There was a time in the distant past when bus systems and rail systems were privately owned and could operate at a profit. The cost of labor, government regulations, equipment, and right-of-way has driven most of these out of business. The privately owned Greyhound Bus service has to operate on a for-profit basis. For this […]
March is Arts Education Month, which makes it fitting to point out that when school budgets get cut to the bone, as they are in this current budget crisis, art and music education are always among the first casualties. Because this crisis is unprecedented, so is the depth of the cuts being made. It’s clear […]
Driving home from Irvine recently, I noticed how nice it was to leave the Ventura/Los Angeles county areas and head into Santa Barbara County and the open areas of the Central Coast. No wonder tourists like to come here! The squeeze of the shoulder-to-shoulder impact of homes, asphalt, and cars was lifted from my head […]
Political wonks like to talk about transformative elections, ones in which more than the faces change, ones in which the temper of American politics shifts from the dominance of one party or ideology to another. This election may well have been truly transformative. George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at U.C. Berkeley, has based a model […]
Change is always difficult, but our culture must change if it is to continue. There is a movement that is coming from the people/citizens. It has been given a title of “green,” but I prefer “sustainable.” Basically, it is change from a high consumption rate to living within the capacity of our habitat. Resources are […]
The construction industry provides sanctuary and equity wealth to homeowners, shelter to renters, comfortable places to conduct business and shop, good salaries to workers, and revenues that help fund local government and pay for public improvements. Yet we often hear people question if the construction industry is paying its fair share. State law, known as […]
The Great Depression made a lasting impression on our family and many American families. Farming in middle America, my mother’s family had just lost my grandfather when bad times hit. Grandmother, unable to keep farming, and my mother, who was forced to quit school, went to work sewing in one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s make-work […]
The idyllic city of Geneva, Switzerland, is about 5,700 miles from California’s Central Coast, an entire world away. But something in that European town may affect us all in upcoming months: It may cause the end of days. To explain, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider—the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN, the research organization […]
When humans first came together to live in agricultural communities, the need developed for rules and laws. It became important for those early leaders, just as today, to set good examples to follow for the rest of the community. Those social rules and laws have become the glue that holds modern civilization and societies together. […]
I have a confession to make. A couple of weeks ago, I told Mark van de Kamp, a management analyst for the city, that the Santa Maria Public Library doesn’t need any more money. A week before that, I said the same thing to Phil Alvarado, the new Santa Maria Bonita School District Superintendent and […]
It was August 1963, and I was a college junior. I had a summer job in New York City, and each day I took the commuter train with my father. On one such trip, I looked at the New York Post and was surprised to learn that college students had gone down south to help […]
Six years ago, California voters passed Proposition 49, which created thousands of new after-school programs, invested in public safety, and guaranteed that funding would not be subject to political whims. However, the State Legislature is now attempting to repeal Proposition 49, through another ballot initiative. At risk are more than 3,800 after-school programs that keep […]
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