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Appointments stall, valley air still polluted Enough already with "pledges" Focus on educating children Kern keeps luring film crews Keep the legal drinking age at 21 We must change the way we think about growth Labor Day: Save gas, lives Terrorists targeting researchers Protect Panorama Park Ruling protects election system June 06 July 06 August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 June 06 May 06 April 06 March 06 February 06 January 06 December 05 November 05 October 05 September 05 August 05 July 05 June 05 May 05 April 05 March 05 February 05 Blog RollAsk The Californian Editorials Entertainment Eye of Bakersfield Faith Forum Fired Up! Inside Sports Neighbors Right Thinking Sound Off Talk of the Town 
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It doesn’t take a vote of the people for President Bush and Congress to know Americans are sick of the war in Iraq and want their soldiers home.
Gov. Schwarzenegger should veto legislation aimed at placing an “advisory vote” on the Iraq War on the Feb. 5 ballot.
The maneuver by Democrats in the Legislature is a cynical stunt to get out the vote — and hopefully liberal support — for pet issues on the February ballot.
These pet issues include changing...
It may be a good start, but we are a long way from the finish line.
Armed with more money and staff, Controller John Chiang has announced plans to “reform” the state’s unclaimed property program.
Chiang is headed in the right direction. But his reform plan doesn’t go far enough.
The state’s unclaimed property program has been ripping off Californians big time for years. Decades of state lawmakers and...
There may be a silver lining for Kern County residents in the dark cloud hanging over California’s overcrowded and badly managed prison system.
That silver lining is the skyrocketing rate of valley fever cases among inmates housed in San Joaquin Valley prisons and the evidence it provides that a vaccine must be developed.
With funding sliced from the state budget to continue testing and developing a valley fever vaccine, the state’s prison problems should produce sufficient...
PUBLISHED 8-31-07
Gov. Schwarzenegger had to make some difficult cuts last week in order to square the state budget. Some of them were painful.
Funding for high-speed rail survived, however, and Californians — especially Central Valley residents — can be glad it did.
Development of high-speed rail, the proposed, 220-mph bullet train that will allow riders to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two-and-a-half hours, has moved at glacial speed. Completely...
PUBLISHED 8-30-07
“Pretty please” works well enough when you’re asking for the last slice of pie. It’s considerably less effective when you’re trying to convince industry to undertake expensive and time-consuming clean-up efforts.
“Pretty please” just isn’t good enough when your charge is protecting the public’s drinking water. Few responsibilities could be greater. Yet, over the years, “pretty please” seems to have been...
PUBLISHED 8-29-07
Quick: Name the most famous astronaut of all time. If you didn’t say John Glenn, you almost surely said Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
Like so many U.S. astronauts, Armstrong logged thousands of hours of test-flight time right here in Kern County, at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base.
But Armstrong’s Kern County links are not widely known, and little has been done locally to honor his contributions....
PUBLISHED 8-29-07
Global warming isn’t necessarily predestined to ruin the day of every living organism on the planet, as some have come to fear.
For example, dandelions and poison ivy will just love the warmer weather. At least that’s what two studies published in the current issue of the journal Weed Science are reporting.
Over the past 200 years, global warming has increased the earth’s carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to about 380 parts per...
California's Supreme Court has spoken loud and clear. The public has the right to know how its tax money is being spent and how its government is being operated.
This right extends to knowing specifically by name what government employees are being paid.
The Supreme Court ruling handed down Monday involved the efforts by Contra Costa Newspapers Inc. to obtain the names and salaries of Bay Area public employees earning $100,000 or more.
Public employee unions argued that the newspaper and...
The only thing troubling about the imminent resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is that it took so long to happen. Gonzales should have stepped down the moment it became clear his policy missteps, ethical lapses and blatant politization of the office had become an irreversible burden on the Bush administration's efforts to restore public confidence.
Bush accepted Gonzales' resignation with what appears to be reluctance, but it seems unfathomable that the president could be...
It’s good to be periodically reassured that video games have not completely taken over our kids’ summer vacations.
We got some good news in that regard Aug. 22 when Bakersfield Recreation & Parks Director Diane Hoover announced attendance figures for the 2007 swimming season at the city’s seven public pools.
Some 82,167 people passed through the figurative turnstiles of the city’s seven pools, a 44 percent improvement over 2006 — and that’s with...
