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Editors |
eDIGEST August 2008
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Upcoming Events | Quick Reference List | Alumni & Student Newsmakers | Faculty in the
News | Recent Faculty Speaking
Engagements & Publications | Videos & Webcasts |
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1. “Climate Change and Peace: Why the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Won the Nobel Peace Prize”
September 21 |
Daniel M. Kammen
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
UC Berkeley Professor of Energy and Society and the Energy and Resources Group
As part of the International Day of Peace,
sponsored by UC Berkeley, United Nations Association -
2. “Race and Space: Residential Location and Labor Market Outcomes”
Colloquium | October 2 |
Steven Raphael, Professor of Public Policy,
John Quigley,
Interim Dean,
Sponsor: Center for Race and Gender. Event Contact: 510-643-8488
3. “Political Rhetoric and Civility in the 2008 Presidential Election”
Homecoming Weekend:
Speakers: Henry Brady, Professor of Public Policy, co-director of the Class of ’68 Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy; Bruce Cain, Heller Professor of Political Science, Co-Director of the Class of ’68 Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement; Robert Reich, Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Class of 1968. Event contact: 510-643-1674
4. “
Special Event | October 14 |
Professor Robert Reich, Goldman School of Public Policy, former Secretary of Labor, is the author of 11 books including "Locked in the Cabinet" and "Supercapitalism. Professor Reich will read from his works, be interviewed about his writing process, and take questions on writing from the audience. Event Contact: 510-642-0875
5. 10th ANNUAL ALUMNI RECOGNITION DINNER
The Bancroft Hotel,
2008 Alumnus of the Year: MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980), Director, State of Department of
Finance
ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS
1. “Death Row Cost Overrun: $40 Million. New San Quentin
housing also could run out of room, report says” (San Francisco Chronicle, July
30, 2008); story citing TODD SPITZER
(MPP/JD 1989); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/30/MNIH121H7J.DTL
2. “Falling home prices pick up speed” (Star-Ledger (
3. “More banking write-downs in the
4. “Obama
veep team floats GOP name” (Politico,
5. “Peskin
elected Dem chairman in a squeaker” (San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 2008);
story citing DAVID LATTERMAN (MPP
2002) and CARMEN CHU (MPP 2003);
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/25/BAG811V540.DTL
6. “Students invent
affordable water heater. An invention may help improve the lives of million”
(KGO TV News,
7. “NYC’S Road Back. How
It Rebounded from the Sad ’70s” (New York Post,
8. “The Center for American Progress (CAP) holds a
presentation on ‘From Status Quo to Breaking the Mold: Schools Expanding
Learning Time’” (The Washington Daybook,
9. “DOHA ROUND: Is this the last stand for globalisation?: Poor nations
derailed the last WTO deal. Now economic turmoil means the rich countries could
kill it off for the foreseeable future” (The Observer (
10. “Cuts will hurt patients, small pharmacies, Medi-Cal told” (Oakland Tribune,
11. “Jennifer Tucker and
Supporting Kids In Peru: The Summer of Meetings” (The
Advocacy Project,
12. “Individual health
policies leave many in the lurch” (
13. “How to Measure
Innovation. NESTA, the independent British organization, is working on a new
index to assess the state of innovation within specific industries” (Business
Week,
14. “More than two billion people lack adequate sanitation:
UN” (Agence France Presse,
15. “More women with MBAs take mommy track than doctors: study”
(Reuters,
16. “Autoline
in LA: Film” (Autoline Detroit TV, broadcast on
Detroit Public TV, July 13, 2008; on Speed TV, July 13 & July 18, 2008);
features commentary by ROLAND HWANG
(MPP 1992); video
link
17. “Stalemate impacts
homes for disabled” (Contra Costa Times, July 12, 2008); story citing TOBY DOUGLAS (MPP 2001/MPH 2002);
http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_9857225?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
18. “City’s trash: Pay
as you throw?” (Philadelphia Daily News,
19. “McCain Plan to Aid
States on Health Could Be Costly” (New York Times, July 9, 2008); story citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/politics/09health.html?pagewanted=2&sq=
20. Toyota reportedly to
put solar panels on Prius (San Francisco Chronicle,
July 8, 2008); story citing ROLAND HWANG
(MPP 1992); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/08/BUFO11L7FO.DTL&type=printable
21. “Feds peek at newest
electronic security technology. SecTech brought
integrator ADT together with leading government security technology vendors” (
22. “AIDS Walk San Francisco Takes Big Green Step Forward; San Francisco’s Largest AIDS Fundraising Event Goes GREEN with Online Communications, Recycling and Awareness” (PR Newswire, July 7, 2008); story citing MARK CLOUTIER (MPP/MPH 1993).
23. “LCC president: ‘We need to do better’” (Lansing State
Journal (MI) -
24. “The Big Test and College Admissions” (Chronicle of
Higher Education,
25. “Does New S.A.T.
Help With Admissions Decisions? The College Board releases a positive report on
the writing section, but many schools are doing their own studies” (The
Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 2008); story citing research coauthored by MARIA VERONICA SANTELICES (MPP 2001);
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0718/p02s01-usgn.html
26. “100 more Stern
Grove trees called hazardous” (San Francisco Chronicle,
27. “Politics Failed,
But Fuel Prices Cut Congestion” (New York Times,
28. “Lenders Help Fewer
Homeowners in May” (Washington Post,
29. “Hope Now Trying to Keep Up With Demand for Help” (Home
Equity Wire,
30. “Quake Revealed Deficiencies of
31. California Budget
Stalemate” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
32. “Interview with Mickey
Levy” (Journal Inquirer (
33. “Idea of expanding federal role in siting
lines, especially for renewables, is gaining ground”
(Electric Utility Week,
34.
35. “With pickup sales down, automakers shift plans”
(Associated Press,
36. “
37. “Base tracks its CO2 ‘bootprint’”
(Los Angeles Times,
38. “Summer Fieldwork Funded in
39. “A positive outcome is in the air ** One deregulation
benefit is a boost for wind generation” (Morning Call, (
40. “S.F.: Volunteer cleanup on Sunset Blvd.” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
41. “Two-thirds vote rule creates budget mess” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
42. “Researchers boost hybrid to 100 mpg” (Daily Times-Call (
43. “Business Briefs for
44. “Assisted-living facility tries to evict 99-year-old
woman on Medicaid” (Seattle Times,
45. “The Big Fix: A rough, relaxed commute - Drive is a
breeze for some, grind for others” (Sacramento Bee,
46. “Community College Transfer Mess” (Washington Post,
47. “In inaugural meeting, DOE advisory group mulls big
changes for
48. “
49. Planners will present draft plan for Charlotte Pike
corridor (Tennessean,
50. Charter school bill’s sponsor now its foe. LEGISLATION:
It was supposed to help board members with financial stakes in charter schools
(Press-Enterprise (
51. Speakers: NatGas Demand Poised For Explosive Generation Growth (Natural Gas Week,
52. First U.S. Trades Reveal Details of Emerging Carbon Market; Federal politicians and regulators to influence regional markets RGGI likely to remain over-allocated in 2008(Business Wire, April 8, 2008); story citing EMILIE MAZZACURATI (MPP 2007).
53. Regional US Carbon Market Could Prompt Federal System
(Securities Industry News,
54. World Energy and Point Carbon to Host Webinar: Climate Change Policy and the 2008 Presidential
Election” (Market News Publishing,
55. From Welfare Shift in ’96, ’08 Reminder for Clinton (New
York Times, April 11, 2008); story citing SANDRA
CHAPIN (MPP 2005); http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/us/politics/11welfare.html?scp=4&sq=%22sandra%20chapin%22&st=cse
56. “Forum a success” (Times-Herald (
57. “Doing PR for state is big job, pros say” (Albuquerque
Tribune,
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
1. “Power Struggle:
Alternative Energy Looks to New Administration, Congress for Progress” (Center
for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org,
2. “Home Buying Opportunities” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
3. “
4. “Candidates Return Focus to Economy and Jobs” (New York
Times,
5. “Bounds still making a case for pre-kindergarten”
(Associated Press,
6. “Obama’s biofuels
policy tension. US presidential hopeful Barack Obama is coming under
increasing pressure to change his policies on biofuels”
(BBC News, July 28, 2008); story citing DAN
KAMMEN; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7529015.stm
7. “
8. “Where’s My Summer Vacation?” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace [NPR],
9. “Clean Tech: Power in the Air” (Forbes,
10. “Hickenlooper confident city
will be ready for convention—and world—despite changes” (Rocky Mountain News,
11. “Summer shines on a bumper crop
of new deans” (Berkeleyan,
12. “Carter’s oil crisis warning went unheard” (Marketplace
[NPR], American Public Media,
13. “Alameda County General Assistance Cuts” (Forum,
KQED-88.5 FM,
14. “Home Foreclosures on the Rise” (KCBS Radio,
15. “How disasters help. Natural disasters can give a boost to
the countries where they occur — and sometimes, the more the better” (The
Boston Globe,
16. “Questions for Robert Reich: Short-Straw Economics”
(New York Times Magazine,
17. “Il supercapitalismo sta stritolando la democrazia” (La Stampa,
18. “Country Unlikely to Meet Health Sector MDGS” (The Daily
Monitor (
19. “Congress’s summer job: The economy” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH; (Marketplace [NPR],
20. “CARB Vets Greenhouse-Gas Market Design Issues” (California Energy Markets, May 30, 2008, No. 978, pp. 1, 6-7); story citing LEE FRIEDMAN.
21. “Governors Seek to Boost Clean Energy Research,
Development and Demonstration” (National Governors Association, March 25,
2008); news release citing DAN KAMMEN;
http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.6c9a8a9ebc6ae07eee28aca9501010a0/?vgnextoid=baf5ab44ab2d8110VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD&vgnextchannel=4b18f074f0d9ff00VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD
1. “Death
Row Cost Overrun: $40 Million. New San Quentin housing also could run out of
room, report says” (San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 2008); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/30/MNIH121H7J.DTL
--Matthew Yi, Chronicle
The auditor’s new $395.5 million price tag for the project, which is expected to be completed by 2011, is new bad news for a state facing billions of dollars in budget shortfalls….
Plans for new housing for San Quentin’s Death Row inmates got its initial boost five years ago when state prison officials requested $220 million and the state Legislature approved the spending. New facilities were needed, prison officials said, because the three existing units—built in 1930, 1934 and 1960—don’t meet the state’s standard for maximum-security facilities.
Prison officials later said construction costs would be far greater as a result of rising prices of construction materials, design changes and unforeseen problems such as cleaning up contaminated soil….
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, said he has little doubt that the corrections department has underestimated the cost of building the new housing units. But the lawmaker, who supports death penalty, said the San Quentin project is the kind of prison infrastructure work that the state has ignored too long.
“Costs are going up because we don’t pay attention to our prisons on a regular basis,” Spitzer said. “We’ve seen prisons largely as a place where you send people and don’t think about them. Now, the chicken’s come home to roost.”…
2. “Falling home prices
pick up speed” (Star-Ledger (
By Timothy R. Homan and Courtney Schlisserman, Bloomberg News
Home prices in 20
The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index dropped 15.8 percent from a year earlier, the biggest decline since records began seven years ago. The Conference Board’s confidence index rose to 51.9, from 51 in June.
Home prices have fallen every month since January last year, eroding household wealth at a time when consumers are trying to cope with record fuel costs and the credit crunch. While both of yesterday’s figures were higher than economists’ estimates, the reports still underscored forecasts for spending to slow in the second half as the stimulus from tax rebates wanes….
