The Commonwealth June/July 2012 by The Commonwealth Club of California

Dan Akerson: BACK IN THE GREEN pg 10

Timothy Geithner: MISSION POSSIBLE pg 18

Dave Eggers: 21st CENTURY VISIONARY pg 54

Dr. Gloria Duffy on THE CLUB’S NEW HQ pg 58

Commonwealth The

THE MAGAZINE OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

JUNE/JULY 2012

live on stage with

RACHEL MADDOW constitutional drift in the national security state

$2.00; free for members commonwealthclub.org

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Not yet been to an event? This is the perfect opportunity to get started! Join us for our members social featuring our new current affairs series “Week to Week.” All members are welcome at no cost. This is a great opportunity to explore the Club with a friend! Nonmembers pay just $20

Everybody complains about the state of political discourse, but nobody does anything about it, right? Well, WE DID. Carla Marinucci Political Writer, SF Chronicle

This winter, The Commonwealth Club launched Week to Week, an ongoing series of programs featuring intelligent and lively discussion of politics and other topics in the news. In July, we are putting together a special evening edition of Week to Week, and you are invited to join us for receptions, refreshments, and engaging political discussion that won’t insult your intelligence.

Larry Gerston Political Analyst, NBC 11

MONDAY, JULY 30 | Wine and light hors d’oeuvres reception: 6 – 6:30 p.m. Week to Week program: 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. | Reception: 7:30 – 8 p.m. For details and to reserve your tickets, visit commonwealthclub.org For more on Week to Week: See our Week to Week news quiz every Friday on Huffington Post San Francisco: huffingtonpost.com/san-francisco

Debra J. Saunders Columnist, SF Chronicle

See our Week to Week series page: commonwealthclub.org/w2w

INSIDE The Commonwealth VO LU M E 1 0 6 , N O . 0 4 | J U N E / J U LY 2 0 1 2

FEATURES ON THE COVER

6 RACHEL MADDOW Constitutional drift in the national security state

13 THE BIG APPLE Adam Lashinsky describes the workings of the “world’s most secretive company”

16 PATIENCE, PATIENTS

Photo by Sonya Abrams

How to deal with patients’ grievances about treatment: Make it more about them

10 REBUILDING GENERAL MOTORS Photo by Name Surname

“President Obama, I think in an unguarded statement of exasperation with the whole industry, said, ‘Why can’t they build a car like the Corolla?’ Well, we did. The bestselling compact car in America today is the Chevy Cruze.” – Dan Akerson

18 THE VIEW FROM THE TREASURY

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on working with China

Photo by Ed Ritger

EVENTS

4 EDITOR’S NOTE

25 PROGRAM

The Club’s real-world impacts

5 THE COMMONS Of haikus and tweets

27 ANNUAL DINNER 2012 Photo report from our biggest annual fundraiser

53 BOOK AWARDS WINNERS 58 INSIGHT Dr. Gloria C. Duffy 110 The Embarcadero, Here We Come!

Does politics have to be so slimy?

22 GLOBAL AUTHORITY John Yoo looks at rule-making in an age of cross-border governance

INFORMATION

50 WHILE AMERICA SLEEPS

26 EIGHT WEEKS CALENDAR Events from June 4, 2012, to August 2, 2012

Russell Feingold warns politics has distracted us from real threats Photo by Ed Ritger

DEPARTMENTS

20 DIRTY POLITICS

36 PROGRAM LISTINGS 49 LATE-BREAKING EVENTS 37 LANGUAGE CLASSES About Our Cover: Rachel Maddow brought her trademark TV host smile and her Rhodes Scholar intellect to the Club. Photo by Drew Altizer.

54 21st CENTURY VISIONARY Dave Eggers on 826 Valencia’s independent retail education

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Commonwealth The

Editor’s Note

BUSINESS OFFICES The Commonwealth 595 Market St., 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 feedback@commonwealthclub.org

Deep in the Heartland

VP, MEDIA & EDITORIAL John Zipperer

John Zipperer

SENIOR EDITOR

Vice President, Media & Editorial

Sonya Abrams

ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR

Steven Fromtling

EDITORIAL INTERN Pria Whitehead

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Drew Altizer Sean Riordan

Ed Ritger Rikki Ward

The Commonwealth (ISSN 0010-3349) is published bimonthly (6 times a year) by The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2805. PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID at San Francisco, CA. Subscription rate $34 per year included in annual membership dues. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Commonwealth, The Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94105-2805. Printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink. Copyright © 2010 The Commonwealth Club of California. Tel: (415) 597-6700 Fax: (415) 597-6729 E-mail: feedback@commonwealthclub.org EDITORIAL POLICY FOR PROGRAM TRANSCRIPTS: The Commonwealth magazine seeks to cover a range of programs in each issue. Program transcripts and question and answer sessions are routinely condensed due to space limitations. Hear full-length recordings of events online at commonwealthclub.org/archive or contact Club offices to order a compact disc.

ADVERTISING INFORMATION Mary Beth Cerjan Development Manager (415) 869-5919 mbcerjan@commonwealthclub.org

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f anyone ever asks you if it matters what happens in Commonwealth Club programs, you can tell them that it can matter a lot. We were reminded of this recently when General Motors CEO Dan Akerson came to speak at The Commonwealth Club as part of our popular Climate One series of programs, which focus on energy and climate issues. A day or two before the appearance, a number of people posted queries about the program on the Commonwealth Club’s Facebook page. The questions were likely part of an orchestrated effort, because they were worded similarly and were the same mix of politeness and firmness. (Orchestration is a lot easier to take when it’s polite!) Briefly, the complaints were, to quote one writer, that “GM funds the Heartland Institute, a group that has tried to push misinformation about climate change into our public schools.” Now, I know people on both sides of this issue. In fact, one of the senior staffers at Heartland is a former boss of mine. He is, as Mitt Romney might say, a severely conservative man; he is also, from my experience, a good man, whatever my disagreements with him might be. But in the days after the release of the documents, he was reduced to issuing statements that sounded as awkward and unconvincing as Soviet election reports. That’s not to say this was a black-and-white affair. Debra J. Saunders, the San Francisco Chronicle columnist and frequent panelist on our Week to Week program (see this issue’s inside front cover), raised questions in her column about the ethics of the person who got and released the documents after posing with a false identity. However it happened, the deed was done and the issue was out there. Climate One found itself at the center. Now, GM is one of the corporate supporters of Climate One, but that doesn’t stop us from asking the sometimes-tough questions that need to be asked, and so Climate One Director Greg Dalton put the Heartland question to Akerson. Akerson took the question head-on, noting that the money was from the GM Foundation – not the company itself – but that he would look into it when he returned to Detroit. Look into it he must have, because three weeks later, GM confirmed that it had discontinued the funding of Heartland. The Los Angeles Times reported: “Yep, it’s true,” said Greg Martin, a GM spokesperson. “Dan Akerson was giving remarks at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and the issue of GM’s very modest and previous contribution to Heartland came up, and Mr. Akerson said he’d look into it. And we’ve looked into it, and we’ve decided to discontinue it. As Dan said at the Commonwealth Club, GM’s operating its business as if climate change is real.” There were protestors at the Climate One event who were prepared to publicly pressure Akerson, but Dalton asked them to be civil and trust him to run the show. Greg has proven to be great at bringing people from divergent viewpoints – such as the Chevron CEO and the leader of the Sierra Club – together at his programs. We invite people from all walks of life, all political viewpoints, to the Commonwealth Club stage because we strongly believe that people talking together is more effective than shouting at each other. Dan Akerson, Greg Dalton and the Commonwealth Club proved that in March.

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The

Commons Quake Prep

When Treasury Speaks, People Listen

Sisterhood of traveling shirts

Timothy Geithner’s worldwide voice

Drop in the Bucket Coke CEO’s backup bottles

isitors to the Club often ask VP of Programming George Dobbins about the bucket inside his door. The basin holds soft drinks, which George doesn’t drink. When Coke CEO Muhtar Kent spoke at the Club in late 2011 about America’s economic recovery and future, his staff produced the bucket, filled it with ice, and stocked it full of Coke products for Kent to enjoy. After the program, they bequeathed the basin and remaining drinks to George. The issues of American economic revitalization remain, as does the basin and a small selection of Coke products. Except for one Coke Zero, which was liberated by a thirsty Commonwealth magazine staffer.

ew people make as much news when they come to The Commonwealth Club as the secretaries of the Treasury. Economics news is big news, and when Secretary Timothy Geithner made an appearance on April 26 (see page 18), the back of the auditorium was packed with reporters. Because of the effects his comments can have on financial markets, the program started at 1 p.m., after New York markets closed. Immediately following the end of his Club program, the modern newswire – the Google News feed – began filling up with reports of Geithner’s call for China to continue to let its currency strengthen, his reaction to “taxmageddon,” and his judgment of the Obama administration’s reaction to the deep recession. When Geithner spoke at the Club in Silicon Valley in October 2010, he also used an early afternoon program time to avoid roiling the New York markets. But the economy is global, as we all know, and within hours, Australian media were reporting the effect of his comments on their local financial markets. It’s a global economy, and a 24hour news cycle.

Tweet, Tweet The 140-character test

e’re thinking of calling it Internet 3.0: the blurring of the lines between digital and in-person realities. At the Club’s annual dinner on April 18, five of our special guests were invited to write “tweets” that they then read aloud to the crowd. Tweets need to be 140 characters or shorter. How did our VIPs do? Jan Wahl, movie reviewer and film historian: “The San Francisco Bay Area loves eccentrics, originals & those of us who march to our own rock & roll, big band swing or any kind of tune that sings to us” (154). Sandy Kurtzig, chairman and CEO of Kenandy: “Enthusiastic support of creativity in solving business, environment, education,

& other issues is the hallmark of what makes the Bay Area great” (143). Janet Reilly, president of the board, Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District: “The Bay Area is defined by its optimism, its energy, its drive. We’re a region of dreamers, innovators & doers. The future begins here” (134). Ronn Owens, KGO Radio 810 talk show host: “The beauty & diversity of the Bay Area makes this such a special place to live & work. We are unique in always being open to new ideas” (134). David Kennedy, Stanford history professor and co-director of The Bill Lane Center for the American West, not only had the shortest tweet, but he put it in the form of a haiku: “City at center / Fragile bay laps around help / Us all to save it” (65).

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Photo by Sonya Abrams

memorable moment from a recent Red Cross training session in San Francisco: Displaying her disaster kit, filled with things people need in an emergency, the trainer pulled out an old t-shirt of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and commented, “Bought on a Commonwealth Club trip to Russia!” Prepared for everything.

Photo by John Zipperer

Talk of the Club

RACHEL constitutional drift

MADDOW

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The liberal MSNBC host argues that the country has gone off-track with its military policies. Excerpt from Inforum’s “Rachel Maddow,” April 12, 2012. RACHEL MADDOW Host, “The Rachel Maddow Show”; Author, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Photo by Sean Riordan

in conversation with DANIEL HANDLER aka Lemony Snicket Author; Screenwriter; Accordionist

MADDOW: The whole reason that I do TV – and the whole reason that I did radio – is that I have these ideas about what’s going on in the world, and I like to explain things, and this is something that I wanted to explain. It was an argument that I wanted to make, that I really felt like there was no way to do other than in print, in long form, and so therefore I had to write a book. HANDLER: The founding of this nation had in it some mechanisms that made it difficult to go to war. But these devices have been circumvented to make it easier and to isolate war, in effect. MADDOW: Yeah. I am not an originalist. I am not a person who thinks that the world is just like it was in the 1700s and that we have to do everything exactly the way that the founders meant. They didn’t have very smart things, for example, to say about intercontinental ballistic missiles, women voting and stuff. But I do think that it is foundational to this country that the colonists were very upset about being required to help the British Empire’s military adventures. There’s a lot of colonial consternation over the fact that there are too many frickin’ wars, and the colonists felt put upon to finance them. Why is that “quartering soldiers” thing – you don’t have to quarter soldiers – in our foundational documents? It’s because that was one of the things that we were really, really annoyed with. If we had not been annoyed by too much war and the necessity of paying for it, we might not have been a country in the first place. Because of that concern, the founders structured the Constitution in a way that was designed not to make us pacifist – and we never were; I mean, we did fight a war to make ourselves as a country; we were never designed to be pacifist, I don’t think – but we were designed to be sort of deliberately peaceable. Peace time would be normal, and war would be an aberration. They specifically put war-making powers in the Constitution not under the execu-

tive, but under the legislature, with the full knowledge that the legislature can often not get its act together. HANDLER: That’s so flattering that you would say, often. MADDOW: They said, “Listen. We think that essentially it is a kingly oppression to wage war at the whim of one person, and kings are prone to that, and we don’t want a kingly system, and with studied care, we’re going to invest the questions of war and peace in the legislature,” because they are not as likely to make a dumb decision

“There are way too many work-arounds for those things that were supposed to impede a president

bent on war.”

to go to war, if only because they’ll actually have to make an argument. They can’t just assert that we’re going; they have to defeat one another in argument in a legislative body, and that bias – that disinclination for war – is not a perfect prescription. It doesn’t tell us what to do in every instance, but I do think that that’s how they meant us to be inclined as a nation, and that creates a lot of hassle for presidents who want to wage war. As presidents have come up with ways to get around those hassles, we’ve kind of let them do that, and now we are in a position, in 2012, in which there are way too many work-arounds for those things that were supposed to impede a president bent on war. HANDLER: It’s a conflict, in my mind, that we have a president who’s the commanderin-chief of the armed forces, and then a legislative branch that’s doing war. What is that difference?

MADDOW: Declaring war is Congress’s prerogative, but we go to war without declaring war all the time. There are commander-in-chief powers that I think even the founders envisioned. They would talk about things like having the power “to repel invasion.” You know, something happens; all of a sudden you need to act quickly; Congress is all in the 1700s equivalent of the Bahamas, or whatever, and so we need to do something. The president has sort of temporally limited ability to make decisions about national security, but it is meant to be an exception and it’s meant to be a time-limited thing. Congress is expected to make the decisions. It doesn’t mean that the president has no authority, but it does mean that he’s got to defer to Congress on the larger issues of war and peace. Does that always mean that it has to be a “declaration of war?” We have evolved in our national security state so that there almost never is one; now it’s an “authorization of the use of military force,” and all these other things – HANDLER: – if we’re lucky. MADDOW: Yeah; if we’re lucky. I’m not even so sure that it matters what you call it, but what I think was intended was the idea that it’s Congress’s call, and that if Congress says no, it doesn’t happen. We’ve seen that happen, even in modern times. Gerald Ford wanted to go back and start the Vietnam War again after we were gone, and Congress said no, and Democrats and Republicans said no, and when he still wanted to go – and he was very upset; he said he was “horrified” by their reaction – they not only said no, they used appropriations; they used money to say, “No; we’re not going to give you a nickel to do it.” The debate before Gulf War I – which is in [the book] at length – we don’t remember having had, I think, a lot of national consternation about balance of power heading into that war, but it ended up being a totally robust, interesting debate that I think made the whole country pay a lot more attention

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and be a lot more invested in that war. HANDLER: You talk, in your book, about the kind of “ratcheting up,” so it’s always an emergency. We always have to rush back and have to decide in two and a half hours, and there’s hardly any time to address the American people, let alone have a debate on war. Do you think some of that is mediadriven, Ms. Media Woman? Do you think that’s part of what builds an emergency state, this kind of drumbeat? When Iraq invaded Kuwait, we saw that on TV. We could see that happening, and that made made everyone, I think, less in the mood to have a long conversation about whether or not we should do something about it. MADDOW: Yeah, and I don’t think it’s just a modern dynamic. Because there’s an imbalance of information between people who are operating at sort of high-level national security positions and the rest of us, they can always say – as Reagan did regularly, for example – that they had secret information that if they could tell us, we would be just as horrified as they are, but we have to trust them that the urgency is there: “We’ll tell ya later.” They can always do that. They can always tell you that things are more urgent than they want to be, and we don’t have the information that they’ve got. I mean, particularly when it’s stuff that’s not actual wars – when it’s conflict with transnational

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actors, like terrorist groups – in that case, their actions or their threats are things that the intelligence community has, that spies have, and that we don’t have access to, and very few members of Congress do. There is an imbalance of information, but I think that ultimately what we have to count on is winning the argument. Having to win the argument forces you to make a good argument. If all you have to do is assert that there is a great danger, and there’s a great imperative that we need to act, and you’re the one who gets to then decide if we’re going to act, it doesn’t matter what you say. You don’t even have to deliberately lie; you could just skew it the way that you see it. But if you actually have to persuade other people who don’t automatically agree with you of the rightness of your cause and then win a vote on it, your argument will be better – will be forced to be better; you’ll be forced to say more of what it is, and that process is designed to make bad arguments lose so we don’t do bad things justified by dumb arguments. HANDLER: It seems to me that the notion of when a war is over has just changed – MADDOW: Well, they end a lot slower now than they used to. We’re in our 11th year in Afghanistan – the longest war in American history – [and we] simultaneously fought an eight-and-a-half year long war

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in Iraq while that 11-year Afghanistan war was going on. HANDLER: And that war ended 27 times. MADDOW: Yeah. And when it really did end – when we really did leave, in December – the reaction here was, “Oh, is that still going on?” We think of National Guardsmen and Reservists as essentially full-time troops now – they’ve been deployed so much now, we think of them almost as active duty; they’re so separate from civilian life that we don’t have that sense of, “Oh, the Guard is coming home;” because we don’t notice what we are paying for; because we think that the military is fighting wars on their own, and not that the country is at war, the wars can kind of go on indefinitely. There’s no friction. That is part of why the wars get longer. We also have started to think about the military as being kind of superhuman, having any capability that we want to give to them. When you end up devoting that much of your budget to a resource like that for decades, they probably should be superhuman by now. HANDLER: I’ll move on to the part about mercenaries; that’ll cheer everybody up. I don’t even really know how to begin with that. The mercenary chapter, for me, was the most fascinating and also the most distressing. When is your sense that that began to

Photos by Drew Alitzer Photography and Sean Riordan

get so completely out of control, that we have private companies… I mean, it’s even just impossible for me to imagine men and women, but mostly men, going over and being neither under the law of the country they’re in nor under United States law, and behaving unspeakably abominably, which I had trouble getting over. I could picture I might end up somewhere where I was neither under U.S. law nor the law of the country I was in, and I wouldn’t think, like, “Well, now it’s time for me to get a 14-yearold hooker.” MADDOW: Yeah, but that is what happened. It was a very convenient falling through the cracks. If you’re working for a U.S. military operation, but you are working not for the U.S. military, and you are abroad and you are peeling potatoes or driving trucks or fixing helicopters or whatever it is on a contract, if you do something wrong – if you kill somebody, or whatever – you can’t be tried under the uniform code of military justice, because you are not in the military. Seems reasonable. The deal with the contract is that you can’t be charged under the local laws in the place that you are serving, because we can’t have these local police officers and law enforcement interfering with our contractors while they’re doing this thing for our military! And what U.S. court is going to prosecute things

that happen in the Balkans somewhere, to somebody who is working on behalf of the U.S. government in a military theater? I mean, a U.S. court deciding that’s their jurisdiction is also very hard to imagine, and in that sort of legal free-fire zone, all sorts of really bad stuff happens, and happened from the very beginning. We’ve always had some private companies involved in making war. There have always been some contracts associated with military operations. But what they decided in the ’90s was that… Dick Cheney was at the Defense Department then, and he decided that he would give a small contract – I think it was, like, a $4 million contract – to a company that he knew, and the contract would be to research whether it might be possible to have some logistics that are done now by uniformed members of the military – things like peeling potatoes; driving convoys; security for VIPs; building roads, barracks; running the kitchens and the PXes on the bases; all of that kind of stuff – couldn’t that be done in a privatized way? This little company that got the $4 million contract looked into it, and decided that yes, it could be done, but only they could do it. That little pilot project expanded into not just a private company doing a thing here and there for the military, but taking over the basic logistics of what it meant to

deploy U.S. troops abroad. Very quickly, under the Clinton administration, that expanded, so that not only are there the helicopter mechanics – in the case of the sex slave ring – working for private companies, but also, when Bill Clinton ran up against political constraints so that he could not do militarily what he wanted to do in the Balkans – he wanted to arm and train the Croatians – he couldn’t do that. Miraculously, a company called MPRI full of former military officials and others surfaced to get a contract to do this work that the U.S. government wanted, but did not want to take political responsibility for. This idea of who was going to peel the potatoes became “who was going to train the Croatians,” and all of a sudden a beautiful nonpartisan nexus was born of unaccountable, free-fire, lawless contractors who are making a lot of money and who can help elide all sorts of political constraints on what we want to do with our military. That has been too attractive to any administration to get rid of. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in 2008, campaigning for the Democratic nomination, both said that they were going to get rid of contractors, essentially, in our overseas deployments, and that has not happened at all. It doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be done. It’s not

