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1. GSPP’s Environmental Policy Group presents
their 5th Annual Student-Alumni Dinner
April 2nd at
After-dinner
remarks by:
Steven Raphael, Interim Dean,
Mark Trexler (MPP 1982/PhD 1989), Past
Managing Director, Ecosecurities Global Consulting Services
Blas Pérez Henriquez (MPP 1992/PhD
2002), Executive Director, Center for Environmental Public Policy
Joseph Levin (MPP cand. 2009)
2. “YouTube, Blogs, Texting, the Web…How is New
Media Changing Politics?”
April 18 |
* Henry E. Brady, Professor of
Political Science and Public Policy, Director of UC Berkeley’s Survey Research
Center, UC DATA
* Bruce E.
Cain, Executive Director University of California
* Geoffrey
Nunberg, Adjunct Professor, UC Berkeley School of Information, Senior
Researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford
Sponsored by the
Event
Contact: 510-643-1674
3. The Students of Color in Public Policy
(SCiPP) & The Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP) present the
4th ANNUAL
ALUMNI DINNER
Welcome by Interim Dean Steve Raphael
Keynote
speaker: JAI SOOKPRASERT (MPP 1990),
Senior Governmental Relations Representative for the California School
Employees Association (CSEA)
Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Graduate
Assembly and GSPP.
Donations Welcome.
Please RSVP
by April 7 to Corey Ponder (MPP cand. 2009); ctponder@berkeley.edu , (510) 664-3809
4.
April 24.
Program begins
Tickets are
no charge, but registration is required; register at www.petris.org
State-Level
Health Insurance Plans: (
Richard Scheffler, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Health Economics
& Public Policy, UC Berkeley
Panel Chair
“Lessons
Learned from
Ruth Liu, (MPP 1999), Senior Director of Health Policy &
Health Reform, Kaiser Permanente
“Implementing
Tangerine Brigham (MPP 1990), Deputy Director of Health,
5. “35th Annual Teacher Outreach Conference:
April 25 |
Elizabeth
Wishnick, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Law, Montclair State
University; Robert Crews, Professor of History, Stanford University; Stephan
Astourian, Professor & Executive Director, Armenian Studies Program, UC
Berkeley; Andrei Tsygankov, Associate Professor of International Relations and
Political Science, San Francisco State University; Harold Smith, Visiting Scholar, Goldman School of Public Policy, UC
Berkeley; Keith Darden, Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Sponsor: The
Event
Contact: Elizabeth Coyne, elizabeth.coyne@berkeley.edu
, 510-643-5844
6.
“The Challenge of Change: What to Expect from the Obama White House”
Faculty
speakers: Henry Brady and Severin
Borenstein
April 29, Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion,
$20 per person. $25 at the door.
To register or learn more visit: http://discovercal.berkeley.edu/lectures/index.cfm?lid=55
7. GOLDMAN SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT
Saturday, May
16,
ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS
1. “S.F. takes aim at massage-parlor brothels” (San Francisco
Chronicle,
2. “Lawmakers dig into White House budget” (Christian Science
Monitor,
3. “A Downturn Wraps a City in Hesitance” (New York Times,
4. “EPA carbon move could drive cap-n-trade action” (American
Metal Market (AMM),
5.“Advocates want stimulus cash used
to avoid cuts” (San Francisco Chronicle,
6.
7. “Price Volatility in Climate Change Legislation; Committee
on
8. “Will Democrats Seek GOP Votes or ‘Reconciliation’?” (Morning Edition, National Public Radio (NPR),
9. “Immigrants, beware fraud” (
10. “Saving
11. “The Nightly Business Report” (PBS,
12. “AIG and ‘Political Risk’” (Wall Street Journal,
13. “Foster Grants” (Forum, KQED public radio,
14. “Supervisors outraged at ‘raid’ on Muni funds” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
15. “Tipping Point” (Forum, KQED public radio,
16. “State fiscal leaders skeptical stimulus funds will avert
cutbacks” (Sacramento Bee,
17. “UNICEF seeks safe access to provide emergency supplies
in
18. “Affordable Health Care Coverage; Committee: House Energy
and Commerce; Subcommittee: Health” (CQ Congressional Testimony,
19. “A Backlash against Obama’s Budget” (Business Week,
20. “System in dire need of reform” (Contra Costa Times,
21. “Harnessing the Sun, With Help From
Cities” (New York Times,
22. “How to shop for health insurance” (CNN.com,
23. “Point Carbon Finds RGGI Long by 31.8 Million Allowances
in 2008; 2008 CO2 Emissions Decline 8.9 percent from 2007 Emissions” (Business
Wire, March 11, 2009); story citing EMILIE
MAZZACURATI (MPP 2007).
24. “CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / Berkeley; UC to cut staff, freeze
hiring” (Los Angeles Times,
25. “
26. “Bee erases 128 jobs, cuts pay for remaining staff”
(Sacramento Bee, Mar. 10, 2009); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981/JD 1982); http://www.sacbee.com/business/story/1685570.html
27. “Bonnie Anderson Appointed Department of Justice Director
of Budget and Policy” (States News Service,
28. “First 5 extends deadline for Mental Health Resource
Guide” (Daily Democrat,
29. “Defiant Sudanese President visits Darfur” (The World
Today, Australia Broadcasting Company, March 9, 2009); interview with ANN VENEMAN (MPP 1971).
30. “My View: Energy efficiency can boost the economy” (Sacramento
Bee,
31. “No Apologies; We’re all worried
about seeming racist. Some advice: just relax” (Newsweek, Pg. 54 Vol. 153,
32. “Obama taking big political risk with budget” (San
Francisco Chronicle,
33. “Basic Health Plan members to be cut. Proposed budget
nearly halves number benefiting” (The Olympian,
34. “Avoid home office pitfalls. Here are unexpected things
that can drive you crazy once you’re actually working from home” (Los Angeles
Times,
35. “Obama Administration Could Still Nationalize Banks”
(Morning Edition, National Public Radio (NPR),
36. “Banking on biotech: Solano in a healthy place”
(Reporter, The (
37. “‘Buy American’ cuts both ways” (CNNMoney.com,
38. “Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee Hearing; Lessons Learned: How the New Administration Can Achieve an
Accurate and Cost-Effective 2010 Census;” (Congressional Documents and
Publications,
39. “Tough Test Emerges as Administration Aims to Bolster
Automakers, Cut Pollution” (The Washington Post, March 4, 2009); story citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1654886831.html?dids=1654886831:1654886831&FMT=FT&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=a1b140f735a92eaaae75e1e13ab56ce0&date=Mar+4%2C+2009&author=Peter+Whoriskey%3BKendra+Marr&desc=Tough+Test+Emerges+as+Administration++Aims+to+Bolster+Automakers%2C+Cut+Pollution
40. “Cap-and-trade proposal faces tough battle” (American
Metal Market (AMM),
41. “UNICEF Executive Director: UNICEF increased its aid to
42. “Hospital CEO to Step Down” (McClatchy-Tribune Regional
News - Palo Alto Daily News,
43. “Why US keeps backstopping a
flattened AIG” (Christian Science Monitor,
44. “Remarks by Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman,
discussing UNICEF Executive Director Ann
Veneman’s visit to Israel” (Federal News Service, March 3, 2009); newswire
citing ANN VENEMAN (MPP 1971).
45. “TRPA looks to
46. “Qorvis’ Stan
Collender discusses Obama proposal for energy, environment programs” (Environment
and Energy Daily, E&ETV’s OnPoint Vol. 10 No. 9,
47. “On prostitution in
48. “Good Earth Makes Good Vines. Winemakers know that adding
a little green improves the reds and whites” (Inside Jersey, a Star-Ledger
Magazine,
49. “Report: County has future in life sciences”
(Times-Herald (
50. “Groups seek more information on illegal immigrants
deported without a hearing” (Contra Costa Times,
51. “Officials unsure how to obtain stimulus funding”
(Times-Herald (
52. “Obama puts spotlight on education deficit” (Los Angeles
Times,
53. “Economic Crisis Complicates
54. “Dissing NextGen” (Aviation Week & Space Technology,
Washington Outlook; Pg. 21 Vol. 170 No. 8,
55. “After Standoff, Calif. Reaches Budget Deal; Legislators
Patch Nation’s Largest Shortfall” (The Washington Post,
56. “Be energy efficient, and the state may help foot the
bill” (Oregonian,
57. “
58. “Jack Thurston:
The Man Who Could Avert Draper’s Car Crash?” (Iain Dale’s
Diary,
59. “Federal aid won’t come fast enough for
60. “College opportunities for state residents ebb” (Los
Angeles Times,
61. “
62. “Tipping Point Community to Receive $250,000 in Cash and
HP Technology to Fight Bay Area Poverty; HP Grant Is Final Push to Meeting
Tipping Point’s $2 Million Goal” (Business Wire, February 12, 2009); newswire
citing DANIEL LURIE (MPP 2005).
63. “Interview with Mickey
Levy” (Journal Inquirer (
64. “Conservation land money available” (Honolulu Advertiser,
65. “Consolidation is on the table again” (Times Argus, The (
66. “Notre Dame Panel to Discuss Future of Electric Power”
(States News Service,
67. “Blago’s enemies lecture at NU” (Politico.com,
68. “
69. “Green goal of ‘carbon neutrality’ hits limit” (The
Associated Press,
70. “Governor Corzine Signs Legislation Officially
Designating New Jersey Israel Commission within Department of State” (States
News Service, December 22, 2008); newswire citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975).
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
1. “Obamanomics Isn’t About Big Government. The
president’s focus is on improving human capital; (Wall Street Journal,
2. “Just How Expensive Is Tesla’s Electric Sedan?”
(New York Times Online,
3. “Wilderness Society Receives Grant from Goldman Fund to Protect Public Lands
from Off-Road Vehicle Damage” (Targeted News Service, March 26, 2009); newswire
citing RICHARD GOLDMAN.
4. “Transparency’s a must to gain our trust” –
Commentary by ROBERT REICH
(Marketplace [NPR],
5. “Even online, politics is a rich man’s game”
(Hindustan Times,
6. “Not Insane” (The New Yorker,
7. “Paying more, getting less from prisons” (San
Diego Union-Tribune,
8. “Letters to the Editor” (San Diego
Union-Tribune,
9. “The Roundtable; Bonus Backlash” (This Week
with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News,
10. “Democrat anger at Obama overkill; Politics
Concern is mounting at the president’s tactics” (The Sunday Times (
11. “AIG Bonus Mess Adds to Geithner’s Rough
Stretch” (Morning Edition, NPR, March 20, 2009); features commentary by ROBERT REICH; Listen to the story
12. “Projections of Climate Change Go From Bad to
Worse, Scientists Report” (Science
13. “Political scientist Henry Brady new
14. “Energy of the Future” (Business News Network
[
15. “Rigorous Economic Recovery by Mid-2010, Robert Reich Tells National Council on
Aging” (U.S. Newswire,
16. “G in GOP stands for grumpy” (Charleston
Gazette,
17. “Bracing for a Backlash over Wall Street
Bailouts” (New York Times,
18. “The real scandal of AIG: We’re helpless” –
Commentary by ROBERT REICH
(Salon.com,
19. “Wall Street rescue plan needs rescuing” –
Commentary by ROBERT REICH
(Marketplace [NPR],
20. “
21. “Replace
22. “Scientists warn of ‘irreversible’ climate
shifts” (San Francisco Chronicle,
23. “Global Warming to Carry Big Costs for
24. “Congress approves Omnibus spending bill” (KGO TV,
25. “California Marijuana Dispensaries Cheer U.S.
Shift on Raids” (Wall Street Journal [*requires registration],
26. “The New Scrooge. Are there lemonade stands
that devote more to charity than Amazon.com?” (Slate (
27. “State’s proposed emissions rule sparks
firestorm. The new standard would gauge a fuel’s ‘carbon intensity,’ from its
source to its burning” (Los Angeles Times,
28. “Making things affordable can really cost big
bucks” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 6, 2009); column citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/06/DDP8168DJU.DTL&hw=richard+goldman&sn=001&sc=1000
29. “First thing, let’s kill economists” (Daily
News, The (
30. “Innovation: A clean start for green power”
(New Scientist [
31. “Class warfare?” (Brattleboro Reformer (VT),
32. “Layoffs in Uncertain Times: Bane or Benefit?”
(Connecticut Post,
33. “Obama buries Reaganomics under $3.6 trillion
mountain; The president has killed off the idea of
small government with a vast schedule of tax and spend” (The Sunday Times (
34. “Struggling States Look to Unorthodox Taxes”
(New York Times, March 1, 2009); story citing ROBERT MACCOUN; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/us/01sin.html?scp=1&sq=%22robert%20maccoun%22&st=cse
35. “Union heads discuss strength in unity.
Leaders say solidarity presents a chance to accomplish goals” (Star-Ledger,
36. “Robert
Reich discusses the economy” (Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC,
37. “Trial by Economy” (The Commonwealth
Magazine, March 2009); speech by ROBERT
REICH; audio link to speech and Q&A
38. “Brown reaps reward of
39. “
40. “Feeling Better, Doing Worse?” (The Jakarta Post,
1. “S.F. takes aim at massage-parlor
brothels” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Robert Selna,
Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Carmen Chu plan to introduce
a package of legislation as early as today aimed at stopping brothels from
operating as city-licensed massage businesses.
Meanwhile, the city’s
Department of Public Health, which regulates massage parlors, will allow vice
squad officers to testify at permit hearings against massage parlors where
prostitution and other crimes are suspected,
On Jan. 28, Chu announced that she had asked the
city attorney’s office to review massage parlor licensing laws after a police
bust in the Sunset District, which she represents. Vice cops said that a health
club, located half a block from an elementary school, was actually a
prostitution den.
“We tried to bring the
different departments together to help solve this problem,”
… In some places, the
women are willing participants; however,
Under the health
department changes that
2. “Lawmakers dig into
White House budget” (Christian Science Monitor,
By Gail Russell Chaddock
- Staff writer
Deputy budget director Rob Nabors, left, and Sen.
Kent Conrad (D) of
Both House and Senate
budget panels were under pressure to make adjustments in the Obama budget after
the Congressional Budget Office scored the 10-year deficits of the Obama budget
at $9.3 trillion.
One casualty of the cuts
was the president’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit, a campaign pledge that
provides up to $400 for working individuals and $800 for married taxpayers
filing joint returns.
The White House budget
proposed $525 billion over 10 years to cover the cost of the tax credit. House
and Senate budget panels both zeroed out funding beyond 2010….
House and Senate panels
also failed to fund the $250 billion set-aside in the White House budget to
fund the Troubled Asset Relief Program—an especially sore point on Capitol Hill
since disclosure last week of $165 million in retention bonuses to employees at
bailed-out insurance giant American International Group.
An early casualty of the
budget process this week is transparency—a signature Obama issue.
The president proposed a
10-year budget that clearly signaled an explosion of deficits and national debt
in the last five years. Both House and Senate budget panels opted for a
five-year window.
“On the one hand, they
wanted to change the Obama numbers but keep the transparency of the Obama
budget—and ended up sacrificing one for the other,” says Stan Collender, a longtime congressional budget analyst and partner at
Qorvis Communications in Washington….
3. “A Downturn Wraps a City
in Hesitance” (New York Times,
By Peter S. Goodman
John B. Satterberg, of Community Financial Corporation, a
Portland-area lender, offers 30-year fixed rates of less than 4 percent. (Leah Nash for The New York
Times)
Michael Powell, the
store’s owner, recently dropped plans for a $5 million expansion. An architect
had already prepared the drawings. His bankers had signaled that financing was
available. But the project no longer looked prudent, Mr. Powell concluded — not
with sales down nearly 5 percent, stock markets extinguishing savings, home
prices plunging and jobs disappearing….
The $787 billion
stimulus spending bill signed by President Obama last month is expected to
generate fresh demand for goods and services. If the financial system plan is
successful at removing the detritus of the real estate bust from bank balance
sheets, this, too, could substantially alleviate the crisis. But the ultimate
question is whether these measures can crystallize confidence in the future, so
businesses and ordinary people resume transacting, generating fresh
opportunities throughout the economy.
“You could fix all the
problems in the financial system and we’d still spiral down because of the
problem of expectations,” said Joe Cortright, an economist at a Portland-based
consulting group, Impresa Inc. …
4. “EPA carbon move
could drive cap-n-trade action” (American Metal Market (AMM),
By Tom Jennemann
Under the Clean Air Act,
the EPA now concludes that greenhouse gases “endanger human health and welfare,”
and contends that it should be able regulate them. The
White House has received and is currently reviewing the EPA proposal, released
on March 20.
Some market observers
are now speculating that Congress might be prodded into quicker legislative
action so that the EPA doesn’t usurp its authority. The basic argument is that
it’s better that lawmakers create a custom framework instead of letting the EPA
act unilaterally without industry input….
However, others are less
convinced that the EPA’s decision will lead to new legislative action anytime
soon. Emilie Mazzacurati, senior analyst
at the Washington office of Point Carbon, said the EPA is just one of the
many forces pushing Congress to take quick action on climate change. President
Obama has already asked Congress to send him a bill, while the success of major
international climate change negotiations in
“My feeling is that the
EPA determination will not particularly help convince lawmakers that are
reluctant to take action on climate change, and those that are motivated to act
are already working as fast as they can,” Mazzacurati
said….
