California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

San Diego Throwing Money at Homelessness With Meager Results

by John Lawrence

An article in the San Diego Union titled, "San Diego to pursue buying three hotels to house homeless people" — at a cost of $383,000 per room" appeared on April 25, 2023. Although I think buying old motels to house the homeless is a pretty good idea, when you consider the price tag, there are probably better ideas out there. Katheryn Rhodes and I did some research in 2016 which was reported in the San Diego Free Press. According to Katheryn, the City of San Diego has all sorts of real estate that it has no use for so it usually just sells it on the free market. Although the series of 3 articles was slanted towards affordable housing, these available parcels could as well be utilized as safe campgrounds and safe parking areas. In addition Katheryn did an exhaustive analysis of the pots of money the City has that are just accumulating with no specific purpose in mind. Has the City done an analysis of all the real estate the City owns that has no designated purpose that could be turned into safe parking areas and safe campgrounds? Why not?

The article reported:

It doesn’t have to be this way. The City has squirreled away millions of dollars in off-budget funds which could be used for affordable housing and housing for the homeless. Besides that the City of San Diego owns numerous parcels of land on which affordable housing including housing for the homeless could be built. Since they’re not recognizing the emergency situation that lack of housing represents, they are actually in violation of a state mandate,Senate Bill 2 from 2007, authored by Senator Cedillo which stated the following:

This bill would add emergency shelters to these provisions, as specified, and would add provisions to the housing element that would require a local government to identify a zone or zones where emergency shelters are allowed as a permitted use without a conditional use or other discretionary permit. … By increasing the duties of local public officials, the bill would create a state-mandated local program.

Safe camping areas would provide portable toilets, portable showers, security, social services and other amenities at a fraction of the cost of the nearly $400,000 per room which is the cost of each motel room the City is investing in. The article went on:

Civil engineer Katheryn Rhodes has identified several funds where the City, the County, the San Diego Housing Commission and Civic San Diego are hoarding cash that could be used for emergency shelters and/or affordable housing or even pay for Emergency Shelter Tents and Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) Housing Vouchers. There’s $28.7 million in the Low and Moderate Income Housing Asset Fund (LMIHAF). There’s also $259 million in long-term assets that can be leveraged by using it as collateral and issuing bonds for much more.

One could note that most homeless could provide their own shelter in terms of tents which they are providing for themselves now. They just need a place to put them off the public sidewalks where they could have proper sanitation which they don't have now. The brutal fact that I have witnessed myself is that homeless people urinate and defecate on the public sidewalks. To be graphic, it's sad to see a woman with her pants down stooping over with the poop coming out of her ass in full view of other people and motorists on a public sidewalk in downtown San Diego. It used to be that you had to dodge dog shit on city sidewalks. Now you have to dodge human shit if you even have the courage to walk down some public sidewalks in the City of San Diego. Tents line both sides of Commercial Avenue with barely an inch between them. The homeless rule the streets in that area. I could hardly drive my car down that street without being run over by the San Diego Trolley which honked and honked at me till I was able to pull over without hitting some homeless person.

Seriously, people, check out the series of articles Katheryn and I wrote in 2016. The problem has only gotten worse since then.

Off the Top of My Head

California Paves the Way for Public Banks!

by John Lawrence, October 4, 2019

While the rest of the nation dithers and wrings their collective hands over Trump, California is moving forward passing a bill on rent control, gig workers and now PUBLIC BANKING. Thanks to Ellen Brown's pioneering work, California will now become the second state in the nation (after North Dakota) to have a public bank. This means that billions of dollars won't be sent to Wall Street any more but will stay in the state. More money will be available for affordable housing, student loans at affordable rates, infrastructure and tax relief. Just possibly savers may finally get a reasonable rate of interest on savings accounts. And when the next financial crisis comes, California will weather the storm in much better shape than the rest of the nation just as North Dakota did in 2018.

This was hailed as a “stunning rebuke to the predatory Wall Street megabanks that crashed the global economy in 2007-08.” “Today’s signing sends a strong message that California is putting people before Wall Street profits,” said Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), who co-authored the bill (AB 857) with Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles). “We finally have the option of reinvesting our public tax dollars in our communities instead of rewarding Wall Street’s bad behavior,” he said. “This new law prioritizes communities and neighborhoods by empowering localities to use public dollars for their own public good: from investing in affordable housing projects and building new schools and parks, to accessible loans for students and businesses,” Santiago, the bill’s co-author, said in a statement.

At first the law limits to 10 the number of public banks that can be actualized. That means that probably only California's largest cities will create them. Certainly Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego should be among the first to go through the rigorous process of forming a public bank. The LA Times reported:

The law provides a path for cities and counties to pursue a public-bank license that has several “checks and balances built in, with layers of oversight and accountability” said Sushil Jacob, a senior attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. The committee is part of the California Public Banking Alliance, which pushed for the new law.

For example, the city or county would have to establish a separate corporation with an independent board of directors, and it would have to obtain approval from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to obtain deposit insurance, Jacob said.

The new public bank and its business plan also would need approval from the state Department of Business Oversight, and “the public has to be given the opportunity to weigh in on the [bank’s] viability study before a local agency can approve it,” he said.

“There also are startup costs involved, such as hiring consultants and developing a business plan,” and it’s expected that the state’s largest cities and counties, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, would be among the first jurisdictions to apply, Jacob said.

The process likely would take one to two years, he added.

If this process works well for cities and counties, the next step would be the establishment of a public bank for California as a state and not just allow them in cities and counties. There is a lot more money involved at the state level than at the local level like the CalPERS pension fund and state tax revenues. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is an agency in the California executive branch that "manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.6 million California public employees, retirees, and their families". In fiscal year 2012–13, CalPERS paid over $12.7 billion in retirement benefits, and in fiscal year 2013 it is estimated that CalPERS will pay over $7.5 billion in health benefits. As of June 30, 2014, CalPERS managed the largest public pension fund in the United States, with $300.3 billion in assets. As of 2018, the agency had $360 billion in assets.

Next City reports:

Today in the U.S., state and local governments hold $502 billion in bank deposits (not to mention $4.3 trillion in state and local public pensions). Progress on public banks in California will be closely watched in other states and cities where organizers and public officials have been pushing for public banks — including Washington State, New Mexico, Michigan, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Portland, Seattle, and elsewhere.

Ellen Brown's latest book is "The Making of a Democratic Economy." She has also written "Banking on the People - Democratizing Money in the Digital Age," "The Public Bank Solution," and "Web of Debt." She is largely responsible for the public banking movement. Other articles on public banking have appeared in the San Diego Free Press: Public Banking: How a Public Bank Could Benefit San Diego – Part 4.

The bugaboo in this whole thing could be the need for Federal Deposit Insurance. Trump could get his hands in there and put the kabosh on the whole thing. However, the need for a marijuana bank is an incentive to follow through on the creation of public banks as well as a distaste for Wells Fargo and all the illegal behavior they have been involved in. Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein are not amused.

Some Factual Gun Statistics – Part 2 of A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe

January 9, 2013 by Source

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Editor’s note: Originally published on Jan. 8, the San Diego Free Press is republishing this three-part series in honor of the one year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

Continued from Part 1

Photo:Wikipedia

In almost every measurable statistic whether it be gun ownership, gun homicide rate or total firearm-related deaths including suicides and accidents, the US leads the world in deadly gun violence. Although statistics show that a firearm in the household is more likely to be used on a family member than an intruder, the NRA promotes gun ownership as a means of self-protection and as a crime deterrent.

Britain has a much stricter gun control culture with relatively few guns in households. You couldn´t get a more murder free society than Britain or Japan which has banned practically all guns. In contrast, America has as many firearms as there are people – a situation made irreversibly dangerous knowing that guns have at least a 100-year life cycle.

While the original primary motivation for an armed populace under the 2^nd Amendment was to defend against tyrants and invaders, America´s last 60 years of an accelerating gun ownership dynamic –legal and illegal – is  now perceived and promoted as an absolute necessity to defend ourselves against outrageous, multiple crime subcultures and misfits. The fact that there are so many guns out there seems to justify the rationale that even more guns are necessary in an ever expanding feedback loop. If it is correct that the size of the national gun collection is directly related and proportional to gun violence levels in the U.S., then, as the total number of guns in the hands of the American people continues to grow, so will the level of gun violence.

In 2010, roughly 70% of US homicides were by gun whereas in Britain including Northern Ireland only 9% were by gun. In the US in 2012 the total firearm-related death rate including both suicides and homicides was 10.2 per 100,000; in France the comparative figure was 3.0;  in Britain, 0.25 . So the US firearms-related death rate was about 40 times that of Britain!

The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world – at 89 guns for every 100 Americans compared to 6 in Britain, 31 for Canada and Norway. And the gun murder figures themselves are equally astounding. While there were 9,960 U.S. gun homicides in 2010, there were only 58 in Britain. Britain´s population is one-fifth of the US population. When adjusted for this, British gun murders are equivalent to 290 US gun murders.

Thus, versus Britain, the US had 34 times more gun homicides. In 2010, there were  total of only 1,164 EU-17 gun homicides vs. 9,960 U.S. gun homicides making the U.S. homicide rate higher by a factor of 11 on an equivalent population basis. In the years 2010 and 2011, homicides by guns as a percentage of total homicides were about 28% in the EU-17 vs. 70% in the US.  In 2011 there were 12,664 murders in the US. Of those, 8,583 were caused by firearms. In 2012, there were over 500 gun murders in Chicago alone – almost half the total of the EU-17 countries. Contrary to propaganda by the NRA, these figures show that smaller levels of gun possession lead to smaller numbers of gun homicides.

Obviously, European social and cultural factors play a major role along with much more restrictive, broadly accepted gun controls. In fact, Britain’s strict gun controls led to record low gun homicides in 2011 and to its lowest intentional (gun and non/gun) homicide level ever.

Statistics show that when there is a gun in a home, that gun is more likely to be used on a member of the household than on an intruder. Indeed, Adam Lanza´s mother´s legally purchased semi-automatic guns were first used on her before they were used on 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and later on Adam Lanza himself. Approximately 30,000 people every year die from gunshot wounds – the second leading cause of death from injury after motor vehicle crashes. This includes but is not limited to gun murders. Only a small number of these deaths are due to accidents.

There are far more suicides than there are homicides. Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance than to kill an intruder, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Guns on the street or in the house make us less safe. According to the FBI, for every justifiable handgun homicide, there are more than 50 handgun murders.

The correlation of gun availability and violence is an unending chicken and egg debate. Is the U.S. dilemma of extreme levels of violent crime due mostly to easy gun availability and an exceptionally high ownership level or to other intractable societal factors? For example, England and Norway had achieved low gun homicide rates even prior to having strict gun controls.

Clearly, many confounding societal mechanisms – mental illness, uncensored violent TV films and video games, racial divides, alcohol/drug abuse, self-destruction, income inequality, jealousy, anger, physical abuse, youth gangs in urban cities – all are contributing root causes of gun injuries and homicide rates – much more so in America than in Europe.

Sweden censors movies more harshly for violence than it does for sex although if you really want to see the cut scenes you can request a private showing. In the US movies are only rated for sexual content. According to current regulations, the Swedish film censoring agency can censor any film which depicts events “in such a manner and in such a context as to have a brutalizing effect” and is judged to have “explicit or protracted scenes of severe violence to people or animals or depicts sexual violence or coercion or presents children in pornographic situations.” Evidently, no violence or horror is too graphic that children shouldn’t be able to see it in the U.S.

The day after the mass murders in Newtown I [John] passed a movie billboard featuring a man aiming down the sights of a rifle. The name of the movie: “Killing Them Softly.” You’d think out of decency and respect for what had just happened they would have taken the billboard down, but violence sells obviously and no time out from money making is ever taken including the money making from selling guns whose sales rose rapidly immediately following the Sandy Hook killings.

The popular TV show Crime Scene Investigation features cops solving grisly murders depicted graphically. It has spawned a host of other spin-offs: CSI: Miami, CSI: NY etc. Shoot-em-ups and cops and robbers shows are staples on TV and in the movies.

Video games are almost entirely dramas in which a shooter blows the bad guys away. A Connecticut town is burning violent video games, CDs and DVDs in the wake of the Newtown shootings. A dumpster is being provided where folks can turn them in. Los Angeles recently had a successful gun buyback which netted 2,037 firearms including 75 assault rifles. The irony is that LA gun stores are selling that many guns in a single day!

A similar gun buyback in San Diego netted 360 more guns than the buyback a year ago. If the American people really want to get rid of violent weapons and media, they should replicate these efforts in every town and city throughout the country. In addition to legislation banning the sales of assault weapons and high capacity gun clips, there should be legislation defining a new movie and TV rating code which takes depictions of violence and particularly gun violence into account.

If Americans really want to get rid of gun violence and change the gun culture, they need to step up to the plate and start demanding these kinds of limitations on cultural violence on a local level. Support Mayors Against Illegal Guns, for example, and Demand a Plan to End Gun Violence. What is more important – that Americans be able to play with their favorite toys or that needless murders of innocent children and adults be prevented? And as far as hunting goes, is the pleasure derived from shooting innocent animals worth the misery caused by the loss of innocent children? Expanding our global vision a bit, today in Africa elephants and rhinoceros are being illegally slaughtered to the point of extinction with assault rifles just for their tusks which are worth a lot of money in Asia.

Switzerland’s low gun homicide rate seems a contradiction upon first glance. Here’s a country with one of the highest gun ownership levels in Europe that also has a relatively low gun homicide rate! Same applies to Norway.

In contrast, Britain has exceptionally low gun ownership levels and gun homicide rates. The Swiss, Norwegian and even Canadian firearms experience refutes the belief that very low gun homicide rates are due to strict controls on ownership levels of firearms … while British and most other EU country experience confirms that belief. However, even Switzerland has half the gun ownership rate and Norway, a third that of the US which has the highest gun ownership rate of any country in the world. Furthermore, Switzerland and Norway, while having high gun ownership rates, also have extensive training, certification requirements and strict gun controls … and are not permeated by violent cultural values.

But despite all the certification and training it is always possible for a deranged person determined to carry out a mass murder to do it. On January 3, 2013 a gunman murdered 3 people in the Swiss town of Daillon. Scotland’s Dunblane massacre in March 1996, in which 16 children and one adult were shot dead by Thomas Hamilton who walked into a school armed with a range of handguns and opened fire, resulted in the banning of all cartridge ammunition handguns, with the exception of .22 calibre single-shot weapons, in Britain.

One month after Dunblane, Australia experienced its worse mass murder in a Tasmanian seaside resort, where a gunman killed 35 and wounded 23, Prime Minister John Howard tightened gun control legislation and implemented a mass buyback of about one-fifth of all the firearms in circulation. Australia has not had a mass shooting ever since.

What happened in Scotland and Australia was that a mass murder was followed by a tightening of gun laws. The Australian government bought back more than 630,000 weapons, and the British government took tens of thousands of guns off the streets with a similar program. This makes the buyback programs in LA and San Diego pale by comparison.

The result was less gun violence in general which is a good thing although a determined mass murderer could probably do the same thing again despite increased gun control. This is the lesson I [John] draw from what happened in Scotland and Australia and now in Switzerland where these acts of mass murder are really an anomaly in terms of the overall level of gun violence which is really low. The lesson for the U.S. is the same. Increased gun control may not prevent the next mass murder although it should make it less likely, but it should decrease total gun violence in general.

Spain enforces strict controls over firearms. Their constitution clearly states: “The State shall have exclusive competence over … the regime for the production, trading, holding, and use of weapons.”  In Finland, citizens must have a valid reason for a gun license such as hunting, recreation, or gun exhibitions. An amendment to the 1997 Scotland Firearms Act banned private possession of all modern pistols, even for competitive sporting purposes. Small bore rifles are not limited. Many types of rifles, shotguns, and black powder pistols and long arms may be privately owned. Luxembourg has a complete ban on guns.

In the Netherlands, assault rifles, silencers, and short-barreled shotguns as well as any kind of high capacity magazine are banned for civilian possession unless authorized by the Minister of Justice. Our neighbor, Canada, has no constitutional right to bear arms. Gun ownership is strictly regulated and certain gun models are prohibited by the Firearms Act. Canada’s crime rate is lower than that of the U.S.

Despite the Supreme Court interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment which gives American citizens the right to bear arms, that right does not necessarily preclude strict gun controls including a mandate for training, certification and other precautionary measures. In fact, some states have rather restrictive firearms laws including assault weapon bans. However, many state firearms laws are less restrictive than federal firearms laws.

Complicating harmonization and reciprocity of gun control regulations among all 50 states is the fact that firearm owners are subject to the laws of the state they are in. Also, in the Supreme Court vs. Printz  case, the Supreme Court held that state and local police departments are not obligated to enforce federal gun law. The Supreme Court decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago merely says that the protections of the 2^nd Amendment apply to state and local governments. Although we have a broad hodgepodge of gun laws regulating the sale, possession, and use of firearms among the 50 states, 44 states have a provision in their state constitutions that is similar to the US 2^nd Amendment.

The Red/Blue split among states is likely to engender a similar split when it comes to gun control laws with the northern and west coastal states having more restrictive laws and the southern states being less restrictive.

Continued in Part 3 – Some WHY Questions

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Some ‘Why?’ Questions – Part 3 of a Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe

JANUARY 10, 2013 BY SOURCE

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From the San Diego Free Press

 

Continued from Part 2 

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

WHY does America’s weakly regulated gun culture vs. that in Europe correlate to out-of-sight gun homicide rates in the U.S.? One WHY answer is that there are higher levels of U.S. criminality compared to England, Switzerland, Norway, and other EU countries … illustrated by the number of U.S. citizens in prison per 100,000 population of  750 ± vs. 100 ± in the EU! (see European Institute for Crime Prevention & Control, “International Statistics on Crime and Justice,” 2010).

Our sub-cultures of violent and less violent crime justify for many Americans the constitutional argument of self-defense, thus allowing high cartridge capacity, semi-automatic firearms of all sorts to roll off gun manufacturers’ production lines. We are at a crossroads … where it’s not only the high gun ownership level that contributes to high homicide rates but also the high level of crime and military-style killings by the emotionally unbalanced (as occurred in Newtown) that motivate more people to acquire guns for self-defense.

“Since there are so many guns, we need more guns.”  This NRA promoted endless feedback loop only opens up more opportunities for homicidal maniacs to go on indiscriminate shooting sprees …  killing children, adolescents and adults. In the end, what it all seems to come down to is that we are by nature a violent nation … and have always been so.

Studies by the National Institute of Justice conclude that greater gun availability increases the rates of murder and felony gun use, but does NOT appear to affect the general U.S. violence level. In other words, the fact the U.S. is a violent society does not have so much to do with guns. The fact that our violent crime is so DEADLY has much to do with guns … e.g., resort to AR-15s!

Research I [Frank] have examined makes a case that homicides are tied to the willingness and ability to resort to violence as an attacker or defender, not just to the mere existence of firearms. Studies show that our already horrendously high U.S. total gun homicide rates would be even higher it weren’t for right-to-concealed-carry state laws allowing individuals properly licensed to carry firearms for protection against crime. In right-to-carry states, studies reveal that violent crime rates compared to other states are approximately 25% lower, murder rates 50% lower, and robbery rates 50% lower.

I [John] disagree with Frank on this. I think the proliferation and super-saturation of the populace with guns leads to the settling of disputes by a resorting to gun violence much more likely. Disputes are settled in a variety of ways – some civilized, some uncivilized. Even the old-fashioned fistfight rarely left anyone dead.

Today a gunfight will usually ensue instead of a fistfight if one of the participants has a gun handy. In China on the same day as the Newtown mass murders, a deranged man entered a school and injured 20 childen with a knife. They all survived. The outcome was completely different in Newtown.

Control of guns to reduce our tendency to violence remains critical. But complex social factors already noted cannot be brushed aside as they are also a powerful cause of violence. Why does Switzerland or Norway, for example, have such low absolute levels of violent crime and gun homicides despite being among the most armed household nations in the world?  Solving our violence dilemma lies in the social, cultural and psychological determinants of violence as much as it does in the widespread ownership of guns. The enemy is US and the battlefield is mostly in the urban areas.

Another WHY answer most people sense is that America has gone nuts producing and selling semi-automatic pistols and rifles that release dozens of bullets in seconds. Some rifles on the open market are capable of firing 100 bullets in a second. Military-style assault weapons are really great for our soldiers in Afghanistan … but insane as everyday household defense products for the general public.

Here’s where guns are indeed the major precipitator of a culture of violence. I [Frank] can’t believe that General Wingate, founder of the NRA, had in mind a population armed with such deadly automatic, big-cartridge weaponry that can be purchased almost at will by the teenager, the novice, the mentally ill and the emotionally unstable. As pointed out, when guns are used, they are almost always used for murder or suicide … this particularly applies to automatic weapons.

Another WHY answer explaining Europe’s very low intentional homicide, gun homicide, and crime rates is that guns are generally viewed in Europe as anathema after so many centuries of human killing. That is why European countries do not see ownership of firearms as a constitutional right … as embraced in our 2^nd Amendment. It is also because European countries have updated their Constitutions much more recently than has the U.S. Although the U.S. is a newer country than any country in the EU-17, it has an older Constitution than any of them.

In Europe, one hears little of the facile pro-gun arguments that “gun control disarms law-abiding citizens” that one hears in the U.S. Controls are in place and enforced to limit the availability of firearms manufactured or obtained illegally. Strict selling, permit, and safety training regulations are constantly being improved. England and Switzerland are two of the safest places to be although each has an entirely different approach to gun control.

I [John] think that gun ownership should only be allowed if the gun purchaser has completed a very thorough training program and has been certified as qualified to possess a gun. I think this training should be as rigorous and as expensive as that required to become a private pilot, for example. While you see gun ownership to be pretty widespread among Swiss and Israeli males for the purpose of defending their respective countries, it’s only after being thoroughly trained and certified by those countries.

As it is, in the U.S. unlike Europe there are extremely lax controls over gun usage  An owner can pick up a gun and use it whenever or wherever he damn well pleases. And no training or certification is required. I also think that shooting ranges should keep track of people using their facilities, do a quick computer database background check and report any suspicious behavior. Most mass murderers have utilized shooting ranges.

Although Norway has generally a low level of gun violence and free access to mental health care, it had its first mass murder last year perpetrated by Anders Breivik. In this otherwise peaceful country, Breivik perpetrated the largest mass murder in history killing 69 people. Norway still was not protected from a determined mass murderer who obtained his weapons, ammunition and explosives legally. Perhaps the relatively high availability of guns in Norway compared to other European countries played a part. Breivik played violent video games, but had no previous criminal or psychiatric record. However, this event was a total anomaly in Norway, not so in America where mass murders are becoming commonplace.

Another WHY answer is how the original meaning of the 2^nd Amendment has evolved and changed. The 2^nd Amendment is one long sentence with some key phrases that are a lawyer´s hell or paradise … depending on which side he or she is on. It says:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

State courts and the Supreme Court have generally upheld the right of citizens to keep and bear arms for individual protection against harm doers. This does not prevent a Supreme Court – perhaps with a Democratic majority – to rule in favor of a very narrow and limited interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment concerning, for example, the kinds of weapons and ammunition cartridges that can be sold to individuals for self-defense. Going further and repealing the 2^nd Amendment may someday be possible but highly unlikely given the 300 million guns now in the system and past Supreme Court decisions. Amending the 2^nd Amendment to get tighter control of weapons sales rather than killing it completely may hold more promise.

However, states and municipalities can implement gun control and then dare the Supreme Court and the Justice Department to prevent them from doing it just as states have legalized marijuana in conflict with Federal law. When it comes down to it, the U.S. is still a democracy and eventually the people will get what they want.

The problem is that at the present time what the people seem to want is more guns. How many more mass murders of innocents must we have before the U.S. gun culture will be truly chastened? Perhaps it will be when there are a majority of women and mothers in Congress many of whom will have lost children to gun violence.

It is of little wonder the NRA and other pro-gun lobbying groups tenaciously support the 2^ndAmendment on the basis that guns are the best deterrent of crime against individuals … under their facile philosophy: “As guns increase, we are safer. As guns decrease, there are more murders.”  But the NRA after all is simply more of a lobbyist for gun manufacturers than anything else.

So, argues the NRA president, “arm the school teachers and guards!” Of course maniac killer(s) can always go for these people first with the advantage of planning, surprise, and initiative. I [Frank] hope this article effectively argues the utter falsehood and incredibly dangerous social implications of this kind of thinking.

