Two years after San Francisco passed a law intended to encourage property owners to add accessory dwelling units to help ease the housing crisis, snags in the approval process Two years after San Francisco passed a law intended to encourage property owners to add accessory dwelling units to help ease the housing crisis, snags in […]
Billionaire serial entrepreneur Richard Branson says cash handouts will eventually be required to keep people from becoming homeless in the US. “I think with the coming on of AI and other things there is certainly a danger of income inequality,” Branson tells CNN’s Christine Romans in a piece published Thursday. The inequality will be caused […]
Under current law, national health spending is projected to grow 5.5 percent annually on average in 2017–26 and to represent 19.7 percent of the economy in 2026. Projected national health spending and enrollment growth over the next decade is largely driven by fundamental economic and demographic factors: changes in projected income growth, increases in prices […]
Those who want to blame a California environmental law for the state’s housing problems should instead point their fingers at cities and counties, according to a new report from researchers at UC Berkeley and Columbia University. The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, a 1970 state law, requires developers to analyze and eliminate a project’s […]
PG&E has arrived at its goals for renewable energy deliveries earlier than what’s required by a statewide mandate, the company said Tuesday — but fresh challenges loom due to the embattled utility’s reliance on a nuclear energy plant in central California that’s slated for deactivation. The company stated that it has reached the 2020 renewable […]
The situation for unions is dire in 2018. The National Labor Relations Board, fragile even under Obama, is so unfriendly now that unions are pulling cases from it. The Supreme Court’s decision in Janus is due soon, and state governments are pushing private sector right-to-work bills. Americans are going to have to be convinced to […]
When it hears Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, the Supreme Court will decide whether public-sector unionism violates the First Amendment rights of workers who refuse to join unions. The case will be one of America’s most consequential for government labor–management relations. If the Court rules for the plaintiffs, […]
The road to an imminent electric vehicle future has hit a speed bump — one made of cobalt. An essential ingredient in lithium-ion batteries that power millions of smartphones as well as plug-in electric cars, cobalt is in heavy demand. But just as the silverish-gray metal has established itself as a critical element in the […]
In 2016, German emissions reached a total of 909.4 million metric tonnes CO2 equivalent. This amounts to 2.6 million tonnes more than in 2015 and represents the second increase in successive years. Such are the results of calculations recently submitted to the EU by the German Environment Agency (UBA). Emissions from the transport sector have […]
The struggles of Germany, one of the globe’s most progressive nations when it comes to embracing renewable energy, illustrates the problem. The country’s “Energiewende,” or “energy transition,” aims to generate 80 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2050. The country also has set an aggressive near-term goal of cutting greenhouses gas emissions by 40 […]
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Tuesday that most farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta who get water from the federal Central Valley Project will receive just 20 percent of their requested allocation this year. Some south-of-Delta farmers on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley will get 30 percent allotments because of […]
California, easily the biggest market in the United States for electric-vehicle sales, is still very much in love with the pickup truck. In fact, data from the California New Car Dealers Association shows the Ford F-Series pickup outsold all pure electric vehicles combined in 2017. Californians bought 53,549 electric vehicles last year compared with 55,249 […]
SBE Council President and CEO Karen Kerrigan said: “Fortunately for entrepreneurs and small businesses, the policy environment in terms of taxes and regulations has improved at the federal level over the past year. There is a concerted effort and real action to reduce tax and regulatory burdens on small businesses and entrepreneurs, which has improved […]
We found that these local governments are imposing discretionary review processes on all residential development projects of five or more units within their borders. That means even if these developments comply with the underlying zoning code, they require additional scrutiny from the local government before obtaining a building permit. This triggers CEQA review of these […]
For the business community, the difficulties of the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) are similar to what business faced under the burden of workers compensation costs over a decade ago. Small businesses particularly had to cope with workers comp costs that stood at twice the national average threatening the viability of many establishments. While workers […]