Free Republic

4 ‘African Socialists’ charged with election meddling for Russia after FIB raided their homes Four American socialists have been charged with election meddling and spreading Putin’s propaganda after they were arrested in dramatic FBI raids. The four, are members of the African People’s Socialist Party. Omali Yeshitela, the group’s chairman was one of the 4 Americans indicted Tuesday for “sowing discord, spreading pro-Russia propaganda and interfering in elections within the United States.” The DOJ says that the 81-year-old veteran leader of the far-left group conspired along with three others to help Russian efforts to meddle in elections. Yeshitela has called...

California has seen a population decline of more than 1 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 500,000 people leaving between April 2020 and July 2022. In the state where annual wildfires and treacherous mudslides threaten homes, the population dipped by slightly more than 508,000 since 2020. San Francisco and Lassen counties experienced the largest population declines, at 7.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively.

As a California, moving out of California especially Los Angeles was not an easy decision. I grew up here, all my friends and family are here, and my whole career was here. But with high taxes, expensive cost of living, and dwindling opportunity, there’s no longer any incentive to live here. I’m in the process of moving and every time I get any kind of fear or anxiety, I consider these pros and cons about why you should leave and other people shouldn’t move here.

AP) — A Russian operative under the supervision of one of the Kremlin’s main intelligence services has been charged with recruiting political groups in the United States to advance pro-Russia propaganda, including during the invasion of Ukraine, the Justice Department said Friday. The indictment of Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov reflects what U.S. officials say are ongoing Russian government efforts to meddle in the American political process, to shape public opinion and to sow discord and dissent on hot-button social issues. In this case, the authorities say, Ionov from 2014 through last March recruited political groups in Florida, Georgia and California and...

A Florida socialist political group defended its relationship with Russia after the FBI alleged Kremlin agents teamed up with the organization in a "brazen" attempt to undermine US elections. Federal agents on Friday raided St. Petersburg's Uhuru House — the headquarters of the socialist pan-African political organization — in connection with the alleged election interference conspiracy, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

SAN RAMON, California — Chevron intends to sell its vast headquarters campus in San Ramon, keep its head offices in the same East Bay city and shift jobs to Texas, a move that could deal a fresh blow to the Bay Area economy. The energy giant said it will cover relocation costs for some employees to move from San Ramon to Texas. “Chevron plans to sell our Chevron Park campus and move to new modern leased space in San Ramon,” the oil titan said in comments emailed to this news organization. ... “Chevron will remain headquartered in California, where the...

The popular Gilroy Garlic Festival and gourmet alley which attracted tens of thousands of garlic lovers and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local charities is being canceled indefinitely. “Due to lingering uncertainties from the pandemic, along with prohibitive insurance requirements by the City of Gilroy, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Board has decided not to move ahead with a festival for 2022 and the foreseeable future,” the festival board of directors said in a letter to local media. According to past president and current board member, Tom Cline the festival was losing money. “Clearly it was over the 10...

CALIFORNIA POPULATION TALLY: LA County, all 9 San Francisco Bay Area counties lost residents in same year for 1st time - AP

Less than a week after a massive clean-up of homeless encampments on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, new arrivals continue to swarm the area, DailyMail.com can reveal. City officials promised they would return at the end of July to finish the job, but residents and shop owners say enough is enough, and tell DailyMail.com that last week's sweep was 'all for show'. Last week, a concerned resident who asked not to be identified captured a couple on video taking up camp near the popular boardwalk.

The American Civil War is often thought of as being the deciding historical factor putting to rest any future ambition of individual or groups of states wanting to secede from the union. Well over a century later, the idea of secession appears far from settled in the minds of millions of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike. In fact, secession mindedness has been gaining ground following the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, which showed the nation to be more politically divided than ever. A newly released poll found that two-thirds (66 percent) of Republicans living in southern states, including Texas and Florida,...

REDWOOD CITY (CBS SF) – Longtime Bay Area software giant Oracle announced Friday that it has moved its headquarters to Texas, becoming the latest Silicon Valley firm to relocate during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a regulatory filing obtained by Bloomberg, the company based in Redwood City will be headquartered in Austin. In the filing, the software company said the move “means that many of our employees can choose their office location as well as continue to work from home part time or all of the time.” Oracle said it would continue to support other office locations throughout the country,...

