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eDIGEST May 2008
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GSPP 2008 Commencement
May 17,
Reception to follow at GSPP
*Shuttle service will be provided after the ceremony to transport guests (particularly elders
and those with mobility issues) to the reception at GSPP.
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. “Analysis: Governor’s deficit estimate rises to $20
billion” (Sacramento Bee,
2. “Rising Food Rates Jeopardising
UN’s Ability to Feed World’s Hungry WFP” (Business Recorder,
3. “Economy Showing Signs of Stability - Future Cloudy as New-Home Sales, Durables Slump” (Washington Post, April 25, 2008); story citing MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).
4. “Ted Turner announces campaign to send bed nets to
5. “Test run for 2010 census is scaled back, worrying experts” (Associated Press, April 24, 2008); story by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005/MJ 2004); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/24/national/a110656D98.DTL&tsp=1
6. “Bush fuel economy rules swipe at
7. “Lawmakers take a new look at privatizing California
Lottery” (Sacramento Bee,
8. “Expanding budget deficit bugs Capitol” (Sacramento Bee,
9. “Insecure renting” (The Times (
10. “Looking for the next Nike—sports apparel keeps growing”
(Oregonian,
11. “Paying to unmake your mark” (Boston Globe,
12. “
13. “Creeping sprawl overtakes refugees from cities” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
14. “Northwest hits brakes on per-capita use of gasoline Fuel economy - A 10 percent drop per person since 1999 is three times the average U.S. reduction” (Oregonian, April 18, 2008); story citing JOE CORTRIGHT (MPP 1980); http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1208489115256590.xml&coll=7&thispage=2
15. “Families march for rights of victims” (Oakland Tribune,
16. “Warning on impact of proposed college cuts” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
17. “GSU plans first football game for 2010” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 16, 2008); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976); http://www.ajc.com/search/content/sports/stories/2008/04/15/gstatefb_0416.html
18. “Seacology’s Duane Silverstein woos contributors by taking them to the islands in need of help” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 2008); story citing DUANE SILVERSTEIN (MPP 1980); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/13/CMU8TS8R4.DTL&hw=seacology&sn=001&sc=1000
19. “Gordon lands brief role as yardstick - Used in Byrne
popularity poll” (Record, The (
20. “Scant support for
21. “Obama, Clinton, chop delegate
lists in
22. “Governor seeks $7 billion to improve
23. “Who benefited most from higher Medi-Cal
payments? Report: Many nursing homes profited more than patients” (San Diego
Union-Tribune,
24. “Talks could lead to trans-Atlantic airline mergers”
(International Herald Tribune,
25. “Schwarzenegger urges ‘creative’ revenue increases
without tax hikes” (Sacramento Bee,
26. “Tech firms flock to city’s core” (Oregonian,
27. “‘Revolutionary’ CO2 maps zoom in on greenhouse gas
sources” (Purdue News Service,
28. “Demand for UC to ease—eventually. System officials foresee 7 percent drop in graduating seniors within nine years” (Oakland Tribune, April 7, 2008); story citing NINA ROBINSON (MPP 1989); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_8837639?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
29. “On crayons and pets: two treasures for kids” (Oregonian,
30. “More than 2 million children living with HIV worldwide:
UN report” (Agence France Presse,
31. “Tops in CO2 emissions, Purdue touts
efforts to run power plant efficiently” (Journal and Courier (
32. “Slow economy bogs down area’s office space market” (San
Mateo County Times,
33. “Torch route published; Supes
critical of
34. “Supe carries
35. “FCC Chair Worries about Wide-Open Wireless” (PC
Magazine.com,
36. “CAP breakfast features big names” (Atlanta
Journal-Constitution,
37. “Numbers game, Upland students tackle budget” (Inland
Valley Daily Bulletin (
38. “A System Falters: Experts Q&A. Reporter Matt Krupnick discusses community colleges with state experts”
(Contra Costa Times,
39. “Study: ’07 set record for higher education earmarks”
(Chicago Tribune,
40. “Panel: Next Tahoe fire could be worse” (Daily Review, The (
41. “Migden must pay $350,000 -
FPPC levies record fine as she heads into tough election” (Sacramento Bee,
42. “Take action to save our schools: Donate to save school
music” (Davis Enterprise,
43. “New mayor gives his list of top priorities” (The Piedmonter,
44. “Lennar asks
45. “Brakes put on fee hike by county” (Daily Democrat, The (
46. “Affirmative action foes point to Obama, Say candidate is proof effort no longer needed” (The Boston Globe, March 18, 2008); story citing CYNTHIA BROWN (MPP 1986); http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/18/affirmative_action_foes_point_to_obama/
47. “State may toss tax cuts of 1990s. Budget crisis
threatens breaks enacted during more prosperous times” (Ventura County Star,
48. “FAIR Plan rate hike as high as 30% - Sample FAIR Plan Premiums” (Cape Cod Times, March 12, 2008); story citing KEVIN BEAGAN (MPP 1988).
49. “Ethics Commission Fights Back”
(
50. “County hires Solano EDC for studies” (Reporter, The (
51. “Ways to invigorate downtown
52. “Something in the AIR - Riverdale dairy will transform
manure into gas—and cash” (Fresno Bee,
53. “Unemployed, and Skewing the Picture” (New York Times,
54. “With wind power’s rise come calls for control” (Houston
Chronicle,
55. “Schools try instant messaging for alerts”
(Courier-Journal (
56. “Newsweek Announces Three New Blogs for ‘The Ruckus,’ a New Group Politics Blog” (U.S. Newswire, February 15, 2008); story citing BRIAN LEUBITZ (MPP 2007).
57. “Another first for Nutter: City budget” (Philadelphia
Inquirer,
58. “Bold move to shore up pensions - Nutter says a $4.5
billion bond would trim unfunded liability to 5 percent” (Philadelphia
Inquirer,
59. “Reservoirs could dry out by 2021
60. “Broadband” (CableFax Daily,
61. “Voters’ Choice: Experience or Change - Californians Torn
over Feb. 5 Decision” (San Jose Mercury News,
62. “World’s Aging Population to Defuse War on Terrorism”
(Space Daily,
63. “
64. “School-Linked Clinics: ‘They Put the Care Where the Kids
Are’ // Healthy Idea // Facilities in
65. “San Carlos eyes ‘wish list’ of big-name retail stores” (San Mateo County Times, January 12, 2008); story citing MARK SAWICKI (MPP 2003).
66. “Tiger mauling survivors’ lawyer is at home in the spotlight” (San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 2008); story citing GARY BOSTWICK (MPP 1976/JD 1977); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/07/MNTJU9FT6.DTL&hw=geragos&sn=001&sc=1000
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
1. “Gas Tax Holiday is a Dumb Idea” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American
Public Media [NPR],
2. “The latest on renewable energy sources” (KGO TV News,
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/environment&id=6111905
3. “Will ID requirements sway
4. “Prototype: Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup” (New
York Times,
5. “California-Europe Project Launches at IGS” (Public Affairs Report, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley, Winter 2008/Vol. 49, No. 1); story citing DAVID VOGEL; http://igs.berkeley.edu/publications/par/index.html
6. “12 questions for Robert
Reich” (Rocky Mountain News,
7. “Robert Collier: Can green tariffs serve any purpose?”
(Business Standard [
8. “Unelected Economy Czars” (Bangor Daily News,
9. “Massive March on State Capitol as Thousands of College Students Around the State Protest Schwarzenegger’s Proposed Cuts to UC, CSU, and Community Colleges” (California Progress Report, April 22, 2008); story citing HENRY BRADY; http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/04/massive_march_o.html
10. “Alexander Farrell, 46;
11. “The solar century” (San Francisco Chronicle,
12. “Turning blue collars green. Laborers train in clean
energy jobs” (Contra Costa Times,
13. “Former
14. “Food Prices and Biofuels”
(Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
15. “Controversy mires choice for Goldman Prize” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
16. “Newsom, Fong douse
17. “The 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize” (Forum, KQED-88.5
FM,
18. “Chevron Challenges Goldman Prize Winners” (This Week in
19. “Blog: How Obama’s
‘Bitter’ Comment Story Changes Media-Politics Relationship” (San Francisco
Chronicle Online,
20. “Supercapitalism” (The
Disciplined Investor, TDI Episode 52, Posted:
21. “Just the Tree of Us” (Newsweek,
22. “Guest Commentary: Helping poor buy cars more efficient
than bus subsidy” (Naples Daily News (FL) -
23. “The
24. “Economic rebound by summer unlikely, ex-labor chief
warns” (CNN,
25. “
26. “A Plan for
27. “Bernanke Says Bear Stearns
Rescue Was ‘Necessary’” (PBS News Hour,
28. “Foundation leadership on diversity is missing” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
29. “Full picture on cutting emissions” (Los Angeles Times,
30. “Richard and Rhoda
Goldman Foundation Joins
1. “Analysis: Governor’s deficit estimate rises to $20
billion” (Sacramento Bee,
By Kevin Yamamura
Those who listened to him in
Schwarzenegger has been all over the map in his deficit estimates this month. But after offering vague explanations for the governor’s previous calculations, his aides on Tuesday decided to embrace his latest figure: as high as $20.2 billion starting July 1….
Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill said Tuesday she believes revenues will be “several billion below” what her office anticipated earlier this year, though she said she couldn’t comment on the governor’s $20 billion figure because she didn’t know what his assumptions were. Schwarzenegger’s number is roughly $11 billion higher than Hill’s projection from February.
[Sen. Denise] Ducheny [D-San Diego] and Assembly Budget Committee Vice Chairman Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, said they were surprised to hear the governor estimate the 2008-09 problem to be $20 billion. They said data from the state Franchise Tax Board suggests that April personal income tax receipts have been better than anticipated.
Both said they thought the deficit might be closer to $12 billion….
2. “Rising Food Rates Jeopardising
UN’s Ability to Feed World’s Hungry WFP” (Business Recorder,
The rising food prices worldwide threaten the work of the World Food Programme (WFP) to feed the millions of hungry people around the globe, the head of the UN agency says.
“We can buy 40 per cent less food than we could last June with the same contribution,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a video conference from Rome on Thursday, voicing concern that as many as 100 million people face being pushed deeper into poverty….
Last week, the agency announced it faced a $755 million shortfall, in addition to its budget of over $3 billion for 2008, to feed the hungry worldwide due to food and fuel price increases. UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann Veneman also expressed concern over the “negative social and economic impacts” of climbing food prices, particularly in low-income and least developed nations.
In a statement, she observed that the rising prices will most affect the most vulnerable, including people depending on humanitarian assistance, orphans, those affected by HIV and AIDS, refugees and poor urban families.
“The increase in food prices may not only slow down progress towards achieving health and nutrition related Millennium Development Goals, but can also reverse or negatively impact child-related social indicators,” Veneman remarked. Calling for evidence-based interventions, she said that the most pressing priority is to assist already malnourished children and prevent the deterioration of the nutrition situation of affected populations.
3. “Economy Showing Signs of Stability - Future Cloudy as New-Home Sales, Durables Slump” (Washington Post, April 25, 2008); story citing MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).
By Neil
Financial markets are starting to function more normally, banks are raising billions of dollars in capital, and the latest economic figures, while weak, aren’t much weaker than had been expected.
Taken together, these signs of stability make for the calmest economic period the nation has experienced in months. Now economists are grappling with whether the crisis will continue to ease, or whether this is merely the eye of the hurricane, with more big problems coming soon.
There have been signs of modest improvement. The yield on two-year Treasury bonds has risen sharply, to 2.35 percent yesterday from 1.6 percent at the end of March, reflecting that investors’ money is not gushing into ultra-safe investments with the same eagerness. Markets for mortgage-backed bonds, corporate debt and other forms of credit, while still troubled, are functioning more normally than they had in March….
“We’re not looking at a deep recession as measured by GDP,”
said Mickey Levy, chief economist of
Bank of
4. “Ted Turner announces campaign to send bed nets to
Flanked by religious, civic and business leaders representing more than 25 million people around the world, media mogul Ted Turner announced a grassroots campaign to cover the African continent with long-lasting insecticide-treated nets to help eliminate malaria deaths as soon as possible.
Appearing at the United Nations yesterday as part of a week of activities related to the first-ever World Malaria Day being observed tomorrow, Turner was joined in the announcement by Rick Reilly, a renowned sports columnist and co-creator of “Nothing But Nets”, a global campaign to send bed nets to Africa….
“Eliminating malaria is going to take millions of people and that is what is represented here,” said Turner. “Whether you’re a basketball or soccer fan … you can help save a life by sending a net. And if enough of us do this, we can cover the continent and prevent millions of deaths each year.”…
Ann Veneman, Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund,
told reporters that of the one million people who die each year due to malaria,
about 800,000 are children under the age of five who live in sub-Saharan
Veneman stressed that the disease takes a heavy toll in terms of death and human suffering and is a major source of poverty. “The cost of malaria control and treatment drains African economies and, according to some estimates, slows economic growth by as much as 1.3 per cent per year,” she noted.
“Malaria prevention is an important component of poverty reduction and economic development, and progress is being made,” she added….
