Questions from the Press.

At the Niners-Saints Game, Nov 27, 2022. 

 I serve as a trustee of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District, in the northern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. In that capacity, sometimes the press asks me questions about a given subject. I generally prefer when they do that in writing, because I can answer the questions and post them, so that constituents and stakeholders can see not just what was put in the newspaper, but the context of the conversations. 

 I think that making sure the press gets answers is important. I don't know of anyone who has figured out how to make a democracy work without newspapers. Press freedom is properly the fourth protection guaranteed in the First Amendment for a reason.

 On Tuesday December 6, I received the following questions from Dan Johnson, a reporter for the Sonoma Index-Tribune (Sonoma County has three "major" newspapers, the I-T, the Petaluma Argus-Courier and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, all of which are owned and controlled by the same company). I have printed his questions and my written answers to them below. The questions concerned the settlement of a dispute between the school district and the local construction trades council (a group of construction unions, such as electricians, plumbers, and carpenters, amongst others).   

So, without further ado:

1. Why did you vote in favor of the settlement?

It seemed to me that the general sense of the board was that the agreement was in the interests of the District, and I agreed with that evaluation. 

2. What is your reaction to the passing of it? Were you surprised? 

The PSA that was approved had been discussed for some months by the attorney representing the District and the attorney representing the building trades, and the final document reflected careful work by both lawyers. Given that the District and the building trades had told their attorneys to try to come to an agreement, I think that the success of the negotiation, and ultimate approval of the proposed PSA resulting therefrom, is not a surprise.

3. How will the settlement help the district?

 

I think that the agreement will provide jobs that prioritize a locally based skilled and trained workforce, and joint apprenticeship opportunities for Sonoma Valley students. These joint apprenticeship opportunities will afford students access to career pathway options that will provide family supporting wages, healthcare and retirement benefits, and the ability to live and work in their own community. 

4. Do you think that critics of the settlement made some valid points, and if so, what were they?

I thank the members of our community who took the time to share their thoughts with the board, both those who were in favor and those who were against. The democratic process depends upon constituents and stakeholders taking the time to express their beliefs. I don't have any other comment in response to this question. 

5. It seems to me that the two main changes in the ultimate agreement are shortening the agreement to five years and covering all work costing more than $212,500, rather than $50,000. Were there other significant changes in the agreement?

Regarding the specific changes from the agreement passed on 11-17-20, the issue was briefed by our attorney, Glenn Gould, for the board, and I would point you to that presentation. 

6. How could this process have been handled better by the board?

The settlement was handled in the fashion that one would expect. The board received legal advice that was of high quality, and acted accordingly. 

7. Several trustees said that they felt it was time to move on and focus on the needs of the students? Do you share this feeling?

I am always focused on the needs of our students. As far as my fellow trustees are concerned, I believe their words speak for themselves. 

8. How will the board be able to deal better with such matters in the future?

This was the final act of this board, and it will have no other matters to deal with in the future. 

9. Would you like to say anything else?

No.

10. I’m wondering how the changes I mentioned in question No. 5 came about. It seemed that The North Bay Building Construction and Trades Council opposed negotiating with SVUSD about the agreement, and yet two main concessions were made. Did the council end up negotiating with SVUSD attorneys?

After Sonoma Valley Unified lost twice in court hearings, Michael Allen, a former state assemblyman and representative of the building trades, reached out to the District to see if a compromise could be reached, which was what led to the settlement. 

11. Initially, the document was referred to as a project labor agreement, but at some point, it began being referred to as a project stabilization agreement. Why the change and what did it mean?

It has always been referred to as a project stabilization agreement. 

The Holographic Universe.

Juan Maldacena

Discoverer of the 

AdS/CFT correspondence.

The New York Times wrote recently on the Holographic Universe, something that the truly great PBS Space Time has visited as a topic repeatedly. The interesting point is always, for me, that the information content of any three-dimensional space is limited to the number of bits that can be encoded on an imaginary surface surrounding it, and that limit is defined by the Planck length. The consequences of this are mind-bending.  

