Newsom

The Intensifying Newsom–DeSantis Rivalry

July 3, 2023 By Madeline Kearns 8 Comments

A 2024 general election between the two of them — as hypothetical as that is — would be a fascinating battle in the nation’s culture wars.

Last Fourth of July weekend, Gavin Newsom ran ads in Florida urging “all of you living in Florida to join the fight. Or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom.”

The rivalry between the governor of California and the governor of Florida, who each have four more years in office, has become increasingly fraught in recent months. Newsom has called Ron DeSantis a “small, pathetic man” for sending migrants to California, which he describes as “kidnapping.” DeSantis has been similarly personal. On the Mark Levin Show, the Florida governor suggested Newsom’s “obsession” with the Sunshine State might stem from the fact that his in-laws “moved from California to Florida during our administration, and they left during his administration.”

A few weeks ago, on Fox News, Sean Hannity asked Newsom if he would agree to a two-hour debate with DeSantis. “Make it three,” Newsom replied. “I would do it one day’s notice with no notes. I look forward to that.”

DeSantis said Newsom should stop “pussyfooting” around and throw his hat in the ring to “challenge Joe.” Newsom insists that he supports Biden entirely and has no intention of running for president.

A 2024 general election between the two of them — as hypothetical as that is — would be a fascinating battle in the nation’s culture wars. Both men are more ideological than either Biden or Trump. And in terms of strategy, Newsom and DeSantis are more similar than they’d like to think.

Consider their handling of corporations when they come under the influence of their political enemies. When Disney, under pressure from LGBT activists, proclaimed its aim to defeat DeSantis’s education-reform bill, the governor moved to strip the corporation of its 56-year-old “independent special district” status. Similarly, when Walgreens, in response to the Dobbs ruling, decided not to dispense the abortion drug mifepristone in certain states, Newsom suspended the state’s multimillion-dollar contract with the company.

“We stand for the protection of our children,” DeSantis said. “We will fight those who seek to rob them of their innocence. And on that point, there will be no compromise.”

Newsom justified his actions in the same terms: “California will not stand by as corporations cave to extremists and cut off critical access to reproductive care and freedom.”

With immigration, DeSantis has gone on the offensive — busing and flying migrants to blue states, including California. Newsom has acted with similar aggression on other culture-war issues. The transgender “sanctuary” bill he signed into law encourages children to come to California from out of state to receive trans drugs and surgeries. And trans isn’t the only tourism on offer. Newsom also funded a billboard campaign in other states, encouraging women to come to California to end their pregnancies. One ad promoting abortion even used a Bible verse.

Both Newsom and DeSantis are generally quick on their feet. Both present themselves as family men. And both have spoken about their faith-based values. DeSantis is a practicing Catholic. Newsom is definitely not, though he has spoken about the important “Jesuit values” he picked up while in college at Santa Clara University.

Their political differences are perhaps most obvious in their contrasting responses to the pandemic. And it’s on this that DeSantis could do serious damage to Newsom in any televised debate. In 2021, a year after Newsom’s first shutdown, masks were still mandated, indoor dining was limited, and schoolchildren were ordered to get the Covid vaccine (which was later walked back) in California. Meanwhile, Florida had no restrictions and banned private employers from mandating Covid vaccines.

According to the February PPIC Statewide Survey, 58 percent of California adults approve of Newsom’s handling of his job. However, it’s not clear that would carry over to the national level. In March, a Quinnipiac University poll of registered California voters found that 70 percent of voters, including 54 percent of Democrats, felt that Newsom shouldn’t run in 2024.

Click here to read the full article in the National Review

Newsom Proposes U.S. 28th Amendment on Gun Control

June 10, 2023 By Phil Willon and Taryn Luna 7 Comments

UC law dean calls the governor’s plan ‘terrible’

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday called for a U.S. constitutional amendment on gun control that would ban assault weapons and mandate background checks and waiting periods for purchasing firearms, a proposal that has little chance of passing in a nation deeply divided on the issue.

For Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment to be considered, legislatures in two-thirds of the states must vote in favor of a constitutional convention. Republicans currently control more than half of the nation’s state legislatures, some of which have recently taken action to reduce gun restrictions.

