Opinion / Forum
The rebellion against high-stakes testing roils across country as states start saying no.
A hardy band of educators and parents have been complaining for years about the test-driven mentality of No Child Left Behind, which makes students’ prospects and teachers’ futures hinge on the outcome of high-stakes exams. ...
The economy grinds to a halt as government-driven austerity takes hold.
The U.S. economy is suffering from a very nasty case of austerity. Only 165,000 new jobs were created in April – far fewer than are needed to address existing unemployment and to create positions for ...
Protecting next year’s Boston Marathon from ourselves will take guts; best start preparations early.
If emerging victorious after being down 3-0 to the Yankees in the 2004 playoffs should have taught us anything, it’s that the people of Boston are tough as hell and never lose faith. After last ...
Will voters forgive Obama for cutting social security?
President Obama has riled Democrats by tossing Social Security onto the table in his poker game with Republicans. Not to worry. A year from now, when the 2014 congressional campaigns are underway, Republicans will be ...
Voting Rights Act repeal would have serious consequences in Monterey County.
Our nation’s only safeguard against discriminatory voting practices may be in serious jeopardy. That safeguard, better known as Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ensures that state and local election practices are ...
The Supremes seem ready to rule – finally – on the constitutionality of Defense of Marriage Act.
“Do you think they will punt on this one too?” That was the first thing I heard in the Supreme Court pressroom as arguments over the Defense of Marriage Act got underway on March 27. ...
Parties to celebrate the planet are great, but cleaning up the planet is even better.
At parks across San Francisco, aka “North America’s Greenest City,” last year’s Earth Day celebrators showed their true colors – and green wasn’t one of them. Despite April 22 being devoted to protecting the planet, ...
As oil companies eye the Monterey Shale Formation, what has fracking wrought in the Midwest?
Safely buried since the Pleistocene age, danger is stirring. Driven by unbridled lust for energy and wealth, small men with giant tools are unleashing a lethal demon on villages and farms across America’s Midwest. Now ...
The majority of undocumented immigrants obey laws and work hard. Let’s keep them.
Immigration reform returned to center stage in Washington of late with a proposal from a bipartisan group of senators that was promptly endorsed in principle by President Barack Obama. One of the linchpins of the ...
Pay attention to the man behind that cynical little curtain – and be very afraid.
Fix the Debt financier Peter G. Peterson knows about debt: He’s an expert at creating it. Peterson founded the private equity firm Blackstone Group in 1985 with Stephen Schwarzman (who compared raising taxes to “when ...
Protests in D.C. draw double the expected crowd – and a show of solidarity in Monterey County.
The huge “Forward On Climate” protest in Washington, D.C. on Sunday inspired a handful of Monterey County residents to travel cross-country to demand presidential action on the climate, including stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline. Meanwhile ...
Graffiti creates huge business opportunities – the graffiti abatement industry.
The inaugural edition of the Zero Graffiti International conference was held recently in San Francisco. For three days, more than 150 attendees from 52 cities convened in a conference facility in the basement of St. ...
Google’s almost-total control over the news is a competition killer.
Imagine if a single company had the same sweeping and arbitrary power over print news distribution that Google wields over digital news distribution. Such a company would rightly be the subject of intense public and ...
Men escaping lives of poverty provide the spectacle in the NFL as the rest of us cheer.
This Sunday, citizens across these United States will indulge in the country’s most cherished pastime: watching large men give each other life-threatening concussions. For about 20 weeks, millions of us sit riveted as players in ...
The Roberts Court has shifted away from ideas necessary to enact policies on guns and mental health.
As President Obama begins his second term, our hopes and expectations are shadowed by shooting tragedies whose nadir was reached with the deaths of so many children in Newtown. If these events have reinvigorated a ...
For all his flaws, Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense might be a smart move.
The battle over Barack Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel to be U.S. secretary of defense has many of the elements of a typical episode of insider bloodletting. These happen routinely in every administration whenever powerful ...
Will Diane Feinstein lead congress through the door left open by the NRA’s disaster of a press conference?
