Opinion

Business, California, Public Policy January 16, 2018

California working, UC Berkeley report says

Between 2011 and 2016, California enacted a set of 51 policy measures addressing workers’ rights, environmental issues, safety net programs, taxation, and infrastructure and housing. Critics predicted that these policies—collectively called “the California Policy Model” (CPM) in this paper—would reduce employment and slow economic growth, while supporters argued that they would raise wages for low-wage workers, increase access to health insurance, lower wage inequality, and…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Duncan Hunter investigations, Editorial, Featured, Opinion, Politics, Public Policy December 23, 2017

No taxation without representation, Hunter

Spoiler alert. Rep, Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District), like his President idol (for now) Donald Trump should do everyone a favor and resign. Considering Hunter’s multiple transgressions, topped off by breaking the law by spending campaign finance $$$ for his, and his family’s, personal expenses, self-admitted by Hunter: The vape, on-the-take, Hunter managed to outdo himself last week. Hunter VOTED FOR THE GOP TAX PLAN…

Immigration, Opinion, Vista December 13, 2017

Vista Dreamer’s ‘open letter’ to Darrell Issa

(Editor’s Note: A Vista native, Marco Ortiz Sanchez is a UC Irvine student and a DACA recipient. He traveled to Washington with a group of 100 Dreamers in October.) Dear Congressman Darrell Issa, Thank you for welcoming me into your office to discuss the current situation facing American Dreamers, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals beneficiaries, like myself. Not everyone gets the opportunity to meet their representative on…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Opinion, Politics, Public Policy December 11, 2017

End Citizens United begins GOP ditch drive

A major democratic political action organization that’s working to get big money and all of the temptation it offers out of politics recently released a list of 20 Republican Congress members that it intends to target next year. The organization on attack is End Citizens United, and it is calling its targeted Congress members the “Big Money 20.” A Group that Favors Its Special Interest…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Opinion, Public Policy, The World December 5, 2017

Plastic ocean pollution and climate change

Although burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, fossil fuels could also be driving climate change via a completely different mechanism involving ocean plastic debris and tiny, bioluminescent fish living hundreds of meters beneath the ocean’s surface. Lanternfish (aka myctophids) are only a few inches long typically but so ubiquitous that they account for over half the ocean’s total fish-mass. They are…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Featured, Opinion, Surprising and Strange November 15, 2017

Leaving Gadsden, Alabama, and Roy Moore

Bless his cotton-picking, pedophile, hypocritical 10 Commandments blackheart, good ole child-molesting Republican boy Roy Moore of Gadsden, Alabama is in the news and on the run. I, too, spent time at Gadsden, and have escaped to tell thee. It was another time and another place. Between jobs as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta reporter/columnist for the Sacramento Bee, I…

Duncan Hunter investigations, Editorial, Opinion, Politics November 10, 2017

Duncan Hunter blows hard on vaping rules

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th Congressional District) this month has ducked constituents refusing to hold a town hall. He has been nowhere to be found to answer for his promise to vote for the Republican tax bill raising taxes on the people he pretends to represent. However, the self-admitted spender of campaign funds for personal expenses now under federal criminal investigation for spending campaign funds for…

California, History, Public Policy November 2, 2017

After tax cuts derailed the ‘California dream,’ is the state getting back on track?

In 1978, the year I graduated from college with a degree in economics, most voters in my state chose to turn their backs on the “California dream.” Not unlike the American dream, California’s iteration focused on the limitless possibilities awaiting anyone who moved to the state. It was the state’s basic philosophic footing, a social compact that connected generations, geographies and economic classes in a common destiny….

Columns/Blogs, Editorial, Opinion, Politics October 24, 2017

Trump targets Issa, the last Cal Republicans

It’s hard to know exactly what shape Republican “tax reform” will take. Many details are missing from the “framework” that the administration presented last month. (Describing actions, or promises of action, by the Donald Trump administration often necessitates the use of quotation marks.) But it must have seemed a good idea to someone to complement Trump’s culture war against liberals with a fiscal war. The…

Blogs, Columns/Blogs, Opinion, Politics October 14, 2017

How much more of an ‘F.U.’ can Californians send the Republican Party?

What is to be done in 2018 and beyond, to get the country back on track? Just how liberal is California? It’s the home state of Amanda Chantal Bacon’s Moon Juice and a shit-ton of cannabis — but it’s also the headquarters of Scientology, the launchpad and burial place of Ronald Reagan, and where the landmark 1978 anti-tax measure Prop 13 still polls remarkably well. So how…