They used to call California ocean desalination a disaster. But water crisis brings new look
LAT, HAYLEY SMITH: "For decades, environmentalists have decried ocean desalination as an ecological disaster, while cost-savvy water managers have thumbed their noses at desal’s lofty price tag.
But as the American Southwest barrels into a new era of extreme heat, drought and aridification, officials and conservationists are giving new consideration to the process of converting saltwater into drinking water, and the role it may play in California’s future.
Although desalination requires significant energy, California’s current extended drought has revived interest in the technology. Experts are already experimenting with new concepts such as mobile desalination units and floating buoys, and at least four major plants will soon be operational along the state’s coastline."
‘Cooperate or perish,’ U.N. chief tells global climate conference
AP, SETH BORENSTEIN: "The world is on “a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” the United Nations chief told dozens of leaders Monday, warning countries to ”cooperate or perish” and urging the two biggest polluters, China and the U.S., to work together to avert climate catastrophe.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was not the only one preaching fire and brimstone, invoking pathos and tragedy and trying to foster a greater sense of urgency at this year’s annual U.N. climate conference. “Choose life over death,” former U.S. Vice President Al Gore declared. “It is not time for moral cowardice.”
In calling for a massive overhaul of international development loans and a 10% tax on fossil fuel companies that made “$200 billion in profits in the last three months,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said that “our people on this Earth deserve better.’’"
More people will be eligible for health insurance through Covered California
CALMatters, ELIZABETH AGUILERA: "Hundreds of thousands of Californians previously shut out of Covered California — the state program that offers discounted health insurance — soon can participate because the eligibility requirements are changing.
Prior to the new rules, individuals who had access to an employer-based health insurance plan through a family member were not eligible for Covered California. Employer plans are often expensive for spouses or children, driving up the cost of coverage for those family members. Those caught in this unaffordable “family glitch” have few choices: buy the expensive plan, try to buy a bare-bones plan separately or go without health insurance.
In April, the Biden administration issued guidelines to fix the near-decade-long problem and last month the federal government adopted the regulation. Starting in January 2023, if a family’s premium costs more than 9.12% of the household income the family could be eligible for federal susidies, or discounts, through Covered California."
How can California boost its water supply?
CALMatters, EMILY HOEVEN: "Over and over again, drought launches California into a familiar scramble to provide enough water.
Cities and towns call for conservation and brace for shortages. Growers fallow fields and ranchers sell cows. And thousands of people discover that they can’t squeeze another drop from their wells.
So where can California get enough water to survive the latest dry stretch — and the next one, and the next?"
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: "California voters will decide whether to add an amendment to the state constitution that protects abortion rights.
On Sunday, reproductive rights advocates and state leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, rallied in Long Beach to encourage people to vote yes on PropSosition 1 — a measure drafted in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June that repealed the constitutional right to an abortion it had declared in 1973.
“You will be voting on our values, not just California values but American values, on Tuesday,” Newsom said to a cheering crowd at a rally hosted by the California Democratic Party at Long Beach City College."
Democrats rally in Long Beach for abortion rights measure Proposition 1
LAT, JAMES RAINEY: "California’s top Democrats rallied in Long Beach on Sunday morning to urge voters to support Proposition 1, a state constitutional amendment that would block the state from passing any measures restricting access to abortion or contraception.
Gov. Gavin Newsom told a raucous gathering at Long Beach City College that the fight is part of a larger battle in the state and across the country to sustain not only “reproductive freedom,” but other rights, including voting and free speech.
“This is our opportunity to send a powerful message back to people all across America that we have their back,” Newsom said. “That it’s not just about 40 million of us in California; that we have their back. We believe in reproductive freedom. We believe in a woman’s right to choose. We believe in these fundamental freedoms and we are not going to take this moment for granted. We’re going to meet this moment.”"
Poverty drops in California but only because of child tax credit, COVID relief funds
CALMatters, WENDY FRY: "Poverty fell in California during the COVID pandemic, recent data shows, largely due to state and national safety net programs, especially the expansion of federal child tax credits.
But a deadline to file for those tax credits expires November 17, prompting advocates in California and a few state lawmakers to sound alarms.
“If you haven’t been doing your taxes, now is the time,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a San Diego Democrat who held a press conference reminding people to file and claim the tax credits."
California campaigns make final election push
CALMatters, EMILY HOEVEN: "Do you hear it?
That’s the sound of California candidates and campaigns pulling out all the stops ahead of tomorrow’s deadline for voters to cast ballots in the highly consequential general election.
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to rally in Los Angeles at a get-out-the-vote event hosted by the California Democratic Party. She’s also slated to stump for U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, whose projected lead over billionaire businessman Rick Caruso for Los Angeles mayor is shrinking, according to a new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times."
How will Bass or Caruso win? Latino vote, liberal unity, voter rage, rain all factors
LAT, JAMES RAINEY/BENJAMIN ORESKES: "With two days left in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, front-runner Karen Bass is fighting to maintain her longstanding advantage as the favorite of the city’s liberal Democratic political base, while businessman Rick Caruso tries to forge a new winning coalition, power ed largely by Latinos and residents of the San Fernando Valley.
