California Forum

Water pact, CalPERS scandal, UC Davis Med Center bill

One might guess the federal court with the most burdensome caseload is based in a city like New York, Chicago or Miami. Many would be surprised to learn that this unenviable distinction belongs to our own Eastern District of California, with its main courthouses in Sacramento and Fresno. The impact of this tremendous caseload is felt not only by the judges and staff members who serve the district, but more importantly by the public – the litigants who turn to the federal court expecting timely and efficient resolution of their disputes.

Two recent articles in The Bee tell us that funds for the American River Parkway will be reduced again, continuing the funding shortage the parkway has been dealing with for several years.

STOCKTON -- Californians wondering if they are up to rewriting their constitution should come here, to the University of the Pacific and Robert Benedetti's senior seminar on California government.

State Sen. Darrell Steinberg's quiet reshuffling of 150 years of California water policy to bail out Southern California developers and giant agricultural interests to the south threatens the future of this region. In essence, upstream water users like Sacramento will be responsible for paying for the damage to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta from decades of water exports to the south.

There is widespread agreement that if federal health care reform passes, making it work will depend in great part on getting a handle on spiraling medical costs that already consume nearly one of every five dollars spent in the United States.

City reputations can be like sound waves. They echo out, and the farther you are from the actual city – like, say, Sacramento – the older they are. And when you get to that city, that out-of-date rep still rings in your head and takes awhile to clear.

When a major storm roared through our region Oct. 13, hundreds of people traded questions and answers live on sacbee.com.

Citizens of Sacramento, your City Hall is in disarray.

This week will be a big test for the California Legislature, which has the lowest approval ratings since the Field Poll started measuring in 1983.

Two prominent Sacramento women died last week – Mary Brill and Jean Runyon.

For the first time in our nation's history, women constitute almost 50 percent of all workers. And the number continues to grow. However, our social institutions have not kept pace.

Zoos, investigative journalism, Boy Scouts, pot

If confidence in public schools weren't already precarious enough, it was further shaken by remarks made by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a speech delivered at Columbia's Teachers College on Oct. 22.

Proponents of government-directed health reform achieved a victory recently when the Senate Finance Committee approved the reform bill by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. The Baucus plan purports to extend health coverage to the uninsured and provide those who already have insurance with better health care choices while cutting health costs.

Each time another report surfaces about the decline of newspapers, I feel like a death row inmate counting the warden's footsteps.

When I meet people these days, whatever the setting, I usually end up hearing how they get their news.

I photographed the homeless along the American River from 1990 to 1992 and was intrigued by the types of shelters that people built.

Closing a school and turning it over to a nonprofit to run as a public charter school is not for the faint of heart. It requires a strong school board willing to back an inevitably controversial decision. It requires a charter organization willing to withstand withering criticism in its sensitive startup years by those tethered to the status quo.

If this were a provincial newspaper, we'd be up in arms about Nevada City bumping Sacramento to become the starting city for the 2010 Tour of California cycling race.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the least popular governors in California history. His relationships with the Democrats who control the Legislature are lousy, and his rapport with his fellow Republicans is probably worse.

When we launched our reader survey of syndicated columnists two weeks ago, I assumed we'd get a deluge of responses.

NorCal Voices features a mix of local writers, young and old, writing about their lives, their individual passions and their communities.

For hours, the fear was that the boy would be found smashed to jelly somewhere, so my first emotion upon learning that 6-year-old Falcon Heene was actually safe in his family's Fort Collins, Colo., attic, was relief.