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While we are complaining about Jerry Brown, he also vetoed collective bargaining rights for graduate student researchers at the UCs. Meaning it is still legally prohibited for them to form a union--even though they have to deal with stuff like their advisors overworking them, taking credit for their work, or asking them to grade papers (that's the TAs'/readers' job). So what does this thread think: would Gavin Newsom have been better? Who is a "good" state democrat?
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May 1, 2014 06:18
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Mayor Dave posted:Equally interesting is the way that the grad students who are already in unions get treated when they go on strike. UC Santa Cruz's TA union shut down campus for two days this month and 22 strikers ended up arrested. Even in a liberal beach town and university, opinions are pretty much against the strike. If a town like Santa Cruz sucks for labor relations, what hope does the rest of the state (and country) have? I was actually on that picket line (so if you were too, I might know you!). My experiences with politics in Santa Cruz have been pretty frustrating--for example the people turning down the water desalinization plant for environmental reasons, despite the environmental studies professors from campus all saying that the desalinization plant was a net positive for the environment. The same goes for Santa Cruz's hard-line anti-nuclear stance. It's like a bizarro version of the trend people were talking about with Mark Levine--the few times that it makes sense to support (corporate) development, the people are virulently against it. Of course, I'm far from a political expert on this stuff so I could just be interpreting it all wrong.
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May 1, 2014 09:04
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Redgrendel2001 posted:I can guarantee you that this is never happening. I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm a STEM graduate student and my experience is that a lot of people are getting pretty dissatisfied with how we are treated, especially when we compare quality of life with friends who went into industry instead of going to graduate school. If GSR unionization became legal in California I think it would stand a pretty good chance of actually happening (which is why it's still illegal).
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May 6, 2014 19:06
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CPColin posted:Maybe more Greens figure the GOP is weak enough now that they can stop voting for Democrats? I voted for a number of green candidates and that's pretty much my thinking exactly. I figure if the dems double-lose any races (like what almost happened with controller) then that's their own fault, and in most cases I'd rather try for a dem-green race in the November election than a dem-rep or dem-dem one. Although to be fair I did vote for Stein over Obama (so Vivian Darkbloom's post doesn't really apply to me), and if a race had a pro-business democrat and a progressive one I'd vote the progressive dem over the green.
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Jun 13, 2014 08:07
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For the interested, here are the 2014 ballot propositions. Edit: looking over these, my mind is pretty well made up on all of them except the Native American Casino one. I'm for helping the native population in any way we can, but Environmental Quality Act exemption gives me pause. What are your thoughts on this? VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Sep 28, 2014 22:04
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Surprise of surprises, fracking hosed our water.
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Oct 9, 2014 07:36
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withak posted:It's wastewater injection wells, not fracking. But those wastewater injection wells are part of the fracking process and are used by the fracking companies? I'm not sure why you're being pedantic here.
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Oct 9, 2014 17:23
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Same here. Hope you didn't think to make the arrow the same thickness as the head! Well poo poo, that's exactly what I did. Don't tell me that actually matters!
