Olan Musk Rushes to Judgement on Murder of Tech Billionaire.

 

San Francisco Tenderloin image Source: US Guardian Online

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
4-14-23

 

A couple of years ago, a friend and I were heading up to Lake Tahoe for a few days, hoping to find some nice hikes. We stopped to have breakfast in Auburn, a small community on the way up.

 

Sitting across from us was a guy maybe in his forties talking to this older woman that appeared to be his mother. We had a hard time keeping our mouths shut as the guy was attacking San Francisco and the stench of urine in the streets and the drug addicts and homeless and all the crime that results from this section of society, the people that capitalism abandons to the streets, the ones that don’t fill the prisons.

 

If you walk through the Tenderloin, the homelessness and drug addiction that accompanies it is visible everywhere, as well as the smell of urine. After all, homeless people, many of them with major medical issues, some of them veterans, have to eliminate their body waste just like the rest of us. I’m sure that if you aren’t mentally ill before you end up on the streets of America’s major cities, homelessness will take you there.

 

I used to visit the Piano Fight bar up that way, a great venue for plays, comedy and music. After getting out of the subway at Powell Street it was just a short walk but right through the heart of it. People were on the sidewalks, groups of them and I had to walk right through these groups up to Taylor Street. I was never threatened or intimidated by people. The most invasive experience would be someone might ask for some money. The most unpleasant aspect of an experience like that should be, for any normal human being, regret that there’s nothing one can do about it; that along with compassion and perhaps anger at a society that allows it.

 

But the US mass media is very adept at placing the blame for the ills of an exploitive and unjust society on some of its worst victims. Right wing types like the guy in the restaurant, who would include immigrants and people on welfare for his problems, are given traction by the right wing, xenophobic and increasingly fascist leaning commentators on right wing radio and television.

 

The Christian right in the Republican Party, and other neo-fascist elements use these crises as a means of attacking their opponents in the other Wall Street Party, the Democrats.  The Democrats cry a lot of crocodile tears about the numerous failings of the so-called free market but do little about it. Democratic politicians are associated with urban populations and are particular targets when it comes to urban poverty and homelessness. California is a poplar target but it is obvious that having a temperate climate, if one finds oneself out on the streets better, these streets be in California’s San Francisco Bay Area than Fargo North Dakota.

 

On April 4^th, a tech billionaire was stabbed to death in San Francisco. The billionaire, Bob Lee, was walking in an upscale neighborhood when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. The immediate response was to attack the epidemic of crime in San Francisco, it’s so bad you can’t even walk in a rich neighborhood and be safe. The right wing took aim at the “liberal” political elements in the city (Democrats) for being soft on crime and pandering to the homeless; these are just electoral tactics aimed at increasing the voter base. Despite the fact that people denied basic human shelter are the victims of violence rather than perpetrators of it, the initial thrust was aimed at them.

 

Having a much more influential voice than the lowly Trumper in that café, Onan Musk, the individual fortunate enough to be born a white man in South Africa whose dad once owned an emerald mine, took to the Twitter world:

 

Musk’s response is a small example of the general trend. But yesterday, (April 14 ^th) the police arrested the murderer, another tech wizard and friend of the deceased. There are reports today that the victim may have been in a relationship with the killer’s sister.

 

The murderer, was arrested in his fancy apartment block that is full of lawyers, architects and other fancy folks and apparently there were shocks all round.

 

What was Bob Lee anyway? He produced nothing, made nothing. He developed an app called Cash App that allows money to be transferred from one hand to another and charged 1.5% for the process. In 2021, this parasitic venture made almost $2 billion profit. While it’s a sad situation when someone’s life is taken in this way, Mr. Lee has children that will be distraught no doubt, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for all the tears from the media. Workers are taught to worship such social wasters like Lee and his murderer; they are the epitome of success. They are praised as innovators and hard working. Hard working at getting others to work hard. That’s the gist of it.

 

Yet there are thousands upon thousands of deaths each year that are not natural but are a product of social conditions. The lack of medical care and a national health system is one. There are so many mentally ill people on the streets because we have no serious and humane facilities for treating mental illness. Anyway, if you weren’t sick before you became homeless (5 million had their homes stolen from them in the 2008 crash), living on the streets will change that.

 

Both capitalist parties in the US are responsible for these deaths. The Democrats pay lip service to the health care or housing crisis but do very little to change it. Both Obama and Biden have promised changes in these areas, so did the Clintons. What happened to Obama’s public option or the Medicare for All that was so popular when Democrats wanted Trump gone.The $3 trillion we spent in Afghanistan would have gone a long way to solving many of our domestic problems.

