Homelessness in Chula Vista

 This is the agenda item from the Chula Vista City Council Meeting on 6 October 2023.

Calling the event a workshop seemed to put a kind of benevolence on the proceeding. That was wiped away by much of the city's staffers when it became clear that part of the motivation to hold the event was for the city to demonstrate all of the efforts that it has put into doing something, anything about the problem.  Clearly to me, it was a tour de force of a municipality doing all that it imagined that it could to assuage those who have roofs over their heads to of the cognitive dissonance that homelessness generates short of telling the ugly truth that it's constituents lack a combination of the character or motivation to build sufficient quantities of housing for all of their neighbors.

Due to much of the latter, there was some low-key, very soft reduction of homeless people to abstractions by conflating those who are homeless due to economic impacts with those who abuse mind-altering chemicals and mental illness. There was scant mention of the scant housing alternatives that the city can offer those who are without.

It is the last point that matters most. Chula Vista, like all of California, needs hundreds - perhaps a few thousand - units for neighbors without shelter. That would be the solution - a lot of public housing. Chula Vista won't discuss it because that is not in the budget. Resurfacing streets wasn't in the city budget until the federal government handed out grants to repave streets after the start of the pandemic. Bigger, more expensive issues would cost much more.

issues about a horse race

This is a passage from a post about the 2024 POTUS race that I responded to:

“Only FIVE states will determine if 2024 will be stolen and during his CNN Town Hall, Trump revealed his plans. 

Wisconsin is the most important swing state in the country and will be the key to keeping the White House and Senate blue in 2024. 

In the last three years, Republicans have sought to remove state officials who wouldn’t manufacture votes and falsely declare Donald Trump the winner. 

Trump not only repeated his election lies, but he laid the groundwork to continue to erode our systems.

Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, will determine who will make election decisions in states where the White House is won or lost.” 

My Comment:

[This point] is close enough to my home to give some validity to my assertion that I cross to Tijuana for travel to fly through, my dentist, our dogs' vet, shop and see in-laws. I see...

🔹 3 states that are ignorant and indifferent to the lives of people who cross the border

🔹 a state pretending that it isn't becoming more Latino that thinks it is the same as the previous 3

🔹 a state on the border which is coming to terms with its demographic diversity and the complexities of having a foreign nation on its southern border.

Rooftop solar is scant in California. There is even less in desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix for some reason. 😒

Speaking of Nevada and Arizona, I'm sure that they [would] stick a knife into California for Colorado River water if they got a chance.

I left out the other part of my usual border rant about how dumb, cruel and short sited the U.S. policy is towards refugees and migrants who are queueing up to cross the border from Mexico as I compose this piece and how that is a bi-partisan failure.

The original comment hasn't received a 👍 from anyone in the original post. That might have to do with it being the public (business) page of a comedian on Facebook. That might also have to do with addressing some issues about the horse race instead of the horse race itself.

Revenge of The Studio Flacks

 I'm with Maron.

I remember watching an Academy Awards broadcast within the last 10 years to see the names and faces of men and women in the In Memoriam segment who were identified as executives and publicists. As the Sun Does Rise In The East, it's possible that these people had long, amiable professional relationships in the motion picture industry. But I never heard of them and knew that they didn't have a lot to do with what I would see on a screen - just that they had something to do with leading me to watch that work on a screen. If the AMPAS thought that they were important enough to remember, I figured that they could know their industry better than I do. That doesn't shut down how cynical I am.

I watch national morning news shows and late-night talk shows and am always annoyed by how much content they broadcast that is put together by motion picture public relations flacks as opposed to producing original content. CBS Mornings reminded me how I'm more annoyed by Tom Brady than I like Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field or Rita Moreno today, again. Maybe AMPAS might remember their special relationship with 3 of those 4 acclaimed actors. IMO, movie flacks have a reverse Midas touch with me.

Enough Urban Myths about Homeless People

 I saw urban myths about homeless people, so I replied to several.

When You're Done doing Cartwheels about Biden winning Pennsylvania and the Elector Count....

One-third of California voters supported Donald Trump.

Remember what kind of people they are:

• They came in reacting to substance abuse in their midst, reacting like they were in denial then.
• They left power in denial to a life-threatening illness.

This not hallmark of people with whom one could negotiate or govern. Their nihilism shows that they have been thoroughly saturated by the oligarchs' program of reducing a citizens' understanding of and a belief in government as both a verb and noun. They scorn commonwealth. Their program is Every Man for Himself now and for the foreseeable future. 

