more in the middle. Certainly this progressive tilt has done little to reverse their own declining popularity; public approval of the party has sunk to the lowest levels in a quarter century.
It’s not Charlie Rose parading naked in front of young female employees, or Rep. John Conyers firing a woman who wouldn’t have sex with him, or Roy Moore in his 30s cruising the mall for teenage girls that should be at the top of the American outrage list — disgusting as all those alleged actions are.
The real issue we need to deal with is the overarching, fundamental absence of equality for women in America.
So there’s a solid underpinning of societal discrimination behind the thousand indignities, little and big, that women have to deal with to this day. The shortage of women running the show, the pay inequities, the unequal distribution of child-raising responsibilities — America has come by these things not by accident, but by design.
Sex pervert Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-Pacoima, announced he is stepping down from his leadership post as majority whip and will not seek re-election next year.
That’s too little, too late. His victims and constituents deserve better. Nothing short of his immediate resignation should satisfy the public, and it’s time that his fellow Democrats show some courage and make clear he does not belong in the Assembly representing the northeast San Fernando Valley.
The new and disturbing allegations reported by the Los Angeles Times reveal a persistent pattern of Bocanegra disregarding the dignity of women and willfully abusing his power to take advantage of multiple women.
The GOP’s tax proposal was always going to be a hard sell. Its centerpiece is a deep reduction in corporate taxes when most Americans think corporate taxes should go up, not down.
Even before the House and Senate unveiled their bills, about half of registered voters disliked what they were hearing, according to public opinion polls. Only about a third — essentially, the Republican base — said they favored the plans.
After weeks of salesmanship by the president and his party, those numbers haven’t changed much. A Quinnipiac Poll last week found that 52% of voters oppose the GOP plans; only 25% support them.
Despite all its defects, and rotten numbers in the polls, Republicans in Congress aren’t having second thoughts about their tax bill.
It’s easy to see why. Most voters say they don’t expect their own taxes to go down if either of the bills passes. They expect most of the benefits would go to upper-income taxpayers, not the middle class.
Along with revelations that the board misused its staff and powers for political purposes and mishandled tens of millions of dollars, the nepotism allegations led the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown to enact legislation reforming the tax board in June.
Most of its staff and duties, which included collecting more than $60 billion in annual revenue from various taxes, were turned over to the newly created state Department of Tax and Fee Administration, answerable to the governor. The Board of Equalization was left with fewer than 200 employees and a few constitutionally assigned duties, including reviewing and adjusting property tax assessments and setting levies on insurers and alcohol.
While the overhaul made overdue progress, it dodged the need for consolidation, instead creating agencies out of one and adding them to the existing Franchise Tax Board.
As a result of the latest investigation, the Board of Equalization was ordered to dismiss three improperly hired employees, including the daughter of a state legislator. The board and the new tax department must also rewrite their nepotism policies and relinquish the authority to hire employees and take other personnel actions for a year.
The Board is, and always has been, a criminal enterprise profiting off of taxpayers. Those in charge should be punished, and the Board should be eliminated.
The story is becoming familiar. A powerful man is accused of sexually harassing a young woman in a workplace setting.
He denies it with such ferocity that more women come forward with their own similar stories to support the victim and show that she is likely telling the truth.
If the allegations are true, Mendoza should resign now to save taxpayers and his constituents the headache.
The death toll from the Texas church killings was still rising when U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued a simple statement that spoke for many millions of Americans. She asked:
“When will this end? When will we decide that we can’t accept massacres in our places of worship, schools or at concerts? When will we actually do something about it?”
It’s what gun control losers do…they bleat like sheep while ignoring reality. It make them, and the mindless throngs that follow them, feel better.
Democrats have no intention of banning firearms. They just want to stand on a pile of corpses and shout out, “vote for me!”
For the past two decades, the Bay Area has been engaged in a continual celebration of technology disruption — from music and movies to retail to health care and transportation. Along the way, the Bay Area has championed a progressive social agenda in an effort to shape the nation in its image: global, inclusive and multicultural. By and large, it has benefited millions of people, especially those with the education and adaptability to keep up with constant change.
But one thing has been sorely lacking: empathy for those struggling to keep up with the change. The message from the great Silicon Valley tech companies has been “keep up or get left behind.”
President Trump’s America first world-view is causing them to freak out.
