Take that, red states! California has surpassed Japan to become the fourth-largest economy in the world, with an estimated Gross Domestic Product of more than $4 trillion.

If for whatever reason you happen to follow California Governor Gavin Newsom on Twitter, you’ll notice that his Twitter feed today is just him reposting different news articles written about the exact same topic, over and over and over. But sure, let the Gav celebrate. Because all of those articles he’s reposting are about Wednesday's news that California has surpassed the nation of Japan in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and that California is now the fourth-largest economy in the world.

California had previously passed the United Kingdom to become the fifth-largest economy in the world back in 2018.

“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace,” Newsom bragged in the state’s official press release. “Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation. And, while we celebrate this success, we recognize that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the current federal administration. California’s economy powers the nation, and it must be protected.”

The latest federal numbers show that California’s GDP reached $4.1 trillion, overtaking the previous No. 4 Japan at $4.02 trillion. In terms of US states, Texas would come in a distant second place with a $2.7 trillion GDP.

It’s kind of a fake metric, though. The statistic uses the International Monetary Fund’s rankings of GDP by nation, and the International Monetary Fund does not count California separately from the United States. But this is crossed-tabbed against the just-released US state GDP data, which shows California with the new $4.1 trillion GDP. So there could be some methodology differences, or comparisons of apples to oranges.  

But our state’s economic growth is undeniable, and represents a big shit sandwich for all the wealthy conservative loudmouths who claim that Texas is a better place to do business than California.

"In 2024, California’s growth rate of 6% outpaced the top three economies: U.S. (5.3%), China (2.6%) and Germany (2.9%),” Newsom’s office adds in the release. “California’s success is long-term — the state’s economy grew strongly over the last four years, with an average nominal GDP growth of 7.5% from 2021 to 2024.”

Though the release also gets in a dig at Trump's tariffs. “President Trump’s tariffs are projected to shrink the U.S. economy by $100 billion annually,” Newsom’s release adds, explaining that’s why the state is suing to halt Trump’s tariffs.

Related: Now Gavin Newsom Claims California Has Eliminated Its Budget Deficit, Is Back in Surplus Times [SFist]

Image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 26: Gavin Newsom speaks onstage during the Vogue World: Hollywood Press Announcement at Chateau Marmont on March 26, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/WireImage)

California Governor Gavin Newsom climbed atop the Golden Gate Bridge to tout the supposedly record-breaking $150 billion tourism dollars spent statewide in 2023, but cynics point out that may just be because of inflation-driven higher prices.

Yes, Governor Gavin Newsom is standing on top of one of the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in the video below posted Sunday morning. “So I’m up here on the Golden Gate Bridge,” Newsom said from on high, with the scenery of Presidio and Sutro Tower visible behind him. “What a perfect place to announce our record-breaking tourism numbers. Last year, $150 billion of investment, tourists around the globe coming to the great state of California.”

Newsom is technically correct that the tourism agency Visit California had just announced that the state enjoyed a record $150.4 billion in travel spending for 2023, which does indeed break 2019’s pre-pandemic record year of  $144.9 billion. But those are statewide numbers, and KPIX points out that Bay Area tourism spending is still down compared to 2019 levels; with $37.7 billion in tourism spending here last year, whereas 2019’s total was $39 billion.

"We're just waiting for the tourists to come and for the season to really get going," Pier 23 Cafe owner Mac Leibert told KPIX Sunday. "And as you can see on a Sunday afternoon brunch, it's not happening."

KPIX also spoke to bus tour guides and pedicab drivers, who echoed the same sentiment. They sound a common note that the local convention and business conference markets have not rebounded, and the level of tourism from Chinese visitors is still at only about half the volume it was pre-pandemic. Prior to COVID, the Chinese tourist demographic was the No. 1 driver of SF tourism revenue.

And KTVU adds a little more skepticism to Newsom’s numbers, noting that the higher dollar amounts for 2023 may be solely because of inflation. “Things cost more last year than they did four years ago,” that station notes, and adds that the Visit California report “says that adjusting for inflation, travel spending in California is actually down 14% from its peak in 2019.”

There is one undisputed silver lining, though, in that the report also notes that 98% of the tourism- and hospitality-related jobs in the state have returned since the tourism job losses of recent years.

