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eDIGEST October 2010
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Archives | Upcoming Events | Quick Reference List | Alumni & Student Newsmakers | Faculty in the
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1. The Philomathia
Foundation Symposium at
October 1–2, 2010. 9 a.m.–5 p.m. both days. Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Among Distinguished Presenters:
Dan Kammen, Founding Director, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley: “Innovating in a Low-Carbon Economy”
Robert Collier,
Visiting Scholar, Center for Environmental Public Policy,
More info at: http://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/energy/symposium/conference-program
2. “Nuclear Weapons and Cyber Security”
Homecoming: October 8 | 3:30-4:30 p.m. | Sibley Auditorium,
Michael Nacht, Professor of Public Policy
3. “Big Ideas to Fix
the
Homecoming: October 9 | 9:00-10:30 a.m. | Dwinelle Hall, Room 155
Dean Henry Brady, Prof. Bruce Cain, Sunne Wright McPeak
Sponsored by the Class of 1968 and GSPP; more info
4. “What Would Happen
if
Homecoming: October 9 | 10:30-11:30 a.m. | Sibley Auditorium,
Rob MacCoun, Professor of Law and Public Policy
5. “Presumed Guilty: Special Screening and Discussion”
Layda Negrete
LL.M. ’96, M.P.P. ’98 and Roberto Hernández, Doctoral Candidates in the
Homecoming: October 9 | noon-1:00 p.m. | Sibley Auditorium,
6. “The Labor Market
in the Great Recession: The View from
October 11 | Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Conference Room
Jesse Rothstein, Professor of Public Policy and Economics
RSVP by emailing Myra Armstrong at zulu2@berkeley.edu ; more info
7. “Climate Change and Black Swans - How Many Can We Spot?”
Dr. Mark C. Trexler (MPP 1982/PhD 1989), Director, Climate
Strategies and Markets, DNV Climate Change Services, Norske Veritas
North
October 12 | 12-1:30 p.m. | Goldman
Presented by Center for Environmental Public Policy Speaker Series: more info
8. “Greener, Brighter and Better”: Israeli Innovation for Global Cleantech Solutions
A panel discussion moderated by Dean Henry Brady, with opening remarks from Consul General Akiva Tor and Dean Richard Lyons, Haas School of Business
October 13th from 5:30-7:45. GSPP, Room 250
Featuring 3 leading clean tech companies: GreenRoad Technologies, BrightSource
Energy and
Presented by the International Public Policy Group
9. Child Development Policy Institute 9th Annual Fall Forum
“Through the Looking Glass: Where We’re Going to Be in Five Years (whether we like it or not)”
Featured Participant: Greg Hudson (MPP 1989), Southern Field Services Administrator, Child Development Division, California Department of Education
Oct. 12 - Oct. 13, 2010
Sheraton Grand
More info at: https://www.cdpi.net/cs/cdpi/print/htdocs/events.htm#fallforum
10. “Mother’s Work and Children’s Lives: Low Income Families After Welfare Reform”
October 26 | 6-8 p.m. | 5101 Tolman Hall
Rucker Johnson,
Sponsored by Center for Child and Youth Policy; more info
11.
The 14th annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture
& Young Activist Award
“Main Street
First: Fixing Broken Markets and Rebuilding the Middle Class”
Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law, and chair of the Congressional oversight panel for the $700 billion bailout (T.A.R.P.) fund.
October 28 |
8-9:30 p.m. | Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, Pauley Ballroom
The inspiration
and driving force behind the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
Elizabeth Warren has been described as one of the “100 Most Influential People
in the World” (Time), “a whipsmart consumer warrior,”
(S.F. Chronicle), and “a person who will stir up a lot of trouble” (Forbes)….
Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley
Library, the
12. GSPP in
November 4,
2010, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
University of
Registration
Fee: $10.00 per person. Reservation deadline: October 29, 2010; more info
13. 32nd Annual APPAM Research
Conference: “Making Fair and Effective Policy in Difficult Times”
GSPP’s Alumni Reception, hosted by Dean Henry Brady
November, 5,
2010, 5:45 p.m. - Hyatt Regency Hotel -
14. CAPH’s 2010 Annual
Conference: “Fulfilling the Promise of Health Care Reform”
December 1st
- 3rd. Claremont Hotel,
Featured
speakers:
Susan Ehrlich (MPP 1984/MD), CEO, San Mateo Medical Center &
Chair, California Health Care Safety Net Institute
Wendy Jameson (MPP/MPH 1989), Director, California Health Care Safety Net
Institute
To register
or for further information, please click here
ALUMNI AND STUDENT NEWSMAKERS
1. “Former FERC Director William Hederman Joins Deloitte” (Journal of Technology & Science, October 10, 2010); story citing WILLIAM HEDERMAN (MPP 1974).
2. “ACLU and Other Groups File Amicus Brief Opposing Arizona’s Racial Profiling Law” (Targeted News Service, September 30, 2010); newswire citing KAREN TUMLIN (MPP 2003/JD 2004).
3. “Commute is hard to judge” (The Press-Enterprise, September 30, 2010); story citing JOE CORTRIGHT (MPP 1980); http://www.pe.com/localnews/transportation/stories/PE_News_Local_D_commute30.2a0ea5d.html
4. “Obama rules may require 60 mpg average by 2025” (USA TODAY, September 29, 2010); story citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/09/60-mpg-required-by-2025---/1?loc=interstitialskip
5. “Hopelessly Retro Budget Ideas Make a Comeback” (Roll Call, September 28, 2010); commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
6. “Despite economy, Americans don’t want farm work” (Associated Press, September 27, 2010); story by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005/MJ 2004); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/09/27/financial/f063017D17.DTL&ao=all
7. “The Future of California, Ready for Discussion” (New York Times, September 26, 2010); column citing MARINA GORBIS (MPP 1983); http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/us/26bcweber.html?_r=2
8. “Institute for the Future Looks Ahead at California Beyond the Crisis; New Forecast Map Provokes the Public to Get Engaged With the Future of the State” (Marketwire, September 28, 2010); newswire citing MARINA GORBIS (MPP 1983).
9. “The generational shift in
10. “Mickey Levy, Chief Economist at the Bank of America, Talks about Quantitative Easing on Bloomberg Surveillance” (Bloomberg: Surveillance Show, September 24, 2010); conversation with MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).
11. “Report: CA health care bills won’t add to deficit” (Associated Press, September 24, 2010); story citing MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980).
12. “Appealing Insurance Company Denials: New Protections” (States News Service, September 24, 2010); newswire citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982).
13. “State air board OKs 33% renewable energy rule” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 2010); story citing LAURA WISLAND (MPP 2008); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/24/MNJD1FIMTQ.DTL
14. “In run-up to Nov., GOP unveils ‘Pledge to
15. “The Contract will be Positive for Markets but not like 1994?” (CNBC/Dow Jones Business Video, September 23, 2010); interview with STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
16. “An answer for unemployment” (The Washington Post [*requires registration], September 23, 2010); Letter to Editor by JOHN PENDER (MPP 1983/PhD).
17. “AB12 would help foster youths until age 21” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 22, 2010); op-ed citing organization co-founded by AMY LEMLEY (MPP 1998) and DEANNE PEARN (MPP 1998); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/22/EDGM1FH0GO.DTL#ixzz10H9LBhPm
18. “Health Reform at Six Months: What Changes Are in Store?” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, September 22, 2010); report features KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); watch the video
19. “I-680 HOT Lane Debut Should Help Carpoolers” (KQED Public Radio News, September 20, 2010); interview with STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); Listen to the story
20. “Race for Daly’s seat tests District 6’s changes” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 2010); analysis citing DAVID LATTERMAN (MPP 2002); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/19/BA411FFJHL.DTL#ixzz10CXmFQoL
21. “Poll: Most Americans would spend more for 60 mpg car” (
22. “S.F. has cut homeless by 12,000, Newsom says” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 16, 2010); column citing TANGERINE BRIGHAM (MPP 1990); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/16/BAPC1FEK4F.DTL#ixzz0ziEh5aKo
23. “The Influence Game: Renewable energy goal stalls” (The Associated Press, September 16, 2010); newswire citing ROB GRAMLICH (MPP 1995); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_16089450?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
24. “
25. “Breakfast in class: Fight against kids’ hunger starts at
school” (
26. “Insurance Companies to Remove Benefit Caps” (Morning Edition, National Public Radio (NPR), September 14, 2010); features commentary by KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); Listen to the story
27. “Medtrade Charts ‘Roadmap to Success’” (HomeCare Magazine, September 13, 2010); event featuring STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976); http://homecaremag.com/news/medtrade-opening-keynote-20100913/index.html
28. “Passion fuels a fight for justice” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 2010); interview with LAYDA NEGRETE (MPP 1998/PhD cand.) and ROBERTO HERNANDEZ (PhD cand.); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/12/LVK91EUSPL.DTL
29. “Sunday Viewpoint: College in the time of recession” (Contra Costa Times, September 12, 2010); commentary by ABEL GUILLÉN (MPP 2001); http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_16045396?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com
30. “Readers’ Forum: Can pension reform yield immediate savings?” (Oakland Tribune, September 11, 2010); op-ed by MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980) and citing DANIEL BORENSTEIN (MPP 1980/MJ (1985); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_16043993?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
31. “BART connector to
32. “Is engineering now a young man’s game?” (
33. “Opposing view on fuel economy: Keep it simple” (
34. “Today’s Events in
35. “Pawlenty Order Blocking Reform Funds Violates State Law, State Rep. Says” (Inside Health Reform, September 8, 2010, Vol. 2 No. 36); story citing PHILLIP CRYAN (MPP 2009).
36. “Having It Both Ways on the Bond Market’s Message” (Roll Call, September 7, 2010); commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
37. “2010 InnovAction Award Winners
Announced!” (
38. “Daniel Borenstein:
39. “Supes’ races to decide city’s political future” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 5, 2010); story citing CARMEN CHU (MPP 2001); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/05/BAHK1F8GB4.DTL
40. “Reducing Emissions with Inflated Tires” (ClimateWatch, KQED public radio, September 3, 2010); features commentary by ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2010/09/03/reducing-emissions-with-inflated-tires/
41. “Age a Big Factor in Technology Earnings” (EWeek.com, September 3, 2010); story citing GREG LINDEN (MPP 1995); http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Age-a-Big-Factor-in-Technology-Earnings-273889/
42. “F.C.C. Seeks More Input on Wireless Internet Rules” (New York Times, September 2, 2010); story citing DEREK TURNER (MPP 2006); http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/technology/02fcc.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
43. “
44. “Readers Write: PAWLENTY AND OBAMACARE” (Star Tribune (
45. “Oakland Election News: Jennifer Pae, Jean Quan, Courtney Ruby” (Zennie62, September 1, 2010); political endorsements citing JOSH DANIELS (MPP 2008/JD), LEAH WILSON (MPP 1997/JD) and ABEL GUILLEN (MPP 2001); http://wellstoneclub.org/endorsement-nov2010.htm
46. “Clean Energy Programs Pit Advocates Against Mortgage Lenders. Clean energy advocates battle mortgage lenders over the validation of the ever-popular PACE programs” (Governing Magazine, September 2010); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000); http://www.governing.com/topics/energy-env/Clean-Energy-Programs-Pit-Advocates-Against-Mortgage-Lenders.html
47. “Report: Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements” (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, September 2010); report coauthored by MARK ZIMRING (MPP cand. 2012/MA ERG cand 2012); http://drivingdemand.lbl.gov/
48. “
49. “Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors say
50. “‘No’ on Prop. 19 pot legalization, Contra Costa panel recommends” (Contra Costa Times, August 25, 2010); story citing BEAU KILMER (MPP 2000); http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15895114?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com&nclick_check=1
51. “
52. “Mickey Levy, Chief Economist of Bank of America, Talks about the Fed” (Bloomberg On The Economy, August 24, 2010); interview with MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).
53. “Social Solutions Customers Awarded $15.4MM” (Business Wire, August 17, 2010); newswire citing CARLA JAVITS (MPP 1985).
54. “Protest draws dozens at UC Berkeley for John Yoo’s first day of classes” (Oakland Tribune, August 16, 2010); story citing STEPHANIE TANG (MPP 2004); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_15794112?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
55. “Senator Byron Dorgan to be Honored with the Legacy Award by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, the American Diabetes Association, and the National Indian Health Board” (States News Service, August 11, 2010); newswire citing CYNTHIA RICE (MPP 1994).
56. “Will bill save any Modesto-area teachers? Education package may mean $1.2B for state—assuming it even qualifies” (Modesto Bee, August 10, 2010); story citing JANNELLE LEE KUBINEC (MPP 1997); http://www.modbee.com/2010/08/09/1287474/will-bill-save-any-modesto-area.html#ixzz0zjLjhFKo
57. “The new underinsured; While health reform is expected to add 31 million to the ranks of the insured, low-income families-and providers- may still face significant financial risk” (Modern Healthcare, August 9, 2010); analysis citing JANUARY ANGELES (MPP 2002).
58. “Oil spill taints UC Berkeley’s BP-funded research” (The Associated Press, August 1, 2010); story citing STEPHANIE TANG (MPP 2004); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_15648313?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
59. “Financial Reform Law Limits Future Flexibility of US NatGas Trading” (Natural Gas Week, July 26, 2010); story citing SKIP HORVATH (MPP 1976).
60. “Sherrod racial controversy blows up in Obama’s face”
(Sunday Business Post [
61. “Up Front; The Question” (The American Prospect, July-August 2010, Volume 21, Number 6, Pg. 7); editorial contribution by ELIZABETH GETTELMAN (MPP 2003); http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=up_front_july10
62. “OSHA, stakeholders debate ways to enforce upcoming program rule” (Inside OSHA, Vol. 17 No. 14, July 13, 2010); story citing JOHN MENDELOFF (MPP 1974/PhD 1977).
63. “With end of stimulus, tough times ahead for public colleges” (Gannett News Service, July 9, 2010); newswire citing WILLIAM ZUMETA (MPP 1973/PhD 1978).
FACULTY IN THE NEWS
1. Letters: “Learning From Brockton High School” (New York Times, September 30, 2010); Letter to Editor by JACK GLASER; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/opinion/l01school.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
2. “Former
Labor Secretary Reich: Bush-Era Tax Cuts ‘Hurt Quite a
3. “The Monthly turns 40” (Berkeleyside, September 29, 2010); column citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/09/29/the-monthly-turns-40/
4. “Reich Blames Economy’s Woes on Income Disparity” (Fresh Air from WHYY, National Public Radio, September 29, 2010); interview with ROBERT REICH; Listen to the interview
5. “House Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, and Homeland Security Hearing; Reauthorization of the Second Chance Act” (Congressional Documents and Publications, September 29, 2010); congressional testimony citing STEVEN RAPHAEL.
