California Forum

Around July Fourth weekend of 1933, the year that unemployment in the United States soared near 25 percent, you might have expected the columns of The Sacramento Bee to be filled with despair and hardship.

Apparently, finishing things is a new online 'trend'

A bold new direction can address California's seemingly insurmountable financial challenges – one that creates a first-ever California public-private partnership enterprise fund.

At a time when state employees already are reeling from furloughs that will effectively cut their salaries by 15 percent, as well as hiring freezes and other uncertainties, leave it to The Bee to pile on its July 1 editorial "Pensions like it's 1999: Good start."

We're happy that California has become the first state to require chain restaurants to disclose the calorie counts of almost everything on their menus.

In a state government with a $26 billion shortfall, the Legislature's own operating budget is nearly meaningless. Except as a symbol. And symbols matter.

In the slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, about 1 million poor people pay up to 30 times more for water of dubious quality brought to them in old tanker trucks than middle-class citizens pay for clean and safe water provided by the local public water utility via standard household connections.

California's campaigns introduce candidates not only to the state's voters but to its immensity. In Bakersfield, Meg Whitman, 52, the former chief executive officer of eBay who is campaigning for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination, learned about carrots.

State budget, immigration, Michael Jackson and The Bee's news judgment

The undercurrent in many of reports on California's budget fiasco seems to be that the self-indulgent Left Coasters are getting exactly what they deserve. And while schadenfreude is never pretty, we certainly deserve much of the scorn.

California is the place where the odd and migrant go to live, a state that practices a politics of chaotic narcissism, leaving education ill-funded and litigation run amok.

California's attempt to reform health care in 2007 is becoming a harbinger for the debate over health care reform now unfolding in Washington. Reform failed here because it was determined that the proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then-Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez did not really reform health care. Rather, the initiative simply shifted unsustainable costs onto the government. Without a credible way to control costs, no reform package will succeed in Washington.

Report documents agency's flaws and suggests reforms to fix problems.

• Californians are more likely to be uninsured than residents of all but six states. About 20 percent of Californians lack health insurance at any one time during the year. For the nation, the average is 17 percent. California has 6.5 million uninsured.

Two groups are offering competing visions for how best to overhaul the state's government, its budgeting, election laws and more.

I get angry at teenage girls who ride their cute fat-tire bicycles illegally down the sidewalk, smiling obliviously as they force me to step aside with my dogs as they pass.

Sacramentans are about to benefit from the troubles of an old friend.

Many supporters of President Barack Obama have gone "all in" on this administration. Considering it too historic to fail, either they can't see this White House's shortcomings and mistakes or they simply refuse to acknowledge them.

Foreclosures: The poor pets are getting left behind

Iran, health care, state budget, etc.

Two independent groups have been working toward a fundamental restructuring of state government and might soon begin presenting Californians with some options for overturning the status quo.

A wise man once said that love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

If you hang around the state Capitol long enough, the saying goes, you'll most likely see everything at least once.

The economic contributions of immigrants, and their children, come in many forms in California.