 

Just like the looming climate catastrophe, the gun violence, the mass shootings, the infrastructure collapse, the chemical spills, rail derailments and more; these are market driven disasters. 

 

We are in the era of capitalism’s decline, of capitalism’s end days as some have put it. Capitalism cannot develop society further, not even here in the belly of the beast, the most powerful nation and richest in human history, the country with more billionaires than any other and California has most of them. And in the face of that, Biden is over in Ireland promising billions in investment. "I'm home" said Biden during the visit. No mate, you're not Irish, you're of Irish ancestry. That's different.

 

Bernie Sanders raised consciousness with his talk of social, needs and democratic socialism. He put forward social democratic demands, attacked the wealthy and inequality and had a huge effect on young people only on each occasion to offer the Democratic Party as the electoral road to go. This is a dead end politically and millions of working class people have drawn that conclusion. In the 2016 national election almost 100 million opted out.

 

Sanders could have fomented a left split form the Democrats around his demands and program, attacks on the billionaires, and social need. He has been around the left a long time he is well aware of the history in other advanced capitalist countries of independent working class parties, Labor Parties, Social democratic and socialist parties.

 

The Democrats in San Francisco are going on the offensive in the light of Musk’s tweet and others like it and the arrest not of a homeless killer but one of the tech industry’s own and a friend of the deceased.

 

But workers have to draw the conclusion that a step we must take if we are to break the political stranglehold the ruling elite has on the economy, society as a whole and the political process, is the building of an independent working class alternative to the two parties of capitalism. A party rooted in our communities, our organizations, unions etc. a party that can draw to its ranks all the victims of the savagery of the market.

Housing is Human Shelter Wall Street Doesn't Agree

Image Source

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Here we go again with the housing market. What is housing. It’s human shelter that’s what it is to millions of people. There are also millions who have no shelter even when houses, sit empty. And there’s millions more who can’t afford the cost of it. Human shelter, like all crucial social needs, is a business in our society and if you can’t buy it, profits cannot be made from it; then you do without.

 

People go to extreme measures to be able to buy a home; they put off having children. They work maybe two sometimes three jobs, all so they can borrow money from the moneylender and pay maybe two or three times for the home after interest payments. If they’re lucky, they may own it after 30 years or so.

 

The whole system is set up to function this way; a whole section of social parasites will get rich through it. It is a disgusting and without doubt, most barbaric way for society to house its citizens.  But it’s not about housing people is it. It’s about a few people getting very rich off of what should be a right; human shelter.

 

After the crash in 2008 when some five million people had their homes stolen from them by the moneylenders, (people didn’t “lose” them) huge capital management companies and private equity firms like Blackrock got in to the business of purchasing single family homes. These firms are among the largest landlords in the country and usually prefer their victims in one place like an apartment complex, but the rewards were too great and investors made a killing.

 

The housing market is ablaze once again and big institutional investors are now buying up entire subdivisions from home manufacturers. These firms and their investors have accumulated billions as the US working class and poor have seen their living standards decline and never being ones for actually “earning” money through hard work, the investors need to find a lucrative home for their profits.

 

By “selling entire neighborhoods to investors.”  the Wall Street Journal reported this week*, “The country’s most prolific homebuilder booked about twice what it typically makes selling to the middle class….”. (In the US, the mass media and the trade union hierarchy refer to workers as middle class. There are no workers here, just rich, poor and middle class.

 

Reading serious big business outlets like the Journal gives working people a glimpse in to the world of the big capitalists, the hedge fund managers, financiers and other coupon clippers who get rich off those that work for a living. “…yield chasing investors are snapping up single family houses to rent out or flip.” (my added emphasis) the Journal article states as if this is some sort of respectable activity.

For the uninitiated, the full term is “house flipping” It is one of the most disgusting terms and it sickens me when I see it written and think of the sacrifices working people make to own a home and the tragedy of homelessness. In my town, a closet costs $1000 a month; I feel sorry for young people. We should all be very angry at this crowd and the politicians and their two parties that allow it. When you hear the term, lobbying, in regards to politics, what it describes is people like those who get rich off your need for a home taking some of that money they rip from you and giving it to legislators to make laws that keep the ball rolling.