6. “List of possible candidates for Obama’s top economic advisor grows” (Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2010); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-summers-succcessor-20100929,0,4309432.story
7. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Republican ‘tough love’ economics: Social Darwinism for the 21st century” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 28, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0928/Republican-tough-love-economics-Social-Darwinism-for-the-21st-century
8. “Leah Garchik: A measure of gratitude is measured” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 27, 2010); column citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/27/DD5V1FH8IC.DTL
9. “Top 1% of earners get 20% of the money” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 26, 2010); analysis citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/26/BU7T1FIKPE.DTL
10. “The New
11. “
12. “GOP pledge omits a few big issues” (Sacramento Bee, September 24, 2010); analysis citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sacbee.com/2010/09/24/3052792/gop-pledge-omits-a-few-big-issues.html#ixzz10TM1c5CZ
13. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Why policy fixes won’t work: The middle class needs a bigger piece of the pie” (Christian Science Monitor Online September 24, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0924/Why-policy-fixes-won-t-work-The-middle-class-needs-a-bigger-piece-of-the-pie
14. Sunday Book Review: “Fairer Deal” (New York Times & International Herald Tribune [*requires registration], September 24, 2010); review of book by ROBERT REICH; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/books/review/Mallaby-t.html?scp=9&sq=Berkeley&st=nyt
15. “Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, on the Economy” (Nightly Business Report [PBS], September 23, 2010); interview with ROBERT REICH; link to video
16. “Silent and deadly: Smoke from cooking stoves kills poor people” (The Economist, Sep 23rd 2010); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.economist.com/node/17093623
17. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Who should get the tax cut? The rich, or everyone else?” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 22, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0922/Who-should-get-the-tax-cut-The-rich-or-everyone-else
18. “Long-term unemployed aim to become a political force. People who have exhausted their jobless benefits are pressing policymakers for more aid and joining together to call attention to their cause” (Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2010); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0922-99er-advocacy-20100922,0,1222057.story
19. “Op-Ed: Bridging the achievement gap. The formula to help young African Americans succeed in school is not pie-in-the-sky” (Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2010); commentary by DAVID KIRP; http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kirp-black-males-20100922,0,1828200.story
20. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Warning bells of deflation” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 21, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0921/Warning-bells-of-deflation
21. “Rich People Pity Party” (Mother Jones, September 21, 2010); column citing MICHAEL O’HARE; http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/09/rich-people-pity-party
22. “Earnings of more than $250,000 a year, but professor laments family just getting by” (Chicago Tribune, September 23, 2010); story citing MICHAEL O’HARE; http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-23/business/ct-biz-0924-rich-blog-20100923_1_law-professor-blog-taxes
23. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Christine O’Donnell and the ‘crackpot gap’” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 20, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0920/Christine-O-Donnell-and-the-crackpot-gap
24. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Think getting tough
with
25. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Gingrich threatens extinct strategy: Shut down the government” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 17, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0917/Gingrich-threatens-extinct-strategy-Shut-down-the-government
26. “Is Lt. Governor Exploiting
27. “Ten hot green-energy trends to watch. From electric vehicles to technologies that convert turkey poop to electricity, green energy is the source of constant hype and buzz” (MSNBC.com, September 14, 2010); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39153668/ns/technology_and_science-innovation
28. Robert Reich’s Blog:” Two kinds of American corporations – and their politics” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 14, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0914/Two-kinds-of-American-corporations-and-their-politics
29. Robert Reich’s blog: “An economic tale: the tortoise and the (deep) hole” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 12, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0912/An-economic-tale-the-tortoise-and-the-deep-hole
30. “World Bank taps UC Berkeley’s Daniel Kammen” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2010); column citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/10/BU801FBB6V.DTL#ixzz0zA4v6Z6F
31. Green Blog: “Q. and A.: The Renewable Energy Czar” (New York Times Online, September 14, 2010); interview with DAN KAMMEN; http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/no-either-or-the-clean-energy-czar/?partner=rss&emc=rss
32. Dot Earth Blog: “Signs of New Energy at the World Bank” (New York Times Online, September 14, 2010); blog citing DAN KAMMEN; http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/signs-of-new-energy-at-the-world-bank/
33. “New Analysis Finds Prop. 23 Would Cut Jobs and State Revenue” (UC Berkeley Law News, September 9, 2010); press release citing MICHAEL HANEMANN and DAN KAMMEN; http://www.law.berkeley.edu/9316.htm
34. “Reich: Corporate tax cuts not the answer” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace [NPR], Sept. 8. 2010); Listen to this commentary
35. “Giving Up State Funds” (Inside Higher Ed, September 7, 2010); story citing DAVID KIRP; http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/ucla
36. “Opposing view on another stimulus package:
Stoke the economy” (
37. “Christina Romer’s White House days ending” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 2010); column citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/03/BU2I1F7N64.DTL
38. “CFS Appoints Experts’ Steering Committee; Will Help Reach Better Decisions on Hunger” (States News Service, September 3, 2010); newswire citing ALAIN DE JANVRY.
39. “How to End the Great Recession” (New York Times, September 3, 2010); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
40. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Why a civil society extends unemployment benefits” (Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0902/Why-a-civil-society-extends-unemployment-benefits
41. “Why Obama’s mortgage-relief program failed” (SF Weekly, September 1, 2010); analysis citing JOHN QUIGLEY; http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-01/news/why-obama-s-mortgage-relief-program-failed/
42. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Warning: why cheaper money won’t mean more jobs” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 1, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0901/Warning-why-cheaper-money-won-t-mean-more-jobs
43. “ESEA Reauthorization and
1. “Former FERC Director William Hederman Joins Deloitte” (Journal of Technology & Science, October 10, 2010); story citing WILLIAM HEDERMAN (MPP 1974).
Respected energy industry veteran William Hederman has joined the energy and resources industry group at Deloitte.
Hederman will apply his 25 years of energy experience to helping Deloitte’s clients meet their regulatory compliance needs, capitalizing on his long track record of executive and analytic experience in the natural gas and power industries spanning both the private and public sectors.
Most notably, Hederman was
recruited by the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in
2002 to serve as the founding director of the agency’s market oversight and
investigations office, which was created in the aftermath of the failure of
Enron and the electricity-shortage in
Hederman’s other experiences include serving as Columbia Gas Transmission’s vice president for business development and strategic initiatives, as well as executive director and chief operating officer of the International Energy Agency’s gas technology center. In addition, he has held positions at companies and organizations that include the RAND Corporation, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America.
Moreover, Hederman has advised executives at oil companies, pipelines operators, utilities and financial center banks on energy markets, regulation and cultural matters.
Hederman earned a bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering from the University of
Notre Dame and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
also holds a public policy degree from the
2. “ACLU and Other Groups File Amicus Brief Opposing Arizona’s Racial Profiling Law” (Targeted News Service, September 30, 2010); newswire citing KAREN TUMLIN (MPP 2003/JD 2004).
SAN FRANCISCO -- The American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of civil rights groups today filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit urging the court to keep in place an injunction blocking the core provisions of SB 1070, Arizona’s racial profiling law….
Karen Tumlin, Managing Attorney,
3. “Commute is hard to judge” (The Press-Enterprise, September 30, 2010); story citing JOE CORTRIGHT (MPP 1980); http://www.pe.com/localnews/transportation/stories/PE_News_Local_D_commute30.2a0ea5d.html
By Dug Begley, The Press-Enterprise
Inland-area workers who
remain in
But for those commuters
who cross into
Though Inland drivers deal with some of the nation’s worst traffic, congestion is only one part of the equation, according to the report, “Driven Apart,” produced by CEOs for Cities. The group promotes urban development, and commissioned the study to combat previous reports on traffic congestion….
Midwestern and Sun Belt
cities are far lower than
When the lengthy
commutes are considered,
“One of the things it is saying is if we build our cities right, we can take out those longer commutes,” said Joe Cortright, the study’s author.
But because of the way
the report was calculated, Cortright said it paints an “uneven image” of the Inland
commute. Researchers could not factor for commuters who travel to nearby
counties for work. So the
4. “Obama rules may require 60 mpg average by 2025” (USA TODAY, September 29, 2010); story citing ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/09/60-mpg-required-by-2025---/1?loc=interstitialskip
By James R. Healey --
Automakers are barely into the run-up to a government-required 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016 and they appear to be about to stare at a 60-mpg standard.
A proposed mileage rule is expected from the Obama administration this week, listing an overall auto-industry standard in 2025 that could range from about 47 mpg to 60 mpg. The process for finalizing such rules means it wouldn’t be set in concrete until late 2011 or early 2012.
The technology required for automakers to average 60 mpg (1.67 gallons per 100 miles) would boost the average price of a 2025 vehicle $2,700 in today’s dollars, says the National Resources Defense Council’s transportation issues czar, Roland Hwang. Such a vehicle would repay its owner via fuel savings in about 4.5 years, assuming gasoline is an average of $3.40 a gallon in today’s money.
In the advocacy group’s
view, hewing to a softer line than 60 mpg would allow the automakers lose the
competition with rivals in
He acknowledges that the only way for car companies to hit such a target, even as far out as 2025, would be for about 55 percent of cars sold to be hybrids and 15 percent to be plug-in hybrids or pure battery-electric vehicles.
How can electric vehicle mileage be measured in miles per gallon, given they use no gallons?
A standard for carbon emissions is set, and it’s translated into miles-per-gallon equivalents (mpge). Hwang says today’s models might emit around 300 grams of carbon per mile, while electrics—which have no so-called “local” emissions—would cause 120 grams per mile of carbon emissions after you factor in what comes from the utility plants that generate the juice to charge the electrics.
So, set the carbon standard low enough and you force a rapid move away from petroleum-burning machines. Carbon emissions are blamed for greenhouse gas accumulation, which is blamed for climate change.
5. “Hopelessly Retro Budget Ideas Make a Comeback” (Roll Call, September 28, 2010); commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
By Stan Collender
A number of old ways of dealing with budget problems suddenly seem to be back in style. A month or so ago, some lawmakers were seriously suggesting a revival of general revenue sharing, the Nixon-era program that was first discredited back in the late 1970s. Then the phrase “government shutdown” cropped up a few weeks ago, even though the tactic yielded such disastrous political results in 1995 and 1996 that it was assumed to be buried in an unmarked political grave, never to be found again.
Now another golden budget oldie has appeared. Two-year federal budgeting, an idea that has been rejected so many times over the past few decades that it should have a personality complex, once again is being discussed as a deficit cure.
What’s next? Budget Committee members wearing bell-bottom pants, crushed velvet ties and three-piece white suits with wide lapels and a black shirt? …
I want to state this as directly as possible: The only thing biennial budgeting would absolutely cut is the number of politically difficult votes that Members of Congress have to take on the deficit….
Supporters of two-year budgets typically ignore one of the biggest problems with the concept: It will significantly reduce accountability….
Stan Collender is a partner at Qorvis Communications and founder of the blog Capital Gains and Games. He is also the author of “The Guide to the Federal Budget.”
6. “Despite economy, Americans don’t want farm work” (Associated Press, September 27, 2010); story by GARANCE BURKE (MPP 2005/MJ 2004); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/09/27/financial/f063017D17.DTL&ao=all
By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer
In this Sept. 24, 2010 photo, Benjamin Reynosa, 49, of Orange Cove, picks table grapes near Fowler, Calif. (Photo: Garance Burke / AP)
(09-27) 08:57 PDT
Most Americans simply
don’t apply for jobs harvesting fruits and vegetables in
And the few unemployed Americans who apply through official channels usually don’t stay on in the fields, a point comedian Stephen Colbert — dressed as a field hand — has alluded to in recent broadcasts on Comedy Central. [His testimony before the House Judicial Committee’s subcommittee on immigration was broadcast on C-SPAN 3.]
“It’s just not something that most Americans are going to pack up their bags and move here to do,” said farmer Steve Fortin, who pays $10.25 an hour to foreign workers to trim strawberry plants for six weeks each summer at his nursery near the Nevada border. He has spent $3,000 this year ensuring domestic workers have first dibs on his jobs in the sparsely populated stretch of the state, advertising in newspapers and on an electronic job registry.
But he hasn’t had any takers, and only one farmer in the state hired anyone using a little-known, little-used program to hire foreign farmworkers the legal way — by applying for guest worker visas.
Since January,
Only 233 people applied
after being linked with the jobs through unemployment offices in
So far, a tongue-in-cheek effort by Colbert and the UFW to get Americans to take farm jobs has been more effective in attracting applicants than the official channels.
The UFW in June launched the “Take Our Jobs Campaign,” inviting people to go online and apply.
About 8,600 people filled out an application form, but only 7 have been placed in farm jobs, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez said….
7. “The Future of California, Ready for Discussion” (New York Times, September 26, 2010); column citing MARINA GORBIS (MPP 1983); http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/us/26bcweber.html?_r=2
By Jonathan Weber [Jonathan Weber writes a column for The Bay Citizen.]
It’s easy to be
discouraged about the future of
Yet as I gaze at a
colorful new map that lays out four alternative futures for the state, I feel
quite energized. The document is the first piece of an effort by two major
It’s not that the scenarios themselves are particularly rosy….
Even the “smart state”
scenario, in which
But as Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, explained, the specific scenarios are not really the point. Rather, the goal is to “outline the kinds of questions and dilemmas we need to be analyzing, and provoke people to ask deep questions.”
The map is structured in part as a game board, posing questions around large issues: health, education, food, work, water and energy, governance and equity, and migration. It then lists bullet points around each topic and invites people to offer their own solutions. The four big scenarios suggest broad outcomes based on the many specific decisions….
Ms. Gorbis emphasizes that futurism is not about ivory-tower navel-gazing, but instead aims to engage people in shaping their lives and communities. Call me a wonk, but I found it extremely useful to have big issues organized in a way that made them seem tractable, while also showing their relationship to other societal forces.
The engagement piece is clearly the big challenge. Mr. Smarr and Ms. Gorbis both emphasized the potential of gaming platforms as an engagement tool. The map itself is just the starting point; it is meant to build a broad-based conversation, both online and in person….
8. “Institute for the Future Looks Ahead at California Beyond the Crisis; New Forecast Map Provokes the Public to Get Engaged With the Future of the State” (Marketwire, September 28, 2010); newswire citing MARINA GORBIS (MPP 1983).
"
IFTF also has plans to conduct workshops to facilitate this thinking and hopes to reframe the public policy discussion.
9. “The generational
shift in
By D.K. ROW, The Oregonian
…
“Time was when you gave
to an endowment and got a 10 percent return,” says Arlene Schnitzer,
a former art dealer who ran
Schnitzer
is part of what Guenther calls
Development professionals say there are practical reasons the next generation is producing fewer cultural patrons….
But experts say the most pertinent issue is that the city’s demographics and ambitions have evolved. Economists like Cortright have documented the influx of people into Portland for nearly a decade, most from out of state, many of them college educated and from bigger cities. The technology revolution, initially led by people like [Bill] Gates, has also played a part. The Internet has changed the way everyone communicates and has spawned an entire generation for which social networking is part of daily life….
10. “Mickey Levy, Chief Economist at the Bank of America, Talks about Quantitative Easing on Bloomberg Surveillance” (Bloomberg: Surveillance Show, September 24, 2010); conversation with MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).
KEN PREWITT, Host, Bloomberg News: Which side of the [quantitative easing] debate do you fall on?
MICKEY LEVY, CHIEF ECONOMIST, BANK OF
Prewitt: ... What about the
LEVY: ... One thing that really impresses me about what’s going on in Europe is they’re announcing fiscal austerity packages and I just heard that Papandreou, the Prime Minister from Greece, that not only have they put in place an unprecedented fiscal austerity package, but the economies are doing okay and confidence is actually rising….
LEVY: … but throughout Europe confidence is actually rising and the
11. “Report: CA health care bills won’t add to deficit” (Associated Press, September 24, 2010); story citing MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980).
By Shaya Tayefe Mohajer - Associated Press Writer
Two bills aimed at
helping the uninsured get health care coverage won’t send the
Legislation creating an oversight agency to set up the California Health Benefit Exchange, a web-based marketplace for health insurance and a cornerstone of the national health care reform package, is on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk awaiting approval or veto.
Earlier this week, the California Chamber of Commerce issued an analysis critical of the bills, AB1602 and SB900, saying they could endanger the state’s ailing general fund with costs ‘‘potentially exceeding $1 billion annually.’’
That assessment is far different from the report by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which found the exchange would be funded entirely by federal grants and fees it generates, until the federal funding’s sunset date in 2016.
After that, health
insurers would be assessed fees to continue the exchange under
Nationally, more than 46 million Americans are uninsured, including more than 6.7 million Californians, according to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Exchanges are expected to create competitive markets in health insurance that would drive down costs and help the self-employed, small businesses and the uninsured buy coverage at improved rates. Affordability is crucial to trimming the number of uninsured in the run-up to 2014, when federal law will require most Americans to carry insurance….
The exchange would be overseen by a five-member board, with two members appointed by Schwarzenegger before his term ends and the rest appointed by the Legislature.
Mike Genest, the former Schwarzenegger finance director who did the study for the chamber, said that setup gives ‘‘unlimited, unaccountable power and authority’’ to non-elected officials.
He said he arrived at the $1 billion cost figure in his report by assuming that with more coverage there will be more fraud involving public programs like Medi-Cal, and that the exchange will expand benefits, with some of that cost absorbed by the state.
The analyst’s report rejects the idea that benefits will be expanded by the exchange, noting that ‘‘under the legislation, the Legislature would retain full authority to set eligibility and benefit levels for state programs ... .’’ …
Genest’s report and the Legislative Analyst’s Office did agree on one thing: Many details of how the exchanges will work have yet to be established….
12. “Appealing Insurance Company Denials: New Protections” (States News Service, September 24, 2010); newswire citing KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982).
By Karen Pollitz, Deputy Director for Consumer Support, Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight
WASHINGTON, DC -- You may have read Jay Angoff’s HealthCare Note in July about the Affordable Care Act rules related to appealing health plan benefit denials and other consumer protections. The rules, which began to go into effect on September 23rd, give consumers new rights and resources to help them take control of their health care in good times and bad. These new rules guarantee your right to appeal, or to ask that your plan reconsider when it denies you a benefit….
