Author: SacBee — Opinion

Health insurance premiums are surging – and conservatives fear that the spectacle will reinvigorate the push for reform. On the Fox Business Network, a host chided a vice president of WellPoint, which has told California customers to expect huge rate increases: “You handed the politicians red meat at a time when health care is being discussed. You gave it to them!”

Sky-high rate increases make a powerful case for comprehensive, guaranteed coverage – which is exactly what Democrats are trying to accomplish.

Here’s the story: About 800,000 people in California who buy insurance on the individual market – as opposed to getting it through their employers – are covered by Anthem Blue Cross, a WellPoint subsidiary. These are the people who were recently told to expect dramatic rate increases, in some cases as high as 39 percent.

Why the huge increase? It’s not profiteering, says WellPoint, which claims instead (without using the term) that it’s facing a classic insurance death spiral.

Private health insurance only works if insurers can sell policies to both sick and healthy customers. If too many healthy people decide that they’d rather take their chances and remain uninsured, the risk pool deteriorates, forcing insurers to raise premiums. This, in turn, leads more healthy people to drop coverage, worsening the risk pool even further, and so on.

Now, WellPoint claims it has been forced to raise premiums because cash-strapped Californians have been dropping their policies or shifting into less-comprehensive plans. Those retaining coverage tend to be people with high current medical expenses. And the result, says the company, is a drastically worsening risk pool; in effect, a death spiral.

So the rate increases, WellPoint insists, aren’t its fault: “Other individual market insurers are facing the same dynamics and are being forced to take similar actions.” Indeed, a report released Thursday by the department of Health and Human Services shows that there have been steep actual or proposed increases in rates by a number of insurers.

But here’s the thing: Suppose that we posit, provisionally, that the insurers aren’t the main villains in this story. Even so, California’s death spiral makes nonsense of all the main arguments against comprehensive health reform.

For example, some claim that health costs would fall dramatically if only insurance companies were allowed to sell policies across state lines. But California is already a huge market, with much more insurance competition than in other states; unfortunately, insurers compete mainly by trying to excel in the art of denying coverage to those who need it most. And competition hasn’t averted a death spiral. So why would creating a national market make things better? More broadly, conservatives would have you believe that health insurance suffers from too much government interference. In fact, the real point of the push to allow interstate sales is that it would set off a race to the bottom, effectively eliminating state regulation. But California’s individual insurance market is already notable for its lack of regulation, certainly as compared with states like New York – yet the market is collapsing anyway.

Finally, there have been calls for minimalist health reform that would ban discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions and stop there. It’s a popular idea, but as every health economist knows, it’s also nonsense. A ban on medical discrimination would lead to higher premiums for the healthy, and would, therefore, cause more and bigger death spirals.

So California’s woes show that conservative prescriptions for health reform just won’t work.

What would work? By all means, let’s ban discrimination on the basis of medical history – but we also have to keep healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that people purchase insurance. This, in turn, requires substantial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can afford coverage.

And if you put all of that together, you end up with something very much like the health reform bills that have already passed both the House and the Senate.

What about claims that these bills would force Americans into the clutches of greedy insurance companies? Well, the main answer is stronger regulation; but it would also be a very good idea, politically as well as substantively, for the Senate to use reconciliation to put the public option back into its bill.

But the main point is this: California’s death spiral is a reminder that our health care system is unraveling, and that inaction isn’t an option.

Some on the Sacramento City Council may be cheering the abrupt resignation of City Manager Ray Kerridge, who announced his exit Wednesday.

They shouldn’t be. His exit – especially the timing of it – can’t be interpreted as anything but a setback for the city. It widens the leadership vacuum in Sacramento and reinforces the impression of a City Hall in disarray.

Kerridge had his shortcomings. We’ve noted them in previous editorials. His priority on “getting the customer to success” put an emphasis on helping big developers, not necessarily ordinary citizens. He championed a dubious plasma arc incinerator project for the city’s trash that went nowhere.

As city manager, he also bears some responsibility for diversions of funds from the Utilities Department, uncollected building fees and other serious problems in the city’s building department.

Yet did Kerridge resign because of those troubles? No. He left because of an atmosphere within the City Council that was growing increasingly toxic.

There’s no polite way of putting this: Certain City Council members – Rob Fong, Sandy Sheedy and Kevin McCarty – are at war with Mayor Kevin Johnson. It’s a war that is now being played out in discussions over a sports and entertainment arena, Johnson’s strong-mayor proposal and the ongoing probe of the city building department.

If Kerridge wanted to keep his job, he would have needed to choose sides. Instead, he decided to do something else.

Kerridge had his strengths, and in searching for a replacement, the City Council would be wise to acknowledge what they have lost. Kerridge brought a progressive vision of Sacramento. He wanted it to shed its sleepy image and resistance to change. We recall him, at a State of the City meeting in 2008, talking with real passion about revamping the city’s riverfront, its transit system and its downtown alleys.

Kerridge was also a bulldog on confronting the city’s budget troubles, but on this score, he didn’t get enough support from the council. In particular, Kerridge couldn’t extract wage concessions from Local 39, resulting in layoffs for 150 employees.

Will the council be able to quickly find a new city manager? It is unlikely. Any candidate for the job will want to know the outcome of Johnson’s strong-mayor proposal, which, if enacted, would reduce the powers of the city manager.

So Sacramento may need a caretaker for a while. What it really needs is a mayor and City Council that can get along, and put the city’s interests first.

Yes, it was mind-bogglingly insensitive and outright racist for some students at the University of California, San Diego, to hold a party mocking Black History Month. Resorting to nearly every offensive stereotype imaginable, the “Compton Cookout” invitation demeaned black women as “ghetto chicks” with gold teeth and nappy hair who start fights, and who make up for a “very limited vocabulary” by cursing and smacking their lips.

But does the Legislature have much weightier matters to attend to? Absolutely.

About 30 state lawmakers – mostly Assembly members, including outgoing Speaker Karen Bass and incoming Speaker John A. Pérez – took to the south steps of the Capitol to vent their outrage in a made-for-TV event Thursday. One after another, they stepped up to the portable lectern, the Assembly seal affixed with packing tape, to denounce the party, to make clear that such behavior will not be tolerated in 21st century California, and to demand accountability.

Assemblyman Isadore Hall III, who represents Compton and organized the local event, called on UC San Diego administrators to launch an immediate and full investigation.

They already have.

Indeed, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and her team appear to have the controversy well in hand. Fox sent out an announcement condemning the Monday party, there will be a campus teach-in Wednesday and officials are organizing a “Not in our Community” campaign.

They’re also following due process under the student code of conduct and state law, and trying to respect free speech, no matter how objectionable. The party was held off-campus, and while members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity were among the organizers, it did not officially sponsor it.

