Free Republic

Los Angeles was once the epicenter of apparel manufacturing, attracting buyers from across the world to its clothing factories, sample rooms and design studios. But over the years, cheap overseas labor lured many apparel makers to outsource to foreign competitors in far-flung places such as China and Vietnam. Now, Los Angeles firms are facing another big hurdle — California's minimum wage hitting $15 an hour by 2022 — which could spur more garment makers to exit the state. Last week American Apparel, the biggest clothing maker in Los Angeles, said it might outsource the making of some garments to another...

California lawmakers and union leaders have reached a tentative deal to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is expected to make the formal announcement as early as Monday. According to the L.A. Times, the minimum wage will jump from $10 to $10.50 an hour in 2017 and will increase by $1 every year after that until reaching $15 an hour in 2022. Business with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to comply. "The governor and stakeholders have all been negotiating...

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...

Let's examine the issues rationally, and see who actually understood the Age of Reason.Last March, California Governor Jerry Brown declared that those who wished existing federal immigration law to be enforced — in the manner that would have saved the late Kate Steinle from a five-times deported, seven-times released felon illegal alien – were: [A]t best … troglodyte, and at worst … un-Christian. In California, if one assumes that the law as written should be followed, one is dubbed either a cave-dweller or an apostate. Meanwhile, sophisticated non-troglodytes in San Francisco have a sheriff — with a criminal record of...

Cherished family heirlooms were among the 21 firearms Michael Roberts surrendered to the Torrance Police Department in 2010, after his doctor filed a restraining order against him. The court order was the result of a dispute Roberts had with a member of the doctor’s staff and, after Roberts pleaded no contest, the matter was resolved. Yet, even though he filed the proper Law Enforcement Gun Release paperwork on four separate occasions, obtained clearance from the California Department of Justice and had two court orders commanding the return of his guns, police refused to hand them over. With the backing of...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- Federal authorities say California's $68 billion higher-speed rail could harm the protected kit fox.

Last week when NASA announced that California is on its death bed and has only 12 months of water left, the news hit like a punch to the gut. “Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir,” writes Jay Famiglietti of NASA. Famiglietti adds: “Statewide, we’ve been dropping...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A California trial judge ruled Saturday that a woman suing a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in a high-profile gender bias case may seek punitive damages that could add tens of millions of dollars to the $16 million in lost wages and bonuses she is pursuing. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn denied a request by lawyers for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to have Ellen Pao's demand for unspecified punitive damages thrown out. Pao, the interim CEO of the news and social networking site Reddit, claims she was passed over for a promotion at...

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders will propose more than $1 billion in drought-relief spending for California as it heads into a fourth dry year, according to a legislative staffer who has been briefed on the package. The staffer tells The Associated Press that the vast majority of the package to be announced Thursday accelerates spending that voters have already approved for water and flood projects, including last year’s $7.5 billion bond measure. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the staffer is not authorized to speak to the media. The package would provide immediate aid to communities...

t could soon get easier to live on the streets in the Golden State. As controversy swirled around the police shooting of a homeless and mentally ill man on Skid Row in Los Angeles, legislators in California considered a new set of regulations activists said would “decriminalize” homelessness by providing a so-called “right to rest” in public.

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation creating a new loan program for undocumented students in California’s public universities. California has already taken several steps to make college more affordable for undocumented students, including extending in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants who graduate from California high schools and making them eligible to apply for Cal Grant scholarships. Brown signed the bill on Sunday without comment.

MEXICO CITY – Gov. Jerry Brown suggested Monday that Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s ordering of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to address the surge in border crossings is misguided, urging politicians instead to heed the “religious call … to welcome the stranger” in addressing the crisis. “This is a human problem, and it has been the religious call of all religions to welcome the stranger, and it’s in that spirit that I believe the clergy can call the United States, Mexico and all the players to perhaps a higher response than might otherwise happen,” Brown said on the...

The terms “husband” and “wife” have been deleted from California’s marriage law under a bill signed into law Monday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The terms will be replaced with “spouse” to accommodate same-sex marriage, which became legal in the state last year after the Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved ban on it. SB1306, the bill signed Monday by Brown, takes effect Jan. 1 and reflects the legality of gay marriage after a decade of litigation. The law also removes limits on recognizing same-sex marriages performed out of state.

Anyone having issues with their California state tax refund.

A half-century ago, a governor named Brown persuaded the California Legislature to embark on what those involved thought would be a modest new program of health care for poor Californians. Medi-Cal, as it was dubbed, was California's version of the national Medicaid program that had been attached to the new Medicare system of health care for the elderly. At the time, California's poor obtained medical care, if they did, from either charity or county-owned hospitals, and Medi-Cal was seen as a way of easing the burden on the counties' taxpayers. But as one of the participants in the Medi-Cal legislation,...

California Governor Jerry Brown released his state budget earlier this week and had some strong warnings about future cost impacts due to the effects of global warming. According to some scientists, over the next couple of hundred years, sea levels could rise up to four feet and that will affect the airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as the nuclear plant in San Onofre.

It’s okay, the 1 percent only pays 41 percent of California’s income taxes. And half the state pays no income tax at all. No one will even notice they’re gone. Prop. 30, approved by voters in November 2012, raised state income taxes retroactively to Jan. 1, 2012, on singles making more than $250,000 and married couples making $500,000. It raised rates by one, two or three percentage points through 2018, bringing the top rate on incomes above $1 million to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. Bryan Goldberg, who founded the Bleacher Report sports website and sold it to...

While some saw the clip of the lady implying 'victory for Obama means phones for everyone' as perhaps exaggerated out-of-context right-wing propaganda - as that would be preposterous right? - it appears San Francisco took it a little more serious. As SFGate reports, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to approve (within a couple of weeks) a plan to offer homeless and other poor people in California 'virtually free cell phones and service'. The plan is funded through the federal LifeLine program and is designed to enable these individuals to 'keep in touch with family, potential employers and others...

FLASH! BULLETIN!! NEWS ALERT!!! State Controller John Chiang has announced that California will run out of cash by early March. Yawn. Haven’t we heard this before? So, what’s Chiang’s best advice? The state will have to take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, he writes in a letter to state lawmakers today. Yawn. Let’s see, what got the state into this mess? . . .