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December 2011
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1. UC
Berkeley Sustainable Wine Forum
December 5,
2011, 5:30-7:00 p.m. Location TBA
The event
will include a sustainable wine tasting, a panel discussion, and keynote
speaker 1st District Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro.
Hosted by:
The Goldman School of Public Policy’s SNAP (Students in Nutrition and
Agriculture Policy), Environmental Policy Group, Haas Wine Industry Club, and
ResponsibleVino.com
Free tickets
at: http://responsiblevino.eventbrite.com/
2. The Future
of Public Universities Forum #2: “Taxation, Citizenship, Protest and Our
Current Crisis in Higher Education”
December 6,
2011 – 12 pm to 2 pm – Wheeler Auditorium
Henry E. Brady – Dean of the Goldman
School of Public Policy and co-author of the forthcoming book The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political
Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy
Jonathan Stein – UC Student
Regent-Designate, former UC Student Association (UCSA) board member, and UC
Berkeley MPP/JD candidate
Free tickets
available at the Wheeler Auditorium Box Office beginning at 11am. Doors will
open at 11:30am. More info
3. Annual
Aaron Wildavsky Forum 2012
Lawrence
Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University; Director of the National
Economic Council in the Obama Administration 2009-2011; U.S. Secretary of the
Treasury, 1999-2001.
April 12-13,
2012.
ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS
1. “Winners Announced in GovLoop / NASPAA 2011 Graduate Public Service Scholarship Essay Contest” (Govloop, November 30, 2011); award citing EVAN WHITE (MPP/JD cand. 2012); http://www.naspaa.org/principals/news/GL_scholarship_winners.pdf
2. “UC Regents approve spending plan, meet with students” (The Berkeleyan, November 30, 2011); story citing JONATHAN STEIN (MPP/JD cand. 2012); http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26732
3. “U.N. Climate Talks Getting Under Way amid Hazy Future - Local Strategies Taking Place of Kyoto Global Pact” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 28, 2011); story citing NED HELME (MPP 1971).
4. “Healthy S.F. is Harvard innovations award finalist” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 2011); story citing TANGERINE BRIGHAM (MPP 1990) and RICHARD SCHEFFLER; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/27/BAA11M08GM.DTL#ixzz1f1xiEl1H
5. “Is a strategic deficit plan beyond us?” (Star Tribune (
6. “
7. “The Nightly Business Report” (PBS, November 21, 2011); program featuring commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
8. “Bay Area transportation projects to be judged on benefits vs. costs” (San Jose Mercury News, November 21, 2011); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_19379548
9. “Gingrich: CBO a ‘reactionary socialist institution’” (CNN Wire, November 21, 2011); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
10. “Vallejo on the road to recovery” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2011); story citing CRAIG WHITTOM (MPP 1985); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/19/BAQQ1M1F4D.DTL#ixzz1eMkWwOPT
11. “Supercommittee’s work is step one” (Star Tribune (
12. “Settlement saves services for disabled, elderly” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 2011); story citing TOBY DOUGLAS (MPP 2001/MPH 2002); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/17/BAOR1M0JEH.DTL#ixzz1e4vpuAUZ
13. “Area roads among most congested” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 17, 2011); column citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/16/BA441M09VQ.DTL#ixzz1dzH7BeLw
14. “As Renewables Grant Program Fades, Industry Scrambles for Alternatives” (EnergyWashington Week, Vol. 8 No. 46, November 16, 2011); story citing ROB GRAMLICH (MPP 1995).
15. “Capitol Alert:
16. “In
17. “Former US Labor Secretary Reich presses Occupy crowd to take moral stand against Wall Street” (Washington Post, November 15, 2011); story co-reported by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005/MJ 2004) and citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/higher-education/anti-wall-street-activists-to-rally-at-uc-berkeley-in-attempt-to-build-another-occupy-cal-camp/2011/11/15/gIQASYnTNN_story.html
18. “Critical report prompts overhaul of special-education programs” (The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, November 15, 2011); story citing JANNELLE LEE KUBINEC (MPP 1997); http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/133829328.html?id=133829328
19. “FlexEnergy and DoD Introduce Flex Powerstation FP250 System” (Travel & Leisure Close-Up, November 14, 2011); story citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978/PhD 1983).
20. “Op-Ed: Pricing of electricity could use a jolt” (Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2011); op-ed by FREDERICK TAYLOR-HOCHBERG (MPP cand. 2012); http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-taylor-hochberg-electricity-rates-20111113,0,2240602.story
21. “Regulation study called biased” (Orange County Register, November 12, 2011); column citing STUART DROWN (MPP 1986).
22. “S.F. Mayor Ed Lee declares victory” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 10, 2011); story citing DAVID LATTERMAN (MPP 2002); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/09/MNBT1LSR24.DTL#ixzz1dK8MgDW0
23. “
24. “Mirkarimi looks to build on Hennessey’s legacy” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2011); column citing CARMEN CHU (MPP 2003); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/BARI1LTGTU.DTL#ixzz1diuJICLc
25. “Public financing a major player in mayor’s race” (
26. “How
27. “Daniel Borenstein: Oakley city manager loan deal wasn’t first public deception” (Oakland Tribune, November 12, 2011); column by DANIEL BORENSTEIN (MPP 1980/MJ 1985); http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_19323264
28. “Transitional Kindergarten: Preparing California’s Children to Succeed” (The California Progress Report, November 11, 2011); op-ed by DEBORAH KONG (MPP 2007); http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/transitional-kindergarten-preparing-california%E2%80%99s-children-succeed
29. “Policy Analysis Suggests System for Kidney Transplant Allocation” (States News Service, November 11, 2011); newswire citing DAVID WEIMER (MPP 1975/PhD 1978) and AIDAN VINING (MPP 1974/PhD 1980).
30. “A new take on the Food Stamp debate” (The Hill’s Congress Blog, November 10, 2011); op-ed by CHRISTINE FRY (MPP 2007); http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/193003-a-new-take-on-the-food-stamp-debate
31. “William S. Richardson School of Law Retains American Bar Association Accreditation” (US Fed News, November 10, 2011); newswire citing DENISE ANTOLINI (MPP 1985/JD 1986).
32. “Slapping lipstick on a money-losing pig; ‘Multiple
account evaluation’ now used by cities to justify projects that would be
rejected by cost-benefit analysis” (National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (
33. “State’s solar energy output reaches milestone” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2011); story citing LAURA WISLAND (MPP 2008) and SCOTT MURTISHAW (MPP 1999) and initiative co-written by DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/09/BU6D1LS4E6.DTL#ixzz1dEgJ3WzO
34. “Democrats Expand Their Hold on New Jersey Legislature, Despite Christie’s Efforts” (New York Times, November 9, 2011); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975); http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/nyregion/christies-bid-to-extend-his-clout-falls-flat.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29
35. “Legislative Analyst’s Office gives Jerry Brown’s public pension plan a mixed review” (The Sacramento Bee, Nov. 9, 2011); story citing MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980); http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/09/4040605/legislative-analysts-office-gives.html#ixzz1dEHYaEkR
36. “GW Professor Robert Entman Wins Prestigious Humboldt Prize” (States News Service, November 8, 2011); award citing ROBERT ENTMAN (MPP 1980/PhD).
37. “UT Research Center to Host Public Forum about Online Insurance Marketplace” (US Fed News, November 9, 2011); event featuring BRIAN HAILE (MPP 2000).
38. “Grupo Salinas Hosts U.S. Delegation of Journalists, Business Leaders and Political Leaders to Attend Ciudad de la Ideas Thinkers’ Forum in Puebla” (PR Newswire, November 8, 2011); newswire citing ANDRES ROEMER (MPP/PhD 1994).
39. “Health Affairs holds a briefing on ‘Linking Community Development & Health’” (FNS DAYBOOK, November 8, 2011); event featuring DAVID ERICKSON (MPP 1993).
40. “Why Did Healthy Children Fall Critically Ill in the 2009 H1N1 Flu Pandemic?” (PR Newswire, November 7, 2011); newswire citing TIM UYEKI (MPP 1985/MPH 1996/MD).
41. “Immigration officials back away from deportation program” (Gannett News Service, November 6, 2011); newswire citing KAREN TUMLIN (MPP 2003/JD 2004).
42. “Alarming state report predicts $294 billion shortfall for transportation over next decade” (San Jose Mercury News, November 6, 2011); story citing group headed by STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.insidebayarea.com/california/ci_19273018
43. “Landowners strike it rich with hedge fund” (The Times (
44. “‘Social enterprises’ helps people overcome barriers to
employment” (Deseret Morning News (
45. “Differences between Romney, Cain in Full View” (All Things Considered, National Public Radio, November 4, 2011); features commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
46. “INSIDE POLITICS” (Contra Costa Times, November 4, 2011); story citing ABEL GUILLEN (MPP 2001); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19259845?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
47. “Night harvests yield benefits; Vineyards getting better
wine, lower energy costs and happier workers” (
48. “Pension reform group’s initiatives may spur Legislature” (Oakland Tribune, November 3, 2011); story citing MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980); http://www.insidebayarea.com/bay-area-news/ci_19248787
49. The California Report: “Battle Brewing over State Public Employee Pensions” (KQED public radio, November 3, 2011); features commentary by MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980); Listen to the story
50. “Springs could take bullet if deficit panel fails; Even if an accord is reached in D.C., the city’s dependence on defense spending could spell large cuts down the line” (The Denver Post, November 2, 2011); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
51. “Sarah Marxer: DOMA perpetuates unfairness in Social Security system” (San Jose Mercury News, November 1, 2011); commentary by SARAH MARXER (MPP 2004); http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19242994
52. “San Mateo County to reap benefits from America’s Cup races, official says” (San Jose Mercury News, November 1, 2011); story citing ADAM VAN DE WATER (MPP 2001).
53. “By the numbers Health insurance; Which plan to pick? New rankings show big quality differences” (Consumer Reports, November 2011); story citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982).
54. “World Congress session to zero in on CAFE, energy” (Automotive News, Pg. 6 Vol. 86, October 24, 2011); event featuring ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992).
55. “Tri-City Shows Rationale for Excluding Members. Cites 1905 bribery case, N.Y. senator’s conviction” (San Diego Union-Tribune, October 22, 2011); story citing JOANNE SPEERS (MPP 1984/JD).
56. “Disability benefits program on unsustainable financial path” (McClatchy Washington Bureau, October 20, 2011); analysis citing NICOLE MAESTAS (MPP 1997/PhD Econ).
57. “CLIMATE: Utilities press EPA for ‘flexible’ greenhouse gas rule” (Greenwire, Vol. 10 No. 9, October 19, 2011); story citing BRIAN TURNER (MPP 2006).
58. “Physicians Treating Latinos Have High Hurdles to Jump, Study Shows” (Targeted News Service, October 10, 2011); newswire citing ARTURO VARGAS-BUSTAMANTE (MPP/MPH 2004).
59. “Quick Change That Lasts for the Long Term” (The New York Times Blogs (Opinionator), October 4, 2011); blog citing ANNA RUNKLE (MPP 1997).
60. “Guam Aircraft Company Sued for Religious Discrimination by EEOC” (US Fed News, October 3, 2011); newswire citing TIMOTHY RIERA (MPP 1989).
61. “Guam Pharmaceutical Wholesaler Sued by EEOC for Sexual Harassment” (US Fed News, October 3, 2011); newswire citing TIMOTHY RIERA (MPP 1989).
62. “
63. “D.C. students to be tested on sex education” (Washington Post, September 15, 2011); story citing BRIAN PICK (MPP 2007).
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
1. “First Amendment hijacked by moneyed interests” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/26/INBM1M2LC7.DTL#ixzz1f2eonS5O
2. “Looking Beyond Election Day” (New York Times, November 25, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/looking-beyond-election-day/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1
3. “As Layoffs Rise, Stock Buybacks Consume Cash” (New York Times & International Herald Tribune [*requires registration], November 22, 2011); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/business/rash-to-some-stock-buybacks-are-on-the-rise.html?sq=Berkeley&st=nyt&scp=4&pagewanted=print
4. “Reich: If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?” (Marketplace, American Public Media, November, 16, 2011); commentary by ROBERT REICH; Listen to the commentary
5. “From Savio Steps, Reich applauds ‘moral outrage’ as thousands cheer” (UC Berkeley NewsCenter, November 15, 2011); event featuring ROBERT REICH; http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/11/15/tuesday-strike/
6. “Huge protest at UC Berkeley - vote to set up camp” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 2011); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/15/MN7V1LVH5N.DTL#ixzz1dtTsCdwE
7. “Global protests: is 2011 a year that will
change the world? Will this year go down in history as one of those that
redefined global politics? Just what are the parallels – if any – with 1968 and
1989?” (Guardian [
8. “Wealth, political power imbalance must be fixed” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/12/INJU1LS12D.DTL#ixzz1dht7rVlC
9. “Wood smoke from cooking fires linked to pneumonia, cognitive impacts” (UC Berkeley Newscenter, November 10, 2011); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/11/10/cookstove-smoke-pneumonia-iq/
10. “Experts Suggest
11. “Robert Reich: Occupy movement not part of ‘class war’” (San Francisco Business Times, Nov. 8, 2011); column citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2011/11/robert-reich-occupy-not-class-war.html
12. Blog: “We need a Corporate Pledge of Allegiance” (Salon, November 8, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.salon.com/2011/11/08/we_need_a_corporate_pledge_of_allegiance/
13. “Income Gap Widening Across Generations” (KQED Radio, November 7, 2011); interview with ROBERT REICH; http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201111071730/a
14. “Alice Waters, Robert Reich talk up a delicious revolution” (Berkeleyside, November 7, 2011); event featuring ROBERT REICH; see the video
15. “Wall Street is back to its old tricks” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/04/INFR1LP34F.DTL#ixzz1d4IEpexc
16. “Occupy movement turns to extending appeal to
broad segments of
17. “Ideas on a new agenda for youth” (The Berkeleyan, November 1, 2011); profile and interview with DAVID KIRP; http://research.universityofcalifornia.edu/profiles/2011/10/david-kirp.html
18. Morning Edition: “As Population, Consumption Rise, Builder Goes Small” (NPR, November 1, 2011); features commentary by DAN KAMMEN; Listen to the story
19. “The occupiers’ responsive chord” (The Berkeleyan, November 1, 2011); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/11/01/the-occupiers-responsive-chord/
20. “Secretary-General Names Members of High-Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All” (States News Service, November 1, 2011); newswire citing DAN KAMMEN.
