Posts Tagged: responsibility
Opinion
OPINION: Managing autoimmune arthritis that causes painful, swollen joints and daily fatigue is almost like having a full-time job. The medication I need to prevent further joint damage also suppresses my immune system, which means running through PTO (paid time off) for sick days instead of fun days. Regardless, biologic medications allow me to function and keep my hands from swelling like balloons. Living with chronic illness is taxing enough without having to decode insurance hurdles to receive these life-altering medications.
News
California recently approved three sweeping environmental laws: SB 54, SB 343, and AB 1201. Hopefully, this game-changing legislation will shape national policy about recycling, composting, plastic pollution, and human health. We have many people to thank for the recent measures to reduce plastic pollution and increase plastic recycling, but we citizens rarely know who. Heidi Sanborn is one of those people.
Opinion
OPINION: One of the charges I hold seriously is to ensure every child in California has the resources they need to succeed. As a product of California’s K-12 public schools in the Central Valley, I can still recall the deficiency in resources as well as the knowledge of those that were appointed to secure that my future endeavors were aligned for excellence.
Opinion
OPINION: I helped create these remedial structures because I believed they would help students be successful. But over the last decade I’ve worked to dismantle them, eliminating both remedial courses and placement tests. Why? Because enrolling in a remedial class makes students less – not more – likely to be successful in college.
News
When Denise Williams’ baby boy was 2 months old, she became alarmed by a rattling sound in his lungs and took him to the emergency room. While undergoing treatment, he spiraled into a disabling neurological disorder.
Opinion
OPINION: The leadership of the California Association of County Treasurers and Tax Collectors (CACTTC) is comprised of five elected women and two men, thus reflecting the success of women in elected office. Representing the concerns of CACTTC, we find it ironic that at a time when gender balance in politics is front-and-center, the office to which historically more women than men are elected is being eroded through consolidation of treasurer-tax collector with auditor-controller without voter approval.
Opinion
OPINION: It is fascinating, in a very frustrating sort of way, to watch certain special interests come up with excuses for why legislation should not be passed when the facts clearly are not on their side. I witnessed it first hand as the author of California’s first state-wide plastic bag legislation 10 years ago. Then and now, it often takes serious mental gymnastics to follow the rhetorical and “illogical” leaps of their arguments. The current iteration is the beverage industry’s, massive and misleading lobbying campaign to defeat Assembly Bill 319.
News
They lie washed up on the side of levees, they sit silently moored in the quiet sloughs of the vast Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, sometimes drifting aimlessly down the middle of the waterways. There are hundreds of these abandoned recreational watercraft and commercial vessels in the Delta; some of them have been slowly wasting away for 60 years or more. Many pose a danger to navigation and the environment.
News
FairWarning: Just after noon on March 29, a pickup truck crossed the center line of a rural road in South Texas and slammed into a church bus, killing 13 members of the First Baptist Church of New Braunfels. A police report said the 20-year-old pickup driver, who survived, had taken medication and was texting. In other words, he was on two drugs, not one.
Opinion
OPINION: With all that we do to try to help our children succeed at school, we are failing to properly screen students for correctable vision problems that can hinder learning.
A patient takes medication to deal with a chronic illness. (Photo: fizkes, via Shutterstock)
