Brian EdwardsTiekert
@bedwardstiek
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Host, UpFront, 7am @kpfaradio @CWAUnion | Fmr @JSKStanford | he/him | Insta: @ibikeeverywhere | Masto:
Berkeley, CA
Joined August 2008
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Pinned Tweet
BREAKING: in the Oakland hills an escaped peacock has been taken in by a rafter (yes, that's the collective noun) of wild turkeys.
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Local journalist here, with a thread on why you should *absolutely not* do what this headline writer did, and treat the recall of Chesa Boudin as a referendum of national significance on criminal justice reform. 1/
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Evictions ramping up while ~90% of the federal rent relief dollars are still unspent is what happens when landlords get rights and tenants get means-tested assistance.
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Homeless folks sleeping in cars and RVs at the Berkeley marina whom I spoke to today:
-One is a public school teacher
-One is already twice-displaced: foreclosed in SF, evicted by rent hike in San Pablo
-One is just got her master's degree from UC Berkeley. In journalism.
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7. Bad things blackouts do:
-Spoil food
-Cut off water
-Shut down highway tunnels
-Close businesses
-Cost wages
-Trap people who need elevators/motorized chairs
-Kill people
-Start fires (because without power, people light candles, fire up gas generators, cook on grilles, etc.)
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Street crime in San Francisco is getting out of hand, a thread: 1/
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2. PG&E is both the country's largest electric utility, AND a convicted felon.
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6. This was largely preventable (if PG&E had been trimming trees, replacing transformers, and maintaining decrepit towers).
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Better headline: "Bucking regional trend, Bay Area's fourth-largest county trades progressive DA for vague assurances of continued reforms under unknown successor"
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I just interviewed the untaggable Dave Eggers, who told me he:
*Lives without WiFi or a smartphone
*Writes on a 14-year-old laptop with no internet connection
*Checks his email once, daily, from the library
...and now I have new life goals.
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Would you believe 88% of California does not live in San Francisco or LA?
You can hop on a commuter train in San Francisco and reach two more-populous counties where progressive reformers are trouncing tough-on-crime DA candidates RN.
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1. The basics: Our electric grid is owned by a profit-maximizing business called Pacific Gas and Electric.
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1. All the *other* elections yesterday.
Ride BART one stop to Oakland (where the homicide rate is 4x SF's) and you're in a county where a progressive reformer took first place in the DA primary and the law-and-order Sheriff barely made it to a runoff...
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8. PG&E doesn't have to pay the tab for any of ^. Just for starting wildfires.
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Firefighters: We're facing a heat wave driving vegetative moisture to record lows making dry tinder which is now burning hot enough to produce flaming tornadoes.
Our President: BUT HAVE YOU TRIED PUTTING WATER ON THE FIERY PART
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5. So now that it's dry and windy, they are TURNING OFF THE POWER for up to 2.5 MILLION people, for up to SIX DAYS.
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4. PG&E doesn't want to rack up more wildfire liability...
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.
...but it also hasn't completed two thirds of the inspections and maintenance it told a judge it needs to make the system safer.
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...ride further to Contra Costa, and the progressive reformer DA defeated a tough-on-crime challenger so handily there won't even be a runoff.(These counties combined have more than triple the population of SF -- but a fraction of the press attention).
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3. PG&E is presently in bankruptcy because its neglected equipment sparked massive wildfires over the past two years.
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11. The official source of information on which areas will be blacked out is PG&E's website. It's been down since yesterday . . .
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15. "But I thought utility companies are super *regulated*?"
Yes!
And they also have $ to finance the electeds who pick their regulators, and hire their former staff to lobby their old bosses!
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12. There are going to be millions of people without electricity for days. With a couple exceptions, PG&E's set up only one emergency resource center PER COUNTY. . .
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9. But the blackouts are ultimately PG&E's call. Not the state. Not the utility commission*. PG&E.
(*The PUC does approve PG&E's plan for managing wildfire risk in general)
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10. Why the flurry of surprised posts? Even though PG&E's planned to do something like this for close to a year, they have been absolute crap at actually managing it....
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14. The emergency resource centers they *have* set up are, uhm . . . spartan. Also, they close at night.
This looks like the perfect place to plug in my kid's ventilator so she can breathe...while she sleeps...all night long 🙄🙄
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13. They only started working on how to keep the region's busiest highway tunnels open . . . yesterday.