 

One head of a real estate consulting firm tells the Journal that in many of the major housing markets in the nation, “….about one in every five homes sold is bought by someone who never moves in.”. Not only that, even with very low interest rates how can an individual or a single family compete in this market with an organized gang of housing speculators. In Houston TX for example, 24% of homes purchased are bought by investors and the same head of the consulting firm admits that these developments will, “…. make US housing permanently more expensive.”, and that means more insecurity, more stress to gather the required capital and pay the moneylenders their interest. Consequences of this existence is domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction, family fragmentation and in worst cases, total breakdown and the violence associated with that.

 

So as the “yield chasing investors” salivate at the chance of money without working, the consulting firm warns that the “institutionalization of real estate investors has set the stage for another speculative, investor driven home price bubble.” It’s not like they don’t know what their activity leads to but they don’t suffer in the way millions of working class and middle class people do and like the fox in the henhouse, can’t stop the killing; they are driven mad themselves by the laws of the system.

The consulting firm assures the investors that “The bubble has room to grow before it bursts…”, home prices rose 11% in 2020 and are expected to rise 12% this year so the danger is there, but as one of their own, Chuck Prince , the former CEO of Citigroup pointed out, “….as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”. Prince is right about that from the capitalist’s point of view, what we have to do though is stop the music.

They know the consequences of this for millions of people but because most of them won’t experience it themselves it’s easier for them to put it aside. Anyway, what can they do, it’s a matter of life and death for them and there is no alternative. We are capitalists Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful Wall Street politicians in the US, told one naïve youth in 2019, that’s just the way it is.

 

There is an alternative though. How can there not be? Society has the resources; labor power, capital, and all the skills necessary to provide everyone with decent living conditions. No one need be homeless, no one should be without the best healthcare society has to offer. The problem is a political one. Housing is a private venture and in order for capital to be allocated and the resources cobbled together from architects and planners to skilled workers and designers, the process must yield profits. If housing doesn’t provide the required profits, the owners of capital will find somewhere else to put it. They do not produce for social need, they produce for personal enrichment; we all know that really and we will never fully resolve this or any other market driven problems until the wealth of society that is a collective product, is collectively owned and collectively allocated in a rationally planned way.

 

I certainly don’t have all the answers in the immediate. I am sure that there are many people, activists in housing struggles that have ideas about how we can make some changes within the framework of capitalism. We can expand the public sector and direct funds to build houses at affordable prices. Society can provide millions of decent apartments and any serious infrastructure plan would allocate money for that. The trade union apprentice schools can expand their trainings and millions of young workers can learn the skills society needs to improve living conditions for all.

 

The money is there, the obstacle is the private sector, the finance industry, the tech billionaires and the two capitalist parties that have a dictatorship over US political and economic life. This dictatorship and the refusal of the trade union hierarchy to build an alternative, is one of the reasons a degenerate like Trump was elected. Fortunately, this era of two -party domination is coming to an end.

 

So one important step in that direction is building an independent party of working people based on our organizations in the workplaces, the unions, and also our communities. Housing can just as easily be a public venture like the capitalist’s wars.

 

Municipal bodies are dominated by landlords and big business. What we build how we build it and when, is all based on how it best serves business and profit making. Building independent working class structures to the present political bodies and linking them locally, nationally and from there internationally, would be a positive step in the right direction.

 

As things stand, having owning a home is an important aspect of US life. But so were large cars. Americans used to laugh at us back home because our cars were so tiny by comparison. But economic necessity changes minds. Most people would be happy with a decent apartment. The state can provide the resources, employ the labor power and can even offer a selection of three or four styles just like the private builders do, the main thing is it would be subsidized, after all, we subsidize wars and all the other ventures the super-rich initiate like Elon Musk’s space game. He never earned the money he wastes in projects of personal gratification. As a white South African, he has had a very privileged existence, never had to do any hard work and his family’s wealth was robbed from the Black South African working class.

 

I cannot help wondering to myself when the US working class will put a stop to this abuse by US capitalists. When will we cease falling for the same old propaganda that the world hates us that the Iranians are on the verge of destroying our way of life (now Washington’s old friend Saddam Hussein has gone) and that economic refugees coming in to the country from our southern border are our enemies, are the cause of our misfortunes and declining living standards. These immigrants are a by-product of US imperialism’s intervention in Mexico and Central America. NAFTA alone drove millions of Mexican farmers from their land and their means of subsistence. People do not leave their homes because they don’t like where their roots are. The reason there are so many people in the US with Irish names is they were fleeing the same horrors that Mexicans and Central Americans are.