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The head of the revitalized automaker discusses the bailout, energy efficiency and funding the Heartland Institute. Excerpt from “GM CEO, Dan Akerson,” March 7, 2012. DAN AKERSON Chairman and CEO, General Motors in conversation with GREG DALTON Director, Climate One DALTON: GM’s just had a good year. Where is it now, and where are you trying to take the company in the years ahead? AKERSON: We had the best year we’ve ever had in our 103-year history, and we posted record profits. We had to go through some difficult times, and there’s been a lot of political dialogue on that, but after a two-year hiatus, General Motors is again the largest auto manufacturer in the world. Between ’10 and ’11, we grew our revenue $15 billion. That alone would put us in the

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Fortune 250. Our revenue today is about $150 billion, which would be larger than the gross national product of 100 countries in the world. It’s an American company [and] it’s a global company, in the sense that we compete in 117-odd countries. We export around the globe. We’re very successful in most of the high-growth markets; we have the largest market share of any automotive manufacturer in the world. I think the lesson learned is [that] we can’t be as internally focused as we were before. As Wayne

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Gretzky said, he doesn’t skate to where the puck is; he skates to where it’s going to be. Companies don’t fail in a year or two; it takes 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, for the deterioration and the rot to really impact the viability of the company. We can’t be sitting here in 2035 and saying, “What happened?” We’re in pretty good shape, but we have a lot of work to do, and we still have many issues that need to be addressed and resolved. DALTON: The bailout has become a national political issue in this election sea-

Photo by Eduardo Fuentes Guevara / istockphoto.com

son. You came from a private equity firm. Was there private capital available that could’ve bailed out the company, instead of taxpayers? Did the deal give the UAW a deal over bondholders? AKERSON: I don’t want to be defensive, because, having come from private equity, we were part of many restructurings, and there are multiple avenues to a successful restructuring. I know we’ve become somewhat of a punching bag this political season. [The industry] was coming off the wheels. As Americans, we ought to be very proud. Our government stood up, regardless of party affiliation, and just like blood is critical to the body, liquidity is critical to the economy. We provided liquidity into the markets. I’m also the senior director at American Express, which is one of the larger financial institutions. It was a different set

of circumstances in the financial arena than it was in the manufacturing, specifically in the automotive, but at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have joined the company if I didn’t agree with it, because I think pragmatism has to enter into the economic dialogue. You can’t separate politics and economics on a macro-economic scale. Two presidents of divergent political perspectives put money into this company. They weren’t running for office at the time. They had to face the hard facts, and in my opinion, they made the pragmatic decision to save this company, because it’s now been estimated a million jobs were at risk. That’s a million households. On a personal level, this is a wealthy state and a wealthy community – you all look very prosperous and wealthy to me – but when you go to Detroit, and you go to Ohio, and you go to Pennsylvania and Indiana and Illinois, where a good share of the automotive industry resides, whole communities have been negatively impacted by the downturn. It would’ve been significantly worse. President Bush said a million jobs and $150 billion in tax revenue would have been forgone by the federal and state governments had it been allowed to fail. The industrial infrastructure of this nation would have been severely damaged. I don’t care how we got there; the question is, “Did it work?” Well, we’re not just alive; we’re prospering. Since bankruptcy, we’ve hired almost 17,000 employees in the United States alone, and we’ve invested almost $10 billion. DALTON: One way to separate politics from economics would be to pay back the remaining money that was lent by the U.S. Treasury. Do you have a time frame for when the Treasury will be paid back the other half? AKERSON: Not to parse words, but you say “lent.” They lent us money; we paid all that back. They provided preferred stock with a 9 percent coupon; we’ve paid all that back, plus dividends and interest. We held the largest IPO in the history of the world, and most of that went to the federal government. They own 27 percent on a fully diluted basis, and they’re just like every other shareholder; they can sell it when they want. It is perverse, but I have some understanding of capital markets, and though we produce record profits, why isn’t the stock at record levels? Part of it is because we have a big

shareholder and we don’t know when they’re going to leave. You’ve heard the structure in the financial world; it was, “Let’s take the good assets of the bank and call it good bank and bad bank.” Well, we had Liquidation Motors. We left all of the “toxic” assets behind, and we had to give several hundreds of millions of shares to the liquidation motor shareholders, and some of those, largely, were bondholders. When the stock really swooned late last year, it was because we dropped a couple hundred million shares on them and they flushed into the market. A lot of our big shareholders look at a big holder like the federal government and say, “When are they going to exit?” The answer is, candidly, I don’t know. DALTON: You could understand the hue and cry in Congress, though. If the U.S. government sold shares that are 30 percent below the IPO price, the scream would be, “Ahh! Taxholders are getting fleeced; they sold at a loss! Bad move.” AKERSON: I asked – I won’t tell you who I asked the question – “Is the federal government a private equity firm, or were they acting on behalf of we, the people?” Was our economy – was our citizenship – properly served? What if we didn’t collect those $150 billion in taxes? If we had failed, we’d have had a $23-24 billion pension shortfall, which we’ve now worked down to around $12 or $13 billion. That would’ve gone to the PBGC [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation], and the government would’ve had to take up that $20 billion liability. DALTON: You told CNN last year that gasoline at about $4.50 would affect people going into showrooms. How are high gasoline prices affecting car sales and the kinds of cars that Americans are buying? AKERSON: In my tenure, we’ve seen a shift of almost 12 percent of our production to small- to medium-sized sedans, away from large trucks. That’s a function of energy cost and us producing better cars on the low end of the market; I don’t mean low-end price, but smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. I remember President Obama, when I was in private equity, I think in an unguarded statement of exasperation with the whole industry, said, “Why can’t they build a car like the Corolla?” Well, we did. The best-selling compact car in America today is the Chevy Cruze. It’s not just the Corolla; it’s all of them, and it makes about 40 miles per gallon.

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Photo by Ed Ritger

Burying the Hatchet. California State Senator Fran Pavley and GM CEO Dan Akerson meet for the first time. Under Akerson’s predecessor, GM led industry opposition to fuel efficiency laws that Pavley had authored.

DALTON: Last year, you said that a dollara-gallon gasoline tax would be preferable to the efficiency standards that were being talked about at that time and subsequently became law in California and the United States. Do you still think that increasing the 18-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax is a good idea? AKERSON: I think there are a number of approaches to how you want to impact consumption. There are economic laws just like there are physical laws, and one of them is, you don’t tax production; you tax consumption if you want to change behavior. There are a number of ways to get to that. DALTON: I’d like to read you one of the

“We have some plants that are completely run off of landfill methane – they’re

zero emission.”

questions we got from Facebook today: “Please ask Mr. Akerson why GM funds the Heartland Institute, a group that has tried to push misinformation about climate change into our public schools. Is this funding consistent with their company’s message and marketing of the Chevy Volt?” AKERSON: I am glad you asked me that. I wasn’t aware of this until the last day or so. A couple things in terms of good governance: I cannot sit on the Foundation’s board or

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steer anything, because – DALTON: You’re saying it was the General Motors Foundation that gave the money to this institute? AKERSON: Yeah; not the company. Let me say another fact. The first time I was interviewed by the press, I was stunned with the following reaction. Some guy says, “Do you believe in global warming?” and I said, “Well, yeah, I do.” Several GM executives said, “You don’t say that in public!” I always say [that] actions matter more than words. Just last week, the EPA named us their Energy Star [Partner of the Year] because of consistent reduction of emissions controls. We are 60 percent more efficient in the use of fuel than we were just five years ago. Landfill usage coming off of our plants is essentially zero. You can put it in a coffee can. We have some plants that are completely run off of landfill methane – they’re zero emission – and we have plants that are the size of small farms. We put $40 million behind the Chevy program with the Cruze and said we would reduce 8 million metric tons of CO2 in this country in one year, and we’ve done it; we’ve bought and paid for a forest to be the size of the state of Connecticut. This is $15,000 that was committed to before I came in. I also think the Heartland Institute, I’m told, does other things. I find this [question] interesting. I won’t go any further, but I’m going to take another look at it when I get back to Detroit. I’ll leave it at that. DALTON: You’re a global company. Europe has a price on carbon, very low. Australia

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recently put in a carbon tax. China’s moving in that direction. When do you think there’ll be a price on carbon, and how will that affect your plan for General Motors selling cars around the world? AKERSON: When I was at [the] Naval Academy, we were told, “Yes, sir; no, sir; I’ll find out, sir.” I don’t know. DALTON: No one does. Lots of people have metrics and scenarios. AKERSON: We have to allow for all possibilities. We were an active, willing participant in CAFE standards this year. We’re going to do our level best to be a responsible corporate citizen, and if the wisdom of our political leadership is to put in a carbon tax, we’re going to react to it as best we can in the interest of our shareholders. DALTON: The Chevy Volt is the centerpiece of a lot of GM strategy right now. It’s brought something of a halo effect to the company, yet recently the company announced it was suspending production; you sold less than you wanted to last year. Are you a little bit disappointed with the Volt, or is this natural for something that’s a new technology in the marketplace? AKERSON: You never have perfect knowledge of what the market’s going to do and how well it’ll receive your product. There’s so much intensity around the Volt, because though it was designed probably when President Obama was in the Senate, it’s now his car. DALTON: GM Ventures invested in carsharing, I believe with Relay Ride. Talk about the future of car-sharing and mobility as a service, not something that people buy. AKERSON: We’re looking at autonomous cars. We’re trying to look at everything now. We can’t afford to run around with blinders, saying, “We’re going to build just trucks.” We’re going to build every segment of the market. Well, if it evolves to a Zip Car type or a peer-to-peer type application that relay cars represent, we want to be part of it. We have a unique technology in OnStar where we can enable that. They want to take this to all 50 states. We don’t want to be late to the game, so we decided to be proactive rather than reactive. It’s always, “If you’re right, you’re a genius; and if you’re wrong, well, we knew you were stupid.” This program was made possible by the generous support of Ernst & Young.

THE BIG APPLE LASHINSKY: I want to thank Apple for being so wonderfully difficult. Apple is a difficult company to cover, and I admire Apple for its difficultness, if that’s a word, because Apple is incredibly focused, which is part of the thesis of my book. They are focused on what is best for Apple. If you think about it in a corporate sense, or a fiduciary sense – a shareholder’s sense – that’s a really good thing for a company to be. I came to understand that Apple is only interested, professionally speaking, in one thing in terms of dealing with the outside world, and that is Apple’s products. The only reason that Apple wants to engage people like Jessica [Vascellaro] and me is to talk about its products. It is not interested – professionally again – in the topic of how Apple works. I admire them for that, because that doesn’t necessarily help them sell iPads or iPhones or Macintosh computers and so on, and they do that extremely well. They sell well; they manufacture well; they manage well. They promote well, and part of that is because they promote what is of their choosing. This is a theme that I come back to over and over, and my theme that I’ll leave you with is that in so many ways, Apple is

Lashinsky went in-depth to explore the methods and processes that make Apple the world’s most valuable company. Can the company continue it s success in the post-Steve Jobs era? Excerpt from “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired and Secretive Company Really Works,” February 15, 2012.

ADAM LASHINSKY Senior Editor at Large, Fortune; Author, Inside Apple

different from every other company in the country and in the world, and in fact the way they do business is different from the way business is taught in business schools. I decided that it would be interesting to ask the question, “Well, if this company is the world’s most valuable company – now we don’t have to keep saying on this day or that day; it is the world’s most valuable company – and if they do everything that they do so well, maybe the business schools should be teaching something different.” VASCELLARO: Tell the story about how you decided to write the book. LASHINSKY: People say, “Why did you decide to write about this?” I have a very simple answer: My editor asked me to. It’s interesting; some of this was actually mentioned in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Jobs had been in for meetings at Time, Inc., and had mentioned that Apple behaves like a startup, and that Apple has no committees, for example. [Fortune magazine’s managing editor] Andy Serwer said to him, “Gee, that’s interesting. We’d like to write a story about that.” Steve said, “We’ll see. Sometime.” Eventually, Andy decided we were done waiting and he asked me to do

JESSICA VASCELLARO Senior Technology Reporter, Wall Street Journal –

Moderator

it, so I just started doing it. What I came to understand is that I was asking a different question from what other journalists were asking, or other journalists had asked and had been told no. I got told no also, obviously, but I just kept on going. I believe – and I’d like to see some academic research to back this up – that Apple has just had the most amazing 15year run of any company perhaps in the history of companies. They’ve done very little wrong – not nothing, but very little wrong – and what little they’ve done wrong has been completely overwhelmed by all the things they’ve done right. I think if Steve Jobs were alive and well, they could not have another 15-year run like the 15year run that they’ve just had, if for no other reason than because their sheer size and the complexity of the company that they’ve worked so hard to avoid is upon them. There will be changes. We’ve seen subtle changes already. It was symbolically important that the first public act that Tim Cook made was to declare that the company would now, for the first time in years – or ever; I don’t know – match U.S. employees’ philanthropic donations up to $10,000. This was important, because Jobs

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Photos by Ed Ritger

1. Adam Lashinsky shares his insights into Apple. 2. Inside Apple’s focus is not Steve Jobs, but rather the personality of his company. 3. Jessica Vascellaro quizzes Lashinsky on Apple’s inner core.

thought that was a bunch of hooey – VASCELLARO: – and [Cook] did it right away. LASHINSKY: He did it quickly, and he showed that he was listening to employees, because this was something that they cared about. Apple has a fundamental challenge that they will have to grapple with, which is that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest entrepreneurs we’ll ever know, and the people at the top of the org chart – which we published in Fortune – who are running Apple today are not entrepreneurs in their bones the way he was. Meaning no disrespect to him, Tim Cook bled IBM blue for the first 10-plus years of his career. That is not the making of an entrepreneur. VASCELLARO: What do you think would happen if you have a company that’s been led by a visionary, entrepreneurial type? You said Tim “bleeds IBM blue.” LASHINSKY: Bled. I mean, let’s be fair to him. He loves Apple – we’ve heard him say that over and over – but his training, his formative years, were at IBM. VASCELLARO: There’s a great amount of very senior leadership, but all with very different skills. What does this company look like in five years? LASHINSKY: This is an example of how

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the company inevitably will change, I think. I’ve described this as what I believe is a religious debate at the highest levels of Apple and among the senior people who have left Apple. You get people with very strong opinions on both sides of this: “Apple’s going to run off the rails; it’s never going to be as great as it was,” is one argument. The other argument is, “This is a company with so much excellence, and so much greatness, and so much process, that it will continue to be great.” I lean in the latter direction. Number one, there is a ton of excellence in the company. They’ve hired really good people who buy into the mission of the company, which is an important part of the Apple story. Number two, there’s all sorts of functions of the company that Steve Jobs didn’t have his fingers on for several years now, and these are the parts of the company that Tim Cook has effectively been in charge of for 2 years, 3 years, 10 years. The one big intangible was that Steve Jobs made the final decision on anything that mattered. He had this uncanny ability to do that, an almost idiot savant ability to say, “This is where we’re going to go, and we’re not going there.” I have no idea how they’re going to replicate, replace or pivot from that. VASCELLARO: Despite this being the

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world’s most valuable company right now, the people who are there don’t think a ton about money. You talk a lot about a culture [in which] people don’t talk about getting rich, and that’s not why they’re in it. At the same time, this is a company that’s known for pinching its suppliers on fractions of a penny for every component down its supply chain, and that clearly has some pretty money-minded folks there. Do you think Apple can maintain the image of the culture and the brand? Not only is the company very operationally minded, but now there’s someone of that mould running it, too. LASHINSKY: It calls to mind the joke, “Why are rich people so cheap? Well, how do you think they got rich in the first place?” There is an element of that in Apple. These are sort of two separate subjects: There’s the personal mentality about money at the company, and then there’s the company’s relationship with wealth and spending money. Like many things with Apple, there’s a lot of paradoxes at play here. Jobs had an odd relationship with money. He lived a relatively humble life for a multi-billionaire, and he was openly critical of people who would talk about money, and in particular who would talk about making money as being the goal of business. He never stressed that business was about making money. For him it was about creating great products: “We’re going to do that extremely well, and oh, of course we’re going to make money.” Another paradox at Apple is that on the one hand Apple people will describe the company as being “resource-constrained.” I had the hardest time understanding what in the world they were talking about. I came to understand that they really were referring to the difficulty of finding enough people to do the projects that they wanted to do. They could never staff up as much as they wanted to. So they’ll, on the one hand, pinch a supplier. On the other hand, when they want to spend money, whether it’s on forward purchases of DRAM or buying the equipment that is necessary for outstanding manufacturing processes or, as I describe in the book, incredibly lavish spending to market a product exactly the way they want to, they’ll spend almost anything. This is something where I’m actually very optimistic for Apple. I think these are

cultural attributes of this company, and I think these cultural attributes die hard. On the one hand, where it’s going to be hard to find somebody with this ability to say, “No, we’re not going to do the iPad now; we’re going to do the iPhone first” – incredible decision – that I don’t know, but I think this culture of focusing on product over revenue optimization will persist. You talk to people who went to Apple in the late ’90s or the early 2000s in the first few years of Steve’s return, long before it was evident that the company was going to be a major financial success again: None of them went there for the money. Their friends told them they were crazy to be joining this loser company, and above a certain level, they all got stinking rich in the process. VASCELLARO: A couple questions around whether Steve Jobs was a good manager or not, and what should people take away and try, and what should they leave? LASHINSKY: He was an astoundingly good manager in that he focused on what he thought was important, and he did a very good job of forcing his people to focus on what was important. One of the most telling elements of his management style was… you know, it gets a bit tiresome, but in conversations about Apple, the word “product” comes up over and over and over. They will say that it’s all about product, but they mean it, and the evidence of this is the product review process that Jobs had. Basically, every important product project was reviewed every Monday, unless the executive team couldn’t get to it, and then they reviewed it the following Monday. Many companies have this quarterly product review concept, but Jobs felt, as a manager, that there was nothing more important than paying attention to the product. He would review it obsessively. Middle-level people spend their careers at Apple preparing their bosses, who are preparing their bosses, who are preparing their bosses, for a presentation to Steve Jobs and the executive team, and now Tim Cook and the executive team. I think he managed that extremely well. VASCELLARO: What about the “Steve bottleneck” that you refer to in the book? LASHINSKY: The “Steve Jobs bottleneck” is that, for good or ill, Steve Jobs only concentrated on a small handful of things at once, and he made very shrewd decisions over the last 15 years about what to con-

centrate on. The upside of his concentration was the iPhone, for example. The downside was – and this is something that Apple people talk about – if you worked in a part of the company that he wasn’t concentrating on, you got no attention. Nothing moved forward on your project; it was very obvious to you that you were not in the cool crowd, and Apple would not move forward on that. This would frustrate managers of all sorts, and I know people who left the company who would say, “I had my time; I worked on the hot product. The heat shifted; I didn’t. It was time for me to leave, because I knew I wasn’t going to get any attention anymore.” [In] the modern Apple, the management will cure some of those bottlenecks, and they’ll pay attention to more things. You could see that being a good thing for running a $400 billion market cap company, but you could see it being an abandonment of what made them great, too. VASCELLARO: Which companies do you think are Apple’s biggest threat right now? LASHINSKY: The most obvious threat is Google, in that Google is culturally the antithesis of Apple in nearly every way, and then Google is coming after Apple in some very specific areas, mobile device platform being the most obvious example. The fact that they’re coming at it from such a different perspective – of giving away operating software for mobile platforms for many device manufacturers, as opposed to Apple’s “walled garden” approach of packaging its software with its hardware and running its own application ecosystem – is the most glaring example of a head-on fight. They’re fighting for a lot of other things, like talent, mindshare. But it’s only the most obvious one. Samsung is a threat, and you can go down each of Apple’s major product lines, and you could say that a lot of startups are a threat as well. Apple has never done anything particularly good in social media, so in a sense, Facebook and Twitter are threats. They’re benign threats right now, from a revenue perspective, but… VASCELLARO: Apple has about $100 billion in cash right now, which is extraordinary. The company has to figure out something to do with it, shareholders argue, and they probably agree. What do you think will happen? LASHINSKY: The reason Apple has all this

cash is that Steve Jobs was freaked out about running out of cash, because he remembers in 1997 when the company didn’t have much of it. He said they were 90 days from insolvency. He was almost like a Depression Era baby about this issue of cash and debt. There’s actually very little evidence, Jessica, that they care what investors think about their use of the cash. VASCELLARO: Particularly with the iPod, they sort of diversified a little bit, went down to some cheaper products – haven’t done that with the iPhone, but bringing the cost down – and today, the Mac. What do you see as the future for the Mac, because it’s fairly premium? LASHINSKY: When you study Apple, you begin to appreciate what a risky enterprise it is. They have so relatively few product areas for their size that they’ve engaged in these “bet the company” efforts multiple times over the last handful of years. They’ve been very good about their small bets, too. They made a small bet on Apple TV; it didn’t work; big deal. They made a small bet on MobileMe, this email system; it didn’t work; no big deal. They made a big bet on the iPhone, a big bet on the iPad, this huge bet on DRAM memory – knowing what was coming down the pike with the iPad and the iPhone – and it worked. These big bets have worked huge.

