The Blue Bottle Coffee, the Bay Area foodies’ favorite coffee house, merged with the Tartine Bakery and Café in April. Now, the combined artisan food company has raised $70 million in venture capital to be the “next big thing.”
California not only has the highest poverty rate in the U.S. at 23.4 percent, but that rate is now also higher than Greece, at 22.3 percent.
A raging debate is questioning Apple’s ability to succeed in the upcoming streaming music service that will be launched at their developer conference on Monday in San Francisco.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast released on Friday predicts that California will help drive the nation’s economic recovery this year with an expected labor force growth of 128,000 new workers, or +2.1 percent. But Forecast’s Director Ed Leamer cautioned that while California payrolls reached a new high of 17.8 million jobs, the number is still running 16 percent behind states’ long-term trend. Leamer’s concluded, “We’re in a world of hurt.”
The former president of Trader Joe’s opened Daily Table as a non-profit grocery store in Boston’s “Southie” neighborhood of Dorchester. It offers high quality “sell-by date” and surplus food at huge discounts to help low-income grocery shoppers.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a long-postponed draft report Thursday on the impact of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The regulators concluded that based upon “peer-reviewed studies as well as state and federal databases,” there is no evidence the practice has had a “widespread, systemic impact on drinking water.”
With the strike ban that was a pre-condition of the GM and Fiat Chrysler federal bailouts expiring, United Auto Workers (UAW) locals are collecting food and encouraging union members to save for a potential strike when the Big Three four-year labor agreement expires on September 14.
As Governor Brown wrestles with the Democrat-run state legislature on how to spend the state’s supposed $3 billion surplus, he is being challenged by California’s powerful environmentalist lobby.
It has been just two months since a San Francisco jury of six women and six men ruled against former junior partner Ellen Pao on all four of Pao’s claims of gender discrimination and retaliation against the prestigious Silicon Valley venture capital firm of
The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) reported that domestic crude oil productionfor the week ending May 22 surged by 304,000 barrels per day (bpd) to a 44-year high of almost 9.566 million bpd. The latest production numbers come on the heels of Breitbart News’ report that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had effectively conceded defeat in its battle against U.S. shale oil competition.
Recently, Breitbart News broke the story last week that major insurers in a number of states were proposing up to 51 percent healthcare premium increases for Obamacare policies. Now Illinois and Pennsylvania are also seeking 2016 rate hikes in the range of 30 percent.
It was only a matter of time until California’s powerful public sector unions geared up for a two-step approach to overturn the 1978 Proposition 13 ballot measure that has saved California property owners about $550 billion in property taxes.
With San Francisco offering massive tax incentives to redevelop 77 dilapidated warehouse buildings into a “Twitter Town” for the “digerati” venture capital crowd, the adjacent Mission District community is now in turmoil, as the city’s poor are being booted to make room for new buildings and Airbnb vacation rental conversions.
For the second time, an employee in the California Department of Justice was caught impersonating as a sworn law enforcement officer. California Attorney General and Democratic Senate candidate Kamala Harris’ office was rocked last month when one of her direct aides was arrested on charges of impersonating a police officer after he took a leading role in setting up a fake police department. Harris has made no comment on either case.
The Sierra Club is upset because the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) built a sophisticated and unbiased computer model to analyze the cost-effectiveness of new solar policy proposals. But despite all the Sierra Club’s political clout, the computer model determined is that none of the solar policy proposals are cost effective.
The California Senate’s Appropriations Committee passed SB 4 to give health care to all illegal/undocumented aliens. Breitbart News estimates that based on the non-partisan Legislative Analysts’ Office projections, SB 4 will cost at least $1 billion, and the cost will undoubtedly go much higher over time.
OPEC’s attempt to over-produce crude oil for export to crush prices and bankrupt the American shale-fracking oil boom has failed, according to a draft OPEC long-term strategy report seen by Reuters ahead of the cartel’s policy meeting in Vienna on June 1st.
The Irvine City Council voted 4 to 1 to begin dumping an eight-year-old “Living Wage” ordinance on Wednesday night that forces most of the city’s thousands of contractors to pay all employees at least $13.34 an hour.
With major insurers in some states proposing up to 51 percent Obamacare insurance premium increases, liberal Democrats are scrambling to avoid a political and financial disaster. One proposal is to merge California’s financially troubled “Covered California” exchange with the even more insolvent state exchanges, like “Cover Oregon,” which was forced to shut down last year.
