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Prop 29: Should Smoking in California Be More Expensive?
Dr. Jaus/Flickr That’s the underlying question that Proposition 29 poses to California voters, who go to the polls in June to decide if smokers should pay an extra buck in taxes for a pack of...
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Who Smokes? The Stats on Lighting Up
credit: lanier67/Flickr About one in five adults in America smokes. That’s a significant drop from even a decade ago. In California, which has one of the lowest rates in the country, it’s down to...
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Interactive: Counting the Undocumented in California (and the rest of the...
(Click on each state for population estimates of the undocumented immigrant community; source: Pew Hispanic Center) Although the vast majority of immigrants in California came here legally, the state...
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Why Do So Many Californians Choose NOT to Vote?
Guest post by Jennifer A. Waggoner President, League of Women Voters of California Education Fund kristin_a/Flickr Voting is essential to the democratic process; it allows citizens to participate in...
View ArticleWho Votes in California? (Hint: it’s not the majority)
Click each county on the map below for stats on California’s eligible and registered voters, as well as a breakdown of political party affiliation (but keep in mind there’s a big difference between...
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Is California’s Prison Realignment Experiment Working?
Depends whom you ask (real helpful, huh?). On the one hand, the state has significantly reduced its prison population since realignment went into effect last October. At the end of September 2011,...
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Who Do We Lock Up? Four Key Characteristics of Cal’s Prison Population
Who’s actually behind bars in California? Here are four key characteristics of California’s prison population: Geography The majority of inmates come from the southern part of the state. A whopping...
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Three Awesome Infographics On America’s Abstract Electoral System
Elections aren’t supposed to be super complicated. But they are. And if you feel like you still need a diagram to figure out our electoral process, here are two good ones to get you started (created...
View ArticleThe Cost of Housing Across the Bay Area
Click on a county below to see median home prices and racial/ethnic demographic information.
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Packing the House: The Back Story on California’s Prison Boom
California’s prisons are old, crumbling, and packed to the gills with inmates. The inmate population exploded in the late 1980s and 90s. It rose almost 900 percent over three decades and reached an...
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How One Law Helped Pack California’s Prisons
A single state law from the 1970s completely transformed the way California sentences its criminals. The Uniform Determinate Sentencing Law was signed in 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown (yes, same guy)....
View ArticleA Brief History of Social Media (in just over 140 characters)
View full-screen version In February 2012, Facebook announced that it was filing for an IPO. The company, launched out of a college student’s dorm room just 8 years before then, is now estimated to be...
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Obama’s Very Loaded Thumbs Up On Same-Sex Marriage
It took just 10 words for President Obama to end his career-long wrestling match with the same-sex marriage issue. During a deceptively casual television interview on Wednesday, Obama simply said: “I...
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Why Does California Have So Many Charter Schools?
California’s charter school industry is booming. Even as school districts reel from punishing budget cuts and school shutdowns, new charters are sprouting in every corner of the state: just this year,...
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