San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Economy

Get Ready for the Market Crash and Recession of 2016

by

Oil is less than $30. a barrel. This is over three times less than what it costs just to buy the barrel itself! Iran has been accepted back into the world community and is revving up to sell its oil on the world market which will bring down the price of oil even more. Frackers and oil producers in the US have taken on a huge amount of debt under the assumption that it would pay off down the road. They hadn’t counted on the price of oil plummeting. What will they do when we convert 100% to renewables?

The debt overhang in the US economy is, as The Donald would say, UUUUGE! All the Wall Street banks and hedge funds, which have bet on the US becoming oil independent and have bought derivatives up the ying yang, are on the losing end of their bets. This presages a crash similar to the mortgage based crash of 2008. Then the Big Banks will ask for another bailout. Or maybe they won’t ask; they’ll just tell us that we’re bailing them out because, after all, they run the government.   [Read more…]

Rebuild San Diego: Snake Oil or Cure for Local Infrastructure?

by

This week local politicos will be making the rounds, led by Mayor Kevin Faulconer and City Councilman Mark Kersey, promising to repair San Diego’s infrastructure. Potholes big enough to be named, geysers from broken water mains regular enough to be a tourist attractions and crumbling sidewalks unsafe at any walking speed are facts of life in America’s Finest City.

Smiling faces from city hall will be front and center in the media, pitching Councilmember Kersey’s “Rebuild San Diego” ballot measure promising three decades worth of improvement with no tax increases. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is.

Despite the billion with B numbers you’ll be hearing, this “dedicated funding stream” is not enough money and rife with the potential to degrade other city services.   [Read more…]

A Beach, Burb, and Billionaire “Citizens’ Plan” for San Diego’s Urban Neighborhoods

by

Editor’s Note: Some months ago Attorney Cory Briggs and others rolled out the “Citizens’ Plan for the Responsible Management of Major Tourism and Entertainment Resources,” better known as the Citizens Plan. They are hoping to have this on the November 2016 ballot as an alternative to the current tourism/development scheme, which is dominated by hotel industry’s financial interests. 

UrbDezine’s Bill Adams raises serious questions in the article below about just what it is would be accomplished should the Citizen’s Plan be adopted. Cory Briggs is writing a response we hope to publish next Monday. What is important about this debate about the future of San Diego’s downtown is that neither author is assuming the status quo is acceptable. I urge you to read both essays before passing judgment. 

By Bill Adams / San Diego UrbDeZine

They’re calling it the “Citizens’ Plan” initiative. Like all such initiatives, the name is misleading. Said citizens are an alliance of a billionaire and a few advocates for a limited selection of  public interests. Not included are the citizens who are most impacted nor the economic interests of the City’s working populace. Citizen Kane Plan might be a more appropriate name for the way it attempts to manipulate public opinion into believing it is a grassroots plan.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: Living and Working In Poverty

by

Grim Reality in “America’s Finest City”

By Susan Duerksen

“Living in poverty” is one of those shorthand terms that rolls easily off the tongues of news anchors and politicians before they turn to the next topic. We all tend to glaze over the full meaning of the phrase, the grinding day-to-day misery of hunger, worry, discomfort, exhaustion, and despair.

In the city of San Diego, the proportion and number of people living in poverty edged up in 2013. It should have gone down. Instead, 7,000 more people in the city live in poverty now, in addition to the 202,000 who remain in that dire situation from the previous year.

Statistically, it was a small increase, nothing drastic. When the Center on Policy Initiatives reported it in an analysis (63) of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the main response from local media and others was a yawn.

But consider what that statistic means. It counts only the people whose household income is below the federal poverty threshold, an absurdly low measure in high-cost places like San Diego. The threshold is the same everywhere in the U.S. and varies only by family size; for example, it’s about $12,000 for a single person and about $24,000 for two adults with two children. That’s per year.   [Read more…]

Six Years After Citizens United, Call to ‘Reclaim Democracy’ Louder than Ever

by

Reformers are hopeful President Barack Obama will issue an executive order requiring current government contractors to disclose their political contributions.

By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams

On the sixth anniversary of Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that unleashed the scourge of dark and unlimited election spending into the political process, campaign finance reform advocates are spotlighting the tangible solutions that could loosen the stranglehold of corporate interests on U.S. democracy.

“The ruling has given voters fed up with the political system a concrete focus for their anger, and helped push the issue of money in politics from the margins to the mainstream,” Eliza Newlin Carney wrote for the American Prospect on Thursday. “The surging popular concern over political money has set the table for a serious discussion of what’s wrong with the system and how it can be fixed.”   [Read more…]

Ultra-Rich ‘Philanthrocapitalist’ Class Undermining Global Democracy: Report

by

As foundations and wealthy individuals funnel money into global development, what “solutions” are they pursuing?