Related: SF Tourism Board Launches New Ad Campaign to Sell City as Still Quirky and Fun [SFist]

Image: @CAgovernor via Twitter

A new report from the California State Auditor finds the state has spent $24 billion on homelessness since 2018, only to see things get worse, and dings the state for not keeping track of whether much of this money is even accomplishing anything.

Here’s a stunning factoid from a new state report about California homelessness: According to a  CalMatters summary of the report, the state spends about $50,000 a year on each unhoused resident. Well jeez, if you just gave these people $50,000 directly, wouldn’t the majority of them be vastly more effective at keeping a roof over their head than is the State of California bureaucracy? It’s a fair question!  

That State of California bureaucracy is the target of a new report from the State Auditor that finds the state has spent $24 billion trying to solve homelessness since 2018, but is not keeping track of whether the programs actually work, as NBC Bay Area reports. And as seen below, despite the massive $24 billion investment, the California homelessness rate just keeps getting higher and higher.

“This report concludes that the State must do more to assess the cost-effectiveness of its homelessness programs,” California State Auditor Grant Parks says in the full report. “Another significant gap in the State’s ability to assess programs’ effectiveness is that it does not have a consistent method for gathering information on the costs and outcomes for individual programs.”

The audit tracked five different programs. Two of them actually scored quite well, and those are the two that actually tracked whether the people stayed housed. One of them is Project Homekey, which basically just puts unhoused people in hotel rooms. Another is the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program, which provides funding to already-housed people who are at risk of becoming homeless.

But the three other programs assessed — State Rental Assistance Program (SRAP), Encampment Resolution Funding (ERF), and the CalWORKs Housing Support Program — have no method of evaluating whether they are successful, but just keep raking in the billions.

“California is facing a concerning paradox: despite an exorbitant amount of dollars spent, the state’s homeless population is not slowing down,” state Senator Roger Niello said in a statement to NBC Bay Area. “These audit results are a wake-up call for a shift toward solutions that prioritize self-sufficiency and cost effectiveness.”

Gavin Newsom’s latest salvo in his fight on homelessness is his “Treatment Not Tents” Prop 1 effort that voters just barely approved last month. It’s a $6.4 billion mental health bond whose gist is that it can compel people into treatment and shelter. But as with many of Newsom’s homelessness prevention programs, it’s an awfully large amount of money going toward an effort whose early results show it’s serving few people and barely making a difference.

Related: SF Does Not Have Highest Homelessness Rate In California — We’re No. 3 [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

In a charged address at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim Friday, Donald Trump made headlines with a mix of familiar attacks and grievances, as well as a concerning call for violent retribution against criminals.

Some of the topics of the complaints in Trump’s wandering 90-minute speech: crime, forests, homelessness, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, electric vehicles, and, of course, alleged election fraud, according to the Chronicle.

He reportedly called retail thieves “Marxist monsters unleashing mayhem in Los Angeles and San Francisco,” and said he send “every asset” he could to “shoot” them — apparently drawing applause from the 1,500-person crowd. Going off-script, he said, "If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store," emphasizing his call for violent punishment.

Trump also wants to “wet” forest floors to prevent wildfires, per the Chronicle. But then he said that rich people in Beverly Hills smell bad because they're denied water, as KCRA reported.

Going after California's Democratic leadership, Trump blamed them for issues such as homelessness, high taxes, and inequality. He reportedly accused the state of being a "dumping ground" for prisoners, terrorists, and mental patients, pledging to "reverse the decline of America."

Naturally, Trump has no shot of winning the state, but California is set up to play a pivotal role in the Super Tuesday primaries, so the state's GOP support is valuable — he currently leads the primary race among likely Republican voters, according to a recent poll, per the LA Times.

Also in attendance at the convention were other Republican contenders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who expressed support for law enforcement without advocating violence, according to the Chronicle. But Trump’s legal challenges still loom as he faces felony charges in four criminal cases.

While he was in Southern California on Friday, he went to a gun store and may have bought a handgun, as the Washington Post reported. A staffer reportedly posted a picture of him with a gun, and federal prosecutors are questioning if that counts as a violation of the gag order imposed on him amid his criminal trials because the image could be construed as a public threat.

