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Toyota Motor Corp. plans to move large numbers of jobs from its sales and marketing headquarters in Torrance to suburban Dallas, according to a person familiar with the automaker's plans. The move, creating a new North American headquarters, would put management of Toyota's U.S. business close to where it builds most cars for this market. North American Chief Executive Jim Lentz is expected to brief employees Monday, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Toyota declined to detail its plans. About 5,300 people work at Toyota's Torrance complex. It is unclear how many workers will be asked...

<p>Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto blames the state of California for Toyota Motor's decision to relocate its North American headquarters from the city to Plano, Texas.</p> <p>"The state of California lost Toyota," Scotto said on "Power Lunch" Tuesday.</p> <p>He pointed to a number of issues in the Golden State that negatively affect companies' bottom line: tax structure, workers' compensation and liability insurance.</p>

California’s inhospitable tax policies may have struck again, this time costing Los Angeles one of its largest employers. According to multiple sources close to the situation, Toyota will be relocating its US headquarters from the LA suburb of Torrance to Plano, Texas. The company has yet to notify its employees of the news, but is expected to do so Monday, followed by a public announcement. While it’s unlikely that Toyota, which is ranked 8th on Fortune’s Global 500, will directly cite taxes as the reason for its relocation, it should come as little surprise that the financial burden of operating...

The express train hurtling to return racial preference admissions to California — in the form of State Constitutional Amendment 5 [1], which if placed on the ballot and approved by voters would have overturned Prop. 209 —has just been derailed [2] by an outburst of opposition from Asian Americans.The eruption of opposition caught SCA 5’s Democratic sponsors by surprise and caused a crucial three Asian American senators to withdraw their support, depriving the measure of the two thirds senate majority required to place an initiative on the ballot. “Prior to the vote on SCA 5 in the Senate,” Senators...

SACRAMENTO — When my family moved from northwest Ohio to pricey Southern California, we could afford an entry level house but couldn’t also spring for private-school tuition for the kids. So we scoured the test-score databases, looking for those neighborhoods where home values were reasonable and public schools were tops. Given the focus on schools, it will surprise no one that we settled in a city with a majority Asian-American population.

Are our boys and girls wrongIn expecting you who make your livingExclusively off the white raceTo stop patronizing Jap laundries.And thereby assist your fellow men and womenIn maintaining the white man’s standard in a white man’s country? — Placards belonging to the Anti-Jap Laundry League, Calif., 1908 California has a long and ugly history of discriminating against Asian Americans. From the Anti-Jap Laundry League, the Anti-Chinese League, the Asiatic Exclusion League, the alien land laws, the Anti-Coolie Act . . . the list is long. Much of that discrimination had its origins on the left, with the Ant-Jap Laundry Act,...

On April 1, Washington Mayor Vincent Gray was denied a second term, defeated in the primary by upstart city councilwoman Muriel Bowser. The beginning of the end came on March 10, when U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen struck a plea bargain with a wealthy businessman who confessed he'd spent $668,000 on an illegal "shadow campaign" to fund get-out-the-vote efforts that helped Gray win the mayoral office in 2010. So the corrupt mayor of America's most important city is thrown out. A political scandal? The same networks that were utterly breathless over the local story of Gov. Chris Christie's aides slowing traffic...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Suspended state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to bribery and gun charges two weeks after he was arrested as part of an FBI sting targeting political corruption and an alleged organized crime syndicate based in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Yee entered his pleas in federal court to one count of conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and illegally import firearms; one count of conspiring to defraud citizens of honest services; and six counts of engaging in a scheme to defraud citizens of honest services. The San Francisco Democrat is accused of conspiring...

The stunning arrest of veteran Democrat Leland Yee will erode, at least temporarily, Democratic dominance in the very blue Golden State. Yee, arrested after a five-year FBI sting operation, faces federal charges related to conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and accepting campaign funds in exchange for political favors. An LA Times headline read, “Even old hands are stunned by Yee allegations.” “If there ever has been a more nauseating corruption scandal in Sacramento, I’m not aware of it, writes one observer. “The notion of a legislator masquerading as a gun control crusader while offering to help a...

July 12, 2002 Barriers Students Faced Count In University Admission Process By DANIEL GOLDEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IRVINE, Calif. -- Stanley Park felt as if the University of California, Los Angeles, had revamped its admissions criteria just for him. UCLA was looking for students who had overcome "life challenges," such as family illness, being raised by a single parent or being the first in the family to go to college. After Mr. Park's parents, Korean immigrants of modest means, divorced three years ago, he lived with his mother. When she developed breast cancer, he began tutoring...