If you’re one of those active people who like to take advantage of Bakersfield’s best recreational resource, the Kern River bike trail, you’re no doubt familiar with one uncomfortably exposed stretch of asphalt.
There’s not a sliver of shade on the mile-long sweeping curve, opening onto a long straightaway, that’s between the Coffee Road-Truxtun Avenue overpass and Cal State Bakersfield. That portion of the bike trail offers little more than scorched earth and...
It’s hard to blame the Kern County Board of Supervisors for its decision last week to take no action on the conundrum posed by conflicting laws related to medical marijuana dispensaries. Almost any action the supervisors might have taken would’ve run afoul of someone or something.
Supervisors should have taken this step, though: Demand that our state and federal elected officials provide some leadership in getting the dilemma resolved.
California became one of 12 states to...
It seems counterintuitive and gallingly irresponsible, but a Central Valley school district actually debated whether it should turn down a shipment of modern, clean-burning school buses — a fleet of them, practically free — because they were equipped with seat belts.
The Selma Unified School District was recently presented with a $1.9 million grant for the purchase of 14 new buses, and all it had to do was fork out $30,000 in matching district funds. The catch was — and...
PUBLISHED 8-23-07
Police ballistics experts identify shooters as best they can by matching the distinctive, but random markings on bullet shell casings with the guns that fired them.
A bill making its way through the Legislature would go a long way toward improving on the science of firearm fingerprinting.
The bill, passed by the Assembly in May and headed for a Senate vote later this month, would make California the first state to require gun manufacturers to install a mechanism...
PUBLISHED 8-23-07
If you’ve ever seen a 7-year-old passenger, newly graduated from his child car seat, wrestling with the shoulder strap of his safety belt, maybe you’ve asked yourself this question:
Just how much is that thing gonna help?
Safety belts are essential equipment, no question about it, and partially functional safety belts are generally better than no safety belt at all, but they ought to fit the person they’re supposedly protecting.
Current...
PUBLISHED 8-22-07
From the opening minutes to the handshakes five hours later, it was apparent Kern County and Bakersfield city officials were miles apart on their roads plans.
After decades of planning and grappling with explosive metropolitan Bakersfield growth, Monday night’s joint city-county transportation task force was a curious show — a cross between Kabuki-like political theater and congressional filibuster.
City staff droned on for more than two...
PUBLISHED 8-22-07
What took them so long?
That might be the first thought that comes to mind when you ponder the fact that Bakersfield and Sacramento will soon have a direct, daily commercial air connection for the first time in at least a decade.
Business folk and government employees have been either flying air charter (and that can cost $450 each way) or setting aside half a day and an entire...
Last week, The Californian urged readers to send e-mails to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The good mayor was taking a victory lap after a Los Angeles-based federal judge overturned Kern County’s voter-approved Measure E.
The ballot initiative, which voters overwhelmingly passed last year, bans the smearing of sludge onto land in unincorporated areas of Kern County. In effect, it blocked Los Angeles from hauling millions of gallons of its human and industrial waste to Kern...
Welcome back to work, state senators. We assume that’s what you now plan to do — WORK!
You have a budget to pass and state bills to pay. The elderly and poor are being stiffed, as are the small businesses that sell goods and services to the state.
Instead of sticking around Sacramento to negotiate a partisan budget stalemate, you went on vacation. Instead of passing an emergency spending plan to cover the state’s bills, you walked off the job.
Enough! The Assembly...
The young real estate tycoon had impressed everyone with his flair, his extravagance and his generosity. He drove an exotic Italian sports car, wore Rolex watches, pledged $1 million to the Cal State athletic department and boasted of billion-dollar sales years to come.
When it all came crashing down, prosecutors from the District Attorney’s office publicly wished they’d had better resources in place to track cases of alleged real estate fraud. Only then, taking advantage of a...
The streets of two major American cities have been noticeably quieter this summer thanks to a crackdown on loud vehicles, motorcycles in particular.
Police in Denver and Anaheim have gotten serious about eardrum-shattering bikes, which are typically modified from factory standards with aftermarket exhaust equipment.
The purpose of that equipment: Increase the bike’s decibel level to just below the threshold of pain. No exaggeration: Some modified motorcycles can hit 135 db, loud...
PUBLISHED 8-16-07
The only thing “green” about the way the city of Los Angeles gets rid of its sludge is “money.”
The city and its mayor — who says he wants to be known as environmentally sensitive, or “green” — are only thinking about “money” when they haul about 65 million gallons of sludge a year to Kern County, where it is smeared onto the land.
