Less Talk, More Action on Water Needed Now
Common lore quotes Mark Twain as saying, “Whiskey’s for drinking and water’s for fighting over.” Sadly, more than a century after Twain served as a reporter for The Sacramento Union newspaper, those words still ring true in the Capitol.
The ongoing battle over water pits the same factions in the same fights: farmers versus environmentalists; north versus south; and conservation versus storage.
What’s so frustrating is that this vicious cycle can be broken. We can responsibly provide what we need for the people of this state and this economy, protect the Delta and the environment that relies upon it. There isn’t anything more important to the people of this state, our economy and, even our national security, than a safe, secure, clean and abundant water supply for all Californians.
Poizner Apologizes for Being a Moderate
It must be discouraging to have to apologize for supporting something you believed in, but GOP gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner is probably getting used to it by now.
Take, for example, Poizner’s new www.PoiznerFacts.com, which is, according to a press release Thursday, “a myth-busting web site aimed at correcting distortions of Steve Poizner’s record.”
You know, the type of myths that suggest that the current state insurance commissioner was once a moderate Silicon Valley Republican who was willing to take unpopular positions because he felt they were right, even if they did go against the conservative, anti-tax grain of the state party.
Of course that was a couple of campaigns ago, when he was running for state Assembly in a strongly Democratic Bay Area district with the endorsement of the newspapers in San Francisco, San Jose and Palo Alto.
The Governor Needs A Wake-Up Call on Prisons
Releasing inmates is a threat to public safety and state taxpayers. Instead of releasing prisoners, Sacramento needs to cut the fat out of the state’s bloated bureaucracy.
While the number of Corrections Department administrators grew by 32% over the last four years, the inmate population grew by just 2% and the number of youth inmates fell by 41% while the Juvenile Justice System added 50% more administrators.
According to a University of Chicago study, for every criminal that remains behind bars, there are five or six fewer crimes reported. Bureau of Justice statistics show that stronger sentencing laws over the past 30 years – including Three Strikes — have clearly spared countless Americans from being assaulted, robbed, raped, and murdered. Violent crime has plunged by more than 59 percent since the mid-1990s — from 51 crimes of violence per 1,000 US residents in 1994 to 21 in 2005. In I973, 44 million crimes were committed. By 2007, that number dropped by nearly 23 million — even as the population grew by more than 75 million.
Health Care’s Prescription for Bioscience – Will Kennedy Decide America’s Fate?
Yesterday, I spent the day in Menlo Park with national and
state partners who came together to discuss the future of biotechnology in
Northern California. The Bioscience
Business Roundtable is the voice of industry leaders in the bioscience community promoting public
policies on the federal, state and local level that provides a dialogue and proposes
solutions to keep America’s place as a world leader in the bioscience sector.
Three tenets discussed by industry leaders were the
promotion of access and prevention and the encouragement of innovation through
building a greater understanding of the roles of government, the business
community, and academia.
Astro-Turf Protesters and Fake Town Halls
For folks like me who work with or for local government, the new NBC sitcom, “Parks and Recreation” has become a guilty pleasure. The show follows the humorous trials and tribulations of Parks & Rec Director, Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler) in the mythical town of Pawnee, Indiana. But when a recent episode focused on a local “town hall meeting” about the building of park, my mind leapt to those other so-called “town halls” being staged around the country.
In this particular installment, entitled “Canvassing”, Pawnee has received Federal Stimulus monies and is looking for “shovel-ready” projects. The city sees the conversion of a dump into a park as such an opportunity, and Leslie is directed to get public support by promoting a “Town Hall Meeting”. Though cautioned by the City Planner not “to go to the public too early” – as no architectural plans or environmental assessments have been made for the site – Leslie pushes on fearlessly, believing that no one could oppose a park. Within minutes of beginning the forum, things begin to disintegrate as residents realize that they are not going to engage in an honest dialogue about the park, but were simply invited to accede to a project pre-ordained by their government. Even though they are fictional the well-intentioned officials of Pawnee offer some great advice to our Congressional leaders who are fanning out across the country: