The Academy Awards would not be complete without at least one political statement.
This year there were three.
It’s a telling statement about the state of political discourse in the United States when the best international film is stridently anti-war German production.
The best documentary film is about a Russian dissident who is imprisoned for standing up to Vladimir Putin.
The best adapted screenplay Academy Award went to Women Talking, written and directed by Sarah Polley.
This is the first win for Sarah Polley, who was nominated for the same award in 2007 for “Away From Her.”
“I want to thank the Academy for not being mortally offended by the words women and talking so close together,” Ms. Polley said in her acceptance speech.
Perhaps those privileged members of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Science want to send a message that says, “We care.”
It begs the question. Where are the courageous dissidents in the United States?
I am sure there are many who are fighting for environmental justice, civil rights and a fair justice system. You just don’t often read or hear about these people in the mainstream media.
The wealthy are too busy worrying about the their holdings at the failed Silicon Valley Bankand breathing a sigh of relief that Washington has bailed them out of their predicament.
The rest of America is too busy obsessing over the soon to be indicted wastrel Donald Trump and how this criminal charge will impact his run for the White House in 2024.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 3.12.2023
All Quiet on the Western Front wins best international film
Midway through the evening, German production All Quiet on the Western Front won the Academy Award for best international film.
The Netflix original film brought audiences a gruesome anti-war message almost a hundred years after the original book by Erich Maria Remarque was published.
Navalny wins best documentary amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
A documentary about jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has won the Oscar for best documentary feature.
Navalny explores the poisoning that nearly killed the Kremlin critic in 2020 and his subsequent detention upon his return to Moscow in 2021.
“My husband is in prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy,” his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said at the ceremony.
“Alexei, I am dreaming of the day when you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong, my love.”
Bank failures are akin to a tsunami in the financial world.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is a world wide story receiving major headline coverage.
The collapse of this bank, 16th largest in the United States, holds particular relevancy in the Bay Area.
The Standard, an online publication in San Francisco, was founded by prominent venture capitalists. Its current online edition has eight stories about the collapse of SVB. https://sfstandard.com/ A lead story being headlined ‘Bay Area Investors Clamor for Government to Step up After Silicon Valley Bank Meltdown.’
The Wall Street Journal is playing the story across the front page of its online edition.The last sentence in the editorial is the most telling about what America’s leading financial publication is really thinking.
But nobody, least of all central bank oracles, should be surprised that there are now bodies washing up on shore as the tide goes out. Investors will have to brace for what could be some heavy weather ahead.
Following is the WSJ editorial.
Wall Street Journal editorial 3.10.2023
There’s nothing like a bank panic to make for a relaxing weekend.
Markets took another header on Friday, as regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th largest U.S. bank and the biggest to fail since the 2008 crisis. This came days after Silvergate Capital announced it is liquidating its bank. Cracks in the financial system emerge whenever interest rates rise quickly after an easy-credit mania, and the surprise is that it took so long.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took over SVB on Friday and may have to collect more bodies by the time the Federal Reserve is done correcting its easy-money mistakes. At least that seems to be the fear of investors, judging by the sharp selloff in regional bank stocks like First Republic Bank (-14.8%) and PacWest Bancorp (-37.9%).
SVB’s customers include leading venture-capital firms and tech startups, including some Chinese firms that need offshore accounts to raise foreign capital. San Diego-based Silvergate is smaller but grew in recent years by serving crypto companies.
What the two have in common is that they lacked diverse deposit bases and fell victim of a classic banking strategy of borrowing short and lending long. Although their liabilities were backed by putatively safe assets like Treasury bonds, when interest rates rise the bonds that banks hold lose value. They have to be held to maturity or incur losses when sold.
SVB and Silvergate incurred steep losses as they sold bonds to compensate for fleeing deposits. A regulatory crackdown on crypto also spurred Silvergate customers to bail, sticking it with even bigger losses.
Silvergate on Wednesday said it would liquidate “in light of recent industry and regulatory developments.” Its crypto ties may have made it too politically toxic for another bank to take over. While regulators will surely flog Silvergate’s failure as a warning not to serve the crypto industry, its concentrated deposit base was the main cause of its demise.
