California

Feud Between Native American Casinos and California Card Rooms Moves to Legislature

August 15, 2023 By Dan Walters 1 Comment

When California voters were deciding the fate of two competing sports gambling ballot measures last year – and defeating both after seemingly jillion-dollar campaigns – they were unwittingly passing judgment on three ancillary gambling issues.

Proposition 26, the measure sponsored by American Indian tribes that would given them control of sports wagering, contained three other provisions that drew little media attention. One would allow a few horseracing tracks to take bets on sporting events, a second would have expanded gambling in tribal casinos into roulette and dice games, and a third could have driven the state’s poker parlors out of business.

The third was an effort by the tribes to settle a long-simmering political and legal dispute with the card rooms over which kinds of games the latter could feature. The casino-owning tribes contend that their rivals, with such games as blackjack, have expanded into tribal territory under the state’s very complicated definitions separating legal gambling from illegal forms.

If approved, Prop. 26 would have given the state attorney general new powers to crack down on violations of gambling laws, including the power to close facilities that the AG deemed to be violators, and if the AG refused to act, a private party – such as an tribal casino – could file a civil action itself. Card room operators saw the passage as a death sentence and were relieved when the proposition failed.

However, it was not the end of the long-running gambling turf war, and hostilities are being resumed in the state Legislature in the form of a bill that would allow tribes to do what voters didn’t approve last year: file civil actions against the rival card rooms.

Senate Bill 549 began as a measure dealing with education when it passed the Senate, but in June its author, Sen. Josh Newman, a Democrat from Fullerton, stripped out its language and substituted verbiage lifted almost word for word from Prop. 26, giving tribes a three-month window next year to take legal action against their rivals.

Both sides are gearing up for war when the Legislature reconvenes this week. The tribes have a bottomless pit of political money and have long established themselves as a major interest group in the Capitol. But, the family that owns a large card room in Hawaiian Gardens, a tiny city – just one square mile – in Los Angeles County, has committed $5-plus million just this year to lobbying against SB 549.

Hawaiian Gardens is located just a few blocks from the boundary of Newman’s district and taxes on the Gardens Casino, one of the state’s largest card rooms, provides more than two-thirds of the otherwise impoverished city’s revenue.

This isn’t the first time the casino has been embroiled in political battle.

The casino’s late founder, Dr. Irving Moskowitz, was a major financier for settlements in territory claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians. As I wrote in a Sacramento Bee column 23 years ago, Moskowitz’s actions in Israel were supported by the nation’s hardliners but drew criticism from moderates and the conflict found its way into the Legislature over allegations that the city of Hawaiian Gardens had improperly used redevelopment funds to underwrite construction of the casino.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California, California Politics, casinos, unions

Tensions Flare As California GOP Gives Trump a Boost by Overhauling State Primary Rules

July 31, 2023 By Seema Mehta 6 Comments

In a move backed by former President Trump’s campaign, the California Republican Party on Saturday changed its rules for allocating delegates in the state’s presidential primary — a shake-up that could discourage other GOP candidates from campaigning here and make the state less competitive in next year’s nominating contest.

Tensions flared as the California GOP’s executive committee approved the plan, with some pro-Trump demonstrators denouncing the move, police getting called and two factions nearly coming to fisticuffs.

Although demonstrators argued that the state party leadership was trying to undermine the former president, the decision by the California GOP’s executive committee reflects a concerted effort by the Trump campaign to mold state party rules across the country to benefit his candidacy.

The Michigan Republican Party also recently changed its rules for awarding delegates in a way that’s expected to benefit Trump. Republicans in Idaho, Nevada, Louisiana and Colorado are considering other measures that could give Trump an advantage.

The new rule in California means a Republican presidential candidate who receives more than 50% of the vote in the March 5 primary will win all 169 delegates from California, which has more than any state in the nation. If no one reaches this benchmark, delegates will be awarded proportionally based on the statewide vote.

State party leaders argued that the new plan would draw candidates to compete in California.

“Today’s vote … was a massive victory for California Republicans who are eager to have a say in deciding who our Party’s 2024 presidential nominee will be,” state party Chair Jessica Millan Patterson said in a statement.

