Levi Sumagaysay

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CalMatters •

How Trump tariffs could upend California farms, wine businesses and ports

President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs are putting many California businesses, jobs and the state budget at risk. They’re affecting not only long-term relationships with trading partners, but an intricate web of ecosystems and supply chains. 

The California business owners and groups grappling with the tariffs — wine shop owners, winery founders, farmers — say the precise effects on their industries are unclear so far. They hope there will be an upside. 

But for those who have a...
CalMatters •

Canadians pull back on travel to California because of Trump: 'I will miss the desert'

California tourism could lose billions of dollars because of President Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs, immigration and gender identity, as well as his talk of annexing Canada. 

Visit California, a nonprofit organization that promotes tourism in the Golden State, recently revised its overall visitor spending forecast for this year from $166 billion to $160 billion, saying international travel into California is already beginning to slow. Canada, the second-largest source of international tou...
CalMatters •

LA fires could drastically drive up insurance premiums — and test California’s new market rules

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The deadly and destructive fires in Los Angeles — which some say could be the costliest in the state’s history — will further strain the insurance market and worsen the financial position of California’s insurer of last resort.

Data about Pacific Palisades, the devastated LA neighborhood whose residents include movie stars and directors, help illustrate the insurance problems plaguing the state. An estimated 1 in 5 homes in the upscale neighborhood were covered by...
CalMatters •

Trump’s deportations could cost California ‘hundreds of billions of dollars.’ Here’s how

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Mass deportations promised by President-elect Donald Trump could have a seismic economic effect in California — potentially inflicting billions of dollars in direct damages to a wide range of industries, including small business, agriculture, construction and child care, advocates and academics said.

The impact could also spread outward to other sectors, including growth drivers like tech.

The Golden State relies heavily on the labor of immigrants, whether they’re...
CalMatters •

How to stay calm when Elon Musk says he’s leaving California — and other lessons from business relocations

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When oil giant Chevron said over the summer that it would be moving its corporate headquarters to Houston from San Ramon, the headlines were dire. “Chevron Dumps California for Texas After 145 Years,” read one. Another called the move a “Snub to California.” A third noted that the departure came “as Regulations Mount in Golden State.”

The gloomy headlines illustrate how the press and corporate leaders often oversimplify big-company departures from California, leadi...
CalMatters •

A mystery surge in California tax revenue points to tech companies like Nvidia. Here’s why

No sooner had Gov. Gavin Newsom cut billions of dollars in spending to close a budget deficit in June than California received an unexpected tax windfall, one that has people in the Capitol speculating about where the avalanche of money came from.

More corporate taxes than expected poured into state coffers this summer, with cash receipts exceeding forecasts by nearly $2 billion since April. An especially big surge came in July, and state officials and accounting experts think the extra receipt...
CalMatters •

California companies wrote their own gig worker law. Now no one is enforcing it

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Nearly four years after California voters approved better wages and health benefits for ride-hailing drivers and delivery workers, no one is actually ensuring they are provided, according to state agencies, interviews with workers and a review of wage claims filed with the state.

Voters mandated the benefits in November 2020 when they approved Proposition 22. The ballot initiative was backed by gig-work companies that wanted to keep their workers classified as inde...
MarketWatch •

Clipboard Health promises fast pay. A nursing assistant had to chase down $21K.

In the age of the gig economy, healthcare workers use many different mobile-phone apps to find work and get paid. Paulette Hewitt, a nursing assistant, booked shifts at different healthcare facilities in Los Angeles through an app called Clipboard Health.One day, as Hewitt worked shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic, her paychecks from the app stopped coming in, she said. Hewitt said she was owed more than $21,000, including for regular and overtime shifts, for work she performed from November 20...
MarketWatch •

Why 'fed up' actors, writers, hotel workers and grad students are all on strike

Tired of growing wealth disparities and fighting for what they feel is their fair share, U. S. workers across industries and income levels are either on strike, about to go on strike or fresh off participating in some sort of labor action this year.Los Angeles is a hotbed of all that activity, with striking Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild members bringing most productions to a standstill. Hotel housekeepers, front-desk clerks and other hospitality workers in the area are also on...
MarketWatch •

California task force approves reparations potentially worth billions of dollars

After a sometimes contentious day-long meeting Saturday, California’s reparations task force approved a sweeping set of recommendations — including potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in monetary reparations — for repair and restitution for harms experienced by African Americans as a result of slavery and the state’s subsequent policies and practices. The task force was born out of a 2020 law that established the first state-level reparations effort of its kind in the nation. The final...
MarketWatch •

A driver spent $180K to start an Uber Black business. Then Uber deactivated him.

