The Social Security Scam Continues

© by Mark Dempsey

Sacramento Bee 8/23/23 Headline: "Survey: Nearly half of Gen Zers think they won't 'get a dime' in Social Security”

I’ve written about the "Eek! Social Security is out of money" scam before, but my point bears repeating. First, a few suggested alternative headlines:

“Scorekeeper at the ballgame almost out of points”
“Bureau of Weights and Measures says almost out of inches”

How deep is the denial that underlies this scam? Here’s from the U.S. Treasury itself:

"The 75-year fiscal gap is a measure of how much primary deficits must be reduced over the next 75 years in order to make fiscal policy sustainable. That estimated fiscal gap for 2022 is 4.9 percent of GDP (compared to 6.2 percent for 2021).

"This estimate implies that making fiscal policy sustainable over the next 75 years would require some combination of spending reductions and receipt increases that equals 4.2 percent of GDP on average over the next 75 years. The fiscal gap represents 26.0 percent of 75-year PV receipts and 21.2 percent of 75-year PV non-interest spending." [emphasis added]

The "sustainability" argument is predicated on the absurd notion that dollars grow on billionaires. It assumes government is like a household, and "tax and spend" is the sequence of fiscal events. But where would taxpayers get the dollars they use to pay taxes if the monopoly provider of legal dollars--government--didn't spend them first? A "balanced" federal budget would mean spending and taxes would be equal--no dollars would be added to the economy. The inevitable result: deflation--something beloved by creditors, but which crushes debtors. It's far more dangerous than inflation, too.

So the sequence of federal fiscal policy is actually "spend first, then retrieve some dollars in taxes." The taxes make the dollars valuable, they don't provision federal programs.

What do we call the dollars not retrieved in taxes? You know, the ones in your wallet and savings account? First, we call them the dollar financial assets of the population. But, because of double-entry bookkeeping, we also call them "national debt." This is analogous to your bank account. That's your asset, but the bank's liability. Marching down to the bank to demand it reduce its debt means it would reduce the size of your bank account. Not very sensible.

To add to the brilliant pseudo-economics blasting from every conceivable media outlet, now the "It's Up To Us" organization--an alliance between the Clinton Global Initiative, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Net Impact--is offering rewards to dozens of colleges and universities if the participants will come up with a plan for "sustainable" public fiscal policy--i.e. policy that reduces that "debt," (AKA the population's dollar financial assets). 

According to its website, this organization is a "a nonpartisan initiative that provides young civic leaders with resources to learn about and advocate for a more sustainable fiscal future. In its inaugural year, this case competition challenged teams of students nationwide to consider prompts addressing the rising national debt in the context of climate change, higher education affordability, or health care costs." [emphasis added] Yep they're hypnotizing...er, I mean "training" ... yeah, that's the ticket ... the next generation of "fiscally responsible™" scrooges who will try to cut Medicare and Social Security.

Next, I say they need to offer scholarships for mathematicians who can determine the end point for the number line.

The Fate of Democracy

 (Enlarge and read the whole thing to appreciate Thucydides insight)

"Utter twats" like Ramaswamy (I agree with the characterisation) unfortunately tend to become the norm in a "democracy" under economic hardship, a dynamic already widely recognized in ancient Greece.

Here's what Thucydides wrote about this:

"[As conditions deteriorated]… https://t.co/OQwHpaGNDq

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) August 24, 2023

"News"papers miss the boat

(c) by Mark Dempsey

 

In 2020, the McClatchy family sold their papers, including the Sacramento Bee, to a private equity firm, and its local coverage has taken a downturn. One recent example was the Sacramento County Supervisors' vote to enlarge the County Jail--a move now estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $1 billion.

 

That Supervisors' vote occurred on August 15. The Bee's coverage announcing that (upcoming) vote began...wait for it...August 16. In other words, unless Sacramentans were following the Supervisors' published agenda, the vote to expand the jail would have been a complete surprise. Of course, the Supervisors ignored all the public protesters that did appear before that vote, so perhaps reporting in retrospect to encourage preemptive resignation has its uses. The report of the vote's outcome appeared in the Bee on August 17, two days after the vote.