“We’re going to see
continued declines in house prices, much more so in problem areas,” said Mickey Levy, chief economist at Bank of
3. “More banking
write-downs in the
ASHLEY HALL: Only yesterday, the International Monetary Fund was sounding a warning that there’s no end in sight to the credit crisis gripping world financial markets. And it didn’t take long for a new shock to emerge….
MICHAEL ROWLAND: Under mounting pressure from the imploding mortgage market Merrill Lynch has been forced into a spectacular corporate fire sale. The bank has unloaded more than $30-billion of risky debt at a very deep discount. In fact the buyers of the tainted loans are getting for them for just 22 cents on the dollar….
Fresh capital is something Merrill Lynch sorely needs and it’s got it in the form of a $9-billion cash injection, a large part of it from the Singapore Government-owned fund Temasek Holdings….
The average American homeowner isn’t so lucky. Just as Merrill Lynch was making market shock waves a closely watched index had us house prices plunging 16 per cent in May, that’s the steepest decline ever. No city in the Standard and Poor’s Case-Shiller survey experienced price gains.
While the figures are
undeniably bleak, Mickey Levy, the chief economist at Bank of
MICKEY LEVY: I would say it’s painful but we’re making progress and widdling down the undesired inventories and we’ll eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel.
MICHAEL ROWLAND: But Mr Levy says this won’t be until next year at the earliest….
4. “Obama
veep team floats GOP name” (Politico,
By Amie
Parnes & Ben Smith |
AP Photo
Barack Obama’s vice presidential search team has floated the name
of a member of President Bush’s first-term Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman,
as Obama’s running mate.
The search committee, now led by Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder, raised Veneman’s name—among others—in discussions with members of Congress, said two Democrats familiar with the conversations.
The mention of Veneman’s name surprised Democratic lawmakers. The low-profile Republican was close to food and agriculture industries but clashed with farm-state Democrats and environmentalists during her tenure, which lasted from 2001 to 2004.
But Veneman, 59, has a biography
that could be suited to Obama’s unifying message. A
Republican raised on a
The selection of a Republican could bolster Obama’s unifying message, a Capitol Hill Democrat familiar with the discussion said.
“You select a strong independent woman who appeals to Republicans and independents, and so that’s hard to beat,” the Hill source said, explaining the logic of the possible choice. “Choosing someone like [Veneman] doesn’t hurt you with the Democrats. It just doesn’t hurt you. But it helps you with Independents and Republicans.” Veneman’s is one of about a dozen names suggested by vetters in a round of meetings with members of the House and Senate within the last few weeks….
Choosing Veneman would be a way to “show that he can get things done without all the partisanship,” said the Democrat familiar with the discussions. “Her appeal would be nonideological. It would be, ‘I’m just here to get the work done.’ She’s not a hot-button conservative.”…
5. “Peskin elected Dem chairman in a squeaker” (San Francisco Chronicle, July 25, 2008); story citing DAVID LATTERMAN (MPP 2002) and CARMEN CHU (MPP 2003); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/25/BAG811V540.DTL
By Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Threats and intrigue marked the contentious vote for chairman of the little-known San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, but in the end Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin eked out a victory that could sway the outcome of this fall’s supervisorial races.
The politically powerful
committee … isn’t well-known among average
The battle between Peskin, a member of San Francisco’s ultra-liberal progressive faction, and Scott Wiener, a more moderate deputy city attorney, came down to last-minute pleading phone calls and threats from political heavyweights on both sides. In the end, Peskin received 18 votes, and Wiener nabbed 16.
Political observers say the outcome means progressive candidates in local races this fall stand a better chance of winning because they’ll likely get the powerful DCCC endorsement, followed by party-funded automatic telephone calls to voters, mailers and advertisements.
“Nobody cares what the DCCC does really, but the official Democratic endorsement is actually pretty important,” said political consultant David Latterman, who consults for Wiener. “People see that and take it seriously, and now it’s pretty much rigged for the progressive candidates.”
Seven of the 11 seats on the Board of Supervisors are in play, and the outcome will determine whether progressives continue to hold power or whether moderates can regain the majority for the first time in nearly a decade. Mayor Gavin Newsom now has four moderate votes on the board, the bare minimum to sustain a veto….
Political consultant Jim Ross, who manages candidate campaigns—including those for Supervisor Carmen Chu in District Four and supervisorial candidate Sue Lee in District One—called the fight over the chair “extraordinarily petty.”
“People are fighting
over what I think aren’t really the biggest stakes,” he said. “But
6. “Students invent
affordable water heater. An invention may help improve the lives of million”
(KGO TV News,
By Terry McSweeney
A mechanical engineering dream team came up with this developing countries wonder—in response from a challenge from their professor; Ashok Gadgil said build an advanced, affordable solar water heater….
It’s a money saver alright, and of course people like that,
but the business and marketing team attached to this mechanical engineering
project found something else about the folks in
“A lot of people who were interested in this product were
interested primarily in the fact that it helped the environment,” said Adam Langton,
They also found out that 70 percent of the people surveyed said they would gladly buy one for $100. The solar water heaters are currently on the rooftops of ten homes. Students are working out the kinks….
The students have also located groups interested in mass producing the water heaters locally, meaning much needed jobs. Who knows where this might be headed….
The students are grateful to all those groups that provided funding for their research and development.
Down in one town in
7. “NYC’S Road Back. How It Rebounded
from the Sad ‘70s” (New York Post,
By Michael Gecan & Raymond Domanico
They didn’t fix it, we did: President Jimmy
Carter (c.), Mayor Abe Beame (r.) and Housing
Secretary Patricia Harris discuss urban blight in the burned out
THIS summer brings the quiet sunsetting
of the Municipal Assistance Corp., which was created to monitor city finances
in 1978 and steer the city away from bankruptcy. No one who lived through
BY 1975, whole neighborhoods of the city were disappearing.
Blight and abandonment dominated most of the
Almost every one of the scores of thousands of abandoned
buildings has now been renovated and fully occupied. The vast, vacant tracts in
WHAT can we learn from
First: A 1930s “hand up” worked better than a 1960s “hand out” approach. Advocates often criticized the effort to build new affordable housing because it used scarce resources to build homes for working families, not the poorest of the poor: No matter that those working families would never be able to buy a home, build equity and take long-term leadership roles in their own communities. But it proved to be the right call. A former police commissioner, Ben Ward, called the Nehemiah houses, with which Metro Industrial Areas Foundation is affiliated, “the best anti-crime strategy yet.” He understood the relationship between the new stability in many neighborhoods and effective police work.
SO let’s toast a city that left bankruptcy behind, that saw its students and schools succeed this year and that will tangle with its current and very real challenges—like the revival of its vast public-housing system—from a position of hope and strength….
Michael Gecan and Raymond Domanico are senior organizer and senior education adviser at Metro Industrial Areas Foundation.
8. “The Center for American Progress (CAP) holds a
presentation on ‘From Status Quo to Breaking the Mold: Schools Expanding
Learning Time’” (The Washington Daybook,
The presentation will take a look at two CAP new papers on what is commonly known about the expansion of learning time and contribute original research on the implementation and costs to the field….
PARTICIPANTS: Gretchen Bueter, principal at Grave Patterson Elementary School; Carmel Martin, general counsel and chief education adviser at Sen. Edward M. Kennedy Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee; Elena Rocha, education consultant; Marguerite Roza, research associate professor at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington; and Cynthia Brown, director of education policy at CAP.
9. “DOHA ROUND: Is this the last stand for globalisation?: Poor nations
derailed the last WTO deal. Now economic turmoil means the rich countries could
kill it off for the foreseeable future” (The Observer (
By Heather Stewart
With
Yet with economic uncertainty at fever pitch in the
Many developing countries were encouraged in recent decades, partly by the last round of trade talks, but also by the lending policies of the International Monetary Fund, to tear down agricultural trade barriers in an attempt to make their farming sectors more efficient and generate export business. But with the US and Europe still spending billions on subsidising their own farmers, the result in many cases has been a dramatic increase in dependence on food imports instead of the hoped-for improvement in the health of the agricultural sector.
‘In the long run, subsidies to improve production in
Jack Thurston, co-founder of farmsubsidy.org, which campaigns for transparency about agricultural subsidies, agrees: ‘If free markets had been given a chance in agriculture over the past 40 years, I don’t think we would be in the position we are. We are reaping the whirlwind.’ Developing countries dismantled the barriers protecting their farmers, he says, ‘without the quid pro quo of undistorted markets’.
That has meant cut-price, subsidised
food products from
10. “Cuts will hurt patients, small pharmacies, Medi-Cal told” (Oakland Tribune,
By Suzanne Bohan
Pharmacists’ relief at a federal court ruling last week temporarily halting a 10 percent cut in Medi-Cal drug payments proved short-lived, as the same court reversed itself Wednesday night and reinstated the cuts….
…[T]he appeals court on Wednesday lifted the restraining order, accepting a plea from the state Department of Health Care Services that the one-month halt would cost the agency more than the state’s pharmacists stood to lose….
The Medi-Cal cuts for prescription drugs took effect July 1, as mandated by a fiscal emergency declaration in February by the state Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. That order mandated 10 percent cuts by state agencies to help the state balance the budget, now $15.2 billion in the red for the fiscal year that began July 1.
Toby Douglas, deputy director of health care policy for the Department of Health Care Services, stressed that Medi-Cal takes a substantial share of the state’s budget. The agency administers Medi-Cal, a joint state-federal program that provides medical care for low-income residents.
“It’s an extremely tough budget, and Medi-Cal
has to be part of the solution,”
“Our job is to run the Medi-Cal program based on the laws that govern it,” he said. “And the legislature and governor have to make really tough decisions.”
His agency does also provide crucial input regarding its programs, he added.
“We have a role to make in informing the governor on the best
decisions to make,”
But the fight to rescind the pharmacy cuts isn’t over. Next week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will again hear arguments from both sides….
And on Friday, a separate lawsuit challenging Medi-Cal cuts, this one brought by the California Medical Association, among other parties, could also halt the rate cuts….
He had no prediction, however, as to how that proposal might fare during the rancorous budget debate over the summer.
“It really is too soon to know what’s going to happen,”
11. “Jennifer Tucker
and Supporting Kids In Peru: The Summer of Meetings”
(The Advocacy Project,
Posted by Jennifer in the blog
“2008 Fellow: Jennifer Tucker” @
After the meeting.
… By far the most inspiring in the endless string of meetings were those we organized last weekend with the mothers (and two fathers) who are a part of [Supporting Kids In Peru]’s programs…. For me, it was moving to hear their stories. Parents told of their frustration when they can’t help with their children’s school work because they didn’t finish primary school; of not being able to afford the matriculation, uniform and school supply costs and having to tell their child: “maybe you can go back to school next year;” of their children being marginalized by teachers who get upset when families can’t afford the required (and sometime ridiculous) list of school supplies; and of the general weariness of struggling everyday but never having enough.
Now the challenge is to use their feedback and a
better understanding of their reality to strengthen SKIP’s
programs so that together we can build a Peru where each child realizes their full potential through a quality
education, economically stable families and healthy home-environments (the
organization’s new vision statement!).
12. “Individual health
policies leave many in the lurch” (
By Julie Appleby -
Theresa Swaim, with twin sons
Logan, left, and Morgan, wasn’t able to get health insurance for
Soon after a pediatrician noted in his medical records that 5-year-old Logan Swaim was short for his age, his mother, Theresa, tried to buy health insurance.
Her husband, William, had started his own landscaping
business after being laid off, and the insurance he got from his former
employer was about to expire. Two insurers accepted the Swaims
and three of their children for new coverage, but they rejected
Unlike group plans offered by employers—which provide coverage to everyone, no matter how sick—there is no guarantee in most states that individuals can get insurance. Even if they can, their policies may not cover existing medical conditions….
