Housing Activist promotes Smart Growth and Plan Bay Area to Google Employees

Here is a slick presentation by a leading Housing Activist group, SPUR.  Egon Terplan makes a persuasive appeal to the employees at Google.  He speaks of high density development in urban settings as the acme of living.  I expect many of these young employees will discover that life is not so grand in a small apartment with young children who need to play.  

A Citizen Marin member makes a cameo appearance at 9:40.   He concludes his message about 40:00 with "solutions".

One of the "solutions" is to create changes to zoning and regulations BEFORE the project stage so citizens will not have a chance to challenge questionable development with concerns about traffic, parking, impacts on schools, tax burden on the community, etc.  He views all of us as NIMBYS and anti-growth and dismisses our concerns as superfluous .  He also suggests that local government should be replaced with appointed regional authorities like ABAG, MTC, and others.

In my experience, most members of Citizen Marin support thoughtful growth and local democracy as opposed to the rapid high density growth advocated by SPUR.  

Clearly they are worried about the growing unrest as people learn of Plan Bay Area.  Palo Alto successfully defeated a monster development in a residential area and elected council people who will represent local interests.

Comments from a Viewer:

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Implementation of Sustainable Development: don't give away your political power

*Affordable housing (below market rate) as 30% of income all income levels in high density stack and pack, no one owns property nor will they have the chance to own property nor will they have equity in their house from which to borrow on to start a business. Breaks the free market for housing. Government assignment of housing through public private partnerships of tax exempt housing organizations. Small space limits your ability to own stuff, have children and organize politically.

Federal housing plans encroach on States rights and rights of we the people to make our own decisions. If the government decided you're a problem, they can reassign you to another house and maybe another job.
Housing would be affordable if government policy did not take land off the market. PDA's of Plan Bay Area limit growth to high density.

Government regulation makes building more expensive. Regional housing needs are associated with "policy based" population projections. Who is making the policy?

*TOD/Active transportation: walk, bike, mass transit: carbon cap and trade gas tax, regional road pricing, vehicle miles traveled, automated collection of fees via fastrak for highways and bridges amounts to public surveillance. Tax payer to rate payer. Limits your mobility and distance as well as takes more of your time. Congestion robs you of minutes, "active transportation" robs you of hours and days. GAO report states goal is to reduce miles traveled not help people get to where they want to go. 

*Governance: regionalism is about breaking jurisdictional boundaries and bypassing the democratic process. No one in regional government is elected to that regional government board that they sit on. The MTC board includes State and Federal agency staff. MTC is an MPO (metropolitan planning organization) a federal register construct to funnel federal transportation funds to regions not state's to implement sustainable development.
*Public participation is a governance mechanism to give the public a chance to speak while taking their real legal political power away from them. This process is about manipulation of the public and shows a profound lack of respect for both our government process and the rights of the public to self govern.

*Stakeholders/public private partnerships are about special interests corrupting our government denying people the equal justice under the law that is our founding tradition.

*Our city > County > State > federal government jurisdictions become local > regional > global governance non-jurisdictions.

No jurisdiction means we the people have no legal political power. If we the people don't have the legal political power, then who does and to what end?

Our government is being expanded, boundaries dissolved, replaced, infiltrated, overlain, bypassed and sliced and diced in so many ways, it looks like a divide and conquer strategy to me. If we are to maintain any semblance of a government of the people, by the people and for the people we need to separate/consolidate/limit government and return to the three branch government structures and systems that are constitutional, representative and democratic and leave the rest to society to figure out.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." -Frederick Douglass

Housing — or “safe deposit boxes in the sky?”

By Tim Redmond

DECEMBER 29, 2014 – In the earlier days of San Francisco urban environmental movement, we talked about the “Manhattanization” of the city – the threat that highrise buildings would turn SF into a another version of New York – except without the subways or the city income tax or the rest of the financial and public infrastructure needed to handle that much density.

Now, of course, the official line in some of the environmental world is all about urban density. There’s some value to that; there’s also some value to realizing that part of the reason we have a housing crisis is that we’ve built too much office space and attracted more jobs than we can handle with the existing housing. Part of what’s now known as the slow-growth movement (it used to be the “anti-highrise movment”) is the concept that the city doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, accommodate every single office developer who wants to build a project here.

But now there’s a different type of “Manhattanization” happening – and you can see the outlines in this fascinating Bill Moyers report.

