The Toll of Super Bowl 50

This article originally appeared on Disinfo.com

I have never been a football fan. In addition to my adolescent frustration at having The Simpsons and X-Files pre-empted by a group of grown men lunging at each other in formations I had no frame of reference for or interest in, I also grew up in Cincinnati, OH, and thus had no access to a professional football team. I would roll my eyes at the grown-ups and wait for the halftime show, or perhaps a Beavis & Butthead cartoon, or of course, the commercials (which have declined in cleverness and are now premiered weeks ahead of time on the internet anyway).

I have watched and even celebrated Super Bowls with friends and co-workers (it is sort of inevitably the case when you go to college in Pittsburgh, PA, a city whose entire economy revolves around the sport), but with the same sort of detached fascination an agnostic enjoys when accompanying his religion friends to their church, or mosque, or temple. And this same religiosity is what I can only assume allows people to be a die-hard fan of a sport where concussions and domestic violence are rampant, and where loyalty lies with an arbitrarily chosen team name over entire groups of people that it may offend.

I kid (sort of). I think that local sports teams, in general, help create a common culture and foster a spirit of friendly competition between cities, as well as contributing to an identity at a collegiate, local, state and even national level. But there are problems with propping up your city’s economy with sportsball.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has been a shrewd investment by the entrenched and moneyed San Francisco elite; why else spend nearly two million dollars on a candidate that was practically unopposed? (Answer: as a boondoggle to friends and consultants of the Willie Brown clique). Arguably, this mayor was only elected the first time out of an ironic hipster love of his mustache, in addition to the political machinations that thrust him unwittingly onto the dais. Recall that Mr. Lee initially professed no interest in running, a sort of “aw shucks” moment that would have had a more convincing impact if the ones who were clamoring for him were, ya know, everyday citizens and not political insiders.

The City under Lee’s leadership, in his infinite wisdom, has determined that the homeless are just too much a nuisance to the grand Super Bowl 50 endeavor being spearheaded (something something “the measure of a civilization” and all that) and “are going to have to leave”. Business types and NIMBYs like C.W. Nevius applauded the move… or rather, mysterious Giuliani-esque “relocation”, but that’s just semantics. The Mayor cooed about how this was in the best interests of those individuals who happen to be without homes (during the winter and with little recourse, a famous lack of affordable housing, and inadequate institutional support). Lee said it was “not just because it is illegal, but because it is dangerous for them.” And while the DOJ might have some non-binding opinions about the constitutionality of sit/lie, the latter assertion was not expounded on by the mayor; one can only assume he meant that football fans are drunken louts who will lash out at the city’s homeless in their reverie (kidding aside, I actually saw this happen in Pittsburgh).

Lest we start to believe that this was all just puffery on the part of the Mayor’s office, rest assured that the scourge of those jobless dregs have already been pushed to the outmost rim of the BART line, if reports from social media, friends and co-workers are any indication. The DPW has begun removing the tents of ‘tent city’ residents in SF, supposedly to protect them from El Niño and definitely not the conveniently timed Super Bowl events. But with nowhere to go, it remains to be seen how taking what little fabric and tarp shelters these humans have is going to help better prepare them for the coming storm.

A similar concern was raised about the City’s robust protest movements, which of course are never good for business (don’t they realize that?). But one is forced to wonder if perhaps this has less to do with ‘optics’ and just as much if not more to do with the fact that protesters have been pestering the good Mayor for months now; affordable housing advocates and opponents of police violence and deportations have already interrupted His Imminency at not only his prepared speech for MLK Day, but before that during his inauguration… twice.

It isn’t just the homeless and social justice activists who will be inconvenienced. When the mayor first spoke of this grand plan, he told KCBS radio “to be quite candid with you, there won’t be any room for anybody.” Blocks of the busy Market Street will be closed off, public transportation will be choked and traffic gridlocks, city businesses and landmarks such as the Ferry Building and Embarcadero center are appropriately branded as the fetish commodities they are. The “Fan Village” will have fences and police pat-downs set up to prevent terrorism. The city’s airspace will be an enforced “No-Fly Zone”, wreaking the same disruptive havoc on our skies as on our streets, and adding more days of the year where Bay Area residents must bear the noise pollution of our military-industrial complex. But, at least there won’t be as many panhandlers.