Both Bass and Caruso now appear to have paths to victory in a contest that Bass had dominated for months, besting Caruso by 7 percentage points in the June primary and surging to a lead of as much as 21 points by late summer. Bass’ advantage had shrunk to just 45% to 41%, within the margin of error, in a poll published by The Times on Friday.
The question that will not be settled until Tuesday’s election — and potentially revealed only after days or weeks of vote counting — is whether Caruso’s momentum has plateaued, or will push him into the mayor’s office."
Campaign mailers target Asian Americans with disinformation, group says
The Chronicle, CATHERINE HO: "Right-wing groups linked to former President Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller are targeting Asian American voters with mailers and digital ads promoting disinformation ahead of the midterm elections, said a California advocacy group that aims to boost progressive political power among Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
The campaign is meant to sow confusion and division among Asian American communities, discourage AAPIs from voting, and amounts to anti-Asian hate, said the advocacy group, AAPIs for Civic Empowerment Education Fund.
The mailers and ads claim that federal policies advancing racial equity exclude white and Asian people, blame President Biden for violence against Asian Americans, and criticize affirmative action. They have been traced to the America First Legal Foundation and Citizens for Sanity, conservative organizations led by Miller and other former Trump administration staffers."
A farmworker’s son and a dairy farmer battle to represent the Central Valley in Congress
LAT, ALEXANDRA REYES\-VALERDE: "As a teenager, David Valadao had a long list of chores to do before school every day. He’d jump on his tractor, buck hay and feed the family’s dairy cows on their Hanford farm. After school, it was more of the same.
When Rudy Salas was a child, he woke before dawn to join his father in the Central Valley fields. He worked piecemeal, boxing up grapes and fixing machinery. When he injured his fingers doing repairs, his father would tell him, “put some duct tape on it and tell me about it later.”
Valadao and Salas represent, at least symbolically, two of the largest forces fueling the Central Valley — the farmers who drive the area’s agricultural industry and the workers who harvest the food that feeds the nation."
A total lunar eclipse will kick off Election Day. Here’s a timeline for the rare ‘blood moon’
The Chronicle, KELLIE HWANG: "Election Day will get off to a weird start in the Bay Area this year, with an apparently unprecedented total lunar eclipse unfolding in the early morning hours Tuesday.
It’s the first full lunar eclipse ever to officially fall on a federal Election Day in the U.S., according to the website EarthSky — at least, under the definition by Congress as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November during even-numbered years.
The total lunar eclipse, known colloquially as a “blood moon,” will start just after midnight on Tuesday, Nov. 8, in the Bay Area. It will be the second full lunar eclipse this year — the first occurred in May — and will be the last for three years, according to NASA."
New biography examines Michael Kirst's impact on public education in California and beyond
EdSource, JOHN FENSTERWALD: "For more than six decades, Michael Kirst has made a mark on public education. Starting fresh out of graduate school to draft Title I legislation that was part of President Lyndon Johnson’s vision for a Great Society, Kirst has had multiple careers.
Author and professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford University, Kirst is best known by Californians as president of the State Board of Education for all four of Jerry Brown’s terms as governor and the architect of the Local Control Funding Formula, which remade the state’s K-12 financing and school accountability system.
Now he is also the subject of a new biography by Richard “Dick” Jung. A retired teacher, headmaster and adviser to independent schools in the Washington, D.C., area, Jung has known Kirst since he first took his course on the politics of education at Stanford and became Kirst’s teaching assistant."
Remote work or not? How 4 Bay Area companies are tackling the post-pandemic workplace
The Chronicle, CAROLYN SAID: "At Twitter, new owner Elon Musk reportedly may require all remaining employees to return to the office, altering the company’s remote work policy. When he enacted a similar mandate at Tesla, Musk told workers that being based at “some remote pseudo office” counted as “phoning it in.”
But elsewhere in the tech world, many companies have made very different business calculations.
A growing number of Bay Area companies are letting employees decide whether and when to work at their physical offices. They say productivity remains high, while employee satisfaction has soared thanks to better work-life balance and ability to relocate."
Want employees to come to the office? Pick up their laundry and welcome their dogs
LAT, ROGER VINCENT: "In L’Oréal’s plush new West Coast headquarters in El Segundo, workers are pampered by a concierge who will fill their cars with gas, pick up their laundry, retrieve their dogs from day care or do any other task employees want.
Personal and professional chores are fulfilled for $5 an hour, freeing employees to concentrate on their jobs in a former aircraft factory turned office building that now sports such comforts as a fitness center, restaurant, juice cafe and a cabana-like bar that serves coffee drinks and, depending on the occasion, alcohol."
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "Maggie Larson has lived on Hawaii’s Big Island for more than 50 years. Despite buying property decades ago, the cost of everything from gas to food has made her life there increasingly untenable, driving more than an hour each way to her job at a hotel in Kailua-Kona — since she cannot afford to live in town. That amounts to somewhere between $500 to $600 a week in gas.
“I can barely make it,” Larson said.
Hawaii may seem a world away from the Bay Area, but Larson’s story reflects the choices residents in places along the West Coast — and beyond — with ballooning housing prices have to contend with daily. And while San Franciscans think of their city as unique in so many ways, it’s the same as other costly Pacific cities and regions in one key way: High housing costs are pushing people further away from the cities, or causing them to seriously consider leaving."