We've been at the losing end of a "class war" for at least the last 30 years. It's well past time we started fighting back!
Here's a good piece by one of the best minds on the subject:
--
A Good Fight
Tuesday 20 September 2011
by: Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog | Op-Ed
So the really big fight — perhaps the defining battle of 2012 — won’t be over Medicare. It won’t even be over Obama’s jobs program.
It will be over whether the rich should pay more taxes.
The President has vowed to veto any plan to tame the debt that doesn’t increase taxes on the rich. The Republicans have vowed to oppose any tax increases on the rich.
It’s a good fight to have.
In a Rose Garden ceremony this morning, Obama proposed new taxes on the wealthy — including a special new tax for millionaires, the closing of loopholes and deductions for people making more than $250,000 a year, and an end to the portion of the Bush tax cut going to higher incomes.
Republicans accuse the President of instigating “class warfare.” But it’s not warfare to demand the rich pay their fair share of taxes to bring down America’s long-term debt.
After all, the richest 1 percent of Americans now takes home more than 20 percent of total income. That’s the highest share going to the top 1 percent in almost 90 years.
And they now pay at the lowest tax rates in half a century — half the rate they paid on ordinary income prior to 1981.
(Unfortunately, the President isn’t proposing to raise the capital-gains tax — which, now at 15 percent, creates a loophole large enough for the super-rich to drive their Ferrari’s through. About 80 percent of the income of America’s richest 400 comes in the form of capital gains. Here’s where billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers make out like bandits. As I’ve noted, I also wish he aimed higher — for more brackets and higher rates at the very top. But at least he’s drawn a line in the sand. The veto message is clear.)
Anyone who says the American economy suffers when the rich pay more in taxes doesn’t know history. We grew faster the first three decades after World War II than we have since.
Trickle-down economics has been a cruel joke.
On the other hand — given projected budget deficits — if the rich don’t pay their fair share, the rest of us will have to bear more of a burden. And that burden inevitably will come in the form of either higher taxes or fewer public services.
If anyone’s declared class warfare it’s the people who inhabit the top rungs of big corporations and Wall Street (and who comprise a disproportionate number of America’s super rich). They’ve declared it on average workers.
The ratio of corporate profits to wages is higher than it’s been since before the Great Depression. And even as corporate salaries and perks keep rising, the median wage keeping dropping, and jobs continue to be shed.
You’ve got the chairman of Merck taking home $17.9 million last year. This year Merck announces plans to boot 13,000 workers. The CEO of Bank of America takes in $10 million, and the bank announces it’s firing 30,000 workers.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but the way I see it we’ve got a huge budget deficit and a giant jobs problem. And under these circumstances it seems to me people at the top who have never had it so good should sacrifice a bit more, so the rest of us don’t have to sacrifice quite as much.
According to the polls, most Americans agree.
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ROBERT REICH
Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock.
http://www.truth-out.org/good-fight/1316540233
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Bruce LeBel LTE of Arcata Eye re: Panhandling Lawsuit
From the Arcata Eye
9.7.11
Editor –
My answer to the question “Whose Arcata?” posed on the cover of last week’s North Coast Journal is this:
Arcata is everyone’s who is here, with our rights enumerated in the US Constitution and with constraints in activities and behaviors defined by laws, regulations and zoning. That these shared rights and constraints pit the preferences of one against the rights of another is a source of conflict engendered by some who are impatient or offended by others, as illustrated by Arcata’s reactionary panhandling ordinance.
The City will certainly lose the current lawsuit challenging the panhandling ordinance, as the geographic constraint on free speech by the ordinance is essentially total in the commercial area. (A reminder of the foundation of civil rights that our society, including Arcata, is built on was provided by a Federal judge’s recent ruling in favor of a panhandler on a Fifth Ave. sidewalk in Manhattan. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/nyregion/panhandler-on-fifth-avenue-wins-respite-from-arrests.html?adxnnl=1&ref=todayspaper&adxnnlx=1314705644-IhDc2tjvqDLJLI/BBPXCrg).
There were already municipal ordinances that define aggressive panhandling as illegal, and the further elements of the new ordinance that address aggressive panhandling are not being challenged.
