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Single-payer health care tabled
Assemblymember Ash Kalra at a press conference on the opening day of the 2020 legislative session. Photo by Anne Wernikoff, CalMatters
A proposal to create single-payer health care in California has been tabled until next year freeing Newsom from having to take a stance in a heated intra-party debate as he faces an almost-certain recall election. The bill’s lead author, Assemblymember Ash Kalra, said Wednesday that he chose to delay consideration of the bill until January 2022 in response to “many of my colleagues” raising “concerns that the funding mechanism for the bill had not been identified.”
In summary
Lawmakers should look hard at both sides of the ledger sheet of a possible public banking option before approving AB 1177.
By Kerry Jackson, Special to CalMatters
Kerry Jackson is a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute, kerryjacksonPRI@gmail.com.
Nearly 200 local and national banks operate more than 6,500 branches in California. But lawmakers believe the state needs one more. A bill in Sacramento establishes a public bank with “a zero-fee, zero-penalty public option for basic financial services.”
Assembly Bill 1177, the California Public Banking Option Act, would create BankCal. BankCal would strengthen “the financial stability of the state’s most vulnerable residents,” “unbanked and underbanked,” who tend to be minorities, and “pay proportionally more for their financial services, lack secure means of saving, have fewer opportunities to build credit, and are rejected for loans at far higher rates.”
Today is Earth Day. Weâve had a lot to say about this most holy of ecofascist holidays in the past, and todayâs entry comes from Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist with the Pacific Research Institute, and Jeff Stier, a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center. They write:
The first Earth Day celebration was conceived by then-U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson and held in 1970 as a âsymbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship.â In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience, and most activities were organized at the grassroots level.
Sadly, todayâs Earth Day shares something with the current political environment: It reeks of divisiveness.
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The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday gave the green light to San Diego Gas & Electric, allowing the utility to proceed with a second round of its “Power Your Drive” program that will construct electric vehicle charging stations at sites across the region.
But the OK came with a few provisions, including a requirement that SDG&E pay for a third-party audit after the first phase of the project racked up cost overruns of $25 million.
Approving the extension “is a small but really essential step in ensuring California is prepared for rising electric vehicle charging demand, which we so much need to do,” commission President Marybel Batjer said just before the 5-0 vote.