In a recently released study, the Department of Health and Human Services affirmed that the 45-year-old Head Start preschool program has no lasting effects on its students in all of 114 academic and non-academic tests. “These results make it clear that we need to build a more coordinated system of early care and education, and to focus on key improvements to teaching and learning in the early grades,” said US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In the wake of the report, HHS Secretary Sebelius called for greater funding and more federal control of both Head Start and elementary education, declaring that “research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children.” Naturally, the only possible solution is to spend more money on it.

2. SB 518 To End Free Parking in California

California State Senator Alan Lowenthal’s bill, SB 518, recently passed in the California legislature. The bill imposes programs on local governments which eliminate ordinances that require parking spaces in commercial lots. The bill is intended to support AB 32, which requires California to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. In the name of fighting global warming, the bill imposes state-mandated local programs, empowers the California Air Resources Board to assign “cap and trade” points or other measures, takes authority over money apportioned to cities or counties, and dictate local ordinances, all without State compensation. The bill has no provisions – other than harassment and micromanagement of drivers and taxpayers – to alleviate traffic congestion.

3. Obama vs. Perry, Round 297

Responding to President Obama’s statements indicating that his administration will attempt to federalize education with the “Race to the Top” plan, Texas Governor Rick Perry stated, “I will say this very slow so they will understand it in Washington, DC: Texas will fight any attempt by the federal government to take over our school system.” Texas withdrew from the program “in the interest of preserving our state sovereignty over matters concerning education”, and because the federal government is “further interfering in state and local affairs and betraying their clear disdain for our rights.” According to Texas education officials, accepting the plan would cost over $3 billion in up-front costs and acceptance of as-yet-unwritten standards, likely inferior to those recently implemented by the Texas state legislature, for an uncertain one-time benefit of under $1 billion. Don’t mess with Texas.

4. By the Numbers: State of the Union Address Edition

2. Lou Dobbs Leaves CNN
On November 11th, advocacy anchor Lou Dobbs announced on his final program that he would be leaving CNN. In his broadcast, he recognizes his esteemed colleagues and support that the network has given him. CNN was the “world’s first news network,” according to Dobbs, who was one of the original anchormen 30 years ago, where he began acting as chief economics correspondent and host of “Moneyline.” CNN President Johnathan Klein agreed to release Dobbs from his contract, and called him “a valued founding member of the CNN family.” Dobbs continued on the show by  saying, “Over the past six months it’s become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us, and some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day.” He has aspirations to engage in dialogue and help resolve a wide variety of issues, including health care, immigration policy, climate change, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he wants to put an end to the partisanship behind these ideals, and try to come together to realistic, comprehensive solutions to these issues. Dobbs went on to point out the current flaws in our capitalist economy and the supposed “true lack of representation” at the capital. His accolades include the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1987, and the Emmy for Lifetime Achievement that he received in 2005. He temporarily left the network to start a Web site related to space topics. He then returned to CNN as an anchor and managing editor of Lou Dobbs Tonight and for CNN/U.S. Dobbs says he will continue as anchor of The Lou Dobbs Show, a daily radio show that began in March 2008 and is distributed to more than 160 stations nationwide by United Stations Radio Networks Inc.

3. Climategate

While the rest of the media ignores the most recent developments in the debunking of global warming theory, ie. the e-mails leaked from pro-warming climatologists that suggest skeptics may be right to be even more skeptical, Americans all over the country are experiencing one helluva cold start to winter. Snow in Sacramento forecasted, the earliest snowfall ever in Houston, and arctic chills spanning the continent this December, one should rather believe that we are at the helm of a new ice age. Indeed, scientists predicted ice back in the 1970s, and, curiously, at the center of the leaked e-mails controversy, “climategate,” if you will, is the fact that most of the data indicating warming is from before the 1970s. There have been suggestion by skeptics that the global warming trend has much more to do with the political climate than the planet. Still, the issue of whether climate change is man-made or not will most likely remain a cloudy one as those scientists responsible for determining so rely heavily on money from the government.

4. Party Crashers

Also known as the White House crashers, Michaele and Tareq Salahi have recently made a name for themselves as they managed to successfully crash the White House dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The couple gained media attention after posting pictures of themselves at the dinner on the global social networking web site, Facebook. One of these pictures included the couple posing with Vice President Joe Biden. The Salahis are being considered for The Real Housewives of D.C., an upcomng reality show on Bravo. There is a criminal investigation into how the couple managed to get into the high-security White House dinner without fooling anyone. As for the chances of successful White House crashers in the future, the Secret Service should probably start executing its tasks properly.

