Tag: City Politics

City Owned Grocery Stores

Last Friday I posted the plan from NYC mayor to open city owned grocery stores to try and help struggling people get the food they need.

This is the post to which I refer….

Those City-Owned Grocery Stores

Of course there are those among us that think this is a good idea (I am one of those people) and there are those that want to crap on the idea by saying big box stores will kill the idea or they just do not want cities trying to solve a problem that the national government helped create.

I say good for those that will try to find a solution or part of one….

First thoughts from a magazine that caters to the food industry….although it is not as condemning as I had thought it would be….

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took to Instagram to reaffirm his commitment to opening five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough. Intended to “take on the affordability crisis” as grocery prices soar, this campaign promise is moving closer to reality: La Marqueta in East Harlem was announced as the first site for the municipal grocery store model and is expected to open in 2029. (Other to-be-announced sites will open before La Marqueta, as soon as next year.)

What does it mean for the local government to own a grocery store, and what’s it actually like to shop at a municipal supermarket? This isn’t the first time a city has opened its own grocery store, and similar models — along with Mamdani’s proposed plans — offer a clearer sense of what to expect.

https://www.foodandwine.com/how-government-run-grocery-stores-work-11975917

Those that criticize this plan do not understand how this concept works….they are shooting from the hip because some MORON has called in socialism.

Contrary to the public outcry from critics, city-owned grocery stores are not a novel or radical idea in the United States. The United States military already operates a network of publicly owned grocery stores; rural communities in Kansas have successfully experimented with municipally owned supermarkets; and big cities are exploring their potential and charting plans.

City-owned grocery stores are a promising solution for communities who suffer from the hunger and food insecurity that comes from living in food deserts, urban or rural neighborhoods with limited access to healthy and affordable groceries.

Food deserts exist in part because of misaligned profit motives for private sector grocery companies. Large corporate retailers like Kroger and Whole Foods do not bother to invest in certain communities because, despite demand, low-income neighborhoods lack the infrastructure and purchasing power to sustain their for-profit business. Instead, retailers concentrate or relocate their grocery stores to areas where they can expect a higher rate of return, like wealthier suburban neighborhoods.

That profit incentive creates a harmful cycle that perpetuates a phenomenon known as “supermarket redlining” that leaves thousands of communities underserved.

New York City is home to more than two dozen neighborhoods that are classified as food deserts. These localities are predominantly Black and Hispanic and rely on both bodegas and dollar stores for their grocery needs, creating “food swamps” where unhealthy food options vastly outnumber nutritious ones.

How City-Owned Grocery Stores Can Tackle Food Insecurity

Personal opinion….this idea should be in place already….with the idiots in DC passing judgement on the poor and corporation slobbering over the profits being made on screwing the public….it is time for some real programs to come to the light.

I Read, I Write, You KNow

“lego ergo scribo”

NYC Does It Again

I recently wrote about a policy that the new mayor of NYC will pursue…..city owned grocery store….personally I think it is a great idea and more cities should be so concerned.

The mayor has yet another plan for the city….this time it will help city employees with child care….

Tucked in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sprawling universal childcare plan is a little-talked-about milestone: In September, the city will open what appears to be the first free daycare for municipal workers in the country.

The center, called The Little Apple, is a pilot program that could prove to be a model for cities across the country that are childcare curious, but not ready to take the big universal swing.

Housed in a renovated space on the first floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building in Manhattan, home base for more than 2,000 city workers, the Little Apple will offer free care to the kids of full-time staff. All workers in the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), a city government support agency, can also take advantage of it regardless of their work location.

The center will be small — just 40 seats for children ages six weeks to 3 years old. To pay for it, the city budgeted about $1.5 million, or $35,000 per child.

“This is what Wall Street could call a good investment,” Mamdani said in a press conference announcing the new center. “We know that after housing, the cost of childcare is what is pushing working families out of this city.”

DCAS Commissioner Yume Kitasei told The 19th said the solution came about as a retention strategy, responding to the needs workers shared. In surveys, workers enthusiastically embraced the idea. One worker described access to free childcare as “life-changing.”

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/under-mamdani-new-york-will-be-first-to-open-free-childcare-center-for-city-workers/

So far this man has done just about everything he said he wanted to do….he has my vote of mayor of the year.

