California’s taxable sales soar to record high
SETH SANDRONSKY, Capitol Weekly: "California reported an all-time high of $216.8 billion in taxable sales for the second quarter of 2021, up 38.8 percent from the same period in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic raged and Gov. Gavin Newsom closed public schools and some service industries to slow the spread of the virus.
Taxable sales from April to June 2021, unadjusted for inflation, also compare favorably with the same period two years earlier.
“The 17% gain in taxable sales over pre-pandemic activity in 2019 is particularly impressive,” says Lynn Reaser, chief economist, Fermanian Business & Economic Institute, at Point Loma Nazarene University."
Federal court upholds California law banning large-capacity gun magazines
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: "California’s voter-approved ban on possessing large-capacity gun magazines, those holding more than 10 cartridges, was reinstated Tuesday by a bitterly divided federal appeals court, which said the devices were commonly used in mass killings and had little relationship to self-defense.
But the dispute could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose majority appears increasingly receptive to challenges of state laws limiting gun ownership and use. At a hearing Nov. 3, the justices seemed likely to strike down New York’s restrictions — as well as those in California — on carrying concealed firearms in public, and dissenters in Tuesday’s 7-4 appellate ruling urged the Supreme Court to overturn the state’s limits on gun magazines.
Unless the high court intervenes, “the Second Amendment will remain essentially an ink blot in this circuit,” said dissenting Judge Lawrence VanDyke."
Fear of falling into homelessness is an urgent threat for many LA voters, new poll finds
LA Times, BENJAMIN ORESKES/DAVID LAUTER: "Amid deep frustration over widespread, visible homelessness, Los Angeles voters want the government to act faster and focus on shelter for people living in the streets, even if those efforts are short-term and fall short of permanent housing, a new poll of county voters shows.
Most voters continue to express empathy for homeless people, but also impatience and disappointment with the region’s leadership, according to the poll, conducted by the Los Angeles Business Council Institute in cooperation with The Times.
A key finding: Nearly four in 10 voters said that homeless people in their neighborhood made them feel significantly unsafe."
People on ‘auto pilot’ as remote work continues, California doctors say. What’s at risk?
HANH TRUONG, SacBee: "Boundaries are broken down, people often experience isolation and loneliness and their physical health, in some cases, can suffer during prolonged remote work, California health experts said.
Many Americans are nearing their second year of working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And while this allows for more convenience and fewer commutes, teleworking has impacted the mental and physical health of many people, experts told The Bee.
According to a poll in 2021 by the American Psychiatric Association, a majority of the 1,000 people surveyed said they experienced mental health impacts from working from home, including isolation and loneliness."
Bay Area labs are even testing the wastewater at SFO in their hunt for omicron
The Chronicle, ERIN ALLDAY: "California has built up a substantial network of laboratories to look for concerning coronavirus variants over the past year, and now the scientists running those labs are developing creative new strategies to quickly identify omicron.
At UCSF, one team is studying wastewater — including effluent from San Francisco International Airport — for signs of the newest variant, which has not yet been found in the United States but is likely already here. The head of the Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory hopes to narrow the search for omicron by focusing on one mutation that it happens to be missing. Some scientists plan to use a simple diagnostic test to speed up the hunt.
Across the state, many public health laboratories are prioritizing viral samples from people who have recently traveled from southern Africa — where the highly mutated variant was first spotted — for further genomic sequencing."
SF Mayor Breed appears maskless in another nightclub video. She says she didn't violate COVID rules
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI: "Mayor London Breed was spotted dancing and singing along to live music without a mask at an indoor nightclub in San Francisco in another short video that appeared over the weekend and was widely distributed on social media.
It reignited the debate over whether the mayor is following city health guidelines that she is asking residents and businesses to obey. Critics called out the mayor on the issue after a similar clip surfaced in September.
According to the regional mandate announced in August, everyone must wear a mask inside businesses, including nightclubs, unless they are actively eating or drinking."
Special report: How California state government monitors employees since its shift to telework
WES VENTEICHER, SacBee: "Emily Phillips and her husband had just added a walk-in closet to their Elk Grove home when the coronavirus arrived 21 months ago.