Both presidential candidates say they want to improve options for people who buy their own coverage. Democrat Barack Obama says he would create ways for individuals to buy insurance in groups and would require insurers to sell to everyone….
Republican John McCain has made individuals the centerpiece of his health plan. He proposes $2,500 to $5,000 tax credits to all Americans to purchase their own coverage and would end the tax breaks workers get for job-based coverage….
In the current market, insurers selling individual policies try to pick the healthiest applicants to lower their risks. In most states, insurers can consider an applicant’s health history in deciding whether to offer coverage and how much to charge….
In a 2001 study by Karen Pollitz of the Georgetown Health Policy Institute, researchers submitted applications to 19 insurers on behalf of seven fictitious applicants, who had medical conditions ranging from HIV to allergies. Of 420 applications, 37 percent were rejected.
“What we have shown is there are carriers who will turn you down if you have hay fever,” Pollitz says….
Can you afford it?
Obama says allowing individuals to pool together to buy coverage would help drive the cost down.
He would not allow insurers to charge more based on a person’s health, a move critics such as [Merrill Matthews of Council for Affordable Health Insurance] say could raise costs for the healthy.
McCain says his plan would help lower prices by allowing people to shop in any state for health insurance.
Critics such as Georgetown’s Pollitz say healthier people would flock to insurers in the least-regulated states, which could raise rates in other states that end up covering lots of sick people….
13. “How to Measure Innovation. NESTA, the independent
British organization, is working on a new index to assess the state of
innovation within specific industries” (Business Week,
By Ernest Beck
Since the 1970s,
In an effort to more adequately measure innovation—and its impact on Britain’s entire economy—the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts [NESTA], a nonprofit organization that promotes innovation, wants to create a new index, one that will be industry-specific and include what NESTA Executive Director Richard Halkett calls “the changing, unreported face of innovation.”
The index would provide a more accurate picture of many
sectors where R&D is not a major factor. Consider the financial-services
industry, which has helped make
Enter NESTA’s new Innovation Index, due in 2010. Like all indexes, it’s intended as a road map of the economy….
The Innovation Index is likely to look at a range of factors, such as organizational change, investment in management and skills training, and competitive performance over time, as well as include a peer review in which company executives both help to define the innovation indicators and rate each other. The latter, Halkett says, instantly pinpoints the companies considered innovative, though of course it’s hardly a foolproof system as less visible companies might fall through the cracks….
The NESTA index … will attempt to distinguish itself through a more complex methodology. Halkett believes it will be useful to both large and small businesses, universities, and skills providers, as well as government officials looking to formulate economic and tax policies. It can also be used internationally, as a basis of comparison with other countries.
For the most part, innovation policy still isn’t closely linked with large-scale economic policy, because there hasn’t been a clear connection between innovation and productivity …. With the upcoming NESTA index, “We want [connection] to drive economic policy decisions,” Halkett says.
14. “More than two billion people lack adequate sanitation:
UN” (Agence France Presse,
More than two billion people around the world still lack adequate sanitation, according to a UN report released here Thursday….
The report was prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“At current trends, the world will fall short of the Millennium sanitation target by more than 700 million people,” said Ann Veneman, the UNICEF executive director. “Without dramatic improvements, much will be lost.”
The largest affected populations are in
In
In southern
It found that if people are forced to travel more than 30 minutes to retrieve safe water, they collect less and compromise their drinking water needs by relying on unsafe sources more often….
15. “More women with MBAs take mommy track than doctors:
study” (Reuters,
REUTERS/Jason Lee
The University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business study of nearly 1,000 Harvard undergraduates found that 15 years after graduation, business school graduates were more likely than doctors or lawyers to leave the workforce.
“Within a field, we find that women who are in family-friendly environments are more likely to stay working,” Associate Professor Catherine Wolfram said in a statement.
Wolfram and her colleague Jane Leber Herr of UC Berkeley’s economics department speculated that the business world was less female-friendly than the fields of medicine and law.
The study, “Opt-Out Patterns Across Careers: Labor Force Participation Rates Among Highly Educated Mothers,” used Harvard College reunion surveys for the 1988 to 1991 graduating class for their initial data….
16. “Autoline
in LA: Film” (Autoline Detroit TV, broadcast on
Detroit Public TV, July 13, 2008; on Speed TV, July 13 & July 18, 2008);
features commentary by ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); video link
It’s ironic that the movie capital of the world,
As early as 1943, the city recognized this pollution as a
legitimate problem and has been struggling with it ever since…. And one of the
reasons that
On this week’s Autoline in LA John
McElroy will be joined by three of these environmental thought leaders as they
discuss emissions, cars, MPGs and how
… Roland Hwang is the Vehicles Policy Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a 40-year old environmental action group with 1.2 million members ….
17. “Stalemate impacts homes for disabled” (Contra Costa
Times, July 12, 2008); story citing TOBY
DOUGLAS (MPP 2001/MPH 2002); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_9857225?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Sandy Kleffman
Krystal Coles, 18, left, is attended to by staff member Marquita Gallon at the New Way Services home for people
with severe developmental disabilities at 1325 Yosemite Circle photographed on
Thursday, July 10, 2008, in Oakley, Calif. Funding for homes like these may
disappear in the next couple of weeks as the delay in passing the state budget
continues. (Eddie Ledesma/Contra Costa Times)
Few people are following the state budget impasse in
Hundreds of such homes across the state will be among the earliest casualties of the budget stalemate. Their funding will evaporate within the next week or two as a state contingency fund runs out of money….
No quick resolution is in sight for the budget showdown as lawmakers grapple with an estimated $15.2 billion deficit. Democratic leaders favor tax increases to avoid hefty service cuts. Many Republicans oppose tax increases and favor more belt-tightening….
In the past, [Zolno] and [co-owner Lupe] Henry have been able to obtain loans to tide them over until the budget is approved. But the clampdown on credit prompted by the national mortgage crisis has made it virtually impossible this year Zolno said….
The state has a $1 billion contingency fund, plus $1 billion in federal funding, to pay institutional Medi-Cal providers during such budget stalemates. Last year, the fund lasted until July 24. This year, it will run out of money about the same time, predicted Toby Douglas, deputy director of health care programs for the state Department of Health Care Services….
18. “City’s trash: Pay as you throw?” (Philadelphia Daily
News,
By Catherine Lucey -
IT’S CALLED “pay as you throw.”
The Nutter administration is researching whether to charge residents for trash collection, according to city officials.
Environmental experts say this would encourage recycling because there is typically no charge for collecting recyclable waste.
And the fees would help pay for trash collection and disposal, which currently costs the city $95 million a year, according to Deputy Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams.
But will Philadelphians balk at shelling out for something they’ve been getting free for years as taxpayers?...
Budget Director Steve Agostini stressed that officials are only in the preliminary stages of looking into such a program, which is included in the city’s five-year budget plan.
“We had a discussion about it early, which is why it’s reflected [in the plan],” Agostini said. “We’re trying to get some information nationally. We’re trying to get to know what people are doing—would it make sense here?”
In Philly, just 8 percent of residential trash is recycled, compared with a national average of 18 percent….
19. “McCain Plan to Aid States on Health Could Be Costly”
(New York Times, July 9, 2008); story citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/us/politics/09health.html?pagewanted=2&sq=
By Kevin Sack
“What do you pay first? Do you pay the mortgage?
Do you pay your child support?” asks Chaim Benamor. The $4,572 premium for a high-risk policy was more
than he could afford on an income of about $35,000. (Matt Roth for The
New York Times)
The heart attack left Mr. Benamor with a $17,000 hospital bill, $400 in monthly prescription costs and a desperate need for insurance. After being rejected by a number of commercial carriers, he turned to the Maryland Health Insurance Plan, one of 35 state programs for high-risk applicants whom no private company is willing to insure.
He decided that the annual premium—$4,572 for a plan with heavy deductibles—was more than he could handle on an income of about $35,000. Yet his earnings were too high for him to qualify for state subsidies….
In late April, Mr. McCain … announced that if elected
president he would seek to insure people like Mr. Benamor
by vastly expanding federal support for state high-risk pools like
Though high-risk pools have existed for three decades, they cover only 207,000 people in a country with 47 million uninsured…. Premiums typically are high, as much as twice the standard rate in some states, but are still not nearly enough to pay claims. That has left states to cover about 40 percent of the cost, usually through assessments on insurance premiums that are often passed on to consumers….
Critics argue that, to date, insurers have benefited from the state pools as much as the uninsured. As long as premiums remain above market rates, the pools insulate commercial insurers from the greatest risks while giving customers little incentive to abandon their private policies.
“They are run in ways that protect the profitability of
commercial insurers,” said Karen Pollitz, a professor at
Mr. McCain’s proposal would represent a huge increase over the $50 million a year that Congress now appropriates in grants to the state pools, in a program that began in 2002. But several analysts questioned whether even $10 billion would be nearly enough, given that the states now spend about $2 billion to insure 207,000 people.
“I do not for a minute think it will cost 7 to 10 billion dollars a year,” Ms. Pollitz said. “It may cost 7 to 10 billion dollars a week.”….
20. “
-David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
(07-07)
Toyota Motor Corp. plans to stick solar panels on some models of its popular Prius hybrid car, according to news reports Monday. The panels, made by Kyocera, would help power the air conditioner….
And some of the details seem implausible. [The Nikkei financial newspaper] wrote that the panels would produce 2 to 5 kilowatts of electricity, roughly the same as a rooftop solar array on a typical house….
Other people are trying to marry solar power to more common cars.
One
Roland Hwang, a vehicles specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, doesn‘t expect such dramatic mileage increases from using solar power on cars. But solar could still prove useful for running electric auxiliaries. He suggests a system in which solar panels would run a small ventilation fan while the car was parked during the day. That would keep the car cabin from turning into an inferno that the air conditioner would struggle to cool once the driver returned.
“When it‘s sitting out there for a day in a hot parking lot, that‘s when it makes sense,“ he said.
21. “Feds peek at newest electronic security technology. SecTech brought integrator ADT together with leading government
security technology vendors” (
By W.J. Hennigan, The
Video cameras and monitors make up part of the
Dozens of security companies gathered in the District last week to show off their newest products in hopes of snagging government contracts. But their cutting edge technology may also be cutting in on citizens’ privacy, civil liberties groups say….
Each year, ADT invites legislators at the state and federal
level to show off the latest gadgets in hopes of drumming up business. Other
government representatives are also invited, such as Department of Homeland
Security, Transportation Security Administration, and members from branches of
the
One item on display was ADT’s
wireless mesh network video system. The technology is in the process of being
installed in
The technology is costing the city more than $2 million, Ms. Schneider said.
“It certainly isn’t a panacea,” she said. “But we have high expectations it will deter crimes.”
The city’s seaport,
In all, there will be more than 100 cameras installed at the port and crime hot spots. The cameras are programmed to recognize certain suspicious movements like fights, crowd gathering and climbing. If these movements are picked up, the cameras will trigger an alarm, prompting a security or police officer to take a better look.
“This technology will let us catch things while it happens,” Ms. Schneider said, indicating it will help both police and prosecutors….
22. “AIDS Walk San Francisco Takes Big Green Step Forward; San Francisco’s Largest AIDS Fundraising Event Goes GREEN with Online Communications, Recycling and Awareness” (PR Newswire, July 7, 2008); story citing MARK CLOUTIER (MPP/MPH 1993).
