- Latest News
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- Controversies
- Where is the Money Going?
- California and the Nation
- Unusual News
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L.A. Voters Restrict Pot Dispensaries, but the Medical Marijuana Fight Isn’t Over
Friday, May 24, 2013Voters, by a 63%-37% margin, approved Measure D, capping the city’s wild and wooly medical marijuana marketplace at 135 dispensaries. The new law is expected to receive legal challenges. David Welch, an attorney with Angelenos for Safe Access (creators of Measure F), indicated his group would probably sue the city, on the theory that the 2007 cutoff is arbitrary and unfair. He said that many shops that opened after 2007 would stay open in defiance of the law. Read More -
Report Points Finger at Doctors for Elective Surgery Choices being “All Over the Map”
Friday, May 24, 2013Women with breast cancer who live in the South San Francisco area are seven times more likely to undergo a lumpectomy with radiation than those in the South Lake Tahoe area. Men with prostate cancer are 18 times more likely to receive internal, localized brachytherapy radiation treatment than men in the Oceanside area. Read More -
School District Wants to Expel Mentally Disabled Teen Targeted by Undercover Cop
Friday, May 24, 2013Parents of a 17-year-old high school senior with Asperger’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, Tourette’s syndrome and various anxiety disorders are suing the Temecula Valley Unified School District for trying to expel him after he was busted by an undercover cop for selling the officer a couple of marijuana joints. Read More -
NorCal Tea Party Leads Charge against IRS that May Put Focus on Dubious Nonprofit Claims
Thursday, May 23, 2013The NorCal Tea Party Patriots filed its lawsuit—and asked for class-action status—in Cincinnati, where staffers at an IRS office singled out for scrutiny groups applying for tax-exempt status whose names indicated a political affiliation. Like the Tea Party. Read More -
San Francisco Bay Area News Sources Disappear in Merger
Thursday, May 23, 2013The "one powerful newsroom" will not be covering the Bay Area much. CIR stories will now “transcend geography” and cover national and international issues that “actually make a difference in people’s lives,” so “it doesn’t matter if they are about San Francisco or Sacramento or Washington, D.C.” Instead of the 1,000 stories covered last year, they are aiming to publish 200 this year. Read More
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Top Stories
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Why Did Caltrans Use Previously Banned Bay Bridge Bolts that Are Breaking?
Tuesday, May 21, 2013The bolts, which are actually special galvanized rods up to 24-feet long, were prohibited by Caltrans on bridges in 2000, according to the Chronicle, because of their vulnerability to hardening and cracking. The federal government has warned about using them for decades. But in 2002, Caltrans decided to use them anyway with “eyes wide open,” according to Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty. Read More -
Tesoro Wins OK to Make Tight California Oil Market Even Tighter
Monday, May 20, 2013Tesoro, the second largest oil refiner in California, received permission to buy the state’s BP refinery and Arco assets, despite anti-trust concerns that further market consolidation will hurt consumers. Tesoro and Chevron will own nearly half of California’s oil refining capacity, including its three largest refineries. California consistently has the highest gasoline prices in the country, generally attributed to erratic refinery production and low supplies of gasoline. Read More -
Gov. Brown’s Budget Shifts Cap-and-Trade Funds from Climate Control Fight
Thursday, May 16, 2013The law that set up the cap-and-trade program, AB 32, did not earmark exactly how money in the GHGR Fund would be spent. But the legislation’s formal name, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, and an accompanying directive that its proceeds support its goals, seemed to indicate that the money wasn’t meant to be dumped in the General Fund. Read More - more in this category
Controversies
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Is There Any Sound if 85,000 Trees Fall in Berkeley Hills while Students Are Away?
Thursday, May 23, 2013Some folks in the Bay Area are livid over the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) plan to cut down 85,000 trees in the hills near Oakland and the University of California, Berkeley. The agency has scheduled three public hearings on the controversial proposal in May while students are studying for finals or going home for the summer. Read More -
Immigrant Detainees Pay a Heavy Toll for a Short Phone Call
Tuesday, May 21, 2013At the Contra Costa West County Detention Facility (WCDF) in Richmond, one of the differences is the cost of making a phone call. A couple of weeks ago, protesters gathered outside the facility that houses 1,100 prisoners to argue that what amounts to upwards of a $20 charge for a 15-minute phone call is cruel and inhumane treatment of inmates. Read More -
Wrongful Death Suit Filed against Wells Fargo after Man Dies in Court Fighting Bogus Foreclosure
Tuesday, May 21, 2013Wells Fargo placed Delassus into default after the bank incorrectly charged him for back property taxes, which it turned out was really owed by his neighbor, not Delassus. Even after Delassus pointed out the mistake, which Wells Fargo acknowledged, the bank refused to correct the situation or help him bring his account current, resulting in the condo being seized and sold off. Read More - more in this category
Where is the Money Going?