“The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so,” the court filing says, per WaPo. “It would be a separate federal crime, and thus a violation of the defendant’s conditions of release, for him to purchase a gun while this felony indictment is pending.”

Feature image of former U.S. President Donald Trump greeting fans during the California GOP convention on September 29, 2023 in Los Angeles, California, via David McNew/Getty Images.

A combination of inflation, high interest rates, and tech layoffs have some economists worried that a nasty California recession is brewing, though the downturn may be limited to commercial real estate landlords and people who made bank during the pandemic.

You’re currently seeing a nonstop loop of San Francisco “doom loop” articles in the Chronicle, which seems odd, because San Francisco's unemployment rate is currently at a terrifically low 2.9%. I’m pretty sure things were way worse when the pandemic had the city’s unemployment rate higher than 12%! Meanwhile the New York Times, which loves to bash the SF Bay Area when they have a chance, just published its own kind of California “doom loop” analysis over of the national factors of inflation, high interest rates, and the stock market downturn, combined with California variables like tech layoffs and economic fallout from this winter’s storms.

Mind you, California is still by many accounts the fourth largest economy in the world, statewide unemployment is just 4.3%, and I can think of 49 other U.S. states that would love to be the economic powerhouse that is California. But it’s hardly reassuring that the state is looking at a deficit again, of $22.5 billion. That’s not historically so bad (Governor Gray Davis ran a $38 billion deficit in 2003, a time when the state’s GDP is far smaller, and we all survived). But it’s still a shock when you said you had a $108 billion surplus a year or so prior, highlighting the risks of California's boom-and-bust economic cycles — Newsom referred to the charts of deficit and surplus as looking like "an EKG."

“The tech sector is the workhorse of the state’s economy, it’s the backbone,” Loyola Marymount University economics professor Sung Won Sohn told the Times. “These are high earners who might not be able to carry the state as much as they did in the past.”

You’re aware there have been massive tech layoffs, though that still seems contained to companies that made bank during the pandemic and grew way too much. Though the Times also points out a 36% global decline in venture capital investment, which hits California disproportionately hard, and the Times adds that information sector employment has “declined by more than 16,000 from November to February.”

There are other troubling factors outside the tech industry. Disney had 7,000 layoffs in February, which is one example of how Hollywood is being affected. The Times also adds that “California’s robust supply chain, which drives nearly a third of the state’s economy, has continued to buckle under stresses from the pandemic and an ongoing labor fight between longshoremen and port operators up and down the West Coast." They add that “Cargo processing at the Port of Los Angeles, a key entry point for shipments from Asia, was down 43 percent in February, compared with the year before.”

Thus far, the layoffs are not spreading beyond the tech industry, and the financial pain seems to be most severe for the commercial real estate industry. Those sectors have lived lavishly for about the last decade, so a correction is not out of the ordinary, and plenty of us have had it tougher than them. But the Times does add that UCLA economic forecasters have considered several scenarios wherein the financial pain spreads beyond tech and commercial real estate.

And frankly, it’s kind of encouraging that the Times concludes “Regardless of which scenario pans out, California’s economy is likely to be better off than the national one.”

Related: Study Ranks San Francisco Dead Last In U.S. for Downtown Economic Recoveries [SFist]

Image: First Republic Bank via Yelp

PG&E, the largest utility company in California, has announced that customers have likely seen and will continue to see significant increases in their bills this winter, SFGATE reported, to the tune of about a 32% spike. That reportedly translates to an average of $79 per month from November through March.

PG&E is blaming these higher electricity and gas bills on this winter’s below-average temperatures and greater heating demand across the West Coast, as well as higher global natural gas prices, in its statement regarding the sticker shock. (Of course, last summer, the company also reported a downturn in profits and higher expenses related to burying power lines and paying wildfire victims’ families, but that wasn’t in the press release.)

PG&E said that its customers have “used more natural gas than the five-year historic average this winter, with November usage 20% higher, December 10% higher, and January to date [as of January 27] about 3% higher.”

And that’s not all — a PG&E spokesperson told SFGate that even after fall 2023, the average customer's monthly bill could still continue to rise, with an expected rate increase of 16.3%, or about $35.40. PG&E needs the California Public Utilities Commission approval to increase what it's allowed to charge its gas and electric customers from 2023 to 2026, and the company just requested these higher rate adjustments, which could start in fall of 2023.

