Hi friends,
The press release also mentioned the possible use of the Defense Production Act to produce
clean electricity like solar and heat pumps to power [our] homes.
And, as if the Biden Administration read the same article about Amory Lovins that we did, the White House announced that
[t]he Department of Energy opened applications for more than $3 billion in new Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding—ten times the historical funding levels of the Weatherization Assistance Program—for energy efficiency and electrification upgrades in thousands of homes that will save families hundreds of dollars on utility bills.
Contact the president and ask him (again!) to use the Defense Production Act to produce “Heat Pumps for Peace and Freedom.” This ready-made action has been updated!
Albany, NY. A banner made by Fair Pay for Home Care activists, 3/30/22
The budget is going to be late in New York. The legislators have adjourned until Monday. It’s a good day to call Governor Hochul.
Blair Horner, an advocate for good government and transparency, has seen a generation of budget negotiations. He remarked on this year’s process:
It's as closed down as it can be, and to some extent, that shields the governor and lawmakers from pressure, from people who are unhappy with what they're considering and so that's bad for how the process of democracy is supposed to work.
The governor herself threw a giant wrench in the works when she announced on Monday her plans to fund a stadium in Buffalo. This is appalling on every level.
The deal would be “the largest handout ever given to a sports stadium in the United States,” said Victor Matheson, an economist at the College of the Holy Cross.
“We’ve been studying deals like this for over a quarter-century, and it is the overwhelming and essentially unanimous opinion of economists who are not directly associated with league or directly associated with the teams that the economic impact from large subsidies for stadiums or franchises has little or no economic impact on the localities that host them,” Matheson said.
The governor has said that the stadium would bring in $27 million annually in tax revenue, but that math is faulty, according to Matheson, because it is based on the idea that people would not spend their money elsewhere in Buffalo if there were no stadium.
Another critic of subsidies for sports stadiums, co-author of Field of Schemes, Neil deMause, estimates that the stadium boondoggle will cost taxpayers $40 million a year.
This makes it especially hard to swallow the pleas of poverty in the face of real human need and far better economic development plans. The governor has offered only bonuses, instead of a living wage, for care workers.
Fair Pay for Home Care — a proposal to raise wages for home care workers and consumer directed personal assistants to $22.50/hr., or 150% of the highest minimum wage in each region — would cost the state approximately $4 billion dollars AND a recent report shows that this investment in the workforce would result in increased revenue and savings totaling over $5.4 billion.
I wrote at length yesterday about the legal and moral arguments for Fair Pay for Home Care. Budgets are moral documents AND they are pragmatic tools. A budget without Fair Pay for Home Care is neither pragmatic nor moral. Make the case.
Call the governor (again!) at 1-518-474-8390; press 3 and then 2 to speak to a person. Tell the staffer we can’t afford not to fund Fair Pay for Home Care. Please call and make them listen to reason.
Because there has not been enough chaos (?!), the new district maps for NYS have been thrown out by a NY Supreme Court judge. Confusingly, the state’s highest court is the appellate court, not the supreme court, so this may yet be resolved in favor of the maps created by the legislature, which has Democratic majorities in both houses.
However, the current court order requires
the Legislature to come up with new maps by April 11. And they must have bipartisan support. If that doesn’t happen, [Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister] said he’ll retain an outside expert to draw up a new set of maps. That could get pretty hairy, as the judge acknowledged — delaying the primary set for June 28.
There is similar map chaos in Maryland and in Ohio. Are we now a nation that cannot hold elections because we can’t agree on the rules?
It’s been another challenging week on earth. Here’s a beautiful poem by Alberto Rios:
We Are of a Tribe
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.
with love,
L