5. “Test run for 2010 census is scaled back, worrying experts” (Associated Press, April 24, 2008); story by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005/MJ 2004); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/24/national/a110656D98.DTL&tsp=1
By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer
(04-24) 11:15 PDT Fresno, CA (AP) -- The Census Bureau has scaled back its dress rehearsal for the once-a-decade national head count, raising fears that thousands of soldiers, immigrants and other hard-to-reach people will go uncounted when the population survey is conducted in 2010.
“It’s like sending up a rocket for a moon shot and not doing the final test on how to land,” warned former Census Bureau Director Kenneth Prewitt, who oversaw the agency during the 2000 count.
The dry run is now under way in two states, with more than a half-million households receiving questionnaires from the Census Bureau. But the agency dropped such routine follow-up practices as sending census takers door-to-door to check whether homes on the bureau’s mailing list are vacant or occupied, and dispatching workers to figure out the best way to reach soldiers on military bases.
Because the dry run helps shape the way the national head count is ultimately carried out, some politicians and demographers worry that the census will miss members of the military, inmates, homeless people, college students, migrant workers and immigrants, both legal and illegal….
The paring back was a consequence of a decision the Census Bureau made two weeks ago: Because of technology glitches and a bungled government contract, the bureau scrapped plans to send census takers out with handheld computers. [Census Bureau spokesman Stephen] Buckner said there wasn’t enough time to train census takers to go out with pencil and paper in the test run, so the agency simply dropped the door-to-door part….
“You’ve got an incredibly high amount of distrust of the
government right now, and there are some significant obstacles that need to be
overcome in this dress rehearsal,” said state Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, a
Southern California Democrat. “An undercount in
In 1990, about 838,000 Californians went uncounted, and the state lost out on $223 million in Medicaid and other federal programs, according to the Government Accountability Office…..
6. “Bush fuel economy rules swipe at
--Zachary Coile, Chronicle
When the Bush administration announced proposed regulations Tuesday to raise fuel economy standards for cars and trucks to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, even some environmentalists applauded. But then they read the fine print.
Tucked deep into a 417-page “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” was language by the Transportation Department stating that more stringent limits on tailpipe emissions embraced by California and 17 other states are “an obstacle to the accomplishment” of the new federal standards and are “expressly and impliedly preempted” by federal law….
The language showed that beneath the bipartisan veneer of support for new fuel economy standards—approved by Congress and signed by President Bush in December—the conflict is still raging between the White House and the states over who will set the nation’s first limits on greenhouse gases….
The Supreme Court ruled in the
A federal judge in
Roland Hwang, the vehicles policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the document appeared to be an effort to bolster the legal case of the auto industry.
“We fully expect to see this rule being quoted by the
automakers in their court cases in trying to overturn the
7. “Lawmakers take a new look at privatizing California
Lottery” (Sacramento Bee,
By Judy Lin
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and some lawmakers are newly interested in a push to privatize the state lottery as one of the least painful possibilities for addressing the state’s financial troubles.
But it’s become clear that in order to make the business enticing to private investors, voters would have to agree to authorize bigger jackpots and allow games that are currently banned.
An analysis prepared by Lehman Bros. for the Schwarzenegger administration revealed private investors would want to target middle-class Californians by installing more terminals and vending machines where they frequently shop, such as Target or Costco. It would boost revenues by running aggressive marketing campaigns and selling ads on lottery tickets.
Schwarzenegger’s finance director, Michael Genest, said leasing the lottery to an investor like Lehman Bros. would likely require a statewide vote.
“The more bang for your buck, the more likely it would necessitate a vote of the people,” Genest said….
8. “Expanding budget deficit bugs Capitol” (Sacramento Bee,
By Dan Walters
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget office reported last week that revenue is running $1.2 billion below estimates for the current fiscal year, it added fuel to one of the Capitol’s biggest guessing games: How large is the state budget deficit?
These are the numbers: In January, Schwarzenegger said the gap for the remaining six months of the 2007-08 fiscal year and all of the 2008-09 budget was $14.5 billion. The Legislature’s budget analyst, Elizabeth Hill, citing revenue projections, jumped the number to $16 billion. The administration informally agreed with Hill’s higher number, and the $1.2 billion shortfall revealed last week, budget experts agree, validated her $16 billion figure….
The Capitol has seethed with competing deficit-closing proposals, ranging from the across-the-board spending cuts that Schwarzenegger proposes but has semi-disavowed, to up-front increases in general taxes and closure of tax loopholes, which the governor has said he’s willing to discuss. Hill’s alternative budget proposes a combination of spending reductions and loophole closures….
9. “Insecure renting” (The Times (
The main reason why renting is not seen as desirable here, compared with across the Channel, is that tenancies here are tipped heavily in favour of the landlord. It’s not just the issue of rent control (though that would help), but tenure security.
I have been renting in
Jack Thurston London SE1
10. “Looking for the next Nike—sports apparel keeps growing”
(Oregonian,
By Brent Hunsberger, The Oregonian
Sports and outdoor gear brands are popping up around
But with the
But double-digit sales growth in
Nike’s European region sales are close to surpassing its
total
“These are firms that serve a global marketplace,” said Joe Cortright of
Some brands—Le Coq Sportif, Merrell
and Icebreaker—with a firm footing overseas are opening divisions or North
American headquarters in
“Particularly for these small companies, what they’re looking to do is have a distinctive product to break into the market place and get some market share from other folks,” Cortright said. During a recession, he said, the overall size of the marketplace might grow more slowly, affecting Nike and Adidas more noticeably than a very small company or startup that churns out “this season’s really hot product.”…
“The nature of recessions are it’s a
tougher time to turn a profit,” Cortright said. “But I don’t think that works against the
(industry’s) longer term prospects here in
11. “Paying to unmake your mark” (Boston Globe,
By Tom Haines; Globe Staff
(James Tutor/iStock.com)
To avoid setting too-high hopes for voluntary carbon offsets—the system by which a traveler can give money to a wind farm project in Minnesota, for example, to minimize the environmental impact of a flight to Tuscany—it helps to stay grounded….
But we do keep flying, more and more each year, from
There are many other offset providers to choose from, some for-profit, others nonprofit, but all angling to redirect dollars. Critics of the system claim that, at worst, all this offsetting can be a distraction from the challenge: using less fossil fuel in the first place….
Even some supporters of offsets contend the unregulated voluntary market leaves customers with too little certainty about whether their offset purchase will do any good….
For consumers, one useful guidepost is still a 2006 report published by Clean Air Cool Planet, a nonprofit environmental group. The report, which ranks individual providers, is still available online at cleanair-coolplanet.org; officials plan to update it later this year. The Tufts Climate Initiative (tufts.edu/tci/carbonoffsets) also maintains a helpful travel guide for consumers….
Mark Trexler, a consultant who conducted the original Clean Air Cool Planet review, said there remains plenty to clarify.
“It still sort of remains to be seen how good the different standards are in accomplishing what we want them to,” Trexler said….
12. “
By Eric Berger, Staff
When it comes to carbon dioxide,
The first-ever analysis of county-by-county carbon dioxide emissions in the United States found that Harris County, which emits 18.6 million tons of CO2 per year, narrowly edged Los Angeles for the top spot.
“Some regions will see this analysis as an excuse to point
fingers, but I don’t really view it that way,” said Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences
at
The new analysis represents the first effort to break carbon
dioxide emissions down on a county basis. Previous statewide analyses found
that
The rankings, Gurney admitted, are based largely upon estimates. Reliable data exist for much of the power industry, but not for other industries.
Most heavy industries must report carbon monoxide data to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, from which the Purdue scientists calculated fuel burned and, therefore, carbon dioxide produced.
For cars and other mobile sources, Gurney said, emissions are calculated based on vehicle miles traveled and the types of cars in a particular area, as determined by registration data.
“There are lots of uncertainties, but we feel like we’re doing pretty well at the county level,” he said. Within about a year, Gurney said, data through the year 2005 should be available. Eventually, he hopes to provide more timely estimates.
That’s important if, as many energy analysts expect, carbon dioxide emissions eventually become a commodity—traded like energy futures or wheat….
13. “Creeping sprawl overtakes refugees from cities” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
--Rachel Gordon
A huge complex of apartments and condos in
Fed up with the encroaching sprawl, Linda Jimenez fled
In 1990, Tracy, a friendly agricultural community separated
from the Bay Area by the
The town sits as a symbol of the quest by working- and
middle-class Bay Area residents to find housing they can afford—a pursuit that
often draws them further from the traditional job centers in
The result: A swath of residential and retail development
that reaches toward the Sierra foothills, into the agricultural heartland of
the
The migration comes at costs to the environment: loss of natural habitat, increased greenhouse gases and a growing strain on the watershed….
“We’re losing migration corridors for animals and
compromising our watersheds and paving over productive farmland,” said Amanda Brown-Stevens, field director for
The challenge, she said, is getting people to value long-term sustainability more than short-term profit. If they won’t do it on their own, then land-use laws can be enacted to prevent landowners and builders from developing open space….
Greenbelt Alliance has calculated that 401,500 acres of open space lands in the Bay Area could be developed in the next 30 years, with the growth hot spots centered along Interstate 80 in Solano County, eastern Contra Costa County, the East Bay’s Tri-Valley area, Coyote Valley in southern Santa Clara County and Highway 101 in the North Bay through Sonoma County.
Brown-Stevens said the demands of population growth and the search for affordable housing can’t be ignored. However, she said, there are development options that are less harmful to the environment than building on remote open lands.
One such option, she said, is the construction of compact residential developments with a mix of condos, single-family homes and apartments in cities. Ideally, they would be near stores and job centers and have easy access to public transit to make it more convenient for people to get around without driving.
But convincing people that the American Dream can be found in an urban neighborhood where sometimes the only open space is the back stoop or the neighborhood playground won’t be easy.
Still, Brown-Stevens suggested that the time is right to make the argument.
“I think people are sick of traffic,” she said, “and they do care about the issue of global warming, and they do want to spend more time with their families and spend less time in their cars.”
[Online resource: “At Risk: The Bay Area Greenbelt,” a report by Greenbelt Alliance ]
14. “Northwest hits brakes on per-capita use of gasoline Fuel economy - A 10 percent drop per person since 1999 is three times the average U.S. reduction” (Oregonian, April 18, 2008); story citing JOE CORTRIGHT (MPP 1980); http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1208489115256590.xml&coll=7&thispage=2
By Dylan Rivera - The Oregonian Staff
Northwest residents are individually buying 10 percent less gas than they did nine years ago, now consuming about a gallon a week less than the national average.
But population growth means more drivers, and that has kept overall Northwest gasoline consumption about the same.
Those are among the findings in a report released Thursday by
the Sightline Institute, a sustainability think-tank based in
Though analysts all agree that per-capita gas consumption is
declining, some disagree on the relative contribution of transit and land-use
planning to the effect. Bill Conerly, an economist
and chairman of the libertarian leaning Cascade Policy Institute in
However, Conerly agreed with Sightline’s [research director Clark Williams-Derry] that motorists are certainly taking many small steps to reduce their fuel consumption. When gas prices are high, families tend to use their sedans for long trips, rather than less-efficient sport utility vehicles….
But after the baby steps, if gas prices remain at elevated
levels for the long term, consumers tend to change their behavior
substantially, said Joe Cortright, a
Cortright
said he believes transit use would play a significant factor in lower Northwest
consumption. Unlike some metro areas, transit use in
Compact land-use patterns keep Portlanders’ trips to work and the grocery store relatively short, Cortright said. And state laws that require planning for apartments and income diversity work to ensure that residents of all incomes can afford housing relatively close to where they work.
“Instead of all the housing choices for you being in one part of town, there are houses that you can afford or that you’d be interested in buying in every part of the region,” he said.
15. “Families march for rights of victims” (Oakland Tribune,
By Jill Duman, Contributor
SACRAMENTO — Most of the 1,000 or so parents, children, friends, lovers and spouses of crime victims gathered on the Capitol lawn Wednesday morning hadn’t heard about the Supreme Court’s decision validating execution by lethal injection.
But Wednesday’s 19th annual Victims March on the Capital was as much about grief and solidarity as it was a call to action.
“People want the world to remember that they had a family
member that was killed,” said Marilyn Harris, mother of 18-year-old Khadafy Washington, who was killed in
Nevertheless, Crime Victims United honored political leaders at the march that they thought had made a difference to crime victims—including state Attorney General and former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown.
Also addressing attendees was Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, co-author of Assembly Bill 2043, which aims to create a Crime Victims’ Memorial in the Statehouse with the help of private funding. The proposed memorial would sit near existing memorials dedicated to fallen firefighters and law enforcement officials.
Spitzer also spoke in favor of Marsy’s Law, the Crime Victims Bill of Rights Act of 2008, which Spitzer hopes to see qualified for the November ballot. The measure, which needs 763,798 valid petition signatures to qualify, was named in honor of Marsy Leach, who was 21 in 1983 when she was killed by her ex-boyfriend. The measure seeks changes in the parole hearing system and would require victims and their families to receive notification when offenders are up for parole.
“The California Constitution protects defendants,” Spitzer told reporters and victims rights supporters Wednesday. “What constitutional rights do victims have?”
16. “Warning on impact of proposed college cuts” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
--Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Proposed budget cuts totaling about $1 billion to the state’s university and community college systems wouldn’t just cause belt tightening for a year or two, but would mean long-term problems for the state economy, according to a report released Wednesday.