SVB’s business model was more durable but still vulnerable to market shocks. Rising interest rates have made it hard for its startup clients to raise fresh equity. As its customers drew down deposits, SVB had to sell bonds at a loss. SVB disclosed this week that it had lost $1.8 billion on securities sales and would need to raise $2.25 billion in equity.
Cops stand guard over the bankrupt Silicon Valley Bank
This stoked fears of insolvency, which caused customers and investors to bolt. It was reportedly searching for a buyer on Friday, and we hope regulators didn’t pre-empt potential private investors by closing SVB so quickly on the same day.
Bank of America and J.P. Morgan rescued smaller banks during the 2008 crisis. But banks may be reluctant to do that again since regulators last time punished them for the sins of their foster children. The takeover of SVB will presumably cost the FDIC money to repay insured depositors.
But if SVB was doomed, it is better to let it fail than have the government bail it out, despite what one hedge-fund lord suggested this week. Didn’t we learn from the 2008 crisis that the feds’ rescue of Bear Stearns encouraged everyone to believe that Lehman Brothers would be rescued too?
There doesn’t appear to be any obvious systemic risk to the financial system from the SVB and Silvergate failures, and market discipline needs to prevail unless there is danger of a larger financial breakdown. SVB investors and customers benefited from the government’s easy money. Why should they also benefit from a government lifeline after taking risks with that easy money?
This week’s bank failures are another painful lesson in the costs of a credit mania fed by bad monetary policy. The reckoning always arrives when the Fed has to correct its mistakes. That was the story of 2008, and it’s the eternal lesson that economic historian Charles Kindleberger taught in “Manias, Panics, and Crashes.” We saw the first signs of panic in last year’s crypto crash and the liquidity squeeze at British pension funds.
Now it’s hit the U.S. financial system, and there are likely to be more casualties. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that the U.S. banking system “remains resilient,” but that’s what Fed officials Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner thought before the 2008 panic.
While big banks today are much better capitalized than before the 2008 financial crisis, some regional and small banks with less diverse deposit bases may be vulnerable to shocks. Some may be over-exposed to industries such as commercial real estate that are under stress. The Fed will have to be careful as it continues its anti-inflation campaign.
But nobody, least of all central bank oracles, should be surprised that there are now bodies washing up on shore as the tide goes out. Investors will have to brace for what could be some heavy weather ahead.
Germany has been rocked by a mass shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness center in the port city of Hamburg.
Hamburg’s Mayor called the mass killing “shocking.”
This type violence is a rarity in Germanywhere there are strict gun control laws.
In America where guns are as easy to purchase as hamburgers random mass violence is all too common.
The New York Post 3.9.2023
At least six or seven people were killed and eight others were injured during a shooting inside a church in Hamburg, Germany, on Thursday.
Hamburg police reported that shots were fired inside a Jehovah’s Witness center in the Gross Borstel district at around 9 p.m. local time, resulting in “several” fatalities.
German news sites reported that seven people were gunned down and eight others were wounded. Police officials said the gunman is likely among the dead found at the scene.Â
“There were about four periods of shooting,” student Laura Bauch told German news agency dpa. “There were always several shots in these periods, roughly at intervals of 20 seconds to a minute.
“We only know that several people died here; several people are wounded, they were taken to hospitals,” police spokesman Holger Vehren said, without confirming an exact number of casualties.Â
Residents in the area received a shelter-in-place order amid the police investigation, while cops responded to the three-story building.
German police at the scene of the mass shooting in Hamburg
Officers who responded to the mass shooting found people with gunshot wounds on the ground floor and then heard the sound of a gun firing from a floor above. They discovered a person who had been fatally shot upstairs and believe that person may have been the shooter, Vehren said.
Investigators were still attempting to verify that the casualties were the work of a lone gunman, police officials said early Friday.
Nearby residents told local media they heard a barrage of gunshots and saw a person running from floor to floor during the shooting.
Gregor Miesbach, who can see the building from his home, said he heard at least 25 shots in an interview with the German news station NonstopNews.
He said he heard gunshots and then took out his phone and filmed a person entering the building through a window followed by the sound of gunfire. The figure briefly reappears in a courtyard on the property and then re-enters the building and more shots can be heard.
After police arrived on the scene, Miesbach said, he heard one last gunshot about five minutes later.
