The Campaign Video I Wish I Ran for my Candidacy

The Dogcatcher Strategy

The Dogcatcher Strategy

By Gary North

November 17, 2000

 

“President, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom — and of whom only — it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.” — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

No matter who is declared the winner in this year’s unforgettable fiasco, he will be deeply resented by half the American electorate, whose political representatives will vow revenge in the mid-term Congressional elections and then in 2004. Having said almost nothing of substance during a year of campaigning, so as not to ruffle anyone’s feathers, the winner will find that he has ruffled more feathers than any President in the last hundred years. Such is the irony of winning the Presidency.

Three modern Presidents have believed in politics above all else: Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. The first two were eventually consumed by the god they served so faithfully. Clinton, so far, has not. But memories are short, and space in history textbooks is scarce. He will be remembered in fifty years, if at all, for only one thing: he was impeached. He will be remembered as the true political successor of Johnson: Andrew, not Lyndon.

Meanwhile, disappointed voters in the third party (fourth party, fifth party) fringes ask themselves: "Why don’t good guys ever win the Presidency?" This question greatly bothers people who think it’s worth winning the Presidency. But why is it worth winning?

It is worth winning as a symbol of comprehensive political success, which begins at the lowest offices in the land. It is worth winning as the expression of a majority of voters’ decisions regarding the moral legitimacy of, and limits to, the State. But voters think of the Presidency in the same way that Adam thought of the forbidden fruit: a bypass around successful moral decision-making, not the culmination of a comprehensive, widely shared world view. The Presidency’s frantic pursuers want to attain the knowledge of good and evil on their own terms — a formal numerical victory that skips over the substantive issues of comprehensive representation.

What good is it to have "your man" win the Presidency if the principles he stands for are out of favor with the electorate? Why does anyone really believe that the Presidency is so important — if it’s just the Presidency? Yes, it’s a bully pulpit. But if the President is not backed up by Congress, and if Congress is not backed up by state legislatures, and if state legislatures are not backed up by county commissioners, then what’s the point of a bully pulpit? Ask Andrew Johnson.

That magnificent cynic, Ambrose Bierce, defined the Presidency as "the greased pig in the field game of American politics." Well, a lot of men have vainly pursued that pig around the field, taking millions of voters and voters’ money with them in the vain chase. And even among those who caught the squealer, what positive legacy did they leave?

Back in the waning years of Reagan’s Presidency, I spoke with Paul Weyrich, who runs the Free Congress Foundation. He is a skilled technician in the area of getting candidates elected. He lamented the fact that he could get all the neophyte candidates he wanted if he offered to fund their campaign for the U.S. Senate, but the lower the office, the fewer the candidates.

Who wants to run for dogcatcher? We hear the old phrase, "I wouldn’t vote for him for dogcatcher." Why doesn’t this motivate people to run for dogcatcher? If it’s the bottom of the electoral barrel, why not use it as the first rung up the ladder? But no one thinks to himself: "If the public won’t vote for that guy to be dogcatcher, maybe I can win." People want to play in the World Series without learning the game in the minors.

Ron Paul won his Congressional race again. As usual, he didn’t surrender to voter preference on any controversial issue. Leonard E. Read, who bootstrapped modern libertarianism with his Foundation for Economic Education, used to offer his highest praise by saying, "Hedoesn’t leak." Ron Paul doesn’t leak. In 1984, he ran for the U.S. Senate and lost to Phil Gramm. So, he is content to be a non-leaking Congressman.

Why do libertarians think they have to field a candidate for President when they have not yet put anyone into the office of dogcatcher? Why does anyone believe that he should send money to a political party that has never won anything locally? I think it’s a way for people to tell their friends, "I’m fed up." Fine; but don’t take politics seriously. "I’m fed up" is not a campaign platform or a way to effect political change. Don’t imagine that it matters who wins a no-win party’s nomination. Don’t give any post-election thought to the question, "How could we have won 2% of the vote instead of less than 1%" It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.

What matters is the red section of the country in the map of the counties: the heartland. These are the counties that voted for George W. Bush. There are over 3,000 counties in the United States. There are over 100,000 offices to get elected to, if you count school boards. This is the playing field that matters, not the Presidency.

