Free Republic

Dawud Abdulwali was taken into custody Tuesday by members of the Los Angeles Police Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Los Angeles Fire Department, LAPD Officer Tony Im confirmed to KTLA. Abdulwali was arrested at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday and was booked less than two hours later at the LAPD’s 77th Street station, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department online inmate records. No other details of the arrest were immediately available. The suspect’s bail was set at $1,036,925, according to the Sheriff’s Department. Officials from the arresting agencies and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office...

Labor leaders, who were among the strongest supporters of the citywide minimum wage increase approved last week by the Los Angeles City Council, are advocating last-minute changes to the law that could create an exemption for companies with unionized workforces. The push to include an exception to the mandated wage increase for companies that let their employees collectively bargain was the latest unexpected detour as the city nears approval of its landmark legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. For much of the past eight months, labor activists have argued against special considerations for business...

Charter Communications plans to soon begin offering the Los Angeles Dodgers TV channel, SportsNet LA, in Southern California, breaking the year-long impasse that has prevented thousands of baseball fans from watching their favorite team on TV ... "We want the Dodgers on every outlet and we are committed to making that happen," [Charter Communications Chief Executive Tom] Rutledge said ...

Did The New York Times just inadvertently tell us what the real goal of the raise-the-minimum-wage campaign is? A Times editorial last week cheered Los Angeles’ enactment of a $15-an-hour minimum wage — but noted that restaurants, particularly fast-food joints, don’t like it. Said The Times: “The restaurant industry . . . will not go down without a fight.” We didn’t think that bringing down an entire industry was what the campaign for a $15 minimum was supposed to be about. Oops. Back in March, we noted that a similar hikein Seattle’s minimum wage was leading to a spate of local restaurant closings, given that labor costs...

The Los Angeles City Council this week voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. But the effective cost for employers likely will spike to nearly $20, at least for full-time workers. Once all the nonwage costs are added, including payroll taxes, paid sick leave and the big one — ObamaCare's employer mandate — minimum compensation for a full-time worker could rise as high as $19.28 an hour by 2020, an IBD analysis finds. That would amount to a jump of $10.67, or 124%, since June 2014. Seemingly absent from the minimum-wage debate has been the reality that...

If someone’s pay suddenly doubles, she may lose rental assistance, child care subsidies, and more. In L.A., a worker who currently makes $9 an hour and works 40 hours a week (which is not a given, but that would be a full-time workload) will earn $360 a week, or about $1,440 a month and $18,720 a year, before taxes. If that worker is a mom with two children, she is below the poverty line. She qualifies for a bevy of federal and state programs like food stamps, rental assistance, child care subsidies, health care for her children, and Medicaid because...

Hollywood’s enemies of American freedom are busy undermining the life we have built and hope to keep. These social parasites, who have the wherewithal to live anywhere after they complete the destruction of America, are opening their checkbooks to the Democrats who will carry out the end game for America if we let them. People like Leonardo DiCaprio, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Barbra Streisand, whose personal lives have nothing whatsoever in common with our own, are pouring out their “One percenter” fortunes to force us to live as they deign we should live. In an effort to save Democrat...

The ballot item, Measure R, spearheaded by actor, director and producer Rob Reiner and backed by entertainment-industry figures including Barbra Streisand, Tom Hanks and David Geffen, passed with 59 percent of the vote, according to election results released today.

A glittering line-up of Hollywood stars is poised to back Hillary Clinton's bid to become US President by raising millions for her campaign. The former Secretary of State and wife of ex-President Bill Clinton is expected to announce her 2016 candidacy today in a video released on social media. And political pundits say plans are already in place to hold fundraising parties as early as next month. Mrs Clinton's most high-profile Hollywood backers include director Steven Spielberg, and actors George Clooney, Barbra Streisand and Tom Hanks. DreamWorks studio boss Jeffrey Katzenberg has said: 'Hillary is the best qualified candidate. She...

Poor Barbra Streisand. Just last week the renowned economist (who also describes herself as a “singer,” “actress,” and “activist”) penned an opinion piece titled “Have You Heard the Good News?” about how well the economy is performing under Barack Obama. It was a pep rally of sorts, and all that was missing were the pom-poms. “President Obama’s Administration, with only opposition from the Republicans,” she gushed, “has steadily helped put more than 11 million Americans back to work in the private sector.” Then two days later the dismal jobs report for March was released. Bad timing, for sure. The statistic...