5. “Advocates want
stimulus cash used to avoid cuts” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Marisa Lagos,
Chronicle Staff Writer
A fight has broken out
in San Francisco over how to spend millions of federal stimulus dollars
earmarked for health and human services, with advocates arguing the cash should
be used on things like keeping shelters open and saving jobs of social service
workers.
The advocates accused
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office of stalling in order to use the money to plug other
holes in the city’s estimated $576 million shortfall, and pointed out that in
releasing the money last month, President Obama told governors it was meant to “help
ensure that you don’t need to make cuts to essential services Americans rely on
now more than ever.”
Budget officials with
the mayor’s office said the money will go to its intended targets, but warned
that it may not save jobs or prevent deep cuts because the city’s deficit is so
large.
At issue is about $30
million to $40 million in extra Medicaid funds that the city’s health
department and human service agency expect to receive each fiscal year until
the end of 2010. Advocates would like the city to pour that money directly into
plugging deficits at the public health and human services agencies, which have
been ordered to cut a total of $122 million from their combined budgets….
Nani Coloretti, the mayor’s budget director, said Newsom has asked
departments to cut 25 percent of their spending, but the city needs to slash up
to 50 percent of its expenditures—meaning the stimulus dollars can’t simply
offset the ordered cuts.
Coloretti called the extra money “great news” but said the mayor’s office
can’t promise anything until the entire budget is complete.
“We need every solution
that’s on the table in order to balance the budget,” Coloretti said. “Every cut that’s been discussed, every federal
stimulus dollar that could be given to us and revenue measures on the November
ballot—we need it all, and we’ll be lucky if we can get through this year.” …
6. “
By Peter Ford, Staff
Writer for The Christian Science Monitor
Race: This March 2008 photo shows a satellite for Galileo,
As the EU prepares to
sign contracts this year with satellite builders and China plans the June
launch of the first satellite in its own “Compass 2” constellation, “both are
at stages of program development that make this an urgent question,” says Glenn
Gibbons, editor of “Inside GNSS” magazine.
GPS, Galileo, and Compass,
along with the Russian “Glonass,” are building the satellite infrastructure for
an increasingly important technology used for purposes ranging from nuclear
missile guidance, through mapping, to steering a mobile-phone user to the
nearest Starbucks.
Their designers are
publicly committed to making these systems inter-operable, and their signals
part of the global commons. If
More than a decade ago
the EU, unhappy with its dependence on the
When
...
... The problem for
There is no law against
that, so long as the Compass signals do not interfere with Galileo’s. But in the
event of a conflict, it means that European forces could not jam Compass’s
publicly available signal—which an enemy could use—without jamming its own
secure signal.
“The question arises
whether this is payback for being booted out of Galileo,” suggests Mr. Hagt….
7. “Price Volatility in
Climate Change Legislation; Committee on
Statement of Michelle
Chan Director, Green Investments Program Friends of the Earth - US
… The [carbon market] boom
was largely driven by a flood of new traders seeking financial returns. Asset
managers began marketing carbon as a new asset class, encouraging investors to
increasingly allocate a portion of their portfolio to carbon derivatives.
Investment banks developed financial instruments such as indexes to allow even
more investors to gain exposure to carbon, and new carbon funds (set up to
finance offset projects and/or buy carbon credits) were formed. Today,
speculators do the majority of carbon trading, and they will continue to
dominate as carbon markets grow. In fact, about two-thirds of carbon investment
funds by volume were not established to help companies comply with carbon caps,
but rather for capital gains purposes.
In 2006 Mark Trexler of EcoSecurities warned
against “market speculators, whose role has been getting rather dangerous in
contributing (in our view) to a ‘carbon dot com’ bubble analogous to the
technology ‘dot com’ bubble.”…
8. “Will Democrats Seek
GOP Votes or ‘Reconciliation’?” (Morning Edition, National
Public Radio (NPR),
RENEE MONTAGNE, host: ...
It was just a few months ago that President Obama was hoping for bipartisan
support for his priorities. Now in the face of opposition, he may have to
resort to different tactics. The president’s budget calls for the government to
spend $3.6 trillion; that’s more than any president has ever proposed. One question
now is whether Democrats should seek Republican votes or if they’ll use a
budget rule that allows them to do without those votes. NPR’s David Welna has
the story….
DAVID WELNA: What
Republican lawmakers really object to in the Obama budget is the creation of
potentially costly, new government programs such as universal health care
coverage or a cap and trade plan, but many Democrats consider such initiatives
essential and want to shield them from potentially fatal Senate filibusters
through a budget maneuver called reconciliation.
Mr. STAN COLLENDER (Budget Expert): Reconciliation, for most
people, is a husband and wife getting together and working out their marriage
problems.
WELNA: That’s budget expert Stan Collender. He says
budget reconciliation has helped controversial legislation—such as the two big
Bush tax cuts—by requiring only 51 votes to pass in the Senate rather than the
usual 60. And because Senate Democrats are two votes shy of 60, Collender says reconciliation could be
very useful to them.
Mr. COLLENDER: It may, in fact, be the only way Obama can get
things done, unless he can convince a couple of Republicans to vote with the
Democrats and then, of course, hold all the Democrats….
9. “Immigrants, beware
fraud” (
By Victor Manuel Ramos,
Sentinel Staff Writer
Kobie and Nic van der Berg, shown at their south
Like many newcomers, the
van der Bergs first came to
Nic and Kobie van der
Berg decided to emigrate from a crime-ridden and unstable South African
province to what they saw as a nice growth area.
They would sell their
mango farm back home, arrive as tourists, start a business, and apply for visas
as investors. Their goal was to obtain permanent residency and make
They had no idea of how
difficult it would be.
They were duped by three
immigration firms that friends had recommended. They paid tens of thousands of
dollars in legal costs and application fees but were left with no visas and had
to start the process over.
“It was a nightmare,”
said Nic van der Berg, 55, an entrepreneur who owns a custom-framing business
in south
There are no estimates
of how many such cases exist, but immigrant advocates and legal experts say
that fraud against immigrants is a serious problem that causes families pain
and often goes undetected because many victims don’t file formal complaints….
“We think it’s a severe
problem nationally,” said Karen Tumlin,
a staff attorney with the
“By the time an
immigrant actually catches the mistake and seeks the advice of someone who is
qualified, they are filing motions to reopen to try and stop a deportation.” …
10. “Saving
--Bob Agee, Jan Agee,
Sheila Allen, Ruth Asmundson, Davis Campbell, Delaine Eastin, Lucas Frerichs, Jackie Hausman, Barbara Hills, John
Hills, Michael Hulsizer, Sara Husby, Hiram Jackson, Charlotte Krovoza, Susan
Lovenburg, Karen Mo, Don Palm, Gavin Payne, Jim Provenza, Richard Reed, Don
Saylor, Helen Thomson, Kirk Trost and Jay Ziegler ; Special to The Enterprise
… Alexis de Tocqueville
once wrote, “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” …
As members of the
When facing challenges
like these in the past, constituent groups in our community and elsewhere took
pen in hand or marched on the Capitol to demand resources for their cause. As
the recent budget discord illustrates, this approach no longer serves us well,
forcing equally worthy causes to fight for adequate funding as resources shrink….
Born out of these false
choices, we have formed an action group, Saving California Communities, to
advocate for permanent structural reform of state government. We bring together
county, city and school elected representatives and a wide cross-section of
community members.
We are united voices for
strong, healthy communities in
In the coming weeks, The
Davis Enterprise will publish a series of articles illustrating the local
impact of our state’s dysfunction. As you read these articles, you will come to
understand they are not isolated stories; their cumulative impact drains
vitality from our community and all
Our group will host Saving
California Communities: Starting Here! on Saturday,
May 16, a community conversation to explore possibilities and begin to craft a
local course of action that joins with others in setting our state on the road
to reform. Program details will be available in The Enterprise and on our Web
site at http://www.savingca.org.
…
… Solutions are not
simple, but we believe true reform is possible only when whole communities
accept President Obama’s challenge to take responsibility, “seize gladly” those
duties to ourselves and others, and become a force for change.
We invite you to join us
in this new Era of Responsibility to obtain the government we deserve.
11. “The Nightly
Business Report” (PBS,
Stephanie Dhue, Nightly
Business Report Correspondent: AIG’s
Outrage moved into
action with passage of a bill to tax bonuses at a 90 percent rate. Employees
who got bonuses after
There are doubts about
whether the House bill is constitutional and how much of the money it would
recover….
But emotion ruled the
day with an overwhelming vote in support of the proposal. Budget analyst Stan Collender says the bill should be a warning to
firms that receive government support.
STANLEY COLLENDER, MANAGING
DIRECTOR, QORVIS COMMUNICATIONS: You don’t invite the
government into your home, charge them billions, if not hundreds of billions of
dollars for the privilege and then kick them out the next morning when the
government’s cramping your style. The government will be there with either
these strings, if not shackles attached, for quite some time….
12. “AIG and ‘Political
Risk’” (Wall Street Journal,
By IAN BREMMER and SEAN WEST
After quietly tolerating
$170 billion in bailout money for AIG, why have the public, Congress and the
administration suddenly blown up about a tiny fraction of that amount that is
being paid out in retention payments and bonuses? After all, the AIG bailout
channels
The reason is one of political
expediency: The bonuses represent greed in the face of dire circumstances,
which resonates with Joe the TARP-funder. The public now has an Enron-like
target on which to unload its collective frustration about the financial
meltdown. While public outrage is understandable, pandering to it jeopardizes
the administration’s credentials in a sloppy attempt to score populist points.
This raises the political risk for all investors in the
It was not long ago that
Mr. Obama assailed the Bush administration for its dangerous expansion of
executive power during a complex crisis. The Obama administration’s antics
around the AIG bonuses suggest a similar effort to use political power to
contort the law. But rather than doing so for reasons of national security,
this administration is doing so to pander to an angry public. When the Obama
administration and Congress flex this kind of muscle, they attach a new
political-risk component to all contracts negotiated in the shadow of the
bailout….
This is a hallmark
moment for the administration. Congressional anger over AIG’s bonuses
foreshadows the battle looming if and when the administration asks for more
financial-sector rescue funds. The administration may rightly sense that
failing to join hands with Congress and the public in outrage over the bonuses
would complicate release of those funds. But Mr. Obama does not need to show
solidarity by diminishing confidence in the rule of law. That bit of populism
will cost the president far more in future credibility than he stands to gain
in present popularity.
Mr. Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, a global political-risk
consulting firm, and co-author of “The Fat Tail: The Power of Political
Knowledge for Strategic Investing” (
13. “Foster Grants”
(Forum, KQED public radio,
Foster care services in
Guests:
• Amy Lemley, policy director
for the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes,
a San Francisco-based non-profit dedicated to improving the quality of life for
• Karen Bass, speaker of
the California State Assembly and co-sponsor of AB 12, a bill that would extend
foster care benefits to young Californians up to the age of 21
• Sam Cobbs, executive
director of
14. “Supervisors
outraged at ‘raid’ on Muni funds” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Rachel Gordon,
Chronicle Staff Writer
Supervisors Bevan Dufty (left) and Carmen Chu (center) stand
with Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Two
Supervisor Bevan Dufty
called for a hearing into the practice by such departments as police, public
health and the 311 call center, which bill Muni for work their employees
perform ostensibly on behalf of Muni - reimbursements for such services as
security, auditing, legal advice and technology support.
As reported in The
Chronicle last month, the payments, known as work orders, are expected to
balloon from $53 million in the fiscal year that ended in June 2008 to nearly
$81 million at the close of the fiscal year in June 2010. The $28 million
increase is almost the exact amount of additional money
Board of Supervisors
President David Chiu said he will do what he can during the budget process to
curtail what he says is an escalating raid on transit funding….
15. “Tipping Point”
(Forum, KQED public radio,
In the midst of an
economic downturn, we speak with Ronnie Lott and Daniel Lurie of Tipping Point Community about the increasing number
of Bay Area residents living in poverty—and what is being done to help. Tipping
Point allocates millions of dollars annually to community organizations, and
has gained national attention for its innovative grant-making techniques…. Host:
Michael Krasny
Guests:
• Daniel Lurie, president and
founder of Tipping Point Community (first half
hour)
• Ronnie Lott, board
member of Tipping Point Community, former cornerback and safety for the San
Francisco 49ers and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame (first half hour)
Daniel Lurie: “We are 100% impact…. Ronnie and I and the other 9
members of the board cover 100% of the operating costs and that’s something no
other nonprofit does except for Robin Hood.”
16. “State fiscal
leaders skeptical stimulus funds will avert cutbacks” (Sacramento Bee,
By Kevin Yamamura
Carmen Rivera-Hendrickson of Pleasanton holds her service dog before
a hearing Tuesday to determine whether the state will receive enough in direct
budget relief from the federal stimulus package to reduce state income taxes
and social service cuts. (Brian Baer/Sacbee.com)
Two state fiscal leaders
sounded skeptical Tuesday that
As part of a $40 billion
deficit solution, state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked state
Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Department of
Finance Director Mike Genest to determine by April 1 whether
If the two leaders
determine the state will not receive that amount,
Lockyer and Genest said during a Capitol hearing
Tuesday that they will withhold final judgment until later this month, after
they analyze testimony and examine clarifications in the federal stimulus act.
But neither seemed inclined to believe
Genest’s Department of Finance estimated that the state will
receive only $8.2 billion in federal aid that can be applied to the state
budget. An independent consultant hired by Lockyer, former state auditor Kurt
Sjoberg, said he did not disagree with that figure….
Lockyer and Genest insisted throughout the
three-hour hearing that their role was “ministerial” and that they were
carrying out a statistics-driven responsibility forced upon them by the
Legislature.
The nonpartisan
Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated last week that
That would push the
state total above the mark to $11.8 billion. But such a move remains
hypothetical. Lockyer and Genest
said they could consider such an addition in federal dollars only if the
Legislature acts before April 1
[Mike Genest was also interviewed on local TV news (NBC11,
17. “UNICEF seeks safe
access to provide emergency supplies in
NEW YORK -- Alarmed by a
fresh wave of violence in Sri Lanka, UNICEF
Executive Director Ann Veneman on Tuesday sought regular and safe access
for humanitarian agencies to provide lifesaving supplies in light of “a
critical lack of food, water and medicines” there.
“Children and their
families caught in the conflict zone are at risk of dying from disease and
malnutrition,” she said in a statement. “Children are the innocent victims of
Veneman said the U.N. Children’s Fund is working with other U.N.
agencies and other parties to provide “emergency water and sanitation, health,
nutrition, protection and education support for many of the 40,000 people who
have been able to leave the conflict zone.” …
18. “Affordable Health
Care Coverage; Committee: House Energy and Commerce; Subcommittee: Health” (CQ
Congressional Testimony,
Statement of Karen Pollitz, Research Professor,
Georgetown University Health Policy Institute
... In our present
health care system, and particularly private health insurance markets, several
key shortcomings must be addressed as part of an overall effort to assure
universal coverage. These include:
1. Discrimination based
on health status and risk selection
2. Inadequate coverage
3. Affordability
challenges for low- and middle-income people
4. Rising costs
5. Lack of transparency
and accountability
Part of the solution to
these problems will lie in strengthening and reorganizing private health
insurance markets to produce the coverage results we seek. A health insurance
Exchange - sometimes referred to by other names, such as “Connector” - can be
established to pursue the goals of reform and to hold markets accountable for
progress toward those goals.
Promote risk spreading
and stability
It has long been true
that approximately 20 percent of the population accounts for 80 percent of
health spending. The sickest one percent account for nearly one-quarter of
health expenditures. We rely on health insurance to spread costs more evenly
across the population and protect all of us from the risk that we may find
ourselves in need of expensive care in any given year. Unfortunately the
distribution of medical care needs creates a powerful economic incentive to
avoid risk, not spread it. Discrimination based on health status is a problem
for all health insurance purchasers, although most pronounced in the individual
market today….
How reform can help – Congress
can and must change the rules of the health insurance marketplace so that
insurers no longer compete on the basis of risk selection, but instead, on the
basis of efficiency and customer service. All policies should be sold on a
guaranteed issue basis. Premiums should be determined based on community
rating. Pre-existing condition exclusions should end. Federal minimum standards
for health insurance should be strengthened so that these protections apply to
all types of health coverage. Vigorous oversight to ensure compliance is also
essential….
19. “A Backlash against Obama’s
Budget” (Business Week,
By Jane Sasseen and
Keith Epstein, with Steve LeVine in
Business is marshaling
its forces. The target is the aggressive domestic agenda laid out in President
Barack Obama’s first budget.
Private health insurers
are mobilizing to fend off Obama’s plans to cut the fees they receive from
Uncle Sam and create a government-subsidized rival that, they fear, would undercut
them with lower-cost care for the uninsured. Multinationals are up in arms
about the prospect of paying higher taxes on foreign earnings. Real estate
agents want to quash efforts to lower the mortgage interest deductions for
families earning more than $250,000. Small business owners—many
of whom pay personal income tax rates on their companies’ profits—fear his
plans to raise income, capital-gains, and dividend taxes on those same high-end
earners. Many industries accept the idea of paying a price for carbon
emissions—but not as quickly as Obama envisions. Private equity players and
venture capitalists claim that the higher taxes Obama wants them to cough up
will drain away innovation and investment….