“Republican presidential candidates will not only be encouraged to spend real time campaigning in our state and making their case to voters, but Republican voters will equally be encouraged to turn out to support their chosen candidate to help them win delegates,” she added

But other Republicans say the plan will instead make California less competitive than if the party had stuck with some version of the system it has used for much of the last two decades, in which three delegates were awarded for each congressional district won, said Jon Fleischman, who was executive director of the state GOP in 2000, when it adopted this plan (though it didn’t go into effect until after the 2004 election).

Such a system allows a candidate to strategically target a handful of areas instead of trying to campaign and advertise in an enormous state with some of the most expensive media markets in the nation.

“The net effect of passing this proposal will be no presidential campaign will be incentivized to do any campaigning in California, period,” Fleischman said. “The cost to advertise statewide is too great and the impact of trying to motivate volunteers is too small. So they will go to other states and ignore California in the primary, as they ignore California in the general election.”

Trump’s campaign supported the plan because polling shows he can win more than half the votes in California’s GOP primary, allowing him to sweep up the state’s huge haul of delegates, according to an executive committee member who had spoken with a campaign official.

Trump strategists also believe a previous proposal — that the California GOP scrapped — could have helped Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, said the executive committee member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the insider conversation.

Under that system, delegates would have been awarded by congressional district, with two going to the winner in each district and one delegate going to the second-place finisher. California is so big, with 52 congressional districts, that such a system would have created an enormous “consolation prize” amounting to more delegates than those awarded by multiple other states combined.

Ken Cuccinelli, founder of the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down super PAC, blasted the state GOP’s decision to go the other route.

“Smoke filled back rooms do not reflect the will of or benefit voters in any state. Yet across the country games are afoot to enhance the potential outcome of primary elections for one former president who half of the Republican electorate no longer wants as the party leader,” said Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general who served in the Trump administration, in a statement.

But “even with these asinine primary rules changes,” he added, “we remain confident Governor DeSantis will become the Republican nominee and 47th president of the United States.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Had it not changed its rules, the California GOP would have lost half of its delegates to the Republican National Convention — a huge blow to the state’s clout. Either of the plans that were considered would have met the national party’s requirements for sending a full delegation.

California’s 2024 primary is scheduled for Super Tuesday on March 5, along with contests in more than a dozen other states. While California’s overwhelmingly Democratic tilt has long made it uncompetitive for Republican presidential nominees in general elections, the state could play a significant role in deciding the next GOP nominee — particularly if a candidate doesn’t take a commanding lead in earlier contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

By the time California votes in the spring, Trump could be under indictment in four separate criminal cases. He has already been charged in connection with an alleged hush money payment to an adult-film star in the final days of the 2016 campaign, and with mishandling and illegally possessing classified documents at his Florida home after his presidency ended.

Trump is also being investigated in Georgia on allegations that he attempted to overturn his 2020 loss in the crucial state to Democrat Joe Biden; and federal prosecutors have targeted the former president in an investigation into other efforts to keep him in office, including the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But Trump’s legal issues have not dampened support from his base — including the more than 50 supporters who staged a protest at the Marriott hotel in Irvine on Saturday morning.

The protesters saw the California GOP’s earlier proposal as a purposeful effort to harm Trump, and remained angry that a decision was being made by the party’s 100-member executive committee rather than by more than 1,400 members at their fall convention — a reflection of the distrust of party leadership among conservative activists across the country. They unsuccessfully pushed for a candidate having to receive a certain percentage of the vote to be awarded any delegates.

“There’s a part of me that does think that maybe they’re trying to take votes away from Trump, specifically, who’s coming in strong, and so they’re kind of thinking, ‘What can we do to take away votes for Trump?’” said Bonnie Wallace, president of the Greater Pasadena Republican Assembly. As a state party delegate, she was able to observe the committee meeting, which was closed to the media, but she was unable to vote on the matter.

“What I heard in there is, ‘Oh, we need to open this up so all the candidates are welcome. … If they get 5% of the vote, they’ll get something,” added Wallace, who carried a sign that read, “CAGOP & RNC/Why not Trump? Stop supporting corruption!” “You know, we need to whittle things down. We don’t have participation trophies.”

