Have you been supporting Steyer, Buttigieg or Klobuchar? Did you get an absentee ballot? Are you afraid that now your vote won’t count on Super Tuesday? Fear not, or at least take hope.

I ran into my longtime neighbor Doris, who was a poll worker for many years, on College Avenue today.

She quickly sketched out a menu of options, depending on your circumstances, which she had researched since the three departed the race. It was too late for me to check with the County Clerk, but I trust Doris.

1. You haven’t filled out your absentee (“vote by mail”) ballot yet. Just throw it away and vote in person, or fill it out at home for your new choice and deliver it yourself, or mail it as usual.
2. You have already filled out your ballot, but you haven’t turned it in yet, either by mail or in person. No problem, just throw it away and go in to vote in your local polling place. The in-person vote is the one which will be counted.
3. You have already mailed or delivered your ballot. You can still go to your polling place and vote in person for your new choice. This will give you a fighting chance, because whichever vote is counted first by the officials will be the one that is recorded—but there’s no way to know.

Me? I always vote in person and I’m still voting for Elizabeth Warren. I talked to my friend Carol in North Carolina about this today. She’d been out canvassing for Warren with her daughter, and (an exact quote) she said that they’d be “mighty pissed if it came down to nothing but another choice between two Old Straight White Guys.”

Don’t get me wrong, some of my nearest and dearest are in that demographic, but isn’t it time to try something else? Especially if the best qualified candidate is a woman. 

 

 

In cities undergoing gentrification, like Berkeley and Oakland, many communities form organizations that demand affordable housing to counter rising rent levels, and to end the displacement of low income community members that accompanies the process. A seeming battle emerges between city councils and developers. Developers wish to avoid including affordable housing units, which are not as profitable, and are willing to pay mitigation fees to do so. And cities invent “Below Market Rate” (BMR) schedules and "inclusionary" housing standards to create the appearance of promoting low income housing development. But the latter requires a building owner to agree to the discounts. And city councils refuse to set mitigation fees high enough to produce enough on-site affordable units.

In short, cities promise "affordable housing" units while allowing the juggernaut of gentrification to proceed. And the neighborhoods respond with a sardonic “Bronx cheer,” “Affordable? Affordable for who?” After all, market rate housing is already affordable for those who can afford it. 

Insofar as “Affordable for who?” becomes a slogan, it serves as a vocal battering ram to knock down the rhetorical assurances by cities that corporate control gentrification is not absolute. Among that slogan’s many meanings, it expresses outrage at the pretended concern by officials for a community, while they feed community interests to financial gluttony. It contains an unstated demand to end “business as usual” and include neighborhoods at the planning tables (more than mere "input" or “public comment”). It implies that “affordable housing” units should be affordable for those who live in the vicinity of the buildings to be constructed. That is, the neighborhoods themselves should be the yardstick by which new housing rates were to be measured, not an impersonal "market" in which prices and rents are out of control. As a slogan, it thus becomes a protest against the specter of impoverishment, a desperate recognition that those who have maxxed out their cards and only get a 3% raise where they are employed still face a doubling of rent and possible homelessness. 

It also recognizes, in its protest, that there is no recourse for low income people. The legal system is designed to protect property rather than human well-being. California, for instance, has outlawed rent control (the Costa-Hawkins Act), which allows landlord willfulness concerning rent levels, and against which those who are harmed by rent gouging, and thrown on the street, are helpless. Entire communities have been decimated by this process. It is responsible for reducing Berkeley’s black community to 25% of its former size in the last 20 years. The law has given developers the legal power to refuse low income units in the absence of state subsidies of their envisioned profit margins (the Palmer Decision). Because housing is productive of profit for an owner of the building, the law protects the "right" of a developer of multiunit apartment developments to get the same market return (profit) as other landlords. 

