KNOWING IT ALL
If it were possible for a publishing company to move their book to the top of every search through the Library of Congress’s catalog, don’t you believe they would? I completely disagree that Google’s algorithms for searching should be open, because you’d then see
the organizations with lots of resources ensuring visibility through tampering. If the algorithm were open, then the big companies would go underground, spending money on a high rank, quitting their advertising, and fooling the public about whether their page is actually useful.
I appreciate that you raise many concerns in Steve Weber’s article, “Open Source: A double bind,” but I’m suspicious of your conclusions. If open systems like Wikipedia must occasionally experience revolutions to maintain their integrity, then so be it. The nature of the Internet is a combination of individual and collective creativity. There are always going to be folks who shout louder than the rest of us, but when the rest of us can all play, too, the selfless and idealistic among us will always find ways to promote the common good.
Tim Warner ’89

I received your issue of “Can we know everything?” It really knocked my socks off. It is often wrongly said, “Man makes himself.” He does not. Technology—stone age, copper age—makes us. This was the theme, generally, of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
D. L. Snow ’72

I saw your March/April cover with the rhetorical question “Can we know everything?” It would appear that the student in the foreground is accessing Wikipedia, which is interesting given the questions that you raise about online knowledge. Even more interesting is the second student, who is playing solitaire on his laptop. Perhaps the question should be, “Do we care enough to know everything?”
Andre DuVigneaud

GETTING A LOCKE ON IT
I found Jeff Gillenkirk’s article on the Locke reunion lacking in capturing the life, vibrancy, and ongoing optimism of California’s Chinese Americans. It was The Joy Luck Club—but where was the joy or the luck? The Locke alumni share a sense of humor about our time there, a fondness for our shared stories, and our work towards better communities. What the article failed to portray was that the reunion was a moment of toe-dipping into the Sacramento River delta, testing the temperature of the past, present, and future of our shared social history, before taking a dip in the rich waters of our common baptism.
Whitney Marr ’77

Locke is one of my favorite places; whenever I get within 50 miles of the town, I go to Al the Wop’s for dinner. I love the delta, and when I’m there
I always feel I’m surrounded by California history.
I’ve written two stories about the Chinese in California, one about a Chinese man, a farm boss, who came to Locke every so often for a few days of R&R. He sleeps in, eats a lot, gambles, and makes his daily trip to the whorehouse. My father was a wool buyer and for years dealt with many Basques who ran sheep in the San Joaquin Valley. The Basque sheepherders did the same—came to town two or three times a year for R&R.
Don Ball

CHINAFORNIA REDUX
I read with interest the January/February issue of California magazine, particularly the way this edition mixed the bicultural perspective of “Chinafornia” with the multicultural ponderings of Richard Rodriguez.
We Californians did not wake up one morning to a multicultural state. Rather, the seeds of diversity that were sown throughout this land since even before statehood have been branching out ever since. I wonder if you have ever considered approaching esteemed historian Ronald Takaki to contribute an essay on the subject.
When I was first a Cal student in the early 1980s, it was Professor Takaki who inspired me to see the print media as a powerful way of communicating a perspective of diversity into the mainstream. Since then, I have gone on to be an editor and publisher in the Bay Area for two decades now.
I want to thank you for continuing to position California magazine on the leading edge of the complex issues facing our state. You do the alumni proud!
Ted Fang ’02, editor
Asian Week

I was intrigued by Orville Schell’s article on China (January/February). I am a 1950 Cal business graduate and spent my career in commercial banking.
I had a heated discourse with the Chinese banking delegate to the World Bank conference as to whether or not they had cleaned up their banks via a single large government infusion into two of their state-owned banks. Since then, I have been following their efforts to show the outside world that they are getting close to having a “world class” banking system. I submit that their “authoritarian capitalism” will make that impossible.
The Chinese have been able to finance their mammoth Three Gorges Dam project, but will they be able to get the financing they will need for the other problems? They have no track record in servicing any significant amount of borrowed money. If they don’t borrow, it might well be because they will use their significant U.S. dollar holdings, which could come at a poor time for us.
Richard H. Daniel ’50

TAX DECODE
I read and enjoyed the John Judis article (January/February) regarding Governor Arnold and Governor Ronald. The general history of the ’60s and ’70s in California is most relevant today. But, with respect, Judis is a revisionist and his history needs some correction. I was the author of both the 1970 Tax Reform (AB 1000, 1001) and the 1971 Welfare Reform acts. We negotiated these massive bills respectively for about six weeks directly with Governor Reagan and his key staff.
Judis’s statement that former speaker Jesse Unruh was involved with tax reform is just not the case. Unruh left to run for governor in 1970. Also, the statement that Governor Jerry Brown’s budget surplus ($6 billion) in 1978 resulted from a rise in local property tax rates is not correct.

