Tag Archives: California

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: “California City Council Will No Longer Consider Giving $2.5 Million Grant to Catholic High School” / Friendly Atheist / Hemant Mehta☮

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Church, State and the Almighty DollarIf that sounds like a complete violation of church/state separation, you’d be correct. Mater Dei High School can pay for its own renovations; the taxpayers shouldn’t be funding them.

And that’s what the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Legal Fellow Ryan Jayne said in a letter to the Council a couple of weeks ago.

We are writing to object to the proposed grant to Mater Dei because distributing public money to a private religious school violates both the Federal Constitution and the California state constitution.

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from supporting religious activities with public funds… The city of Santa Ana violates this principle when it funds the expansion of a private parochial school.

The letter worked. The City Council informed Jayne recently that the agenda item to give the money to the Catholic school has been removed from consideration.

FFRF is elated at the city’s about-face.

“We were dismayed that Santa Ana was possibly going to channel millions of taxpayer dollars to a sectarian religious entity,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We’re glad that it saw the light.”

That’s $2.5 million that the city can now use for public institutions, just as it should be.

h/t: Friendly Atheist

CANNABIS: “California Approves Recreational Marijuana Ballot Measure” ☮

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Marijuana Peace SignCalifornians are set to decide whether to make recreational marijuana use legal, as other Western states have done, after the California Secretary of State’s office said on Tuesday the issue could be put to voters in the November ballot.

The proposed so-called “Adult Use of Marijuana Act,” which is supported by Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom among others, would allow people aged 21 and older to possess as much as an ounce of marijuana for private recreational use and permit personal cultivation of as many as six marijuana plants.

“Today marks a fresh start for California, as we prepare to replace the costly, harmful and ineffective system of prohibition with a safe, legal and responsible adult-use marijuana system that gets it right and completely pays for itself,” initiative spokesman Jason Kinney said in a statement.

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PROGRESSIVISM: “The Hellhole That is California” / Markos “kos” Moulitsas ☮

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San FranciscoIn conservative land, California is a bankrupt third-world basket case. And in truth, Arnold Schwarzenegger left the state in pretty bad shape. But in the two years since we got Democrats back in charge?

California leads the nation in job creation

California contributed more than 15 percent of the nation’s new jobs between October 2011 and October 2012 – adding more jobs in 12 months than Texas and the rest of the other top-10 fastest-growing states combined – while home building is bouncing back and demand for houses is increasing.

The end-of-2012 results were even more impressive.

Of the 171,000 new jobs the entire U.S. added in October, 27 percent were in California. And since the beginning of the year, California has added nearly 300,000 jobs, outperforming Texas by a decent margin and outpacing New York by more than 2 to 1.

San Francisco is overrun with cranes, as the new digital economy (Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter) continue to be HQ’d in the Bay Area. Heck, add Samsung to the pile.

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