Newsom’s announcement is likely to be politically popular among national Democrats and in California, which has some of the toughest gun control restrictions in the nation. It could further the liberal governor’s efforts to expand his political influence on some of the most pivotal and controversial issues facing the country.

The proposal comes after Newsom in March launched a federal political action committee, dubbed the Campaign for Democracy, which he said he created to boost Democrats before the 2024 election and push back on Republican leaders who “ban books,” “kidnap migrants” and “stoke racism.”

Newsom’s proposed amendment on gun restrictions, which he announced Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, would outlaw the civilian purchase of assault weapons, raise the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, mandate universal background checks for gun purchases and institute a “reasonable waiting” period for all gun purchases.

“The 28th Amendment will enshrine in the Constitution common sense gun safety measures that Democrats, Republicans, independents, and gun owners overwhelmingly support — while leaving the 2nd Amendment unchanged and respecting America’s gun-owning tradition,” Newsom said in a statement Thursday morning.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the school of law at UC Berkeley, called Newsom’s plan a “terrible idea.”

Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, an amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of Congress or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed in a constitutional convention under that process.

“To me, what’s really frightening about it is we’ve never had a constitutional convention under that procedure of Article V,” Chemerinsky said.

“No one knows would it be limited to just the 2nd Amendment, or could it do anything? Could they do abortion or rewrite the Constitution? How is it going to be constituted? What are its rules?”

Chemerinsky said calls for constitutional conventions from conservatives have gained traction over the years, including a proposal to mandate a balanced federal budget. He said a balanced budget would devastate social programs, and liberals have argued against it by saying a constitutional convention is unprecedented and dangerous.

By endorsing the process for gun control, Newsom is eroding that argument, he said.

Chemerinksy also made the case that it’s unnecessary. Newsom’s gun control proposals could be carried out by state legislatures or Congress and would not violate the 2nd Amendment, he said. If Congress or lawmakers don’t have the political will to enact the measures through legislation, he said, they won’t do so through a constitutional amendment.

“That’s why I think that Newsom is making a huge mistake in calling for a constitutional convention,” Chemerinsky said. “It’s incredibly unlikely, because I can’t imagine two-thirds of the states calling for this and three-quarters of the states approving changing the 2nd Amendment when you’ve got a majority of states controlled by Republican legislatures, and it’s dangerous to be opening the door to giving credence to the idea of a constitutional convention.”

Newsom’s aides said the governor is calling for a constitutional convention after federal courts struck down several of California’s gun control measures. While rejecting the state’s 30-year ban on assault rifles in 2021, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez compared the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to a Swiss Army knife and called it “good for both home and battle.”

“If judges are taking radical approaches, the only recourse is to change the actual Constitution,” said Anthony York, a spokesperson for Newsom.

But Chemerinsky pointed out that none of the changes Newsom is proposing have been addressed by the Supreme Court yet.

“So maybe the Supreme Court will say these things violate the 2nd Amendment, but it hasn’t happened yet,” said Chemerinsky, who predicted the high court would at the least continue to allow background checks.

Newsom said he is working with the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature to make California the first state to call for the constitutional convention.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) did not comment Thursday. Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) commended Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward), the lawmaker who intends to draft California’s resolution to carry out Newsom’s plan.

The governor intends to travel to other states to make the pitch over the summer, his aides said.

Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher accused Newsom of chasing the national spotlight.

“Newsom’s proposal is a poorly thought out, attention-seeking stunt from a governor desperate to distract from his ever-growing record of failure,” Gallagher tweeted.

Click here to read the full article in LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, guns, Newsom

Gavin Newsom’s Lithium Valley – Spinning Yet Another Field of Dreams

March 1, 2022 By Ann Bridges 1 Comment

Technological advances, geopolitical interruptions, and alternative capital choices make this newly forming industry unpredictable

It is no surprise that Governor Newsom’s recent promises of visionary breakthroughs in clean energy in Southern California comes with breathtaking assurances of game-changing technology plus equity for all. Quite a spin of the facts, courtesy of his senior advisor Dee Dee Myers, previously of the Clinton Administration and advisor for the TV show The West Wing.

