Source:  California Retired Teachers Association

November 2, 2025 (San Diego) - During this year’s Retired Teachers Week, we proudly look back to January when the California Retired Teachers Association (CalRTA) achieved our biggest legislative victory when the Social Security Fairness Act was signed into law. CalRTA helped spearhead this successful national campaign and was the only West Coast organization working directly with the bill authors to secure this historic change. This landmark achievement repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO), policies that had unfairly reduced the earned benefits of retired educators and other public servants for decades.

By Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH

September 29, 2025 (San Diego) -- I am Jewish, born and raised in San Diego, and lived for six months in Israel in 1978. News focuses on the brutal Hamas attack on Israel; but ignores that two years earlier, 600,000 Israelis moved into the West Bank Palestinian Authority and a few thousand the Gaza strip, set fire to mosques, shot at farmers, etc. Condemned by the world.

Three percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinians, living in enclaves where they are often denied permits to build, with lower spending on schools, and several thousand held in administrative detention without charges.

A few thoughts by some of your Julian neighbors

By Susan Stevenson, David Shorey, Greg Schuett, Carrie Danielson, Chris Reed

Photo via White House: President Donald Trump signing H.R., the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act", on July 4, 2025

September 10, 2025 (San Diego) -- When people talk about H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” it’s not just Washington politics to us. We think about what it means for our own pocketbooks, and the truth is, the bill isn’t so beautiful after all.

The bigger standard deduction means we’ll see a little more money in our paychecks. The expanded child tax credit helps families like ours get by, and the promise that tips and overtime won’t be taxed gives us some breathing room. On paper, it looks like a win.

But the other side of the coin is troubling. Nonpartisan experts say the bill adds trillions to the national debt, which our kids and grandkids will be stuck with. The benefits for families like ours expire in just a couple of years, while big corporations lock in permanent tax cuts. Ordinary people get short-term help; the powerful get long-term gains.

By Kathleen Finney 

May 20, 2025 (El Cajon) -- El Cajon made history when its city council unanimously approved an ordinance that would ban the sale of disguised vape devices in an effort to help local schools control the youth vaping epidemic. Now, they need to focus on strictly enforcing tobacco restrictions at the point of sale. 

The ordinance, which went into effect on April 10, is the first of its kind in California; the only other similar ban nationwide can be found in Minnesota, where a statewide ban on the sale of disguised vape products passed in 2024. This decision displays El Cajon’s eagerness to protect the health of East County youth but fails to address the issue at the root of teen vaping.

An open letter sent to California Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff

By Chuck Brown, Spring Valley

March 13, 2025 (Washington, D.C.) - The House passed legislation to fund the government through Sept. 30 and thereby avert a shutdown at the end of this week.

Former national park worker speaks out on Trump renaming tallest U.S. peak

By Walt Meyer

March 2, 2025 (San Diego) -- Because I worked in Denali National Park during the summer of 2024, lately people have asked me about the naming of Mount McKinley. I talked about this in one of the lectures I gave at the Denali Education Center.

By S.E. Michael

Photos: CC via Bing

February 27, 2025 (San Diego) -- Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress ran on a pro-life platform. But it’s clear from recent actions of the Trump administration that its leaders don’t care about babies. Its actions are putting lives and wellbeing of millions of infants and children at risk, both around the world and here in the U.S.

Cutting off U.S. Aid including food in famine-stricken areas, clean water and medical supplies without notice, for instance, means that “millions of children will suffer and thousands may die” around the world, according to an analysis by First Funding for Children. Ships laden with food were prohibited from unloading, leaving food to rot rather than save lives of starving children, CBS reports. The United Nations warns of “mass death” in Sudan from starvation and is seeking donations after the U.S. abruptly cut off all aid.

Similarly, Republicans’ Congressional budget cuts to Medicaid, school lunch programs, and the child tax credit will all harm children.

Mass federal firings by the Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) include workers who ran childcare and Head Start programs and also ended a program to improve maternal healthcare for pregnant women, threatening the wellbeing of their unborn  babies.

By Patrick Cameron, El Cajon

February 13, 2025 (El Cajon) -- In one of Donald Trump’s first acts in office, he stripped away protections for schools, hospitals, and places of worship from immigration enforcement. These were once safe spaces where people could learn, receive health care, and pray without fear. Now they have been turned into targets for ICE raids.

This is unconscionable. As the world’s largest historical climate polluter, the United States has a responsibility to immigrants. Our pollution is causing the climate chaos — droughts, floods, hurricanes, rising waters — that is forcing people in Latin America, Asia, Africa and elsewhere to leave their homes. Others are fleeing violence, poverty, and hunger — all of which are caused or made worse by the climate crisis.

People have the right to be able to leave their homes and migrate with dignity to find safe haven. But right now, immigrant families are facing the unimaginable: the fear that seeking education or health care could mean deportation, or that a peaceful moment of prayer might be shattered by ICE agents barging in.

By a school counselor, who asked to remain anonymous

Photo:CC by SA via Bing

February 13, 2025 (El Cajon, CA) -- The Grossmont Union High School District is set to eliminate 22 school counseling positions next year. This is not just a number—these are people who are on the frontlines, working day in and day out to support our students through mental health crises, academic struggles, and life challenges. Does the public understand what this means? Does anyone care that the care for our kids is about to drastically decrease?

School counselors do far more than manage schedules and guide college applications. We are the ones who step in when students are on the brink of despair, offering a safe space when they feel they have nowhere else to turn.

Today, I saved a life. I had a student walk into my office feeling like there was no hope left, contemplating ending their life. But I was there. I listened, I acted, and I made sure they got the help they needed before it was too late.

By Brenda Miller, PhD., R.N.

February 6, 2025 (La Mesa) -- When Benjamin Franklin included silence in his list of virtues, he termed it “golden.” Silence does not mean remaining quiet with respect to important issues but involves speaking after listening and thinking before speaking.  That apparently is not the philosophy of Nadia Farjood, recently elected member of the Grossmont Healthcare District Board of Directors.

By Laura Preble, El Cajon

October 28, 2024 (El Cajon) -- As a 20-year veteran of Grossmont Union High School district (West Hills and Monte Vista High School), I want to strongly urge East County voters to elect Jay Steiger and Chris Fite to the school board.