Pharmacy transparency is one of the most vital components of healthcare in this country – sadly, California is severely lagging in this transparency department. In July, the California Senate Health Committee heard Assembly Bill 315 (AB 315) – it passed unanimously with support from both sides of the aisle.
Sunlight streams through the bars of a prison cell. (Photo: nobeastsofierce, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Proposition 57’s 50 percent good time credit should be applied retroactively to all incarcerated people, including lifers who committed violent crimes. Contrary to popular fears, releasing reformed lifers may be the best thing we can do to reduce violent crime.
Watering crops in California's Central Valley. (Photo: CRSHELARE, via Shutterstock)OPINION: In the past 30 years, perhaps no legislative effort to bolster the state’s water policy has received as much attention as the management of groundwater. This effort lead to the expansion of water district powers, the creation of special act districts with unique powers, the authorization of voluntary plans and finally culminated in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
Photo: Monticello, via ShutterstockThe California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has issued shocking assertions about the dangers of Bisphenol-A (BPA). In one sense they are right, their research findings are shocking – but only because they contradict the published scientific literature on BPA safety as well as the opinions of credible global health experts, including our own United State Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Pumpjacks in a Kern County oil field, November 2013. (Photo: Christopher Halloran)OPINION: The Paris talks brought into clearer focus just how many so-called moderate Democrats who sided with the oil industry this year re out of touch with their caucus, their party and their state. This small tribe of transactional politicians, whose campaign coffers have been filled with oil company dollars for years, did the shameless bidding of Big Oil once again this year, failing to protect Californians from greater environmental harm.
Chilldren at play with assorted toys. (Photo: Iakov Filimonov, Shutterstock)Californians are inundated with consumer labels. Some of these labels communicate valuable information, others do not. The sheer number of required labels almost guarantees that most of us will be overwhelmed by the fine print and the labels never read. This week, California policymakers are considering a bill (SB 763) that would add yet another label – this time to children’s products.
Everyone knows about the pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors and other financial interests that dominate political spending in Washington, D.C. Because federal spending provides a big share of those businesses’ revenues, it’s not surprising they spend heavily for a Congress sympathetic to their interests. But fewer know about the financial interests that dominate political spending in Sacramento.
ANALYSIS: The Supreme Court is set to announce a decision in an Arizona redistricting case that could upend the California Redistricting Commission’s congressional lines and return to the legislature the responsibility for conducting each decennial redraw. Some prominent leaders in redistricting reform are preparing for this eventuality and urging the Legislature to stand down, allowing the current lines to be carried forward until 2022 and giving reformers a chance to develop a new method for independent redistricting of Congressional lines that wouldn’t conflict with the court’s decision in this case. This, however, may not be possible or even necessary.
A seal of the city of Stockton, Calf. (Photo: Astudio, via Shutterstock)On the day that Stockton emerged from bankruptcy last week, ending 32 months of debt protection, the final court argument was about the “cram down” imposed on the only creditor that did not cut a deal.
California and Arizona are two states that couldn’t be further apart in temperament and size. But in one crucial issue – the drawing of political boundaries – they are joined at the hip, as California’s redistricting commission made clear Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court.