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Wall Street Should Pay a Sales Tax, Too

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When a high-rolling trader buys millions of dollars’ worth of stocks or derivatives, there’s no levy at all.

By Sarah Anderson / OtherWords

In case there was any doubt, the presidential election fight has confirmed that blasting Wall Street, even eight years after the financial crisis, is still a vote-getter.

Hillary Clinton has said she’d like to jail more bankers. Donald Trump has skewered the hedge fund managers who are “getting away with murder.” And Bernie Sanders has made Wall Street accountability a centerpiece of his campaign.

Of course, financial industry lobbyists aren’t about to take this lying down. In recent weeks, they’ve turned up the heat on lawmakers to block one particular measure that Sanders has mentioned in nearly every stump speech: taxing Wall Street speculation.   [Read more…]

Why the Panama Papers Are a Feminist Issue

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By Chiara Capraro, Francesca Rhodes / OpenDemocracy.Net

The world is talking about tax this week, so here’s another tax story for you. Asana Abugre has a small shop in Accra, Ghana where she makes and sells batiks and tie-dyed textiles. Asana pays her taxes regularly. Women like her, working in markets across the city, sometimes pay up to 37% of their income in tax. Tax collectors come to their shops to collect taxes, and there is no chance of them not paying, regardless of how little money they might have made that day.

Of course, this isn’t the tax story that everyone’s been talking about. The release of the Panama Papers by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is the biggest data leak in history, and this time it’s some of the world’s most powerful people who have cause to worry, with the spotlight finally falling on their own secretive tax arrangements.

But the two stories are linked. When those at the top of the economic pyramid find ways to pay little or no tax, the impact is felt hardest by those at the bottom – people like Asana.   [Read more…]

Beyond Panama: What the World Really Needs is the #DelawarePapers

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That giant sucking sound you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the U.S.A.

by Nika Knight / CommonDreams

Panama saw populist protests on Wednesday in response to Panama Papers revelations that the nation’s lax tax laws are providing a haven for the world’s wealthiest to stash their cash. But in the United States, where observers note that corporate greed is surely not lacking, the leak has yet to produce such a grassroots display of outrage.   [Read more…]

The New Liberty Station Public Market – A First Look

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As a recognized “foodie” I have anxiously awaited the opening of the Liberty Public Market. The one thing I miss most about living in the Bay Area is the “Berkeley Bowl” – a converted bowling alley turned into a multitude of food shops. From all I had heard, this new venture was a cross between the Bowl and the Seattle “Pike Place Market.” Even at my age I have not yet learned not to expect too much.

My friend Irene and I decided to take a look at this new venture on a Friday morning during the first week it was opened. Parking was relatively easy – but we noted it was packed when we left shortly after noon. We also found that most of “stores” did not open until 11:00am. But that suited our purpose, because we were just “lookie-loos” this first time around. Unfortunately, it might just be my “last time around.”   [Read more…]

Highways, Not Skyways Motivate Voters in SANDAG Polling for Ballot Measure

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In just a few short weeks, the Board of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) will vote on placing a half-cent sales tax increase on the November ballot. At stake are billions of additional dollars for transportation projects in coming decades.

The regional government group has released results from a just completed Competitive Edge survey of 1201 local voters, weighted for voting history, survey mode, age, party, gender, and subregion.

The ‘Good News’ is that there appears to be enough of a consensus to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage. The ‘Bad News” is that the 68% supporting the idea dwindles to 62% once arguments against it are presented. (But the trend is in the right direction if you’re an optimist.)   [Read more…]

Lies of the Rich and Famous: Off-Shoring Dark Money and Fighting the Minimum Wage

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As leaks of confidential documents go, the Panama Papers dwarf past disclosures. The story isn’t new: rich people use offshore shell corporations to avoid taxes. But the detail is stunning. And there is reportedly much more coming over the next month.

Enough documents to fill six hundred CD’s leaked from the law firm Mossack Fonseca reveal the dark money dealings of world leaders, celebrities and dozens of Fortune 500 billionaires. More than 370 journalists from more than 70 countries are following up on leads using corporate filings, property records, financial disclosures, court documents and interviews with money laundering experts and law-enforcement officials.

A much ‘smaller’ story impacting a much larger number of people in the US appears today in the Washington Post (via the Center for Media and Democracy) showing internal polling commissioned by Chambers of Commerce revealing a large majority of business owners being supportive of increasing minimum wages, paid sick leave and other reforms.   [Read more…]

A $15 Minimum Wage Didn’t Fall From the Sky and the Sky Won’t Fall Because of It

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“There’s no turning back. We will win. We are winning because ours is a revolution of mind & heart” – Cesar Chavez

An ambitious demand tracing its origins to fast food workers walking off the job in 2012 took a big step towards becoming real yesterday as proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour advanced in California and New York.

