A blog about News.
|
Those were mighty pricey bricks Open season on campaign theft No on Proposition 7 How does Interstate 7 sound? Quit posturing and get it done Modified bailout must go forward Tonight’s debate must go forward Safety must be top concern Interior giving away millions Vote NO on Proposition 2 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 October 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 
RSS 2.0    Share!
|
|
|
PUBLISHED 7/30/08 -----
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has few clubs to beat the Legislature with to convince lawmakers to forge a state budget.
Too bad he decided to hold it over the heads of state workers — you know, those men and women on the line, just doing their jobs protecting us, fighting the massive wildfire near Yosemite, keeping bad guys locked up.
What did they do to deserve being threatened with pay cuts and layoffs? We’re not just talking trimming pay. We’re...
PUBLISHED 7/27/08 -----
In about four months, voters will go to the polls and cast their ballots in the general election. Twelve initiatives already are on the ballot, two more may be added. Several initiatives ask voters to add more debt to the state’s existing huge debt.
And out pops — at this late date — a sales tax-raising idea for Kern County. With the exception of insiders who helped craft the idea, it has been greeted by surprise and an underwhelming,...
PUBLISHED 7/25/08 ----
Trans fats are yummy, but research shows they are rough on the arteries. Trans fats, found in hydrogenated oil, give pastries their flakiness, biscuits their crumble and french fries their snap.
They also elevate the risk of heart disease and diabetes — and, as a result, increase the cost of maintaining public health. Several European countries have banned restaurants from serving food containing trans fats, and last summer New York City did the same.
Now...
PUBLISHED 7/24/08 ------
Oildale. ZIP Code 93308. That’s why old-timers call folks who live in Oildale “08-ers.”
A hard-scrabble, blue-collar community, the people who live there are fiercely independent and proud. Their roots are set deep in their Dust Bowl heritage. The sweat shed in oil fields still puts bread on many of Oildale’s tables.
It’s Oildale. It’s not Bakersfield. It’s not part of the city. It...
PUBLISHED 7/23/08 ----
There wasn’t enough on the June primary ballot to attract many voters. Enticed by only a couple of state propositions to go with the usual assortment of local bond measures and municipal office races, California voters turned out in the thinnest numbers on record.
Only 28.2 percent of California’s registered voters cast ballots in the primary — about 4.6 million of the 16.1 million eligible, or about half the 9.1 million who voted in the...
PUBLISHED 7/22/08 ----
Some people consider NASA’s mandate to understand and explore our solar system an extraneous undertaking. Those billions, they argue, would be better spent on more earthly concerns.
But NASA’s contribution to the battle against California’s raging summer fires underscores the many applications that NASA-engineered technology, and the research that brought about that technology, can have in our daily lives.
A remotely piloted aircraft carrying a...
PUBLISHED 7/20/08
Do you know what a “ripoff” is? It is when Democrats and Republicans in Sacramento don’t have the interest or the guts to fix the state’s budget mess, so they allow the pain to roll downhill to the cities and counties Californians rely on for their day-to-day government services.
So Democrats can keep spending and Republicans can keep saying “no” to closing tax loopholes and raising taxes, plans are taking shaping to raid local...
PUBLISHED 7/18/08 ----
The last time things got really desperate for American motorists, the nation was in the grips of an Arab oil embargo that threatened supplies and created tortuous lines at the gas pump. The supposed solution: a national 55 mph speed limit, which Americans hated even more than the long lines.
This time the problem is not a political bottleneck in the supply pipeline, but soaring, speculation-fueled price hikes. The proposed solution: another drastic change in...
PUBLISHED 7/17/08 ----
Canines provide a valuable service to law enforcement agencies and, by extension, to the law-abiding public. They grab or corner fleeing suspects, sniff out narcotics, search buildings and more. Like the officers they support, they sometimes pay dearly for their service.
The people of Kern County are fortunate to have some exemplary dogs on duty, as evidenced by the solid showing by two local contingents at last weekend’s third annual Ventura County K-9...
Who would have thought? The liberal city by the Bay is one of the first with a group to announce plans to name a public facility to honor outgoing President Bush.
OK, granted the honor being planned by the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco isn’t exactly what Republicans expected or even wanted.
