Author: John Troidl

Good news today….. Scott Pruitt is out as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.  Not only were his/Trump's policies harmful to the environment, but he basically is a crook.  Guess he is getting out of town shortly before an indictment.

It is good riddance and now time to clean up the mess he has made and put the EPA back on the smart bi-partisan path of the past.  Don't forget, the EPA was started by a Republican president… Richard Nixon.  And a lot of important environmental legislation was signed by that same President after lead ins by others.

A healthy environment helps create a healthy population…… and although that seems obvious, to some people it is not.

John

This is a link from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research…… where this study is described.  Seems like a good piece of applied public health research.  https://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/newsroom/press-releases/pages/details.aspx?NewsID=297

The City of Los Angeles wants its residents to be healthy.  Imagine that!

John

PS  I am wondering if the developers at NISHI would consider making that development "smoke free"?  The UC Davis campus is…. how about off campus student housing?

That's the question I asked one of my classmates from China when I was in grad school at Berkeley.  You know, the huge, pervasive portraits of Chairman Mao and other political leaders over the years… just popping up everywhere I understood.

She smiled and said, "Well, probably the same way you deal with the commercial propaganda here in the United States".  Good answer!  Quite insightful.

As a card carrying capitalist I know the purpose of marketing is to ask the customer what they want and communicate to them that you are going to give it to them.  But "sales" sometimes deviates from true marketing and ventures into persuasion and dare I say it, manipulation.  

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By now you must have heard of the big issue of children being separated from parents at our boarder with Mexico ……. this is highly controversial and within the past 24 hours five current and former First Ladies have weighed in on this situation…. express concern and at times outrage at how this situation is being managed by the current administration.

Part of the management of the situation is a considerable amount of communication "spin".  Here is a link to an article from the Washington Post which does a great job of sorting out the spin from the truth.  

In these modern times it is important to be able to separate fact from fiction or even more critically fact from near fact or semi-fact.  And we need to be prepared to sort through these claims as we go about making decisions that affect us and/or others.  For example, "More cars means less traffic".  You might have heard that one lately.  Still makes my head shake.

Anyway, here is the link to the Post:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/19/the-facts-about-trumps-policy-of-separating-families-at-the-border/?utm_term=.54b235edb54f&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

I subscribe to the online version….. you might want to, too.

John

This is a complicated issue …. assisted dying…. and can have profound impact for individuals and their families.

The original law in California, based in part of laws from other states including Oregon, was proposed by Davis based Senator Lois Wolk.  It was passed during a special session of the legislature and a recent court decision put it on hold for that reason.  Then just this week a higher court reversed the hold and now the law is in place again.

That kind of back and forth must be torture for doctors, patients and their families trying to help their loved ones and also wanting to be operating within the boundaries of the law on this controversial issue.  (Many disability advocates have issues with this law).

Couple of interesting articles in the Chronicle today (https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/California-s-assisted-dying-law-reinstated-12999276.php) describing the law switching back on and from the Bee (when the Wolk bill was approved by the California Senate) help provide some background: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article23113641.html

Perhaps this is something to discuss in your families, among friends, on this blog page, etc….

John 

Some folks may know that the legislature is supposed to vote on the California State Budget by June 15th or today.  Actually, they finished up yesterday a day ahead of time.  That's kind of nice because this kind of performance was not always the norm.  It seemed that not that many years ago, the Legislature was chronically late in moving on the final budget and that caused lots of problems for state funded programs.  But no more, and let's give appropriate thanks to the Governor and the Legislature for making that process work!

Speaking of work, how are the folks in the education sector going to spend all the money that they got in one time and ongoing boosts to their budgets?  You might like to know that this was a major "feature" of the budget and as Delaine Eastin was heard saying in her campaign for governor, "Budgets represent values" and so, I think the new California $200 billion budget does that with an infusion of money into education.

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This evening I was listening to NPR and heard the end of an interview with Delaine Eastin.  How interesting!  Such an experienced and well thought out politician.  She has promised to stay engaged and help elect more women (only 23% in the California legislature) and to hold elected officials feet to the fire regarding positions taken and promises made.  I'm glad!  

Check out her interview here:  https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/political-breakdown

 John

Recently I heard someone describe Davis in print as a "company town".  This was in the context of the housing needs of local residents and/or students.  This writer also made some cheap shot about "Without UCD, we'd be Dixon or Vacaville" and I am sure the good people who live in those towns did not appreciate that slap, just like some voters in the 2016 did not like being called "deplorables".  C'mon have some manners!

But that is not my main point here.  The main point is:  Who wants to be a company town anyway? Historically company towns were situations where a large employer manipulated the employees of the company and residents of the nearby town for their own economic benefit…. essentially making the residents indentured servants.  Is that the kind of relationship we want between UCD and the town?  I think not.

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