With the demand for a college-educated workforce growing, the cuts would limit the pipeline of qualified candidates, according to the study, which was sponsored by the Campaign for College Opportunity, a coalition of business, education and labor leaders.
“
The report outlined how student fee increases have far
exceeded inflation, while state funding has not kept pace with growing
enrollment within the CSU,
If the situation continues, it will result in limited courses, increased class size, restricted enrollment and more time required to graduate….
The state’s higher education officials and the report’s authors, however, didn’t offer any solutions to covering the estimated $8 billion statewide budget shortfall, saying that was up to the governor and state legislators.
“It is their responsibility to balance all these different issues,” said Tim Gage of Blue Sky Consulting, which conducted the study.
[To see the full report, go to: www.collegecampaign.org ]
17. “GSU plans first football game for 2010” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 16, 2008); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976); http://www.ajc.com/search/content/sports/stories/2008/04/15/gstatefb_0416.html
By Andrea Jones; Staff
The
The Board of Regents on Tuesday approved an $85 increase in
A football team has long been the dream of retiring GSU president Carl Patton, who has overseen dramatic changes in his 16 years at the helm….
For many years, the school has been morphing from a commuter-based community into a more traditional university. By 2015, Patton has said, GSU plans to house 20 percent of its 50,000 full- and part-time students on campus.
18. “Seacology’s Duane Silverstein woos contributors by taking them to the islands in need of help” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 2008); story citing DUANE SILVERSTEIN (MPP 1980); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/13/CMU8TS8R4.DTL&hw=seacology&sn=001&sc=1000
--Sam Whiting
Duane Silverstein. Illustration by Joshua Gorchov
Duane Silverstein lives
half a block from his office, but works half a world away. Silverstein, 55,
commutes to
“I’m originally from an island,
At Seacology we approach island villagers and say, ‘What tangible thing do you need in exchange for establishing a marine or forest reserve.’ Very often they’ll say, ‘A school, a community center, solar energy, freshwater delivery.’ It’s a deal. It’s not charity. We build these schools for about $20,000 using volunteer village labor. For $20,000, we get a badly needed new school and a forest reserve or a no-take fishing area protecting a coral reef….
A major way we’ve attracted donations is by taking people on trips to visit our projects in remote island sites. These trips are very moving experiences because we’re treated like family by these remote villagers. Often we’ve been the first group of Westerners ever to visit. Most people who come on these trips end up crying, and I’m talking about hardened CEOs….
19. “Gordon lands brief role as yardstick - Used in Byrne
popularity poll” (Record, The (
By Charles Stile
Call him Baseline Bob.
Democratic Fair Lawn state Sen. Robert Gordon’s name was used in the now famous (and yet to be fully disclosed) poll commissioned by former state Democratic Party Chairman Tom Byrne of Princeton, who briefly considered challenging Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the June 3 primary for the U.S. Senate.
Byrne, the son of ex-Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, had 500 likely Democratic primary voters surveyed right after Easter Sunday, to evaluate his chances. He wanted to know, for example, just how well-known he was among rank-and-file voters—a key question for any candidate plotting a challenge to an incumbent with $4.3 million in the bank….
Then Byrne wanted to see how well he matched up against a generic-sounding candidate with little name recognition outside his home county, a name that could serve as a baseline of anonymity, so to speak. Enter Bob Gordon.
“I wanted a name that might sound familiar with voters,” said Byrne, who declined to release a copy of the poll. “I know him and like him and he is a very smart and substantive guy.”
Only 16 percent said they were familiar with Gordon, Byrne said, but he noted that Gordon scored much higher in North Jersey, where he is better known (which is another way of saying he was virtually invisible south of Bergen County)….
Gordon called the 16 percent figure “astounding,” saying it was a sign of wider statewide support than originally believed.
“I thought I had a small family,” he quipped….
20. “Scant support for
By Judy Lin
Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill thinks it’s a sensible way to help balance the state budget [which is lopsided by at least $8 billion]: lower the extra amount families can write off on their state income taxes for dependent children.
The exemption – $294 per child compared to $94 for mothers and fathers – is only 10 years old, and disproportionately favors those making more than $50,000 a year. It would save the state $1.3 billion.
But Republicans say it amounts to a tax increase, which they won’t support in any form. And Democrats pushing for higher taxes won’t touch it, saying it would hurt working families….
Teachers aren’t sure if they will have a job next school year. Doctors may reject low-income families because state-sponsored insurance hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of health care. And thousands of state workers are watching their labor contracts expire….
In general, the governor’s [10 percent] across-the-board [reduction] approach has been hammered for failing to prioritize state programs….
Hill, who has been the Legislature’s nonpartisan advisor for 22 years, crafted an alternative budget that would cut nonessential services and raise taxes to generate $2.7 billion in the 2008-09 fiscal year.
In addition to reducing dependent care credit, she proposed limiting the state’s research and development tax credits, which are more generous than the federal government’s….
21. “Obama, Clinton, chop delegate
lists in
By Michael R. Blood, AP Political Writer
LOS ANGELES -- The campaigns for Barack
Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are purging
potential
Locked in a race with an uncertain outcome, representatives for both camps directed the California Democratic Party this week to delete a raft of names from lists of some 2,400 potential delegates who will be elected Sunday in party caucuses….
Most of the cutting was done by the
San Francisco blogger and political consultant Brian Leubitz
traveled to
He earlier donated to John Edwards when the former
“I didn’t think I was going to win ... but I’m kind of surprised they just dropped me,” Leubitz said. “I don’t think I’m going to change my allegiances, but it does increase my cynicism, which is the opposite of the campaign’s mantra.”…
22. “Governor seeks $7 billion to improve
By Don Thompson - Associated Press Writer
The request to the Legislature’s budget committee chairs is the first time officials have said how much it will cost state taxpayers to improve a prison medical system so poor that it has been ruled unconstitutional.
The governor is cooperating with a court-appointed federal receiver who is in charge of improving inmate health care.
Schwarzenegger’s finance director, Michael Genest, said in a letter to lawmakers that the receiver, J. Clark Kelso, intends to spend $2.5 billion of the borrowed money during the fiscal year that begins July 1. It would go to start building up to seven medical facilities at existing state prisons or on state-owned land….
Most of the $7 billion Schwarzenegger is requesting would be borrowed, but $100 million would come from the state’s general fund….
If lawmakers refuse, Kelso could ask U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of
23. “Who benefited most from higher Medi-Cal
payments? Report: Many nursing homes profited more than patients” (San Diego
Union-Tribune,
By Keith Darc, Staff Writer
During the first full year of getting extra government money
to care for poor patients, nursing homes in
The findings appear to contradict the intentions of the Medi-Cal Long-Term Care Reimbursement Act of 2004. The law
raised the average amount paid to nursing homes for each Medi-Cal
patient from $124 a day in 2004 to $152 a day in 2006….
Nursing home operators called the report unfair. They said
its scope—covering data from 2001 to 2006—didn't accurately reflect trends in
how the additional money is being spent because most of the payments didn't
start arriving until 2006.
State health care officials also said the study was
premature.
"At this point, we need more time to assess and evaluate," said Toby Douglas, deputy director of the Department of Health Care Services. "The data is not sufficient to answer those questions."…
24. “Talks could lead to trans-Atlantic airline mergers”
(International Herald Tribune,
By Mark McSherry - Reuters
NEW YORK -- The next round of ‘‘open skies’’ talks between the United States and the European Union, set to start in May, could lay the groundwork for trans-Atlantic airline mergers—but proponents of greater European involvement in U.S. carriers would have to overcome obstacles in Washington.
Political opposition to foreign control of
The first phase of ‘‘open skies’’ took effect March 30 and
replaced restrictive treaties dating to World War II. It allows EU and
But EU states have threatened to scrap the deal if
Attempts by the administration of President George W. Bush to
ease ownership caps [25% of voting stock] were rebuffed by Congress. While some
The
Dorothy Robyn, a
principal at Brattle Group economic consultants in
‘‘There are two ways it might happen,’’ said Robyn. ‘‘One is that it will be driven by some proposed transaction that is very desirable to labor.
‘‘Alternatively, it will be done purely as a policy matter after extended debate and consideration on how to address some of the pilots’ concerns,’’ she said….
25. “Schwarzenegger urges ‘creative’ revenue increases
without tax hikes” (Sacramento Bee,
By Kevin Yamamura
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday he believes the state can’t solve its current budget problem through cuts alone and called on lawmakers to “get very creative” in finding new revenues that don’t qualify as taxes.
California is grappling with an $8 billion budget hole in the roughly $101 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, imperiling funding for schools, social services, prisons and other state programs….
Schwarzenegger’s remarks Tuesday move him closer to the Democratic position that a balance of cuts and taxes is necessary to resolve the state budget gap. Republicans have stressed that the state must cut spending rather than search for new revenues….
Despite proposing roughly 10 percent in across-the-board cuts in January, Schwarzenegger increasingly has alluded to tapping new revenue sources, going so far in February as to suggest that the state should terminate $2.5 billion in tax credits identified by Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill before specifying later that he was not necessarily backing a particular proposal….
Schwarzenegger’s January proposal included some new revenue, though none as substantial as Hill proposed through ending tax breaks. The governor’s budget proposed a new 1.25 percent fee on homeowners insurance, as well as an $11 increase in vehicle registration fees, neither of which the governor considers tax hikes….
26. “Tech firms flock to city’s core” (Oregonian,
By Jonathan Brinckman, The Oregonian
It turns out that empty-nesters with excess discretionary
income are not the only ones who gravitate to
To attract top talent, software companies are briskly filling
large, open spaces in older downtown
In the past two years, dozens of software companies have taken
root or expanded in downtown. Some have kept adding space in the district even
amid worries of a broad economic slowdown. The trend has gradually given
downtown a burgeoning tract of the tech scene, traditionally concentrated in
Two crucial factors are driving the trend: Software companies—particularly those focusing on social networking, online advertising and finance—are thriving. And a hip office in a central location can be a competitive edge in attracting top-notch staff….
“Software firms struggled through 2002, 2003, 2004, but the good firms are coming out of that,” [Chris Elsenbach of corporate real estate adviser CresaPartners] said. “The companies that survived the tech downturn are now profitable. They are selling their products, making money, adding desks.”
The hard part is getting good employees to fill those desks,
said Joe Cortright,
a
“The chief asset of a software company is the talent it attracts,” he said. Being centrally located—easy to get to by public transportation—and having coffee shops, good restaurants and cultural amenities nearby help attract creative young workers, he said….
27. “‘Revolutionary’ CO2 maps zoom in on greenhouse gas
sources” (Purdue News Service,
--Steve Tally
Researchers now have a better view of where carbon dioxide
is being emitted thanks to Vulcan, a research project led by Kevin Gurney,
an assistant professor at Purdue. This map shows where CO2 is being emitted in
the continental
“For example, we’ve been attributing too many emissions to the northeastern United States, and it’s looking like the southeastern U.S. is a much larger source than we had estimated previously,” says Kevin Gurney, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric science at Purdue University and leader of the project.
The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions at more than 100 times more detail than was available before. Until now, data on carbon dioxide emissions were reported, in the best cases, monthly at the level of an entire state. The Vulcan model examines CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis.
Researchers say the maps also are more accurate than previous
data because they are based on greenhouse gas emissions instead of estimates
based on population in areas of the
To create the Vulcan maps, the research team developed a method to extract the CO2 information by transforming data on local air pollution, such as carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide emissions, which are tracked by the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and other governmental agencies.
“These pollutants are important to determine the ozone levels and air quality in major cities, and they are tracked on an hourly basis,” Gurney says. “We’ve been able to leverage that data to determine the levels of CO2 being produced.”…
“Before now the only thing policy-makers could do was take a
big blunt tool and bang the
“When you compare the old inventories to Vulcan, the new data
show atmospheric CO2 differences that are as large as five parts per million in
some
28. “Demand for UC to ease—eventually. System officials foresee 7 percent drop in graduating seniors within nine years” (Oakland Tribune, April 7, 2008); story citing NINA ROBINSON (MPP 1989); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_8837639?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Lisa M. Krieger, MediaNews Staff
The fierce and frenzied competition for admission to the
The number of high school graduates will drop nearly 7 percent over the next nine years. And the continued expansion of UC campuses means that there will be even more slots for applicants.
The best news is for the parents of today’s third-graders, who will face the least competition for UC slots when their children graduate in 2017. After that, student numbers start climbing again.
“It is a very different picture from what UC has faced over the past 50 years,” Nina Robinson, UC’s policy and external affairs director, told the UC regents in San Francisco last month.
“That is a very good thing,” she said. “There have been years where we’ve just been exploding at the seams. We’ll have more measured growth in the future.”
The university will try to take advantage of the slowed growth to reach out to students who might not have otherwise considered UC, Robinson said.
Only 8.3 percent of last year’s eligible high school graduates enrolled at UC. The university wants to increase that number to 9.2 percent, an all-time high.