Despite the persistent efforts of President Trump and Republicans in Congress to sound the alarm about the nation’s failing healthcare system, media elites continue to spin the fantasy that Covered California is alive and well.
It’s just not true.
Open enrollment in the state’s exchange program began Wednesday and continues through Jan. 31. Thanks to careful planning, the vast majority of the 1.4 million enrolled in Covered California plans will be able to find affordable health insurance plans for 2018.
Affordable that is, only if you choose healthcare over food and housing.
Media elites gleefully report that Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee says 78 percent of the program’s enrollees can expect to see their costs actually decrease next year. That’s right. Decrease.
That’s because Covered California has evolved into an entitlement program for the poor. The millions of people who make up the rest of California, facing gigantic insurance premiums, has opted for food and shelter instead.
The elite media in California has chosen to ignore this.
Of the many huge challenges Kevin de León faces in trying to unseat Dianne Feinstein, the toughest is this: How does the state Senate president say it’s time for the 84-year-old U.S. senator to go without saying she’s old?
The good news for de León is that here in California, there’s no shortage of Democrats who toppled their, ahem, veteran fellow party members. We’ve seen how this can work.
Yes, it’s possible that California would lose seniority, power and institutional knowledge if you retired. But that’s only one of the questions involved when you consider passing the torch.
My advice to people in your predicament is to begin by asking yourself: Are you able to see the energy and passion and fresh perspectives that younger generations bring? Be honest! If you squirm, then you have some homework to do!
Here in the Bay Area, we live in a bubble. While 46 percent of the American electorate voted for President Trump, in California, just 32 percent did. In Santa Clara County, 21 percent. And in my hometown, Palo Alto, it was just 12 percent.
Some were inclined to dismiss Trump voters as racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic or xenophobic. But do we really believe that 46 percent of the American electorate is racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic or xenophobic?
I don’t.
The rest of the country must see things somewhat differently than folks here. So what prompted 46 percent of the electorate to vote for a candidate I considered wholly unfit for the presidency?
And why on Earth did 6 million to 10 million Americans (estimates vary), who previously voted for Obama, then decide to cast their ballots for Trump?
“For all the advantages of the Golden State, far too many Californians are barely scraping by” writes the editorial board of the Orange County Register.
The Orange County deputy sheriffs’ union president, in a Monday interview with the Orange County Register, made a shockingly cynical statement about the men and women he represents.
His words probably were meant as a rhetorical device to muscle county taxpayers into paying some controversial workers’ compensation claims, but I was nonetheless floored by what Tom Dominguez was quoted saying.
“The county has to be very cautious in these cases,” Dominguez told the newspaper. “If they deny the claims, then the message that they’re sending to their peace officers is not to take action when it is certainly warranted.”
Dominguez was referring to four unnamed county deputies who attended country singer Jason Aldean’s Oct. 1 concert in Las Vegas, where a gunman murdered 59 people and injured 527 others.
The deputies were on their personal time and were in Clark County, Nevada, not Orange County, California, yet they argue that California residents should pay for their physical and psychological injuries.
“President Trump’s expressed contempt for a free press seems right out of an authoritarian playbook, where delegitimizing and ultimately silencing government watchdogs and critical commentators is a cornerstone of retaining power.”
The fake news elites are freaking-out.
“The framers of the U.S. Constitution would vigorously disagree. They drafted the First Amendment to declare in unambiguous terms that freedom of the press shall not be abridged.”
But to the elite media, the Second Amendment should be repealed. So much for their selective interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
“Trump’s disdain for rigorous reporting has been matched only by his craving for obsequious questioning and over-the-top praise.”
Another laughable interpretation from Leftists who are “over-the-top” on a daily basis.
Everyone knows it’s time for Dianne Feinstein to go.
A California senator for 25 years, 84-year-old Dianne Feinstein this week announced she’ll run for another six-year term in 2018. The former San Francisco mayor, a Democrat, did so despite facing pointed criticism from some prominent figures in progressive politics in recent months.
The most liberal elements of the Democratic Party are on the ascent. And they want her gone.
They love Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist who is clearly a psychopath.
As someone whose college dreams were almost derailed by remedial math courses, I was thrilled to learn that the California State University system will no longer require intermediate algebra as a remedial pre-requisite for general education courses.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and throughout high school and college I excelled in speech, debate, and all of my English classes. But math was my greatest obstacle.