Solemn footsteps / Earth-friendly AIDS walk:
25,000 people raise $4.5 million at S.F. event. (Photo by Michael Maloney / San Francisco Chronicle)
“With the Foundation’s focus on the overall health of our community, as well as our commitment to preventing new HIV infections, ‘greening’ AIDS Walk made great sense,” said Mark Cloutier, Chief Executive Officer of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “Every person who participates will walk towards a future where people and our shared environment are both healthier.”…
[Mark Cloutier was interviewed on KRON-TV (
23. “LCC president: ‘We need to do better’” (Lansing State
Journal (MI) -
By Matthew Miller
Last fall, 124 students signed up for College Algebra II at
Of the 829 students taking more than one remedial course in fall 2006, 214 failed more than one.
The most recent graduation rate that LCC reported to the federal government … was 11 percent. That’s low compared to most other community colleges in the state.
LCC’s leaders have begun to take a hard look at how well the college is serving its students, and they acknowledge too few are succeeding.
The cost of failure is high, they say, not only for students, but for a state that’s struggling to remain economically competitive….
For years, many community colleges focused mainly on getting
students in the door, said Nancy Shulock, executive director for the Institute for Higher
Education Leadership and Policy at
That’s changing, she said, “with the increasing awareness that we’re in a global competition, we’re experiencing shortages of educated workers and that the United States is slipping in relation to other developed and developing countries in terms of the number of people who have college degrees.”…
24. “The Big Test and College Admissions“ (Chronicle
of Higher Education,
By Stan Katz
The Center for
Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley has quietly been doing some of the most
significant higher education policy research I know of. Spurred by the vote in
California in 1996 to end affirmative action in the state’s colleges and
universities, and blessed with a vast database on student performance in the
huge UC system, researchers [including Veronica Santelices] at CSHE have been
asking the Big Question about college admissions — what are the most reliable
objective predictors of success in college for high-school students? When the
first results were published several years ago, I found them both troubling and
significant, for the researchers found that the best predictor of college
success (measured by course grades) was grades in high-school college
preparatory courses. They also argued that using grades as the criterion for
admissions had the least adverse effect on the success of poor and minority
college applicants. And, significantly, high-school grades were not just
predictive of success in the freshman year, but of cumulative GPA over four
years, and four-year graduation rates….
An important follow-up report [“Back to the Basics“] by Saul Geiser of CSHE was published a few days ago….
…These data seem to me to add tremendous force to the growing lack of confidence in the reliability of aptitude tests. And most important, in an era in which affirmative action in college admissions seems to be rapidly disappearing, tests that disadvantage the poor seem particularly objectionable, given the relationship between higher education and life outcomes…. If nothing else, we should be grateful to CSHE for providing a solid statistical basis for public discussion of what is too often more an emotional and political than a policy debate.
[See Geiser and Santelices, “The role of advanced placement and honors courses in college admissions“ (2006); Geiser and Santelices, “Validity of high-school grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators of four-year college outcomes“ (CSHE, 2007).
25. “Does New S.A.T. Help With Admissions Decisions? The
College Board releases a positive report on the writing section, but many
schools are doing their own studies” (The Christian Science Monitor, July 17,
2008); story citing research coauthored by MARIA
VERONICA SANTELICES (MPP 2001); http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0718/p02s01-usgn.html
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
For the past three years, when high school students have hit the SAT prep books, that’s included a tuneup for a writing section. For colleges trying to predict student performance, the new test has been: (a) helpful, (b) not helpful, (c) both of the above, or d) don’t know.
So far, many colleges are answering “d.”
The College Board, which administers the SAT, is offering another answer this summer in a much-anticipated study. The report shows the writing section to be more predictive of a student’s first-year grades in college than the math or critical reading sections….
Many schools, though, have been conducting their own examinations of the writing section, rather than depending on the board’s study….
But preliminary results at Harvard show the SAT writing test to be a good predictor of students’ performance at college, says dean of admissions William Fitzsimmons.
That’s not surprising, Mr. Fitzsimmons says, because the writing test has similarities to the SAT’s Subject Tests, which are generally optional and assess knowledge in many academic areas such as biology and French….
Studies at the University of California [coauthored by Maria Santelices] found similar results years ago, and the UC system switched to a heavy emphasis on high school grades and SAT Subject Tests in 2001. UC played down the regular SAT partly because it had a negative impact on minority and low-income students’ admissions eligibility.
The College Board added the writing section largely in response to such research. But critics say old, flawed ideas about testing IQ and the capacity to learn are still embedded in the SAT, despite its changes and its dropping of its former name, the Scholastic Aptitude Test.
“The new SAT is a test at war with itself,” says Saul Geiser, a researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley, who conducted the UC studies [with Maria Santelices]….
26. “100 more Stern Grove trees called hazardous“ (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer
A large branch snapped off a redwood tree in Stern Grove on April 14, killing a woman and smashing a car. Chronicle photo by Lacy Atkins
Three months after a large branch snapped off a Stern Grove tree and killed a woman, San Francisco officials said Thursday that there are still more than 100 hazardous trees that need to be removed there—and probably thousands of others throughout the city that need to be pruned or cut down.
Work to trim or remove the trees at Stern Grove and elsewhere is under way, but it has been slow because the city doesn‘t have enough forestry staff, said Dennis Kern, director of operations for the Recreation and Park Department.
There are 100,000 trees spread among the department‘s 3,500 acres of parkland, Kern said, and only three tree crews. Each crew is made up of two or three tree climbers and one laborer. One of the crews is now working fulltime on Stern Grove‘s 2,600 trees….
The department doesn‘t really know
how many trees in the city would be considered hazardous by arborists because
only three areas—Stern Grove, Park Presidio and
District Four Supervisor Carmen Chu, who called the hearing, asked the department to take another look at the location of dangerous trees in Stern Grove and to report back to the committee on the citywide urban forestry program and the bond.
27. “Politics Failed, But Fuel Prices Cut Congestion” (New York
Times,
By William Neuman
NEW YORK - Soaring gas prices and higher tolls seem to be doing for traffic in New York what Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious congestion pricing was supposed to do: reducing the number of cars clogging the city’s streets and pushing more people to use mass transit.
In May, with gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, traffic at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bridges and tunnels dropped 4.7 percent compared with the same month the previous year….
At the same time, subway, bus and commuter rail ridership has increased. Weekday subway ridership was up 6.5 percent in April, compared with the same month a year ago….
And though there is no denying that increased costs mean a certain pain for drivers in New York, they may also have the unique effect of meshing with the city’s goal of cutting traffic and, as a consequence, lowering pollution.
Bloomberg administration officials, however, said the actual impact may be slight.
“The magnitude here is by no means comparable to the effect that congestion pricing would have in reducing traffic,” said Bruce Schaller, deputy transportation commissioner for planning and sustainability.
“What congestion pricing does,” he added, “is it focuses traffic reduction on the most congested places and times, whereas gasoline prices spread the impact out.”…
The rise in gas prices may also be increasing something that
congestion pricing was meant to eliminate: the incentive for drivers to avoid
tolls by using the free bridges over the
The congestion pricing plan called for a 6.3 percent reduction in the total miles traveled by all vehicles in the pay zone. That is different from simply taking cars off the street since some vehicles, like taxis, are responsible for a higher share of the total miles driven. Mr. Schaller said that to achieve the program’s goal, the city would have needed at least a 10 percent reduction in the number of cars entering the zone….
28. “Lenders Help Fewer Homeowners in May” (Washington Post,
By
The mortgage industry helped 170,000 at-risk homeowners with their troubled loans in May, down about 7 percent from the previous month, according to industry figures released yesterday.
The figures come as legislation aimed at helping hundreds of thousands of homeowners avoid foreclosure awaits a vote in Congress and the industry is facing pressure to do more for troubled borrowers. Foreclosure rates are increasing nationally and locally.
Hope Now, an industry alliance, said the month-to-month decline was a statistical anomaly and that lenders are still on schedule to help 519,000 homeowners during the second quarter.
The decline compared with April, when a record 182,000 homeowners were helped, will be more than made up later, said Stan Collender, the group’s spokesman. The industry’s recent adoption of guidelines to streamline the workout process will help lenders speed assistance to homeowners, he said. The group estimates that it has helped 1.7 million homeowners avoid foreclosure since July.
“You can’t conclude based on the May numbers that the number of modifications are going down. The trend is going to continue upward,“ Collender said. “The goal is to keep doing as many as is necessary.”…
29. “Hope Now Trying to Keep Up With Demand for Help” (Home
Equity Wire,
Hope Now servicers helped nearly 170,000 at-risk borrowers stay in their homes in May, but they could not keep up with the record pace of workouts in April when they negotiated 185,000 loan modifications and repayment plans.
Despite this letup, Hope Now executive director Faith Schwartz says the pace of workouts is accelerating and the second-quarter tally will exceed first-quarter workouts.
“The second-quarter results are going to blow away the first quarter,” said Hope Now advisor Stan Collender….
Treasury Department officials mobilized the Hope Now initiative last fall to deal with rising foreclosures.
Since then, Hope Now servicers have been fine-tuning their workout efforts and they recently agreed to establish timetables for acting on a borrower’s request for assistance and to keep them informed and up to date about the process.
The 28 servicers also agreed on guidelines for dealing with second mortgages and expediting short sales. Getting the second-lien holders to agree to a loan modification on the first mortgage is often difficult and time consuming. Hope Now officials expect the new guidelines on second liens will accelerate the pace of workouts going forward….
30. “Quake Revealed Deficiencies of
By Jake Hooker
A helicopter evacuated
P.L.A. troops in 
After the May earthquake in southwestern
It was a gritty, hands-on effort, unfolding under the clear view of the public and the news media, and it offered analysts the best chance to assess the performance of the People’s Liberation Army in a crisis since the nation’s rising economy started pumping tens of billions of dollars into the military. It got good marks for public relations domestically, but the effort left some veteran P.L.A.-watchers underwhelmed….
Some Western analysts say that
It all stands in sharp contrast to the military’s performance
after the last major earthquake, in
Chinese and Western analysts agree that the military’s lack of heavy-lift helicopters and transport aircraft created the most serious bottleneck in the early days after the May earthquake. Troops had poor communications, they said, and did not have immediate access to surveillance imagery to help them make decisions.
“They were visible everywhere,“ Mr. Hagt said of the soldiers, “but the actual achievements of the mission were far less admirable. How many more people they could have saved with the proper equipment, technology, know-how and training is hard to know.“…
[Eric Hagt was also cited in the International Herald Tribune
(
31. “California Budget Stalemate“ (Forum,
KQED-88.5 FM,
July 1 is the constitutional deadline for the state to enact a spending plan, but lawmakers still can‘t agree on a budget. We find out what‘s causing the gridlock. Host: John Myers
Guests:
·
Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance
· Fred Silva, fiscal policy adviser for California Forward, a non-partisan, non-profit organization interested in governance and fiscal reform
· John Laird, member of the California State Assembly, District 27 (D-Santa Cruz) and chair of the Budget Committee
· Roger Niello, member of the California State Assembly, District 5 (R-Sacramento) and vice chair of the Budget Committee
32. “Interview with Mickey
Levy” (Journal Inquirer (
Bank of America’s chief economist, Mickey D. Levy analyzes and forecasts national and international economic performance and financial market behavior and conducts research on monetary and fiscal policies. Levy, a widely quoted economic observer, is also an adviser to several Federal Reserve Banks.
Q: What’s your outlook on the economy for the rest of this year?
LEVY: Moderate growth through the summer, boosted by tax rebate spending, but renewed weakness in the fourth quarter.
The current period will be designated as a recession, even though I do not expect real Gross Domestic Product to decline.
Employment is declining modestly, a trend I expect will continue.
Housing is adjusting, and the declines in construction and prices will run their course.
The real culprit is sharp increases in energy and commodity prices. These combine to depress confidence, reduce real purchasing power, and squeeze margins.