When you put it all together it seems to me (John) that the availability and proliferation of guns, particularly assault rifles with high capacity clips, is the main reason why the US has such a large amount of gun violence compared to other societies. A secondary reason is a violent culture as the amount of gun violence on TV, movies and video games desensitizes and accustoms the public and especially sensitive minds to the fact that gun violence is “normal.”

What one sees and hears and experiences on a daily basis comes to be seen as a mundane and inevitable part of life. A tertiary reason is the fact that a significant portion of our population has mental health issues. Another issue is desperation and poverty. Neighborhoods in which there is a lot of poverty have greater levels of gun violence.

Guns need to be taken off the streets and out of households. Buyback programs have been massive in other countries and not just tokenism as they have so far amounted to in the U.S. In Britain and Australia after mass murders there, gun laws were strengthened and tightened. The result has been that not only have there been no more mass murders, but the everyday mundane use of guns to kill people one at a time has been greatly reduced.

While I believe that no amount of gun control will prevent a determined mass murderer, we know from historical precedent that prudent gun control laws can and will, in general, reduce the amount of gun violence both homicides and suicides.

There needs to be an effort to rate movies and TV programs in terms of their violence, and not just their sexual, content. While we supposedly protect young people from sex in the media, we don’t protect them from violence in the media. As for mental health, it needs to be free on demand as, hopefully, it will be under the Affordable Care Act.

As I [John] wrote recently in the San Diego Free Press:

Terrorists have only been able to kill 17 people in the US since 9/11, but 88,000 Americans have died in gun violence from 2003 to 2010. Britain, which has very strict gun laws, had 41 gun murders in 2010 while the US had around 10,000. 6,626 Americans have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 3000 died in the tragedy of 9/11. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far is around $4 trillion.

At the same time no money has been spent on the war on gun violence in the US in which about the same number of people die every year from gun homicides as the total of those who died on 9/11 plus those who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. About 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence when you add in suicides. Does this make any sense? As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

The bottom line is gun ownership should be a privilege and not a right.

A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence In The US And Europe (Part 1)

JANUARY 8, 2013 BY SOURCE

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From the San Diego Free Press

 

Editor’s note: Originally published on Jan. 8, the San Diego Free Press is republishing this three-part series in honor of the one year anniversary of the Newtown school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

By Frank Thomas and John Lawrence

While US gun crime and all crime levels are slowly but almost imperceptibly declining, they still remain relatively astronomically high compared with Europe. In this article, we compare US and European levels of gun violence and gun control to see if we can make any sense of the gun debate in the wake of the increasing frequency of mass murders as well as the almost mundane everyday killings in urban areas like Chicago and Detroit. Frank is an ex-pat who has lived in Europe for over 30 years. John has lived in San Diego for over 40 years.

It’s time to get serious on prohibiting gun acquisition or possession by people with a history of mental illness and by high risk groups such as felons, drug addicts or alcoholics. It’s time to get serious on limiting civilian gun sales to one shot at a time pistols and rifles with cartridge or chamber capacities of no more than six bullets. It’s time to get serious on conducting thorough criminal and mental health background checks and having waiting periods for high risk people and first-time buyers seeking gun permits. 

Complicating matters, in my (John’s) view, is that most mass murderers have no prior record of mental illness nor have they obtained their guns illegally. The main problem, we believe, is that so many legal and illegal guns are out there, particularly powerful high bullet capacity semi-automatic weapons and assault type pistols and rifles, that only an all-out effort to get them off the street and out of households is going to do any good. It’s the easy availability and sheer number of guns that creates our unique climate of gun violence.

Part 1 – The 2^nd Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms           

Unlike Europe, America’s 2^nd Amendment has given constitutional support to a culture where the gun is designed, worshiped, and elevated to a sacred, very efficient killing status.

While our nation has had a somewhat constant, but international-wise very high, level of homicide violence, gun proliferation has enabled a greater portion of that violence to become deadly in sharp contrast to Europe. Pro-gun advocates like to say that violent crime rates are far higher in Europe as a result of restrictive gun controls. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Clearly, the original intent of the 2^nd Amendment was to create a militia of citizens to protect the country from foreign invaders, especially the British who had just been beaten in the War of Independence and would have had another try at it in the War of 1812. The militia concept took the place of a standing army.

The English Bill of Rights of 1689, which predates our Bill of Rights by 100 years, codified an ancient self-protection right with the words, …  “subjects who are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”  This gave birth to the English common law right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, but the vague wording is a far cry from the absolute wording of our 2^nd Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

In the 18^th century, the Swiss “citizens militia” model was cited in support of passage of the 2^ndAmendment to our Constitution on the rights of citizens to keep and bear firearms. Since its founding in 1291, Switzerland has allowed and even required its citizens to arm as a defense against Europe’s despots. For centuries a well-armed Swiss populace has kept its independence by defeating the mighty armies of European monarchs. The Swiss learned early that tyrannical invading foreign forces kill more people than do criminals or the deranged. The Swiss militia took the place of a standing army as did American citizen militias in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

Thomas Jefferson was the first to suggest we should not have a standing army and wrote a series of letters in 1787 urging James Madison and others to write this into the Constitution. The idea was that, instead of a standing army, every able-bodied man in the nation should be required to be a member of a local militia, under local control, with a gun in his house. If the nation were invaded, word would come down to the local level and every man in the country would take arms and constitute a de facto army (following the Swiss model).

Militias were clearly meant by the Founding Fathers to take the place of a standing army. However, a permanently standing US army was established in WWII. As such, it took the place of militias making them unnecessary and also to a certain extent making the basic intention of the 2^nd Amendment superfluous.

In 1791, US Representative Andrew Jackson acknowledged the Swiss influence on the right to bear arms when he said: “The inhabitants of Switzerland emancipated themselves by the establishment of a militia which finally delivered them from the tyranny of the lords.” Similarly, the right to bear arms as part of a “well regulated militia”  formed the original basis for our 2^nd Amendment. General Wingate, founder of the NRA, heaped praise on the Swiss militia model as being the ideal model for securing the country’s security.

First came a legal challenge in Aymette v. State (1840) where the court held that, “citizens have an unqualified right to keep and bear arms.” The court held this right is not just for those individuals who are members of the militia.

Then came the vague, poorly arrived at and seeming contradictory decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939) where the court held that the 2nd Amendment “protects the right to bear arms only if the arms in question are those that would be useful as part of a civilian militia.”

Finally, Justice Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) held that the 2^nd Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in the militia.”

Then came a landmark case McDonald v. Chicago (2010) where the Supreme Court held the right to “keep and bear arms” under the 2^nd Amendment applies also to the states. The District of Columbia v. Heller ruling was vague on the scope of gun rights in regard to states.

However, under the banner of linking “freedom” to personal armed “readiness,” the NRA has long adopted the position that efforts to restrict gun sales – whether semi-automatics, AR-15s, AK-47s, machine guns, or hunting rifles – are an “assault” on our constitutional rights under the 2^ndAmendment. In truth, the 2^nd Amendment does NOT sanction the individual right to semi-automatic and automatic firearms.

Further, the NRA propagandizes that inadequate gun control laws have nothing to do with the epidemic of gun-related killings. “People kill, not guns”´  is the NRA’s motto … rather than “People kill with guns.” According to the NRA, the way to make people safer is MORE semi-automatic guns and better background checks on society´s psychiatrically disabled.

GunPolicy.org

In Europe today, there is no absolute right to own a gun. The British strictly control the possession of most types of arms for the common good. Criminals, children, and the mentally ill are not allowed to be armed. The UK Firearm Acts of 1968 and 1998 setrigid requirements for a firearms certificate. Firearms such as rifles and shotguns as well as ammunition must be stored and locked securely – preferably in specially manufactured firearms cabinets. This is to prevent to the extent possible any “unauthorized” person from taking or using them. An “unauthorized” person is someone who does not have a firearm or shotgun certificate.

Ad hoc inspections control this regulation, including regulations regarding carrying a gun on the street. Violations result in serious fines plus up to six months in prison (and possible loss of firearm certification). Center-fire, self-loading, and pump action rifles are banned as well as automatic weapons. Gun rights and strict rules have culturally evolved to a point where today Britain has one of the lowest gun ownership levels and gun homicide rates in the world. Further, this has not resulted in high non-gun homicides or a high violent crime culture as purist anti-gun control believers like to say.

Switzerland also has no constitutional guarantee of an individual´s right to bear arms. The national legislature could ban gun ownership anytime if it wished. But today Switzerland is a heavily armed nation (but at half the rate of gun ownership as the US). This reflects a centuries old Swiss culture of having arms to resist possible invaders or despotic tyrants, for example, Hitler in WWII.

The country’s high gun ownership level comes with a very low gun homicide rate compared to the US. All males at 18 must join the military and can take their military assault weapon home with them when they leave the army. Thus, up to 500,000 military assault weapons (or approximately 6 guns per 100 population) are estimated to be in Swiss households today. These weapons must be locked up and ammunition is kept in central arsenals. However, there is a movement afoot to relocate these military weapons out of the home and into depots.

The government supplies bullets for shooting festivals. Canton police may issue special permits for civilians to own assault rifles – typically as licensed collectors – and such weapons may not be fired in full automatic mode. While gun ownership laws have tightened on handguns and non-military weapons, it is still relatively easy to get a hand gun. But, it is illegal to carry guns in public.

Switzerland has many guns but few murders … thanks to strict gun control laws and a popular recreational shooting culture. The country hosts some of the largest rifle shooting events in the world. Swiss households use firearms mainly as a peaceful, sport-shooting family occupation at contest festivals where eating, drinking, socializing abound. Shooting-range festivals have come to be recognized as a wholesome community activity. Well-enforced rules apply to permits, safety training, and gun/ammunition handling. Ammunition sold at ranges must be used there. Males 20 to 42 must keep their rifles and pistols at home. This culture fosters gun safety. Over time, these social attitudes have helped to keep Swiss total gun and non-gun homicide rates far below those of the U.S.!

Continued in Part 2: Some Factual Gun Statistics (Tomorrow)

Guns, Angry People and Mass Murders: The Cycle Continues Until We Stop It

OCTOBER 20, 2015 BY JOHN LAWRENCE

Reposted from the San Diego Free Press

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By John Lawrence

We live in a sick society where little kids play violent video games, you can’t flip through the channels on a TV without seeing drawn handguns, and hunters use automatic weapons to kill innocent animals. It’s a culture of violence in movies and TV, a culture of violence in video games and a culture of violence in terms of unending wars and people blown to smithereens every night on the nightly news.

It was disheartening to me to see a few days after the horrific mass murder at Umpqua Community College, pro gun demonstrators protesting the American President as he landed there to give comfort to the families who had lost loved ones. Where were the anti gun protesters? Where were the ones who protested the taking of innocent lives by sick minds who are bolstered every day of their lives by a sick culture, a culture which glorifies and celebrates gun violence. It’s ubiquitous. It’s celebrated and it’s done in order to make money from “entertainment.”

That’s right. We’re entertained by people killing each other with guns. Is there an action movie in which there are no guns? I don’t think so. How many video games don’t involve the player or shooter not pulling a trigger. We train them up young with hand/eye coordination. Then we send them to schools in which there is no recess so that their energy and anger builds to the point that they feel justified in blowing people away for no justifiable reason.

Let’s face it folks. We’re more in danger from Americans with sick minds blowing children away than we are from terrorists. Yet we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year defending ourselves from terrorists and hardly anything defending ourselves from ourselves.  As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

Why wasn’t the FBI monitoring websites for the “involuntarily celibate”? These are the websites that Elliot Roger and Christopher Harper-Mercer telegraphed their intentions on. Why wasn’t the FBI tracking them? And why are violent young men, who willingly state online their murderous intentions, allowed to purchase guns regardless of the fact that they’ve never before been convicted of a crime?

In a recent post on Love-shy.com, a forum for the dateless and sexless, a man wrote, “I am seriously thinking about just getting a gun and shooting everything up. I fantasize about it everyday … that’s how fucked up my mind is.” The truly “fucked up” thing is that this isn’t another newly discovered online posting from Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who went on a shooting rampage in Isla Vista, killing six people. These are just the words of yet another angry man on the internet expressing rage at society — especially women — over his own celibacy.

President Obama should have had a hundred anti-gun demonstrators waiting for him when he got off that helicopter in Roseburg. Instead he was met by a bunch of yahoos who all they can think about is their freakin guns. These people are a bunch of angry a-holes who have nothing better to do than to be worried about their guns right after 10 people from their own community, Roseburg, have just been rubbed out, their young lives lost forever, in a hail of bullets. Their answer is to arm everyone?

Preachers in pulpits are now carrying guns. Principals in schools are now carrying guns. Anger and guns. They now characterize American society. Oregon is one of seven states with provisions, either from state legislation or court rulings, that allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public postsecondary campuses. How friggin convenient for Harper-Mercer!

Photo by nordique 

Do I have to detail all the tragedies perpetrated by sick individuals who not only had possession of but were even encouraged by their parents to possess guns? There was Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook who fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Surely he was affected by a culture of violence which makes it seem “routine” to off people. President Obama has said that mass killing of Americans by Americans has become routine. “Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it … We have become numb to this,” he complained. During his presidency, President Barack Obama has had to deliver statements on gun violence 15 times.

No longer can we “wonder at the gunman’s motives” or think this is a”rare occurence.” It’s routine, folks; it’s happening every day. Get ready for the next one. Your children could be next. In fact it already happened just 8 days after the shootings in Roseburg. Gunmen opened fire on campuses in Texas and Arizona. Copycats? Perhaps. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got the ball rolling at Columbine. They paved the way for the others. That’s their legacy. They were first.

The others: Dylan Roof, who killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, SC; Elliot Rodger, who killed 6 people in Isla Vista, CA; Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy enlisted man, who killed 12 people in Washington, DC; John Zawahri, who killed 5 people in Santa Monica, CA; Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old former Marine, who killed 3 people in Brookfield, WI; Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran, who killed 6 people at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI; James Holmes, who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora, CO; One L. Goh, who killed 7 in Oakland, CA; Scott Dekraai, who killed 8 in Seal Beach, CA; Jared Lee Loughner, who killed 6 in Tucson, AZ including the attempted killing of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; Omar S. Thornton, who killed 8 in Manchester, CT; Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who killed 3; Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood, TX; Jiverly Voong, who killed 13 in Binghamton, NY; Steven Kazmierczak,who killed 5 in a geology class at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL; Robert Hawkins,who killed 8 at a shopping center in Omaha, NE; Seung-hui Cho ,who killed 32 on the Virginia Tech campus; Sulejman Talovic, who killed 5 at a Salt Lake City shopping mall …. And the list goes on.

A rather long sentence, isn’t it, the preceding? Many of the perpetrators were students, many were former Marines or Army vets.

They all had grudges; they all had violent uncontrollable anger. They all had access to guns. They all purchased their guns legally. They all had Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

According to Wikipedia: “Intermittent explosive disorder (sometimes abbreviated as IED [what an apt acronym!]) is a behavioral disorder characterized by explosive outbursts of anger, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand…” There is no need to probe these people’s minds any further, to ask ad nauseum “what was the gunman’s motive.” They were all sick and they all had legally purchased arsenals at their disposal. They all planned their killing sprees. Most of them telegraphed their intentions on social media. Some were even cheered on.

Can we learn nothing from other countries which have strict gun control and far fewer gun deaths than the US? Why is there even a debate as to whether more guns or less guns is the solution?

Does the FBI even read the Washington Post, which had a really informative article: “Incels, 4chan and the Beta Uprising: making sense of one of the Internet’s most-reviled subcultures”? Incels are INvoluntarily CELibateS by the way. Maybe society should just get them all girlfriends or sex workers. It might just solve a lot of problems.

The following is from the website, dailymail.com in the UK:

Chris Harper-Mercer wrote the anonymous message on bulletin board 4chan: ‘Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest’ 9 hours before the killing began. It was written at 1.19 AM yesterday morning and the first shots were fired at Umpqua Community College at 10.38 AM.

Under the disturbing message, many users encouraged the person to go ahead with their threat and even advised the poster on the best ways to kill people. One user wrote: ‘I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire.

‘Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it is possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.’ While another user wrote: ‘You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. ‘Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo.’ ‘If you are suicidal and hate people, then do it. If not then stay away from what will ruin your life,’ another user wrote.

A user wrote: ‘In this very clearly hypothetical situation you actually shoot people in your high school or college, try to aim for s***** people at least. Spare the kind fools, humdrum druggies, and churchies and go for he whom really terrorises the populous: Chads and Stacies who have scorned many and yourself. The post continued: ‘You’ll do the world a favour by purging part of the population that only exists to consume resources and act for themselves.’  In 2013, 18-year-old student Neil Allan Macinnis shot dead two women at a Virginia college – before the killing he posted on 4chan asking users to ‘wish him luck.’ 

Some of the posters on the site even tried to contact the FBI tip line. Evidently, they were asleep at the switch. I guess they’re only interested in foreign terrorists, not domestic ones. They better wake up that this is a phenomenon that is not going away. Prevention is the only alternative at this point in a nation that is locked and loaded and ready to pull the trigger over the slightest grievance especially at schools and on campuses.

How many remember San Diego’s own mass shooting on campus in 1996? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of the killing that took the lives of three San Diego State professors.

Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

The San Diego State University shootingwas a school shooting that occurred at the San Diego State University (SDSU) engineering building on August 15, 1996 in San Diego, CA. Three professors were killed by master’s degree student Frederick Martin Davidson. Three months later, a copycat threat flier was sent, with threats against professors and racial insults.

Davidson, the three faculty members, and three other engineering students assembled in the classroom shortly before 2:00 p.m. The three students were there to support Davidson, and to witness a Master’s thesis defense. Liang stood, formally introduced Davidson, stated the purpose of the meeting, and sat back down. Davidson then handed Liang a printout of an e-mail, from a prospective employer who was interested in hiring Davidson, that stated that his future employment with the company hinged on a successful Master’s thesis defense.

Without time for comment from Liang, and without saying anything himself, Davidson turned to the first aid box on the wall, removed a 9 mm handgun, and immediately started firing. He hit Liang first, killing him while he was still seated at the faculty table. Lowrey and Lyrintzis were also hit. However, Lowrey tried to escape out the only main access door to the room. There were other doors in the room, but only one door led out to the hallway, and other parts of the third floor of the Engineering building.

Davidson was between the main door and the faculty table, and shot Lowrey several times; he died on the floor in the main doorway. Lyrintzis fled from the main door and Davidson, into an adjoining classroom, and hid under a table. After killing Lowrey, Davidson reloaded another magazine into the handgun, and pursued Lyrintzis into the other room. There, he shot and killed Lyrintzis while the latter was still under the desk. Overall, Davidson fired 23 rounds, with 16 rounds hitting the professors.

The three students attending the thesis defense were not shot, and escaped without injury. One of the students made it out through the main doorway, and notified the third-floor students and faculty to evacuate. Davidson later commented that he was not angry at the students, and had no intention of killing them.

After the shooting, Davidson himself called 911. Police arrived to find Davidson in the third-floor hallway still holding the handgun. He was reportedly sobbing and begging for police to kill him. He soon surrendered to police without further incident. Davidson had intended to kill himself after the shootings, but could not due to “pure cowardice”. Davidson had left a murder-suicide note in the hallway for the police to find, detailing the location of evidence and computer files in his house.

Guns and angry people. To say they have no impulse control would be an erroneous statement. They had to purchase guns in the first place, laying the groundwork for future misdeeds. They had to work up a head of steam about some real or perceived mistreatment or grievance, and, finally, they had to load up the guns and take them to the killing field. At any point in time along the way, they could have turned back. They not only had a preconceived plan; they probably fantasized about it for months.

Many Americans are so obsessed with the Second Amendment that they can’t even imagine that other societies might be doing things differently with much better outcomes. See A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe in 3 parts by Frank Thomas and myself for alternatives to the violence and gun-ridden society of Amerika and for some alternatives that actually work, that is if we can give up our love affair with guns.

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John Lawrence

John Lawrence graduated from Georgia Tech, Stanford and University of California at San Diego. While at UCSD, he was one of the original writer/workers on the San Diego Free Press in the late 1960s. He founded the San Diego Jazz Society in 1984 which had grants from the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and presented both local and nationally known jazz artists. John received a Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego chapter, 2014 award. His website is Social Choice and Beyond which exemplifies his interest in Economic Democracy. His book is East West Synthesis. He also blogs at Will Blog For Food. He can be reached at [email protected].

In El Cajon, a Stunning Crackdown on Feeding the Homeless

From Voice of San Diego:

“A homeless rights advocacy group plans to take legal action against the City of El Cajon after at least a dozen people were arrested Sunday for feeding the homeless,” the U-T reports. The story was all over the news yesterday, here’s KPBS. A 14-year-old was among those arrested.

“Arrested” is a strong word. The police handed out citations.

A group called Break the Ban dared to feed the homeless in a city park in violation of a newly approved city law that “banned the distribution of food on city-owned property. City officials said the ordinance was a response to the deadly hepatitis A outbreak,” reported Times of S.D.

Vapor Beds and Other Non-Facts

From the San Diego Free Press:

By Jeeni Criscenzo

Let me start with an apology. At the San Diego Select Committee for Homelessness meeting on Monday, July 24, I made some comments in response to a report by the new CEO of the Regional Taskforce on the Homeless, Gordon Walker, which came out sounding critical and petty.

When I watched myself on the video, I wasn’t pleased with my scolding tone. I had been trying to meet with Mr. Walker for over a month and finally got a voice mail from him politely explaining that it would be some time before he had time to meet with me and he hoped that I would understand. While I hadn’t planned on publicly reprimanding Mr. Walker, it certainly came out that way and I’m sorry.

I could blame my response on my Sicilian heritage or my New Jersey upbringing, but it was really my frustration with what I heard in Walker’s well-intentioned report that rattled my cage. Maybe, if we had the opportunity to talk prior to his report to this committee, he might have been better informed about the situation here in San Diego from a different perspective than what he’s being given by the people he had time for in his first month on the job.

Right now, it appears he’s hearing from the same old good ol’ boys perpetuating the same old song and dance to serve their same old self-interests.

It’s Off to the Races at the Del Mar Death Track

From the San Diego Free Press:

July 19, 2017

by Doug Porter

10 Comments

It’s the time of year when the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club cranks up its well-oiled PR machine. Today, the $100,000 Oceanside Stakes, with a 14-horse field of 3-year-olds competing on the infield grass race track, will kick off a 36 day summer season. Are you excited yet? Don’t be.

There will be hats — outrageous hats, funny hats, and flamboyant head coverings–worn by people competing for a $5000 prize and 15 seconds of fame on local TV news. Later this year, the famed Breeder’s Cup, two days of racing moving from track to track each fall, will draw international attention to Del Mar.

The celebratory ‘cool as ever’ public relations slogan, opening day promotions, concerts and celebrity events barely mask the stench of death surrounding the Del Mar race track. It’s not just the (too many) horses dying; it’s the sport itself.

The Sweet Kiss of death…The story of jockey Frank Hays, who died (riding a horse named Sweet Kiss) mid-race from a heart attack, but whose body stayed upright to the finish line and won a 1923 race at Belmont Park (NY) is an apt metaphor for the state of the horse racing industry these days.

At Del Mar, the focus has been on the condition of the race track. The hope is spending money on upgrades will lead to a decline in negative publicity. I would argue there are deeper issues to consider, namely greed and inbreeding.

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Rent Going Up? Planning to Move? Welcome to the Street

by John Lawrence

This article was originally published in the 1969 print edition of the San Diego Free Press. It follows on to our 4 part series on affordable housing in San Diego. So what else is new? Nothing except the price of real estate.

The housing situation in San Diego, especially for people with low incomes, bears all the earmarks of a terminal illness. The condition is grave and seems destined to get worse. The City will tell you that 1968 was a year in which San Diego experienced a record boom in housing construction, but their figures are completely misleading. It is true that there were 12,525 units of housing begun in 1968, as compared with 6,100 units in 1967, and that while city building doubled, rural building was up 47% in 1968 over the previous year. Yet most of this activity was in the realm of plush apartments and condominiums which cater to middle and high income groups, thus leaving people with low incomes at the mercy of soaring prices and a vacancy rate for the entire city of less than one percent.

This critical situation in San Diego is by no means unusual nationally. 90% of the family residential units in the US cost the purchaser over $20,000. [As an aside, coastal real estate in San Diego County could be purchased for below $20,000 in 1969. Today it would be hard to find anything for less than $1,000,000.] Yet half the people earn less than $7,800 per year. To make the payments on a $20,000 home, a person must earn at least $9,000 per year. A little simple arithmetic shows that at least half the people in this country can afford only 10% of the housing now being constructed. When it comes to low cost housing today, the law of supply and demand seems to have gone awry.