“We would like to extend access to a broader group of
UC also seeks to boost the number of graduate school slots,
strengthening its mission as a research institution. In the coming decade, it
plans to enroll almost 50 percent more grad students—especially in the
sciences, engineering, math and health fields, which are deemed most essential
to
29. “On crayons and pets: two treasures for kids” (Oregonian,
--Helen Babbitt, Special to The Oregonian
“Liza loved her crayons. She treasured turquoise, adored
apricot, and flipped over fuchsia.” The first sentences of “A Day With No Crayons,” written
by Elizabeth Rusch of
Liza is a child artist who runs out of paper and remedies the problem by coloring on her bedroom wall. Mom is not amused and exclaims, “No more crayons for you today.” Suddenly the pages become as gray as Liza’s spirit. Liza shuffles to the bathroom and squirts a swirl of blue-green toothpaste into the sink that looks suspiciously like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Trudging outside, she is heartened to see colors everywhere, from the dandelion crushed into her hand to the red brick that can draw on the sidewalk.
Jampacked with sophisticated color vocabulary, this treasure invites parents and teachers to enrich an enjoyable read with action: bring out those crayons, read their fancy names, venture outside to see if blackberries and flower petals do indeed leave color where they’re squished, create a masterpiece.
[A Day With No Crayons is published by Rising Moon publisher.]
30. “More than 2 million children living with HIV worldwide:
UN report” (Agence France Presse,
GENEVA-- More than two million children worldwide were living with the HIV virus in 2007, most of whom were infected before they were born, a joint study by United Nations humanitarian organisations said Thursday.
Some 290,000 children under the age of 15 died of AIDS last year and 12.1 million children in sub-Saharan Africa lost one or both parents to the disease, according to the “Children and AIDS” report by the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and UNAIDS.
“Today’s children and young people have never known a world free of AIDS,” said UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman.
“Children must be at the heart of the global AIDS agenda,” she urged.
The report highlighted four areas crucial to tackling the epidemic: preventing HIV transmission from mothers to children; providing paediatric treatment; preventing infection among adolescents and young people; and protecting and supporting children affected by AIDS….
31. “Tops in CO2 emissions, Purdue touts
efforts to run power plant efficiently” (Journal and Courier (
By Brian Wallheimer
Over the past year,
A Gannett News Service analysis of carbon dioxide-emitting
entities puts Purdue at the top of the list for
[Erick Van Meter, director of utilities at Purdue] said Purdue’s Wade plant is very efficient—running at about 70 percent efficiency—because it burns coal to boil water. The steam is used not only to create electricity, but to then heat and cool the campus.
“A commercial producer’s efficiency is only 35 percent,” said Robin Mills Ridgway, an environmental regulatory consultant at Purdue….
Purdue spends about $9.2 million for its heating and $5.2 million for cooling.
Van Meter said that if Purdue were to purchase heating power, it would cost about $40 million because natural gas would be the most efficient way to go….
Kevin Gurney, associate director of Purdue’s Climate Change Research Center, said Purdue could use more alternative energies, but he said those are very cost prohibitive. He said being 70 percent efficient is quite good.
“All things being equal, Purdue is ahead of the curve,” Gurney said. “If there was conversion technology that was available and the university considered that cost effective and sound, I’m sure they would consider that.”…
32. “Slow economy bogs down area’s office space market” (San
Mateo County Times,
By Tim Simmers, Business Writer
After four years of solid growth, the
Some companies looking for office space are taking a
wait-and-see approach, as leasing rates that soared last year have flattened
out, according to a report by CB Richard Ellis in
Office leasing rates climbed 43 percent during last year’s expansion, jumping to more than $4 per square foot per month last year. They have since leveled off….
Since the county does not depend on banks, mortgage companies and home lenders, its office market has not been hit hard by the credit market turmoil. It continues to be fueled by technology and life-science tenants.
Still, the recent stock market volatility, overall credit
morass and a weakening dollar are beginning to affect office market activity on
the
“Certain companies are a little more cautious now because the
general economy is slowing down,” said Doug
Henton, economist with Collaborative Economics in
33. “Torch route published; Supes
critical of
By Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
The
At City Hall, Supervisor Chris Daly, who introduced the
resolution critical of
Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd voted
against the resolution.
… Newsom pleaded with activist groups to remember that the Olympics are not about politics but about the performance of athletes and “the spirit of unity and the things that unite us.”
“Don’t protest the torch bearers,” Newsom said. “Please separate your condemnation from the person who’s running (with the torch) or in a wheelchair carrying the torch.”…
The spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in
Some in the [local] Chinese community also have criticized
Daly’s resolution. A letter from the Chinese American Association of Commerce,
sent to city offices over the weekend, was signed by 105 Chinese community
organizations based in
The letter accuses “demonstrators of anti-China sentiment” of trying to sabotage the torch event….
It goes on to say, “We strongly condemn Chris Daly for his breach of duty as supervisor by not listening to the peaceful majority, especially undermining the unified stand and position of the local Chinese community.” …
[Carmen Chu was seen on local TV news, e.g. KNTV, arguing for her resolution.]
34. “Supe carries
--C.W. Nevius
… Not that anyone is in favor of human rights violations. And
But who asked the supes? …
This week, Supervisor Chris Daly went to a lot of work
getting a resolution passed that condemns human rights violations in
You really get the sense the entire show was for the benefit
of the jammed press gallery at the board meeting, with the “Team
Still, there was actually a period when City Hall officials were delighted at the prospect of hosting the torch….
Initial planning called for the route to include jogs across
the
“I think it would have been great to go through
35. “FCC Chair Worries about Wide-Open Wireless” (PC
Magazine.com,
By Chloe Albanesius
Skype was dealt a setback Tuesday when Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin said he would recommend that his fellow commissioners dismiss Skype’s request to apply the Carterfone principles to the wireless industry.
“In light of the [wireless] industry’s embrace of a more open wireless platform, it would be premature to adopt any other requirements across the industry,” Martin told a receptive crowd at the annual CTIA Wireless Conference. “Thus, today I will circulate to my fellow commissioners an order dismissing a petition for declaratory ruling filed by Skype.”
In February 2007, Skype asked the FCC to apply the Carterfone rules to wireless networks. The Carterfone decision, handed down in 1968, opened up the Bell network to devices not produced by the AT&T wireline network, paving the way for devices like answering machines, fax machines, computer modems, and early dial-up Internet.
Skype argued that the wireless industry has limited subscribers’ ability to run certain software communications applications on their mobile phones, and disabled phones and features to thwart competition—all in violation of the Carterfone principles, Skype said.
Wireless companies vehemently disagreed, and said that their industry is rife with competition….
Chairman Martin agreed with the wireless industry….
Interest groups were not enthused.
Opposing the petition “is a missed opportunity to usher in a new era of innovation,” S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, said in a statement. “If open devices and applications are good for consumers in the networks to be built on the newly auctioned spectrum, why not for all mobile networks?”
Trusting the wireless industry to move ahead with an open platform is short-sighted, Turner said….
36. “CAP breakfast features big names” (Atlanta
Journal-Constitution,
By Maria Saporta; Staff
The next president of the
All three presidential candidates—Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—spoke to CAP’s annual breakfast through taped videos Wednesday morning….
Receiving special awards were Georgia State University President Carl Patton and Norman Koplon, the longtime director of
37. “Numbers game, Upland students tackle budget” (Inland
Valley Daily Bulletin (
By Canan Tasci, Staff Writer
Students were introduced to a hands-on lesson from Next 10, a nonpartisan/nonprofit organization with a mission to educate, engage and empower Californians to improve the state’s future.
While participating in the online 2008 California Budget Challenge game, students were asked to reduce a $6.9 billion deficit by using a hand-held clicker to accept or reject 17 policy options….
Once the students voted, they were able to instantly see how much their cumulative decision would either increase or decrease the deficit.
“In class, we talk about theoretical topics, but these questions are appropriate because they are realistic and they’re talking about our current problems,” said Richard Huang, 17.
The content of the questions was developed by Tim Gage, former
Students were asked to balance the budget with policy option questions pertaining to spending in education, health care, human services, environment, criminal justice, jobs and retiree health.
They were also asked questions about generating revenue from carbon, gas, property, income, sales, car and corporate taxes….
By the end of the exercise, students had trimmed the $6.9 billion deficit to about half a billion dollars….
[Visit www.Next10.org/challenge and try your hand at balancing the state’s budget. When you’re done, let lawmakers know what your choices are by sending them an e-mail.]
38. “A System Falters: Experts Q&A. Reporter Matt Krupnick discusses community colleges with state experts”
(Contra Costa Times,
The Times on Tuesday hosted a live online discussion about
subjects raised in its four-part series on community colleges. Panelists
included Nancy Shulock
of Sacramento State, Bruce Smith of City College of San Francisco and Nick
Kremer of
Communication between colleges and K-12:
“There is a ton of work happening across the country on
setting college ready standards and aligning high school standards to college
readiness.
For the transcript of the complete discussion, click here.
39. “Study: ’07 set record for higher education earmarks”
(Chicago Tribune,
By Alan Finder, New York Times News Service
Congress set aside a record $2.3 billion in pet projects for colleges and universities last year for research on subjects like berries and reducing odors from swine and poultry, according to an analysis by The Chronicle of Higher Education to be published on Monday.
Despite recent calls in Congress for a moratorium on the home state projects, known as earmarks, the sum was $300 million more than the last time….
The largest single earmark for higher education went to the
Such pork-barrel projects bypass the normal route for financing peer-reviewed scientific research.
When it comes to earmarks, said James Savage, a professor of
politics at the
40. “Panel: Next Tahoe fire could be worse” (Daily Review, The (
By Don Thompson, Associated Press
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — A special panel created after last summer’s Lake Tahoe wildfire warned Friday that another catastrophic blaze is imminent and wants a disaster declaration to hasten fire-protection efforts….
The California-Nevada Tahoe Basin Fire Commission wants the state and federal governments to free up money quickly, primarily to cut thick stands of trees.
The commission gave unanimous approval to a report containing more than 70 recommendations. Many of them are intended to resolve the bureaucratic infighting among overlapping agencies that has hampered fire-prevention efforts for years.
The report also recommended imposing higher taxes on property owners, requiring homeowners to replace wood shingles and upgrading the Tahoe basin’s water systems, which together could cost more than $300 million over 20 years….
[The commission] recommended the Lahontan water board and the regional planning agency update their policies to emphasize tree clearing, “with the priority given to protection of life, property and the environment, in that order.”….
During the hearing, representatives of the water board and the regional planning agency unsuccessfully challenged recommendations to allow more mechanized thinning of trees and brush along streams. Those areas are considered among the most sensitive in the Tahoe basin.
“It says anything goes,” objected Patrick Wright, a commission member who directs the
41. “Migden must pay $350,000 -
FPPC levies record fine as she heads into tough election” (Sacramento Bee,
By Aurelio Rojas
Sen. Carole Migden’s image
was hurt last year when her state-issued SUV struck another vehicle after a
wild ride on I-80. (Brian Baer /
State
Sen. Carole Migden will pay a record $350,000 fine
for campaign spending violations under an agreement approved Thursday by
California’s political watchdog agency.
The 89 violations that resulted in the largest fine ever by the Fair Political Practices Commission included personal use of campaign funds and inaccurate disclosure of cash payments and receipts between 2003 and 2007.
The 35-page agreement, disclosed earlier this week, comes as the San Francisco Democrat is battling to retain her seat in the June 3 primary against Assemblyman Mark Leno and former Assemblyman Joe Nation.
David Latterman, a San Francisco political analyst and pollster, said the record fine “is more mud on the pile” in Migden’s re-election campaign.
“She’s in trouble,” Latterman said. “Her poll numbers were already dropping, and this can’t do anything but hurt her.”…
42. “Take action to save our schools: Donate to save school
music” (Davis Enterprise,
Since it sounds as if we have to find $200,000 to avoid losing the wonderful talents of four secondary school music teachers, my suggestion is that we start by doing the math. I read in The Davis Enterprise recently that there are 826 students participating in the elementary school music program. That translates into $242 per student—not an incredible sum for all the benefits provided.
If we expand that pool of students to include all those who would be directly affected by the loss of four secondary school music teachers, the amount needed per student would drop even more. Of course, there are those in our community who could not afford to donate $242 for their student or students in the music program, but there are also those who may be able to donate more than that amount. It’s about $20 a month—less than most of us probably spend at Starbucks on lattes.
Also, with the federal economic stimulation package recently approved, many of us will receive a one-time refund ranging from $300 to $600 or more later this spring. Perhaps a campaign enlisting people to donate their refund to save the music program—or sports, or any program targeted for significant reduction or elimination they care about personally—is how we as a community can best respond….
I have complete faith we will find a way to preserve our music program and save the jobs of our talented secondary school music teachers. For myself, I’m going to start by donating $245 to DSOMA, the Davis Schools Orchestral Music Association (http://groups.dcn.org/dsoma). Anyone care to join me?
Ginny Puddefoot, Davis
43. “New mayor gives his list of top priorities” (The Piedmonter,
By Jon Kawamoto, Editor of The Piedmonter
In the span of less than an hour Monday night, Abe Friedman was elected as Piedmont’s new mayor—and quickly moved into a leadership role by listing his priorities for his term as the city’s top official.
He called for public-private partnerships and then listed two top priorities—completing the Civic Center Master Plan with a swim facility as its centerpiece and finding more recreational fields for residents, such as the city’s many youth sports teams, to use.
He spoke of moving “expeditiously” and gaining concept approval of the master plan and beginning a fundraising process.
Above it all, Friedman’s theme was inclusiveness and centered on coming together as a community to reach decisions and goals affecting all of the city’s residents.