The world changed, and the couple quickly realized they wouldn’t need the variety of outfits hanging in the 15-by-8 space. So they replaced them with two desks, a printer, a filing cabinet and lots of plants. They gave the closet a new name: “the cloffice.”
“We’re pretty cramped in there,” said Phillips, 42, a manager in the contracts unit of the California Department of Justice."
New digs — and a hefty price tag — for legislative office space
URIEL ESPINOZA-PACHECO, Capitol Weekly: "Sacramento’s core is being transformed by an array of construction and infrastructure improvements — much to the ire of detour-weary motorists.
But the centerpiece of the building has nothing to do with the city —it’s the state Capitol’s annex, which contains a hive of government offices.
The overhaul of the granite annex, a six-story appendage to the Capitol that opened in 1952, and the accompanying construction of a new office building a block away carry an estimated $1.3 billion price tag — reflecting an increase over the amount originally projected."
The Chronicle, SAM WHITING: :"A former investigator at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office claimed in a lawsuit he was fired after alleging that prosecutors investigating a fatal police shooting attempted to obtain officers’ cell phone records using improper search warrants.
The suit was filed in San Francisco Superior Court in early November by former investigator Jeffrey Pailet, who claims he was fired in 2020 by Boudin and the D.A.’s chief of staff, David Campos, in retaliation for his efforts to expose alleged wrongdoing during an investigation of an unspecified 2017 police shooting.
At the time, Pailet was a member of the department’s Independent Investigations Bureau, charged with ensuring investigations and prosecutions were done in compliance with state and federal law. Pailet claimed the D.A. investigators withheld key details when writing search warrants for officers’ cell phone records, and that he was fired after attempting to expose those missteps."
Moms’ unequal work is topic of California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new film
SOPHIA BOLLAG, SacBee:"When Gov. Gavin Newsom arrived late to a press conference in April, he had an unusual excuse: a book report on LeBron James.
Newsom said at breakfast he had asked his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, why she scheduled her COVID-19 vaccine for the following week and not as soon as she became eligible, a conversation that morphed into one about how he needed to shoulder more of their parenting duties.
“She then reminded me of my role and responsibility with my kids, and no sooner did that happen, then I was working on my son Hunter’s book report of Lebron James,” Newsom said. “Perhaps that’s too much information… I’m in trouble now when I get home.”
SF awards $2M to family of woman killed by city vehicle
The Chronicle, ANDRES PICON: "The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to pay $2 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a city resident who was hit and killed last year by a Department of Public Works vehicle.
Rui Xia Zhen was walking in a crosswalk with the walk signal flashing at the intersection of Geary Street and Taylor Street on March 1, 2020 when a Public Works vehicle “made an unsafe left turn” onto Geary Street and hit Zhen, according to the lawsuit.
Zhen suffered serious injuries to her head and face and was pronounced dead at San Francisco General Hospital less than an hour after the collision, according to the suit."
Democrats make last effort to keep immigration reforms in social spending bill
LA Times, ANDREA CASTILLO: "House Democrats last month passed legislation that would offer protection from deportation for millions of immigrants for the first time in more than 35 years.
The immigration provisions — part of a $1.85-trillion social spending bill — probably represent Democrats’ last chance to achieve reforms to the nation’s immigration system before the 2022 midterm election. After that, if Republicans gain the majority in Congress, the possibility of winning any protections for immigrants would probably drop exponentially.
The measures now face an uphill battle in the Senate, which is expected to take up the legislation this month, and they could be stripped by the Senate parliamentarian well before that. Adding to the challenges there, immigrant advocates are at odds over provisions that would provide work permits to nearly 7 million immigrants living in the country without authorization. The protections would provide temporary respite from deportation but not a path to citizenship."
World War II bomb explodes in Munich, injuring 3 and disrupting train services
AP: "A bomb left over from World War II exploded Wednesday at a construction site next to a busy railway line in Munich, Germany, injuring three people, one of them seriously, police said.
A column of smoke was seen rising from the site near the Donnersbergerbruecke station. The site is on the approach to Munich’s central station, about a half-mile to the east. Trains to and from that station, one of Germany’s busiest, were suspended.
Unexploded bombs are still found frequently in Germany, even 76 years after the end of the war, and often during work on construction sites."