Latest Posts
-
Can Corporations Be Carpool Buddies?
The answer to this question depends on the outcome of a traffic court hearing set to take place today in Marin County, California.When San Rafael resident Jonathan Frieman was pulled over by a California Highway Patrol officer for driving solo in the high-occupancy lane, Frieman claimed he wasn't alone: sitting in the passenger seat were the incorporation papers of Frieman's non-profit.
If corporations are people, Frieman explained to the officer (who probably has to deal with wackier theories from Bay Area drivers on a weekly basis), then he had two people in the car and was within his rights to use the carpool lane.
Frieman wasn't just trying to avoid a traffic ticket. He wants to upend corporate personhood.
Tags: California, Cars & Vehicles, Citizens United v. FEC, Corporations -
9 Strange New Laws for 2013
On January 1, 400 new federal laws took effect. Meanwhile, state legislatures passed 29,000 bills and resolutions, many of which came into force on the first of the year. Local government added thousands of new laws.
Ignorance is no excuse, so start cramming on all the weird new regulations you have to follow as of Tuesday:
Tags: Alcohol, Animals, California, Children, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina, Sex, State Legislature -
13 Things Americans Banned in 2012
We live in the land of the free, which means we're free to ban just about anything we don't like. In 2012 Americans dropped the ban hammer on public nuisances from goose livers to "gateway sexual activity."
Tags: Advertising, Alcohol, California, Colorado, Fashion, Food, Health, Health Care, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, New York City, San Francisco, Sex, Television, Utah -
Mitt Romney Deals With Life After Loss
A lesser man than Mitt Romney would be devastated by having his lifelong ambition crushed by something as arbitrary as the majority will of American voters. Somehow, someways Romney has been able to pick up the pieces and readjust to life as a regular multi-millionaire living in La Jolla, California and Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.He's been spotted doing rich-guy things ("driving a new black Audi Q7, a luxury sport-utility") and decidedly middle-class guy things, like taking his family to Disneyland and ordering Thanksgiving dinner "from Boston Market, the home-style restaurant chain, because there were too many kids running around the house to bother with cooking a feast."
Amid all that, Romney has even jump started the nanotechnology sector of the American economy…
Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There's no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit.
However sympathetic the post-campaign Romney may be, it's impossible to read that sentence without hearing the strings of the world's smallest violin.
Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Tags: California, Mitt Romney, Money -
San Francisco Bans Public Nudity
Conservatives warned us about all the mandates and edicts to come during the Obama administration. There's a mandate to blend ethanol with gasoline. A mandate to purchase health insurance. Now, there's even a mandate to wear clothes in San Francisco. In San Francisco!
Tags: California, Nudity, San Francisco
