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eDIGEST March 2007

UPCOMING EVENTS

1. “Faculty forum on Energy Biosciences Institute”

March 8, 4-6 p.m., Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center

A faculty forum will discuss issues relating to the selection of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to share $500 million in research funding to create an Energy Biosciences Institute. A real-time webcast of the forum will be available at webcast.berkeley.edu/events.

Invited panelists (among others):

--Robert Reich of the Goldman School of Public Policy

--David Vogel, professor of business

Moderated by Linda Schacht of the Graduate School of Journalism

Additional information: academic-senate.berkeley.edu

2. “The Social Impact of Political Cartoon Journalism” - A Conversation with Kal Kallaugher of The Economist

Interviewed by Anat Shenker (MPP 2005)

March 22, 2007, 6:00 p.m. presentation, 7:00 p.m. reception; Room 250 & GSPP Living Room

Please RSVP by March 7: reply by email: doornbos@berkeley.edu or by phone at 510-642-8005.

3. ANNUAL WILDAVSKY FORUM: “War, Crime, Terror, Law: The Post-9/11 Constitution”

Kathleen M. Sullivan, Professor of Law & Director of the Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School

April 12, 7:30 pm, Booth Auditorium, Boalt School of Law, UC Berkeley

WILDAVSKY FORUM DISCUSSION SESSION with Faculty Panel

April 13, 9-11 a.m. at the Goldman School, Rm. 355

Preceded by 8:30 continental breakfast

4. Commencement Exercises of the Class of 2007

May 19, 2007 – time & location TBA

QUICK REFERENCE LIST

In addition to the print media referenced below, broadcast media coverage includes numerous interviews with DEAN NACHT by KRON TV, KGO TV and KTVU, among others.

ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS

1. “Mixed results in workers’ comp poll” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 23, 2007); story citing FRANK NEUHAUSER (MPP 1993); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/23/BUGKCO9MAM1.DTL&type=printable

2. “Analyst: Red ink’s ahead. Shortfall in tax revenues may mean $700 million deficit, legislators told” (Sacramento Bee, February 22, 2007); story citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/127156.html

3. “Prison bed surplus is predicted. Legislative analyst cites building plans, sentencing changes” (Sacramento Bee, February 22, 2007); story citing BRIAN BROWN (MPP 2003); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/127196.html

4. “Death row plan slammed” (Marin Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA), February 22, 2007); story citing BRIAN BROWN (MPP 2003) and ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.marinij.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5279042

5. “Scientists: State must act on warming now” (The Record (Hackensack, NJ), February 21, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975); http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDgxMDgy

6. “Animal test ban attracts skeptics - Drug firms fear bill could limit research” (The Record (Hackensack, NJ), February 21, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975); http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDgxMDMy

7. “The Woman in the Middle. Moderate Democrat Is New Target of Liberal Bloggers” (Washington Post, February 21, 2007); story citing BRIAN LEUBITZ (MPP cand. 2007); http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001575_pf.html

8. “Victim of DUI sees hope in new bill” (Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA), February 20, 2007); opinion column citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

9. “Blagojevich aims to cut greenhouse-gas output” (Chicago Tribune, February 13, 2007); story citing STEVE FRENKEL (MPP 2000).

10. “University chiefs seek research support. Benefits ripple throughout the state, presidents tell legislators” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 13, 2007); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976).

11. “TANGERINE BRIGHAM: Newsmaker Profile. Full health coverage—full speed ahead” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 2007); story citing TANGERINE BRIGHAM (MPP 1980); NANI COLORETTI (MPP 1994); FIRST PLACE FUND FOR YOUTH, co-founded by AMY LEMLEY (MPP 1998) & DEANNE PEARN (MPP 1998); http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/09/BAG75O1R171.DTL&hw=tangerine+brigham&sn=001&sc=1000

12. “Legislator Seeks to End Statute of Limitations on Most Sex Crimes” (San Jose Mercury News, February 8, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

13. “Tax revenues dip, state says” (Sacramento Bee, February 7, 2007); story citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/119567.html

14. “McClatchy targeting Net profits. Online features added as its papers struggle” (Sacramento Bee, February 6, 2007); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981); http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/118849.html

15. “GOP faults Democrats on prison overcrowding. Hearings delayed so courts will take over system, lawmakers charge” (Sacramento Bee, February 6, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

16. “Warming goes mainstream” (Daily Democrat, (Woodland, CA), February 5, 2007); story citing CHUCK SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

17. “Grocery Workers Prepare for Labor Talks” (New York Times, February 5, 2007); story citing study coauthored by FELIX SU (MPP cand. 2007); http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Supermarket-Labor.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

18. “City Targets Dangerous Gilman Street Intersection” (Daily Californian, February 5, 2007); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000); http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=22846

19. “State urged to act on global warming / Lawmakers offering ideas for Illinois” (State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL), February 3, 2007); story citing STEVE FRENKEL (MPP 2000).

20. “Governor’s bet on Indian gambling unrealistic, Legislative Analyst says” (Ventura County Star, February 3, 2007); story citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www1.venturacountystar.com/vcs/state/article/0,1375,VCS_122_5326101,00.html

21. “Berkeley strives to be model in greenhouse gas reduction” (Contra Costa Times, Feb. 2, 2007); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000); http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/alameda_county/berkeley/16605559.htm

22. “Seneca Center to launch program” (Daily Review (Hayward, CA), February 4, 2007); story citing AMY LEMLEY (MPP 1998); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5156330

23. “Report Details Community College Students’ Struggles” (Los Angeles Times (LATWP News Service), February 1, 2007); story citing NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

24. “Housing prices still rising—at state prisons. Labor, medical care drive costs up” (Sacramento Bee, February 1, 2007); story citing report by BRIAN BROWN (MPP 2003) & EDGAR CABRAL (MPP 2005); and citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/116756.html

25. “WHAT’S HAPPENING” (Washington Post, January 18, 2007); events citing MITCHELL BARD (MPP 1983, PhD 1987).

26. “Aaronson, Yellin to be honored Feb. 4” (Boca Raton News, January 15, 2007); story citing MITCHELL BARD (MPP 1983, PhD 1987).

27. “Extending marine reserves must be done thoughtfully” (Daily Review (Hayward, CA), January 11, 2007); editorial citing LINDA SHEEHAN (MPP 1990).

28. “Do carbon offsets live up to their promise? - Consumers purchase them to relieve greenhouse-gas guilt, but there’s no easy way to keep offset companies accountable” (Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2007); story citing MARK TREXLER (MPP 1982, PhD 1989).

29. “Officials may have broken law by attending meeting” (Naperville Sun (IL), January 10, 2007); story citing DONNA LEFF (MPP 1978).

30. “Latinos lag other racial, ethnic groups in getting college degrees. Study shows lack of information about admission” (Ventura County Star, January 8, 2007); story citing NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

31. “Saint Xavier University events to celebrate King’s life, legacy” (Daily Southtown (Chicago, IL), January 8, 2007); story citing SUSAN SANDERS (PhD 1981).

32. “THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE. What happens after Uncle Sam busts Big Pharma?” (Oregonian, January 7, 2007); story citing BENJAMIN ZYCHER (MPP/PhD 1974).

33. “Runny nose. Achy head. Sore throat. All symptoms point to cold. Or do they?” (San Mateo County Times, January 5, 2007); story citing SUSAN EHRLICH (MPP 1984).

34. “A shock absorption test for the global financial system” (Financial Times (London, England), January 3, 2007); Letter to the Editor by EMERY ROE (MPP/PhD 1988).

35. “JOURNEYS: Ecotourism; Traveling the World to Help Save It” (New York Times, December 17, 2006); story citing DUANE SILVERSTEIN (MPP 1980); http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=980DE2D81431F934A25751C1A9609C8B63

36. “Financial - Despite possible rejection, Branson may win in U.S. airline bid” (Advocate (Stamford-Norwalk, CT), December 6, 2006); story citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978, PhD 1983).

37. “Fire Chief Steps Down In Los Angeles In Bias Case” (New York Times, December 2, 2006); story citing CAROL CHETKOVICH (MPP 1987, PhD 1994).

38. “Area Medi-Cal beneficiaries safe - Officials reaffirm Fresno office closure won’t affect services, despite worries” (Fresno Bee, December 2, 2006); story citing TOBY DOUGLAS (MPP 2001, MPH 2002).

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

1. “It’s Bob Reich’s story, and he’s sticking to it. The Berkeley professor, former Cabinet member, and sometime playwright outlined ‘four narratives of American public life’ in last week’s Townsend Center appearance” (Berkeleyan, February 28, 2007); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/02/28_Reich.shtml

2. “Workers need stronger unionizing rights” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 28, 2007; Listen to this commentary

3. “Martin Trow: Sociologist who saw the dilemmas of university expansion” (The Guardian (London), February 28, 2007); obituary of MARTIN TROW; http://education.guardian.co.uk/obituary/story/0,,2022799,00.html

4. “Blueprint for new Cal bioscience institute. Plant researcher from Stanford likely to be director” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 27, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/27/MNGP8OBREO1.DTL&type=printable

5. “Sixth Graders in Middle Schools Fare Worse Than Peers in Elementary Schools, Study Finds” (UC Berkeley Newscenter, February 26, 2007); story citing ROBERT MACCOUN; http://dukenews.duke.edu/2007/02/sixth_grade.html

6. “Feinstein touts economic solution to global warming. BERKELEY: Senator pushes emissions-cutting legislation centered on ‘cap and trade’ credits friendly to industry” (Contra Costa Times, Feb. 24, 2007); story citing GOLDMAN SCHOOL EVENT; http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16774767.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

7. “Berkeley: Battle of Bowles Hall—tradition vs. money. UC business school sees cash cow in transforming historic boys dorm into site for executive training center” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 2007); story citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/22/BAGFMO8PA41.DTL&type=printable

8. “Environment: What Will it Cost to Fight Global Warming?” (Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, February 22, 2007); program featuring DAN KAMMEN; Listen to the program

9. “Everybody profits from fair-labor standards” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, National Public Radio, February 21, 2007); Listen to this commentary

10. “Change the lightbulb, save the planet” (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 20, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; LISTEN TO STORY

11. “Editorial: Economic challenges are not easy to solve” (Contra Costa Times, Feb. 16, 2007); editorial citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/alameda_county/berkeley/16713081.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

12. “Officials manipulate elections with polling location” (Dallas Morning News, February 14, 2007); story citing HENRY BRADY; http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8N9M3E83.html

13. “Forget balancing the budget” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 14, 2007); Listen to this commentary

14. “PBS’ ‘Frontline’ examines ways politics, business hurt news media” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2007); story citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/13/DDGRFO28SJ1.DTL&type=printable

15. “When do ‘good’ firms go ‘bad’? Ranking corporations by ethics is popular, but telling the good guys from the bad is not clear-cut” (Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2007); op-ed by DAVID VOGEL; http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-vogel13feb13,1,2966670.story

16. “Wine in California” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM, February 13, 2007); program featuring commentary by Distinguished Visiting Scholar JOHN DELUCA; listen to the program

17. “Across the Great Divide: Investigating Links Between Personality and Politics” (New York Times, February 12, 2007); story citing JACK GLASER; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/arts/12part.html

18. “UC Berkeley: Cal’s deal with BP moving forward. Faculty leaders eager to avoid a repeat of 1998 Novartis pact” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/11/BAGKGO2QF11.DTL&type=printable

19. “Political Roundtable with ROBERT REICH,” (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News, February 11, 2007); program featuring commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

20. “Editors’ Choice: Psychology—Calibrating Confidence” (Science 2 February 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5812, p. 574); editorial review citing study co-authored by ROBERT MACCOUN; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5812/574a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Calibrating&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

21. “Obituary: Professor Nelson Polsby” (Times [London] Online, February 8, 2007); obit citing AARON WILDAVSKY; http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1350297.ece

22. “Make oil companies pay for alternatives” (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 7, 2007);

Listen to this commentary

23. “President’s speech shows CEO pay has hit the big time” (USA Today, February 5, 2007); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-02-05-ceo-pay-usat_x.htm

24. “Cal to be hub for study of alternate fuel. Group headed by UC Berkeley wins $500 million grant from BP” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/01/MNGM8NSSDP1.DTL

25. “Lawmakers vow to aid African Americans” (Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2007); story citing STEVEN RAPHAEL; http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-legis1feb01,1,99968.story?coll=la-headlines-california

26. “FT Report - Business Education. Global warming has become a hot topic” (Financial Times [UK], Jan 29, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL; http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=vogel&y=9&aje=true&x=17&id=070129000812

27. “Lawmakers want public funds out of Sudan” (Austin American-Statesman, January 25, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL.

