Category California

Oct 2 2023

California Raises Minimum Wage for Fast Food Workers to $20 per Hour


Armstrong Economics Blog/USA Current Events Re-Posted Oct 2, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Effective April 1, fast food workers in California will receive a minimum wage of $20 thanks to a new law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. This law does not extend to all minimum wage workers, only those at fast food establishments. Why? Newsom needs to buy votes and labor unions and chain restaurants have been battling it out to determine who must pay.

Fast food lobbyists spent $4 million in the first six months of this year to prevent the California Accountability Bill from passing. The bill would hold franchisees and their parent companies jointly liable for the treatment of workers. Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Jack in the Box, KFC, McDonalds, Chic-fil-A, and basically all of the fast food chains separately spend money to defeat bill AB 1228. Commercials appeared across California of seemingly desperate franchise owners saying their businesses were in danger if the big bad corporation had to take over.

That bill will not be on the ballot for 2024, thanks to this new boost in pay. California currently has one of the highest minimum wage brackets in the country at $15.50. Critics say that these jobs are intended for students who live at home and need work experience.  “That’s a romanticized version of a world that doesn’t exist,” Newsom said. “We have the opportunity to reward that contribution, reward that sacrifice and stabilize an industry.”

Other labor unions are certain to follow and demand higher wages. Fast food prices have spiked in recent years and can hardly be considered cheap. Unskilled laborers vote Democrat, and the big chains will put money behind Democratic candidates who support their interests. At the same time, most fast-food chains have begun to automate positions and cut down on hiring.

Sep 27 2023

Newsom Vetoes Parental Discrimination Gender Identity Bill


Armstrong Economics Blog/WOKE Re-Posted Sep 27, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Some say California’s Governor Gavin Newsom is attempting to appear more moderate ahead of election season. Newsom actually used common sense and defied party lines by vetoing a bill that would have taken children away from parents who refuse to provide them with gender-affirming care.

Democratic Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo and Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener introduced AB-957 Family law: gender identity, and it actually passed state legislature in September. The bill would have likened refusing gender-affirming care to child abuse. So if you refuse to give your child puberty blockers or put a tutu on your son who claims he is your daughter, you are unfit to be a parent in Biden’s America. Forget the statistics or the growing number of adults who are forever scarred from the medical procedures their parents allowed them to undergo before their brains had fully developed.

Newsom stated that provisions are already in place that “protect” children from parents not adhering to the woke agenda. This is commonplace in California family court as parents will attempt to discredit the other for not accepting their child’s chosen gender or sexuality. Children have already been removed from their homes for this very reason, but the proposed bill would have made it easier for the government to confiscate confused kids.

Now, Newsom is still a strong advocate of children undertaking genital mutilation. However, he is attempting to seem a bit more moderate as Democrats in the middle are not in favor of these measures. “I share a deep commitment to advancing the rights of transgender Californians, an effort that has guided my decisions through many decades in public office,” Newsom wrote in the announcement. “That said, I urge caution when the Executive and Legislative branches of state government attempt to dictate – in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic – legal standards for the Judicial branch to apply.”

California lawmakers are introducing new legislation at rapid speed, and it is all intended to transfer parental rights to the state. There are proposals to allow children to seek psychiatric care in relation to their gender without notifying parents. There is another proposal that would provide shelter to children as young as 12 if they reported facing “LGBTQ+ negativity” at home. These are intended to be broad terms to give the state the power to confiscate kids. When my kids were young, you’d have to sign a letter just to let them go on a school trip a few miles away. Now, parents are fighting with the school boards to have a say in how their child is raised.

Jul 8 2023

Laura Loomer Talks Republican Politics with Steve Bannon


Posted originally on the CTH on July 7, 2023 | Sundance 

An awful lot of the people who live in a world of affluence and influence afforded by professional republican politics do not like Laura Loomer.  However, what she had accomplished with sunlight on their backroom operations deserves a lot of respect.

Earlier today Laura Loomer appeared on the Steve Bannon podcast to review the California scheme to shape the primary delegate distribution. {Direct Rumble Link} Loomer and Bannon also apply the lessons from the 2016 Cruz operation to the 2024 goals and objectives of the DeSantis operation.  Both are correct in that much of what we are seeing is a replay of that same crew.  WATCH:

Jul 7 2023

The Big Ugly Surfaces in The Story of Mike Davis and Harmeet Dhillon, Contrast Against the Backdrop of GOPe Maneuvers in California


Posted originally on the CTH on July 6, 2023 | Sundance 

I will be as generous in explanation as brutal honesty permits.  This is hopefully the last I will write about the internecine network of California GOPe manipulative politics and the latest episode of republican fraud within in.