What makes housing so expensive? The housing industry is one of the most inflated sectors of the US economy. The construction industry represents 10% of the GNP--80 billion dollars a year which is divided up among a lot of relatively small companies. There hasn't been the centralization that has taken place in the automobile industry, for example. Mass production of industrialized homes could cut costs considerably, but this does not occur mainly because the rate of profit in low cost housing does not compare with that in higher cost housing.

Construction costs have increased 85% since 1951. In the past year the cost of some materials, particularly lumber, has increased as much as 100%. But labor has been the chief reason why costs have increased so spectacularly. Many plumbers and carpenters now earn $20,000 per year, often for a 32 hour week. Craftsmen in general now earn at about twice the hourly rate of college graduates. Another reason for the high cost of housing is land. The cost of urban residential land across the nation has risen nearly 400% since 1934. Land costs are rising so high that it is fast becoming a reality that the land costs more than the structure built upon It. Since land is becoming so expensive, houses are being crowded closer and closer together and multi-family dwellings are becoming more common.

The attitude of the business community toward low coat housing is negative. The general trend is to replace dilapidated housing by high cost housing, thus upgrading the property values and leaving those who cannot afford it literally out on the street. Poorer people are eventually forced out of suburbs and into the already crowded city ghettos and barrios. This type of policy is being implemented here in Ocean Beach where business interests are trying to oust hippies and other low income people by raising rents and/or replacing low cost with high cost housing.

What is being done to correct this situation in San Diego? There is a group of businessmen called "San Diego Housing", a non-profit development corporation headed by Dan Grady, whose purpose is to give assistance and expertise to people who want to avail themselves of Federal housing programs. They have projects in Linda Vista and Southeast San Diego. Some of the Federal housing programs are the following: Model Cities, Leased Housing program, Rent Subsidy program, Community Housing Improvement and Revitalization program and Home Ownership Mortgage Insurance Assistance program. Many of these programs were put into effect by the 1965 Housing Act. The Model Cities program is an attempt to plan a 5 year action program to resolve problems in 10 different areas including housing, welfare, crime and transportation.

$268,000 has been allocated to San Diego for the first year. This money will go to analyze problems and come up with a plan. Additional money will he required to actually implement a program. The MC [Model Cities] project is concentrating on two areas of San Diego: Southeast and San Ysdro. This program is good in that it is intended to be a comprehensive approach, but it is doubtful whether the Federal funds needed will be forthcoming.

The Leased Housing program involves cities leasing housing units from private owners. The city then subleases these to needy people who pay rent amounting to 25% of their income.

The San Diego Housing Authority administers the program and federal subsidies finance it. This year San Diego had a quota of 1000 units. This program has been unsuccessfull because private owners are reluctant to lease their homes to needy people when they can rent them more profitably on the open market. The quota was never filled.

The Rent Subsidy program involves the subsidization of rent paid by poor people who qualify. Under the program people pay out only 25% of their income.

The purpose of the Community Housing, Improvement and Revitalization program is to conserve property values and improve the living environment. Under this program San Diego's current budget is 1.7 million dollars. The [purpose of the] Home Ownership Mortgage Insurance Assistance program is to reduce the interest on the home purchases mortgage rate to 1%. [This could be accomplished more efficiently with a public bank.] All of these programs are fragmented, piecemeal attempts to solve a problem which needs a massive unified, concerted approach. They are not adequate to the dimensions of the problem.

They all in effect subsidize the rich landlords, property owners, and capital investors by paying them inflated market rates for the use of their property and then letting the poorer people use it at prices they can afford. It seems everybody is happy, both rich and poor, but it means that the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are [thus driving income inequality]. If the goal of those programs is to solve the problems of inadequate and insufficient housing, they fail miserably. The difficulty is that the federal government makes inefficient use of the tax dollars at its disposal. Instead of using the money directly to provide low cost housing for those who need it, the government funnels the money to the wealthy property owners in return for the limited use of their land.

If the federal government's programs are not adequate to the need, can private industry fill the void in low cost housing? There are no handsome profits to be made in this field. Industry will only venture into it when subsidized by the federal government and then only as a measure of profiteering off government funds--again off our tax dollars.

A good example of this is the South Bay Terrace project owned by a Mr. Kahn. Subsidized by Federal funds, Kahn is building what many people regard as another ghetto--crowding as many units into one parcel of land as possible. Many urban experts think that for low cost housing to be effective, it must not he all concentrated in one location, but should be dispersed throughout the city. This leads to a more homogeneous distribution of income groups and a healthier social situation.

The reason that it is unprofitable to build low cost housing on the open market is that the cost of any housing is dominated by land, labor and profits. These are used to practically the same extent regardless of the "quality" of the structure being built. A very small fraction of the total cost goes into aspects that separate high quality housing from low quality housing. In other words it costs almost as much to build "low" cost housing as "high" cost housing, but "high" cost housing is more profitable.

Without even considering "communitizing" the land, many housing experts have concluded that the only solution to this problem is the introduction of the mass-produced prefabricated housing. This industry could he organized by the government as a non-profit enterprise. In one form this has happened with the mobile home business, and nearly one out of every four Californians live in a mobile home. But this industry in still run by profit making business men and it isn't that much cheaper. [Factory produced tiny homes could get the homeless off the streets at a minimal cost.]

As it stands now, the poor will remain dependent on a handout and remain in sub-human dwellings, while the tax payer gets pissed off at government waste. Too often the taxpayer will blame the poor for what is a government fuckup that aids the rich. Realistic low cost housing, which would curb inflation and save tax dollars, will remain a long way off unless the profit motive and the profit makers are expurgated from the solution.

The March for People's Park - Memorial Day 1969

Transcribed by John Lawrence

From the San Diego Free Press 1969

It was a beautiful day for the people's parade. The people's parade for People's Park.

As we arrive in Berkeley early Friday morning, people were already at work on the new People's Park Annex, dubbed Insurrection City, built on a vacant lot owned by the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority. Children were already sifting sand, sliding on slides, and swinging on swing sets. The parade was to start here at Grant and Hearst and proceed to the original People's Park about a mile away.

More people started arriving. People sold the Berkeley Barb on every street corner. People of every political persuasion and organization from the Spartacists to the Christians were passing out literature. It was a welcome change from the usual Memorial Day parade where apolitical hawkers pass out trinkets, flags, hats, cotton candy and other consumer junk. The atmosphere was festive. People's Park Annex started to swell with 30,000 people.

As noon approached, people prepared to march.  There was a hint of danger in the air. People prepared themselves accordingly. Some had moist rags in plastic bags. Others had gas masks on. No one seemed prepared to withstand the buckshot Madigan had promised.

Brothers and sisters were there from all over the U.S. and abroad. San Diego was well represented with people from San Diego State, Mesa College and UCSD. People gathered under placards representing the place they were from to show their solidarity with Berkeley: Stanford, all UC branches, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO locals, university librarians. The San Francisco Mime Troupe Gorilla Band was there bedecked in leaves and branches. They executed some snappy maneuvers and featured a groovy drummer. Everyone carried signs demanding that People's Park be returned to the people.

People surged into the street and waited for the parade to get under way. Some speakers had been scheduled to rally the crowd, but the sound system was poor and most people couldn't hear them. They didn't need to anyway - the spirit was already there. The people didn't need any message from on high in order to get together and do what they had come to do. It was a long wait and people got impatient, but finally the parade started.

All kinds of people were there: students, workers, young, old, black, white and all shades in between. Infants in strollers, old gents with canes, people in wheelchairs and on crutches - all marched for People's Park.

All along the route people flashed 'V' signs from windows and cheered the marchers. Many provided water from garden hoses or from paper cups. Some old people had set up a stand and were dispensing Kool-Aid and punch. Parent groups set up little stands with signs like "Parents to Prevent Thirst." The community was with the marchers. The community was behind the marchers. The community was indistinguishable from the marchers.

There was a great feeling of solidarity. People were solidly people, transcending all barriers and demarcations like age, sex and occupation.

It was a strange parade in many ways. 30,000 strong. In bygone days, we were accustomed to seeing the people line the sidewalks while in the street various military units, officials, prancing ponies, perfectionist bands never missing a beat or losing a step, veterans with their bellies hanging out of World War II uniforms, did their thing. But the People's Parade for People's Park was a different kind of Memorial Day parade. The people were in the streets and the military lined the sidewalk. All along the parade route were police, Alameda sheriffs, and National Guardsmen seeming to find their jobs distasteful because they could not cheer the marchers and join in the spirit. Streets adjacent to the parade route were sealed off--some with barbed wire, all with sullen-faced troops. The people covered the barbed wire with flowers as they would cover the cyclone fence around the People's Park with flowers at the destination of the Parade.

Someone shouted, "Don't throw anything at the National Guard except kisses." That was the spirit that prevailed. The people did their thing seemingly oblivious to the military presence which surrounded them.

The march proceeded past a billboard with a big picture of one of the new picturesque Bank of America checks on. it. (See, even banks can be "with it".) Someone had filled in the blank spaces on the check: "Pay to the order of ... People's Park. Amount .... $1,000,000. (Signed)... Madigan."

There was a float which was the people' s approximation to a helicopter. A quick look at the sky verified that there were a number of real helicopters, no doubt armed with various blends of gasses, intent on observing the proceedings. Blue Meanies overlooked the marchers from strategic roof-top positions.

The parade continued. Some people rode on trucks. Most walked. It was a long march. It was crowded, and it was hot. But no one seemed to mind.

A friend said to me, "This is what the revolution is all about." And it was. And it is. Revolutionary spirit replaced empty slogans and obtuse rhetoric. It became obvious what people could do with themselves if they didn't have to work; it was obvious in a way that could never come out of a debate. People were doing it. People were enjoying themselves and each other, and there was no way the pigs could break that spirit. There was nothing the pigs could do except keep a watchful eye. The people went right on. Danced in the streets and made love. Saw old friends they hadn't seen in years. Boys took off their shirts; girls took off their bras. A few really liberated girls took off their shirts too. Sun on skin enjoyed irrespective of sex.

In the late afternoon people made their ways back to the People's Park Annex from which the parade had started. Children were again playing in the sand. Little unconcerned, bare-assed girls stooping over, filling their pails with sand and photographers snapping their pics. Two little girls swinging, one telling the other, "This is the people's park. It's for all the people. It's a people's park. It is. It is." Children knew what was happening, and wide-eyed babies took it all in.

People taking up collections for wine. A truck rolled in, and a band played: An amateurish rabble-rouser tried to do his thing between tunes: "Do you love me?" Crowd: "Yeah, we love you." "I love you too."

Spontaneously, people created their own band. It was a rhythmic tour de force. People beat on bottles, cans, drums, the metal ventilator grating on the sidewalk beneath which the BART technology had been installed. Metal on metal. Wood on wood. Skin on skin. People scraped with rakes, beat with shovels, stirred, mixed and dug, acting out the drama of work, of building their park, now in fun, in play, in rhythm. People tapped, beat, pounded. And the rhythm never stopped well into the night. Only the rhythm section changed to protect the weary. As soon as one person laid down his instrument, there was another to take it up.

It was a tribal, ritualistic, communal, even primitive atmosphere. Back to the roots. A celebration of life. People stomped., shouted, danced. A cloud of dust lifted and mixed with the smell of sweat. People passed around bread and carrots and more wine. One cat was embracing everyone in sight, telling them how much he loved them. "I love you. I love." He loved so much that he wasn't able to make it to the People's Pot and urinated right through the BART ventilator grating. But no one paid any special attention. It was a People's Park and, so long as you didn't do anything injurious to people, you could do your thing whatever it was.

Some cats took off all their clothes and danced in the nude. The rhythm was everywhere. The people moved rhythmically everywhere. The rhythm moved the people everywhere. Rhythm permeated the crowd.

It is a peculiarly American drama that is being acted out at People's Park. People worked together to settle this country. Now people are working together to humanize it. The sod brothers and sisters of Telegraph Avenue have their foes just as the sod busters of Oklahoma had theirs - the cattle punchers. We've all seen movies about the rivalry between the sod busters and the cow punchers. Now we're seeing the reality of the sod brothers versus the people punchers. Now we're seeing punchers - the pigs. It's back to the land for the sod brothers and sisters, and, as Malcolm X said, "Revolution is based on land."

Some people say the revolution will never work because it doesn't take into account human nature. But the Berkeley experience flies in the face of such assertions. 30,000 people were engaged in a common endeavor, and people worked and people had fun together. There was not one fight. Not one baby cried. And that is a good check on the vibrations: a look at the children' s faces. Human nature asserted itself in Berkeley despite all our parents taught us, despite all we learned in school, despite the competitive system we've been brought up in. Human nature went against the grain of society in order to rear its beautiful head. A friend said to me, "Wouldn't it be beautiful if the society was attuned and geared to the life people are living today, if it encouraged life instead of fighting against it?"

There is no time to lose. Let a thousand People's Parks blossom.

Hippies Move To Ease Tension in Ocean Beach

From the San Diego Free Press circa 1969

Reprinted by the OB Rag

Transcribed by John Lawrence

Relations between Ocean Beach Hippies and the San Diego Police Dept. continue to deteriorate according to Ocean Beach residents.

Police patrolmen have apparently shifted their tactics from Field Interrogation type harassment to outright threats and intimidation. Officer McLean told a gathering of youths in front of the In-Between on Newport Ave, "I've been watching you guys ... milling around ... We're just watching, for we're not gonna give you a ticket, but we're gonna take you to jail. All we're looking for is the sacrificial lamb. Any of you guys want to step forward and be first?"

Reactions of the hippies to this hardened police attitude have ranged from anger to desperation and resignation. Many feel that the police are actively trying to make any modus vivendi impossible, and that their real purpose is to drive the hippies out of town, despite token measures of the police public relations department to 'open up ways of communication.' The general feeling is that a mass confrontation between police and hippies is inevitable if the police continue on their present course, and rumors are that it could take place during Easter vacation.

Such a confrontation would be disastrous in its effects, according to many hippies. Said one of them at a meeting at the In-Between at which the problem was discussed: "We're just beginning to establish a certain amount of communication and understanding with local church groups and businessmen, and a thing like this would turn the community entirely against us, thus playing right into the hands of the police."

The situation thus defined, a course of action was decided upon. First the Hinky-Dinky Report, a newsleaflet published by and for Ocean Beach youths, is to be distributed more widely to inform all hippies of the situation and invite them to join in the effort to rally the community to their cause.

Second, it was agreed upon that the hippies are to take the initiative and attempt to gain community support by proving to the more orthodox residents that hippies, also, care about the community in which they live. Tactically, it was decided that the best way to do this was to counter the prevalent impression of hippies as being dirty, etc. by cleaning the streets of Ocean Beach. This is scheduled to take place on Sunday, March 16, beginning at 10 AM with the Newport Ave area from Bacon to Abbott streets. Brooms and food will be provided, and the 0. B. Drum Company is expected to be there. Coordinator for the Street Sweep is Andy McKinney, who may be contacted at the In-Between.

Third, and last, plans are now being made to try to prevent the feared confrontation between police and hippies during Easter by rechanneling the energies brought by the people into a more constructive and peaceful meeting, where grievances are rapped about and solutions sought.

Qualcomm Stadium: a Boondoggle from the Get-Go?

From the original San Diego Free Press circa 1968, we reprint the rundown on Qualcomm Stadium

Transcribed by John Lawrence

Hi, sports fans. Big Jim here.

Well, fans, there is a big spat brewing in major league San Diego and from this experienced observer's view the losers in this main event are going to be the city's middle- and lower-income taxpayers.

This whole new controversy is revolving around that great concrete muskmelon in Mission Valley, the San Diego Stadium.

As the Free Press goes to the printers, the news is out that the City of San Diego is suing the San Diego Chargers for one year's back rent (more than $200,000). The Chargers apparently have decided that they don't want to pay rent, at least not for the next seven years.

But that is just one of a long series of rubs - one of the first rubs in how that stadium got there in the first place.

Who Wants It?

The San Diego Stadium holds 50,000 people. The city of San Diego holds nearly 800,000 people. This means that 750,000 people in San Diego couldn't use the stadium on a day that everyone decided to see a ball game. But that doesn't mean that these 750,000 squabbling over a knot hole in the stadium's wall, are not paying for the place.

The stadium and its accoutrements cost $27.75 million, ostensibly. Actually, after interest is paid on the stadium's bonds, the total cost of it is at least $52.4 million.

The stadium is the brain child of local millionaires, who euphemistically call themselves "sportsmen," who emphatically pointed out to the public that property taxes would never be used to pay back the principle and interest on a the stadium bonds.

Instead of using property tax, these sports czars explained, the City would pick up the tab with the sales tax it received back from the state, along with some other revenues (which ultimately proved to have originated as sales tax, too).

The local media played the sports czars' tune with feeling, assuring the public that the stadium would cost little more than a "Yes" vote on the Stadium proposal on the November, 1965, general election ballot. And 100,000 of the 140,000 voters that turned out swallowed the bait.

No economist would argue against the notion that sales taxes are the most regressive form of tax we have. That means that the middle- and lower-income families are the hardest hit and carry the heaviest burden of sales taxes, while the wealthy are hardly scathed.

On the other hand, equitably administered property taxes put the brunt of the cost on the people most capable of bearing it and who ultimately benefit most from projects like sports stadiums - the wealthy.

(Even though equitably administered property taxes only exist in Camelot, they are still less burden on the middle-and lower-income families than are sales taxes. Dubious homeowners should sit down one day and figure how much they pay in sales tax compared to property tax each year.)

But the people have been conditioned to believe (by corporate media and those corporations who exercise control over them through advertising) that property tax is their ultimate bugaboo — and 100,000 of more than 600,000 San Diegans voted "Yes" on the stadium proposal.

So let's take a look at the old score board and see who's winning in the final quarter.

Sports czars ahead!

This far in the game, the middle- and lower- classes seem to be trailing. About 17 percent of San Diego's 1965 population committed the people of San Diego to pay $144 million annually for the next 35 years. People's score: minus $52,4 million.

Local and out- of- state contractors, architects and building suppliers hauled in $15.5 million on the stadium's construction and about another $12.3 million in trimmings. Construction companies' score: $27.8 million.

Two Chicago bond houses won the stadium bond issue at 3.94126 percent interest. Chicago financiers' score: $24.7 million of tax-free profit.

Motel and restaurant interests in San Diego anticipated an increased annual take of $24.9 million because of stadium visitors. Motel and restaurant interests score: $24.9 million annually.

The San Diego Chargers, whose annual revenue has risen from $660,000 in 1962 to $2.1 million last year, are demanding that they be allowed the use of the stadium rent tree for the next seven years. If they get away with this, they will augment their already mounting earnings by an estimated $2 million for those years. A great deal of their earning power was directly a result of the stadium. Chargers' score is difficult to determine but in the neighborhood of $3 million annually.

The San Diego Padres baseball team has worked out a [indecipherable] deal with the City administration. For the next seven years they will pay eight percent of their ticket sales to the City as rent.

The City estimates that this will amount to $500,000 annually. But then the City turns around and pays the Padres (going under the name of the San Diego Stadium Management Company) $306,000 each year to manage the stadium.

This will make the Padres actual rent about $194,000 per year. The Padres score, by the City's own figures: slightly over $6 million gross.

How does that grab you, sports fans? It looks like San Diego's "sportsmen" have learned something from San Diego's defense industries about government subsidy.

Welfare for the Rich

In 1965, when the designs were laid for the San Diego Stadium, the city manager, then Tom Fletcher, admitted that the stadium would not be an earning proposition. He estimated that with just a major league football team the stadium would make about $120,000 annually. If the City were to pick a Major league baseball franchise, the figure might be boosted to $340,000.

This amount, he explained, would go toward retiring the  interest and principle on the stadium bonds, about $1.5 million yearly.

What Fletcher forgot to tell us was that the City would lose property tax revenues on the 166 acres on which the stadium stands. In 1965, the land was valued at $4.1 million. At present property tax rates, the City is losing between $100 000 and $120,000 each year. As Mission Valley property values soar in the next decade, these losses will be compounded. 

Defenders of the stadium argue that in 35 years the stadium will be all paid off and be a "real moneymaker" for the people of San Diego.

In 35 years- - considering our present rate of architectural and technological growth -- the San Diego Stadium will look to us like the Whaley house looks to us now.

There will be groups of "sportsmen" wanting to tear it down and set out on another publicly subsidized project (unless, of course, today's revolutionary groups haven't changed all that by then), and there will be groups of monument minders who will want to preserve the structure for historical reasons.

Who Let the White Elephant in?

Why did such a beast ever get by the voters? Because there was no critical media. There was no scrappy little newspaper like the San Diego Free Press. There were only corporate mass media intent on getting a piece of the action.

James Copley, owner-publisher of the San Diego Union-Evening Tribune, certainly wasn't going to torpedo the stadium. He owns about a million dollars worth of the Chargers.

That's about all for this issue, sports fans. Next issue Big Jim will really lay some heavy facts on you about who, how and how much on that concrete muskmelon. There should be some really interesting playbacks on the San Diego sport czars.

In the meantime, Big Jim is going to see about opening up a jock strap factory and having the City of San Diego subsidize me, because, after all, "It's not whether you win or lose that counts; it's how your capital gains!"

How Our Stadium Saved Hilton's Ego & Other Chuckles To Cry Over

by Jim Knastick   (Part 2 of a 3 part Article)

Hi sports fans. Big Jim, again.

Well, fans, last issue - - when we looked into that great muskmelon in Mission Valley - - we found a bill for $52 million addressed for the little taxpayer in San Diego and nothing but profits for local sports czars (your druggist knows them as merchants, financiers and industrialists).

Current vignette, fans: Taking Care of Barron.

The Boys Club

The story of our stadium goes back to late 1959 when Lamar Hunt, son of the right-wing zealot billionaire H.L. Hunt, Bud Adams, Jr., son of the chairman of the Phillips Petroleum company, and Barron Hilton, son of the hotel magnate Conrad, pitched together several million dollars to create the American Football League.

Hunt was suffering a rebuff by the National Football League that had just refused to grant him an NFL franchise for Dallas. So he threw in with Adams to form his own league.

Hunt took a Dallas franchise, Adams took one for Houston and they set up six others. The Los Angeles franchise went to Barron Hilton.

As head of the Carte Blanche credit card company, Hilton decided to call his team the Los Angeles Chargers in hope of stimulating business.

In its first year of operation the AFL had a combined loss of $4.5 million. Hunt bore the heaviest losses - - $1 million, and Hilton ran a close second at $900,000.

It took Hilton less than a sing [?] to draw only 11,000 people in the LA Coliseum, which holds 101,000. The day they won the AFL’s Western Divisional Championship they drew 9,900.

It took Hilton less than that year to decide that his AFL Chargers were no competition for the LA Rams. He found it very embarrassing to draw only 11,000.

Hilton knew he had to do something. His old man couldn't bail him out; he was too busy trying to keep Castro from taking over the Havana Hilton.

Then young Hilton smelled a fish to the south: San Diego. The local sports czars (though still would-be) also smelled a fish: the public. The "civic leaders" of San Diego fell all over themselves to get the Chargers to move to San Diego, which they eventually did - - but not before Hilton got a promise from the City government to make some improvements in the Chargers' future home, the Balboa Stadium.

Hilton wanted the Balboa Stadium's seating accommodations increased from 22,000 to 34,500 seats at the City's expense.

The City followed Hilton's bidding. The cost was estimated at $800,000 originally. By the time the work was done the cost was $1.5 million. Then the Chargers' rent was waived for the first year and only a pittance was paid in successive years.

During a series of preseason exhibition games, the largest audience the Chargers could draw was 13,000 paid admissions. Charger stock, which had sold at $3 a share when the team first moved to San Diego, dropped to $2.25. It slowly inched back up to its original price after the Chargers had a winning streak during the regular season. Even then their games did little better than draw an average of 30,000 spectators, and Hilton began to feverishly look for buyers.

Enter Sports Czars

As Hilton was trying to find himself (or whatever else he was trying to find in San Diego), a group of 200 San Diego "sportsmen" organized the Greater San Diego Sports Association (GSDSA).

These men, heads of banks, bottling companies, contracting and construction firms, stated the aims of the Association as: 1. seeking a major league baseball franchise for San Diego. 2. boosting the Chargers, and 3. getting an all-purpose stadium built.

George Kirksey, the man who ramrodded a $22 million bond issue in Houston for the Astrodome, was the keynote speaker at the GSDSA organizational meeting. A. B. Polinsky, the head of the San Diego Coca- Cola Bottling Company was named as the acting president.

