5-29-09

 
5-29-09
Badlands Journal
Michelle in Merced...Badlands Journal editorial board
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-05-29/007244
    Here in Merced CA, where some of us have been doing environmental work for 30 years, we supported Obama for historical reasons, held out vague hopes for national and international improvement, and stayed focused on our local issues.
    Our most powerful opponent is the University of California, which established a new campus in Merced that became an anchor tenant for the most destructive building bubble in regional history. The boom caused Merced and adjoining cities Modesto and Stockton to rise to the top of foreclosure-rate communities in the nation. In 2005, in "high bubble," we were among the least affordable (in fact Merced was considered the least affordable) housing market in the nation. Now our housing is nationally ranked among the most affordable, due to the volume of foreclosures. Meanwhile, Merced's official unemployment rate is over 20 percent this month, which means that local demand for these foreclosed bargains is dropping, not rising. Who cares of that $250,000 house of yesteryear is now on the market for $50,000 when nobody can qualify for a loan anymore and the speculators have already lost their money?
    UC, employing its enormous prestige, credibility and flak apparatus, invented whole new forms of developer propaganda to establish that campus adjacent to seasonal pasture land, redubbed "waste" land, which in fact supports our free-range cattle industry, the only relatively sustainable form of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. The pastures are also home to about 20 wildlife species federally listed as either threatened or endangered and at least two state-listed species. This land is also the watershed for the east side of Merced County. But, slap a few solar panels on campus buildings and, Voila -- a "green" campus emerges. Meanwhile, every developer and his sister-in-law with a fistful of easy money were downtown arguing before the council or the supervisors for a subdivision "because UC is here." Many of those subdivisions ring the city of Merced today, half-built, with foreclosed houses and empty lots, exposed wiring, curbs, unpaved streets and wind-torn realty banners.
    UC Merced has been sued six times (won three, lost three) and there were those in the community who, very privately, funded all those lawsuits. Those suits, however, are by no means the sum total of local attempts to defend the California Environmental Quality Act and, on occasion, the state Public Record Act, the state Brown Act of Open Meetings, the Williamson Act, and the federal Endangered Species and Clean Water acts against the depredations of finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) special interests cashing in on the establishment of UC Merced.
    A strange thing happened here last weekend, described as "magic" in a letter written to UC Merced's first graduating class that began as freshmen. The letter was written by the first UC Merced chancellor, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, who now lives far away. The letter was read by Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood, who resigned from the provost's position at UC Davis while under investigation for conflicts of interest, one of which involving Tomlinson-Keasey hiring Greenwood’s son at UC Merced. Oh well, California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi also attended the commencement and John Jr. is a vice-chancellor of UC Merced.
    The "magic" was the appearance of Michelle Obama as keynote commencement speaker. So much for having vague hopes for the nation and the world while keeping focused on local issues. The explanation for how Mrs. Obama happened to be here is equally "magical": it is alleged the graduating class achieved their goal of having the first lady address them on a 106-degree day in May by means of a massive letter-writing campaign (including 900 valentines on which the word, spirit, was spelled "sprit"), appeals to politicians, contributors and friends of the Obamas like Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, who grew up in Merced. With a decade of experience of the political deals behind this boondoggle of a campus, we’re doubtful. We’ve watched how the UC political mafia operates, particularly in tandem with the San Joaquin Valley politicos -- people like former congressmen Gary Condit, Tony Coelho and present Rep. Dennis Cardoza. To further the cause of UC Merced and developers, Cardoza launched three unsuccessful campaigns in Congress against the Endangered Species. We also note that that class of graduates may have been the most “nurtured” group of students in the history of universities, so we find it difficult to imagine they could do anything by themselves.
    One example of UC Merced political meddling at work was the expropriation of a perfectly healthy bobcat kitten by a university that cannot open its institutional trap without praising itself for environmentally correct thinking and behavior. The bobcat kitten was left in a paper bag at the City of Merced’s zoo. According to law and protocols established between the state Department of Fish & Game and wildlife rehabilitators for over 30 years, that healthy bobcat kitten was supposed to be sent to a nearby rehab facility that specialized in that species, after which it was to be released into the wild.
    It remains in the zoo, which the city may soon close for budgetary reasons, as the official, live mascot of UC Merced.
    Among the many other events that occurred that famous day, May 16, 2009, former UC Regent and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, Dolores Huerta, appeared on campus and led an "alternative commencement" for Hispanic students. Gray Davis appointed Huerta to an unexpired regent's chair; she was a staunch supporter of UC Merced; the present governor replaced her at the end of her short term, with Fred Ruiz, a San Joaquin Valley businessman whose attitude toward working people could not be more antithetical to Huerta’s.
    There was a lot of history on the speakers' stand at the commencement, including state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whom Davis served as chief of staff when Brown was governor and created the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the first such board in the country. Chairman of the UC Board of Regents, Richard Blum, husband of senior California US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, evoked the phrase that originated in the Valley more than 40 years ago, "Si, se puede," usually translated as "Yes, we can," to compliment the graduating class on its "magic," and perhaps to stir others in the audience to pay for the event, which will probably run close to $1 million, but was budgeted for $100,000. For the event, UC Merced unrolled acres of fresh turf and created an orchard of 20-foot redwood trees, not indigenous to the San Joaquin Valley and requiring much water to survive here, at least until their roots find the deep aquifer, an obstacle at UC Merced, built on hardpan. But nothing says "California" like a redwood, so we got landscaping by propaganda. We hope those graduates didn’t get an education from the same well known substance.
    Mrs. Obama praised the students for touching and moving her and her staff to accept the invitation to give her first commencement address as first lady. 
But I understand that this type of community-based letter writing campaign isn't unique to me. This community, this Merced community, employed the same strategy to help get the University of California to build the new campus here in Merced. (Applause.) Every school kid in the entire county, I understand, sent a postcard to the UC Board of Regents in order to convince them to select Merced, and I just love the fact that some of the graduates sitting this audience today participating were involved in that campaign, as well, and then they used the same strategy to get me here. That is amazing. And what it demonstrates is the power of many voices coming together to make something wonderful happen. And I'm telling you, next year's graduation speaker better watch out, because Merced students know how to get what they want. (Laughter and applause.)
