Tag: california

Test Scores Are Plummeting Despite California Spending Wildly on Education

I’ve recently been investing in some long-deferred maintenance at my home and it should be no surprise to anyone that I’ve sought to receive as much quality work done for as little money as possible. When people spend their own hard-earned money on such projects, they measure success by results, such as a sparkling new kitchen. They don’t brag about how much they spent, but how much they got in return.

By contrast, state officials seem to delight in how much money they “invest” in different priorities, without worrying too much about outcomes. Sure, they sometimes pay lip service to results—but they don’t care enough about them to actually change the way they provide public services. (They’re not about to annoy the public-sector unions, which represent the people paid to provide those services.)

I’m not the only one to have noticed. State Sen. Steve Glazer (D–Orinda), in a July column about the $310-billion budget, complained that “we’ve already spent billions of dollars on the same problems—with very little to show for it.” He called on his fellow Democrats to ensure that the spending “actually improving the lives of the people we say we are committed to helping.” What a novel idea.

This dynamic is most pronounced in public education, which consumes more than 40 percent of the state’s general fund budget—plus local bond measures. Although lawmakers slowed education funding increases to close a $32-billion budget deficit this year, as of last year—during an unprecedented $97.5-billion budget surplus—they lavished public schools with money.

“The revised budget directs a total of $128.3 billion to education, lifts up the most critical needs including historic funding for school mental health, recruitment and retention of teachers,” boasted Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, following last year’s budget deal.

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Eureka, CA Decriminalizes Psychedelic Plant Medicines

Eureka, CA, has passed a resolution decriminalizing entheogens and psychedelic plant medicines, making it the sixth California city to do so and the second such city in Humboldt County.

The Eureka City Council unanimously approved an initiative last week to decriminalize plant medicines such as psilocybin mushrooms within city limits. The announcement came less than two weeks after CA Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an initiative which would have decriminalized psychedelics statewide. The City of Arcata, just a few miles to the north, voted to decriminalize in 2021 thanks to efforts by a group who also provided the language used in the Eureka resolution, Decriminalize Nature Humboldt.

According to an article in the Lost Coast Outpost, the resolution was passed without much trouble from the council, though a particular phrase was removed from the language of the bill. The council voted to remove language which seemed to endorse entheogenic plants’ ability to “catalyze profound experiences of personal and spiritual growth.” Not for nothing, but one of recently deceased Johns Hopkins professor Roland Griffiths’ first studies on psilocybin in 2006 was on psilocybin’s ability to induce mystical and spiritual experiences in the user. Much of Griffiths’ later work at Johns Hopkins has been referenced in similar legislative discussions surrounding the legality of psychedelics.

Other than the removal of the aforementioned phrase, the resolution was passed without much protest from the rest of the council members.There were some concerns voiced by local law enforcement representatives, mirroring Gov. Newsom’s concerns about potentially unforeseen consequences to the resolution. City Manager Miles Slattery, however, pointed out that he had consulted with the Arcata Police Department who reported no serious issues to him after just over two years of psychedelic decriminalization. He also pointed out that the City of Eureka only saw five cases of arrests related to entheogens in the previous year and almost every case was related to something more serious such as domestic violence. 

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Second Amendment Win: California’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Has Been Thrown Out

Second Amendment supporters may want to remember the saying, “As California Goes, so Goes the Nation,” after a federal judge overturned the Golden State’s three-decade-old ban on so-called “assault weapons” on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, of San Diego, found no equivalent in early American history and ruled that the ban was therefore unconstitutional.

The judge further ruled that the semiautomatic rifle – known in the industry as “modern sporting rifles” – such as the AR-15 are common household items used for self-defense by millions of law-abiding citizens, who should not have their Second Amendment rights abridged by a state – even as the firearms have been misused by others in crimes including mass shootings.

“Guns and ammunition in the hands of criminals, tyrants and terrorists are dangerous; guns in the hands of law-abiding responsible citizens are necessary,” Benitez wrote in his ruling. “To give full life to the core right of self-defense, every law-abiding responsible individual citizen has a constitutionally protected right to keep and bear firearms commonly owned and kept for lawful purposes.”