Some Asians' College Strategy: Don't Check 'Asian' JESSE WASHINGTON Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white. "I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process." For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges. Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these...

Asian Americans Turn Democratic Their support for President Obama on Nov. 6 caught many political pundits by surprise. By Taeku Lee and Karthick Ramakrishnan November 23, 2012 As the dust settles on the presidential election, there seems to be a new theory daily as to why Mitt Romney lost and what it signals for the future of the Republican Party. Common to nearly all the speculation are the partisan implications of demographic change. The United States is shifting gradually toward a majority-minority electorate, with ever-growing numbers of Latino and Asian American voters. Notably, these groups are increasingly voting as Democrats....

Bill would allow state colleges to consider race By The Associated Press Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 4:16 p.m. SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Assembly has approved a bill that would allow the state's public universities to consider race, gender and other demographic characteristics when they admit students. The bill, AB2047, passed on a 44-24 vote Thursday and now moves to the Senate. It would apply to the University of California and California State University systems. Democratic Assemblyman Ed Hernandez, who introduced the bill, says the legislation is needed to address the education gap in California. Currently, the state's black...

DAVIS SIGNS ASSAULT ON PROPOSITION 209; PLF POISED TO POUNCE Proposition 209 is the voter-passed amendment to the California Constitution which forbids state and local governments from playing favorites by race in public hiring, contracting and education. The latest in a long line of assaults on Prop. 209 by proponents of racial spoils is Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally's bill that would play inventive word games with key mandates in the initiative. The Dymally legislation, A.B. 703, would require that the words "discriminate" and "preference" be interpreted not by the clear definitions that the California Supreme Court has used when applying Prop....

The world gets more competitive every day, so why would California's education elites want to dumb down their public university admissions standards? The answer is to serve the modern liberal piety known as "diversity" while potentially thwarting the will of the voters. The University of California Board of Admissions is proposing to lower to 2.8 from 3.0 the minimum grade point average for admission to a UC school. That 3.0 GPA standard has been in place for 40 years. Students would also no longer be required to take the SAT exams that test for knowledge of specific subjects, such as...

A professor who said he suspects UCLA is cheating to illegally admit black students resigned Thursday from its admissions committee, saying the university refused to provide him the data he needs to investigate his suspicions. "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," political science Professor Tim Groseclose wrote in a report he released Thursday. "Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay portion of the application."Students typically report their race on their applications, but the people who evaluate their files don't see names, race or ethnicity. If race does come up in...

A lot more young people will have a shot at getting into the University of California under new eligibility rules, approved by the UC Board of Regents today, that represent the most sweeping changes in admission standards in almost 50 years. "The bottom line is that it will be more diverse and more fair," said UC President Mark Yudof. The board approved these changes today: -- SAT subject tests will no longer be necessary. -- The pool of applicants who will be considered will widen, but the number guaranteed entry into one of the university's nine undergraduate campuses will shrink....

AP) SAN FRANCISCO — Backers of affirmative action asked a federal appeals court Monday to overturn California's 15-year-old ban on considering race in public college admissions, citing a steep drop in black, Latino and Native American students at the state's elite campuses. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal heard arguments in the latest legal challenge to Proposition 209, the landmark voter initiative that barred racial, ethnic and gender preferences in public education, employment and contracting. The affirmative action ban has withstood multiple challenges since voters approved it in 1996, but advocates say their campaign to...

Affirmative action proponents took a hit Monday as a federal appeals court panel upheld California’s ban on using race, ethnicity and gender in admitting students to public colleges and universities. The ruling marked the second time the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a challenge to the state’s landmark voter initiative, Proposition 209, which was passed in 1996. 0 Comments Weigh In Corrections? Personal Post . Affirmative action proponents, who had requested that the court reconsider its 1997 decision after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that affirmative action could be used in college admissions, said they...

An historic ballot proposition passed by California voters in 1996 to end race-based admissions to the University of California may have led to more blacks being admitted to UC. “At present, by a wide range of metrics—including relative to state population share and changes in toal UC enrollment—black and Hispanic enrollments are higher than before Proposition 209,” Stuart Taylor, Jr. and Richard Sander write in an amicus brief they filed in a U. S. Supreme Court case. “UC black enrollment had returned to pre-209 levels by 2002 and averaged some 40% above pre-209 levels by 2007.” They filed a brief...