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Editors |
eDIGEST September 2008
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Upcoming Events | Quick Reference List | Alumni & Student Newsmakers | Faculty in the
News | Recent Faculty Speaking
Engagements & Publications | Videos & Webcasts |
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1. “Green Growth?”
Daniel Kammen will discuss the international opportunities and constraints available to our next president and identify key areas where policy change must be immediate.
September 9,
Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies
2. “Climate Change and Peace: Why the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Won the Nobel Peace Prize”
September 21 |
Daniel Kammen
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
UC Berkeley Professor of Energy and Society and the Energy and Resources Group
As part of the International Day of Peace,
sponsored by UC Berkeley, United Nations Association -
3. “Race and Space: Residential Location and Labor Market Outcomes”
Colloquium | October 2 |
Steven Raphael,
Professor of Public Policy,
John Quigley,
Interim Dean,
Sponsor: Center for Race and Gender. Event Contact: 510-643-8488
4. “Political Rhetoric and Civility in the 2008 Presidential Election”
Homecoming Weekend:
Speakers: Henry Brady, Professor of Public Policy, co-director of the Class of ‘68 Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement at the Goldman School of Public Policy; Bruce Cain, Heller Professor of Political Science, Co-Director of the Class of ‘68 Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement; Robert Reich, Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy.
Sponsored by the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Class of 1968. Event contact: 510-643-1674
5. “
Special Event | October 14 |
Professor Robert Reich, Goldman School of Public Policy, former Secretary of Labor, is the author of 11 books including “Locked in the Cabinet” and “Supercapitalism. Professor Reich will read from his works, be interviewed about his writing process, and take questions on writing from the audience. Event Contact: 510-642-0875
6. 10th ANNUAL ALUMNI RECOGNITION DINNER
The Bancroft Hotel,
2008 Alumnus of the
Year: Mike Genest
(MPP 1980), Director of Finance, State of
7. “Our Environmental Destiny: Mario Savio Memorial Lecture”
December 4 |
The 12th annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture will feature leading environmental
defender Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Doors open at
Sponsor: Mario Savio Memorial Lecture Fund
The evening includes a presentation
of the Mario Savio Young Activist Award, which
recognizes young people engaged in the struggle to build a more humane and just
society. Event Contact: 510-642-3394
ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS
1. “Planning for health care is crucial” (Chicago Tribune,
2. “John Muir Charter works with the California Conservation
Corps to help wayward students” (Los Angeles Times,
3. “Why decriminalize prostitution now?” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
4. “Comcast to Place a Cap on Internet Downloads” (New York
Times,
5. “Comcast to restrict monthly broadband use” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
6. “Comcast to cap customers’ Internet use” (Marketplace
[NPR],
7. “
8. “Report: SAT, GPA still strong indicators of college
success” (Dallas Morning News,
9. “Technology to shine at political conventions” (Oakland
Tribune,
10. “Bay Area blogger to run for
State Dems vice chair” (Political Blotter, Contra
Costa Times,
11. “More
12. “Home price outlook is a cloud over markets” (Deseret News (
13. “
14. “MBA Moms Most Likely to Opt Out” (BusinessWeek,
15. “Have the Olympics Improved China’s Image?” (Capital
Times (
16. “
17. “S.F. Democrats take a sharp turn to the left” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
18. “
19. “Senate says bye to LAO’s Liz Hill” (The Sacramento Bee Capitol
Alert,
20. “Photo: Fond farewell for a number cruncher” (Sacramento
Bee,
21. “State high in carbon output” (Press-Register (
22. “Beyond the SAT”
(Forbes Magazine,
23. “Health care cost growth expected to slow” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
24. “Corzine OKs
hospital-monitoring bill” (Associated Press,
25. “Dependent on Same Lawyers - Despite Concerns, County Gives New Deal to Dependency Court Attorneys” (San Jose Mercury News, August 9, 2008); story citing LEAH WILSON (MPP 1997); http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10148730?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
26. “AIDS in
27. “Workers’ compensation enforcers widen focus on
employers. Audits of factories, farms and other workplaces highlight violations
by employers” (Los Angeles Times,
28. “Neighborhoods focus of supervisor’s school plan” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
29. “Shed No Tiers for Broadband Pricing” (eWeek.com,
30. “Interstate Competition Could Reduce Uninsured, Study
Says” (American Health Line,
31. “Anti-tax activists again watch
32. “Settlement reached in ‘05 fatal shooting by
33. “
34. “Chasing an ideal through Olympic rings of hope” (Canberra
Times (
35. “Fed: Olympics - a heavy mix of sport and politics” (AAP Newsfeed,
36. “UNICEF Pledges Further Three Million Dollars” (Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique,
37. “Health insurance ambition narrows” (Los Angeles Times,
38. “New tracking method shows higher rate of HIV” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
39. “UNICEF head concerned over spread of HIV in
40. “State utilities to miss energy deadline” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
41. “State’s Medi-Cal program is
being hit hard” (San Francisco Chronicle,
42. “No budget leads to 10,000 layoffs” (Ventura County Star,
43. “Big money in S.F. supes’ race”
(San Francisco Chronicle,
44. “
45. “Evercare practices - reviewed
by state - 7 agents fired over Medicare plan sales” (Boston Globe,
46. “Brattle Group Principal Dorothy Robyn Recommends Major Changes to Air Traffic Control System at Hamilton Project Forum Led by Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin” (PR Newswire July 31, 2008); newswire citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978/PhD 1993).
47. “Deficit projections complicate candidates’ plans” (MarketWatch,
48. “New S.F. budget will include plenty of cuts” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
49. “Is the surge working? GAO doesn’t think so” (Journal
Inquirer (
50. “Charity golf fundraiser organized by Sacramento
Utilities Department employees under scrutiny” (Sacramento Bee,
51. “
52. “US ready for black president, poll shows; Breaking away
from traditional black politics has helped Obama”
(The Straits Times (
53. “Health care cuts studied” (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
(
54. “Four finalists selected for Army base development deal”
(Oakland Tribune,
55. “Briefs: Economic development forum set” (Monterey County
Herald,
56. “Nation’s Premier Conference on Faster Freight and
Cleaner Air Brings Together Industry Giants in
57. “Will gas prices drive homebuyers away from suburbs?”
(Seattle Times,
58. “Parking dynamics changing at BART stations” (Oakland
Tribune Online,
59. “Keyboard cops - These Web watchers keep reference sites
in check” (Chicago Tribune RedEye Edition,
60. “Debunking the drug myth” (Boston Herald,
61. “CCSF to Deploy Waterfall Mobile’s AlertU
Platform” (Wireless News,
62. “State acts to fight global warming. In a pioneering
blueprint, the air board proposes to slash greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels”
(Los Angeles Times,
63. “Lovelife Generation on Mobile
Network” (Africa News,
64. “Dems file ethics complaint over RI Gov.’s niece” (The Associated Press State & Local Wire, June 17, 2008); story citing ROSS CHEIT (MPP 1980/PhD 1987).
65. “Ethics Commission hears arguments on maligned loophole”
(The Associated Press State & Local Wire,
66. “Chinese on tour of nature reserves” (Honolulu
Advertiser,
67. “Metro System Can Be Enhanced by State’s Approval of
RTAS” (Capital Times (Madison, WI),
68. “2008 World Business and Development Awards Launched”
(Africa News,
69. “Congressional Hearing Highlights Fogarty’s Role in
Global Health Research” (States News Service,
70. “Company looks to turn manure into power” (Hanford
Sentinel (CA) -
71. “
72. “Winter Day Out in
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
1. “It Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game. Newsweek’s Business Roundtable
looks at the two faces of globalization, and whether the
2. “Robert Reich:
Best Clinton Speech Ever” (Politics Blog, San
Francisco Chronicle Online,
3. “Foreign Policy and Political Nominating Conventions”
(Washington Post,
4. “What Biden brings to the party. As the Democrats convene in
5. “Beyond all the hoopla, party is worth watching” (Times
Union [
6. “How Obama Reconciles Dueling
Views on Economy” (New York Times Magazine,
7. “Districts Have Closed, Reconstructed Several Schools”
(Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
8. “CAMPAIGN 2008: A look at who’s advising Obama and McCain on energy, environment” (Greenwire,
9. “Traffic is lighter in a bad economy” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace [NPR],
10. “McCain, Obama hit hard at VFW
convention” (KGO TV,
11. “Solar power” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
12. “In Defence of Capitalism”
(Financial Express
13. “PG&E plans big investment in solar power” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
14. “
15. “Obama may pick VP with
military or foreign policy ties” (Rocky Mountain News,
16. “Saving $10 Billion with Efficiency” (Wall Street
Journal,
17. “Missing men.
18. “Giant Retailers Look to Sun for Energy Savings” (New
York Times,
19. “Olympian effort needed to clear
20. “Ideas 08: Climate Change. A Campaign Primer” (Chronicle
of Higher Education
21. “Is clean coal the answer to our energy needs?” (Money
Week,
22. “Sales Tax Hike” (Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
23. “A contest between two capitalisms” – commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace [NPR],
24. “Going for broke. The subprime
crisis raises serious questions about the underlying soundness of the dominant
economic model” (The Australian, 5 - Australian Literary Review Edition,
25. “Energy troubles” (Larry King Show, CNN,
26. “Credit crunch: The blame game” (BBC News Online,
27. “Tax Plans Very Different - McCain’s Tax Breaks Would
Favor the Rich, and Obama’s would Favor
the Poor” (Winston-Salem Journal,
28. “Author, Professor Urges
1. “Planning for health care is crucial”
(Chicago Tribune,
By Janet Kidd Stewart,
On your own to bridge the gap between retirement and Medicare? You’re not alone. Twenty years ago, two-thirds of employers with 200 or more workers offered health benefits to retirees, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust. Today, that number is one-third.
Even retirees older than 65 can’t be certain they are set for life when it comes to paying for health care, as their out-of-pocket costs grow for services not covered by Medicare.
“This is a terrible age to be without coverage,” said Karen Pollitz, director of Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. “It means you could lose everything you’ve worked for, and it’s quite frightening.” What are the options for people who find themselves without coverage years before Medicare eligibility?
Pollitz said the best option is to “reattach” to group coverage. Loss of benefits is a qualifying event, which means that if your spouse is eligible for coverage at work, you can apply even if the employer’s enrollment season has passed….
2. “John Muir Charter
works with the California Conservation Corps to help wayward students” (Los
Angeles Times,
By Mitchell Landsberg,
“Many of these students didn’t ... realize they had the capacity for
bigger things,” said Buzz Breedlove, center, executive director of John
Muir Charter. (Robert Durell/
FRENCH GULCH, CALIF. --
Alex Gowan leaned against the side of the White
Rhino. The bleached workhorse of a bus had strained up a near-vertical fire
road to carry him and his fellow members of the California Conservation Corps
to this wide, bulldozed bluff in the smoke-shrouded mountains west of
Gowan was a high school dropout whose quest to finally get a diploma had led him here, to the edge of the Motion Fire, or what remained of it after weeks of firefighting. The same was true for most of the 18 other corps members with him, a weary, slap-happy bunch who had been pulling 16- and even 24-hour shifts working backup behind firefighters from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Forest Service.
In addition to being members
of the Cs, as they call the Conservation Corps, many of these young people were
students or recent graduates of one of the most unusual schools in
John Muir was chartered in 1998, primarily to provide education to participants in the Conservation Corps. The corps had been established more than 20 years earlier by then-Gov. Jerry Brown to turn around wayward youth through projects that would benefit the state’s environment. About half its members are high school dropouts….
Corps members, who can be 18 to 25, are paid for their work and encouraged to complete school. If they finish a one-year commitment, they can be eligible for scholarships to further their education, either in vocational school or college….
One of Muir’s biggest
advantages is that it has very small classes, so small that it can give
students something close to one-on-one attention. It can afford to do this,
said executive director Buzz Breedlove,
largely because it uses Conservation Corps facilities in
Breedlove is a former legislative analyst who worked for the Conservation Corps before taking over at Muir in 2003. He’s a statistics guy who constantly crunches numbers to figure out how Muir can do better.
But how do you even judge a school like Muir? It is a significant question, because as a charter school … Muir is expected to show evidence of academic success or face eventual revocation of its charter….
The state Department of
Education acknowledges that its dropout data don’t do justice to a dropout
recovery program. Since Muir deals with students whom no other school could
reach, its dropout rate [ranked tops in a recent study] is fairly meaningless.
And Breedlove pointed out that
because of another statistical anomaly, Muir has just about the best Academic
Performance Index ranking in
…In the 2006-07 school year, Muir graduated 306 students -- perhaps a third to a
quarter of its enrollment. That might sound low, but some regular
Breedlove believes that, ultimately, the only true measure of success for a school like his is the “value added” to an individual student. How many grade levels of reading did a student improve? Did a student learn algebra after years of frustration and failure? Success is measured one student at a time.
“Is a student becoming more civic-minded, more civil, more healthy, mentally and physically? . . . I wish I could find an assessment for that,” he said. “If they’re going to be successful students, they have to be successful at life. I think we’re good at that, but I don’t know how to measure it.”
It may not be measurable, but it is palpable on the fire lines, where students working 16-hour shifts talk about how good it feels to put in a hard day’s work doing something that matters. As they drive through the region, they see hand-lettered signs from homeowners thanking them for saving their property.
“Many of these students didn’t see that bigger purpose, didn’t realize they had the capacity for bigger things,” Breedlove said.
“Then they join the
corps and suddenly someone says, ‘You’ve got to go out and save
3. “Why decriminalize
prostitution now?” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--C.W. Nevius
When ultra-liberal San
Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly put together a slate of like-minded people to
run for membership in the Democratic County Central Committee this summer, the
intention was to make a splash in local politics.
They have succeeded
beyond their wildest dreams.