According to the San Francisco Examiner, in the past two decades, CPUC has approved about half of PG&E's requests. In February of 2022, the CPUC authorized a 9% jump in rates — which was unrelated to PG&E's new requests for 2023 and beyond

PG&E's attempts to increase prices are still facing criticism by many of its customers and consumer advocacy groups. Some customers are unhappy with the timing of the increase, especially after facing economic difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent storms.

"Hundreds of people are calling to say they can't afford to pay their bills, they're afraid of being shut off," The Utility Reform Network (TURN) executive director Mark Toney told ABC7 about the potential price increases. "They're cutting back on their prescriptions, cutting back on food. People should not be faced with the choice of heat or eat."

Customers could get some relief soon, SFGATE reported, as the state's Climate Credit program distributes credits that lower Californians’ energy bills once a year in April. (The credits come from large companies buying carbon pollution permits, and that money offsets natural gas costs in residential energy.) However, the CPUC voted this week that utilities could send out those credits "as soon as possible."

Image via Unsplash/Jorge Gardner.

California and New York appear set to lose some power in Congress after the 2020 Census numbers are tallied, while Florida and Texas look likely to gain two or three seats.

Never in the history of the United States Census, which goes all the way back to 1790, has California ever seen any population decline or loss of clout in the Census count. Granted, California did not become a state until 1850, but the state has still grown in residents, and power, each decade in more than 150 years of Census-taking. But a San Francisco Chronicle editorial today rings the alarm bells that California could lose a seat in Congress based on the 2020 count, a move that would also cost the Golden State hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds.

California currently has 53 representatives, the most of any state, and the Chron notes that number appears likely to slip to 52 due to out-migration to other states, though we won't know until everyone is counted.

CBS News goes through all that states to find that the likely losers of one (or more) seats also include New York, Illinois, and seven other states. This would entail the loss of Electoral College votes, though these blue state losses are canceled out by similar red state losses in states like Alabama, Ohio, and West Virginia. Plus, new seats are going to increasingly purplish states like Texas, Arizona, and Colorado.    

Of course, the numbers are far from in, so this is all just informed speculation. It comes from the Census' 2019 Population Estimates Program report projections released on December 30, 2019. So California’s loss is not a done deal.

That same day, the Census also released a separate Census Test Report that tested the impact of the citizenship question on response rates. A Census Bureau spokesperson tells us these are separate reports with distinct, different purposes.

"The Census Test is done to fine-tune the operations and questions in the 2020 Census, and is not used to project population for the country," said U.S. Census Bureau spokesperson Josh Green. "Population estimates are released every year by the Census based on projections from the last decennial Census combined with current data on births, deaths and migration."

But there’s plenty to be concerned about in the 2020 Census, as it will be administered by a Trump administration whose defining characteristics are top-level incompetence and race-based mean-spritedness. The administration has already tried to add a citizenship question to the Census, clearly designed to intimidate immigrant populations from being participating. That was struck down by the Supreme Court, though this Census still carries risks, like the possibility of hacking since you’ll be able to complete the questionnaire online — and the potential for bad actors to spread misinformation about how the census works on social media, which companies like Facebook and Twitter have vowed to combat.

Even if California does get nicked out of a congressional seat and an Electoral College vote, this would not affect this year’s 2020 presidential election. The counting won’t be finished until next year, and then will be followed by a redrawing of Congressional districts. So there is no electoral impact until the 2022 midterm elections. But the statehouse will feel the impact of less federal funding, and it would not be surprising if some California member of the House of Representatives gets gerrymandered out of a job.

Note: This post has been updated with comment from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Related: Facebook Says It Will Fight Disinformation About the 2020 Census [SFist]

Image: Census.gov

The State of California is one of emergency, Governor Jerry Brown declared yesterday: To bolster recovery efforts following January and February storms that brought damage in the form of power outages, floods, and mudslides, Brown has requested a "Presidential Major Disaster Declaration."

The President, naturally, has declared California a disaster many times over. And last month alone he granted two separate Presidential Major Disaster Declaration requests related to the Oroville Dam debacle and earlier January storm havoc.

