Skid Row Today and 2040 [excerpts] by L.A. Community Action Network LA is one of the most expensive cities in the US, right behind NY and SF. Rents are rising, forcing 1000s more into the streets every year. Housing is a basic human right, the key to solving this crisis, and criminally scarce in a city with our resources. With simple changes to our land use policies, we can build a city [...]
Family dairy farming is dying By Jim Goodman [Excerpts] httpss://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/dairy-farming-is-dying-after-40-years-im-out/2018/12/21/79cd63e4-0314-11e9-b6a9-0aa5c2fcc9e4_story.html Ed note: As of 2011 — as is true with much of the country's wealth — the top 10% of farms in size account for more than 70% of cropland in the United States; the top 2.2% take up more than a third. After 40 years of dairy farming, I sold my herd of cows this summer. The herd had been in [...]
Republicans on Health Care: Do Vast Harm By Leo W. Gerard Author Bio: Leo W. Gerard is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW). This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute. This week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a Republican, announced that his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, just hadn’t gone far enough when he asked a federal judge to kill the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) protections for people with [...]
Door slams on rent control Why Prop. 10 failed in California by Val Carlson Gloria Cortez spoke out for Prop. 10. Her family was “evicted by rent increase” after she complained about mold. With skyrocketing rents, a disastrous housing shortage, and a blue wave cresting in the political arena, a pro-rent control measure should have been a shoo-in on California’s November 2018 ballot. But Proposition 10, which would have overturned the notoriously [...]
Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right—and How We Can, Too by George Lakey Reviewed by Jeffrey Hirsch In a brief look at America currently, we might ask, “Why do we have a president as incompetent, vicious and unqualified as Donald Trump?” But to look at Donald Trump in isolation is a big mistake. CBS gave him almost two billion dollars in free air time running up to the 2016 election [...]
A Public Bank for Los Angeles? httpss://www.laprogressive.com/public-bank-for-los-angeles/ [Excerpts] Voters in the city of Los Angeles will be the first in the country to weigh in on a public banking mandate, through Measure B on the November ballot that would allow the city to form its own bank. The City Charter currently prohibits the creation of industrial or commercial enterprises by the city without voter approval. The measure would allow the city to [...]
On Defend Boyle Heights and the Escalating Los Angeles Anti-Gentrification Movement httpss://defendboyleheights.blogspot.com/ “En este logro que tuvimos no nada mas los residentes de aqui [...] Somos ganadores todos. Estabamos peleando con un elefante. Y nosotros eramos unas hormiguitas. Pero nos damos cuentas que hace mas una hormiga caminando, que un elefante hechado.” --Ana Hernandez, Boyle Heights resident, at the Celebration of 356 S. Mission Rd., Ooga Booga, and Gavin Brown Enterprises being [...]
This is a very good assessment of the orchestrated coup in Nicaragua. The author is a Gringa who lives in Managua working at the Ben Linder house who happens to be stuck in Granada because we are under siege by many thugs, armed I am sure with help of the US. We hope that the OAS soon will agree to come to Nicaragua to facilitate a true (non-church) dialogue and peace process. [...]
HEADS UP! HEADS UP! The much-awaited Ballot Initiative is finally here… THE RENT CONTROL INITIATIVE IS COMING TO YOUR LOCAL BALLOT NOV. 6, 2018 -GENERAL ELECTION The Secretary of State announced the news June 15, 2018 County Clerk/Registrar of Voters (CC/ROV) Memorandum #18150 TO: All County Clerks/Registrars of Voters and Proponents FROM: /s/ Robert Bradshaw Voting Services, Manager RE: Initiative: #1837 Related to Rent Control – Eligibility for Ballot The Secretary of [...]
US Considering a Form of Sanctions Against Nicaragua as Protests Continue by Craig Toennies I support my Nicaraguan friends, many of whom are in the streets bleeding for their cause, in protests over austerity measures by the government of Daniel Ortega of the FSLN, increasing mandatory contributions to, and decreasing benefits from, the country's social security and retirement system. There are very real grievances and the streets are historically where these things [...]
African-Americans Decimated from their Own Neighborhoods httpss://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/04/rent-to-own-redlining/557588/ A House You Can Buy, But Never Own by Alana Semuels / The Atlantic, April 10, 2018 African Americans in the same neighborhoods decimated by subprime lending are now being targeted with new predatory loan offerings, a lawsuit argues. Black tenants are offered a "contract for deed," a type of transaction that was rampant in the 1950s and 1960s before African Americans had access to [...]
Reverse Robin Hood: Trump Tax Plan Robs from the Poor to Give to the Rich Data and text from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) [Editor's notes in brackets] httpss://www.cbo.gov/system/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/costestimate/reconciliationrecommendationssfc.pdf The combined distributional effect of the provisions estimated by ...CBO, thus representing the total distributional effect of the bill, was calculated by subtracting the estimated change in federal spending from the change in federal revenues allocated to each income group. The resulting [...]
