Just before New Year’s, California gained a new and significant (though likely temporary) resident: a gray wolf from Oregon crossed into the far north of California. His official name is OR7 but he has since been dubbed “Journey”. The picture above was captured by a deer hunter’s motion-activated camera. By crossing the Oreg0n-California border, Journey became the first known wild wolf in the state in over 80 years: the last was trapped in Lassen County in 1924.

I spent much of the fall working on a paper on wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountain area and their protections under the Endangered Species Act so Journey’s arrival is especially significant to me. He is a descendant of wolves that were reintroduced into Wyoming and Idaho in the 1990′s. The species was extirpated across the United States by the 1930′s because of an extermination campaign waged by ranchers and government at all levels. In the 1970′s, the wolf was listed as endangered under the newly passed Endangered Species Act. Also in the 1970′s, environmentalists began arguing that reintroduction of the gray wolf was necessary to rebalance the ecosystems of Yellowstone and other wildernesses in the Northern Rockies and that it was feasible because of the large tracts of public land that exist in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Since the reintroduction of the wolf, ecosystems have become more healthy. In Yellowstone, the (non-catastrophic) reduction in elk numbers as well as the change in their eating habits have allowed other species including songbirds and beavers to once again thrive.

The gray wolf reintroduction was not without opponents, however, and Journey’s entry into California is rousing the same adversaries. Ranchers assert that wolves will wipe out livestock while others say that the wolves are dangerous for humans. The facts, however, tell a different story. In 2010, wolves accounted for .14% of combined cattle and calf losses in the United States (PDF).  In Idaho, Montana and Wyoming combined, wolves accounted for 2.07% of losses – higher but a far cry from decimation. As for human safety, wolves are not dangerous to humans in the overwhelming majority of circumstances. Although there were two deaths recently in Canada and Alaska, those are “the only fatal attacks in the last 100 years“. You’re more likely to get killed by a bear or a bee than a wolf.

While wolves have a limited impact on livestock and are generally safe for humans, these concerns should nonetheless be acknowledged. Although there was significant local involvement, the wolf reintroduction was a federal initiative carried out under the federal Endangered Species Act and local ranchers and citizens should not be forced to bear the financial burden of the reintroduction. To that end, the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife established a wolf compensation fund that gave ranchers market value for livestock taken by wolves if they supplied adequate proof. Currently, that program is being transitioned to state agencies in Montana and Idaho with the support of federal funding – Wyoming is a special case as their wolf management plan has not been finally approved because of inadequate protections for wolves. Livestock loss is also curbed through the translocation (or culling, unfortunately) of wolves that repeatedly prey on livestock. Human safety should be addressed through education about safe interactions with wolves and programs to ensure that packs do not become habituated to human contact.

What should Californians expect from Journey’s stay in our state? Likely very little. He is currently looking for a mate and territory to establish a new pack. While there is certainly adequate territory, he’ll be hard-pressed to find a mate. Nonetheless, in the long run, it’s quite possible that wolves could become reestablished in their historic range along the Sierra Nevadas (and debatably the Coastal Range). If that happens, Californians should embrace the wolf as an important part of a healthy ecosystem while taking steps to limit their negative effects on ranchers and others.

Currently, Journey is in Lassen County, the same place that the last wolf was killed in 1924. Few if any will see him but the knowledge that he is there reaffirms the vitality of our wilderness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov is the story of three brothers – Alyosha the novice, Dimitri the sensualist, and Ivan the intellectual – and their father, Fyodor Karamazov, a miserly, debaucherous old man. It’s a long book – I’ve been reading it on and off for a year, if I remember correctly, and just finished. Over the course of 700+ pages, the plot shifts often from family drama to philosophical debate murder mystery to theological biography to coming-of-age story to romantic triangle and back again. It is sprawling, and undoubtedly an epic.

The range of the book’s subplots make it difficult to summarize. Instead, I’ll note three parts of the book that stood out to me. The first is Ivan’s poem, The Grand Inquisitor, which Ivan tells to Alyosha. In the story, Christ returns to Spain during the Inquisition. In Sevilla, the theological capital of Spain at the time, the Grand Inquisitor orders him to be arrested and jailed. The Inquisitor visits Christ in his cell and tells him that free will, and the uncertainty that accompanies it, is too great a burden for humanity to bear. According to the Inquisitor, Christ gave humanity free will by denying Satan’s three temptations but now the Inquisition and the Church is giving humans what they truly want: security and certainty through the relinquishment of free will. At the end of the Inquisitor’s monologue, Christ kisses the Inquisitor and is set free. The point seems to be that free will is a burden that we must embrace.

Another part that struck me is Ivan’s meditation on the question of theodicy. He relates to Alyosha different stories he has read in the news from around Russia about children suffering without justification. In the most devastating, a serf boy hurts a general’s favorite hound and, as punishment, is torn to pieces by the general’s hounds in front of his mother. Ivan posits that suffering is necessary to create harmony in the aftermath of human sin but asks, even if this is true, why must children, who cannot sin, suffer? How can we call God just, all-powerful and all-knowing when children suffer?

