Author: SacBee — Opinion

Sacramento County workers have priced themselves so high that the public they serve is sometimes better off when county government bows out.

The transitional housing program at the Mather Community Campus set to be taken over by Volunteers of America this week illustrtrates the phenomenon.

In 1996, a voter-approved ordinance made it easier for Sacramento County to contract out for services to organizations like VOA. But that ordinance, codified as 71J in the county charter, also barred the county from displacing existing county workers with private sector employees.

With the county in tough economic times and county workers facing layoffs, Sacramento County Counsel Robert Ryan has interpreted 71J and state civil service case law to mean that county workers can displace private sector contract workers in any job that county workers can perform. Displacement is permitted even if the county worker is more costly and less skilled and experienced than the contract worker, and even when county workers are taking on jobs they’ve never performed in the past.

Armed with that interpretation, county case managers threatened with layoffs from county social service agencies last year were able to displace private case managers for formerly homeless clients at the Mather Community Campus.

Because county worker pay and benefits were so much higher, six private workers had to be laid off to bring in just three county employees. Case loads at Mather immediately doubled and services suffered.

It gets worse. Private case managers were more flexible. Many worked evenings and weekends when the clients most needed them. That allowed the nonprofit agency running the program to keep paid staff on site virtually around the clock.

Under the terms of their union contracts, county workers’ hours were more restricted. Most worked regular weekday hours when many of the clients were either at work or attending classes.

By pulling out all county general fund money from the Mather Community Campus, county supervisors freed VOA to bring back private case managers, save money and restore common-sense efficiencies to the program. Homeless clients and the public will be better off.

But Mather Community Campus is just one example of dozens of nonprofit agencies in Sacramento County threatened by 71J. Across the county, private workers providing vital services to some of the county’s most needy residents are being displaced by more expensive and, often, less experienced county employees.

Private mental health providers complain that their programs are being decimated by 71J. Some have challenged the county’s interpretation of the local ordinances. They argue that state mental health law requires “mental health services to be accomplished using available private resources and facilities so as to provide quality services at the least possible cost.”

Eventually the courts may have to decide if replacing contract workers with more costly, less skilled or experienced county employees violates the law. It doesn’t take a court to recognize that the ordinance, as interpreted by the county, does a disservice to the mentally ill and the public.

After more than a year when the spotlight remained fixed on the doctor’s office and the hospital room, attention switches this week to the classrooms of America. On Monday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will announce the first-round winners of the Race to the Top, the $4 billion competition he set up to reward the states with the most ambitious plans for improving their public schools.

When I asked Duncan last week what he hoped people would say about this unprecedented contest, he responded: “So many were skeptical when we announced this a year ago as part of the stimulus package. I hope they realize now that a very high bar has been set.” Because the winning plans are so good? I asked. “So good, and so few,” he said.

Duncan, the rangy former Chicago schools chief who plays pickup basketball with the president, has been given what none of his predecessors in the Education Department ever had: a huge chunk of cash, part of the two-year, $862 billion effort to rescue the economy from collapse. Fifteen of the 40 states that submitted plans were named as finalists in the Race to the Top earlier this month, along with the District of Columbia. The winners will pick up millions for their improvement projects.

That this is happening when state after state and school district after school district have seen their regular budgets slashed by the recession-crippling domestic economy simply increases Duncan’s leverage.

We know he will use it to increase the role of charter schools and to spur other efforts to change the way teachers are recruited, trained and deployed – especially for youngsters from meager financial households.

But we don’t know where. And we don’t know how successfully Duncan can exploit this windfall to move the bureaucracy of education in ways that produce dramatic results.

As it happens, Race to the Top is just one of two major initiatives Duncan has launched to try to change the face of America’s public schools. The other is the effort to rewrite and reauthorize in Congress the largest federal aid to education act, now best known as No Child Left Behind.

Duncan wants to preserve what is most distinctive (and controversial) about that law, the insistence that elementary and high schools test their pupils regularly to determine how every significant subgroup is doing, with the aim of reducing racial and gender gaps.

But he and President Barack Obama have urged Congress to rewrite both the standards and their implementation in a variety of ways that promise to be more rigorous but less intrusive than NCLB.

They are helped by the fact that 48 of the 50 states – all but Texas and Alaska – have agreed to write a set of common standards for math and English studies, providing a benchmark for schools without invoking the heavy hand of Washington.

It’s too soon to know what Congress will do with the Duncan plan or even whether NCLB reauthorization will fit into the legislative calendar.

So far, the most critical comments have come from the heads of the two big teachers unions, which could doom these changes in a Democratic Congress. But Duncan, after his experience in Chicago, has learned the value of keeping the lines of communication open and not accepting the first “no” as final. The day I saw him, he’d had breakfast with one of the union chiefs.

More remarkably, the bipartisanship that marked the passage of NCLB – with Democrats George Miller of California and Ted Kennedy partnering with Bush – remains possible even after the war over health care.

Duncan credits Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a former secretary of education now in the Senate, and Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, another Republican, for helping shape the proposal.

Achieving the kind of change Duncan is promoting would be a great gift for the country, especially when so many states are being forced by budgetary pressures to skimp on their commitments to education.

Recently the Bee published an editorial (“Triple dipping comes to Rocklin,” March 19) on one of the programs our city is using to cut costs in this period of economic downturn.

This program helped our effort to realign the city organization to meet the needs of a changing city and helped us save money by eliminating unneeded positions. When development began to slow, Rocklin began to prepare for the transition from a growing city to a mature city. It was clear the city organization and staffing pattern needed change. So the City Council and staff began planning for city reorganization.

Some city departments were to be downsized, others combined for efficiency. Then the economy plummeted and revenues shrank dramatically, compounding Rocklin’s challenges.

As any organization or company should do in such times, Rocklin cut back. Hiring was frozen, travel stopped, temporary workers were eliminated, employee hours were cut, and layoffs occurred. But the economy worsened. Left with few options, Rocklin did what many private companies commonly do: it offered incentives for employees to retire early.

Fifteen employees opted for early retirement and the city plans to permanently eliminate 13 of those jobs. To assist in the transition, some of the retiring employees have been hired on a part-time, temporary basis, with no benefits. That means they will cost the city much less than when they were full time. All but one will be gone in 2010.

There is a cost for this early-retirement incentive, just over $51,000 per year for 20 years, or slightly more than $1 million total. Even after paying this cost, Rocklin will achieve sizable savings.

According to our estimates, by eliminating 13 jobs, in just the first three years the city will save a total of more than $3 million. That savings takes into account the cost of the temporary workers and the cost of providing the incentive to retire early.

These savings are significant during a time when city revenues have fallen dramatically and cash flow has severely strained city services.