"'It's completely crazy,' [says Leonard Susskind], in reference to the holographic universe. 'You could imagine in a laboratory, in a sufficiently advanced laboratory, a large sphere — let’s say, a hollow sphere of a specially tailored material — to be made of silicon and other things, with some kind of appropriate quantum fields inscribed on it.' Then you could conduct experiments, he said: 'Tap on the sphere, interact with it, then wait for answers from the entities inside ... [o]n the other hand, you could open up that shell and you would find nothing in it,' he added. As for us entities inside: 'We don’t read the hologram, we are the hologram.'"

Wikipedia has a dense, but good article on the same subject. This also leads to the AdS/CFT correspondence, which really makes a lot more sense after watching this video from Matt O'Dowd.

Trust in the Supreme Court.

"Confidence in Institutions"
Gallup, June 1-4, 2013, 
available at http://tinyurl.com/m8dl5vg

 From Gallup this morning:

"Trust in many U.S. institutions has declined in recent years, but the loss of faith in the Supreme Court is especially notable, given the high levels of trust it has enjoyed historically."

As I wrote back in 2013, and as I have done pretty often over time, trust in government is the sine qua non of democracy. The "great deal/quite a lot" level of trust for the Supreme Court is down to 25%; this is less than banks used to be in 2013, and is within the margin of error for big business at that time. Most institutions in American life (with the exception of organized labor) have lost trust recently, but none from so high a starting place, and so precipitously. As the article's lede notes:

"This represents a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago, including seven points since last year, and is now the lowest in Gallup's trend by six points. The judicial branch's current tarnished image contrasts with trust levels exceeding two-thirds in most years in Gallup's trend that began in 1972."

Prior posts re the United States Supreme Court:

1. Turnout, Serrano, and the Outlier.
2. 34 Cents of Your Property Tax Dollar Goes To Our Schools. 
3. Brown, Budgets, Prisons, and Contempt.
4. A Society Can Be Judged By Entering Its Prisons.
5. Standing, Blogging, and Prop 8. 

Hurricane Ian and Government Accountability.

Witnessing the damage from Hurricane Ian, the striking failures of local government to prepare their constituents feels all too familiar to residents of Sonoma County, few of whom forget the night of October 8, 2017. The failure of local government to inform residents in harm's way of the approaching danger sears memories years later. 

Image Courtesy National Weather Service. 

Use pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 105.

To see this replicated by Lee County, Florida in the face of Hurricane Ian reminds that information from authorities in a crisis proves often unreliable. Worse, accountability after the fact is usually prevented by a smokescreen of finger-pointing and obfuscation.

This New York Times article, however, pushed across the line from mere spin to outright absurdity. Lee County, Florida, failed to warn citizens in time of the need to evacuate, despite a detailed plan prepared in advance that noted exactly how much warning was required. In defense of the County's behavior, "the county commissioner ... said that one challenge the county faced was that the local schools had been designed to be shelters and that the school board had made the decision to keep them open on Monday." 

To be clear, the county commissioner went so far as to blame the local school board for the civil authority failing to prepare citizens from the thoroughly understood threat that precisely this type of storm approaching created. The school board that was, of course, looking to the county for the very advice necessary on whether to stay open or closed. 

As a school board trustee myself, I could only shake my head. I note once again that school boards are a convenient target, whether fairly or not, for almost everything.

Space Rendezvous.

 One of the most technically difficult and impressive acts humanity has ever achieved is the rendezvous of spacecraft in orbit. Interestingly, the American and Soviet approaches to the problem were different; while astronauts until quite recently controlled the process manually (Buzz Aldrin's Ph.D thesis concerned how to do so), since 1967 the Soyuz spacecraft have been able to do so autonomously. The Igla system, followed by Kurs, paved the way for autonomous resupply of Mir space stations at a fraction of the cost of manned spaceflight, a feat only matched by the Dragon capsules of SpaceX as recently as 2012. 