Moyers talks about the gap between the rich and the poor in American cities. He also talks about how real-estate developers use political clout to get their way. He complains about new towers for the richest of the rich blocking the sunshine in Central Park (at least San Francisco has laws protecting our parks).

But the main point of his piece, I think, is how much of the new housing is being bought up by people who don’t live in the units, don’t rent them out, and just see them as “safe deposit boxes in the sky” – places to park extra cash. Places that only get visited a few times a year.

We’re seeing that new kind of Manhattanization in San Francisco. And while Mayor Ed Lee says he’s open to doing something about vacant units, what he’s not doing, and what sounds like heresy these days, is to talk about whether we should allow these buildings to go up in the first place.

Why take scarce urban real estate and turn it into empty boxes of part-time pieds a terre for the ultra-wealthy? Mike Bloomberg talked about how billionaires were good for New York – but as Moyers points out, they aren’t much good for anyone if they don’t actually live in the city and pay taxes.

The San Francisco City Planning Department has its own video, which promises that 50 percent of the 30,000 new housing units the mayor wants to build will be accessible to the middle class. I don’t see how that’s possible with the current market conditions – if we are relying on the private developers to provide most of that housing.

We’re all proud of the $15 an hour minimum wage that’s coming to San Francisco – but it takes more than four times that amount to afford a new market-rate apartment in the city. So the minimum wage, valuable as it is, can’t be even remotely seen as an answer to the housing crisis.

And so far, we aren’t doing so well on the mayor’s goal. According to the city’s own dashboard, 3,980 units were completed by October, 2104, and 968 were affordable. That’s 24 percent affordable – and it means that 76 percent of all new housing is high-end condos and apartments, some of it available only to the wealthiest people in the world, who don’t even live here.

Happy new year.

Take Back the Word “Liberal”

A resolution for 2015

JANUARY 02, 2015 by JEFFREY A. TUCKER

For 2015, I would like to pick up an old campaign to take back the word “liberal” for the cause of human liberty. Or perhaps that’s too ambitious. Perhaps it is enough for each of us to do our part not to keep conceding the use of this glorious word to the enemies of liberty. It does not belong to them. It belongs to us.

This is not a tedious argument over definitions; this is about the proper identification of a magnificent intellectual tradition. Liberalism is about human liberty and its gradual progress over the last 500 years. It is not about state control. In the coming year, I’m determined to at least make my own language reflect this reality.

Yes, I know this is an old campaign. It was a cause pushed by F.A. Hayek, Leonard Read, Frank Chodorov, John T. Flynn, Milton Friedman, and countless others.

My favorite case is Ludwig von Mises. In 1927, he wrote a book called Liberalismus. It was an attempt to recast and update the intellectual foundations of the entire liberal movement. To his knowledge, this had not yet been done.

“The greatness of the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the first World War,” he wrote, “consisted precisely in the fact that the social ideal after the realization of which the most eminent men were striving was free trade in a peaceful world of free nations. It was an age of unprecedented improvement in the standard of living for a rapidly increasing population. It was the age of liberalism.”

But by the time the English edition of his book came out in 1962, he worried that the word liberal had been lost. The book appeared under the title The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth. Very soon after, he changed his mind again. He had decided not to give up the great word, not because he was spiteful or belligerent or did not understand that language evolves. He decided that the term could not be given up.

“This usage is imperative,” he wrote in 1966, “because there is simply no other term available to signify the great political and intellectual movement that substituted free enterprise and the market economy for the precapitalistic methods of production; constitutional representative government for the absolutism of kings or oligarchies; and freedom of all individuals from slavery, serfdom, and other forms of bondage.”

Doesn’t that just sum it up beautifully? The core conviction of liberalism was that society contained within itself the capacity for self-management. The social order was self-organized. We didn’t need masters and slaves. Society did not need to be hierarchically organized. Everyone could have equal freedom. This was a radical idea, and it did indeed build the best of modernity as we know it.

Liberalism secured private property. It ended slavery. It brought equal freedom to women. It stopped wars of conquest. It broke down the class and caste systems. It freed speech. It stopped religious persecution. It opened economic opportunities for everyone. It cast moral disapproval on despotisms of all sorts.

