Posts Tagged: low
Opinion
OPINION: California Community colleges do an outstanding job offering degree attainment and education opportunities that lead to rewarding careers for the 2.1 million students who attend. But far too many of those students cannot cover enrollment fees and basic living expenses, putting them at risk. The current financial aid formula does not fully address the needs of students working to meet their academic goals, and in many cases, working full-time to support themselves and their families.
Opinion
OPINION: When the California Air Resources Board released the results of its May auction of carbon allowances, audible gasps from around the state could be heard from the space station. I kid – but only just a little. The auction results did in fact create a great shock: many had expected at least half a billion dollars to be collected at the quarterly auction, but the auction generated only about ten million dollars. But here’s the truth: The super-low May auction result should actually help the State’s legal defense of cap-and-trade.
Opinion
OPINION: We generally think it a big success when public policy successfully fixes a serious problem. Right now, smart California policies are effectively tackling three major issues at once: housing, traffic, and climate change. Anyone not living under a rock knows that California faces an unprecedented crisis in housing affordability.
Opinion
OPINION: This has been a crucial time in international climate negotiations. In December, in Paris, negotiators signed an agreement on the next round of targets and actions to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and will effectively close down in 2020. Negotiators established a new and meaningful agreement for multinational action through individual country “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).
Analysis
ANALYSIS: Most politicos are fans of the movie The Candidate, a 1972 political drama where a U.S. Senate candidate, Bill McKay, seeks an underdog win in his first campaign. The energy and excitement builds up for months leading to a pivotal sunny Tuesday in California when everyone heads to the polls. The movie is filled with young excited volunteers rushing out to put up door hangers, check polling locations to see who’s voted, and make phone calls to those who haven’t – all parts of the traditional get out the vote efforts known in the business as G.O.T.V. But if this campaign were a modern campaign it would also be a losing campaign.
Opinion
OPINION: A recent opinion column in Capitol Weekly (Jan. 7, “Moderate Democrats: the slaves of Big Oil?”) was not the real story of last year’s SB 350, an effort to reduce petroleum-based transportation fuels in California by 50 percent. Ironically, the real story of SB 350 is the first line of the author’s eighth paragraph: “The story of inequality in our state is not just one of economics…”
News
To political experts up and down California, California’s new Motor Voter law is a question mark that likely will involve rethinking some practices and require a great deal of new effort. To Democrats, it’s the long-overdue removal of a barricade to full participation in California’s civic life. To Republicans, it poses a danger that a flood of illegal immigrants will start participating in political decision-making.
Opinion
With news this week that California’s tax revenues came in $6-$8 billion stronger than previous estimates, California now has an undeniable choice: a high road that lifts up all our people and strengthens our state, or a low road that ignores the nearly one in four residents who live below the poverty line in the wealthiest state in the nation.
Opinion
OPINION: When the Greek philosopher Aristotle presented fellow scholars with empirical evidence and scientific proof that the world was round—not flat—around 330 BC, he was called a lunatic and a charlatan. More than two millennia later, Sacramento has its own version of the Flat Earth Society — the California Air Resources Board (ARB). Only this time, the debate isn’t over the shape of the Earth; it’s over an obscure regulatory concept known as Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), a component of the state’s Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS).
News
The Field Poll estimates that only 8.2 million Californians will participate in today’s statewide general election. This would represent a turnout of just 46.1% of the state’s 17.8 million registered voters and just 33.8% of the state’s 24.3 million adult citizens who are eligible to register and vote. Both would represent record lows for a statewide general election in California in the modern era.
Students sharing knowledge in a college study hall. (Photo: Rawpixel.com 