It’s the cheapest way for Los Angeles to get rid of the...
PUBLISHED 8-16-07
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa claims the city of Los Angeles has tried to be a “good neighbor” in its operation of its Green Acres Farm in Kern County.
Los Angeles spreads about 750 tons of human and industrial waste a day on this “farm”, which is located between Bakersfield and Taft, south of Highway 119.
It seems the honorable mayor of Los Angeles doesn’t know how bad his “farm” smells, the danger...
‘We steadfastly believe that Kern is blessed with a rich tradition of men and women who have answered the call. And these efforts will promote education, patriotism and pride in the citizens of Kern, young and old.’
— Mission statement,
Kern Veterans Memorial Foundation
During America’s last unpopular war — Vietnam — men and women in uniform often were vilified. Even veterans and reservists who were not on active duty unfairly bore the brunt of...
PUBLISHED 8-14-07
Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decertification of most electronic voting machines, including the ones used in Kern County, has pushed California into the forefront of a national debate over election reform.
It also has thrown into chaos preparation for the orderly counting of Californians’ votes — a basic function of government that we expect to be performed in an accurate and timely manner.
With the Feb. 5 California presidential primary just...
PUBLISHED 8-14-07
As the dust settles over Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s audit of electronic voting systems, country registrars are scrambling to go back to using paper ballots for the Feb. 5 election.
Kern County citizens can help relieve the pressure, avoid delays at the polls and be assured their votes are counted in a timely manner by using absentee ballots.
Absentee ballots also allow voters to consider their election choices slowly and in the privacy of their homes....
PUBLISHED 8-12-2007
What does global warming have to do with the state budget? Not a darn thing. But tell that to 14 Republican senators, including Bakersfield’s Roy Ashburn, who are holding up passage of the budget to leverage their power on unrelated issues and to settle a score with the governor.
California is one of only three states that require a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature to pass a budget.
More than three weeks ago, the Assembly slashed its way to...
PUBLISHED 8-13-2007
This is a bad idea that keeps rising from the grave. Efforts are underway again to change state rules on lunch breaks for workers.
It was a bad idea when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to loosen regulations two years ago and it is a bad idea now.
California law requires most employees to be given a 30-minute meal break every five hours of work. Workers also get a 10-minute rest every four hours.
Recently, State Labor Commissioner Angela Bradstreet informally...
PUBLISHED 8-13-2007
Kern County’s childhood obesity problem would seem to have a simple, sensible solution: Put down the joystick, kid, and go play outside.
That can be more challenging than it might seem, as many parents in the Central Valley can attest.
Now this: Bad air can make strenuous outdoor exercise harmful. On the dirtiest of days, your kid might actually be better off chained to his video-game console. You might be, too.
A 2004 review of pollution studies...
PUBLISHED 8-10-2007
One billion dollars. That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of zeros on a figure needed to close the gap in meeting metropolitan Bakersfield’s road construction needs.
To secure the millions of dollars allocated to Bakersfield through the Thomas Road Improvement Program — federal funding arranged by Congressman Bill Thomas before he retired — city and Kern County officials must come up with about $1 billion.
This money is needed to match...
PUBLISHED 8-9-2007
Congratulations to Barry “King of Swing” Bonds. His 756th home run to break Hank Aaron’s career home run record is an accomplishment that cannot be denied.
Whatever else anyone feels about Bonds personally, the achievement is awesome. Hitting a professionally thrown baseball is one of the most difficult tasks in sports.
Even if the use of steroids and other “enhancements” turned some doubles and triples into home runs, the innate...
PUBLISHED 8-9-2007
The state’s method of choosing mandatory school immunizations will be overhauled for the better if Assembly Bill 16 is passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.
The bill by Democrat Assemblyman Edward Hernandez, a Costa Mesa optometrist, will consolidate immunization requirements in the new state Department of Public Health.
At present, immunizations required to enter school can be put in place by sometimes cumbersome regulatory action or...
PUBLISHED 8-8-2007
There’s nothing like a row of empty storefronts to dissuade a business from moving into the neighborhood. It’s the empty-restaurant syndrome: If there’s never, ever a waiting list, perhaps something is amiss in the kitchen.
So it goes in downtown Bakersfield, where, despite gradual improvement over the past decade, too many shops remain unoccupied. Bakersfield City Councilwoman Sue Benham is among those trying to do something about it.
