#212 / The Chief's Speech

The Great Change website tells us that the famous words below, attributed to Chief Seattle, were not, in fact, the words of Chief Seattle at all. 

It does matter, of course, who says something. But it is also true that words, themselves, can speak to us, and touch our souls, and convey important truths. 

Written for television? OK. These words speak to me:

This we know. The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Image Credit:

https://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-gospel-of-chief-seattle-written-for.html

#211 / Sedentary Ways

The image above comes from an article in the July 29-30, 2017, Wall Street Journal. The article is called "The Perils of Agriculture" in the print edition of the paper, and "Maybe Cities Were A Bad Idea" in the online version. Most of us, today, would probably think of "cities" and "agriculture" as opposites, but the Wall Street Journal's review of Built On Bones: 15,000 Years Of Urban Life And Death, is correct in linking the two. Without agriculture, we wouldn't have cities. We would be back in a "hunter-gatherer" existence.

Brenna Hassett, author of Built On Bones, lectures in bioarchaeology and physical anthropology at the University of London. The problem she addresses in her book, as described in the Wall Street Journal review, is "one of the most absorbing in the history of the last 14,000 years or so: why, when sedentary ways are obviously destructive of health, have so many people abandoned foraging for farming and rural for urban life?" Why, in other words, are human beings not still operating as hunter-gatherers?

[Hassett] focuses on the evidence of bones, and so psychological sickness and social malaise are under-represented in her tally. But, on most calculations, there is no doubt that farming is bad for you. Populations that adopt it die earlier than hunter-gatherers, exhibiting more stunted and distorted bones, more tooth decay, more exposure to viruses and more evidence of malnutrition than their foraging predecessors. Concentrated populations are accident-prone niches for epidemics, where filth and pollution accumulate, while deprivation ensues from widening inequalities. 

Yet farming and urbanization conquered most of the world, with rapidity that, as Ms. Hassett points out, seems astonishing by comparison with the rate of transmission of earlier technological innovations. A way of life that brought “debilitating, spine-crunching diseases” zoomed across the globe during the Neolithic revolution, whereas two-edged flints took perhaps half a millennium to reach Europe from Africa. Populations grow at the expense of individual health and happiness; resources increase, but so do risks of wipe-out.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, who reviews Built On Bones for the Wall Street Journal, is a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. Fernández-Armesto suggests that climate change forced pre-urban humans to learn to domesticate plants, with the only other alternative being for them to undertake a radical geographic migration,  "to follow the retreating ice-edge." Fernández-Armesto also notes that "elites" benefitted from the transition to an agriculture-based urban existence, thus suggesting that the sort of "class warfare" that Marx talked about predated the industrial revolution by a very long time. 

Here is what struck me in the article. A "hunter-gatherer" existence clearly makes human life directly dependent on a World of Nature that humans did not create. To survive in that world, humans had to acknowledge the primacy of Nature ("the world God made," to put things in a religious context), and if you believe anthropologist James Suzman, author of Affluence Without Abundance, that approach has a great deal to recommend it:

If we judge a civilization’s success by its endurance over time, then the Bushmen are the most successful society in human history. Their experience of modernity offers insight into many aspects of our lives, and clues as to how we might address some big sustainability questions for the future.

In our "urban" and agriculture-based world, it is easy for humans to conclude that they are in charge of their own existence. Harking to my one year of theological education, my Old Testament professor, James Sanders, defined "sin" as the human refusal to acknowledge that we are "creatures," not the Creator; our "sin," in other words, is to attribute our existence to our own human creativity, instead of to the seminal and ultimate creativity of God, who brought everything that is into being. 

References to "theology," and to any confession that human beings are subject to the power of a Creator God, are definitely out of favor in today's world. Whether religious language is used, or not, however, is not actually that important, in my view. What is important is whether we can and will acknowledge the truth that the human world that is brought into existence by our own creative activities is ultimately and radically dependent on a World of Nature that we did not create. 

Human civilization has had to deal with many "pop quizzes" in its long path to the present, and maybe global warming is going to be our "Final Exam." Our assertion that "we're in charge," generally, has a strange relationship to our approach to global warming. When confronted with the evidence that global warming is, in fact, caused by our human activities, "global warming denialism" questions whether human activities are really the cause of our current crisis. We can't really have it both ways. Human civilization is not going to survive the "Global Warming Final Exam" unless our actual relationship with the World of Nature is first confessed. In the end, we are not "in charge."

We have moved from a "hunter-gatherer" existence, in which the radical dependence of human beings on the Natural World was an evident and everyday fact of life, into an agricultural/urban world of our own making, in which it has become ever easier to forget the ultimate primacy of the World of Nature. That world, the World of nature, the world God made, is the world on which all life depends. We are either going to learn that lesson or fail the final!

As is so often the case, Bob Dylan captures this "Two Worlds" thought in a song. Here is his observation in Mississippi, one of my favorites. This verse perfectly expresses (in metaphor) the transition from our "hunter-gatherer" existence into our current, urban-based civilization:

City’s just a jungle; more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away
I was raised in the country, I been workin’ in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/maybe-cities-were-a-bad-idea-1501269935

#210 / Doomsday Maps And Metanoia

The picture above (and many others like it) can be found online. The title of the article in which these "doomsday maps" are found is titled, "The Shocking Doomsday Maps Of The World And The Billionaire Escape Plans." 

Why has the fabulously wealthy Ted Turner bought so much real estate in Montana? Well, he may know something that we don't know. For instance, he may have inside information that California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and a good chunk of Colorado are shortly going to disappear, as the poles shift, and/or as an asteroid hits the earth, and/or as massive volcanic eruptions lead to massive worldwide flooding. Read all about it in the article I have linked, above.