Thank the National Rifle Association for the continued momentum toward gun control. One week after the horrific shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, and only hours after a nationwide moment of silence for the victims, the NRA ...
Shouldn’t the last act of murderous outrage in our nation have been enough of a wake-up call?
Fact: Eighty-eight people in this country have died in mass shootings this year alone, joining the 30,000 others who were murdered or killed themselves with guns. Guns make us stupid. This truth was on display ...
How the American Legislative Executive Counsel thwarts honest debate about gun violence.
The first response of any country to violence of the sort seen in Connecticut must be one of horror. And sorrow. President Obama showed that sorrow when he wiped away the tears so many Americans ...
Supreme Court will finally take up two watershed marriage cases, including California’s Prop. 8.
It’s no shocker that the Supreme Court of the United States decided last week to hear United States v. Windsor, which questions the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). By ...
Obama ad insults young women voters with creepy, big government paternalism.
Amidst this presidential campaign’s bickering about which candidate is women’s friend or foe, the Obama camp targets young women in an eye-catching web ad intended as feminist. In fact, its main effect is to show ...
Walmart workers walk off the job in a dramatic action that could remake working-class America.Walmart workers walk off the job in a dramatic action that could remake working-class America.
More than a year ago, Walmart spokesman Steven Restivo lyrically told me that the company had changed its relationship with communities, from a “transactional to transformational” one. That had a nice ring to it. Walmart ...
Does he really want to be king, or does he just want to be wanted by the GOP?
Does Mitt Romney even want to be president? That’s not a rhetorical question: In Mitt Romney’s heart of hearts, maybe all he really wanted was the Republican nomination. Every time Romney gets an opportunity to ...
Hey, wait a minute: Isn’t Mitt Romney a certified member of the 47 Percent?
Mitt Romney, a son of privilege who used family connections and family advantages to accumulate a “vulture capitalist” fortune, and who collects multi-million-dollar checks for doing absolutely nothing, claims to have identified 47 percent of ...
46 million Gen Xers have little or no savings, but they do have voter registration cards.
The electorate seems to be hungering for presidents in the mold of TR, FDR and LBJ – old-school leaders who painted ambitious visions of where America could go and why it should, who anticipated crises ...
The GOP ambitions under the Romney/Ryan facade.
I’d been in Tampa for all of 15 minutes, and I was already late for something. Of course, I knew that the real Republican National Convention would occur far from the klieg lights and sound ...
Pundits are turning Paul Ryan from a right-wing ideologue into a bold intellectual – and framing the election in the process.
One reads of people obsessed with finding Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. These folks may be annoying, but for most of us, they are not really a problem. The same can’t be said of ...
The Republicans’ best bet, a win by voter suppression, will be greeted with a national shrug.
Everybody, even the Republicans, is talking about how choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate has made winning the election just that much harder for Mitt Romney. But maybe the choice makes it just a ...
The wealthy aren’t just steering politics, they’re conscripting it from the will of the people.
Are you sick of hearing about the 1 percent yet? Well, don’t be. There’s a big reason everyone is talking about the ones on top: They’re more powerful and rich now than they have ever ...
At the convention, Dems have a chance to right Bill Clinton’s wrong on defining marriage.
The two major political parties of the United States are imperfect vehicles, but when they take stands on fundamental issues, these powerful institutions provide a measure of where not just politics is, but where the ...
The feds are poised to cut another $1.5 trillion from the deficit, and women will suffer the most.
Remember when Congress almost defaulted on our debt? It may seem like a distant nightmare, but we’re still living with repercussions from the debt ceiling showdown. In order to get Congress to lift the ceiling ...
History has taught us nothing, and that’s why Aurora will happen again.
We are uncomfortable in confronting randomness in our lives. When something terrible happens we search for “explanations” in the same way that primitive people did when puzzled by the complexity of the universe. Why does ...
As the American economy reels, Romney still reaping millions from Bain’s vulture capitalism.