In the past, low income families were able to afford housing. The present situation is characterized by a predatory and impersonal economic system which functions like an impoverishment machine. Against that, because it focuses on prices and rents, the slogan appears weak. It is a cry in the wilderness for city officials to end their complicity with the predatory. It doesn’t call for communities to organize locally to create autonomous zoning (through overlays) of their neighborhoods in accord with their own local needs. 

In other words, as an expression, “Affordable for who?” sits suspended between two languages. Rent is stated in terms of price. That means the rental unit is a commodity. One purchases the unit for a time period (lease). But it is not like buying a cell phone, or a car. A housing unit slips away, back to an owner. Before it does, however, it serves as a means of production. It produces "residence" in a city and a state. Its center and focus is on humans who reside. The human is its other language. 

What is confusing is that developers make money from a tenant by setting a real human being in the unit to make it productive of "residence." Instead of being paid, however, like productive factory workers, the tenant pays the owner. Affordability refers to the price of a “housing commodity,” but the owner never relinquishes control over the unit. It becomes a funnel to the owner into which the resident, the producer of "residence," continually throws more money. 

Because of this inversion, an entire spectrum of people gets priced out of housing by gentrification. Many hold on, "affording" their housing by choosing whether to put food on the table or pay their electric bill. When the situation reaches crisis proportions, government produces a resolution (like BMR, or a density bonus, or mitigation fees) that leaves the source of the crisis intact. Thus, it creates a treadmill on which crisis and resolution cycle around to each other endlessly. And it uses its confusion of languages (commodity vs. people) to disguise its character as an impoverishment machine. 

Cities and developers deal with the economics of price – the price of construction, the price of labor, the price of borrowed money, etc. That forces residents, when they wish to speak to cities or developers, to use the language of price, and not the language of residence or production. The confusion of language is a political one. And hiding the operation of the impoverishment machine hides the relation between wealth, produced by the machine, and the victimization of the many from whom that wealth is taken. Wealth does not exist out of relationship. When one individual or corporation gets rich, it means others have gotten poorer. In preventing rent control, the government serves to fill the needs of that machine. It also does this with police racial profiling, employment offices, surveillance technologies, etc. 

If there is a politics of ownership language, then a neighborhood language of democracy must also eventually stand opposite.. After all, democracy insists that those affected by a policy should be the ones who make the policy that will affect them. For housing, this would mean a community participation not only in defining what is affordable for itself, but in having a place at the table where buildings are designed and prices are defined. Without that, one is left with corporate despotism. 

 

A change in the slogan  

In face of the fact that “Affordable for who?” doesn’t focus on low income families, many community activists have changed the slogan’s demand from “affordable housing” to “low income housing.” But there is a confusion in that as well. The expression “affordable housing” already refers to low (and very low) income people because it refers by definition to those who can’t afford market rate housing. In addition, to say “build low income housing” still speaks the language of price and of housing as a commodity (like a car or a cell phone). It asks the economic machine, in a vaguely pleading way, to “please bring the price down.” 

But there are several levels of low income (a defined by HUD using the Area Median Income as a standard of calibration). Low income is 50% to 80% of AMI. Very low income is below that. Berkeley claims its AMI is $99,000 a year. A family earning $65,000 a year (65% of AMI), and paying $2400 a month for rent, would be paying 43% of their income for rent (market rate for the apartment would be much higher for 2 bedrooms). A family earning $55,000 a year, also low income, in the same apartment would be paying 60% of their income. The first family is living in hardship. The second is outrageously on the edge of crisis. 

In other words, an apartment at any "affordable" low income level will still be unaffordable for tenants at lower income levels. The impoverishment machine is nothing if not discriminatory. It does not provide equity for human beings. “Low income housing” will discriminate against others who are at lower income. And finally, even if different affordability levels are defined so that different rents could be charged in each stratum of renters, these levels are imposed rather than determined by the people and neighborhoods assessing their own economic needs. 

Thus, to add “we need low income housing” to the slogan “affordability for who?” still does not respond to the inequities of “affordability.” Instead, it dilutes the power of rejection in the slogan by again giving credence to market dominance. 