His February 22 formal statement is chock full of qualifiers: “could be,” “positions the state,” “experts estimate,” and “committed to.” Conveniently, results from this so-called green initiative won’t come due until after he has left office. Accompanying tax credits and earmarking taxpayer dollars to fund investments questionable in their long-term viability aren’t surprising either.

Newsom’s only credible assurance is to include labor standards, which President Biden also emphasized in the video conference highlighting just California’s contribution to the supposed nationwide effort to create a domestic supply chain for critical minerals. Tellingly, the press and public were excluded from discussions with Union guests.

So what’s really happening?

Proponents of mandating unrealistic policies and tight deadlines to fight climate change are finally having to confront the consequences of those sweeping decisions against a backdrop of an unreliable global supply chain impacting our national security.

The foundational elements to build all of these “climate change fighting machines” like wind turbines and EV batteries require literally tons of minerals to be extracted, processed, shaped, shipped, combined, and finally formed into a final product. The original Silicon Valley hardware engineers understood how to apply mind-boggling characteristics of many minerals into the advanced technology we blithely use today. But we have since ceded that expertise.

China now has a commanding chokehold on each of these steps producing the smartphones we hold in our hands, the Teslas zipping around our freeways, and the submarines and air fleet we rely on for national security.

Scrambling for answers, the Biden Administration made a series of federal grants and contracts mostly linked to our defense, not energy. Yet Newsom is re-labelling this transfer of funds from the Federal government to California to position himself as a global leader on climate change. Quite a spin.

The Pentagon intends to stockpile lithium in case of war, as we are woefully dependent on other countries to produce and China to process for us. Fully permitted lithium mines in Nevada are ready to go. Funding a future source in Imperial County on Federal and indigenous lands raises questions about whether this is about urgent stockpiling or political lobbying.

The Pentagon also granted $35 million to MP Materials in San Bernadino County (headquartered in Las Vegas with known ties to China, currently exporting its full output to China for processing) in order to create a HEAVY rare earths processing plant for a product it can’t mine—a significant differentiation. Its touted mines-to-magnet supply chain ends with manufacturing in Texas, not California.

Yes, the Department of Energy approved a small $1.2 million to the US Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory to lead a joint effort to quantify and characterize lithium resources in the underground geothermal reservoir near the Salton Sea. Yet it granted $14.9 million, added to California’s previous grant of $6 million, to Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy for a demonstration facility to capture these indeterminate battery-grade compounds of lithium. It is unknown if it can scale to deliver on the promises of output in quantity, quality, and cost-justifiability, let alone its environmental impact. Thus far this administration’s EPA and Interior Secretary have shown stunning deference to any requests to delay, reconsider, and halt existing domestic efforts to extract critical minerals, including lithium.

Contrary to quotes in Newsom’s advance press announcement, the local community representative at the White House live event expressed only “cautious optimism,” noting they have basic problems like reliable power, environmental damage, and “unfulfilled promises.”

Technological advances, geopolitical interruptions, and alternative capital choices make this newly forming industry unpredictable. Before California’s lumbering legislative processes and bureaucratic oversight can even begin, it’s likely that lithium-ion batteries may be improved upon, replaced, or deemed irrelevant in a world where India and China embrace fossil fuels, volcanoes explode, and wars occur, impacting the global air despite good intentions.

If Newsom has political capital to spend, perhaps he should lobby to mine the tonnage of copper being blocked in Alaska and Arizona by Biden’s Administration. Without copper, no electrical grid can be built out, no battery charging stations will exist, and we’ll have another taxpayer-funded boondoggle project.

Click here to read the full article at California Globe

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Legislature, Newsom

Homelessness, Crime Damage Newsom In Poll

February 16, 2022 By Phil Wilson 2 Comments

The governor’s approval rating falls as a majority of voters say state is heading in the wrong direction.

SACRAMENTO — Less than five months after Californians overwhelmingly rejected a recall effort against Gov. Gavin Newsom, voters are growing more dissatisfied with the governor, and a solid majority believe the state is headed in the wrong direction, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Concerns about rising crime and California’s seemingly intractable homelessness crisis emerged as the top political undercurrents driving voter dissatisfaction, with most of those surveyed giving Newsom poor marks on how he has handled those issues. Californians praised Newsom’s ability to guide the state through the COVID-19 pandemic, but two-thirds believe the crisis is subsiding, diluting its effect on his overall job approval ratings, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll.

