Free Republic

Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line. Consider the disconnects: California's combined income and sales taxes are among the nation's highest, but the state's deficit is still about $16 billion. It's estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet California wants to raise taxes even higher; its business climate already ranks near the bottom of most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid on average in the nation, but its public school students consistently test near the bottom of...

"The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" isn't living up to its promise. Also known as Proposition 47, the California ballot initiative, which was approved in November 2014 with 60 percent of the vote, downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon was the rare prosecutor who pushed for its approval. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, "What we have been doing hasn't worked, frankly." Gascon spokesman Alex Bastian told me, "The voters indicated that possessing small amounts...

California's most valuable cash crop, marijuana, is taking a heavy toll on some of the state's most sensitive ecosystems, with the effects ranging from erosion, contamination, threats to wildlife, and heavy water use at a time of severe drought. The situation is prompting ecologists and wildlife managers to urge greater focus on bringing marijuana plots under tighter environmental scrutiny. It's a tall order, notes a research team calling for the added focus via an article in the August issue of the journal BioScience. Among the challenges: Money to beef up enforcement and to cover cleanup is scarce. And where some...

With a new ballot proposal reigniting debate over government retirement benefits, the latest federal figures show California’s public pension debt in 2013 stood at $4,425 for every man, woman and child in the state, despite strong investment returns by public retirement funds.

LOOMIS, Calif. — China is demanding that the Obama administration return a wealthy and politically connected businessman who fled to the United States, according to several American officials familiar with the case. Should he seek political asylum, he could become one of the most damaging defectors in the history of the People’s Republic. The case of the businessman, Ling Wancheng, has strained relations between two nations already at odds over numerous issues before President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States in September, including an extensive cybertheft of American government data and China’s aggressive territorial claims. Mr. Ling...

SACRAMENTO — California is launching a state website that lets residents tattle on water wasters, from neighbors with leaky sprinklers to waiters who serve water without asking. California has multiple restrictions on water use, including banning washing cars with hoses that don't shut off and restricting lawn-watering within two days of rainfall. But enforcement varies widely across the parched state. Residents can send details and photos of water waste at www.savewater.ca.gov . Complaints are then sent to local government agencies based on the address of the offense. The site went online Thursday as the latest conservation initiative. More than 300...

On July 24, California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) announced she will investigate whether the Center for American Progress broke any laws in videoing Planned Parenthood’s (PP) Dr. Deborah Nucatola. On the video, Nucatola discussed PP’s sales of baby livers and the practice of “partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts” to those who want them.

Gov. Jerry Brown arrived in Rome for climate talks this week with the smallest of entourages – three – and the most comfortable of accommodations. Brown, who typically flies Southwest Airlines in California, flew to Italy with real estate developer George Marcus and his wife, Judy, in their private plane. Brown is combining his trip to a conference here with a vacation with those friends.

ANAHEIM – Two men were shot late Sunday night, and one died Monday morning, in an unincorporated area west of the city, officials said. Dave Bruce Douglas, 51, and a second man were in a Ford SUV around 10 p.m. Sunday near Lullaby Lane and Poona Drive when they had a confrontation with three to five men who were on foot outside of the vehicle, Orange County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Jeff Hallock said. Both men live in the neighborhood and drove by the group who were in their late teens or early 20s and who were spray painting, or tagging,...

Gov. Jerry Brown, in an ominous appeal on climate change, said Tuesday that the world may already have “gone over the edge” on global warming and that humanity must reverse course or face extinction. “We don’t even know how far we’ve gone, or if we’ve gone over the edge,” Brown said at a climate summit at the Vatican. “There are tipping points, feedback loops, this is not some linear set of problems that we can predict. We have to take measures against an uncertain future which may well be something no one ever wants. We are talking about extinction. We...

Uniting the two highly combustible issues of Obamacare and immigration could reignite a fierce health-care reform controversy. By 5:11 AM EDT California lawmakers and activists are spearheading a first-in-the-nation plan to let undocumented immigrants buy Obamacare health insurance. Supporters say the California proposal, which would need federal approval and couldn’t start until 2017, is the next logical step in expanding health insurance to a population that was intentionally excluded from the president’s health-care law. But uniting the two highly combustible issues of Obamacare and immigration could reignite a fierce health-care reform controversy. Story Continued Below There’s no guarantee the California...