28. “Few treatment options for severely mentally ill” (Orange County Register, January 21, 2007); story citing STEVEN RAPHAEL.

ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS

By Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Most injured workers are satisfied with the medical treatment they get under workers’ compensation, but those with the worst injuries have the most complaints, according to the first comprehensive survey undertaken since state lawmakers overhauled the controversial system.

The inch-thick report will be released today and sent to the Legislature and the governor to help them assess the impact of a series of reforms that have cut about 60 percent of the costs out of the once-bloated system….

Looking at the entire sample, nearly 4 out of 5 workers (78 percent) were satisfied or very satisfied with their overall care. The rest were dissatisfied or highly dissatisfied. Given the size of the system, that suggests more than 170,000 injured workers that year had complaints about the system….

The UCLA report noted that workers’ comp doctors “receive on average 13 percent below the Medicare fee schedule” for visits. “That’s their bread and butter,” [the report’s principal author, UCLA health policy researcher Gerald Kominski] said. “And their butter is low.”

Frank Neuhauser, a research professor with UC Berkeley’s Survey Research Center, finds the UCLA report encouraging. He said it suggests that costs have been greatly reduced while satisfaction ratios fall right within the same range typical of such medical surveys.

“The Legislature should be happy,’’ Neuhauser said.

By Clea Benson - Bee Capitol Bureau

Elizabeth Hill

California will take in about $2 billion less than previously expected in tax revenues this fiscal year and the next, so lawmakers should cut spending now, the Legislature’s nonpartisan budget adviser said Wednesday.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, whose view of the state’s fiscal situation has been more pessimistic than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in recent weeks, also said the governor’s spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1 would leave the state with a deficit of over $700 million.

“We face a very challenging budget situation,” Hill said at a news conference where she released her office’s annual review of the governor’s spending proposals. “It requires additional solutions. We are urging that decision makers act now.”…

Though the state’s economy is still growing, Californians do not appear to be earning as much from capital gains as originally forecast, Hill said. Last year, huge stock profits reaped by executives at Google and other companies helped pour a windfall of billions of dollars into state coffers.

Even with that cash, the state will spend about $8 billion more than it takes in during the 2006-07 fiscal year, Hill said. Much of the shortfall is being covered by reserves from other years.

Hill said lawmakers could stave off future problems by cutting about $300 million in spending on schools that was already approved in this year’s budget. That amount represents a tiny fraction of the multibillion-dollar budget for education and would have little effect on schools, she said….

[The news conference was broadcast on California Channel TV, February 21, 2007; and February 26, 2007; http://www.calchannel.com/schedule.htm .

A webcast of highlights from Elizabeth Hill’s discussion of the 2007-08 budget can be viewed at: http://www.lao.ca.gov/2007/webcasts/Analysis_07/EH_Analysis07.aspx ]

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau

California prisons may be jampacked to the point of federal judges slamming the door shut to new inmates, but the Legislative Analyst’s Office says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s corrections proposals could leave the state with the equivalent of six empty new prisons by 2012.

In its annual budget review released Wednesday, the LAO reported that Schwarzenegger’s prison construction plans would add about 30,000 beds while his proposed sentencing and parole changes would reduce the prison population by 25,000 in five years, resulting in a surplus of 32,000 beds.

The report said that the empty beds would be enough to fill six prisons by today’s standards and that it would take eight to 11 years for the state’s judges to sentence enough inmates to fill them.

“In our view, it would not be wise to use state resources to build excessive prison capacity, which is likely to remain unused for such a long period,” the LAO report said.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said the LAO report was flawed because it did not take into consideration the total picture of prison overcrowding in the state….Hidalgo said the report considered only the emergency housing units as overcrowded, not the double-bunked cells that house the bulk of state prisoners….

LAO criminal justice analyst Brian Brown confirmed that the report looked only at the emergency housing in its overcrowding equation. He said the problem of decaying prison facilities is “not something that (corrections officials) put forward as part of their (prison construction) proposal.”…

The LAO recommended that the department cut the $3.3 billion planned for adding 16,000 beds at existing prisons to $1.7 billion and that the money be earmarked only for maximum-security and reception center beds.

It endorsed Schwarzenegger’s proposed parole discharge policies and called for additional changes that would allow some lower-level felonies to be charged as misdemeanors, which would further reduce the prison population.

By Richard Halstead

A $337 million plan to build a new death row at San Quentin State Prison should be scrapped because of spiraling costs, according to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office….

The analyst’s office cited the project’s 53 percent increase in estimated cost since 2003 to $337 million as its primary rationale. Although $220 million has already been appropriated for the project, the governor is seeking an additional $117 million more. Instead, the analyst’s office suggests using the appropriated money “to build additional prison capacity for condemned and maximum-security inmates at a lower cost per bed elsewhere.”…

“Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill has consistently questioned the wisdom of building a new death row at San Quentin,” said former Assemblyman Joe Nation of San Rafael. “Hopefully, there will be people who will pay more attention now.”

[Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael] said, “I think it will make a difference. This comes at a time when the Legislature is really grappling with both a growing budget deficit and the implosion of our criminal justice system.”…

Nation and Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey have spearheaded opposition to the death row on economic grounds, arguing that the bayfront land would be better used as a regional transit hub and ferry port.

The report by the analyst’s office notes that the cost of the death row project has increased to almost $300,000 a bed—while the size of the project has been reduced by 25 percent.

Analyst Brian Brown, who helped write the report, said the higher costs are primarily due to the location of the project. Engineering requirements at San Quentin are more challenging due to the instability of the soil. Also, labor and materials are more expensive in the Bay Area than at other potential sites, Brown said.

Brown said the project would do little to ease the state’s severe prison overcrowding. The state agreed in the death row project’s environmental report not to house more than 6,558 inmates at San Quentin. The new death row could house a total of 1,152 inmates in its 768 cells. As a result, San Quentin might be prevented from using its existing death row cells, which house 640 inmates, to bunk lower security inmates, Brown said….

By Alex Nussbaum, Staff Writer

Killer heat waves, epic flooding and the destruction of the state’s famed coastline could await the future residents of New Jersey if state legislators don’t take immediate action against global warming, a panel of scientists warned Tuesday.

In North Jersey, Newark Airport and stretches of the turnpike could remain underwater more often than not. In the southern part of the state, a rising sea could wash away the Jersey Shore, they said….

Legislators are considering a tough new crackdown on greenhouse pollution blamed for climate change….

The legislation would require the state to reduce carbon dioxide and other industrial emissions by about 20 percent by the end of the next decade—and allow for deeper cuts if deemed necessary. That won’t come without any economic pain—electricity, for one, will probably cost more to produce—but the bill still seemed to have the support of much of the committee….

Global warming “could be the most important issue that our country faces,” said Assemblyman Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn. “While it is not too late to make the changes required, it is getting close.”…

By Hugh R. Morley, Staff Writer

A bill before the Assembly on Thursday that would restrict product testing on animals has prompted wary scrutiny from the drug industry.

The bill, A-909, prohibits testing if there is an “appropriate, validated alternative test method” that has been approved by a federal or other regulatory agency. The proposed ban does not cover testing done for “medical research.”

Assemblyman Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, a co-sponsor, said that “if there are alternative methods that provide the kind of data required, we should use them.”…

By Juliet Eilperin and Michael Grunwald - Washington Post Staff Writers

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party’s left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition….

Democratic leaders want their activists to focus on beating Republicans. But the grass roots and Net roots believe the political tide is shifting their way, and they can provide the money, ground troops and buzz to challenge Democratic incumbents they don’t like. MoveOn.org had two Bay Area chapters before the election; now it has 15, and they could all go to work against Tauscher in a primary. “Absolutely, we could take her out,” said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga—better known as Kos—the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site….

Tauscher’s liberal critics say she has undermined the party during the Bush years, making a fetish of bipartisanship at a time when Republicans had no interest in real compromise, demonizing the far left at a time when Democrats needed to unify against the far right. And they’re still seething about her “left cliff” quote [shortly before the election, she warned Democrats not to “go off the left cliff”], which echoed GOP talking points before Election Day.

“She reinforces the idea that lefties are out-of-control children,” said Brian Leubitz, who runs a liberal California blog called Calitics. “She provides cover for Republican extremists.”…

Her rhetoric infuriates activists, who still quote her statements that she never met a trade deal she didn’t like, even though she later voted against one, and that she slept fine after her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war, even though she now opposes it. She supports same-sex marriage, but she’s not an activist’s idea of a Bay Area politician: too Wall Street, too establishment, too comfortable with the Chamber of Commerce.

“You can sense her contempt for the grass roots,” Leubitz said. “She really doesn’t represent her district.”…

Kos can imagine a day when Tauscher still holds her seat but is no longer distasteful to the left. “That’s what victory would look like—a more responsive representative,” he said. So when Tauscher [who was once the only California Democrat to oppose Pelosi’s campaign for leadership] praises Pelosi as “perfect on substance, perfect on optics,” it’s hard to know if that’s a result of personal evolution, political trends, or blogospheric pressure, but it’s music to Kos’s ears. It’s helpful to Democratic leaders, too….

8. “Victim of DUI sees hope in new bill” (Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA), February 20, 2007); opinion column citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

By Yvette Cabrera

Irvine resident David Garcia learned all too painfully how flaws in the legal system can alter a life forever.

As readers might recall, last November I wrote about Garcia and his journey to recover his life after he lost his legs in a collision. In 2003, a drunken driver smashed into Garcia, a tow truck driver, as he was jump-starting a minivan on the shoulder of a freeway. In an instant, Garcia’s legs were severed at midthigh.

At the time, Garcia told me he felt the laws weren’t stiff enough on repeat offenders. In his case, the driver was arrested for the third time for driving under the influence of alcohol and at the time of the collision was driving even though his license had been suspended….

So when I learned that Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, had co-authored a bill that would make it tougher for drunk drivers to drive while under the influence, I knew Garcia would have something to say about it.

Senate Bill 177, unveiled last week by state Sen. Carol Migden, D-San Francisco, would require California courts to mandate that each person convicted of a DUI offense install what’s called an ignition interlock device, or IID, on every vehicle they own or operate.

The device measures a driver’s alcohol content level via a breath testing unit linked to the ignition switch. The engine can’t be started until the driver provides a breath sample, and if the sample detects any amount of alcohol, the device locks the ignition.

Under the bill, for example, a first-time DUI offender could either accept a four-month suspension from driving, or after serving a 30-day suspension they can opt for a six-month restricted driver’s license if they install the ignition device and enroll in a DUI treatment program. Only non-injury offenders would qualify to apply for the device….

Spitzer sees the bill as critical to addressing what he’s describes as “flat lining” drunk driving statistics.

Although there are stricter laws, more serious fines and prevention programs, drunken driving statistics have not increased nor been reduced significantly, he says.

“So you ask yourself, if we have used all of this – penalty approach, the jail approach … I think we’re all convinced if we’re going to have a dramatic impact on drunken driving we need to take a different approach,” says Spitzer, a former LAPD policeman and Orange County deputy district attorney.

He cites California Highway Patrol statistics that show from 2005 to 2006 there was a 14 percent increase in the number of people convicted of driving under the influence with a suspended license for a prior DUI….

“The bottom line is that we need to keep the car from starting, because we know and I know from personal experience because I’ve done hundreds, if not thousands of these cases – prosecuting those people who have had their licenses suspended for drunken driving – and they drove anyway,” says Spitzer.

A 2004 study by the California Department of Motor Vehicles of the ignition device found that it was effective for repeat DUI offenders and resulted in a lower risk of DUI recidivism compared with repeat offenders whose licenses are suspended….

9. “Blagojevich aims to cut greenhouse-gas output” (Chicago Tribune, February 13, 2007); story citing STEVE FRENKEL (MPP 2000).

By Michael Hawthorne, Tribune staff reporter

Gov. Rod Blagojevich will lay out an ambitious goal Tuesday of reducing Illinois’ output of heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

The governor wasn’t specific about how the state would reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020—the same target set by a new California law and a bill in Congress….

Blagojevich touted clean energy during his re-election campaign last year. But his administration has approved five new coal-fired power plants that would churn out more carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas blamed for heating up the planet.

Only one of those plants—a new coal burner for the municipal utility in Springfield—is guaranteed to offset its emissions with wind energy….

Coal plants generate about half of the state’s power. All but a small fraction of the rest comes from nuclear plants, which don’t produce greenhouse gases.

“Coal will continue to be a major source of energy in Illinois,” said Steve Frenkel, Blagojevich’s director of policy development. “But the governor’s vision is to make the state more energy-efficient and rely more on clean sources like wind, which would displace the older plants.”…

By Andrea Jones - Staff writer

Scientists are studying everything from diabetes to bird flu at the state’s four public research institutions and bringing in millions of dollars in research grants, university presidents told lawmakers Monday.