The new mayor noted that the March 4 election was “a very
difficult election for
“
“We embody the notion of community more so that any town I know,” he continued. “We must harness that spirit to move us forward, to create spaces for children to play, to create facilities that will meet the needs of the future and to enrich the lives we share together in sport, in play and in community.”
Friedman extended an olive branch to [relative newcomer Ryan] Gilbert [who had far outspent the others and lost in the contentious City Council race] by telling the standing-room-audience at Piedmont Community Hall that he was going to ask Gilbert to become part of a new task force on sustainability in Piedmont….
But above all, the night belonged to the city’s new leader—Friedman. He joked in closing that the “pay is not much” for the volunteer position and hoped to someday have a sandwich named after him—like others in Piedmont—at Mulberry’s Market.
44. “Lennar asks
By Sarah Rohrs/Times-Herald staff writer
[
Lennar has drawn in 90 businesses and about 2 million square feet of commercial uses since 1997, company officials said.
In the same time frame, some 2,036 jobs have been created, including 124 new jobs stemming form 9 new businesses created in the last year, said Mare Island vice president of commercial development Wanda Chihak.
The goal has been to generate approximately 10,000 new jobs on the island, Assistant City Manager Craig Whittom said….
To help speed things up, council members directed City Manager Joe Tanner to identify a main point person at City Hall for Lennar officials to work with rather than trying to resolve issues with staff members in three or four departments.
Tanner told council members Whittom had been devoting a
significant amount of time on
Tanner said it is hoped Whittom could return to
Whittom
said several top city department employees devote part of their time to helping
push
45. “Brakes put on fee hike by county” (Daily Democrat, The (
By Luke Gianni
A major county fee increase proposed in Tuesday’s supervisors meeting—some by as much as 300 percent—was sent back for further review….
At issue were the more than 70 proposed increases to the county’s master fee schedule, which dictates public works and health fees for everything from land-use permits to vending machines that exist within the county.
The fee hikes were presented by the
The problem for the board was those adjustments in some cases meant more than tripling existing fees in some cases—which might stymie local business.
For example, under the new proposed fee schedule, rezoning applications go from $283 per application to $954. Business license reviews would go from $44 per review to $144 per review….
County Analyst Jesse Salinas said, however, there exists a direct nexus between the proposed fee increase and the actual cost of each specific service the county provides.
The new fee formula was derived by a new computer tracking program that measured time spent by county employees in each service category. From this data, county administrators said, they are able to assign more accurate dollar amounts to service fee categories.
According to the report provided by the
46. “Affirmative action foes point to Obama, Say candidate is proof effort no longer needed” (The Boston Globe, March 18, 2008); story citing CYNTHIA BROWN (MPP 1986); http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/18/affirmative_action_foes_point_to_obama/
By Joseph Williams and Matt Negrin, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent
Ward Connerly, a black conservative who is leading a national effort to ban racial preferences, vowed to use Obama’s success as evidence for anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives his organization is promoting in five states….
“The whole argument in favor of race preferences is that
there is ‘institutional racism’ and ‘institutional sexism’ in American life, and you need affirmative action to level the playing
field,” he said. “How can you say there is institutional racism when people in
... But affirmative action proponents say Obama’s campaign, which has tried to transcend race, is proof that the system is working and should not be dismantled.
“I think blacks who have opportunities can make it ... but we know that many black kids do not have the opportunities that Barack Obama had,” said Cynthia Brown, education policy director for the Center for American Progress in Washington. “But we have many, many black kids who didn’t have that and were born into families who couldn’t provide those experiences and couldn’t attend the schools that Obama did and took advantage of.”…
47. “State may toss tax cuts of 1990s. Budget crisis threatens
breaks enacted during more prosperous times” (Ventura County Star,
By Timm Herdt (Contact)
A series of tax cuts enacted in the late ‘90s have remained
on the books, even with the boom times long gone. Now, for the first time in
years, people in
The reason: Unless some of those good-times tax cuts are revoked, the only alternative may be to slash education spending.
Beginning in 1993, the first year of an uninterrupted
eight-year expansion of the
The nonpartisan California Budget Project estimates the combined value of those and other good-times tax cuts amounts to $12 billion in the state’s current fiscal year.
Now the state faces its toughest fiscal challenge since the 1991 recession—a $16 billion shortfall that was halved through actions taken by lawmakers last month but appears to be creeping up again as tax receipts from a sluggish economy continue to lag budgeted forecasts….
… At least 20,000 layoff notices were mailed to teachers, counselors and school librarians around the state to meet Saturday’s notification deadline….
The choice of either increasing taxes or slashing schools has been underscored—although in sharply different ways—by the two budget proposals that have been submitted to lawmakers.
Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill’s proposal would cut education spending by $2 billion and also raise $2 billion in new revenue by eliminating a number of tax credits and deductions, most of which have been put in place over the past 12 years. She argues the state has an obligation to protect essential services such as education, and since lawmakers responded to good times by both increasing spending and cutting taxes, they should now take a similarly balanced approach in tough times.
Schwarzenegger proposed a cuts-only budget that would cut school funding for next year by more than $4 billion….
48. “FAIR Plan rate hike as high as 30% - Sample FAIR Plan Premiums” (Cape Cod Times, March 12, 2008); story citing KEVIN BEAGAN (MPP 1988).
By Sarah Shemkus
For months, consumer advocates, government officials and
concerned citizens have been debating the merit of the FAIR Plan’s proposed 25
percent rate hike for the
Local activists have taken issue with the size of the potential increase, and on Monday, Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a brief with the Division of Insurance, claiming the amount is excessive and poorly supported by fact.
That one, oft-cited number, however, does not tell the entire story of how the potential increase could affect the finances of area home-owners.
While the FAIR Plan rate request proposes an average rate hike of 25 percent, individual homeowners could see increases ranging from 7.9 percent to nearly 30 percent, according to sample premium calculations provided by the FAIR Plan.
This system “more equitably distributes the rates based upon the risk of the individual property,” said Kevin Beagan, the director of the State Rating Bureau, a group within the Division of Insurance that advises the commissioner on technical matters.
The FAIR Plan was created by the state Legislature to provide homeowners insurance for those unable to obtain coverage elsewhere [when private insurers began limiting coverage in coastal areas or pulling out entirely]….
These homeowners were further distressed in October 2006 when Julianne Bowler, then the state insurance commissioner, approved a proposal to increase rates by 25 percent….
The request, however, includes two elements that are designed to make the proposed increase less onerous for homeowners who live in more modest homes or further inland, Beagan explained….
One of these new factors specifies a smaller rate increase for homes with replacement values below $220,000….
“We’ve heard the argument over and over again that, on the
The second factor reduces the rate hike for homes located more than a half-mile from the coast….
If the proposed rate hike is approved with these provisions intact, a home with $150,000 worth of coverage located three-quarters of a mile from the coast would see a premium increase of 7.9 percent, according to numbers provided by the FAIR Plan.
If that same home were located within a half-mile of the water, the premium would go up by 18.8 percent….
49. “Ethics Commission Fights Back”
(
By Matt Jerzyk
Ethics Commission member and Brown University Professor of Public Policy, Ross Cheit, doesn’t think much of Rep. Douglas Gablinske’s rhetorical shuffle against the Commission:
The complaint against Senator Ciccone alleged that his union position created a conflict of interest that should have prohibited him from voting on a bill about the financing of arbitration fees. The bill favored Senator Ciccone’s bargaining unit and more than 100 others. Given that Senator Ciccone represents only a small portion of the ultimate beneficiaries, he was permitted to vote under the “class exemption.”
The fact that there is such a rule, Representative Gablinske argues, “does not mean the rule is right.” It seems he would prefer that the Ethics Commission ignore the law from time to time—whenever the rule does not seem right. I suspect that if we adopted this kind of willy-nilly approach against him, he would find it objectionable.
The rule of law exists to prevent such arbitrary actions. It would be unfair to Senator Ciccone, or anyone else, for the Ethics Commission to assess fines or to proceed with complaints in cases where the existing law did not support the result. Such actions would undoubtedly be overturned in court. Due process requires that the rules be established in advance of imposing penalties. Cheit notes that there are two ways to change the class exemption if people really believe in the process of change. First, they could propose a bill. Or second, they could engage the regulatory change at the Commission. Gablinske has done neither.
50. “County hires Solano EDC for studies” (Reporter, The (
The Index and Clusters, which target innovation and
opportunities, will create a foundation of baseline information that better
positions
Solano EDC will be working under contract with Doug Henton, president and co-founder of Collaborative Economics. The firm is the originator of the Index of Silicon Valley, which measures the economic strength and health of that community by highlighting challenges and providing an analytical foundation for leadership and decision making.
In the last 15 years, Collaborative Economics has worked with leaders in more than 40 regions to help their communities break from traditions that hold them back and put them on a new pathway to success.
Henton
is also a consultant to the California Economic Strategy Panel,
51. “Ways to invigorate downtown
By Mary Bender, The Press-Enterprise
RIALTO—The city’s downtown core could draw more visitors and attract popular businesses if streets and building facades were improved, more housing and parking were built, and if the area was geared towards pedestrians.
Those were some of the ideas offered by a consultant hired by
the city, and by local residents who took part in a workshop Wednesday night
about sprucing up
The focus of the plan would be the blocks between
There are many public uses in the area, but they lack any
cohesiveness or town-square feel, consultant Chris Beynon
of MIG, a planning and design firm in
“We think the downtown is really the defining element of a
city,” added Jason Moody, an economist
with Economic & Planning Systems Inc., a
The firms will incorporate public input into a draft plan scheduled to be released by early May.
Downtown could be invigorated by adding “transit-oriented housing” near the Metrolink station: a combination of live-work lofts, townhomes, condominiums and apartments, along with shops and restaurants geared toward the roughly 400 commuters who use the train station each day, Beynon said….
52. “Something in the AIR - Riverdale dairy will transform
manure into gas—and cash” (Fresno Bee,
By Dennis Pollock, The
The first dairy in the state to supply natural gas to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. on Tuesday unveiled the equipment it will use to turn its manure into a moneymaker.
The Vintage Dairy plans to convert methane from its 5,000-cow Riverdale dairy….
And a competitor, New Hampshire-based Microgy Inc., plans to add more
than a half-dozen other dairies in the central
Generating the gas means a renewable energy source for PG&E, and a new source of income for dairy operators.
BioEnergy and Microgy pay for the equipment needed to capture the gas and deliver it. They share profits from selling the biogas and carbon credits with the farmer….
Jim Boyd, vice chairman of the California Energy Commission, said the project means a significant reduction in releases of greenhouse gases, with methane being 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
And Roy Kuga, vice president of PG&E, said “cow power” can bring “a triple win: reduced greenhouse gases, added ability for PG&E to use renewable energy and economic opportunities for the ag sector.”…
Microgy uses above-ground steel tanks to generate methane, rather than BioEnergy’s covered lagoons.
BioEnergy uses only manure. Microgy plans to add other agricultural waste, including culled citrus and pulp from crushed grapes.
Jeffrey Dasovich, senior vice president of Microgy, said the company is focusing on three sites for renewable natural gas facilities in various stages of the permit process. The projects would produce enough gas to meet the needs of about 40,000 homes, he said, and PG&E has agreed to purchase the gas….
Dasovich said he expects to begin delivering gas to PG&E from all the projects early next year.
53. “Unemployed, and Skewing the Picture” (New York Times,
By David Leonhardt
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
In
1878, Carroll D. Wright set out to do something that nobody in the
As is the case today, the 1870s were a time of economic anxiety, with a financial crisis—the panic of 1873—having spread into the broader economy. But Wright, then the chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor, thought there weren’t nearly as many people out of work as commonly believed. He lamented the “industrial hypochondria” then making the rounds, and to combat it, he created the first survey of unemployment.
The survey asked town assessors to estimate the number of local people out of work. Wright, however, added a crucial qualification. He wanted the assessors to count only adult men who “really want employment,” according to the historian Alexander Keyssar. By doing this, Wright said he understood that he was excluding a large number of men who would have liked to work if they could have found a job that paid as much as they had been earning before….
[Wright’s] method for counting—and not counting—the unemployed became the basis for Census tallies of the jobless and, eventually, for the monthly employment report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wright is the father of the modern unemployment rate....
Over the last few decades, there has been an enormous increase in the number of people who fall into the no man’s land of the labor market that Carroll Wright created 130 years ago. These people are not employed, but they also don’t fit the government’s definition of the unemployed….
Consider this: the average unemployment rate in this decade, just above 5 percent, has been lower than in any decade since the 1960s. Yet the percentage of prime-age men (those 25 to 54 years old) who are not working has been higher than in any decade since World War II. In January, almost 13 percent of prime-age men did not hold a job….
Various studies have shown that the new nonemployed are not mainly dot-com millionaires or stay-at-home dads. (Men who have dropped out of the labor force actually do less housework on average than working women, according to Harley Frazis and Jay Stewart of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
Instead, these nonemployed workers tend to be those who have been left behind by the economic changes of the last generation. Their jobs have been replaced by technology or have gone overseas, and they can no longer find work that pays as well….
54. “With wind power’s rise come calls for control” (Houston
Chronicle,
By Tom Fowler, Staff
But the state’s grid operators say a problem they could normally handle was complicated when a number of traditional power plant operators failed to provide the amount of electricity to the grid as promised….