Rocklin has always been a fiscally conservative city. Its navigation through the worst economy in 80 years continues its track record of striving to provide quality services to our citizens in the most efficient manner.

The United States used to be among the world’s leaders in educating its citizenry. After World War II, Americans completed college at higher rates than most other countries as returning soldiers used the GI Bill to pay tuition.

My father was among the veterans who completed college with Uncle Sam’s assistance, a beneficiary of a farsighted federal government that understood boosting college attainment was good for the country. That cohort of college boys helped to lead a prolonged period of national prosperity. They fostered educational achievement in their children, who often completed college, as well.

College assistance was also a signal accomplishment of the Eisenhower administration, which spent millions on education after the Soviets launched Sputnik. Among other things, Eisenhower created a loan program for students’ college costs.

But somewhere along the way, the nation lost its focus on pushing educational achievement. We became complacent while developing nations rightly decided that college attainment would help them achieve economic growth. Just 39 percent of American adults have an associate’s degree or higher, compared with 55 percent for Canada and 54 percent for Japan.

The United States now ranks sixth in the percentage of adults ages 18 to 24 who are enrolled in college – behind, among others, Hungary and Poland.

Worse, the United States ranks 15th in college completion rates – a figure that President Barack Obama cites often and has vowed to improve.

In a speech last year, Obama called the nation’s failure to boost academic achievement a “prescription for economic decline. … That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” Congress has just made a down payment on that promise. Amendments attached to health care legislation – and largely overshadowed by the spectacle accompanying that debate – include a student loan overhaul that will add billions in funding for Pell Grants, which help pay college costs for about 6 million students.

Pell Grants, started in 1973, have long been popular and well-used – a significant source of funds for students without the means to pay for college. During the 1970s and ’80s, the grants, which don’t have to be repaid, helped many students become the first in their families to obtain four-year college degrees.

But as college costs soared over the last two decades, Pell Grants didn’t keep pace. The grants once covered about two-thirds of the costs of a public university; now, they cover only about a third.

Higher-education experts have long pointed to steep costs as one of the reasons that so few students manage to finish college in four or five years. Even community college costs have risen, forcing some students to drop out before they can complete a two-year degree.

With state legislatures nationwide threatening budget cuts that could lead to steep tuition increases at public colleges and universities, those increased Pell Grants could help some students stay in school.

“It’s a transformational opportunity,” said U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Predictably, the student loan overhaul had its critics. The private-lending lobby inundated Capitol Hill with its representatives.

Several Republicans and a few Democrats claimed a “government takeover.” It’s nothing of the sort.

In 1965, the federal government wanted more student loans, so it gave lenders subsidies and assumed the risks for repayment. But private lenders abused the process, charging high fees and paying off colleges to steer students their way.

By 1992, when former President Bill Clinton started streamlining the loan program, the federal government was spending $6 billion a year for $15 billion in loans. The new legislation eliminates the middleman, freeing up $9 billion for better uses.

That’s change we can believe in.

To see the reaction in some states to the just-passed health care reform bill, you might think you were back in the 1950s. Today, as more than a half century ago, some states are looking for ways to defy federal law – including reviving the pre-Civil War doctrine of “nullification,” claiming that a single state can block federal law.

And, once again, Virginia is leading the way, similar to its 1950s “massive resistance” campaign against federal orders to end racially segregated schools. Virginia’s governor signed laws last week that attempt to make elements of the new health care law illegal in Virginia. Utah and Idaho have passed similar laws.

In California, state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, has introduced his own version of nullification. A proposed constitutional amendment would “prohibit the effectiveness or enforcement” of requirements that insurance companies provide coverage to all applicants regardless of pre-existing conditions and that individuals have health insurance coverage – unless California voters go to the ballot and approve them.

Such single-state nullification won’t pass legal muster. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution – the Supremacy Clause – says that federal laws take precedence over state law. The Civil War was fought over this issue – and decided in favor of national union.

States can, of course, legally challenge the constitutionality of federal laws in court. But here, too, they need to use some sense – not simply engage in frivolous lawsuits that are more about policy differences or symbolic gestures than constitutionality.

The new health law is a case in point. On the day President Barack Obama signed the health care bill into law, Republican attorneys general in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington, and the Democratic attorney general in Louisiana, filed a lawsuit challenging it.

The lawsuit focuses on the new law’s “individual responsibility” provision that requires people to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. Legal scholar Jack Balkin explains that provision this way: “If they stay out of the risk pool, they effectively raise other people’s insurance costs, and Congress taxes them to recoup some of the costs. If they join the risk pool, they do not have to pay the tax. A good analogy would be a tax on polluters who fail to install pollution-control equipment: They can pay the tax or install the equipment.”

Recall that this provision originally was championed across the Republican spectrum – from Newt Gingrich to Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was signed into law in Massachusetts in 2006 by then-Gov. Mitt Romney, later a Republican presidential candidate. The recent Republican reversal on this issue signals that opposition is more about political theater than constitutionality.

The three Republican candidates for California attorney general – Steve Cooley, John Eastman and Tom Harman – say they would join the 13-state lawsuit, calling the new law an intrusive expansion of federal power at the expense of states’ rights. The seven Democratic candidates – Rocky Delgadillo, Kamala Harris, Chris Kelly, Ted Lieu, Pedro Nava, Mike Schmier and Alberto Torrico – would not join the lawsuit, considering it a partisan maneuver.

The bottom line: Rather than skirmishing about the new law in the courts, proponents and opponents would do better to settle this policy issue through a “keep it” or “repeal it” debate in the normal election process. This may sound quaint, but why not fight it out in the political arena using facts and persuasion?

California public health authorities delivered excellent news recently when they announced that the number of tuberculosis cases reported in 2009 had dropped by the largest margin in nearly a decade.

The number of cases fell to 2,472 – from 2,695 in 2008, and almost 3,300 at the start of the decade, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The decline is a testament to hard work and foresight on the part of county public health officers across California and at the state level.

But there are warning signs. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has held funding steady at $8.2 million this year and in the coming year.

The bulk is earmarked for counties where the hard work combating the disease takes place. But cash-strapped counties are having a hard time keeping up with spending demands.

The state is providing $566,788 to Sacramento County this year, plus additional money for housing and related medical needs. The county provides the rest of TB program spending, $3.7 million. That is down by almost $840,000 from the prior year. A similar cut is contemplated in the coming year.

Such cuts take a toll. Consider the rebound of syphilis. At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of 2000, there was a realistic hope that syphilis would be relegated to history. As a result, money to combat it was cut.

An outbreak in prison spread it outside the prison walls. In time, it jumped to heterosexuals.

In 1999, Sacramento County recorded two cases of syphilis, and one in 2000. By 2008, there were 91 cases, up from 62 the year before.