Although our respective individual economic positions, available time, health, energy and worldview give each of us our capabilities to engage in our chosen ways with our Arcata community, we all share our civil rights and share the responsibility to comply with applicable laws. However, when a law attempts to erode our Constitutional foundation of civil rights, those who take a stand challenging the misguided ordinance are representing all of us, every one of us in Arcata, because other than the air there is nothing shared more commonly among all of us whose Arcata this is than our civil rights.
And yes, an increase in respectful behavior would be nice, but you can’t create that from the City Council dais, particularly when the Council takes a position disrespecting our Bill of Rights.
Bruce LeBel
Arcata, CA
* * *
9.7.11
Editor –
My answer to the question “Whose Arcata?” posed on the cover of last week’s North Coast Journal is this:
Arcata is everyone’s who is here, with our rights enumerated in the US Constitution and with constraints in activities and behaviors defined by laws, regulations and zoning. That these shared rights and constraints pit the preferences of one against the rights of another is a source of conflict engendered by some who are impatient or offended by others, as illustrated by Arcata’s reactionary panhandling ordinance.
The City will certainly lose the current lawsuit challenging the panhandling ordinance, as the geographic constraint on free speech by the ordinance is essentially total in the commercial area. (A reminder of the foundation of civil rights that our society, including Arcata, is built on was provided by a Federal judge’s recent ruling in favor of a panhandler on a Fifth Ave. sidewalk in Manhattan. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/nyregion/panhandler-on-fifth-avenue-wins-respite-from-arrests.html?adxnnl=1&ref=todayspaper&adxnnlx=1314705644-IhDc2tjvqDLJLI/BBPXCrg).
There were already municipal ordinances that define aggressive panhandling as illegal, and the further elements of the new ordinance that address aggressive panhandling are not being challenged.
Although our respective individual economic positions, available time, health, energy and worldview give each of us our capabilities to engage in our chosen ways with our Arcata community, we all share our civil rights and share the responsibility to comply with applicable laws. However, when a law attempts to erode our Constitutional foundation of civil rights, those who take a stand challenging the misguided ordinance are representing all of us, every one of us in Arcata, because other than the air there is nothing shared more commonly among all of us whose Arcata this is than our civil rights.
And yes, an increase in respectful behavior would be nice, but you can’t create that from the City Council dais, particularly when the Council takes a position disrespecting our Bill of Rights.
Bruce LeBel
Arcata, CA
* * *
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Response to Michele Bachmann
Maybe sever weather is God's way of encouraging deficit spending as economic stimulus?
Monday, September 5, 2011
City of Arcata to be Sued for Denying Public Records Request
Arcata threatened with lawsuit over records
Jessica Cejnar/The Times-Standard
09/05/2011
A former Arcata commissioner is threatening to sue the city unless it releases information on the amount of money it spends on private attorneys.
According to Arcata resident Marc Delany, city officials refused to release the total amount of fees it paid to every private attorney hired to represent Arcata over the last three years.
According to a letter attorney Peter Martin sent to the Arcata City Council on Delany's behalf Wednesday, city officials refused to release that information, claiming it is subject to attorney-client privilege.
Arcata City Manager Randy Mendosa said the city spent a substantial amount of time and cost to meet Delany's request but said he was unsure if the legal costs were included. Mendosa also said because Delany has hired an attorney to represent him and has threatened to sue the city, he couldn't comment further on the issue.
”Our staff works hard to comply with as many public records as requested by the public,” he said. “It's something we take very seriously.”
Arcata City Attorney Nancy Diamond was unavailable for comment.
Martin and Delany, a former member of Arcata's Historic and Design Review Commission, are part of a new organization called the Humboldt Civil Liberties Defense Fund, which formed last week. Martin said Delany filed the public records act request with the city on July 11 and received a response 10 days later asking for more time to compile the requested documents.
When the city again responded on Aug. 11, it turned over records of the cases Arcata has been involved in and the attorneys who represented the city, but the amount of public funds spent to pay for those attorneys was missing, Delany said.
”We're trying to figure out what the trend line is for city expenditures for legal costs,” Delany said. “We're kind of curious about things the city has done that clearly didn't match up with what the rules and regulations were.”