The new rules require that your plan tell you how to appeal when it denies the payment. Starting July 1, 2011, insurers and health plans are required to provide you this information in writing. Until then, you may need to ask your plan or insurer for the information—which it must then provide….
If your insurance company or health plan denies your appeal, you have a right to an independent external review of that decision, and your plan must tell you how to request that review. Again, until July 1, 2011, insurers and health plan aren’t required to notify you of your appeals rights in writing, but must provide you that information if you request it….
These rights are part of a larger package of Affordable Care Act rules that began to go into effect on September 23 that end some of the worst insurance company abuses—you can learn more about that here: www.HealthCare.Gov
13. “State air board OKs 33% renewable energy rule” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 24, 2010); story citing LAURA WISLAND (MPP 2008); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/24/MNJD1FIMTQ.DTL
--Wyatt Buchanan,
Chronicle
The action came after the Legislature failed last month to pass a bill that would have put such a standard into law and the board and other groups said they will continue to press for that to happen….
Air board chairwoman Mary Nichols said approving the 33 percent standard after the Legislature ran out of time in its session to do so will help “move the ball forward.”
It is important the board “put something in place that only sends strong, positive messages to the market,” Nichols said. Clean-energy investors and manufacturers have expressed concerns that inaction by the state would harm the development of the sector….
Laura Wisland, clean energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the regulation was needed, but added, “We believe this is a stop-gap measure and not equal to ... establishing 33 percent in law.” …
14. “In run-up to Nov.,
GOP unveils ‘Pledge to
By John Fritze --
House Minority Leader John Boehner of
The plan includes 33 proposals such as extending tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush and directing more resources to the U.S.-Mexican border. Here’s a sampling of the GOP proposals and the political reality facing them: …
Proposal—”We will cancel the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a move that would save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.”
Analysis—The 2008 bank bailout program, signed by Bush, has essentially run its course. No new money can be spent after Oct. 3.
Republicans including Boehner have focused on the initial $700 billion price tag, but recent analyses show the bailout will cost far less. The CBO estimated last month that the government will recoup all but about $66 billion of the bailout money. “The single-largest deficit reduction (factor) might be repaid TARP money,” quipped budget expert Stan Collender of Qorvis Communications, who called any plans to do away with the program “a political statement.” …
15. “The Contract will be Positive for Markets but not like 1994?” (CNBC/Dow Jones Business Video, September 23, 2010); interview with STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
Mark Haines, host: ... As far as the
markets go, we saw a rally following the 1994 contract with
Stan Collender, Managing Director with Qorvis Communications: Well, Mark, you’ve got to
remember, the rally that occurred after the contract with
Plus the contract with
But you’ve got it just
right. That is, back in the mid-1990s, the contract with
Given the state of the economy, it’s not clear to me that stalemate is what Wall Street, what the economy’s going to need. But the most important thing is, don’t take that one example as a sample of something that is typical every time you get into this situation….
16. “An answer for unemployment” (The Washington Post [*requires registration], September 23, 2010); Letter to Editor by JOHN PENDER (MPP 1983/PhD).
In the Sept. 17 Washington Forum piece “What America needs is a payroll tax cut,” Nouriel Roubini correctly argued that broad income tax cuts and tax cuts encouraging capital investment do not necessarily benefit workers, and that a better approach is to reduce labor costs through a payroll tax cut.
After decades of stagnant real wages and the current high unemployment, it’s obvious that neither broad income tax cuts nor targeted investment incentives are doing much to increase wages or employment.
Unfortunately, President
Obama and the Democratic Party seem to be too politically cowed to offer
anything but an extension of the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans.
Their tax-cut plan will increase the deficit over the next decade by $3
trillion instead of the Republicans’ $4 trillion plan. And we have the
spectacle of some Democrats, such as my representative, Gerald E. Connolly (
How will either party pay for these cuts? Will the Democrats continue to cut nutrition and other programs for the poor, even in the face of record poverty rates? Is it any wonder that Democratic voters lack enthusiasm when this is the leadership we are offered?
John Pender,
17. “AB12 would help foster youths until age 21” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 22, 2010); op-ed citing organization co-founded by AMY LEMLEY (MPP 1998) and DEANNE PEARN (MPP 1998); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/22/EDGM1FH0GO.DTL#ixzz10H9LBhPm
--Patricia Cortijo
While in foster care, Patricia Cortijo
moved 22 times. (Photo: Julie Harris /
Legislation that would extend assistance to children in foster care until their 21st birthday passed out of the Legislature last week with overwhelming bipartisan support. The only thing left is for the governor to sign AB12.
The difficulties facing children who “age out” of the foster-care system are well known, yet the recession has only magnified and intensified those challenges. The cost of education is rising and jobs for youths are scarce, making it hard on those just starting to try to make it on their own. Millions of young adults are forced to move back in with their families. For many in foster care, like me, there are no families to move back in with.
As a 12-year-old, I was
placed into foster care because my mother was physically abusive. In the six
years I spent in foster care, I moved a total of 22 times, to various group
homes and foster homes all over
I was fortunate. I found a program called First Place for Youth [co-founded by Amy Lemley and Deanne Pearn] that supports foster youth during their transition to adulthood. I am now affordably housed, finishing college and working toward a bright future. Without basic support—like that offered by AB12—during this critical time in my life, I would still be on the street and not on track to becoming self-sufficient….
Patricia Cortijo, a foster child who aged out
of California’s system, is a
participant in
18. “Health Reform at Six Months: What Changes Are in Store?” (The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, September 22, 2010); report features KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); watch the video
BETTY ANN BOWSER: … Democrats who voted for [health care] reform now face voters unhappy with the changes. Republicans, in turn, have pressed the issue and even talk of repealing the reforms if they take back control of Congress….
In the meantime, most of the major provisions, like coverage for millions of the uninsured, don’t kick into gear until 2014.
But several key reforms focused on the insurance industry take effect tomorrow. As of Thursday, providers will have to stop imposing lifetime caps on coverage. They will be barred from canceling insurance for people who become sick, and from denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. In addition, young people will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until the age of 26….
… [Seven-year-old Thomas
Wilkes of
KAREN POLLITZ, Director, Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight: There are already protections that will affect some people very directly.
Karen Pollitz heads the new Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight for the federal government. She acknowledges that it will take time for the impact of these provisions to be felt by many who will be affected.
KAREN POLLITZ, Director, Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight: The protections will roll in as your insurance policy renews or as you buy a new policy. We are giving people better protection. You know, it’s like putting stronger seat belts in cars or better air bags…. We may not use them; we may not all get in the high-speed crashes, but that’s what they’re there for. And I think we all feel a little better knowing that that protection is solid….
19. “I-680 HOT Lane Debut Should Help Carpoolers” (KQED Public Radio News, September 20, 2010); interview with STUART COHEN (MPP 1997); Listen to the story
Rubberneckers slowed traffic this morning on Interstate 680 over the Sunol Grade, where transportation officials allowed solo drivers into the commuter lane—as long as they were willing to pay a toll that varied depending on how bad the traffic was. Host Cy Musiker talks to Stuart Cohen, the executive director with TransFORM, a group advocating for less car travel and more mass transit.
STUART COHEN: “Express lanes do hold a lot of potential to raise new money and the big question is going to be: How do we spend that money? We’re excited that there’s a new way to let people have a choice and the fact that it will generate new funds, but if it’s just going toward more highway expansion, we’re just going to be stuck in the same cycle where everybody has no choice but to drive for way too many trips.”…
20. “Race for Daly’s seat tests District 6’s changes” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 2010); analysis citing DAVID LATTERMAN (MPP 2002); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/19/BA411FFJHL.DTL#ixzz10CXmFQoL
--Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
The home turf of
The district ranges from luxury condo high-rises to skid-row flophouses where the city’s political divisions over development and budget priorities take center stage…..
Business, law-and-order and real estate interests have failed three times to defeat the firebrand Daly with a moderate candidate….
Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and operates more than a dozen residential hotels in the district, said he’d be surprised if a moderate could win the race, even if candidates with solid liberal credentials like Walker, Kim and Keys split the vote.
David Latterman, a political consultant working with Sparks, agreed with Shaw that District Six is staunchly liberal and that a shift toward the center will be slow. He said his candidate, who has backing from business groups and Mayor Gavin Newsom, will showcase her background as a transgender woman overseeing the city’s human rights policies to keep her opponents from defining her as the conservative in the race.
“You may see a lot of new buildings,” he said, “but that doesn’t necessarily represent a lot of votes.”
21. “Poll: Most
Americans would spend more for 60 mpg car” (
The Toyota Prius can get close to 60 miles per gallon. Here, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom holds a power cable before test driving a plug-in Prius version that is one of four on loan to the city for evaluation Aug. 25. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
How much more would you pay for a car that gets 60 miles per gallon? A new poll finds that 74% of likely voters favor such a fuel-efficiency standard and 66% back the idea even if it adds $3,000 to the price of a new car.
“If you build it, they will come. That famous line from the film, Field of Dreams, captures today’s mood of American car buyers,” says Roland Hwang of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that commissioned the poll along with Environment America, the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The groups favor a 60 mpg standard by the year 2025….
22. “S.F. has cut homeless by 12,000, Newsom says” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 16, 2010); column citing TANGERINE BRIGHAM (MPP 1990); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/16/BAPC1FEK4F.DTL#ixzz0ziEh5aKo
--Heather Knight
… On call: While the
country continues to squabble and wring its hands over President Obama’s health
care reform package,
Brown & Toland Physicians, a city-based group of 800 doctors
serving 330,000 patients, will begin accepting Healthy San Francisco participants
Dec. 1. The medical group will provide primary care to participants and is
partnering with
In addition, BAART Community HealthCare, which has two clinics in the city, will serve an additional 1,000 Healthy San Francisco patients starting Oct. 1.
Tangerine Brigham, director of Healthy San Francisco, said once people qualify for the program, they’ll be able to choose a physician at a site that works for them. “Be it Dr. McDreamy or whatever he’s called,” she said, referencing the nickname of a TV character from “Grey’s Anatomy.”
The comfort of getting
to know and like your own doctor should smooth the transition in 2014, when
provisions of the national health care reform package kick in, Brigham said. At that time, city
officials expect 60 percent of Healthy San Francisco’s 54,000 patients to
qualify for health insurance and move off the city plan, which isn’t insurance
because it doesn’t cover people outside
“They might want to see the same provider when they get health insurance,” Brigham said. “It maintains the usual source of care.”
Already, the health department is briefing Healthy San Francisco patients on what the national changes might mean for them. Currently, the program is accepting patients earning up to $54,150 for one person or $110,250 for a family of four….
23. “The Influence Game: Renewable energy goal stalls” (The Associated Press, September 16, 2010); newswire citing ROB GRAMLICH (MPP 1995); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_16089450?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Frederic J. Frommer - Associated Press Writer
In this Jan. 24, 2007, file photo, a cluster of windmills of the
north side of
It hasn’t been for lack
of trying. In March, the bipartisan Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition, which
includes GOP heavyweights such as Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Tim Pawlenty of
... With hopes dead for passing climate legislation this year, environmentalists are looking at a renewable mandate as a way to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for contributing to global warming. Proponents also argue that a mandate would generate manufacturing and construction jobs for renewable energy projects.
“Our challenges are partisanship and the Senate schedule, which leaves very little room for much to be debated and resolved,” said Rob Gramlich, a lobbyist for the [American Wind Energy] association. He said the lack of a renewable mandate was a big factor in the wind industry having its worst six-month period since 2007 earlier this year.
“Utilities are not signing the long-term (wind) power contracts that they were before,” Gramlich said. Without a mandate, he said, the industry is reliant on short-term tax credits, which lead to a continuing boom-and-bust cycle….
24. “
By Juliet Eilperin -
When it comes to
climbing
Huang Huikang, as vice mayor of
“We shut down 1,500 highly-polluting factories,” Huang said, adding that even as he did so the city’s gross domestic product doubled twice in the past five years, to $400 million….
But the lack of a
national accounting standard for emissions makes it difficult for independent
observers in
Without a transparent and comparable system of lowering global warming emissions, Center for Clean Air Policy president Ned Helme warned, “there’s always the risk that some people don’t do it” and the world falls short of “where we need to be as a global commons.”
25. “Breakfast in class:
Fight against kids’ hunger starts at school” (
By Martha T. Moore
Senior and student body president Carlie
Moore, 17, opens her cereal at
Now, states such as Colorado and Florida, anti-hunger groups and congressional lawmakers from both parties are pushing schools to follow programs such as Centennial’s—an effort not only to improve students’ performance in school but to combat rising hunger in tough economic times.
The number of
The cost of school
breakfast for needy kids, such as the cost of their lunches, is eligible for
federal reimbursement. Most
*In
Getting more kids to eat breakfast at school is key to achieving President Obama’s campaign pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015, according to groups such as Share Our Strength and Feeding America, a food bank network. The best way to do so, they say, is with a program like Centennial’s that feeds rich and poor kids alike….
“We aren’t asking taxpayers to feed every kid a free breakfast at school,” says Courtney Smith, director of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry program. “We are saying that in very high-need areas, a way to effectively provide breakfast at school is through a universal breakfast program.” …
26. “Insurance Companies to Remove Benefit Caps” (Morning Edition, National Public Radio (NPR), September 14, 2010); features commentary by KAREN POLLITZ (MPP 1982); Listen to the story
STEVE INSKEEP, host: … A
new provision of the health insurance law takes effect this month. It will be a
significant change for people who’ve suffered from long-term illnesses. The
vast majority of insurance policies in
JULIE ROVNER: …Most policies have [lifetime caps]. And most people who only have claims of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a year never know they’re there. But for hemophiliacs and others with chronic conditions that require hugely expensive drugs or treatments, capping out, as it’s known, is just a fact of life…. But it’s not just people with expensive illnesses like hemophilia who are affected by lifetime benefits limits.
Ms. KAREN POLLITZ (Department of Health and Human Services): Any of us are at risk.
ROVNER: Karen Pollitz is the director of the Office of Consumer Support at the Department of Health and Human Services. That makes her one of the people in charge of implementing the new health law.
Ms. POLLITZ: I had a friend who had twin girls who were born prematurely, and before their first birthday, he had hit the lifetime limit on his coverage because of all of the health problems that they had.
ROVNER: That’s another quirk of the lifetime limits problem. It generally covers an entire family, not just the affected patient or patients. And Pollitz says that being able to effectively use up your insurance kind of negates the idea of having insurance in the first place.
Ms. POLLITZ: It’s like saying my health insurance is okay, but not if something really bad happens to me….
ROVNER (Shots: NPR’s Health Blog): … Starting late next week, new health plans or plans that are renewed, won’t be able to cap the dollar amount of benefits they cover. No more yearly caps either, though those limits will be phased out over three years, disappearing entirely in 2014….
Karen Pollitz, head of an office at the Department of Health and Human Services to help consumers navigate overhaul, says it’s a big change:
Ms. POLLITZ: This is sort of the ultimate example of what insurance is for. We’re buying protection against the financial ruin that comes with a very expensive medical condition or injury as well as assurances that we’ll be able to connect to the care we need to get better. So when you hit the lifetime limit, you often lose access to the treatment, not to mention your house….
27. “Medtrade Charts ‘Roadmap to Success’” (HomeCare Magazine, September 13, 2010); event featuring STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976); http://homecaremag.com/news/medtrade-opening-keynote-20100913/index.html
ALPHARETTA, Ga. - Clifford Schorer, a proponent of innovation and the free enterprise process, will be the keynote speaker for the opening session of Medtrade 2010, coming up Nov. 15-18at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
Also at the show,
“Getting a pulse on the
activity in
28. “Passion fuels a fight for justice” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 2010); interview with LAYDA NEGRETE (MPP 1998/PhD cand.) and ROBERTO HERNANDEZ (PhD cand.); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/12/LVK91EUSPL.DTL
--Louise Rafkin, Special to The Chronicle
Layda Negrete
and Roberto Hernandez relax on the couch at their home in
“We met in prison,” says Roberto Hernández, 36, grinning….
It was 2002, and Roberto and Layda Negrete, now 40, both
What they found was even more disturbing than they had imagined. In a legal system where everyone arrested is presumed guilty, 92 percent of detainees are accused without physical evidence, 93 percent are tried without seeing a judge, and 95 percent are convicted. Mexican police are even rewarded for the number of arrests they make.
