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I recently interviewed one of the country’s unabashed progressive leaders, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our discussion ranged from Ronald Reagan’s legacy to the failures of contemporary Democrats to stand up for their values. “We have an income inequality crisis in this country that will endanger the future of the entire United States of America,” de Blasio told me. We present here the second in a series of clips from that interview. (Full transcript here.)
Danny is communications director at LAANE and the publisher of Capital and Main. He has led LAANE’s communications efforts for the past decade. He has attracted national media attention for numerous LAANE projects, including the successful effort to stop Wal-Mart from building a superstore in Inglewood and the drive to bring living wages to hotel workers in Santa Monica.
Read more articles by Danny Feingold » Read more about: Watch Now: Bill de Blasio on the Current Economic Crisis »
Our friend showed up late in the evening from Northern California to spend a couple of days with us before pushing on in a long-planned vacation. But when I woke up the next morning, he had been up for hours. I found him surrounded by three screens and his cell phone – solving a tech problem for his company.
“Auspicious beginning of a vacation,” I said. “I thought you were supposed to leave all that behind.”
“Oh, no,” he said, “not at my pay level.”
And so it goes. “No rest for the weary and the wicked go free.” That was an oft repeated phrase an early mentor in work mumbled as he sipped on yet another cup of coffee and ran to yet another customer. He may have been obsessive and wired, but he only worked a 40-hour week. None of us worked more, except the boss now and then.
Capital & Main recently looked at a spate of negative headlines about public pension funds, spurred by data that State Controller John Chiang released on his new public data site at ByTheNumbers.sco.ca.gov.
Chiang has served as Controller since 2006, acting as California’s Chief Fiscal Officer. He was recently elected as State Treasurer and will switch to that office next year. In both roles, Chiang sits on the Boards of Administration for the two largest public employee funds, California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS).
Capital & Main followed up with the Controller to ask about the state of pension systems in California and how those systems should be looking to the future.
The data you posted on your By the Numbers site led to many existing critics of pension saying “See?
» Read more about: Controller John Chiang on the Future of California’s Public Pensions »
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California is in the midst of what is arguably the worst drought in its recorded history.
Powered by Cincopa Video Hosting for Business solution.California’s Megadrought in the Central ValleyPictures of land and people in California’s Central Valley impacted by the state’s historic drought.Dead orchards are bulldozed and woodchipped to make into compost.flash 16cameramake Canonheight 600orientation 1camerasoftware Adobe Photoshop CC 2originaldate 10/28/2014 5:34:26 PMwidth 900cameramodel Canon EOS 5D Mark IICitrus grower Bryan Hixson alongside the Friant-Kern Canalflash 16cameramake Canonheight 600orientation 1camerasoftware Adobe Photoshop CC 2originaldate 10/28/2014 12:23:12 AMwidth 900cameramodel Canon EOS 5D Mark IIAlmond husks. Almonds are highly water-intensive, but growers are holding onto their almond fields and even switching over to the crop because it yields among the highest profit margins.flash 16cameramake Canonheight 600orientation 1camerasoftware Adobe Photoshop CC 2originaldate 10/28/2014 7:10:32 PMwidth 900cameramodel Canon EOS 5D Mark IIBoth the high-speed rail and the effort to restore the San Joaquin salmon run are political third rails in the Central Valley.flash 16cameramake Canonheight 600orientation 1camerasoftware Adobe Photoshop CC 2originaldate 11/6/2014 12:00:38 AMwidth 900cameramodel Canon EOS 5D Mark IICitrus grower Gus Carranza in his fieldsflash 16cameramake Canonheight 600orientation 1camerasoftware Adobe Photoshop CC 2originaldate 10/27/2014 8:13:52 PMwidth 900cameramodel Canon EOS 5D Mark IICalifornia’s Proposition 1 was an emergency measure to mitigate the drought situation,
“Racism doesn’t take a break when it rains and neither will we,” Priscilla Ocen, a professor at Loyola Law School, announced over a loudspeaker outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles Tuesday. Before her stood a crowd of about 200 people, mostly lawyers and law students, who braved a downpour to protest state violence from South L.A. to New York City, culminating in a four-minute-and-thirty-second “die-in” — representing the four-and-a-half hours that police in Ferguson, Missouri, let Michael Brown’s dead body lie in a street.
“I think it’s a really important thing to stand up to the injustice that we’re seeing around the country,” said Mona Iman, director of Taslimi Foundation, which works to defend human rights in Iran. “This wave of killings of unarmed black men is just so disturbing,” she told me, “and when you feel the frustration and you feel the anger at what’s happening in the world,
» Read more about: Lawyers and Law Students Stage ‘Die-in’ Outside L.A. Courthouse »
“Ain’t that about nothing,” Macy Farmdale said. “Nine to zip, including the so-called liberals.” She shook her head. “What chance does the working woman have, I ask you.”
Jess Dixon said, “It’s all about keeping the big conveyor belt going, Macy. Us peasants have no choice but to fight and scrabble each day for our rice and beans.”
“Sheeet,” her friend sneered.
