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eDIGEST April 2007

UPCOMING EVENTS

1. GSPP’s BIOSECURITY FOR A NEW ERA Lecture Series

All lectures on Wednesdays, 7 p.m., at the Faculty Club (O’Neill Room), UC Berkeley

Doors open 6:45 p.m. Free and open to the public. For more info call 510-643-4581.

* April 11

“Secrets, Freedom, and Friendship: The Ethics of Biosecurity in a World of Distributed Knowledge”

Dr. Laurie Zoloth, Professor, Northwestern University

* April 18

“Biotechnology and 21^st Century International Security”

Dr. Malcolm Dando, Director, Bradford (WMD) Disarmament Research Centre, University of Bradford

* April 25

“Terrorists and Biological Weapons: Considering new targets and the capability of old methods”

Dr. Craig Hooper, Lecturer, UC Berkeley

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

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

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

WILDAVSKY FORUM DISCUSSION SESSION with Faculty Panel

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

Preceded by 8:30 continental breakfast

3. CHABOT SPACE & SCIENCE CENTER - GREEN DAY

Celebrate Sun & Earth Day Kids Go Green: Be Part of the Solution

Saturday, April 14^th. Activities: 11 am – 4 pm

Keynote Speaker, Dan Kammen 4 pm – 5 pm

Dr. Dan Kammen

FREE with general admission. Visitors who wear green will receive $1 OFF each Admission

Space is limited! RSVP at the Box Office: 510.336.7373. More info

Join us for a day of fun-filled Earth & Solar activities. Learn more about global climate change & how you can help, then see special guest, Dr. Dan Kammen, and his discussion on Saving the Planet: What You Can Do.

4. “Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble”

Lester R. Brown, Founder of Worldwatch Institute & Earth Policy Institute

April 18, 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. 2060 Valley Life Science Building

For more information, please contact Joanne Birdsall, Joanne_birdsall@berkeley.edu

A presentation of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment; co-sponsored by the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy and by the Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies.

5. Science, Technology & Engineering Policy (STEP) White Paper Competition

April 25, 5:00 p.m., location TBA. In the final four is:

“The Berkeley City Ordinance on Nanotechnology” by Javiera Barandiaran (MPP Cand. 2008)

6. “Entertainment Media, Democracy and Policy – What’s the Story?”

Panelists: Sid & Nancy Hult Ganis, Norm Pattiz, Robert Reich

Moderator: Linda Schacht Gage

April 30, 6 pm. Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Center, UC Berkeley

Free and open to the public. Call 510-643-4581 for more information

7. COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES OF THE CLASS OF 2007

May 19, 2007 – time & location TBA

QUICK REFERENCE LIST

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

ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS

1. “High-tech help in tracking predators” (San Gabriel Valley Tribune, March 22, 2007); story citing BRIAN BROWN (MPP 2003); http://www.sgvtribune.com/search/ci_5492607

2. “Global warming activists try to stir Americans to change. Urging different lifestyles on people seen as difficult” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 2007); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000); http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/22/MNGDROPJN61.DTL

3. “‘Cap and trade’ gaining favor. Congress taking up business-friendly proposals to reduce global warming” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 2007); story citing BLAS PERÉZ HENRÍQUEZ (MPP 1992/PhD 2002), MARK TREXLER (MPP 1982/PhD 1989), CHUCK SHULOCK (MPP 1978), and GOLDMAN SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAM; http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/21/BUGVQOGJM4135.DTL

4. “52 percent of JC students earn degrees. State audit gauges performance at 110 community colleges” (Oakland Tribune, March 20, 2007); story citing NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search//ci_5477560

5. “Educating future education leaders” (CNN News, March 19, 2007); story citing GOLDMAN SCHOOL STUDENT [HEATHER BARONDESS (MPP Cand. 2007)]; http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/03/19/execed.schools/

6. “Tech companies urge use of TV airwaves for Internet” (San Juan Star, March 17, 2007); story citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978/PhD 1983).

7. “State joining rush to hold primaries for president early” (Record, The (Hackensack, NJ), March 16, 2007); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975); http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDk0MDk5

8. “Dems would empower sentencing commission. Senate bill gives panel ‘teeth,’ differs from advisory role that governor seeks” (Sacramento Bee, March 15, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/138394.html

9. “CALIFORNIA: Deep flaws found in school system. Study says allocation of funds and teacher assignments are key problems among many” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 15, 2007); story citing study coauthored by JANNELLE LEE KUBINEC (MPP 1997); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/15/BAGJCOLASI1.DTL

10. “Price of gasoline going up, up, up. Fuel costs continue to climb toward record levels” (Oakland Tribune, March 14, 2007); story citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5432586

11. “Moving forward on equity and inclusion. As the search for a new vice chancellor progresses, diversity-related efforts on campus continue on multiple fronts” (Berkeleyan, March 14, 2007); story citing WALTER WONG (MPP 1978); http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2007/03/14_diversity.shtml

12. “Gamers aren’t teen geeks” (Courier Mail (Australia), March 12, 2007); story citing FRANK ALPERT (MPP 1981).

13. “SAN FRANCISCO: Chief of AIDS office to depart amid phaseout” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 9, 2007); story citing MARK CLOUTIER (MPP/MPH 1993); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/09/BAGRPOIBGI1.DTL&hw=mark+cloutier&sn=001&sc=1000

14. “Patients: Clinics Deny Care To Urban American Indians” (Cincinnati Post, March 9, 2007); story by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005).

15. “Georgia Tech to buy Ga. State’s ‘village’. Dorms can hold 2,000 students. GSU is building its own housing, which will open this fall” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 8, 2007); story citing CARL PATTON (MPP/PhD 1976); http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2007/03/07/0308metdorms.html?COXnetJSessionIDbuild20=pnq6GCNM7Ty8mhsLQ2sKvjrg6ZMbFy3Q9G1thvsQcTVrWlmpqqWk!654889994&UrAuth=`NbNUOaNVUbTTUWUXUVUZTZU`UWUbU_UZU]U^UcTYWYWZV&urcm=y

16. “Governor in Norco to push prison overhaul” (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA), March 7, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

17. “Plan Would Move Wards Closer To Home - Proposal Aims To Ease State Prison Problems” (San Jose Mercury News, March 7, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

18. “Lower fees don’t ease community college cost - Living expense, financial aid difficulties keep students from attaining education” (Contra Costa Times, March 7, 2007); story citing WILLIAM ZUMETA (MPP 1973/PhD 1978) and NANCY BOROW SHULOCK (MPP 1978); http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/living/education/16850589.htm

19. “Proposition 1B formula benefits Bay Area public transit” (San Mateo County Times, March 7, 2007); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_5373317

20. “McClatchy closes its sale of Minneapolis newspaper” (Sacramento Bee, March 6, 2007); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981); http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/133043.html

21. “Editorial: Review lays out budget realities. State may be facing tough times” (Ventura County Star, March 5, 2007); editorial citing ELIZABETH HILL (MPP 1975); http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion/article/0,1375,VCS_125_5394323,00.html

22. “School group loses lawsuit, plans appeal” (Oakland Tribune, March 3, 2007); story citing RICHARD WINNIE (MPP 1971); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5349331

23. “New rules require medical translation. Health care facilities must improve their language assistance” (Sacramento Bee, March 2, 2007); story citing organization directed by MARTY MARTINEZ (MPP 1996); http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/131320.html

24. “Highway 198 expansion set for ’09” (Porterville Recorder (CA), March 2, 2007); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.portervillerecorder.com/articles/2007/03/02/news/local_state/news11.txt

25. “UNICEF Chief - Child Mortality Declining in Ethiopia” (US Fed News, March 1, 2007); story citing ANN VENEMAN (MPP 1971).

26. “XM, iPod can’t touch that dial” (Christian Science Monitor, February 23, 2007); story citing DEREK TURNER (MPP 2006); http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p11s02-algn.htm

27. “Inflation climbs, spooking Wall Street” (Orlando Sentinel, February 22, 2007); story citing MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).

28. “Mayor shares his vision of grand future - Bates’ State of the City address is tempered by more immediate concerns about Berkeley’s fiscal health” (Berkeley Voice, February 16, 2007); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000).

29. “OPINION: An appeal: More facts, less bluster” (Times, The (Shreveport, LA), February 21, 2007); op-ed citing ROBERT ENTMAN (MPP/PhD 1980).

30. “Fat chance: Has Murphy made a big mistake?” (Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2007); story citing ROBERT ENTMAN (MPP/PhD 1980).

31. “Leading the way out of global climate change is vital” (Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), February 6, 2007; op-ed by KEVIN GURNEY (MPP 1996).

32. “The Bush budget: What’s in $2.9 trillion? - It promises an end to deficits and a smaller bite from defense spending by 2012, but some analysts question such forecasts” (Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 2007); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976); http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0206/p01s01-usec.html

33. “Budget deal seems unlikely” (Associated Press, Erie Times-News (PA), February 7, 2007); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).

34. “Don’t discount bird flu. President’s adviser warns against apathy, sees pandemic threat as real, urges faster drug development” (Newsday (Long Island, NY), February 5, 2007); story citing TIMOTHY UYEKI (MPP 1985).

35. “Affordable housing good for the planet, group says” (Marin Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA), February 2, 2007); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.marinij.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5140951

36. “Letters: Fuel economy standards” (Kansas City Star, The (MO), February 1, 2007); Letter to the Editor citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992).

37. “Helping the upper classes. Even that can be part of state healthcare reform” (Ventura County Star (CA), January 31, 2007); opinion column citing study by DAVID CARROLL (MPP 2000).

38. “Editorial: Coverage Should Be Priority For Bush” (San Jose Mercury News, January 30, 2007); editorial citing study by DAVID CARROLL (MPP 2000).

39. “Uninsured find a way. Health care access exists for illegal immigrants” (San Diego Union-Tribune, January 30, 2007); story citing RUTH LIU (MPP 1999).

40. “California Health Plan Has Budget Hawks Antsy” (Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2007); story citing MARIAN MULKEY (MPP/MPH 1989).

41. “The Hidden Costs Of Regulating Pharmaceuticals” (Tampa Tribune, January 22, 2007); op-ed citing BENJAMIN ZYCHER (MPP/PhD 1974).

42. “For Belkin, a career built on risk, vision. Rich, successful entrepreneur faces an uphill challenge to build the tallest tower in the city” (Boston Globe, January 19, 2007); story citing NORMAN STEIN (MPP 1982).

43. “Schwarzenegger’s health care idea draws cautious cheers” (San Mateo County Times, January 10, 2007); story citing MAYA ALTMAN (MPP 1985).

44. “The Future Of Economics Isn’t So Dismal” (New York Times, January 10, 2007); column citing JESSE ROTHSTEIN (MPP/PhD 2003); http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DD1130F93AA35752C0A9619C8B63

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

1. “Wanted: Researchers. Biotechs hit with lack of scientists” (Oakland Tribune, March 31, 2007); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5565126

2. “More U.S. college students studying clean energy” (Reuters, March 28, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSN2837232720070328?pageNumber=1

3. “Budget dodges killer asteroids” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace: American Public Media [NPR], March 28, 2007); Listen to the commentary

4. “Bush, Automakers Talk Flex-Fuel Cars” (ABC7 TV News, March 26, 2007); features commentary by DAN KAMMEN; http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5154132

5. “For now, it’s a city only in his eyes. He’s never built a thing, but W. Quay Hays aims to turn 12,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley dirt into a model municipality” (Los Angeles Time, March 26, 2007); story citing JOHN QUIGLEY; http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-quay26mar26,1,5376383,full.story?coll=la-headlines-california

6. “BERKELEY: Professor urges social priorities in BP institute. Dan Kammen backs greater goals than fuel for the affluent” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 2007); interview with DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/22/BAGILOPM001.DTL

7. “Perils grow in battle for medical pot. Laws in conflict—environment dicey for patients, dealers” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 2007); story citing ROBERT MACCOUN; http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/22/MNGDROPM7E1.DTL

8. “Control CEO Pay By Taxing The Very Rich” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Radio, March 21, 2007); Listen to this commentary

9. “V.C. Nation: Green Energy Enthusiasts Are Also Betting on Fossil Fuels” (New York Times [*requires registration], March 16, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/technology/16venture.html?pagewanted=print

10. “Let’s keep candidates off Wall Street” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Radio [NPR], March 14, 2007); Listen to this commentary

11. “Reich Warns of UC-BP Deal’s Consequences” (Berkeley Daily Planet, March 13, 2007); story citing ROBERT REICH and DAVID VOGEL; http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=03-13-07&storyID=26536

12. “Researchers debunk conventional wisdom on trial witnesses” (UC Berkeley NewsCenter, March 12, 2007); story citing ROBERT MACCOUN; http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/03/12_testimony.shtml

13. “Speaker Pelosi Walks A Delicate Line” (KGO-TV News, March 12, 2007); features commentary by MICHAEL NACHT; http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=politics&id=5115907

14. “Why Do Men Control Most of the World?” (Your Call, KALW-91.7 FM Radio, March 12, 2007); features commentary by Visiting Professor RUTH ROSEN; listen to the program

15. “The Care Crisis” (The Nation, March 12, 2007 issue); commentary by Visiting Professor RUTH ROSEN; http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070312/rosen

16. “Divesting from Sudan” (Austin American-Statesman, March 11, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL.

17. “UC Berkeley chancellor defends BP energy deal. Birgeneau responds to criticism from some faculty, students over contract” (Oakland Tribune, March 10, 2007); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.insidebayarea.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=5406658&siteId=181

18. “‘400,000 British children’ taking hyperactivity drugs” (Daily Mail [UK], March 8, 2007); story citing RICHARD SCHEFFLER; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=440820&in_page_id=1774

19. “Opinion: We Trained Them, We Should (Be Allowed To) Keep Them” (CIO Insight.com, March 7, 2007); op-ed citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,2101736,00.asp

20. “China Practices Some Power Politics” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Radio, March 7, 2007); Listen to this commentary

21. “Bush to back bioethanol - but benefits are in the balance” (New Scientist [UK], March 6, 2007); story citing study coauthored by DAN KAMMEN, MICHAEL O’HARE, BRIAN TURNER (MPP 2006); http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11325-bush-to-back-bioethanol--but-benefits-are-in-the-balance.html

22. “Op-Ed: Going Down With the Ships” (Washington Post, March 5, 2007); op-ed by Visiting Lecturer CRAIG HOOPER; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030401049_pf.html

23. “Managing Corporate Social Responsibility” (Wall Street Journal [*requires registration], March 3, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL; http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB117218573999116608.html

24. “Sales tax hike won’t move Pennsylvania forward” (Morning Call (Allentown, PA), March 2, 2007); op-ed citing ROBERT REICH.