 

As someone who gets notified of such votes thanks to the Decarcerate Sacramento organization I was horrified the Supervisors were even considering devoting so much of their budget to cages, so I asked a local American River Democratic club president to publicize the upcoming vote a few days before it occurred. He put the notice on their Facebook page on August 17 too.

 

So...Bee's reporting, even reporting from social media, was too late to matter.

 

One online news service, the Davis-based Vanguard, did report this upcoming vote before it occurred, but while that covers the whole region, Davis is in Yolo County, not Sacramento, where the Sacramento Bee is based.

 

A little context:

 

The U.S. is the world's champion at caging people. With 5% of the world's population, it incarcerates 25% of the world's prisoners--five times the world's per-capita average, and seven times the age-demographic identical Canadians. And Canadian crime is insignificantly different from U.S. crime.

 

In Sacramento, 60 - 80% of the prisoners in the County jail have been convicted of nothing except being unable to afford bail. Yep, it's illegal to be poor in Sacramento. Did Supervisors consider modifying or ending cash bail (as Illinois did recently, and as Washington D.C. has done for years now)? Nope.

 

The impetus for this race to build a bigger cage is the "Mays decision" a court case the County lost because it mistreated prisoners in jail. The committee the Supervisors formed to address the basis for this decision has many recommendations for remedies, but none of those remedies included enlarging the County jail.

 

Ignoring their own committee, dozens, if not hundreds of protests, the egregious cost of the project, alternatives like ending or modifying cash bail...all of that was not influential. And now, local news coverage simply ignores such decisions until it's too late to change them. It may be good to be king, but it looks pretty similar to be Supervisor.

How State Capacity Can Help America Build: A new paper shows underinvesting in government comes at a staggering cost.

David Dayen, August 17, 2023 [The American Prospect]

Zachary Liscow, a professor at the Yale Law School who until recently was the chief economist in Biden’s Office of Management and Budget, co-authored the paper with William Nober of Columbia University and Cailin Slattery of UC Berkeley. It finds significant cost drivers to building in an unheralded place: the procurement process, which accounts for one-quarter of all U.S. government expenditures.

Through an elegant study that isolates procurement processes, Liscow and his co-authors demonstrate that increases in government capacity, which can invite more bidders into a project and foment competition, translate into substantial cost reductions, which subsequently leads to faster and more robust projects. While one shouldn’t translate the study into an overarching monocausal theory for how to accelerate building, it’s a piece of the puzzle that is woefully understudied and should enter the conversation.

THE PAPER LOOKS AT STATE ROAD RESURFACING PROJECTS, which is a good way to reduce the variables on cost overruns. In general, citizens don’t clamor to stop projects that fill potholes, and permitting is usually straightforward. It’s also where the money goes in much of our infrastructure spending: $187 billion was spent on highways in 2018, and little of that on new highways. Yet there is substantial variation in cost. The authors point to the neighboring states of Georgia and South Carolina; Georgia spends about $189,000/mile to resurface on average, while South Carolina spends almost twice as much ($376,000/mile)….

Perhaps the biggest lesson is that the Reagan Revolution degraded government capacity, and the neoliberal turn in the 1990s, combined with the Great Recession’s savagery to government head counts, kept government permanently hobbled. Even in areas as routine as road repaving, the effect is substantial.

The logic of neoliberalism was that reducing the scope of government would reduce spending. What the paper makes clear is that the result was the exact opposite: increased spending for the things we need government to do. The investment in building capacity pays off in the long term, and as we re-enlist in industrial policy, that will likely become more pronounced.

Our Politicians' Trance State: Darryl Steinberg & Roberta MacGlashan

 (c) by Mark Dempsey

"You Yanks don't consult the wisdom of democracy, you enable mobs" - Australian planner

Our politicians must be in a hypnotic trance to campaign for office. How else can we explain their obviously false assertions?

When Sacramento mayor Darryl Steinberg was campaigning for his first term, he boasted that he had been instrumental in insuring the "asset" of a professional basketball team--the "Kings"--remained in Sacramento. As a leader in the state Senate, he had moved heaven and earth to make sure the City of Sacramento could build the Kings a stadium without those pesky delays demanded by California's CEQA law.