A third part that stuck out to me is said by Zosima, Alyosha’s mentor in the seminary. Zosima feels that his death is near and spends his last day recounting his life and what he has learned from his experiences. Near the end, he says, “Fathers and teachers, I ask myself ‘What is hell?’ And I answer thus: ‘The suffering of being no longer able to love.’”

Of course, there are many other parts of the book that stood out to me but these are the ones that I found most significant. Looking back, I have to say that I was disappointed that the book did not address the issues raised by these parts more consistently. While the murder mystery that makes up the last third of the book is exciting, themes that were central to the first half of the book are unfortunately forgotten, left perhaps for the sequels that never came. Nonetheless, each stage of the book is rewarding in its own way, even if they are distinct from each other. The book is ultimately together by the passion and vivacity of the three brothers, who confront life without flinching.

Obviously, since the McCain-Palin ticket didn’t win, the “policy” hasn’t been implemented, though Obama did make an unfortunate gesture towards expanding drilling immediately prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Nonetheless, the phenomenon ignored by Drill Here, Drill Now is playing out in the oil markets today: oil extracted in the United States is being exported to other countries because of the tepid appetite for gasoline among American consumers and the exports are keeping gasoline prices high here in the United States. Even if we were extracting more oil, the same thing would be happening. Oil is sold were it can garner the most profit, not where it’s extracted, and expanded oil drilling in the United States won’t bring down prices at the pumps. “Drill Here, Drill Now” sounds great, but it’s really just a charade.

A week after the police violence at UC Berkeley, protestors returned to Sproul Plaza. That evening, over four thousand students packed the Plaza to hear former Secretary of Labor and Berkeley professor Robert Reich speak, many crowding adjacent rooftops. “The days of apathy are over,” Reich said. If the past weeks are any indication, the days of apathy truly are over. While the police actions were reprehensible and must be addressed, students have remained focused on their goal: reversing the repeated tuition hikes of recent years. They have raised their voices against rapidly diminishing opportunities for many of California’s brightest young people and against the dismantling of one of the best public university systems in the world.

The day after Reich spoke, buses were scheduled to bring Berkeley students to the UC Regents’ meeting in San Francisco but, after the Regents cancelled the meeting citing safety concerns, the buses were rerouted to Sacramento where students held a press conference and met with legislators and their staffs.

In a way, the Regents’ cancellation was fortuitous: it allowed students to confront the problem at its root. While the Regents approve tuition increases, their decisions are constrained by UC’s allocation in the California budget. California’s budget is passed by legislators in Sacramento, who are elected by voters. To reverse the current trend of disinvestment from higher education, students must influence legislators and voters to convince them that the California’s public university system is worth preserving.

California’s budget is a problem for the UC both it is shrinking and the UC’s portion of it is shrinking. In 1970, the University of California received 7% of California’s general fund. Today, it receives 3.5%. In terms of the total budget, general fund revenue as percentage of total personal income hit historic lows in the 2008-2009 and since then has remained near those levels.

Increasing the UC’s proportion of the state budget requires cutting in other areas, and most of California’s social services have been hit as hard if not harder than higher education by recent budget cuts. While UC funding should increased, it should not be increased at the expense of Californians in need. The bloated prisons budget offer an opportunity to reallocate funding to the UC but this would involve policy changes outside the scope of the budget process that would be difficult connect to UC funding.

The most direct way to increase UC funding, then, is by increasing total state revenues. As I’ve said, this requires convincing California voters that higher education is worth higher taxes. The UC is clearly worth paying for: a recent study showed that every $1 spent on the UC results in $14 of economic output, without including the impact of human capital development such as spinoff companies based on UC research or the economic contributions of UC alumni. However, a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California showed that, while 74% of Californians believed that higher education was underfunded, only 49% of likely voters would pay higher taxes to maintain current funding. Voters need to be convinced that the UC’s historic excellence is worth higher taxes.

Next fall’s election will present multiple opportunities for UC students to influence the future of California. As many as three ballot measures increasing taxes could be on the ballot and the redistricting maps drawn after the 2010 Census have opened a slight possibility that Democrats could gain the supermajority necessary to raise taxes without Republican support. Of course, even if Democrats gain a supermajority, students will have to continue to pressure Democrats to make sure they follow through on their commitments to support higher education.

Beyond next fall, students should act to move Prop. 13 from its place as the third rail of California politics to a subject for debate. If Democrats do not gain a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature, Prop. 13 will continue to allow intransigent anti-tax legislators to block revenue increasing measures and deny full funding of the UC as well as other social services. Repealing Prop. 13 would increase political accountability and foster an honest debate among Californians about what state functions, including higher education, are worth paying for.

It is understandable that the nationwide Occupy Movement has shunned involvement with traditional politics to maintain its organic character. However, for the tuition increases to be stopped, UC students must move beyond occupying their campuses to engage with California’s political process. The recent trip to Sacramento was a start, but there’s a long way to go.