What’s stirring up
industry is not only the breadth of Obama’s agenda but the strength of his
position because of Democratic dominance in Congress. As Peter Orszag, Obama’s
budget director, puts it: “The President has the bully pulpit, he has strong
public support, and these are all things he campaigned on.” If Obama faces a
tough fight getting his entire budget passed, business faces one, too, warns Stan Collender, a partner of Qorvis
Communications, a
20. “System in dire need
of reform” (Contra Costa Times,
By Daniel Borenstein, Staff columnist and editorial writer
IN JUNE 2007, UC
Berkeley’s police chief retired after nearly 34 years of employment, collected
her pension and was promptly hired back at a higher salary under a contract
that was most recently renewed just seven weeks ago.
While much has been
written about whether the rehiring violated university policy, the other issue
is why Chief Victoria Harrison, then 54, and UC Berkeley officials felt the
need to jump through those hoops. The answer highlights how some public
employee pensions — especially for public safety workers — have reached absurd
levels that discourage able-bodied people from working….
While the Harrison,
Nowicki and Kamlarz situations differ, they all raise the question of why many
government worker pensions have become so lucrative that there’s no point
coming to work. Lest anyone think this is unique to management, it’s not. Many
rank-and-file employees — especially cops and
firefighters — also enjoy plush retirement packages….
It’s a system that badly
needs reform. Pensions should help workers live comfortably in their old age.
But they should not be a financial even trade for working. That’s too rich for
taxpayers to support and creates warped incentives, as the Harrison, Nowicki
and Kamlarz cases demonstrate.
Public employees often
argue that the plush retirement packages are trade-offs for lower salaries.
That’s unproven. Academics who follow compensation closely generally concur
that blue-collar workers draw higher salaries in the public sector, while
high-end management and professional jobs are better paid in the private
sector. As for benefits, they are generally more generous across the board in
the public sector. Indeed, some studies show that lucrative public employee
benefits are overcompensating for any deficiencies in salaries.
But if surveys show
total compensation — salary and benefits — is lower in the public sector,
government employers would do better to pay more upfront in salaries to match
the market rather than hiding the costs in delayed benefits that are often
partially paid by future generations. Moreover, creating a retirement program
that encourages good workers to leave makes no sense at all.
21. “Harnessing the Sun,
With Help From Cities” (New York Times,
By Leslie Kaufman
Rick and Wendy Clark put solar panels on their guest house through
new municipal financing. (J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times)
…[L]ate last year, Mr.
Clark decided to install a $62,000 solar power system because of a new
municipal financing program that lent him the money and allows him to pay it
back with interest over 20 years as part of his property taxes. In so doing, he
joined the vanguard of a social experiment that is blossoming in
The goal behind
municipal financing is to eliminate perhaps the largest disincentive to
installing solar power systems: the enormous initial cost. Although private
financing is available through solar companies, homeowners often balk because
they worry that they will not stay in the house long enough to have the
investment — which runs about $48,000 for an average home and tens of thousands
of dollars more for a larger home in a hot climate — pay off.
But cities like Palm
Desert lobbied to change state laws so that solar power systems could be
financed like gas lines or water lines, covered by a loan from the city and
secured by property taxes. The advantage of this system over private borrowing
is that any local homeowners are eligible (not just those with good credit),
and the obligation to pay the loan attaches to the house and would pass to any
future buyers.
The idea of public
financing for home solar systems began two years ago in
Cisco DeVries, who developed
the program for
22. “How to shop for
health insurance” (CNN.com,
By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN
Senior Medical Correspondent
After his sister nagged him for eight years to
go to the doctor, Kurt Berger finally had a physical late last year. Then in
January, he received a phone call from his doctor: Tests showed he had prostate
cancer.
… But he felt some
relief that at least he had health insurance. Since Berger doesn’t receive
insurance through his job as a maintenance worker at a church in
“I thought at $76 a
month, this is pretty good,” Berger remembers. But now, weaknesses in the
policy are beginning to emerge. For example, he just found out his insurance
policy doesn’t cover his radiation treatments, so he’s using his savings to pay
for them.
As Berger learned,
picking out a good health insurance policy by yourself
can be a daunting task. “When you are buying coverage on your own, you are
walking through a minefield,” says Karen
Pollitz, project director of Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.
In order to understand the fine print, “you would need a lawyer sitting next to
you.”…
4) Am I buying a
short-term or a long-term plan?
In a recent Time article, the magazine’s national
political correspondent Karen Tumulty wrote about her brother’s struggle with
an insurance company that refused to pay for his treatments for kidney disease.
The problem: For six years, without realizing it, he’d purchased a series of
six-month insurance policies rather than one long-term policy.
“…[H]is kidney disease
was nonetheless judged a ‘pre-existing condition’—meaning his insurance wouldn’t
cover it, since he was now under a different six-month policy from the one he
had when he got those first tests.”
The solution: Be wary of
short-term policies.
“Don’t buy them,” says Pollitz, project director of Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.
“If you get sick, they are going take your coverage away.”
And here’s one rule to
remember when you’re shopping for health insurance: If it sounds too good to be
true, it probably is. “In general, if you find cheap health insurance, there is
probably a reason why,” Pollitz says….
23. “Point Carbon Finds
RGGI Long by 31.8 Million Allowances in 2008; 2008 CO2 Emissions Decline 8.9
percent from 2007 Emissions” (Business Wire, March 11, 2009); story citing EMILIE MAZZACURATI (MPP 2007).
WASHINGTON -- Today,
Point Carbon announced its estimates for the 2008 carbon dioxide (CO2) emission
levels for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to be 156.2 million
short tons (one short ton is equal to 0.91 metric tons) resulting in a decline
of 8.9 percent from 2007 emissions. This leads Point Carbon’s team of analysts
to forecast an over allocated RGGI market.
Point Carbon is a
world-leading provider of independent analysis and consulting services for
power, gas and carbon markets. The forecasts supplied are part of the company’s
independent Trading Analytics and Research division, which regularly monitors
and forecasts market movements.
“These results would
leave RGGI long by 31.8 million allowances if emissions remain stable in 2009,”
said Emilie Mazzacurati, Manager of
Carbon Market Research
High oil prices and the
economic recession are cited as the main causes for a net reduction in
CO2emissions for the region. On the supply side, high oil prices favor the use
of natural gas for electricity generation. Decreased consumption and economic
output have caused a decrease in the demand for power generation.
However, the firm notes
that large-scale decline in generation could also reflect the cumulative effect
of energy efficiency programs that state authorities and utilities have
implemented in the region over the past decade.
“In the short term, RGGI
is reaching its goal of achieving a reduction of emissions beneath its target
cap,” remarked Mazzacurati. “Regardless,
the high amount of activity in the primary and secondary markets reflects an
overall bullish sentiment on carbon.” …
24. “CALIFORNIA BRIEFING
/ BERKELEY; UC to cut staff, freeze hiring” (Los Angeles Times,
By Catherine Ho
UC Berkeley announced
plans Tuesday to implement layoffs, a hiring freeze and a possible six-day
furlough to help offset what officials described as an “unprecedented” budget
shortfall of up to $70 million for the 2009-10 school year.
The campus is facing a
$15-million shortfall for this school year and will see $10 million to $20
million in permanent state budget cuts for 2009-10, said Vice Chancellor of
Administration Nathan Brostrom….
Layoffs are also likely at
UCLA, which will face $12.6 million in cuts this fiscal year and $9.7 million
in 2009-10, Vice Chancellor Steve Olsen
said last week.
25. “
Posted by Joseph Rose, The Oregonian
TheInformationist.com
Over at The
Infrastructionist,
Noting that gas prices
and a weak economy led to a 30-percent decline in traffic congestion around the
country last year (36 percent in the Portland area, according to the same Inrix
study), Cortright makes the case for
“managing demand” with variable road pricing rather than spending billions on
more capacity.
“Currently,” Cortright writes, “we ration traffic
capacity the same way the old
“Pricing the roads to
reduce peak volumes even slightly—by encouraging those with flexible schedules
to take the trip at some other time, go by another mode, or forgo the trip
altogether—makes the system work better for everyone else and actually
increases its capacity.” …
Jim Whitty, ODOT’s
innovative partnerships and alternative funding manager, said Cortright does make some good points….
26. “Bee erases 128 jobs, cuts pay for remaining
staff” (Sacramento Bee, Mar. 10, 2009); story citing GARY PRUITT (MPP 1981/JD 1982); http://www.sacbee.com/business/story/1685570.html
By Dale Kasler
The Bee eliminated 128
jobs Monday, or 11 percent of its staff, and imposed pay cuts on remaining
workers. The cutbacks are part of a broader layoff by The Bee’s parent, The
McClatchy Co. of Sacramento, which said it’s erasing
1,600 jobs, or 15 percent of its work force.
The rollbacks are the
third and most severe for McClatchy and The Bee since June. The cuts go deeper
than McClatchy envisioned just a month ago, when it said it would seek up to
$110 million in savings to cope with a quickening decline hitting nearly all
media.
It’s
“essential that we move even faster to realign our work force,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Pruitt.
“Given the worsening economy, we must do more.” …
Since June McClatchy has
cut 4,150 jobs, or about one-third of its work force, and trimmed total costs
by more than $300 million. Analysts said the cuts are needed to ward off a
possible bankruptcy, though McClatchy says the company is sound.
Pruitt will take a 15 percent cut in base salary this year. Other
executive salaries will fall 10 percent, and McClatchy announced “wage
reductions across the company.” …
Pruitt’s pay cut comes off a $1.1 million base salary in 2008,
according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. His total compensation
for 2008 isn’t yet public, but the company said he and other executives will
get no bonuses for this year or last….
27. “Bonnie Anderson
Appointed Department of Justice Director of Budget and Policy” (States News
Service,
She succeeds longtime DOJ Budget and Policy Director Jack
Benjamin who is retiring after 30 years of state service.
28. “First 5 extends
deadline for Mental Health Resource Guide” (Daily Democrat,
First 5 Yolo and a group
of area therapists are developing a Mental Health Resource Guide that will
contain listings of licensed private therapists and mental health agencies
located in
… The guide will include
addresses, phone numbers, specialties and insurances that providers accept. The
Resource Guide is intended to facilitate referrals from providers throughout
Interested parties may
go to the First 5 Yolo web site: http://www.first5yolo.org
and click on the link for the First 5 Yolo Mental Health Resource Guide survey
to enter their information. For more information, contact Jackie Hausman at jhausman@first5yolo.org; phone: 669-2330.
… First 5 Yolo expects
to have the completed guide available to the public in April of this year.
29. “Defiant Sudanese
President visits Darfur” (The World Today, Australia Broadcasting Company,
March 9, 2009); interview with ANN
VENEMAN (MPP 1971).
… MEREDITH GRIFFITHS:
After a warrant was issued [by the International Criminal Court] for his arrest
last week, President Omar al-Bashir told rallies in the Sudanese capital of
Khartoum, it was a colonialist ploy by nations targeting the country for its
oil and natural gas….
… After the warrant for
his arrest was issued last week,
… The United Nations
says the expulsion of the 13 agencies last week has put more than a million
lives at risk.
Ann Veneman is the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund.
ANN VENEMAN: There are millions of people in
[Ann Veneman was also interviewed by the BBC World Service (
30. “My View: Energy
efficiency can boost the economy” (Sacramento Bee,
By Howard Posner - Special
to The Bee
There’s an adage in the electric
utility industry that the cheapest power plant is the one we don’t have to
build. It’s another way of saying that energy efficiency is the most
cost-effective way to meet growing energy needs and reduce greenhouse gas
emissions….
Without minimizing the
benefits of renewable energy, energy efficiency is “America’s untapped energy
resource,” as a recent cover story in Time magazine put it. Energy-efficient
choices can save families about a third on their energy bills while reducing
carbon emissions by a similar amount. People don’t have to sacrifice comfort to
become more efficient, either. Efficiency is about using energy more
productively.
Better yet, energy
efficiency drives economic growth and creates new jobs. Energy efficiency
measures have enabled
31. “No Apologies; We’re all worried about seeming racist. Some advice: just
relax” (Newsweek, Pg. 54 Vol. 153,
By Raina Kelley
Dear fellow journalists
(especially the ones on TV): can I offer you a bit of unsolicited advice? Be
brave. Listening to you talk (and talk and talk)
around the subject of Barack Obama and race has been downright painful….
And I hate to pick on
the company that pays my bills, but The
Washington Post’s preemptive act of contrition for using an illustration of
a monkey for a humor column by Gene Weingarten about monkeys was completely
nonsensical…. Just because the New York
Post got into hot water for an editorial cartoon depicting cops shooting a
chimp identified as the writer of the stimulus plan does not mean that all
pictures of monkeys “inadvertently ... conjure racial stereotypes,” as The Washington Post wrote in its apology
to readers. Will The Washington Post
now forgo pictures of chickens and basketballs in case it brings to mind
unbidden racial stereotypes?
This is what can be so
unbelievably frustrating to African-Americans. We get apologies for things no
reasonable person would be offended by, nonapology apologies when we are
offended. (Really? Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grouse didn’t
know black people were offended by watermelon jokes?) Meanwhile, nobody’s
having the kinds of discussions African-Americans would like to have—like
whether increased diversity in the newsroom can prevent the negative racial
stereotyping we saw during Hurricane Katrina, when black people were reported as
“looting” while white people were said to be “foraging.” Why can’t we debate
why, according to “The Black Image in the White Mind” written by Robert
Entman and Andrew Rojecki, a mug shot of a black defendant is four times
more likely to appear in a local television news report than one of a white
defendant? …
32. “Obama taking big
political risk with budget” (San Francisco Chronicle,
--Carolyn Lochhead,
Chronicle
Amid a cratering stock market, huge job losses
and continuing ad hoc bank interventions, President Obama is risking his
presidency on the most ambitious remake of the federal government since Ronald
Reagan, raising jitters among moderate Democrats and presenting House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi with the most daunting challenge of her career.
For liberals who fretted
just a month ago that Obama was acting suspiciously centrist, his $3.6 trillion
budget is a call to arms. It is also a carefully woven matrix that tackles
everything from global warming to health care with new spending and taxes.
Pull out one piece, be
it a quasi-tax on carbon or an end to charitable and mortgage interest
deductions by the wealthy, and either the programs unravel or $1 trillion-plus
deficits rocket higher….
Like former President
Reagan, who inherited an economic calamity from a deeply unpopular predecessor,
Obama is using the crisis to change government’s role in the economy. “We are
at an extraordinary moment that is full of peril but full of possibility,”
Obama told PBS’ Jim Lehrer, “and I think that’s the time you want to be
president.”
Historically, a
president’s first year is almost always his most productive. “If you can’t do
it in your first term with your first budget, you almost never get a chance to
do it later,” said Stan Collender, a
veteran budget expert now with Qorvis Communications, a
“This is not a
continuation of anything,” Collender
said. “The policies and priorities of George Bush are not the policies and
priorities of Obama.” …
33. “Basic Health Plan
members to be cut. Proposed budget nearly halves number benefiting” (The Olympian,
By Adam Wilson, The Olympian
The math looks pretty
simple: To cut the Basic Health Plan’s costs by 42 percent, trim the rolls by
42,000 people.
The program helps pay
for the health care of 106,000 working-class residents. They share costs with
taxpayers based on how much they earn.
Gov. Chris Gregoire
proposed cutting the program’s funding by $252 million over the next two years.
The state faces a budget
shortfall of $8 billion in that time, and the Health Care Authority, which runs
the plan, already plans to drop enrollment to less than 100,000 by the end of
April.
“We think we can start
taking it down to 64,000 (people) by March of 2010 and hold it there, given the
amount of funding that the governor’s budget calls for,” Dave Wasser of the
Health Care Authority said.
The agency’s strategy to
meet Gregoire’s goals focuses on allowing some people to join the plan, even as
most open slots are eliminated….
Letting a few people
into the program might not prevent costs from soaring, said Rebecca Kavoussi, a government affairs vice
president for the Community Health Network of
“At some point, the
program will go into a death spiral if you don’t have enough healthy people to
offset the sick people,” she said.
People who lose access
to the insurance plan will have no choice but to seek care in hospital
emergency rooms or already-stressed health clinics, the network says. It has
opposed such a drastic reduction in the program and supports raising more tax
money to stave off such cuts.
Lawmakers have not
tackled the budget yet, nor have leaders said specifically what they would do
with the Basic Health Program.
“What we do know is that
Basic Health is a very popular program with the public. But we certainly are
not getting any reassurances on it,” Kavoussi
said….
34. “Avoid home office
pitfalls. Here are unexpected things that can drive you crazy once you’re
actually working from home” (Los Angeles Times,
By
Don’t get her wrong: In
theory, Julie Marsh loves her work
arrangement. The policy researcher
has an enviable schedule that permits her to split the week between Rand Corp. in
The fact that her work
space is cloistered within the recesses of her master bedroom is what allows
her to concentrate for long hours. But it’s also what cuts her off from the
world at large.
