The government has lost billions to unemployment fraud. Can it get it back?
Sac Bee, DAVID LIGHTMAN: "The federal government is unlikely to recover most of the billions of dollars in unemployment insurance fraud that plagued its Covid recovery programs, independent government watchdogs said Wednesday.
“History will tell us there is a very low percentage that would likely be recovered from fraud,” said Comptroller General Gene Dodaro.
“The recovery rate is clearly gonna be far below what the fraud rate is,” added Michael Horowitz, chairman of the federal Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, an independent government watchdog."
California coalition lobbies Legislature to curb teen domestic and sexual violence
Sac Bee, ALEX MUEGGE: "In a 2019 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 12 high school students experienced sexual dating violence, and about one in 12 experienced physical dating violence.
The study reported that female students experienced higher rates of physical and sexual dating violence than male students, and student members of the LGBTQ+ community experienced higher rates of physical and sexual dating violence compared to students who identified as heterosexual.
The California Partnership to End Domestic Violence is a statewide coalition dedicated to deepening the process of healing by identifying and addressing the underlying and contributing factors of domestic violence through public policy, according to the organization’s website, and the partnership hosted its Orange Day of Action on Tuesday, where representatives from several organizations joined on the west steps of the state Capitol calling on the Legislature to do more to curb domestic and sexual violence."
Hime’s loss another blow to CA business community
Capitol Weekly, JOHN HOWARD: "Two of the fiercest warriors in California’s interminable political battles over taxes and business regulation have died, but their impact remains deeply felt throughout the Capitol.
Allan Zaremberg, who led the California Chamber of Commerce for more than two decades until he retired in 2021, and Rex Hime, head of the California Business Properties Association for 37 years, passed away within hours of one another on Saturday February 4th. Zaremberg was 73; Hime, 74.
Both men were staunch conservatives who worked for years in Republican administrations before turning to lobbying. Zaremberg was chief legislative lobbyist for both Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson before leaving to work for the Chamber of Commerce. He became the Chamber’s top executive in 1998."
Flag was set to fly during Pride month — then California town decried it as ‘divisive’
Sac Bee, BROOKE BAITINGER: "A California city that first voted in 2021 to celebrate Pride by flying the Pride flag during the month of June reversed course, calling the flag “divisive.”
Huntington Beach City Council voted 4-3 on Tuesday, Feb. 7 to reverse the 2021 decision after hours of “sometimes tense public comment,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
The proposal came from Pat Burns, a newly elected council member. Burns wrote in the proposal that the city had “always” flown between three and five flags: the American flag, flags honoring prisoners of war and military members missing in action, the California state flag and the Huntington Beach city flag."
‘We are outlawing misinformation.’ California bill goes after crisis pregnancy centers
Sac Bee, ANDREW SHEELER: "Nearly five years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a California law aimed at preventing “crisis pregnancy centers” from misrepresenting the prenatal and abortion services they offer, a state lawmaker is trying again with a different approach.
The original measure required centers to provide pregnant people seeking help with information about how the state offers free or low-cost prenatal and abortion-related care to qualified applicants.
The Supreme Court ruled that this violated the center operators’ First Amendment rights."
Can an annual blood test find cancer while it’s curable?
BANG*Mercury News, LISA M. KRIEGER: "Despite decades of effort in the war against cancer, screening tests are available for only five types of the disease, representing less than one-third of all cases.
What if one test could screen for dozens of cancers, using a single vial of blood?
Innovations in genetics and computing, which allow the detection of tiny fragments of genetic material shed by cancer cells with a “liquid biopsy,” or blood draw, are opening a new front in the battle."
Homeless high school seniors in California could get $5,000 under proposal
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "Nearly 15,000 homeless high school seniors would get $1,000 per month just before and after graduation under proposed state legislation aimed at giving the students some momentum to head to college or into the job market.
The students, all identified as lacking “a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence,” would get five monthly installments from April through August. The measure would apply only to the class of 2024, but could be extended."
UC Berkeley ‘unnames’ a fifth building that honored a founder and white supremacist
The Chronicle, NANETTE ASIMOV: "One of UC Berkeley’s founding fathers was Bernard Moses, a 19th century intellectual who set up the political science and history departments, taught law and economics and died three decades before the campus named its philosophy building for him in 1965.
Moses was also an author. He wrote that lynching Black people was an effective way to “deter the barbarian.” He opined that “neither the Indian nor the mestizo was capable of originating and carrying on great enterprises.” And Spaniards who married people native to Mexico and South America, “fell below the European standard,” in Moses’ opinion."
