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Making It Easier to Build Won’t Generate Affordable Housing

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By Murtaza Baxamusa / Rooflines, the Shelterforce blog

It is often convenient to blame city planners for the affordable housing crisis. After all, those affected have no other public forum to vent their concerns, least of all toward those who are profiting off of the crisis on a project-by-project basis. Sadly, this blame is often misguided, because planners do not produce housing.

A case study of the profit-maximizing, decision-making that is driving the affordability crisis is downtown San Diego. Construction cranes are up all over, and a $6.4 billion development juggernaut is rolling through. Nearly 10,000 new units have been permitted by the downtown planning board over the last four years, and the fast and generous permit approval process is cited as a model by developers for other regions.   [Read more…]

Disdain for Human Rights “A Disease That’s Spreading,” Warns UN Chief

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Warning comes as Trump administration reportedly considers pulling out of UN Human Rights Council

By Nika Knight / Common Dreams

“Disregard for human rights is a disease, and it is a disease that is spreading,” warned United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a keynote address as the U.N. Human Rights Council (OHCHR) opened its main session on Monday.

“We are increasingly seeing the perverse phenomenon of populism and extremism feeding off each other in a frenzy of growing racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred and other forms of intolerance,” Guterres said, referring to growing intolerance in the U.S. and Europe as far-right figures such as President Donald Trump gain power.   [Read more…]

On Tuesday, House Republicans Will Betray Their Oaths, Their Country, And The American People

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By Dartagnan / Daily Kos

On February 28, 2017, the United States will witness the what may be the single greatest act of collective treachery by its elected government officials since the Confederate States voted to secede from the Union in 1860 and 1861.

And in all likelihood, the U.S. media will completely ignore it.

On Tuesday the Republican-dominated House Judiciary Committee is expected to reject House Democrats’ Resolution for a formal inquiry into the the potential ethical and legal violations committed by the Trump campaign apparatus in its contacts, communications and financial transactions with Russia during the run-up to Trump’s election last November, and throughout the transition since then. It will also reject calls to examine evidence of Trump’s solicitation and receipt of foreign gifts intended to influence American policy and the potential violations of the Emoluments Clause of the United States Constitution.   [Read more…]

CalPERS Joins Investors Calling on Banks to Address Concerns About Dakota Access Pipeline

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By Dan Bacher / Daily Kos

On February 17, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) officials announced they are joining over 100 fellow investors asking major U.S. and international banks backing the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to address the concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota.

The statement endorsed by CalPERS supports a rerouting of the pipeline, but doesn’t call for halting DAPL, a project that poses enormous harm to the drinking water supply for 17 million people and to many fish and wildlife species on the Missouri River.

The announcement came four days after 150 people from a coalition of environmental and Native American Groups held a march and rally in front of the CalPERS office in Sacramento to tell the retirement fund to divest from its investments in banks backing the Dakota Access Pipeline.   [Read more…]

Union Density in San Diego Below State Average

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By Murtaza Baxamusa

There were about 185 thousand union members in San Diego, based on surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016. About 110 thousand of these workers are in the private sector. There are additionally 20 thousand workers covered by union contracts in the region. The continuing employment recovery in the last two years contributed to an increase in union membership.

Union density is the share of workers that are union members. It is an important measure of union prevalence that determines the impact of collective bargaining agreements on area-wide labor wages and benefits. In 2016, union density was 12.9 percent for all workers in San Diego. It was about 6.2 percent in the private sector and 45.5 in the public sector in San Diego. Union membership rate in California stayed almost constant at 15.9 percent since membership grew by 65,000 members at the same pace as the overall employment.   [Read more…]

Trump’s Budget Office Preps ‘Hit List’ on Public Programs

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National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Americorps are among targets meant to showcase ‘waste’ of taxpayer funds

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

With Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) confirmed to lead the White House budget office, the Trump administration is getting ready to follow through on plans to slash major domestic programs, the New York Times reported Friday.