Even so, Hall and other lawmakers seemed to prejudge the case and say the fraternity’s charter should be revoked and any students involved should be expelled. After the news conference, Hall insisted that the party was worthy of the Assembly’s limited time because it funds universities, and “this is an issue of higher education.” Pérez said that because less than 2 percent of UC San Diego students are black, such hate and bigotry is especially harmful and undermines the university’s image and ability to educate all students. That’s something the Legislature should care about, he said, adding, “We’re quite capable of focusing on multiple issues at one time.” They have valid points.

Still, it’d be nice to see similar passion and determination applied to the budget crisis or the recession or public schools or any number of other issues. Then maybe, Californians would get the swift, decisive action they deserve from the Legislature.

Bruce Blanning

Destroying something worthwhile, such as a pension system, is best achieved by misdirection, claiming that doing so is necessary to help solve a financial crisis or other problem. Calling it “reform” rather than destruction and distorting the facts or being untruthful are the other ingredients in sowing the poisonous seeds to weaken, then kill a healthy, worthwhile program that provides reasonable benefits to retired career public servants.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, established by law and protected by the vote of the people in a constitutional amendment, administers the retirement plan for state employees and hundreds of local agencies that voluntarily participate. More than $200 billion in investments fund the retirement benefits for current and former employees. The system is actuarially sound, free from those politicians who would like to steal the money to pay for their pet projects. They find that rather frustrating, particularly those who don’t like public servants to begin with.

Public employee pension benefits are protected by the state constitution. If you are hired by a public agency and are told that when you retire you will receive a certain benefit, then that commitment must be honored. There is no bait-and-switch allowed with pension benefits. The governor acknowledged this recently in his State of the State speech when he said, “For current employees, these pensions cannot be changed – either legally or morally. We cannot break the promises we already made. It is a done deal.” Two days later, he proposed to violate that done deal by asking the Legislature to double the employee payment into the pension plan, which the courts have ruled is just as unconstitutional as reducing the benefits. However, at least for a moment there, he recognized the obligation of the state as an employer to its employees.

If the politicians and public servant-bashers can’t raid the money in the pension fund and can’t cut pension benefits, then what can they do? Well, they can try to persuade the people to change the constitution, or at least slash pension benefits for future hires. How do you persuade the people when the facts aren’t on your side? You say things that aren’t true.

Gubernatorial candidates say that pension benefits are excessive and the cost to the taxpayer is too high. The governor’s representative, David Crane, says pension costs have risen by 2,000 percent, pensions threaten funding for other programs, the benefits were “a costly mistake with terrible consequences,” and it’s all the fault of the Legislature. All of that is nonsense, but they keep saying it, the media keep reporting it, and sooner or later, they hope, people will believe it.

What’s the real truth about CalPERS? The average benefit for a retired public servant in CalPERS is $2,100 per month. Of that $2,100, only $1 of every $8 is paid by the employer, which means the taxpayer. The rest is paid through employee contributions and earnings on the investments. That means for every retired public employee, the taxpayers provide less than $300 per month for their pension.

Changes to the retirement plan have been negotiated in the past. Future changes, if any, should be achieved in the same manner. As Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg has said, if the state wants to save money on pay and benefits for its employees, “that means working with the people on the front lines. Don’t go around them.” Retirement benefits, along with salary and other benefits, belong on the bargaining table to be developed as part of a package.

Jeff Lustig

There’s a downturn in the protest market.

Repair California, the San Francisco organization that’s led the campaign for a constitutional convention, has shuttered operations.

“It’s time for Californians to take back their state,” its leaders once declared to a state that couldn’t improve its schools, repair its roads or balance its books. It was time, they said, for “a people’s convention,” the last having been in 1879, when the state had 860,000 people.

“Popular movement.” “Revolt.” “Nullify the government.” Such were the phrases that accompanied their call. “Success is tantalizingly close,” reported John Grubb, campaign director for what he described as this “die-hard group of Californians” in a fundraising letter last week.

Though this image suggested a bunkered band of rebels, Repair California was an arm of the Bay Area Council, an association of CEOs from major corporations and government entities like Bank of America, Chevron, United Airlines, Google, McKinsey and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. An unlikely vanguard for a people’s struggle.

But Repair California seemed to have it all – a handsome Web site, well-turned op-ed pieces, highly publicized conferences and widespread town meetings. In 2009, it held those meetings throughout the state. In mid-October, it announced receipt of a $2 million gift for the convention effort.

In late October it filed two initiatives for the November 2010 ballot – the first to empower the public to call a convention, the second to actually convene what it called “A Limited Constitutional Convention.”

A month later, Clint Reilly, the high-end political consultant, came on board as chief strategist for the effort. But shortly after sending the fundraising letter noted above, the organization abruptly pulled the plug, citing the need to meet payroll and a shortfall of $3 million for signatures for its two initiatives.

It was a surprising end for a protest movement, and the die-hard group expired fairly easily, after all. I’m a veteran of a few political movements – the free speech movement, the civil rights and anti-war movements. And I’ve read about the state’s populist, Progressive and labor movements. But I never heard of a movement that suspended operations because of cash-flow problems or the need to pay signature-gatherers. Penury came with the territory. Volunteer labor was the norm.

Leaders of Repair California said they were being blackballed by Sacramento signature-gathering firms. Such firms have a stake in unrestrained initiatives, which a constitutional convention might have tried to corral.

That may or may not have been a hurdle. But a show-stopper?

The real problem, one suspects, was with the BAC’s second initiative, a measure so complex that it rivaled the constitution it was trying to reform. The proposal tried to set what could and could not be debated at the far-off convention. But it also designed a Rube Goldberg process for picking delegates.

The current constitution is a model of economy here, taking one sentence to say delegates should be elected from equal-size districts. The BAC’s plan spent eight single-spaced pages detailing a process in which half the roughly 500 delegates would be randomly selected, as we pick juries, and the other half picked by committees of local county and city officials supplemented by lotteries. Plus provisions for including Indian tribal delegates and excluding people with recent political experience.

Notably missing was any provision for California citizens to elect their own representatives. No wonder they had trouble collecting signatures. The people picked by such a method would not have been anyone’s “delegates” at all. The planners had confused a constitutional convention with a focus group and a reality TV show.

Tom Paine noted that a constitution, fundamentally, “is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government.” That being the case, the people have to be involved directly and not by random proxy.

The Bay Area Council is to be commended for taking the lead in the call for a new constitution. We have outgrown the old one. And the BAC was right to conclude that if the problems are systemic, the solution needs to be systemic. But one suspects that the neglect of popular involvement that marked their delegate-selection plan also marked their capital-intensive and virtual movement.