But are the Kings really an "asset"? All the economists' say professional sports is as big a liability as an asset--so economically it's a wash.

And the transaction to build the stadium was certainly not in the City's favor. The City owns the stadium, so it generates no property tax, and it's a white elephant if the Kings decide to move (again). The threat of moving is what generated the urgency to build a quarter-billion-dollar stadium.

The City got no stake in the team, which Forbes says was then worth double what the owners (Vivek Ranadive and his merry band of plutocrats) paid. So profit to the City is doubtful, and the plutocrats got 100% return on their investment. 

Polling said roughly 70% of the population did not want to subsidize a basketball team. The NBA league's legal exemption from antitrust prosecution means the City can't form its own team if the Kings leave, too. 

This transaction structure also means the threat to leave can extort additional subsidies. Seventy-five percent of George W. Bush's net worth apparently came from the Texas Ranger's threat to leave (Arlington) Texas. Al Davis and his successors have extorted subsidies from Oakland, Anaheim, Oakland again, and finally Las Vegas to keep the team in these various locations. From the business end of things, these are not so much professional sports as extortion rackets.

Steinberg is intelligent, but how can his boast about keeping this "asset" be anything but post-hypnotic suggestion?

One other example comes from former Sacramento County Supervisor, Roberta MacGlashan. In an Orangevale community meeting, she listened to constituents concerns then had everyone in the room vote on specific principles of governance. This sounds sensible, just as "you're feeling very sleepy" sounds persuasive, but here are the principles of governance she got from that meeting:

• Keep tax revenue local.
• Get better commerce
• Keep Orangevale rural

She even repeated these at subsequent meetings.

But in California, residential areas like Orangevale don't pay enough taxes to cover the expenses of infrastructure and schools, and sales tax is the only source of discretionary spending for local governments. "Keeping tax revenue local" is tantamount to saying "Keep the pope Catholic."

And here's a news flash: sparsely populated rural areas don't get better commerce. If you want a fancy store like Nieman-Marcus, you need to go to Union Square in San Francisco--a commercial center surrounded by apartments and hotels.

Obviously the crowd assembled at that initial meeting, and Ms. McGlashan herself, believed they knew enough of the costs and consequences of governing to endorse the arrant nonsense of those principles. These "listening" sessions politicians sponsor are reminders that costs and consequences need to be exposed before people choose, otherwise we get Supervisors who are "little queens" who can do whatever they want because the public is uninformed.

The big question is "When are our leaders going to snap out of it?"

What use is the Vice President?

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Besides being the "spare tire" for the presidential replacement, what use is an office John Nance Garner called "not worth a bucket of warm spit"? (And that's the Bowdlerized version.) Consider this tale of Vice Presidential action:

North of Sacramento's downtown is some 20-foot-under-water floodplain surrounded by weak levees (North Natomas). Land speculators purchased (or optioned) that land for roughly $2,000 an acre--a bargain for rice land, which was its then-current agricultural use.

Meanwhile, the Sacramento regional sewer plant got a federal grant to increase its capacity, but one condition of the grant was that it would not serve land so unsuited for development as North Natomas. If that sewer plant served North Natomas, the feds would assess a $6 million penalty.

The speculators weren't concerned. They went to then-Vice-President George H.W. Bush and got that $6 million penalty transformed from a prohibitive up-front fee to pay-as-you-develop installments, and they got a $43 million levee grant to improve those weak levees to pre-Katrina standards.

So far, that's a pretty good deal: pay $6 in installments to get $43 in levee money. But wait! There's more!

After some political machinations, the speculators got North Natomas annexed by the City of Sacramento, and, contrary to the wishes of that district's City Councilperson, got approval to develop it. 

Incidentally, to please the City, the speculators also "consulted" with local environmentalists. An entire staff of attorneys and experts debated with a single environmentalist--no, not an architect or someone trained in ecology, a graphic artist for the local transit agency--and the City accepted the outcome of these talks as guidance for the design of eventual build-out. If anyone was overmatched, it was that poor graphic artist--who has since left town. Predictably, the design of North Natomas development is sprawl, not the market-preferred pedestrian-friendly mixed use that cuts vehicle miles traveled roughly in half. Every North Natomas trip of significance requires getting in a car.

Once they got their "entitlements" the speculators started selling the land to builders. They had paid around $2,000 an acre for the land but sold it to builders (e.g. Winncrest homes) for roughly $200,000 an acre. If your calculator isn't handy, that's a 10,000% return on investment. Sure, there were expenses to pay for consultants and attorneys, but that's a huge gross profit.

But wait! There's even more!

If the speculators swapped the sold land for an income-producing property like apartments or shopping centers before the sale closed, they deferred income tax on this extremely profitable transaction indefinitely. 

Contrast this practice with what happens in Germany: The developers must sell the agricultural land they want to develop to the local government at the ag land price, then buy it back at the development-approved land price. All that 10,000% profit--the "unearned increment"--inures to the benefit of the public realm.

And the Germans have a very nice public realm indeed: free tuition at their universities, first-class infrastructure--without the collapsing bridges the US enjoys--and wonderful arts and parks. The arts budget--for concerts, art exhibits, etc.--for the City of Berlin exceeds the entire National Endowment for the Arts for the US.

The late Sacramento Supervisor, Grantland Johnson, told an assembled audience that it's widely acknowledged throughout California that the Sacramento Region is the most in the hip pocket of  developers. This is not a contest anyone would like to win.

But see!... Vice Presidents can accomplish things for their (real) constituents. Builders have now filled North Natomas with suburban sprawl, and its residents must pay for the cost of improving levees to post-Katrina standards while the speculators are on their way to the bank, laughing and counting their winnings.

Trump did something right?

 

The biggest dip in suicide rates in modern US history was when the US government took the boot of capital off people's necks for a few months https://t.co/sleptKfO6v

— Nate Bear (@NateB_Panic) August 15, 2023

Economic Quotes to live by

The Greatest Investment Quotes [That Everyone Should Know]

[Of Dollars and Data, via The Big Picture 8-8-2023]


From guiding principles to words of caution, the timeless wisdom found in them reflects centuries of experience from the greatest investors across space and time….

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

-Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

“Fear incites human action far more urgently than does the impressive weight of historical evidence.”

-Jeremy Siegel, Stocks for the Long Run (3rd Edition)

“Your personal experiences with money make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.”

-Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don’t understand it, then put your life savings into it.”

-Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street

“Buying at the bottom and selling at the top are typically done by liars.”

-Bernard Baruch

A little perspective on the global economy (chart)

 

Chinese Military = USA Military? (and who is lobbying for peace)

 

Remember how the US spends more than ten times of everyone else combined on the military? Yeah that’s not true. US and Chinese military spending is roughly comparable.

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 10, 2023

 

From Tony Wikrent's Weekend Wrap:

[TW: I’ve always thought the data on US military spending was problematic. My primary concern was that there was no way to factor out the bloat of privatization and rent-seeking by defense contractors. How many tens of billions is now spent in the military budget just for contractors to feed the troops — a job the troops largely used to do themselves?

Second, it’s useful to look at actual force comparisons. The [Chinese] PLA has 975,000 active duty troops and 4,800 main battle tanks compared to 463,000 and 5,500 MBTs for USA. USMC is another 181,000 active duty.

PLA Air Force has 400,000 active duty compared to USAF 329,000. PLA Air Force has 1,215 fighters and 120 bombers compared to USAF 1,511 fighters and 152 bombers.

PLA Navy has 260,000 compared to US Navy 350,000. PLA Navy has 623 ships; USN has 480 ships.

USA has large advantage in helicopters with over 4,000 compared to over 800 for China. And USA has massive advantage in strategic forces with 406 ICBMs and 336 SLBMs compared to 70 ICBMs and 39 SLBMs for China.

So, notwithstanding the large USA superiority in helicopters and nukes, the sizes of the armed forces of the two countries is roughly comparable, and would lead one to expect about similar expenditures. [According to figures I've seen published, USA spends three times the Chinese military budget.]