The two chuckled mirthlessly. They lamented the recent Supreme Court ruling wherein employees were expected to go through their end of shift security screenings on their own time—no matter if it took five minutes or half an hour.
Farmdale leaned across the lunch table toward the other woman. “This is why we need a union,” she whispered. She leaned back and had more of her chicken salad sandwich.
Jess hunched her shoulders. “That wouldn’t change the ruling. I bet them unions filed, you know,
» Read more about: The Dixon Family Chronicles: “The People United” »
What do Facebook, Kaiser Permanente, Staples and the San Francisco Department of Environment have in common? All four appear on a list of corporate and government entities that pledged to stop purchasing furniture treated with flame-retardant chemicals. The Center for Environmental Health (CEH), the organization behind the pledge, hopes to steer business away from furniture containing flame retardants, which have been linked to a range of health risks. All the offices on the list spend a combined $520 million on furniture every year.
The pledge coincides with new state legislation that will require manufacturers to attach labels to furniture treated with flame retardants. In September Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1019, which takes effect January 1, 2015.
Treating furniture with flame-retardant chemicals used to be standard procedure for meeting California’s furniture flammability code, known as Technical Bulletin 117.
“For a long time government regulations were promoting the use of these chemicals,” Charles Margulis of CEH tells Capital &
» Read more about: Offices Pledge They’ll Buy Chemical-Free Furniture »
Occasionally, President Barack Obama reminds us that he was once a community organizer.
In his interview last Monday night with BET News, Obama said that he had invited some people who have been organizing protests against police misconduct to meet with him at the White House last week.
“Because the old adage, power concedes nothing without a fight — I think that’s true,” Obama said.
Obama was closely paraphrasing a statement by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass that is well-known among community organizers and activists: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
This is not a phrase that most politicians would be familiar with. Obama probably first heard Douglass’ words during his three years as a community organizer in Chicago during the 1980s. Douglass’ famous one-liner was actually part of a speech he gave on August 3, 1857 in Canandaigua,
In The Hunger Games, the rich and politically powerful rulers of the capital city Panem force young people from 12 districts to fight against each other. The Games serve the interests of the ruling elite by ensuring a quiescent populace remains that way, while 23 of the 24 young combatants are meant to wind up dead.
Good dystopian sci-fi holds up a mirror to reality, sometimes despite itself. It is unlikely that either trilogy author Suzanne Collins or Lionsgate – the producer and distributor of the film series – had Hollywood in mind, but the films provide an excellent description of the economics of today’s movie industry, as states compete with each other to give away ever more taxpayer dollars in exchange for jobs that, in some cases at least, they don’t even get.
As a new LAANE report details, every year approximately 40 U.S.
Last week Chicago Bulls basketball star Derrick Rose wore a T-shirt in warm-ups that read “I Can’t Breathe,” protesting the non-indictment of a New York police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner. Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James wore a similar shirt the next night, telling a reporter who asked him after the game if his action was a “Cavaliers thing,” that no, it was a “worldly thing.”
A few days before these pro basketball players’ protests, five members of the St. Louis Rams football team ran out of the team dressing room before kick-off with their hands raised above their heads, a reference to the “don’t shoot” gesture that protesters have been using after the shooting of teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Predictable outrage ensued. The St. Louis Police Officers Association issued a statement saying the organization was “…profoundly disappointed” with the five players,
“Man, what can I do?” DeMarkus Williamson paced, hands on his hips, head down. He was dressed in oversized basketball shorts and a tee.
“Teaflake doesn’t strike me as the forgiving sort.” Little Joe said. “But then again, you didn’t steal his money. He’s a logical cat.”
“Still,” the young man said, gesturing with his hands. “It was my girl that done it, and like he’s gonna believe I wasn’t in on it.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“She made off with a shade over twelve grand. Settin’ me up to be the chump.”
“Shit,” Little Joe said, whistling.
The two were in a rear bedroom in a clapboard house in Richmond. Out a translucent-curtained window, the metal spires of the century-old Chevron refinery could be seen in the near distance. Recently the progressives in the city, outspent mightily to the tune of $3 million by Big Oil backing its hand-picked candidates,
» Read more about: The Dixon Family Chronicles: “Live for Today” »
When people think of Los Angeles, what comes to mind first? Maybe Disneyland, Hollywood for sure, perhaps our proximity to the beach, but definitely traffic—the infamous Los Angeles freeway traffic. Is there ever an answer to this omnipresent problem?
Over this past summer, I had the privilege of spending time in Hong Kong, thanks to the Henry Luce Foundation and the Urban Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. For six weeks, I explored the area while researching the political and education underpinnings of rooftop farms in Hong Kong. When I made the transition back to L.A., I found myself reflecting on different aspects of life, including food justice and transportation, and making unexpected comparisons between the two places.
Hong Kong has a population of more than seven million people and is one of the most world’s densely populated areas, with about twice the population of Los Angeles.
» Read more about: Hong Kong to L.A.: Reflections on Transit Transformation »
“Public Pensions Need Gamblers Anonymous,” blared the op-ed by the American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew Biggs in the Wall Street Journal last week.
