Columnist.
Occupy Oakland has scheduled a general strike throughout the California city for Wednesday. What does that mean? "No work. No school. Occupy everywhere," the group's website explains. "Shut down the city." And: "All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them." "Blockade everything." Occupy Oakland activists have not only free speech rights but also the power to stomp on other people's rights.
One of the great things about America, President Barack Obama told students at the University of Colorado, is that no matter how humble your roots, you still have a shot at a great education. He also told students that his goal is to "make college more affordable." Alas, the president's prescription for making higher education affordable seems likely to yield the same results as his plan for curbing health care costs; that is, it is likely to drive prices higher than inflation. The nation's next fiscal nightmare may well be a higher-education bubble.
Republicans, beware. In 2007 and 2008, Democrats assured one another, "Anyone would be better than Bush." Now you hear the Republican version: "Anyone would be better than Obama." Such talk raises impossible expectations. "We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek," Barack Obama proclaimed in 2008. Very inspirational, but it left Democrats disillusioned and flat-footed when President Obama took his oath of office and the seas did not part.
What is the purpose of high-occupancy vehicle lanes? Is it to make people who aren't in car pool lanes feel resentful? Or, as University of California, Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor Michael Cassidy believes, is the goal to reduce the number of people-hours traveled? Cassidy believes HOV lanes work but used to work better. Cassidy and doctoral student Kitae Jang conducted a study of Bay Area freeway traffic before and after July 1, when the Legislature let lapse a 2005 program that allotted yellow stickers granting access to HOV lanes for low or solo occupancy to 85,000 hybrid vehicles. The researchers found that everybody loses. "Drivers of low-emission vehicles are worse off, (and) drivers in the regular lanes are worse off," Cassidy said in a statement.
The families of the 270 people killed in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 no longer will have to watch as Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, the man who ordered the attack, visits New York to deliver his long rants to the United Nations. President Barack Obama's decision to authorize cruise missile strikes on Tripoli and the NATO mission paid off. "Without putting a single U.S. service member on the ground," the president proclaimed Thursday, "we achieved our objectives, and our NATO mission will soon come to an end."
On Tuesday, Hamas released Gilad Schalit, 25, an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants in 2006 and held by Hamas for more than five years. Last month, Iran released Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, two 29-year-old Americans serving eight-year prison sentences on phony espionage charges filed as they hiked near the Iraq-Iran border in 2009. Tehran released a third hiker, Sarah Shourd, a year ago.
On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the Obama administration was ending the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or CLASS, Act -- enacted as part of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. In doing so, the administration killed off a major provision of Obamacare -- a new voluntary program designed to offer affordable long-term care -- yet the story barely was reported in the press. The Obama administration did the right thing -- and it could not have been easy. Democrats had been promoting the plan, brainchild of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, as a means of protecting middle-class families from having to sell their assets if they needed long-term care.
President Barack Obama has become quite the drug warrior. Last month, his Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives issued a memo that stated that it is unlawful for anyone with a state-issued medical marijuana card to possess a gun or ammunition. This month, four U.S. attorneys in California announced that they are escalating prosecution of medical marijuana clubs by going after the assets of their landlords and property owners.
Before his American Jobs Act failed to pass a Senate cloture vote Tuesday, President Barack Obama made a last-ditch speech to talk up his troubled bill. Not once did Obama mention "green jobs" -- his erstwhile jobs of the future. Smart move. Obama's 2009 $787 billion stimulus package included $500 million for training programs that were supposed to create new green jobs for thousands of middle-class Americans. Last month, however, the Department of Labor's inspector general conducted an audit that found that as of June 30 -- with one-third of the funds spent and more than 50,000 participants -- only 10 percent of trainees were placed in jobs. And only 1,336 participants, or 2 percent, had held jobs for six months or longer.
In May 2009, President Barack Obama proclaimed at the U.S. Naval Academy, "As Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals." That was the Obama who signed an order to close the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay and hold civilian trials for such swells as self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I prefer the current Obama, who kept Gitmo open and gave up on prosecuting Mohammed and company in New York. This is the president who authorized the use of military force that led to the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Note: The use of U.S. military drones meant that al-Awlaki -- an American citizen who has been linked to the 2009 Christmas Day attempted airline bombing and the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 dead -- would not have a last-minute chance to surrender and have his day in a U.S. court.
