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‘Free Trade’: The Elites Are Selling It But The Public Is No Longer Buying

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By Dave Johnson / Campaign for America’s Future

Voters have figured out that our country’s current “free trade” policies are killing their jobs, wages, cities, regions and the country’s middle class. Giant multinational corporations and billionaires do great under free trade, the rest of us not so much.

Elites say increasing trade is always good. But when you close a factory here, then open the factory “there” and bring the same goods back to sell in the same outlets, you have “increased trade” because those goods now cross a border. The differential between wages paid here and there goes into the pockets of the executives and shareholders. Those unemployed American workers add to wage pressures on the rest of us. Inequality increases.   [Read more…]

It’s Not Smart Growth… It’s Called Avoiding a Housing Crisis

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By Howard M. Blackson III / San Diego UrbDeZine

California’s Bay Area housing disaster tells Southern Californians that our housing crisis will only get worse and doing nothing is both an irrational and irresponsible response. We are faced with deciding to have more neighbors or pay more taxes as we desperately need money to fix our city’s crumbling infrastructure. The conundrum is that we despise taxes and the mere mention of ‘density’ polarizes any discussion into either demands for no new growth or building tall towers.   [Read more…]

Berkeley Votes To Boost Co-op Economy In The Face Of Gentrification

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A growing number of cities are investing in co-ops to keep money local and neighborhoods affordable.

By Araz Hachadourian / Yes! Magazine

In 1971, the owners of The Cheese Board turned their Berkeley, California, mom-and-pop shop into a co-op, where they became worker-owners alongside their former employees. Over the years, more co-ops branched out from the bakery, forming the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, a group of six bakeries and a development and support collective in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, The Cheese Board Collective, as it’s now called, has an espresso bar, a pizzeria, a menu of nearly 400 cheeses, and dozens of well-paying jobs.

Cathy Goldsmith has worked as a baker there for 21 years. Like the other worker-owners, she also has duties in human resources, accounts receivable, and community relations. She estimates that she makes about twice as much as she would make at other local bakeries where her responsibilities would be more limited.   [Read more…]

Trouble on the Dream Coast: Housing Policy Challenges

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By Debra Varnado / Capital & Main

It’s no secret that California residents pay more for housing than residents in most other states, especially in the metropolitan coastal areas and Silicon Valley cities. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto and other highly attractive, jobs- and amenities-rich cities are widely documented as being the least-affordable housing markets in California.

Obtaining decent affordable rental housing and earning enough income to sustain a family are increasingly more difficult goals to achieve. The American Dream of homeownership, and of building and maintaining stable communities, is fading in the face of this new socio-economic reality.   [Read more…]

What A New Supreme Court Means for Unions, Education Funding, and the Future of California

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With the death of Antonin Scalia on February 13th, public sector unions in America were given a reprieve from what was sure to be a bad ruling in the Friedrichs v CTA case before the Supreme Court. As Michael Hiltzik explained in the Los Angeles Times:

The target of the Friedrichs lawsuit, and several others just like it, is the “agency” or “fair share” fee. Under the law and according to a 1977 Supreme Court decision known as the Abood case, unionized public employees can be assessed nonmember fees to cover solely the cost of negotiations and contract enforcement, without being compelled to join the union and support its political activities by paying full union dues. That’s the arrangement in California.   [Read more…]

North of the Fence: Institutionalized Racism in San Ysidro …

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… South Bay Rapid Transit Breaks Ground, and the Bill of Rights Schooner Needs Help

On Wednesday, February 17th a groundbreaking ceremony marked the construction of the South Bay Rapid project, a $113 million, 21-mile bus route from the Otay Mesa Port of Entry to downtown San Diego. Mayor Mary Salas said it would connect eastern Chula Vista with downtown San Diego.

The biggest question yet unanswered: Will residents switch from their car to public transportation?   [Read more…]

Who the Election Should Be For: The 7 Most Beaten-Down Americans

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By Paul Bucheit / CommonDreams

Wealthy Americans are afraid of too much change, the kind that might occur with a Democratic Socialist as president. But it’s too late for gradual change. Only a popular uprising against big business greed can restore a semblance of normalcy to our perversely unequal society.

