Photo illustration: Africa Studio, via Shutterstock.OPINION: Imagine enjoying your summer holiday vacation only to learn that special interest lawmakers beholden to the California Teachers Association are voting to close down your child’s school. As a parent, you’ve never received any school closure information or a single news report.
A student going to school on the web. (Photo: Anna Tamila)OPINION: Like many families throughout California, ours is taking the important step of beginning another school year. Although we live in Sacramento County, my sons will be attending an excellent public school in Sutter County. Or, more precisely, the school will be coming to them. My sons attend the California Virtual Academies (CAVA), an online public charter school offered throughout the state and certified by the state of California.
Millions of Californians receive quality health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act and Medi-Cal. And though most would probably thank President Obama or the Governor for that, Peter Harbage, who passed away Tuesday at age 43, after a courageous fight with cancer, had a lot to do with it too. “Peter is the unsung architect of health care reform in the United States,” says Anthony Wright, Executive Director of Health Access, a health care consumer advocacy group.
OPINION: The fact that the oil industry is using front groups to battle against clean energy progress is no surprise to anyone who has been working in California or around the west to protect clean air laws. This kind of tactic has been used for decades. It was front and center for voters in 2010 when out-of-state oil companies spent millions to derail AB 32.
Islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, an aerial view. The Delta is home to about half of California's drinking water. (Photo: Worldislandinfo.comCalifornia’s top water official told a key gathering of south state water interests that “hard-earned progress” is being made on the Brown administration’s controversial plan to build twin tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The comments by Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, were aimed in part at dispelling rumors that the project had run aground, perhaps permanently.
OPINION: Public employees have shown they are willing to do their part to help balance government budgets. We may not have liked the pension system overhaul Governor Brown signed in 2012, but once it became law our union leaders helped to implement the changes, which will amount to a reduction of more than $77 billion to public workers’ retirement and health care benefits.