At a meeting on Aug. 13,
the newly configured DCCC - the powerful political committee of 34 people that
directs money to candidates and measures it approves - took several
controversial stands, including voting not to endorse funding for the popular
Community Justice Center, which would target chronic street criminals. Despite
the vote, ballot Measure L, for funding for the CJC, is expected to pass
overwhelmingly in the November election.
But the real showstopper
was a vote - 18-12 with three abstentions and one member absent - to endorse
Supervisor Jake McGoldrick's Measure K, which would
decriminalize prostitution and prohibit the city from spending money on
sex-traffic investigations that involve racial profiling….
The measure, and the
vote in favor of it, has already proved so unpopular that - amid reports of
fundraising resistance from dependable donors - there was talk that the
committee might hold a revote….
“I think this was a real litmus test across the city on where these guys want to go,” said political consultant David Latterman, who is advising several moderate campaigns and is working for Claudine Cheng's supervisorial run in District Three and Emily Murase's bid for school board. “This is what they stand for. It shows how incredibly out of touch they are.”…
4. “Comcast to Place a
Cap on Internet Downloads” (New York Times,
By Brian Stelter
Comcast, one of the country’s largest Internet providers, said this week that it would place limits on customers’ broadband usage….
According to Comcast, a customer would have to download 62,500 songs or 125 standard-definition movies a month to exceed the caps. But high-definition video and video gaming require a higher amount of bandwidth. S. Derek Turner, the research director for the nonpartisan media policy group Free Press, said broadband caps could create a disincentive to view online video.
“As media companies put content online, consumers can bypass the cable companies and get their content directly from the Internet,” Mr. Turner said. “A 250 gigabyte cap may seem very high — and it is for today’s Internet use. But it’s essentially the equivalent of four hours of HD television a day.”
Critics have charged that Internet providers are trying to protect their cable TV and telephone businesses by stifling Internet access….
Comcast said there was no link between the caps, announced Thursday, and the Federal Communications Commission’s finding on Aug. 1 that the company was improperly inhibiting customers who used BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing program.
But Andrew Jay Schwartzman, the president of the Media Access Project, said the caps appeared to be a direct result of that finding. Mr. Schwartzman’s group represented Free Press in its complaint against Comcast about the file-sharing controls.
5. “Comcast to restrict
monthly broadband use” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
Comcast soon will begin cracking down on heavy users of its Internet service in a move that critics fear could be a step toward restricting unlimited broadband access to download and upload files while surfing the Web.
The country’s largest cable company and second-largest Internet provider said Thursday that beginning Oct. 1, residential users who download and/or upload more than 250 GB of data a month will be notified and asked to curb their use. Customers who exceed the limit a second time in six months will face termination of their account….
S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press, a media nonprofit group, said that while the limit seems high now, it might not be sufficient in the future as technology evolves and broadband use grows. He blamed a lack of competition that allows Comcast to profit from “artificial scarcity.”
“Unfortunately, Americans will continue to face the consequences of this lack of competition until policymakers get serious about policies that deliver the world-class networks consumers deserve,” Turner said in a statement….
6. “Comcast to cap
customers’ Internet use” (Marketplace [NPR],
(Tim Boyle/Getty Images)
… DAN GRECH: How much is 250 gigabytes? It’s about 50 million e-mails, 62,000 songs, 25,000 photos…. Comcast says it enacted the cap to weed out excessive users.
Derek Turner is with Free Press, a nonprofit that has complained to the FCC about the way Comcast manages its network. He says the cap is really the cable company’s response to high-definition video over the Internet.
DEREK TURNER: That is a direct threat to Comcast’s core business model and their core cash cow, which is delivering video.
Two hundred-fifty gigs translates to downloading just 25 HD movies. Turner says Comcast capping Internet use is a case of the fox guarding the hen house.
DEREK TURNER: The same pipe they use to deliver video is used to deliver Internet. And as more and more content is available online, customers are quickly going to realize they don’t need to pay cable companies $100 a month to get their video content….
7. “
By John Reitmeyer,
If Hillary Clinton were
accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination this week,
Instead, they settled
for watching
State Sen. Robert Gordon, an early
“What’s important is to get that message to those disaffected Hillary supporters,” said Gordon, D-Fair Lawn.
Republican John McCain,
the GOP’s presumptive nominee, is running a new ad with a former
“I think that’s sheer
idiocy,” said Gordon, whose district
supported
8. “Report: SAT, GPA
still strong indicators of college success” (Dallas Morning News,
By Charles Scudder / The
A good score on the lengthier, revamped SAT along with a strong high school grade-point average continues to be a solid indicator of first-year collegiate success, according to a recently released report from the College Board, which administers the test.
The 2008 SAT Validity Studies, based on information from 110 colleges and universities around the country, uses a complex formula that correlates a relationship among SAT scores, high school GPA and first-year collegiate GPA. The study found that high school GPA was a good predictor of how a student would fare in college, but the GPA/SAT score combination was even better….
Saul Geiser, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, has criticized the College Board’s endorsement of its own test. In a recent research paper, he said he finds that the SAT fails in “equity, uniformity, technical reliability, and prediction.”
Among his reasons, he said that the SAT is a single snapshot of a student’s work, but a GPA is a more holistic look at four years’ worth of aptitude.
“In studies of almost 125,000 students entering UC between 1996 and 2001, my colleagues [including Maria Veronica Santelices] and I found that the strongest predictor of college success was high-school grades in college-preparatory courses,” Mr. Geiser stated in the paper. “The predictive superiority of high-school grades was consistently evident across all entering classes, academic disciplines, and campuses in the UC system.”
Barmak Nassirian is associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and a noted critic of the SAT….
He cites the [2008 SAT] validity studies to show that high school GPA is about as predictive as the SAT itself. Using the College Board’s scale of minus 1 to 1, he notes that high school GPA alone gets a 0.54 while the full SAT gets a 0.53….
[See Geiser and Santelices, “The role of advanced placement and honors courses in college admissions” (2006); Geiser and Santelices, “Validity of high-school grades in predicting student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as indicators of four-year college outcomes” (CSHE, 2007).]
9. “Technology to shine
at political conventions” (Oakland Tribune,
By Lisa Vorderbrueggen - Contra Costa Times
The Denver 2008 Convention Host Committee officially welcomed more than 10,000 journalists from around the world to the Democratic National Convention.
… The next two weeks promise to be the most
high-tech political events in U.S. history, offering every voter with a
computer or an Internet-equipped phone the chance to see and read more from
inside the conventions than ever before.
The Democrats will, for the first time at a political convention, videostream the floor sessions live over the Internet in a gavel-to-gavel feed — in high-definition — at www.DemConvention.com. Viewers can even choose their own camera angles….
Record numbers of blogs and bloggers have been
credentialed for both conventions, including progressive Calitics founder and
10. “Bay Area blogger to run for State Dems
vice chair” (Political Blotter, Contra Costa Times,
By Josh Richman
“This people-powered party shouldn’t simply exist to serve a legislative caucus or any particular donor but rather to ensure that the collective action of thousands of grass-roots Democrats can be heard. This means truly opening up ourselves to introspection. It means reviewing our processes to ensure that we are an institution that is seeking the best solution rather than the easy solution. It means recalibrating ourselves to overcome inertia in the service of positive change. After all, if there is one thing that term limits have taught us, it is that incumbency is ephemeral, values are permanent.”
It’s not surprising, given all the scorn the Calitics folks have heaped upon the party’s current leadership, be it for bankrolling Don Perata’s legal fund, defending Dianne Feinstein even as she continues to offend progressives, or what have you. It’ll be interesting to see how grass-roots progressives fare against the entrenched regime….
11. “More
--Garance Burke, Associated Press
Jan Ham (left) of Cal-OSHA discusses the importance of keeping cool
and hydrated with farmworker Yer
Yang in
(08-22) 04:00 PDT Raisin City, Fresno County -- California, the nation’s leader in heat-related deaths among farmworkers, sought to turn that trend around three years ago with new laws aimed at ensuring people toiling in sweltering fields had such basics as a water break and an umbrella for shade. But if anything, the problem has gotten worse.
Since then, 12 farmworkers have died in suspected heatstroke deaths, six this year alone. That’s twice the number of such deaths in the nearly three years before the laws were passed.
An Associated Press
investigation found that an understaffed labor agency fails to consistently
hold farms and labor contractors accountable for heat deaths or ensure they pay
for violations and improve conditions in one of the most brutal jobs in
One recent high-profile death of a pregnant, teenage vineyard worker [Authorities believe she collapsed because her supervisors denied her access to shade and water as she pruned white wine grapes for more than nine hours in nearly triple-digit heat] led the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health to issue a record fine of more than $262,000. But the fines often drop when appealed and have averaged less than $10,000 in other heat-related deaths. In one case, it ended up at just $250.
Currently, 210 state
inspectors look for heat-related violations and other safety hazards at farms
and all other kinds of work sites. But with just 1 inspector for every roughly
90,000 workers in
One day last month in
“Why did no one run over
to help him in an emergency? Maybe his life could have been saved,” asked his
grieving sister Natividad, who said she also fainted
from heatstroke this year after pruning bushes at a
Only firefighters suffer from heatstroke at a higher rate than farmworkers, and no occupation sees more deaths from it….
“You see people crouching underneath tractors when you go out in the fields. We think workers should be able to rest with dignity,” [Cal/OSHA Chief Len] Welsh said….
12. “Home price outlook
is a cloud over markets” (Deseret News (
-- Bloomberg News
Mickey Levy, chief economist at Bank of America Corp. in
"The uncertainty
about how far house prices have to fall is the biggest gray cloud overhanging
financial markets and financial institutions," Levy said Thursday in a Bloomberg Radio interview. "I think
that gray cloud will start to lift early next year."
As the market values of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fall, the likelihood increases that the U.S.
Treasury will need to save the government-chartered mortgage-finance companies.
"The Treasury has
to come out with a meaningful, significant bail-out package that has an exit
policy that has credibility in the marketplace," Levy said in
"They're insolvent," he said of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "Trouble is really brewing."
13. “
LOS ANGELES -- Michigan needs either to overhaul its public campaign financing law and provide additional funding for gubernatorial candidates, or to abandon the program altogether and shift the funding to judicial campaigns for the state supreme court, the new report [from the Center for Governmental Studies] says. Otherwise, the two primary objectives of the program—high candidate participation and increased public confidence in government—will no longer be achieved.
Driving Towards Collapse concludes that
Sasha Horwitz, California Governance Project Manager at CGS, said, “Although political spending is going up, the legislature has neglected its once successful public financing law. This law no longer achieves its goals: it doesn’t limit spending, and most candidates don’t take the program seriously.” …
Driving Towards Collapse and other CGS reports are available on the CGS website, www.cgs.org ….
14. “MBA Moms Most
Likely to Opt Out” (BusinessWeek,
By Alison Damast
Shortly after graduating
from
“And I was right, it was
the hardest job I could find,” said Icke, who later
went on to
Twenty years and four
kids later, Icke is far removed from the pressure and
deadline-driven world that she thrived on in back in her early 20s and 30s. A
stay-at-home mom in
Icke’s
career trajectory is typical of many of her fellow female undergraduates at
Harvard who subsequently got their MBAs, according to a new study from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
A surprising number of these women have dropped out of the labor force to
become stay-at-home mothers, according to
By the time they are 15 years out of college, 28% of the Harvard women who went on to get their MBAs were stay-at-home moms, compared to only 6% of women who got medical degrees, the authors found. The study also looked at the career paths of Harvard women who became lawyers and found 21% chose to stay home with their children. Some of the women in the study managed to to strike a balance between family life and work. For example, the highest percentage of women in the study to work part-time were doctors, while women in business, especially those in finance and banking, were the least likely to have done so, the study showed….
15. “Have the Olympics
Improved China’s Image?” (Capital Times (
“No. They’re creating a
public spectacle, spent a lot of resources to create these venues in order to
host this mega event, but my concern is how they treat their own people and the
people of Tibet, and I don’t know anything they’ve done to address that. The
Olympics hasn’t caused me to ignore some of the fundamental issues that
-- Jack Benjamin, budget director,
[Kevin Murphy, a
16. “
By Evelyn Nieves - Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO -- California’s nearly 80,000 foster children are underserved by overburdened courts and agencies making life-changing decisions for them, and often end up in limbo, according to a report released Friday.
The state’s foster care system, the largest in the nation representing 15 to 20 percent of all foster children, is simply overwhelmed, according to a report by the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care. The panel was appointed by California Chief Justice Ronald George to study the courts’ role in these cases and recommend reforms.
In a two-year study, the panel found serious consequences resulting from the lack of time foster cases receive in court. The entire juvenile court system has fewer than 150 full and part-time judges and commissioners working on foster care, with caseloads averaging 1,000. Lawyers for these courts average 273 cases apiece—in some counties 500 to 600 cases—and often do not meet the children and parents they are representing until moments before their hearings.
The panel found that hearings last an average of 10 to 15 minutes….
More than half of the state’s 80,000 foster children remain in the system for two or more years, 17 percent for more than three years. About 5,000 foster care children reach the age of 18 and are termed out of the system-set loose in the world-without reuniting with their families or in other permanent homes….
Afterward, the Judicial Council unanimously endorsed the commission’s recommendations, which focused on several key areas: preventing the removal of children from their families, when it is safe to do so; reforming the courts to prioritize cases and assign more judges to hear them; improving coordination between the courts and social service agencies; and providing more resources and funding to the juvenile courts by being more flexible with funds….
The Blue Ribbon
Commission on Children in Foster Care was comprised of 42 child welfare experts
[including Amy Lemley,
policy director of the John Burton Foundation for Children Without
Homes], legislators, court officials and foster youth. Their study was the
first to focus on the role of the courts and their responsibility for foster
children in
17. “S.F. Democrats take
a sharp turn to the left” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
The San Francisco Democratic Party has veered dramatically to the left, telling voters that on Nov. 4 they should elect a raft of ultra-liberal supervisorial candidates, decriminalize prostitution, boot JROTC from public schools, embrace public power and reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s special court in the Tenderloin….
