A Midterm Upset Would Spark Big Battles, Peterson Says

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The website Elite Daily asked UCLA Luskin’s Mark Peterson to weigh in on the remote possibility that Democrats will reclaim control of the Senate in the November 2018 midterm elections. “I think it is first vital to emphasize what a shocker that would be,” said Peterson, a professor of public policy, political science and law. In the event that Democrats beat the steep odds against them, Peterson predicted big battles between the Senate and White House, particularly over judicial appointments and an overhauled legislative agenda that would face President Trump’s veto pen. He also said the chances are slim that a Democrat-controlled Senate would convict the president if he is impeached by the House. “That requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which could not be achieved without a significant number of Republicans joining in,” Peterson said. “Given our current politics, that would probably take not only a ‘smoking gun,’ but a ‘smoking bazooka.’ ”

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Jacoby Comments on Employee Profit-Sharing in Sears’ Heyday

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Sanford Jacoby, distinguished professor emeritus of public policy at UCLA Luskin, commented in a front-page New York Times article about the remarkably egalitarian employee profit-sharing program offered by Sears in its heyday. Before it was phased out in the 1970s, the stock-ownership plan allowed Sears workers at all ranks to build a comfortable nest egg. “People were retiring with nice chunks of change,” Jacoby said. “People loved this fund, and Sears was a wildly successful company.” But the approach favored men over women and also made workers even more exposed to their employer’s fate, said Jacoby, who also holds professorial appointments in history and management at UCLA. The article contrasted the program at Sears, which has declared bankruptcy, with policies at Amazon, which recently lifted its minimum hourly wage to $15 but also stopped giving stock to hundreds of thousands of employees. The decision underscores how lower-paid employees across corporate America have been locked out of profit-sharing and stock grants, the article said.

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Shoup Offers Remedy for Pensacola’s Parking Woes

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Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, recently spoke at Pensacola, Florida’s CivicCon to address the city’s chronic issues with parking, including huge swaths of unused parking lots. According to the Pensacola News Journal, Shoup proposed three reforms to improve the city’s inefficient parking system: remove off-street parking requirements, charge the right prices for on-street parking and use parking revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. Shoup gave in-depth breakdowns of how each idea would improve the system as a whole. He also cited real-world examples of cities, such as Pasadena, where identical reform programs were successfully implemented. The overarching message behind Shoup’s presentation was that Pensacola should replace all on-street parking with a meter system; money raised from the meters would go directly back into the community to fund civic improvements to infrastructure, landscaping and general beautification. If all of his recommendations were adopted, Shoup argued, they would work in tandem to increase foot traffic and property values.

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Manville Comments on L.A. Traffic, Public Transportation and Potential Solutions

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UCLA Luskin transportation expert Michael Manville is featured in a podcast and short film about traffic and public transit in Los Angeles. Besides negative impacts on drivers’ health, wallets and mental well-being, traffic is a large issue for people living near large roads, who may suffer harmful consequences from pollutants. In the NPR podcast, “The One Way to Reduce Traffic,” Manville, an associate professor, argues that the solution to traffic jams is to “price roads with a congestion charge, a dynamic type of toll that would rise and fall based on the demand for the road at different times of day.” Manville explains that the “majority of the delay in traffic is caused by the last few cars getting on the road.” A toll that would get 4-5 percent of drivers off the road could increase average speed by 15-20 percent. In his Streetfilms appearance, Manville highlights the limitations of Los Angeles’ approach to public transportation. With bus ridership falling and a prioritization of cars over buses, Manville identifies the root of the issue as a “fight over space.” He stresses urgency, saying “congestion in our major urban areas is getting worse.”

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Ruling Puts Welfare of American Indian Children at Risk, Akee Writes

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Randall Akee, assistant professor of Public Policy and American Indian Studies, wrote an article for the Brookings Institution’s Up Front blog likening the separation of migrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border to that of the United States’ former policy of permanently relocating American Indian children from their families and often impoverished communities into foster homes. This practice was in place until as recently as 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was enacted, granting tribal governments exclusive jurisdiction over American Indian child custody cases. However, the ICWA was recently ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court for Northern Texas. Akee argues that the state-ordered breakup of tribal families is cruel and unnecessary and, if resumed, could further harm the already largely damaged tribal communities. Furthermore, he argues that indigenous peoples thrive under independence and self-governance, and meddling by state civil and criminal jurisdictions cause these communities to “[experience] an increase in crime and a reduction in incomes,” not to mention the “disastrous” effect on the welfare of the children themselves. 