CSU seeks court order to protect faculty and others who complained about Chico professor
EdSource, THOMAS PEELE: "The California State University system on Wednesday sought a court order to protect three Chico State academics and a graduate student from a suspended biology professor who allegedly threatened campus gun violence.
The request seeks to protect two professors, a lecturer and a graduate student from David Stachura, who has been accused of making gun violence threats that roiled the campus when they were revealed in December.
Stachura has been on paid suspension since Dec. 9 following an EdSource report that he allegedly told his estranged wife he wanted to shoot two co-workers who cooperated in a 2020 investigation that found he had an affair with a graduate student he supervised that included sex in his Holt Hall office. Colleagues complained that they heard the couple having sex through the walls."
What Is the Difference Between Working Class & Middle Class?
The Street, ERIC REED: "Homer Simpson is working class. Ned Flanders is middle class. Jake Peralta is working class. Phil Dunphy is middle class. Darryl Philbin is working class. Jim Halpert is middle class.
Any questions?"
‘It has not worked’: S.F.’s crackdown on street vending under fire as inspectors get attacked
The Chronicle, ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH: "On a recent cold and drizzly Friday, dozens of vendors lined up at UN Plaza, spreading their wares out on the brick sidewalk. Several elderly men and women were selling produce and canned goods, while a few dozen yards away, two women applied makeup and took hits from a glass pipe.
A man who identified himself as Tony C. hawked small statues, a chessboard, and cigarettes.
He said he’d worked in restaurants before the pandemic, but had spent the last two years earning money by picking through trash bins and selling his wares at the plaza or elsewhere in the city."
Amid concerns over Mission District sex work, some propose creating an S.F. red-light district
The Chronicle, RACHEL SWAN: "As San Francisco leaders scramble to install barriers on Capp Street — hoping to divert, or at least slow down an unchecked market for sex work — some community organizers are contemplating a more controversial and far-reaching approach: creating a sanctioned red-light district.
The move has support from sex-worker advocates, Mission District residents who want the now-illicit business contained in a commercial zone and Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who broadly favors the idea but is more focused on lifting criminal penalties from the sex trade altogether. And she's turned to Sacramento for assistance. Ronen is drafting a resolution that would urge state legislators to write a bill that would legalize sex work."
Bob Iger announces 7,000 job cuts at Disney, signals ‘significant transformation’
LA Times, RYAN FAUGHNDER: "Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger said Wednesday that the Burbank company will shed 7,000 jobs in an effort to save $5.5 billion in costs, marking some of the steepest reductions in the company’s history and the latest sign of Hollywood’s retrenchment.
The belt-tightening underscores the extraordinary difficulties Disney and other media giants face as they reckon with the realities of streaming economics — which have proved more vexing than many anticipated — and the challenges facing Iger, who took over from ousted CEO Bob Chapek in November.
Disney is facing pressure to control costs and boost profits as it continues to lose money from its key streaming business, which includes Disney+."
Brazen food stamp scammers steal millions from L.A.’s poorest. ‘They’re hemorrhaging money’
LA Times, REBECCA ELLIS: "The two men approached the ATM at 6 a.m. — soon after the state disburses the latest round of cash aid to the lowest-income Californians.
They sported dark clothing — one wearing paint-splattered black jeans and the other a zip-up and beanie.
For about eight minutes on the morning of Feb. 2, authorities say, they inserted cloned Electronic Benefit Transfer cards — the cards people receiving public benefits use to access their monthly funds — into the slot at a U.S. Bank ATM in Tarzana."
Silicon Valley developer goes on hunger strike to protest construction delays
BANG*Mercury News, MARISA KENDALL: "A home developer is taking an unusual and dramatic stand after the city halted work on his construction project. He’s on a hunger strike — and he says he won’t eat until his crews can get back to work.
Navneet Aron, founder and CEO of Aron Developers, says he hasn’t eaten since last Friday morning. He has spent every weekday since then camped out in City Hall with a sign proclaiming, “On hunger strike until death!”
He’s protesting the city’s decision to stop construction of 18 townhomes on North Fair Oaks Avenue after his team forgot to obtain an approval from Santa Clara County’s Department of Environmental Health. Aron worries that fixing the issue could take months, which could mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in delayed construction costs."
