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Today, November 29, is Giving Tuesday - a day to support nonprofit organizations. Open California, the nonprofit organization that produces Capitol Weekly, The Roundup, The Capitol Weekly Podcast and many other nonpartisan projects is taking part in this year’s event, and we have received an incredible offer:
The Tribal Alliance of Sovereign Indian Nations has graciously offered to MATCH all donations we receive today, up to $2,500! The value of your donation will be DOUBLED if received by midnight tonight!
We hope you will take this opportunity to support informed, nonpartisan public policy journalism from Capitol Weekly and Open California. You can participate by visiting our donation page @ https://capitolweekly.net/donations/ -- Thank you!
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The Chronicle, SHWANIKA NARAYAN: "It’s the third holiday season since the pandemic began and, as in previous years, millions of Americans are traveling for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanza and other winter festivals.
This time around, the public health guidance is different. Almost three years into the crisis, COVID prevention measures such as mandatory masking and social distancing have largely been lifted. Most Americans have been vaccinated, many have gotten booster shots and at-home test kits are widely available.
Still, experts expect a pickup in COVID cases during the winter as people travel all over the country and gather indoors with friends and family. Along with the coronavirus, hospitals are also dealing with two other infectious diseases this year — respiratory syncytial virus and the flu — that are hitting early and hard, straining hospital capacity."
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI/RITA BEAMISH: "California virus transmission levels continue climbing at a pace on par with what preceded previous waves, including the summer BA.5 spike. And just as the winter virus transmission season kicks in, the federal government reports that it has yet another new coronavirus subvariant in its sights. For the record, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top U.S. health officials, people should recognize that we are still in the throes of the brutal coronavirus pandemic."
LAT, RONG-GONG LIN II/LUKE MONEY: "RSV and other respiratory viral illnesses are continuing to stress children’s hospitals across California.
Nationally, hospitalization rates related to RSV — or respiratory syncytial virus — are exceptionally high, according to Dr. Theodore Ruel, chief of UC San Francisco’s pediatric infectious diseases and global health division.
The per capita RSV hospitalization rate this month was the highest since the 2018-19 cold and flu season, Ruel said at a recent campus town hall. And while scientists are monitoring signs that RSV hospitalization rates may have peaked, it will take more time to be certain."
The Chronicle, NORA MISHANEC: "A new judge will preside over the high-profile criminal case of David DePape, the man accused of bludgeoning U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in a stunning attack that hardened political divisions across the nation.
Judge Stephen Murphy will take over the case as it proceeds to a preliminary hearing on Dec. 14, at which Murphy will decide whether to send the case to trial and whether to hold DePape in jail in the meantime.
Murphy will replace Judge Loretta Giorgi, who disclosed a potential conflict of interest during a hearing earlier this month, saying she had worked with Pelosi’s daughter, Christine Pelosi, at the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office during the 1990s. Giorgi presided over a brief scheduling hearing at the Hall of Justice Monday morning."
Capitol Weekly, AARON GILBREATH: "California recently approved three sweeping environmental laws: SB 54, SB 343, and AB 1201. Hopefully, this game-changing legislation will shape national policy about recycling, composting, plastic pollution, and human health.
We have many people to thank for the recent measures to reduce plastic pollution and increase plastic recycling, but we citizens rarely know who. Heidi Sanborn is one of those people.
The founder of three nonprofits, she is currently executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council and also serves as VP of the board of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, a community-owned electric utility."
Sac Bee, DAVID LIGHTMAN: "This could have been the line of presidential succession behind Vice President Kamala Harris when the new Congress convenes in January: Nancy Pelosi, 82, and Dianne Feinstein, 89.
Having two octogenerians (and three Californians) that close to the Oval Office didn’t happen. The list to start 2023 will probably go like this: Vice President Kamala Harris, 58, a former California attorney general and U.S. senator, likely House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, 57, a California Republican, and Senate President Pro Tem Patty Murray of Washington, 72.
The narrow escape from a succession line of octogenarians renews longstanding concerns about succession, and it’s not only about age. Suppose McCarthy, a caustic critic of all things Biden, becomes president? Is that what the American people elected in 2020?"
BANG*Mercury News, GABRIEL GRESCHLER: "In his first major political maneuver, San Jose Mayor-Elect Matt Mahan is calling for a special election — at a potential taxpayer cost of up to $11 million — to fill two city council seats up for grabs after this month’s election.
The move — which he argues would allow residents in District 8 and District 10 to have a say in who represents them — may put him at immediate odds with his more progressive colleagues just as he enters office. The other option is for the council to make appointments to the council.