 

There is a great US union slogan, “An Injury to one is an injury to all.” It refers to workers of all types and countries. It is not workers from other countries that are the cause of the housing, transportation, health crisis or any other problems we face here in the US. We don’t have to look far to see who’s ripping us off. We simply have to get up and stop the damn music from playing. Elon Musk, Chuck Prince, and the other coupon clippers like them won’t be dancing then.

 

* Big Firms Crowd in to Market For Houses, Driving Up Prices WSJ 4-5-21

 

No Debt, No Landlords. Housing is a Human Right

Source: Luke Dukinfield

 

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

There is a popular post on the Internet stating correctly that the pandemic has demonstrated three things. One is that the capitalist economy collapses when it is unable to keep selling “useful stuff to over indebted people”. The other is that it is “perfectly possible to reduce pollution” and the final thing was that the lowest paid people in society (workers) are the most essential. I agree with all of this though I would stress that it is not possible to eliminate debt or pollution within the confines of the capitalist economic system of production.

And the Pandemic has done much more. The capitalist mode of production has conquered the world. But here in the US we are in the belly of the beast. The market is God. It is the answer to all things. Human shelter (housing) is a commodity and for thirty of forty years of your existence on this earth you can be indebted to investors in this industry until you finally own the roof over your head by the time you are lucky enough to retire. You might pay three times the value of your house when interest is included and the bloodsuckers get their interest up front.

The pandemic has exposed the weak underbelly of the capitalist system in the most powerful capitalist country in the world, especially when it comes to health care and human shelter, or housing.  As I pointed out in an earlier commentary, the economic future will become even bleaker when the moratorium on evictions hits.

 

The US ruling class is very concerned about this but are very guarded when they write about it in the mass media. The Wall Street Journal, not an outlet that is directed at the US worker, is a little more open.

 

The journal warns its readers today that the national eviction ban is set to expire by January or sooner. Up to now, individual landlords, with the assistance from some municipalities and cites have held off evicting tenants, but that could change rapidly in the next few months.

The Journal reports that the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank reckons indebted renters may owe $7.2 billion by the end of this year. The economic consulting and analysis firm Moody’s, reckons that could hit $70 billion if there is no additional stimulus (taxpayer bailouts). This would mean tens of millions of renters would be caught in a “web of home rental debt” as the Journal puts it.

According to the US census, 25% of American renter households with children are in rent debt. Naturally, it is the poor, those not earning enough to buy a home, that are the most affected, and for all the reasons that I do not have time or space to go in to here.  Of those poor, women and people of color are the largest portion. In California, Black and Latino’s are facing rent or housing insecurity at twice the rate of whites. Those that think Biden and the Democrats are going to shift the costs of the pandemic on to the rich and Wall Street will be bitterly disappointed.

The affect this will have on the economy, among many other negative effects from the pandemic, will be significant as, “30 to 40 million people from New York City to San Francisco face potential eviction…”  WSJ quoting fed officials.

As if the pandemic and all its consequences isn’t enough, failing to pay rent hurts ones credit score and makes it even harder if at all impossible to find other accommodation. In most cities, landlords have a huge influence on local politics. and are often on city councils. The largest homeowners and landlords are capital management companies and hedge fund outfits. Housing is an important industry for investors, moneylenders and banks. Like medicine or health care, it is a business and negatively effects the price of shelter as people and companies speculate in housing. One of the most disgusting terms in our lexicon in my opinion is “house flipping” where someone with some extra cash can buy homes, either in bad shape or foreclosed, spend some time and cash on them then “flip” them back in to the market place.

I make a distinction between professional landlords and those workers with better jobs and some good fortune perhaps who can buy an extra place and rent it out or someone whose parents die leaving them an extra home that they rent to others.  The way the set up is, is that the house is our savings bank, it helps pay the kids college fees or makes us a little more secure in retirement; it might make paying a visit to the hospital a little easier as another human being that can’t afford to buy a house pays or contributes to someone else’s income via rent payments.

That is why housing, health care social security or retirement, all social necessities like transportation, are all issues we have to take up. Society’s wealth has arisen from the previous labor power, dedication, sacrifice and service of workers since gone. Society can provide these things, it’s not charity they; are our right and given to us by our ancestors.
 

