State Watch

CAL MATTERS - While it deals with the stubborn COVID-19 pandemic, California is also contending with a smorgasbord of equally resilient social pathologies, including chronic illness, homelessness, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness and street crime.

BUSINESS WATCH - Clogged supply chains. Hiring struggles. New mask rules. A virus that trampled right over return-to-work schedules. Last year was chaotic for many businesses across California.

CALIFORNIA MATTERS - Splashy headlines, viral videos and fear of lawlessness have spurred the beginnings of a proverbial pendulum swing in California. 

CALIFORNIA MATTERS - The first Europeans to visit California were Spanish explorers who assumed it was an island and named it for a fictional island in a 16th century Spanish novel, occupied by a band of woman warriors led by a queen named Calafia.

CALIFORNIA HIGHWAYS - Don’t ever complain about freeway traffic, especially around my mother.

STATE OF THE STATE - Yet California is not doomed, at least in the near term, nor is it anything like a model of social democracy.

CALIFORNIA MATTERS - California is a state of contrasts. On the one hand, it is flush with a $31 billion budget surplus from the gains of the rich, enabling it to spend record amounts on schools and health care.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA - When is California going to stop playing COVID games?

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR - Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2018 universal care, saying there was “no reason to wait…I’m tired of politicians saying they support single-payer but that it’s too soon, too expensive or someone else’s problem.”

CALIFORNIA FINANCIAL BOOKS - As we approach the end of 2021, California’s problems have become an embarrassing example of failure in management from the supply chain crisis to high rates of COVID despite draconian measures up and down the state on masks and vaccines.

ENERGY POLITICS - California can claim to be an international leader in energy. Or California can close its last operating nuclear power plant. But it can’t do both.

CRIME WATCH - When it comes to law and order, Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California voters to know that he feels your pain — no matter what the statistics say.

COMMENTARY - Hey, President Biden: Did California’s invitation to your Summit for Democracy get lost by your failing postal service?

CALIFORNIA OIL - To gain more press time, California Governor Newsom just announced California moves to ban oil wells within 3,200 feet of homes and schools. Governor Newsom is proud of continuing the decline of in-state oil production that’s been going on for more than 30 years.

CALIFORNIA CRIME WATCH - “It is time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city … come to an end.

CALIFORNIA WATCH - California’s “tort wars” over the rules governing personal injury lawsuits are heating up again and dueling ballot measures may land on the 2022 ballot.

STATE OF WORK - California has the highest unemployment rate in the country. Several factors are contributing, including the state’s slow-to-rebound leisure and hospitality sectors.

LAW WATCH - If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.  That appears to be Gov. Gavin Newsom’s strategy for counteracting the U.S. Supreme Court’s Friday decision to let stand Texas’ ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

HOUSING POLITICS - A sustained campaign against CEQA, led by polluting industries, real estate developers, and other special interests, has repeatedly and falsely claimed that – despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary – California’s preeminent environmental law is somehow fueling the state’s housing crisis.

LEARNING POLITICS - If California’s local school board members won’t accept unfair criticism, submit to questionable recall votes, or tolerate verbal abuse at meetings, then California should do away with school boards entirely.

REDISTRICTING CALIFORNIA - California’s independent redistricting commission is taking a lot of heat for the congressional and legislative maps it’s drawing to beat a Dec. 27 deadline.