Until the last few seconds before landing, the Asiana flight headed for SFO seemed routine. It wasn't
From the Chronicle's Justin Berton, Kristen V. Brown and Marisa Lagos: "The plane slammed into the ground, then everything went dark."
"Screams filled the plane as luggage fell out of overhead compartments, people flew out of their seats, oxygen masks dropped and the cabin filled with ash. The plane slid back and forth.
Passenger Hee Young said it felt like the plane was going the wrong way."
"Wen "Kitty" Zhang looked back and saw daylight where the plane's bathroom had been just moments before. When the plane stopped, Zhang, who was in a window seat near the tail, grabbed her 4-year-old son, Qixuan Xu, and walked through a hole in the back of the plane and onto the tarmac."
The battle lines are being drawn over those "superstores" that sell everything from goceries to bicycles, with an effort to require a new level of environmental and ecomic impact reports to be completed before locals can approve their construction.
From Capitol Weekly's John Howard: "The core of the dispute actually boils down to groceries, a $100 billion business in California in which the competing interests suffer thin profit margins as they battle for market share. Unionized grocers say the non-unionized superstores have a competitive edge. "
"Assemblyman Roger Hernandez, a West Covina Democrat, has authored AB 667, which pegs local approval of the superstores – mainly those that include groceries in their inventory -- to definitive findings that the project won’t adversely affect the economic well-being of the area most affected by the new store. The finding must reflect public input, publicly scheduled hearings and discussion, and may be accompanied by additional studies targeting economic impacts."
"Hernandez’s bill failed to emerge from the Senate Governance and Finance Committee in the first vote, but Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, the chair of the committee, said the bill is the subject of new negotiations."
New testing for K-12 students in California -- part of an array of changes that authorities are considering -- carries a hefty price tag.
From the SI&A Report's Tom Chorneau: "Buying and installing a new system of K-12 student assessments aligned to the common core state standards will likely cost California $67 million, according to a report before the board of education this week."
"For that price, the state would receive test developer Smarter Balanced’s “complete system,” which includes several types of assessments as well as a digital library – all of which is proposed in key legislation that would authorize the transition to the new assessments."
"The new assessment system is just one piece of the complex puzzle state education officials face as California transitions its K-12 school system to new standards. With the governor’s signature last week on legislation restructuring school finance, an array of policy questions now confront the California State Board of Education – charged with implementing new accountability requirements, new student performance measurements and a new assessment system."
Meanwhile, health care for California's jail inmates is a major priority for the counties, whose lockups are crowded from realignment and who face new challenges with the Affordable Care Act.
From HealthyCal's Mary Flynn: "When the signature reforms of the Affordable Care Act go into effect on January 1st, millions of Californians will have expanded access to government subsidized health-care benefits. Counties, some of which saw their jail populations and health-care costs swell since prison reforms took effect in 2011, want to make sure that jail inmates will be among the newly insured."
"Inmates tend to be younger and sicker than the general population, and the poor health care offered in prisons was the reason that courts ordered California to reduce their prison populations. The prison population was reduced by making county jail or probation — rather than state prison –the only sentencing option for certain felony offenses."
"That change in turn increased jail populations in several counties, prompting some critics to wonder if reform simply shifted the health care problems in prison to jail."
Gay marriage is one thing, gay divorce is another.
From the Bee's Anita Creamer and Phillip Reese: "Sometimes, marriages just don't work out. The flip side of gay marriage is, of course, gay divorce. With the legal resumption last week of same-sex marriage in California, the state's family law attorneys are gearing up for what happens when some of those marriages fail."
"That's already the reality for some same-sex marriage pioneers: Gay and lesbian couples in unsuccessful domestic partnerships and those whose 2008 marriages didn't last have already learned the ropes in family court, where attorneys' fees can easily soar past $20,000."
"They've already negotiated child and spousal support, and they've navigated the world of community property, with the equitable division of real estate, bank accounts, pensions and other assets."
And from our
"We Heard it Through the Grapevine" file comes the tale of raisin farmer Marvin Horne,
who is in trouble with the feds because of a dumb law that dates back more than half a century.
"Horne, a raisin farmer, has been breaking the law for 11 solid years. He now owes the U.S. government at least $650,000 in unpaid fines. And 1.2 million pounds of unpaid raisins, roughly equal to his entire harvest for four years."
"His crime? Horne defied one of the strangest arms of the federal bureaucracy — a farm program created to solve a problem during the Truman administration, and never turned off.
He said no to the national raisin reserve."
“I believe in America. And I believe in our Constitution. And I believe that eventually we will be proved right,” Horne said recently, sitting in an office next to 20 acres of ripening Thompson grapes. “They took our raisins and didn’t pay us for them.”
"The national raisin reserve might sound like a fever dream of the Pillsbury Doughboy. But it is a real thing — a 64-year-old program that gives the U.S. government a heavy-handed power to interfere with the supply and demand for dried grapes."
The grapes of wrath ...