“There’s very little evidence that they care

what investors think about their use of the cash.” The Macintosh business gives them this incredible cushion to take risks, because it is now their cash cow business, and they are milking it. There’s not a ton of innovation in the Macintosh. They have this franchise that is growing faster than the rate of the rest of the industry, that just does nothing but throw off cash that they can invest in other things. This program was made possible by the generous support of Chevron.

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PATIENCE, PATIENTS Patients and healthcare providers are facing changes if they hope to build a system of patient-centered care. Excerpt from “New Approaches to Patient Care and Advocacy,” Thursday, March 8, 2012.

JENNIFER BROKAW, MD

Founder, Good Medicine

SEAN DUFFY Co-founder and CEO, MARTY TENENBAUM Founder,

Omada Health

Cancer Commons

WAYNE PAN, MD Chief Medical

SARAH VARNEY Health Reporter,

Informatics Officer, Health Access

VARNEY: In the Affordable Care Act we have many different levers coming at the hospitals and the providers – and patients, for that matter. We’ve got these accountable care organizations, which are essentially trying to knit together specialists and primary care and hospitals. But we’ve tried this before. We all went through managed care, and patients didn’t like that very much. Marty, what’s different this time? TENENBAUM: I wanted to pipe in the patient’s perspective, which is based on recent personal experience. I was up in Seattle helping take care of my mother-in-law, who at 92 had had a heart attack, sitting in the hospital, and all of her family – she has a big family – stuffed into an intensive care room, and Mom on a ventilator. We’re trying to figure out what questions to ask the doc when he comes in and graces us with 10 or 15 minutes of his time, if we’re lucky. Then the doc goes away, and we spend the rest of the night contemplating all of the implications for what happens tomorrow when Mom goes off the respirator. What do we do if she doesn’t breathe? From a patient’s perspective there’s a lot of care-giving that goes on that has nothing to do with medical professionals, and in this day and age I think you’ll all agree that the supportive care team is spread all over the country. This is an opportunity for information technology to find a way to be able to bring the family together, not just those who can stuff into the

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Solutions; Chief Medical Officer, Pacific Partners Management Services Inc.

“The California Report” – Moderator

emergency room. That’s where we can worry about advance care directives, and we can worry about being able to provide information or advice on what questions to ask the physician and how to make decisions when you get the answers. Information technology has many roles to play, but this whole system is going to fall apart if it’s not for the 60 million people

“Patient-centered [medicine] is just an amazingly sexy and

awesome concept.” –Sean Duffy who volunteer their time to take care of parents and grandparents and so forth. DUFFY: Patient-centered medical [practice] is just an amazingly sexy and awesome concept that I think could be progressed in a really interesting way. It seems like a delivery entity can apply for patient-centered medical home recognition by meeting certain standards, and the standards are very patient friendly: it’s online scheduling; it’s communication between different providers. It’s the sort of thing where patients out there should be demanding that their care is provided by a patient-centered medical home, but when you go out and talk to people who are in the primary care

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world and they’re looking for doctors, the first thing they think of when they hear the words “patient-centered medical home” is a house, a funeral home, a nursing home – it’s incredibly unclear what that is. Taking the concept of a patient-centered medical home and re-branding – where it becomes this amazing gold seal that all of the best primary care centers out there have – will spark some of the consumer demand, which will prompt some of the financial reform required to make it an actual practicing reality. TENENBAUM: It needs a different name. BROKAW: I suggest “Good Medicine.” DUFFY: This is a Good Medicine-approved primary care center, and everybody knows that that’s what they need to ask for when they go look for their doctor. VARNEY: Most of the presenters are forprofit. Is this a contradiction in good care for community? Is there a way in which you’re simply adding to our cost problem, or can you guarantee us that you’re going to lower our insurance premiums? Sean? DUFFY: Our company’s in a rather fortunate place in that there’s been a number of ROI studies done on the original diabetes prevention program this trial, and they’ve spoken very favorably of the economics at a certain threshold, which we’re hoping to be able to hit because we’re delivering this online. If we can hit the same primary outcomes as this clinical trial, it’s easy for us to make an argument that

the ROI holds. In terms of us being a for-profit versus a non-profit, very early on, we felt very convinced that we had to find a business model that fit into an ROI framework that self-insured employers and insurance companies could be comfortable with, because I don’t think it’s a reasonable goal to deliver prevention at the scale that it needs to happen in the U.S. if you don’t have the financial incentives aligned. Theoretically, the more people we can bring through our system, and the more entities we can convince to pay for it, the more people we prevent from getting diabetes. It’s a rather nice alignment that I don’t think you find in too many places, but for us it works. VARNEY: Have you found so far in your work that there are certain populations that this seems to work for, or is this really a populationbased tool? It’s going to work in South L.A.? It’s going to work in Fresno? DUFFY: Sure, sure, sure. It would be helpful to just give a little context for how this feels from the patient standpoint. If you find out you have pre-diabetes: We take people with pre-diabetes, and we match you up – algorithmically, kind of like match.com, into groups of about 10 people – and then we bring you all through the curriculum from this clinical trial at the same time, with the help of the health coach, who’s involved in working with not just one group, but many groups. VARNEY: An [audience] question: “Is there any way for a patient to get a list of charges with explanations of treatment that they will be getting, even for simple things like related costs for lab tests?” Then it says, “P.S. A timeline for future bills would also be nice.” To be noted. BROKAW: It’s really incredible how little we understand about our health care. If I were to ask this room if you knew, to the dollar, how much was spent on you personally by your insurance company for your health care last year, I doubt any of you could tell me. Even worse, doctors have no idea how much they spend of our total health care dollars when they order tests. There are new efforts being made to really bring that back. In the 1980s, during that managed care revolution, there was this, “Mother, may I order a CT scan?” “No, you may not,” and that’s going to come back, in a way. There are going to be flags built into the system – into the electronic health records – that say, “This patient had an MRI last month. Why are you re-ordering an MRI?” or, “This medicine that you’re ordering costs $200 a month. Could you use this less expensive

alternative?” Price awareness is coming back. Ultimately, the consumer has to come to the table, though. There are some companies out there now doing just that, making healthcare costs transparent by using Medicare data: what Medicare has charged by certain hospitals. For instance, within the Bay Area, you could get a colonoscopy at Stanford, you could go to Seton Hospital or you could go to UCSF, and the charges are divergent. When those charges are transparent to the self-insured employers that are big purchasers of health care, they’re going to say, “Dr. X, or Hospital X, why are you charging three times as much as this other hospital?” The answer might be, “We’re better at it, and this is why,” and that would be a valid response, but show us the data! VARNEY: A person in the audience asks, “Arrogance within medical practice is a given. How does one change the culture to one of teamwork and patient safety and not about egos, i.e. the surgeons?” Dr. Pan? PAN: I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I can understand that. Part of the issue is here that we have a provider-centric system where you have to go to a provider to get information. You have to go to the hospital; you have to go to the lab. We need to change it to a patient-centric system, which is all about what the patient-centered medical home is. I really don’t think that just having a stamp of patient-centered medical home, or having it certified, is what you’re going to get or experience. People and practices need to understand that there’re only two questions you need to ask. The first is, “How does whatever I’m doing benefit the patient?” and the second is, “Can I make it easier for the patient?” If you can do those two things, you’re on the way to patient-centeredness. This transformation is going to take a long time, because proprietors in the past have been trained to be: “You come to me. You sit in my waiting room for five hours. I don’t care, because you have to see me.” Now that we have a bit more openness and cost-transparency, there’ll be patients who will say, “I don’t really want to sit there for five hours. My time is just as valuable as yours, and I’m going to go somewhere else.” This customer-service model, which is really patient-centric models of health-care delivery, [will] prevail.

Club Leadership OFFICERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA Board Chair Maryles Casto Vice Chair Anna W.M. Mok Secretary William F. Adams Treasurer Lee J. Dutra President and CEO Dr. Gloria C. Duffy BOARD OF GOVERNORS Dan Ashley Jill Nash Massey J. Bambara Richard Otter* Ralph Baxter Joseph Perrelli* Hon. Shirley Temple Black* Hon. Barbara Pivnicka John L. Boland Hon. Richard Pivnicka J. Dennis Bonney* Fr. Stephen A. Privett, S.J. Helen A. Burt Dr. Mohammad H. Qayoumi John Busterud* Dan C. Quigley Michael Carr Toni Rembe* Hon. Ming Chin* Victor A. Revenko* Jack Cortis Skip Rhodes* Mary B. Cranston** Dr. Condoleezza Rice Dr. Kerry P. Curtis Fred A. Rodriguez Dr. Jaleh Daie Renée Rubin* Evelyn S. Dilsaver Robert Saldich** Lee J. Dutra Joseph W. Saunders Joseph I. Epstein* George M. Scalise Rolando Esteverena Connie Shapiro* Jeffrey A. Farber Charlotte Mailliard Shultz Dr. Joseph R. Fink* George D. Smith, Jr. Carol A. Fleming, Ph.D. James Strother Lisa Frazier Hon. Tad Taube William German* Charles Travers Dr. Charles Geschke Thomas Vertin Rose Guilbault** Robert Walker Jacquelyn Hadley Nelson Weller* Edie G. Heilman Judith Wilbur* Hon. James C. Hormel Dr. Colleen B. Wilcox Mary Huss Dennis Wu* Claude B. Hutchison Jr.* Russell M. Yarrow Dr. Julius Krevans* Lata Krishnan * Past President ** Past Chair Don J. McGrath ADVISORY BOARD Karin Helene Bauer Hon. William Bradley Dennise M. Carter Steven Falk Amy Gershoni

Heather M. Kitchen Amy McCombs Hon. William J. Perry Ray Taliaferro Nancy Thompson

This program was made possible by the generous support of the California HealthCare Foundation. J U N E/J U LY 2012

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Geithner photo by Sonya Abrams, Binoculars by houseonrock / Flickr

Success in the globalization era requires getting our relationship right with China. Excerpt from “Remarks on the U.S. and Global Economies Ahead of the 2012 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue,” April 26, 2012. TIMOTHY GEITHNER U.S.

Secretary of the Treasury

he economic relationship between the United States and China provides significant benefits to both our nations. Even though we compete in many areas, our economic strengths are largely complementary. China faces a very complicated set of challenges as it transitions toward a more open, market-oriented economy and financial system, facing rising costs and slowing labor force and productivity growth. Our priorities in our economic relationship with China – from its exchange rate to its treatment of intellectual property – reflect changes that are fundamentally in

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China’s interest and essential for sustainable economic growth. And finally, the prosperity of Americans depends most importantly on the economic policies we pursue to strengthen American competitiveness. Even as we work to encourage further reforms in China, we need to understand that our strength as a nation will depend not on choices made by China’s leaders, but on the choices we make here at home. We have focused our economic policy toward China on achieving two broad strategic objectives: The first is to expand opportunities for U.S. companies to export and sell to China, to level the competitive playing field, and to encourage economic reforms that would move China away from its export-oriented growth model and extensive subsidies for Chinese companies. Our second objective is to deepen our cooperation with China on a range of international economic and financial issues, so that we are better able to work together on common global challenges, like the global financial crisis of 2008-09 and the ongoing European crisis. We want to build a stronger framework for economic cooperation that will allow us to balance the economic interests of what are – and will be for the

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foreseeable future – the two largest economies in the world. We have made significant progress on these objectives over the past three years. • Since early 2009, U.S. exports of goods to China have almost doubled, growing twice as fast as our exports to the rest of the world. In 2011 alone, the United States exported around $130 billion in goods and services to China, supporting well over 600,000 jobs here at home. Exports of goods from California exceeded $14 billion, supporting more than 65,000 jobs. • China has committed to improving the protection and enforcement of U.S. intellectual property rights. To make sure that government agencies only use legitimate software, China has committed to increase budgetary resources for software purchases, to conduct audits and inspections, and to accelerate deadlines for provinces and municipal government to use only legal software. China also committed that technology transfer and technology co-operation is not a precondition for access to the Chinese market. • When China’s efforts to encourage indigenous innovation by limiting government purchases to an approved list of Chinese domestic products threatened to undermine market access for U.S. firms, President Obama successfully pressed to

unwind China’s indigenous innovation accreditation system. • China has opened up new sectors to foreign firms, such as auto liability insurance and bond underwriting. • China cut some tariffs earlier in the year, and China has launched a pilot program to reduce taxes on services, which we hope will be part of a larger reduction in taxes and tariffs which can make the price of consumer products in Shanghai twice as high as in San Francisco. • China appears to be prepared to negotiate new rules on official export financing with the United States and other major exporters so that U.S. goods and services will be competing based on quality and price rather than the terms of foreign government financing. • China’s exchange rate has appreciated and is up about 13 percent against the U.S. dollar when accounting for differences in inflation since June 2010, and 40 percent since 2005. China also recently announced that it is widening the band to allow market forces to play a greater role in setting the exchange rate and is continuing to remove controls on capital flows in and out of China. • China’s trade surplus fell to less than 3 percent last year, compared to around 8 percent of China’s GDP the year before President Obama entered office. Despite this important progress, we have unfinished business and new challenges ahead. Looking forward, in addition to our long-standing concerns with piracy of U.S. intellectual property, government procurement preferences, taxes and tariffs and other limitations on market access in some sectors, there are several Chinese reforms that are particularly important to the United States. First, China’s financial system is still dominated by large state-owned banks, who favor lending to large state enterprises, with comprehensive controls on deposit interest rates. This system limits the returns to savers to below the rate of inflation, forcing them to save excessively to achieve their financial goals and insure against life’s risks. This both limits consumption and starves China’s most innovative firms and sectors of capital, despite massive domestic savings. Savers in search of higher yields and private firms in search of funds to grow their businesses gravitate to informal financing, with less prudential regulation and consumer protections. In a step in the right direction, China launched a pilot program

last month in Wenzhou to allow new private lenders to lend to private enterprises. To promote a more efficient financial sector and more efficient financial intermediation, interest rates will need to better reflect market forces. Raising the ceiling on deposit rates will also allow Chinese households to earn a higher return on their savings, both increasing their income and reducing their need to save, thus increasing their ability to consume goods and services, including from the United States. These financial sector reforms are critical to China’s continued growth – and that growth in turn represents tremendous opportunity for American companies and workers building and growing the things and offering the services the Chinese most seek. Financial reform in China will help reduce one of the main advantages China’s state-owned enterprises have in competing with U.S. companies. China’s state-owned enterprises still compete with a range of unfair advantages in the Chinese and global markets. They have privileged access to cheap land, resources and credit. They monopolize many of the most profitable sectors in China, including oil and telecommunications. But even where state-owned enterprises compete with private enterprises, their implicit backing by the Chinese government discourages private firms’ entry and expansion. Channeling resources into large state enterprises, while many of China’s most dynamic private firms are starved for credit, ultimately hurts China’s economy, and recent studies have highlighted how much more inefficient Chinese state enterprises are than their private counterparts. But it also hurts U.S. companies and workers who compete with these firms. If China’s state enterprises want to be treated like commercial enterprises by the rest of the world, they need to act more like commercial enterprises, including by paying market-based dividends to their shareholders and making their corporate governance and finances less opaque. Finally, while we welcome the reforms to China’s exchange rate system, the process of correcting the misalignment of the exchange rate remains incomplete, and the Chinese currency needs to appreciate further against the dollar and other major currencies. A stronger, more market-determined renminbi will help reinforce China’s reform objectives of moving to higher value-added

production, reforming the financial system, and encouraging domestic demand. It will provide China the independence and flexibility to respond to future changes in growth and inflation. And it will help the world economy, reducing a source of unfair competition with China’s trading partners. As we have worked to advance reforms in China, we have been forceful in protecting American companies from unfair competition. • Since 2009, the Department of Commerce has issued a total of 36 antidumping and countervailing duty orders on unfairly traded imports from China. • The president used the Section 421 safeguard remedy for the first time to protect U.S. jobs in the tire industry from a harmful surge in Chinese imports. • We have successfully challenged China in the WTO, including most recently on China’s export restraints on raw materials, limitations on the distribution of film and other media, and subsidies benefitting its domestic wind power sector. The president recently announced the creation of the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center to aggressively challenge foreign unfair trade practices, including from China. We have been aggressive in protecting our interests and will continue to do so. These are our main objectives and concerns with China. China, of course, wants certain things from the United States. China wants greater access to U.S. technologies and high-tech, dual-use exports. It wants to be able to invest more in the United States. It wants to continue to have access to our market and would like to be accorded the same terms of access as exports from countries we consider market economies. We are willing to continue to make progress on these issues, but our ability to do so will depend in part on how much progress we see from China on issues that are important to us. ... Our great strengths as a country remain our openness to ideas and talent, our capacity to innovate, our excellence in higher education, a willingness to invest public resources strategically in scientific research and discovery, and the political will to confront challenges with wisdom and force. China’s rise offers us the opportunity of dramatic growth in demand for things Americans create and produce. We should welcome both the opportunity and the challenge.

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A look at the rough-and-tumble of the political process. Don’t like it? It’s not likely to change, say our veteran political panelists. Excerpt from “Must Politics Be a Dirty Business?,” March 14, 2012.

ANN RAVEL Chair, California Fair

Political Practices Commission; Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Torts and Consumer Litigation HANSON: Ann Ravel, as head of the FPPC, what worries you about this year’s campaign season? Do you think we’re about to embark on a period of even more negative campaigning and more influence by money? RAVEL: I don’t think there’s any question that we will be seeing a lot more money in politics and probably lots of violations of the law as well. The bigger question tonight that’s being asked is, “Must politics be a dirty business?” It’s ironic, but Richard Nixon, who of course was the architect of the Watergate scandal and the reason why the Political Reform Act was enacted in 1974, has said, “I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.” What I see for the next election are three things that I’d like to address. One of them is, of course, the rise of super PACs and what that has done to politics on the

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national level, and what the impact will be in California, though California has for a long time permitted independent expenditures. The second thing that will hopefully increase the public sense that politics isn’t a dirty business is more disclosure, more transparency. Everybody talks about transparency, and unfortunately we don’t have a very robust system for giving information to the public. That’s something we need to change. Finally, as the chair of the FPPC, I have to say that I think the FPPC has participated itself in some of the negative views of government and negative views of politics by emphasizing small issues – small transgressions – and identifying them as if they are ethical violations, rather than actually going after big issues. HANSON: Bill, it’s been a number of years since you had some of the responsibility for the voting process as secretary of state. How have things changed, and what worries you this year? JONES: The issue of politics in general – this whole question of the intensity or the negative campaigning – is not new. You can go back all the way to Abraham Lincoln; you can go back further than that. What is

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new is the intensity of the media coverage. With a 24-hour cycle, it makes everything heightened. When I started in public life, there were three television stations, you get a direct mail piece, and some 4 x 8s on the highways, and that was the campaign. Today, you can’t get away from it. Politics has turned into ratings, and that means there’s

BILL JONES Former California

Secretary of State

Chief of Staff for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; Former Executive Director, California Democratic Party money in it for the stations and for the media, which in turn puts all the candidates in an environment that – while they always were interested in publicity, now they are a vehicle for the ratings. If you’re going to do a talk show, they don’t want you to come on and agree; they want you to come on and fight. They set the tenor there that creates an awful lot of controversy which then is magnified and goes out to the public. It isn’t even that the issues have changed as much, but – as you just mentioned – we’ve always had independent expenditures in California; they have to be reported. When I was secretary of state, when we started, we just had paper. If you wanted to come in and see what anybody gave, we gave you paper. We moved on to technology. Now you’re moving on – and I compliment you for your effort. But no matter how much disclosure you do, as long as the politics and this 24-hour news cycle are competitive, it is going to create a different dynamic that is heightened, and if you want to compete, it requires money. You’re always going to have money in politics. I believe strongly that disclosure is the key. The better disclosure you can get, the better off you are. I do believe that the super PACs should be disclosing; then let the process continue as it might. I think one thing about this year, at least in our primaries for president, it is amazing

with problems. We don’t elect statesmen such as Bill Jones to office anymore, and I’m not just blowing smoke because he’s sitting next to me; he is truly considered one of the last statesmen in California politics, in the era where we solved big problems. We’re electing people to office now with a very myopic view of their time in office, and a necessarily selfish and limited view, because they’re always running for the next office. I think the poison has entered the governing process much more so than the campaigns. HANSON: There are two [audience] questions about asking you to define dirty politics, and where’s the line between fair, tough, negative politics and dirty politics. KENNEDY: Truth and untruth. JONES: That’s a fair answer. HANSON: So, any accusation that is true is fair game? KENNEDY: Yes. JONES: I think campaigns are about vetting candidates. If you don’t want to be vetted, you’d better not get in the game. KENNEDY: There are things that are, I think, still off-limits. Those lines get blurred – you know, how you treat family members; how you treat personal issues – but if it’s true, it’s fair game. JONES: I would agree. This program was made possible by the generous support of the Travers Family Foundation. Photos by Ed Ritger