Lately, Sacramento County public health authorities have identified pregnant women who have the disease. That poses a serious threat, since syphilis can cause a variety of birth defects and mental retardation.

The fight against communicable disease is labor-intensive. Public health officers must follow individuals with tuberculosis to make certain they do not spread it and are taking drugs to cure it.

California leads the nation in reported tuberculosis cases, with roughly 1,000 more than the next nearest state, Texas. Although the disease is a problem among certain immigrant communities, infectious disease knows no boundary or class.

Tuberculosis spreads when infected people cough or sneeze. It usually attacks the lungs and generally is treatable, although at least 197 people died of it in California in 2008.

State and county officials who control funding must understand that even in tough budgetary times, cuts in public health produce false savings. As the re-emergence of syphilis shows, communicable diseases that once appeared to be under control have a habit of reappearing.

Shawn Steel

The attention of California Republicans is naturally focused on the rambunctious gubernatorial and U.S. Senate contests. After all, who we nominate for those offices, and the slate of constitutional officers, is essential to the GOP’s recovery as a force in California politics.

Overshadowed by the sound and fury of those contests is an initiative on the June ballot that could affect GOP fortunes even more profoundly by permanently, radically altering how party nominees are selected.

Proposition 14 replaces our traditional party primary system with the “blanket” primary used by that paragon of political dysfunction, the state of Louisiana. Prop. 14 is the fruit of a corrupt bargain struck a year ago between liberal Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado and legislative Democrats: Maldonado voted to enact the budget and largest tax increase in state history in exchange for putting the blanket primary on the June ballot.

Traditionally, California voters choose party nominees in a primary election, the winners of which face each other in the November general election. Political parties are free to decide votes in their primaries. For example, the GOP allows decline-to-state voters to vote in its primary, in addition to registered Republicans. This system has served our state well for decades.

The radical Prop. 14 scheme proposes a blanket primary in which all candidates are on a single ballot. The top two vote-getters – regardless of party affiliation – advance to the general election.

The blanket primary narrows, rather than widens, voters’ choices. Many of our gerrymandered legislative and congressional districts are dominated by a single party. In these, general elections would be between a Republican and a Republican, or a Democrat and a Democrat. In large, rural districts, there would never be a Democrat on the November ballot. Likewise for Republican candidates in urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco. As for third party candidates, they’d effectively be knee-capped.

This is no accident. The blanket primary is designed to blur the lines and populate the Legislature with politicians with mushy beliefs. The unstated premise is that sharp philosophical differences between the two parties is unhealthy, and that seeking voter allegiance on such a basis is “partisan” and therefore bad.

In a free society, parties should be allowed to set their own rules for selecting nominees, not have one imposed on them against their will.

Adopting a blanket primary in the tea party era would be a historic mistake. I can’t remember the last time so many ordinary Americans were so earnestly engaged in issues of politics and government, actively pushing back against state and federal governments that have slipped their constitutional moorings and are spinning out of control.

At a time of maximum voter alertness to the very real differences between two parties – and their flaws – do we really want a blanket primary that blurs those distinctions? Is it wise to rig the game so that voters, rebelling against the status quo, have their choices narrowed to two brands of vanilla? Some elites argue that the California Republican Party can only grow by diluting itself, and they see the blanket primary as a means to that end – but that view ignores history and is blind to the opportunities ahead.

In California, the seeds planted by years of Democratic policies – high taxes, anti-business regulations, massive entitlements and unsustainable public pension obligations – are bearing their bitter fruit. The edifice of liberal governance is quickly crumbling, and more and more Californians are open to Republican solutions grounded in liberty and limited government as the surest path to restraining government and creating economic opportunity. Why, then would we choose such a moment to adopt a blanket primary that deprives voters of robust choices and offers them a narrow octave of echoes, instead?

I was disappointed to see that my friend and colleague Ralph Nader recently spoke out against Proposition 14, the California ballot initiative that proposes to reform the electoral process in America’s most populous state.

If passed, Prop. 14 would allow all voters, whether affiliated with a party or not, to vote in an all-inclusive first round in which every candidate is on the ballot with their party preference next to their name. The top two vote-getters go on to the general election which is also open to every voter.

Nader believes California voters should reject this reform in order to guarantee third parties a spot on the general election ballot at the expense of millions of independent voters who will be empowered if Proposition 14 passes.

In 2004, Ralph faced an organized conspiracy by the Democratic National Committee and the John Kerry presidential campaign to keep his name off the ballot in as many states as possible. Leading Democrats held Nader responsible for Al Gore’s defeat in 2000, and justified their assault on his right to run for president and the right of Americans to vote for him with the need to defeat George W. Bush by any means necessary.

I am proud that I volunteered my efforts to represent Nader in courts in West Virginia and New Mexico, and that in both states his name remained on the ballot.

Recently, Nader made the following statement in opposition to Proposition 14: “Unless defeated, Proposition 14 would establish a two-party tyranny that prevents other candidate choices for California voters from the November election ballot. In short, Proposition 14 wants to shut you up if you disagree with the arrogant, big two-party politicians.”

Nader, not unlike other third party advocates who oppose Proposition 14, seems to discount that many “arrogant, big two-party politicians” have been outspoken and aggressive in their opposition to open primary reforms. When voters in Washington state adopted the system on which Proposition 14 is modeled, the Democratic and Republican parties went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsuccessful effort to overturn it.

Since Proposition 14 is an attempt to loosen the hold that the major parties have on our democracy by their iron-fisted control of the nominating process, it is no surprise that the major parties – whose tyranny Nader denounces – are doing everything they can to defeat it.

Proposition 14 will give the 3,466,855 independent voters in California who are not enrolled in a political party the right to participate in the primary elections that determine who will appear on the general election ballot. If Prop. 14 passes, independents will be on equal footing with other voters.

Proposition 14 is an important step towards nonpartisan governance. Voters will be voting for candidates, not parties, and there is a real opportunity for coalitions of independents, parties (minor and major) and party members to join together to support reform-oriented candidates. Under Proposition 14, an effective coalition can propel a candidate not favored by the party establishment (major and minor) to round two, with a real chance to win.

For those concerned with party building – major or minor – having strong spokespersons in the first round will help parties enlarge their base, arguably much more effectively than running what often amount to fringe candidacies in the general election that do not have an impact on either the election or public policy.

Third-party advocates argue that they function as incubators for political and social change. Yet since World War II, social movements have been more effective in producing sweeping change than third parties. The civil rights gains of the sixties came about through a mass movement that forced the Democrats and Republicans in Congress to take long overdue measures to redress discrimination, including passage of the Voting Rights Act. Three decades later, the Perot movement forced the major parties to do something about America’s growing national debt and to at least consider (as in Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America) a series of political reforms such as term limits and opening congressional committee meetings to the public. When the Perot movement reorganized itself as a third party, the Reform Party began its descent into political irrelevance. I know, because I was there. I participated in the formation of the Reform Party and witnessed the events that led to its decline.

