I’ve always thought that if the various Protestant denominations can be said to represent a socio-economic sector of American culture, then the people who made up the United Methodist Church (UMC) were the middle of the middle. I mean that across the country and particularly in this region, which includes Southern California, Methodists never wanted to be bothered about too much social or economic justice, and when they were it was a sign that even the center of the country was getting on board.
Arguments against divestment from fossil fuels parallel those against divestment from South Africa.
I can vividly remember when, in the early 1970s, the UMC in my region finally climbed on board the national grape boycott to support farm workers, just as I can recall when the Conference (as the regional body is called) decided to push for divestment in South Africa.
» Read more about: Climate Change and Oil Portfolios: Divesting in the Future »
Last week, in a powerful affirmation of the common good, commissioners in Tennessee’s Johnson County unanimously opposed the privatization of the state prison within their county’s limits. A response to fears that the state government could soon outsource management of the Northeast State Correctional Complex, the resolution reads like a checklist of what democracy and public control can provide a community.
The “no” vote was prompted by the state government’s recent exploration of outsourcing the management of state properties, including prisons, hospitals, parks and even the University of Tennessee. State officials have also been trying to manage a shortage of prison officers after introducing a controversial overtime policy statewide to cut costs.
But the Johnson County commissioners recognize that outsourcing isn’t the answer: “Any type of privatization would be detrimental to our county, citizens and staff of Northeast Correctional Complex.” They also honored public service by dedicating a day each year in recognition of the prison’s current staff.
» Read more about: Counties Say No to Privatizing Their Prisons »
A number of residents of the picturesque, alpine community of Mount Shasta, California are fed up with their big, new, imminent water hog of a neighbor, the Crystal Geyser Water Company. As Capital & Main reported earlier this year, a group of them have been calling for months for an environmental impact report (EIR) to measure the potential harm that the opening of a new local bottling plant may have on the region’s watershed. With the state in the fourth year of a historic drought, they argued that allowing a multinational corporation to extract precious California groundwater to manufacture and sell tea, soda and bottled water around the world is the height of recklessness.
On Monday, under the name of their nonprofit group, We Advocate Through Environmental Review (WATER), residents filed a complaint in Napa County Superior Court, the district in which Crystal Geyser’s corporate headquarters is located,
» Read more about: Mount Shasta Water Lawsuit: Message to a Bottler »
If L.A.’s landlords have their way, California’s ongoing drought woes could result in many renters having to foot the bill for their water usage. Owners are nudging city leaders to study a survey released in July by the landlord group Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles (AAGLA).
The report claims that more than 86 percent of rental property owners in the city who pay for their tenants’ water have experienced an increase or seen no change in water usage since Governor Jerry Brown ordered mandatory restrictions in April. Landlords assert that renters have no incentive to conserve water because they aren’t paying for it, resulting in higher water costs.
Some tenant groups are crying foul, however, claiming that this proposal is little more than an attempt by landlords to use the drought to circumvent rent control laws. Los Angeles forbids owners of buildings constructed before 1979 to pass on water costs to tenants.
» Read more about: L.A. Landlords Seek to Put Tenants on the Hook for Water Bills »
If you try to play Monopoly with a two year old, you will not win.
Sure, you may be better at buying up property, building hotels and following rules about when to pass Go – good on you. But when the two year old decides he’s playing a different game, like Throw the Entire Board at the Adult, that game and its goals will absolutely trump yours.
Disruption went from Silicon Valley buzzword to cliché years ago, but it persists as an operational goal for countless tech startups and their investors. (See Judith Shulevitz’s excellent 2013 exploration of the term.)
We still see such supercharged words as reinvent, reimagine and revolutionize as investors search for the next “unicorn” – the term for a startup valued at more than $1 billion.
» Read more about: Do Unicorns Play Monopoly? Ask Uber and Amazon »
Backers of a proposed statewide ballot measure that would radically change the way wages and pensions of California’s government employees are formulated have begun an email campaign seeking pledges of support for the measure – as well as volunteers to circulate signature petitions when they become available in a few weeks.
