Embedded video from CNN Video
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Temple University Beasley School of Law
SO why not report on some alumni news:
General News
The Beasley School of Law hosts an exclusive symposium on the credit crisis with nearly 50 practicing attorneys, judges, and law professors in attendance.
The Congressional Research Service names Temple Law program at Tsinghua University one of five "Key Actors and Programs" in China.
Temple Professor Phoebe Haddon named new Dean of University of Maryland Law School. Sister #1 of Temple Law who trounced her wisdom of constitutional law and her own husband Carl Singley, former Dean of Temple School of Law, and the so-called competition to really impress them with her notoreity near the Nations's capital at one of its most prestigious area universities.
Dean JoAnne Epps to receive the Philadelphia Bar Association's Sandra Day O'Connor Award and present the Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Memorial Public Interest Lecture on June 9, 2009. Like my favorite professor, she is graceful, beautiful, and such a wonderful person (you too Dean Haddon - that sounds right on you - you too!)...so nice, hot too. Anyway, just a thought.
Professors Reinstein and Sinden deliver honorary lectures (Judge Green and Friel/Scanlan lectures).
U.S. News and World Report: Temple ranks in Trial Advocacy, Legal Writing, and International Law.
Michelle Orloski '09 wins the 2009 Distinguished Writing Award, presented by the Burton Foundation, in association with the Library of Congress.
National Trial Team: Year in Review.
Jessup Moot Court finishes third among US teams in international competition.
Temple student awarded Sandra Mazer Moss Scholarship.
Faculty
In the Media:
Amy Sinden comments on Supreme Court ruling that allows government to apply cost-benefit analysis for ordering environmental upgrades (fish protection) in Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune.
David Hoffman discusses cyber-bullying in law school student forum in Conde Nast Portfolio.com.
The Philadelphia Inquirer cites Jane Baron in article on estate implications for Dow Chemical and Rohm & Haas merger. featured practice areas: Environ. Law, Estates, Business Law, Immigration, Cyberspace, Trial Adv., Prof. Responsibility.
Publications and ConferencesDuncan Hollis's article, "Unpacking the Compact Clause," to be published in the Texas Law Review.Sandra Sperino's "Judicial Preemption of Punitive Damages" accepted by the Univ. of Cincinnati Law Review.
William Carter's article on "Judicial Power to Compel Domestic Treaty Implementation" was accepted as the lead article for the Maryland Law Review. featured areas of interest: Treaties, Family Law, "Wiki"Law, Employ. Law, Int'l Law, Intellectual Property, Cyberspace Law, Business Law.
Complexity and Collapse: The Credit Crisis symposium organized by Temple Law Professors Peter Huang, David Hoffman, and Jonathan Lipson.
General News
The Beasley School of Law hosts an exclusive symposium on the credit crisis with nearly 50 practicing attorneys, judges, and law professors in attendance.
The Congressional Research Service names Temple Law program at Tsinghua University one of five "Key Actors and Programs" in China.
Temple Professor Phoebe Haddon named new Dean of University of Maryland Law School. Sister #1 of Temple Law who trounced her wisdom of constitutional law and her own husband Carl Singley, former Dean of Temple School of Law, and the so-called competition to really impress them with her notoreity near the Nations's capital at one of its most prestigious area universities.
Dean JoAnne Epps to receive the Philadelphia Bar Association's Sandra Day O'Connor Award and present the Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Memorial Public Interest Lecture on June 9, 2009. Like my favorite professor, she is graceful, beautiful, and such a wonderful person (you too Dean Haddon - that sounds right on you - you too!)...so nice, hot too. Anyway, just a thought.
Professors Reinstein and Sinden deliver honorary lectures (Judge Green and Friel/Scanlan lectures).
U.S. News and World Report: Temple ranks in Trial Advocacy, Legal Writing, and International Law.
Michelle Orloski '09 wins the 2009 Distinguished Writing Award, presented by the Burton Foundation, in association with the Library of Congress.
National Trial Team: Year in Review.
Jessup Moot Court finishes third among US teams in international competition.
Temple student awarded Sandra Mazer Moss Scholarship.
Faculty
In the Media:
Amy Sinden comments on Supreme Court ruling that allows government to apply cost-benefit analysis for ordering environmental upgrades (fish protection) in Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune.