The presidents of Medical College of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia outlined research on their campuses before the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee on Monday, giving an overview of economic impact and health and medical benefits for Georgians.

Mike Cassidy, head of the Georgia Research Alliance, a nonprofit group that recruits top researchers to the state, said Georgia is poised to become an international leader in drug and vaccine research. Scientists at Georgia universities are already working on vaccines for AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease, and Cassidy said the state should increase funding to lure more top researchers, who in turn start companies and bring money into Georgia…

Presidents also made their pitch for more money.

Georgia State President Carl Patton said his institution has a $100 million backlog in major repairs and renovations on campus….

By Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tangerine Brigham, director of San Francisco’s Health Access Program, lives in Oakland and often gets to work by 6 a.m.

Passing the first-of-its kind law to guarantee health care coverage for everybody in San Francisco was the easy part. Now comes the real challenge, called by Mayor Gavin Newsom the “most complex” part of the whole undertaking: actually getting it to work.

Newsom and the Board of Supervisors have set July 1 as the deadline for the unveiling of the new program—and, according to the city’s public health chief, there’s only one woman who could get it done so quickly.

She’s Tangerine Brigham, an Oakland resident who overcame a childhood of foster care and food stamps to become a go-to player in the world of Bay Area nonprofits and San Francisco city government.

“To really make a July 1 deadline, I would have to have Tangerine,” said Mitch Katz, director of the Department of Public Health, who spent months last summer wooing Brigham to take the job of implementing the cutting-edge San Francisco Health Access Program.

After all, it’s hard to forget someone who colleagues joke must be the one who officially opens the Bay Bridge every morning because she’s often at the office by 6 a.m. Brigham has been known to return phone calls at 5:30 a.m.—perhaps not unusual for West Coast stock market traders but definitely a little unusual for government work….

The oldest of four children, Brigham was raised in a low-income family in Los Angeles and entered foster care at age 7….

Her father, then long divorced from her mother, managed to reclaim custody of the children when Brigham was 14 and raised them in his student housing apartment on the UCLA campus as he pursued a degree in urban planning. The family lived on her father’s student financial aid and food stamps.

Brigham went on to attend UCLA to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics. After graduating, she worked as a legal assistant in Los Angeles before getting a master’s degree in public policy from UC Berkeley. She then worked from 1990 to 1993 as a policy analyst for the San Francisco Department of Social Services before joining the San Francisco public health department as a financial planner….

Nani Coloretti, a graduate school friend who directs the mayor’s office of policy and finance, said she believes it is the newness of what the bureaucrats are calling the Health Access Plan that convinced Brigham to return.

“This is really cutting edge, and I think that’s what got her back,” said Coloretti, adding that when people leave employment in city government they usually don’t return. “It’s the perfect meld of her prior knowledge, but it’s brand new.”

But health—and housing, for that matter—have always been two of Brigham’s top civic priorities. “My personal history just makes me that much more interested in it,” Brigham said….

In her limited spare time, Brigham … serves on the boards of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation and First Place Fund for Youth, which helps children transition from foster care to living on their own at age 18….

12. “Legislator Seeks to End Statute of Limitations on Most Sex Crimes” (San Jose Mercury News, February 8, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

By Mike Zapler And Edwin Garcia, MediaNews Sacramento Bureau

MediaNews Sacramento Bureau reporter Kate Folmar contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — Most accused rapists and other serious sexual offenders can’t be prosecuted in California if it’s been 10 years since their crime. This week, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, announced legislation to scrap that time limit—a nod to victims, she said, who are too traumatized to come forward earlieR.

The bill could trigger an odd alliance between Lieber, D-Mountain View, a staunch liberal on most issues, and tough-on-crime Republicans in the Legislature. But its passage is far from certain: A similar measure stalled in the state Senate two years ago without so much as a vote….

But tough-on-crime bills often have cross-party appeal. The Democratic chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee endorsed Lieber’s bill and it’s likely many Republicans will, too.

“I’m completely supportive,” said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, a former prosecutor and police officer. “The psychological trauma and the ability of a victim to come to terms with that trauma typically doesn’t emerge until adulthood.”…

13. “Tax revenues dip, state says” (Sacramento Bee, February 7, 2007); story citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/119567.html

By Jim Wasserman - Bee Staff Writer

California’s troubled real estate and construction sectors are likely culprits for state income taxes falling $1.3 billion below projections in January, state Controller John Chiang said Tuesday.

Chiang noted the revenue shortfall at a news conference highlighting changes that will affect state residents as the tax preparation season gets under way.

Last year 15 million individuals and 1 million businesses paid nearly $49 billion in income taxes, the state’s largest single source of revenue.

The tax slump, first reported last month by Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, signals potential trouble for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $103 billion general fund budget recently proposed for a new fiscal year beginning July 1.

The controller’s office said the governor’s budget proposal may already be $710 million short on revenue….

By Dale Kasler - Bee Staff Writer

The McClatchy Co.’s purchase of Knight Ridder Inc. last summer was widely seen as a $4 billion bet on the future of newspapers. It’s increasingly turning into a wager on the Internet.

Though it’s been online for years, Sacramento-based McClatchy is putting greater emphasis on the Web as The Bee and other McClatchy papers experience sluggish times in print. McClatchy is adding more audio and video to its Web sites, and starting specialty sites for political junkies, counterculture hipsters and other niche audiences. It’s using search engines and e-mail alerts to link shoppers with advertisers, and entering into strange-bedfellow alliances with rivals like Google.

Experts welcome these moves but warn that they won’t provide a quick fix for the problem facing McClatchy and other newspaper chains: a steady decline in print circulation and advertising….

Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s chairman and chief executive, acknowledged the climate is “not pleasant.” The company is in a revenue slump that began last summer and will last through the first half of 2007, he said. He declined to make projections beyond June.

Still, Pruitt said the long-term outlook is good because McClatchy’s total audience—in print and online—is growing.

“Of course, most of that growth is happening online, where the user produces less revenue for us than the print reader,” he said. “So it’s not a simple equation, but it’s not the profile of an industry that’s dying, either.”…

McClatchy owns a stake in Career Builder, a successful online help-wanted company, and is in discussions to create a national Web ad-sales network with its Career Builder partners, Tribune and Gannett. McClatchy also is a part owner of national car-buying and apartment-rental sites.

Fifty papers, including six from McClatchy, made an alliance to sell print ads through Google. The experiment has attracted ads “that we might not otherwise have gotten,” Pruitt said.

And McClatchy papers in Miami and Minneapolis sell a service that helps advertisers buy the “keywords” that get ads to pop up on Google searches.

Pruitt acknowledged the irony of helping advertisers do business with a rival like Google. But he said traditional boundaries are being erased, and newspapers have to adjust. McClatchy is talking to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft about various deals, he said.

“It will be a much more competitive world forever for newspapers,” Pruitt said. “It’s not like the 1970s and 1980s. Those halcyon days are gone.”

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau

Legislative Republicans accused Democrats on Monday of delaying action on prison construction in the hope that the federal courts will engage in “a complete takeover” of California’s correctional system.

In a press conference outside Folsom State Prison, GOP members said they will fight for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bid to add tens of thousands of new beds to the state and local correctional systems as the best way to solve the prisons’ overcrowding emergency.

They said they would oppose any sentencing commission proposal that looks to them like it would result in early releases. They also decried court-ordered spending on prison health care as an “unaccountable” intrusion into legislative spending prerogatives….

With some 172,000 inmates in its custody, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is crowded to nearly twice its designed capacity.

Eight class-action lawsuits currently control a huge swath of the state prison system, with the entire adult medical delivery operation placed under the control of a federal court-appointed receiver. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento, meanwhile, has given the state until June 4 to solve its overcrowding problem or he will take steps to impose a population cap.

Todd Spitzer, a Republican Assemblyman from Orange and the co-chair of Schwarzenegger’s select committee on high risk sex offenders, led the partisan attack on Democratic legislators. Spitzer said he was angry that Assembly Democrats failed to act on Schwarzenegger’s prison construction plan during last year’s special session and that there’s been no movement by the Democratic leadership yet on the governor’s pending construction plan….

“We absolutely believe unequivocally the reason we have had no hearings is because the Democrats want, are committed and are dedicated to a complete takeover by the federal courts of the operations of our prison system,” Spitzer said, with the two dozen GOP members standing behind him before embarking on a tour of the prison….

16. “Warming goes mainstream” (Daily Democrat, (Woodland, CA), February 5, 2007); story citing CHUCK SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

By Mike Taugher/MediaNews Group

Scott Wayland installs photo voltaic panels on the roof of his home in San Ramon. Dan Honda/Contra Costa Times

Global warming has gone mainstream.

President Bush, for the first time, mentioned it during a State of the Union speech when he said his energy policies would help confront “the serious challenge of global climate change.”

A day earlier, 10 major corporations, including PG&E, Bank of America, Dupont and General Electric, joined with national environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense to call for a nationwide cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

The central debate is no longer whether the earth is warming or whether man has a hand in it.

It is what the impact of climate change will be and what should be done about it.

Now, the debate gets thorny.

Because the extent of future warming is uncertain, it is difficult for policymakers to decide on appropriate responses.

California policymakers have responded aggressively with laws and regulations to curtail tailpipe emissions and commit the state to reducing greenhouse gas emissions….

In April, the state Air Resources Board is expected to consider the first set of regulations under a law that commits the state to cutting emissions by 174 million tons. That law requires California to cut emission to 1990 levels by 2020.

The first rules are expected to include limits on the carbon content of gasoline and prohibiting retail sales of car refrigerant. The full plan to bring emissions back to 1990 levels is expected next year.

Meanwhile, state regulations that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from new cars sold in California beginning in 2009 are tied up in court. Those regulations are expected to curtail new cars’ carbon dioxide tailpipe emissions by 30 percent by 2016. The fate of that lawsuit is tied to a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate case in which states are trying to force the federal government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

The state’s greenhouse gas regulations are likely to increase the cost of energy and new cars, but state officials say energy efficiency improvements could offset the added costs.

“It’s not at all clear that there will be a pocketbook impact,” said Chuck Shulock, the air board’s program manager for greenhouse gas emissions….

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The last time Southern California’s largest supermarket chains battled with their employees’ union over a labor contract, the dispute escalated into a strike-lockout that dragged on for nearly five months. With little more than a month to go on the current deal, a new slate of negotiations could produce another brawl over health care benefits and a two-tiered wage system—the same contract issues the union begrudgingly agreed to three years ago….

A study by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education [coauthored by Felix Su] released last week found only 7 percent of Southern California grocery workers hired since the 2003-04 strike and lockout were receiving benefits as of September….

[You can read the UC Berkeley study, “Declining Health Coverage in the Southern California Grocery Industry,” at: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/ ]

[This story appeared in more than 100 sources nationwide, including the <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020500042_pf.html“>Washington Post</a>, <a href=“http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/business/24hr_business/story/3545924p-12757293c.html“>Sacramento Bee</a>, and <a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/02/04/financial/f212336S34.DTL&type=printable“>San Francisco Chronicle</a>]

18. “City Targets Dangerous Gilman Street Intersection” (Daily Californian, February 5, 2007); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000); http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=22846

By Andy Stokols, Contributing Writer

At the intersection of Gilman Street and Interstate 80, two cars almost collide. Photo/Andre Nguyen

Berkeley officials say they have a plan to improve traffic problems at the interchange where Gilman Street meets Interstate 80, which some have called one of the city’s most dangerous intersections.

The project will aim to facilitate better traffic flow at the intersection by constructing two roundabouts on either side of the interstate, said Peter Eakland, associate traffic engineer for the Berkeley Office of Transportation.

The intersection was the site of 76 auto collisions and 41 injuries between 2000 and 2005, said Cisco DeVries, Mayor Tom Bates’ chief of staff.

“The interchange is one of the worst if not the worst in the city,” DeVries said. “It is extremely dangerous, very confusing, and it has a lot of traffic.”

DeVries said the roundabouts will handle traffic much better than the stoplights and ramps currently in place.

“They don’t want traffic backing up on the freeway,” he said. “Roundabouts keep traffic moving.”

The project currently is being funded by state bonds, Caltrans—the state transportation agency that operates the interstate—and $1.2 million allocated by Congress through the efforts of Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), DeVries said….

19. “State urged to act on global warming / Lawmakers offering ideas for Illinois” (State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL), February 3, 2007); story citing STEVE FRENKEL (MPP 2000).

By Mike Ramsey - Copley News Service

CHICAGO - Global warming may be considered an international issue, but Illinois is among several states considering their own curbs on greenhouse gases.