It put the consumer in charge of production. It brought education, culture, leisure, and even luxury to the mass of men and women. It lengthened lives, brought down infant mortality, raised incomes, ended plagues and starvation, and ignited the fire of invention that gave humanity the ability to travel, communicate, and cooperate as never before and as one human family. It brought peace.

This is what liberalism did! How can we give up this word? We cannot. We will not.

It is because of liberalism’s great achievements that the term itself became such a prize. We began to lose the word about 100 years ago, when the partisans of state power began to use the excuse of "liberalization" to push their agenda.

Gradually "liberalism" became about using public policy to create opportunities and improve the world, with the best of intentions. The statists' goals were the same as those of liberalism but the means they used to achieve their goals were completely antithetical and even dangerous to liberal ideals.

Matters became especially intense after the economic crash of 1929. Suddenly the market economy itself was on the hot seat and self-described liberals were forced to choose. Mostly they chose wrongly, and mainstream liberalism hooked up with big government and corporate statism. By the end of the New Deal, it was all over. The word had been stolen and came to mean the opposite of the original idea.

In the postwar period, there was a new coinage to describe people who opposed the political agenda of these new fake liberals. That word was “conservative,” which was a highly unfortunate term that literally means nothing other than to preserve, an impulse that breeds reactionary impulses. Within this new thing called conservatism, genuine liberals were supposed to find a home alongside warmongers, prohibitionists, religious authoritarians, and cultural fascists.

It was a bad mix.

All these years later, this new form of liberalism remains intact. It combines cultural snobbery with love of statist means and a devotion to imposing the civic religion at all costs and by any means. And yes, it can be annoying as hell. This is how it came to be that the word liberalism is so often said with a sneer, which you know if you have ever turned on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. And quite often, the right-wing attacks on liberalism are well deserved. But what does the right offer as an alternative? Not liberation but a new type of party control.

Given all these confusions, why not make another attempt to take back the word liberalism? Again, this is not an argument over the definition of a word. It is an argument about the proper means to build a great society. Is the goal of political life to maximize the degree of freedom that lives in the world, or is it to further tighten the realm of control and centrally plan our economic and cultural lives? This is the critical question.

The other advantage to using the word liberalism properly is that it provides an opportunity to bring up names like Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, Albert Jay Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, plus the more modern tradition with Rand, Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek, plus the tens of thousands of people who long for liberty today in academia, business, punditry, and public life generally. Just using the old term in its proper way provides an opportunity for enlightenment.

It’s true that liberalism of the old school had its problems. I have my own issues with the positions of the old liberals, and they include a general naïveté over democracy, too great a tolerance for the mythical “night-watchman state,” and some latent affection for colonialism.

The more important point is that genuine liberalism has continued to learn and grow and now finds a more consistent embodiment in what is often but awkwardly called libertarianism or market anarchism, both of which are rightly considered an extension of the old liberal intellectual project.

Still, even libertarians and anarcho-capitalists need to reattach themselves to the old word, otherwise their self-identifications become deracinated neologisms with no historical or broader meaning. Any intellectual project that is detached from history is finally doomed to become an idiosyncratic sect.

Let’s just say what is true. Real liberalism lives. More than ever. It only needs to be named. It’s something we can all do.

If you agree, there is a statement you can sign at LiberalismUnrelinquished.net.

This post originally appeared at Liberty.me.

Editor's at SF Gate call for "Forceful" solutions to Regionalize Government

Stalin was a master at central planning.

A need for regional thinking

San Francisco Chronicle

Published 6:00 pm, Sunday, December 28, 2014

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A giant tunneling machine dubbed Elizabeth is burrowing under London, part of a $25 billion regional train line scheduled to open in 2018. The finished product is intended to to alleviate suffocating traffic, ease pressure on housing costs and share growth across a booming urban center, not just the inner core.

Those problems, if not the solution, should get the Bay Area thinking. Our locale shares London’s anxiety about the future and the next steps to improve livability.A giant tunneling machine dubbed Elizabeth is burrowing under London, part of a $25 billion regional train line scheduled to open in 2018. The finished product is intended to to alleviate suffocating traffic, ease pressure on housing costs and share growth across a booming urban center, not just the inner core.

Costly housing and inadequate transit are concerns that occupy Bay Area residents nearly every day, topics taken on in The Chronicle’s “City on the Edge” editorial series. As the expansive London plan shows, these shortcomings can’t be isolated to the big-city center. They’re regional concerns, taking in dozens of communities.