Heavily armed German law enforcement in Hamburg
The mayor of Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, called the shooting “shocking” in a tweet.Â
“I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. The forces are working at full speed to pursue the perpetrators and clarify the background,” Mayor Peter Tschentscher tweeted.
I always pay attention to the category of feature length documentaries which tend to balance art and politics.
One of my favorite winning documentaries is the 2003 ‘The Fog of War Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.’ Defense Secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Born in San Francisco’s Richmond District on 10th Avenue, McNamara had a corporate career before joining the Kennedy Administration in 1961as Secretary of Defense His role in the Vietnam War was pivotal and a crucial factor in the disastrous American involvement.
If you’re looking for suspense at the Oscars, focus your attention on the documentary-feature-film category. It’s a nail-biter, a true toss-up, with five near-perfect movies (representing my second-favorite set of nominees in the race).
The quality is all the more remarkable given the state of the overheated nonfiction-film sector, where streamers hungry for low-cost, Tiger King–style hits are commissioning anything and everything—docs on Ted Bundy! Crypto! Abercrombie & Fitch!—creating a bubble of mixed quality and raising certain ethical questions along the way. Finding a great doc has started to feel a little like…well, finding anything on your overstuffed, weirdly undernourished streaming homepages.
But let me say it again: These five Oscar nominees are truly great—they do the magic trick of edifying you with real-world facts while also transporting you with emotionally rich narratives. Their subjects cover geopolitics, activism, love, and heartbreak. Here’s a guide, with some predictions thrown in. Watch as many as you can and join me on the edge of my seat when the winner is read out next month.
America’s paper of record, The New York Times, published a detailed investigative piece whose ultimate conclusion is that the United States had no involvement in the September 2022 explosion that seriously damaged the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which is supposed to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The Biden administration has consistently maintained that it was not involved. Now the results of “new intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukranian group carried out the attack.”
The public may never know who was responsible if Washington has its way.
Excerpted from The New York Times 3.7.2023
WASHINGTON – Last month, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article on the newsletter platform Substack concluding that the United States carried out the operation at the direction of President Biden. In making his case, Mr. Hersh cited the president’s pre invasion threat to “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2, and similar statements by other senior U.S. officials.
U.S. officials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not authorize a mission to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involvement.
Early last year, President Biden, after meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany at the White House, said Mr. Putin’s decision about whether to attack Ukraine would determine the fate of Nord Stream 2. “If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Mr. Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”
When asked exactly how that would be accomplished, Mr. Biden cryptically said, “I promise you we’ll be able to do it.”
Since the explosions along the pipelines in September, there has been rampant speculation about what transpired on the sea floor near the Danish island of Bornholm.
Poland and Ukraine immediately accused Russia of planting the explosives, but they offered no evidence.
Russia, in turn, accused Britain of carrying out the operation — also without evidence. Russia and Britain have denied any involvement in the explosions.
New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.
U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.
Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.
The brazen attack on the natural gas pipelines, which link Russia to Western Europe, fueled public speculation about who was to blame, from Moscow to Kyiv and London to Washington, and it has remained one of the most consequential unsolved mysteries of Russia’s year-old war in Ukraine.
Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.
Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved.
The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explosions in September, in what U.S. officials described at the time as an act of sabotage. European officials have publicly said they believe the operation that targeted Nord Stream was probably state sponsored, possibly because of the sophistication with which the perpetrators planted and detonated the explosives on the floor of the Baltic Sea without being detected. U.S. officials have not stated publicly that they believe the operation was sponsored by a state.
Nord Stream 2 pipeline – Across the Baltic Sea to Germany
The explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services, U.S. officials who have reviewed the new intelligence said. But it is possible that the perpetrators received specialized government training in the past.
Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, as the two pipelines are known, stretch 760 miles from the northwest coast of Russia to Lubmin in northeast Germany. The first cost more than $12 billion to build and was completed in 2011.
Nord Stream 2 cost slightly less than the first pipeline and was completed in 2021, over objections from officials in the United States, Britain, Poland and Ukraine, among others, who warned that it would increase German reliance on Russian gas. During a future diplomatic crisis between the West and Russia, these officials argued, Moscow could blackmail Berlin by threatening to curtail gas supplies, on which the Germans had depended heavily, especially during the winter months. (Germany has weaned itself off reliance on Russian gas over the past year.)
