The first Europeans to visit California were Spanish explorers who assumed it was an island and named it for a fictional island in a 16th century Spanish novel, occupied by a band of woman warriors led by a queen named Calafia.
Later, of course, it was understood that California is geographically attached to North America, a situation unlikely to change unless a cataclysmic earthquake detaches it. Nevertheless, Californians have often seen themselves as somehow separate from the rest of the United States.
That tendency, or conceit, manifests itself in unique policies whose advocates contend will position the state as a leader of global stature — a phenomenon that has become more pronounced as the state’s political orientation has shifted leftward into one-party dominance.
The current governor, Gavin Newsom, is particularly prone to making first-in-the-nation claims, but he is merely verbalizing an attitude that had already become ingrained in California’s culture.
The spate of new laws that went into effect this month provides multiple examples of the syndrome, such as one — enacted by voters in 2018, not the Legislature and the governor — that requires bacon and other pork products sold in the state to come from pigs bred and raised under presumably humane circumstances.
Other new laws unique to California include a $15 per hour minimum wage, protections for warehouse workers (aimed at Amazon) from work quotas, hourly wages for garment workers to replace piecework, and...
; ; ; agreed to pay $17.07 million to settle federal allegations of illegal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices on Friday, marking the Justice Department's first resolution unde...