California Mayors Hope To Take Aim At Housing Crisis After Election As Economic Fears Mount
October 4, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO - The housing crisis over the past year has been visible across the country, and California is no exception. Foreclosures have risen at an alarming rate across the state, but particularly in the Golden State has housing prices have fallen drastically since their peak a few years ago. The San Francisco metro area has seen the bottom drop out of the housing market as the home price index has dropped over 20 percent from its peak in 2005, with a majority of that drop coming in just the past year. The city of San Francisco itself has remained largely stable with prices mostly plateauing or seeing a drop of a few percent and foreclosure rates remain at about half a percent, the lowest in the Bay Area. However, even that minor amount is still a 160 percent increase over the number of foreclosures last year, and saw over 550 households[1].
While the economic crash has hit house owners hard, the impact of the real estate collapse has often hit renters harder than homeowners. Not only does a recession economy hurt tenants’ ability to afford rent or risk losing their leases due to unemployment, but in many states including California, no fault evictions are a standard practice that can abruptly force a renter out on the street. The rise in these no fault evictions is part of what brought several California mayors to San Francisco yesterday for a panel discussion and a call to action from the state on ways to mitigate the effects of the housing and economic crisis on low income homeowners and renters. Mayor Matt Gonzalez of San Francisco hosted the panel in his city, and invited several mayors from around the state to discuss the issue and “create a unified plan to protect the most vulnerable tenants.” Gonzalez, who himself was a renter as a county supervisor and for a brief period into his mayoral term, welcomed mayors Gayle McLaughlin of Richmond, Ron Dellums of Oakland, Donna Frye of San Diego, and Bobby Shriver of Santa Monica to the discussion. While most of the discussion panel was from the Bay Area, Donna Frye recalled how the housing crisis has been felt further south in San Diego. Frye, up for reelection to a full in November, pointed out that the San Diego County housing market plummeted by over a quarter from 2007 and that prices reached a low in the region not seen since 1995[2]. She and the other mayors present discussed the possibility of city measures such as requiring banks to notify homeowners of a possible intent to default and provide them with a point of contact to seek help, as well as greater offerings of financial assistance to borrowers before a foreclosure could be undertaken.
While they discussed city measures, a large portion of the discussion also was the five mayors giving the state a call to action on assisting not just homeowners but renters during the market crisis. In particular, mayors Gonzalez and Dellums issued public calls for the repeal of the Ellis Act, a state law governing allowances of evictions. The Ellis Act, named for former Republican state senator James Ellis of San Diego, was passed in 1985 and prohibited municipalities from outlawing a landlord’s ability to evict tenants, particularly if the landlord was going out of the rental business. Signed by Republican governor George Deukmejian, the act has in effect undermined city rent control initiatives, as frequently landlords have evicted their tenants in order to convert the property to condominiums or to demolish a property providing affordable housing, reducing the overall amount of affordable rental units. With foreclosures and rental evictions mounting from the housing crisis, the mayors reiterated the necessity of protecting and increasing affordable housing and maintaining rent control. Along with a majority of the mayors calling for the repeal of the Ellis Act, all five mayors condemned the Proposition 98 initiative on the statewide ballot in November. While framed as an eminent domain initiative prohibiting government agencies from seizing private property for commercial use, Proposition 98 has been largely backed by landlords and real estate groups and has come under fire from opponents as a means of phasing out rent control. With governor Schwarzenegger coming out against Proposition 98 in recent weeks, the fight to protect affordable housing seems to be doing well on that front, but the Ellis Act is going to be a far tougher nut to crack. The mayors of several major cities calling for its repeal is a good start, but the lack of Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was a great absence in the panel discussions.
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Devoid of Clinton and Pataki, Third Party Debate Still Finds An Audience
October 18, 2008
NEW YORK - On Wednesday October 15, Republican George Pataki and Democrat Hillary Clinton met at Hofstra University to participate in the final presidential debate of the 2008 election. However, while most Americans were paying attention to the two contenders most likely to win the presidential election in a few weeks, that same night 20 miles away, three other presidential candidates were holding a debate at Columbia University. This debate, sponsored by C-SPAN and moderated by Democracy Now! Host Amy Goodman, featured three third party candidates. Former Georgia Representative and Libertarian nominee Bob Barr, former Assistant Secretary of State and Constitution Party nominee Alan Keyes, and former California Representative and Green Party nominee Pete McCloskey attended. While the debate was primarily aired on C-SPAN2 and so did not receive much live TV viewership, it has reached a far wider audience online. In the days since the debate was uploaded onto C-SPAN’s channel on the video sharing site Youtube, it has received over 40,000 views so far in the last three days[4].