The numbers were appalling, but the people behind those numbers were what touched Roberto and Layda: so many innocent people behind bars.
They also discovered each other.
“Roberto brought a book of Neruda’s poems,” says Layda…. “So when things got really sordid, he’d read poetry to clean the air.” Layda, divorced from a businessman who had different priorities, was immediately smitten by Roberto’s passion for justice. “His indignation was exciting!” she says….
Forces aligned, they attacked the Mexican justice system. But Roberto was frustrated. People failed to respond to their hard statistics, regardless of how horrifying they were. One day, he sold his car to buy a video camera, thinking film would portray their findings more convincingly, and dramatically. He met a young man falsely accused of murder and began work on his case; the young man was granted a new trial, which the couple was allowed to film.
“Presumed Guilty,” a powerful, frightening documentary, is the result….
Meanwhile, the two are studying for doctorates in public policy at UC Berkeley….
29. “Sunday Viewpoint: College in the time of recession” (Contra Costa Times, September 12, 2010); commentary by ABEL GUILLÉN (MPP 2001); http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_16045396?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com
By Abel Guillén - Guest Commentary
IN THESE stormy economic times, the Peralta Community College District is tossing a vital lifeline to local students. The four Peralta Colleges—College of Alameda, Berkeley City College, Merritt and Laney Colleges in Oakland—teach 30,000 students each semester, and are finding new and innovative ways to help local students transform their lives through education….
The cost of an education at the Peralta Colleges remains remarkably affordable despite recent increases. At only $26 per unit, the annual tuition for a full-time resident student is under $700. This is extraordinarily low and represents an exceptional educational value….
For example, we increased online education to reduce costs and cut travel budgets by 70 percent. We received $14 million in federal grants to fund education and job training programs.
To help subsidize classes for our local students, we also generated more than 6.2 million in fees and tuition from out-of-state and international students.
The Peralta Colleges provide our students with an affordable education in a quality teaching environment. Thousands of our students transfer to four-year colleges or graduate with an associate degree, and thousands more hone their job skills with specialized courses or full-time training programs. Our career and technical education programs successfully train students for good jobs in business, health care, “green” technology, biotech and other high-demand fields.
We continue to offer life-transforming opportunities to our students despite tough economic times.
Abel Guillén is president of the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees.
30. “Readers’ Forum: Can pension reform yield immediate savings?” (Oakland Tribune, September 11, 2010); op-ed by MIKE GENEST (MPP 1980) and citing DANIEL BORENSTEIN (MPP 1980/MJ (1985); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_16043993?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Mike Genest -- Guest Commentary
THE PROSPECTS for major
reform of public pensions in
The Times’ own Daniel Borenstein has hammered on pension malfeasance and mismanagement for years.
Yet, the defenders of the pension status quo are strong. One of their most effective arguments is that since pensions are very long-term obligations, pension reform cannot be counted on to help solve the current fiscal emergencies faced by state and local governments.
This excuse for putting pension reform discussions on the back burner is both disingenuous and wrong.
In fact, there are at least three ways that pension reforms can make major contributions to current budgets by reducing costs immediately….
3) As a recent state retiree myself, I certainly appreciate the nearly free to me lifetime health care coverage provided by the state. But, is it really reasonable to give that kind of coverage to retirees? It certainly isn’t affordable since projections show that taxpayers’ costs to provide these benefits are soaring now and expected to go out of sight in the coming decades.
Since retiree benefits, at least at the state level, are tied to the costs of health plans for current state workers, we can cut these costs dramatically by negotiating lower cost health plans, with streamlined benefit packages and higher co-pays.
Doing this would produce immediate savings to state and local governments. As a bonus, it would have a salutary effect on general health care inflation….
Mike Genest is a retired state worker and the former state director of finance.
31. “BART connector to
--Will Kane, Chronicle Staff Writer
BARTs plan to build a controversial 3.1-mile-long elevated railway to the Oakland International Airport took a small, tentative step forward Wednesday when a regional transit agency approved spending $20 million in state funds on the project.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s 6-2 vote came after almost two hours of heated public comment, where supporters and opponents of the project debated its usefulness, cost and potential ridership as well as the number of jobs it could create.
The $20 million represents only a small portion of the project’s estimated $484 million cost and must be approved by the California Transportation Commission at its meeting later this month….
BART would be better off building a dedicated bus lane from the BART station to the airport and use the savings to support other regional transit agencies like AC Transit, said Stuart Cohen, executive director of TransForm, a local transit advocacy group.
“This (project) fails the laugh test,” he said after Wednesday’s vote. “This is a connector that we will be laughing or crying at—depending on your perspective—when it is built.”
… Construction was
supposed to start early this year but was delayed when the Federal Transit
Administration said BART had not properly considered the railway’s impact on
low-income populations in
Since then, BART has had to patch together replacement funding using loans and money from one of the agency’s reserve funds.
Cohen said BART had yet to secure all the needed funding, and he and other opponents would fight the plan every step of the way.
“There are many votes left to go,” he said. “We think this is far from over.”
[Stuart Cohen was also cited in The San Jose Mercury News, September 5, 2010: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16001814?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com ]
32. “Is engineering now
a young man’s game?” (
--Toni Bowers
Recruiters at Silicon
Valley companies lament that in the
According to a piece by Vivek Wadhwa for TechCrunch, the truth of the situation is that tech companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced engineers rather than shell out the money for a seasoned veteran....
Wadhwa’s
article talks about a new book called Chips
and Change by
* Salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but the increases slowed after the age of 40.
* Over age 40, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education.
* After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower-by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs-than the salary of those younger than 50….
33. “Opposing view on
fuel economy: Keep it simple” (
By Luke Tonachel
This year’s Chevy Malibu gets 26 miles to the
gallon, combined city and highway. Quick—how much will it save or cost you over
the next five years? How much carbon pollution does it emit? And how does it
stack up against other options at the dealership?
The answers could soon be on the window of every new car, minivan or pickup, along with a single letter grade that rates the vehicle by fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions. The idea is to enhance the gas mileage information long posted on new vehicles and to respond to growing consumer concerns about rising gas costs, oil dependence and global warming pollution.
With a simple grade every middle-schooler understands, vehicles could be labeled as getting anywhere from an A+ to a D based on how much gas they burn and how much heat-trapping carbon dioxide they fire out the tailpipe. But if the auto companies get their way, the labels won’t have a grade, but instead have a long list of confusing numbers….
Critics cringe at the notion that shoppers might get needed clear guidance in these areas, as if providing consistent comparisons from a trusted source somehow puts Big Brother in the driver’s seat. Nonsense. The grades will empower consumers, pure and simple. We’ll all know more when we pick our cars…
Luke Tonachel is a clean-vehicles expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
34. “Today’s Events in
KAISER
- DISABILITIES - MEDICARE - 9:30 a.m. - 11 a.m. The Kaiser Family
Foundation will hold a policy forum examining the health care issues facing
people with disabilities and the opportunities and challenges presented by the
new health care reform law enacted earlier this year. Panelists: Jeffrey
Crowley, senior advisor on disability policy at the White House; Joe Baker,
president of the Medicare Rights Center; Elizabeth Priaulx,
a senior disability legal specialist with the National Disability Rights
Network; and Juliette Cubanski, study
co-author and associate director of the Foundation’s Medicare Policy Project.
Moderator: PBS Newshour co-anchor
Judy Woodruff. Opening Remarks: Tricia Neuman,
Foundation vice president and director of the Medicare Policy Project.
Location:
35. “Pawlenty Order Blocking Reform Funds Violates State Law, State Rep. Says” (Inside Health Reform, September 8, 2010, Vol. 2 No. 36); story citing PHILLIP CRYAN (MPP 2009).
--Brian Everstine and Amy Lotven
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and members of a
Many states have announced lawsuits challenging the health reform law, but Pawlenty is the first governor to oppose it by executive order.
Phillip Cryan of SEIU, who also sits on the health insurance exchange working group of the state’s Legislative Commission on Health Care Access, said he found it “extremely disappointing” that the governor chose to block the group from access to funds that would help make a good, sound judgment on how to configure the exchanges. Without the money, it will be much more difficult to collect the data and research necessary to make decision, but “we’re going to do the best we can,” he said.
Cryan said the executive order
did not surprise anyone. “(Pawlenty) has made it more
and more clear that the GOP caucus votes in other states are more important to
him than the residents of
36. “Having It Both Ways on the Bond Market’s Message” (Roll Call, September 7, 2010); commentary by STAN COLLENDER (MPP 1976).
By Stan Collender
My Aug. 3 column about the former “bond market vigilantes” now being obvious federal budget deficit cheerleaders generated a great deal of attention and lots of pro and con comments….
Would the same people who responded that we should ignore what Wall Street is saying and start to reduce the deficit in the face of low economic growth be just as adamant that, if the bond market were back in a vigilante mode, we should begin to adopt policies that increase federal spending, reduce taxes and raise Washington’s borrowing because, after all, at some point it will change its mind?
Of course they wouldn’t.
If it was important to hear what the bond market vigilantes were saying in the 1990s—and it was—it’s just as vital to listen to what the bond market deficit cheerleaders are saying today….
The lower interests that the bond market is using to send its message today simply aren’t as potent a threat as the higher rates that it was imposing almost 20 years ago. As a result, the politics of lower interest rates just isn’t the same and the imperative for dealing with them quickly is very different….
Stan Collender is a partner at Qorvis Communications and author of “The Guide to the Federal Budget.” His blog is capitalgainsandgames.com.
37. “2010 InnovAction Award Winners Announced!” (
Pro Bono Net, a national
nonprofit organization working to increase access to justice, is the 2010
recipient of the coveted InnovAction Award from the
Meet our 2010 InnovAction Award Winner!
Pro Bono Net [where Claudia Johnson is LawHelp Interactive Local Initiatives Coordinator]
LawHelp Interactive
LawHelp Interactive provides a national infrastructure for online legal document assembly and helps tens of thousands of low-income people each year to complete needed legal forms. LawHelp Interactive was launched in 2005 with support from the Legal Services Corporation, and was used last year to complete nearly 150,000 civil court forms covering such critical areas as child support, protection orders for victims of domestic violence, consumer debt and eviction. LawHelp Interactive increases efficiency for legal aid programs, allowing more people to be helped in less time. It also removes barriers to pro bono participation by making it easier for attorneys to work in areas of law where they may lack experience, and by allowing them to spend less time on tedious paperwork and more time interacting with clients….
38. “Daniel Borenstein:
By Daniel Borenstein – Staff columnist and editorial writer
IT’S TRULY a hidden tax.
As Oakland residents prepare to vote in November on a $360 annual parcel tax aimed at keeping more officers on the streets, they probably don’t realize that homeowners already pay more than that in extra property taxes each year just to help fund the pensions for 1,155 retired police and firefighters and their surviving spouses.
In a sobering peek at
what could lie ahead for taxpayers across
Theoretically, pensions should be fully funded when employees retire. Thus, the money in the system now, combined with future investment returns, should be enough to pay the pensions to the PFRS retirees and beneficiaries … for the rest of their lives.
But that’s not the case. According to the July 1 actuarial analysis, the system should have $793 million on hand. Instead, it has $298 million, 38 percent of the necessary funds. That’s despite nearly three decades of extra property tax payments to finance the system.
Homeowners wouldn’t know
from looking at their property tax bills that they have been paying extra for
the Police and Fire Retirement System. A typical
On top of that,
homeowners must pay their share of voter-approved debt issued by cities,
schools, transit and park districts and other agencies. For
The money for the Police
and Fire Retirement System comes out of the city share. Specifically, the
system costs each homeowner an additional 0.1575 percent each year. On an
average
The unusual extra charge
to fund pensions for this relatively small group of retirees is more than
At some point, someone must step in and stop this financial train wreck—and that person is City Attorney John Russo. The city charter requires the funding of the Police and Fire Retirement System to be completed by 2026. The latest bond scheme makes that nearly impossible. It should prompt Russo to question its legality. If he doesn’t act, taxpayers, who were never told what they were committing to when they went to the polls in 1976 and 1988, will be exploited once again.
39. “Supes’ races to decide city’s political future” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 5, 2010); story citing CARMEN CHU (MPP 2001); http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/05/BAHK1F8GB4.DTL
--Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
The November election
will mark the end of a profound political era in
With the impending departure of Supervisors Chris Daly and Sophie Maxwell, the last two members of the Class of 2000 to be termed out of office, a new era will be ushered in. Five of the board’s 11 seats are on the fall ballot and the campaigns will kick into high gear after Labor Day.
Only one incumbent, District Four Supervisor Carmen Chu, a political moderate who represents the homeowner-heavy Sunset District, is running—and she is unopposed….
40. “Reducing Emissions with Inflated Tires” (ClimateWatch, KQED public radio, September 3, 2010); features commentary by ROLAND HWANG (MPP 1992); http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2010/09/03/reducing-emissions-with-inflated-tires/
Posted by Gretchen Weber
The state Air Resources Board passed a new regulation this week designed to increase fuel efficiency and reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. It requires auto shops to check the tires on their customers’ vehicles and to inflate them to proper levels whenever they are doing an oil change or providing any other service.
CARB estimates that if
every car in
Customers who don’t want to pay the extra dollars [if any], however, have the right to decline the service. But according to the new rule, they must “affirm” that they have either had their tires checked in the last 30 days or will do so in the next seven….
But according to Roland Hwang, the transportation program manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council, maintaining the proper tire pressure is the right thing to do, regardless of the regulation.
“There’s a surprising number of people with under inflated tires,” said Hwang. “And what does that mean? That means you are consuming more fuel and paying more money at the pump. It also means there’s more air pollution being put in the air, and finally, it also means that you are risking your safety.” …
41. “Age a Big Factor in Technology Earnings” (EWeek.com, September 3, 2010); story citing GREG LINDEN (MPP 1995); http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Age-a-Big-Factor-in-Technology-Earnings-273889/
--Don E. Sears
The older you get in technology, the harder it is to maintain a salary that grows, discovered economists Clair Brown and Dr. Greg Linden of the University of California, Berkeley, who have been studying the subject in research about offshoring and the semiconductor industry since 2006. These academics have repeatedly discovered data that shows salaries for engineers and technology workers peak in their 30s, and become more stagnant in the 40s and 50s, with fewer job opportunities as aging progresses.
Brown and
“We found in out fieldwork that experienced engineers were often forced to work on mature technologies with stagnant earnings, rather than being allowed to learn and work on new technologies with rising earnings,” wrote Brown and Linden in the book….
Other findings in the
book from Brown and
42. “F.C.C. Seeks More Input on Wireless Internet Rules” (New York Times, September 2, 2010); story citing DEREK TURNER (MPP 2006); http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/technology/02fcc.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
By Edward Wyatt
“As we’ve seen, the issues are complex, and the details matter,”
Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, said in a
statement. (Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg News)
After months spent gathering comments about preserving an open and competitive Internet, the F.C.C. requested more feedback on Wednesday about whether regulations should apply to wireless Internet service.
The agency is also asking for comments about one of the most hotly debated Internet regulatory issues: special services that offer to prioritize certain digital traffic for a fee….
Last month, Google and Verizon proposed a framework that would offer some consumer protections for an open Internet but would allow broadband service providers the freedom to speed the delivery of some digital content for a fee.
The proposal also would exclude wireless broadband from nearly all regulation….
Several public advocacy groups expressed anger at the F.C.C.’s move, accusing it of trying to duck a politically difficult decision.
Those groups have been pushing for the commission to re-establish its authority over Internet service providers and to guarantee the open-access practice known as net neutrality.
“I think it has the appearance of the F.C.C. kicking the can down the road,” said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press. “The job of the F.C.C. is to protect the public interest. That includes making the really hard decisions that may anger some powerful industry incumbents.” …
43. “
By Dana Hull and Josh Richman, Bay Area News Group
Two major environmental
bills went down in flames Tuesday as
A bill to ban plastic carry-out bags was soundly defeated after heavy lobbying from the oil and chemical industries.
Also, a bill that would
have given
The energy-mandate bill, SB 722, would have required the state’s utilities to draw at least 33 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2020. The bill went through several last-minute amendments and had managed to gather support from unions, environmentalists and at least one of the state’s investor-owned utilities….
“Renewable energy is one
of the bright spots in our economy, and we can’t abandon it now,” Laura Wisland,
energy analyst for the
44. “Readers Write:
PAWLENTY AND OBAMACARE” (Star Tribune (
Pawlenty’s decision will deprive Minnesotans of a lot more than money.
