What the UC Pension Plan Proposed Changes Mean

Update: To listen to the September 13, 2010 Subversity show with our interview with Bob Samuels, click here:
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The University of California is currently proposing to offer a reduced pension plan for new hires joining UC after July 2013, while making current employees contribute more towards the plan.

One critic of the new proposals is UC-AFT president Bob Samuels, who has been blogging about it. His latest two blog entries state his position bluntly:
UC Offers New Pension Plan to Re-Distribute Wealth to the Top and Let the Great Pension Scare Begin.

We talk with Samuels about what he means during the first half of the next Subversity show on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, broadcasting Monday, 13 September 2010 at 5 p.m., with a simulcast on kuci.org. Show host is Daniel C. Tsang.

Some background: Hyde Amendment and Healthcare; Immigration Reform

UPDATED: To listen to this edition of the Subversity show, click here: .

Last night the U.S. House of Representatives passed historic legislation to provide health-care coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. What's behind Obama's executive order enforcing the Hyde Amendment that barred federal funding of abortion?

And over the weekend, thousands rallied for immigration reform. What's the view on the ground about immigration reform and the legacy of Bush-era immigration raids?

For the next edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we bring you two dispatches from Making Contact, the National Radio Project's program on topical issues.

1. ‘Hyde-ing’ the Right to Choose: While lawmakers in Washington mull over the nuts and bolts of health care reform, advocates are concerned that a woman’s fundamental right to reproductive health services is endangered. On this edition, Stupak, the Hyde Amendment, and religion. We take a look at some of the threats to abortion access, more than thirty-five years after Roe V. Wade legalized a woman’s right to have an abortion.

Featuring:

Stephanie Poggi, National Network of Abortion Funds Executive Director; Jenny, shares her story about having an abortion; Jon O’Brien, Catholics for Choice President; Guadalupe Rodriguez, ACCESS/Women’s Health Rights Coalition Program & Public Policy Director. This Making Contact program was funded in part by the Mary Wohlford Foundation.

URL: http://www.radioproject.org/2010/01/hyde-ing-the-right-to-choose/.

2. Immigration Reforms, How a Broken System Breaks Communities:
If there’s one thing to be said about the U.S. immigration system, it’s that there’s universal support for change. But when it comes to answers, the viewpoints are all over the map. Congress is planning to make some changes in 2010, but in the meantime, state and federal immigration laws remain confusing and are sporadically enforced. On this edition, we go to two communities sorting through the aftermath of Bush-era federal immigration raids, and to Los Angeles, where American Apparel became the first test case of the Obama administration’s new approach to workplace hiring violations. This Making Contact program was funded in part by spot.us, a community supported journalism project.

Featuring:

Andrea, Las Americas store manager; Angelica Olmedo & Eber Eleria, Howard Industries workers arrested in Laurel Raid; Bill Deutch, Catholic Charities & Hispanic ministries bi-lingual counselor; Meyer, kosher grocery store owner; Mark Grey, University of Iowa Anthropology professor and co-author of ‘Postville: Surviving Diversity in Small-town America’; Scott, Agriprocessors employee; Former Agriprocessors workers; Michelle Devlin, University of Iowa Public Health professor and co-author of ‘Postville: Surviving Diversity in Small-town America’; Maryn Olsen, Postville Response Coalition coordinator; Bill Chandler, Mississippi Immigrant’s Rights Alliance Executive Director; Noami Perez, Maricela Perez & Sergio, laid-off American Apparel workers; Roberto Suro, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Professor; Peter Schey, American Apparel attorney and Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law Foundation Executive Director; Natalia Garcia, UCLA Downtown Labor Center Administrative Assistant; Anonymous, unidentified Fake ID salesman in MacArthur Park.

URL: http://www.radioproject.org/2010/01/immigration-reforms/.

Subversity airs today (22 March 2010) from 9-10 a.m. on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

Privileging (Gay or Straight) Marriage is "Misplaced"

For the first show of our new Winter 2010 season, Subversity re-airs our November 24, 2008 edition, when we talked with law professor Nancy D. Polikoff, author of a new book, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law (Beacon Press, 2008), on the limits of fighting for gay marriage. The show airs on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, California, and is simulcast via kuci.org.

She argues that by privileging marriage under the law over other relationships, many people suffer, including those in domestic partnerships. She breaks with fellow queer activists who have moved into the streets to defend gay marriage after California voters approved Prop. 8 that banned gay marriage in California. She challenges those activists to see beyond gay "equality" arguments that restrict marriage benefits only to those willing to get married.

Today, a federal court hearing on Prop. 8 is slated to be made available via YouTube.

Nancy D. Polikoff is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches in the areas of family law, civil procedure, and sexuality and the law. Previously, she supervised family law programs at the Women's Legal Defense Fund (now National Partnership for Women and Families), and before that she practiced law as part of a feminist law collective. For 30 years, she has been writing about and litigating cases involving lesbian and gay families. Her articles have appeared in numerous law reviews, and her history of the development of the law affecting lesbian and gay parenting appears as a chapter in John D'Emilio, William B. Turner, and Urvashi Vaid, eds., Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights (St, Martin's Press, 2000). She helped develop the legal theories in support of second-parent adoption and visitation rights for legally unrecognized parents, and she was successful counsel in In re M.M.D., the 1995 case that established joint adoption for lesbian and gay couples in the District of Columbia, and Boswell v. Boswell, the 1998 Maryland case overturning restrictions on a gay noncustodial father's visitation rights.

For more on the book, go to web site.

Her blog is at: here.

See also John D'Emilio's "The Marriage Fight is Setting Us Back".