Lifelong Californian Lori Thompson is well aware of the state’s dire affordable housing problem. She’s just wondering why she’s the one who has to pay to fix it. After her daughter moved to Reno to escape high rents in the Monterey Peninsula, Thompson and her husband decided last December to purchase a $360,000 cabin in […]
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Posted inEnvironment
The Electric Highway: Why California is sputtering along
The state’s electric-car adventure got off to a shaky start. Here’s the problem.
Posted inElection 2016
Proposition 64: Legalizing marijuana
1oo percent of precincts reporting partial returns—will be updated when all results are certified. Background: The push for marijuana legalization is on the ballot in at least nine states this November, with California’s Prop. 64 the most watched. Although four other states previously have legalized recreational pot, a vote by the nation’s most populous state […]
Posted inPolitics
Will state ban property seizure from people who aren’t criminals?
In civil liberties circles, she is known by the pseudonym of Elizabeth James—a retiree from the phone company who was contemplating a cross-country trip with her machinist husband. The two had worked for decades, raising two children and caring for her developmentally disabled sister, who lived in a home the couple had bought and remodeled […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environment, Politics
Climate retreat? Legislature could ditch plan to radically cut emissions
Gov. Jerry Brown has taken the national stage to tout California’s fight against global warming, telling cheering throngs at the Democratic National Convention that the state has “the toughest climate laws in the country.” Yet inside the state Capitol, the fate of the policy’s centerpiece—legislation to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions—is in peril. One ominous […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environment, Politics
Oil money flows for black and Latino Democrats
It’s not often that interest groups call out public officials by their race, but as environmentalists evaluated state lawmakers’ voting records last year, that is just what they did. Black and Latino Democrats “must do better” to buck the interests of the petroleum industry and help the communities they represent, the California Environmental Justice Alliance […]
Posted inPolitics
Rise of the Business Democrat
HALF MOON BAY — It’s a lovely place to do business. Ocean waves crash into rocky cliffs. Pelicans flap along the shoreline. And on the golf resort overlooking it all, a powerful bloc of legislators hit the links recently with donors who paid up to $40,000 for the opportunity to join them. This was the […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environment
Ad blitz heats up climate change fight
The oil industry helped Democrat Jim Cooper win his first election to the Legislature last year. Now it’s seeking his help fighting Democratic leaders in the state Capitol. Cooper is one of a handful of potential swing votes the oil industry is targeting as it tries to kill a controversial proposal to cut in half […]