Free Republic

Voters in Berkeley, Calif., have passed the nation’s first soda tax with a resounding 75 percent of the vote. The measure aims to reduce the effects of sugar consumption on health, especially increased rates of obesity and diabetes. It will levy a penny-per-ounce tax on most sugar-sweetened beverages and is estimated to raise more than $1 million per year. Proceeds will go to the general fund; Measure D calls for the creation of a health panel to advise Berkeley’s City Council on appropriate health programs to receive funding. Campaign Co-Chair Jack Daniels called Berkeley’s win a tipping point. “I think...

Berkeley, California, one of the most liberal cities in the nation, have overwhelmingly approved the nation's first 'sugar tax,' which will raise the cost of sodas and energy drinks by one penny per ounce. A similar tax in neighboring San Francisco, which would have levied two cents per ounce, failed to pass - gaining 55percent of the vote, short of the two-thirds majority needed. The Berkeley tax would raise the cost of a can of Pepsi from $1 to $1.12, but bigger fountain drinks would get hit harder. A large Coke from McDonald's would go from $2.29 to $2.61. A...

...But he stumbled onto the truth a few months ago, arguing that, indeed, Islamic extremism is a problem that needs to be confronted. The cheering from the Left has stopped. Now, to punish Maher for pointing out the truth, students at UC Berkeley are looking to ban him from the campus and to prevent him from making a speech there. They have started a petition, which now has over 1,500 signatures. The petition, called, "Stop Bill Maher from speaking at UC Berkeley's December graduation," makes a number of accusations about Maher, specifically slamming him for his statements against radical Islam....

A student petition at University of California, Berkeley, aims to prevent Bill Maher from speaking on campus following his recent comments on Islam. The petition, which now has more than 2,200 signatures and is circulated on change.org, demands that the university revoke its invitation for the liberal comedian to speak at a December commencement ceremony. “Bill Maher is a blatant bigot and racist who has no respect for the values UC Berkeley students and administration stand for,” the petition reads. “Bill Maher’s public statements on various religions and cultures are offensive and his dangerous rhetoric has found its way into...

On both coasts, grandparents are learning to apply a modern-day rule of thumb with surprising accuracy: If it looks inane, it’s probably Common Core. “The Berkeley school district's curriculum for sixth-grade math was an exact copy of the Common Core State Standards for the grade,” Marina Ratner wrote in The Wall Street Journal on August 5, 2014. “The teacher in my grandson's class went through special Common Core training courses.” “As his assigned homework and tests indicate, when teaching fractions, the teacher required that students draw pictures of everything: of 6 divided by 8, of 4 divided by 2/7, of...

The progressive War on Soda may have failed in New York, despite the best efforts of the Deplorable Nanny State Mayor, but this is a multi-front battle which will clearly rage on for some time. As any good battle commander will tell you, when fighting an opponent with numerical superiority, it’s best to drag them into a skirmish on your home turf. In the effort to save people from their own ignorant, evil selves, the fight to make soda more expensive – and thereby modify public behavior through tax policy – has moved to Berkeley.

As marijuana restrictions are eased throughout the nation, lawmakers from both parties are looking to the drug as a potential cash cow to shore up budget deficits and fill local and state coffers. For Democrats, however, a far more insidious pattern is developing, as recent moves by left-wing indicate they see in marijuana as a powerful tool to further control their largely poor and minority constituency with this 21st century "opiate for the masses." The city of Berkeley, CA recently moved to institute policy requiring "medicinal" marijuana outlets to allot certain amounts of their product to be distributed free to...

Low-income residents in a California city will soon be able to get high for free. The Berkeley City Council has passed a law requiring medical marijuana dispensaries to distribute 2 percent of their stashes to people making less than $32,000 per year or $46,000 per family. Under the new ordinance, which was approved unanimously this summer, only city residents will be eligible and they must have a prescription. 'Basically, the city council wants to make sure that low-income, homeless, indigent folks have access to their medical marijuana, their medicine,” Councilman Darryl Moore told CBS San Francisco. The law requires that the...

Young people who want to spend their college years to undergoing radical intellectual transformations do so typically through the study of liberal arts. No other academic scheme is able to challenge the preconceived notions that young people have in quite the same way as the introspective, penetrating dialogues found in Plato’s Republic or in Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. Only within the course listings of the liberal arts infrastructure would burgeoning humanists be able to find such prime opportunities to alter how they think, feel, and live. The study of Greek philosophy and psychology are highly valued disciplines, but what...