21. “The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs holds a forum on ‘Food Price Increases: Causes, Impacts and Responses’” (The Washington Daybook, September 30, 2011); event featuring ALAIN DE JANVRY.
1. “Winners Announced in GovLoop / NASPAA 2011 Graduate Public Service Scholarship Essay Contest” (Govloop, November 30, 2011); award citing EVAN WHITE (MPP/JD cand. 2012); http://www.naspaa.org/principals/news/GL_scholarship_winners.pdf
...The community has spoken, and the three scholarship winners are:
• Evan White, University of California, Berkeley – Goldman School of Public Policy and School of Law (Boalt Hall)
• Mauricio Cifuentes,
• Brian Footer,
Evan White took first place, a $2,500 scholarship, for his essay, “Promise Neighborhoods for a Promising Future.” In his essay, White suggested that the $100 million be allocated to ten communities to create “Promise Neighborhoods” that aim to eliminate poverty by taking a cradle-to-career approach with children.
“Because each child should have an opportunity to succeed, the racial achievement gap — which starts at age two — is a national disgrace. But it is also our greatest untapped potential. A more educated populace will spur innovation and create jobs. Increasing student success will decrease the nation’s widening inequality gap, with attendant improvements in crime, health, and levels of trust,” White wrote in his essay.
White is in his final year of simultaneously pursuing two graduate degrees: a Masters of Public Policy and a Juris Doctor (Law), both from UC Berkeley. He says that he would like to work for the Domestic Policy Council in a second Obama administration. During his first summer in graduate school, he interned at the White House Office of Management and Budget and would be thrilled to return to the Executive Office....
2. “UC Regents approve spending plan, meet with students” (The Berkeleyan, November 30, 2011); story citing JONATHAN STEIN (MPP/JD cand. 2012); http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26732
By Carolyn McMillan
Student regents Alfredo Mireles Jr., left, and Jonathan Stein listen to comments at UC Davis.
Members of the University of California Board of Regents, meeting by teleconference at four separate campus locations, today (Nov. 28) approved a spending plan for the coming year, then met informally with some of the student protesters who temporarily shut the meeting down.
The board meeting, held at UCLA, UC Merced, UC Davis and UC San Francisco, included 90 minutes of public comment, rather than the usual 20, in an effort to accommodate the large number of speakers. Many students were there to decry police use of pepper spray on demonstrators earlier this month at UC Davis and students being jabbed with police batons during protests at UC Berkeley.
President Mark G. Yudof, following the public comment period, announced that he has appointed former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso to head the task force that will review the UC Davis incident. Yudof noted that Reynoso, a farmworker’s son and the first Latino to serve on the state Supreme Court, “has dedicated his life to protecting civil liberties.”
The president earlier in the meeting reaffirmed his commitment protecting the rights of students, faculty and staff to protest on UC campuses....
Many of the speakers
called on the regents to do more about rising tuition — a key issue behind the
student protests. They also asked the regents to sign a pledge to reform
3. “U.N. Climate Talks Getting Under Way amid Hazy Future - Local Strategies Taking Place of Kyoto Global Pact” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 28, 2011); story citing NED HELME (MPP 1971).
By Juliet Eilperin, The
The officials from
around the world who will gather today in
The mandatory targets of the Kyoto Protocol cover less than a third of the world’s carbon output. Major emitters are not bound by it. And, increasingly, the world is relying on a patchwork of measures rather than a universal treaty to lessen the impacts of global warming.
The Kyoto agreement won’t die altogether in Durban; it may be extended for another five years without binding commitments from industrialized nations while programs for international carbon offsets are preserved as a way to compensate for emissions....
But the debates over
concrete policies to cut greenhouse-gas emissions over the next decade are
happening in places such as the Australian Parliament and
Several developing
countries are adopting what are known as “nationally appropriate mitigation
actions.”
“You’ve got some good things happening,” said Ned Helme, who heads the Center for Clean Air Policy and has worked with several Latin American governments on climate policy. “Look at where we are on the ground and where we’re moving.” ...
4. “Healthy S.F. is Harvard innovations award finalist” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 2011); story citing TANGERINE BRIGHAM (MPP 1990) and RICHARD SCHEFFLER; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/27/BAA11M08GM.DTL#ixzz1f1xiEl1H
--Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
In a political era in
which government is often blamed as a problem rather than a solution,
Richard Scheffler, a professor of health economics at UC Berkeley, evaluated Healthy San Francisco this year for Harvard and said it’s well coordinated, broadly supported by business and labor groups, culturally sensitive to its diverse population of patients, stresses primary care and prevention, and has grown to involve public and private health providers.
“All those put together, and it’s a pretty neat package. ... It’s an extremely creative solution to a very difficult problem,” he said. “This is kind of like the Academy Awards, you know. If you get nominated, you’re actually a winner.”
Created in 2007, the city’s universal health care program now serves 55,000 patients who are treated at 33 locations. More than 85 percent of the city’s uninsured residents now have a primary care doctor, and emergency room visits have dropped as a result....
Healthy
She said millions around the country still won’t be covered, though—because they get waivers for their religious convictions or because they prove they can’t afford it, they’re undocumented immigrants or they’re incarcerated.
“We’ll still need Healthy San Francisco,” she said, saying it could be a model for other counties that grapple with how to cover those who still don’t get health insurance.
Scheffler said that just because millions of additional people stand to gain health insurance if Obama’s plan stands up in court doesn’t mean there will automatically be enough doctors and other medical staff to treat them.
“
Brigham said she was delighted to learn her program had been chosen by Harvard as a finalist.
“In government, it’s so rare to be able to step back and really think about what’s been accomplished and to have that recognize in a meaningful way,” she said. “Government can really do great things.”
5. “Is a strategic deficit
plan beyond us?” (Star Tribune (
The question in the wake
of the congressional supercommittee’s failure isn’t whether the
A Congress incapable of passing new fiscal policies because of the stalemate between rigid antitax ideologues and unyielding defenders of expensive entitlement programs will trigger a far more aggressive deficit reduction plan than just about anything that’s been proposed so far, according to a provocative analysis by budget expert Michael Linden of the Center for American Progress.
A do-nothing Congress
that sits back and lets the $2.2 trillion in spending cuts agreed to this year
take effect, that lets the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012, that doesn’t address the
alternative minimum tax or block Medicare physician reimbursement cuts and
other measures, would reduce deficit spending by $7 trillion in the next
decade. “That is an enormous sum—more than enough to stabilize the debt-to-GDP
ratio and then put it on a sharp downward trajectory,’’
Compared with this
“do-nothing” plan, the high-profile Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan
released late last year would leave the nation with an additional $1 trillion
in debt, according to
6. “
--Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
Anne Campbell Washington has been appointed as Chief of Staff
by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan. (City of
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan hired a chief of staff Monday in an effort to bring stability to an administration that is increasingly under siege.
Anne Campbell Washington is very familiar with her new job—she was former Mayor Jerry Brown’s chief of staff and until Monday was chief of staff for the city’s Fire Department.
Campbell Washington, 41, an
Mayor Quan “recognized
the importance of having someone who can speak for her internally in our city
organization and who would work closely with City Council members, the city
administrator and the leadership in
Council President Larry
Reid said
“I don’t think you’ll find one council member who’ll tell you one bad thing about Anne,” said Reid. “She’s a very smart woman.”
Cities, including
“It’s a very different
time,” said
7. “The Nightly Business Report” (PBS, November 21, 2011); program featuring commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
TOM HUDSON, ANCHOR: ... While the failure of the super committee to reach an agreement on deficit reductions does mean automatic budget cuts in 2013, both Republicans and Democrats have to turn their focus however to tax and spending bills with even sooner deadlines. Darren Gersh has the details.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The next big deadline for Congress falls smack in the middle of the busiest shopping week of the year. Now that the super committee has failed to deliver a super deal, much unfinished business will have to be worked out before a short-term extension of government funding runs out on December 16.
STAN COLLENDER, MANAGING DIR., QORVIS COMMUNICATIONS: I can’t imagine that we won’t go to the very last minute and it will be a perils of Pauline, cliff-hanger ending. There’s just too much at stake.
GERSH: Those stakes include increasing Medicare payments to doctors and extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut into next year. All are top priorities for Democrats and the White House....
Worried by the prospect of deep cuts in military spending, Republicans have been talking for weeks about softening the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts triggered by the super committee’s failure.
COLLENDER: Markets are not necessarily going to like the idea that the amount of automatic spending cuts get reduced. If there is one thing that my Wall Street clients tell me is they don’t care if it’s $1.2 trillion because the super committee decided to reduce it or because the cuts happen, as long as they get one or the other. They will react negatively if both of those go away....
8. “Bay Area transportation projects to be judged on benefits vs. costs” (San Jose Mercury News, November 21, 2011); story citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.insidebayarea.com/top-stories/ci_19379548
By Gary Richards grichards@mercurynews.com
BART, Treasure Island congestion pricing, AC
Transit bus and smart highways in
No longer is a speedier commute the primary way to assess the benefits of 90 of the most expensive transportation projects being considered in the Bay Area over the next 25 years.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is looking at factors often ignored when assessing whether it is financially worthwhile to pay millions to widen highways and expand trains. Road fatalities and injuries, emissions reductions, the cost of owning and operating a car and even the health effects of physical inactivity are being considered in the Project Performance Assessment study now under way....
Transit and toll lanes rise to the top of the financial benefits for every $1 it will cost to build, operate and maintain a project.
“This is groundbreaking analysis that could call into question some of the biggest transportation projects,” said Stuart Cohen of TransForm, an Oakland-based public transportation advocacy group. “For projects that have a score under 1, or lead to greenhouse gas increases, it will—and should—bring on intense scrutiny.”
BART’s plan to run express trains and more frequent trains is the highest rated project, with a $60 to $1 benefit/cost ratio....
But at risk are light
rail and express buses through the
“One of the clear losers
in the assessment was light rail in
“But the most hideous
loser is BART to
9. “Gingrich: CBO a ‘reactionary socialist institution’” (CNN Wire, November 21, 2011); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
The former Speaker of
the House labeled the Congressional Budget Office a “reactionary socialist
institution” during a speech on Social Security reform in
“The Congressional Budget Office is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated,” Gingrich said....
The CBO’s mission is to provide Congress with information on budgets and the impact that legislation will have on government finances.
The agency is frequently described as “nonpartisan” and “objective.” Generally respected by politicians on both sides of the aisle, the CBO acts as an official scorekeeper of sorts on budget issues....
Stan Collender, a former Capitol Hill aide who worked for the House and Senate Budget Committees, said he was “stunned” that Gingrich would describe the agency as socialist.
“He should know better, and he should be ashamed of himself,” Collender said. “The CBO is the best group as analysts I’ve ever met. They are bipartisan. Their only job is to get it right, and they do.”...
Collender chalked up Gingrich’s remarks as campaign year electioneering.
“When you are appealing to the far right wing of the part, inflammatory adjectives become important,” Collender said....
10. “Vallejo on the road to recovery” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2011); story citing CRAIG WHITTOM (MPP 1985); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/19/BAQQ1M1F4D.DTL#ixzz1eMkWwOPT
--Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
The John F. Kennedy branch of the Solano County Library system has
remained open through the city’s fiscal crisis mainly because of sales tax
designated for the facility on Friday, Nov. 18, 2011, in
Here’s proof that
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but I definitely think the city is coming back,” said Mustico, 88. “Of course, I probably won’t live to see it, but right now things look pretty good.”
After three years of bankruptcy and a local economy that could best be described as catatonic, signs of life abound. A sales tax measure that would bring in $10 million annually is on the brink of passing, national retailers and manufacturers are moving back in, and a waterfront garage that was stalled for a decade is now close to completion.
“This city has been through a very difficult period, but right now we’re stable,” said Assistant City Manager Craig Whittom. “Although we still have a lot of work to do.”...
11. “Supercommittee’s
work is step one” (Star Tribune (
... What’s important to remember this week is that the supercommittee’s work isn’t the last or only shot at the problem. An agreement that achieves only the minimum savings target—$1.2 trillion—should be viewed as an important step, a down payment of sorts, toward balancing the nation’s books.
Failing to reach an agreement would trigger the same amount of cuts, though this across-the-board approach would not prioritize valuable programs over less efficient ones. Both outcomes add up to a solid amount of savings when coupled with the $1 trillion already cut in last summer’s debt-ceiling deal—as long as Congress doesn’t try to undo some of those cuts next year before they take effect in 2013. Voters must punish faux deficit hawks who try this.
These more modest measures aren’t ideal, but they’re a start. And tackling the nation’s monumental debt problem in a series of smaller steps has historically worked better than trying to solve it with one big piece of legislation, a point made in a smart analysis by Michael Linden, a Center for American Progress budget expert. Congress wound up doing end runs around the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act because the nation simply wasn’t ready for its far-reaching cuts. More moderate approaches, such as the 1990 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act and a 1993 measure with a similar moniker, both of which balanced cuts with more revenue, proved to be more sustainable....
The “Going Forward is More Important Than Going Big” analysis by Michael Linden is available on the Center for American Progress website. To read it, go online to www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/going_big.html .
12. “Settlement saves services for disabled, elderly” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 2011); story citing TOBY DOUGLAS (MPP 2001/MPH 2002); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/17/BAOR1M0JEH.DTL#ixzz1e4vpuAUZ
--Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writer
Brenda Collins, program specialist, plays a video game with client Elisa Cuevas, 85, (rt) at the Oakland adult health care site run by the Alzheimer’s Services of the East Bay on Wednesday Nov. 16, 2011 in Oakland, Calif. ASEB will be closing the Oakland center’s doors on November 30th because of statewide budget cuts. A settlement reached Thursday may allow most of their clients to be placed in other programs. (Mike Kepka / The Chronicle)
Disabled, elderly and low-income adults got a huge win Thursday when the state agreed to preserve a version of Adult Day Health Care, a program helping to keep about 35,000 Californians out of nursing homes that was set to shut down Dec. 1.