It appears several power providers didn’t perform as expected, according to a spokeswoman for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s quasi-public grid operator, but names won’t be revealed at this point.
Ultimately, ERCOT headed off a crisis by calling on a handful of so-called interruptible customers, large industrial operations that get reduced rates in exchange for being ready to cut power at a moment’s notice.
Those companies turned off about 1,100 megawatts.
Most of
Many reports on Tuesday’s incident failed to mention the complexity of the problem or blamed it entirely on wind, said Rob Gramlich, policy director for the American Wind Energy Association, an industry advocacy group.
That same day in
“No generation system operates flawlessly all the time, which is why we need to have well-equipped system operators that can address system shortfalls,” Gramlich said.
Gramlich believes as much as 20 percent of the nation’s power could come from the wind if better wind forecasting systems are developed and power grids are expanded to connect with the primarily rural areas where wind resources are the strongest.
Wind power capacity in the
“Wind, like all generation technology, is best used as part of a diverse portfolio of sources,” Gramlich said.
55. “Schools try instant messaging for alerts”
(Courier-Journal (
By Antoinette Konz - The Courier-Journal
Two
Officials hope it can dispel misinformation during tense
situations such as Wednesday’s four-hour lockdown at
Last fall, the
56. “Newsweek Announces Three New Blogs for ‘The Ruckus,’ a New Group Politics Blog” (U.S. Newswire, February 15, 2008); story citing BRIAN LEUBITZ (MPP 2007).
“The newest contributors to ‘The Ruckus’ represent key states
in the 2008 presidential race—
57. “Another first for Nutter: City budget” (Philadelphia
Inquirer,
By Patrick Kerkstra and Marcia Gelbart - Inquirer Staff Writers
Mayor
Michael Nutter reviews his budget this morning before giving his address to
City Council. (Tom Gralish/Inquirer)
Mayor
Nutter will present his first budget and strategic plan to City Council today,
providing the most detailed view yet of the new administration’s priorities.
The $4 billion spending plan is expected to feature
significant new investment in the police and fire departments, as well as extra
funding for the
Tax cuts will also play a feature role in Nutter’s proposed budget. In addition to continued trims to the city’s wage tax, Nuttter will call for cuts to both the gross receipts and net income portions of the business privilege tax.
“We must create a more business-friendly environment,” Nutter said at a luncheon hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce….
Indeed, the starkest differences between Nutter’s first
budget and those of former
Nutter and his budgeting team have embraced the notion of “outcomes-based” budgeting, in which a city sets broad goals for itself, and then drafts a budget that reflects those priorities.
“We fit the budget into a strategic plan,” budget director Stephen J. Agostini said. “In my prior experience, what you often have is a strategic plan that comes after the budget’s done, or you have a strategic plan that’s entirely separate from the budget.”…
58. “Bold move to shore up pensions - Nutter says a $4.5
billion bond would trim unfunded liability to 5 percent” (Philadelphia
Inquirer,
By Marcia Gelbart, Inquirer Staff Writer
Mayor Nutter’s budget
message was broadcast to the City Hall galleries yesterday. His call for a $4.5
billion pension-fund bond - largest bond issue in the city’s history - would
provide about $50 million a year to the general fund as well. (Tom Gralish/Inquirer staff
photographer)
Mayor Nutter’s proposal yesterday to float a $4.5 billion
pension-obligation bond represents the boldest attempt yet to sweep away
With employee-benefit costs consuming an increasingly bigger portion of the city budget, several recent reports have warned that the rapid growth in pension spending threatens the city’s ability to provide services, and reduce taxes.
One study released last month also found that of 10 major
cities surveyed,
“Our retirees and current city employees should not have to worry about their future after years of loyal service to the city and to our citizens,” Nutter said to applause as he delivered his budget address in a packed City Council chamber. “We need to act.”
Under the $4.5 billion plan being considered—the largest bond issue in city history—bond proceeds would be used to shrink the pension fund’s unfunded liability from 49 percent to 5 percent.
At the same time, the bond would enable the city to reduce its annual pension costs by taking advantage of current low interest rates. A portion of the proceeds would be used to pay off a $1.25 billion bond issue from 1999 used to finance city pension debt. It is estimated the current bond issue would have an interest rate more than 2 percentage points lower than the 1999 bond….
Nutter chief of staff Clay Armbrister said the plan—which was the brainchild of new budget director Steve Agostini—represented “our best thinking right now.”…
59. “Reservoirs could dry out by 2021
By Mike Lee and Michael Gardner, Copley News Service Staff Writers
That would jolt
Major industries—from tourism to biotech—would be affected by
such a shortage, which already is starting to force changes. A large marina on
This latest warning could escalate pressure for more conservation, either voluntary or mandatory, several water experts suggest….
Several other reports in recent years agree that the
Concerns on the Colorado River have been heightened by legal complications to moving water from Southern California’s other major water source, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. This year, the region’s farmers have had supplies cut by 30 percent.
Despite problems, numbers released yesterday by the San Diego County Water Authority show that the county set a record high for water use in 2007….
Ronnie Cohen, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said “it’s time for a new approach”—including pushing the Department of Water Resources to set statewide savings goals.
“As a state, we need to figure out what level of water use is sustainable and then develop a plan to get there,” she said….
60. “Broadband” (CableFax Daily,
NTIA on Thurs released a report touting broadband’s growth in the U.S. “Currently available data suggest that broadband availability and subscribership have increased dramatically, and that consumers—including those in rural and remote areas—have more opportunities than ever to choose the broadband solution … that best suits their needs,” stated the report….
But not all are convinced the broadband battle is nearing
victory. “Declaring mission accomplished won’t reverse
The report relied on FCC data that found that more than 99%
of all
61. “Voters’ Choice: Experience or Change - Californians Torn
over Feb. 5 Decision” (San Jose Mercury News,
By Mary Anne Ostrom, Mercury News
They say they want something different in a president, but they are siding with experience. At least that is what the polls say….
What constitutes change depends on who wants it. Voters say
the country’s woes, ranging from
Though Obama campaigns on ‘‘Change
you can believe in,’’ for many women, casting a ballot for
Leo Levenson, 46, a Berkeley Democrat, is one who has been ‘‘waffling back and forth.’’
The local government
manager said he’s fairly confident now that Obama
will get his vote. He’s pretty much convinced the
Though once concerned that Obama’s
lack of experience might lead him ‘‘to be rolled over by Congress,’’ he says he
believes Obama has learned lessons on the campaign
trail. And the last few weeks of the Democrats’ increasingly nasty campaign
made him realize he wants ‘‘a clean break. I really dislike the hardball
politics of the
62. “World’s Aging Population to Defuse War on Terrorism”
(Space Daily,
Countries such as
Under the title “Global Aging: Rise and Consequences,” this installment of PP and AR also contains three other articles outlining current research about aging societies…. And Adele Hayutin of the Stanford Center on Longevity pays particular attention to population aging in the less-developed world [“Graying of the Global Population”].
63. “
By Curtis Lum
Although experts here say racial discrimination and harassment aren’t as overt as they can be on the Mainland, they do exist and are a concern.
Nationally, charges of race discrimination make up about 35 percent of the complaints filed each year with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Race complaints annually surpass other categories, such as discrimination based on sex, national origin, religion and age.
In
Bill Hoshijo, Civil Rights
Commission executive director, said it is difficult to say why
“It’s still a substantial number of complaints. It’s something that we in enforcement and employers and unions have to pay attention to because it’s not something that’s just in the past,” he said.
Tim Riera, director of the EEOC Hawai’i office, agreed and said race is an issue that cannot be ignored. He said he’s seen an increase in the number of companies and agencies that take advantage of EEOC employment discrimination courses.
“In
64. “School-Linked Clinics: ‘They Put the Care Where the Kids
Are’ // Healthy Idea // Facilities in
By Melanie C. Johnson, The Press-Enterprise
Leslie Theiroth sees a
The school nurse, who divides her week between
Theiroth said she was able to refer
the child’s mother to the district-linked Donna Leffler
Health Clinic on
Such incidents happen every day, Theiroth said.
“I love this clinic,” she said. “I have more access to finding out whether or not patients are on certain medications and I can call the clinic and get appointments for kids.”
The Donna Leffler Clinic is one of
153 school health centers in
Centers statewide offer a variety of services, including immunizations, physicals and help managing chronic illnesses such as asthma and diabetes. Some provide health education and dental services.
Most are concentrated in areas with a large number of low-income residents, according to the California School Health Centers Association….
The California School Health Centers Association, a statewide advocacy group, wants to see the current clinics expanded and new ones created to meet needs, especially in low-income communities.
“They put the care where the kids are,” Curran said. “It’s where the kids feel comfortable.”
The organization is sponsoring a proposed bill expected to go before the Assembly this year that calls for creation of a state-administered grant program that would provide funding for new and existing clinics. A similar federal bill also has been proposed, she said.
The proposed law follows the 2006 passage of Assembly Bill 2560, which required the state Department of Health to create an office to collect data on the health centers and provide support, Curran said.
Although the bill has passed, it hasn’t been funded because of the state’s budget troubles, she said. The districts and clinic operators scramble each year to find money to stay open….
65. “San Carlos eyes ‘wish list’ of big-name retail stores” (San Mateo County Times, January 12, 2008); story citing MARK SAWICKI (MPP 2003).
By Mark Abramson, MediaNews Staff
The commission discussed the list briefly Wednesday night. Economic Development and Housing Director Mark Sawicki presented the nine-page document.
“It is absolutely essential,” Mayor Brad Lewis said about
attracting businesses to
The list the committee looked at also included some “green”
businesses, such as Apricus Solar, a solar heating
company; Green Fusion Design Center, a home improvement center; and Pacific
Green Furniture. City officials have said that going green is a priority in
“All of these green businesses (are something) we should go after,” Sawicki said.
66. “Tiger mauling survivors’ lawyer is at home in the spotlight” (San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 2008); story citing GARY BOSTWICK (MPP 1976/JD 1977); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/07/MNTJU9FT6.DTL&hw=geragos&sn=001&sc=1000
--Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Pit bull.
All of these have been used to describe Mark Geragos, the attorney who jetted up from
Hardly.
“It’s all about the client,” he said. “So if they want to say I do everything I can for my client, fine.”…
“Like they say, any publicity is good publicity, and Mark has
certainly had a lot,” said Gary Bostwick, another
1. “Gas Tax Holiday is a Dumb Idea” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American
Public Media [NPR],
Scott Jagow: ... Some politicians want to put the gas tax on holiday. So people wouldn’t have to pay the extra 18 cents a gallon this summer. But commentator Robert Reich doesn’t like it.
ROBERT REICH: Talk about a dumb idea. It will only encourage Americans to drive more, thereby increasing demand and causing gas prices to rise even higher. Driving more will also put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which fuels global warming. And this will cost taxpayers some $10 billion. It’s a cheap political gimmick that does nothing to stem the rising price of oil.
You want to hold oil prices down? In the short term, strengthen the dollar….
Over the longer term, though … there’s really only one way for us to go: alternative sources of energy—wind, solar, biomass, water and, if we can make it safe enough, nuclear….
That’s why it’s time for a windfall profits tax on oil companies to finance our way to sensible and sustainable sources of energy. Forget the summer tax holiday on gas. We need a permanent holiday from oil.
Jagow: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the
2. “The latest on renewable energy sources” (KGO TV News,
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/environment&id=6111905
By Heather Ishimaru
Will there be a day when the sun, wind and agriculture replace coal, natural gas and oil as energy sources?
“Well we’re well on the way in
U.C. Berkeley Energy and Resources Group Professor Dan Kammen says we don’t need 100 percent replacement of existing sources to make a difference.
“We would get a long way towards reaching the climate goals, and more immediately reducing the price increases we are seeing at the pump by simply bringing down our demand. curtailing the growth and demand would impact because it would take the pressure off in many of those areas,” said Kammen....
3. “Will ID requirements sway
By Mark Matthews
In next week’s
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
“
Brady suspects it’s going to be a very small number either way and ABC7’s political analyst says, if it’s close between Clinton and Obama, we’ll already know the winner….
4. “Prototype: Home Brew for the Car, Not the Beer Cup” (New York
Times,
By Michael Fitzgerald
Floyd S. Butterfield, left,
and Thomas J. Quinn with the MicroFueler in
What if you could make fuel for your car in your backyard for less than you pay at the pump? Would you?
The first question has driven Floyd S. Butterfield for more than two decades. Mr. Butterfield, 52, is something of a legend for people who make their own ethanol. In 1982, he won a California Department of Food and Agriculture contest for best design of an ethanol still, albeit one that he could not market profitably at the time.
Now he thinks that he can, thanks to his partnership with the
...But brewing ethanol in the backyard isn’t as easy as barbecuing
hamburgers. Distilling large quantities of ethanol typically has required a lot
of equipment, says Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy
Laboratory at the
[This story also appeared in the <a href=“http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/27/business/27proto.php“>International Herald Tribune</a>]
5. “California-Europe Project Launches at IGS” (Public Affairs Report, Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley, Winter 2008/Vol. 49, No. 1); story citing DAVID VOGEL; http://igs.berkeley.edu/publications/par/index.html
…
… In January,
6. “12 questions for Robert
Reich” (Rocky Mountain News,
By James Paton, Rocky Mountain News
* Robert Reich, who served as Labor secretary under Bill Clinton, made headlines last week when he endorsed Barack Obama.