So far, the more liberal members of the Board of Supervisors are pushing for the City to get reimbursed for the estimated $5.3 million in expenses we’ll rack up between now and game day. And while the Chamber of Commerce has put out a dubious report of the meager and theoretical sales tax benefits, remember that it isn’t an either/or. What exactly is the argument against getting those tourist dollars (already a foregone conclusion at this point) and asking for reimbursement?

That price tag only appears to be going up, as Mayor Ed Lee ordered major construction projects put on hold (which itself is certainly never an eyebrow-raising signal of corrupt city management). Overall, the bills could have been even higher if the spendthrift Super Bowl 50 Host Committee had been successful in convincing the City to remove those unsightly MUNI wires, which would have potentially messed up transit schedules for weeks and cost the city an additional “seven figures”.

From SFist:

Supervisors John Avalos, Jane Kim, and Aaron Peskin really want to make it clear that the signed commitments made by Fire, Police, and Emergency Management Departments “to not seek reimbursement from the NFL for providing any additional public safety services” are bullshit, especially in light of commitments made by the NFL to reimburse costs incurred by Santa Clara, and that the supervisors expect the NFL to pay up.

Oh, that’s right. In case you forgot, it’s not San Francisco that is hosting the Super Bowl; it’s set to take place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. A city that is 50 miles, (or at least 75 minutes driving time) away from San Francisco. A city that had the foresight to require the NFL to reimburse them for the costs incurred by said hosting. A city with a population about one-eighth that of San Francisco’s. Santa Clara: the city that stole the San Francisco 49ers from San Francisco back in 2014. It is a lovely city, though, I must say.

Supervisors Jane Kim and Aaron Peskin:

“Santa Clara is hosting the Super Bowl, the world’s most lucrative marketing event. San Francisco is hosting the traffic jam. Why should San Francisco taxpayers fund the marketing efforts of the world’s largest corporations?”

But both the Mayor’s office and the Host committee have defended the current deal. (That Committee, by the by, includes members such as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former SF Mayor Willie Brown.) The costs of the deal were, for the most part, kept secret until city budget analysts began to alert the Board of Supervisors to the potential fiduciary dangers to the City.

City analyst Severin Campbell:

“This fact represents a nondisclosure to the Board of Supervisors of significant expenditures, and represents a disservice to the Board of Supervisors.”

In the end, it may not even be entirely clear who is taking advantage of whom; the well-meaning “non-profit” NFL or the slick machine politics of Willie Brown Ed Lee.

This bending over backwards to make the city a Corporate World’s Fair for the gilded class is nothing new; it also happens every year like clockwork during Oracle and SalesForce. Not just the Moscone convention center (which one would expect to be used for such events) but city parks and streets are auctioned off. Voters in 2012 had to act to stop the practice of renting out historic COIT tower for private dinners that threatened to destroy murals. Dozens of buildings are owned by the Art Academy, a for-profit institution, and it remains to be seen if they will be reined in or will continue to enjoy a ‘closeness’ with Ed Lee and Willie Brown while the City looks the other way on their many zoning illegalities. LGBTQ activists have been worried for years about the increasing tech influence and corporate sleaze buying out traditional Pride celebrations. Those same tech companies enjoy reduced tax burdens and preferential treatment, all the while doing most their business online and sharing little to none of their profits with their neighbors (similarly the NFL, as a non-profit organization, has no obligation to spread any of their estimated $10 billion around San Francisco).

Meanwhile, in San Francisco… pic.twitter.com/55b5XptnUB

— Uel Aramchek (@ThePatanoiac) January 26, 2016

City leaders seem to care more for the events and conventions of high-spending corporations and little for those local, traditional or family events that the rest of us nobodies enjoy. I personally observed the slap-in-the-face to those unfortunate and underserved citizens waiting in line at Glide, while Salesforce put on an expensive and cordoned-off gala right next door resplendent with sumptuous food, fare and drink. Of course, a large branded tarp was in place to keep the elites from having to witness their lessers. It just wouldn’t do to have visitors see the endemic economic inequality in our world-renowned tourist city.