The announcement is the result of a settlement, reached Thursday, between state officials and advocates for the program. Those advocates sued over Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to wholly eliminate Adult Day Health Care in a bid to save the state about $170 million a year.
Under the agreement, the state’s approximately 275 Adult Day Health Care centers will remain open in their current form through Feb. 29, when participants deemed to be at risk of institutionalization will be transitioned into a new program, known as Community-Based Adult Services....
Like Adult Day Health Care, Community-Based Adult Services will offer medical care, physical therapy, exercise, counseling, socialization and other support to qualified adults, and its cost will be split between the state and federal governments. Supporters of the program have consistently maintained that its elimination would ultimately cost the deficit-plagued state much more because many participants would end up in nursing homes and hospitals that would still be funded by taxpayers and can cost three times as much.
On Thursday, both sides praised the settlement. Toby Douglas, director of the state’s Department of Health Care Services, said the agreement “upholds the state’s commitment to provide essential care and services to those most in need efficiently and economically.”...
13. “Area roads among most congested” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 17, 2011); column citing STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/16/BA441M09VQ.DTL#ixzz1dzH7BeLw
--Will Kane
Bay Area roads are some of the most congested in the country, according to a new study from the Texas Transportation Institute....
Among them: the Bay Bridge (eighth-most congested overall), Highway 24 through the Caldecott Tunnel (ninth-most congested overall), Highway 4 through the delta (17th-most unreliable) and Interstate 880 (the 13th-worst morning commute in the country)....
“Caltrans recognizes the
need to improve travel time for
Stuart Cohen, head of the transit advocacy group TransForm, said the government needs to do more than just build bigger highways to cut down on traffic.
“We’ve dramatically underinvested in the easy stuff,” he said, which includes commuter benefits and incentives for workers to take public transportation. “These are like what CFLs were for the lighting industry, quick and easy.”
The best thing to do is to get cars off the road, he said.
We need to “stop adding as many cars to the road, that’s how we add the biggest bang to our buck,” he said....
14. “As Renewables Grant Program Fades, Industry Scrambles for Alternatives” (EnergyWashington Week, Vol. 8 No. 46, November 16, 2011); story citing ROB GRAMLICH (MPP 1995).
A major investment bank and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) have launched a behind-the-scenes effort to win Obama administration and congressional support as they scramble to find an alternative to a key Treasury grant program for wind and solar that will phase out at the end of December, according to a senior banking official. The end-of-year momentum is occurring because Keybanc, a large investment bank, and AWEA are not anticipating an extension of the section 1603 Treasury grant program established under the 2009 Obama stimulus law. Faced with that closure, they are looking for support from the administration and Congress in advancing new financial structures to shore-up renewables investments given the realities of a weak tax equity market and continuing limited access to capital, which the 1603 program helped renewable projects overcome....
Keybanc is actively pursuing a novel way of using real estate investment trusts, or REITs, as a means of securing capital for renewable energy projects.... [Andy Redinger, head of the utility and alternative energy group for KeyBanc Capital Markets] said Keybanc is “doing a lot of work behind the scenes” with AWEA, which is working to advance the idea of using Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), which are traded on securities exchanges, to gain capital for renewable energy projects. AWEA’s head of government and regulatory affairs, Rob Gramlich, said in October that the group was pursuing MLPs as a means of replacing 1603....
15. “Capitol Alert:
Posted by David Siders
Angry about tuition
increases and budget cuts in
The protest came after
the
The students came on
buses from UC Berkeley and UC Davis. A bus that was scheduled to pick up
students in
“Student activism is consistently hampered by logistical problems,” he said.
Before the news conference, Stein distributed scripts to students, and they spent about 30 minutes calling the offices of Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders from their cellphones.
Outside, students held signs that said “Save our State, Fund our Future,” and “Don’t Make Our Public Education a Debt Sentence.” ...
16. “In
By Cathy Cockrell, NewsCenter
Berkeley Law student Alexandra Havrylyshyn joins a rally against state cuts to public education funding.
McDaniel took his
frustration to
Similar UC days of action in recent years have called on legislators to support public education. This time, student after student cited the Occupy movement, a rising tide of student debt and a demand not just for better funding but for structural changes.
“More money needs to
come from the people who can pay,” said Ph.D.
student John Erickson. “The
17. “Former US Labor Secretary Reich presses Occupy crowd to take moral stand against Wall Street” (Washington Post, November 15, 2011); story co-reported by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005/MJ 2004) and citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/higher-education/anti-wall-street-activists-to-rally-at-uc-berkeley-in-attempt-to-build-another-occupy-cal-camp/2011/11/15/gIQASYnTNN_story.html
--Associated Press [Associated Press writers Garance Burke and Terry Collins contributed to this report.]
The daylong strike and peaceful demonstrations against big banks and education cuts culminated in some 4,000 people rallying at the Reich speech on the steps of the same student plaza that first launched the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960s.
“The days of apathy are over folks,” Reich, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, said to a roaring crowd at Sproul Hall. “We are losing the moral foundation stone on which this country and our democracy were built. There are some people out there who say we cannot afford education any longer, we cannot provide social services for the poor ... but how can that be true if we are now richer than we have ever been before?” ...
“Every social movement in the last half century or more — it started with moral outrage,” Reich said, likening Wall Street to the bullies who battered him when he was an especially short kid. “You understand how important it is to fight the bullies, to protect the powerless.”...
Elizabeth de Martelly, a 29-year-old UC Berkeley graduate student, said she was inspired by Reich’s comments about social movements born from moral outrage and planned to spend the night in the new encampment.
“That said, I want to see the movement to expand beyond encampments,” she said amid the music, light shows and dancing. “But this is a powerful thing for the time being.” ...
18. “Critical report prompts overhaul of special-education programs” (The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, November 15, 2011); story citing JANNELLE LEE KUBINEC (MPP 1997); http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/133829328.html?id=133829328
By Mary Vorsino, The
A new report that raises questions about the transparency of special-education funding and argues there are “strong disincentives” for moving disabled students into general-education classrooms will be used as a guidebook for making big changes through the coming year as to how special-education services are administered, state officials said....
The report, commissioned by the state for $435,000, was aimed at identifying problems and offering recommendations for improving a special-education system that accounts for more than one-fifth of the Department of Education’s $1.3 billion general fund budget, serves more than 17,000 students and employs more than 2,200 teachers and thousands more education assistants, skills trainers, behavioral health specialists and others.
The
THE REPORT’S recommendations for improving services include working closer with stakeholders and schools to identify excellent programs and making lines of funding and responsibility clearer.
Jannelle Kubinec, a program director at WestEd, told members of the Senate and House Education committees on Monday that the department needs to ensure that schools are accountable for decisions made to educational plans for special-needs students.
The statewide school district model “lack(s) a bottom line for local practice,” she said, making the example that principals can make special-education decisions without worrying about funding or other implications....
19. “FlexEnergy and DoD Introduce Flex Powerstation FP250 System” (Travel & Leisure Close-Up, November 14, 2011); story citing DOROTHY ROBYN (MPP 1978/PhD 1983).
FlexEnergy, an energy
technology company based in
The Company said the Flex Powerstation, offering both pollution control and energy generation, converts previously wasted landfill gas into 250 kW of renewable electricity, which is enough energy to power 250 homes. The clean energy produced has near-zero emissions and will reduce both the Army's carbon footprint and its bottom line.
"FlexEnergy is
pleased to be providing a renewable source of energy for our nation's security
operations, while at the same time protecting our environment," said Brad
Hancock, Director of Federal Programs for FlexEnergy Inc., and former Deputy
Director of Facilities Energy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
"I am proud to be part of the FlexEnergy team as we dedicate the Flex
Powerstation, which will deliver energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reduction
and more energy security at
According to a release,
FlexEnergy's technology converts methane into usable clean electricity. The
system architecture and proprietary technology allows the Flex Powerstation to
utilize all sources of methane gas, even low-quality gas from closed landfills.
The
"We have a lot of very old landfills, and the energy content of the waste is very, very low," explained Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment, at the GovEnergy 2011 conference. "This is a technology that will allow us to produce electricity from low-Btu content waste," Robyn said....
20. “Op-Ed: Pricing of electricity could use a jolt” (Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2011); op-ed by FREDERICK TAYLOR-HOCHBERG (MPP cand. 2012); http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-taylor-hochberg-electricity-rates-20111113,0,2240602.story
By Frederick Taylor-Hochberg
(Illusration by Wes Bausmith /
Here are some things Californians deserve from
their power providers: a fair and reasonable price for electricity, household
bills that are easy to understand and based on the actual cost of producing
power, and rates that encourage conservation yet don’t punish low-income
customers who can’t afford to make their homes more energy efficient.
The price of a kilowatt
hour should speak, and this is what it should be saying: Don’t waste energy,
and if you can avoid it, don’t run your dishwasher or do your laundry at times
when
As it stands, the
pricing structure for the majority of residential electricity consumers in
At first blush, this system would seem to make sense. Don’t the high prices of the upper tiers give people an incentive to avoid them by turning off lights and not running appliances? And don’t rich people, who often have big, energy-hungry houses and swimming pools, subsidize the rates of the poor by shouldering the burden of the upper-tier prices?
Not really. A growing body of research suggests that not only does tiered pricing fail to meet these goals, it is counterproductive: It neither encourages conservation nor helps low-income people pay for power....
So what should be done? An alternative way to charge for energy, known as time-of-use pricing, is beginning to gain some traction, and it makes economic and environmental sense....
Frederick Taylor-Hochberg is a
graduate student in public policy at UC Berkeley. He was an intern last summer with the
21. “Regulation study called biased” (Orange County Register, November 12, 2011); column citing STUART DROWN (MPP 1986).
By Brian Joseph,
In the business community’s ongoing battle over government regulation, the report could be a game changer.
Two weeks ago, a
well-respected government watchdog called the Little Hoover Commission released a study concluding that
The report, “Better Regulation: Improving California’s Rulemaking Process,” recommends that the state assess the economic impact of every proposed regulation before it’s enacted....
While the commission says it tried to sidestep the debate over regulatory overhauls, the report echoes the business community’s long-held belief that onerous regulations are dragging down the state’s economy.
The commission’s
endorsement of that premise is sure to carry a lot of weight in
Commissioner Virginia
Ellis, the retired
Ellis also blasts the report for providing “no solid, independently verified evidence” that regulations harm the economy....
The commission’s executive director, Stuart Drown, said it’s not uncommon for commissioners to disagree with a report. But he said the process used in drafting this one was no different from what’s been done for all the others. Hearings were broadcast. Testimony was available online. It was a transparent process, he said.
(Full disclosure: Drown was one of the Watchdog’s editors at the Sacramento Bee in 2005 and 2006.)
There’s another potential problem with the report, however. The subcommittee overseeing the report was chaired by Commissioner Loren Kaye, who is the president of the California Chamber of Commerce’s think tank, the California Foundation for Commerce and Education. Kaye is described in his own commission biography as having helped “numerous private sector interests … to resist further regulation or costs on business.” ...
Drown, meanwhile, pointed out that “a lot of people had input” on the report. Before it was released, he said, revisions were made to the report based on comments from the bipartisan commission. The report was approved by the commission, Drown said.
“It’s not the product of one commissioner,” he said.
22. “S.F. Mayor Ed Lee declares victory” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 10, 2011); story citing DAVID LATTERMAN (MPP 2002); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/09/MNBT1LSR24.DTL#ixzz1dK8MgDW0
--John Wildermuth, Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writers
Mayor Ed Lee, with his daughter Brianna, (left) and his wife Anita, stopped for a moment after he was overcome with emotion in claiming victory in the Mayor’s race, after new numbers were released by the Department of Elections office, on Wednesday November 9, 2011 in San Francisco, Ca. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
Ed Lee claimed victory
Wednesday as
While the preliminary ranked-choice count is unofficial, the results have typically held up in the past. About 32,000 late-arriving ballots remain to be counted, said John Arntz, the city’s election director. He said he expects final results in 10 days to two weeks....
While the uncounted ballots are expected to boost the voter turnout to around 40 or 41 percent, that’s nowhere near the 50 percent average of the past 10 mayoral contests.
Lee’s early and
continuing lead in the polls sucked all the excitement out of the race, said David Latterman, a political analyst and
lecturer at the
“This was not (Gavin) Newsom versus (Matt) Gonzalez” in the 2003 mayor’s race, he said. “This was Ed Lee against the field, and Ed and the field weren’t that interesting.” ...
23. “
--C.W. Nevius
In a way, it was almost like we held an election and nothing happened. Avuncular interim Mayor Ed Lee entered the race in August polling at 30 percent of the vote and, in a crowded field, no one could overcome that head start, with Lee winning in the 11th ranked-choice round....
The moderate swing continues: Last year’s election was a splash of cold water for the far left. The trend continues. Lee is a clear moderate choice, the moderate pension reform measure, Proposition C, won, and as political consultant David Latterman, who worked on David Chiu’s mayoral campaign, says, of George Gascón, “We just elected an ex-Republican, pro-death-penalty D.A. And that race was the runaway of the night.” ...
Bridges burned: State Sen. Leland Yee and City Attorney Dennis Herrera went after Lee hard....
Herrera is a different case. A respected public servant with an impressive list of policy papers, he was considered a favorite until Lee entered the race. That prompted Herrera to go negative, calling for a criminal investigation of alleged laundered campaign funds by Lee and coining the campaign slogan “No strings attached.” ...
In the end, Latterman says, “He wasn’t going to win. None of us were.”
It was Lee from the start.
24. “Mirkarimi looks to build on Hennessey’s legacy” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2011); column citing CARMEN CHU (MPP 2003); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/BARI1LTGTU.DTL#ixzz1diuJICLc
--John Wildermuth
Mayor Ed Lee (middle) and supervisor Carmen Chu (back,
middle) greeting the lunch crowd at Lam Hoa Thuan during a merchant walk on
... Hitting the streets: Mayor Ed Lee might not have been elected unanimously Tuesday, but you wouldn’t have known it walking through the city’s neighborhoods with him Thursday.