Other areas — notably the vast region surrounding New York that includes New Jersey and Pennsylvania — are moving in the same direction as London. It’s time there, as well as here,

California's new laws for 2015: How are you affected?

California's new laws for 2015: How are you affected?

Donald Sterling and V. Stiviano watch the Clippers play. Sterling, then the team's owner, was fined $2.5 million by the NBA in April. A new state law bars sports team owners from writing off league penalties on their taxes. (Danny Moloshok / Associated Press)
By PATRICK MCGREEVYcontact the reporter
Politics and Government
Crime

California adds hundreds of laws on sick pay, guns, mothers, plastic bags, schools, gardens and other topics



Hundreds of California laws take effect with the new year, including several drafted in response to corruption scandals in the Legislature, the mass shooting in Isla Vista last spring and racially inflammatory comments by the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Others address drug crimes, the use of aerial drones by paparazzi and rights for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

California lawmakers have continued to aid immigrants and tighten gun controls even as Congress has remained gridlocked on those issues. They also passed a raft of bills aimed at winning back public trust in an election year (though the ruling Democrats, tarnished by criminal charges against several party legislators, failed to regain a supermajority in the Capitol).


The Isla Vista rampage that killed six UC Santa Barbara students in May was a factor in two new state laws aimed at keeping firearms away from people deemed dangerous. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who meanwhile rode a wave of popularity to a historic fourth and final term, vetoed 143 bills the Legislature sent him, saying they cost too much money, did not improve the state or created unnecessary regulations. He signed 930 others into law.

Most of those take effect Jan. 1. Others don't kick in until July, including a ban on single-use plastic grocery bags. Opponents have submitted petitions for a referendum on the law; if the referendum qualifies for the November 2016 ballot, the ban will be delayed until that vote.

Also taking effect in July are a minimum of three days' paid sick leave each year for workers and a $300-million annual tax break for Hollywood.

One law being implemented now allows police or family members to seek a restraining order that bars a person deemed dangerous from possessing firearms for 21 days. Another requires law enforcement agencies to develop policies encouraging officers to consult a state database that shows who owns guns before checking on someone who is potentially dangerous.

The measures followed the May massacre in Isla Vista, where Elliot Rodger killed six UC Santa Barbara students and wounded 13 others. Less than a month before, police had visited Rodger to check on his welfare but did not know he had guns.

Also last year, federal bribery charges were leveled against two state senators, and Brown signed measures that extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting public bribery cases and double restitution fines for public officials who seek or accept bribes.

In addition, public officials are now barred from using campaign funds to pay fines for improper personal use of political funds.

The governor also approved a law prohibiting owners of professional sports teams from deducting league penalties from their taxes. In April, a record $2.5-million fine was levied by the National Basketball Assn. against then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, whose disparaging comments about African Americans caused public outrage.

Other new state laws include:


A new California law prohibits state entities from displaying or selling copies of the Confederate flag or objects marked with it. Exceptions include books, digital media and educational or historical museum displays. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

BABIES

•Breast feeding: Large airports in California must provide, behind the security screening and separate from restrooms, a room where women can express breast milk.

•Maternity leave: State universities may not require female graduate students to take leaves of absence for pregnancies and must allow those who do take leaves to return in good standing.

BUSINESS

•Bitcoin: Digital currencies including bitcoin are legal for transactions in California.

•Online reviews: Nondisparagement clauses in consumer contracts for goods or services in the state of California are now unenforceable; therefore, businesses cannot use them for civil lawsuits against Californians offering opinions or reviews on Internet sites such as Yelp.

CIVIL RIGHTS

•Confederate flag: State entities are barred from displaying or selling copies of the Confederate flag or objects marked with it, unless the image appears in a book, digital medium or state museum for educational or historical purposes.

CRIME

•Badges: Those convicted of using a badge to impersonate a peace officer will pay a higher fine: $2,000 rather than $1,000.

•Drugs: Those convicted of possessing crack cocaine for sale, who previously could be sentenced to three to five years in jail, now face two to four years — the same penalty applied to offenses involving powder cocaine.

•Juvenile records: Juveniles convicted of crimes will have their records automatically sealed if they complete all court-imposed orders.

•Sex offenders: Paroled sex offenders who fail to report for fitting with a GPS monitoring device, or who willfully render such a device inoperable, face a mandatory 180 days in jail.