Right after the first of the year the mayor first major proposal was a tax plan….

A number of new taxes have been proposed this winter and spring to address the City’s structural budget gap. They range from a surcharge on high-income Personal Income Tax filers, to a partial recapture of the federal tax benefits accruing to Pass-Through Entity Tax filers, to higher rates for the City’s business income taxes, to higher real property transaction taxes on luxury properties at time of sale. One of the most likely, and possibly only, new tax revenue to be included in the FY 2027 State budget is a tax on pied-à-terre properties in New York City.

To date, details on the proposed tax have been hard to find, but Governor Hochul announced a revenue estimate of $500 million from 13,000 “second homes” with market value of at least $5 million.  The lack of further information has spurred wide-ranging conjectures regarding which properties might be subject to the tax and how much they might pay.

In this Fiscal Note we use previous pied-à-terre tax proposals to estimate potential revenues and highlight areas of uncertainty. Based on the parameters chosen for the analysis, tax revenues are critically dependent on the share of targeted properties that are rented and on the behavioral responses to the tax. We find that, before adjusting for these factors, our choice of tax rates and brackets could raise almost exactly $500 million from a little over 11,200 properties. However, revenues could be reduced to between roughly $340 million and $380 million based on assumptions on exclusions for rented units and behavioral changes following the imposition of the tax.

The Pied-à-Terre Tax and Its Potential Revenues

Another policy that meets with my acceptance….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Economic Development?

I have always thought that the promise of ‘economic development’ was a “LIE”…..it is the promise of something that is not going to happen to justify some sort of con perpetrated on the community.

I got thinking about this term more when I watched a piece on the local news…..the head honcho of the country economic development was taunting the building of several small strip malls.executive offices…as a bright world in which the county lives in……

First of all let’s define the term ‘economic development’…..

Economic development is a concerted effort on the part of the responsible governing body in a city or county to influence the direction of private sector investment toward opportunities that can lead to sustained economic growth. Sustained economic growth can provide sufficient incomes for the local labor force, profitable business opportunities for employers and tax revenues for maintaining an infrastructure to support this continued growth. There is no alternative to private sector investment as the engine for economic growth, but there are many initiatives that you can support to encourage investments where the community feels they are needed the most.

That definition is all blue skies and unicorns.

My question is to the city council where is this building economic development?

They built a structure that may remain empty….they employed a couple of guys to erect the structures but where is that economic development?

I mean where these couple of small malls were built sits in an area full of unused space……just two blocks away is a large strip center that sits 90% unoccupied….about one mile away is a large strip mall that is only about 70% occupied and 2 miles away is a strip center that has many open spots for businesses to jump on…..and this does not include the smaller strip malls within a 5 mile radius that sit basically unoccupied…so why were these new malls necessary?

So with this said where is all that ‘economic’ upside?

All this is just my area…..the broader look at local development is just as bleak…..

The average minimum wage in my county is $7.25…that is about half what is needed for a living wage.

So again I ask what ‘economic development’?

Land speculators and contractors are the only people making out like bandits…..by using the BS of ‘economic development’….there is few economic benefits for the average worker in this county.

My next question is….how with so many open spaces for businesses to expand how does a contractor/developer get the cash to build something that may go unused?

Of course I am told that these new structures will benefit the community…..and how does a empty office space enhance my community?

Just who will benefit from this non-existent economic development?

What makes anyone on the council think that business will rush to snap up this new space?

Are the objectives of development met by these structures….those objectives are 1) provide for basic needs.  2) Raise the level of living.  3) Expand the range of economic and social choices.

These structure fail.

How does these ‘new’ buildings offer any of those?  Just who profits from this wish and a hope of destroy land and cutting down trees om a wish and a hope?

My thought is that if we truly wanted economic development then maybe paying livable wages would do more than the promise of empty buildings.

The council needs to design a plan and program for filling empty spaces before the destruction of more land….the council works for the people of the city and should not bow to the cash and wishes of developers….especially on the lie of ‘economic development’.

Just a thought.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Those Police Unions

Closing Thought–20Aug20

First of all I take exception to the term ‘Union’ when applying it to the police.

At best it is an association……to imply it is a union means that it is part of the larger labor force…they are NOT!

That is my short bitch…..what this post is about is the coming storm of reform that is hitting the police forces around the country.

But why are these “associations” so strong?

Police unions are at the center of questions about what will happen to Chauvin and the three officers who watched as Floyd was suffocated. And they are also key to understanding why officers across the country escape discipline time and again after beating or killing people. As other labor unions have shrunk in recent years, membership in police unions has remained high. While the Black Lives Matter movement encouraged people to document police brutality on camera and demand accountability, police unions, which now have hundreds of thousands of members, have pushed back in almost every way imaginable—by overturning firings, opposing the use of body cameras, and lobbying to keep their members’ disciplinary histories sealed.

All of which can make officers feel invincible when they commit acts of violence. A forthcoming research paper from the University of Victoria in Canada found that after police officers formed unions—generally between the 1950s and the 1980s—there was a “substantial” increase in police killings of Black and Brown people in the United States. Within a decade of gaining collective bargaining rights, officers killed an additional 60 to 70 civilians of all races per year collectively, compared with previous years, an increase that researchers say may be linked to officers’ belief that their unions would protect them from prosecution. A working paper from the University of Chicago found that complaints of violent misconduct by Florida sheriffs’ offices jumped 40 percent after deputies there won collective bargaining rights in 2003.

The Infuriating History of Why Police Unions Have So Much Power

Reform is sadly needed but it will be a hard row to hoe…..because these so-called unions will fight any reform that is sadly needed.

In May, just days after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, Lieutenant Bob Kroll, the bellicose leader of the city’s police union, described Floyd as a violent criminal, said that the protesters who had gathered to lament his death were terrorists, and complained that they weren’t being treated more roughly by police. Kroll, who has spoken unsentimentally about being involved in three shootings himself, said that he was fighting to get the accused officers reinstated. In the following days, the Kentucky police union rallied around officers who had fatally shot an E.M.T. worker named Breonna Taylor in her home. Atlanta police staged an organized sick-out after the officers who killed Rayshard Brooks were charged. Philadelphia police sold T-shirts celebrating a fellow-cop who was caught on video clubbing a student protester with a steel baton. The list goes on.

Along with everything else about American society that was thrown into appalling relief by Floyd’s killing, there has been the peculiar militancy of many police unions. Law enforcement kills more than a thousand Americans a year. Many are unarmed, and a disproportionate number are African-American. Very few of the officers involved face serious, if any, consequences, and much of that impunity is owed to the power of police unions.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-police-unions-fight-reform

Until those much needed reforms hit in your police department….there are a few things we all can do to try and keep the cops in-line with the rest of society…..

As a reporter covering law enforcement for the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, and now in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, I use investigative reporting techniques to strengthen police accountability. Other journalists do the same. But, in truth, any citizen can apply the same methods to ensure the law enforcement system they’re funding is serving them well.

Police culture can be insular and tough to penetrate. But I’ve been surprised by how often it’s possible, though time consuming, to expose important issues by requesting and examining records and data from police departments and other government agencies and engaging citizens and key leaders. So here are five techniques concerned citizens, journalists and policymakers can use to examine police conduct in their communities.

https://www.propublica.org/article/i-cover-cops-as-an-investigative-reporter-here-are-five-ways-you-can-start-holding-your-department-accountable

Read the list and try to help keep the PD on a thin line…..it is time for them to return to their prized motto…”To protect and serve”….instead of the one they live by these days…”to punish and enslave”…..

Do yourself a favor….READ THE DAMN POST!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

State Flag Is Gone!

Closing Thought–18Jun20

My city of Gulfport has voted to take down the state flag and replace it with the original flag……

Outside Gulfport City Hall, the Mississippi flag is nowhere to be found, but the Magnolia Flag is. On Tuesday afternoon, Gulfport city leaders decided to take down the flag in a seven-to-zero vote.

Top is old flag— bottom the new flag…called the Magnolia Flag…..

Republican lawmaker proposes a two-flag solution in Mississippi ...

That alone is a big move but I would like for you to read the comments…..

