Since he was first elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2010, Scott Wiener has proven to be a highly effective legislator, passing bills regulating the environment, housing protections, and the LGBT community. Now, as San Francisco's representative in the ...read more
The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill's online news publication, makes no bones about its contempt for the Democratic Party. Stocked with writers critical of the party's dominant centrist wing, the publication has become a thorn in its side, as its articles emphasize ...read more
Wednesday morning, Donald Trump woke up and started rage tweeting at California and its governor, Jerry Brown:Ignoring the gibberish of "breeding concept", who says the people of California aren't happy? Only 4 polls since 2013 have shown Brown's popularity dipping below 50%. The ...read more
Last month, California State Senator Scott Wiener introduced bill SB-822, which would extend net neutrality protections throughout the state and strike a major blow to the FCC and its chairman, Ajit Pai. Today, the bill received a hearing from the State's Energy, Utilities, and ...read more
Since repealing net neutrality last December, the FCC has faced significant pushback. In the federal government, Senators have introduced a resolution to overturn the decision. The governments of Montana, New York, and Hawaii have passed laws protecting consumers from ISPs that ...read more
The California Democratic Party declined to endorse Senator Dianne Feinstein for re-election, selecting state Senate leader Kevin de Léon by a margin of 54-37%. Although neither candidate reached the 60% majority required to make it official, De León declared victory, calling it ...read more
Yesterday, Robert Paul Preston and Tom Reed launched “New California,” a movement that would make the rural, inland part of California into the nation’s fifty-first state while leaving the coastal cities to their own devices (but keeping San Diego for themselves.) This is the ...read more
In November 2016, I felt pretty ashamed to be an American, but damn proud to be a Californian. The last year has only made me happier for my home state as we've led the Resistance and served as a role model for the rest of the country in how to eat progressive policies. This has ...read more
According to the San Jose-Mercury News, Cenk Uygur, anchor and CEO of The Young Turks, may challenge incumbent California Senator Dianne Feinstein in next year's primary. Uygur cryptically said to his viewers on yesterday's broadcast, “Don’t miss the show next week. Interesting. ...read more
(Photo: Coffey Park, Santa Rosa, CA. Elijah Nouvelage, Special To The San Francisco Chronicle)The Banter Long Read: I've had an interesting week. And it all began with something inside my computer called "classpnp.sys."...UPDATE: For the next 24 hours, you can get a month's free ...read more
California Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who never took a position the Kremlin didn't like, showed his true colors again when he brought Holocaust denier Charles C. Johnson to a meeting with Senator Rand Paul this week. Rohrabacher, who previously called the Charlottesville ...read more
Where there's liberal democracy, Julian Assange will be there to undermine it. Last year he supported Brexit, and he has taken meetings with one of its strongest advocates, Nigel Farage. Then he took stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and weaponized them against ...read more
California Republican Dana Rohrabacher is no stranger to conspiracy theories. In his meeting with Julian Assange last month, Rohrabacher stated his belief that not only was WikiLeaks not involved in the emails, he even went so far as to say WikiLeaks deserves White House press ...read more
Note: the following is the second in an ongoing series about the sexism problem on the left. To read the first of these pieces, click here. I’ve been dissatisfied with Bernie Sanders’ supporters since he announced his campaign back in June of 2015, not because I was angry that ...read more
One of the big stories that followed the election of Barack Obama was the outrage of the newly formed Tea Party and the appearance of angry citizens at town hall meetings held by Democratic (and some Republican) members of Congress. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it's GOP ...read more
While every single day of the Trump presidency so far has been a kind of Dali-esque nightmare, Wednesday was by any measure the darkest day yet. To continue reading this article, please go here. A Banter Membership gets you access to the magazine and all our Members Only content. ...read more
Now that the final tally is in and Trump lost the popular vote by almost 3 million, there is a new talking point coalescing among the right to bolster Trump's fragile ego: If you don't count certain liberal states, Trump won the popular vote.Dear god in heaven, I am not making ...read more
In August of 2001, I abandoned Los Angeles. I had no choice but to give up the city and everything in it because the place was literally killing me. I'd moved there a year earlier with my new wife because she'd accepted a job with NBC Newschannel -- NBC's affiliate feed service ...read more
California has taken concrete and logical steps to actually help child victims of human trafficking. For some reason, this is angering conservatives who seem to think that if the victims aren't jailed, liberals are trying to make pedophilia more acceptable. They are actually ...read more
While much of the news regarding climate change has been overwhelmingly depressing and frustrating, California Gov. Jerry Brown is extending his state's plan to make huge carbon emission cuts over the next 10 years. The bills signed by Brown are some of the most progressive ever ...read more
On Thursday, the California State Assembly took a big step forward in formalizing so-called "lane-splitting." What this means is that the assembly has authorized the California Highway Patrol to establish guidelines for the supposedly safe operation of motorcycles sharing the ...read more
Hypothetically speaking, if you were facing a pressing environmental issue you would probably want environmentalists and scientists to come up with a solution, not a half-baked politician with a very average degree in communications and a penchant for shooting moose. However, ...read more
Always remember, this never had to happen. In a sane America, this never would've happened. It's staggering to think that so many people failed in their basic responsibility as parents and citizens and were willing to put others at risk in the name of groundless paranoia that the ...read more
When you design an economy to be based on short term profit to the benefit of giant corporations, the results over the long term will be a country so hostile to human life that the unreasonable and unthinkable becomes an every day reality. Wealth inequality, mass poverty, a ...read more
