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In December, preparing to escape what turned out to be a mild New York winter for the palmy breezes of Southern California, I was stunned when friends suggested that I think twice about coming to Los Angeles. What could be awful enough to keep my wife and me in the Northeast? I soon discovered that, for every Angeleno I spoke with, the answer was the same. It wasn’t homelessness, crime, or El Niño; it wasn’t that Kobe Bryant was retiring. No, it was traffic: the subject of constant calculation and discussion, a matter of negotiation between friends, spouses, and would-be...

When I arrived in Los Angeles on August 22, 1960 with my wife Carol, recruited from Illinois to teach Chemistry, I thought it was perfect, busy and a little scary, but just about the finest place on this planet.  As the years went by and I traveled to other countries that idea was enforced.  “LA had it all,” and I was there for 26 years watching it decay imperceptibly and that would flash on me once in a while. What is it like today?  Here following is a controversial list that has been seen in several publications with no challenge...

California's public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to know where their money's at," said bill sponsor Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, a Republican. The two bills went down Wednesday on a party-line vote, after dozens of union members came out against the legislation....

Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday enacted California’s most significant new tobacco regulations in decades, signing laws that will place tight restrictions on use of the increasingly popular e-cigarette and make California the second state to raise its smoking age to 21. Brown signed five closely watched bills, which will also expand smoking restrictions in the workplace and on school properties. California now joins jurisdictions like Hawaii, New York City and San Francisco that have bumped the tobacco-buying age to 21 in an effort to block young people’s route to obtaining tobacco. But Brown vetoed one measure that would have allowed...

Filmmaker Rob Reiner made headlines today by arguing that the rise of Donald Trump stems from racism in America and that the media has given him a pass. Reiner accused the media of going easy on Trump, saying that the billionaire businessman is only taken seriously as a political candidate because he is a celebrity. "The words that have been flung out from his mouth are insane!" Reiner said on MSNBC. "If he was not a celebrity - if Donald Trump was not a celebrity … you'd see a guy in a park, a lunatic in a park on a...

Preliminary numbers show California's personal income tax collections were about $1 billion short of Gov. Jerry Brown's projections during the pivotal month of April.

Not only will Burlingame be the center of the Republican political universe for three days starting Friday, when White House presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich speak at the state Republican Convention, but some Democrats are taking advantage of the media spotlight shining on California, too. Billionaire San Francisco environmental activist Tom Steyer launched an 30-second ad Thursday ripping Cruz and Trump for their dubious attitudes toward climate change and urging people to vote against them. On Monday, the former hedge fund manager has announced his NextGen Climate Action super PAC would spend $25 million this year...

Recent discussions within Los Angeles labor groups reveal inherent hypocrisy within the “Fight for $15” campaign. Unions paid plenty of lip service toward this effort, which would raise the minimum wage to $15. The Los Angeles City Council is considering a measure that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020, and this month California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2022. It seems that unions should be celebrating this supposed win for workers – yet union leaders are currently seeking an exemption to the $15-an-hour minimum wage for union...

Los Angeles was once the epicenter of apparel manufacturing, attracting buyers from across the world to its clothing factories, sample rooms and design studios. But over the years, cheap overseas labor lured many apparel makers to outsource to foreign competitors in far-flung places such as China and Vietnam. Now, Los Angeles firms are facing another big hurdle — California's minimum wage hitting $15 an hour by 2022 — which could spur more garment makers to exit the state. Last week American Apparel, the biggest clothing maker in Los Angeles, said it might outsource the making of some garments to another...

My home state, California, has edged out New York to be the first state adopting a $15 minimum wage. Our Governor, Jerry Brown, gave the policy a full-throated endorsement. He stated “I'm hoping that what happens in California will not stay in California, but spread all across the country. It's a matter of economic justice. It makes sense.” If you know anything about California, you too would be in support of this righteous increase that more than doubles the national minimum wage. How does anyone expect one to live on a measly $7.25 an hour? After all, this is not...

