Guest View

A new pejorative sentiment has taken root and is flourishing in

South County residents get 100 percent of their drinking water from local groundwater sources. The Santa Clara Valley Water District knows how critical it is to keep this key source reliable. A new project under way in Morgan Hill will help do just that.

Close your eyes and picture this: A warm and cozy ... no, wait a minute. You'd better open your eyes or you won't be able to read the rest of your newspaper. Or worse, you might drift off to sleep and land face first in your cereal bowl, and then you'll be cranky and out-of-sorts the rest of the day.

Last week, the newspaper covered the Santa Clara County Department of Alcohol and Drugs Services (DADS) press conference announcing the lawsuit it filed against the state Board of Equalization (BOE). The BOE, responsible for taxing beverages, classifies "alcopops" as beer, though they are vodkas and whiskeys. The classification of the fruity, sweet-flavored distilled spirits significantly lowers their tax to 20 cents per gallon instead of $3.30 per gallon. This keeps their prices low to consumers makes them widely availability in convenience stores, which have licenses to sell only beer and wine. Recent studies show the low price and increased availability encourage consumption, particularly among young girls ages 13-15.

Our City Council's alarm with LAFCO's response to a city project

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In May 2010, the Farm Bureau endorsed Mike Wasserman because of his fiscal conservatism, collaborative attitude, and background in small business. Supervisor Wasserman has exceeded our expectations and over the past two years he has stepped up to support local agriculture in big ways.