Good morning. It’s Thursday, Dec. 1.
- High school athletes making major endorsement money.
- A “textbook” case of voter suppression in Oakland.
- And disturbing new details in Riverside triple murder.
Statewide
1.
Canvassers backed by the oil industry have been collecting signatures to qualify for a ballot measure by telling people that it would protect communities from oil drilling. In fact, it would do the exact opposite. The proposed referendum aims to overturn a new law requiring buffer zones of 3,200 feet between oil wells and homes. “Big Oil is paying people to lie to the general public,” said Kobi Naseck, an environmentalist. “They’re effectively buying the policy they want.” Inside Climate News
2.
California has become a trendsetter among states that allow high school athletes to profit from their name and image without jeopardizing their college eligibility. The money is so good that athletes like Jada Williams, of Missouri, are moving to California to take advantage. The point guard for La Jolla Country Day School is making $550,000 a year, a hefty sum for a 17-year-old. But deals can get much bigger: Bronny James, Lebron James’ son, is puling in $7.5 million a year. A.P.
3.
A California law that would punish doctors for spreading false information about Covid-19 is set to take effect Jan. 1. But a pair of legal challenges on free-speech grounds could block the law, the first of its kind in the U.S. Among the plaintiffs is Dr. Tracy Hoeg, an epidemiologist in Grass Valley and a fierce critic of school masking. “It’s going to cause this very broad self-censorship and self-silencing from physicians with their patients,” she said. N.Y. Times
4.
“A legit winter storm.”
The first of two incoming storms is poised to dump as much as 4 feet of snow on the southern Cascades and Sierra Nevada while soaking the coast and interior valleys of Northern California on Thursday, forecasters said. Highway officials pleaded with motorists to avoid the mountains between now and Sunday. The storm, pivoting southward, should lose some of its bite by the time it reaches Southern California late Thursday. A second storm was expected to arrive Saturday into Monday. Accuweather | KQED
Northern California
5.
In 2020, a supermajority of Oakland residents approved a measure lowering the voting age in school board races to 16, a victory hard-won by youth activists. But the county, which runs the city’s elections, never implemented the change. So election day passed like those of the past: with 16- and 17-year-olds watching from the sidelines. The Washington Post called it “a textbook case of voter suppression.”
6.
A San Francisco father said his 10-month-old boy found and ingested fentanyl while playing at a city playground on Tuesday, causing the child to go into cardiac arrest. Reporters confirmed parts of the explosive story, which seemed certain to inflame debate over the city’s response to the drug epidemic. The father, Ivan Matkovic, said he was “frankly ignorant” about the fentanyl problem: “This is another thing to add to your checklist of things that you’re looking out for, because we weren’t.” S.F. Chronicle | NBC Bay Area
7.
Robin Engelman, a 56-year-old psychologist, lived in the Los Angeles area for decades. She was ready for somewhere smaller, more green. “I wanted to find home,” she said. Home for Engelman and her husband, a movie producer, is now a redwood forest in Marin County. They can hardly believe their eyes when look they out the windows every morning, Engleman said. “It’s ridiculously magical.” The N.Y. Times has 12 photos.
Southern California
8.
Riverside police said Wednesday that a Virginia sheriff’s deputy posed as a 17-year-old boy and asked a 15-year-old girl for nude photos before he drove across the country, killed her family, and set fire to their home. Austin Lee Edwards, 28, fled with the girl and died by suicide during a shootout with police on Friday. Investigators are not yet describing the interaction between Edwards and the girl, who was unharmed, as an abduction. “We don’t believe at this point she had anything to do with the murders,” Riverside Police Chief Larry Gonzalez said. A.P. | L.A. Times
9.
On Nov. 1, the Drug Enforcement Administration suspended the ability of Dr. David Bockoff, a chronic pain specialist in Beverly Hills, to prescribe controlled substances. The move came as the agency intensifies efforts to shut-down so-called “pill mills.” But it sent one of Bockoff’s patients into a panic. Danny Elliott, 61, suffered severe chronic pain. Days later, he and his wife were found dead in what police called a “dual suicide.” Asked for comment, Bockoff said, “Their blood is on the DEA’s hands.” Vice
10.
A judge declared a mistrial in the rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson after the jury said it was deadlocked. Prosecutors said Masterson, a lifelong Scientologist, raped three women at his home in the Hollywood Hills in the early 2000s and his church dissuaded them from going public for years. Jurors leaned strongly toward acquitting him on all three charges of forcible rape. Hollywood Reporter | A.P.
11.
John Kayacan, a young street photographer, spent three years trying to capture moments in Los Angeles that most people would ignore or pass without notice. In the tradition of Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank, his compositions are moody, immediate, and sometimes off-kilter. See a collection of 16 images. 👉 Photographic Journal
Follow Kayacan on Instagram. 👉 @jkayacan
California archive
12.
Texas has embraced the slogan “Six flags over Texas” in recognition of the six sovereign countries that once presided over the state, incorporating their emblems into malls, official buildings, and the namesake theme park Six Flags.
If California did the same, it would need a lot more flagpoles. All told, at least 12 flags have flown over the state in the last five centuries.
They have included the banners of England, planted in San Francisco in 1579 by Francis Drake; Russia, hoisted by fur traders along the Sonoma Coast in 1812; and Mexico, raised after casting off Spanish colonial rule in 1821.
In one of California’s strangest power dramas, a pirate loyal to Argentina arrived in Monterey, then a Spanish colony, in 1818 after hearing it was poorly defended. His crew of 360 men overpowered the locals and raised the Argentine flag. They stayed less than a week before ransacking their way down the coast and setting sail, never to be seen again.
Then there was the Bear Flag. In 1846, a group of settlers revolted against the Mexican government, proclaiming an independent California Republic. The rebels stood down 25 days later as the U.S. Army, at war with Mexico, swept into California. But the grizzly bear emblazoned on their banner lived on. It inspired California’s official state flag, an ongoing tribute to the state’s rowdy past.
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