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SB4 green lights fracking despite enviro protest
Even with a Democratic supermajority, the California Legislature was unable to pass several bills this year to ban hydraulic fracking. All fracking bills died in committees, or were killed during the legislative process — except for one. Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill
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New dose of Obamacare pain arriving by mail
After nearly four years of covering the Affordable Care Act, more commonly referred to as “Obamacare,” it's hard not to laugh at a story today in the San Jose Mercury News about two San Francisco Bay Area Obama voters who
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Shutdown casts shadow over CA races for U.S. House
The partial government shutdown is now in its second week. Throughout the duration of the shutdown, national and local media have released myriad stories about the pain that different government workers — and those who rely on government — are
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Shutdown blacks out U.S. Census site
It's taken a week, but I finally was affected by the federal government “shutdown” (which actually only closes, temporarily, 17 percent of the government; leaving 83 percent still operating). computer softwares I went to the U.S. Census's Web site, census.gov,
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$4.4 billion headache solved. How? Chronicle has no explanation
Members of the media's aversion to math — especially to explaining how numbers work when explaining spending decisions in public policy — is hard to miss. For years, few stories by California journalists on pensions and retirement benefits really dug
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Top 10 quotes from the 2003 Gray Davis recall
October 7 marks the 10-year anniversary of the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. The 2003 recall brought a movie star to power and marked only the second time in American history that a sitting governor has been removed
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Judge rules against government retirees, for common sense
A common argument in California from public employees and government retirees is that once they get a goodie, they always have to get a goodie — even if it's not guaranteed by law. Take the bizarre, antithetical-to-logic practice of giving
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Why was 2003 recall so unique? Joe Mathews misses key point
Joe Mathews has written an interesting column about the 10th anniversary of the recall of Gov. Gray Davis. assignment online “Critics of the recall said it was a crazy idea, a partisan Republican power grab, a perversion of America’s tradition
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CA's green energy swan turning into ugly duckling
best computer repair software Nicholas Taleb’s book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” popularized the one-in-a-million genetic improbability of a black-colored swan as a symbol for understanding rare events. Such events included the Mortgage Meltdown of
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