The executive committee approved the delegate allocation plan on a 53-16 vote. State party officials said they could not wait for the convention to debate the matter due to a tight deadline for submitting plans to national Republicans.

The protest was driven in part by fury and confusion sowed on social media, where far-right activists argued that Millan Patterson and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, who effectively controls the state party, were trying to derail Trump’s candidacy.

“They are trying to change the laws so they can orchestrate a brokered convention at the National convention and steal the GOP nomination from Donald Trump,” Laura Loomer, a Trump supporter from Florida who has a history of spreading conspiracies to her large online following, wrote on Twitter on July 20. “We can’t allow [Millan Patterson] and [McCarthy] to get away with their deceptive rule changes that are designed to screw Donald Trump.”

Millan Patterson and McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment on the accusations.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California, Primary, Trump

Mass Media Hysteria Over ‘Dangerously Hot’ Summer Heat

July 16, 2023 By Katy Grimes 4 Comments

Long before ‘climate change hysteria,’ Sacramento had such hot summer days, we kids couldn’t walk barefoot on the sidewalks

Meteorologists forecasted June would be unseasonably hot. It wasn’t – we had lovely cool weather in June.

Now that Summer has finally arrived in California, many of these shameless green agenda forecasters are warning of a “dangerously hot” summer.

Yesterday this dangerously hot weather hit 94 degrees in Northern California after being told it would be 102. Today is is predicted to be 101 degrees. “Dangerously hot.”

The Sacramento Bee, one of the climate hysterics, reports:

“After two years of severe drought, record winter rains and now sweltering heat, more than four in ten Californians reported being personally affected by an extreme weather event in the last two years, a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found. The survey released Thursday showed that nearly 80% of adults think climate change is contributing to extreme weather in the state and 82% consider the climate a top or near-top concern.”

The PPIC poll was funded by the Arjay and Frances F. Miller Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Windy Hill Fund. The Arjay and Frances F. Miller Foundation is not rated on Charity Navigator or Guidestar, despite an IRS ruling year of 1957. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, created in 1964, supports environmental causes and population control programs, according to Influence Watch. The Windy Hill Fund is a total mystery.

The hyperbole in the PPIC poll is ripe as they claim “Californians are facing ‘weather whiplash’ and heat waves as the global climate changes.”

Despite historical polling responses finding that climate change is always far down on a list of concerns, the PPIC reports:

When asked how much climate change is affecting their local community, 25 percent say “a great deal” and 46 percent report that is having “some” effect. Overwhelming majorities believe that climate change is a “very” or “somewhat” serious threat to California’s future economy and quality of life; however, partisans differ on these issues.

Perhaps this mass hysteria is bolstered by Governor Gavin Newsom’s “extreme heat warning and ranking system.”

Last September, Gov. Newsom signed a bill into law to create an extreme heat warning and ranking system in California. The Globe reported:

Assembly Bill 2238, jointly authored by Assemblywoman Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood) and Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella), will create a ranking and advance warning system in conjunction with the Department of Insurance and the Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program (ICARP), a wing of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) that focuses on climate change impacts. Such a system will be developed by January 2024 and will also require ICARP to develop a public program around the ranking system and work with local and tribal governments in implementing the system locally, develop guidance in preparing and planning for extreme heat, and recommend adaptation measures.

Pay particular attention to this: Newsom’s Department of Insurance and the Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program (ICARP), a wing of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) that focuses on climate change impacts.

And we wonder why our insurance rates are skyrocketing…

California’s Missing-in-Action Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara opined:

“California is once again leading the world in fighting climate change and its deadly effects. Ranking heat waves will be a powerful new tool to protect all Californians alongside Governor Gavin Newsom’s Extreme Heat Action Plan. I applaud the Governor’s and the bill’s joint authors’ continued leadership on these necessary extreme heat investments and policies that will save lives and close the protection gap for our most at-risk communities as we face more heat waves in the years ahead.”

My weather app, which is far more accurate than most television meteorologists – and a lot less hyperbolic – reports that is will be 101 today.

Oh NO!!!