Villainizing them is one thing. For those unlike them who miss that they are a continuing danger to any state in North America that they may be a national of is folly.

The day is filled with a romance for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. When they get to work, the results of their election will be different. Any implied promise that a Biden Administration that is imagined today will meet with an opposition by a Congress that is indifferent at best.

Biden is the better man for the short term. Once the pandemic has been stopped, we'll be reminded that a 40+% deplorable electorate is adverse to good things: healthcare, education, housing, human and civil rights. People who scorn civic engagement and replace it with puerile taunting can't be shamed to negotiate in good faith often, if ever.

Hope that you enjoyed that cold shower.

Message for A Second Term

Organizing has ground to a halt in this pandemic. Whatever we might have done to show up and talk to people to support an independent California that we might have normally done before the pandemic is just too risky for me and probably you, too, today. What I see that there is to do is to plan for the future. My campaign for election as chapter coordinator for nine Southern California counties is based on putting together a plan to find technical assistance in building up our contact management system.

We need to be able to prospect through thousands of contacts

There are roughly 39 million people in California. If the California National Party is to get a checkbox on voter registration forms, the state law mandates that we would need 60,000 people to register. To do that, we need a way to work remotely to gather names with contact information. We'll probably need about 100,000 contacts to sift through to register. We can count on the partisan duopoly, more likely Democrats than Republicans, to disallow and/or deny registrations in the office of the Secretary of State and probably any registrar of voters office in every county. The party won't be able to fight every denial so we will have to expand our goal to exceed the threshold significantly.

For the sake of illustration, let's say that the California National Party sets up a program where we have one CNP activist with the goal of 5 registrants.  You can pick either 12,000 to 20,000 people who read e-mails or URLs in text messages and will show up, say, at every 3rd event near them. We need something to manage people at that scale. We have it, but it's not working right to manage phone banking (a very 20th Century concept) or to be able to manage people who respond to a text message.

I don't believe that the California National Party has a sufficient infrastructure to create our own narrative for either California subordinate to the USA (as it is now) or the California independence movement. Again, our contact management system must be repaired and expanded to drive our own content to news media.

Because of that problem, I am writing a manual to seek out technical assistance - either an intern or volunteer covering much of the following:

• definition of the problems with our contact management and e-commerce system
• the functions that need repair and management by a person with technical expertise
• the substance and duration of the relationship between the technical person and the party
• the plan for developing the party's technical infrastructure

Again, none of this will happen on the streets. I picked this not only because the work can be done remotely, over the Internet but also because it is something that I have seen novel political movements neglect for well over a decade. While our contact management application is not groupware, it is more essential than a collaboration package for political organizing.

With your support, I will prepare us for a time to meet for California and gather for our interests, to come up with plans for our neighbors to work towards being free of country indifferent to our needs.

Joe Biden is the best you could get for POTUS during this pandemic

My wife and I are in high-risk categories for people to be infected by the novel Coronavirus. My in-laws are more immunocompromised than I am. We did a run-through of one of us (me) infecting everyone else in the house with the flu in February. I was tested - it wasn't COVID-19 but it worried us all enough for my wife, a nurse, to take me then my mother-in-law to the E.R. I was laid out for most of a week. My in-laws were laid out for a week-and-a-half. la My wife rarely misses work for sickness - she missed two days. About 6 - 8 weeks after recovering, I tested for COVID-19 antibodies: I had none. Others recounted on social media about contracting a strain of influenza that was nastier than anything that they had before in February. One other friend who had that flu, got laid out pretty badly by it also tested negative. I feel like that flu in February - March was a bullet whizzing past my head. 

I freely admit that I could seem self-involved about my concerns about contracting Coronavirus, but I know others will be threatened by it, too. The nihilism of those who deny the lethality of the virus defies description. It's changed my priorities. I haven't gone out to protest the killing of George Floyd because of it. Last weekend my wife and I took my octogenarian mom out for dinner to Pacific Beach. We were surrounded by young people everywhere who wouldn't be bothered to wear a mask; I won't be going back until after the pandemic. Everyone in our house has a gun to their heads: I don't think the vaccination for this Coronavirus won't be ready until Fall 2021 at the earliest, sorry Oxford. The next POTUS would have been sworn in 9 months before. 