When I enrolled at Pierce College, I didn’t pass the intermediate algebra placement test and learned I would have to take three semesters of remedial math before I could take a course that would transfer to CSU. After years of struggle, the idea of redoing high school math for a year and a half seemed like a deal breaker.
If we as Americans were willing to give up some rights or expectations in the name of fighting terrorism, we should be willing to do the same with our gun rights.
Assault weapons should be considered tools of terrorism, pure and simple, no matter who is pulling the trigger. Once, federal law banned semiautomatic firearms with large, detachable magazines. A few years ago that ban expired. It should be revived.
No matter who is behind the trigger, shootings like the slaughter in Las Vegas are acts of terrorism, and we should treat them as such.
Liberal Democrats are hostile to private industry and entrepreneurship, as they introduce tax-raising, regulation-laden, job-killing bills that earn the ire of the hard-pressed business community.
The anti-business rhetoric has gotten particularly vicious, especially regarding tech firms.
It’s ironic that some modern conservatives want to use progressive policies to punish private companies because of their progressive politics. If that’s the new standard, then there’s nothing wrong with leftists using the iron hand of regulation to harass conservative-oriented companies such as Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A — or that bakery that refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding.
After all, pick up a history book, and look at what white males did to black slaves, American Indians, Chinese immigrants and Mexicans in the occupied Southwest.
They’re the original bad hombres.
And so, after the Las Vegas massacre — where a 64-year-old white man named Stephen Paddock carried 23 guns into a hotel suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and opened fire on an outdoor concert crowd, killing at least 59 people and wounding more than 520 others — it’s fair to ask: “Is it time for authorities to start profiling white males who purchase unusually large amounts of high-powered weapons and ammunition?”
The San Joaquin Valley to Sacramento tracks once were a main passenger route through the state, dating to the turn of the century. But our collective love affair with cars made trains seem obsolete. They’re not.
In reality, the automobile, convenient and always at the ready, is a main cause of climate change. We must find ways to wean ourselves. Certainly, electric vehicles are part of the solution. Autonomous vehicles hold the promise of revolutionizing urban travel. But rail must be part of our future.
Bill after bill, these wealthy unions showed who runs those under the Capitol dome…the unions own the super-majority Democrats in the Assembly and Senate.
So now that the legislative session is over, super-minority Republican lawmakers are home bleating to their dwindling conservative base. As if hand-wringing raises money, recruits candidates, and shapes pubic opinion.
There’s a reason California Republicans are losers.
The gubernatorial election is more than a year away, but the leading contenders have been busily raising money, taking shots at one another on the margins and collecting early endorsements from key interest groups and prominent politicians.
How about some substantive comparisons on where they stand on the big issues facing the state?
It’s an inconvenient political truth in California that almost everyone wants to help homeless people get off the streets and into housing.
But almost no one wants to help when that housing happens to be next door.
So, it’s no surprise that residents of North Sacramento are livid over Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s plan to open a temporary emergency shelter and a permanent “triage” shelter in their neighborhood in the coming months.
“I just don’t see any upside for our area,” Shane Curry, chairman of the Del Paso Boulevard Partnership, told The Sacramento Bee’s Ryan Lillis. “It’s not like these people are going to become contributing, productive citizens.”
There you have it. From one of the most racist cities in America.
President Trump’s new and improved ban on travel to the U.S. from a handful of countries makes a few changes to the previous versions, and in so doing might successfully satisfy a court that its underlying impetus is not an anti-Muslim bias.
The new iteration of the old ban still excludes people mostly from countries with Muslim majorities, while adding a few other countries like hideous North Korea.
The new ban indefinitely bars immigrants from Syria, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iran, Chad and North Korea. The last two countries are new to the list, and Sudan, which had been covered by the previous ban, is no longer listed.
Leftists believe there’s something fundamentally wrong with excluding entire nations of people simply because some people in those countries are radicalized and dangerous. Americans, who don’t want to be killed, or have their stuff blown up disagree.
Under growing pressure to reveal more about the spread of covert Russian propaganda on Facebook, the company said on Sept. 21, 2017, that it was turning over more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads, some of which attacked Hillary Clinton, to the Senate and House intelligence committees.
Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Thursday a more subtle but equally disquieting feature of Facebook-mediated politics: “You … don’t know if you’re seeing the same messages as everyone else.” This might seem trivial, but it’s becoming a very serious problem — and it’s one that San Francisco can help fix.