EDUCATION


Veta Gashgai attends a demonstration against the Exide battery recycling plant. A new law requires the state to close or permit the Vernon plant after assessing its hazardous-waste compliance. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

•Allergies: Public schools must stock epinephrine injectors so medicine can be administered quickly to students who suffer serious allergic reactions.

•Bad behavior: Schools can no longer expel students who "willfully defy" teachers or administrators at any grade level and cannot suspend students for that misbehavior through third grade.

•Consent: Colleges and universities must adopt a standard of clear consent for students engaging in sexual activity. "Affirmative consent" is required by both participants.

•Equality: Public schools must publish the number of girls and boys participating in each sport to show whether the sexes have the required equal access to athletic programs.


•Genocide lessons: State education officials must consider incorporating lessons about the Armenian genocide and other mass killings, such as those in Rwanda and Darfur, into curriculum standards that will be updated in 2015. Lessons about genocide should include oral testimony from survivors, rescuers and witnesses.

ELECTIONS

•Absentee voting: Absentee ballots mailed on election day will be counted if they arrive within three days. Formerly the deadline was election day.

•Ballot initiatives: Proposed initiatives may now be amended after signed petitions are submitted, during a 30-day public-review period.

•Voter registration: Eligible Californians cannot be disqualified from registering to vote on the grounds that they sign the required affidavit with a mark, cross or signature stamp.

ENVIRONMENT

•Exide: The state must decide whether to grant a permit for Exide Technologies' battery recycling plant in Vernon after determining whether it is complying with hazardous-waste laws, or shut the facility down.

•Fracking: Oil and gas companies must report the amount of water used in drilling operations that involve hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a procedure in which water mixed with sand and chemicals is injected into rock.


•Frogs: The California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii), recognized by the federal government as a "threatened" species, becomes the official state amphibian. Mark Twain featured the creature in his story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."

•Trains: Railroad operators must disclose more information to the state and public about crude oil and other hazardous materials being transported through California. That information includes the volume of material and routes taken.

FOOD

•Access: A new California Farm to Fork Office will be created to promote access to food and make more agricultural products available to schools and underserved communities.

•Gardens: Landlords may not prevent residents of condominiums and apartments from growing their own fruits and vegetables in portable containers.

GUNS


Homes overlook the Inglewood Oil Field. A new state law requires oil and gas companies to report the amount of water used in drilling operations that involve hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

•Courts: Courts must report to the state Department of Justice within one business day when a person becomes barred from having a firearm.

•Standards: Single-shot pistols must comply with the state's handgun safety requirements, including having certain safety devices or meeting specified firing tests.

•Toy weapons: In response to law enforcement shootings of minors brandishing toy guns, manufacturers now must make the toys brightly colored so officers can easily distinguish them from real firearms.

HEALTH

•Birth control: Most health plans are required to cover contraceptive drugs, devices and products for women, as well as related counseling, follow-up services and voluntary sterilization procedures.

•Sterilization: State prisons may not force or coerce inmates to be sterilized unless the inmate's life is in danger.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

•Prostitution: Those convicted of solicitation or prostitution may have the conviction set aside if he or she was a victim of human trafficking.

•Wiretaps: Courts may approve wiretaps for the investigation or prosecution of human trafficking.

IMMIGRATION

•Insurance: Immigrants with state driver's licenses are eligible for California's Low Cost Auto Insurance Program, even if they reside here illegally. A 2013 law that takes effect Jan. 2 allows specially marked licenses for undocumented residents, and a separate new law prohibits employers from discriminating against anyone with such a license.

•Professional licenses: Those in the country illegally will no longer need a Social Security number to obtain state licenses to work as doctors, dentists, nurses, barbers, security guards or for many other jobs.


A new California law aimed at paparazzi allows prosecution for invasion of privacy when aerial drones are used to photograph or record another person in a private setting. (Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)

•Proposition 187: State law books will be stripped of provisions in the 1994 ballot measure that would have withheld public services from those in the country illegally but were ruled unconstitutional.

•Student loans: Immigrants residing in the country illegally are eligible to apply for student loans funded by the state to help them attend University of California or California State University campuses.

INTERNET

•Booking photos: Internet websites may no longer charge a fee to people who have been arrested in exchange for removing their booking photos from a website.