There will be new calls for a constitutional convention. California governance is becoming more dysfunctional, and the victims of its failures are multiplying by the day. Californians can use the time until a real convention proposal emerges to good effect. They can use it to build the popular movements needed for a real convention, as in 1879, and to educate themselves better about state politics than they have done for key initiative votes over the last 30 years.

A real “people’s convention” has to be built from the ground up, not from the ether down.

In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. America had become ungovernable.

Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.

The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O’Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.

A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board – and fueled two decades of economic growth.

Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.

It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t.

President Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives – cap-and-trade and health care reform – lie in ruins. Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked The New Republic. Guess the answer.

The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, opines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model, while America flails about under its “two parties … with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.

Yet, what’s new about any of these supposedly ruinous structural impediments? Special interests blocking policy changes? They have been around since the beginning of the republic – and since the beginning of the republic, strong presidents, like the two Roosevelts, have rallied the citizenry and overcome them.

And then, of course, there’s the filibuster, the newest liberal bête noire. “Don’t blame Mr. Obama,” writes Paul Krugman of the president’s failures. “Blame our political culture instead. … And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable.” Ungovernable, once again. Of course, just yesterday the same Paul Krugman was warning about “extremists” trying “to eliminate the filibuster” when Democrats used it systematically to block one Bush (43) judicial nomination after another. Back then, Democrats touted it as an indispensable check on overweening majority power. Well, it still is. Indeed, the Senate with its ponderous procedures and decentralized structure is serving precisely the function the Founders intended: as a brake on the passions of the House and a caution about precipitous transformative change.

Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: “Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama’s (possible/ likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. … But in this case there’s a simpler explanation: Barack Obama’s job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed.” The people said “no,” expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public opinion polls, then in elections – Virginia, New Jersey and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.

That’s not a structural defect. That’s a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself – despite the special interests – through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.

Will it kill you to plan for your death? That’s the question that Capital Public Radio is posing in an upcoming Community Health Forum on end-of-life issues.

The forum, presented by Capital Public Radio in partnership with The Bee, will feature a panel of experts discussing the medical, legal, financial and spiritual challenges that people face in making end-of-life decisions.

A one-hour live broadcast will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday on KXPR, 90.9 FM in Sacramento, 90.5 FM in Tahoe/Reno and 88.1 FM in Quincy.

A half-hour question-and- answer Web chat with the panelists will follow at 7 p.m. at www.secondopinions.org.

Coming Sunday in The Bee’s California Forum

Writers Dorsey Griffith and Dr. Michael Wilkes explore why families and doctors are often hesitant to confront end-of-life decisions.

Michael Oren

Negotiations for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should resume immediately and without further preconditions.

This isn’t only Israel’s position – it is that of Egypt, Jordan, Europe and the United States. All want Israel and the Palestinians to do the hard work of negotiating a comprehensive peace deal. All understand that this is a propitious moment that must not be squandered – everyone gets this, except our Palestinian partners.

The moment is right because 2009 has been a year of strong economic growth in the West Bank, with indications of greater prosperity should peace finally come, and its been a year of deepening economic stagnation in Gaza under Hamas rejectionist rule.

Never has the peace dividend in the Middle East been more evident.

This is an opportune moment from the standpoint of Israeli leadership as well. In an attempt to create better conditions for resuming peace talks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has undertaken gestures never made by even the most dovish Israeli political leaders.

He has ordered a 10-month construction moratorium on private building in settlements throughout the West Bank, and in so doing has been willing to harm his own political base in order to bring the Palestinians, our future partners in peace, back to the table.

The settlement freeze is a very profound statement of Israel’s peace intentions, and the Palestinian leadership is committing a tragic but oft-repeated blunder in rebuffing Israel’s outstretched hand.

Netanyahu could not have been more clear than in his policy statement announcing the moratorium on settlement building: “We hope that this decision will help launch meaningful peace negotiations and finally end the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel.”

We are committed to moving as swiftly as possible to resolve all outstanding issues between ourselves and the Palestinians, including the thorny issues of Jerusalem, borders and refugees.

Israel’s response to the Haiti crisis is a reflection of the salutary role our country wants to play in the international system. The effectiveness of the Israeli field hospital outside Port-au-Prince, and the speed with which it was deployed and made operational, reflect only a minute fraction of our capacities as a nation for the global welfare.

With skills honed in the course of six difficult and isolated decades, Israel knows how to hit curve balls; and we look forward to employing these abilities for the greater international good once we achieve peace with our neighbors and are finally allowed to take our rightful place in the family of nations.

This is one of many reasons why I was thrilled last week to visit Sacramento and the Bay Area, a region so full of innovation and enterprise, and in which the Israeli economy is already deeply integrated. At this juncture of Silicon Valley and Silicon Wadi, Israeli companies, technologists and entrepreneurs work seamlessly with Californian counterparts in the creation of new means of alternative energy, Internet communications and computational capacity that will form the infrastructure of prosperity and peace in the 21st century.

As such, my visit to Northern California was both invigorating and bittersweet. It presented a vision of the future to which we aspire and which, at many levels, Israel has already arrived; but it also served as a reminder of the hurdles that still must be overcome back home in our region, not least of which is Iran’s drive to achieve nuclear weapons.

I am encouraged that many in the United States, Europe and in California are finally waking, and are beginning to plan and implement the necessary economic sanctions required to keep this threat from knocking on every door.

The giant is stirring.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is sponsoring important legislation that would shine light on the shadowy world of placement agents. The bill is no panacea, but it could guard against abuses. The pension board deserves credit for pushing it forward.

As introduced, the legislation – AB 1743 by Assemblyman Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina – would require that placement agents play by the same rules as lobbyists in Sacramento. They would have to register with and report to the Fair Political Practices Commission and the secretary of state. Their identities would be disclosed publicly on the secretary of state’s Web site, as would their clients and what their clients pay them.

The bill would extend the requirement to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and local pension funds in municipalities. Importantly, placement agents would be prohibited from receiving payments based on whether they help their clients obtain business.

Until recently, the public had no idea about the magnitude of the payments to placement agents, or which investment funds had retained them.

But more than 600 investment houses complied with a CalPERS request that they voluntarily disclose whether they had used placement agents, and the amounts they paid.

The top 10 placement agents received an astounding $125 million.

The placement agent business has come under scrutiny largely because of the investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into that state’s pension fund system.

Cuomo and his investigators have reached into California, gaining a guilty plea in a bribery case against Elliott Broidy, a major Republican fundraiser from Los Angeles who until recently headed a firm that manages up to $50 million in California pension fund money.

It’s not known whether Broidy’s firm, the Los Angeles-based Markstone Capital, hired a placement agent. The firm has not told CalPERS whether or not it used a placement agent to gain $50 million commitment from the pension fund. If Hernandez’s legislation had been law, any agent who represented Markstone would have been required to file the disclosure or face administrative fines and criminal sanctions.