A former San Franciscan rants about how terrible life has become in San Francisco, and talks about his family fleeing San Francisco, and their plans to leave California altogether. His wife owned a hair salon, which has been closed since Mid-March. He talks about the devastation on small business in San Francisco. I thought freepers might appreciate his video. Towards the end of the video, he swears an oath to not vote like a Californian in his new home.

... The 1970 Clean Air Act prohibits states from regulating tailpipe emissions, but it allows California to request a waiver to “meet compelling and extraordinary conditions.” This waiver authority was intended to help California reduce tailpipe pollutants such as NOx and sulphur that contribute to smog. The LA haze in those days could be as thick as San Francisco’s fog. Yet the Obama Administration in 2009 issued California a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions despite the lack of legal or environmental justification. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act pre-empts state regulations of fuel economy, and CO2 emissions don’t cause...

You can't go a week without another report of businesses and people leaving California because of the high cost of housing. Today it's the Wall Street Journal's turn, in a story headlined, "California Has the Jobs but Not Enough Homes." The problem -- a self-inflicted problem if there ever was one -- is that the hot economy is creating jobs, but developers can't build enough affordable living space. The WSJ reports that "companies are expanding outside the state or moving outright as an affordable-housing crisis casts a shadow on the booming economy."More: For employers, “we’re at a crisis stage,”...

A White House petition gathering force calls for citizenship to be stripped and exile for anyone who signs a petition in favor of a state's secession. "Mr. President, please sign an executive order such that each American citizen who signed a petition from any state to secede from the USA shall have their citizenship stripped and be peacefully deported," the full petition reads. The title of the petition is, "WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Strip the Citizenship from Everyone who Signed a Petition to Secede and Exile Them." As of this writing, 2,205 have signed the petition; 22,795 more...

Somebody has posted a petition asking that those who have signed the "peaceful secession" petitions be deported. So, I started a petition to deport them (fighting liberal moocher ignorance with like ignorance). Please sign my petition so that we'll win the playground fight! Click Link to Petition

A colossal waste of time, money, and the public's attention span is underway in the golden state. Casey Tolan of the Mercury-News reports: For the first time since before the Civil War, voters across California will decide in November on a proposal to split up the Golden State – potentially remaking it into three new states. An initiative dividing California, pushed by Silicon Valley venture capital investor Tim Draper, received enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot, the Secretary of State's office confirmed Tuesday afternoon. Supporters of the radical plan submitted more than 600,000 signatures, and a random sample projected that...

California is a diverse, populous state full of potential. Yet for residents in twenty-one counties in Northern California—and they are particular about their truly northern status compared to San Francisco—they feel left out. I learned first-hand about the struggles for these rugged salt-of-the earth conservatives during a three-day visit to the region. I gave two speeches on conservative activism and to recruit help for the fight against California’s increasingly unpopular sanctuary state law, SB 54.“North State” is so far north, the closest airport is in Medford, Oregon. The region stretches from California’s northwesternmost county, Del Norte, to the northeastern corner...

Tim Draper is a rich man, but he understands he doesn't know it all.  His first attempt to divide California into six states made little sense.  So he went out and got some people who are experts on the subject.  The result, Cal 3, is a political masterpiece.  This could work. When California was admitted to the Union in 1850, it had only 92,000 people, most of them scrambling for gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.  That's why California's county lines are so screwy.  Los Angeles County now has 10,000,000 people.  Alpine County has 1,000. Cal 3 divides the state along lines that make...

In a state consumed by conservation and environmental issues, one highly endangered species has long gone unnoticed and unprotected – the California Conservative. Is it still possible to rescue them from the brink of extinction? Can their numbers be revived? And can they thrive here once again? While the nation continues to view California as a homogeneous voting block of individuals in lock step with an increasingly progressive liberal agenda, for Common Sense Californians up and down the left coast state, there’s a sense that a different tide is rising. The ripple began in Los Alamitos where the city council...