Archive for California
Recent Stories for California
Ballot measure to decriminalize prostitution divides liberal San Francisco
Category: Prostitution · State: California · Source: LA Times
At age 22, Patricia West already has her small-business model fully launched. She's done her market research, knows how to advertise online and has a competitive rate structure. There's just one problem: She works in the world's oldest profession, which is illegal. In industry parlance, West is an in-call sex worker. Clients meet her in safe locations. Though this helps her avoid the violence and arrests that routinely come with working the streets, she's always on guard for police stings on the Internet. West wants that to change. She believes all sex workers, including exotic dancers and porn stars, should be able to ply their trade free of the discrimination that comes with a criminal record. She's one of a number of sex workers waging a campaign to decriminalize prostitution here. They're supporting Proposition K, which would shift the city's focus from prosecuting prostitution to pursuing those who prey on sex workers and increasing public health outreach. The goal, West says, is to reduce violence against women and improve the health of sex workers and their clients.
T. Boone Pickens' motives in energy plan questioned
Category: Corruption · State: California · Source: Dallas Morning News
Railing against the "club" of Big Oil and promising to shake up "management entrenchment," T. Boone Pickens once turned his epic takeover battles with oil companies into a national effort to make public companies more accountable to shareholders. He modeled his effort on a political campaign - complete with lobbyists, grass-roots supporters and his own money. A corporate raider whose duels with incumbent managers earned him millions, Mr. Pickens became the public advocate of shareholders betrayed by dull corporate bosses. Now 80, Mr. Pickens is again casting business as a "crusade," as a Democratic senator once put it. On commercials and in testimony before Congress, he is urging the country to use more wind power and natural gas - the focus of his own investments - to wean itself off foreign oil.
State loves to change the law of the land
Category: Initiative and Referendum · State: California · Source: San Francisco Chronicle
The U.S. Constitution has 27 amendments. California's has more than 500. In the past 10 years, Californians have voted on 55 constitutional amendments, and four more are on the November ballot this year. With a state Constitution that can be changed at the ballot box by a simple majority vote, amending the document is often more a political question than a legal one. "We have one of the most unruly constitutions in the world," said Joel Fox, a former aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and member of the 1996 California Constitution Revision Commission. "So we make a habit of amending it more often." When backers of Proposition 8, which would bar same-sex marriage, put their measure on the November ballot as a constitutional amendment, opponents complained that such a ban had no place in a document like the state Constitution. Besides Prop. 8, state voters also will decide this fall whether measures on parental notification of abortions (Prop. 4), victims' rights (Prop. 9) and legislative redistricting (Prop. 11) will become part of the voluminous document. But it's hard to say exactly what doesn't belong there, given that the Constitution already contains such minutiae as the unalienable right of Californians to fish on public lands (Article 1, Section 25).
Critics Assail 'Self-Serving' Ballot Measure
Category: Rent-Seeking · State: California · Source: Contra Costa Times
Texas billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens has made no secret of his desire to open up the market for natural gas-powered vehicles. The founder of a company that develops natural gas vehicles, Pickens believes he has a foothold in an emerging field of clean energy resources — just as soaring gas prices and carbon emissions are causing many to look for alternatives. He's gotten kudos from environmental leaders for mounting a national campaign to lead the country away from its reliance on foreign oil. But, critics are howling at what they're saying is Pickens' brazen attempt to get California voters to foot the bill for a $5 billion bond measure, Proposition 10, that would expedite natural gas development — and line his already-gilded pockets. Pickens wrote the ballot measure, and his company, Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., solely bankrolled the $3.25 million drive to get the initiative on November's ballot — and is expected to spend millions more to get it approved by voters.
S.F. Ballot Will Get Bush-Sewage Measure
Category: City Government · State: California · Source: United Press International
A measure to name a city sewage plant for President George W. Bush has qualified for the November ballot in San Francisco, officials said. A group calling itself the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco said in June it had collected enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot, and then turned the signatures in to elections officials July 7. The Department of Elections Thursday informed the group it had collected enough valid signatures -- so city voters will be asked in November whether to change the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Monthly Archives for California
- September 2008 (1)
- August 2008 (1)
- July 2008 (3)
- June 2008 (3)
- May 2008 (4)
- April 2008 (1)
- December 2007 (11)
- November 2007 (49)
- October 2007 (14)