The lobbying battle has begun. Third Party Marketers Association, representing more than 70 agents, is presenting arguments against the fee provisions of Hernandez’s bill, while another trade group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, has retained lobbyists to work on the measure.

But CalPERS, reinforced by Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Controller John Chiang, presents a powerful force. It’s the largest U.S. public pension fund, managing $195.5 billion for more than 1.6 million active and retired public employees and their families. When CalPERS speaks, the industry needs to listen.

While I try to buy local foods, I’m still learning about the sustainability of the foods I eat. Having lived in the Midwest for most of my adult life, I’m just getting exposed to the bounty of seafoods on the West Coast, and the impact of fishing practices.

I learned a lesson over the Presidents Day weekend in Monterey.

At a Valentine’s Day dinner with my husband, I ordered a special listed on a restaurant menu: red snapper. It was delicious, and I didn’t think twice about it.

The next morning, we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the first time. From hovering rockfish to synchronized-swimming sardines, the Kelp Forest was my early favorite.

Then we came to a fish counter, featuring information on three popular seafoods: rockfish, salmon and tilapia.

I pressed the rockfish button: “Buyer beware!” three people in the virtual kitchen warned. “West Coast rockfishes are often marketed as Pacific red snapper, and should be avoided due to concerns about the way they are caught.” And true red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico is overfished.

So much for fond thoughts of our romantic dinner.

Then I pressed the salmon button: “Buyer beware!” again. Farmed salmon raised in open net pens in the ocean harm the ecosystem with chemicals, parasites and escapes of farmed fish into native salmon habitat. “Avoid.” But wild-caught Pacific salmon from Alaska and farmed freshwater coho salmon raised in closed tank systems are ranked a “Best Choice.”

Last was the tilapia button. This freshwater fish is a “Best Choice” if U.S.-farmed in closed inland systems that guard against escapes and pollution. Tilapia from Central and South America are ranked a “Good Alternative.” Tilapia from China and Taiwan, where pollution and weak management are problems, are ranked “Avoid.”

Hmmm. Eating ethically and sustainably doesn’t seem all that easy. Fortunately, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program helps (see www.seafoodwatch.org to print out a handy wallet-size card).

In our region, the Davis Food Co-op and the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op use the Seafood Watch ranking system to label seafood.

Recently, two major national chains have joined the effort. Target no longer will carry farmed salmon, in favor of Alaskan wild-caught salmon. Safeway no longer will sell monkfish, grouper and Atlantic/ Gulf red snapper. The store also will implement a tracing system for its seafood supplies.

The path of fish from water to table does matter. It’s about individual responsibility: checking labels and asking questions when shopping or eating out. Without asking, I won’t know if albacore tuna is pole-caught (a best choice) or longline-caught (avoid). But I know now to ask. And the more people ask, the more businesses will pay attention.

The Republican presidential nominee, an Arizona senator, was a maverick, which was part of his charm. He spoke and acted impulsively, which was part of his problem. Voters thought his entertaining dimensions might be incompatible with presidential responsibilities. For example, he selected a running mate most Americans had never heard of and who had negligible experience pertinent to the presidency.

This was 1964.

Barry Goldwater, whose seat John McCain occupies, chose to run with Bill Miller, a congressman from Lockport, N.Y., near Buffalo. Miller, Goldwater cheerfully explained, annoyed Lyndon Johnson.

After the Goldwater-Miller ticket lost 44 states, Miller retired to Lockport where he practiced law and lived in dignified anonymity until his death in 1983. No one suggested he should be considered for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.

Yet Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska’s governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.

Conservatives, who rightly respect markets as generally reliable gauges of consumer preferences, should notice that the political market is speaking clearly: The more attention Palin receives, the fewer Americans consider her presidential timber. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans – including 52 percent of Republicans – think she is not qualified to be president.

This is not her fault. She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain. She is feisty and public-spirited, and millions of people vibrate like tuning forks to her rhetoric. When she was suddenly forced to take a walk on the highest wire in America’s political circus, she showed grit.

She also showed that grit is no substitute for seasoning. She has been subjected to such irrational vituperation – loathing largely born of snobbery – that she can be forgiven for seeking the balm of adulation from friendly audiences.

America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism. But the reaction against this must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness. This is not a stance that will strengthen the Republican Party, which recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites. Besides, full-throated populism has not won a national election in 178 years, since Andrew Jackson was re-elected in 1832.

After William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in 1908, his third as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, this prototypical populist said he felt like the man who, thrown out of a bar for a third time, dusted himself off and said, “I’m beginning to think those fellows don’t want me in there.” In 1992, Ross Perot, an only-in-America phenomenon – a billionaire populist – won 19 percent of the popular vote. But because of the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes, he won none of those. In 1976, Jimmy Carter somewhat tapped America’s durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

In 1968, George Wallace, promising to toss the briefcases of pointy-headed intellectuals into the Potomac, won 46 electoral votes with 13.5 percent of the popular vote. He had the populist’s trifecta – a vivid personality, a regional base and a burning issue. Actually, he had three such issues – backlash against the civil rights revolution, social disintegration (urban riots, rising crime) and resentment of the progressive projects of Great Society social engineers (e.g., forced busing of other people’s children).

Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess.

Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. But today’s saturation journalism, mesmerized by presidential politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of political novelties. In that role, Palin is united with the media in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not her fault. But neither is it her validation.

Katy Grimes is a longtime political activist, writer and columnist who lives in Sacramento.

Mayor Kevin Johnson should not give up on his campaign to enhance the powers of Sacramento’s mayor. Sacramento is ready for a strong, accountable mayor who wields more strength and responsibility than that of a council member.

Why else should a city have a mayor?

It is understandable why Johnson sidestepped the City Council and went straight to the ballot originally. It was well known that a majority of the council opposed changing the status quo.

While I was critical of Johnson’s original strong mayor plan (Viewpoints, Sept. 25, 2009) and many city residents were surprised by the swiftness with which Johnson sought his ballot initiative, he had made no secret of his plans to enhance the mayor’s power during his campaign for office.

Earlier this month, the 3rd District Court of Appeal blocked Johnson from placing his initiative on the ballot. The court sided with labor leader Bill Camp, who claimed the mayor’s proposal was a charter revision that could be placed before voters only by an elected body or a charter revision committee.

Smartly, Johnson and team have rebounded and modified their initiative, with a more common-sense approach to governing – described as a “collaborative executive mayor reform package.” Initially, the mayor hoped to place his proposal on the June ballot.

This week, he backed off and is now aiming for November.