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Umemoto Comments on Asian American Stereotypes

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UCLA Luskin Urban Planning’s Karen Umemoto shared her thoughts about stereotypes related to Asians and Asian Americans on a KPCC broadcast of “Air Talk.” The interview followed the release of an essay by novelist Celest Ng on marriage and relationships between Asian women and non-Asian men and the harassment some Asian women receive — online and off — for their personal choice of partners. “I think it’s been an issue for decades. … Celeste Ng’s article just calls our attention to the new heights of harassment given the expanse of social media, I think, which brings a new dimension to the problem of hate speech,” Umemoto said. The director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center added that although the issue is longstanding, “I also don’t want to magnify it bigger than it is. … I think it’s important for us to put it in a broader social and historical context because I think it’s very dangerous the way that people are being attacked and harassed,” she said, noting that such controversy may distract from addressing the underlying structural, historical causes.

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Kavanaugh Hearings Show Potential of Social Media Polling, Villasenor Writes

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In a Forbes article following the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that included testimony from U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, UCLA Luskin’s John Villasenor highlighted results from two polls taken by College Pulse. The mobile application and website, which aggregates campus public opinion, showed that overall opinion about Kavanaugh’s confirmation did not change significantly after the testimony. But “breaking down the data down by gender tells an important part of the story: Among the respondents, college men … saw their support increase an additional 8 percentage points,” Villasenor noted. College women also showed increased support for confirmation in the poll, but only by 3 percentage points above the pre-hearing support level of just 11 percent. “The tech industry has barely scratched the surface of the potential for an optimized combination of social media and polling technologies,” Villasenor wrote.

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Older Adults, Minorities Will Redefine ‘the Next America,’ Writes Torres-Gil

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A commentary on the changing demographics of older adults and minorities in the United States, co-authored by Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy Juan Fernando Torres-Gil, was published in the Dallas Morning News. Torres-Gil and co-author Jacqueline L. Angel, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, caution lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that these changes will redefine “the next America” in important ways. “By 2050, the United States will be driven by two demographics, majority-minority and older people,” wrote Torres-Gil and Angel. “This dynamic of twin demographic trends — a doubling of the older population and minorities and immigrants becoming the majority — will create political competition between older whites and younger racial and ethnic groups over scarce public resources, such as taxes to preserve Social Security versus reinvesting in public education,” added the co-authors of the recently published book, “the Politics of a Majority-Minority Nation: Aging, Diversity, and Immigration.”

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Peterson, Yaroslavsky Comment on Possible Garcetti 2020 Presidential Run

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Public Policy Professor Mark A. Peterson commented about the possible White House aspirations of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in a story that appeared in the British news publication The Telegraph. “In personality, he is also everything President Trump is not,” said Peterson, whose research interests include the presidency and Congress. “He is articulate, gracious, cheerful, self-deprecating, devoid of bombast, and far from prone to insult and impulsive commentary or action,” Peterson added, but noted, “…some of those attributes may be a disadvantage in today’s politics.”  Zev Yaroslavsky, former Los Angeles County supervisor and current director of the UCLA Luskin-based Los Angeles Initiative, also commented in the story, which noted that mayors are considered long-shots for the Oval Office. “We never had had a reality TV star as president or an African American as president,” Yaroslavsky said. “Anybody running for president will be hoping that lightning strikes, so he is thinking why not me.”

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Villasenor Commentary Focuses on Diversity — of Viewpoints

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In a commentary published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, John Villasenor of UCLA Luskin Public Policy and co-author Ilana Redstone Akresh of the University of Illinois discuss viewpoint diversity on college campuses. While complaints of political correctness in academia have been around for decades, Villasenor and Akresh argue that the dynamic has changed in recent years. “Social media are increasingly employed as a tool both for direct censorship and for strengthening the pressures to self-censor, significantly narrowing the range of permissible academic discourse,” they write.  Villasenor and Akresh advocate teaching students to examine multiple perspectives, explore nuance, question assumptions, and think critically in all aspects of their education. “Academic freedom exists and needs protection precisely because there are opinions that can both generate offense and have value,” they write. “This does not mean that all offensive ideas have value. But it does mean that the value of an idea cannot be judged solely on the basis of whether it offends.” Villasenor and Akresh write that “we need college faculties that are diverse racially, ethnically, religiously, and in terms of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and the viewpoints they bring to their research, teaching, and engagement with their communities.”

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