Public Comment
A Berkeley Activist's Diary, Week Ending July 4
As the Supreme Court hands out one frightening decision after another, I am finding my way into reading and rereading that little 5 ¼ by 3 ½ inch 38-page booklet “The Constitution of the United States of America” that I received years ago in the mail from the ACLU.
Article III applies to the court. In Article III Section 2 the constitution gives the Court the power to settle controversies between states, between a State and Citizens of another state, so if anyone thinks that the right to travel from a state banning abortion to another permitting it is the solution to the end of Roe v. Wade for women with the means to travel, I wouldn’t feel too confident going forward. A right to travel isn’t specifically spelled out, just like the right to an abortion isn’t spelled out, “The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion” (page 2, of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision). Article IV Section 2 does spell out a person charged with a crime in one state found in another can be “delivered up.”
The “Originalists” or “Textualists” as the radical conservatives call themselves pick and choose pieces from history and the constitution that suits them as they chip away at rights with a sledge hammer. This Court doesn’t need Chief Justice Roberts to moderate. It is looking more and more like no right is sacrosanct. With a 6 to 3 radical conservative majority one can drop off here and there and the rest can hold.
This week we can add separation of church and state to the list going down the drain with the convoluted decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District from Justice Gorsuch. Gorsuch delivered the opinion that Joseph Kennedy was exercising freedom of speech when he knelt on the field to offer a “quiet” prayer of thanks. Bremerton is a public school and “quiet” is the fiction on which the Gorsuch decision rests.
Justice Sotomayor with Justices Breyer and Kagan in their dissent included pictures portraying the true nature of what took place on the football field and responded with, “[S]chool officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible. Official-led prayer strikes at the core of our constitutional protections for the religious liberty of students and their parents.” The pictures in the dissent are a crowd on the field clearly showing Gorsuch’s use of the word “quiet” as a made-up description to reach the majority’s desired end. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf
We have for so long depended on good faith and expanding rights, but things are changing quickly.
Saturday, I asked guests, the daughter and son-in-law of a close friend, a couple I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade what they thought about the state of the country, the answer was, “terrified.”
They aren’t the only ones as Heather Cox wrote in her Letters from an American June 30, 2022
The fear that I had in 2016 when Trump was elected that one day the U.S. would look much like the USSR on December 25, 1991 doesn’t seem so farfetched anymore the way things are going.
I might suggest picking up and reading two of the books I previously reviewed, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky.
Pay particular attention in After the Fall to the twelve steps describing how the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban (the darling of the right, Tucker Carlson, Trump and CPAC) took Hungary from a democracy to authoritarianism in ten years. Number five on the list is pack the courts, seven is demonize opponents (the January 6th Commission hearings) and ten is wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
- Win elections through right-wing populism that taps into people’s outrage over the corruption and inequities wrought by unbridled globalization.
- Enrich corrupt oligarchs who in turn fund your politics.
- Create a vast partisan propaganda machine.
- Redraw parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power.
- Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.
- Keep big business on your side with low taxes and favorable treatment.
- Demonize your political opponents through social media disinformation.
- Attack civil society as a tool of George Soros.
- Cast yourself as the legitimate defender of national security.
- Wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
- Offer a sense of belonging for the disaffected masses.
- Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites.
- disregard for norms,
- denies the legitimacy of opponents,
- tolerates or encourages violence
- indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents including the media.
We would all be wise to look for warning signs in the presidential wannabees in the wings. Some of them are pretty frightening. I wouldn’t put saving this democracy on the top of their list.
There is a third book that I am picking up to reread, From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp https://www.aeinstein.org/from-dictatorship-to-democracy/ It is free online from the Albert Einstein Institution www.aeinstein.org. We do need to vote and as much as voting counts, we need a plan that is more than show up and give money.
State and local elections matter as those are often the stepping stones to positions of greater power. With the Court dismantling the laws we depended on and putting the authority in the hands of the states, we can’t take our eyes off what is happening closer to home or for that matter what a Republican state is cooking up until they fulfill their authoritarian dream of a super majority in Congress and one of their own as President. Keeping track of all of it is a lot to swallow.
With national news soaking up so much attention, it was a relief that there were only two evenings with meetings of consequence.
