Free Republic

North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire’s bill to permanently ban new oil drilling in state waters along the 840-mile California coast was approved by the Senate Wednesday and now moves to the Assembly. Calling the coast a “worldwide wonder,” McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said his bill will protect the natural beauty of the coast, which draws 150 million visitors a year and contributes $40 billion to the state economy. The bill closes a loophole in a 1994 law that banned oil and gas development in state waters, which extend out three miles from shore, but permitted exceptions in cases where state oil...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) —It's a television ad that runs just 30 seconds, but its implication that immigrants are draining resources during the California drought has critics contending its message is divisive and untrue. "I think those ads are disingenuous," said Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat from Bell Gardens. "They serve to further divide us as Californians."

In the battle to save a precious resource a record number of people in the Bay Area are reporting their water-wasting neighbors. The Santa Clara Valley Water District has a program where residents can anonymously report water waste. In April, 900 people reported water wasters. It was the highest number since the district's program to conserve water by reporting water waste started last summer. Residents are able to report water waste through e-mail, phone or using the district's water app. "It's extremely helpful," said Jerry De La Piedra of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. "Often people don't realize they...

The state Senate on Tuesday approved a hotly debated measure that would allow many immigrants in the state illegally to sign up for special healthcare programs that would offer the same benefits as Medi-Cal. State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) said his proposal provides “what we can realistically achieve now” for the estimated 2 million people in the state illegally. “We are talking about our friends. We are talking about our neighbors and our families who are denied basic healthcare in the richest state of this union,” Lara told his colleagues.

A proposal to expand health care to Californians in the country illegally cleared the Senate on Tuesday, passing on a 28-11 vote and heading to the Assembly.

... A report published Thursday by the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative think tank, gives additional credence to the latter theory. It surveyed 924 restaurants in New York State that self-identified as fast food operations. When asked how likely they are to raise prices in response to a $15 per hour minimum wage, 86% of respondents said that they were very likely or somewhat likely to do so. Eighty-three percent said they were very likely or somewhat likely to reduce workers’ hours, or reduce staffing levels in response to such a hike. The report said that its results “suggest that...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Seven out of 10 New Yorkers want a $10.50 an hour minimum wage rate for the state, a Quinnipiac University poll found. Democrats overwhelmingly support the idea by 92 percent. Only 41 percent of Republicans statewide agree with the higher wage rate, the poll found.

Fourteen to one, in favor. That was the Los Angeles City Council vote to raise, over the next five years, the city's minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15. Of course, as Investor's Business Daily tells us, the $15 per hour really is closer to $20. How does it get to $20? Investor's Business Daily says: "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...

St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is looking to raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 an hour by 2020. Missouri’s current minimum wage is $7.65 per hour. Slay’s proposal, expected to be formalized in a bill before the Board of Aldermen by next week, would include exemptions for small businesses that employ 15 people or fewer and those that do less than $500,000 in annual sales, Alderman Shane Cohn, who’s expected to sponsor the legislation, said in an email. “There’s obviously a lot of discussion that will be taking place in the coming weeks, and (I) look forward...

Los Angeles on Tuesday is set to take a final vote on becoming the latest big U.S. city to endorse a hike in the minimum wage. The City Council is extremely likely to make the move, which has the endorsement of Mayor Eric Garcetti and comes two weeks after a 14-1 preliminary vote on the wage. The vote would bring a $15-an-hour wage by 2020—more than double the current federal minimum. …

Child-care assistant Eunice Medina, 23, was thrilled when Oakland's minimum wage took effect in March. But almost as quickly, Medina's workdays were cut and her hours shaved from eight to six.. Her employer, Asiya Jabbaar, says she had no choice. Despite slicing hours and laying off one of three assistants, Jabbaar says she still may need to close her business next year and convert it to a part-time after-school program. It's a big letdown for the 38-year-old Jabbaar, who launched Reaching Beyond Care in 2010 from her East Oakland loft apartment.Her experience illustrates what can happen to small employers when...

One of the first concepts taught in basic economics is the demand curve. As the price of something goes up, the demand for it goes down. And vice versa. One doesn’t even need an economics class to understand that a $50-million house will not have a bunch of buyers in a bidding war, compared to a much less expensive house. Or that a sale, lowering the price of something, is a good way to sell more and clear the inventory. So why is there such confusion about the minimum wage? A wage is simply the price of labor. Raise the...

On May 1, S.F. increased rate to $12.25 an hour Voters support move, but some business owners, workers are uneasy Sacramento will study raising pay wage above the $9 state rate SAN FRANCISCO In this diverse and densely packed city, known for high living costs and soaring rents, 77 percent of voters last year approved a series of pay hikes that will boost San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2018. Yet there are tensions these days on Valencia Street in San Francisco’s multicultural Mission District over the minimum wage hike and what it means for businesses and...

---snip--- Although the union-funded Raise the Wage campaigned so vociferously in favor of a $15.25 minimum wage, unions are seeking exemptions from the higher wages for their members. The exemption, or escape clause, would allow them greater strength in organizing workplaces. Unions can tell fast food chains, hotels, and hospitals that if they agree to union representation, their wage bill will be substantially lower. That will persuade employers to allow the unions to move in.

For two decades the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has recommended repealing the state’s prevailing wage law. It is an expensive mandate that artificially raises the cost of state-funded construction projects. Bills to make prevailing wage an artifact of history have been adopted by the state Senate. Mackinac Center research suggests repeal will eventually free up money for more road, school and other government construction projects. It's an example of how not all reforms that impact the budget are actually "cuts." State prevailing wage laws mandate that construction projects funded by the state pay fabricated union scale wages. Our 2007...

As noted by the New York Post , the New York Times has let it slip that the real goal of the $15 dollar an hour wage is to drive cheap fast food restaurants out of business. And as they said: “The restaurant industry . . . will not go down without a fight.” But, I thought that all the businesses affected by the minimum wage were just greedy and could easily afford the wages they should have been paying all along? I guess that wasn’t true. That certainly wasn’t the case for Z Pizza in Seattle. Z Pizza employed 11 employees,...

In the 1970s, when oil prices jumped, most liberals embraced a simple solution: price controls. It should be illegal, they thought, to sell oil or gasoline for more than a certain amount. Americans should be able to drive without being fleeced by oil companies and foreign governments. The impulse was understandable. Gasoline is an essential commodity for most people. When the cost rises, it imposes a heavy burden on consumers, most of whom have few transportation options. In 1971, in an attempt to tame inflation, Republican President Richard Nixon imposed controls on almost all prices. By 1974, he had lifted...

This has to be the month's top entry in the "Just when you think you've seen it all" category — and it will be more than a little interesting to see how the nation's press handles it. As the Associated Press reported a week ago, the City Council in Los Angeles, by a vote of 14-1, ordered the drafting of a law mandating a citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour by 2020, noting that "the support of Mayor Eric Garcetti virtually guarantee its eventual adoption." Now that it's almost a done deal, labor unions whose members earn less want...

Those who think the minimum wage doesn't cost jobs might want to have a chat with unions in Los Angeles.

Big hotels in Los Angeles will soon be required to pay at least $15.37 an hour to their workers... Hotels that have a unionized workforce can be exempted from paying the $15.37 hourly wage, if workers agree in their contract to relinquish that opportunity.