Fibber Mike Davis (below left) gave an interview {Rumble Segment Here} which now provides some clarity on his character and the issues of his defense of Harmeet Dhillon (below right), in an effort to protect her from the outcome of Dhillon’s own creation.   Within the interview Davis notes that in addition to her RNC and California GOP professional relationships, Dhillon also represents the Trump campaign as a lawyer.

Within the interview we discover who and why Davis was protecting when he made claims about the Trump campaign seemingly being okay with a California GOP scheme to allocate proportional delegates to Ron DeSantis.  In essence, the “Trump campaign official” who didn’t raise objections to the CA rule change, the one Mike Davis was protecting from scrutiny, was actually Harmeet Dhillon herself. The same Harmeet who signed off on the 6/17/23 email proposal, then reversed after sunlight.

Mr. Davis also admits he and Mrs. Dhillon have a professional working relationship with the Article III Project organization that forms the basis of Mr. Davis’ affluence and influence.  Davis and Dhillon swim in, and benefit from, the same financial ocean.   Here’s the result:

Within Harmeet Dhillon’s lengthy explanation of her backtracking [SEE HERE], in the second segment {SEE HERE} she uses carefully constructed lawyer speak to highlight that she was duped by the other two California GOP officials, Jessica Patterson and Shawn Steel.  Mrs. Dhillon will not and cannot say she was lied to, for two reasons.

Mrs. Dhillon carefully says, “I was told by the state party” and “I accepted these representations” in the customary way a lawyer would obfuscate their choice not to say I was lied to.  Indeed, against the inaccuracy of the original justifications by Dhillon, and if we are to take Mrs. Dhillon at her word, she says in her reversal of position that she was misled and mistaken in her opinion by materially false representations of Jessica Patterson and Shawn Steel.

Unfortunately, Harmeet Dhillon cannot be more deliberate in her statement because she has a professional role to maintain, and the admission that she was duped is against her brand image.

Harmeet Dhillon represents herself to her clients and her audience as the counterbalance to manipulation in elections and politics.  If Dhillon were to admit she was a victim to manipulation in California election rules and politics, her brand would suffer significant harm.

Given that Mrs Dhillon is supposed to be a subject matter expert in the world of political rules and specifically RNC constructs, she cannot be viewed as incompetent to the rules and constructs she is expected to comprehensively understand.

As a result, Harmeet needs to carefully extract herself from a situation that shows her inept ability, yet simultaneously admit the original position she took was wrong.

Navigating a professional path between duplicity and incompetence is always challenging.  Making matters worse, Dhillon is being paid by the Trump campaign specifically for legal expertise navigating rules and regulations of GOP primary electoral politics.

Despite the wide grin on the face of Marc Elias, getting the rules wrong in Harmeet’s own backyard is not a good look and not funny.  Everything that followed Dhillon’s original really bad GOP rule justification is an exhibition in professional face-saving.  However, this is not the first time Harmeet Dhillon has fallen back on the “I accepted these representations” excuse.

When Dhillon was originally challenged on the 2022 partnership with notoriously corrupt and conniving Henry Barbour in Mississippi, Mrs. Dhillon also defended and justified her lack of knowledge about the Barbour background by saying she was assigned the role to work with Barbour by the RNC (Ronna McDaniel).

It’s never Dhillon’s fault.  Her lack of knowledge or skill within the job of her self-proclaimed political and electoral expertise is always the fault of others. 🙄 Just ask Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson or a host of other incompetence justifiers within the world of political interest. Perhaps even ask voices within the orbit of President Trump himself and you will find a multitude of high praise statements and cover stories.

This is where Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Mary McCord, Andrew Weissmann, Norm Eisen and Barry Berke start laughing uncontrollably.

This is also why Steve Bannon’s frequent WarRoom guest, Attorney Mike Davis, stepped in so quickly after the Laura Loomer revelations began to get traction and sunlight.  Davis continued to say the proportional rule change was not objected to by the Trump campaign; yet, Davis would not say who in the campaign was seemingly aware of the CA GOP rule change and was okay with it.

The “Trump campaign official” who didn’t raise objections to the CA rule change, the one Mike Davis was protecting from scrutiny, was actually Harmeet Dhillon herself.