It impacts what I see for voters in the U.S.A., whose choices for POTUS are:

1. An old man who has most likely assaulted women (no one is debating that), shows no capacity for the nuances of science and would continue to put profit ahead of saving people from a pandemic.
2. Another old man has a mediocre/unremarkable record on women's rights (Anita Hill's testimony). He has built up the penal industrial complex. To his credit, he has demonstrated the capacity of understanding complex concepts. This Number Two might trade some integrities to save more people: he'll know what the best thing to do would be but is conditioned to look at legislation that 60 - 70% of what is needed as golden.

Will Donald Trump dither with that time until a vaccine is ready? He most certainly has dithered with the time since the pandemic began. Trump has not used the War Powers act to produce and stockpile sufficient PPE. His Health and Human Services Administration has not protected nursing homes. You can fill most of the large stadiums in the U.S. with all who have died from the disease today (those numbers may be undercounted). Donald Trump and his cult following are a threat to my life until the region around San Diego reaches herd immunity to this novel Coronavirus.

I'm writing this for everyone who I know in person and from social media who are like me dissatisfied with the office of POTUS and/or the nation governed by it. They have all kinds of reasons for being #NeverBiden. I understand those reasons and they would be more valid if there weren't a pandemic. Think about it: would Joe Biden as POTUS handle the pandemic better if not screw up less than Trump would in a second term? Biden would almost assuredly get the federal government to do its best to make sure that a vaccine for this novel Coronavirus gets to us and the people around us.  With Biden, there would be a bottom to how bad the United States could be. Without Biden, I believe that me, my family, BIPOC, the poor, uninsured and essential workers would be much more vulnerable.

Cheap Talk about California as a "Nation/State".

Plenty of allies for California Independence got excited by an opinion piece published in Bloomberg. It annoys me because it not true: California will remain an ATM for federal and any other election of any office as long as California is one of the U.S.

Don't take my word for it - look it up on the FEC's website. You can look up any committee with Trump or Mitch McConnell's name on it on that site and search for donations from California. You'll find millions have come from Californians that effectively suppressed and deprived their neighbors. I find them to be wonderful protest targets....that would be down the line.

So yeah, Newsom would be all in for giving money to a Doug Jones or a Connor Lamb because they are both on the same bench while neither Jones nor Lamb would do anything to return a deported parent to work here to support minor children or to make sure a DREAMer would be able to stay in the only community that she knows.

Where are the facts about A.B. 5?

A.B. 5 (Gonzalez) has shaken up a lot of freelance workers, disrupted their income streams and the ways that they have made a living. Writers who I know (of) have been negatively impacted by the legislation, publishers of news enterprises have had that they have had to change staffing practices because of it. It was created because of freelance laborers in the gig economy, specifically, those who contracted with transportation network corporations - predominantly Lyft and Uber - have been subjected to drastic decreases in their income after those two corporations.

On occasion, I have driven both Lyft and Uber. It's like any other job: if you put the time and the effort in, you get something out of it. I have been a supporter of A.B. 5 all along. I still support the law. I find Uber and Postmates' opposition to the law a prime example of amoral capitalism. I worked for Postmates one evening: their driver application is designed to confuse and startle drivers into accepting deliveries. All three companies take much more than half of either of the mark up to food delivered or one fare. None give a driver clear terms on what the break down of what payment would be for any offer of a fare or delivery before a driver can choose to accept or reject the work. All must have agents in Sacramento, there is no way that they could have missed the author announcing the legislation on social media; yet none of them tried to negotiate a law that they could work with.

Currently, the law is a work in progress. Omitting a challenge by plebiscite, I suspect that there will be plenty of tweaks to it at least throughout the current legislative session.

The law passed last autumn. I have heard from freelance journalists and writers, they have lost work because of this. The stories are real, but still, they are anecdotes. I ask for facts about the results of the legislation; I got silence instead:

The problem that anyone who opposes A.B.5 has is that few lack the capacity to not end up in the same pot with the neo-fascist ideologues who attack the bill's author because of their bigotry. There are a lot of people on social media who attack anything that Gonzalez does, from anything substantial to the most trivial. Those who do have good faith arguments against A.B. 5 have chosen to remain silent rather than be cast alongside those who blurt with no respect for themself or others (sic). Then I engage with people who are as rational about the legislation as those who oppose vaccinating children. As you can see, it didn't go well. These graduates from the Rupert Murdoch School of Civil Discourse aren't helping to fix A.B. 5 - they are more interested in burning it or Lorena Gonzalez or liberal governance down. That obscures the genuine flaws of the dominant half of the Partisan Duopoly in California.