[Aaron] Peskin, the group’s chairman, said Thursday that the progressive endorsements are in step with the priorities of San Francisco’s voters and are geared toward making the party bigger and stronger after some left-wing members broke off to join the Green Party….
The group endorsed incumbents Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd….
18. “
--Michael Burnham, Greenwire senior reporter
Newly minted environment
exchanges in
Last week, Chinese officials quietly launched the Beijing Environmental Exchange and the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange….
The
“Overseas companies can
now come to
Carbon dioxide emissions trading between Chinese companies is unlikely to happen any time soon, other carbon market experts say….
“Without a cap, the idea of a market is silly,” Trexler added. “A market requires a scarcity of something.” …
19. “Senate says bye to LAO’s Liz Hill”
(The Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert,
Posted by Shane Goldmacher on
Calling her the “consummate public servant” and one of the most respected voices in state government, the state Senate bid farewell to Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill in a floor ceremony on Thursday.
Senator after senator rose to heap praises on Hill, who has provided nonpartisan fiscal advice to lawmakers since 1976. She rose to head the Legislative Analyst’s Office a decade later.
“If we simply took...your LAO reports and we put them into statute, the state would be a whole lot better off,” said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. “That is the ultimate compliment to you.”…
A gracious Hill said it had “been such an honor to serve you, to try to give you advice.”
“Thank you all so much for giving me the dream job of legislative analyst,” she beamed.
Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, said Hill offered “a fair analysis whether you wanted it or not.” …
Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, said Hill was “trusted on both sides of the aisle.” Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-
Sen. Gloria Romero of
20. “Photo: Fond
farewell for a number cruncher” (Sacramento Bee,
Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill, left, stands with state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, as senators applaud Hill’s service on Thursday. Hill is retiring after joining the office, which provides legislators with fiscal advice, in 1976 and taking its top job in 1986. Hill, 58, said in March when she announced her retirement that she planned to travel and work on her golf game. (BRIAN BAER / bbaer@sacbee.com )
21. “State high in
carbon output” (Press-Register (
By Brian Lyman, Capital Bureau
The nation's per capita average that year - the latest for which numbers were available from the Energy Information Administration - was about 20 tons….
Experts say the state's production of and use of coal, along with a rural character necessitating dependence on the car, drive the CO2 into the atmosphere….
The presence of heavy industry can also play a role.
Kevin Gurney, a professor at Purdue University in Indiana, who has studied
carbon emissions throughout the country, said states bringing in heavy
industry, such as
"In
22. “Beyond the SAT”
(Forbes Magazine,
--Richard C. Atkinson and Saul Geiser
It used to be that an
acceptance letter from a good college was simply a pleasant prelude to the game
of life. No more. In 21st century
But who are the best students? American colleges and universities have long answered this question by looking at applicants’ high-school grades in academic subjects and their scores on standardized college-entrance tests.
These tests come in two
varieties: achievement and general reasoning. Achievement tests measure what
students have learned in high-school courses, such as history, math and foreign
languages. General-reasoning tests seek to assess students’ academic potential
by measuring their skills in solving reading and math problems largely, by
design, independent of high-school curricula. Since 1926, the dominant
general-reasoning test in the
… Yet the problem with general-reasoning tests like the SAT is their premise: that something as complex as intellectual promise can be captured in a single test and reflected in a single score….
The new SAT is looking
more like a promising first draft than a final product. Any plans for revision
should consider a series of
The studies, conducted over the past decade, suggest that achievement tests are better than general-reasoning tests in predicting how well students are likely to perform in college, that they are fairer to low-income and minority students, and that they reinforce teaching and learning in a way the SAT … does not….
[See UC Center for Studies in Higher Education studies: “Validity of High-School Grades in Predicting Student Success Beyond the Freshman Year: High-School Record vs. Standardized Tests as Indicators of Four-Year College Outcomes” by Saul Geiser & Maria Veronica Santelices. CSHE.9.07 (June 2007)]
23. “Health care cost
growth expected to slow” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer
Employers are working to reduce health care costs by urging employees to join wellness programs and to choose generic drugs.
A new survey predicts that health care costs
will increase more than 10 percent next year, a rate that—while it far outpaces
inflation—is significantly lower than similar hikes in recent years.
A report released by Aon Consulting Worldwide estimates employers will spend about 10.6 percent more in 2009 for the same health benefit package they’re offering this year. This price bump is similar to last year’s, but a far cry from increases of 15 percent and 16 percent in 2001 and 2002.
Aon officials said employers likely will be able to reduce their actual costs by three or four percentage points by using a variety of techniques such as employee wellness programs and disease-management programs….
Despite the relative moderation, some troubling trends continue. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers [in a similar study] determined cost shifting from the uninsured, in addition to underpayments from government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, will account for nearly 1 in every 4 dollars spent by private payers in 2009.
Meanwhile, the population continues to age, and the economy is straining a country that already is spending more than 16 percent of its entire economy on health care.
“The fact we’re having
this debate of who has to pay more because someone else is paying less is
symptomatic of the many deep flaws in our health care finance system,” said Marian Mulkey,
senior program officer for the
Mulkey said the Aon survey, which did not provide individual state projections, shows “slow grinding declines in access to health care” rather than any dramatic shifts.
While supporting the benefits of employee wellness programs, Mulkey doubted they would contribute to short-term premium reductions….
24. “Corzine
OKs hospital-monitoring bill” (Associated Press,
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The law comes amid a
spate of hospital closures in the state. So far this year, four acute-care
hospitals have closed: Barnert in Paterson, St. James
and Columbus in
“Through this legislation, the Department of Health will have an early warning when a hospital becomes fiscally unstable and will be able to intervene before the fiscal instability gives way to fiscal insolvency, and yet another health care facility in the Garden State has to close its doors forever,” said state Sen. Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, a chief sponsor of the bill….
25. “Dependent on Same Lawyers - Despite Concerns, County Gives New Deal to Dependency Court Attorneys” (San Jose Mercury News, August 9, 2008); story citing LEAH WILSON (MPP 1997); http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10148730?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
By Karen De Sá, Mercury News
Despite documented problems in the handling of dependency court cases, state and local court officials have chosen the current lawyers to receive a new two-year contract to continue representing impoverished Santa Clara County parents and some children in foster care….
The selection, made by a committee of officials with the state Administrative Office of the Courts and Santa Clara County Superior Court judges, leaked out Friday when lawyers at the firm, as well as three competing bidders for the job, received written notices. The contract … provides for the firm to represent about 2,000 impoverished parents facing allegations of child abuse and neglect as well as roughly 300 youth….
One critical problem has been the poor quality of lawyering for parents. Juvenile Defenders, like similar firms around the state, has often failed to prepare cases properly, has not hired investigators, experts, or social workers. Critics also say the firm has continually failed to protect the parents’ right to appeal adverse rulings….
A state court official
said Friday that the lawyers were selected based on assurances they would
correct past problems to ensure that parents are properly represented. In a
statement, the court said the bid of the new
Court officials also expect the quality of representation to be improved as Santa Clara County has recently joined a statewide pilot program [DRAFT (Dependency Representation, Administration, Funding & Training)] that will require the attorneys to document the time they spend with clients, and to use investigators and experts where warranted.
The program also provides state money to lower caseloads and increase lawyers’ salaries….
Counties that already entered the program have shown such improved results as greater likelihood that siblings will be placed together, and less likelihood that children, once reunited at home, will return to foster care, according to the program’s director, Leah Wilson….
26. “AIDS in
The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention estimates that the number of new HIV infections is 40
percent higher than previously thought. As the 17th International Aids
conference in
Guests:
● Mark Cloutier, executive director of SF AIDS Foundation
● Theogene Rudasingwa, vice president of global affairs for the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation
● Antoine Mahan, community activist and man living with AIDS
● Barbara Lee, congresswoman for California’s 9th congressional district
27. “Workers’
compensation enforcers widen focus on employers. Audits of factories, farms and
other workplaces highlight violations by employers” (Los Angeles Times,
By Marc Lifsher,
David Dorame, director of the Economic and
Employment Enforcement Coalition, a state and federal task force, talks with a
SACRAMENTO -- For a decade, California employers and their advocates in Sacramento complained about the high cost of workers’ compensation insurance and condemned abuses of the system by employees, who they said fake claims, exaggerate medical conditions and collect fat disability benefits.
But some data suggest that employers—not workers—are the bigger workers’ compensation cheaters. And the state is stepping up enforcement against businesses suspected of ignoring the law and endangering workers.
Workers’ comp insurance is the state’s basic protection for people hurt on the job. A century-old law requires that all employers have policies that pay for medical care, hospitalization and disability payments for job-related injuries.
The heightened enforcement efforts are beginning to show results. In May, state labor officials conducted a quarterly survey of 500 randomly chosen firms and found that at least 12.4% of them did not carry workers’ compensation. They assessed $191,000 in fines against 62 companies….
No one has ever been able to measure fraud among the hundreds of thousands of employees each year who file workers’ comp claims, said UC Berkeley expert Frank Neuhauser. “But it’s certainly less than 10%,” he said….
28. “Neighborhoods focus
of supervisor’s school plan” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
A committee of
The resolution was approved Thursday by the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee and sent to the full board for a vote later.
Currently, where a student lives has little, if any, influence in school assignments. The district instead assigns students using a complex system that aims to desegregate schools.
The process has been hotly debated for years, pitting those who want access to schools close to home against those who want to promote diversity.
Supervisor Carmen Chu, who authored the resolution, said it’s time for the city to take on the emotionally charged topic and fix a broken system.
“We have seen a lot of neighbors who have called to complain about this,” she said. “You end up having communities that are shipping their kids all over the place.”…
29. “Shed No Tiers for
Broadband Pricing” (eWeek.com,
It’s been one week since the Federal Communications Commission bopped Comcast’s ears for blocking the peer-to-peer application BitTorrent, ruling that the broadband provider violated the FCC’s network neutrality principles.
After the predictable celebrations by network neutrality advocates came the darker, more ominous message from other circles: If broadband providers can’t manage their networks to keep bandwidth hogs from clogging the pipes, tiered service, caps or metering are sure to follow.
The chief disciple of this line of thinking is Craig Moffett, an analyst with Bernstein Research. On Aug. 1, he wrote on his blog:
“If network operators can’t manage traffic loads one way, they’ll do it another. By banning discrimination based on application or content, the FCC—and net neutrality proponents more broadly—are pushing network operators closer and closer to what increasingly is their only viable alternative—usage-based pricing….”
Not so fast, countered media reform organization Free Press. Along with Public Knowledge, Free Press brought the FCC case against Comcast after tests by the Associated Press and others showed that Comcast blocks users’ legal P2P content. Bernstein, said Free Press in a report released Aug. 7, (PDF) is climbing a rope attached to nothing. The report, written by Free Press Director of Research S. Derek Turner, stated:
“These assertions are simply untrue. By stirring up fears of higher monthly bills, this posturing attempts to delegitimize the Commission’s worthy action, giving consumers the false impression that they must choose between secret Internet blocking or the very undesirable practice of metering.”
Turner added, “This is a false choice, one most providers don’t even consider necessary or practical. These scare tactics shouldn’t deter anyone from pursuing the policies we need to preserve a free and open Internet.”
Free Press noted that such a switch in broadband pricing models would represent a significant shift by broadband providers, “But to believe such a move is right around the corner, we must accept the argument that there is congestion in the network.”
There isn’t, at least according to the available data….
30. “Interstate Competition
Could Reduce Uninsured, Study Says” (American Health Line,
About 12 million
uninsured people in the
Reaction
Karen Pollitz, project director for the Georgetown University Institute for Health Care Research and Policy, said that the study’s figures were misleading because reducing the number of people who are uninsured does not equal reducing the number of people who are underinsured. Pollitz said, “Good health insurance that will take care of you when you’re sick is expensive because health care is expensive,” adding, “The [state] regulations require that the insurance be meaningful.” …
31. “Anti-tax activists
again watch
By Pamela M. Prah, Stateline.org
… In California, four bond questions totaling nearly $17 billion will await voters, including whether the state should issue nearly $10 billion in bonds for a high-speed train system, another $5 billion for incentives for alternative fuel vehicles, nearly $1 billion for children’s hospitals and nearly $1 billion to help California veterans who have recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan buy homes or farms….
Californians’
willingness to put big-ticket items on the state credit card worries some. “I’m
not sure if voters get it,” said Sasha Horwitz of the Center for Governmental Studies, a think
tank based in
32. “Settlement reached
in ’05 fatal shooting by
By Eric Louie - Valley Times
A $1.35 million
settlement has been reached in a lawsuit regarding a 2005 incident in which
Police had entered the
home of Richard Kim, 49,
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, had alleged that officers violated the civil rights of Kim’s wife and son. The widow, Jee Young Kim, initially asked for $20 million in damages, alleging that the officers who entered her house … used excessive force and negligently killed her husband….
Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie said the case was settled because there were many conflicting facts and a trial would have involved emotional and conflicting testimony. He said the incident has made the sheriff’s office more sensitive to language and cultural differences, but no procedural changes have been made because, he said, authorities regard the shootings to have been justified.
“It was an extremely volatile situation,” he said. “It’s clear one of the men had a knife in his hand and had the potential of harming another individual.”
The complaint had said that Richard Kim and Tae-Lee were intoxicated and had been arguing that evening. Kim went upstairs and Tae-Lee went into the kitchen and got a knife. Richard Kim took refuge in a bedroom and shut the door….
When the officers arrived, the report said, they believed one woman, who was clutching her side, had been assaulted, and they fired at Tae-Lee because they thought he was a threat to the women or themselves.
33. “
By Peter Hegarty -
With the state facing at
least a $15 billion deficit, the City Council has put
The unanimous decision Tuesday followed a request from the League of California Cities, which has asked local governments to lobby Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers to stop them from diverting local property, redevelopment or sales tax money.