From the Economist.

This American tendency to rely upon a skilled human operator also found its way into the distinction between earlier Airbus and Boeing aircraft, with the European consortium leaning towards fly-by-wire, systems with the then-Seattle based manufacturer only following later. 

I mention this point today in light of the rapid perceived advances in AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning). Much ink has been spilled regarding recent advances in language processing and image creation (this article is a nice example from the Economist). 

But such technologies have long existed in some of the most challenging engineering spaces faced by humankind. Is the current surprise regarding AI/ML more due to the fact that it is now able to address the routine activities formerly used to sideline (if not belittle) the technology, when the practical application of the same has long since progressed past triviality to indispensability? 

Previous posts on Economist issues:

1. Nordic Success.
2.  @TheEconomist (Ann Wroe?) on Dr. Robert McClelland and #JFK.
3. Further Reading.
4. Where Newspapers Are Headed ...
5. @TheEconomist on a hybrid #VirtualParliament.
6. @TheEconomist on #Homelessness in @SFGov.
7. The Life Pressed Out.
8. Why Travel Matters.
9. @econbartleby and @billswindell at @TheEconomist and @NorthBayNews, respectively.
10. @AmExperiencePBS @RobertKenner-- the 1918 Pandemic.
11. The Return of #Cash.
12. California, where Malala Yousafzai becomes Janet Yellen.
13. The Plutonium Standard.
14. Beikoku and Eikoku.
15. Secession is a bad idea, full stop.
16. QE4.
17. Brown, Budgets, Prisons, and Contempt.
18. Executive Orders.
19. #rebeccapurple.
20. The Streets Should Fit the Trees.
21. @TheEconomist on Alcohol and Health.
22. What Do Bubbles Look Like, Pt. 2.
23. "Bringing Up Baby Bilingual"
24. Freshman Teams, Student Performance, and the Case For SVUSD's Master Plan.
25. Dual Immersion Enhances Attention.
26. Trust Levels of News Sources.
27. Slouching Towards Utopia.

Slouching Towards Utopia.

Brad DeLong 

One thing I like to do from time to time, is recommend a good book. Brad DeLong has been an economics and history professor at UC Berkeley for a long time, and I have enjoyed reading his posts. He has recently put together many of his thoughts in a book, Slouching Towards Utopia, which I am reading and recommend to anyone interested in the history of the "Long 20th Century" from 1870-2010. The Economist's very positive review of the book is here.

Brad DeLong has come up on this blog before -- here's a list of the times I've mentioned him previously:

1. Paul Krugman: "Brad, Don't Get Too Excited."
2. QE4.
3. Brooks and Krugman.
4. Nothing So Dear as #cheapmoney 
5. Le Mieux est l'ennemi du Bien.
6. @RobertJShiller and the #EMRATIO.
   

Thomas P. Kelly, Jr. (1936-2020).

 My dad recently passed away. Below is an obituary I wrote for him for the Sonoma County Bar Association Journal, appearing in the Summer 2020 volume.  

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 Thomas P. Kelly, Jr. passed away February 24, 2020. A native Texan, he worked his way through the University of Texas as a brakeman on the Southern Pacific Railroad, earning business and law degrees, and developing a lifelong love of Longhorn football. He served in the Air Force as a JAG in Vietnam, and then worked in San Francisco as a railroad lawyer. Ambitiously, in the late 1960’s, he moved to Santa Rosa with his fiancé Joyce knowing no-one. He joined Anderson & McDonald (now the Abbey firm), where he would be a partner for thirty years, before running his own practice for twenty more.

