Author Archive for Thomas D. Elias
Six Californias? It’s just a ludicrously flawed idea
Here’s a piece of advice for registered voters: When petition carriers accost you outside supermarkets, big box stores or shopping malls asking you to help advance a plan to carve California into six states, don’t sign.
California Focus: New vaccination form eases way for falso myths
For almost two months, parents of California public school pupils have been able to claim with no proof that their religion precludes getting their children vaccinated against once dreaded and disabling diseases like polio, rubella, mumps, pertussis and smallpox.
California Focus: If water rationing comes to the state, do it right
Despite heavy mid-February rains that briefly drenched Northern California and the respectable ensuing snowfall in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the California drought remains.
California Focus: Costa Azul shows the state avoided white elephants
White elephant: an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth. —Wikipedia
Four-year degrees at community colleges? Why Not?
Maybe it’s been just an ego thing or a matter of turf, but administrators and some alumni groups at the University of California and the California State University systems for years have adamantly opposed the notion of community colleges granting anything more than two-year associate of arts degrees.
Siskiyou secession move going nowhere, like all the rest
It’s secession season again in California. For the seventh time in the last 27 years or so, there’s a movement afoot to split the state.
Lines blur between citizens and non-citizens
As the lines begin to blur between American citizens living in California and immigrants who are here legally, it’s fair to begin asking what’s the difference?
Thomas Elias: New school requirements risk drop in grad rates
As California teachers and students open the new school year, they’re feeling proud of a recent trend toward decreased dropouts and increased graduation rates.
Rejected spending and the prisoner crisis
For every action, goes the law of both physics and politics, there is a reaction, a consequence.
At least two more years of fixable property tax inequity
Maybe Proposition 13 really still is a third rail in California politics, one that no one dares touch for fear it means instant political suicide, just as surely as if through electrocution.
