Free Republic

FRESNO — Days after Donald Trump won the White House vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally and fortify the Mexican border, California farmer Kevin Herman ordered nearly $600,000 in new equipment, cutting the number of workers he’ll need starting with the next harvest. Herman, who grows figs, persimmons and almonds in the nation’s most productive farming state, said Trump’s comments pushed him to make the purchase, larger than he would have otherwise. “No doubt about it,” Herman said. “I probably wouldn’t have spent as much or bought as much machinery as I did.”(continued)

Mother Jones writes, "It's not easy to evict someone in California… Generally that's a good thing." But many people who read the article in which this claim appears may reach a different conclusion.Elizabeth Abel, an English professor at the University of California-Berkeley, rented her two-bedroom home to David Peritz, who teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Abel didn't bother to ask for references or do much research on her prospective tenant, according to Mother Jones: the fact that he was an academic was essentially good enough for her.Her trust was misplaced. Peritz failed to pay rent on time, and it...

Former Attorney General Eric Holder will back the California Legislature in potential legal clashes with the incoming Trump administration. Holder, currently a partner at the law firm Covington & Burling, will serve as an adviser and outside counsel to help "resist any attempts to roll back the progress California has made" — in particular with climate change, health care, civil rights and immigration issues, legislative leaders said Wednesday.

Girding for four years of potential battles with President-elect Donald J. Trump, Democratic leaders of the California Legislature announced Wednesday that they had hired Eric H. Holder Jr., who was attorney general under President Obama, to represent them in any legal fights against the new Republican White House. The decision by the Legislature to retain Mr. Holder, who is now a prominent Washington lawyer, is the latest sign of the ideological battle that may play out over the next four years between this predominantly Democratic state and Washington. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president, defeated Mr. Trump by more...

What makes the law-abiding leave California is not just the sanctimoniousness, the high taxes, or the criminality. It is always the insult added to injury. We suffer not only from the highest basket of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation, but also from nearly the worst schools and infrastructure. We have the costliest entitlements and the most entitled. We have the largest number of billionaires and the largest number of impoverished, both in real numbers and as a percentage of the state population. In feral California, we suffer not just from too many and too few applications of...

One reason for the emergence of outsider Donald Trump is the old outrage that elites seldom experience the consequences of their own ideologically driven agendas. Hypocrisy, when coupled with sanctimoniousness, grates people like few other human transgressions: Barack Obama opposing charter schools for the inner city as he puts his own children in Washington’s toniest prep schools, or Bay Area greens suing to stop contracted irrigation water from Sierra reservoirs, even as they count on the Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy project to deliver crystal-clear mountain water to their San Francisco taps. The American progressive elite relies on its influence, education, money,...

The next time you wander into Sammy’s Wood-Fired Pizza for a burrata and pesto pie, indulge in a shrimp-filled bucket at Rockin’ Baja Lobster, or decide to splurge on beef tenderloin at George’s at the Cove, don’t be surprised to see an added charge when your check arrives. Girding for the second minimum wage hike in six months and the fourth in 2-½ years, many of San Diego’s full-service restaurants are introducing for the first time an average surcharge of 3 percent of the meal’s cost to help cover increased labor expenses that some operators say amount to hundreds of...

The California Legislature reconvenes this week, but thanks to Donald Trump, it is more likely to resemble a war council in the coming months than the deliberative body of the most populous state in the nation. This war posture is triggered by fears that Trump’s election means life as we know it in the Golden State is about to change for the worst. Marauding hordes of federal agents will sweep up illegal immigrants wherever they find them, Covered California will be rendered naked, and scientists who believe in climate change will be pushed to the sidelines. Out will go solar...

The phrase “sanctuary city” should be redundant. Cities should be sanctuaries for citizens. Period.The surrounding walls of a community kept inhabitants safe from marauding tribes in the Middle Ages. To this day, Vatican City has its ancient surroundings. Israel has a fence, with a cement wall in key sections, to protect their citizenry from Islamic terrorists and West Bank agitators. Those cities are safe, or at least safer.American citizens, though, are finding less safety in their cities. In California, there are at least 35 sanctuary cities in the lawless sense: illegal aliens can live and work in these areas, and...

A California man has been charged with setting up fake businesses in three states, then using names taken from temporary visas issued to student visitors on a cultural exchange to obtain more than $355,000 in unemployment benefits for nonexistent workers, federal prosecutors in Iowa said in court documents. Nikolai Monastyrski is charged in federal court in Iowa with wire and mail fraud related to the scheme that prosecutors say he perpetrated there as well as in Illinois and Pennsylvania. A complaint filed Nov. 10 by Dana Johnson, a Chicago-based U.S. Department of Labor special agent, says Monastyrski was able to...

