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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 3:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno--you keep playing the fool. Trying to make knowing comments that just reveal how little you know. Here's the background on what is happening in Oakland, From last January. Old news.

Quote:
20, 2020 at 9:12 a.m. | UPDATED: January 20, 2020 at 5:15 p.m.
OAKLAND — Marking a major victory for a controversial group of housing activists, Moms 4 Housing will get a chance to move back into the West Oakland home its members were squatting in for two months before they were evicted last week.

The owner of the empty house on Magnolia Street, real estate investment group Wedgewood, has agreed to negotiate the sale of the property to the Oakland Community Land Trust — a nonprofit that works with community members to buy properties to convert to affordable housing.

The land trust intends to fix up the house and allow the Moms 4 Housing members to move back in, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who brokered the deal, said during a media conference Monday at City Hall.

In what Schaaf called a “historic agreement to change the way they do business in Oakland,” Wedgewood also agreed to allow the city, the land trust, or other affordable housing organizations the right of first refusal on all of the dozens of properties it owns and had planned to sell in the city.


https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/examining-wedgewood-a-look-at-the-home-flipping-giant-in-battle-with-homeless-mothers/2208119/

Now I'm not a big fan of one-offs. I'm looking for things that scale, so I don't think this "victory" is a watershed event. But there is a very real problem with businesses like Wedgewood, which are predatory in nature. They buy up property during recessions, hold the property vacant--mining the tax code in the process--and then flip it for big profits. Jared Kushner has that kind of business. Betsy DeVos has that kind of business in student loans.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/news/2017/01/27/297572/inside-the-financial-holdings-of-billionaire-betsy-devos/

It's the real estate version of hostile take over of successful businesses by hedge funds. Strip out the assets and leave a husk without workers. It's now happening to the last refuge of affordable housing--trailer parks.

If you wanted to actually post something constructive, you might tell us the Republican program for not pushing poor people out of housing. But the Republicans have no programs--or even ideas--for poor people. They simply don't care about anything but trolling libs.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 6:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

With your belated addition of "exceptions", the problem doesn't appear to be near as dire as you keep trying to portray. I think that you've stuck your neck out too far on this issue. Best to let this one go.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Before the GOP went all in on xenophobia, it had legislators like Dick Ackerman. A very smart, very reasonable guy. Unlike Techno, he actually knows something about California's educational system.

Quote:
Profile Image
By Dick Ackerman
Dick Ackerman is co-chair of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education, dickackerman33@gmail.com. He is a Republican and a former California state senator and assemblymember from Orange County.


Profile Image
Mel Levine, Special to CalMatters
Mel Levine is co-chair of the California Coalition for Public Higher Education, MLevine@gibsondunn.com. He is a Democrat and a former member of the U.S. Congress and state assemblymember from Los Angeles.

The election of Vice President Kamala Harris and the appointment of several Californians to top posts in the new administration signal not only the state’s renewed clout in the nation’s capital but also the influential role our world-class public higher education system plays in shaping leaders and expanding diversity at the upper echelons of government.

Harris, a graduate of the University of California, Hastings College of Law, is the nation’s first woman, first person of color and first UC-affiliated person to ever hold the vice presidency. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus, is the first woman to hold that powerful position, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas graduated from UC Berkeley and is the first Latino and immigrant leader of the Department of Homeland Security.

These appointments and others underscore how California’s public higher education system creates strong and diverse leaders and helps combat economic and social inequities. But leaders at UC, California State University and California Community Colleges recognize they need to do more to increase diversity among faculty, staff and the student population. Each is moving forward with initiatives to achieve these goals, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal to increase funding for these initiatives deserves the Legislature’s support.

Among these initiatives, California Community Colleges, the state’s primary entry point into collegiate degree programs, has already met its 2022 goal of a 20% increase in students receiving credentials, and it is narrowing the achievement gap for students of color. California Community Colleges also is increasing flexibility in its courses, credit and support to meet the needs of an older and increasingly diverse student population. And it’s working to help struggling students secure housing and food, so they can focus on learning and reaching their goals.

CSU Board of Trustees and UC Board of Regents have developed multi-year plans to eliminate achievement gaps, with CSU seeking to eliminate gaps by 2025 and UC by 2030. Graduation rates at CSU, one of the nation’s largest and most diverse public universities, are at an all-time high, granting 62% of all bachelor’s degrees earned by California’s Latinx students and 47% of all bachelor’s degrees earned by the state’s Black students.