Tuesday evening City Council approved the $737,068,276 (from the documents and annotated agenda) biennial budget for FY 2023 and FY 2024. Mayor Arreguin wrote the total is $734 million in his email.
The 410 page budget booklet is enough to give any normal person a headache. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-06-28%20Item%2044%20Biennial%20Budget%20Adoption.pdf It makes me feel like the City answer to public review is drown them in paper or more rightly an e-document with hundreds of pages. At least there is a table of contents to ease the journey and the contents are not as daunting as one might expect, although I wouldn’t suggest trying to wade through it in one sitting. If you are looking for how much the City spends on consultants, it isn’t available in this budget document.
The City Manager listed the new City website as an accomplishment in her section of the budget package, something with which many of us would disagree.
If you are looking for the total of authorized fulltime equivalent City employees (FTEs - part time positions are added together) it is 1,735.09 for FY 2023 and 1,737.09 for FY 2024 (pages 74 – 92). The startling number is that it takes the City an average of 242 days, nearly eight months to fill a posted position. (page 208).
Whatever promises the Council pledged in their votes to reimagine public safety and cut police funding after the murder of George Floyd and demonstrations locally and around the world, the Berkeley Police got their wish, a bigger police force budget with a $12.5 million budget increase, 180 sworn officers and a total department of 290.2 FTEs.
The goBerkeley pilot, which council passed the same evening, to charge for parking in residential neighborhoods (no matter what justification is thrown up) looks more and more like the mechanism to bail out the Parking Meter Fund. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds allocated to parking run out in 2023 (page 64). That leaves paying for things such as the Center Street Garage debt underfunded. Money has to come from somewhere. Neighborhoods look to be the next source to tap.
There is nothing that requires the Berkeley Marina to be a self-sustaining financial entity, however, that is how the City has chosen to define it (an enterprise fund) while at the same sending the Marina hotel taxes (transient occupancy tax – TOT) into the general fund to be redistributed. ARPA funds will bail out the Marina temporarily and then it will slip back into falling short. This lays the ground for commercial development projects and Mayor Arreguin’s dream of the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) building a new pier or at least paying for a big chunk of it and adding a ferry. There is the expectation the WETA endeavor and the commercial developments will boost the City coffers.
WETA is counting on regaining pre-pandemic ridership to cover its own financial shortfalls. I asked my guests who work in Silicon Valley, one as a manager, the other a programmer if a return to the office to pre-pandemic levels is in the offing. They answered people do come in (once in a while or maybe once or twice a week), but as to a full return that answer is no. In fact, working from home defined what was important in the layout of the home they recently purchased.
The allocation to EV charging stations at the corporation yard and at sites in the city from the Mayor’s budget did survive. The allocation of funding to councilmembers for an additional legislative aide survived with only half of the desired funding. Councilmember Kesarwani lead the opposition to allow any funding for legislative aides.
In the public comment on the budget, there were a number of speakers from the Berkeley Hillside Fire Safety Group lobbying to use Measure FF funds for the removal of eucalyptus trees from private property in the fire zones. That request did not gain traction, but we can expect them to continue showing up.
Wednesday, I chose the Housing Element Workshop #3 over the Police Accountability Board and the Rent Board Convention. There wasn’t anything new which means still reading the 500 plus pages to find what is packed away in the details. Breakout groups followed the short presentation.
The increase density attendees clearly won the day. A future of perpetual droughts, water shortages, hardscape with water runoff and heat island effect are clearly not part of the picture, nor are habitat loss and damage to ecosystems. Solar access is dismissed.
The Matthew Lewis (there two) employed by California YIMBY as Director of Communications proclaimed rooftop solar is a big nothing when it comes to the environment as Berkeley has opted the city up to 100% renewable with EBCE (East Bay Community Energy). The 4000 plus owners of rooftop solar in Berkeley would beg to differ except, of course, Matthew Lewis, who says he would happily trade his solar for a high density building next door, is paid to send the message that only density near mass transit matters.
If I didn’t give you enough to ponder as we cross another July 4th holiday, for a longer look at older Supreme Court decisions starting with Marbury v. Madison in 1803, check this website https://www.infoplease.com/us/government/judicial-branch/milestone-cases-in-supreme-court-history. Marbury v. Madison is the first instance in which a law passed by Congress was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
