Category: California

Here are new laws that will take effect in California on January 1, 2023.

Abortion (AB-2223) —  It protects a woman or pregnant person who chooses to end a pregnancy from prosecution, even if the abortion is self-induced or happens outside the medical system. It also abolishes the requirement that coroners investigate stillbirths and protects someone who helps a pregnant person end their pregnancy voluntarily from criminal or civil liability.

Minimum wage (SB-3) — The statewide California minimum wage will rise to $15.50 per hour for all employer sizes.

Public Service Announcement

With the new year just a few days away, here are new traffic safety-related laws that will take effect Jan. 1, 2023.

The laws include:

— SB 1472 expands the criteria for “gross negligence” to include drivers involved in sideshow activity, exhibition of speed or speeding over 100 mph resulting in a fatality.

— AB 2147 prohibits police officers from stopping pedestrians for certain pedestrian-specific violations such as crossing the road outside of a crosswalk, unless there is an immediate danger of a crash.

Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune reports that there is a “troubling spike in coronavirus-positive hospital admissions among seniors in California, rising to levels not seen since the summer Omicron surge.

Hospitalizations have roughly tripled for Californians of most age groups since the autumn low. But the jump in seniors in need of hospital care has been particularly dramatic. Still, there is optimism that any winter surge will not be as bad as those of the last two years.

Rising hospitalization rates are a reason health officials are urging people, especially seniors, to get the updated COVID-19 booster shot and, if they test positive and are eligible, to access therapeutic drugs that probably will reduce the severity of any illness.

By Amy Graff / SFGATE / Nov. 29, 2022

After a grueling 15-day labor walkout by 48,000 academic workers at the University of California, two of the four groups striking announced Tuesday that they reached a tentative agreement that includes wage increases, officials said.

By Olivia Rosane / Nation of Change / Oct. 13, 2022

Much of the movement to reduce ocean plastic pollution has focused on the single-use plastic bags used to cart purchases away from the supermarket.

But there’s another type of plastic bag that is ubiquitous in grocery stores across the country: the handleless plastic bags typically on offer by the produce or meat sections for shoppers to tear off and use to separate their apples or cold cuts from the rest of their haul.

In California grocery stores, however, these other plastic bags will soon be a thing of the past. The state became the first in the nation to ban them in grocery stores

By Thomas Ultican / Tulican

The infamous John Deasy resigned his post as Superintendent of Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) on June 15th, 2020. That made his tenure two weeks more than two years which further exacerbated the longtime administrative instability at SUSD.

He apparently steered the district budgets toward deficit spending and left a decimated finance department in his wake while other administrative positions multiplied. Concurrent with his two years in Stockton, money and leaders from organizations bent on privatizing public education were bolstered and became more active.

By Mat Wahlstrom

We’ve been dealing with many attacks on our rights lately.

From above, the activist Supreme Court has gutted the right to privacy that underpinned the right to reproductive freedom as well as non-normative sexuality, allowed tax dollars to be transferred from secular public to private religious schools, and endorsed performative public prayer in the name of someone who specifically rejected making a show of praying in public (Matthew 6:5).

From Republicans, who almost universally support the January 6 insurrection, it’s the freedom to mass murder so long as it’s with bullets, and continued voter disenfranchisement.

But while these have been dominating headlines, we’ve lost sight of the single most dangerous one yet: the plan touted by state and local Democrats to create a separate legal system through what are perversely called “CARE Courts.”

By Michael Hiltzik / Los Angeles Times / Aug. 16, 2022

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant lies on the coast near San Luis Obispo within 20 miles of four active earthquake faults.

The faults were apparently unknown to the plant’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, which certified during the construction period that no such faults existed within that distance. Unit 2 was built in accordance with flawed blueprints.

There have been efforts to close the plant for years, gaining intensity as PG&E’s atrocious safety record came to light.

California residents and visitors spraying on sunscreen to protect themselves from the sun’s rays should check which product they’re using because of a recent recall.

The parent company of Banana Boat sunscreen products has issued a voluntary recall of several batches of the brand’s hair and scalp sunscreen spray because it may contain a cancer-causing chemical known as benzene. The recall impacts the following products:

Will the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Ever Shut Down?

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

We thought it was a done deal. The Diablo Canyon nuke plant, the last operating one in the state, located on the central coast near San Luis Obispo, was due to permanently close, one nuclear reactor in 2024, the second the following year.

In 2016, even owner Pacific Gas & Electric agreed to the deal.

But, as the Doors predicted Back in the Daze, “The future’s uncertain and the. end is always near.”

By Erik Anderson / KPBS

The federal science agency is preparing to pass out an unprecedented amount of money to make the nation’s coast more resilient.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has more than $3 billion ready to fund projects that bolster natural systems which can buffer the impacts of climate change.

In California, funded projects could include sand replenishment, wetlands recovery and expansion, or natural projects that fight coastal erosion.

The California Coastal Commission is meeting today, Wednesday, July 13, and will be deciding the fate of a new development in Ocean Beach that will demolish two cottages at the very end of Cape May Avenue.

Local OBceans are understandably concerned that coastal access will be negatively impacted and understand that the area does flood.

The problem is the Commission is meeting in Ft. Bragg in Northern California – and they’re meeting today. OB residents want folks, however, to participate in the meeting by remote testimony on Permit #6-20-0375 at 5162 Cape May Ave.