State Of California

The San Fernando Valley victim is thought to have crashed his car after being shot in the head on the 101 Freeway, Los Angeles police Officer Norma Eisenman said. The unidentified man was found early Sunday by rescue crews responding to a report of a rolled-over vehicle on the freeway, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Cecil Manresa said. The car crashed near a freeway onramp, so it is possible the victim was shot on a surface street and then drove onto the highway, Eisenman said. The incidents come about a month after the shooting in late February of a 46-year-old man who was hospitalized after being shot in the torso and right arm while driving on the Foothill Freeway northeast of Los Angeles. In another incident, a 26-year-old man died after a shooting on the 101 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley on March 1 that followed an argument on Hollywood Boulevard. A 54-year-old woman was found about two weeks later shot in the head in a car crashed on the San Bernardino Freeway in eastern Los Angles County. More California News

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“Real Estate California”

The real estate in California is a big paying field. California has always been a popular vacation destination, but is also home to many people from all walks of life. Many housing options are available, from small centrally located town-homes to beautiful ocean side mansions to accommodate every unique person and their needs. Real estate in California is available in many price ranges and locations, it just depends on what and where you’re looking. You may want to enlist the help of an experienced real estate agent that knows the area in which you’re looking, who can facilitate your transaction, and therefore make your purchase or sale a pleasurable experience.

Many realtors offer online photographs of homes and land for sale, and virtual tours of select properties to enhance the perspective buyers’ experience. Real Estate California is a very competitive business, and with many people relocating to the state on a daily basis, realtors must make their offerings as accessible and as appealing as possible. The buyer or seller should look for a licensed realtor that is knowledgeable in all areas of real estate transactions, including estate sales, financing, property inspections, and legal requirements, just to name a few. Check out some good websites on Real Estate in California.  This is a great place to start and provides essential information and guidance to anyone interested in buying or selling California real estate.

Many individuals and families find themselves moving without much advance notice, and must put a great amount of trust into the realtor and the information given them. There are many websites that are devoted solely to relocation, and provide information on schools, neighborhoods, and local amenities as well;  for a lot of helpful information look around this site. It is possible to buy a property and relocate without every visiting the area, and though it is not recommended, it happens quite often. We live in a very mobile society and services are popping up daily to make relocation less painful, to facilitate a smooth transition into what can sometimes be a stressful experience.

California real estate prices vary by location, and the perspective buyer or seller can do a great amount of research online before ever enlisting the help of a professional realtor. For example, in southern California, it is possible to search tens of thousands of homes for sale in San Diego County alone in a variety of price ranges through the multiple listing service or MLS. Several real estate publications are also available and can be found in stands at many convenient locations throughout the state. If you are interested in moving to a particular city, you can also contact the local Chamber of Commerce for information regarding the city and the surrounding area. Historically, property values in California have been rising steadily, so why wait? Whether you’re buying or selling California real estate, now is the time, so jump in!!

Release sought for former SLA member; was sent back to Calif. SACRAMENTO (AP) — Lawyers for former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson are asking a California judge to release her from state prison. A motion filed Tuesday in Sacramento County Superior Court says state corrections officials had no authority to re-arrest her after she was paroled last week. Olson served six years in prison for the attempted bombings of Los Angeles police cars and the shooting death of a customer during a bank robbery near Sacramento in the 1970s. Prison officials say they miscalculated her sentence and now say she should serve seven years. The 61-year-old Olson was paroled March 17 but was intercepted Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport as she was about to fly home to Minnesota. More California News

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“Houses in California”

The Houses in California are beautiful and anyone would be glad to live in one. It has been decades since the dust bowl, but Woody Guthrie’s statement about California still rings true: you won’t find it so hot if you ain’t got the do-re-mi. California is one of the most expensive markets on earth. The combination of the good weather, beautiful outdoors, tremendous economic power, high density of extremely wealthy homeowners, and great cities, make California one of the most overpriced places that you can live. In fact, recent years have seen a great exodus of native Californians from the state because of the high price of houses in California. If you haven’t made it, There is little chance that you will ever afford to own homes in California.