5. Afghanistan

Fortunately, Obama made a decision on whether to send more troops into Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it took him months to do so. Staying in line with our former commander-in-chief, President Obama also made the unfortunate error of wavering on just what our goals in Afghanistan are and when it will be time for our troops to come home. We’re there to win a war against terrorists (even though many of them are in Pakistan now), kill bin Laden, possibly help establish a new regime, fight for civil rights, and on and on and on. The American people are no different under Obama than under Bush. We want to know what the mission is, what our priorities are, and when our men and women will return home. Anything else is simply politics as usual, and we deserve better than that.

1. Supreme Court Hears Case against Campaign Finance Laws

The Supreme Court recently heard Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a case that might potentially overturn many government restrictions on politically-oriented speech, and Justice Sotomayor’s first case. Chief Justice Roberts expressed hostility to the government’s argument, declaring “we don’t put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats”. Sotomayor, meanwhile, expressed her opinion that corporations have rights under the First Amendment. She also affirmed her strong commitment to stare decisis, upholding precedent on the grounds that past judgments should be followed even when constitutional decisions might be wrong. At the same time, she expressed approval toward deferring to the “democratic process”,
suggesting that she will not be friendly toward liberty in the face of government “reforms”.

2. Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Obama won instant fame – and infamy, even among Democrats – after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. The fourth president to win the Prize, he is the first to do so in his first year in office, and also the first to do so without having accomplished anything of importance. Obama himself affirmed that the award was not “a recognition of [his] own accomplishments”. While the Nobel Committee praised Obama for his vision of a nuclear-free world and his speeches on peace, unity, and internationalism, they conveniently ignored his real actions, including – among other things – tariffs on Chinese tires, which indicate his opposition to free trade, and demonstrate that he and the Nobel Committee believe that international goodwill is somehow served by restrictions on voluntary interactions between citizens of different nations. Ironically, immediately after accepting the Peace Prize, he met with military advisers to discuss the deployment of an additional 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.

3. FOX News Host Braves Berkeley

Greg Gutfeld, host of FOX News Channel’s Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, returned to Cal Saturday, October 17, after graduating in 1987. The former editor in chief of Stuff, Men’s Health, and Maxim’s UK edition, Gutfeld encouraged students to get jobs after they graduate and to think of every job as a learning experience that will pay off in the end.

After landing a respectable internship at a leading conservative news magazine upon graduation, Gutfeld claims he was really just the guy running his boss’s errands. But having “never quit a job” in his life, and rather by getting fired each time, Gutfeld now hosts the leading cable news show in the 3AM time slot. Go Bears!

4. Conservative Comedian Targets UC Berkeley

Rising conservative comedian Steven Crowder visited UC Berkeley last month to gauge the political bias (and ignorance) on campus. His results were unsurprising. While students overwhelmingly selected Abraham Lincoln as their favorite president, very few were able to identify the first Republican president’s party affiliation. None of the interviewed students were able to identify the Federal Reserve as the cause of the Great Depression, nor the wartime inflation as its ultimate end, nor even the name of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Students were also filmed asking why rigorous proof was necessary in argument (“It’s like, why prove it? I believe you.”), promoting revisionist history regarding African slave-trading, and politicizing the death of Ted Kennedy. It’s a shame Crowder was unable to find any conservatives to show that we do exist, even in the heart of the Left Coast.

5. Daily Cal Hires Conservative Columnist

Senior Roman Zhuk, 19, currently writes as The Daily Californian’s Wednesday columnist, bringing a much needed and admirably articulate conservative point of view to the campus daily. Although the newspaper has had its share of politically charged liberal columnists, the last and perhaps most laughable being the columnist of Thursday’s print edition this summer, Zhuk’s online column is a refreshing start to a more current, diverse, and interesting Daily Californian. Check out his weekly column featured every Wednesday on the Daily Cal Web site.

In the first weeks of summer, Chancellor Birgeneau sent a mass e-mail to the student body regarding the university’s dire financial straits and his “leadership strategy”. Specifically mentioning the regents’ 9.3% increase in student fees and “other revenue enhancement”, and some unspecified “cost-saving measures”, he went on to say that “units with higher capacity will be asked to take larger cuts than those with lower capacity”, for the sake of “breadth”, with no judgment on the effectiveness or value of either set. And yet he described the policy as “the only rational approach”. The chancellor went on to “be clear as to what we will not entertain”, including “[sacrificing] our commitment to social access: low-income students who have earned a place at Berkeley must be capable of affording a UC Berkeley education” and “[abandoning] our efforts to train and promote a highly skilled and diverse workforce”. In short, Berkeley will be making an open-ended commitment to fully-subsidizing lower-income students, while forcing others to pay at least 10% more to cover that expense, and to “diversity”, at an institution that prides itself on the fact that the majority of its present student population is already some minority.

