As oil and gas companies continue to rake in record profits, Gov. Gavin Newsom this week unveiled the details of his proposal to deliver $11 billion in relief to Californians facing record-high gas prices.

“We’re taking immediate action to get money directly into the pockets of Californians who are facing higher gas prices as a direct result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Newsom. “But this package is also focused on protecting people from volatile gas prices, and advancing clean transportation — providing three months of free public transportation, fast-tracking electric vehicle incentives and charging stations, and new funding for local biking and walking projects.”

The Governor’s proposal calls for $9 billion in tax refunds to Californians in the form of $400 direct payments per vehicle, capped at two vehicles. This package also provides $2 billion in broader relief including:

• $750 million in incentive grants to transit and rail agencies to provide free transit for Californians for three months. As a result, roughly three million Californians per day who take the bus, subway, or light rail won’t have to pay a fare every time they ride.
• Up to $600 million to pause a part of the sales tax rate on diesel for one year.
• $523 million to pause the inflationary adjustment to gas and diesel excise tax rates.

The package also calls for $500 million in active transportation for projects that promote biking and walking throughout the state.

Additionally, this proposal fast-tracks a $1.75 billion portion of the Governor’s historic $10 billion ZEV package to further reduce the state’s dependence on oil and save Californians money, including the investments in more ZEV passenger vehicles and building more charging infrastructure throughout the state — especially in low-income communities.

The tax refund will take the form of $400 debit cards for registered vehicle owners, and individuals will be eligible to receive up to two payments. An average California driver spends approximately $300 in gasoline excise tax over a year.

The proposal provides up to two $400 rebates per vehicle, for owners to support families with more than one vehicle in use. Eligibility will be based on vehicle registration, not tax records, in order to include seniors who receive Social Security Disability income and low-income nontax filers.

The governor’s proposal does not have an income cap in order to include all Californians who are facing higher prices due to the cost of oil.

The Newsom administration will meet with the Legislature to negotiate the details of the proposal in the coming days. Once approved through the Legislature, the first payments could begin as soon as July.

Gov. Newsom has allocated billions of dollars in direct relief to Californians over the past two years, including $12 billion in direct checks through the Golden State Stimulus, $5.2 billion in rent relief, and $2 billion in utility relief.

Since 2019, the Administration and Legislature have added significant expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit, including expanding the credit to taxpayers with ITINs, expanding the credit to every Californian working full time at minimum wage, and adding the Young Child Tax Credit.

Additionally, the governor’s historic $37.6 billion climate package provides the resources needed to forge an oil-free future and bolster the state’s clean energy economy.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake was among 16 counties included in a state of emergency issued on Wednesday in response to the fall storms that did damage across the region.

Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency in the counties of Amador, Butte, Contra Costa, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Placer, Plumas, San Francisco, Solano, Sonoma and Trinity to support their ongoing recovery from severe October storms that caused widespread damage to roads and other infrastructure.

The proclamation directs Caltrans to request immediate federal assistance for highway repairs or reconstruction, among other provisions.

At the end of October, an atmospheric river dropped several inches of rain in Lake County, which also led to downed trees and power lines, and some mudslides and boulders in local roadways.

The text of the proclamation is published below.


WHEREAS beginning on or about October 21, 2021, and continuing for approximately one week, a series of strong Atmospheric River storm systems struck California; and

WHEREAS these storms resulted in record-breaking rainfall and resulted in flooding, erosion, and debris flows; and

WHEREAS these storms caused widespread damage to roads and other infrastructure across significant portions of the state; and

WHEREAS under the provisions of Government Code section 8558(b), I find that conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property exist due to these storms; and

WHEREAS under the provisions of Government Code section 8558(b), I find that the conditions caused by these storms, by reason of their magnitude and combined impact, are or are likely to be beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of any single local government and require the combined forces of a mutual aid region or regions to appropriately respond; and

WHEREAS under the provisions of Government Code section 8625(c), I find that local authority is inadequate to cope with the magnitude of the damage caused by these storms; and

WHEREAS under the provisions of Government Code section 8571, I find that strict compliance with various statutes and regulations specified in this Order would prevent, hinder, or delay the mitigation of the effects of these storms.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GAVIN NEWSOM, Governor of the State of California, in accordance with the authority vested in me by the State Constitution and statutes, including the California Emergency Services Act, and in particular, Government Code section 8625,

HEREBY PROCLAIM A STATE OF EMERGENCY to exist in Amador, Butte, Contra Costa, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Placer, Plumas, San Francisco, Solano, Sonoma, and Trinity counties due to these storms.

