NB Would Like California...

WHL wrote:They are moving to Texas.  But they can move to other states too.  People ARE moving out of Ca.

California health officials Wednesday declared electronic cigarettes a health threat that should be strictly regulated like tobacco products, joining other states and health advocates across the U.S. in seeking tighter controls as "vaping" grows in popularity.

The California Department of Public Health released a report saying e-cigarettes emit cancer-causing chemicals and get users hooked on nicotine but acknowledging that more research needs to be done to determine the immediate and long-term health effects.

"E-cigarettes are not as harmful as conventional cigarettes, but e-cigarettes are not harmless" said California Health Officer Ron Chapman. "They are not safe..."
—ABC

News Buzzard wrote:"...Of course the CEO's would love to have states that legalized sweatshops. Isn't that what corporate America is all about?   

Then he said, "Well Lee, the other places would typically run you about $1200. or more, so you may want to take this Santa Rosa guy's number."

The mechanic further explained. "Painting cars has become much more expensive over the last few years mainly because of all the environmental restrictions that now have to be met." He named two friends who used to have spray rooms, but have gone out of business, because they couldn't afford to modernize their facilities.

You know, I'm starting to like this Dark Green anyway. I think I'll keep "Old Rusty" the way it already looks. At least for now. Maybe I'll get a nice tax return before Easter, then, I'll do it...
—leemartell

(CNN) —Student leaders [proposed] the banning of hanging flags of any nation, including America's Stars and Stripes, in the lobby of student government offices...

The Legislative Council of the Associated Students of the University of California, Irvine's passed the resolution, "Flags and decoration adjustment for inclusivity," in a 6-4 vote Tuesday with the stated intention of creating a "more inclusive" environment."

"A much-hailed law that restricted the opening of new stand-alone fast-food restaurants in one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles did not curb obesity or improve diets, a new study found.

City lawmakers passed the zoning ordinance in 2008 that limited the opening or expansion of fast-food outlets in a 32-square-mile area south of Interstate 10 that struggles with high obesity rates and other health problems.

The law, believed to be the first effort of its kind by a major city to improve public health, did not ban new eateries in strip malls.

The research by the Rand Corp. think tank found that obesity rates in South Los Angeles continued to rise after passage of the law."
AP

It’s fine to respect motives, efforts and wants so long as the result is not forced unwillingly on the populace. Government isn’t diet, nutrition or lifestyle or otherwise. It is simply and illegally enforcing its will on the subjects of California.

Taxpayers pay high salaries and more money to teach on state time ( Colorado double dipping )

Taxpayers paid state Supreme Court Chief Justice Nancy Rice nearly $148,000 plus generous government benefits last year. But, since 2007, she collected more than $100,000 in public money teaching University of Colorado law school classes that began during normal judicial business hours, Watchdog.org has found.

Public Defender Douglas Wilson and one of his employees, Ann Roan, also were paid for teaching at the CU law school during normal work hours, despite taxpayers paying Wilson more than $138,000 and Roan more than $132,000 a year to do their public defender jobs, documents obtained under state open records laws show.

Steve Curtis, vice president of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers, said the double dipping is an abuse of taxpayer money
Watchdog

News Buzzard wrote:The State of California has the best economy in the country:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP

Comrade, NB

Not Alabama. Not Mississippi. Not any of the Red Neck states hip, morally superior Californians love to ridicule. We Californians lead the nation in poverty.

So what is the state Legislature’s response? They’re offering even more incentives for poor people to move here.
SB 674, one of the 10 bills introduced last week offers “immigrants” (notice the missing qualifier—Illegal?)  assistance in applying for special federal visas if they are victims of a crime. They call it the “Immigrants Victims of Crime Equity Act” but a better title would be the “File a Phony Police Report and Win a Green Card Act.”

Surely the Republicans in Sacramento will do something to stop this madness, right?

“Comprehensive immigration reform is important to California’s way of life,” said Senate Republican Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, parroting President Obama and every other pro-amnesty politician in the land. “The rationale behind these bills is admirable,” says Huff.

And he’s the LEADER of the opposition.

I, of course, would use a different adjective to describe the rationale behind these new laws; “irrational” comes to mind, so does “destructive” and “subversive.”

Offering even more incentives for the poorest of the hemisphere’s poor to come to California only condemns the poor who already call the Golden State home to a tougher climb out of poverty.

What’s “humane” and “forward thinking” about that?

Covered California board members voted Thursday to become the first state health care exchange in the nation to impose price caps on high-cost specialty drugs to treat conditions such as hepatitis C and HIV.

The four board members unanimously agreed to impose $250 monthly limits on out-of-pocket prescription costs for most patients, creating a precedent that other government health exchanges could follow.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...