“I love the fact that I
get to be closer to my kids with this arrangement,” Marsh says. “But the hard part is when I really need to keep
working, I also need lunch or I need to run an errand. When the kids are at
home with the nanny, the minute they see me, it can turn a 15-minute break into
something much longer.”
The fantasy of many
cubicle dwellers—the 20-step commute—can seriously suffer in translation, as Marsh can attest….
Marsh stockpiles PowerBars, bottled water and diet soda in her
office, and her husband, composer Steve Mayer, says there’s been some
semi-serious talk of adding a ladder to the master bathroom window so his wife
can get in and out of her office without running the gantlet of mommy-hungry
toddlers….
35. “Obama
Administration Could Still Nationalize Banks” (Morning Edition, National Public
Radio (NPR),
STEVE INSKEEP, host: Let’s
see if we can try to figure out the discussion over whether the
DAVIDSON: Well, the
official word is pretty clear: We - the Obama administration - we don’t think
it’s a good idea to nationalize the banks. In fact, I spoke to Secretary of
Treasury Tim Geithner recently, and it was pretty clear….
INSKEEP: ... So why do
people keep talking about nationalization? …
DAVIDSON: Well, this is
what we’re trying to figure out. Now, I do talk to people off the record in the
administration, and they tell me we won’t even talk to you off the record in
any way about nationalization because we are so frightened about setting off a
global bank run. You just can’t even have a discussion about it. So we have to
look out from the outside and try and figure out what they’re thinking. One guy
who does that for a living is Sean West.
He’s an analyst of the U.S. political
scene for Eurasia Group,
and he presented his theory to me, which has a lot of compelling points to it.
Mr. SEAN WEST (Analyst,
Eurasia Group): Rather than actually talking in the language of
nationalization, the government has opened the door to increasing ownership of
these banks. It allows them to take ownership of banks as necessary, to say not
have to do it if the banks are able to pay back their loans. So it’s not
requiring nationalization.
INSKEEP: Adam, that
actually sounds a little bit like what’s happening. Take over a little bit of
Citigroup. If that doesn’t work, take over a little more.
DAVIDSON: Exactly. What
he points out is these stress tests you’ve heard of and the capital that the
government is making available—basically, what they’ve set up is a system where
the banks can nationalize themselves effectively, which gives the Obama
administration tremendous cover. They can say, oh, we’ve been telling you all
along this is a lousy strategy, but it turned out it
was the only thing we could do. Here’s Sean
West again.
Mr. WEST: Taking a 36 percent stake in Citigroup, but that’s huge.
By doing it incrementally instead of, say, taking it over, they’re able to kind
of deflect scrutiny of it….
36. “Banking on biotech:
Solano in a healthy place” (Reporter, The (
--Published in the
Reporter
Biotechnology is
thriving in
One can only imagine how
that news was received by the 140 workers who two days earlier were laid off
from their jobs at Vacaville’s ALZA Corp.
So which is it? Boom times or layoffs in the life sciences field?
The answer is ... both.
Consultant Doug Henton, chairman
and CEO of Collaborative Economics, based his assessment on information
collected between 2000 and 2006. It showed healthy growth in
Such companies were
growing at a rate of 35 percent a year, while other counties in the Bay Area
were reporting biotech losses of 3 percent. The number of Solano biotech jobs
grew from 385 to 2,310—most of them filled by local residents who saw their
wages rise noticeably in the process.
Yet even the best
biotech labs haven’t found a vaccine to inoculate the industry from the
economic virus that has infected the nation and the world in more recent months….
Still there is reason
for hope in the long term. There are around 40 life science companies in the
Solano area. As the population ages, as it is doing in the
That’s where local
governments can help. As Mr. Henton
pointed out, cities and the county should act to ensure there are places for
these companies to grow, and water available for their use, when the time
comes. State representatives can help by making sure tax policies encourage
these businesses to stay, rather than expand outside
37. “‘Buy American’ cuts
both ways” (CNNMoney.com,
By Steve Hargreaves,
CNNMoney.com staff writer
Some fear that the protectionist
trend spreading across the globe could escalate into a growth killing global
trade war.
The “buy American”
provision that Congress slipped into the stimulus bill last month is just one
of several protectionist measures governments are calling for during this
unprecedented economic crunch….
Buy American, in its
watered down form, isn’t seen as particularly restrictive. But there’s a fear
it could grow. To free traders - including former Presidents
George Bush and Bill Clinton - that means perpetuating inefficient industries
at home, driving the cost of goods up and the quality down, and hampering a
global economic recovery.
A host of other
countries have enacted or are pushing for various forms of government
protection for their domestic industries.
The most extreme example
of protectionism gone awry is the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. In an attempt to
protect domestic manufacturers, the law put a tariff on a broad range of
imports coming into
No one says we’re
anywhere near that.
Some say even the
measures we’ve seen so far, buy American among them, are merely politically
motivated blips, installed to placate the voting public but then quietly eased
by the trade negotiators.
“Obama’s trade policy
makes clear that the administration will pursue open trade,” said Sean West, a
38. “Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Hearing; Lessons Learned: How the
New Administration Can Achieve an Accurate and Cost-Effective 2010 Census;” (Congressional
Documents and Publications,
Testimony by Robert
Goldenkoff, Director, Strategic Issues,
What GAO Found
The decennial census is
an inherently fragile undertaking, requiring many moving parts to come together
in a short time frame. For example, accurate cost estimates help ensure that
the Bureau has adequate funds, and that Congress, the administration, and the
Bureau itself have reliable information on which to base advice and decisions.
However, as GAO has reported before, the Bureau has insufficient policies and
procedures and inadequately trained staff for conducting high-quality cost
estimation for the decennial census….
… Other key contributors
to this testimony include … Kathleen
Padulchick [GAO analyst]….
39. “Tough Test Emerges
as Administration Aims to Bolster Automakers, Cut Pollution” (The Washington
Post, March 4, 2009); story citing ROLAND
HWANG (MPP 1992); http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1654886831.html?dids=1654886831:1654886831&FMT=FT&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=a1b140f735a92eaaae75e1e13ab56ce0&date=Mar+4%2C+2009&author=Peter+Whoriskey%3BKendra+Marr&desc=Tough+Test+Emerges+as+Administration++Aims+to+Bolster+Automakers%2C+Cut+Pollution
By Peter Whoriskey and
Kendra Marr;
In the viability plans
General Motors and Chrysler submitted to support their federal aid requests,
the companies pledged to try to meet new fuel economy standards.
GM said that within six
years its cars would average 38.6 miles per gallon. Chrysler proposed 35.4 mpg.
Yet whether those levels
will be enough to meet new federal fuel efficiency standards is unknown because
even as the Obama administration is trying to revive the American car industry,
it is simultaneously drafting tougher fuel economy standards of the kind that
many in the industry had said were bad for business….
At a minimum, the Obama
administration is preparing to set yearly fuel-economy standards that will lead
to compliance with the Energy Act of 2007, which sets a fuel-economy goal for
2020….
But on Jan. 26, just
days after the presidential inauguration, Obama signaled that he may be willing
to entertain even stricter standards. He ordered federal regulators to consider
giving
GM and Chrysler
officials have said they will meet any new fuel-economy standards. But if
California’s rules are adopted, it is likely that the companies would fail the
environmental tests, narrowly in some cases, based on their current product
plans….
Others think the
requirements would not be as onerous as some have suggested.
“Our analysis shows,
when the car and light-truck fleets are considered together, that a national
greenhouse gas standard equivalent to
Whatever the effects of
the
40. “Cap-and-trade
proposal faces tough battle” (American Metal Market (AMM),
By Diana Schwaeble
The Obama administration’s
proposed budget for 2010 outlines a proposed cap-and-trade system which the
President said could generate $78.7 billion in revenue in 2012 and $645.7
billion over the next 10 years, according to reports citing budget documents.
The steel industry,
which for some time has raised concerns about cap-and-trade, is studying the
proposal, according to Thomas J. Gibson, president and chief executive of the
American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), Washington. “A lot of the debate
seems to be about ‘one size fits all’ approaches that can be extended to all
parts of the economy. I think that would be a mistake,” he said. “We are in the
process of carefully analyzing the budget proposal, but prefer a global steel
sectoral approach to climate change.”
But the industry need
not fear an imminent change in policy, even if some Democrats would like a
cap-and-trade system to be introduced quickly, one analyst said.
“I don’t think it is
going to go quickly,” said Emilie
Mazzacurati, senior analyst at
Carbon Market Research
41. “UNICEF Executive
Director: UNICEF increased its aid to
Veneman added that UNICEF focuses on quality education issues,
developing curricula, increasing number of school students and protecting
children….
On violence at school, Veneman said the UNICEF started a
program with the Education Ministry and UNRWA to train teachers on solving
disputes.
42. “Hospital CEO to
Step Down” (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Palo Alto Daily News,
By Shaun Bishop
The chief executive
officer of the
Sang-Ick Chang, who has
been CEO of the San Mateo County-run hospital for a little less than two years,
will be the new chief medical officer for the
Chang leaves as
The center’s chief medical officer, Dr. Susan Ehrlich, will take over
as interim CEO until the county finds a permanent replacement….
43. “Why US keeps backstopping a flattened AIG” (Christian Science
Monitor,
By Ron Scherer, Staff
writer
AIG’s dark days: A man leaves the insurance giant’s offices in
After Lehman Brothers
failed in September, the financial markets froze up, causing interest rates to
jump despite vigorous efforts by central bankers worldwide to keep credit
flowing. Would the same thing happen - or perhaps something worse - if the
Yes, is the reply from
the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve, which added another $30 billion
commitment to AIG on Monday. This increases taxpayers’
pledges to the company to $180 billion - about the same amount to be spent this
year under the just-passed economic stimulus package. It is the fourth time
Uncle Sam has had to backstop the company.
“AIG by itself is not
important, but it is intertwined in so many other aspects of our financial life
and so many people rely on it in one form or another,” says Stan Collender, a partner at Qorvis
Communications in
44. “Remarks by Israeli Foreign
Ministry spokesman, discussing UNICEF Executive
Director Ann Veneman’s visit to Israel” (Federal News Service, March 3,
2009); newswire citing ANN VENEMAN (MPP
1971).
(As released by the
Israeli Foreign Ministry,
On
During the war, the
children of Sderot sent a petition to Director
Veneman, in which they requested that UNICEF would relate to the suffering
of the children of southern
Director Veneman will also visit the Gaza Strip and meet with
senior officials of the Palestinian Authority. During Operation Cast Lead,
UNICEF issued supportive comments regarding the situation of the children of
45. “TRPA looks to
By Jeff DeLong
It’s all part of an
effort to finance an estimated $2.5 billion worth of projects that officials
say are needed to continue a trend of improving Tahoe’s threatened environment
during the next decade.
The
Projects funded by
Nevada, California, the federal government, local governments and the private
sector include efforts to control erosion polluting the lake, restore wetlands
and treat fire-prone forests.
Details concerning
California’s contribution toward the TRPA Environmental Improvement Program
over the next decade have not been determined but “there’s definitely a state
commitment,” said Patrick Wright,
executive director of the
The state has provided
more than $519 million….
46. “Qorvis’ Stan Collender discusses Obama proposal
for energy, environment programs” (Environment and Energy Daily, E&ETV’s
OnPoint Vol. 10 No. 9,
… During today’s
OnPoint, budget expert Stan Collender,
a partner at Qorvis Communications, reacts to President Obama’s first budget.
He explains what the administration will need to do to reach its goal of
reducing the deficit in four years. Collender
also gives his analysis of the cap-and-trade, clean energy, and oil company tax
provisions in the president’s proposal.
Monica Trauzzi: So [President
Obama] has this goal of reducing the deficit by the time his first term is
over. But this budget runs deficits, so it is that possible? … I mean can you have that type of turnaround in
four years?
Stan Collender: This is a very unusual situation. This is a
president who comes into office with permission to spend money, with permission
to run big deficits right now. That’s what the correct fiscal policy is given
the state of the economy and people say, “Just fix the economy. If you think it
takes bigger deficits, let’s go for it.” But, in a year or two, that is, when
we have unambiguous evidence that the economy is turned up again, he will have
then have permission to reduce the deficit. That is he’ll run it up because he’s
got … political permission to do it, and then he’ll be able to start making
some pretty substantial reductions, both on the tax side and on the spending
side. And so there are very few presidents in history that have had this
ability to kind of switch gears so quickly.
Monica Trauzzi: The
budget essentially assumes that a cap-and-trade plan will be enacted and that
the government will be collecting significant revenues from such a system by
2012. There’s still a huge debate on Capitol Hill over whether cap and trade is
actually good for the economy or not. There’s some debate over whether it will
actually pass. So, does this put further pressure on Congress to actually pass
this legislation? And if they don’t, what does this do to the budget?
Stan Collender: Well, first of all, keep in mind that every
president’s budget, to a certain extent, is a wish list. I mean it’s just the
beginning of the debate, not the end. So every president says, “If I were king
or queen, this is what I would do.” And it’s not necessarily what’s going to
happen, but it’s his statement of policy and priorities and preferences. So,
does this put pressure on Congress? You bet it does. You’ve got the most
popular leader in the country right saying this is what we should do. It’s an
issue that most people don’t understand. The average person doesn’t really
understand very well. And, under those circumstances, if you’re going to vote
against the plan you’re going to have to explain to your constituents why you
want to do it. What happens if it doesn’t happen? Well, there’s a lot on the
spending side and on the revenue side that won’t occur. Don’t forget, the
president is proposing not just to collect revenues, but to spend a good deal
of it on a variety of programs that people would want. So those programs won’t
happen and obviously the revenues won’t flow in, so the deficit will be a
little bit higher….
Monica Trauzzi: So,
bottom line, the budget as a whole, who are the biggest winners and losers?
Stan Collender: Energy, healthcare, and education were the big
winners. The big losers: defense, although defense is still going up, but not
by as much as what happened in the administration; oil companies and
agriculture are the big losers….
47. “On prostitution in
Spot a massage parlor in
It’s no secret - not to
city leaders or law enforcement - yet next to nothing is done about this
flagrant trade and the sex trafficking behind it. Federal agents and city vice
squad officers have made arrests but barely dented the problem. These busts
rarely lead to parlor shutdowns….
Supervisor Carmen Chu was galvanized to take preliminary action
this month after police busted the Vicente Fitness and Health Care Center a
half a block from an elementary school in the Sunset District she represents.
It was the second arrest at the club since October. Her goal, like the mayor’s,
is to come up with either new city codes or law enforcement direction that will
end the bureaucratic run-around.
One of her ideas:
Multiple arrests at one business should automatically revoke a massage license,
and not oblige the city to go through lengthy hearings and court filings to do
the same….
48. “Good Earth Makes
Good Vines. Winemakers know that adding a little green improves the reds and” (Inside
Jersey, a Star-Ledger Magazine, March 1, 2009); story citing ALLISON JORDAN (MPP 2004).
By TJ Foderaro
Whether you realize it
or not, every time you open a bottle of wine, you’re doing your part for the
environment.
That’s because the wine
industry has long been front and center in the green movement, pioneering
so-called sustainable practices at a time when most of the agricultural world
remained addicted to agrichemicals.
Today, it’s safe to say,
a majority of wineries, in the
“My guess is close to
100 percent are doing some elements of green,” said Allison Jordan, executive director of the
The Wine Institute, the
leading trade group for
For example, instead of
using chemical pesticides to protect vines from insects, wineries are
introducing natural predators by installing birdhouses in the vineyards. To
reduce water usage, winemakers are switching to “drip irrigation,” pinpointing
small amounts of water at the base of the vines.
And rather than using
herbicides to control weeds, vineyard managers are planting cover crops between
rows of vines, which not only avoids the use of
chemicals but also prevents soil erosion….
In
Among them is the world’s
largest winery, E&J Gallo. “From our company’s first days, our philosophy
has been that healthy land lends itself to healthy vines, which produce the
best grapes, which ultimately make the best wine,” said Matt Gallo, grandson of
winery co-founder Julio Gallo.
“There are a lot of
capital costs up front, but then there’s a payback,” she said….
49. “Report: County has
future in life sciences” (Times-Herald (
By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen/
Times-Herald staff writer
Looking past the
economic crisis,
In a report delivered to
the Solano County Economic Development Corporation (EDC) last week, Doug Henton of Collaborative Economics
said that during the past decade, the county has seen exponential growth in the
life science-related industry, and can expect more.
“We did an index of
Vallejo’s
“We also expect new
related businesses to spin off the research and to come out of Touro’s (
The report also found
the area’s average wage levels have risen and that nearly 80 percent of the
area’s life sciences jobs are held by county residents, he said.
“Not just the
entry-level jobs but also the high-end jobs,” Henton said.
To ensure the county’s
position, however, certain things must be in place, Henton and Ammann said.
“There needs to be space
for research and development, manufacturing and commercial,” Henton said. “There needs to be a
workforce and training and education for them.”
Adequate water and sewer
capacity also is needed, he said.
“We’re in a short-term
recession but in the long term, the region is uniquely well positioned to take
advantage of growth in the life sciences industry.” Henton said….