Work on President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal has been delayed as Republicans worked to get Mulvaney—known for his unyielding stances on safety net programs—approved as head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Now, his office has targeted nine popular and critical programs to axe, according to an early internal OMB memo obtained by the Times.

The so-called “hit list” includes, in part, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Export-Import Bank, and the Corporation for National and Community Service, which funds AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps projects.   [Read more…]

Rebel Action Network Urges Everyone to Participate in the F17 General Strike

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Information provided by the Rebel Action Network

Strikes Work. Here’s Why:

Individually, our strength is inconsistent. Collectively, we’re indefensible. When a few hundred thousand citizens coordinate, we can bring the powerful US economy to a grinding halt. And without America’s formidable economic strength, the government is redundant. They need cashflow & the tacit permission from all citizens in order to work. Friday we’ll withhold both in our collective show of strength.

While other resistance organizations are organizing rallies & symbolic gestures of protest, we Rebels are getting down to high-impact business.

Here’s what you need to do in three easy steps:   [Read more…]

Local Organizations Call On San Diego City Council To Sign Amicus Brief in Muslim Ban Lawsuit

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ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties

We, the undersigned civil society and business organizations, urge the San Diego City Council to join the City of Chicago in filing an amicus curiae brief in State of Washington vs. Donald Trump to denounce the U.S. Government’s suspension of refugee admissions and its unconstitutional ban on admissions of citizens of seven Muslim- majority countries. The executive order that established these policies violates fundamental principles of human rights and bedrock tenets of Constitutional law; and it betrays our values as a nation of immigrants and as San Diegans. Its implementation has had cruel and arbitrary consequences for many people fleeing persecution or seeking to enter the United States to reunite with family, receive medical treatment, or pursue professional and educational opportunities.   [Read more…]

In California’s Imperial Valley, Residents Aren’t Waiting for Government to Track Pollution

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For marginalized communities along the California-Mexico border, projects to gather and share scientific reports are crucial to holding agencies accountable.

By Paulina Phelps / Yes! Magazine

Each day, the drying Salton Sea and an increasingly busy border take their toll on the air quality of southern California’s parched Imperial Valley. Despite averaging only three inches of rain a year, this swath of desert spanning the Mexican border from the Colorado River to San Diego County is heavily dependent on agriculture, and for decades farmers have relied on the Salton Sea to drain their fields. Today, the valley air hangs with toxic dust and pollution, and the residents face the highest rate of hospitalization for asthma of any area in the state.   [Read more…]

#NotOurLaborSec: Fast Food Workers Protest Puzder Nationwide

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As protests against Andy Puzder erupt around the country, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tells labor secretary nominee he has a “sneering contempt” for workers

By Nika Knight / Common Dreams

For the third time since anti-worker fast food CEO Andy Puzder’s nomination for Labor Secretary was announced, fast food workers flooded the streets in protest on Monday.

Days before Puzder’s confirmation hearing on Thursday, hundreds of cashiers and cooks ralliedin front of the St. Louis headquarters of Hardee’s and the Anaheim, Calif. offices of CKE Restaurants, the conglomerate overseen by Puzder that includes Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants.   [Read more…]

Public Transit as a Social Justice Issue

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By Joseph Wagner / San Diego UrbDeZine

One crucial aspect of contemporary debates on spatial politics, socioeconomic stratification, and immigration is the issue of public transit.

Prior to the question of a person’s right to be in a city (or supposed lack thereof in the case of undocumented immigrants), there is the question of a city’s duty to provide feasible means for moving around in its space. Albeit mundane, it is a key factor determining a person’s economic and educational opportunities, to name only two.

And it hardly bears mentioning, but moving around in San Diego all but requires a car.   [Read more…]

Progressives Lost The Vote On DeVos But Won Something Else

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By Jeff Bryant / Education Opportunity Network

Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasn’t the only thing that went down to defeat that day.

For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a “Washington Consensus” that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.

Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven “reform” mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were “happily copying each other” on education.   [Read more…]

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