Will anyone enforce California’s new mask mandate? Counties are rejecting new COVID rule
LARA KORTE, SacBee: “California officials say the new month-long statewide indoor mask mandate is critical to preventing another surge of COVID-19.
But it’s unclear who is responsible for enforcing that mandate. When asked about the lack of enforcement mechanism for the mandate, which went into effect Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he “has faith” in Californians to follow it, but didn’t provide specifics on what would happen if they didn’t.
“I have more faith than you do in the capacity of people to do the right thing. That’s the response,” Newsom told a reporter during a press conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday.”
READ MORE on pandemic: COVID-19 hospitalizations jump in Southern California as Omicron alarms grow -- RONG-GONG LIN II; 5 omicron COVID cases at West Sacramento high school in region’s first outbreak -- MICHAEL McGOUGH, SacBee
California’s marijuana market heads into a difficult 2022
URIEL ESPINOZA-PACHECO, Capitol Weekly: “With cannabis taxes poised to rise on Jan. 1 and a legitimate business landscape plagued by a thriving black market, California’s marijuana industry faces uncertainty.
Years ago, California voters approved the use of medical and recreational marijuana, with the expectation that legalization would lead to an elimination of a back market and the state would enjoy a dramatic revenue surge.
The Jan. 1 cannabis tax increase — like others before it — stems from a state law requiring the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration to recalculate the cultivation tax rates once a year because of inflation.”
He stood his ground against a highway gunman. Now he’s receiving California’s highest honor
WES VENTEICHER, SacBee: “Gov. Gavin Newsom awarded the state’s highest honor on Thursday to a correctional officer who helped arrest a man who had been shooting randomly at vehicles west of Fresno four years ago.
From late November to mid-December 2017, a 43-year-old man later identified as Jorge Javier Gracia was driving around Kerman shooting into approaching vehicles. Gracia was found guilty in October 2018 of six felonies in 2018 related to the shootings, The Fresno Bee reported.
Sgt. Hector Villareal was driving through the city of 13,000 with his family while off-duty on Jan. 8, 2018, when he saw a passing driver stick a handgun outside a vehicle. The driver was targeting him, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said in a press conference.”
The supposed scandal over Kamala Harris’ cookware is too silly for me. And I’m a cartoonist
JACK OHMAN, SacBee: “Vice President Kamala Harris is having something of a bad stretch, in the way that only vice presidents can.
The vice presidency is kind of a lose-lose job. Aside from the very cool Air Force plane rides, they have to do all sorts of tedious, dreadful things that presidents want them to do.
I won’t belabor the usual observations (bucket of warm “spit”/funeral attendance), but hardly any vice presidents have thrived under the lack of a spotlight. It’s their job to stand over there, smile, nod and wave. Maybe not even wave. Or nod. Just stand.”
California lawmakers prepare to protect abortion access, starting with eliminating copays__
LA Times, MELODY GUTIERREZ: "Ignited by threats to abortion rights across the country, California lawmakers are preparing countermeasures to expand access for those who live both in and out of the state, focusing first on resurrecting a bill that would eliminate costly copays for services.
The added urgency for abortion access legislation comes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers overturning Roe vs. Wade, the landmark decision that barred states from banning abortions nearly 50 years ago. Last week, the Supreme Court declined to block a Texas law that banned terminating pregnancies after six weeks.
Abortion rights advocates counted one win Thursday when the federal government announced it would allow patients to receive abortion pills prescribed for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy by mail, although some states will continue to have their own restrictions on mailing the medication."
Delta, Omicron could overwhelm hospitals soon
LA Times, RONG-GONG LIN II/EMILY ALPERT REYES:"The rapid growth of Omicron is prompting officials to warn that hospitals could easily become overwhelmed, potentially within weeks, as they deal with a combination of the newest variant of the coronavirus along with patients hit by a holiday wave of the Delta strain.
California and the rest of the nation now face a formidable winter. According to the state’s COVID forecasting models, there are plausible scenarios in which a winter surge could hit hospitals worse than the summer Delta wave, which strained facilities across swaths of the state.
The combination is “a perfect storm for overwhelming our hospital system that is already strained,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy health officer for Orange County."
Can a rock climber help ‘restore’ Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley?
The Chronicle, GREGORY THOMAS: "On a sunny November morning, Lucho Rivera tiptoed along the edge of a granite cliff rising 1,800 feet above the flat, indigo surface of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. He checked to make sure that a pair of steel bolts he’d driven into the rock years before to anchor climbing ropes were still intact. Then he and fiancee Mecia Serafino went about setting up camp a few steps from the precipice for a weekend of climbing.
“We used to sleep right on the edge but eventually moved our camp back a little ways,” Rivera said. “I’m not really a sleepwalker but I wouldn’t want to start here.”
Rivera, a 41-year-old climber who grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District, has set up dozens of expert-level climbing routes in this overlooked sliver of Yosemite National Park for almost 20 years. That makes him somewhat of an anomaly in the climbing community, which for generations has focused its energy on the more storied walls in Yosemite Valley to the south."
Fake students enrolled in community colleges. One bot-sleuthing professor fights back
LA Times, COLLEEN SHALBY: "At 1 in the morning, insomnia struck again.
So the criminal justice professor settled into the family room couch and opened her laptop to try to root out suspected crime right before her eyes: fake student bots.
Since learning several months ago that an unknown number of fraudulent students registered in classes throughout California’s community college system, Kim Rich, a Pierce College professor and department chair, has taken it upon herself to become a bot sleuth. After combing through her and other professors’ class rosters she suspects the problem has not gone away."
3.5 million travelers expected to pass through LAX this holiday season as Omicron arrives
LA Times, CHRISTIAN MARTINEZ: "Holiday travelers are expected to slam Los Angeles International Airport beginning this week, with the airport estimating it will see 3.5 million visitors between Thursday and Jan. 3.
“Last year, 1.85 million passengers went through LAX during this time, making this year almost twice as busy,” airport officials said Thursday in a release.
This year’s figures look to be a return to near 2019 levels, when 4.5 million travelers used the airport during the last pre-pandemic holiday season."
Fatal crashes persisted on Bay Area roadways during pandemic even as traffic dramatically declined, data show
The Chronicle, RICARDO CANO/STEPHANIE ZHU: "The Bay Area’s streets and highways emptied to precipitous lows last year amid shelter-in-place orders during the pandemic that thinned out the region’s notorious traffic. But fewer motorists didn’t lead to safer roads as fatalities held steady and, in some counties, rose above pre-pandemic figures.
In a two-pronged trend that unfolded following dramatic reductions in driving, traffic deaths persisted even as the overall number of crashes across the Bay Area dropped considerably, according to fatal crash data gathered by UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System and analyzed by The Chronicle.
The region’s nine counties totaled 462 traffic fatalities in 2020, just 30 fewer deaths than in 2019, while total crashes during this span dropped by 30%."