A group of state lawmakers this week rallied around a “Blueprint for Action” drafted by Environment Illinois. The legislative remedies it suggests include California-style caps on carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and coal-burning power plants.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich has not taken a position on those stringent proposals, but he has organized a task force on global warming that is expected to begin meeting this month and issue a report in June, policy adviser Steve Frenkel said. Blagojevich has been a proponent of developing clean-burning bio-fuels and policies that encourage “renewable” energy production such as wind turbines….

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., praised the states for blazing a trail but said he hopes the Democrat-controlled Congress sends President Bush a national framework to combat climate change. The Republican administration has not emphasized global warming as an issue….

By Aaron C. Davis - The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bet that the state could balance its budget next year with revenue from bigger Indian casinos is unrealistic, a report released Friday by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst says.

Schwarzenegger’s proposal to let tribes install some 22,500 new slot machines and then collect more than $500 million in new fees and taxes from them is critical to his plan to wipe out the state’s chronic budget deficit next year.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, who in recent weeks has blasted the governor’s spending plan for relying on rosy revenue projections, on Friday took aim at its Indian gambling component, saying it would likely take three to 10 years for the state to realize the revenue boost Schwarzenegger is counting on in a matter of months.

“The governor’s budget assumes that annual general fund revenues related to tribal-state compacts grow from $33 million in 2006-07 to $539 million in 2007-08,” Hill wrote. “This projection is not realistic.”

What’s more, according to her report, the compacts could leave California on the hook for millions in unexpected costs.

The compacts would require the state to spend millions of the projected revenue increase in coming years to help poor tribes that don’t operate casinos - money Schwarzenegger is relying on for the budget.

The compacts also would let the richest tribes stop paying into funds for gambling addiction and other programs, the analyst said.

“The Legislature could face funding shortfalls for gambling addition, regulatory, and local government programs,” she wrote….

[Another report citing Elizabeth Hill was published in the Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/117872.html ]

By Doug Oakley - MEDIANEWS

Berkeley is spending $100,000 to fund a program to slash greenhouse gases in the city 80 percent by 2050….

“Measure G got 81 percent of the vote, and it is technically advisory, but given the importance of the issue and how important greenhouse gases are to the future of the world, the mayor will act as though the measure is legally binding,” said Cisco DeVries, chief of staff for Mayor Tom Bates.

The City Council approved the mayor’s greenhouse-reduction plan this week. DeVries will start spending half his time on the project, and the city is funding a full-time expert to work on the program through an organization called Sustainable Berkeley—a coalition of education and community groups, businesses and government agencies funded by the Berkeley City Council and PG&E.

DeVries said the city already hired a consultant to estimate the city’s carbon dioxide output, and found in 2005 the city emitted 656,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Vehicles passing through Berkeley on Interstate 80 and emissions from the UC Berkeley campus were not included in the study.

The study found that 45 percent of the city’s carbon dioxide emissions came from vehicles, “with a surprisingly high amount from diesel engines,” DeVries said. Twenty-six percent of the carbon dioxide output comes from homes, and 29 percent comes from businesses, he said.

DeVries said one of the most important issues is getting people out of their cars. One idea, he said, is to increase the number of parking spaces in prime spots for car-sharing services, which encourage people to use cars only when they really need them. Another idea is strengthening the city’s Residential Energy Conservation Ordinance, which requires homeowners to install insulation, water-saving devices and energy-efficient lighting when a home is sold.

Another idea would be to change Berkeley law to allow electric car dealerships on Shattuck Avenue. There is currently a moratorium on car dealerships there.

“This is Berkeley’s role in the world,” DeVries said. “We firmly believe that Berkeley is at its best in creating these kinds of model changes. Other cities are looking to see how to do this economically.”…

22. “Seneca Center to launch program” (Daily Review (Hayward, CA), February 4, 2007); story citing AMY LEMLEY (MPP 1998); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5156330

By Martin Ricard, Staff Writer

SAN LEANDRO — A local nonprofit agency that provides mental health services to youths caught up in the Alameda County probation system was recently awarded a contract by the county to implement a new therapy program slated to help keep youths at home, in school and out of juvenile hall.

The program, which will be launched by San Leandro-based Seneca Center in a few months, intervenes with families by dispatching therapists in the middle of a crisis and connecting the problem with the youths’ socioeconomic environments, not just with their emotions.

It takes a bold new approach to therapy, directors say, by working with youths and their parents wherever they might be in life and whenever a problem occurs—at home, at school or in their community….

Instead of treating crime as the problem for youths on probation, the program considers all the dimensions of their lives and works with their families to find alternatives….

During the program’s pilot stage, the agency witnessed one key example of the program’s success.

A youth … was referred to the program after continually getting arrested for stealing….

But rather than dictate to the family how to solve the youth’s problem, the therapist helped the mother develop methods for making sure her son wasn’t stealing. It turned out the youth had been stealing because he wanted to give his family new things, but the program helped the family understand that there were alternative ways he could show his generosity….

Amy Lemley, policy director for the John Burton Foundation and a prominent Bay Area youth advocate, said the best strategy for preventing juvenile crime and keeping youths out of the system is to provide them with the very thing they miss when they continually get locked up at a young age: consistency.

Replacing that deficit with support systems built in their own communities directly translates into cost savings, Lemley said, which otherwise would have been spent on keeping youths locked up, out of school and away from home.

But, she added, therapy doesn’t completely solve the ultimate source of crime: poverty.

“It’s very cost- and race-based,” she said. “It’s disproportionately low-income children of color and, particularly in group homes, it’s African Americans. ... Until we really focus on that and target resources to those communities, we’re not going to accomplish the goal.”

23. “Report Details Community College Students’ Struggles” (Los Angeles Times (LATWP News Service), February 1, 2007); story citing NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

By Francisco Vara-Orta

LOS ANGELES -- Only one-fourth of California’s community college students seeking a degree transferred to a university or earned an associate’s degree or certificate within six years, a report released Thursday found.

Researchers at California State University, Sacramento, said the figure is an unintended consequence of state policies initially created over the past few decades to remove barriers to community college access.

“Historically, state policies have succeeded in getting students into community colleges, but the same policies impede community colleges from flexibility in meeting the students’ needs and getting them through college,” said Nancy Shulock, the report’s lead researcher.

Over a six-year period, Cal State Sacramento’s Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy tracked 520,407 students who initially enrolled at California’s community colleges during the 1999-2000 academic year. Sixty percent of the students identified themselves as degree-seekers, while the other 40 percent were non-degree seekers who took courses to gain job skills or personal enrichment.

Shulock, joined by other researchers and lawmakers, announced the results in a teleconference from Sacramento….

Community colleges receive most of their state funding based on enrollment, which leads to some institutions allowing students to register late and postponing exams until enrollment is reported to the state, researchers said. The strategy boosts funding, but not academic excellence, the report said….

Another policy under scrutiny is the required hiring of 75 percent of full-time faculty instead of hiring a variety of part-time teachers who specialize in fields where jobs are needed in the local community.

“All of these provisions were well-intentioned efforts to address the rights of faculty and ensure a quality education,” Shulock said. But they sometimes hinder a college’s ability to offer the kinds of courses students need, she said….

“The community college is viewed as the principal route to upward mobility for many of California’s Latinos, but the disparities are evident,” Shulock said. “We just can’t throw up our hands in the air.” …

The report calls for policymakers and community college officials to work together to increase completion rates, making specific suggestions on the financial and instructional constraints state policy has over community colleges.

[The report, “Rules of the Game,” is available online at www.csus.edu/ihe ]

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau

The average annual cost of housing an inmate in the California prison system has more than doubled over the past decade to $43,287 a year, according to figures released Wednesday by the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Most of the increase is due to rising labor costs, but health care expenditures resulting from federal court orders in Sacramento and San Francisco have more than tripled in the 10-year period and figured significantly into the increase, the LAO reported.

“A little bit of it is due to the growth in the inmate population, but that’s a relatively small share,” said Brian Brown, the author [with Edgar Cabral] of the LAO’s criminal justice report that contained the cost figures. “The bigger portion has to do with the combination of the increases in salary for the correctional officers, who make up the bulk of the prison staff, and all the increases related to health care services for inmates.”

The annual cost per inmate pencils out to a daily per capita prison rate of $119—nearly a 33 percent jump since the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in October said that it was paying an average of $90 a day to house a prisoner.

“Wow,” said state Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden, the chairman of the budget subcommittee that oversees prison spending, when told about the $43,287 figure….

Among the changes discussed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats are the elimination of parole for some 24,000 low-risk offenders and the creation of a sentencing commission to regulate the flow of inmates into the system.

Republicans in the Legislature have expressed skepticism about both plans. GOP Assemblyman Todd Spitzer of Orange, however, said California residents are going to have to come to grips with the state’s rising per-inmate costs, especially in light of voter-approved sentencing initiatives such as the “three-strikes” law for repeat offenders and the Jessica’s Law statute for sex criminals.

“I think the public better get ready because it’s going to get a lot higher,” Spitzer said….

Security costs, most of which are dedicated to labor, account for $19,561 of the current total, which compares to a figure of about $9,600 a decade ago, Brown said. Inmate health care, meanwhile, now costs $9,330 per prisoner. In 1997, it added up to about $2,500 per inmate, according to Brown….

Inmate health costs, meanwhile, have been forced higher by hundreds of millions of dollars in increases ordered for medical and mental health care by U.S. District Court Judges Thelton Henderson in San Francisco and Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento….

Assembly Republicans have called for a bipartisan legislative oversight panel to monitor the court-ordered costs, which Spitzer said are about to go “off the charts.”

“There are no indicators to show that this number is going to go down,” Spitzer said.

25. “WHAT’S HAPPENING” (Washington Post, January 18, 2007); events citing MITCHELL BARD (MPP 1983, PhD 1987).

“Is Peace Even Possible?” -- 3 p.m. Sunday. Mitchell Bard, an author and Middle East expert, will discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Congregation Kol Ami, 1909 Hidden Meadow Lane., Annapolis. Free. 410-266-6006.

26. “Aaronson, Yellin to be honored Feb. 4” (Boca Raton News, January 15, 2007); story citing MITCHELL BARD (MPP 1983, PhD 1987).

Commissioner Burt Aaronson and Rabbi Richard Yellin will receive the David Ben Gurion award in recognition of efforts on behalf of Israel and the Jewish community. Israel Bonds will present the awards at Temple Emeth in Delray Beach. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Mitchell Bard, the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, and a foreign policy analyst….

27. “Extending marine reserves must be done thoughtfully” (Daily Review (Hayward, CA), January 11, 2007); editorial citing LINDA SHEEHAN (MPP 1990).

IT’S imperative that California complete its network of marine reserves along its lengthy coastline if we’re going to repopulate fisheries and bring both commercial and recreational fishing back to its past glory.

State officials now seem to understand that and are contemplating filling the gap in California’s chain of preserves by limiting fishing along the Central Coast from Half Moon Bay north to Mendocino.

If approved, it would close a current gap by extending areas set aside for regeneration up and down the entire coast. Reserves, which have been found to revive over-fished areas rather quickly, already exist from Mendocino north to Oregon. In August, state Fish and Game approved a network of 29 reserves between Santa Barbara and Half Moon Bay….

The hope of conservationists is that the reserves will help revive depleted populations of rockfish and other endangered, threatened or sparse species.

[State Resource Secretary Mike] Chrisman said the reserves would not preclude all fishing and agreed that compromises by both the state and fishermen would be necessary to implement a good program—another considerate concession. Fishermen are no doubt going to object to such a plan. But Linda Sheehan of the California Coastkeeper Alliance notes this proposal is “an essential part of the puzzle” for restoring the health and size of fish populations along our coast….

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff - Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

In 2006, “carbon neutral” became the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year, evidence not only of the “greening” of our culture, but of our language as well. As scientists predict another bout of record-setting temperatures this year, climate concerns may soon “green” our wallets as well. By all accounts, 2007 is poised to see the industry of carbon neutrality—so-called carbon offsetting—grow dramatically.

In theory, the idea is simple. The consumer pays a third party to remove a quantity of carbon (in the form of a greenhouse gas) equal to what he or she emits. But how voluntary carbon offsets actually work is unclear at best, and potentially fraudulent at worst, say experts.

The problem: No current certification or monitoring system has any teeth, and there is no easy way to confirm that offsetting companies are doing what they promise. Now, various organizations are scrambling to provide standards for what experts call a fragmented market with a product of drastically varying quality.

The first-ever ranking of carbon offsetters recently released by Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit in Portsmouth, N.H., graded 30 companies on a scale of 1 to 10; tellingly, three-quarters scored below 5. Critics, meanwhile, question whether the carbon market might be a dangerous distraction at a time when decisive action is needed to avert climate catastrophe….

