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Outgoing CEO Paul Jacobs to Shareholders: Tell Your Congressman to Give Qualcomm a Tax Break!

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By John Lawrence

In his final message after more than eight years as chief executive officer of Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), Paul Jacobs on March 4 gave shareholders what he called a “homework assignment.” “Send your Congress people your opinion that you’d like American companies to be able to bring offshore money back to the United States to either reinvest or return to shareholders”, said Jacobs, now executive chairman of the San Diego based chipmaker, which has $21.6 billion in overseas profits.

Paul could have said, “Go home and hug your wife and children” or “It’s been a pleasure being your CEO for 8 years and thank you for your work.” Or “tell your Congressman to raise the minimum wage” or “tell your Congressman to end homelessness now”, but, no, his solipsistic exhortation was all about making Qualcomm executives and shareholders (not employees mind you!) even richer than they already are.   [Read more…]

Putting Our Financial Well Being Above Our Children’s Ability to Survive a Warming Planet

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By John Lawrence and Frank Thomas

Each year there are more extreme weather events not only in the US but all over the world. Most scientists agree that, as more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air and the gaseous composition of the atmosphere is changed, extreme weather events are more likely to happen.

As the earth warms due to greenhouse gasses (GHGs), polar and glacier ice melts and more moisture is held in the atmosphere which is deposited in torrents of precipitation. The Arctic permafrost and subsea waters contain over 1.7 trillion tons of methane which will be released as the earth warms further. This could lead to deadly injections of highly toxic methane reserves into the atmosphere in the relatively near future.

Just a 3% release over a short time, or 50 billion tons of methane, is the equivalent of 1 trillion tons of CO2 emissions … sufficient to ecologically destroy Mother Earth.   [Read more…]

Must Progress Come to a Screeching Halt To Save the Planet From Global Warming?

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By John Lawrence

Ever since the Enlightenment, progress has been essential to civilization. Defined as steady improvement toward a goal, the progress of society or civilization has been synonymous with growth, inventions, growing gross domestic product.

The very US Constitution was a testament to the Enlightenment era notion of progress. Science and technology would create the conditions for the “pursuit of happiness.” Every day in every way human society would get better and better. Only now we’re at a crossroads where the very idea of progress and in particular continued progress is contributing to the destruction of the planet.

The more progress we have, the more growth of GDP, the more greenhouse gases (GHGs) are spewed into the atmosphere and the more our planetary ecology is corrupted. Progress as we’ve known it must come to a screeching halt or the planet is in jeopardy of becoming uninhabitable by the human species.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: February 2014 – Nowhere To Hide

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By John Lawrence

USA Today did a report: Nowhere to hide from extreme weather.  As it turns out, the US is uniquely positioned for extreme weather whether it’s hurricanes in the southeast, tornadoes in the lower plains, noreasters along the eastern seaboard, wildfires in the west, earthquakes, volcanoes and possible tsunamis along the west coast.

And then there are sinkholes in Florida, avalanches in the Rockies and flash floods in the Appalachians. Hail, ice storms and lake-effect snowstorms far from the Great Lakes round out the list. No matter where you go, you will meet extreme weather. Especially now that storms are almost continent wide. Each storm in February affected about 150 million people, half the population of the US.   [Read more…]

Public Banking – Part 5: San Diego Could Benefit From a Public Bank

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City of San Diego Sending Billions of Dollars to Wall Street Needlessly

By John Lawrence

Public banks are financial institutions owned by government entities, such as cities, states, and nations. Establishment of a Public Bank of San Diego would return millions in profits to the City instead of winding up in Wall Street bankers’ private pockets.

Each year the City of San Diego deposits millions of dollars of city revenues in Wall Street banks. The budget for 2014 General Fund Revenues is $1.2 billion. That includes revenues from property taxes, sales taxes, Transient Occupancy Taxes and Franchise Fees among other things. That money has to be deposited somewhere. The City pays these banks transaction fees and loses whatever interest might be gained if the City of San Diego deposited the money in its own public bank with profits earned deposited in the City’s general fund.

Under the current arrangement, interest earnings for the projected 2014 budget are a pathetic 0.1%. Why? Because the Wall Street banks earn most of the interest on the deposited City revenues and pay out interest to the City bordering on zero. Revenues from interest to the City alone could be millions of dollars, and interest the City pays out could be effectively be reduced to zero if the City of San Diego owned its own bank.   [Read more…]

A Challenge to Kevin Faulconer: End Homelessness Now

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By John Lawrence

You kibitz with the homeless in your campaign ads. Now that you’re Mayor Kevin Faulconer, are you really going to do anything about it? Or are you going to continue to procrastinate. Other cities are ending homelessness from Phoenix to Salt Lake City to Nashville.

You have the model to follow. It’s a no-brainer. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just follow their successful models. You don’t have to continue to study the problem in order to address it ten years from now.