The text of yesterday's request is here, and it draws on the National Weather Service reports of an atmospheric river system during the period of January 18 to 23rd. An estimated 55,000 households and businesses were left without power during the period. According to the document requesting public assistance, damages are likely to exceed $112.9 million. Brown's declaration applies to 53 of 58 California counties including all those in the Bay Area.

The disaster proclamations direct Caltrans to request assistance from the Federal Highway Administration's Emergency relief fund, and the Office of Emergency Services to provide more in the way of help.

Related: Atmospheric River Causes Mudslides And Floods, As 24 Straight Hours Of Rain Predicted

Bicycle advocates have long been pushing for the legalization of the so-called "Idaho stop" — or "California roll" — in which cyclists treat stop signs more as yield signs, only coming to a full stop if conditions are busy or hazardous. A new bill being put before the California Assembly would make such rolling stops legal statewide, but this is sure to re-spark a years-long debate in which motorists say cyclists shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose which traffic laws to follow on our already chaotic city streets.

The Examiner reports that Assemblymen Jay Obernolte (R-Hesperia, and an avid cyclist) and Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) introduced the bill on Friday, and the language leaves it up to cyclists' discretion whether conditions in an intersection are safe enough to pedal through, though stopping at red lights would still be mandatory.

Obernolte tells the paper that coming to awkward stops and spending more time in an intersection is actually more dangerous for cyclists. "It’s pretty compelling that the data supports this kind of change in the law,” he says. “Their loss of momentum causes them to spend a substantially longer amount of time in the intersection."

The practice was named for the only state where this is now settled law, Idaho, and a previous effort to push through a similar measure locally by the Board of Supervisors was vetoed last year by Mayor Ed Lee. At the time Lee said he refused to "trade safety for convenience," and that "while expedient for some bicyclists, [the Idaho stop] directly endangers pedestrians and other cyclists."

But Obernolte points to the fact that such stop-sign laws for cyclists are very unevenly enforced, and that rolling through stop signs remains common practice nearly everywhere because of the above-mentioned momentum issue.

Back in 2008, the city commissioned a study of the stop-as-yield practice, but no legislation came out of that effort. Since then, several municipalities in Colorado have passed stop-as-yield ordinances.

A study out of UC Berkeley comparing traffic incidents in Boise, Idaho to both Sacramento and Bakersfield suggests that cycling is far safer in Boise, where the Idaho stop law has been on the books since 1982.

Previously the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has railed against the city for failing to focus on the five types of motorist violations that cause traffic deaths, and "Instead, [the SFPD is] ordering officers to spend hundreds of hours cracking down on people biking cautiously and slowly through stop signs."

Previously: Mayor Vetoes 'Idaho Stop' Law As Promised

It may not be in the cards this year, but California has an extended history of mega-floods — the likes of which the state has not seen since 1862, when about 40 days of straight rain turned the Central Valley and much of Sacramento into a lake, killing countless people and thousands of livestock and leveling a number of barely decade-old west coast towns. Hydrology researcher Dave Reynolds argued in a 2012 paper that despite the lack of weather records for the state prior to the 1850s, the Great Flood of 1862 should be considered a 200-year event that could be expected to repeat itself with much more disastrous effects now that the west coast is so much more densely populated. But now KPIX/CBS 5 picked up on this historic flood narrative, noting that the "atmospheric river" effects we're seeing this season from the colloquially named Pineapple Express could lead to a mega-flood catastrophe sooner than we think.

They report that "Geographic data indicates California has a mega flood about every 100 to 200 years," meaning we could even be overdue for another one — and the relatively minor inconveniences and small number of casualties we've seen as a result of the past six weeks' storms are negligible compared to the massive destruction the state could have in the future, climate change or not.

The USGS has modeled a scenario that they've called an ARkStorm (standing for Atmospheric River 1,000), and if you want one more thing to keep you up at night you can read the full report from 2011 right here. They estimate that economic losses could be three times what have been estimated for a major Southern California earthquake, roughly $400 billion in property losses, and business interruption costs of another $325 billion, so $725 billion total (in 2011 dollars).