Compounding an offset’s inscrutability is its intangibility. Unless you’re willing to visit Uganda in 20 years to verify the existence of a new tree, a carbon offset is arguably invisible. “The carbon market is particularly difficult because of that issue,” says Mark Trexler, president of Trexler Climate + Energy Services in Portland, Ore., the firm commissioned to author Clean Air-Cool Planet’s (CA-CP) guide to carbon offsets. “You’re dealing with stuff in the future in many cases that hasn’t happened yet.”

CA-CP’s “A Consumer’s Guide to Retail Carbon Offset Providers” attempts to wrangle a semblance of order from what one industry insider calls the “Wild West.” It ranks offsetting companies on factors like transparency, third-party certification, their efforts to educate consumers, and how well they prove they’re not selling the same carbon offset more than once….

29. “Officials may have broken law by attending meeting” (Naperville Sun (IL), January 10, 2007); story citing DONNA LEFF (MPP 1978).

By Jennifer Golz

As many as nine Naperville elected officials may have violated the Open Meetings Act.

Three Park District and six City Council members attended Monday’s legislative committee meeting of the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but discussions of the proposed $35 million Frontier Park Rec Center, the city’s proposed smoking ban, the downtown transit orientated development study and the home-based business ordinance made it one.

The Open Meetings Act defines meetings as, “any gathering ... of a majority of a quorum of the members of a public body held for the purpose of discussing the public business.”…

“You could be at a bowling alley. You could be at a grocery store—even a social gathering can turn into an open meeting if the focus turns to the topic of public business,” said Don Craven, Illinois Press Association attorney and Open Meetings Act expert.

“Participation doesn’t matter—it’s their presence.”

But Naperville’s city attorney, Margo Ely, said participation does matter.

“The purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to make sure you don’t have secret meetings,” she said….

“The fact that the chamber put matters of public business on ... the agenda—the City Council has no control over that,” she said….

While the City Council may not have deliberately violated the Open Meetings Act, it may have violated its spirit, said Donna Leff, professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

“The principle of the law is to make certain the public has access to their public officials and all public deliberations,” she said….

By Eric Stern - McClatchy Newspapers

SACRAMENTO - It’s a common refrain Latino kids hear from older relatives who migrated to the United States: “You’ve got to go college to be successful; don’t go working in the fields like we did,” said Diana Coughran, 17, a college-bound senior at Rio Americano High School.

Generational pressure is one thing. Just as daunting are the admissions tests, applications and financial aid forms for those who are first in the family to go to college….

Latinos in California lag other racial and ethnic groups in obtaining college degrees, a bad omen for the economy considering that 40 percent of the state’s working-age population will be Latino by 2020.

If the fast-growing Latino population continues its pace of college attainment, the state’s per capita income will soon drop below the national average, said Nancy Shulock, director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at California State University, Sacramento.

“If you look at who’s going to be replacing retiring baby boomers you’re going to have much less highly educated people in the work force,” Shulock said….

The rate of Latino high school graduates in California going directly to college is 43 percent….

However, 75 percent of Latino young adults who had never attended college or dropped out said they would have been more likely to see it through if they had better information on scholarships, need-based grants and loans….

31. “Saint Xavier University events to celebrate King’s life, legacy” (Daily Southtown (Chicago, IL), January 8, 2007); story citing SUSAN SANDERS (PhD 1981).

Saint Xavier University will commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a campus-wide celebration that will include dance and theater on Tuesday, Jan. 16….

Also speaking at the celebration will be … Sister Susan Sanders, vice president for University Mission and Heritage at Saint Xavier….

32. “THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE. What happens after Uncle Sam busts Big Pharma?” (Oregonian, January 7, 2007); story citing BENJAMIN ZYCHER (MPP/PhD 1974).

By David Reinhard; The Oregonian

It’s such a simple and politically appealing idea. Get the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for the best prices under the Medicare prescription drug program. Use the Medicare system’s vast purchasing power to get the best deal for the nation’s seniors who need prescription drugs and the taxpayers who underwrite the drug benefit. Wal-Mart does it. Why shouldn’t Uncle Sam? Isn’t everybody always saying government should operate more like a business?

Yes, it’s a simple and politically appealing idea. It wouldn’t have made onto the House Democrats’ “First 100 Hours” agenda if it were not. But you don’t have to be a drug company or in the pocket of Big Pharma to fear it’s bad idea with unintended consequences. Even deadly unintended consequences….

It’s true, having the feds negotiate discounts directly would drive down prices for patients and taxpayers. Big time. The Manhattan Institute’s Benjamin Zycher figures the average price reduction for drugs from 2007 to 2025 would be about 21.8 percent. But there’s what the makers of a recent Wal-Mart documentary called “the high cost of low price.” Indeed, the long-term costs of low drug prices would be even higher—for Medicare and non-Medicare patients alike.

Somebody’s going to swallow those price reductions, and that would be the pharmaceutical companies. But the financial reaction doesn’t end there. Zycher calculates that the drug companies would reduce their research and development by about $10 billion per year to pay this “implicit tax.”

“There is no dispute in the economics literature with respect to the downward effect of mandated price discounts upon research and development investment,” he writes. “The analytic issue to be addressed is the likely magnitude of that impact….”

Using National Science Foundation data on historical investment trends, Zycher estimates that the reduction in research and development would mean about 10 fewer medicines a year.

What would this mean in human terms? His research projects a loss of 5 million expected life-years annually, which can be valued conservatively at about $500 billion per year, far more than total annual U.S. spending on pharmaceuticals.

Even in the present, however, Medicare patients would likely have access only to certain cheap drugs….

[The VA’s] formulary includes some 1,400 drugs. The formularies that private purchasers now negotiate under the Medicare drug benefit include about 4,300 drugs. In addition, Zycher notes, “drugs covered by the VA formulary are significantly older than those covered by Medicare Part D or by private health insurance plans.”

So the government may be able to provide you with a deeply discounted drug, but the older and cheaper medication might not be right for you.

Zycher’s conclusion: “Cheap drugs in the here and now would prove expensive indeed tomorrow.”

33. “Runny nose. Achy head. Sore throat. All symptoms point to cold. Or do they?” (San Mateo County Times, January 5, 2007); story citing SUSAN EHRLICH (MPP 1984).

By Sandy Kleffman, MediaNews Staff

Experts say there is no way to know for sure what is behind the nasty colds sweeping through the Bay Area and leaving some people with a hacking cough that drags on for weeks.

Kaiser Permanente reports numerous positive tests for respiratory syncytial virus. It typically arrives this time of year and strikes young children particularly hard.

But other people may be sickened by a parainfluenza virus, mycoplasma pneumonia or some other hardy bug….

The uncertainty exists because California does not have a statewide system for reporting and tracking colds. Even if it did, most people do not seek medical help. They simply suffer through it….

“We are seeing (RSV) in our clinics,” said Dr. Susan Ehrlich, who oversees the clinics at the San Mateo County Medical Center. “But it’s hard to say if we’re seeing a lot of it or not.”…

34. “A shock absorption test for the global financial system” (Financial Times (London, England), January 3, 2007); Letter to the Editor by EMERY ROE (MPP/PhD 1988).

From Mr Emery Roe:

Sir, Lawrence Summers (“A lack of fear is cause for concern”, December 27) sums up: “How dramatic increases in speculative capital and the use of credit derivatives and other hedging tools will affect the (financial) system’s response to the next large shock is a profoundly important but ultimately unanswerable question.” Not completely unanswerable, however.

It turns out that the system’s ability to absorb shocks is a function of its members’ ability to take advantage of the real-time opportunities produced by those shocks. In this way, the tight coupling and complex interactivity within the global financial system have both a positive and negative side. The negative is the fear that an Amaranth, or series of unprecedented Amaranth-like collapses, will cascade and bring down the financial system. The positive is that this very same tight coupling and complex interactivity make new opportunities and resources available in real time, but only then (as was witnessed in the Amaranth collapse). Deals become possible in real time that would never have been possible otherwise. (The argument here is that when organisational networks change, that change opens up opportunities for third-party trades among members of the network who would not have traded.)…

Thus, part of the answer to how all this will shake out depends on how abundant liquidity remains globally. If the last 20 years of financial shocks that Prof Summers lists has not dried it up, what can? The current crisis scenarios include a global economic downturn, but perhaps instead we should be focusing directly on global risk management scenarios around the organisation of liquidity. Imagine Basel II was implemented yesterday: You would have the introduction of complex (opaque?) risk management strategies models across diversified portfolios, implemented variously and proprietarily bank by bank, with ad hoc implementation between Europe and the US, as well as within the US, between large and small banks. What a splendid way to test the organisational basis of liquidity’s adaptive equifinality!

Emery Roe,

Department of Public Affairs and Administration,

California State University,

Hayward, CA 94602, US

By Bonnie Tsui; New York Times News Service

Photo courtesy of El Nido Foundation

As a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s, Lynn Franco, now a 62-year-old psychoanalyst who lives in Berkeley, Calif., had always been interested in the underdeveloped regions she had traveled through. She said that longtime interest was what led her to join a trip to Borneo with Seacology, a Berkeley-based nonprofit organization that seeks to preserve island environments and cultures by providing services in exchange for local conservation efforts.

“The project we visited was a micro-hydroelectric generator,” Franco said, “which was funded by Seacology and built by the community, in exchange for the community’s preservation of some of the surrounding lands.”

She and her husband, Nathan Kaufman, met residents, participated in a traditional dance, hiked through the rain forests and explored the nearby coral reefs on scuba-diving expeditions.

“We were able to enter a society more quickly and deeply than would otherwise have been available to us,” Franco said.

As exotic destinations become more commonplace and travelers seek out more unusual and broadening experiences, nonprofit groups are responding. By promoting and helping to organize ecotourism, nonprofits benefit by raising awareness—and money—for their causes. The draw for travelers? Gaining access to places that they wouldn’t be able to get to otherwise….

Duane Silverstein, executive director of Seacology, said, “These people are looking for two things: access to unique areas that most tourists can never visit and a way to improve the quality of life of the people and places they do visit.”

This year, the group opened its fundraising expeditions to the public for the first time. These trips visit project sites in remote places such as Fiji, where the group built a kindergarten in return for the establishment of a 17-square-mile marine reserve, and Tonga, where a floating medical clinic was set up as incentive for the creation of a nature preserve.

[Seacology (510-559-3505; www.seacology.org) will lead excursions to project sites in Tanzania, Fiji, Vanuatu and Indonesia in 2007; a $1,000 donation is requested.]

36. “Financial - Despite possible rejection, Branson may win in U.S. airline bid” (Advocate (Stamford-Norwalk, CT), December 6, 2006); story citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978, PhD 1983).

By John Hughes - Bloomberg News

Billionaire Richard Branson’s bid to start an American airline may help Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., the U.K. carrier he controls, regardless of the decision by U.S. authorities on his proposal….

Under a pending U.S.-EU aviation agreement, more U.S. carriers could fly to London’s Heathrow airport. A 1977 U.S.- U.K. treaty limits U.S.-Heathrow routes to Virgin Atlantic, British Airways PLC, American and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines.

Rejection of Virgin America would let Branson argue that the U.K government should oppose the agreement because the United States didn’t open its market to him, said Charles Hunnicutt, who was an assistant transportation secretary under President Clinton. A “no” vote from any EU nation would sink the accord….

The United States today scuttled a proposed rule to give foreign investors more control over domestic airlines, dimming prospects for the treaty. Europeans had made the investor rule a condition for completing the “Open Skies” treaty with the United States….

Virgin Atlantic and British Airways benefit from the continued treaty stalemate, said Dorothy Robyn, a former senior aviation adviser to Clinton.

The United Kingdom “always puts a price on access to Heathrow, but the price is invariably one that the U.S. is unable to pay,” said Robyn, a principal with the Washington consulting firm Brattle Group. “They put a condition we couldn’t possibly meet in order to maintain the status quo that benefits the British carriers.”

37. “Fire Chief Steps Down In Los Angeles In Bias Case” (New York Times, December 2, 2006); story citing CAROL CHETKOVICH (MPP 1987, PhD 1994).

By Jennifer Steinhauer

The chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department resigned Friday under pressure from Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, after a hazing scandal in which a black firefighter sued the city, claiming his dinner was laced with dog food by his white colleagues.

The chief, William Bamattre, who was hired in 1996, had been given responsibility for overhauling the culture of a department dogged by charges of discrimination. On Friday, Chief Bamattre did not discuss the reasons for his resignation in the prepared statement announcing his departure.