Unfortunately, beyond this cycle, they have long-run implications….
Q: How significant a threat is inflation?
LEVY: It is a significant threat insofar as it is reducing real wages and purchasing power for consumers.
While most of the inflation pressures are stemming from higher prices for energy, commodities, and food, it is nevertheless the case that inflation is above the Federal Reserve’s objective.
Despite current economic weakness, it is very important that the higher energy, commodity, and food prices do not spread to higher inflation in other goods and services.
It is also crucially important that inflationary expectations do not jump up, which would result in higher bond yields.
For these reasons, the Fed has tilted its concerns toward fighting inflation. Amid economic weakness, this may seem odd, but it’s really the right thing to do….
33. “Idea of expanding federal role in siting
lines, especially for renewables, is gaining ground”
(Electric Utility Week,
By Kathy Larsen, Dipka Bhambhani
The idea of increasing the federal role in siting transmission lines may have developed significant enough substance in Washington that even if it does not get far any time soon, it could have a place in serious discussions for some time to come….
Larry Bruneel, vice president of federal affairs for ITC Transmission, and Rob Gramlich, policy director at the American Wind Energy Association, met last week with other industry representatives to talk about developing a plan aimed at a national strategy enabling incorporation of more wind farms, solar energy facilities and other types of renewables into the power grid….
Rob Gramlich, AWEA’s policy director, echoed Bruneel’s view that the grid needs more of a federal role in order to ramp up the contribution that renewables make to the energy mix. DOE’s recent projection that the country could get 20% of its power from wind by 2030 is driving a good deal of the talks in that direction.
“I just think there’s a lot of growing common interest in transmission interstate highways under any future carbon-constrained scenario,” he said. “We think a lot can be done at the state [but] there are really limitations.” AWEA is leading the transmission expansion effort, he said, but it would also benefit other renewables.
“We’re brainstorming with a lot of folks about that at this point,” he said. “There’s a wide range of opinions” and “no organization in these meetings.”…
Although the 20%-wind-by-2030 figure strikes many as fantasy — a top executive at FPL Energy, the country’s biggest wind developer, recently said it simply could not happen — the projection has generated a lot of interest. “We’re talking to a lot of state entities, a lot of different parties on the 20% vision and what it implies,” AWEA’s Gramlich said.
According to Gramlich, one of the biggest impediments to expanding the grid is the issue of cost recovery, or figuring out who will pay for new transmission lines. The second-biggest hurdle is delay and opposition involved in the state siting process. Both issues are fraught with difficulty.
Still, Gramlich said, “a lot of people are coming to the common
conclusion” that there needs to be a “much bigger interstate transmission
network” to accommodate renewable sources on the grid. A renewable-friendly
grid would allow the
“We support more federal involvement. Congress should use their authority,” he said.
Gramlich is a member of DOE’s new Electricity Advisory Committee, which reports to [DOE’s assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, Kevin] Kolevar. The group met for the first time last month to talk about how to modernize the grid to meet growing electricity needs….
34. “
By Daniel Borenstein, Times columnist
Winning might not be everything, but it’s becoming much more
important at
The university is about to sign another large long-term athletic contract, this one with new basketball coach Michael Montgomery, who will take in at least $1.7 million annually over the next six years. That‘s 61 percent more than his predecessor, Ben Braun, received last year. And it follows the seven-year contract renewal UC Berkeley inked with football coach Jeff Tedford that paid $2.8 million last year.
The
Thus far, the university has shown significant gains. In the first five years since Tedford was hired in 2002, donations to the department jumped 76 percent. And the football program, which was struggling financially, now turns an annual $9 million profit. In addition, the athletic department has raised pledges for about $100 million of the roughly $400 million it needs to fund a new training facility and renovations to the football stadium….
The good news is that Barbour has brought the subsidy down from $13 million three years earlier. The bad news is that there are no plans to eliminate it…
But, perhaps, at a time when other departments in the university are being forced to trim staff, there needs to be some belt-tightening in the athletics department as well. Moreover, that subsidy is certain to rise if the football and basketball teams aren’t successful — and fail to draw the major donors as planned.
A greater subsidy means less money for other programs or more tax revenues. So for now, let’s all hope that the Bears do well. Just win, baby.
35. “With pickup sales down, automakers shift plans”
(Associated Press,
By Tom Krisher; Associated Press
On this morning in the middle of May, the man who heads Ford Motor Co.‘s Americas operations has seen enough.
The line on a chart showing subcompact car sales for the first two weeks of the month goes almost straight up. The one for pickup trucks, Ford‘s biggest profit center, runs almost straight down.
High gasoline prices and the economic downturn are changing the market far faster than anyone anticipated. Without action, Ford would be making too many trucks and not enough cars, a recipe for a balance sheet peppered with parentheses….
Eleven miles away at General Motors Corp., they were reaching the same conclusions….
While both companies say they took quick action, critics wonder why they didn‘t make more fuel-efficient vehicles sooner. After all, there were many signs that gas prices would do nothing but rise.
“Obviously they were making just too much money off their SUVs and pickups,” said Roland Hwang, vehicle policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They couldn’t really fully conceive of a world where they would have to rapidly extricate themselves from those markets and those profits.”…
Ford was first, announcing on May 22 that it would
dramatically cut truck and SUV production and slash its salaried work force…. A
week later, Ford announced accelerated plans for a super-compact car to be
built in
GM followed with larger, more specific cuts, announcing at its annual shareholders meeting June 3 that it would close four truck and SUV factories, cutting more than 8,000 jobs. The company … also announced it would build a new small car in the U.S., powered by a 1.4-liter four-cylinder engine capable of getting up to 45 miles per gallon of gas.
Whether Ford, GM and Chrysler LLC can go forward fast enough remains to be seen. But even Hwang of the Natural Resources Defense Council says he thinks the companies will have a brighter future because they are more focused on fuel economy.
“There’s no reason why
36. “
By Lisa M. Krieger, Mercury News
Originally serving a largely white population, Foothill increasingly attracts more Asian and Pacific Islander students. Its share of Hispanic and African-American students is climbing more gradually.
About half of its students are under 25—typical college age.
Of these, an increasing number are suburban students who are ready for University of California, California State University or private universities, but seek to save money and boost academic readiness in Foothill‘s small classes. Living at home, often while working part time, they use Foothill as a place to satisfy general educational requirements—then transfer.
‘‘As the tuition has been going up more steeply in four-year institutions, community colleges are an increasingly attractive alternative for savvy kids who want to save money,” said Nancy Shulock, a CSU-Sacramento professor who studies educational trends….
37. “Base tracks its CO2 ‘bootprint’”
(Los Angeles Times,
By DeeDee Correll, Times Staff Writer
Army Specialist Jesse Baker works on a Humvee with the help of Private Francis Eaton at
This post south of
This year, the mountain post, home to 18,500 troops, got the first glimpse of its impact: 200,000 tons of carbon emissions last year….
At
Over the last several years,
Army officials also are considering ways to encourage less driving, such as carpooling and telecommuting for some workers, [Tad Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for environment, safety and occupational health] said.
But the military fleet of tanks, Humvees and other vehicles poses a particular challenge, and it will be difficult for the Army to reduce its carbon “bootprint” without addressing vehicle emissions, said Derik Broekhoff, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute, an environmental think-tank. He noted that the 30% reduction goal is higher than most companies attempt.
One option is to cut overall activity levels, something the Army can’t necessarily do, he said. Others would be trying to improve gas mileage or switching to low-carbon fuels.
“That would require upgrading or replacing equipment, moving to hybrid technologies or lighter-weight equipment, which might not be a desirable trade-off,” Broekhoff said….
38. “Summer Fieldwork Funded in
- Terry Cooper and Christopher
Weare of the
[For more information, visit http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=1071 ]
39. “A positive outcome is in the air ** One deregulation
benefit is a boost for wind generation” (Morning Call, (
By Sam Kennedy of The Morning Call
… Deregulation’s impact on coal use is unclear, but it has turned out to encourage the exploitation of another energy source that many environmentalists do support: wind.
Four more facilities under construction are expected to come
online by the end of the year. The only northeastern state with more wind power
is
“It’s not a coincidence that prior to this act [deregulation], we had none. And after this act, we have a lot,” said John Hanger, president of the environmental organization PennFuture….
Suddenly, with the rising price of electricity, wind farms can expect to recoup their start-up costs in a fraction of the time that used to be required.
But deregulation, which kicks into full gear in 2010 with the end of electricity rate caps, has also helped. By ending state-sanctioned utility monopolies, it gives wind farms direct access to environment-minded consumers willing to pay a premium for “green” power.
“The voluntary market for renewable energy is very big and
has great prospects,” said Rob Gramlich, policy director at the American Wind Energy
Association in
For example, dozens of universities throughout the state now use wind power to satisfy a portion of their energy needs. Thousands of individual consumers do so as well….
40. “S.F.: Volunteer cleanup on Sunset Blvd.” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
--Jonathan Curiel
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
S.F. boulevard to get a working-over: It‘s one of the longest
stretches of green space in San Francisco, a corridor of almost 20 blocks that
connects Lake Merced to Golden Gate Park, but mention “Sunset Boulevard“ to people in the city, and they‘re just as likely to think
of the famous Los Angeles thoroughfare that cuts through Beverly Hills. L.A.‘s and S.F.‘s Sunset Boulevards
have two things in common: They‘re usually traversed by motor vehicle, and they
can be rough around the edges. In the case of
41. “Two-thirds vote rule creates budget mess” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
No new taxes: Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines, R-Clovis, lays down the law.
Editor
- The rerun of California‘s annual budget spectacle reflects poorly on this
state and makes good governance even harder than it needs to be.
California‘s real budget difficulties are only compounded by voting requirements that have entrenched a tyranny of the minority. In theory, California‘s requirement for a two-thirds supermajority would lead to a budget that reflects widespread support; in practice, it means accepting the most narrow, least irresponsible accommodations to get a vote or two.
This year, Republican Minority Leader Mike Villines seems to be focusing on everything but the budget, including overtime, allowing more global warming and more diesel emissions. In short, the Legislature‘s most important act is being held hostage to leverage unrelated bad ideas. It is long past time to balance the books of democracy and do what virtually every other state does: majority rule.
STEVE LINSEY [Sr.
economist, State of
42. “Researchers boost hybrid to 100 mpg“ (Daily
Times-Call (
By Judith Kohler, The Associated Press
GOLDEN — Tony Markel glides his car
to a quiet stop and checks the mileage racked up during a brief spin around his
suburban
That‘s no surprise. He used almost no gas in the ride around the National Renewable Energy Laboratory grounds. For months now, Markel, a senior NREL engineer, has been driving a plug-in hybrid that gets 100 mpg.
Other researchers have reached that threshold. But the 2006 Toyota Prius hybrid Markel drives isn‘t exactly standard issue. Its 9 kilowatt-hour, lithium-ion battery pack puts out six times the power of a standard Prius battery. It also has solar panels inlaid on the roof that can generate about 165 watts of electricity.
With oil at more than $130 a barrel, the auto industry is pressing to get fuel-efficient hybrids that recharge from an electric outlet, electric cars and fuel-cell hybrids to market. …
The work at NREL and other national labs, including the Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago, is critical to improving the technology, said Luke Tonachel, a vehicles analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We need to get these vehicles on the road,“ Tonachel said….
43. “Business Briefs for
The Santa Barbara Foundation recently welcomed two new program officers: Emilie Neumann and Diahnna Núñez.
A native Santa Barbaran, Neumann returned to the area from
She also has experience in the public sector as a senior
analyst for Arts, Cultural Institutions & Libraries for
She will be responsible for two of the foundation’s five grant cycles as well as the summer campership and sports scholarship program and fund distributions….