50. “Groups seek more
information on illegal immigrants deported without a hearing” (Contra Costa
Times,
By Matt O’Brien - Contra
Costa Times
Buoyed by a new
president’s promise to make the federal government more open, immigrant
advocates are fighting to learn more about a fast-growing program to deport
illegal immigrants without a court hearing.
Immigration judges in
Almost 100,000
immigrants nationwide have signed what is called the “stipulated order of
removal” while in jail, waiving the right to appear before a judge, agreeing to
a speedy deportation and barring themselves from entering the United States for
at least a decade.
The law clinic and a
coalition of other groups last year wrested from the Department of Justice
information about the breadth of the program, but requests to learn more about
how it works were rejected.
“We got virtually nothing
in terms of how the program is run,” said Karen
Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center. “You don’t run a program of
that size without having some instruction to the line workers.”
The groups sued in
November, asserting the government was concealing records that should be
public.
“From what we’re
hearing, people are being told that the benefit is they can get out of
detention sooner,” said Jennifer Lee Koh, teaching fellow at the immigrants’
rights clinic at
“The problem is they’re
also being forced to sign away their rights. ... We feel they should know what
they are getting into when they sign a stipulated order.” …
Although illegal
immigrants began waiving court hearings in the 1990s, it was not until 2004
that the orders became commonplace. That year, 5,481 stipulated orders were
signed, steadily increasing to 31,554 in 2007, according to the documents
obtained by the law clinic. About 95 percent of those who signed the orders had
no lawyers.
Tumlin said how the orders are presented, and who is targeted, and
why some regions use them more than others, remains a mystery to those outside
of the jails where the orders are signed.
“We really don’t know
why the numbers are so big in
51. “Officials unsure
how to obtain stimulus funding” (Times-Herald (
By Jessica A.
York/Times-Herald staff writer
In the wake of this
month’s passage of the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the
steps
There’s a good reason
for that, said the city’s consulting grant writer, Dan Armenta. Working behind
the scenes to scout out the various ways
“It’s an amazing amount
of money that’s become available,” said Armenta, with Vallejo-based Armenta
Management Consulting. “The funding is there ... but not the guidelines,
(which) will become available in the next few weeks ... There’s very little
direct information available. This is so brand new, we’re talking about less
than two weeks that this has been available.” …
Outside of Armenta’s
work, the Vallejo Public Works Department staff has already initiated a request
to receive funds for city “shovel-ready” projects—those that have fully-formed
plans, have an approximately 90- to 120-day turnaround and just need funding,
said Gary Leach, public works director….
Other city department
heads said that many of the public works projects will have ancillary benefits
for their departments, as well. Assistant
City Manager-Community Development Director Craig Whittom said some of the
projects will help improve economic and community development for the city.
52. “Obama puts
spotlight on education deficit” (Los Angeles Times,
By Frank James
The president, in his
first address to a joint session of Congress, said his administration would
provide the support needed to give the
“Right now,
three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high
school diploma,” Obama said. “And yet, just over half of our citizens have that
level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any
industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish…..”
By one measure used by
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2005 the
Not surprisingly,
educators welcome Obama’s address….
Nancy Shulock, executive director of the Institute for Higher Education
Leadership and Policy at Sacramento State University, said, “We’re finally
picking up on the urgency of the educational crisis in this country.” …
53. “Economic Crisis
Complicates
By Felicity Barringer
The president of the CalPortland cement company says plunging
profits and dwindling limestone supplies have made the cost of upgrading the
plant a problem. Monica Almeida/The
New York Times
But the company says the
plant’s future is now uncertain. The recession has sent cement prices plunging,
lowered profits and forced CalPortland’s drivers to cut back on hours. And the
company says it faces new expenses: the cost of meeting
State regulators say new
jobs in renewable energy and green technologies, created as a result of the
law, will more than make up for the jobs that are lost. And the law’s
supporters note that less economic activity means reduced emissions of
heat-trapping gases, making the law’s goals—cutting carbon-dioxide emissions to
1990 levels by 2020—easier to meet….
Chris Busch, a climate economist with the Center for Resource Solutions,
an environmental group, also defended the Air Board’s work.
‘‘The excuse that more
study is needed,’’ Mr. Busch said, ‘‘has
been a standard excuse going back to the earliest’’ discussions about combating
climate change.
He added that, ‘‘now
that the science is increasingly clear,’’ opponents of climate change measures
are shifting the debate to economic models ‘‘which are easier to manipulate.’’ …
54. “Dissing NextGen” (Aviation Week & Space
Technology, Washington Outlook; Pg. 21 Vol. 170 No. 8,
Edited by James R. Asker
The
The measure did include
$1.1 billion in Airport Improvement Program funding and $1 billion for the
Homeland Security Dept. to install in-line baggage screening machines at
airports….
Dorothy Robyn, a Brattle Group consultant
who served on the
55. “After Standoff,
Calif. Reaches Budget Deal; Legislators Patch Nation’s Largest Shortfall” (The
Washington Post,
By Karl Vick;
LOS ANGELES -- In a pre-dawn
bargain,
The deal includes tax increases
that are designed to expire in two years, underscoring the temporary nature of
the patch. But analysts warn that
Already hit harder than
any other state’s by the housing slide, the
Then-Gov. Gray Davis (D)
faced a similar shortfall after the tech bubble burst in 2001, causing the
torrent of tax revenue flowing out of
“I think a lot of people
would say that California never really fully addressed the problem from 2001,
which was that they had an upturn in revenues largely fueled by stock options
and capital gains, and that evaporated fairly quickly,” said Tracy Gordon, an assistant professor of
public policy at the University of Maryland, who studied the California
economy for seven years….
56. “Be energy
efficient, and the state may help foot the bill” (Oregonian,
By Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian
A bipartisan group of
legislators unveiled a bill Wednesday they hope will create a pain-free way for
home and business owners to undertake expensive energy efficiency upgrades,
renewable energy and conservation projects.
The bill’s authors say
the aim is to reduce energy use, combat global warming and create green jobs by
eliminating the chief barrier most consumers and businesses face—big upfront
costs—in going beyond small-scale efficiency efforts such as installing compact
fluorescent light bulbs, attic insulation or weather stripping.
As outlined in the draft
bill, the program would enable consumers to get low-cost, long-term loans
funded with state bonds to underwrite a package of projects such as installing
a new furnace, windows or duct sealing. The loans would be repaid in monthly
installments tacked on to a home or business utility bill. Importantly, the
loan payments would transfer to the new owner of the meter if the home or
building were sold….
The bill is timely,
coming as the Oregon Legislature contemplates what could be a costly cap and
trade system and the Obama administration rolls energy efficiency dollars into
its fiscal stimulus package. An energy task force appointed by the governor has
identified startup costs as one of the major barriers to generating big energy
efficiency gains, and the recession is exacerbating the problem….
Utilities said they were
generally supportive of the concept of encouraging efficiency, but had yet to
wade through and provide feedback on the bill’s specifics. Utilities would be
lending both their credibility and their billing mechanism to the program, so
their support is crucial.
“Our worry is that it’s
too complicated to move through the Legislature quickly,” said Bill Edmonds, Northwest Natural’s director of environmental policy and sustainability.
“There are a lot of devilish details.” …
57. “
By Colin Miner, special
to The Oregonian
The regional government
agency had once looked at what
Two members of the city
commission won election in November after campaigning against the direction the
city was headed. As it debates
Voters elected [Jim] Nicita
and Rocky Smith and defeated three annexation proposals that would have added
nearly 200 acres to the city, allowed for new housing development and created a
green economy center….
Dan Drentlaw, the city’s
community development director, said that while the commissioners are right to
be careful about what projects to back, he worries that an overly cautious
stance could backfire.
“If we discourage
growth, developers will go elsewhere,” he said.
That leads to the
question of what direction
“It’s very important
that
58. “Jack Thurston: The Man Who Could Avert
Draper’s Car Crash?” (Iain Dale’s Diary,
--Iain Dale
When Labour finally
gives Dolly Draper the heave-ho, as they surely will, they could do worse than
turn to a chap called Jack Thurston.
Until 2001 he was Special Advisor to
Nick Brown. In THIS very thoughtful critique of Labour’s internet presence
he accurately analyses where they are going wrong, but, more to the point,
comes up with ideas. Here’s an excerpt from Thurston’s article.
First,
you just have to wonder who entrusted this Labour blogging effort to Derek
Draper, a notoriously hot-head with a profound lack of tolerance for people
whose points of view differ from his own. And on a more practical level, as far
as I can see he has absolutely zero track record as a political blogger (or any
other variety of blogger)....
...So,
what’s to do? The bad news is that I don’t think it’s likely that Labour will
get its blogging groove on in time for the next election. The good news is that
it probably doesn’t matter much. Labour should forget about trying to win the
battle of the blogs. It’s probably a lost cause and anyway I’m not convinced it
matters in terms of winning elections. What really matters is something
altogether less glamorous. And that is a really coherent and responsive
email-driven supporter mobilisation strategy. Even at 30 per cent in the polls,
Labour does have tens of millions of supporters it should be communicating
with, many of whom have email. It’s not about technology. John McCain had all
the same e-mobilisation tools as Barack Obama he just didn’t use them nearly so
well. If the next general election is close (and looking at the polls, that’s a
big IF) this could turn out to be an important difference between the parties.
In the meantime someone should either pull the plug on Labourlist or at the
very least ditch Draper and limit the damage.
Perish the thought.
Interestingly, in the comments on Thurston’s
article, Alex Hilton of Recess Monkey comes out into the open and agrees with
his analysis. Virtually every other Labour blogger I have been in communication
with thinks the same. When will they be brave enough to say it?
59. “Federal aid won’t
come fast enough for
By Harry Esteve and
Charles Pope, The Oregonian
Indeed, much of the
federal aid could be gobbled up when the state’s ever-deepening budget deficit
comes into clearer focus with an updated revenue forecast later this week….
State fiscal gloom
aside,
Kids
going to college? Bigger tax breaks and higher Pell grants await. Looking for a construction job?
And that’s not to
mention the tax breaks that make up about a third of the package, which will
put extra bucks in workers’ paychecks each pay period.
Included in the stimulus
package is more than $300 million for
Portland economist Joe Cortright warned against looking for quick
results in
“What’s happening in
There’s room to be
hopeful, Cortright said. As the
money is spent, more people will be put to work, whether it’s
construction work or managing a construction project. The money they earn will
ripple through the economy, which could lead to other jobs—perhaps a new
barista to sell workers coffee or a new project manager to handle increased
demand.
“It hopefully will cause
people to be optimistic that there are jobs opening up out there,” he said….
60. “College
opportunities for state residents ebb” (Los Angeles Times,
By Gale Holland
The state ranks near the
top nationally for residents over age 65 who have at least an associate of arts
degree, but places only 29th in the nation for those between 25 and 34 who have
the same level of education, the study said. Unless the pattern of shrinking
opportunities is reversed, the state risks a serious shortage of educated workers
to compete in a global economy, the study warned.
“We’re facing some
really serious challenges and it has to do with not getting our younger
generation educated at the same rate as other generations,” said Nancy Shulock, coauthor of the report
and executive director of the Institute
for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at
Titled “The Grades Are
In—2008,” the report said too many of the state’s high school students are not
prepared for college, too many of its adults lack “basic literacy” and too many
colleges fail to make sure their students complete certificate programs or
degrees.
Getting a college
education in
But the statewide
picture also is dismal, Shulock
added.
Nearly 80% of
“It becomes competition
for scarce seats, and the fear is the less well-prepared will lose out,” she
said.
Shulock said that even in the face of the financial crisis, the
state should take action, including shifting funding
formulas for colleges from the number of students they enroll to the number who
complete programs or degrees….
61. “
--America.gov
Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a change in the State Department’s
approach to carrying out its foreign policy duties. This reformation will
strengthen the role of science cooperation in international relations.
“American leadership has
been wanting but is still wanted,” she told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee during her confirmation hearing January 13. “We must use what has
been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal—diplomatic,
economic, military, political, legal and cultural—picking the right tool or
combination of tools for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be
the vanguard of foreign policy.” …
… One of the most
promising of the smart power tools is science diplomacy, the practice of
supporting and promoting scientific exchanges, cooperation and research between
the
Through its Bureau of
Oceans, Environment and Science (OES), the State Department engages
governments, private-sector businesses, universities, nongovernmental and
international organizations and individuals from every region in the world to
promote scientific cooperation and education.
“We have recently
concluded S&T [science and technology] agreements with
“We’ve raised our
S&T relationship with
62. “Tipping Point
Community to Receive $250,000 in Cash and HP Technology to Fight Bay Area
Poverty; HP Grant Is Final Push to Meeting Tipping Point’s $2 Million Goal”
(Business Wire, February 12, 2009); newswire citing DANIEL LURIE (MPP 2005).
To combat poverty in the
Bay Area during the current economic downturn, and as an incentive to inspire
people to donate money to Tipping Point Community, the board of directors of
Tipping Point Community offered a dollar-for-dollar match for money raised
between
HP committed $100,000 in
cash, allowing Tipping Point Community to reach $1 million in donations and
thus a total of $2 million was raised to support Tipping Point grantees.
In addition, HP will
donate $150,000 in HP technology, to be distributed in partnership with Tipping
Point Community to local Bay Area organizations. Also, Michael J. Holston,
executive vice president, general counsel and secretary at HP, has joined the
Tipping Point Community board.
“Our groups desperately
need modern technology to guarantee effective service delivery to their
communities - most simply can’t afford it,”said Daniel Lurie, president and founder, Tipping Point Community. “HP’s
generous contributions ensure they will have the tools required to have maximum
impact in the fight against poverty.” …
About Tipping Point
Community
Tipping Point Community
screens non-profits rigorously to find the most effective groups connecting Bay
Area individuals and families to the services and opportunities needed to break
the cycle of poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency. Tipping Point’s
board underwrites all operating and fundraising expenses so that 100 percent of
every dollar donated goes directly toward fighting poverty. More information
about Tipping Point Community is available at www.tippoint.org .
63. “Interview with Mickey Levy” (Journal Inquirer (
Bank of America Chief Economist, Mickey D. Levy analyzes and
forecasts national and international economic performance and financial market
behavior and conducts research on monetary and fiscal policies. Levy, a widely quoted economic
observer, is also an adviser to several Federal Reserve Banks.
A lot of people are not sure what’s in the stimulus plan and what’s in
the bank bail-out as they are currently constituted. Explain the stimulus plan
first.
MICKEY LEVY: The fiscal stimulus package that in all likelihood
will be enacted and implemented very shortly involves an increase of deficit
spending of over $800 billion, or approximately 3 percent of Gross Domestic
Product, in 2009 and 2010. A little over $200 billion will involve tax reductions.
This will include a $500 temporary refundable tax credit in both 2009 and 2010
for lower- and middle-income individuals ($1,000 for joint tax filers), a
one-time subsidy for Social Security recipients, middle-class tax relief on the
alternative minimum tax, and a tax credit for purchasing a home.
Federal spending will be
increased over $600 billion for a wide variety of programs. This will include
traditional counter-cyclical income support programs such as food stamps and
enhanced unemployment compensation, large grants-in-aid to states, large
subsidies for health insurance, and heavy spending on infrastructure building,
with a focus on transportation and energy.
Political centrists negotiated a compromise on the Obama stimulus plan,
which cut $80 billion—$40 billion from aid to cash-starved state governments,
$16 billion from school construction, money for the unemployed, food stamps,
and health care for the poor. But don’t those items, including Joe Lieberman’s
$15,000 tax credit for buying a home, badly undercut the stimulus?
MICKEY LEVY: Not necessarily. The magnitude in the deficit spending
in the stimulus package is unprecedented, even after those modifications. The
dramatic increase in infrastructure building and many of the other programs
will create jobs and ease the financial pressure currently facing state
governments.
In addition, the tax
credit for home purchases directly addresses a major problem in the economy:
Currently there is a large inventory of unsold homes,
and until demand to purchase homes increases and those inventories decrease,
there will be downward pressure on home prices, with attending negative side
effects….
64. “Conservation land
money available” (Honolulu Advertiser,
--Advertiser Final
A city commission that
advises the City Council on acquiring land for conservation has started an
application process to make recommendations for awarding money to acquire land.
The Clean Water and
Natural Lands Commission, established in 2007, will review the applications and
make recommendations to the City Council on projects to be funded through the
Clean Water and Natural Lands Fund.
Final selection of
projects to be funded will be made by the City Council as part of the annual
budget process.
“This represents a
unique opportunity for our community to enhance conservation efforts by coming
together to take a more active role in the preservation of land on O’ahu,”
Council Chairman Todd Apo said in a news release. “The council encourages the
public to work with the commission through the application process and to
provide input that will assist it in making its recommendations to the council.”
Commission Chairwoman Denise Antolini said the commission has
established criteria for reviewing applications that include protection of
watershed lands, historical or culturally significant land areas and sites,
forests, beaches, coastal areas and agriculture lands….
65. “Consolidation is on
the table again” (Times Argus, The (
By Sarah Hinckley - Times
Argus Staff
Five years ago, the
district considered a similar plan, and residents rejected the $15 million
proposal. Some of the same issues were explored then, but most agreed the costs
outweighed the savings.