And keep in mind that the USA officer corps is quite aware of the severe disadvantages now imposed by privatization and contractor rent-seeking. The professional military journals have been for years regularly carrying articles considering how to deal with this problem. And I think the officer corps have implemented some solutions already: the USAF designed and built its next generation (6th generation) fighter prototype, while apparently keeping contractors at arms length. Development time was reportedly less than 24 months. That’s very, very impressive. I’m sure there are Army and Navy officers salivating at the prospect of doing the same thing for armored vehicles and ships.

On the other hand, there is a disturbingly large number of officers who hop on the contractor gravy train when they retire. But I would bet on the active duty officer corps – it’s their lives on the line. Lots of USA history has been rewritten to glorify the “free enterprise system,” including the industrial mobilization for World War 2. In short, there would not have been any Arsenal of Democracy if not for the work of George C, Marshall and other Army officers in the 1920s and 1930s, establishing the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and carefully surveying every production plant and factory in USA. See How America Saved the World: The Untold Story of U.S. Preparedness Between the World Wars, by Eric Hammel, and Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II, by Mark R. Wilson. ]

As far as peace goes (same source):

[TW: Rather than drifting towards war with China—and Russia—the United States should have agreed to cooperate with China in building the $50 trillion electricity transmission system that would have helped most of the poorer countries begin to develop, while also making a huge impact on reducing the problem of global climate change. China Unveils Proposal for $50 Trillion Global Electricity Network. China made the proposal in March 2016. China Wants to Build a $50 Trillion Global Wind & Solar Power Grid by 2050. ]

Murc's Law

From Mike The Mad Biologist:

Murc’s Law, first proposed by a commenter at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, can be described as:

...the widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics.

We need a corollary to Murc’s Law along the lines of:

Only conservatives are allowed to believe U.S. government institutions are illegitimate, and liberals and progressives must always defend those institutions, no matter how horribly they behave or how much or often they fail in their basic functions.

The Neoliberal Agenda

 From Michael Hudson (for a Chinese audience, in English):

Today's Bee Letter: Proving once again there's no cure for the common scold

8/7/23 in the Sacramento Bee p. Z7-1 George Will writes "A fiscal crisis awaits--here's a provocative idea for heading it off"

George Will writes we need to revive the Obama Simpson-Bowles Commission to fix the “insolvency” of Social Security and Medicare. What he doesn't mention is that the U.S. is a sovereign, fiat currency creator. Sovereigns never run out of money, even if taxes do not compensate for additional spending. Taxes make the money valuable, they do not provision federal programs. (Where would people get dollars to pay taxes if the government didn’t spend the dollars out into the economy first?) 

Even “the maestro” Alan Greenspan schooled Paul Ryan about this when Ryan proposed privatizing those programs. As early as 1945, a director of the Federal Reserve, Beardsley Ruml, made a famous speech to the ABA, asserting that since the end of the gold standard, "Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete."

George Will is so far behind the times, next he’ll be advising us about how to make dinosaur stew.

Sacramento County Supervisor Sue Frost Retires

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The "Cruella DeVil" of Sacramento County Supervisors, Sue Frost, announced her retirement recently. Here are a few of her Supervisorial decisions:

• Forty tenants petitioned the Supervisors for a moratorium on mass evictions like they were facing a month or so before Thanksgiving. They had paid rent, but the landlord was kicking them out. Said Sue: it "broke her heart" to turn them down, but she was the key vote in rejecting their request. In Frost’s world, property rights always trump human rights.
• In one recent vote, she opted to extend the deadline for the County to enact climate emergency measures a decade-and-a-half later than initially proposed (2045, not 2030). According to her, the source of global warming is "fires [that] are larger and more damaging; exacerbated by bad forest management."
  …Why record heatwaves couldn't be connected to human-generated CO2! Climate problems come from forest fires encouraged by evil environmentalists. Incidentally, the fires in the Amazon and Africa are much bigger and had little tree-hugger forest management, not to mention the massive recent forest fires in Canada.
  ...Meanwhile, thanks to global warming, the "Gulf Stream" current in the Atlantic that warms Western Europe is unstable.

• Tuesday Ms. Frost voted for a billion-dollar jail expansion (it passed!) impoverishing the County for the foreseeable future. Her campaign slogan was "no new taxes" yet the "fiscally responsible" Ms. Frost vowed to continue to fully fund police because police and jails are what keep our neighborhoods safe.

