LATEST NEWS
By Carl Franzen
(Note: Last January Donald Cohen wrote here of the conservative political animus against new, green lighting technologies – namely, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). The following repost of a May 12 Talking Points Memo feature looks at the evolution of another alternative to wasteful incandescent lighting – illumination by light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
Battle lines were drawn in Las Vegas, Nevada this week at the 23rd annual Lightfair International trade show, an exposition of the latest in artificial lighting technology.
Spurred in part by the controversial, misunderstood, national phase-out of energy inefficient incandescent bulbs that began in January, companies are racing to develop light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that meet the new energy standards, and yet will provide the same lighting quality that consumers are used to getting from the old, inefficient incandescents.
Until recently the Internet, along with the devices that brought it to us and the platforms that have expanded its usefulness, held a certain cool, selfless allure. The Web was mostly the idea of young, rule-breaking rebels, and their insurgent mystique made them hero geeks. Browsing a favorite blog on our laptops, a cup of red-eye coffee nearby, we felt a part of the New. Then money began doing what it always does to young, rule-breaking rebels – it turned them into our parents, our landlords and our loan officers.
It began in earnest, I suppose, with last year’s tiff between Amazon.com and the state of California over Sacramento’s insistence that the online retail behemoth start collecting state taxes on its sales. Amazon eventually struck “compromises” with California and other states that mostly favored Amazon. Many of us in California smiled – we got an extra year of purchasing on the site without paying taxes.
» Read more about: How Our Internet Heroes Lost Their Cool »
New York City’s Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, and the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending (CAPS) have put together a nifty online chart called 6 Degrees of Walmart. It’s actually more than a chart – think of it as a kind of star finder that allows the user to locate eight constellations of alleged corporate malfeasance and consumer abuse committed by the retail giant. Click on its Gun icon and you’ll find out how Walmart, through its support of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), backs Stand Your Ground laws. Click the Dollar sign and you’ll learn how Walmart colludes with the Business Roundtable and others to protect corporate tax subsidies.
(Please note: The above image is not interactive; to interact, go to the 6 Degrees of Walmart site.)
There’s also an explanation of how Walmart tries to burnish its environmental and corporate responsibility cred through its “sustainability program”
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Cassidy Noblett[/caption]
(The following action alert comes from ClimatePlan.org; news of the alert first appeared at Housing California, which lists 18 Los Angeles County projects that could be affected by the transfer of housing construction funds.)
Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is considering using unencumbered housing funds from former redevelopment agencies to balance the 2012-13 state budget. Such a sweep would impact at least 175 pipeline developments poised to create 23,455 construction-phase jobs in the next two years.
In recent comments to the Sacramento Bee, Steinberg raised the possibility of abandoning his SB 654, which would preserve the low-mod balances for their original intended use. A survey indicates this move would threaten construction of at least 10,215 homes that were counting on the availability of redevelopment funding to move forward.
Key Assembly members recognize the value of the jobs and taxes generated by home construction,
» Read more about: State Housing Construction Funds in Jeopardy »
This week the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor sent letters to every elected official in L.A. County (including Congress members), urging them to return all campaign contributions they may have received from Walmart – and to refuse future donations from the retail giant. The letter, which is signed by a broad spectrum of union leaders, juxtaposes Walmart’s alleged bribery scheme in Mexico with L.A. City Hall’s quick approval of the corporation’s permits for a new store in Chinatown. (The letter’s text appears below.)
“It doesn’t take campaign finance reform,” the signatories say, “to prevent Walmart from wrapping its tentacles around our political system in L.A. County.”
» Read more about: Labor to Electeds: Return Walmart Money! »
(The following post first appeared May 1 on Truthdig.)
By Bill Boyarsky
By chance, the revelation of how Apple evades millions of dollars in taxes broke three days before May Day, when workers of the world traditionally protest such injustice.
Although the Apple practices aren’t illegal, the dodging of taxes on revenue generated, to a large extent, by low-wage Chinese workers, was a perfect introduction to this year’s May 1 observance, highlighted by the Occupy movement’s call for strikes and demonstrations around the country. The goal: Protest corporate domination of an economy being pulled downward by growing income inequality and intractable unemployment.
The New York Times reported that the technology company has used loopholes to reduce its tax bills in 21 states and overseas by billions of dollars annually by creating subsidiaries in places with low-tax or no-tax policies.
» Read more about: Organizing for Change: Different Drummers, Common Cause »
The SEC is dragging its feet implementing a section of the Dodd-Frank reform that would require publicly traded companies to calculate the ratio between the CEO’s pay and that of the firm’s median pay package. The New York Times editorial board urges them to push forward.
Corporate lobbyists say it’s too complicated to figure out the math. They figured out how to create uber-complex financial products that untangled the global economy, but aren’t able to divide the CEO’s earnings (they must know) by the median employee pay?