But if we are provided this type of security, there is consequence. We will not feel the need to own more property, become landlords, compete with others in order to gain an advantage in the struggle to keep our heads above water, to educate our kids so they might have a better life than we have. In other words, we will have less stress, more time for human interaction and space for acts of kindness and so on. We will regain our humanity.

If there’s an argument for the need for social housing the pandemic has made it.  

California: Massive homelessness in a state with 90 billionaires.

Down near my former workplace.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I worked in the streets of Oakland and surrounding towns for 30 years. I worked for the water utility that supplies some 3 million residents on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). I remember driving my backhoe (JCB to Brits) up Peralta Street heading toward Emeryville and North Oakland and I would see the homeless pushing their shopping carts liberated from some Safeway parking lot and laden with cans, metals and other recyclables to a scrap dealer there. 

I became familiar with some of them as I drove by, giving a nod here, a wave there. They were homeless but were dignified, they were working collecting recyclables that could keep them going another day. There were occasional complaints from the "official" refuse collection company that the homeless would do the rounds of the recycle bins parked at the sidewalks edge which is where residents left them for the company trucks that emptied them and took them to the dump. Back then, three workers, Teamster members used to accompany the trucks, one driving the other two grabbing the bins and emptying them. Where I live now, it's just one person as the garbage truck is automated, picks up the bins, empties them and each stop takes just a few minutes.  As with all technical advances that improve the productivity of labor, they are owned by the capitalist not the worker. The excess labor power now no longer needed is cast aside. Technology in the hands of the private sector increases the exploitation of the worker; I don't think the invention of the dishwasher or vacuum cleaner liberated the housewife.

Now when I drive through Oakland there are literally tent cities everywhere, and I mean real cities.   Many of the homeless have traditionally been the mentally ill that were thrown on to the streets when Reagan and co shut down the institutions that were supposed to serve them. For the longest time, one third of the homeless were Vietnam veterans. What a world, a worthless POS like Reagan treating people suffering from the trauma of conflict like that. Isn't the free market great!

The city clears these camps on occasion throwing away their tents and belongings but where can they go? What a barbaric practice. If one is not suffering from some sort of mental illness prior to being homeless and living on the streets, they certainly are likely to after it. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle today, Otis R Taylor Jr points out:
"Homelessness in Oakland increased by 47% in the past two years, with a 68% increase in the number of unsheltered people — from 1,902 to 3,210 people. What’s more, 70% of homeless people are black when black people are less than a quarter of Oakland’s population."

There is talk in some communities of building "affordable" housing and "sheds" that homeless people can occupy. But this is no solution. The US ruling class will throw a few million at some social issues that are a by product of capitalism but the system is incapable of eliminating the savagery of the market, homelessness, like racism and constant war are all an integral part of capitalism and the fox will not protect the chickens in the hen house.  Crucial state institutions supposedly responsible for the health of millions of people are not designed to rectify society's problems; they are designed to give the impression they are.  I have been reading about the state of the Indian Health Services, an arm of the federal government that services over two million Native Americans, it is failing them and it is designed to. And anyway, without a job or skills and after years on the streets, these vicrims of the market need more than just a roof.

In the US, public transportation is so mediocre, particularly so here in California that during the Great Recession and on through these equally hard times, people walked away from their home and the blood sucker's mortgage but continued to pay off the car loan. This was a smart decision as they could sleep in the car and at least get to work.  There has been an increase in the number of vehicles, cars, trucks, and motor homes that park in certain areas, homeless with a roof at least. The "working poor" is a huge section of those in desperation and poverty in the US. To correct this situation will require a lot more than a few sheds and a million thrown out here and there. The trillions spent on the US military are off the table when it comes to finding funds. Same with the wealth of the small percentage of multi billionaires in the US who combined net worth could end world hunger.

It is the insecurity, fear, sense of powerlessness that drives the violent responses, drug and alcohol addiction and wiping out of one's entire family that are so prevalent here in the US; sensible gun control and background checks that any normal person would support will not solve the problem. There is a sort of collective madness. Almost every day there are mass killings of some sort. This is given fuel by the fact that in the media and society in general there is this constant propaganda that directs the blame at the victims. The "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps"  bull has not gone away although more and more people have no bootstraps to pull up. Even if they are working, they have two maybe three jobs with one of them having some sort of meager health insurance. The extreme wealth of a few at the top is ever present in the movies and television. I long for a show where one of the actors says to the roommate, "I'd better hurry I get in real trouble if I'm late for work." This is a bit exaggerated, but the reality is that on TV, work doesn't really exist, everyone just has fun, sex and cracks jokes to one another. There will be a black face, a gay person an immigrant, and so on just to show how wonderful life is here. Remember Breakfast Club, "isn't life swell".

