Peterson on Unfortunate Politicization of COVID-19 Vaccine

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Professor of Public Policy Mark Peterson was featured on Scholars’ Circle, a nationally distributed radio program and podcast, about the U.S. response to COVID-19. As cases spike across the country, newly approved vaccines promise some relief. However, Peterson noted that we have never been so divided as a country. “The emergence of a vaccine ought to be a positive for everyone, but instead it’s caught up in all the distrust,” he said. The incoming Biden-Harris administration is not getting the necessary information about plans for distributing the vaccine, which will be a significant challenge, he said. “None of this should be affected by politics or partisanship or polarization in the country,” Peterson said, noting that President Donald Trump and his administration “have made it all the more complicated by sowing distrust in people.” Moving forward, Peterson stressed the importance of “providing resources to allow people to make it through without financial disaster and support public health provisions at the same time.”

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DeShazo Expresses Skepticism Over Hydrogen-Fueled Cars

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JR DeShazo, director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, expressed doubts about the future of hydrogen-powered vehicles in an ABC News article. A small market exists for hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, which convert hydrogen gas into electricity to power an electric motor. These “plug-less” vehicles can refuel in less than five minutes and have a long driving range. However, DeShazo noted that the infrastructure to support hydrogen fuel for transportation has never materialized. “If there were stations everywhere, hydrogen would be an obvious solution,” DeShazo explained. “Refueling stations are really expensive and require significant economies of scale to be cost effective and compete with gasoline and electricity.” There are currently 42 hydrogen fueling stations in California, and the average price of hydrogen is much higher than a gallon of gasoline. DeShazo also pointed out that the production of hydrogen causes greenhouse emissions, making it less environmentally sustainable.

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Cooper Sees Wisdom in Children on the Margins

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Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Welfare Khush Cooper spoke about insights she has gained from working with children on the margins during an episode of the podcast Welcome to Humanity. “Children on the margins live at the edge of chaos,” Cooper said. “They understand where families, groups, societies have failed, yet their brains are plastic enough to be able to point to what could be.” Foster youth, for example, “can tell you exactly what family is and what family isn’t,” she said. And the very youngest transgender children, up to age 5, are unburdened by labels but recognize something within themselves that doesn’t match how others perceive them. A willingness to learn from these young voices could help societies find solutions for families in crisis and for persisting inequities such as the gender pay gap, she said. “When children on the margins thrive, they lead us to what’s next for the planet,” Cooper said.

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Matute on Debut of Metro’s On-Demand Rideshare Service

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, spoke to Spectrum News about L.A. Metro’s new on-demand rideshare service. Metro Micro allows passengers to summon a ride within a designated service area for $1 per trip. The program will launch in the Watts/Willowbrook and LAX/Inglewood areas. If successful, it will expand into four additional neighborhoods next summer. “Metro will learn much more about where people actually want to go from and to, and when they want to do it,” Matute said. “With a fixed-route bus, you know where you pick them up and go, but you don’t know how far they walked or if they used some other device.” While other transit agencies have tried similar on-demand services and failed, Matute explained that Metro has enough money to experiment without putting the agency itself at risk.

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‘Saving the World, One Parking Space at a Time’

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In an interview with ITS International, Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup shared the key findings of his life’s work on parking and transportation. While most people don’t want to pay for parking, Shoup found that free parking takes up a huge amount of valuable land, and the cost of that land is shifted into higher prices for everything else. He also found that “free parking greatly increases the amount of driving, which congests traffic, pollutes the air and contributes to global warming.” To address these issues, Shoup recommended charging for curb parking, spending parking revenue on public services and removing off-street parking requirements in cities. Shoup believes that “better parking management can improve cities, transportation, the economy and the environment.” His recommendations are seen as a cheap and simple way to increase economic efficiency, protect the environment and promote social justice. “I’m trying to save the world, one parking space at a time,” said Shoup.