City residents can only hope that City Council members understand political expedience, and back Johnson’s modified initiative. Several City Council members have openly discussed making the council positions full time instead, commensurate with full-time pay. Given the mood of the taxpaying voters, they should rethink that notion; most city residents are not interested in further expanding our dysfunctional City Council or doubling council salaries.

The lawsuit and resulting ruling by a single judge in this case is extremely frustrating. This is where “the system” goes sideways when one person can file a lawsuit and bring the matter before one judge. Camp, representing union and labor special interests, took the initiative out of the hands of the voters by going directly to court.

Johnson has created something bigger than just this initiative. People all over Sacramento are talking about how our city operates. City residents are scrutinizing the system and pushing for more accountability from our elected officials and city employees.

From the Department of Parks and Recreation to Regional Transit to the city Utilities Department, nearly every city agency needs serious scrutiny. Whether the initiative passes or not or ever even makes it to the ballot, Johnson has already succeeded in getting more people involved in Sacramento politics and local issues, whether people agree with him or not.

Under Sacramento’s current city council and city manager, the city has become mired in highly questionable financial practices.

Top on the list is the scandal- ridden Utilities Department and its rate hikes of the last four years. The Utilities Department has received federal stimulus money to pay for water meters, even though the recent rate hikes were supposedly to cover the cost of the meters.

The department is sending representatives to local neighborhood association meetings to explain away the meter installations, the tearing up of neighborhood streets and yards, and to smooth over the double-dipping cost increases in spite of the stimulus money.

Last month a grand jury report was released that was highly critical of city officials for diverting $21 million in ratepayer money in apparent violation of Proposition 218 and the California Constitution. It also found that city officials have been engaged in a cover-up of the spending of city utilities funds.

Who in our city is accountable? Heads never seem to roll, yet residents are angry.

Regional Transit is a financial wasteland. Where is the oversight and accountability by the city’s elected leaders?

Sacramento also has a problem with the tail wagging the dog. Local unions are calling the shots. The result? Continual cost increases to city services.

The City Council has caved in on nearly every vote to increase service costs, passing the increases on to residents, instead of forcing the unions to back down on their pay and fringe benefit demands.

What better way to face the big issues head-on than with a strong mayor? Why else would Bill Camp try to put an end to the initiative before it ever makes it to the ballot?

Johnson was voted into office by Sacramento residents weary of a lack of accountability by elected politicians and city employees.

Just by challenging the entrenched local politicians, Johnson started this movement, and now, citizen representation is on the upswing.

Tea party organizer Laura Boatright of Ontario cheers at a Sacramento rally last August.

What’s your view of the tea party movement? To comment on this issue, please see our forum.

It wasn’t Sarah Palin’s party. She was just a guest – a well-paid guest, to be sure, but a guest all the same. And the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, where the former governor of Alaska spoke last weekend, wasn’t most tea party activists’ cup of Earl Grey, either. Many tea partiers boycotted the event, which was organized by a for-profit group that charged $550 a head for the privilege of listening to Palin and others preach to the converted.

But the media hordes descended upon Nashville and covered the spectacle as if it was the perfect distillation of the 21st century tea party phenomenon. As is usually the case, that narrative was too simple and missed the broader, more nuanced picture of tea party activism.

For one thing, Laura Boatright and her friends weren’t there.

“That can’t even be considered a tea party, as far as I’m concerned. It was a faux tea party,” Boatright says of the Nashville event.

“Let me tell you, if it’s even $25 for a dinner and a speech, you won’t see me there,” says the 51-year-old Boatright, a stay-at-home mom who home schools her 11-year-old son in Ontario. “I think $25 would be better spent printing fliers.”

The media have tended to overlook local tea party activists like Boatright in favor of umbrella organizations, such as the nonprofit Tea Party Patriots, and traditional conservative groups backing the tea parties, such as former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s Freedomworks. But it’s the Laura Boatrights, not the Sarah Palins, who are the true face of the tea party movement.

I first met the indefatigable Boatright at the Tax Day protest she organized last year in Rancho Cucamonga. Just as hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered at similar tea parties across the country that day, nearly 2,000 upbeat, patriotic, solidly middle-class denizens of Inland Southern California lined a busy intersection about 60 miles east of Los Angeles and literally flew the flag of freedom. The scene was awash with the Stars and Stripes, Gadsden flags emblazoned with the old revolutionary slogan “Don’t Tread on Me” and homemade posters announcing that Americans have been “Taxed Enough Already.”

April 15, 2009, was the first real show of strength from the tea partiers. Sure, there had been a few rallies earlier in the year against President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill. Liberal commentators waved those events off, when they took notice at all. Oh, it was just a few hundred sore losers. No big deal.

Tax Day was different. It was a massive venting of pent-up anger at what Boatright likens to the punitive “Intolerable Acts” that King George III imposed on the colonies in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

Many Americans think the American Revolution was fought over excessive taxes. Not true. When Bostonians held their famous “tea party” 237 years ago, the tax in question amounted to a couple of pennies per pound of tea. The real issue was consent, the rallying cry “no taxation without representation,” because “if we are not represented, we are slaves.”

Today, Americans do not lack the opportunity to consent in the same way that colonial revolutionaries did. For the 21st century tea partier, the “Intolerable Acts” are years of profligate spending by a Republican Congress that hypocritically wore the fiscal conservative mantle culminating with George W. Bush’s multibillion-dollar bailout of the banks under the despised Troubled Asset Relief Program. Then came the stimulus bill, which most tea party protesters rightly derided as a “porkulus” bill. The automaker bailout soon followed, along with revelations about AIG’s sweetheart deal, news of government mismanagement of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Cash for Clunkers, cap-and-trade, and, of course, health care reform. Obama’s multitrillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see make George W. Bush’s spendthrift ways look parsimonious by comparison.

Talk to any tea partier, and that’s what they will tell you. That was what made part-time volunteer Laura Boatright and countless others like her into full-time activists.

But, oh, the mockery! And the slanders! Cable new networks, liberal columnists and left-wing bloggers assailed the tea partiers with crude slurs and accused them of harboring seditious motives. Those charges were supported by a handful of crazies who showed up at the rallies last year with racist signs. And, like any other movement, the tea parties have their share of people who obsess over fringe issues.

“Do some people want to see (Obama’s) birth certificate? Yeah. Do some want to make immigration a higher priority? Yeah. Do some care a lot about pro-life causes? Yeah,” Boatright says. But those issues are, at best, secondary to the larger goal of restoring accountability in government and the rule of law.

Worse, many tea party critics continue to insist, these protesters are nothing more than unwitting dupes of the Republican Party and Fox News, and the entire movement is just “Astroturf” – that is, fake grass roots.

But that, too, is nonsense. “They’ve simultaneously called the movement small and unorganized yet also a complex GOP Astroturf campaign,” says John O’Hara, whose book, “A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes,” is a kind of manifesto for tea partiers.