By Sarah Lazare / CommonDreams

From Warren Buffett to Bill Gates, it is no secret that the ultra-rich philanthropist class has an over-sized influence in shaping global politics and policies.

And a study (pdf) just out from the Global Policy Forum, an international watchdog group, makes the case that powerful philanthropic foundations—under the control of wealthy individuals—are actively undermining governments and inappropriately setting the agenda for international bodies like the United Nations.   [Read more…]

San Diego: A City Gone Full Circle, From Imperialism to Neo-imperialism

by

From the original San Diego Free Press, circa 1969

In a nutshell, the history of San Diego dates from its discovery as an object of Spanish imperialism to its present-day status as a base for U.S. neo-imperialism. It all started when Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo, a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain landed on Point Loma in 1542. That is, the official San Diego history starts at this point in time. The Indians, of course, had been here some time before that. As Stokely Carmichael says, “You ain’t nothing till some white man comes along and discovers you.”   [Read more…]

From Hockey Star To Homeless: Craig Miller Dies on Christmas Day In Ocean Beach

by

By Vera Sanchez and Sunny Rey

Most people celebrate Christmas by unwrapping surprises, with the smell of coffee, the sound of giggles, and the warmth of a crowded house. But Dec. 25, 2015, is the day we found Craig Miller dead.

We were just two volunteers wanting to pass out sleeping bags; the season slump was to be uplifted in the streets of Ocean Beach. The organization, Urban Street Angels, had a goal of reaching 800 local homeless in the community by gifting them with newly donated sleeping bags. As fate would have it, we received an outdated flyer with an old starting time, and consequently arrived well after the event was over.   [Read more…]

The State of the State: Gov. Brown is Okay, Unless You’re Republican

by

The high season is upon us, the time of year when elected officials offer addresses on how our state is faring — overviews of California and its local governments. Mayor Faulconer will host his smile-a-thon at the Balboa Theater tonight… All together now: Everything is beautiful….

Gov. Jerry Brown will take his turn at the podium next Thursday (Jan 21st). It’s likely he’ll give us all The Lecture on fiscal prudence and run through a laundry list of unfinished projects: funding gaps for Medi-Cal, transportation infrastructure maintenance, and further attention to climate change.

In advance of Gov. Brown’s speech, two major polling outfits have released data purporting to show the mood of the people. Depending on who’s asking, Gov. Brown is either working against the will of the people or has the vision to lead the state into the future.   [Read more…]

Emergency Shelter for San Diego’s Most Vulnerable

by

Using school data, we can prove that close to 10,000 families in San Diego County are homeless and are not included in the Point-in-Time Count (PITC) that is conducted every year throughout the country to determine how to allocate HUD funds for homelessness programs.

They are not being counted because single mothers, who for a myriad of reasons become homeless, will wisely prioritize their personal safety and the safety of their children over anything else. So while their male counterparts will often sleep “rough” on the streets or in the canyons, or compete for the few emergency beds in City and County shelters, 80% of the kids reported as homeless by the schools are spending their nights doubling up with “friends and relatives”.   [Read more…]

“The Big Short” and Bernie’s Plan to Bust Up Wall Street

by

By Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

If you haven’t yet seen “The Big Short” – directed and co-written by Adam McKay, based on the non-fiction prize-winning book by Michael Lewis about the housing and credit bubble that triggered the Great Recession — I recommend you do so.

Not only is the movie an enjoyable (if that’s the right word) way to understand how the big banks screwed millions of Americans out of their homes, savings, and jobs – and then got bailed out by taxpayers. It’s also a lesson in why they’re on the way to doing all this again – and how their political power continues to erode laws designed to prevent another crisis and to shield their executives from any accountability.

Most importantly, the movie shows why Bernie Sanders’s plan to break up the biggest banks and reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act (separating investment from commercial banking) is necessary – and why Hillary Clinton’s more modest plan is inadequate.   [Read more…]

Excerpt From Sunshine/Noir II: The Future of Post-Bordernity

by

The wall is the materialized representation of this idea of a border. In English people call it a “fence” and in the U.S. that fence means “defense”; something that in American minds brings protection. Interestingly enough you would have to ask them, “Protection from who or what?” And this same wall or barrier or fence means an “offense” to Mexicans.

—Norma Iglesias Prieto

By Perry Vasquez

The U.S./Mexico border is falling apart. Like Chipotle Swiss cheese, it is shot through with gaps, holes, lacunae, erasures, and stretches of emptiness. The border exists—but at times its existence seems to collapse beneath the weight of its own sovereignty.

How does the border both exist and not exist at the same time? How does it manage to appear in strategic locations and disappear in non-strategic ones? Why do we think of the border as having a fixed and permanent national identity instead of a contingent and temporary one?

Like every national myth, the U.S./Mexico border began life as a collective act of imagination.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry