It’s long been a tenet of this newspaper that some of the Bay Area’s most intractable problems — namely, housing scarcity and traffic congestion — could be solved only by unified regional action.With three distinct metropolitan centers — San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose — surrounded by suburbs crowded with literally dozens of mini-cities boasting populations of 30,000 to 100,000, the Bay Area has no choice but to attack its problems across city lines.
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According to a report released this week by the College Board, Scholastic Aptitude Test scores on the math and critical reading section of the test, which was revised last year, dropped by seven points. The decline was the largest in more than three decades.
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Great natural catastrophes can bring dramatic political change. This week’s attention to the Hurricane Katrina anniversary excepts no place or party from such consequences.The 1985 Mexico City earthquake undermined the omnipotent pretensions of the ruling party, prompting reforms and finally, after some 70 years, the election of a president from another party.
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Today, Aug. 29, is the final day for the 101,000 residents of the Peninsula Health Care District to postmark their mail-in ballots on whether to approve the long-negotiated contract for Sutter Health to rebuild Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame. Approval now will comply with the state’s 2013 hospital seismic upgrade deadline.
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The registered voters of the Peninsula Health Care District received a mail-in ballot in early August that seeks a vote on Measure V, the agreement between the district and Mills-Peninsula Hospital Services to build a new community hospital. The site is district land at the El Camino/Trousdale location and meets seismic standards as mandated by state law.
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A six-language telephone survey of ethnic and immigrant minority parents in California released last Wednesday produced a refreshingly welcome debunking of patronizing stereotypes. Those stereotypes, promoted by both the state school establishment and by activists suing to block the high school exit exam, have set back education in California.
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It was good news indeed for the 150,000 passengers who ride Bay Area Rapid Transit trains underneath San Francisco Bay each weekday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Wednesday released $2.9 million of Homeland Security funds to fix a vulnerability discovered last year in the 3.6-mile Transbay Tube.
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An interesting development took place in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict earlier this week, and almost no one noticed it or noted its impact. Last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced a unilateral cease-fire in the West Bank and Gaza, one that would put an end to rocket and missile attacks into Israel in order to pressure the Israelis to end its Gaza incursion and agree to a prisoner swap for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
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Among the reasons to get excited about locating stem cell research in The City was the impetus it would give to researchers, both public and private, in advancing medical science. When California voters approved Proposition 71, which authorized a state-supported research institute, perhaps they knew — to give them appropriate credit — that the research energy they were unleashing would overcome nettlesome ethical issues.
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Contrary to the popular expression, cameras sometimes do lie. It doesn’t even take Photoshop mischief to incriminate an innocent person or exaggerate a wartime scene into outrageous propaganda, as some editors lately have learned as they passed on doctored images of the Lebanon war.On the other hand, some photography captures large truths about the human spirit, as San Franciscan Joe Rosenthal learned, 61 years ago, when he snapped his Speed Graphic shutter on five Marines and one Navy corpsman hoisting the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
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URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/archive/19/19?page=456%2C0%2C0%2C1&type[story]=story