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT:

1. All agencies of the state government utilize and employ state personnel, equipment, and facilities for the performance of any and all activities consistent with the direction of the Office of
Emergency Services and the State Emergency Plan. Also, all residents are to obey the direction of emergency officials with regard to this emergency in order to protect their safety.

2. The Office of Emergency Services shall provide assistance to Glenn, Marin, and Trinity counties, if appropriate, under the authority of the California Disaster Assistance Act, Government Code section 8680 et seq., and California Code of Regulations, Title 19, section 2900 et seq.

3. The California Department of Transportation shall formally request immediate assistance through the Federal Highway Administration's Emergency Relief Program, United States Code,
Title 23, section 125, in order to obtain federal assistance for highway repairs or reconstruction.

4. The restrictions set forth in Penal Code section 396, which are automatically triggered upon proclamation of a state of emergency, are suspended, and no such restrictions are imposed, with respect to this 2021 event.

I FURTHER DIRECT that as soon as hereafter possible, this Proclamation be filed in the Office of the Secretary of State and that widespread publicity and notice be given of this proclamation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 23rd day of March 2022.

GAVIN NEWSOM
Governor of California

ATTEST:
SHIRLEY N. WEBER, PH.D.
Secretary of State

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The National Weather Service said there could be a brief respite from the warmer weather this week and early next due to the possibility of rain.

Forecasters said temperatures will remain well above normal across inland areas through Saturday with little likelihood of rain.

However, chances of rain will increase late in the weekend and early next week as a trough of low pressure digs along the Pacific coast, the National Weather Service said.

In Lake County, rain is expected to come into the picture beginning on Sunday, with rain anticipated to begin in the morning.

Chances of rain are forecast to continue through Wednesday.

The Lake County forecast also predicts daytime temperatures into the high 70s through Saturday before dropping into the 60s. Nighttime temperatures will range from the low to high 40s.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — The Scotts Valley Community Advisory Council will meet next week to discuss levees, grants and other projects in that area.

The group will meet at 5 p.m. Monday, March 28, via Zoom. The public is invited to attend.

The meeting ID is 986 2616 1748, pass code is 173031. The meeting also can be accessed via phone at 1-669-900-6833 or +16699006833,,98626161748#,,,,*173031# for one tap mobile.

The council will host guest speaker Korinn Woodard, district conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Woodard will discuss funding opportunities for private landowners to maintain levees.

Under new business, the council will get an update on the proposed annexation by the city of Lakeport of the South Main Street area.

They also will hear the latest on new use permits, the Scotts Valley Groundwater Protection Committee, the multi-tribal fire prevention grant application to Cal Fire to support the Scotts Valley Firewise Community, broadband coverage for Scotts Valley and the South Cow Mountain Management Area Implementation.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — CivicLab announced that ProjectAttain!, a social impact organization focused on increasing educational attainment among working-age adults across Northern California, has been chosen as one of five rural partnerships across the U.S. to participate in a two-year initiative to improve higher education and workforce systems.

Supported by Ascendium Education Group, ProjectAttain! will receive training, technical assistance, and direct financial support valued at $150,000 to develop and implement system-level strategies that create pathways to prosperity for rural, low-income learners.

Sacramento-based ProjectAttain! Joins a cohort of four other partnerships from Florida, Indiana, New Mexico, and Texas that will meet virtually and in person to share ideas, resources, and receive technical assistance.

The Yuba Community College District is participating as a Guiding Team and Advisory Member along with Shasta College, Sierra College, California State University, Sacramento, and Chico State University.

This project furthers the Degrees When Due Work that Yuba Community College District has been participating in through work with the Institute of Higher Education Policy, or IHEP, nationwide completion initiative.

“The circle of poverty and barriers to education and career advancement continue to hold back many of our friends and families in rural Northern California,” said Dr. Jim Houpis, Yuba Community College District chancellor.

“If California is to achieve the needed educational background for future employment and economic growth, greater effort needs to be directed toward achieving equity for our rural communities,” Houpis said. “I am excited about CivicLab’s support of ProjectAttain, and with our other efforts such as Degrees When Due, I see a brighter future for the counties we serve.”

