Good morning.
(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)
At 29 minutes, the State of the State speech that Gov. Jerry Brown delivered Thursday — his 16th and his last — was longer than most. That was in no small part because Mr. Brown devoted considerable time to talking about the past, noting, for example, how California was struggling through a severe economic downturn when he arrived and was now thriving.
But this was no swan song. Mr. Brown, who in a recent interview resisted the notion that he was entering the lame-duck period of his tenure, used the address to set out two critical campaigns he is planning to wage that are likely to help define not only the next year in California politics but also influence the race to succeed him.
The first involves the 12-cent-a-gallon gas tax Democrats in the State Legislature muscled through last year to raise $5 billion a year for the state’s battered roads. Republicans see an opportunity to use it against Democrats: They are circulating petitions to put a voter initiative on the ballot to repeal the measure (and in the process, they hope, bring out an anti-Democratic vote that could protect congressional Republicans facing tough re-election battles.).
Mr. Brown made clear that he would do everything he could to battle any attempt to pull back the measure. “Fighting the gas tax may appear to be good politics, but it isn’t,” Mr. Brown said. “I will do everything in my power to defeat any repeal effort that gets on the ballot.” (Worth noting here: Mr. Brown’s success in winning approval for an income tax surcharge initiative in 2012.)
The other is one of Mr. Brown’s top priorities, a high-speed train that is now in jeopardy because of cost overruns and opposition from the Trump administration. In previous years, Mr. Brown barely mentioned his train. This year, he devoted a long passage to making an urgent plea for the project. “Yes, there are critics,” he said. “There are lawsuits, lots of them. But California was built on dreams and perseverance. And the bolder path is still the way forward.”
Continue reading the main story(Worth noting here: Those words were largely aimed at an audience of one: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was sitting on the stage. Mr. Newsom, who is running to succeed Mr. Brown, has signaled strong concerns about the project.)
California Online
(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)
Photo
• Apple waded deeper into the content creation business by announcing a deal for a television series with Damien Chazelle, the director behind the film, “La La Land.” [The New York Times]
• Marijuana start-ups are finding new ways to deliver a high. [The New York Times]
• What is it like to interview Governor Brown? Adam Nagourney, The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, gives us the back story on sitting down with the departing governor. [The New York Times]
• Mr. Brown’s speech, annotated. [Los Angeles Times]
• A mountain in California will be renamed for a Marine killed in Afghanistan. [Marine Corps Times]
Photo
• Warren Miller, a son of California who learned to ski in the San Gabriel Mountains and then turned his passion into filmmaking, died this week. He was 93. [The New York Times]
• One night in 1962 three bank robbers escaped from Alcatraz, and were never seen again. They were presume to have drowned in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay. But did they really? A newly revealed letter has reopened an old mystery. [CBS SF Bay Area/Washington Post]
• A crisis in journalism in California, with the Los Angeles Times facing turmoil within its newsroom, and other newspapers in California laying off more reporters and editors. [CALmatters/NiemanLab]
• Cher and the Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash disagree in a City Hall debate over an elephant, in a “scene that could only happen in LA.” [Beverly Hills Patch]
• The Justice Department has an opinion about the free speech controversy at Berkeley. [Los Angeles Times]
• Ridership on Los Angeles’s buses and trains fell last year to the lowest level in more than 10 years. [Los Angeles Times]
• A defense of the fancy L.A. taco. [L.A. Taco]
And Finally ...
Photo
Its exact origins are debated, but one historian traced it back to the silver mines of 18th century Mexico.
Another researcher argued that it spread across America as a “form of exoticism” springing from “within the segregated landscape of 1950s Los Angeles.”
We are talking, of course, about the taco. And if the theory that California, with its large Latino population, represents the future demographics of America is correct, then the taco is likely to continue to undergo reinvention in this country for a long time to come. Although perhaps not as inventively as in California, where varieties proliferate, and different cuisines collide to create new takes on an old staple. (One famous example is the Los Angeles chef Roy Choi and his “Korean Mexican taco movement.”)
It’s even a subject of academic study, the history and meaning of the taco, with classes just having started in the spring semester for the course, “Taco Literacy,” at St. John’s University in New York.
But to capture the current state-of-play in the world of tacos, Daily Meal has published its list of the best tacos in each of the 50 states. And No. 1 in California is the carnitas taco at La Taqueria, in San Francisco.
And being the best in California, means being No. 1 in the nation: La Taqueria topped an earlier list of best tacos in the country.
California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
Continue reading the main story Source: http://ift.tt/2DO8fen
0 comments:
Post a Comment