25. “Proposed ethanol plant wins U.S. grant” (Seattle Times, March 1, 2007); story citing study coauthored by DAN KAMMEN, MICHAEL O’HARE, BRIAN TURNER (MPP 2006); http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2003594477&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=ethanol01&date=20070301

26. “Switchgrass is cool, dude” (Salon.com, March 1, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/03/01/switchgrass_is_cool/index.html?source=rss

27. “Speaking Eastern Language On FBI’s Wish List” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 19, 2007); story citing MICHAEL NACHT.

ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS

1. “High-tech help in tracking predators” (San Gabriel Valley Tribune, March 22, 2007); story citing BRIAN BROWN (MPP 2003); http://www.sgvtribune.com/search/ci_5492607

By Fred Ortega - Staff Writer

WEST COVINA - City officials may begin tracking the movements of convicted sexual predators living in West Covina using global positioning technology, a move that preempts similar efforts planned at the state level.

Proposition 83, the so-called Jessica’s Law passed by more than 70 percent of voters last November, already requires that all felony sex offenders who have served jail time be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) ankle bracelets and tracked for life by the authorities. GPS uses satellites to provide real-time information of a person or object’s whereabouts anywhere in the world, with an accuracy of within a few feet.

Before Jessica’s Law, the state only tracked about 500 of the highest-risk sex offenders using GPS, and the devices were removed once the person was off parole. But the new law’s expansion to include all felony sex offenders for life has raised questions about where the funding for the new equipment and monitoring will come from, as well as who will do the monitoring….

West Covina police Lt. Mark Dettor said the state has so far come up with funding for tracking about 1,500 individuals, and is still trying to come up with more funding….

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration is seeking funding to track an additional 9,000 to 10,000 sex offenders on parole who fall under the GPS requirements under Jessica’s Law, said Brian Brown of the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. Money has yet to be sought for the tens of thousands more who would have to be tracked for life after being paroled.

“There are still some issues being resolved in the courts as to the retroactivity of the law, whether it applies to those who were convicted and served jail time before,” said Brown. “The initiative also does not specify whether the is the responsibility of the state or local officials.”…

By Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Washington is suddenly debating global warming this week, but the big challenge remains outside the Beltway–coaxing Americans to adopt new technologies and change their energy-guzzling lifestyles….

According to a Pew Research Center poll released in January, only 47 percent of respondents believe that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels are causing global warming, compared with 50 percent in July 2006. In the poll, 55 percent of respondents said global warming is a problem that requires immediate government action, a decline from 61 percent last year….

Environmentalists admit that persuading the public to change its energy-wasting ways will be tough, even in the Bay Area. A central battleground is Berkeley, whose voters approved in November the nation’s first municipal ballot measure to call for a detailed emissions reduction plan. Although similar to a California law approved by the Legislature last year that called for emissions cuts of 80 percent by 2050, Berkeley’s plan must be drawn up and ready for City Council approval by December, while state regulators are not scheduled to announce a plan until June 2008, with an uncertain legislative schedule to follow.

“If you live in the hills, or outside the range of easily convenient transit service, it’s extremely difficult to envision how you won’t drive as much,” said Cisco de Vries, chief of staff to Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and lead city official on the program. “That will be tough.”…

By Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Chrysler counterpart Tom LaSorda give testimony supporting cap-and-trade.

As environmental activists and politicians, including Al Gore, descend on Capitol Hill this week to urge action on global warming, nearly all are touting a business-friendly solution—as are California regulators who are drawing up the state’s new system to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s called emissions trading, or cap and trade, and it has won support from corporations and lawmakers who worry that strict global warming limits could damage the U.S. economy….

In Congress, all five bills on global warming being debated—with two more expected to be introduced soon—rely heavily on the creation of an emissions trading system, in which companies are given limits for their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and then are allowed to buy and sell their excess or deficit emissions as if they were financial securities.

California regulators are drawing up plans for an emissions trading system under a state law enacted last year calling for the reduction of greenhouse gas output to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of about 25 percent. And California recently signed agreements with Oregon, Washington, Arizona and New Mexico—as well as with British Columbia—to form a cross-border emissions market.

“California is really establishing a de facto national standard, and it’s likely to heavily influence the shape of whatever action Congress eventually takes,” said Blas Perez Henriquez, executive director of the Center for Environmental Public Policy at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

Many environmentalists had long supported traditional forms of top-down government regulation, especially what is known as a carbon tax, which would levy a tax on energy sources that emit carbon dioxide.

“Most people believe that the two big alternatives out there are a carbon tax or cap and trade,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., speaking at a climate change conference at UC Berkeley [co-sponsored by the Goldman School] last month. “I fall into the cap and trade thing, largely because I don’t see a carbon tax ever getting enacted in the United States.”

In recent months, big-business interests have rushed to jump on the cap-and-trade bandwagon. In January, companies with large emissions outputs such as GE, Alcoa, DuPont, Caterpillar and Duke Energy came out in support.

Last week, the chief executives of GM, Ford, Toyota and Chrysler did the same in testimony before Congress….

But greenhouse gases are more complicated to regulate than smog, traders say.

“Setting up a market for greenhouse gases is tremendously tricky,” said Mark Trexler, director of global consulting services for EcoSecurities, a London consultancy and broker in carbon credits.

One danger, Trexler said, is that companies will be granted too many credits—which, in effect, gives them permission to keep polluting. This mistake has severely shaken the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, set up to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, as prices have collapsed from about $38 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2004 to Tuesday’s closing average of $1.40….

Officials at the California Air Resources Board, the agency that is drawing up the state’s new rules, say they won’t repeat the mistakes of Europe and Southern California.

“Yes, there are environmental justice issues to consider with [Regional Clean Air Incentives Market], and there’s no shortage of other possible issues that have to be worked through,” said Chuck Shulock, climate change coordinator for the agency. “But we’re confident that a market-based system can be created successfully.”

By Lisa M. Krieger, MediaNews Staff

Six years after enrolling in community college, only half to two-thirds of area students succeed in gaining a degree—a certificate of progress toward transferring to a university—a report released Monday found.

The state average was 52 percent—comparable to the graduation rate for the California State University system.

The report, the first internal audit by the community college system, studies the performance of its 110 community colleges and 2.5 million students. Fulfilling a 2004 legislative mandate, it is considered to be the most comprehensive and detailed assessment of the system’s many campuses.

Overall, it found that the six-year success rate hasn’t budged much in the past three years, since the data was first collected….

The report, “Focus on Results: Accountability Reporting for the Community Colleges,” does not study all students. Rather, it measures the success stories—students who already have completed 12 units of course work and took English and math assessments.

So it paints a rosier picture than reports that looked at the entire student body, which found fewer than one-quarter of students achieving their goals.

“The community college’s number is very different than ours,” said Nancy Shulock of Cal State Sacramento’s Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy, whose recent study found that 10 percent of students who want a two-year degree and 26 percent of those hoping to transfer to a four-year university achieve their goals.

“This measure doesn’t tell us whether they’re doing their job with the toughest students,” she said. “They look at students who are already successful. Plenty of students never make it to 12 units or enroll in college English or math.

“I don’t want to judge whether a 50 percent success rate means that the glass is half full or half empty. Fifty percent means there is still a lot of work to do.”…

By Peter Walker for CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Throughout their MBA courses, business school students get the chance to apply their new skills to hypothetical problems from the world of commerce.

Some, however, are also asked to go one better and tackle genuine cases. And what better challenge than reorganizing a major education authority with a debt of $100 million?

That was the task facing students from a series of leading U.S. schools earlier this month at the Education Leadership Case Competition, the first contest of its kind in the country.

It involved teams of MBA students from seven top business schools, among them Northwestern University’s Kellogg School, and the Haas school at the University of California, Berkeley, which hosted the event.

The scale of the task facing them was enough to make even the most experience executive have to think long and hard.

The teams were asked to come up with a new financial plan for the Oakland Unified School District….

The financially-troubled educational authority has been in state receivership since June 2003, and owes $100 million to the state, the largest such debt in Californian history….

And while such financial woes might seem unglamorous compared to a career in investment banking or private equity, there is a clear need for talented, well-trained business professionals in the U.S. education system—since 1991, seven California school districts have had to be taken over by the state….

In the end, the host team won, with the three Haas MBA students and [Heather Barondess of] Berkeley’s Goldman Public Policy School taking the $2,000 prize for their plans and presentation….

“[Their] presentation was very comprehensive in terms of getting the gist of the case and talking about all the different aspects that you must invest in to transition from a start-up phase to something that is more sustainable,” [Barak Ben-Gal, budget director of OUSD] said.

A team from Northwestern’s Kellogg School finished second, winning $1,000.

6. “Tech companies urge use of TV airwaves for Internet” (San Juan Star, March 17, 2007); story citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978/PhD 1983).

By Dibya Sarkar; The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and other technology companies are bumping into resistance from U.S. television broadcasters as they seek regulatory approval to deliver high-speed Internet service over unused television airwaves.

The technology companies, which have submitted a prototype device to the Federal Communications Commission for testing, say their aim is to make broadband Internet connections accessible and affordable to millions more Americans.

Broadcasters, though, fear the unproven device could interfere with TV service, and even some technology experts have reservations about how well the device will actually perform. Matters could get even more complicated, broadcasters say, when the industry switches from analog to digital signals in 2009.

At the center of this dispute are unused and unlicensed TV airwaves, part of the spectrum known as “white spaces.” These white spaces are located between channels 2 and 51 on televisions that aren’t hooked up to satellite or cable, though use of these services would not preclude anyone from accessing the Internet over unused spectrum in their region….

Advocates said the white-space spectrum is too valuable to be left idle because the television airwaves can transmit better signal quality through obstacles and to a wider geographic area. In rural areas, the new technology is an attractive alternative to phone-, cable- or satellite-based Internet service because it would not require expensive new infrastructure to be built, they said….

Amid all this enthusiasm, however, there are skeptics.

Dorothy Robyn, a principal with the Brattle Group, a Cambridge, Mass.-based economic consulting firm, said the technology benefits could be overstated. Specifically, she questioned whether the device could deliver good-quality Internet service over long distances.

For this reason, she said licensing—and auctioning off—the white-space spectrum is critical to ensure that it gets used in the best and most efficient way. And there’s an added benefit, Robyn said: if signal interference ever became an issue, broadcasters could point to the source of the problem.

By Josh Gohlke, Trenton Bureau

Lawmakers agreed Thursday to move New Jersey’s presidential primary to early February, but a stampede of other states with the same idea could make that the crowded end of the nomination contests.

The state Assembly voted 57-20 for a bill scheduling the primary on Feb. 5, when it will be preceded only by voting in New Hampshire and a few other special cases. The state Senate has already passed the bill and Governor Corzine is expected to sign it.

Democratic Assemblyman Robert Gordon of Fair Lawn welcomed the measure, recalling that his fellow Bergen County Democrats endured campaign advertising aimed at New Yorkers four years ago even though they could not vote until it was too late.

“That is as close as they have gotten to participating in a real presidential primary in 20 years,” Gordon said….

Now New Jersey’s primary voters are at least guaranteed a say, though in the middle of an electoral cacophony….

By Andy Furillo - Bee Capitol Bureau

Democrats in the state Senate filled in the blanks Wednesday on their version of a sentencing commission by proposing a panel with the power to set prison terms that could be amended only by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature….

[Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero of Los Angeles] said the Legislature “would not abdicate its authority” to the commission and that lawmakers will have an opportunity to respond to and, if need be, reject the recommendations of the panel….

SB 110 came in for early criticism Wednesday from Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer of Orange, the criminal justice point man for his caucus.

“There’s not one Republican, and I would be surprised if there were many Democrats who are not soft on crime who would vote for that bill,” Spitzer said.

Republicans have criticized the sentencing commission concept as taking authority away from the Legislature and for possibly paving the way for some inmates to get out of prison early….

By Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

A yearlong, $3 million evaluation of California public schools by more than 30 education experts reveals a “deeply flawed” system that misdirects school money, emphasizes paperwork over progress, and fails to send the best teachers into the neediest schools.

“Getting Down to Facts”—a collection of 22 studies--begins with the sobering reminder that despite years of academic reform, California students of all ethnicities still score among the worst in the nation on tests of basic reading and math.

A year ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bipartisan group of state educators and lawmakers asked the researchers to find out what was wrong with the public school system. All agreed that once the report came out, they would together try to fix the problems.

On Wednesday, the Republican governor joined Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and state schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell in presenting Part 1 of the two-part research package and vowed to pass laws that will fix the systemic problems—but next year….

Among the many revelations offered up about the 6.3 million-student system are these key points:

-- California’s education data systems are so bad that it’s impossible for schools to share information about what’s working and what isn’t, such as how many students are dropping out.

-- The state imposes too many one-size-fits-all rules—”regulationitis,” says the report—ensuring that principals and other administrators spend more time filling out paperwork than overseeing instruction.

-- California has no coherent way of identifying and keeping quality teachers, or removing ineffective ones.

-- The state hands out education dollars “irrationally,” then largely prohibits principals from deciding how best to spend them.

“Solely directing more money into the current system will not dramatically improve student achievement and will meet neither expectations nor needs,” according to the report, led by Stanford economist Susanna Loeb and paid for by private foundations….

The study can be found on the Web at: irepp.stanford.edu/projects/cafinance.htm

[Jannelle Kubinec coauthored the study on governance and structural issues: “School District Finance Management: Personnel Policies and Practices.”]

By Janis Mara, Business Writer

Bay Area gas prices rocketed above $3 a gallon this month and, worse yet, another 20- to 25-cent jump is predicted in California over the next 30 days.

Such a jump would take gas prices to record highs in the East Bay, San Mateo and other parts of the region.

Gas prices have increased nationally—the U.S. average is now $2.54 a gallon for regular unleaded gas, up 31 cents in the past month. But the rise has been more severe in California, which saw a 45-cent-a-gallon jump to $3.11, according to AAA’s monthly gas report, released Tuesday….

But prices will go up and stay up for a while, according to the experts. For one thing, gas usually goes up this time of year because people go on driving vacations and buy more gas….