“We are thrilled to be selected to participate in this national program,” said Dr. Jenni Murphy, founder of ProjectAttain! And dean of the College of Continuing Education at Sacramento State. “ProjectAttain! Exists to help adults who opted out of their education for one reason, or another get back on track with achieving their goals. Our efforts to support systems change in education and workforce development will be bolstered exponentially through our collaboration with CivicLab and by working in collaboration with the other partner programs across the country.”

More than 810,000 adults across Northern California’s 25 counties make up this initiative’s territory, possess some college, vocational training, or high school credits, but have not completed their degree, certificate, or diploma. In the six-county Sacramento region alone, more than 400,000 individuals face the same circumstances.

The Public Policy Institute of California predicts the state will have a shortfall of at least 1.5 million individuals with bachelor’s degrees by 2030. Additional data indicates the shortfall increases to over 3.3 million when factoring in certificates. ProjectAttain! Aims to learn CivicLab’s state-of-the-art processes to develop processes that will ultimately dissolve this issue in California’s north-state.

“This often overlooked and underinvested population deserves the opportunity to finish what they started,” said Evan Schmidt, Valley Vision CEO and ProjectAttain!’s executive director. “ProjectAttain! Is here to help those who have paused their education find their way back because we know that employers, economies, and communities benefit when more adults complete their education.”

CivicLab’s initiative launched in February 2022 with ProjectAttain!’s guiding team, composed of leaders in workforce and education, attending a two-day Stakeholder Engagement Process Learning Lab at CivicLab’s headquarters in Columbus, Indiana.

The ProjectAttain! Team will return in April for CivicLab’s System Building Lab to improve plans for making lasting change.

“Though many partnerships are deserving of this recognition and support, ProjectAttain! Demonstrated they had the relationships, capacity, and capability to make real change,” said Dakota Pawlicki, director of Talent Hubs at CivicLab.

ProjectAttain! Was selected through a national call for proposals. Each partnership in the cohort includes higher education institutions, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, private-sector partners, and other local stakeholders who work together to improve education and workforce outcomes.

To be selected, partnerships were required to submit plans that both improve outcomes for their residents and make lasting changes on higher education and workforce systems during the two-year grant period.

“Rural communities have largely been left out of national initiatives designed to improve postsecondary education and workforce outcomes,” said Kirstin Yeado, program officer at Ascendium. “Ascendium is pleased to help build the systems necessary to ensure more learners from low-income backgrounds earn degrees and credentials.”

ProjectAttain! Began in 2018 as a bold idea that mobilized area leaders to shed light on working-age adults with some college but no degree. ProjectAttain! Has grown into a dynamic nonprofit bringing together organizations, talent, and seed funding to serve as a catalyst for equitable social mobility and economic growth for all working-age adults returning to complete a formal education credential at the diploma, certificate, or degree level.

“By helping people complete their education, our work transforms lives, families, communities, and careers, and — at the same time — generates immense payback for individuals, employers, and our economy,” said Murphy.

 

Recently, the U.S. Social Security Administration sent out an email to subscribers of its official blog explaining how to access social security statements online. Most people know to be suspicious of seemingly official emails with links to websites asking for credentials.

But for older adults who are wary of the prevalence of scams targeting their demographic, such an email can be particularly alarming since they have been told that the SSA never sends emails. From our research designing cybersecurity safeguards for older adults, we believe there is legitimate cause for alarm.

This population has been schooled in a tactical approach to online safety grounded in fear and mistrust – even of themselves – and focused on specific threats rather than developing strategies that enable them to be online safely. Elders have been taught this approach by organizations they tend to trust, including nonprofits that teach older adults how to use technology.

These organizations promote a view of older adults as highly vulnerable while also encouraging them to take gratuitous risks in defending themselves. As information technology researchers, we believe it doesn’t need to be this way.

Older adults and online safety

Older adults may be at heightened risk of cybersecurity breaches and fraudulent behavior because they lack experience with internet technology and represent a financially attractive target. Older adults may also be more susceptible because they struggle with their confidence in using technology even as they recognize its benefits.