Poor Mitt Romney. Well, not that poor. The wealthiest man ever to secure a major party nomination for the presidency is crying foul because President Barack Obama’s campaign has dared to explain how Romney made ...
How the Republican push for voter ID laws could profoundly change November’s elections.
It’s actually good, from a Republican point of view, that party powers like Rupert Murdoch, his Wall Street Journal and Bill Kristol are piling on Mitt Romney as a lousy candidate right now, in July. ...
Factory farming uses a vast majority of U.S. antibiotics, so why is there so much resistant bacteria in the meat supply?
America’s cheap meat habit is costing more than we bargained for. The factory farming of cows, pigs, poultry and fish sucks up 29 million pounds – 80 percent – of antibiotics sold in the United ...
Tea Party-backed effort threatens California voter rolls.
Threaten to curb someone’s right to own a gun in the state of Florida and you’re likely to provoke a war – you’ll be threatened, castigated, called un-American. You’ll have to pry that gun from ...
The NBA’s Red State Hoops Strategy means you may be rooting for different teams than you realize.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are a stolen franchise, having been torn from Seattle in 2008. A mere four years later, they are in the NBA Finals. They are also being relentlessly promoted by the NBA ...
Courting strange experiences is one of the best ways to boost creativity.
Creative people think differently. But why? There is no magic bullet or single pill. We all have the potential for creativity, but there are so many different triggers that can broaden our minds, inspire and ...
Fee critical to meet state requirements for new water sources and to avoid rationing.
Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary defines a pyrrhic victory as one gained at a ruinous cost. The opposition to the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District (MPWMD) user fee by the Monterey County Association of Realtors looks ...
A farm-worker-turned-farm-owner urges a phase-out of all fumigants.
California’s strawberry farmers are about to get the help we need to make our farms both “greener” and safer, with new farming techniques. State officials recently announced an exciting new effort to help farmers transition ...
Vote Sanchez, Parker and Potter
With District 5 the most contentious, the Weekly announces its endorsements.
District 1 County Supervisor Sergio Sanchez District 1 pits veteran supe Fernando Armenta against two veteran Salinas City Councilmen, Sergio Sanchez and Tony Barrera. While other supervisors’ races may seem more fractious on the outside ...
Flick takes a pointed look at living in a Koch-driven economy, and the selling out of democracy.
With an unflinching look at the Koch Brothers’ money and power, Brave New Films has once again created a film full of rollicking and rigorous facts that informs and challenges corporate media with the truth. ...
Romney’s new Etch A Sketch targets women and Latinos.
Mitt Romney’s campaign adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, caused a kerfuffle by saying that, in the general election, Romney could simply erase his extreme conservative positions from the primary “almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can ...
How the Affordable Care Act can saves lives in an era of healthcare disparity.
We all need to be able to see a doctor when we’re sick. It’s that simple. And somehow, that fact seemed to elude much of our discussion around the Supreme Court oral arguments on the ...
To kill the greed beast, you must chop off its head, and that means continually targeting Wall Street.
What other political movement in modern times has won the sympathy and/or support of the majority of the American public in less than two months? On September 17, 2011, a group of (mostly) young adults ...
Panetta Institute series lines up powerhouse players for revolutionary 15th year.
The 15th annual Panetta Institute Lecture Series returns to the Monterey Conference Center beginning this Monday, under the umbrella theme “Revolutions of the 21st Century: Changing Our Way of Life.” Since its inception, the series ...
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments over healthcare reform, here’s why the law is constitutional.
What is at stake in the case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), scheduled for oral argument in the Supreme Court this month? The challengers maintain that the case is about fundamental ...
Methyl iodide doesn’t make health sense, but it doesn’t make financial sense either.
The Board of Supervisors recently took a stand against the fumigant methyl iodide, in a vote that followed the kind of political calculating in service since Cicero first described it in 50 B.C. A supervisor ...
Some sage advice from an old sage of journalism on how not to screw up the next water project.
So you got yourself elected to the podunk water district and, all of a sudden, your district is now the center of a fancy new proposal. This is a huge thing, a water cure the ...
