Free Republic

The campaign to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom has collected 1,950,000 signatures, Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports, far more than the 1.4 million signatures needed to qualify the recall for the ballot. A full 1.6 million signatures were collected entirely by volunteers, and according to organizer Orrin Heatlie, 31.5 percent of the signers were “other than Republicans.” As the recall effort surges, Democrats turn up the volume against it. “Right-wing Republicans in CA are trying to recall Gavin Newsom for the crime of telling people to wear masks and for listening to scientists during COVID,” tweeted Sen....

The words of diversity ring hollow, as hard-working Asians from every socio-economic background, with stable family structure and strong disciplined work ethic, face dAsian Americans are beginning to realize that their values are no longer aligned with the shifting Democratic Party.A recent spike in Asian hate crimes has led to leftist and corporate media that deliberately refuse to talk about the perpetrators and their motives. They insinuate the hate crimes are due to either structural imbalances in society or a direct result of white supremacy rhetoric. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bizarrely blamed the rise in attacks on Asians on former President...

Californians were right to decline to give affirmative action a second life. People are much better off without it. Saying 2020 is full of surprises is a gross understatement. One of the good surprises — in contrast to, say, the coronavirus reaction — in this election cycle is that voters in California, the bluest of the blue states, rejected Proposition 16, a measure that sought to restore affirmative action in the state, meaning “universities and government offices could factor in someone’s race, gender or ethnicity in making hiring, spending and admissions decisions.” Prop 16 was the left’s latest attempt to...

Angela Li and Vivrd Prasanna have achieved the pinnacle of a public university education — she a senior at UCLA, he a freshman at UC Berkeley. Both are children of immigrants, with Li’s parents from China and Prasanna’s from India. *** But when it comes to Proposition 16, the Tuesday ballot measure that would once again allow affirmative action in public education, contracting and hiring, the two UC students and their families sharply diverge. *** Their diverse views reflect the complexity of the affirmative action issue among Asian Americans, who represent more than 50 ethnic subgroups with varying politics, histories...

Michael Savage @ASavageNation EVEN LEFT WING CALIFORNIA REJECTING USE RACE, GENDER IN HIRING! poll finds that Proposition 16, which would allow race, gender and ethnicity to factor into public employment, education and contracting decisions, is underwater by 10 percentage points and seemingly unlikely

Is California's deep-blue legislature out of control? It sure seems that way to me. Recently, Gov. Newsom approved a clearly unconstitutional bill mandating racial and LGBTQ quotas for boards of directors of private companies. That's pretty brazen. He also signed legislation creating a task force to examine the possibility of slave reparations—even though California was never a slave state. A third example is last month's legislation forcing California State University students to take an ethnic studies course. If a conservative legislature had interfered with a curricular matter like that, the mainstream media would be going bananas. Probably the most consequential...

California voters made a wise decision in 1996 when they adopted Proposition 209, banning state government from favoring some people over others on account of their race. No state should allow officials to treat anyone as more, or less, valuable than others. But the Proposition 16 campaign is underway to repeal Prop. 209 and allow the government to once again act as though, to paraphrase George Orwell in “Animal Farm”, all citizens are equal, but some citizens are more equal than others. This campaign is bolstered by deceptive claims, such as made in a new UC Berkeley study. The study...

President Donald Trump should immediately begin using a California ballot proposition as a springboard for making the evil of racial discrimination and preferences a part of his national campaign. In doing so, Trump should invoke Martin Luthor King, Jr.’s heroic campaign for civil rights.

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 by an impressive 56-to-44 percent majority. Prop 209 amended the state’s constitution to prohibit the granting of preferences based on race or gender. It inaugurated a series of campaigns, led by businessman and University of California Regent Ward Connerly, that by 2006 had established similar prohibitions in 10 states. A few weeks ago, in a move perfectly in sync with the racial politics of 2020, the California legislature put a referendum on the November ballot that invites voters to repeal Prop 209. The new Proposition 16 would allow the state government, and state...

State regulators in 2007 gave Pacific Gas and Electric Co. the go-ahead to spend $5 million of ratepayer money to replace a 62-year-old section of the same pipeline that exploded last week in San Bruno. But the work never got done as scheduled in 2009, and this year the utility asked for another $5 million to do the same job by 2013, according to documents submitted by PG&E to the California Public Utility Commission as part of a general rate-hike request. While the cause of the pipeline explosion has yet to be determined, experts say that in general older lines...

On the Propositions: Prop. 13. Seismic Retrofits. YES: Earthquake proofing your house shouldn’t trigger a tax increase until you’re ready to sell. Any questions? Prop. 14. Distorted Primary. NO: This was the result of the corrupt deal for the tax increase engineered by Abel Maldonado that included this measure to by-pass party primaries in a manner Maldonado believed would enhance his future election prospects. Instead of voters of each party putting their best candidate forward, this jerry-rigged system is designed to disguise the difference between the parties and force those pesky third parties off the general election ballot entirely. Prop....