Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Oct. 1, 2013, Washington Post. Americans’ respect for their Congress has, sad to say, diminished in recent years. But citizens still expect a minimal level of competence and responsibility: Pay the bills and try not to embarrass us in front of the world. By those minimal standards, this […]
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By Joanne Lipman, Wall Street Journal I had a teacher once who called his students “idiots” when they screwed up. He was our orchestra conductor, a fierce Ukrainian immigrant named Jerry Kupchynsky, and when someone played out of tune, he would stop the entire group to yell, “Who eez deaf in first violins!?” He made […]
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By Arne Duncan and Kamala Harris Millions of desks sit empty in elementary school classrooms because of truancy each year, costing schools billions of dollars, wasting public resources and squandering one of the country’s most precious resources: its young people. We tend to think of truancy as something that starts in junior high or high […]
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By Michael Brune and Kathryn Phillips By signing Senate Bill 4, a severely compromised fracking bill, Gov. Jerry Brown has shown a lack of optimism and confidence in California’s future at a time when the state has its greatest chance – and need – to move beyond oil and gas to clean energy. This is […]
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By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee There is simply nothing more important to California’s future than an adequate and dependable supply of clean water. Accordingly, there is simply nothing more complex than its water politics, as we are beginning to see as Gov. Jerry Brown, legislators and water stakeholders attempt to write a 2014 bond issue. […]
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By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times Countries that don’t plan for the future tend not to do well there. When you watch the reckless behavior of the Tea Party-driven Republicans in Congress today, you can’t help but fear that we’ll be one of those. What makes it all the more frustrating is that in […]
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By Byron P. White Somewhere between our group’s discussion of three-year bachelor’s degrees and its deliberation over the value of general-education courses, the sensation swept over me: I’ve seen this before—or at least something close to it. Déjà vu. The people engaged in the conversation were different this time. They were members of Cleveland State […]
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By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee As the ballot measure evolved into California’s primary public policy tool over the last three-plus decades, clever people were paid large sums of money to figure out how to persuade voters. They adopted deception – there’s no other word for it – as a technique. Measures were written that purported […]
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To the community, On Sept. 19 I attended the South Tahoe High School Fall Term Welcome. Wow! To say I was amazed and impressed would be to put it mildly. This is my second freshman year as a parent, with a 15 year gap between my boys. Last school year was our first year back […]
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By Nancy Graalman A growing coalition of statewide and Lake Tahoe preservation interests, intensifying voices from environmental scientists and economists, and – significantly – a recent court ruling are merging to heighten skepticism over the position of California’s State Parks Department that the only way to mend the Upper Truckee River is to downgrade South […]
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