The world’s most pervasive groundwater pollution problem – nitrate in drinking water – is under scrutiny in the richest farming region of the United States. This week, a report for the California Legislature revealed that 250,000 people living in Central California, including four of the top five agricultural counties in the U.S., are currently at risk for nitrate contamination in their drinking water. Many of them are among the poorest Californians. Nitrate, in this instance, is a byproduct of nitrogen fertilizer. In drinking water, high concentrations of it can interfere with the ... Read More
Urban Renewal’s Record Shows It Wasn’t All Bad
January 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Tossed into the dustbin of history more than a generation ago, the concept of urban renewal, long derided as “Negro removal,” is getting a second look. The program began in 1950 and was scrapped in 1974, by then thoroughly discredited as unfair and unworkable. In the national war on blight, the poor were disproportionately targeted for eviction from dilapidated downtowns to make way for parks, office buildings, sports arenas, and high-rise apartments. But a new study for the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that urban renewal, or slum clearance, had some lasting positive ... Read More
No Debate: Kids Can Learn By Arguing
January 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Let’s not “agree to disagree,” says Deanna Kuhn. The Columbia University professor of psychology and education wants to bring back serious debate in America — in sixth grade, if not sooner. Kuhn is tired of hearing that people have a right to their own opinion. It’s too easy to fall into thinking that all opinions are equal, she says, and “so why bother?” The country needs citizens who can make logical arguments “based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence,” she writes. That’s language from the new educational standards for middle school, adopted ... Read More
How Foreclosures Feasted on Some Cities, Not Others
January 17, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Here’s a tale of two cities in Southern California, one that survived the worst of the foreclosure crisis with a few scratches, and one that was badly beaten up. In 2000, Santa Paula, a historic oil town bounded by vast greenbelts of orange, lemon, and avocado groves, had a population of 29,000 and a median household income of $42,000. When the subprime mortgage industry collapsed eight years later, 16 of every 1,000 homes in the “Citrus Capital of the World” went into foreclosure, well below the national average of 22 for every 1,000 homes. Another old town, Lake Elsinore, closely ... Read More
Why Mexican Immigrants Can’t Get Ahead
December 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
An annual Christmas pilgrimage used to see perhaps millions of Mexican immigrants, documented or not, return to Mexico from the U.S. for the holidays. But that flow has slowed as the U.S. militarizes its southern border and violence back home reduces the motherland's charms. But the economic charms of working in the U.S. are paling, too. Among the so-called 99 percent of people in the United States who have not shared in the rising prosperity of recent decades, Mexican immigrants have fared worse than most. While the real wages of other groups have remained fairly stagnant since 1970, ... Read More