So far, no one in
But
“We don’t have a whole lot of money to give, if any, and we are concerned that the state will come after us so we are doing what we can, at the local level, to advocate on behalf of our local interests,” Deputy City Manager Lisa Goldman said.
The state has taken $52
million from
34. “Chasing an ideal
through Olympic rings of hope” (Canberra Times (
By Justine Nolan
With only a few days to go
until the opening of the Beijing Olympics,
Traditionally, the Games
have employed symbols like flames, doves and other images that represent the
spirit of coming together to work for human rights in a move towards the
establishment of a peaceful world concerned with the preservation of human
dignity…. This is not so different from the goals set out in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to promote the inherent dignity and rights of all.
Clearly, modern history has inopportunely juxtaposed reality with these ideals
and the two most prominent examples of where the Olympic Games inconveniently
clashed with human rights ideals were
Access to information
and freedom of speech has long been restricted and until last week, despite
promises to the contrary, awarding the Olympics to
However, the issue is
broader than internet restrictions. Human rights in China are affected in many
ways by Government practices, and groups such as Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch argue that human rights abuses have actually increased in
the months leading up to the Olympics. These groups have been highlighting all
year the increased detention of rights activists within
The political sideshow that accompanies the Games can be used as force for good if governments and the Olympics committee develop the backbone and political will to do so.
Whether the committee has suddenly developed such spirit or was simply shamed into doing so is not so clear in this case. Yes, there are those who will continue to argue that the Games should be depoliticised and immune from such pressure. But they never have been, nor will be.….
Justine Nolan is deputy
director of the Australian Human Rights Centre in the
[Justine Nolan also wrote an op-ed for The Age (
35. “Fed: Olympics - a
heavy mix of sport and politics” (AAP Newsfeed,
After losing out to
And when
The international
community may be willing to take
Even the
Justine Nolan, deputy director of the Australian Human Rights Centre at the University of NSW, doubts the Games will have any noticeable long-term influence on Beijing’s attitude to human rights.
“I think internet restrictions will come back down and they will continue to detain people and very rigorously control free speech, they’ve been doing that all year,” she told AAP.
“I think they’ll probably
go back to their more comfortable relationship with
And she believes international condemnation will only last as long as there’s no economic impact.
“The reality is that
“If you’d seen the Olympics awarded to Burma then everyone would have protested and boycotted it—but you can’t have that situation in China when they’re also a trading partner.” …
36. “UNICEF Pledges
Further Three Million Dollars” (Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique,
The Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Ann Veneman, announced in
“We are most concerned
with children younger than two”, declared Veneman at a press conference
concluding a three day working visit to
A recent government assessment estimated that 41 per cent of Mozambican children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Veneman warned that this could be worsened by the international rise in food prices.
Malnutrition greatly worsened a child’s chances of survival. “If children suffer from malaria and at the same time are malnourished, there is a greater chance that they will lose their lives”, she said….
She said she had been
impressed by Mozambique’s economic growth and by its success in reducing infant
mortality rates. “This is good news for children”, she said. “
Since 1990 Mozambican infant mortality has fallen by 42 per cent….
Veneman also praised the country’s successes in primary education, notably the great increase in enrolment rates. But she deplored the high drop-out rate, and the lack of places in secondary schools for many children graduating from seventh grade (the end of primary education)..
She also noted that high food prices might persuade parents to pull their children out of school, in order to seek employment to boost the household income. “But if the schools have feeding programmes, then the parents would take their children to school, because there would be a guarantee that they would receive meals”, she said.
37. “Health insurance
ambition narrows” (Los Angeles Times,
By Jordan Rau
Susan Braig, an
Studies have found that
people with individual plans are more likely to end up with financially
debilitating medical bills when serious illness strikes.
The average monthly
premium for policies obtained individually in 2006 was $259, compared to $382
for policies purchased by small businesses for their workers, according to the
most recent survey undertaken by the California
HealthCare Foundation, an
But a person with individual coverage paid an average of $1,825 in deductibles and co-payments, triple the $630 paid by someone insured through a small business, the survey found….
Another measure aims to ban the most limited [individual] policies and make it easier for consumers to comparison shop in a market where, according to Marian Mulkey , a senior program officer at the California HealthCare Foundation, “It is quite difficult to understand all the provisions, limitations and features of policies.”…
38. “New tracking method
shows higher rate of HIV” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer
A new method of tracking HIV infections has revealed that about 40 percent more people each year are infected by the virus that causes AIDS than previously believed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Saturday….
The report estimates that the number of new HIV infections in 2006 was 56,300—a 40 percent increase over the CDC’s long-standing and now obsolete estimate of 40,000 new infections per year. But a separate study using the new estimate concluded the overall trend of the epidemic, which peaked in the mid-1980s at about 130,000 new annual infections, has been relatively stable since the late 1990s….
The relative stability in the rate of new infections is somewhat good news, [Kevin Fenton, who heads up the CDC’s national center responsible for public health surveillance] said, given that the overall population of people living with HIV who could potentially pass it on to others is rising as infected people are able to live longer and healthier lives. That suggests those people are taking steps to prevent spreading the virus. The rates of incidence among heterosexuals and among injection-drug users have declined….
However, those bright spots were offset by increases in the rate among men having sex with other men and among African Americans, who accounted for 45 percent of new infections in 2006—a rate seven times that of whites and three times that of Latinos….
Several advocates
said—and Fenton agreed—that the
“A comprehensive
strategy would work across government agencies,” said Mark Cloutier, executive director of the
Speaking from Mexico City, where he said a number of nations were announcing new progress against HIV/AIDS, Cloutier said it is embarrassing that the United States is revising its estimates upward at a time when he said spending on HIV prevention is flat—and in fact has fallen 19 percent when adjusted to reflect inflation.
“We still have people
actually in the
39. “UNICEF head
concerned over spread of HIV in
“We are working with the
ministry of the interior in dealing with uncontrolled immigration of Zimbabwean
women who are engaged in sexual activities in central
Large numbers of women
are believed to have fled poverty-stricken
According to government figures, Mozambique’s HIV prevalence rate among the 16-to-49 age group is estimated at more than 16 percent. However some aid groups say the figure is higher.
40. “State utilities to
miss energy deadline” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
California’s electrical utilities probably will miss the state’s 2010 deadline for increasing their use of renewable power and could face a serious obstacle if Congress does not extend tax credits for wind farms and solar plants, according to a report issued Friday.
By the end of 2010, the state’s large, investor-owned utilities are supposed to ensure that 20 percent of the power they sell comes from such renewable sources as the sun and wind. Utilities such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have been frantically signing contracts with wind farm and solar power plant developers to meet that deadline.
But the report, the California Public Utilities Commission’s latest quarterly update on the state’s renewable power efforts, designed to fight global warming, found that the utilities probably won’t reach 20 percent until 2012 or 2013. Most of the new wind farms and solar power plants they need have not yet been built.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from developers,” said Andy Schwartz, one of the commission’s energy advisers who worked on the report. “The problem is in transforming the projects that the utilities sign contracts with into steel in the ground.”
Furthermore, some of
those projects won’t be built if Congress doesn’t extend a tax credit for
renewable power developers. The credit expires at the end of the year, and
although many members of both parties support it, its renewal has become mired
in the fierce debate over the nation’s energy policy. Many
So far, the state’s three investor-owned utilities have signed contracts for 5,900 megawatts of new, renewable power, enough for 4.4 million homes. But only 400 of those megawatts have been added to the grid to date….
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., will continue pushing for an extension [of tax credits to renewable power developers], spokesman Scott Gerber said. “Sen. Feinstein believes this passage will go through,” he said Friday….
Schwartz, of the PUC, said that despite the report’s warnings on tax credits, deadlines and prices, the effort to expand the use of renewable power in the state appears to be working.
“The program is
demonstrating that
[Read the PUC report.]
41. “State’s Medi-Cal program is being hit hard” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
--Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle Staff Writer
Dr. Budd Shenkin. Photo by Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle
California’s Medi-Cal program, which funds health care for 6.6 million low-income people, is being hit with a double whammy.
Starting next week, Medi-Cal payments will cease for about 4,700 hospitals, clinics, adult day care centers, convalescent homes and other institutions until the state’s budget deadlock ends.
And last month, a 10 percent fee cut took effect for the large network of doctors, pharmacists, dentists and other health care professionals who serve Medi-Cal patients around the state….
The state, which is facing a $17.2 billion deficit and has been operating without a budget since July 1, is being sued by the California Hospital Association and other organizations over the rate cuts. Historically, Medi-Cal rates have been low—the program spends less per enrollee than any other state Medicaid program, and reimbursements to providers are among the lowest in the nation. It’s been about eight years since the last rate increase….
Almost 800,000 people
receive Medi-Cal in
BUDD SHENKIN
Age: 66
City:
Occupation: Pediatrician
When Dr. Budd Shenkin
launched a solo practice in
“She must have thought I was nuts,” he says. “I was really excited—somebody actually came to see me as a doctor.”
After building his
practice over the years, Shenkin is now
president of Bayside Medical Group, a network of nine small primary care
offices in the
Now, says Shenkin, he’s on a brink: If the state makes any further cuts to the Medi-Cal program, he’ll discontinue that portion of his practice.
“We just can’t afford
it,” says Shenkin, who served for years with the
Shenkin says that he has a sense of social mission, but his medical group’s profit margin is “really slim.”
“This is really painful to me,” he says. “I don’t want to say goodbye to my patients, but I think that in the not too distant future we won’t have a Medi-Cal practice. It is unbelievably awful and such a shame. We are trying to hold on, but it is like a slowly closing vise.”…
42. “No budget leads to
10,000 layoffs” (Ventura County Star,
By Timm Herdt
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger talks during a news conference at the
State Capitol in
In addition, Schwarzenegger ordered his finance director and the state’s chief personnel officer to work with Controller John Chiang “to implement the necessary mechanisms” to reduce the pay of up to 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour.
He said these actions were necessary because the Legislature has failed to pass a budget, and the state is now a full month into the fiscal year. Without a budget in place, the state cannot take out the customary short-term loans it needs to manage its cash flow at this time of year, and without that cash, it runs the risk of defaulting on its obligations….
Schwarzenegger’s order was immediately assailed by Democratic leaders of the Legislature.
“This regrettable action undermines the state’s shaky economy, inflicts hardship on 200,000 hard-working Californians who have nothing to do with the state’s budget stalemate and reduces services to everyone who visits a DMV office, expects safe highways or needs other state assistance,” said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland.
For months, state
financial leaders have warned lawmakers that
Finance Director Mike Genest said the state’s cash accounts could dip to about $1.8 billion in September, well below the $2.5 billion cushion he considers to be the necessary “safety zone.”
“We’re now in danger of a serious cash crisis,” Genest said. “The absolute worst thing we could do as a state is to write a check and have it bounce.”
Genest said the layoffs could save about $80 million in August and the minimum-wage reduction, if implemented, could save hundreds of millions more.
In a letter to Schwarzenegger, Chiang disputed the administration’s estimates, saying there is enough cash “to meet all expenditures through September.”
Lawmakers are deadlocked over a budget agreement, which would require a two-thirds majority vote. Democrats are backing a plan that includes $8 billion in tax increases to help balance a $15 billion deficit. Republicans say they will not support tax increases.
If a budget agreement is reached in the next few days, the state could issue routine short-term bonds known as revenue anticipation notes, which would be paid back within the fiscal year. But if there is no budget very soon, finance officials may be forced to issue riskier bonds known as revenue anticipation warrants, financial instruments that not only come with higher interest rates but would also require the state to pay credit insurance.
The last time the state was forced to issue such notes, in 2003, it paid $140 million for these credit enhancements. Genest said estimates are that, given today’s troubled financial markets, the cost would be two to three times higher this year.
That kind of borrowing may yet be required, but, he said, the state should do everything possible to avoid having “to put $200 million or $300 million down on the table just for the privilege of talking to bankers.”
43. “Big money in S.F. supes’ race” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Carmen
Chu, District Four. (Mike
Kepka / The Chronicle)
Candidates for San Francisco’s Board of
Supervisors already are raising and spending big-time dollars on the November
races.
Thursday marked the first deadline for candidates to disclose how much money they have collected, and several have surpassed the $100,000 mark months before the prime time for their campaigns….
Some of the top fundraisers as of June 30 include Supervisor Carmen Chu. She was appointed last year by Mayor Gavin Newsom after removing Ed Jew from office….
Political consultant Jim Ross, who is running Chu’s campaign along with Sue Lee in District One that consists of the Richmond neighborhood, said candidates should have $30,000 to $35,000 cash on hand at this point to be considered viable….
44. “
--Garance Burke, Associated Press
But with more than 2,000 wildfires already under their belt this year, fire authorities are contemplating the sober reality that they’re not out of the woods yet.
“Typically we don’t see wildland fires of this magnitude until much later in the season,” said Alicia Herring, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “But with the dry fuel conditions that we have throughout the state, we could see similar situations arise again until we get a significant amount of rain.”
More than 2,000 blazes have scorched 1,875 square miles in California already this year, compared with the nearly 1,720 square miles that burned in 2007, when blazes raged across Southern California, Herring said….
45. “Evercare
practices - reviewed by state - 7 agents fired over Medicare plan sales”
(Boston Globe,
By Jeffrey Krasner ; Globe Staff
The state Division of
Insurance is investigating sales of Evercare private
Medicare plans that have sparked complaints from
In addition, the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees the
insurance plans, said it has stepped up oversight of Evercare,
a subsidiary of insurance giant UnitedHealth Group
Inc. of
The Globe reported
Saturday that
Kevin Beagan, the state’s deputy insurance
commissioner for healthcare issues, said the Division of Insurance is
working to identify and investigate agents that violated marketing laws and
guidelines. The division held a teleconference with CMS Monday. The division
registers insurance agents in
“We are continuing to work with CMS and go deeper into the materials we have,” said Beagan. “We’ll follow up with the company so we can identify individual agents and find patterns of complaints.”