SUSAN KENNEDY Former

that someone like a Rick Santorum can do what he’s done with hard work and knocking on doors, and overcome this media. Part of the reason that’s true is because of the debates. Public discussion, public debates – I used to hate them when I did them; I did three when I was running for governor and one for the U.S. Senate, and they’re not fun. They’re not fun for the participants to get ready for – they’re very tough – but it’s very good for the public, because it’s unfiltered. When you get right down to the question of the dirty politics, politics isn’t any different than anything else. You have to know the people who are running, and you have to elect people who have good character and have an interest in serving the public, and then you will get a better quality of government. The intensity of the process is going to continue as long as the media is there. HANSON: Susan Kennedy, to some extent you’re a symbol of bipartisanship, as a Democrat working for a Republican governor. On the other hand, you’re a symbol of someone who tries to be bipartisan and gets attacked from both sides. Is the atmosphere as vitriolic in state government day to day as it seems to be in the campaign process? KENNEDY: The simple answer is yes. Whether you live in a democracy or a dictatorship, politics is a dirty business. It’s the intersection between power, money and human beings. You’re going to have problems. Campaigns are a blood sport. We need strong referees like the FPPC in order to keep cheating to a minimum, but it is as much entertainment, as Bill said, as it is an important part of our democratic process, because we choose our elected officials that way. The most important thing is, it’s not more poisonous or more vitriolic today than it was. If Twitter had existed in the early 1800s, half our founding fathers would’ve been run out of town on the rail and never elected to office. What has changed is [that] we’re in a period of permanent campaigning. It’s governing itself that has become poisonous. People are frustrated because they elect people to office on a series of campaign promises that they hear year after year after year, but then when people get to where they’re going, whether it’s Sacramento or the city council or the White House or Congress, they don’t see change. They don’t see people dealing

KIRK HANSON Executive Director,

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University – Moderator

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JOHN YOO Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley; Co-author, Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order

hen we say globalization, we mean a few things. One is the easy, rapid and cheap movement of goods, capital and people across national boarders. Globalization also refers to the ease of communications and the rise of the Internet and new kinds of networks that make it extremely easy and cheap for people to communicate – and for things abroad to affect us here at home, in a way they didn’t 50 or even 25 years ago. Globalization also makes bad things possible. For example, transnational criminal networks; drug smuggling; pollution crosses state borders; terrorism crosses state borders. In fact, a lot of these problems use the same channels of international commerce and communication to move around the world, just as goods, capital and people do. That has sparked a response to try to create regulatory regimes that control these new types of globalization. We call it global governance. The basic idea is that it’s outside the power of a single nation-state to effectively regulate any of these things anymore. Global governance has two features to it. One is that international agreements now try to regulate worldwide; international law has to have a scope it didn’t used to have. For example, to regulate chemical weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention regulates the production and storage and existence of every kind of chemical in the world, no matter who possesses it. Even chemicals held by research laboratories, by industry, by private persons fall under the ambit of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The second thing is the rise of new kinds of international institutions that are neutral and independent from control by any one country. So you have the rise of things not just like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, but the World Trade Organization has new forms of courts and new forms of regulatory bodies that sit outside the control of any one country but, because of that independence, have a new kind of power that international institutions didn’t have before. It used to be that international institutions were under the control of some nations or a few nations; now they’re seen as being independent of any nations. How does the United States’ political and legal system

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respond? Can the United States cooperate with these new institutions, and how does it do it? Some of the new kinds of regulation and institutions are in tension with the way the United States traditionally exercised public power and particularly run into the prerogatives of Congress – especially over the control of domestic law and taxation – but also the prerogatives of the executive branch and the judiciary. We want to avoid the constitutional confrontation that occurred in the New Deal years. In the New Deal period, the economy nationalized, the markets were continent-wide, our society became more national; yet the Constitution and the way the courts thought about it was still regional. So, for example, the Supreme Court would only allow Congress to regulate a good when it crossed a state border, but it would not allow Congress to regulate the manufacture or the sale of that good. The Supreme Court also blocked independent administrative agencies; it would not allow the creation of neutral federal agencies to regulate things like communications or the railroads or the security markets. So when the Great Depression occurred and President Roosevelt introduced approaches to governance at the domestic level that are similar to what’s being tried now on the international level, the Supreme Court blocked him for several years in the 1930s. Constitutional law would not come to accept the national scope of the economy and the national scope of Congress’ powers until the famous confrontation between FDR and the Supreme Court in the beginning of [his] second term. It is only because President Roosevelt threatened to pack the court and the Supreme Court switched its position on these questions and effectively allowed the federal government to regulate nationally and allowed the federal government to create independent institutions – it was only under the pressure of that kind of political attack that the constitutional tension was solved. So we hope that we can see these issues coming down the road earlier than in the 1930s and hopefully figure out doctrines that allow us to escape the kind of confrontation that in the end did much harm to President Roosevelt and the executive branch and to the Supreme Court and its independence.

Photo by Ed Ritger

GLOBAL AUTHORITY 22

America has not yet adopted the legal changes necessary to deal with globalization. Excerpt from “Reconceptualizing U.S. Power and International Law,” March 15, 2012.

Photo by Drew Alitzer Photography

Rachel Maddow (Continued from page 9)

like it’s been like this forever; they started doing it like this in the ’90s. We didn’t have this in the ’80s. We could go back. HANDLER: Despite the fact that it’s happened very quickly, a lot of it seems completely intractable to me. It feels permanent. When [your book] says, for instance, “Going to war or being at war should be painful for the entire country from the start,” and, “Let’s do away with the secret military. Let’s quit asking the military to do things best left to our State Department, or the Peace Corps. Our Guard and Reserves need to be the Guard and Reserves again...” When I try to picture any politician campaigning on that, or standing up and making that [statement], it seems now impossible to me. When I try to imagine any politician saying, “The first thing we’re going to do is that the CIA is going to be a lot more transparent in its military operations,” I just think, “How’s that going to go down?” Much as I like a happy ending in a book. MADDOW: Yes; you are known as Mr. Happy Book. Well, if this happens to Lemony Snicket, what does he do? [Laughter.] [In a] Washington Post-ABC poll, a majority of Republicans say that the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. When Ron Paul used to campaign for president, he would say something anti-interventionist, something sort of isolationist, in his Ron Paul Republican way, and the, like, six Ron Paul guys in the corner would start screaming wildly and then they’d get kicked out and everybody else would boo them and go, “U.S.A.; U.S.A.!” It’s not like that

anymore. Even in the Republican field for presidential candidates this year, as fun as it was to watch, one of the things that was sort of sobering and really interesting about it was to hear them talk about Afghanistan. To hear Newt Gingrich and even Rick Santorum, who’s been very, very hawkish over his career, and sometimes Mitt Romney – depending on the day of the week – and always John Huntsman, and always Ron Paul talking about needing to get the troops home and then getting a big round of applause from a Republican – rather, in some cases, rather rabid Republican audiences. HANDLER: Is that just because someone else is in charge? MADDOW: No; I don’t think so. I think that there is a legitimate – HANDLER: It seems like there’s a certain stripe of Republican that, if Barack Obama said, “You know what? I like babies,” they’d be like, “Ugh; babies.” [Laughter.] MADDOW: I will not argue with you on that, but I do think that there is a libertarianinflected conservative Republican mindset which is horrified by Hillary Clinton going to Pakistan, being asked by journalism students, I think it was, about drone strikes that had happened very recently before she got there, and her saying, “I can’t discuss that.” That is something that horrifies a lot of conservatives, and it ought to. If we are using the CIA as a branch of the military, which we are, first of all we should have had a debate about that. We should have had a fight about whether or not we were going to do that. We didn’t; it just happened. Second, that means that we now effectively have a secret military; we have

a military, with an Air Force, committing acts of war in Americans’ names, and the elected officials who are directing that those things happen will not explain those things to the American people or even admit that they are happening. Now, we didn’t have to have a secret military in order to become a superpower in the world. We did not have to have a secret military in order to win a lot of stuff that we’ve left long in the dust. HANDLER: I agree. When I think of the history of places that have had a secret military and that have not had a secret military, it doesn’t seem to me that they go on as normal but just manage to cut out the secret military part. It seems more like they do away with the whole thing, which I’m not

“If we are using the CIA as a branch

of the

military, which we are, first of all we should have had a debate about that.” advocating, but that’s what concerns me. It’s what I always think about the Department of Homeland Security. What president is ever going to say, “We don’t need a Department of Homeland Security anymore” – ? MADDOW: – But it’s not that old. We didn’t into a secret military over a century.

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We didn’t get the Department of Homeland Security from Abraham Lincoln. We got this stuff recently, under contested terms, by people who made some bad decisions – in many cases, admitting they were bad decisions now – and we can reverse those things, and we should. National security politics shouldn’t be beyond our reach, and it shouldn’t be beyond partisan fighting. We should see those things as within our power. I won’t belabor this more than I already have, but just on the issue of drones: Let’s say we’re not going to talk about whether or not drone warfare is an appropriate use of military force. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we think that ought to continue; there ought to be drones used to kill people that the American government wants dead around the world. I believe that even among the people who would concede that point, there’s going to be a good argument about why that can’t be the Air Force; why that has to be the CIA. The Air Force has drones. The Air Force also has a chain of command, and they also have public information officers. Does the CIA need to be doing all of these things? Operationally, the answer is no. There is no operational reason that the CIA has to be doing it; it is a legal reason. That means it’s about accountability to us, and so we ought to be pressing that. HANDLER: [Audience member] Eileen asks, “In the beginning of your book, you say of Dick Cheney” – Well, the book is dedicated to Dick Cheney. MADDOW: Yes. HANDLER: You say, “Oh, please let me interview you,” and the question is, “If you did interview Dick Cheney, what’s the first question you would ask him?” MADDOW: Oh! That’s good. Well, first I would ask him if me dedicating the book to him is why he finally said yes. “What can I give you, Dick Cheney? I give you this book.” I have been trying for a very long time to interview him. Can I tell you a little story about Dick Cheney, about why I’m interested in him? HANDLER: Yeah. I think that’s kind of the whole idea. MADDOW: Good point. Iran-Contra happens. It seems like a huge scandal, and then promptly disappears in a puff of Reagan hagiography. The Iran-Contra scandal, at the time, is a huge deal. Senior administration officials being

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indicted, being convicted; people going to prison. Reagan was told by Congress, “We know what you want to do in South America and in Central America, and we say no. You cannot do it. You cannot do it with this agency; you cannot do it with that agency; you can’t do it with any other agency that we can think of the name of right now. You can’t do it by any means. No!” Reagan said, “OK,” [whispering] I’ll do it secretly,” which was very illegal. What he did was very,

“Congress said, ‘Are you kidding? That’s

ridiculous!

The president is not constrained by law?’” very illegal and a huge scandal, and he paid for it by selling arms to the Iranians! Not only was that illegal, but he had been talking about how he would never do that. It was a really bad deal, and in order to save Reagan’s butt, at the end of Iran-Contra when, really, it was the scandal that was going to end his presidency, the administration came up – I think ad-hoc, on the spot – with this idea that it hadn’t really been illegal for Reagan to do these things, because he’s president, and a president can do anything they want on national security and it’s never illegal. It was like, Nixon [saying], “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” It was the same thing, except it was about war. So, they came up with this defense, and Congress investigated Iran-Contra, and they said, “Are you kidding? That’s ridiculous! The president is not constrained by law when it comes to national security? That’s ridiculous; that’s not the American way that we do things.” There was a dissent from the congressional conclusion on this, who said, “Actually, the Reagan administration is right. Iran-Contra is fine. That wasn’t illegal. The president can do anything, regardless of the law and regardless of Congress on national security. I agree with them,” and that dissent was from a Wyoming congressman named Dick Cheney. He had a really big idea, and nobody cared at the time,

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because he was this back-bench Wyoming Republican, and it was this minority report to the Iran-Contra investigation. I want to ask him about that. HANDLER: Someone who doesn’t want to tell me their name asks what your prediction is for the outcome of the health care act. MADDOW: Oh! That’s a good question. I am bad at predictions, so I don’t know. But I think that if the court strikes it down – in broad terms, with a five-four decision – it is going to change the way that Americans think about the court for a very long time. I think that the court is cognizant of that. I mean, when Justice Roberts gives speeches – like does the sort of “state of the court” speech that he does, and stuff – he’s been talking about his worries about the esteem of the court in the eyes of the American people, and so it seems to be on their mind – HANDLER: – more than, say, it was in 2000? [Laughter.] MADDOW: Yeah; or after Citizens United. If I am optimistic I want the decision to be not five-four, because I don’t want us to lose faith in the basic structure of our government. But I don’t know; it’s a pretty radical court. HANDLER: “What advice would you give Obama” – and very few people put their names, so I’ll just pretend this is from my mother – “What advice would you give Obama about the world economy on our own, other than firing the banksters, who are his advisers?” That’s kind of a presumptuous question. MADDOW: “Don’t ask Maddow about the world economy.” I don’t know. HANDLER: Well, maybe this leads into this: “How did living in the Bay Area shape your views, and what do you miss most about San Francisco?” MADDOW: I love San Francisco, and every time I come back here I remember that this is the only city in America that has magic in it. I’m sure some other people from other parts of the country feel that way about their city. I mean, I know friends from New Orleans who feel that way about New Orleans, but I go there and I don’t feel it the way that I feel it here. I think it may be an evolutionarily devised response to the fact that there are lots of vistas in San Francisco. This program was made possible by the generous support of Wells Fargo.

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HEALTH & MEDICINE William B. Grant wbgrant@infionline.net HUMANITIES George C. Hammond george@pythpress.com INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Norma Walden norwalden@aol.com LGBT Stephen Seewer stephenseewer@gmail.com

Watch Club programs on KRCB TV 22 on Comcast & DirecTV the last Sunday of each month at 11 a.m. Select Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley programs air on CreaTV in San Jose (Channel 30). View hundreds of streaming videos of Club programs at fora.tv and youtube.com/commonwealthclub

Julian Chang julianclchang@gmail.com MIDDLE EAST Celia Menczel celiamenczel@sbcglobal.net

Subscribe to our free podcasting service to automatically download a new program recording to your personal computer each week: commonwealthclub.org/podcast.

PSYCHOLOGY Patrick O’Reilly oreillyphd@hotmail.com

HARD OF HEARING?

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Chisako Ress chisakoress@gmail.com

To request an assistive listening device, please e-mail Ricardo Esway at resway@commonwealthclub.org or call (415) 869-5911 seven working days before the event. J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

Eight Weeks Calendar June 04 – July 29 M on

Tue

Wed

June 04

Noon The Modern Cookbook FM 5:15 p.m. Thriving Through Trauma FM 5:30 p.m. Steve Jobs FE 5:15 p.m. Innovation Power FM

Noon Is Democracy Killing Itself? 6:00 p.m. Richard Muller

6:30 p.m. David Walker

Noon Nuclear Revival? FM 6:00 p.m. Love: A Rational Explanation FM

6:30 p.m. Raj Patel 7:00 p.m. Joseph Stiglitz

Noon Gail Collins 6:00 p.m. South Africa’s Conflict Resolution Role in Africa 6:00 p.m. Frank Deford

5:30 p.m. Middle East Discussion Group FE 6:00 p.m. E.J. Dionne FM 6:00 p.m. C.W. Gortner: Isabella of Castile FM

6:15 p.m. Science & Tech Discussion FE 6:00 p.m. Fixing the Game 6:00 p.m. Alex Salmond 6:30 p.m. Adam Lashinsky 6:30 p.m. Your Brain on Computers

6:00 p.m. Road to Valor 6:00 p.m. Will Durst

7:00 p.m. Lev Grossman

Noon Tech Wadi FM 6:00 p.m. Samuel Popkin: The Candidate FM

6:00 p.m. Life After the Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell 6:00 p.m. Connected Health

6:00 p.m. Abraham Sofaer

6:00 p.m. United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and Global Democracy FM

Independence Day Club offices closed

6:00 p.m. Rajiv Chandrasekaran FM 6:00 p.m. Henri Bergson and the Energy of Time FM

6:00 p.m. Story Wars 6:30 p.m. Belva Davis

6:00 p.m. Chris Hayes 6:00 p.m. Expeditions into Extreme Affordability

6:30 p.m. Chuck Palahniuk

7:00 p.m. Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black 6:30 p.m. Judith Horstman

6:15 p.m. Science & Technology Planning Meeting FE

5:15 p.m. Estate Planning in Film

6:00 p.m. Kurt Anderson: True Believers

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

JU NE/JU LY 2012

The Commonwealth Club’s 109 th Anniversary and 24th Annual

Distinguished Citizen Award Dinner Honoring: Nancy Hellman Bechtle, Dr. Steven Chu, Ron Conway & Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann

elebrating The Commonwealth Club’s 24th Annual Distinguished Citizen Award Dinner, hundreds of guests descended upon the beautiful and storied Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco on April 18th. Recognizing those who move the Bay Area forward, the Club honored with Distinguished Citizen awards Ron Conway, Dr. Steven Chu and Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann. Nancy Hellman Bechtle was bestowed with the William K. Bowes, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to honoring these individuals, the Club welcomed over 40 of the Bay

Area’s most interesting people, for A Room with Views 2012, representing the fields of sports, science, journalism, law, culinary arts, emergency services, policy, education and the arts. In what is the Club’s biggest and most important fundraiser of the year, gala attendees enjoyed a film and gave generously during a live auction. Embodying the dynamism of the Club, the Annual Dinner not only feted the worthy honorees but was representative of its yearround dedication to capturing and disseminating enthusiastic, energetic and insightful conversation!

8 9

1. Susan Desmond-Hellmann 2. Jed York, Rod Diridon 3. Nancy Hellman Bechtle, MC Hammer 4. Dan Ashley 5. Jaleh Daie, Hubert Keller, Colleen Wilcox 6. Bruce Thom, Bob Walker 7. Michael Nguyen, James Hormel 8. Ron Conway 9. Dinner at the Palace 10. Gloria Duffy 11. Dr. Duffy addresses the audience 12. Dan Ashley at the podium 13. Maryles Casto, Ross Lawley 14. Gary Malazian, Santa Susarapu 15. Ronn Owens 16. Deborah Strobin, Fred Levin, Lois Lehrman 17. Steven Dinkelspiel, Frances Dinkelspiel 18. Harold Brooks and friend 19. Russell M. Yarrow, Kit Yarrow 20. Jonathan Moscone, Tim Williams 21. Sandy Kurtzig, Tad Taube 22. Jan Wahl (right) and friends 23. Felicia Gray, Christy Duncan Anderson 24. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, George P. Shultz, Charlotte Mailliard Shultz, Nancy Hellman Bechtle 25. Prem Abraham (right) and friends 26. Clint Reilly, Janet Reilly 27. Jed York speaking to Annual DInner guests 28. Gregory Suhr, Wendy Kleinman

1. Jed York, Jonathan Moscone 2. Harold Brooks, Errol Hunter, Jennifer Anastasoff 3. Jaleh Daie, Hubert Keller, Colleen Wilcox 4. Steven Dinkelspiel, John Boland, James Carroll, Jon Steinberg 5. Russell M. Yarrow 6. Guests viewing short biographies of the honorees 7. Award recipients Nancy Hellman Bechtle, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Ron Conway, Steven Chu 8. Maryles Casto presenting Steven Chu with his award 9. Nancy Hellman Bechtle, George P. Shultz, Charlotte Mailliard Shultz 10. Maryles Casto and Ron Conway on stage 11. Guests giving a standing ovation to Nancy Hellman Bechtle Photos by Drew Altizer Photography

Journey to Cuba

Education, Art, Health Care and Religion January 11-18, 2013 - Havana and Viñales Valley Mid February - Havana, Trinidad, Santiago (dates and cost TBA) March 15-22, 2013 - Havana and Viñales Valley Continuing our successful People-to-People programs in 2012, the Club plans to operate several departures, pending license renewal from the U.S. Treasury Department. cost:

$4,395 per person, based on double occupancy and including charter air from Miami to Havana.