As Occupy Wall Street activists clogged New York's Zuccotti Park protesting "corporate greed" and Occupy SF hit San Francisco's Financial District on Wednesday protesting "corporate greed," the world learned that Steve Jobs, perhaps America's most beloved modern capitalist, had died at age 56. The protesters claim to represent the working people, the 99 percent of Americans who, according to their blog, are getting kicked out of their homes, must choose between groceries and rent and "are working long hours for little pay and no rights," if they're working at all. They "are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything."
Who poses the biggest threat to destroy Social Security? President Barack Obama. In December 2010, Obama signed a tax deal with his provision for a one-year, 2 percent Social Security payroll tax holiday. It lowered workers' payroll deductions from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent in 2011. This year, Obama proposed increasing the tax holiday for another year, with workers paying half the old rate -- 3.1 percent -- as part of his American Jobs Act. According to the White House, a typical family earning $50,000 a year could expect to save $1,500.
Does San Francisco have a serious problem with birds flying into tall buildings? Was there a good reason the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a "bird-safe" building ordinance last month? I asked Supervisors David Chiu and John Avalos on Saturday why they supported the measure, at a mayoral candidates debate hosted by the West of Twin Peaks Central Council. Their answers were instructive. Chiu seemed put out that he had been asked such a trivial question. The board has spent about "40 seconds" on the measure, he assured me, less time than during Saturday's debate. Avalos answered that he knows the city has a problem; he has seen lots of dead birds on top of City Hall. (Insert your own joke here.)
Mitt Romney is the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary. In recent debates, the former Massachusetts governor has shone while Texas Gov. Rick Perry has stumbled. Those who were hoping for a candidate with more seasoning (Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels), more principle (House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan) or more pizazz (New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) are starting to face facts. They're stuck with the dates who actually knocked at the door. And many are thinking that Romney is the Republican likeliest to prevail against President Barack Obama. My question: Is Romney really the most electable Republican?
On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan gave a talk at Stanford's Hoover Institution on what should become the Republican Party's template behind its bid to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Ryan cited the unintended consequences that employer-paid health care plans have delivered: "The system that shields us from the cost of services has actually left us paying much, much more." On the same day, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report that bolstered Ryan's argument. Over the past year, average annual cost for employer-sponsored health care plans rose 9 percent. Premiums have more than doubled since 2001. The average annual premium is now $15,073 per family -- and that doesn't include out-of-pocket payments.
On Friday, Solyndra execs Brian Harrison and Bill Stover invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. They refused to answer questions at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, which is investigating a $528 million federal loan guarantee that the Obama administration granted to their solar manufacturing company in 2009. On Aug. 31, the company filed for bankruptcy and laid off most of its 1,100 workers. A week later, the FBI raided the company's Fremont, Calif., headquarters and Harrison's home. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., the chairman of the subcommittee, said the hearing wanted to discern, "What did they know (about their financial situation), and when did they know it?"
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad engineered the release last week of two American hikers serving eight-year prison terms on trumped-up espionage charges. He may have thought the release would make him seem more humane, but the $1 million bail-for-freedom deal makes Tehran look like Somali pirates, grabbing innocent tourists, holding them hostage and then releasing them for ransom. So why did released hiker Shane Bauer say the following upon his release? "Two years in prison is too long, and we sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America (emphasis added) and Iran."
At first blush, Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware's decision to unseal videos of the federal trial challenging Proposition 8 would seem to be a victory for truth, justice and open government. But you can't always tell a video by its jacket. The deck was stacked from the start of former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's handling of a federal challenge to California's same-sex marriage ban -- and not because he's gay.
"None of the changes I'm proposing are easy or politically convenient," President Obama noted from the Rose Garden on Monday. I've never seen a president less in a hurry to get things done -- or as quick to display his deep reservoir of self-pity. Consider: Obama's jobs proposal promises payroll tax cuts for most workers and tax increases on millionaires only. That's about as easy and convenient as politics gets. Yet, somehow, the president speaks as if his proposal is courageous. He even tells voters that he's making them share the deficit-reduction burden.