The first topic of the hour and a half long debate was the Iraq War and foreign policy. On this issue the candidates present were largely in agreement. McCloskey fervently pronounced his opposition to the Iraq War and called for an immediate troop withdrawal. He referenced his history in opposing the war in Vietnam and the general anti-war stance of the Green Party in framing his call for an end to the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Barr also called for a withdrawal from both countries, but was called out for his vote in favor of the war by McCloskey as well as his related vote for the PATRIOT Act while in Congress in a somewhat heated exchange between the Libertarian and Green candidates. Barr said he only voted for the PATRIOT Act once his amendments for a planned sunsetting of the act were put in place, and further criticized his former party and the president. “President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary Rumsfeld sold us a mountain of lies in order to get the PATRIOT Act passed, and I regret my vote for it. I have been fighting ever since I left Congress to get the Act repealed.” Barr stated.[3] Keyes, a former foreign policy official during the Reagan administration, provided perhaps the most nuanced answer of the three candidates. Keyes agreed with McCloskey that the United States should not have become involved in Iraq and that if he were president he would not have done so. However, Keyes clarified, he believes the world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power and that “now that we’re there, we have a responsibility to remain and secure Iraq until the country can secure itself.” When moderator Amy Goodman pressed the Constitution Party candidate on his apparent reversal from his 2004 run for Senate against Barack Obama, Keyes retorted “if Bob here and Hillary are allowed to change their position, so can I.”
While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a strong focus of the debate, the biggest topic by far, much like in the debates between Clinton and Pataki, was the economy and how to claw the nation back from the continuing bank failures. In many ways, the answers from the three third party candidates mirrored those of the two major candidates. McCloskey stated his policy would include a broad economic stimulus similar to that of Hillary Clinton. However, McCloskey went further than Clinton in calling for a government takeover of the bankrupt banks and breaking them up to avoid another “disastrous cascading effect” as the Green candidate put it. McCloskey gained some exposure from a memorable quote shared widely over the past few days: “To the banking CEOs and their friends in Congress trying to bail them out, I have one thing to say. If you are too big to fail, then you are too big.” Bob Barr and Alan Keyes, meanwhile, took the opposite approach, calling efforts in Congress to pass an economic stimulus “government overreach.” In another attack on a candidate who was not present at Columbia that evening, Barr bemoaned governor Pataki’s record. Barr noted his former fellow party member’s C report card from the Cato Institute during his gubernatorial administration, adding that “like many others in the Republican Party, Pataki talks fiscal conservatism but turns into a spending machine as soon as he gets the signing pen.”
Following the debate’s airing on C-SPAN and posting to the network’s YouTube channel, C-SPAN conducted an online poll among watchers of the debate on its website to determine who won the third party debate. Over the past few days, it has received 312 responses. Of those, 119 or 38.1% think Green candidate Pete McCloskey won the debate, 98 or 31.4% think Libertarian candidate Bob Barr won the debate, and 95 or 30.5% think Constitution candidate Alan Keyes won the debate. While Keyes came in last in the poll, and while there is no notable record of the demographic breakdown of supporters, several comments on the debate’s YouTube video praised Keyes as the only black candidate for president, perhaps giving some insight into the type of voter Keyes may be able to court in the general election. The three candidates were set to meet again next week in Washington, D.C. for a debate hosted by the Free and Equal Foundation, but the last weeks of the campaign have given them all busy schedules. Barr refused and McCloskey had accepted but dropped out last week, both citing scheduling conflicts with campaign appearances. The Free and Equal Foundation declined offers by both to send party representatives instead after Keyes’ statement he would decline if Free and Equal agreed to it. Therefore, this will likely be the only chance television or online viewers will get to see any of the three third party candidates on the debate stage.
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Tanking Economy Gives Clinton Edge In Polls, But Pataki Still Close
October 27, 2008
WASHINGTON, DC - With the American economy now firmly in the grips of a recession, the toll on the country’s markets is now spreading to a toll on the Republican Party’s hopes for November. Polls before September had shown Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate George Pataki tied for the presidential race, but with the stock market taking a dive, Pataki’s hopes for becoming president seem to be slipping away. In the past two months, several poll aggregators have gone from Clinton and Pataki tied in the polls to giving Clinton a slight edge.
The polling aggregator site RealClearPolitics has tracked polls since the primaries, and show that the Republicans peaked during the summer, when Pataki reached an average of 48.7%, leading Clinton’s 45.2%. The polls tightened soon after as the economy worsened, and Clinton soon took back the lead from the incumbent party. Pataki’s performance in the debate stemmed the bleeding and for a moment the polls had returned to a rough tie between the two around 44 percent. This was also the point where Pete McCloskey reached his height in the polling, but since then it seems voters have returned to Clinton as we near election day. The current RCP averages with barely a week and a half to go before the election have Clinton at 49.4% and Pataki at 45.8%. When the polls included McCloskey, the Green Party candidate has settled around 5.2%, which would be enough to get the Green Party guaranteed federal election funding. In those polls, McCloskey takes from both parties but does appear to attract more Clinton supporters. With McCloskey included, Clinton’s support drops to 46.7% and Pataki’s drops to 44.1%.