This “dangerously hot” day precipitated the Sacramento Zoo to announce it will close early today at 1:00pm.

Last summer city officials imposed a soft lockdown on city residents: The parks were closed due to the forecasted heat wave. Parks are where people retreat when the weather is hot, to get out of hot homes and apartments.

It was 106 degrees in Sacramento July 2nd. Today it could be 101 degrees. This is what is known as hot summer weather in California. We native Californians also know this is normal.

As a kid, I remember such hot Sacramento summer days, I couldn’t walk barefoot on the sidewalks.

But no one cautioned us to “be safe” or “stay hydrated.” In fact, back when I was a kid, parents told us to put shoes on and to stop being stupid.

In July 1973, Sacramento’s hottest day was 107 degrees.

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California, heatwave, Weather

When Will the Legislature Vote on California Reparations?

June 25, 2023 By Wendy Fry 11 Comments

Next Thursday, California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations plans to hand over to the state Legislature its extensive report and recommendations for how to compensate eligible Black Californians for the enduring harms of slavery.

As historic a moment it may be, it won’t mean advocates of reparations have crossed the finish line.

Lawmakers will then have to decide which of the task force’s recommendations they want to turn into bills for consideration. Those bills will then have to be voted on by the Assembly and Senate, and if approved, sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom to be signed into law or vetoed. And all that may not happen until next year.

“For the most part, chances are there will not be legislation produced this legislative year,” state Sen. Steven Bradford — a Democrat from Gardena, task force member and vice chairperson of the Legislative Black Caucus — told CalMatters on Wednesday.

“The recommendations will probably come in the form of a bill that will be introduced probably at its earliest in December of this year and it will move through the process in the next legislative cycle,” he said.

After more than two years, hundreds of hours of public meetings and thousands of pages of public documents, the centerpiece of the task force’s recommendations is economic modeling for how the state can calculate how much each eligible Black Californian may be owed.

Economists estimate eligible Black residents may be owed a total of more than $800 billion for decades of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination. The $800 billion is more than two-and-a-half times the total spending in California’s $300 billion-plus annual budget.

That price tag has been met with a cold response from other lawmakers and Newsom, who signed the law creating the task force. Very few lawmakers have spoken in favor of the task force’s recommendations and Newsom’s office continues to say the governor is waiting for the final report to be released.

Bradford has floated the idea of diverting 0.5% of the state’s annual budget to generate a $1.5 billion annuity to fund reparations programs and payments over time.

“To their defense, in a sense, many are saying ‘We’re waiting for the final report,’ which will be out next week. And then we’ll see where our real allies are at, after that,” Bradford said.

According to the Department of Justice, the final report is expected to look nearly identical to the draft of the final report that the task force approved at its last meeting in May, which is already available online.

The task force’s final meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday in the first floor auditorium in the March Fong Eu Secretary of State building in the 1500 block of 11th Street.

Reparations calculator: CalMatters has created an interactive tool to estimate how much someone might be owed in reparations for slavery and racism. Look it up here, watch a TikTok about it, see it on Instagram and read the full story from Wendy Fry of CalMatters’ California Divide team.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California, California Politics, Legislature, reparations

California Insurance Market Rattled by Withdrawal of Major Companies

June 7, 2023 By Michael Blood 1 Comment

Two insurance industry giants have pulled back from California’s home insurance marketplace, saying that increasing wildfire risk and soaring construction costs have prompted them to stop writing new policies in the nation’s most populous state.

State Farm announced last week it would stop accepting applications for all business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance, citing inflation, a challenging reinsurance market and “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.” The decision did not impact personal auto insurance.

“We take seriously our responsibility to manage risk,” State Farm said. “It’s necessary to take these actions now to improve the company’s financial strength.”

Allstate, another insurance powerhouse, announced in November it would pause new homeowners, condo and commercial insurance policies in California to protect current customers.

“The cost to insure new home customers in California is far higher than the price they would pay for policies due to wildfires, higher costs for repairing homes and higher reinsurance premiums,” Allstate said in a statement.