The election should be about the economy—but the economy of average Americans, not of establishment wealth. The election should be about these beaten-down groups of Americans:   [Read more…]

The Face of Homelessness in San Diego – Part 2

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I met Suzie at Panera Bread in Liberty Station. She is homeless but not vehicle-less. She used to have a nice home in Point Loma, had lived in the Point Loma – Ocean Beach area for years. She has been homeless since last April when her boyfriend kicked her out of his apartment. When that happened, she got on Craigslist and bought an RV. There are many levels and degrees of homelessness, and Suzie is on one of the better off levels. Some homeless persons live on boats in the harbor. So for some, homelessness verges on an alternative lifestyle, the key being whether or not they are forced into the situation or whether their situation is freely chosen.

Suzie grew up in Tennessee in a fairly affluent home. Her father and mother were both college graduates – he an electrical engineer, she a nurse. Her grandmothers were both nurses. Suzie is the second oldest of 5 siblings; she’s 59.She went to college in Dalton, Georgia and became a nurse graduating in 1984. Although she hasn’t worked in 5 years due to health problems, she still considers herself a nurse, keeping her registration current, taking classes, reading articles and helping people when she can.   [Read more…]

Pragmatic Realism Inc: Who Wants the Era of Big-Program Liberalism Over?

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Last week, in a New York Times editorial, Mark Schmitt joined the chorus of clear-eyed “realists” chiming in against Bernie Sanders’ bold agenda in “Is the Era of Big-Program Liberalism Over?”

While acknowledging the political appeal and strategic advantages of universal programs, Schmitt argued that, given the presumably inevitable constraints of the present, the future belongs to an incrementalism that is “most interesting and novel for the absence of big, universal programs that require legislative action.”

This approach to policy forgoes the need for tax increases on the rich and corporations and instead “test[s] the limits of what government can do by rearranging the pieces of existing programs, using regulations, incentives to states, tax credits and ‘nudges’ informed by behavioral economics in place of direct spending.”   [Read more…]

Socially-Blind Urban Planning

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By Murtaza Baxamusa / Rooflines

The contrast between prosperity and poverty is most dramatic in the harshness of inclement weather. In San Diego, while the recent storms resulting from El Niño lashed at the city, I drove through East Village, a neighborhood that contains one of the largest concentrations of homeless in the region. It is also the epicenter of Downtown’s new construction boom.

Amidst the broken tree branches and debris, scattered and soaked in the storm water were large black trash bags that homeless people had used to protect themselves. I saw helplessness in the eyes of an elderly couple as the rain whipped at them from every direction, drenching their belongings. An orderly line of about a half dozen people waited on the sidewalk for their turn to use the portable bathrooms, seemingly numb to the pouring rain. A series of blue tents clustered under the freeway bridge, sharing a tarp, and a young woman was braving the gusty winds to stand at that intersection, her hands clenching a soaked cardboard sign that simply read, “Homeless, Hungry.”
  [Read more…]

Michael Moore Says His New Movie Will Change America

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“Free universal health care, free university, free day care, taxing and policing hedge fund millionaires—have already happened in nearly every other industrialized country in the world! And I have the evidence—and the film—to prove it!”

By Lauren McCauley / CommonDreamsWhere to Invade Next, which is said to be both his happiest and “most subversive” movie yet.

In the film, Moore travels to countries throughout Europe and also Tunisia to “pry loose from them the tools they’ve been using to make their countries happy, shiny places,” he writes, with the goal of “show[ing] millions of Americans what these countries have been hiding from us.” Such tools range from eight weeks paid vacation in Italy, to a year of paid maternity leave in Scandinavia, to women with “true equality and power” in Tunisia, to trusting prisons in Norway.

Moore, who is known for such works as Bowling for Columbine and Capitalism: A Love Story, penned an open letter to supporters last week explaining how a recent bout of pneumonia and subsequent hospital stay forced him to cancel all television appearances promoting the film.   [Read more…]

North of the Fence: Chargers Give South Bay Schools Money, Sirhan Sirhan Lives In Otay Mesa

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… and the Olympic Training Center Will Transfer To Chula Vista

Two South Bay school districts might feel the financial pain if the Chargers move up North, according to The Star News. The Sweetwater Union High School District estimates that their schools have received close to $500,000 in funding from the San Diego Chargers, including for facilities and wellness programs. The Chula Vista Elementary School also says their contributions from the Chargers might go away if they leave up North.   [Read more…]

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