“There is no more fundamental principle in our society than self-determination,” Mahan said outside of City Hall on Monday afternoon, flanked by dozens of supporters who chanted “Let me vote” and held signs urging a special election. “This is just simple, common sense. The people should choose their elected officials. Not politicians.”"
The Chronicle, DANNY SAUTER: "Before John Arntz took the helm two decades ago, the San Francisco Department of Elections was probably best known for churning through its directors and news coverage about ballot boxes floating in the Bay. The discovery of 63 missing ballot boxes after the 2001 election, retrieved as far away as Point Reyes, should remind us of the stark difference from those bad old days and the relative ease of our more recent elections under Arntz.
Indeed, it’s not hyperbole to suggest The Department of Elections under Arntz has set a national standard for how to run municipal elections. Arntz, who is about to finalize the results of his fourth election this year, has overseen increased voter turnout to historic highs, expanded vote-by-mail, opened new poll locations and implemented our ranked-choice voting system. In a city where department heads have recently made the news because they were being investigated by the FBI, the fact that most residents don’t even know John Arntz’s name is a testament to his low-key, competent way of doing business.
San Francisco receives a lot of attention for dysfunctional government and voters are rightfully upset with the direction of the city, but the Department of Elections runs counter to that narrative. Arntz was one of the few department heads who received near universal respect from across San Francisco’s fractured political spectrum. While the integrity of elections across the country has come under attack by antidemocratic forces trying to sow doubt and distrust, San Francisco has made voting easy and transparent."
LAT, JEAN GUERRERO: "Karen Bass’ victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race was another blow to the popular caricature of Latino voters as trending conservative.
The results suggest that the city’s mostly young Latino electorate embraces Black-brown solidarity. The up-and-coming Latino rejects the anti-Blackness espoused by Gen X and baby boomer city leaders in the now-infamous recording that threatened to fray Black-Latino relations.
While the ethnic breakdown of the vote is still forthcoming, Bass’ strong performance after election day suggests that Latinx voters, who tend to cast their ballots closer to election day, favored her more than expected. They helped her leap from 2.5 percentage points behind billionaire developer Rick Caruso to an insurmountable double-digit lead."
The Chronicle, JESSICA FLORES: "Days after San Francisco Mayor London Breed promised to make Union Square safer for shoppers, thieves ransaked a camera store in the vital downtown hub, fleeing with nearly $200,000 in goods on Saturday afternoon, police said.
Detectives are now investigating the armed robbery that occured as Breed and other city leaders are trying to lure people back to department stores this holiday season, a critical moment for the city’s economic recovery.
Last year, several stores were boarded up after a rash of retail thefts in the area."
BANG*Mercury News, ETHAN VARIAN: "Around 44% of Californians are renters. But as far as state Assemblymember Alex Lee can tell, just 5% of the California Assembly – four of its 80 members – don’t own a home.
In Lee’s view, that means the state’s 17 million renters aren’t adequately represented in Sacramento. So earlier this year, he and his three fellow renters in the Assembly formed a new “renters’ caucus” to advocate for tenant-focused policies. Another goal: pushing back on what they see as the outsized influence of landlord and real estate groups in state politics.
Along with Lee, 27, who represents parts of San Jose and the South Bay as the youngest member of the state Legislature, the new caucus so far includes fellow Democrats Matt Haney, of San Francisco, Tasha Boerner Horvath, of Encinitas, and Isaac Bryan, of Los Angeles."
The Chronicle, PHILLIP REESE: "Even as pandemic lockdowns fade into memory, COVID-19 has transformed California’s workplace culture in ways researchers say will reverberate well beyond 2022.
According to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, working from home for some portion of the week has become the new normal for a large segment of Californians. The data shows high-income employees with college degrees are more likely to have access to this hybrid work model, while lower-income employees stay the course with on-site responsibilities and daily commutes.
At a basic level, that means low-wage workers will continue to shoulder greater risks of infection and serious illness as new COVID variants sweep through job sites, alongside seasonal waves of flu and other respiratory viruses. Multiple studies have found that COVID took its greatest toll in low-income neighborhoods, whose workers were deemed essential during early pandemic lockdowns — the farmworkers, grocery clerks, warehouse packers, and other service employees who continued to report to work in person."
Sac Bee, JACQUELINE PINEDO: "In less than a week Sacramento’s streets will be hosting the annual California International Marathon, where more than 9,000 runners will take on the 26-mile route throughout Sacramento.
CIM is organized by the Sacramento Running Association and is popular among runners who want to qualify into the Boston Marathon and U.S. Olympic Trials.
With the race days away, here’s everything you should know if you plan to watch or just live in the area."
The Chronicle, MICHAEL CABANATUAN: "With final exams nearing for University of California students whose graduate instructors are on strike — and rent due for many of the strikers — this third week of the academic workers’ walkout is hitting a critical stage for everyone involved in the labor dispute.