Lovely. In fairness, one guy does not an entire movement make. The restraining order that requires Gerard to stay at least 100 yards away from Commissioner Johnson is about Gerard’s personal behavior, and not about any official actions or positions taken by BLM. If you want to argue that Gerard’s attitude is not typical of BLM’s overall attitude toward the police, give it your best. But if BLM really wants to make the case this is not what it’s all about, they would probably help themselves a lot if they would publicly condemn this sort of nonsense:

FULL TITLE: Gay man who unsuccessfully sued San Diego cops for arresting him for wearing a butt-exposing gladiator costume 'commits suicide' after racking up $1m in legal bills A man who lost a grueling, five-year lawsuit against San Diego police after being arrested for nudity during a gay pride festival has died in an apparent suicide, two weeks after the verdict. Police found 35-year-old Will X Walters dead at his Hillcrest apartment Wednesday but it's unclear how long he'd been dead, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The medical examiner is examining the case. Walters was arrested in 2011 during a...

With California in full revolt against the incoming Trump Administration swearing to go to war with the other 49 states, the elected Leftists who run the state struck again against small businesses in the state. The government enacted 900 (yes, you read that correctly) new laws for 2017. One they snuck under everyone’s nose is a revision of the very expensive worker’s comp system. As you probably know worker’s compensation insurance is paid by employers to cover medical costs for an employee getting injured on the job. It is a sure bet, as you suspected, that California has the costliest...

California would step up efforts to bring about a system of electing U.S. presidents by popular vote instead of the electoral college under new legislation... The proposals follow Dec. 19 electoral college meetings that certified the Nov. 8 victory of Republican Donald Trump... It is the second time in 16 years that the candidate who won the popular vote nevertheless lost the presidency – Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore in 2000 despite losing the popular vote by about 540,000 votes. State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, gives a thumbs up to a colleague in 2014. Hill is...

The arrival in 2017 of a raft of new gun control laws in California won’t amount to much, except more hassles for gun dealers and the law-abiding few. Randy Pench rpench@sacbee.com Yes, “few.” When buying a handgun, rifle or shotgun, the vast majority of people naturally will follow the law. The cost of noncompliance is too high, and the inconvenience is too great. Unless your next-door neighbor happens to traffic in illegal weapons, odds are you will go to the gun store, fill out the paperwork, endure the waiting period and get on with your life. But many otherwise law-abiding...

The Los Angeles Times thinks California’s next attorney general must place the investigation into Exxon Mobil’s climate change research at the top of their “to do” list. Whoever becomes California’s next attorney general will have to address the probes and allegations that Exxon lied to the public and investors at the seriousness of man-made global warming, the LA Times editorial board wrote Friday.

A Black Lives Matter chapter publicly praised a Starbucks barista for spiting in an officer’s coffee at a local California coffee shop Wednesday night. The Facebook page “Stockton Police Department, Corruption Reporting Page” posted a photo of the officer and his family, reports Fox 40. “We are happy to report that today this officer from the Stockton Police Department got to have coffee at Starbucks … served with a side of spit,” the caption alleged.

It started out like any other Uber transaction. Keith Avila, a photographer who also drives for the ridesharing company, picked up two women and a girl at a home in Sacramento, California. As they got into the car, Avila noticed the girl looked young. *snip* “I was 100 percent sure I knew what was happening,” Avila tells PEOPLE. “It wasn’t 99.999 percent. It was 100 percent. And I knew I had to do something, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it. I wondered if I should take pictures with my phone.”

Beginning on Jan. 1, prostitution by minors will be legal in California. Yes, you read that right. SB 1322 bars law enforcement from arresting sex workers who are under the age of 18 for soliciting or engaging in prostitution, or loitering with the intent to do so. So teenage girls (and boys) in California will soon be free to have sex in exchange for money without fear of arrest or prosecution. This terribly destructive legislation was written and passed by the progressive Democrats who control California’s state government with a two-thirds “supermajority.”

U.S. News compiled data on car thefts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2014 – the most recent year for complete data from the bureau – to determine which of the 100 largest metro areas in the country had the highest rate of car theft. Albuquerque, New Mexico, takes the top spot for highest rate of car theft, with a total of 6,131 thefts in 2014 and 676.9 thefts per 100,000 people. The City of Albuquerque acknowledges its high rate of auto theft on its website, noting New Mexico’s shared border with Mexico gives car thieves added incentive because...