Kevin Prindiville, staff lawyer at the
46. “Brattle Group Principal Dorothy Robyn Recommends Major Changes to Air Traffic Control System at Hamilton Project Forum Led by Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin” (PR Newswire July 31, 2008); newswire citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978/PhD 1993).
Dr. Robyn’s remarks were based on her paper, “Air Support: Creating a Safer and More Reliable Air Traffic Control System,” …[which] argues that the nation’s air traffic control system, run by the Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has not kept up with the explosive growth in air travel. For instance, in 2007 flight delays cost passengers and airlines more than $12 billion in lost time and fuel. Moreover, controllers and pilots continue to rely on antiquated air traffic control technology, which contributes to delays and the rising cost of the system.
… As a traditional government agency constrained by federal budget rules and micromanaged by Congress, the FAA is poorly suited to run such [a high-tech service “business”] [Dr. Robyn] argues….
The paper highlights a second problem with the current governance structure—the FAA both operates the air traffic control system and regulates its safety….
Dr. Robyn proposes that Congress create a new agency within the Department of Transportation focused exclusively on the delivery of air traffic control services and regulated at arm’s length by the FAA….
Additionally, Dr. Robyn proposes that Congress replace the current excise tax-based approach to financing the air traffic control system with direct charges on commercial and business aircraft operators. She argues that prices will provide valuable market signals: if aircraft operators have to pay their way, they will have an incentive to use scarce capacity more sparingly, thereby reducing delays….
“The problems of the air traffic control system are the predictable result of flawed public policy. The changes I propose will not solve all of the problems of the system, but they represent a significant step in the right direction,” concludes Dr. Robyn.
[Dorothy Robyn’s presentation at “The Hamilton Project Forum on Infrastructure Investment” was broadcast on C-SPAN TV, July 25, 2008: 3 hr. 39 min); video link ]
47. “Deficit projections
complicate candidates’ plans” (MarketWatch,
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
On Monday, the White House estimated that the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit would total $482 billion, a record. Meanwhile, this year’s deficit will widen to $389 billion, the White House’s data show. The $482 billion is $74 billion higher than estimated in February.
The gloomy data fall right into the thick of election season, when both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are proposing a raft of spending and tax initiatives….
Meanwhile, Stan Collender, a managing director for Qorvis Communications who formerly worked on both the Senate and House Budget Committees, is skeptical that the next president will have an easy time getting much accomplished as long as the deficit remains high.
“Based on what we now know for sure about next year’s budget, none of the presidential candidates’ promises should be taken seriously,” said Collender.
“Unless they, the country, and those lending us money are willing to tolerate much higher nominal deficits and a larger debt than has so far been imaginable, the next president’s options will be severely limited,” Collender wrote Tuesday.
48. “New S.F. budget
will include plenty of cuts” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
In response, the Newsom administration is considering slashing the new budget. Groups that rely on city dollars are bracing for a rough period….
The director of Newsom’s budget office compared the city’s financial situation to that of 2001 and subsequent years, when the Sept. 11 attacks and dot-com bust resulted in high deficits and led to a multitude of cuts.
“It’s a strong likelihood” that the city will be in that situation in the next year and possibly subsequent years, said Nani Coloretti, the budget director. She called the controller’s estimate for next year “a fairly high number to be estimating at this point.”…
49. “Is the surge
working? GAO doesn’t think so” (Journal Inquirer (
By Mitchell Bard
A statement is made in
the
But just because the media has parroted the talking points of the Bush administration and John McCain’s campaign in making such an assertion does not make it true.
And a report released by
the U.S. Government Accounting Office evaluates progress in
The mainstream media barely acknowledged the report’s release. But let’s go through it to see what is there.
NO PLAN
The Bush administration
had no effective plan to handle a post-war
The GAO report finds
that the Bush administration has no plan for what to do next. With the 18-month
surge coming to an end in July, the report says the administration has not set
out “strategic goals and objectives in
VIOLENCE
The report acknowledged
that violence was down in May (after rising in March and April) and attributed
the reduction to three factors: 1) the increase in
What do these three conditions have in common? They are all temporary and unlikely to continue in the future….
After looking through
the GAO report, I can’t help but wonder: What the hell are we still doing in
And why, if the benchmarks have not been met, are we continuing down the same path that has not worked—especially since the reduction in violence is so tenuous and connected to volatile factors? …
Mitchell Bard is an American foreign policy analyst who specializes in U.S.-Middle East policy. He is the executive director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.
50. “Charity golf
fundraiser organized by Sacramento Utilities Department employees under scrutiny”
(Sacramento Bee,
By Terri Hardy
The oversight and financial management of a popular charity golf tournament staged by employees of Sacramento’s scandal-plagued Utilities Department have raised questions about how charitable it actually was….
The Utilities Department, which has been the focus of an FBI investigation in connection with a black-market salvage scam and $1.3 million in missing water meters, for years has had employees organize a golf tournament sponsored by city vendors.
Half of the tournament proceeds were supposed to have gone to First Tee of Greater Sacramento, a nonprofit youth golf association, city officials said. Mystified First Tee officials last week initially said they never received any such funds (although they later discovered that they had received small amounts). But they also said they didn’t even know they were an intended recipient….
Vendors this year
donated $8,000 in cash as well as prizes, including a trip for two to
[Utilities] employee Kenneth Guerard, who ordered supplies and oversaw a storeroom, headed the tournament for several years….
Guerard last week was arrested on two counts of bribery, for allegedly receiving gifts from Sheldon Morris, a Bay Area salvage operator…
Ethics experts and good government groups, however, say the general practice of soliciting donations from vendors—particularly ones with business before the city—can give the perception of a too-cozy, “pay to play” environment….
JoAnne Speers, executive director for the Institute for Local Government said municipalities have to be careful about even the perception of establishing an unfair playing field with vendors.
“Even if a practice is not illegal, it may appear to be unethical,” she said. The institute provides ethics training and advice for cities….
51. “
By Will Oremus
… In fact, life in
In a report that ranks the nation’s 436 congressional districts according to residents’ overall well-being, Rep. Anna Eshoo’s 14th District places third, and Rep. Jackie Speier’s 12th District comes in ninth. The study, published by Columbia University Press, looks at a combination of education, income and health….
It’s great news for locals, if perhaps unsurprising given the region’s vast wealth. But the report—the first to apply international development metrics to regions within an industrialized nation—also comes with a sobering side.
Just down Interstate 5,
in agricultural
Carla Javits, president of the San Francisco-based anti-poverty group REDF, also served on the study’s advisory board. She said it will help domestic development groups target their resources.
One thing the rankings
fail to capture, she noted, is the existence of pockets of poverty within
well-off districts such as
“There are many, many, very affluent communities in the Bay Area,” Javits said. “Sometimes that can mask the fact that there are also communities where people are really struggling.”…
52. “US ready for black
president, poll shows; Breaking away from traditional black politics has helped
Obama” (The Straits Times (
By
The first African-American with a serious shot at the presidency owes his success to his making a clean break from the traditional black American politics of anger and entitlement, say analysts.
Senator Barack Obama’s ancestry and brand of politics work to his advantage with both blacks and whites.
The blacks see him as someone who has overcome racism, while the whites can see themselves voting for a man who does not bear them resentment because his forefathers were not slaves.
In a poll of more than
1,500 adults across the
Mr Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother a white American, distinguishing him from most black Americans, who are descended from West Africans brought in as slaves hundreds of years ago.
These black Americans form 90per cent of the African-American community, said George Washington University’s Professor Robert Entman.
The rest are more recent
immigrants from
Among white voters, however, Mr Obama trails Senator John McCain by 31per cent to 35per cent.
Overall, though, he leads his Republican rival among all registered voters by 45per cent to 39per cent.
‘It is helpful for the white voters that Mr Obama is bi-racial and a political moderate,’ said Prof Entman.
‘Mr McCain and the Republicans have been trying to associate Mr Obama with the politics of black militancy, but it is harder to pin that on him because of his multicultural heritage.’
53. “Health care cuts
studied” (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (
By Wes Woods II, Staff Writer
Anthony Wright,
executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Health Access
A study by Gage’s Blue Sky Consulting Group,
commissioned by California Endowment, examined proposed health and welfare
benefit cuts in the May revise of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget.
That sharp cut would
come despite a fast-growing caseload in
An additional 57,000
people in
The study predicts about 25,000 children in the county would lose coverage because of parents’ likely failure to complete necessary paperwork to verify eligibility.
“It’s causing clients to not remain connected to the health-care system ... It’s a cynical way of reducing costs,” Gage said about the additional paperwork burden.
More than 4,500 children would lose Healthy Families coverage because of increased premiums, the study found….
54. “Four finalists
selected for Army base development deal” (Oakland Tribune,
By Cecily Burt
OAKLAND — It was past 2 a.m. Wednesday when a surprisingly united Oakland City Council swept aside complaints about the selection process and confirmed that four development teams chosen by a special panel would advance to the next phase of bidding to transform the city’s former Army base.
The council voted to invite the teams — AMB/California Capital Group, Federal Development, First Industrial Realty and ProLogis/Catellus — to submit detailed plans for creating a high-density, job-rich, state-of-the-art mix of flexible/technical office and industrial space and port-related logistics facilities at the base.
The teams should incorporate a film center and produce market in their detailed responses, officials said, and retail, if included, should not be the primary element….
Oakland Bay Partners, a
local team not selected for the second round, protested the selection process
at the meeting, saying it should have been included because it had already
lined up three big box retailers, it was self-financed, and it was the only one
to include the
The council members said
they did not want to tamper with the panel’s recommendation and noted that
representatives from
55. “Briefs: Economic
development forum set” (Monterey County Herald,
The Monterey County
Business Council’s fifth annual Economic Development Forum and Public-Private
Partnership Awards Program will he held from
Speakers include … Noel
Perry,
56. “Nation’s Premier
Conference on Faster Freight and Cleaner Air Brings Together Industry Giants in
... [S]peakers include:
-- Bruce Schaller, Deputy Commissioner Division of Planning & Sustainability, New York City Department of Transportation …
57. “Will gas prices
drive homebuyers away from suburbs?” (Seattle Times,
By Elizabeth Rhodes:
The price of gas is starting to affect homebuying
decisions for people like David Underwood. He and his partner, Kali Kuwada, were commuting from
… A
That, eventually, will
devalue suburban housing while strengthening in-city home prices, says Joe Cortright, whose
“The new calculus of
higher gas prices may have permanently reshaped urban housing markets,” said Cortright, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution, a nonprofit
“I expect this to be a subtle process. I don’t expect everyone to put their suburban houses on the market all at the same time.”…
Cortright says he’s starting to
see proof of change in cities nationwide — from
“Statistically, home
prices are down more in the most distant suburbs and still relatively strong in
the closer-in neighborhoods,” he says. “The closer you are to downtown
Cities that offer attractive close-in housing will be more economically successful than those that continue to “follow sprawling development patterns,” Cortright says.
This is a turnaround from the later decades of the 20th century, when low and stable gas prices helped the suburbs grow by making commuting economically painless.
“The thing we heard was, ‘Drive until you qualify’ [for a mortgage] because real estate is less expensive the further out you go,” Cortright says. “So if people would put up with a longer commute, they’d have the opportunity to be able to afford a place.”
But even much cheaper homes in the suburbs might not convince people to buy there if fuel prices stay high….
“If you think it’s temporary, maybe you don’t have to change your behavior,” Cortright says. “What’s changed in the last five or six months is that people believe gas is going to be at least $3 or $4, and they’re recalibrating their thinking of how to deal with that.”
The proof, he says, can be seen in higher transit ridership and lower SUV sales….
58. “Parking dynamics
changing at BART stations” (Oakland Tribune Online,
--Erik N. Nelson
… I’ve always straddled the fence on the issue of parking at BART stations. On the one hand, hardcore transit advocates don’t want any parking at all at them. One reason is that they’d like everyone to get rid of their cars, stop polluting and stop fueling “oil wars.” Another reason is that when transit agencies build parking, people who pay for the system, both riders who pay fares and taxpayers to pick up the remaining cost, end up paying for that parking….
On the other side of the hill, so to speak, are those who believe that the only way you can get many drivers out of their cars is to provide convenient parking at mass transit stations….
And raising money isn’t the only reason.
Consider the commuting
patterns of the average American family. Take Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Transportation and Land Use
Coalition. He tells me his wife could never find parking at the North
Berkeley BART station between
Then they started charging for parking. It’s only $1, but now she can find parking.
“At many parking lots, they were filling up very early in the morning and forcing anybody who wasn’t able to get there often to keep on driving and drive all the way to work,” Cohen told me, explaining why his coalition lobbied BART to begin slapping a charge on their lots….
One thing that Cohen noticed in his own neighborhood, the early risers drove to BART and the later commuters were forced to come up with other ways to get to work and perhaps even to the BART station. Since pay parking was instituted, some of those early risers have taken alternate ways of getting to BART, such as biking or taking a local bus….
59. “Keyboard cops -
These Web watchers keep reference sites in check” (Chicago Tribune RedEye Edition,
By Tracy Swartz, RedEye
He didn’t have a sash
and he couldn’t hand out demerits. But for 12 to 15 hours a week, Mike Harris
of
Web watchers, often unpaid, play a critical role in overseeing reference sites such as wikipedia.org and urbandictionary.com….
About 800 unpaid volunteers each week sift through the 2,000 definitions submitted daily to urbandictionary.com, said Aaron Peckham, who founded the slang dictionary about eight years ago as a computer science student at California Polytechnic State University….
Authors submit new definitions into a queue, and editors review each submission. Anyone can volunteer to review definitions, but no single volunteer can decide if a definition should be published. When a certain number of editors have reviewed a submission, the majority wins and the definition is either published or rejected….
Wikipedia, a non-profit project funded by donations from users and philanthropic gifts, has battled similar problems because the site also employs a majority rules attitude, said John Broughton, who wrote “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual,” released in January….