Another distinguishing factor for California is its cleaner-burning gasoline, [Fred Rozell, retail pricing director of Oil Price Information Service] said. “California’s a little different because there’s only so many refineries that can make that specific gasoline and any event that occurs causes major disruptions and price spikes.”…

“People tend to buy gasoline whatever the price is,” said Roland Hwang, San Francisco-based vehicle policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Prices are going to have to go up pretty darn high, to $4 or $5 a gallon, before we see demand decrease.”…

By Cathy Cockrell, Public Affairs

By midsummer, if all goes as planned, Berkeley’s first vice chancellor for equity and … will begin to lead and coordinate Berkeley’s wide-ranging diversity-related efforts….

Ongoing diversity-related initiatives, in fact, reach all the way from the UC Regents’ boardroom to program offices in the Chávez Student Center that work to support diverse groups of underrepresented undergrads. Here is an overview of some of the work in progress….

Launched last spring, the Berkeley Initiative for Leadership on Diversity (BILD) aims to foster an inclusive workplace environment and to advance staff diversity to better reflect the demographics of California and the Bay Area. Its steering committee, currently chaired by Acting Registrar Walter Wong, is charged with helping the campus find innovative approaches and partnerships toward these goals.

According to Wong, the committee plans to hold information sessions this spring; it will then solicit proposals for projects “that reach unmet or under-met needs in groupings, units, or departments in the arena of diversity and inclusion,” with partnership, access, inclusion, and staff development as the priority areas to be addressed. Co-sponsored by the chancellor and the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate, BILD is on a very tight timeline, Wong adds. “The goal is to solicit proposals this spring for projects that can be implemented in 2007-08.”…

12. “Gamers aren’t teen geeks” (Courier Mail (Australia), March 12, 2007); story citing FRANK ALPERT (MPP 1981).

The stereotypical image of video gamers as spotty, teenage boys is a long way off the mark, according to new research showing the average gamer is in their 30s and just as likely to be a woman.

University of Queensland business school academic Frank Alpert, who has just published a paper on the industry, said his research showed the average age of players was now ‘‘thirtyish,’’ with up to 43 per cent of players being women.

Also contrary to popular belief, most popular games were non-violent, he said.

The best selling game franchise of all time was The Sims—a family game with no violence at all.

By Sabin Russell; Chronicle Medical Writer

San Francisco’s Office of AIDS, long a symbol of the city’s focused attention on the prevention and treatment of HIV, is being dismantled and its functions distributed throughout the Department of Public Health to cope with reduced federal funds and the ever-changing nature of the epidemic.

Jimmy Loyce, who has been director of the office for seven years, announced this week that he will step down from his $160,000-a-year post on May 1, and that no one will be named to replace him….

Although catastrophic cuts in Ryan White Care Act funding have been averted, Loyce said the city expects to lose $1.5 million from built-in reductions in each of the next three years. At the same time, the number of people living with HIV in the city continues to grow, as drugs keep patients alive, and about 900 new infections are found each year….

The greatest impetus for folding the Office of AIDS into the rest of the health department, however, is that the patients who have HIV are living longer and face the same kinds of chronic health problems as other aging populations. They have serious health problems, but not necessarily uniquely HIV-related diseases. For years, the city has been trying to seamlessly provide all the health services these patients need, and now the bureaucracy for prevention and care of HIV is being similarly mainstreamed. Mark Cloutier, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said the integration of the Office of AIDS into the rest of the city health department makes sense. “It’s important that people get care for other chronic diseases at the same place they get HIV care,’’ he said.

The integration of the Office of AIDS into the day-to-day operations of the rest of the health department, he said, presents an opportunity for Mayor Gavin Newsom and health director Dr. Mitch Katz to come up with a more efficient way of delivering care to people with HIV who have other medical problems.

14. “Patients: Clinics Deny Care To Urban American Indians” (Cincinnati Post, March 9, 2007); story by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005).

By Garance Burke, Associated Press

After Vera Quiroga, an American Indian elder, was turned away from a clinic she helped found in Santa Barbara, she has been forced to drive to a far-off reservation to get her teeth cleaned.

The reason she said is that the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn’t recognize the 82-year-old as a Yaqui, even though her children and grandchildren have tribal documentation.

“They said if you don’t have federal paperwork you can’t get service anymore,” said Quiroga.

While federal law requires taxpayer-funded tribal clinics to serve all patients of Indian ancestry, some have recently stopped admitting those who can’t document their federal tribal status, patients and clinic officials say.

Federal officials deny that qualified patients are being turned away and say they’re doing all they can to ensure a health program for urban Indians isn’t shut down entirely. The Indian Health Service oversees 33 clinics nationwide that provide free or discounted medical services to city-dwelling Indians.

But Martin Young, chairman of the Santa Barbara clinic’s board, said it received a letter last fall from the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Sacramento instructing it to stop offering free health services to patients from unrecognized tribes or who don’t have a bureau identification card.

It has since turned away about 200 patients, he said.

An Indian Health Service spokesman said the letter explained who was eligible for care, but denied that the agency instructed Santa Barbara to withhold services. However, clinic managers in Tucson, Ariz.; Wichita, Kan.; and Boston reported getting similar directives….

Under the American Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976, Congress funds health care programs for members of tribes recognized by states or the federal government, as well as their descendants. Many states recognize tribes the federal government does not.

In California, the right to government-supported medical care is extended a step further, to those whose ancestors lived here in 1852 and are “regarded as an Indian by the community.”

Phyllis Wolfe, who oversees urban Indian programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said clinics are granted federal dollars must follow federal guidelines….

Wolfe could not explain why the clinics would have changed their policies. “I don’t believe they would do that, but I can’t say that that’s not been done,” she said. Nationwide, more than 60 percent of American Indians and Alaska natives live in urban areas, according to the U.S. Census. For the poorest of them, the clinics are a lifeline, a place to get diabetes treatment or alcohol counseling delivered by doctors well-versed in native culture.

By Andrea Jones

After years of saying it wasn’t interested in the property, Georgia Tech will indeed take over the Georgia State University Village, the sprawling four-building residence hall complex at the corner of North Avenue and Centennial Olympic Park Drive, university system officials announced Wednesday.

Georgia State has been trying to sell the village for some time. President Carl Patton has long said he didn’t like the distance between the dorms and GSU’s downtown campus. The school is building a massive student housing complex on the 7-acre site of the former Beaudry Ford dealership on Piedmont Road that will open this fall.

“Thanks to the efforts of many individuals within the University System, the transfer of Georgia State’s Village will provide resources needed to build more student housing on our campus, a component of our updated master plan that calls for an additional 4,500 beds over the next 10 years,” Patton said in a statement….

16. “Governor in Norco to push prison overhaul” (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA), March 7, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

By Mark Petix, Staff Writer

Assemblyman Todd Spitzer stands behind Gov. Schwarzenegger at Norco. (Marc Campos/Staff photographer)

NORCO - Using the overcrowded California Rehabilitation Center as a backdrop, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pressed his demands Tuesday for an immediate overhaul of the state’s prison system….

Schwarzenegger came to Norco to promote a $10.9 billion plan that includes adding 16,000 state prison beds, 45,000 local jail beds and 10,000 medical and mental health beds….

A federal judge has threatened to impose an early release program as soon as this summer if action isn’t taken….

“There is a real urgency,” the governor said. “I have called on the Legislature to act. If we don’t solve the problem, the federal courts will solve it for us, and that means a cap.”

He said that would mean thousands of criminals roaming the streets and money taken from education and health care to build prisons….

Accompanied by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary James Tilton and Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, Schwarzenegger toured a gym meant for rehabilitation that instead houses 300 men sleeping in double bunks….

Spitzer, chairman of the state’s select committee on prisons and prison construction, said there also must be room in state prisons for those who need to be taken off the street.

He cited the recent gang killing of a 14-year-old Harbor Gateway girl as one terrible example.

“We are jeopardizing public safety,” he said. “There’s no room for the people who should be in jail. Gangs take over the streets, they’re killing our children and we don’t have room in prison for them.”…

17. “Plan Would Move Wards Closer To Home - Proposal Aims To Ease State Prison Problems” (San Jose Mercury News, March 7, 2007); story citing TODD SPITZER (MPP/JD 1989).

By Karen De Sa and Edwin Garcia, Mercury News

Aiming to cut costs and speed reforms in California’s troubled youth prison system, state officials are suddenly proposing what advocates have spent 20 years fighting for: transferring all non-violent offenders and all girls and young women back to their home communities.

Versions of the plan to keep juvenile offenders out of the state’s violent lockdowns have been tried before. But this time there’s unexpected urgency from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration. The plan would save taxpayers at least $42.9 million, put youthful offenders in more treatment-focused, county-run programs and—as a bonus—free up cells that could ease the adult prison overcrowding crisis….

Under the governor’s proposed population reduction, the reform effort would proceed—but for only the most violent and serious offenders, approximately half of those in custody.

Unconvinced, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, has introduced a bill to simply eliminate the Division of Juvenile Justice, a piece of the overarching Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation she said is ‘‘fundamentally broken.’’

Some Republicans agree with that assessment. ‘‘The state’s motive here is to completely get out of the youth correctional business,’’ said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange. ‘‘The state is realizing that both in the adult and youth side, it is failing miserably.’’…

By Matt Krupnick - Times Staff Writer

High living costs and financial aid shortfalls prevent many California students from attending the state’s community colleges, where student fees are the lowest in the nation, according to a study released today.

Fees, which were lowered to $20 per unit this year, make up an average of less than 5 percent of the costs for community college students, according to the report from the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Books, rent and health insurance all cost far more than fees, the study found.

Fees are waived for more than half of full-time students because they are in the lowest income brackets. Researchers urged policymakers to focus more on adding scholarships than lowering fees to best serve the more than 2.5 million students on 109 California campuses.

“The state has underinvested in student aid,” said William Zumeta, one of the report’s two authors. “The fee rollbacks don’t do these students any good because they already get fee waivers.”

With housing costs and book prices rising faster than inflation, financial aid continues to lag far behind the costs of attending college, researchers said. The maximum award of the Cal Grant B scholarship, used to pay costs other than school fees, is $1,551, or 15 percent higher than it was 20 years ago.

The report noted that California’s community college students are far less likely to apply for and receive federal financial aid than students in other states. About 15 percent of California students receive Pell grants, the most common federal scholarship, compared with 25 percent of community college students in other states.

Researchers recommended that the state gradually raise community college fees at the pace of inflation and spend the extra money on academic improvements and improving transfer rates and financial aid counseling.

Education experts lauded the report and said lawmakers would do well to follow the recommendations.

“We’ve just been so fixated on fees,” said Nancy Shulock, a Sacramento State professor who heads the school’s Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy. “Our students are not well served by that.”…

[William Zumeta was also cited in another story in the Ventura County Star: http://www1.venturacountystar.com/vcs/state/article/0,1375,VCS_122_5400690,00.html ]

By Erik N. Nelson, Staff Writer

When Bay Area voters helped approve the $20 billion Proposition 1B transportation bond in November, it’s likely few of them knew how well their area would make out when the money was divided up….

Thanks to an allocation formula that uses transit agency revenue from fares and local taxes, the area’s high-rolling entities are pulling in the bulk of that funding. San Francisco Muni, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, AC Transit, Caltrain and Golden Gate Transit will reap a combined $897.5 million….

Most of the remaining money [an estimated total of nearly $1.3 billion], $153 million, would go into the Lifeline transit program to benefit low-income riders who rely heavily on public transportation. That would be divided among the area’s transit agencies by local congestion management agencies.

The transit funding bonanza even won praise from activists who opposed the transportation bond in November.

“This transit money is coming at a critical time when we have a lot of projects that just need that last dollar,” said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Oakland-based Transportation and Land Use Coalition. The coalition, which generally supports public transportation, opposed Proposition 1B because it would lock in state spending even during tight budget times when the money might be needed for social service programs.

For the Bay Area alone, “there are approximately $5 billion in transit needs over a 25-year period that are unfunded,” Cohen said. “We hope that the transit agencies look at this money and prioritize fixing the system.”

The new money hasn’t softened the coalition’s position, however, said Cohen, who noted that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has reduced public transit funding in his annual state budget proposal.

20. “McClatchy closes its sale of Minneapolis newspaper” (Sacramento Bee, March 6, 2007); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981); http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/133043.html

By Dale Kasler - Bee Staff Writer

The McClatchy Co. completed the sale of its largest newspaper Monday, transferring the Star Tribune of Minneapolis to a private equity firm.

The sale to Avista Capital Partners fetched $690 million, including $160 million worth of tax benefits. That’s a little more than half the $1.2 billion that Sacramento-based McClatchy paid for the paper in 1998, and the relatively low price has caused anxiety among some investors….

McClatchy Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said the price was fair in today’s climate. As a multiple of annual cash flow—the standard method for valuing a newspaper—the price was higher than what McClatchy paid for Knight Ridder Inc. and what McClatchy earned, after taxes, for selling 12 of the Knight Ridder papers.

“We were congratulated for the other deals,” Pruitt said in a recent interview. “In selling the Star Tribune for what amounts to a higher multiple, we were criticized. This is why you can’t pay too much attention to short-term sentiment.”

The advertising slump that has beset the industry has been particularly harsh on big-city papers like the Star Tribune. Although it had generated $1 billion worth of cash for McClatchy in eight years and remained profitable, it had become McClatchy’s “worst performing paper,” Pruitt said.

Larry Grimes of W.B. Grimes & Co., a media investment bank in Maryland, wondered why McClatchy didn’t hold a public auction in an effort to flush out higher bids.

Pruitt said McClatchy quietly sounded out potential buyers and decided a public auction would have delayed things without guaranteeing a higher price.

“The Star Tribune’s revenues were in decline, and we felt that moving more quickly was in our interest,” he said.

The deal makes McClatchy the third largest U.S. newspaper chain, behind Gannett Co. and Tribune Co….

Number crunchers have offered a glimpse of California’s future and there is a distinct shadow over it.

A variety of public services—from education to environmental protection to assistance for low-income infants and women—could get squeezed.

Too often, programs for the elderly, disabled and low-income women and children are the first ones targeted to save government money.

We urge that, this time, if state budget cuts are required, that the ax be wielded far from the neediest and most vulnerable in our communities.

In her annual review of the governor’s proposed budget, released Feb. 21, California’s nonpartisan legislative analyst, Elizabeth G. Hill, warned that anticipated tax revenues of up to $2 billion—revenue that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger relies on to balance his fiscal 2007-08 budget—won’t be there.

