The Difference Between Bernie And Elizabeth And The Rest Of The Field-- Bernie And Elizabeth Aren't Full Of Crap

Beto has lost a lot of momentum since he decided to run for president instead of taking on John Cornyn for the Texas Senate seat. Even some guy named Andrew Yang is polling better than he is. When Beto joined the presidential race, his fresh face gave him a startling 8.5 in the polls. Since then, though, Domocrats have reconsidered and his average polling number is now 2.8, seventh. The most recent credible poll, by YouGov for The Economist last week, has him at a dismal 1.0.

Brilliant! And Beto has been trying to walk it back ever since

Sometimes Beto wants to get some traction with progressives so screams "fuck" or he stakes out a position to the left of everyone else and then argues for it passionately-- like he did with assault weapons at Thursday's debate, going way beyond what any other Democrat is calling for. "We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore," he asserted, arguing for mandatory confiscation, an ultra unpopular position at this point. "If the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body, because it was designed to do that, so you would bleed to death on a battlefield. Not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers... When we see that being used against children. And in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15. And that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour, because so many other people were shot by an AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time. Hell yes. We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against fellow Americans anymore."

Right now David Cicilline's assault weapons sales ban-- not confiscation-- bill, HR 1296 is being kept from being voted on by... not by Trump, not by MoscowMitch... by Pelosi. There are 211 co-sponsors, 210 Democrats and one Republican. Only 25 House Democrats, led by walking garbage dump and DCCC chair Cheri Bustos, have refused to co-sponsor the bill. Beto's self-serving grandstanding isn't helping; it's hurting the cause. Since the spate of NRA-GOP massacres this summer, some of the conservative Blue Dogs and New Dems-- Beto's compatriots when he was a New Dem member of Congress-- have reluctantly signed on as cosponsors to a bill they shunned when Cicilline introduced it last February 15. Of the 20 converts who co-sponsored since the deadly mass shootings began, one is a Republican (Peter King) and 14 are from Beto's New Dems Caucus.

New Dems-- like Beto-- the House's yellow-bellied cowards. Beto wasn't a progressive when he was in Congress, not on much of anything. Occasionally he sounded a little like one. After all, he represented a solid blue district that was clearly to the left of himself. Trump only scored a puny 27.2% there and the PVI is D+17. Beto did nothing in Congress-- nothing good, nothing bad... nothing. It was a waste of a good seat. And I don't mean to single out or pick on Beto (who I like). But most of these presidential would-be candidates don't do crap, or, worse, did actual bad while they had the chance.




Biden, of course, was worst of all-- a complete villain for his entire career, the definition of a DINO from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, a war-monger, a vicious racist and the very worst kind of corporate whore you'll ever find. Kamala's résumé is so thin as to be nearly non-existent and what there is of it is mostly puke-worthy, illustrating how assiduously she worked to assure wealthy liberal and moderate campaign fonors that just because her skin was a little darker than theirs it didn't mean she leaned left on anything. She was my attorney general and my senator and I never cast a vote for her in a primary or a general election. She may not be as bad as Biden but that's because he's had more time to do more evil.





Compare the rest of the schlubs who were on the stage Thursday night to Bernie or Elizabeth Warren. What Bernie and Elizabeth talk about in their platforms and on the debate stage is what they've spent their entire political careers working on. That's what makes them different from Beto and Biden and Kamala who are just trying to curry favor with voters as though there were no yesterdays. While Biden and Kamala were locking African-Americans away in prisons and Beto was eating lunch with the New Dems-- it's what he told me he did with them-- Bernie spent his life pushing exactly what he talks about with the voters today: Medicare-for-All (aka, original Medicare before conservatives whittled it down, between 1905 and 1965, to what it is today), human rights, peace, environmental justice, workers rights, women's rights... 

Take his newest announced policy position: a national housing policy. Bernie started working on that-- successfully-- in the 1980s when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont (and when Beto was a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow-- a computer hacking collective that stole long-distance phone service-- and listening to Hawkwind and writing poetry based on their songs). Not even a dedicated Bernie-hater like NY Times slime ball and twisted Wall Street shill Sydney Ember could make Bernie's plan to end homelessness and nationally limit rent increases sound bad. And even the hateful, vile Ember admitted that Bernie "has long advocated for affordable housing, even during his days as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s." Here he was in 2000 on the floor of the House talking about the issue he's bringing to the fore of the presidential campaign today. That's who Bernie is. He shines with integrity and authenticity, especially when you put him next to the sad-sack opportunists like Biden, Mayo Pete, Kamala, Beto...

Affordable Housing Is Becoming A Crisis In California-- Don't Expect GOP Hacks Like Tom Lackey To Be Part Of The Solution

Los Angeles doesn't have any Republicans in its congressional delegation any longer-- and there's only one left in the delegation it sends to the Assembly in Sacramento, Tom Lackey of Palmdale (AD-36). His name is an apt description. The Antelope Valley seat stretches from southern Kern County through the northeast corner of Los Angeles County and into northern San Bernardino County. There are 9% more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, but that number is deceiving because there are more Independents than Republicans and they tend to lean right.