After all, as noted by Mike Davis, Mrs. Dhillon is an attorney for the Trump campaign, and the leaked email containing the position of Harmeet Dhillon, Jessica Patterson and Shawn Steel -from three weeks ago- was against the interests of President Trump.  Surely, if the rule change was an issue, the attorney for the Trump campaign would not support it.

It is much easier to protect incompetence by saying “go fuck yourself” to questioning, than to admit a person with a close business relationship has just made a very big mistake.  {DIRECT RUMBLE LINK}

Mike Davis Helps Clear Confusion Over Proposed California GOP Delegate Rules Changes

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President Trump should recognize the value in what Ms Laura Loomer has just provided.  Loomer likely saved the Trump campaign from something a thousand times more costly than the monthly billing cycle of Dhillon Law Firm.  And Loomer did it all free of charge – because it was the right thing to do.

Consider me done with this episode, unless the critics want to continue engagement.

✌️
Jul 6 2023

Laura Loomer Wins – Harmeet Dhillon Retreats from California GOP “Proportional” Rule Position, Now Backs “Winner-Take-All” Option


Posted originally on the CTH on July 6, 2023 | Sundance 

It is difficult to overstate just how impactful Mrs. Laura Loomer was/is in blocking a California scheme that appears to be part of a wider GOPe plan to dilute the primary election delegate distribution against the interests of President Trump and his supporters.

Mrs. Loomer exposed a three-week old plan by state RNC leadership Jessica Patterson, Shawn Steel and Harmeet Dhillon to change the California Republican primary outcome to a proportional distribution of candidates.

Loomer published the contents of a leaked email from the three organizers Patterson, Steel and Dhillon.

As people realized what was happening, all behind closed doors and hidden from public review, outrage began to surface.

Today, after initially trying to justify her position, Mrs. Dhillon reverses course and now supports the ‘winner-take-all’ option. An option that was always available, but purposefully ignored in the plan to deliver the delegates via proportional distribution. As you will see below, Dhillon an RNC rules committee member, claims she was unaware of the rule and led astray by the statements of Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Steel.

First, here’s Mrs. Loomers statement upon hearing of the Dhillon reversal:

RNC CA Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon is now backtracking. She just sent an email out saying that she supports California’s “winner take all” threshold for delegates, that this is her “personal opinion” and doesn’t speak for Jessica Patterson and Shawn Steel? and that she “regrets” that the CA GOP’s back door plan to have a bylaw amendment to remove the “winner takes all” threshold wasn’t communicated to the public and the delegates.

That’s nice and all, but if that’s the case, why was she signed onto the Amendment proposal that was sent out on her behalf on June 17 by CAGOP Chair Jessica Patterson?

In other words, they got caught and now they have to save face.

If this is how Harmeet feels, then I strongly suggest she say so publicly and not support the bylaw change at the CAGOP executive meeting on July 29.

I hope everyone sees they had no plans of ever telling the delegates this information until I blew the whistle.

This is very easy. The RNC’s own rule book says that individual states can keep their “majority takes all”threshold for delegates.

There is no need to change the rules, even if the CA Primary is now earlier. If this is how Harmeet now feels all of sudden, then she needs to oppose the bylaw amendment and keep the language as is so that all of the delegates are awarded to the winner and there’s no way to have a brokered convention.

This is just a very long way of her saying “we got caught doing something we shouldn’t be doing behind closed doors. Now the cat is out of the bag and I know this isn’t going away, so let me try to distance myself from Jessica Patterson and Shawn Steel so that I can try to save face.”

The only way this is going away in any capacity is if all 3 RNC reps from California rip up the bylaw amendment and keep the winner takes all language.

There could very well be protests outside of the CAGOP Executive meeting on July 29 unless this is changed. (read more)

If you carefully read the statement made by Dhillon, you will notice a great deal of disingenuous language used in an effort to cover her tracks.  She seems to portray herself as being hoodwinked by the other participants, which, when combined with the attempted defenses by her DeSantis supporting allies, seems to be the way Dhillon plans to remove herself from the sunlight.

The RNC National Committeewoman, who ran to become the RNC Chairwoman and sits on the RNC Rules Committee, now claims she was not aware of the rules and further disagrees with the content of the letter that was decided three weeks ago.  Something apparently happened between the agreement with the other executives and today.  That something was likely Laura Loomer.   Read the Dhillon letter carefully.

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For comparison, this was Mrs. Dhillon’s position 18 hours ago.

Again, keep in mind Mrs. Dhillon, who ran for RNC chair 5 months ago, is the California RNC Committeewoman, and she sits on the National RNC rules committee.

