Politics and Watchdog Reporting

Connecting the Dots: top news stories for Monday, February 22, 2010

By Ben Trefny on February 22, 2010 - 12:34pm
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Connecting the dots: top news stories for Monday, February 22

Politicians including California attorney general Jerry Brown are starting to use a new word - bankruptcy - to describe the state of the state's finances...

That means more budget cuts are on the way, leading to concern at clinics serving pregnant teens...

And the Bay Area's 211, providing information on social services, is getting more and more popular...

But economics are looking up for dockworkers at the state's ports, where a jump in retail orders have an increasing number on the job...

More money is coming into the Bay Area economy because of the loss of BART's Oakland Airport Connector. Other Bay Area transit agencies are splitting the $70 million in federal funds. But that's not enough to stop service cuts and layoffs...

If that's not enough, commuters are about to pay for taking advantage of one of the friendliest ways to cross the Bay when state bridges begin charging car-poolers on July 1st...

Without incentives to share rides, we could see more cars on the roads, and that could lead to more pollution. But you don't have to wait for the future to see what environmental tolls we've already taken on the Bay Area, if you take a tour of Oakland's toxic legacy...

Speaking of smoke, Berkeley's looking to levy a tax on marijuana dispensaries...

And, in related Berkeley news, a Cal physicist has proven Albert Einstein's most revolutionary theory with 10,000 times the accuracy.

Our Connecting the Dots blog helps you make sense of the day's news.

Discussion

Steven Short's picture
By Steven Short on February 23, 2010 - 10:53am.

This list brings to mind author Beppe Severgnini's assessment of Italy, which is a classic example of a place where nothing works right, but it keeps on rolling along. He says:

"Why doesn't the government do something? ... The answer is that the government doesn't want to. Controllers and controlled have an unspoken agreement. You don't change, we don't change, and Italy doesn't change, but we complain that we can't go on like this." [from BELLE FIGURA; A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, 2006]

Replace "Italy" with "California" here, and you have a good description of our present-day status.