It threatens to undermine our position as a national leader in three critical areas: reducing the number of uninsured; rewarding high-quality, low-cost healthcare; and effectively regulating insurers.
As a member of the working group charged with advising the Minnesota Legislature on how best to set up an insurance exchange—a mechanism to give consumers in the individual and small-group insurance markets better information about their insurance options, and in the process improve those options—I find the governor’s executive order especially exasperating.
The $1 million grant he has rejected for studying exchange policy design—just a drop in the bucket when one considers all the federal funds he has blocked, of course, but the application for this particular grant appears to have triggered the sweeping executive order—would not even have committed the state to setting up an exchange. The grant’s goal was only to give states the capacity to collect and analyze all the data needed to make an informed decision on whether to set up an exchange, and if so, how.
Data collection itself is now the enemy, apparently, for our grandstanding governor and the paranoid forces in the national electorate he seeks to please.
And Minnesotans’ health? Just collateral damage in a holy war against government.
--PHILLIP CRYAN, Organizing
Director, SEIU Healthcare
45. “Oakland Election News: Jennifer Pae, Jean Quan, Courtney Ruby” (Zennie62, September 1, 2010); political endorsements citing JOSH DANIELS (MPP 2008/JD), LEAH WILSON (MPP 1997/JD) and ABEL GUILLEN (MPP 2001); http://wellstoneclub.org/endorsement-nov2010.htm
By Zennie Abraham
The Wellstone Democratic
Renewal Club’s (WDRC) endorsement process started with a meeting last Thursday
night, where members nominated candidates for consideration…. Here’s the full
list of
Joshua Daniels
Karen Hemphill
Leah Wilson
46. “Clean Energy Programs Pit Advocates Against Mortgage Lenders. Clean energy advocates battle mortgage lenders over the validation of the ever-popular PACE programs” (Governing Magazine, September 2010); story citing CISCO DEVRIES (MPP 2000); http://www.governing.com/topics/energy-env/Clean-Energy-Programs-Pit-Advocates-Against-Mortgage-Lenders.html
By Russell Nichols
In the chaos of a
collapsing housing market, a crumbling
As chief of staff to
And that’s when it hit him—an idea so simple, it was scary: Why couldn’t the city use the same model to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by helping residents generate renewable energy in their homes?
That fall in 2007,
“Not only does it help solve the funding problem of how we pay for renewable energy,” Devries says, “but it came along at exactly the right moment when we were focused on how we as a nation, as a state, can get people back to work and help families save money.” …
“It’s rare when something like that shows up and the solution presents itself in such a simple way that people can get it,” Devries says.
But not everyone gets it. In May, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sent out letters stating that PACE programs violate mortgage instruments by altering lien priorities and put homeowners in default of their mortgages. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Fannie and Freddie, supported that stance and moved to block programs nationwide….
With the housing market still reeling from its collapse and the recession, it makes sense that lending companies would try to protect mortgages at all costs, Devries argues, but the move challenges the governments’ rights to levy tax assessments for a public purpose. Local governments pay for municipal improvements such as sidewalks and sewer upgrades through tax assessments. Energy liens, local and state officials argue, are no different….
47. “Report: Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements” (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, September 2010); report coauthored by MARK ZIMRING (MPP cand. 2012/MA ERG cand 2012); http://drivingdemand.lbl.gov/
Hundreds of millions of dollars in public money are flowing into programs to support improvements in home energy efficiency. Ensuring that these funds have their maximum impact by motivating homeowners to seek out home energy improvements is the subject of a new report from researchers [by Mark Zimring et al.] at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) called “Driving Demand for Home Energy Improvements.”
The report is aimed primarily at policy makers and energy efficiency program designers, especially those new to the field. The authors examined 14 residential energy efficiency programs, conducted an extensive literature review, interviewed industry experts, and surveyed residential contractors to draw lessons from first generation programs, highlight emerging best practices, and suggest methods and approaches to use in designing, implementing, and evaluating these programs.
The report concludes that success will require multifaceted approaches that acknowledge a deeper understanding of what motivates homeowners and contractors. Effective programs will tend to be tailored to the location, thoughtfully researched and piloted, personalized to the target audience, and more labor-intensive than simple incentive programs….
48. “
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
JACKSON HOLE,
“It is a debate about
what is the proper role for the Fed,” said Mickey
Levy, chief economist at Bank of
Alan Blinder, a former Fed governor, predicted that the Fed would ease again….
Levy from Bank of America said the key question was whether the Fed
would be able to withstand pressure from the market and
“Would more quantitative easing stimulate demand? I am not so sure,” Levy said….
49. “Governor’s Council
of Economic Advisors say
By Michelle Cole, The Oregonian
During a two-hour, special meeting of the council Friday, Gov. Ted Kulongoski consulted with 14 economists, academics and industry experts about the hole in the state’s current budget and long-term options for restructuring government. The meeting came the day after state leaders learned that revenues are down about $373 million.
But the governor made it clear Friday that agencies will be forced to make another round of cuts. What’s more, he said, the state faces an estimated $3.3 billion shortfall in 2011-2013.
Council members agreed
that
“It’s increasingly clear that the kicker makes no sense whatsoever,” said council Chairman Joe Cortright, president and principal economist at Impresa Inc. “It’s something we should get rid of.” ...
50. “‘No’ on Prop. 19 pot legalization, Contra Costa panel recommends” (Contra Costa Times, August 25, 2010); story citing BEAU KILMER (MPP 2000); http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15895114?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com&nclick_check=1
By Matthias Gafni -- Contra Costa Times
The Alcohol and Other Drugs Advisory Board heard from speakers on all sides of the debate in recent meetings and voted Wednesday to oppose the measure. The committee, which is appointed by county supervisors, makes recommendations to the board….
The lead author of a study on how legalizing marijuana would affect consumption and public budgets addressed the panel Wednesday.
Legalized recreational
marijuana in
The state has estimated $1.4 billion in tax revenue, but Kilmer said such predictions are difficult with so many unknowns. For instance, there are tax evasion opportunities, unknown tax rates and more potent pot could mean spending less to achieve the same high….
View the entire
51. “
--Steve Duin, The Oregonian
Politicians, economist Joe Cortright
says, tend to view recessions as Greek tragedies: “If something bad is
happening in the
They go all Antigone or Oedipus on us, bemoaning the lack of jobs or
the abundance of regulations, rather than acknowledging, Cortright notes, “that this is
the worst recession the nation has experienced since the Great Depression, and
that might have something to do with what’s happening in
“Right now, we’re one percent above the national average in our unemployment rate. We’re right where you’d expect we’d be. The idea that things are especially awful here because of something we did is mistaken.”
When 41 percent of Republicans, according to CNN, continue to insist Barack Obama wasn’t born in this country, we hardly need another reminder that perception is driving too many of us to loopy conclusions.
One of the local
favorites is that
At the end of the 2009
fiscal year, [the Council on State Taxation] calculated that Oregon’s state and
local business taxes were 3.5 percent of the total value of goods and services
produced by the private sector. That’s significantly less than
As Calhoun & Co. offer no suggestions on how the next governor can deal with the perception, and reality, of taxes, I’ll allow Cortright to close.
“There’s almost nothing state governments can do in the short term to influence their economy,” Cortright said. “There’s a lot they can do in the long term. It’s all about knowledge. Success or failure in the global economy depends on how smart you are. Do you have a strategy for doing a better job educating your kids and creating a place where talented, skilled people want to live?”
52. “Mickey Levy, Chief Economist of Bank of America, Talks about the Fed” (Bloomberg On The Economy, August 24, 2010); interview with MICKEY LEVY (MPP 1974).
… MICKEY LEVY, CHIEF ECONOMIST, BANK OF
TOM KEENE, HOST: … Is anybody going
to talk about the American labor economy? … Does anybody at
LEVY: Oh, I think they care intensely. I mean consider the following. The level of real GDP is nearly back to its prior expansion peak with nearly 8 million fewer workers…. It’s … just a stunning relationship and - so …- we have think about not just that relationship but what is … affecting labor markets. Is it job skill mismatches …? Or, is it business reticent to add fixed costs in their production processes and what is driving the uncertainty?
So, when we think about labor markets, it’s a critical element on the supply and demand for labor and a critical element why aggregate demand in the economy hasn’t risen more, given the magnitude of monetary and fiscal stimulus. So, it’ll be at the center of the debate….
LEVY: … [I]f you think about the average firm, it’s generating nice profits here, but its top line revenue growth is very sluggish, and this is one of the critical elements that is inhibiting their decisions on hiring business expansion, and it’s clearly affecting their ability to price products and, of course, to set wages. So it’s critical.
And so … if I had to ask the one question here that’s so important and key to the economy is why hasn’t nominal spending growth picked up, and what type of uncertainties are lurking out there that’s inhibiting a stronger growth in nominal spending, and can policy makers do anything about it? …
53. “Social Solutions Customers Awarded $15.4MM” (Business Wire, August 17, 2010); newswire citing CARLA JAVITS (MPP 1985).
BALTIMORE -- Social Solutions, Inc., the leading provider of performance management software for human and social services, announced three of its customers—Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Latin American Youth Center (LAYC), and REDF—have received a total of $15.4 million in federal and matching funds as a part of the Corporation for National and Community Service’s (CNCS) Social Innovation Fund (SIF) Awards….
CNCS has awarded REDF $3MM to improve workforce outcomes
for citizens across the state of
54. “Protest draws dozens at UC Berkeley for John Yoo’s first day of classes” (Oakland Tribune, August 16, 2010); story citing STEPHANIE TANG (MPP 2004); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_15794112?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Sean Maher Oakland Tribune
Stephanie Tang, second from right, speaks to assembled media
and protesters as she calls for the firing of Boalt
Hall law professor John Yoo for his part in drafting
the “enhanced interrogation” methods used on enemy combatants that were adopted
by the Bush Administration, in a protest on August 16, 2010 at
Between 70 and 80 people gathered near the Boalt Hall School of Law around noon and, after a series of speakers discussed torture from a number of perspectives, dipped their hands in red paint and marched into a classroom where they believed Yoo to be teaching this semester, organizer Linda Jacobs said.
Yoo was not in the classroom, so the group continued on to the dean’s office and demanded to speak with him, Jacobs said. Police at the scene declared the group an unlawful assembly, at which point the protesters walked back outside, Jacobs said….
Yoo has said that the Bush administration did not authorize torture and that he did not consider waterboarding torture….
55. “Senator Byron Dorgan to be Honored with the Legacy Award by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, the American Diabetes Association, and the National Indian Health Board” (States News Service, August 11, 2010); newswire citing CYNTHIA RICE (MPP 1994).
Senator Dorgan has been
a long time champion for people with diabetes in
“Because of the research funded by Special Diabetes Program, people with type 1 diabetes have better treatments for this difficult disease and renewed hope for a cure,” said Cynthia Rice, Vice President of Government Relations for JDRF. “We are tremendously grateful to Senator Dorgan for all he is doing to renew the program this year.” …
56. “Will bill save any Modesto-area teachers? Education package may mean $1.2B for state—assuming it even qualifies” (Modesto Bee, August 10, 2010); story citing JANNELLE LEE KUBINEC (MPP 1997); http://www.modbee.com/2010/08/09/1287474/will-bill-save-any-modesto-area.html#ixzz0zjLjhFKo
By Nan
Valley teachers are scratching their heads over whether they’ll benefit from a $10 billion education relief bill that Congress is expected to pass today.
But analysts say the
state’s fiscal mess may keep it from qualifying.
The money would be allocated by enrollment, about $140 to $180 per student depending on the district’s base funding formula, said Jannelle Kubinec, School Services associate vice president.
Doing the math, that
means
It is packaged with $16.1 billion in help for state health programs for the needy and more than the usual partisan political baggage.
Even if all runs smoothly, however, money could not come to districts until at least October, and possibly much later if the state has no budget, Kubinec said….
57. “The new underinsured; While health reform is expected to add 31 million to the ranks of the insured, low-income families-and providers- may still face significant financial risk” (Modern Healthcare, August 9, 2010); analysis citing JANUARY ANGELES (MPP 2002).
By Melanie Evans
Health reform is expected to expand insurance to millions without it and offer households more protection from the financial distress of medical bills. But the law also leaves some newly insured vulnerable to expenses that will add stress to already strapped household budgets, health policy experts say….
January Angeles, a policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, a nonpartisan policy not-for-profit based in
Of the 24 million expected to find insurance through an exchange, it is estimated that 19 million will be eligible for subsidies to pay for premiums or additional costs paid out of household budgets, known as out-of-pocket costs, such as deductibles, copayments or coinsurance.
Angeles says the law sought to take into account that low-income households must grapple with less discretionary income while at the same time fixed, necessary costs such as rent represent a bigger chunk of income.
Low- and moderate-income consumers inside the exchanges-or those earning below 400%, or $43,320 for 2010, of the federal poverty guideline but too much to enroll in Medicaid-qualify for subsidies that increase as income declines, she says. The subsidies include premium credits for those below 400% of the federal poverty level and the law offers further cost-sharing credits for households earning less than 250%, or $27,075 for 2010, of federal poverty.
Policymakers sought to limit patients’ financial risk by using the premium credits to limit the percentage of household income that will be spent on medical care, based on one of four plans-the second least costly option of the four plans-to be offered through the exchange, Angeles says….
58. “Oil spill taints UC Berkeley’s BP-funded research” (The Associated Press, August 1, 2010); story citing STEPHANIE TANG (MPP 2004); http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_15648313?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com
By Terence Chea - The Associated Press
The oil giant gave UC Berkeley a $500 million grant in 2007 to create the Energy Biosciences Institute, which works to develop new sources of plant-based fuel. The 10-year deal, believed to be the largest corporate sponsorship of university research, has outraged many students and professors who worry the global oil company will exert too much influence over academic research and damage the university’s reputation….
“Now that we can see what BP is responsible for in the Gulf, we demand that the contract between UC and BP be re-looked at,” activist Stephanie Tang said, speaking to onlookers through a megaphone.
But UC Berkeley officials say the institute has nothing to do with the Gulf spill, and the university has no plans to end its research partnership with BP….
59. “Financial Reform Law Limits Future Flexibility of US NatGas Trading” (Natural Gas Week, July 26, 2010); story citing SKIP HORVATH (MPP 1976).
--Lauren O’Neil
Those so-called “end users” may use OTC markets for legitimate hedging purposes, like guarding against swings in commodity prices, interest rates and exchange rates….
Nonetheless, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act’s requirements for swaps dealers and major swap participants to move their trades onto regulated exchanges or clearing houses could limit the flexibility of natural gas trading in the future—and possibly create new costs for end-users who trade with those types of participants….
Furthermore, even some transactions not subject to clearing rules may be hit with margin requirements, although the extent of such regulation could depend upon the interpretation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other federal watchdogs in upcoming rulemakings.
Gas suppliers have serious concerns about the potential for unintended consequences resulting from this legislation if regulators establish margin requirements for uncleared swaps,” said Natural Gas Supply Association President Skip Horvath. His group represents gas producers and marketers.
The risk is a “huge potential drain on capital that could otherwise be invested in job creation and infrastructure,” he cautioned….
60. “Sherrod racial
controversy blows up in Obama’s face” (Sunday Business Post [
All the Obama administration’s best-laid plans came undone last week, as the president’s achievement in pushing a Wall Street reform package through Congress was overshadowed by a controversy with the combustible topic of race at its centre.
The person in the eye of
the storm was Shirley Sherrod, a hitherto obscure 62-year-old who worked as the
rural development director for the US Agriculture Department in the southern
state of
The story soon changed sharply, however. The video clip, it turned out, had been extremely selectively edited to show Sherrod in the worst possible light. Sherrod had, in fact, been telling what many media commentators termed a ‘‘parable’’ about overcoming racial prejudice….
The episode triggered off a fevered discussion about a whole range of broader issues, however. For media-watchers, one key question concerns the way in which avowedly partisan outlets can now propel stories into the mainstream….
More broadly, critics continue to lament the tendency to take controversial and partisan-tinged reporting at face value—especially on such an explosive issue as race.
Right-wingers ‘‘have
been using this issue for 40 years or more’’, Robert Entman, a
‘‘It has been used [by the right] to cement an association in white people’s minds between race and fear.”