These cities and others have decided that treatment and supportive services should not be conditions or precursors to permanent housing. Instead, the very ability to address personal mental health goals, beat addiction and gain stable employment stems from the safety and stability that comes from having a permanent home. This approach is called Housing First.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: January 2014 – 30 million Americans Had Flights Canceled or Delayed

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By John Lawrence

More than 49,000 flights were canceled and another 300,000 delayed in January as airlines lost $75 million to $150 million because of costs such as deicing jets as well as lost revenue. 30 million people had their flights canceled or delayed.

Flight cancellations cost passengers an extra $2.5 billion in meals and extra hotel bills in January alone. Many stranded passengers had to wait days — and in a few extreme case up to a week — to get a seat on a flight out.

After viewing the Super Bowl many fans had their flights home canceled. Even the victorious Seattle Seahawks experienced flight disruptions. Their charter flight was delayed by a snowstorm in Newark, NJ. After a couple of hours on the tarmac, the plane finally took off, only to be diverted to Minneapolis. They finally made it home hours after their scheduled arrival time.   [Read more…]

Concert and CD Review: The North at Dizzy’s

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By John Lawrence

On Saturday, February 1, a trio group called “The North” played San Diego’s premiere jazz club, Dizzy’s, just off the I-5 in Pacific Beach. It was a pre-release party for their album, “Slow Down (This Isn’t the Mainland)” which is officially due out April 15 although albums were available at the club. The group consists of Romain Collin, piano, Shawn Conley, bass, and Abe Lagrimas Jr, drums.

Recorded in Hawaii, and dedicated to Oahu’s north shore (hence the name), they mainly created a mellow, laid back sound. No hard-edged New York City vibe here. As such the music should be very accessible for the average listener but not so much for the die hard jazz fan. One person’s “laid back” is another person’s “nuthin much happenin.”

The group performed the tunes they had recorded on the album, naturally.  The most successful tune even more so in concert than on the album was Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The group’s exquisite rendering was almost prayerful and churchlike. They tried quite successfully to incorporate folk music in their ouvre.   [Read more…]

The Real Job Creators in San Diego: The US Military and the Military-Industrial Complex

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By John Lawrence

In 1961 President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex (MIC). He said, “We annually spend on military security more than  the net income of all United States corporations.” Since then spending on the military and the MIC has only skyrocketed. Taken together, they, not the rich, are the main job creators in the US. If you graduate from high school and can’t get a job, no problem.

The military will accept you with open arms, provide you with on-the-job training, even give you a signing bonus. Why stand in an unemployment line or apply for a job along with 500 other applicants? Or go into debt to attend some schlock college?

If you’re a college graduate and can’t get hired, try the MIC: the NSA, the CIA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics – they’re the real job creators.   [Read more…]

College Graduates Beg for a Shrinking Pool of Jobs

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PhDs Go Begging, Microsoft Lays Off High Tech Workers, Graduates Not Able to Cope with Student Loan Debt Getting Jobs as Baristas…

By John Lawrence

…That’s the new reality for today’s college graduates.

Have America’s young people been sold a bill of goods? They thought that a college degree guaranteed them an entry to a good middle class life. Many are now finding out that that’s not the case as they struggle to pay student loans and try to cope with an anemic jobs market. For-profit colleges are advertising on TV in order to perpetuate the myth that a college education is a panacea. Even President Obama spouts that everyone should go to college, saying that’s what will cure the nation’s ills and prevent us from falling into the abyss of national mediocrity.

But don’t count on it.   [Read more…]

Challenge to San Diego: End Homelessness in 2014

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Phoenix and Salt Lake City have ended chronic homelessness among veterans. Why can’t San Diego follow their example?

By John Lawrence

Phoenix has become the first city to end homelessness among veterans. The Obama administration had set a goal of ending homelessness among veterans by 2015, but Phoenix reached that mark a year early. After housing the last 56 veterans a week before Christmas, Phoenix announced that it had eradicated chronic homelessness among veterans in that city. Phoenix and Salt Lake City had been involved in a frierndly competition to see which city could end chronic homelessness among veterans first. Phoenix won, but Salt Lake was not far behind.

The fact that Phoenix and Salt Lake City Mayors had gotten involved in the homeless issue was a significant reason why this problem has been solved in those cities. In an effort to raise awareness about veteran homelessness, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker proclaimed November “Housing Veterans Month.” In response, roughly 40 landlords contacted the city to say they had units available for veterans. Becker had also engaged Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton in a friendly competition to see whose city could end chronic veteran homelessness first.   [Read more…]

Global Warming: How to Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit – Part 2

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By John Lawrence

This series of articles is based on an excellent book by Tom Rand: “Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit– 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.”  InPart 1 we dealt with all the possibilities for solar power generation.  In this article we will consider wind.  For centuries wind powered ships and windmills drew water out of the ground.  We are now in a position to reconnect with this form of energy and convert it into electricity.  How it works is very simple:  As the wind blows, enough force is created to spin a turbine which in turn generates electrical energy.  These days a single wind turbine can power a decent sized town.

The US Department of Energy has calculated that wind could generate 15 times the total world energy use.  That’s 15 times all the energy generated by oil, coal and nuclear at the present time.  Even oil magnate T. Boone Pickens has called the US the “Saudi Arabia of wind.”   [Read more…]

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