Nonetheless, if you can get a house in California, you’ll be glad that you did. Many California homeowners resorts to fairly desperate measures in order to get a house. People are much more willing in California to buy a decrepit old house, fix it up, and live in it than they are in most places. Even in areas with high crime rates, such as Oakland, houses in Northern California still go for much more than they would be worth anywhere else. Developers are making fortunes every day building California new homes. If you want a piece of the action, you have to be willing to make sacrifices! There are, after all, millions of other people willing to pay top dollar for houses in California or to rent a house in California. 

I have been investing in houses in California for years, so I can tell you that if you have the patience, you can turn the strange economic situation to your advantage. One of the best and worst things about houses in California is that the market is almost always expanding. Even after the dot com bubble burst, the price of California real estate was quick to recover.

If you are looking for houses in California and you have a little bit of startup capital, it is easy to form a business plan. What I did – and what you should do too – is to buy a house in California on the outskirts of a major city. Within a few years, the price will skyrocket. Then you can sell it off for a comfortable profit, and buy more houses in California. The drawback, of course, is that you need a good bit of startup capital. Assuming that you have this, however, investing in houses in California is almost a risk-free investments!

Prosecutors say the 50-year-old attacked Merrily Melson on Saturday in the home they shared at Shingle Springs, Calif. The 34-year-old Melson is recovering from wounds to the head and upper body. What Richard Branson wanted to know was whether his high-powered visitors, among them Larry Page of Google and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, thought global warming threatened the planet - and what to do about it. The IHT’s managing editor, Alison Smale, on John McCain’s trip abroad and the Democrats’ sparring at home. Supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama gathered for the debate at the University of Texas. On the campaign trail with the past (and possibly future) first daughter. More California News

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UCLA's Josh Shipp (3) looks to pass against California's Harper Kamp (43) during the first half of their quarterfinals college basketball game at the Pac-10 men's college basketball tournament at the Staples Center in Los Angeles Thursday, March 13, 2008. The Bears were looking to avenge last weekend’s one-point loss at UCLA that ended on two controversial calls, both in the Bruins’ favor. UCLA opened on a 16-4 run before DeVon Hardin’s dunk — Cal’s first field goal more than 7 1/2 minutes into the game — launched a 13-3 spurt that got the Bears within two. With Love playing just six minutes because of two fouls, Lorenzo Mata-Real produced the two biggest defensive plays of the half on huge blocks of Anderson and Christopher. Love, the Pac-10 player and freshman of the year, returned to start the second half and made an immediate impact. More California News

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“Carmel California”

Camel California is a great place to vacation and to live. Carmel California might once have been a sleepy little hamlet which existed in relative obscurity, but in the last few decades has been put on the map by its very characteristics. Its offerings to tourists and its famous residents testify to Carmel’s wonder.

Besides featuring some of the finest, most beautiful and renowned golf courses on the west coast (such as Pebble Beach), Carmel, California has stunning beaches, inviting shops, clubs, and spas, and the classic aquarium—the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Carmel California, originally dubbed Carmel-by-the-Sea, is sparsely populated, with only 4,081 residents (in 2000), the ages of whom average in the mid-fifties. Of the residents, almost everyone has a high school diploma, over half have a college degree, and almost a quarter of the people carry a post-graduate degree. About 35 percent work in Carmel, while the rest commute an average of no more than twenty-five minutes away—to jobs nearly equally worked in education, health services, and social services (a few over 16 percent); retail/trade (a few over 14 percent); the arts, entertainment, recreation, and accommodation and food services (again, a few over 14 percent); professional, scientific, management, administrative, and waste management services (about 14 percent); and the rest in either finance, insurance, or real estate.

Of those working in the arts and entertainment fields and living in Carmel California, we are familiar: Jennifer Anniston (of Friends fame), Brad Pit, Kim Novak, Betty White, and Doris Day live or have lived there; writers Mary Austin, Beverly Cleary, James Ellroy (THE BLACK DAHLIA, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL), Robinson Jeffers, Robert Louis Stevenson, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, and Robert Heinlein (of SF renown) have set up house there; and I’m OK, You’re OK psychiatrist Eric Berne and genius nature photographer Ansel Adams have made Carmel home at some time or other. Of course, it must also be mentioned that Clint Eastwood took the post as Mayor of Carmel California in the late eighties.

Carmel-by-the-Sea is quaint and classic, yet contemporary and accommodating, especially for visitors. You will LOVE Carmel. You need only remember that of the abundant beauty and inviting calm, there are two quirky laws still on the books in the town: 1) You cannot eat ice cream while standing on a sidewalk there; and 2) wearing high-heeled shoes is against the law!

