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California State Assembly
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The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature. It consists of 80 members, with each member representing at least 465,000 people, members of the assembly are generally referred to using the titles assemblyman, assemblywoman, or assemblymember. The State Assembly convenes at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, in the current session, the Democrats control 55 seats, forming a supermajority of the chamber. The Speaker presides over the State Assembly in the leadership position, controlling the flow of legislation. The Speaker is elected by the majority party caucus, followed by confirmation of the full assembly, other leaders, such as the majority and minority leaders, are elected by their respective party caucuses according to each partys strength in the chamber. The current Speaker is Democrat Anthony Rendon, the majority leader is Democrat Ian Calderon, while the minority leader is Republican Chad Mayes. The chambers green tones are based on the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, the dais rests along a wall shaped like an E, with its central projection housing the rostrum. Along the cornice appears a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and a Latin quotation, almost every decorating element is identical to the Senate Chamber. According to Article 4, Section 2 of the California Constitution, the Chief Clerk, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and the Chaplain are not members of the Legislature. The Sergeant-at-Arms protects the members of the California State Assembly and this position has existed since December 15,1849, when Samuel N. Houston became the Assemblys first Sergeant-at-Arms. The Chief Clerk, the acting Chief Sergeant-at-Arms, and the Chaplains are not members of the Legislature
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California's 19th State Assembly district
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Californias 19th State Assembly district is one of 80 California State Assembly districts. It is currently represented by Democrat Phil Ting of San Francisco, the district encompasses the western, more residential parts of San Francisco along with several of its southern suburbs in San Mateo County. The Golden Gate Bridge is located in this district, California State Assembly California State Assembly districts Districts in California District map from the California Citizens Redistricting Commission
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Fiona Ma
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Fiona Ma is an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who has represented the second district on the California Board of Equalization since 2015. She previously served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and in the California State Assembly, Ma is the oldest of three children born to William and Sophia Ma, both Chinese immigrants. Her grandfather, Lieutenant General Ma Zhen, was the first mayor of Kunming, born and raised in New York, she attended Baker Elementary School before graduating from Great Neck North Middle and High Schools. Growing up, she was known as a tomboy, interested in sports, Girl Scouts and her father, Dr. William Ma, was a civil engineer who later specialized in construction claims and litigation before he retired. Her mother, Sophia, was a school art teacher for 20 years before moving the family to San Francisco to be closer to her parents. Rev William Doo was posted as a minister at the San Francisco Swatow Christian Church in San Franciscos Sunset District, Fiona Ma received a bachelors degree in accounting at Rochester Institute of Technology, a masters degree in taxation from Golden Gate University, and an MBA from Pepperdine University. She is a CPA and member of the Aspen Institutes 2009 Class of Aspen-Rodel Fellows and she is married to Jason Hodge, a firefighter of American Indian descent. In 1993 she worked at Ernst and Young - one of the big six accounting firms at the time, however, seeing few female managers and even fewer female partners during her time with the firm, she decided to start her own accounting practice with an associate. Ma was appointed to the Assessment Appeals Board of San Francisco by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1995 and that same year, she started her public service career as a part-time district representative for then-State Senator John Burton. She served as John Burtons district representative until her election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2002 and she was responsible for helping constituents with Medi-Cal, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, Franchise and Employment Development Department taxes, and professional licensing. Ma was later elected to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors from 2002 to 2006 representing District 4, the Sunset District, Outer Sunset, Parkside, Outer Parkside, Fiona Ma was first elected to represent California’s 12th Assembly District from November 2006 to November 2012. She was the 112th woman to be elected to the California legislature, Ma won the Democratic nomination to represent Californias 19th Assembly District against fellow Democrat Janet Reilly in the state primary election of June 6,2006. The campaign was one of the more expensive legislative races in the state of California. On November 7,2006 Ma received 70 percent of the votes and she replaced Leland Yee as 12th District assemblywoman. Her district included San Francisco, Daly City, Colma and Broadmoor, Ma was appointed Assembly majority whip by the speaker of the assembly, Fabian Núñez, a position which she held for 3 years. As Majority Whip, she marshaled votes to ensure the passage of legislation that affected public education, expanded healthcare access, in 2010, Speaker of the Assembly John A. Pérez appointed Ma to the leadership position of Speaker pro Tempore. Ma presided over a record-breaking 18-hour session to pass Californias budget, as an assemblywoman, Ma continued her work around toxic childrens toys, authoring legislation banning toxic chemicals in products for babies and small children in assembly bill 1108. The bill came to be known as the Rubber Duck Bill, so named because phthalates are often used in the manufacture of plastic toys