And if you think the above illustration portrays a pretty dire "doomsday" scenario for the United States, check out the "doomsday maps" for Europe. Or what will once have been Europe, after "doomsday" arrives.

I am a "doomsday" kind of guy, actually, always willing to entertain the possibility that something really bad may be coming down the line. I take the potential damage that would be caused by a seismic event in the Cascadia subduction zone rather seriously, for instance. But doomsday-friendly as I am, I didn't find the comments of Jim Dobson very compelling. He's the guy who wrote the article with the "doomsday maps."

As Dobson himself admits, the scenarios he rehearses are based on the speculations of "spiritual visionaries and futurists," and are "not based on any science." In fact, these "doomsday maps" are based on a claimed spiritual awakening by one Gordon-Michael Scallion, who has claimed that such a spiritual awakening has helped him create very detailed maps of the future world, coming soon to a continent near you.

The idea that the world may soon change, and in radical ways, does "speak to my condition," to use a Quaker phrase. I have had a hard time, my entire life, believing that the human race can continue pursuing its current course without causing some major and disastrous consequences. That idea about the future (a kind of "doomsday" perspective) is one that I developed as a teenager, and about which I frequently debated my father. He was a very intelligent person, and he pretty much told me that "things have always been like this (i.e., bad)."

I still think we "can't go on like this." At least, not for very much longer. I know that we are always at a critical point in history, that being the essence of our human condition, but I have to think that Bob Dylan is right. It's now or never, more than ever.

It is certainly possible that cataclysmic geologic events will soon be bringing on "doomsday," with maps to match. But so is that kind of "metanoia" I have written about before, a kind of spiritual transformation that could shake the foundations of our world in a transformation that would work for good, and not for ill. 

After reading about the "doomsday maps" that word "metanoia" came into my mind once more. It's kind of a religious word. It means "repent." 

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2017/06/10/the-shocking-doomsday-maps-of-the-world-and-the-billionaire-escape-plans/#4aa71a704047

(2) - https://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2010/09/

#209 / Home At Last

The main article in the August-September 2017 edition of National Wildlife, a magazine published by the National Wildlife Federation, is called "Home At Last." The article celebrates the return of bison to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. The painting above, created by Arturo Garcia, is featured in the magazine. Clicking this link will let you watch a seven-minute video, produced in this case by Defenders of Wildlife, documenting the return of the bison to the Great Plains. 

National Wildlife says that the vivid colors in the painting reflect, for Garcia, a "joyful life," and that "for the Shoshone and Arapaho people, the long-sought return of the buffalo is a source of joy."

I love the painting, and think that we will all experience much joy when we, like the buffalo, finally return to the World of Nature, into which we have been so mysteriously born, and which is, in fact, our ultimate and real home. 

Image Credit:

https://www.arturogarciafineart.com/portfolio/tatanka/

#208 / History Lessons Better Left Unlearned

Roger Cohen wrote an opinion piece in the July 22, 2017, edition of The New York Times that was titled, "There's History, and There's 'History According to Donald.'" That was the title in the print edition. Online, the article is called, "Donald Trump's History Lessons." Cohen faults Trump for what might be called making up "fake history," though he doesn't use that term. He does end on a properly cautionary note: "History is no joke. It’s on the curriculum because it is only through it that the psyches of other nations can be understood and wars averted."

On the same day, but in a different newspaper, Walter Russell Mead pursued a similar topic. His July 22, 2017, article in The Wall Street Journal was titled, "What Truman Can Teach Trump." Mark down Mead as an optimist. So far, there is very little evidence that anyone can "teach" Trump anything. Nonetheless, Mead suggests that Trump could learn from Truman, should Trump be willing to pay attention to anyone besides that "Man In The Mirror," to cite to a Michael Jackson song. 

Both Cohen and Mead are concerned with the United States' "place in the world," and the ability of the United States to provide world "leadership." With no apologies for our current President, figuring out how to continue on the path that the United States has pursued since Truman mighty not actually be the history lesson we need to learn. Maybe, we should ask Trump to learn from Eisenhower, instead of from Truman. 

Eisenhower warned us all about the "military-industrial complex," and we might want to take a look in the mirror, as a nation, and do some thinking about that lesson. The results of studying that history might lead us to some new insights. It doesn't seem to me, for instance, that the policies pursued by the United States since the end of World War II have "averted wars," as Cohen implies. Truman's ability to "scare" the people of the United States into a belief in a "Cold War" as the foundation for United States foreign policy hasn't worked out very well, either, at least in my opinion.

As a history major during my undergraduate years, and from all the reading and thinking I have done since, I have definitely come to appreciate the importance of history. I'm with Cohen and Mead on that. 

But you know the history lessons we really need to learn? It's what your mommy and daddy taught you. It's what your teachers said. It's what the coach of your baseball, football, or basketball team advised

Could we, just maybe...?  Do you think we could...

LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES?

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. 

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. 

                              Dwight D. Eisenhower

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-truman-can-teach-trump-1500661673

#207 / Less Unique Than We Think

The July 21, 2017, edition of The Wall Street Journal ran an article that proclaims that we are "Less Unique Than We Think." The first paragraph of the article attracted my attention: 

Of all the alternative names that have been suggested for our species (out of which Linnaeus somehow chose Homo sapiens, “the wise”), maybe the most appropriate would be Homo narcissus, since we seem to delight so much in gazing at our own reflections. Like the Greek youth who fell in love with his own image, human beings have long been obsessed about what makes us so much “better” than other animals.

