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eDIGEST May 2007

UPCOMING EVENTS

1. Petris Center’s 2007 Symposium, “Implementing Health Reforms in California”

May 4^th, 1pm – 5pm with reception to follow.

UC Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Campus, 2601 Warring Street

This is a free event and open to the public, but registration is required.

To register, read the briefing papers and agenda, visit www.petris.org .

Ø Tangerine Brigham, (MPP 1990) (Director of the San Francisco Health Access Program) will make a featured address on “Implementing Access to Health Care in San Francisco.”

Ø Richard Scheffler, Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and Public Policy, will speak on “The Market for ADHD Medications in California and Globally.”

2. Second Annual Building Bridges: Keeping Youth Connected

Overcoming barriers to engaging youth in the policy, planning and implementation of youth serving programs: What works?

May 8^th, 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Pauley Ballroom, UC Berkeley

Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy and the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly.

More info Questions? E-mail BuildingBridgesSF@gmail.com

3. COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES OF THE CLASS OF 2007

Keynote speaker: Maria Echaveste, UC Berkeley Boalt School of Law Lecturer in Residence; Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to President Clinton 1998-2001.

May 19, 2007 – 10:00 a.m. Ceremony at Chancellor’s Esplanade. Reception to follow at 2607 Hearst Avenue.

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. “Bloggers descend on Dems’ gathering” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2007); story citing BRIAN LEUBITZ (MPP 2007); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/28/MNGF2PHDCO1.DTL&type=printable

2. “Casino-revenue estimates lowered” (Desert Sun, April 28, 2007); story citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704280325

3. “VTA May Cut Fares For Bus Riders - Plan to Boost Ridership Part of Overhaul at Transit Agency” (San Jose Mercury News, April 27, 2007); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_5762766?nclick_check=1

4. “Fiscal Overview of State Bonds” – Informational Hearing of the California State Senate Budget & Fiscal Review (California Channel TV, April 26, 2007); features testimony by ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); webcast available at: http://www.calchannel.com/search.php?date=042607&source=All&type=All&title=&Search=Submit

5. “SNOWPACK LOWEST SINCE ‘88. Some Bay Area water districts call for immediate conservation—no shortages expected this year because reservoirs are nearly full” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 2007); story citing JOHN ANDREW (MPP 1996); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/26/MNGK7PFON81.DTL

6. “Who Runs Universities?” (Public Affairs Report, Spring 2007/Vol. 48 No. 1); story citing WILLIAM ZUMETA (MPP 1973/PhD 1978) and TIM GAGE (MPP 1978); http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/publications/par/

7. “Sides duel over prisons. Governor pushes expansion, lawmaker blasts Dems’ plan at victims march” (Sacramento Bee, April 24, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/159977.html

8. “Lawmakers reach deal for $7.3 billion prison overhaul” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989); http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/26/MNGK7PFOMU1.DTL

9. “Trust Fund Makes Headway, Report Says. Program Gets Credit for 5,000 Units That Have Been Completed or Approved” (Washington Post, April 20, 2007); story citing ANGIE RODGERS (MPP 2003); http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902378.html

10. “Motorists’ green code—drive less, ride more” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2007); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/20/BAgreencars.DTL&hw=drive+less&sn=001&sc=1000

11. “Professor claims ethanol may cause more smog, deaths” (Erie Times-News (PA) [*requires registration], April 18, 2007); story citing ROLAND HWANG; http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070418/NEWS07/704180395&SearchID=73279249387321

12. “McClatchy’s in with Yahoo” (Sacramento Bee, April 17, 2007); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981); http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/155988.html

13. “Bioscience forecast: Back to reality. Tax dollars - Big money spent on buildings” (Oregonian, April 15, 2007); story citing JOE CORTRIGHT (MPP 1980); http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/business/1176533771117360.xml&coll=7&thispage=4

14. “The European Union’s Green Example” (Washington Post, April 14, 2007); letter to the editor by NED HELME (MPP 1971).

15. “COLLEGES: Reeves heads Panthers’ search. Georgia State gets serious about its desire to add a Division I-AA football program” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 13, 2007); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976); http://www.ajc.com/search/content/sports/stories/2007/04/12/0413gsufootball.html

16. “Richmond seeks citizens’ priorities. Questionnaire seeks public input on issues needing city’s attention” (Oakland Tribune, April 11, 2007); story citing JANET SCHNEIDER (MPP 1990); http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_5640628

17. “Leaders making world of difference. Higher profile at UN brings new emphasis on issues affecting women” (Chicago Tribune, April 11, 2007); story citing ANN VENEMAN (MPP 1971); http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0704090148apr11,1,1949859.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

18. “The Rialto—10 Years Later: Venue a hot spot for global talent” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 8, 2007); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976).

19. “Washington & Lee University Symposium on Supreme Court Associate Justice Lewis Powell” (C-SPAN2 TV, April 6, 2007); panel citing JESSE ROTHSTEIN (MPP/PhD 2003); http://12.170.145.161/search/basic.asp?ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&BasicQueryText=%22lewis+powell%22&image1.x=30&image1.y=10

20. “Gov inks bill moving up presidential primary date” (Secaucus Journal (NJ), April 5, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975).

21. “Farmers, builders assail moratorium - Missed deadline may hamper preservation” (Herald News (West Paterson, NJ), April 4, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975).

22. “One-Size-Fits-All Rules Will Hurt Drug Quality” (Wall Street Journal, Page A13, April 4, 2007); letter to the editor by BENJAMIN ZYCHER (MPP 1974).

23. “Bush Splits on Greenhouse Gases With Congress and State Officials” (New York Times, April 4, 2007); story citing STEVE FRENKEL (MPP 2000).

24. “‘Distress sale’ for media giant. Concerns raised about L.A. Times under real estate tycoon’s control” (Sacramento Bee, April 3, 2007); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981); http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/148245.html

25. “It’s a plug-in hybrid—and it’s a school bus. Bus manufacturers are already rolling out the environmentally friendly vehicles—years before major automakers say they will” (Christian Science Monitor, April 2, 2007); story citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0402/p01s03-ussc.html

26. “UC Merced promotes self as easier path to Berkeley. Newest campus promises students they can transfer after 2 years” (San Mateo Times, April 2, 2007); story citing NINA ROBINSON (MPP 1989); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5575085

27. “ ‘Green’ electric cars will soon cruise quietly on Island streets - Futuristic city vehicles resemble golf carts, reach speeds of about 25 mph” (Contra Costa Times, March 30, 2007); story citing LISA GOLDMAN (MPP 1997); http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_5555472

28. “Erotic event turned down by city. Producers of ‘Spring Shwing’ say they are considering filing a lawsuit against Alameda” (Contra Costa Times, March 30, 2007); story citing LISA GOLDMAN (MPP 1997); http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_5555469

29. “Legislative debate focuses on implementing global warming law” (Associated Press, Sacramento Bee, March 26, 2007); story citing CHUCK SHULOCK (MPP 1978); http://www.sacbee.com/308/story/144360.html

30. “Health Care That’s Working - Md. plan is covering more of the sick others exclude” (Sun, The (Baltimore, MD), March 25, 2007); story citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.mhip25mar25,1,4117235.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

31. “Loss of Brown’s records probed” (Oakland Tribune, March 19, 2007); story citing ELIHU HARRIS (MPP 1969); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5470052

32. “Your letters: Candidate could take further steps” (Chapel Hill News, March 18, 2007); letter to the editor by KATHY KAUFMAN (MPP 1988).

33. “Letters: Help the community colleges” (Sacramento Bee, March 13, 2007); letter to the editor by NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

34. “Carbon Confusion. Buying emission offsets is a challenge for consumers” (Boston Globe, March 13, 2007); story citing MARK TREXLER (MPP 1982/PhD 1989); http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/13/carbon_confusion/

35. “BENEFITS: Wild, wild Westwood show in fashion at de Young gala” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 11, 2007); column citing Seacology (founded by DUANE SILVERSTEIN, MPP 1980), and DANIEL LURIE (MPP 2005); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/11/LVG2GOFVP51.DTL&hw=seacology&sn=001&sc=1000

36. “Global warming fight brings local victories” (Oregonian, March 11, 2007); story citing MARK TREXLER (MPP 1982/PhD 1989).

37. “Fiscal 2008 Appropriations: Labor, HHS and Education” (Congressional Quarterly, March 8, 2007); Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony by RICHARD TURMAN (MPP 1987).

38. “New official takes on challenge - Goldman, as Alameda’s new deputy city manager, will be working with City Hall, local media, residents” (Contra Costa Times, March 6, 2007); story featuring LISA GOLDMAN (MPP 1997); http://www.contracostatimes.com/search/ci_5365883

39. “Can you be traveling green by buying offsets?” (USA Today, March 3, 2007); story citing MARK TREXLER (MPP 1982/PhD 1989); http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-03-02-offsets-usat_x.htm

40. “Parental coaching could end abuse - Law enforcement and child welfare officials push passage of bill to fund in-home program” (Contra Costa Times, February 23, 2007); story citing CATHERINE HAZELTON (MPP 2005).

41. “Coastal panel pick becoming political saga” (San Diego Union-Tribune, February 20, 2007); story citing LINDA SHEEHAN (MPP/JD 1990).

42. “Doyle’s Oil Tax Plan Difficult to Enforce - Experts Say Protecting Drivers from Gas Price Increases at the Pump is the Challenge” (Wisconsin State Journal, February 18, 2007); story citing DAVID WEIMER (MPP 1975/PhD 1978).

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

1. “Peru Poverty” (PRI’s The World, Public Radio International, April 30, 2007); features commentary by ALAIN DE JANVRY; Listen to the story

2. “Is it time to raise gas taxes?” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 25, 2007); column citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/25/BUGF3PEIUQ1.DTL&type=printable

3. “Gas taxes could fuel reforms” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2007); column citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/29/BUGPFPG4T61.DTL&type=printable

4. “Getting canned is easy—in the private sector” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 25, 2007; Listen to this commentary

5. “Action a theme of Earth Day fete. Acalanes students, parents learn about global warming and find out ways that they can help” (Contra Costa Times, April 23, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_5731348

6. “The 2007 Goldman Environmental Prizes” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2007); story citing RICHARD and RHODA GOLDMAN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/22/ING7VPBAGQ1.DTL&hw=richard+goldman&sn=001&sc=1000

7. “The mahogany wars of Peru’s rain forests. Shipibo Indian unites 27 indigenous groups to fight illegal logging, preserve tribes’ future” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2007); story citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/22/ING7VPBAH71.DTL&hw=richard+goldman&sn=002&sc=969

8. “Environmental Award Winners Honored In Washington” (Voice of America, April 27, 2007); story citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-27-voa33.cfm

9. “U.S. needs a prescription for gun control” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 18, 2007); Listen to this commentary

10. “In Search of the American Dream: Robert Reich” (KALW-91.7 FM, local Public Radio, April 18 & 22, 2007); interview with ROBERT REICH; listen to the interview

11. “Green Biofuels Index would aid consumers, market” (UC Berkeley NewsCenter, April 17, 2007); story citing MICHAEL O’HARE & BRIAN TURNER (MPP 2005); http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/04/17_greenindex.shtml

12. “Political Roundtable with ROBERT REICH, George Will, Donna Brazile, Tory Clark” (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC TV News, April 15, 2007); podcast available at: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

13. “Former labor secretary Robert Reich talks about immigration, free trade and introducing Bill and Hillary” (Waco Tribune-Herald, April 12, 2007); interview with ROBERT REICH; http://www.wacotrib.com/hp/content/news/stories/2007/04/12/04122007wacrobertreich.html

14. “Shifting to a biofueled world. Research aims for wide social and economic benefits” (Berkeleyan, April 12, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/04/12_ebi-impacts.shtml

15. “Direct student loans only, please” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 11, 2007); Listen to this commentary

16. “EPA stays course on ethanol. Agency undeterred by high court’s ruling on greenhouse gases” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 11, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN and study coauthored with MICHAEL O’HARE, BRIAN TURNER (MPP 2005); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/MNGPNP6C8K1.DTL

17. “Visa quota reflects decline in U.S. education” (Oakland Tribune, April 11, 2007); editorial citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.insidebayarea.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=5640717&siteId=181

18. “Rebuilding a Resilient Nation with Stephen Flynn” (World Affairs Council, broadcast on C-SPAN2 TV, and KQED-88.5 FM, local Public Radio, April 8-9, 2007); Q&A moderated by MICHAEL NACHT; watch video or download MP3 file

19. “Hayat’s hope for new trial. Hearing will probe juror misconduct claim for Lodi man convicted of terrorism charges” (Sacramento Bee, April 5, 2007); story citing ROBERT MACCOUN; http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/149685.html

20. “I’m documented, therefore I am” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 4, 2007); Listen to this commentary

21. “Experts say switching to nuclear may be expensive. Industry must manage itself much better than in past, Berkeley researcher says” (Oakland Tribune, April 4, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_5590276

22. “Weighing the financial risks of nuclear power” (UC Berkeley NewsCenter, April 2, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/04/02_nuclear.shtml

23. “Report tallies costs of river plan - Some skeptical that the San Joaquin restoration would cut up to 3,000 jobs” (Fresno Bee, March 23, 2007); story citing MICHAEL HANEMANN; http://www.fresnobee.com/263/story/36982.html

24. “Pork tale provides food for thought. Readers had plenty to say after a report about Muslim cashiers refusing to ring up shoppers’ pork” (Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), March 16, 2007); story citing JACK GLASER.

ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

San Diego -- When Democrats gathered at their candidate-rich California state convention five years ago, a lone blogger from Berkeley was the first, and only, one of his kind to apply for media credentials to cover the events.

Today, an army has arrived in the wake of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of Daily Kos—one of the nation’s most highly trafficked Web logs, which boasts about 600,000 daily readers.

This year, a record 50 Internet-publication bloggers will join the estimated 400 credentialed “mainstream” media in the press room to track the doings of seven Democratic presidential candidates and 2,100 California party delegates this weekend.

And those numbers don’t count the estimated dozens of mainstream media journalists who will be blogging for major newspapers or the unknown numbers of delegates who will be producing their own running commentary of the convention.

“What this is doing is blowing apart the old calculus for who gets to come to the party and who doesn’t,” says Peter Leyden, director of the San Francisco-based New Politics Institute, a think tank that tracks the intersection of the Internet and politics.

With the 2008 presidential election just 556 days away, political parties and candidates understand that bloggers have become a critical part of the commentary on political developments “on a scale that is absolutely astounding,” he said….

Bob Brigham, 29, an Internet strategist and blogger for Calitics, a liberal Web site that provides commentary on Democratic politics, said the intensity of the “netroots” coverage “stretches the debate in terms of breadth and depth” and has the potential to create immediate ripple effects among a hardcore dedicated political audience….

Brian Leubitz, 28, a UC Berkeley master’s candidate in public policy—and the founder and editor of Calitics—said he’ll attend the convention with nine staffers, the youngest 18 years old, a team larger than many major newspapers will send.

Leubitz said he’s seen the growing hunger for blogger perspective since he started his Web log in 2005 to vent his outrage after Hurricane Katrina, when his handful of readers included “my mother.” Today, he has 5,000 readers daily who tune in for entertaining, informative and occasionally caustic offerings that range from strategy to gossip….

2. “Casino-revenue estimates lowered” (Desert Sun, April 28, 2007); story citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704280325

By Jake Henshaw and Debra Gruszecki

The governor’s budget office has lowered its expected revenue from the expansion of gambling at five Southern California tribal casinos.

Blaming slower-than-desired legislative action and the decisions by two tribes to install fewer than expected slot machines next year, the Department of Finance now expects to get $313.5 million in the 2007-08 budget year, which begins July 1….

The state projections were released about the time the California Democratic Party Convention in San Diego began its series of caucuses, one including Native American issues….

The governor’s $506 million estimate of revenue from the expanded compacts has been criticized as exaggerated since it was released in January as part of his proposed 2007-08 budget.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill said tribal payments to the state treasury probably would only reach $200 million in 2007-08 and that it would take three to 10 years to reach $506 million….

By Gary Richards , Mercury News

The Valley Transportation Authority may take an unusual but welcomed approach to lure back bus riders: cheaper tickets.

The VTA will discuss a plan today to lower fares for nearly all riders, changes that if adopted would run counter to what many transit agencies across the Bay Area and the nation are doing. An adult day pass would fall from $5.25 to $5, while the cost of monthly passes for the elderly and disabled would drop from $26 to $20.

VTA officials estimate lowering fares will cost the agency $1.1 million a year, but could boost ridership by 2 percent and help offset the loss of revenue. The remainder will be covered by sales tax receipts from the improving economy, but the focus is on long-term ridership growth.

‘‘This is the kind of flexibility and leadership that we have been wanting to see out of the VTA, and it’s not coming a minute too soon,’’ said Stuart Cohen, a transit advocate with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition based in the East Bay, and a frequent critic of the VTA….

By Jane Kay; Chronicle Environment Writer

The water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at its lowest level in nearly 20 years—less than 40 percent of usual for this time of year, state water officials say.

The size of the snowpack—the source for most of the state’s drinking water—has already prompted calls for immediate conservation. And orders to curtail use of water could become mandatory this summer or next year if 2008 is also dry….

But the state water agency isn’t expecting shortages this summer because the reservoirs are relatively full after three years of wet weather.

But water managers say they are aware of findings by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which cites studies projecting droughtlike conditions and an increased number of heat waves in Southern California, the Southwest and the upper Midwest over this century.

Two years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formed a Climate Action Team, which is made up of state agencies and coordinated by Cal-EPA. The agencies are keeping abreast of research indicating long-term patterns in climate change and how it could affect the state—including the water system.

As for the low snowpack in 2007, it would be “too speculative to try to connect an individual year or an individual event with long-term climate change,’’ said John Andrew, an engineer who is the Department of Water Resources’ liaison to the team.

“But it does provide perhaps a sneak preview of what climate change will bring and what we may be seeing on a more frequent basis in the future,” Andrew said….

After a year in which higher education saw its share of controversies—from the executive compensation turmoil at the University of California to the troubled Harvard presidency of Lawrence Summers—faculty members, administrators, and others examined academic governance at an IGS conference in December….

Two scholars of higher education—Steven Brint of UC Riverside and William Zumeta [associate dean of the Daniels School of Public Affairs at] the University of Washington—opened the conference by providing a brief summary of the status of the academy in America.

Brint noted that the public is broadly supportive of higher education, but also worries that universities are too expensive … and too politically liberal. Zumeta presented a graph showing that public spending on higher education tends to reflect economic cycles….

Tim Gage, who was the director of the California Department of Finance under Gov. Gray Davis, noted that typically the university complains that it is receiving too little funding, while the Legislature and the governor respond that no more funding is available. That dynamic leaves little room for discussion of “broader public goals that we’re trying to achieve through our higher education system.”

At the same time, Gage acknowledged that the Capitol often displays a flagging level of knowledge and interest in the problems of higher education. Most of the policymaking community’s educational focus is on the K-12 system Gage said….

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau

Debbie Morin of Stockton places a rose on the photo of her relative, Candi Morin, during the Victims March on the Capitol on Monday. Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

The politics of crime infused the 18th annual “Victims March on the Capitol” on Monday, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger imploring the several hundred people gathered on the west steps to “send a message to the legislators” to pass his $10.9 billion prison expansion plan.

Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer of Orange also took to the podium to ask the families of murder victims who made up the bulk of the crowd, many of them hoisting posters depicting the faces of their slain loved ones, to “storm the Capitol” and “sit down” in the offices of the Democratic legislative leaders to oppose a sentencing commission and demand tougher laws.

Both Schwarzenegger and Spitzer waded into territory contrary to the positions of the group sponsoring the rally, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. The union firmly opposes the thrust of the governor’s corrections plan and is an ardent supporter of the type of sentencing commission that attracted Spitzer’s strident criticism.

The CCPOA has strongly criticized some aspects of the governor’s plan, saying it isn’t doing enough to fill officer vacancies and it’s falling short in providing for “effective rehabilitation” for inmates….

In his brief speech, Spitzer told the crowd, “You need to storm this Capitol in a civil way,” to tell lawmakers that victims groups are against the version of the sentencing commission that is being supported by the CCPOA and legislative Democrats.

“You need to tell these legislators that the answer to early release is not a sentencing commission which will reduce the crime and punishment under which defendants were sentenced for harming your family members,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer added he is “incredibly frustrated” about “not winning the battle in this legislative session” on assorted criminal justice issues. He told the crowd, “There are two corner offices in this building. The (Democratic) leaders reside in those offices. You need to go there and sit down until they come to see you, and you need to tell them we want to lock these people up, and we will not accept delayed or denied justice.”…

By Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Because of overcrowding, more than 16,000 inmates are sleeping in gymnasiums and classrooms at various state prisons.

Sacramento -- Legislative leaders announced Wednesday they had reached an agreement to build 53,000 new prison and jail beds as part of a $7.3 billion construction plan aimed at appeasing federal judges threatening to take actions that could lead to the early release of inmates….

The proposal could mean a massive increase for the state’s $10 billion prison system and would rival the decadelong prison building boom that began in the late 1980s. Democratic leaders emphasized that the deal will require the state’s corrections department to place a new emphasis on rehabilitation programs for inmates that could lead to fewer inmates returning to prison.

But the deal, endorsed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, did not include changes to the state’s criminal sentencing structure or parole system, which many experts have cited as key causes of overcrowding in California prisons and the state’s nation-high recidivism rate. About 70 percent of the state’s convicts return to prison within three years on parole violations or new crimes.

California’s 33 prisons house 172,000 inmates in space designed to hold 100,000.

An earlier effort by Schwarzenegger to send prisoners to other states was ruled unconstitutional by a state Superior Court judge, so the new proposal attempts to address judicial concerns by giving the governor explicit authority to send inmates away….

Schwarzenegger, who had proposed a more expensive and expansive building program last December, praised the deal Wednesday.

“This proposal will bring critical new rehabilitation programs and create desperately needed space to relieve overcrowding,” the governor said in a statement.

Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, also praised the deal Wednesday, saying “it’s the exact recipe to protect public safety.”…

By Robert E. Pierre; Washington Post Staff Writer

After a surge in housing prices throughout the region, political leaders have been inundated with pleas to preserve and create affordable housing.

But one program in the District, the Housing Production Trust Fund, already is effectively, if slowly, delivering affordable rental and ownership units, according to an independent review released yesterday by two nonprofit groups.

Since 2001, more than 5,000 units have been completed or authorized because of support from the fund. Most of the units are rentals, and nearly 600 of those have been set aside for the elderly or residents with special needs.

It’s a fraction of what’s needed, said Bob Pohlman, executive director of the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development, which sponsored the report with the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. City leaders for years have acknowledged that demand for units affordable to people working at or near minimum wage outstrips availability by 2 to 1….

The fund was established in the late 1980s but did not receive significant money until fiscal 2001, when the D.C. Council dedicated a portion of deed and recordation taxes to it….

With deed and recordation taxes leveling off along with property values, advocates are trying to persuade city leaders to find more money.

The fund, which received $50 million in fiscal 2004, is projected to receive nearly $58 million in this fiscal year. That is far below previous projections.

“It’s not going to grow as healthy as it has been growing,” said Angie Rodgers of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute.

By Michael Cabanatuan

For citizens of the planet who want to limit their role in its degradation, the solution is simple: Drive less, drive cleaner—or don’t drive at all.

Motor vehicles are the largest single source of U.S. air pollution, spewing smog-forming gases, microscopic particles, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide into the skies. The manufacture of automobiles and trucks, as well as the refining and distribution of gasoline and oil products, also pollute the air….

The biggest change, of course, would be to permanently park that car and rely on public transportation, bicycles and feet to get around….

The Bay Area has, arguably, the best transit network in the western United States…. Taking transit, however, can sometimes take longer than driving, involve multiple transfers, long waits, and occasionally long walks.

Still, you won’t know until you try, said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, a transit lobby.

“The first thing people can do is make a commitment during Earth Week to try out different transit choices,’’ he said. “What we’ve found is that it takes a lot of personal resolve and energy to change the way you get around. Trips of less than a mile are easily walked and yet a majority of them are often driven.’’

After that Earth Week trial, Cohen suggested, making a commitment to get out of the car and commute on transit, bike or foot just once or twice a week can make a difference.

“Changing just one trip a week out of the car produces benefits that multiply greatly if enough people do it,’’ he said.

Studies show that taking just a small percentage of vehicles out of the commute can often reduce congestion, Cohen said. So, more people riding transit could reduce the need to spend money on highway expansions. It also cuts global warming emissions….

Experts also suggest that the trend toward infill development—smart growth—can reduce the reliance on driving. If people live closer to where they work, shop and socialize, they’ll drive less.

“If we want to preserve open space, promote transit usage and more walking, we need to plan for it,’’ said Cohen….

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Switching from gasoline to ethanol—touted as a green alternative at the pump—may create dirtier air, causing slightly more smog-related deaths, a new study says.

Nearly 200 more people would die from respiratory problems if all vehicles in the United States ran on a mostly ethanol fuel blend by 2020, the research concludes….

Each year, about 4,700 people, according to [study author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor], die from respiratory problems from ozone, the unseen component of smog along with small particles. Ethanol would raise ozone levels, particularly in certain regions of the country, including the Northeast and Los Angeles….