    Right. And every school kid in the entire county wrote every one of those postcards. We remember the day at the state Capitol when hacks working for Condit and Cardoza, acting as hall monitors, had herded up most of the third graders in the county, all clad in "UC Merced" tee shirts, outside the governor's office on the day of an important hearing in which UC was accused of lying once again about the environmental impacts of that campus. As for many voices coming together, special interests have been able to create lobbying groups containing all the local usual suspects to go to Washington and Sacramento each year to lobby for $200 million in public funds to repair and improve infrastructure necessary because of UC Merced. So far, UC Merced has contributed one blinking stoplight at a 3-way intersection of country roads, undergraduates who complain about the poor quality of the local mall and a small fleet of buses that roam about town but do not pick up anyone not connected to UC Merced.
    Mrs. Obama equated Merced and the San Joaquin Valley with the South Side of Chicago. She dwelt on how the University of Chicago, in Hyde Park, had not related with the South Side when she was in high school, so she had not considered going there (Princeton instead), but how she'd returned to start an outreach program at the U of C for the South Side. UC Merced is, in fact, planning to build its own Hyde Park, a "university community" between itself and the city of Merced, where the number of unoccupied, foreclosed homes grows by the week. That project is redundant but redundancy doesn’t stop UC Merced, the largest developer in the San Joaquin Valley from committing public funds to it.
    Her speech ran on in this mythical vein and she praised a video the students sent to her called “We Believe," in which student voices off-camera confessed their belief in hope and in change, leadership, life, etc. but most of all, in Michelle Obama. An example of critical thinking the video was not. But Mrs. Obama loved it and Regent Chairman Blum commanded it be played on the big screen before she spoke and everybody was real moved by all the passion and such.
    One of Mrs. Obama’s themes was the future of mainly first-generation college graduates from hard-working, working-class backgrounds right here in the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, that class probably didn't contain more than dozen or two students from the Valley; most came from LA or the Bay Area. But we were in the land of myth that day, where everybody works hard, achieves and is successful if they have the character and hope, of course.
    Both Mrs. Obama and others made comments on student loans. We suspect that most UC Merced students qualify, due to low-income status, for grants rather than loans. It seems that UC keeps raising its fees and increasing grants. We don't know how this works and we doubt anyone in the state Legislature or at UC (outside of the student-aid division) does either. In fact, the valedictorian, accepted to med school next fall, punctured this myth later on by calling UC Merced a place where you could get a private education for a public-education price. Small classes and access to professors is at a premium in the mega-universities UC has built. The valedictorian was a well-spoken young man who probably got pretty good training in biology.
    Mrs. Obama told them that they were blessed to have received an elite college education and that they must remember all the people that had helped them get through college, including friends of theirs who had kept them out of trouble in high school. She told them to remember kids "that just can't get a break," who have lost their dream or never had one. She told the students to go back home and work in their communities to help others. We have the highest respect for this kind of idealism and have lived it ourselves for decades. We hope that the communities those students are returning to are not as hypocritical as Merced. Here, the top regional politician, Rep. Cardoza, has moved his family, including his wife, a badly needed physician, to Annapolis MD. She works for the University of Maryland while Cardoza leads the local whine to establish a new UC medical school in Merced.
    It was an inspiring speech. She mentioned a hero of hers, who had gone from the Bronx to an Ivy League college and then on to establish a large program for kids in Harlem. She mentioned the founder of Teach America. Mrs. Obama conjured up before our sweat-stung eyes the vision of a new Helping Elite, college-educated into belief in their own leadership. If the Obamas had not expropriated religion as surely as Bush did, we would have fallen to our knees and asked God for deliverance from a plague of unemployable college kids hustling grants to establish their upward mobility in our communities.
    Become leaders within the system and you, too could become a city council member right here in Merced and vote for projects like the new WalMart distribution center, built on a freeway interchange created for the Campus Parkway out to UC Merced, and express your leadership skills by figuring out language to persuade yourself and others that the project would not worsen air quality and would not increase asthma and respiratory illness rates for children and elders. There are hundreds of non-union jobs people might be able to live on at stake. In fact, WalMart may depress wages for warehouse work throughout our region – a boon to your contributors in the business community. Or you could express your leadership and political correctness, as was done recently on the county Planning Commission, by arguing for the legitimacy of raising fighting cocks, because it is a form of small farming. You could even get a law degree or a science PhD, stand side-by-side UC Merced planners “to make the project better,” and attempt to coerce colleagues into silence.
    Mrs. Obama's rhetoric ends by demonizing anyone who doesn't play ball to "be successful," anyone insufficiently impressed by the nearest elite. There are some in the Valley who, after performing independent, elementary reasoning processes, oppose our local elite and do not join their voices in the The Great Valley Whine: "Give us more public funds! Give us more water! Abolish all laws that stand in the way of agribusiness, its lenders and landowners! Send us a UC campus to confuse our low-income youth -- otherwise they might get angry again like they used to! Send us Michelle Obama to dazzle them with visions from elsewhere! Let our youth focus their vision upward instead of outward! Let them be blinded by the Blue and the Gold!"
    Or maybe you could hitch up to an Emersonian star, work your way up in the system, hit the jackpot and become president just in time to bail out the same banks that have plundered the entire economy of your hometown. Mrs. Obama advised the graduates that success involves compromises.
    As one disgruntled organic gardener in the region, a Nader voter of decidedly Stalinist tendencies, called President Obama: "the greatest president since Herbert Hoover." Lou Hoover was also an intelligent woman -- first woman college graduate in geology in the nation -- who helped the less fortunate and was a role model for modern women of her era.