California’s unsettled market aligns with trends across the country in which companies are boosting rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters in the era of climate change. Florida and Louisiana have struggled to keep healthy insurance markets following extensive damage from hurricanes. Premiums are rising in Colorado amid wildfire threats, and an Oregon effort to map wildfire risk was rejected last year because of fears it would cause premiums to skyrocket.

Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In recent years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in state history.

Some California homeowners already are going without coverage, and a shortage of new policies could make it more difficult to buy a home. A state-run pool that serves as the insurer of last resort for many could face pressure as enrollments surge.

The state pool — the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan — provides basic fire insurance coverage for properties in high-risk areas when traditional insurance companies will not. Enrollments have jumped in recent years to 272,846 homes in 2022.

“We just don’t have a stable insurance market,” said state Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat from Napa, whose Northern California district has been charred by wildfires. “What’s happening is a lot of people in my district and frankly other districts are … going naked — they have no insurance.”

According to data compiled by the industry-supported Insurance Information Institute, California has more than 1.2 million homes at risk for extreme wildfire, far more than any other state.

“The number of acres burned in California has grown steadily in recent years, as more people are moving into fire-prone areas of the state,” the institute said in a statement on the company departures from California. “More homes in harm’s way — combined with rising costs of repairing or replacing houses either damaged or lost to fire — leads to increased insured losses.”

In Colorado, which has been hit by devastating wildfires, insurance premiums have been rising significantly, and some smaller insurance companies have been pulling back from covering properties. A study commissioned by state lawmakers found that 76% of carriers decreased their exposures in Colorado in 2022, leaving the five largest insurance companies to dominate the market.

Florida has struggled to keep the insurance market healthy since 1992, when Hurricane Andrew flattened Homestead, wiped out some insurance carriers and left many remaining companies fearful to write or renew policies in Florida. Risks for carriers also have been growing as climate change increases the strength of hurricanes and intensity of rainstorms.

Louisiana is in the midst of an insurance crisis, exacerbated by hurricanes Delta, Laura, Zeta and Ida in 2020 and 2021. As claims piled up, companies that wrote homeowners policies in the state went insolvent or left, canceling or refusing to renew existing policies.

In California, the loss of large insurers could create more pressure to loosen consumer-minded policies that have held down rates in the state for years. Voters approved Proposition 103 in 1988, which allows the state insurance commissioner to reject proposed rate increases and order refunds. It has been credited with saving consumers billions of dollars, but the industry says it places constraints on accurate underwriting and pricing risk.

Last year, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara advanced regulations requiring insurers to give discounts to customers if they followed new standards like building fire-resistance roofs and creating defensible space around their homes.

Before their announcements, State Farm and Allstate both had been seeking significant rate increases.

Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan advocacy group, said State Farm’s decision was unlawful.

“Insurance companies can’t just stop selling insurance to consumers in order to make more money for themselves,” Harvey Rosenfield, the author of Proposition 103 and the founder of the group, said in a statement. “They have to open their books and get the (state) insurance commissioner’s approval.”

Lara’s office didn’t respond to an email request for comment.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California, Fire, insurance companies

Davis Killings Renew Focus on Death Penalty

June 2, 2023 By Anita Chambria 4 Comments

In Yolo County, just west of Sacramento, the decision on whether to pursue the death penalty rests with one man, Dist. Atty. Jeff Reisig.

Of course, the same is true in California’s other 57 counties, where district attorneys ultimately make the call. But, as Reisig told me when I sat down with him recently, “It’s absolutely fair to say that in 58 counties in California, every D.A. probably does it differently.”

Reisig may soon be facing that decision yet again, for about the 30th time in his more than 16 years in office, in the case of the young man accused in a series of stabbings that terrorized the nearby college town of Davis. Over the course of a few days in April, two men were killed and a woman was knifed through the fabric of her tent, leaving her alive but in critical condition.

The suspect in the unexplained spate of violence is 21-year-old Carlos Reales Dominguez, a former UC Davis student who has pleaded not guilty and remains in custody in the Yolo County jail.

It’s the kind of frightening and inexplicable case that leaves many of us split on what justice could look like if Dominguez is eventually found competent to stand trial — especially in a state where the death penalty remains on the books but is impossible in practice since Gov. Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on it with an executive order in 2019 and shuttered the state’s death chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

So I asked Reisig how he’ll decide — and why.