In California, hundreds of low-wage workers and members from supportive unions traveled to the Capitol to watch as the bill (SB3) was voted on in both legislative houses. California State Secretary of Labor David Lanier later told a cheering crowd that Governor Jerry Brown would sign the bill in Los Angeles on Monday.

In New York,  Gov. Andrew Cuomo made it official Thursday night, announcing the state budget deal he reached with Legislature leaders included a $15 an hour minimum wage. The New York deal is multi-tiered with different regions of the state getting different rates of increases.     [Read more…]

San Diego’s Old Central Library: Public Benefit or Profit Center?

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A not-so-common idea for a building that belongs to us

For three years, 150,000 square feet of space in downtown, belonging to the citizens of San Diego, has stood vacant. Each night, for these past three years, impoverished human beings have spread their cardboard beds on the brass inlays of the terrazzo at the entrance of the old Central Library on E Street.

But any suggestion that this place could provide shelter for homeless people is dead on arrival, so I won’t be wasting words on that idea. But I do think we need to come up with a fair and just use of this building that retains the spirit of its original reason for being built. After all, it belongs to us, if we are willing to fight for it and put a little imagination into its transformation.   [Read more…]

What San Diego Should Learn From the Country’s Best and Worst Public Transit Systems

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From Portland’s TriMet to Atlanta’s MARTA

By Hutton Marshall / SanDiego350.org

Not all public transportation systems are created equal. Across the country, there’s a huge gulf between bumper-to-bumper black holes like Los Angeles versus cities like the subway-happy New York City, which boasts 660 miles of rail transit.

Many of the cities we now see as pinnacles of functional transit became that way out of utility. New Yorkers, for example, have come to see their expansive subway system as a way to escape fierce blizzards and even fiercer rush hours.

Today, however, many cities have come to see public transit as an important tool in growing in a sustainable, environmentally conscious manner.
  [Read more…]

Assault on Public Employee Unions Fizzles at the Supreme Court

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Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association Gets Split Decision 

Rebecca Friedrichs, the elementary school teacher honored with a ‘Torch of Freedom Award’ at the San Diego County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner last weekend, won’t be celebrating this weekend.

This morning, in a single-sentence order, the Supreme Court announced that the judgment of a lower court rejecting an effort to defund public sector unions “is affirmed by an equally divided court.”. A four-decade-old opinion protecting public sector unions will live to see another day.

Friederichs and nine other teachers served as plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by the conservative Center for Individual Rights (CIR) and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The claim being made was that the free speech rights of non-union members entitled them to contribute nothing to the costs of representation, even if they’d already opted out of fees supporting unions’ political activities.   [Read more…]

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, California – The $15 Minimum Wage isn’t a Done Deal

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A quick read through today’s news might lead the casual reader to believe California is all-but-set to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The Los Angeles Times already has an article featuring interviews with low wage employees and low-margin employers talking about the impact of the proposed increase.

The New York Times, Washington Post and the wire services all have stories about what is really no more than a back-room handshake agreement. Gov. Jerry Brown is set to make an announcement today, and then the sausage-making in the legislature will begin. The promise of more food on the table for as much as 38% of California’s workforce could very easily end up looking like a shit sandwich.

In today’s column, I’ll take a look at what’s been proposed and the forces already at work to derail or water down the deal.   [Read more…]

CEO Revolving Door at Tri-City Costly to Taxpayers

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Tri-City Healthcare District Chairman of the Board, Jim Dagastino, gushed last week about the appointment of the hospital’s third CEO in three years, the promotion of chief financial officer, Steven Dietlin. “Mr. Dietlin made an immediate impact on Tri-City medical center’s financial well-being as CFO when he arrived at the hospital in 2013.”

The board chairman had to keep a straight face in his praise of outgoing CEO Tim Moran for his “leadership. Moran, the San Diego Business Journal’s Most Admired CEO of 2016, lasted less than two years before being canned by Tri-City. He collected $600,00 in severance pay and a year of medical and dental coverage.

What Dagostino didn’t mention is that the CEO they fired three years ago brought Dietlin to Tri-City in early 2013. Larry Anderson needed help to fix serious problems with the hospital’s financials. Like Moran, Anderson had been named Most Admired CEO by SDBJ in 2011, apparently the kiss of death for Tri-City executives.   [Read more…]

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