Disputes typically are resolved on the article’s “discussion” section, where editors and contributors can hash out their issues, [Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation] said. More serious disputes may be brought up with the mediation or arbitration committees staffed by volunteer administrators, who are trusted editors who have the ability to delete pages and protect articles.
The result is an encyclopedia of truth by rough consensus, not necessarily fact, Broughton said.
“It’s potentially a great jumping off place. It’s not appropriate ... to cite Wikipedia as a source,” Broughton said. “A Wikipedia article today isn’t going to look like the Wikipedia article tomorrow.”…
60. “Debunking the drug
myth” (Boston Herald,
Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, claimed four years ago that
drug company propaganda ignored the fact that “almost always” it was research
in universities or government labs that made the scientific breakthroughs that
led to new drugs. The companies, she claimed, simply synthesized the
appropriate molecule and conducted clinical trials, “the least creative part of
the process.”
This view has been
widely adopted among industry critics. But a new report from Joseph A. DiMasi and Christopher-Paul Milne of
They studied the
histories of 32 drugs singled out as important by earlier researchers and
industry sales. The drugs included prominent agents against HIV infection, statins for cholesterol and antibiotics, among others.
In seven cases, a drug
company did the basic research; in 31 cases, the drug company performed
essential applied research, such as identifying which compound was relevant,
and perhaps even a chemical path through which it could attack a disease
process or biological target identified by earlier research. Sometimes the company’s
contribution, though not “basic,” was crucial, as in the achievement of Bristol-Myers
Squibb in figuring out how to produce enough of the anti-cancer compound Taxol to be useful, or of Amgen in making erythropoietin
for anemia through pioneering recombinant techniques.
It takes drug companies
$700 million, on average, to bring a new drug to market. Does anybody think
society would be better off if the government had to exploit the discoveries
made with taxpayer dollars?
The case histories of
the report show much collaboration and interaction among scientists in
government, university and drug company laboratories, and if the authors had
looked, they would have found a lot of movement among the three sectors by the
scientists involved….
61. “CCSF to Deploy
Waterfall Mobile’s AlertU Platform” (Wireless News,
City College of San Francisco (CCSF), part of the California Community Colleges (CCC) System, announced it will deploy the AlertU emergency alert notification system from Waterfall Mobile, becoming the 22nd district in the CCC System to implement AlertU.
CCSF is California’s largest single-administration, multi-campus community college. CCSF administrators now have the ability to send critical text message alerts and emergency updates to the mobile devices of over 100,000 students, faculty and staff in real-time, according to the company.
“As one of the largest
community colleges in the nation with 10 campuses and over 150 instructional
sites in
62. “State acts to fight
global warming. In a pioneering blueprint, the air board proposes to slash
greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels” (Los Angeles Times,
By Margot Roosevelt, Times Staff Writer
California’s blueprint is the first comprehensive effort to combat global warming by any American state, and comes nearly three weeks after the U.S. Senate threw out a national greenhouse gas bill that would have set similar targets.
Virtually every sector of the state’s economy would be affected by the air board’s plan, including coal-fired power plants and oil refineries, landfills where rotting garbage emits methane gas and forests, which would be cultivated to reduce fires.
But the California Air Resources Board’s draft road map for implementing the state’s landmark 2006 global warming law faces daunting obstacles, among them resistance from the Bush administration, legislative snarls and some industry opposition.
The federal government has blocked California’s 2002 law to cut carbon dioxide fumes from automobile tailpipes, opting for a less strict mileage standard. The controversial attempt to get utilities to generate one-third of their energy from renewable sources died in the Legislature last year and is pending before the Assembly, along with several green-building bills.
Meanwhile, the Western Climate Initiative, a group of seven states and three Canadian provinces, has yet to agree on the basics of a trading plan, much less cope with political skepticism….
Although most environmental and industry groups will not see copies of the plan until today’s board meeting, many have been briefed and offered guarded approval….
But Chris Busch, a Union [of Concerned Scientists] economist, added that the Western Climate Initiative needs to be strengthened: “Until the details are filled in, the jury remains out.”…
63. “Lovelife
Generation on Mobile Network” (Africa News,
As of this morning,
Using a minimal amount of airtime, users can build and maintain profiles, join chat groups and access bursary and scholarship information. Page view costs 2-5 cents and less than 25 cents for downloading data, depending on the mobile operator and individual service plan….
The programme has been integrated into loveLife’s on the ground and media programmes. According to loveLife, in coming up with the social network strategy, it used available statistics which showed that there are over 38 million cell phone users in South Africa. Only 6% of the country’s population has access to the Internet via computer….
“Young people are more likely to protect themselves if they have a strong sense of identity, belonging and purpose in life. A mobile social network will not replace face to face interaction but it offers young people a new way of defining themselves and connecting to each other,” said Dr David Harrison, the CEO of loveLife….
64. “Dems file ethics complaint over RI Gov.’s niece” (The Associated Press State & Local Wire, June 17, 2008); story citing ROSS CHEIT (MPP 1980/PhD 1987).
State ethics regulations in place since 1991 bar state officials from hiring their nieces, including those related by marriage. But Carcieri’s staff has argued the rules did not apply when [Stephanie Accaputo, daughter of Carcieri’s wife’s brother] was hired because nieces-in-law weren’t specifically barred from being hired under the code until later.
Commission member Ross Cheit said it appears Carcieri broke the rules, asking the governor’s counsel Tuesday: “What part of ‘by marriage’ don’t you understand?”…
65. “Ethics Commission
hears arguments on maligned loophole” (The Associated Press State & Local
Wire,
The provision, known as the “class exception,” has been blamed for fostering corruption in state government. The commission held a workshop Tuesday to discuss changing it.
Recently, the commission dropped five ethics charges against state Sen. Frank Ciccone because of the provision. Ciccone had been accused of voting for legislation that would affect the unions he works for, but the commission determined he had not run afoul of ethics laws because the bills he supported also would have affected more than 100 other union locals in the same way.
Gov. Don Carcieri’s office and government reform groups urged the commission to close the loophole. The governor’s office said in a letter that it permits unethical behavior by allowing lawmakers to introduce and vote on legislation that would help them financially or benefit their employers….
James Lynch Sr., the commission chairman, has said he wants to change the “class exception.”
“Many of us think that something needs to be done,” commission member Ross Cheit said.
66. “Chinese on tour of
nature reserves” (Honolulu Advertiser,
--Advertiser Final, Lynda Arakawa
A delegation of
conservation officials and nature reserve managers from
The tour—which included visits to such places as New York’s Adirondack Mountains, California’s Yosemite National Park and Haleakala National Park—aims to help China better manage its nature reserves, which have roughly doubled in the past decade, said Ian Dutton, deputy director of The Nature Conservancy’s Asia Pacific Region….
Their time in Honolulu included presentations from Denise Antolini, director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Hawai’i law school, and UH School of Travel Industry Management dean Walter Jamieson.
“The important issue
that inspired me and my colleagues is the local people and the government ... emphasize ecological and environmental
protection very much, especially about invasive species management,” said Lucy
Yu, manager of the China Protected Areas Project for The Nature Conservancy’s
67. “Metro System Can Be
Enhanced by State’s Approval of RTAS” (Capital Times (Madison, WI),
Dear Editor: … Although
good public transit is essential for economic development and our quality of
life, Wisconsin’s infrastructure and transportation tax system are broken. We
need regional transit authorities that provide a dedicated source of funding
for transit, and we need to give priority to improving and expanding our bus
system. All Midwestern states except
We need a state representative who acts on the belief that decent public transit is a matter of social justice, economic viability, public health and environmental sustainability. We need labor and business to make clear that public transit can not only benefit individual households but can also provide good-paying local jobs and can help the economy grow….
... In the last number of years, we have seen the state’s share of Metro’s budget drop from 44 percent to 36 percent and the downward trend is set to continue.
It is as if the myriad advantages of public transit have gone unrecognized. That has to change. We need a source of dedicated funding that can be used to improve and expand our bus system. The state needs to enable the existence of RTAs with taxing power.
-- Susan De Vos, Madison Area Bus Advocates
68. “2008 World Business
and Development Awards Launched” (Africa News,
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) are pleased to open nominations for the 2008 World Business and Development Awards in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The awards recognize the contribution of the private sector to help achieve the MDGs through their core business….
An International Judging Panel will be made up of representatives of the organizers and leaders from other non-governmental organizations, business entities, and international agencies, including: Jeffrey Sachs, Director, Earth Institute and Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University; Oby Ezekwesili, Vice-President for Africa, World Bank and former Nigerian Minister of Education; Lisa Dreier, Director, Public-Private Partnerships, World Economic Forum; Jane Nelson, Director, Corporate Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School; and Guy Sebban, Secretary General, ICC.
69. “Congressional
Hearing Highlights Fogarty’s Role in Global Health Research” (States News
Service,
The following information was released by the National Institutes of Health:
[NIH’s
“International scientific cooperation promotes good will, strengthens political relationships, helps foster democracy and civil society, and advances the frontiers of knowledge,” according to written testimony submitted by Jeff Miotke, the State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science, Space and Health.
Because the
The State Department
works closely with Fogarty to foster international biomedical collaborations,
he noted. Yet many global health research questions remain unanswered partly
due to Fogarty’s small budget, which provides “a small fraction” of what is
needed to support global health research and research training capacity
worldwide. “This is particularly relevant given the increasing incidence of
infectious and non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries,
where science diplomacy could be most helpful for the
70. “Company looks to
turn manure into power” (Hanford Sentinel (CA) -
By Eiji Yamashita
Cow manure produced in
the rural area south of
Using anaerobic digesting machines, a Delaware-based company wants to turn dairy waste into methane-rich biogas, a renewable substitute for natural gas, and then sell it to a utility company.
Microgy,
a subsidiary of Environmental Power Corp., eyes a location near
“
Company officials tout the project’s potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—a sensitive issue in the region with the poorest air quality in the country—as well as to help the state meet its renewable energy goal.
In a typical open-air dairy lagoon, methane and other air pollutants like ammonia and volatile organic compounds are released into the air, contributing to smog and global warming. Dairy manure also poses a risk to ground water, as salts and nitrates can seep into the water table or be washed into rivers by heavy rain.
The project is still in the permitting process. Approval from the Kings County Planning Agency is in. The environmental and air permits are currently out for public comments. A water permit’s up for approval on March 13, Dasovich said.
If everything goes well, the methane digester should begin operating by early 2009, Dasovich said.
71. “
“
PARTICIPANTS: Thomas Brewer, associate professor of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and associate fellow at the Centre for European Political Studies; Andy Shoyer, partner at Sidley Austin LLP; Marty McBroom, director of federal environmental affairs at American Electric Power; and Joe Kruger, policy director at the National Commission on Energy Policy.
72. “Winter Day Out in
By Matt Richtel
Matt’s in the popular Pike Place Market in
DRINK coffee. Put on another
layer of dry clothes. Repeat. This is the formula to warm inside and out. Then
attack a
Outdoor adventure No. 2:
Walk or jog at
“He likes the birds,” said Dahlia Kupfer, referring to her 16-month-old son, whom she had bundled in a blue fleece and toted around the lake in a downpour. Besides, if they didn’t walk in the rain, “we’d never be outside,” she said….
1. “It Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game. Newsweek’s
Business Roundtable looks at the two faces of globalization, and whether the
Robert Reich, former
Secretary of Labor under
If we define the world’s
economic leader as the country with the biggest gross domestic product,
Although we’ve lost manufacturing jobs, this is partly a result of success. About half of those jobs have been lost to new technology, robots and computer-controlled machine tools, which have replaced old-fashioned assembly lines, dramatically reducing the need for workers. In 1900, more than a third of Americans worked on farms; now, fewer than 5 percent do. The manufacturing sector is following this historical pattern….
2. “Robert Reich: Best Clinton Speech Ever” (Politics Blog, San Francisco Chronicle Online,
Posted by Joe Garofoli
Here’s some insta-feedback on the evening from former Clinton Labor
Secretary Robert Reich (who is now a
UC-Berkeley professor.) Reich was on
The O’s bandwagon in April, but knows the
Robert Reich: “Bill Clinton hit it out of the ballpark. I think he built back any bridge that might have been slightly affected with the party. I think it was one of the best speeches he’s ever given, and he helped bring the party together….”
3. “Foreign Policy and
Political Nominating Conventions” (Washington Post,
By Joanna Klonsky, Campaign 2008 Staff, Council on Foreign Relations
Every four years, Republican and Democratic delegates gather to appoint presidential nominees and formulate their party’s platform for the general election. Until the middle of the twentieth century, conventions offered great drama in the choosing of presidential candidates and in some cases, they exposed intraparty differences over foreign policy and other issues. For the past couple of decades, though, there has been little suspense over the choice of candidates…. . Some experts say the significance of conventions has decreased in recent years as platforms are increasingly dictated by the campaigns of the presumptive nominees….
Unlike many
parliamentary democracies, whose electoral platforms reflect hard-fought
debates within a party that various factions then seek to enforce during the
party’s time in power, American electoral platforms have evolved into more
political documents. There was a time, says
The text of a draft of the 2008 Democratic platform largely matches up with Obama’s policy plans….
4. “What Biden brings to the party. As the
Democrats convene in
By Barry Bergman, Public Affairs
… Not surprisingly, perhaps, Robert Reich — who served as labor secretary
under Bill Clinton and is now a professor
of public policy at the
Reich also points to the respect that world leaders have for Biden, who has served on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee for three decades and is currently its chairman. Biden,
he observes, was the first member of Congress to visit the
Biden’s foreign-policy experience,” says Reich, will not only “help restore America’s leadership in the world” but will “burnish Obama’s foreign-policy credentials.” …
Social psychologist Jack Glaser, an associate professor of public policy, agrees that Biden’s national-security credentials beef up the ticket, and could help neutralize McCain’s advantage on that front — an advantage he terms “symbolic,” based, he explains, on the Arizona senator’s military experience and his “age and tenure in the Senate,” rather than on an actual command role.
