Guest Commentary

Mike Males, author of “Teenage Sex and Pregnancy: Modern Myths, Unsexy Realities”: From the 1990s to 2017, the birth rate among California teens fell by a staggering 80%. Why did this happen? Ignore the interest groups clamoring for credit. The reason is not sex education in California or contraceptive programs in Colorado. Teens themselves are reducing births, especially those involving adult partners.

Tom Dalzell, IBEW Local 1245: In the fight between hedge funds for control of PG&E, there is only one viable plan for reorganization, as things stand today, and that is the one put forward by the hedge fund-bondholders. The plan articulated several weeks ago by the shareholder hedge funds has dissolved to all but nothing.

Chris Ising, Culligan Water Service: Assembly Bill 792 by Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco would require plastic beverage containers in California to be made with at least 25% recycled content material by 2021. The measure would force up prices on products that communities like Paradise need, literally, to survive.

Maurice Goens, Advance Peace: Police are the only solution to battling street violence. In Stockton, the community group, Advance Peace, is helping stop shootings.

Kids today are tracked like no other generation. Click by click, site by site, companies track every move kids—and all consumers—make online.  That’s because our data and our viewing habits are worth a lot of money. For today’s kids, personal information, activities, hobbies, and networks are exposed and often for sale from birth, making kids […]

RE: “New state budget a windfall for unions,” July 4, 2019. People across California bust their butts to take care of their family members and others in the In-Home Supportive Services program while barely making minimum wage. Yet CALmatters commentator Dan Walters seems alarmed  because they now have a little more “leverage” to try to get decent […]

By Holly J. Mitchell and Jen Flory, Special to CalMatters There are few more nerve-racking experiences than sitting in a dentist’s chair writhing from severe pain.  You trust the dentist to fix the problem, relinquishing yourself to his or her care, while under pain medication. Sitting in that dentist’s chair, the last thing on your mind […]

California’s aging water infrastructure desperately needs an upgrade.  Shorter, more intense rain storms, less snowpack and more prolonged stretches of drought reflect the reality of climate change. There’s no one project, no single action, that will save California from a dry and unreliable water future.  We need a broad portfolio of solutions that includes storage […]

RE: “Hedge funds’ proposal to ‘rescue’ PG&E is probably too good to be true,” July 5, 2019. Former Assemblyman Mike Gatto made inaccurate and misleading claims about the proposal outlined in a recent court filing made by the Ad Hoc Committee of Pacific Gas and Electric Company Bondholders. Here are the facts: The committee is comprised of a diverse […]

Will legislators consider that two seemingly different policy choices debated currently share a similar principle and therefore require a like solution? I’m looking at Senate Bill 206 by Sens. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley and Steven Bradford of Gardena to allow college athletes to be paid for the money-making use of their name, image, and likenesses, and the […]