According to Martin, the city claimed that its legal costs is privileged information.
”In my view of the law, there's no basis for that,” he said, adding that he and Delany would give the city two more weeks to respond to their records request. “Mr. Delany will then bring an action in superior court to enforce the demand if it's not complied with.”
The amount of money cities pay in legal fees is a matter of public record, said Duffy Carolan, an attorney with San Francisco law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Any advice and confidential communications that take place between a city council and their outside counsel can be redacted, she said, but the amount of attorneys' fees isn't something that can be withheld from the public.
”Many agencies hire outside counsel that are private attorneys as opposed to just having something done through the city attorney,” Carolan said. “How would the public ever be able to assess the city's decision to go with that particular firm in light of other firms?”
Martin said the Humboldt Civil Liberties Defense Fund will monitor cases in which peoples' civil liberties may have been affected and will provide funding to help pay for cases that it feels are a worthy cause. One case the organization is interested in is Richard Salzman's lawsuit against Arcata over its panhandling ordinance, said Martin, who is representing Salzman.
Jessica Cejnar can be reached at 441-0504 or at jcejnar@times-standard.com.
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_18829322
Jessica Cejnar/The Times-Standard
09/05/2011
A former Arcata commissioner is threatening to sue the city unless it releases information on the amount of money it spends on private attorneys.
According to Arcata resident Marc Delany, city officials refused to release the total amount of fees it paid to every private attorney hired to represent Arcata over the last three years.
According to a letter attorney Peter Martin sent to the Arcata City Council on Delany's behalf Wednesday, city officials refused to release that information, claiming it is subject to attorney-client privilege.
Arcata City Manager Randy Mendosa said the city spent a substantial amount of time and cost to meet Delany's request but said he was unsure if the legal costs were included. Mendosa also said because Delany has hired an attorney to represent him and has threatened to sue the city, he couldn't comment further on the issue.
”Our staff works hard to comply with as many public records as requested by the public,” he said. “It's something we take very seriously.”
Arcata City Attorney Nancy Diamond was unavailable for comment.
Martin and Delany, a former member of Arcata's Historic and Design Review Commission, are part of a new organization called the Humboldt Civil Liberties Defense Fund, which formed last week. Martin said Delany filed the public records act request with the city on July 11 and received a response 10 days later asking for more time to compile the requested documents.
When the city again responded on Aug. 11, it turned over records of the cases Arcata has been involved in and the attorneys who represented the city, but the amount of public funds spent to pay for those attorneys was missing, Delany said.
”We're trying to figure out what the trend line is for city expenditures for legal costs,” Delany said. “We're kind of curious about things the city has done that clearly didn't match up with what the rules and regulations were.”
According to Martin, the city claimed that its legal costs is privileged information.
”In my view of the law, there's no basis for that,” he said, adding that he and Delany would give the city two more weeks to respond to their records request. “Mr. Delany will then bring an action in superior court to enforce the demand if it's not complied with.”
The amount of money cities pay in legal fees is a matter of public record, said Duffy Carolan, an attorney with San Francisco law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Any advice and confidential communications that take place between a city council and their outside counsel can be redacted, she said, but the amount of attorneys' fees isn't something that can be withheld from the public.
”Many agencies hire outside counsel that are private attorneys as opposed to just having something done through the city attorney,” Carolan said. “How would the public ever be able to assess the city's decision to go with that particular firm in light of other firms?”
Martin said the Humboldt Civil Liberties Defense Fund will monitor cases in which peoples' civil liberties may have been affected and will provide funding to help pay for cases that it feels are a worthy cause. One case the organization is interested in is Richard Salzman's lawsuit against Arcata over its panhandling ordinance, said Martin, who is representing Salzman.
Jessica Cejnar can be reached at 441-0504 or at jcejnar@times-standard.com.
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_18829322
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Cover art for 8th Annual Gathering at Pamplin Grove
August 20-22, 2011 Pamplin Grove
Humboldt County, California
Friday, July 15, 2011
1987 Labor Day Party invite: Graphics Urinalysis Center
Double click either or both images to read text.