Antarctica Expedition Aboard M.S. L’Austral

January 17-30, 2013 After two nights in Buenos Aires, embark on a spectacular journey to Antarctica, Earth’s last frontier. Cruise aboard the exclusively chartered, intimate M.S. L’Austral, the finest vessel in Antarctic waters. Experience the “White Continent”—fantastically shaped icebergs, turquoise glaciers, bustling penguin rookeries and breaching whales—during the lingering light of the austral summer. Accompanied by an expert expedition team of naturalists, board sturdy Zodiac craft for excursions ashore and observe the antics of Antarctica’s abundant wildlife. The expedition team will provide a series of enriching lectures on this untouched wilderness. Extend your journey with an optional three-night Iguazú Falls post-trip. cost:

from $7,595, per person, based on double occupancy (and with early booking discount)

Treasures of Southern Africa From Cape Town to Victoria Falls

January 15-29, 2013 Experience the best of southern Africa, a diverse region poised along a beautiful coastline, breathtaking mountains and expansive plains. Visit cosmopolitan Cape Town and take in views from Table Mountain. Walk in Nelson Mandela’s footsteps on Robben Island and tour Soweto in Johannesburg. Continue on a 3-day safari near Kruger National Park and search for elephant, lion, and rhino. Then take a two-night deluxe train journey from Pretoria to Victoria Falls, aboard Rovos Rail. Witness the power and majesty of one of the seven Natural Wonders of the World at Victoria Falls. Throughout the adventure, enjoy guest lectures on history, nature, and contemporary issues. cost:

from $6,995 per person, based on double occupancy

The Best of Melanesia and Micronesia

Papua New Guinea, Trobriand Islands, Yap & Palau

April 16-May 2, 2013 Explore the far frontier of the western South Pacific —including the outer islands of Papua New Guinea, Yap, and Palau—which host some of the most exuberant traditional cultures and exotic tropical landscapes in Oceania. On this 17-day voyage aboard the 110-passenger Clipper Odyssey, watch energetic dance performances by the Trobriand and Yap islanders as well as the Baining tribe’s dramatic fire-dance. Hike lush jungles, stroll beaches brushed by palm fronds, view smoking volcanoes, and cruise by Zodiac along remote shorelines with our naturalist guides. View spinner dolphins and sea turtles. Snorkel or dive amongst neon damsels, parrotfish, wrasses, and giant tridacna clams. Look for magnificent frigatebirds and sulphur-crested cockatoos. cost:

from $10,980, per person, based on double occupancy

North Africa’s Mediterranean Coast Aboard the 100-Guest Corinthian April 21-30, 2013

Join Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann, the President of the American Academy of Diplomacy, as we explore North Africa’s Mediterranean coast. Visit the Moroccan town of Tangier, where a vibrant new artistic culture is emerging in the Arabic, French, and bohemian alleyways; Gibraltar, one of the world’s great landmarks of the sea; the seldom-visited Tlemcen, with its striking architecture; and Oran, founded in the 10th century. In Algeria’s Cherchell, Tipasa, Djemila, and Hippo Regius, we will visit excellent Roman ruins. And in Tunisia, explore Carthage, with its fascinating Roman and Phoenician remains, and the Bardo Museum, a repository of priceless mosaics. Learn during onboard lectures; wander medinas and kasbahs; and discover a truly remarkable collection of sites whose history spans the centuries. cost:

from approximately $6,795, per person, based on double occupancy

Celtic Lands: Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and France Aboard the Deluxe M.S. LE BORÉAL May 9-18, 2013

Join Dwight David Eisenhower II, grandson of General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and historian Celia Sandys, granddaughter of Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, as they provide exclusive lectures and personal insights during this 8-night cruise. Experience the D-Day landing beaches in Normandy, the UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Neolithic Ring of Brodgar and Skara Brae on the Orkney Islands, and Caernarfon Castle near Holyhead, Wales. Lose yourself in the austere beauty of Scotland’s Highlands and the Inner Hebrides isles of Iona, Mull and Skye. Walk in the footsteps of medieval and present-day princes in North Wales and view treasures of rich Celtic heritage in Dublin. Optional two-night Edinburgh pre-trip and two-night Paris post-trip. cost:

from approximately $5,495, per person, based on double occupancy

Legendary Turkey

From Istanbul to the Turquoise Coast

May 16-30, 2013 Discover Istanbul, Turkey’s cultural and spiritual heart, and visit the legendary Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, and Topkapi Palace, one of the world’s richest museums. Travel south to the sacred World War I battlefield of Gallipoli, ferry across the Dardanelles to Troy, and explore the wealth of Greco-Roman ruins at ancient Pergamum. Spend a full day at Turkey’s nonpareil classical city, Ephesus. Board a privately chartered gulet yacht and cruise the exquisite Turquoise Coast for four splendid days, relaxing and discovering hidden sights, quaint fishing villages, and remote ruins. End your journey in the seaside resort Antalya, with a side trip to ancient Perge. Optional post-trip extension to Cappadocia and Ankara. cost: approximately $5,095 – including air from SFO - per person, based on double occupancy

Bali and Flores

Adventure and Luxury on the Islands of Indonesia June 15-26, 2013

Experience Bali with leaders who have spent years developing relationships with Balinese royalty, government officials, artists and musicians. Learn about Bali’s history, religions, and textile and spice trades. Luxuriate in our 5-star resort in Ubud. Meet with a master mask carver; learn about the gamelan, the traditional Balinese instrument; experience magical dance performances; and tour the famous Green School. Visit a Banjar, a self-governing community, and meet with the royal princes at their palace. Fly to the island of Flores and discover beautiful coastlines, volcanic lakes, and Kelimutu National Park. Meet with a cultural arts cooperative, and learn about dye-plant harvesting, ikat work, and weaving. Marvel at the colorful underwater life during snorkeling at Maumere Bay. cost:

approximately $5,450, per person, based on double occupancy

Exploring Tibetan Paths Yunnan and Tibet

September 14-28, 2013 Explore China’s rugged Yunnan province and legendary Tibet. Meet with a local shaman, a language expert, and a writer/explorer in Yunnan. Chat with a university professor and a local carpet maker in Tibet, and watch the debates at Sera Monastery. Witness the dramatic landscapes of the Tibetan plateau and learn about the nomadic way of life. Try yak butter tea during a home visit, and meet with contemporary artists. Experience sacred Buddhism sites, like the Jokhang temple in Lhasa, and some of China’s most beautiful landscapes, like Tiger Leaping Gorge. Visit the Shanghai Museum; take the high-speed Maglev train, and follow a prominent historian on a tour of the city’s most famed and beautiful neighborhoods. cost:

approximately $6,775, per person, based on double occupancy

Discovering Eastern Europe

Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic

October 5-21, 2013 Depart on an odyssey through Central Europe that visits five distinctly different nations—Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic—focusing on the past as well as the monumental events of the last century. Tour Warsaw’s Old Town— a UNESCO World Heritage Site— and visit the haunting concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Explore Budapest and view the scenic Danube Bend. In Vienna, attend a classical music performance and tour majestic Schönbrunn Palace. Dine with local families in Bratislava and explore Prague’s acclaimed museums and architectural treasures. An optional 3-day/2-night post-tour extension in Prague is available. cost:

approximately $5,450 – including air from SFO – per person, based on double occupancy

Taste of Spain

Food and Wine of Southern Spain

October 9-21, 2013 Join our world-class guide, an author and gastronomy expert, as you sample regional food and wine, and meet with chefs, winemakers, and restaurant owners for an insider’s perspective on the culinary delights of Southern Spain. Visit Madrid’s Prado Museum; tour the Golden Age Theater in Almagro; and sample Andalucian olive oils. Stay in the Moorish city of Granada and visit the Alhambra. Enjoy wine and tapas and explore the gypsy caves of Sacromonte to watch a zambra performance. Discover Cadiz’s colorful market; tour a sherry bodega; and wander the Jewish quarter in Seville. Visit the legendary Mezquita in Córdoba and relax in the Plaza Mayor of Chinchón. cost:

approximately $5,095, per person, based on double occupancy

Journey to Northern India

Diwali and the Festival of Lights

October 23-November 8, 2013 India exists at a remarkable crossroads of the modern world intersecting with life as it has been lived for millennia. From the capital city of New Delhi to the breathtaking vistas of Rajasthan, take in this colorful and mind-boggling country. Admire the magnificent work of Mughal architecture at the Taj Mahal; take an elephant ride at Amber Fort; discover the opulent forts and palaces of Jaipur and the elaborate Hindu temples at Khajuraho. Experience Diwali, the Festival of Lights, and marvel at the romantic lake city of Udaipur. Witness the Hindu rituals in Varanasi and take a sunrise boat ride on the Ganges. Learn from local experts about modern India during guest lectures. cost:

approximately $5,295, per person, based on double occupancy

Echoes of the Past: Remembering the Civil War

A Voyage Between Alexandria and Charleston - Aboard the 138-Guest Yorktown October 28-November 7, 2013

In 2011 the United States began a four-year commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Sail from Alexandria, down the Potomac River for an excursion to historic Fredericksburg, site of the infamous Battle of Fredericksburg, one of the largest of the Civil War. Explore Petersburg National Battlefield, and Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, renowned today for its monuments to Confederate heroes. Along the North Carolina coast, discover the historic towns of New Bern, Morehead City, and Wilmington, each of which played crucial roles in Union battle victories. We conclude our voyage in Charleston Harbor, where the war began in 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Along the way learn from guest speakers and study leaders. cost:

from $4,895, per person, based on double occupancy

Patagonia Frontiers

Argentina and Chile by Land & Sea January 2014

Discover the majestic fjords and glaciers of Southern Patagonia and the dramatic scenery of Torres del Paine. After three nights in Buenos Aires, set sail on a three-night cruise aboard a 64-cabin expedition ship built specifically for sailing the Patagonian Channels. Cruise through the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle and Murray channels to Cape Horn, followed by a call at Magdalena Island, home to more than 120,000 Magellanic penguins. Spend three days at Torres del Paine National Park, a 700-square-mile World Biosphere Reserve of jagged mountain peaks, ice-blue glaciers, turquoise lakes, rushing rivers, and thunderous waterfalls. Experience Chile’s Lake District, including Vicente Rosales Park, Osorno Volcano and Petrohue Waterfalls. End in Santiago for a private winery tour. cost:

approximately $7,850 - including air from SFO - per person, based on double occupancy

We still have space on these 2012 departures: Legacy of the Silk Road Burma (Myanmar) and Laos Uzbekistan & Turkmenistan

Kingdoms of the East

October 6-20, 2012

October 14-27, 2012

CST# 2096889-40

Photos: (Scotland) Visit Scotland / Flickr, (Melanesia girl) G. Fasanelli, (Melanesia boat) S. Metz, (Cuba car) Marc Verart, (Cuba, Tibet) Kristina Nemeth, (Spain) Gerry Dawes, (Varanasi) nicocrisafulli / Flickr, (Antarctica) davidkn1 / Flickr, (Burma) Stafan Munder / Flickr

For Information & Reservations: visit commonwealthclub.org/travel call (415) 597-6720 email travel@commonwealthclub.org

Legend

San Francisco

Free program for members

East Bay

Free program for everyone

Silicon Valley

Members–only program

Thu

Fri

S at

Sun

Noon Medical Uses of Marijuana 6:00 p.m. Getting Equal and the Marriage Equality Movement 6:00 p.m. Jason Goldberg: Fab.com 7:00 p.m. Raj Patel

Noon Martha Kanter: Making College Accessible and Affordable FM

11:00 a.m. Private Tour of Sculpturesite/A New Leaf Gallery in Sonoma

Noon A Tiger in the Kitchen 2:00 p.m. Russian Hill Walking Tour 5:15 p.m. The Buck’s Breakthrough Discoveries

Noon Financing Infrastructure for America FE

July 01

Noon General Colin Powell 2:00 p.m. Chinatown Walking Tour 6:00 p.m. 81st Annual California Book Awards

6:00 p.m. Zoobiquity

Noon Sweeta Nori FM

2:00 p.m. San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour 6:00 p.m. Sugar Addiction

2:00 p.m. North Beach Walking Tour 6:00 p.m. Harvey Rose 6:00 p.m. Charles Yu

J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

June 04–07 Exhibits at the Club

M O N 04 | San Francisco

May 08 – July 05

Exploring the Origin of the Modern Cookbook

Thriving Through and Beyond Trauma: Adjustment to Acquired Disability

“Far From Home” Artworks by Shane Weare This exhibition of etchings by Britishborn Weare spans the period from his student days in London at the Royal College of Art to settling in California as an alien resident, raising a family, becoming a U.S. citizen and head of printmaking at Sonoma State University. Weare has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, and his work has been collected by more than 50 major museums and universities.

Anne Willan, Author, The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers and Recipes that Made the Modern Cookbook

So what was for breakfast during the French Revolution? From the opulent banquet halls of the Burgundian dukes to the tables of simple English countrymen and American settlers, Willan explores the religious, economic and political crosscurrents that influenced their meals. She traces the development of recipes over time and updates these recipes for the modern kitchen.

Gary Karp, Author, Life on Wheels: The A to Z Guide to Living Fully with Mobility Issues and Disability & the Art of Kissing

Karp became paraplegic at the age of 18 in a fall from a tree. Now he is an internationally recognized voice for what he terms the “modern disability” experience. The author of two books, numerous articles and blogs, and a highly active public speaker and trainer, Karp sheds light on the innate drive in us all to reach for life and potential. Karp believes success depends on factors including access to services and a strong support network.

MLF: THE ARTS Location: SF Club Office Cost: FREE Time: Regular SF Club Office hours Program Organizer: Lynn Curtis

MLF: BAY GOURMET Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

M O N 04 | San Francisco

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Innovation Power

This biography by Walter Isaacson is the first authorized by Steve Jobs. Consisting mostly of a series of interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, the biography also includes interviews with family members, friends, adversaries, competitors and colleagues. Isaacson vividly describes Jobs’ personal life and personality as well as his influence on the diverse industries of personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing. This discussion will be led by Howard Crane and Barbara Massey. The author will not be present.

Dan Adler, President, California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) Rex Northen, Executive Director, Clean Tech Open Cathy Zoi, Partner, Silver Lake Kraftwerk Past Winner of Clean Tech Open – TBA

MLF: SAN FRANCISCO BOOK DISCUSSION Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Howard Crane

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

MLF: PSYCHOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 4:45 p.m. networking, 5:15 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students Program Organizer: Patrick O’Reilly

Equity markets are not giving a lot of love to clean tech startups these days. One concern is how reliant they are on government mandates or subsidies. Another is whether Silicon Valley venture capitalists are pulling back after realizing it is tougher to make their hurdle rates in the slow-moving and capital-intensive power sector. Project finance is a more promising story. Entrepreneurs are forging ahead with exciting innovations on the supply and demand side of energy production and delivery. We’ll look at hot sectors, exciting companies, job creation and what skills are in demand by fast-moving startups aiming to revolutionize how California and America will power the future. Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. reception Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Also know: Part of the Chevron Innovation in California Series

JU NE/JU LY 2012

T U E 05 | San Francisco

Is Democracy Killing Itself? Philip Howard, Attorney; Chair, Common Good; Author, Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America and The Death of Common Sense

Is government dysfunction inevitable, or the result of too many laws making everyone powerless? Howard contends that “our mature democracy is so encrusted with accumulated laws and mandates that it no longer has the capacity to make the sound and informed choices needed to meet the challenges of the times.” Come hear a top lawyer make his case for common sense and fewer laws. MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: George Hammond

W E D 06 | San Francisco

FOREIGN LANGUAGE GROUPS

David Walker, Former U.S. Comptroller General: Correcting America’s Fiscal Imbalances

Free for members Location: SF Club Office FRENCH, Intermediate Class Thursdays, noon Pierrette Spetz, Graziella Danieli, danieli@sfsu.edu FRENCH, Advanced Conversation Tuesdays, noon Gary Lawrence, (925) 932-2458

Founder, President and CEO, Comeback America Initiative; Author, Comeback America

Through his efforts with Comeback America Initiative, Walker aims to remain a nonpartisan voice for lawmakers in the hopes of correcting the country’s federal, state and local fiscal imbalances.

GERMAN, Int./Adv. Conversation Wednesdays, noon Sara Shahin, (415) 314-6482 ITALIAN, Intermediate Class Mondays, noon Ebe Fiori Sapone, (415) 564-6789 RUSSIAN, Int./Advanced Conversation Mondays, 1:30 p.m. Rita Sobolev, (925) 376-7889 SPANISH, Advanced Conversation (fluent only) Fridays, noon

Location: SF Club Office Times: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost:$20 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Also know: Part of the Charles and Louise Travers Series on Ethics and Accountability

T H U 0 7 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

T H U 07 | San Francisco

General Colin Powell

81st Annual California Book Awards

Former U.S. Secretary of State; Author, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership With Dan Ashley

Jack Boulware, Co-founder and Co-director, Litquake; Author, Gimme Something Better - Master of Ceremonies

In his new book, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership, Powell opens up for the first time to reveal the principles that guided his journey from being the son of Jamaican immigrants to becoming the first African-American secretary of state. Location: Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Parkway Time: 11:15 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $25 standard, $15 members, $10 students. Premium (includes book and priority seating in front) $55 standard, $45 members Also know: Part of American Values series. Underwriters: Koret and Taube Family Foundations and The Bernard Osher Foundation

Since 1931, the California Book Awards have honored literary excellence among authors in the Golden State. At our special awards ceremony, we will bestow gold and silver medals in several categories, including: fiction, nonfiction, first fiction, poetry, young adult, juvenile, Californiana and contribution to publishing. Hear from some literary giants and amazing writers. See you at the ceremony! Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:15 p.m. pre-program reception, 6 p.m. awards ceremony, 7:15 p.m. book signing and dessert reception Cost: $20 standard, $15 members Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation. Special thanks to Dr. Martha Cox and the late Ambassador Bill Lane for their generous endowment, allowing the California Book Awards to take place. Sponsored by Bank of the West. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (415) 5976705.

J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

June 07–14 T H U 07 | San Francisco

M O N 11 | San Francisco

Chinatown Walking Tour

Nuclear Revival?

Enjoy another Commonwealth Club Neighborhood Adventure. Join Rick Evans for a memorable midday walk and discover the history and mysteries of Chinatown. Explore colorful alleys and side streets. Visit a Taoist temple, an herbal store, the site of the first public school in the state, and the famous Fortune Cookie Factory. There is a short break for a tea sample during the tour. Location: Meet at corner of Grant and Bush, in front of Starbucks, near Chinatown Gate Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–5 p.m. tour Cost: $45 standard, $35 members Program Organizer: Kristina Nemeth Also know: Temple visit requires walking up three flights of stairs. Limited to 12 people. Participants must pre-register. Tour operates rain or shine.

Jim Boyd, Former Commissioner, California Energy Commission Marv Fertel, CEO, Nuclear Energy Institute Joe Rubin, Reporter, Capitol Public Radio/Center for Investigative Journalism

Two new nuclear plants are moving forward for the first time in nearly 30 years. Boosters of atomic power say that’s an indication an American atomic revival is back on track after the radioactive disaster in Fukushima. But the cost of the new U.S. plants is a staggering $10 billion apiece, raising questions of whether new nukes can stand on their own legs without government crutches. Abundant and cheap natural gas is also undercutting new nuclear, coal and renewable sources of electricity. What other sources of low-carbon energy could supply the 20 percent of electricity now generated by splitting atoms? Join us for a discussion about a critical juncture in powering America’s future. Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. networking reception Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)

M O N 11 | San Francisco

T U E 12 | San Francisco

T U E 1 2 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

Love: A Rational Explanation

Raj Patel: Stuffed and Starved, Still

Joseph Stiglitz

George Hammond, Author, Rational Idealism

Activist; Academic; Author, Stuffed and Starved, The Value of Nothing

Monday Night Philosophy steps into the debate about whether love is irrational. The apparently inexplicable ways we fall into and out of it are the grist of the entertainment industry, but is there a clear pattern to it all after all? You be the judge after Hammond describes the elements of the emotion we all love to experience. MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: George Hammond

Half the world is malnourished, the other half obese. Why is there such a large discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots for what we all need: food? Patel conducts a global investigation to make sense of the world food crisis and charges that “the food system is filled with choices made by a handful of powerful people, in smoke-filled rooms, over the objections of the majority.” Hear a story of nefarious false choices and of international resistance movements that takes you from seed to store to plate. Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

JU NE/JU LY 2012

Nobel Prize Winner, Economics; Professor, Columbia; Author, The Price of Inequality Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon.com

Critics are charging that our current economic system has made the U.S. the most unequal advanced industrial country, with crippled growth and undermined democracy. To bridge the growing gap, Stiglitz offers his plan for changing our current fiscal and budgetary policies to create a more just and prosperous future. Location: Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students; Premium (book and front row) $40 standard, $40 members.

W E D 1 3 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

W E D 13 | San Francisco

Gail Collins

South Africa’s Conflict Resolution Role in Africa

Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times; Author, As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda Katrina Heron, Editor-at-Large, Newsweek/The Daily Beast – Moderator

Hon. Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, Deputy Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, the Republic of South Africa In conversation with Dr. Saleem Badat, Vice Chancellor, Rhodes University, South Africa Kevin O’Malley, President, TechTalk / Studio – Moderator

Collins posits that Texas has become the bellwether of a far-reaching national movement that continues to have profound social and economic consequences. The proud state of big oil and bigger ambition has created a conservative political agenda that is shaping our national identity, Collins declares.