Facebook knows just about everything there is to know about its users. By tracking posts, “likes” and website visits, Facebook algorithms can predict users’ political orientations and much more to boot. Politicians and political activists use these predictions to narrowcast their messaging.
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ swing through California and Hillary Clinton’s book tour underscore the Democrats’ problem in the aftermath of the 2016 election.
The problem: The party’s two main factions are clinging to the leaders of yesterday rather than looking forward.
Clinton would have made a fine president, but that’s never going to happen, and the party’s job is to figure out which Democrats have a legitimate shot in 2020.
Illegal immigration is big business in America. Let’s never forget that. Which explains why it is so important to the Left and the Right.
President Trump has imposed a six-month deadline for Congress to resolve DACA and take other steps to strengthen immigration enforcement. They must act.
Republican leaders are desperately trying to stave off the Democratic assault. They hope that having John Cox, a GOP candidate, on the ballot for governor, even if he has scant odds of winning, and a measure to repeal the state’s new gas taxes will spur enough Republican voting to save the seats.
Great news! The Los Angeles Times reports that LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’ announced Friday that he would step down in June, before the end of his second and final five-year term.
San Diego County politics are in for an overhaul. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, isn’t running for a 10th term. Four Republican county supervisors — Greg Cox, Bill Horn, Dianne Jacob and Ron Roberts — are termed out after more than 20 years. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, faces a serious campaign finance scandal that could cost him his job after nearly a decade. And longtime county GOP chairman Tony Krvaric said he may also quit this year.
Elizabeth Goitein, a Leftist from NYU, slams Nancy Pelosi for not doing enough to protect privacy rights in the San Francisco Chronicle.
OMG! OMG! They’re coming for Prop. 13!!
As the Trump administration ratchets up criminal prosecutions and efforts to deport undocumented immigrants and legal residents with criminal convictions, the San Francisco Chronicle opines that Gov. Jerry Brown has doubled-down on exercising his power to grant clemency and demonstrate his belief in the power of redemption.
Democrats desperate to disturb the gathering momentum for Republicans’ tax cuts adopted the “Corker kickback” as their battle cry. The target, Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, and others argued vehemently that a provision likely to favor his particular investments was not what persuaded him to drop his opposition to the bill last week.
The nation’s largest pension system is expected to adopt a funding plan this week that anticipates shortfalls during the next decade and then banks on exceptional investment returns over the following half century to make up the difference.
Russians voting in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin [didn’t hand] the election to the Republican candidate by a bit more than 80,000 votes.
After touting California’s climate leadership to the world at the United Nations climate conference in Germany, Gov. Jerry Brown addressed a home crowd last week at the ClimateTECH conference in San Francisco.
As movie fans have been hit by an onslaught of stories about powerful Hollywood men sexually harassing and abusing others, one entertainment critic suggested a radical idea: Just cancel the Oscars.
The Republicans in Congress are on the verge of enacting a historic tax reform program that will lead to radical change in California politics.
A legal advocacy group has asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into Rep. Duncan Hunter’s endorsement of private vaping products in blatant disregard of the House Ethics Rules.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi struggled to answer questions Sunday about harassment allegations against Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
It’s not Charlie Rose parading naked in front of young female employees, or Rep. John Conyers firing a woman who wouldn’t have sex with him, or Roy Moore in his 30s cruising the mall for teenage girls that should be at the top of the American outrage list — disgusting as all those alleged actions are.
Sex pervert Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-Pacoima, announced he is stepping down from his leadership post as majority whip and will not seek re-election next year.
Here in the Bay Area, we live in a bubble. While 46 percent of the American electorate voted for President Trump, in California, just 32 percent did. In Santa Clara County, 21 percent. And in my hometown, Palo Alto, it was just 12 percent.
“For all the advantages of the Golden State, far too many Californians are barely scraping by” writes the editorial board of the Orange County Register.
If we as Americans were willing to give up some rights or expectations in the name of fighting terrorism, we should be willing to do the same with our gun rights.
White men scare me.
Bill after bill, these wealthy unions showed who runs those under the Capitol dome…the unions own the super-majority Democrats in the Assembly and Senate.
The gubernatorial election is more than a year away, but the leading contenders have been busily raising money, taking shots at one another on the margins and collecting early endorsements from key interest groups and prominent politicians.
Illegal immigration is big business in America. Let’s never forget that. Which explains why it is so important to the Left and the Right.
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