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel revealed Tuesday at the California Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes that the company is planning for an initial public offering (IPO). He said the company, recently valued at $15 billion, had no desire to be acquired in a merger like the Facebook’s $3 billion offer two years ago. Then, in a refreshing twist for such a young captain of industry, Spiegel warned that the Fed’s “easy money policy” and low interest have created a tech bubble and it’s only a “matter of time till it bursts.”
It must be rainbows, butterflies and unicorns for Sacramento liberals, as California successfully defended its crown as America’s CEOs again named California the worst state to do business–for the eleventh straight year.
Bitcoin’s open-source digital currency was designed to disrupt and cut out the manipulative architecture of central banks, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve. Originally, Bitcoin transactions went through a third party. But the virtual currency has evolved to eliminate all of
Investors anxiously await Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes, like the details of the April 28-29 meeting released Friday. But despite the Fed’s monetary policy purchase of $4 trillion in bonds to drive interest rates to near zero, Fed Chairman
The sad look of south Santa Barbara beaches after the recent oil spill is serving as a backdrop for environmental protesters to advance their causes that have little to do with the ocean’s birds and fish. But as the protesters chanted “End Oil Now!” billions of microscopic bacteria are feasting on the oil that has been on their diet for millenniums.
For a state with 24,200,997 licensed drivers, California has suspended 4.8 million licenses of drivers who didn’t pay traffic fines or failed to appear in court in the last decade.
While the rest of America took time to celebrate the sacrifices of veterans and their families on Memorial weekend, 500 San Francisco protesters marched against Monsanto Corporation, carrying signs and chanting, “Evil Seed of Corporate Greed.”
Major insurers in some states are proposing up to 51 percent premium increases for health plans sold under the Affordable Healthcare and Patient Protection Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. Despite single digit increases for 2015, insurance companies are seeing their costs jump and are demanding to be compensated with dramatically higher rates.
A coalition of 50 labor organizations, consumer groups and the “Debt Collective” sent a joint petition on Tuesday to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, urging him to cancel federal student loans owed by 78,000 who attended Corinthian College schools.
Some economists are warning that the Los Angeles City Council’s approval of what is essentially a $1.20 per year increase in the minimum wage for the next five years will be so inflationary that rents and other prices will rise.
U.S. public sector unions are politically powerful because they collect and spend at least $4.0 billion in dues each year. But California unions are overwhelmingly powerful because although the state has just 11 percent of the nation’s population, California’s public
In a huge victory for farmers and their workers, California’s 5th District Court of Appeal ruled last week that the state’s “Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation” process, which allows a mediator to impose a binding contract on farm companies and agricultural unions when the negotiation process breaks down, is unconstitutional.
Twitter Inc. (TWTR – NYSE) mission statement is: “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” To meet that mission, the company is spending $6 million to open the new Twitter NeighborNest to teach tech skills near their headquarters on South Market Street in downtown San Francisco.
There is plenty of room to debate the benefits of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. But Senators Elizabeth Warren (MA-D) and David Vitter (LA-R)’s bipartisan bill, the “Bailout Prevention Act of 2015,” would further restrict the Fed’s emergency lender-of-last-resort
With temperatures dropping into the high teens, and about 7 inches of snow falling for the next three days, Mammoth Mountain is on track to get its most snow since December 2014. The unseasonal snowfall in the Sierras will not break the drought, but the National Climate Prediction Center’s decision to raise the probability of El Niño to 90 percent has insurance companies scrambling to model losses they expect to suffer from El Niño flood damage.
Grocery stores are responding to the massive loss of consumer dollars by going all-in for organic foods, which Consumer Reports estimates cost 47% more. Despite clever marketing, most health experts doubt organics are worth the premium price.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council passed a minimum wage law by a 14-to-1 vote margin that continually cranks-up wages for the next five years to $15 an hour. Meanwhile, employers are responding by investing in machines over people.
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen recently joined the rising chorus of economists and former Fed officials warning about the risks of irrational exuberance by bond and stock investors paying bubble-inflated prices. Conspicuously silent about the risks of stock investing over the last 6 years, Yellen’s comments quickly tanked the bond market. But with the NASDAQ tech-heavy index up 500% since the bottom of the last crash, Yellen seems to be warning this bubble could pop.
The leftist Greek government’s debt re-negotiation strategy was aimed at stretching the crisis out and making the risk from a messy “Gr-exit” so big that the European Union would grant huge concessions to avoid a Greek collapse that would topple falling
In a surprise move, Xiaomi just announced on its Facebook page that it is coming to U.S. and Western markets with a plan to attack Apple’s ecosphere.
With cap-and-trade cash flow doubling this year and growing rapidly into the future, a newly approved “Scoping Plan” requires “maximizing” investments in “disadvantaged communities” that just happen to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.