“Some days (the tea parties) are called a rudderless fringe, other days they’re allegedly a small army taking marching orders from Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. The contradictions in these characterizations are glaring but not surprising given the media’s desire to create a convenient, simple narrative,” O’Hara told me.

The fact is, although the tea parties attract conservatives by and large, they are not strictly partisan events.

“It goes beyond party definition,” says Boatright. “The Republican Party is ready to come in and try to co-opt us. But they don’t know how to deal with us.” Boatright, who has volunteered for Republican candidates in the past, estimates that about 25 percent of the people active in her local tea party group identify themselves as Democrats.

That analysis is born out by public opinion polls. Although a new Washington Post/ABC News poll found two-thirds of Americans didn’t know much about the specifics of what the tea parties stand for, about 45 percent said they agree “at least somewhat” with tea partiers on the issues. And a widely reported Rasmussen poll published in December found that a “Tea Party” candidate would trounce a Republican in a generic three-way ballot. Among independent voters, a “Tea Party” candidate would beat the Republican and the Democrat.

O’Hara points out that tea partiers “have been burned by politicians of all stripes. Many of them voted for President Obama and are having a serious case of buyer’s remorse. Others feel the Republican Party in many instances has lost its credibility as the standard-bearer of small government and fiscal responsibility.”

What tea parties represent is a revival of good, old-fashioned constitutionalism and the idea that government needs to get back to basics. There is a great yearning for a return to first principles. Millions of Americans, but perhaps not yet a majority, would very much like to restore the principles of the American Founding Fathers to their rightful and pre-eminent place in our political life. Or, as O’Hara put it to me, “Americans are realizing that more freedom, not more government, is both the principled and practical ingredient for prosperity.”

The savviest tea partiers have begun to internalize the wisdom of former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s old saw that “all politics is local.” The protests that have garnered so much televised attention have been great street theater – and that’s about all. “Standing on a corner with a sign doesn’t really effect change,” Boatright says.

The real momentum is behind the scenes, and focused more on genuine grass-roots organizing: voter registration, letter-writing campaigns, building mailing lists and staffing phone banks, canvassing neighborhoods at election time, and, above all, getting elected and mounting direct challenges to incumbents, regardless of party.

Even Ron Paul, whose insurgent Republican presidential campaign in 2008 helped build some of the infrastructure that made the tea parties possible, has attracted three tea party challengers in his home district in Texas. In Southern California, Republican war horse and earmark king Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands likely will face a tea party challenger as well.

For her part, Boatright plans to run for a seat on the San Bernardino County Republican Party Central Committee. The party establishments that believe they can ignore or co-opt the tea parties may soon discover that the tea parties have co-opted them. Watch out, Sarah.

Ben Boychuk

Rick Addante, 26, of Davis jeers during Tuesday’s “tea party,” the Sacramento rally drew 5,000 people and was one of several across the nation today, the day income tax returns and payments are due.

In a time of constant calamity and crisis fatigue, proposed legislation in Uganda to execute gays passes through the American consciousness with the impact of a weather report.

Corrupt politicians count on the brevity of the American attention span, but certain items demand a tap of the pause button. How exactly does the idea of executing gays evolve in a majority-Christian nation? Interesting question.

Gays in Uganda already face imprisonment for up to 14 years. Under a new bill proposed last October by David Bahati, the government could execute HIV-positive men and jail people who don’t report homosexual activities.

We are officially appalled, of course. President Barack Obama called the proposed legislation “odious” in remarks at the recent National Prayer Breakfast. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also mentioned Uganda at the breakfast. Even evangelical mega-pastor Rick Warren made an impassioned Christmas video plea to Ugandan pastors, declaring the measure “unjust,” “extreme” and “un-Christian.”

Warren’s message wasn’t prompted by outrage at the treatment of gays, however, but by accusations that he had helped create the bill. Warren’s Saddleback Church has hosted a Ugandan pastor who supports the legislation, but the purpose-driven pastor insists he had no role shaping the proposed law. Though Warren deserves to be taken at his word, other comments he made in his defense are problematic.

In a statement to Newsweek, Warren said: “The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.”

I’m not so sure about that. It may not be Warren’s personal calling to comment on “political process.” But is neutrality really an option for one of the world’s most powerful Christian leaders when state genocide of a minority is proposed in the name of Christianity? If we decide that genocide is too political for interference, then what good is moral leadership? Other evangelical Christians operating in Uganda are less easily excused from responsibility in the country’s increasingly hostile attitudes toward gays. Often cited as having stirred the pot are pastors Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, who last March worked with Ugandan faith leaders and politicians to help stop the “homosexualization” of the country.

Nobody “made” Bahati write the bill. But these three pastors, known for their conviction that gays can be “cured,” have been spreading their particular brand of gospel in Uganda, and it seems to have found traction. The three have distanced themselves from the proposed law and say they never encouraged punishment for gays.

This may well be the case. In fact, let’s assume it is. Let’s further assume that these missionaries have only the purest of intentions and want only to help strengthen the traditional family.

Dear Sirs: Uganda isn’t Connecticut. A country where gays are routinely harassed, rounded up and incarcerated doesn’t need stoking by American fundamentalists on a mission from God. Instead, it seems more the case that Uganda has became a laboratory for zealots who have found a receptive audience for their personal cause.

The proposed law is a case study in the unintended consequences of moral colonialism.

Meanwhile, one would think that Uganda, given its history, would have had enough of executions related to homosexuality and religion.

In the 1880s, the martyrs of Uganda were burned to death by Mwanga II, the king of Buganda, who was miffed, by some accounts, when his own homosexual advances were declined by recent Christian converts.

And now Uganda’s Christians wish to make martyrs of gays? Not all do, of course. Some pastors are opposing the bill and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said the proposal is too tough.

Human rights watchers predict the bill will be toned down to exclude capital punishment, but imprisonment is also unacceptable – and no American should find difficulty saying so.

In a “Meet the Press” interview last November, Warren said he never takes sides, but one wishes he would. To borrow his own words, it is in certain cases extreme, unjust and un-Christian not to.

Justice may be blind, but the commission in charge of disciplining California’s judges should have its eyes wide open when a jurist shows up on its docket more than once.

Because judges wield such enormous power, it is no trifling matter when they stand accused of abusing their authority. And since it is exceedingly rare for them to be formally investigated, it is very troubling that two local jurists – Placer Superior Court Judge Joseph W. O’Flaherty and Sacramento Superior Court Judge Peter J. McBrien – have been in the dock twice.

Over the last decade, the state Commission on Judicial Performance has fielded an average of 982 complaints a year. Almost all are summarily dismissed because there’s no evidence of anything fishy; there have been only 34 formal proceedings in that time. If the commission finds misconduct, it can issue a private admonishment, a public admonishment or censure, and in the most egregious cases it can sack a judge – done only two dozen times.

