Good morning. It’s Friday, Feb. 3.
- Paid canvassers accused of lying about ballot petition.
- Roadkill rate threatens California cougar population.
- And the Yosemite peak that most dazzled John Muir.
Scheduling note: The newsletter will pause Monday. Back in your inbox Tuesday.
Statewide
1.
“I feel duped.”
California said last week that a coalition of fast-food corporations had secured enough valid signatures to qualify for a ballot referendum on a new law that could lift the wages of their workers. But 14 voters interviewed by the L.A. Times said they were lied to about what they were signing. Some signature gatherers said the petition was for guaranteeing living wages. One canvasser presented the petition as an inflation cure. L.A. Times
2.
“We may have reached a critical threshold.”
Mountains lions have been dying on roads at a rate that scientists fear may exceed healthy reproductive rates for the big cats. In the last eight years, 535 mountain lions were reported killed on California’s roads, a toll that amounts to one or two every week, newly released data showed. The finding comes amid a growing campaign to install more wildlife crossings across freeways. L.A. Times | Reuters
3.
Yosemite has no shortage of breathtaking granite monoliths, but one especially captured the imagination of John Muir. On his first summer in Yosemite in 1869, the bearded Scottish-American stumbled upon the summit in Tuolumne Meadows and called it Cathedral Peak, reflecting his perception of nature as a religious experience. “This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California,” he wrote, “led here at last, every door graciously opened for the poor lonely worshiper.” Caltech.edu | SummitPost
Northern California
4.
Reporter Garrett Leahy was at a plaza across from Oakland’s airport when a fast-food worker pointed him toward a gas pump. “Look out for that gray sedan there,” the worker said. Sure enough, a man in a black hoodie emerged, smashed the car’s window, snatched a purse, and took off. “It had my ID, credit cards, everything,” the victim said between sobs. Another worker at the plaza, where motorists briefly park cars loaded with luggage, estimated that she sees 10 such thefts daily, brazen and in broad daylight. SF Standard
5.
“This whole concept of working from anywhere went too far.”
Silicon Valley’s abrupt turn toward austerity has bosses feeling like bosses again. Tech companies shed nearly 100,000 jobs in 2022, a culling of the labor force that is now spreading to other industries. It’s led to a shift in sentiment inside many organizations, reporters Chip Cutter and Theo Francis wrote. Pay increases are slowing. Projects are getting cut. Some CEOs are enforcing in-office attendance mandates. Wall Street Journal
6.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman chats with John Gedmark, an aerospace engineer and chief executive of Astranis, based in San Francisco. Astranis is making satellites designed to deliver broadband internet to the 4 billion people on Earth who are not connected. Gedmark described the mission as akin to unlocking access to the sum total of humankind’s knowledge. “We see it up there as one of the great challenges of our time,” he said.
Southern California
7.
The Jan. 26 fatal police shooting of a man whose legs were both amputated has set off outrage among family members and watchdog groups who are demanding that the Huntington Park police department explain why the encounter required lethal force. Grainy cellphone video of the encounter showed Anthony Lowe, a 36-year-old father of two, scrambling away while holding a knife as officer drew their guns. “I’m heartbroken, and filled with anger and rage,” Lowe’s sister, Tatiana Jackson, said. The Guardian | Washington Post
8.
A Laguna Beach emergency room physician riding his bike along Pacific Coast Highway was killed Wednesday by a Lexus driver who slammed into the bicyclist from behind, then stopped, exited his vehicle, and stabbed him in the back, officials said. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department said there is no apparent connection between the men and no known motive. Colleagues described the victim, Michael Mammone, 58, as “an incredible physician and friend.” O.C. Register | Long Beach Post
Graphic video captured the moment Mammone was hit. 👉 @RssRyan
9.