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Nov 5, 2014 00:04
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:On another note, I have family friends telling me about how absolutely hosed their housing situations became at Cal after Berkeley lifted the rent cap. Anecdotally, housing has been a huge issue in bay-area college towns this year. I've heard horror stories from Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Cruz about students and postdocs being unable to find affordable housing, even well into the quarter.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:15
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Pervis posted:Maybe the Colleges could use some of the construction funds to build student housing for more than just some Freshmen, I dunno. I doubt they have that much land left in usable places though. That would be nice if it was affordable. At UC Santa Cruz at least graduate student housing is actually more expensive than the housing downtown. A small single-person room in a university-owned 4-bed-1-bath townhouse would cost around 60% of my post-tax income.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:51
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Pervis posted:That's insane. Are they trying to turn a profit or just trying to make up for some absurd construction contract? I have no idea, but my guess is that it's a combination of scarcity and location (graduate student housing is on-campus, and the layout of campus makes that a bigger deal than other places). Another factor is that they don't really pay us that much, so 60% of our income is not quite as crazy as it may seem at first. In any case, I don't really understand how graduate students afford those places on our salary, but apparently people do because as far as I know the housing fills up. Edit: Also I just checked and it's 2 bath. The page is here for the curious. VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 06:05
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AYC posted:http://www.dailycal.org/2014/11/19/breaking-tuition-increase-policy-passed-uc-regents-committee/ Good on you for being at the protests! This tuition hike sucks, and unfortunately it's looking like it's going to be "the new normal" for a while. As an undergrad I knew multiple people who had to drop out because they could no longer afford UC tuition, and it's just going to get worse. There's not even a lot we can do about it, because the Regents are completely unaccountable to non-billionaires, and can dodge the PR issue by blaming lack of state funding (which is admittedly a huge part of the problem). I wonder if it would be possible to organize huge protests at the capitol next time they pass a budget. It'd be hard since there's no UC Sacramento, but I could see organized carpools bringing people in from Davis, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz.
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Nov 20, 2014 08:49
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AYC posted:What can we do stop this? A general strike against going to all classes? There's probably not enough support for that, and it'd just be a symbolic effort because the Regents already have the money you paid for the classes you'd be skipping and they are very adept at dodging bad PR. Honestly I have no idea how to stop it, but it literally can't go on forever. At some point, non-wealthy people will stop being able to pay for college, and they either won't go or won't be able to pay their debts after graduation (the government can only garnish wages so much). Either way the bubble will pop when the UCs can't pay their bills, and we'll probably have another Great Recession on our hands. Edit: I really should say there's not enough support for an effective general strike without a big PR campaign. You could probably accomplish a lot with a general strike if you got enough people in on it. Basically I think you would need enough that the press is forced to frame the anti-tuition-hike people as "all students" instead of "a small group of students". VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 09:37
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AYC posted:Just throwing ideas out there. Yeah I made that edit because I didn't want to poo poo on your brainstorming too much. I like the idea in general but I think it's hard to make it practical, especially this time of year. How do we avoid losing momentum over the holidays, etc? Anyways, if you belong to any student activist organizations, you should probably bring this up at the next meeting. They're going to be the ones with the resources and experience necessary to get the numbers you need. If you don't belong to any student activist organizations you should join one--more manpower is always good and it sounds like you are ready to get involved.
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Nov 20, 2014 09:53
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I'm pretty sure Mountain Dew Code Red is the gooniest drink, but I'd be happy to hear arguments to the contrary.
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Jan 4, 2015 05:32
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This poo poo is the worst. I'm pretty sure there are two of them in a row on the 17N-85N interchange, too. The other big 17 freeway design horror is the fishhook, where 1N and 17S become one. If you are driving along the 1 in the left lane you go around a fairly sharp turn, which suddenly sharpens even more mid turn, and then are dumped out on the 17 with people going at speed, with literally zero merge time. The lanes just very suddenly are the same. It's a wonder there's not an accident there daily.
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Feb 13, 2015 07:41
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Today protesters blocked Highway 17 near Santa Cruz to protest tuition hikes at the UCs.
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Mar 4, 2015 02:15
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nm posted:Then why does it say this: The leftist groups on campus have had a lot of tension with law enforcement in recent years and this is probably a relic of that. As for general #BlackLivesMatter stuff: the protesters have been pointing out that there is a racial element to the tuition hikes, because they make it harder for poor minorities to attend school and minority enrollment had dropped significantly as a result. I would have trouble drawing a direct line from that to #BackLivesMatter, but that's where they are coming from. nm posted:The whole thing is a shitfest between an administration that won't cut its bloated self, and the tax payers who won't pay enough to fund a truly world-class system. I hate to go all truth is in the middle, but it is mostly true here, though I blame the tax payers more as even with reduced admin, the UC will be underfunded, particularly if it will use tenure track people like they should. The students are stuck in the middle. The UC budget problem is a lot more complicated than "the taxpayers don't want to pay for it". In addition to what Pervis and Sydin have said, here are a few more big problems:
Bizarro Watt posted:That also relates to my relative annoyance with the grad student union in general. It's a little unclear from your posts whether you still go to UCSC, but if you do I would recommend getting involved with the Grad Student Union now. A bunch of the leadership just graduated, so there are very few people running the show and even a few dissenting voices can make a huge difference in the direction of the union.