But Glaser, whose research focuses on stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, believes Biden balances the ticket in another, possibly critical respect.
“
Going with “a senior, white male,” concludes Glaser, was a “wise strategic choice.”…
5. “Beyond all the
hoopla, party is worth watching” (Times Union [
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy,
Hundreds of thousands of
party faithful, celebrities and journalists are descending on
But even though the convention is stripped of suspense over who will win the Democratic Party’s nomination, there are plenty of reasons to watch.
Conventions are “not
like the old days,” acknowledged Henry
Brady, a political scientist at the
There will “be an
attempt to show he is a real American (and) that he can relate to people in
6. “How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy” (New York Times
Magazine,
By David Leonhardt
Tim Davis for The
New York Times (
II. A New Democratic Consensus, of Sorts
To understand where Obama stands, you first have to know that, for 15 years, Democratic Party economics have been defined by a struggle that took place during the start of the Clinton administration. It was the battle of the Bobs. On one side was Clinton’s labor secretary and longtime friend, Bob Reich, who argued that the government should invest in roads, bridges, worker training and the like to stimulate the economy and help the middle class. On the other side was Bob Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs executive turned White House aide, who favored reducing the deficit to soothe the bond market, bring down interest rates and get the economy moving again. Clinton cast his lot with Rubin, and to this day the first question about any Democrat’s economic outlook is often where his heart lies, with Reich or Rubin, the left or the center, the government or the market.
Obama has obviously studied this debate, and early on during the flight to Chicago, he told me a story about Reich and Rubin. The previous week, Obama convened a discussion with a high-powered group of economists and chief executives. He was sitting at a conference table, with Rubin two seats to his left and Reich across from him. “One of the points I raised,” Obama told me, “is if you just use you, Bob, and you, Bob, as caricatures, the truth is, both of you acknowledge the world is more complicated.” By this, Obama didn’t simply mean that their views were more nuanced than many outsiders understood. He meant that both have come to acknowledge that the other man is, in part, correct. The two now occupy more similar ideological places than they did in 1993. The battle of the Bobs may not be completely over, but it has certainly been suspended….
In practical terms, the new consensus means that the policies of an Obama administration would differ from those of the Clinton administration, but not primarily because of differences between the two men…. Obama’s agenda starts not with raising taxes to reduce the deficit, as Clinton’s ended up doing, but with changing the tax code so that families making more than $250,000 a year pay more taxes and nearly everyone else pays less. That would begin to address inequality. Then there would be Reich-like investments in alternative energy, physical infrastructure and such, meant both to create middle-class jobs and to address long-term problems like global warming….
During our conversation, Obama made it clear that he considered the deficit to be only one of the long-term problems requiring immediate attention, and he sounded more worried about the others, like global warming, health care and the economic hangover that could follow the housing bust. Tellingly, he said that while he admired what Clinton did, he might have been more open to Reich’s argument — even in 1993. “I still would have probably made a slightly different choice than Clinton did,” Obama said. “I probably wouldn’t have been as obsessed with deficit reduction.”…
7. “Districts Have
Closed, Reconstructed Several Schools” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,
By Brian C Rittmeyer
Students in some local districts will start school in different buildings this year….
The change came from a desire to offer a full-day kindergarten program, and to move ninth-graders from the intermediate school to the high school, said high school Principal William Suit.
Officials in nearby
Pine-Richland were trying to solve an overcrowding problem at their middle
school when they came across a [2008] study
of sixth-graders done by faculty at
Parents embraced moving sixth-graders because it avoids rushing them into adolescence, Manley said….
“We felt like if we could give them one more year to discover themselves, to develop that confidence you really have to have going into adolescence ... they’re going to be a little more nurtured and given a little more understanding,” Manley said….
[In their study, “The Negative Impacts of Starting Middle School in Sixth Grade,” Philip Cook, Robert MacCoun, Clara Muschkin, & JacobVigdor conclude: “Based on our results, we suggest that there is a strong argument for separating sixth graders from older adolescents…. As a school moves from a K-5 to K-6 configuration, sixth graders get one more year of a ‘childhood’ culture.”…]
8. “CAMPAIGN 2008: A
look at who’s advising Obama and McCain on energy,
environment” (Greenwire,
--Darren Samuelsohn, Greenwire senior reporter
Want to see who’ll play key roles in setting energy and environment policies in the next administration? Then look closely at who is advising the presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain….
Obama’s Team
Dan Kammen, a senior energy and environmental aide to the
campaign, has been an Obama surrogate at a number
of events in California, Texas and Oregon—including a debate with former
California Secretary of State Bill Jones, McCain’s California campaign
director.
Kammen, 46, is an energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. He was coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore last year.
Kammen has an undergraduate degree from Cornell University, with graduate and doctorate degrees from Harvard. He said he was introduced to Obama on the basketball court while both were students at Harvard….
9. “Traffic is lighter
in a bad economy” – Commentary by ROBERT
REICH (Marketplace [NPR],
Bob Moon: The U.S. saw a 3.9 percent drop in traffic fatalities since 2006. That’s according to the latest report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters credits the decline to safer vehicles and *aggressive law enforcement. But commentator Robert Reich says there’s something else at work in these numbers.
ROBERT REICH: … So what’s the explanation? It’s the economy, stupid. When the economy tanks, as it began to do last year, fewer people are on the road. It’s not just the high gas prices. The same pattern can be seen in other major downturns….
The last time we saw this big a drop in highway deaths was 1991, which was also the last time we experienced this big a plunge in our economy. Highway fatalities rose again in the mid-90’s as the economy revived. Given how the economy is now going, 2008 will probably turn out to be among the safest years on record.
Moon: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the
10. “McCain, Obama hit hard at VFW convention” (KGO TV,
By Mark Matthews
Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Florida this week and after McCain Sunday challeged Obama’s partiotism for opposing the surge in Iraq, Obama slammed McCain back Monday….
McCain suggested Obama opposed the surge because getting out of Iraq was politically popular….
Political ads that question a candidate’s commitment to lead have proven effective, but University of California, Berkeley political scientist Henry Brady believes McCain’s attack Obama will not sway voters—in part because it is reminiscent of Bush versus Kerry.
“In fact, right now I think there’s a lot of concern among people in the American public about how can we be sober, how can we be careful; we’ve made mistakes, big mistakes were made, let’s not make those mistakes again,” Brady said….
11. “Solar power”
(Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
Pacific Gas and Electric has announced that it will buy 800 megawatts of power from two Bay Area companies that plan to build huge solar farms in San Louis Obispo. We discuss whether this commitment signals a significant change in the role solar power plays in the nation’s energy mix. Host: Spencer Michaels
Guests:
· Dan Kammen, professor of energy at UC Berkeley
· Cara Libby, project manager at Electric Power Research Institute
· J.P. Ross, president of strategic relationships at Sungevity home solar
· Monique Hanis, spokesperson for the Solar Energy Industries Association
DAN KAMMEN: “The tax incentives for investing in alternative energy are required to be renewed year by year in Congress. That’s the worst possible climate for business investment—when there’s uncertainty. Businesses overseas look at us and scratch their heads…. It’s been shown that when there’s question about whether they will be renewed, the level of investment goes down. After they are renewed, the level of investment goes up….”
12. “In Defence of Capitalism” (Financial Express
Robert Reich’s ideology has always been hard to pin down. It is not as if he fits easily into pre-prepared slots: he is not a shrill liberal railing against corporate power, nor is he a cynical pragmatist advising us to make the best of a bad situation. He is not a simplistic populist insisting that control is slipping out of the grasp of the middle class, nor is he one of those clamouring for a return to a simpler, more stable time. There are aspects of all these stands in Supercapitalism, but the whole is considerably more than the sum of its parts, and satisfyingly nuanced.
Reich has never been an enemy of the market. Even as labour secretary during President Clinton’s first term, when he expanded government programmes and supported organised labour, he was notable for arguing against strict protectionism, and suggesting instead an expansion of re-training mechanisms to allow the American workforce to adjust to freer trade….
In this book, even as he
worries about the effect that corporate power has on democratic politics, he
frames it explicitly as a defence of capitalism as he
sees it. The central question, according to Reich, is how the comfortable
consensus that existed in the 1950s and 1960s in
... Together with what he sees as an attempted takeover of government by business, and no less pernicious in Reich’s opinion, are calls for corporate social responsibility. Again, it is impossible to pigeonhole Reich: he delivers for an entire chapter an impassioned defence of the concept that a company’s sole role in today’s world is to defend its bottom-line, and that activists and officials urging other considerations on corporations are not performing any useful function. Calls such as Bill Gates’ for alteration of capitalism, he clearly thinks, are doomed to fail. Capitalism is what it is, liberal democracy is what it is, and the duty of a citizen is to try and distinguish them….
13. “PG&E plans big
investment in solar power” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer
This photovoltaic solar plan in Portugal is similar to the one that SunPower plans to build in San Luis Obispo County to supply energy to PG&E.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced plans Thursday to buy 800 megawatts of photovoltaic solar power from two Bay Area companies - a giant deal that would provide enough electricity to power 239,000 homes and would create the country’s first utility-scale photovoltaic plants.
PG&E agreed to buy 550 megawatts from OptiSolar, a relatively new Hayward firm that would install thin-film solar panels on 9.5 square miles of ranchland in San Luis Obispo County.
It would buy an additional 250 megawatts of power from SunPower Corp., a solar industry leader based in San Jose that would use an additional 3.5 square miles of San Luis Obispo land.
Energy experts said the purchase could change the face of the renewable energy industry by showing that photovoltaic power can be affordably produced on a large, centralized scale, not just on the rooftops of individual homes and businesses.
“This scale is 10 times larger than what was being talked about awhile ago,” said Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley….
14. “
ELEANOR HALL: … Professor Michael Hanemann
is the Director of the Climate Change Centre at
He was recently asked by
the Governor to assess the economic impact of climate change on the state and
he delivered his Scenarios Project to the Government in March this year. Professor Hanemann
is in
Professor Hanemann, you were asked by California’s Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger to evaluate the potential economic impact of climate change on
MICHAEL HANEMANN: Well we found that
ELEANOR HALL: It was called the Scenarios Project and you projected into the future. Were you shocked at what you found?
MICHAEL HANEMANN: Yes and no. the changes in some cases are large. For water supply for example, we rely on the snow pack in the mountains to provide a third of all storage and by the end of the century if no action is taken we lose 80 to 90 per cent of the snow pack. So that’s in turn about 28 per cent of our water supply. That’s a huge change.
We also face the
prospect of severe crop losses from drought and extreme heat events. And even
with energy supply, we’re vulnerable to big spikes in energy demand in the afternoons
for air conditioning so there really are significant costs to
ELEANOR HALL: And the cost to business of taking action?
MICHAEL HANEMANN: That’s, we’re still looking at that, but the bottom line was that it wouldn’t cost the Californian economy at the end of the day to reduce our emissions and that’s, for several reasons that are unique to California.
We don’t have much coal, we have hydro and a major component of programs to reduce emissions will be to increase energy efficiency. Increasing energy efficiency actually lowers costs and puts money in people’s pockets….
ELEANOR HALL: And then last month the California Government announced plans for an emissions trading scheme that’s linked to several other US states and some parts of Canada. Is that the right approach?
MICHAEL HANEMANN: Yes it is. But it’s important to emphasise that emissions trading is only one part of a number of approaches that are being used. Much of the reduction will come from regulatory programs aimed at requiring increased energy efficiency, aimed at changing agricultural and some land use practises….
… The last thing I’d say
on that is there’s a sense in
15. “Obama
may pick VP with military or foreign policy ties” (Rocky Mountain News,
By Sara Burnett
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign on Monday may have dropped the biggest hint yet of what to expect from his running mate: a foreign policy wonk or someone with military experience.
The still-unnamed vice presidential nominee will be the main speaker on the third night of the Democratic National Convention, when the theme will be “Securing America’s Future,” said Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a convention co-chair….
Picking someone with
national security experience would help shore up Obama’s
perceived weakness against Republican Sen. John McCain, a decorated Navy pilot
and former prisoner of war in
“We know McCain is
tough, at least personally,” said Henry
Brady, professor of political science and public policy at the
16. “Saving $10 Billion With Efficiency” (Wall Street Journal,
By JERRY BROWN
David Klein
… How would you spend $10 billion of American
resources (either directly or through regulation) over the next four years to
help improve the state of the world?
… I propose that we take the $10 billion and invest it in curbing our energy appetite through efficiency programs and incentives. The efficiency I envision would allow us to enhance our quality of life, but do so in ways that reduce the huge quantities of oil, gas and coal that we now consume.
While military, medical and
pharmaceutical research has steadily grown over the past two decades, R&D
to increase our national energy efficiency and provide the full gamut of new
fuels and power sources has fallen by 50% in real terms. In the early 1980s,
energy companies invested more in R&D than drug companies; today, drug
companies invest 10 times as much in R&D as do energy firms. To secure our
energy and economic future,
17. “Missing men.
America’s fight against poverty has a growing hole. Some say it’s time to pay
attention to the people falling through it: men” (The Boston Globe,
By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
The homeless and out-of-work of the Depression in
line for shelter in
IN KEEPING WITH the work ethic of their Puritan forebears, Americans have always preferred to direct their generosity to the “deserving” poor: the have-nots who, through no fault of their own, are unable to support themselves….
The icon of the “undeserving poor,” by contrast, has always been the able-bodied man. Although some programs in the New Deal and the War on Poverty provided them with jobs and training, social welfare policy has otherwise largely ignored men….
After World War II, the
After 1973, however, … well-paying manufacturing jobs began to vanish….
The opportunities and incentive to enter the labor market have dwindled, especially for black men. In 2005, about 28 percent of working-age black men reported no employment. This level of joblessness means the inability to help support families, or reliance on illicit sources of income such as the drug trade—in either case, ravaging the fabric of poverty-stricken communities.