44. “Assisted-living facility tries to evict 99-year-old
woman on Medicaid” (Seattle Times,
By Maureen O’Hagan:
Gene Robertson kisses his mother, Cordelia, who faces eviction from Franklin House in Sumner.
The 99-year-old spent her life savings on care there and is now on Medicaid.
The facility says it’s reducing its number of Medicaid residents. (Jim Bates/The
The notice came in early May, two days after her 99th birthday: Cordelia Robertson was going to be evicted.
The assisted-living facility she loved, the place she called home for a decade and where she had exhausted her life savings, was kicking her out.
Robertson hadn’t broken the rules at Franklin House. Instead, after paying her own way for years, she ran out of money and had to enroll in Medicaid, the government program that funds health services for low-income people. But the facility, in Sumner, didn’t want more Medicaid patients….
It’s a problem that is expected to grow as assisted-living facilities grapple with a financial reality: They earn less from Medicaid than they do from private-paying clients….
Exact numbers are hard to come by but, in general, facilities earn less from Medicaid clients than from those who pay themselves.
According to Bill Moss, director of the state’s Home and Community Services Division, assisted-living facilities get between $65 and $163 a day for each Medicaid patient, depending on the level of care.
Jeff Crollard, a lawyer for the family, figures it would be around $100 a day for Robertson.
The industry says it doesn’t make money on these clients….
By May, [Assisted Living Concepts (ALC), which owns Franklin House] said [Cordelia Robertson] was nearly $20,000 in arrears. It filed an eviction notice and had scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
But at the last minute, the company canceled the hearing. The battle isn’t finished; the company still says Cordelia Robertson owes the money.
She can’t be removed unless the company proves its case in court. Crollard, the family’s lawyer, thinks she has a good chance of winning.
Crollard says other elderly people are vulnerable, too. “The underlying issue is not going to go away,” he said.
45. “The Big Fix: A rough, relaxed commute - Drive is a
breeze for some, grind for others” (Sacramento Bee,
By Tony Bizjak
Commuter traffic returned to downtown Sacramento Monday—the first serious test for Interstate 5‘s Big Fix closure—and results were mixed….
Some drivers reported sailing through typically congested
corridors, such as Highway 99. Others found unexpected gridlock on midtown
streets heading north toward Highway 160 and the Capital City Freeway, and on
Traffic officials and commuters were pleased with Monday‘s general lack of drama.
“People really responded well,“ Caltrans’ [Mark] Dinger said.
State transportation officials said it appears some state workers took Monday off as part of the regular flex-schedules. Elaine Hussey [who works for the Integrated Waste Management Board], for one, stayed home in south Sacramento—working well, she said, to the booming “1812 Overture“—but will be back at work today.
“I‘ll try some of my regular streets,“ she said. “But I might just take the bus.“…
46. “Community College Transfer Mess” (Washington Post,
By Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer, washingtonpost.com
Like many community college students, Josie Showers saw her
classes at Jefferson Community and
After she transferred to the
This is only one of several revelations in an investigative
report on the community college transfer system by Louisville Courier-Journal
reporter Nancy C. Rodriguez, made possible by a fellowship from the Hechinger
Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College,
A series by another Hechinger participant, Contra Costa Times
reporter Matt Krupnick, shows similarly distressing
failures in
…Is this the best our colleges can do?
47. “In inaugural meeting, DOE advisory group mulls big
changes for
By Dipka Bhambhani
The Energy Department‘s new electricity advisory committee met for the first time last week to hammer out goals it thinks will help DOE modernize the country‘s electric grid.
DOE formed the committee in April in an effort to help the department address rising fuel prices, the costs of technology and problems with transmission expansion, all of which have contributed to the uncertainty in electricity delivery.
In the course of a casual roundtable discussion at a Virginia
hotel Tuesday, one member of the 30-member advisory committee suggested a
complete redesign of the
… [Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration] said before tackling the symptoms of an antiquated grid, the government needs to fix the root cause of the problem: a patchwork grid that does not facilitate transmission expansion and adequate supply, and has different governance structures….
Woolf told the committee that the patchwork represents a “major market failure or governmental failure.“
But Rob Gramlich, the executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, said the task is too big for the advisory committee. “I don‘t think we’re going to get very far on that,” he said.
Gramlich, who previously served as an adviser to former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood, said, “I don’t think at lot of states would view us as an appropriate group to deal with deregulation of electric markets.”
“People have very strong feelings on both sides, and it is up to the states to figure out how they want their state to [operate],” Gramlich said….
48. “
By Christine Cordner
Center for Clean Air
Policy President Ned Helme said May 7 that the
leading
“Protecting US jobs is an important goal, and the border adjustment in the bill [by US senators Joseph Lieberman, Independent-Connecticut, and John Warner, Republican-Virginia] could help ensure that a national climate policy doesn‘t worsen our competitive position relative to the major developing countries,“ Helme said, speaking at the Nuclear Energy Institute‘s Energizing a Low-Carbon Future conference in Chicago.
“However, we should be under no illusions from a climate change perspective as the border adjustment will not drive the significant reductions in GHG emissions needed from developing countries,” he said. “They need incentives to build upon their current unilateral actions.”
Up for a US Senate floor vote in June, S. 2191 includes a
“border adjustment” trade provision that would require importers of goods from
countries that have not taken actions comparable to those taken in the
Since industrial exports to the
Washington-based non-profit policy group CCAP thus supports a
sector-based approach to reducing GHG emissions, Helme said. Under that design,
financial or technology assistance would be provided to developing countries as
long as they are reducing emissions as fast as
Helme said this is “a win-win approach” that offers a bridge to slow emissions growth until developing countries are willing and able to make firm or hard emission targets….
49. “Planners will present draft plan for Charlotte Pike
corridor” (Tennessean,
By Nancy DeVille
Metro planners will discuss a draft corridor design plan for several neighborhoods along Charlotte Pike at a community meeting on Monday, May 12….
Since January, the Metro Planning Department has been working
with residents, property owners, institutional leaders and business owners
along
“The Charlotte Avenue-Richland Park corridor study meetings have been well-attended and generated a lot of conversation about how to guide future growth and development to create a corridor that serves as both a throughway for traffic and a destination for surrounding neighborhoods to shop, play and live,“ said Jennifer Carlat, community plans manager with Metro Planning.
“This draft plan (presented at Monday‘s meeting) will remain static for some time so the community has time to read and absorb it, and so planning staff can meet with and get comments from all the stakeholders.” …
50. “Charter school bill’s sponsor now its foe. LEGISLATION:
It was supposed to help board members with financial stakes in charter schools”
(Press-Enterprise, (
By Shirin Parsavand, The Press-Enterprise
A group representing the state‘s charter schools was thrown for a loop when the bill it asked a legislator to carry ended up being much more restrictive than expected.
The California Charter Schools Association asked Assemblywoman
Bonnie Garcia,
The
In September, a grand jury handed down a 117-count indictment against the school‘s founder, Charles Steven Cox, and Tad Theron Honeycutt, a Hesperia councilman who ran businesses connected to the schools.
They are accused of illegally transferring $5.5 million from the academy to private, for-profit management companies they created to sell supplies and services back to the school….
Garcia’s bill, AB 1772, originally would have required that no more than 49 percent of a charter school‘s board be made up of staff or those with a financial interest in the school.
The new version would prohibit charter school board members from holding any financial interest in the school. Charter schools would have to comply with the same conflict-of-interest laws affecting public schools….
… [T]he San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools office and the California School Boards Association support holding charter school boards to the same standards as public school district boards.
“We think it’s better for the school, better for the
taxpayer,” said Brian Rivas, senior
legislative advocate for the
51. “Speakers: NatGas Demand Poised
For Explosive Generation Growth” (Natural Gas Week,
By Michael Sultan,
“We always predict natural gas prices incorrectly,” said MIT economics professor, Paul Joskow, at EIA‘s 2008 Energy Conference held recently in Washington.
And if you believe Joskow and many other conference speakers, predicting the course of natural gas prices is only going to get harder. Market uncertainty—a force for higher prices by itself—is expected to ratchet up from many directions.
According to Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, what is greatly complicating natural gas forecasting is that natural gas and other energy commodities have “emerged as a distinctive financial class.”…
One panel of experts at EIA’s gathering tackled the question “New Baseload Generation: Coal or Nuclear?” and came up with an interesting answer: natural gas.
The uncertainties of future coal and nuclear generation led several experts to put natural gas on notice….
How do natural gas forecasters navigate these turbulent waters ahead?
First, do no harm. Forecasters and others should avoid adding to the generalized “suspicion“ in markets left over from the heyday of Enron, according to William Hederman, energy policy specialist at the Congressional Research Service.
Hederman insists on clarity when explaining natural gas prices to the public—not to leave the public and/or market players thinking that the cause of their troubles is some ill-defined “bigger force.”…
52. “First U.S. Trades Reveal Details of Emerging Carbon Market; Federal politicians and regulators to influence regional markets RGGI likely to remain over-allocated in 2008” (Business Wire, April 8, 2008); story citing EMILIE MAZZACURATI (MPP 2007).
WASHINGTON -- Point Carbon, a world-leading provider of independent analysis and consulting services for governments and companies in the global power, gas and carbon markets, today released the first “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) Market Brief,” analyzing the current state of this impending market. The report focuses on the recent execution of the first two compliance trades and the release of 2007 emissions numbers, providing an outlook for the RGGI market in 2008.
The first two trades of RGGI allowances were announced in the
past month, establishing the first ever
By engaging in trading now, companies are gaining exposure to the markets and establishing themselves as market makers….
Emission data certainly sends a bearish signal. According to 2007 emission data recently released by the EPA, emissions had increased by 6.5 percent, which is still well below the cap set for the year….
However, federal regulatory developments actually create a bullish signal for the RGGI market. If investors feel that a federal program will preempt a RGGI reassessment in 2012, prices could also be driven up or down significantly depending on how RGGI allowances are merged into a federal program.
“It‘s important that federal regulators monitor the regional RGGI market as they shape the federal cap-and-trade system,” said Emilie Mazzacurati, Senior Analyst, Point Carbon. “Their decisions are going to be a driving factor in pricing RGGI allowances.”…
53. “Regional US Carbon Market Could Prompt Federal System”
(Securities Industry News,
By Joan R. Magee
Although the U.S. pioneered the cap-and-trade approach for
sulfur dioxide in the 1990s and boasts the world‘s oldest carbon
marketplace—the Chicago Climate Exchange—it remains the only industrialized
nation that hasn‘t ratified the Kyoto Protocol… Despite the lack of an official
limit on emissions in the
Early action, market speculation and first-mover status are
luring some investors to the young
The U.S. could learn from Europe‘s experience. Despite its current strength, the European carbon market froze up in April 2006, leaving investors unable to roll over their credits and dampening confidence. Observers note that the crash was partly caused by the European governments’ dependency on a variety of conflicting estimates when they set up the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). Phase one of the ETS launched in January 2005. “They relied on estimates from each facility, from industry sectors, and then at the state level, that got aggregated at the European level,” says Emilie Mazzacurati, senior analyst at Point Carbon. “All market players that contributed to these estimates of their own emissions wanted to be on the safe side and had probably overestimated their emissions. When companies had to turn in their emission inventories and their allowances at the end of the first compliance year, the market was shown to be largely over-allocated, with 10 percent more allowances than emissions.”…
54. “World Energy and Point Carbon to Host Webinar: ‘Climate Change Policy and the 2008 Presidential
Election’” (Market News Publishing,
World Energy Solutions, Inc., a leading operator of online
exchanges for energy and environmental commodities, will co-host with Point
Carbon a new webinar, “Climate Change Policy and the
2008 Presidential Election,” on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. EDT. The
complimentary webinar will feature an overview of the
current status and future direction of
In this complimentary, one hour webinar, join Point Carbon’s Veronique Bugnion and Emilie Mazzacurati as they discuss the current status and direction of US climate change policy. They’ll delve into each of the presidential candidates’ positions on cap-and-trade programs and renewable energy subsidies….