There are increasing challenges to this madness and that includes homelessness but, as we have stated on this blog in the past, there will be some explosions ahead in the US. The movement against the savagery of the market will not be pretty, there will be confusion, steps back and steps forward and there will be violence as reaction rises in response to the class struggle becoming more acute. The US capitalist class has a long rich tradition of hiring gangsters and thugs to combat social movements and the organized working class. US labor history is full of such examples, like the Pinkertons and the Civil Rights had the citizens councils and the KKK. Here is the link to Otis Taylor Jr's article on the situation in Oakland in today's San Francisco Chronicle

US Society: Extreme Wealth And Growing Poverty an Explosive Mix.

Elon Musk's five Bel Air homes. Paid for by Tesla workers and others. Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444,retired

Here in the US we are in the belly of the capitalist beast. Most of the globe’s billionaires are here and its industries, dominate the world. We have only two capitalist parties at this point and no party that is based on workers and our communities. The market is god here. And while there has been some changes in that view, many victims of the market, the poor, disenfranchised and so on, still defend it.

Here in California, homelessness is a major issue with huge tent cities springing up everywhere. One of the reasons for this is the relatively mild winters throughout the state. And our public schools are struggling for cash and resources yet we have the most billionaires in the US about 90 in all. The United States is also home to five of the world's top 10 cities with the most resident billionaires. Tesla’s Elon Musk is one of them and he spent $100 million on six homes in Los Angeles, all on them close together on two streets. He also has a 100 yea- old ranch in Northern California. His Tesla factory and the workers who are the source of much of his wealth is 20 miles from where I write. One property Musk turned in to a private school for his five sons. Many of these social parasites do this. Mark Zukerberg spent $50 million on five homes across the bay here in San Francisco. It’s also a way of protecting their environment, keeping the rest of the world at bay.

Alongside this obscene wealth, we have the worst health care system in the advanced capitalist world. National health care spending in the US rose to $3.65 trillion in 2018 a 4.6% increase from a year earlier and was 17.9% of the US economy by 2017. Despite this figure, which is the highest of all the advanced capitalist countries, by 2016, the U.S. “….had the lowest life expectancy of 12 comparable countries.” According to the Wall Street Journal and we have one of the worst infant mortality rates. It is worth noting that the life expectancy of white American’s a “privileged” group is declining. As things stand, health care spending is projected to climb to 19.4% by 2027

Meanwhile, one million people were added to the number of Americans without health insurance in 2018 for a total of 30.7 million. As pathetic as Obama’s Affordable Care Act is, it did offer some respite to the uninsured, increasing coverage to a further 20 million people and I think we cannot underestimate what this meant to those folks. The problem is that the ACA left the insurance companies intact.

In order to pay for the expanded health coverage, a tax was imposed on insurance companies in the form of an annual fee. The Trump administration suspended it in 2017 and 2019 and it is expected to return to the books in 2020.

It shows the flaws in taxing capital and keeping a crucial social service industry like a nation’s health care in private hands. In response to the tax, insurers simply raised prices hurting consumers of health care which means the sick, the elderly the poor and do on.

Blaming the increased cost of health care on the tax is not entirely wrong, the same argument used against increasing the minimum wage or legislating minimum wage laws. The apologists for capital never argue that wage increases eat in to their profits so they might not be able to buy that yacht or take that home in a fancy neighborhood which is the case. They have to appeal to the wage workers’ self interest and link wages to prices claiming, as if it is a divine law, that a loss of jobs is a natural outcome of wage increases. Workers would not be so receptive if the boss explained that they want to keep their goodies at our expense.

The same is the case with this ACA tax argument. How is it that the insurance companies can counter the increased coverage by passing ttaxhe costs on to the sick and on the consumers of health care?  It is their profits they are protecting and they can always hide those; it’s their right as capitalists. This is why they oppose a public national health care system or even Obama’s  “public option” that disappeared as swiftly as it arose, because with a public option the consumer has a another choice. Prices can rise if the market can bear them. The public option gave the consumer of health care more leverage.

Poverty, homelessness, environmental destruction, collapsing social infrastructure are a result of capitalist crisis and efforts to clean up these social crises are paltry to say the least. Public expenditure is money out. It is returning to workers some of the wealth we create in the form of social services. In addition, capitalism needs some of these services in order to maintain a relatively stable system for profit making and capital accumulation.

