KCRW’s radio program, “Which Way LA?,” with Warren Olney had a segment yesterday on the chancellor’s report on racism which was circulated recently.You can hear that segment at the link below (first 17 minutes):
UC Davis will pay $38,055 in a workers’ compensation settlement to John Pike, the former university police lieutenant who was internationally scorned in November 2011 for pepper-spraying students at close range during an Occupy-style tuition protest on campus. According to paperwork filed with the state’s Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, the damages cover injuries to Pike’s “psyche.”… Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/23/5846956/uc-davis-pays-claim-to-pepper.html This story may not be music to your ears but consider:
The State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee carries a piece on what the political campaign against the anti-pension/anti-retiree health care initiative will likely look like. Excerpt: Chuck Reed’s public-employee pension initiative is a long way from making it to a statewide vote – money being the biggest hurdle – but labor unions have already started blasting the proposal. The San Jose mayor’s measure would, among other things, change the California Constitution to explicitly allow state and local governments in a fiscal emergency to cut future retirement costs by lowering current employees’ benefits prospectively but leave accrued benefits untouched. Right…
From Salon.com: [excerpt] 10-23-13 Less than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal alerted its national readership to what was happening in the tiny state of Rhode Island. In a story headlined “Small State Gets Big Pension Push,” the paper noted that the state’s “rollback of public-employee retirement benefits has turned (it) into a national battleground over pensions.” With the help of billionaire former Enron trader John Arnold and his partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, conservative ideologues and Wall Street profiteers who engineered Rhode Island’s big pension cuts were looking to export those “reforms” to other states. Now, after…
Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, founders of Campaigns, Inc. You probably have never heard of the couple above, Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, who founded what some regard as the first modern political advertising firm – Campaigns, Inc. – right here in California in the early 1930s. You may not have heard of the great “EPIC” campaign of 1934 – their first big target. (They ran the opposition.) I will leave it to you to read up on the history of all of that which you can find in http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all However, a key tactic they developed was distributing information favoring…
UCLA ROTC cadet in 1930s From the Westwood-Century City Patch: UCLA will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that effectively locks the university out of Jackie Robinson Stadium—which is on Veterans Administration land in West Los Angeles —where Bruin baseball has been played for decades, it was announced Tuesday… If appeals fail, the university may have to vacate the stadium after the 2014 season… U.S. District Judge S. James Otero ruled in August that by not using the land to provide health care for vets, the VA is in violation of federal law. Otero issued a written ruling Monday rejecting efforts…
We have noted in past posting on the filing of a public pension initiative that there appeared to be a good deal of “coordination” in the effort, including a Stanford-Hoover MOOC (online course) on personal investments that somehow ends with a session on public pensions. There appeared to be more involved than a few California mayors who are the official face. The fact that UC is swept into the initiative – although it is not a city and has its own set of pension modifications adopted by the Regents in 2010 – seems to be evidence of a larger agenda….
Recruitment for UCLA band in 1940.
From the Daily Bruin: University of California student leaders are proposing a new admissions criterion that would give preference to applicants from low-income schools that have special partnerships with UC campuses. Under the criterion, UC campuses would look at whether an applicant comes from a Title I high school – a school that serves a significant number of low-income students – or a community college with low transfer rates that has a partnership with a UC campus. The partnerships would involve academic preparation and outreach programs that the UC would create for these schools. Students proposing the new factor, including…
I want out! Yours truly has been posting about the recently filed public pension (and retiree health care) initiative which covers UC. UC needs a strategy including first attempting to see if the sponsors will amend it or file a revised version that omits UC. This is a political battle it would be best to avoid if possible. The initiative has the potential to become a “symbol” of intergenerational conflict as a recent article in calpensions.com points out. Once things become symbols of something that goes beyond the issue at end – think “ObamaCare” – the pros and cons get…