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Mar 5, 2015 00:05
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Fun fact: as a TA, I get paid more than the lecturer teaching the class. Also I have much, much better benefits. The difference IMO is that the TAs have a way stronger union.
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Mar 5, 2015 20:44
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nm posted:^^^^^^^^^ Is his grave near a UC? A mass-pissing sounds like a pretty good form of protest to me.
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Mar 6, 2015 01:03
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Re: landlord chat Last year in Santa Cruz, there was a perfect storm of a housing crisis. The university offered less housing than usual while accepting an unusually large class, meaning that a lot more people than usual were looking for housing off-campus. Simultaneously, the city started doing housing inspections, and kicked a bunch of people out of homes that were "unfit to live in" (whether they were actually unfit to live in depends on who you ask). This means that there were a lot fewer places to live off campus. Predictably, the landlords took advantage of the higher demand and lower supply and jacked prices way up, where they have stayed since. IMO landlords are scum, and are pretty much the perfect example of rich people leeching money off of poor people for deigning to want a place to live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCiYmCVikjo
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Mar 16, 2015 22:11
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jeeves posted:Rumor has it that the university is the one that put the pressure down on the city to crack down on the inlaw units and such. Interesting. Was the idea to increase the standard of living for the students? Because if so boy howdy did that backfire.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:37
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Leperflesh posted:Hella yes. The thing that unites all Californians is our abiding hatred for Texas. This is sort of like the NorCal/SoCal divide: I rarely hear Californians complain about Texans, yet whenever someone complains about California they inevitably turn out to be from Austin.
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Mar 24, 2015 05:46
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CPColin posted:U.S. Representative Lois Capps won't run for reelection, probably because she'd be blown up with how lovely her last campaign was. She took her opponent's quote, which was, "I do not intend to go to Washington to represent the 24th District to bring back baseball fields. That's not why I am going. I am going to fight for my country, and I happen to come from the 24th District." and put this part in her commercial: "I do not intend to go to Washington to represent the 24th District." Then she claimed it was an honest mistake and her campaign pulled the ad as soon as there were complaints. (It still ran for plenty of time, right before the election.) That's pretty surprising to me. I would have assumed that Santa Barbara was fairly solidly Democratic, especially with the university there.
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Apr 9, 2015 18:32
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etalian posted:I'm sure there's some way like zoning they could block the project. Every time I see this map I am shocked at how good BART was planned to be. Is there any hope of getting this some day?
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Apr 18, 2015 18:23
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nm posted:We replaced the eastern span of the bay bridge with one made of defective parts. Wait, what?
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Apr 22, 2015 18:20
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incoherent posted:Someone just dumped a lot of oil on a concentration of rich people. Again. drat, that sucks. Also, I don't think Goleta is particularly rich? It's not like this happened in Montecito or something.
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May 20, 2015 06:31
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Apologies if this has already been posted, but UC Berkeley recently dropped healthcare coverage for dependents of Graduate Student Researchers.
VikingofRock fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 28, 2015 09:28
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GrumpyDoctor posted:For their children. Still lovely though. Whoops, nice catch. I didn't mean to mislead people, just forgot a word. I've edited my post. In any case, this is more evidence that the GSRs need to be unionized, and it's a shame that they are legally prohibited from doing so.