For the fall 2020 semester, UC enrolled more Latinx students than before and increased the admissions of low-income and first-generation-to-college students. The trend is continuing. UC reports a record number of undergraduate applications for the upcoming fall semester, a surge in applications from Latinx and Black students applications and continued growth in California Community Colleges transfer applications.

The governor’s budget proposal would continue these gains by providing state funding to CCC, CSU and UC to help close equity gaps, promote completion, fuel innovation and support students’ upward economic mobility. A recent agreement with legislative leaders would also restore previously enacted reductions, effective July 1, for UC and CSU. And the governor’s proposal assumes no increase in tuition and fees in 2021-22.

While the budget proposal won’t make up for all the funding losses over the past several years at the state’s colleges and universities, it will help them continue to provide the ladders to success for students from backgrounds and train the diverse leaders we need.

Over the past year, the U.S. has faced a long overdue reckoning of the racial and economic divides that persist in our nation. This moment in time demands urgent action to achieve equity in higher education to give students from all walks of life equal access and opportunities. Now is not the time to falter or fail. Now is the time to invest in all our young people.

_____

Dick Ackerman and Mel Levine have also written about how public universities and colleges can serve as economic engines, how the state’s economic recovery depends on investing in California higher education and how federal investments are needed for the state’s higher education system in the fight against COVID-19.
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The few remaining Delta smelt and Chinook salmon (if any) are jubilant over California's water priorities.

Quote:
California Lawmakers Continue to Perpetrate
More than 50% of the state’s water is allowed to flow out the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, and other things that just don’t make sense

By Katy Grimes, April 27, 2021 7:47 am

Food or Fish, Liberty or Oppression, Victim or Fighter? We Californians have many decisions to make about our future.

In Climate Deceit and Dubious Policies California Lawmakers Continue to Perpetrate, we addressed unreliable solar and wind power, and China’s influence pushing electric vehicles and an all-electric grid on the U.S., and how this all started with AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which initially set a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal into law.

Droughts and Water

While California’s drought conditions are actually historically normal, each of California’s droughts are billed by government and media as the driest period in the state’s recorded rainfall history. Scientists who study the Western United States’ long-term climate patterns say California has been dry for significantly longer periods — more than 200 years.

Droughts are nature’s fault; they are naturally occurring. Water shortages are the fault of government officials, and California’s water shortages fall squarely on former Gov. Jerry Brown, and now on Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The state of California hasn’t significantly invested in water storage since the 1970s when Jerry Brown was governor the first time around. “This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it,” Brown said upon being elected governor in 1975, embracing the “small is beautiful” way of thinking. Since then, California’s population has doubled, as have environmental demands. And, more than fifty-percent of the state’s water resources are allowed to flow out the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean.

Rather than build the desperately needed infrastructure projects to collect and store water during the wet years, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in 2018 a new water conservation act that will limit each citizen to just 50-55 gallons of water per person per day by 2050.

The truth is that 50 percent of California’s water already goes toward environmental purposes. Of the rest of the water, only about 10 percent goes to “urban” uses for homes and businesses, and 40 percent is used by agriculture. A full 50 percent of the state’s water is used for environmental purposes.

As California farmer and water expert Kristi Diener recently explained, the state has been letting water out of reservoirs across California for months now. And it’s not going to farmers, growers, ranchers or urban use. Environmental policy says the water “flows” from reservoirs are necessary to produce a rebound of endangered Delta smelt and Chinook salmon. However, these policies are a failure as neither species have been collected in all of the latest trawling surveys, where they spend several days a month searching in more than 200 spots. This practice of releasing water and hoping fish improve, has been unsuccessful for nearly 30 years, according to Diener. Both species are close to extinction.

If the State of California didn’t allow billions of gallons of fresh water to spill into the Pacific Ocean every year, we wouldn’t ever face water shortages.

Democrat lawmakers and federal environmental regulators have authorized more than 81 billion gallons of water to flow out to the ocean, instead of being used for human consumption. This is environmental extremism at its worst, and it is killing California agriculture, says Diener.

People forget the winter of 2019 brought 200 percent of average rains and snow pack. Yet the state still held back on water to farmers, and residents are facing rationing, the Globe reported May 2019.

Drought and California’s Big Water Lie

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a pair of bills creating permanent residential water rationing standards throughout the state of California. Senate Bill 606 by Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles), and AB 1668 by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), impose a mandatory limit of 55 gallons per person per day on indoor water consumption beginning in 2020.