But that's only one topic the prolific writer, blogger
and
4) What are the headlines the next president will face on day one?
Whoever is the next president is first going to have to attack head on an economy that is facing not only fierce head winds but also frustrations with many middle-class people who have a hard time getting wage increases. Secondly, a backlash against globalization and immigration. Thirdly, all the problems related to baby boomers retiring—Medicare, Social Security, pensions and a work force under increased strain.
5) What do you think should be done to help the middle class?
Unemployment insurance has to be extended. I think it's very important to provide people who are in danger of losing their jobs with job counseling, search assistance, training and even wage insurance, which would provide people with a portion of the difference between the wages of their old job and a new job for a certain period. I think the earned income tax credit can be expanded. It has worked extremely well. K-through-12 education is critical as well as access to affordable health care.
6) With all the bleak economic and financial news, you'd think we're on the brink of an apocalypse.
The optimists say we'll be out of the woods at the end of this year. I think that's a little too optimistic…. We are in a recession already, I believe, and I think it will continue until at least the first quarter of 2009. There are too many trends working against the economy. The two most obvious being the bursting of the housing bubble and the credit crunch. You have oil prices soaring. Food prices are soaring. Americans are deep in debt. I don't want to be a doom and gloomer. I'm quite upbeat on a number of things, but on this one, I'm concerned.
7) Your last book was called Supercapitalism. What's next?
A textbook on introductory economics with Laura
Tyson, who was part of the
7. “Robert Collier: Can green tariffs serve any purpose?” (Business
Standard [
By Robert Collier
In recent months,
The focus on China intensified late last year, when new data from the International Energy Agency and other research organisations revealed that China had overtaken the US as the largest source of greenhouse gases—and, more ominously, that its emissions are growing at a rate that exceeds all wealthy nations’ capacity to decrease theirs....
The tariff proposal … now before Congress … would also levy punitive
tariffs on greenhouse-gas-intensive products imported from countries that lack
“comparable action” to that of the
Developing nations’ allies, meanwhile, are warning that the sanctions plan could destroy the chances of a post-Kyoto treaty….
Despite
Although
Robert Collier, a visiting scholar at the Center for
Environmental Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, is writing a book about
8. “Unelected Economy Czars” (Bangor Daily News,
Polls show the top issue among voters this election year is their fears about the fate of the economy. Voters can grill congressional candidates at town hall meetings and on call-in radio shows and they can get a fix on the presidential candidates' economic plans through campaign news coverage. But the fate of the economy may be most influenced by a seven-member body that does not answer to the American voter.
The Federal Reserve, observers such as former Treasury [Labor] Secretary Robert Reich have said, is a largely unaccountable fourth branch of government. The Fed has had an active hand in the expanding economies of the late 1980s and late 1990s. And now, Mr. Reich asserts, it is making a critical decision about which is the lesser of two evils, recession or inflation, which in turn affects every American's wallet….
Though government regulatory arms have succeeded over the past 70 years in steering the economy from extremes like the Great Depression, recent history reveals the Fed's heavy-handed presence and its mark on the political realm….
George H.W. Bush was elected in 1988 on the strength of that
economy, but when it faltered in 1991 and 1992, Bill Clinton persuaded voters
he would "focus like a laser" on fixing it again. Mr. Reich has said that the
Earlier this decade, Mr. Reich observed recently in his commentary on public radio's "Marketplace," the Fed "made money so cheap, lenders shoved it out the door to anyone capable of standing up." That created the housing bubble, which in turn led to the subprime lending debacle.
Now, Mr. Reich says, the Fed has decided that "the threat of recession is worse than inflation, so it's lowered interest rates." That move has devalued the dollar, which in turn contributes to the high cost of oil, gas and food.
"Can you imagine if Congress caused this to happen?" Mr. Reich asks….
9. “Massive March on State Capitol as Thousands of College Students Around the State Protest Schwarzenegger’s Proposed Cuts to UC, CSU, and Community Colleges” (California Progress Report, April 22, 2008); story citing HENRY BRADY; http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/04/massive_march_o.html
By Frank D. Russo
They came by the busloads to
... After the rally and throughout the day, students roamed the hallways of the legislature talking to their representatives. They represented 3.2 million students—who have registered to vote in record numbers—and will be looking closely to see what is done after the May Revise of the budget is available in about three weeks. There will be a huge backlash if the cuts go through.
In addressing the crowd, Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi … said: “You are all here because you have a message for the legislature and for the Governor. And the message is simple: Kick us out and we’ll vote you out.”…
The message was not lost
on those who gave up a day to come to
The theme of higher
education as an investment in
10. “Alexander Farrell,
46;
By Ken Bensinger,
Alexander Farrell was
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s choice to co-write the landmark fuel standard for
BERKELEY – Alexander Farrell, a UC Berkeley
associate professor who was a leading voice in energy and transportation policy
and played a key role in drafting the state’s plan for carbon emissions
reductions, died last week in his San Francisco home. He was 46.
No cause of death had
been determined, and the
Farrell was best known for his work in researching biofuels, plug-in electric hybrid cars and the effect of fossil fuels on climate. Last year, he was chosen by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to co-write the landmark low-carbon fuel standard for the state….
In 2003 he was recruited to UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources group by professor Dan Kammen. The two worked closely on a number of projects, including groundbreaking research on biofuels that shattered long-held beliefs about the viability and environmental effect of combustibles such as corn-based ethanol….
Farrell and Kammen co-authored numerous papers in the field, and Kammen admired Farrell’s thoroughness and attention to detail. “Alex was very much involved in looking at the nitty gritty,” Kammen said. “He was very much a person who went where the numbers told him to go.”…
Roland Hwang, director of vehicles policy at the Natural Resources
Defense Council, worked with Farrell to develop the low-carbon fuel
standard, visiting both
“Alex was quite remarkable,” Hwang said, praising Farrell’s open-minded approach to policymaking and willingness to incorporate differing ideas into his work. “It’s going to be very difficult to find anyone like him. His contributions were tremendous, not just scientifically, but as a person. He did so much to bring together different groups.”…
11. “The solar century”
(San Francisco Chronicle,
--Daniel M. Kammen
Time for a true/false test on solar photovoltaic power:
a) PV power today is much more expensive than most other sources;
b) PV can become some of the most convenient power;
c) PV today provides far less than 1 percent of our electricity, but ultimately will need to become a major source if we are to meet climate goals;
d) all of the above
The answer is, of course, (d), which explains the vehement and at times sadly vitriolic debate over solar power.
The debate centers on the economic costs and benefits of rooftop solar home systems specifically…. The argument is that solar power mounted on individual family roofs typically costs 25¢ per kilowatt hour or more (and sometimes more than 40¢ per kWh)—far more than many other options to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions—and thus state and local solar photovoltaic subsidy plans are not the best use of scarce resources.
The problem with this argument is that it true only in an economic system built around the public utility model we are used to, not the innovative energy system we could have.
… The cost of peak power to PG&E on a hot summer day can be over 40¢ per kilowatt hour, and as the laws change to catch up to an evolving energy system that will ultimately look more like eBay than a central utility/distribution model, the ability to sell power back to utilities will change the economics of solar still further. This will benefit the utilities and consumers.
…Many of the energy efficiency winners of today initially were not cost-effective. Compact fluorescent light bulbs, window-glazings, and control systems for hyper-efficient buildings all needed initial investment and market support to catch on. When this happened, innovation accelerated to the point where they today not only save money, but in some cases pay back beyond their cost. Solar needs that same market opportunity.
Finally, innovations
abound. The financial model that renewable energy sources face makes the job of
distributing them difficult because they have higher capital costs, and no fuel
costs. How many of us would have cell phones if we had to purchase 20 years of
minutes up front? Not I, yet that is just what we require of solar energy
purchases. The city of
Just as we did with both private and public funds and know-how to bring the coal, oil, hydropower and nuclear energy industries into existence, however, we have to commit to invest in this future for it to happen. The choice is ours.
Daniel M. Kammen co-directs the Berkeley Institute of the Environment (http://bie.berkeley.edu) and is founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (http://rael.berkeley.edu). He has appointments in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
12. “Turning blue
collars green. Laborers train in clean energy jobs” (Contra Costa Times,
By Barbara Grady -
Edgar Perez, of
Edgar Perez fits a hose from a truck containing used vegetable grease into a ceiling-high tank holding methanol and sodium hydroxide. His timing in releasing the hose’s content is key to whether the mixture will produce bio-diesel fuel to power fleets of “green” trucks and buses.
It also is key to Perez’s self-esteem. The 22-year-old
The job, Perez said,
“makes me feel like I’m part of something and I’m improving myself every day.”
Perez could be the poster child of a movement started in the
“We call it green pathways out of poverty—connect the people who most need the work with the work that most needs to be done,” said Van Jones, the Oakland social justice worker who started the Oakland Green Jobs Corps as well as the national Green for All campaign gaining cross-country attention….
Venture capital investment
alone—or money put into renewable energy and clean technology startups by
investors—grew 44 percent to $5.18 billion last year, according to the Cleantech Group LLC. In
Economists say the green
sector will continue to expand, especially in
“
Kammen is referring to Assembly
Bill 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires
13. “Former
By Glen Johnson - The Associated Press
Reich, who served as Labor secretary under Bill Clinton, said in a blog post that “although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama’s strike me as even more so.”
Reich also said Obama’s plans for
reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding,
and his approach to the nation’s housing crisis and financial market failures
are sounder than the
Reich is a longtime
friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He ran for governor in
[Stories on this topic appeared dozens of sources worldwide, including the <a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-campaign19apr19,1,5808872.story“>Los Angeles Times</a>, <a href=“http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_8981955“>San Jose Mercury News</a>, <a href=“http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics/ci_8981955“>Contra Costa Times</a>, and <a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-obama-endorsements_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip“>USA Today</a>]
14. “Food Prices and Biofuels” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
This week has seen world-wide unrest over food prices and mounting criticism that biofuels, which are mainly derived from food crops, are furthering a surge in these prices and have a negative impact on the environment. We take up the debate.
Host: Dave Iverson
Guests:
Dan Kammen, professor of energy at UC Berkeley and co-director
of Berkeley’s Institute of the Environment
Neil Koehler, board member of the Renewable
Fuels Association and president and CEO of Pacific Ethanol, Inc., a leading
marketer and producer of renewable fuels in the
Roz Naylor,
economist and director for the Program on Food Security and the Environment at
15. “Controversy mires
choice for Goldman Prize” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Pablo
Fajardo Mendoza at a pool of oil and waste and towers
burning natural gas at North Lago Agrio
station in
(04-15)
The two men, lawyer Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and community organizer Luis Yanza, were among half a dozen grassroots environmentalists from around the world who were feted at the San Francisco Opera House on Monday and awarded $150,000 apiece to continue their work on projects that range from improving sanitation in Mozambique to protecting wetlands in Puerto Rico to shutting down polluters in Russia….
The prize, initiated by San Francisco philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman 19 years ago, has gone to Kenyan tree planter Wangari Maathai, who went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and the late Nigerian playwright Ken Saro Wiwa, who fought Shell Oil Co.’s practices in his homeland.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has called the award “on a par with the Nobel Peace Prize in terms of its recognition of courage and brilliance in protecting our environment.”
But this year the award to Fajardo and Yanza has triggered a harsh response from Chevron Corp., which is being sued in Ecuadoran court for despoiling the Amazon. The company insists it cleaned up its share of the mess—described by plaintiffs as a fouled area the size of Rhode Island—and says the Goldman Foundation was hoodwinked….
Richard Goldman responded with a statement reiterating his pride in Fajardo and Yanza, whom he described as “two ordinary Ecuadorans addressing a problem that impacts 30,000 of their countrymen: petrochemical waste spoiling hundreds of square miles of Amazon rain forest. Their work is motivated by a single desire: to ensure that their corner of the Amazon—one of the world’s most contaminated industrial sites—is cleaned up.”
He said the men were chosen through a nomination process that includes research by environmental experts from 50 organizations and five months of fact-checking by foundation staff….
At the press conference,
Fajardo said that a report filed earlier this month
by a court-appointed expert in
“I live in Sucumbios, where Chevron operated. I’ve seen the reality for more than 20 years,” Fajardo said. “The Goldman Prize allows us to tell even more people about the damage Chevron did in our country. It motivates us to continue on until we repair the damage.”
[For information about the Goldman Environmental Prize, go to www.goldmanprize.org ]
16. “Newsom, Fong douse
--Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross
Prize fight: No sooner
did the curtain drop on
It’s all being ignited
by
Fajardo is a former Ecuadoran farm laborer who rose to take over as a lead attorney in a nearly 2-decade-old fight to force Chevron-acquired Texaco Inc. to pay billions of dollars to clean up 1,700 square miles of rain forest polluted by years of drilling and the dumping of oily wastewater. Yanza is a fellow community leader in the cause.
Once San Ramon’s Chevron
got wind of the Goldman Foundation selections, the oil giant began gearing up
for a full-scale media counterattack charging that the charity founded by philanthropist and former San Francisco
Protocol Director Richard Goldman had been “sadly misled” in honoring the Ecuadoran pair. Chevron says most of the pollution has
happened under
For his part, Goldman says honoring the pair has nothing to do directly with the merits of the lawsuit.
