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Fixing Flint

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Water is a public good provided by public institutions

By Donald Cohen / Capital & Main

Flint was a failure of government — but it didn’t have to be so. And government wasn’t the root of the problem. It was about the people, and ideas they advocate, who have taken control of governments across the country.

Water is a public good provided by public institutions — i.e. governments. It should be clear now that “running government like a business” (the privatizers trope) means you don’t invest in places that don’t have markets that can afford to buy your products. It didn’t work for Flint and it doesn’t work for America. Government needs to be run like a government — clear about its mission, run by competent people (yes, bureaucrats) committed passionately to the public good.   [Read more…]

Andrea Palacio Skorepa: From VISTA Volunteer to Casa Familiar CEO

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Andrea Skorepa has been CEO of Casa Familiar (Casa) since 1980. As we spoke I could not distinguish if Andrea was Casa Familiar or if Casa Familiar is Andrea. Both are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate them.

Andrea was born at Paradise Valley Hospital. The first fourteen years of her life were spent growing up in San Ysidro, then her parents moved to Chula Vista where she attended Castle Park High School. While attending Junior College, now known as Community College, Andrea decided that she would become a Peace Corps volunteer.   [Read more…]

San Diego: Two Expeditions — Enter Father Serra

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Part Two of Seven. Part One can be found here. Source: History of San Diego by William E. Smythe. All quotes are from this book.

By John Lawrence / From the original San Diego Free Press, circa 1969

A land and sea expedition set out from Mexico in 1769. After major navigational difficulties, two ships, the San Antonio and the San Carlos, landed at San Diego on April 11 and April 29, 1769, respectively.

It seems that the incompetent Cabrillo had reported that San Diego was at 34 degrees latitude whereas actually it is at 32 degrees. The result of this bungling was that most of the sailors were sick or dying when they reached San Diego. In fact all the seamen on the “San Carlos” died except for one and the cook. We can see that the plight of sailors in San Diego hasn’t changed much in 200 years.   [Read more…]

Emergency Shelter in San Diego: Getting Beyond the Game of ‘Mother May I’

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Back when I was a kid, about a billion years ago, all the kids in the neighborhood would hang out after school until it got dark, or we got hungry, playing games like tag and Hide-and-Seek with the entire neighborhood for our playground. We didn’t get in trouble or kidnapped … (well there was the time 5-year-old Johnny Pappa disappeared and everyone in the neighborhood was out looking for him well past bed-time, until his brother found him sleeping UNDER his bed).

One game we played was “Mother, May I?”. The kid who was the “Mother” stood at one end of the yard and everyone else stood some distance away facing her. The Mother would tell each kid what kind of step they could take towards her or away from her. The goal was to get close enough to tag the Mother and then you would become the Mother. The catch was that if you didn’t ask, “Mother May I?” before taking the step, you missed your turn.   [Read more…]

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

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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…]

Emergency Shelter for San Diego’s Most Vulnerable

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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…]

European Refugees Are Better Off Than San Diego’s Homeless

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Amy Goodman did a recent show about the refugees living in a camp in Calais, France. She walked around the camp interviewing several refugees all of whom spoke good English. Most of these people were sleeping in tents similar to the ones you see on the sidewalks of San Diego. Some had built simple structures. As she walked around, I began to notice some facilities that they had there which are nowhere to be found for the San Diego homeless. First I noticed a dumpster. There’s no dumpster for San Diego’s homeless. The trash just gets left on the street.

Then I noticed a whole row of Port-a-Potties. San Diego had one Portland Loo which they are getting rid of. Unlike San Diego’s homeless, the refugees in Calais, who are from all over the Middle East – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan -everywhere the US has bombed, had a place, places, to go to the bathroom. There were other services. A barber and a restaurant were mentioned. A little later there was a guy doing laundry. There was running water – a sink with faucets. Are there facilities like this for San Diego’s homeless? No. Not at all.   [Read more…]

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

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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…]

Calls for Michigan Gov. Snyder’s Arrest as Flint Poisoning Scandal Implicates Top Staffers

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‘To poison all the children in an historic American city is no small feat’

By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams

Calls for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s ouster—and arrest—are growing after internal emails showed that his high-level staffers were aware of lead poisoning in Flint’s public water supply six months before the administration declared a state of emergency.   [Read more…]

San Diego Police Impound Tiny Shelter, Arrest Homeless Man

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A wooden box is not a home…but…

Part three of the quartet of storms pounding San Diego this week is in full force as I sit here at my computer. The alert goes off on my phone signaling a flash flood warning. The shade cloth over my neighbor’s garden has disengaged itself from two of the poles securing it to earth and is preparing for takeoff.

Peering out the rain-whipped, sliding-glass doors that safely separate me from the deluge outside on my patio, I can’t help but wonder how the people living out on the streets are faring in this godawful storm. Even those fortunate enough to have a tent can’t be feeling protected right now.

Earlier today, local homeless advocate Lisa Kogan had given me an update on the 4’ x 7’ wood structure that she had built for Red, a homeless man she befriended.   [Read more…]

With a Spate of New Laws, California May Be the Most Progressive State in the Nation

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By Sonali Kolhatkar / TruthDig

California lawmakers have been extremely busy actually getting work done—unlike their federal counterparts in Washington, D.C. The most populous state in the nation is now arguably also the most progressive. Here are 10 critical issues covered by recently passed laws, from reproductive rights and equal pay to voting rights and health care for undocumented children.   [Read more…]

Uber Capitalist, Martin Shkreli, the Most Hated Man in America, Arrested

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The Poster Boy for Corporate Greed

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who bought the drug, Daraprim and then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. a pill was arrested on December 17 by the FBI on fraud charges having nothing to do with his price gouging with Daraprim. Shkreli seemed to back off on his 5000% increase for a life-saving drug after he received a lot of negative publicity but later said that he wished that he had raised the price of the drug even more. A silent chorus went up all over America, “He’s getting what he so richly deserves!” It does seem like Karma, doesn’t it?

Earlier this month Shkreli talked about his second thoughts at a health care conference sponsored by Forbes. “I probably would have raised the price higher. That’s probably what I would have done. I think health care prices are inelastic. I could have raised the price higher and made more profits for my shareholders which is my primary duty. And again no one wants to say it, no one’s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, capitalist system and capitalist rules and my investors expect me to maximize profits, not minimize them or go half or go 70% but to go to 100% of the profit curve …”

So the ultimate solution for this capitalist is maximizing value for his shareholders (and for himself, by the way) and if a few people who can’t afford this life-saving drug have to die along the way that’s just the cost of dong business, collateral damage, because what’s most important is profit maximization. The Ultimate Solution becomes synonymous with Hitler’s Final Solution.   [Read more…]

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