Public Problems require Civil Service Solutions not Parochial Profiteering

Wiener’s “SB 899” panders with band aids, blurs church-state separation, fails to proffer public-interest solutions

Quick fixes conceived under pressure of crisis (and compounded crises) made not by inadequacy of the entity or institution of government — but by the impenetrable corruption, nepotism, incompetence, carelessness, and neglect of men and women ensconced in and around public office over many years.

Alternatives which are narrow-minded, shortsighted “nongovernmental” (anti-“bureaucracy,” anti-“government”), which amass wealth masked as doing good, which cash in and drain the public treasury (as surely as the military industrial complex) never aid public health and welfare. 

 

More often than not, as with Wiener's proposal, they selfishly

(a) breach the crucial barrier, in place to avert conflict and tribalism, which separates sectarianism from civil service (State)

(b) undermine essential, duly-designated public sector issues and priorities; and 

(c) further destroy public taxes-funded (and mandated) competent civil service for the general public health and welfare.

P

oliticians’ Pandering Never Solves Problems 

Duke University graduate, Fulbright Scholar, Harvard Law graduate Scott Wiener was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, grew up in southern New Jersey, and worked as a litigator for the bankrupt multinational Limited Liability Partnership Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe headquartered in San Francisco, California.

• In 2008, his former firm “filed a voluntary petition for chapter 11 bankruptcy for protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California” throwing the firm into chaos over who was “entitled to revenue from client matters pending at the time of bankruptcy.” In 2016, the dispute reached the California Supreme Court.

• In November 2016 Scott Wiener became a state senator for California’s District 11.

• Estimated daily homelessness (2019) in Wiener’s old and later states of residency

Pennsylvania: 13,199

New Jersey: 8,862

California: 151,278

• Public school student homelessness conditions school year 2017-2018

Pennsylvania: 440 students unsheltered, 6,681 in shelters, 2,231 in hotels/motels, and 21,901 doubled up.
New Jersey: 76 unsheltered, 1,982 in shelters, 1,511 in hotels/motels, and 9,665 doubled up
California: 10,407 unsheltered, 17,299 in shelters, 13,713 in hotels/motels, and 221,639 doubled up.

March 2020

S

an Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener introduces “SB 899 to allow faith institutions (such as churches, synagogues, and mosques) along with nonprofit hospitals to build affordable housing on their property by right, even if local zoning prohibits this type of housing.”

Wiener’s stated Rationale for his quick fix

• Because: “Churches and other religious and charitable institutions often have land to spare, and they should be able to use that land to build affordable housing and thus further their mission.”

• Because: “California desperately needs housing of all kinds, including affordable housing for ‘our’ low income residents.”

N

ONSENSE!

Contrary to the state senator’s enthusiasm for further breaching of the time-honored doctrine of separation of church and state, the government should not be in the business of helping sectarians further their “mission.” Their “mission” is their issue.

Nevertheless… sheep follow

California State Assembly (15th Assembly District) Hillary’ite Buffy Jo Christina Wicks:

“The State needs to consider all options for alleviating our [it is disgusting how politicians and media personalities incessantly and insincerely use the first person plural possessive "our"] housing crisis, and removing roadblocks for the faith community is a critical step in the right direction.”

Ethically compromised San Francisco Mayor London Breed:

“Our housing shortage is the result of decades of under building and restrictive zoning, and as a result, the cost of housing in San Francisco is unaffordable for many of our residents. We need solutions to eliminate the red tape that gets in the way of creating more affordable homes in our city.”

Breed’s get-government (unelected-bureaucrats) -off-our-backs reasoning” is ideologically scripted and fatally flawed. Her facts only minimally true. 

San Francisco is a big place with many buildings. And every municipality in the country has, one expects, properly thought out zoning laws.

In serious terms of permanent priorities and principled policies, politicians— as always, operating from crisis to crisis and election to election — fail to address critical issues in the public interest and for the long term.

C

ritical issues crafty politicians omit

• Inferior education and training

• Inadequate transferable skills

• Uneasy or impossible access to mental health and referral services and more general human resources

• Lack of or insufficient innovative workplaces planned and designed to replace incursion of automation

• Under- and unemployment

• Work and income insufficiency to cover costs of housing and related necessities

• Wherewithal overall (mentally and physically) to stave off homelessness

People don’t need churches or other profiteers calling themselves non-profits.

People do not need others' guilt or alms or "do-gooding" "missions" or 

condescending, self-serving “charity.”

People don't need proselytizing

 People need strengthening resources permanently enabling self-sufficiency and independence.

Why not for public good instead of mere private gain employ the principle of —

E

minent Domain

As to the specific area of affordable housing, eminent domain is the better public course for the public good.

It lacks hidden motives and /or government laundering public money through private sectarian “nonprofit” enterprises, or private sectarian “nonprofits” laundering money through government. 

It is a traditional public instrument that avoids breaching important public doctrines such as the separation of church and state.

The law of eminent domain (land acquisition, compulsory purchase) means the State, Province or National Government is empowered “to take private property for public use.”

To serve the general public, the federal legislature, acting on behalf of the general public, could declare excess properties held by religious places or spaces (churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc., shouldn't object since they are such do-gooders) for public use; and make a one-time “just compensation” to the owners.