Jacobson’s study troubles some environmentalists, even those who work with him. Roland Hwang of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that ethanol, which cuts one of the key ingredients of smog and produces fewer greenhouse gases, is an important part of reducing all kinds of air pollution.

Jacobson’s conclusion “is a provocative concept that is not workable,” said Hwang, an engineer who used to work for California’s state pollution control agency.

“There’s nothing in here that means we should throw away ethanol.”…

The science behind why ethanol might increase smog is complicated, but according to Jacobson, part of the explanation is that ethanol produces more hydrocarbons than gasoline. And ozone is the product of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxide cooking in the sun….

Hwang agreed that that is a “well-known effect.”

While praising Jacobson as one of the top atmospheric chemists in the nation, Hwang said he had problems with some of Jacobson’s assumptions, such as an entire switch to ethanol by 2020. Also, he said that the ozone difference that Jacobson finds is so small that it may be in the margin of error of calculations.

Jacobson is also ignoring that ethanol—especially the kind made from cellulose, like switchgrass—reduces greenhouse gases, which cause global warming. And global warming will increase smog and smog-related deaths, an international scientific panel just found this month, Hwang said.

[Jacobson’s study, based on a computer model, is published in Wednesday’s online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology.]

12. “McClatchy’s in with Yahoo” (Sacramento Bee, April 17, 2007); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981); http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/155988.html

By Dale Kasler - Bee Staff Writer

Eager to ramp up its Internet revenue, The McClatchy Co. announced a groundbreaking news and advertising deal Monday with online giant Yahoo Inc.

Sacramento-based McClatchy, which owns The Bee, became the latest and largest newspaper publisher to join a fledgling revenue-sharing alliance under which Yahoo and major newspaper chains sell advertising on each others’ Web sites. Yahoo technology will enable advertisers buying space on sacbee.com and other McClatchy sites to target their messages more effectively to niche audiences, while Yahoo’s search engine will be incorporated into the newspapers’ sites.

Also, Yahoo’s news pages will carry news from McClatchy papers and provide links back to the newspapers’ Web sites, giving McClatchy access to Yahoo’s vast audience….

By signing on with Yahoo, McClatchy is abandoning negotiations to create a national online ad sales network with Gannett Co. and Tribune Co., the two largest U.S. newspaper publishers.

It became apparent that the Yahoo program “is where the momentum is,” said Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s chairman and chief executive.

“This is where the gravitational pull is. ... So many newspapers had signed up, this is the most promising partnership.”

Pruitt said the switch isn’t expected to affect McClatchy’s relationship with Gannett, Tribune and Career Builder, an online help-wanted advertising business owned by the three publishers.

Moreover, Pruitt said Gannett and Tribune “have an open mind” about joining the Yahoo alliance….

The alliance between Yahoo and the newspaper industry began last November and initially focused on Yahoo’s HotJobs help-wanted business. McClatchy stood on the sidelines because of its existing affiliation with Career Builder. Now that the program is being expanded to include news and other forms of advertising, McClatchy decided to opt in, Pruitt said….

The deal will bring “contextual searching” to McClatchy’s Web sites. A reader conducting a search on a particular topic will find links to related advertisers from Yahoo….

Signing on with Yahoo will also expand the audience for McClatchy’s news stories. Yahoo commands the Internet’s largest news audience….

By Ted Sickinger

Oregon Health & Science University has backed away from the economic development projections that it sold to legislators between 2001 and 2003 when seeking $200 million to build a bioscience research building and recruit scientists.

The fountain of new companies, jobs and tax revenue that was supposed to flow from taxpayers’ investment has not materialized as rapidly as envisioned. And OHSU’s new president, Joseph Robertson, acknowledges that the university’s projections were “optimistic” and “exuberant.”

Asked about the creation of a biotechnology industry with $1 billion in annual sales by 2006—a forecast billed as conservative—Robertson said that hasn’t occurred, won’t happen soon and was unrealistic….

Among those projections:

Forecast: 6,000 OHSU jobs and $14.7 million in payroll taxes over a decade, 12,600 non-OHSU jobs and $45.4 million in taxes.

Progress: Since 2003, OHSU has added 625 employees, including 83 researchers and 200 to 300 support staff paid for by the state….

Skeptics doubted such forecasts, which now look overblown….

If anything, competition for biotech is tougher today, said Joe Cortright, a Portland economist who authored a 2002 study documenting the concentration of biotech activity in nine metro areas, including Boston, San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle. At the time, he cast doubt on Oregon’s ability to join the club.

Though biotech companies are expanding rapidly, money and job growth are more concentrated than ever in established companies and industry hubs such as California, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Maryland that boast the most ample venture capital, managerial pool and scientific talent to turn research into business.

Meanwhile, traditional drug companies, with sparse research-and-development pipelines, are more aggressive in locking up the intellectual property of biotech startups.

The implication for Oregon, Cortright said, is that even when OHSU researchers make marketable discoveries, the resulting startup or economic activity is likely to happen elsewhere.

“From an economic development standpoint,” Cortright said, “even if it’s wildly successful, the impact on the state is relatively little.”…

14. “The European Union’s Green Example” (Washington Post, April 14, 2007); letter to the editor by NED HELME (MPP 1971).

The European Union’s cap-and-trade system did not get a fair shake in “Europe’s Problems Color U.S. Plans to Curb Carbon Gases” [front page, April 9].

The European Union developed and implemented this first-of-a-kind carbon trading system in record time—within two years after the legislation was adopted. The European Union readily acknowledged that hiccups would be expected, but given the urgency presented by climate change, it agreed that the first phase needed to be learn-by-doing. Throughout this first phase, however, the European Union has monitored those hiccups and has tightened the caps for each member country and its companies in the second and internationally binding phase of the program, which starts next year.

A structural obstacle not present in U.S. policymaking should be noted, that E.U. states have far more autonomous power in a more decentralized system than states in the United States. Consequently the E.U. Commission had to move carefully toward a federal solution.

Most significant, E.U. companies are systematically managing their carbon dioxide emissions. They have responded to the first market price on carbon dioxide by examining their carbon emissions, reducing them in a cost-effective manner and incorporating the price of carbon into long-term planning. Losing sight of this important outcome is to miss the forest for the trees.

-- Ned Helme

Washington

The writer is president of the Center for Clean Air Policy.

By Bill Sanders – Staff

Former Falcons coach Dan Reeves. Joey Ivansco / AJC

Two messages were coming out of Georgia State’s athletics department Thursday with crystal clearness: The old way of doing things no longer was good enough, and the new way involves college football.

Everyone involved with the testing of the football waters at Georgia State made it clear Thursday they thought the sport eventually would come to the school. Front and center was the new face of Panthers football, former Falcons coach Dan Reeves [a Georgia native who led the Denver Broncos to the Super Bowl three times and took Atlanta to the NFL’s championship game in 1999].

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it was very likely that it would happen,” Reeves said Thursday. “When someone mentions starting a football program in the state of Georgia and asks, ‘Am I interested?’ You bet.”

And don’t hold him to this just yet, but that means Reeves is interested in every aspect of a possible Division I-AA-level program except suiting up and playing. That includes coaching the team….

The new day at Georgia State was on display shortly after Reeves was announced as coming aboard. New basketball coach Rod Barnes was one of the first to come to the podium and greet Reeves.

“When we announced Rod Barnes two weeks ago, we reflected on how we’ve stepped up over the last 10 years, starting with Lefty Driesell,” Georgia State President Carl Patton said. “We’re stepping up again and we’re doing it realizing what athletics can do for a university, from boosting the growth in research, to a wider range of students to additional financial support, not only for the athletic program, but for the university as a whole.

“It’s time to take the next step.”…

By John Geluardi, MediaNews Staff

About 3,000 Richmond residents may have been stunned recently to open their mailboxes to find a five-page questionnaire asking how city government can better serve them.

Richmond residents will be able to tell city officials how they want their tax dollars spent and sound off on a host of such civic issues as crime, potholes, public transportation, police response time, community centers and park maintenance.

“The City Council wants to find out what the community’s priorities are,” city Administrative Chief Janet Schneider said. “The questionnaire will help the council determine how to spend capital improvement dollars, and it will help the city set a baseline for providing public services.”

The effort to encourage community input, stands in stark contrast to Richmond’s past, when the public was regularly side-stepped in favor of the interests of industry, developers and powerful city unions….

“This is your opportunity to tell the city what you’re priorities are and what you think the city should be focusing on,” Schneider said….

“The city is looking for better ways to communicate with, and get input from, residents,” Schneider said. “We want to know how to get information from them and how to let them know about things that are happening in the city.”…

In the last year, the city upgraded its Web site to contain news flashes and public service announcements. The city also is developing a newsletter that will be sent regularly to residents, Schneider said.

“We’re hoping for a great response rate,” Schneider said. “And we plan to do other surveys every two years.”

By Stevenson Swanson, Tribune national correspondent

When Ban Ki Moon started naming his staff after he became the new secretary general of the United Nations in January, one thing quickly became clear: He seems determined to increase the number of women in leadership positions at the world body.

Ban’s deputy, the second highest-ranking UN official, is Asha-Rose Migiro, the former foreign minister of Tanzania. The undersecretary general for management—an important position at an organization that is in the throes of trying to become more efficient—is Alicia Barcena of Mexico. And his chief spokesperson is Michele Montas, a Haitian journalist.

In addition, more of the UN’s far-flung operations are being handled by women than they have been in many years, and for only the third time in its six-decade history, the UN’s General Assembly president is a woman. Women have rarely enjoyed this much prominence at an organization that, like much of international relations, has traditionally been dominated by men….

Among the women serving at UN-affiliated agencies are Dr. Margaret Chan, recently elected head of the UN-affiliated World Health Organization, and Ann Veneman, the former U.S. secretary of agriculture, selected two years ago to run UNICEF…

18. “The Rialto—10 Years Later: Venue a hot spot for global talent” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 8, 2007); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976).

By Susan Elliott for the Journal-Constitution

In 1991, a dilapidated, boarded-up building sat at the corner of Luckie and Forsyth streets, a tragic shadow of its former glory days as one of the Southeast’s premier entertainment venues.

Surrounded by halfway houses and seedy hotels, the Rialto, as it had been known since its 1916 origins, had become a picture postcard for the urban blight that at one time or another has afflicted so many of America’s inner cities.

It was also a steal for anyone interested in downtown real estate, provided they were willing to brave the high crime rate of about 350 robberies reported annually, and the occasional murder.

Richard Koehler, director of the School of Music at Georgia State University at the time, was in search of a performance venue for his department; when a real estate agent walked him by the Rialto, an idea that has since helped to spark the resurgence of downtown Atlanta began to take shape.

In 1992, Carl Patton, an urban planner, was named president of Georgia State University. “I arrived when Dick Koehler was cooking up the idea,” Patton, who remains the school’s president, said in a recent interview, “and I thought it was a great one.”

Envisioning a refurbished Rialto as an early and impressive symbol of the school’s commitment to build up the area, he set about raising the necessary funds—$14 million—for its renovation. Construction started in 1994 and, by the spring of 1996, the new Rialto—luxuriously appointed with 833 seats (18 inches wide, says Patton with pride, “you won’t find that in just any theater”), superb acoustics, a sprung-wood dance floor and a light-filled, spacious lobby—was ready for prime time, not to mention the 1996 Olympic Games. Opening night, March 23, 1996, featured legendary chanteuse Maureen McGovern fronting the Rialto Pops.

But the venue’s image problem lingered. “People told me, you can fix up the Rialto but nobody will ever go down there,” remembers Patton. At first, those concerns proved true. But over the last decade, especially as the university has renovated some of the surrounding real estate for its own purposes, the area has rebounded: restaurants have opened, condominiums have been built, hotels and corporate offices abound.

“Now when people go to the Rialto,” deadpans Patton, “they have a good time, and they’re not murdered, either.”

“It’s been a huge catalyst,” concurs A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, “not just for the downtown community landscape, but as a cultural beacon for the region as well.”…

Washington and Lee University School of Law hosts a symposium to discuss the legacy of Lewis Powell. Several panels specifically look at Powell’s cases dealing with diversity in schools and their impact in higher education.

Second Panel on “The Future of Affirmative Action in Higher Education” [begins at about 1:56 in the video]:

Panelists: Rachel Moran, Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley; Lani Guinier, Harvard School of Law; Gail Heriot, University of San Diego School of Law. Moderator: Robert Grey, past president, American Bar Association.

Lani Guinier, arguing that the current “testocracy” is a means for academic institutions “to launder wealth,” cited a study by Jesse Rothstein, economist at Princeton University.