Ultimately, though, the reason to support Proposition 14 in California is tactical.

The most effective way for “outsider” movements for innovation and progressive change to transform the political mainstream is for third parties and social reform groups to come together to nurture the development of a mass movement.

It’s particularly disturbing that at a moment when millions of independents are knocking at the door of an electoral process from which they are excluded, Ralph Nader and the third party movement would want to slam it shut.

What do you think of the local food movement? To comment on this use, please use our forum.

After years of being urged to “eat fresh, eat local,” residents of the Sacramento region are responding. From neighborhood dinner tables to big institutional kitchens, locally grown foods are in high demand.

But every spring, locally grown produce is rotting in the fields of the small family-run farms around the region.

Between that abundant supply and the strong demand, the market has broken down. There is no good way to get those crops from the farms to the people who want them at a price consumers are willing to pay.

Bob Corshen wants to fix that.

Corshen is director of local foods for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, based in Davis. The alliance and its partners are about to build the link that will close the gap in the local food supply chain. At the same time, they may be putting in place the first piece of a far-reaching social mission to bring more fresh foods into the region’s low-income communities.

The new link in the food distribution chain will be known as an “aggregation hub.” But that really is just a fancy name for a cold-storage warehouse.

Farmers will bring their harvests to the hub. A contractor working for the alliance will inspect those small shipments of strawberries or asparagus or carrots and combine them to fill the larger orders that come from the customers. Then those boxes – identified as locally grown and traceable by county and farm – will be sent into the community aboard the same trucks that already carry produce from around the world.

If all goes as planned, the small farmers will enlarge their markets and their profits. Sacramento shoppers and diners will get the local foods they want. Distributors will have a way to meet the demands of their customers. And the contractor managing the distribution hub will earn money for its role in making it all possible.

Corshen’s group is behind the “buy fresh, buy local” campaign that is now working better than anyone had hoped. Suddenly local food is on top of everyone’s wish list.

“We are involved in this for the simple reason that this whole concept of local foods is booming,” Corshen said.

Corshen said a recent issue of Packer Magazine, which he calls the bible for the food distribution industry, asked readers which word had more influence on their customers: “organic,” “sustainable” or “local.” “Local” won in a landslide.

“All in the sudden the distributors give a damn,” he said. “They realize there is a need for it.”

The problem is that the existing system for distributing fresh produce in the region is built for large-scale shipments. It is too time consuming, and too expensive, for produce distributors to deal with dozens of small and sometimes unreliable farms when they could get the same product in one large lot from a farm anywhere in the world. And get it, in many cases, for less money.

“When we go to market, we have to have a consistent supply,” said Nate Parks., vice president of sales for Durham-based ProPacific, a major produce distributor in Northern California. “I have to go to my customers and say I have these 35 or 40 items, and I have them consistently for you.

“A lot of times with local farmers, his crop may come out for a week straight, and then on day eight he is out of product. It’s hard for distributors to switch gears and identify another source. The distribution hub is a great way for us to have that consistent supply chain lined up before we go to market.”

The alliance tried a similar project a few years ago, known as the Sacramento Growers Collaborative. Working with a beat-up van, the collaborative tried to pick up boxes of locally grown produce from small farmers and distribute them to customers. But neither the farmers nor the distribution network proved reliable enough to survive.

The key difference with the aggregation hub is that it will not try to replicate the existing distribution network. Instead, it will piggyback on top of it.

Smith Panh grows strawberries on a tiny plot of less than 2 acres that he leases from a friend in Antelope. He sells most of his berries at a roadside stand and was able to sell some to a local school last year. But not all of them.

“I had a lot I could not sell,” he said. “I just had to leave them in the field.”

This year he is starting fewer plants to reduce his waste. But he would rather grow more and sell them all.

The same is true for Dennis Xiong, who grows strawberries on 4 acres near the corner of Jackson Road and Sunrise Boulevard. He sells his harvest at a roadside farm stand. But in May and June, when his berry plants are bursting with ripe fruit, he often cannot sell them all and watches as they rot in the fields. Last year, when the berries were at their peak, he was able to sell only about half of his potential harvest.

“I want to sell outside, but I don’t know where to go,” he said.

Before moving to Sacramento, Xiong grew strawberries in Merced County. There, he had far more land and more production. But there was a company that would buy any berries he did not sell at his stand. He does not have the same advantage here. A distribution hub for small family farmers, he said, would be a huge help for him.

“That would be great,” he said.

Access to markets is just one hurdle Southeast Asian American farmers confront. The language barrier is another, according to Jennifer Sowerwine, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who works with this group of growers.

Many of the strawberry farmers are ethnic Mien. The vegetable farmers are mostly Hmong.

“They don’t have the skills or the know-how in our California food culture and system to approach a potential customer, present their product and negotiate a fair price,” said Sowerwine.

One potential customer that has gone largely unserved because of these barriers is the Sacramento City Unified School District. District spokesman Gabe Ross said the city schools have been trying to bring more local foods onto school menus and would welcome a distribution hub that would make that task easier.

“It’s a conversation our food service staff has been having over the last couple of years,” Ross said. “The issue in the past has always been distribution, from a logistical standpoint. If there is a way to work those issues out, absolutely, this is something we would love to explore.”

The alliance expects to have its hub up and running within a month. It most likely will be housed at a food processing building in south Sacramento near Executive Airport, although other sites are also being considered.

Unlike similar hubs opening in Los Angeles and Oakland, the Sacramento hub is likely to have a broad public service mission. Organizers hope to make fresh food more accessible to low-income communities, provide education about whole foods and nutrition and employ youths who would otherwise be jobless. The expanded hub might also have cleaning and processing facilities so the produce can be shipped in ready-to-use bags that large institutions, such as schools and hospitals, prefer.

That part of the project is being funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and managed by Soilborn Farms, an urban farm with land near the American River in Rancho Cordova.

Shawn Harrison, a founder and director of Soilborn, envisions a food center that will serve farm stands in urban neighborhoods, farmers markets, corner stores and food box programs that deliver fresh produce directly to people’s doors.

“For these underserved communities, what the food hub does is, one, give us the ability to source local, and then it creates momentum around these kinds of incubator mechanisms, to get food into the community,” Harrison said.

But Harrison does not see it as something only for low-income communities. He and others would like the project to be the beginning of a long-term reversal in the trend toward shipping locally grown food out of the region while importing most of the food that Sacramentans eat.

More local consumption of local food would reduce transportation costs and pollution while freeing more farmers from the wild swings of the international commodity markets.