While South Africa, known as a “water-stressed country,” limits its citizens to a maximum of 50 gallons per day, California’s 2019 Sierra snowpack was measured at 500 inches, and is on record at 188 percent of normal. But that water was not stored for future use.

Since year 2000, California voters have approved eight water bonds totaling more than $30 billion, according the the Legislative Analyst’s Office, and approved the construction of two more dams.

Yet, on May 9, 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed an Executive Order to “make water conservation a way of life” in California, which opened the floodgates for future water rationing legislation, rather than new dams or water storage.

The oft-repeated media canard that farmers use 80 percent of California’s water, is not true. “The statistic is manufactured by environmentalists to distract from the incredible damage their policies have caused,” according to Rep. Devin Nunes of California. “Environmentalists have manufactured the 80 percent statistic by deliberately excluding environmental diversions from their calculations. Furthermore, in many years there are additional millions of acre-feet of water that are simply flushed into the ocean due to a lack of storage capacity — a situation partly explained by environmental groups’ opposition to new water-storage projects.”

More is never enough for the left

They are coming for the children. While Climate change is back on the docket, buyer beware: one proposed bill would mandate California students are taught about climate change as early as first grade and would make the subject a high school graduation requirement.

A second bill, by the same lawmaker, would establish the Extreme Heat and Community Resilience Program to facilitate the implementation of regional and state climate change planning into effective projects.


https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/water-and-drought-deceit-more-dubious-policies-california-lawmakers-continue-to-perpetrate/
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Written by the co-author of California's War Against Donald Trump: Who Wins? Who Loses? Go figure where she's coming from.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Techno--I've worked on water policy in California for over 50 years. I've forgotten more than you'll ever know. But you've amply demonstrated that it is not necessary to actually know anything in order to troll. The right wing internet will feed you plenty of bullshit, and you'll lap it up.

Quote:
Overall, we rate the California Globe Right-Center biased based on story selection that moderately favors the right and Mixed for factual reporting due to the occasional use of poor sources and failed fact checks.


I'll give you one simple fact. There are nearly 1500 dams in California. All of the good sites have been developed. Trying to create new water supply with a dam is just stealing from each other. More than that, new sites cost about $3,000 per acre foot of water. Agriculture, which uses about 75% of California's water, would be out of business at those rates.

You'd rather wage culture war than learn anything.
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J64TWB



Joined: 24 Dec 2013
Posts: 1685

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some reservoirs are required to maintain half full, not due to fish but flood danger. Last thing you want is a flood. Science is getting better with forecasting, don’t know if those rules have been augmented.

Techno you good with Trump supporters storming the castle based on a lie?
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J64TWB



Joined: 24 Dec 2013
Posts: 1685

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

California watershed seems complex. Here’s a primer techno. Sound bites don’t cut it.

https://www.watereducation.org/photo-gallery/california-water-101
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

J64TWB wrote:
Some reservoirs are required to maintain half full, not due to fish but flood danger. Last thing you want is a flood. Science is getting better with forecasting, don’t know if those rules have been augmented.

Techno you good with Trump supporters storming the castle based on a lie?


We'll find out whether or not it's a lie when Arizona audit has concluded. Either way, Rachel Madcow is going to declar it a conspiracy. You are with good company
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bard’s all in on a Qanon group taking ballots and “counting” them again with no oversight. But with Republican funding.


The Water Education Foundation is a pretty good source, although pretty ag-oriented. A couple of facts.

1. In California, all of the new reservoirs that have been evaluated will develop only a pittance of new water. That’s because there are already reservoirs on virtually all of the streams.

2. California’s a hot place in the summer, and getting hotter. Most of the new reservoir ideas will evaporate a huge amount of water.

3. California gets a huge amount of storage in the snow pack. That is being reduced by global warming.

4. The only place to store the volumes lost with the erosion of the snow pack, without losing most of it to evaporation, is the ground. But that is complicated. It has to be retained over porous soils long enough to infiltrate into the ground. That requires either public ownership of the areas to infiltrate the water, or a system to allow private landowners to monetize that infiltration. Far from simple. California was the last of the western states to regulate groundwater. Corporate agriculture fought that regulation to the bitter end. We are not yet in a place where we have a system to get us through this drought—much less the loss of storage in the snow pack.

Simpletons think the world is simple, and simple nostrums from right wing sources will fix complex problems. Adults know the world is complicated.
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