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Report bolsters governor’s call for budget caution
With the June 15 deadline to finalize the 2016-17 state budget looming, Gov. Jerry Brown continues to push back at Democratic lawmakers’ call for him to revise his $123 billion spending plan to include new or expanded spending on social
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Report predicts surprisingly strong CA turnout in primary
The conventional wisdom holds that primary turnout in California is generally weak unless there is a particularly contested election of note or a high-profile, high-stakes ballot measure. This June 7, with the presidential nominations largely determined for both parties, most
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Fear of PokerStars hangs over CA poker debate
California gamblers’ dream of having legal internet poker in the Golden State suddenly seems closer than ever, thanks to proponents’ decision to include in pending legislation a de facto subsidy of at least $60 million annually to struggling racetracks. But
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El Nino provides little relief outside of Northern California
Once-high hopes that a winter 2015-16 El Nino would lift California out of its 5-year-old drought have given way to a complex picture. Heavy winter snow and rains in the northern Sierras and the Sacramento Valley are providing widespread relief in
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Good news on several CA drought fronts
State officials measured the Sierra Nevada snowpack for the second time in 2016 on Tuesday, and once again the news was good. Capital Public Radio has the details: The latest measurement … showed that the “snowpack is growing quite nicely.”
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Los Angeles County the capital of U.S. poverty
The Census Bureau’s 2012 decision to begin releasing an alternative measure of poverty that included cost of living has appeared to have far-reaching effects in California as politicians, community leaders and residents react to the new measure’s depiction of the
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Oregon claim of assisted suicide safeguards has critics
A key argument spurring Gov. Jerry Brown’s recent decision to sign a bill allowing physician-assisted suicide in California, and the Legislature’s desire to enact such a law, was that a similar law had worked well in Oregon after its 1997
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Study: 28% of CA elderly impoverished
In 2012, after many years of being urged to develop more sophisticated measures of wealth and prosperity, the U.S. Census Bureau began issuing an annual 50-state review of poverty that incorporated cost of living. California shot from the middle of
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Water-independent Riverside forced to cut use 28%
The grousing over Gov. Jerry Brown’s April order of sweeping cutbacks in water use — from 12 percent to 36 percent, depending on local factors — was widespread and instantaneous. Farmers in urban areas objected to facing more cutbacks than
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CA’s history of direct democracy sometimes brings out ‘crackpots’
This week, lawmakers once again loudly proclaimed their outrage at a proposed ballot initiative that would allow voters to decide whether gay people should be shot. The notion is both sickening and unconstitutional, but it’s also part of California’s political
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