The group planted tracking devices in 152 monitors and printers — classed as hazardous waste under international law — given to U.S. recyclers and found that 40 percent ended up exported, the vast majority illegally. Most ended up in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.
NFIB California State Executive Director Tom Scott added, “Compared to the national trend, California paints an even uglier picture for small businesses. Three problems California small business owners rank much higher than those in other areas of the United States are family/sick leave mandates; minimum wage laws; and hiring/firing employment regulations.
A widespread Southern California Edison power outage early Monday forced the shutdown of the Torrance refinery, raising concerns that gasoline prices throughout Southern California may see a temporary spike.
“Most importantly, the LAO’s analysis separates fact from fiction about the split-roll concept, which unions and other liberal groups have promoted for decades by arguing that homeowners are shouldering an ever-larger share of the $50 billion in property taxes that schools and local governments collect each year. Fundamentally, the LAO’s analysis rejects that claim, concluding, “Proposition 13 likely did not cause the slight increase in the share of property taxes paid by homeowners.””
And while the Sierra Club report said U.S. dealerships need to improve marketing of electric vehicles, it also said this: “Our volunteers were 2 1/2 times more likely to find no EV on a dealership lot in the nine other ZEV states than they were in California.”
But by grading schools that serve California’s 6-plus million K-12 students on “10 areas critical to student performance,” the system – whose precise details are yet to emerge – moves away from traditional academic standards into fuzzier areas. And that will likely make it more difficult for parents and the larger public to determine what’s really happening, or not, in the classroom.
Through six months this year, CNCDA said sales of new, conventional hybrids accounted for about 4.5 percent of all new-vehicle sales statewide. That’s down from nearly 7 percent in 2013. The CNCDA report showed that California sales of new, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles (EVs for short) have remained basically flat since 2014, with each segment accounting for about 1.5 percent of all new-vehicle registrations statewide. Between 2010 and 2014, plug-in and EV sales were rising.
But 13 years later, and just four years from the goal date, San Francisco continues to throw away huge amounts of garbage. The city’s waste has averaged 1,463 tons every workday over the past year, according to Recology, the city’s trash collector. There’s no penalty for not meeting the target other than, of course, a swelling landfill that’s bad for the environment and a big dent in San Francisco’s reputation as one of the greenest cities in the world.
Employers statewide added a robust 63,100 jobs during the month, the Employment Development Department reported Friday, although the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.5 percent. The job gains for August were a sharp contrast with a fairly weak showing of 18,600 the month before.
Both the formation of firms (for example, McDonald’s as a whole) and establishments (an individual McDonald’s restaurant), have dropped off precipitously since the financial crisis and remained low.
Retail sales declined last month for the first time since March and manufacturing production slipped, government data released Thursday showed. Meanwhile, prices businesses receive for their goods and services were unchanged last month, a sign of still-soft demand at home and abroad. Companies also remain cautious about building up too much inventory, new figures showed.
Brown has acknowledged the “volatility” that the dependence fosters, because incomes of the wealthy are tied to the stock market and other investments. But he’s declined to spend political capital on making the tax system more stable.
Congressional lawmakers have launched a formal investigation into whether solar-energy companies improperly received billions of dollars in tax incentives from the Obama administration.
Whatever your view of the past several years, America’s economic growth is not what it used to be. Our real gross domestic product roared along from 1947 to 1974, growing an average of 3.8 percent per year, and slowed only slightly until 2004. But since then, it’s dropped by half. Today’s economy, growing at a sluggish 1.6 percent per year, has been described using an old term inherited from the 1930s, “secular stagnation.”
Even the liberal Chronicle focused on overwhelming opposition to rent control by economists, noting that 81 percent of those surveyed disagreed that rent control has “improved the quantity and quality of affordable rental housing.” The article pointed to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which concluded rent control results “in a decline in the overall quality of a community’s housing stock.”