Caltrans director says he only learned that Caldecott Tunnel might have to be closed during the
#PGEpowershutdown
A DAY AND A HALF AGO...that’s 36 hours before hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents would lose power
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Seriously, right now while I'm just tweting our producer is hounding county officials to find out what happens if the jails lose power and booking interviews with state senators on the utilities committee -- help make sure there's a paycheck for her.
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2. Local fundamentals. SF's citywide elections go poorly for progressives. Boudin got in with a tiny margin in a three-way race against an appointee with no experience in politics. His hold on citywide office was always tenuous, not newly-tenuous.
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5. The data. A poll showed Chesa Boudin's policies (setting up a workers' protection unit and an innocence commission, ending cash bail and adult charges for children) were considerably more popular than Chesa Boudin himself.
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Something this article nods at is that Chesa Boudin's 45% showing in the recall would make him a strong candidate to win the office back in the fall's instant-runoff special election to fill the remainder of the term.
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This is blowing up! Donate to my radio station's fund drive here so we can keep making local journalism:
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4. Finance. Recall campaigns can raise unlimited donations. That advantages SF's concentrated finance, tech, and real estate capital. A breathtaking $7.2m (and counting) went into attacking Boudin, who had no opponent on the ballot to attack in turn.
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16. (Maplight breaks out PG&E investment in state-level politicians here:
Opensecrets has federal data, and the employment history of the lobbyists working for them here: )
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3. Recall fundamentals. Incumbents *always* want to shape an election as a choice (between them an opponent they run attacks on) rather than a referendum that asks voters if things are going well. That's impossible under SF recall rules, with no opponent on the ballot.
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This is the tech capital of the world starting to shut down because of climate change, neglected infrastructure, and leaving our power system in the hands of a profit-maximizing shareholder-owned utility.
#BREAKING
: Caltrans plans to close all four bores of the Caldecott Tunnel for as long as five days due to
#PGEShutoff
.
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The Bay when there's a storm blowing in at sunset.
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Friday night after reporters start drinking is when you drop news you expect to land poorly.
Gavin Newsom has announced vetoes of bills to:
-Fund more legal aid lawyers for tenants facing eviction
-Expand the Cal Grant financial aid program
-Decriminalize jaywalking
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At one local business, hundreds of thousands of dollars in theft: 7/
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I'm just wrecked by the news at
@EastBayExpress
laid off its entire editorial staff. This is a paper that's been punching well above its weight class on local accountability journalism for a *long* time.
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A deranged man has bear-sprayed eight strangers on the street: 2/
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6. The campaign's own words. Recall proponents *themselves* publicly identified as supporters of criminal justice reform. They conceded the substantive policy ground to defeat the person advancing it. /fin
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San Francisco, the city that can't stop ending.
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Brazen daytime assault on San Francisco woman: 4/
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In plain sight, multiple San Franciscans' property stolen, destroyed: 6/
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Man stabbed to death by tech executive, drugs may have been involved: 3/
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OK let's de-euphemise some police vocab:
*"deploy tear gas" = gas people
*"disperse the crowd" = stampede the crowd
*"fire projectiles" = shoot
*"rubber bullet" = rubber-coated steel bullet
*"baton" (unless used in a relay race or marching band) = club
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Teenager shot and killed while exiting store: 5/
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A wild thing about free fare discourse in the Bay is for 10+ years we've had have big tech employers running large networks of free buses because doing that is actually a very good way to move people around without cars but somehow it's inconceivable as a public service.
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Hello to everyone suddenly paying attention to the orange skies of the west coast!
Local journalist here, fresh off weeks of interviewing weather, climate, forest, and fire experts to give you . . . a
#CaliforniaFires
explainer thread:
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Open-air drug markets, operated with impunity for years 8/
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Hi! 40 years ago today, California voters approved proposition 13, a giant gut-punch to a government that had been building ambitious infrastructure projects, running world-class schools, practically giving away University degrees for free, AND banking surpluses. Some details:
1. It capped property taxes so low (at 1%) that it made building more housing a money-losing proposition for most local governments (because the taxes from the housing don't cover the services required by its residents)
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Hey let's go over some of the weapons police are using on protesters, and where they came from:
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It took us forever to pry this out of officials, but after PG&E cuts the power tomorrow, they'll set up one emergency resource center *per county*. They'll have water, charging, and A/C. Here where:
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Thank you!