Inferno in the outer Richmond neighborhood – photo San Francisco Fire Department
The Sunday morning inferno
The normal Sunday morning tranquility was broken when fire trucks and emergency vehicles came rumbling down the block past our home in the normally quiet outer Richmond District.
I stepped outside to see smoke billowing from a home on the next block and a mass of fire fighters extinguishing the blaze.
The fire started when the elderly resident of the two unit building was cooking with oil. Flames rose up through the kitchen flue causing the blaze which destroyed the building. Fortunately he got out safely and nobody was injured.
A firefighter scales the ladder
The fire quickly went to two alarms and four San Francisco Fire Department battalions responded to extinguish the blaze. Because of the efficient and professional work of the fire fighters the buildings on either side of the conflagration were not damaged.
According to the SF Fire Department over 70 firefighters were dispatched to fight the blaze.
Looking down the block at the scene of the conflagration. St. Thomas the Apostle steeple in the background.
Fire fighters look on at the fire destroyed building
Firefighterssurveying the burnt out wreckage of the Sunday morning blaze in the outer Richmond neighborhood
A trio of firefighters whose sole job is to assist any of their comrades should they be injured.
A photographer documents the blaze
Smoke billows from the burning building.
Some of the San Francisco firefighters on the job on Sunday morning
The Sunday morning sun looms over the site of the blaze
San Francisco Fire Department battalion chiefsconsole owner of fire destroyed property.
The fire hydrant adjacent to Donna the Drain. Its recently cleaned condition enable the excess water to flow freely into the SFPUC system
Fire fighters utilized the fire hydrant at the corner to extinguish the blaze. The hydrant was readily accessible as long time Public Utilities Commission volunteer drain maintainer Liz Heidhues, keeper of ‘Donna the Drain’, had thoroughly cleaned the corner location after the fierce Saturday rainstorms.
There was plenty of equipment on stand by to ensure the blaze was eradicated and to care for anybody who may have been injured. Fortunately the medical teams were not necessary.
Top photo – Firefighters approach the Sunday morning blazing inferno as neighbors look on incredulously
Tennessee was the 11th and final American State to secede and join the Confederacy in its insurrection against the United State government beginning in 1861 and concluding in 1865.
The Civil War was all about States rights and the right to own black slaves.
Obviously some beliefs have not changed in the past 158 years.
Civil rights is still a mirage for too many of America’s Black citizens.
Top photo: Tacoma Times 5.22.2017 Just as appalling as the “Lynching Fever Grips South” is the story underneath it headlined “Study This Picture.” Blatant anti-Asian racism on full display on page one above the fold.The Chinese Six Companies of San Francisco is the subject of criticism for wanting tobring Chinese workers into the Tacoma, Washington area.
The Guardian 3.2.2023
Like many US states, Tennessee has a long history of official killing.
A Tennessee Republican lawmaker apologized after suggesting “hanging by a tree” could be added to a bill concerning methods of execution in the state.
Paul Sherrell, a state representative from Sparta, made the suggestion on Tuesday, during discussion of an amendment which would allow execution by firing squad in Tennessee.
“I was just wondering, could I put an amendment on that that would include hanging by a tree, also,” Sherrell asked, offering to co-sponsor the state bill.
The remark prompted considerable backlash, particularly as it was made in a southern state with a brutal history of racially motivated lynchings.
The prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump wrote: “This is UNREAL! … How in 2023 can a government official have such a grotesque suggestion leave his mouth?!”
On Wednesday, Sherrell said sorry.
“My exaggerated comments were intended to convey my belief that for the cruelest and most heinous crimes, a just society requires the death penalty in kind,” he said.
“Although a victim’s family cannot be restored when an execution is carried out, a lesser punishment undermines the value we place on protecting life.”
Reprehensible Republican Paul Sherell
Sherrell said he “sincerely apologise[d] to anyone who may have been hurt or offended”.
There are currently 47 inmates on death row in Tennessee.
Earlier this year, the state was found to have repeatedly violated its execution protocol since 2018, regarding the improper testing of lethal injection drugs.
The Republican governor, Bill Lee, said in January there would be no more executions until action had been taken “to fix the protocol”.
According to the state government, “until 1913, all individuals convicted of a capital offense were hanged.
All too typical newspaper headline – June 16, 1920
“… From 1913 to 1915, there was no capital punishment in Tennessee … From 1916 until 1960, 125 persons were executed by electrocution in Tennessee.
“In 2000, lethal injection replaced electrocution as the primary method of execution. In September, 2007 the first electrocution in 47 years was carried out.”
For nine years from 2009, the state did not execute anyone. Executions resumed in 2018.
Why is it that so many people, even in San Francisco, believe the nonsense that lower taxes on big business and more cops make for a healthier City?
Mayor Breed and her @StopCrimeSF cadres are reaping the Whirlwind of their lies which drove Chesa Boudin from office.
1. Crime, which was generally in decline during Chesa’s tenure has ramped up. Typically the MSM (including The Chronicle) is reporting the crime but not holding Breed’s handpicked crony DA accountable like it did Chesa.
2. People were scared off from downtown by all the rhetoric about rampant crime. All in the interest in deposing someone who was not part of the City Hall gang.
Like, those of us who opposed the Recall and tried in vein to debunk the Mayor’s lies, the credulous San Francisco public can reap the whirlwind of a tanking economy and rampant crime.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 3.1.2023
Mayor London Breed’s plan to use tax breaks to attract new companies to downtown San Francisco is facing early pushback from an influential critic on the Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Connie Chan at City Hall
Chan said her approach to any structural tax reform would be more about making sure that everyone is “paying their fair share.”
Supervisor Connie Chan, the board’s budget chair, on Wednesday questioned whether the mayor’s proposal could have unintended consequences, particularly in light of the city’s projected $728 million two-year deficit caused largely by reduced expectations from business and commercial property tax revenues.
“We’re not going to sacrifice these things at the expense of, if I may be frank, downtown interests,” Chan said. “We have to think of the city as a whole and not just one area. We have to take a step back and hold ourselves accountable.”
Empty streets of downtown San Francisco
Chan said she also wants to advocate for more ambitious proposals such as securing state and regional funding that could help make Muni free, first for low-income residents and eventually for the city’s entire population. Her office said free public transit could boost the city’s economic recovery by improving ridership. Breed previously vetoed legislation that would have made Muni free for a three-month pilot program.
Chan also hopes to advocate for a more regional approach to reducing homelessness, as well as expanded child care services for working families.
In a total abdication and dereliction of duty in her responsibility to uphold equal Justice under the law San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins is absolving a murderous cop of any culpability in the murder of an unarmed citizen.
Brooke Jenkins should not be the Chief Law Enforcement officer in San Francisco. Her political machinations to protect the San Francisco Police Department from facing Justice for their misconduct is an abomination and miscarriage of Justice.
San Francisco Chronicle 3.1.2023
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins on Wednesday moved to dismiss the historic manslaughter prosecution of the first San Francisco police officer believed to have ever been charged with an on-duty shooting.
Once the case is dismissed, only nine days remain in the statute of limitations to file charges.
Jenkins has also delayed three other police prosecutions she inherited from Boudin, and shrunk the unit responsible for investigating alleged crimes by police, further angering reform groups that held a rally outside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday to condemn Jenkins’ actions.
The dismissal of the case against former Officer Christopher Samayoa, who was just days out of the police academy when he fatally shot a fleeing, unarmed Keita O’Neil in December 2017, has become a flashpoint for Jenkins and police reform advocates who say she is backing off her campaign promise to hold officers accountable for excessive violence.
Judge Loretta M. Giorgi granted but stayed filing the dismissal until March 7 in case Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office requests more time to weigh whether it will take up the prosecution.
Jenkins said the case never should have gone to court, and has characterized it as a political prosecution by her recalled predecessor, former District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who charged Samayoa nine months after taking office in 2020, and after discovering that he had only days to do so before the statute of limitations would expire.