To avoid a shortfall in the coming fiscal year, she urged lawmakers to trim $600 million from schools and for the governor to cancel more than $1 billion in other spending….

Ms. Hill pointed out that the $600 million in education funds represents less than 1 percent of education spending in the state and that it is unlikely all of it will even be spent….

Ms. Hill noted that without the corrective actions she prescribes, the state will have a $726 million shortfall at the end of the 2007-08 budget year—not the $2.1 billion surplus the governor predicted.

Then, there are clouds from the federal government.

The same day Ms. Hill gave her review, the nonprofit California Budget Project released a report showing how President Bush’s $2.9 billion proposed fiscal year 2008 budget which calls for sizable reductions in domestic discretionary spending—will affect California….

22. “School group loses lawsuit, plans appeal” (Oakland Tribune, March 3, 2007); story citing RICHARD WINNIE (MPP 1971); http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5349331

By Josh Richman - MediaNews Staff

A group hoping to build a Christian school near Castro Valley lost its lawsuit against Alameda County on Friday but vowed to keep its decade-long legal battle alive with an appeal.

County Counsel Richard Winnie declared victory Friday afternoon.

“A jury verdict is much more powerful than the ruling of a judge. It says that 10 objective people have heard two weeks of evidence and made a decision,” he said. “And basically, they have said that this case is dead, dead, dead.”

Not so, said Becket Fund for Religious Liberty litigation director Derek Gaubatz, whose Washington, D.C.-based nondenominational nonprofit group is co-counsel for Redwood Christian Schools.

“We lost round one, but it’s only round one,” Gaubatz said in a news release….

Redwood Christian … invoked the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, which says government can’t impose land-use regulations that put a substantial burden upon someone’s religious exercise unless that burden furthers a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of achieving that interest.

But the county’s lawyers, led by San Francisco attorney Jon Keker, said a local municipal advisory board, the county’s planning commission and the Board of Supervisors all concluded the project was too heavy a use for the semirural land outside the Castro Valley Urban Area’s borders. And the land use law doesn’t apply here because Redwood Christian isn’t a church, they said, but rather a school engaged mostly in secular activities.

Winnie said Friday that although the county has the utmost respect for Redwood Christian Schools as a group of good-intentioned parents and teachers eager to provide children with a quality education, he has little respect for the Becket Fund.

“I think the Becket Fund made a real mistake in talking a well-meaning board into not dealing with the neighbors, but instead relying on a lawsuit to get this school built,” he said. “It’s taken five years, they’re no closer to having a school, and they’ve wasted a lot of people’s time and money. ... They were badly advised.”…

By Clea Benson - Bee Capitol Bureau

Dr. Sarah Marshall, speaking in English, talks with Carmen Ramos at UC Davis Medical Center on Thursday. In the monitor at right, Inez Talbott translates into Spanish. Under the new regulations, health maintenance organizations must provide care in a language patients can understand. Sacramento Bee/Brian Baer

At the UC Davis Medical Center on Thursday, Carmen and Julio Ramos came in for a checkup.

Their doctor, Sarah Marshall, was there. And so was a medical translator, beaming in via a computer screen from a central translation room a few floors away to help the Ramoses communicate with their English-speaking doctor in Spanish.

Under new state regulations that went into effect last week, that kind of language assistance will become more common in medical facilities throughout California.

Health maintenance organizations must now ensure that their members receive services in a language that they understand, consumer groups and officials at the California Department of Managed Health Care said Thursday….

At the UC Davis Medical Center, interpreters stand ready to translate medical information into 18 different languages, said Inez Talbott, manager of medical interpreting services. The service is used about 1,000 times a week.

But in medical facilities that do not have those kinds of services, children are often called in to serve as translators for their parents, and non-English-speaking patients sometimes go without needed care because they are intimidated, said Cindy Ehnes, director of the DMHC. She called the new rules “groundbreaking.”

“I have heard dozens of stories of people confused and frightened when visiting the doctor because of a language barrier,” Ehnes said….

The California Pan-Ethnic Health Network [under policy director, Marty Martinez], a San Francisco nonprofit group that sponsored the legislation, and Health Access, another consumer group, plan to monitor compliance….

By Sarah Elizabeth Villicana, The Porterville Recorder

A $70 million road project to expand the stretch of highway linking Visalia and Hanford will break ground in 2009.

California Transportation Commission officials on Wednesday divvied up more than $4 billion in bond money voters approved in November for highway construction, approving car pool lanes, a tunnel and other projects….

Many lawmakers and transportation experts, however, say the allocation made only a dent in California’s overall highway needs….

[Transportation advocates] noted that twice as many highway projects—more than 100 that regional agencies nominated—went unfunded because there wasn’t enough money in the bond.

The transportation commission estimated last year that unfunded transportation needs in California would hit $160 billion by the end of the decade.

The short list of highway projects the transportation commission funded Wednesday illustrates that the state cannot fix all its woes with bond money, said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Oakland-based Transportation and Land Use Coalition….

25. “UNICEF Chief - Child Mortality Declining in Ethiopia” (US Fed News, March 1, 2007); story citing ANN VENEMAN (MPP 1971).

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- UNICEF Executive Director, Ann Veneman said child mortality in Ethiopia has fallen by 40 per cent over the past 15 years and steady development progress is being made in other areas as well.

The visiting head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said, under-five mortality rates have steadily declined in Ethiopia down from peak levels in 1990. However children under the age of five are still dying from preventable causes each year.

“We must build upon these gains to further improve the lives of children,” said Veneman.

“Partnerships are essential for Ethiopia’s success against the challenges of poverty, disease, nutrition, protection and education. We must act with urgency and build on our achievements so that Ethiopia’s children not only survive, but thrive,” said Veneman.

The Enhanced Outreach Strategy for child survival—the largest ever collaboration between the UN and the Government of Ethiopia—and the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) campaign, are two examples of these partnerships, according to the release….

26. “XM, iPod can’t touch that dial” (Christian Science Monitor, February 23, 2007); story citing DEREK TURNER (MPP 2006); http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p11s02-algn.htm

By Clayton Collins Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Satellite-radio firms XM and Sirius announced this week their intention to merge in the interest of boosting program offerings that now reach a combined 14 million listeners.

Meanwhile, consumer interest grows around high-definition (HD) radio—which lets even “terrestrial” programmers deliver digital clarity and also piggyback multiple signals for simultaneous broadcast….

But even as HD promises new levels of clarity for many listeners … consolidation of the broadcast industry has threatened that vital localness by imposing cookie-cutter playlists and formats, some experts say.

A recent draft FCC report showed a nearly 6 percent increase in the number of commercial radio stations in the US between 1996 (a year of major deregulation) and 2003. The same report indicates the number of radio-station owners declined by 35 percent….

“As you get consolidation on the national level seeping down to the local level, what you get is a loss of local content,” says Derek Turner, research director at Free Press, a Washington-based organization that advocates public participation in media-policy debates. “You don’t have local artists being able to break through anymore because these stations are dictated a format and a playlist from the top down.”…

27. “Inflation climbs, spooking Wall Street” (Orlando Sentinel, February 22, 2007); story citing MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).

By Shobhaha Chandra, Bloomberg News

Consumer prices rose more than forecast in January, giving credence to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s message that inflation remains the central bank’s primary concern.

The Consumer Price Index increased 0.2 percent as Americans paid more for food, medical care and air travel, the Labor Department said Wednesday in Washington. Prices excluding food and energy rose 0.3 percent, the most since June….

The CPI figures show that inflation, which policymakers anticipate will gradually recede in the next two years, isn’t dissipating easily. Treasury notes fell on speculation that the report will strengthen the Fed’s resolve not to cut interest rates in coming months.

“This is kind of a wake-up call to the market,” said Mickey Levy, chief economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. Inflation “is sticky, so it’s still on the front burner of concerns for the Fed.”…

By Robert Lewis - Correspondent

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates this week outlined an ambitious vision of Berkeley’s future in which the city will be a hub for innovative businesses, a cultural center and a leader in the fight against global warming.

While the mayor’s annual State of the City speech took an optimistic view of Berkeley’s prospects, officials at Tuesday’s City Council meeting were also realistic—looking ahead to the troubling budgetary issues facing the city….

Like many in [standing-room-only] attendance, [Jinky Gardner, president of the League of Women Voters for Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville] appreciated the mayor’s proposals but also understood the fiscal realities facing a city with increased service needs and an aging infrastructure….

Bates devoted a good portion of his speech to the local economy.

Berkeley needs to attract the next generation of innovative and environmentally conscious companies, and support the city’s unique shops and businesses, he said. To that end, he called for more flexible zoning regulations to help spur economic development….

There was some short-term good news on the financial front. Officials anticipate an extra $3.3 million in revenue for the 2007 fiscal year, said City Manager Phil Kamlarz, in a second-quarter budget update….

While the money will help, it will not “come close to touching the entire city need,” budget manager Tracy Vesely said.

City departments have steadily trimmed their budgets, primarily through staff cuts and hiring freezes….

At some point, voters might need to consider tax measures, including one to fund public safety as well as a measure to pay for infrastructure upgrades, said Cisco DeVries, the mayor’s chief of staff.

“There’s a lot of challenges on the horizon,” DeVries said….

29. “OPINION: An appeal: More facts, less bluster” (Times, The (Shreveport, LA), February 21, 2007); op-ed citing ROBERT ENTMAN (MPP/PhD 1980).

By Emily Metzgar

Last week, LSU’s Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs hosted a presentation by Professor Robert Entman of The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. Entman’s presentation was titled, “When Policy Fails: A Discussion of Media & Democratic Accountability in the Iraq War.”

The presentation focused on the role of media coverage in American politics, both leading to the war in Iraq and continuing through today. Specific to that media coverage, Entman identified what he calls the “accountability gap” or the “mismatch between media content and public policy results” concerning media coverage of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Entman’s core argument is that a functioning democracy requires a questioning, discerning and critical press. Moreover, he argues, when the press fails in performing that duty, public policy disaster ensues.

The implications of this “accountability gap” are straightforward: When the media doesn’t present a fact-based narrative contradicting official talking points and rhetorical spin, then there is little pressure on leadership to either acknowledge public dissatisfaction with offending policies or to actually revise the failed policies themselves.

Does anything about that dynamic sound familiar to readers in Louisiana?…

30. “Fat chance: Has Murphy made a big mistake?” (Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2007); story citing ROBERT ENTMAN (MPP/PhD 1980).

By Los Angeles Times

Eddie Murphy’s on the verge of an awards season trifecta—his charismatic portrayal of a tragic R&B singer in “Dreamgirls” already has nabbed him a Screen Actors Guild award and a Golden Globe, and he’s considered a front-runner for a best supporting Oscar.

But the most high-profile image of Murphy these days—while Oscar ballots still are out—is on billboards and in movie trailers wearing a fat suit, garish eye shadow and little else.

The tagline for his new comedy, “Norbit,” poses the question: “Have you ever made a really big mistake?”

Some Oscar observers are questioning the timing of the movie’s Friday arrival, and whether it may unintentionally put off potential academy voters, while some black activists are taking Murphy to task for engaging in what they say are demeaning racial stereotypes….

Award season aside, Murphy and “Norbit” are under fire from some black activists who say the film is just the latest to build a movie around a black man dressing up as an unsophisticated, overweight black woman. Adding fuel to their anger is the movie’s release during Black History Month.

“For Eddie to follow what he did with ‘Dreamgirls’ with this just doesn’t make sense,” said Robert Entman, author of “The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America.” “There’s no excuse for him to lend his prestige to something like this. ... There has to be a point where African-American stars of his stature have to take some responsibility for their actions and just say no.”…

[Robert Entman’s The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (University of Chicago Press, 2000, with Andrew Rojecki) won three awards, including the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University.]

31. “Leading the way out of global climate change is vital” (Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN), February 6, 2007; op-ed by KEVIN GURNEY (MPP 1996).

By Kevin Gurney (For the Journal & Courier)

Assistant Professor Kevin Gurney of Purdue University is associate director of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center.

Friday was an important day for those of us who work on the science of climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a collective of 2,500 international climate scientists, released a long-awaited summary report on what is and isn’t known about global warming. It paints a picture of a world that has warmed predominantly due to human activity and a future that will see an acceleration of this trend unless mitigating steps are taken….

… 11 of the last 12 years are among the 12 hottest years on record; the number of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas; more intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since 1970; summer Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk by more than 20 percent since 1978; it is likely that hurricanes will become more intense; it is likely that longer, more intense heat and rainfall events will become more numerous; some work shows that late-summer Arctic sea ice will disappear this century; and by the end of the 21st century, global average sea level will rise by 7 inches to 23 inches above recent levels.

This sobering assessment is remarkable not because of its conclusions but because of the increasing confidence of the observations and projections. This moves the challenge from one of scientific research to the arena of policy, leadership and private action. It is this mixture of public and private choices that make the challenge of climate change an opportunity.

To most, the use of “opportunity” is a surprising way to describe such a serious environmental problem. The near-term needs to slow climate change involve actions and policies that have cobenefits.

For example, replacing home incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs not only cuts the pollutant emissions associated with your home lighting, but it cuts your home electric lighting bill by roughly three-quarters, putting those savings in your pocket.

Tackling this problem will not be solved solely by consumers. Policies constructed at the community to national level are needed. Examples: Flexible limits on greenhouse gas emissions and more use of biofuel sources and incentives to unleash the creative ability of the private sector to offer new energy systems or emission-reducing technologies.

The key is the need for honest leadership on this issue. The challenges and opportunities that climate change poses must be part of the dialogue of those running for city council and the presidency. We need an honest dialogue reflecting the seriousness of this issue combined with a confidence that we can solve this problem with the same inventiveness and creativity that the U.S. economy has exhibited in facing acid rain and ozone depletion….

[Kevin Gurney was also interviewed in a Q&A column published in the Journal & Courier, February 11, 2007.]

By Peter Grier, Gail Russell Chaddock - Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

“Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2008: Historical Tables,” GPO/Rich Clabaugh–Staff

President Bush’s new proposed budget represents an attempt to make permanent some of his key changes in US domestic policy, while challenging the fiscal priorities of the new Democratic- controlled Congress.

What it may not represent is an easy pathway to the land of black ink. While the White House plan projects a balanced budget by 2012, some of its assumptions about future government spending are unrealistic, say some budget analysts.

In essence, the Bush budget may promise a budgetary nirvana in the future, while avoiding some of the messy details about the way that nirvana might be reached.