But conservative and libertarian voters want to feel that they have done something important when they vote for "their man" in The Big One. They still believe in the modern conception of the Presidency. They have emotionally accepted the legitimacy of centralized political power. They have not only abandoned the Articles of Confederation; they have abandoned Madison, Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams, who ran for Congress and won after he lost the Presidency in the election of 1828.

Ron Paul has shown the way. Start your climb to power no higher than the top rung that your weight-lifting leg can reach. This may be the office of dogcatcher. Don’t pick a party banner to run under that you suspect cannot carry you to the highest rung that you are capable of attaining without developing leaks. If you don’t plan to climb very high, join that party whose local voters and spokesmen may listen to your suggestions once in a while.

If you want one book to read on what it really takes to have local political clout for initially unpopular causes, with no budget to speak of, read Douglas Hyde’s little masterpiece,Dedication and Leadership. He was a Communist Party organizer in England in the 1940’s, but later converted to Catholicism. He shows how the really bad guys did it, way back when.

Go, thou, and do likewise.

November 17, 2000

The Flawed Concept of “Workforce Housing”

Listening to the Marin County Supervisors we would be led to believe there is no higher priority than to provide “workforce housing“.

 

Supervisor Kate Sears

“We can reduce the impacts of in-commuting by…building workforce housing would enable people working in Marin to live closer to their jobs.” Supervisor Sears, Feb 21st 2014 Facebook page

 

“It’s important that we build healthy and sustainable communities by allowing those who work in Marin to also live here,”  Supervisor Arnold, Sept 2011

 

“To increase the stock of affordable housing, especially workforce housing, the Marin
County Board of Supervisors enacted the Affordable Housing Impact Fee.”
This is a $5 or a $10 per square foot fee imposed on new builds and remodels. An existing 1,800 square foot house with a 700 square foot addition or conversion will be assessed $2,500. Source.

The concept of providing workforce housing underpins stated policy not just from Marin County Supervisors but also the Association of Bay Area Governments’ Plan Bay Area:

 

Plan Bay Area references “workforce housing”

“The job growth forecast was adjusted based on the difficulties in supplying sufficient housing in the Bay Area to meet the needs of workforce housing within reasonable commute times. ”
Source: Plan Bay Area, page 15, Employment Forecast

Workforce Housing – The Premise & Alleged Benefits

The concept presumes that by building affordable housing in a county:

• more county workers who used to live outside the county will be able to live in the county
• traffic congestion will be reduced
• greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced.

A quick Google search constrained to the Marin County website references the term “workforce housing” in 340 separate documents. The same term appears in 160 documents on the Association of Bay Area Governments website. Restated the premise of workforce housing is woven deeply into planning and policy across the region. It is frequently used to justify housing projects.

The Theory and the Facts

If the premise of workforce housing reduces in commuting then one would expect to see a substantial increase between these two numbers:

• Affordable housing residents who work in the county but who previously lived outside the county and had to commute in
• Affordable housing residents who now live and work in the county, who no longer have to commute into the county

To make the case there should be a measurable and not insignificant increase between the former and the latter.

In 2008 Marin County published a document “Affordable Housing Inventory“. The stated purpose of the document was to create a single data source for information on affordable housing in Marin establishing a platform for future tracking and analysis of affordable housing in Marin County.

On page 4 the document states:

“ approximately 90% of [affordable housing residents] lived and worked in Marin prior to living in affordable housing

Then on page 32 the same document states:

“The current employment location of working [affordable housing] residents was provided for 606 individuals. Of this sample, 91% work in Marin County.”

If workforce housing as a premise was valid one would expect to see an order of magnitude between these two numbers. Instead there is an increase of 1% – which is within the margin of error.

One might presume that affordable housing can be made available selectively only to people who work in the county – but this is not legal.

What Does This Mean?

This language is presented as if it is an indisputable fact. Yet in Marin the evidence shows that there is no  basis validating the workforce housing concept – but  there is evidence that no relationship exists. Therefore we should expect to see the following actions:

• The term workforce housing should no longer be used by elected officials
• The term should be dropped from all policy documents
• If the term is used in media such as the Marin IJ the term be immediately called out as being disproven to discourage future usage

This does not mean that there should not be more affordable housing. What it does mean that we need to discard dishonest, disproven and consequently misleading concepts from the discussion.

