California Voices

The Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld partisan gerrymandering as a political practice for which there is no federal judicial remedy will be taken as a green light by some state legislatures to draw political maps to favor the party in power. Even if that is not a risk to us in California, the case should […]

We know their stories because they have told them to us: The hardship of sleeping in the fields with no shelter except a blue tarp and the grape vines that they picked; the awkwardness felt by elderly parents who slept on the couches of their adult children’s apartments and trailers already crammed beyond capacity; the […]

In January, California ended a decades-old legal doctrine that put numerous people behind bars for murders they did not commit.  Yet six months after the new state law—Senate Bill 1437—took effect, some prosecutors are trying to overturn it, resorting to scare tactics and false distortions. We are the legislators who wrote and supported this critical […]

Since 1984, Californians have been pulling their older cars and pickups into smog-check stations and pulling out their wallets to pay for a test to certify that their vehicles meet state emission standards. The average cost for a vehicle-inspection in 2018 was $48.60. It has been money well spent. Every day the program prevents 400 tons of tailpipe […]

For years – many years – journalists and government watchdogs have cataloged an almost unbroken, extremely expensive string of failed attempts to bring information technology into state government operations. Dozens of IT projects have either failed completely or functioned undependably, costing taxpayers countless millions of dollars. The current poster child for faulty IT is “The […]

In his apology for California’s genocidal treatment of Native Americans, Gov. Gavin Newsom focused attention on the state’s nearly forgotten first elected governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, and his declaration in 1851 that Indians would be exterminated. As Gov. Newsom reported, Burnett infamously predicted to the 1851 Legislature: “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the […]

For decades – close to a century, in fact – America’s educators and politicians have argued furiously over how best to teach children to read, pitting advocates of “phonics” against those of “whole language,” a conflict dubbed “reading wars.” Phonics stresses fundamental instruction in the letters and letter combinations that make up sounds, thus allowing […]

RE: “A million independent voters risk being irrelevant in California’s presidential primary,” June 19, 2019. CALmatters’ Ben Christophe reports that Chad Peace wants a presidential primary ballot that lists all the presidential candidates.   Ironically, California had a presidential primary like that in 2000. There was one presidential primary ballot that listed all the candidates of all six […]

James Gore, Sonoma County Board of Supervisors: Getting educated about how to build more fire-resistant homes and buildings is an essential step to strengthen our triple bottom line of the economy, the environment and the social fabric of our neighborhoods. 

A collection of commentaries by Dan Walters over the past week.