The incident the Supervisors will excuse their votes with is the Mays decision-- a court order to stop mistreating prisoners. But does building a bigger jail really end maltreatment, and, not incidentally, prevent crime?

The US population grew by 42% between 1982 and 2017. Police spending grew by 187%--more than four times faster. Crime is down slightly, certainly not 400%. Yet all the police procedurals and courtroom dramas on TV imply that police solve every crime. That's fiction. In California, police solve roughly 15% of "blue collar" crimes like burglary and less than half of the murders.

One nearby example: From 2010 to 2021, San Francisco's police budget increased by 15%, yet total arrests declined by 41%, and although reported offenses were up (+28%) crimes cleared (-33%) and total arrests (-41%) both declined. The effectiveness of those massive investments in punishment and policing may even be counterproductive.

With 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of its prisoners, seven times more than Canada's per-capita rate. Yet Canada's crime differs insignificantly from U.S. crime. Even putting drug users in cages doesn't cure addiction as well as medical treatment (rehab), and it is seven times more expensive.

But Ms. Frost's agenda is to enrich prison contractors, and turn the police into an army of occupation. Even before the billion-dollar jail, the County spent 70% of its budget on police, courts, and jails.

County jail is currently full. Yet 60 -80% of the inmates are convicted of nothing except being too poor to afford bail. In Sacramento County, it's not "Innocent until proven guilty," it's "Guilty until proven wealthy."

The state of Illinois just eliminated cash bail. Washington D.C. has not had cash bail for years now and has successfully managed crime without it. Eliminating cash bail was not on the Supervisors' agenda when they voted to enlarge the jail. Gee, I wonder what Sacramento could do–no, not house the homeless, or deal with climate problems–besides spending a billion dollars to make a bigger cage?

Enlarging the jail is not supported by the public, by facts, and does not prevent crime (my letter to Sacramento Supervisors)

Dear Public Servants,

Your recent moves to expand the County's jail remind me of a Russian sentiment that things are never so bad they can't get worse. The US incarcerates at five times the world's per-capita average--seven times the Canadian per-capita rate. So...is Canadian crime worse than US crime? Nope. About the same. Incarceration doesn't prevent crime.

The recent Mays decision condemning Sacramento's treatment of prisoners is just the tip of the iceberg. True, the jail is full, but that does not mean it needs to be expanded. 60% - 80% of its inmates are not convicted of anything worse than being unable to afford bail. That's right, it's not "innocent until proven guilty" in Sacramento County, it's "guilty until proven wealthy."

Is there any attempt to provide alternatives to cash bail in Sacramento County? Not that I've seen. Yet it's been successful elsewhere: "The nation’s capital is often cited as a leading example of the success of bail reform. 

"Since 1992, the court system in Washington, D.C., has operated under a mandate to limit pretrial detention by emphasizing the release of people under the least restrictive conditions that still ensure they see their cases through and don’t commit new crimes.

"While cash bail is not completely prohibited, it has not been the status quo there for three decades. It can only be imposed for those deemed at risk of fleeing the jurisdiction and cannot exceed a person’s ability to pay. 

"In a report examining the last five years of data, the district’s Pretrial Services Agency found that 83% of people were released to the community at their first court appearance. Most of them were released with certain conditions, like electronic monitoring or supervision by the courts. 

"Of the remaining 17%, more than half were released after subsequent hearings to determine special conditions and only 7% remained behind bars.

"Those who are released can be connected to mental health services and substance abuse treatment if their case warrants it. 

"The approach [that avoids bail] appears to be working. [emphasis added]

"In the five-year analysis, 88% of defendants were not arrested for another crime. Of those who were, less than 2% were alleged to have committed a violent crime. 

"The appearance rate for defendants has remained similarly high, with 89% of defendants showing up for court." (from the Chicago Sun-Times)

Pre-trial detention further impoverishes poor people too. Who can keep a job if they have to be incarcerated while waiting for the courts?

The incarceration problem is systemic, related to, for example, homelessness. "In Denver, a five-year randomized control trial of a program that provides housing subsidies to those at risk of being unhoused found a 40 percent reduction in arrests among participants. These kinds of results are why localities from New Jersey to New Mexico are restructuring their local governments to invest in the social determinants of health and safety...