The commission considers previous misconduct, and its director says there has never been a judge censured more than once who has not been removed. But even without a prior censure, repeat offenders deserve special attention.

Last week, the commission announced formal proceedings against O’Flaherty, who joined the Superior Court bench in 1998.

The complaint stems from a small-claims case in which a customer alleged that Golden 1 Credit Union had interfered in his sale of a used car. After O’Flaherty dismissed the case in December 2008, two credit union employees told him they were worried that the customer would come after them. The judge hauled the man back into his courtroom and ordered him to stay away from the branch where the employees worked for 90 days. The commission says issuing that order was an “abuse of authority.”

In 2004, the panel admonished O’Flaherty after finding that in two cases, he invited potential jurors who might be racially prejudiced to misrepresent why they couldn’t serve. Both defendants were convicted – and both convictions were overturned because of O’Flaherty’s jury instructions.

Another local judge the judicial commission should monitor closely is McBrien, who has been disciplined twice since becoming a Sacramento Superior Court judge in 1989.

In 2000, the judge pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor for illegally cutting down trees near his house on the American River Parkway. Two years later, the commission admonished him.

Last month, the commission publicly censured McBrien for his “manifestly unjudicial” handling of a 2006 divorce case. The panel found he declared a mistrial before all the evidence was in – leading to his decision being overturned. It also found the judge improperly threatened one lawyer with contempt. And it concluded that his “failure to appreciate the full extent” of his conduct suggested a likelihood of future misbehavior.

Weighing all those factors, two commissioners voted to remove McBrien, but seven voted to let him keep his job.

To protect the public, the commission should grant very little leeway to these two judges – particularly since voters won’t get to render their own verdicts on O’Flaherty until 2012 and on McBrien until 2014.

A strong public education system in Sacramento’s central city is crucial to the prosperity of the entire region. Sacramento City Unified seems primed for progress, even with the budget challenges that all school districts confront.

The school board has hired a talented and innovative superintendent. The board itself has four new members as the district switched from at-large voting to a system of seven geographic district seats.

Yet despite some hopeful signs, there’s a chance that two school board incumbents will go unchallenged in November. That’s not good for the school district or the incumbents themselves.

The seats up for grabs include those for District 1 (the area surrounding McClatchy High School); District 2 (an area that includes Rosemont High School); and District 6 (the area surrounding Kennedy High School).

Each district has about 22,000 voters and about 14,000 households, small enough for candidates to engage directly with voters at their doors.

Yet in two of the three districts – those represented by Ellyne Bell in District 1 and Roy Grimes in District 6 – no challengers have stepped forward to test the incumbents.

District 2 provides a contrast.

Incumbent Jerry Houseman has declined to run for re-election. So far, two strong candidates have stepped forward.

Jeffrey Cuneo, an attorney specializing in juvenile justice, has served on the Children’s Coalition, an advisory body to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors. He faces Mary Hernandez, a lobbyist for SEIU Local 1000, California’s largest state employees union. She has served in state government at the Department of Industrial Relations and the California Workforce Investment Board.

This promises to be a lively race.

There’s still time for other candidates to jump in. Although the formal filing deadline is in July, now is the time to launch a campaign organization, raise funds and engage voters in public education issues, one door at a time.

Robert J. Birgeneau

We hear a lot these days about an idealized vision of zero fees for students at the University of California. As undergraduate fees surpass $10,000 in 2010-11, those who attended Berkeley in the 1960s look back nostalgically to the era when fees were around $200 a year.

Others simply hold as an ideology that public education should be free: They often point to Clark Kerr’s master plan as the great ideal of free state-provided education for every qualified Californian. Proponents of free public education argue that zero fees today would provide increased accessibility for underrepresented minorities.

This is an especially persuasive argument, given the importance of extending the California Dream to the state’s new 21st century demographic. Persuasive, if it were true, but it is not. On the contrary, for future generations of aspiring Californians, zero fees would end the promise of the California Dream of world-class, accessible public higher education.

Let us consider the practical consequences of a return to a zero-fees policy. Both the economic makeup and the ethnic background of Berkeley’s undergraduate class are very different from a half-century ago. In the ’50s and ’60s, the student population was largely Caucasian and much more economically homogeneous. Today, there is no majority population in our student body at Berkeley, and about one-third of our students come from low-income families. Further, the majority of our undergraduate students from underrepresented minorities come from low-income families.

Forty years ago, the state provided 60 percent of the campus’ budget. Today, it provides only 22 percent.

With the recently approved fee schedule for California in-state students, undergraduate fees at Berkeley next September will be slightly over $10,000. The fee is a small fraction of the total cost of attending. Additional costs, including room and board, books, health insurance, etc., raise the cost to more than $31,000. This is a very large amount.

However, the really important number is what students, especially those from low-income families, actually have to pay.

How is that amount determined? For UC Berkeley, our in-state and out-of-state undergraduate students combined in 2010-11 will generate a total educational fee income of about $315 million; $230 million will go into the university’s operating budget to pay for faculty and staff salaries and other operating costs, while $85 million will be returned to financial aid. The “return-to-aid” provides funding for grants (not loans) to students in financial need, most especially those from low-income families.

Through Cal Grants and the University of California’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Program, fees are completely covered for eligible students from families with incomes under $70,000. Yet this still leaves some $21,000 in remaining costs. Federal Pell Grants, and more importantly, the portion of fees returned to financial aid, reduce the $21,000 to about $9,000 for our lowest- income students.

Our students typically cover this remaining amount, which is called the “self-help” level, through a combination of work study and loans. Without return to aid – that is, if fees were zero – the required self-help contribution would be much higher, possibly $15,000 or $16,000.

Our low-income students would graduate with debts as high as $50,000 compared with the current average debt of $14,000. The one-third of our students with family incomes under $45,000 would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to attend Berkeley. More than half of our underrepresented minority students fall into this category, and so a policy of zero fees would have a devastating effect on the diversity of the UC Berkeley undergraduate student body.

We also have some very important challenges for middle-class families under our current financial aid structure. Specifically, because of federal policies, students from families with incomes of about $100,000 typically receive very little financial aid other than loans. This puts an unreasonable burden on the middle class. The solution for the middle class is not zero fees. Rather, we need to develop a uniformly accessible system that would help all those with real financial need. This means more, not fewer, resources for financial aid.

Many people, including me, would argue as a matter of social justice that students from affluent families should pay fees because a policy of zero fees represents a transfer of income from the poor to the rich. Whether or not one agrees with this philosophical position, the practical effect of zero fees is undeniable: Unless financial aid funds were radically increased, which is unlikely to happen in the current state economy, reducing fees to zero would have a devastating effect on how representative our Berkeley student body is of today’s, and, even more, of tomorrow’s California. In addition, if the state government did not replace the $230 million that undergraduate fees provide for education, the quality of education would be greatly diminished.