If two of the most progressive U.S. cities don’t pass a tax on sugary drinks, will the idea finally fizzle out? Sugary drinks have been under fire for years, with many blaming them for rising rates of obesity and chronic diseases. Yet efforts to curb consumption by imposing taxes and other measures have failed, in part because the beverage industry has spent millions to defeat the efforts. Now, the question of whether a bottle of Dr. Pepper with 64 grams of sugar should be treated like a pack of cigarettes is being considered in San Francisco and Berkeley, with the...

The city of Berkeley will require medical marijuana dispensaries to give away two percent of the amount of cannabis they sell each year free to low-income patients. The City Council voted unanimously at Tuesday’s meeting to amend the city’s medical pot rules, which would also allow for a fourth dispensary in Berkeley.

Driving might be hazardous to the earth's health. Warning labels posting a message that vehicle exhaust is a key source of carbon emissions may soon be affixed to gas pumps in the Bay Area -- but only in Berkeley, where leaders are mulling such a move. The Los Angeles Times reported that a pair of city environmental panels have already OK'd the warning stickers, which are directly modeled on the warnings on cigarettes. As of now, the stickers would carry the statement that the state "has determined that global warming caused by C02 emissions poses a serious threat to the...

The dream first happened in 1994, when Maia Flore was just 7 years old, and it continued on and off for the next nine years: An older man is pushing Flore toward the sea — pushing, pushing — and Flore, almost airborne, gets closer and closer to the water that she's deathly afraid of. It was as if Alfred Hitchcock himself were orchestrating Flore's nocturnal stirrings. In the dream, Flore would always wake up before she entered the waves. "At first, I wondered why this nightmare was coming back. Why did I have just this one nightmare?" says Flore, who's...

May 17, 2014, 02:42 pm Pelosi's message to grads: Be disruptors By Timothy Cama Lauren Schneiderman House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) encouraged graduates of the University of California Berkeley to be disruptors, using their knowledge and technology to shake up the economic system. “Being called a disruptor is a high compliment,” Pelosi said in prepared remarks Saturday. “You here at Berkeley are already disruptors in many ways.” Pelosi’s speech came nearly 50 years after students led by Mario Savio occupied a Berkeley building and launched the “free speech movement,” which sought to lift university bans on political activities. “Now,...

A suspect smashed a car into an Apple store in Berkeley early Friday morning and made off with merchandise, police said. Berkeley police responded around 2:52 a.m. to a report of an alarm from the Apple store at 1823 Fourth St. and discovered a car inside the store surrounded by glass debris. Officers checked the vehicle and found it was empty, but noticed “signs of prowl” inside the business. Officers conducted a search of the business but did not find any suspects. An investigation revealed that several Apple products were stolen, including several laptops and iPhone. McDonald's Tests Seasoned French...

On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) addressed the University of California, Berkley at an event hosted by the university's Berkeley Forum...

Rand Paul wowing them at Berkeley

A 24-year-old geography major is the first Wikipedian-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley. His announcement can be found - where else? - but on his own Wiki page. Cal hired Gorman, according to a February announcement, to advise students and professors on the complex task of editing articles for Wikipedia, the user-generated online encyclopedia that gets 500 million monthly visitors. Until now, Wikipedians-in-residence have been assigned to cultural institutions, such as the British Museum, the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and the U.S. National Archives. In a statement, Cal calls Gorman a "hardcore Wikipedian" since his undergraduate days at Berkeley,...

Any visitor to North Carolina and California will know that the two states have their differences. The former is a typically “red state”; California is staunchly “blue.” Each has certain geographic, ethnic and cultural peculiarities, different demographic makeup, family income levels, and more. Yet perhaps the most surprising divide, one many wouldn’t expect, is that North Carolina appears to be a hotbed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD—especially when compared to California. A child who lived in North Carolina instead of California in 2007, according to U.S. academics Stephen Hinshaw and Richard Scheffler, was 2½ times more likely to...

Thousands of San Francisco Bay Area residents may have been exposed to measles last week when an unvaccinated student at the Unversity of California, Berkeley, attended classes and rode the area's BART transit system. Public health officials in Contra Costa County, outside of San Francisco, said anyone riding BART from Feb. 4 to Feb. 7 during the morning or late evening commutes could have been exposed to the highly contagious respiratory virus. The young man in his 20s lives in the county and was confirmed to have measles on Wednesday. He was likely infected while traveling recently in Asia, health...