20. “Gov inks bill moving up presidential primary date” (Secaucus Journal (NJ), April 5, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975).

By Deborah Howlett - Newhouse News Service

Gov. Jon Corzine … signed a bill Sunday pushing New Jersey to the front of the presidential primary pack.

“This puts New Jersey at center stage in national politics,” Corzine said. “It’s not going to put us in the singular spotlight, but it gives us a pretty good role in the selection of a candidate.”

Moving the primary up to Feb. 5, 2008, will allow New Jersey voters to participate in what might amount to a national primary….

In 2004, New Jersey held its primary in June, seven weeks before the nominating conventions but well after it was clear that Democrats were already solidly behind Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry to challenge the re-election of President Bush.

Assemblyman Robert Gordon, D-Bergen, another of the bill’s sponsors, said that during the 2004 election he remembered being inundated with TV advertising during the hotly contested New York primary in early March and feeling powerless to have any effect on the outcome.

He also pointed out that New Hampshire, a state with fewer residents than Bergen County, has a greater impact on choosing a candidate.

“This legislation will make us active participants in the process,” Gordon said. “We are moving New Jersey from the political backwaters to the front lines.”…

21. “Farmers, builders assail moratorium - Missed deadline may hamper preservation” (Herald News (West Paterson, NJ), April 4, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975).

By Jan Barry, Special to the Herald News

Farmers and builders are protesting Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s consideration of a moratorium on development in the water-generating Highlands until a protective master plan is completed.

Prodded by environmental groups, Corzine last week directed state agencies to determine how many projects might be affected by a moratorium while the draft plan is worked on by the Highlands Council.

The council missed its June 2006 deadline to create a plan to keep development from overwhelming streams that supply drinking water to more than half of the state. As a result, critics say, the door has remained open to massive development plans, contradicting the preservation goals of the 2004 Highlands Act….

Assemblyman Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, a sponsor of the act, said Tuesday that the consequences of a moratorium should be carefully previewed.

“The governor is probably taking the right course, which is to get an assessment from the DEP as to how many applications would be affected,” Gordon said. “We should think long and hard and see what the impact is first.”…

22. “One-Size-Fits-All Rules Will Hurt Drug Quality” (Wall Street Journal, Page A13, April 4, 2007); letter to the editor by BENJAMIN ZYCHER (MPP 1974).

Having spent years pretending to be a pharmaceutical economist, Marcia Angell (“Those Newly Approved Drugs Are a Lot Like Some Old Ones,” letters, April 2) now accuses Richard Epstein (“Drug Crazy,” editorial page, March 26) of writing “far afield from his expertise” but never mind. The larger problem with her “me-too” argument on drugs is clear: it simply is impossible that in every class the first one to have emerged from the FDA approval proves is the best for every patient.

The evidence for this, as demanded by Dr. Angell, is to be found in everyday medical practice when doctors and patients make myriad choices among available options, given differences in effectiveness, side effects, and drug interaction for individual patients. And as their choices suggest that alternative drugs within a class are not the same, Dr. Angell now blames “wishful thinking” on their part. What she wants is top-down (i.e., bureaucratized) “scientific study,” which inexorably would evolve into one-size-fits-all medical regulation.

Benjamin Zycher

Senior fellow

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

Agoura Hills, Calif.

23. “Bush Splits on Greenhouse Gases With Congress and State Officials” (New York Times, April 4, 2007); story citing STEVE FRENKEL (MPP 2000).

By Felicity Barringer and William Yardley

A day after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases, President Bush said he thought that the measures he had taken so far were sufficient….

Mr. Bush made it clear in remarks on Tuesday that he thought his proposal to increase automobile fuel efficiency was sufficient for the moment; he gave no indication he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases….

But with Congress and the states more determined than ever to act, some of the nation’s largest industries—including automobile manufacturers and the oil companies that make their gasoline, and electric utilities and the coal companies that fire many of their boilers—now face the increasingly certain prospect of expensive controls on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common heat-trapping gas associated with climate change….

In Washington, Congress has already begun a process that would eventually apportion both the responsibility for cuts in emissions that could cost tens of billions of dollars and the benefits and incentives that could mean billions of dollars of new income.

Several environmental leaders said the court decision could persuade still other states to pass climate-change legislation….

California has been in the vanguard, first with its bill to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from vehicle tailpipes in 2002, and then with its landmark 2006 law requiring a 25 percent reduction in the state’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2020….

In Illinois, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich has proposed restricting carbon emissions to [40] percent of 1990 levels by the year 2050, said Steve Frenkel, an aide to the governor.

“You’ve seen a lot of leadership coming out of the coasts,” Mr. Frenkel said. “Looking in the Midwest, where there’s a lot of coal and industrial pollution, how we handle this here is important for how we handle this nationally.”…

These states have completed comprehensive Climate Action Plans (Source: Pew Center on Global Climate Change)

By Dale Kasler - Bee Staff Writer

When The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento paid $4 billion for the Knight Ridder Inc. newspaper chain last summer, the price was considered a steal—and a sad commentary on the state of the newspaper industry….

The latest benchmark: Tribune Co. of Chicago, much larger than Knight Ridder, announced Monday it is selling itself to flamboyant real estate tycoon Sam Zell for $8.2 billion. Pound for pound, Tribune is selling for about what Knight Ridder fetched….

The deal severs the Times from its longtime owners, the Chandler family, who sold their publishing empire to Tribune in 2000 but retained a 20 percent stake in the company. The Chandlers essentially forced Tribune to sell out by going public with their complaints about the company’s performance.

In that respect, there are parallels with McClatchy’s takeover of Knight Ridder. In both cases, a proud and venerated media company was put up for sale under pressure from dissident shareholders. What followed was a less-than-robust auction that ended with a lower-than-expected sale price.

McClatchy, which publishes The Bee, paid a multiple of 9 to 10 times Knight Ridder’s annual cash flow, according to analysts’ estimates. Cash flow is a measure of profit. The price “would have seemed an unimaginable bargain only a few years ago,” McClatchy Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Pruitt wrote in a column for the Wall Street Journal at the time….

Tribune executives said the Zell deal will cushion their embattled company against the short-term pressures of public ownership….

Pruitt said going private “remains a long-term option” for McClatchy. But before that happens, the company would have to whittle down a substantial portion of the hefty debt it amassed to buy Knight Ridder.

By Mark Clayton - Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Emily Mulrine helped name her school’s plug-in hybrid bus ‘Limpio’—Spanish for clean. Dane Roth/IC Corp.

The basic yellow school bus hasn’t changed much in 30 years: a shoe-box-on-wheels built to transport kids safely at low cost.

Now Ewan Pritchard wants to turn that soot-spewing school bus into a clean, green plug-in-hybrid machine. High mileage. No more exhaust cloud at each stop.

When Mr. Pritchard, a mechanical engineer, unveiled his plan to a major bus manufacturer in 2002, snickering officials nearly laughed him out of the room. That was before hurricane Katrina hit, and diesel prices skyrocketed.

“When we first talked about this, manufacturers acted as if we were asking them to build flying cars or something,” says Pritchard, hybrid program manager for Advanced Energy, a small nonprofit energy-consulting company in Raleigh, N.C.

That laughter has subsided. Now, the nation’s biggest school-bus maker has orders for 19 buses from districts in 11 states—including Washington, California, Texas, Iowa, Arkansas, and North Carolina….

Such plug-in hybrid buses use both a diesel engine and an electric motor—plugging into a power socket at night to charge batteries. Environmentalists and energy-security hawks love the idea.

“Buses are a great way to use off-the-shelf technology that can reduce pollution and energy use,” says Roland Hwang, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This move creates greater pressure on the automakers to produce similar technology.”…

By Matt Krupnick, MediaNews Staff

MERCED — The newest University of California campus here has tried attracting students based on its own merits. Now it is using other schools’ merits as well.

UC Merced will allow about 1,000 students who narrowly missed admission to a more established UC campus to attend the Central Valley school for two years and then transfer to the university they originally chose. Four UC campuses—Berkeley, Los Angeles, Irvine and San Diego—issued the “Shared Experience” offers last week.

Administrators at the sparsely attended Merced campus, which will welcome its third freshman class in September, hope most of the diverted students will stay after the first two years….

…The same program boosted attendance at UC Santa Cruz in the 1980s, when some students were guaranteed subsequent entry to UC Berkeley, and the University of Texas system has a similar strategy.

“It was considered a great success by the people at Berkeley and by the people at Santa Cruz,” said Nina Robinson, a student-affairs administrator for the 10-campus UC system….

By Alan Lopez - Staff Writer

Alameda’s latest offensive against global climate change is a little bigger than a golf cart and will silently cruise the streets at about 25 mph.

On Monday, a fleet of six electric vehicles manufactured by Global Electric Motorcars will make their debut with a ribbon cutting in front of City Hall…. Among other things, the buggies will be used to travel between city office buildings.

“We do a lot of trips around town, back and fourth between buildings,” Deputy City Manager Lisa Goldman said. “This helps save on gas guzzling.”

Last May, the city instituted a policy for purchasing electric-powered cars whenever possible. It fits into Alameda’s effort to become a “green” Island that produces fewer fossil fuels and creates less waste….

City officials say that’s a good match as AP&T uses about 85 percent renewable energy, which includes wind, water, and solar power.

Consequently, Alameda already counts itself as having the lowest greenhouse emissions among 11 local municipalities. And the city has a climate protection task force working on a plan for further reducing emissions.

“This is another in series of steps city is taking to become more green,” Goldman said….

By Peter Hegarty - Staff Writer

It was billed to be “A Nite of Lust, Libation and Laughter” that its producers say would have brought the kind of merriment to Alameda that’s been happening for years in San Francisco with the Exotic Erotic Ball.

But that was before Alameda city officials got wind of “Spring Shwing: An April Fool’s Celebration,” and what its producers called its “sexy hunks and hotties in a spicy seductive setting.”

The city denied a license for the March 31 event, prompting the producers on Monday to threaten a lawsuit.

“Much like the ball, Spring Shwing is all about flesh, fantasy, and fun on the surface—but it’s also about freedom of expression, love, and respect,” the [producers] said on their Web site….

Deputy city manager Lisa Goldman said Monday that the denial of the license had nothing to do with the event’s sexual nature, but her boss, City Manger Debra Kurita, mentioned the libidinous orientation of the program first among her objections….

City Hall officials first heard about Spring Shwing through the advertisements, Goldman said.

“They were already selling tickets to an event that had never obtained a permit,” she said.

Goldman said city officials feared the event—which was set to take place in a former aircraft hangar at Alameda Point—would draw thousands of people and stretch police resources. The hangar can accommodate as many as 3,600 people.

“It was the uncontrolled nature, not the content,” she said about the decision to deny the license….

By Samantha Young - Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO -- California lawmakers expressed skepticism Monday about how the Schwarzenegger administration plans to reduce greenhouse gases, illustrating the difficulty in implementing the state’s much publicized global warming law….

The California Air Resources Board, which was charged with implementing the law, has begun hearings and workshops to sort out how much the state must reduce its emissions and what industries will be asked to do.

The board is considering a variety of strategies, including creating new regulations for fuels and creating a market that would allow companies to buy and sell credits to meet their obligations under the law, commonly referred to as Assembly Bill 32….

The law is one of the key ways California lawmakers are seeking to limit global climate change. Scientists and experts in various state agencies predict climate change could diminish California’s water supply, stress farm land and forests, and alter the coast line as sea levels rise….

Schwarzenegger has issued several executive orders that seek to dictate the board’s actions and involve his administration to a greater degree in the process.

On Monday, however, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office issued concerns about the administration’s involvement. Policy analyst Jay Dickenson recommended the Legislature deny funding to the state Environmental Protection Agency for some of its climate work and limit funding to the air board involving any market programs.

“It seems premature to us for the Air Resources Board to seek funding for market mechanisms,” Dickenson said….

Chuck Shulock, manager of the state Air Resources Board’s greenhouse gas reduction program, defended the board’s early focus on cap-and-trade markets. He said it was following time lines established in the bill.

Shulock also urged lawmakers to approve the administration’s budget requests, which would give the Environmental Protection Agency the money to help the board meet the law.

“There are a number of agencies involved here,” he said. “We at the air board are not at the best position to coordinate and make things happen.”

By M. William Salganik - Sun Reporter

Most health insurers like to enroll healthy people, so they can be confident that premiums paid will exceed medical claims. Maryland Health Insurance Plan enrolls mostly sick people—those who get turned down by private insurers.

Most health insurers raise premiums and reduce benefits. MHIP has been reducing premiums and raising benefits.

Across the country, politicians and policy wonks have been talking about how to cover more of the uninsured. MHIP is actually doing it. Membership, now just over 10,000, has jumped 40 percent in the past year and has doubled in the past two years, creating new concerns as its board works to sustain the growth.

