Drunks and distracted drivers cause most accidents, but most enforcement efforts focus on people driving above the speed limit.Nearly half of all traffic fatalities are caused by drunken drivers, according to National Highway Transportation Safety Administration data, which also — with help from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute — tells us that fully 80 percent of all traffic crashes are caused in part by distracted drivers, mostly those talking on cell phones. So why do more drivers encounter radar guns during the holidays than Breathalyzers or unsafe driving citations?
Read More
It’s become axiomatic that college degrees should be universal. So unquestioned is the desirability of post-secondary schooling for everyone that the Democrats made subsidizing it a plank in their successful campaign to recapture Congress. And what campus isn’t planning a major expansion, as indeed San Francisco State University now contemplates?
Read More
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his inauguration committee selected Democratic icon and noted raconteur Willie Brown to be master of ceremonies at the swearing-in ceremony Jan. 5. And only the most hard-core partisans from both parties seem to find this choice neither entertaining nor intriguing.Brown, the former San Francisco mayor and longtime Assembly speaker, was being a political realist when he departed publicly from his party line early this fall to predict the governor’s landslide re-election.
Read More
The Examiner has a few early predictions about Sacramento’s emerging push for health care coverage expansion in California. You can expect health care for the state’s seven million uninsured to be the No. 1 legislative issue throughout 2007.There will be a clash of competing plans and fierce demands from all interested parties. But ultimately a decent compromise will emerge, probably just in time for the November ballot. Few in the debate will get everything they want, but all except the most partisan will feel all right with the final outcome.
Read More
As the all-too-predictable backroom biting and clawing for bigger chunks of November’s $37 billion public works bond package gets into full swing, a fierce attack is under way. The objective: to remove the matchingstate grants for Bay Area highway projects funded partially by bridge toll increase measures.
Read More
By endorsing the Treasure Island development project, the Board of Supervisors took a major step in addressing one of The City’s most pressing issues. That would be homeownership, the impediments to which — many of them politically created — are routinely cited as reasons for middle-class flight from San Francisco.
Read More
If the leaders of the new Democratic majority in Congress are really serious about holding down health care costs, they can prove it by enacting meaningful tort reform early next year. The legal system has become a lottery for high-priced lawyers who often recruit plaintiffs and then pocket billions of dollars from jury awards, adding to the skyrocketing cost of health insurance for everybody else.
Read More
The fact that two new California university reports are forecasting a statewide slowdown in economic growth might not seem like the most cheerful news. But it is considerably better than the widely feared alternative — a full-blown recession caused by decline in the state’s real estate market.
Read More
Maybe this is unfair, but Muni’s Transit Effectiveness Project seems replete with bureaucratic jargon. It’s painful when you compare it to Portland, Oregon, TriMet’s common-sense, employee-empowering Productivity Improvement Process.PIP has saved Oregon taxpayers $50 million during the past five years while dramatically boosting staff morale and service quality. Muni almost certainly could benefit — not to mention buy some good will — by studying Portland’s success.
Read More
The sting might have lessened some, especially now that The City’s own representative will soon commence her reign over Capitol Hill. But 22 years ago, a caricature of "San Francisco Democrats" entered the nation’s consciousness as political jiu-jitsu. The wordsmith was Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who died last week at 80.
Read More
URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/archive/19/19?page=444&L=registration.register