Berkeley and the University of California as a whole seek to be a leaders in providing accessible and excellent public education for California. The vision of zero fees would end rather than fulfill this promise.

Ian Magruder

Last fall, students across California mobilized against cuts to higher education to a degree not seen since the student movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

It started on Sept. 24, when thousands of University of California students and faculty skipped or canceled classes and held huge rallies decrying the $812 million that the state Legislature had cut from the UC budget. The activism escalated in advance of the UC Board of Regents’ vote to increase student fees by 32 percent, and from Nov. 18 to 20, a three-day strike swept the UC system.

A diverse range of students joined together in a wide variety of actions – everything from writing letters to legislators to occupying buildings – and in the end the message made it through to Sacramento: We cannot balance the budget on the backs of students.

When students returned from winter break, we were glad to hear that our efforts had paid off. In his State of the State speech, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced painful cuts to nearly every social program in the state, but higher education was spared the ax. What is more, his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, directly attributed student actions as the motivating factor in the decision. “Those protests on the UC campuses were the tipping point,” she was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

It would be easy for students to sit back and bask in the glory of our accomplishments from last fall. It would be easy to pat ourselves on the back and return to school as usual. But this fight isn’t over. Although the governor and Legislature might be sparing education in this round of budget cuts, the future of California’s three public higher education systems is still in peril.

The 32 percent fee increase that was implemented last year remains in effect. The faculty and staff who were laid off have yet to be rehired. This is not a time for complacency or self-congratulation.

So as students look forward to how we can build off of what was achieved last fall, we must consider the context of our actions. 2010 is an election year and, besides electing a new and hopefully more student-friendly governor, dozens of state Senate and Assembly seats will be up for election. The winners of these elections will be the policymakers who shape the direction of California as we step into this new decade.

Will they continue down the path of more cuts to funding and higher student fees, or will they change course and invest in the educational institutions that have made California the most prosperous state in America? That is for us to decide.

Students, faculty, parents, and everyone who wants to see our universities and colleges continue to lead the world in providing high-quality, affordable education need to realize that elections have consequences. We cannot be afraid to get our hands dirty.

We need to demand that all candidates take the crisis in higher education seriously. Then we must register thousands of students to vote and prove to the candidates that they cannot ignore us.

Finally, we must recognize the structural problems in Sacramento and fight to repeal the two-thirds rule that has allowed the minority party to block new revenues to fund higher education. That is how we build off of the momentum from last fall. Our fight is political.

Proposals for a new Kings arena continue to divide Sacramento’s mayor and City Council. Before this script gets any uglier, here’s the kind of dialogue we’d love to hear – but probably never will – at a City Council meeting:

Mayor Kevin Johnson: The volunteer task force will offer its recommendations on an arena – er, I mean, sports and entertainment complex – by March 11. Is there any further discussion on the workings of the task force?

Councilwoman Sandy Sheedy: Yes, Mr. Mayor, I want to amend some of my previous statements. We are fortunate to have this volunteer task force soliciting these proposals. Although it will be up to the City Council to make the final review and decision, I see no harm in letting this task force complete its work.

Councilman Rob Fong: I want to second that. Although I’m an unabashed booster of the Kamilos proposal, I see no harm in letting the task force finish its work.

Councilman Kevin McCarty: Let me chime in here. I have also rethought some of my previous comments. I regret that the tone of some of our conversations has gotten so … personal. That is not what the public expects from this council.

Mayor Johnson: Wow, this is a refreshing change. Did someone put something in the water pitcher?

(Genuine laughter.)

Mayor Johnson: Let me just say, we all share responsibility for the tension of recent weeks and months. I take part of the blame. But I hope we can get beyond that and focus on what really matters – the best interests of the city.

Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell: Hear, hear. It is in the city’s best interests to hear from a variety of arena developers and financiers – not just Goldman Sachs. We need to have leverage, and we lose leverage if we lock in early with one or two proposals.

Councilman Steve Cohn: Shouldn’t we go into closed session on this?

Mayor Johnson: No! We must conduct the people’s business in public. There are appropriate times for closed sessions, but this is not one of them.

In the face of jawboning by Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and other politicians, Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest for-profit health insurer, announced Saturday that it will postpone its planned 39 percent rate hike.

That’s welcome news.

Rate hikes of this magnitude would surely prompt thousands of Anthem’s 700,000-plus customers in California to drop their individual coverage, putting more strains on emergency rooms. Hospitals would then pass costs onto insurance companies, which would respond with ever-higher rate hikes.

It’s a vicious downward cycle.

Part of the answer, of course, is national health care reform, which (if Congress gets it right) would help cover all Americans and require all to obtain insurance. That would reduce costs that hospitals must either absorb or pass along, eliminating one of the cost-drivers to the current system.

Yet given the chance that Congress won’t act on real reform in the near future, California must have a strategy to deal with insurance companies that seek rate hikes above the inflation rate for medical costs. One clear option is to regulate the rates that health insurance companies charge.

It won’t be easy.

In 2007, Assemblyman Dave Jones introduced a bill that would have granted regulatory power to the state. The Sacramento Democrat managed to push the bill through the Assembly, but the measure failed to pass the Senate Health Committee.

Jones introduced a similar bill in 2009. That bill didn’t even get out of the Assembly Health Committee that Jones chairs.

Republican legislators opposed the measures in unison, hewing to their supporters in the insurance industry and business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce. But Democrats had big majorities in both houses and could have passed the regulation if they saw fit. They didn’t.

The clout of the insurance industry, and Anthem Blue Cross in particular, is one explanation. Between 2007 and 2009, the company spent more than any other single company on its lobbying in Sacramento – $6.65 million. That was $500,000 more than runner-up AT&T. The company is a major campaign donor, giving $6.9 million to California candidates and causes since 2000.

In 2007, it sent a letter to the Senate Health Committee contending that if Jones’ bill were to become law, “insurers will be less motivated to propose innovative products and less motivated to make minor, consumer-friendly changes to existing projects …”

Hmmm. Was a 39 percent rate hike the sort of “consumer friendly changes” that Anthem Blue Cross had in mind?

State-by-state regulation of insurance companies is hardly an optimal outcome. It is inherently inefficient. Here in California, it could well prompt insurers to drop covered services or take other steps to maximize profits.

Yet if Congress refuses to act – and if insurance companies continue to fund stealth campaigns to kill national health reform – then California will have little choice but to join other states that are already regulating health insurers.

The rate hikes that Blue Cross is contemplating can’t be squared with reality.

They reek of price gouging.