Miguel Abreu, a ride-hailing driver, bought a Chevy Tahoe for about $80,000 last summer. He spent about $10,000 getting a commercial license and hiring an accountant to set up a luxury Uber Black business, then bought a Mercedes for $90,000 and lined up another driver for that vehicle. Then, in early December, Uber Technologies Inc. deactivated his account.Abreu, of Lynn, Mass., told MarketWatch the company kicked him off the Uber One day, Uber asked Abreu to prove he was at the airport, so he s...
MarketWatch •

'Uber for nurses?': Initiative targets healthcare for a 'gig work' law

Healthcare, the nation’s fastest-growing industry, could be next in the push for laws to expand gig work. A measure filed this week with the California attorney general’s office seeks to ask the state’s voters in November to classify nurses, dental hygienists, occupational therapists and other healthcare workers who secure work online or through apps as independent contractors. The proposed measure was submitted by a law firm that worked on Proposition 22, the record-breaking $200 million-plus i...
MarketWatch •

‘I don't know how I fell for this’: How scammers target vulnerable gig workers, and why it may never end

Jimmy Quach had been working part time as an Uber Eats delivery driver in Albuquerque, N.M., for two months when he was scammed out of his earnings.After a customer canceled a Taco Bell order, he received a phone call from a person claiming to be Uber support. The person asked him to log out of his account, send a photo of himself for verification purposes, and type in a bank account number as a payment method in the Uber Eats app.Quach followed the instructions and lost the $337.36 in his accou...
MarketWatch •

Contractor slashed Facebook janitors’ paid holidays and blamed the tech giant, but reversed course after questions

A contractor said this week it is restoring holiday pay to Facebook Inc. janitors after questions from MarketWatch about why hundreds of workers lost more than half their paid holidays during the COVID-19 pandemic.Facebook FB janitors who kept their jobs but worked sporadically throughout the coronavirus pandemic went back to full-time, on-site work in April as the social media giant began to open its offices with limited capacity. Although several janitors said they are grateful to still be emp...
The Mercury News •

Elon Musk calls lidar ‘stupid,’ but most self-driving cars use it. Who’s right?

In the race to a future in which self-driving cars deliver us safely to our destinations, technology’s brightest minds are debating the best way to make fully autonomous vehicles as good as or even better than humans at driving.
Unlike us, computers can’t see. So the pioneers of the self-driving revolution found their solution in cameras, radar and – critically — lidar, a technology first used in the 1960s in meteorology and to map the surface of the moon. Lidar, which stands for light detection...
The Mercury News •

Dictionary.com: Noun. Oakland company, master of trolling Trump et al.

In the age of social media and a tweet-happy president, online dictionaries aren’t just sitting back and waiting for people to look up words.
Dictionary.com is pointing out connotations of the words President Donald Trump uses, correcting his misspellings and calling out other famous people in the news. The East Bay company’s online posts — especially on Twitter and Facebook — have raised its profile, ensuring the president doesn’t always get the last word on controversial matters and offering c...
The Mercury News •

Engelbart’s historic demo: What have we learned 50 years later?

Long before PCs and the web became ubiquitous, Doug Engelbart stood up at a computing conference at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium for a revolutionary demo. He showed off a mouse made of wood that could manipulate electronic text, and a computer that displayed different programs in windows on a screen. He collaborated with colleagues miles away using video. When it was over, he got a standing ovation.
In just 90 minutes, in front of about 1,000 people on Dec. 9, 1968, Engelbart kicked off the...
The Mercury News •

Minorities in the Bay Area grapple with racism, anxiety in Trump’s America

Laurie Laxa woke up with her heart pounding and her eyelids swollen, maybe because she’d been squeezing her eyes tightly shut. She had just had a nightmare that ICE had detained her.
Laxa is a U.S. citizen. She was born here. But as a child of Filipino immigrants, she is sensitive to the rising hostility toward immigrants and minorities in this country.
“I was telling them, ‘I was born here! I was born here!’ I was pounding on the table,” said the Fairfield resident, who had just finished watchi...
MarketWatch •

‘It’s like being ripped into two’: Chipotle workers overwhelmed by online orders and furious customers

For more than three years, Patrick Rodriguez has worked at a Chipotle restaurant at the northern tip of Manhattan, a vital food lifeline during the pandemic for the nurses and doctors who work a block away at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.“Last year, we were heroes [serving healthcare workers],” Rodriguez said Wednesday. “And now, look at us. We’re striking.”Rodriguez and several other Chipotle workers did not show up for their shifts Wednesday morning, becoming the latest group of fast-food wor...
The Mercury News •

Uber IPO falls flat in worst first-day showing of tech unicorns this year

The long-awaited IPO of Uber, the brash ride-hailing giant that has changed transportation around the world, turned out to be a dud Friday.
Despite its efforts to tamp down expectations, the San Francisco company closed at $41.57, down 7.6 percent from its IPO price, valuing it at $76 billion. That is the worst first-day showing of the five tech unicorns that have gone public so far this year and a long way from the $120 billion valuation that was estimated by the company’s lead underwriters las...
The Mercury News •

Gig economy ‘earthquake’: California Supreme Court rules on worker classification

A sweeping California Supreme Court ruling that redefines when employers can classify workers as independent contractors could blow up the business models of Uber, Lyft and dozens of other companies that rely on gig workers.
The decision, handed down Monday in a case involving delivery drivers for a Southern California company, may lead to many more California workers being classified as employees, with the higher pay and legal protections that classification entails.
“This is an earthquake, a s...
The Mercury News •

Opinion: Filipino World War II veterans get long-overdue honor, but for many it’s too late

A Filipino veteran of World War II spoke this week at a ceremony honoring him and his fellow vets in Washington, where they were awarded a Congressional Gold Medal after fighting in a real war, then fighting a long battle to be recognized for their service.
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The Mercury News •

Google diversity push attacked by one of its own

One of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies is being attacked from within for being a liberal bastion.
A screed titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” that’s making the rounds at Google says the company’s diversity initiatives are discriminatory, and chalks up the gender gap at the company to the biological differences between men and women.
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