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Cities and States Prefer Public Banks To Wall Street

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Profits Can Stay In State, Provide Local Funding

Alarmed by the corruption and greed of Wall Street, many US cities and states are studying the feasibility of establishing public banks. Public banks are owned by cities, states or other jurisdictions and serve to keep funds local instead of being deposited on Wall Street. The funds are then used to support local economic activities like small business loans and student loans.

Washington state has already cut its ties with Wells Fargo because they funded DAPL. Now they want to get rid of Wall Street as a place to park their money making use of the local economy and profiting the people of Washington instead of the bankers of Wall Street. Bills were introduced on January 18 in both the House and Senate of the Washington State Legislature that add Washington to the growing number of states now actively moving to create public banking facilities.   [Read more…]

Republicans Big Hurry to Ruin Healthcare for Millions

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Like a dog finally catching up with the car it’s been chasing, the Republicans are now faced with the question of “what do we do now?” when it comes to Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act.

Each of San Diego’s Congressional districts has roughly 30,000 people covered, thanks to the provisions of the law. There are 121,500 people employed in the healthcare industry locally, contributing $17.2 billion annually to the area’s economy. So any changes to the way the system currently functions are bound to have a broad social and economic impact.

The text of the GOP’s replacement health care plan was reportedly finalized over the weekend, with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, HHS Secretary Tom Price, among others, hashing out details via a conference call on Saturday.   [Read more…]

GOP So Worried Public Will See Healthcare Bill They Hid From Lawmakers, Too

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A ‘bipartisan wild goose chase’ on Capitol Hill made for great comedy on Thursday, except that it seems to be part of a House leadership plan to keep their Obamacare repeal in the shadows

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

Amid reports that House Republicans are keeping their draft healthcare legislation in a secret location, Congressional lawmakers on Thursday convened an actual search party to find the Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal and replacement bill.   [Read more…]

How San Diego’s Downtown Housing Supply Boom is Making Rent Less Affordable

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By Murtaza Baxamusa / UrbDeZine

Having invested a billion and a half dollars of public funds in downtown redevelopment, it is worth asking if it helped or hindered in solving the affordable housing crisis that San Diego faces. From the catalytic start of downtown’s boom with the construction of the ballpark to the unceremonious demise of tax increment financing under Governor Brown, there has been a lot of change.

Census data shows that from 2000 to 2015, downtown’s housing stock doubled. About half of downtown’s current stock of 25 thousand housing units has been built during this time frame. About 5 thousand renter-occupied housing units were added to the stock. Of the total housing stock almost 18 percent (over 4 thousand units) are vacant, compared to 9 percent vacancy back in 2000. This indicates a greater share of investor-owned units or second homes that are not occupied.   [Read more…]

ACLU Criticizes City Council’s ‘Inexcusable Failure’ to Adopt Recommendations Addressing Biased Policing In Independent Study of SDPD Data

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After pleas from the public for action on Monday, the City Council did not seize the opportunity to be a leader in addressing racial profiling.

By Norma Chavez-Peterson, Executive Director / ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties

The majority of the San Diego City Council demonstrated an inexcusable failure in leadership yesterday [February 27] in their decision to accept the 2-year independent study of police traffic stop data, but disregard its recommendations.

The Council had before them the results of an SDSU study, requested by former Councilmember Marti Emerald in 2015 to address community concerns about racial profiling by San Diego Police Department officers, wherein researchers independently examined more than 200,000 records of police traffic stops over two years. Among their findings was clear evidence of racial disparity in what happens after a driver is stopped.   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News – February 2017

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Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and abroad, and highlights the efforts of those who are working for a nuclear free world. Here is out February 2017 report:

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

1. Fire and explosion at French nuclear plant.

Various media outlets reported that on February 9, a fire and explosion happened at the Flamanville nuclear plant, forcing the shutdown of one of its two reactors there. The nuke is located in Normandy on that country’s northwest coast, facing the English Channel.   [Read more…]

Subversive: How The Black Panthers Fed Kids For Free And Set A Model For The Government

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By Kelly Macias / Daily Kos

Last week, I wrote a story about how Republicans in Congress are trying to reform the free breakfast program in schools. This is not new. Republicans have been trying for quite some time to cut this and other similar programs like free lunch, citing concerns about fraud and wasted expenses. Of course, just like their claims of supposed “illegal voting” that needs to be stopped, they have no real evidence that fraud of this type exists.

If you look at their motives, this actually has nothing to do with waste and everything to do with the stigmatization of poverty.   [Read more…]

Making It Easier to Build Won’t Generate Affordable Housing

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By Murtaza Baxamusa / Rooflines, the Shelterforce blog

It is often convenient to blame city planners for the affordable housing crisis. After all, those affected have no other public forum to vent their concerns, least of all toward those who are profiting off of the crisis on a project-by-project basis. Sadly, this blame is often misguided, because planners do not produce housing.

A case study of the profit-maximizing, decision-making that is driving the affordability crisis is downtown San Diego. Construction cranes are up all over, and a $6.4 billion development juggernaut is rolling through. Nearly 10,000 new units have been permitted by the downtown planning board over the last four years, and the fast and generous permit approval process is cited as a model by developers for other regions.   [Read more…]

The Age Of Fear And Hiding In North County San Diego

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With increased actions by US Customs and Border Patrol in North San Diego County, residents return to a life of fear and hiding.

By Don Greene / djgreene.net

On February 20th, the Department of Homeland Security released two new memorandums for its agents. The memorandums increase the arbitrary authority of the agents in the field and reduce the rights of those who are arrested to almost zero. The ghost of immigration policies past is slowly creeping into our national dialogue once again. Though the Obama administration racked up a high tally of undocumented immigrants it deported, those who were deported were criminals or those who had deportation orders issued.

Over the last week, the Trump administration has begun a crackdown on undocumented immigrants of all sorts and those who had been able to come out of the shadows of fear and anxiety are quickly heading back to those all too familiar places. We have only begun to see what steps the current administration is willing to take to carry out campaign promises of “building a wall” and getting rid of some “bad hombres.”   [Read more…]

Disdain for Human Rights “A Disease That’s Spreading,” Warns UN Chief

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Warning comes as Trump administration reportedly considers pulling out of UN Human Rights Council

By Nika Knight / Common Dreams

“Disregard for human rights is a disease, and it is a disease that is spreading,” warned United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a keynote address as the U.N. Human Rights Council (OHCHR) opened its main session on Monday.

“We are increasingly seeing the perverse phenomenon of populism and extremism feeding off each other in a frenzy of growing racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred and other forms of intolerance,” Guterres said, referring to growing intolerance in the U.S. and Europe as far-right figures such as President Donald Trump gain power.   [Read more…]

‘Playing Politics’ and ‘School Choice:’ Code Words for Bigotry and Ignorance

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Republicans on the San Diego City Council united yesterday to oppose an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit before the United States Supreme Court involving the rights of transgender students.

The brief supports Gavin Grimm, a transgender student suing a county district in Virginia for the right to use public facilities, including boys bathrooms, in public schools.

Support came from the council’s five Democrats. Council members Chris Cate and Mark Kersey abstained. Lori Zapf simply didn’t show up. Republican Scott Sherman, who is termed out, voted to oppose the motion.   [Read more…]

The Who, What, Why, When, Where And How Of SANDAG Prop A

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The San Diego Association of Governments has been under fire for poor forecasting and potentially deceiving the public about revenue projects from Proposition A.

At the February 24th meeting of SANDAG, the San Diego Association of Governments, the Board of Directors comprised of the 18 jurisdictions of San Diego County, heard an explanation of the bad forecast used to anticipate revenue generated from Proposition A, the 1/2 cent sales tax increases which failed on the November 2016 ballot.

Ray Major, SANDAG’s head of technology services and chief economist, explained through a series of power point slides the problems which he has uncovered in the formulas used by the agency to forecast revenues and other economic indicators. Only having been in the post for a little over a year, Major described finding a problem with the Retail Sales Tax estimates, which generated the emails the Voice of San Diego published in their story.

The Board took this opportunity to express their concerns and request an independent investigation into the details surrounding who knew what and when and why the Board had not been made aware of the mistake much sooner.   [Read more…]

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