This is an independent opinion. Have one of your own? Write it! Email it to hoa@ivn.us

Three of the largest wildfires ever to scorch California are burning right now. Millions are choking on ash up and down the coast, after suffering from record breaking heat storms and rolling blackouts. Amidst a global pandemic, these disasters are just the opening salvo of human caused climate change that are only getting worse.

Is affirmative action “the enemy of white people who are contractors and Americans of Asian descent who are trying to get into the University of California at Berkeley,” as one influential critic called it? Or is neglecting race as a factor in admissions denying the reality that many students endure racism as an impediment to academic progress?

Editor's Note: This article originally published on Governing and has been republished on IVN with permission from the author.

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ANCHORAGE, ALASKA. - The comprehensive reform campaign, Yes on 2 for Better Elections, released its first general election TV ad Tuesday, targeting the corrupting influence of undisclosed money in politics, also known as “dark money..”

This is an independent opinion. Have one of your own? Write it! Email it to hoa@ivn.us. 

Before 2020, Court Jones and his wife, Debbie Burmeister, said they thrived in the arts industry, finding an abundance of work in drawing live, digital caricatures at parties and trade shows. But when Jan. 1 rolled around, the couple said their careers became complicated with the pandemic and Assembly Bill 5, a new law that limits how much work an independent contractor can perform before being classified as an employee.

We the people are not a commodity for our elected officials to trade for wealth and inclusion in a tyrannical plutocracy that funds their political campaigns. Corrupt elected officials are empowering a tyrannical plutocracy to prey upon their constituents with the same callous indifference cancer demonstrates to its human hosts. The time is now for we the people to take back control of our government and our country and bring to justice the tyrannical plutocracy and their sycophants in our nation’s capital.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher.

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The coronavirus pandemic has already changed how millions of Americans will vote this year, and a new poll makes clear it's also going to change when they vote.

Homelessness has been largely obscured by the pandemic. The issue is receiving attention and affirmation from, of all places, the reality TV show “America’s Got Talent.” A singing group composed of people experiencing homelessness that has made it to the semifinal rounds of the highly rated talent competition. 

Paradise Hill resident Alicia Muhammad says said she loves chatting with her son every other day, but at 33 cents-per-minute — she can’t talk very long. Her son, Reginald Harmon, is incarcerated at the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa where inmates must pay to use the phone.