But along with economic shifts, analysts say that social policy has also left poor men behind. Reforms in the 1990s ushered millions of women off the welfare rolls and into the labor force. In addition to the “sticks” of welfare reform, there were less widely discussed “carrots,” notably a greatly expanded earned income tax credit (EITC) for custodial parents (read: mothers). Families with two or more children can now receive a maximum credit of $4,400, while those with one child qualify for up to $2,662. For single adults with no dependents, however, the maximum is only $399….
What’s more, in some cases the current policies actually penalize marriage. If a mother is single, she will be eligible for an array of benefits that will disappear or diminish once she files jointly with a husband.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if we don’t get married, we’ll get a bigger check,” says Steven Raphael, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley….
Another piece of the male poverty puzzle, thinkers say, is the evolution of the child support system….
The reforms have helped plenty of struggling mothers and children who would have otherwise had no recourse. But critics say that the majority of poor fathers today can’t pay, and that the erosion of their paychecks translates into a further disincentive to take legal work.
“They are being saddled with growing debt that drives them underground to somewhere no one wants them,” says Ronald Mincy, a professor of social policy at Columbia and editor of the 2006 anthology “Black Males Left Behind” [in which Steven Raphael authors a chapter]….
18. “Giant Retailers
Look to Sun for Energy Savings” (New York Times,
By Stephanie Rosenbloom
A Whole Foods store in
Retailers are typically obsessed with what to put under their roofs, not on them. Yet the nation’s biggest store chains are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource.
In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.
So far, most chains have outfitted fewer than 10 percent of their stores. Over the long run, assuming Congress renews a favorable tax provision and more states offer incentives, the chains promise a solar construction program that would ultimately put panels atop almost every big store in the country.
The trend, while not entirely new, is accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity from coal.
“It’s very clear that
green energy is now front and center in the minds of the business sector,” said
Daniel M. Kammen,
an energy expert at the
19. “Olympian effort
needed to clear
By Robert Collier
The persistent smog that shrouds today’s opening of the Beijing Olympics is not just a danger to the lungs of international athletes. Nor is it merely an embarrassment to the Chinese government, which has long pledged that it would clean up the city’s notorious pollution problem and deliver blue skies for the Games.
The haze over
Mark Levine, the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s China Energy Group, estimates that without any major new federal assistance initiative, China’s emissions could triple or even quadruple in the next 20 years—a prospect that would probably doom all hopes of stopping catastrophic global warming.
But if the federal government adopted a broad program of technical assistance totaling $200 million annually for China (plus another $300 million for other developing nations), and contributions from other industrialized countries tripled this program, China could cut the projected emissions growth in half in the same time period - a “much more tolerable” prospect, Levine says, and more feasible if the rest of the world also makes significant emissions reductions….
…All together, it’s
still a longshot. But there’s no hope of slowing
global warming whatsoever if we don’t do everything remotely possible to help
Robert Collier is a visiting scholar at the Center for Environmental Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
20. “Ideas 08: Climate
Change. A Campaign Primer” (Chronicle of Higher Education
By Richard Monastersky
The political winds have warmed steadily this year on the issue of climate change. Following a two-decade-long national debate about whether humans are heating the globe and what we should do about it, the next president will enter the White House committed to curbing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
It won’t come soon
enough for climate and energy experts, who say the world is potentially nearing
several tipping points. Warming of the oceans and atmosphere could trigger
irreversible environmental changes in coming decades, for example, by causing
vast numbers of species to go extinct and by melting polar ice. At the same
time, if industrialized nations do not develop and deploy cleaner energy
choices soon, rapidly growing economies such as
...”This federal election
is maybe one of the most important in history,” says Daniel M. Kammen, a professor in the Energy
and Resources Group at the
The growing consensus is that nations must deal with the climate problem by doing more than just going on an extreme carbon diet....
Kammen, of Berkeley, agrees that tackling all facets of the climate problem will prove daunting, especially making the shift to a low-polluting future: “It’s the biggest change we’ve seen in the industrial economy since the Industrial Revolution, but I think it’s quite possible.”
21. “Is clean coal the
answer to our energy needs?” (Money Week,
By Greg Guenthner
... [H]alf of the excess CO2 civilization has contributed to the air is from coal. And as you are aware, oil use will most likely decrease from this point forward due to supply and pricing constraints.
It is clear that coal is the dirty, cheap energy culprit the world needs to fix. President Bush and both major-party candidates in the White House race have advocated the development and use of new coal technology that would reduce CO2 emissions. And politicians on both sides of the aisle have supported efforts to develop clean coal technology.
Unfortunately, a viable solution is decades away.
Take carbon capture technology, for instance….
While it looks good on
paper, industry analysts believe this technology is at least 10 to 15 years
away from commercial use. Others are questioning whether CCS will ever become
viable. A New York Times article from earlier this year asks precisely that,
describing the government yanking support from an
The article continues,
citing utility projects in
Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.
“It’s a total mess,”
said Daniel M. Kammen,
director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the
22. “Sales Tax Hike”
(Forum, KQED-88.5 FM,
Governor Schwarzenegger wants a temporary one cent sales tax increase to help erase the state budget deficit. We look at the potential economic impact. Host: Michael Krasny
Guests:
• John Ellwood, professor of
public policy at the
• John Myers,
• Roger Niello, member of the California State Assembly, District 5 (R-Sacramento) and vice-chair of the Budget Committee
JOHN ELLWOOD: “If I cared about balance, I would have a combination
of spending cuts and revenue increases, and that’s the way it’s done—outside of
“Anytime you raise taxes—not only a sales tax—you’re taking money out of the economy. Anytime you cut spending, you’re taking money out of the economy.”…
23. “A contest between
two capitalisms” – commentary by ROBERT
REICH (Marketplace [NPR],
ROBERT REICH: The real competition lurking behind the upcoming
Olympic games is between democratic capitalism and
authoritarian capitalism. For years, American policy toward
We were right on the first part. The games will showcase a Chinese middle class so big that almost as many Chinese now use cell phones and the Internet as do Americans, and soon as many will own cars. But we were wrong about the democracy part. We thought capitalism and democracy went hand in glove. They don’t….
Authoritarian capitalism works wonders if all you care about is getting ahead economically and being able to afford more stuff…. But if you’re someone with a grievance, or you want to criticize those in power, or you’re a Tibetan or ethnic minority, or you happen to like clean air, you’re out of luck.
Democratic capitalism should win in the end because it responds far better to what people want—not only as consumers but also as citizens. Yet right now it’s not so clear. The Chinese economy is booming while we’re in deep trouble. Eighty percent of Chinese are optimistic about the future but only 20 percent of Americans say this nation is on the right track.
In terms of this big contest, you might think of our upcoming presidential election as our own Olympic games. It will showcase to the world how well democratic capitalism still works.
Jagow:
Robert Reich teaches public policy at
the
24. “Going for broke.
The subprime crisis raises serious questions about
the underlying soundness of the dominant economic model” (The Australian, 5 -
Australian Literary Review Edition,
By Ian Macfarlane
Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life
By Robert Reich
Scribe, 272pp, $32.95
… Unlike [George] Soros, who has had considerable worldly success but wants
to be known as an intellectual, [Robert]
Reich is primarily an intellectual
who has had some worldly success, as Bill Clinton’s labour
secretary. Reich’s education was in law, but he has held chairs of public policy at Harvard and the
He achieved prominence
in the early 1990s with an important book, The
Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, which
helped propel him into
His new book, Supercapitalism,
examines the change in capitalism in the
Reich contrasts this with today’s capitalism, which he calls supercapitalism. By this he means the “shareholder value model of capitalism’’, where management’s almost exclusive task is to achieve increased earnings and a rising share price. Failure to do so means that management will probably be replaced, and so it relentlessly pursues cost-cutting, outsourcing and the creation of low-cost global supply chains….
The obvious next question is what caused the shift from the old capitalism to the new supercapitalism. This is a question that has always intrigued me and Reich devotes most of his second chapter to an explanation I find quite compelling….
One of the attractive features of Reich’s worldview is that he is an original thinker with a capacity to surprise. Although a liberal Democrat, he can often reach conclusions that one would not expect. For example, he argues that company taxes should be abolished and that companies should not be able to be sued; only individuals should be taxed and sued, and only individuals (and governments) should be able to contribute to political campaigns…
I found Supercapitalism very stimulating and often very profound. I would have no hesitation recommending it to readers of all political persuasions and am confident that each of them would come away with some ideas that they found interesting, and a few compelling.
25. “Energy troubles”
(Larry King Show, CNN,
Tonight’s guests discuss the energy crisis facing the country and the presidential candidates’ proposals to solve it.
Guests:
·
Bill Richardson, governor of
·
Haley Barbour, governor of
· Robert Reich, economic adviser to Barack Obama and professor of public policy the University of California at Berkeley
BARBOUR: …We’ve got to produce more domestic energy, including oil and gas, nuclear, clean coal…. But we’ve got to get the supply up of domestic energy if we’re going to wean ourselves off too much foreign oil.
KING: Professor Reich, doesn’t that seem logical?
ROBERT REICH: Well, it’s not logical, Larry. I mean what we know, from the Energy Department and many other sources, is that if we drill for more oil right now, we’re not going to see the results for seven or eight or 10 years. And the results, say the Energy Information Administration, are going to be negligible in terms of prices.
I mean the only way of weaning ourself off the addiction of oil is to invest, as Senator Obama wants to, in alternatives—non-fossil based fuels, wind, biomass, water, other fuels that will allow us, over the long-term, to create five million new jobs, to be the center of alternative use for the country.
Still, there is a short-term issue. And what Senator Obama said, in the short-term, give a rebate back to American consumers, a thousand dollars per family. And that rebate comes from the extraordinary outrageous profits that oil companies are now making….
26. “Credit crunch: The
blame game” (BBC News Online,
Bear Stearns is the biggest casualty of the credit crunch.
One year after it all started, who is to blame
for the global credit crunch? ...
We asked various experts to tell us who they thought was responsible—and their answers make interesting reading....
BLAME THOSE GREEDY BANKERS
Robert Reich, of the University of California at Berkeley, is a
former
“Some greed is necessary to keep capitalism going. But too much greed will bring it down.
Even Adam Smith, the father of economics, understood that capitalism requires some degree of trust.
Yet the greed that’s taken over our banking system is undermining the trust of investors, who are necessary if there’s going to be any money in the banking system to invest.
Here in America, the authorities are now chasing down investment bankers who recommended their giant hedge funds to investors, even when the bankers knew the funds were about to implode.
Greedy bankers like them have been running a giant con-game. They figure if they can persuade investors to buy something that’s actually worth nothing, it might appear to be worth something, which lets them persuade others to buy even more, because—after all—by this time lots of investors are buying it….
Franklin D Roosevelt told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. But the fact was, the financial system had let them down—and they wouldn’t trust it again for decades.
Greedy bankers beware.”
27. “Tax Plans Very
Different - McCain’s Tax Breaks Would Favor the Rich, and Obama’s
would Favor the Poor” (Winston-Salem Journal,
By Sean Mussenden - Media General News Service
… The candidates have laid out sharply different recovery plans, centered on tax cuts they say will help create new jobs by giving Americans more money to spend and invest….
Obama wants to make the tax system more progressive, reserving the largest cuts for those at the bottom and middle of the economic ladder, while raising taxes on the very rich.
McCain would make the tax system more regressive, favoring bigger cuts for the wealthy than the middle class and the poor.
Under Obama’s plan, the top fifth of income earners—those making
more than $112,000 a year—would see a tax increase of about 2 percent,
according to an analysis by the
The biggest cut—a 6 percent decrease—would go to the poorest workers, those making less than $20,000 a year.
Everyone else, including the bulk of middle-income workers, would get a 2 percent to 4 percent cut….
Robert Reich, an Obama economic adviser who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, calls Obama’s plan a “bottom-up” approach to recharging the economy, sharply contrasting McCain’s “top down” approach.
Obama’s advisers argue that giving bigger cuts to poorer people with more pressing financial needs will inject cash into the economy quickly while reducing inequality.
“The Bush policies are not the sole cause of (the economic problems), but they have not helped,” Reich said on a conference call with reporters this month.
“More of the same. That’s what John McCain is offering.” …
28. “Author, Professor
Urges
JACKSON, Miss. -- Setting up pilot site programs may be the best way to build support for early childhood education programs in Mississippi because it gets people involved on the local level, award-winning author David Kirp told a group of about 130 education, community and business leaders Friday.
Although many children
attend federally-funded Head Start and others are in private preschools,
“We’ve known for a long
time that early childhood education is essential,” said Kirp, who came to
“(A recent study) cited the return on investment at 3-to-1,” Kirp told [Blake Wilson of the Mississippi Economic Council]. “I don’t know about you but when I look at my stock portfolio, I say a 3-to-1 investment? I’ll take it.”
Research shows children that have the opportunity to attend an early childhood education program are less likely to be retained or drop out of school, Kirp said. As an adult, it can mean earning 25 percent more on average, staying off welfare and staying out of prison, he added.
Former Gov. William Winter, who also attended the event, said he hoped leaders across the state would heed Kirp’s message.
“Investing in early childhood education is politically smart. It’s economically smart, and it’s morally right,” Kirp told the audience. “We should not forget, this is the kind of thing that makes us feel good. Little children are not just economic engines. They are human beings.”
August 12 Michael Hanemann
spoke on “Targets for GHG reductions” at the
Robert B. Reich,
“The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility” (
Steven Raphael and
Lucas Ronconi
(MPP/PhD 2007), “Reconciling National and Regional Estimates of the Effect of
Immigration on
Michael O’Hare,
“Capitalizing Art Museum Collections: Awkward for Museums But Good for Art and
for Society” (November 2005).
To view a complete list
of GSPP videos, visit our Events Archive at: /news-events/archive.html
Recent events viewable
on UC Webcast: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/archive.php?select2=36
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Director of External Relations and Development