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Neoliberalism and Its Discontents: What’s Left Beyond More Impoverished Choices?

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By Jim Miller

The debate rages on. Last week after I spent the final part of my column addressing Adolph Reed’s provocative Harper’s piece on the dismaying state of American politics, “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals, the argument just kept going across the national progressive media landscape.

In a sharp rebuttal to Reed in The Nation, Michelle Goldberg attacked what she characterized as “Electoral Nihilism” by essentially dismissing what she called his “left wing disappointment” and reasserting the very strategy that Reed so adeptly critiqued in his article:

So yes, for liberals, there is only one option in an election year, and that is to elect, at whatever cost, whichever Democrat is running. The rest of the time, those who find the current choices intolerable should join in the long, slow groundwork that would allow for better ones.

Goldberg points out some current signs of hope for progressives nationwide, particularly a wave of progressive new mayors in places like New York and concludes that this makes it a “bizarre moment” for Reed to put forth his argument.   [Read more…]

The Jobs Picture: Not Looking So Good From the Bottom Up, Even in San Diego

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By Doug Porter

An article in the UT-San Diego business section about employment opportunities caught my eye this morning. While the local picture may be slightly better than the national projections, due to the presence of defense and tech industries, the prognosis for hiring remains heavily weighted towards low paying industries.

Today we’ll take a look at this story and other recent economic reports, along with what they portend for the growing national movement in support of increasing the minimum wage.     [Read more…]

SDPD Chief Lansdowne Takes One for the Team

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By Doug Porter

San Diego’s Chief of Police is gone as of Monday, March 3rd. Retired. Resigned. Whatever.

Incoming Mayor Kevin Faulconer will be starting his term with a clean slate, able to downplay reports of police misconduct as the failures of prior administrations.  

The systemic problems within the SDPD won’t be actually resolved by his resignation, but the perception that action has been taken will likely trump demands for actual reforms, or, God forbid, an actual independent monitor. Fortunately, there was another, less noticed, development yesterday that may derail hopes by local officials that these scandals will fade away.      [Read more…]

Vergara v. California’s Corporate Heart

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By Julie Gutman Dickinson/Capital and Main

Are job protections for teachers to blame for educational underachievement among low-income students of color in California? That’s the provocative question ostensibly at the heart of Vergara vs. California, which seeks to invalidate the tenure, due process and seniority rights of hundreds of thousands of educators.

Astute observers of the nation’s escalating education wars, however, may be asking another question: When did it become permissible to use the welfare of children as a fig leaf for an all-out legal attack on teachers?

Or, as historian and teacher John Thompson wrote recently in Scholastic, “Are corporate reformers unabashedly using the courts as a battleground for battering employees’ rights, as opposed to helping children?”   [Read more…]

More Lies Leveled Against Raising the Minimum Wage — This Time by the Federal Govt. Itself?

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The truth: economists say raising the federal minimum to $10.10 would lift somewhere between 4.6 and 6 million households above the poverty line.

By Joe Conason / AlterNet

In the midst of a crucial political debate that plainly favored proponents of a higher minimum wage, the Congressional Budget Office dropped a bombshell headline this week. Increasing the minimum to $10.10 an hour — as demanded by President Barack Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill — would “cost 500,000 jobs.” At a moment when employment still lags badly, this assertion was potentially devastating.

Almost lost in much of the predictable media coverage was the CBO report’s estimate that a minimum-wage increase would lift at least 900,000 workers and their families out of poverty — and boost incomes for at least 15 million more.

But as top economists have repeatedly pointed out, such damning employment numbers are fuzzy and unreliable, while the CBO poverty numbers probably underestimated the positive impact of a higher minimum.   [Read more…]

Another Day, Another SDPD Sex Scandal: Can City Leaders Put a Lid on It?

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By Doug Porter

Police Chief Bill Lansdowne called a press conference yesterday evening to announce yet another reported incident of sexual misconduct involving a SDPD officer.

One of the women contacting the SDPD following allegations against officer Christopher Hays, provided information leading to yet another officer, who is now under investigation for allegedly touching and exposing himself to a female arrestee.

The chief told the assembled press that the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave while the investigation continues. “We are doing everything we should be doing in this case,”  Lansdowne said, and repeated an earlier plea for any other potential victims or witnesses to come forward to report wrongdoing   [Read more…]

NLRB Upholds Vote by Sutter California Pacific RNs to Join CNA

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By Chalres Idleson and Liz Jacobs/Beyond Chron

It’s official. The federal government has upheld the vote by registered nurses at San Francisco’s largest private hospital, and largest non-union facility, Sutter’s California Pacific Medical Center’s Pacific campus with 800 RNs, to join the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. It was the single biggest hospital organizing win for non-union RNs in a decade.