Affordable Housing

Note that this does not mean that Marin County, or any other location should no longer provide affordable housing. The county has excellent policies requiring that new developments include 20% affordable units. Sadly many developments, such as MacFarlane’s Tamal Vista, were able to circumvent these requirements. Marin needs to uphold these well founded policies.

Marin does need to grow – but not with large concentrations of housing. Instead the county should continue it’s policy of integrating affordable units into all new developments.

Visit www. PLANNING FOR REALITY.org  for thoughtful solutions to Marin's Future Growth.

Voter Apathy

Why Architect Le Corbusier Wanted To Demolish Downtown Paris (Why even Brilliant Planners can be Idiots)

Why Architect Le Corbusier Wanted To Demolish Downtown Paris

Gus Lubin

AP




Walking through Le Corbusier's exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, I was surprised by how many of the great modernist architect's designs were never built. They were simply too radical, and none more so than his 1925 proposal to demolish two square miles of downtown Paris.

It's probably a good thing the architect, born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, didn't get his hands on Paris. The area he would have destroyed, including the 3rd and 4th arrondissements on the right bank of the Seine, is today among the prettiest, hippest, and most architecturally significant neighborhoods in the city. What's more, the replacement of organic urban areas with huge new developments has been criticized since the 1960s for sapping the vitality of cities.

All of that said, let's take a moment to appreciate how cool Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin would have been.

To start, demolishing central Paris made a lot of sense in the 1920s. The formerly aristocratic Marais district had fallen into squalor, characterized by poor sanitation, disease, and overcrowding, as chronicled by Marybeth Shaw in "Promoting An Urban Vision: Le Corbusier and the Plan Voisin." By 1921 in the Beaubourg area, 250 out of 276 houses were marked uninhabitable due to tuberculosis contamination.

Le Corbusier wanted to replace this urban blight with something incredible.


Plan Voisin called for 18 cruciform glass office towers, placed on a rectangular grid in an enormous park-like green space, with triple-tiered pedestrian malls with stepped terraces placed intermittently between them. Extending perpendicularly to the west, there would be an adjacent rectangle of low-rise residential, governmental, and cultural buildings amid more green space.

The new development would be integrated with highways, train and subway lines, as well as an airport, making this area the first thing that most visitors to the city would see.

The design sounds beautiful, as described by the architect :

I shall ask my readers to imagine they are walking in this new city, and have begun to acclimatize themselves to its untraditional advantages. You are under the shade of trees, vast lawns spread all round you. The air is clear and pure; there is hardly any noise. What, you cannot see where the buildings are ? Look through the charmingly diapered arabesques of branches out into the sky towards those widely-spaced crystal towers which soar higher than any pinnacle on earth. These translucent prisms that seem to float in the air without anchorage to the ground - flashing in summer sunshine, softly gleaming under grey winter skies, magically glittering at nightfall - are huge blocks of offices. Beneath each is an underground station (which gives the measure of the interval between them). Since this City has three or four times the density of our existing cities, the distances to be transversed in it (as also the resultant fatigue) are three or four times less. For only 5-10 per cent of the surface area of its business centre is built over. That is why you find yourselves walking among spacious parks remote from the busy hum of the autostrada.

The new office district would be the business center of the city, the country, and the world — while looking nothing like the "appalling nightmare" downtown streets of New York City. The adjacent housing district would be home to the world's business elite.

"Paris of tomorrow could be magnificently equal to the march of events that is day by day bringing us ever nearer to the dawn of a new social contract," Le Corbusier wrote.

To pay for the project, Le Corbusier counted on investment from France's business elite, promising a five-fold increase in land value. As for the denizens of the area that he wanted to destroy, the architect said these "troglodytes" could be relocated to garden cities in outer Paris.

As for concerns with leveling such a historic neighborhood, Le Corbusier insisted that the best architecture from the district — including the Palais Royal, the Place des Vosges, and certain townhouses and churches — would be saved. They would be, as described by Shaw, "preserved like museum pieces in the green carpet of the skyscrapers and low-rises that one would come upon while walking the curved paths of the parks."