The best example of that comes from the top: Governor Newsom didn't make an effort to separate homeless Californians from the mentally ill or substance-abusing Californians in his State of The State Speech today. Prop. 63 of 2004 does need to be put into effect, but those who need those services should be distinguished from those who were victims of laissez-faire government and capitalism. California Democrats won't tell the truth about their constituents' greed, misinformed paradigms or poor character - they just aren't willing to rock the boat in a way that will do any more than treat the symptoms of homelessness.

When there are meaningful statistics about the effects that A.B. 5 has had on gig workers or independent contractors,  Californians can have a meaningful discussion about the law. Only if that data makes it above the din made by ideologues and those who muddy up civil discourse, California will know if the law works for them.

A.B. 5 (Gonzalez) before the Uber Strike

That which is finished
A.B. 71 (Melendez and Kiley) is dead. That's just as well - this is what a legislation analyst has said about it:

The first reason is that AB71 is Republican backed (not that Republicans are bad, but they tend to back business before workers) and the language favors businesses at it gives them more leeway to determine classification. Instead of the ABC test as laid out in AB5, it is like the whole alphabet. Many ways that businesses could get out of classifying workers as employees, which saves them big money! I was speaking with a reporter yesterday about AB5, and I then asked her about AB71, she said she has been touch with legislators in the State and AB71 is dead in the water.

A.B. 5 is Scheduled for A Committee Hearing

A.B. 5 (Gonzalez) is scheduled for hearing in the Committee on Appropriations on May 16th - check for the agenda after May 9th.  Rideshare drivers need to make sure that it has lots of momentum to go through this committee hearing and the full Assembly. 

How to Contact your Assembly Members

1. Look up your home address on this page.
   
2. Find the contact information of your Assembly Member (not Senator).
3. Call them and tell them:
1. Your Name and Address
2. You're a rideshare driver or independent contractor with a ride company (use the term that you believe works best for you)
3. Your earnings were good, you could pay the bills, but the contracting company has reduced compensation while costs have risen.
4. You need protection from the whims of companies like Lyft and Uber.
5. The Assembly Member's support of A.B. 5 (Gonzalez) will protect your investment in driving as a way to earn money.

From The Sea, To The Mountains, To The Valleys, To The Deserts and Down To Baja

I'll see you at sunrise

I'm Ken Brucker. I ask for your consideration when you select the Local Chapter Coordinator of Southern California for the California National Party. As defined by the party's bylaws, I want to grow the places in California south of  35° 47′ 28″ / 35.791111° North latitude. That is a straight line that is the northern boundaries of San Bernardino, Kern and San Luis Obisbo counties.

Looking Forward

Some of the ways that I propose that we grow party membership and activism is doing plain, old retail organizing: loading up my minivan with my canopy, table, folding chairs, the party's handouts and banners, driving to meet people like you to talk to Californians about what we can do as an independent nation better and how we can reach that goal. We can also leverage technology to help us grow the movement in your community.

The party has a robust constituent management system with which we manage mailing lists, coordinate volunteers to staff events and manage donations. I'm working with the party's IT Director to develop that application to manage media contacts so that we can disseminate our own messaging about California independence instead of rogue actors in the movement driving the narrative about the movement. I also see that this can easily be converted to make a list of educators that we can reach out to so we can give presentations about the party and the movement.

Intersectionalism

If California nationalism is to succeed, it has to be many things. We need to be multicultural and take many interests into account. Tenemos que hablar en varios idiomas lo mejor que podemos a nuestros vecinos. If I could say that in Hmong, Tagalog, Farsi, Mandarin...and on down the list...I would. Not all women need the same things to be well and successful. There aren't just a few silver bullets what will solve California's problems, so we have to look at all of the issues. I want to work with you on creating solutions to those problems.

Experience with The Party

I'm not a plankowner in the party. I joined the party and started organizing San Diego County in January 2017. Since then, I have...

• written and printed material
• made presentations to groups about the movement
• organized and staffed many tents presenting the party:
• Beach Clean-Up in August, 2018
• December 2018 at the San Diego Stadium Swapmeet
• Late March 2019 at the Santa Fe Springs Swapmeet
• Solicited donations for and designed stand up banners
• Earth Fair, 2019 with lots of help from The Usual Suspects

Again, lots of people helped out with those events - you can see them in those pictures and I'm grateful to every one of them.