Benham,...
PUBLISHED 8-8-2007
The drumbeat of demands general aviation planes pay to access the nation’s air traffic contol system and landing fees at airports like Meadows Field are part of a much broader controversy.
General aviation is all non-airline, non-military flying, often referred to as “private” flying. That includes everything from technically sophisticated corporate jets to crop dusters, air ambulances and training planes.
For years, the Federal Aviation...
PUBLISHED 8-8-2007
The drumbeat of demands general aviation planes pay to access the nation’s air traffic contol system and landing fees at airports like Meadows Field are part of a much broader controversy.
General aviation is all non-airline, non-military flying, often referred to as “private” flying. That includes everything from technically sophisticated corporate jets to crop dusters, air ambulances and training planes.
For years, the Federal Aviation...
PUBLISHED 8-7-2007
He was briefly on the General Motors payroll as a celebrity product endorser, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s affection for Hummers seems never to have lapsed. The tough-guy chief executive and the wide-bodied pseudo-tank, manufactured by GM, might have been made for each other.
Almost four years into his tenure in Sacramento, the governor still enjoys a good relationship with the automaker. Just how good is a question that some, including state Sen. Dean...
PUBLISHED 8-7-2007
A call to action: A decades-long quest for a vaccine to prevent Valley Fever must not stumble in the state’s budget.
Bakersfield’s Sen. Roy Ashburn has managed to obtain $7 million in state funding to help “fight the fever” in recent years. But future state money is in jeopardy.
Last year, the Valley Fever Vaccine Project of the Americas was required to change some of its research and development contracts. As a result, not all of the money...
PUBLISHED 8-6-2007
It is commendable that a public hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles by the state Department of Managed Health Care concerning a Blue Cross proposal to reduce payments to physicians will consider other complaints about the company’s practices.
But the department should propose even more extensive investigations into industry-wide practices — not just Blue Cross practices. Compare them to past performance to gauge the overall health of medical insurance in...
PUBLISHED 8-6-2007
There’s something about a home on the sagebrush frontier that still appeals to Westerners. Whether it’s a solitary ranch in the arid outback or a tract home in the conquered desert of new suburbia, the appeal of escape from the urban center, fueled in part by the breakneck pace of California’s growth, is strong.
But life on the parched perimeter of the city comes with a price, and sometimes that price includes human life.
Bone-dry conditions in...
PUBLISHED 8-5-2007
It’s August. It’s hot. And the search for shade is on. Like many people, I try to run a few errands at noon or after work. But most of my time is spent trying to find a leaf of shade in local parking lots. I don’t mind walking a distance to shop, as long as there’s some shady green relief when I return to my car.
Some Bakersfield business owners instinctively know that people are more likely to shop in or visit their stores or dine in their...
PUBLISHED 8-5-2007
Kern County and the aerospace community mourn the deaths of three employees and injuries suffered by others in a July 26 explosion of rocket components at Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites Co. in Mojave.
A company statement says, “This accident has left an emotional wound in our Scaled family. We ask for your continued prayers and good wishes that all those hurting can find strength and solace in the days ahead.”
Without diminishing the loss that the...
PUBLISHED 8-3-2007
Commend Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his immediate pledge to Sen. Dean Florez to make emergency funding available to fight the West Nile virus epidemic.
Florez asked the governor for the funding following the second fatality from the mosquito-borne virus in Kern this year.
As in the past, Kern County is the nation’s hot spot this year for the epidemic. So far, Kern accounts for half the fatalities and two thirds of the 56 diagnosed cases in the state. The...
PUBLISHED 8-2-2007
What was Gov. Schwarzenegger thinking? To head a state consumer financial watchdog agency, he appointed a former Republican deputy insurance commissioner who was forced to resign in 2000 after being found up to his earlobes in scandal.
While legislators were on a recent holiday break, Schwarzenegger appointed Michael A. Kelley to serve as commissioner of the Department of Financial Services. It is an appointment that will have to be confirmed by the state Senate after...
PUBLISHED 8-2-2007
Cal State Bakersfield administrators seem to be finally getting the message: To expand the state university campus and engage in revenue-producing commercial enterprises, they must consult with the community.
State laws somewhat shield schools — including Cal State Bakersfield — from jumping over the local planning and local public hearing hurdles that private developers must clear.
But Cal State Bakersfield administrators strained the limits of their...
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