With that it mind, several hundred striking researchers, graduate student instructors and postdocs gathered in an Oakland park Monday, marched to the University of California president’s office downtown and slid through locked glass doors a manila envelope including a letter to President Michael Drake demanding the university get serious about negotiating a settlement to the strike by 48,000 striking academic workers.
Surrounded by a crowd of strikers and supporters that filled Franklin Street between 11th and 12th streets in downtown Oakland — chanting “President Drake, it’s getting late, UC needs to negotiate” — the group tried to get the attention of a dozen police and security guards inside then slipped the letter through a gap in the doors, where it sat until long after the protesters moved on."
EdSource, MICHAEL BURKE: "As 48,000 academic workers across the University of California entered a third week of striking, hundreds of full-time faculty in the system pledged Monday to join the work stoppage and not teach or submit grades until the strike ends.
More than 200 faculty members across UC’s campuses had signed the pledge as of Monday afternoon.
“As long as this strike lasts, faculty across the system will be exercising their right to honor the picket line by refusing to conduct university labor up to and including submission of grades — labor that would not be possible without the labor of all other academic workers as well as university staff,” the faculty pledge states."
The Chronicle, JACK LEE: "After pleasant weather on Thanksgiving Day and warm temperatures over the weekend, Monday’s cold morning may have felt like a brutal start to the workweek. But be warned: Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are expected to be even chillier.
North Bay residents are expected to face the coldest temperatures. Overnight lows in Santa Rosa will dip down to around 30 degrees, for example.
San Francisco and the Peninsula aren’t expected to get quite as brisk. But the South Bay and East Bay will also face chilly conditions, with the potential for frost, especially in inland valleys."
Sac Bee, MAGGIE ANGST: "If you haven’t already, it looks like it’s time to break out those gloves and umbrellas — and potentially even the tire chains.
Following a warm and dry Thanksgiving weekend, temperatures across Northern California will plunge this week as multiple storm systems are expected to drop rain in Sacramento and dump snow on the Sierra Nevada.
The first storm, which arrives Monday, is forecast to dust the Sierra with up to 3 inches of snow and create powerful winds on the mountains. Heavenly Mountain Resort reported Monday morning that it shut down its gondola due to the high winds."
LAT, RYAN FAUGHNDER: "The Walt Disney Co.'s returning Chief Executive Bob Iger threw cold water on the idea of selling the company to Apple — or acquiring other major companies — during his highly anticipated Monday town hall for employees, according to attendees who were not authorized to comment.
During a Q&A session with “ABC7 Eyewitness News” co-anchor Leslie Sykes, Iger also stressed the need to make Disney+ profitable and signaled that cost-management measures, including a hiring freeze and travel restrictions, would remain in place — even though they were started by his ousted predecessor, Bob Chapek.
He also addressed the controversy over Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law and the planned relocation of 2,000 employees to the Sunshine State."
CNN COM WIRE SERVICE: "Elon Musk on Monday claimed that Apple has “threatened” to pull Twitter from its iOS app store, a move that could be devastating to the company Musk just acquired for $44 billion.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk said in one of several tweets Monday taking aim at Apple and its CEO for alleged moves that could undermine Twitter’s business.
In another tweet, Musk claimed that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. “Do they hate free speech in America,” he said, in an apparent reference to his oft-stated desire to bolster his idea of free speech on the platform. “What’s going on here [Apple CEO Tim Cook]?” Musk added in a follow-up tweet. He also criticized Apple’s size, claimed it engages in “censorship,” and called out the 30% transaction fee Apple charges large app developers to be listed in its app store."
The Chronicle, J.K. DINEEN: "Danny Haber is trying to re-imagine the way the Bay Area builds workforce housing.
Using an inexpensive “mass plywood” building material and focusing on small, standardized units that can be built at scale, his company has created an 800-unit pipeline that he says will produce apartments at less than $400,000 a unit — about half of what many developers pay in the Bay Area.
And in the process Haber, 34, is also hoping to do something that may be just as difficult: rebuild a public image that has been mired in controversy since he burst into the real estate industry nearly a decade ago."
Sac Bee, RYAN LILLIS: "Home values throughout California are cooling. In the Sacramento region, one county is going against that trend.
The median sale price for a single-family home in El Dorado County was $684,000 in October, up 5.6% over the previous month and more than 11% higher than the same time last year, according to data from the California Association of Realtors. That month-over-month increase was among the largest in California.
No other county in the Sacramento region saw a price increase in October. The median price in Placer County was flat, according to the state realtor group, and prices were down 1.4% in Sacramento. Yolo, Yuba and Sutter all saw October price drops of around 6% compared to September."