The incident involving the Los Angeles firefighter, Tennie Pierce, elucidated the complex culture of the urban firehouse, in which hazing rituals are common and gender and race remain underlying tinderboxes of departmental relationships. In January, the city’s controller released a report documenting a long pattern of harassment and discrimination in the department….

“The thing that is interesting about firefighter culture is that the whole hazing and practical joking and slamming and all that stuff that goes on serves a purpose among firefighters,” said Carol Chetkovich, an associate professor of public policy at Mills College in Oakland and the author of a book about gender and race in the fire service. “The firefighters are concerned with personal qualities of people they work with, because lives depend on each other.”…

By E.J. Schultz - Bee Capitol Bureau

State officials reaffirmed Friday that the closure of a Fresno Medi-Cal office won’t affect area beneficiaries despite claims to the contrary by a Valley lawmaker.

Announced Thursday, the planned closure of the regional office drew criticism from state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, who said in a statement that it would force Valley Medi-Cal recipients to travel to Sacramento or farther for services.

But officials said that wasn’t true.

“We’re not sure where he came up with this information,” said Toby Douglas, assistant deputy director of Medi-Cal. “No beneficiaries or providers will be impacted by this change.”

The 40-employee office, at 3374 E. Shields Ave., is used for administrative functions, not for face-to-face visits by beneficiaries, he said. For instance, the office approves requests for hospital stays or the use of medical equipment, such as a ventilator, Douglas said….

“This is about increasing efficiency and effectiveness,” [Douglas] said. “It was part of our continual movement to consolidate.”…

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

By Barry Bergman, Public Affairs

There’s something rotten in America, says public-policy professor Robert Reich, and Republicans have located it right here in Berkeley. Democrats, he argues, need to find a different villain. (Peg Skorpinski photo)

Once upon a time, says Robert Reich, a central theme of American life was the struggle against “the rot at the top.” From the days of King George III, this was a tale of “malevolent influences in high places”—usually the government or the corporate boardroom—abusing their power to run roughshod over the citizenry.

In the current, Bush-era version of the story, however, the villain has been recast, Reich told a standing-room-only crowd last Wednesday evening (Feb. 21) in Wheeler Hall’s Maude Fife Room. Now, he said, “The rot at the top, ladies and gentlemen, is”—long, dramatic pause—”you.”

As evidence, Reich, a Berkeley professor of public policy and former labor secretary under Bill Clinton, recounted a political commercial aired during the runup to the 2004 presidential campaign that, while not an official White House spot, was “certainly coordinated with the Bush administration.” The spot, he said, described “this new rot” as a “tax-hiking, government-spending, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show.”

“I stand today with you,” he announced to appreciative laughter, “at the center of this rot.”…

“Listen to any—I challenge you, any—major political speech … and you will hear the triumphant individual and the benevolent community again and again,” Reich said.

These, he explained, are the “stories of hope.” There is also, however, “a dark side,” embodied by two complementary narratives….

Republicans, argued Reich, have largely reached a consensus on their versions of all four narratives, identifying the “triumphant individual,” for example, as an entrepreneur, the benevolent community as “faith-based voluntarism,” and the “mob at the gates” as terrorism.

Democrats, by contrast, have been far more tentative in casting the villains in their own political storytelling. As a case in point, Reich cited Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic convention—which, with Mario Cuomo’s 1988 keynote, he considers one of the “two most powerful Democratic speeches” to encompass all four narrative threads. Obama’s address, noted Reich, included “no attack on the corporate elite” and “not a single word” about the “misuse and abuse of power by the Bush administration.”

“The thing that strikes me is how thin the gruel is” in the Democrats’ telling, Reich said. “So the question is … how do we want our political leaders to responsibly talk about ‘the rot at the top’ or ‘the mob at the gates’?”…

These American themes, as he’d said earlier in the evening, are “dangerous stories, every one of them. Because when we understand our culture and our future in terms of simplified—simplified—stories, we turn our fates over, potentially, to demagogues.”

2. “Workers need stronger unionizing rights” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 28, 2007; Listen to this commentary

The Employee Free Choice Act would make a major change in how workers choose whether to join a union—the first such change since 1935. Commentator Robert Reich says it’s about time.

ROBERT REICH: The right to form a union isn’t worth the paper the National Labor Relations Act is written on if you can get fired from your job for trying to form one. While it’s illegal for an employer to do this, the penalty for getting caught is a slap on the wrist….

A half century ago, most employers obeyed the law and allowed workers to organize. But in the 1980s and 90s, competition heated up, investors demanded higher returns, employers felt increasing pressure to cut wages, and union-busting became the name of the game.

Nowadays, even though polls show most workers would organize a union if they could, the process is so long and drawn out—so susceptible to illegal firings and harassment—it’s rare they even get to choose….

A secret ballot sounds democratic, but workplaces aren’t democracies because employers have the power to hire and fire. That’s where the potential for intimidation lies. And the only way around it is to go with a simple up-or-down vote.

America’s rising economic tide has been lifting executive yachts, but leaving most working people in leaky boats. Workers need more bargaining power. They should be allowed to form a union when a majority of them wants one. As simple as that.

JAGOW: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He was the Labor Secretary under President Clinton.

By Dennis Kavanagh

The American academic Martin Trow, for more than 30 years the pre-eminent figure in the sociology of education, has died, aged 80. A major theme of his 12 books and some 170 reports and articles were the dilemmas—economic, political and moral—of the transition from elite to mass higher education.

A renowned director of the centre for studies in higher education at the University of California, Berkeley (1976-88), Trow was best known in the UK for The British Academics (1971), the magisterial book he wrote with the Oxford don AH Halsey…. At the time, the small university world still enjoyed high academic standards, generous staff-student ratios and amenities, and had an elitist outlook about teaching and research. The study reported the considerable opposition to expansion among dons if it involved a threat to those features. Trow insisted that expansion on traditional lines could not be sustained. Democratisation of higher education had to manage with economies; the party was over.

Trow’s work covered the problems of teaching and learning, the implications of the slowdown of economic growth for higher education, the balance between manpower planning and markets, the status and values of university teachers, academic freedom, quality assessment, accountability and the consequences of new information and technologies….

His first teaching post was at the women’s Bennington College, in Vermont (1953-57). He then moved to the Berkeley sociology department, where he flourished until the student riots of the late 1960s. Those events deeply divided the faculty and Trow, among others, turned his back on the department, disillusioned that many colleagues failed to defend the academy against direct action. In 1969, he became a founding member of the graduate school of public policy, concentrating his research on comparative education systems….

Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer

A brain trust of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists will staff the university’s new Energy Biosciences Institute funded by British Petroleum, and a top plant research professor at Stanford appears likely to be selected to lead the facility.

According to interviews and a previously undisclosed document that is the institute’s blueprint, Stanford biological science Professor Chris Somerville is in line to lead the institute’s 150-member staff.

Somerville is director of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford in addition to his Stanford faculty post. He also is a plant biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab….

Jay Keasling, a Cal professor of biochemistry and chemical engineering and a division lead at the national lab, is mentioned as a head researcher in addition to being the director of one of five centers that would provide high-tech support for institute scientists….

Three UC Berkeley faculty members—Daniel Kammen, David Zilberman and Brian Wright—would head groups in a program studying the socio-economic impact of new biofuels technologies….

Cal’s candidates for energy institute

Socio-Economic Systems: Next-Generation Assessment—Daniel Kammen, UCB

Durham, NC -- Sixth graders placed in middle schools have more discipline problems and lower test scores than their peers who attend elementary schools, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition, the negative effects of grouping sixth graders with older students are lasting and persist at least through ninth grade.

These findings cast serious doubt on the wisdom of the historic nationwide shift to the grades 6-8 middle school format, said Philip Cook, Duke professor of public policy and economics and an author of the paper.

In the 1970s, less than 25 percent of middle schools included sixth grade. Now, the figure is 75 percent nationwide and 90 percent in North Carolina, which has led the trend toward grades 6-8 middle schools. The shift took place in part due to school population pressures, but also because educators believed it was developmentally appropriate.

What’s been lacking in the debate is any real data on how the school configuration affects student behavior and performance, Cook said. As it turns out, moving sixth grade out of elementary school appears to have had substantial costs.

Jacob Vigdor and Clara Muschkin, Cooks colleagues at Duke’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and Robert MacCoun of UC Berkeley [Goldman School of Public Policy] co-authored the report, “Should Sixth Grade Be in Elementary or Middle School? An Analysis of Grade Configuration and Student Behavior.” …

The sixth graders attending middle school were more than twice as likely to be disciplined as those attending elementary school, after accounting for socioeconomic and demographic differences in the groups. Drug-related disciplinary incidents were nearly four times greater among the middle school group. The pattern continued as the sixth graders advanced through the grades, suggesting the problems were not tied solely to the transition to a new school environment….

Although the study didn’t pinpoint the causes for the differences, the authors concluded that the 6-8 middle school structure brought impressionable sixth graders into routine contact with older adolescents who were a bad influence. Older adolescents are more rebellious and more involved in delinquency, sex, illicit drugs and other activities that violate school rules, the authors noted….

[The report is available online at < www.pubpol.duke.edu/research/papers/ >]

By Douglas Fischer - MediaNews Staff

Sen. Dianne Feinstein speaks on a plan to curb global warming at a luncheon Friday for U.C. Berkeley’s Institute of the Environment International Workshop.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein swept into UC Berkeley on Friday, preaching the gospel of global warming, calling for “bold action” to stem greenhouse gas emissions and saying America must become a global leader if people are to have any hope of keeping the planet from cooking.

Feinstein, D-Calif., unveiled a wide-ranging package of bills aimed to do just that. One would limit emissions from power plants, another would increase fuel economy standards. Several are based on laws California already has in place.

“We’ve got to control and contain the warming,” Feinstein told about 150 academic, government, industry and activist experts gathered for a two-day conference on climate change policy [co-sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy]….

Feinstein’s package represents a more surgical approach to limiting emissions. It focuses on the challenges confronting each industry and tailors regulations to meet the needs of various sectors. Taken together, the five bills represent a comprehensive plan for dealing with the nation’s burgeoning greenhouse gas load.

It is a better approach, many conference participants agreed, than a single, sweeping initiative—such as a tax—applying to all economic sectors.

The United States accounts for one-quarter of the globe’s manmade carbon dioxide emissions yet to date has taken no significant role in reducing that output.

The cornerstone of Feinstein’s package is a so-called “cap and trade” program aimed at forcing annual emissions reductions from electrical utilities and industry.

The program would be modeled on a successful effort, launched in the 1980s, to curb sulfur dioxide emissions linked to acid rain in the Northeast. The European Union has used that program as a template for its pioneering carbon cap-and-trade program….

“The bottom line is this,” Feinstein said to applause, “every nation is part of the problem, and every nation must be part of the solution. But the United States must lead.”

[Another story on this topic appeared in the <a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/24/BAGGFOA8GE14.DTL&type=printable“>San Francisco Chronicle</a>]

Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer

Bob Sayles visits Bowles Hall at UC Berkeley, which was established with an endowment in 1929.

UC Berkeley’s latest expansion plans may doom one of the oldest traditions on campus—the communal male undergraduate lifestyle at Cal’s first dorm, storied Bowles Hall.

An eight-level Tudor mansion hugging a canyon wall on the steep east side of campus, Bowles Hall looks like no other Cal building. Its old-school traditions, which have frequently frustrated campus officials, are in a class by themselves.

…But some alumni say the unique niche Bowles fills is being squeezed by the growth demands of a university that must accommodate not only undergraduate education but also a giant research establishment and professional schools hungry for funding to keep pace with the competition.

The source of the concern, say alumni joining ranks to preserve the Bowles experience, is Cal’s prestigious Haas School of Business. Haas, located across Gayley Road from Bowles, is looking into the possibility of acquiring Bowles and making it the home of the school’s cash-generating executive education program....

...Bowles Alumni Association President Bob Sayles says the Haas proposal is an affront....

While Haas officials informally prefer Bowles to other possible sites, they stress that no decision has been made nor are they ready to pitch a proposal to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau….

In a letter to Sayles last month, Haas Dean Tom Campbell countered that his proposal would preserve Bowles in name and architecturally, adding greatly to its life as a residence for those studying at the university. He said he doubted whether it’s possible to restore the undergraduate experience Sayles enjoyed but noted that the renovated Bowles would be available for alumni gatherings....

“If (the Haas plan) is going to serve the university better,” said prominent UC Berkeley philanthropist Richard Goldman, who lived at Bowles from 1939-41, “and if they can accommodate students in a much-improved facility, that’s good enough for me.

“We had a nice tradition and we had a nice life, but in my way of seeing it, that served me and then it was over.”...