    We were inspired although Mrs. Obama wasn't speaking to us. Her speech said: College degree = leadership = social responsibility = local activism. We are very grateful to UC Merced for the superb education it provided us in environmental law, graft, political corruption, and how it indelibly illuminated the power structure of our region. We were especially encouraged by Regent Chairman Blum's mention of "Si, se puede," a term coined by Cesar Chavez, who stopped going to school after the 8th grade. Chavez, Huerta, Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, Al Green, Dave McKay and others who lacked the UC advantage changed our communities for the better. Several of them also made great contributions to the education of workers. There have been interesting courses offered at UFW labor halls and farmworker retirement homes through the years.
    The first thing those real leaders taught us was to avoid cooption by private or government poverty programs and to form our own organizations. Today, in the Valley, the younger generation faces the profoundly corruptive force of a public/private, win/win partnership called the UC/Great Valley Center and its "leadership" programs. UC/GVC conducts a constant surveillance operation looking for any signs of independent mental energy in Valley youth. Once discovered, the victim is swept into the coils of “network,” introduced to some real rich people who get their names in the papers, and that little bulb goes out, having realized its little dream. At the federal level, Mrs. Obama mentioned a new Office of Social Innovation the president is setting up to buy off another generation of grassroots leadership. Everybody will no doubt be real smart and educated good. 
    Finally, we note the people who weren't on the stage with Mrs. Obama. The least excusable absence was Cardoza, in whose district the campus lies and who did all a politician could do to bring it to Merced. He boycotted the event, along with another Democrat and two Republican congressmen from the Valley. It was undoubtedly about the current water hysteria. The latest move by the west side growers and water districts is to launch a federal suit claiming the ESA doesn’t cover species without commercial value. Cardoza's snub had racial edge to it, something that reminded us of the Valley of our youths, when African-Americans (called something else then) did not cross the tracks from South Merced after dark. That's not to say that Cardoza is a racist; but he has no respect for the extreme emotional importance to the Valley of the Obama presidency and why many of us, having lived that history, could not resist voting for Obama, even though in Merced his lawn signs cost $10 and his headquarters was in the most obscure location in history. Cardoza sent former state Assembly Speaker Bob Herzberg to collect his chancellor's medal for him. Cardoza had swung some Blue Dogs to Herzberg, an LA Democrat, during that race for the speakership and, no doubt, funding for UC Merced was part of the deal.
    However, an alternative explanation could be offered in terms of partisan politics in Washington. The Republican delegation from the Valley, Radanovich and Nunes, could be seen as simply following the present Republican Party line, an elegantly simple, “No," while Blue Dog Democrats Cardoza and Costa project a more nuanced,“Duh?”
    Not even mentioned was UC Regent Odessa Johnson, the first African-American teacher in Modesto (hired by my former high school principal). Where was Odessa that day? Where was Bob Carpenter, the public Mr. UC Merced, a local insurance salesman who organized tirelessly for years to create the boosters to put the project over? Did he and those behind him make so much money in real estate they no longer care about the campus? He is a Republican. Johnson, a Democrat who did nothing discernible to get the campus here, got the chair on the regents instead of Carpenter. Where was Merced County dairy/developer mogul, Mike Gallo, who dedicated a wellness center to the campus in honor of his father, Joseph? Where was Merced County developer Greg Hostetler, who contributed to funding a gymnasium? Where was a representative of the Kolligian family? Fresno developer and former UC Regent Leo Kolligian and his wife contributed heavily for the library. Where was Dr. Hanimireddy? Lakireddy who donated $1 million to improve an auditorium that bears his name? Where was state Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, who represents the UC Merced district? She's a Democrat, unlike state Sen. Jeff Denham, a Republican, who didn't show up either. Where were the county supervisors, who enthusiastically supported every bogus environmental document concocted by UC's consultants? Where was the mayor of Merced? The city council approved, against its own ordinance, supplying water and sewer to the campus and has not seemed to mind much that UC never paid them for it. Perhaps, if local government comment letters on the environmental impact report for the new town “university community” development project are any indication, they finally woke up and realized they have a real expensive, high-maintenance, 900-pound ugly baby on their hands – a baby that will never grow up. 
    Where are the various superior and state appellate court judges that ruled so graciously on behalf of the UC Merced in environmental cases? Where was the executive director of the county Farm Bureau, who for years peddled the line that the state Agricultural Preservation Act (Williamson Act) was mitigation for UC Merced? Where was former Gov. Gray Davis, whose administration railroaded the campus over the supine wills of state and federal resource agency officials? Where was a representative from Merced-based County Bank? Oops, bankrupt. Where was that bright young fellow, chair of the Merced Chamber of Commerce and local representative of Citigroup a couple of years ago? Gone.
    Where were US senators Feinstein and Boxer? Where were the governor and his Kennedy wife, Maria? In some far, far cooler place, no doubt.
    Bob Gallo (Gallo Wine Co.) and his wife, Marie, were on stage. The Gallos are funding a school of management for the campus and donated a reconditioned Steinway grand piano.
    Michelle Obama's commencement speech was the greatest day UC Merced and the citizens of Merced may ever see outside of the day the Queen of England came through on her way to Yosemite and one of her entourage collided with a car, killing the passengers. The governor showed up at the In and Out Burger once during a campaign, but disappointed the girls behind the counter by being so “chaparito” (short).
    I watched the commencement downtown on a monstrous TV monitor at the corner of Main and Canal streets. A Florida firm won the bid to supply the monitor for an event given by a university that claimed that it would link satellite campuses throughout the Valley by the latest multimedia technology. I was surrounded by the usual crowd of Mercedians, poor to middling, ethnically various, polite, interested, in fact totally rapt. When the event was over the overheated crowd abruptly dispersed while two homeless guys on bicycles gleaned all the plastic and aluminum out of the overflowing trash barrels, I went down the street to the corner of Main and Martin Luther King, Jr. and listened to Cynthia Huddleston and the Juke Joint Jokers belt out the fine old R&B for which this town has been famous since WWII.