California's reputation as a coastal stronghold of liberal elitism is so firmly entrenched in the national consciousness that the reality is sometimes difficult to process, even among those who live here. Every once in a while, though, that reality makes itself known in the ...read more
We were warned this would happen. No one can be shocked the day finally arrived when a disease once effectively eradicated came roaring back to life within the comfy First World confines of the U.S. We always knew that the irresponsible and ignorant anti-vaccine movement would ...read more
(Image: Stuart Carlson) It's the year 2015 and Southern California still doesn't qualify as the Third World, regardless of what some Republicans lawmakers in the flyovers might think. Yet you'd never know either of these truths by looking at the latest reports on how quickly ...read more
My newly christened fiancée Taryn is a semi-professional chef. Not only is she sincerely one of the most talented and knowledgable cooks I've ever met -- and I have to say "one of" only because I once had a lengthy conversation with Wylie Dufresne -- she runs the appetizer ...read more
Not everyone in California is a credulous, doe-eyed flake, but if you happen to be a credulous, doe-eyed flake, California is definitely the place to be. The 60s didn't die here, they just morphed into silly new age pseudoscience, a slavish devotion to celebrity self-help and a ...read more
Today in irony, we bring you this nugget from millionaire Republican, former Goldman Sachs executive, and $700 billion bank bailer-outer Neel Kashkari, who's challenging California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in November. In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Kashkari described in an op-ed ...read more
If you haven't seen the above image yet today, there's a pretty good chance you haven't been on Twitter. Created by a conservative "street artist" named Sabo -- the same guy who brought you the poster of doughy wuss Ted Cruz made-over as the tattooed bad-ass the right sees him as ...read more
This week saw some great things and some that were not so great. While I applaud the Supreme Court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it bothers me a lot that they also gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA). And I don't know how Paula Deen fits into this but she ...read more
And I am, well, I cannot think of anything more ridiculous than considering James O'Keefe anything but a major douchebag so you can just come up with the second part of that sentence yourself. If you have forgotten who O'Keefe is -- good for you! I'll have what you're having -- ...read more
There was a fascinating exchange on MSNBC's Morning Joe program today between host Joe Scarborough and Time columnist Joe Klein on Obama's use of drones. Here's the partial transcript:SCARBOROUGH: "What we're doing with drones is remarkable: the fact that over the past eight ...read more
By Bob Cesca: The debt and deficit are evidently making American voters more insane and more self-defeating than they usually are. Conservatives, conservative financiers, anti-Obama zealots and a ridiculously complicit press corp have tapped into an easily-fooled, ...read more
By Paul Kiel and Cora Currier: States have diverted $974 million from this year's landmark mortgage settlement to pay down budget deficits or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis, according to a ProPublica analysis. That's nearly forty percent of the $2.5 billion in ...read more
California Gov. Jerry Brown called on state lawmakers to embrace austere cuts and urged voters to approve tax hikes in outlining a revised budget Monday. Brown proposed $8.3 billion in cuts across education, health care and welfare programs in laying out a plan to address the ...read more
Exclusive: Work-place and college-campus slaughters have become a regular feature of America’s harsh economic landscape the past few decades, as Ayn Rand-style policies sharply divide the nation into a few heroic “winners” and many hapless “losers,” a factor Mark Ames examines in ...read more
Update: A reported seven people have been shot dead. Read more at the BBC. A number of people have been killed and several injured in a shooting at a university in California, police say. TV footage showed wounded people emerging from buildings at Oikos University in the city of ...read more
Yes, you heard right. Matt Taibbi on Anita McLemore who was sentenced to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application to get food stamps:Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have ...read more
David Ropeik makes a powerful argument in favor of more incentives to get vaccinated:In many places, particularly in affluent, liberal, educated communities (Boulder, San Diego), unvaccinated people are catching diseases that vaccines can prevent, like measles, whooping cough, ...read more
Kate and 'Wills', the world's most famous couple visited Los Angeles this week and took time to visit the homeless on skid row, some unemployed veterans and disadvantaged children in one of L.A's poorest areas. Despite the couple's attempt to bring attention to some very worthy ...read more
A fascinating report in the Atlantic on the Unversity of Southern California's experimentation with an online virtual classroom:Since USC and Kaztman teamed up to create the country's first online course for a master's in teaching, called MAT@USC, the school that graduated only ...read more
Image via WikipediaThe revelation that Arnold Schwarzennegger fathered a child with a member of his household staff shouldn't really be surprising. As a Los Angelino, I have heard many, many stories about Arnold's sexual indiscretions, and the only thing shocking is that this ...read more
By Ben CohenWhile it's better than not paying anyone, the state of California is in such dire straights, it is now resorting to issuing IOUs:Encumbered by a $26bn (£16bn) budget shortfall and a seemingly intractable political stalemate, California's state government is issuing ...read more
This is Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO and Republican candidate for governor of California: While this is a perfectly rational cover for a powerful CEO on the cover of Fortune, in these times where the rest of us are feeling pissed on by the elite business class - especially in ...read more
Hey, Californians, how about you reform the moronic initiative system you guys have? Perhaps it isn't a good idea to leave fundamental human rights up to a contest in which the biggest megaphone often determines the winner. As far as Prop 8 itself, I don't know how making a ...read more
Prop. 8 is just the latest stupid proposition up for a vote in California. It is by far the worst system in the country for deciding on important issues. I don't understand why people in California put up with the proposition system, where the state legislature abdicates its ...read more