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Court Re-Connects with Reality in Homeschool Reversal
Capital Ideas
By: Lance T. Izumi, J.D.
8.27.2008
SACRAMENTO – Earlier this year, California’s Second District Court of Appeal shocked parents and lawmakers by effectively banning the homeschooling of children. In my column “Court Out of Touch with Reality in Homeschool Decision,” I pointed out that the court had ignored a longtime state practice that gave approval to parents to homeschool their children. When the court recently reversed itself, the judges cited this state practice as a key reason for the reversal.
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The Media Should Report What the Vatican Really Says about the Environment
Environmental Notes
By: Amy Kaleita, Ph.D
8.19.2008
Listening to the news over the past year, one would think the Vatican was reinventing Catholicism in an effort to go green. First there was the story that the Vatican was sponsoring a forest to offset the carbon emissions of Vatican City. Then we found out that the Vatican had come up with seven new deadly sins, among them polluting the environment. The UK’s Telegraph even ran the headline “Recycle or go to Hell, warns Vatican.” And in July, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Pope Benedict XVI, like many world leaders, has spoken passionately about the urgent need to protect the planet from climate catastrophe.”
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2008 U.S. Index of Health Ownership
PRI Publication
By: John R. Graham
8.14.2008
San Francisco-Americans lack the basic freedom to make their own health care decisions according to the second edition of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, an annual report by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). The Index measures the degree to which individuals, be they patients, health professionals, entrepreneurs, or taxpayers, "own" the health care in their states.
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How Water, Oil, and Government Mix in California
Capital Ideas
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
8.13.2008
On August 6, the California Coastal Commission approved a desalination plant at Carlsbad in San Diego County, a region with severe water needs in normal times and hard hit by the current drought. The $300-million for-profit venture by the Poseidon Resources Corporation aims to produce as much as 50 million gallons of fresh water each day, about nine percent of the water San Diego County uses. The approval marks a change for the Coastal Commission, an unelected body usually in the business of rejection.
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Ranking Health Care in the States: The Most Important Input is the Patient
Health Policy Prescriptions
By: John R. Graham
8.12.2008
This month, PRI publishes the second edition of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership (IHOP), the only project that ranks states’ health care according to principles of individual choice. This is very different from other rankings of health care in the states, because each IHOP measurement calls for less government intervention, while other rankings often favor big government spending on health programs, as well as centralized control. As I noted last year, significant challenges make it very difficult to connect the performance of the health care “system” with actual health outcomes. A recent Commonwealth Foundation publication included performance measurements of both health care access and “lifestyle” inputs. In my analysis, I pointed out that access and quality measurements have hardly any relation to healthy lives.
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Lessons for Sacramento from San Francisco’s High-Tech Heist
Capital Ideas
By: Daniel R. Ballon, Ph.D
8.6.2008
For nine days last month, San Francisco’s state-of-the-art new computer network was held hostage by a convicted felon. Even a team of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest engineers working around the clock could not crack his code. Finally, in a secret midnight meeting at the Hall of Justice, the mayor himself convinced the perpetrator to relinquish control.
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The Case for Womanism
Contrarian
By: Sally C. Pipes
8.5.2008
Dee Dee Myers was the first woman to serve as White House Press Secretary and the youngest ever at 31. She served under President Bill Clinton. Now she has taken on a more demanding task in Why Women Should Rule the World, a manifesto for what we might call Womanism.
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