8. “Environment: What Will it Cost to Fight Global Warming?” (Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio, February 22, 2007); program featuring DAN KAMMEN; Listen to the program

Many scientists say immediate action is needed to stop global warming. But some economists argue that the benefits of any realistic solution aren’t worth the cost. Can we afford to stop global warming?

Guests:

-- Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles columnist and contributing editor to National Review

-- Barry Rabe, professor at The Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

-- Dan Kammen, director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment and the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley

9. “Everybody profits from fair-labor standards” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, National Public Radio, February 21, 2007); Listen to this commentary

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for fair-labor standards to be attached to all international trade agreements. Commentator Robert Reich says those standards would be good for both sides.

ROBERT REICH: The labor standards shouldn’t be too high for developing nations to achieve. After all, if we require their workers to have the same wages or working conditions as Americans, jobs won’t go there. That’s called protectionism....

A minimum wage, like health and safety standards, is the hallmark of a civilized society.

Maybe the biggest hurdle is that this requirement will force us to set and keep our own minimum wage at half our median, which would be about $7.50 in today’s dollars.

Yet presumably, we have as much interest in developing a stronger middle class here in the United States as we do elsewhere around the world. Don’t we?

Ryssdal: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He was Labor Secretary under President Clinton.

10. “Change the lightbulb, save the planet” (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 20, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; LISTEN TO STORY

Fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs. (Getty Images) Kai Ryssdal: Change the light bulb, save the planet. That’s the message from the Australian government. Australia’s going to become the first country to completely phase out the incandescent light bulb.

The government says by replacing the common bulb with energy efficient compact fluorescents, Australians will cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 4 million tons a year. That’s the equivalent of taking more than a million cars off the roads down under....

Daniel Kammen with UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group says the plan makes sense.

DANIEL KAMMEN: It’s the lowest-hanging fruit. Compact fluorescent light bulbs save a great deal of energy and money. Their payback times can be now very quick. And it opens up a door to do other things....

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich paid a visit to Berkeley City College last month to diagnose the city’s economy. But while the popular pundit offered plenty of keen—and often witty—observations about what’s happening in Berkeley, he was careful about prescribing solutions to its economic ills. Despite several one-liners that prompted City Councilwoman Linda Maio to speculate whether he might have a career as a standup comedian, Reich’s assessment was largely sobering: The city faces many difficult questions but few easy answers.

Reich, who teaches at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and resides in the city, is often viewed nationally as a consummate bleeding heart liberal (he left the Clinton administration when it began to drift toward the center after its first term). But by Berkeley standards, Reich is a pragmatist who tempers ideological passions with economic realities.

His message needs to be heard in Berkeley, where people vie for the moral high ground by pretending their way is the only way. Reich reminded his audience that noble goals often come with unintended consequences, and policies designed to help one group can easily hurt another.

To be sure, Reich wasn’t telling the people of Berkeley to compromise their values. Quite the opposite, he praised the city for keeping big-box, union-killing retailers like Wal-Mart out of town and encouraging small, independent businesses. But he also stressed that the application of those values should be rooted in a clear understanding of their consequences for the city’s people….

As Berkeley addresses its economic challenges over the next several years, its leaders would do well to keep this in mind.

By Joe Stinebaker / Associated Press

Associated Press Writer Rachel Konrad in San Jose, Calif., contributed to this report.

Officials in two Houston-area elections recently manipulated polling locations to clear the path for their supporters to vote and to toss numerous roadblocks before their opponents.

Sponsors of a local community college bond election tried last year to put all their polling locations on their campuses, making voting easy for students and employees—a natural support base—but less convenient for opponents. That move prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to step in, and the election was postponed.

And officials with a suburban school district scheduled their bond election on the same day as the state’s general election in November—and then spent $64,000 extra to set up separate polling places. State law would normally bar such a move, but a large loophole allows such maneuvers in the Houston area only.

“I’m sort of astonished that election law in Texas allows somebody to buy their way onto a different ballot,” said Henry Brady, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Its just astonishing to me.”…

In Pearland, where the campaign to replace former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay guaranteed a higher-than-usual turnout in the general election, school district officials scheduled a $115.6 million bond election for the same day.

But consultant Richard Murray, a political scientist at the University of Houston, advised the district that they would be “much more at risk” if the bond issue was on the same ballot as the general election….

So the Pearland schools spent an extra $64,000 to hold a separate election, meaning people would have to make two stops to complete voting.

It worked. Forty percent of Pearland voters turned out for the general election, but only 9 percent turned out for the bond election, most of those in early voting.

The bond proposal passed with 70 percent of the vote.

Brady called the Pearland election “bizarre.”

“The notion that you could buy your way out and have a separate ballot, I mean start thinking about what that would mean,” Brady said. “It’s pretty astonishing. ...It’s pretty easy to put polling places in the right places and to therefore discourage some people and encourage others.”…

13. “Forget balancing the budget” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 14, 2007); Listen to this commentary

Commentator Robert Reich says all the politicking over balancing the federal budget is an exercise in accounting futility that doesn’t necessarily lead to smarter spending or borrowing.

ROBERT REICH: When Bill Clinton was in the White House and the Republicans ran Congress, it was Republicans who demanded that the federal budget be balanced.

That was because they wanted to cut federal spending.

Now that George Bush is in the White House and Democrats run Congress, it’s Democrats who are outraged by what they consider to be an irresponsibly rosy scenario in the President’s new budget, which he claims will be balanced by 2012….

The federal budget is just an accounting convention. And a lousy one at that….

Any family knows the difference between past, present, and future. Between, say, paying down the mortgage, going on an ocean cruise, or paying college tuition for the kids. You’ve got to honor past obligations, you live today on the basis of what you can afford to do today, and you should make investments in the future. Even if you have to borrow to send the kids to college.

But the federal budget is a static account that tells us nothing about past, present or future.

Price supports to protect today’s farmers are treated the same way as education and health care for our nation’s children, which will shape our future. Social Security surpluses, there because the post-war Boomers are still working but which will turn into giant liabilities in a few years after Boomers begin to retire, are counted in today’s revenues….

We should worry instead about putting aside enough to deal with past obligations, devoting no more than we can afford to current needs, and making adequate future investments. Even if we have to borrow in order to make them.

JAGOW: Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich now teaches public policy at the University of California Berkeley.

By Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

The timing couldn’t be better for the four-part “Frontline” series “News War” premiering tonight on PBS….

Readers didn’t need a week of front-page stories about diaper-wearing astronauts and the alleged cultural significance of Anna Nicole Smith to tell them that the Fourth Estate is having an identity crisis. There’s also last week’s Pentagon inspector general report criticizing the Bush administration’s manipulation of prewar intelligence, reminding Americans that most of the Beltway media danced to the White House’s drumbeat to the Iraq war four years ago….

In the first two installments, “News War” explains how current efforts by federal prosecutors to chill investigative journalism by trying to coerce reporters to reveal confidential sources is not a new story. Neither is the White House’s push to kill stories that allegedly threaten national security—such as the New York Times exposé that the National Security Administration is listening to citizens’ phone conversations without warrants. The media faced similar issues in the early 1970s during the publication battle over the Pentagon Papers and for its coverage of the unpopular Vietnam War.

The difference now, said Berkeley-based “Frontline” correspondent and co-writer Lowell Bergman, is that the financial and legal landscape of the journalism industry has changed. Major newspapers, which traditionally have been the leaders in investigative reporting, were more financially robust 35 years ago….

At the same time, the legal protections that have enabled the use of confidential sources for nearly four decades are under attack by the Bush administration….

Providing that perspective for “News War” are three prominent Bay Area residents who developed, largely funded and executed the series. Bergman, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Dean Orville Schell and Bay Area philanthropist Richard Goldman.

“In my early life, it never came up that the news was slanted or that the business was under pressure,” said Goldman, 86. The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation eventually gave $1.5 million to the “News War” project, one of the largest individual donations in “Frontline’s” 24 years ….

By David Vogel

DAVID VOGEL teaches business ethics at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and is the author of “The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility.”

Sustainable firms. Green businesses. Socially responsible corporations. A growing number of magazines, activist groups and websites publish such lists, suggesting that one can distinguish the good companies from the bad.

The claim that such distinctions are possible is likewise central to ethical mutual funds, indexes and stock rating services that recommend “responsible” investing—with some even asserting that “better” firms have superior financial performance.

But corporate social responsibility isn’t such a clear-cut matter. People are rarely consistent in their ethical behaviors, as numerous psychological studies have shown. An individual can cheat on his spouse and file an honest income tax return, or be a model employee and an irresponsible parent. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were ruthless businessmen yet also generous philanthropists—a category in which some also place Bill Gates. Interestingly, the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—criticized in The Times recently for “irresponsible” investing—reflected so well on Microsoft that the company topped the Wall Street Journal’s Reputation Quotient survey.

So if it is difficult to judge the overall ethics of an individual, it is certainly more so in the case of complex business organizations. Few firms widely regarded as socially responsible consistently exhibit ethical behaviors, while even the most criticized are not without virtues. The more closely one looks, the harder the determination gets….

16. “Wine in California” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM, February 13, 2007); program featuring commentary by Distinguished Visiting Scholar JOHN DELUCA; listen to the program

The show presents a conversation with the Wine Institute’s John DeLuca on issues related to the California wine industry. DeLuca is a distinguished visiting scholar and member of the board of advisors at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

By Patricia Cohen

Folk music and a collection of feminist poetry may well be dead giveaways that there is a liberal in the house. But what about an ironing board or postage stamps or a calendar?…

Research into why someone leans left or right—a subject that stirred enormous interest in the aftermath of World War II before waning in the 1960s—has been revived in recent years, partly because of a shift in federal funds for politics and terrorism research, new technology like brain imaging and a sharper partisan divide in the nation’s political culture….

For anyone who assumes political choices rest on a rational analysis of issues and self-interest, the notion that preference for a candidate springs from the same source as the choice of a color scheme can be disturbing. But social psychologists assume that all beliefs, including political ones, partly arise from an individual’s deep psychological fears and needs: for stability, order and belonging, or for rebellion and novelty….

Some of these psychological studies have been dogged by charges of bias however. In 2003 a mammoth survey of more than 50 years of research on the psychology of conservatism that [John T.] Jost and [Arie] Kruglanski undertook with the help of Jack Glaser at Berkeley and Frank Sulloway [at UCLA] concluded that conservatives tend to be “rigid,” “close-minded” and “fearful,” less tolerant of minorities and more tolerant of inequality….

The authors insist they are not making value judgments; whether a particular trait is positive or negative depends on circumstance. “Fear of death has the highest correlation with being conservative,” Mr. Sulloway said. But he continued: “What’s wrong with fearing death? If you don’t fear death, evolution eliminates you from the population.”…

Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer

Ten days ago with fanfare, UC Berkeley rolled out its unprecedented bioenergy research pact with oil giant BP. Now begins the hard work: crafting a contract that protects the university’s independence and provides guarantees against corporate involvement in faculty decisions….

UC Berkeley Professor Dan Kammen said the proposal, which BP invited the Berkeley-Illinois consortium to submit, protects any intellectual property developed by campus scientists.

“There’s no right of first refusal,” said Kammen, a professor of public policy and Director of the University’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. “It’s ours. Novartis had a different structure that gave Novartis right of first refusal.”

BP and campus scientists will work in separate labs. The university will pick its own project directors. University researchers will focus not only on new technologies for making fuels from plant materials but also on the impact such breakthroughs could have on global poverty.

“I don’t anticipate they’d meddle, and they wouldn’t own anything we come up with,” Kammen said.

Faculty members attending Kammen’s informational meeting last week stressed that they wanted to see the proposal made public, he said….

Robert Reich of the University of California-Berkeley and The American Prospect joins Cokie Roberts and George Will to discuss this week’s topics: income inequality, Obama’s announcement and possible war on Iran.

… Previous studies have demonstrated that confidently uttered statements are believed more often and that being accurate on other issues, even those peripheral to the adjudicated question, is conducive to being believed.

