"Details from diversity training sessions, accounts of alleged reverse discrimination, and screenshots of internal communications on company forums and message boards in the lawsuit cast the company culture as extremely hostile to employees with unpopular opinions, especially heterosexuals, men, white people, and those who hold conservative views."
"California was home to the Haight-Ashbury counterculture movement, the Grateful Dead and Cheech & Chong. It’s also the home state of Richard Nixon, who birthed the modern drug war, and Ronald Reagan, the president who made Nixon’s war metaphor all too literal. Today, we’ll look at cannabis in California up until about the late 1960s."
"Advocates say camera-mounted drones could help protect officers and others by collecting crucial information during high-risk situations or searches without jeopardizing their safety. For many privacy advocates and police critics, however, the drones stir Orwellian visions of unwarranted surveillance or fears of militarized, weapon-toting devices patrolling the skies. LAPD brass, along with police commissioners, tried to ease those concerns last fall by promising careful restrictions on when the drones would be used, and strong oversight of the pilot program."
"California’s war on guns will soon broaden to a war on ammunition as a ban on the possession of bullets purchased out-of-state takes effect January 1, 2018. According to the Sacramento Bee, it will also be illegal 'to transfer or buy ammo' from anyone other than a licensed dealer within the state, beginning January 1. California residents can order ammunition from a catalog as long as they have that ammunition shipped to a licensed dealer for pickup. The dealer will then add a 'processing fee' to the cost of the ammunition."
"In Pasadena, CA some 'heroes' (aka, law enforcers) noticed a motorist driving a car with windows that were tinted 'too much' and which was missing its front license plate. These are heinous offenses against the peace, you see. Can’t that let that go. A stop was initiated. Which quickly led to a violent beat down of the unarmed, unresisting motorist."
"A recent California law is requiring that trade schools like Bob’s deny admission to any student who has not completed high school or a state-approved equivalent. He is joined in the suit by Esteban Narez, a ranch hand who wants to learn how to shoe horses at PCHS, but cannot be admitted because he never graduated high school."
"One morning she walked her kids to the bus stop and she was approached by an official from the Claremont school district and a police officer. In very intimidating fashion, they began questioning her about whether or not her children had been vaccinated. When she refused to answer and started recording the interaction they walked away, but that wasn’t the end of it. Later she called the police department and explained what was going on, and she was told that she could be arrested for refusing to vaccinate her children."
"State and local taxes on marijuana could surpass 45% in some parts of California, jeopardizing efforts to bring all growers and sellers into a state-licensed market in January, according to the global credit ratings firm Fitch Ratings. The report said that increased enforcement may blunt the illegal market, 'but high taxes may complicate such efforts by diverting in-state sales to the black market.'"
"The state is on a hiring binge to fill what eventually will be hundreds of new government positions by 2019 intended to bring order to the legal pot economy, from keeping watch on what’s seeping into streams near cannabis grows to running background checks on storefront sellers who want government licenses. Thousands of additional jobs are expected to be added by local governments. Last January, just 11 full-time workers were part of what’s now known as the Bureau of Cannabis Control, the state’s chief regulatory agency overseeing the pot market. Now, it’s more than doubled, and by February the agency expects to have more than 100 staffers."
"Tim Draper filed his proposed 2018 ballot initiative on Friday asking voters to split California into three new states: Northern California, California and Southern California. 'The citizens of the whole state would be better served by three smaller state governments while preserving the historical boundaries of the various counties, cities, and towns,' Draper wrote in the initiative's statement of findings."