Free Republic

High-speed rail is turning out to be a slow-speed proposition. The first segment of California’s first-in-the-nation bullet-train project, currently scheduled for completion in 2018, will not be done until the end of 2022, according to a contract revision the Obama administration quietly approved this morning. That initial 119-mile segment through the relatively flat and empty Central Valley was considered the easiest-to-build stretch of a planned $64 billion line, which is eventually supposed to zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. So the four-year delay is sure to spark new doubts about whether the state’s—and perhaps...

A new super PAC partnership between billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, the AFL-CIO and major public sector employee unions has triggered an angry backlash among the building trade unions -- dividing organized labor just as it ramps up its 2016 political programs. In letters delivered Monday to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, the presidents of eight building trade organizations called on the AFL-CIO to cut ties with Steyer, whose opposition to an extension of the Keystone XL Pipeline infuriated unions that had championed the jobs that the oil pipeline would have created.

Perry Lutz says his struggle to survive as a small businessman became a lot harder after California voters reduced theft penalties 1½ years ago. About a half-dozen times this year, shoplifters have stolen expensive drones or another of the remote-controlled toys he sells (...). "It's just pretty much open season," Lutz said. "They'll pick the $800 unit and just grab it and run out the door." Anything below $950 keeps the crime a misdemeanor — and likely means the thieves face no pursuit and no punishment, say retailers and law enforcement officials.

In December, preparing to escape what turned out to be a mild New York winter for the palmy breezes of Southern California, I was stunned when friends suggested that I think twice about coming to Los Angeles. What could be awful enough to keep my wife and me in the Northeast? I soon discovered that, for every Angeleno I spoke with, the answer was the same. It wasn’t homelessness, crime, or El Niño; it wasn’t that Kobe Bryant was retiring. No, it was traffic: the subject of constant calculation and discussion, a matter of negotiation between friends, spouses, and would-be...

When I arrived in Los Angeles on August 22, 1960 with my wife Carol, recruited from Illinois to teach Chemistry, I thought it was perfect, busy and a little scary, but just about the finest place on this planet.  As the years went by and I traveled to other countries that idea was enforced.  “LA had it all,” and I was there for 26 years watching it decay imperceptibly and that would flash on me once in a while. What is it like today?  Here following is a controversial list that has been seen in several publications with no challenge...

California's public employee unions used their muscle this week to fight back a legislative bid to open their books, killing in committee a bill that would force them to post online how dues are spent -- and a second bill requiring a union vote every two years. "These members want to belong to a union. They want to be represented by a union. They just want to know where their money's at," said bill sponsor Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, a Republican. The two bills went down Wednesday on a party-line vote, after dozens of union members came out against the legislation....

Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday enacted California’s most significant new tobacco regulations in decades, signing laws that will place tight restrictions on use of the increasingly popular e-cigarette and make California the second state to raise its smoking age to 21. Brown signed five closely watched bills, which will also expand smoking restrictions in the workplace and on school properties. California now joins jurisdictions like Hawaii, New York City and San Francisco that have bumped the tobacco-buying age to 21 in an effort to block young people’s route to obtaining tobacco. But Brown vetoed one measure that would have allowed...

Filmmaker Rob Reiner made headlines today by arguing that the rise of Donald Trump stems from racism in America and that the media has given him a pass. Reiner accused the media of going easy on Trump, saying that the billionaire businessman is only taken seriously as a political candidate because he is a celebrity. "The words that have been flung out from his mouth are insane!" Reiner said on MSNBC. "If he was not a celebrity - if Donald Trump was not a celebrity … you'd see a guy in a park, a lunatic in a park on a...

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...