Fresno Bee

California's biggest problem, according to authors Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, is that the state's governing system is a self-defeating, hodgepodge of reform ...

Among them is Steve Coll, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who will conclude the San Joaquin Valley Town Hall Lecture series season Wednesday at the Saroyan Theater. The timing couldn't be better: Coll is just back from Afghanistan.

As with Iraq, this is a different kind of war. American generals are telling troops they can't capture and kill their way to victory. A premium is on winning civilian support and sowing confusion among Taliban commanders.

Raise your hand if you think filing a federal tax return will bring you thousands of dollars. Or if you think tax time this year could bring a windfall of federal stimulus dollars to Fresno's economy.

Most hands, I predict, are down. Everyone dreads doing their taxes. But this year, every working family with an income of less than $48,000 could have a big reason to look forward to it. That's because of something known as the Earned Income Tax Credit. It could be called Big Bucks For Fresno.

It makes filing that tax return very, very worthwhile for many people.

"I predict that this will go long," said Joe Mathews, Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. "I think Democrats will be under intense pressure ...

The health care reform debate is under way in Sacramento, and the public must demand that it leads to substantive action that improves the quality of health care for all Californians.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger started discussions in January with a sweeping health insurance proposal. It immediately drew fire from special interests who don't want their piece of the system changed. But if it isn't fixed, the system will crumble on its own.

Treatment of wounded soldiers, under heavy scrutiny following reports of squalid conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, has the leaders of VA hospitals eager to highlight the differences between their facilities and those run by the military.

"There are no parallels between what happened in Washington and what we do here," said Alan Perry, a former Army officer who is director of the Fresno VA...

Here's the reason that California's health care insurance mess will never get fixed: Our political leadership would rather do nothing than anger any of the powerful special interests by passing a reform package that would require everyone to share the financial burden to get a better system.