Following the state’s expansion of Medicaid, Medi-Cal enrollment is up – way up – with one in almost three Californians in the program. Judy Lin, AP:
“California has enrolled 2.3 million people under an optional expansion of the state's Medicaid program — nearly three times more than the state had anticipated, according to the state Department of Finance.
“Beyond that, a record number of people who already qualified for the low-income health program signed up, pushing overall enrollment in the state's Medicaid program known as Medi-Cal past 12 million to roughly 1 in 3 Californians.
“Medi-Cal's rapid growth is now putting financial pressure on a state that was quick to embrace President Barack Obama's health care initiative. Five years ago, the program accounted for 14 percent of California's general fund. Today, Medi-Cal consumes 16 percent.”
CALmatters, a new nonprofit news organization devoted to covering California public policy, launched this weekend. The org has been collecting high-profile reporters for months, and if their debut efforts are any indication, they’ll be serving up must-read content on a regular basis.
Former Bee reporter Laurel Rosenhall profiles the close relationship between billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and Senate pro Tem Kevin De Leon.
http://www.calmatters.org/articles/california-climate-change-policy-overview/
Meanwhile, NYT alum Kate Galbraith has multiple pieces up, including a data-heavy exam of California’s efforts to combat climate change, as well as a look at the Air Resources Board, perhaps the most important agency in the state.
You might want to bookmark their site – we have.
Not to be outdone, the LA Times’ Chris Megerian profiles Mary Nichols, chair of the ARB.
“As chair of the Air Resources Board, Nichols plays a central role in deciding where Californians get their energy, what fuel goes in their cars and how their homes are built. She also oversees the state's ambitious program for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, one that analysts say could be a model when world leaders hold their environmental summit next year in Paris.
“And although California already has some of the strictest pollution regulations in the country, Nichols is helping to lay the groundwork for more.
"’It's on people's minds right now,’ Nichols said. ‘While the momentum is strong is the right time to act.’"
In California, unions are used to waging war in the court of public opinion,and at the ballot box – and winning. Next year, labor faces what has been called an ‘existential threat’ – Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a Supreme Court case that could bar unions from collecting dues for political activities from dissenting members. Dan Morain, Sacramento Bee:
“’Look at the composition of the court and it makes you nervous,’ said Steve Smith, spokesman for the California Labor Federation…
“About 25,000 of the union’s 325,000 members opt out of paying for political activities but must help fund other union operations. An additional 29,000 teachers are not union members but still pay for bargaining and representing teachers’ other matters.
“The amount of money that might be at stake isn’t clear. But one of the briefs says a loss by the teachers union could cost public employee unions hundreds of millions of dollars annually.”
Here’s a good long read from Saturday’s Bee, digging into the complexities of water usage and rights in the Delta. If a farmer puts twice as much water back into the Delta as he uses each year, whose water is it – and does he have to pay? Ryan Sabalow, Sacramento Bee:
“At the heart of the dispute is California’s complex system of water conveyance. The California Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operate the state’s largest reservoirs, including Shasta, Oroville and Folsom. The reservoirs collect mountain snowmelt from the Sacramento, American and Feather rivers and release it to the Delta. There, two giant pumping systems divert it into canals that ship the water west to Silicon Valley and south as far as San Diego.
“Questions about just how much water local farmers can draw from the Delta’s channels and sloughs before it reaches those government pumps have flared on and off for years.
“’The question has always been: Are they diverting what’s naturally occurring in the Delta?’ said Craig Wilson, a former State Water Resources Control Board attorney who also served as a Delta watermaster, overseeing enforcement of water rights. ‘Or are they poaching water that’s been stored upstream previously and that’s being released into the Delta to be shipped to the south?’”
Governor Brown is in Rome this week, convening with Pope Francis and others for a climate change conference at the Vatican. Anthony York, who covered Brown’s third term for the LA Times, gives the trip some context. From The Grizzly Bear Project:
“It’s fitting, and perhaps telling, that Brown wanted to be a priest before he wanted to be a politician. There is a connection with his current environmental ambition and religious thinking. Both are based on things that most people cannot directly see or touch. In embracing the science of climate change, there is a measure of faith involved, as well as a connection to something transcendent, something larger than the individual himself.
“This week, the man who once wanted to be a Jesuit priest will head to the Vatican to meet with the first Jesuit pope. Both men have, in their own ways, been transformative figures who have embraced the cause of climate change as a call toward salvation – a call that is as political as it is humanitarian.
“Jerry Brown is at home amid that texture, that depth, that richness. This convergence of climate and Catholicism is in many ways the culmination of a political career that has spanned six different decades, and an ultimate reminder that you don’t have to be in the White House to be a relevant, or even historic, political figure.”
Our final story of the day comes from even further away than the Vatican, and features a fellow who is even more favored by providence than the Pope himself (with amazing video). Australian surfer Mick Fanning was attacked by a Great White Shark live on TV during a surfing competition, but escaped unscathed after punching the 10 foot beast.
“The unprecedented attack was broadcast live on television with Fanning remarkably coming out unscathed after he ‘punched [the shark] in the back.’
“’I just saw fin, I didn't see the teeth. I was waiting for the teeth to come at me as I was swimming.’
“Commentators were shocked as they called the attack live on air, with one exclaiming ‘Holy sh*t! Excuse me.’"