“This isn’t something that is going to happen over a year,” Harrison said. “This is a 20-year process where we begin to shift the food that we have the ability to grow in this region, that has typically gone out, we can shift it to come back in.

“Ultimately, people living in the Sacramento region will more than not be getting food from places where they know where it is coming from and they know the quality of that food. That will be their preference, and they will be able to do it in an affordable manner, in an equitable manner.”

Fresh produce like that sold in the region’s farmers markets could soon be easier to obtain for a wider group of consumers.

What do you think of the local food movement? To comment on this use, please use our forum.

Why is agriculture vital to the Sacramento region?

To start, our region’s farms help feed the world. Roughly half of the nation’s specialty crops come from California, while more than 28 percent of the state’s production is shipped overseas. Agriculture also is one of the few regional bright spots in this recession, increasing about $300 million in value – a 22 percent jump since 2006.

The importance of agriculture is one of the reasons the Sacramento Area Council of Governments started a new project last year called the Rural-Urban Connections Strategy, which has been compiling data about our rural economy.

Our farmers currently produce $1.66 billion in food, supporting 28,000 jobs and $3.3 billion in economic activity. At the local level, the effects are even greater. In El Dorado County, every job in agriculture supports seven jobs in local processing, distribution and agritourism.

Before RUCS, our knowledge was limited to whether rural lands were agricultural or open space. Now we have maps that illustrate the incredible diversity of agricultural activity throughout our region, and we’re developing information on environmental uses such as habitat conservation, flood protection and carbon sequestration.

So where’s the “urban” in our rural-urban connection? Farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, restaurants, grocery stores, schools and hospitals are a huge potential market for local farmers. Yet less than 2 percent of the food we eat is supplied locally. Considering that our region consumes 2.2 million tons of food annually, you can imagine how much economic activity we could generate if more of what we eat were produced locally.

Yet the clock is ticking. Over the past 20 years, the region has lost more than 300,000 acres of farmland. Between 2000 and 2005, nearly 60 percent of that loss was for housing on lots between 1 and 10 acres.

As we emerge from the current economic downturn, we must not forget the importance of agriculture to our economy. The preservation of agricultural land and the ability to grow food in our region is vital to the sustainability of both rural and urban communities.

State worker furloughs were an emergency measure that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger employed to deal with last year’s fiscal crisis. They helped the state preserve cash at a time California was having trouble paying its bills. It was harsh medicine.

With three furloughs a month, workers endured what were close to 15 percent pay cuts. The public was inconvenienced as well, most notably by longer waits at DMV and unemployment offices.

Restaurants and other businesses lost money as state workers stayed home. Also, some agencies that generate revenue, the Franchise Tax Board, for example, lost money.

Now that the immediate emergency that spawned furloughs has passed it’s time to end them. Even the governor understands this. He says he will end furloughs June 30, but why wait? End them now.

Still, while ending furloughs makes sense today, the governor’s authority to resort to furloughs in future emergencies should not be curtailed. The governor was right to veto Senate Bill X8 29, a measure by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg that would tie the hands of future governors.

Among other things, Steinberg’s bill would exempt from future furloughs all civil servants whose positions are funded at least 95 percent from sources other than the general fund. It also would exempt employees of revenue producing agencies such as the Franchise Tax Board and the Board of Equalization from furloughs.

Such exemptions undermine equity, leaving some state workers subject to furloughs and others not. That’s unfair. There are also practical problems with Steinberg’s approach. Some positions are funded by multiple sources, and it is not always possible to tell when at least 95 percent of the funding comes from the general fund.

Also, while some state workers are paid from special funds, that is, not from the general fund, initially all payroll flows out of a central account. It can take months to apportion the different funding sources to the right special-funded agencies.

When the governor resorted to furloughs last year, he was dealing with a cash-flow crisis. Cash levels were so low the state had to issue IOUs to some vendors. Future governors need that flexibility to cut payroll costs fast during similar cash emergencies.

A more equitable way to achieve salary savings would be to cut pay and benefit levels across the board. That requires cooperation from state employee unions and their allies in the Legislature. Given the state’s continuing budget crisis, Steinberg should use his energy and clout to persuade his friends in organized labor to agree to concessions.

If leaders of public employee unions and Democrats continue to resist such concessions, they should keep in mind the potential price of success. If pay rates and benefits can’t be reduced and furloughs are outlawed during future cash crises, layoffs become government’s only option.

How do state workers benefit when furloughs and pay cuts are replaced with unemployment?

Now is no time for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to go all wobbly on his landmark achievement – the AB 32 law that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The centerpiece is creation of a cap-and-trade program that would allow power plants, industries and other major producers of greenhouse gases to purchase permits for carbon emissions. Companies that reduce emissions below their allotment (the cap) can sell them on the open market (the trade).

California would be part of a market with six other states (Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington) and four Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec) in the Western Climate Initiative.

The key question is how to distribute the emissions allowances – by auction or for free?

The governor, until recently, favored an auction – and he should stand by that. An advisory committee to the California Air Resources Board also supports auctioning because it is transparent and creates incentives for companies to reduce emissions.

California would not be alone – or first – in doing this. Ten Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states that make up 20 percent of the nation’s economy already auction allowances (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont). The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative just completed its seventh auction March 10. At $2.07 per ton of emissions, the price is not onerous.

Proceeds from auctions to date, more than $582 million, have gone back to the states to improve energy efficiency and accelerate renewable energy technologies. Schwarzenegger now worries that auctioning may be “too abrupt a transition” for California. Wrong. Giving away emissions allowances is what hobbled Europe’s initial cap-and-trade program. California shouldn’t repeat that mistake.

Michael Newdow, who is a lawyer and a doctor, challenges using “God” on money and in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Supreme Court rejected one case.

With millions of people out of work, our education system in trouble, the state unable to finance services for its most vulnerable residents, is this really the time to be arguing about the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance?

Much like the evangelical atheism billboards that have gone up along the freeways in recent months, Michael Newdow is focusing the limited resources of our courts on removing the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. It seems mostly an annoyance.

Does it really hurt anyone to leave that phrase in there? Are any of us feeling forced by either a pithy billboard message or two words in a national ritual to have faith, or to abandon it?

And yet, I think he has a point.

Like Michael Newdow, I am a lawyer. I have been trained to think critically and to question our cultural assumptions. Probably like Newdow, I don’t believe that the history of the founding of this country or the drafting of the Constitution suggests that the United States was intended to be a Christian nation. The people whose vision of government we have inherited wanted to be sure that citizens of this country would never be oppressed by a government acting as an instrument of the Church. Any church.

But it’s not lawyering that convinces me that the words “under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on our coins and currency do not belong there. It’s my faith.

