Crime
Blog
BART Blues
In this November election, it’s unfortunate that there’s only one seat up on the BART board (for non-Bay Area readers, BART is the region’s electric train line), because if I had one command as Queen for a day – a question Tim Anaya likes to ask our podcast guests — ...
California
State Should Embrace Charities, Nonprofits to End Homeless Crisis
California, long considered a land of golden opportunity, has a homeless problem. To the north of San Diego, not far from the gates of the fantasy world at Disneyland, a two-mile long homeless camp reminds us of a real and ugly world. Street people are slowing rail traffic between Sacramento ...
California
Lawmakers Should Think Carefully Before Leashing ‘The Dog’
Crime in California is on the rise and the solution offered by Sacramento is … releasing suspected criminals back into the community without requiring them to post bail? Assembly Bill 42 would, if passed and signed, authorize the pretrial release of an “arrested person,” and “set a time and place ...
California
Prop 57 Contains a Loophole for Violent Criminals
With violent crime increasing in California, it seems reasonable to grant early release to inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses to make room in the prison system for truly dangerous felons. Most of us would be happy to trade an accountant guilty of bilking his employer for a serial rapist. One ...
Business & Economics
Give A Convict A Job
Never has it been more evident that California is in a downward spiral on the verge of economic, social and political collapse San Francisco is now pushing to make convicted criminals a protected class so that prospective employers cannot inquire about criminal records. An already precarious business climate in ...
Business & Economics
Making public pay for budget cuts
Sacramento – Last year, one of my reporters and her adult son were walking in downtown Sacramento when a couple of young toughs tried grabbing her purse. She pulled back her purse, and the robbers lunged at the two of them, leaving the son’s face covered in blood. Despite a ...
Business & Economics
Police budget cuts won’t spike crime
SACRAMENTO – “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” observed the journalist, critic and satirist H.L. Mencken. Mencken perhaps would not have envisioned the ...
Business & Economics
Vallejo Goes for Broke
Can bankruptcy save California’s cities from staggering pension obligations? As California cities and counties struggle to fulfill the generous pay and pension commitments that they made to public employees during flush economic times, some politicians have taken comfort in a usually forbidding word: bankruptcy. Top officials in Los Angeles and ...
Business & Economics
The $2 Trillion Hole
Promised pensions benefits for public-sector employees represent a massive overhang that threatens the financial future of many cities and states. LIKE A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE, populist rage burns over bloated executive compensation and unrepentant avarice on Wall Street. Deserving as these targets may or may not be, most Americans have ignored ...
Crime
Time for Parents to Overthrow School Safety “Czars”
Similarly The Detroit News reported numerous shootings in or around the city’s public schools this year, acknowledging that “for each high-profile shooting, there are hundreds of assaults and other violent crimes on school campuses that go unreported each year.” Furthermore, the Detroit Police Department reported that they have responded to ...
BART Blues
In this November election, it’s unfortunate that there’s only one seat up on the BART board (for non-Bay Area readers, BART is the region’s electric train line), because if I had one command as Queen for a day – a question Tim Anaya likes to ask our podcast guests — ...
State Should Embrace Charities, Nonprofits to End Homeless Crisis
California, long considered a land of golden opportunity, has a homeless problem. To the north of San Diego, not far from the gates of the fantasy world at Disneyland, a two-mile long homeless camp reminds us of a real and ugly world. Street people are slowing rail traffic between Sacramento ...
Lawmakers Should Think Carefully Before Leashing ‘The Dog’
Crime in California is on the rise and the solution offered by Sacramento is … releasing suspected criminals back into the community without requiring them to post bail? Assembly Bill 42 would, if passed and signed, authorize the pretrial release of an “arrested person,” and “set a time and place ...
Prop 57 Contains a Loophole for Violent Criminals
With violent crime increasing in California, it seems reasonable to grant early release to inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses to make room in the prison system for truly dangerous felons. Most of us would be happy to trade an accountant guilty of bilking his employer for a serial rapist. One ...
Give A Convict A Job
Never has it been more evident that California is in a downward spiral on the verge of economic, social and political collapse San Francisco is now pushing to make convicted criminals a protected class so that prospective employers cannot inquire about criminal records. An already precarious business climate in ...
Making public pay for budget cuts
Sacramento – Last year, one of my reporters and her adult son were walking in downtown Sacramento when a couple of young toughs tried grabbing her purse. She pulled back her purse, and the robbers lunged at the two of them, leaving the son’s face covered in blood. Despite a ...
Police budget cuts won’t spike crime
SACRAMENTO – “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” observed the journalist, critic and satirist H.L. Mencken. Mencken perhaps would not have envisioned the ...
Vallejo Goes for Broke
Can bankruptcy save California’s cities from staggering pension obligations? As California cities and counties struggle to fulfill the generous pay and pension commitments that they made to public employees during flush economic times, some politicians have taken comfort in a usually forbidding word: bankruptcy. Top officials in Los Angeles and ...
The $2 Trillion Hole
Promised pensions benefits for public-sector employees represent a massive overhang that threatens the financial future of many cities and states. LIKE A CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE, populist rage burns over bloated executive compensation and unrepentant avarice on Wall Street. Deserving as these targets may or may not be, most Americans have ignored ...
Time for Parents to Overthrow School Safety “Czars”
Similarly The Detroit News reported numerous shootings in or around the city’s public schools this year, acknowledging that “for each high-profile shooting, there are hundreds of assaults and other violent crimes on school campuses that go unreported each year.” Furthermore, the Detroit Police Department reported that they have responded to ...