They’ll also review the climate change legislation debated by the Senate in early June that would have created a national cap-and-trade scheme for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 63% below 2005 levels by 2050. Although the bill did not receive the needed votes to move to final consideration, it will certainly be revisited in the future. Veronique and Emilie will discuss what changes might occur to the bill after the election, and how such a bill may affect the cleantech industry and the economy in general….
55. “From Welfare Shift
in ’96, ’08 Reminder for
By Peter S. Goodman
President Bill Clinton signed legislation in 1996
overhauling the welfare system. (Paul Hosefros/The
New York Times)
In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance.
Despite the criticism and anxiety from the left, the legislation came to be viewed as one of Mr. Clinton’s signature achievements. It won broad bipartisan praise, with some Democrats relieved that it took a politically difficult issue off the table for them, and many liberals came to accept if not embrace it….
But now the issue is back, pulled to the fore by an economy turning down more sharply than at any other time since the welfare changes were imposed….
In the interview, conducted last month, Mrs. Clinton said she had followed through on her promise to address what she viewed as shortcomings in the welfare law after being elected to the Senate in 2000. She said she had pressed for legislation that would have increased financing for child care for poor mothers by up to $11 billion, seeking to expand food stamps, and allowing welfare recipients to draw cash aid while attending school.
Those provisions were blocked by the Republican leadership….
Many welfare advocates dispute Mrs. Clinton’s characterization. Since entering the Senate, they say, she has shown a predilection for compromise at the expense of the poor.
When the overhaul bill came up for reauthorization, Sandra Chapin, a former welfare recipient affiliated with a coalition called Welfare Made a Difference, lobbied Congress to allow more women to attend college while they received aid. Mrs. Clinton “wouldn’t have anything to do with it,” Ms. Chapin said.
Ms. Chapin, now program director of the Consumer Federation of California, posted an e-mail message to a discussion board in February accusing Mrs. Clinton of having “had a hand in devaluing motherwork in this country, and no doubt sending thousands of children and their families deeper into poverty.”…
56. “Forum a success” (Times-Herald (
The North Vallejo Health Collaborative held a wildly
successful community forum and celebration at
The forum was to gather input on priorities for the Healthy
Start grant and for the
We are grateful to: … Deanna Niebuhr [Director of Programs at Bay Area Health Partnership] for organizing refreshments….
MaBella Gonzales, Principal,
57. “Doing PR for state is big job, pros say” (Albuquerque
Tribune,
By Maggie Shepard
Regardless of whether taxpayers read, watch or even care about the news, they are paying for it.
Public information officers — the people responsible for connecting
the media and citizens at large with information — cost
While the annual millions spent for these communication specialists might seem like a lot of money, even the most stringent advocates for lean government say it is likely money well spent.
“Transparency is extremely important, and $5 million is a drop in the bucket,” said Paul Gessing, president of the limited government research group New Mexico Rio Grande Foundation, noting the state’s $6 billion budget….
“If we’re all honest and professional, the public is going to have maximum information and our political and commercial systems will work well,” [Dirk Gibson, associate professor for public relations at the University of New Mexico‘s Communication and Journalism Department] said. “Public interest has to be number one.”
But department spokesmen also are responsible for managing their employers’ public image, both through media campaigns and when the department surfaces in news stories….
“It’s crucial that we have someone to articulate to the public what the department is doing, because state government does a lot of important things,“ said Jan Goodwin, secretary of the Department of Taxation and Revenue….
High-earning PIOs in
1.
“Power Struggle: Alternative Energy Looks to New Administration, Congress for
Progress” (Center for Responsive Politics, OpenSecrets.org,
Published by Lauren Pick
on
Long in the shadow of traditional energy sources, alternative energy has come into the spotlight as a potential energy crisis looms. For some producers of alternative energy sources, this is the perfect time to promote their legislative wish list—and spend more money than they ever have before to do it….
According to [Christine Real de Azua, assistant director of communications for The American Wind Energy Association], the first and most pertinent item on AWEA's policy agenda is an immediate extension of the federal production tax credit (PTC). The PTC rewards renewable energy producers that meet certain requirements with 2 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy they produce during a facility's first 10 years of operation. As it is now, the provision expires every one to two years and is expected to lapse this year. Along with another extension before the current credit expires, AWEA is seeking a long-term tax benefit in order to stabilize increased production of wind energy….
While the solar industry also benefits from the PTC, it is more focused on an extension of the solar investment tax credit (ITC), which also expires in December of this year, said Jared Blanton, a spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The ITC gives a 30 percent tax credit to families and businesses that install solar energy panels on their roofs. The measure that would have allowed the tax credit to be extended for eight years did not pass this summer….
Wind and solar power
have traditionally depended more on the tax credit because their prices are not
competitive with fossil fuels, compared to geothermal energy, which is
relatively inexpensive but harder to produce, said Lee Friedman, a professor at UC Berkeley’s
So far, Congress has not proposed any landmark legislation involving alternatives, and the clock is winding down for the 110th Congress. Lawmakers will soon depart to their districts for the August recess, followed by prime campaigning season for the November elections. Republicans and Democrats continue to bicker over energy legislation, especially dealing with offshore drilling and increased taxation for oil companies. This is keeping bills with amendments that call for an extension of the production tax credit from getting signed into law.
“I think and I hope that we don’t have too long to wait before we get good climate change legislation,” Friedman said, adding, “But I don’t think it will happen until we have the new administration.”
2. “Home Buying
Opportunities” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
As real estate prices continue to fall, Forum talks about what that means for those who don’t own homes. Falling prices and soaring rents can make it easier for first-time home buyers to enter the housing market.
Host: Michael Krasny
Guests:
• Carolyn Said, real estate writer for the San Francisco Chronicle
• John Quigley, professor of economics at UC
• Liz Stevens, owner of Windemere Real Estate
• Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union
JOHN QUIGLEY: “I think it’s really dangerous to try to time a housing market. It’s unlike a commodities market where you could move in and out quickly.”…
3. “
ROBERT REICH: Ordinarily, I’d never recommend you take a book by an economist to the beach. I wouldn’t even recommend you take an economist to the beach. The exception is Thorstein Veblen, and his book is “The Theory of the Leisure Class.”
Veblen wrote this classic in 1899, near the end of the Gilded Age when robber barons ran wild, but the book is just as fresh and relevant today. In Veblen’s view, the reason people seek great wealth has more to do with social status than purchasing power.
One way wealthy people show their superiority is through what he called “conspicuous leisure,” signaling they have so much wealth they don’t have to break a sweat….
The other way the rich show their superiority is through what Veblen called “conspicuous consumption.”…
Now what to do about the vast concentration of wealth and income that characterized the Gilded Age? Veblen was skeptical that government would do much. Just as they controlled big corporations and Wall Street, the wealthy also controlled government. In his words, “Representative government means, chiefly, representation of business interests.”…
Ryssdal:
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy
at the
4. “Candidates Return
Focus to Economy and Jobs” (New York Times,
By Larry Rohter
Senator Barack
Obama met in
Shifting the emphasis of
his campaign back to the deteriorating economy after a weeklong trip abroad,
Senator Barack Obama, the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, met in
In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, conducted July 7-14, more than half of the people surveyed cited an economic issue as the most important problem facing the country, compared with 7 percent before the 2006 midterm elections in which Democrats won control of Congress. The war in Iraq, which Mr. McCain has made the centerpiece of his campaign, was cited by just 13 percent of those polled as the issue of paramount concern to them….
5. “Bounds still making
a case for pre-kindergarten” (Associated Press,
By Shelia Byrd, Associated Press Writer
Mississippi Superintendent of Education Hank Bounds appeared discouraged by lawmakers’ response to his pitch for prekindergarten legislation during a committee meeting this past regular session.
Sen. Tom King, R-Petal, was one of the lawmakers resisting the idea. King’s contention was that parents should be responsible for preparing their children for school. Bounds had hit a brick wall — the same barrier pre-K proposals face year after year.
But by session’s end, lawmakers had done something unprecedented. They approved $3 million for the state Department of Human Services to use for two of its childcare education programs that had been funded through grants….
Indeed, the budget adopted for the current fiscal year gives level or reduced funding to many agencies.
Lawmakers were able to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program this year, but only through a shell game of diversions from other pots of money. MAEP is an equity funding formula for the state’s 152 school districts….
But it looks as if
Bounds isn’t letting them off that easy. He’s still making the case for a
state-funded pre-K program. At Bounds’ request, David L. Kirp, a University of
California-Berkeley professor, was in
Kirp has written the book, “The Sandbox Investment,” which touts the long-term economic benefits derived from pre-K programs, including reduced unemployment and crime rates….
6. “Obama’s biofuels policy tension. US presidential hopeful Barack Obama is coming under increasing pressure to change his policies on biofuels” (BBC News, July 28, 2008); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7529015.stm
By Roger Harrabin - BBC environment analyst
Senator Obama has been
a big supporter of corn subsidies for American farmers to produce the
plant-fuel ethanol.
But a new report from his own green adviser warns of the many problems associated with the biofuel.
Daniel Kammen’s paper says that a car will emit more greenhouse gases driving on corn ethanol processed with coal than it will using normal petrol.
The University of California, Berkeley, professor says the boom in subsidised American corn production is driving up the cost of animal feed—and forcing soy production to Brazil where it creates still more greenhouse gases if it is planted on virgin land.
Professor Kammen says much smarter biofuels policies are needed, but admits that the analysis of this highly complex field will prove very difficult.
“To address this clash of policies, views, economic valuations and environmental goals, a clear set of evaluation methodologies, and high-quality, open access to data will be required,” his paper adds….
Recently, [Obama] has been shifting position somewhat but we may not know until after the election how much he has been listening to Professor Kammen….
7. “
Guests:
• H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the California Department of Finance
• John Chiang, state controller
• John Ellwood, professor of public policy at UC
JOHN ELLWOOD: “The elephant in the room is health care…. The problem with a spending cap is that rising health care costs would eat up the budgets of all the other services….”
[In the discussion, a caller cited Next 10’s “California Budget Challenge”—designed by former state budget director, Tim Gage (MPP 1978); http://www.next10.org/budget/challenge.html ]
8. “Where’s My Summer
Vacation?” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH
(Marketplace [NPR],
ROBERT REICH: If you’re taking some time off this summer, you’re in the minority. A Conference Board poll last April found fewer than 40 percent of Americans planning a summer vacation….
Not incidentally, consumer confidence in the economy is the lowest it’s been in 28 years. In other words, there’s a correlation between the small number of Americans taking a vacation this summer and this very bad economy.
It’s not that we’re too busy to vacation. Just the opposite: There’s not enough work go around. Which means we don’t dare leave work, lest we lose us a customer who might just happen to want us when we’re gone. Or we could even lose the job, because employees on vacation might seem expendable to an employer looking for a way to cut costs.
Despite all this, Americans need a summer vacation. And any political candidate who aims to win votes this November would be wise to promise them one.