From the time of its inception the GSDSA had been bucking for a multi-purpose stadium. It came as no surprise in December, 1963, when Mayor Curran appointed GSDSA president, Paul Carter, to preside over The Mayor's All-American Stadium Committee, another group of "sportsmen" that was delegated the responsibility of determining the feasibility of the stadium.

The Committee was authorized by the City to spend $100,000 on the study. When the announcement was made, City officials said that they hoped private funds would be used. Apparently almost the whole amount came from the public's purse.

Other members of the All-American Stadium Committee included William Black, president of the Bank of La Jolla; William Elser, president of the Elser Elevator Company; Kenneth H. Golden, head of the Kenneth H. Golden Construction Company and a director of the City Bank of San Diego; A. B. Polinsky, head of Coca-Cola here; and Harry Sugarman who ran his own investment company. (These are among others about whose sports interests Big Jim wonders.)

Bailing Out Barron

Rumors have it that by 1964, Barron Hilton was spending more time knocking on the doors of prospective buyers for his team and franchise than he was with his team. He was also threatening to move the team to another city.

Should he actually move the team to another city, all justification for building a stadium (replete with lots of tasty profits for the czars) would be lost. So once more Paul Carter made another unsurprising entrance. This time it was before the City Council in August, 1964.

Carter pleaded with the Council to put a $25 million "general obligation" bond issue on the November, 1964, general election ballot.

The deadline for putting issues on the ballot was drawing near, and Carter told the Council, "We have to place something on the ballot now or we are cooked for another year." That Carter's committee was still waiting on the $35,000 stadium feasibility study that wasn't due until October, might make Big Jim think that Carter was in something of a hurry.

But the cooler heads prevailed, to both the chagrin of Paul Carter and Barron Hilton. A general obligation bond issue would have required approval by 2/3's of San Diego's registered voters.

William Quirk, president of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce at the time, told the Council that Carter's proposal "reflected poor timing" because there wasn't sufficient time to "mount a campaign that will guarantee passage of the bond issue." If the bonds lost November, 1964, Quirk explained, the stadium measure would be set back for years. Besides, he added, the bond issue could jeopardize other ballot issues. (Other ballot issues included pay raises for Council members and the Mayor.)

Hilton was dejected when the Council announced that it wou1d not act to put the bond issue on the November ballot.

It was about then that Hilton, who knew little about the odd machinations of San Diego's fine establishment, started to sell his team to C. Arnholt Smith, a local industrialist (and owner of the San Diego Padres) who knows plenty about the machinations of San Diego's establishment. The sale price was set at a pitiful $750,000, which would just start to cover his first year losses in Los Angeles.

Then, apparently, someone put a bug in Hilton's ear, and he dropped the idea like a hot football.

Super Campaign

All through 1965, San Diego "sportsmen" waged a super campaign. Their theme was that the stadium would be a boon for local tourism, which they stressed was some kind of panacea for the San Diego economy.

Tourism's appeal is based on the remembrances of the '50s and the defense layoffs. Obviously, explained the "sportsmen," the stadium would bolster tourism and take San Diego's economic emphasis away from defense. (Well, fans, tourism accounted for about 6 percent of San Diego' s gross income last year, while the 11th Naval District made up 25 percent. San Diego's 5 largest corporations are General Dynamics Convair, Ryan, Rohr, Solar and National Steel and Shipbuilding Company. San Diego is the same old war baby it has always been.)

Despite the chest beating of stadium boosters, public support wasn't really very strong during the campaign (or at the polling places for that matter).

The Citizens for a Stadium, the only campaign committee for the stadium, reported only receiving $932.25 in contributions of $10 or less (if each, of all those contributions in this category, gave only $1, that's only 932 and 1/4 people.

The $11 to $25 contribution category amounted to $660. Considering that the total contributions were $39,617.09, small contributions only accounted for 4% of the committee's backing.

All contributions over $25 were listed by the contributor at the City Clerk’s office, and, fans, let Big Jim tell you that they're interesting. Surprisingly, the GSDSA was the second largest contributor. They only contributed $10,000. But what's more interesting is the first and third highest contributors, The Associated General Contractors of San Diego County and The San Diego County Rock Producers Association, respectively.

The General Contractors describe their Association as an organization of local "heavy construction contractors, the builders of freeways, airports, dams and high rise structures." They contributed $12,500.

The Rock Producers Association is an organization of 18 local transit mix concrete companies, cement and sand and gravel companies. They donated $4,000. Rancho Bernardo, Inc. contributed almost $3,000, and the San Diego Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company (then headed by the late Frank Alessio) put $500 on the line. A Schlitz-Burgie and Lucky Lager distributor put up $1,000. And the list goes on, with many $50 contributions from all sections of the White-Power-Structure.

By the registration deadline, September, 1965 there were over 244,000 registered voters in San Diego. Only 140,000 voters showed at the polls in November. According to Big Jim's slide rule, that’s about 58 percent of the registered, and only 100,000 voted "Yes" on the stadium proposal – that’s 41 percent of the city’s registered voters.

But, then, the average fan is asking himself, how did the stadium get built?

Well, fans, the City wanted to simplify the administration of the bonds, according to the City. So it did an appendectomy on the "general obligation" bond (like Big Jim said, that would have required a 2/3’s vote of all registered voters) and changed it into a City charter amendment (which requires only a simple majority of people voting).

The charter amendment proposed to form a "joint power agreement" between the City and the County governments to administer the stadium, hold title to it and to issue bonds for its construction.

Magic Tally

After the election, all the City’s czars were beating their chests, bragging about the "72 percent landslide victory". Home safe, a local sportswriter said that he wanted to "make it clear once and for all" that what the public voted on wasn't a general obligation bond issue, but a charter amendment. Big Jim felt badly that the sportswriter (who has been described as the richest small town sportswriter in the country and was a member of the GSDSA) didn't tell his readers that before the election.

The charter amendment's bond wording leaves the so-called Stadium Authority an open-ended power to issue bonds. So the idea that they will only issue $27 million of bonds ain't necessarily so. If  they wanted to, they could issue bonds from now through the next 50 years.

Barron Is Back In The Saddle

After the new stadium was approved, Barron Hilton was a new man. During a half-time ceremony in Balboa Stadium, Hilton walked onto a platform before thousands of San Diegans and signed a ten-year occupancy agreement, saying that the Chargers would pay 10 per-cent gross of all ticket sales at the new stadium and receive a third of all concession and parking profits.

Less than a year later (to show his gratitude to San Diego), he sold the controlling interest of the Chargers to two Los Angeles tycoons for $10 million. Quite an improvement over $750,000 eh, fans? Well, fans, Big Jim is running out of newspaper faster than he's running out of facts and other historical curiosities. So I guess Big Jim will stretch this out one more issue after this one so we can take a look at how the contracts were awarded and where those profitable bonds went.

Until next time, fans, this is Big Jim with a few late scores off the sports wire: $3.5 million to $329,000; $275,000 to $578,000; and $20.1 million to $1.95.

Big Jim Says: ‘Let’s Put the Lid on Her, Sportsfans.’

Part Three of a Two Part Series

Hi, sports fans. Big Jim, King of the Sport Freaks, here.

Everybody in the press box is getting upset with Big Jim taking up so much newspaper, so I’m going to wrap up the stadium thing, PDQ.

When construction bids were open for the stadium, the lowest bidder was from a group of three companies: Alex Robertson and W. D. Larsen companies of San Diego and the Donovan Construction Company of St. Paul.

Their bid was $14,082,240. The other two bids were about $15.4 million and $15.8 million, therefore the Robertson, Larsen and Donovan bid was accepted.

But, alas, the City Manager of that day, Tom Fletcher, exclaimed at what a bargain that was -- such a bargain that he and the City Council approved an additional $1.5 million worth of keen 'additions,' including some extra elevators, escalators, a restaurant and such.

That put the final cost above the bid of the next highest bidder.

Not that the costs stopped there, either.

By the time the actual edifice was completed, the Robertson, Larsen and Donovan people had submitted about 50 changes in cost to the City Council for approval. The City was free with its approval. The cost changes amounted to $620,433 above the $15,546,891 figure - - totaling $16,167,324.

That is more than $2 million above the original bid and almost $400,000 above the highest of the three original bids. How does that grab you, sales tax fans?

Robertson-Larsen-Donovan wasn't the only company submitting price changes. All in all there were probably several hundred cost changes by people who had one kind of contract or other on that silly stadium.

Then there is the question of the bonds that were issued to pay for the stadium.

The latter part of 1965 and early 1966 were excellent times for selling municipal bonds. People were looking around to jump on the next issuance of bonds and interest rates were low.

Today, tax-free municipal bonds are getting interest rates as high as 5.1 per cent. In the days of the stadium bonds, they were only getting about 4 per cent -- that means there were a lot of people interested in getting hold of the bonds. So one might ask, "How do we assure ourselves that insiders involved in the issuance of the bonds don't take unfair advantage of their knowledge in making a bid?"

Two Chicago bond houses submitted the lowest bid on the bonds: 3.969847 percent. That amounts to $24,672,203.74 of tax-free profit over a period of 35 years.

There are a lot of Chicago interests in San Diego and vice versa. So, Big Jim asked himself, "Where did that money go?"

Big Jim called the City Treasurer’s office and asked who received the bonds. The people there said they didn't know. They thought it went to two Chicago bond houses. "Sure," said Big Jim, "but they are only middle-men. Do you know where they went after that?"

"No," said the City, "All we care about is that we got the money."

Big Jim then learned that Southern California First National Bank (SCFN) was the trustee for the stadium authority. So Big Jim called their trust department and they were unaware (or so they said) as to where the bonds went.

(Little vignette, fans: You may already know that the Foodmaker Company - -Jack-in-the-Box - - owns a controlling interest in Southern California First National. According to the recent Patman report on bank trust departments, SCFN has 73 percent of all San Diego's trust funds and one of its directors, Richard T. Silberman, is head of the Stadium Authority, the people authorized to spend stadium money.

Rumor has it that SCFN branch drive-thru windows are serving Bonusburgers to anyone with one hundred or more dollars in their checking accounts.

That's enough for now, sports fans. But remember, this week is International Eat the Rich Week, paying tribute to one of the fastest growing indoor sports in the world.

Extreme Weather Watch: April 2014 - Tornadoes, Flash Floods Pound US

159 Tornadoes, 35 Deaths as Torrential Rain and Flash Floods Pound East, South and Midwest

by John Lawrence

The last week in April saw extreme weather over as much as half the nation. Over 20 states were affected. In some places a month's worth of rain fell in a day. In New York City there was close to 5 inches of rain in one day. In Pensacola, FL there was over 20 inches of rain in 24 hours, 6 inches in one hour alone, more rain than Los Angeles saw all last year. More rain fell in Pensacola than during Hurricane Ivan. There were nearly 6000 lightning strikes in fifteen minutes. First responders rescued people in boats. Roads and bridges collapsed.

Two trillion gallons of water fell on the south and the east coast in just one day. Flooding was worse than after some hurricanes. Heavy rain led to the collapse of a retaining wall in a Baltimore neighborhood sending cars tumbling 75 feet down an embankment onto railroad tracks. These cars were not covered by insurance as the collapsing embankment was considered an "act of God."  The Schuylkill River in Philadelphia crested higher than after Hurricane Irene and Super Storm Sandy. Philadelphia received more rain in a day than it usually gets in a month. Golf ball sized hail pummeled the country.

Small towns in some states were wiped off the map. A violent high-end EF-4 tornado with winds of 180 - 190 mph tore through Vilonia and Mayflower, AK on April 27, killing 15 people. A whole neighborhood in Vilonia, which was hit by a tornado just 3 years ago, was wiped out. A brand new school costing $14 million was reduced to a pile of rubble.  This tornado was also the widest (3/4 mile) and longest lived (60 minutes) twister of the outbreak. It was on the ground for almost 100 miles.

In Tupelo, MS an EF-3 tornado destroyed an entire business district and sent trees crashing into houses. Peak estimated wind speeds were 150 mph and the path length was at least 24 miles. The tornado lasted over 26 minutes. In Louisville, MS a tornado rated EF-4 with peak estimated wind speeds of 190 mph, a maximum width of 0.75 mile and a path length of 35.5 miles over 56 minutes left 9 dead and a hospital heavily damaged.

But this was not the only extreme weather event in April. On April 4 the National Weather Service reported a number of twisters across several states. More than two feet of rain caused flooding problems for Gulf Coast communities just days after a severe weather outbreak brought multiple tornadoes to Alabama. There were at least 30 water rescues in the Mobile area alone.

Emergency managers say at least 240 homes were damaged or destroyed by the tornadoes and strong storms that swept through Alabama in early April. An update from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency said that damage was reported in 31 of Alabama's 67 counties.

St. Louis, MO residents awoke April 3 to tornado sirens as a cluster of heavy thunderstorms began moving through. A tornado was spotted around 8:16 PM on the ground in St. Louis County near Glendale. About an hour earlier, the agency reported a "damaging" twister with quarter-size hail about 50 miles west near Washington. And a tornado was earlier reported in the Osage County community of Rich Fountain. The weather service confirmed a tornado touched down about an hour before sunrise in the St. Louis suburb of University City, gouging a half-mile-by-100-yard path. The weather service gave the tornado, packing top winds of 112 miles per hour, an initial rating of EF-1.

In the west there were wildfires as Santa Ana winds topped 100 mph in some places including San Diego County and temperatures approached 100 degrees F. There have already been 1000 wildfires in California this year and fire season has barely gotten underway. More than 1600 homes were evacuated in Rancho Cucamonga as a fire charred 2000 acres.

It's not necessary to have actual tornadoes in order to inflict massive damage as high winds, torrential rains and golf ball sized hail, which is increasingly common during thunderstorms, can cause downed tree limbs, roof and gutter damage and busted windows. A forthcoming National Climate Assessment report shows that the top 1% rain events have increased in all regions of the continental US in the past five decades due to climate change.

There have already been three weather disasters this year which will cost over $1 billion:

1) The January 5 - 8 "Polar Vortex" winter weather outbreak, which is estimated to cost $3 billion in damage.

2) The California drought, with $3.6 billion in agricultural damages so far, as estimated by the California Farm Water Coalition.

3) Severe weather outbreak of April 27 - 30, which is estimated to cost over $1 billion in damage.

The return of tornado season with a vengeance has people asking again about a possible link to climate change. At the same time, tantalizing new preliminary research finds “some evidence to suggest that tornadoes are, in fact, getting stronger.”

Tom Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center, explained in a 2011 email:

What we can say with confidence is that heavy and extreme precipitation events often associated with thunderstorms and convection are increasing and have been linked to human-induced changes in atmospheric composition.

The Fishiness of Mayor Kevin's Tax Giveaway to Illumina Corporation

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

It Saved 300 Jobs. Really? Really?

San Diego's Mayor Kevin Faulconer recently signed a deal with Illumina Corporation that was supposedly designed to keep the corporation from jumping ship and landing in another state or jurisdiction. The City of San Diego agreed to rebate $1.5 million in sales and use taxes. In return Illumina promised to keep a number of jobs in San Diego for the term of the agreement. With revenue of just over $1 billion last year, Illumina sells machines that sequence the human genome. The company leases 6 buildings in San Diego totaling over 560,000 sq. ft. and currently has 1500 employees.

Illumina likes to brag about itself as being the "Apple of the genomics industry." It wrote to its shareholders in 2012:

“Illumina is like the Apple of the genomics business. Tools made by the San Diego company are revered by genomics researchers around the world just like millions of consumers love their iPhones and iPads. And Illumina holds its dominant position at an enviable moment in history, as we’re heading into a scientific golden age when human genomes will be sequenced for $1,000 or less.” – Xconomy reporter Luke Timmerman, March 6, 2012

MIT has called it the "World’s Smartest Company" ahead of Tesla Motors, Google and Samsung.

But the deal the City has entered into with Illumina is fishy on several levels. For starters in 2007 GenomeWeb News reported that Illumina signed a fifteen year lease for a new 84,000-square-foot facility currently under construction in San Diego that will enable it to expand its laboratory and office workforce. BioMed Realty Trust, a real estate investment company focused on the life sciences industries, said the new facility will expand an existing 110,000-square-foot facility that Illumina leases at the University Towne Center. Furthermore, Illumina said it had added a 15-year extension to the lease on the existing property. The new facility will allow for the creation of as many as 1,200 new jobs in the San Diego area, according to BioMed.

A fifteen year lease on new and existing buildings signed in 2007? The lease will be up in 2022. It doesn't sound like Illumina has plans to abandon San Diego any time soon. Meanwhile, the Mayor signs a ten year deal that would keep Illumina here till 2024. So for $1.5 million the City gets two more years of Illumina's commitment to San Diego. But wait there's more. The ten year deal is not really a ten year deal. Sound fishy? Read on.

 

And then there's the shady reports about Illumina being lured away by Memphis, Tennesee or Poway. Poway?? Good God, does the City of San Diego really have to spend $1.5 million to prevent a company from moving to Poway? For those of you who don't know, Poway is located next door to San Diego in San Diego County. It's part of the San Diego Greater Metropolitan area, for Pete's sake. And those mysterious rumors of a move to Memphis. Problem is sources in Memphis don't know anything about it.

 

CityBeat reported:

 

Media reports on the "historic" deal—as Council President Todd Gloria described it—suggested that the cities most aggressively seeking favor with Illumina's allure were Poway and Memphis.

This was news to some pretty smart folks in Poway and Memphis.

"That really surprises me, because we've never been in contact with the company," Poway Mayor Don Higginson told Spin. "I checked with our economic-development director, and he said we were never approached by them."

Mark Cafferty, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.— a key organizational player in reaching the Illumina agreement — suggested that Memphis was the big player here in luring Illumina away. Au contraire, said Reid Dulberger, head of economic development for the Memphis area. He'd never heard of such a thing. Asked if the offer suggested by Mark Cafferty was in the ballpark, he replied, "There is no ballpark."

Similarly, representatives of the Memphis Chamber of Commerce and Mayor's office knew nothing about any courtship involving Illumina. It seems like this courtship of Illumina by outside jurisdictions was a fig newton of Mark Cafferty's imagination. After all a CEO of an Economic Development Corporation has to do something to earn his pay. Why not gin up a $1.5 million tax giveaway to some leading corporation which by the way Illumina doesn't really need. They are quite profitable thank you very much.

As the article, Mayor Kevin Faulconer's Illumina-ting Pitch stated: "Going forward, will city leaders throw a bone to every company that mentions Texas or some other far-off land of fiscal opportunity?"

300 Jobs Saved. 2400 Jobs Free To Go

 

Local news NBC 7 San Diego reported that "the deal" was announced on July 15, 2014: "Under the 10-year agreement, Illumina will keep 300 middle-class manufacturing jobs in San Diego and receive a tax break up to $1.5 million." First of all the "10-year agreement" implies that those 300 middle class jobs will stay in San Diego for 10 years. Not true. Under terms of the agreement the deal could end much sooner if certain conditions are met. But remember that figure "300 middle class jobs." As we shall show, that is a blatant untruth and misrepresentation of the facts.

 

Illumina has 1500 employees in San Diego. So retaining 300 middle class jobs is a pittance at best compared to its total San Diego employment. And then remember those 1200 additional jobs that Illumina's expansion at University Towne Center, for which they signed a 15 year lease,  allowed for the creation of? That's 2700 jobs in San Diego at present and in the near future, but the Mayor gave away $1.5 million of taxpayers' money to retain a paltry 11% of those jobs. And as we shall show, it's even less than 11%. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, but Faulconer sold out the taxpayers for a mess of BS.

 

And then there's the tax rebate deal itself. When scrutinized in the harsh light of day, it has aspects which haven't been made apparent in reports the media has made to the general public. First of all it's not a $1.5 million deal. It's a $1.5 million deal with interest. Witness this exchange on KPBS:

 

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH:  That is up to $1.5 million, is that right?

ALMIS UDRYS:  That is correct, $1.5 million with interest as well, over the time while they are claiming the rebate, interest would be accrued as well. In the end it would be over $1.5 million.

So the "tax break up to $1.5 million." Not true either. Illumina will get $1.5 million plus 3% interest, and the payout will be in one lump sum which maximizes the interest.

By the way Almis Udrys also noted that this is the third incentive deal that the city has signed off on this year: "Two of them were craft breweries, Ale Smith and Ballast Point, earlier in the year..."

And then there's the matter of how the $1.5 million is rebated to Illumina. It is rebated out of taxes that Illumina expects to pay in the future above and beyond what they are paying now plus 30%. Illumina is expected to grow, have more sales, pay more sales tax and have even more employees than it has now. So they would go on paying the amount of taxes they paid last year (the benchmark year) plus 30%. Any sales tax above that would be rebated once the $1.5 million is reached. A fine detail is that the 30% only applies to sales tax; use tax rebates would be 100% above those paid in the benchmark year.

So last year Illumina paid about $1.3 million in taxes. Since the rebate amount must sit in city coffers until it totals $1.5 million to be paid out in one lump sum, it will accrue interest until Illumina decides to ask the city for a check. When the full $1.5 million has been received by Illumina (plus interest) or 10 years has elapsed, the deal will be terminated. That means that, if Illumina's sales skyrocket, those 300 jobs it promised to keep in San Diego could evaporate in just a few years not the 10 years the media has reported. And since Illumina is heading into a "scientific golden age" for human genome sequencing, they do expect their sales to skyrocket.

Illumina is adding 1200 jobs almost doubling its workforce. Therefore, it is a reasonable guesstimate that it expects to double its sales. Doubling its sales doubles its sales tax. So next year or the year thereafter Illumina could be paying $2.6 million in taxes which would put it at or near the $1.5 million rebate level. The point is that in just a couple years Illumina could have satisfied conditions for the rebate, taken the $1.5 million and left town except for the fact of those 15 year leases. Oh well, they could leave at least by 2022 so that the 10 year deal to save 300 jobs would be moot.

The rationale is that keeping Illumina here keeps the sales and use taxes coming at least at the present rate plus the employees that it keeps here pay sales tax and other taxes themselves and generate up to three ancillary jobs. Of course, Illumina could move about 90% of its employees to another state immediately. The deal with the city doesn't constrain them from doing that.

Moreover, Alan Gin noted in the same KPBS interview that this sort of tax giveaway "will then impact the level of services that can be provided, spent on infrastructure, and other things." That's $1.5 million plus that won't be spent on parks, libraries, schools, repairing potholes, replacing watermains and improving neighborhoods. Remember K-Faulc's mantra: “There is no such thing as a Democratic or Republican pothole.” Whoops, I guess those Democratic potholes won't get fixed after all.

The New York Times reported:

[The tax] giveaways are adding up to a gigantic bill for taxpayers.       

A Times investigation has examined and tallied thousands of local incentives granted nationwide and has found that states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains.

City Council's Approval a Mere Afterthought

So did Illumina shake down the city and threaten to move elsewhere if they didn't get their spif? Not at all. The tax giveaway was initiated by Kevin Faulconer's team itself with a little help from the folks at San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. which gave the mayor's office the heads up. It seems that the city undertook to shake itself down.

On July 21 the City Council took up the Economic Development Incentive Agreement (EDIA) with Illumina, Inc., to provide a sales and use tax rebate. On the Council Docket was the following item description:

Authorize the Mayor to enter into an Economic Development Incentive Agreement with Illumina, Inc., to provide a sales and use tax rebate to encourage this company to retain its manufacturing operations and its taxable product sales operations with the City of San Diego.

From an email inquiry to the members of the City Council, I received this reply from Councilmember Lorie Zapf's office:

Yes, the City Council approved the Illumina deal. It came before Council twice; the first time was on July 21, 2014 and all members were present. The second time was also unanimous on August 7, with Councilmembers Kersey and Emerald absent.

However, according to the docket, it was noted that this item was pursuant to Section 99 of the City Charter (10 day published notice, approval by Ordinance and 6 votes required). There was no mention that the item was voted on at all on July 21. And remember the Mayor had already signed the agreement on July 15!

NOTE: If some of the subsequent links generate a "File or Directory Not Found" message, click here and then scroll down and click on

ITEM-200:     Approval of an Economic Development Incentive Agreement with Illumina, Inc. (University Community Area.  District 1.)

and the documents will be found on the right hand sidebar. The City should really fix this problem so that links to its documents always work.

The Request for Council Action dated July 24 stated the following in the Executive Summary of Item Background:

Illumina would be obligated to retain all of its manufacturing jobs within the City, at any site of its choice, during the term of the EDIA. The term of the EDIA would be the lesser of 10 years or the year that Illumina has generated new additional (above the benchmark) sales and use tax revenues of $1.5 million.

This is interesting for two reasons: (1) Illumina is not required to maintain jobs in the City for ten years as reported in the media but for "the lesser of 10 years or the year that Illumina has generated new additional ... sales and use tax revenues of $1.5 million" and (2) Illumina would not be required to maintain 300 jobs in the City but "all of its manufacturing jobs within the City."

