California
Eight high-profile California laws set to take effect in 2023
As with each approaching new yr, a bunch of legal guidelines are about to take impact in California that embrace a concentrate on minorities and animals.
On Jan. 1, 2023, quite a few payments signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), surrounding clothes, the office, and the legal justice system, will go into impact. Listed here are probably the most excessive profile examples:
No extra fur
Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley moguls should purchase their fur some place else. The manufacture and sale of fur merchandise might be prohibited because the progressive state turns into the primary to ban all new fur merchandise.
The cities of Los Angeles, West Hollywood, San Francisco, and Berkeley have already got this legislation on the books. The legislation doesn’t apply to the sale of used merchandise for fake fur, which is manufactured with plastics.
Freedom to jaywalk
Crossing a road outdoors of a sidewalk is technically unlawful in California, however as of Jan. 1, police are urged to look the opposite manner. The Freedom to Stroll Act says wayward pedestrians shouldn’t be ticketed until they create an “quick hazard of a collision.”
Backers of the brand new legislation say racial disparities exist when police hand out tickets, with black pedestrians cited extra typically. A earlier model of the legislation was vetoed by Newsom in 2021.
Prostitution loitering
If you’re a prostitute and need to declare a road nook as your personal, beginning on Jan. 1, police can’t do something about it.
The Safer Streets for All Act strikes parts of the state’s legal code part that prohibits “loitering with the intent of prostitution.” Proponents say the present legislation unfairly focused minorities, however Newsom burdened that prostitution continues to be unlawful in California.
“It merely revokes provisions of the legislation which have led to disproportionate harassment of ladies and transgender adults. Black and Latino ladies are significantly affected,” Newsom stated.
The pink tax
For years, ladies have been buying merchandise aimed toward males as a result of the price might be considerably lower than a feminine counterpart, comparable to shampoo or razors. This markup has been referred to as the “pink tax” and it’ll quickly be unlawful.
A “individual, agency, partnership, firm, company, or enterprise shall not cost a distinct value for any two items which can be considerably comparable if these items are priced otherwise primarily based on the gender of the people for whom the products are marketed and supposed,” the underlying Meeting invoice states.
New vacation
Respect for some Californians’s Asian heritage has impressed a brand new state vacation: Lunar New Yr, which varies by date in January. It offers state workers eight hours of trip or compensation if they don’t take the time off.
“Recognizing at the present time as a state vacation acknowledges the range and cultural significance Asian People carry to California and supplies a chance for all Californians to take part within the significance of the Lunar New Yr,” Newsom stated.
Felony data disappear
A controversial new legislation will completely seal most felony convictions after defendants full their sentences and any probation necessities. They need to additionally go a sure variety of years with none new arrests. These data will nonetheless be out there to legislation enforcement and college districts, however can’t be accessed by most people.
Proponents argued that the legislation was essential to keep away from discrimination in varied sectors of society, comparable to job and housing functions. Felony data are available on databases to county superior courts.
Transgender youth haven
Minors who arrive in California to acquire transgender surgical procedures or different medical therapy are secure from repercussions by different states. The legislation blocks out-of-state subpoenas and file sharing by docs.
It additionally permits judges to make baby custody determinations if one dad or mum resides in one other state the place custody is revoked from a California dad or mum supporting transgender therapy.
New law enforcement officials
Cops in California not should be a citizen or authorized resident of the US. The brand new legislation removes language that officers “should be a citizen of the US or a everlasting resident alien who’s eligible for and has utilized for citizenship.”
Federal legislation prohibits unlawful immigrants from turning into officers, so this legislation would solely apply to authorized immigrants who’ve a visa or inexperienced card, supporters say.
California
California Highway Patrol advises drivers to take precautions in fog, dust storms
FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — The California Highway Patrol says there is an increase in accidents this time of year because people get complacent after a summer without fog.
A wall of dust rolled over Madera County Monday leading to a massive pile-up on Highway 152.
“We slowed down to a stop, and then all the cars just kept coming and hit us,” said Delissa Fulce, an Oakhurst local.
“We got hit three times by the cars behind us, and I think they got hit behind us. So it was probably a 20-car pileup.”
“Our friend, which is now in the hospital, is like, we’re going to get hit again,” said Julia Parra Pintado, Crash victim. “Like, be prepared. And we get and we got hit up by the back.”
California Highway Patrol said the massive crash likely would’ve been hard to avoid with how quickly the dust moved in.
While we might not see dust storms daily, we have entered fog season and many drivers will face the Tule Fog as they head out most mornings.
Dust and fog can lead to similar conditions on the roadway and California Highway Patrol says you should take similar precautions if you run into either.
“Reduce your speed,” said Mike Salas, California Highway Patrol. “If you cannot see, don’t try and risk it. Pull over off where it’s safe, turn those emergency flashers on, remain in your car, seat belted, and hopefully you can wait until that issue subsides.”
CHP spokesman Mike Salas said you can even turn on your emergency flashers while you’re driving to make yourself more visible.
When it comes to your headlights choose the low beams over high beams.
“The high beams, all it does is it’s a mirror effect, so it kind of blinds the driver, especially in the evening hours,” said Salas.
If your car has automatic headlights Salas said don’t depend on the car to pick the right setting, especially during the day and know the forecast before you hit the road.
“Delay your trip at all possible, if not,” said Salas.
“If you’re stuck in a situation where you feel that it’s going to be a danger to you or someone else on the road, pull over off of the road well enough where you won’t become a hazard if someone comes up from behind you.”