While MHIP has succeeded in covering more of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, its potential for reaching large numbers of the state’s 780,000 uninsured is limited because only a fraction are eligible for the state-subsidized program. Richard Popper, MHIP’s executive director, estimates that perhaps 40,000 state residents have conditions that bar them from getting affordable private health insurance, assuming they can get it at all.

Still, MHIP’s funding mechanism, an assessment on hospital bills, could offer a possible template for other efforts to cover the uninsured….

It was the hospital assessment that enabled MHIP’s rapid growth, which is remarkable compared with other high-risk health insurance pools. The locked-in funding funneled tens of millions of dollars into its reserves in the program’s first years when enrollment was low. The financial cushion allowed MHIP to cut premiums and improve benefits as it actively sought more members.

“Maryland is off-the-charts unusual in that it made affirmative efforts at outreach. Most other high-risk pools hide,” said Karen Pollitz, who was an MHIP board member until last summer and studies high-risk pools at the Institute for Health Care Research and Policy at Georgetown University. Nationally, membership in high-risk pools has been flat for the past several years, Pollitz said….

Somewhat surprisingly, one of the most effective [outreach efforts], Pollitz said, was the development of a simple and inviting “mini-application” for MHIP that CareFirst agreed to include when it sent a letter of denial to people applying for insurance.

“It has a daisy on it, and smiling faces,” Pollitz said….

31. “Loss of Brown’s records probed” (Oakland Tribune, March 19, 2007); story citing ELIHU HARRIS (MPP 1969); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5470052

By Heather MacDonald and Thomas Peele, MediaNews Staff Writers

Some public records of new state Attorney General Jerry Brown’s eight years as Oakland mayor are missing and others were apparently improperly destroyed, raising questions about whether the state’s top law-enforcement official has violated California’s public records law….

Public records advocates said the matter raises serious concerns about Brown’s ability as attorney general to enforce laws such as the Public Records Act designed to ensure government transparency….

Early last week, city officials said that none of Brown’s records could be found.

Then Thursday, some of Brown’s e-mails were located by the city’s information technology department and were close to being deleted under a city policy that they be held for 90 days after an official leaves office….

The normal policy is to delete e-mails 90 days after an official leaves city government, [Bob Glaze, the city’s chief technology officer] said. That directly conflicts with state law requiring that records be retained for two years, records lawyers said….

When former Mayor Elihu Harris left office in 1999, he turned over dozens of boxes of public records to the city clerk and others to the city-owned African-American Museum and Library.

“There are boxes and boxes after eight years,” Harris said.

32. “Your letters: Candidate could take further steps” (Chapel Hill News, March 18, 2007); letter to the editor by KATHY KAUFMAN (MPP 1988).

The Edwards campaign has just released word that they are making their campaign carbon neutral (see http://johnedwards.com/news/ press-releases/20070313-global_ warming/).

In other words, they are trying to be energy-efficient, and they are purchasing clean energy credits to offset the carbon their campaign travel produces.

That’s a terrific step, and Edwards should be commended. You know what would be just as cool? What if the Edwards family took advantage of the terrific environmental professionals we are blessed with locally and installed solar panels—and even a residential wind turbine—to produce clean electricity for their sizable estate south of town?

Then no one could call them hypocrites, as they tried to call Al Gore.

Just a thought (and no, I have no personal financial interest in this).

Kathy Kaufman

Chapel Hill

33. “Letters: Help the community colleges” (Sacramento Bee, March 13, 2007); letter to the editor by NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978).

Re “Nitpicking community colleges,” column, March 9: Dan Walters implies that Californians should be indifferent to whether the 2.5 million students in community colleges meet their goals. After all, he says, no one is making them go; it’s their own fault if they don’t succeed.

Our two reports, which he mischaracterized as “blaming” the community colleges, drew attention to the need to change the state policies that govern the colleges so that more students can get the financial aid, the guidance and the classes they need.

Is it “beyond the reasonable control” of the colleges to support policy reforms that will help more students succeed? Is it “nitpicking” to be concerned whether California has enough college-educated individuals to compete in the global economy? Is it “nitpicking” to expect that the policies our lawmakers enact are designed to help students succeed? Is it “nitpicking” to expect that students understand the true costs of college and be directed to available financial aid?

Walters typically supports education reform to meet the state’s work force needs. We are puzzled why in this instance he is satisfied with the status quo of projected shortfalls of educated workers in California.

- Nancy Shulock, Sacramento

Director, Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy

- Patrick Callan, San Jose

President, National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education

By Beth Daley - Globe Staff

BARNET, VT. - Sara Demetry thought she had found a way to atone for her personal contribution to global warming.

The psychotherapist clicked on a website that helped her calculate how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide she and her fiancé emitted each year, mostly by driving and heating their home. Then she paid $150 to e-BlueHorizons.com, a company that promises to offset emissions.

But Demetry’s money did not make as much difference as she thought it would. While half of it went to plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide, the other half went to a Bethlehem, N.H., facility that destroys methane—a gas that contributes to global warming. The facility has been operating since 2001—years before the company began selling offsets—and Demetry’s money did not lead the company to destroy any more methane than it would have anyway.

Moreover, the project received a “dirty dozen” award from a New England environmental group in 2004 because it burns the methane as fuel to incinerate contaminated water from the landfill, emitting tons of pollution each year in the process. This method of destroying methane can emit more pollution than other burning methods.

“I really thought I was doing something good,” Demetry, 42, said after being told what became of her money. “I thought if I contributed this much money it would be helping the environment that much more.”

Demetry’s $150 purchase is part of the fast-growing world of voluntary carbon offsets—an unregulated, largely online marketplace.

Although specialists say some of the money is well spent, it can be difficult for consumers to figure out if they are buying any new environmental benefit.

Demetry’s purchase gets at a key concept in the offset world, called additionality. For consumers, it boils down to this question: What am I making happen with my money?

“Consumers don’t even ask this question, because they assume their money is going for something additional, something that is new,” said Oregon-based Mark Trexler, who is director of EcoSecurities Global Consulting Services and has studied carbon offsets.

But offset companies use different definitions of what’s additional….

By Catherine Bigelow

THIS WEEK

Seacology [headed by Duane Silverstein] A night at the theater featuring a performance of “Jersey Boys” benefits this organization dedicated to protecting endangered environments and cultures of islands throughout the world. 8 p.m. Tues. Curran Theatre, 445 Geary St., San Francisco. $135; $500 (includes a post-performance reception hosted by Robin and Marsha Williams at Jardiniere restaurant). (510) 559-3505.

COMING UP

Tipping Point Community Executive Director and Tipping Point founder Daniel Lurie hosts Give Get, the inaugural gala for this poverty-fighting foundation that serves and screens local organizations that address homelessness and housing, youth development and unemployment. The evening includes a cocktail reception, dinner, live auction and performance by Third Eye Blind. 6 p.m. April 4. Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus Ave., San Francisco. $250 and $500; $25,000 and $50,000 (tables of 10). (415) 348-1240.

36. “Global warming fight brings local victories” (Oregonian, March 11, 2007); story citing MARK TREXLER (MPP 1982/PhD 1989).

By Michael Milstein; The Oregonian

Next time you drive down Southeast Division, Southeast McLoughlin, North Greeley or any of more than 15 other busy roads in and around Portland, your car will burn less gasoline and pump out less greenhouse gas.

That’s because a company that built a power plant in Eastern Oregon paid $533,000 to synchronize the traffic signals. Now cars spend less time sitting, engines idling, at red lights.

It’s one way efforts to control global warming are already changing your life, without you noticing. As governments clamp down on greenhouse gases, more change is on the way.

The signal re-timing is called an offset: Reducing carbon dioxide from cars in Portland helps offset the same gas emitted by Avista Utilities’ natural gas-fired power plant near Boardman.

Oregon in 1997 became the first state to make new power plants control or offset emissions, and the order has pumped millions of dollars into reforestation and energy efficiency projects statewide. It has made Portland a national—and international—clearinghouse for power companies in need of offsets and others with offsets to offer.

Altogether the traffic signal adjustment saves drivers about 1.6 million gallons of gas a year that, if burned, would inject more than 15,000 extra metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to global warming.

Car owners also enjoy a green payoff of about $3.5 million a year they no longer have to spend on gasoline.

But that’s just the start. Offsets will become much more common as utility companies face wider demands to compensate for greenhouse gases that their plants vent to the sky….

That means more money will probably flow to offset projects in Oregon and across the country as utilities and other industries build up credit so they’re prepared for coming regulations.

Portland has quietly become a central brokerage for offsets. The Climate Trust, a Portland nonprofit organization, first formed to help power plants meet the Oregon requirement, but now is handling offsets from Europe to Ecuador….

“The situation has changed dramatically in the last six months,” said Mark Trexler, a Portland consultant who helps companies prepare for greenhouse regulations.

The European Union has started a cap-and-trade system to try to control carbon dioxide emissions, driving some European companies to fund offsets. The concept is that it doesn’t matter where carbon dioxide is reduced—as long as it’s reduced—so some of that money has even flowed to the United States….

37. “Fiscal 2008 Appropriations: Labor, HHS and Education” (Congressional Quarterly, March 8, 2007); Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony by RICHARD TURMAN (MPP 1987).

Committee on House Appropriations - Subcommittee on the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies

Statement of:

Daniel Schneider Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families Department of Health and Human Services

Richard Turman Deputy Assistant Secretary, Budget, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Welfare reform has been a tremendous success in moving families off the rolls and moving toward self-sufficiency. Reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program through the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) re-focuses States on helping families find work. Our FY 2008 budget request builds on the DRA by requesting the extension of authority and funding for Supplemental Grants for Population Increases through FY 2010 and proposing elimination of the separate two-parent 90 percent work requirement to encourage equitable treatment of all families.

The FY 2008 budget request continues to support the high level of success achieved by the Child Support Enforcement Program and builds on the newly enacted initiatives from the DRA that are moving the program toward a focus on healthy, financially strong families. The budget includes legislative proposals that will increase collections to families by almost $1.4 billion over the next five years, at a federal cost of only $19 million….

With the significant flexibility States have in using other Federal and State funds to provide child care assistance, $11.7 billion was available for child care in FY 2006.

To help those newly arrived in this country who are in especially fragile circumstances, our FY 2008 proposal requests $656 million for programs serving refugees, asylees, Cubans/Haitians entrants, victims of torture and trafficking, and unaccompanied alien children. This is an increase of $68 million over the FY 2007 level and will provide the funding necessary to continue eight months of cash and medical assistance for refugees, fund a new grant program for domestic victims of trafficking, and address the shelter and medical needs of an increasing number of unaccompanied alien children during the period of time that they are in our custody. The budget assumes a 15 percent increase in annual placements from FY 2007 to FY 2008….

By Alan Lopez - Staff Writer

Lisa Goldman likes working with people.

That may help to explain why a government theory class she took while attending Harvard University rubbed her the wrong way. She hated the class, she said.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I graduated,” said Goldman, now 39.

Goldman however, found her niche. And today is her seventh day as Alameda’s new deputy city manager.

One of her main duties will be acting as a conduit for public information between City Hall and the local media and residents. She will also help implement goals and projects for the City Council.

Alameda City Manager Debra Kurita and others who have worked with Goldman say she is highly-qualified for the job.

Palos Verdes Estates City Manager James Hendrickson met Goldman when she expressed an interest in the local recycling program shortly after she graduated with a degree in American History from Harvard in 1990.

She began working for the city, her hometown, as an intern. Hendrickson said he was impressed that Goldman could accomplish her tasks—which included helping to implement an ordinance governing noisy leaf-blowers—while listening to others and doing it without “ruffling feathers.”

“It’s not a skill you see in younger people but she demonstrated it early on,” he said.

Goldman took her skills to Washington D.C. for a few years, where she worked for Congressman Henry Waxman.

Following that, she worked in the non-profit sector for a year, then in 1999 went to work for the city of Fremont, where she stayed for seven years. Along the way, she also earned a masters degree in public policy from UC Berkeley.

While work at the federal government level is exciting, Goldman said she has found that local government work is more rewarding because its impact can be seen immediately….

While Goldman is focused on her current job duties, she envisions herself as moving up to a city manager position one day.

“It’s the top job in city government,” she said. “Taking on the challenge and doing it well would be really gratifying.”

By Barbara De Lollis - USA Today

2003 photo of wind turbine by Stuart Villanueva, The (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader

Buy an airline ticket online, and you’re increasingly likely to see this pitch: Add a payment of a few dollars and finance save-the-Earth activities to offset environmental damage caused by your trip.

Travel companies such as British Airways and travel sites Travelocity and Expedia are giving ticket purchasers the chance to at least assuage guilt, and possibly help the planet, by selling so-called offsets to finance green activism. Cost: About $5 and up.