Now, courtesy of Fondation Le Corbusier, here's a sketch of the verdant business district:

© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.



Here's a close-up showing the green spaces between buildings, with hints of ground-level commerce and transportation access:

© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.



Here's a model showing the business district and part of the residential, cultural, and governmental district extending west along the Seine:

© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.



And here's what the area looks like today:

Google Maps

Editor's Note:  Would Paris be "Paris" if Le Corbusier succeeded in his plans?  Even Hitler knew better than not to destroy Paris during the occupation/retreat during World War II.

The monstrous conceit of "Smart Growth" planners of Plan Bay Area is that they can build a "better Marin" by creating transit oriented development prescribed by a national institue of planning professionals.  We even have "style guides" for architecture that will help builders expedite construction.  Goodbye to architectural innovation, nuance and whimsy.   If successful,  we will be left with a soulless landscape much like Le Corbusiers Vision.  We will not let this happen.  We will Save Marin Again!

Fair Isn’t Fair by Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S

Fair Isn’t Fair Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S 

Patrick Henry—an ardent supporter of a smaller, local government—once said, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” Something tells me that he would not utter such a statement were he alive in 2014. Henry and many other Founding Fathers are likely rolling over in their graves as a result of the incessant intrusion into local affairs by our current president and the federal government. 

More recently, in the eyes of the Obama Administration, Americans are not the best judges of where they should live and raise their families. At least that’s the message coming from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Just when you thought the administration’s Orwellian sovereignty had reached its limits, HUD declared that our nation’s suburbs aren’t diverse enough and that local governments may not be the best arbiters of housing and zoning regulations. 

To remedy this perceived cultural malaise, the administration has issued a new proposed regulation (sound familiar?) that mandates a barrier for individuals and families on where they can choose to live. With this action, the president and his administration are encroaching on the rights of local governments and once again needlessly injecting race into public policy issues, setting the stage for even further division and animosity in America. 

As a means of accomplishing this goal, President Obama proposed a rule known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), which according to Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, will “push Americans into living how and where the federal government wants. It promises to gut the ability of suburbs to set their own zoning codes. It will press future population growth into tiny, densely-packed high-rise zones around public transportation, urbanizing suburbs and Manhattanizing cities.” 

What this administration fails to understand is that one of the most unique American values is our ability to be mobile. America practically invented the modern open road. That road to the future symbolizes our freedom to choose—to choose where we live, where we work and to choose our neighbors and neighborhoods. 

But instead, the president has decided to restrict that freedom. If this proposed rule is adopted, Washington bureaucrats are now going to tell Americans where they can live and who they will live next to, all in the name of social justice and ideological utopianism. Nothing could be more un-American and more fundamentally wrong. Just like Americans don't need the government choosing their doctors, they don't need the government choosing their neighbors. 

The 1968 Fair Housing Act already makes discrimination illegal in the “sale, rental and financing of dwellings based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” The Act was amended in 1988 to add disability and familial status as covered conditions. Apparently, it’s not enough to provide everyone with equal opportunity in housing matters. What the Obama Administration wants is equal outcomes, and the only possible way to produce this is for the federal leviathan to force itself upon local jurisdictions. 

While no one should ever be targeted for exclusion from a neighborhood because of their ethnicity or any other protected category, neither should there be quotas for neighborhoods to achieve some sort of racial balance that would not happen naturally. A level playing field that allows all Americans to choose where they live, and that gives zoning authority to local governments, is the wisest policy. 

To curb this federal overreach, I sponsored an amendment in the Transportation, housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act that would block funding for the president’s rule on AFFH. Some of my colleagues and I are issuing a call to action and are asking House appropriators to include the same defunding language that passed the House of Representatives in any appropriations package we vote on and send to the president. If the rule is implemented and municipalities do not comply with AFFH, federal community development grant money will be withheld. 

The sad truth about this Obama social engineering proposal is that HUD conducted its own study in 2011 which concluded that moving those currently living in poor neighborhoods into suburban neighborhoods neither helps children do better in school nor decreases their family's dependence upon welfare, as is the goal of the proposed AFFH rule. Therefore, one of the most compelling reasons to defund this regulation is that it will have the opposite impact on the people it is intended to assist, increasing their likelihood of government dependency. 