David Hoffman discusses cyber-bullying in law school student forum in Conde Nast Portfolio.com.
The Philadelphia Inquirer cites Jane Baron in article on estate implications for Dow Chemical and Rohm & Haas merger. featured practice areas: Environ. Law, Estates, Business Law, Immigration, Cyberspace, Trial Adv., Prof. Responsibility.
Publications and ConferencesDuncan Hollis's article, "Unpacking the Compact Clause," to be published in the Texas Law Review.Sandra Sperino's "Judicial Preemption of Punitive Damages" accepted by the Univ. of Cincinnati Law Review.
William Carter's article on "Judicial Power to Compel Domestic Treaty Implementation" was accepted as the lead article for the Maryland Law Review. featured areas of interest: Treaties, Family Law, "Wiki"Law, Employ. Law, Int'l Law, Intellectual Property, Cyberspace Law, Business Law.
Complexity and Collapse: The Credit Crisis symposium organized by Temple Law Professors Peter Huang, David Hoffman, and Jonathan Lipson.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Michelle Obama's Commencement Speech at UCal Merced - INSPIRATIONAL!
What a speech! This will certainly go down as one of the most important and inspirational first lady speeches given by anyone since Elanor Roosevelt. Hillary was inspirational, but not as good as this first lady and certainly none of them have a more inspirational story than Michelle's - hey, none of them were that poor. That's the spice, the essence of the Obamas - they really are just like, and come from, places like you and me!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Yes, Obama is Right, and Bush was just WRONG!!!!
Again, as 2009 unfolds, the storms are still strong, stanky, and still with us. But we will trudge on with our new leader as he fords a new and better path. Starting with stepping up funding, he added $19 billion to the stimulus package for real jobs for young people, or at least more of them. A far improvement over the previous administration's dismal years, as evidenced by this archived 2007 article from the "Cold Case Files":
NYC MISSING BIG CHANCE TO BUILD TEENS' CAREERS
More slots available in the public jobs program for young people would pay major dividends in the shape of their futures. > By David Jason Fischer
City Limits WEEKLY #592June 18, 2007
New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) will serve approximately 9,000 fewer young people this summer than in 1999, and will turn away tens of thousands of applicants due to limited slots, according to a report released today by the Center for an Urban Future, City Limits' sister think tank.
The report shows that while the Bloomberg administration and City Council have significantly increased city funding for the program in recent years, steep cutbacks in federal support and a higher state minimum wage have caused the number of participants to shrink by 21 percent.
The report concludes that the declining enrollment in the summer jobs program is deeply troubling, since New York’s teen employment rate is the lowest of any of the nation’s 50 largest cities. The city also has an alarmingly high number of “disconnected youth,” young people who are neither working nor in school. According to the study, research by national workforce development experts shows that early work experience strongly boosts young workers’ prospects for future success in the job market.
Here is an excerpt from the report:
While there is no solid formula to measure the return on investment for subsidizing SYEP participation, a wealth of research suggests that the value is quite substantial for participants’ future jobholding and earning power.
Although SYEP is not means-tested for participants, the city is required to check participants’ financial eligibility in order to draw down state funds, and the numbers suggest that more participants than not hail from low- to middle-income households. Additionally, nearly three quarters of participants from 2006 were non-white. Research has found both that teens from wealthier families and white teens have higher rates of part-time employment than non-white and less well off young people. In that sense, SYEP gives a double boost to many of its participants.
Researchers found that during 2005, the employment rate of white New Yorkers between the ages of 16 and 19 was almost a third more than of blacks in the same age range, and about 12 percent more than older Hispanic teens. Without SYEP, those numbers would likely be considerably more skewed.
But what exactly do participants gain by working? And who gains the most? Perhaps the most definitive answers to these questions are found in a book-length report by Andrew Sum, Neeta Fogg, and Garth Mangum, released in 2000, titled "Confronting the Youth Demographic Challenge: The Labor Market Prospects of Out-of-School Young Adults."
“The cumulative years of work experience and the nature of [teens’] work experiences are critical determinants of their weekly and annual earnings,” they write. “Early work experience during the high school years has frequently been found in past national and local studies to have favorable labor market consequences for youth, especially for those not enrolling in four-year colleges and universities immediately upon graduation from high school. Those youth who obtain more work experience during the high school years experience smoother transitions to the labor market upon graduation, obtain higher weekly wages when they do work, and earn more per year 10 to 15 years after leaving high school.”