Of course, the real reason they oppose the law is that they don’t want to add fire to the public debate about excessive CEO salaries – certainly while the rest of America struggles to pay bills, put kids through college and afford mortgage payments. Obscurity, not transparency, benefits the privileged.
Their opposition to useful information for investors and consumers is a replay of earlier legislative battles.
» Read more about: Why Can’t CEOs Do the Math on Their Pay? »
“About 100 Occupy protesters,” reports the Pasadena Star News, “seeking to reverse an eviction gathered Tuesday outside the Pasadena house of a Bank of America executive in the San Rafael neighborhood.” The newspaper said the home belonged to Raul Anaya, a B of A executive. The following LA Progressive post, by Occupy Fights Foreclosures member Cheryl Aichele, was written just prior to the action, which was designed to bring attention to the dire predicament of Dirma Rodriguez and other foreclosed homeowners.
By Cheryl Aichele
On Friday, David Redy — a partner at Redy & Smith— called Dirma Rodriguez, a widowed mother with a severely disabled daughter and four sons, who says she was fraudulently foreclosed upon by Bank of America. Allegedly during the conversation, Redy — who represents the bank— threatened Carlos Marroquin,
» Read more about: Bank of America Foreclosure Backlash in Pasadena »
I am just a girl who can’t say “no.” In my youth this was actually a fun quality, but now it means that I spend a lot of time manning concession booths, volunteering in Sunday school classrooms, and doing whatever else the local Uber Mom has tasked me with. But make no mistake, I am not the Uber Mom. The Uber Mom is the mom who is always in charge. She knows everyone, runs every volunteer effort, and cooks absolutely everything from scratch.
One thing I have noticed about these moms, whose astounding accomplishments are both impressive and deeply annoying (homemade marshmallows? really?), is that they are not dispersed evenly through society. This became particularly apparent to me when my own children moved from a private and rather expensive pre-school to a public school in LAUSD. Overnight we went (as my husband likes to point out) from being young,
(The following announcement has previously appeared on other Web sites, including LA Progressive.)
Practically everyone has an opinion about Obama’s health care, but few understand it, according to the latest Associated Press poll. The future of the president’s Affordable Care Act lies in the hands of the Supreme Court, which is expected to make a decision on the Act’s constitutionality in June. Meanwhile 40 million people are without health insurance.
A free public conference – Health Care: Where Are We Now? — will address the health-care debate:
Saturday, May 12, from 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
at Pasadena City College, Harbeson Hall
1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena
A coalition of community based organizations in Southern California led by the League of Women Voters Pasadena and Health Care for All – San Gabriel Valley is sponsoring the conference.
Other organizations include Physicians for a National Health Program,
» Read more about: Health Care Debate: A Free Public Conference »
There they go again. The Heartland Institute, which The New York Times rather generously describes as a “libertarian organization,” recently felt compelled to yank a line of billboards comparing believers in climate change to mass murderers and dictators. “I Still Believe in Global Warming. Do You?” asked one billboard featuring a picture of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. More boards had been planned for Chicago, in a run-up to the institute’s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change, a kind of Coachella for climate-change deniers. Those ads showed photos of Charles Manson, Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden.
Apparently even some of Heartland’s fellow climate-change deniers began feeling a little queasy over the campaign and so the Windy City-based group killed its plan. Not with any remorse, however. Institute president Joseph Bast released this statement:
“We know that our billboard angered and disappointed many of Heartland’s friends and supporters .
» Read more about: Climate-Change Denier Group Is Feeling the Heat »
By Rebecca Band
(This post first appeared May 7 on the Labor’s Edge blog site.)
One BILLION Dollars. That’s how much California gives away every year to big corporations, thanks to a wasteful tax loophole that actually incentivizes companies to close up shop in California and move those jobs elsewhere.
According to L.A. Times columnist George Skelton:
You might think a tax law that rewards companies for killing California jobs and resurrecting them in another state would be dumped. Very quickly. Especially if it also rewards them for selling off property here and rebuilding elsewhere. Or, put another way, if the law provides a tax incentive not to hire or invest in California in the first place. You’d repeal it. A no-brainer.
Makes no sense, except for the companies using the loophole while profiting from selling their products here in the nation’s largest consumer market.
» Read more about: State's Corporate Tax Breaks: Loopholes or Black Holes? »
First the Beverly Hills Unified School District ended its tradition of allowing B.H.-adjacent kids to attend that posh city’s schools. Now the local PTA is fighting tooth and French nail to keep subway trains from traveling under Beverly Hills High School via the proposed Westside Subway Extension. The subway has been planned to run through a nine-mile tunnel connecting the current Wilshire and Western terminus of the Purple Line to downtown Santa Monica.
The PTA, according to a Los Angeles Times piece, has released a scare video that predicts “a doomsday scenario” in which students could be incinerated in the event a train somehow ignites a plume of subterranean methane gas left over from the oil wells the school was built on. But if the school is sitting on such a potential box of dynamite, why isn’t it shut down immediately – with or without a subway?