Narcissism does seem a powerful force! Think about our current President, Donald J. Trump. It certainly wasn't "wisdom" that got him there!

In fact, says David Barash, whose article reviews two recent books, if it wasn't "wisdom," that got us where we are, it wasn't "narcissism" either. "Creativity" and "social cooperation" have been major reasons that humans have differentiated themselves from the other species: 

In “The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional,” [Agustín Fuentes] has done a fine job of summarizing recent research in anthropology and primatology. He argues, in short, that creativity combined with social cooperation can provide the key to human uniqueness, pointing to numerous examples in which problems such as the finding of food, the avoidance of predators, the transfer of information and the manipulation of the physical environment are solved by way of imaginative collaboration. The group achieves results that would be beyond the reach of any individual. 

But, Barash says, creativity and cooperation aren't enough, in themselves, to explain why human beings are different from the other animals. What about culture? 

Perhaps not creativity but culture is what is most fundamental to our humanity—not just today but throughout our evolutionary history. This is the gravamen of Mr. Laland’s “Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind.” The author points to the qualitative gulf between, say, a nightingale’s song and a Verdi aria, or between the ability of many animals to count and Newton’s invention of the calculus. His explanation for the difference derives mostly, he believes, from the human ability to copy and teach (“high-fidelity information transmission”) and from the ways in which this ability, in turn, fed back into our evolution. 

Darwin was certainly aware of the importance of human culture, but under Mr. Laland’s sophisticated interpretation, cultural innovations did not merely respond to environmental challenges but also helped create the elaborate surroundings within which natural selection made us what we are today.

There is a pretty good argument, it seems to me, that "culture" is actually the product of "creativity" coupled with "social cooperation," but unless we want to debate terms and definitions, it's enough to know that creativity, social cooperation, and culture are all important aspects of what it means to be human. 

What makes us uniquely human, in my opinion, is our ability both to think thoughts and to take actions that are "new," that have never been known before, and to cooperate and work together to make into reality the ideas and visions that come to us first as possibility.

The "World of Nature," which contains all other species, operates on the basis of laws of inevitability. We alone have the freedom to make our own "laws," unconstrained by inevitability, and to write the charter of a new beginning, our prescription for the actions that will create a new, human world.

Image Credit:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/12/11/masters-of-the-planet/

#206 / Pornography, Technology, And Freedom

This summer, I have been teaching a course at the University of California, Santa Cruz, called, "Introduction To Legal Process." Normally, I teach a "Capstone Thesis" course for students majoring in Legal Studies. That course is called, "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom."

My summer class is using a textbook called, Law Justice, and Society, by Anthony Walsh and Craig Hemmens. Chapter 10 is entitled, "The Limits of Social Control: Policing Vice." 

"Limits" is the key word. I think it's fair to say that Walsh and Hemmens disapprove of pornography, because of their view that it causes both personal and social "harm," but they nonetheless conclude that "freedom of speech trumps harm...." Pornography is here to stay, in other words, whether they (or we) like it or not. As noted in the slide at the top of this blog posting, child pornography is the exception. 

As is pretty obvious to anyone who uses the Internet, there does not seem to be any effective limit, whatsoever, to the presence and availability of pornography online - at least not in the United States. China, with its "Great Firewall," may have had some success in cutting back on the instant availability of online pornography, but there is no such limit here. 

Some people, of course, do NOT agree with Walsh and Hemmens that pornography causes the kind of "harm" that should lead to its suppression. Here, for instance, is the abstract of an article called, "Pornography and Freedom," by Danny Frederick:

Abstract:

I defend pornography as an important aspect of freedom of expression, which is essential for autonomy, self-development, the growth of knowledge and human flourishing. I rebut the allegations that pornography depraves and corrupts, degrades women, is harmful to children, exposes third parties to risk of offence or assault, and violates women’s civil rights and liberties. I contend that suppressing pornography would have a range of unintended evil consequences, including loss of beneficial technology, creeping censorship, black markets, corruption and extensive social costs.

Whichever side you may be on with respect to the harmfulness, or not, of pornography, technology may soon change the world of online pornography, perhaps eliminating those manifestations of it that are based on self-published pornographic pictures and videos. There are a lot of those! Thousands upon thousands of men and women routinely post pornographic pictures of themselves, inviting comments, and perhaps something more. My bet, though, is that the relative anonymity of these picture posting sites facilitates the practice. That could change. The readings I have been doing for my other course, "Privacy, Technology, And Freedom," suggest that online anonymity, where pictures are involved, may soon disappear entirely. 

Specifically, commercially available facial recognition software is becoming so powerful that full information on any face found online may soon be easily available. Cheating wives (and husbands) and college students who post naked pictures online, have been assuming, I think, that the pictures won't, themselves, identify them. Facial recognition technology may soon demonstrate that this assumption will have to be reevaluated. As Walsh and Hemmens point out, "social control" is actually carried out more by "social pressures" and "customary standards" than by the law. If the "law" can't stop online pornography, because the First Amendment trumps majority "standards of decency," it may well be that technology can pick up the slack.

Before we all cheer too loud, however, about the wonders of technology, let's remember that the facial recognition software that might discourage online pornography will also strip everyone of us of any anonymity, at all, and that posting a picture on Facebook, documenting your trip to Yosemite, might let anyone in the world, or in the government, find out who you are, and track you from then on till forever. 

Finding a way to curb the ability of the government, or of any person, to track you down, using modern technologies, is going to be a big challenge for the future. And pornography, I think, is the least of our problems!