The travel companies pass along the money to a new breed of enterprises—some for-profit, some not—that invest in wind farms, solar energy, energy-efficiency technology or other green projects. They go by names such as Native Energy, Carbon Fund or TerraPass. But for all the good feelings that bubble up for the traveler who makes the donation, controversy nags about their effectiveness and the accountability of some of the enterprises taking money….

Because the industry is not regulated in the United States, the companies and organizations taking payments from consumers approach the task of cleaning up the environment in widely divergent ways….

Among the basic issues on which the developing carbon offset industry can’t find consensus:

Accountability. Many offset companies pay outside firms to verify their work. But a report by environmental consultant Mark Trexler, commissioned by New Hampshire-based Cool Air-Clean Planet, said the lack of clear industry standards makes outside verification unreliable.

Even with third-party certification, it’s not always clear, for instance, how an offset project’s performance is tracked or whether the same carbon offset is sold multiple times, the report says.

“There is a real potential for backlash if people come to the conclusion that this isn’t an environmentally credible approach,” says Trexler….

By Malaika Fraley - Times Staff Writer

Eight-year-old Raijon Daniels died in October from long-term child abuse that included starvation, isolation, beatings and chemical burns, authorities say, and his mother, age 16 when he was born, is charged with torture and felony child abuse.

His is one of thousands of devastating stories in the Bay Area involving child abuse—cases that can be prevented if parents are given the right skills, East Bay law enforcement leaders said Thursday at a news conference in Martinez….

Nearly half of child abuse and neglect cases could be prevented by voluntary in-home parent coaching programs, according to a report released Thursday by the California chapter of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, an anti-crime nonprofit organization led by police chiefs, district attorneys and victims of violent crimes.

Bay Area law enforcement leaders are using the report to call on legislators to increase funding for such programs by passing the federal Education Begins at Home Act. The bill would provide for $500 million for parent coaching programs during three years, including $20 million for California. The bipartisan bill was introduced in both the House and Senate last session but died because time ran out.

Investing in child abuse prevention, the law enforcement officials said, will save taxpayers millions of dollars in criminal and child welfare costs today and millions more in the long term, as children who suffer abuse or neglect are more likely to grow up to commit violent crimes.

There were 11,317 substantiated case of child abuse and neglect in the Bay Area in 2005, which cost an estimated $500 million in criminal and child welfare costs, according to the report.

Of those child victims, 450 are expected to commit a violent crime as an adult, the report says….

The Bay Area has a number of parent coaching programs in place, but too few at-risk parents have access to them because of underfunding, said Catherine Hazelton, associate director of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, California.

41. “Coastal panel pick becoming political saga” (San Diego Union-Tribune, February 20, 2007); story citing LINDA SHEEHAN (MPP/JD 1990).

By Terry Rodgers; Staff Writer

The process of choosing an elected official from San Diego County to serve on the state Coastal Commission has turned into a political soap opera….

Vacancies on the 12-member commission, which oversees coastal development, usually are filled promptly. But Núñez’s decision has been complicated by a rift within the environmental community, which is split over whether to endorse San Diego Councilman Ben Hueso, a longtime friend of the speaker’s, or others with stronger environmental credentials….

One explanation for the delay is that some activists have lobbied against Hueso because of his spotty record on environmental issues.

In September, for example, Hueso cast the swing vote against fellow Democrat Donna Frye’s nonbinding City Council resolution opposing construction of an Orange County toll road through San Onofre State Park.

California’s three most influential coastal environmental groups—the Sierra Club, California Coastkeeper Alliance and Natural Resources Defense Council—are supporting Encinitas councilwoman Maggie Houlihan.

“We’re always going to endorse the candidates who, by their actions and words, demonstrate the strongest commitment to implementing the letter and spirit of the Coastal Act,” said Linda Sheehan, executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance….

By Jason Stein

State officials probably can’t stop oil companies from dipping into your pocket to cover the costs of a gas tax proposed by Gov. Jim Doyle, experts say.

The state can tax gasoline brought into the state, as Doyle proposed in his budget last week. But it’s unlikely the governor can follow through on his promise to prevent oil companies from passing the tax along to consumers by raising prices at the pump, said economists and others familiar with the industry. Doyle wants to hire a team of auditors to help enforce a proposed law that would fine, and possibly jail, oil companies or executives who passed the tax on to consumers.

But experts were skeptical whether state auditors could prove that rising gas prices reflected the costs of the tax, as opposed to some other factor in a complex global market. The issue comes as some Republican lawmakers question whether the measure could mean consumers pay up to 5 cents more at the pump….

“The information that would be needed to make the case seems to me to be overwhelmingly difficult to gather,” said David Weimer, a public affairs professor at UW-Madison who has worked in oil regulation at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Weimer said that didn’t mean the gas tax itself was a bad idea, saying it made sense to tie the cost of roads to gasoline sales….

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

1. “Peru Poverty” (PRI’s The World, Public Radio International, April 30, 2007); features commentary by ALAIN DE JANVRY; Listen to the story

Program beneficiaries

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced a new plan to help the city’s most impoverished families. The program will pay parents to do the right things—like getting their kids vaccinated on time and making sure they attend school. It’s a controversial idea. Some call it coercive and paternalistic. But the concept has been tried elsewhere in developing countries. Reporter Sheri Fink traveled to Peru to see how a similar program there is working.

Fink: …This is the home of Cerila Artaquci Navarti. She’s a single mother. And she lives off of the animals and vegetables she raises here. But it’s not a good living. And that’s affected how she’s raised her children. She says until recently she didn’t send them to school regularly.

Navarti: “I needed my children to work because I didn’t have money…”.

Fink: Yet the family earned so little money that Navarti says she had a hard time affording even the most basic staples, like bread, for her children. Poor nutrition stunts growth and brain development. It’s not good for Navarti’s children, and it’s not good for the future of Peru. So the government began offering extremely poor mothers like Navarti a deal. Now she gets $30 a month in cash. But it isn’t a traditional welfare payment. It’s called a conditional cash transfer. The money comes with conditions. Nalvarti has to spend it on nutritious foods. She has to attend classes on good kitchen hygiene to prevent the spread of disease. And she must keep her kids in school. With the extra cash she’s getting, she seems more than willing to accept the strings attached to the program….

Fink: The problem is that nearly all the children here are poor. But only the extremely poor qualify for the program…. And programs like this raise a broader question. Is it appropriate for governments to force the poor to comply with conditions in order to receive aid?

de Janvry: “There’s a very big debate as to whether you should condition the transfer or whether you should not.”

Fink: Alain de Janvry is a professor at U.C. Berkeley who’s studied the effects of conditional cash transfer programs. He says some argue that the poor should be left to make their own decisions about how to spend their time and money.

de Janvry: “We know from economic principles that it’s better to let people decide how to use the resources they have.”

Fink: But he says it’s not that simple.

de Janvry: “Parents quite often don’t appreciate the value of education, they have not been educated themselves. As you compare a cash transfer to a conditional cash transfer, you certainly get a lot more via conditionality.”

Fink: Parents are eight times more likely to enroll their kids in school, for instance. But these programs have a punitive aspect, too. If parents fail to follow the rules, they risk losing their payments…. But Peruvian officials say it’s rare that anyone is dropped from the program. And they say the conditions they impose will ultimately help the children….

By David Lazarus

High gas prices are posted at a Shell gas station in Palo Alto, but they’d be bargain prices if gas taxes were doubled or tripled. Advocates of such an increase say it would spur new thinking about energy consumption.

A gallon of unleaded regular gas was averaging $2.85 nationwide Tuesday, $3.34 in California and $3.47 in San Francisco, according to AAA. Experts say drivers could be paying $4 per gallon at the pump before long.

But is that high enough?…

By contrast, taxes add about $4 to the price of a gallon of gas in Europe and more than $3 in Japan.

These sky-high gas taxes abroad both fill government coffers and make drivers highly sensitive to pump prices. As a result, a greater emphasis is placed on walking and public transportation than in the United States, and fuel efficiency is among the most important considerations when buying a new vehicle….

Daniel Kammen, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley who specializes in energy issues, said he expects gas prices to hit $4 per gallon in the not-too-distant future.

He also said he agrees with Harvard’s [N. Gregory] Mankiw that a significant increase in gas taxes would be a tough political sell. But Kammen disagrees that you need to soften the blow by reducing income taxes.

“I strongly believe that we need higher gas taxes to fund research into energy alternatives,” he said. “We’ll need European-level gas prices before the U.S. engine of innovation gets really serious.”

So how high should gas prices be? “A doubling of where we are today is what we need,” Kammen said. “It would do the country a world of good.”

By David Lazarus

Virtually all economists agree that significantly higher gas taxes would reduce consumption and spur demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles, thus easing our reliance on foreign oil. If these are our goals, the move clearly makes sense….

One problem with introducing European-style gas taxes in this country—in other words, a pump price of nearly $8 per gallon—is that Americans, unlike many Europeans, don’t have a culture of walking. They prefer to drive, even for short distances.

Furthermore, we lack the extensive public-transit infrastructure of Europe and Japan. It could even be argued that car-loving Americans attach a stigma to riding buses and trains.

This suggests that the transition to higher gas prices and reduced consumption would be highly disruptive for many people. On the other hand, economists say that the higher gas taxes go, the quicker Americans will adjust.

Daniel Kammen, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, believes the biggest change with gas prices at that level is that major users like businesses and the military would throw their collective weight behind rapid development of plug-in hybrid and alternative-fuel vehicles capable of getting 100 miles per gallon.

“Suddenly, everything becomes cost-effective,” he said. “We’re not now sending a strong enough signal to the automobile industry.”

Kammen also would earmark gas-tax revenue for public transportation and development of new fuel technologies.

“If gas cost $6 or $8 per gallon, we would be within range of bringing some of the alternatives closer to reality,” he said….

4. “Getting canned is easy—in the private sector” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 25, 2007; Listen to this commentary

SCOTT JAGOW: Some high-ranking public figures are on the hot seat right now. World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is in trouble for helping his girlfriend get a high-paying job. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is taking the heat for firing eight federal prosecutors. And presidential advisor Karl Rove is being investigated for possibly abusing his power. Leaders in the corporate world also get themselves into sticky situations of course. But Commentator Robert Reich says they have a much harder time holding onto their jobs.

ROBERT REICH: In government, you can hold on as long as you have strong backers willing to lend you a hand.

That’s why Wolfowitz may make it, since the U.S. is the biggest shareholder in the World Bank. And Rove, who some have called Bush’s brain, will probably stay on as long as he wants.

But it’s also why, when the going gets tough, the tough often let go of underlings to take the heat off themselves.

Which is why, as the U.S. attorney scandal spreads, Gonzoles may not make it. Why officials who ran Walter Reid Army Hospital are gone. And why Michael Brown—remember Brownie?—is no longer working at FEMA.

The private sector is different. Sure, there’s often back-biting enough to fill a bear-baiting pit. But there, the answer to “How long can he or she hold on?” is ultimately decided by consumers and investors.

Don Imus couldn’t hold on, because advertisers wanted him to go—because consumers threatened to leave if he didn’t….

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

By Tom Lochner

LAFAYETTE -- To a background of pictures of shrinking Arctic sea ice and coal strip mines, alternating with graphs showing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a college professor urged a gallery of high school students and their elders at Lafayette’s Acalanes High School on Sunday to outfit their homes with solar collectors and drive fuel-efficient vehicles before global warming becomes irreversible.

This wasn’t “An Inconvenient Truth”—former Vice President Al Gore’s cautionary documentary would screen later in the afternoon—but UC Berkeley professor Daniel Kammen doing a localized version as part of the Earth Day Festival and Science Symposium.

Gore’s film does “a remarkable job,” said Kammen, who is co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment and an expert on nuclear engineering, public policy and climate change. “There are no credible complaints about the science in the movie. It’s not the facts that are to be quibbled with, just who is to blame.”

Americans need not look far. Kammen noted that the United States accounts for one-quarter of the world’s energy consumption, “a remarkable overconsumption relative to the number of humans” who live here. But China, with its runaway industrialization, proliferation of new power plants and reliance on coal, a far more “greenhouse-intensive” fossil fuel than petroleum, could soon displace the United States as the world’s No. 1 producer of greenhouse gases, he said….

The good news, according to Kammen, is that Californians are doing quite a bit. Despite population growth, the state is on track to significantly reduce its production of greenhouse gases, Kammen said, crediting alternative energy technologies and increased social consciousness. So far, only some Western states and, to a lesser extent, some Northeastern states, are following California’s lead, he said.

Kammen criticized the Bush administration for its resistance to joining international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases while hailing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his “guts” in putting global warming at the center of his agenda.

