State Watch

DROUGHT - California Gov. Gavin Newsom today unveiled a broad strategy for bolstering the state’s water supply that includes targets to recycle more water, expand reservoir storage and collect more data on the amounts farmers use.

CA UNEMPLOYMENT - If you get laid off, there’s a system that’s supposed to help you get by: unemployment benefits.

ECONOMY - What does it really take to stay afloat in California?

SACRAMENTO - Welcome to the final countdown.

CA FINANCE - Send help, Harry Potter! Sacramento needs a new wizard!

GUEST COMMENTARY - Burdened with a decomposing President and a clearly overmatched Vice President, the Democrats are on the hunt for a saviour.

 JOB MARKET TECH - Most folks have internet access, right? If not a desktop setup, at least a phone that can connect you to the internet.

WORKER RIGHTS - Some of the lowest wage workers are getting their livelihoods stolen by their own employers. 

CALIFORNIA WATCH - Should Floridians get to vote in California elections? Should Californians get to cast ballots in Florida?

CAL MATTERS - When UC-Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies conducted one of its periodic polls of California voters early this year, it discovered that just 36% of them believed that the state is “moving in the right direction” while 54% had a negative view.

REDQUEENINLA - As your Dem Party representative elected at the County level, I am also one of your political reps elected to the Party at the State level.

ROE v. WADE A.D. - As California’s efforts to enshrine abortion access continue, the University of California and California State University are working to provide medication abortions on all campuses by Jan. 1

GUN LEGISLATION - Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and other California politicians are incensed that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s law imposing tough limits on concealed weapons permits.

CAL MATTERS - Californians in November will vote on the fewest statewide ballot measures in more than a century — heightening already intense attention on a pair of dueling initiatives to legalize sports betting. 

STATE POLITICS - To encourage us to think about the unthinkable, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sets a Doomsday Clock, showing how close humanity is (in metaphorical minutes and seconds) to the “midnight” of the apocalypse (nuclear or otherwise) and human extinction.

TENANTS IN CRISIS - Eviction protections for thousands of California households still waiting in line for payments from the state’s multi-billion dollar rent relief program expired Thursday.

YOUR TAX BILL - Let’s start with the premise that taxation is largely arbitrary.

UNHOUSED - In California, homelessness is a long-running crisis. And it is a human tragedy for an estimated 160,000 unhoused people.

CA BUDGET - The 2022-23 fiscal year will begin in less than a week and Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders are still negotiating — or arguing — over how to divvy up a nearly $100 billion projected budget surplus.

GUEST COMMENTARY - The constitutional right to abortion in the United States is no more.

RAIL TRANSPO - Can Californians find their way to San Jose?