In essence, this is an encroachment into the domain of local governments—even bypassing the state government level—and is a violation of the basic intent of our Founders. So if you hear reports of a minor earthquake near Henry’s resting place at Red Hill in Charlotte County, Virginia, it should be easy to locate its epicenter.

Editor's Note: Marin is currently under a voluntary agreement with HUD to meet racial quotas in its neighborhoods.  Curiously, the most vigorous supporters of this initiative,  Steve Kinsey, in particular has NO PLANS for large affordable housing projects in his district while pushing 80% of all affordable housing in Marinwood-Lucas Valley. 

Zone of Possible Contamination includes all of Casa Marinwood, a parts of Roundtree and Blackstone Canyon Rd.

The above circle represents the Zone of possible contamination from Prosperity Cleaners toxic waste site located at 187 Marinwood Ave, San Rafael., CA.  High levels of toxins have been discovered on the eastern most edge of the circle (right hand side of map) and a radius has been drawn around it to signify other possible contamination locations.    

While most of the toxic waste contamination from Prosperity Cleaners is expected to flow on the down gradient towards San Pablo Bay East, new soil vapor testing has proven contamination exists just a few feet away from Casa Marinwood.  

There is effective treatment available once testing inside Casa Marinwood is complete. Residents need to know that there appears to be no risk of their drinking water to be contaminated.  

The Clean Up Marinwood Plaza Now Oversight committee will hold a meeting in conjunction with Supervisor Damon Connolly's office and the Regional Water Quality Control Board in the next few weeks.

We will announce the meeting here on www.SaveMarinwood.org

Thank you for your support

Thank you for your support in my election for Marinwood CSD.  I especially want to thank all of those who posted my signs and talked with their neighbors to help get out the vote.   I look forward to working with the new Marinwood CSD board to encourage responsible budgets,  civic openness and improved parks.  

Running for office is not easy.  I have been fighting for the rights of the community for years.  I was one of the first individuals to make public the massive plans for urbanization of Marinwood-Lucas Valley,  the toxic waste danger at Prosperity Cleaners,  the irresponsible budgets and closed door dealing of past Marinwood CSD boards.   I ran to bring truly responsive local government back to the people.

We still have big challenges ahead.  We need to get our spending under control.  We need new revenue streams and we definitely need more openness in our local government.

I will stay involved to make this happen.

California governor signs bill to ease parking requirements and create more affordable housing

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Mary Eveleigh

On Friday California Governor Jerry Brown signed into a law a bill that will help create more affordable housing by easing parking requirements for developers.

The legislation, Assembly Bill (AB) 744, Planning and Zoning: Density Bonus, will allow developers to request reduced minimum parking requirements within affordable housing projects. It also amends the parking ratio for affordable housing and senior housing to require no more the 0.5 parking spaces per unit, and amends the ratio for special needs housing to require no more than 0.3 parking spaces per unit.

Developers seeking to use these ratios must meet established guidelines regarding percentage of affordable units in the project, distance and access to a transit stop, availability of paratransit services, and access to fixed bus route services. The emphasis on transit access will bolster other efforts to make public transportation and active transportation options safer, more convenient, and more accessible for low-income families.

“AB 744 will enable a new wave of affordable housing development that was not previously feasible,” said Meea Kang, President of Domus Development and a Steering Committee member of LOCUS. “Real estate developers have long strived to build the affordable housing our communities demand, but parking restrictions and their ensuing construction costs have made these projects extremely difficult to finance. By lowering these restrictions, AB 744 will help California maintain its affordable housing capacity as our population grows and becomes increasingly diverse.”

The average above-ground parking space costs $24,000 to build. Below-ground parking spaces cost even more, at an average of $34,000 a piece. Regulations that require developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces — even if there is no market demand for them — can significantly increase a project’s costs. In the Bay Area, an estimated 31 percent of parking spaces at affordable housing developments go unused.