Image Credit:
http://slideplayer.com/slide/6422705/

#205 / My Letter To The Council****

Dear Members of the Santa Cruz City Council:

Since I was not able to finish my comments at the City Council forum on housing, held at the Civic Auditorium last Tuesday, June 27th, I am sending this email as a follow up. 

The first point I made at the forum is a point that Maria Gaura also made, in a recent letter to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. If you haven’t seen her letter, I’d like to draw it to your attention. Her main point is irrefutable:

"We cannot rely on the market to lower the cost of housing here.” 

Since the price of things goes up when there is more demand than supply, it might seem like a good strategy to increase the “supply” of housing to meet the “demand,” so the price of housing will go down. It doesn’t work, and it never will work in Santa Cruz. In Bakersfield, maybe it would work, but we live in one of the nicest communities on earth. Everyone would like to live here (so the demand might as well be infinite). The The territory here (and thus the potential to “supply” housing to meet the “demand”) is extremely limited (as are our natural resources and our existing community infrastructure). 

To make more specific the source of the “demand” that so over tops the possible “supply” that we can never hope to lower prices by “supplying” more housing, consider these three factors: First, there is a global demand for California real estate, as investors from all over the world seek to invest in land on the California coast. Second, we are "right over the hill” from one of the most rapidly-growing economies in the world, with tens of thousands of people, or even hundreds of thousands of people, making much more money than any worker in Santa Cruz ever can. Third, we have our own “demand-generating” growth machine right here in Santa Cruz itself, in the form of our University of California campus that is seeking, always, to expand, expand, expand. 

There is no way that Santa Cruz can ever lower housing prices by building more market rate housing. In fact, as any fair analysis of the so-called “Corridors Plan” shows, “up-zoning” properties, to allow for more building, increases the sales price of the properties that get “up-zoned,” thus making whatever new housing is built more expensive, not less expensive, since land cost is the major cost involved in housing. 

If we want to make progress on affordable housing in Santa Cruz, there are only three strategies that can work - and one of them is emphatically NOT setting up new zoning districts that will increase the density on existing properties, raising their price, and stimulating more building. That is a strategy that would likely result in the elimination of existing housing units, and one which would certainly lead to the production of new, and more expensive units, since the new land prices will demand higher prices for new development. 

What are the three strategies that might work? 

First, it is critically important to try to find ways to take housing out of the regular “market,” where excess demand for Santa Cruz real estate will always push housing prices higher, and to impose price restrictions, in various ways. Second, the City should be seeking to reduce demand, in any way it can. Third, generating money to subsidize affordable housing, which must then be maintained as affordable by an in-perpetuity resale price restriction, is another way to make some progress.

None of these approaches is a panacea, but all of them would actually help, while the City’s apparent current strategy - trying to stimulate new market-rate building to meet housing demands - will only make things worse.

I have five specific suggestions for Council action, based on the outline above. I do think that the City has a housing “crisis,” and I therefore do NOT think that the Council should wait to take action until the end of the elaborate process outlined at the housing forum, with listening tours and all the rest. Take action as soon as possible on any and all solutions that might help. Here are my five ideas: 

#1 - STOP further growth at UCSC. This is already the official position of the City Council and the Board of Supervisors. However, it is one thing to “say” this, and a completely different thing to organize a legal and political effort actually to accomplish it. I urge you to begin immediately to do the latter, which means mobilizing the community, mobilizing students, faculty, and staff on campus, and launching an effort that will have to involve the State Legislature and the Regents. The Council should do everything it can to make certain that the Santa Cruz Campus does not grow beyond the size authorized in the currently-effective LRDP.

#2 - Make large new employers pay to construct price-restricted affordable housing. In other words, as large new employers increase the “demand” for the housing that their workers need, make them help with the effort needed to “supply” affordable, price restricted units.

#3 - Reinstitute a true “inclusionary" housing program with no escape hatches. Currently, the City allows a developer to pay a fee to the City, instead of actually building affordable units, and this makes the construction of new affordable housing the City’s problem. Every time a new housing development is approved, one condition ought to be that the developer will ACTUALLY BUILD a percentage of the new units and sell them at a permanently restricted price, affordable to an average or below average income person working in Santa Cruz. Furthermore, the inclusionary percentage should be much greater than 15%. I suggest 50%. You will be told that no one will build anything with such a significant inclusionary requirement. Maybe, but remember how high the “demand” is for housing here. Why not see? Since every new unit of new market rate housing is actually a “loser” for the City, in terms of the cost of new services versus taxes generated, and since the more market rate housing that is built the more demand there is for service level workers, thus increasing the need for affordable housing (with no place for these people to find housing), this approach is definitely worth a try. 

#4 - The Council should do everything it possibly can to institute a program of price control for rental units. I know that "rent control" has a lot of problems, and that the City has limited authority, but I urge the Council to use every bit of authority it does have to put rental price restrictions in place at the earliest time possible. 

#5 - Finally, as noted earlier, “up-zoning” actually increases the cost of building new housing, because it increases the price of land. The Council should consider the option of “downzoning” properties, with any subsequent “up-zoning” to be granted only in connection with the actual construction of permanently affordable, price-restricted housing.

Thank you for taking these suggestions seriously - and for following up on other suggestions made by those who testified at the housing forum. There is no doubt that Santa Cruz has a housing crisis. In a crisis, we need to try to do new things, and we need to move quickly to respond to the crisis. Addressing our housing crisis is not a “planning” exercise. It’s genuinely a matter of life or death for some, and if we don’t do better than we have, the community that we all love will be lost.

