Our Work

Our Jim Gerstenzang on energy policy, Detroit and 60 miles per gallon

Jim Gerstenzang is back with another co-authored op-ed piece on energy policy, this one looking at the White House's moment of opportunity in nudging Detroit toward not only new car designs, but a new industrial model. From the piece in the Miami Herald:

This month, with traditional fanfare, Detroit is launching the new model year. More quietly, the Obama administration is preparing to help shape the cars that we will be driving six years from now. In coming weeks, it will unveil the first draft of standards for fuel efficiency and emissions beginning with the 2017 model year.

The challenge facing the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation is to set standards tough enough to revitalize the industry. They will bring savings at the pump, reduce global warming pollution and cut our oil addiction and the risks that go with it. They will transform the car industry by transforming the car.

This is a unique opportunity. As auto makers emerge from bankruptcy, strong emissions and fuel-mileage standards can ignite American know-how -- the country's greatest resource. With the best American technology, by 2025 Detroit can build safe, clean, 21st-century cars that average at least 60 miles per gallon -- and deliver 21st-century jobs.

Susan Brink on one doctor's evolution

Our Susan Brink has a piece in On Wisconson, the alumni magazine for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on what can only be described as a physician's path of enlightenment that began with a dying man's case of the hiccups. From her story:

The hiccups wouldn’t stop. It was August of 1996, and an elderly stroke victim lay dying in his home in the small town of Driggs, Idaho. But he could have no rest. He was stricken with a relentless case of hiccups, robbing him of comfort. The episode gave David Rakel, the man’s physician and neighbor, a memorable lesson in the importance of watching, listening, and heeding the desires of his patients. Drugs, the main weapon in Rakel’s medical arsenal, made the dying man groggy and unaware, and still the hiccups continued. Family members suggested acupuncture. Like many conventional, or allopathic, Western physicians, Rakel was skeptical. But he figured acupuncture would do no harm. “I humored them. I said, ‘Sure. Why not?’ ” It worked. The acupuncturist came. The hiccups went away without sedation. “He was able to die with loving family around him and a sense of peace. It was a beautiful death,” says Rakel, now a UW-Madison professor of family medicine.

Karen Chaderjian, Leslie Carlson and Brett Levy team up to produce booklet for nonprofit VSI

Former Los Angeles Times page designer Tom Trapnell and Journalism Shop members Karen Chaderjian, Leslie Carlson and Brett Levy teamed up to produce a 28-page booklet for nonprofit Venture Strategies Innovations. The booklet contains the organization’s “four-year plan to bring effective and affordable health technologies to women in the developing world.”

VSI focuses on populations of women who too often die from complications of pregnancy, childbirth and abortions. VSI has offices in Irvine and Berkley, California.

Working closely with VSI, Tom and Leslie designed the booklet, which is being distributed in both a print and digital PDF format. Karen content and copy edited the booklet, while Brett oversaw the printing of the 1,000 copies at a professional print shop.

Scott Martelle on local government corruption in Southern California

Our Scott Martelle weighs in at AOL News on a string of corruption scandals in a handful of small cities southeast of Los Angeles. From his piece:

Call it the New Jersey of the West.

Recent revelations of exorbitant salaries paid to top officials in the Southern California city of Bell are only the latest developments in a long-running saga of corruption embroiling a string of cities along the Los Angeles River.

The scandals encompass city councils paying themselves and city officials exorbitant salaries, but also involve the alleged conversion of city funds for personal expenses, Third World-style elections and, in one case, a police department so bad that insurance companies jacked up the coverage rates, sparking a fiscal meltdown.

The most recent scandals involve three cities that form an arc of alleged corruption and bad government from the industrial enclave of Vernon through the essentially employee-less Maywood into immigrant-heavy and working-class Bell, where until recently city officials were raking in CEO-level salaries.

Municipal corruption is nothing new, of course, but the spate of problems in three adjoining cities has made this corner of Southern California a model of government gone wild, sparking state-level investigations and broad calls for reforms.

Janet Wilson on new research on the line between 'senior moments' and Alzheimer's

Our Janet Wilson, who has been doing work for UC Irvine, has a piece up on research into the difference between "senior moments and Alzheimer's. From her piece:

Now, with the help of Burns and other volunteers aged 18 to 89, the researchers have been able to identify for the first time in humans a long-hidden part of the brain known as the perforant path. The passage is believed to deteriorate gradually as part of normal aging and far more quickly as part of Alzheimer’s. Scientists have struggled for decades to locate the tiny pathway, which is linked to the hippocampus, a well-known center of memory.

The UCI researchers developed and used a new ultrahigh-resolution technique, outlined in a paper published June 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to electronically peer through dense matter near the seahorse-shaped hippocampus.

Locating the perforant path and monitoring its deterioration could distinguish normal aging from dementia much sooner than other methods, offering relief to absent-minded folks. The information could also be useful to drug companies and doctors testing Alzheimer’s treatments.

“The nice thing about this is we may be able to predict Alzheimer’s very early,” says Stark, who often inserted his own gleaming bald pate into the MRI to help develop their scanning techniques. “Let’s say you’re a drug company, and you think you’ve got a potentially effective treatment for slowing Alzheimer’s. You want to try it on people in the most preliminary stages of that disease, not those just experiencing normal aging.”

Our Jim Gerstenzang on oil spills and public policy

Jim Gerstenzang, writing with Dan Becker, has this op-ed piece in the Detroit Free Press looking at the Gulf Oil spill within the context of America's energy policy and gas mileage.  From the article:

The lesson of the BP disaster is that we must now substantially toughen those standards. They need to be strong enough that auto companies will produce cars that begin to break our reliance on the internal combustion engine. To do that, the Obama administration will have to weaken the grip of big oil and the auto industry.

The new mileage standard represents a 4% annual increase in fuel economy. If it is next increased to 5.5%, from 2017 to 2025, we could ultimately save an additional 3.5 million barrels of oil a day.

Accomplishing this is not rocket science. It's auto mechanics. Better engines, improved transmissions and aerodynamic, hybrid and new electric vehicle technology are all awaiting installation by Detroit.

Given their track record, the car companies will only use them if we adopt tough standards. We own GM and Chrysler. Let's tell them and the other automakers: It's time to help, not hinder. Use your engineers, not your lobbyists.

Robyn Norwood on John Wooden's favorite breakfast spot

Our Robyn Norwood, a longtime sportswriter for the LA Times, has this piece on FoxSports.com on a visit to legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden's favorite breakfast spot in Tarzana, California. Wooden, an icon in Southern California, died this week at age 99. From her story:

They began trickling into Vip’s Family Restaurant in Tarzana before 8 a.m. Saturday, the regular customers with their canes, a lawyer in a Bruins T-shirt, a family wearing UCLA caps.

Around the time John Wooden used to sit down for breakfast at his favored Table 2, owner Paul Ma and his wife Lucy placed a vase of yellow roses, a photo of Wooden and a copy of the Los Angeles Times with news of the former UCLA coach’s passing in the booth, now a shrine to their most famous regular.

“He liked the No. 2 special: bacon, scrambled eggs, English muffin,” Ma said. “At the beginning, Coach always liked hot tea. So many memories… I always put the honey out for Coach, and I would squeeze the honey for him.

“He was a great man.”

Rick Schmitt on Stanford Law alums in the Obama administration

Our Rick Schmitt, who writes from Washington, D.C., has this piece on Stanford Law grads who are working in the Obama administration. The article ran in the Stanford Law alumni publication. From Schmitt's story: 

 SLS alumni can be found at all levels of government, plying their trade in the stately corridors of federal agencies and executive offices. Graduates of the law school have long had a history of government service—and a significant number of alumni are now working in the highest echelons of this administration. They are the new GCs in D.C. and include the top lawyers at three Cabinet-level departments, heads of large divisions, as well as several members of the Office of the White House Counsel—arguably the nation’s most elite law firm. 

Barely a year into their jobs, they have dealt with issues ranging from terrorism threats to the “cash for clunkers” program and environmental disasters.

“It is the opportunity of a lifetime,” says Christian A. Weideman ’00, deputy general counsel of the Treasury Department, who until February worked with Roberto J. Gonzalez ’03, associate counsel to the president in the White House counsel’s office. “You have to be a little bit lucky, if not a lot lucky, to have one of these jobs. So you want to take full advantage of it. People work hard. They invest enormous amounts of themselves in their jobs—and for good reason.”

Scott Martelle on a showdown in San Diego County

Our Scott Martelle, who write regularly for AOL News, has this piece on a showdown in San Diego County between tax officials and a veteran living off the land who refuses to pay a lien filed after a private contractor for the local fire district cleared brush from his land without permission. From the story:

 Supporters are painting Diliberti's troubles as a principled stand over individual rights against a local government that overstepped its bounds, and centering on a back-to-nature enthusiast overcome by exurban sprawl. 

Local officials say Diliberti's overgrown property posed a communal risk in a place acutely sensitive to the power of wildfires. They also say that his failure to reimburse the county for the expense of clearing his land passes an unfair burden along to fellow taxpayers.

Janet Wilson on a San Diego County desalination project

Our Janet Wilson has this piece for DC Bureau on a San Diego County desalination plant -- and concerns that the reality might prove to be much different than the supporters' expectations. From her story:

Company and water officials, along with some industry analysts, say it is well worth the price to bring a local water supply to the drought prone region, as population swells and climate change could begin to wreak havoc with the Sierra snow cap. They say despite recessionary woes, the time is right. 

But critics say that far from being a New Age answer to water woes, the plant and others like it are costly, unnecessary boondoggles that often malfunction and carry damaging environmental side effects. They argue keeping water prices artificially low through subsidies for costly desalination plants is the wrong approach, and that conservation, recycling wastewater, and other far cheaper alternatives should be tried first.