Saturday, January 26, 2019

Proud to be represented by Nancy Pelosi

Image result for pelosi picture gavel
Nancy Pelosi
The air traffic controllers may have added a final kick to get it over the finish line, but the real credit belongs, as it always has, to Nancy Pelosi, who kept her cool for 35 days and never allowed Trump to see even a glimmer of hope for a victory.
Rob's comment:
I've rarely even mentioned Pelosi on this blog over the years, taking her for granted and assuming that San Francisco would always be represented in the House by a liberal Democrat. 

She made us proud to be represented by her the way she dealt with Trump during the shutdown.

I was also obligated to defend her: when she was attacked by the Bay Guardian left here in the city.

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Gentrification and poverty

Trulia


...some of the most actively gentrifying areas, such as San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, have become increasingly plagued with social dissolution and rising homelessness.

In recent years, a relatively small downtown population has done better, but surrounding areas have not. Philadelphia’s central core rebounded between 2000 and 2014, but for every district that gained in income, two suffered income declines. 

Research by urban analysts Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi shows that the number of high-poverty (more than 30 percent below the poverty line) neighborhoods in the U.S. has tripled in the last half-century, from 1,100 in 1970 to 3,100 in 2010.

Poverty is not, as is widely suggested, now primarily a suburban problem. The poverty rate, according to the American Community Survey, remains two-thirds higher in urban cores than in suburbs. 

Equally important, many longstanding middle- and working-class neighborhoods are disappearing. Teachers, firemen, and police officers are struggling to afford homes in many American cities, according to a study from Trulia. This pricing-out also applies to many skilled blue-collar professions like technicians, construction workers, and mechanics...

Some cities with the fastest gentrification rates, according to Realtor.com, have undergone dramatic displacement of their poor and minority populations. Washington, D.C., long celebrated as Chocolate City, has seen its African-American population share drop substantially. In Portland, 10,000 of the 38,000 residents of the historic African-American section, Albina, have been pushed elsewhere. 

San Francisco has lost 7.2 percent of its black population since 2010. Given these realities, many grassroots groups have become skeptical, even openly hostile, to gentrification. Our colleagues working in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas have all reported growing opposition—including vandalism—to city development schemes widely seen as replacing long-term residents with short-timing hipsters...

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The terrorist was foiled---this time.


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