Well, if it’s in the newspaper…

Willie Brown, for his part, wants people to stop whining about Super Bowl 50. “You bet it’s a corporate event.” he opined in the Chronicle. He is far more interested in “making a killing”, and suggests you rent your hovel as an AirBnB during the festivities (but not to any grody homeless people, because they can’t pay). Hell, why not rent a Lamborghini for the Super Bowl celebration? It’s a real inside look into the privileged mentality that runs city politics. If you have money and want to make money, then you are worth Willie Brown’s attention. If not, then why are you even still here?

On a side note, the one group of entrepreneurs guaranteed to turn a profit this week (besides the politicians and the NFL) are scalpers. So that’s something.

What remains to be seen is if the NFL, or any of these other large organizations, will be sullied by their connections to the Mayor and his cronies, during a joint investigation by the District Attorney’s Office and the FBI which they plan to bring to its “logical conclusion”.

But all of the aforementioned dangers exist for other cities facing Ayn Rand-inspired ideologues, repressive austerity for the poor, and financial opportunism for the rich — expect to see more on this when the Olympics hit Rio De Janeiro. But these questions of economic inequality extend far beyond one corporate or sporting event, as the City increasingly becomes a haven for the wealthy, with the middle-to-lower-income workers and families shipped in from surrounding Districts to service their needs.

If you are one of those peons, expect and plan for traffic delays.

Another Unethical For-Profit College Brought to Light

This article originally appeared on Disinfo.com

Students, parents, and all-around consumers and taxpayers are growing increasingly skeptical of the dubious for-profit college model that promises valuable degrees (and ultimately, jobs) but instead leave students with crippling debt and few career options upon graduation. Rising public scrutiny in the wake of lawsuits concerning predatory loans, lack of job placement assistance, misleading recruitment claims, and deceptive financial aid activities have begun to have an effect on this industry’s worst offenders. EDMC (parent company of the Art Institutes) was sued until their stock dropped so far they eventually delisted from the NASDAQ last November, while Corinthian Colleges is selling off or shutting down campuses as it faces lawsuits and investigations from multiple state and federal agencies.

At the Huffington Post, Kyle McCarthy writes about another culprit: Globe University and the Minnesota School of Business (MSB), part of the Globe Education Network responsible for more than 30 for-profit colleges with sky-high tuition, outrageous debt, low graduation rates, high default rates, and more than their share of dirty laundry.

The tuition is so high, in fact, that often students are forced to search for alternative funds above and beyond their financial aid; and this is where the trap is sprung.

from Huffington Post (emphasis added):

Globe University and Minnesota School of Business were ripping off students with their predatory, “Educational Opportunities” (EdOp) loan at a usurious 18% interest rate. The schools also directed students to sign up for the loan through EdOpLoan.com, a website which was actually being serviced by a debt collection agency.

Unlike with federal student loans, lenders are not required to provide borrowers with benefits such as Income Based Repayment (IBR), Pay as You Earn (PAYE), public service loan forgiveness options, unemployment deferment, forbearance without fees, nor the ability for loans to be discharged in cases of fraud, school closure, or a borrower’s death or permanent disability.

A quick look at the EdOp loan promissory note shows that borrowers were also subjected to late charges, collection costs, capitalized interest, and numerous things that could trigger a default. For instance, upon graduating or withdrawing from school, borrowers immediately go into default after 30 days without payment. Other reasons for default include: failing to notify the lender of a name change within 10 days, or upon death of the borrower or co-signer…

Globe Education Network CEO Jeff Myhre has refuted the 18 percent figure, and instead cited a loan starting at 12 percent interest for students without a co-signer, 8 percent interest for students with a co-signer“. Either way, anything over 8% is considered usury in the state of Minnesota, which may have been what led Myhre (and/or Globe Education Network) to delete the article and replace it with a revised version that makes no mention of those rates.

This is also one of the reasons why Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is suing Globe University and Minnesota School of Business for misleading students over their deceptive ads amounting to consumer fraud, and unlicensed lending and usury (specifically involving EdOp and StA loans). The company may have also provided “misleading and incomplete information” to students concerning those loans.

Swanson asserts that the loans may be “void” with “no obligation to pay any amount owing and are entitled to recover all amounts paid.”