Tenney [MacCoun, Spellman & Hastie] show an interaction between these parameters in mock trials of civil … and criminal … cases. Two witnesses were equally confident in asserting their recollections of how the accident had occurred, yet one was uncertain about other events that had taken place on that day whereas the other professed a complete and accurate recall. Subsequently, both witnesses were shown to have been correct about the weather conditions at the time of the incident, but both were also shown to have been in error in placing a personal appointment (entirely unrelated to the accident) on that same day. Although, as expected, the credibility of the supremely confident witness was rated higher initially, the less confident witness was regarded as being more credible after their fallibility had been revealed. -- GJC

[Prof. MacCoun’s study, “Calibration Trumps Confidence as a Basis for Witness Credibility” can be read at Psychological Science 18, 46 (January 2007) (requires registration): http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/18_1.cfm ]

21. “Obituary: Professor Nelson Polsby” (Times [London] Online, February 8, 2007); obit citing AARON WILDAVSKY; http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1350297.ece

…In 1964 [Nelson Polsby] and his dynamic UCB colleague, Aaron Wildavsky, published Presidential Elections. Revised and published quadrennially—its 11th edition was in 2004—it remains the standard text on the topic. After Wildavsky died in 1993, Polsby was the sole author and claimed that: “The only difference since Aaron’s death is that I win the arguments.” His prose was highly readable and marked by wide reading and incisive analysis. He was ambitious and worked very hard to maintain his reputation and keep up with UCB colleagues; he confessed that his insomnia was caused by noticing that the lights in the rooms of colleagues in the early hours of the morning—they were still at work! He quipped: “While Polsby sleeps, Wildavsky publishes.”…

22. “Make oil companies pay for alternatives” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], February 7, 2007);

Listen to this commentary

The U.S. is going to have trouble funding alternative energy if it waits for Congress to approve a carbon tax. Commentator Robert Reich says we should look to oil companies to provide the money.

ROBERT REICH: You can forget a carbon tax any time soon. Democrats don’t have the intestinal fortitude, or the votes, to enact it. That leaves the only plausible alternative right now, subsidizing the development of nonfossil-based fuels. Yet there’s no money in the public kitty for this. Bush’s new budget allows only a pittance for new research in solar, biomass, wind, and other alternatives. Even if the Democrats wanted to spend more, they’d have to take it from somewhere else in a budget that’s already tight.

So the question is where to get the money for alternative energy? The answer is, at least partly, from the revenues we consumers have been handing oil companies….

The Democrats should propose a temporary windfall profits tax on oil companies—temporary, that is, until the oil companies’ current oil earnings boom falls back to a normal range. The proceeds would go into a fund to finance R&D in nonfossil-based fuels….

… But the windfall tax should be designed so that, to the extent oil companies do wish to invest in nonfossil-based fuels, such profits are exempt.

It’s a no-brainer. Oil companies are in the money. We gave it to them because there are no competitive nonfossil alternatives. It makes sense to use those extra profits to create those alternatives.

RYSSDAL: Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley. He used to be the secretary of Labor for President Clinton.

By Greg Farrell, USA TODAY

Excessive executive compensation, an issue shareholder activists and labor unions have ridden for years, has suddenly become a hot topic in Washington, D.C.

Lawmakers in both houses of Congress plan to make laws affecting executive pay packages, and a new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission is forcing companies to provide a simplified summary of top executives’ compensation in their public filings. Even President Bush weighed in on the subject last week in New York, exhorting corporate boards to tie CEOs’ salaries and bonuses to their success in improving companies and bringing value to shareholders.

“When President Bush talks about CEO pay, you know that it’s moving to the top of the national agenda,” says Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and former secretary of labor under President Clinton….

By Rick DelVecchio, Mark Martin, Chronicle Staff Writers

An unprecedented $500 million grant to develop new biofuels has been awarded to a consortium led by UC Berkeley, making the Cal campus the international hub of research on clean energy and the Bay Area the potential crucible of a new post-oil economy.

Sources in Sacramento said Wednesday that UC Berkeley, teamed with the University of Illinois, has won a hard-fought international competition to land the Energy Biosciences Institute, funded by British Petroleum.

The oil giant announced last June that it would stake half a billion dollars over 10 years on the search for alternatives to oil and gas and was looking for a major academic center to host the project, which it described as the first of its kind in the world.

The center will fund “radical research aimed at probing the emerging secrets of bioscience and applying them to the production of new and cleaner energy, principally fuels for road transport,” according to an announcement on the company’s Web site….

The institute is to be housed at the national lab in the Berkeley hills above the campus and will be the richest alternative energy-research center in the world, according to a Sacramento source.

British Petroleum chose UC Berkeley over other major research universities in the United States and the United Kingdom, according to the source.

UC Berkeley Professor Dan Kammen, who directs Cal’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, said the university has more energy experts than any other academic center in the world.

“I happen to think we have the best group of researchers,” he said. “The group is growing. There are people being recruited here just because of other projects.”…

UC Berkeley has been aggressively moving to become the world’s research-and-development center for alternative fuels. The university, working with the national lab, where many faculty members hold joint appointments, is combining its expertise in engineering and the life sciences to bring clean energy technologies to consumers in the next 10 to 20 years.

One focus is solar power, in which researchers are developing more powerful, cheaper ways to convert sunlight to electricity and fuel.

Another focus is bioengineering, in which scientists are designing new genetic operating systems that code specially bred microbes to make hydrocarbons, which could be brewed in mass quantities for transportation fuel.

Scientists predict that biofuels will become a critical part of the U.S. economy’s shift from oil.

“Twenty-five percent of our gasoline could go away and be replaced with biofuels, a combination of ethanol and bio-diesels, in a decade or decade-and-half time frame,” Kammen said.

25. “SAN FRANCISCO - Commonwealth Club awards coming up” (San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/01/BABADIGEST3.DTL&type=printable

- Glen Martin

The Commonwealth Club of California will present its 19th annual Distinguished Citizens Awards on Feb. 22 at the Fairmont Hotel, focusing for the first time on people prominent in sustainable energy production.

The recipients include: The Energy Foundation, a San Francisco partnership of six foundations involved in research and production; Timothy Draper, founder of a $30 million fund that invests in clean energy technology; Denis Hayes, co-founder of Earth Day and director of the Bullitt Foundation, which funds environmentally friendly projects in the Pacific Northwest; Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission; and Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley….

26. “Lawmakers vow to aid African Americans” (Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2007); story citing STEVEN RAPHAEL; http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-legis1feb01,1,99968.story?coll=la-headlines-california

By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO — A group of lawmakers announced an effort Wednesday to put more African American Californians to work, bring healthier food to inner-city neighborhoods and better prepare students for college.

Armed with a new study [co-authored by Steven Raphael] showing that the overall well-being of blacks lags behind that of other Californians, members of the Legislative Black Caucus vowed to make sure that some of the $43 billion in public works bonds passed by voters last year be used to hire workers in high-unemployment neighborhoods….

The Legislature this year includes nine black members, a historic high, and each is expected to offer at least one bill inspired by the new report, called “The State of Black California”….

Using 2000 census data, the report shows that blacks—who make up less than 7% of California’s population—lag behind whites, Latinos and Asians in income, housing quality, health and education. Blacks are also more likely to be felons and homicide victims.

The study found, for example, a median household income of $35,000 for blacks, compared with $55,000 for Asians, $54,000 for whites and $37,000 for Latinos. Homeownership rates for blacks in 2000 were 39% compared with 65% for whites….

Only 25% of black high school students complete the courses needed for entrance to the University of California or California State University systems, compared with 41% of white students. Black students dropped out of high school at higher rates than white students: 22% compared with 8%….

But [Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), who led the 1½-year effort to publish the report with $20,000 from Southern California Edison and additional funds from the nonprofit California Endowment] noted that the researchers, Michael A. Stoll of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at UCLA and Steven Raphael of the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, found greater civic participation among blacks than among other Californians. The researchers measured civic engagement through military enrollment, union membership and English fluency….

“ ‘The State of Black California’ report is not the culmination of a process,” [Tommy Ross, a Southern California Edison vice president for regional affairs who helped launch the report] said. “It is merely a foundation from which we will launch strategies that will improve the lot of African Americans in the state.”

[“The State of Black California,” commissioned by the California Legislative Black Caucus and based in part on a series of community meetings held across the state, is available at: www.assembly.ca.gov/lbcweb/ .]

27. “At least Biden dared to talk about race” (Sacramento Bee, February 3, 2007); op-ed citing study coauthored by STEVEN RAPHAEL;

By Ginger Rutland

Anyone who wonders why politicians babble platitudes rather than engage their constituents in intelligent speech—especially when the issue touches on the ultrasensitive topic of race—need look no further than the hissy fit that has erupted over Sen. Joe Biden’s comments regarding Sen. Barack Obama.

In response to a question from a reporter, Biden called the Illinois Democrat and fellow presidential candidate “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Although Biden’s remarks show his unfortunate tendency to open his mouth without engaging his brain, they surely were not intended to offend. But, this being presidential politics and the subject being race, of course they did….

Biden merely said out loud (a bit clumsily, I concede) what people all over the country are thinking. Obama has the kind of cross-over appeal that can attract white voters as well as black, the kind of appeal that previous African American presidential candidates lacked.

Biden’s remarks have been willfully misunderstood. Rather than telling the American people why he thinks he should be president, Biden—a man with a 100 percent record on voting for civil rights—spent the first day of his candidacy defending himself against thinly veiled charges of racism….

I hope Biden’s experience won’t stop presidential candidates from talking about race. Just this week, California’s Legislative Black Caucus issued a “State of Black California Report” [coauthored by Steven Raphael] that shows blacks lagging well behind whites in income, educational attainment, home ownership and health status. It shows them overrepresented among those arrested, victimized by crime and living in poverty. Those troubling disparities need to be talked about….

28. “FT Report - Business Education. Global warming has become a hot topic” (Financial Times [UK], Jan 29, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL; http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=vogel&y=9&aje=true&x=17&id=070129000812

By Rebecca Knight in Boston

Business schools are going green.

Along with customary classes on subjects such as finance, accounting, and marketing, today’s MBA students are enrolling on courses for environmental policy and stewardship. Indeed, more than half - 54 per cent - of business schools require a course in environmental sustainability or corporate social responsibility, up from 34 per cent in 2001, according to a biennial survey of 91 US business schools by the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute, published in October 2005...

Students at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley are required to take a course on ethics and social responsibility. It includes a case study on British Petroleum’s initiatives on climate change and compels students to consider the extent to which companies - within the constraints of a market system - can address the issue.

David Vogel, professor of business ethics at Haas, says students take the issue “very seriously” and come to learn that voluntary corporate action only goes so far. “People recognise that corporations have a responsibility to do what they can, but there are limits to what the private sector can do,” he says. “Students come to understand the importance of public policy.”

Prof Vogel says that while it is not necessarily new that environmental issues can have an impact on corporate strategy - it has been part of Haas’s curriculum since the 1970s - perceptions among students have changed. Most of today’s MBA students care a great deal about working for a company that is considered socially responsible....

[This story also appeared in the <a href= http://www.latimes.com/business/la-ft-warming12feb12,1,7690949,print.story >Los Angeles Times</a>]

29. “Lawmakers want public funds out of Sudan” (Austin American-Statesman, January 25, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL.

By Robert Elder; American-Statesman Staff

State legislators on Wednesday launched Texas into the national debate over investing in companies doing business in Sudan, the site of an ongoing government-backed genocide in the Darfur region.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, introduced a bill that would require the $23 billion state Employees Retirement System to identify companies that derive a substantial portion of their revenue from operations in the African nation or work with the ruling party.

Western governments and human rights groups say Sudanese rulers and their allies have killed 300,000 to 400,000 people in Darfur since 2003….

The bill’s sponsors likened the Sudan divestment movement to the similar campaign in the 1980s against South Africa’s apartheid regime. The South African divestment movement is widely credited with helping to end the practice of apartheid.

But a 1998 academic study on South African divestment says that view is flawed. The paper, by two business school professors and an economist, looked at years of financial data and concluded that “corporate involvement with South Africa was so small” that the campaign “had little discernible effect.”

Companies have withdrawn operations in Sudan because of political and shareholder pressure. Canada-based Talisman Energy Inc. sold its stake in a Sudanese drilling operation in 2003 amid a sinking stock price and pressure from activists.

The vacuum created by Talisman’s departure didn’t last long.

University of California at Berkeley professor David Vogel, in his 2005 book “The Market for Virtue,” said the largest foreign investors in Sudan became China, Malaysia and India, countries where corporate activism isn’t as strong.

30. “Few treatment options for severely mentally ill” (Orange County Register, January 21, 2007); story citing STEVEN RAPHAEL.

It’s been called the broken promise.

When hundreds of thousands of the mentally ill were released from hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s, families were told they would be treated in their own communities.

But few alternatives were ever provided.

Today as many as 30 percent of the homeless and 20 percent of the prison population are severely mentally ill, academics say.

Officials say there are at least 4,800 mentally ill homeless people in Orange County.

A 2000 study by UC Berkeley estimated that deinstitutionalization is responsible for as many as 148,000 inmates in the state prison system in the United States.

“These places aren’t designed to treat people for mental illness,” said Steven Raphael, the professor of public policy who did the study.

To address the issue, California voters in 2004 approved a 1 percent tax on high-income residents to put more mental health funding into local communities.

That money is just arriving into Orange County, and plans for new housing and others services are in the works. The county received $25 million this year and expects $34 million next year….

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