Here are the real and rather fascinating historical facts about Reagan-era tax and welfare legislation: Governor Pat Brown’s last general fund budget (1966) totaled $4.6 billion (today it’s $100 billion). By 1970 Governor Reagan’s budget was $10 billion, a 100 percent increase in four years. In a moneysaving effort, we did pass the Bagley-Beilenson Welfare Package in 1971. Presidential candidate Reagan later claimed that he/we thus saved $2 billion.

But back to taxes. In 1969–70, under then-Republican Speaker Bob Monagan, we proposed, and Governor Reagan agreed, to add the 9, 10, and 11 percent state income tax brackets. We also added a one-cent (18 percent) increase to the sales tax and virtually doubled (from 5 to 9 percent) the corporate tax. This measure raised almost $2 billion of new state revenue; it was the largest percentage tax increase in the state’s history. A significant part was/is remitted annually to local government for property tax relief. Mistakenly, however, we narrowed the tax brackets, and when burgeoning inflation occurred in the mid-1970s, everybody’s tax brackets jumped and the state’s income tax take expanded massively. Thus the big budget surplus that occurred during Governor Jerry Brown’s term (1975 forward) was provided by the ostensibly conservative Governor Reagan.
William T. Bagley ’49
Former legislator and UC Regent

A fter reading the article by John Judis, I would
like to ask what might happen if Proposition 13 were to go away? What would happen to the thousands, if not millions, of people who would be taxed out of their homes? What about all the elderly people who would like to spend what’s left of their lives in their own homes and would have to leave because they could no longer afford their taxes? I saw it happen in Hawaii: Families who had lived in their homes for generations were taxed out
of them with nowhere to go. It could happen here.
Yvonne Vail ’71

TRIBUTE
I was extremely saddened to learn of Dean Richard Holton’s passing. He was one of my MBA professors, and more importantly my MBA advisor, whose expertise and knowledge were instrumental in my academic pursuits. Dean Holton was always receptive to innovations and enthusiastically endorsed my successful efforts to establish a joint MBA/aerospace industry research program.
He was not only a teacher, but a trusted advisor and friend whose untimely passing is indeed a tragedy.
Karl Kettler, MBA ’66

BLUE HAIKU
Going on the firm belief that it is never too long after a Big Game victory to gloat, I am belatedly sending along this haiku I composed:
Untried quarterback
Steve Levy is true hero.
Beat Stanford—real good!
James Chapman ’82

BEAR FACTS
I just received the March/April edition, and always a sucker for trivia, I turned to “Check Your Cal Bona Fides.” Imagine my surprise when I read Question 2! I called my spouse, David Gruber ’71, MS ’76, Ph.D. ’81, the Cal Bear Man, just to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind. The scientific name for the Cal griz is Ursus arctos. I know, I know, it is listed as Ursus californicus on the state Web site, but consider the source.
Kristina Roper Graber ’82

The editors respond: Although purveyors of all things California, we have to agree that our original source for Question 2 in “Cal Bona Fides,” the state Web site, may not have been the most reliable source. Curious as to how Ursus californicus made it onto the state Web site, we consulted Professor Bruce Baldwin, a professor of integrative biology. He explained:

"In the early 1900s, C. Hart Merriam named many species of grizzly bears in North America (seven in California alone) based on differences in pelage, skull morphology, and other characteristics that can be quite variable within populations. Current taxonomy places all grizzly bears within Ursus arctos, the same species as the European and Alaskan brown bears (not to be confused with the cinnamon phase of the black bear, Ursus americanus). At most, the Californian grizzlies are now treated as a distinct—and extinct—subspecies (Ursus arctos californicus)."