"If you want policies that actually work, you have to change the political conversation from 'tough candidates punishing bad people' to 'strong communities keeping everyone safe.' Candidates who care about solving a problem pay attention to what caused it. Imagine a plumber who tells you to get more absorbent flooring but does not look for the leak." (from "The Root Cause of Violent Crime Is Not What We Think It Is," NY Times)

Despite the massive investment in Hollywood's propaganda that says police solve all crimes and only bad people go to jail, police solve only 15% of crimes in California and less than 50% of murders. To isolate one community's experience, from 2010 to 2021, San Francisco's police budget increased by 15%, yet total arrests declined by 41%, and although reported offenses were up (+28%) crimes cleared (-33%) and total arrests (-41%) both declined. Knowing this should make the public skeptical of the effectiveness of those massive investments in punishment.

You don't have to convince me you're anti-crime. You have to convince me that you're pro-effective action.

--Your constituent,

--Mark Dempsey

Here are the agenda Item numbers and arguments against continuing your misguided attempt to manage crime with incarceration:

ITEM #48: 2:15 PM -- Contract No. 81554, Approve Second Amendment To Agreement With Nacht & Lewis Architects, Inc., For Professional Architectural Services On The “Main Jail Intake And Health Services Facility Criteria Architect Services” Project To Amend The Scope Of Work And To Increase The Contract Authority From $7,027,135 To $7,032,661 (General Services)

The Nacht & Lewis Contract Should Be Canceled

Sacramento County's community made clear that they did not want an expensive jail expansion, and yet the county re-started this previously canceled project, relying on recommendations from a biased architectural firm, Nacht & Lewis. If Sacramento County leadership values integrity in their decision-making process, they will cancel the contract with this architectural firm, and reevaluate the validity of their recommendations before moving forward with this project.

The reversal of your decision to cancel this project (in March of 2021) was based primarily on the opinions of Nacht & Lewis who were asked by county staff, without Board approval, to determine the feasibility of meeting the Mays v. Sacramento consent decree without a building expansion, a project which they were (and are) under contract to complete.

The county’s “peer review” of one of Nacht & Lewis' studies is simply a list of professional activities and qualifications of the individuals who performed the study, and the peer reviewer Wendy Still. The document is not a review of the content or validity of the findings and does not address the conflicts of interest that precipitated the request for a peer review.

County staff are promising one thing while doing another: Rick Heyer, Supervising Deputy County Counsel, told the board on September 14th, 2022 that “Nacht & Lewis…will not be eligible to participate in any future construction, design, or build—because of their work here, will be excluded from that.”

We urgently ask you to uphold integrity and accountability in county decision-making by canceling the Nacht & Lewis contract for the “Main Jail Intake and Health Services Facility” project and by stopping the use of any existing recommendations or designs from N&L for this project to avoid continued conflicts of interest.

Background

Nacht & Lewis (N&L) was hired in April 2020 to design a new “Correctional Health & Mental Health Facility” annex of the downtown jail

In March of 2021, the BOS canceled this project with a 4 to 1 vote after years of advocacy convinced them that this project was unnecessary, but the N&L contract was never fully canceled.

A few months later, in June of  2021, County executive staff changed the scope of work of the original N&L contract. They tasked N&L to perform a study on “how to meet the Mays consent decree,” in other words, how to justify the need for a new jail annex.

Sacramento County executives have long used the Mays lawsuit as an excuse for jail expansion, even though it highlights the need for jail population reduction and community-based alternatives.

County executives tasked N&L, an architecture firm with extensive experience with building jails, with determining the number of people the Main Jail can house to comply with the consent decree.

They were not, however, chosen by the Board of Supervisors themselves to determine how the county can meet the Mays consent decree without a new jail building. This is simply not their expertise.

In 2022, the community called out the corruption: the fact that the county was hiring the firm that was set to profit off this project to justify its need.

Of course, N&L are going to recommend the construction of an addition to the jail to meet compliance - they stand to profit from this project.

County executive staff claimed N&L would no longer be involved in the project, but have yet to follow through on this ethical commitment.

