News

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    June Trigger; August Cap

    Byadmin

    Note: This posting has been updated with a report at the very bottom indicating UC is not included in the pension deal.   First we had a trigger cut as part of the state budget enacted in June.  Now we are about to hear about a pension cap.  According to various news reports, the legislative leaders will announce later today what they are going to do with Governor Brown’s pension proposals.  They have apparently dropped his hybrid idea of a mix of defined benefit and defined contribution and are sticking with defined benefit.  But some kind of cap will also…

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    LA Business Journal Editorial on the UCLA Hotel: Shrink It!

    Byadmin

    UCLA Hotel Reservations: Editorial (excerpt) Charles Crumpley, Editor, LA Business Journal,  August 27, 2012 …(M)any businesses are fine with the conference center. It’s the hotel they have reservations about. They fear it’ll bottle up the visitors. Since conference goers will only have to go upstairs to their rooms, they won’t need to walk to a nearby hotel. That means they’ll be far less likely to dine or drink or watch a movie in Westwood. …And the nearby hotels? Well, you can imagine they hate UCLA’s proposed hotel. For one thing, there’ll be plenty of rooms at the inn – 250…

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    More Sausage, Sacramento Style

    Byadmin

    A couple of days ago, we provided some insights into the sausage making of a bill in the legislature that would lower tuition with revenue from closing a corporate tax loophole. Today’s LA Times carries an interesting article on the sausage making process behind the governor’s tax initiative on the November ballot, the initiative the Regents have endorsed. Basically, the article looks at the sources of funding for the campaign.  The theme is that various large firms in industries that might be hit by proposals for specific taxes (such as oil, liquor, and soft drinks) if the initiative doesn’t pass…

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    UCLA History: Rheingold Loser

    Byadmin

    Rheingold was a regional beer in the New York City area for decades until the brewery went out of business in the mid-1970s.  As a promotion, it sponsored a “Miss Rheingold” contest as the pictures on the left indicate. (The label was revived by another company in the 1990s and apparently the contest is being revived, too.) In the 1963 contest, a UCLA grad was one of the six finalists. She is one of the six in the black and white photo. Which one is not known.  And she didn’t win. (The actual winner is shown in the picture on…

  • You might want to check out the cheap textbook website for errors

    Byadmin

    The San Francisco Chronicle today has an article about a website that is supposed to give students alternative options, i.e., cheaper prices, for buying assigned textbooks.  But the article notes that the site has some problems.  It may give a price for other than the latest edition of the assigned book.  And it omits Amazon as a possible source. I tried the website for my two departments, management and public policy.  For whatever reason, it had listings for the former but not the latter.  It picks up any assigned books for the departments and courses it does list, whether they…

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    Could the legislature pass a last-minute tax with revenue for cutting tuition? A look at the legislative sausage factory

    Byadmin

    It seemed improbable a bill of that kind could pass until recently, although we have included some reporting about one such bill in two prior posta on this blog.  (Scroll back to August 14 and 15 for those posts.)  And the story of how the legislative sausage is (or might be) made is complicated and involves a bunch of seemingly-unrelated elements.  But there appears to be at least a chance now for the bill to pass.  So let’s start with a cast of characters: John Pérez is speaker of the state assembly.  He is the sponsor of a bill that…

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    And Yet Another Bill for the Governor to Sign (or Not)

    Byadmin

    We have been reporting on bills related to UC that have been sent to Governor Brown for his signature or veto.  Here is another:=== A bill approved by the state Senate would give University of California and California State University research assistants the right to collective bargaining…  It would affect 14,000 research assistants in the UC system and about 2,000 at CSU schools. …Gov. Jerry Brown has until the end of September to act on the bill. Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/23/4752473/uc-csu-research-assistants-would.html Will Brown sign?  Here is what proponents say: Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/23/4752473/uc-csu-research-assistants-would.html#storylink=cpy

  • Quick Action for Dumb Questions at U of Colorado?

    Byadmin

    According to the chancellor of the U of Colorado, faculty may not shut down a class just because a student is carrying a gun.  So reports Inside Higher Ed today:=== The Colorado Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that students with concealed carry permits could bring handguns to university classrooms. …(T)his week, Jerry Peterson, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and chair of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, said he would cancel classes if he found that someone had brought a firearm to class… (But) Philip P. DiStefano, the chancellor at UC-Boulder, sent out an e-mail Tuesday to faculty…

  • Who Will Santa Monica Catch With Its UC-Berkeley DUI Grant?

    Byadmin

    According to the agenda for the Santa Monica city council meeting for next week, the City is about to get a small research grant to set up more drunk driving checkpoints from UC-Berkeley. Just as a check of my own, I Googled “DUI” and “Santa Monica” on the image setting to see who gets caught. Seems like inebriated celebrity types get into trouble in Santa Monica, as this sampling of pictures from that web search illustrates.  So it should be an interesting study. For more on the grant, you can find the Santa Monica city council agenda item athttp://www.smgov.net/departments/council/agendas/2012/20120828/s2012082803-J.htm Apparently,…