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Jul 28, 2015 19:43
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Boot and Rally posted:Do you have more information on this? I thought GSRs didn't unionize because they have no leverage. Or, at the very least, their leverage is "we don't work on your grant programs but we also don't graduate", which is not a problem TAs have. It's a little hard to find a good article about it, but as I understand it the GSRs are classified as students instead of employees and thus do not have a right to unionize. Here's a 2012 article about Jerry Brown vetoing a bill to extend the right to unionize to GSRs.
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Jul 29, 2015 02:51
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I'm pretty sure stripping the right to vote from 13% of black men leads to a pretty significant redshift in American politics--whether or not that is intentional is up to you to decide.
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Aug 6, 2015 02:32
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I really wish there was a BART line running to Santa Cruz, just so you could take mass transit to SF/Berkeley in less than 3 hours. Plus it would do a ton to ease traffic on the 17 during tourist season. It'll never happen though, at least until we get another WPA-like project.
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Aug 17, 2015 00:04
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It's a little pointless to debate some internet guy's political beliefs for him, but I don't really think minarchism is particularly right-wing either. I'd say it doesn't really fit into the left-right spectrum.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:37
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CopperHound posted:I have no Idea how he manages it, but he is the only politician I can think of that hasn't been a disappointment to me once in office. It is almost as if he is trying to make the hard decisions to improve California even if they are unpopular. Jerry Brown's definitely been good at a lot of things, but he's far from perfect. For example, he vetoed some legislation a few years back which would have allowed graduate student researchers to unionize, and he redirected a bunch of funds from prop 30 into prisons. Actually, the fact that he has done almost nothing to fix overcrowded prisons, despite an order from the Supreme Court, is pretty damning in and of itself.
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Oct 6, 2015 07:08
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GrumpyDoctor posted:My friend, who was in that department with him, said "everyone knew he was a sociopath" but I'm not sure if "everyone" was the larger exoplanets community or just the department. Probably the former. Astronomy is a pretty small field to begin with, so everyone established within a given subfield knows most everyone else within that subfield. Rumors get around, and the guy had been abusing his students for literal decades. So chances are this was widely known in the exoplanets community.
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Oct 15, 2015 10:00
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So to what degree of there a legitimate safety issue that needs to be addressed? I was under the impression that porn actors underwent fairly frequent STI screenings and that outbreaks in the industry were fairly rare.
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Nov 6, 2015 07:59
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Noggin Monkey posted:Probably the wrong thread but this is a pretty wide range of California chat; I'm taking my parents on a road trip up from SoCal and we are due to close the day in Big Basin tomorrow evening. I'd like to stop somewhere around there for dinner tomorrow (or on the edge of tech land) and sit out rush hour before making the next leg of our trip up to Napa. You'll probably get a better response in the California thread in Tourism and Travel.
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Jan 8, 2016 08:09
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jeeves posted:Santa Cruz, CA is doing municipal fiber to the home. (Second article) This is awesome, and makes me want to hang around Santa Cruz for a few more years.
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Jan 19, 2016 00:19
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Xaris posted:Another example of backfiring was the last BART strike which really pissed off a lot and anti-union sentiment went way on the rise (of course part of that was media) , but ultimately it did more to hurt unions more than anything else--even from diehard democrats. Didn't management end up caving and agreeing to the union's demands?
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Jan 19, 2016 08:23
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Bizarro Watt posted:This sentiment frustrated me when I was a college student, and the blocking of Highway 17 in particular comes to mind (a couple years ago I believe). Some (not all) of the protesters or sympathizers claimed that they were forced to block traffic because of such and such issue, like tuition and fees. They didn't seem to want to accept responsibility that they in fact, had decided it was the best course of action to take, in their minds. It was someone else's fault, of course. The UCs backed down on the tuition raise though, after it seemed like a done deal. They'll never say it was because of the protesters, but the protesters got what they wanted (at great personal cost). Direct action is incredibly effective, and if the cost of keeping UC tuition down is a day of awful traffic on the 17, that is a small price to pay.
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Jan 19, 2016 19:24
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