By Dan Walters A sandwich shop in downtown Sacramento has been offering some foot-long "subs" for a bargain price of $5, but when a customer orders one of the hot items on the list, the counter person quickly warns the patron that the cost will be $5.39 because of sales tax.

By Dave Ellison In several op-ed pieces appearing in The Argus recently, Sacramento Bee pundit Dan Walters chronicled a series of "disturbing signs" in California's public schools.

Two years ago, newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vowed to put 1,000 more cops on the city's dangerous streets and proposed to raise trash collection fees to provide the money.

By Dan Walters When Assemblyman Mark Leno was challenging Sen. Carole Migden's bid for a second term this year, one aspect of their campaigns was what one might term chemical warfare. No, they weren't lobbing canisters of poison gas at each other, although the contest did get a bit nasty at times.

By Dan Walters The Legislature's budget analyst issued a report last week on the chronic problems that the state's community colleges encounter in instilling the fundamental reading, writing and mathematics skills their students need to obtain college educations.