Can it be true? Did the trustees of CalPERS just take retirement funds for 1.7 million Californians – backed up by our tax dollars – to Las Vegas and put it all on black?
Of course not. Biggs is probably talking about speculating through black box investments and shadowy hedge funds, right?
Wrong again. The risky investing strategy we are warned against: the stock market.
As a measuring stick, Biggs trots out the “100 minus age rule,” which says that an individual should invest no more than that percentage amount in stocks and other so-called risky assets. (So a 30-year-old might have 70 percent of his or her investments in stocks and 30-percent in things like bonds,
» Read more about: Pension Cutter Confuses Stock Market With Las Vegas »
A year and a half ago, I wrote an article for the Huffington Post that I called “Will the Killing of Trayvon Martin Catalyze a Movement Like Emmett Till Did?” I pointed out that Rosa Parks was thinking about Emmett Till — a 14-year-old African American who was brutally murdered by two white thugs in Mississippi in August 1955 — when she refused to move to the back of the bus in December of that year and sparked the Montgomery bus boycott which, in turn, triggered the civil rights movement.
At the time, I hoped the answer to my question would be yes, but I wasn’t sure. I wondered whether the protests over the murder of Trayvon Martin, and the acquittal of his killer George Zimmerman, would coalesce into a sustained movement.
Now we can see that, indeed, a movement for social and racial justice has emerged from the Trayvon Martin murder and more recent events —
» Read more about: The Dawn of a New Racial Justice Movement »
With the expensive mid-term elections followed by Thanksgiving and Black Friday, followed by Cyber Monday, you’d think that people wouldn’t have much money left over for Giving Tuesday. But if current trends continue, charitable contributions this year may actually match pre-Great Recession levels. We won’t know about 2014 for a while, but the results are in for last year: Americans gave $335 billion in nonprofit, tax-deductible gifts in 2013.
The vast majority of that money did not come from rich people. Yes, occasionally a Mark Zuckerberg will give away a billion or so, which certainly ups the total. But on the whole, those in the top 20 percent give away about 1.3 percent of their income while those in the bottom fifth donate about 3.2 percent of their incomes. That’s unfortunate because America’s “ultra-rich” population grew by about six percent last year.
If you’re bummed by the recent election and feel like the clock’s been turned back for women’s rights, take yourself to a screening of She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, the new documentary on the 1970s women’s liberation movement, and get some righteous feminist energy going.
Opening in Los Angeles December 12 at the Nuart Theater, the 90-minute film is jam-packed with footage of energized women challenging the powers that be — from Congressional committees to the medical establishment, from news media to men on the street — demanding basic rights and respect for themselves as citizens, workers, wives and girlfriends.
As a founder of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union in the 1960s, I have a small part in the film, which thankfully shows the movement as it really emerged, not just in New York, but in communities across the U.S.
It’s hard to imagine what life was like for women back then – want ads were segregated by gender,
» Read more about: Film Review: “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” »
With tongue firmly planted in cheek Thursday, a beaming Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti credited two secret weapons for helping him break a deadlock among a labor coalition, civic groups, Kinkisharyo International LLC and the city to craft a compromise to save jobs and keep construction of new light rail cars in Palmdale: “bad pizza and smaller meeting rooms.”
Garcetti also serves as chair of the county’s transit authority, Metro. His self-deprecating quip garnered a hearty laugh while setting the tone for a mostly celebratory morning press conference to announce the new agreement before Thursday’s regular Metro board meeting.
In addition to the mayor and Kinkisharyo reps, news conference attendees included L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford Jr., Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Maria Elena Durazo and Antelope Valley business group leaders.
All of the speakers heaped praise upon Garcetti for taking the lead in this 11th-hour process to broker the deal.
» Read more about: How Negotiators Erased Lines Drawn in the Sand to Create Jobs »
I recently sat down with actor Ed O’Neill, best known for his role as Al Bundy in the Fox TV Network sitcom, Married With Children, and who is currently starring in ABC’s award-winning comedy, Modern Family, which will be honored next week at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy’s 2014 City of Justice Awards Dinner. Here’s the second in a series of clips from that interview. (Full transcript here.)
» Read more about: Watch Now: Actor Ed O’Neill on His Teamster Roots »
California pension cutters suffered another setback last week when a state appellate court rejected their claims that ballot language written by Attorney General Kamala Harris showed political bias.
The decision by Sacramento’s 3rd District Court of Appeal “dismissed as moot” San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s appeal of a lower court ruling. This effectively leaves in place Sacramento Superior Court Judge Allen Sumner’s March decision that Reed had failed to prove Harris’ ballot summary was misleading.
“We’re not going to get a hearing on the merits,” Reed told Capital & Main. “It shows how difficult it is to try to get through the court system in an election cycle; it means you have to start earlier.”
Legally, the two rulings sound a final death knell for Reed’s contentious statewide campaign to put his self-described Pension Reform Act of 2014 before California voters. In practical terms,
» Read more about: Pension Cutters Lose in Court, Vow 2016 Ballot Bid »