When the Census Bureau began calculating poverty a half-century ago – as a “war on poverty” became a hot issue in Washington – it devised a rather simple formula. The formula defined income that would be counted – excluding non-cash income such as food stamps and housing subsidies – and applied it to a narrow “market basket” of food and other living necessities. All the data were nationwide, with no adjustments for regional or local differentials. By the official poverty index, California doesn’t fare too badly, with 17 percent of its residents impoverished, a bit above the national rate of...

Gov. Brown Talks To KCAL9 About Bill That Would Mandate Reduction In Gas Usage LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — As Gov. Jerry Brown prepares to travel to Rome next week for an international climate conference, the debate over a bill aimed at reducing gas usage in California is heating up. Brown fully supports SB-350, which would mandate a 50-percent cutback in California’s gas usage in the next 15 years, arguing that it’s a prime factor in global warming. “We’ve got a serious problem here,” he told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan via satellite. “Burning oil and gas and coal and diesel...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Several California lawmakers and community assistance groups are calling on Gov. Jerry Brown to repay more than $331 million in funds intended to help homeowners struggling with foreclosures that the state siphoned off to help deal with its budget crisis. A Sacramento County judge found that the governor and state Legislature unlawfully diverted most of a fund that was part of a $25 billion settlement between five major banks and nearly every state in 2012. Brown's attorneys argued the state had the discretion to use that money in the state budget. But the judge sided with...

GasBuddy started an emergencypetition on Friday calling on Governor Brown to obtain an EPA waiver to prevent gasoline price increases of at least 50-cents a gallon in Southern California and 30-cents in Northern California. As Breitbart News warned in December in “Brown Needs Oil Trains to Prevent Skyrocketing Energy Prices,: decades of anti-oil-production-policies in the Democrat-controlled state had made residents highly reliant on inconsistent supplies of oil from Iraq and oil trains from North Dakota. With supplies now breaking down, Californians are sure to be angry paying $5 a gallon for gasoline. GasBuddy noted that an “extraordinary convergence of fuel supply problems...

When Fabiola Ortiz heard California had granted health coverage to poor children lacking legal immigration status, she was grateful. Since arriving in the U.S. illegally 12 years ago, she has taken her two youngest children to the doctor only for required school physicals and relied on home remedies for everything else.

California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that he will travel to Vatican City later this month to discuss climate change and modern slavery with dignitaries including Pope Francis as the governor seeks to burnish his legacy as a climate change activist. Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian, plans to attend a two-day event starting July 21 hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences. The focus is on two issues highlighted in the pope's recent teaching document, called an encyclical, in which he chastised international lawmakers for failing to adopt effective, long-term policies that would protect the environment and...

Citing significant new costs to the state and a negative effect on businesses, the Brown administration’s Finance Department is opposing a bill that would raise California's $9 minimum wage to $11 an hour on Jan. 1 and boost it again to $13 in 2017. “The Department of Finance is opposed to this bill because it results in significant, unbudgeted costs to the General Fund,” the report says. “Further, Finance notes the net impact of an increased minimum wage on California’s economy and state budget is likely to be negative.” “For the economy, losses from higher production costs to businesses would...

Sunday night in Los Angeles as a 30 year-old white woman walked with her boyfriend near Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, a mysterious Black man walked up behind the couple and without saying a word fired a shotgun blast to the back of the woman’s head, according to police. The killer was seen carrying the shotgun as he ran to a car and drove away. The search for the killer continues. The Los Angeles Times reported: “The man walked up from behind the woman as she walked with her boyfriend in Hollywood near Sunset Boulevard. He aimed a shotgun and killed...

A new experiment in California aims to solve two problems with one program. A pilot program backed by the California Air Resource Board is offering some big kick backs for residents of the Greater Los Angeles area and San Joaquin Valley if they turn in old gas guzzling vehicles for more energy efficient ones. The lower their income the more money could be coming their way. In fact, in the right situations, residents could get an electric or hybrid car for nothing. Literally $0. According to the press release from the Air Resource Board: The program works by providing increasingly...