While dramatic changes are taking place on the international scene and among the major powers, Africa continues to suffer from a multitude of violent conflicts. Ebrahim, a hero in the struggle against apartheid, will provide insights and perspectives on the current state of Africa’s conflict zones, the outlook for reconciliation and peace, South Africa’s role on the UN Security Council, and the role South Africa is playing as mediator in Africa.

Location: Schultz Cultural Hall, Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program,

MLF: BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP/INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Kevin O’Malley

1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students. Premium: $40 standard, $40 members (copy of the book and seating in front)

W E D 13 | San Francisco

T H U 14 | San Francisco

Frank Deford

Getting Equal and the Marriage Equality Movement

Senior Contributing Writer, Sports Illustrated; Author, Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter

Stuart Gaffney, National Media Director, Marriage Equality USA John Lewis, Legal Director, Marriage Equality USA Robin McGehee, Director and Founder, GetEQUAL

Deford’s career as a chronicler of American culture has included more than 50 years of work as an award-winning writer for Sports Illustrated. His accomplishments have also included longtime positions as a regular commentator for National Public Radio and as a correspondent for HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” Now Deford provides an account of his, and ultimately the nation’s, experiences in sports journalism. Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

The fervor historically reserved for following sports teams can now be seen in the surging public interest in court rulings on equality measures in the LGBT community. As plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008, Gaffney and Lewis are uniquely qualified to clarify the maze of recent marriage equality rulings and provide a comprehensive update. McGehee was propelled into national-level activism post-Prop. 8 and represents a generation of activists demanding total equality. She is among only a handful of people who have been both arrested at the White House and later invited there. She’ll be discussing strategies for the future. MLF: LGBT Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Laurie Wagner

J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

June 14–19 T H U 14 | San Francisco

T H U 1 4 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

T H U 14 | San Francisco

Medical Uses of Marijuana

Raj Patel: Stuffed and Starved, Still

Fab.com: The Design Darling of Ecommerce

Clint Werner, Author, Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease

If using marijuana can reduce our chances for developing a variety of cancers as well as dementia from Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, asks Werner, why is it still illegal? He argues that the unique compounds found in the cannabis plant, the cannabinoids, closely mimic and supplement the health-protective activity of our bodies’ own endocannabinoids, which work to prevent and interrupt disease processes through the endocannabinoid system.

Activist; Academic; Author, Stuffed and Starved, The Value of Nothing

Jason Goldberg, Founder and CEO In conversation with Sarah Lacy, Founder, PandoDaily

Fab took the tech world by storm after its launch in June 2011 and has been hailed as the planet’s fastest growing ecommerce site. What’s behind the design-focused retailer’s rise? Fab could be on its way to becoming the world’s most valuable design resource. Join us for a conversation with Goldberg on the rise of curated content, social shopping and the next phase of ecommerce.

MLF: HEALTH & MEDICINE Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizer: Bill Grant

Location: TBA Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students

Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. networking and VIP receptions Cost: Regular: $25 standard, $15 members. Premium (priority seating and VIP reception) $45 standard, $30 members

F R I 15 | San Francisco

S AT 1 6 | N o r t h B a y

M O N 18 | San Francisco

Martha Kanter: Making College Accessible and Affordable

Private Tour of Sculpturesite/ A New Leaf Gallery in Sonoma

Middle East Discussion Group

U.S. Under Secretary of Education; Former Chancellor, FoothillDe Anza Community Colllege District

Sculpturesite is Northern California’s premier sculpture gallery, set against the backdrop of the beautiful Sonoma wine country. More than 60 sculptures are displayed on the site’s patios, olive groves and throughout the innovative Cornerstone Gardens complex. Micmacker will lead us on this private tour. After the tour, you are at leisure to visit the Cornerstone shops, wineries and gourmet cafe.

Brigitte Micmacker, Gallery Co-founder

At UC Davis, tuition and fees have risen a staggering 185 percent over the past decade, and this is not an isolated case. The cost of higher education has skyrocketed across the state in recent years, pushing the prospect of a degree further out of reach for many students. What can be done to turn this crisis around and keep education affordable? Kanter will discuss the administration’s plans to expand the availability of college for every American who seeks it. Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, students free (with valid ID)

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MLF: THE ARTS Location: 23588 Arnold Drive (Hwy 121), Sonoma Time: 11 a.m. meet at gallery Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Peter Lazar

JU NE/JU LY 2012

Make your voice heard in an enriching, provocative and fun discussion with fellow Club members as you weigh in on events shaping the face of the Middle East. Each month, the Middle East Member-Led Forum hosts an informal roundtable discussion on a topic frequently suggested by recent headlines. After a brief introduction, the floor will be open for discussion. All interested members are encouraged to attend. There will also be a brief planning session. MLF: MIDDLE EAST Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Celia Menczel

M O N 18 | San Francisco

M O N 1 8 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

Divided Political Heart

C. W. Gortner: Isabella of Castile

Lev Grossman

E.J. Dionne Jr., Senior Fellow, Brookings Institute; Columnist, The Washington Post; Author, Our Divided Political Heart

Author, The Queen’s Vow

Washington Post op-ed columnist Dionne is an expert on competing political philosophies in America. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is poisoning the nation’s political atmosphere, Dionne argues that Americans can’t agree on who we are because we can’t agree on what it is that makes us Americans. Can we get past this impasse?

Book Critic, Time; Author, The Magicians and The Magician King

Isabella of Castile is best known for funding Columbus’s dreams, but her full story is richer and far more complex. Isabella, whose strategies and love-against-the-rules marriage united a fractured country, and on whose watch the Inquisition created indelible images of theocracy gone astray, is reimagined by Gortner as a young teenager caught in webs of royal intrigue, followed by a mythic rise to power that transformed Spain and the Americas.

Grossman’s 2009 novel The Magicians was labeled by critics and fans “Narnia for adults.” The dark tale of a magical school for adolescents became a bestseller that spawned a sequel and soon attracted the attention of Hollywood. Join us as the author and popular blogger discusses what’s in store for Quentin Coldwater and his fellow graduates of the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. Location: Cubberley Community Theatre, 4000 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception with light hors d’oeuvres, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $25 standard, $15 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students Program Organizer: George Hammond Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

T U E 19 | San Francisco

Science & Technology Forum Discussion Group: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Fixing the Game: What Capitalism Can Learn from Sports

Join us for a lively discussion on the nature and role of the public affairs forum in our globalized world, where rapid technological changes and scientific discoveries are constantly advancing opportunities for dialogue. The public sphere has shifted from the national to the global and is increasingly constructed around ever-changing global communication networks.We will discuss how this new public sphere may enhance the dialogue between different social collectives and their cultures in the hope of sharing meaning and understanding.

Roger Martin, Dean, University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management; Columnist, Businessweek; Author, Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL In conversation with Doug LeMoine, Managing Director, Cooper Kevin O’Malley, President, TechTalk / Studio – Moderator

What can business learn from sports about management, gambling, point spreads and the dangers of playing an “expectations” market rather than a real market of tangible goods and services? Martin proposes that capitalism can avoid bubbles and crashes by emulating the NFL. This program will present five positive steps to heal American capitalism, fix the game, play tough and win in the real world. MLF: BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Kevin O’Malley

MLF: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 6:15 p.m. discussion Cost: FREE Program Organizers: Dan Trachewsky and Tom Devine

J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

June 19–26 T U E 1 9 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

TUE 19 | East Bay

W E D 20 | San Francisco

Adam Lashinsky

Your Brain on Computers: Neuroscience and Tech’s Devices of Distraction

Road to Valor

Senior Editor at Large, Fortune; Author, Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired and Secretive Company Really Works Angie Coiro, Radio Host, “Live from the Left Coast” – Moderator

What’s next for Apple? In 2008, Lashinsky predicted that Tim Cook would eventually succeed Steve Jobs as CEO of the company. He takes us inside the offices at 1 Infinite Loop and offers a rare glimpse into Apple’s ecosystem, corporate culture and leadership strategies that have helped propel the company to success. Location: The Tech Museum, 201 S. Market Street, San Jose Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing Cost: $10 standard, $5 members Also know: In association with The Tech Museum

Adam Gazzaley, Associate Professor of Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry; Founding Director, Neuroscience Imaging Center, UCSF Matt Richtel, Reporter, The New York Times; Author, Our Brain on Computers

Does constant use of devices impact our physical neurology? Join us as cognitive neuroscientist Gazzaley and tech journalist Richtel discuss the distracting nature of devices and attempt to unearth the impact that technology has on our most important computing asset: our brains.

Andres McConnon, Historical Researcher; Coauthor, Road to Valor Aili McConnon, Journalist; Co-author, Road to Valor

Gino Bartali was a chain-smoking, Chianti-loving, Tuscan cyclist who won the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948. During WW II, Bartali secretly used his cycling fame to help Jews by smuggling false identity documents, hidden in the frame of his bicycle, past military checkpoints and by sheltering a Jewish family in an apartment he financed with his cycling winnings. The McConnons explore his legacy.

Location: Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $22 standard, $12 members, $7 students

MLF: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Also know: In assn. with SF Bicycle Coalition Program Organizer: Linda Calhoun

TUE 19 | SAN FRANCISCO

W E D 20 | San Francisco

T H U 21 | San Francisco

Scotland’s Place in the World: A Good Global Citizen

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Just a Few Minor Exaggerations

Russian Hill Walking Tour

Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland

Tiny Scotland has had an enduring influence over the British Isles and beyond. Discover more about this country and the challenges it faces, including climate change and the question of independence, as the Club hosts Scotland’s first minister, the equivalent of prime minister. Salmond worked for decades in high-level economics and banking and made political history after becoming the first nationalist to be elected first minister of Scotland, securing control from the longstanding Labour Party and proclaiming that he anticipated Scotland to be entirely independent within a decade. Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

Will Durst, Political Satirist

Famed political satirist and five-time Emmy nominee Durst, hailed by The New York Times as “possibly the best political comic in the country,” has configured a career spanning multiple forms of media commentary and more than 800 television appearances. Join him at The Commonwealth Club as he gives an undoubtedly entertaining account of his life and work. Location: SF Club Office Times: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost:$20 standard, $12 members, $7 students

JU NE/JU LY 2012

Join a more active Commonwealth Club Neighborhood Adventure! Russian Hill is a magical area with secret gardens and amazing views. Join Rick Evans for a twohour hike up hills and staircases and learn about the history of this neighborhood. See where great artists and architects lived and worked, and walk down residential streets where some of the most historically significant houses in the Bay Area are located. Location: Meet in front of Swensen’s Ice Cream Store located at 1999 Hyde Street at Union. Tour ends about six blocks from the Swensen’s Ice Cream Shop at the corner of Vallejo and Jones. Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2– 4 p.m. tour Cost: $45 standard, $35 members Program Organizer: Kristina Nemeth Also know: Steep hills and staircases, parking difficult. Limited to 20. Must pre-register. Tour operates rain or shine.

T H U 21 | San Francisco

F R I 22 | San Francisco

A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family

The Research and Teamwork Behind the Buck’s Breakthrough Discoveries

Financing Infrastructure for America: Are We Becoming a Second-Class Country?

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Author, A Tiger in the Kitchen, A Memoir of Food and Family

Mary K. McEachron, J.D., Chief Administrative Officer, the Buck Institute

Panelists TBA

By learning to prepare her ancestors’ pineapple tarts, pandan-skin moon cakes and more, Tan embarked on a study of culinary anthropology in which her family’s roots are revealed. She pieces together family history, filled with gambling dens, opium addictions and family schisms. In the kitchen, Tan learned to infuse her New York lifestyle with her Singaporean heritage.

By working to slow the effects of aging and prevent or delay the disorders commonly associated with it, McEachron and Buck Institute scientists are focused on extending the healthy years of life so that growing older doesn’t have to mean growing ill.

Transportation experts will discuss their growing concerns regarding what they see as the woeful lack of investments and funding for our national highways, bridges, transit and airport systems. As they tackle this important issue, they will also review a newly completed “heavy sample” national survey.

MLF: GROWNUPS Location: SF Club Office Time: 4:45 p.m. networking reception, 5:15 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students (with valid ID) Also know: In association with San Francisco Village Program Organizer: John Milford

Location: SF Club Office Time: 8:30 a.m. check-in/light continental breakfast, 9 a.m. panel discussion, 10 a.m. keynote Cost: FREE Also know: Underwritten by the Mineta Transportation Institute

M O N 25 | San Francisco

T U E 26 | San Francisco

Tech Wadi

The Candidate: What It Takes to Win

The Sky Did Not Fall: Life After the Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

MLF: BAY GOURMET Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Also know: Underwriter: Bernard Osher Foundation. In assn. with Singapore Consulate-General Program Organizer: Cathy Curtis

Dr. Ossama Hassanein, Chair, Tech Wadi, BDNA Corp in Silicon Valley and Echovox in Geneva Dina Ibrahim, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Broadcast Communication Arts, SFSU – Moderator

Dr. Hassanein is an international entrepreneur, in addition to serving as a mentor and lecturer. He will discuss Tech Wadi, a nonprofit organization building bridges between the U.S. and the Middle East and North Africa to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and economic development. MLF: MIDDLE EAST/BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP/ SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, students free (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Celia Menczel

Samuel Popkin, Professor of Political Science, UCSD; Consulting Analyst, Clinton, Gore and CBS News; Author, The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House

Ty Walrod, Co-founder, OutServe Col. Stewart Borhoft, U.S. Army (Ret.) Capt. M. Matthew Phelps, USMC

A campaign veteran and political expert, Popkin will share his take on the politics of presidential campaigns. This topic couldn’t be timelier, amid the ongoing primaries and the upcoming presidential election. Filled with entertaining characters and lively stories from campaigns past, his new book takes a look at previous elections and brings us up to speed on the 2012 election season.

American military personnel have continued their professional defense of America with no disruption after the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Active duty troops report that the situation is normal now that there is open service for lesbians and gays in the military. From the front lines, we get firsthand, personal-experience updates on how the change in policy has affected individual lives of servicemembers across the globe.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)

MLF: LGBT Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizer: Julian Chang

J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

June 26 – July 11 T U E 26 | San Francisco

W E D 27 | San Francisco

T H U 28 | San Francisco

Connected Health: How Technology Is Revolutionizing Health Care

Abraham Sofaer, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow: Effective Policy Toward Iran

Zoobiquity

Jody Ranck, Analyst, mHealth Alliance, UN Foundation and IntraHealth International; Principal Investigator, Public Health Institute; Author, Connected Health In conversation with Scott Stropkay, Co-founder, Essential

George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Hoover Institution; Legal Advisor, Dept. of State, 1985 to 1990; Author, Talking on Iran George P. Shultz, Former U.S. Secretary of State – Moderator

Mobiles, big data, the Internet and social media are the early stages of a new algorithmic revolution that offers the opportunity to transform health systems. What are the most promising of these technologies, and what are the socio-political and cultural challenges we face?

It makes sense now, Sofaer posits, before Iran has shown both the ability and the intention to develop nuclear weapons, for the U.S. to stop projecting weakness by indulging the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ illegal conduct, and to start utilizing any opportunity to negotiate professionally and consistently.

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Cardiologist, UCLA Medical Center; Co-author, Zoobiquity Kathryn Bowers, Science Writer; Co-author, Zoobiquity

Cardiologist and psychiatrist NattersonHorowitz and science writer Bowers look at the connections between the way human beings and animals live, die, get sick and heal in their natural settings. They delve into an array of disciplines – evolution, anthropology, sociology, biology, cuttingedge medicine and zoology – to provide a new understanding of what animals can teach us about the human body and mind.

MLF: BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizer: Kevin O’Malley

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students Also know: Part of the American Values Series. Underwriters: Koret & Taube Family Foundations.

MLF: HEALTH & MEDICINE/SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Organizers: Bill Grant and Daniel Trachewsky

F R I 29 | San Francisco

M O N 02 | San Francisco

Sweeta Nori: The State of Afghanistan

The Old Gringo

United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and Global Democracy

Afghanistan Country Director, Women for Women International

A leading advocate for global women’s issues discusses the state of post-troop withdrawal in Afghanistan as well as the role of women in peace talks with the Taliban. In July 2004, Nori launched Afghanistan’s first microcredit lending program targeting women, which has since disbursed over $16 million to approximately 64,400 women. MLF: MIDDLE EAST Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $8 Women for Women International members, students free (with valid ID) Program Organizer: Celia Menczel

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

The group will discuss The Old Gringo, by Carlos Fuentes, one of his greatest works. The book tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American author, soldier and journalist and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa’s soldiers – particularly his encounter with one of Villa’s generals, Tomas Arroyo, as well as with a spirited young American woman named Harriet Winslow. As a reminder, this is a book discussion; the author will not be present. MLF: SAN FRANCISCO BOOK DISCUSSION Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. program Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Howard Crane Also know: Because space is limited, if after signing up your plans change, please be courteous to your fellow members and cancel your reservation by phone.

JU NE/JU LY 2012

Andreas Bummel, Secretary-General, Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, Berlin

Globalization and efforts to shape global policies can make the absence of democracy at the international level very troubling. UNPA aims to address this by including citizens in global decision-making through elected representatives. Come hear from one of the world’s leading activists for the establishment of a world parliament. MLF: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students Program Organizer: John O. Sutter Also know: In association with Democratic World Federalists

M O N 09 | San Francisco

T U E 10 | San Francisco

Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Henri Bergson and the Energy of Time

Story Wars

Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor, The Washington Post; Author, Imperial Life in the Emerald City and Little America

Suzanne Guerlac, Professor of French Literature, UC Berkeley; Author, Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson

One of the world’s foremost reporters on the war and nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan gives us a startling, behind-the-scenes account of the struggle between President Obama and the military to reconstruct Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran describes the disillusioned diplomats, frustrated soldiers and headstrong officers who have come to define the process of pumping American money and soldiers into Afghan nation-building.

Monday Night Philosophy focuses on Henri Bergson, who asks us to think not only about time, but in time. He asks us to think dynamically instead of statically. Professor Guerlac shows how this leads, as Bergson puts it, to the “breaking of many frames” and philosophical frameworks, as well as to a new way of writing philosophy.

Jonah Sachs, Co-founder, Free Range Studios; Author, Story Wars Jenna Briand, Vice President of Content, Participant Media

The lead character in the story of carbon is a gas that is invisible and has no smell. The impacts of that gas are often thought to fall first on polar bears and people in faraway lands, in a time far into the future. Though human creation of carbon pollution is believed to be hitting closer to home faster than many expected, there is still a dearth of compelling narratives about how global warming affects the lives of average people. Join an evening with skilled storytellers for a look at the story of our times.

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students

MLF: HUMANITIES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizer: George Hammond

TUE 10 | East Bay

W E D 11 | San Francisco

Belva Davis

Chris Hayes

Expeditions into Extreme Affordability

Host, “This Week in Northern California,” KQED TV; Author, Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism

Editor-at-Large, The Nation; MSNBC Host, “Up With Chris Hayes”; Author, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

From being the first black TV journalist in the West to one of the nation’s most respected media figures, Davis has changed the face of American journalism. Now, she recounts a harrowing personal history interwoven with the cultural upheaval of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. She shares her story of courage, grace and determination as she witnessed some of the most transformative events of her generation. Location: Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $22 standard, $12 members, $7 students Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

James M. Patell, Professor of Public and Private Management, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

MSNBC’s rising star Hayes offers a radically novel answer to what led America into what he dubs the “Fail Decade”: an era plagued with the failures of Congress, Wall Street and even Major League Baseball. Hayes mixes deft political analysis, timely social commentary and deep historical understanding in offering an argument that traces the roots of our present crisis and mistrust of authority to meritocracy. Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students. Premium $40 standard, $40 members (includes copy of book and seating in the front).

Patell will discuss the Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, an interdisciplinary project course at Stanford d-school in which graduate students apply design, engineering and business skills to create solutions for challenges faced by the world’s poor. Projects have ranged from irrigation systems to incubators for low birth-weight infants. MLF: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/ SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Also know: In association with NorCal Peace Corps Association Program Organizer: Karen Keefer

J U N E/J U LY 2012

THE COMMO N WE AL TH

July 12–30 T H U 12 | San Francisco

T H U 12 | San Francisco

M O N 16 | San Francisco

San Francisco Architecture Walking Tour

Sugar Addiction: Recovery from the Greatest Dietary Crisis of All Time

Chuck Palahniuk: The Monsters Within

Explore San Francisco’s Financial District with historian Rick Evans. Hear about the famous architects who influenced the building of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Discover hard-to-find rooftop gardens, Art Deco lobbies, unique open spaces and historic landmarks. This is a tour for locals, with hidden gems you can only find on foot! For those interested in socializing afterward, we will conclude the tour at a local watering hole.