2. Letterman’s “Creepy Old Man” Look

Perhaps one of the reasons that Sarah Palin needs to protect her family from the spotlight and thus chose to resign is to avoid crude jokes made by late night television host David Letterman. In the Late Show host’s monologue, Governor Palin was referred to as having the style of a “slutty flight attendant.” Letterman then joked, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” It was 14-year-old Willow, not Bristol Palin, however, who was at that game. Sarah Barracuda and her husband, Todd, shot back in a statement claiming that Letterman’s comments were “disgusting” and “inappropriate”, and only portray the type of sexual exploitation that society sees towards young women everyday.

3. Tax on Cigarettes a “Common Sense Revenue”

In an op-ed published in the Daily Californian, ASUC Senator Ariel Boone, Cal Berkeley Dems Policy Director Nik Dixit, and Cal Berkeley Dems Magazine Editor Mia Pskowski opine that the state’s recently-passed budget allows for too many “cuts, cuts, cuts” across the board. They claim that legislators “ignored new, common sense revenues which could have offset cuts and improved our outlook”. However, one of only two such “common sense revenues” Ms. Boone, Mr. Dixit, and Ms. Pskowski refer to happen to be additional taxes on cigarettes that would effectively a) raise money and b) reduce smoking. But isn’t such a tax, by design, meant to be a temporary, shrinking revenue source, and thus cannot reasonably serve to balance the costs of ongoing programs? One hopes it is still common sense that taxing something out of existence would make taxing it less profitable in the future.

4. Obama’s Ratings Down after Five Months

With each successive slip up, including the president’s “stupidly” remark, more and more seem to disagree with everything Obama does, but remain transfixed with Obama the man. On June 18, nearly five months after Obama’s inauguration, the Wall Street Journal released an article discussing Obama’s approval numbers – because they’re slipping. Moving past the president’s charisma and charm, two qualities that strongly boosted his number of votes in the presidential elections, Americans are beginning to take notice of how well (or how poorly) Obama can handle the important issues facing the country. Disapproval is already rearing its head on several of Obama’s key decisions – including the stimulus plan, the bailouts of banks and auto companies, and the decision to close Gitmo within the year. A majority of the survey respondents in the article claimed that their primary concern is to keep the budget deficit low, even if that means it takes longer for the economy to recover. In regards to Obama’s healthcare plan, more apparently favored it than opposed it at the time the survey was taken, as they still had yet to see what his plan would bring. Since then, ObamaCare’s met opposition on both sides of the aisle. As for Obama’s nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, overall support for her confirmation is strong, as critics quickly learned it is best not to bring up a Latina’s past, even if she is to be a justice of the Supreme Court.

5. “Truth” Commissions for Berkeley High Students

Responding to “racist incidents on campus” protesters at a Berkeley Board of Education meeting in June demanded more diversity education in Berkeley High’s curriculum, such as mandatory courses in African-American studies and ethnic studies, more black teachers and more diversity training for teachers, according to a Berkeley Daily Planet article. The demands followed on the heels of what some alleged to be incidents of racism committed “by a few white students” either on campus or off. At least one of the alleged incidents happened on Facebook. In language that would make George Orwell cringe, the protesters also called for “truth and reconcilation forums”, or “restorative justice healing circles”, where those accused would be made to face their accusers and the rest of the student body.

6. A New Revolution: Vegetarianism

Lydia Guevara, the granddaughter of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, is following in her grandfather’s footsteps as the icon of another revolution – vegetarianism. The 24-year-old vegetarian poses semi-nude in a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) ad promoting vegetarianism. In October, Guevara’s ad is expected to debut in magazines and posters first in Argentina, where Che was born, and then
debut internationally. In the ad, Lydia Guevara wears camouflage pants, a red beret, and bandoliers of baby carrots. Guevara’s ad is PETA’s first campaign promoting vegetarianism in South America. PETA spokesman Michael McGraw claims, “We say the best way to save animals is not to eat them.”

1.    UC Fees to Rise 10%

UC students will likely face fee increase of almost 10% and employees may be laid off; however, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has said that he’s unwilling to take a pay cut himself. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the chancellor

currently makes $436,800 a year, plus “a generous package of benefits.” The chancellor told the Chronicle, “Obviously [salary reductions for top administrators] is one of the things that we have considered. Further reductions of senior administrators’ salaries would make us less able to compete with other universities … seriously damaging our ability to attract outstanding people.” Not all administrators are so selfish. Frank Yeary, a vice chancellor, has opted to forgo his $200,000-a-year salary. The fee increase has been designed with the Communist slogan “from each according to his abilities” in mind. Families earning more than $100,000 would see fees rise by 9.3%. Families earning from $60,000 to $100,000 would face an increase of 4.65 percent, while those earning less than $60,000 would not be subject to any increase. The UC regents have approved the increased fees for the summer secession, and are expected to vote in May to extend the increase to the 2009-2010 academic year.

