Opinion
OPINION: California has a drinking water crisis. More than 1 million people in California lack access to safe, clean, and affordable drinking water. 400 schools in our state have lead contamination in their drinking water. About 300 public water systems in our state are not in compliance with drinking water standards. This is a public health and environmental crisis.
Opinion
OPINION: One year ago, the California Legislature passed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law. Even at passage, the legislative leadership recognized its flaws – what some observers called an “unmitigated disaster in the making” – and committed to addressing its flaws in the year before it took effect in January of 2020.
Opinion
OPINION: Until 2019, if a California utility violated fire safety rules and thereby caused a catastrophic wildfire, the utility could not make its customers pay for its uninsured wildfire costs.In 2017, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was found by two administrative law judges to have violated numerous fire safety rules when its operations caused San Diego’s catastrophic wildfires in 2007.
Opinion
OPINION: Anyone binge watching “Stranger Things,” will be struck by the similarities with the real-world drama playing out before the federal appeals court in New Orleans. The question before the three-judge panel is whether the Affordable Care Act should be struck down in its entirety. In Stranger Things, the deadly threat comes from an upside-down parallel universe in which things aren’t what they seem, the rules of logic don’t apply, and nothing makes sense.
Opinion
OPINION: I recently signed a letter with state Sen. Connie Leyva, chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus, and six other prominent women in California calling on J.J.Jelincic Jr. to drop out of the race for the CalPERS board after his history of harassing women was revealed by the Sacramento Bee. It matters that three women at CalPERS felt so uncomfortable working with Jelincic that they filed harassment charges against him, and that their allegations were upheld by the California State Personnel Board.
Opinion
OPINION: Fifteen years into a 41 years-to-life sentence, I arrived at San Quentin — the home of Death Row. I immediately noticed the difference between the treatment of condemned people and of general population people, like myself. Anytime condemned people left their cell they were shackled at the waist and feet. As they moved through the corridors and walkways, all general population people were told to face the wall.
Opinion
OPINION: You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You are what you eat” a thousand times. It’s a motto usually used to encourage skipping the fries or chips for the recommended servings of veggies and fruits. But lately this phrase has a taken on an alarming new meaning. We are eating plastic.
Opinion
OPINION: California is facing a wildfire crisis of epic proportions, and with the 2019 fire season already upon us, the immediate threat of yet another highly destructive and costly wildfire looms over communities all across the state. Everyone agrees that something must be done to address this crisis, and yet legislators still have not taken definitive action.
Opinion
OPINION: There are more than 55,000 children in foster care in California and about 34 percent of them will be placed with relatives according to AdoptUSKids — that is, if social workers can find their family. When a child is removed from the home and placed in out-of-home care, relatives are the preferred resource because this type of placement maintains the child’s connections with their family.
Opinion
OPINION: I started DoorDash for people like my mom, who worked in a Chinese restaurant after immigrating to the United States. Working alongside her instilled in me a passion to help hard-working families and small businesses struggling to get ahead. Today, hundreds of thousands of Californians deliver with DoorDash to earn extra income while retaining the freedom to dictate when, where, and how much they work.
A sign urging protections for drinking water in Yosemite National Park. (Photo: Earl D. Walker, via Shutterstock)