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California-Based Apple Uses Irish Subsidiary to Dodge Billions in Taxes
Wednesday, May 22, 2013Using a web of overseas subsidiaries, particularly in Ireland, Apple went beyond the common multi-national corporation practice of stashing money in low-tax offshore havens to obtain, in the words of Senator Levin, “the Holy Grail of tax avoidance.” “It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere,” he said. Read More -
A Triple Dose of Bad News for Unemployed Workers
Friday, May 17, 2013Extended benefits for more than 1 million recipients have run out, those still getting benefits are seeing their checks slashed and customer service hours are about to be whacked. The cuts are a combination of sequester slashing and already existing administrative underfunding by the federal government. Read More -
California Veterans Need Help, but Not the $1.1 Billion Designated for Home Loans
Thursday, May 16, 2013Other financial institutions offer better deals. Only 1,300 loans were issued in 2003, a miniscule 83 in 2012 and 59 so far this year. Altogether, around $1.1 billion in bonds sits untouched while veterans go begging for other assistance. Activists have long agitated for more job training, mental health counseling and other services. Read More - more in this category
California and the Nation
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Frogs with a Deadly Fungus Feared Worldwide Are All over the State
Thursday, May 16, 2013They established for the first time that the frogs are spreading Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, known as Bd or chytrid, which was first described by scientists in 1999. The disease causes cardiac arrest in amphibians by thickening and hardening the skin, which interferes with their electrolytes. Frogs are dying en masse in Australia, Europe, Latin America and western U.S. states. The Caribbean has been devastated. Read More -
JPL Workers Allowed to Discuss Background Checks but Not Avoid Them
Wednesday, May 15, 2013Five of them continued to inform their co-workers, and complain, about what they considered to be a looming, unwarranted invasion of privacy. That drew disciplinary action. The five appealed the punishment and last week a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) judge ruled (pdf) that JPL had engaged in unfair labor practices and ordered it to remove letters of reprimand it had placed in their files. Read More -
Attorney Argues Georgia Should Ignore Federal Judge in California Because State Has Gay Marriage
Monday, May 13, 2013The week after a federal judge in California fined a group of lawyers for trolling the Internet looking for downloaders of porn and then suing them, ostensibly, for copyright violations, one of the trolls argued in a Georgia court that the judge should ignore the ruling because the Golden State has gay marriage. Read More - more in this category
Appointments and Resignations
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Democrats Lose Supermajority in State Senate before They Even Get Started
Monday, February 25, 2013Democratic State Senator Michael J. Rubio surprised his party and the governor when he announced last Friday that he would be resigning his seat to take a job as the manager of California government affairs for Chevron Corporation. Rubio, 35, said he wanted to spend more time with his wife and two young children, one of whom as special needs. Read More -
Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Who Is Jeffrey A. Beard?
Thursday, December 20, 2012Sentencing reform advocate and former Pennsylvania prisons chief Jeffrey A. Beard was named Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Wednesday by Governor Jerry Brown. He replaces Matthew Cate, who left in October after four and a half years to head the California State Association of Cities. Read More -
Director of the Department of Parks and Recreation: Who Is Anthony L. Jackson?
Wednesday, November 14, 2012Governor Jerry Brown, reaching outside the park service community, went career military instead and picked retired Major General Anthony L. Jackson, 63, as director of the troubled Department of Parks and Recreation on Tuesday. Jackson replaces Ruth Coleman, who resigned in July after $54 million was found stashed in department accounts while 70 state parks faced closure because of budget cuts. Read More - more in this category
Unusual News
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Navy Dolphins Near Coronado Find Torpedo—from the 19th Century
Wednesday, May 22, 2013Bottlenose dolphins stationed in San Diego and trained to find undersea objects located a torpedo in March near Coronado that was last used in the 19th century. The Howell torpedo, only one of 50 made between 1870 and 1889, was one of the world’s first self-propelled torpedoes. The Howell just found is only the second known to still exist. Read More -
Judge Considers Sentencing Dead Cop for Kidnap and Rape
Wednesday, May 22, 2013Westminster Police Detective Anthony Orban killed himself in jail last year after being convicted of kidnapping, beating and raping a waitress in 2010, but before his victim had the satisfaction of seeing him sentenced for his crimes. But last Friday, West Valley Superior Court Judge Shahla S. Shabet indicated that she was prepared to sentence a dead man because there were still legal issues that needed to be addressed. Read More -
Doctor/Minister Gets 14 Years for Pedaling Quack Cancer Cure
Monday, May 20, 2013Dr. Christine Daniel pitched her witch’s brew of suntan lotion and beef flavoring, which she promoted as the herbal product C-Extract, on Trinity Broadcast Network, online and at her Sonrise wellness center in Mission Hills. She charged dozens of terminally-ill patients up to $150,000 for treatments but cured no one. Read More - more in this category