Everyone loves a winner, and panhandlers, schoolkids, folks driving by and merchants with “Leland Yee for Mayor” signs in their store windows all assured the new mayor that they were 100 percent behind him on election day....
“This is better than mayoral debates, better than bar crawls, better than campaigning. This is what I like to do,” Lee said walking outside the Sunset Super market in the Sunset....
Lee was accompanied by Supervisor Carmen Chu in the Sunset District, Supervisor Malia Cohen in the Bayview and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd in West Portal, a show of unity that wasn’t lost on Lee....
25. “Public financing a
major player in mayor’s race” (
--John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting received about $301 in taxpayer money for every first-place vote he got in the city’s first mayoral contest with public financing.
Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman spent about $39 per vote when she paid a record $160 million ... in her failed bid for governor in 2010.
While Whitman got 41
percent of the vote, Ting got less than 1 percent in the first round, a showing
that has helped fuel the debate over
More than $4.6 million in taxpayer money was spent on campaigns in a race that had 16 candidates on the ballot, low turnout and weeks of stinging attacks, many from independent committees funded by union and business interests not covered by the city’s strict campaign finance rules....
No candidate receiving public financing, which has been used in supervisor races since 2002, has ever dropped out of a race, [John St. Croix, director of the city’s Ethics Commission] said.
Political consultant David Latterman, who worked on Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s mayoral campaign, noted, though, that candidates could have spent more wisely.
“Nobody told them to spend boatloads of money on consultants,” Latterman said at a postelection forum at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association....
26. “How
--Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Mayor Ed Lee (middle) and supervisor Carmen Chu (middle,
right)) greeting the lunch crowd at Lam Hoa Thuan during a merchant walk on
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was the top choice of voters in 71 percent of the city’s precincts, dominating his 15 challengers in neighborhoods his campaign describes as “the doughnut.”
With the exception of a
small bite in Potrero Hill and adjacent Dogpatch neighborhoods on
Supervisor John Avalos, a former social worker and labor organizer who ran to the left of Lee, finished second in the race. Avalos secured the most first-choice votes in precincts located in what could be described as the doughnut hole.
Those neighborhoods include the Mission, Bernal Heights, Western Addition, the Haight and parts of the Tenderloin—areas that traditionally back progressive candidates and causes, such as rent control.
“Really no big surprises,” said David Latterman, a campaign consultant who worked on Board of Supervisors President David Chiu’s mayoral campaign.
The doughnut, or crescent as it was once known before the city’s southeastern sector was added on, has been “a consistent moderate bloc” for years, Latterman said....
27. “Daniel Borenstein: Oakley city manager loan deal wasn’t first public deception” (Oakland Tribune, November 12, 2011); column by DANIEL BORENSTEIN (MPP 1980/MJ 1985); http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_19323264
By Daniel Borenstein - Staff columnist
In the year leading up to the sweetheart deal in which Oakley taxpayers were to bail out City Manager Bryan Montgomery from his underwater residential mortgage, he was speculating on another property in town.
The City Council in September approved the loan-forgiveness that amounted to a $366,500 taxpayer-funded windfall. After I revealed the hidden details last month and city residents loudly protested, the council and Montgomery rescinded the deal.
This wasn’t the first
time the council and
Indeed, he was doing well enough to make a significant investment. After the council 2½ years ago started excusing him from payments on his taxpayer-funded mortgage, he bought a second house....
In a memo last week, City Attorney Derek Cole admitted the closed-door negotiations were illegal, denied the loan-equity trade was a gift of public funds but said it might have been “unwise” and did not address ethical and legal conflict-of-interest issues raised by Montgomery’s dual role negotiating a personal benefit at the expense of taxpayers he was supposed to be protecting.
That conflict included
composing the deceptive public analysis of his own deal in September.
Officially authored by Mayor Jim Frazier, but actually written by
28. “Transitional Kindergarten: Preparing California’s Children to Succeed” (The California Progress Report, November 11, 2011); op-ed by DEBORAH KONG (MPP 2007); http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/transitional-kindergarten-preparing-california%E2%80%99s-children-succeed
By Deborah Kong – Preschool
As schools across California gear up to offer
transitional kindergarten—the first new grade introduced in state schools since
1891, when kindergarten began in the Golden State—educators and policymakers
from across the state gathered at a statewide summit recently to talk about
getting transitional kindergarten classrooms up and running next fall....
For children, transitional kindergarten provides the gift of time that will help them build a strong foundation for success in elementary school. It gives parents an additional option to ensure their children enter kindergarten with the maturity and skills they need to excel. And for schools, it means that students are better prepared to succeed, and less likely to be placed in special education and retained in later grades....
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson called transitional kindergarten “one of the bright spots for education,” noting that it will “create a wave of success. It’s going to deal with the dropout rate. It’s going to deal with having our students be able to be proficient in math and language arts” by the early elementary grades, he said....
... The districts at the
summit serve more than 2 million children and represent more than a third of
Among them were districts that have offered programs similar to transitional kindergarten for years, and some of the more than 20 that have already implemented transitional kindergarten. These districts, who are on the front lines of implementing transitional kindergarten, shared promising practices, strategies, and resources for doing it in a high-quality and efficient way....
Their work is backed by research that shows children who attend kindergarten readiness programs like transitional kindergarten are more likely to do well in school and attend college....
Deborah Kong is communications
director at Preschool California,
a statewide nonprofit organization working to increase high-quality early
learning opportunities for all of
29. “Policy Analysis Suggests System for Kidney Transplant Allocation” (States News Service, November 11, 2011); newswire citing DAVID WEIMER (MPP 1975/PhD 1978) and AIDAN VINING (MPP 1974/PhD 1980).
Weimer, La Follette graduate Lara Rosen, and
Published in the August 2011 Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, their analysis shows how such commodification could be designed and regulated to reduce ethical concerns about exploitation of potential donors and unfair advantage in allocation.
“Transplantation is the treatment of choice for those suffering from kidney failure,” Weimer says, “but the waiting list is long, growing, and unlikely to be substantially reduced through the use of kidneys from cadavers. Not only does transplantation offer improved quality of life and increased longevity relative to dialysis, it reduces end-stage renal disease program expenditures, providing savings to Medicare.”
One conservative estimate is that each live kidney transplant saves Medicare’s end-stage renal disease program more than $114,000, says Weimer, who teaches cost-benefit analysis for the La Follette School.
Medical ethicists oppose direct purchase of kidneys from living “donors” or vendors, the authors note. However, much of the ethical debate has been in terms of commodification through market exchange—buying and selling kidneys for profit in an open market. Weimer and colleagues designed and assessed three alternative institutional arrangements for the commodification of kidneys that would regulate transactions to reduce ethical concerns.
Forty percent of kidney transplants come from live donors wanting to help a relative or friend. However, the altruistic donor might be incompatible. An innovation has been to match an incompatible dyad with another pair.
“Seeding” these chain exchanges is an element of a more efficient transplantation system, the authors recommend.
“Our policy analysis argues for establishing a nonprofit organization that sets prices and purchases kidneys that it then gives to the transplant centers that can organize the longest ‘chains’ of transplants,” Weimer says. “Of the arrangements we analyzed, this alternative best balances the goals of promoting equity, efficiency, fiscal advantage and human dignity.”
30. “A new take on the Food Stamp debate” (The Hill’s Congress Blog, November 10, 2011); op-ed by CHRISTINE FRY (MPP 2007); http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/193003-a-new-take-on-the-food-stamp-debate
By Christine Fry, a senior policy analyst with Public Health Law &
Policy, a nonprofit law center based in
Over the past couple of weeks members of Congress have been taking part in a challenge to live on the average food stamp budget, a public experiment that comes in the midst of an ongoing debate about whether people receiving food assistance should be allowed to spend government dollars on junk food and soda.
But instead of putting all of our focus on how recipients spend their food stamp dollars, we need to take a hard look at the stores that are accepting those dollars—because lawmakers have a critical opportunity right now [through reauthorization of the Farm Bill] to require these stores to improve what they’re selling.
More than 45 million Americans now receive benefits through the food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). That’s one in every seven people in this country....
Many low-income families rely on SNAP to make ends meet. They also rely on small convenience stores for a lot of their food shopping, if they live in a neighborhood where there is no grocery store, public transit is unreliable, and they don’t own a car.
... I walked into a convenience store recently and noticed a sticker on the door proclaiming, “We accept SNAP!” The store was heavily stocked with soda, chips, and doughnuts, with barely a vegetable or piece of fruit in sight....
Some nutrition advocates fear, understandably, that strengthening standards would exacerbate the problem of “food deserts,” neighborhoods with limited access to healthy, affordable food. But just recently, the USDA upgraded requirements for retailers who participate in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which has supported low-income mothers and their young children nationwide for decades.
For the first time in the program’s 35-year history, store owners accepting WIC vouchers are now required to carry fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and low-fat dairy products.
... [R]esearch by the Altarum Institute, a nonprofit consulting organization, has shown that most small vendors transitioned successfully to the new food requirements – and that WIC participants reported eating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lower-fat milk after the new requirements were adopted.....
Christine Fry is a senior policy analyst with Public Health Law & Policy, a nonprofit law center based in Oakland, California.
31. “William S. Richardson School of Law Retains American Bar Association Accreditation” (US Fed News, November 10, 2011); newswire citing DENISE ANTOLINI (MPP 1985/JD 1986).
... An
A number of the questions raised by the Accreditation Committee involved rearrangement of space at the Law School, in which an increase in programs and additional faculty members now squeeze in the Law School’s physical plant, built in the early 1980s, to or past capacity. A major reassessment led by Associate Dean Denise Antolini and her Space Committee managed to make the entire Law School space more efficient as well as more comfortable for students, faculty, and staff.
Dean Avi Soifer stated: “Though we desperately need more space and we have high hopes of finally getting started on our major renovation project, it has been great to see the immediate improvements made through the work of the Space Committee.”...
32. “Slapping lipstick
on a money-losing pig; ‘Multiple account evaluation’ now used by cities to
justify projects that would be rejected by cost-benefit analysis” (National
Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (
By Peter Shawn Taylor, Financial Post
Say you have a bridge to build. What’s your best option?
You could go for the shortest span using the cheapest materials to save money. Then again, perhaps a more expensive bridge would last longer and save more over the long term. Or maybe a lengthier span farther down the river would provide drivers with a quicker and safer trip. And of course the local mayor wants it built in town for political reasons.
The only practical way to sort through this kind of dilemma is costbenefit analysis, which boasts an irrefutable logic....
Done properly, cost-benefit analysis presents a sturdy defence against political manipulation of public funds. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the days of cost-benefit analyses may be coming to an end. Welcome to the era of multiple account evaluation (MAE), where politicians are in total control, where any project can be made to look like a winner and where taxpayers are left entirely clueless.
Developed by the B.C. government in 1993 and now in widespread use, MAE dispenses with a single spreadsheet of advantages and disadvantages and adopts instead numerous separate “accounts: “ a financial account, social account, environmental account and so on. In this way, the actual monetary costs and benefits of a project become just one of many issues to be considered.
Waterloo Region, in
southwestern
With billions in federal and provincial transit money at stake, the appearance of MAEs in place of traditional cost-benefit analysis should raise red flags for taxpayers across the country.
This trend concerns Aidan Vining, a professor at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University and co-author [with David Weimer] of the widely-used economics textbook Cost-Benefit Analysis: Concepts and Practice. While admitting there are situations in which MAE analysis can be useful (primarily in social policy), Vining says transit projects are not among those situations: “Transportation is an area where I would argue there is the least justification to abandon cost-benefit analysis.”
Then what explains this recent move toward MAE, particularly for light rail transit? “Maximum feasible obfuscation,” observes Vining. The vague and confusing structure of an MAE “inevitably makes it harder to figure out what is really going on.” All of which makes it easier for politicians to achieve whatever outcome they prefer....
33. “State’s solar energy output reaches milestone” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2011); story citing LAURA WISLAND (MPP 2008) and SCOTT MURTISHAW (MPP 1999) and initiative co-written by DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/09/BU6D1LS4E6.DTL#ixzz1dEgJ3WzO
--David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Clifton Broussard, 20, tightens the bolts on a new solar panel array
that he helped install on a residential rooftop in
And
The report examines the
progress of
The number of solar
systems installed in the state each year has expanded rapidly, growing by an
average of 40 percent, according to the report by Environment California. At
that rate,
The report credits much of solar’s growth in the state to the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, noting that California only had 200 megawatts of photovoltaic solar panels installed before the program began.
The initiative has also helped cut the cost of going solar, the report argues....
But other forces are
playing a part. Solar panel prices have plunged due to a flood of new
production in
But Laura Wisland, an energy analyst with the
“I do think it’s done its job, because it has created strong demand in the state, and that encourages solar developers to find cost savings,” said Wisland, who was not involved in the Environment California report. “Panel prices are falling for everyone, so you need to find ways to innovate and make your projects cheaper to compete.”
The Million Solar Roofs Initiative includes multiple components, addressing different types of buildings and utility customers. The largest component is the California Solar Initiative, which provides rebates for homeowners and businesses that install solar.
The rebates were designed to shrink over time as the state’s solar market grew and prices declined....
And yet, even as the incentives decline, the number of applications keeps growing. Last year Californians submitted CSI rebate applications for enough solar projects to generate 425 megawatts of electricity, more than twice the capacity of the previous year’s applications.
“Without this program,
you wouldn’t see this level of activity,” said Scott Murtishaw, an adviser to the president of the
“Even with the fall in panel prices,” he said, “you wouldn’t see this kind of activity.”
34. “Democrats Expand Their Hold on New Jersey Legislature, Despite Christie’s Efforts” (New York Times, November 9, 2011); story citing ROBERT GORDON (MPP 1975); http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/nyregion/christies-bid-to-extend-his-clout-falls-flat.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29
By David M. Halbfinger
Gov. Chris Christie put
his popularity, fund-raising clout and boasts of reining in government to work
for his fellow Republicans in
In the two
hardest-fought and most closely watched State Senate contests, Democrats wound
up with surprisingly wide victory margins: Robert
Gordon, an incumbent from
Over the last week, the governor placed about $500,000 worth of television advertisements in the New York and Philadelphia media markets, in which he declared that “the New Jersey comeback has begun,” trumpeted his efforts to reform public pensions and control property taxes, promised to create jobs and urged voters to support candidates like Mr. Driscoll “to help me finish the job.” ...