 

Rent based on income  

If it is as a commodity that housing economics can exile families from their communities, then some alternative to reliance on “the market” has to be found. This suggests we need a different measure for "affordable," one that looks at it from the people side rather than the market side. The existence of an Area Median Income points us in a different direction. 

According to HUD, tenants should not have to pay more than 30% of their income for rent. Rent related to income would be a great equalizer between low and very low income tenants with respect to the same apartment. The rent would vary according to who rented the apartment, and go down if a family with less income moved in. 

Setting a standard like that would entail a complete shift of perspective on life itself. Housing would cease to be part of an impoverishment machine, and the market would be removed from its throne of sanctity. The production of residence for which housing would be the instrument would render housing a human activity rather than a submission to economic forces. . 

Two things would have to be changed in order for a system maximizing rent at 30% of income to be possible. The first is that, until those most in need of housing had been housed – namely, the homeless, those evicted by rent increases, and those with very low incomes – housing would be withheld from moderate and upper income people (the wealthy can always manage affordability for themselves). Those with money would still want to rent a lower rent unit. So priorities would have to be made clear. Those who do not face the stress of displacement and impoverishment that low income families do would have to wait for low income housing needs to be fulfilled first. 

A second problem arises because even an income-related rental system still exists in a commodity economy. The means of maintenance would be market oriented. One of the reasons laws were passed prohibiting “rent control” was that landlords claimed they could not maintain their property and still earn money from it if rents did not rise along with all other prices. This means that there would have to be subsidies for maintenance. But it is going to cost money if government is going to resolve the problem of homelessness, or displacement. Rather than put money into the treadmill of resolving a crisis and then facing the next crisis to be resolved, it would be wiser to put an end to the treadmill and simply guarantee housing maintenance for truly affordable housing. 

Clearly, this would be an earth-shaking shift in economic perspective. People would stop dying on the streets. Housing would truly be implemented as a human right. As long as housing is a commodity, survival itself cannot even be taken as a human right. Relating rent to income would mean an end to economic victimization. And the response to the question, “Affordable for who?” would be “affordable for all.” 

 

This marks a cultural transformation  

Relating "affordability" to income defines a cultural difference. Humans themselves become the focus of economic processes, rather than simply the actors in it. And this reveals the false (mythic) nature of market universality. One can only buy what one can afford. In relation to survivability, as evidenced by the existence of homeless communities, that universality is intolerable. It is as intolerable as “murder for hire.” No just society would fail to charge a person who hires a killer as an accessory to the crime. The social institution that allows death on its streets cannot hide behind universality. It is accessory to those deaths. Housing is a life and death matter. And relating rent to income would be a step toward removing housing from market universality to the self-determination of human rights. 

We see another example of this distinction in the term “sanctuary.” California has declared itself a sanctuary state, as have many cities within it. The term implies protection from danger, as well as refuge or shelter. It raises the analogous question, “sanctuary from what?” 

California provides sanctuary for immigrants, chiefly from Latin America, but also from Islamic countries. The term has been disparaged and twisted by the federal government, however. For Trump, sanctuary and refuge refers to people running from justice, and who therefore can be considered criminals. We know, however, that the immigrants from Mexico are here because US corporate control of Mexican commodity markets has impoverished Mexican farmers (e.g. by underselling corn). They come to the US to get jobs to send money back for their families. The federal government attempts to track them down and deport them back to their impoverished conditions. In response to the injustice of that, California gives them sanctuary from the federal government. Thus, the term contains a similar dual meaning. It means refuge from justice for the US government and its corporate marketing. And it means refuge from US government revictimization for those escaping their impoverished communities. A market oriented political power drives the corporate impoverishment machine, and a people-oriented culture seeks to provide escape from that government’s oppressiveness. 

The sun has long set on Britain’s former empire. Its comeuppance is long overdue.

The bungling pinstripe-bowler hat brigade of elite British public schools and universities have long poured over world maps searching for ever greater conquests.