While Clinton has the edge in the popular vote, by any respect the electoral college result is still a tossup and the Democrats could be looking at a repeat of 2000. Among the different electoral maps from various sources including RealClearPolitics, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the Princeton Election Consortium, and a number of electoral forecasting blogs including Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight and Harry Enten’s Margin of Error, there are several tossup states that could go either way over the next ten days. These include some of the usual tossups such as Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, and Florida, but they also include a few more interesting predictions. Oregon which nearly went for Bush in 2000 and Minnesota, which voted for the Republican in 2004, are potential vital states if Pataki has a hope of winning the presidency. Meanwhile, North Carolina and western states Colorado, South Dakota, and Montana are curiously in play and would be valuable pickups for Clinton. Bill Clinton won Colorado and Montana in 1992, and if Hillary can win them once again it could show a shifting trend in the traditionally Republican leaning Mountain West and Plains states.
However, despite the appearance of many states that could go either way, the map does not look good for George Pataki and the Republicans. Even in some of the predictions with a broader range of states in play, Clinton still has an advantage of around 250 electoral votes already in hand, largely thanks to California and the Northeast. For Pataki to win, he would have to run the board with many of the tossup states, and that could be difficult to do over the next ten days now that the debates are over and with the continually struggling economy. Our predictions currently have Clinton at 254 electoral votes to Pataki’s 199 electoral votes. Clinton could overcome her current deficit just with wins in either Ohio or Florida. However, the Green Party could throw a wrench in Clinton’s plans just as they did for Gore and Kerry, so Pataki could still pull off a victory if things go right for him.
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Bombshell Rumor: Clinton Would Appoint Pataki To Cabinet Post If She Wins
October 29, 2008
EAU CLAIRE, WI - With just a week to go before Americans go to the polls in November, a true October Surprise has popped up that could change the entire course of the electoral race. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was at a campaign stop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin earlier this week. Originally reported by alternative weekly newspaper Second Supper in La Crosse and Isthmus in Madison, an aide working with Clinton’s Wisconsin campaign team witnessed Clinton conversing with senior staffers and overhead that the Democratic candidate would be willing to give her opponent George Pataki a Cabinet position if she won the election. Further comments revealed a potential Secretary of Agriculture position for the former New York governor in a presumptive Clinton administration.
If this position by Hillary Clinton is credible, then it reveals a striking fact about the state of establishment politics in this country. Both Cinton and Pataki are New Yorkers, and with her a sitting Senator and Pataki a former governor of the state it is certain that the two have an acquaintance and a rapport together. It reached the point in the crux of the campaigns when the two frequently referred to each other as “my friend” during the debates. However, few people would expect the connections of the establishment between the Democratic and Republican parties to run so deep as for a candidate to openly consider nominating her opponent to a Cabinet post, let alone doing so before the election is over and done with. That shows a level of not just haughtiness but rot and cronyism in the current political and electoral system that is clearly evident now even at the highest levels of government.
The quotes from the aid reported in the La Crosse alternative weekly were Clinton stating that “he [Pataki] can be Secretary of Agriculture,” to other staffers while backstage at a campaign event in Eau Claire. This could be taken as an innocuous joke, but even if so, it shows the lack of seriousness the candidates from the major parties are placing on today’s issues, especially given the state of the economy and the hardships faced by working Americans. Both Clinton and Pataki are candidates beholden to the whims of Wall Street, and will at a basic level tackle issues from that perspective without considering the real change that is necessary to solve the issues facing this country today. It is tempting to say that things may have been different if Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination. Obama would have brought a younger voice and real change to the Democrats. However, the reality is the Democrats are the party of Clinton now, just as they were last decade, they are a party that is little different from the Republicans, and that are tied to each other because both benefit from trading off each other’s success without letting anyone else in. This comment from Clinton it just the latest thing to prove it.
[1] Source:
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Record-foreclosures-in-Bay-Area-state-in-2008-3253153.php
[2] Source:
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...rices-tumble-24-2007-2009jan17-htmlstory.html
[3] A retooling of an actual quote Barr said during his 2008 campaign and one of the reasons he joined the Libertarian Party.
[4] For a comparison, the OTL third party C-SPAN debate between Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin has a
total of 61,000 views. Over the past ten years.