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New year brings new social justice laws to California

January 2, 2019

In response to the Me Too movement, California has several new laws relating to sexual harassment. A pair of new laws prevent and invalidate settlement agreements that restrict the disclosure of information in sexual harassment cases. Likewise, employers with five or more employees must provide two hours of sexual harassment prevention training to all supervisory employees and at least one hour to other employees. [Cal Coast Times]

The state is also requiring public companies to place women on their boards of directors. Public California companies must have at least one woman on their board of directors by the end of 2019. By 2021, a company must have at least two female board members if it has at least five directors, or three women if it has six or more directors.

Criminal justice reform is also occurring in California. Most notably, starting in October, the state will eliminate its cash bail system and replace it with one in which defendants’ custody is determined based on assessments of their threat to public safety and likelihood to skip court.

Additionally, there are new police transparency laws. Records kept in investigations into use-of-force, sexual assault and lying while on duty will become public records. Likewise, as of July 1, law enforcement in California will have to release recordings from body cameras within 45 days of an incident, including if officers fire shots or use force to cause death or great bodily harm.

A host of new gun laws are also taking effect. Individuals must now be 21 in order to purchase legal firearms. Previously, the age requirement was 18, with the exception of handguns, for which one had to be 21 in order to purchase. There are exemptions from the new law for military members, law enforcement and individuals who have hunting licenses.

California also now has a lifetime ban on gun ownership for certain people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. Additionally, concealed carry now requires eight hours of training and live-fire exercises.

Another new state law applies to the humane treatment of animals. Pet stores are now banned from selling dogs, cats and rabbits unless they were acquired from an animal shelter, rescue or adoption organization.

On a lighter note, anyone under 18 must now wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, scooter, skateboard or skates, otherwise they will received a citation.


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Do these new laws apply to everyone or did the legislators carve out exemptions for themselves and their class of special people again?


5

I’m not leaving California but I will squelch my opinions, bad spelling, un-typed words and dyslexic sentence structure. This has been fun but now I want and need to get busy on projects that will be of benefit to my successors.


-3

Needing to add more laws is a side effect of the sad fact that so many adults need to be supervised as if they were children. From what I can surmise of these new laws, they would only be offensive to those who would prefer to be free to harass co-workers, abuse animals, let people have lethal weapons before they are old enough to drink responsibly (which many of those over 21 can’t seem to accomplish), neglect the safety of their children, arm those proven to be abusive (most women are murdered by domestic “partners” or family), allow LEO to abuse their power, or enjoy a system where money buys freedom, even when guilty.


Of coarse there are those who liked it better when all of this was legal, but that is just a sad commentary on the way they were raised and illustrates the reason why the laws were necessary in the first place. HAPPY NEW YEAR.


-11

My problem with some of these new laws is that they are knee jerk reactions by legislators who have not adequately taken time to understand the problem.

A 19 year old man working as a cowboy in Susanville can’t by a .30-30 rifle to keep coyotes away from his employers cattle because a 20 year old gang member in Los Angeles bought a gun and misused it.


This boiling down every law to the lowest denominator only penalizes the people who don’t do stupid or illegal acts.


Using not too different logic from what has already been used in this state we could pass laws that:

Require workers be separated from sight and of one another by cubicles to prevent any harassment in the workplace. All communications would be done through computers using software to scrub offensive words or images.

Outlaw the ownership of all animals. The chickens won’t be in inhumane pens, they will be running free as God intended, at least until the coyotes eat them, which might have been prevented had we let that 19 year old cowboy buy a rifle.

License only socially responsible adults, who possess certain educational and intellectual levels, to legally have children. That way the beer guzzling, flip flop wearing, Nascar watching rabble doesn’t reproduce, because we KNOW they are the ones abusing their children. Not Chang and Chiquita Applebaum the socially aware couple who work at Amazon and drive a Tesla.

Require the disarming of police, presumably because we have made the state safe by ensuring 19 year old cowboys don’t have rifles. If the police are disarmed they will be more polite and considerate of the other persons feelings; remember MS13 members are people too!

Create a fairer justice system where every accused person is placed under house arrest, transported at no cost by a friendly unarmed policeman to court and then allowed a trial with 12 fellow citizens, plus two alternates deciding their guilt or innocence.


Voila! Problems Solved!


3

Just what CA doesn’t need…more laws.

We don’t enforce the laws already on the books, more is just more, not necessarily better.


9

But hey now we need more government employees to oversee these new laws and we need new agencies to administrate them.


6

California is going deeper and deeper in the toilet.


25

A giant steps towards going off the cliff.


27

I find this interesting; “A pair of new laws prevent and invalidate settlement agreements that restrict the disclosure of information in sexual harassment cases.”. Does that mean people who took money to keep quiet can now talk, Without giving the money back? What about 18 year olds who bought a rifle legally, but are not now 21? Arrest?, Confiscation? And I can’t wait for the bail replacement, just let everyone go as long as they promise to come back in two years for their trial? What kind of idiots have we elected?


15

Is it ok to say, “The patients are running the asylum”?


8