Dialing back the pages of history, novelist, Paul Scott reminds us of the utter decadence and destructive nature of the former architects of the British Empire who hastily withdrew and partitioned India into illogical member states. The handsome but ethically challenged last viceroy Mountbatten was accurately described by historian Andrew Roberts as a “mendacious, intellectually limited hustler.” Britain looted India of much of its wealth, destroying its garment trade to promote the sale of inferior British goods.

It’s ironic that Mountbatten, who was derided in British circles as “Master of Disaster,” was put in charge of the “jewel in the crown” robbing India of its enormous potential.

It is mindboggling to understand the callousness of how Britain chose to dismember India. 

Originally Britain announced its exit from India on June 1948. But Mountbatten hastily preponed the date to Aug. 15 1947. In an unguarded moment he admitted that it was a “ludicrously early date.” It was left to a little known lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe to draw up the boundaries of a country he had never visited. The result was sheer insanity. Punjab lost much of its former territory and historic temples to Pakistan. Pakistan was further subdivided into West Pakistan inhabited by Punjabis and East Pakistan inhabited by predominantly poor Bengalis. The ‘Blood telegram” sent by US diplomat, Archer Blood accurately describes the massacre in east Pakistan by General Yahya Khan with weapons supplied by the US. 

In a stunning turn of events, following its messy divorce from the European Union Britain now faces the prospect of its own partition. 

Following decades of bloodshed between northern and southern Ireland, religious passions have cooed and the desire for unification is growing. Scottish nationalists are also agitating for independence. 

The Brexit debacle was started by former Prime Minister, David Cameron who recklessly gambled in a disastrous referendum to pacify rebels in his own party. The opportunist Remainder Boris Johnson, sensing the winds of change, quickly switched to become an ardent Brexiteer winning a thumping majority in the recent election.Following the Trump charade, “Make Britain great again” is quickly morphing into a looming economic and political disaster. 

Are the British being punished for their past misdeeds? The law of Karma is unforgiving.

The Trump administration’s decision to fire the U.S. Coronavirus pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs was ill-advised. The CDC’s stark warning on the dangers of the virus came on the same day that White House’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, dismissed the threat telling CNBC the virus was “contained.” His re mark echoed President Trump’s assessment that the coronavirus was “very well under control.” The cost-cutting measures were made by his administration gutting the nation’s response to the virus’s looming threat. 

Funding cuts to the CDC forced the agency to abort efforts to help countries to prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in 2018. Among the countries abandoned was China. Disease-outbreak prevention had been cut by a staggering 80%.  

Clearly embarrassed by the conflicting messages from the White House, the President appointed Vice-President Pence to be his point man, a man who has no experience on health issues. There seems to be more concern with tightening the massaging of the Coronavirus than trying to prepare for its impending invasion of the US. His Twitter fingers were busy blasting CNN and other networks for stoking fears of the virus which he continues to downplay. 

If the markets continue their downward slide it may adversely impact Trump’s reelection prospects. He is clearly more concerned about the virus’s economic impact than the welfare of the American people and the world at large.

KPFA and Pacifica Radio, once one of the most important resources for progressives, in these troubled times is in trouble. It has the potential to change the direction of our nation, but it is nowhere near living up to its potential. We, a group of concerned members and activists, are asking for your support for a critical step to correct this right now.

One of the major difficulties Pacifica faces is an unwieldy and contentious governance system that has crippled its management in addressing serious issues such as the changing media landscape, the changing fundraising paradigm of younger generations, and the necessity for first rate programming to inform, educate and inspire listeners and supporters in this critical time. 

Quite frankly, Pacifica stations have not produced local or national boards of directors capable of addressing these issues without such destructive polarization that management cannot make and carry out plans of action without the board countermanding those plans or stifling them or micromanaging them to the point of complete breakdown and inefficacy. 