The pension activists have 180 days from August 11, the date Attorney General Kamala D. Harris assigned a full title and ballot summary to the measure, in order to qualify it for the November, 2016 election.
Such email campaigns can help an initiative qualify for the state ballot if coupled with other efforts, Mike Madrid of Grassroots Lab, a Sacramento-based public affairs group, told Capital & Main by phone. “But if it is the only thing you are doing the chances for success are slim.”
In ballot-box politics, the bottom line is money.
» Read more about: Leaders of Pension-Cutting Ballot Proposal Look for Supporters Online »
As public officials across the country continue to manage shrinking budgets, experiments for funding public services are emerging. One new idea, the Social Impact Bond, has been advertised as a “win-win” for private investors and the public, but the reality is beginning to look a little different.
The results are in from the first SIB tried in the U.S. and it failed to meet its goals. The SIB was aimed at reducing the rate by which adolescents housed on Rikers Island returned to jail, with a goal of at least an 8.5 percent drop. Therapy was provided to inmates, but recidivism wasn’t significantly reduced.
SIBs are complex arrangements—private investors lend funding for a program and the government repays them only if certain goals are met. For the Rikers SIB, New York City was lent millions by Goldman Sachs, backed by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Proponents of SIBs claim that,
» Read more about: Wrong Island: Why Are Privatizers Applauding Failed Prison Experiment? »
When the U.S. Census Bureau released figures identifying California as having the highest poverty rate in the nation, the news would not have shocked the 4.8 million low-wage earners at the bottom of California’s income divide. For those single workers and families that subsist paycheck to paycheck, and too often make up the difference by maxing out credit cards or taking out predatory short-term loans, life’s a precarious balancing act even when things go well.
But when unforeseen calamities strike, such as serious health emergencies or the loss of a job, hard-pressed households are left without a safety net. Unable to keep up payments, loans fall into default and too often result in crippling court-ordered garnishments that claim up to a quarter of earnings.
SB 501 quickly ran afoul of the powerful California Bankers Association and debt-buyer lobbyists.
“We see increasing numbers of these families in our legal aid services throughout the state,” the Western Center on Law and Poverty’s Jessica Bartholow told Capital &
» Read more about: Garnishing California's Future: New Bill Seeks to Curb Wage Seizures »
Here’s the good news: The percentage rate of change in global carbon emissions in 2014 was zero. It didn’t go up. That’s the first time in the record books that the world economy grew but carbon emissions didn’t. Here’s the bad news: The average global temperature has been hotter every month since February of 1985 than the 20th century average for any given month. We’re talking 360 consecutive months of warmer-than-average temperatures.
Here’s the really bad news: If we continue to extract fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – at the current pace, we will not be able to live on the planet by mid-century.
We must leave 80 percent of our coal, oil and gas in the ground, if civilization is to survive.
Here’s the science: Despite the climate deniers, the consensus of people who study this field professionally say that if we raise the temperatures of the planet more than two degrees Celsius (that’s about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) human life as we know it will not be possible.
» Read more about: Dethroning Fossil Fuels: The Rise of the New Abolitionists »
Vivian Thorp was 28 years old when she ripped a ligament in her knee lifting heavy freight at Walmart in Vallejo, California. Until then, she’d liked her job and was good at it. “I was always strong and agile, and I had the skills for a physical job,” she says. “I helped set up that store.” But when the injury laid her up, she found herself adrift in the job market. “I wasn’t skilled for anything else other than waitressing or shipping and receiving,” she says. “I got really deeply depressed.”
Her life began to unravel. A bank repossessed the rental she was living in. The father of her baby daughter Jasmine, born in 1994, left Thorp and returned to England. In 1997, four years after the accident, Walmart finally paid her $20,000 for medical expenses and lost income, but more than half of it went to pay back workers’ compensation.
» Read more about: California's Worst Law — And What's Behind the Repeal Movement »