Julia Ross, MA, MFT, NNTS, CEO, Recovery Systems; Author, The Diet Cure and The Mood Cure

Location: Lobby of Galleria Park Hotel, 191 Sutter St. Time: 1:45 p.m. check-in, 2–4:30 p.m. tour Cost: $40 standard, $30 members Also know: Tour operates rain or shine. Limited to 20 people. Participants must pre-register. The tour covers less than one mile of walking in the Financial District. Involves stairs.

While exposing the surprising contribution of low-calorie dieting to the overeating epidemic, Ross, a celebrated integrative pioneer and educator in the fields of addiction and eating disorders treatment, focuses primarily on how we can correct the faulty appetite chemistry that drives it. Her approach, based on neuronutrient research from the chemical dependency field, is widely known for its unique effectiveness.

Author, Fight Club, Invisible Monsters Remix

Fight Club and Choke author Palahniuk is a modern master when it comes to blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. Now, Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters is back with a vengeance. Remixed with new material and design, it reads like a road memoir of pills, betrayal, dreams and plastic surgery. After our interview at the Club, attendees are invited to join us for an after-party at 111 Minna.

MLF: HEALTH & MEDICINE Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizer: Patty James

Location: Program at SF Club Office, afterparty at 111 Minna Time: 6 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30 p.m. book signing and after-party Cost: $20 standard, $5 members. Ticket with book $40 standard, $25 members. Also know: Underwriter: Bernard Osher Fdtn.

T U E 17 | San Francisco

T U E 1 7 | S i l i co n Va l l e y

M O N 23 | San Francisco

Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black: Two Slices of American Pie

Judith Horstman

Science & Technology Planning Meeting

Odd couple of the year, McCain and Black have written a love letter to America. In a cross-country tour to probe our beautifully weird country, the liberal comedian dad and the rising pundit and media darling explored nooks of American life, while stopping at every Olive Garden they came across, of course. Witness the oddball odyssey and hear their story live at the Castro Theatre.

Welcome to the new old age! In the fourth book of her Scientific American series on the brain, Horstman presents a realistic and encouraging overview of the wellaged brain, a sobering look at what can go wrong, and the latest in what neuroscience is finding to help you stay healthy longer. This new and positive message about growing older describes how to preserve what you’ve got, minimize what you’ve lost, and optimize the vigor and health of your brain as you grow older.

Author, The Scientific American Healthy Aging Brain: The Neuroscience of Making the Most of Your Mature Mind

Location: Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St. Time: 6:15 p.m. check-in and premium reception, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing Cost: $25 standard, $15 members, $7 students. Premium (reception with McCain and Black, book and priority seating - limited number available) $45 standard, $30 members

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Location: Sobrato Center for Non-Profits, 1400 Parkmoor Ave., San Jose Time: 6:30 p.m. check-in, 7 p.m. program, 8 p.m. book signing Cost: $15 standard, $10 members

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Join fellow Club members with similar interests and brainstorm upcoming Science & Technology programs. All Commonwealth Club members are welcome. We explore visions for the future through science and technology. Discuss current issues and share your insights with fellow Club members to shape and plan programs for the months ahead. MLF: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 6:15 p.m. planning meeting Cost: FREE Program Organizer: Chisako Ress

T U E 24 | San Francisco

W E D 25 | San Francisco

T H U 26 | San Francisco

Estate Planning in Film

Kurt Andersen: True Believers

North Beach Walking Tour

John E. O’Grady, Esq., Chair of the Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law section, Bar Association of San Francisco

Host and Co-creator, “Studio 360”; Author, True Believers: A Novel

Attorney and mediator O’Grady presents the first installment of three popular seminars, discussing the latest approaches to the age-old estate planning questions raised in the popular movie A Thousand Acres, a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” He’ll show relevant clips to explore creative ways to protect your property rights and plan for your care and financial security without giving up control of your affairs. There is no need to see the movie in advance.

The best-selling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Century is back with his powerful novel True Believers. Andersen’s seductive storytelling alternates between the 1960s and the present, capturing the enduring impact of that time on the ways we live now. Andersen hosts and co-created “Studio 360,” and as an editor, he co-founded the transformative, satirical monthly magazine Spy. Come hear one of the great cultural critics of our time discuss his dazzling new novel.

Join another Commonwealth Club Neighborhood Adventure! Explore vibrant North Beach with Rick Evans during a two-hour walk through this neighborhood with a colorful past, where food, culture, history and unexpected views all intersect in an Italian “urban village.” In addition to learning about Beat generation hangouts, you’ll discover authentic Italian cathedrals and coffee shops.

MLF: GROWNUPS Location: SF Club Office Time: 4:45 p.m. networking, 5:15 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizer: John Milford Also know: In assn. with San Francisco Village

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

T H U 26 | San Francisco

M O N 30 | San Francisco

Harvey Rose: How Does an Independent Analyst Survive San Francisco’s City Hall?

Charles Yu: How to Live Safely in the Fictional Universe

Middle East Discussion Group

Budget and Legislative Analyst, City and County of San Francisco; Founder, Harvey M. Rose Associates, LLC; Former Auditor, General State of California

Author, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Sorry Please Thank You: Stories

So what happens to the city’s budget and money? In his straightforward, “tell it like it is” attitude, San Francisco independent budget and legislative analyst Rose will explain his approach and the critical need for independent analysis in the public sector. Join us for an informative insider’s independent view of the reality of San Francisco’s money and politics.

A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a co-worker out. A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape. Yu draws from pop culture and science to transport his readers into an imaginative universe in his latest collection, Sorry Please Thank You: Stories. Join us and hear from this major new voice in American fiction.

MLF: BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP/ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizer: Ann Clark

Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students Also know: Underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation

Location: Saints Peter and Paul Church, 666 Filbert, between Columbus and Stockton. Please meet at 1:45, depart by 2. Time: 2-4 p.m. tour; no-host optional socializing to follow Cost: $45 standard, $35 members Also know: Limited to 20 people. Must preregister. Operates rain or shine.

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July 30 – August 02 M O N 30 | San Francisco

M O N 30 | San Francisco

The Arts as a Medium for Exploring Racial Issues: Past, Present, Future

Week to Week: The News Commentary Program

Sherri Young, Executive Director, African American Shakespeare Company Joyce Jordan, Founder and Director, Joyce Jordan Gallery, Oakland Sean San Jose, Co-founder, Campo Santo; Program Director, Intersection for the Arts Marcus Shelby, Jazz Bassist; Composer; Director, Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra

The Arts Forum hosts a lively panel discussion in association with AfroSolo Arts Festival 19. From Alvin Ailey’s iconic signature work “Revelations” to the critically acclaimed plays of August Wilson, this panel will explore how the arts have played a central role in examining issues related to race in the United States. MLF: THE ARTS Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID) Program Organizers: Anne Smith and Thomas Simpson Also know: In association with the AfroSolo Festival

Larry Gerston, Professor, SJSU; Political Analyst, NBC 11 Carla Marinucci, Senior Political Writer, San Francisco Chronicle Debra J. Saunders, Columnist, SF Chronicle; “Token Conservative” Blogger, SFGate.com

Join our panelists for informative and fun commentary on political and other major news, plus an in-depth look at one topic in the news, plus audience discussion of the week’s events, and a news quiz. Also join us for a reception with refreshments before and after the program. See the inside front cover of this magazine for more. Location: SF Club Office Time: 6 p.m. reception, 6:30 p.m. program, 7:30–8 p.m. post-program reception Cost: $12 standard, MEMBERS FREE

MON 30 | East Bay

T U E 31 | San Francisco

A Taste of Place: Eating Your Way Around the East Bay

The America’s Cup: What It Means for SF

Daniel Patterson, Executive Chef and Owner, Coi, Plum and Haven James Syhabout, Executive Chef and Owner, Commis and Hawker Fare Tanya Holland, Executive Chef and Owner, Brown Sugar Kitchen Russell Moore, Executive Chef and Owner, Camino Restaurant

You’ve heard it before: Location is everything. In the culinary game, “where you’re at” can dictate the ingredients you use, the type of cuisine you churn out, and the kinds of people you’re cooking for. With an endless list of top eateries, the Bay Area is a prime foodie destination. But what is it specifically that makes Northern California and the East Bay such a special place to grow, cook and eat? Our panel of locally minded chefs will discuss the unique tastes, philosophies and circumstances that allow them to channel the true flavor of their location. Stay tuned for details about our corresponding dinner where you can get a taste of the East Bay, courtesy of our all-star chef panelists. Location: Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette Time: 5:45 p.m. check-in, 6:30 p.m. program Cost: $22 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

Mark Buell, Chair, America’s Cup Organizing Committee Tom Ehman, Rules Advisor, AmericaOne

San Francisco is buzzing with talk about the America’s Cup, and the first events are setting sail in the Bay Area in August. But what will it all really mean for the city? Join a conversation with experts involved in planning the Cup, discover how to separate fact from fiction, learn about past races and hear how next year’s America’s Cup will get underway here in the Bay Area. Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

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T U E 31 | San Francisco

T H U 02 | San Francisco

N E W D AT E ! J U N E 2 1

Medical Careers: New Roles for Growing Demands

Olivia Fox Cabane: Charisma and Leadership – What If Charisma Could Be Taught?

Richard Muller

Meg Jordan, Ph.D., RN, CWP, Professor and Chair of Integrative Health Studies, California Institute of Integral Studies; CEO, Global Medicine Enterprise

Learn how you can benefit from being with a health coach, and how it is vastly different from traditional health education. This session will provide four big ideas from research in neuroscience, addiction, social ranking and creativity that are moving the new field of health coaching from the margins of the medical landscape to a central role. MLF: HEALTH & MEDICINE Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizers: Bill Grant & Len Saputo Also know: Part of The Future of Work series

Chief Charisma Coach, Spitfire; Author, The Charisma Myth

Many of us assume that charisma is something you’re either born with, or not. But science is proving otherwise. For the first time, science and technology have taken apart charisma and turned it into an applied science. Cabane highlights a few compelling studies and arms you with practical tools for everyday application. MLF: BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP/ SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking reception, 6 p.m. program, 7 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, $8 members, $7 students Program Organizers: Chisako Ress and Nafeesah Rasheed Also know: Part of The Future of Work series

Professor of Physics, UC Berkeley

Physicist Muller generated headlines last fall when he said evidence for climate change “is clear and incontrovertible.” He has bones to pick with many climate scientists, but agrees that climate disruption is urgent and should be addressed by switching China from coal fired electricity to natural gas. Electric cars? Not worth it, he says. Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. check-in, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, $12 members, $7 students (with valid ID)

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J U S T A D D E D ! J U LY 1 6

JUST ADDED! JUNE 29

Bastille Day Celebration with the Bay Gourmet Forum

Success and Chocolate

Week to Week: The News Commentary Program

Cara Black, Author, Murder at the Lanterne Rouge - the 12 Aimee Leduc Mystery

San Francisco resident Black frequents a Paris little known outside the beaten tourist track. She shares this Paris with us in her award-nominated Aime’e Leduc Investigation series. Each murder mystery is based in a different arrondissement in Paris and features the spike-haired, tattoed detective Aime’e Leduc. Black will share with us stories from her latest book while we enjoy some tastes of France. MLF: BAY GOURMET Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program, 1 p.m. book signing Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students Program Organizer: Cathy Curtis Also know: Underwriter: Bernard Osher Fdtn.

Kathy Wiley, Owner, Poco Dolce Ellen Purdom, Director of Social Media, Toffee Talk Peggy Butler, Blogger, Success and Chocolate Blog - Moderator Additional panelists TBA

Everyone loves chocolate, but it seems that women love it more. It’s no wonder that women entrepreneurs have created some of the most successful chocolate businesses in the Bay Area. Our panel of chocolatiers and business women will share the joys and challenges of creating a business around this most beloved treat, which some say is essential to their happiness! MLF: BAY GOURMET Location: SF Club Office Time: 5:30 p.m. networking, 6 p.m. program Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students Program Organizer: Cathy Curtis

Larry Gerston, Professor, SJ State Univ.; Political Analyst, NBC 11; Author, Not So Golden After All: The Rise and Fall of California Additional panelists TBA

Join our panelists for informative and fun commentary on political and other major news, plus an in-depth look at one topic in the news, plus audience discussion of the week’s events, and a news quiz. Also join us for a reception with refreshments before and after the program. See the inside front cover of this magazine for more. Location: SF Club Office Time: 11:30 a.m. check-in, noon program Cost: $12 standard, MEMBERS FREE

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Picking up where Churchill left off, the liberal former senator from Wisconsin calls for vigilence against continuing threats from terrorists and in defense of our rights. Excerpt from “Russell Feingold,” March 1, 2012. RUSSELL FEINGOLD Former U.S. Senator (D-Wisconsin); Author, While America Sleeps: A Wake-up Call for the Post-9/11 Era CHRISTOPHER EDLEY, JR. Dean, Berkeley Law School, University of California –

Moderator

or the last 10 years, we certainly could have done a better job of focusing on the issues that were raised by 9/11, and we could’ve done a much better job of staying focused on the rest of the world. The fact that we haven’t done that is partly understandable. We had a terrible economic collapse in 2008, and we have continuing economic difficulties. But I think 9/11 showed us what happens when we don’t stay alert. We all remember how it felt to be taken completely by surprise. We need to “walk and chew gum” at the same time. Even when you have difficult domestic issues, you have to continue to focus on what’s happening around the world as well. Instead, we’ve gotten something very different. We’ve gotten a public and a government at odds with itself. We are divided; we are at war domestically, in ef-

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fect. We refuse to come together to solve problems. We have gridlock, partisanship, obsession not only with the next election, but the next caucus or primary – on the Republican side in particular, as we have a Democratic president. We have the almost unprecedented corrupting influence of big money in politics. I kept thinking about Winston Churchill’s book, While England Slept. It really wasn’t a book by Churchill; it was a series of 40 speeches that he gave in the House of Commons, warning the people of England about the re-arming of Germany and that they weren’t paying attention carefully. In one [speech], he says, “We must remember that we are, for the time being, no longer entirely masters of our own fate.” He says of the English, “We are an undefeated people. Nearly 1,000 years have passed since we were subjugated by external force. All our outlook

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for several generations has been influenced by a sense of invincible, inexpugnable security at home. That security is no longer absolute or certain, and we must address our minds courageously, seriously, to the new conditions under which we now have to dwell.” That reminds me a little bit about how we have to think about our place in the world after 9/11. We know that we were asleep at the switch on September 11, 2001. It’s not like there weren’t clues that there was a problem. We tended to just observe and discount things, like the bombing of two American embassies in Africa in 1998. We sort of discounted the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen in the year 2000, where 17 American sailors were killed. I remember even trying to make sense of, or discount, the shocking act of destroying giant Buddha statues [in Afghanistan by the Taliban]. I thought, “They’re not going to do that. Hitler didn’t

even blow up the Oxford colleges in Saint Paul.” I said, “Nobody would do that.” The clues were everywhere that this was different. I especially remember being on a foreign relations trip to Nigeria in early 2001. We went up to the ancient city of Kano, which is one of the five or six largest Islamic cities in the world, and my staff members and I observed the streets there. Kids had postcards and pictures not only of Muammar Gadaffi but of Osama bin Laden. We ran into this in several places. I said to my staff member, “What’s going on with this? Can you get me a briefing on it?” It takes forever in Washington to actually get one of those briefings. They finally scheduled it for September 13, 2001. It never occurred. I thought we got off to a pretty good start of waking up after this. President Bush’s speech in the Congress about three weeks after 9/11 was probably the best speech I ever heard by a president in that chamber. I thought his public conduct at the time was very effective, including in particular being very clear that Americans or Muslims or Arabs should not be mistreated as a result of this. The discussion of going into Afghanistan was handled in an appropriate way. Colin Powell ran it, and he carefully lined up almost every country in the world – almost every Islamic country – including some that weren’t with us for the Gulf War. Then we got off track. The Iraq war was an absurd attempt to link the events of 9/11 in a way that really had no factual basis. There was a particular environment of fear in Washington, because of the bunker mentality. My staff members and I were frequently required to leave the building because of a “suspicious package” every 15 minutes. Then we had the anthrax attack, and my office was the one other than Senator Daschle’s that actually had people who tested positive. Then of course days before the vote on the Iraq war, we had the D.C. sniper, which had nothing to do with this, but somehow it all created an environment that did not feel that way back in Middleton, Wisconsin; I think it had something to do with people making this judgment that, “Gee, I better vote for this, just in case this has something to do with al-Qaeda.” We went off track, because after the fact, we had to justify this Iraq thing – or at least the Bush administration thought that. We came up with an idea of dealing with

al-Qaeda where we’d invade one country at a time, even though the president himself had said that al-Qaeda was active in over 60 countries. It included countries like Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Ireland. Of course, there was one country that wasn’t on their list – that was Iraq – but, you know, whatever. [Laughter] Instead of looking at this as an international network – essentially, a criminal syndicate – what did we do? We decided that we would invade countries. If you’re good at the game of Scrabble, as one guy once told me who played the game with me and was much better than I was, “You must always think in two directions.” That’s what we have a hard time doing. It seems to be, “All right; we’re out of Iraq; we’re in bad shape in Afghanistan; now it’s going to be Iran. We’re going to either invade Iran, or we’re just going to think about Iran,” but that’s not the way this situation works. Take the case of Algeria. “Algeria? Why is he talking about Algeria?” Well, Algeria had, of course, a terrible war to throw off the French rule, but, in the 1990s, what’s less known is that an Islamic party was starting to do well electorally there, and it won fair and square in some elections; the regime there canceled the subsequent elections. A group of extremists who were connected with the completely legitimate political party there decided to exploit the situation. They created a group called the GSPC [Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (Group for Call and Combat)]. Now, why do I say “two directions”? Well, they were Algerians, but they hadn’t just been in Algeria; they had gone with Osama bin Laden to train to work with him for many years – 3,000 of them. They all came back to Algeria and started this organization, and for many years they were terrorizing the country, and, frankly, the regime there was terrorizing the country, too; it was very brutal. They finally got diminished, but what did they finally do? They went to places like Mali and Chad. What did they do? Well, they became a franchise recently: al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. If you think about this only as “this country” or “that country” and don’t see the connections, you will never understand the nature of this threat, and the threat is not over. The other problem is, we have an attitude that when we go into a country, we have to go in there and stay there forever, and

somehow it’s a sign of weakness if you try to do something less than a full invasion of a country. I give President Obama great credit for the way he handled Libya. It wasn’t easy. Everybody was pushing him: “You’ve got to go in there; you’ve got to send troops in.” He realized that Gadaffi was at a tipping point, and instead of having boots on the ground, he used something that was a more measured, intelligent, mature approach that actually got the job done of getting him out of power. I’m optimistic that this president has a different vision of how to do this, but again, people ask me about Syria, of course, another situation where I don’t think it has to be the complete invasion. I’m concerned about the fact that our policy has never adapted to the threat.

Problems at home

he domestic side of this is where 9/11 has been exploited for purposes of domestic political agendas and other agendas. One of those was the passage of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. I actually did this weird thing at the urging of my staff member, and another who’s here today: I actually read the bill. [Laughter] It was an interesting experience, for a legislator. I found in the bill things like people’s library records being able to be obtained who have done absolutely nothing wrong and have no connection to terrorism at all; that’s never been changed. Even Bob Novak, the conservative columnist, said at the time, “This thing was an old wish list of the F.B.I.” And it was; it [included] provisions that never would have passed. In

“We know that we were

asleep at the switch on September 11, 2001. It’s not like there weren’t clues.” fact, the purpose wasn’t to use it to go after terrorism; it was for domestic drug cases, and so on. A similar problem occurred when President Bush, with the help of the Office of Legal Counsel, was able to come up with a new theory about the Constitution going completely to the opposite of Justice Jackson’s opinion of the Youngstown case, which boils down to this: If Congress

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Feingold photos by Rikki Ward, eagle by CTW / Flickr

“Though I am one of the chairmen of the president’s re-election campaign, he needs to step passes a law, and it’s explicit about what the law is, the president can’t just ignore it under the Commander in Chief power. Well, the Bush White House said, “Nope; that’s not right. Because we are in a war on terror” – which, of course, has no end – “the president can pretty much do what he wants, regardless of statute – because of the war – so he can create an illegal, warrantless, wire-tapping program. He can authorize torture against the laws of the United States and our treaties.” It was a direct attack on our Constitution and our system of government, and that hasn’t been fixed, either. Even though I am one of the chairmen of the president’s re-election campaign – I really want him to win – he needs to step up his game on this one. Unfortunately in the last couple of years, another thing has happened. It’s suited a certain people’s agenda to start trying to make Muslims in this country feel like they’re not welcome, which is foolish. I’ve always thought [that] taking on a billion people is not a good idea [Laughter], particularly when they have absolutely no inclination in this regard. The mosque incident in New York was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. How in the world, when you know all the different things that are in that part of Manhattan, could anyone say that it is inappropriate for somebody to build a house of worship there? This has made many members of our community feel uncomfortable at a

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up his game on this one.” time when we need their alliance, their help and their friendship more than ever.

In defense of foreign policy

inally, foreign policy has been trivialized as a subject – particularly by the conservatives, but not only. Instead of having a real, consistent view about what the world should look like – or what a Republican president would do – what they do is try to say, “The president always apologizes for everything.” Now, he did actually apologize the other day for something, which of course I thought was reasonable, but they take his words that have nothing to do with apologies. When he says something in Cairo like, “We could have done a better job on this,” you know, that’s not an abject apology. The other thing they do is mock presidential trips. We didn’t mock presidential trips based on political party. When John Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” we didn’t mock it. When President Nixon – even though I was hoping he’d lose – went to China, we were proud of that initiative. When Ronald Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to take down this wall, we did not mock him. When Barack Obama goes to India, they make fun of him because the president and the first lady did a traditional Indian dance with some people in a village, which is probably a good thing to do. India’s kind of important. The president should be there. Finally, the capper is the repetition of the mantra American exceptionalism. Do you have any idea how that goes over overseas? What-

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ever happened to “Walk softly and carry a big stick”? Whatever happened to George Bush’s excellent comments about humility? Instead, it’s just this mantra of fealty to some kind of a right-wing agenda that specifically rules out thoughtfulness with regard to foreign policy, even though of course I think America is exceptional and the greatest country in the world. Then we get to the last couple of years – and that’s the rise of the Tea Party. Notice, we all have talked about the way the Tea Party rather cleverly said, “We’re not going to talk about social issues.” That was their plan, and it worked in 2010. They did not talk about guns, God and gays. They ruled that out. The reason for that was [that] they wanted to just blame Obama for the economy This was a conscious plan, but what’s less noticed is [that] they also didn’t want to talk about foreign policy – partly because of Bush and what he had done, but also partly because President Obama’s had a pretty successful run on foreign policy. This has been an intentional narrowing and slumbering into not talking about the rest of the world and the threats we face 10 years after 9/11. The threat is not over. My book is not only about one particular kind of threat, a terrorist threat or even alQaeda. I’m concerned about what China’s intentions are in Africa. What is Iran trying to do in Latin America? Are we going to take advantage of the fact that Africa has a chance now to really emerge and have the kind of relationship with those countries who have a very positive image about the United States generally? All of these things are important, but let me just take the one example of what is happening in Kano, Nigeria. There is a group there called Boko Haram. Boko Haram, in the last year, has pulled off some 60 or 70 attacks. They have started attacking Western facilities, a U.N. facility. They killed 180 people in one day on January 20 in six different locations at the same time. It appears that they are affiliated with al-Shabaab in Somalia, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Who’s talking about it? What does this remind you of? It reminds me of the same blinders that we had when we couldn’t see something that was right in our face. That’s the same place, Kano, where I noticed [those] people years ago. This program made possible by the generous support of the Charles Geschke Family.

Gold Medals Poetry: Giovanni Singleton Ascension Nonfiction: Jason Felch & Ralph Frammolino Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum First Fiction: Alice LaPlante Turn of Mind

Fiction: Héctor Tobar The Barbarian Nurseries Juvenile: Jonanne Rocklin One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street

Californiana: David Rains Wallace Chuckwalla Land: The Riddle of California’s Desert

Silver Medals

Young Adult: Maile Meloy The Apothecary

Nonfiction: Jonathan Lethem The Ecstasy of Influence: nonfictions, etc.

Contribution to Publishing: City Lights Publishers Ten Years that Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978

Fiction: Peter Orner Love and Shame and Love

M O N T H 200#

5:15 p.m. reception 6:00 p.m. awards ceremony 7:15 p.m. book signing & reception $15 members, $20 standard The Commonwealth Club 595 Market Street, San Francisco (415) 597-6705 | commonwealthclub.org

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DAVE EGGERS

21st Century Visionary

The man who spawned a movement to reinvigorate teaching and student creativity discusses the need for his work.

826

Ma tch

Education

Sch ola r

cia len Va

ing e Th Th

onc e u po n a s c h oo l . o rg

DAV E EGGERS Founder and

in conversation with DAN MOULTHROP

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McSweeney’s

E d it o r, M c S w e e n e y’ s ; C o Founder, 826 Valencia; Author,54A Heartbreaking Work THE COMMO N WE AL TH of Staggering Genius

Excerpt from “Dave Eggers: Inforum’s 21st Century Visionary Award,” March 22, 2012.

Co-Author, Teachers Have It Easy; Co-founder, The Civic Commons; Former Public Radio Host

electrifying. I can’t sleep after the class. I have to come down from it because it’s so exhilarating, seeing the ideas bounce around.”

Eggers photo by Ed Ritger

“These two hours are

EGGERS: [When we started 826 Valencia,] we had this publishing company, McSweeney’s, and I thought of a lot of friends who were teachers, and they said, “Boy, we could use some help, after school, maybe, or kids who have fallen behind in their writing skills.” And I said, “I’ve got a lot of staff and interns and people like that.” Back in the day at Might magazine, we used to host groups from the YMCA, who would come in and learn magazine publishing. That was in the back of my mind. So we signed the lease at 826; McSweeney’s was in the back of the building, and the tutoring center was in the front. At 2:30 or 3 when the kids started coming in, the staff would take a few hours off, and they were the tutors, at first. But we were very disorganized, and we didn’t have trained educators on staff. That’s when Nínive [Clements Calegari, 826 co-founder] came and took that very vague idea and built 826 into everything that it became. MOULTHROP: You’ve now got 8 regional or local 826 centers in New York and Los Angeles and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it’s inspired these models of how you can create a writing center with a hip retail element in places like Copenhagen and Cleveland. EGGERS: It was really important at the beginning, and Nínive as an educator really emphasized this and made sure that the teachers in the city knew we were there to support them and not create some other program that was working at cross-purposes from what they were doing every day in the classroom. We were going to raise and train a tutor army to serve them in the curriculum and lessons plans they already had. That’s when you came in – MOULTHROP: Because the call to action, Nínive said, “Tell us what you need, and we’ll help.” So I was the faculty advisor to the school literary magazine, and we wanted to reinvent it, so I said, “I want to reinvent the literary magazine.” Nínive said, “OK, bring your kids.” We field-tripped them over from San Lorenzo in the East Bay, and it was this giant adventure for everybody. We got there, and

they had floppy disks at the time – EGGERS: It was not floppy disks. [Laughter.] MOULTHROP: We had all the material we wanted to publish and we had no idea what we wanted to do. And you took the day with them and taught them things about magazine design and style that I think really changed their lives in a lot of ways, because suddenly they realized you can make these decisions and you shouldn’t use, say, every font available to you. [Laughter.] EGGERS: That’s always the first thing! We don’t have to use every one; there’s hundreds, and three will do. MOULTHROP: Before this event, we were talking about your experience teaching The Best American Non-Required Reading class. You said something very interesting; you said it was the best part of your week; you also said if there was a test involved, you’d quit. EGGERS: I don’t know if I would quit right away. All I know is that these two hours are electrifying. I can’t sleep after the class. I have to come down from it because it’s so exhilarating, just seeing the ideas bounce around and everything. Nine times out of ten, I read the same time the students do. We all read for the first hour and discuss it the second hour. So I don’t have any answers ahead of time. It’s rare that I have the story figured out when we begin discussing it. But over the course of that hour, we break it down together. I just sort of guide the conversation. They explain the story to me; we figure it out together – what works, what the author is trying to do. For 10 years, it’s been the best part of my week, outside of all of my time with family and friends. I’ve talked to friends of mine who teach, and I don’t know how you would measure what the students learn in this class. I see incredible progress over the course of a year. I see students who are very shy and reluctant to express ideas about something or don’t know who Joyce Carol Oates is and people like that; and by the end, they own it and they are at graduate-level awareness and ability to assess and analyze this work. I don’t know how it would show up on a test.

If there was a test at the end of it and I was being held accountable for what they learned, and there was some measurement and this metric, and they didn’t learn what some test that was conceived a thousand miles away said [the students] should learn, and it made me a bad teacher, or if they were failing – all of these punitive measures would take all the joy out of it for me. So many teachers are up against this. It’s tough to think like it should be such a joyful experience teaching – MOULTHROP: It is. EGGERS: And it is. And if you think, Boy, they’re gonna come down on me like this hammer if somehow whatever magic is happening in this classroom doesn’t show up on the Scantron form, and isn’t measurable, you know what I’m saying? As a teacher yourself, how did you balance those things? MOULTHROP: I ignored the tests. [Laughter.] I put my faith in students and I put my faith in my own curriculum and the pedagogy I was employing and believed that this was going to make a difference. Here’s the thing: A lot of those schools, they’re urban schools where the teachers are really stressed out about those tests, because the student population has all the challenges that jump out on these tests, that wind up with educational outcomes that people get upset about. In the suburbs, they don’t really teach to the test; for the most part, they spend a lot of time just teaching, and the kids have all the resources and all of the stuff that supports their learning, so they wind up doing just fine on the tests. You and I were talking about this before. You want education to be the place where you hire the right teachers, you say, “You can do this; I trust you. Do your best.” EGGERS: And, “What do you need?” MOULTHROP: “Do you need somebody to do those photocopies for you, so you can focus on the intellectual pursuit of crafting a good lesson?” EGGERS: Or like at James Lick Middle or Everett Middle [schools] we provide enough caring adults who can give more one-on-one attention, so a teacher will come in and split

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1. Eggers (left) and Moulthrop shared teaching stories. 2. Moulthrop, a former teacher, was inspired by 826 Valencia. 3. Eggers built a small publishing house into a philanthropic movement. 4. Eggers received Inforum’s 21st Century Visionary Award. 5. What good are books if you can’t buy them?

a class, and 11 students will stay with us in our pirate-themed [classroom], and then they can wok with the other 12 in smaller groups. That’s powerful. I can’t imagine it any other way. But obviously, we’re going in a different direction nationally, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better any time soon. The other thing that came up recently is that there’s a movement for increased concentration on creativity in the classroom, trying to figure out how you can imagine that, to try to sneak it into the curriculum, if you can allow teachers to emphasize creativity and innovation. MOULTHROP: You talked about this before we came on stage as being the difference between divergent and convergent thinking. EGGERS: There was a guy named [Ellis Paul] Torrance, who was a scientist who started in the late 1950s measuring creativity. There’s the IQ and what he called the CQ, like creativity quotient. I don’t know

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how many people are aware of this test; it’s administered by psychologists; it’s 90 minutes. It’s an open-ended conversation with a student. What they found is that the creativity, however they measured it – they’d say, “Take this toy truck; how would you make it better?” – questions like that encourage innovation and creativity. The American scores were going up pretty steadily from when they started in the ’50s until 1990. Ever since then, they’ve been declining, really steadily. A psychologist at William and Mary has been studying this; his work is online and really fascinating. A lot of it has to do with this emphasis on rote learning, convergent thinking, one right answer, fill in the bubbles, and all of this measure, measure, measure everything, and teach to the test. MOULTHROP: How do you think we can get education in general to change the focus, or to shift or to create room?

JU NE/JU LY 2012

EGGERS: Well, right now there’s a lot of groups, like Project Zero out of Harvard, that are trying to find more measurements that they can sell to legislators, basically. Like, How do we add this test or add creativity to the number of measurements? Right now, everything has to be measured, or else it’s not valued. It’s infuriating, I think, sometimes. When we’ve tried to seek funding for 826, I’ve been in rooms with funders who’ve been in a room with 70 students working one on one with tutors, who are shoulder to shoulder, they’re caring adults. They’re all working on this first-grader’s homework, and you know the student’s sitting there quiet and interested and having an engaged adult and they’re having a conversation. MOULTHROP: And they say, “What’s your logic model?” EGGERS: Or “Give me the metrics on this” or “Prove that this works.” It drives me crazy. As a society, we are really going that way in a lot of forms, not just education but this emphasis on data. Again, there are so many things that cannot be measured in this way and that cannot be put in a spreadsheet. And if you’re educating the whole child, the whole young person, the ways that these tests are administered don’t come close to measuring the whole young person. MOULTHROP: You’ve got a student right now who’s doing something about college access. Do you want to talk about that? EGGERS: Three of my students go to Unity High School in Oakland. They came to me and said, “You got to hear about this ballot initiative that we’re a part of.” Some students the year before at Unity had put together this idea; they did some math and they came up with a ballot initiative that would provide free college tuition to all California students to go to the UCs or the CSUs; it would just require increased taxes on those making over $250,000. This would raise billions and make it possible for all students who maintain a 2.7 average and do some community service to go to college. The students are fighting for it. They’re here tonight; they’re going to bug you on the way out; they’ve got the petitions. They only need to get 10 million signatures [laughter] or something like that to get it on the ballot. This program was made possible by the generous support of National Semiconductor.

Antarctica Expedition January 17 – 30, 2013

“Everything wears an aspect of unreality. Icebergs hang upside-down in the sky, the land appears as layers of silvery or golden cloud. Cloud banks look like land, and icebergs masquerade as islands.” – Ernest Shackelton An Antarctica expedition might be the single greatest travel adventure of your life. • Spend two nights in Buenos Aires, Argencalving glaciers, like Rudolf Glacier in tina before flying to Ushuaia to board the Neko Harbor. deluxe M.S. L’Austral. Launched in 2011, and with only 120 elegant staterooms, • Learn from our team of naturalists and expedition staff during ship lectures M.S. L’Austral is the way to enjoy Antarcand when out exploring in our fleet of tica in comfort and luxury. zodiacs. Their expertise spans marine • Observe the antics of gentoo, Adelie biology, ornithology, geology, glacioland chinstrap penguins, and spot ogy, history and photography. crabeater seals, whales and abundant • After exploring the “White Continent” marine life. venture to the lush Argentinian-Brazilian • Marvel at the soaring and towering jungle on an optional Iguacu Falls mountains of ice. And experience the post-trip extension.

Join us for that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Antarctica – one of the Earth’s most unique places. Cost: From $7,595 to $12,995, per person (depending on cabin category) in double accommodations CST: 2096889-40 Photos: penguins by davidkn1 / Flickr, seal by Mad as a Fruitbat / Flickr

For Information & Reservations: visit commonwealthclub.org/travel call (415) 597-6720 email travel@commonwealthclub.org

Photo courtesy of Gloria Duffy

InSight with

DR. GLORIA C. DUFFY

President & CEO, The Commonwealth Club

110 The Embarcadero, Here We Come!

or 109 years, the Commonwealth Club has served its members and the community from rented space in San Francisco. Its locations have been as varied as a suite at the St. Francis Hotel, offices in the historic Monadnock Building on Market Street, and for the past 26 years, space in a high rise at the corner of Market and Second Streets. The story is legendary that the founders of the Club sought a home from the beginning in 1903, but the search was derailed first by the earthquake and fire of 1906 and subsequently by the cost of San Francisco real estate and other factors. The Club is perhaps the only major cultural institution based in San Francisco that has not had its own headquarters. Now that situation will change. In mid-2013, the Club’s 110th year, the Club will finally move to its own home, at 110 The Embarcadero. Last June, when the commercial real estate market was at its nadir, the Club’s leadership seized the opportunity and signed a contract to purchase a small building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. We have been raising funds ever since, to complete the purchase by October of this year. Then we will launch into renovations to be completed by next July, when the Club will move in. The building the Club is purchasing – which runs through the block from the Embarcadero to Steuart Street – is essentially a shell, but one in a location that could not be more ideal. We polled Club members, and you told us that the convenience of being located near downtown and public transportation was very important to you. There is probably no single location in the Bay Area more easily accessible than the Club’s new site. It is across the street from the Ferry terminal, 3 blocks from the Embarcadero BART station, a few blocks from the new TransBay Terminal, walking distance from downtown, right on MUNI bus and trolley lines and near onramps to major freeways and the Bay Bridge. We feel very lucky to have taken the step we did to acquire this site in 2011, because a rapid escalation of San Francisco commercial real estate prices is now underway. The Club has recently been notified by its landlord at 2nd and Market of a planned rent increase of at least 75 percent when our lease expires next year. The cost of leasing downtown space, which was already expensive for the Club as a nonprofit organization, would overstrain our budget by mid-year next year.

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The Club’s building effort is led by two committees. A Building Committee is co-chaired by Board members Richard Pivnicka and Joe Epstein, and has worked on the identification, acquisition and design of a building. The Campaign Cabinet is chaired by Board Chair Maryles Casto. This Cabinet is leading the fundraising effort. We are honored that former Secretary of State George Shultz and San Francisco Chief of Protocol Charlotte Mailliard Shultz are the Honorary Chairs of our building campaign. With generous donors having pledged almost enough now for the building purchase, which is just 50 percent of the total cost of this project, we are continuing to raise the remainder of the funds needed for renovation of the building. While we continue to keep the Club’s public affairs programming going at its normal pace, many staff members and volunteers are deeply engaged in this effort. Virtually all of the Club’s board has donated to the building fund, and many board members are working on the various committees to either raise funds or plan the building renovation. The Club plans a green retrofit of the two-story building that makes efficient use of energy and other resources, and a comfortable and welcoming environment for our members and the public, while preserving the historic quality of this building and the neighborhood. Our future home is next door to the Audiffred Building, built in 1889 and the oldest surviving building on San Francisco’s waterfront. The Club’s new home itself has a significant history in the development of the San Francisco waterfront and the labor movement. In the 1930s, when it bore the address of 113 Steuart Street, it was the hall belonging to the International Longshoremen’s Association, the labor organization led by Harry Bridges. This location played a role in the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, in the Pacific Coast Dock Strike, and particularly in the events of “Bloody Thursday” in July of 1934, during which two striking dockworkers were killed. The Club will recognize this San Francisco history through preserving the building’s Steuart Street façade, and by presenting information on the events that took place at the site. It’s a wonderful location for the Club for its second century and beyond, and we look forward to welcoming you there next year.

Treasures of Southern Africa Featuring Cape Town, Robben Island, Rovos Rail, Luxury Safari, and Victoria Falls January 15 – 29, 2013

Join us for this extensive and exciting adventure of Southern Africa! Discover the stunning beauty and fascinating cultures of Southern Africa, a diverse region poised along a beautiful coastline, breathtaking mountains and expansive plains. • Explore alluring Cape Town and spectacular views from Table Mountain.

during your three-day luxury safari near Kruger National Park.

• Walk in Nelson Mandela’s footsteps • Board Rovos Rail for a two-night on Robben Island. deluxe train journey from Pretoria to Victoria Falls, where you experi• Stand at the Cape of Good Hope ence the power and majesty of one and see the African penguins at of the seven Natural Wonders of Boulders Beach. the World. • In Johannesburg, tour Soweto and • Learn during guest lectures about visit a local youth center. history, nature and contemporary • Thrill to sightings of the Big Five and issues, as well as an embassy briefing. other exotic wildlife on game drives From $$6,995 per person, depending on category, and based on double occupancy CST: 2096889-40 Photos: CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT

For Information & Reservations: visit commonwealthclub.org/travel call (415) 597-6720 email travel@commonwealthclub.org

The Commonwealth Club of California 595 Market Street, 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94105

Purchase event tickets at commonwealthclub.org

PERIODICALS POSTAGE PAID IN SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

or call (415) 597-6705 or (800) 847-7730 To subscribe to our free weekly events email newsletter, go to commonwealthclub.org and click on “MY CLUB ACCOUNT” in the menu at the bottom of the page.

PROGRAMS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS June 7

General Colin Powell

June 13

Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times; Author, As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda

Former U.S. Secretary of State; Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Author, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership

June 18

Gail Collins

Throughout his decades of service, General Powell has kept his private life out of the limelight. Now, in his new book, Powell is revealing the important principles that guided his journey from being the son of Jamaican immigrants to becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first AfricanAmerican secretary of state.

The first female editor of The New York Times editorial page and a best-selling author, Collins argues in her explosive new book that Texas has become the bellwether of a far-reaching national movement that continues to have profound social and economic consequences for the nation. The proud state of big oil and bigger ambition has created a conservative political agenda that is shaping our national identity.

for event details, see page 37

for event details, see page 39

E.J. Dionne Jr. Senior Fellow, Brookings Institute; Columnist, The Washington Post; Author, Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in the Age of Discontent Dionne is considered an expert on competing political philosophies in America. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is poisoning the nation’s political atmosphere, Dionne argues that Americans can’t agree on who we are because we can’t agree on what it is that makes us Americans. Can we get past this impasse? for event details, see page 41

July 17

Two Slices of American Pie Meghan McCain Columnist, The Daily Beast; Author, America, You Sexy Bitch

Michael Ian Black Actor; Comedian; Author, America, You Sexy Bitch McCain and Black have written a love letter to America. In a cross-country tour, encountering gun lovers, flag burners, teen moms, politicians and gay parents, they explored all the nooks of American life. Witness the oddball odyssey and hear their story live at the Castro Theatre. for event details, see page 46