Suddenly, all of the stuff in Mrs. Dhillon’s prior position is claimed to be untrue in Mrs. Dhillon’s current position.

Yesterday, the RNC rules were “legally necessary” and the deadlines were “looming”.   Today, the RNC rules do not make the proportional requirements mandatory, and there is plenty of time for debate and discussion.  Go figure.

In the bigger picture, Mrs. Loomer’s supernova of sunlight has now put the RNC/RGA and DeSantis team into a position of vulnerability.  There is a possibility that people will begin to understand that all of the GOP candidates are not trying to win the 2024 nomination; rather they are in the race as part of the Big Club plan to gain collections of individual delegates that can be reassembled into one larger delegate bloc at the RNC convention.

California was only one state that was organizing their rules to participate in the block Trump effort.

Keep watching…

Jul 6 2023

Bannon Warroom Frequent Guest, Mike Davis, Continues to Claim President Trump Authorized California GOP Rule Change to Give Delegates to Ron DeSantis


Posted originally on the CTH on July 5, 2023 | Sundance 

Something about this doesn’t pass the proverbial sniff test, and when asked for a direct answer – well, things get salty.

For two days a self-proclaimed Trump advisor and frequent guest on the Steve Bannon Warroom podcast, Mike Davis, has claimed that President Trump and the Trump campaign authorized a California GOP rule change that would permit proportional delegate distribution against the interests of President Trump.

The claim itself made no sense because, if Mike Davis and Harmeet Dhillon were correct, essentially Trump would be approving a GOP change that would give delegates to his GOP nomination competition – namely Ron DeSantis.  Mr. Davis was asked to explain who specifically from the Trump campaign authorized and approved of the plan.

Mr. Davis refused to answer the question publicly, which, as normal, created additional suspicions about the validity of the claim.  More and more people started to pay attention and put the question out, because, well, quite frankly, it just doesn’t make sense.

Instead of responding simply and publicly to the question, and saying who in the Trump campaign knew about, authorized and approved the California plan, Mike Davis responded with the following Direct Message: “Go fuck yourself.”

Apparently Mr. Davis is unable to state who from the Trump Campaign approved of the California GOP rule change.

As a consequence, I’m a little skeptical there is any truth to the claims by Mr. Davis.

In semi-related news, after Mrs. Loomer published the internal emails from three weeks ago outlining the plan, and after a considerable amount of Trump supporter interest in the scheme underfoot in the California Republican Party, the CA GOP was forced to release a statement, somewhat attempting to justify, their plan.

An update on the California Republican Party’s Presidential Primary process:

We recently submitted a bylaw amendment to codify rules for our Presidential Primary election next year, and we wanted to share some context and facts about that process as there is some misinformation floating out there.

The CRP’s bylaws, as currently constructed and used for 2020, are not in compliance with the Republican National Committee’s Rules (RNC Rule 16) for 2024, so to that end, a bylaw amendment was created that complied with the rules. The RNC’s Rule 16(c) states that “Any presidential primary, caucus, convention, or other process to elect, select, allocate, or bind delegates to the national convention that occurs prior to March 15 in the year in which the national convention is held shall provide for the allocation of delegates on a proportional basis.”

Thanks to California Election Code section 1001, as determined by the Democrat-controlled Legislature and Governor, our primary moved up from June (where it was in 2020) to March 5, 2024. While that move put us early in the national primary calendar and on Super Tuesday, it also meant that to comply with the RNC’s Rules, we must change to a proportional model, which this bylaw amendment accomplishes.

If we didn’t make this switch (and before an October 1st deadline), we would be in jeopardy of losing 50 percent of our delegates. As it stands today, California Republicans have more delegates than any state in the nation, and to not comply with RNC Rules would have not only taken that distinction away from us, but also would have greatly mitigated our role in determining our party’s nominee; it also would have lessened the number of delegates that could ultimately go to any Presidential candidate seeking the nomination in California.

This was the same process we followed before the 2020 Primary to abide by the RNC rules. However, it is important to note that the rules we had in 2020 had a sunset clause that only allowed us to use those rules for the 2020 Presidential Primary election.

In compliance with the CRP’s rules, this bylaw amendment will next go before the CRP’s Rules Committee, followed by our Executive Committee, later this month. We look forward to more discussion on this important adjustment as the process progresses.

Together, California Republicans can help determine our Party’s 2024 Presidential nominee and, ultimately, the future of our nation. We do not take that responsibility lightly and are grateful for your ongoing support in helping to put our state and nation on a pathway to success again.