“We bring lessons from
that, one is that the budget was put together deductively—basically it was the
process of adding, adding, adding,” said Richard
Sheir.
Sheir said the board needs to take into account the cost of
payments for the $1.45 million bond passed last March and the expense of ending
a contract with New York-based Honeywell, which was hired to conduct an energy
audit on
66. “Notre Dame Panel to
Discuss Future of Electric Power “ (States News
Service,
NOTRE DAME,
The forum is part of the
University’s yearlong emphasis on global energy, which was introduced during
the 2008 Notre Dame Forum on Sustainable Energy….
William Hederman, special
advisor to the
67. “Blago’s enemies
lecture at NU” (Politico.com,
By Ali Elkin - Daily
Northwestern
As the first day of Gov.
Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment trial came to a close, two journalists he had
previously called “beeping people” spoke at Northwestern.
Bruce Dold, Medill ‘77,
and John McCormick, Medill ‘72, editors of the
“Their names are
prominent on the governor’s informal enemies list as well as Medill’s roster of
distinguished alumni,” Prof. Roger Boye said, garnering chuckles from an
audience of about 60 students, faculty members and guests during his
introduction.
Prof. Donna Leff moderated the talk, asking her own questions
before opening up the conversation to the audience….
68. “
CITY COUNCIL SITTING AS
THE LOCAL REUSE AUTHORITY CONSENT CALENDAR
Approving - a third
amendment to the agreement with Katharine
Gale Consulting to provide services related to the Homeless Accommodation
for the Concord Reuse Project increasing the compensation by $30,000 to a total
not to exceed $130,000 and extending the term to July 31, 2009; and authorizing
the Executive Director to execute the agreement. Recommended by the Director of
Planning and Economic Development….
69. “Green goal of ‘carbon
neutrality’ hits limit” (The Associated Press,
By Jeffrey Ball, The Wall Street Journal
ROUND ROCK,
In the two years since
Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” helped make climate change a marquee
issue, companies from Timberland Co., the shoe maker, to News Corp., the owner
of The Wall Street Journal, have
promised to become “carbon neutral.” …
The amount of emissions
Dell has committed to neutralize is known in the environmental industry as the
company’s “carbon footprint.” But there is no universally accepted standard for
what a footprint should include, and so every company calculates it
differently. Dell counts the emissions produced by its boilers and
company-owned cars, its buildings’ electricity use, and its employees’ business
air travel….
Moreover, while Dell is
improving its energy efficiency, it is claiming carbon neutrality mostly by
purchasing environmental “credits.” These are financial instruments that
bankroll environmental improvements made by others, such as running wind
turbines or planting forests. Dell reasons that these credits cancel out the
bulk of its carbon footprint….
In such cases, the
revenue from credits might help a renewable-energy company’s financial
performance, but it’s not really funding new cuts in emissions. And that means
the companies buying the credits to neutralize their own continued pollution
aren’t achieving the environmental gains they’re claiming.
Aware of this pitfall,
Dell hired a consultant this summer to review some of its planned REC purchases
and confirm their legitimacy.
“They wanted to make
sure that when they came out and said, ‘Here’s our carbon footprint,’ there
were no surprises,” says Craig Ebert,
Neither ICF nor Dell
will release the report ICF prepared. Mr.
Ebert says the three-page memo was a “basic assessment” of the projects. “It
wasn’t a deep dive down into every nook and cranny of the projects,” he says,
because that “really wasn’t necessary, and we weren’t asked to do that by Dell.”
He says the report concluded that the wind-power projects Dell asked ICF to vet
wouldn’t have been economically feasible without the revenue from the
certificate sales….
ICF, the consultant Dell
hired to vet several of the wind projects, stands by its study, the company’s Mr. Ebert says. Dell’s Mr. Parker said
in an email that the computer maker has “made a conscious decision to partner
with the world’s most reputable providers” of environmental credits.
70. “Governor Corzine
Signs Legislation Officially Designating New Jersey Israel Commission within
Department of State” (States News Service, December 22, 2008); newswire citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975).
“
As a symbol of potential
cooperation,
“Through the
codification of the Commission, we are protecting the current agreement
covering exchange programs we have with Israel, while also congratulating its
people on reaching such a significant milestone [congratulating Israel on its
60th anniversary],” said Senator Robert
Gordon, (D-Bergen) [a primary
sponsor of the legislation]….
1. “Obamanomics Isn’t About Big Government. The
president’s focus is on improving human capital; (Wall Street Journal,
By ROBERT
B. REICH
The real distinction between Obamanomics and
Reaganomics involves government’s role in achieving growth and broad-based
prosperity. The animating idea of Reaganomics was that the economy grows best
from the top down….
Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy
grows best from the bottom up….
Obamanomics recognizes that the only resource
uniquely rooted in a national economy is its people—their skills, insights,
capacities to collaborate, and the transportation and communication systems
that link them together. Public investment is the key to attracting long-term
private investment so that a nation’s people can prosper….
Regulation, done correctly, is also a form of
public investment because it enables consumers and investors to be confident about
what they’re receiving, and ensures that the side-effects of trades don’t harm
the public. Reaganomics assumed that deregulated markets always function
better. They do in many respects. But when they don’t, all hell can break
loose, retarding economic growth….
Under Reaganomics, government was the problem.
It can still be a problem. But a central tenet of Obamanomics is that there are
even bigger problems out there which cannot be solved without government. By
building the economy from the bottom up, enhancing public investment, and
instituting reasonable regulation, Obamanomics marks a reversal of the economic
philosophy that has dominated
Mr. Reich is professor of public policy at the University of California
at Berkeley and a former U.S.
Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton.
2. “Just How Expensive Is Tesla’s Electric
Sedan?” (New York Times Online,
By Claire Cain Miller
Tesla Motors’ chief executive,
Elon Musk, right, and chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, unveiled the Model
S, an all-electric, zero-emission car, on Thursday in
Tesla Motors unveiled its second all-electric
car Thursday in
It is also affordable, at least according to
Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive. At $57,400 ($49,900 after tax credits), it
is half the price of Tesla’s $109,000 Roadster — but more expensive than the
average sedan….
After factoring in savings on gas, [Musk] said,
the car is comparable to a $35,000 sedan….
Smaller electric cars would be less expensive,
and Mr. Musk said that Tesla eventually plans to build one for less than
$30,000. Prices will presumably go down as the technology improves.
“A $50,000 sporty E.V. is actually quite impressive
given the decades of underinvestment in battery research,” said Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the
3. “Wilderness Society Receives Grant from Goldman Fund to Protect Public Lands
from Off-Road Vehicle Damage” (Targeted News Service, March 26, 2009); newswire
citing RICHARD GOLDMAN.
“There has been a proliferation of new roads and
motorized trail networks in our national forests and other federal wildlands,”
said Matt Dietz, a California-based ecologist with The Wilderness Society. “The
cumulative impact of millions of off-road users is highly destructive and has
become one of the leading threats to public landscapes across the country.
These activities need to be carried out in places where they will not threaten
wildlife, vegetation, and people who are seeking peace and quiet.”
The funding will enable The Wilderness Society
to develop ecological, economic, and legal criteria for federal land management
agencies to use in designating routes suitable for off-road vehicles, while
closing and when needed, restoring, unsuitable routes in ecologically sensitive
areas. “We are grateful to Richard
Goldman for his commitment to conservation and to the Goldman Fund for its generosity,” said Wilderness Society President
William H. Meadows….
The Richard
and Rhoda Goldman Fund provides resources and leadership for creative,
risk-taking philanthropy. In addition to its grant making, the Fund’s
commitment to conservation is seen in its sponsorship of the Goldman
Environmental Prize, the world’s largest prize program honoring grassroots
environmentalists.
4. “Transparency’s a must to gain our trust” –
Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace
[NPR],
Kai Ryssdal:
The president said it last night. The Treasury secretary said it today …that
the Obama Administration wants new ways to protect against systemic risk in the
financial industry. New regulations and government powers.
Commentator Robert Reich thinks that’s
a great idea. He’s just worried about execution.
ROBERT REICH: The only real way to
restore trust in Wall Street is to make the Street more transparent.
So much was
done off the balance sheets, buried in incomprehensibly complex derivatives,
swaps. Debt instruments that were collateralized,
securitized, guaranteed, insured, co-partied. Triple-A-rated nothings,
sliced and diced until no one could possibly know….
The Treasury
and Fed are trying to do their jobs under the most difficult circumstances in
over a half century. But they’re losing sight of a very basic principle: You
can only make a financial system more transparent and accountable by using
techniques that are themselves transparent and accountable.
Ryssdal: Robert Reich is a professor of public
policy at the
5. “Even
online, politics is a rich man’s game” (Hindustan Times,
“Real world”
political activities, like writing a letter to an official or signing a
petition, are known to vary with income. Almost 80 per cent of those in the
wealthiest fifth of the
6. “Not
Insane” (The New Yorker,
By Hendrik
Hertzberg
On “Hardball”
the other night, David Frum was complaining about the Republican Party…. What
conservatives are saying, he told Matthews, is increasingly not only
counterproductive economically but also politically. We look like we don’t
care. We look like we’re indifferent. We don’t offer solutions. We’re talking
about a spending freeze in the middle of a 1929-30-style meltdown!
And yet,
lurking underneath the anti-spending, pro-tax-cutting cant is one idea that
might truly have merit. Frum mentioned it on that “Hardball” broadcast,
touching off this rather cryptic exchange:
FRUM: I’m
for a big payroll-tax holiday that would go into effect immediately.
MATTHEWS: I
know about the payroll, uh-in other words, it gets
money back in the hands of people who are working people, right? … But it
sounds like a liberal argument. The funny thing is,
the liberals haven’t pushed it. And I don’t know why, because working people
pay a very regressive tax when they go to work, right?
Right. The payroll tax-a.k.a. the Social Security tax, the
Social Security and Medicare tax, or the Federal Insurance Contributions Act
(FICA) tax—skims around fifteen per cent from the payroll of every business and
the paycheck of every worker, from minimum-wage burger-flippers on up, with no
deductions. No exemptions, either—except that everything above a hundred grand
or so a year is untouched, which means that as salaries climb into the
stratosphere the tax, as a percentage, shrinks to a speck far below. This is
one reason that Warren Buffett’s secretary (as her boss has unproudly noted)
pays Uncle Sam a higher share of her income than he does. In fact,
three-quarters of American households pay more in payroll tax than in income
tax.…
Liberals
have been reticent, too. The payroll tax now provides a third of federal
revenues. And, because it nominally funds Social Security and Medicare, some
liberals regard its continuance as essential to the survival of those programs.
That’s almost certainly wrong. Public pensions and medical care for the aged
have become fixed, integral parts of American life. Their political support no
longer depends on analogizing them to private insurance… Holding them hostage
to ever-rising, job-killing payroll taxes is perverse.
If the
economic crisis necessitates a second stimulus—and it probably will—then a
payroll-tax holiday deserves a look. But it’s only half a good idea. A whole
good idea would be to make a payroll-tax holiday the first step in an orderly
transition to scrapping the payroll tax altogether and replacing the lost
revenue with a package of levies on things that, unlike jobs, we want less
rather than more of—things like pollution, carbon emissions, oil imports,
inefficient use of energy and natural resources, and excessive consumption….
Impossible? A politically heterogeneous little group with
the unfortunately punctuated name of Get America Working! has
been quietly pushing this combination for twenty years. In one form or another,
without much fanfare, it has earned the backing of such diverse characters as
Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens, the liberal economist James Galbraith and the
conservative economist Irwin Stelzer, Republican heavies like C. Boyden Gray
and Democratic heavies like Robert Reich.
It’s ambitious, it jumbles ideological and partisan preconceptions, and it
represents the kind of change that great crises open political space for. Does
that sound like anyone you know?
7. “Paying
more, getting less from prisons” (San Diego Union-Tribune,
By Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll
What is the
optimal level of incarceration? The simple answer is something like: The same
amount as there are criminals. The real answer is: the level that provides
Crime rates
are down, and yet prisons are more crowded than ever. The number of people
imprisoned has more than doubled over the past decades….
… The
recently passed 2009-10 California Budget allocates $9.6 billion to the
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, much higher than the $6 billion
budgeted for the
As we have
expanded the scope of offenses punishable with imprisonment, we are
incarcerating increasingly less dangerous offenders, thus reducing the marginal
benefits in terms of crime reduction associated with further increases. And
then there are the collateral damages, including an erosion of family and
community stability among certain demographic groups, depressed labor market
opportunities for ex-offenders, and accelerated transmission of communicable
diseases such as AIDS among inmates and their nonincarcerated partners….
Incarceration
isn’t the only way to prevent crime, and alternatives can provide just as much
bang for the buck. Preschool enrichment strategies, other educational options
and crime-diversion programs are more socially attractive and cost-effective
than our current reliance on incarceration. With these, we can get the same or
better crime-fighting benefits while expending much less on direct and
collateral costs of imprisonment.
Continuing
to support existing incarceration policies makes no sense from either a social
justice perspective or a cost-benefit analysis.
Raphael,
acting dean and professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the
University of California Berkeley, and
Stoll, chairman and professor of public policy at the School of Public Affairs
at the University of California Los Angeles, are the editors of “Do Prisons Make Us Safer?” published by the
Russell Sage Foundation.
8. “Letters
to the Editor” (San Diego Union-Tribune,
Alarm over
Under a
banner of fighting crime, we’ve created an industry with vested interests and
powerful lobbies. Against declining crime rates we are increasingly
incarcerating less serious, marginal offenders. According to authors Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll, only 20
percent of the prison growth is due to increased criminality. The remaining 80
percent is attributed to policy changes in sentencing and enforcement,
mandatory sentencing and stiffer penalties. Rather than pursue less costly,
more effective crime-fighting options like enforcing child support, youth
development, education and skill training, we’re being devoured by our own
prison industry. Have we struck out on three strikes? --
9. “The
Roundtable; Bonus Backlash” (This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News,
…ROBERT REICH (“The American Prospect”):
George [Will], you sound like you have a lot of rage
about the rage. And there is a lot of rage raging around this town, but let me
just say that populist rage is usually a pretty good indication that there is
something under the rage, that the public may have a legitimate reason to be
concerned about. I think that the public, under a tremendous economic stress
right now that cannot be exaggerated. is very
suspicious of the entire bailout operation. The public is very nervous about
what seems to be a counterintuitive proposition, which is that the people on
Wall Street whose greed and stupidity got us into this mess somehow should be
given huge amounts of money in order to help us get us out of this mess. And I
think that … the administration needs to get ahead of this….
GEORGE
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, Bob, how does - what
is the proper way then to address that concern, the concern of Wall Street, the
financial community that this [public-private partnership] is just not going to
work, that it’s going to drive away the very people you’re trying to help?
ROBERT REICH: Well, there are two commonsense alternatives
and, unfortunately, the public doesn’t really understand why neither is being
tried. One is temporary receivership. You simply say to a bank that cannot
afford it or AIG, they can’t pay its bills, you are temporarily directly under
the government’s ownership, not just ownership but control right now and that
means that we are calling the shot, the taxpayers own you, and we are at least
temporarily going to get rid of your assets that are toxic, we’re going to sell
them ….
… [B]ut, you
know, the question is why didn’t they get it sooner and let’s get it as fast as
possible. The other logical position is a kind of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Let
these institutions deal with their own creditors. Let AIG
deal with its own problems. Why does the government have to be here at
all? The hybrid that is being created right now is the worst of both worlds because
it means that these institutions are neither accountable to the market nor are
they accountable to taxpayers and democracy….
10. “Democrat
anger at Obama overkill; Politics Concern is mounting at the president’s
tactics” (The Sunday Times (
By Tony
Allen-Mills
WHEN the
White House announced last week that President Barack Obama will be returning
to the nation’s television screens on Tuesday for a prime-time press conference
that will postpone the latest episode of American Idol—the talent show watched
by 25m viewers—fans of the programme were quick to respond.
“Stop,
please stop, Mr O, we can’t take much more,” one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related
website. “Not again!” complained another….
The barbed
response to the prospect of yet another mass media dose of Obama’s economic
prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to
sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the
costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government’s trillion-dollar
bailout programme….
It was not
just that the White House misread popular outrage at the Wall Street hotshots
rewarded for running their company into the ground; there were rumblings of
discontent from a wide range of disillusioned Obama supporters complaining
about everything from his lack of support for gays to his plans for a new
military “surge” in
… A survey
from the key battlefield state of
“Here we are
six months after the Wall Street bailout began and it’s still the case that
almost no loans are being made to [ordinary people on] main street,” said Robert Reich, a prominent liberal academic and former labour secretary under
President Bill Clinton.
“The Wall
Street bailout is beginning to look like the most expensive tax-supported
fiasco in history,” Reich added. “The
president cannot afford to lose the public’s confidence that his administration
is a careful steward of the public’s money.” …
11. “AIG
Bonus Mess Adds to Geithner’s Rough Stretch” (Morning Edition, NPR, March 20,
2009); features commentary by ROBERT
REICH; Listen
to the story
Reported by
John Ydstie
President Obama shakes hands with Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday. Obama has expressed
“complete confidence” in Geithner. (Ron Edmonds/AP)
It’s been a
tough week for Timothy Geithner. President Obama’s Treasury secretary has been
a target of criticism in the AIG bonus controversy. Several Republican members
of Congress are calling for his resignation, and even some Democrats are
beginning to express concern about his future….