500 times on the blackboard…Badlands Journal editorial board…5-26-09
http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2009-05-26/007241
   Members of the Badlands Journal editorial board wish to apologize to our readers for the spelling in yesterday's post, originally titled, "Socery." As soon as we discovered it, we changed it to try to restore our dignity. The offending, spelling-disadvanted editor is currently halfway through his assignment, writing the word, "Sorcery," 500 times on the Badlands blackboard.
   "You make fun of somebody misspelling a really complicated word like "Chihuahua" (spelled "Chiewahwah" on a sign observed in town) and those young scientists out at UC Merced for spelling "spirit" "sprit," and you can't spell a perfectly ordinary three-syllable English word!" said the outraged board to the offender. "Judge not, if you cannot spell it! Your membership on the editorial board is hanging by a thread."
   The offender offered no explanation, hung his head, accepted his punishment and is now covering the blackboard with "sorcery." We hope that this exercise will exorcise the Misspelling Demon running free in town from Badlands and we urge local journalists and PR practitioners to take prophylactic action. Remain calm but hang dictionaries in every doorway.
Badlands Journal editorial board
Merced Sun-Star
Acclaimed author to deliver keynote address...Sun-Star
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/871000.html
LIVINGSTON -- Author and journalist Mark Arax will deliver the keynote address for the "Taste of the River Valley" dinner at Riverdance Farms in Livingston on Saturday.
Earlier that day, Arax will sign copies of his new book, "West of the West," at Riverdance Farms. He'll also do a reading/signing at Barnes & Noble in Merced from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
"I'm looking forward to coming to Merced, where there is a real agrarian movement trying to save farmland from the developer's plow," said Arax, a former Los Angeles Times senior writer. "If we're going to prevent this Valley from becoming another Los Angeles, it's going to be the farmers of Merced County who will be leading the way."
"West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State," is Arax's third nonfiction book. It examines the land and people of modern-day California. Six of the 11 dramas in Arax's collection take place in the San Joaquin Valley, including three pieces that focus on farmers and farmworkers and developer corruption.
Los Angeles Times praised Arax's "intimate dramas" shaped by the "intense subtleties of his writing."
For 20 years as a journalist, his stories exposed human rights abuses and official cover-ups in California prisons. They also helped change state laws that govern air quality and the treatment of farm workers in the fields.
His first book, "In My Father's Name," is a memoir that weaves the history of his Armenian family and hometown of Fresno into his decades-long search to find the men who murdered his father in 1972.
His second book, "The King of California," tells the story of the Boswell farming family and the building of a secret American empire in the heart of California. Named one of the top 10 books of the year by the L.A. Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, "The King of California" won a 2004 California Book Award and the 2005 William Saroyan International Writing Prize.
Arax, who lives in Fresno, is the senior policy director for the California Senate Majority leaders and teaches literary nonfiction part-time at Claremont McKenna.
Loose Lips: Grammar pitfalls everywhere
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/871002.html
It's time for honorary degrees to be handed out. They're going out faster than North Korean missiles. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is now the Doctor-nator, courtesy of UCLA. (As if his ego wasn't big enough.) Wannabe-in-Chief Hillary Clinton was bestowed a Yale degree.
The Prez, meanwhile, was told nope by Arizona State University because he hasn't achieved enough yet. Maybe Hillary was right.
Well, even Loose Lips received an honorary degree of sorts. We were inducted as an honorary member of Help All Teachers of English, or HATE (the acronym is negative, the purpose lofty, the members anonymous.)
"Editor," the letter reads, "would you like to join the Crusade? An occasional filler could be a REMINDER for those wanting to know. Your most humorous reporter could offer the city/county teachers an open forum or a competition."
The letter goes on to explain the difference between it's/its, accept/except and -- everyone's favorite -- they're/their/there.
While Lips make errors here and there, we know it's a grand honor to accept this responsibility. Grammar crimes aren't something we take lying down. (Or is it laying down?)
Red pens -- stat!
It just so happened we were honored the same week Merced City Manager John Bramble released the proposed budget, which includes an essay about the coming of the year, which is awfully grim. And it's about bad news.
Let's just say Lips hopes the new head honcho is better with numbers than words. And we still can't figure out why he hates commas.
Check out this doozy: "As the City Council budget priorities were developed the recognition that the City would have a reduced work force was given consideration as we proceeded into the new budget year."
And this: "The (Fire) Department will loose a Fire Inspector II and six firefighter positions through the overall downsizing the City has implemented over the past 12 months."
Perhaps this ran in the paper when the city was unloading surplus property: "For Sale: English stylebook. Never used."
For whom the budget tolls
Just days after digesting that piece, we got a public letter from Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani about the budget crisis. "California is a less prosperous place than it was a year ago," she wrote. "People are making less money. Our homes are worth less. And we're all spending less shopping."
You could say it sounds as if it were written by an elementary school student. It may have been. The 400-word essay falls at the fifth-grade level based on the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test.
In comparison, this Lips column comes in at an eighth-grade level. Bramble's budget message is at the 22nd grade level.
We're thinking Galgiani (or her ghost writer) must have been reading some Ernest Hemingway to string together such succinct sentences as this: "It hurt them. Real and unbearable pain. Grown men cried."
That's about Republicans watching Sen. Abel Maldonado approve tax hikes.
Letter: Outside interests...JOEL KNOX, chairman, Golden Valley Neighborhood Association Merced
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/v-print/story/871024.html
Editor: The Sun-Star's May 2 editorial about the proposed Wal-Mart distribution center is on the right track.
"(Wal-Mart) must provide mitigation for those concerns that warrant and need solutions," wrote the editorial board.
Unfortunately, the editorial board is worried about "opposition ... fueled by out-of-town, anti-Wal-Mart interests."
Many southeast Merced residents remain opposed to the project, and many more across Merced have expressed concern.
The real concerns about the proposed distribution center that truly "warrant and need solutions" have been made very clear by residents over the past three years. They include local hiring, air quality, traffic, health, and accountability to those of us who will be most affected by the project.
Who will address these concerns? We know it won't be Wal-Mart.
Take a look at the comments submitted by Wal-Mart's law firm on the draft environmental impact statement. The comments weren't about how to strengthen their much-publicized environmental efforts or guarantee benefits to the community, but how to get out of any commitment to their fair share of mitigation.