Governor Ronald Reagan, who had been publicly critical of university administrators for tolerating student demonstrations at the Berkeley campus, sent California Highway Patrol and Berkeley police officers into People’s Park on May 15, 1969, at 4:30 a.m. The action came at the request of Berkeley’s mayor, Wallace J.S. Johnson. Beginning at noon about 3,000 people appeared in Sproul Plaza at nearby UC Berkeley for a rally, the original purpose of which was to discuss the Arab–Israeli conflict. The crowd later moved down Telegraph Avenue toward People’s Park. Reagan’s chief of staff, Edwin Meese III, assumed responsibility for the governmental response to the People’s Park protest, and he called in the Alameda County Sheriff‘s deputies, which brought the total police presence to 791 officers from various jurisdictions.
James Rector was visiting friends in Berkeley and watching from the roof of Granma Books when he was shot by police; he died on May 19. A carpenter, Alan Blanchard, was permanently blinded by a load of birdshot directly to his face. At least 128 Berkeley residents were admitted to local hospitals for head trauma, shotgun wounds, and other serious injuries inflicted by police. One local hospital reported two students wounded with large caliber rifles as well.[News reports at the time of the shooting stated that 50 people were injured, including five police officers. Some local hospital logs indicate that 19 police officers or Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies were treated for minor injuries; none were hospitalized. However, the UCPD states that 111 police officers were injured, including one California Highway Patrol Officer, Albert Bradley, who was knifed in the chest.
That evening, Governor Reagan declared a state of emergency in Berkeley and sent in 2,700 National Guard troops. For two weeks, the streets of Berkeley were patrolled by National Guardsmen. Demonstrations continued for several days after Bloody Thursday. By May 26, the city-wide curfew and ban on gatherings had been lifted, although 200 members of the National Guard remained to guard the fenced-off park. On May 30, 1969, 30,000 Berkeley citizens (out of a population of 100,000) secured a city permit and marched without incident past the barricaded People’s Park to protest Governor Reagan’s occupation of their city and the casualties. Nevertheless, over the next few weeks National Guard troops broke up any assemblies of more than four people who congregated for any purpose on the streets of Berkeley, day or night. In the early summer, troops deployed in downtown Berkeley surrounded several thousand protesters and bystanders, emptying businesses, restaurants, and retail outlets of their owners and customers, and arresting them en masse.
Excerpt from Wikipedia.
Senator Scott Wiener, the lapdog and shill for realtors and speculators spouted off his outrage. He got it right by half when he said the Court ruling, “introduces the idea that people are pollution.“
Yes, Senator. “People are pollution” because they cause pollution.
People’s Park 1969 and 2023 – A decades long struggle
Excerpted from The Standard 2.27.2023
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll work this year to reform a landmark state environmental law that he says has been weaponized by wealthy homeowners to block badly needed housing for students at the University of California Berkeley.
The 1st District Court of Appeals’ ruling Friday could delay the building of a complex at Berkeley’s historic People’s Park, which is owned by the University of California Berkeley, for years or even decades, Newsom said.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, said the appeals court ruling was “horrific” and would have major implications for housing in California because it classifies noise from people as an environmental impact.
“It introduces the idea that people are pollution,” Wiener said.
The project has faced opposition since its inception and last year two local organizations, Make UC a Good Neighbor and The People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group, filed a lawsuit against it, citing the CEQA law and saying the university’s environmental impact report had not considered the housing complex would bring more noise to the area.
The People United Will Never be Defeated
Newsom’s comments over the weekend followed a state appeals court ruling that found the University of California “failed to assess potential noise impacts from loud student parties in residential neighborhoods near the campus” as required by the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, when it planned new housing near the university.
The housing complex would accommodate about 1,100 UC Berkeley students and 125 formerly homeless people. Part of the park would be set aside to commemorate its significance in the civil rights movement, university officials have said.
University officials said in a statement Monday they were dismayed by the decision and planned to file an appeal with the California Supreme Court, adding that their commitment to building the People’s Park project “is unwavering.”
The university called the appeals court decision “unprecedented and dangerous” because it could prevent colleges and universities across California from building student housing.
The landmark 1970 environmental law requires state and local agencies to evaluate and disclose significant environmental effects of projects and to find ways to lessen those effects. But in the decades since its passage, critics say the environmental law has been used by opponents of development to block housing and public transit projects.
“This law needs to change, and I’m committed to working with lawmakers this year to making more changes so our state can build the housing we desperately need,” he added.
Lee's Perspective 