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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…]

Inequality in America: Incomes Collapsing for Bottom 50% as Top 1% Soars

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While most of us were busy watching the Trump administration and their crack team of “populist” millionaires light the world on fire, a new study released by Thomas Piketty, Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, and Emmanuel Saez underlined the fact that the steep costs of our historic level of economic inequality are being borne by those at the bottom of the economic system, particularly here in the United States. As the Market Watch story on this new research outlined:

In the U.S., between 1978 and 2015, the income share of the bottom 50% fell to 12% from 20%. Total real income for that group fell 1% during that time period.   [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…]

Top 10 Companies to Boycott Because of Trump Products or Money

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There is a nation-wide group that is organizing a boycott of companies that carry Trump products, or are owned by Trump or have other relationships with him. It’s call #GrabYourWallet and they believe economic push-back by American citizens and others is a very valid form of protest.

Their campaign has already been going on for nearly 4 months now and it has achieved some successes. Here is how they describe themselves and their history:

The #GrabYourWallet movement tracks & boycotts retailers that sell Trump family products as well as corporate leaders who enabled the political rise of the Trump family through fundraising and/or endorsements.

  [Read more…]

One-Third of Working Age Families in San Diego Can’t Make Ends Meet

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Latest data shows more than 1 million people living in families with incomes too low for expenses

Center on Policy Initiatives

A new report from the Center on Policy Initiatives finds that a third (33%) of all household in San Diego County have incomes below the level needed to cover basic living expenses.

Women and children are most impacted, largely because employed women throughout the county earn 74 cents for every $1 paid to men. Among households headed by single mothers, 69% have incomes below the bare-bones level known as the Self-Sufficiency Standard.   [Read more…]

Gov. Brown: ‘California is Not Turning Back. Not Now, Not Ever.’

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State of the State Address / Office of the Governor

This is California, the sixth most powerful economy in the world. One out of every eight Americans lives right here and 27 percent – almost eleven million – were born in a foreign land.

When California does well, America does well. And when California hurts, America hurts.

As the English poet, John Donne, said almost 400 years ago: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

A few moments ago, I swore into office our new attorney general. Like so many others, he is the son of immigrants who saw California as a place where, through grit and determination, they could realize their dreams. And they are not alone, millions of Californians have come here from Mexico and a hundred other countries, making our state what it is today: vibrant, even turbulent, and a beacon of hope to the rest of the world.

We don’t have a Statue of Liberty with its inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” But we do have the Golden Gate and a spirit of adventure and openness that has welcomed – since the Gold Rush of 1848 – one wave of immigration after another.   [Read more…]

Building Trades Allow Themselves to Be Played Like Fools

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By Erik Loomis / Lawyers, Guns & Money

Emperor Tangerine invited the building trade union leaders in for a meeting yesterday and boy were they excited.

At a meeting with the leaders of several construction and building trade unions, President Trump reiterated on Monday his interest in directing hundreds of billions of dollars to infrastructure investments, some of it from the federal government, union officials said.

“That was the impression I was taken away with,” said Sean McGarvey, the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, an umbrella group, on a call with reporters after the meeting. “That the American citizenry and the American Treasury will be invested in building public infrastructure.”

Mr. McGarvey added that Mr. Trump clearly felt that much of the money should come from the private sector and that some of the investments could take the form of public-private partnerships, an idea the president floated as a candidate.

  [Read more…]

Readers Write: No! to Minimum Wage Surcharge on Restaurant Bills

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By John Loughlin

Restaurateurs make a political statement by adding a surcharge to ‘cover’ the cost of paying the poorest workers a higher wage.

The Union-Tribune article helpfully provides a list of restaurants to boycott as well as some to support.

Back in May 2016, David Cohn speaking at a CREW event “It is so easy to vote for that [minimum wage] increase, but it is going to really raise your cost of entertainment and spark a new round of inflation that we haven’t seen since the 1970s.” He was reported as predicting that the results could lead to menu prices increasing a minimum of 30% over the next few years. From Jan 1, 2017 the Cohn Restaurant Group is adding a 3% surcharge to cover ‘mandated’ cost increases.   [Read more…]

War on the Poor Starts Soon

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The Safety Net Will Soon be in Shreds

The Trump administration will take over in a couple weeks. Essential benefits for tens of millions of low-and moderate-income Americans are in danger of being phased out or canceled immediately. These include the Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid health-insurance program for the poor and further reduction of already squeezed funding for scores of other important programs serving the most vulnerable Americans such as rental vouchers for low-income families, programs to fight homelessness, job training, funding for poor school districts, Head Start for young children and Pell grants to help low-income students afford college.

Republicans are all about cutting non-defense discretionary spending, and that means any program that helps the poor and middle class. After Trump showers tax cuts on the rich and corporations, the Republican Congress will attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. It’s what they’ve been trying to do for years, but Obama stood in their way. Now they have a green light. In the House GOP’s most recent budget plan, 62 percent of a stunning $6 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years would come from programs to help the poor.   [Read more…]

Seize the Charities

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Private charity will never cure capitalism’s ills. Only working-class organizations can do that.

By Patrick Stall / Jacobin

The holidays are upon us. ’Tis the season of altruistic volunteers in Santa Claus hats ringing bells outside local Walmarts and synagogues hosting food drives. Toys for Tots bins will overflow with trinkets and teddy bears, and Christmas carols blaring from shopping mall speakers will extol the virtues of giving to the deserving poor.

This all seems perfectly appropriate. We are bombarded with images of starving children and pleas to help those who can’t afford to heat their homes in the winter. As Oscar Wilde remarks in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” it is “inevitable that we be strongly moved” by the plight of our fellow humans, and feel compelled to take immediate action against poverty and suffering. A dollar in the Salvation Army’s bucket or a monthly pledge to OxFam seems to be the least we can do when we’re surrounded by so much unnecessary human misery.

But, as Wilde notes, “this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty.”   [Read more…]

Whatever Trump Is, It’s Genuine

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By Michael-Leonard Creditor

No, I don’t like it. But that’s just because what’s occurring in the new administration is against my politics and social outlook. Nor do I agree with it. This is a wrong thing to do from the get-go, but you’ll hafta read all the way through to see why I think so. But I think I can shed some light on what Trump is doing.

Some pundits and commentators are saying that Trump is basically playing us all; just showing what he can “get away with.” This takes him from merely being a con-man (Trump U., Trump steaks, etc.) to being a swindler who would co-opt the federal government. And, this line of thought portrays Trump as tipping his hand by making outlandish appointments before he even takes the Oath of Office.

I think that is absurd. I think he simply and genuinely wants to make government work like a business model; business is the only model he knows.   [Read more…]

Why Privatizers Look Forward to 2017

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By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

“We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.”

That’s what Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s chief strategist and cofounder of the website Breitbart, said a few weeks ago about Trump’s plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure.

That pretty much fits with what we know so far. Trump wants to “invest” $1 trillion in fixing and building roads, bridges, water pipes and other infrastructure. But by “invest” he means using massive tax breaks to convince private investors to spend the money.

As Michelle Chen at The Nation writes, “The goal isn’t fixing bridges so much as fixing the corporate tax codes to promote privatization and unregulated construction with virtually no public input.”

  [Read more…]

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