Law + Policy

Through the Lens of Hope: Obama’s Videographer Debriefs

Most of the people who follow the President of the United States wherever he goes are there to protect his life. But Hope Hall has a different job: to document it.

For the last six years, she’s been Barack Obama’s presidential videographer (think of her as the national fly on the wall). She doesn’t shoot videos for the official record; that’s the job of the White House Communications Agency, which documents every public event in which the President participates. Her assignment is to film the President in his more informal moments.

Posted on January 18, 2017 - 12:56pm

Lawsuit Against Uber Alleges “Fraudulent Scheme”

While the ride-sharing service Uber has smashed transportation paradigms left and right, its performance has been controversial. The company’s business model—a digital go-between for car owners and riders—offers reliable transportation, but largely ignores the pesky regulations that shackle cab companies. People who need lifts generally think that’s pretty damn cool, given the convenience and affordability of an Uber ride. Cab drivers, regulators, and some employees are not as charmed, and they’ve dragged the company to court on numerous occasions to demonstrate their pique.

Posted on January 9, 2017 - 1:12pm

Unruly Tenants: Moving Day at 1600 Pennsylvania Can Be Rough

The on-again-off-again détente between the outgoing and incoming administrations was off before apparently being on again—at least, as of this writing—with The Donald tweeting last week, “Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!” only to reverse himself a few hours later when he told reporters that the transition was going “very, very smoothly.”

So has it always been this awkward?

Posted on January 4, 2017 - 2:43pm

Warehouse Fire Illuminates Holes in Public Safety Net

The pain hasn’t subsided. For many people, it never will. Some traumas are simply too great to overcome, and there can be no true healing—only a bleak and comfortless accommodation.

Posted on December 20, 2016 - 3:59pm

The Struggle Continues: Checking in With Revolution Books

Many Americans are fired up in a bad way about Trump getting elected, and the Revolutionary Communist Party, aka RevCom, founded in 1975 by UC Berkeley grad and party chairman Bob Avakian, are particularly vocal about it. A stroll by Revolution Books, in the alleyway just west of Telegraph, between Durant Avenue and Channing Way, will tell you as much. Outside the store sits a signboard with a large poster of Trump in a KKK cap, complete with Hitler-stache—an image made all the more sinister by the gloom of the dark, rainy skies that have been drowning the Bay in the wake of the election.

Posted on December 19, 2016 - 5:17pm

Do Dems Have a Pelosi Problem?

It’s no secret that things started going sideways for the Democratic Party long before November 8. In 2009, the Democrats had a lock on both federal legislatures, with 257 seats in the House of Representatives and 57 in the Senate. Following the 2016 election, those numbers had plummeted to 194 House members and 48 senators. 

Posted on December 15, 2016 - 2:30pm

Alumni Gazette: Rocket Science, Woman Power, and Updating The League

Ever hear that old cliché “This ain’t rocket science?” I wouldn’t use it around Ashley Chandler Karp because what she does is rocket science. A propulsion engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, she’s helping design the next generation of rockets, which will bring samples from Mars back to Earth for more extensive testing than can be done on the Martian surface.

As if that weren’t ambitious enough, they also have to figure out a way to transport the stuff here without getting any contamination from the Red Planet on the container.

From the Winter 2016 Reality Bites issue of California.

Keepin’ It Real with President Napolitano: The State of the State’s University

Janet Napolitano and I met in her office in downtown Oakland on the afternoon of November 4, 2016, just four days before Hillary Rodham Clinton was thwarted in her attempt to make history by becoming the first woman president of the United States of America.

Some people thought that Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona and Secretary of Homeland Security in the first Obama administration, might herself have been a candidate for the White House. Instead, she became the first woman president of the University of California in 2013.

From the Winter 2016 Reality Bites issue of California.

Black Hole: The Injustice of Wrongful Incarceration Doesn’t End When the Prison Doors Open

Danny Brown was in prison for almost two decades for a rape and murder he didn’t commit, and he has evidence to prove it: a host of eyewitness accounts validating his alibi, a polygraph test he took, and passed, at the prosecution’s request, and DNA from the crime scene matching that of another man who is currently serving time for a factually similar rape and murder.

He was released from prison in 2001 at the age of 45.

From the Winter 2016 Reality Bites issue of California.

Stronger Together? A Blueprint for a Blue State Alliance

Few pollsters on either side of the political aisle really expected a Trump win on November 8th. And while pundits and prognosticators were somewhat less certain about the outcome of state races, many were surprised—or shocked—that Republicans held on to the Senate and the House and improved their standing in state governments. Republicans now claim governorships in 34 states, up from 31.

Posted on December 5, 2016 - 3:41pm

Bye-Bye Balance: Skewed and False News Is on the Rise

Democrats are still stumbling around in the smoldering rubble of the 2016 presidential election, struggling to identify just what went wrong for them. Several theories are vying for primacy: voting fraud (or at least, inaccurate ballot counting), the Democratic Party’s disconnect with white working class voters, Trump’s bonding with the same, Trump’s uncanny tapping of surging nativist and xenophobic sentiment, the American susceptibility to celebrity, and Clinton’s bedrock weakness as a candidate.

Posted on November 28, 2016 - 3:59pm

Running on Principal: Cal Student Claire Chiara Opposes the Unopposed

Cal is an incubator for the politically engaged, and many students move on to careers in public policy. Some even run for office. In the latter case, though, they usually wait until they pick up their diplomas. Claire Chiara is an outlier. She’ll graduate in May 2017 with a political science/economics major, and she’s also the Republican candidate for the California State Assembly’s 15th District.

Posted on November 4, 2016 - 3:59pm

UC Berkeley Votes: On-Campus Interviews about the 2016 Election

The national reputation of the University of California, Berkeley is, shall we say, a bit liberal. And there’s been a lot of talk this election season about the Millennial vote, as though Millenials were a monolithic group sharing a single Bernie-inspired thought, or maybe just an Instagram image that would carry them to the polls, if they bothered to vote at all. Not content to believe rumor, California talked to people around campus about the election, the candidates, and whether or not they’ll vote.

Posted on October 27, 2016 - 7:07am

A Cal Alum’s Recipe for More Tuolumne River Salmon: Add Water

The Tuolumne River has long been revered by whitewater kayakers and rafters for its pristine wilderness canyon and challenging rapids. But “The T,” as it’s known by river-runners, was once famed for something else: Salmon. Before the Hetch Hetchy and Don Pedro Dams were built on the river’s upper reaches in the last century, the Tuolumne supported up to 130,000 spawning Chinook salmon annually.

Posted on October 17, 2016 - 1:11pm

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