In a ruling issued late last week, the National Labor Relations Board San Francisco region resolved outstanding challenged ballots from the December secret ballot campaign, in which the RNs voted in mid-December by a count of 351 for CNA to 321 for Sutter.

Concurrently, Joseph Frankl, the NLRB regional director, dismissed Sutter CPMC’s objections to the election, writing that the employer “failed to identify potential witnesses or even to allude to
testimony,” in support of their objections. Formal certification by the NLRB of CNA/NNU as the elected representative of the RNs is expected later today.   [Read more…]

California Needs High Speed Rail Now

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By Robbie Hunter/State Building and Construction Trades Council of California via Labor’s Edge Blog

California urgently needs high speed rail now. The nay-sayers are still searching for reasons to delay this great public works project further, but they are out of  excuses. The delays need to stop. It is time to move forward and begin building. The transportation needs, the workers and the dollars are there to get started.

Governor Brown has made the sensible suggestion to use cap-and-trade dollars for some of the funding. That makes sense because the very purpose of cap-and-trade is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels–one of the greatest benefits high-speed mass transit rail will bring to California. Without question, providing electrified mass transit for the people of California will reduce our use of fossil fuels.

That’s in addition to the other obvious benefits of a cleaner and healthier environment, the easing of congestion on our highways and at our airports, the more efficient movement between our state’s population centers, and the immediate economic jolt of  thousands of good construction jobs.   [Read more…]

Walmart’s New Research: A Flattering Self-Portrait

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By Steven Mikulan/Capital and Main

Last year Walmart commissioned a study on itself, and now its findings can be revealed: Walmart is the greatest thing since penicillin. More specifically, the study sees the chain-store titan’s widening footprint on America’s retail landscape as a gift for the communities lucky enough to have a Supercenter land on them.

The research, conducted by the Hatamiya Group, a Davis-based firm owned by Lon Hatamiya, is predicated on a comparative analysis of taxable retail sales and retail business permits, and reaches two conclusions: “On average,” California communities with Walmart Supercenters in them have fared better economically than those without them.   [Read more…]

The First Order of Business for the Post-Election City Council: A Minimum Wage Referendum

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By Doug Porter

It’s time to give the Lincoln Club and their allies a dose of their own medicine. They’ve collectively decided to wield veto power over our elected officials, effectively turning San Diego into a case study of rule by initiative.

Fine. It’s likely the City Council will have a veto-proof 6-3 majority for the foreseeable future. If there’s one issue that polls well with the general public, would actually benefit people not in a position to belong to the yacht club and will simply drive Jerry Sanders along with the rest of Kevin Faulconer’s transition team crazy, it’s raising the minimum wage.

Putting such an initiative on the November ballot, which the council can do without hiring professional truth twisters to harass shoppers, will have the additional benefit of increasing voter turnout, something favoring Democrats and progressive causes.   [Read more…]

The “Alvarez Effect” and the Future of San Diego

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By Jim Miller

Nobody thought this was going to be easy.

Back in July, at the height of the Filner debacle, I predicted a dire outcome, noting that “in a recall or special election in an off year, the electorate is guaranteed to be more conservative and definitely not favorable” for a progressive replacing Bob Filner because, “Faulconer would have a huge fundraising advantage garnering support from all the usual suspects downtown and benefit from an energized base geared up to hand it to the liberals, unions, minorities, and other foul ‘special interest groups’ that they’ll blame for bringing us the evil that was Bob Filner. With the Democrats dispirited, humiliated and divided, it might not even be much of a fight.”

As it turned out, David Alvarez stepped up and offered progressives hope, and the labor movement surprised everyone by actually being able to raise more money than the Faulconer forces.   [Read more…]

A Titanic Defeat

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By Erik Loomis Lawyers, Guns & Money

The United Auto Workers lost its attempt to unionize the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga after Tennessee politicians interfered to defeat the vote when VW acquiesced to unionization.
It’s hard to overstate what a terrible defeat this is. Here you had the company suggesting the UAW enter their plant so they could create the American version of the German works council that would be illegal without a union election (would violate the company union provisions of the National Labor Relations Act). The UAW will never receive a more favorable opportunity in the American South and just like its failures in the 90s, it came up short.   [Read more…]

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