They argued that even the inadequate measures proposed in the draft EIS are somehow not "feasible" for the largest corporation in the world.
The project's real impacts on our neighborhood should decide mitigation, not Wal-Mart's ideas of "feasibility."
Since Wal-Mart won't do it voluntarily, we need our City Council to negotiate adequate conditions to the project that guarantee us jobs and a decent quality of life. Decades of poor planning and now Wal-Mart have put Merced residents in a painful position: trade the health and well-being of our families and the future of our neighborhood for the hope of some jobs.
With some political backbone, we don't have to choose one over the other; we can have both.
Letter: Don't cut Cal Grants...ADRIANA CERVANTES, Baldwin Park
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/v-print/story/871016.html
Editor: Regarding Gov. Arnold Schwarze- negger's plan to eliminate the Cal Grant program and cut $600 million from the state's public universities.
As a student at UC Merced, the Cal Grant award is a big deal for me. I really don't have any money for school from my parents, so any money I can get my hands on is necessary. My Cal Grant is my biggest source of money for my education. If it is cut, I would have no choice but to drop out of UC Merced.
Being the first of my family to attend a university is something I am really proud of. I wouldn't want to be the first in my family to drop out of school.
Like a lot of my fellow classmates, I was told that if I maintained good grades, helped the community and was a good individual, I would not have to worry about paying for school.
Sadly, the governor's proposal is really stressing me out at the moment.
I understand that we as a state are going through economic hardships, but we should not take money away from what is important for our future: our education.
Letter: Students will lose...ADRIANA HERNANDEZ, Merced
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/v-print/story/870996.html
Editor: By eliminating the Cal Grants, the governor is keeping more than 200,000 students from continuing their studies. I'm one of those students.
The Cal Grant is the only type of financial aid that I receive. It has helped me pay my tuition. Without this money, I won't be able to go to school. If I can't go to school, I won't be able to find a job that will help me financially support my family.
I feel that if Cal Grants are eliminated, California's future is going to go downhill even more. It's already hard for people to find jobs. Now it's going to be hard to go to school and find a decent job that does not require a degree.
It seems like education is not important to the governor. This is causing many of us to think about moving out of California and continuing our studies in a state that does want their citizens to get an education.
If the governor doesn't want California to be abandoned, he should rethink about eliminating Cal Grant.
Letter: Personal story...ALEXANDER PETROSKY, Merced
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/v-print/story/871003.html
Editor: I would like to tell you my story. My mother was abandoned with four children when my father left. I am the third child.
In order to support us, my mother took on three additional jobs while making sure we attended school and were well behaved. My older brother and sister soon went off to college. Before she knew it, it was my time.
My siblings already were on financial aid and there was no money to send me to college. If it were not for Cal Grants, I would not currently be on my way to achieve a degree in human biology and international relations.
Right out of college, I hope to attend medical school and become a neurologist.
Although my life may not have been as rough as others, there can be one lesson that I have learned in life. My mother always repeated to us, "I don't want your children to have the life you had. I want you to go to college and make a good life for your children."
I am writing because my little brother is about to graduate high school and is looking to attend San Francisco State University in the fall. I hope he will have a chance at a successful future.
Letter: Cal Grant concerns...JAVIER MIRAMONTES, Merced---5-28-09
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/180/v-print/story/869055.html
Editor: Last Thursday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's finance officials announced that they are considering eliminating the Cal Grant program and cutting another $600 million from the state's public universities.
As a student at UC Merced, who receives financial aid, I am deeply concern about this proposal.
Many low-income students are in college because of the Cal Grant; by eliminating this, the governor will create a huge burden for us students.
I am the first person in my family to attend college, and this is something I am proud of.
My most important issue is that people like me, who do not come from a wealthy family, can have the oppor- tunity to attend college and be able to better our living standards. We have dreams, we have goals and we aspire to be great.
I understand that California is going through a tough time right now but education should be a priority for all Californians. It is to our benefit that we educate the mas- ses. In high school, I was told that attending a four-year university could be in my future if I received good grades despite of my economic status. Now I'm wondering if we can still say that to the future college-bound students.
San Francisco Chronicle
Calif. bill limits costs in public records fights...Thursday, May 28, 2009
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/28/state/n162330D27.DTL&type=printable
Sacramento, CA (AP) --The cost of fighting for access to public records and meetings would be limited under a bill approved by the Senate.
Sen. Leland Yee's bill would bar judges from ordering plaintiffs to pay governments' legal costs in open records and meetings lawsuits. Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, says high costs have "a chilling effect" on such public interest lawsuits.
For instance, the nonprofit Center for Public Forum Rights near Sacramento paid $80,000 in government attorneys' costs last year after it sued Orange Unified School District for allegedly altering video of a public meeting.
Newspaper publishers and the American Civil Liberties Union are among supporters. There was no opposition.
The bill was approved 34-0 Thursday. It now goes to the Assembly.
On the Net: Read SB786 at www.sen.ca.gov  
California State Senate...BILL ANALYSIS...SB786...THIRD READING...Amended 5-20-09
http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/sen/sb_0751-0800/sb_786_cfa_20090520_135905_sen_floor.html
Road-building halted in U.S. forests...Matthew Daly, Associated Press
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/29/MNMT17SUM8.DTL&type=printable
Washington - -- The Obama administration is ordering a one-year moratorium on road-building and other development on about 50 million acres of remote national forests.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issued a directive Thursday reinstating for one year most of a Clinton-era ban against new road construction and development in national forests. The 2001 rule banned road-building and logging in more than 58 million acres of remote national forests, mostly in the West.
Conflicting court decisions issued since then have left the so-called roadless rule's legal status in doubt.
Environmental groups consider the road ban crucial, because road-building is often the first step toward logging, drilling, mining and other development in the forest backcountry. Critics of the ban say roads are needed to fight wildfires and log small trees that otherwise could serve as fuel for catastrophic fires.
