California schools are about to suffer a 235% increase in the percentage of their annual budgets that are devoted to teacher pensions managed by the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). The stunningly higher costs will slash the number of classroom teachers in all predominantly middle-class schools, but exempt inner-city school districts with high “English learners and recipients of subsidized meals.”
Leaking information to reporters in Silicon Valley is an everyday occurrence. But a former employee at Yahoo is being sued for actually leaking passwords to confidential computer files inside the company to help a financial industry journalist write an unauthorized biography titled: “Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!”
State Controller Betty T. Yee yesterday announced that her staff will conduct an investigation into the financial practices of the City of Industry after an outside, “limited-scope audit” raised questions about $326 million in payments to businesses owned by a former mayor David Perez and his family.
Facebook Mobile is combining its lucrative app install ads with linking to location, conversation, and movement, so a specific “in-app purchase page” opens as an app download, according to a review by TechCrunch. The result is an extremely powerful tool for direct marketers to increase monetization of products and services on mobile.
Rain and snow hit Northern California as an unseasonably cold spring storm pushed south through parts of Northern California on Thursday, bringing a welcome break in the drought.
In February, Google unveiled an expansion of its Silicon Valley campus that many dubbed the new Star Wars Fleet Command Headquarters. The worldwide acclaim for its eco-friendly biosphere design, which features translucent canopies and walkways around natural salt water lagoons, has been intense. But this week, the City of Mountain View decided, in order to maximize property tax revenue, to give the property to Linkedin to build 1970s-style conventional stack-and-pack office towers that maximize occupancy.
Earlier this week, the San Jose Mercury published an article, “Asian-American Tech Workers Absent from Silicon Valley’s Executive Suites,” that describes how the Ascend Foundation wants to add Asians to the classes of black, women and Latino engineers that are
The Pacific Justice institute warned parents of children in California schools that new legislation progressing through the California State Assembly will force schools to put a positive spin on the HIV and AIDS epidemics.
Californians could soon see drones irrigating or dusting crops. Amazon and Google told the Wall Street Journal they have recently seen a major shift in the attitude of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding critical issues to accelerate commercial drone test flights that extend beyond the sight of the operator.
Harris stated that she may be able to wipe out student loans through a “closed-school loan discharge”, a rule that provides students with debt relief if they cannot complete their education because their school closed. But “closed-school loan discharge” means former students are not eligible for debt relief, and students that try to transfer with completed class credits lose their eligibility for any debt relief.
Breitbart News reported in January that farmland prices were estimated to have fallen 3 percent, for their first fall since 1986. But the Chicago Federal Reserve just upped the decline to 8.9 percent, and “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer” warns that farmland
Adam Andrzejewski, Chairman of American Transparency and founder of the transparency website OpenTheBooks.com, has been battling for American Transparency (AT) to force California’s Chief Financial Officer, the State Controller of California, for an “any and all” line-by-line detail for state vendor payments.
A new, unauthorized, supposedly “tell-all” biography just released by Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance claims that serial entrepreneur and Tesla (TSLA-NASDAQ) CEO Elon Musk hid from investors and customers that the electric car company was down to two weeks of cash in early 2013 and had to beg for Google to consider buying the company.
The prices of California’s water and sewer bonds are beginning to take a nose-dive after Governor Jerry Brown issued the first-ever mandatory statewide cut-backs to water use.
The “Hill and Bill” Clinton effort to convince America that “we are just regular middle-class folks” took another dive when former President Bill Clinton said that the couple had “taken almost no capital gains” over the last 15 years. However, in another self-inflicted controversy, Bill failed to realize that Hillary’s campaign had already released the couple’s 2000 to 2006 tax returns that reported a $371,000 of capital gains.
John Malone, Chairman of Liberty Media, the dominant shareholder of Charter Communications, reportedly called Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus in recent days about a friendly merger following the collapse last week of an offer by Comcast to buy Time Warner, according to the Wall Street Journal blog. Malone and Marcus appear be discussing a 3-way merger that would challenge Comcast’s industry dominance.
The sun is known to be the main driver of all weather and climate. With 99.86% of the mass in our solar system, the great ball of violent fire in the sky, has recently gone quiet in what is likely
Saudi Arabia is still rich, but they are burning through their foreign reserve cash at a record pace due to lower oil prices and an unwillingness to cut the domestic spending that ensures the survival of the royal family. With the nation hemorrhaging cash, Saudi Arabia’s total foreign reserves fell by 5 percent, or $36 billion in just the last two months.
The Port of Los Angeles has been best known for union labor strife over the last year, but the scandal that is blowing up over the arrest of Chief of Port Police Ronald Jerome Boyd on federal bribery, kickback, and tax fraud charges may set a new high for port turmoil.
Tesla Motors Inc. CEO Elon Musk unveiled a line of home and industrial battery packs at an event late Thursday afternoon. Musk said that Tesla is “trying to change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world.” Although the system announced appears favorable compared to the numerous competitor’s battery solutions currently offered, Tesla’s high reliability stand-by power is much more expensive than generators and has a commercially unfavorable investment recapture period of eight to ten years.
George Soros is often called the “Godfather of the Left” for supporting a worldwide network of progressive causes with over $550 million in donations. But the world’s 27th wealthiest person–according to Forbes–with a net worth of about $30 billion has allegedly used tax deferral to prevent paying any taxes on $13.3 billion profit. Now, according to an Irish regulatory filing by Soros, he will soon be enjoying the shared sacrifice of paying a 50 percent tax that will wipeout a quarter of his net worth.
U.S. Judge Nathanael Cousins, at a San Jose hearing on Wednesday, called the ground-breaking case against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) an “adventurous and risky lawsuit.” The judge signaled he is likely to award the $50 million requested by plaintiffs’ lawyer Hausfeld LLP, who won what Cousins called “the most significant antitrust case of the era.”
In response to San Francisco’s new vacation-rental law to allow unlimited short-term rentals when a host is present, a powerful group of unions, landlords, housing activists and traditional hotels are preparing a November ballot initiative to severely constrict Airbnb and other “sharing economy” companies’ ability to help individuals secure short–term rentals from part or all of their homes or apartments.
U.S. economic growth stalled out in the first quarter of 2015 as the domestic energy boom caused a short-term collapse in capital spending, large lay-offs in the oil industry, and a 15 percent jump in the exchange rate of the US dollar. A pattern of slowing GDP just before a consumer spending boom takes off is consistent with what happened the last time a big rise in U.S. crude oil production tanked gasoline prices beginning in 1986.
The Assembly Governmental Organization Committee voted unanimously this week in favor of advancing AB 431. The positive vote marks the first time that the legislature has moved a digital gambling bill towards a floor vote that could allow widespread sponsorship by Native American casinos, horse tracks and poker of online gambling.
