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The Battle Against Plastic Bags in California; A Brief History

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By Mitch Silverstein

Of the 17 measures on this November’s ballot, two in particular deal specifically with California’s statewide plastic bag ban.

Prop 67 presents a fairly straightforward referendum; Prop 65, on the other hand, is a deceitful measure designed specifically to trick us. As the outcome of these measures will determine if California enacts the nation’s first statewide single-use plastic bag ban, let’s take a brief look at how we got here.

San Francisco passed the first single-use plastic bag ban in 2007; other bay area and coastal cities quickly followed suit. With these bans came wide media exposure, and several studies showed significant reductions in plastic waste in cities that adopted them.   [Read more…]

Rising Costs of Living [With an Education] in California

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Tuition and fees for public colleges in the US rose 80 percent between 2000 and 2014 while American household income fell seven percent during the same period, according to recent data published by ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism outlet.

The data shows yearly tuition and public schools across the US rose $3,563 in adjusted 2014 dollars, and the median household income was $4,067 less in 2014 compared to 2000.

Using the online tool ProPublica provided, which allows users to obtain information specific to their state, we learn tuition and fees increased 162 percent in California, more than double the average. Students in California paid $5,327 more in 2014 than did an earlier generation of aspiring scholars back at the turn of the millennium. Those attending California colleges and universities paid $1,674 more in tuition and fees than the average American student in 2014.   [Read more…]

A Cliffhanger for California Farm Workers Overtime Legislation

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Will Agribusiness Interests Buy Some Votes by Monday?

The disappointment at the California Capitol building was palpable as the legislature adjourned on Thursday without voting on a bill granting farm workers overtime pay after eight hours or more than 60 hours in a week.

The vote was postponed to Monday in the face of uncertainty about the support of business-friendly Democrats facing political pressure from agribusiness interests. When leaders realized they might be short of the 41 votes they needed, they pulled the bill from the Assembly floor.

Hundreds of farm workers came on buses from around the state came to Sacramento to rally in support of Assembly Bill 1066, authored by Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego.  A similar proposal died in June four votes short of the majority it needed to pass and supporters were there to witness what many assumed would be a turnaround.   [Read more…]

An $8.8 Trillion Tab for Millennials to Pay

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By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children,” is an oft-quoted proverb, frequently used to explain the importance of environmental preservation. Unsaid, however, is how much it will impact the next generation if the Earth is bequeathed in a lesser state.

Environmental campaigners NextGen Climate and public policy group Demos published a new study that attempts to quantify the true cost of not addressing climate change to the millennial generation and their children.

The Price Tag of Being Young: Climate Change and Millennials’ Economic Future (pdf) compares some of the high costs millennials will face in the “new inequality economy”—such as student debt, child care costs, stagnant wages, as well as financial and job insecurity—against the fiscal impacts of unmitigated global warming.   [Read more…]

So Long, Suckers! One Million Uber Jobs Going, Going…

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A decision by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen rejecting a legal settlement that would have divided up to $100 million among about 380,000 Uber drivers to resolve claims they’ve been treated as independent contractors instead of employees may be beside the point.

The settlement would have paid as much as $8,000 to some drivers, but the majority would receive $24 or less. And the question of their status would largely remain unresolved.

In any case, it looks like Uber’s planning on just dumping its people. The San Francisco-based ride share company, according to Bloomberg, is rolling out a program to test robo-rides in Pittsburgh this month, with the goal of replacing its one million drivers with automated vehicles as quickly as possible.   [Read more…]

Why Do People Hate the Homeless?

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They’ll say it’s the smell of excrement. Or the public intoxication. Or the aggressive panhandling. Or the intrusion on their public or private space.

People hate what they don’t understand. Lots of people translate their repulsion in hate.

Homeless people on the street are a stark reminder of the failure that could be lurking around the next corner in life. And in order to get along in life the rest of us have to deny the possibility of becoming one of ‘them.’