Gary L Lee
·6h ago
I think it is a disgrace and a dishonor and very offensive to our founding fathers that they would even think of removing the state flag if that is the case they need to remove the Martin Luther King holiday because all he had was a dream at least our founding fathers took action and made our nation what it is this is not for every race it is for the ones that cares nothing for nation that wants to destroy it
Joe Cruthirds
·7h ago
That looks like a Christmas tree with bad lights. Or could it be a cotton bush? It also looks like it belongs in a cartoon movie. They need to just leave the flag like it is.
Painman 58
·15h ago
You should read history of confederates/civil war before you comment. And Mr. Choctaw, did you know the Texas Rangers were formed to hunt down and slaughter Mexicans, and Indians?
 
Painman 58
·15h ago
The confederates should fly a white flag, after all they lost & funky Lee surrendered on 04/09/1865 @ Appomattox.
 
Susan Bridgman
·15h ago
leave the flag alone what is it hurting anyone my goodness.
User from MS
·16h ago
This is Bull Shit & no I not a southerner I was born and raised in Pennsylvania! The US Navy Brought me to Mississippi in 1985 & I’m still here 23 years of Military Service & I still can’t believe what I helped fight too protect our History & our Future freedoms are being manipulated like it is!! That’s all I got to say about that. 🇺🇸✌🏻😎
 
Danielle Hampton
·16h ago
That’s an ugly flag, surely they can do better than that
 
Frankie Moran
·17h ago
you have got to be joking city leaders want to promote black heritage but the hell with everyone else’s heritage no I am not a white supremacists I am Choctaw
These are interesting and illustrate a couple of things….one most of the commenters need to return to school and learn some Mississippi history….and two the heritage thing….true cover for a racists that is too cowardly to admit they hate.
 
My choice was the flag called the Bonnie Blue Flag….
 
Bonnie Blue Flag
 
Why this one?
 
It is the flag I fly at my residence.
 
Gulfport is within the boundaries of the short lived Republic of West Florida….In 1810, a small group of Americans living below the thirty-first parallel in Spanish Florida rebelled against Spain and established the Republic of West Florida. The flag adopted by that short-lived republic was a field of blue with one white star, an emblem that would later be heralded in song and verse as The Bonnie Blue Flag. The Republic of West Florida was eventually annexed by the United States and its territory was divided between Mississippi and Louisiana.
 
If interested I have written about the Republic previously….https://lobotero.com/2012/09/22/the-republic-of-west-florida/
 
“lego ergo scribo”

De-Fund The PD!

The streets are alive!  It is time for solutions not symbolism!

After all the protests and the overreaction from the police plus the many many cases of racial abuse there is now a call to de-fund police departments.

First, I feel this is the wrong term to use for this leaves it open to interpretation and twisting of the meaning  as it is always done…..I figure there will be lots of mental midgets that will jump on the term and turn it into something it is not.  A great term for the “spin masters”.

The idea is starting to catch hold…..only the department is not going to be de-funded just parts of it and the funds go elsewhere….like to Community Services……

Some city PDs are starting to respond….

A veto-proof majority of nine Minneapolis City Council members vowed Sunday to “dismantle” the city’s police department, the New York Times reports. Standing on a hill before hundreds of people, they said the current department was beyond reform and will be replaced with a new public-safety system. “It shouldn’t have taken so much death to get us here,” said Kandace Montgomery, who heads Black Vision. “We’re safer without armed, unaccountable patrols supported by the state hunting black people.” The move comes a day after protesters cried “Shame! Shame!” when the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said he didn’t favor “the full abolition of the police.”

It also coincides with a grim Star-Tribune article on the city’s Third Precinct, which headquarters the officers who killed George Floyd. Calling it a “playground for renegade cops,” the paper looks at confirmed abuse incidents there—like officers kicking a handcuffed suspect until his jaw broke, pistol-whipping a low-level drug suspect, and letting prostitution suspects touch officers’ genitals before arresting them. The city also paid out $2.1 million between 2007 and 2017 to settle lawsuits against the precinct. “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” tweets Jeremiah Ellison, a representative in the city’s Ward 5. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.”

New York City has decided to take things seriously as well…….

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday he would accede to protesters’ demands by moving to shift funds away from the NYPD toward social services.

During his daily briefing, the mayor addressed the demonstrations that have gripped the city and nation for almost two weeks following the death of George Floyd while in police custody. De Blasio announced a number of reforms as proposed by a task force on racial inclusion, one of which was to shift funding from the police force to youth initiatives.