The California Assembly is advancing legislation to protect homeless people who live in their cars from fines and vehicle impounds. Local governments could not punish people caught sleeping in cars under AB718. It advanced to the Senate on Monday with a 54-to-12 vote.
San Jose Mercury News

Corcoran, a restaurant group administrator who kept his "New York attitude" when he came to laid-back Los Angeles awhile ago, is unrepentant. So, there is a "New York attitude", which is obnoxious, rude, proud, self-righteous, and know-it-all.
AP-comment

Anti Federalist wrote:

News Hawk wrote:

Corcoran, California – One of the most famous killers in the American prison system will be walking free. On Tuesday, Charles Manson was granted parole by the California Board of Parole and authorized by California Governor Jerry Brown.
—Empire News

 

Hoax.

Op-Ed: Thousands fall for Charles Manson 'parole' hoax

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/odd+news/op-ed-thousands-fall-for-charles-manson-parole-hoax/article/385956#ixzz340oWSykw

Panic spread through the United States as thousands of social media enthusiasts shared the big news that infamous cult leader Charles Manson would be paroled.

Little did they realize, it was all a hoax.

The story originated with an article written by a satirical news website called Empire News.

Farmers with rights to California water dating back more than a century will face sharp cutbacks, the first reduction in their water use since 1977, state officials announced Friday. The officials said that rights dating to 1903 would be restricted, and that such restrictions would grow as the summer months go on, with the state facing a prolonged drought that shows few signs of easing.

“Demand in our key rivers systems are outstripping supply,” said Caren Trgovcich, the State Water Resources Control Board’s chief deputy director. “Other cuts may be imminent.” It is too early to know the practical impact
NY Times

For the past 11 years, Chief Executive magazine has been polling hundreds of CEOs from across the nation and evaluating state budgetary and economic growth metrics to determine the best and worst states for business. And for the 11th straight year, California has come in dead last.
Orange County Register (CA)

LOS ANGELES — A GENERATION ago, this West Coast metropolis became a “third world city.” At least in the rhetoric of certain East Coast thinkers.

A 1991 book by David Rieff cited visitors who were stunned by “seeing nothing but brown faces, hearing nothing but Spanish on the streets.” The arrival of coffee-colored Latino masses (like me and my Guatemalan-American family), together with the spread of Mandarin and Korean logograms on street signs, led Mr. Rieff to call this the “capital of the third world.”

As a native of the city, I was offended to hear it tagged with such a denigrating label. But in recent years, and for different reasons, I’ve come to believe that a metropolis of the “developing world,” to use a more polite expression, is being born here.

Its center is not in East Los Angeles, or any other Latino neighborhood; nor in our recently christened “Little Bangladesh.” The third world exists everywhere here — in the spread of inequality.

The deepening gap between rich and poor is both a sociological fact and a state of mind. The cost of housing is up dramatically, and so is homelessness.

“If it feels like there are people living on the streets and under bridges everywhere you look, it’s because they are,” Bianca Barragan wrote for the website L.A. Curbed last month, after a survey by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority found an 85 percent increase in the number of people living in tents and cars over the past two years. In all, the census counted more than 25,000 homeless people in the city, up 12 percent over the same period.
New York Times

After a new law went into effect in January, more than half of all new driver's licenses issued in California this year have gone to people who are in the country illegally, the state said Friday. The California Department of Motor Vehicles reported it has issued roughly 397,000 licenses to people who live in the country illegally. A total of 759,000 licenses were issued in the first six months of the year.
San Jose Mercury News

California's most valuable cash crop, marijuana, is taking a heavy toll on some of the state's most sensitive ecosystems, with the effects ranging from erosion, contamination, threats to wildlife, and
heavy water use at a time of severe drought.

The situation is prompting ecologists and wildlife managers to urge greater focus on bringing marijuana plots under tighter environmental scrutiny.

It's a tall order, notes a research team calling for the added focus via an article in the August issue of the journal BioScience. Among the challenges: Money to beef up enforcement and to cover cleanup is scarce. And where some level of regulation exists, enforcement can be stymied by a disconnect between federal and state laws regarding the possession, sale, and use of marijuana.

The environmental concerns are not limited to California, notes the team, led by Jennifer Carah, an ecologist with The Nature Conservancy's office in San Francisco. Twenty-three states and at least three countries are testing the marijuana-liberalization waters to varying degrees.

Where environmental concerns have been raised, they often have centered on energy and water consumption, or carbon footprints for commercial-scale, indoor pot farms. The situation in northern California highlights the need to pay attention to the broader environmental effects of widespread cultivation as well, the team holds.
BioScience