An Activist’s Life, by Thomas Leavitt

Just as small businesses (not large ones), are the primary creators of jobs, it’s individuals and small groups, such as partners and families, and who create the majority of affordable housing. Over 50% of affordable housing is “informal;” i.e.; it doesn’t show up on any rosters of apartment buildings or anywhere else. It’s created room by room and conversion by conversion. That’s where most housing comes from, and has for centuries. So many of us are in a position to create affordable housing.

Tucson’s law is the oldest local
government public financing law currently administered in the nation
and demonstrates that, given sufficient time, public financing can
become an integral part of a jurisdiction’s political culture.

Jane Fonda’s Speech at the National Women’s Leadership Summit

Miami: Talks on hemispheric free trade attract a small army of protesters

Coverage of “Light Up” pro-medical marajuana event.

Recap of pro- medical marijuana event at my home today.

Dozens of inauguration parties will light up the Golden State on Monday, when Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in on the west steps of the state Capitol.

But arguably the most unusual will be held in — where else? — Santa Cruz.

The constitution, annotated line by line with links to documents and letters explaining the intellectual and legal background and the founders’ reasoning behind the words they chose.

NCLB reaches Head Start - standardized testing for pre-schoolers!!! Pointer to NYT article.

Internal Republican Party email discussing Fox News’ excitement over Republican tactics in the Senate.

[Should university presidents be compensated like private-sectors CEO’s? Should they be interchangable? What are the implications for our system of higher education as this happens? For our society… academia has long been seen as a counter-balance to the interests of business (admittedly, more so because of faculty attitudes than those of university administrators); how does […]

“I got meal costs down to 40 cents a day per inmate. It costs $1.15
a day to feed the department’s dogs.” –Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Pointer to Commonweal Institute article on the (not so) hidden agenda of the tort-”reform” movement.

From a letter to Dave Farber: “Four colleagues of mine, all members of the National Research Council’s Committee on Human factors, have written an article to be published in the Bulletin of the Human factors and Ergonomics Society, critical of the way that the current government is interfering with the selection of scientific experts on study panels.”