Of the fifteen bills in the “housing package” signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on September 29, the one that got the most attention in the media was State Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 35—and for good reason: SB 35 goes a long way toward “putting teeth” in California’s Regional Housing Needs Allocations, the number of housing units whose each city’s and county’s zoning must accommodate. Moreover, the bill’s provisions for “by-right” approval of certain multi-family, infill developments both circumvent the California Environmental Quality Act and eliminate negotiations with developers over community benefits.

But two other items in the package, SB 167 and AB 1515, that either got much less publicity (SB 167) or virtually none at all (AB 1515) will likely do much more damage to the democratic governance of land use in the state. Both amend California’s Housing Accountability Act, a once-dormant law now being exploited by Bay Area Yimbys. 

Passed in 1982, the HAA limits the ability of local agencies to reject or make infeasible housing developments without a thorough analysis of the economic, social and environmental effects of such action. It applies to all housing projects. Most important, the HAA allows a court to compel a city to take action on proposed developments. 

Analyzing AB 1515 for the State Senate Rules Committee, Senate staffer Alison Hughes observed that when a jurisdiction is sued under the HAA, 

the local government bears the burden of proof that its decision has conformed to all of the requirements in the law, including, if applicable, any findings that the development was not consistent with the city’s general plan or zoning standards. 

…. 

[I]n order to qualify for the Housing Accountability Act’s protections, a development must be consistent with a city’s general plan and zoning standards in effect at the time that the application was deemed complete. In land use cases, when the issue is such consistency, courts have tended to defer to local governments, unless the court finds that the local government acted arbitrarily, capriciously, or without evidentiary basis. 

In legalistic terms, a local government’s decision would be upheld unless no reasonable person could have made the same decision—a very high bar. AB 1515 effectively lowered the bar to the ground. 

AB 1515, Hughes explained, “requires courts to give less deference to a local government’s consistency determination. It changes the [evidentiary] standard of review by providing that a project is consistent if there is substantial evidence that would allow a reasonable person to find it consistent.” 

AB 1515 was sponsored the California Building Industry Association. The Legislature staff analyses list only one opponent: the California chapter of the American Planning Association. Given that professional planners are usually avid proponents of development, Cal APA’s opposition is striking. 

In a letter sent to the members of the Legislature on August 1, Cal APA laid out the harm that AB 1515 does to democratically accountable land use policymaking: 

Under current law, a city council or board of supervisors weighs the evidence and reaches a decision based on established principles of democratic decision-making—local governments are ultimately held accountable for their decisions by the local electorate. 

AB 1515 would replace the judgment of local elected officials with that of any "reasonable person," including the project developer who has a fundamental economic interest in the project. When fundamental land use decisions, like general plan consistency, are made by developers rather than elected representatives, local government accountability is compromised and the recourse available to the electorate is taken away. 

AB 1515 will allow the applicant, rather than the local agency or a judge, to determine consistency of a development with the General Plan and zoning by allowing the applicant to provide contrary reasons why the project is consistent. 

As a result, the issue will be whether a “reasonable person” could conclude that the project is consistent—not whether the city or county had substantial evidence to back up its conclusion. 

In response to my e-mailed query, Cal APA Ex. Director Sande George elaborated: 

Under this bill, a project would have to be found consistent with local plans if there's any evidence or interpretation supporting a finding of consistency, regardless of circumstances and evidence to the contrary. 

The existing standard is that the local agency’s finding is assumed to be correct unless no reasonable person could reach that conclusion. This [standard] retains the “reasonable person” phrasing in the bill but does not allow developers to begin making what are clearly local determinations, or to take a local agency to court over every finding. 

Cal APA asked that AB 1515 be amended to read: “the local agency’s finding is assumed to be correct unless no reasonable person could reach that conclusion.” Request rejected. 

The Legislature approved AB 1515 on September 15. On September 19, the League of California Cities sent Gov. Brown a letter requesting him to veto the bill. Like the APA, the League argued that AB 1515 “would deviate from longstanding judicial precedent” that generally deferred to local determination of a project’s consistency with a jurisdiction’s planning. 

But whereas the APA held that the bill authorized developers to begin making such determinations, the League contended that it 

would essentially allow a court to determine whether a project is consistent with local zoning and general plan [sic] by selecting the substantial evidence it wishes to rely on rather than reviewing whether the city council relied on substantial evidence. 

Instead, the League wrote, “[l]ocal governments are in the best position to determine whether a project is consistent with adopted general plan and zoning requirements.” 

The Yimbys Seize on the HAA 

Besides the California Building Industry Association, AB 1515 supporters included the Bay Area Council, the California Apartment Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California, and Yimby Action. Every one of these organizations also supported SB 35. 

But the Yimby support for AB 1515 is particularly notable. 