In
35. “Legislative Analyst’s Office gives Jerry Brown’s public pension plan a mixed review” (The Sacramento Bee, Nov. 9, 2011); story citing MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980); http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/09/4040605/legislative-analysts-office-gives.html#ixzz1dEHYaEkR
By Jon Ortiz
Gov. Jerry Brown’s public pension plan drew a mixed review Tuesday from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, sparking criticism from a group hoping to put its own retirement-rollback measure on the 2012 ballot.
The LAO said the governor’s plan to put new state and local employees into so-called “hybrid” pension plans and raise the qualifying age for drawing retirement, among other changes, is “a bold starting point for legislative deliberations.”
But the report
questioned whether Brown’s proposal to split pension costs equally between
employers and current employees could be legally mandated. The LAO also faulted
the governor’s plan for skipping the pension and retiree health shortfalls
facing the state’s teachers’ retirement system and the
California Pension Reform, a group hoping to put a tougher retirement overhaul plan on the November 2012 ballot, hammered the analysis for failing to note that administration officials had said the state would save $4 billion to $11 billion over 30 years....
Worst-case estimates have pegged CalPERS’ unfunded pension obligations at $240 billion for its promises to 1.6 million current state and local employees, retirees and their dependents. CalPERS officials have said that amount is inflated by flawed forecasting methods.
“We need bold, comprehensive reform now and cannot continue to wait as politicians debate the issue and tinker around the edges,” California Pension Reform’s Mike Genest, a former state finance director, said in a statement....
36. “GW Professor Robert Entman Wins Prestigious Humboldt Prize” (States News Service, November 8, 2011); award citing ROBERT ENTMAN (MPP 1980/PhD).
Dr. Entman’s award-winning research focuses on media framing and bias and the media’s influence on foreign policy, race relations and other important areas of American politics. His 1993 conceptualization of framing has been cited in thousands of scholarly works. Dr. Entman will release a new book in March 2012 entitled “Scandal and Silence: Media Responses to Presidential Misconduct.” Using a series of recent case studies, he argues against the commonly-held view that media eagerly work themselves into “feeding frenzies” over sex scandals and other wrong-doings by top politicians....
Dr. Entman’s 2004 book, “Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy,” won the 2011 Doris Graber Book Award from the political communication section of the American Political Science Association (APSA)....
Dr. Entman earned a
Ph.D. in political science as a National Science Foundation Fellow at Yale, and
an M.P.P. in public policy analysis from
the
37. “UT Research Center to Host Public Forum about Online Insurance Marketplace” (US Fed News, November 9, 2011); event featuring BRIAN HAILE (MPP 2000).
The University of Tennessee Center for Health Policy and Services Research, on Monday, November 14, will host a public forum to help the public understand this new requirement. The forum will also explore issues surrounding it and outline some alternatives to the state-based site....
The event’s keynote speaker will be Brian Haile, director of the Insurance Exchange Planning initiative in the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration....
38. “Grupo Salinas Hosts U.S. Delegation of Journalists, Business Leaders and Political Leaders to Attend Ciudad de la Ideas Thinkers’ Forum in Puebla” (PR Newswire, November 8, 2011); newswire citing ANDRES ROEMER (MPP/PhD 1994).
MEXICO CITY - Grupo Salinas, a group of dynamic, fast-growing and technologically advanced companies deeply committed to the modernization of the countries in which they operate, is pleased to host a group of leading U.S. journalists, business leaders and political leaders who will attend the Ciudad de las Ideas thinkers’ forum in the city of Puebla.
The delegates represent
organizations as diverse as the New America Foundation, the Aspen Institute,
TED, Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute and
New America Foundation
fellows will also participate in a televised forum called Does Mexico Matter
for the
“In addition to
participating in a stimulating ideas festival in
The trip will include high-level meetings with Mexican presidential candidates, representatives of the U.S. Embassy and executives of Grupo Salinas companies, among others....
... The event is organized by the Mexican think-tank Poder Civico S.A. and curated by its president, Andres Roemer....
39. “Health Affairs holds a briefing on ‘Linking Community Development & Health’” (FNS DAYBOOK, November 8, 2011); event featuring DAVID ERICKSON (MPP 1993).
LOCATION: W Hotel
Washington,
PARTICIPANTS: Sandra Braunstein of the Federal Reserve System; David Erickson of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Mariana Arcaya of Harvard University School of Public Health; Douglas Jutte of the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health; Ronda Kotelchuck of the Primary Care Development Corporation; Nicholas Freudenberg of City University of New York; Jaya Aysola of Harvard Medical School; David Miller of the University of Michigan Medical School; Peter Hussey of RAND Corporation; John Sheils of The Lewin Group; and Katherine Swartz of the Harvard School of Public Health....
40. “Why Did Healthy Children Fall Critically Ill in the 2009 H1N1 Flu Pandemic?” (PR Newswire, November 7, 2011); newswire citing TIM UYEKI (MPP 1985/MPH 1996/MD).
Moreover, almost all of these co-infected children were rapidly treated with vancomycin, considered to be appropriate treatment for MRSA. The fact that they died despite this treatment is especially alarming given the rising rates of MRSA carriage among children in the community.
“There’s more risk for MRSA to become invasive in the presence of flu or other viruses,” says study leader Adrienne Randolph, MD, MsC, of the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston. “These deaths in co-infected children are a warning sign.”
The researchers hope their findings, published November 7 by the journal Pediatrics, (eFirst pages) will promote flu vaccination among all children aged 6 months and older. (No flu vaccine is currently available for children younger than 6 months.)
“The 2009 H1N1 virus has
not changed significantly to date,” notes Tim
Uyeki, M.D., MPH, of the Influenza Division of the
41. “Immigration officials back away from deportation program” (Gannett News Service, November 6, 2011); newswire citing KAREN TUMLIN (MPP 2003/JD 2004).
By Daniel Gonzalez – The
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have been deported under the program over the past several years. Called stipulated removal, it allows the government to quickly deport illegal immigrants held in detention centers as long as they forgo a hearing before a judge to review their legal rights and to determine whether they want to fight their case....
A 30-page report
released in September by the National
Immigration Law Center accused government officials of pressuring illegal
immigrants to accept quick deportation by threatening long detention stays if
they tried to fight to remain in the
The report found that 80 percent of those deported through the program hadn’t committed crimes.
The report also found
that 96 percent of those deported didn’t have lawyers. Therefore, the report
concluded, many of those without criminal records may have been eligible to
remain in the
Instead of deportation,
the non-criminals also may have qualified for less-severe voluntary departure,
which gives immigrants the chance to return to the
The report was based on 20,000 government documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Tumlin said she was unaware that ICE had stopped offering
stipulated removals to immigrants unless they had a lawyer. The Arizona Republic discovered the new
policy in September, when it began examining the
“If that’s true, it would be welcome news,” Tumlin said.
The change, she said, alleviates concerns that the quick removals were violating the due-process rights of illegal immigrants....
42. “Alarming state report predicts $294 billion shortfall for transportation over next decade” (San Jose Mercury News, November 6, 2011); story citing group headed by STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); http://www.insidebayarea.com/california/ci_19273018
By Gary Richards
The California Transportation Commission’s first review of state transportation needs since 1999 paints a scenario through 2020 that is beyond bleak and suggests that today’s jammed and pothole-riddled roadways may one day seem like the good old days....
To fill the funding gap, efforts to raise money through the opening of more carpool lanes to solo drivers willing to pay a toll, hiking vehicle or license fees or charging motorists a vehicle mileage fee may be considered....
Every option, officials say, should be on the table.
“Deteriorating transportation infrastructure is a hugely expensive problem, and the state of our politics and economy only exacerbate the challenges,” said Graham Brownstein, state policy director for TransForm [headed by Stuart Cohen], a public transportation advocacy organization. “But it’s not a rational option to allow the system to collapse.” ...
43. “Landowners strike
it rich with hedge fund” (The Times (
By Rhoda Buchanan
More than £1 billion of public money will be given to British landowners to comply with an environmental scheme that can be left unchecked for decades, The Times has learnt.
The Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) scheme, a type of EU land subsidy, has earmarked £1.2 billion for British farmers and landowners in exchange for environmentally friendly farming over the next five to ten years. This could mean as little as maintaining hedges, sowing birdseed or keeping old farm buildings in good condition.
Only 5 per cent of contracts are inspected annually, however, so most landowners can expect to be inspected once every 20 years. Some agreements are never monitored....
Funded by the EU and the
British taxpayer, it has been taken up by about 70 per cent of the
The lack of monitoring
is compounded by a
Jack Thurston, from FarmSubsidy. org, which keeps tabs on land
subsidies, said: “If this Government favours transparency in public finances,
why is it hiding behind a ruling of the
44. “‘Social enterprises’
helps people overcome barriers to employment” (Deseret Morning News (
By Marjorie Cortez –
... Javits will share REDF’s extensive studies how this model creates high social and financial returns. But it also builds self-esteem in people who, long before the economic downturn, were “frozen out” of the world of work, Javits said. “A paycheck is critical. Everyone needs that. Work tends to impact a lot of things. It’s a social network. It gives people a sense of value, a purpose or meaning to their lives. It makes it worthwhile to get up in the morning,” Javits said.... To the American sensibility, having a job to go on Monday morning is a matter of human dignity, Javits said. But for people who have poor employment histories, substance abuse, mental illness “nobody wants to give you a chance. But we know that it’s a lot easier to get a job, if you have a job. That’s the point. We’ve got to give people a chance,” Javits said.
45. “Differences between Romney, Cain in Full View” (All Things Considered, National Public Radio, November 4, 2011); features commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
Herman Cain, as well as
Mitt Romney, spoke here in
... [Mitt Romney] said his experiences in business, turning around the Olympics, and in the governor’s mansion prove that he can fix the economy. “When I get to the White House, hopefully, no one will need to teach me how to balance budgets. I’ve been doing that for 35 years.”
He supports amending the Constitution, so Congress must pass a balanced budget every year, and he says he would save trillions by overhauling Medicare. “The future of Medicare should be marked by competition, by choice and by innovation, rather than by bureaucracy, stagnation and bankruptcy.”
Romney would give the next generation of Medicare recipients a sum of money and a variety of plans to choose from. The problem, according to budget expert Stan Collender, is that these kinds of changes are so unpopular that they’ll never pass Congress. Collender is a former Democratic staffer on the House and Senate Budget Committees, now with Qorvis Communications. “We’ve already seen Republicans and Democrats in Congress, you know, ultimately don’t go along with big, big changes in Medicare and Medicaid, such as the ones that he’s proposing.”
And Collender says what makes Romney’s budget plan even more
unrealistic is its reliance on a 4 percent growth rate for the
46. “INSIDE POLITICS” (Contra Costa Times, November 4, 2011); story citing ABEL GUILLEN (MPP 2001); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_19259845?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Lisa Vorderbrueggen
... After the California Redistricting Commission redrew legislative and congressional maps earlier this year, many incumbents, would-be candidates and voters found themselves in new districts with new numbers and new boundaries....
Here’s a quick
old-to-new decoder chart for
Assembly
Sandre Swanson, D-Oakland: Old 16 is the New 18. Swanson terms out next year. AC Transit Director Joel Young and Peralta Community College Trustee Abel Guillen, both Democrats, are running....
47. “Night harvests
yield benefits; Vineyards getting better wine, lower energy costs and happier
workers” (
By Elizabeth Weise,
At 4 a.m., Shafer Vineyards is alive with light and motion. The sun
won’t be up for more than three hours but lines of pickers are moving
methodically down vines full of ripe cabernet sauvignon grapes. (Jack Gruber,
The scene at this vineyard is part of a worldwide practice that’s increasingly the way all wine grapes are harvested—in the dead of night. It results in better wine, lower energy costs and happier workers.
Daytime temperatures in the 90s and above change the sugar composition of grapes. Picking at night when sugar levels are stable keeps “surprises” from happening during fermentation such as wild yeast starting fermentation, says Shafer’s Andy Demsky.
Pickers can work longer hours in the lower temperatures and also avoid the “wasps, bees and rattlesnakes” that come out during the day, he says. And the grapes are picked cool, saving energy because they don’t have to be pre-chilled before they’re crushed.
Statewide, during crush
48. “Pension reform group’s initiatives may spur Legislature” (Oakland Tribune, November 3, 2011); story citing MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980); http://www.insidebayarea.com/bay-area-news/ci_19248787
By Steven Harmon and John Woolfolk - Staff writers
Initially lukewarm if not hostile to Brown’s plan, Democrats and public employee unions got a glimpse of the alternative—measures that would require a lot more sacrifices from government workers than Brown’s week-old proposal.
Led by two former officials in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration, Californians for Pension Reform said it filed the two proposals with the attorney general’s office but will decide in January which measure to circulate....
The initiative proposals differ in some key respects from Brown’s. The governor called for eventually making public employees pay half the annual cost of their pensions. But the proposed initiatives open the door to billing workers with underfunded pension plans for at least some of the massive unfunded liabilities accumulated from market losses, retroactive benefit increases and flawed cost assumptions.....
Even the backers of the initiatives were impressed with the sweep of the governor’s plan. But, they said, it doesn’t go far enough, and they doubt the Democratic-controlled Legislature’s willingness to adopt the governor’s proposals.
“While we would prefer to see a legislative solution to this problem, we know full well that there is little chance of that happening,” said Mike Genest, a former state finance director for Schwarzenegger working with the reform group. “We cannot afford to postpone decisive reform while our elected leaders debate half measures.” ...
49. The California Report: “Battle Brewing over State Public Employee Pensions” (KQED public radio, November 3, 2011); features commentary by MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980); Listen to the story
Reported by John Meyers, Sacramento Bureau Chief
JOHN MEYERS: ... There’s one big reason why backers of a new initiative campaign to revamp public employee pensions want their changes to be part of the state constitution, which means a ballot measure.
MIKE GENEST: It should not be subject to future legislative undermining, which would happen if it wasn’t in the constitution.”