AB 477 was supported by a coalition of over 60 organizations and individuals, including Domus Development, LOCUS, Smart Growth America’s coalition partners Local Government Commission and TransForm, as well as Author Assemblymember Ed Chau, AARP, the American Planning Association, California Council for Affordable Housing, California Economic Summit, Enterprise Community Partners, Professor Donald Shoup of UCLA, Jeffery Tumlin of Nelson Nygaard, and Ethan Elkind of the Council of Infill Builders.

Easing parking minimums at affordable housing projects are a straightforward way for states to make these projects more financially feasible for developers and allows developers to put funds toward building more homes, rather than more parking spaces. A standard housing subsidy can fund roughly 6.5 times more units with no parking than units with two allocated spaces.

By signing AB 744 into law, California is setting a model for other states to follow in terms of innovative ways to build more affordable housing. For more information about the new legislation, see the full bill text or a fact sheet from the California legislature.

Editor's Note:  Planners and Governor Brown have this magical belief that if parking is eliminated, suddenly everyone will walk, bike or take transit.  What they ignore is the cold reality that people need to go work in many places other "job centers" in central cities.  These sorts of policies are the cruelest to laborers who often must rise early and travel far to work.  Check out this video trying to find parking in San Rafael's Canal district.

IS CALIFORNIA’S BUBBLE BURSTING?

IS CALIFORNIA’S BUBBLE BURSTING?

by Bill Watkins 10/29/2015

California has a long history of boom and bust cycles, but over the past 25 years or so, California’s cycles appear to be becoming more volatile, with increasing frequency, higher highs, and lower lows.  The fast-moving business cycle may not provide the time necessary for many people to recover from previous busts, and may be too limited in its impact. Even now, 22 of California’s 58 counties have unemployment rates of 7.5 percent or higher. Eleven California counties have unemployment rates of at least nine percent.  And these, we are told, are the best of times.

Policy behavior is predictable throughout the business cycle. 

Sacramento is awash in cash during a boom, because California’s revenues are more closely related to asset prices than economic activity.  As the economy grows, particularly in an era of ultra-low interest rates, asset prices climb faster than the economy grows, and California is flush.  Sacramento acts as if the boom will continue forever.  Spending commitments are increased, or taxes are decreased.  Politicians congratulate themselves on “fixing” the budget problem.

For Sacramento, economic busts and the resulting fiscal crisis are acts of God, completely independent of policy.  State revenues fall more rapidly than economic activity falls, because asset prices fall faster than overall economic activity. Sacramento tries to transfer the fiscal pain to local governments.  Mostly, they are successful. As of July, Local government employment was still down almost five percent from its pre-recession high, while state government employment is up about 4.5 percent over the same period.

Sacramento is currently enjoying a boom, but this boom, like all booms, will ultimately lead to a bust.  There are signs that California’s confrontation with its next bust could come soon.

Asset prices are cause for concern.  After a five-year Bull Market that saw cumulative gains of over 70 percent, the S&P is little changed this year.  Over the past 60 days, it’s been very volatile.  California’s median home price is up over 70 percent from its recession low.  It too has recently shown volatility, reflecting the huge differences between regional markets.

Housing affordability (percentage of population that could afford the median home) is down too.  It’s fallen from over 50 percent to about 30 percent.  We can’t be sure, but it’s probably below a sustainable level.  That is, below a level that can sustain a middle-class population.  Several California communities have lower levels home ownership rates, but places like Marin County have minimal middle classes.

California’s tech sector has served the state well over the past business cycle.  In quarter after quarter the Bay Area has led the state in job creation.  In many quarters, the Bay Area was the only California region to gain jobs.

But California’s tech sector can be very volatile, as the last dot.com bust in 2000 showed.  Today, venture capital investment is near the levels we saw just before tech’s big bust.  The number of deals is lower though.  It’s not clear that it is again a bubble about to bust, the possibility should be seriously considered.  Ideally, we would have a plan to deal with the subsequent fiscal challenges.

If tech does decline, the impacts will be more than fiscal.  California’s Information sector, down more than 100,000 jobs from its previous high, still has not recovered from the dot.com bust:

Recent data imply that continued economic growth, even the slow growth we’ve become accustomed to, is threatened.  California’s most recent jobs report was a big disappointment.  National data was disappointing too.  Only 20 states saw employment increases in September.