BANG*Mercury News, GEORGE AVALOS: "A big office building in north San Jose has been bought by a family of California billionaires in a deal worth more than $80 million, a transaction that hints at sturdy interest in Silicon Valley real estate.
The office building, located at 350 Holger Way, was bought by an affiliate headed up by Stewart Resnick and his wife Lynda Resnick, Los Angeles-area billionaires who are the founders of The Wonderful Co. In 2018, Stewart Resnick was reported to be one of the nation’s wealthiest farmers.
The Resnick-controlled affiliate bought the building in a deal worth about 84.9 million, including the price paid for the building as well as a loan that the billionaires assumed as part of their purchase, according to documents filed on Nov. 23 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office."
BANG*Mercury News, GABRIEL GRESCHLER: "If you gathered every property record amassed by Santa Clara County since its incorporation in 1850 and stacked them on top of each other, the pile would soar to the height of Mount Everest. It could wrap around Apple’s spaceship-like headquarters roughly five times – or run parallel to Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport’s runways back-and-forth three times.
You get the picture – it’s a lot of paper.
And for two employees in Santa Clara County, that stack is their main focus for the next five years. They face the daunting task of reviewing every property record for discriminatory language that excluded nonwhite residents across the state and country from buying and settling in certain areas, contributing to today’s segregated neighborhoods and racial wealth gap."
LAT, JAMES QUEALLY: "The desperation pervading Los Angeles County’s juvenile halls can be distilled into a single incident and its aftermath.
A veteran probation officer — too afraid of retaliation to reveal their name or gender — was so overwhelmed by the staffing crisis in the facilities that house the county’s most violent young offenders that they begged to be demoted so they wouldn’t have to go back inside.
The officer had been left alone as a fight broke out among more than a dozen youths. When they radioed for help, none came. The officer had to use chemical spray to stop the brawl — a controversial tactic the department was supposed to phase out after officers were accused of excessive force years ago."
AP: "President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers would take up legislation this week to impose the deal that unions agreed to in September.
“Let me be clear: a rail shutdown would devastate our economy,” Biden said in a statement. “Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down.”
In a statement, Pelosi said: “We are reluctant to bypass the standard ratification process for the Tentative Agreement — but we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt.”"
The Chronicle, RICARDO CANO: "A Board of Supervisors committee launched the latest chapter in the protracted clash over the future of the Great Highway on Monday by advancing a proposal that would keep the roadway car-free, part-time, through 2025.
If approved by the full board, the proposed pilot by outgoing Supervisor Gordon Mar, who represents the Sunset District, would keep in place the highway’s car-free hours — from noon Friday until 6 a.m. Monday — while city staff study its use.
The three-member Land Use and Transportation Committee moved the plan forward with “no recommendation,” and it’s unclear if supervisors will attempt to amend the proposal when it goes to a full board vote."
Sac Bee, BRIANNA TAYLOR: "Depending on the time of day, you won’t have to worry about feeding the parking meters situated on Sacramento’s central grid.
All parking meters in both midtown and downtown will be shutoff after 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and all day on the weekends now through Christmas. The city of Sacramento’s Free Holiday Parking Program is a continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic, plus an effort to entice shoppers to support local businesses throughout the holidays.
Remember: The rule applies to the roughly 4,000 metered parking spaces on the street; however, motorists must obey other parking restrictions like street cleaning times, as well as time and color zones."
The Chronicle, JOHN SHEA: "Barry Bonds could get his ticket to Cooperstown punched as early as Sunday, when his latest Hall of Fame bid will be determined.
A 16-person electorate was announced by the Hall of Fame on Monday, and Bonds and seven other era committee candidates must receive 75% of the votes — 12 — for election.
The group will meet in San Diego Sunday as a kickoff to the winter meetings and the results of the voting will be announced at 5 p.m. that day."
The Chronicle, ESTHER MOBLEY: "Margaret Duckhorn, who co-founded one of California’s best-known wineries, Duckhorn Vineyards, died on Saturday, Nov. 26, at age 83. The Duckhorn Portfolio, as the company she started is now known, did not disclose a cause of death.
With her ex-husband, Dan Duckhorn, she grew a small family business into one of the most recognizable wine brands in the world, laying the foundation for the Duckhorn Portfolio to become one of California’s only wineries that is publicly traded. Duckhorn helped stoke a nationwide thirst for Merlot, which was unpopular at the time the winery first started making it and evolved into one of the most in-demand wines in the U.S. in the 1980s and ’90s.
Duckhorn was also a trailblazing leader in the wine industry, serving as the president of the powerful Napa Valley Vintners trade association and the president of the California Wine Institute — one of the first women to hold each of those titles."