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San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
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Carmen Chu
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Carmen Chu is the elected Assessor-Recorder of the City and County of San Francisco. Chu is currently one of the two elected to a citywide office out of seven citywide positions. She is also the only Asian-American Assessor elected to serve among the 58 counties in the State of California, before joining the Board of Supervisors, Chu served as Deputy Budget Director in the Mayors office of Public Policy and Finance. Chu is the second of three daughters to Hung Wing and Shuet Ying Chu, who immigrated from Hong Kong in the 1970s with ancestry in Taishan. The Chu family settled into a number of jobs to make ends meet including initially working as a seamstress or as a restaurant worker before starting their own small family restaurant and she graduated from Occidental College Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. On February 6,2013, Chu was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee to serve as Assessor-Recorder, in November 2013, Chu successfully ran for election and became then the only San Francisco elected female representative in a Citywide position. Chu ran again in 2014 and was elected to a term on November 4,2014 with 98% of the vote. The work of the Office of the Assessor-Recorder is to carry-out the laws of the State of California and local laws governing property tax, Chu oversees the safe-keeping of over 180,000 recorded public documents every year. Every year, property related revenues accounted for over one-third of the funds that support general municipal functions including public safety and health, property taxes also fund the services of the San Francisco Unified School District, City College of San Francisco, BART and other services. Last year, San Francisco was amongst one of the highest roll-growth counties in the State reaching over $200 billion in cumulative assessed value and she is also a member of the Lambda Alpha International, the honorary land economics society. Office Redesign and Website Since 2013, Chu has implemented business process improvements and strived to adopt technologies to improve efficiency, in 2016, Chu spearheaded the Office’s modernization project to provide a new platform to store and access over 208,000 property files more efficiently. In support of transparency and open data, Chu also publishes annual datasets of non-confidential property information online and that weekend,479 marriage licenses were recorded with the City and County of San Francisco. The City and County of San Francisco was the only County Recorder’s Office to remain open that first weekend in the State of California. On September 25,2007, she was appointed to replace the embattled San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew, the District 4 seat remained vacant for five and a half hours until Mayor Newsom appointed her to succeed Jew for the remainder of Jew’s term. Chu ran for election after Jew’s term expired, and on November 4,2008 she was elected by the voters as Supervisor of District 4 for the term January 2009 to January 2011, Chu was re-elected as Supervisor representing the Sunset/Parkside District for a four-year term in November 2010. Chu worked with the local Public Utilities Commission to develop the largest municipal solar project in the country at the time, the rooftop of the Sunset Reservoir, a project which would provide clean energy for municipal buildings. Under Chus direction, San Francisco was awarded the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award in 2006-2007 from the Government Finance Officers Association for the proposed budget document. History of the Chinese Americans in San Francisco Official website Campaign website https, //www. facebook. com/CarmenChuSF https, //twitter. com/CarmenChuASR
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Torrance, California
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Torrance is a city in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Torrance has 1.5 miles of beaches on the Pacific Ocean, Torrance has a moderate year-round climate with warm temperatures, sea breezes, low humidity and an average rainfall of 12.55 inches per year. Since its incorporation in 1921, Torrance has grown rapidly and its estimated 2013 population was 147,478. This residential and light high-tech industries city has 90,000 street trees and 30 city parks, known for its low crime rates, the city consistently ranks among the safest cities in Los Angeles County. Torrance is the birthplace of the American Youth Soccer Organization, in addition, the city of Torrance has the second-highest percentage of Japanese demographic in California. Torrance was originally part of the Tongva Native American homeland for thousands of years and it was later divided in 1846 with Governor Pío Pico granting Rancho de los Palos Verdes to José