This county’s population is shrinking the fastest in the Bay Area. Here’s why
The Chronicle, SUSIE NEILSON: "The entire Bay Area has been losing people since the pandemic began. But lately, one county has been shrinking particularly quickly.
Known for its sandy beaches and rugged mountains, quiet wooded neighborhoods and liberal, affluent population, Marin County conjures a vision of NorCal living that’s hard to beat. Its most famous feature, Mt. Tamalpais, lures many a Patagonia-clad millennial away from San Francisco for weekend hiking."
Nine years of controversy, hundreds of planned East Bay housing units—and now, nothing
BANG*Mercury News, KATIE LAUER: "A 14-acre former port terminal in the Point Richmond neighborhood will remain vacant, neglected and fenced off behind barbed wire for the foreseeable future after an upscale housing development nearly a decade in the making was shot down.
The Terminal One development — sandwiched between the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline and Richmond Yacht Club near Brickyard Cove — was poised to transform the dilapidated, lead-contaminated property into 92 single-family detached residences, 62 duplexes and 30 junior accessory dwelling units.
But after more than five hours of discussion late Tuesday night, the Richmond City Council voted 5-1-1 to scrap the deal, require the property at 1500 Dornan Drive to be deeded back to the city, and return a $500,000 deposit for the land’s sale to the developer. Mayor Eduardo Martinez voted no, and Councilmember Melvin Willis was absent."
Pro-housing advocates are suing these Bay Area cities to force planning for more homes
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN VARIAN: "Housing advocates tired of the Bay Area’s foot-dragging efforts to plan for more homes amid an intensifying housing crisis are taking matters to the courts.
On Tuesday, three pro-housing groups announced they had sued 11 cities and Santa Clara County for failing to meet a Jan. 31 deadline to submit their future homebuilding proposals to state regulators.
Advocates contend the jurisdictions have long resisted growth and are now ignoring their responsibility to prepare for significantly more housing over the next decade. The cities include Palo Alto, Cupertino, Burlingame, Daly City, Martinez, Pinole, Pleasant Hill, Richmond, Fairfax, Novato and Belvedere."
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN VARIAN: "Regulators have determined Oakland’s plan to add at least 26,000 new homes over the next decade isn’t up to snuff — putting the Bay Area’s third-largest city at risk of missing out on crucial funding and losing control over local rules governing development.
Under state law, cities must come up with plans — dubbed “housing elements” — explaining how they aim to approve significantly more housing for residents of all income levels between 2023 and 2031. Bay Area cities and counties were supposed to have their plans finalized by Jan. 31, but most blew the deadline.
In a Feb. 2 letter, regulators informed Oakland that its plan — which the city council adopted at the end of January — still needs more work, meaning the city is now subject to penalties."
New deputy ‘gang’ forming in L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, lawsuit alleges
LA Times, KERI BLAKINGER: "Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies are forming a new “gang” in the agency’s East L.A. station, according to a deputy who alleges in a lawsuit he was abused when he refused to join the group.
Amayel Garfias filed his lawsuit in Superior Court last month, claiming he was harassed, assaulted and purposely put in harm’s way by an alleged member of the new “gang.” Both the county and several sheriff’s employees should be held responsible for allowing the East L.A. station to remain under “gang” control, the lawsuit states.
The Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for comment, and attorneys for the county have not yet responded to the lawsuit in court."
BANG*Mercury News, RACHEL HEIMANN MERCADER: "A former Pleasanton police officer claims he was fired for reasons tied to him attending a “Stop the Steal” rally in Sacramento on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.
Peter McNeff, a five-year veteran of the police force, filed the lawsuit in federal court last month against the city of Pleasanton, Chief David Swing and other officials, alleging he was retaliated against for expressing his “political views.”
In a break of the so-called blue wall of silence, he was turned in by a fellow police officer who saw social media posts of McNeff and his wife attending the Sacramento rally. At the time, he was using his personal Facebook page under a pseudonym, “Jonathan P,” court records show."
Earthquake death toll passes 16,000 as families in Turkey plead for help
LA Times, NABIH BULOS: "Sarwan Oghlu shook her head and screamed as she stood before the building that had been her family’s home, and where her youngest daughter and son, aged 12 and 7, remained, amid floors flattened one against the other.
As her sister and two daughters strained to calm her, she pleaded with God.
“Where are my kids? If you love me get me my kids. I won’t go anywhere before my kids return,” she said, her shouts made raspy by grief. “For three days I’ve been here. God, you’ve heard everyone but not me.”"