A pair of reporters went to Tijuana and tested counterfeit prescription pills sold at local pharmacies, which often attract Americans looking to save money on prescription drugs. “Pills sold as oxycodone tested positive for fentanyl, while pills sold as Adderall tested positive for methamphetamine. Testing conducted farther south in Cabo San Lucas and nearby San José del Cabo bore similar results, although there, even weaker painkillers — including pills sold as hydrocodone — also tested positive for fentanyl. Many are nearly indistinguishable from their legitimate counterparts.” L.A. Times
10.
“I think he’s a different level of crook.”
David Bunevacz seemed to be a swaggering Los Angeles weed mogul. He drove a Lamborghini, chartered yachts, and lived in a mansion that was once home to Kylie Jenner. But he was really a world-class con-man. Over a decade, he lured more more than 100 victims — including some of his best friends — into investing in fake cannabis businesses then promptly siphoned away the money to fuel his family’s lavish lifestyle. A gripping long read on greed and betrayal by the reporter Michael Finnegan 👉 L.A. Times
California archive
11.
Fly above California’s Central Valley and a vast earth-toned checkerboard spreads out below. The fertile plain — as big as Tennessee and bathed in sunlight 300 days a year — yields a third of the produce grown in the United States. In his book “Coast of Dreams,” the historian Kevin Starr described the birth of the irrigated culture as “an imposition of will.” He wrote, “Across a century, great public works, ferocious machines, and the back-breaking labor of millions now forgotten had brought into being a place that nature never intended.”
Before the 1848 discovery of gold triggered a stampede of settlers into the state, the Central Valley was endowed with a watery landscape now hard to comprehend: dense riparian forests, swampy marshes, grasslands crowded with elk and pronghorn. Tulare Lake, between Bakersfield and Visalia, was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, with a surface area four times that of Lake Tahoe. In wet years, it was possible to sail from the lake all the way to San Francisco.
A century and a half later, California draws roughly half of the water out of the state’s environment. Of that, some 80% goes to agriculture.
There are 1,526 dams across the state, including hundreds along the western slopes of the Sierra, where a circulatory system of rivers fans out across the valley below. In the past, when the water ran wild, about 6,250 square miles of wetlands filled the Central Valley. That figure is now less than 350. Cut off from its tributaries, Tulare Lake vanished. A century of groundwater pumping has caused parts of the valley to drop 30 feet. The whole region seems shrouded by dust and heat.
That’s one reason environmentalists like Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute, bristle at the demands of some farmers to “Stop dumping our water into the ocean,” a slogan seen on billboards throughout the valley. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times last year, he said California does not “give” water to the environment. “The environment used to have it all.”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- A rich concentration of Native American rock art. A mountain tree that was more than 1,600 years old at the close of the Bronze Age. And a pair of boulders rubbed smooth by back-scratching Columbian mammoths. Here’s a virtual trip to nine surprisingly ancient marvels across California. 👉 Atlas Obscura
- A Frank Lloyd Wright home is for sale in an unlikely location: the San Joaquin Valley. Built in 1961, the Fawcett Farm has seven bedrooms and floor-to-ceiling windows on 76 acres of agricultural land in Los Banos, outside of Merced. Yours for $4.25 million. Dwell | design boom
- For $50 a night, you can stay at a lodge where Clark Gable, Herbert Hoover, and Jean Harlow once bedded down at the foot of the Santa Lucia Mountains. William Randolph Hearst commissioned architect Julia Morgan to design the Hearst Hacienda Lodge for his overflow Hollywood guests who traveled north to see his castle. SFGATE
- A report on the Colorado River impasse included elegant graphics illustrating how deep proposed cuts would be for each of the seven states that draw from the river. Under a plan that all of the states except California have endorsed, California would lose the greatest volume of water in dry years, but Arizona would lose the largest share of its allocation. Grist
- On March 13, 2000, Jim Zellers made the first snowboard descent of Yosemite Valley’s Half Dome. Mike Daniel, a Truckee pilot, took Zellers up over the valley in a small plane and had him narrate the story of his historic ride. Video from the trip includes incredible aerial views of Yosemite buried in snow. YouTube (~19 mins)
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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