Vilsack said his interim directive - which takes effect immediately - will provide clarity that should help protect national forests until the Obama administration develops a long-term roadless policy. The directive gives Vilsack sole decision-making authority over all proposed forest management or road construction projects in designated roadless areas in all states except Idaho.
Idaho was one of two states that developed its own roadless rule under a Bush administration policy giving states more control over whether and how to block road-building in remote forests. More than 9 million acres of roadless national forests in Idaho will remain under state control, Vilsack said.
Colorado was the only other state to write its own roadless plan. The state has been working with the Forest Service to clarify language and hoped to complete work in the next few months on a plan to protect more than 4 million acres of roadless national forests.
The federal directive takes precedence over the state's efforts for now, said Chris Mather, a spokeswoman for Vilsack.
But Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said the state will continue to work on its roadless plan. Ritter, a Democrat, said Colorado's roadless rule is "consistent with the objectives of the Obama administration, and therefore I look forward to continuing to work with the secretary as we finalize the Colorado rule in the coming months."
Rick Cables, head of the regional Forest Service office in Denver, said Vilsack's announcement was not intended to stop Colorado's process. The regional office will continue working with Colorado on the plan, Cables said, adding that any plan the state submits will need Vilsack's approval.
Confusion over the roadless rule extended beyond Colorado and Idaho.
In alternately upholding and overturning portions of the 2001 Clinton rule, federal courts "have created confusion and made it difficult for the U.S. Forest Service to do its job," Vilsack said in a statement. The new directive will ensure that the administration can consider activities in the affected areas while long-term roadless policy is developed and court cases move forward, he said.
The directive's most immediate effect is to halt plans for road construction in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. About 35 miles of roads are proposed as part of several timber sales pending in the Tongass, the nation's largest federal forest.
Obama's proposed "time out" is "needed and welcome," said Trip Van Noppen, president of the environmental group Earthjustice. "Roadless areas are important as the last remaining pristine areas in America, and they are a great bulwark in how we will protect our environment in an era of climate change."
Need-based student aid in jeopardy...Kathleen Pender
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/28/BUD117S4UB.DTL&type=printable
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's draconian plan to phase out the state-funded Cal Grant program for lower-income college students starting this fall has students, schools and financial aid advocates in shock.
"This is a very theatrical and distressing threat," says Lauren Asher, acting president of the Institute for College Access & Success.
Cal Grants are need-based financial aid awards that go to undergraduate students attending public or private colleges in California who meet certain income and grade-point-average requirements. The grants, which go only to state residents, are fairly generous and do not have to be repaid.
They provide up to the full fees at public universities - $7,788 at University of California campuses and $3,354 at California State University schools. Low-income students attending community colleges, who typically pay no fees, can get up to $1,551 per year in cash for transportation, books and living expenses. Those attending private colleges in California can get up to $9,708 in tuition payments.
Most students who qualify have already received their Cal Grant offers for the 2009-10 school year.
The governor's proposal, released Tuesday, would do two things. First, it would eliminate all new Cal Grants. About 118,000 students who were offered Cal Grants for the first time this fall would have their offers rescinded, according to the California Student Aid Commission, which administers Cal Grants.
Students who got them in the past would continue getting them if they still qualify. But under the second part of the proposal, Cal Grant awards would no longer go up to match fee increases at the state's public universities. If the plan passes, about 82,000 students returning to UC and CSU campuses in the fall would have their grants rolled back to last year's level - $7,126 at UC and $3,048 at CSU campuses.
The proposed changes would save the state more than $200 million in fiscal 2009-10 and more than $450 million the following year.
Although the governor has attempted to trim the Cal Grant program in the past, this is the first time he has proposed dismantling it.
"We are trying to process the magnitude" of the proposal, says Allison Jones, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs for the CSU system. "It defies comprehension how we can (implement) this reduction in a two-month period of time for a class that has already been admitted."
Alternate plans
Schools are scrambling to formulate plans in case the Legislature goes along with the governor's proposal, or some version of it.
"We are coming up with various different scenarios as to how to react to this huge loss," says Nancy Coolidge, the UC system's coordinator of student financial support.
Rather than have new students absorb the entire loss, the UC system could reallocate its own financial aid pool. For example, middle-income students who had been receiving grants from the pool (which is funded in part with a portion of fees paid by students) might have some of their grant replaced with loans so that more grants could go to low-income students who lost Cal Grants.
Another option could be increasing fees so that more money goes into the pool. Coolidge stressed that UC has made no decisions. "Many ideas will go forward to the regents," she says.
Students are also fretting.
Thomas Lewis, an aspiring medical student attending College of San Mateo, was awarded a first-time Cal Grant of $1,551 for the coming school year and $7,788 for 2010-11, when he plans to attend UC Berkeley. But if the governor's proposal is approved, he would lose both grants and might have to transfer to a cheaper university. "I would have to look at all my options and then choose something I could afford," he says.
Although all states are facing budget woes, most are not planning to cut need-based aid.
"This is not happening everywhere," says Tom Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. "Almost all other states protect need-based grant programs and expand them during recessions." To compensate, "they cut school budgets with the expectation they can raise tuition. This is why we were all so shocked that the governor was going to cut this first. Maybe he is making a political statement. He's going to galvanize a lot of opposition."
Schwarzenegger is also proposing cuts to the UC and CSU budgets and eliminating funding for UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
The Cal Grant program, started in 1955, has many supporters who will fight hard against the governor's proposal. But the program also helps show how the state got into the budget mess it's in.
Before 2001, the state allocated funds each year and the number of grants depending on funding.
Entitlement program
In 2000, when the state was running a surplus, the state decided to convert it into an entitlement program. Students were guaranteed a Cal Grant if they graduated from a California high school with a minimum GPA and met the income requirement. The budget increased to cover the number of grants awarded.
Compared with other states, California is relatively generous with need-based aid.
Mortenson measured how much each state spent on need-based aid as a percentage of federal need-based aid. California's ratio was 51.4 percent, 10th-highest in the nation and up from 35 percent 10 years ago.