“You see a lot of changing going on in the public’s mind. I think they’re focusing less on COVID, more on the other long-standing issues that the state has been facing,” DiCamillo said. “The state has some major issues, and he’s the governor. The buck stops there.”

Newsom’s prospects for reelection in 2022 still appear strong, however, with less than four months to go before the June primary.

Thus far, Newsom’s top challenger is Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle, a seasoned Northern California conservative lacking a statewide political profile. During his nine years in the Legislature, Dahle has never had to raise the tens of millions of dollars necessary to run for governor in a state as vast as California. Newsom already has raked in $25 million for his reelection effort. When announcing his candidacy, Dahle likened the task to “David versus Goliath.”

After the failed Sept. 14 recall election, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said he would consider running for governor in 2022 and on Monday said he will be announcing his decision soon. The moderate Republican received little support when he ran as a replacement candidate in the recall election.

According to the poll, 48% of registered voters surveyed approved of Newsom’s job as governor, while 47% disapproved — a difference within the survey’s margin of error. That’s down from the 64% approval rating California voters gave Newsom in September 2020 amid the first wave of the pandemic.

More than half of registered voters polled, 54%, believe California is on the wrong track, compared with 36% who believe the state is on the right path, with the remainder expressing no opinion. Voters were evenly split just last May.

While disapproval of Newsom has always been strong among conservatives, the poll found criticism rising slightly — 7 percentage points — among Democrats compared with six months ago, although Democrats still overwhelmingly give Newsom high marks.

Among Californians registered as “no party preference” or with other political parties, 41% approved of Newsom’s job as governor and 51% disapproved.

Majorities of Latino, Black and Asian American/Pacific Islander registered voters approved of Newsom’s job as governor, while a majority of white voters disapproved.

Since September, voter dissatisfaction has risen slightly among white, Latino and Asian American/Pacific Islander voters. Newsom gained support among Black voters during that time.

A spokesman for Newsom’s reelection campaign said the governor has “decisively guided California through historic and unprecedented crises” of the pandemic while taking action to address California’s most entrenched and challenging problems.

“His actions saved lives and provided real help to families as they faced uncertainty,” said spokesman Nathan Click. “He remains 100% focused on providing solutions to California’s most vexing challenges — from the pandemic and climate change to homelessness and public safety.”

Though the Berkeley poll found strong voter support for Newsom’s actions addressing the pandemic and climate change, the biggest danger sign for Newsom is growing voter anger over crime and homelessness, DiCamillo said.

Two out of three registered voters said Newsom is doing a poor or very poor job addressing homelessness, an increase of 12 percentage points from 2020, according to the survey.

On crime and public safety, 51% of voters surveyed said the governor was doing a poor job, up 16 percentage points from 2020.

“There’s a long history of state residents being concerned about crime. It hasn’t been that prominent in recent years, but now appears to be coming back,” DiCamillo said. “That issue has become much more prominent, and Newsom is much more vulnerable.”

Rising crime promises to be a major issue for Republicans in the 2022 election, especially in the races for governor and California attorney general.

Conservatives blame California’s ongoing struggles with crime on policies embraced by Newsom and the Democratic leadership at the state Capitol for decades.

That includes Democratic support for Proposition 47, the 2014 voter-approved ballot measure that reclassified some felony drug and theft offenses as misdemeanors, and Proposition 57, a parole overhaul measure ratified in 2016. This year, the Newsom administration expanded good-behavior credits permitted under Proposition 57, allowing an additional 76,000 prisoners to qualify for early release.

The Berkeley poll found that most voters want to see changes to Proposition 47.

Click here to read the full article at the LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Crime, Homelessness, Newsom

California Throws More Money at COVID-19 Contact Tracing, But Is It Too Late?

January 19, 2022 By Teri Sforza 4 Comments

One expert says that because omicron spreads so quickly, the millions spent on contact tracing could be better spent on more effective masks and more testing

Intensive contact tracing has helped contain COVID-19 outbreaks in some Asian countries. People test positive, they quarantine, and the folks they’ve had contact with are tracked down and asked to — or, in some nations, forced to — quarantine as well.