61. “Up Front; The Question” (The American Prospect, July-August 2010, Volume 21, Number 6, Pg. 7); editorial contribution by ELIZABETH GETTELMAN (MPP 2003); http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=up_front_july10
THE QUESTION
Beyond Petroleum is a misnomer. What does BP really stand for?
“Bleeding Petroleum.” -- Elizabeth Gettelman, Mother Jones….
62. “OSHA, stakeholders debate ways to enforce upcoming program rule” (Inside OSHA, Vol. 17 No. 14, July 13, 2010); story citing JOHN MENDELOFF (MPP 1974/PhD 1977).
John Mendeloff (Photo from GSPIA eNews, January 10, 2010)
OSHA and stakeholders debated how OSHA should enforce its upcoming Injury and Illness Prevention Program rule, including cases when penalties should be issued, whether to be lenient on enforcement initially and whether guidelines are needed to aid employers, during a recent stakeholder meeting on the planned rulemaking. The rule is a top priority for OSHA chief David Michaels….
John Mendeloff of RAND said OSHA should make it clear what actions will be required to show that employers are in compliance with the standard, such as examples of hazard surveys or training records. He added that the content of the requirements, the evidence for the requirements and the penalties for noncompliance should be considered together.
Additionally, Mendeloff questioned whether the agency will be more lenient with fines during initial inspections. He recommended that OSHA take into account whether companies are improving. “[It] is an important element here, if we’re really going to somehow change the culture from compliance to trying to get companies to do better,” he said….
63. “With end of stimulus, tough times ahead for public colleges” (Gannett News Service, July 9, 2010); newswire citing WILLIAM ZUMETA (MPP 1973/PhD 1978).
By Elizabeth Bewley - Gannett
WASHINGTON-Most state governments depend on federal stimulus money to keep public colleges and universities afloat, a new report says. But these funds may be drying up as the new fiscal year begins.
Thirty-nine states used stimulus money to support higher education in the past year, compared to only 14 states the year before, according to the report by the National Conference of State Legislatures. To receive federal funds, states were required to keep higher education funding at or above 2006 levels.
As a result, public funding for higher education increased an average 2.3 percent last year. Without stimulus money, it would have fallen 2.5 percent, according to the report….
Experts say it won’t be long before stimulus dollars disappear for good, forcing state colleges and universities to raise tuition, cut enrollment, or lay off faculty—trends already apparent at institutions across the nation.
“Higher education
funding will continue to take significant cuts in most states,” said William Zumeta, a
public affairs and education professor at the
Since colleges and universities can raise tuition to compensate for reduced state funding, any extra stimulus money will likely go to Medicaid and other state services, Zumeta predicted.
“Higher education is the only state function that can look to its customers to pay more,” he said….
1. Letters: “Learning From Brockton High School” (New York Times, September 30, 2010); Letter to Editor by JACK GLASER; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/opinion/l01school.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
To the Editor:
The story of how teachers turned around the
failing
It is misguided, however, for this story to be construed as being about “smaller isn’t better.” No controlled experiment was conducted comparing small and large schools.
Rather, this is a single case of a school where the staff took remarkable initiative and improved student performance by dint of sheer will, creativity and commitment.
If a short person worked extra hard and became a successful high jumper, we could conclude that short people can succeed, but not that “taller isn’t better.”
Jack Glaser
The writer is an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
2. “Former Labor Secretary Reich: Bush-Era Tax
Cuts ‘Hurt Quite a
… JEFFREY BROWN: Tonight, we turn to Robert Reich, professor of public policy at
the
Now, you were against these tax cuts from the beginning. So, nine years later, what’s your view on how much they have helped or hurt?
ROBERT
REICH: Well, I think they hurt quite a lot. The original Bush tax cuts of
2001 and 2003, remember, were sold to
And, beyond that, median wages, Jeff, actually dropped between 2001 and 2007. Adjusted for inflation, the median worker actually grew poorer. There was no trickle-down at all.
JEFFREY BROWN: So … when we get to now and the question of what to do about them, whether to let them lapse, you’re for letting them lapse at the top end for the wealthiest, but not for the majority of people?
ROBERT REICH: Yes. ... I mean, technically, we’re out of the great recession, but, obviously, the aftershock of this recession continues.
We ought to provide at least middle-class people with as much benefit as they can….
Also, remember, people at the top, if they did get that one-year extension that they didn’t expect, that would put a huge hole in the budget deficit that apparently—and I think justifiably—many people, Republicans and others, are very concerned about….
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, several of our previous guests in this series have talked about … thinking in terms of the Bush-era tax cuts in terms of reforming the tax code more broadly. And I know that, in your new book, you talk about that….
ROBERT REICH: Yes. What we tend to forget when we talk about taxes is that most middle-class, working-class people are already taxed enormously. The sales taxes in most states have gone up. The taxes that we call payroll taxes that deal with Social Security and unemployment insurance, those payroll taxes, FICA, have actually gone up.
Eighty percent of American workers pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes. So, why not, I have suggested, exempt the first $20,000 of income from the payroll tax and make it up by putting the payroll tax on incomes over $250,000?
In other words, there are many long-term issues, Jeff, that have to do with fairness of our tax system. And the tax system is hardly fair. …[R]ight now, we have multimillionaires who are able to treat much of their income as capital gains, subjected to now a 15 percent income tax.
Well, that’s ridiculous. I mean, that’s unfair. That’s lower taxes than people earning $30,000 are paying.
3. “The Monthly turns 40” (Berkeleyside, September 29, 2010); column citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/09/29/the-monthly-turns-40/
By Frances Dinkelspiel
The Monthly, (formerly known as The Telegraph Monthly, the Berkeley Monthly, and the East Bay Monthly) turns 40 in October and has put out an anniversary edition pondering the question “What Makes the East Bay Unique?
The magazine’s writers have asked 40 “local luminaries” for some of their favorite memories of the region….
Robert
Reich, former
4. “Reich Blames Economy’s Woes on Income Disparity” (Fresh Air from WHYY, National Public Radio, September 29, 2010); interview with ROBERT REICH; Listen to the interview
Robert Reich is
currently the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the
Economist Robert Reich isn’t surprised at the anemic economic recovery from the meltdown in 2008. His new book, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, argues that the economy isn’t going to get moving again until we address a fundamental problem: the growing concentration of wealth and income among the richest Americans.
“I think that we have not fundamentally reformed
Wall Street,” he tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. “We have not done what we
needed to do. Derivatives are still relatively unregulated. There are big, big
holes in that Wall Street financial reform act — holes big enough for Wall
Street traders to drive their Ferraris through. We didn’t bust up the big
banks. ... We have not in any way helped the mortgage market. ... I think we’re
going to be left with a Wall Street that continues to grow more and more
powerful and richer relative to the rest of the
“[The middle class] can’t go deeper and deeper into debt. They can’t work longer hours. They’ve exhausted all of their coping mechanisms,” he says. “And people at the top are taking home so much that they are almost inevitably going to speculate in stocks or commodities or whatever the speculative vehicles are going to be. ... Unless we understand the relationship between the extraordinary concentration of income and wealth we have this in country and the failure of the economy to rebound, we are going to be destined for many, many years of high unemployment, anemic job recoveries and then periods of booms and busts that may even dwarf what we just had.” …
Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future By Robert B. Reich (Hardcover, 192 pages,
Knopf, List price $25)
[Read an excerpt from Aftershock: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307592811&view=excerpt
5. “House Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, and Homeland Security Hearing; Reauthorization of the Second Chance Act” (Congressional Documents and Publications, September 29, 2010); congressional testimony citing STEVEN RAPHAEL.
Testimony by David Muhlhausen,
Senior Policy Analyst, Center for Data Analysis, Heritage Foundation,
…. The high cost that released prisoners impose
on society has been empirically demonstrated by Professor Steven Raphael of the University of
n7 Steven Raphael and Michael A. Stoll, “The Effect of Prison Releases on Regional Crime Rates,” in William G. Gales and Janet Rothenberg Pack, eds., Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), pp. 207-243….
6. “List of possible candidates for Obama’s top economic advisor grows” (Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2010); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-summers-succcessor-20100929,0,4309432.story
By Jim Puzzanghera and
Tom Petruno,
Reporting from
Economists and academics mentioned include Laura Tyson, a UC Berkeley economist who chaired the National Economic Council from 1995 to 1996 under President Clinton; former Labor Secretary [and current UC Berkeley professor] Robert Reich; and Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz….
7. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Republican ‘tough love’ economics: Social Darwinism for the 21st century” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 28, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0928/Republican-tough-love-economics-Social-Darwinism-for-the-21st-century
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
House Minority Leader John
Boehner of
John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.”
Actually, those weren’t Boehner’s words. They were uttered by Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon, after the Great Crash of 1929.
But they might as well have been Boehner’s because Hoover’s and Mellon’s means of purging the rottenness was by doing exactly what Boehner and his colleagues are now calling for: shrink government, cut the federal deficit, reduce the national debt, and balance the budget.
And we all know what happened after 1929, at least until FDR reversed course....
Social insurance is fundamental to a civil society. It’s also good economics because it puts money in peoples’ pockets who then turn around and buy the things that others produce, thereby keeping those others in jobs.
We’ve fallen into the bad habit of calling these programs “entitlements,” which sounds morally suspect – as if a more responsible public wouldn’t depend on them. If the Great Recession has taught us anything, it should be that anyone can take a fall through no fault of their own….
8. “Leah Garchik: A measure of gratitude is measured” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 27, 2010); column citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/27/DD5V1FH8IC.DTL
--Leah Garchik, Columnist
… Along with the Girls of the PAC 10 feature, the October “college issue” of Playboy names the Playboy Honor Roll, 20 “of the most brilliant and innovative college professors in the nation.” Among them: …
“Energy Troubleshooter” Dan Kammen of UC Berkeley works in alternative energy studies and is an adviser to the Obama administration and a believer in the use of sunlight and wind to create power. Kammen is “honored” by the award, and not even miffed not to be part of a pictorial. Speaking personally, he said, “No picture is the right one. I am hoping that the old adage— that people buy it for the articles—is true. ... I’m sure I’m not going to hear the end of this.” …
9. “Top 1% of earners get 20% of the money” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 26, 2010); analysis citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/26/BU7T1FIKPE.DTL
--Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer
Soaring
unemployment has poured salt into a long-festering economic wound—the widening
gap between rich and poor Americans, a trend that has been accompanied by a
hollowing out of the middle class.
One unimpeachable view of this wage gap comes from a Federal Reserve report that examined the period leading up to the housing bust and recession, and noted that “income became more ‘unequally’ distributed over the 1988-2006 period.”
A more provocative analysis emerges from research co-written by UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez.
After studying Internal Revenue Service records since 1913, Saez found that the fraction of total income reported by the top 1 percent of tax filers peaked at 23.94 percent in 1928.
Thereafter, income for this elite group fell for decades, only to rise from the 1980s through 2007, when this top strata took in 23.5 percent of all reported income.
Former
“We have got to address this inequality, or it will derail the economy,” said Reich, who will speak at the Commonwealth Club Tuesday evening about the plan he proposes in his new book, “Aftershock,” to tax the rich to pay for training and other assistance to help Americans climb the income ladder….
And the modern finance-driven economy doesn’t
spread the wealth as effectively as did its widget-making predecessor, argued Reich during an interview in his
cramped
“The top 25 hedge fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each in 2009,” he said….
10. “The New
Reported by Martha Teichner
… [
“Typically, in a business cycle we get back to the same economic path we were on—people get their old jobs back, or nearly their old jobs. But this time around, very much like the Great Depression, we are not going to be able to go back on the same road.”
Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in a new book [Aftershock], points out another ominous parallel between the Great Depression and the Great Recession: its cause.
“More and more of the income that was generated by the economy went to the people at the top,” Reich said.
In the last century, there were only two years—in 1928, just before the great crash, and then again in 2007—during which the richest 1% were taking home nearly a quarter of the entire income of the nation.
“The typical CEO is up to 350 times the salary and benefits of the typical worker,” Reich said. “Last year, when most Americans were suffering, the top 25 hedge fund managers each earned one billion dollars.
“A billion dollars would pay the salaries of something like 20,000 teachers,” he said.
That wage inequality, Reich argues, is at the heart of our economic woes, and to fix things we need to pay those teachers and the rest of the middle class more, not less, so they can spend enough to kick-start the economy.
And yes, that means higher taxes for the rich.
“The economy depends, 70 percent of demand, on consumers,” Reich said, “and those consumers are essentially the middle class. People who are very rich, they spend a much smaller proportion of their income.”
In the partisan battle over the future of the Bush tax cuts, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said, “No recovery will take place if we impose new taxes on the people we need to create jobs.”
Reich disagrees.... “We provided a huge tax cut to the rich, and nothing trickled down,” he said. “After 2001, median wages actually dropped.”
The top tax rate is now 35% ... if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, 39.6%.
For the record, under President Eisenhower, a Republican, the top rate was 91%. Really, middle class wages were rising—and the rich actually got richer.
“Henry Ford understood this,” said Reich. “He paid his workers $5 a day at the Highland Park Model-T plant. That was about twice as much as the typical worker was earning. He said, ‘You know, I’m going to make a lot of money because my workers are going to earn enough that they can turn around and buy the Model-Ts they’re making.’
“And you know something? Henry Ford was right.” …
11. “
By Steve Johnson and Pete Carey
In the wake of the catastrophic Sept. 9 gas line
explosion in
On Thursday, when the PUC detailed plans to
create an independent expert panel to investigate the
“Anything of this type should probably make the regulator look upon themselves, too, and ask the question, ‘Are we doing the very best job possible?’” Michael Peevey, the commission’s president since the end of 2002, said in an interview with the Mercury News.
Lee Friedman, a utility regulation expert at UC Berkeley, said the agency “may be the best PUC in the country. It’s very professional and it’s organized in a way that gives it more independence from the industries that it’s regulating than most of the other state public utility commissions. ... Our PUC is one of the only ones that has an independent consumer branch. They fiercely represent consumer interests, as a counterweight against industry arguments.”…
12. “GOP pledge omits a few big issues” (Sacramento Bee, September 24, 2010); analysis citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sacbee.com/2010/09/24/3052792/gop-pledge-omits-a-few-big-issues.html#ixzz10TM1c5CZ
By David Lightman and William Douglas
Republican candidates already have plenty of momentum going into the November elections, and the GOP’s new agenda is full of themes that congressional Republicans have been pushing for nearly two years: Extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, repeal this year’s health care overhaul and freeze most federal spending at 2008-09 levels….
The GOP plan, however, doesn’t have much to say about some of the day’s most pressing issues.
It doesn’t address how to deal with the projected
shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, discuss how to wage or end the war
in
“It’s a public relations document, it’s like the
Contract (with)
“If you take seriously their planks of cutting the deficit, balancing the budget, removing government … that is Herbert Hoover economics. And what’s likely to happen, if they actually implement that, is a double dip (back into recession) or at best a continued very anemic recovery. There is no demand.” …
13. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Why policy fixes won’t work: The middle class needs a bigger piece of the pie” (Christian Science Monitor Online September 24, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0924/Why-policy-fixes-won-t-work-The-middle-class-needs-a-bigger-piece-of-the-pie
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
Two television networks … that the Federal Reserve left rates unchanged in their final meeting before the mid-term elections, Tuesday, Sept. 21. Stock prices, which had been relatively flat before the Fed’s statement, rose afterward, propelling the Dow up 60 points within minutes. (Henny Ray Abrams / AP)
The Fed’s decision today (Tuesday) to keep short-term interest rates near zero is no surprise. What’s odd is its apparent decision not to boost the economy by buying hundreds of billions of bonds — despite its acknowledgment that “the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months,” and that prices are rising too slowly for comfort (i.e., we might be facing deflation)….
The problem isn’t the cost of capital. Most businesses can get all the money they need. Big ones are still sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash.
The problem is consumers, who are 70 percent of the economy. They can’t and won’t buy enough to turn the economy around. Most don’t qualify for more credit given how much they already owe (or have already defaulted on)….
So what’s the answer? Reorganizing the economy to make sure the vast middle class has a larger share of its benefits. Remaking the basic bargain linking pay to per-capita productivity….
Robert Reich is chancellor’s professor of
public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national
administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton...
