Over the past few weeks, California small business owners such as myself have worked diligently to ensure a safe reopening and to make sure we do everything we can to keep employees and customers healthy.

This concern – combined with the fact that we’re operating during an economic recession – is a lot for business owners to handle. What’s worse, on top of this pandemic, we’re now facing the threat of coronavirus-related lawsuits. A threat that has the potential to shut all of us down for good.

What is a coronavirus-related lawsuit? The nature of COVID-19 makes it impossible to know for sure where or when someone contracted the virus. Trial lawyers are taking advantage of this. They’ll file a suit claiming an employee or customer contracted the coronavirus while on the business’s property, therefore making that business owner liable. And while it’s impossible to prove where someone contracted COVID-19, it’s also impossible to disprove. Therefore, even if a business owner has taken all of the necessary safety precautions, these baseless lawsuits will still go to court where it will take up everyone’s time and money and will likely end in the… Read More

There is one person more than anyone else who could have stopped the violence that has spread from city to city in America. These cities clearly have one thing in common. It is not their population of Black people or any actions that may have occurred there. It is the fact they are run by liberal — if not Left-wing — Democrats who hate Trump. The person who is the head of their party could have ended this. Joe Biden.

Someone might argue that Donald Trump is President and he should have stopped it. He tried. He offered the mayors and governors of all these cities and states federal help. He was turned down. He had to send federal officers to Portland to defend federal buildings from being destroyed because of either ineffective or non-existent policing. The Leftists running the city and state chastised Trump and called our federal officers Stormtroopers. They called the people throwing Molotov cocktails at the building and rocks at our officers “protestors.” What was the mayor’s plan – to go out and “protest” with “his people” until they realized he was the Mayor and they turned on him?

By the time the incident in Minneapolis happened… Read More

One of the most important changes in California in the last couple years is the change of how independent contractors are treated and whether they should be W-2 employees. There is no doubt that some employers were abusing the law in California that aligned with the federal rules. The question is did we throw the baby out with the bathwater? And it is clear that was exactly what was done.

New rules were set in place by a California Supreme Court ruling in the Dynamex vs. Superior Court of Los Angeles. The ruling in short established that someone working for a company was an employee not an independent contractor. The burden of proof became the companies; they must show the person was not an employee.

Then the legislature drafted AB5 and the Governor signed this bill which codified the Supreme Court ruling with many exceptions for various different professions. A labor law mediator who is an expert on labor law in California stated that he believes the exceptions in the law has made AB5 problematic. There are more exemptions that were being put forward that are on hold because of the COVID situation. For example, the musicians were not considered in initial… Read More

As everyone knows, buying a home in California is MUCH more expensive than buying a home in almost all the other states. Generally we compare states using the “median home value.” According to Zillow, the July 2020 median home value in the U.S. is $248,857. The CA median home value is $578,857. BTW, the median home value in my San Diego County is $628,519. https://www.zillow.com/san-diego-county-ca/home-values/

When you first heard of it, it was something far away. Then it might come to our shores. It was here but was not a concern. Then it began to get serious and then it began to get scary. People were afraid to leave their homes. Some have been locked down since March. If you ventured out of the house you risked everything. The authorities instead of calming you were causing panic. But you are not the panicking type. You do everything responsible to protect yourself. Wash your hands a dozen times a day. Wear a mask around people. Keep your distance from people. Then you find out you have it. You have COVID.

You think it would be easy to know you have it. It isn’t. The authorities have you scared of anything going on with your body. You are over 50, but not in the high risk over-80 age group where most deaths are occurring, though that fact must be uncovered because it is not generally disclosed. Forty percent of deaths are still from people in nursing homes where the median life span is five months. Yet you get a sniffle or cough, or you wake up congested one morning and you run to look at the symptoms on the internet. The symptoms go away and relief returns. This time… Read More

A single event has been the catalyst to discuss our police unlike any other time we have had in this country. The reactions are on a spectrum between reasoned discussion with moderate change all the way to wholesale change in how we address the issue of police, particularly in how they interact with various communities.

It is generally accepted even by the most ardent supporters of the police (include me in that group) that there is a need to spend more effort in policing the police. If there are 800,000 police in this country and one percent are an issue, that is 8,000 cops. They may have become problematic through being worn down by the rigors of the job. Or they may have been improperly screened in the first place and gotten further than they should have.

I have asserted that a large part of the problem is the police unions protecting bad cops. There is no question that cops deserve protection because at times they are either falsely accused or they make decisions in dangerous situations within a split second as to whether they have to take extreme actions to protect themselves or others in extraordinary scenarios. Some like to “Monday morning quarterback”… Read More

For the past 27 years, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard has ruled over California’s 40th District in a seat that was held by her father, Rep. Edward Roybal, for 30 years before her. But while the father-daughter combo has enjoyed the perks of power for 60 years, it’s Roybal-Allard’s son Ricardo Olivarez who might be the biggest beneficiary of the family’s hold on power.

Olivarez heads the law firm of Olivarez Madruga LLP, through which he currently serves as the city attorney for Cudahy (which is inside his mother’s district), as well as San Fernando and El Monte. His billing for work in El Monte during the last calendar year, 2019, included a monthly retainer of nearly $60,000 a month, totaling more than a whopping $705,000 for the year.

According to a 2014 article in the Whittier Daily News the industry average for public attorneys is to charge client cities and organizations $10,000 to $20,000 per month. Thus, his billing of El Monte is staggeringly… Read More

Employment? Democrat states don’t NEED no stinkin’ employment!

You can verify this gonzo assertion by looking at the latest (June, 2020) BLS unemployment figures by state. The top (worst) ELEVEN employment states are all Democrat run. California is “only” the fifth worst state: 50th — Massachusetts — the worst 49th — New Jersey — surprised? 48th — New York — stunning, right? 47th — Nevada — now that both state houses AND gov are Democrat 46th — The Golden State — La La Land

Conversely, 11 of the 12 BEST states (lowest unemployment rates) are GOP controlled — only Maine is the exception. https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm… Read More