Free Republic

Not only will Burlingame be the center of the Republican political universe for three days starting Friday, when White House presidential hopefuls Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich speak at the state Republican Convention, but some Democrats are taking advantage of the media spotlight shining on California, too. Billionaire San Francisco environmental activist Tom Steyer launched an 30-second ad Thursday ripping Cruz and Trump for their dubious attitudes toward climate change and urging people to vote against them. On Monday, the former hedge fund manager has announced his NextGen Climate Action super PAC would spend $25 million this year...

Recent discussions within Los Angeles labor groups reveal inherent hypocrisy within the “Fight for $15” campaign. Unions paid plenty of lip service toward this effort, which would raise the minimum wage to $15. The Los Angeles City Council is considering a measure that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020, and this month California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2022. It seems that unions should be celebrating this supposed win for workers – yet union leaders are currently seeking an exemption to the $15-an-hour minimum wage for union...

In the past, left-wing student activists at UC Berkeley have joined unions in pushing for higher wages, including a “living wage,” for campus staff. Campus minimum wages have lagged behind local minimum wages because the university, as a public state institution, is exempt from local minimums. On Monday, University of California Berkeley chancellor Nicholas Dirks announced that the educational institution will be eliminating 500 jobs over the course of two years, which will wind up saving an estimated $50 million. “My concern and the public’s concern is that UC Berkeley is going to start cutting the people it can ill...

Boxer Unhinged: You berate anyone who disagrees with you as immoral and corrupt Rob is our resident Catholic, so I defer to him on matters of Catholic doctrine. But from the looks of things I know a lot more about it than self-identified Catholic Barbara Boxer - whose real religion appears to be global warming. Or should I say, the massively expanded and empowered government we’ll get if only people stop questioning the left-wing orthodoxy on things like global warming, which demands that all debate stop immediately and that government be given whatever it wants so it can do something,...

Every few months, another think tank or financial institution releases a new report sounding the alarm about the fiscal crisis facing state and local pension funds, and the findings are reliably dismissed by public sector unions and their political backers. But the latest research, from researchers at Stanford’s business school, is hard to ignore. The Financial Times reports:

REGIONAL BREAKDOWNS: SoCal is head over heels for Trump (Trump 49 percent; Cruz 34, Kasich 13) , Central Valley leans Trump (Trump 39, Cruz 26, Kasich 18), and Inland Empire for Cruz (Cruz, 43, Trump 30, Kasich, 9). Silicon Valley and the Bay Area? Kasich trounces Trump 43-36, with Cruz at 14.

Gov. Jerry Brown, casting a living wage as a moral imperative while questioning its economic rationale, signed legislation Monday raising California’s mandatory minimum to $15 an hour by 2022, acting within hours of a similar bill signing in New York. The bill’s enactment comes one week after Brown, Democratic lawmakers and labor leaders announced an agreement on the wage increase, averting a brawl on the November ballot. [snip] California political leaders and labor have struck a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over the next seven years. One excited fast food worker hugged Gov. Jerry Brown...

Confirmed: Demoralized Cops Equal Higher Crime Jack Dunphy Gentle readers, fasten your seatbelts. We are about to embark on a virtual tour on which you will join me in a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car cruising some of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. We will be patrolling the LAPD’s 77th Street Division, which year after year ranks at or near the top in violent crime among the city’s 21 patrol divisions. The Los Angeles Times tracks crime in more than 200 communities across L.A. County, and five of the top ten on the list are in 77th Street Division....

California could be pivotal in the upcoming GOP Presidential primary. Most of the delegates are awarded on a "winner take all" scheme based on the top vote getter in each congressional district. Still, the statewide popularity of Trump and Cruz will probably determine many of the district results. But it's hard to know the relative strength of Trump and Cruz because recent polling in California has been sparse, and contradictory. There have been only two polls in March, and both give conflicting, and odd results.

The official number of illegal aliens in the state of California is nearly 3 million. We can estimate the number to be more than double this amount in reality. Over half of all drivers license issued in California were given to individuals who are here illegally and the state automatically registers those with a driver’s license to vote. In 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill giving full voting rights to illegal aliens. This gives them the right to vote in all elections from a local level to national elections, including that of choosing who will become President. The...

During a speech Monday to union organizers at a Sacramento dinner, California Gov. Jerry Brown made one of his characteristic off-the-cuff jokes. “If (Donald) Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of the country,” he said, adding that Californians prefer bridges to walls. Conservatives said they’d like a chance to get out of here first. There’s no need to worry, though. Whether it’s bridges or walls, the way California builds infrastructure these days, it would take decades to finish and the shoddy work would pose no barrier to egress....

The Governor of California Just Slammed Donald Trump’s Wall Idea Lucinda Shen Mar 4 Not everybody is a fan of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hallmarking immigration control policy--namely, his proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Now, Jerry Brown, governor of the state with the most Mexican immigrants, has reportedly joined the team. Brown, the Democratic governor of California told Bloomberg that Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and force the latter to finance it would be “absolutely preposterous.” "It would create such tension with our closest neighbor that, probably, a dumber idea I...

Build that wall Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown!

Let's take a break from the violence now part-and-parcel of this year's presidential election to take a look inward — and see where San Francisco political donors are dropping their dollars. Despite an endorsement from Mayor Ed Lee for Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has many friends in San Francisco. In fact, two of the highest-contributing ZIP codes in the country are in San Francisco: the Mission (94110), where Sanders has gleaned $59,649 in contributions, and the Castro/Noe Valley (94114), where denizens have written $52,109 in checks for the Bern. That sounds great if you’re a Bernie Bro (or...

Gov. Jerry Brown, mocking Donald Trump for his plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, suggested Monday that if the Republican frontrunner wins election, California might have to take protective measures of its own. “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” Brown told labor organizers at a dinner in Sacramento. “By the way that is a joke. We don’t like walls, we like bridges.” Brown, the Democratic governor of a liberal border state, has signed legislation granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants and...

“If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” he said at a dinner held in Sacramento by the California Labor Federation and State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, according to the Sacramento Bee. “By the way that is a joke,” he added. “We don’t like walls, we like bridges.” Brown was touting the state’s economic progress, and the influx of young, talented tech workers — though the state has experienced net out-migration for decades, especially of middle-class families. The governor blasted “old white guys”...

Gov. Jerry Brown, mocking Donald Trump for his plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, suggested Monday that if the Republican frontrunner wins the election, California might have to take protective measures of its own. “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” Brown told labor organizers at a dinner in Sacramento. “By the way that is a joke. We don’t like walls, we like bridges.” Brown, the Democratic governor of a liberal border state, has signed legislation granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants...

California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds. The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as part of its power purchase agreements with utilities, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would....

California Gov. Jerry Brown joked on Monday that if Republican frontrunner Donald J. Trump wins the 2016 election, the state would have to erect a wall — not on its border with Mexico, but its borders with other states. “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” he said at a dinner held in Sacramento by the California Labor Federation and State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, according to the Sacramento Bee. “By the way that is a joke,” he added. “We don’t like...

An underground natural gas pipeline rupture that caused the largest methane leak ever in California has been permanently capped, paving the way for thousands of displaced Los Angeles residents to return home, state regulators said on Thursday. The leak, which began in October, was confirmed by a series of independent laboratory tests to have been successfully sealed as of Wednesday night, officials said. The leak originated from a broken injection-well pipe deep beneath the surface of the 3,600-acre (1,457-hectare) Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field, owned by Southern California Gas Co. State officials said the uncontrolled release of 80,000 tonnes...