TBH, a big swath of our audience will wake up with no power this morning, and we're worried it will wreck
@kpfa
's ability to raise our budget during this fund drive.
Donate:
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Apparently
@alex_lee
used a committee meeting to gut and amend a doomed gas tax holiday bill into a windfall profits tax + rebate and I am somewhat resentful that news of this has been crowded out of my feed by slap takes all afternoon.
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Hi!
Apropos of a rent bad tweet I'll not amplify here, a reminder that the *most* government-subsidized form of housing in the US is... <drumroll>
.
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.
the owner-occupied suburban single-family home!
Here's a thread:
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The thing about homeless evictions here: there's literally nowhere to go. No city has shelter capacity for all its homeless (let alone long-term affordable housing). The City Manager basically told me she expects evicted vehicle-campers will just move onto other city streets.
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Also clear the lack of housing drives other probs:
One person was employed until *after* she moved into the RV:
"I don't have anywhere to shower or clean up," she said. "So I go into job interviews looking like this" (dressed casually, makeup-less, maybe overdue for a shower)
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UC Berkeley's Free Palestine Camp is apparently being overwhelmed with donations from supporters. As of this afternoon, their request list is down to zero, and they're only enumerating things they *don't* want.
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Berkeley, a city with ~800 unsheltered homeless, has one emergency warming shelter, with 80 cots.
It doesn't serve meals, doesn't allow kids, and kicks everyone out at 6:30am, even during storms so bad Caltrans is begging people to stay off the streets.
Small protest outside Old City Hall today, calling for more emergency shelter beds during the winter storm in Berkeley.
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August: Dear Lord, the AQI's up to orange!
September: Thank God, the AQI's down to orange!
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Thank you Utah, San Carlos, and East Sussex!
It meant tons that these came in just as our Program Director slipped us an announcement that we've cancelled a benefit scheduled for tonight--because the venue has no electricity. Help here:
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this is purely pragmatic: Cal's administrators have dealt with enough protest movements over the years to know police crackdowns are an accelerant and it's easier to just wait for graduation and summer break.
Whatever the flaws of the
@UCBerkeley
administration for their messaging on Palestine and Palestinians, they have refrained thus far (thankfully) from the despotic and violent crack down on students—unlike Emory, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UT Austin, NYU and many other leading
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(I'm grateful to work at a place that covers local politics with nuance, covers crime as a social phenomenon instead of a series of lurid spectacles, and asks how reforms are *working* before it asks how they're playing with hypothetical backlash voters.)
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After 18 years without a contested election, Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern has lost office without even making it to a runoff.
ALCO Sheriff candidate Yesenia Sanchez lead has only grown since Friday. Hard to imagine it falls back down below 50%, so looks like the reign of Ahern is over [insert Yoda quote]
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If you're watching news of California's
#KincadeFire
from a safe place, here's what you should know, A THREAD:
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@ceaubin
As the demands on your time go up, it gets more important to:
1) be comfortable saying no
2) pre-schedule time with friends and loved ones
3) block out time to do nothing
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There's a pandemic brewing and we're a country where:
-30 million might avoid medical help b/c no health insurance
-45 million might b/c they're underinsured / can't handle the bills
-12 million people might avoid contact with government health workers, b/c they're deportable
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It's usually around season four when the writing room runs out of fucks and just decides to make shit weird.
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Clarifying b/c this is blowing up with totally valid takes about the privilege inherent in being able to unplug:
he was not bragging or chest-thumping about his offlineness, I was prying into his setup and routine during idle chit-chat before the interview started.
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RN our fundraising staff
@kpfa
are happily puzzled that there's a flood of donations coming in from out of state with references to a Twitter thread:
(join in at )
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@kpfa
LOCALS: Here's a fantastic give/get mutual aid spreadsheet for weathering the blackout in the East Bay:
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San Francisco: I hope some of you are bottling that shit.
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Here's a photo of the mudslide that's closed Alvarado Road.
This slope started collapsing in 2016, two years after the big house above it got built; the de-vegetated terrace next to the slide is what's left of the homeowner's stabilization effort.
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You're going to see a lot of tsk tsking people at beaches this weekend because anyone can take a photo that makes them look packed.
The people who run the places the virus is *actually* tearing throuh--prisons, nursing homes, meatpacking plants-- deserve more of your attention.
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Spent an hour or so at Sproul Plaza on at 3 of UC Berkeley's encampment, and I'm here to report the vibe is very chill.