Benitez, who previously overturned the ban, added, “The State of California posits that its ‘assault weapon’ ban, the law challenged here, promotes an important public interest of disarming some mass shooters even though it makes criminals of law-abiding residents who insist on acquiring these firearms for self-defense. Nevertheless, more than that is required to uphold a ban.”

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Seventh So Cal Antifa member convicted in violent conspiracy and rioting case

A So Cal Antifa member pleaded guilty to being part of a violent, organized Antifa riot almost three years ago at Pacific Beach, San Diego.;

Faraz Martin Talab, now 29 years old, of Atwater Village, Los Angeles, was captured on evidence video on Jan. 9, 2021 at a riot where roving mobs of black-clad Antifa members attacked supporters of Donald Trump and people walking on the beach boardwalk. He is now the seventh person to plead guilty in the ongoing felony conspiracy case.

In San Diego County Superior Court on Oct. 13, Talab pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to riot with his ten Antifa co-defendants, plus he admitted to assaulting a person with force likely to produce great bodily injury. As part of his plea deal, Talab admitted to joining in the Antifa attack with co-conspirators Joseph Austin Gaskins, 23, and Christian Martinez, 25. Gaskins was convicted in a plea deal in November 2022.

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California’s $20 Minimum Wage Will Hurt the Fast Food Workers It’s Meant to Help

Last month, Gavin Newsom signed into law a California bill that will raise the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour starting in 2024. While the law has been hailed as a victory for low-wage Californians, the reality is much more complicated. 

When states force industries to massively increase wages, the result isn’t that the same number of employees start making more money. Instead, enacting a climbing minimum wage often results in higher unemployment and higher prices.

The law, originally Assembly Bill 1228 was passed as a compromise measure. Last September, Newsom signed the Fast Food Accountability and Standards (FAST) Recovery Act, which would have increased the minimum wage for fast workers to up to $22 an hour. In response, a campaign to get a measure to repeal the law on the 2024 ballot quickly sprang up. Ultimately, restaurant groups gathered enough signatures for the referendum. 

Rather than face a ballot referendum over the law, Assembly Bill 1228 was crafted to repeal the FAST Act and replace it with a less extreme alternative following negotiations with restaurant and labor groups. The new law applies to employees working for fast food restaurants with more than 60 locations nationally, with an exception for businesses that bake their own bread.

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California Adds New Excise Tax on Gun and Ammo Sales

Retail sales of guns and ammunition will soon be subject to a new state excise tax in California. Under Assembly Bill 28, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 26, 2023,  an 11% tax will apply to gross receipts from retail sales of ammunition, firearms, and firearm precursor parts starting July 1, 2024. Revenue generated by the tax will be deposited in a new Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Fund.

California’s new gun tax is similar to the federal firearms and ammunition excise tax (FAET), which was first implemented in 1919 and is administered by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). The FAET is 10% of the manufacturer’s price for pistols and revolvers, and 11% of the manufacturer’s price of other portable weapons, shells, and cartridges. It applies to firearms and ammunition for domestic use barring certain exemptions, for example, businesses producing fewer than 50 guns per year are exempt from the FAET.

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California Bans Student Suspensions For Defying Teachers, Disrupting Classes

It will be illegal for California public schools to suspend students for disrupting class or defying teachers—known as willful defiance suspensions—starting July 1, 2024.

“With Governor Newsom’s signing of SB 274, California is putting the needs of students first,” bill author Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) said in a statement a day after the governor’s signing Oct. 8. “No more kicking kids out of school for minor disruptions. Students belong in school where they can succeed.”

SB 274—an extension of the author’s previous legislation from 2019 that banned willful defiance suspensions for TK–5 students permanently and for grades 6–8 until 2025—now broadens such policy to include all public-school grades from TK–12 across the state, with a sunset date of July 1, 2029.