“The details will be worked out in the budget process in the weeks ahead. But, I want people to understand that we are committed to shifting resources to ensure that the focus is on our young people,” de Blasio said.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/de-blasio-nyc-to-cut-nypd-funding-shift-it-to-social-services

Is this a real opportunity or just another in a long list of promised reforms that have fallen into the trash heap of political promises?  Is this just a way to try and calm the protests?

I think all that “reform” is a good idea….but there should be more emphasis on the personnel…..hire good stable people and put the trash out.

All over this nation the city governments have had ample time and ample notice that this was needed and yet they all looked away and allowed the abuses to continue…..what makes us think they are serious this time around?

Keep in mind that this situation we have today was seen some 50 years ago……
The scenes are similar to the 1960s. In response Pat Gillham, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Washington University, says President Lyndon Johnson commissioned the 1968 Kerner Report, offering recommendations to police for managing protests.

But seeing the response this week with military-style vehicles and tear gas, Gillham thinks the report has been ignored.

“These things don’t create positive relations between the police and the community they promise to serve and protect,” says Gillham. “Just exacerbates things, which is exactly what the Kerner Report found 50 years prior.”

https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2020-06-05/social-justice/50-year-old-report-warns-against-police-tactics-used-today/a70445-1

Dems step in to save the police departments with a bill that would “reform” the PDs……

Democrats proposed a sweeping overhaul of police oversight and procedures Monday, the most ambitious change to law enforcement sought by Congress in years, per the AP. Before unveiling the package, House and Senate Democrats held a moment of silence at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, reading the names of George Floyd and others killed during police interactions. They knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds—now a symbol of police brutality and violence—the length of time prosecutors say Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee before he died. The Justice in Policing Act would:

  • Limit legal protections for police. For example, it would revise the federal criminal police misconduct statute to make it easier to prosecute officers who are involved in misconduct “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
  • The package would also change “qualified immunity” protections for police “to enable individuals to recover damages when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights.”
  • Create a national database of excessive-force incidents.
  • Ban police chokeholds.
  • Ban racial profiling and boost requirements for police body cameras.
  • Grant subpoena power to the Justice Department to conduct “pattern and practice” investigations of potential misconduct and help states conduct independent investigations.
  • The measure stops short of calls by activists to “defund the police,” a push to dismantle or reduce financial resources to police departments that has struck new intensity in the weeks of protests since Floyd’s death.
  • It is unclear if law enforcement and the powerful police unions will back any of the proposed changes or if congressional Republicans will join the effort

Please stop calling them “police unions”….nothing about them is about the worker and their protection.  At best they are associations to protect cops when they do wrong.

The Dems still are naive enough to think that good policy will win the day….sadly it NEVER wins out…..if it does it is then quickly changed…..

Again I think this move is just a political ploy to give them cover with the voter.

All the leaders are jumping into this and onto the bandwagon…..most of them have had how many years to get something done and yet now is the time they pick….could it be that the election looms?

This is an idea of what society and community could be……

At first blush, the notion that modern police departments could be defunded and dismantled seems, to many, like a misguided impulse from out of nowhere. Without police departments, how will we deal with violent crime? Sure, many on the left would agree that the war on drugs that has put so many people behind bars — especially people of color — must be radically overhauled or completely ended. But what about murder? Are we not going to arrest murderers anymore?

This concern has been raised by lots of people online, including some of my liberal colleagues. Few on the left would disagree that modern, hypermilitarized police forces have shown little regard for anyone or anything that doesn’t directly relate to the police or the protection of the interests of corporations and other business owners. (Even then, police departments nationwide haven’t done a great job of preventing theft.) And few on the left would disagree that heavy police reform is necessary, possibly at a federal level, or that the right to peaceful assembly guaranteed by the Constitution’s First Amendment should be reinforced as well. But getting rid of the police? How would you do such a thing?

https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/6/8/21281069/abolish-the-police-black-lives-matter-george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-new-york

A regular to IST Political Change was posted on the ideas to reform the police…..https://politicalcharge.org/2020/06/08/what-policies-does-your-city-need-to-adopt-to-decrease-police-brutality/

Please….any thoughts?

“lego ergo scribo”