“These fellows are being honored because they are trying to protect the land where their ancestors lived and they live,” Goldman told us Friday.
As for Chevron’s contention that it’s been scapegoated in the process, Goldman said, “If you had a bunch of stockholders out there, what would you say?”
17. “The 2008 Goldman
Environmental Prize” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
What do a pop star from
Guests:
·
Feliciano dos
·
Ignace Schops, a conservationist from
·
Rosa Hilda Ramos, an activist and grandmother
from
18. “Chevron Challenges
Goldman Prize Winners” (This Week in
Reported by Paul Rogers,
Environmental Writer,
The prestigious Goldman
awards were established in 1990 by philanthropists
Richard and Rhoda Goldman to recognize environmental heroes. This year,
Pablo Fajardo-Mendoza and Luis Yanza
from
Marinucci: Did Chevron succeed in tarnishing the Goldman Award in any way with this huge campaign? It’s such a prestigious award….
Marinucci: Do you think Chevron got anything out of all this? …
19. “Blog:
How Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comment Story Changes
Media-Politics Relationship” (San Francisco Chronicle Online,
Posted By: Joe Garofoli
Mayhill Fowler changed
more than the presidential campaign this week when she posted comments Sen. Barack Obama made about “bitter”
voters at a $1,000-a-head fundraiser in
On MSNBC Monday afternoon,
ex-GOP congressman Joe Scarborough said the comments could be particularly
damaging because “He said it in a private, behind-the-scenes fundraiser in
But Robert Reich, the former Clinton Labor Secretary turned UC-Berkeley professor said “Rather than counter all this, the American media have wallowed in it. Some, like Fox News and talk radio, have given the haters and blamers their very own megaphones. The rest have merely “reported on” it.
“Instead of focusing on how to get Americans good jobs again; instead of admitting too many of our schools are failing and our kids are falling behind their contemporaries in Europe, Japan, and even China; instead of showing why we need a more progressive tax system to finance better schools and access to health care, and green technologies that might create new manufacturing jobs, our national discussion has been mired in the old politics.”...
20. “Supercapitalism”
(The Disciplined Investor, TDI Episode 52, Posted:
Guest: Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy
at the
We discuss:
• Supercapitalism - The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life.
• People are taught all along that “the big guys” bend the rules to get wealthy…Why not them…?
• Harry Dent theory 2009 - What is the chance that we are entering a long term recession? Depression?
• WHERE IS THE NEXT PROBLEM?
• Via Barry Ritholtz: “Who should Obama replace Bernanke with?”
• The worldwide food shortage, how can we protect ourselves (fill them bunkers!)
• Seems to be a transparency problem today … people scratching their heads about what is going on.
• Unions..? Any good any more? Do they serve any purpose?
21. “Just the Tree of
Us” (Newsweek,
By Jerry Adler | NEWSWEEK
… After seven years of inaction on
greenhouse-gas emissions, Bush can honestly claim that he hasn’t changed his
position. “I take the issue seriously,” he told a news conference at the end of
last year [in 2000 the presidential candidate said he would take climate change
“very seriously”].
… This year, though, [leaders of environmental groups] want to make sure there’s no confusion on the part of the voting public. The environment, which typically ranks somewhere around “regulatory reform” among voters’ concerns, has emerged as a leading issue in this election cycle; last year more than three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate’s green credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby, up from just 11 percent in 2005….
The [League of Conservation Voters], which generally calls the tune for most mainstream environmental groups when it comes to national politics, hasn’t chosen a candidate for 2008. Officially, it is keeping an open mind, while waiting for John McCain to elaborate on his global-warming plan. But it would constitute a major political upheaval if the league, for the first time since it began making presidential endorsements in 1980, chose the Republican….
Nor are most environmentalists willing to admit that they breathed a sigh of relief when McCain locked up his party’s nomination, but he was widely viewed as the most acceptable of the major GOP contenders. “It’s unusual to have a Republican candidate who openly disagrees with the Bush administration on the need for capping carbon emissions,” says Dan Kammen, an authority on energy policy at UC Berkeley who has advised all three leading candidates and is now associated with the Obama campaign. “There’s more disagreement with the current administration than with each other.”…
In the end, no president
gets his program through Congress intact. The differences in emphasis and
wording mean less at this stage than the emergence of environmentalism as a
broad-based political force, rather than an elite preoccupation of people
concerned about the effect of rising sea levels on beachfront property….
“Whoever is elected,” says Berkeley’s
Kammen,
“will need a pretty good energy plan as part of their first hundred days’
agenda.” The president Americans choose this fall will take office in 2009, the
year in which a new international treaty on global warming is to be negotiated,
replacing the expiring Kyoto Protocol. It will likely set the course of energy
and technological change for the first half of the century, and if
22. “Guest Commentary:
Helping poor buy cars more efficient than bus subsidy” (Naples Daily News (FL)
-
By Pat McCourt, Bonita Springs City Council member
Bonita Springs City Council’s decision to withdraw it’s subsidy of Bus Route 150 has drawn heavy criticism from some factions who claim to defend our less fortunate…. There was loud clamor and wild claims that eliminating this service would eliminate much-needed medical transportation and handicap transportation. It has since been demonstrated that these claims were simply not true.
The remaining argument for this outrageously inefficient service seems to be that the taxpayers have an obligation to get the poor to work. An estimated 50 people use the service to commute to work at a cost to taxpayers of $38,000 per month, or $760 per month for each worker. It was pointed out that with $760 per month we could lease each worker a Cadillac and have money left over….
The question now is this: If we want to improve the job prospects of low-income people, by enabling them to reach more potential jobs, is it more effective to spend resources on expanded public transit service or on helping them obtain a used car?...
Steven Raphael of University of California at Berkeley and Michael Stoll of UCLA found “strong evidence that having access to a car is particularly important for black and Latino workers” because low-income members of those groups tend to live in segregated areas that are not exactly full of job opportunities. There is good evidence that “car owners search greater geographic areas and ultimately travel greater distances to work than do searchers using public transit or alternative means of transportation.” One striking finding from their data analysis is that “raising minority car-ownership rates to the white car-ownership rate would eliminate 45 percent of the black-white employment-rate differential.” The paper is titled “Can Boosting Minority Car-Ownership Rates Narrow Inter-Racial Employment Gaps?” (Published in the Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs, 2001.)…
23. “The
Today state energy regulators created the California Institute for Climate Solutions. It’s charged with finding innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the natural gas and electric power industries. Californians will fund the institute with $60 million a year coming out of their electricity bills. Host: Cy Musiker
Guests:
Nancy
Ryan, advisor to the
24. “Economic rebound by
summer unlikely, ex-labor chief warns” (CNN,
“More realistically, we are going to go into 2009 with a serious recession,” Reich, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the recent book “Supercapitalism,” said on the CNN program “Issue #1.”
Reich, who served in the
“I think there’s no more than 20 percent chance of a depression,” Reich said.
Although Reich stressed that a depression is unlikely, he said that what’s happening with the economy today is close to a perfect storm.
“You’ve got food and energy prices, fuel prices going way way up,” he said. “You’ve got wages stuck. You’ve got people who are losing their jobs. You’ve got housing prices going down. I mean, it’s pretty bad.”
25. “
ROBERT REICH: Contrary to what some are saying, the economic cost
of the War in
…The war is a terribly
inefficient way to stimulate the
More to the point, a dollar spent in Iraq is a dollar we do not have to spend here, not only repairing our own bridges, roads and water and sewage systems, but also giving Americans access to health insurance and our children access to good schools, fully funding Social Security and Medicare, investing adequately in non-carbon based energy sources and green technologies and borrowing less from abroad.
In other words, the real economic cost of the Iraqi War doesn’t show up in the business cycle. It will show up years from now in a standard of living that for most Americans will be significantly lower than we might have enjoyed, because we spent trillions on a war in Iraq rather than investing here in America.
RYSSDAL: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the
26. “A
Plan for
In his testimony before
Congress on Tuesday, General David Petraeus,
commander of
Guests:
Carolyn Lochhead,
Michael Nacht, former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory, and dean and professor of public policy at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy
Thomas Henriksen,
author of “American Power after the Berlin Wall” and senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution specializing in the study of
27. “Bernanke
Says Bear Stearns Rescue Was ‘Necessary’” (PBS News Hour,
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended the agency’s rescue of Bear Stearns in a Senate hearing Thursday, saying the move was necessary to prevent further impact on the general economy. Financial experts weigh the Fed’s response to recent economic turmoil....
Jeffrey Brown: In addition to the Fed’s role in the Bear Stearns deal, concerns have also been raised about the central bank’s decision to make emergency loans to investment banks. Today, the Fed reported it has lent those firms an average of $38 billion a day in the past week alone.
We look at all this now with Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of
California-Berkeley. He served as secretary of labor in the
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Mr. Reich, what do you think? We heard Ben Bernanke and the others say that they felt they had no choice.
ROBERT REICH,
former
We’ve got to say that if taxpayers, essentially, are going to backstop big financial institutions that are not regular commercial banks, then the least we can require of these large investment banks and hedge funds is that they put up capital requirements, that they actually have to put up enough money proportional to the risks that they are taking on. Otherwise, the taxpayers are going to get caught holding the bag....
We are definitely witnessing a redefinition [of the role of a central bank in a market economy]. We have not seen a banking system, a financial system, that looks like this….
And the Federal Reserve Board has become, de facto, a fourth branch of government, indeed, the most active branch of government when it comes to the current economic crisis….
JEFFREY BROWN: … [I]f it is a branch of government, it’s certainly one of the least known. So help us understand, what are the pros and cons … of this new definition that we’re witnessing?
ROBERT REICH: Well, the pros are we are in new financial territory, we’ve never been here before, and we need some institution with the expertise and the oversight to take action that needs to be taken to avoid the kinds of—well, the kinds of runs on banks that almost occurred and would have occurred, many people think, if Bear Stearns had been let to go by itself.
The other new reality, though, is that we need some oversight of the overseers. We need an accountability mechanism. Because after all, at the end of the day, it is taxpayer money that is being put up here. Taxpayers are being exposed to huge potential liabilities.
And a lot of the investment bankers and hedge funds and all of their cousins really still, to this day, get all of the upside gains with regard to the bets they make, but very few of the downside losses, particularly if taxpayers are there as a backstop….
28. “Foundation leadership on diversity is missing” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
--John C. Gamboa
Thanks to Assemblyman Joe Coto’s “sunshine” bill, The Foundation Diversity and Transparency Act, the public has heard more about diversity and accountability on philanthropic foundation boards in two months than it has in two decades. This bill, which my organization sponsored, would require large foundations to disclose their board and grant-giving diversity. Information of this type is already provided by every major bank and regulated utility in the state. What we did not realize, though, is how this issue would ignite a firestorm of controversy and condemnation from major foundations. Almost every week there is a new charge that the proposed law would unleash “diversity police” or promote “reverse racism.”
The strongest argument against AB624 has not been raised by anyone in the philanthropic world, and there is good reason why. If the $700 billion of foundation assets were truly private in nature, then the Legislature has no right to require transparency as to the uses of these funds. But the taxpayers subsidize through tax exemptions to the foundation world between $40 billion and $80 billion a year.
These taxpayer subsidies were awarded in order to encourage
the foundations to assist the poor and under-served communities. They were not intended,
for example, to subsidize the opera or the symphony, which throughout the
29. “Full picture on cutting emissions”
(Los Angeles Times,
Re “Deregulation deja vu,” editorial, March 10
Your editorial about the California Public Utilities Commission’s recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions overlooks several issues.
Assembly Bill 32 requires the Air Resources Board to address
emissions from power plants in
You also ignore the fact that over half of emissions from
imported energy comes from five coal-fired plants that provide energy to
several
A carbon tax offers no improvement in tracking imported
emissions and would not be any less vulnerable to lobbying than a cap-and-trade
system, which combined with
Nancy Ryan,
The writer is chief of
staff to President Michael R. Peevey of the
30. “Richard and
“Now more than ever, spreading accurate information about the Holocaust and the history of the Jewish people is of great importance,” said Foundation President Richard N. Goldman. “We commend the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s efforts to provide people from every corner of the world with education of this nature.”
The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation’s name will be engraved on the Museum’s Pillars of Memory Wall this spring. The Foundation is also a member of the Museum’s Founders Society, comprised of 141 individuals, foundations and organizations that have donated $1 million or more to the Museum….
March 6 The Survey Research Center, directed by Henry Brady, hosted prominent leaders and scholars at a panel discussion on “The Future of Survey Research.” The event, part of the SRC’s celebration of its 50 years of leadership in its field, was presented in conjunction with a national conference of Academic Survey Research Organizations, also hosted by SRC.
April 11 Dan Kammen
testified at the “Green Innovations for a Clean California: A Community and
Workforce Development Symposium/Hearing” sponsored by Assemblywoman Mary
Hayashi, at
April 17 Robert Reich was keynote speaker at the
April 18 Rob MacCoun
presented his paper, “Do Citizens Accurately Perceive Marijuana Sanction Risks?
A Test of a Critical Assumption in Deterrence Theory and the
Decriminalization Debate” at the
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Director of External Relations and Development