California’s position on the Pacific Rim between Asia’s manufacturing sector and the world’s largest consumer market guarantees that trade is an important sector for California.  Increasingly, however, that sector is at risk.  China’s economic growth is weakening.  Competing ports in Mexico and Canada threaten California’s trade sector, as does the Panama Canal expansion.  California’s response has been to ignore the challenges and to refuse to expand ports to accept today’s largest ships.  California’s share of North American trade will surely continue to decline:

An economic downturn would have a huge impact on California and its citizens.  California’s budget surplus is precarious, and the state has failed to make any real changes in California’s fiscal structure.  Instead of using California’s period of good fortune to reduce the budget’s vulnerability to volatile asset prices, by broadening the tax base, Sacramento has amazingly elected to increase revenue volatility by augmenting the status quo with a temporary tax.

The games that partisan politicians play leads me to the conclusion that they either don’t believe that their policies adversely affect real lives, or they don’t care.  Certainly, economic outcomes   affect real lives.  There is abundant evidence that unemployment and poverty cause drug abuse, domestic violence, broken families, poor health outcomes, and many other social pathologies.

The question, then, is do policies affect economic outcomes?  In their book Why Nations Fail, Acemoglu and Robinson compare side-by-side communities that appear identical but have different economic outcomes, cities like Nogales Arizona and Nogales Mexico.  These two cities, and the other pairs in the book, are identical, except for being in different countries.  They are adjacent to other.  They have the same resources.  They are demographically very similar.  They only differ by political regimes.   Acemoglu and Robinson find that policy decisions and the inclusiveness of the decision process have dramatic impacts on economic outcomes, and thus people’s lives.

California policy is dominated by a rich coastal elite who control most of the media, finance campaigns, rule over the universities and generally dominate all discussion.  The result is extreme inequality, persistent nation-leading poverty, high housing costs, and limited opportunity for California’s most disadvantaged populations.  And, California’s most disadvantaged will pay the most for California’s next downturn.  They won’t write checks, because they can’t.  Their net worth won’t decline, because it’s already at or below zero.  They’ll pay a far higher cost in broken homes, broken families, and broken lives.

Bill Watkins is a professor at California Lutheran University and runs the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, which can be found at clucerf.org.

Much at stake for Bay Area in regional planning merger talks

By Daniel Borenstein, staff columnist 

Now the hard work begins.

Leaders of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission on Wednesday temporarily halted their ham-handed bid for a hostile takeover of the Association of Bay Area Governments. Instead, the two regional planning agencies have promised to work cooperatively toward a needed and long-overdue merger.

There's much at stake. The Bay Area must better align housing, jobs and public transit. We spend too much time stuck in traffic. It will only get worse if we fail to build densely near transit centers and continue to approve sprawl along highway corridors already filled to capacity.

Unfortunately, for decades we've had two regional planning agencies -- one for transportation, the other for housing -- that have been engaged in passive-aggressive and sometimes open warfare.

The mantra of ABAG is local control. For MTC, the goal has been imposition of regional order. In other areas of the state, one regional agency oversees the two functions. But in the Bay Area they have always been split. Merging these two cultures won't be easy.

Previous attempts have failed. And this one almost died before it began. Last month, MTC's executive director, Steve Heminger, and board chairman, Dave Cortese, proposed that their agency take away key ABAG staff members. See the Full Article HERE

Inconvenient truths about “affordable” housing in Boulder, CO (but applies to Marin County too)

Inconvenient truths about “affordable” housing and Ballot Question 300

By Paul Danish

Whatever else Ballot Questions 300 and 301 end up accomplishing, they have already succeeded in awakening the social consciences of most of the developers, builders, realtors and bankers in Boulder.

They’ll get over it, of course, but in the meantime a lot of trash is being talked about planning, development, growth and housing prices in Boulder.

And about Ballot Questions 300 and 301. Ballot Questions 300 and 301 would allow residents of neighborhoods to vote on zoning changes that affect their neighborhoods (Question 300) and require new growth to pay its own way (Question 301).

