Tag "San Francisco"

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San Francisco could drop voting age to 16

With shades of the 1960s Youth Movement, San Francisco might drop its voting age to 16 from 18. Doing so only would affect city elections, as other elections are affected by state and federal voting laws. Yet Fog City often has

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Job cuts precede Seattle minimum-wage hike

In the past couple of years, many states and localities have been increasing minimum wages. It’s part of the American federalist system in which the 50 states are the “crucibles of democracy,” trying different things to see what happens. Seattle’s

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Teacher pay raises gobble up Prop 30, LCFF funds

In 2012, California voters approved Proposition 30, which temporarily raised sales taxes on everyone and income taxes on the wealthy. The measure was sold with the promise it would directly help public education. It was “for the kids.” In 2013,

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San Francisco rebuked for ‘fundamental’ abuse of property rights

In an era in which eminent domain is routinely used to reward the wealthy and politically connected — to the detriment of  poor and middle-class property owners — it’s easy to forget that property rights as conceived of in the

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The impacts of raising San Francisco’s minimum wage to $15

On Nov. 4 San Francisco voters are being asked to approve Proposition J, a measure which increases the minimum wage in San Francisco to $15 per hour by 2018 from the current city rate of $10.74. San Franciscans should think

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Minimum wage activists set sights on L.A.

The concerted push for higher minimum wages in California has spread from the East Bay to Los Angeles. On the heels of a recently approved $15 minimum wage in Seattle, advocates for dramatically increased hourly wages sensed an opportunity to select

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LA and SF dogfight over transport visions

In San Francisco, a bus project over a decade in the making finally receives its massive environmental impact report. In Los Angeles, the mayor announces his first executive directive, launching a “Great Streets” program. It’s a tale of two cities

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Minimum wage jumps to $9 an hour

Here’s what the minimum wage does: it destroys tens of thousands of jobs to increase the pay of tens of thousands of other jobs. It does this by increasing government coercion over our lives even more than it already does.

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San Fran = Rwanda

San Francisco is by far the most liberal city in the United States. In the 2012 election, it voted 83 percent for Democratic President Obama and 13 percent for Republican Mitt Romney. So one would think that SF would have the

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Mass transit for poor frowned on in Bay Area

There’s plenty of research that shows that bus rapid transit is far the most cost-effective type of mass transit, with a flexibility that’s particularly helpful to the less affluent. This is from a Reason Foundation study released in January about

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