While Komen’s controversial V.P. resigned, it won’t be the last we hear from her.
Karen Handel spent the week before her resignation as the vice president of public policy of the Susan G. Komen foundation at the epicenter of the controversy around Komen’s decision to withdraw support for Planned ...
Extending the Fort Ord Reuse Authority’s lifespan could mean more jobs, better development and cooperation in the region.
Fort Ord has been a critical part of our region’s economy, politics and environment since 1917, and we all know the challenges and opportunities that the base’s 1994 closure posed to our communities. That year, ...
If only they didn’t stand a chance at becoming president, this could be fun to watch.
What a satisfying, if self-indulgent, pleasure it has lately become to read the conservative press. As Newt Gingrich whacks Mitt Romney with brickbats furnished by Occupy Wall Street, the voices of the Republican establishment are ...
Falling into the Bin Laden trap: One down, one to go.
In October, 2001, just after 9/11, I wrote the following: “The regimes in [Pakistan and Saudi Arabia] are based on a coalition of support from pro-Western modernizing elites and an extremely conservative, popularly-based Islamic establishment. ...
NAACP President Ben Jealous decries national addiction to incarceration over education.
MCWeekly: Who are some of your local heroes in the Civil Rights struggle? And why? Ben Jealous: It was a whole family of people active in the NAACP. They had faith in me, got me ...
The entertainment industry has failed to explain why the U.S. economy collapsed.
As protesters continue to provoke fresh real-life confrontations with our financial oligarchy, the American culture industry has followed its own instinctive path, forging heroic narratives about the nation’s financial woes that gravitate into a Neverland ...
The federal prison system includes units where inmates can be rarely seen or heard.
When the Abu-Baker family arrived to visit their father, Shukri Abu-Baker, at the secretive federal prison known as a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Indiana this past fall, they were forced to sit in silence ...
A dangerous bill heading toward the president would gut our rights.
You know these are interesting times when Glenn Beck, Dianne Feinstein, Rand Paul and the ACLU all agree on an issue. The issue in question is Subtitle D of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), ...
While the world slept, the poor were demonized and the middle class collapsed.
Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from ...
If scandal helps elevate Gingrich while finishing off Herman Cain, the country should be declared insane.
Sex is almost always the loser in a scandal. Heaped with scorn, muddied and defiled, it sinks to the basement of our collective imagination – its vain cries, “I am not an animal; I am ...
Then the president and Congress just aren’t that into you.
Forget now-defunct GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain’s rallying cry of 9-9-9. The battle cry for every American ought to be 7-7-7. 7-7-7: for the $7.7 trillion the Bush and Obama Administrations secretly funneled to the ...
How Higher Education and the Security State Intermingle
Two shocking scandals. Two esteemed universities. Two disgraced university leaders. One stunning connection. Over the last month, we’ve seen Penn State University President Graham Spanier dismissed from his duties and UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi ...
Keep your expectations for it low, based on a possible court decision.
How would you feel if the government could freely use satellite technology and computers to secretly turn your property into an invisible surveillance device and track your every public move 24/7? The Obama administration recently ...
Idyllic Happy Valley built on the suffering of children.
These things should be simple: 1. When, as an adult, you come come across another adult raping a small child, you should a) do everything in your power to rescue that child from the rapist, ...
A defender of the condemned finds commonalities with a cop who worked Death Row protests.
We met at a gay wedding. I’ll call him David. His wife was the matron of honor for one bride, my wife the matron of honor for the other. We were at the rehearsal dinner ...
The Republican darling might want to back away from an all-out border war.
Pizza mogul Herman Cain has had a good few weeks. He’s vacuuming up Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s former supporters, rising in the polls and turning the GOP nominating contest on its heels. It’s a testament ...
The Apple co-founder was lionized in death, but his legacy includes Chinese sweatshops.
No one knows the lure of Apple products better than Mike Daisey. He is, in geek parlance, an Apple fanboy: “I belong to the Cult of Mac. I have been to the House of Jobs. ...