Kammen also debunked the popular notion that ethanol is a catch-all solution, noting that its production from corn involves heavy use of fertilizer and a coal-fueled production process, thus making corn-based ethanol only marginally less destructive to the environment than gasoline. Moreover, shifting corn from food to fuel production has raised prices in poor nations that rely on corn as a staple, especially in the Western hemisphere, he noted….

By Glen Martin

Hammerskjoeld Simwinga organizes microloan programs in Zambia.

This year’s winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize—announced annually on Earth Day and widely acknowledged as the world’s most prestigious and largest such award—are Willie Corduff of Ireland, Julio Cusurichi of Peru, Orri Vigfusson of Iceland, Ts. Munkhbayar of Mongolia, Hammerskjoeld Simwinga of Zambia and Sophia Rabliauskas of Canada.

The prize—established in 1990 by San Francisco philanthropist Richard Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda Goldman—recognizes average people who have struggled to make a difference. Winners usually have accomplished tremendous things with little more than grit, charisma and a sound moral compass. Many come from regions suffering civil strife as well as environmental degradation; sometimes their activism has put their lives at risk….

So far, the prize—now at $125,000—has been awarded to 119 people from 70 countries. The prize affords a cachet to recipients and their causes. Several recipients have been appointed or elected to public office in their home countries, or received even greater honors: Wangari Maathai, a 1991 Goldman Prize winner, received the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize….

By C. J. Schexnayder, Chronicle Foreign Service

Julio Cusurichi (center), a Shipibo fighting illegal logging in Peru’s rain forest, meets with Amahuacan school children.

Boca Pariamanu Indian Village, Peru—The muddy Las Piedras river rolls quietly through a dense jungle where brilliant blue butterflies the size of a large hand alight on verdant vegetation. It is difficult to believe this is the site of a battlefield between Stone Age tribes and the 21st century.

For more than a decade, indigenous tribes in this southern Peru rain forest have clashed with loggers intent on harvesting old-growth mahogany in the tribes’ traditional territories. As the value of the wood has increased, so has the danger to those who stand in the way.

Julio Cusurichi, a 37-year-old Shipibo Indian, has fought to defend the tribes and preserve their habitat. Five years ago, Cusurichi and his organization, the Native Federation of Madre de Dios … created a 3,000-square-mile reserve for tribes that choose to have no contact with the outside world….

Cusurichi’s efforts on behalf of three nomadic tribes who live in the reserve—the Nahuas, the Masco-Piros and the Amahuacas—are why he won 2007 Goldman Environmental Prize for Central and South America….

The three tribes survive mainly by fishing in one of the three major waterways. They are vulnerable to disease brought in by loggers, as well as violence in which their bows and arrows are pitted against firearms….

“Julio has been exemplary in his efforts to defend (the tribes’) rights to continue living in their traditional ways, and to remain cut off from the outside world,” said San Francisco civic leader and philanthropist Richard Goldman, who established the award in 1990. “His work illustrates the connection between environment and people.”…

Richard Goldman

Richard Goldman

8. “Environmental Award Winners Honored In Washington” (Voice of America, April 27, 2007); story citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-27-voa33.cfm

By Paul Sisco

Washington -- The Goldman Prize is often called the Nobel Prize for environmental heroism. Every year since 1990 someone from Africa, Asia, Europe, islands and island nations, North America, and South and Central America are singled out for their environmental activism. Winners receive $125,000 dollars, the largest award of its kind.

Founder Richard Goldman said, “The Goldman Prize ends up in the hands of people who are grass roots environmentalists protecting the areas in which they live, and given an opportunity to get more recognition throughout the world.”

Many of this year’s winners have risked their lives for their cause…

Prize winners for 2007 are being honored in Washington this week as they have been since the first Goldman environment awards were presented in 1990.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California told them, “I remember the very year it started, and thinking how wonderful, and I guess the point I want to make between that day and this day is that the environment is back as an issue in America. And the reason its back is because of people like you, who understand the fact that human rights include the dignity of living in a safe environment.”…

[For more information, visit www.goldmanprize.org .]

9. “U.S. needs a prescription for gun control” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 18, 2007); Listen to this commentary

TESS VIGELAND: The awfulness at Virginia Tech continued today as authorities revealed the gunman had a history of violent and bizarre behavior. Monday’s mass shootings have prompted many politicians, citizens and commentators to discuss anew the debate over gun control in this country. Robert Reich is one of them.

ROBERT REICH: In the United States, if you’re seriously depressed, you can buy anti-depressive drugs—but only if you have a prescription from a doctor….

But in the United States, in places like Virginia, a seriously depressed or deranged person can walk into a store and buy a semi-automatic handgun and a box of ammunition.

All you need is two forms of identification. You don’t need permission from a doctor or counselor or anyone in the business of screening people to make sure they’re fit to have a gun.

We can debate the relative benefits and dangers of anti-depressants and semi-automatic handguns, but if 30,000 Americans were killed each year by anti-depressants—as they are by handguns—it seems likely that anti-depressants would be even more strictly regulated.

So why aren’t handguns?…

Look abroad and you have another useful point of contrast. In the United States, many people who are seriously depressed can’t afford to see a doctor, let alone get a prescription. Unlike every other advanced nation, we do not provide universal health care, or ready access to mental health services.

But unlike every other advanced nation, we do allow just about anyone to buy a handgun.

VIGELAND: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He was labor secretary under President Clinton.

10. “In Search of the American Dream: Robert Reich” (KALW-91.7 FM, local Public Radio, April 18 & 22, 2007); interview with ROBERT REICH; listen to the interview

As a prologue to our documentary series “In Search of the American Dream,” we speak with former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. Now a professor with the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, Reich discusses the vastness of the wealth gap and what can be done to reverse the trends splitting the United States. (Interviewed by KALW News Director, Holly Kernan.)

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations

BERKELEY – The debate over whether biofuels like ethanol are better for the environment than fossil fuels has left many consumers confused and unsure where to fill their gas tanks.

Much of this confusion could be eliminated with a biofuels rating system that would reflect the positive or negative environmental impacts of a particular fuel, according to a group of University of California, Berkeley, researchers. A ratings system, like the Michelin stars for hotels and restaurants, would take into account all environmental aspects of biofuels processing and production, from the way biofuel crops are tilled and fertilized to the kinds of energy - coal, natural gas or biomass, for example - used to process them.

Such a system would not only help consumers make decisions about where to fuel up but, perhaps more importantly, stimulate competition among fuel producers to market the greenest fuels possible, driving the less-green biofuels out of the marketplace in favor of ones that really serve the planet.

“We think it’s feasible to design a workable and effective ratings system for green biofuels today with the types of information that many farmers and many biofuel production facilities already collect,” said study co-author Alex Farrell, assistant professor of energy and resources and director of the campus’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center. “The American biofuels industry can produce much greener biofuels than they do today, and I think they can do so at reasonable prices and at a profit.”

Such a labeling system would reveal, for example, that a fuel such as ethanol varies widely in its environmental merit depending on its production history, according to co-author Michael O’Hare, UC Berkeley professor of public policy. Some ethanol in current use is not much better, or is even worse, for the environment than gasoline, while other ethanol is beneficial.

Farrell, O’Hare and colleagues in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group and in the Goldman School of Public Policy disseminated a research report on the issue today (Tuesday, April 17) in hopes of stimulating discussion around the nation on how best to formulate such a labeling system. Called “Creating Markets for Green Biofuels: Measuring and Improving Environmental Performance,” the study is online at UC Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center Web site: http://www.its.berkeley.edu/sustainabilitycenter/

…The UC Berkeley group urges environmental, agricultural and regulatory agencies to join forces with local, state and national governments to develop this Green Biofuels Index, and that funding agencies should research ways to measure the environmental performance of biofuels, such as their impacts on global warming or farmland.

Co-authors on the paper also include graduate students Brian T. Turner and Richard J. Plevin of UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. Turner also is with the Goldman School of Public Policy….

[You can download the paper at: http://repositories.cdlib.org/its/tsrc/UCB-ITS-TSRC-RR-2007-1/ ]

This Week’s topics: Don Imus, racism, sexism and vulgarity in American culture; Alberto Gonzales under fire; John McClain’s presidential campaign, etc.

By Tim Woods - Tribune-Herald staff writer

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich spoke at McLennan Community College. (Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald)

Robert Reich, who served as the 22nd U.S. secretary of labor under President Clinton, was in town Wednesday to speak at McLennan Community College about jobs, wages and the global economy.

The author of 10 books, including two best-sellers, Reich talked to the Tribune-Herald for a few minutes before his presentation Wednesday night.

Q: President Bush has again raised the issue of immigration reform. In this discussion, the president has said we face a looming labor shortage. Do you agree?

REICH: There’s no question that many immigrants are doing jobs that many native-born Americans do not want, but there is no evidence of an immediately imminent labor shortage. As the American population ages over the next 25 to 30 years, there will be fewer workers to support every retiree, so we need immigrants to fill some of those places.

Q: What kind of reform would be needed to address this problem?

REICH: If you’re talking about regularizing the status of undocumented immigrants, that strikes me as an important thing, both economically and in terms of the humanitarian principles involved. It’s a delicate balance. Obviously, you don’t want to provide amnesty in a way that encourages all people to feel that they can come here as undocumented workers, but at the same time it seems grossly unfair to subject the people who have been here to uncertainty and exploitation….

By Sarah Yang, Public Affairs

Much of the buzz over the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) has centered on the promise of new, cleaner fuels from renewable resources. Equally important will be research by EBI partners into the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the move toward biofuels.

“Biofuels, unlike solar energy or gas-powered plants, affect land use directly, which means they affect the lives of the rich and poor directly,” says Dan Kammen, professor of energy and resources and of public policy, and director of Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. “They affect fundamental things like the status of women, public health, and even how many calories kids in Kenya will eat. If we orient and oversee this biofuel initiative right, we can benefit all of those things.”

Kammen, a member of the EBI executive committee, said that in many parts of the world, plants raised for biofuels are grown as subsistence crops, which are mainly farmed by women. “Biofuel technology can become either a problem or an opportunity for these women,” he says.

How can we grow biofuel crops that do not supplant food crops? Kammen notes that the perennial grass miscanthus, for example, is a popular biofuel choice because of its rapid growth and high yield, but it can only be used for biofuel. Other crops, such as sweet sorghum, may be more appropriate biofuel sources in economically poor regions where fertile land is scarce; it is both a food and an energy crop, and needs little water and fertilizer….

15. “Direct student loans only, please” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 11, 2007); Listen to this commentary

SCOTT JAGOW: The New York Attorney General says he may file criminal charges in the student loan scandal. The allegations are that some lenders have been paying school loan officers if they steer students to their loan company and a Department of Education official has been put on leave. Turns out he owned stock in one of these lending companies. Commentator Robert Reich believes the whole system of student loans needs an overhaul.

ROBERT REICH: The federal government subsidizes college loans in two different ways, giving colleges and universities the option of which way to go.

The first way is for the federal government to lend students the money directly. Students get a good deal because the government, being the government, can raise funds at a lower interest rate than banks or other private lenders.

The alternative is for the federal government to subsidize student loans indirectly by guaranteeing banks and other private lenders that if a student doesn’t repay the loan, the government will. The government also gives banks and private lenders additional subsidies to ensure they get a profitable return on any student loan they make.

Obviously, this second alternative is a great deal for the banks and other lenders. Hey, a guaranteed return on a no-risk loan?

But it’s a lousy deal for American taxpayers. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, taxpayers pay about $7 more for every $100 lent by the private lenders than they do on direct government loans….

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

By Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Stephen Johnson, EPA chief, says California can’t regulate emissions until his agency acts.

The Bush administration—a week after a rebuke by the Supreme Court for refusing to regulate greenhouse gases—insisted it would plow ahead with the president’s plans to boost ethanol production and ask Congress for more power to raise fuel economy standards….

Environmentalists and energy experts questioned the administration’s efforts to pin its strategy for global warming and energy independence on ethanol. Scientists point out that corn-based ethanol produces a relatively small net energy gain—about 1.6 units of energy for every one unit of energy input, according to federal estimates.

A UC Berkeley study [by Dan Kammen, Michael O’Hare, Brian Turner et al.] last year found that while producing corn ethanol required less petroleum than gasoline, ethanol emits almost as much in greenhouse gases as gasoline because of the fertilizer and energy used to irrigate, grow and transport the crop. The study concluded that corn ethanol could be made with much less energy, but only cellulosic ethanol offered major reductions in greenhouse gases.

“It turns out we are using so much fossil fuel to make the fertilizer and for the irrigation of corn, we give back much of the benefit of using a biofuel over a fossil fuel,” said Daniel Kammen, the founding director of UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, who co-authored the study.