•Children: Businesses may no longer use personal information about minor students obtained through Internet education websites and mobile applications for any purpose other than online education.

•Court orders: Victims of "revenge porn" can seek court orders to have sexually explicit photos posted by others removed from the Internet and to ask for damages.

•Selfies: The law against posting sexually explicit photos of someone online as retaliation is extended to photos taken, though not posted, by the victim.

JUSTICE SYSTEM

•DNA: Imprisoned felons can get DNA tests of evidence if they show that such tests are relevant to their cases, replacing the current requirement of a demonstration that it would prove their innocence.

•Sentences: Those convicted of aggravated arson — in which damages and firefighting costs exceed $7 million — can be sentenced to prison for 10 years to life.

•Truants: Confinement in a juvenile detention facility, or juvenile hall, is no longer allowed as a penalty for minors who are found in contempt of court solely for failing to obey a judge's order to attend school.

PRIVACY

•Data mining: State agencies are barred from cooperating with federal officials in the mass collection of phone and computer records unless a warrant has been issued.


American Legion Chaplain Bill Cook at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine in April. A new California law allows for the creation of a state veterans cemetery on the former El Toro base site. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

•Drones: Prosecution for invasion of privacy is permitted when aerial drones are used to photograph or record another person in a private setting.

•Students: School districts collecting information on students through social media are limited to data involving student or school safety. Districts must allow parents to review and correct any such information collected.

RESIDENTIAL CARE

•Admissions: The state may block new admissions to a residential care facility that has been cited for violations posing a risk to the health and safety of residents.

•Carbon monoxide: All community care facilities, including child care establishments and residential care homes for the elderly, must have at least one carbon monoxide detector installed.

•Violations: Residential care facilities for the elderly must remedy license deficiencies within 10 days of notification.

SEX AND GENDER


•Births: Same-sex couples are allowed to identify themselves on state birth certificates as "father," "mother" or the new gender-neutral option of "parent."

•Death certificates: Transgender Californians will be able to have the gender they identify with listed on their death certificates.

TRANSPORTATION

•Bike trails: Local agencies, including cities and park districts, may place proposals on the ballot that, if two-thirds of local voters approve, would impose a vehicle registration surcharge of up to $5 to develop and maintain bikeways.

•Light rail: The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is permitted to convert the Metro Orange Line busway to light rail in the San Fernando Valley.

VETERANS

•Cemetery: State and local officials can begin working to create a new veterans' cemetery at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine.

•Criminal convictions: Courts may create a diversion program for active military personnel or veterans who commit misdemeanors and are suffering from service-related trauma or drug abuse.


patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

Heaven on Earth The Rise and Fall of Socialism

Welcome to 2015 and NEW GAS TAXES at the pump.

As you know, California drivers have been experiencing an early gift this season in the form of lower fuel prices. With average fuel prices in California down approximately 85 cents per gallon from a year ago, it has been a little easier for families to balance their holiday budgets or travel to see relatives. The boom in U.S. oil production - including right here in California - has played an important role in lowering prices at the pump. 

Unfortunately, a portion of this relief will be short-lived. That's because California's "hidden gas tax" will likely hit drivers next month when gas and diesel are placed in the state's "cap-and-trade" carbon trading program. Despite calls from more than 115,000 Californians for the Air Resources Board to delay or modify this program, it now appears certain that this policy will hit drivers next month.

That's the bad news.

The good news is California drivers rallied this year and successfully engaged state government officials in a long-overdue debate over bringing fuels into the cap-and-trade program.

Thanks to your efforts, the Air Resources Board has at least acknowledged that the price of fuel will increase when the "hidden gas tax" takes effect.

"Stripping Environmental Laws for Urban Growth" at ABAG March 8, 2013

Politicians at ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) advocating the stripping of Environmental Laws to provide for more urban growth in environmentally sensitive areas.  Plan Bay Area is welfare for builders, financiers and housing advocates.

"Twenty Somethings" find Affordable Housing and Self Reliance in the "Forbidden Lifestyle" of Plan Bay Area

One of the often repeated lies of the Pro High Density Housing folks (CALM, etc)  tell, is that "young people prefer to live in small apartments in urban environments". This is against every consumer survey done on home ownership among all classes of people over the last fifty years. According to industry groups, 80% of people prefer the "single family home" lifestyle over crowded urban conditions. 