The report is meant to help governments prepare for such a possibility (inevitability?), but really, how can they? The concluding statements in the abstract are enough to make you want to throw up your hands, or worse: "An ARkStorm raises serious questions about the ability of existing federal, state, and local disaster planning to handle a disaster of this magnitude... [and] innovative financing solutions are likely to be needed to avoid fiscal crisis and adequately fund response and recovery costs from a similar, real, disaster."

Yah.

Ecologist John Bourgeois, who is from Louisiana, tells CBS 5 that in the Bay Area alone, about 350,000 people live in the 100-year flood plain, and they likely don't realize it.

So stop complaining about this rain, in other words. It could be much, much worse.

Related: Fresh 'Pineapple Express' Storm Arrives Thursday As Cleanup From Last One Continues

Using a sixth sense? SF voters mark their ballots inside Columbarium, among remains of politicians, actors, friends pic.twitter.com/UIrupCsvyH

— Juan Carlos Guerrero (@JuanCarlosABC7) November 8, 2016

Direct democracy is now 105 years old in California, and while many think that legislating at the ballot box has gotten way out of hand — especially with this year's 17 state initiatives and 25 local ones in SF — there is something to be said for laws that the people make themselves. USC law professor Elizabeth Garrett has said, it's empowering for a populace to make change directly, "rather than hoping that lawmakers, who have an interest in the process, will reform [things] themselves." Indeed the ballot initiative system began in California during a period when businessmen and monied interests were having too great an influence on the state legislature, and it was a Republican governor who helped usher in the era of direct democracy in the state in 1911. And you think this year's ballot is long? You should have seen the ballot in 1914.

As The California Report discusses this morning, one of the first years that ballot initiatives became possible in the state, in 1914, there were 48 state measures on the ballot, putting our current 17 to shame.

Reporter Polly Stryker says, at the time, "There was a growing frustration with the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad... and putting the initiative process on the ballot and getting it ratified in the constitution as an amendment was a way to break the power of the railroad." And this first big round of initiatives included a number of populist concerns, including an attempt at alcohol prohibition (which would ultimately pass as a national constitutional amendment five years later, in 1919); the establishment of a state water commission, which passed; the establishment of a minimum wage for women and children, which passed; the establishment of an eight-hour work day, which failed; and a ban on organizing, training for, or betting on prize fights, which had clearly become a widespread public ill at the time, and which passed.

The ballot initiative system was, as Stryker says, "part of the progressive movement, and it's a way to circumvent corruption or untrustworthy politicians." But, of course, huge sums of money have creeped into the system, especially when it comes to corporate interests (like Big Pharma, and Big Soda) buying ad time to shoot down progressive causes like prescription drug price cuts and soda taxes. And it tends to take a ton of money to get anything on the ballot these days, with over 900,000 signatures required.

LA Weekly did a recent piece about the history of direct democracy in California, and we were actually the 10th state in the union to establish such a system during a broader progressive era. The initiative, referendum, and recall systems in the state were largely spurred by a wealthy progressive doctor, John Randolph Haynes, who "moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles for his health in 1887 and helped found the Christian Socialist Economic League of Los Angeles," as the Weekly explains. Haynes was fond of saying, "The remedy for the evils of democracy is more democracy," and after getting direct democracy established in LA County, he moved on to pushing it at the state level.

Haynes found an ally in Hiram Johnson, a progressive Republican who was elected governor of California in 1910, and their Lincoln-Roosevelt League helped put Proposition 7, which established the initiative, referendum, and recall systems, on the ballot the following year as a state constitutional amendment.

Fast forward to today, Election Day, when you can see the machinations of business and politics all over the ballot, and a somewhat confused and confusing version of direct democracy at work. While the idea remains a nice one in its purest form, there is something absurd, particularly in general election years, in believing that California's 17.9 million registered voters have the inclination, time, or intelligence to parse the complexities of over a dozen new laws they're asked to vote on, especially when monied interests spend hundreds of millions of dollars to sway them with sound bites one way or the other.

Spending on state ballot measure campaigns has reached an all-time high in 2016, approaching $500 million, with $100 million of that being spent on the prescription drug measure, Prop 61, alone.

Next up: A ballot measure to reform the ballot measure process.