Republicans wouldn’t dare, unless it helped kill Planned Parenthood.
First they came for abortion, but I didn’t care because abortion was for sluts. Then they came for sex ed, but I didn’t care because the kids can learn all they need to know at ...
The system will ignore the wrath of young, debt-ridden and disenfranchised voters at its own peril.
Enraged young people, The New York Times worries aloud, are kicking off the dust of phony democracy, in which “the job of a citizen was limited to occasional trips to the polling places to vote” ...
A Central Coast attorney’s killing helps shine a light on the hidden tragedy of domestic violence.
What is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States? If you guessed car accidents, you would be wrong. In fact, more women are hurt by their partners than by any other ...
Changing the food system won’t come from Congress, but from educated eaters
In the forty years since the publication of Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, a movement dedicated to the reform of the food system has taken root in America. Lappé’s groundbreaking book connected ...
An Iraq War vet suggests: Stop relying on empty symbolism and choose leaders wisely.
A patriot, as defined by the dictionary, is someone who defends popular liberty and zealously safeguards his or her country’s welfare. Certain things come to mind: defending your nation, paying your taxes and making sacrifices ...
The Kochs are at it again, this time promoting ultra-restrictive voter identification laws.
V oter fraud is virtually nonexistent in America, but this imaginary crime still serves to justify a wave of new voter registration laws—often requiring a state-issued photo ID—that Republican legislators have rapidly spread across the ...
Veteran combat doc turned author finds death isn’t the only measure of risk on the battlefield.
The human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are high – and hidden, due to advances in combat medicine, and this masks the ferocity of these conflicts. In Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A ...
The Iowa Straw Poll, a pricey test of organizing capacity, has a strange influence on American politics.
A day after Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll results came in – Michele Bachmann edged out Ron Paul, with Tim Pawlenty a distant third, just ahead of Rick Santorum and Herman Cain – Pawlenty pulled the ...
Time for Real Liberals to stand up and kick Team Dem to the curb.
The U.S. might as well have defaulted. Regardless of where you stand politically, the deal to raise the federal debt limit came too late for the U.S. to achieve its main objective, avoiding the downgrading ...
Has Roger Ailes tapped American phones on behalf of Fox News?
“H as Roger Ailes been keeping tabs on your phone calls?” That’s how Portfolio.com began a post back in 2008, when a former Fox News producer charged that Ailes had outfitted a highly secured “brain ...
Balanced budget amendment will require radical shifts in government, a fact nobody seems to get.
This week, as the federal debt ceiling battle churns closer to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s Aug. 2 deadline, there’s increasing talk about an amendment to the Constitution that would require balanced budgets. Senate Minority Leader ...
The great Republican obsession: women’s bodies and killing Planned Parenthood.
I suppose that conservatives aren’t going to be happy until they kill off Planned Parenthood. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin just signed a two-year, $66 billion budget stripping the organization’s health clinics of their state ...
With constant conflict, searching for peace becomes an abstraction.
In times of war, U.S. presidents have often talked about yearning for peace. But the last decade has brought a shift in the rhetorical zeitgeist while a tacit assumption has taken hold – war must ...
Obama’s security troika runs headfirst into another conflict.
So Obama’s women wanted war against Libya. We’d like to think that women in power would somehow be less pro-war, but in the Obama administration it appears that the bellicosity is worst among Hillary Clinton, ...
U.S. nuclear hubris mixes technological arrogance with profit motive.
Tshe “impossible” is underway in Japan. A 9.0 magnitude earthquake has badly shaken up several “indestructible” nuclear plants. Reactor No. 1 at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is in partial meltdown, and reactor ...
No jobs a-boomin’ in environmental sector, but losses in traditional areas abound.
In his State of the Union speech last month, President Barack Obama planned to “win the future” by, among many other things, having the federal government invest in “clean energy technology – an investment that ...
The tiny house movement still comes with a sizeable pricetag.
In the same way that America’s fast food purveyors pack their menus with cheap, empty calories, America’s home builders pack their houses with cheap, empty space. On a cost per square foot basis, the typical ...