Under the item Community Participation and Public Outreach Efforts it was noted: "None - Confidential municipality-taxpayer negotiations" So the inner workings of the City in this regard are meant to be shrouded in secrecy.

Jay Flatley, CEO of Illumina, signed the Economic Development Incentive Agreement with the City on July 7 long before the City Council "approved" it. The agreement specified the following:

Job Creation and Retention. During the Term of this Agreement, Company shall (i) create or retain all manufacturing jobs existing in the City of San Diego as of the Execution Date; and (ii) make commercially reasonable efforts to create Sales Force jobs, or retain at least the same number of Sales Force Jobs, located in the City of San Diego as of the Execution Date.

The exact number of those manufacturing jobs is not mentioned nor is it specified what a "commercially reasonable effort" is. This would probably not hold water in a court of law.

On July 10, the following document was ready for Mayor Kevin's signature: "AN ORDINANCE OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAN DIEGO AUTHORIZING THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT WITH ILLUMINA, INC. AND APPROVING CERTAIN RELATED ACTIONS." approved by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. This document contains a lot of legalese in the form of Whereas this and Whereas that followed by Therefore, Be It Ordained blah, blah, blah. However, one of the Whereases is particularly, well, illuminating:

"WHEREAS, Illumina is committing to create or retain over 100 middle-wage manufacturing job opportunities within San Diego, jobs which are likely to be filled by San Diego residents"

Wait a minute, the legal agreement specifies only 100 manufacturing jobs as opposed to the 300 manufacturing jobs widely reported by the media?! You mean to tell me that this $1.5 million rebate was created to retain 100 jobs in San Diego for what might turn out to be far less than the ten years reported in the media? And that's 100 jobs out of approximately 2700 jobs that Illumina expects shortly to have? Or approximately 1% of its jobs?

The City and its taxpayers have been hoodwinked.

On July 8 David Graham, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Neighborhood Services, sent a Memorandum to City Council President Todd Gloria with a Direct Docketing Request which consisted of urging the City Council to go ahead and approve the Economic Development Incentive Agreement that Jay Flatley had already signed. It noted: "A proposal for an EDIA would normally be considered by the Council Committee on Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations (ED&IR) prior to consideration by the full City Council." But Graham wanted it ramrodded through the City Council without further consideration because after all the details had already been worked out and it had already been signed by Flatley. It was awaiting Faulconer's signature as soon as the City Council complied.

The City Council did not give final approval to the Illumina deal until August 7 no doubt because of that Section 99 of the City Charter that required a 10 day waiting period. In any event the deal had already been done, and the City Council's "approval" was after the fact. Faulconer's deal with Illumina was a fait accompli.

Jumping the gun on the City Council's approval, on July 15 Mayor Kevin Faulconer put out a press release:

Mayor Faulconer Announces "World’s Smartest Company" Will Stay, Expand in San Diego

Agreement with Illumina Inc. will keep hundreds of high wage jobs in the city

San Diego, CA – Today Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer joined Illumina Inc. CEO Jay Flatley to announce an agreement that will keep the medical device company and its good-paying jobs in San Diego. Illumina was recently named "World’s Smartest Company" by the MIT Technology Review, ahead of Tesla Motors, Google and Samsung.

The City will provide a tax rebate in exchange for Illumina retaining approximately 300 middle-class manufacturing jobs in San Diego.

So did the City Council merely ratify a deal on August 7 that had already been consummated on July 15? And the retention of 300 middle-class manufacturing jobs? What about the 1500 other higher paying R&D and sales jobs that Illumina now provides and the 1200 new jobs it will add according to Biomed? Illumina has in no way committed itself to maintaining those jobs in San Diego. And as it turns out, the 300 manufacturing jobs had magically diminished to 100 manufacturing jobs when the ink was put to paper.

Nothing about this deal is what it seems. The $1.5 million rebate. It's actually $1.5 million plus 3% which the city will pay out in one lump sum. That 3% really adds up year after year. The 10 year time period? It's really the lesser of 10 years or whenever Illumina can claim the rebate. Illumina moving to Poway or Memphis? It turns out neither Poway nor Memphis had ever heard of that. Illumina seeking a tax advantage not to move out of San Diego? Illumina CEO Flatley didn't approach the City. The Mayor's office in the person of Almis Udrys, Kevin Faulconer's Director of Government Affairs, approached him. The City Council's approval of the deal? The City Council's "approval" came after the deal had already been signed by Faulconer and Flatley. Did anyone on the City Council do their homework or due diligence to check this deal out? The first clue, Sherlock, was that Illumina had signed 15 year leases on all or some of its properties. Doesn't seem that they were going anywhere any time soon.

The Illumina deal sets a disastrous precedent for other corporations to seek out their own tax deals. It is just the harbinger of things to come. With the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation giving the "heads up", and Almis Udrys as liason, Mayor Faulconer is only too able and willing to do tax giveaways to San Diego corporations. Hey, we're open for business. C'mon down! The City Council's approval will just be an afterthought. Someone from the Mayor's office, like David Graham, will send the Council a Memorandum telling them to hurry up and ratify the Mayor's deals.

That's money that won't be used for parks, libraries, schools and infrastructure repairs like replacing 100 year old water mains and filling potholes. The Republicans' goal is to defund government and give the money to corporations. As their spokeman, Grover Norquist, has said, "We want to make government so small that it can be drowned in the bathtub." That's the Republican mantra. Corporate welfare of the type given to Illumina Corporation is a handy means for defunding government and transferring the money to the private sector.

Peter D. Enrich, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law has written:

The proliferation of state and local tax incentives designed to attract or retain business investment ... has proven troublingly resistant to reform. Despite a growing recognition ... that the competition over business incentives is at best a zero-sum game... the size of the incentive packages offered for large corporate facilities reaches ever-new heights ... The only consistent winners are the large businesses that can pit one jurisdiction against another for reduced tax burdens, while other taxpayers and citizens pay the cost in constrained government services and higher taxes ... The states and localities face a classic collective action problem: when they each pursue their individual self-interest, they all end up worse off.

CEO Jay Flatley was not going to move Illumina Corporation out of San Diego. He needs to stay close to the world class research universities in San Diego and the relationships developed therewith. His executives and highly paid employees don't want to trade San Diego's climate, the best in the nation, for Rich Perry's Texas hell hole. His kids want to continue surfing at the beaches. They all love their houses in La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe. The wives want to continue shopping at University Towne Center. To uproot all these executives and highly paid employees would be unthinkable. Why then, does Mayor Faulconer think he has to offer tax rebate incentives to get major corporations to stay here? And to bum rush the City Council who obviously had not done their homework and due diligence on this issue. The best policy is to have faith and believe in San Diego as a place that major corporations would want to locate and, once located, would want to stay. The urge to offer tax incentives to corporations must be resisted. A Democratic Mayor would have resisted.

The Illumina rebate is just the beginning, the advent of a new era in San Diego politics, the signal that more is yet to come. The Mayor is sending a message to business. C'mon y'all, line up for your free tax giveaways. Mayor Kevin is open for business!

San Diego's P100 Program Targets the Poor and Vulnerable While Letting the Rich and Powerful Off the Hook

by John Lawrence

Since 1997, San Diego County has required all families applying for California's version of welfare called CalWORKs to submit to warrantless, suspicionless, unannounced home searches and interrogations by District Attorney investigators.  As of June 2013 about 150,000 families, or about 9,300 families each year, have been subject to these searches. This policy, called Project 100% or P100, diverts money away from the poor and has not been shown to be effective at detecting or preventing fraud. San Diego is the only place in the whole nation which has such an intrusive, untargeted policy making it America's finest city - NOT - for the poor and vulnerable. These searches are a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids "unreasonable searches" of peoples' homes.

Money to fund the DA office's P100 search program is money taken away from the CalWORKs program which could have gone to help needy families. In fact almost $2 million per year could instead be used to hire 42 new welfare-to-work employment counselors. Not only are blanket home searches ineffective, they are harmful to children and parents in crisis. Simply for requesting government aid for which they are potentially eligible, families are forced to endure the frightening and degrading intrusion into the private spaces of their homes by law enforcement officials.

People signing up for welfare have to agree to these unscheduled searches, and make themselves available at all times during the day since, if they're not home when the inspector arrives at the door, they get turned down for welfare benefits. When the inspector comes, she must invite him in or forego benefits. Investigators for the program - not social workers mind you, but accusatory and sometimes rude investigators from the DA's office - pay over two thousand unannounced visits a month, taking note if they find a man's name on a prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet or boxer shorts in a sock drawer. If the inspector finds a pair of work boots in her closet, he will accuse her of harboring a man in her home and she will lose benefits. If there are two toothbrushes in her toothbrush holder, she will lose benefits. Investigators have even threatened to take the applicant's children away if they find any evidence of welfare fraud. These situations have actually happened to real people.

One inspector picked up a Victoria's Secrets bra with the erasure tip of a pencil and waved it in her face claiming that, if she were really poor, she wouldn't have such an expensive bra in her dresser. Who was she trying to impress - a boyfriend perhaps? The same technique was used on a pair of her sexy panties. If she didn't have a boyfriend, what would she have needed those for? Anything that would tip off the inspector that she may have lied on her application is grounds for denying her a few hundred measly dollars a month. Authorities are looking for evidence that the applicant has a secret job or a boyfriend who could pay bills.

The general idea is that being really poor means you should naturally give up any ideas you might have about privacy or dignity. If you are poor, you should have to give up your Constitutional rights such as the Fourth Amendment. You are not afforded the benefit of being protected from unreasonable searches. Welfare fraud is subject to harsh penalties while bankster fraud goes unpunished. No bankster would have to undergo a peremptory search of his premises despite the massive frauds involving billions of dollars that some of them have committed.

And what about the Balboa Park Centennial Inc (BPCI) that spent almost $3 million of taxpayer money with no results whatsoever. Are they being investigated for fraud? Hell, no. They are part of San Diego's white collar, white faced elite. They can waste any amount of money whatsoever and the DA's office will look the other way. Only City Councilman David Alvarez is questioning where millions of taxpayer dollars meant for the Balboa Park Centennial Celebration have gone. The insiders on the BPCI paid themselves handsomely, and they have taken the money with impunity, with no obligation to pay it back despite their pathetic results. No one is accusing them of fraud. No one is carrying out unreasonable searches and seizures at any of their homes. There are two standards of justice - one for the rich who steal millions and one for the poor who may, if they're lucky, get a few measly bucks to pay their electric and water bills.

In Matt Taibbi's book, The Divide, he chronicles the experiences of Maria Espinosa, Karen Bjorland, Markisha and the couple, Diego and Anna [more about them next time], as they were hassled by the P100 program in San Diego:

Maria Espinosa was a pioneer. The sifting-through-the-dresser-drawer search she experienced in the early years of the George H. W. Bush presidency was an informal precursor to a [program that] would become formalized in her new home county of San Diego. In San Diego County ... the state preemptively searches for evidence of fraud in the homes of the tens of thousands of people who have applied and are applying for cash assistance via CalWORKs, the California version of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF - what we used to call welfare.

Today, every single person who applies for aid and is accepted has to be preemptively searched. These people are almost all non-white. And while in L.A. in the late 1980s the person visiting the home of someone like Maria Espinosa was just a social worker from the local welfare office, the state has since upgraded. In San Diego now it's a law enforcement official, a representative of the district attorney's office, who comes in to look through your underwear drawer. The city has a team of investigators whose sole purpose is to conduct the searches for this program ... .

One hundred percent compliance, that's the idea. No outliers, no excuses. Fraud must not be tolerated, not even the smallest kind. So the program must be large, and appropriate resources must naturally be devoted to crime detection. In just one year, 2011, the county conducted an astonishing 26,000 home searches.

P100 generates, by the thousand, stories that sound like testimonials culled from refugees of some distant, low-rent, third-world despotate. The stories are terrible, humiliating, abusive.

On the other hand, Taibbi continues:

... while the San Diego District Attorney's Office spent more than a decade sifting through thousands of dresser drawers and bringing felony cases all the way to court for frauds as small as four hundred dollars, executives in the same general area of Southern California, at companies like Countrywide and Long Beach Mortgage, were pioneering the mass fraud scheme that involved the sales of toxic mortgage-backed securities.

... Not one home was searched. No banker ever had someone pick up his underwear by a pencil and wave it in his face.

Twenty-six billion dollars of fraud: no felony cases. But when the stakes are in the hundreds of dollars, we kick in 26,000 doors a year in just [San Diego] county.

Finally, six women who had experienced these travesties got together and with the help of the ACLU filed a lawsuit. In Sanchez v, the County of San Diego, they argued before the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, that these intrusive home searches were a violation of their Fourth Amendmant rights. They lost. The argument that prevailed was basically that, by virtue of their applying for taxpayer supported aid, the state's interest took precedence over their right not to have their homes peremptorily searched, that they had forfeited that portion of their Constituional rights.

However the minority opinion of the Court was quite striking. They wrote the following:

[A visit from a social worker] is a far cry from the program carried out by the County of San Diego, whose Project 100% home visits entail a law enforcement agent - trained not to give advice to welfare applicants - walking through the applicant's home in search of physical evidence of ineligibility that could lead to criminal prosecution either for welfare fraud or other crimes unrelated to the welfare application. In light of the significant differences in scope and implementation between the home visits at issue in Wyman [a precedent case] and those challenged here, I disagree with the majority's conclusion that the home visits do not rise to the level of a Fourth Amendment search. Nor do I agree with the majority's improper discounting of the Appellants' heightened privacy interest in their home. In the majority's view, even if the home visit is a search, it is reasonable because the Appellants' relationship with the state as potential welfare recipients “reduce[s] the expectation of privacy even within the sanctity of the home.”   ...   By suggesting that welfare applicants may be treated the same as convicted criminals, the majority ignores the limits - implicit and explicit - in [another precedent case].

Courts have been chipping away at the Constitutional rights of the poor and people of color for many years while giving a free pass to rich, white collar and white faced criminals. The County of San Diego with its P100 program is the worst offender along these lines in the entire US. If you're black or brown and live in the ghetto, you don't get protection against illegal searches and seizures. Whether it's possession of microscopic amounts of drugs or accusations of welfare fraud, that's just the way it is.

NEXT TIME: How P100 Screwed Diego and Anna.

Inside the Mind of the Isla Vista Killer

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Elliot Rodger left a 140 page document which is a truly revealing window into his soul. After reading this "manifesto", which is really more of a life history, his twisted life which led up in painful stages to his "Day of Retribution" becomes, if not excusable, at least more understandable. And understanding why people feel impelled to do these horrific acts is important if we are to come to any conclusions which just might prevent more of these situations in the future. Understanding is more important than condemning. It's not about Rodger, at this point, or his victims. Nothing can be done to bring them back. But lessons can be learned about what went wrong in this young man's life and what could have been done to deflect him from his ultimate course. After all, right up until the end he expressed some tiny bit of hope that his life would take a more positive turn, and he wouldn't be driven to commit the crimes that he did.

One of the misconceptions that the media has hastily come up with is that Rodger hated only women. For sure he was a misogynist, but he hated men equally as much, especially the cool jock type men that he fantasized women were exclusively attracted to instead of being attracted to an "intelligent gentleman" like himself. He couldn't stand the sight of a young couple holding hands on the street or (horrors) making out! It enraged him since he fantasized about all the sex they were having while he was getting none.

His jealousy, envy and rage didn't happen overnight. They built up to the breaking point over a number of years starting after he went through puberty. It got to the point where he hated both men and women whom he fantasized were having more sexual pleasure than he was. In fact his only sexual pleasure was masturbation; he never had sex with a woman. And he wasn't willing to go on living that way. In his sick mind, if he couldn't have the pleasure of making love to a beautiful blonde woman, then nobody else would have that pleasure either if he could do anything about it.

One of the major malfunctions of his sick mind was that he expected that it was girls' (collective) responsibility to provide him with sex and love. And it just wasn't any girl he wanted. He wanted a sexy, beautiful blonde. His problem was that he never put any meaningful effort into meeting, dating or establishing a relationship with any girl. He gives detailed accounts of all his playdates in childhood going back to age zero, including all the names of every kid he was ever friends with, yet he never mentions one girl whom he actually dated or who actually rejected him. He fantasized that girls rejected him because they didn't come to him and offer to have sex with him. In fact the rejections he experienced at the hands of girls were probably all fantasies.

One of the things about this manifesto is that Rodger is brutally honest about his own feelings and psychological predicaments, no matter how twisted they are. His negative feelings festered for many years until they built up to a boiling point in his own mind. He planned his "Day of Retribution" at least a year in advance. It was all about revenge for a world that didn't satisfy his needs and caused him excruciating pain although he was willing to call it off at the last minute if only a beautiful girl would have sex with him.

Rodger grew up shorter than average and not physically strong. He was always trying to fit in and regretted his lack of cool friends although he had many others. He took refuge in video games, in particular, World of Warcraft. He was so badly bullied in high school that he begged his parents to take him out of it. They did and he finished high school at continuation school, the school for dropouts that enabled them to get a high school equivalency certificate. One would have thought that he would have made some friends there since he experienced no bullying at all. Unfortunately, Rodger was a snob and considered those at continuation school to be low class losers.

Although he was the product of a broken home (his parents divorced when he was seven), he had a lot of perks due to his parents' connections to the film industry and evidently quite a lot of money in the family despite his father's financial debacle in the movie "Oh my God" that he produced. Peter Rodger was also an assistant director of The Hunger Games, a movie in which teenagers go around trying to kill each other. Elliot Rodger got to walk down the red carpet at a number of Hollywood premieres. He had an admitted taste for luxury and opulence. He became convinced that the only way out of his predicament was to become wealthy, really wealthy. He tried to convince his mother on several occasions that she should marry a rich man. He fantasized about moving into a mansion like some of his parents' rich friends owned.

As he became more and more desperate, he became convinced that he would be able to get a beautiful girlfriend if only he himself could become wealthy and the only feasible way of doing this was for him to win the lottery. He thought it was his destiny to win in order to make up for all the unfairness that he had experienced since attaining puberty. He considered that he had had a happy childhood up until that time, and he was owed this destiny. He made numerous trips to Arizona to buy Megamillion Lottery tickets at a time when they weren't offered in California. Later when it became legal in California he bought more. After each incident, his not winning left him even deeper in despair.

Finally, after giving up hope of ever having a beautiful girl by his side and having a happy life, he started making plans for a "Day of Retribution." He even planned to kill his little brother, Jazz, whom he liked, because he could see he was the outgoing type that girls would be attracted to. His stepmother, whom he hated, would have to go as well. He made his elaborate plans over the period of a year, and they were a lot more elaborate that what tragically actually happened, fortunately.

What can be learned from Rodger's life history? That he was obsessed with having something that he couldn't obtain? That he didn't have the social skills to go about getting the thing he most wanted in life? That nothing else was more important to him than losing his virginity and having sex with a beautiful blonde girl? That he fantsized about how ideal the lives were of all the beautiful people who effortlessly were able to have what he desired? That he considered the world to be unfair because women were attracted to obnoxious, alpha male, jock types instead of to intelligent gentlemen? That girls' lack of attraction to him constituted rejection? That negative feelings can build and build to the boiling point at which they explode splattering other peoples' innocent lives in their wake?

This episode also speaks to a hollow, crass culture, the props of which are guns, violent video games, material goods and sex devoid of meaningful relationships, a culture that places pleasure and entertainment above any and all ethical values.

Although Rodger had a variety of psychologists, psychiatrists and life coaches, they all failed miserably to apprehend the depth and nature of his problems or to be in a position to do anything about them. Actually, he had only one problem: how to have sex with a girl. If it could have been arranged, the tragedy in Isla Vista might never have happpened. Rodger himself was powerless to make it happen, and he, narcissistically, thought the world owed it to him without any effort on his part. Actually, his efforts, which consisted of walking around Santa Barbara waiting for a girl to approach him, were totally misguided. Being at a party school was just the wrong milieu for him. He didn't have the personality to be a casual pick-up artist. He might have tried online dating. But he was a snob that was put out that he couldn't be in the upper echelon of snobs and have everything that they had in the same way they had it. He wouldn't have lowered himself.

If any verification for the theories of Wilhelm Reich were needed, the story of this individual's life is it. Wilhelm Reich authored "The Mass Psychology of Fascism," a book which was banned in this country in the 1960s. The San Diego Free Press, to its credit, published and distributed bootleg copies of the book. Reich's main thesis was that what led to the Nazi era was sexual repression among Germans, Hitler in particular. Comparing Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography, to Rodger's manifesto, one can see that they had very similar dysfunctional personalities. Resentment fueled both their violent fantasies. Hitler resented the fact that he had been denied admisssion to Munich's prestigious art school twice. The Germans seethed with resentment at the terms of the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War.

Reich wrote that sexual repression led to feelings being bottled up which eventually turned into rage and hatred. Rodger was a proto fascist. He fantasized about being dictator of the world and putting women into concentration camps watching them from a tower as they slowly died of hunger (Hunger Games redux?). He thought there was something wrong with them that they were not attracted to him but to the jock types. He would have outlawed all sexual pleasure on the grounds that, if he couldn't have it, nobody else would have it either. Finally, both Hitler and Rodger fantasized and carried out a Gotterdammerung of total destruction of themselves and the world around them. Fortunately, in both cases the havoc they wreaked was considerably less than the havoc they envisioned.

Who Knew? Organic Foods Contain a Dose of GMOs

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

To be labeled as "USDA organic," 95% of the ingredients must be organically grown and the remaining 5% may be non-organic agricultural ingredients or synthetic substances that have been approved for use in organics by the USDA. The 5% of non-organic products are usually derived from GMO corn which is highly sprayed with Monsanto's Roundup. It's a little known fact that some organic packaged foods contain GMOs and pesticides thanks to the lobbying efforts of Big Organic corporations.

For example, consider a container of O organic Tomato Basil soup, a product of Canada, purchased at Sprout's. The ingredient list includes organic tomatoes, organic tomato pulp, citric acid, calcium chloride, organic tomato paste, citric acid, organic cream, a long list of other organic ingredients and finally citric acid. Why you might ask is there so much citric acid listed and is it organic? Evidently not or it would have been listed as "organic citric acid."

The fact is that citric acid does not even come from citric fruit like oranges or lemons. You might have envisioned workers pouring vats of freshly squeezed lemon or orange juice into the product. No, my good friend, citric acid is a product derived from GMO corn! Cheap corn permeates every facet of the American diet ... even organics! Its derivatives including citric acid are used as preservatives, taste enhancers and a whole variety of other things.

Citric acid is produced using a mold, Aspergillus niger. The mold is grown in the presence of a carbohydrate to produce citric acid. In order to get higher yields, genetically modified Aspergillus niger is employed. Besides the genetically modified mold being used, the carbohydrate "food" that the mold metabolizes is often genetically modified corn.

Why, you might ask, is an ingredient derived from GMO corn allowed to go under the name of "citric acid"? This is from cornucopia.org:

 

On September 26, 2012, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a rule that continues its policy of allowing the indiscriminate and illegal addition of synthetic nutrients to organic foods. Nutrients occur naturally in foods, and many are essential for good health. But organic consumers expect the nutrients in their foods to be naturally occurring rather than added synthetics that are mass produced in factories by chemical corporations, often using hazardous petrochemical substances.

 

So USDA policy allows the "indiscriminate and illegal use" of synthetic products such as those derived from GMO corn and they also allow the description of those products on the packaging in a deceptive manner as long as it is chemically identical to the real thing. Even if you buy organic, the citric acid in that organic food is most likely made with GMO products and processes unless explicitly stated to the contrary.

 

Why is citric acid used in foods? It sharpens taste and acts as a food preservative. That's why it's in so many organic packaged food products. Citric acid is found in a huge number of products and is used in numerous processes: from shampoo to soda to cheese to beer making to candy to medicine to varnish remover.

 

Citric acid has been linked to gastrointestinal problems and also to problems associated with the loss of dental enamel. In a study at the University of Bristol, UK, the increasing incidence of enamel erosion was causally connected to the high amounts of citric acid added to drinks and food.

 

It is important to check the nutrition list on the labels of packaged organic products to avoid exposure to GMOs. Citric acid is one of the worst offenders. It may be chemically identical to citric acid from oranges and lemons, but it was produced in an industrial process not involving any citric fruits whatsoever. In fact it was probably produced using a GMO mold and GMO corn.