Reisig can’t speak in specific terms about the Dominguez case, of course, but he was willing to walk me through the process he uses in general, and how both the law and the sentiments of Yolo residents weigh into it.

First off, he told me he doesn’t care about Newsom’s executive freeze.

In fact, Reisig said he considers it an authoritarian overreach for the governor to insert himself into the death penalty debate after voters in both 2012 and 2016 decided to keep the option on the books.

He points out that another governor could reverse Newsom’s order, though in dark-blue California, that is unlikely.

The moratorium “has no basis, no influence on whether or not I’m going to do my job,” Reisig said. “If the voters, you know, are given another chance on an initiative and they reject [the death penalty], so be it. That’s democracy. But what we’re living through right now, with the governor’s self-imposed moratorium, I think, is really not democracy.”

Reisig pointed out that only a few types of cases qualify for the death penalty — most commonly first-degree capital murder cases with a narrow set of special circumstances such as lying in wait or killing a police officer. So the first part of his decision is just running though the law to see if a case qualifies.

On the surface, this case could, given the charges. But at a recent hearing, a judge ordered a mental competency evaluation for Dominguez, who unsuccessfully asked to represent himself. That first competency hearing is set for June 20 and will likely begin a lengthy process of determining his fitness for trial.

For Reisig, if a suspect is determined to have a mental illness that played a significant role in the commission of the crime, he won’t pursue capital punishment.

He considers it “profoundly” wrong to seek the death penalty for someone who can’t understand their actions, which seems obvious.

But I promise you some D.A.s would contest a finding of mental incompetency no matter what.

If the mental competency is there and the case qualifies legally, Reisig begins his own internal investigation that looks not just at the crime, but circumstances that make it worse than the average capital murder (aggravating factors), as well as mitigating factors such as whether the person was under duress that may offer some explanation.

He also considers the “special K” evidence, named after its position in the applicable penal code, that’s basically a catch-all for anything else that’s relevant.

“And for that, you literally go back to birth,” he said. “You look at, has this person demonstrated violence throughout their life? Are they a Charles Manson kind of guy? Or is it just like a one and done?”

Interestingly, while a D.A. can consider age in the final decision, age isn’t considered a mitigating factor — meaning suspects don’t get a break just because they’re youthful.

“Just the fact that somebody is young, in their 20s or whatever, does not mean by law that [they’re] not eligible for or not appropriate for the death penalty,” he said.

Once all that evidence is gathered, he brings together his top advisors and they hash it out. “We talk about it, we debate it,” he told me. “We dig, we ask more questions. Sometimes those conversations can take hours, sometimes it’s days, sometimes we’re thinking about it over, you know, weeks.”

But once that team makes a recommendation, “I make the decision,” he said.

Part of that final call is whether he thinks he can win at trial.

Reisig calls Yolo “the most liberal county from Bakersfield to the Oregon border.”

That’s one of the reasons that in his nearly two decades as its top prosecutor he has chosen to pursue the death penalty only one time: in the 2008 murder of Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputy Jose Antonio Diaz (though he inherited a death penalty case from his predecessor too).

“That’s come up a lot, where the case on its face, we all can look at it and say, ‘Yeah, this guy is really the extreme. Like he’s a psychopath. This is terrible. He meets all the statutory elements.’ But will a jury of Yolo County folks go for that? And that, I mean, that changes county to county, right?”

Reisig said that because “people have such entrenched views” on the death penalty, it can be hard to even seat a jury on a capital case.

He points out that, legally, a juror has to be willing to consider either life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty. “Well, good luck,” he said of finding jurors open to weighing both.

“People come in and they’re like, ‘No, I will never vote for the death penalty,’ or ‘This guy, this person should always get the death penalty,’” he said. “And so I don’t want to pursue a death sentence on somebody that I know, based on my experience, I have no chance of getting 12 people to agree.”

In the case of Diaz’s murder, Reisig won a death penalty conviction in 2011 against Marco Topete after a jury deliberated for days. Reisig said he and the defense team screened more than 600 jurors before seating their panel — a tough task in a county of about 200,000 people.