The 8,000 acres of the Loreto Bay Resort on Baja California snuggle on flat, hard desert between the charismatically craggy Giganta range and the spookily glassy Sea of Cortez. The most basic elements of nature — sun and water, rock and sand, the vertical and the horizontal — collide with that particular grace that only nature can produce. If the vision of the Mexican government and an American developer is realized, a decade from now Loreto Bay will include 6,000 homes, from small condos to 3,800-square-foot custom houses, most of them probably to be owned by American retirees or part-time residents. Financing is available through American lending giants like GE Capital and Citigroup — whose property arm, is, in fact, the majority owner of the Loreto Bay Resort. The government put about $200 million into roads, water, sewers, electricity and a small airport, then promptly seemed to forget about the area as Los Cabos (including Cabo San Lucas) and Cancún began to blossom. More California News

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Bakersfield CaliforniaBakersfield California is a great place to live. One might think of Bakersfield California as a remote and simple town where working class families devote their lives to tradition and complacency.  But according to the major census sites and other observations, Bakersfield, California is a viable area and one of the “fastest-growing of the larger cities in the United States.”  After Fresno and Sacramento, for instance, Bakersfield is the third-largest inland city, equally viable economically: Bakersfield, California subsists on agriculture and petroleum processing (by way of one of the older oil spots, the 100-year-old Kern River Field) and the growing of such crops as carrots, grapes, almonds, citrus, potatoes, and garlic.

The burgeoning yet still conservative Bakersfield California shows a 2000 population of 247,057 people with a median age of 30, a population which works the farms and the fields but also earns its median income of between $39,982 and $45,556 in the educational, health, social services, and retail fields—approximately 66% staying in town for work.

With ranging temperatures of between 40 and 100 degrees throughout the year, Bakersfield, California also features historic restaurants (such as Luigi’s, Maitia’s, Noriega’s, Pyrenees, and Woolgrower’s); a popular series of sports (the ever popular football, baseball, ice hockey, and soccor, as well as the renowned motor sports—which have a major following); and world-renowned country music, which, evidently, brought such icons as Buck Owens and Merles Haggard to the area to create a unique genre of music they dubbed the “Bakersfield Sound.”

Bakersfield California is also known well as being the birthplace of Haggard, as well as of Detroit Lions’ Brock Marion, Detroit Tigers’ Colby Lewis, Washington Redskins’ Cory Hall, Playboy’s Rebekka Armstrong, and NASCAR’s Casey Mears; as being the birthplace of Korn members; as being the nearby locale of the infamous deaths of policemen immortalized in The Onion Field; as being the home to such greats as US Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, country crooner Dwight Yoakum, and child star Brandon Cruz, and as having a reputation which is mentioned, described, defined, and/or alluded to in the artwork of everyone from Henry Rollins to The Rolling Stones to Johnny Cash.

And, for those of us who have a simple understanding of Bakersfield, California, we might credit our impressions to Steinbeck, who depicted the town and its neighboring landscapes in The Grapes of Wrath.  At the same time, however, Bakersfield has thrived, and has evolved from being the historical establishment housed by Native Americans, then missionaries, then gold-miners and pioneers and Oakies living off the simple land to a major city with major industry and development.

SACRAMENTO — State Treasurer Bill Lockyer is urging Wall Street’s embattled credit-rating firms to give California a higher bond rating, arguing that an upgrade could save billions of dollars in interest payments over several decades. In a letter sent to the three top rating firms today, Lockyer and the treasurers from ten other states argue that state and local governments have been unfairly held to a higher standard than corporate bond issuers. State and local governments rarely default on bonds, said Lockyer, but recently complicated private-sector debt instruments given top ratings have gone sour in a market struggling with the subprime-mortgage crisis. If $61 billion in California bonds approved by voters but not yet issued received a top rating of AAA, Lockyer estimated, taxpayers could save up to $5 billion in interest as the bonds are paid off over 30 years. After major budget actions, state officials brief the rating firms to plead their case for a good rating, sometimes in trips to Wall Street. Currently, California’s bond rating is among the lowest of any state (A+ from Standard & Poor’s and Fitch and A1 from Moody’s), mainly because California has had a chronic deficit for seven years. More California News

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