The social services that do exist, are often exploited by the very same people that assail government spending. They have no principles whatsoever and at every opportunity they will gleefully bury their elongated snouts in the public trough. It’s called entrepreneurship.

New York City has a program that relocates homeless shelter residents. According to the WSJ it’s called the Special One-Time Assistance program. It provides a year’s rent “anywhere in the US” if they can prove they can continue the payments after the one year is up. So far, 12,482 people (5,074 families) over the past two years have used it. Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? But as you can see from the graph, NY City has about 78,000 homeless people, by that measurement it’s not much of a relief.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Because we have no real social housing program in the US, these homeless families were placed in private apartments and NY City housing inspectors often failed to check out the rentals according to the media.*  As of August 2019, New York City residents paid $89.12 million to landlords, a nice deal for them. It’s similar to section 8 housing where cities pay market rent to homeowners to house welfare or other low income of poor people. It’s a great deal for the owner of property.

Some of these families were forced to live in squalor ”without heat and infested with mice and vermin” according to a report by the Department of Justice.  Some apartments had defective facilities and one a defective boiler that left people living in a place with a 42.6 degree temperature in winter. There was no accountability for the landlords “…due to a flaw in the city’s paperwork….”, the report says. There’s that damn flaw in the paperwork again; language in an important weapon in capitalism’s never ending war against workers. Some of these folks were sent to apartments in Newark and the mayor of Newark is suing New York City which has opened this issue up.

There is talk among some of the politicians hoping to dislodge the degenerate trump to end the US “forever wars”, after all, the Afghan war has lasted 17 years and the mighty US war machine has been unable to defeat a ragtag group of medieval warlords. But US capitalism has been at war with its own working class and poor since the European invasions, starting with genocidal war against the original inhabitants. The history of its rise to power and final consolidation as a nation state with the second half of its revolution we call the Civil War, has been nothing but brutality and violence. US Labor history is a rich and militant chronicle of the struggle of workers, immigrants we should add, against the most brutal of capitalist regimes. It has its weaknesses and its strengths; racism and racial violence, along with sexism and the war against women has played a sad and destructive role in organized labor’s history.

Yesterday there was a massive general strike in France. This follows on the heels of the street battles in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, Hungary and Hong Kong where we can be sure the only issue was not the law that has been withdrawn. The Beijing regime is extremely worried that the struggle for democratic rights, free trade unions and so on could spread to the mainland. All workers must support the right to universal suffrage and democratic rights, but there must surely be other issues like housing and so on.  That some may have illusions in Trump is their weakness, but it is impossible to gauge the mood exactly from afar.

The situation in the US is explosive and will become more so as the economic situation changes. The economic situation is not looking good with corporate debt, one example, at around 3.7 trillion. This is not a positive thing. What we are seeing around the world will occur in the US with a vengeance. This movement has been delayed by the lack of any national movement able to bring all the many struggles together and the role of the heads of organized labor that act to suppress any movement that threatens the status quo. This delay is what will make the movement in the US so turbulent and at times confused and violent.

*I want to clarify with regard to the housing inspectors in this case. As with all public social workers burdened with overwork and having to deal with the failings of services to protect children, families, the poor etc. the blame is rarely theirs and any attempt by the capitalist media to blame them rather than market failures has to be suspect.

An excellent article about the state of affairs in one of our major cities and the state with the  6th largest economy in the world. The "other" Wall Street party, the Democrats, have such power in California some refer to us as a "one party state". It speaks to the need for an independent political voice, a party of the working class based on our organizations, the labor movement, community groups, environmental activists, Native American organizations, and all community based organizations fighting against the dictatorship of capital, both economic and political. 

The opinion piece was published in the New York Time May 22nd.

Opinion

America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.

The demise of a California housing measure shows how progressives abandon progressive values in their own backyards.

By Farhad Manjoo

Opinion Columnist

• May 22, 2011

To live in California at this time is to experience every day the cryptic phrase that George W. Bush once used to describe the invasion of Iraq: “Catastrophic success.” The economy here is booming, but no one feels especially good about it. When the cost of living is taken into account, billionaire-brimming California ranks as the most poverty-stricken state, with a fifth of the population struggling to get by. Since 2010, migration out of California has surged.

The basic problem is the steady collapse of livability. Across my home state, traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality.