About Me

I'm a twice-married father of one son who is about to graduate from high school. I'm a graduate of U.C. Santa Barbara where I earned a B.A. in Communication Studies. I was awarded a certificate in Computer Information Sciences from the now-defunct Coleman College. I've lived in San Diego most of my life, but that was interrupted with stints in Isla Vista, Los Angeles (The Palms District) and Hayward. I currently work part-time as an independent contractor with ridesharing services (your first two guesses as to which business would probably be correct). I speak Spanish better than I can understand it.

Endorsements

Shankar Singnam

• Vice President, California Freedom Coalition
• Board Member, Independent California

Questions?

Ask in the comments below or e-mail me.

First Review of A.B. 5 2018-2019 session

There are two bills in the California Legislature this session which are intended to elevate the status of the gig worker, usually someone who works as an independent contractor and receives work by means of a mobile app. One is AB 71 (Melendez and Kiley). The other which this blog will be about is AB 5 (Gonzalez).

The bill is either brand new or is running into headwinds at the moment. It would take someone in Sacramento who knew the right questions to ask about the legislation to make the determination between either of those characterizations. The following about the bill is clear today:

• there are no co-authors
• it has not been assigned to a committee for review
• it is very brief
• there have been no modifications to it since it's first reading 91 calendar days ago

In essence, the bill is meant to put a court decision into law

Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles (2018) 4 Cal.5th 903 has many implications for companies that hire independent contractors - specifically gig workers. It has three tests that reclassify those who were independent contractors as employees:

(A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact;

(B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and

(C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.

Lyft, Uber, DoorDash and many other services all fall under that description.

One analysis of the B and C tests illustrates that there is a lot to clear up about compensation (wage or salary):

For example, prong B of the ABC test is particularly troublesome for any businesses that use independent contractors to deliver or provide their core product or service. In applying the ABC test to Dynamex, the Court noted that a class of delivery drivers could be certified under prong B because the question of whether the delivery drivers were performing outside the usual course of Dynamex’s business could clearly be resolved on a classwide basis. Indeed, delivery services—which are provided by the delivery drivers—are the very core of Dynamex’s business. 

Lastly, it is not yet clear whether the ABC test applies to wage claims that do not arise from a wage order. For example, a claim for reimbursement for business expenses such as fuel and tolls that are not governed by a wage order and are obtainable only under section 2802 of the Labor Code may still be controlled by the Borello test. Indeed, this was the holding of the Court of Appeal in Dynamex, and the Supreme Court stated that it was not reaching the issue. Also left open by the Supreme Court’s decision is whether the “exercises control over the wages, hours or working conditions” prong of the wage orders’ definition of “employ” is applicable to classification questions outside the joint employment context.

Current language in legislation AB 71 could clear that up.

Will Marco Rubio drag the USA into a war about Venezuela?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1099477470691184641.html?refreshed=1550978052

Does “upzoning”—allowing taller, denser housing to be built—actually work?

Are all of the cranes you see downtown doing any good?
Does “upzoning”—allowing taller, denser housing to be built—actually work?

My suggestion(s) to support child refugees from Central America

I just don't think that our Federal representatives are getting the necessary message to support the asylum claims that are due them. So I put together an essay with a message to our Federal representatives with step-by-step instructions on how to support the refugees.

• Look up your federal representatives:
• your representative
• your Senators
• The President
• navigate to the comments or mail me or what ever that Member of Congress calls the page where you write in
• Copy this essay in the message box on the message page
  or
• paste this link to it
  — http://goo.gl/ETrm3D —
  with your own comments
• Share this page with friends on all kinds of social media
  See the buttons further down this page?
• Share the message with news media.
• bookmark this page

Thanks, some kid could have a better life with your efforts.

Rachel Maddow: committed Republicrat

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Did you catch Maddow interjecting "I agree with you whole heartedly"? That's Rachel Maddow overtly and explicitly endorsing the political duopoly; this is not an endorsement of political plurality as an ideal. She is showing herself up to be one who sticks her head in the sand ignoring the deep, systemic problems in our political system as it is.  Yes,  she does do segments about the pernicious effects of 501(c)(4) corporations and oligarchs donating insane amounts of money to campaigns, but it's really token coverage. The corporate system likes the Republicratic political paradigm because it can manage and control both parties with money. Maddow does not dare to bite the hands that feed her.

I'll keep watching her for the 95% of her content which is spot on, but keep an eye out for that missing 5%.