 

It is better to deal with local farmers since most organic products found in stores come from food giants which have bought out what started as small organic operations. In 1995 there were 81 independent organic processing companies in the United States. A decade later, Big Food had gobbled up all but 15 of them. Many iconic organic brands are owned by the titans of junk food, processed food and sugary beverages—the same corporations that spent millions to defeat GMO labeling initiatives in California and Washington. General Mills (which owns Muir Glen, Cascadian Farm, and LaraBar), Coca-Cola (Honest Tea, Odwalla), J.M. Smucker (R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic), and many other corporate owners of organic brands contributed big bucks to deny citizens’ right to know what is in their food.

 

Other Big Food operators who have found it lucrative to get into the organic market  are the following.  The amounts they've contributed to fight GMO labeling in California (Prop 37) and Washington State (I-522) are in parenthesis:

 

PepsiCo ($4.8M) - IZZE, Naked Juice, Simply Frito-Lay, Starbucks Frappucino

Coca-Cola ($3.2M) - Honest Tea, Odwalla

Nestle ($3M) - Gerber Organic, Sweet Leaf tea

Kraft/Mondelez ($2.4M) - Boca Burgers, Green and Black's 

General Mills ($2.1M) - Cascadian Farm, Larabar, Muir Glen

ConAgra Foods ($2M) - Alexia, Pam organic cooking sprays

Kelloggs ($1.1M) - Bear Naked, Gardenburger, Kashi, Morningstar Farms

Campbells ($980k) - Plum Organics, Wolfgang Puck organic soups

Smuckers ($900k) - R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz organic, Smuckers Organic

Hershey's ($880k) - Dagoba

Bimbo Bakeries ($560k) - Earthgrains bread

McCormick ($400k) - Simply Asia, Thai Kitchen 

 

On a positive note:

 

WASHINGTON, May 8, 2014 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA is making a historic $78 million investment in local and regional food systems, including food hubs, farmers markets, aggregation and processing facilities, distribution services, and other local food business enterprises.

“The 2014 Farm Bill has given USDA new tools, resources and authority to support the rural economy,” Vilsack said. “Consumer demand for locally-produced food is strong and growing, and farmers and ranchers are positioning their businesses to meet that demand. As this sector continues to mature, we see aggregation, processing, and distribution enterprises across the local food supply chain growing rapidly. These historic USDA investments in support of local food give farmers and ranchers more market opportunities, provide consumers with more choices, and create jobs in both rural and urban communities.”

Russia is considering legislation to criminalize GMO foods describing GMO food producers as terrorists. France, the largest agricultural producer in Europe, is preparing to restore a GMO maize ban in their country. Twenty-six countries, including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy and Mexico, have a total or partial ban on GMOs. Significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.

On May 8, Peter Shumlin, Governor of Vermont, signed a historic bill requiring food manufacturers to label genetically engineered (GE) foods, and to drop the practice of labeling GE foods as “natural” or “all natural.” Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) has threatened to sue the state of Vermont. New research has found that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, is actually found in the breast milk of women, leading to damage to underdeveloped human beings.

In 2014, half the states will likely consider placing special labels on food that use genetically modified organisms (GMOs), according to Pamela M. Prah at PEW’s Stateline. “Big Food” is ready for the challenge though and will use its influence and resources to protect profits gained from GMOs that are found in 80 percent of the food America consumes. 

Another Look at Thomas Piketty’s ‘Law of Inequality’

by Frank Thomas from the San Diego Free Press

This is a follow-up to the article Capitalism: A Comparison of Marx and Piketty by John Lawrence.

Utilizing massive historical documentation, Thomas Piketty argues that as returns to invested capital outstrip the rate of economic growth, income from wealth grows faster than the economy – concentrating more and more money and power in the hands of a few. As these returns are reinvested, inherited wealth will grow faster – concentrating even more money in fewer hands. When incomes from capital become more concentrated than incomes from labor – e.g., today, the wealthiest 10% earn almost the same amount of income as the rest of the country – personal income distribution will also become more unequal. So far, this is not an earth-shaking economic revelation.

No one can deny the fact that those at the bottom and increasingly those in the middle are doing poorly while those in the top 10% are grabbing an increasing fraction of our nation’s income (see: TABLES 1,2).

SOURCE: Piketty and Saez : 2003 data updated to 2012.

Computations based on family market income including realized capital gains (before individual taxes). Incomes exclude government transfers (such as unemployment compensation and social security) and non-taxable fringe benefits. Incomes are inflation-adjusted using the Consumer Price Index.

The 4^th column shows the fraction of total real family income (loss) captured by the Top 1%. For example, from 1993 to 2012, average family income grew by 17.9%, but 68% of that growth went to the Top 1% while only 32% went to the Bottom 99%. During the 2009-2012 recovery, income concentration for the Top 1% returned to its huge pre-recession level and then some.  Average family income grew only 6%, but 95% of that growth was grabbed by the Top 1% while practically zero went to the Bottom 99%. The Top 1% have about fully recovered from their loss during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, but the Bottom 99% are still sitting with their loss.

In my view, Piketty’s major innovative breakthrough in economic thinking is that the forces at play creating an obscene outsized societal income and wealth inequality – as has been occurring in the U.S. for past 30 plus years – self-reinforce and self-perpetuate inequality to new levels, fostering societal stratification and instability in which people are not moving forward together. Ordinary people are being more and more separated from those with economic and political power.                   

Unless these forces are reined in and income/wealth distribution becomes fairly balanced as was the case for 30 years after WWII, concentrated asset wealth will continue to benefit the rich and debt will continue to overwhelm the middle class and poor as the latter spend beyond their means to keep up. An economy like the U.S. – that is so dependent on 70% consumption, very low savings (vs. 58% consumption in Europe and 10-12% savings), stagnant wages, and maxing-out credit card debt to achieve a reasonable GDP growth – inevitably ends up reducing both consumer expenditures and economic growth and increasing personal debt levels - driving the next Great Recession where the rich will again come out on top.                                

Part of the self-perpetuating enriching process of the few stems from a political system that is poisoned and warped by the influence of big money – a system giving inordinate power to those at the top. And the warping process is getting worse as the wealth of the top 10% grows larger. Those at the top take advantage of their market and political power not only to limit redistribution but also to shape the rules in their favor in order to increase their own income and wealth at the expense of the rest.

Let’s be clear: this paper is not about arguing for a system of equality of income and wealth, a favorite line of dogmatic conservatives.  It’s about recovering a system we once had of equality of opportunity, a decent wage and fair play ^i.e. a rising economic tide that brings the standard-of-living of all citizens “commensurably” forward … precisely the opposite of what one sees happening in TABLES 1 and 2. During the 2009-12 recession recovery, the wealthiest 1% captured 95% of income growth, while the bottom 90% became poorer.

 

SOURCES: The World Top Incomes Data Base; The Washington Post; Sloan School of Management; U.S. Treasury Department; U.S. Census Bureau; Piketty and Saez, etc.

If the above doesn’t confirm a process that is phasing out the middle class, what does? Most Americans have seen their incomes sink or stagnate while incomes of the top 1%, 5% and 10% have come about at the expense of those below. The median income (adjusted for inflation) even for households of individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher fell by a tenth from 2000 to 2010. (see:  http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/ ) .                    

U.S. family members are working up to 60 hours a week and using credit card debt to maintain their standard of living. The average real minimum wage of $10.69 has steadily declined from 54% of average real hourly earnings of $19.85 in 1968 to 36% of real average hourly earnings of $20.31 today based on a real minimum wage of $7.25 in 2013. (Source: Congressional Research Service, “Inflation and the Real Minimum Wage,” Jan. 8, 2014). Shockingly, the U.S. average CEO salary has exploded exponentially from 44 times the average worker salary in 1974 to over 300 times, in 2013. In sharp contrast, the EU average CEO salary has been relatively stable at 44 times the average worker salary in 1974 to 50 times today.                     

The wealthy lost some of their wealth in the Great Recession as stock prices declined, but the 1% wealthiest now hold 240 times the wealth of the typical American – twice the ratio in 1962 and 1983 when the numbers were already sky-high at, 125 to 1 and 131 to 1, respectively. A hollowing-out of 80% of working  Americans is in process where mobility upward has been at a standstill, with nearly rock bottom wages, few benefits, and labor rights.

Piketty’s main thesis is about pure capitalism’s inevitable, automatic creation of an ever expanding income and wealth concentration for the few and relative stagnation of incomes and wealth for the rest. His thesis revolves around what is termed “The first fundamental law of capitalism,”  which incorporates Piketty’s following economic values for determining inequality:

(a)      = the share of capital incomes in national income

(r)      = the rate of return, in real terms, on capital         

(g)      = the rate of growth of the economy                                                                

(B)      = the ratio between capital income and national income

Piketty’s historical studies show that the (B) ratio was a very high 7 in the UK and France, 6 in Japan, and 5 for the U.S. prior to WW I. During the next 50 years through 1975, the (B) ratio dropped precipitously to about 3.5 in the UK and Europe and to below 4 in the U.S., the latter helped by much higher marginal tax rates, a labor-friendly atmosphere, higher inheritance taxes, etc., causing a far more equitable personal income and wealth distribution. In the last 35 years, the (B) ratio has soared back to levels corresponding to those before WWI.                         

The first fundamental law of capitalism says that the share of capital incomes in national income, (a), is equal to the rate of return on capital, (r), times the ratio between capital income and national income (B). Concerning this law, Piketty’s brilliant finding is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is permanently above the rate of growth of the economy, (g), then the share of capital in national incomes, (a), increases. This, in combination with an increasing ratio between capital income and national income, (B), will drive the share of capital in national income to new high peaks thereby also intensifying income and wealth inequality to a more dangerous level.

Just as climate change from accelerating CO₂ emissions is intensified by positive feedbacks, so is wealth concentration intensified by a positive feedback. Piketty clarifies this feedback in simple language. As capital’s share in national income increases, capital owners become wealthier. Assuming they do not consume the entire return on their capital, they will have savings to reinvest to further increase their wealth share. This is in sharp contrast to the bottom 90% of the working population which has most of its capital tied up in homes and some in stocks, bonds or small proprietorship businesses. Their small annual capital gains are mainly used to maintain personal living standards.

In a recent interview, Piketty illustrated what one person called his “First law of inequality,” and its inevitability under capitalism with the following example:

“Imagine a hypothetical village from centuries ago where neither the population nor the economy was growing. …. Even in a zero-growth society, however, assets that helped people to produce goods – also known as “capital” – had value. In our hypothetical village, a large farm might produce $10,000 worth of crops in a year, yielding $1,000 in profit for its owner. A small farm might have the same 10% rate of return on $1,000 in annual crop sales, yielding $100 in profit. If the large farmer and small farmer each spent all their money every year, the situation could continue ad infinitum, and the rate of inequality in the village would NOT change.

But one of capital’s greatest advantages is that its owners can make enough income to spend some of their money, save and eventually reinvest the rest. If the large farmer saved $500 of that $1,000 profit, he could buy more capital assets, which would bring in more profit. Perhaps a few owners of small farms had small debts to pay, and one of the large farmers bought them out. Eventually, the owner of the expanding farm might find himself owning land that yielded $1,500 or $2,000 in annual profit, allowing him to put aside more and more for future capital acquisitions. Less stylized versions of this story have been playing out for centuries.”

As the interviewer noted, “The fact that the rich earn enough money to save money allows them to make investments (many times at low capital gains tax rates) that other people cannot afford. And the investments often bring in a positive return on capital generally higher than the rate of economic growth.” This capitalistic process efficiently creates income and wealth inequality. Piketty describes this relationship, when the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of the economy, as (r) exceeds (g).    

Will (r) Always Exceed (g)?

Piketty cynically thinks the marginal return to capital will not decline. In his opinion, global competition for capital and the financial sophistication to find new, productive uses for capital will all help to keep the return on capital (r) at a higher level than (g). Unless this is checked by appropriate taxation and by aggressive establishment of worker-owned enterprises, including public banks and credit unions for start-up and expanding small businesses, then a continuing high (r) spells Big problems ahead for the economy, for quality-of-life and societal stability.

Right now, despite slower job growth, Europe’s advanced economies are far better balanced in the functional, fair distribution of income and wealth as well as recycling of national income for social well-being. Here, tax rates progress substantially for personal taxable incomes in the highest tax bracket. The Netherlands is a typical example of this. The maximum Dutch tax rate for incomes above $80,000 (Euro 55,991) is 52% compared to a U.S. maximum tax rate of 39.6% on income above $425,000 for a head of household. The Dutch tax rate on savings and investments is 30% compared to a far lower U.S. capital gains tax rates. Further, U.S. Top 1%, 5% and 10% income earners can divert much income into relatively low capital gains with tax rates varying from 0% for those in the 10% to 15% brackets up to 20% for those in the highest 39.6% tax bracket. This has helped accelerate U.S. wealth concentration to the highest levels in the world for top 10% income earners – with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia or Dubai.     

A U.S. societal transformation to shared ownership and public banking will help diversify rather than concentrate wealth. Such an approach roots the incomes and wealth it generates back to communities and regions – as opposed to transferring profits, assets and resources away from Main Street communities to Wall Street’s multinational corporations and their global shareholders. 

As the IMF has stated recently, “Policies that reduce inequality have a more benign effect on growth than once thought.” In fact, they will spur growth by putting more money in middle class pockets to save and consume without relying so heavily on debt to maintain a decent living standard.                       

Bruce Frohnen sums up well the macro-micro inequality issue in his essay, “Economic Inequality and the Hypocrisy of Power, May 2014” – where implicitly he argues against both dogmatic societal individualism and dogmatic government interference.    

“The issue is not how we shall make everyone equal. We can’t do that, though we can hand tyrannical power over to those who promise to do it for us. The question is how we can establish and maintain a decent social structure that ties, however loosely, the garnering of great wealth to the promotion of the general welfare while limiting evil conduct in the pursuit and use of wealth …. As Aristotle recognized, more than 2,000 years ago, a successful polity must have a strong middle class. People who have a substantial stake in the economy while still having to work within it are necessary for that economy’s stability. Such folk also are necessary for political and social stability because they thrive, not on “creative destruction” (which is, after all destructive) but rather on hard work (editor:  fairly compensated  for value contributed) aimed at steady, intergenerational improvements.”

Frank Thomas
The Netherlands
May 20, 2014

Cheap Corn Permeates Every Facet of the American Diet

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Corn is the staple of the US agricultural system and food supply. It's in everything we eat unbeknownst to many Americans. Corn feeds steers that become steak and fast food hamburgers. Corn feeds chickens and pigs - even catfish, salmon and tilapia. Milk, cheese and yogurt that once came from cows that grazed on grass now come from Holsteins that spend their time tethered to milking machines while munching on corn. Processed foods contain even more corn than so-called "natural" foods. Take chicken nuggets, for example. Not only the chicken itself but the corn starch that holds it together, the corn flour in the batter, the corn oil in which its fried, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di- and triglycerides, the golden coloring, the citric acid that keeps it fresh - all these ingredients come from corn.

Any soft drink in the supermarket including Coke and Pepsi contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) so you can wash down your corn with some more corn. A quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain corn. Corn's derivatives are used in all processed foods, derivatives such as corn oil, corn starch, maltodextrin, xanthan gum, ascorbic acid, ethel acetate, acetic acid and vanilla extract. When broken down, derivatives of corn get used as a food filler, texturizer, emulsifier, sweetener, preservative, adhesive and many other applications.  Government agricultural policies makes corn so cheap that food manufacturers earmark large budgets for research and development to invent infinite ways to push corn into more products. And corn is not only used as a food. It is used in gasoline production (ethanol), construction materials, adhesives, paper products, disposable diapers, trash bags, batteries and charcoal briquettes as well.

Why is corn so ubiquitous in the American diet? The main reason is that it's super cheap and this is mainly a result of government policy. For hundreds of miles in the midwest corn is the only crop grown. Farm after farm are devoted to this monoculture. America produces 300 million tons of number 2 corn each year. This isn't the kind of corn you eat when you eat corn on the cob. This is the kind that is primarily fed to beef cows, chickens and pigs.

It wasn't always so. Farms used to plant several crops and were home to multiple animals. No longer. Why this change from polyculture to monoculture? Credit Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill, the two mega corporations of US agribusiness. US government agricultural policies, lobbied for by these giant agricultural corporations, have resulted in corn being the cheapest agricultural commodity out there. Government subsidies, provided thanks to the taxpayers, push the price of corn way below the level that would have been set by the law of supply and demand.

Way back in the 1930s farmers were paid not to grow corn when supply exceeded demand thereby keeping supply and demand in balance and the price paid for a bushel of corn up. The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a United States federal law of the New Deal era which reduced agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus and, therefore, effectively raise the value of crops. But during the Nixon administration farm policies were rejiggered to increase production and drive down prices.

The 1973 farm bill began replacing the New Deal policy of supporting prices through loans, government purchases and land idling with a system of direct payments to farmers. Farmers were encouraged to sell as much production as they could at any price, no matter how low, because the government (taxpayers) would make up the difference. Corn production skyrocketed much to the approval of large agribusiness corporations like ADM, Cargill and Monsanto which engineered GMO seeds that could be sprayed with their Roundup herbicide. But lower profit margins forced the smaller farmers into bankruptcy. Farmers were forced to maximize the number of bushels their farms could produce per acre. The only way to do this was to use GMO corn (bought from Monsanto), huge tractors and combines and huge quantities of pesticides (also bought from Monsanto).

It became economically expedient to concentrate animals in large feeding pens where they were fed a diet of corn. Corn is fed to beef cows although they evolved to eat grass. Feeding them corn actually makes them sick, and, in order to prevent this, they are fed a dose of hormones and antibiotics with their daily allotment of corn. Corn subsidies have been largely responsible for this change.

Author Michael Pollan's recent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, suggests that corn subsidies in particular have led to the success of the feedlots or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that he and journalist Eric Schlosser have blamed for the emergence of e. coli as a major health concern. Subsidized corn is so inexpensive that beef companies find it profitable to build large facilities to feed corn to their cattle. Cows do not normally live in enclosed areas or consume corn, so these CAFOs generate large amounts of waste and require antibiotics and other drugs to keep the animals healthy.

From agribusiness' point of view, a cow is simply a vehicle for converting plant material to protein and the point is to get the cow to maximum weight in the shortest period of time. In other words the game is to minimize the time to slaughter for these animals. The same applies to chickens, turkeys and hogs. This maximizes profits. Corn does a better job of speeding up this process than does grass. Corn can be commodified and stored; grass can't. Cheap corn made beef and in particular fast food hamburgers cheap. Those cheap hamburgers are actually subsidized by American taxpayers with the subsidies paid to farmers.

As a reaction to the inhumane treatment of animals in CAFOs and the unhealthiness of chicken and beef provided by animals brought to maturity in these confining conditions where they literally tromp around in their own excrement day after day, the organic movement has taken hold. Cow excrement which used to be spread on fields by manure spreaders on small family farms and which provided healthy nutrients back to the soil is now so toxic due to the corn fed diet that it can't be used as fertilizer and is placed in lagoons where it languishes much like spent nuclear fuel. In both cases there is nothing that can be done with the toxic sludge except to store it in perpetuity. Only there have been burst dams and the resultant toxic sludge has oozed into streams and rivers.

Organic food has also caught the attention of big food producers whose lobbying has shaped the US organic food laws to their benefit. What is considered organic has been defined as loosely as possible. The result is that instead of what the consumer visualizes as a bucolic family farm with happy chickens scratching for worms has instead become big business with CAFOs similar to nonorganic food production. The only difference is that the chickens must be fed organic chicken feed ^i.e. there can be no chemical additives, hormones or antibiotics in the feed. In order to qualify as free range, the chickens must have the possibility of going outside on some grass. So the large feeding pens have a little door which the chickens can go out and romp around on a fifteen foot strip of grass but only for a short time before they are slaughtered. Most chickens acclimated to the large enclosed pens don't even bother, but they can be marketed as "free range chickens."

Big Organic food production is hardly the small family farm that most people envision. It turns out that there's organic and then there's ... organic. Large scale operations have invaded the organic industry. They operate much like non-organic food industries. In many cases they are one and the same. Take Horizon milk, for instance. I have been drinking Horizon organic milk for a couple of years. I was sort of amazed to see it pop up at Food 4 Less and even, recently, at Wal-Mart. I should have suspected that this was a really huge operation, but until I started researching this article, I didn't realize how huge. It turns out that Horizon is just another brand of Dean Foods:

Dean Foods is by far the largest U.S. dairy processor. According to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Dean processes 40 percent of fluid milk consumed in the U.S., which it distributes in a dizzying array of brands. Its dominance extends to organic milk, too — Dean’s Horizon brand is the largest supplier of organic milk.

Like a lot of Big Organic food suppliers, Horizon is pushing the limits of the meaning of "organic." The Cornucopia Institute has a dispute going with Horizon over the illegal practice of bringing conventional heifers onto organic farms. These heifers are then converted to organic although they haven't been raised to organic standards up till then.

According to Cornucopia News:

Conventional replacement dairy calves, typically bought at auctions, likely receive antibiotics, toxic insecticides and parasiticides as well as conventional feed during their first year of life before being “converted” to organics—all practices strictly prohibited in organic production.

“Real organic farmers don’t buy replacement heifers,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute.  “Real organic farmers sell [surplus] heifers.”

Demonstrably lower levels of stress, superior health and improved vitality of the cows separates authentic organic dairy farms from factory farms masquerading as organic, according to the farm policy research group.

“In the factory farm model, the animals are pushed for such high production that, just like in the conventional confinement model, after as few as 1 to 2 years, they are so sick, or they are not healthy enough to breed, that they are slaughtered,” Kastel clarified.  “Organic cows are generally so healthy, and live such long lives, that many of the baby calves born can be sold to other farmers, creating an alternative revenue stream for organic farmers.”

The fact that large scale organic farms use the same CAFOs as do the large scale conventional farms explains a lot why there is as much e. coli found in organic food as there is in non-organic food. In both cases animals are concentrated together and live out their days in their own excrement. Only difference is that "organic" cows and chickens are fed organic feed (supposedly) and no antibiotics or hormones. Because of living conditions, organic CAFOs will result in more sick animals even than conventional CAFOs which at least have the advantage of antibiotics.

Another issue with organic produce is that it is allowed into the country from foreign countries as long as it was produced according to organic standards. Of course there is little or no enforcement mechanism to ensure that organic vegetables and fruits from abroad adhere to the highest standards.

Many might think that the issue of food production has nothing to do with climate change, but they would be wrong. Grassing over the huge number of acres now devoted to corn in order to feed ruminants (cows) would in fact do a lot to offset fossil fuel emissions. If the 16 million acres now used to grow corn in the US were converted to pasture, 14 billion pounds of carbon would be removed from the atmosphere by the grasses and put into the soil as enrichment, the equivalent of taking 4 million cars off the road. Cows, and, therefore, humans, would be so much healthier. As much as one third of the greenhouse gasses that human activity has added to the atmosphere can be attributed to food production and transport. Locally grown would reduce the GHGs produced from transporting food all over the world.

In another article I will spell out the differences in more detail between the Big Organic food producers and the local small family operations of real organic farms which are not only organic according to the letter of the law but in the spirit of true organic farming as well.

Big Data Renders College Diplomas Worthless; Billionaires Nonplussed

by John Lawrence from San Diego Free Press

It used to be accepted without question that a college degree was necessary to get a good job, and over the course of a lifetime, you would make more money with a college degree than without one. But not so fast. Despite the propaganda put out by colleges who hope to profit off your matriculation, it turns out that the latest thing in hiring practices is to disregard the college degree altogether.

Companies like Xerox are hiring not based on your resume, which includes your degrees and work experience, but on a test they've devised which they claim is a better predictor of job performance. Xerox runs 175 call centers around the world. In all, the centers employ more than 50,000 customer service agents who deal with questions about everything from cellphone bills to health insurance.

Xerox was having a problem hiring the right people for the jobs and reducing turnover. So they hired a company to help them do a better job of finding the right people. This company studied the characteristics of those people already at Xerox who were successful at their jobs and came up with a test whose aim was to find new applicants with exactly those same characteristics.

The company, whose name is Evolv, tested prospective employees based on the data collected from employees already on the job and doing well. With these new techniques, Xerox says it has been able to improve its hiring and significantly reduce turnover at its call centers.

Other companies that parse employee data say that the conventional wisdom about the desirability of college graduates as employees is flat out wrong. Michael Rosenbaum of Pegged Software said the following: "We find zero statistically significant correlation between a college degree or a master's degree and success as a software developer." Really?! This is not what the for profit colleges or even the traditional colleges want you to hear. They profit from loading you up with a huge load of student loan debt. Why would you acquire a prodigious amount of student loan debt only to find out that your degree was practically worthless in the job market?