He has written 13 books, including his
most recent book, ‘Aftershock: The Next Economy and
14. Sunday Book Review: “Fairer Deal” (New York Times & International Herald Tribune [*requires registration], September 24, 2010); review of book by ROBERT REICH; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/books/review/Mallaby-t.html?scp=9&sq=Berkeley&st=nyt
By Sebastian Mallaby
Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future
By Robert B. Reich
174 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25
Way way back, which means before the financial sector imploded, it wasn’t Wall Street bonuses and vampire squids that excited the most fury. People agonized, instead, about the stagnation of middle-class incomes and exploding inequality. In “Aftershock” — impressively, his 12th book — Robert B. Reich steers our attention back to those earlier worries, which have arguably become more urgent in the wake of the financial crisis....
Reich is trying to fortify the standard case for redistribution. As he acknowledges, he could have grounded his argument in morality: it is simply unfair that the richest 1 percent of Americans capture almost a quarter of the total income in the economy. Alternatively, Reich could have invoked American values: a grotesquely skewed inequality of outcomes is bound to tip the playing field for the next generation of Americans, mocking the nation’s commitment to equality of opportunity. But instead Reich reaches for an economic claim — that redistribution is a prerequisite for growth….
… [M]uch of Reich’s book is important and well
executed. A
[Another review of Professor Reich’s book appeared in the <a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/26/RV511FFOLM.DTL“>San Francisco Chronicle</a>]
15. “Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, on the Economy” (Nightly Business Report [PBS], September 23, 2010); interview with ROBERT REICH; link to video
SUSIE GHARIB: …With the policy battle heating up,
we continue our look at new ideas to revive the economy…. Tonight, we turn to Robert Reich. He’s the former Labor
secretary in the
ROBERT
REICH, PROFESSOR, UNIV OF
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: One of the solutions you offer in your book “Aftershock” for that is a reverse income tax where you would have the highest rate go up to 55 percent. As you well know there are many economists who say if it goes to 40 percent we’ll have a disaster. How do you respond to that?
REICH: They don’t know history. During the Eisenhower administration and nobody ever accused Dwight Eisenhower of being a radical, the marginal income tax on top incomes was 91 percent. I’m not suggesting going to 91 percent. My only point is that we’ve had in the past very high marginal tax rates during periods where the economy has done remarkably well…. I think that it will provide us the leeway both to deal with the long-term deficit problems and also to reduce taxes on the middle class and actually provide wage subsidies so that the middle class has the wherewithal to start buying again.
GERSH: You were Labor secretary so it was really noted here that you called for changing our unemployment insurance system to a reemployment system. What is a reemployment system?
REICH: A reemployment system helps people get new jobs and not expect that they will get the old job back. We need to have an emphasis on job search assistance, on job counseling and on wage insurance so that if somebody gets a new job that pays less than the old job they get, say, half of the difference for maybe up to two years so that they have an incentive to get that new job….
16. “Silent and deadly: Smoke from cooking stoves kills poor people” (The Economist, Sep 23rd 2010); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.economist.com/node/17093623
Around two billion people have no access to modern energy, and a billion have it only sporadically. The smoky stoves that many of them use, the World Health Organisation reckons, produce particulate pollution that causes around 2m premature deaths a year….
The appeal of a stove that produces more heat,
more cleanly and with less fuel is clear. But Kirk Smith, a stove specialist at
the
Another lesson of past failures, says Daniel Kammen, who runs the World Bank’s clean-energy programmes,
is the need for better data about how stoves are actually used. That is
increasingly possible, because cheap sensors can be embedded in stoves. At
17. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Who should get the tax cut? The rich, or everyone else?” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 22, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0922/Who-should-get-the-tax-cut-The-rich-or-everyone-else
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent — whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy — or the rest of us?
Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.
Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they’ll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.
But before this can be a defining election issue in the midterms, Democrats have to bring it to a vote. And they’ve got to do it in the next few weeks, not wait until a lame-duck session after Election Day….
And the Republican charge that restoring the Clinton tax rates for the rich would hurt the economy — because it would reduce the “incentives” of the rich (including the richest small business owners) to create jobs — is ludicrous.
Under Bill Clinton and his tax rates, the economy roared. It created 22 million jobs.
By contrast, during George Bush’s 8 years, commencing with his big 2001 tax cut, the economy created only 8 million jobs. And as the new Census data show, nothing trickled down. In fact, the middle class families did far worse after the Bush tax cut….
18. “Long-term unemployed aim to become a political force. People who have exhausted their jobless benefits are pressing policymakers for more aid and joining together to call attention to their cause” (Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2010); story citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0922-99er-advocacy-20100922,0,1222057.story
By Alana Semuels,
Kian
After his wife of 23 years pulls out of the driveway every morning to head to college, Scott Mathewson sits down at the computer in his apartment and talks to his unemployment group.
Mathewson, a
On Wednesday, Mathewson’s group plans to join
with 16 similar grass-roots, Internet-based organizations to blitz members of
the U.S. Senate with faxes and e-mails. Calling themselves the American 99ers
Few legislators or candidates this political season are championing efforts to extend unemployment benefits because of growing concerns over the size of the federal budget deficit….
“The jobless are not a lobbying group. There’s no national association of the unemployed,” said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. “Most people who have lost a job think of themselves as very much alone.” …
19. “Op-Ed: Bridging the achievement gap. The formula to help young African Americans succeed in school is not pie-in-the-sky” (Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2010); commentary by DAVID KIRP; http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kirp-black-males-20100922,0,1828200.story
By David L. Kirp
…
A new study from the Schott Foundation for Public Education sets out the sorry
statistics. Across the country, fewer than half of all black males graduate
from high school, compared with 78% of white males. In
These disparities aren’t new — the Schott report could have been published a generation ago. What is new and noteworthy is solid evidence that this gap can be bridged, with well-tested approaches that don’t require massive changes in public education and don’t depend on superhero teachers and administrators….
From kindergarten on, for most black males, the achievement gap keeps widening. Reformers from the “no excuses” camp believe that the answer is to fire teachers whose students are failing and exponentially expand charter schools, but there’s no empirical basis for such claims.
What does
work? Reducing class size to 14 or 15 students, a large-scale
Good preschools, smaller elementary school classes, a focus on reading, altering attitudes about intelligence, linking schools to their communities and paying attention to character-building — there’s nothing pie-in-the-sky in this agenda. If these crib-to-college reforms shift the public conversation away from “you can’t educate these kids” fatalism and toward investing in what’s been shown to work, the biggest achievement gap may finally start to shrink.
David Kirp is a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. A longer version of this piece appears in the October issue of National Affairs and a chapter in the forthcoming book, “Building Healthy Communities: A Focus on Boys and Young Men of Color.”
20. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Warning bells of deflation” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 21, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0921/Warning-bells-of-deflation
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis
addresses the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in
Three economic reports today (Friday) that should sound warning bells about deflation….
Put the three together and you have what could be a recipe for deflation: Flat consumer prices, weekly earnings, and hours, coupled with increased pessimism about where the economy is heading.
Consumers aren’t buying. They’re acting rationally. Their debt load is still huge, they’re worried about keeping their jobs, they know they have to tighten belts, and they’re justifiably worried about the future.
But for the nation as a whole, it spells even more trouble. If consumers hold back even more, prices will start dropping. When and if they do, consumers will hold back even more in anticipation of still lower prices. That means more layoffs and less hiring.
It’s a vicious cycle. And once deflation sets in,
it’s hard to reverse. Just ask
21. “Rich People Pity Party” (Mother Jones, September 21, 2010); column citing MICHAEL O’HARE; http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/09/rich-people-pity-party
— By Nick Baumann [Nick Baumann covers national politics for Mother Jones’ DC Bureau.]
I almost feel sorry for Todd Henderson. Last
week, the University of Chicago Law School professor took to his blog to
complain about how he and his wife, who make north of $250,000 a year combined,
are going to suffer under the Obama tax plan. (Under Obama’s plan, marginal tax
rates for couples who make more than $250,000 would return to their Clinton-era
levels. Those couples’ overall tax burden would still be lower than it was
during the
Prof. Henderson’s complaints drew the attention
of
22. “Earnings of more than $250,000 a year, but professor laments family just getting by” (Chicago Tribune, September 23, 2010); story citing MICHAEL O’HARE; http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-09-23/business/ct-biz-0924-rich-blog-20100923_1_law-professor-blog-taxes
By Ameet Sachdev, Tribune reporter
Todd Henderson feels like he’s barely making ends
meet. He’s a law professor at the
Wait. What’s he talking about? A lot of people would consider him rich.
People have had some other choice words for the outspoken professor, who has been on the receiving end of a jolt of criticism in response to a blog posting last week in which he described his lifestyle in detail and then complained about President Barack Obama’s plan to raise taxes on high-income families.
“A quick look at our family budget, which I will
happily share with the White House, will show him that, like many Americans, we
are just getting by despite seeming to be rich. We aren’t,”
Michael O’Hare, a professor of public policy at the University of California-Berkeley, who railed against Henderson’s blog post, said regular Joes are tired of hearing people better off than them complain about what they have.
“It’s just rude to be worrying in public about whether you have to fire the maid,” he said Thursday. “That didn’t used to be acceptable behavior, for people who were that much better off than the rest of us to complain about their misfortunes.” …
23. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Christine O’Donnell and the ‘crackpot gap’” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 20, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0920/Christine-O-Donnell-and-the-crackpot-gap
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
Delaware Republican Senate
candidate Christine O’Donnell delivers remarks at Values Voter Summit in
… In
Many Americans these days don’t like Congress and are cynical about government. The lousy economy has made almost all incumbents targets of the public’s anger and anxiety.
But if there’s one thing Americans like even less it’s people pretending to be legitimate politicians whose views are so far removed from those of ordinary Americans that they pose a danger to our system of governance….
Some Democrats think all this is wonderful because it boosts the odds of Democratic wins, not only in the midterms but also in 2012 when the Republicans put up Palin, Gingrich, or someone equally bizarre. Even voters who are are unenthusiastic about Democrats will be motivated to turn out if they fear that crackpots will otherwise take over our government.
I’m not as sanguine about what’s happening.
Political discourse in
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton....
24. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Think getting tough
with
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
Figure 2A man stands on a bridge near a new residential site in
With unemployment in the stratosphere and the midterm elections weeks away, politicians naturally want to show voters they’re committed to getting jobs back.
So now they’re getting tough on
But it’s a dangerous ploy based on wishful thinking….
But it’s naive to assume all we have to do to get Chinese to do what we want is to threaten them with tariffs….
What worries me most about all this tough talk
about
Twenty million Americans lack jobs because
American consumers – especially
After three decades of stagnant middle-class wages, during which almost all the economic gains have gone to the top, we’ve finally reached a day of reckoning. The middle class can no longer borrow vast sums by using their homes as ATMs. They can’t squeeze more working hours out of two wage earners. And they have to start saving for retirement.
The central challenge we face isn’t to rebalance
trade with
25. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Gingrich threatens extinct strategy: Shut down the government” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 17, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0917/Gingrich-threatens-extinct-strategy-Shut-down-the-government
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
Then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was photographed in July, 1998, in his office at the U.S. Capitol. Twelve years later, he has re-emerged on the national stage, and threaten to shut down the government like he did in 1996. (Douglas Graham / Congressional Quarterly / Newscom / File)
Newt Gingrich is saying if Republicans win back control of Congress and reach a budget impasse with the President, they should shut down the government again….
Americans may be cynical about government but we’re proud of our system of governance. And we don’t want it to be used as a political pawn in partisan power games. That’s what Republicans forget time and again. They dislike government so much they don’t see the difference between government as a bureaucracy and democratic governance as a cherished system.
The framers of the Constitution developed checks and balances to assure one branch didn’t accumulate too much power. But they never contemplated that one party could shut down the entire governmental system if it didn’t get what it wanted.
26. “Is Lt. Governor Exploiting
SAN BRUNO, Calif. -- Republican Lt. Governor Abel Maldonado has been one of the most visible state officials in San Bruno ever since the gas line explosion and fire last week, leading some members of the California Democratic Party Tuesday to accuse Maldonado of “capitalizing on tragedy for his own political gain.”
The gain? His campaign for Lt. Governor against the Democratic Party candidate, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
On Tuesday, Maldonado signed an executive order
to help
Normally, only governors do such things. But with
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in
“It looks like probably the governor said ‘I think I can help you and advance you a bit and give you some air time,’” said UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Henry Brady….
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for Maldonado to get air time. To do all sorts of good deeds. To show that he is a caring person [and] to show he is on top of things,” said Brady….
27. “Ten hot green-energy trends to watch. From electric vehicles to technologies that convert turkey poop to electricity, green energy is the source of constant hype and buzz” (MSNBC.com, September 14, 2010); story citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39153668/ns/technology_and_science-innovation
By John Roach - msnbc.com contributor
From the rollout of sexy new electric vehicles to
technologies that convert turkey poop to electricity, green energy is the
source of constant hype and buzz. What do green-energy experts have on their
radar screen? To find out, we checked in with Dan Kammen, director of the Renewable and
Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the
(Matt
Slocum / AP)
Prices for solar energy are dropping and will keep dropping, Kammen and Pernick say. For Kammen, the trend means that solar will finally start grabbing significant market share away from energy sources such as coal and oil — and catch up to the deployment of wind power, which itself is forecast to become as big as nuclear.
Lump all three sources of energy together, and “we are now starting to talk about more than half of our energy coming from clean carbon sources,” he says, noting the caveat that nuclear has its own concerns, such as waste storage that lead to questions about its overall cleanliness….
In a “Jetsons”-like future, refrigerators will know when we’re low on items such as cheese and beer and send a message to our GPS-equipped cell phones to remind us to pick up a wedge and a six-pack the next time we walk into our favorite grocery store — and thus prevent an extra 20-mile jaunt in our 2,000-pound car for a few items. Such a future is just around the corner, Kammen says.
(VEVdrive.com)
“Smart hardware won’t solve our consumption addiction, but it will allow us to be much more efficient,” he says. “And movement of goods around is a big deal.”
Kammen and his colleagues are currently matching up energy and information technologies with a smart phone application that lets people take a virtual test drive of an electric vehicle such as the Nissan Leaf or Chevrolet Volt. The app sits on a GPS-equipped smart phone and rides along with drivers in their current car. Then, the users can go online, upload their data, and learn what their energy consumption would have been if they were driving an electric ride.
28. Robert Reich’s Blog:” Two kinds of American corporations – and their politics” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 14, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0914/Two-kinds-of-American-corporations-and-their-politics
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
In this Friday, Aug. 13, photo, a roofer works on a new home in view of One Liberty Place skyscraper in Philadelphia. Companies whose employees and customers are all or mostly Americans differ in many ways—including politically—from those whose revenue comes from abroad. (Matt Rourke / AP / File)
Some giant American corporations depend on a
buoyant American economy and a world-class industrial base in the
The first group includes national telecoms like
Verizon and AT&T that need a prosperous
The second group includes companies like Coca Cola, Exxon-Mobil, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and McDonalds, that get substantial revenues from their overseas operations…. Not surprisingly, American companies that are less dependent on American consumers have been showing the biggest profits.
So what does this mean for politics? Big
companies hedge their bets and support both Republicans and Democrats. But in
my experience, companies in the first group are more responsive to tax,
spending, and monetary policies that cause unemployment to drop and wages to
grow, and less obsessed by inflation and deficits, than are companies in the
second group. The former are also more supportive of new investments in
infrastructure and education, which improve
The problem is, more and more big companies are moving into the second category because that’s where the markets and the money are….
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton....
29. Robert Reich’s blog: “An economic tale: the tortoise and the (deep) hole” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 12, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0912/An-economic-tale-the-tortoise-and-the-deep-hole
By Robert Reich, Guest blogger
If
today’s recovery had a name, it would be the tortoise economy. (Business Wire)
…
After a typical recession, growth surges until the economy reemerges from
whatever hole it fell into and returns to its normal
growth path….
But this time it’s not happening that way. More than two and a half years after the Great Recession began, many months after we hit bottom and when in a normal “recovery” we’d expect growth to surge, the opposite is happening. Growth is slowing.
We may or may not fall into another hole, but a so-called “double dip” isn’t really the worry. The worry is we’re not getting out of the giant hole we fell into. Growth is slowing when it should be surging. Think of a tortoise trying to get out of a deep ravine, who’s just begun to scale the wall when he gets tired and goes to sleep.
As I keep saying, this isn’t your ordinary business cycle. But we’re debating fiscal policy as if it were….
The underlying problem is structural, not cyclical. There will be no return to normal because normal got us into the hole in the first place. And the normal kind of prescriptions can’t possibly get us out. Until the economy is restructured so more Americans share in its gains, the economy won’t make many gains. We’ll be forever trying to scale a wall that can’t be, because the vast majority of Americans lack the purchasing power to move upward….