Gary A. Patton, Attorney at Law

P.O. Box 1038

Santa Cruz, CA 95061

Telephone: 831-332-8546

Email: gapatton@mac.com 

Website: www.gapatton.net

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gapatton

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In my blog posting yesterday, I talked about our affordable housing crisis from a different perspective. As I thought about it, I realized that the letter I am including here was actually a pretty good summary of the way I see the problem. We are not going to be able to "eliminate" the affordable housing crisis, absent a massive reinvestment by the state and federal governments in permanently price-restricted housing (including lots of rental housing) that can be afforded by ordinary working families and those who are at the bottom of our ever more skewed economic hierarchy. Local governments just don't have the money to do what is needed. Despite that fact, there are, as I outline here, some ways to address the issues, and to make some progress, but they require a bold deployment of local government powers to do things out of the ordinary. While local governments hesitate, hoping for a "private market" solution, development interests are working at the state level to take away community planning and zoning powers, all in the name of "affordable housing." The state-proposed solutions are almost all tilted way too heavily towards the developers, with minor affordable housing advances justifying dramatic cutbacks in local control.

Image Credit:

http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2009/10/28/new-affordable-housing-comes-to-downtown-walnut-creek/

#204 / Notions About NIMBYS

CityLab, part of The Atlantic Monthly group, outlines its mission this way: "CityLab is committed to telling the story of the world’s cities: how they work, the challenges they face, and the solutions they need."

A recent story on the CityLab website carried this title: "Oregon May Strip Portland of Its NIMBY Powers." The subhead elaborated: "A controversial bill before the state legislature [in Oregon] would preempt cities’ rights to prevent new affordable housing." The article is worth reading, and Oregon is not the only state that is thinking about stripping local communities of their traditional land use and zoning powers, all in the name of "affordable housing." It's happening right here in California, too.

NIMBY stands for "Not In My Backyard." Being called a NIMBY is not a term of endearment. In fact, there is a popular notion that NIMBYS, so-called, are probably racists, bigots, and most certainly selfish. Given this characterization, it's no wonder that people of good will think it might be appropriate to deprive such NIMBYS of their right to have any control over their own local land use.

Let me, please, interject a cautionary word. Maybe we should be careful before we transfer control over the future of our local communities to politicians operating at the state level. Local residents are, generally, those who know best about their own "backyards." The whole idea of "local control" over land use recognizes this fact. Local residents can also be pretty effective in making local officials do what the local residents want, if the residents will get active and get involved. This is what is normally called "self-government," and it's a value worth preserving. Local residents are pretty powerless when they have to deal with local issues in the arena of the state legislature. 

And here's another caution. The land use and zoning provisions that development interests claim are racist, exclusionary, and bigoted, may not be the product of such unworthy sentiments at all. Communities that care about water supply issues, traffic, and the ability of their local governments to provide necessary public services, adopt regulations to address those very legitimate issues, and the effort to do that does not, in fact, stem from base motives of selfishness and racism. 

Here's what is really going on, in my opinion: Development interests who always want to be able to do whatever they want, and to make as much money as they can, with the minimum amount of interference, are seizing upon an incredibly real and serious crisis - the affordable housing crisis - in an effort to eliminate perfectly responsible and appropriate local land use measures. Let's keep in mind that it is very much easier to parlay money for votes in the State Legislature, where big money interests dominate, than it is to use money at the local level, to override involved and active residents concerned about their neighborhoods, public safety, water security, and the traffic clogging their local streets.

Great concern about "affordable housing," when it comes from development interests pushing state legislation that overrides local land use powers, is quite likely insincere. How do you gauge whether or not this is true? Check out whether the "override" of local land use control will actually produce any significant amount of price-restricted, genuinely "affordable" housing, or whether it will just produce MORE housing. 

Many people think "more" housing means lower-priced, and therefore more "affordable" housing, but that just isn't true, and concerned people of good will should not let themselves be hoodwinked by notions about NIMBYS that are not founded on the facts. 

Image Credit:

https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/06/oregons-hb-2007-would-preempt-cities-zoning-rights/528612/

#203 / Forget About It

Ulrich Boser thinks it is "Good to Forget." Among other things, Boser contends that "relearning what you once knew makes you smarter." Benjamin Storm, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is, of course, located right here in my own hometown, has made human memory, and forgetting in particular, the area of his major academic focus. Storm is cited by Boser as someone who now takes this "forgetting is good" idea quite seriously. 

Speaking personally, I was very happy to hear about this theory, and that forgetting can be beneficial. For whatever reason, and age may have something to do with it, I tend to forget things rather quickly, particularly in the sense that I have no reliable "inner index" to what I know. I often cannot remember, for instance, if I read a particular book, or who wrote it, or what its main argument might have been. And yet, I know that I continue to make use of the books I've studied, as I start thinking and writing about a topic in which I have some interest. I "know" things without being able to say precisely what it is that I do know, and when I need the knowledge it "comes to me," as I am somehow able to resurrect past knowledge and use it in some new construction. 

One book I have never forgotten, by Michael Polanyi, is called Personal Knowledge. In that book, Polanyi says that we "know" things that we cannot document or explain. He uses the knowledge of Antonio Stradivari as an example. Stradivari "knew" how to make violins better than anyone else, but that knowledge was "personal" to him. It could not be reduced to writing, or listed out in a set of instructions, and then transmitted to others. No one else could make violins as good as Stradivari's, even with such guidance. Stradivari obviously "knew" things he didn't even know he knew. Our "knowledge," in other words, is always "personal," not existing independently of ourselves. I take this to suggest that our knowledge is often, and maybe even "always," greater than the sum of the sources from which we have acquired it, and from which sources we assemble what we "know."