If need be you can then "zoom in" under "view" in your menu bar, to enlarge further.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Richardson Grove as important as general plan update [for Humboldt County]
Richardson Grove as important as general plan update
Ken Miller/For The Times-Standard
06/22/2011
Wholesale STAA access through Richardson Grove is potentially the most immediately devastating threat to our county.
It would open the north-south link in a circuit connecting Interstate 5 and U.S. Highway 101 via routes 199, 299, and 20, putting large diesel trucks on 101 through, not just into, our county, 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Signaling or one-way traffic would create harmful congestion in the grove, and do nothing about the STAA traffic through the county.
Who benefits?
Mainly the international trucking industry and a few local businesses. Caltrans' EIR acknowledges that local industries do not need these trucks: “... There is a maximum weight restriction for loads as well as maximum length of cabs and trailers, and that for heavy loads, the economic advantage for the larger vehicles is not there,” concluding that the “Proposed project would not result in significant increases in overall economic productivity in the region.”
Wal-Mart and Home Depot in Crescent City have been the squeakiest wheels for Richardson Grove and 199, whining that lack of STAA access costs them $15,000 monthly, savings they would surely use to undercut local businesses, and exchange good paying jobs for low-wage employment as their stores are linked all along the 101 corridor.
Could the new general plan stand up to STAA-related sprawl development?
Vehicular traffic from the proposed Marina Center is estimated at 16,000 trips daily. Add STAA to that and the pressure to open and widen Waterfront Drive and bypass Eureka escalates. Caltrans never considers this, despite the 2003 Caltrans-funded study warning about the “constraint on economic development” from “traffic congestion on U.S. 101 in Eureka's commercial and retail areas due to heavy overlapping uses for trucking, through traffic, and local traffic.”
Ambulance and coroner business may spike. These large trucks represent less than 3 percent of vehicles, but are involved in 14 percent of fatal crashes, and automobile passengers constitute 98 percent of the fatalities in car vs. truck accidents.
Who loses?
The project is a job killer for many local businesses, and will cost the rest of us in road damages, safety hazards, noise and air pollution, congestion, and quality of life. Trinidad will not be so quaint, or quiet, with 24/7 STAA on the 101 grade.
Many of these trucks have extra cabs with kitchens and beds enabling transit from Mexico to Canada without needing a motel or restaurant.
Ancient redwoods may not tolerate modern road use and construction technology. Trees that have survived for a century next to the current roadbed may have benefited from the paucity of heavy truck traffic, as well as construction in 1915 with horse and buggies, hand tools, and gravel, mitigating factors that this project would undo overnight.
Arguments that road construction will not harm ancient redwoods rely on Caltrans' arborists who have no expertise in redwoods, and on Caltrans' own claims.
Experts like Steve Sillett and Stan Binnie registered serious concerns about disturbing woody and feeder roots, justified by the numerous ancient redwoods whose tops are dying back along 101, and those which have fallen, revealing evidence of road or path-induced damage. Hence Redwood Park warnings to avoid walking over roots.
Scientific literature is clear that redwood roots interconnect for up to 500 feet, and that roots larger than one inch are considered “major.” Yet Caltrans claims that roots larger than two inches in diameter will not be cut in the structural root zone, ignoring the critical feeder roots. According to HSU's Professor Sillett, there have been no relevant studies on the impacts of roadways on redwood roots.
If ancient redwoods suffer due to this project, how many hundreds or thousands of years will it take for the damage to show up? And what penalty, or relief, is there?
Perhaps the saddest casualty has been the failure to consider alternatives to 6 mpg STAA trucks for our goods movement in the face of greenhouse gas emissions, rising fuel costs and sea levels, and climate change.
Short sea shipping from our undeveloped port is the most efficient transport modality on the planet, and with 299 STAA access it could meet nearly all of our shipping needs, creating boatloads of jobs.
A 2003 Caltrans' Cambridge Systematics study summed up the benefit of not widening 101 through Richardson Grove, and retaining the critical buffer between 101 and I-5: “The county's relative geographic isolation has spared it from some of the sprawl and growth pressures that have impacted many of California's coastal communities, lending the area a quality of life cherished by residents.”
