This summer we saw the debate over health care reform heat up. The result has been partisanship, too little dialogue and too much misinformation. As a small-business owner, I’m concerned about reform, reform that will protect the country’s millions of small companies against skyrocketing health care costs. My own research has led me to a few basic conclusions.

People are genetically engineering their own cells in their kitchens, injecting modified viruses into their bodies and surgically implanting homemade sensors under their skin. The “do-it-yourself” mentality has entered the realm of medicine. And, surprisingly, the FBI supports it.

This summer, the Milken Institute released its second report on manufacturing in California. Seven years the institute sounded the alarm that California was losing its manufacturing edge, the driving force for postwar prosperity from the aerospace industry through high technology. The institute said policy makers should pay attention to the state’s manufacturing decline.

‘Tis the season for last-minute holiday shopping, and buyers seeking creative gifts and a memorable shopping experience have a number of local businesses to choose from.

Wearing coveralls and galoshes caked in manure and mud, a father and son attach suction devices to the teats of ailing cows.

In America’s farm-to-fork capital, it’s easy to place attention on the fork side of the story – the amazing chefs and restaurants feeding us. Yet, there’s a complicated web of grassroots services, part of a larger food system, which covers everything including health, environment, economy, social justice and more. Nonprofits provide core services that keep this delicate system moving toward a better community. Comstock’s explores this side of Sacramento’s local food network.

It’s the meeting no business owner wants, an adult equivalent to sitting in the principal’s office.

Only instead of a principal, the person calling you in is a banker. And instead of the dreaded “permanent record,” the folder on the desk is an agreement for a business loan, a line of credit, equipment financing or some other form of borrowed money that helps keep the company afloat.

Some Californians are breathing a sigh of relief now that House and Senate Republicans have agreed to a partial preservation of state and local income taxes, but a lot of taxpayers will still be unhappy.

Most recognized California as “the Golden State” long before lawmakers adopted the official nickname in 1968. But while California’s standing as the land of big ideas and golden opportunities is well-earned, so too is its recent reputation as a state in perpetual crisis. In few places is this more evident than the state’s ongoing debate over its aging and unsustainable water management system.

Beyond the devastation and personal tragedy of the fires that have ravaged California in recent months,  another disaster looms: an alarming uptick in unhealthy air and the sudden release of the carbon dioxide that drives climate change.