Recreational marijuana sales won't start in January in SF after all
The Chronicle's RACHEL SWAN: "People eager to start buying recreational marijuana from shops in San Francisco when sales become legal throughout the state in January are going to have to wait a little longer."
"The city won’t issue permits to sell recreational marijuana until it passes new laws to regulate the industry and creates an equity program to help low-income entrepreneurs, people of color, and former drug offenders break into the market."
"According to Supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who introduced an ordinance with proposed regulations at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, city officials still have no idea what that program will look like or how it will operate."
Speaking of cannabis, things are not going well in rural, rugged Siskiyou County.
From Capitol Weekly's LISA RENNER: "Illegal marijuana grows in rural Siskiyou County are out of control and state officials should help stop them, local authorities say."
"Earlier this month, the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors took the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency because of the problem. Republican Sen. Ted Gaines, who represents the rugged area, followed up with a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking that he declare a state of emergency in the county as well."
“The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office, despite outstanding leadership, has simply too few officers to effectively police such a vast geographic area on its own and is in desperate need of any and all assistance the state could provide, including deployment of California National Guard personnel to assist them in their mission to stamp out illegal grows,” Gaines said in the letter."
Feinstein contends the Cadiz project would contaminate the water supply
Daily News' JIM STEINBERG: "As the Cadiz project seems increasingly likely to go forward, Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued a statement contending the underground desert water could ultimately contaminate much of Southern California’s water supply."
"The project involves the transfer of ancient groundwater in a remote part of San Bernardino County’s Mojave Desert to parts of Orange County and other locations, where it could serve as many as 400,000 people."
"For close to two decades, Cadiz has been trying to ram through a water extraction project that would harm the Mojave Desert. And now we hear from the Metropolitan Water District that the water Cadiz wants to extract could contain dangerous chemicals that pose a threat to the safety of Southern California’s water supply,” Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a recent statement."
Huge Southern California wildfire is 15% contained as anxious residents wait for word
LA Times' JOSEPH SERNA/ANH DO/ALENE TCHEKMEDYIAN: "John DeYoe spotted the residents in their open garage, gathering belongings they didn’t have time to pack the night before when the fast-moving Canyon fire forced them to flee."
"As firefighters gained the upper hand on the blaze in the Santa Ana Mountains on Tuesday afternoon, the residents had hiked to the top of their Corona hillside neighborhood to find part of their roof burned and the inside of their home damaged by smoke."
"It was just a tragic wind shift,” DeYoe, a firefighter and spokesman with the Corona Fire Department, said of the wildfire that has charred 2,000 acres and threatened 1,900 homes. “I don’t think those residents were really prepared."
READ MORE related to Environment: Oakland hills grass fire threatened homes, led to evacuations -- The Chronicle's STEVE RUBENSTEIN/EVAN SERNOFFSKY; The wet winter brought lots of water to California. But fighting over fish continues -- Sacramento Bee's RYAN SABALOW/DALE KASLER
GOP gives up on voting on Obamacare repeal, but bipartisan approaches remain in doubt
LA Times' LISA MASCARO/NOAM N. LEVEY: "Members of Congress searched for a way forward on healthcare legislation Tuesday, but as they did, the wreckage of the latest Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act continued to threaten to block the way for bipartisan progress."
"Senate Republicans, emerging from their weekly policy lunch, said they would not move ahead with a vote on the most recent repeal legislation, sponsored by Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The public opposition from three Republican senators — John McCain of Arizona, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — had doomed that bill to defeat."
"We haven’t given up on changing the American healthcare system,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “We are not going to be able to do that this week. But it still lies ahead of us."
Meanwhile, the demise of the GOP repeal couldn't come fast enough for an array of California health experts.
From CHUCK McFADDEN in Capitol Weekly: "Even as it entered its death spiral, the latest Republican attempt to do away with Obamacare came in for fiery denunciations from California health care leaders."
"Incredibly damaging.” “Worst of all repeal bills.” “Politics over policy.” “Appalling.”
"And those were only a few of the accusations."
READ MORE related to Beltway: Will Trump allow release of secret JFK assassination papers? -- AP's ALANNA DURKIN RICHER; New Republican tax outline gives huge cuts to businesses, but details of individual relief are less certain -- LA Times' JIM PUZZANGHERA/LISA MASCARO; Big deficits? No problem, say conservatives, if it means big tax cuts -- McClatchy DC's LESLEY CLARK;
Fast food without antibiotics? It tastes just like chicken
LA Times' GEOFFREY MOHAN: "If you like your fast food without antibiotics, order the chicken and hold the beef and pork."