JOHN MEYERS: Mike Genest was budget director under former Governor Schwarzenegger. What he’s really saying is that politically powerful public employee unions would ultimately cajole legislatiors to undo pension changes. Genest and a trio of other Republicans put forth two versions of an initiative Wednesday. The plan would force current government workers pay more of the cost of their retirement plans....
50. “Springs could take bullet if deficit panel fails; Even if an accord is reached in D.C., the city’s dependence on defense spending could spell large cuts down the line” (The Denver Post, November 2, 2011); story citing STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
By Allison Sherry - The
The city, heavily dependent on an economic churn of military and defense contracting, undoubtedly faces gigantic cuts to those areas.
Even if the six Republicans and six Democrats toiling mostly in secret on a deficit-reduction plan—which can include raising taxes—come to an agreement by the fast-approaching deadline, defense is a likely loser.
And if they fail to reach an accord—and many predict that is a distinct possibility—a blunt “sequester” kicks in that would pare $600 billion from defense and $600 billion from domestic spending....
But it already is clear that the rising tension between former levels of defense spending—when the country was in two wars—and the omnipresent push to cut taxes will only increase as the supercommittee deadline approaches....
Federal budget expert Stan Collender said defense contractors will probably be the first to go if the supercommittee fails to reach accord.
“The president is going to take the ability he has to exempt military personnel and people in uniform from pay cuts,” Collender said. “They’re going to have to make a decision about what’s important to them. … A lot of members have pledged a lot of things, and they’re going to be hoisted on their own petard.”
51. “Sarah Marxer: DOMA perpetuates unfairness in Social Security system” (San Jose Mercury News, November 1, 2011); commentary by SARAH MARXER (MPP 2004); http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19242994
By Sarah Marxer – Special Mercury News
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote this month on whether to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and require the federal government to recognize the marriages of the tens of thousands of same-sex spouses who live in states where those marriages are legal. I hope that when they decide how to vote, members of the committee will remember that one purpose of marriage is to enable family members to take care of each other....
... In 2008, my partner and I were among the 18,000 same-sex couples to marry in the brief period between the Supreme Court of California’s decision finding we had the right to marry and the passage of Proposition 8. Every year, when our Social Security statements arrive, we are reminded that the federal government’s refusal to recognize our marriage may cost us dearly. This is particularly likely if I outlive my spouse, because she earns more than I do....
Same-sex couples are more vulnerable to poverty in old age because we don’t have access to spousal benefits under Social Security. Spousal benefits provide important income to the lower-earning spouse upon the retirement, disability or death of the higher-earning spouse. This helps reduce the financial risk involved in devoting time to caring for family members instead of paid work....
Data from the 2010 Census show that 31 percent of married same-sex couples are raising children. It is likely that in many of these families, one parent forgoes income to spend more time raising kids. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 45 percent of women with children under 18 worked part time or were not in the labor force. Those mothers—and fathers who do the same—not only earn less now but will receive lower Social Security benefits when we retire....
SARAH MARXER is a married lesbian mother in
52. “San Mateo County to reap benefits from America’s Cup races, official says” (San Jose Mercury News, November 1, 2011); story citing ADAM VAN DE WATER (MPP 2001).
By Bonnie Eslinger - Daily News Staff Writer
When the
Adam Van De Water, San Francisco’s assistant project director for the 34th America’s Cup, told supervisors the international sailing competition will also generate about 8,800 jobs, mostly in the construction, transportation, food, beverage and hospitality industries.
Board President Carole
Groom welcomed the prospect of
The
According to the
California Travel & Tourism Commission, 30 percent of visitors to
To minimize traffic
congestion and parking problems,
53. “By the numbers Health insurance; Which plan to pick? New rankings show big quality differences” (Consumer Reports, November 2011); story citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982).
... Until the health reform law’s major provisions finally take effect in 2014, choosing and affording health insurance will remain a vexing chore for many. You may be tempted to opt for a familiar brand name. But that might be a mistake, unless the brand is Kaiser Permanente.
Our analysis of the rankings of 830 private, Medicare, and Medicaid health-insurance plans from a respected independent quality-measurement group, the nonprofit National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), finds that a national brand is no guarantee of quality....
People who buy insurance
on their own are also increasingly being forced to accept high deductibles to
keep premiums affordable. Laurice Koury-Goldberg, 62, a self-employed attorney
and small-business owner in
“This is the case of the amazing disappearing coverage,” says Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank (not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente). “There’s savings on the premium, but many people with such plans end up paying the lion’s share if not all of their medical costs, and those with low or midlevel incomes can ill afford that. For them, a $5,000 or $10,000 expense is a big hit.” ...
54. “World Congress session to zero in on CAFE, energy” (Automotive News, Pg. 6 Vol. 86, October 24, 2011); event featuring ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992).
The session, which will be held Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 10, will explore the nation's emerging policies and what will be needed to meet both market expectations and regulatory requirements.
Among the session's participants will be:
- Mitch Bainwol, who
earlier this year became CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which
represents 12 automakers and is the industry's leading lobbyist group in
- Roland Hwang, transportation program director for the National Resources Defense Council and one of the advocates who influenced the Obama administration's proposed corporate average fuel economy standards for the 2017 to 2025 model years....
55. “Tri-City Shows Rationale for Excluding Members. Cites 1905 bribery case, N.Y. senator’s conviction” (San Diego Union-Tribune, October 22, 2011); story citing JOANNE SPEERS (MPP 1984/JD).
By Aaron Burgin, U-T
The Tri-City Healthcare District has revealed its legal justification for excluding two board members from executive session meetings.
The public health agency
has kept elected board members Kathleen Sterling and Randy Horton out of closed
sessions since April, saying Horton leaked information and
The letter cites two
The Watchdog asked several open-government and political reform experts to review the letter and the legal strategy....
JoAnne Speers, the director of the Sacramento-based
“The consensus among most municipal attorneys we’ve spoken to is that preventing an elected official from being able to discharge their duties on behalf of people is an extraordinary step to take,” Speers said. “And most attorneys would not advise that as the first remedy or even a second or third remedy for the difficulties the district appears to be having with closed-session confidentiality.” ...
Page sent the letter as
a private citizen in
In turn, the district sent a three-page letter on Wednesday to Bill Campbell, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The letter, signed by CEO Larry Anderson and board chairwoman RoseMarie Reno, lays out the legal justification and seeks an investigation of Page for his advocacy.
“We are concerned that Mr. Page’s actions may constitute unethical conduct … because he is pursuing legal arguments that are, or may be, adverse to the county’s own legal interests,” the letter says....
Speers expressed concern with the tenor of the letter.
“That is just not acceptable among public agency attorneys,” she said. “We encourage all public officials to not engage in personal attacks and focus on the merit of any discussion. This letter does not do that.” ...
56. “Disability benefits program on unsustainable financial path” (McClatchy Washington Bureau, October 20, 2011); analysis citing NICOLE MAESTAS (MPP 1997/PhD Econ).
By Tony Pugh; McClatchy Newspapers
The sour economy, weak eligibility standards and a wave of aging baby boomers are driving an explosive increase in the number of injured workers who get disability benefits through the Social Security Disability Insurance program.
At the current growth rate, the SSDI trust fund, which pays for benefits, won’t have enough money to meet its obligations in 2018.
In September, SSDI paid nearly 8.5 million injured workers an average of $1,070 per month. That’s up nearly 20 percent from 7.1 million when the recession began in December 2007. There were only about 3 million recipients in September 1990.
Roughly half of all applicants eventually get accepted into the program, and less than 1 percent ever return to work.
However, some 18 percent
of new recipients could probably work again within two years of joining the program
as their conditions improve, said Nicole
Maestas, director of the Center for Disability Research at the RAND Corporation
in
Acting on similar concerns and rapid caseload growth in 1980, Congress directed the SSA to conduct disability reviews to make sure all recipients met the program’s medical standards. This led to widespread removal of people from the rolls.
Congress halted those efforts in 1983, however, as political backlash mounted. In 1986, Congress expanded the program’s eligibility standard for mental illness....
“If someone is paralyzed, you can see it,” said Maestas of RAND. “But if somebody says they have back pain, we can’t measure it. We can’t see it. We go on the basis of how they say they feel and what they say they can do. It’s much, much harder to quantify and very, very hard to evaluate.”
In fact, the screening process for new applicants can take well over a year of rejections and appeals to finally be approved for benefits. But roughly half of all SSDI applicants eventually get accepted. And while only 36 percent of initial applications are approved, a whopping 60 percent are approved at appeals hearings before administrative judges.
“That, to me, is astounding,” said Maestas. “That’s saying half of the cases were originally evaluated incorrectly, which seems too high.”...
Richard Pierce, a law
professor at
Still, he, Autor, Maestas and Burkhauser say it’s the system that’s broken — not the players....
57. “CLIMATE: Utilities press EPA for ‘flexible’ greenhouse gas rule” (Greenwire, Vol. 10 No. 9, October 19, 2011); story citing BRIAN TURNER (MPP 2006).
--Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter
Electric utilities waiting for U.S. EPA to propose a new greenhouse gas standard for power plants find themselves in an awkward position.
The sector has been holding stakeholder meetings with EPA trying to shape the agency’s regulation of carbon dioxide emissions; meanwhile, many coal-fired utilities are battling the agency in court and on Capitol Hill, contesting its authority to curb heat-trapping gases.
EPA hasn’t said yet when it will propose new source performance standards (NSPS) for greenhouse gases from new and existing power plants, but many in the power sector hope it will be something other than a simple “command and control” regulation.
Brian Turner, assistant executive officer for federal climate policy at California Air Resources Board, said that the Clean Air Act was definitely a second-best solution to legislation for tackling greenhouse gases, but he said EPA would at least provide a starting place for building a national climate policy.
“What we’re doing here ... is using what we’ve got,” he said.
Turner said he expected EPA to release a standard that is “plain vanilla,” requiring utilities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt.
But the Clean Air Act
allows flexibility in how states implements those standards, Turner said.
He said the standard would also “reinvigorate” regional carbon dioxide programs like the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has been compromised recently by New Jersey’s decision to leave the pact, the possibility that other states may follow, and low demand for allowances.
But Turner, whose state is among those suing EPA to promulgate NSPS rules, said it is difficult to discuss what effect they might have until they are released.
“We are all,” he said, “waiting on EPA.”
58. “Physicians Treating Latinos Have High Hurdles to Jump, Study Shows” (Targeted News Service, October 10, 2011); newswire citing ARTURO VARGAS-BUSTAMANTE (MPP/MPH 2004).
LOS ANGELES -- ... Research out of UCLA and the City University of New York has found that primary care physicians who treat Latinos are less likely than physicians treating primarily white patients to believe they can provide high-quality care. Among the reasons: inadequate time with patients, patients’ lack of ability to afford care, patients not adhering to recommended treatments, and difficulties in communicating.
The study appears in the current edition of the journal Health Affairs.
Researchers used data
from the 2008 Community Tracking Physician Survey, a nationally representative
sample of
“From this survey, we analyzed physicians’ self-reported ability to provide high-quality care to Latinos and compared it to that of physicians treating primarily whites,” said Arturo Vargas-Bustamante, an assistant professor of health services at the UCLA School of Public Health and lead author of the study along with Jie Chen, an assistant professor at CUNY’s College of Staten Island.
Latinos differ from other minority patients in their socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, as well as their patterns of health care access, use and spending, Vargas-Bustamante said, and these differences are likely to influence physicians’ perceptions of the quality of care they deliver.
Latinos represent more
than 15 percent of the
“We wanted to understand the challenges that providers face in delivering high-quality care to underserved populations,” he said. “Overcoming such challenges will be critical to ensure that the insurance expansion under the Affordable Care Act will succeed in providing better health for all.”...
59. “Quick Change That Lasts for the Long Term” (The New York Times Blogs (Opinionator), October 4, 2011); blog citing ANNA RUNKLE (MPP 1997).
By Tina Rosenberg
On Friday I wrote about Rapid Results Initiatives, bite-sized pieces of social change that a village, government office or business will choose and try to accomplish in just 100 days. Rapid Results Initiatives have proven to be effective at various tasks: improving health, infrastructure, education—service delivery of any kind. The urgent deadline provides focus. It’s no longer business as usual, plagued by the usual list of reasons why nothing gets done....
Projects also need careful planning.... The group must include specialists in the project’s necessary parts - if a village is building a well, someone on the committee has to be from the district water office....
And what if that water
chief feels threatened by a Rapid Results project? “People get deeply invested in perpetuating
problems,” wrote Anna Runkle of
60. “Guam Aircraft Company Sued for Religious Discrimination by EEOC” (US Fed News, October 3, 2011); newswire citing TIMOTHY RIERA (MPP 1989).
HAGATNA, Guam --
Aviation Concepts, Inc., an aircraft retailer and service provider, violated
federal law when it terminated a Jehovah’s Witness after he refused to raise
the flags of the
According to the EEOC,
an assistant mechanic at the company had made known his religious beliefs and
the restrictions associated with being a Jehovah’s Witness. During the first
year and a half of his employment, the company respected his religious beliefs
and he was not required to perform duties which conflicted with those beliefs.
However, the EEOC contends that this changed in June 2010 when a different
manager ordered the mechanic to raise the
“A supervisor who engages
in discriminatory practices can be a huge liability for any employer,” said Timothy Riera, local director for the
EEOC’s
61. “Guam Pharmaceutical Wholesaler Sued by EEOC for Sexual Harassment” (US Fed News, October 3, 2011); newswire citing TIMOTHY RIERA (MPP 1989).
HAGATNA -- MD Wholesale,
Guam and
According to the EEOC’s
suit, female employees at MD Wholesale’s facility in Taminung,
Timothy Riera, local director for the EEOC’s Honolulu Local Office,
which has jurisdiction over
62. “
--William Fisher
As 20 of
The arms sale comes less
than three months after the
Since mid-February, the kingdom has confronted demonstrators with cordons of armed military and police firing live ammunition. At least 31 people have died and hundreds more have been injured in the clashes....
Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association,
told Mother Jones magazine that “the
political upheaval across the
63. “D.C. students to be tested on sex education” (Washington Post, September 15, 2011); story citing BRIAN PICK (MPP 2007).