“They’re trying to get you to focus on 2012 instead of 2008,” says Stan Collender, a veteran federal budget expert and managing director of Qorvis Communications….

Republicans in Congress say that, overall, Bush showed fiscal responsibility with his plan, and that if the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill were serious about balancing the budget, it should work with the White House, not criticize it….

Critics of the Bush plan, however, say it is notable for what it excluded. For one, the White House made no serious attempt to pencil in post-2008 war costs, says Mr. Collender of Qorvis.

Nor did it include the cost of changing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a levy aimed at the wealthy that increasingly hits middle-class taxpayers. An AMT change is anticipated by lawmakers of both parties.

“Proposals that provide long-term savings are fully included in the Bush budget,” says Collender. “Proposals that provide long-term increases [in spending], like the Iraq war or an AMT change, are not included.”

Under assumptions that the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group, considers more plausible, Uncle Sam will remain $400 billion in the red in 2012. These assumptions include discretionary spending that keeps up with the increase in the gross domestic product, and a continuation of other current policies.

33. “Budget deal seems unlikely” (Associated Press, Erie Times-News (PA), February 7, 2007); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).

By Andrew Taylor - Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Many of the necessary ingredients are there for the budget chefs in Washington to whip up a bipartisan deal….

Big budget agreements like a 1997 deal forged by President Clinton and congressional Republicans often occur in odd-numbered, nonelection years like this one. Then, like now, tax revenues were surging, and that made it much easier to grease the deal—as did Clinton’s willingness to call for Medicare cuts when submitting his budget that year.

It’s often easier to take painful steps such as cutting benefit programs or raising taxes when the government is split between the two parties. That way, both share the political heat. That’s what happened in 1990, when congressional Democrats and President Bush’s father enacted a major deficit-cutting deal.

But that 1990 deal—in which the elder Bush broke his “read my lips” pledge on taxes—had big political consequences for George H.W. Bush, who lost his re-election bid.

And a tax-laden 1993 bill, passed with only Democratic votes, contributed to a Democratic disaster at the hands of voters the next year.

That’s the rub: Voters often punish politicians who take difficult steps on the budget. That may be why GOP leaders on Capitol Hill are in no hurry to work with Democrats on the budget….

Bush’s GOP allies in Congress have made it clear they’ll insist on no rollbacks on his tax cuts—even though such an agreement might make some of the tax cuts permanent instead of expiring at the end of 2010….

And if Democrats fall on their faces and are unable to pass a budget blueprint, that may be OK with the GOP, too….

“The president’s looking for a legacy and Republicans in Congress are looking to regain power, and it’s not clear that compromise on the budget helps congressional Republicans get back the majority,” said longtime budget expert Stan Collender, managing director at Qorvis Communications.

By Delthia Ricks. Staff Writer

ARLINGTON, Va. - A top biodefense adviser in the Bush administration acknowledged Friday that people are tiring of the drumbeat about pandemic flu, but he characterized the threat as real and urged countries worldwide to quicken the pace of drug development and vaccine research.

“This needs to be a priority. People have already begun to talk about pandemic fatigue,” said Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, President George W. Bush’s special assistant on biodefense in the Department of Homeland Security.

Venkayya, addressing 300 infectious disease specialists and public health officials from around the country attending an influenza conference here, underscored that preparing for pandemic flu puts in place vital resources in the event of bioterrorism….

Venkayya said that if a flu strain comparable to the deadly flu virus that triggered the 1918 pandemic were to strike today, an estimated 350,000 children nationwide would die within two months. The 1918 outbreak was the deadliest flu season in the history of humankind. An estimated 50 million people died worldwide.

Other experts who addressed the meeting emphasized that the threat of a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 flu is not imminent. But the potential menace remains alive, they said, because of the continuing presence of H5N1, the virus that causes bird flu.

Dr. Timothy Uyeki, an influenza expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said H5N1 has undergone so many mutations that numerous subtypes are now circulating worldwide. Birds, he said, are in the midst of a sweeping pandemic.

“This is an enormous agricultural problem,” Uyeki said. “The impact is global.”

More than 50 countries, he said, have reported evidence of H5N1 since 2003 when the virus re-emerged. The pathogen was first recognized as a threat in 1997 when scores of birds in Hong Kong were infected and a few bird-to-human cases demonstrated its lethality….

By Rob Rogers - IJ reporter

Affordable housing advocates are urging environmentalists to support the housing cause as a way to fight global warming.

“Almost everything we’re doing with global warming goes back to land use,” said Stuart Cohen, co-founder of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, at a luncheon Thursday sponsored by the Ecumenical Association for Housing, now known as EAH Housing.

“Affordable housing residents have the highest use of public transportation, statistically, in the area,” Cohen said. “All of you who are working for affordable housing will be able to look your children and grandchildren in the eye and say you did the most important thing possible to fight global warming.”

Cohen and other speakers took aim at environmentalists and others who have blocked affordable housing developments in Marin County, such as a proposed Habitat for Humanity project in unincorporated Strawberry….

Environmentalists should support mixed-use affordable housing developments—which combine residential and retail units—because people who live there tend to drive less and use public transportation more, Cohen argued.

“A recent study by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District says that transportation is responsible for 50 percent of the Bay Area’s greenhouse gas emissions,” said Cohen, whose organization campaigns on behalf of public transportation. “A lot of that is because of land use. It’s difficult to get into or out of this area without using the auto. We have to do what we can to grow around public transit. Those who live less than half a mile from public transportation are four times or more less likely to own a car.”

According to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, low-income residents take half as many car trips per day as high-income residents, and own an average of 1.35 vehicles, in contrast to high-income residents’ 2.45.

Cohen urged Marin leaders to push for a reduction in the parking requirements for affordable housing developments, encouraging residents to use public transportation.

“Our current planning codes present the biggest obstacle to placing a lot of affordable housing near transportation,” Cohen said….

[Stuart Cohen was also featured in a report aired on ABC7 TV News, March 25, 2007.]

36. “Letters: Fuel economy standards” (Kansas City Star, The (MO), February 1, 2007); Letter to the Editor citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992).

To the Editor:

…The fuel economy standards for cars (27.5 mpg in 2007) are much stricter than those for light trucks (22.2 mpg in 2007).

Raising the fuel economy standard for SUVs and other light trucks by just one mile per gallon per year over the next five years to 27.2 mpg by model year 2012 could save one million barrels of oil per day by 2020, according to Roland Hwang, vehicles policy Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. That’s twice as much oil as we buy from Iraq, and three-quarters of our daily imports from Saudi Arabia.

--Paul T. Hirth Olathe

37. “Helping the upper classes. Even that can be part of state healthcare reform” (Ventura County Star (CA), January 31, 2007); opinion column citing study by DAVID CARROLL (MPP 2000).

The state of California will help you save money for retirement by not taxing that portion of your income you contribute each year to your 401(k) retirement savings plan.

The state of California will help you save money for your kids’ college education by allowing you to earn tax-deferred earnings on money placed in a Scholarshare account….

But the state of California won’t help you save money to put aside in case you or someone in your family gets sick.

Uncle Sam will help you save for that, but California won’t.

Whether that changes this year will be a big test of whether a bipartisan spirit actually exists in Sacramento to tackle the healthcare reform challenge, as Democrats and Republicans alike say they want to do….

Democrats in the Legislature have reflexively opposed past proposals to give [Health Savings Accounts] tax-favored status in California … partly because some Republicans insist on overselling the benefits by insisting these accounts are a panacea that will solve nearly everything that ails America’s broken healthcare system.

They are not a panacea.

As the California Budget Project—a nonpartisan outfit that champions programs for the poor—points out in a recent report [by David Carroll], Health Savings Accounts offer no tangible benefit to any California family of four with an income of $47,671 or less. Such families pay not a penny in state income taxes, so they would receive no benefit from being able to subtract contributions to a Health Savings Account from their taxable incomes.

The report further notes that about two-thirds of the 6.5 million Californians without health insurance have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level—which means that the encouragement of Health Savings Accounts alone would do almost nothing to help the uninsured….

[To read “Health Savings Accounts: No Solution for the Uninsured” by David Carroll go to www.cbp.org .]

38. “Editorial: Coverage Should Be Priority For Bush” (San Jose Mercury News, January 30, 2007); editorial citing study by DAVID CARROLL (MPP 2000).

When it comes to health care reform on the national or state level, coverage for uninsured children should be the first priority. Every one pretty much agrees on that.

Except, perhaps, President Bush.

The president knows that the decade-old, $5 billion federal program that helps provide coverage for more than 6 million American children is set to expire Sept. 30. But his silence on the issue during his State of the Union address last week was deafening.

The president should make it clear that he wants to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP. And Congress should push him to find money in the federal budget to help states expand the program until all 8 million uninsured children in the United States have coverage….

Even though covering children is less expensive than covering adults, it’s still not cheap. According to the California Budget Project [in a policy brief prepared by David Carroll], the state will need more than $2 billion during the next five years just to support the current program.

But Bush must understand that the long-term savings and the benefits to society will more than justify the short-term costs. Fortunately, there are plenty of governors and lawmakers in his own party who can explain it to him.

[To read “SCHIP Reauthorization: President Proposes Insufficient Funding for Healthy Families” by David Carroll go to www.cbp.org .]

39. “Uninsured find a way. Health care access exists for illegal immigrants” (San Diego Union-Tribune, January 30, 2007); story citing RUTH LIU (MPP 1999).

By Cheryl Clark; Staff Writer

It might be called America’s, and San Diego County’s, not-so-little secret.

Ask most people where illegal immigrants get health care and they’ll say a hospital emergency room or obstetrics unit.

In truth, many of the nation’s roughly 12 million illegal immigrants obtain free or low-cost medical services—emergency as well as outpatient—through a much broader patchwork of clinics, hospitals and doctors. Expenses not covered by Uncle Sam, states or counties are quietly passed on to health insurance premiums that employers and the insured pay.

In this context, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recently announced health-care plan would ostensibly use existing and new funds to legitimize insurance coverage for undocumented adults and children. About 2.5 million to 3 million illegal immigrants live in the state, although there’s no authoritative estimate….

The Schwarzenegger administration argues that his proposal would save taxpayers money by emphasizing preventive care, which is much cheaper than treatment in the ER….

In San Diego County, about 10 percent of patients treated in hospital emergency rooms are illegal immigrants, according to a recent survey by the county’s Health and Human Services Agency and the nonprofit coalition Community Health Improvement Partners.

“Just in San Diego County, taxpayers are paying $56 million, (much of it) on emergency care for the undocumented,” said Ruth Liu, associate secretary of health policy for the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Liu added that Schwarzenegger’s plan would expand health coverage for undocumented children because they “are going to school, and if a child has a communicable disease, (he/she) is sitting right next to a child here legally.”…

40. “California Health Plan Has Budget Hawks Antsy” (Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2007); story citing MARIAN MULKEY (MPP/MPH 1989).

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar

WASHINGTON -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants $3.7 billion a year in new federal funding to cover a big chunk of his health-care plan for his state, putting him on a collision course with budget hawks in the nation’s capital and leaders in other states seeking assistance.

The sheer size of the federal allocation Schwarzenegger’s plan would require is raising eyebrows….

The cost of helping states fund their health plans has attracted the attention of budget cutters, because it is complicating President Bush’s stated goal of balancing the federal budget in five years. In his new budget, scheduled to go to Congress on Monday, Bush is expected to call for a substantial slowdown in federal health-care spending. Some of the cuts Bush proposes could affect programs Schwarzenegger is counting on to help pay for his plan, such as Medicaid….

Washington may struggle to deal with demands for more money from California and other states, but some experts say federal policymakers in effect asked for it by taking little or no action to address the problems of the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.

“The reason this is being discussed in a serious way in Sacramento is because it really isn’t being confronted in Washington,” said Marian Mulkey, a health-insurance expert with the California HealthCare Foundation. “If (Washington) reacts negatively, it might just call the question of ‘What do they want to do next?’ What is Washington doing to address this, if this kind of state solution isn’t workable?”

Bush pledged in his State of the Union address … to work with states to cover the uninsured. But he made no commitment for more federal money—only redirection of some existing accounts….

41. “The Hidden Costs Of Regulating Pharmaceuticals” (Tampa Tribune, January 22, 2007); op-ed citing BENJAMIN ZYCHER (MPP/PhD 1974).

By Lawrence A. Hunter; Special To The Tampa Tribune

Record profits. Million-dollar bonuses. Billion-dollar sales.

Such “complaints” could apply to businesses across the board, from energy companies to the New York Yankees. But lately, they’ve been focused on one industry in particular—pharmaceuticals. And just the other day, the newly elected Congress confronted the industry’s supposed greediness by taking on the nation’s drug companies.

By a vote of 255-170, House lawmakers passed a bill giving Medicare bureaucrats the power to “negotiate” prices directly with pharmaceutical companies. In the coming weeks, the Senate will vote on the measure.

Drug-price negotiations may seem like a good idea—if a large entity like Wal-Mart can leverage its purchasing power to secure lower prices, why shouldn’t the government?

The problem lies in what is generally left unsaid. In a truly free market, both parties to the negotiation have the freedom to walk away.

If Wal-Mart refuses to pay Sony the price it demands for PlayStation 3s, then Sony can leave the table. This may harm Sony’s sales, as Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer, but Sony can decide that Wal-Mart’s offer is simply too low….

In the case of drug negotiations, it would be suicide for a company to walk away from the government’s offer, as taxpayers pay for nearly two-thirds of the nation’s drugs. Rather than cut themselves off from two-thirds of the market, drug companies would have no choice but to recoup their investments from the smaller market that is still accessible.

For those not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, this would lead to higher prices. And for all of us, it would mean fewer drugs and less choice….

And with profit eliminated as a motive for research into new cures, who knows how many potential drugs would be foregone? According to a comprehensive study published by the Manhattan Institute’s Benjamin Zycher, the amount of money dedicated to pharmaceutical research and development will decrease by $196 billion between now and 2025 if Medicare begins to negotiate drug prices. Considering that the average drug costs about $1 billion to develop, that means about 196 new drugs will never be invented….

Lawrence Hunter, Ph.D., is the former staff director of the congressional Joint Economic Committee. He currently serves as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry.

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr. - Globe Staff

Steven Belkin, the guy who wants to build Boston’s tallest building, is rich and successful. He blames an unhappy childhood.

“Money was always an issue,” he recalled recently of growing up in Grand Rapids, Mich. There was a lot of arguing, “a lot of shame.”...