"California has made a strong commitment to need-based grants," Mortenson says.
We'll see if the commitment can survive the recession.
Contra Costa Times
World's largest fusion facility today celebrates long, difficult road to official opening...Suzanne Bohan
http://www.contracostatimes.com/top-stories/ci_12471753?nclick_check=1
The challenging pursuit of fusion is nothing new to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists. In the lab's early days in the 1950s, weapons designers successfully developed the fearsome hydrogen — or fusion — bomb, many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. In 1952, the lab joined a program called Project Sherwood that attempted to control the force of fusion to create a virtually unlimited source of electrical energy.
Today, the lab enters the newest chapter in its fusion quest with the official opening of the multipurpose National Ignition Facility, 15 contentious years after the project's approval. The massive, dark building on the eastern edge of Livermore — not far from hillsides dotted with grazing cows — covers the footprint of three football stadiums. With 192 lasers, it ranks as the world's largest laser fusion facility.
The opening ceremony of the facility, called NIF, is expected to draw 3,500 and scheduled speakers include Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and scores of other dignitaries.
"The dedication of NIF marks a new era," said Ed Moses, principal associate director of NIF. "Through NIF we have a path to fusion ignition, the same force that powers our sun and the stars. NIF will play a key role in ensuring our national security, opening new frontiers in basic science and possibly providing the pathway to fusion energy."
"I think it's wonderful," said Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley physics professor and member of a NIF advisory panel. "What other reaction could there be?"
On the northwest corner of national weapon lab, however, longtime opponents of the project intend to gather throughout the day. They'll have "an 'evidence table' with documents demonstrating that NIF is related to nuclear weapons design," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, a watchdog group that monitors the lab, which is the birthplace of numerous types of nuclear weapons over the decades.
The lab insists no new weapons design work is under way. Instead, Moses said a critical NIF mission entails testing the reliability of the nation's 5,000 nuclear warheads, to ensure they serve as a credible deterrent against attack.
Much of the public acclaim for NIF, however, focuses on its potential to provide the research for ultimately creating fusion power plants. For six decades, scientists have chased the dream of fusion power, as theoretically it could provide an inexhaustible source of energy using seawater as fuel, freeing countries from reliance on imported energy sources or environmentally-damaging fuel extraction methods. Now fusion's potential for generating power without releasing greenhouse gases burnishes its appeal.
As the name implies, fusion ignition is NIF's mission. Ignition means that a fusion reaction — the fusing of two hydrogen atoms — generates enough energy to sustain fusion reactions in surrounding fuel. So far, fusion reactions have been fleeting — and driven by external sources.
The challenges sound straightforward, but are exceedingly complex: Heat the hydrogen fuel to millions of degrees, propagate the reaction, and confine the reacting material in a stable state. Plasma physics is a field devoted to this endeavor.
"There's always been one problem with fusion, and that's that Mother Nature has not been totally cooperative," said Moses. "That's why it's taken a protracted effort to sort it out. That's why we had to build the NIF to finally do it."
The project cost $3.5 billion, Moses said. Kelley and others dispute that figure, however, saying that figure accounts for the building, not other costs. She puts the price at more than $5 billion. It's also opening six years behind schedule, and quadruple its original projected cost. The facility now employs 1,000.
NIF follows two other "inertial confinement fusion programs" at the Livermore lab, starting with the Shiva project in 1977 and followed by the NOVA facility in 1984. The latter was marred by a calculation error that rendered it technically impossible to achieve ignition, and its scope was scaled back. NIF replaces NOVA, and it builds on the knowledge gained from previous projects.
But doubters say NIF takes too big a technical leap from its predecessor, and that lab officials pushed it through despite a lack of rigorous peer review and after stacking scientific assessment panels in its favor.
For example, a successful 1997 lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Tri-Valley CAREs and another plaintiff against the Department of Energy, which funds the lab, banned the agency from relying upon or disseminating data from a National Academies of Science committee studying NIF's likelihood of achieving ignition. A U.S. District Court issued the ruling on the grounds that the agency violated a federal law requiring balanced representation in committees that federal agencies rely upon for advice, and open access to the committees' meetings and documents.
And a 2005 review by an independent scientific advisory group called JASON concluded that ignition at NIF in 2010 was "unlikely," although the group added advice for providing "a reasonable road map for progress toward ignition after the initial attempts." Quoting that report's findings, former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., vented his frustrations with the NIF project during a 2006 Senate committee hearing with the Energy Department agency that runs the Livermore Lab.
"I stand by watching and waiting and hoping that it works," Domenici said at the hearing. "It is one of the biggest gambles I've ever voted for."
"JASON said it was unlikely, they didn't say it was impossible," responded Thomas D'Agostino, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration. "We think the first credible ignition experiment will be done in 2010," he said Thursday.
But Stephen Bodner, head of the laser fusion program at the Naval Research Laboratory from 1975 to 1999, counts himself among the doubters. Bodner also worked at the Livermore Lab from 1964 to 1974 in its fusion programs. "Everything would have to work according to optimistic scaling laws, and that seems unlikely," he said.
What galls Kelley, with Tri-Valley CAREs, is the new focus on fusion energy as a critical aim of NIF, when nuclear weapons work was the reason Congress approved the project.
"I've seen NIF marketed three different ways through three different administrations," Kelley said. "But the laser itself hasn't changed."
"Suddenly with Obama and global warming, it's somehow going to solve the energy crisis," she said.
D'Agostino said that NIF won't be designed to produce new nuclear weapons, that it's a question of "semantics" in that debate. Kelley said the facility will be used to add upgrades to the existing weapons — a form of new weapons work, in her view. But D'Agostino said that's a critical step for ensuring the reliability of the warheads.
The simulated nuclear warheads testing program that NIF will conduct provides a critical means of reducing the number of nuclear weapons, said Muller, with UC Berkeley. U.S. presidents face tremendous pressure to resume nuclear testing, he said. The nation hadn't conducted an underground nuclear test since 1992.