By Bill Turque
D.C. public and public charter schools, which annually test student progress in reading and math, will also measure what they know about human sexuality, contraception and drug use starting this spring.
The 50-question exam will be the nation’s first statewide standardized test on health and sex education, according to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which developed the assessment for grades 5, 8 and 10.
The District’s rates of childhood obesity, sexually transmitted disease and teen pregnancy are among the country’s highest. Periodic surveys have detailed student attitudes toward risky behavior, but officials said the annual test will fill gaps in their understanding of what young people know and why they might behave the way they do.
“It paints a fuller picture,” said Brian Pick, deputy chief of curriculum and instruction for D.C. Public Schools. “We don’t know as a system or as a city what knowledge kids have about these topics.”
Officials said that the test, which will also include questions on nutrition, mental health and drug use, is based on a provision of the Healthy Schools Act of 2010, which the D.C. Council passed to address health issues in the 75,000-student system....
1. “First Amendment hijacked by moneyed interests” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/26/INBM1M2LC7.DTL#ixzz1f2eonS5O
--Robert Reich
A UC Davis police officer uses pepper spray on protesters during an Occupy rally Nov. 18. (Thomas K. Fowler / AP)
A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum: It was hijacked.
According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech, and corporations are now people.
Yet when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances—clubbed, pepper-sprayed, thrown out of public parks and evicted from public spaces.
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Now millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace.
This is where the Occupiers come in. If there’s a core message to the Occupy movement, it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top endangers our democracy. With money comes political power.
Yet as Occupiers seek to make their voices heard about all this, they’re told the First Amendment doesn’t apply. When they peacefully assemble—erecting tents in public spaces—they’re attacked and evicted....
Now more than ever, the First Amendment needs to be put right side up. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.
© Robert Reich
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley and the
author of “Aftershock: The Next Economy and
2. “Looking Beyond Election Day” (New York Times, November 25, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/looking-beyond-election-day/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1
By ROBERT B. REICH
Most
political analysis of
Not to depress you, but our economic troubles are likely to continue for many years — a decade or more....
This, in turn, could make political compromise even more elusive than it is now, as remarkable as that may seem....
But here’s what might be considered the good news. Rather than ushering in an era of political paralysis, the Great Depression of the 1930s changed American politics altogether — realigning the major parties, creating new coalitions, and yielding new solutions. Prolonged economic distress of a decade or more could have the same effect this time around.
What might the new politics look like? The nation is polarizing in three distinct ways, and any or all of could generate new political alignments....
How our political parties and leaders will cope with these three fault lines is far from clear, partly because the lines don’t all move in same direction. Young Americans tend to be more anti-establishment than older Americans, for example, but are also more open to other nations and cultures. By the same token, a generational war over the budget might be avoided if anti-establishment movements succeed in reducing corporate welfare, raising taxes on the rich, and limiting Wall Street’s rapacious hold over economic decision making.
What seems certain, however, is that continued high unemployment coupled with slow or no growth will create a new political landscape. This will pose a special challenge — and opportunity. If our political leaders don’t manage the new dividing lines effectively they could invite a politics of resentment that scapegoats certain groups while avoiding the hard work of setting priorities and making difficult choices.
On the other hand, if political leaders take advantage of the energies and possibilities this new landscape offers, they could usher in an era in which the fruits of growth are more widely shared: between elites and everyone else; between the beneficiaries of globalization and those most burdened by it; and between older Americans and young. This itself could reignite a virtuous cycle — a broad-based prosperity that not only generates more demand for goods and services and therefore more jobs, but also a more inclusive and generous politics....
Robert B. Reich, a former secretary of
labor, is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Aftershock: The Next
Economy and
3. “As Layoffs Rise, Stock Buybacks Consume Cash” (New York Times & International Herald Tribune [*requires registration], November 22, 2011); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/business/rash-to-some-stock-buybacks-are-on-the-rise.html?sq=Berkeley&st=nyt&scp=4&pagewanted=print
--Nelson D. Schwartz
When Pfizer cut its research budget this year and laid off 1,100 employees, it was not because the company needed to save money.
In fact, the drug maker had so much cash left over, it decided to buy back an additional $5 billion worth of stock on top of the $4 billion already earmarked for repurchases in 2011 and beyond.
The moves, announced on the same day, might seem at odds with each other, but they represent an increasingly common pattern among American corporations, which are sitting on record amounts of cash but insist that growth opportunities are hard to find.
The result is that at a time when the nation is looking for ways to battle unemployment, big companies are creating fewer jobs, and critics say they are neglecting to lay the foundation for future growth by expanding into new businesses or building new plants....
Liberal critics insist the trend is another example of top corporate executives raking in an inordinate share of the nation’s wealth, even as their employees suffer.
“It’s an extraordinarily unimaginative way to use
money,” said Robert Reich, a former
secretary of labor under President Clinton who now teaches public policy at the
4. “Reich: If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?” (Marketplace, American Public Media, November, 16, 2011); commentary by ROBERT REICH; Listen to the commentary
By Robert Reich
Kai Ryssdal: ... If the 1 percent had less, would the 99 percent be better off?...
ROBERT REICH: With all due respect that's exactly the wrong question. It plays into the false idea that the economy is a giant zero-sum game, in which either the top 1 percent wins and everyone else loses, or the reverse. But that's not how it works. If an economy is functioning correctly, everyone wins—the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent.
For three decades after World War II, that's the kind of economy we had. Labor productivity doubled, and the incomes of almost all Americans doubled as well. In fact, the pay of workers in the bottom fifth more than doubled—rising at a faster pace than the pay of people at the top. The vast majority of Americans did so well they had enough money to buy just about everything they produced—which, in turn, kept the economy growing at full tilt....
... So to get the economy moving again we have to restore broad-based prosperity—not just for the top 1 percent and not just for the bottom 99 percent, but for everyone....
Ryssdal: Robert
Reich teaches public policy at the
5. “From Savio Steps, Reich applauds ‘moral outrage’ as thousands cheer” (UC Berkeley NewsCenter, November 15, 2011); event featuring ROBERT REICH; http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/11/15/tuesday-strike/
By Public Affairs, UC Berkeley
Robert Reich addresses the Occupy Cal crowd from the Mario Savio Steps at Sproul Hall. (Peg Skorpinski photo)
“Not only is the
“The sentiments Mario Savio expressed 47 years ago are as relevant now as they were then,” said Reich, a professor of public policy, author and social commentator with a nationwide following. Appearing as the presenter of this year’s Savio Lecture, Reich praised the Occupy Cal protesters for their “moral outrage,” and said democracy depends upon “the ability of people to join together and make their voices heard.”
“The days of apathy are over, folks,” Reich declared. “Once this has begun, it cannot be stopped, and it will not be stopped.” ...
[The Daily Californian’s report on the story also features video: Robert Reich speaks out at Occupy Cal ; part of Prof. Reich’s Savio lecture was also shown on PBS Newshour, November 16, 2011.]
6. “Huge protest at UC Berkeley - vote to set up camp” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 2011); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/15/MN7V1LVH5N.DTL#ixzz1dtTsCdwE
--Justin Berton, Nanette Asimov, Demian Bulwa, Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writers
Overflow crowd in front of
Savio steps of
As many as 10,000 students and Occupy activists
overflowed UC Berkeley’s
There were so many people in the plaza that it
was hard to move through it, and dozens of police officers stayed on the
periphery as the tents went up around 9:30 p.m. The first time students tried
to set up an Occupy
Professor Robert Reich
speaks to the thousands from
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau issued orders last week and again on Tuesday that no tents be allowed past a symbolic few in the name of political expression. But the result of a vote by protesters—said to be 88.5 percent in favor of tents—was in clear opposition to those orders....
Reich delivers speech
The vote came just before UC Berkeley professor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich delivered the annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture in which he blasted economic inequity. Immediately after the hour-long address, the tents sprang up....
7. “Global protests: is 2011 a year that will
change the world? Will this year go down in history as one of those that
redefined global politics? Just what are the parallels – if any – with 1968 and
1989?” (Guardian [
--John Harris guardian.co.uk
... Between 1993 and 1997, Robert Reich served as Bill Clinton’s labour secretary. Of late, as if to demonstrate that sections of the US Democrats are being energised and excited by Occupy, from his base at Berkeley University he has visited and spoken at Occupy Oakland (cleared for a second time by the city’s police on Monday), Occupy San Francisco, and Occupy Los Angeles. Not without reason, he’s wary of too many comparisons with what’s happening in the industrialised west and the Arab spring, though he readily accepts that in terms of “political ferment”, 2011 may well turn out to be a watershed year....
What, I wonder, might be the concrete result of all the noise?
“It’s impossible to know at this stage. Even in
1968, we had no idea until many years later – and even now, revisionists appear
every year, re-interpreting what happened. 1989 was much more clear-cut: we
know how the world changed. All we can say about 1968 with any certainty is
that there were mass protests and uprisings, people felt nations were moving in
the wrong direction, and there was a kind of shock of political recognition
among elites, that they had to change direction because of these swelling ranks
of discontented people. In the
Here, he says, lies a danger, common to the US and Europe: that if the mainstream left does not convincingly address the tangle of economic issues that underlies this year’s great outbreak of protest and unrest, the initiative could easily be seized by the right. In other words, the onus is on Obama and the Democrats to speak to the moment, and there’s an increasing sense that if they don’t, the American centre-left may splinter along generational lines. On one side will stand the staid party establishment; on the other, the young networked multitudes, many of whom did their bit for Obama in 2008, but are now gripped by disillusionment that could easily get worse.
For Reich, this possibility has clear echoes of 1968 – and that infamous episode when politicised young people descended on the Democratic convention in Chicago and dramatised the party’s miserable failure to rise to the moment, while the city’s police used what one convention speaker decried as “gestapo tactics”.
“You will recall that in 1968, the Democratic party split,” he says. “The establishment Democrats went with [Presidential nominee] Hubert Humphrey, and young people deserted the party. Basically, the Democrats lost big because they didn’t know how to respond to the wave. And the drama of 2012 will be a drama, I think, of the Democratic party.” ...
8. “Wealth, political power imbalance must be fixed” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/12/INJU1LS12D.DTL#ixzz1dht7rVlC
--Robert Reich, © 2011 Robert Reich
... Until we reverse the trend toward inequality, the economy can’t be revived.
Yet the biggest question in our nation’s capital right now has nothing to do with any of this. It’s whether Congress’ supercommittee—six Democrats and six Republicans charged with coming up with at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings—will reach agreement in time for the Congressional Budget Office to score its proposal, which then must be approved by Congress before Dec. 23 to avoid an automatic $1.2 trillion in budget savings requiring major across-the-board cuts starting in 2013....
Look elsewhere around the world, and you see a
similar collision unfolding between the needs of average people and the demands
of the financial sector for government austerity. You see it in
Increasing numbers of young people are idle - a
sure recipe for upheaval. In
Will 2012 go down in history like other years that shook the foundations of the world’s political economy - 1968 and 1989? ...
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley....
9. “Wood smoke from cooking fires linked to pneumonia, cognitive impacts” (UC Berkeley Newscenter, November 10, 2011); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/11/10/cookstove-smoke-pneumonia-iq/
By Sarah Yang, Media Relations
An
estimated 3 billion people in the world still cook with open fires and dirty
cookstoves, including this mother in
BERKELEY — Two new studies led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers spotlight the human health effects of exposure to smoke from open fires and dirty cookstoves, the primary source of cooking and heating for 43 percent, or some 3 billion members, of the world’s population. Women and young children in poverty are particularly vulnerable.
In the first study, the researchers found a dramatic one-third reduction in severe pneumonia diagnoses among children in homes with smoke-reducing chimneys on their cookstoves. The second study uncovered a surprising link between prenatal maternal exposure to woodsmoke and poorer performance in markers for IQ among school-aged children....
The new studies come amid growing worldwide attention to the need for cleaner, more fuel-efficient cookstoves. Just last year, the United Nations Foundation launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an international public-private initiative championed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Using a chimney reduced exposure to household woodsmoke by half.
In addition to the health consequences of burning wood, charcoal, dung or crop residue for cooking and heating, the alliance noted that use of traditional cookstoves increases pressures on local natural resources, contributes to climate change and puts women in danger when they forage for fuel in conflict zones.
Finding cleaner alternatives to traditional
cookstoves has been an area of active research at UC Berkeley and the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) for decades. Some current projects are part
of the UC Berkeley-based
“The biggest collection of people working in the
area of cookstoves in the world is at UC Berkeley and LBNL,” said Kammen, who co-authored a 2001 study
linking smoke from cookstoves and health in
[Additional information: Establishing Effective Cookstove
Dissemination Strategies in Tanzania (
10. “Experts Suggest
... During a special informational hearing of the
Senate Transportation & Housing Committee Oct. 24 dubbed “Meeting the Goals
of AB 32: Fuels of the Future,” several clean-transportation experts said that
an effective strategy to help
Dan
Kammen, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley (UC) who has
studied the strategy extensively, told lawmakers during the hearing that a
feebate program would in part help send a message to motorists that reducing
vehicle emissions is critical. Last year, UC published an extensive study of
how a feebate program would perform in
11. “Robert Reich: Occupy movement not part of ‘class war’” (San Francisco Business Times, Nov. 8, 2011); column citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2011/11/robert-reich-occupy-not-class-war.html
--Steven E.F. Brown
The Occupy Wall Street movement is not part of a
class war, said former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who speaks next
week on the subject of “class warfare” at the
Reich will be giving the 15th annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture on Nov. 15 in Pauley Ballroom in the university’s student union....
Reich, who worked in the administrations of
Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, was labor secretary from 1993 to 1997
under President Bill Clinton. He’s a
professor at Cal’s Goldman School of Public Policy and he used to teach at
Despite the popular division protesters make between “the 99 percent” of ordinary folks and “the 1 percent” super rich, Reich, who says he may mention the Occupy protests in his talk, told the Business Times “I don’t think it’s a class war, nor should it be seen that way.” ...
Nevertheless, Reich did admit that there are some class issues involved.
“The biggest thing movements like this do is change the national conversation,” he said. “To this extent, the Occupier movement is already a success. The issue of ever more concentrated wealth, income, and political power at the top is now an almost daily feature story.”