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Peterson on Becerra’s Impact on California’s Progressive Agenda

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Public Policy Professor Mark Peterson spoke with Kaiser Health News about prospects that California’s health care agenda will grow more progressive once the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, is elevated to the nation’s top health care post. In his three decades of political experience, Becerra has been a strong advocate of health-care reforms including a state-level single-payer system, environmental justice and protecting immigrants’ access to safety-net care. Many California Democrats believe his selection as the next U.S. secretary of health and human services will give them a strong federal ally who will help make the state a laboratory for progressive ideas. Should Becerra back a progressive health agenda in California, similar proposals could follow in other states, Peterson said. “California has pushed the envelope on health care beyond where other states are,” he said. “And that gives more capacity for California sensibilities and ideas to get into the mix in Washington.”

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Yaroslavsky on Funding Olympic Games

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Utah’s Deseret News about hosting the Olympic Games in U.S. cities. Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Games in 2002, and Utah is bidding to again play host in 2030 or 2034. Similarly, Los Angeles will host its third Summer Games in 2028. Yaroslavsky said it makes sense to hold future Olympics in places like Utah and Los Angeles because they already have facilities in place. “The cost of putting on the Games is largely in the infrastructure you have to build,” he explained. Yaroslavsky, a former city councilman, worked to prohibit the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles from using general fund money from the city, pushing organizers to find private funding instead. “I am a cheerleader for the Games,” Yaroslavsky said. “But I’m a cheerleader for a Games that doesn’t cost taxpayers money.”

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Ong Points to Chinatown as Economic Barometer

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Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Director Paul Ong was featured in a Bloomberg article about the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Chinatown businesses. Across the United States, Asian American businesses experienced a slowdown even before the pandemic arrived in the United States as a result of xenophobic fears about the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. According to Ong, these businesses could be a strong indicator of the long-term economic impact of the pandemic on small businesses. “What distinguishes Chinatown businesses is that they’ve been facing financial and fiscal problems for a much longer time, with deeper cuts to revenues,” he explained. Ong stressed the importance of relief stimulus packages to protect these historic communities before it’s too late. “If we can intervene to save these businesses and neighborhoods, that may tell us a lot about what we need to do to help businesses and workers beyond Chinatown,” he concluded.

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Diaz on Becerra’s Nomination to the Biden Cabinet

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Sonja Diaz, founding director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to KPCC’s Take Two about California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s nomination as U.S. secretary of health and human services in the Biden administration. Becerra has “the dynamism and also the experience to get us through the pandemic,” Diaz said in an interview beginning at minute 10:30. “As much as health care is a policy, it’s also politics,” she said, noting that Becerra fought to protect the health of his constituents both as the state’s chief law enforcement officer and during his long tenure in Congress. Diaz earlier wrote a Univision opinion piece calling on President-elect Biden to build a Cabinet that reflects the face of America. “In 2020, it’s no longer acceptable to build a senior team or Cabinet without including Latinos in a meaningful way,” she wrote. “The lack of representation at the pinnacle of the country’s leadership … sends a message to the Black, Brown and Native American communities that power the economy as essential workers and serve as the core of the Democratic Party that their contributions are not valued.”

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Shah on Involving Men and Women to Address Intimate Partner Violence

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Professor of Public Policy Manisha Shah was featured in a Global Citizen article about reducing intimate partner violence in Tanzania. In Tanzania, one in three women between the ages of 15 and 24 experiences intimate partner violence, including physical and sexual violence, stalking, or psychological harm by a current or former partner. A study by the Global Lab for Research in Action at UCLA Luskin found that educational health programs for men and boys and goal-setting exercises for women and girls can reduce intimate partner violence and improve sexual and reproductive health. “I have come to the conclusion that one of the only ways we will be able to shift social norms around violence against women and girls will be to get both males and females involved,” Shah said. Most existing reproductive and sexual health programs focus only on women, but the study found that using men’s soccer clubs to promote domestic violence education reduced intimate partner violence.

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