"This is a way of reducing them in reality by assuring that the few nuclear weapons we have left will be reliable, and by eliminating the need for (underground) testing," he said.
But Bodner, who says that the lasers have never met their original design specifications, wonders whether NIF can provide reliable simulated weapons testing.
"The bigger question is, if the lab cannot face up to NIF's failure to meet necessary specifications, then how can they be entrusted to maintain our enduring nuclear weapons stockpile?" Bodner asked.
D'Agostino, though, said the enthusiasm over NIF's opening among scientists is palpable. "It's hard to contain the excitement among the scientists. They never thought they'd get to this day."
Los Angeles Times
Program to refurbish aging nuclear warheads faces setbacks
Technical problems and an erosion of scientific expertise are blamed for delays in the effort to replace thousands of parts that have aged since the bombs left the factory decades ago...Ralph Vartabedian
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-broken-warheads29-2009may29,0,6683665,print.story
A decadelong effort to refurbish thousands of aging nuclear warheads has run into serious technical problems that have forced delays and exacerbated concerns about the Energy Department's ability to maintain the nation's strategic deterrent.
The program involves a type of warhead known as the W76, which is used on the Navy's Trident missile system and makes up more than half of the deployed warheads in the U.S. stockpile.
The refurbishment program is aimed at replacing thousands of parts that have aged since the bombs left the factory 20 and 30 years ago.
The $200-million-a-year program is a cornerstone of America's nuclear deterrent strategy, and the Energy Department has been under growing pressure from the military and Congress to meet tough deadlines to get the weapons ready.
In February, the department's National Nuclear Security Administration announced that the "first refurbished W76 nuclear warhead had been accepted into the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile by the Navy."
But no delivery was ever made. The warhead is in pieces inside a production cell at the Energy Department's Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, according to an engineer at the facility.
The delay in retrofitting the warheads appears to validate long-standing concerns about an erosion of technical expertise at the Energy Department, as Cold War-era scientists and engineers retire and take with them detailed knowledge about the bombs.
Although the nation's nuclear weapons are functional and reliable, the W76 issue represents one of the most serious setbacks in the nuclear weapons program at least since the end of the Cold War and raises questions about the future, several experts told The Times.
"I wouldn't say the deterrent has been affected at all," said Philip Coyle, a former deputy director at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and former assistant secretary of Defense. "It is, however, a reminder that expertise about nuclear weapons is a precious thing and needs to be maintained."
He said the W76 problem underscored concerns experts have long raised about maintaining nuclear weapons decades after they were designed, manufactured and tested.
As the nation reduces the size of its stockpile under treaty agreements with Russia, he said, the reliability of the remaining weapons becomes more important.
Damien LaVera, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the department had not lost its crucial skills, but he acknowledged that retaining experienced weapons scientists and training a new generation of scientists were "an ongoing concern."
At issue with the W76, at least in part, is a classified component that was used in the original weapon but that engineers and scientists at the Energy Department's plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., could not duplicate in a series of efforts over the last several years.
The component, known by the code word "fogbank," is thought to be made of an exotic material and is crucial to a hydrogen bomb reaching its designed energy level in the microseconds before it blows apart.
The W76 is designed to release energy equal to about 100 kilotons of TNT, through both fission and fusion of atoms.
When it came time to make new batches of fogbank for the refurbishment program, the current workforce was unable to duplicate the characteristics of the batches made in the 1970s and 1980s, according to a March report by the Government Accountability Office.
"I don't know how this happened that we forgot how to make fogbank," Coyle said. "It should not have happened, but it did."
Given the problems, the technical staff at the Pantex plant was stunned by the Energy Department announcement in February that the warhead had been delivered to the Navy, according to an engineer who spoke on condition of anonymity.
B&W Pantex, the private company that operates the plant, was still awaiting delivery of a classified part from another facility and cannot assemble the warhead, the engineer said.
Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss told The Times on Thursday: "We have not received delivery of any refurbished W76 warheads. The answer is none."
LaVera defended the accuracy of the February announcement, saying a federal council had decided to accept the final design of the weapon and therefore it was technically a part of the stockpile.
The failure of the Energy Department to actually deliver a W76 was brought to the attention of The Times by the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based watchdog group that has long expressed concern about poor performance at the nation's weapon sites.
"NNSA gets away with producing shoddy work . . . and even lying to the public," said Danielle Brian, the group's executive director. "Our confidence in the stockpile cannot depend on lies."
The technical problems with the W76 were also partially disclosed in the report from the GAO, which said the Energy Department had failed to "effectively manage cost, schedule and technical risks" not only on the W76 program but on another refurbishment effort for a warhead known as the B61.
In the case of the B61, the Energy Department boasted that it had completed the job ahead of schedule and under cost, even though it sharply reduced the number of bombs that it rebuilt and curtailed the scope of the work on each bomb, the GAO said. The cost of refurbishing each bomb doubled, the office said.
LaVera said all issues with fogbank had been resolved. The only remaining W76 issue involves potential minor defects in its arming, fusing and firing system, the safety controls that prepare a nuclear weapon for detonation.
He said the existing design of the arming system had been certified, though the department was continuing to examine the issue.
"It is inaccurate to say that we are unable to ship the weapons because there is an issue or problem," LaVera said.
Not everybody agrees that the fogbank problem raises broad concerns about a loss of expertise.
Since the late 1990s, the nation has embarked on a program to invest billions of dollars in scientific research to keep the old weapons viable.
The issue is highly sensitive because many arms control advocates worry that such a loss could become a rationale for a resumption of nuclear testing.
The Energy Department's scientific program to support the stockpile "has done very well so far. Most people would say it has been a terrific success," said Sydney Drell, a nuclear weapons expert at Stanford University.
The department plans to deliver the first batch of W76s in late fall, LaVera said.
That would put it about two years behind schedule, a delay that has caused logistical problems for the Navy, the GAO said.
It is not yet clear how long it will take for the department to refurbish all 2,000 warheads in its current plan, but the process of gradually taking warheads out of service, refurbishing them and returning them to service could take an additional 10 years.