Rick Heyer: “N&L who, whatever happens, will not be eligible to participate in any future construction, design, or build—because of their work here, will be excluded from that” (https://agendanet.saccounty.gov/BoardOfSupervisors/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=7624&doctype=1) 4:35min in, @ 6:39 pm

The Nacht & Lewis study did not explore how the jail could be retrofitted if the population was reduced.

Mays Class Counsel has said: “At the core of this crisis is the oversized jail population, which the County has failed to manage in a humane or lawful manner.”

Nacht & Lewis’ studies claim there is no way to reduce the jail population enough to result in enough space in the main jail for constitutional ADA and HIPAA renovations, despite numerous reports from court-appointed experts showing in great detail how the county can meet the consent decree without a new jail.

So far, over $2 Million has been spent on this project. We demand that the contract be canceled and the remaining $5+ million be spent on reducing the jail population and funding community-based alternatives.

ITEM #49: 2:30 PM -- Contract No. 81675, “Construction Management Services For Sacramento County Main Jail Intake And Health Services Facility,” Approve Agreement With Kitchell/CEM, Inc., In The Maximum Amount Of $18,897,168 And Adopting A Resolution Declaring The Official Intent Of The County Of Sacramento To Reimburse Itself For Certain Capital Expenditures From The Proceeds Of Indebtedness (General Services)

Kitchell/CEM, Inc is the same firm that the BOS voted against in March of 2021 when they effectively canceled this jail expansion project. No new Request for Proposals (RFP)/bid process has been issued since then.

This item also includes a resolution “Declaring The Official Intent Of The County Of Sacramento To Reimburse Itself For Certain Capital Expenditures From The Proceeds Of Indebtedness”, essentially meaning that they will start the process of getting a $650Million Bond which will sink the county into unimaginable debt with at least $50Million a year in interest alone. The impacts of this financial decision on the rest of county services cannot be understated—we have to stop this.

Questions:

What fiscal year does the County intend to reimburse itself with bond proceeds?

Why didn’t the county issue a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for this project?

Stop the Bond/Loan:

The $650 million dollar loan would sink the county into unimaginable debt, and lock the county into prioritizing this project over critical health services.

The $650 Million dollar Lease Revenue Bond would come with many strings attached.

My letter to Supervisor Frost

Sue,

I've just read your newsletter that pooh-poohs climate "alarmism."

So...Global warming isn't that bad? Really? Have you seen this?

That's a cumulative map of all the fires in Australia in 2019-20. 

Incidentally, insurance offices in Sacramento are very busy because of all the cancellations of homeowners' policies here in California. Mine called me at 6:30 last night. We still haven't finalized a replacement for our homeowners' insurance.

Here's a NASA map of all the active fires from 9/14/20

Here are the more recent Canadian fires (6/18/23)

Then there are the reports that the North Atlantic current warming Western Europe (the "Gulf Stream") is on the verge of collapse.

Your comments favoring business viability over action on these serious problems remind me of one of the "helpers" at your "Better Angels" (now "Braver Angels") political conversation. He told me that if we did what I recommended, the stock market would collapse and his 401K would tank.

I'm no fan of elder poverty, but this remark was a symptom of "Midas Disease" -- more common than COVID. Alfred North Whitehead calls it the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It mistakes symbols for reality. The commandments about idolatry are related. 

The "helper" believed that as long as his stack of dollars or stock certificates grows, then nothing else matters. There will always be something to buy. Hint: this is like going to a restaurant and devouring the paper menu rather than the food. If we burn up the planet in search of profit, then the height of that stack of stock certificates or dollars won't be able to save us.

Honestly, I don't expect to convince you of anything. You've made your mind up long ago. I can tell you that sleepwalking is not a winning life strategy. Heck, it's not even a good strategy for crossing the living room without barking your shins on the furniture.

Wake up!

Update:

Yesterday, Antarctic sea ice extent hit a new record statistical low of -6.65σ below the 1991-2020 mean. About a 1-in-70B chance w/o climate change.

This is not a graph of extent or anomaly. It is a graph of standard deviations -- a measure of how abnormal the year's data is. pic.twitter.com/CvnYLde9iD

— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@EliotJacobson) July 29, 2023