A man receives the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in Covina in March. (Photo: Ringo Chiu, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Vaccines are one of the greatest public health tools for preventing the spread of infectious disease and death. Innovations in vaccines have helped all but eliminate significant threats from measles, polio, pertussis (whooping cough), influenza, and pneumococcal disease among those who are vaccinated.
Berkeley City College, which received a portion of $51 million in state stem cell research grants. (Photo: berkeleyside.org)The California stem cell agency has awarded $51 million to help train students in the art of research at the Golden State’s community colleges and universities. All 15 applicants for awards that ran as high as $3.6 million each were approved, including Berkeley City College, which was initially rejected by anonymous reviewers who met privately prior to the ratification of their decisions by the agency’s directors.
Robert Klein, who spent six years as the state stem cell agency's chairman, addresses issues related to the November ballot initiative. (Photo: David Jensen, California Stem Cell Report)The folks who are trying to save the $3 billion California stem cell agency from financial extinction are using a well-worn technique that goes back to ancient Egypt, at least by some accounts. It is expensive, depending on what you are peddling, and generates a return as low as 1 percent. It is direct mail, but with a significant twist.
A pair of homeless men asking for money on a Los Angeles street corner. (Photo: Hayk_Shalunts, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Dear Gov.-elect Newsom: California has long stood out as a state that innovates and leads. As you begin your term, we at the Western Center on Law and Poverty are ready to work with you to ensure that California lives up to its ideals — including addressing poverty and its subsequent harms.
A correctional facility in Salinas operated by The GEO Group. ((Photo: GEO Group website)So you think privately run prisons are a Republican thing? Perhaps in Texas and Tennessee. But in deep blue California, it is the Democrats who take in the most contributions from for-profit correctional corporations, primarily Florida’s The GEO Group and the Tennessee-based CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America.
Mail boxes all in a row in rural California. (Photo: Ant Clausen)More and more of them are flooding your mailbox. They are usually bright, colorful, and nonsensical. Political mailers. What else? It’s the season, after all. Even in the age of texting and twitter, old-fashioned paper still has its charm for campaign strategists, especially in-down ballot races where a shotgun approach is not useful.
A patient is treated at a dental clinic. (Photo: sirtravelalot, via Shutterstock)Susan Inglett’s dental coverage changed just after she got a root canal on one of her top teeth. It was 2009, and California was in the midst of a budget crisis. To cut costs, Medi-Cal, the state health insurance program for low-income residents, eliminated non-emergency dental benefits for adults.
Demonstrators protest the elimination of DACA at a September 2017 gathering at UC Berkeley.
(Photo: Sheila Fitzgerald) OPINION: Adriana and her six-year old daughter are like two peas in a pod, taking walks on the beach together, baking brownies, cuddling at home with a book, and occasionally splurging on a trip to Orange County’s Disneyland Resort. Arriving from Guatemala when she was five years old, Adriana has always lived here in Orange County.
An illustration of a telomere at the end of a DNA sequence of a chromosome. (Illustration: VIT Studio, via Shutterstock) The $3 billion California stem cell agency this week welcomed the first members of its “Great Ideas” club and gave them a total of nearly $4 million to pursue the scientific gleams in their eyes. Nineteen researchers received awards at a meeting yesterday of the governing board of the agency. They were the first such grants approved by the nearly 12-year-old enterprise.
The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, New York. (Photo: Wikipedia)The way our government accounts for public employee pension promises is nothing short of fraud, yet no public official has gone to jail or paid a price for what surely ranks among the largest muggings of citizens in US history. Let me explain. As the stock market reaches record levels, little is heard anymore from public officials who used to blame market declines for rising pension costs.