Sources

United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

“New Jersey Homelessness Statistics” https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/nj

“Pennsylvania Homelessness Statistics” https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/paa

“California Homelessness Statistics” https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca

https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20200306-senator-wiener-introduces-housing-legislation-allow-churches-and-other-charitable

https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/biography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Wiener

Eminent domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain#United_States

Curbed San Francisco “New bill would allow churches and hospitals to build housing on their land: Faith can be your shelter, but it probably shouldn’t be the only one” Adam Brinklow

March 6, 2020 https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/6/21168455/wiener-church-affordable-housing-sb-899-bay-area

Curbed reports on “homes, streets, neighborhoods, and cities as inextricably related” (and brings) “local issues to a broad, national audience.”  https://www.curbed.com/pages/about-curbed

London Breed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Breed

Buffy Wicks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_Wicks

Other supporters of Wiener in their own narrow interests:

Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California Executive Director Amie Fishman

Nonprofit Housing Association of Southern California Executive Director Alan Greenlee

https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/20200306-senator-wiener-introduces-housing-legislation-allow-churches-and-other-charitable

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights Reserved

Exceptional America “First and Last” Abandons its Own

People Suffer, Anger for want of most basic of basics, Scramble over crumbs thrown from tables of luxury and waste

For years, since saving account interests rose to and plummeted from 11 percent and homeless people languished in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol Dome in Washington DC, America’s neglect has been evident to anyone who would see. I was there and watched America’s self- immolation, its cannibalizing, its selfish crash and burn—from bridges to bank scandals, to blatant breach of public trust  — as public officials raked in their share and turned their faces.  

When central or federal government officials serve only themselves and their “partners,” “relatives,” “friends,” and “allies,” the public, the country, suffers interminably.

The corrupt have instituted a system of selective “grant” handouts from partisans and profit- making charities. Not principled support of the welfare of all America.

This system leaves U.S. states and cities, local communities bereft and barren, the masses of people fighting among themselves while up against a wall of corrupt and/or incompetent municipal officials some perhaps earnestly trying to serve mass need but many, in the Washington model, serving only themselves by robbing the public treasury and pandering to selective interests. In this system, the masses are left to fight for scraps, inadequacies, the basic of basics in air, water, shelter, health and safety, training and education.  

Forget the USA “democracy” mantra (that too is a shroud of nothingness)

Michigan and Louisiana’s masses need water. California, New York, Appalachia’s masses need shelter. America’s masses need decent jobs with living wages. Decent jobs and living wages don’t need handouts, charity, “grants,” “soft” money or public office politicians’ pandering.

Water, Water Everywhere — Private, yes; Public, No

I

n Louisiana, the New Orleans mayoralty and Sewage and Water Board are calling names and threatening to shut off water amidst citizen complaints of no bills, no meter readings, and spiked bills. One disabled woman, according to Aaron Murch writing this week at WSWS, reported a “$1,400” bill, another a “$700” bill, others reported receiving no bills in a year but they continued to pay what they no doubt guessed to be the correct amount.

This is chaos and incompetence. And the servant of the people, reportedly, considers the people “bad actors.”

F

lint, Michigan 2014 – present: Federal State of Emergency because of lead contaminated water

2018: The State of Michigan grants Nestle bottling company a permit “to significantly increase the volume of fresh water” it currently pumps from Michigan waterways, at 100,000 times the amount used by residents, a change that doubles the amount Nestle can pump, and at “no additional cost.”

N

estlé Preference 

 April 2, 2018, Despite public objections, “the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality,” according to Popular Science and Science Alert, “approved a plan allowing the snack company Nestlé to pump 250 gallons of water a minute from White Pine Springs, 

which the company will then bottle, brand like Nestlé Pure Life Purified Water or Ice Mountain 100% Natural Spring Water, and sell (at least in New York) for about $2.50 a pop.

In 2014 the powers that be placed Flint, Michigan, residents under threat by changing their water source “from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the cheaper Flint River.” And as they suffer, Nestle profits soar. Flint residents will have to wait at least six years for lead laden pipes to be replaced; and  Nestle will sell them bottles of water rising no doubt to more than three dollars a bottle (to drink, cook and bathe), no longer subsidized or aided (no free bottled water) by a government whose actions caused both the water emergency and the corporate giveaways.

A Flint resident speaking to Science Alert makes the point poignantly:

We the citizens of Flint are unable to get water, but you can give Nestle water for free and force us to buy that back at a premium.

The government has promised replacement of Flint’s lead-contaminated water pipes “no sooner than 2020.” But don’t bank on it.

D

etroit falling apart 

Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013 but a decade and a half before that, “less than one-half of one percent of the city’s water main pipelines had been replaced and breaks and water flooding city streets had become as normal as broken streetlights.”

USA

 Way

 

Blame! Blame and bilk the public and the public treasury. 

Undermine the public trust. 

If the citizens or the masses cannot afford or are sickened by the basic necessity of water, well, it’s their own fault. And when sickened by contaminated water without the means to either prevent ill health or afford health services, well, tough luck. Who cares!

This is America at its most Exceptionally “Christian” Corrupt making fit the few and failing to quench the thirst or give living water to the masses.  

Sources

World Socialist Web Site “New Orleans mayor refers to residents as ‘bad actors’ amid looming water cut-offs’ August 8, 2018 Aaron Murch http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/08/orle-a08.html

Science Alert “Flint Residents Struggle For Affordable, Clean Water, While Nestle Pumps Gallons of It Nearby: Nestle pays only $200 a year” April 10, 2018, Carly Cassella https://www.sciencealert.com/flint-michigan-residents-clean-water-nestle-pump-gallons-cheap

Popular Science “Michigan is practically giving away clean water—but not to Flint” April 13, 2018 Eleanor Cummins https://www.popsci.com/flint-michigan-nestle-bottled-water

Wikipedia

Flint Water Crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

Crain’s Detroit Business “Aging infrastructure lurks beneath Detroit's revitalization” August 5, 2018 Chad Livengood http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20180805/blog026/667741/aging-infrastructure-lurks-beneath-detroits-revitalization

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights Reserved