In fact, some folks are downright annoyed. “It doesn’t dignify a response,” White House spokesman Trey Bohn said. Republicans promise a fight!
The group...
PUBLISHED 7/16/08 ----
A new study shows Hispanic students taking advantage of San Joaquin Valley community colleges in great numbers — with some of the greatest numbers coming from Bakersfield College.
The study, from the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, which encompasses 24 colleges from Bakersfield to Stockton, placed the growth of Hispanic students at 2.1 percent in the region.
"Why Access Matters” examined the demographics of students receiving...
PUBLISHED 7/15/08 ----
Kudos to state Sen. Roy Ashburn, whose bill designed to alleviate California’s critical shortage of nurses recently passed the Senate.
Ashburn’s SB 1620 addresses the shortage of nursing instructors in community colleges by eliminating restrictions that make the hiring and retention of nursing faculty difficult.
The number of part-time instructors at California community colleges is currently capped, but Ashburn’s bill exempts nursing faculty from...
PUBLISHED 7/13/08 -----
Kern County citizens appreciate that the Rev. Chad Vegas has a calling — a professional and spiritual commitment to the service of the Christian God.
But Vegas also has taken on an important secular commitment — that of an elected trustee of a large public school system, the Kern High School District.
When Kern County voters elected Vegas to the KHSD board in 2004, he took an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and California...
PUBLISHED 7/11/08 ----
We’re supposed to be able to trust the county’s elected auditor-controller to make decisions based on fiscal responsibility. Budgetary concerns, exclusive of all other matters, define that job.
Are taxpayers getting their money’s worth from local government? Is the county taxing fairly and spending judiciously? Is government operating free of fraud?
Those are among the questions Kern County Auditor-Controller Ann Barnett was elected to answer...
PUBLISHED 7/10/08 ----
Give the City of Los Angeles a big hand for seeking innovative ways to get rid of its garbage. But why does it have to involve — yet again — a scheme to dump it on Kern County?
The city has launched a pilot project in North Central and South Los Angeles to recycle food waste — table scraps — by mixing it into the green-waste cans.
An estimated eight to 20 pounds of food garbage per household each week could be diverted from the...
PUBLISHED 7/9/08 -----
We’re in the midst of Healthy Air Week, a seven-day recognition of the community’s ongoing quest for healthy lungs and civic responsibility.
Among other things, Central Valley residents are being asked to consider carpooling, walking or biking to work.
Walking would seem the most ideal of those options, because it promotes physical fitness and requires no special equipment, and almost everyone is capable of giving it a shot. Sidewalks and crosswalks...
PUBLISHED 7/8/08 ------
Caltrans officials have a difficult decision to make: Allow all organizations, except the most blatantly racist ones, to participate in the popular and useful Adopt-a-Highway program, or drop the program entirely lest the state agency lose its say in which organizations are appropriate players.
The question hangs in the air because a federal court has decreed that the California Department of Transportation may not deny the San Diego Minutemen the opportunity to...
PUBLISHED 7/3/08 -----
Kern County builders may be unhappy about the prospect of paying an estimated $5,400-per-home increase in development fees. They correctly point out that those fees will, to a great extent, be passed on to homebuyers.
But who, if not homebuilders and their customers, should be bearing the cost of roads, traffic signals and other infrastructure improvements necessitated by growth?
Bakersfield and Kern County have for too long allowed development to outpace local...
PUBLISHED 7/2/08 ----
As any high school government teacher can tell you, civic education is sorely lacking in our schools. For every whiz kid who can recite the U.S. Constitution front to back, there are undoubtedly hundreds who, when asked to describe the 15th Amendment, would opt to take the Fifth instead (if only they knew what it said).
Perhaps as a result, voter turnout among citizens in 18-to-24 age range is grievously low.
Now a state legislator is trying to do something about...
PUBLISHED 7/1/08 -----
It paid dividends two years ago when the City of Bakersfield declared it illegal to sell and use Piccolo Petes and ground bloom-type fireworks, and then stepped up fireworks enforcement. Let’s hope it pays again this year.
Not too long ago, Bakersfield Fire Chief Ron Fraze described a July 4th holiday in the city as being like living in war-torn Beirut, Lebanon. Structures were on fire and people were injured. There was even a death as people set off legal and...
|
