- Free tuition at community colleges
KCRA Channel 3 Sacramento and CNN: California will provide free tuition for two years of community college to first-time, full-time California students. Full time students are those taking at least 12 units per semester. It does not include the cost of books, housing, or any other expenses. This is the same program that existed in the 1950s.
- Is this an invasion of privacy? Is this big brother?
Business Insider: American Airlines has started using facial recognition technology to let passengers board planes without their boarding pass.
LA Times: Delta Air Lines began using facial recognition technology at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, installing cameras to identify passengers at one boarding gate, with plans to add more. Critics of the technology say the images collected by the cameras can be stored and used to violate the privacy of innocent people, and that the technology is more likely to misidentify women and people of color than white men.
Washington Post: The doorbell-camera company Ring has quietly forged video-sharing partnerships with more than 400 police forces across the United States, granting them access to homeowners’ camera footage and a powerful role in what the company calls the nation’s “new neighborhood watch.”
- Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020
Washington Post: The president has told senior aides that a failure to deliver on the signature promise of his 2016 campaign would be a letdown to his supporters and an embarrassing defeat. When aides have suggested that some orders are illegal or unworkable, Trump has suggested he would pardon the officials if they would just go ahead, aides said. He has waved off worries about contracting procedures and the use of eminent domain, saying “take the land,” according to officials who attended the meetings.
- A mom with a license plate that reads ‘PB4WEGO’ wins a battle with the state to keep it
If you’re a parent, heading out the door before a car ride with the kids probably goes a little like this:
Parent: “Did you go to the bathroom?”
Child: “No, I don’t have to go.”
Parent: “Go now, you may not get the chance later.”
Wendy Augur has had this license plate for 15 years. New Hampshire’s DMV demanded she turn in the plate because it had a phrase relating to “sexual or excretory acts of functions”. In a hearing it took the governor’s intervention to allow her to keep the plate.
- No homeless housing in Chatsworth (a “middle class” community in Los Angeles)
LA City Councilman John Lee opposes a proposed homeless housing site on Topanga Canyon Blvd. “I don’t think the site was really well thought out. It was thrown at the community, and I don’t believe the site is going to work” he told the LA Daily News. The location is along a stretch of the boulevard that is all commercial buildings. He implied he had another location in mind. The neighborhood council has been on record opposing any homeless shelter in the community.
- UCLA study on homelessness
1 – Homelessness has surged 75 percent in six years. An estimated 57,000 people will be without a home in Los Angeles tonight. Many of these people are families and children; veterans and friends.
2 – 26 percent of homeless individuals in California are severely mentally ill, 18 percent chronically abuse drugs and 24 percent are victims of domestic abuse.
- Latest round of Trump’s tariffs on China takes effect on many consumer goods
New tariff took effect Sunday Sept. 1 (Labor Day). The tariff list includes 90 types of boots, slippers, leather shoes and other footwear; more than 125 kinds of watches and clocks; various color TV sets video monitors; computer printers, all Apple products (except the iPhone that will be impacted on December 15), and hundreds of clothing items. In all, about $110 billion worth of imported products from China are newly subject to 15% tariffs.
- Williamson deletes tweet suggesting ‘power of the mind’ can deter Hurricane Dorian
Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson posted and then deleted a tweet Wednesday morning that suggested the “power of mind” could deter Hurricane Dorian from slamming into the US.
“The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas…may all be in our prayers now. Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm,” her now-deleted post read.
Williamson did not qualify for the next debate scheduled for September 12.
- A scary warning: Don’t do a thorough job: A Threat?
LA Times: As a high-level government auditor, Beth Kennedy has investigated or reviewed the spending of many city of Los Angeles departments without serious incident, she says. But now, Kennedy, a chief internal auditor for City Controller Ron Galperin, is alleging that she was warned not to delve too deeply into controversial contracts awarded by the Department of Water of Power, according to a legal claim she filed against the city last month.
Kennedy claims that a superior in her office told her in May that, for personal safety reasons, she should “not be as thorough” with her audit. Then in June, someone smashed a glass patio door at Kennedy’s home in Orange County, according to La Habra police.
- Squirrels listen in on bird chatter to decide if they’re safe, and that’s scientifically significant
A new study published in the journal PLOS One (a scientific journal) concludes grey squirrels use the sounds of nearby birds to infer the absence or presence of predators. According to the researchers, bird sounds are “likely to indicate safety because such sounds are generally given when imminent threat has not been detected.”
So after the indicated presence of a threat in the red-tailed hawk, the squirrels were more likely to relax if they thought other species around them were relaxing too.
- California’s new plan to cap rent
California lawmakers are on the verge of approving one of the only state laws in the nation to limit rent increases after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a deal with legislative leaders last week on a bill to cap annual rent hikes.
Why do this?
In Boyle Heights (a low income community in Los Angeles), apartments without rent controls saw rents increase from a median $1,200 a month to $1,700 between 2016 and 2017. Such rent hikes would no longer be allowed under the proposed legislation.
- Donald Trump the weatherman
He falsely claimed that Hurricane Dorian was likely to hit Alabama. Then he repeated the claim after the National Weather Service debunked it. Then he insisted that the media, not him, was in the wrong. Then, to try to prove his point, he showed the media an outdated map that had clearly been altered with a Sharpie marking pen. Then, trying again, he tweeted out an unaltered map that was too old to prove his point. Then, trying again he tweeted out some more old maps. Finally, Trump got his homeland security adviser to issue a statement vouching for him.
Even today there have been threats that NOAA employees would be fired for contradicting the president.
The object was obvious. He did put himself in the forefront of the hurricane threat and that was his purpose.
And that’s the way it was!
Coast Contact 