Now 59, Belkin is chairman of Trans National Group, a $200-million-a-year complex of travel, telecom, and financial services companies….

Belkin’s business successes have been marked by two traits—vision and a willingness to take risks others won’t—that are firmly present in his bid to build a 1,000-foot tower. He was the only one who responded to Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s call for a skyscraper on the site of a city parking garage downtown….

His ideas, though, as rendered in the skyscraper design by famed architectural firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop for example, can be audacious.

Built essentially on stilts, Belkin’s tower will have at least two acres of green and open space below, between Federal and Devonshire streets.

“Skyscrapers should use the sky and give back the ground space,” he said. “We’re calling this a town green—a gathering spot in different times of day for different groups of people.”

In Piano’s bold design, even the top of the building would be public space—a restaurant and half-acre open-air park.

“When I talked to him about the building, what he had a high degree of passion about was how can we create something the community will use, because we want to invite them in,” said Norman Stein, vice president of development at the Boston Medical Center, who knows Belkin and his wife, Joan, from their philanthropic activities….

43. “Schwarzenegger’s health care idea draws cautious cheers” (San Mateo County Times, January 10, 2007); story citing MAYA ALTMAN (MPP 1985).

By Rebekah Gordon, Staff Writer

The devil, as they say, is in the details, and the governor’s plan to reform health care seems to be no exception.

San Mateo County officials, who have struggled to find a way to provide affordable health care for the county’s 60,000 uninsured adults, lauded Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for beginning the conversation in earnest in Sacramento on Monday.

But for many, his first-blush proposal also leaves as many questions as it does answers. Furthermore, the governor must get a buy-in from the legislature before anything can become reality, making what will really happen an unknown….

Maya Altman, the executive director of the Health Plan of San Mateo, which administers state programs like Medi-Cal, Healthy Kids and Healthy Families for the county, said the governor’s proposal was bolder and more extensive than she expected.

She praised the governor’s suggestions of universal health care for children, taking better advantage of federal funding, and mandating insurers guarantee coverage regardless of age or health status.

Increased Medi-Cal reimbursements could also be a boon, Altman said.

“What I’m hoping it’ll help with is our provider network, and convince these providers to take Medi-Cal,” she said….

By David Leonhardt

On a summer day a few years ago, a recent college graduate named Emily Oster was talking to her boyfriend about the research that was, and wasn’t, being done on the spread of AIDS. She was an aspiring economist at the time, getting ready to go to graduate school, and she was struck by the fact that her field had little to say about why some countries had such high H.I.V. rates.

To most people, that may not sound like a question an economist needs to be asking. It’s more the domain of epidemiologists or public health workers, and they were already doing good work on it.

But economists have been acting a lot like intellectual imperialists in the last decade or so. They have been using their tools—mainly the analysis of enormous piles of data to tease out cause and effect—to examine everything from politics to French wine vintages….

So during her time as a Ph.D. student at Harvard, the younger Ms. Oster took on AIDS in Africa. Her most provocative finding was that Africans didn’t really behave so differently from people in countries with much lower H.I.V. rates….at least relatively well-off, healthy Africans….

Poorer Africans, who of course make up the continent’s overwhelming majority, had made fewer changes. They had less of an incentive to practice safe sex, Ms. Oster concluded, because many of them could not expect to reach old age, whether or not they contracted H.I.V. Any attack on AIDS should therefore include an attack on poverty.

“This is not the kind of thing epidemiologists would do. It’s not the way they would have framed it,” Ms. Oster … said. “It’s an idea only an economist would love.”…

As “The Soulful Science,” a new book by Diane Coyle, puts it, there has been a “remarkable creative renaissance in how economics is addressing the most fundamental questions—and how it is starting to help solve problems.” The reams of data that computers can now crunch have ushered the field into a new golden age, Ms. Coyle writes, yet most of its accomplishments are not widely known.

So before this year’s [annual economics] conference, I did an informal poll of about 20 senior economists around the country and asked a single question: who are the young (untenured) economists doing work that is both highly respected among experts and relevant to the rest of us? Who, in other words, is the future of economics?…

Chart: “Economists to Watch” [in alphabetical order]

When a number of senior economists were asked which young, untenured economists were doing impressive work on real-world problems, these were the 13 young researchers whose names came up most often.

Raj Chetty, Berkeley

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Unemployment benefits and tax credits

Stefano DellaVigna, Berkeley

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: The decline in crime during the weekend a violent movie is released

Amy Finkelstein, M.I.T.

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Medicare’s role in increasing health spending

Roland Fryer, Harvard

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: The causes of racial inequality

Xavier Gabaix, M.I.T.

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: A rationale for chief executive pay

Matthew Gentzkow, Chicago

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: How newspapers cater to readers’ political views

Ulrike Malmendier, Berkeley

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Irrational behavior, among everyone from chief executives to eBay customers

Dean Karlan, Yale

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Microfinance in poor countries

Benjamin Olken, Harvard

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Corruption in Indonesia

Emily Oster, Chicago

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Health in developing countries

Jesse Rothstein, Princeton

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: What school choice doesn’t accomplish

Jesse Shapiro, Chicago

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: How television can benefit disadvantaged toddlers

Justin Wolfers, Penn

RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE: Online bettors’ success in predicting elections

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

1. “Wanted: Researchers. Biotechs hit with lack of scientists” (Oakland Tribune, March 31, 2007); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_5565126

From Staff Writer and Wire Reports

(Kimberly White Bloomberg News)

BAY AREA biotechnology companies, including Genentech Inc., Bayer Corp. and Gilead Sciences Inc., can’t find enough scientists to hire, threatening to slow one of the industries’ bolstering U.S. job growth.

South San Francisco-based Genentech’s work force doubled in the past four years to 10,500 and may rise 11 percent this year—if managers can locate biomedical scientists. Gilead of Foster City bought two companies last year, partly to get 200 skilled employees.

And the need to find good talent for Bayer’s Berkeley facility is so intense that the company often goes to job fairs in other areas of the country to look for scientists who may have recently been laid off from elsewhere….

Robert Reich, a former U.S. labor secretary and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, feels schools aren’t doing a good enough job in educating students in science.

“The big failing is in education, not only post-grad but also undergraduate and even K-12,” he said in an e-mail. “We do a lousy job of training our kids to be scientists.”…

Biotech companies that can’t hire in the U.S. will recruit foreign workers or open research centers overseas, said Reich, the former labor secretary. U.S. workers stand to miss out because the average biotech job pays $65,775 a year, compared with $39,003 in the overall private sector, according to the April 2006 study by Battelle….

2. “More U.S. college students studying clean energy” (Reuters, March 28, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSN2837232720070328?pageNumber=1

By Leonard Anderson

BERKELEY, Calif (Reuters) - Concern over global warming has more U.S. college students looking into careers in alternative energy, leading U.S. universities to add new courses on clean energy technologies and the environment.

“Students see an opportunity for challenging jobs and a way to do some good for the planet,” Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said.

The number of Berkeley undergraduates enrolled in introductory energy courses has almost tripled and a new graduate class in solar photovoltaics signed up 70 students, the largest course in recent memory at UC’s College of Engineering.

“Over the last two years, demand for energy courses is off the charts here,” Kammen said.

Berkeley and Stanford had to turn away attendees from renewable energy symposiums organized by students….

Ties to venture firms and clean-tech companies in the San Francisco area also are pursued by the new Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC), organized in 2005 by students at UC’s Haas School of Business….

3. “Budget dodges killer asteroids” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace: American Public Media [NPR], March 28, 2007); Listen to the commentary

Hard choices have to be made as Congress hammers out a new budget, but Robert Reich wonders why lawmakers aren’t throwing more cash NASA’s way to protect us from planetary destruction—and why other countries aren’t pitching in....

ROBERT REICH: According to a new report from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, some 100,000 asteroids and comets routinely pass between the Sun and the Earth’s orbit....

But the worrying news is NASA believes over 1,000 of these things are large enough—about a mile wide in diameter—and their orbits close enough to us, as to pose a real potential hazard of crashing into the Earth with such force as to end most life on this planet....

Congress has given NASA a budget of a little over $4 million a year to track these killer asteroids, but NASA says it needs at least a billion dollars more to find all of them by the year 2020....

All of which raises at least three pertinent questions.

First, if we’re spending over a billion dollars a day in Iraq, why can’t we bring the troops home a few days earlier and use the savings to track killer asteroids that might end life on Earth?

And since we’re talking about the survival of most living things and not just Americans, why shouldn’t we expect other nations to kick in some money, too—especially now that the dollar is dropping relative to the euro and the yen?

And third, once NASA knows for sure that a killer asteroid is heading directly for us, how exactly are we supposed to get ourselves out of its way, or it out of our way—and how much should we be budgeting to accomplish this?

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

4. “Bush, Automakers Talk Flex-Fuel Cars” (ABC7 TV News, March 26, 2007); features commentary by DAN KAMMEN; http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5154132

By Wayne Freedman

The president got a demonstration of various flex-fuel vehicles at the White House today—car builders showing the wave of the future. One problem, there are very few places that provide fuel for the ecologically friendly cars….

… Flex-fuel cars burn ethanol, a byproduct of corn or sugar cane. The good news is that Californians already own some 300,000 of them. The bad news is that if they wanted to fill up today, they would have to get past a security gate at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

Dan Kammen, Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley Energy Expert: “If you want to drive to San Diego, there is a public pump there.”

U.C. Berkeley Professor of Energy, Dan Kammen, applauds automakers for adding the flex-fuel option. In five years, they estimate half the cars on our roads will be able to run on blends of 85 percent ethanol, assuming they’re able to get it. Less than one percent of gas stations sell the fuel, now.

Dan Kammen, Ph.D.: “Once you get ethanol in the market, we’re going to have more supply, we’re going to have more diversity, we’re going to have competition. So it would benefit everybody.”…

By Gary Polakovic, Times Staff Writer

Standing in an empty field in southern Kings County facing the horizon, W. Quay Hays enthusiastically surveys the land—stark and featureless except for two newly planted redwood trees.

This desolate patch of San Joaquin Valley real estate along Interstate 5 is the spot Hays has chosen to pursue his vision for a new city: a utopia of 150,000 people living in a solar-powered, self-contained community rising from the dirt flats about 50 miles north of Bakersfield….

John M. Quigley, director of the Housing and Urban Policy program at UC Berkeley, said the task of building a new city is daunting. He said such projects are rare and tend to work when sustained by abundant natural resources or when built next to existing urban centers.

“There was a time about 25 years ago when a lot of attention was paid to building new cities in the United States, but most of them did not succeed,” Quigley said. “It’s difficult to pull off because the logistical and coordination aspects are enormous and the capital costs are huge. If I were an investor, I’d look at this very carefully.”…

By Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer

Dan Kammen, a public policy professor, wants UC Berkeley to identify social goals for the BP partnership before beginning research.

The $500 million BP biofuels deal may be one of the biggest things to hit UC Berkeley science since the A-bomb.

But Dan Kammen says science that big needs something else—a conscience to match.

Kammen, a public policy professor who holds an honorary title of Distinguished Professor of Energy, thinks the deal is a prime opportunity for the Berkeley campus to use technology as a force for social good, but fears the university could let the chance get away.

“The social goals of the project—enhancing food, fuel, social and environmental security for the full global population—must be as central as developing improved and more sustainable biofuels for the more affluent nations,” Kammen says.

He is one of many faculty members working to influence the university’s administration as it negotiates a 10-year agreement to create the BP-funded Energy Biosciences Institute housing 50 company researchers and 100 academic scientists and engineers.

The institute isn’t running yet, and no hiring decisions have been announced. But Cal’s proposal to BP lists Kammen as leading a group in analyzing the social and economic impacts of new biofuels.

His outspokenness now is partly an effort to make sure that the agreement with BP gives socioeconomic research a central role and includes people with firsthand knowledge of how the developing world would deal with the impact of new biofuels….

“Socially determined objectives must thus lead and direct this effort, not become relegated to ‘ambulance chasing,’ following behind a series of technically compelling yet socially questionable discoveries, papers or patents,” Kammen wrote in remarks submitted to a recent faculty forum.

If the project develops low-carbon fuels without fundamentally addressing the social needs of the world’s poor, it will have failed “no matter how many Nobel prizes” it generates, he wrote.

He wants the university to spell out the social goals at the outset to calm faculty criticism over how the partnership with BP will be governed and mediate conflicts between social and commercial values that may arise when the project is running….

As a physicist with a social vocation, Kammen’s interests focus on the energy, health and environmental impacts of putting new technologies in place in developing countries. He directs the university’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, which works on bringing energy innovations like small wind turbines to people in ways that make cultural and economic sense in everyday life….

Kammen, who has a lab in Nairobi, Kenya, is interested in what the new institute might mean for farmers in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa and would like to include in his end of the research such associates as Wangari Maathai, an environmental and political activist [a Goldman Environmental Prize winner] and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

“I’m pretty comfortable we’re going to come up with good crops for affluent farmers in Iowa,” Kammen said. “I’m not sure we have structures to come up with fuels for poor Ghanean or West African farmers. That’s my goal.’’

By Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer

Medical marijuana patients shop at HopeNet in San Francisco. Chronicle photo by Mike Kane.

A decade after Californians approved the medical use of marijuana, the state’s battle with the federal government over the use of marijuana still is being fought hard, with contradictory results….

Across California, smoking pot remains a gamble. Decisions over who gets busted and who doesn’t affect large numbers of medical pioneers, average smokers and make-a-buck dope dealers alike.

Last week, two federal court rulings in San Francisco gave contrasting victories in the dispute over whether the medical use of marijuana, approved by California voters, should be prosecuted or permitted.

On March 13, a federal judge gave a win to the medical marijuana forces, tossing out most of the U.S. charges against cannabis activist and writer Ed Rosenthal, saying a five-year campaign to put him behind bars gave “the appearance of vindictiveness.”

On the same day, however, another federal court ruled against Angel Raich, a severely ill Oakland woman who smokes marijuana to ease her chronic pain and had challenged U.S. laws against medical cannabis.

Federal seizures of California marijuana have risen steadily. Last year, Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested 594 people in the state on marijuana charges and confiscated 3 million marijuana plants, up from 359 people and 880,000 plants in 2001, according to official statistics.

Yet the number of medical cannabis dispensaries—authorized by Proposition 215, a 1996 state referendum allowing seriously ill adults to use marijuana with their doctor’s approval—has soared from about 100 to more than 300 throughout the state.