Loreto and Juan Capistrano Sepulveda, in the Alta California territory of independent Mexico. In the early 1900s, real estate developer Jared Sidney Torrance and they purchased part of an old Spanish land grant and hired landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to design a new planned community. The resulting town was founded in October 1912 and named after Mr. Torrance, the first residential avenue created in Torrance was Gramercy and the second avenue was Andreo. Many of the houses on these avenues turned 100 years of age in 2012, both avenues are located in the area referred to as Old Town Torrance. This section of Torrance is under review to be classified as a historical district, historically the El Nido neighborhood was home to many European immigrants, such as originally Dutch, German, Greek, Italian and Portuguese people. Rapid new growth in Torrance began after World War II as wartime industries transformed into Post-war Aerospace manufacturers, large housing developments were built in the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate the new population. Torrance moved on after the closure of some development and oil refinery plants in the 1990s statewide recession. Torrance survived the deindustrialization, regional economic slowdowns and national recessions in the 1970s to 2000s, large-scale Asian immigration in the past couple of decades has transformed Torrance into a diverse and multicultural city. Torrance is a community in southwestern Los Angeles County sharing the climate. It is about 20 miles southwest of Downtown Los Angeles, Torrance Beach lies between Redondo Beach and Malaga Cove on Santa Monica Bay. The southernmost stretch of Torrance Beach, on a cove at the end of the Palos Verdes peninsula, is known to locals as Rat Beach. A Nature center provides activities, information, and classes for school children, Torrance has a Mediterranean climate or Dry-Summer Subtropical. The rainy season is November through March, as shown in the adjacent table, the Los Angeles area is also subject to the phenomenon typical of a microclimate
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United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
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California Democratic Party
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The California Democratic Party is the state branch of the United States Democratic Party in the state of California. Headquartered in Sacramento, it is chaired by veteran Democratic politician and former United States Representative John L. Burton and it is the majority party in both chambers of the California State Legislature, i. e. the State Assembly and the Senate. In regards to businesses and economics, the California Democratic party takes a stance that protects consumers, small businesses, unions, the platform also makes a point to champion the economic reforms of President Barack Obama. The 2012 platform addresses the issues of family in several sections, the platform promises to protect seniors, children and all types of families with fair economic and social policies. These policies range from continuing Medicare for the elderly and keeping playgrounds safe for children, the platform also highlights the right of a woman to make choices for her own body and claims that healthcare is a natural right of all people. The California democrats further promise to protect the dignity of disabled citizens, the platform is dedicated to advocating for the rights of women through equal pay and affirmative action. The party prioritizes the creation of a sustainable and earth-friendly state, focus is placed on the development of alternative forms of energy and how energy is consumed. In addition, the stresses that green jobs are a solution to economic. Finally, the platform takes stances on open internet use, immigration, the Democrats of California support the right of the people to express their thoughts and ideas through any media, and their right to assemble. The party believes that laws should be fair and that immigrants should not be discriminated against. The party wishes to bring education to the forefront, aiming to turn California into a state for academic achievement. A Detailed description of the California Democratic Partys position on all of the issues can be found in their 2012 Platform document. The California Democratic Party passes multiple resolutions every year as a way of expressing their opinion to lawmakers statewide, while the partys resolutions have no legal force themselves, they are official documents that elected representatives should take into account when making decisions. A few recent resolutions are summarised below,2012 Buy American This resolution, written 18 November 2012, encourages all arms of government to favor American suppliers of goods and services. The above are three of a long list of Resolutions passed by the California Democratic Party in 2012 and in preceding years. The history of the Democratic Party of California is complex and long, the State has traded hands every few cycles since its admission into the union in 1850. At that time, the state was firmly in the hands of the Democratic Party, until the early 1880s after the Republican Party abolished slavery, the Republicans held the state through the power and influence of railroad men. The Democratic Party responded by taking an anti-corporate, anti freedom of attainment position, in 1894, Democrat James Budd was elected to the governorship, and the Democratic Party attempted to make good on their promises to reform the booming railroad industry
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California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