“If you embraced low-input corn or low-input switchgrass—that means you don’t use forced irrigation, you don’t use a lot of fertilizer—then you can make these fuels very clean. That’s the problem with the president’s approach. ... He means well, but we need to grow a better form of corn, and we’re not doing that.”…

Kammen said the administration should follow the lead of Schwarzenegger and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who both support California’s approach of requiring refiners to produce low-carbon fuels.

“The more we get locked into corn ethanol today, the more difficult we make the emergence of a low-carbon ethanol economy tomorrow,” Kammen said.

MANY Bay Area high-tech and science-based businesses requiring well-educated, highly skilled workers spent a great deal of time recently scrambling to prepare H-1B visa applications to bring foreign workers into our country.

It’s part of an annual, post-9/11 scrum necessitated by a drop in the cap for such visas, from 195,000 to 65,000, and the lack of enough trained native-born Americans to fill the jobs. Now such firms want to either raise the quota or erase the visa cap….

What’s ultimately at risk is America’s continued leadership, dominance or in some cases the survival of information businesses. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a professor at UC Berkeley, says our education system fails students at all levels: “We do a lousy job of training our kids to be scientists.”…

California and the United States need to get serious about rejuvenating education to the point where we provide young people with the incentives, skills and backgrounds they need to compete in tomorrow’s economy. If we don’t, the superiority we’ve enjoyed in many technical and scientific fields since World War II will continue to erode.

Despite the devastation wrought by terrorists on 9/11 and by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, Stephen Flynn believes Americans are still in denial concerning how vulnerable our nation is to disasters, both natural and human-made. In The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation, Flynn says acts of terror cannot always be prevented, and nature will continue to show its fury in unpredictable ways. Therefore, he argues that resiliency must now become our national motto. Resiliency can be gained by repairing and updating what has become an outdated and failing public infrastructure, from the public health system to the nation’s dams. By tackling head-on the obstacles to resiliency that lie before us, Flynn believes we can remain true to our most important and endearing national trait: our sense of optimism about the future and our conviction that we can change it for the better for ourselves—and our children.

By Denny Walsh - Bee Staff Writer

Hamid Hayat will be back in court Friday with a hope that a new trial awaits him on terrorism charges.

The odds are against the Lodi man being granted a new trial, but he has a chance. That’s because his allegations of juror misconduct are comparatively unique, legal experts say….

The motion alleges the foreman of the jury that convicted Hayat a year ago had a bias against persons accused of terrorist activities and hid his bias with dishonest answers while jurors were being chosen.

[U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr.] said he definitely wants to question Cote on another juror’s allegation that he repeatedly made a “hangman gesture,” as if cinching a noose around his neck, in discussions with other jurors during Hayat’s trial.

At the time he scheduled the hearing, Burrell said he had not yet decided whether it will also cover statements after trial attributed to Cote in The Atlantic magazine. At least some of the statements could be interpreted to mean Cote prejudged the case against Hayat….

Attributed to Cote in The Atlantic article is a remark that he believes people “of that background” could not be put “on the street.” The article quotes him as talking about “new rules of engagement” that he viewed as applying in terrorism cases, and saying he did “not want to see the government lose its case.”…

Robert MacCoun, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bolt Hall School of Law, said it is “difficult to show that 11 other jurors were incapable of ignoring the foreman and making up their own minds.”

“I’m not saying the defense can’t win, but it will be tough....

“What the defense has to do is show that he so prejudiced the other jurors that they were incapable of making up their own minds. That almost never happens.

“The mere fact someone says ‘hang him’ doesn’t make everyone say ‘hang him.’ The defense has my sympathy, because these are pretty appalling allegations,” MacCoun said. “But I’m skeptical it will succeed.”

20. “I’m documented, therefore I am” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Media [NPR], April 4, 2007); Listen to this commentary

KAI RYSSDAL: The Attorney General of the great state of Texas sued RadioShack this week. The electronics retailer stands accused of dumping thousands of customer records—things like credit card numbers and home addresses—right into the trash bin behind one of its branches. It’s enough to make you consider paying all cash for everything from now on.

But what if you lose not just a piece of your information, but any proof of who you are at all? Commentator Robert Reich can tell you exactly what that’s like.

ROBERT REICH: The day before yesterday, I was standing in an airport in Barcelona, Spain—without a passport or driver’s license or credit cards, or any other documentation.

You see one moment, I’m waiting to pick up my plane ticket. The next moment my briefcase has been snatched—and in it, everything that proves who I am….

And at that moment, I couldn’t. I was utterly powerless, invisible, humiliated….

As for me, I found a sympathetic stranger who shepherded me to the American consulate and a passport to get me home. But suppose—just suppose—you’re a refugee without papers, an undocumented immigrant, a person without a state. There are tens of millions of such people whose existence is continuously threatened and exploited. Some thrown into indentured servitude or even slavery, because they cannot prove they exist.

RYSSDAL: Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley. He used to be labor secretary for President Bill Clinton ... or, at least, that’s what he told us.

By Ian Hoffman, Staff Writer

After painstakingly analyzing the costs of U.S. nuclear power plants built decades ago, energy experts caution that a resurrection of nuclear power could bring along some financial risk and surprisingly high electricity costs.

Researchers reporting in the most recent edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that construction costs varied by as much as 500 percent before the last U.S. nuclear power station was built almost 30 years ago.

“There is no other (energy) technology we’re looking at where the range in cost is a factor of five,” said Dan Kammen, professor of energy and resources and of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “It means that if the nuclear industry doesn’t manage itself much better than in the past, we are likely to still get this large range of costs.”

The clean, carbon-free energy from splitting atoms has drawn backing among influential lawmakers and environmentalists as a way to ease consumption of fossil fuels and global warming.

But the industry and its financial backers could be vulnerable to the same cost volatility, scientists warned, especially if utilities begin trying half a dozen new kinds of reactors cooled by metals or gases rather than water….

Ordinarily, an industry learns by producing and with learning, technology gets less expensive. But researchers at UC Berkeley, Georgetown University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that “the case of nuclear power has been seen largely as an exception that reflects the idiosyncrasies of the regulatory environment as public opposition grew, regulations were tightened and construction times increased.”…

22. “Weighing the financial risks of nuclear power” (UC Berkeley NewsCenter, April 2, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/04/02_nuclear.shtml

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations

BERKELEY – Enticed by the gleam of government subsidies, many companies are rushing to invest in nuclear power, expecting that new technology and safer reactors will make them as good an investment as other types of power plants.

A new study appearing in the April 1 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology notes, however, that the country’s history of unexpected cost overruns when building nuclear plants should sound a cautionary note for power companies that nuclear power may not be financially attractive.

“For energy security and carbon emission concerns, nuclear power is very much back on the national and international agenda,” said study co-author Dan Kammen, UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources and of public policy. “To evaluate nuclear power’s future, it is critical that we understand what the costs and the risks of this technology have been. To this point, it has been very difficult to obtain an accurate set of costs from the U. S. fleet of nuclear power plants.”

The study, conducted by a research team from Georgetown University, Stanford University and UC Berkeley, analyzes the costs of electricity from existing U.S. nuclear reactors and discusses the possibility for cost “surprises” in new energy technologies, including next-generation nuclear power.

What they found was a range of electricity costs, from 3 cents per kilowatt hour to nearly 14 cents per kilowatt hour, with the higher costs attributed to such problems as poor plant operation or unanticipated security costs.

“In the long term, whether these plants are 4 cents or 8 cents per kilowatt hour, they are still a good deal, if you think carbon is an issue,” Kammen said, referring to the carbon dioxide emissions from oil, coal and gas-fueled power plants that exacerbate global warming. “If the argument is that cost really needs to be important, then I’m not sure nuclear competes that well.”

Some politicians also tout the increased security benefits of having domestic sources of energy, but this doesn’t translate into decreased risk for investors, the study notes….

No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States in 29 years, in part because they’ve proved to be poor investments, producing far more expensive electricity than originally promised. In 2005, about 19 percent of U.S. electricity generation was produced by 104 nuclear reactors….

But Kammen points out that in the past, when U.S. companies have introduced new technologies, they’ve run into unexpected costs that have kept electricity prices high. France, on the other hand, standardized the design of its nuclear power plants and encountered fewer cost surprises.

“Some U.S. plants were really well done, and they happen to be the older ones,” he said. “If we can learn the lessons from those plants, which are often simplicity of design and standardization of design, then I think nuclear could make a comeback.”

New and safer technologies are essential to making nuclear power more acceptable, he said, but “we need to optimize a few designs, we don’t need a proliferation of types of plants, because we have proven we are not good at managing them.”

The answer to the increased riskiness is not more government subsidization, he added, but more savvy investment decisions by the companies interested in nuclear power….

By Michael Doyle - Bee Washington Bureau

Restoring the San Joaquin River could put 3,000 people out of work, a newly released—and already controversial—study concludes….

“Changes in agricultural production have impacts on many businesses and industries throughout the larger region,” noted study author Robert McKusick, a consultant with the Vancouver-based firm Northwest Economic Associates, which specializes in natural resource issues.

San Joaquin Valley agricultural production could fall by $159 million annually when farmers lose irrigation supplies, McKusick estimated. On the Valley’s east side, 51,300 acres could go out of production as water once used for crops flows down the long-parched river channel….

The study appears as Congress considers a $250 million river restoration bill. The legislation would help settle the 18-year-old lawsuit [filed by environmentalists]….

Environmental groups successfully argued that construction of Friant Dam half a century ago dried up a river that once pulsed with salmon. Facing a judge’s potentially harsh order, farmers negotiated a deal that would release restoration water from Friant—but not as much as the judge might have ordered.

Farm water officials and environmentalists have said they could soften the blow on the farm economy with various strategies, including recapturing the extra water for irrigation after it has passed through the river.

Skeptics think McKusick’s conclusions are too grim. A University of California economist, Michael Hanemann, found flaws in the study, saying it greatly overstated the economic effects. Hanemann, an ally of environmentalists, stressed that the costs could be significantly reduced through alternatives such as water conservation….

Others say the McKusick study does not fully account for the benefits of restoring a river where salmon are to be introduced by 2013….

By H.J. Cummins – Staff Writer

Boy, do a lot of people have an opinion on pork.

After a Star Tribune article Wednesday reported that some Muslim cashiers wouldn’t scan shoppers’ pork products—saying that touching it violated their religion—more than 800 postings to one of the paper’s online discussion boards came pouring in.

The often anonymous messages ran the gamut from, “That seems reasonable,” to, “Send them all back to where they came from.”

Some posters were made uncomfortable by the implicit disapproval of their purchases by the cashiers.

The scale of the reaction reflects continuing trauma from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said psychologists, religious scholars and workplace consultants. This group also chalked up many of the responses to something as simple as modern impatience and as complicated as human prejudice….

Some of this sounds like prejudice masquerading as customer-service outrage, said Jack Glaser, an assistant public policy professor at the University of California in Berkeley, who studies stereotyping and hate crimes.

“People these days don’t really like to see themselves as prejudiced,” Glaser said. “This way they can say, ‘It’s not that I don’t like Muslims, but these people are being inconsiderate and I take umbrage at that.’”

That phenomenon is why researchers no longer simply ask people’s opinions, he said; instead, they set up experiments—a store checkout could be a good one—to see how people really react.

The best way to eliminate prejudice is for two groups to spend enough time together that they get past the stereotypes to see individuals, Glaser said.

Like at a checkout counter?

“No, it doesn’t work very well when one group is taking money from the other,” he said.

FACULTY SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS & EVENTS

April 5 RUCKER JOHNSON spoke on “Risk Preference Formation and Risky Behaviors in Adolescence and Adulthood: The Importance of Neighborhood and Family Background” in the Sociology Colloquium.

April 9 New Transportation Fuels Spring Seminar: “Creating Markets for Green Biofuels,” by MICHAEL O’HARE, Professor of Public Policy, the Goldman School of Public Policy.

April 11 ROBERT REICH spoke on jobs, wages and the global economy in the Distinguished Lectures series at McLennan Community College, Waco, Texas; http://www.mclennan.edu/robert_reich/

April 17 DAN KAMMEN spoke on “Science and Policy to Support a Climate Protection Regime” in a briefing before the U.S. House International Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, Washington DC.

VIDEOS & WEBCASTS

To view a complete list of GSPP videos, visit our Events Archive at: /news-events/archive.html

Recent events viewable on UC Webcast: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/archive.php?select2=36

If you would like further information about any of the above, or hard copies of cited articles, we’d be happy to provide them.

We are always delighted to receive your material for inclusion in the Digest. Please email the editor at wong23@berkeley.edu .

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Annette Doornbos

Director of External Relations and Development