This would come as vindication for students who have been taken advantage of, as well as the two former deans of the schools who blew the whistle on falsification of job placement numbers, inflation of graduation rates and defying accreditation standards.

For more details in the ongoing case, read McCarthy’s full article at the Huffington Post.

Austere Warnings

Danger signs abound reminding us of the context of our austere, violent, unequal world. Politically-motivated reasoning disenfranchises voters, consumers, workers, people of color, the impoverished, whistleblowers, dissenters, journalists, and any citizen who wants their free civil rights.

PLAYLIST
In the Hall of the Mountain King – Duke Ellington
Sunshine Of Your Love – Ella Fitzgerald
Other Planes of There – Sun Ra And His Solar Arkestra
Pinetops Boogie Woogie – Pinetops Perkins
Big Chief – Professor Longhair
I Smell A Rat – Big Mama Thornton
Drunk – Jimmy Liggins & His 3D Music
RL Burnside – Boogie Chillen
Bass Solo – Larry Graham
What About You (In The World Today) – Co Real Artists
fruitman – kool and the gang
Acid Lady – San Francisco T.k.o.’s
Message From 9 To The Universe – Jimi Hendrix & friends
Get Off Your Ass And Jam – George Clinton & Parliment Funkadelic
Look What You Can Get – Funky Nassau
Symphonic Revolution – Mandrill
It’s A New Day – The Skullsnaps
Do The Sissy – Albert Collins
Sunset – Yusef Lateef
Goodmorning Sunshine – Quasimoto
Crosshairs – DANGERDOOM
Chemical Calisthenics – Blackalicious
Spiritual Healing – Dälek
Bounce – Jay Dilla
Lazy Confessions – The Moldy Peaches
Lonlon (Ravel’s Bolero) – Angélique Kidjo

Stranger in a Strange Land 2013-02-02: Austere Warnings by The Stranger on Mixcloud

Inequality for All!

This originally appeared on Robert Reich’s blog:

Don’t be distracted by January’s fiscal cliff or looming budget deficits. The central problem of our economy is widening inequality.

It’s reducing the purchasing power of the vast middle class on which job growth depends, and turning the economy into a speculative casino for multimillionaires and billionaires.

It’s also undermining our ability to turn the economy around, as those millionaires and billionaires subsidize politicians who refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy and seek to cut spending critical to the middle class and the poor.

We can reverse this trend.

The first step is to make sure Americans understand what’s occurred, why it’s occurred, and what must be done.

And one of the best means of doing so is through film.

That’s why I’ve joined a team of talented filmmakers to produce a new documentary called “Inequality for All.”

We need your help. Please watch the following short video, and do whatever you can:

Check out their Kickstarter project here, and follow professor, economist, and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s blog.

Want Less Inequality? Tax It

Wikimedia Commons (CC)

British economist Arthur C. Pigou, friend and contemporary of beloved John Maynard Keynes, eventually not only came around to the Keynesian logic, but also expanded on the common-sense philosophy to promote social balance and checks with the gentle, invisible hand of the Public. By incentivizing what benefits the downtrodden (perhaps with subsidies) and disincentivizing poor practices (by taxing rampant, unregulated profits), a more reasonable parity between the classes could be reached, stimulating economic growth and benefiting everyone.

This doesn’t have to be a ‘redistributive’ scheme that pits neoconservatives against progressives. Indeed, such a rational, gradated, and bracketed system makes sense to anyone who believes in the American traditions of pragmatism, equality, openness, innovation and opportunity.

Via the American Prospect by Liam C. Malloy and John Case

But the conventional strategy for fighting inequality—far higher taxes on the rich—usually rests on a foundation of fairness, and the question of what’s fair and what’s unfair turns out to cut different ways, depending on your point of view. You may find it unfair that the very rich take in so much more than others. But somebody else might wonder why the rich should be taxed so heavily. Don’t they already pay disproportionately more than everyone else? These arguments quickly hit a dead end. That may be why befuddled Democrats and Republicans in Congress wrangle fruitlessly over top tax rates—39 percent, 35 percent, or even lower—that have already demonstrated negligible effects in reducing inequality. No one even discusses top rates that might make a difference. (We’re referring, of course, to marginal rates, rates that apply only to income over a certain threshold, like $250,000 or $1 million.)