The U.S. has spent billions on contact tracing, and California alone will have spent $300 million on it through the next fiscal year. But researchers have found that 2 of 3 people with confirmed COVID-19 in the U.S. were either not reached or wouldn’t name contacts when interviewed, and public health authorities haven’t been able to monitor enough cases to stem the tide.

Now, as the pandemic enters its third year, the highly contagious omicron variant spreads like fire through dry grass. The incubation period can be as short as two days. The Centers for Disease Control recommends isolation for as little as five days. More people are testing at home — cases authorities don’t even count in their tallies — and some officials are throwing their hands up and suspending contact tracing.

“(T)he sheer speed of omicron’s transmission means people are exposed, infected and then contagious before the local health department can even identify an outbreak, much less get word to those who are exposed,” said officials in Oregon’s Multnomah County. “Because of that dynamic, contact tracing has become much less effective at lowering COVID-19’s risk, especially when cases are surging so high and when spending time in any indoor public space is essentially considered an exposure for anyone who isn’t up-to-date on their vaccines.”

Financial commitment waning

The financial commitment to contact tracing in California appears to be waning, but remains. The governor’s proposed budget shows that $258.3 million was spent on contact tracing over the first two years of the pandemic, with another $38.9 million going forward through the end of the next fiscal year.

The current and future spending breaks down to a projected $20.6 million this fiscal year, and $18.3 million next fiscal year, said Sonja Petek, principal fiscal and policy analyst for the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“Contact tracing remains one of our many key tools in responding to the spread of COVID-19,” said a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office. “It’s also an important measure utilized in high-risk and congregate settings. Contact tracing assists with notifying exposed people for possible post-exposure treatment, testing, and quarantine in a timely manner.”

Overall, Newsom’s budget proposes $110 million to increase public health and humanitarian efforts at the California-Mexico border — including vaccinations, testing, isolation and quarantine services — “and expanded statewide contact tracing activities to help keep Californians safe and slow the spread.”

Currently, 268 state employees have been redirected to contact tracing efforts, the governor’s press office said. But experts aren’t sure the investment will bring great returns — at least not right now.

Click here to read the full article at the OC Register

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: budget, contact tracing, Covid-19, Newsom

Newsom Budget: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

January 18, 2022 By Jon Coupal 1 Comment

The governor’s budget is a tale of the good, the bad and the ugly. We won’t see a real state budget until it emerges from the smoke-filled backroom following the May revise, but that didn’t stop Gov. Gavin Newsom from gleefully announcing to reporters how he would like to spend the windfall of other people’s money in a 400-page “summary” presented last week.

Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly of his proposal.

The Good.

The governor’s budget puts more money into the reserve accounts, accelerates the paydown of state retirement liabilities, eliminates some budgetary debt, and allocates 86 percent of the discretionary surplus to one-time spending rather than ongoing liabilities that has so often happened in past years.

That’s good because the good times won’t go on forever. While the budget projects healthy returns for the next couple of years, it notes that “[s]tructural (non-pandemic) downside risks to the forecast remain, including the challenges of an aging population, declining migration flows, lower fertility rates, higher housing and living costs, increasing inequality, and stock market volatility.”

That’s important because the top 1% of California taxpayers pay more than 50% of the state’s income tax revenues. The state is currently riding high on the wealthy’s stock market gains, but as the Federal Reserve starts raising interest rates, the party could be coming to an end, and soon.

The Bad.

The bad is that an already bloated bureaucracy is getting even more bloated. Under the requirements of Proposition 98, increases in spending for public schools and community colleges will be dramatic and, as has been much talked about in these pages recently, California’s public schools aren’t hurting for cash as it is.

According to the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics, in inflation-adjusted constant dollars, per-pupil spending in California for public elementary and secondary schools in 2017-18, the most recent year for which statistics are available, was $13,129, the highest ever.

Under the governor’s budget, schools would see more than $20,000 per student, putting California in the top five of states in education spending – with little to show for it.