To fix this problem we are proposing changing the Bylaws to change the governance structure. Under the new structure the Pacifica National Board of Directors would be reduced in number from twenty-two (22) to eleven (11) members. Five (5) of the Directors would be elected directly by the members at each of the five Pacifica radio stations, and six (6) “At-Large” Directors would be elected by the board itself. The “At-Large” directors would be chosen for their skills and leadership in areas including alternative media and movement work, financial planning and fundraising work, and their commitment to Pacifica’s peace and justice mission and purpose since its establishment in 1949. 

Local Station Boards would be eliminated, but Community Advisory Boards at each station would be emphasized and supported to bring listener concerns and views into station programming decisions. 

Today, facing mounting debt (on account of hard decisions not taken years ago, and because of declining listenership), Pacifica will sink below the waves if it does not make a major course correction in its structure and leadership. We ask for your help in making this happen. 

We ask your support for a Pacifica structure that can rise to the challenge of these times. 

This can only be achieved by the membership of the foundation, and that is you! Your YES vote for the new Bylaws will be transformative.  

For more info, visit our webpage at: www.pacificarestructuringproject.org 

By Carol 707-526-2867, 1136 Wild Rose Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 

The Pacifica Restructuring Project is the work of three current Pacifica Board members, Bill Crosier, Donald Goldmacher, and Mansoor Sabbagh; four former Pacifica Board members, Sherry Gendelman, Carol Spooner, Akio Tanaka, and Carole Travis; and former Chair of the KPFA Local Station Board Susan da Silva.

It appears that Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic Nomination -- the 538 website rates his chances as "1 in 2." Bernie is not my favorite candidate; nonetheless, if he wins the Democratic nomination, I'll work hard for him. Here's my assessment of Bernie's strengths and weaknesses.

The latest Real Clear Politics summary of national polls shows Sanders beating Trump by an average of 4.7 percent. Nonetheless, we remember all too well that Clinton led Trump throughout a long and agonizing campaign and then lost the election, courtesy of the electoral college. Bernie can beat Trump but it's far from certain. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/24/who-would-win-trump-sanders-election/)

Sanders' strengths: 1. Enthusiasm. If you've followed the 2020 Democratic nomination process, you've probably noticed that Bernie Sanders' followers are the most enthusiastic. There are a lot of reasons for this, but Sanders' rallies have the most energy.

It isn't always the case that follower enthusiasm translates into get-out-the-vote energy, but it is a major consideration; in my experience, 2008 Obama election workers were more enthusiastic than 2016 Clinton workers. Enthusiasm is an important factor because, at the moment, Democratic voters, in general, are more enthusiastic than Republican voters. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-enthusiasm-exclusive/exclusive-ahead-of-2020-election-a-blue-wave-is-rising-in-the-cities-polling-analysis-shows-idUSKBN20D1EG )

Imagine two campaign rallies in Ohio: one for Trump and the other for the Democratic nominee. Only a Bernie rally would match the enthusiasm at the Trump rally. This makes sense because both candidates rile up their audience with a populist, "blow up the establishment" message.

2. Broad Coalition: Bernie appears to be able to build the broad coalition that Democrats have been yearning for. The Nevada Democratic caucus exit polls (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/entrance-polls-2020-nevada-caucuses/) indicate that Sanders carried most Demographic groups; for example, all age groups except those voters aged 65 and over. (Sanders carried 29 percent of White-non Hispanic voters and 51 percent of Hispanic voters.)

A lot of concerns that we might have had about Bernie's ability to build a broad coalition have been assuaged in the last couple of weeks. His core message resonates with all segments of he Democratic Party -- although he needs to do more to reach out to women who were once ardent Hillary supporters. (Bernie's core message is "the system is rigged:" "Bernie has fought tirelessly for working families, focusing on the shrinking middle class and growing gap between the rich and everyone else.")

3. Swing State Strength: Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because she faltered in critical swing states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wiscconsin. According to Real Clear Politics, in Michigan, Sanders leads Trump by 5.3 percent; in Pennsylvania, Sanders leads Trump by 3 percent; and in Wisconsin, Trump leads Sanders by 1 percent. (BTW: In the last Ohio poll, Sanders was ahead of Trump; they're tied in Florida.)