 We are also told that there is "no affordable solutions" for young people.  This is simply not true.  Here are two examples of independent, creative twenty somethings who have figured out an affordable living solution.    Both of these solutions will be banned under the "urban corridor" ideal of Plan Bay Area. Single family living on a piece of land is termed  ugly "sprawl" and causes global warming.
  
To me these young folks represent the "California Dream" of creative independence that once was dominant in Marin County until some progressives aligned with developers and power hungry politicians to advocate for the urbanization of Marin.   

We will Save Marin Again!  

Once Upon A Time, Free Speech And Association Were Sacred To Liberals

Once Upon A Time, Free Speech And Association Were Sacred To Liberals

The old, classical idea of liberalism embraced freedom of speech. A commitment to liberty meant respecting the right of every person to speak, and it equally meant opposing the use of state power to censor or in any way “chill” freedom of speech.

By the same token, all people were free to associate for the purpose of advancing their peaceful interests and government had no right to interfere either directly or indirectly, such as by compelling the release of membership information.

The leading case in this regard is NAACP v. Alabama. Alabama’s segregationist officials, irked that the NAACP was working against their policies, wanted it silenced and ousted from the state. Toward that goal, it relied upon state law to compel the NAACP to disclose a list with the names and addresses of all its members and agents within the state.

In its brief, co-authored by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP argued that Alabama was trying to violate constitutionally protected rights of free speech and association.

The case was decided in 1958. Unanimously, the Supreme Court held that the state could not require the NAACP to disclose such information. Writing the Court’s opinion, Justice Harlan said, “Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.”

Alabama’s contempt citation and heavy fine against the NAACP for failure to comply with its demands were tossed out.

Joining Justice Harlan were famous liberals: Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, William Brennan. You have to wonder what they would say about modern “liberals” who have no qualms about using the power of government to punish groups espousing dissident beliefs.

Today’s dissidents, groups such as Americans for Prosperity (AFP), no longer need to protest state segregation, but they protest the expansion and abuse of government power in many other respects. As Tim Phillips and David Spady of that organization write in an op-ed piece in the December 19thWall Street Journal, California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris is demanding that AFP disclose the names, addresses, and contribution levels of its supporters within the state.

Nothing in California law allows the attorney general to make that demand. But as we have seen over and over during the last several years, absence of legal justification doesn’t impede government officials who believe that “winning” is all that matters from doing whatever they want.

Attorney General Harris maintains that she would protect the confidentiality of AFP’s membership information, but we must take that with a shaker of salt. No one would have legal recourse if names and addresses somehow leaked to zealots who’d like to intimidate AFP supporters. In any event, California has no more a legitimate interest in knowing who the members and donors of AFP are than Alabama had in knowing who was supporting the NAACP.

AFP has been operating in California (and other states) for thirteen years and the government has never before seen any need to pry into its membership. Why now?

I think that Phillips and Spady are absolutely correct in writing, “Rather than debate the merits of their policies, many on the left responded with a coordinated campaign to suppress free speech – primarily by intimidating, demonizing and silencing the people who opposed and defeated them.”

Since most of the “progressive” agenda has been in place for years and many people are coming to doubt all the glowing promises made for it, we’re seeing the iron fist of statism emerge — abusive policies intended to intimidate and punish critics. Losing in the battle of ideas, progressivism desperately turns to raw power to maintain its grip on the country.

The liberals of old worried about preserving individual privacy in the face of government hostility. Justice Harlan pointed out in his opinion, “This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations.” It is simply no rightful concern of government whether a person chooses to belong to or support a church, a social organization, an educational organization, an advocacy group, or anything else.

Privacy used to matter to liberals, who understood that neither “the public” nor state officials have any right to know such things about individuals.

It’s very revealing that today’s so-called liberals find the need to resort to the same tactics that defenders of segregation once used.

Philadelphia Artist Defeats Eminent Domain Land Grab, Will Keep His Studio

Philadelphia Artist Defeats Eminent Domain Land Grab, Will Keep His Studio


Nick Sibilla , Contributor


James Dupree, a world-renowned artist, has battled the City of Philadelphia for nearly two years to save his studio from a government land grab. Using the power of eminent domain, the citywanted to bulldoze Dupree’s studio and pave the way for a grocery store and a parking lot. His fight sparked nationwide outrage and galvanized thousands of supporters.