On the Evolv website they say they are the recognized leader in Big Data workforce optimization. The idea is that they collect a lot of data on what makes for a successful employee, and then assist companies in finding those individuals whose characteristics correlate with that data. This does not mean that they look for people with college degrees. The whole degree process is effectively bypassed and invalidated by means of Big Data.

Here's the skinny on Evolv, chosen by Fast Company as one of the top ten most innovative comapnies in Big Data:

[They mine] employee performance to help stanch turnover and upend HR. Big data is also changing the way companies hire and manage their workforces. Like other HR software, Evolv helps employers better understand employees and job candidates by comparing their skills, work experience, and personalities. But Evolv takes it to a deeper level, crunching more than 500 million data points on gas prices, unemployment rates, and social media usage to help clients like Xerox—who has cut attrition by 20 percent—predict, for example, when an employee is most likely to leave his job. Other insights Evolv’s data scientists have uncovered: People with two social media accounts perform much higher than those with more or less, and in many careers, such as call-center work, employees with criminal backgrounds perform better than those with squeaky-clean records. Evolv’s sales grew a whopping 150% from Q3 2012 to Q3 2013.

Hey, this is great news for criminals who finally will be able to compete for jobs on a level playing field with college graduates! So let's get real. A college diploma is nothing more than a piece of paper. It shows that you were able and willing to be bored to death and sit through 16 years of classes while being a pretty good test taker. It's the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. It commends you as a docile and compliant employee, one who will not make waves, one who will submit to a boring job in order to pay off all those student loans.

Here's an example of the counter-intuitive wisdom that Evolv purports to have discovered: Workers who use Chrome or Firefox—instead of Internet Explorer—stay at their jobs longer, miss 15 percent fewer work days, and deliver higher customer satisfaction. Who would have known? So all you job applicants out there - make sure you are using the correct browser if you want to get hired! Some of this stuff is downright silly. Here's another bon mot: Job performance is higher among employees who use three to four social networks compared to those who are less involved with social networks (sort of contradicts the blurb above on Fast Company).

We are entering an era of hypermeritocracy where everyone applying for a job will be given a rating by Big Data. Finally, Huxley's Brave New World is being realized. You might be rated as an alpha or a beta - if you're talented - or a gamma, delta or epsilon if you're not. Your job rating complemented by your credit score will be determining factors in predicting your success or lack thereof throughout life. As long as you tow the line, you'll be OK. Having fun, yet?

So who needs college? Apparently most billionaires don't. Many of those at the top of Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans are college dropouts including #1 (Bill Gates) and #3 (Larry Ellison). Charles and David Koch, tied for #4, are graduates of MIT. Most of the the Walton family (#s 6, 7, 8 and 9) have college degrees which had nothing to do with their inherited billions. Sheldon Adelson (#11) is a college dropout, but he's calling the shots in the political arena. Robert Reich has this to say about dropout Sheldon:

At this very moment, Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (worth an estimated $37.9 billion) is busy interviewing potential Republican candidates whom he might fund, in what’s being called the “Sheldon Primary.”

“Certainly the ‘Sheldon Primary’ is an important primary for any Republican running for president,” says Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush. “It goes without saying that anybody running for the Republican nomination would want to have Sheldon at his side.”

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, (#12), graduated from Princeton. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, (#s 13 and 14), founders of Google, are college graduates although they dropped out of Stanford before getting their PhDs. Mark Zuckerberg, (#20), founder of Facebook, is a college dropout. Michael Dell of Dell Computer (#25) is a college dropout. Paul Allen, (#26), cofounder of Microsoft, is a college dropout and current owner of the Seattle Seahawks. Lorene Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs founder of Apple Computer who was a college dropout, is #35. Local billionaire Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm, has a PhD from MIT and is tied for #342 with seven other guys. He has something in common with the Koch brothers although not their political philosophy.

Most of these guys came from humble backgrounds and achieved success by dint of being extraordinarily talented and obsessively hard working. They are the meritocrats of the new meritocracy. Put another way they are the upper 1% intellectualy who became the upper 1% financially. They are not only meritocrats; they are plutocrats as detailed in Chrystia Freeland's book, Plutocrats. This is what is driving income inequality in the US and the world: the phenomenal success of extremely gifted people helped along with a multiplier effect that capitalism and in particular the stock market via Initial Public Offerings provides.

As Chrystia Freeman states in her book:

Forbes classifies 840 of the 1226 people on its 2012 billionaire ranking as self-made. It's true that few of today's plutocrats were born into the sort of abject poverty that can close off opportunity altogether...but the bulk of their wealth is generally the fruit of hustle, intelligence, and a lot of luck. They are not aristocrats, by and large, but rather economic meritocrats, preoccupied with not only consuming wealth but also with creating it.

The concentration of income and wealth at the top comes about as a result of meritocracy more than anything else. Income and wealth inequality represent the dark side of meritocracy. There is a disconnect between the values that got the plutocrats to where they are (intelligence and hard work) and the results which have been produced (erosion of the middle class due to income and wealth inequality).

Incidentally, Bill Gates does not even have a job, having retired from Microsoft, but still made a substantial sum last year. As of March 2014, Gates is worth $76 billion, according to Forbes' annual list of billionaires. That's $9 billion more than a year ago and $4 billion more than six months ago. Even though he's given $38 billion to his charitable foundation, he still keeps getting richer year after year. There are no such similar gains, however, for 99% of US citizens whose wages have been stagnant for years.

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to Employees: Tell Your Congressman to Give Qualcomm a Tax Break!

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

In his final message after more than eight years as chief executive officer of Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), Paul Jacobs on March 4 gave employees and shareholders what he called a “homework assignment.” “Send your Congress people your opinion that you’d like American companies to be able to bring offshore money back to the United States to either reinvest or return to shareholders", said Jacobs, now executive chairman of the San Diego based chipmaker, which has $21.6 billion in overseas profits.

Paul could have said, "Go home and hug your wife and children or it's been a pleasure being your CEO for 8 years and thank you for your work." Or tell your Congressman to raise the minimum wage or tell your Congressman to end homelessness now, but, no, his solipsistic exhortation was all about making Qualcomm executives and shareholders (not employees mind you!) even richer than they already are. Funny, you'd think he'd have made that request of the shareholders who have something to gain rather than the employees who do not. 

What these tech companes actually do with their extra tax free money is not to create jobs, but to buy back their own stock thus driving up the price making it that much more lucrative when execs cash in their stock. Paul Jacobs, by the way, just cashed in 70,000 shares of Qualcomm stock on Monday, March 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $76.79, for a total value of $5,375,300.00. Just think how much more Paul Jacobs would have made if the government had actually allowed Qualcomm to repatriate their foreign profits tax free and then used the money to buy back stock and drive up the price. Such a shame.

Paul Jacobs has been fixated on this problem of getting Qualcomm's money back into the US tax free for a number of years. According to a 2011 San Diego Union article: "There's $1.4 trillion that U.S. companies have so-called offshore," [Qualcomm CEO Paul] Jacobs said at the Qualcomm annual meeting. "So you think about that with respect to the size of the stimulus package. These are real numbers, and so getting that money back into the United States would be very valuable for the U.S. economy, of course. So we've been out talking about repatriation."

The tax holiday of 2004 was called the American Jobs Creation Act. It created very few jobs and in retrospect turned out to be a total scam. Various companies did bring $362 billion back into the US under the pretense that this money would be used to create jobs. But the majority of it did not go to building factories nor did it go to research. Instead corporations bought back their own stock giving a boon to shareholders and execs and created jobs overseas. It was actually responsible for destroying jobs. In a huge disconnect from Paul Jacobs' purported good intentions about job creation in the US, Qualcomm announced in 2011 that it planned to invest $1 billion to build a massive manufacturing facility in Taiwan.

David Cay Johnston wrote in "The Fine Print":

Buried in the fine print of the Jobs Creation Act is a hard truth: companies were not obliged to spend one dollar on new hiring or expanding research. If that sounds to you like an action with all the significance of moving a dollar from your left pocket to your right, your assumption is correct. The way lobbyists wrote the bill, companies could use their tax savings for virtually anything company executives said contributed to a firm's ability to retain workers and create jobs. In other words, creating jobs was not a requirement of the American Jobs Creation Act, while destroying jobs was an authorized purpose." As Johnston states: "Perhaps the law should have been called the 2004 Destroy American Jobs Act.

In 2013 US corporations' cash abroad rose by $206 billion. They parked cash in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands and whatever other jurisdictions had little or no taxes. According to Bloomberg, multinational companies ahave accumulated $2 Trillion outside the US. That's up 11.8% from one year ago. The top 15 companies now hold over $795 billion outside US. But in terms of cash held abroad, Qualcomm is a relative piker compared with Microsoft ($76.4 billion) and Apple ($54.4 billion). Qualcomm's $21.6 billion held abroad is chump change compared to the big guys. These companies are deferring hundreds of billions in US taxes which could be used to rebuild infrastructure (thus creating jobs) or to invest in renewable energy sources (thus creating jobs). They are lobbying to end the system of paying tax when they repatriate profits altogether.

US companies owe taxes up to a 35 percent rate on profits they earn around the world. Whatever taxes they do pay in a foreign country are deducted from what they owe Uncle Sam. For instance, say they paid 5% taxes on their earnings in the Cayman Islands. Then they would owe Uncle Sam 30% if and when they repatriated that money to the US. But they don't want to pay that. Instead they lobby the Federal government to let them repatriate the money tax free.

Here's what I wrote in 2013:

Here’s how the scam works. Corporations like Qualcomm set up subsidiaries in offshore jurisdictions with zero tax rates like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Then they transfer assets to those corporations. In Qualcomm’s case those assets are mainly “intellectual property” like patents. These are the kinds of assets that are very easy to transfer. They typically sell these assets to their subsidiary for a very low price. They can legitimately do this if profits have not started to really kick in like in the case of a new patent that hasn’t become a goldmine yet.

As profits from that patent start to come in, the parent US based corporation has to pay huge royalties to the offshore subsidiary for the use of its patents. Profits pile up offshore where they aren’t taxed while losses pile up onshore where they qualify for a tax deduction.

Qualcomm in its lobbying efforts has put its money where Paul Jacobs mouth is. According to OpenSecrets.org, Qualcomm spent $4,740,000 in 2012 and $6,620,000 in 2011 on lobbying. Qualcomm’s lobbying efforts have increased from a relatively modest $415,000 in 2000 to the neighborhood of $6 million a year (with the exception of 2012) starting in 2007.

In recent years Qualcomm has increased the number of properties owned or leased outside the United States from 70 to 99, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, Qualcomm pared down its U.S. property holdings from 76 to 73. Qualcomm is one of the nation's premier outsourcers and  pioneered the practice of shipping work overseas.

Congress is balking at letting the Qualcomms, Apples and Microsofts of the world pull a second scam akin to the one they pulled in 2005. They know that the Jobs Creation Act did not create American jobs. Sure it enriched corporate CEOs and shareholders, but the only jobs created were in foreign countries. You know the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." Thank you, George W Bush for those words of wisdom.

Putting Our Financial Well Being Above Our Children's Ability to Survive a Warming Planet

by John Lawrence and Frank Thomas from the San Diego Free Press

Each year there are more extreme weather events not only in the US but all over the world. Most scientists agree that, as more carbon dioxide is pumped into the air and the gaseous composition of the atmosphere is changed, extreme weather events are more likely to happen. As the earth warms due to greenhouse gasses (GHGs), polar and glacier ice melts and more moisture is held in the atmosphere which is deposited in torrents of precipitation. The Arctic permafrost and subsea waters contain over 1.7 trillion tons of methane which will be released as the earth warms further. This could lead to deadly injections of highly toxic methane reserves into the atmosphere in the relatively near future. Just a 3% release over a short time, or 50 billion tons of methane, is the equivalent of 1 trillion tons of CO₂ emissions … sufficient to ecologically destroy Mother Earth.

Instead of doing everything possible to reduce the injection of GHGs into the atmosphere, well established corporations and vested interests are doing everything possible to proceed with business as usual. CEOs are driving their enterprises to maximize short term profits lest they get a bad rating from Wall Street analysts causing a reduction in their stock prices. Advertising encourages consumers to consume more lest GDP drops. All of this fervent economic activity produces and releases more GHGs into the atmosphere. More cars powered by more internal combustion engines burning more gasoline resulting in more tailpipe emissions results in increased GDP and increased percentages of CO₂, currently at 400 parts per million and rising. As Al Gore has pointed out, every day we relentlessly spew 90 million tons of man-made CO₂ pollution into the atmosphere.

There is a collision course between rising GDP which is correlated with increasing energy use and the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere which at a certain point can lead to runaway release of both CO₂ and methane making the earth unsuitable for human habitation. As Kevin Moore says, "I’m afraid those who have managed to work their way into political positions are forbidden from making any decisions jeopardizing business-as-usual; but as the memes go, there is no business on a dead planet nor is there a planet B. The least these politicians and corporate heads could do is be honest with their own children by telling them their future is not as important as the short-term profits to be had right now by ripping up the Earth’s last remaining resources and fouling the biosphere. If they cannot be truthful to their own offspring, how could we expect them to be forthright and unbiased with us?"

The experts point out that reducing our consumption and energy output would doom the US to a recession or even worse. How can the Big Oil companies take a supreme hit without the stock market going kerflooie? Well, how did Germany manage to do it, solarize that is, and their economy is still OK, pretty good in fact. So there is a way. There just isn't a way given the terms and constraints of American capitalism. As Richard Smith points out: "Under capitalism, growth and jobs are more often than not at odds with environmental protection."

The neat thing about photovoltaic (PV) solar is that energy from the sun can be produced by millions of solar panels on millions of individual rooftops. It turns farms, homes and businesses into energy producing entrepreneurs. For instance, Germany is awash in solar PV. In 2007 alone enough solar panels were installed throughout the country to power more than 1.2 million homes. The reason is that the German government has given people an incentive to install them. It’s called a feed-in tariff which allows individuals and businesses to sell energy so produced back onto the grid in such a way that it is profitable for them to do so. Here in the US lobbyists for the utility companies are fighting a similar plan because, when individuals and businesses not only produce their own energy but also sell the excess back onto the grid, the utility company loses the exclusive right to sell energy and their profits are diminished. The Koch brothers are now lobbying for legislation that would introduce not an incentive to solarize but a tax (a disincentive) on those who do so because they fear a reduction in their sale of fossil fuels. The fossil fuel purveyors are doing what they can to discourage the implementation of renewable fuels.

The GDP of the American economy is 70% consumption. If we stop or slow down over-consumption, we are out of work – so goes the propagated conventional wisdom. Of course, this flies in the face of independent studies which clearly show that cumulative job growth in the green industry in recent years now actually exceeds that in the petroleum industry – when the correct, not manipulated, comparative direct job growth data is used. And the ‘green’ industry is only in its ‘cradle’ stage of business growth. Scaling back unneeded consumption is an important step in reducing the need for energy to produce a bunch of superfluous items. Let's produce and consume only what we need. This would ameliorate and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Back in the 1970s Denmark decided to become energy independent by developing their wind resources big time. Today a substantial share of the wind turbines in use throughout the world were manufactured in Denmark. Wind supplies about 30% of Denmark’s energy needs, and they intend to increase that to 50% by 2020.  As far as storage goes, Denmark has encouraged the use of electric vehicles which are charged primarily by wind power. That power stored in car batteries can be fed back onto the grid at times when wind is not sufficient to generate all the power that is needed.  The Danes have thus come up with a clever way to store energy that is wind generated.

In a democracy one would think that the majority of the people would band together and vote to place their children's long term survival interests above their corporations' short term financial interests. The fact that that is not happening in the US is a testament to the fact that the US is no longer a democracy. It is a corporatocracy where government policy and legislation is promulgated by an army of lobbyists representing the short term interests of corporations. Lobbyists run Washington DC. They outnumber Congressman 25 to 1. For every member of Congress, as of 2012, there was about $12.5 million spent on lobbying.  By comparison, the average 2012 budget for a member of the House of Representatives was only $1.3 million. So, in 2012 in a down economy, proclaimed lobbyists and shadow lobbyists accounted for more than nine times the typical House member’s official operating expenses. No wonder that becoming a Congressman is only a way station to becoming a lobbyist later on when it becomes time for the Congressman to "spend more time with his family." That's where they make the real money.

In addition ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, invites lobbyists and Congressmen to meetings in which legislation reflecting corporate interests has already been prepared. It is taken back to Washington and introduced verbatim and then passed into law. The"legislators" need not even "legislate" any more. That is done for them by the corporations whose only interest is short term profits. And the Congressmen can look forward to cashing in when they leave Congress and in turn become lobbyists.

Europeans, on the other hand, are for the most part in unity about the challenge of global warming and know the stakes are very high. They recognize and accept the science that recent climate changes and the buildup of energy heat content in the atmosphere cannot be explained by natural causes alone. That is why Europe has been for some time adjusting to the reality of climate change much more seriously and successfully than most US states with the exception of states like California, Colorado and Vermont.

What we can do:

The following are some critically important innovative actions – some in progress and some rather fresh – to stabilize CO₂ emissions at no more than 450 ppm by 2050 (with 2020 and 2030 as key tipping points) and to avoid an increasingly dangerous release of Arctic methane (CH₄) as warming continues with rising GHG emissions and the related treacherous positive feedbacks which eventually could trigger runaway global warming.

We need to (1) finalize as quickly as possible state-of-the-art capture and sequestration of CO₂ and perfect the knowhow to capture CH₄ leakages during hydrolic fracturing, using the same for burning in power stations; (2) develop a ZERO carbon release policy for coal-fired power generation and strictly enforce it with severe penalties for violations; (3) sharply reduce extensive CO₂ and other toxic emissions coming from the chemical industry; (4) make sure that extracted natural gas displaces, rather than adds to, consumption of dirtier fuels.

We need to gradually begin eliminating gas guzzling, CO₂ polluting SUVs; strengthen very weak CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards which are a joke compared to EU standards and a scam whereby lower standards are allowed for bigger vehicles; switch quickly and extensively to smaller, economy vehicles as Europe has done over the years.

We should set as a top priority for vehicles the development of effective, safe alternate green fuels with an outstanding EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) performance. Green fuel options include the electric battery (which may be poorly EROEI efficient based on recent studies), and hydrogen or ammonia fuel systems now at an advanced stage of prototype testing and improving.

We should get serious on finally determining the potential of Algae as a green fuel – another fuel option that captures twice as much CO₂ per one part of oxygen and can be used as a drop-in fuel to eventually substitute for any fossil fuel.

We need to transition far more aggressively to solar for heat and cooling of homes and commercial buildings; thermally insulate homes; develop smart rotor blade technology to optimize the power generation of single wind turbines; technically assess the benefits of natural photosynthesis versus artificial photosynthesis for producing clean energy.

We should plant millions of fast-growing trees in a program of massive reforestation and stop the slashing of forests (e.g., IKEA wiping out forests to make cheap furniture).

We need to transition as quickly as possible to organic grain agricultural systems (‘biochar’ farming) where CO₂ can be sequestered in the soil organic matter; finds ways that absorb GHGs while growing more food and improving the lives of poor farmers by, for example, raising the quality of degraded soils so that they can absorb more carbon and, if possible, by planting valuable trees among the crops.

We should examine the feasibility and pros-cons of harvesting phytoplankton in mass to re-oxgenate seas where needed and neutralize carbolic acid in seas.

We need to redesign and make products that are truly durable (e.g., away with the planned obsalescence culture), easily repairable, and as long-lasting as feasible even though this would reduce sales and hence GDP. Also we need to get rid of plastic bags.

We should look into a technically new greenhouse food production system now in prototype testing in Africa using piped in salt water that is simply converted to natural water for planting in a process that also captures and recycles CO2 providing a very rapid growth of food products with little need for fertilizers.

Despite admitting to the role of climate change, Exxon Mobil is bound and determined to keep pumping out the fossil fuels and polluting the environment. Exxon was reported as saying the following: “Exxon Mobil predicts that carbon tax or no carbon tax, by 2040 global demand for energy is going to grow by 35%, 65% in the developing world (includes China and India) and ALL of this is going to be supplied by fossil fuels.”

This is from Exxon Mobil's Carbon Disclosure Project:

ExxonMobil shares with policy makers, industry, and consumers the global challenge of addressing risks posed by increases in global greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions. While climate change remains extraordinarily complex, increasing scientific evidence makes it clear that rising GHG emissions pose risks to society and ecosystems. These risks justify the development and implementation of responsible actions by governments, companies, and individuals. ExxonMobil believes that the long-term objective of a climate change policy should be to reduce the risk of serious impacts on society and ecosystems, while considering the importance of energy to global economic development. Managing these risks will require effort and decisions over many decades.

The problem is we don't have "many decades" to deal with this problem. While Exxon Mobil is taking a leisurely approach, the Earth will be a basket case in just a couple of decades unless something radical is done starting right now.

ExxonMobil earned $45 billion profit in 2012, a 9 percent jump over 2011. While racking up remarkable profits Exxon also received $600 million annual tax breaks. In 2011, Exxon paid just 13 percent in taxes. The company paid no taxes to the U.S. federal government in 2009, despite $45.2 billion record profits. It paid $15 billion in taxes, but none in federal income tax.

The company spent $12.97 million lobbying in 2012 to protect low tax rates and block pollution controls and safeguards for public health. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson received $24.7 million total compensation. Exxon is moving ahead with a project to develop the tar sands in Canada.

Exxon like most US corporations invests its money primarily in lobbying efforts, the result of which is to diminish regulation and allow it to pollute as much as it wants. This increases profits. US corporations locate in whichever country has the lowest environmental standards, the lowest paid workforce and the lowest tax rates. The trouble is that pollution spewed into the atmosphere freely in a country with low environmental standards affects people in countries with high standards since the atmosphere is a universal system. It doesn't matter where the GHGs are spewed. There is only one atmosphere for all Earthlings.

How do We the People wrest control of government back from the corporations whose interests are at odds with the interests of future generations? Can the world, whose history has been divisiveness, war and greed predating capitalism, come together and agree on one thing - that global warming requires that we all act in concert on a worldwide basis and make the necessary changes to control it? Or will the future of humans on the earth be written with the epitaph: For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

SEMPRA Energy Wants Ratepayers to Pay for Their Negligence

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

It's standard operating procedure for San Diego based SEMPRA Energy, parent corporation of San Diego Gas and Electric, to delay costly maintenance and then, when there is a breakdown in the system such as the 2007 Witch Creek Fire which burned 198,000 acres, killed two people, injured 40 firefighters and destroyed more than 1,100 homes, to go to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and get a ruling that would allow them to charge the ratepayers for costs associated with that disaster. This is standard business procedure for SEMPRA which has the CPUC in the palm of its hands. They have played this game time and again.

The problem is aging infrastructure, infrastructure that SEMPRA has a responsibility to maintain and upgrade. But upgrading infrastructure and maintaining its power and gas lines is expensive and subtracts from its bottom line profit margins. So SEMPRA's strategy is very simple. Don't spend the money on maintenance and then, when a disaster happens, go to the CPUC whose members it has wined and dined, and ask for a rate increase so that the ratepayers, not SEMPRA, pays for the costs associated with the disaster such as paying off homeowners whose homes have been burned down in the fire. Hey, it's cheaper than doing routine maintenance.

SEMPRA's problems in the Witch Creek fire arose because its insurance policy was not sufficient to cover all the costs of the fire. Total costs of the fire are in the $2 billion range with insurance only covering $1.1 billion. A state inquiry found that SDG&E lines ignited the 2007 firestorms because the company did not properly design, build and maintain its equipment. So naturally instead of SEMPRA hitting up its stockholders for the difference, it expects its ratepayers, many of whom were actual victims of the fire, to pay the bill. It has filed with the CPUC for approval for a rate increase on the grounds that it is needed to pay for the fire that SDG&E itself caused due to lack of maintenance and negligence. An attorney for UCAN (Utility Consumers' Action Network) said it works out to about $356 more a year for an average utility customer. How could the California PUC make it possible for SEMPRA to charge its ratepayers for its own negligence which caused a large swath of death and destruction in San Diego County in 2007?

Simple. The CPUC is in the pocket of not only SEMPRA but the other big California utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric based in San Francisco. For example, commissioners have twice approved rate increases in the tens of millions of dollars for SDG&E customers to cover the company’s higher wildfire liability insurance costs. CPUC members and staffers have had paid vacations courtesy of SEMPRA, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. After Mike Peevey ended his term as President of the CPUC, he helped to create the California Public Utilities Commisssion Foundation which held a fund-raising dinner where tables sold for $20,000. each. Among the buyers were San Diego Gas & Electric, child of parent SEMPRA. Up until 2000, the CPUC was regarded as the best utility regulatory body in the nation, but under Peevey it became the utility corporations' best friend. Par for the course for the Bush years.