» Read more about: WebHot: Beverly Hills Says, “Not Under My Back Yard!” »
(Editor’s Note: This post first appeared May 3 on Huffington Post.)
Today is Pete Seeger’s 93rd birthday.
What’s an appropriate gift for the most influential folk artist of the 20th century? A few years ago some of Pete’s fans launched a campaign to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is time to resurrect that effort.
No one can get a crowd singing like he can. The songs he has written, including the antiwar tunes “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” “If I Had a Hammer,” and “Turn, Turn, Turn” (whose text is drawn from Ecclesiastes), and those he has popularized, including “This Land Is Your Land,” “Guantanamera,” “Wimoweh,” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting for freedom. His songs are sung by people in cities and villages around the world,
The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) has filed a lawsuit against current and former members of Walmart’s board of directors, and other company officers, charging them with gross violation of fiduciary duty in connection with the company’s Mexican bribery scandal. That scandal, extensively examined by a recent New York Times feature, revealed a corporation so eager to expand its Mexican operations that it ignored findings by its own investigators sent to look into the allegations.
CalSTRS’ move takes the form of a derivative-action suit – a suit nominally brought on behalf of Walmart against individuals whose actions damage the retail giant and potentially, investors such as CalSTRS.
CalSTRS is the second largest public pension fund in the United States and holds more than 5.3 million shares of Wal-Mart, valued at $313.5 million, accounting for 0.41 percent of CalSTRS global equities portfolio.
» Read more about: Teachers’ Fund Lawyers-Up Against Walmart Brass »
I received no less than 25 emails celebrating the passage of the 2035 SCAG RTP within the past few weeks. This stands for the Southern California Association of Governments’ Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy. Environmentalists, low-income groups and housing groups all cheered the vast improvements to the way regional planning organizations look at future development. This new, more comprehensive view ideally would address the twin goals of creating more economically vibrant communities and improving our environment.
ClimatePlan, the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network and MOVE LA, among other groups, have praised the projected greenhouse gas, “vehicle miles traveled (VMT)” and traffic congestion reductions, as well as the forward-looking goals of increasing non-motorized transportation use, such as bicycles and walking.
Yet while there is much to take heart in, I started to ask myself: Could the SCAG plan have aimed even higher?
I salute the planners and community activists who brought a progressive vision and spent many long hours working on shaping the plan into what it is.
» Read more about: Could Transportation Plan Have Dreamt Bigger? »
(Editor’s Note: Tomorrow is the deadline to collect signatures for the Long Beach hotel workers living-wage ballot initiative. In this post, activist Christine Petit shares her perspective on this historic effort. Her feature first appeared on the California Work & Family Coalition Web site.)
In 2008, I chose to make Long Beach, California, my home. I love Long Beach because it’s a diverse city and there are always interesting events and festivals going on. Many people are attracted to Long Beach for these reasons, if only for a weekend. In fact, Long Beach has made great strides to attract tourists, investing approximately $750 million into revamping downtown toward these ends over the last three decades.
Meanwhile, the hotel workers who take care of Long Beach’s tourists are struggling to provide for their families. The median annual income for full-time hotel and food-service workers in Long Beach was $23,538 in 2009,
» Read more about: Living Wage Law Could Go to Long Beach Voters »
Republican legislators in Michigan have a new target, the Michigan Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC). Apparently at the behest of industry lobbyists, GOP Representative Joe Haveman proposed limiting the funding of public universities that allow their students to get internship credits for working with ROC.
The cause is rather specific: a few interns participated in a picket line outside Andiamo, an Italian restaurant in Dearborn, near Detroit. Workers had sought to get paid overtime and get the owner to stop making them pay for their uniforms, among other demands. The company’s response (alleged surveillance and intimidation) led to several NLRB charges and a AFL-CIO sponsored boycott. The good news is, the dispute was settled back in May, 2011. The protests in question occurred back in 2009 and 2010.
As this blog post shows, restaurant industry folks weren’t too pleased, and thus the proposed new rule. The governor’s not in favor,
Memory is not only highly selective, but fatefully idiosyncratic. We remember – or forget – based on where we were, who we were with and, more elementally, who we are.
In April 1992, I was a 28-year-old editor of a now long-defunct weekly, the Village View. When violence erupted following the unfathomable not-guilty verdicts in the Rodney King beating trial, I was where I usually was in those days – knee deep in the grind of getting a paper to press. I wish I could recall exactly what I was doing, or who I was with, but those details are lost to history.
What I do know is that, because of who I was – the news editor of an alternative paper with few of the traditional restrictions that most journalists live with – my reaction to, and experience of, the civil unrest were defined not only by the fear and dread shared by many Angelenos,
» Read more about: 1992 Remembered: Memory, Truth and Justice »