I am also a United Methodist minister. I have committed my professional life to helping people see that God hopes for them something more than what we have learned to expect of our lives, our character, our relationships. The God I believe in – the God I know from the Judeo-Christian tradition I come from – has always been pretty intent upon not coercing people into faith. The idea of free will seems not only something that human beings insist on, but something built into the very fabric of creation.

Instead of forcing or threatening people into relationship, the God I preach about woos us, like a hopeful lover. We make a choice to have faith or not, to trust God or not.

To put a pronouncement of faith on every coin and dollar bill, to assume it for every person who handles money or who pledges allegiance to the flag as an act of patriotism, cheapens it. You can be a citizen and a patriot of the United States without believing in the God of Christianity or any other religious tradition. You can use money to buy things in this country without trusting God.

Ironically, it’s often our worry or greed about money that keeps us from trusting God for what we need.

Faith means nothing if we pretend that every person who buys something, or who has been granted American citizenship, has it. It ought to mean more.

It does mean more. I’m going to keep preaching faith to everyone who walks into my church, with gratitude that this is a country where people can freely make the choice to come into that church, or not.

I hope that someday this nation’s sense of inclusion and hospitality will lead us to remove from our pledge and our coins those phrases that presume too much and leave some people out. But this is not the time to argue about it.

Kathleen McShane

Three factors are driving California’s water crisis. Our fisheries are collapsing. Salmon, one of nature’s healthiest foods and a job generator, is endangered on all of our major rivers.

Second, climate change is altering the amount and timing of snowmelt that feeds our reservoirs. This is reducing the reliability of the state’s largest water supply.

Lastly, the fiscal meltdown is making old approaches impossible. With unemployment above 12 percent and a state budget deficit of over $20 billion we cannot just keep asking taxpayers for more money to throw at these problems.

The Planning and Conservation League has stepped back from all the rhetoric in recent water wars to think about what common sense approaches can actually improve conditions. Last week we released “8 Affordable Water Solutions for California.”

These practical proposals can go a long way to giving residents, businesses, farmers and the environment a secure water future. They also will generate good new jobs that we can afford:

• Use already approved bonds first. There is still more than $3 billion available from bonds already approved by voters. Before taxpayers are asked to approve more borrowing, existing funds should be carefully invested in the highest priorities. This includes ensuring safe drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Californians who cannot drink the water coming out of their faucets.

• Increase water supplies through safe recycling. Every year in California we divert 4 million acre-feet of water from our rivers, use it once, partially clean it up and dump it into the ocean. By way of comparison, that is more water than the massive State Water Project can deliver. The Department of Public Health needs to develop criteria for purifying that water to safely replenish our water supplies.

• Develop flow standards for the Delta and major rivers. A big reason for the collapse of California’s fisheries is the lack of scientifically based information and standards for how much water is needed to keep them healthy. This information also will increase our water supply certainty by telling us how much water we can reliably divert for people, farms and other businesses.

• Analyze a smaller Delta tunnel. Instead of a massive $10 billion plus peripheral canal (slightly larger than the Panama Canal), we should be looking at a smaller tunnel to allow some water to be diverted from the North Delta along with some diversions from existing South Delta facilities. This would be far less expensive and would be less disruptive to prime Delta agriculture. The smaller tunnel’s screened intake could reduce fish death. The tunnel also would provide a reliable water supply if there was massive levee failure in the Delta.

• Require water-neutral development. California needs to accommodate another 10 million residents in the next 20 years without taking additional water from sustainable agriculture or the environment. One way to do that is by having new developments incorporate state of the art conservation measures to reduce their water use and then offsetting the remaining demand by additional conservation and recycling in the existing communities.

• Convert unfarmable land to solar production. On the west side of the San Joaquin Valley there are hundreds of thousands of acres of land that are going out of production due to unsolvable drainage conditions. Converting these unsustainable lands to large scale solar production will create new manufacturing, installation and maintenance jobs. It also will reduce the overallocation of the state’s water supplies.

• Protect California’s major water source. Fires, erosion and other changes caused by climate change are degrading the headwaters of the Sierra Nevada watershed. We need to invest in watershed restoration to maintain the state’s largest water supply and to protect the natural environment.

• Consider a smaller water bond when the economy improves. If California’s economy rebounds in the next two years, voters should then consider a bond of about $3 billion to cost share innovative water supply projects, safe drinking water improvements and overdue restoration of the state’s most important fisheries.

I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law. But a few days later, it doesn’t seem quite as entertaining – and not just because of the wave of vandalism and threats aimed at Democratic lawmakers. For if you care about America’s future, you can’t be happy as extremists take full control of one of our two great political parties.

To be sure, it was enjoyable watching Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, warn that by passing health reform, Democrats “will finally lay the cornerstone of their socialist utopia on the backs of the American people.” Gosh, that sounds uncomfortable.

And it’s been a hoot watching Mitt Romney squirm as he tries to distance himself from a plan that, as he knows full well, is nearly identical to the reform he himself pushed through as governor of Massachusetts. His best shot was declaring that enacting reform was an “unconscionable abuse of power,” a “historic usurpation of the legislative process” – presumably because the legislative process isn’t supposed to include things like “votes” in which the majority prevails.

A side observation: One Republican talking point has been that Democrats had no right to pass a bill facing overwhelming public disapproval. As it happens, the Constitution says nothing about opinion polls trumping the right and duty of elected officials to make decisions based on what they perceive as the merits.

But in any case, the message from the polls is much more ambiguous than opponents of reform claim: While many Americans disapprove of Obamacare, a significant number do so because they feel that it doesn’t go far enough. And a Gallup poll taken after health reform’s enactment showed the public, by a modest but significant margin, seeming pleased that it had passed.

But back to the main theme. What has been really striking has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the GOP, coming not from some radical fringe but from the party’s leaders. John Boehner, the House minority leader, declared that the passage of health reform was “Armageddon.” The Republican National Committee put out a fundraising appeal that included a picture of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi surrounded by flames, while the committee’s chairman declared that it was time to put Pelosi on “the firing line.” And Sarah Palin put out a map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight.

All of this goes far beyond politics as usual. Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush – but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials.

No, to find anything like what we’re seeing now you have to go back to the last time a Democrat was president. Like President Barack Obama, Bill Clinton faced a GOP that denied his legitimacy – Dick Armey, the second-ranking House Republican (and now a tea party leader) referred to him as “your president.” Threats were common: Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina declared that Clinton “better watch out if he comes down here. He’d better have a bodyguard.” (Helms later expressed regrets over the remark – but only after a media firestorm.)

And once they controlled Congress, Republicans tried to govern as if they held the White House, too, eventually shutting down the federal government in an attempt to bully Clinton into submission.