Just look at San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi’s city. One of every 11,600 residents is a billionaire, and the annual household income necessary to buy a median-priced home now tops $320,000. Yet the streets there are a plague of garbage and needles and feces, and every morning brings fresh horror stories from a “Black Mirror” hellscape: Homeless veterans are surviving on an economy of trash from billionaires’ mansions. Wealthy homeowners are crowdfunding a legal effort arguing that a proposed homeless shelter is an environmental hazard. A public-school teacher suffering from cancer is forced to pay for her own substitute.

In March, teachers went on strike for seven days in Oakland, Calif., arguing that their salaries were not keeping up with the region’s soaring cost of living.CreditBen Margot/Associated Press

In March, teachers went on strike for seven days in Oakland, Calif., arguing that their salaries were not keeping up with the region’s soaring cost of living.CreditBen Margot/Associated Press

And there is no end in sight to such crushing success. At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing.

It was another chapter in a dismal saga of Nimbyist urban mismanagement that is crushing American cities. Not-in-my-backyardism is a bipartisan sentiment, but because the largest American cities are populated and run by Democrats — many in states under complete Democratic control — this sort of nakedly exclusionary urban restrictionism is a particular shame of the left.

There are many threads in the story of America’s increasingly unlivable cities. One continuing tragedy is the decimation of local media and the rise of nationalized politics in its place. In America the “local” problems plaguing cities are systematically sidelined by the structure of the national media and government, in which the presidency, the Senate and the Supreme Court are all constitutionally tilted in favor of places where no one lives. (There are more than twice as many people in my midsize suburban county, Santa Clara, as there are in the entire state of North Dakota, with its two United States senators.)

That’s why, aside from Elizabeth Warren — who has a plan for housing, as she has a plan for everything — Democrats on the 2020 presidential trail rarely mention their ideas for housing affordability, an issue eating American cities alive. I watched Joe Biden’s campaign kick off the other day; the only house he mentioned was the White House.

Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount goal of progressivism. Cities are the standard geographical unit of the global economy. Dense urban areas are quite literally the “real America” — the cities are where two-thirds of Americans live, and they account for almost all national economic output. Urban areas are the most environmentally friendly way we know of housing lots of people. We can’t solve the climate crisis without vastly improving public transportation and increasing urban density. More than that, metropolises are good for the psyche and the soul; density fosters tolerance, diversity, creativity and progress.

Yet where progressives argue for openness and inclusion as a cudgel against President Trump, they abandon it on Nob Hill and in Beverly Hills. This explains the opposition to SB 50, which aimed to address the housing shortage in a very straightforward way: by building more housing. The bill would have erased single-family zoning in populous areas near transit locations. Areas zoned for homes housing a handful of people could have been redeveloped to include duplexes and apartment buildings that housed hundreds.

State Senator Scott Wiener, center, introduced a bill, later shelved, that would have allowed higher-density housing in areas close to transit and jobs.CreditRich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

State Senator Scott Wiener, center, introduced a bill, later shelved, that would have allowed higher-density housing in areas close to transit and jobs.CreditRich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

The bill had garnered support from a diverse coalition of business and advocacy groups, and its sponsor, State Senator Scott Wiener, had negotiated a series of compromises with some of its fiercest opponents. Polls showed the measure to be widely popular. For the first time, something extraordinary looked possible: California’s wealthy homeowners would abandon their restrictionist attitudes and let us build some new housing.

Nope. Instead, Anthony Portantino, a Democratic state senator whose district includes the posh city of La Cañada Flintridge and who heads the appropriations committee, announced that he’d be shelving the bill until next year. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, he worried that the law would spur lots of people to move near residential bus routes, which he suggested would alter the character of enclaves like his.

And? Why is that so bad?

Reading opposition to SB 50 and other efforts at increasing density, I’m struck by an unsettling thought: What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and Nimbyism. Preserving “local character,” maintaining “local control,” keeping housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the same: to keep people out.

“We’re saying we welcome immigration, we welcome refugees, we welcome outsiders — but you’ve got to have a $2 million entrance fee to live here, otherwise you can use this part of a sidewalk for a tent,” said Brian Hanlon, president of the pro-density group California Yimby. “That to me is not being very welcoming. It’s not being very neighborly.”

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Farhad Manjoo became an opinion columnist for The Times in 2018. Before that, he wrote the State of the Art column. He is the author of “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.” @fmanjoo • Facebook