2.    UC Officials: What Recession?

Chancellor Birgeneau isn’t the only UC official making big bucks during the recession. Despite the economic crisis, in March the UC regents added more senior administrators to the university’s already bloated bureaucracy, hiring two executives with salaries greater than $350,000 a year. At the same time the regents authorized two former chancellors to take paid administrative leaves; according to the San Francisco Chronicle, one will receive $315,000 a year while the other makes off with a whopping $402,200 annually! Over the past several months, the regents have given pay raises of up to 22.3 percent to a half dozen senior administrators, the Chronicle reported. Paul Schwartz, a spokesman for the UC Office of the President, said the sky rocketing salaries should be viewed in the context of “a pay freeze for existing senior staff, restrictions on travel, and a host of other cost-cutting measures here and on every UC campus.” Anyone who’s been in a crumbling, overcrowded campus building knows there certainly are cost-cutting measures in place. The university’s statement is loud and clear: students should pay up while UC fat cats make off like Somali pirates.

3.    State Sales Tax Spikes

Many Californians felt like fools on April 1st, when they learned that state sales tax had increased by one percent; however, the higher tax rate is no joke. California state sales tax is now six cents on the dollar, although local sales taxes mean that the average Californian pays 8.95 percent on most purchases. In the Bay Area, sales tax rates are even higher and, if Oakland officials have their way, the regional will continue to be the tax leader in the state. In what we can only assume is an attempt to make Oakland the worst place to live in California, Oakland City Councilwoman Jean Quan proposed asking voters to raise the sales tax to 10.25 percent. Currently, sales tax in Oakland is a whopping 9.75 percent; Berkeley residents pay the same sky-high rate. If the proposed sales tax increase is approved, Oakland would tie for the highest sales tax rates in the state. If rampant violence wasn’t enough of a reason for shoppers to avoid Oakland, a higher tax should do the trick and kill of any businesses left in the city.

4.    Terrorists Strike Berkeley Marine Recruiting Center

On the eve of the six-year anniversary of the Iraq war, the windows of the Marine Recruiting Center in Berkeley were broken and splattered with red paint (or pink, depending on the lighting). Although the perpetrators have yet to be brought to justice, the Iraq war anniversary was celebrated the next day by antiwar activists Code Pink and World Can’t Wait. We can’t help but wonder why the anti-military forces aren’t targeting the one man who has authority to stop the war—Commander in Chief Barack Obama. In the past Code Pink never hesitated to call out President Bush, even as they misdirected their anger at the Marine Recruiting Center which has no power to shape defense policy. If these vandals and criminals care about ending the war, they should direct their protest at the president using slightly more legal avenues to express their opinions. If instead they choose to intimidate the Marines with acts of violence, they should be treated as the terrorists that they are.

5.    Barbara Lee Chills with Castro

Oakland is in crisis. Recently four police officers and a UC student were slain on its violence-plagued streets (see the news section for our coverage of these horrific events). In the midst of these tragedies, one might ask what are Oakland’s elected officials doing to bring an end to the bloodshed. Oakland’s Democratic Representative Barbara Lee was soaking up the sun on an exclusive Caribbean island—Cuba. That’s right, Rep. Lee violated the embargo to travel to Communist Cuba and was hosted by none other than Fidel Castro himself. The Oakland liberal came away impressed with the Communist country: “There were no barricades, but beautiful plants and trees,” Lee told the San Francisco Chronicle. We’re glad Rep. Lee enjoyed her trip—we only wish she could have stayed longer. Since this Commie-loving liberal isn’t doing anything to end the violence in her own city, she might as well retire to the worker’s paradise that is Cuba. Of course, maybe we’re just mad that she didn’t bring us back any Cuban cigars.

6.    ASUC on the Brink of Bankruptcy

The ASUC recently rejected a proposal that would have allowed fast-food chain Panda Express to open a restaurant on campus in a move that may do more than just deprive Cal students of cheap, tasty food. According to ASUC Auxiliary Director Nadesan Permaul the deal with Panda Express is necessary to keep the auxiliary fiscally afloat. The auxiliary is currently facing a $200,000 deficit, according The Daily Californian. According to Jan Crowder, director of student affairs, the ASUC is itself on the brink of insolvency and the deal with Panda Express would have been a way for the organization to regain financial stability. “I am extremely concerned about the possibility of falling prey again to the circumstances that led the ASUC to a $6 million deficit and near bankruptcy in 1998,” Crowder told The Daily Cal. “If ASUC does not enter into a contract with Panda Express, it will not have other options available to stay afloat.” This is just the latest example of the ASUC taking an ideological stance instead of deciding in the best interests of the students. On second thought, maybe this item doesn’t belong on this list—would it really be so bad for the ASUC to go bankrupt?