 There were many ways people came to know Tom. He was a lector at St. Eugene’s Cathedral, and a Contracts and Corporations professor at the Empire Law School, where he was one of the founding faculty. Tom was a devoted counselor for the Eritrean community, many of whom considered him one of their own. A strong advocate for Sonoma County business, he particularly championed the construction industry. Charity was always a part of his life, especially on behalf of parochial schools and the Law Enforcement Chaplaincy.

The Kelly Family, ~1980. Tom & Joyce, with, L-R, Tom III, Heather, and John.

 Tom and his wife Joyce were a study in contrasts. He was the dark haired Catholic Republican Texan, she the blonde Protestant Democratic Englishwoman. Perhaps such a pairing could only have occurred in San Francisco in the 60’s, where they had worked together and fallen in love. Their marriage, at his passing three months shy of their 50th anniversary, produced three children, Heather, Tom III and John, all of whom followed him into the profession.

 For Tom, law practice was like basketball. He had honed that skill as a short, thin, awkward teenager in San Antonio. He shot 10,000 free throws then, developing an outstanding jumper, and earning a spot on his high school team. Decades later, arriving home to his kids playing hoops, he would call for the ball, and shoot from an impossible distance. Invariably, he hit. Was it skill? Was it luck? Was it both? Did it matter?

 His day was generally conducted like clockwork. Even on the weekends, he could be found at his desk at the office at 9 A.M., answering his telephone with a curt “law office,” without any other salutation. His memory was fantastic (at one time he was jokingly referred to as the master of the obscure statute), but his organizational skills were slightly less so. Possessed of a hearty laugh, intelligence was the coin of his realm, and education his marker of achievement. A bit long winded, his conversations always seemed to turn to railroads, where his face would light up like a child delighted with a train set on Christmas.

Tom (UT-Law) with daughter Heather (U-Chicago Law), ~1992.

 Tom was tough to your face, and praised you behind your back. Imperious in the courtroom, he was humble with clients. A reservist for thirty years, retiring as a Colonel, his Air Force support staff were continually bemused by the contrast. In jest, they got him the license plate “HMBLTOM.” He placed it on his Porsche with pride. Sometimes called a “grumpy Matlock” (despite being a civil not criminal practitioner), the gruff exterior concealed a deeply religious respect for the value of every human life. A military officer and student of the history of warfare, the core of his spiritual values was still betrayed by his longtime computer password, “peacenow.”
 His weakness was Rocky Road ice cream, and while no gourmet, he could cook fantastic San Antonio- style enchiladas and pretty good Chicken and Walnuts. He loved his wife’s Joyce’s garden, although lamenting his own brown thumbs. An outdoorsman when young (missed Eagle Scout by a whisker), he nevertheless refused to ski, claiming to have broken his leg on the bunny slope at Squaw. Stern in confrontation over values in court, he melted in the presence of children, almost always accurately guessing their age (with an extra year for good measure). He would strike up conversations with them, never talking down. Instead, he always made them feel “big.” He had been the littlest one himself once, of course.

Tom & Grandkids, L-R Clara, Miles, Allegra, Siena & Ruby, 2019.

 But it was law practice to which he gave his first, best, and ultimately final measure of devotion. For him, practicing law was fun. It was the best single thing you could do. He couldn’t see why anyone would do anything else. Growing up with him, cross-examination could come at any time, and his “ah-ha!” at his kids’ admissions against interest revealed the twinkle in the eye of a man in his element. Perhaps the greatest tribute to him is the large number of his students at the Empire College of Law who spoke of his dynamism as a professor. So many went on to fulfill the values he held dear, and he remembered nearly all of them. Although he perhaps had not always let them know how impressed he had been with their work, he made sure his family knew. The continuing impact of those students is the best tribute he probably could have imagined to the spirit of the profession he was so delighted himself to have practiced.

 Thomas P. Kelly, Jr. was 83 years old.

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 John Kelly (Berkeley Law ‘02) is a member of the SCBA Board, and chair of its Business and IP Law section. He is President of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees and a partner in Kelly, Carlstrom & Associates in Santa Rosa.