At any rate, for those worried that their memory may be "fading," or becoming "unreliable," the Boser piece in The New York Times might provide some comfort.

When you catch yourself not remembering something that you just know that you know, don't get alarmed. Forget about it!

Image Credit: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/opinion/sunday/forgot-where-you-parked-good.html

#202 / Regulation Is Freedom #3

The New York Times ran a front-page story on July 12, 2017, documenting the "deep industry connections of Trump's deregulation teams." The Times' story began by noting that "President Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations."

The point of the article was that the regulatory cutbacks being conducted by these "teams" were taking place "out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts."

That doesn't sound good, of course (and it's not), but many people probably think that scaling back government regulations, and cutting the "red tape," is generally a good thing. My purpose today is to suggest that "deregulation" may not, in fact, be an automatically positive activity. Contrary to common understanding, "regulation" is an arena in which our democratic freedoms are directly achieved. I have translated this thought into shorthand by an Orwellian-sounding phrase upon which I have elaborated twice before, once in 2010 ("Regulation Is Freedom"), and once again in 2011 ("Regulation Is Freedom #2"). 

Because it has been almost six years since I have made this point in my blog, I thought it was worthwhile to make it again. What made me think it might be worthwhile to reiterate my point was a letter to the editor appearing in the July 12, 2017, edition of the San Jose Mercury News (on the same date, in other words, that the above-referenced article appeared in the New York Times).

Here's the letter that appeared in the Mercury News, from Morris Chassen, of San Jose: 

Thick smog of the 60s could be coming back 

At age 74, I remember living in Los Angeles in the 50’s and 60’s. I had a personal smog alert: Mom would say, “Don’t go outside it’s too smoggy.” There were times I couldn’t see to the end of the block and coughed when I went outside. Smog was an accepted way of life. When young and old started to die, people looked to the skies but couldn’t see the sun. Things are a lot better now but we still have a long way to go. I live in Almaden Valley, I can look toward downtown San Jose and think, they sure are smoggy over there. I drive downtown and look back toward Almaden Valley and think, they sure are smoggy over there. Smog control is not a liberal plot by a bunch of government bureaucrats. Go to YouTube and look at Los Angeles Smog in the 50’s and 60’s. That’s not what we want for our families.

If my suggestion that we "legislate" our human world has any validity, then our ability to write whatever law or rule we like means that regulation is, in fact, the realm of freedom, in which we discover our human ability to create a world of our own choosing. 

Obviously, not every "regulation" is wonderful, and excessive and oppressive regulations can exist. However, the way that "deregulation" is often equated with an effort to increase "freedom" always rubs me the wrong way. A proper understanding of regulation will recognize that "regulation," in fact, is the arena in which our political freedom is made real. It is the place where, among other things, we can act, collectively, to counteract the bad effects that sometimes come from letting everyone do what they want, individually. To follow up on Mr. Chassen's point, see below:

Image Credits:

(1) - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/8314379/Regulation-Freedom-Day-for-company-directors-says-IoD.html

(2) - http://midwayautoandbrake.com/2016/06/27/how-to-pass-a-smog-check/

#201 / Politics As A Hobby

Professor Eitan D. Hersh is worried that American politics is turning into a kind of "hobby" for those who engage in it. You can read about his concerns in the Sunday, July 2, 2017, edition of The New York Times. In the hard copy version of the paper, Hersh's column is titled, "Political Hobbyists Are Ruining the Country." Online, you'll find that the title is equally dramatic, and equally negative: "The Problem With Participatory Democracy Is the Participants."

As Hersh sees it: 

Political hobbyism might not be so bad if it complemented mundane but important forms of participation. The problem is that hobbyism is replacing other forms of participation, like local organizing, supporting party organizations, neighbor-to-neighbor persuasion, even voting in midterm elections — the 2014 midterms had the lowest level of voter participation in over 70 years ... An unending string of activities intended for instant gratification does not amount to much in political power.

This much is true: any healthy politics is serious. If politics is serious, that means it is seriously focused on power, and about how to generate power, and about how to mobilize power, and how to use power to achieve the kind of world we want. Activities that lead us away from the serious pursuit and use of power, to achieve serious and important objectives, should be resisted. Those who think that politics is about "letting everyone know where we stand," are missing the mark. "Spouting off," using all the new and high-tech methodologies we now have available, is something quite different from engaging in genuine politics. There is no doubt Hersh is right about that! I think this is the warning that Hersh is voicing.

That point taken, however, I believe that Hersh's rather negative view of current political activity may be overstated. Is the proliferation of anti-Trump petitions and Facebook groups really "ruining" the country? Are all those political "newbies," who are trying to "participate" in our democracy for the first time really the big "problem?"

I don't think so. All that activity is just fine, the way I see it, but the activities that Hersh is concerned about should be seen as "necessary," not "sufficient." 

Career advisors frequently tell their passionate clients to "turn your hobby into your life's work." That's how I'd phrase Hersh's message. Let's find a way to move ourselves from "hobbyists" to agents of genuine political change. That is a "life's work," indeed!

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/opinion/sunday/the-problem-with-participatory-democracy-is-the-participants.html

#200 / Is This What Victory Looks Like?

The pictures above appeared in an online article in The New York Times. The July 10, 2017, story discussed the "victory" of Iraq's armed forces, as the Iraq government took back the city of Mosul, Iraq, previously occupied by by the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL. You remember them, right? They're the terrorists! The pictures shows what the non-terrorists do.