On
Wednesday, as he prepared to leave for the West Coast, Obama rose to Geithner’s
defense.
“I have
complete confidence in Tim Geithner and my entire economic team,” the president
said.…
Robert Reich, who was the secretary of labor during the
“I get
calls, people say, you know, ‘Who should be Geithner’s replacement if he should
be replaced?’ or ‘Don’t you think he’s really a liability? Isn’t he screwing up
this or screwing up that?’” Reich
said. “I’ve been through this so many times before. …
Still, Reich said, Geithner is the easiest
target in the administration for critics of the AIG bonuses.
“Because,
obviously, if he did not know, as he says he did not know, then why didn’t he
know? I mean, the government is essentially the owner
of AIG and should be running AIG,” Reich
said. “On the other hand, if he did know, why did he let it slip so long and so
far?”
Edward
Liddy, AIG’s CEO, acknowledged before a congressional committee Wednesday that
he had not talked to Geithner about the bonuses until last week. In further
defense of Geithner, Reich said the
number of huge issues he’s juggling makes it understandable that the bonus
issue could fall through the cracks. That’s especially the case because delays
in vetting appointees have kept Geithner very short-staffed at the Treasury.
Nevertheless,
Reich acknowledged, when a president
is forced to express full confidence in a Cabinet secretary, the red flags go
up in the nation’s Capitol.
12. “Projections
of Climate Change Go From Bad to Worse, Scientists Report” (Science
By Eli
Kintisch
Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen (far right) quizzed four
climate scientists (Dan Kammen at center) at the
The
challenge of change
Although
transforming the world energy economy poses what Ian Chubb, vice-chancellor of
13. “Political
scientist Henry Brady new
By Kathleen
Maclay, Media Relations
BERKELEY — Political scientist Henry E. Brady, a leading scholar of
public opinion, political movements, politics and public policy in the United
States, Canada, Russia, Estonia and other countries, has been appointed dean of
the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman
School of Public Policy.
Brady, the
Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
at UC Berkeley and president-elect of the American Political Science
Association, takes over the
The
“In the last
forty years, policy analysis has become an important force in
He noted
that the Internet and information technology have changed the ways that public
policy is formulated, advanced and evaluated, while science and engineering
have become essential components of more and more public issues such as global
warming, homeland security, public infrastructure and telecommunications
policy. Because of that, he said, he sees the
“To do this,
the
Brady is co-director of the Goldman School’s
Class of ‘68 Center on Civility and Democratic Engagement. He is the
director of the
In the
1990s, Brady led major evaluations of welfare reforms in
14. “Energy
of the Future” (Business News Network [
BNN
interviews Daniel Kammen, distinguished professor of energy,
Dr. Daniel Kammen: “… You’re right that
the longer the recession lasts the harder it will be to finance these
low-carbon energy projects, but it is still broadly understand that the green economy
is a job creator….”
15. “Rigorous
Economic Recovery by Mid-2010, Robert
Reich Tells National Council on Aging” (U.S. Newswire,
LAS VEGAS-- In
an address about older workers’ critical role in the economy, economist Robert Reich predicted a
rigorous recovery by the middle of next year at the National Council on Aging’s
MaturityWorks Alliance Workforce Summit. Reich,
who was Secretary of Labor under the
“Mature
workers are excellent employees,” Reich
said, for five key reasons: “experience, knowledge, capacity to innovate,
capacity to mentor, and reliability.” He pointed to the vigor of older baby
boomers and people in their 60s, 70s and above, as people’s life spans continue
to grow. He emphasized that older people can lead challenging, productive
lives.
Reich said that while the official
number for unemployment was 8%, it did not include people who had become
discouraged and stopped looking for work or those working part time who wanted
to work full time. The real unemployment number was really close to 14%. He
said the Workforce Investment Act, introduced during the
Reich predicted a rough year for the
economy, but pointed out that the faster the downturn, the faster the upturn
when the time comes. Regarding related issues facing older workers, Reich said, “there
was no problem with Social Security.” In contrast, he was very worried about
Medicare because medical costs are going up so much, which was why it was so
critical for the Obama Administration to reform health care….
16. “G in
GOP stands for grumpy” (Charleston Gazette,
By Terry
Gossard
If by chance
you missed it, morphing of the “Grand Old Party” now appears to be complete. It
has become (no, make that ensconced itself) as the “Grumpy Obstructionist Party”….
Following
what has been a tragic eight years of inept leadership and fiscal
irresponsibility, the “new GOP” Congressional modus operandi is “just say no”.
This is not to suggest or even imply that the Dems will always get it right,
but if memory serves, a significant majority of those casting a vote last
November exclaimed loud and clear ... HELP! …
Perhaps former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich
characterized it best a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning talk show when he
suggested that Congressional Republicans seem poised to sit back, wait and hope
that the Stimulus Plan fails and that as a consequence, Republicans will be able
to gain seats in both the House and Senate. How’s that for faithfully serving
your constituents? In the meantime, they seem to be satisfied with rearranging
deck chairs on our ship of state….
17. “Bracing
for a Backlash over Wall Street Bailouts” (New York Times,
By Adam Nagourney
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is increasingly
concerned about a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street, worried that
anger at financial institutions could also end up being directed at Congress
and the White House and could complicate President Obama’s agenda….
“Never underestimate the capacity of angry
populism in times of economic stress,” said Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the
[This story also appeared in the <a href=“http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/16/mideast/assess.php“>International
Herald Tribune</a>.]
18. “The real scandal of AIG: We’re helpless” –
Commentary by ROBERT REICH
(Salon.com,
By Robert
Reich
Reuters/Mike Segar
The
real scandal of AIG isn’t just that American taxpayers have so far committed
$170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail—the
most money ever funneled to a single company by a government since the dawn of
capitalism—nor even that AIG’s notoriously failing executives, the very unit
responsible for the catastrophic credit-default swaps at the very center of the
debacle, are planning to give themselves over $100 million in bonuses. The
scandal is that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated
to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is
happening with our money….
This sordid story of government helplessness in
the face of massive taxpayer commitments illustrates better than anything to
date why the government should take over any institution that’s “too big to
fail” and which has cost taxpayers dearly. Such institutions are no longer
within the capitalist system because they are no longer accountable to the
market. To whom should they be accountable? As long as taxpayers effectively
own a large portion of them, they should be accountable to the government….
Robert Reich, a professor of public policy
at the University of California at Berkeley, was secretary of labor during the
[Robert
Reich’s commentary was excerpted in The
Wall Street Journal’s roundup of economic news from around the Web: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/03/16/secondary-sources-troublesome-aig-how-to-repair-it-regulation/tab/print/
; and in Politico‘s Arena.]
19. “Wall Street rescue plan needs rescuing” –
Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace
[NPR],
ROBERT
REICH: The real scandal of AIG … isn’t just that the firm plans to give
giant bonuses to its executives. It’s that even though the public now owns 80
percent of AIG, Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, didn’t even know of this
bonus plan until last week, and seems helpless to stop it….
We’ve also learned that much of the $170 billion
has been used by AIG to pay off counter-parties such as Goldman Sachs, that up until now has claimed it did not receive any
bailout money. In fact, the original plan to bail out AIG was concocted at a
meeting last fall, run by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who had been
a former CEO of Goldman Sachs—along with the current CEO of Goldman Sachs, and
the then head of the New York Fed, our current Treasury Secretary, Tim
Geithner.
Now, none of this would be nearly as awful if the
Wall Street bailout were working….
And until the public feels confident that
taxpayer money isn’t being thrown down a rat hole, it may balk at other
ambitious undertakings, such as health care or education or the environment….
Chiotakis: Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich teaches public policy at the
20. “
By Gloria Borger - CNN Senior Political Analyst
President Obama now has his economic team on the
hunt for a way to scale back those egregious bonuses. But the president’s
problem goes beyond that: He has to make a convincing case for bailing out the
bad guys. He has to take the long view—explaining why it would hurt us to allow
the banks to fail….
But it may not be enough to say, “If we don’t do
this, we will face an economic Armageddon.” Why?
“The model in people’s heads right now is
extortion,” Robert Reich, President
Clinton’s former labor secretary, tells me. “In order to reduce that
anxiety and paranoia, the president has to assure the public that the benefit
is not going to the bankers—that, in the end, it’s going to benefit us.”
But, given the AIG bonuses, the public might well
ask: “Why should we believe you? You lectured Wall Street before the first
bailout—and you told us you were going to hold them accountable.”
Reich
says, “It makes them [the administration] look clueless. So not only does the
administration have to explain exactly why this money is necessary, but also
explain what is in place to keep the banks from doing this again.”
If that doesn’t happen, the cynicism, skepticism,
outrage and anger toward the banks will remain—and could potentially transfer
to the White House itself….
“At some tipping point in the future,” warns Reich, “the administration could be
seen as part of the problem.” …
21. “Replace
--Oliver Tickell
The world should dump the “inefficient and
ineffective”
Nordhaus, professor of economics at Yale university, critricised the
Dan
Kammen, professor of economics at Berkeley, said the world needs more than
a carbon tax to tackle climate change. “A uniform carbon tax may be very nice
in theory, but we are not going to make climate policy on theory alone. Any
carbon tax would need to be supplemented by policy, legislation, regulation and
efficiency standards.”
For example, Kammen
said, huge investment is needed to rebuild electricity grids to accommodate a
higher proportion of renewables and a carbon price could not achieve that in
the necessary time frame. “How many of us would have a cellphone if we had to
pay for 20 years of minutes upfront? We need financing to enable people to build clean energy into their homes on terms which makes
it available to owners, landlords, renters and low-income groups.”
22. “Scientists warn of ‘irreversible’ climate
shifts” (San Francisco Chronicle,
By Jan M. Olsen, Associated Press Writer
British economist Nicholas
Stern, author of a major British government report detailing the cost of
climate change, talks at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in
(03-12)
Their stark message came at the end of a
three-day conference aimed at updating the findings of a 2007 report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change before U.N. talks in December on a
new global climate treaty.
“The worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or
even worse) are being realized,” the scientists said in a statement. “There is
a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an
increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.”
The climate change panel predicted a sea level
rise of 7 to 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, which
could flood low-lying areas and force millions to flee. But more recent
research presented at the conference suggested that melting glaciers and ice
sheets could help push the sea level up at least 20 inches (50 centimeters),
and possibly as much as 39 inches (1 meter).
“Recent observations show that societies are
highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change with poor nations and
communities particularly at risk,” the statement said.
It noted that policy-makers already have a range
of tools to mitigate global warming. “But they must be vigorously and widely
implemented to achieve the societal transformation required to de-carbonize
economies,” it said.
23. “Global Warming to Carry Big Costs for
By The Associated Press
Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- From agricultural
losses to devastation wrought by wildfires, California’s economy is expected to
see significant costs resulting from global warming in the decades ahead,
according to a new report.
Global warming could translate into annual costs and revenue losses throughout
the economy of between $2.5 billion and $15 billion by 2050, according to a
summary of cost analyses presented to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s climate
advisers....
The projected financial toll comes from a compilation of 40 studies
commissioned by the governor’s Climate Action Team....
‘‘The numbers indicate that we have a lot at stake,’’ said Michael Hanemann, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and
Resource Economics at the
Hanemann, who reviewed the studies,
said the annual cost estimate of $2.5 billion to $15 billion is conservative.
For example, wildfire property damage estimates
do not include money that might be spent by state and local governments to fight
the fires.
Wildfire property damage alone could cost Californians between $200 million and
$42 billion a year, with the larger figure based on a worse-case scenario, Hanemann said. The state spent about $1
billion fighting wildfires in 2008....
[This story also appeared in more than 100 sources around the world, including
the <a href=“http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/12/america/Climate-Change-California.php“>International
Herald Tribune</a>, <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/12/AR2009031200377.html“>Washington
Post</a>, <a href=“http://www.sacbee.com/832/story/1692939.html“>Sacramento
Bee</a>, <a href=“http://www.mercurynews.com/natbreakingnews/ci_11894180“>San
Jose Mercury News</a>, <a href=http://www.contracostatimes.com/nationandworld/ci_11894180”>Contra
Costa Times</a>, <a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/12/national/a011651D77.DTL&type=science“>San
Francisco Chronicle</a>, and <a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2009-03-12-california-global-warming-costs_N.htm“>USA
Today</a>]
24. “Congress approves Omnibus spending bill” (KGO
TV,
By Mark Matthews
Washington (KGO) -- After nearly a week long
delay, the Senate passed the $410 billion Omnibus Spending Bill. The fight over
$7 billion in ear-marks galvanized Republican opposition and created fractures
among the Democrats. This bill was supposed to sail though Congress and instead
it gave Republicans a platform....
And the fight over the spending bill has helped
focus attention on other spending programs….
The truth is the White House can’t give a bottom
line for much of what the president is proposing.
“Right now, we don’t know how much it’s going to
cost to really stimulate the economy in terms of spending. We don’t know how
much it’s going to cost to bail out the banks; AIG, for example, we keep giving
more and more money to,” said UC Berkeley
Professor Henry Brady Ph.D.
Brady
says we don’t even know if all the government spending will work and that
uncertainty helps push down the market—which adds to the uncertainty and makes
it harder for the president to get his programs passed.
“Obama got a pass on the stimulus bill, but it’s
not clear he’s going to get a pass on much else from now on and he’s put a lot
on the table,” said Brady Ph.D....
25. “California Marijuana Dispensaries Cheer U.S.
Shift on Raids” (Wall Street Journal [*requires registration],
By Stu Woo and Justin Scheck
“We may be seeing the end of an era,” said Rob MacCoun, a law professor who studies
drug policy at the
Mr.
MacCoun said the Obama administration’s stance may help to legitimize a “quasi-legal”
marijuana culture in
The federal government may also challenge the
bill if it passes. “No one should assume that just because the Obama
administration is tolerant of medical marijuana, that they’ll be as tolerant of
recreational marijuana,” said Mr.
MacCoun, the
26. “The New Scrooge. Are there lemonade stands
that devote more to charity than Amazon.com?” (Slate (
By Paul Collins
With Amazon.com’s recent announcement of profits
of $645 million on revenues of $19.17 billion last year, the company isn’t just
surviving the recession—it’s pounding its rivals into the dust. So it’s cakes
and ale all around for charitable beneficiaries of the
Sure—if they’re buying.
While Amazon.com is famously cheap in its prices,
it’s also become infamously cheap to the community it lives in….
But should this matter to consumers?
That question animates the recent but largely
unnoticed book Creative Capitalism: A
Conversation With Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other
Economic Leaders, overseen by Slate’s
founding editor, Michael Kinsley. Beginning with Bill Gates’ 2008 Davos speech
by calling for “creative capitalism”—a loosely defined “hybrid engine” of
corporate do-gooderism and entrepreneurial know-how—Kinsley calls on an
all-star panel of economists and capitalists to respond.
… What’s remarkable about Creative Capitalism is that the best arguments belong to the
tightwads—to those who believe, as Warren Buffett bluntly tells Gates in one
conversation, “Basically, I don’t feel I’ve got the right to give away the
shareholder’s money.” By the time Richard Posner comes aboard, the question’s
not whether corporations should be finding new ways of being charitable—it’s
whether they should engage in any charity.
The problem, contributor and Yale economist John
Roemer notes in his tart essay “Just Tax the Rich,” is not that corporations
don’t care enough—it’s that we don’t. “Repairing the present injustice should
not be left to charity (or corporate philanthropy),” he writes, “but instead should be a state mandate.”
Yet the most bare-knuckled takedown comes from
where you’d least expect it: beardy
Coldblooded, perhaps, but fair enough: Amazon.com
and its shareholders can claim a philosophical purity of purpose and not spend
a penny on charity so long they play by the rules. There’s just one problem:
Amazon.com doesn’t much like the rules.
Amazon.com has spent a decade opposing the
enforcement of online taxes so that its noncollection of sales tax creates a
powerful pricing incentive over bricks-and-mortar competitors….
27. “State’s proposed emissions rule sparks
firestorm. The new standard would gauge a fuel’s ‘carbon intensity,’ from its
source to its burning” (Los Angeles Times,
By Margot Roosevelt
The low-carbon fuel standard, if approved next
month by the state’s Air Resources Board, would be the first in the nation to
restrict greenhouse gases produced by a fuel, from its source to its burning….
Air board chairwoman Mary Nichols said the
proposed rule was a “comprehensive, cradle-to-grave approach” that would spur
innovation and competition in the alternative fuels market….
By forcing refineries, producers and importers to
reduce the “carbon intensity” of their fuel by 10% by 2020, and by increasing
percentages after that, the air board is taking a far different approach from
the Renewable Fuels Standard that President Bush pushed through Congress in
2007.
That law required that 36 billion gallons of
biofuels be sold by 2022, of which 15 billion could be ethanol derived from
corn. That rule, said Daniel Sperling, an air board member and a UC Davis
transportation fuel expert, spurred “a massive expansion of corn ethanol.”
The corn from which ethanol is derived requires
large amounts of water and petroleum-based fertilizer to produce and, according
to some studies, diverts land from pastures and rain forests, which store
carbon. The result is increased carbon in the atmosphere.