Sincerely,

Jessica Millan Patterson
Chairwoman
California Republican Party

Harmeet Dhillon
RNC National Committeewoman
California

Shawn Steel
RNC National Committeeman
California

The California GOP statement does not address a core issue, RNC rule 3(ii) [as below] that permits the state to continue a winner-take-all allotment so long as the candidate obtains 50% of the primary vote.   This is the element completely ignored in their Republican Party leadership proposal.

Instead, with the timing of the announcement against the backdrop of unexpected sunlight upon their previously constructed plan, the statement reads like the California Republican Party is trying to cover its ass.

Being as diplomatically generous as one can afford, it would appear Mr. Mike Davis, Mrs. Harmeet Dhillon and the California leadership of the Republican Party are being less than fulsome in their statements. 👀😉

Jun 8 2023

Major Hotel Chains Shutting San Francisco Locations


Armstrong Economics Blog/USA Current Events Re-Posted Jun 8, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

San Francisco and other blue cities are overrun with crime, permitted by light-on-crime policies. I know numerous people who travel for work, and all they can discuss after visiting cities such as San Francisco and Seattle is the urban encampments and rampant crime that occurs in broad daylight. Companies no longer wish to hold conferences in these dangerous drug-ridden cities, and it is causing hotels to shutter.

The Hilton San Francisco Union Square Hotel, the largest hotel in the city, and Parc 55 Hotel, the fourth largest, are fleeing the city. CEO Thomas J. Baltimore Jr. said that his hotels have lost almost all of their business from conferences and conventions. Park Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NYSE:PK) announced that it has stopped all payments toward its $725 million loan. They want to completely remove these hotels from their portfolio immediately. There is no saving the city at this point, and the smart money is leaving. “Unfortunately, the continued burden on our operating results and balance sheet is too significant to warrant continuing to subsidize and own these assets,” the company politely stated.

Quite a shame as this was once a beautiful city in a prime location. Hotels in San Francisco have to remind guests to park within enclosed, monitored parking garages because theft is so prominent. Some residents would like to turn a blind eye to the growing problem as the homeless population is beginning to outnumber them. The New York Post recently featured an article showing images of the vacant stores throughout the once desirable downtown as retail vacancy rose 6% in Q1 alone. Businesses, such as Whole Foods which was only open for one year, said they were worried about the safety of their employees.

What is the city doing to correct the problem? Nothing. They are downplaying the true crisis and wondering why tourism is nearly non-existent. The $120 million in budget cuts for the police department since 2020 has not helped the situation. Reports state that fewer than 80% of 911 calls are answered in a timely fashion, if at all. This is how cities fall under incompetent leaders who ignore problems in favor of votes.

May 7 2023

California Turned Paradise into Hell


Armstrong Economics Blog/Gov’t Incompetence Re-Posted May 7, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Jan 27 2023

California Wealth Tax to be Applied to Anyone Whoever Worked in the State


Armstrong Economics Blog/The Hunt for Taxes Re-Posted Jan 27, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Some people have written in and said I am just a Republican and I hate California. Sorry, I consider myself in the middle. I disagree with a lot on the Republican side as well. Simply put, the government should NOT be in the business of trying to manipulate society any more than the Investment Banks have tried to manipulate the markets and when they blow up, they run to the government for bailouts. The fines they get from CFTC ad SEC and just their 10% take of the amount of money they make on such schemes.

California is the absolutely WORSE state to live in. They are so MARXIST you cannot even imagine. They are proposing to create a WEALTH TAX and apply it to anyone who has ever worked in California. You better know that California has been going after people who worked in that state, but then moved to Florida. They then hunt them down and demand state income taxes arguing that they earned that pension while they were in California.

Plain and simple, California is the state from HELL. It views people as its economic slaves. Yes, you are a slave – the property of the state. It does not matter where you have moved to, they view it that you remain their property.  California is out of control. It will NEVER reduce its size, it looks down upon the people as their endless possession. Slavery ended with the Civil War but that was only private slavery. The state has replaced that and it outright claims you are its property. They never heard of no taxation without representation. If you move out of state, you forfeit your right to vote in California. So we have exactly the very same situation that led to the American Revolution – you are taxed under tyranny and have no right to even be heard.

What California has been doing to those who retire out of state, they will do to absolutely everyone who has ever worked in that God-forsaken land of inequity.

Just for the record, you must report every asset you own everywhere in the world, and then you are taxed on that as if it were a property tax. Every year you will be taxed and if your assets declined, that’s your problem. You will be taxed on what the state says it is worth.