Consumer marketing makes little girls older much faster.
In November, the U.S. Senate, by a vote of 58 to 41, rejected the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would have remedied pay disparities between men and women. What better time to examine the ...
Voters want the country to innovate, president wants to get us there.
As President Obama addressed the nation during his recent State of the Union speech, I was in a dark, crowded room peering through one-way glass at a group of voters from the real America – ...
Antidepressant residue chills fish out, and damages their innate drive to survive.
Back in the 1990s, Theo Colborn, then-senior scientist with the World Wildlife Fund, sounded the first alarms about endocrine disrupters. In the book Our Stolen Future (Plume) Colborn describes her early findings that connected these ...
When marketing copy passes as medical writing, someone wins.
After the FDA approves a new drug, it rarely faces follow-up studies that might reveal serious and possibly fatal side effects. Some dangers remain hidden for years until an accumulation of disasters sparks lawsuits. Faced ...
Cult of thinness battles fat acceptance movement and kids still lose.
As President Obama signs the new federal child nutrition bill, flanked by anti-childhood-obesity crusader Michelle Obama, the culture wars have devolved into a food fight – literally. Yet it is a battle in which the ...
Can we disconnect from online media long enough to live our lives?
The blog of a friend kept showing up in my inbox. I felt guilty not reading it each week, and couldn’t get it to go into my junk mail. Then I saw the unsubscribe button. ...
America’s drug policy a failed experiment in social engineering.
America’s drug policy aims to reduce illicit drug use by arresting and incarcerating dealers and, to a lesser extent, users. Whatever its merits (and there are some), the policy is deeply flawed because it is ...
Vertical farming imagines a utopian future, but can it price out?
Now that there are hardly any farmers left to migrate from the cornfields to the city, farms themselves are poised to make the big move. This, at least, is the premise of Dickson Despommier’s The ...
Palin is no nature lover – she just plays one on TV.
If the first episode was any indication, Sarah Palin’s Alaska will be as cloying as expected, with family conflict rendered in its most anodyne form, giving Palin ample opportunity to burnish her image as a ...
Gore abounds, with Shakespearean underpinnings.
With its putrid zombie horde, The Walking Dead is the ultimate gift for fans of gore: There are splattered heads, swarming flies and enough tattered, rotting flesh to make most watch through splayed fingers. But ...
Dems’ future lies in Latinos – and Obama’s ability to close his credibility gap with them.
In 2008, Barack Obama won the national Latino vote 67-31. Given the rapid growth of this key demographic, those results augured well not just for Obama’s re-election chances, but for the Democratic Party’s future. It ...
How women style their hair down there connotes class.
Once upon a time, it was risque rather than nostalgic to feature pubic hair in a softcore magazine. Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse, changed all that, revealing to millions of readers the physical details ...
A look at what insiders are saying as the Giants open the World Series in San Francisco.
Turns out the blogosphere is particularly well-suited to spread the lore of the San Francisco Giants. What follows is a compilation of local and national posts from smarty-pants of all stripes in advance of the ...
SEIU backs Prop. 19 and courts a hip sector of workers.
The debate over the legalization of marijuana has burned for decades, but has largely been waged between the political establishment and a grassroots movement trying to get the government off its back. But as the ...
The NFL’s breast cancer blitz shows it is as fragile as Brett Favre’s reputation.
You may have noticed an abundance of pink in the National Football League this month. Between the pink sneakers, pink mouth guards, and pink wristbands, one would be excused for wondering how the machismo-drenched league ...
People are at their smartest when they blend their brains with machines.
Which are smarter, humans or machines? Back in 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer struck a blow for bots when it beat Garry Kasparov at chess. Deep Blue won because computers can perform endless lightning-fast calculations; ...
Domestic dad is more than just a hot piece of status.
People over the years have called me many things. My favorites include: wordsmith, Next in Line and, of course, Beaver – because it rhymes with my last name. If I don’t ease off the pizza ...