In its proposal, the air board seeks to quantify
these so-called “indirect land use changes,” a calculation that effectively
assigns a high carbon intensity to corn-based ethanol
in relation to other fuels….
Several missives supporting the air board’s
approach were signed by leading
28. “Making things affordable can really cost big
bucks” (San Francisco Chronicle, March 6, 2009); column citing RICHARD GOLDMAN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/06/DDP8168DJU.DTL&hw=richard+goldman&sn=001&sc=1000
By Leah Garchik
-- The Girl Scouts of Northern California have
named Richard Goldman a Person of
Distinction. Goldman became the
first man so honored at a packed luncheon in the Julia Morgan Ballroom on
Tuesday. Four years ago Goldman—a “Girl
Scout at heart,” said one tribute—helped found the Girl Scouts’ Save the Bay
campaign, which has involved 28,000 Bay Area girls.
Even better than the dubbing was the introduction
of a Girl Scout patch for the Goldman
Environmental Prize, to be awarded to Scouts for RHODA: research, habitat, observe, discover, action. The acronym
honors Goldman’s late wife….
29. “First thing, let’s kill economists” (Daily
News, The (
By Paul Heise -
The sorry truth is,
economists are largely responsible for the crisis. They implemented the
mainstream free-market model, and it failed….
To understand how this economic and financial mess
happened and speculate when it might be over, you have to go back to the
arrogance of a specific group of economists called the “Committee to Save the
World.”
That is what Time
magazine called then Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin, Deputy Secretary Larry
Summers and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in the late 1990s, when they famously
put out financial brush fires in
When the crisis first hit, Secretary of Treasury
Paulson, New York Fed President Timothy Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
formed a new “save-the-world” committee. Unfortunately, they continued to
implement the deregulation model that, in this case, meant funneling money to
the rich expecting trickle-down….
Many economists never ascribed to Greenspan’s
deregulation ideology, saw the crisis coming and now vigorously disagree with
what Summers is doing. These include, my favorites,
Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Robert
Reich and Robert Kuttner. Also Paul Volcker, who should be moved to the
inner circle, for he is to Summers and Geithner what a
distinguished professor is to an undergraduate and a high-schooler.
These economists saw this crisis coming, and they
now advocate that the Keynesian economics being applied to stimulate the
economy also be applied to the repair of the financial system….
A resident
of Mt. Gretna, Heise holds a Ph.D. in
economics and is professor emeritus of economics at
30. “Innovation: A clean start for green power” (New
Scientist [
By Colin Barrasm, Columnist
So-called clean technologies have a dirty secret:
despite their potential to provide power without pumping out tonnes of
planet-warming gases, some methods are not actually very environmentally
friendly or sustainable....
Dangerous compounds are not the only issue. The
solar cell industry is currently reliant on materials that work well but may
soon become depleted....
Part of the reason for the photovoltaic industry’s
expensive tastes is a notion championed in the late 20th century by economist
Julian Simon that resources would get cheaper as global population expanded,
because human ingenuity would identify synthetic alternatives.
Simon won a high-profile, decade-long bet with
But that same investment is now worth $1500 in
real terms, points out Daniel Kammen at
the University of California in Berkeley. Growing industrial demands have
in fact driven up costs Julian Simon was wrong....
Kammen
thinks that this new economic reality will spur a wave of innovation into
cheaper solar cell materials as the industry attempts to minimise costs and
shelter from volatile market forces. His team even studied the extraction costs
and availability of 23 semiconducting materials to point photovoltaic research
in the direction of the more low-cost, sustainable alternatives....
The groundwork for this switch has already got
under way. Inspired by Kammen’s
analysis, engineers at
[Solar cell materials, Kammen et al.: Environmental Science and Technology (DOI:
10.1021/es8019534) ]
31. “Class warfare?” (Brattleboro Reformer (VT),
--Reformer.com
As a sign of how intellectually bankrupt
conservatism is right now, the far right is reduced to playing the class
warfare card in opposing President Obama’s economic plan.
Apparently, Obama believes that to pay for
education, health care and other public priorities, the very wealthiest
Americans should pay a bit more in taxes. He wants to do this by allowing
President Bush’s tax cuts to expire for individuals who make more than
$200,000, and for families making more than $250,000. The proposed tax increase
amounts to returning people in these income groups to the 39.1 percent rate
that they paid in the 1990s.
... Despite all the scary Republican rhetoric, a
large majority of Americans still voted for Obama.
Why? Because the cries of class
warfare ring hollow. As Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in
world, has noted, the
Contrary to conservative myth, economic growth
usually rises when taxes are increased and fall when they are lowered. Why?
Because, as most economists will tell you, the way to a prosperous economy is
ensuring that the poor and middle class have money to spend on goods and
services, which in turn, creates jobs.
“It’s about time a presidential budget
unequivocally redistributed income from the very rich to the middle class and
poor,” economist and former Labor
Secretary Robert Reich recently wrote. “The incomes of the top 1 percent
have soared for 30 years while median wages have slowed or declined in real
terms. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have shown, in the 1970s
the top-earning 1 percent of Americans took home 8 percent of total income; as
recently as 1980 they took home 9 percent. After that, total income became more
and more concentrated at the top. By 2007, the top 1 percent took home over 22
percent. Meanwhile, even as their incomes dramatically increased, the total
federal tax rates paid by the top 1 percent dropped. According to the
Congressional Budget Office, the top 1 percent paid a total federal tax rate of
37 percent three decades ago; now it’s paying 31 percent.” …
We are glad that Democrats are returning to the
defense of the ideal that this country works best when everyone shares in its
prosperity. Transferring wealth to the already-wealthy creates nothing. The
history of the last 30 years is conclusive proof of that. And if modestly
raising taxes on a group of people who have already prospered greatly constitutes
class warfare, let the battle begin.
32. “Layoffs in Uncertain Times: Bane or Benefit?”
(Connecticut Post,
By Wayne Bragg, Guest columnist
Since the start of the financial crisis,
corporate layoffs have seemingly reached epidemic proportions, nearly 3.6
million positions have been axed since December 2007. But, are massive layoffs
the correct tactic to thwart the specter of declining income during this
recession? …
The logic that across-the-board labor cuts
immediately translate into lower operating costs, productivity improvements and
increased corporate earnings in the short term, is basically faulty.
Unfortunately, for several decades this theory has been bolstered by Wall
Street as they reward companies’ I must do something knee-jerk reaction with an
increased share price which only emboldens management to continue the cost
cutting spiral.
This “Wall Street Effect” is best characterized
through a quote by Robert Reich when
Secretary of [Labor]:
“The typical upturn in stock prices immediately
upon announcement of a layoff is based more on a collective anticipation by
investors that other investors will respond positively to the same news, than
it is on any change in the fundamentals.” …
33. “Obama buries Reaganomics under $3.6 trillion
mountain; The president has killed off the idea of
small government with a vast schedule of tax and spend” (The Sunday Times (
By Sarah Baxter
… The Great Communicator of the 1980s would have
recognised his successor’s upbeat tone, but not his policies. When Obama
unveiled his eye-popping $3.6 trillion (£2.5 trillion) budget proposal two days
later, it was clear he had come not to praise Ronald Reagan, but to bury him.
“I don’t think we can continue on our current
course,” Obama said. “I work for the American people and I’m determined to
bring the change that the people voted for last November.” Democrats, who have
been conditioned for years to expect their leaders to renege on their left-wing
campaign promises, were jubilant.
The scale of Obama’s ambition has only just begun
to sink in. If his budget for 2010 passes through Congress largely unscathed,
it will represent the “the biggest redistribution of income from the wealthy to
the middle class and poor this nation has seen in more than 40 years”, said Robert Reich, a former secretary of labour
under Bill Clinton who has been advising Obama.
Reich
told The Sunday Times: “It is the
boldest budget we have seen since the Reagan administration, and drives a nail
in the coffin of Reaganomics. We can basically say goodbye to the philosophy
espoused by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.” …
Obama has not only turned his back on Reaganomics
but has ditched Clintonomics too. It was Bill Clinton who declared “the era of
big government is over” when he lost Congress to the Republicans in 1994 and
began to roll back welfare entitlements….
Some of Obama’s closest White House advisers,
including Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council, were
members of
“The idea of a self-regulating market seems
quaint if not outright ludicrous in the wake of the biggest crash since the
Great Depression,” said Reich.
Summers may not have had so much a change of
heart, as a change of president, according to Reich. “It doesn’t really matter what anybody thinks.
Obama is the boss and it is his budget,” he said….
34. “Struggling States Look to Unorthodox Taxes”
(New York Times, March 1, 2009); story citing ROBERT MACCOUN; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/us/01sin.html?scp=1&sq=%22robert%20maccoun%22&st=cse
By Jesse McKinley
… ‘‘People came down on me like a ton of bricks,’’
said [Representative Mark Miloscia] Miloscia, who proposed an 18.5 percent
sales tax on items like sex toys and adult magazines. ‘‘I didn’t quite
understand. Apparently porn is right up there with Mom and apple pie.’’
Mr. Miloscia’s proposal died at the committee
level, but he is far from the only legislator floating unorthodox ideas as more
than two-thirds of the states face budget shortfalls….
Nowhere is that more true than California, where
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a freshman from San Francisco, made a proposal
intended to increase revenue, and, no doubt, appetite: legalizing and taxing
marijuana, a major—if technically illegal—crop in the state. ‘‘We’re all
jonesing now for money,’’ Mr. Ammiano said. ‘‘And there’s this enormous
industry out there.’’ …
... Betty Yee, chairwoman of the California Board
of Equalization, the state’s tax collector, said that legal marijuana could
raise nearly $1 billion per year via a $50-per-ounce fee charged to retailers.
An additional $400 million could be raised through sales tax on marijuana sold
to buyers.
The law would also establish a smoking age—21—effectively
putting marijuana in a similar regulatory class as alcohol or tobacco.
Marijuana advocates argue that legalization could also decrease pressure on the
state’s overburdened prison system and law enforcement officers.
All of which, Ms. Yee said, at least makes the
proposal worth talking about in a state with chronic budget problems and a law
already on the books allowing the medical use of the drug….
‘‘We know the product is out there, and we know
marijuana is available to young people as well, but there’s no regulatory
structure in place,’’ Ms. Yee said. ‘‘I think it’s an opportunity to begin the
debate.’’ …
Having taxes on illegal activities, like a
seldom-collected tax on marijuana sales in Nevada, also has its drawbacks, said
Robert MacCoun, a professor of law and
public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has researched
drug policy.
‘‘It is very hard to tax illegal vices unless one
is comfortable with contradiction,’’ Mr.
MacCoun said. ‘‘How can you collect the taxes without documenting the
behavior? And how can you document the behavior without making an arrest?’’ …
35. “Union heads discuss strength in unity.
Leaders say solidarity presents a chance to accomplish goals” (Star-Ledger,
By Sam Hananel, Associated Press
Union leaders are talking about reuniting under a
single, more powerful federation, nearly four years after a nasty breakup split
organized labor.
Leaders from 12 of the largest unions, along with
rival federations AFL-CIO and Change to Win, have held three meetings since
January aimed at setting aside differences and taking advantage of the most
favorable political climate for unions in 15 years.
“We’ve had very positive discussions and we’ve
reached some significant agreements,” said David Bonior, the former
Seven unions, led by the Service Employees
International Union, bolted from the AFL-CIO in 2005. They complained the
federation focused too much on political campaigns and not enough on recruiting
new members. The break reflected frustration with steadily declining union
membership, from a peak of 35 percent of the workforce in the 1950s to about 12
percent today.
The political landscape has changed now that
Democrats control the White House and Congress. Union officials see a chance to
accomplish goals such as passing legislation that would make it easier for
workers to organize unions.
Robert
Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton administration, said the labor
split didn’t really matter when Republicans ran
But with Democrats in charge, unions realize that
“strength lies in unity,” said Reich.
“A divided labor movement is inherently weaker than a united one, especially
when it comes to national politics and policy.” …
36. “Robert
Reich discusses the economy” (Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC,
MARIA BARTIROMO, host:
Mr. ROBERT
REICH (University of California
Berkeley, United States Secretary of Labor, 1993-1997): … This is … a
revolutionary budget … I don’t know that people appreciate the full scope of
this thing. We haven’t seen a budget like this certainly in nine or ten or
maybe even 40 years.
BARTIROMO: What’s most stunning to you?
Mr. REICH:
Well, the redistribution of income that is implied in this budget. We … will
see tax increases on the wealthy. We will see tax cuts and subsidies for people
in the middle and below. We will see an end to a lot of what some of us have
been calling corporate welfare with regard to, for example, subsidies coming
from Medicare to the pharmaceutical companies and agricultural subsidies. If
this goes into effect, it’s going to change the relationship between government
and business, and change American society quite substantially….
37. “Trial by Economy” (The Commonwealth
Magazine, March 2009); speech by ROBERT
REICH; audio link to speech and Q&A
[Excerpt from “Annual Bank of
America-Walter E. Hoadley Economic Forecast,”
By ROBERT
REICH – Former U.S. Secretary of Labor; Author, The Work of Nations and Supercapitalism
… The dominant theory [of how we got here] is
that we had a housing bubble, and the housing bubble burst, and with the
bursting, a lot of Americans feel simply poorer than they did before. They
thought they had more assets than they otherwise did, and now they have fewer
assets; or they think their assets are worth less, particularly their housing asset.
They feel poorer and therefore they are holding back from the malls, and their
confidence is down, and as they hold back from buying, then obviously
businesses have to lay people off. As they lay people off, that creates a
vicious cycle.
The dominant scenario is not completely wrong,
but it implies that the problem originated with the housing bubble. I think the
housing bubble was a trigger for something else. Part of it was revealing the
irresponsibility on Wall Street and those who were supposed to regulate Wall
Street. But even that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the
matter has to do with consumer incomes….
38. “Brown reaps reward of
By Sarah Baxter
A NEW special relationship based on economics was
forged between Gordon Brown among the sand dunes and beach houses of
It was there that the brains behind Obama’s
economic team became friends many seasons ago with the up-and-coming young
shadow chancellor of the exchequer. New Labour was just being created and Brown
was eager to learn at the foot of masters who had summer houses there, such as
Larry Summers, now head of Obama’s National Economic Council, and Robert Reich, a professor at
There was another connection, too: the two
top-flight American economists had taught Brown’s young advisers, Ed Balls and
Ed Miliband, at
39. “
By Maya Mirsky, Correspondent
Speakers did express cautious optimism about
President Obama’s stimulus plan during the “Progressive Perspective on the
Economic Crisis” panel planned and moderated by Brunner, who represents District
1,
The long-planned discussion … gained new urgency
coming on the heels of both a final $41 billion budget for the state of
“It’s really quite dismal,” said panelist Dr. Steven Raphael, professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley.
He said
40. “Feeling Better, Doing Worse?” (The Jakarta Post,
--Jonatan Lassa (The writer is a Ph.D candidate in
Disaster Risk Governance at the
There is an increasing trend of social economic
losses in “natural” disasters due to the rising number of natural hazard
incidents together with the increasingly vulnerable population in
The United Nations International Strategy for
Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) jointly with
The recent 7.2-magnitude earthquake (S.R.) in the
The people not only live in a vulnerable
environment in regard to housing and infrastructure but also lack the
infrastructure to react quickly to the warning of a potential tsunami….
On the other hand, one may share the optimistic
view, asserting that
But why do many people feel worse when the
government is doing better in anticipating natural disasters? This question was
once asked by Aaron Wildavsky in
1977 within the
March 6 Dan Kammen was featured speaker at the
Former President’s Forum, ‘Energy, Access, and Equity’, hosted by Brazilian
President Lula and former President Cardozo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
March 10-12 Dan Kammen gave a talk on “Innovation
for Low-Carbon Economy” and was featured in “Closing Plenary,” at the International
Alliance of Research Universities Climate Change Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark;
http://climatecongress.ku.dk/
March 12 Dan Kammen gave a talk on “Science and
policy for a low-carbon future” at the Energy Crossroads Conference,
March 17 Dan Kammen was the keynote speaker at
the Green California Summit,
March 19 Robert Reich gave a free public lecture
on “Will Our Children Live as Well?” at Arizona State University Tempe campus,
March 19 Dan Kammen presented the EPCOR 2009
Distinguished Lecture, “Innovations for a Low-Carbon Society,” Center for
Applied Business Research in Energy and the Environment,
March 23-April 7 Dan Kammen is featured on the Discovery
Channel’s series, “Global Warming: The New Challenge with Tom Brokaw.”
March 26 Dan Kammen gave testimony on “Green
Jobs” at the Capitol Briefing: “Building A Strong,
Inclusive Green Economy In California,”
To view a complete list
of GSPP videos, visit our Events Archive at: http://gspp.berkeley.edu/events/webcasts
Recent events viewable
on UC Webcast: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/archive.php?select2=36
If you would like further information
about any of the above, or hard copies of cited articles, we’’’’d be happy to
provide them.
We are always delighted to receive your material for inclusion in the Digest. Please email the editor at wong23@berkeley.edu .
Sincerely,
Annette Doornbos
Director of External Relations and Development