"That’s the advice gleaned from an annual report card published Wednesday on the fast-food and casual-dining industry, which made substantial progress this year in eliminating antibiotics from its poultry supply but lags in its efforts for beef and pork."
"Use of antibiotics to raise animals is one factor behind the rise of drug-resistant infections that sicken more than 2 million people annually, causing at least 23,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
Three arrests after fist fights between right, left at UC Berkeley
The Chronicle's KIMBERLY VEKLEROV/LIZZIE JOHNSON/JILL TUCKER: "Berkeley police arrested three people after several fist fights broke out between liberals and conservatives when dozens of people gathered for a short time at Sproul Plaza Tuesday afternoon."
"Members of a conservative group called Patriot Prayer arrived near Sproul Plaza around 2 p.m. and were met by protesters, including representatives of the leftist activist group By Any Means Necessary. Neither of the groups are student groups, and students and faculty — busy with midterms — did not appear to get involved in the rally or protest."
"After the two groups scuffled inside an “empathy tent,”
OP-ED: How Hitler's fascism almost took hold in Los Angeles.
LA Times' PATT MORRISON: "Hitler didn’t have to set foot out of Germany for his malign plans to be felt beyond the Reich’s borders — even here in Los Angeles. Through the depths of the Depression right into World War II, Nazi Germany was ginning up support in Southern California, where its agents plotted everything from attacks on National Guard armories to murdering Hollywood’s Jewish moguls and filmmakers."
"USC history professor Steven J. Ross has unearthed the story of sunshine Nazism, from picnic rallies in a La Crescenta park to a compound planned for Pacific Palisades as Hitler’s White House on the Pacific. Ross’ book, “Hitler in Los Angeles, How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots against Hollywood and America,” is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding."
"Why was Los Angeles, way out here on the West Coast, so important to the Nazis in the 1930s?"
"Because everyone sees New York as kind of the center of Jewish activity, and so did the Nazis. But they also understood that the mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia, was a very vehement anti-Nazi. As many people may not know, he was half-Jewish. And he had the ports of New York, which the Nazis referred to as “Jew York,” very closely guarded."
Fuel-efficient cars often paired with gas guzzlers, study finds
The Chronicle's PETER FIMRITE/MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "Human nature, as defined by those of us who use our morning runs to justify pigging out on jelly doughnuts, has a tendency to torpedo even high-minded goals — including, it turns out, fuel efficiency."
"A study released Tuesday by economists at UC Davis shows that families who own fuel-efficient cars tend to buy big, powerful gas guzzlers as their second vehicle, largely defeating the purpose of the little petrol sippers in their garages."
"The researchers, who studied California Department of Motor Vehicle trends for two-car households over several years, likened the phenomena to the “diet soda effect,” in which people who buy diet drinks reward themselves by wolfing down greasy french fries."
She's a Berkeley grad teaching 7th grade math. The end of DACA puts her future in jeopardy
Sacramento Bee's DIANA LAMBERT: "Diana Montelongo came to the United States as a 6-year-old from Mexico, brought by her parents in search of a better education."
"Now a graduate of UC Berkeley, Montelongo teaches math in Natomas to middle school students. On a recent weekday, hands shot up in Montelongo’s seventh-grade class when she asked students to help her add integers with imaginary balloons and sandbags. Using imagery from the movie “Up” is one way Montelongo connects with students."
"The day after the 2016 election, she decided another way would be to share her story."
Gay rights groups protest 'erasure' of LGBT history in California textbooks
Sacramento bee's ALEXEI KOSEFF: "Amid a wave of gay youth suicides that generated national concern, California in 2011 became the first state to require lessons on the historical contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in its K-12 curriculum."
"The historically inaccurate exclusion of LGBT Americans in social sciences instruction as well as the spreading of negative stereotypes in school activities sustains an environment of discrimination and bias in school throughout California,” former Sen. Mark Leno, a San Francisco Democrat who authored the law, stated at the time. “This is a primary obstacle to addressing California’s bullying epidemic that continues to plague a majority of LGBT youth.”
"But as California officials prepare to adopt instructional materials that, for the first time, meet these new LGBT guidelines, gay rights groups are raising concerns that the textbook options before the state fall far short of the inclusion sought by Leno. Organizations such as Our Family Coalition and Equality Californiawill appear over the next two days at a meeting of the Instructional Quality Commission, an advisory panel that makes curriculum recommendations to the State Board of Education, urging members to reject all but two of a dozen elementary and middle school social science textbooks proposed by publishers, unless edits are made."