Obama dines with Streisand, Springsteen, Kardashian and Hollywood Elite The contrast could not be greater! While President Obama was hobnobbing with Hollywood's liberal elite in southern California, we were in middle America rallying working-class Americans to vote in the midterm elections.  President Obama claims to represent the working class, yet has never had a real job and prefers the company of liberal celebrities like Barabra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Kim Kardashian, and Bruce Springsteen.   The President's hypocrisy could be smelt all the way in Minneapolis, MN where Diana Nagy was joined on stage by patriotic Americans President Obama was...

"L.A.'s Big Raise For Working Poor," read the Los Angeles Times' front-page headline a day after the City Council passed a $15-an-hour minimum wage. It should have read, "L.A.'s Big Disaster For Working Poor." The moral preening of the City of Angels' leftist political elites after the 14-1 vote comes with a hefty price tag. Forcing employers to pay what politicians believe is fair rather than what the market says is fair will cost many workers their jobs and force them onto welfare. "Today the city of Los Angeles, the second-biggest city in the nation, is leading the nation," said...

We still have thousands upon thousands of war-injured and impoverished homeless Veterans and they need your help to speak out in their behalf Fellow Veterans and Friends of Veterans When the Plaintiffs and Defendants jointly announced the so-called “settlement agreement,” the lead spokesman for the Plaintiffs called it “a good deal” and I called it a “Trojan Horse.” The lawyers for both the Plaintiffs and Defendants said “trust us.” Well, we trusted them and the settlement is proving to be a very bad deal for Veterans as the “Trojan Horse” has taken over and it is a very good deal...

LOS ANGELES, May 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Calls for the resignation of Los Angeles City Attorney, Mike Feuer, were made after an investigatory article from the Washington Examiner exposed him and his staff for what appears to be a politically-motivated, discriminatory and malicious prosecution of an innocent man.

LOS ANGELES — The nation’s second-largest city voted on Tuesday to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020 from the current $9 an hour, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far in the national push to raise the minimum wage. The increase — which the Los Angeles City Council passed in a 14-1 vote — comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages. The impact is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, more than 40 percent of the city’s work force earns less than...

Los Angeles lawmakers are expected to vote Tuesday on a hotly debated plan to hike the minimum wage across the city to at least $15 an hour. If they press forward with that plan, the city could soon join Seattle, San Francisco and other West Coast cities that have boosted wages as part of a national campaign led by labor and community groups to reduce poverty, even as business groups argue the strategy will backfire as employers slash jobs. Workers are currently supposed to earn at least the California state minimum wage of $9 an hour, which will rise to...

Democrat Elizabeth Warren warned Saturday that Republican policies being promoted by its emerging presidential field would create an "American nightmare" that would crush opportunities for students and workers, deepen wage inequality and favor Wall Street banks and huge corporations. Warren's speech before several thousand party loyalists at a California Democratic convention in Anaheim was greeted with thunderous cheers while scores of delegates waved signs emblazoned with her name. The Massachusetts senator and favorite of the party's left wing ridiculed the GOP's potential 2016 field, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has proposed a double-digit cut in state aid for higher...

Brown's first trial ended in 2006, with two jurors voting to convict him of first-degree murder, eight voting for second-degree murder and two favoring manslaughter. In 2009, a jury split evenly between second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Apodaca, the third jury’s foreman, said it took one day of deliberations for the entire jury to agree. A key to the case, he said, was an expert witness who said the girl's injuries were inconsistent with a slip or trip and instead suggested that she was thrown.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles County's homeless population has grown by 12 percent during the past two years amid a sluggish economic recovery that has left the poorest residents of the second-largest U.S. metropolitan area falling farther behind, a study released on Monday found. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's report cited stagnant or falling wages among the lowest-income earners, a local jobless rate that remains above state and national averages, and a worsening lack of affordable housing. "The economy has improved, but not for the persons at greatest risk of homelessness," said Peter Lynn, the authority's executive director.

Jim Geraghty has a piece on the home page today about how Jeff Sessions got Scott Walker’s ear on immigration. Here is a further statement from Sessions on the debate: >>>>Any political party that wants to win needs to demonstrate that it is willing to go to bat for working Americans. Perhaps no issue more divides a small handful of elites in Washington, D.C. from the American people than the issue of immigration. The idea that immigration should be increased beyond any level ever recorded — without any discussion of its social or economic impact — is not mainstream, but...