And he just beat City Hall.

In a statement released earlier this month, Brian Abernathy, executive director for the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA), announced that the “PRA will end condemnation proceedings enabling Mr. Dupree to keep his studio.”




James Dupree

Dupree has owned his studio in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Mantua for almost a decade. Back in 2005, he purchased what was then a dilapidated car garage and poured considerable resources into renovating the 8,600-square-foot facility. His studio is just minutes away from Drexel University and some of Philadelphia’s finest museums, including the Barnes Foundation, the Rodin Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which houses several pieces of Dupree’s work).

But on December 27, 2012, the city seized the deed to his studio, jeopardizing its future. Appallingly, the condemnation began just four days before an eminent-domain loophole was closed. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. New Londonthat the government could use eminent domain to seize an entire neighborhood under the guise of “economic development.” Outraged, lawmakers in Pennsylvania and more than 40 other states curbed the use of eminent domain and passed new protections for property owners. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s reforms did not apply to Philadelphia and other cities until December 31, 2012.

Once appraised for over $2 million, Dupree’s studio is home to over 5,000 pieces of his oeuvre. It also doubles as both a museum and a loft space ready to rent on Airbnb. During his battle with the PRA, Dupree even painted the exterior as a visceral protest against eminent domain. “As an art studio, that thing is unique,” Dupree said in an interview.

Philadelphia thought differently. Initially, the city offered Dupree about $600,000 for the entire property. At one point, the PRA reportedly presented Dupree with another $40,000 to compensate him for all of the interior improvements and his art. Later on, Philadelphia proposed a land swap to Dupree. One of the properties was in complete disarray, with a dead cat on site.

But he wasn’t interested. “Getting my deed back was the only thing I ever wanted,” Dupree said.

Over the past year, the Institute for Justice worked tirelessly with Dupree to pressure the city to back down and respect his constitutional rights. In March, Dupree held “Stolen Dreams in the Promise Zone” at his gallery—probably the first-ever art show inspired by eminent-domain abuse. One month later, IJ, along with the ACLU of Philadelphia, organized an open-door event on location at his studio in Mantua to rally support. Concern over Dupree’s treatment catalyzed an unusual coalition, with ACLU chapters teaming up with Americans for Prosperity, the Commonwealth Foundation, the Mural Arts Program and a plethora of other local art groups.

Finally, after months of grassroots pressure, the PRA relented. Yet even in its announcement, the PRA continued to claim that Dupree was an obstacle: “In short, the inability to acquire Mr. Dupree’s property puts the prospect of bringing fresh food to this community at serious risk.”

But the city’s own redevelopment plans say otherwise. City agencies already own over 400 vacant lots—more than 40 percent of all vacant land in Mantua. In fact, government-owned vacant parcels make up roughly 15 percent of all parcels in the neighborhood. Philadelphia has plenty of land to build a supermarket; there was never a need to bulldoze Dupree Studios.

By all accounts, Mantua is in rough shape. Half of the neighborhood lives below the poverty line. Fifteen percent of homes are vacant—twice the city average. So it’s particularly galling that the city would choose to condemn one of the few vibrant properties in the neighborhood.

With the threat of condemnation gone, Dupree is keen on revitalizing the neighborhood through the power of art. With his studio, Dupree wants to return to teaching art classes and mentoring inner-city youth. As he put it, his studio “has the potential to be the lighthouse of the community.”


Since he fought condemnation and lived to tell the tale, Dupreehopes his victory “puts the use of eminent domain on notice: people are not going to allow their properties to be taken unjustly.”

“I didn’t just win. We all won. America wins with this.”

Segregation at All Costs: Bull Connor and the Civil Rights Movement

This is a 10 minute video of Bull Connor, one of the most reviled politicians of the Old South, who pandered to worse impulses of society to hold his political power.  Ironically,  he became a galvanizing symbol as a common enemy of the Civil Rights movement and decent people worldwide, and made full civil right reforms possible. 

Politicians long have known how to stir fear and division as a political tool of power.  Watch for politicians using code words to isolate and marginalize people as outsiders, coercion through guilt, emotions over reason.  This is the sign of a demagogue.

For more on Bull Connor HERE

¹dem·a·gogue

 noun \ˈde-mə-ˌgäg\: a political leader who tries to get support by making false claims and promises and using arguments based on emotion rather than reason