When signing the bill raising California’s minimum wage, Governor Jerry Brown called the new $15 minimum wage “good politics” but “questionable policy.” He may be more prescient than many realize. There was a time in recent American history when a minimum wage of nearly equal magnitude to California’s was imposed, and “good politics” turned out to be disastrous policy. It is worth remembering this previous minimum-wage experiment as voters assess whether the progressive push for substantially higher minimum wages will deliver prosperity for the working class. President Obama has long supported the so-called Raise the Wage Act, which, if passed,...

In the past, left-wing student activists at UC Berkeley have joined unions in pushing for higher wages, including a “living wage,” for campus staff. Campus minimum wages have lagged behind local minimum wages because the university, as a public state institution, is exempt from local minimums. On Monday, University of California Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks announced that the educational institution will be eliminating 500 jobs over the course of two years, which will wind up saving an estimated $50 million. “My concern and the public’s concern is that UC Berkeley is going to start cutting the people it can ill...

Boxer Unhinged: You berate anyone who disagrees with you as immoral and corrupt Rob is our resident Catholic, so I defer to him on matters of Catholic doctrine. But from the looks of things I know a lot more about it than self-identified Catholic Barbara Boxer - whose real religion appears to be global warming. Or should I say, the massively expanded and empowered government we’ll get if only people stop questioning the left-wing orthodoxy on things like global warming, which demands that all debate stop immediately and that government be given whatever it wants so it can do something,...

Every few months, another think tank or financial institution releases a new report sounding the alarm about the fiscal crisis facing state and local pension funds, and the findings are reliably dismissed by public sector unions and their political backers. But the latest research, from researchers at Stanford’s business school, is hard to ignore. The Financial Times reports:

REGIONAL BREAKDOWNS: SoCal is head over heels for Trump (Trump 49 percent; Cruz 34, Kasich 13) , Central Valley leans Trump (Trump 39, Cruz 26, Kasich 18), and Inland Empire for Cruz (Cruz, 43, Trump 30, Kasich, 9). Silicon Valley and the Bay Area? Kasich trounces Trump 43-36, with Cruz at 14.

Gov. Jerry Brown, casting a living wage as a moral imperative while questioning its economic rationale, signed legislation Monday raising California’s mandatory minimum to $15 an hour by 2022, acting within hours of a similar bill signing in New York. The bill’s enactment comes one week after Brown, Democratic lawmakers and labor leaders announced an agreement on the wage increase, averting a brawl on the November ballot. [snip] California political leaders and labor have struck a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over the next seven years. One excited fast food worker hugged Gov. Jerry Brown...

Confirmed: Demoralized Cops Equal Higher Crime Jack Dunphy Gentle readers, fasten your seatbelts. We are about to embark on a virtual tour on which you will join me in a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car cruising some of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. We will be patrolling the LAPD’s 77th Street Division, which year after year ranks at or near the top in violent crime among the city’s 21 patrol divisions. The Los Angeles Times tracks crime in more than 200 communities across L.A. County, and five of the top ten on the list are in 77th Street Division....

Raising the minimum wage in California to the highest statewide level in the nation would eventually cost taxpayers an additional $3.6 billion a year in higher pay for government employees, legislative analysts determined. The estimate was disclosed as an Assembly committee gave initial approval Wednesday to boosting the wage to $15 an hour by 2022. The full state Assembly and Senate could vote on the deal between Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and labor unions as early as Thursday. […] First-year costs to the state would total $19 million, when the minimum pay bumps to $10.50 on Jan. 1, according to...

California lawmakers and union leaders have reached a tentative deal to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is expected to make the formal announcement as early as Monday. According to the L.A. Times, the minimum wage will jump from $10 to $10.50 an hour in 2017 and will increase by $1 every year after that until reaching $15 an hour in 2022. Business with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to comply. "The governor and stakeholders have all been negotiating...

"For rent: Downtown apartment, 2 bedrooms. Includes organic garden space, hot tub, great backyard. You can bring your dogs if they have references as good as yours. If voting for Donald Trump, do not call." This ad appeared in The Nickel, a free paper in Grand Junction — and even before the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel published an article about it on Saturday, landlord Mark Holmes received push-back from fans of Donald Trump by way of ugly voicemail messages. And that's not to mention the comments that have appeared in posts about the ad that have appeared on conservative websites, some of...