Federal and local authorities are at loggerheads over the issue.

“The priorities of the federal government are a bit misplaced in putting large amounts of resources into going after people for this,” said San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. “The vast majority of Californians and certainly San Franciscans believe that marijuana has medicinal purposes.”

Javier Pena, head of the DEA’s Northern California division, says state voters have no say over this matter. “Marijuana is still marijuana, and it’s still against federal statutes,” he said….

Robert MacCoun, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and Boalt Hall School of Law who is an expert on drug policy, says the debate over medical marijuana no longer is a hot button for Americans. Smoking pot is not as rampant as in its heyday of the 1970s, but it has become part of an established niche in society, he noted.

But the war over its use in American society continues.

In the Bush administration “Medical marijuana is seen as a Trojan horse for sneaking the legalization of marijuana through the gates, and many activists see medical marijuana as a great strategy for trying to soften marijuana laws overall,” said MacCoun. “Both sides are trying to fight a battle that has little to do with medical marijuana.”…

8. “Control CEO Pay By Taxing The Very Rich” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Radio, March 21, 2007); Listen to this commentary

KAI RYSSDAL (HOST): … This has been a big year for shareholder comments on CEO pay. Investors at more than 50 companies wanna have a say in how much the boss makes, and the House is working on some legislation along those lines. But Marketplace commentator Robert Reich thinks they’re missing the real issue.

ROBERT REICH (COMMENTATOR):

Depending on shareholders to reign in CEO pay is like relying on gamblers to reign in the owners of Las Vegas casinos. Shareholders don’t care about CEO pay. All they care about is that their shares go up. They might be concerned if the giant pay packages prevented their shares from rising, but that’s not been the case. Between 1980 and 2003, while CEO pay at America’s 500 largest companies rose six folds, adjusted for inflation, the average value of those companies also rose by a factor of six. But while shareholder returns have kept up with CEO pay, median wages have not….

Not since the era of the robber barons of the late 19th century has income and wealth been so concentrated as it is in 21st century America. This threatens our democracy as the wealthy bankroll politicians who, for example, keep the marginal tax rate on them lower than it’s been in 70 years even though the national debt is rising, as is the cost of keeping America secure, and our schools and health care systems are falling apart. The answer is not for Congress to give shareholders more say over CEO pay. The real answer is to enact a sharply higher marginal tax rate on yearly incomes of everyone above, say, a mere million.

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

By Matt Richtel

Silicon Valley’s technology investors have taken to the ramparts, threatening to tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance with innovations that use ethanol, solar and wind.

A chief champion of the cause has been Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the marquee venture capital firms. Its principals, John Doerr in particular, have passionately advocated development of alternative energies as a way to create energy independence and clean up the carbon-saturated atmosphere.

But Kleiner has also poured millions of dollars into Terralliance, a company that makes technology to enable more efficient drilling of oil and gas....

Daniel Kammen, professor in the energy and resources group at the University of California at Berkeley, said such investments by Kleiner and other firms that portray themselves as green-friendly are inconsistent with their marketing message.

“They’re being hypocritical,” he said of the firms. The former vice president Al Gore, the billionaire Richard Branson and other figures with ties to Silicon Valley’s green movement “should hold these companies to a higher standard.”

Still, Mr. Kammen acknowledged that venture capital firms like Kleiner deserve much credit for pushing an alternative-energy agenda. And their simultaneous interest in technologies oriented toward fossil fuels is understandable and defensible, given the huge market opportunity, he noted.

“High prices of oil facilitate more oil discoveries and more innovations that get more money out of oil,” he said....

10. “Let’s keep candidates off Wall Street” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Radio [NPR], March 14, 2007); Listen to this commentary

SCOTT JAGOW: Hillary Clinton gave a speech this week to the Wall Street investment bankers at Bear Stearns. A few weeks ago, Rudy Giuliani spoke. Bear Stearns has invited all the major presidential candidates to come and talk and raise money. Commentator Robert Reich doesn’t like it.

ROBERT REICH: I may be old-fashioned, but I liked it the old way when presidential candidates spent months trudging through New Hampshire and Iowa, addressing citizens at town meetings and in living rooms….

Now candidates spend less time addressing coffee klatches in Iowa and New Hampshire and more time addressing … well, investment banks.

Partly this is because the presidential election now starts long before even the first state primary, which means the major candidates on both sides are already national celebrities….

The big-state primaries will be air wars, where the candidates duke it out in television ads, followed by a general election requiring even more TV ads. And TV ads cost lots of money. It’s estimated that the 2008 presidential election will cost a total of over $2 billion—most of it going into television advertising….

And where do candidates in search of big bucks turn? Increasingly, to Wall Street.

In 2004, Wall Street contributed a total of $339 million to candidates for federal office, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. That’s about 60 percent more than the second-largest sources of funds, which were corporate lobbyists and lawyers.

But as presidential politics morphs from town meetings in Iowa to investment banking meetings on Wall Street, you gotta wonder what the presidential candidates are hearing about America.

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

By Richard Brenneman

UC Berkeley Professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich warned fellow faculty members about possible conflicts of academic freedom raised by UC Berkeley’s planned $500 million contract with British oil giant BP. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.

UC Berkeley professor and former cabinet officer Robert Reich must be feeling prophetic today, since the warning he issued about the use of a university’s good name to greenwash an oil industry giant has just cost Stanford $2.5 million.

During Thursday’s Academic Senate discussion of the half-billion-dollar planned pact between UC Berkeley and British oil giant BP, Reich cited ads run by Exxon Mobil shortly after it signed a 2002 agreement establishing a $100 million, 10-year research accord with the school across the bay.

The ads, which ran on the op-ed page of the New York Times, announced Exxon’s alliance “with the best minds at Stanford,” and carried the university’s seal and the signature of the Stanford professor heading up the research.

“One such ad read, ‘Although climate has varied throughout earth’s history from natural causes, today there is a lively debate about the planet’s response to more greenhouse gasses in the future,’” said Reich, drawing gasps from some in the audience.

That ongoing ad campaign has just cost [Stanford] university a $2.5 million donation already pledged by film producer Stephen Bing, a major Democratic contributor. He recently gave $50 million to Proposition 87, the failed November 2006 ballot measure that would have levied a 4 percent tax on oil companies to fund alternative energy research.

The San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday that Bing killed his pledge in response to the ads….

Just how responsible a corporation is BP? David Vogel, a professor at Haas School of Business and the Goldman School of Public Policy, said, “On balance, BP is a relatively responsible institution and I’m delighted that it has chosen to associate itself with a relatively responsible university.”

He cited the company’s adoption of a policy to disclose all payments to governments in developing countries and its efforts to clean up oil spills in Alaska and repair a Texas refinery where 15 people were killed and 200 injured in a 2006 explosion.

He also cited the retirement benefits given Lord Browne, the CEO during the spills and the era leading up to the Texas disaster. Browne “retired with £5.3 million and an annual pension of £1 million ... this may seem like a lot of money, but his counterpart the same year, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, retired with a retirement package of $400 million. Even if you do the currency, there’s a big difference.”…

Reich was the most cautious of the panelists except for [Professor Ignacio] Chapela, citing five major areas of concern in joint research agreements.

The first was the one raised by Birgeneau, “the academic freedom of researchers to contract with whomever they wish in terms of funding,” including the issue of whether Berkeley researchers can take tobacco industry money, an issue “still pending before the regents right now.”

Second was the question of prior restraints on publication of results of privately funded research, and Berkeley’s approach remains an open question, “a question I hope we have time to discuss,” he said.

Third on Reich’s list was the ability of funding to distort the research agenda….

Reich also cited the $2.9 million Exxon Mobil handed out in 1998 “to researchers who would raise doubts about climate change” and pharmaceutical industry funding designed to “create an intellectual echo chamber of economists” opposed to regulation.

His fourth issue was the potential impact of funding on hiring and promotion of university staff, and the possibility that critics of corporate funds would be discouraged or not hired at all. “The danger here is potential intimidation,” he said.

The fifth issue, already cited, was exploitation of the university’s image and reputation on behalf of the corporate sponsor….

A complete video recording of the senate meeting is available online at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events.php

[David Vogel was also cited in a San Francisco Chronicle report: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/13/BAG6AOK4A91.DTL&type=printable ]

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations

BERKELEY – A new study authored in part by a University of California, Berkeley, professor of public policy and law throws cold water on a common theory that a confident witness who errs in trial testimony is still more credible than a less confident witness who similarly slips up.

The researchers concluded that self-assured witnesses who make a mistake—even on issues of little importance—undermine their credibility by raising doubts about their competency, their ability to judge their own abilities and their motivations.

“People giving testimony, or advice, or opinions should therefore be careful to express appropriate degrees of confidence in their assertions,” the researchers write in a summary of their report in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science. “Otherwise, the 13th stroke of the clock will cast the other 12 in doubt.”

The researchers included Robert J. MacCoun of UC Berkeley, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and at the School of Law (Boalt Hall); Elizabeth Tenney, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Virginia; Barbara Spellman, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia; and Reid Hastie, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

MacCoun said the team’s findings challenge the frequent tendency of attorneys to pressure their witnesses to project a strong sense of confidence and to minimize the use of hedges like “I think” or “maybe.” Academic experts encounter similar pressures when asked to testify before policy makers, he said. But this first-of-its-kind study shows that such a strategy can backfire if a cocky witness gets caught in a mistake….

MacCoun said these findings have been borne out with two newer studies not included in the journal article.

“This comes up all the time with talk shows, where experts like Richard Perl (a federal policy advisor who supported invading Iraq with a minimal number of troops) are so brash in their assertions, and so wrong,” MacCoun said. “Then, suddenly, you don’t see them (on TV) any more.”…

13. “Speaker Pelosi Walks A Delicate Line” (KGO-TV News, March 12, 2007); features commentary by MICHAEL NACHT; http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=politics&id=5115907

By Mark Matthews

The push and pull over Iraq got personal this morning. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi awoke to protestors camped outside her Pacific Heights home.

Speaker Pelosi is being hit from the right and the left as she attempts to maneuver the president into ending the war….

At a black tie event Saturday night, she portrayed Democrats as united in their support to fund the war if the president agrees to bring troops home no later than August 2008….

But in fact, Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland is leading progressive Democrats in a call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. She has been joined by Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of Marin….

On the other side are those who say pulling out of the war would be a disaster.

Vice President Dick Cheney: “When members speak not of victory, but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they’re telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.”

But at U.C. Berkeley, an expert on national security and the dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy believes the troops would be better used in Afghanistan.

Prof. Michael Nacht, Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley Goldman School: “We need to have the forces to go after those who really want to hurt us and most of the Sunnis and Shias fighting with each other in Iraq are not aiming at us, they’re aiming at each other.”

The bottom line, says Professor Nacht, is it’s a judgment call to pick the least harmful from a batch of bad options….

14. “Why Do Men Control Most of the World?” (Your Call, KALW-91.7 FM Radio, March 12, 2007); features commentary by Visiting Professor RUTH ROSEN; listen to the program

Why do men still control the corridors of power? Rose Aguilar is joined by Lis Wiehl, author of “The 51% Minority: How Women are Still Not Equal and What You Can Do About It,” and Ruth Rosen, visiting professor at UC Berkeley and author of “The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America.”

From contraception and pregnancy, to unequal pay and domestic violence, Wiehl and Rosen say women are still handed the short end of the stick. What are the solutions?

15. “The Care Crisis” (The Nation, March 12, 2007 issue); commentary by Visiting Professor RUTH ROSEN; http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070312/rosen

By RUTH ROSEN

Ruth Rosen, a historian, journalist and senior fellow at the Longview Institute, teaches history and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Penguin Putnam).

A baby is born. A child develops a high fever. A spouse breaks a leg. A parent suffers a stroke. These are the events that throw a working woman’s delicate balance between work and family into chaos.

Although we read endless stories and reports about the problems faced by working women, we possess inadequate language for what most people view as a private rather than a political problem. “That’s life,” we tell each other, instead of trying to forge common solutions to these dilemmas.

That’s exactly what housewives used to say when they felt unhappy and unfulfilled in the 1950s: “That’s life.”…

The great accomplishment of the modern women’s movement was to name such private experiences—domestic violence, sexual harassment, economic discrimination, date rape—and turn them into public problems that could be debated, changed by new laws and policies or altered by social customs. That is how the personal became political….

Call it the care crisis.

For four decades, American women have entered the paid workforce—on men’s terms, not their own—yet we have done precious little as a society to restructure the workplace or family life. The consequence of this “stalled revolution,” a term coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, is a profound “care deficit.” A broken healthcare system, which has left 47 million Americans without health coverage, means this care crisis is often a matter of life and death. Today the care crisis has replaced the feminine mystique as women’s “problem that has no name.” It is the elephant in the room—at home, at work and in national politics—gigantic but ignored….

The result? People suffer their private crises alone, without realizing that the care crisis is a problem of national significance.

It is as though Americans are trapped in a time warp, still convinced that women should and will care for children, the elderly, homes and communities. But of course they can’t, now that most women have entered the workforce….

16. “Divesting from Sudan” (Austin American-Statesman, March 11, 2007); story citing DAVID VOGEL.

By Robert Elder; American-Statesman Staff

The misery in Sudan has been compounded by events in its western region of Darfur: genocide, systematic rape, and the burning of crops and homes committed by the Sudanese government-backed Arab militia.

Companies that do business in Sudan generate revenue that has revived the economy of Khartoum, the capital, and helps keep President Omar al-Bashir in power. And that appears to create a straightforward moral argument for advocates of divestment.

Seven states have passed divestment laws to either force or encourage their public investment funds to dump the shares of companies doing business in Sudan. The hope is that big investors, such as pension funds, will sell their holdings in these companies and eventually force the government to stop waging war against the people of Darfur.

Here in Texas, divestment legislation has bipartisan support and the endorsement of Gov. Rick Perry. But there are growing questions about the financial impact (the major state pension funds hold nearly $1 billion in shares of companies doing business in Sudan), whether selling shares will matter to a brutal foreign government, and whether selling violates the funds’ duty to retirees….

The small size of Sudan-related investments by the massive pension funds in Texas could minimize constitutional problems, said David Vogel, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of “The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility,” published last year.

“It makes it much much easier” to divest because any losses are bound to be a small fraction of the fund, Vogel said….