Pigou may be able to help us cut through the confusion. Viewed through a Pigovian lens, today’s highly skewed income distribution imposes three sorts of costs on the rest of us.

1. As the economy grows, the rich get nearly all the gains.
2. Many talented people focus narrowly on getting richer, to the exclusion of activities that might be more beneficial to society.
3. As a group, the rich can use money to pursue political power and influence well beyond their numbers.

Assuming that a highly skewed income distribution results in negative political externalities, Pigou’s response would be quick. Slap a tax on vastly unequal incomes, and watch the externalities shrink.

A Pigovian tax on the rich might look on the surface like any other progressive income tax, but there are at least three philosophical differences. Its purpose is to reduce inequality, not to make everyone pay a “fair share.” This goal cuts through the complaint that the rich are already paying far more than their share in taxes.

A Pigovian tax seeks to change incentives. That is, its goal is to alter the pretax distribution of income, not just the after-tax distribution—to discourage people from seeking to earn exponentially more than their fellow citizens. With higher tax rates, a job in finance might lose some of its appeal to talented young people. U.S. chief executives might content themselves with salaries averaging 20 times the typical worker’s earnings—the ratio in 1965—instead of 351 times the average, as was the case in 2007. Incidentally, past experience suggests that even with much higher tax rates, plenty of people would pursue careers in finance, corporate management, sports, entertainment, specialized medicine and law, and other well-paid fields. These occupations would still offer a high standard of living and above-average nonmonetary rewards. The most successful practitioners might earn $100 million or more in salary and capital gains and—depending on rates—pay taxes of $50 million or more. That would still leave them with a sufficiently comfortable lifestyle.

A Pigovian tax on inequality is not designed to equalize outcomes. It seeks only to reduce inequality from a level that threatens democracy to a level compatible with democracy, while still encouraging plenty of work and innovation. There would still be super-rich Americans, just not quite as many.

In fact, the only people who would have a problem with this are the unpatriotic wealthy who want unmitigated greed, and see any form of taxation as punishment. But taxation is not and has never been a punishment. Fines are punishments. Taxation is a civic responsibility to help support the system that we all exist in, are part of, contribute to, subsist on, etc…

For a more in-depth description, graphic visualization, and examples of how this might work, read the entire article from the American Prospect.

America’s Student Debt Crisis

Student debt activists and education advocates Kyle McCarthy and Natalia Abrams are tired of the ‘silence and complacency’ that our elected (and duly bribed) officials exhibit in the face of overwhelming evidence of usury and millions of voices of the disaffected. At least two out of three of students take out loans for college and at least 1 out of 5 of those will default.

Via Huffington Post:

Since 1978, college tuition has skyrocketed by over 900%, while simultaneously, grants and scholarships continue to be slashed. The result? Students are forced to mortgage their futures with student debt, from which there is no escape. In 2010, student debt actually eclipsed credit card debt as the second largest consumer debt in the country (second only to mortgage debt, surpassing $1 trillionin total). The Atlantic recently reported that, since 1999, student debt has increased by 511%.

And who benefits from so many Americans bogged down with student debt? The lenders, of course. The nation’s largest student lender, Sallie Mae, a company that continues to lobby againstconsumer protections and which has poured millions into destroying Pell Grants, recently announced that they would be issuing dividends to shareholders, enriching themselves off of the backs of those who did nothing other than to seek out a better life through higher education. At a time when funding for education is being slashed at all levels, the lenders are flush with cash as our leaders stand idly by, refusing to do anything about this ever-growing problem.

These student lenders shower our leaders with millions of dollars, give them free rides oncorporate jets and, perhaps most egregious, the single largest recipient of campaign cash from the student lending industry, Speaker John Boehner, was rewarded by Sallie Mae for doing its dirty work by giving his daughter a job at General Revenue Corporation, Sallie Mae’s collections subsidiary. Yes, you read that right. Sallie Mae actually has its own collections agency. When a borrower defaults, he or she can be charged up to 25% of the principal amount owed, including capitalized interest. One could logically conclude that it’s in the lender’s best interests, and can make far more money, when borrowers default on their loans. Why else would the lenders be so unwilling to work with borrowers to come to reasonable repayment options?