[This commentary was cited by Linda Wertheimer on “Morning Edition” (NPR, September 10, 2010).]
30. “World Bank taps UC Berkeley’s Daniel Kammen” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 10, 2010); column citing DAN KAMMEN; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/10/BU801FBB6V.DTL#ixzz0zA4v6Z6F
--David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Daniel Kammen, one of UC Berkeley’s top energy experts, will guide the World Bank’s efforts on renewable power. (Christina Koci Hernandez / The Chronicle)
The World Bank announced Thursday that it has appointed one of UC Berkeley’s top energy experts, Daniel Kammen, to a new position as the organization’s renewable power “czar,” helping shape policies and guide lending worldwide.
Kammen will play a key role in setting the bank’s overall energy strategy for the next 10 years. He will also help developing countries choose the right policies and technologies to expand their use of renewable power.
“Energy use is growing rapidly in developing countries, so in terms of implementing new ideas and hardware, developing countries are where it’s at,” Kammen said. “This is really an effort to make sustainable development at the core of what the World Bank does.”
The bank funds economic development projects in poor countries, and many of those countries are interested in renewable power….
Kammen will go on leave from UC Berkeley to take the new
job, which begins in October. He’ll also move to
Kammen sees the new job as an extension of his
“This is really a time to put many of the ideas we’ve been working on here at the university into practice,” he said.
[Another story on Dan Kammen’s new job appeared in Berkeleyside; http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/09/10/kammen-takes-world-bank-post/ ]
31. Green Blog: “Q. and A.: The Renewable Energy Czar” (New York Times Online, September 14, 2010); interview with DAN KAMMEN; http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/no-either-or-the-clean-energy-czar/?partner=rss&emc=rss
By Leora Broydo Vestel
Last week the World Bank announced that it
had appointed Daniel M. Kammen, an energy policy expert who heads up the Renewable
and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the
Q. More than 1.5 billion people live without access to electricity and, as you’ve noted in your research, another billion have energy services that are either sporadic or cost-prohibitive. How do you improve energy access for the rural poor – and economic and educational opportunities – without a substantial increase in carbon emissions?
A. Thankfully we know a lot about rural mini-grids and ways to build infrastructure that utilizes existing sawmills, power plants, local gas turbines, wind farms. All of those things are really the cornerstones of sustainable energy systems at the rural and the distributed scale. So I do think we have a wide range of technologies ready to go. We’re not as far advanced on the policy side. We certainly have those tools available, and so part of what I want to do is to really integrate the lessons across hardware, software, financing and human capacity-building/knowledge-building into a strategy.
Q. What are some of the hurdles on the policy side?
A. The biggest hurdle is we still don’t value financially the environmental and social damage we’re doing with our current fossil-fuel economy. The economist’s term for that is “the externalities” – the things we’re not including in our calculus. Everything from the negative impacts of floods, sea-level rise, drought. I would like to think that at a place like the World Bank, which is focused on the bottom line, we have a natural advantage in terms of putting a price on many of these social and environmental damages. And, after all, if a banker can’t focus on the bottom line, who can? …
[Another interview with Professor Kammen on this topic appeared in <a href=“http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-13-a-chat-with-dan-kammen-about-his-new-job-at-the-world-bank/”>Grist</a>]
32. Dot Earth Blog: “Signs of New Energy at the World Bank” (New York Times Online, September 14, 2010); blog citing DAN KAMMEN; http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/signs-of-new-energy-at-the-world-bank/
By Andrew C. Revkin
I encourage you to read interviews conducted by The Times’ Green blog and David Roberts at Grist with Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the
In academia, Kammen has probed energy issues
ranging from the health impacts of smoke-spewing cooking stoves in
Here’s a particularly illuminating section from the Green blog chat, starting with Kammen’s challenge in diving into an institution that, like any bank, still has money, not human and environmental factors, as its main bottom line: …
Q. ... Why hasn’t the World Bank yet assigned a monetary value to those things?
A. The world economists don’t put a value on all of those social and environmental goods, partially because they’re hard to quantify, but also partially because our economy is fixated on one metric, which is money….
… We now need to beyond our single currency value to one where the social and environmental parts of the story are equally represented. That’s the next challenge….
The bank is a ponderous supertanker of an institution, and many determined individuals are working hard from within to shift norms…. Hopefully Kammen can help nudge the rudder a bit.
33. “New Analysis Finds Prop. 23 Would Cut Jobs and State Revenue” (UC Berkeley Law News, September 9, 2010); press release citing MICHAEL HANEMANN and DAN KAMMEN; http://www.law.berkeley.edu/9316.htm
The report,
Some of the significant measures that Prop. 23 would suspend include:
• a cap-and-trade program;
•
• an executive order requiring utilities to provide 33% of electricity from renewables by 2020; and
• AB 32’s early implementation programs that improve auto efficiency and limit industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
… Proponents of the initiative contend that
suspending AB 32 will benefit the state’s economy. But environmental economist and professor Michael Hanemann says the evidence tells a different story. “The idea that Prop. 23 would benefit
Hanemann attributes some of the job losses to the initiative’s suspension of the Renewable Portfolio Standard, which requires that 33 percent of retail electricity come from renewable sources by 2020. Daniel Kammen, professor of energy and report co-author, reached the same conclusion by creating a job projection model.
“No connection exists between
[Stories on this topic appeared in the <a
href=“http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/?q=node/8146“>California
Progress Report</a> ; and in http://www.sacbee.com/2010/09/10/3017897/climate-change-laws-suspension.html
The
34. “Reich: Corporate tax cuts not the answer” – Commentary by ROBERT REICH (Marketplace [NPR], Sept. 8. 2010); Listen to this commentary
ROBERT REICH: The economy needs two whopping corporate tax cuts right now as much as someone with a serious heart condition needs Botox. The reason businesses aren’t investing in new plants and equipment has nothing to do with the cost of capital. It’s because they don’t need the additional capacity….
Corporate lobbyists have been seeking these tax cuts, because corporations are investing in automated equipment and software. These investments are designed to boost profits by permanently replacing workers and cutting payrolls. The tax cuts Obama is proposing would, therefore, make such investments all the more profitable….
More troubling, Obama’s whopping proposed corporate tax cuts help legitimize the supply-side dogma that the economy’s biggest obstacle to growth is the cost of capital, rather than the plight of ordinary working people.
Ryssdal: Robert Reich teaches public policy at the
35. “Giving Up State Funds” (Inside Higher Ed, September 7, 2010); story citing DAVID KIRP; http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/07/ucla
By Scott Jaschik
How bad are things in
Leading public universities regularly complain
about the decline in the shares of their budgets that come from the state, even
as regulation has not lessened. But being willing to give up those funds
altogether is rare. The
… An article in the journal The Public Interest details the quest by the
The article—by David L. Kirp of the University of California at Berkeley and Patrick S. Roberts of Virginia Tech—is an early look at the impact of the changes at Darden. In many respects, the article says that Darden and its supporters were correct that the freedom from the state allowed the business school to raise far more money than it was receiving from the state—helping to boost the business school’s prestige and the quality of students it attracted.
The article, however, questions whether it is the role of a public university to make such tradeoffs, and the piece notes that many other parts of U.Va. lack the facilities or funds of the business school. By embracing the idea that those parts of the university that can bring in more money should do so, and be rewarded for doing so, Kirp and Roberts write that the university was placing ideals at risk.
“Does the academic commons that Thomas Jefferson tried to embody in his design of the Lawn—professors and students with diverse academic interests coming together in a single open space—stand a chance in this dollar-driven era? Can a university maintain this kind of intellectual community if learning becomes just another consumer good?” they write….
36. “Opposing view on another stimulus package:
Stoke the economy” (
By Robert Reich
… Last year’s stimulus package of spending and tax cuts saved about 3 million jobs by boosting demand. But it wasn’t big enough to fill the gap between what the economy can produce and what consumers are willing and able to buy.
In the second quarter of this year, economic growth slowed to 1.6%. More than 20 million Americans are now looking for work. What remains of the stimulus will save an additional half-million jobs by the end of the year, still way short of what’s needed….
Paradoxically, that long-term deficit will only worsen if government fails to boost demand in the short term by spending more. Slower growth over the next five to 10 years would mean an even larger long-term deficit as a percent of the overall economy.
Fortunately, this is the perfect time for the government to borrow to boost demand and thereby restore growth. The yield on 10-year Treasury bills is at rock bottom. Bond markets are evidently more worried about recession than inflation, as they should be. Inadequate demand is the problem. And government has to be part of the solution.
Former
Labor secretary Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at
the
37. “Christina Romer’s White House days ending” (San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 2010); column citing ROBERT REICH; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/03/BU2I1F7N64.DTL
--Andrew S. Ross
Christina Romer (Joshua Roberts / Bloomberg)
Today’s
the last day of White House service for UC Berkeley economist Christina Romer.
President Obama’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisers is set to return to teaching at UC Berkeley in the fall after what, by all accounts, was an exhausting 22 months grappling with the worst economic falling off since the Great Depression, and the fashioning of an $800 billion stimulus program that kept the country out of what Romer, 51, called “my father’s depression.” …
“She’s enormously talented and insightful, so her
departure is a real loss,” said Robert
Reich, secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, who now teaches at UC
Berkeley’s
38. “CFS Appoints Experts’ Steering Committee; Will Help Reach Better Decisions on Hunger” (States News Service, September 3, 2010); newswire citing ALAIN DE JANVRY.
The Steering Committee will appoint ad-hoc expert teams to provide independent expert knowledge on food security-related topics. Its function will be to assess and analyze the current state of food security and nutrition and its underlying causes and provide scientific and knowledge-based analysis and advice on specific policy-relevant issues….
Steering Committee Members are:
… Alain de
Janvry (
39. “How to End the Great Recession” (New York Times, September 3, 2010); op-ed by ROBERT REICH; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/opinion/03reich.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
By ROBERT B. REICH
Alain
Pilon
THIS
promises to be the worst Labor Day in the memory of most Americans. Organized
labor is down to about 7 percent of the private work force. Members of
non-organized labor — most of the rest of us — are unemployed, underemployed or
underwater. The Labor Department reported on Friday that just 67,000 new
private-sector jobs were created in August, while at least 125,000 are needed to
keep up with the growth of the potential work force.
The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working: near-zero short-term interest rates from the Fed, almost record-low borrowing costs in the bond market, a giant stimulus package and tax credits for small businesses that hire the long-term unemployed have all failed to do enough.
That’s because the real problem has to do with the structure of the economy, not the business cycle. No booster rocket can work unless consumers are able, at some point, to keep the economy moving on their own. But consumers no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services they produce as workers; for some time now, their means haven’t kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them.
This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology — things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet — made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago….
Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top….
THE Great Depression and its aftermath demonstrate that there is only one way back to full recovery: through more widely shared prosperity. In the 1930s, the American economy was completely restructured. New Deal measures — Social Security, a 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half overtime, unemployment insurance, the right to form unions and bargain collectively, the minimum wage — leveled the playing field….
By contrast, little has been done since 2008 to widen the circle of prosperity. Health-care reform is an important step forward but it’s not nearly enough.
Policies that generate more widely shared prosperity lead to stronger and more sustainable economic growth — and that’s good for everyone. The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving. That’s the Labor Day lesson we learned decades ago; until we remember it again, we’ll be stuck in the Great Recession.
Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the forthcoming “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.”
40. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Why a civil society extends unemployment benefits” (Christian Science Monitor, September 2, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0902/Why-a-civil-society-extends-unemployment-benefits
By Robert Reich
Dwayne Speller, 22, waits to
talk to a counselor at the
... The economy is so bad that the social fabric is coming undone, and what used to be merely weird economic theories have become debatable public policies.
Tonight it was Harvard Professor Robert Barro, who opined in today’s Wall Street Journal that
... It’s also true that if we got rid of lifeguards and let more swimmers drown, fewer people would venture into the water. And if we got rid of fire departments and more houses burnt to the ground, fewer people would use stoves. A civil society is not based on the principle of tough love.
In point of fact, most states provide unemployment benefits that are only a fraction of the wages and benefits people lost when their jobs disappeared. Indeed, fewer than 40 percent of the unemployed in most states are even eligible for benefits, because states require applicants have been in a full-time job longer than most jobless had one….
Anyone who bothered to step into the real world
would see the absurdity of Barro’s position. Right
now, there are roughly five applicants for every job opening in
A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy. It is to the nation’s credit that many are receiving unemployment benefits. This is good not only for them and their families but also for the economy as a whole, because it allows them to spend and thereby keep others in jobs. That a noted professor would argue against this is obscene.
41. “Why Obama’s mortgage-relief program failed” (SF Weekly, September 1, 2010); analysis citing JOHN QUIGLEY; http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-09-01/news/why-obama-s-mortgage-relief-program-failed/
By Matt Smith
At
age 64, Brenda Reed of
The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s reported in June that it would take at least three years for banks to sell the foreclosed houses they’ve withheld from the market. That doesn’t include selling delinquent mortgages on which they’ve postponed foreclosure.
If lending institutions acknowledged all the bad or near-bad debt on their books, declared asset values would plunge, causing all sorts of problems, adds U.C. Berkeley economist John Quigley, director of the university’s Program on Housing and Urban Policy.
Among those problems: Trillions of dollars’ worth
of
HAMP was touted as a cheap alternative. But it was doomed to fail.
In part, that was because the 2000s were an orgy of all kinds of borrowing — not just ill-advised mortgages. Millions of maxed-out homeowners are a bad risk, even if their mortgage payments are cut. Standard & Poor’s estimates that as many of 70 percent of HAMP participants could redefault.
“It’s deplorable,” Quigley says. “But it’s not terribly surprising that these voluntary programs don’t work.” But it has “worked,” in the sense of possibly allowing banks to postpone recording the loans on their books at decimated postrecession values….
42. Robert Reich’s Blog: “Warning: why cheaper money won’t mean more jobs” (Christian Science Monitor Online, September 1, 2010); commentary by ROBERT REICH; http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich-s-Blog/2010/0901/Warning-why-cheaper-money-won-t-mean-more-jobs
By Robert Reich
On Friday, Aug. 27, United and Continental got approval to merge. This is just one of the recent wave of big-business mergers and acquisitions that will create more profits but fewer jobs. (Tammy Bryngelson / United Airlines, Continental Airlines / AP / File)
Can the Fed rescue the economy by making money even cheaper than it already is? A debate is being played out in the Fed about whether it should return to so-called “quantitative easing” – buying more mortgage-backed securities, Treasury bills, and other bonds - in order to lower the cost of capital still further.
The sad reality is cheaper money won’t work. Individuals aren’t borrowing because they’re still under a huge debt load. ... Small businesses aren’t borrowing because they have no reason to expand. Retail business is down, construction is down, even manufacturing suppliers are losing ground.
That leaves large corporations. They’ll be happy to borrow more at even lower rates than now — even though they’re already sitting on mountains of money....
If Bernanke and company make it even cheaper to borrow, they’ll be subsidizing a third corporate strategy for creating more profits but fewer jobs — mergers and acquisitions....
What we need now is more jobs, not bigger corporations. And that means focusing on the demand side of the economy, not the supply side.
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton....
43. “ESEA Reauthorization and
Statement of Dr. Rollin Abernethy Professor and
Associate Provost University of Wyoming,
… If high school reform is to be realized, it is essential that we as a country move beyond the blame game. The community—parents, business owners and employees, government workers, civic leaders, and seniors—can and should all play a role in elevating the importance of an academically strong, effective school system. David Kirp, in the June 14, 2010 issue of The Nation outlines a “community school-philosophy” using as a model a school in upper Manhattan Island of New York. In his example, parents are involved as learners and teachers, with schools offering medical care and social services in addition to academics. Community groups and businesses are partners with the school and not only provide new funding, but also connect students to the world beyond their school and neighborhood. The traditional school day and year is substantially expanded with programs after school, on weekends and during the summer. While all the elements of this particular model may not be readily transferable, the concept overall is worthy of more widespread consideration….
Sept. 28 Robert Reich spoke on “
Sept. 29 LiveTalks LA kicked off with Robert Reich in conversation with Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal on the subject of his new book, “Aftershock: The
Next Economy and
To view a complete list
of GSPP videos, visit our Events Archive at: http://gspp.berkeley.edu/events/webcasts
Recent events viewable on UC Webcast: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events.php?group=The+Richard+%26+Rhoda+Goldman+School+of+Public+Policy
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