Even worse is the fact that there is little in the budget to address waste, fraud and abuse generally, not just in education. There is nothing to prevent another fiasco like we saw with the $20 billion in fraudulent claims paid by the Employment Development Department; still no accountability with the bullet train project and, in fact, the boondoggle is getting billions more.

Click here to read the full article at OC Register

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: budget, California Politics, Newsom

California Farmworkers Now Get Overtime Pay After 8 hours. Some Growers Say It’s a Problem

January 10, 2022 By Nadia Lopez 2 Comments

For the past two decades during the harvest season, 58-year-old farmworker Lourdes Cárdenas would wake up at 3 a.m. to get dressed, say her daily prayers and prepare lunch before driving an hour south from her home in Calwa to a farm in Huron. She’d pick crops like cherries, nectarines, and peaches from daybreak until sundown — at least 10 hours a day, six days a week.

There would be days where she wouldn’t get home until 7 p.m or 8 p.m., depending on traffic, she said. For many of those years, she was paid minimum wage. There was no overtime pay.

“It’s a long work day,” she said in Spanish. “I’d get home very late, exhausted. It’s very hard work being in the fields.”

For years, hundreds of thousands of farmworkers toiling in California’s agricultural heartland weren’t entitled to overtime pay unless they worked more than 10 hours a day. But that has changed due to a 2016 state law that’s been gradually implemented over four years. As of Jan. 1, California law requires that employers with 26 or more employees pay overtime wages to farmworkers after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week.

That means many farmworkers like Cárdenas will now be compensated time-and-a-half for working more than eight hours. It’s a change advocates say is long overdue to provide the agricultural labor force with the same protections afforded to other hourly workers. But opponents argue that the law — though well-intentioned — strains farmers who already operate on thin margins and confront other financial challenges. Employers also say the new rules will disadvantage workers, as they’ll likely reduce hours in an attempt to cut increasing labor costs.

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Under the law, which was authored by Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, farmworkers began in 2019 to gradually receive the same overtime pay as employees in other industries. Farmworkers previously became eligible for overtime benefits after 10 hours, but the law has lowered the threshold for overtime pay by half an hour annually for the past three years, until reaching the standard eight hours this year.

In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Gonzalez said “none of my bills stole my heart more.”

The full implementation of the law for larger-scale growers marks the most recent win for labor advocates, who had been running a decades-long campaign to secure overtime pay for farmworkers. California is one of six states, alongside Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New York and Washington, to provide overtime pay to agricultural workers. Many states, however, only provide overtime pay after the 60-hour threshold has been met.

FRESNO GROWERS CONCERNED ABOUT FARMWORKER OVERTIME LAW

Eriberto Fernandez, the government affairs deputy director at the UFW Foundation, which sponsored the California bill, said the law secures a basic protection for a workforce that has long been exploited. He added that agricultural workers were excluded from the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that gave most employees the right to minimum wage and overtime pay.

“It’s a very historic and momentous occasion for farmworkers that they now, for the first time in the history of agricultural labor, have the same rights as all other Californians do,” he said. “For the first time since the 1930s, equal overtime pay now also applies to farmworkers.”

Fernandez said the law will provide farmworkers with more quality time with their families. He also said farmworkers, many of whom work ten- to twelve-hour shifts during the peak harvest season, will be fairly compensated for their labor.

“This is about leveling the playing field for farmworkers,” he said. “We’re hoping that this new law now puts farmworkers on equal ground with all other industries in California.”

But many growers say the new law could do more damage than good.

Ryan Jacobsen, a farmer and Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO, said the law doesn’t address the needs of the farming industry, arguing that agriculture requires a unique set of rules because it is subject to changing weather and seasons. And unlike other businesses, the labor-intensive industry requires more flexibility on scheduling and working, especially during peak harvest times, he said.

“Most of these jobs in the industry are still seasonal in nature and there are times of the year where there’s more work than there is in other times of the year,” he said. “In the California ag industry, there was always — up until the passage of this bill — an understanding that these employees would be able to make up these hours during these shorter windows because there’s not as much availability of farm agricultural work (in other times of the year).”

Daniel Hartwig, a fourth generation grape farmer from Easton who also works as the procurement manager at Woolf Farming, agreed. He said that the law makes an already fickle industry even more complicated for growers.