By Matt Krupnick, MediaNews Staff

BERKELEY — University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is adamantly defending the university’s part in a $500 million research deal with energy giant BP Amoco PLC.

Speaking to more than 200 faculty members and students at a campus forum Thursday to discuss last month’s announcement of the pact, Birgeneau said those who oppose the new Energy Biosciences Institute are ignoring the tenets of academic freedom.

People who attack corporate funding deny the value of the resulting research, he said. “I consider that to be abhorrent,” he said. “I’ll defend academic freedom to the hilt.”

Professor Ignacio Chapela, a longtime detractor of the Novartis project, compared the BP deal to prostitution….

Supporters argued that corporate funding—even with the BP money—is just a small part of the university’s budget. Industry money will make up about 5 percent of the school’s outside funding after UC Berkeley receives the BP funds, said Beth Burnside, the university’s vice chancellor for research.

Like other universities, UC Berkeley restricts companies’ control over the research they fund. Those restrictions are needed to protect Berkeley researchers in the institute from later criticism, said public policy professor Robert Reich.

“It seems to me,” said Reich, a former U.S. Labor secretary, “that the strength of these regulations will determine whether the (institute) is a huge feather in Berkeley’s cap or a huge noose around Berkeley’s neck.”…

By Jenny Hope

NHS spending on drugs to treat child hyperactivity [ADHD] has tripled in only five years.

Almost 400,000 aged between five and 19 are believed to be on the drugs despite doctors’ fears about side effects.

The total number of doses is equivalent to every child between these ages taking hyperactivity drugs more than four times a year….

A report from the University of California, Berkeley, shows the use of such drugs has tripled worldwide since 1993….

[Lead author] Professor Richard Scheffler, from UC Berkeley, said: “ADHD could become the leading childhood disorder treated with medications across the globe.

“We can expect that the already burgeoning global costs for medication treatment will rise even more sharply over the next decade.”…

[Richard Scheffler was also cited in the BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6425977.stm . Read more about the study, “The Global Market for ADHD Medications,” published on March 6 in the journal Health Affairs at: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/03/06_adhd.shtml ]

19. “Opinion: We Trained Them, We Should (Be Allowed To) Keep Them” (CIO Insight.com, March 7, 2007); op-ed citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,2101736,00.asp

By Eric Chabrow

America is at its greatest when we combine the talents of those born here with those who choose to live here. We literally get the best of both worlds.

It’s not that we have much of a choice. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich suggested in an interview with CIO Insight, demographic forces are behind our need for skilled workers as baby boomers rapidly move into their later years. “The baby-bust generation, people born in the U.S. between 1965 and 1990, will be in relatively short supply,” Reich said. “Companies will have to worry even more about recruitment and retention than they do now. Immigration will become an ever more contentious issue because we’ll need many more people than we have available to do all sorts of jobs, at the high end and also at the low end.”…

20. “China Practices Some Power Politics” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace, American Public Radio, March 7, 2007); Listen to this commentary

KAI RYSSDAL (HOST): Of course, it’s not all about business and economic growth in China. Earlier this week, Beijing announced it’ll increase military spending almost 18 percent this year to about $45 billion. That’s about a tenth of what the Pentagon gets. But it was still enough to get some attention in Washington. And commentator Robert Reich explains that’s just what the Chinese wanted.

ROBERT REICH: One clue is that China’s announcement of its military build-up comes the same week Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is scheduled to visit. Presumably, to continue pressing China to raise the value of its currency in light of the huge and growing trade imbalance with America. You see, for China, economic security and military security go hand in hand. Both are part of the same strategy to make China a superpower. Maintaining its current 10 percent yearly growth rate necessitates reliable supplies of oil, natural gas and other raw materials from all over the world, as well as the latest technologies. And China also needs growing export markets to absorb its increasing production and provide jobs to the tens of millions of its people migrating from the countryside….

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

By Catherine Brahic, NewScientist.com news service

The beginning of a new international trading platform for bioethanol is expected to be announced on Friday, when US president George W Bush meets with Brazilian president Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva.

The announcement is in line with Bush’s State of the Union address on 24 January 2007, when he announced that the US will cut its gasoline use by 20% over the coming decade, largely by requiring the use of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels—including ethanol and hydrogen.

But while Bush’s environmental initiatives will certainly please those who have argued that a shift in US policies are needed to help the globe fight climate change, not everyone sees bioethanol as the most desirable green fuel of the future....

A 2005 study conducted by David Pimentel, at Cornell University, US, concluded that making bioethanol from corn requires 29% more fossil energy than provided by the fuel produced (Natural Resources Research, vol 14, p 65).

But in January 2006, Alexander Farrell [with Dan Kammen, Michael O’Hare, Brian Turner], at the University of California at Berkeley, US, and colleagues analysed six different studies of bioethanol and concluded that “current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline” (Science, vol 311 p 506).

[The UC Berkeley scientists’] slightly more favourable conclusion results from including the further use of the stems, husks, and other biomass left over after the corn has been converted into ethanol—as animal feed for instance. It is claimed that making use of such “co-products” could reduce demand for other, more carbon intensive animal feeds....

By Craig Hooper

The writer is a lecturer at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He served on the Chief of Naval Operations’ Maritime Strategy Working Group at the Naval War College last fall.

Over the past six years, 79 condemned Navy ships have been towed out to sea and destroyed by Air Force bombs, submarine-launched torpedoes or hails of gunfire. These exercises … have eaten away at America’s inventory of still-useful retired warships. Soon every vessel capable of serving in America’s reserve combat fleet could vanish, leaving an overextended Navy with no viable backup forces. This unwise drawdown goes against Navy tradition….

This flurry of ship disposal suggests the administration is getting rid of useful warships to compel construction of pricey new vessels such as the next-generation CG(X) anti-missile cruiser or the $3.3 billion DDG-1000 land-attack destroyer. When the Clinton administration pruned the national stockpile of reserve destroyers, only eight feeble, 46-year-old hulks went to the bottom. But the Bush administration has sunk (so far) a 31-year-old fleet of 27 destroyers. Twenty-two others have been scrapped or sold, and additional disposals are pending.

In this carnage, virtually all 31 of the country’s middle-aged submarine-hunting Spruance-class destroyers have been sunk, scrapped or scheduled for destruction. As China readies a deep-ocean submarine fleet and more navies deploy cruise missiles on ultra-quiet diesel submarines, the rationale for eliminating a mothballed reserve fleet of sub-killing destroyers is scanty at best. The administration is destroying a cheap insurance policy….

After World War II, prudent Navy leaders invested $213 million to mothball a “Ghost Fleet” of 2,000 surplus vessels. That supplied 381 much-needed warships during the Korean War, including 13 aircraft carriers and two battleships. Other ships were recalled for Vietnam, and even the enormous Iowa-class battlewagons returned to finish out the Cold War….

But now, rather than extract all possible value from stricken ships, America appears uneager to study many of its sinking exercises.

This is no way to run a navy. With each sinking, the Navy risks becoming a hollow force, dependent on the construction of pricey ships that, given America’s overextended finances, may never arrive.

[Craig Hooper will be lecturing on “Terrorists and Biological Weapons” on April 25. See Upcoming Events.]

By Beckey Bright

The idea of corporate social responsibility has become a growing topic in boardrooms in the last few years, with the debate centering on what obligations companies have to be socially responsible, and what impact it can have on the bottom line....

David J. Vogel, Solomon P. Lee Distinguished Professor in Business Ethics at Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley and editor of the California Management Review, says it is nearly impossible to make an overall judgment about a company’s commitment to socially responsible behavior or to sort the good companies from the bad.

The author of six books on business political influence and the politics of environmental regulation argues that there is a place in the corporate world for responsible firms, but that the “market for virtue” is not sufficiently important to make it in the interest of all firms to behave more responsibly.

Recently he spoke with The Wall Street Journal Online about how managers are adjusting their strategies to the call for increased voluntary action that is good for society. Here is an edited excerpt of that conversation....

24. “Sales tax hike won’t move Pennsylvania forward” (Morning Call (Allentown, PA), March 2, 2007); op-ed citing ROBERT REICH.

By Camille ‘Bud’ George, Special to The Morning Call - Freelance

It’s tough to comprehend how any Democrat could favor expanding Pennsylvania’s 6 percent sales tax.

Inflating sales taxes makes sense for certain stripes of Republicans. They can rail against hated property taxes by favoring higher sales taxes, knowing full-well that most people believe that sales taxes are less coercive than income taxes.

It’s a costly misconception. As former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes, “Sales taxes are among the most regressive forms of taxation. Consumers with moderate or low incomes have to sacrifice much larger portions of their incomes on sales taxes than do wealthy consumers.”…

… We can make a stand for the middle class or forfeit any claims to being the party of the people. We can fight for them or fleece them with the sales tax….

By Hal Bernton, Seattle Times staff reporter

The straw from Pacific Northwest wheat harvests could be turned into motor fuel in a proposed Idaho ethanol plant that Wednesday gained up to $80 million in federal money.

The U.S. Energy Department grant went to Iogen Biorefinery Partners, which hopes to break ground next year on an 18 million-gallon-a-year plant in Shelley, Idaho, in the heart of that state’s wheat belt....

The taxpayer support reflects the Bush administration’s efforts to expand the ethanol industry into raw materials beyond corn. Demand from ethanol plants has helped drive up corn prices used for food and animal feed to the highest levels in years....

The corn-ethanol industry currently requires large amounts of natural gas and other fossil fuels to produce fertilizers, operate tractors and power distillery boilers.

Thus, corn ethanol appears to produce only slightly less greenhouse gases than gasoline, according to a University Of California, Berkeley study [coauthored by Dan Kammen, Michael O’Hare, Brian Turner, et al.] published in Science Magazine last year.

Much bigger greenhouse-gas cuts could be obtained by converting cellulose to ethanol, the study concluded....

26. “Switchgrass is cool, dude” (Salon.com, March 1, 2007); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/03/01/switchgrass_is_cool/index.html?source=rss

--Andrew Leonard

…On Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced that it was investing $385 million into six cellulosic ethanol biorefineries over the next four years. Reference to this announcement was made several times during the subcommittee hearing, sometimes skeptically, by panelists and politicians who claimed that they’d been hearing optimistic predictions about the imminent arrival of cellulosic technology for 30 years. But that was only one subplot in a hearing that ranged far and wide in its discussion of energy issues in the U.S. After preliminary reports from Guy Caruso, administrator of the Energy Information Agency, and Jim Wells, director for natural resources and the environment at the Government Accountability Office, the subcommittee heard testimony from a panel of expert witnesses, including Dan Kammen, the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment at U.C. Berkeley, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s David Hawkins, and MIT physics professor Ernest Moniz….

27. “Speaking Eastern Language On FBI’s Wish List” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 19, 2007); story citing MICHAEL NACHT.

By Moustafa Ayad, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Standing in the main prayer room of the ornate Pittsburgh Sikh Gurdwara in Monroeville, the FBI’s special agent looked out at a sea of turban-wearing worshippers with dark beards.

The clean-cut agent, armed with brochures and a short video extolling the virtues of Sikhs to the worshippers gathered for prayer services, was playing an increasingly important post-Sept. 11, 2001, role—that of recruiter.

The FBI is mounting such recruiting efforts at a time when the need among its ranks for speakers of languages such as Punjabi, spoken by Sikhs, as well as Arabic, Urdu and Farsi, is high and the supply is low. Just a fraction of 1 percent of the 12,000 FBI field agents have limited working proficiency in Arabic, for example—a total of 40, up from 33 in October….

A lack of language-proficient employees is a concern not only at the FBI. In its recently released report, the Iraq Study Group pointed out that, of the 1,000 employees at the embassy in Iraq, the largest U.S. outpost in another country, only six have the proficiency to carry on a conversation in Arabic.

“It is alarming, perplexing and odd,” said Michael Nacht, a professor of U.S. security and foreign policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

“I think language education, at least in this administration, is seen as soft and is viewed as not as hard-core. It’s not what real heroes do. If anything, the language problem is more of a reflection of American history, not just the FBI.

“Imagine having an embassy in Washington and only six people who can carry on a conversation in English,” he said.

Mr. Nacht said the government faced similar problems during the Cold War. Without the necessary expertise of natives of Eastern Europe, and particularly linguists among the ranks of security agencies, the government took almost a decade to gather the in-depth knowledge needed for effective intelligence gathering.

Federal agencies, however, had to overcome a stigma both in their own cultures of hiring and on the part of the European natives they were attempting to get onto their payrolls, Mr. Nacht said….

Many experts now believe that a buildup of linguistic expertise within U.S. security agencies during the late 1990s could have given the government a chance at being a step ahead of the threats it faced, but large bureaucracies often have been slow to learn the lessons of Sept. 11.

“There was kind of misunderstanding of what was needed for homeland security after Sept. 11,” Mr. Nacht said. “It was kind of a learning process for the FBI and it is not easy to move a large bureaucracy. It’s like trying to right an ocean liner. They took this more as a criminal justice and intelligence problem and didn’t seem to believe it required a massive re-education.”

FACULTY SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS & EVENTS

March 7 ROBERT REICH gave a talk entitled, “Why We Shouldn’t Blame Wal-Mart: Thoughts on the 21st Century Labor Market,” at the inaugural David Feller Memorial Labor Law Lectureship at UC Berkeley School of Law - Boalt Hall.

March 14 MARGARET TAYLOR spoke in the CITRIS Research Exchange: “Government Actions and Innovation for Climate Change” (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society); lecture is viewable at: mms://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast

March 15 ROBERT REICH testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, Hearing on Increasing Economic Security for American Workers.

March 21 DAN KAMMEN spoke on “Making Solar Power Competitive” and “UC Berkeley Research Overview in Creating a Sustainable Energy Future” at the first annual UC Berkeley Energy Symposium. http://berc.berkeley.edu/symposium-schedule.html

March 21 MICHAEL HANEMANN spoke on “Carbon Regulation and the Impact on Innovation” at the first annual UC Berkeley Energy Symposium, “Challenges, Opportunities, and the Role of UC Berkeley in Creating a Sustainable Energy Future.” http://berc.berkeley.edu/symposium.html

VIDEOS & WEBCASTS

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

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

New this month:

“Faculty Forum on the Energy Biosciences Institute” (March 8, 2007) with ROBERT REICH, DAVID VOGEL et al.

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events.php

“Government Actions and Innovation for Climate Change” with MARGARET TAYLOR mms://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast

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

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

Sincerely,

Annette Doornbos

Director of External Relations and Development