Moon: Robert Reich is a professor of public
policy at the
9. “Clean Tech: Power in
the Air” (Forbes,
--Sarah Terry-Cobo
Courtesy of Xcel Energy
GE is one of the many
companies playing a role in the debate over how to wean the
Those goals sound
audacious. Currently, wind, the fastest growing sector of renewable energy in
the
Even so, utility
industry experts as well as large producers such as GE Energy assert that all
the technological pieces exist to meet at least Picken’s
goals. “To get to [20% wind energy] is totally doable,” asserts Dan Kammen, a
professor specializing in energy at the
...”We must make producer tax credit permanent for a decade,” says Kammen, who worked on background to the pivotal wind energy study. “Otherwise we’re telling investors the wrong thing.”...
10. “Hickenlooper
confident city will be ready for convention—and world—despite changes” (Rocky
Mountain News,
By Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News
Is the city ready? …
Sixteen different
committees have tackled everything from police training to a convention-themed
film festival in the 18 months since
Yet the process hasn’t always been smooth, and loose ends remain—many critical to a successful convention, such as security and deciding how tickets will be distributed for Barack Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination at Invesco.
If things go poorly, it
could mean a permanent scar for the city and Obama,
said Henry Brady, a professor of political science and public policy at the
Think
On the other hand, if things go well, it could be a major boost for Obama and the city.
“Certainly planning to make it work well is important,” Brady said.
“This is the one time the (Democratic) party has the attention of the nation.”…
11. “Summer
shines on a bumper crop of new deans” (Berkeleyan,
By Carol Ness, Public Affairs
Seven new deans are taking the reins of leadership in time for the start of the fall semester in August — five of them permanently, and two on an interim basis….
At the
A specialist in urban economics
and the integration of real estate, mortgage, and financial markets, Quigley
holds appointments in the
Educated at the U.S. Air Force Academy (B.S. 1964), the University of Stockholm (M.Sc. ’85), and Harvard University (A.M. ’70, Ph.D. ’71), he taught at Yale and was visiting professor at the University of Gothenberg before coming to Berkeley in 1979. He serves as director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy.
12. “Carter’s oil crisis
warning went unheard” (Marketplace [NPR], American Public Media,
President Jimmy Carter delivers his “Crisis of Confidence” speech on
Twenty-nine years ago today, President Jimmy Carter told Americans that the energy crisis was “a clear and present danger to our nation” and drew out a plan to address it. Sustainability reporter Sam Eaton asks what happened….
DAN KAMMEN: History has born Carter to be dead on.
Dan Kammen is an energy policy expert at U.C. Berkeley. He says the image of President Carter wearing a cardigan sweater to stay warm may not have been very presidential, but his ideas were. In that same speech Carter proposed a cap on foreign oil imports and an ambitious conservation plan that included a 48-mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency standard for cars.
KAMMEN: If that amount of savings was going on,
Jerry Taylor with the
conservative CATO institute says Carter’s moratorium on foreign oil imports
would have devastated the
But unlike the energy crises of the late 1970, few are predicting that this one will go away. And if that’s the case, Berkeley’s Dan Kammen says the U.S, may need that cardigan sweater after all.
13. “Alameda County
General Assistance Cuts” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
Some
Guests:
• Jane Mauldon, associate professor of public policy in the
Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley
• Judith Gold, a lawyer with Heller Ehrman, LLP working on an Alameda County case involving social service cutbacks….
14. “Home Foreclosures on the Rise” (KCBS Radio,
Interview with Professor Larry Rosenthal, Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy:
“The problem is, I think, that the administration has moved very slowly and, as a result, won‘t be able to stop many of the foreclosures that are already in the pipeline.
“One of the reasons that the administration has moved at a snail’s pace is because there are very legitimate conflicts in the government, and you‘ll see these drawn out in the presidential campaign, regarding how interventionist the government should really be.”…
15. “How disasters help. Natural disasters can give a boost
to the countries where they occur — and sometimes, the more the better” (The
Boston Globe,
By Drake Bennett
Devastating disasters
like the earthquake that hit
THE EARTHQUAKE THAT struck
If the Chinese government is to be believed, the earthquake also did something else: it helped the country’s economy. A little over a month after the quake, the State Information Center, a Chinese government research body, announced that the massive rebuilding effort, and the billions of dollars it would pump into the Chinese economy, would far outweigh the economic losses from the quake, enough to bump up national economic growth by 0.3 percent — a small but not insignificant part of a 2008 growth rate most estimates put at just under 10 percent….
In fact, some economists argue that hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, ice storms, and the like, despite the widespread destruction they leave behind — indeed, largely because of it — can spur economic growth….
Studies have found that earthquakes in
Of course, even analysts of the “creative destruction” school don’t see disasters as good things — disasters kill people, often in great numbers, and uproot many more….
Nonetheless, a recovery planned only to maximize growth might well conflict with more basic humanitarian concerns. Those most in need of help and resources in the wake of a disaster — the poor and the uninsured near-poor — are going to contribute the least to growing the economy as it recovers. On the other hand, those best equipped to find opportunities for growth in the rubble — large corporations and the wealthy — are also those best able to survive the catastrophe on their own.
“If you took all the disaster relief money and gave it out to
the corporations affected, you will have spent a lot of money very intelligently
in terms of urban growth,” says Larry
Rosenthal, executive director of the program on housing and urban policy at the
16. “Questions for Robert
Reich: Short-Straw Economics” (New York Times Magazine,
Interview by Deborah Solomon
Q: You’re a professor of public policy at
ROBERT REICH: Now that gas is at $4 a gallon, people are deserting their cars for trains and buses and, where available, light rail. We haven’t seen a transition on this scale away from cars ever before.
Q: But you can’t take light rail to most backyard picnics in
REICH: No, public
transit has been the poor stepchild of infrastructure spending in
Q: What do you make of the argument that the only way to lessen our dependence on foreign oil is to tap more oil wells here — in Alaska and off the coasts of Florida and California?
REICH: When you consider that the oil we pump goes into a global oil market, offshore drilling makes no sense. We take the environmental risk, but we’d have to share the negligible price gains with Chinese consumers and every other user around the world.
Q: Then why do you think President Bush asked Congress last month to lift the longtime ban on offshore oil drilling?
REICH: If I had to guess, I would say that President Bush is very close to the oil companies and wants whatever they want.
Q: And what they want is license to drill?
REICH: I think they would like as many licenses and permits as possible granted during the Bush administration. They know they would have a harder time with a Democratic White House….
17. “Il supercapitalismo sta stritolando la democrazia“ (La Stampa,
-Maurizio Molinari
Il supercapitalismo
sta stritolando la democrazia e gli unici che possono
difenderla sono i cittadini. E’ questa l’idea-guida di Robert Reich, economista dell’Università di Berkeley, ex Segretario
Che cos’è il supercapitalismo e perché ci minaccia?
«Rispetto al capitalismo che abbiamo avuto in passato quello odierno è supercompetitivo.
Le tariffe di accesso ai mercati
sono basse, i consumatori posso
scegliere prodotti in ogni angolo
18. “Country Unlikely to Meet Health Sector MDGS“ (The Daily Monitor (
U.N.‘s Millennium Development Goals are meant to be reached 2015 when there is supposed to be enough doctors to meet overall global needs, but Ethiopia has been rated as one of the countries to still be far short in that regard, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts said on Wednesday.
In the latest WHO bulletin, researchers from the U.N. agency
and the
“International aid to
“Given the disproportionate burden of disease in this region, policies for increasing the supply of physicians are urgently needed to stem projected shortages,“ they said.
“Government and donor organisations should consider increasing financial support of health-care workers as a means of improving recruitment and retention.“ It said efforts to connect African hospitals with laboratories and experts abroad through the Internet and phone, known as “telemedicine,” may also help ease cost pressures in countries that lack skilled medical personnel, the report concluded….
19. “Congress’s summer job: The economy” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH; (Marketplace [NPR],
Robert Reich: The economy is failing, but it‘s now clear the Fed won‘t revive it. It figures if it cuts interest rates, global investors will move their money out of dollars, causing the dollar to drop further, meaning more inflation as the price of everything we buy from the rest of the world, including much of our oil, rises even faster.
Yet American consumers cannot stimulate the economy on their own because they don‘t have any money left. And exports can‘t make up the difference. So how to get back on track?
Blue Dog Democrats, Calvin Coolidge Republicans and Ross Perot Independents all must understand the critical importance of a fiscal stimulus right now. And it has to be on the right scale. Distributing those little stimulus checks last month was like dispensing aspirin for pneumonia: momentary relief for a whole system desperately sick....
In other words, now that the Fed‘s hands are tied, we need a bold fiscal policy, a stimulus large enough to get the economy moving again and a progressive tax system large enough to keep it moving. The question is how low the economy will have to sink before there‘s political will to do this.
Moon: Robert Reich
teaches public policy at the
20. “CARB Vets Greenhouse-Gas Market Design Issues” (California Energy Markets, May 30, 2008, No. 978, pp. 1, 6-7); story citing LEE FRIEDMAN.
The article reports Lee Friedman’s presentation to the California Air Resources Board, during which he discussed the differences between a carbon fee approach and a cap-and-trade approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
21. “Governors Seek to Boost Clean Energy
Research, Development and Demonstration” (National Governors Association, March
25, 2008); news release citing DAN
KAMMEN; http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.6c9a8a9ebc6ae07eee28aca9501010a0/?vgnextoid=baf5ab44ab2d8110VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD&vgnextchannel=4b18f074f0d9ff00VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD
SEATTLE—As part of the National
Governors Association’s (NGA) Securing a Clean Energy Future Initiative (SCEF
Initiative), NGA Chair Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty
and Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire today convened a
summit in
“Creating a cleaner, more secure and more independent energy future is one of the most urgent challenges facing our nation,” said Gov. Pawlenty. “Reducing our reliance on foreign sources of energy and building a clean energy infrastructure will improve our national security, our economic well-being and our quality of life. States are well-positioned to lead the way as we Americanize our energy sources and grow related jobs and our economy.”
The two-day summit featured a keynote address by Dan Kammen, distinguished professor of energy at the University of California–Berkeley, who shared insights into evaluating the return on public and private investments in clean energy RD&D and described how state clean and renewable energy research programs can bolster state economic and environmental goals….
[In July, Governor Pawlenty, as chair of the National Governor’s Association, released a report, authored by Dan Kammen, Amber Kerr and Stephen Portis from ERG/RAEL, and McAlister Clabaugh (MPP 2008), “Securing a Clean Energy Future: Opportunities for States in Clean Energy Research, Development & Demonstration.” It will be part of the National Governors Association program for the fall political season.]
March 25-26 Dan Kammen gave the keynote address,
“What is the Case for State RD&D,” at the “State Workshop on Clean Energy
Research, Development and Demonstration,” co-chaired by Governor Tim Pawlenty and Governor Chris Gregoire. Dan Kammen also
moderated the panel on “How Do Public-Private Rd&D
Parnerships Support State Clean Energy And Economic
Development Goals?”, Seattle, WA; http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.9123e83a1f6786440ddcbeeb501010a0/?vgnextoid=aca5e8f41e1f8110VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD&vgnextchannel=4b18f074f0d9ff00VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD
Lee S. Friedman, “Should California Include Motor Vehicle Fuels in
a Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Program?” (June 2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1162865
Margaret R. Taylor, “Beyond Technology-Push and Demand-Pull: Lessons
from California’s Solar Policy” (July 31, 2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1193446
To view a complete list
of GSPP videos, visit our Events Archive at: http://gspp.berkeley.edu/news-events/archive.html
Recent events viewable
on UC Webcast: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/archive.php?select2=36
If you
would like further information about any of the above, or hard copies of cited articles, we’d be happy to provide them.
We are always delighted to receive your material for inclusion in the Digest. Please email the editor at wong23@berkeley.edu .
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Annette Doornbos
Director of External Relations and Development