In other words, young people not immediately bound for college – whether from lack of interest, inability to pay, or need for quick income from work – gain the most from work experience as a teen. This is meaningful given that tens of thousands of city high school students graduate every year and do not immediately enroll in college. It also suggests that the SYEP program could maximize the return on public investment by giving preference for work opportunities to high school seniors (who typically account for more than three-quarters of total participants) who are unsure about or unlikely to directly pursue post-secondary education.
While almost any summer job has some positive impact, Sum, Fogg and Mangum argue that the better that job, the bigger the likely impact will be: “The quality of an employed youth’s work experience also influences the size of its labor market impacts. The opportunity to acquire new skills, to obtain more work hours per week, and to integrate school and work-based learning improve hourly wages and occupational mobility in the early school-leaving years.”
This suggests that the impulse behind CAPITAL, GirlsREACH and BoysREACH – to connect participating young people to higher-value work experiences with private-sector employers – is a good one, and probably deserving of even more city resources and effort than it currently commands. As things stand now, the “ladder” on which SYEP is a lower rung and CAPITAL, GirlsREACH and BoysREACH are next steps up would look more like a pyramid with a very wide base quickly coming to a point.
New York City is hoping to place a few hundred young people in private-sector internships. In contrast, Philadelphia – a city with less than a fifth of NYC’s population and a less diverse and high-powered business community – plans to secure 1,000 employer-paid internships for its young people this summer. The push for these internships has come not from government, but from the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Similarly, the private sector in Boston long has taken a leading role in helping to provide young residents of that city with meaningful work experiences; indeed, the program there served as a model for CAPITAL.
The comparison between New York and these other cities is imprecise because neither Philadelphia nor Boston – where several thousand young people gain private-sector internships each summer – has a publicly funded summer youth program at anywhere near the scope of SYEP. Additionally, a significant number of private-sector employers in New York City have their own programs for summer hiring.
“When we approach companies about participating in CAPITAL, we often hear that they’re already doing something on their own,” says Rich McKeon of the advisory Youth Board. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever documented how many employers are doing this, and what the untapped potential might be.”
Policymakers should worry about the possibility that this potential will remain “untapped.” If the research is correct that work experience during the teen years gives a strong boost to chances of later success in the job market, it is very troubling that so many young New Yorkers who want to work aren’t able to find summer jobs. In 2006, nearly 30,000 young New Yorkers were not selected through the lottery, and early indications are that an even larger number will find themselves out of luck this year. The extreme weakness of the city’s young adult labor market – which Sum, in a more recent publication, characterizes as a “depression era” employment rate – means that rejected SYEP applicants have very dim prospects of finding work through other means.
Finally, even program administrators acknowledge that we don’t know as much about SYEP as we should. “I think it would be terrific to get some money to do a longitudinal study about participants,” says DYCD Assistant Commissioner Suzanne Lynn. “We actually have a natural experiment; we can compare the long-term employment and earnings effects of those not selected for the lottery versus those who were.”
Recommendations
• The federal government must resume substantial support for summer youth employment programs, helping New York City and other localities place many thousands more young people into jobs.
• City government and the business community should measure the extent to which private-sector employers are hiring young New Yorkers for summer work outside the parameters of public programs.
• The Department of Youth and Community Development should offer more support for SYEP providers in fleshing out the educational component of the program, including a sample curriculum and opportunities to learn from best practices.
• The philanthropic community should fund a major quantitative and qualitative assessment of SYEP and summer work in general.
Again, as 2009 unfolds, the storms are still strong, stanky, and still with us. But we will trudge on with our new leader as he fords a new and better path. Starting with stepping up funding, he added $19 billion to the stimulus package for real jobs for young people, or at least more of them. A far improvement over the previous administration's dismal years, as evidenced by this archived 2007 article from the "Cold Case Files":
NYC MISSING BIG CHANCE TO BUILD TEENS' CAREERS
More slots available in the public jobs program for young people would pay major dividends in the shape of their futures. > By David Jason Fischer
City Limits WEEKLY #592June 18, 2007
New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) will serve approximately 9,000 fewer young people this summer than in 1999, and will turn away tens of thousands of applicants due to limited slots, according to a report released today by the Center for an Urban Future, City Limits' sister think tank.