Obama seems to have sincerely believed that he would face a different reception. And he made a real try at bipartisanship, nearly losing his chance at health reform by frittering away months in a vain attempt to get a few Republicans on board. At this point, however, it’s clear that any Democratic president will face total opposition from a Republican Party that is completely dominated by right-wing extremists.

For today’s GOP is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan – not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the anti-government fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom.

It’s a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans’ economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It’s a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side – Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions – are mainstream. And, as a result, it’s a party that fundamentally doesn’t accept anyone else’s right to govern.

In the short run, Republican extremism may be good for Democrats, to the extent that it prompts a voter backlash. But in the long run, it’s a very bad thing for America. We need to have two reasonable, rational parties in this country. And right now we don’t.

The term “historic” can be used in wild excess, but it fits the House’s dramatic approval late Sunday of health care reform.

True, many details must be worked out, particularly on containing ever-spiraling health costs. The plan will be immensely complicated to implement, as it always is when trying to harness the free market to achieve a social good. There will be short-term pain as some pay higher taxes, and while some of the most important benefits kick in this year, others won’t start until 2014.

But the sweeping legislation promises to make America a healthier and more just society. Its significance is on par with Social Security and the Civil Rights Act. It will extend coverage to 32 million Americans without insurance – more than 5 million of them in California – whose ranks are growing every year and many of whom are one illness away from the poorhouse.

It will prevent insurers from writing off those with pre-existing conditions, pulling coverage when someone gets sick and needs it most and from using other unfair practices to pad their profits. And it will loosen the chain between employment and insurance, protecting those who get laid off and helping would-be entrepreneurs who, in the absence of affordable health care, might be reluctant to chase their dreams.

The Senate should quickly pass the companion “fix-it” bill before the special interests and protectors of the status quo try to muck up the deal.

President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill today, and when he does, he will have delivered the change he promised on the campaign trail. The tide turned a month ago when he finally laid out in specific terms the health reform he wanted, and then went back on the stump to sell it to voters. He will soon be able to move on to clean energy, financial regulation and immigration reform, and most importantly refocus on jobs. His victory on health care augurs well for progress on those fronts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought together a fractious and diverse Democratic caucus and cemented her standing with an achievement that eluded legislative legends like Tip O’Neill and Sam Rayburn.

Moderate and conservative Democrats in swing districts showed immense political courage. It is entirely possible that the health care vote will cost some of them their seats in November. If that happens, they will have left a legacy to be proud of.

Advocacy groups, especially those in the grass roots, kept up the pressure on Washington, a textbook demonstration of how representative democracy is supposed to work.

On the other side, Republicans and their allies in the tea party movement and elsewhere gave in to their worst instincts. Instead of making their case on legitimate policy differences, far too many of them resorted to shouting epithets and slogans and inciting hate and fear. When Republican lawmakers couldn’t win through reasoned argument, they fell back on using terms like “socialism” and “totalitarianism” to describe a health care proposal that resembles systems in place in Germany and Switzerland.

It remains to be seen if voters will judge them harshly. History certainly will.

Sunday’s passage of health care reform was preceded by many weeks of venomous attacks and wild exaggerations, yet it all seems so tame now in comparison.

Since the vote, at least 10 House members have reported death threats, harassment or vandalism at district offices. More than 100 House Democrats were alarmed enough to meet privately Wednesday with the FBI and Capitol Police. Some requested and received extra security.

Such violence and threats of violence are not free speech and political protest. It is intimidation, it is criminal, and it has no place in a democracy like ours.

Republicans, of course, have condemned the violence and acts of bigotry that followed the bill’s passage. Yet their ongoing vitriol has given license to the threats. They own what’s happening now.

Some of the scariest attacks have been directed at Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, the leader of anti-abortion Democrats in the House, whose support put the bill over the top. When Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas yelled “baby killer” while Stupak was speaking on the House floor, the GOP can’t later feign shock that someone left a death threat on Stupak’s phone.

It is Republicans’ right to fight the health care overhaul. GOP senators offered amendment after failed amendment to the “fix-it” bill before its final passage Thursday night.

Yet they haven’t stopped there. Cementing their reputation as obstructionist sore losers, GOP leaders have blocked other important legislative business that has nothing to do with health care.

Republicans stopped several committees from even meeting Wednesday, including the Senate Judiciary hearing for two eminently qualified judicial nominees in California: Goodwin Liu for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and Kimberly Mueller for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District, headquartered in Sacramento.

Liu, an associate law school dean at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mueller, a magistrate judge and former Sacramento City Council member, both have the highest rating from the American Bar Association. And they’re both badly needed at unusually busy courts.

As of last Sept. 30, the 9th Circuit had more than one-third of all pending federal appeals nationwide, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. And in the Eastern District court, more than 10 percent of civil cases had been pending for at least three years and criminal cases had taken an average of 10 months to complete.

Justice delayed is justice denied. But in their all-out war against the health care bill, Republicans don’t seem to care much about that, either.

It is often said that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is California’s version of the Everglades.

Increasingly, however, this vast estuary resembles a gigantic spin machine – a whirlpool of hype and misinformation.

Last Friday, the National Academy of Sciences released the first part of a $1.5 million study, requested by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, on the science that has led federal wildlife agencies to limit water pumping from the Delta to help prop up plunging stocks of fish.

The report was barely released before various interests and politicians rushed to reinterpret its core findings.

Certain environmental groups claimed the science panel had validated the need for greatly reduced water diversions from the Delta. Farm interests seized on parts of the report that questioned certain federal actions aimed at protecting fish.

Cut through the fog and you’ll find the National Academy’s panel offered a much more nuanced bottom line.

Overall, the panel found that most of the actions by federal agencies to reduce water diversions were “scientifically justified,” based on current understanding of this complex ecosystem.

But the panel also noted that much integrated analysis is needed to better understand this system.

No surprise there. Scientists who participated in the ill-fated CalFed effort have been saying the same for years.

Feinstein and groups representing big water diverters had hoped the panel would go further and buttress their efforts to suspend two biological opinions that have restricted water diversions. For months, farm groups have been claiming that smelt and other fish haven’t responded to the federal restrictions, and so they don’t work.

To its credit, the panel declared the obvious – it’s unrealistic to expect measurable improvements for fish after only one full year, especially when there are so few smelt left to measure.

The National Academy panel will now complete the second part of its review, which is expected to take 20 months and cost another $750,000.

That report will examine the array of factors – not just water diversions – that are harming the Delta and complicating water shipments.

Twenty months is long time. Perhaps the Delta combatants can spend it developing a Bay Delta Conservation Plan that results in long-term solutions for water conveyance and restoration of this estuary.