Related: Here's What You Need To Know Before Voting For The Dozens Of State And Local Propositions

Leading a charge that is expected to ripple across the country, California governor Jerry Brown and the state legislature struck a deal Monday to raise the statewide minimum wage to $15 per hour over the course of the next six years. While San Francisco and Los Angeles have already passed local ordinances to do so sooner (SF by 2018, and LA by 2020), municipalities statewide will have to catch by 2022 — and the way things are going, by that time $15 is likely to buy about as much as $10 does today, i.e. the current state minimum hourly wage.

As USA Today reports, the deal would boost the wages of 6.5 million Californians beginning in 2017, when the minimum will rise to $10.50. It will go to $11 in 2018, then go up a dollar each year to $15/hr in 2022. The deal will still need to pass through both houses of the CA legislature, but chances of it passing look pretty good, says the LA Times.

A tentative deal was struck late last week, as the AP and LA Times reported, and today Brown gave a news conference with legislators in Sacramento to make it official. Per the Times, Brown said this is "a matter of economic justice," and "It makes sense."

The timetable for the wage hike marks a compromise, given that labor leaders already had a state proposition qualified for the 2016 ballot that would have raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2021. Brown also got a caveat written into the deal: If statewide unemployment or the state has a projected deficit in its budget in the first few years of the agreement, the minimum wage hikes will go on pause.

Brown said that the current deal "is the result of a lot of thinking," and it's been written "in a way that takes into account the vagaries of the capitalistic economy.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage remains $7.25, where it has been stuck due to the efforts of Republicans in Congress since 2009. Oregon recently raised their state minimum to $15, and Seattle and some other California municipalities have done similarly — with the city of Berkeley recently talking about hiking theirs to $19, though they later nixed that idea. There's currently a proposal from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to raise the state's minimum to $15/hr by 2021, with the New York City minimum hitting that mark by 2019.

Back in 2014, as both SF and LA were mulling their own minimum wage hikes, an anti-minimum wage campaign went up in both cities, funded by the conservative Employment Policies Institute and spearheaded by "evil" PR mastermind Rick Berman, who also does work to fight anti-smoking groups, teachers' unions, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and "nanny-state" bans of all kinds, as 60 Minutes reported.* The billboards threatened restaurant workers and teens with the notion that any rise in wages means that some of them will simply lose their jobs.

Related: Video: Kristin Bell As Minimum-Wage Mary Poppins

* This post has been corrected to show that, according to Berman's reps, he has not done any work on behalf of the tobacco industry.

In a move that surprised no one today, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB270, aka "California's plastic bag ban" into law. Just as unsurprisingly, the folks who make plastic bags are pissed, and say that they won't rest until California's voters repeal the law, with a move that could delay the law's implementation until 2017, or later.

Before today, single-use plastic bags were already verboten in 87 California cities and counties including, as you of course know, San Francisco. With Brown's OK of the state-wide ban, California becomes the first state in the US to have such a law.

With the ban, grocery stores, big-box stores like Walmart and Target, and pharmacies in places that don't already have the ban will be required to stop offering single-use plastic bags by July 2015. The same will go for corner stores and liquor stores the year after that. The law doesn't apply to non-food retailers like most of the places in your local mall, nor does it apply to the little plastic bags you get at the grocery store for produce or bulk items, or the plastic bags they put your meat in.

As has been the case in San Francisco, stores will be required by law to charge at least a dime for every paper bag or "reusable" plastic bag a customer gets, all in an effort to encourage folks to bring their reusable bags.

All this is pretty much nbd for those of us in the Bay Area, where many of us live in places where the single-use bags have been banned for a while. For whom the deal is big are plastic bag manufacturers who, despite the law's built-in $2 million in loans to help them transition their operations to produce reusable bags, say that they're ready to fight the ban.

In a statement sent to media, The American Progressive Bag Alliance (a coalition of manufacturers), which describes the ban as "what happens when greedy special interests and bad government collide in the policymaking process," says that they "have taken the necessary steps to gather signatures and qualify a referendum to repeal SB 270 on the November 2016 ballot."

If they are successful in collecting the number of signatures they'll need to be added to the 2016 ballot (in this case, 504,760 verified signatures), the bag ban will be suspended until after November 2016 election. If voters agree with the bag makers that the law must be repealed, then it's game over for the ban, at least for now. If the ban prevails, the law will then kick in in January, 2017.