The report shows that while the Bloomberg administration and City Council have significantly increased city funding for the program in recent years, steep cutbacks in federal support and a higher state minimum wage have caused the number of participants to shrink by 21 percent.
The report concludes that the declining enrollment in the summer jobs program is deeply troubling, since New York’s teen employment rate is the lowest of any of the nation’s 50 largest cities. The city also has an alarmingly high number of “disconnected youth,” young people who are neither working nor in school. According to the study, research by national workforce development experts shows that early work experience strongly boosts young workers’ prospects for future success in the job market.
Here is an excerpt from the report:
While there is no solid formula to measure the return on investment for subsidizing SYEP participation, a wealth of research suggests that the value is quite substantial for participants’ future jobholding and earning power.
Although SYEP is not means-tested for participants, the city is required to check participants’ financial eligibility in order to draw down state funds, and the numbers suggest that more participants than not hail from low- to middle-income households. Additionally, nearly three quarters of participants from 2006 were non-white. Research has found both that teens from wealthier families and white teens have higher rates of part-time employment than non-white and less well off young people. In that sense, SYEP gives a double boost to many of its participants.
Researchers found that during 2005, the employment rate of white New Yorkers between the ages of 16 and 19 was almost a third more than of blacks in the same age range, and about 12 percent more than older Hispanic teens. Without SYEP, those numbers would likely be considerably more skewed.
But what exactly do participants gain by working? And who gains the most? Perhaps the most definitive answers to these questions are found in a book-length report by Andrew Sum, Neeta Fogg, and Garth Mangum, released in 2000, titled "Confronting the Youth Demographic Challenge: The Labor Market Prospects of Out-of-School Young Adults."
“The cumulative years of work experience and the nature of [teens’] work experiences are critical determinants of their weekly and annual earnings,” they write. “Early work experience during the high school years has frequently been found in past national and local studies to have favorable labor market consequences for youth, especially for those not enrolling in four-year colleges and universities immediately upon graduation from high school. Those youth who obtain more work experience during the high school years experience smoother transitions to the labor market upon graduation, obtain higher weekly wages when they do work, and earn more per year 10 to 15 years after leaving high school.”
In other words, young people not immediately bound for college – whether from lack of interest, inability to pay, or need for quick income from work – gain the most from work experience as a teen. This is meaningful given that tens of thousands of city high school students graduate every year and do not immediately enroll in college. It also suggests that the SYEP program could maximize the return on public investment by giving preference for work opportunities to high school seniors (who typically account for more than three-quarters of total participants) who are unsure about or unlikely to directly pursue post-secondary education.
While almost any summer job has some positive impact, Sum, Fogg and Mangum argue that the better that job, the bigger the likely impact will be: “The quality of an employed youth’s work experience also influences the size of its labor market impacts. The opportunity to acquire new skills, to obtain more work hours per week, and to integrate school and work-based learning improve hourly wages and occupational mobility in the early school-leaving years.”
This suggests that the impulse behind CAPITAL, GirlsREACH and BoysREACH – to connect participating young people to higher-value work experiences with private-sector employers – is a good one, and probably deserving of even more city resources and effort than it currently commands. As things stand now, the “ladder” on which SYEP is a lower rung and CAPITAL, GirlsREACH and BoysREACH are next steps up would look more like a pyramid with a very wide base quickly coming to a point.
New York City is hoping to place a few hundred young people in private-sector internships. In contrast, Philadelphia – a city with less than a fifth of NYC’s population and a less diverse and high-powered business community – plans to secure 1,000 employer-paid internships for its young people this summer. The push for these internships has come not from government, but from the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Similarly, the private sector in Boston long has taken a leading role in helping to provide young residents of that city with meaningful work experiences; indeed, the program there served as a model for CAPITAL.
The comparison between New York and these other cities is imprecise because neither Philadelphia nor Boston – where several thousand young people gain private-sector internships each summer – has a publicly funded summer youth program at anywhere near the scope of SYEP. Additionally, a significant number of private-sector employers in New York City have their own programs for summer hiring.
“When we approach companies about participating in CAPITAL, we often hear that they’re already doing something on their own,” says Rich McKeon of the advisory Youth Board. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever documented how many employers are doing this, and what the untapped potential might be.”