All homeless people apparently lived great lives until they somehow fucked it up and ended up homeless. And “we” are better than that. Or so we think.   [Read more…]

Why Does Homelessness Persist in America’s Finest City?

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Housing is Not a Human Right in the US

By John Lawrence

Why does homelessness persist in the world’s richest nation? The simple answer is that having a roof over one’s head is not a human right in this society. Fortunate people, those with a home and a car and other assets will not vote to give others what they possess even on the most basic level. Article 25 of the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

  [Read more…]

On Love and Meritocracy – Part 2

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There is No PhD in Love. Instead, there’s a ‘filtering out’ system.

When I was a graduate student at UCSD, my adviser, Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm and local billionaire, advised me that at the end of my second year there enrolled in a PhD program, there would be a “filtering out procedure.” Jacobs, the ultimate meritocrat, thought nothing about the disruption of lives that would be caused by having them filtered out.

Some of these people had sacrificed to come there leaving good jobs; some of them had families to support. I felt somewhat responsible because I had persuaded some of them to enroll in that program. But Jacobs had no qualms about filtering them out if they didn’t meet his high standards and didn’t deserve to be in the ranks of the ‘best and the brightest.’

My point was why did they admit them into the program in the first place if they didn’t think they were good enough to be designated PhDs?

  [Read more…]

On Love and Meritocracy – Part 1

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We Don’t Need Another Gadget

What the world needs now is love… so wrote Hal David in 1965 with music by Burt Bacharach. It was true then and even truer now. We don’t need another gadget, we don’t need another smartphone, we don’t need another IPO which only increases the economic divide between the 1% and the 99%.

Economic progress has utterly failed us. It won’t prevent the world going up in flames and/or being flooded out due to global warming. It hasn’t prevented war and violence crowding out every other story on the evening news and getting worse by the day.   [Read more…]

GDP is a Poor Measure of Progress

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Gross Domestic Product does not measure the well-being of human beings.

War, natural disasters, incarcerations all add to positive GDP growth. Profits from casinos, drug sales, cigarette sales, junk food all add to economic growth. Stock buybacks contribute to GDP. GDP is based on distorted values. If I pay down my debt, that does not add to GDP. If I borrow more money and go into debt and go out and buy stuff, that increases GDP.

Wall Street insistence on short-term profits, as opposed to long-term growth, does add to GDP. GDP is f’d up, yet for every politician and government functionary it’s the sine qua non of economic indicators. Every swindler that parts someone with a buck contributes to GDP growth.   [Read more…]

Brexit: Not in Black and White

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Millions of words will be written over the coming weeks about the vote in Great Britain to leave the European Union, popularly know as Brexit. I’ll point to a few commentaries striking me as important as I surveyed the news this morning.

The immediate reaction in the Western media has been predictions of doom and gloom, backed by reports of stock prices declining. Nationalists worldwide are celebrating, as if a symbolic wall ala Trump has been erected. Nativists and xenophobes are thrilled that their messages about the “other” have resonated with the English electorate.

The truth of the matter is much more complicated. Attempts to put a left/right spin on the circumstances leading up to the vote fail to portray the many moving parts in play. However, the political parallels between the forces favoring disengagement and the rise of Donald Trump cannot be ignored in the context of the upcoming general elections.   [Read more…]

Defined-Contribution Plans are Inadequate Substitutes for Pensions

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By Ben Valdepena / Californians for Retirement Security

In testimony to the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, Californians for Retirement Security called for national action to address the nation’s retirement security crisis.

Hello, my name is Ben Valdepena. I’ve been a custodian with the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District. California since 1983. Today I represent the 1.6 million teachers, firefighters, nurses, classified schools employees and other public servants who are members of Californians for Retirement Security. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to submit testimony to the Platform Committee.

Over the last few decades, as pensions have all but disappeared for private sector workers, retirement security has been sliding further and further out of reach for many Americans. The shift toward 401(k)s has proved a failure for providing retirement security for all except the very wealthy. This trend has been particularly harmful to women, people of color, low-income workers, and young people who are already burdened with student loan debt.   [Read more…]

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