As residents of one of the highest taxed states in the nation, Californians have a right to expect the government they pay handsomely to provide the basic services their taxes fund. We expect that when we lose our job, the money we paid in unemployment insurance will be available to sustain...
California’s New Goal: Vaccinate a Million People in 10 Days
Getting the coronavirus vaccines into the arms of as many Californians as possible has become a race against time as COVID-19 cases continue to spiral upward and a more infectious variant of the virus takes root. Many questions remain unanswered about how the next — and much larger — wave of...
Opinion: Will Gov. Newsom Patch up the Local Control Funding Formula for Schools?
One of my 6th graders struggled with everything. Her notebook pages were often blank and, when she did write, it was incoherent. The 12-year-old was reading at a pre-kindergarten level. Then mid-year, she began working with our school’s new full-time school psychologist. The results were immediate. Diagnosed with a learning...
California’s Plan to Bring Many Students Back to School for in-Person Learning in Careful Stages
As one of the most challenging years we have faced in recent history is ushered out, we enter 2021 with trepidation and hope. Amid the darkest moments of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is light at the end of the tunnel, with new vaccines arriving and a renewed sense of purpose...
Even More Contagious? Here’s What You Need to Know About the Mutating Virus Now in California
As California continues to ride its worst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials have more unsettling news: Six cases of a worrisome, potentially more infectious new coronavirus variant have been detected in California. The new strain, first detected in the United Kingdom, also has been seen in Colorado...
How Newport Beach Ended up With 2 Affordable Housing Units in 8 Years
They say you get what you pay for, but when it comes to affordable housing, wealthy Southern California cities are paying to get almost nothing. And that’s exactly the way they want it. Between 2013 and 2021, the state of California allocated the city of Newport Beach a total of two...
California Should Solve State’s Recycling Problems, Not Cause New Ones
In the iconic movie “The Graduate,” a would-be mentor takes the new college graduate Dustin Hoffman aside and cryptically says, “I want to say just one word to you: plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.” Today we are living that future: trillions of plastic items – single-use bags, straws,...
Fauci: Vaccines Should Allow CA Colleges to Teach in-Person Next Fall
While coronavirus cases are surging across California and overwhelming intensive care units, the country’s top infectious disease expert said today he’s “cautiously optimistic” that college students can return to campus in the fall. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he anticipates that...
Who Will Pay for All of California’s Unemployment Fraud?
A 1-year-old in Fresno raking in $167 a week. An ex-state employee stealing $200,000 from California’s unemployment system, some by impersonating Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Another $1.2 million swindled by a rapper who bragged about it on YouTube, $1 billion drained in the name of state prisoners, and $2 billion in jobless benefits siphoned off state-issued debit cards. If doing the...
Whack and Stack: PG&E’s Toppling of Trees Creates New Hazards
Kristi and Brian Anderson have some thoughts about how the first year of California’s “get-tough-on-utilities” approach to preventing wildfires is going: Badly. Very badly. The Andersons, who live in Bonny Doon, nestled in the mountains near Santa Cruz, lost their home four months ago in the CZU Lightning Complex fires. But their...