Policymakers should worry about the possibility that this potential will remain “untapped.” If the research is correct that work experience during the teen years gives a strong boost to chances of later success in the job market, it is very troubling that so many young New Yorkers who want to work aren’t able to find summer jobs. In 2006, nearly 30,000 young New Yorkers were not selected through the lottery, and early indications are that an even larger number will find themselves out of luck this year. The extreme weakness of the city’s young adult labor market – which Sum, in a more recent publication, characterizes as a “depression era” employment rate – means that rejected SYEP applicants have very dim prospects of finding work through other means.
Finally, even program administrators acknowledge that we don’t know as much about SYEP as we should. “I think it would be terrific to get some money to do a longitudinal study about participants,” says DYCD Assistant Commissioner Suzanne Lynn. “We actually have a natural experiment; we can compare the long-term employment and earnings effects of those not selected for the lottery versus those who were.”
Recommendations
• The federal government must resume substantial support for summer youth employment programs, helping New York City and other localities place many thousands more young people into jobs.
• City government and the business community should measure the extent to which private-sector employers are hiring young New Yorkers for summer work outside the parameters of public programs.
• The Department of Youth and Community Development should offer more support for SYEP providers in fleshing out the educational component of the program, including a sample curriculum and opportunities to learn from best practices.
• The philanthropic community should fund a major quantitative and qualitative assessment of SYEP and summer work in general.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
O.J. and the Devil (This is Priceless!)
This will make you laugh out loud, peeps:
One day in the future, OJ Simpson has a heart-attack and dies. He immediately goes to hell, where the devil is waiting for him.
'I don't know what to do here,' says the devil. 'You are on my list, but I have no room for you. You definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I've got a couple of folks here who weren't quite as bad as you. I'll let one of them go, but you have to take their place. I'll even let YOU decide who leaves.'
OJ thought that sounded pretty good, so the devil opened the door to the first room.
In it was Ted Kennedy and a large pool of water. Ted kept diving in, and surfacing, empty handed. Over, and over, and over he dove in and surfaced with nothing. Such was his fate in hell. 'No,' OJ said. 'I don't think so. I'm not a good swimmer, and I don't think I could do that all day long.'
The devil led him to the door of the next room.
In it was George W. Bush with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time. 'No, this is no good; I've got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day,' commented OJ.
The devil opened a third door. Through it, OJ saw Bill Clinton, lying on the bed, his arms tied over his head, and his legs restrained in a spread-eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best. OJ looked at this in shocked disbelief, and finally said, 'Yeah man, I can handle this.'
The devil smiled and said . . . . .
'OK, Monica, you're free to go.'
One day in the future, OJ Simpson has a heart-attack and dies. He immediately goes to hell, where the devil is waiting for him.
'I don't know what to do here,' says the devil. 'You are on my list, but I have no room for you. You definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I've got a couple of folks here who weren't quite as bad as you. I'll let one of them go, but you have to take their place. I'll even let YOU decide who leaves.'
OJ thought that sounded pretty good, so the devil opened the door to the first room.
In it was Ted Kennedy and a large pool of water. Ted kept diving in, and surfacing, empty handed. Over, and over, and over he dove in and surfaced with nothing. Such was his fate in hell. 'No,' OJ said. 'I don't think so. I'm not a good swimmer, and I don't think I could do that all day long.'
The devil led him to the door of the next room.
In it was George W. Bush with a sledgehammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing that hammer, time after time after time. 'No, this is no good; I've got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day,' commented OJ.
The devil opened a third door. Through it, OJ saw Bill Clinton, lying on the bed, his arms tied over his head, and his legs restrained in a spread-eagle pose. Bent over him was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best. OJ looked at this in shocked disbelief, and finally said, 'Yeah man, I can handle this.'
The devil smiled and said . . . . .
'OK, Monica, you're free to go.'
Monday, May 4, 2009
An Action Hero Movie
Our hero wrestles with finding the courage to get past or defeat the monster who has taken his comrades captive, and saving his friends from being cushion-pinned to death. Risky, but not an impossible task for this brother under cover!
Sebastian's Voodoo from Joaquin Baldwin on Vimeo.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
I Just Love This Photo! Feom Flickr
very very very busy time! just another crosstown traffic kind of day... why the rush? will it really get you there faster?
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