Posts Tagged: tools

News

Ballot battle underway to keep stem cell agency alive

DNA is injected into a stem cell. (Photo: Spectral-Design, via Shuttertock)

The California stem cell agency has just finished pumping $5.3 million into the fight to save the lives of Covid-19 victims. And — in a ballot-box bonus — its efforts are already surfacing in the ballot campaign to rescue the agency from its own demise. The agency is running out of money. It will begin closing its doors this fall without major financial support that it hopes will come from Proposition 14, a $5.5 billion bond measure on the November ballot.

News

What happens when the next big wildfire hits?

Fire safety has suddenly become far more politically fraught and expensive. Here, firefighters respond to 2017 Ponderosa Fire. Photo courtesy of Cal Fire. (Photo: CalFire, via CALmatters)

Don’t be fooled by the precipitation, the snowpack, the wildflowers. When winter ends, it’s unlikely that California’s iconic landscape will sustain the moisture to withstand the 100-degree summer and fall. California has yet to recover from the 5-year drought that began in 2012. For four years, record wildfires have ravaged the state, including the Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma in 2017 and the Camp Fire last year that wiped out the town of Paradise in Butte County.

News

Before Kevin and Devin, there was Bill

Former Congressman Bill Thomas at a political event in Bakersfield. <(Photo: Screen capture, YouTube.)

Former Republican Congressman Bill Thomas, who capped a 28-year House career as chair of the Ways and Means Committee, has been out of Congress for more than a decade. His name is no longer familiar outside of his Bakersfield base. But two of his protégés are very well known – House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who served as Thomas’ district director,  and Oversight Committee Chair Devin Nunes, who Thomas encouraged to run for Congress and who nurtured his career after he got there.

Opinion

Wanted: A statewide database for higher education

Sather Tower at UC Berkeley, looking toward the bay. (Photo: Chao Kusollerschariya, via Shutterstock)

OPINION: How can the state of California make intelligent public policy on higher education when it does not have the data to do so? This simple question underscores every governor’s and legislator’s dilemma when they annually establish funding levels for California’s postsecondary education system. There is no integrated statewide database for higher education.

News

CA120: Buckle up, California — redistricting looms

Drawing the political boundaries. (Illustration: Tim Foster, Capitol Weekly)

We are just getting used to the current districts, but once again redistricting is about to rear its decennial head. To provide a preview of what is to come in California, we have created an interactive map of the state’s congressional districts using current census projections and voter registration data. This tool allows you better understand the mid-decade projections and project to what could be the factors in the 2021 redistricting.

Podcast

CA120: Politics in the digital age

An illustration using hard-drawn images on green data paper. (Maksim Kabakou, via Shutterstock)

This past election cycle rewrote the rules for digital campaigning. Most media coverage, especially after the election, has focused on how a brand of digital terrorism – viral campaigns based on fake news stories, fueled by fake social media accounts and hacked computers – put before voters a mix of negative messages and falsehoods that had a huge impact on the U.S. presidential campaign.

Opinion

Does curbing drones stifle innovation?

OPINION: One of the next great areas of innovation is at risk because of SB 142, which would make it an offense to fly a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over private property at an altitude of 350 feet or below – regardless of the reason – without the permission of each private property owner in the flight path.

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