Though the Occupy protests have been knocked by
critics for being a hodgepodge of groups with many complaints ..., the movement
Savio came to personify also benefits from that analytical backwards view of
history, which has found patterns and principles in what started as chaos and a
spontaneous mob protesting Jack Weinberg’s arrest in
“Most movements begin this way,” said Reich. “And most become more organized eventually, or stop being movements and become cultural phenomena.”
12. Blog: “We need a Corporate Pledge of Allegiance” (Salon, November 8, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.salon.com/2011/11/08/we_need_a_corporate_pledge_of_allegiance/
--Robert Reich
Despite what the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney
say, corporations aren’t people. (I’ll believe they are when
The Court thinks corporations have First Amendment rights to spend as much as they want on politics, and Romney (and most of his fellow Regressives) think they need lower taxes and fewer regulations in order to be competitive.
These positions are absurd on their face. By flooding our democracy with their shareholders’ money, big corporations are violating their shareholders’ First Amendment rights because shareholders aren’t consulted. They’re simultaneously suppressing the First Amendment rights of the rest of us because, given how much money they’re throwing around, we don’t have enough money to be heard.
And they’re indirectly giving non-Americans (that is, all their foreign owners, investors and executives) a say in how Americans are governed. Pardon me for being old-fashioned but I didn’t think foreign money was supposed to be funneled into American elections.
Romney’s belief big corporations need more money and lower costs in order to create jobs is equally baffling. Big corporations are now sitting on $2 trillion of cash and enjoying near-record profits. The ratio of profits to wages is higher than it’s been since before the Great Depression. And a larger and larger portion of those profits are going to top executives. (CEO pay was 40 times the typical worker in the 1980s; it’s now upwards of 300 times....
13. “Income Gap Widening Across Generations” (KQED Radio, November 7, 2011); interview with ROBERT REICH; http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201111071730/a
Cy Musiker: ...[A] new study from the
The median net worth in 2009 of a
The median net worth for someone under 35: just $3,660—that gap has widened since 1984, the first year the Census Bureau began tracking those figures.
Robert Reich is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley, and served as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton.
Professor, why is this gap widening?
ROBERT REICH: Well, housing has a lot to do with it, Cy. If you were lucky enough to get into the housing market in the early or mid-1980s when a lot of people who are 65 or older first entered the housing market, you rode the great wave. But, if you were unlucky enough to be a younger person and got in later, in the 2000s, your equity has been wiped out.
Musiker: Also, what about more debt for the young, especially debt for college.
ROBERT REICH: Undoubtedly that is a big big factor. When people who are 65 or older went to college, or when they entered credit markets for a variety of reasons in the 1980s and 1990s, they got a much better deal. Young people today, instead of getting aid or direct financial assistance, they’ve got to take out huge loans. And that means when they get out they are burdened with enormous debt. When you can’t find a job on top of that then you have a very toxic combination....
14. “Alice Waters, Robert Reich talk up a delicious revolution” (Berkeleyside, November 7, 2011); event featuring ROBERT REICH; see the video
By Sarah Henry
... Alice Waters, a one-time Montessori teacher, wanted to stimulate her students’ senses. So, last Tuesday, that’s how she kicked off her turn to talk at the Edible Education 101 fall lecture series at UC Berkeley, funded by her own Chez Panisse Foundation.
And, in an inspired piece of programming, the woman with a big, broad vision for food reform in schools and beyond, who speaks in a small, wispy way and sometimes appears uncomfortable, even a little lost alone in the spotlight, invited the jovial Cal public policy professor and economics expert Robert Reich to join her on stage for a conversation in front of a close to capacity crowd at Wheeler Hall.
Reich, who has served in three federal administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, and who can be heard regularly offering financial commentary on public radio’s Marketplace, was more than up to the task of speaking for Waters when she couldn’t, per her request....
15. “Wall Street is back to its old tricks” (San Francisco Chronicle, November 6, 2011); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/04/INFR1LP34F.DTL#ixzz1d4IEpexc
--Robert Reich
... After the banks made wildly risky bets with our money, we bailed them out. Congress enacted financial reform (the Dodd-Frank law). But Wall Street lobbyists immediately set about diluting it along with its regulations. Dodd-Frank is now riddled with so many exemptions and loopholes that the largest banks are back to many of their old tricks.
For example, it’s impossible to know the Street’s real exposure to the European debt crisis. To stay afloat, several of Europe’s banks could be forced to sell mountains of assets—among them, derivatives originating on the Street—and might have to renege on or delay some repayments on loans from Wall Street banks....
For more evidence, consider the fancy footwork by Bank of America in recent weeks. Hit by a credit downgrade in September, BofA moved its riskiest derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a retail subsidiary flush with insured deposits.
That unit has a higher credit rating because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (that is, you and me and other taxpayers) are backing the deposits. Result: BofA improves its bottom line at the expense of American taxpayers.
Wasn’t this supposed to be illegal? Keeping risky
assets away from insured deposits had been a key principle of
The so-called Volcker rule in the new Dodd-Frank Act was designed to remedy this. But under the pressure of Wall Street’s lobbyists, the rule has morphed into almost 300 pages of regulatory mumbo-jumbo, riddled with loopholes....
© 2011 Robert Reich Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley....
16. “Occupy movement turns to extending appeal to
broad segments of
By Scott Johnson
The problem, says Wilkerson, a 42-year old unemployed software engineer and self-described conservative, is that the system has run amok.
Holding a sign that read, “A Conservative Against Corporate Personhood,” Wilkerson said he joined the protest to find some common ground with the overwhelmingly liberal crowd. “We need to look for what’s in common, not how we can fight each other,” he said....
If Wilkerson’s presence at Wednesday’s strike is anything to go by, the vein of discontent with America’s corporate and governing infrastructure is spreading across economic, political, racial and class lines....
“The Occupy movement is already having a huge
effect nationwide. It is changing the discussion for the first time in
decades,” said Robert Reich, former
secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton and a professor of public
policy at UC Berkeley. As Reich
made his way up Broadway in the midst of a huge crowd, he said, “This movement
is hitting a responsive chord across the country because so many people feel
the dice are loaded. The game is rigged.
[Prof. Reich also spoke at Occupy Los Angeles on Nov. 5, 2011.]
17. “Ideas on a new agenda for youth” (The Berkeleyan, November 1, 2011); profile and interview with DAVID KIRP; http://research.universityofcalifornia.edu/profiles/2011/10/david-kirp.html
DAVID KIRP
Education and Public Policy
When David Kirp was growing up on
His five big ideas in brief include giving young parents strong support; providing high quality early education; linking schools and communities to improve what each offer children; providing mentors to youngsters; and setting aside a nest egg for teens to help kick-start college and career....
Question: Can you pigeon-hole the thrust of your research explorations?
Answer: When I’ve looked back, people have described my work as exploring the tension between “community values” on one side, some other value — often the market — on the other side. In the case of universities, it’s the norms and forms of the market, the pressure of dollars on academic decisions. In case of preschool, it’s political powerlessness. In the case of the school system I’m studying, where poor Latino kids are doing so well, it’s community versus a market-driven view of what education should look like.
My recent focus on young children really stems from my personal experience — if you spend time with preschool kids, as I have, you start loving them and their teachers in a way you do not love college administrators or AIDS bureaucrats. It’s very personally affecting — that’s why I’ve moved away from writing about kids as objects of policy in the abstract to writing about kids in the concrete, the here and now....
18. Morning Edition: “As Population, Consumption Rise, Builder Goes Small” (NPR, November 1, 2011); features commentary by DAN KAMMEN; Listen to the story
by Christopher Joyce
The planet may not feel any different today, but there are now 7 billion people on it, according to the United Nations.
That number will continue to rise, of course, and global incomes are likely to rise as well. That means more cars and computers, and bigger homes: the kinds of things Americans take for granted. It’s that rise in consumption that has population experts worried.
...Physicist
Daniel Kammen at the University of
“In many parts of the world, energy — and I hate to say this — is simply too cheap,” he says.
Kammen, the head of an energy laboratory at Berkeley, says cheap energy enables Western countries to live high on the hog. And people want to copy us.
“There’s a huge impact of the decisions that we make,” Kammen says, “and also we export a lot of technologies.”...
Since buildings consume about 40 percent of the nation’s energy, they’re a logical target for more efficiency. But Berkeley’s Kammen says living smaller isn’t the ultimate solution. With 9 billion or 10 billion people, rising consumption will overwhelm any efficiency, as well as our current sources of energy. What’s needed, he says, is renewable energy that’s cheap and won’t run out.
“And by essentially every measure,” he concludes, “we are not moving fast enough.”
19. “The occupiers’ responsive chord” (The Berkeleyan, November 1, 2011); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/11/01/the-occupiers-responsive-chord/
Robert Reich, professor of public
policy | 11/1/11
A combination of police crackdowns and bad weather are testing the young Occupy movement. But rumors of its demise are premature, to say the least. Although numbers are hard to come by, anecdotal evidence suggests the movement is growing.
As importantly, the movement has already changed
the public debate in
Consider, for example, last week’s Congressional
Budget Office report on widening disparities of income in
But it’s the first time such news made the front page of the nation’s major newspapers.....
Even more startling is the change in public opinion. Not since the 1930s has a majority of Americans called for redistribution of income or wealth. But according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an astounding 66 percent of Americans said the nation’s wealth should be more evenly distributed....
A profound change has come over
20. “Secretary-General Names Members of High-Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All” (States News Service, November 1, 2011); newswire citing DAN KAMMEN.
The Group includes distinguished global leaders
in business, finance, governments, and civil society. It is co-chaired by
Kandeh Yumkella, the Chair of United Nations Energy and Director-General of the
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), and Charles
Holliday, Chairman of Bank of
The members of the Group will develop an action
agenda that will mobilize action by all stakeholders in support of energy
access, energy efficiency and increasing the share of renewable energy. A range
of commitments and partnerships will be announced at the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development (
Technical Group: Al Binger, Caribbean Community Climate Change Center; Fatih Birol, International Energy Agency; Abeeku Brew-Hammond, Energy Commission for Ghana; Mark Fulton, Deutsche Bank; Vijay Iyer, World Bank; Daniel Kammen, University of California, Berkeley; Susan McDade, United Nations Resident Coordinator for Uruguay; Vijay Modi, Columbia University; Nebojsa Nakicenovic, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis; Petter Nore, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation; Richard Samans, Global Green Growth Institute; and Leena Srivastava, The Energy and Resources Institute.
21. “The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs holds a forum on ‘Food Price Increases: Causes, Impacts and Responses’” (The Washington Daybook, September 30, 2011); event featuring ALAIN DE JANVRY.
AGENDA: Highlights :
-- 9 a.m.: Stephen Smith, GWU professor of economics and international affairs, and director of the GWU Institute for International Economic Policy, delivers opening remarks
-- 9:15 a.m.: Panel on “Causes: Long and Short Term Forces Underlying Food Price Spikes and Trends”
-- 11:30 a.m.: Panel on “Impacts: Poverty, Nutrition and Welfare Impacts of Food Price Increases”
-- 1:15 p.m.: Alain de Janvry, professor of agricultural and resource economics at
the
Nov. 3 Henry Brady chaired the panel on “Knowledge Management,” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 3 Jane Mauldon chaired the panel on “Organization Culture, Calcification and Learning,” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 3 Lee Friedman presented his paper, “Will Smarter Rate Designs Keep Up with a Smarter Grid? Better Time-Varying Electricity Rates to Attract Consumers and to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference. Joe Kruger (MPP 1986) was discussant in that panel.
Nov. 3 Steven Raphael was discussant on
“Social Policy Effects on Crime,” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference. Aaron Chalfin (PhD cand.) presented his
paper, “What is the Contribution of Immigration to U.S. Crime Rates? Evidence
from Rainfall Shocks in
Nov. 3 Jesse Rothstein presented his paper, “Teacher Quality Policy When Supply Matters” in the “Teacher Quality: Measurement and Policy” panel at the APPAM Fall Research Conference. Candace Hamilton Hester (GSPP PhD cand.) presented her paper, “The Effect of the Pill on Teacher Quality” in that panel.
Nov. 3 Jane Mauldon presented her coauthored
paper, “Joblessness, Unemployment Insurance, and the Safety Net in
Nov. 3 Michael O’Hare was speaker in the roundtable on “Narratives as Sources of Policy Guidance and Inference,” moderated by Sandra Archibald (MPP 1971/PhD 1984), at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 3 Elizabeth Mokyr Horner (PhD cand.) presented her Poster, “Retirement and Subjective Well-Being: A Regression Discontinuity Approach” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 3 Sarah Martin-Anderson (PhD cand.) presented her Poster, “Prenatal Feeding Intentions, WIC Participation and Breastfeeding Duration” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 3 Sarah Tahamont (PhD cand.) presented her paper, “The Effect of Visitation on Prison Misconduct” in the panel “Crime Control Evidence Generated from Natural Experiments” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 3 Chris Finn (PhD cand.) presented his paper, “The Role of Labor Unions in Political Representation of Underserved Populations” in the panel “Representation, Access and US National Policies” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference
Nov. 3 Henry Brady, Karl Hausker (MPP 1981/PhD 1986) and Mark Trexler (MPP 1982/PhD 1989) were speakers in the roundtable on “Competing Frames for Climate Change: Benefit-Cost Analysis vs. Risk Management” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 4 Jesse Rothstein was discussant on the panel, “Teachers, Doctors and NBA Point Guards: Using Statistics to Measure Worker Output in Complex Settings” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 5 Eugene Bardach was discussant on the panel, “New Approaches to Performance Management and Accountability” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 5 Dan Kammen was discussant on the panel, “Energy Services and Electricity Access in Developing Countries: The Role of Public Policy” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 5 Michael O’Hare chaired the panel, “Human Resource Motivation and Innovation” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 5 Michael O’Hare presented his coauthored paper, “When Biofuels Climate Policy Turns into a Methodological and Political Can of Worms” at the APPAM Fall Research Conference.
Nov. 10 Henry Brady delivered the 2011 Matthew
Holden, Jr. Lecture at
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