Here, in no particular order, are a few inconvenient truths that ought to be part of the conversation but aren’t:

1. Both liberals and conservatives say they’re for “more affordable” housing, but the very term “affordable housing” is meaningless. All housing is affordable — by someone. It isn’t “affordable housing” that we’re after. It’s low-priced housing.

2. The reason Boulder housing prices are high isn’t “a simple matter of supply and demand” as pro-growthers (both those with recently awakened social consciences and those with interminable liberal guilt) sometimes claim.

It’s a simple matter of demand and supply.

Boulder housing prices are high because there are a lot of relatively high paying jobs in the Boulder. When it comes to buying a house, chances are Boulderites with six-figure incomes will want more than a double-wide.

3. Apart from demand and supply, Boulder housing is going to be more expensive than comparable housing elsewhere in the metro Denver area for at least two other reasons. The first is location, location, location; if you want to live within walking distance of the Rocky Mountains instead of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, you’re going to pay a premium. The second is that the people of Boulder have made an enormous investment in maintaining Boulder’s environment and character — starting with the purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of open space — which makes Boulder a highly desirable place to live and pushes up property values.

4. When it comes to Boulder housing, the 500-pound gorilla in the room is the University of Colorado. The current enrollment of the University of Colorado is about 32,000, and chances are it will continue to grow. Historically university dormitories and married student housing can accommodate maybe 25 to 30 percent of the student body, and that proportion is unlikely to change much in the future. The rest, more than 20,000, live in off-campus housing in Boulder or in surrounding towns. It doesn’t take a genius to see that as CU grows an increasing number of students are going to find accommodations outside of Boulder — in Westminster, Longmont, Lafayette, Broomfield, Northglenn, Frederick and so on, and commute to school.

Instead of trying to further densify the already over-crowded neighborhoods near the campus, a more realistic student housing policy for Boulder would be for the City to provide more parking lots near the campus.

5. There is no free lunch. The more Boulder grows, the more traffic-congested it is going to become. This is because a) Boulder is designed around the automobile, and b) thanks to Boulder’s geography, Boulder’s street network cannot be expanded much without doing real damage to the city. Buses, bicycles and hare-brained schemes like eliminating auto lanes on arterial streets in favor of bicycle lanes will not eliminate the added congestion that comes with added population or even mitigate it. Neither will the sort of densification that has occurred in the 28th and 30th Street corridors — that much should be self-evident by now.

6. Opponents of Ballot Question 300 are trying to define it as an existential threat to low-cost housing in Boulder. The assumption is that if neighborhoods could vote on up-zonings and land use changes that would result in higher density — like the back-door densification measures the Council tried to slip through a few months ago — such changes would almost always be voted down.

That may well be the case. However, it doesn’t follow that changing Boulder’s land use regulations to allow additional rental units in existing single family homes and on existing single family lots will result in lower rents.

Back in the 1960s, a lot of Boulder home-owners rented out basement apartments to students, and (even taking into account 800 percent inflation) the rents were moderate by today’s standards. And because the homeowners lived on the premises, there was a degree of adult supervision, which made the higher density more tolerable.

But as the old homeowners died off, their homes were acquired not by new owner-occupants who rented out a room or a basement, but by absentee investors who turned them into total rental properties and jacked up both the rents and the number of renters — often in brazen disregard of the city’s occupancy limits. In Austin, Texas such rental properties around the University of Texas are called “stealth dorms.”

7. The claim by opponents of Ballot Question 300 that it “pits neighbors and neighborhoods against each other” is hogwash squared and cubed. Boulder neighborhoods historically look out for their own interests, but I can’t recall an occasion where one neighborhood has gotten into a fight with another over a land use issue. Ballot Question 300 isn’t going to change that.

As for pitting neighbor against neighbor, as a Boulder City Councilman and Boulder County Commissioner, I’ve sat through dozens of public hearings involving proposed projects that would increase the density and change the character of neighborhoods. The most striking thing about those hearings was the unanimity with which the residents opposed those projects. The real fear of Ballot Question 300’s opponents isn’t that it will pit neighbor against neighbor, but neighbors against developers. They should be honest enough to admit it.

Time Travel to Old Marin