A black-and-white view of smoggy Century City, Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles. (Photo: trekandshoot)OPINION: Squinting into the smog, our state’s utilities have seen the future — and it’s not fossil fuels. Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric revealed plans to invest $1 billion to build a comprehensive electric transportation infrastructure.
Doctors and nurses guide a young patient on a gurney down a hospital corridor. (Photo: Spotmatik LTD, via Shutterstock)Billions of dollars for California’s health care system serving 13 million poor and young people would be slashed dramatically under a GOP-backed proposal in Congress supported by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other top Republicans.
A mid-1930s truck on a Kern County highway. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, Shutterstock)California’s already poor roads deteriorated to a whole new level of disrepair this winter. Sinkholes have popped up throughout the state and major roads have closed because of damage. To cite just a few major examples: Portions of Interstate 80 and Highways 50 and 49 were closed due to mudslides. Parts of Highway 1 remain closed because of storm damage. Numerous local roads were battered severely.
Synthetic cells, a 3D illustration. (Jurik Peter, via Shutterstock) The $3 billion California stem cell agency said it is losing one of its top leaders, James Harrison, one of the authors of the measure that created the agency and who most recently is serving as its “unflappable” general counsel.
From left to right, moderator Dan Morain and panelists Dave Jones, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, V. John White and Ross Brown. Cap and trade is either a sensible effort to reduce pollution in California without undue damage to the state’s economy, or it is a circumvention of the drastic action that is really needed to safeguard the environment.
Protesters in Los Angeles, three days after Donald Trump's election. (Photo: llewellynchin, via Shutterstock)In the fight between President Trump and California over immigration, many wonder whether a state — even one as massive as this one — can successfully confront the White House. Thus far in Sacramento, the answer is yes — from the governor on down.
State Librarian Greg Lucas. (Photo: California State Library)Prying funds out of the Trump administration may not be easy, but California State Librarian Greg Lucas is giving it a shot. And not just for California. Amid heavy snows and the unveiling of President Trump’s first budget, Lucas went to Washington this week to urge Congress to double the funding for the nation’s public libraries to $300 million, including the more than 1,100 libraries in California.
Chamber of the state Assembly in the Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: Felix Lipov)This is the third in a series of detailed articles dealing with the inner workings of the California Legislature. In this installment, we focus on the rules surrounding committee hearings, floor actions and special sessions.
A Ventura County voter casts a ballot in the June 2016 primary. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, via Shutterstock)Any sound voter analysis tries to identify prior events that hopefully serve to predict future voter behavior. For this we examine several past elections, including the gubernatorial elections we mentioned in Part I, and other recent presidential primaries. But each appears somewhat flawed as a predictor of what the 2018 primary will look like.
California drivers in a Los Angeles traffic jam.(Photo: ShutterStock)Traffic tickets aren’t so out of the ordinary – until you get to Howard Herships’ case. After being caught by a red light camera on a right turn in suburban Sacramento, Herships, 73, contested the $200 ticket. His fight has proven costly: He lost his driver’s license, and his 2014 ticket penalty ballooned more than eight-fold to a whopping $1,665, plus a $55 driver’s license reinstatement fee. Now he’s in federal court over a constitutional issue.