Update: I wrote the above piece on Nov. 21 for a class. Because of the word limit, I had to gloss over a few things so I want to put add a bit more nuance here.

Earlier this week, students protested at the Regents’ meetings which were being held at different UC campuses across the state, turning the meetings into assemblies of the “People’s Regents”. I support these actions. The Regents do make decisions that on how to spend the funding allotted by the state budget. Spending that money on administrators’ salaries while raising tuition rates makes the UC’s less affordable and less accessible, and that is a decision that is solely in the control of the Regents. So, influencing the Regents is important. However, I still believe that the root problem is the shrinking budget and the UC’s shrinking piece of that budget, and the way to address this is by influencing voters and legislators. Protests at the Regents’ meetings can be part of this strategy but students should keep their eye on the ultimate decisionmakers.

It appears that Romney’s jab has elicited a strong response from the Democratic National Committee as they released this ad today:

It’s pretty devastating. The Kerry campaign failed in part because of Kerry’s inconsistencies on the Iraq War – inconsistencies that were more explicable considering the faulty information disseminated by the Bush administration. In contrast, Romney has flip-flopped on several issues that are at the heart of national debate and are much clearer than the Iraq War. It’s difficult to see how a candidate could survive an ad like that in a normal campaign but, of course, the high unemployment rate and widespread (justified) pessimism about the economy will make 2012 anything but a normal campaign.

• Tom Steyer, leader of the anti-Prop. 23 Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, recently submitted an initiative to the Attorney General for approval for signature-gathering. The initiative would force companies to calculate their taxes based on in-state sales, instead of another formula which allows companies that keep their offices and employees out of state. It would raise $1.1bil per year, which would be spent on energy efficient retrofitting, job training, K-12 education and community colleges.
• The Think Long Committee, a group of ”former governors, legislative leaders, U.S. secretaries of state, seasoned state finance directors and leaders in business and labor unions”, released a proposed initiative yesterday that would significantly change California’s tax structure. It would flatten and simplify the income tax, reducing both overall rates and the total number of brackets and eliminating most deductions. It would extend the sales tax to services, aside from education and healthcare, while reducing the rate on goods. It would also repeal parts of Prop. 98, which assures approximately 40% of the CA budget goes to K-12 education, and increase taxes on out-of-state companies like the Steyer proposal.
• Gov. Jerry Brown is also planning a tax initiative, although the specifics are not yet clear. According to George Skelton, insiders say that the initiative would increase income taxes on the wealthy and sale taxes across the board. Brown will likely ally with unions to support the measure.

What makes these proposed initiatives significant is that they have money behind them. Good ideas are cheap; getting them on the ballot, and winning on Election Day, is not. Nicolas Berggruen, founder/backer of the Think Long Committee has pledged $20mil of his own money to back their proposal. Steyer and Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs put big money into their anti-Prop. 23 campaign. Brown won’t put anything on the ballot unless he’s ready to raise money for it and, if he’s crafting the measure with unions, they will likely be willing to spend as well.

It remains to be seen whether any of these initiatives reach the ballot, though most people say if you’ve got $2mil to spend, your initiative will make the ballot. If one or more is placed on the ballot, it will spur an important debate for Californians: tax increases, or more failing schools, more crumbling infrastructure, less support for those in need, and slow decline for our public universities?

Update: Kevin Yamamura of the SacBee has a writeup on the different tax initiatives that are currently on the radar, including one proposed by an organization named “Our Children, Our Future” which I didn’t mention above. Dan Morain, also of the SacBee, has more on their proposal.

The officer’s actions were heinous and unacceptable. What struck me was the officer’s utter disregard for the humanity of the protesters – and his nonchalance, showing off the bottle than strolling back and forth to make sure he gets all the protestors.

Beyond that, the police’s actions were pointless. Why do they need to move the protestors? Are they interfering with other people? Maybe they are violating campus policy, but is that policy a beneficial policy for UC Davis? If not, why enforce it? If the police wanted the protestors to move because their actions were against campus policy, they should have arrested them. Maybe that would have been difficult, but it was the right thing to do if they were violating university policy. The pepper spray was unnecessary and, again, completely unacceptable.

A UC Davis professor wrote an open letter to UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi, demanding her resignation. The crux: “Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students.” Yes, actions are more important than words. It doesn’t matter what Katehi and other administrators say they’re going to do; what matters is what they actually do. Katehi has launched a probe into the incident – we’ll see what comes of it, whether it’s just words or actual actions.

I’ve wrestled with the tension between the imperatives of the freedom of speech and assembly on the one hand and the need for public health and safety policies that allow for people to live together in communities. It can be a difficult balance to strike. In this case, the outcome of any such balancing would clearly weigh against the reprehensible actions of the police but, in thinking about that tension more broadly, I found the following insightful: the right to peaceably assembly is empty if it can only be exercised within constraints defined by the government.