In the case he inherited from a previous district attorney, the 2005 killing of CHP Officer Andy Stevens, the jury took only two days to decide on death for Brendt Anthony Volarvich, then 22 and a member of a white pride gang called the Peckerwoods.

Before I left, I asked Reisig if he is for or against the death penalty, and he told me it’s not about his personal beliefs, though “if the people voted to do away with the death penalty, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

Personally, I am against it precisely because there’s so much discretion in how it is applied. How can we ever feel confident it’s fair, regardless of the moral debate?

Support for the death penalty has fallen dramatically across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, as have the number of executions and death sentence convictions.

In 1999, executions reached their highest annual number with 98 people put to death.

Death sentences peaked a few years earlier in 1996, with 315.

Click here to read the full article in LA Times

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California, California Politics, murder

Kamala Harris Touts Launch of $4B Research Center in Silicon Valley

May 24, 2023 By Joe Garofoli Leave a Comment

Vice President Kamala Harris appeared in Sunnyvale on Monday to laud a Silicon Valley semiconductor toolmaking company for pumping $4 billion into a research facility in the region, an investment that would create the largest such enterprise in the world.

The facility, which will be called the Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center, is projected to open in 2026 and create up to 2,000 engineering jobs, according to Applied Materials, the world’s largest manufacturer of the tools used to make semiconductor chips. The facility, to be built in Sunnyvale, is expected to be the size of three football fields.

Applied Materials will invest in the facility over the next seven years and expects to apply for money from the federal subsidies in the CHIPS Act, a $52 billion package of subsidies that President Biden signed last year in part to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign chipmakers. That legislation included $13 billion dedicated to research and development.

Harris said Applied Materials decided to invest in the research facility because of those incentives.

Demands in the near future for better technology, Harris said, will “require a new generation of semiconductors. Semiconductors that are more compact, more efficient, more powerful and more important.”

The new facility “will potentially be a hub for collaboration” where “the brightest minds will gather to share data and expertise,” she said.

Administration officials say more than 300 companies have expressed interest in applying for the CHIPS Act funds, representing potential projects in 37 states and all parts of the semiconductor industry. Harris said the administration’s technology focus has spurred $140 billion of private investments in the semiconductor industry this year. Plans for new manufacturing facilities have broken ground over the past couple of years in Idaho, Arizona, Ohio and California, she said.

Harris, who has traveled to meet with semiconductor executives in Japan and Singapore in an effort to lure investment in U.S. manufacturing, met privately Monday with nearly two dozen tech executives, including Gary Dickerson, CEO of Applied Materials, Mark Liu, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Naga Chandrasekaran, senior vice president of Micron Technology.

Dickerson said it was important to create the research center in Sunnyvale, “in the heart of Silicon Valley.”

“By investing in manufacturing capacity, we will create a more resilient supply chain,” Dickerson said.

Click here to read the full article in the SF Chronicle

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California, California Politics, Kamala Harris

Los Angeles Area Still Blanketed by Snow in Rare Heavy Storm

February 26, 2023 By John Antczak and Ken Kusmer 5 Comments

A powerful winter storm that swept down the West Coast with flooding and frigid temperatures shifted its focus to southern California on Saturday, swelling rivers to dangerous levels and dropping snow in even low-lying areas around Los Angeles.

The National Weather Service said it was one of the strongest storms to ever hit southwest California and even as the volume of wind and rain dropped, it continued to have significant impact including snowfall down to elevations as low as 1,000 feet (305 meters). Hills around suburban Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, were blanketed in white, and snow also surprised inland suburbs to the east.

Rare blizzard warnings for the mountains and widespread flood watches were ending late in the day as the storm tapered off in the region. Forecasters said there would be a one-day respite before the next storm arrives on Monday.

After days of fierce winds, toppled trees and downed wires, more than 120,000 California utility customers remained without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us. And Interstate 5, the West Coast’s major north-south highway, remained closed due to heavy snow and ice in Tejon Pass through the mountains north of Los Angeles.