Below are pictures of Dresden, Germany; Nagasaki, Japan; and young children fleeing Ben Tre, Vietnam. The United States was directly responsible for the "victories" captured in those photos.

It was about Ben Tre that an unidentified American officer said, "it became necessary to destroy the town [in order] to save it."

Check out these images. This is what "victory" looks like, when you go to war:

Image Credits:

(1) and (2) - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/world/middleeast/mosul-isis-liberated.html

(3) - https://mholloway63.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/what-happened-on-february-13th-the-fire-bombing-of-dresden/

(4) - http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/japan-photos-devastated-cities-hiroshima-nagasaki-after-us-atomic-bombs-1562334

(5) - http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/02/it-became-necessary-to-destroy-town-to.html

#199 / Ready To Crash? (Silver Lining Department)

Kathleen Pender writes a business column in the San Francisco Chronicle. On July 2nd, here was her headline: "Taking on more mortgage, debt to get easier." Online, the title of Pender's column has been reworded to make it more precise: "Fannie Mae making it easier to spend half your income on debt."

Oh, boy, I thought. Here we go again!

It is generally accepted that the 2007-2008 economic meltdown in the United States, leading to a world financial crisis, began with a crash in the home mortgage market, leading to a chain-reaction of bank failures. As Wikipedia describes it: 

The precipitating factor was a high default rate in the United States subprime home mortgage sector. The expansion of this sector was encouraged by the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a US federal law designed to help low- and moderate-income Americans get mortgage loans. Many of these subprime (high risk) loans were then bundled and sold, finally accruing to quasi-government agencies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). The implicit guarantee by the US federal government created a moral hazard and contributed to a glut of risky lending. Many of these loans were also bundled together and formed into new financial instruments called mortgage-backed securities, which could be sold as (ostensibly) low-risk securities partly because they were often backed by credit default swaps insurance. Because mortgage lenders could pass these mortgages (and the associated risks) on in this way, they could and did adopt loose underwriting criteria (encouraged by regulators), and some developed aggressive lending practices. The accumulation and subsequent high default rate of these mortgages led to the financial crisis and the consequent damage to the world economy.

Like I said, "Here we go again." 

The former system encouraged people to buy (with a mortgage) real estate that they couldn't actually afford. Ever-increasing real estate prices (they call it a bubble) convinced homeowners that they were safe, because the price of their home would just keep rising. In other words, working people were encouraged to speculate with the only asset they had, and then they lost. They lost big! It all came from allowing homeowners to finance real estate that they didn't really have the income to afford. 

The Pender column I am citing reported on recent actions by Fannie Mae, a government agency that was deeply implicated in the last crisis. Fannie Mae can buy or insure mortgages that meets its underwriting criteria, and starting on July 29th, Fannie Mae's automated underwriting software will approve loans with debt-to-income ratios as high as 50 percent. Of course, just because some borrowers will be able to spend up to half of their monthly pretax income on mortgage and other debt payments, that "doesn't mean they should." Pender does make that point, and Gillian Kindle, an adviser with Mosaic Financial Partners, completely agrees. "It's a pretty poor idea," says Kindle. "It flies in the face of common financial wisdom and best practices."

This upcoming action by Fannie Mae is something completely separate from the proposal to repeal the Dodd-Frank legislation that was adopted after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. But that is happening, too. Dodd-Frank seeks to prevent a future set of massive bank failures. The Trump Administration and the Republican Congress are determined to roll back banking regulations, and to put banks and other financial institutions back in the business of speculating with other people's money. Chances are, Dodd-Frank is a dead duck. 

Is there any "silver lining" in this entire debacle? Well, the only one I can think of is this: In the last crisis, the banks took over hundreds of thousands of homes, everywhere in the United States, when their owners could no longer make mortgage payments. As the banks were on the verge of failures that could have totally wiped out the United States economy, they came to the federal government for a bailout, and they got it. But the federal government, then in the driver's seat, did not require the banks to turn over all those homes, taken by the banks when their owners couldn't pay. Next time, it could be different. 

What if the federal government had taken those homes from the banks, in return for bailing them out, and then turned around and sold those homes to people at prices they could afford, but with a resale restriction, to keep them affordable for ever? Well, that would have been a major action making truly affordable housing available not only immediately, but in the future. 

Check that graphic at the top of the page: "Here we go again!" Get ready to crash. This time, however, when the taxpayers bail out the banks, let's at least get hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing as our price for being so nice to the rapacious financial institutions that are getting ready to do it to us once again!

Image Credit:

http://hardhatbizschool.com/get-ready-for-the-next-crash/

#198 / What's In A Name?

The Mercury News carried a story on Saturday, July 8th, documenting how Facebook is planning to make mammoth changes to the City of Menlo Park, building a "vast expansion" to the Facebook campus, to include retail shopping, a grocery store, parks, plazas, and hundreds of homes, all to accompany Facebook's new office buildings. Google is planning to reconfigure downtown San Jose, too, pretty much along the same lines, but at an even larger scale. 

These city planning efforts indicate just how much our local "communities" have become mere adjuncts to massive corporate development projects. And then, there's Salesforce. 

The July 7, 2017, edition of The San Francisco Chronicle told readers that Salesforce was going to claim "naming rights" over San Francisco’s new downtown transit center:

Salesforce, a software company with its headquarters and 6,600 employees in the Bay Area, has agreed to a 25-year, $110 million sponsorship of the 2½-block-long facility set to open next spring at Fremont and Mission streets. The deal includes naming rights, which means that the complex would be known as the Salesforce Transit Center. Similarly, the 5.4-acre rooftop open space will become Salesforce Park if the board of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority approves the contract [as, in fact, it did].

