Droughtsville, California, is in trouble. Its water supply is endangered as multiple crises intensify: worsening droughts, competition for scarce supplies, sea-level rise, groundwater contamination, earthquakes, wildfires, and extreme weather. All of these factors, and more, threaten Droughtville’s ability to provide clean water to its residents. The city is fictional,...
California Leaders Must Keep Word on Public Health Funding
When Cultiva La Salud partnered with Saint Agnes Medical Center to deliver vaccines to farm laborers in rural Fresno County – where essential workers were placing their lives on the line to feed us despite growing infections and deaths – no one told them a nonprofit shouldn’t be promoting health...
How $900K Fresno Nursing Home Fine Was Buried From Sight
The inspection report painted a bleak picture of life inside Northpointe Healthcare Centre in Fresno. Residents grimaced in pain from bedsores. Staff told inspectors they were stretched so thin they sometimes skipped treatments and failed to distribute medications. One resident was hospitalized with sepsis after missing four doses of an antibiotic, the report stated. After...
When Will California Finally Protect Small Businesses from Lawsuit Abuse?
California’s atrocious legal environment coupled with the Legislature’s relentless pursuit of liability expanding principles has earned the Golden State the dubious honor of being named the “Top Everlasting Judicial Hellhole” in the nation, by the American Tort Reform Foundation. We have received this unfortunate honor, not once, but 16 times over...
A Chowchilla Woman, Her Murderous Husband, and Failed Gun Control
Lea este artículo en español. Eighteen miles south of the Central Valley home that was her prison, down Highway 99 past almond orchards and trucks overloaded with hay bales, sits the Madera County Superior Court. The four-story steel structure with its light granite exterior boasts 10 courtrooms, large flat-screen monitors, and...
Will State’s Plan for Clearing Homeless Camps Actually Work?
The first time William Joseph Brown filled out a survey to try to get into permanent housing, he was living beside a highway. That was December 2019. In late August this year, when California’s transportation agency cleared him from the same strip of land tucked behind the San Clemente off-ramp...
How International Climate Promises Compare to California’s Emissions Mandates
Nations convening at the United Nations climate conference pledged Thursday to end the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in major markets by 2035 and globally by 2040, mirroring California’s plans. The nations took another major step: a plan to eliminate sales of trucks and buses that pump out planet warming...
This Plan Creates All the Water California Needs: Opinion
Re: the Calmatters commentary “California should create more water – much more“ published Oct. 28, 2021. There is an answer to Jim Wunderman’s position that “state and federal governments should commit to creating 1.75 million acre-feet – about 25% of California’s current urban water use – of new water from...
CA Politicians Raising Money for Charity Face New Rules
After more than 18 months of deliberation, California’s political ethics regulators voted this week to approve new rules when elected officials raise money for charities that they or their family control. More public disclosure of their ties to the group getting the payments? Yes. Limits on money from interest groups...
Put Up or Shut Up on California High-Speed Rail: Walters
While Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 770 bills passed by the Legislature this year, he couldn’t approve a big one that he wanted badly — a $4.2 billion appropriation to shore up the state’s much-delayed, increasingly expensive, and obviously mismanaged bullet train project. He couldn’t sign it because the Legislature, controlled...