Ken Miller resides in McKinleyville.
More info: www.saverichardsongrove.org
Ken Miller/For The Times-Standard
06/22/2011
Wholesale STAA access through Richardson Grove is potentially the most immediately devastating threat to our county.
It would open the north-south link in a circuit connecting Interstate 5 and U.S. Highway 101 via routes 199, 299, and 20, putting large diesel trucks on 101 through, not just into, our county, 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Signaling or one-way traffic would create harmful congestion in the grove, and do nothing about the STAA traffic through the county.
Who benefits?
Mainly the international trucking industry and a few local businesses. Caltrans' EIR acknowledges that local industries do not need these trucks: “... There is a maximum weight restriction for loads as well as maximum length of cabs and trailers, and that for heavy loads, the economic advantage for the larger vehicles is not there,” concluding that the “Proposed project would not result in significant increases in overall economic productivity in the region.”
Wal-Mart and Home Depot in Crescent City have been the squeakiest wheels for Richardson Grove and 199, whining that lack of STAA access costs them $15,000 monthly, savings they would surely use to undercut local businesses, and exchange good paying jobs for low-wage employment as their stores are linked all along the 101 corridor.
Could the new general plan stand up to STAA-related sprawl development?
Vehicular traffic from the proposed Marina Center is estimated at 16,000 trips daily. Add STAA to that and the pressure to open and widen Waterfront Drive and bypass Eureka escalates. Caltrans never considers this, despite the 2003 Caltrans-funded study warning about the “constraint on economic development” from “traffic congestion on U.S. 101 in Eureka's commercial and retail areas due to heavy overlapping uses for trucking, through traffic, and local traffic.”
Ambulance and coroner business may spike. These large trucks represent less than 3 percent of vehicles, but are involved in 14 percent of fatal crashes, and automobile passengers constitute 98 percent of the fatalities in car vs. truck accidents.
Who loses?
The project is a job killer for many local businesses, and will cost the rest of us in road damages, safety hazards, noise and air pollution, congestion, and quality of life. Trinidad will not be so quaint, or quiet, with 24/7 STAA on the 101 grade.
Many of these trucks have extra cabs with kitchens and beds enabling transit from Mexico to Canada without needing a motel or restaurant.
Ancient redwoods may not tolerate modern road use and construction technology. Trees that have survived for a century next to the current roadbed may have benefited from the paucity of heavy truck traffic, as well as construction in 1915 with horse and buggies, hand tools, and gravel, mitigating factors that this project would undo overnight.
Arguments that road construction will not harm ancient redwoods rely on Caltrans' arborists who have no expertise in redwoods, and on Caltrans' own claims.
Experts like Steve Sillett and Stan Binnie registered serious concerns about disturbing woody and feeder roots, justified by the numerous ancient redwoods whose tops are dying back along 101, and those which have fallen, revealing evidence of road or path-induced damage. Hence Redwood Park warnings to avoid walking over roots.
Scientific literature is clear that redwood roots interconnect for up to 500 feet, and that roots larger than one inch are considered “major.” Yet Caltrans claims that roots larger than two inches in diameter will not be cut in the structural root zone, ignoring the critical feeder roots. According to HSU's Professor Sillett, there have been no relevant studies on the impacts of roadways on redwood roots.
If ancient redwoods suffer due to this project, how many hundreds or thousands of years will it take for the damage to show up? And what penalty, or relief, is there?
Perhaps the saddest casualty has been the failure to consider alternatives to 6 mpg STAA trucks for our goods movement in the face of greenhouse gas emissions, rising fuel costs and sea levels, and climate change.
Short sea shipping from our undeveloped port is the most efficient transport modality on the planet, and with 299 STAA access it could meet nearly all of our shipping needs, creating boatloads of jobs.
A 2003 Caltrans' Cambridge Systematics study summed up the benefit of not widening 101 through Richardson Grove, and retaining the critical buffer between 101 and I-5: “The county's relative geographic isolation has spared it from some of the sprawl and growth pressures that have impacted many of California's coastal communities, lending the area a quality of life cherished by residents.”
Ken Miller resides in McKinleyville.
More info: www.saverichardsongrove.org
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