The facility that will soon be known as the "Salesforce Transit Center" has been known, heretofore, as the "Transbay Transit Center," and so far about 2.4 billion dollars in public money has been invested in this new facility. 

What's in a name? An acknowledgment that our public institutions have been taken over by private, corporate capital. 

We will end up thinking that private corporations are more "important" than the public itself, even though it is the public, acting through its government, that makes the wealth-producing activities of the private corporations possible, and even though it is public money that basically finances the facilities for which corporate capital is now going to claim the credit. 

I'd like to think that the soul of our public institutions is not for sale. But... heads up! I might be wrong.

Image Credit:

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Salesforce-buys-naming-rights-to-Transbay-Transit-11274011.php

#197 / The Reinvention Of Politics

The photo above shows Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, popularly known as "Lula," speaking in São Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday, July 13, 2017. Lula is the former president of Brazil, and he was speaking to his supporters a day after his conviction on corruption and money laundering charges. 

Lula left office six years ago, and was, at that time, a widely popular political figure. He denounced his conviction as the product of a "deceitful judiciary that had wandered dangerously into politics." 

Note that Lula seems to take for granted that there is some sort of fundamental distinction between judicially-enforced laws governing corruption and the realm of "politics." Keep your anti-corruption laws out of politics, says Lula, they don't belong there! Lula is pledging to run for President again, but that may or may not happen. If his conviction is upheld (meaning that the Brazilian judiciary doesn't buy into the distinction between anti-corruption laws and politics), then Lula will be spending ten years in prison.

Lula is just one of many former and current elected officials in Brazil who have been convicted of, or who are facing charges of, corruption. An article in the Friday, July 14th New York Times (print edition) provides a partial list, which includes politicians from all parts of the political spectrum. 

On Saturday, July 15th, The Times carried another article on this topic, entitled, "Why Uprooting Corruption Has Plunged Brazil Into Chaos." Basically, that article elaborates upon the observation made by Lula that judicial efforts to enforce the laws against corruption can make "politics" dysfunctional. There is, in other words, a practical problem with rooting out corruption, in a political system in which corruption is taken for granted: "A stunning number of establishment political figures have been implicated, leaving the world's fifth most populous country with few credible leaders." 

So, as both Lula and The Times seem be be saying, be careful about getting too hung up on combatting corruption. The results of the judicially-led campaign against corruption might be worse than the corruption itself. One of the possible horrors The Times sketches in its July 15th article is this: 

Brazil is now as polarized as the U.S.” [said] Carlos Melo, a Brazilian political scientist ... If Lula is absent it would unquestionably open the space for an outside, very emotional leader, a bit like U.S. President Trump.

So, seen from Brazil, the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States is seen as a kind of horror story to be avoided. Many here, I think, would affirm that judgment, and while Donald Trump was not elected to the U.S. Presidency in a political environment in which a major issue was the kind of deeply-rooted "corruption" that prevails in Brazil, the above comment intrigued me. Is there, in fact, a parallel between current politics in the United States and the politics in Brazil? Did Trump's election here come out of some similar political situation?

I think the answer may be "Yes." 

The Times July 14th article said that virtually every powerful political force in Brazil had been "discredited." The judicial assault on official corruption, taking place over the last several years, has discredited not only individuals but the entire "political class." This, it seems to me, sounds a lot like politics in our country. 

In Brazil, political "corruption" has been exemplified by bribes and overt payoffs to individual politicians, and systematic corruption of this kind has "discredited" the entire "political class." In our country, a perception that our politics is "corrupt" is also widespread. While the "corruption" here has been of a different character, I think a good argument can be made that an increasing majority of voters believe that our entire political system is "corrupt," and that virtually every member of the "political class" has been "discredited." As in the case of Brazil, we also believe, many if not most of us, that a "stunning number of establishment political figures have been implicated [in the corruption of our politics], leaving ... [our] country with few credible leaders." 

In such a situation, there is a real danger that a political outsider of some kind, a "very emotional leader," as the Brazilian social scientist rather gently put it, will be elected as the only available alternative to set of possible candidates who all come from the discredited "political class."

Such, I would argue, is precisely how we wound up with Donald Trump. He is definitely a "very emotional leader," who came from the "outside," and he won because virtually every other political leader who presented himself or herself (with the exception, I would argue, of Bernie Sanders) came from a "political class" that was, and is, and continues to be "discredited."

I recommend the two articles from The Times, not only for their reporting on what's going on in Brazil, but for some lessons we might think about with respect to our own politics. In fact, it seems clear that the "danger" that Lula warns of is a real danger, and that when attempts are made to reject an admittedly corrupt politics, and when the entire "political class" is then "discredited," the resulting upset of the politics of the nation may not be immediately positive. 

That said, The Times July 14th article ends with a bit of hope: 

Marina Silva, a former member of Mr. da Silva’s cabinet [and no relation to the former president] who broke ranks with his Workers’ Party in 2009, said the scandals plaguing Brazil’s dominant political parties could be a catalyst for a sweeping transformation that the country needs. 

“Brazil’s current crisis requires the reinvention of politics,” said Ms. Silva, who ran for president in 2014 and is widely expected to enter the race next year. “This debate is not limited to Brazil, but extends to the world.”

The debate certainly extends to the United States. A "reinvention of politics" is precisely what is required. 

In Brazil, and right here, too!

Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/americas/brazil-luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva-michel-temer-corruption-presidency.html