And politicians who support the utility corporations' agenda get their share of free travel as well. Each year more than a dozen California state lawmakers enjoy a free trip to Hawaii. In 2011 they checked into the luxurious Fairmont Kea Lani hotal in Maui. California law prohibits state lawmakers from taking more than $400 a year in gifts. But as ever there's a loophole. The $13,000. trip to Maui per lawmaker was paid for by this loophole which in this case is a nonprofit corporation, the Independent Voter Project (huh?), which was a front group for the utility companies. San Diego politicians are among other recipients of SEMPRA's largesse. Bob Filner is the only mayoral candidate who has not received money from SDG&E, its parent company SEMPRA, or their employees. Nathan Fletcher, Bonnie Dumanis and Carl DeMaio have all taken SDG&E or SEMPRA money, but claim that it hasn't affected their judgment or proclivities. Yeah, sure.

But free trips for regulators and cozying up to lawmakers is not the only way utility corporations screw the public. There's another way. While your payroll and income taxes are taken out of your paycheck before you get paid, Congress lets corporations earn money today and defer taxes till years later. For example, Pacific Gas & Electric, a company responsible for the 2010 San Bruno gas line explosion which killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes, had about $450 million of deferred taxes in its ADIT (Accumulated Deferred Income Tax account) in 2011 when it filed with the CPUC for a rate hike. The filing explained how long it holds on to this money before actually paying the government. In some cases it was 37 years. Meanwhile, inflation has reduced the value of the money it owes and investment has increased it. From 1954 to 2006, corporate-owned electric utilities got tax benefits worth $450 billion. So while you pay your taxes upfront, utilities can delay paying them for up to 37 years.

It's important to realize that not only does SEMPRA want San Diego ratepayers to pay for the 2007 Witch Creek fires; they also want the CPUC to rule that ratepayers should pay for all future fires. “The people of San Diego County will rise up if they find out they’re going to be charged for past fires, future fires, negligent behavior or not," said Diane Conklin, of the citizens watchdog group Mussey Grade Road Alliance. "They will be furious.”

It's not like SEMPRA thinks it has the CPUC in their hip pocket or anything. Profits are maximized by deferring maintenance, waiting for disasters to happen and then gouging ratepayers and taxpayers, average citizens, to pay for it. David Cay Johnston in his newly published book, The Fine Print ,says:

No other modern country gives corporations the unfettered power found in America to gouge customers, shortchange workers and erect barriers to fair play. A big reason is that so little of the news, which informs us about the world around us, addresses the private government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward. When news breaks about one company buying another, the focus is almost always on the bottom line and how shareholders will benefit from higher prices and less competition; much less is said about added costs for customers as competition wanes. This powerful yet subtle bias appeals to advertisers such as mutual funds and other financial services companies who wish to address investors.

Are We Heading for a Servant Economy?

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Jobs in the US are undergoing a huge transformation. People are being laid off from good paying jobs with benefits, and, to the extent they are finding new ones, they are being paid about half what they were at their previous job with no benefits. Most of the newly created jobs in the "promising" recent jobs report were part time or temporary jobs. The September Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report indicated that 114,000 jobs were added in September and that the unemployment rate dipped to 7.8%. This is good news to be sure, but the fact remains that the issue is more about the quality of jobs added than the actual number.

Half of all college graduates are not able to find work. The good jobs out there are only for elite students from elite institutions. Half of all graduates including graduates in science and engineering from universities like Harvard and Duke are going to work on Wall Street. This is where the top talent is going, and they're making big bucks - six figures to start plus signing bonuses. If you are just an average college student though from a run of the mill college, chances are the only job you will find is as a barrista at Starbucks or at the Apple genius bar. The Microsofts, Qualcomms, Googles and Intels are only hiring the top 1% or 2% from elite colleges.

The myth that with a college education you will be able to get a good paying job is being laid to rest. The social contract that, if you work hard, play by the rules and graduate college, there will be a job waiting for you is just a myth. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about guaranteeing college graduates a job. That would be a social contract, and there ain't no social contract.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that for the top ten fastest growing occupations for the years 2010 - 2020, only two will require a college degree. Four don't even require a high school diploma! Two require an Associate's Degree. Jeff Faux in his book, "The Servant Economy," explains why he believes politicians of both parties working for America’s elite are systematically destroying the economic aspirations and quality of life for America’s middle class. 

Jeff Faux: "The future — you walk into an Apple store and you think you’re looking at the future, and you are, but it’s not in the technology. It’s in all of those smart college educated kids with the T-shirts on who are working as retail clerks at $12 an hour or so. Now if you talk to them, they will say, well, I’m just here temporarily." But they may still be there well into their 30s. That's what's happening. When you consider the BLS projections about the jobs of the future, you realize that many of these kids, these 20-something’s thinking that they’re going to be on a professional track, are going to be 30-something’s with dead end jobs well into the future. The BLS projections give the lie to the much repeated myth that with a college education you will make more over your lifetime than you will with just a high school diploma. Heck, where the jobs really are is for people without even a high school diploma. And the kids coming out of college that can't find jobs, that is the non-elite kids from non-elite colleges, they are loaded down with student loan debt. They wind up in a dead end job barely able to make their payments to Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

The fact is that corporations are robotizing, computerizing and automating most aspects of most jobs. The kind of work that can't be robotized is outsourced to sweatshop workers in Asian contries where workers slave away for less than a dollar an hour. This is mostly assembly work. For instance, the Apple iPhone is a sophisticated device most of whose parts are manufactured by robots. However, they haven't figured out a way to have robots do the final assembly. So the iPhones are assembled by hand by Foxconn workers in China. These corporations, like Apple, however, are working on robots that will even do this bit of final menial assembly work. At that point they will not even need the sweatshop workers. That is the final goal: a product that can be entirely produced from start to shrink wrap by an automated assembly line without the need for human intervention.

This "hollowing out" of the US economy is nothing new. It didn't just start with the Great Recession of 2008. This is a trend that has been going on for 30 years or more. The first shot fired was Reagan's firing of the unionized PATCO workers. The gradual demise of the unions combined with the globalization of the work force has resulted in the reduction of the status of American workers to the point that the middle class is doing a disappearing act. Some economists would argue that, as the work force is becoming more productive, workers should share in those productivity gains. But its not that the work force is becoming more productive, the robots are becoming more productive. Capital itself in the form of robots is becoming more productive replacing the need for workers altogether. So to the extent that workers are necessary in the production process at all, it's not that they in and of themselves are becoming more productive. It's that less human work is required for the same amount of output due to the fact that robots are doing most of the work. In any event the non-unionized work force doesn't have the power to demand wage increases tied to increases in productivity.

Rana Foroohar in a Time article entitled "More Jobs, Less Pay," says: "Corporate profits are at record highs... and companies are buying plenty of cool new technology. The problem is that they are using it to replace human workers everywhere, with software eliminating white collar administrative jobs and robots getting Chinese factory gigs. ...

"The upshot: while technology is still doing a good job of displacing workers, it's not creating the kinds of megashifts in productivity and income growth that allow for major increases in standards of living."

Service sector jobs have by and large replaced manufacturing jobs and temporary and part time jobs have replaced full time jobs with benefits. Most large employers in the service sector manage their workforce as if their workers didn't depend on their jobs for anything essential like rent or child support. Most Wal-Mart workers are on food stamps. These are great jobs for people who don't really need them to pay their bills. In "No Logo," a book published in 2000 well before the Great Recession, Naomi Klein says: "And so the mall and the superstore have given birth to a ballooning category of joke jobs - the frozen-yogurt jerk, the Orange Julius juicer, the Gap greeter, the Prozac-happy Wal-Mart 'sales associate' - that are notoriously unstable, low-paying and overwhelmingly part-time."

She goes on: "Never mind that the service sector is now filled with workers that have multiple university degrees [and student loan debt], ... laid-off nurses and teachers, and down-sized middle managers. Never mind, too, that that the students who do work in retail and fast food - as many of them do - are facing higher tuition costs, less financial assistance from parents and government and more years in school." Many of these workers who consider their positions temporary, until they can find a real job in their field, end up with a de facto career in a job that doesn't even require a university degree and at wages that can't really support a middle class life.

Instead of entering the "servant economy" where job applicants are expected to conduct themselves in a servile manner, those who are able would be better off creating their own jobs instead of expecting that a university degree will be their ticket to a stable long-term, well-paying job. They should, if possible, be their own "job creators" instead of expecting that the so-called job creators, whose only real interest is in reducing the number of jobs and increasing automation and offshoring, will do it for them. One who creates his or her own job does not necessarily have to be an "entrepreneur," one who comes up with the next "Big Thing." There are plenty of self-created jobs in well established fields which require little if any credentialization. For instance, trades such as carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, handyman, gardening/landscaping, these are jobs which one can create for oneself with little capital investment required. Windowcleaning is a profession that doesn't even require a contractor's license or any formal training in the state of California and hardly any capital investment. I should know: I've been one for 36 years.

And in a country that espouses freedom, one cannot really be free working in a servant economy where in essence one must bow down to your boss or supervisor. That's not really being free. There is no freedom like being self-employed, and earning your living from multiple sources and a large customer base. That way no one customer has any power over you. No one can order you around. Only then are you truly free, and you can tell the so-called "job creators" to go to hell. It really is exhilarating.

 

 

Prop 37: Vote Yes for Labeling GMO Foods

by John Lawrence  from the San Diego Free Press

The French prime minister announced on September 15, 2012 that France would maintain a ban on Monsanto's MON810 maize, the only genetically modified organisim (GMO) currently allowed in Europe. Thanks to activism by French citizens and serious political outcry, Monsanto is now effectively blocked from Europe’s gigantic marketplace. This is even more true when you consider that France is the largest agricultural producer in Europe.

But that's not all. Following the ground-breaking French study that graphically linked the lifetime consumption of Monsanto’s GMO corn in rats to massive tumors and direct organ failure, Russia’s premiere consumers rights organization has suspended both the importation and use of Monsanto’s GMO corn within the nation’s borders.

Also in March, 2011 the Mexican States of Tlaxcala and Michoacán each passed legislation banning the planting of genetically modified corn to protect natural plants from further GMO contamination.  Together, both states produce about a third of all of Mexico’s corn. GMO corn can cross-contaminate ancient strains of Mexican maize.

Meanwhile, the "No on 37" ads are proliferating. They are saying that Prop 37 is arbitrary because it doesn't call for labeling alcohol, restaurant food, meat or cheese. However it does call for labeling all fruits and vegetables which are GMO products. That's certainly a worthwhile start. Since all animal products in the grocery stores have eaten GMO corn, labeling animal products as GMO because they ate GMO corn when they were alive would result in blanket labeling of all meat products except those who were fed organic grass or corn, a minuscule quantity.

Also labeling GMO foods on restaurant menus would result in every item on the menu being labeled as GMO. This would be a little extreme to start, and would guarantee massive infusions of lobbying cash into the battle for GMO labeling by the other side. Alcoholic drinks contain GMOs, but again it would be impractical at the present time to require a bartender to inform you that the drink you just ordered contained GMOs. It is better just to consume organic products insofar as possible. Organic wine is already labeled as such. There are GMO grapes, but the larger issue is the fact that grapes are heavily sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, and grapes aren't grown from seed making GMO grapes a non-issue. 

Bourbon by definition must be made with 51% corn. Nearly every distillery uses GMO corn to make bourbon. However, at present there are two organic, non-GMO choices: Four Roses and Wild Turkey. However, even those whiskies are not committed to using non-GMO corn since there is little of it available these days. Jack Daniels is ending its commitment to using non-GMO corn. In 2000, a number of their consumers, particularly those in Europe, expressed a preference for non-GM ingredients, and  they opted for only 100% non-genetically modified corn. But now they are going to GMO corn because of availability issues. I guess they will lose the European market. Here is a marketing opportunity for someone!

It is not only concern about GMO corn that calls for caution.

Colin O’Neil, regulatory policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, says he hasn’t seen any science pointing to genetic material passing through the distillation process. But, as he sees it, that’s not the only cause for concern.

“To assume that the only real risk is contamination of genetic material ignores the fact that these crops by and large either produce an insecticide (which has been shown not to break down in the human gut) or they are engineered to withstand exposure to herbicide.” And farmers are spraying an increasing amount of Roundup and other weed killers as a result of herbicide-resistant “superweeds,” he points out.  

“I don’t know what types of pesticide residues are on the corn that goes through the distillation process,” O’Neil adds, “but residue in any form presents an increased exposure to consumers.”

So bourbon aficionados will have to take their chances or demand organic whiskey because Prop 37 will not protect them. Beer drinkers should import European beers now that GMO maize, which had been previously used in beer manufacturing, has been banned there.

Major U.S. companies have dropped genetically engineered foods in Europe, citing consumer fears. There is a survey which says that Kellogg, Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, Heinz, and others comprise a growing list of companies going GMO-free - but not in the U.S. Some of these companies are behind the "No on Prop 37" campaign here in California. If enough people in the US demand GMO free foods and beverages as they have in Europe, they will have to provide them here as well.

Here are 8 reasons you want Prop 37 to pass, and why we're asking for your support.

1. GMOs have never been proven safe. The FDA conducts no independent testing of GMOs, but instead claims that they are "not substantially different" from non-GMO foods.

2. The biotech industry is not required to conduct long-term safety studies on GMOs, and it keeps researchers from conducting those tests by claiming the right to protect its patented seeds and technologies.

3. GMOs are everywhere. Today, most non-organic US corn, soy, cotton, and sugar beets - which are used in most of the sweeteners and additives used by food processors - are genetically engineered. So is the feed fed to the animals you eat. In fact, 75-85% of the processed food in your grocery store contains unlabeled GMOs.

4. The companies who want you to believe GMOs are safe are the same ones who lied to you about Agent Orange and DDT.

5. GMO crops are responsible for super weeds and super bugs, soil degradation, and a lack of diversity - which makes crops and humans more susceptible to disease.

6. The only folks who don't want you to know what's in your food are huge corporations like Monsanto, Dow AgriScience, BASF and food conglomerates like Pepsi and Coca-Cola - who along with other biotech, pesticide and processed food manufacturers have donated nearly $33 million to defeat Prop 37.

7. This is our best - and perhaps only - shot at labeling GMOs and ending Monsanto's monopoly of our food supply and destruction of our health and environment. Nineteen other states have tried - and failed - to get a GMO labeling law through the state legislative process. Prop 37 takes GMO labeling direct to the voters so Monsanto's lobbyists can't kill it.

8. If this law passes in California, food manufacturers have admitted that it may as well be a national law. They won't want to put "this product contains GMOs" on their labels, so they will reformulate their products. And if they reformulate for California, they may as well do it for all of their products.

Early voting on Prop 37 begins on October 9. By November 6, this historic initiative will have passed or failed.

Sex in San Diego: Rape in the Military

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Even as a little girl Claire Russo wanted nothing more than to grow up and serve in the military. At 14, she was a Senate page for Dan Coats, worked at the Republican National Convention in San Diego, and interned for Senator Judd Gregg the following year. Later she said "I became obsessed with the Marine Corps after that. I knew the legacy of the Marine Corps was elite and the legacy of Guadalcanal. They were pretty tough and if I was going to join, I’d join the toughest out there."

When she grew up, she became a Marine who served in Iraq and later as an advisor for the Army in Afghanistan. At Officers Candidate School, where she finished fourth in a class of 65, she started hearing stories about women who had been raped by other Marines. One of her drill instructors told her, "You're either a bitch or a slut."

In 2004 she was assigned as an intelligence officer to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego. She moved in with her cousin Tom, who was a Navy F-18 pilot and instructor on the base. Just a month after Claire arrived at Miramar, the festivities surrounding the Marine Corps' annual birthday celebration were in full swing. She accompanied her cousin Tom to his Marine Corps Ball since he didn't have a date. Before the Ball officially began they partied in a hotel room at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego with some friends.

As the evening wore on, Claire had several drinks, and, since Tom had hooked up with a date, she started feeling like the odd woman out. She had been introduced to several of Tom's pilot friends for whom she had the utmost repect. She had wanted to work with pilots as part of her mission in the Marines. She made small talk and danced with some of them to whom she was introduced by their call signs such as Wallet and Dirty.

Later Dirty, who was a Marine Captain, invited her to join a group of friends at a room party upstairs. Claire said, “I would certainly never question the integrity or motivation of the Marines—certainly not at that point. I didn’t doubt this guy at all.” It turned out that the "room party" was at Dirty's room, and there was no one else there. The next thing she remembers is being forced to give Dirty a blow job during the course of which she started vomiting. The only thing she remembers him saying to her was "You're so disgusting."

After that she was in the bathroom where Captain Dirty was trying to penetrate her anally to the point that she started bleeding. He left her there naked on the bathroom floor covered in blood and vomit. She then heard her cell phone ringing in the other room. She entered the bedroom where Dirty had already retired to bed and answered the phone. It was one of cousin Tom's friends. She's incoherent. He tells her to get a cab and go home. She puts on her vomit-and-blood stained dress and jacket, leaving behind ripped stockings and a broken necklace. Without a word from Captain Dirty, she leaves, wanders abjectly around the hotel lobby looking for Tom and catches a cab home around 3 AM.

Her boyfriend Josh, another Marine who was on duty that night at Camp Pendleton calls her around 7 AM, and she can't tell him what happened. While Josh comes to get her, she takes a shower and realizes she's still bleeding. Around 4 pm Claire returns home with Tom and begins to go into shock—crying, shaking, feeling cold and panicky—as she relived the events of the previous night with Tom. A dutiful pilot, he immediately phones his Unit Executive Officer to report that there was an incident at his Marine Corps Ball, despite Claire’s protests. He then takes Claire to the Emergency Room at Balboa Navy Medical Center. Tom then receives a call from NCIS, (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) Special Agent Zach Paton, who says, “Do not let them examine her. They’re going to screw it up,” referring to the Navy Medical Center. He tells Tom to bring Claire to a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) nurse who specializes in sexual assault exams at Palomar-Pomerado Hospital, a civilian facility.

After several conversations with different agencies of the military, Paton was told that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute; that it was a “he said, she said” case and there wasn’t anything in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that would allow them to prosecute a rape by intoxication. So Paton took the case to the San Diego District Attorney’s office. “They about crapped in their drawers,” says Paton. “Because of his [Dirty’s] position and rank and the potential media outcome, they wanted to keep it as small as possible.” 

And so Dirty whose real name is Captain Douglas Alan Dowson went on trial in civilian court in San Diego. It turns out that he had a prior record of deviant sexual behaviour but no prior conviction. Gretchen Means was the Deputy District Attorney in San Diego's Sex Crimes Unit who prosecuted Claire's case. Dowson was charged with six counts of sexual assault. Two days into the trial Dowson accepted a plea on one count of sodomy of an intoxicated person. He was sentenced to three years in prison but served just 19 and a half months. Given the sentencing laws, Means says, it was likely he would get more time if he had been found guilty on multiple counts. Dowson is now registered as a sex offender and was discharged from the Marine Corps with an other than honorable discharge in 2006. In the summer of 2007, Claire sued Dowson for damages and he settled for $13,000.

After the rape, Claire remained dedicated to the military. In 2006 she was deployed to Iraq. After being sexually harrassed there, she returned home with PTSD and was given a medical discharge from the military in 2007. She married Josh and they traveled the world. But she still had the desire to serve. In 2009 she was hired by the Army to be part of the Female Engagement Team in Afghanistan.

Claire said the way that the military dealt with her was far more traumatizing than the actual assault. But somehow she persevered and maintained her belief in military service. Gretchen Means has seen a lot of rape victims, but Claire stands out among them:

“I’ve known Claire for a long time, I went to her wedding, I’ve seen her inside and outside this crime. I was always really super impressed with how engaged she was in getting through it.

“Look what she’s done with her life. This took away her dignity and love of her country for a little bit, but look what she’s done; amazing stuff.”

Claire is currently a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington D.C. where she interviews men in the Special Operations forces about their experiences employing women and the role of women in the military. 

Claire now has a one year old daughter named Genevieve.

This article relies on an article in Business Insider entitled, "This Marine Was Raped By A Captain and the Military Did Nothing."

The San Diego Free Press circa 1969

I used to work for the San Diego Free Press. It flourished for about two years from about 1968 to 1970. I guess there is a current version but it has nothing in common with the 1968-70 version except the name. It was an "underground" newspaper meaning that it was devoted to radical politics, alternative lifestyles, the counterculture in general. But mainly it was a political newspaper. I used to sell papers at the San Diego Zoo among other spots, one of the few people who actually went out and sold them on the street. Most of the staff just liked to put out the paper, do the art work, write the articles etc. I also wrote for the paper, took photos and was a reporter.

We all lived in a commune at Second and Thorn in Hillcrest. How we were able to rent this house I don't know because it's a really nice house. It's been totally refurbished and is in private hands. I wonder if the present owner knows the history of the house, how it housed a bunch of 60s era radicals. In a later homeless period I used to park my van and sleep just a block away from my old home at Second and Thorn.

There I had my own room on the second floor. Across from me was Jan Diepersloot the guy as much in charge as anyone. He wrote most of the editorials. In the masthead it says he's the policy coordinator. I don't even remember some of the people who worked on the paper, and some of the people who lived at the house didn't even really work on the paper. I remember Richard Blackburn, "Black Dick" they called him. I remember Herman Rumper. Most of these people were present or former UCSD students. Larry Gottlieb was a Physics major. I was a Computer Science major. We were the only two from the science and engineering type schools. All the rest were liberal arts majors, mainly Philosophy students. Matie Belle lived with us but I don't think she worked on the paper.

We also had a "retreat" out in Ramona where we could go to get away from it all. It was an old abandoned ranch with a little shack and a run down barn. One couple lived out there and grew marijuana. They got caught and hauled into court, but I don't remember whatever happened to them. Once their dog had about 16 cute little pups. They were country people and didn't like the city. Since I had a private pilot's license, they wanted me to fly marijuana over the border, but I chickened out. I remember two of our girls drove across with some. Luckily, they made it but they were shitting bricks and never did it again to my knowledge. That's how we paid our rent, I think. Anyway no one ever asked me to pay rent.

One time we ripped off a load of plywood from a building site at UCSD. We used it to floor in our attic so some people could sleep up there. The only problem was people were always stepping off the floored in area onto the lath and plaster and then they would fall through the ceiling directly over my bed. This happened two or three times. The UCSD operation was pretty sophisticated. We had look-outs with walkie-talkies. We used a converted schoolbus that belonged to this guy who stopped in from time to time and stayed with us for awhile. I think he was a friend of Jan's. He was wanted for arson up in northern California since the police had kicked him off some land he was homesteading and in retaliation he had burned down the police station. I don't think they ever caught him.

I had saved all the Free Presses and had them at the little duplex in Del Mar where I lived later after I'd gone my separate way. One day I threw them away which I later regretted. Some years later I searched for the San Diego Free Press and found them on microfiche at the UCSD library. I printed out some pages, mainly the ones on which I had written articles. I used to do a series on San Diego history. And then I did book reviews and a muckraking article on General Dynamics, a company with which I was still employed although on leave of abscence attending school although I was also on a leave of absence from school as well while I pursued revolutionary activities. Our main goal was to create a new society which would require a revolution. We never quite reached that goal. In fact we never even came close.

Following is an excerpt from a book review I did of "Who Rules America?" by G. William Domhoff, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz:

This book contains a lot of well documented facts about the nature of the American political, economic and social power structure, referred to in some quarters as the Establishment. Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of Californla at Santa Cruz, draws heavily on the works of C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite), Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy (Monopoly Capital), AND E. Digby Baltzell (The Protestant Establishment). He shows conclusively that an American social upper class does exist and that this class owns a disproportionate amount of the country's wealth and makes a disproportionate number of America’s decisions; in short, that the American social upper class is the American governing class. His criteria for determining membership in the upper class are the following: 1) listed in the Social Register, 2) attendance at an exclusive private school such as Groton, Hotchkiss or St. Marks, 3) member of a very exclusive gentlemen’s club such as the Knickerbocker (New York), the Pacific Union (San Francisco), or the California (Los Angeles), 4) father was a millonaire entrepreneur or $100,000 corporation executive or corporatlon lawyer and either a) went to exclusive private school or b) belongs to an exclusive club, 5) marries a person under 1) - 4), 6) member of family chronicled by Amory in Who Killed Society! or The Proper Bostonians. Domhoff sets very stiff criteria for upper class membership so that the errors are on the side of exclusion rather than inclusion. Consequently, the statistics he gathers are always conservative.