Read the rest and make up your own mind. While you’re at it, check out the petition urging the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to hold hearings on H.R. 4170: The Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012.

Everybody’s High on Education

As student loans officially increase to around 511% (nearing $1 trillion), as one of the largest for-profit educational chains (and an alma mater of yours truly) faces federal fraud charges, as students and unemployed all over the country vehemently protest large greedy corporations, and as loan corporations bloat an already non-sustainable bubble of debt with their record greed, the taut material holding this battered industry together catches by each thread and shreds slowly under the weight.

These are actually actionable viable threats to a system arterially hardened by its own butter-soaked gluttony. After bearing witness to our recent economic hubris relating to real estate, home mortgages, and big bank credit swaps, and thanks to books like Alan Collinge’s Student Loan Scam and documentaries like “Default: The Student Loan Documentary“, the population at large is becoming more and more aware of the corruption and predatory practices rife in the higher-educational system.

College rates are still on the rise, but not for long as related findings reveal that graduation rates are stagnant, the job market abysmal and placement through the school is laughable. Add in the amount that students and parents have to nearly immediately start paying back, which may last a lifetime, and it begs some serious questions of consumer rights.

When will college go on sale? And though I’m not talking about a (unnecessarily) controversial voucher system, it doesn’t take an analyst to realize that eventually the jig will be up, or at the very least this non-sustainable bubble will burst as the list of those who cannot afford higher education grows to encompass not only underprivileged lower-class, but the once-spoiled now-neglected middle class. The ones whose votes are actually not discounted or tampered with, and more importantly, whose main democratic voice is heard by the spending power of their wallets in our commercial machine. If you silence their credit limits, we most certainly will see even more industries topple and threaten to destroy the rich, shit trickling downhill as it has with so many economies already.

The sale(s) to which I refer would and should be consumer driven demand for basic necessities and, eventually as the middle class grows, extra related frivolities. A series of coupons and discount cards adding bulk value to the college credit system, and a downgrading of the overinflated price per credits, books, materials, etc. It may seem like some cheesy CVS/Safeway, bullshit, and may raise eyebrows to the legitimacy of the school’s accreditation at first, but in the face of dire financial ruin, who would fault them?

The government would have to dish out less, something that big money interested conservatives would be more than happy to hear (though I argue that much more money should be spent preparing an engineering and technologically savvy work force for this new century we’ve stumbled into). The students would have to dish out less, and though they’d still be in the same position as before, a little lateral flexibility would stimulate college spending both socially and academically. Granted a fair amount would squander the difference in savings on flash-in-the-pan adventures fit for fraternity fraternizing, but many may be able to save and put away to be better prepared for the harsh life after the college experience that had been keeping them in their adolescence. The percentage of this, I’d venture to guess, is no different than the squanderers and savers in the general populace.

Learn more about the college and student loan industry, and you begin to be really sick at the schemes intended to put students in ridiculous amounts of unforgivable (even under bankruptcy) debt, and keep as many as possible near or at default. But now with a discounted system, students at least have some gap between the deathly workhouses of indebted indentured servitude. And a consumer-rights-driven movement of demand would engender a mentality of paranoia for corrupt corporate conniving, so perhaps there’s less harm of fraud.

Only the school is losing some money, as the initial discounters. But they’ve shown they prefer quantity of low-income students to anything else, and as any student of economic history may point out, while Henry Ford was not the nicest person, his stroke of brilliance was to pay his auto workers more all over the country, effectively building a new middle class with an infusion of cash so that not merely the stingy upper .1% would be prospective customers.
The only ones who would ‘lose’ would be the massively wealthy and powerful loan companies, who have tripled their profits despite the economic crash and downturn. The risky loans, the odds and interest growing larger by default, and captive market require these greed machines to drive prices up into an untenable bubble. Which is why you can be sure it doesn’t happen.
But as with many industries, technology, information, and interconnectedness obliterate the vacuum, granting the consumer more choice, better deals, flexibility, and direct service and products from their vendor. And though the constant interstitial intervention of the government will remain, newer online markets of education and lower university operating costs may eventually see the end of the financial middlemen.

Protesting is great. But historically, boycotts work better than protest alone. Either way, something’s gotta give.