The spin cycle is getting wearisome, and it’s doing little to help fish, fowl or farmers.

Bruce Maiman

Once again, college students from all over the state flocked to Sacramento on Monday to protest education cuts and tuition hikes.

The system suffered a 20 percent spending cut last year. In response, the colleges raised fees for students, eliminated courses and furloughed workers.

It may surprise you to know that these students, telling taxpayers to spend more money as they struggle to pay their way, are leaving up to $500 million in Pell Grants untouched. They don’t apply for them.

About half a million of California’s 2.9 million community college students could receive a federal Pell Grant, according to Debbie Cochrane of the nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success in Berkeley.

Why does the money sit there? Because the application process is complicated. “A lot of students do give up,” Cochrane says.

One student told the San Francisco Chronicle she thought about applying for financial assistance but when she showed up at the financial aid office, she walked out.

“Every time I’ve gone to the financial aid office, the lines are ridiculously long.”

I wonder how many students complaining about long lines for Pell Grants spent Monday traveling to and milling around Sacramento. Better than standing in line or filling out a form online to apply for a grant of up to $5,350, I suppose.

So not only are taxpayers not spending enough money; they won’t do anything about those long lines and complicated forms. After all, students can’t be expected to endure such hardship for an opportunity to apply for free money (free, at least, to the student).

And then there’s the Department of Redundancy Department, where 60 percent of CSU freshmen are remediated in high school math or English, or both.

These are students who graduated from high school with a B average or better (because you can’t get into CSU without a B average) and they’re not proficient in high school math or English. How did they get the B average? How did they graduate? Why are colleges teaching high school courses? It does work. Claudia Keith at CSU’s Public Affairs office says 90 percent of CSU freshmen are fully proficient after that first year of remediation.

But isn’t that the high school’s job? And what’s it costing taxpayers for colleges to “graduate” high school students in high school subjects that students apparently failed to learn in high school? No one I spoke to at CSU knew, but a study two years ago by the Pacific Research Institute, a conservative think tank, put the cost at $247 million annually.

It gets better. In 2012, CSU launches a new program called Early Start to identify deficient students while they’re high school juniors and require them to take remediation courses as seniors or in the summer prior to college (right now, aptitude testing and extracurricular prep courses are all voluntary). Keith explains that Early Start gets students hitting the books again because they tend to coast in senior year.

But if students don’t hit the books and fail to pass or complete the courses, they’re still admitted to CSU because these are students who maintained a B average or better.

Ponder that for just a minute. We’re spending money to educate high school kids in high school courses and college kids in high school courses. Now we’re going to spend money on a program to require high school kids to take extra-curricular high school courses because they can’t seem to learn it in regular high school courses because they coast in their senior year. But if they don’t pass those courses, they can still go to college.

Yet, some college educators say Early Start isn’t fair because it might force students to give up their part-time or summer job. How will they find the money to go to college? Well maybe they can apply for a Pell Grant – if the lines aren’t too long. Or maybe they can learn the subject in the original classes designed to teach them.

How about we graduate these students with a B average only after they’ve proved proficient enough in English and math so they don’t have to be remediated in college at all?

How about we don’t give them a high school diploma until they’re proficient in English and math at the high school level?

How about we make the high school graduation requirement the same as the entrance requirement for CSU? Is that too revolutionary an idea for our public education system?

So, after spending taxpayer dollars to prepare high school students to go to college, we spend an additional $247 million on remediation because high school standards aren’t up to the CSU entrance requirements. Meanwhile, students protesting education cuts and rising tuition rates are costing us $247 million because they weren’t proficient in core subjects, yet $500 million in Pell Grants goes wanting because the burden of applying is too overwhelming.

I wonder if that’s worth protesting.

To those led to believe that, as President Barack Obama claimed, the passage of the health care bill is “comparable to the passage of Medicare and Social Security” and that “every American will be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage” as a result of it, my advice is to hold off on uncorking the champagne.

For one, Social Security and Medicare were public programs that from their inception offered immediate benefits to millions of ordinary Americans, who for the first time could rely on old-age pensions and access health care services that until then had been completely out of reach.

By contrast, this “historic bill,” instead of eliminating the root of our health care woes, further enriches and entrenches a profit-driven health insurance industry that makes money when it succeeds in not paying medical bills.

How so? It forces millions of Americans to buy the insurance industry’s shoddy products or pay a fine, even as it offers eligible ones subsidies – courtesy of taxpayers – to purchase those products.

Sound familiar? It should. The bill consolidates the transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street of the last decades, only second to the recent, similar transfer implemented under the dubious claim that otherwise the economy would disintegrate.

I’m the vice president of the California branch of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that advocates for a publicly financed, privately delivered national health program.

Some of us have been called party spoilers by continuing to criticize Obama’s health reform plan. Yet here are some facts about the bill that supporters of reform need to consider:

• Millions of middle-income people will be mandated to buy commercial health care policies costing up to 9.5 percent of their income. Yet those policies will cover as little as 60 percent of “covered services,” leaving them vulnerable to financial ruin if they become seriously ill. So yes, over 30 million Americans will be “covered” by this bill, but by an umbrella full of holes under pouring rain.

• People with employer-based coverage will be locked into their plans’ “preferred providers’ networks.” So yes, workers will “keep their plans if they like them” (assuming they can afford the ever-increasing prices and don’t lose their jobs, or their employers don’t drop their plans), yet will have to keep them even if they don’t like them.

• Insurers will be handed at least $447 billion in taxpayer money to subsidize the purchase of these policies, which will further empower the insurance industry and its ability to block future reform.

• Health care costs will continue to skyrocket because the bill will do nothing to reduce the $400 billion wasted every year pushing paper to market thousands of plans and separate people according to eligibility criteria, services covered, etc.

• The much-vaunted insurance regulations – e.g. ending denials on the basis of pre-existing conditions – are riddled with loopholes. For instance, older people can be charged up to three times more than their younger counterparts, and large companies with a predominantly female work force can be charged higher gender-based rates at least until 2017. Policies can still be canceled in case of “fraud or intentional misrepresentation,” the No. 1 excuse insurers use to cancel policies today.

• About 23 million people will remain uninsured nine years out, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That translates into about 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually.

Did it need to be like this? Not at all. All the good provisions in the bill, such as funding community health centers, could have been adopted as stand-alone measures.

Instead, Congress and the Obama administration have chosen to burden ordinary people with a “uniquely American” individual obligation to buy flawed private products.

Social health insurance in the form of single-payer health care will sooner or later have to be adopted, not because it is politically feasible, but because it is inevitable.

As Harvard professor William Tsiao (the brain behind Taiwan’s single-payer system) argued, you can have universal coverage, lower costs, and improve the quality of care, but you need a single-payer system to achieve that.