Growers have been concerned about labor costs increasing, in part due to California regulations, Hartwig said. He said many growers are reducing their employees’ hours and transitioning to cultivating other crops that don’t require as much human labor. Instead of planting fruit trees, Hartwig has switched over to nuts like almonds and pistachios, he said.

“We can’t absorb those additional labor costs,” he said. “So we’ve just kind of refocused on making sure more of our crops are able to be mechanically harvested. Those are the choices we’re making. (The law) is hurting farmers, and it’s hurting the farm workers as well.”

Fresno County broke its own record for agricultural and livestock production in 2020, peaking at more than $7.98 billion, according to the crop report from county Agricultural Commissioner Melissa Cregan. Nuts were among the top earners. Almonds were the county’s top-grossing crop, earning $1.25 billion, while pistachios made up $761 million, the report found.

Fernandez, of the UFW Foundation, said it’s “unfortunate” that farmers are reducing hours for their employees given the county’s record-breaking years.

“These are the same arguments that we hear over and over again about how these laws are going to destroy agribusiness in California,” he said. “And if anything, we’ve seen the opposite — we’ve seen the California businesses thriving. For them, it’s a matter of economics and of profitability. They’re choosing to shorten worker hours to save money that they would otherwise have paid for overtime pay.”

CALIFORNIA FARMWORKER WAGES INCREASING

Farmworkers are some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S, according to a 2021 report from The Economic Policy Institute. On average, farmworkers in 2020 earned about $14.62 per hour, “far less than even some of the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. labor force,” the report found. Farmworkers at that wage rate earned below 60% compared to what workers outside of agriculture made, according to the report.

Click here to read the full article at the Fresno Bee

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Farmers, money, Newsom

60% of S.F. Drug Incidents Are In The Tenderloin. That Number’s Rise Is One Factor In the Debate Over a ‘State of Emergency’

December 24, 2021 By Susie Neilson Leave a Comment

Last week, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood. A small, dense neighborhood in the heart of downtown, the “T.L.” is home to museums, the city’s theatre district and about 36,000 San Franciscans.

The Tenderloin has also long been a hotbed for illicit drug use, an issue made all the more urgent by the recent surge in overdose deaths. Data from SFPD shows that about 60% of San Francisco’s drug-related reported police incidents in 2021 have occurred in the neighborhood, up from about 40% in 2019, prior to the pandemic.

Breed’s declaration follows months of stories in national media focused on a perceived crime wave in San Francisco. Some city leaders and public officials, including San Francisco Police Department Chief Bill Scott and Supervisors Ahsha Safai and Catherine Stefani, have supported Breed’s emergency declaration, which came with pledges to offer additional services to people suffering from addiction. She also proposed increased funding to police in order to get “a lot more aggressive” with existing laws, including a city ordinance that prevents people from lying or sitting on sidewalks.

Other officials, like District Attorney Chesa Boudin, Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton and Public Defender Mano Raju, agree the Tenderloin is in crisis — but criticize the Mayor’s plans to increase policing and jail those who refuse treatment, saying they echo historic tough-on-crime policies that failed to reduce crime rates in the city or meaningfully help people with drug addictions.

As Breed and other city leaders begin to enact the state of emergency plan, which the Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on at 2 p.m. on Thursday, the Chronicle examined data kept by the SFPD to see what it could tell us how drug activity and policing in the Tenderloin has changed over time, focusing on the pandemic period.

SFPD data shows that the Tenderloin has consistently had the most drug-related incidents, defined as reports filed with the department about incidents involving drugs, of any of the city’s neighborhoods. This year so far, the T.L. has had 1,186 reported drug incidents — nearly two-thirds of the city’s total, even though the neighborhood accounts for just 4% of its population. Over that time period, the neighborhood had a reported drug incident rate of nearly 330 crimes per 10,000 residents. That’s more than three times that of SoMa, the neighborhood with the second-highest drug incident rate in the city, and nearly 15 times that of the Financial District, the third-highest.

Click here to read the full article at the San Francisco Chronicle

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Newsom, san francisco

The Intensifying Newsom–DeSantis Rivalry

Newsom Proposes U.S. 28th Amendment on Gun Control

Homelessness, Crime Damage Newsom In Poll

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