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Bay folk, you are getting exposed to high *fine particulates* for 2+ days.
You may not smell smoke, but you're still being damaged.
It's serious: PM2.5 spikes drive up hospital admissions for serious heart and lung issues. 1/
Holy fuck, plug in your air filter, don your N95
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My guilty pleasure is checking Ukraine OSINT accounts for tank footage to confirm that a country with a per capita GDP <$4k currently *being invaded* nevertheless maintains its pavement better than California.
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What do you call the stage of capitalism where there are mass evacuations because of a wildfire wave during a killer pandemic, the electric grid doesn't even work, and the stock market just ... rises to an all-time high?
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Fun facts about what prop 13's contributed to our housing crisis, as Republicans celebrate its 40th anniversary (1/6)
Republicans in the state Assembly introduce a resolution to celebrate Prop. 13 on the 40th anniversary of its passage on June 6
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Folks, I don't have a Soundcloud.
My radio station did come up a bit short on its last fund drive, and welcomes donations here:
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Security guards for one of Oakland's new luxury apartment buildings just detained, and drew a gun on, a passing black Oaklander.
He drew suspicion while photographing bike racks.
He is chair of the Oakland Bicyclists and Pedestrian Advisory Commission.
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@DrIbram
Us white folks were taught to think of racism as something you sign up for, instead of something you learn to do without even thinking about it.
So we think not wanting to be racist is the same thing as not being racist.
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The crowd for the mid-day pro-Palestinian march getting ready to depart from the Federal Building in Oakland.
Speakers announced a separate picket at the Port of Oakland has stopped an incoming shift and paused work there.
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One gotta go:
1) Glass storefronts
2) $25k handbags
3) Gilded Age-level inequality
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So here's the thing:
At its root, speeding is a design problem.
Dangerous roads are generally roads engineered to maximize traffic flow 1/
I also genuinely don't understand what approach to speeding we're supposed to take that doesn't involve fines and seizures.
Is the idea that nobody would break the speed limit if we offered them good jobs and affordable housing?
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The COVID sewage monitoring data's looking . . . not-great. Here's the trendline for EBMUD (inner East Bay):
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I can't think of a more plausible way for the US to enter a dystopian everyone-for-themself we're-not-really-a-single-country-anymore devolution than every state and local government ad-hoccing its response to a deadly pandemic.
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The Guardian, this week:
SACRAMENTO: Oh shit tech's pushing people here
OAKLAND: Oh shit tech is moving here and pushing us out
SF: Oh shit we are tech and even we don't like us
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What if everybody laid off yelling at everybody who supports a different candidate and just tried talking to people who don't normally vote instead?
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Left: "Let's ask police officials and consultants to speculate about whether protests over police murders are to blame"
Right: "Let's identify impacted communities, ask what's going on there, quote people doing violence prevention work, and profile families who've lost someone.
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NEWS:
California Guv calling for home isolation of everyone 65+, and everyone with chronic conditions. 9/
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I know there's polling on Warren voters breaking for Bernie if she drops out but isn't she also the one who keeps decapitating his enemies for him? Like, she got Chris Matthews canned. She Wine Caved Mayor Pete. She tore Mike Bloomberg's still-beating heart out of his chest on tv
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5. But the MOST IMPORTANT thing is that the majority of the tax savings haven't gone to homeowners. That's because corporations, unlike people, don't die. They don't move and change homes. So they don't get re-assessed. Many will keep paying 70s-era taxes basically forever. /end
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PG&E's website--the official source of info on who will be impacted by blackouts--is still mostly down today. The Chronicle's map is paywalled. Kudos to the Merc for getting the info up for free.
FYI: our news org is providing free access to this map.
#Supportlocaljournalism
Map: PG&E power shutoff in Bay Area, Northern California
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BREAKING: in the middle of rush hour, cease-fire activists have shut down one of the busiest commute routes in the country during President Biden's visit to the APEC summit in San Francisco
🚨BREAKING🚨: Bay Area residents have SHUT DOWN Bay Bridge to demand ceasefire while
@Potus
Biden visits San Francisco.
#CeasefireNow
! No more genocide in Gaza!
#BayBridge
#CeasefireNow
#BidenHarrisCeasefireNOW
#APEC
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Could not be a starker difference in how these two outlets covered the exact same phenomenon.
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The greater region's been targeted by international drug-smuggling networks 9/
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