Sanders' weaknesses: 1. Socialist label: Bernie describes himself as a "Democratic Socialist." This has given pundits a huge opportunity to criticize him. Many mainstream-media talking heads have declared that because of his socialist label, Sanders will never beat Trump. I'm not convinced that the socialist label will make that much of a difference.

First, Sanders isn't really a socialist. New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, observed: "The thing is, Bernie Sanders isn’t actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn’t want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning; he has expressed admiration, not for Venezuela, but for Denmark. He’s basically what Europeans would call a social democrat — and social democracies like Denmark are, in fact, quite nice places to live, with societies that are, if anything, freer than our own."

Second, there will be two kinds of 2020 campaign ads: vitriol and substance. The Republican vitriol ads will call Bernie a socialist and predict dire consequences. The Democratic vitriol ads will call Trump a pathological liar and a Russian asset. If you already like Trump you will vote for him regardless of the negative ads; if you don't like Trump, you're unlikely to vote for him regardless of what they say about Bernie.

Nonetheless, a recent academic study published in Vox (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21152538/bernie-sanders-electability-president-moderates-data ) suggests that a Sanders' candidacy would be problematic: "Our survey data reveals voters of all parties moving to Trump if Sanders is nominated, a liability papered over by young voters who claim they would be inspired to vote by Sanders alone."

2. Weak Coattails: The main reason Democratic pundits are worried about Bernie is because they fear that a "Democratic Socialist" will hurt "down ballot" Democratic candidates. Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg has made this assertion: "Bernie Sanders would 'jeopardize' the re-election of 42 House Democrats in battleground districts and therefore the party’s majority rule of the chamber if the self-described Democratic socialist becomes the party’s nominee for president."

In 2020, Democrats have to take back both the Presidency and the Senate. If "Moscow Mitch" McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader, he will block most Democratic legislative initiatives. From here, the contested Senate seats are: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, and North Carolina. (Democrats have to win four.)

Consider the situation in Arizona, where there's a contested Senate seat now held by Republican Martha McSally -- a Trump acolyte. In the 2020 Arizona Senatorial election, she'll be opposed by former astronaut Mark Kelly -- husband of former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords. In 2016, Arizona narrowly went to Trump. Would Bernie Sanders help or hurt Mark Kelly?

I think that having Bernie as the 2020 Democratic nominee will help improve Arizona voter turnout and that will help Mark Kelly. Republicans will run negative ads targeting Bernie and Democrats will run negative ads targeting Trump; those will cancel out.

The Nevada exit polls indicated that the most important issues were: health care, climate change, and income inequality. If these are the most important issues in (neighboring) Arizona, Sanders will help Mark Kelly because Bernie is much stronger on these issues than is Trump. (Actually Trump isn't strong on any issue other than the "economy" and, at the moment, this is teetering because of the impact of the coronavirus.)

I believe that Bernie will help down-ballot Democratic senatorial candidates in Arizona, Colorado, and Maine. I'm not sure about Georgia, Kansas, and North Carolina.

3. Temperament: Like Trump, Bernie offers his own brand of charisma. That attracts loyal followers but masks his irascibility. He really is crochety Uncle Bernie.

Writing in the New York Times ( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opinion/bernie-sanders.html?referringSource=articleShare), Frank Bruni observes: "[Bernie Sanders] isn’t and has never been popular with his Democratic colleagues in the Senate... I know that because I’ve heard some of those colleagues talk about him, describing him as arrogant, uncooperative, unyielding, even mean."

Summary: Maybe the 2020 election will come down to "our S.O.B. versus their S.O.B." Personally, I'd hoped that the Democratic candidate would be someone who could make progress on healing the nation. Perhaps that's too much to hope for.

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Bob Burnett is a Bay Area writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net