There are 3 relatively viable Democrats in the race, two conservatives, Steve Fox (a reactionary who lost to Tom Lackey the last 3 elections) and Johnathon Ervin (who hasn’t won an election despite trying 3 times for City Council and once for State Senate). As of today, Blue America is endorsing the progressive in the race, Eric Ohlsen. Eric enlisted in the Coast Guard right out of high school. After this service he enrolled in L.A. City College and ran up $30,000 in student debt. His wife and her family are from Palmdale and that's where they settled. Today he works as a producer and is an unabashed progressive which he believes gives him the best chance of winning over independent voters and beating Lackey. He's a booster of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. He feels he can not just pinpoint the problems that his neighbors care about but that he has the solutions to deal with them.

One of the big ones in the Antelope Valley is an affordable housing crisis that is kicking in all over the region. I asked Eric to introduce himself by talking about that specifically. If you like what you read, please consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the Blue America state legislative thermometer above. As you can see, he's the only Californian on the list.


California’s Housing Crisis
by Eric Ohlsen

Housing costs continue to increase faster than income levels. The financial strain pushes too many good citizens further and further toward the fringes. While there is no magic policy pill that will solve California’s affordable housing crisis, as a State, and a community, we desperately need to find solutions. That means changing the way we approach the problem as a whole.

First, let’s start at the state level with Proposition 13. Because of Prop 13, both commercial and residential properties are only reassessed for tax purposes when they are sold. So owners pay property taxes based on the value of the property when they acquired it, not at its current market value. The problem with this is that a municipality’s revenue does not reflect the rising costs of its operations, and must therefore cut costs any way possible in order to account for annually increasing shortfalls. And the easiest budgets to slash are social services and education. Prop 13 was a bill that was sold to the public in a way that sounded good at the time, but has ultimately had far too many unintended consequences. It has hamstrung local governments and deprived them of necessary civic revenue, forcing cuts to important social services including affordable housing initiatives.

Another unintended consequence of Prop 13 is on construction of new housing. The city still has the same costs associated with new construction, but not the same revenue. So now cities are forced to work around those costs by passing them onto the developers in the form of up-front fees that must be paid before construction. This additional burden of up-front costs drives up the initial investment and makes it more difficult for developers to build much needed housing throughout the state. This exacerbates the problem of housing shortages and rising home costs to everyone. Also, the front-loaded development fees that cities have become increasingly reliant on, favor large-scale housing developments and shopping malls.

There are currently efforts underway to treat commercial property different than residential property, which has become known as “split roll.” By enacting the split roll, nothing would change for residential properties, but businesses would have their properties reassessed to market values every three years or less and these commercial properties would still be taxed at their value plus 1 percent. These additional funds would help communities across the state pay for much a much needed upgrade in our educational system, fund social programs, affordable housing initiatives, and rebuild civic infrastructure. In short, it will give our communities the resources they need to thrive.

Rent control solutions are also an option, such as AB 1482, which recently passed the State Assembly, and caps rent increases at 7 percent plus inflation. But this legislation falls woefully short because it not only does not go far enough, but it also lacks any renter protections. What good is rent control if a landlord can evict a tenant without any just cause, only to raise the rent as much as they want with the tenant gone? We can and should do better than this, but it is at least one direction where we can find progress.

Next, let’s look at local solutions like Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). CDBGs are allocated to social service programs locally and can be used in very specific ways targeted to the individual needs of the community, for example, subsidized housing or maintaining the stock of affordable housing in the area. CDBGs can also be used to keep small business real estate more affordable, which creates jobs and retains locally owned businesses.

Another local solution to help address California’s housing shortage is to amend zoning ordinances to ease restrictions on second dwelling units. While from a State level these units do not require additional reviews or hearings to build, many local municipalities have restrictive city ordinances in place that create a barrier to secondary dwelling units on a property. These units are beneficial to a community because they increase the supply of affordable housing, increase the urban density, and help homeowners with financial stability. Zoning ordinances can also be amended to account for the development of “tiny house” communities which have been successfully used to help the chronically homeless, but also as an alternative housing solution in other areas.

Finally, and most urgently, let’s look at the housing crisis from the street level. Immediate action must be taken to give help to our most vulnerable neighbors. Those with the greatest housing needs can be helped through expanded programs for subsidized housing. These programs can be paid for in part by the proposed changes to Prop 13 and can help our neighbors now, before they face the devastating effects of homelessness. We can also work to make the system easier to navigate for those in need by continuing to improve the coordination of services through L.A. County’s “No Wrong Door” policy. This helps people to avoid getting swept up in bureaucracy and to find their way to the help they need.

These are all specific things that can be done to help ease the crisis of housing costs in California, but I think that the biggest change has to come with how we approach this problem as a whole. We need to seek out a comprehensive solution rather than treating the problem as an afterthought. This is a problem that impacts literally every Californian and solving it must be seen as a priority by legislators and not some secondary or tertiary problem. We must demand a bolder approach from our State Legislature.