Traditionally, willful defiance suspensions have been imposed on students for disrupting school activities, including wearing hats backward, nodding off in class, using bad language in school, or engaging in verbal disagreements with teachers, Ms. Skinner’s office said in the statement.

Under the new law, teachers can remove a student from class for unruly behavior, but the youth would not be suspended from school. Instead, school administrators would be responsible for evaluating and implementing suitable in-school interventions or support for the student, according to the senator’s office.

Additionally, the bill prohibits the suspension or expulsion of students due to tardiness or truancy.

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California Quietly Repeals Restrictions on Doctors’ COVID-19 Advice

California legislators last month quietly repealed a 2022 law that authorized disciplinary action against doctors, including loss of their medical licenses, when they share COVID-19 “misinformation” with their patients. The law, A.B. 2098, defined that ambiguous and highly contested category of speech as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

Not sure what that means? Neither were the California physicians who challenged the law on First Amendment grounds in two separate lawsuits. They argued that the state’s amorphous definition of prohibited medical advice was bound to have a chilling impact on constitutionally protected speech.

In McDonald v. Lawson, which the Liberty Justice Center (LJC) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on October 4, 2022, Judge Fred Slaughter declined to issue a preliminary injunction, concluding in a December 28 order that A.B. 2098 was probably constitutional. Four weeks later in Høeg v. Newsom, which the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California on November 2, Judge William B. Shubb reached the opposite conclusion.

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California just created the ‘Ebony Alert’ to find missing Black children

California’s newly enacted “Ebony Alert” law is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for Black youth gone missing. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 673 into law on Sunday, making California the first state to create an alert notification system — similar to an Amber Alert — to address the crisis of missing Black children and young women.  

The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area. The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25. 

“Data shows that Black and brown, our indigenous brothers and sisters, when they go missing there’s very rarely the type of media attention, let alone AMBER alerts and police resources that we see with our white counterparts,” state Sen. Steven Bradford, also a Democrat and creator of the legislation, told NBC News earlier this year. 

He added: “We feel it’s well beyond time that we dedicate something specifically to help bring these young women and girls back home because they’re missed and loved just as much as their counterparts are.”  

About 141,000 Black children under the age of 18 went missing in 2022, and Black women over 21 accounted for nearly 16,500 missing persons cases that year, according to the most recent data from the National Crime Information Center. More than 30,000 Black people in the U.S. remained missing at the end of 2022, according to the center. Although about 38% of the people who went missing i in 2022 were Black, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, missing Black people are less likely than white people to have their stories highlighted in the media. Also, missing persons cases for Black people remain open longer than those for white people. Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the foundation, told CNN that a majority of the 6,000 cases of missing Black people in her database remain unsolved. 

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US state that’s ‘overrun’ by UFOs with more than 16,000 sightings

Unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings aren’t uncommon across America — the recent congressional hearing on the fascinating objects has proven their prevalence and brought them back into the spotlight. One state in particular, however, seems to be seeing a lot more UFOs than other states.

With the earliest reported sighting in 1928 and the most recent this past September, California has over 16,000 reported UFO sightings, according to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). UFOs are also commonly referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), their technical name.

Most of the reports detail a string of lights in the sky or several balls of light, many of which were reportedly orange. A large chunk of the sightings were reported by individuals who were out camping or on Navy ships docked in nearby harbors — places with clear views of the sky. That’s why many initially thought the lights they saw were shooting stars.

But many also reported seeing UFOs in broad daylight as they walked to work, drove their kids to school or simply went about their days. Several sightings fall between the hours of 10am and noon. A lot were also reported on airplane radars and from pilots looking out as they flew across the sky.

One particularly intriguing entry from 1953 detailed the experience a camp worker had with the kids she had been supervising at a summer camp near a lake. As the group chatted, a strange flying object came and landed near them to observe them.

The woman who reported it wrote: “It was silver, and looked like two saucers glued together with windows where they joined. It was so close, we could see figures at the windows that surrounded the middle seam. This was 1953, and none of us had ever seen anything move like this craft did.”

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