Are you more of a visual learner? Here's a dramatic graphic showing just how short on water the state of California is compared to just last week, and last year. That dark maroon part indicates "exceptional drought" or drought-level 4 (D4). The red is "extreme drought," and orange indicates "severe drought." These all sound like basically the same thing, but according to this week's Drought Monitor report from the USDA, the D4 designation is based on a range of factors getting much worse, especially in Northern California, as we barely pass the midpoint of summer.

Nebraska-based climatologist Mark Svoboda at the National Drought Mitigation Center calls our three-year drought "a once in a generation type of event," noting to Mashable that compared to the California drought of late 1970s, there are now about twice as many people living in the state, therefore using twice as much water, if not more.

75 percent of California's water usage nonetheless goes to agriculture — i.e. growing most of the country's carrots, avocados, strawberries, almonds, grapes, etc. And according to a UC Davis study released two weeks ago, about five percent of the state's irrigated crop land, or 428,000 acres, will be taken out of production by year's end, and statewide agriculture revenue losses are expected to be $1.5 billion. So you can expect the price of those carrots and avocados to rise.

The "exceptional drought" indicator is based on the following facts:

• California is short more than one year’s worth of reservoir water, or 11.6 million acre-feet, for this time of year.
• For California’s 154 intrastate reservoirs, storage at the end of June stood at 60% of the historical average
• California’s topsoil moisture and subsoil moisture reserves are nearly depleted and the state’s rangeland and pastures were rated 70% very poor to poor on July 27.
• New wildfires (the El Portal Fire near Yosemite and the Sand Fire further south) have collectively charred almost 8,000 thousand acres of vegetation in northern and central California. The El Portal Fire is 34 percent contained, and the Sand Fire is now 95 percent contained.

So if you've been whining about not being able to hose off your driveway, just stop.

[Drought Monitor]
[Twitter/NWSHanford]
[Mashable]

Although you see many A's caps around town and can't help but notice their green-and-yellow costumery while riding BART, this map says there are basically no A's fans in the Bay Area, not even in Oakland. Huh. The NYT Times used aggregated data pulled from Facebook "to create an unprecedented look at the geography of baseball fandom, going down not only to the county level, but also to ZIP codes." Zip codes in Oakland show a strong preference for SF over Oakland. In fact, the A's don't even register on the nationwide map:

The NYT explains the jarring Giants bias is due in large part to two recent (and quite glorious) World Series wins. "Like the Mets, the Athletics are the less popular team in a two-team region — less popular everywhere in that region, based on the data from Facebook. Again, winning the World Series matters. The Giants have won two of the last four. The A’s have won none of the last 24."

While noting the 2010 and 2012 championships as one explanation why A's fans might be fading, noted A's zealot Gunnar Hissam (partner / owner of Om Records) gives us another: "One reason fans might be dwindling is that owners John Fisher (absentee) and Lew Wolff (real estate tycoon and face of the team, when he's not down in LA going to Dodgers games) are complete clown asses and shit on the fans. The stadium is a dump, they refuse to fix it up, they want to move to San Jose, they don't respect Oakland or the history. They're just in it for the money."

Another oddity is San Luis Obispo. The town always been considered the dividing line between the Giants and the Dodgers, right? Not so, says the map. As the NYT points out, SLO "is squarely Dodgers territory." (Zac Efron, an SLO native, revealed himself to be "a serious Giants fan" in a 2008 interview. So brave of him to come out as an SF fan while coming from such a backward city!) While the Giants have major presence throughout Northern California, Tulare County acts as the real Mason-Dixon line in the Great Giants-Dodgers War.

And, yes, you're probably right. This fandom map could be miles away from the real makeup of MLB fandom. (It also claims that NYC basically has no Mets fans.) To find out more, we asked platinum Giants fan Grant Brisbee of McCovey Chronicles

"It's hard to know exactly how closely Facebook likes mirror reality. You would think Facebook skews a little younger, and this is trying to measure a sport whose fans skew a little older," Brisbee explains. "I will say that I'm dubious. I live about 10 minutes from the Oakland Coliseum, and I see plenty of A's gear. It's at least a 50/50 split between Giants and A's apparel, and that's being conservative. And you know that famous saying, 'Anecdotal evidence is far, far better than aggregated data.' "

[NYT]