We have been developing technology tools that help aging Americans maintain their own online safety no matter what challenges they may face, including cognitive decline. To do so, we needed to understand what and how the people we study are learning about cybersecurity threats and what strategies they are being taught to reduce their vulnerabilities.

We have found that older adults attempt to draw on personal experience to develop strategies to reduce privacy violations and security threats. For the most part, they are successful at detecting threats by being on the lookout for activities they did not initiate — for example, an account they do not have. However, outside experts have an inordinate amount of influence on those with less perceived ability or experience with technology.

What ‘experts’ are telling older Americans

Unfortunately, the guidance that older adults are getting from those who presumably have authority on the matter is less than ideal.

Perhaps the loudest of those voices is the AARP, a U.S. advocacy group that has been carrying out a mission to “empower” individuals as they age for over six decades. In that time, it has established a commanding print and online presence. Its magazine reached over 38 million mailboxes in 2017, and it is an effective advocacy group.

What we found was that the AARP communiqués on cybersecurity use storytelling to create cartoonish folktales of internet deception. A regularly featured diet of sensational titles like “Grandparent Gotchas,” “Sweepstakes Swindles” and “Devilish Diagnoses” depict current and emerging threats.

These scenarios appeal to readers the way crime shows have historically appealed to TV audiences: by using narrative devices to alarm and thrill. Ultimately they also delude viewers by leaving them with the misconception that they can use what they’ve learned in those stories to defend themselves against criminal threats.

Folktales and foibles

One job of folktales is to spell out the hazards that a culture wants its members to learn in childhood. But by presenting cyber-risk as a set of ever-evolving stories that focuses on particular risks, the AARP shifts attention away from basic principles to anecdotes. This requires its members to compare their online experiences with specific stories.

Readers are implicitly encouraged to assess the plausibility of particular scenarios with questions like, Is it possible that I have any unpaid back taxes? And, Do I actually have an extended warranty? It requires people to catalogue each of these stories and then work out for themselves each time whether an unsolicited message is a real threat based on its content, rather than the person’s circumstances.

No, it’s not personal

Through this inventory of stories and characters, we also found that the AARP was personalizing what is, at root, a set of structural threats, impersonal by nature. The stories often characterize scammers as people in the reader’s very midst who use local news to manipulate older adults.

Real threats are not “sweepstake swindlers” or “Facebook unfriendlies,” with a live scam artist sensitive to the needs and foibles of each intended victim. There is rarely a human relationship between the cyber-scammer and the victim — no con artists behind the notorious “grandparents scam.” The AARP bulletins and advisories imply that there is — or, at least, implicitly foster that old-fashioned view of a direct relationship between swindler and victim.

Don’t engage

Perhaps even more worrisome, AARP advisories appear to encourage investigation into scenarios, when engagement of any sort puts people at risk.

In one post alerting people to “8 Military-Themed Imposter Scams,” they discuss “prices too good to be true,” when the very concept of buying a car on Craigslist, or an “active-duty service member” urgently selling a car, should be a red flag discouraging any form of engagement.

Internet users of any age, but especially more vulnerable populations, should be urged to withdraw from threats, not be cast as sleuths in their own suspense stories.

Protecting older adults in the age of surveillance capitalism

In order to reduce everyone’s risk while online, we believe it’s important to provide a set of well-curated principles rather than presenting people with a set of stories to learn. Everyone exposed to threats online, but especially those most at risk, needs a checklist of cautions and strong rules against engagement whenever there is doubt.

In short, the best strategy is to simply ignore unsolicited outreach altogether, particularly from organizations you don’t do business with. People need to be reminded that their own context, behaviors and relationships are all that matter.

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Because, in the end, it’s not just about tools, it’s about worldview. Ultimately, for everyone to make effective, consistent use of security tools, people need a theory of the online world that educates them about the rudiments of surveillance capitalism.

We believe people should be taught to see their online selves as reconstructions made out of data, as unreal as bots. This is admittedly a difficult idea because people have a hard time imagining themselves as separate from the data they generate, and recognizing that their online lives are affected by algorithms that analyze and act on that data.

But it is an important concept — and one that we see older adults embracing in our research when they tell us that while they are frustrated with receiving spam, they are learning to ignore the communications that reflect “selves” they don’t identify with.

Nora McDonald, Assistant Professor of Information Technology, University of Cincinnati and Helena M. Mentis, Professor of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.