Street art in Santa Barbara., August 2011. Philip Bird OPINION: Since 2003, California’s Governors and the Legislature have allocated $1.1 million annually to the Arts Council, the bare minimum necessary to qualify for a $1 million National Endowment for the Arts grant. This lack of foresight has put California dead last among all 50 states in per capita funding for its arts agency.
Pfeiffer Beach at the mouth of the Big Sur River in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. View looking upriver from the beach, with Cupressus macrocarpa trees. Photo: Wikimedia CommonsDecades ago, California began taking over the management of thousands of acres of rural wildlands in dozens of counties across the state. But over the years a problem arose: With the state in control, some counties were cut out of the money that they otherwise would have collected from property taxes. The state had promised to compensate the counties for the lost revenue by making payments in lieu of taxes.
A former military prosecutor, a Democrat, and a conservative San Diego-area, a Republican, are jointly authoring legislation that would bar the state — and private companies that do business with the state, including utilities — from helping the NSA collect so-called “metadata” or electronic data on Californians without a warrant.
Reliable sources are among a journalist’s most valuable assets. In California, an effort is under way to strengthen their protections, a move prompted by the federal government’s recent efforts to abruptly seize reporters’ telephone records.
“A free democracy depends on the freedom of the press,” said Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Long Beach. Lieu, a former prosecutor,