Missing word makes gax tax campaign misleading
One dropped word can make almost any written passage wholly misleading and confusing. Imagine if President Trump’s 2016 election slogan had lacked the word “great.”...
Thomas D. Elias
Remember the energy crunch? Say ‘no’ to regional electric grid
Way back in 1990, when Californians overwhelmingly voted to impose term limits on state officials, critics warned about the loss of “institutional memory” the move...
Solar mandate, under attack, actually good for consumers
Ever since the California Energy Commission adopted a new solar panel requirement for new homes sold in 2020 and beyond, the edict has been under...
Two-year wait for chance at real Proposition 13 change
No law is more important to lifestyles in California than Proposition 13, the landmark 1978 law that limits property taxes to 1 percent of their...
Brown reveals naiveté in assuming PUC is fair deal
Gov. Jerry Brown has made this year something like a farewell tour, traveling the world as the de facto leader of American environmentalism and basking...
Legislature must amend list of nonviolent crimes
There isn’t a woman alive who was ever raped while either intoxicated or unconscious who doesn’t consider the entire experience violent. But that’s not how...
One census question could do long-lasting damage
President Trump may just have struck his most effective and longest-lasting blow of a seemingly constant conflict with California, the state that cost him a...
PUC fire risk map for utilities too little, too late
It was a clear-cut case of too little and too late when the California Public Utilities Commission the other day issued its first-ever map showing...
Gender gap the key to Democrats’ aims in Congress
The most dramatic news in the year’s first big round of political polling, out a few days ago, was that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, once...
Rebuke for PUC as state consumers get half a win
The bottom line on the 2012 shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station was that by all sensible logic, consumers should never have had...
Single-payer emerging as key election issue
After the contentious, sometimes raucous first debate of this year’s primary election season, it became clear that issues like offshore oil drilling, affordable housing, President...
Obscure agency is state’s best defense against offshore drilling
Florida escaped from President Trump’s plan to sell new offshore oil drilling leases because it has a Republican governor who called in a favor. There...
Will electric freedom suffer a major delay?
The California Public Utilities Commission giveth, but the same benighted agency much more often taketh away. At least from consumers. In December, this five-member commission...
Fire ruling has immediate effect on state’s utilities
Under intense political pressure at the same time bone-dry Santa Ana and Sundowner winds propelled unchecked wildfires across Southern California in early December, the California...
Now we’ll see what transparency can do
California will be exploring new ground as the impending election year builds to its climax in early November. For the first time ever, big donors...