Multiday precipitation totals as of Saturday morning included a staggering 81 inches (205 centimeters) of snow at the Mountain High resort in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and up to 64 inches (160 centimeters) farther east at Snow Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Rainfall totals as of late Saturday morning were equally stunning, including nearly 15 inches (38.1 centimeters) at Los Angeles County’s Cogswell Dam and nearly 10.5 inches (26.6 cm) in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles.

“Quite a remarkable storm the last few days with historic amounts of precip and snow down to elevations that rarely see snow,” the LA-area weather office wrote.

The Los Angeles River and other waterways that normally flow at a trickle or are dry most of the year were raging with runoff Saturday. The Los Angeles Fire Department used a helicopter to rescue four homeless people who were stranded in the river’s major flood control basin. Two were taken to a hospital with hypothermia, said spokesperson Brian Humphrey.

In the Valencia area of north Los Angeles County, the roiling Santa Clara River carried away three motorhomes early Saturday after carving into an embankment where an RV park is located. No one was hurt, KCAL-TV reported, but one resident described the scene as devastating.

The storm, fueled by low pressure rotating off the coast, did not depart quietly. Lightning strikes shut down LA County beaches and scattered bursts of snow, showers and thunderstorms persisted.

Derek Maiden, 57, who lives in a tent in LA’s Echo Park neighborhood, collected cans in the rain to take to a recycling center. He said this winter has been wetter than usual. “It’s miserable when you’re outside in the elements,” he said.

Meanwhile, people farther east were struggling to deal with the fallout from storms earlier this week.

More than 350,000 customers were without power in Michigan as of early Saturday afternoon, according to reports from the the two main utilities in the state, DTE and Consumers Energy. Both said they hope to have the lights back on for most of their customers by Sunday night.

Brian Wheeler, a spokesman for Consumers Energy, said half an inch (1.27 centimeters) of ice weighed down some power lines — equivalent to the weight of a baby grand piano.

“People are not just angry but struggling,” said Em Perry, environmental justice director for Michigan United, a group that advocates for economic and racial justice. “People are huddling under blankets for warmth.”

She said the group will demand that utilities reimburse residents for the cost to purchase generators or replace spoiled groceries.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Allison Rinker was using a borrowed generator to keep her 150-year-old house warm Saturday after two nights in the cold and dark.

“We were all surviving, but spirits were low on the second day,” she said. “As soon as the heat came back and we were able to have one or two lights running, it was like a complete flip in attitude.”

After driving to a relative’s home to store food, Rinker, 27, compared the destruction of trees to tornado damage.

“The ice that was falling off the trees as it was melting was hitting our windshield so hard, I was afraid it was going to crack,” she said. “There’s just tree limbs everywhere, half of the trees just falling down. The destruction is insane.”

Back in California, the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service forecast heavy snow over the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada through the weekend.

The low-pressure system was also expected to bring widespread rain and snow in southern Nevada by Saturday afternoon and across northwest Arizona Saturday night and Sunday morning, the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas said.

An avalanche warning was issued for the Sierra Nevada backcountry around Lake Tahoe, which straddles the California-Nevada border. Nearly 2 feet (61 cm) of new snow had fallen by Friday and up to another 5 feet (1.5 meters) was expected when another storm moves in with the potential for gale-force winds and high-intensity flurries Sunday, the weather service said.

In Arizona, the heaviest snow was expected late Saturday through midday Sunday, with up to a foot of new snow possible in Flagstaff, forecasters said.

Weekend snow also was forecast for parts of the upper Midwest to the Northeast, with pockets of freezing rain over some areas of the central Appalachians. The storm was expected to reach the central high Plains by Sunday evening.

At least three people have died in the coast-to-coast storms. A Michigan firefighter died Wednesday after coming into contact with a downed power line, while in Rochester, Minnesota, a pedestrian died after being hit by a city-operated snowplow. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, said a person died of hypothermia.

Much of Portland was shut down with icy roads after the city’s second-heaviest snowfall on record this week: nearly 11 inches (28 centimeters). While the city saw sunny skies and temperatures approaching 40 degrees Saturday afternoon, the reprieve — and thaw — was short-lived. More snow was expected overnight and Sunday.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

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