For news updates, follow Kate Nemarich on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Copyright © 2024 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.
California
California insurance department accused of hiding information on life insurance complaints
A Bay Area consumer-advocacy group claims California’s Department of Insurance is violating state public-records law by refusing to hand over important data on consumer complaints about life insurance.
The Pleasant Hill-based non-profit Life Insurance Consumer Advocacy Center called the department’s purported violation of the California Public Records Act “inexcusable.”
The department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Numbers and types of consumer complaints about life insurance and annuities, plus the reports and data the department used for the complaints section of its 2023 annual report, would help the non-profit promote the interests of life insurance customers, and provide key information to establish a baseline on consumer complaints.
“Why is (the department) trying to hide this information?” said the group’s executive director Brian Brosnahan.
Of particular interest to the group is assessing consumers’ responses after passage this year of California Senate Bill 263, which imposes requirements for agents selling life insurance, including that they not put their own interest ahead of a customer’s. The group alleges that the the bill, now law, lets agents “falsely tell” a consumer they do not have conflicts of interest with the consumer, even if they stand to make substantial commissions if the customer follows their guidance.
The Department of Insurance’s alleged stonewalling has gone on for months, the group said in a news release Tuesday. An initial request in August drew a response from the department that it did not have the information, according to the group, which responded by pointing out that the department’s annual report contained charts showing total complaints and the top 10 complaint topics. The department “obviously did possess the requested information,” the group claimed.
Another back-and-forth followed, with the department saying the requested data was “not maintained by the Department,” the group said.
“This statement is obviously false since (the department) necessarily maintains the underlying data and reports from which the charts in the Annual Report were generated,” the group claimed.
In October, the department “finally admitted that it possessed the requested data,” the group said, but now is refusing to provide it, saying it is confidential, the group said.
Originally Published:
California
Kamala’s California problem
In the final days of the presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump never missed a chance to tie his opponent to California. It was a critique that required no elaboration—though true to form, Trump didn’t shy away from providing an overheated one. At his Madison Square Garden rally in October, he proclaimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was a “radical-left lunatic” who “destroyed California.”
Breathless rhetoric notwithstanding, it is a problem for national Democratic ambitions that California—the state most associated with the party’s rule—is now synonymous with the top issue of the election: the rising cost of living.
For the first time in recent memory, housing costs emerged as a major presidential election issue. (Experts agree that it’s the last major driver of inflation.) And while Harris promised to oversee the construction of 3 million homes over her term, that wasn’t enough to shake the California stigma.
As of 2024, California has the most expensive housing of any continental U.S. state, with a median home price that is more than eight times the state median household income. (A healthy ratio is considered between three to five times the state median income. The ratio in Texas is four.) As a result, working- and middle-class Californians have virtually no path to homeownership.
Locked out of homeownership, half of California renters spend at least a third of their income—for many, up to 50 percent—on rent. And they’re the lucky ones: Nearly 200,000 Californians and counting are homeless.
On some level, rank-and-file Democrats understand that the state is a problem. Ask a progressive in swing states like North Carolina or Wisconsin what she thinks about California, and she will likely try to change the topic of conversation. (Could you imagine a conservative having the same reluctance about Texas?)
Where millions of Americans—myself included—once knew California as a place where friends and family went off and claimed their slice of the dream, the Golden State is today better known as the source of embittered migrants making cash offers on homes.
Over the past 25 years, hundreds of thousands of people have voted with their feet and left the state. Sluggish population growth over the 2010s led California to lose a congressional seat after the 2020 reapportionment. (On net, red states picked up three seats in that election.) Amid declining immigration, the state has started losing population for the first time in history.
In 2022 alone, an estimated 102,000 Californians moved to Texas. They weren’t fleeing the perfect weather or the high-paying jobs—by and large, they were pushed out by the cost of living.
Occasionally, California’s progressive NIMBYs celebrate this unhappy exodus as a way of flipping other Mountain West states blue. Yet this year, Nevada voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years. Even before the election, the polls acknowledged that Arizona was a lost cause for the Democrats.
It turns out that forcing people to abandon their home state in search of an affordable home doesn’t exactly engender party loyalty. Indeed, it may be having the opposite effect: Surveys out of states like Texas suggest that new arrivals from California might actually be more conservative than the locals.
Of course, Kamala Harris isn’t the reason California has a housing crisis. Democrats aren’t even solely to blame—the zoning that has made it illegal to build housing in California has been backed by NIMBYs of the right and left, and it was Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan who signed the state’s infamous environmental review act into law.
But the state has been under Democratic supermajority control since 2011. Outside of the unusual case of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican who backed Harris for president, they have effectively run the state since 1999. The undecided voter might be forgiven for wondering why this issue has only gotten worse under a quarter century of Democratic governance.
Immediately after the election, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom—who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions—called for a special session to address how California will respond to anticipated attacks on reproductive rights, immigrants, and the state’s climate policies by the Trump administration. The proclamation makes no mention whatsoever of the cost-of-living issues that likely handed the election to Trump.
There is a small but growing cadre of pro-housing Democratic state legislators who have taken up the cause of cutting through the red tape and getting California building again. And they’ve had some successes: Since 2017, the state has legalized granny flats, abolished parking mandates, and streamlined permitting. But all too often, reform efforts have been stymied by members of their own party.
It’s too late for Kamala Harris. But the next Democratic nominee for president had better hope those reformers are successful.
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