To begin, the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund or CaRLA, self-described as “the legal advocacy arm of the Yimby Party,” qualifies as a “housing organization” that can sue cities under the HAA. The law that made housing organizations eligible to sue under the HAA, AB 2584, is one of the eleven bills listed on the Yimby Legislative Report Card for the California Legislature’s 2016 session. Like AB 1515, AB 2584 was authored by Assemblymember Daly. 

Developers are reluctant to sue a city, because they are constantly negotiating with city officials over their projects. The Housing Accountability Act allows a developer’s surrogates to do the dirty work by authorizing as plaintiffs not only a project applicant but also a person who would be eligible to apply for residency in the development, and a housing organization. 

As state staffer Rebecca Rabovsky wrote in her analysis of AB 2584, previously “only the project developer or an eligible tenant of the proposed development [could] bring an action against [a] jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of the HAA.” HAA added a “housing organization” to the roster of prospective plaintiffs. 

As amended by AB 2584, HAA defines a housing organization as 

a trade or industry group whose local members or primarily engaged in the construction or management of housing unit, or a nonprofit organization whose mission includes providing or advocating for increased access to housing for low-income households and have filed written or oral comments with the local agency prior to action on the project. 

In 2015 CaRLA sued Lafayette under the HAA and lost; the petitioners were Sonja Trauss and SFBARF (San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation). In 2016 it sued Berkeley and won; this time the petitioners were SFBARF, CaRLA, Trauss, and Diego Aguilar-Canabal. On November 2, CaRLA sued Sausalito; the petitioners are SFBARF, CaRLA, Trauss, and Sausalito resident and San Francisco property owner/developer Robert Tillman. 

None of these lawsuits concern affordable housing, and two of them don’t concern much new housing of any sort. The Lafayette case involved 44 single-family homes. In Berkeley, the issue was whether an existing single-family home would be demolished and replaced with three single-family units. In Sausalito, the city has denied an application to demolish and remodel a duplex and add a new single-family unit. 

SB 167 was drafted by prominent Bay Area Yimby Brian Hanlon. Hanlon runs CaRLA with SFBARF founder Trauss. 

Like AB 1515, SB 167 weakens local authority over land use decisions by changing the evidentiary standard for determining whether a proposed development is consistent with a jurisdiction’s zoning. The change is different, however. AB 1515 makes it much easier to challenge a city’s disapproval of a project by lowering the standard of evidence for mounting such a challenge. SB 167 makes it much harder for a city to disapprove a project in the first place by raising the standard of evidence for such a disapproval. 

Before SB 167, a city could disapprove a project based on “substantial” evidence in the record, which means requiring “more than a ‘mere scintilla of evidence.” SB 167 changed the standard to “a preponderance of” evidence in the record, which is to say, to evidence showing that the argument at hand is more likely than not to be convincing and accurate. 

SB 167 further strengthened the developer hand at the expense of local government by expanding the Housing Accountability Act’s provisions about attorney’s fees. Before SB 167, a court could award “reasonable attorney’s fees and cost of suit” to a petitioner. SB 167 mandates that a housing organization shall be entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees if it sues a city under the HAA and wins. 

SB 167 also increased the size of fine that a court can impose on a city. If a court finds a violation of the HAA, SB 167 requires the court to impose a fine in a minimum amount of $10K per housing unit (in the Yimby first draft of the bill, the fine was $100K per unit). Money cannot be paid out of a fund already committed to affordable housing. Fines go into an affordable housing trust fund with the sole purpose of financing newly constructed housing units affordable to extremely low, very low, or low income households.” 

And if a court finds that a city acted in bad faith when it rejected or conditionally approved the housing development or failed to carry out the court’s order within 60 days, the court must multiply the fine by a factor of five. 

Like the other bills in the housing package. AB 1515 and SB 167 take effect on January 1, 2018. 

The Yimbys and other stalwarts of the California growth machine cast growth-resistant communities as a mighty political force. Yet AB 1515 and SB 167 made their way through the Legislature without grass-roots protest. That history suggests that the growth entrepreneurs’ portrait of a Nimby juggernaut is a caricature whose main purpose is to justify the machine’s ongoing assault on local authority over land use. 

Do the residents of Berkeley’s District 8 know that their Councilmember Lori Droste is positioning herself as the Joan of Arc of unrestrained development density?

Last Tuesday Droste spearheaded the ill-conceived crusade by some Berkeley City Council members to prevent current residents from commenting on developers’ plans to build semi-affordable housing projects. The goal is to allow planning department staff to approve projects which claim a high percentage (~50%) of affordable units without the approval of those annoying citizens’ land use regulatory commissions (not the Zoning Adjustment Board, nor its Design Review Committee, nor the Landmark Preservation Commission). Eager sponsors (Droste, Bartlett, Arreguin, Worthington) characterized this truncated process as “ministerial” rather than “discretionary” approval. They proudly claimed that there would be no opportunity for citizens to appeal such decisions if their proposal should become Berkeley zoning law. Swell.

District 6 Councilmember Sophie Hahn (who is among other achievements a graduate of Stanford Law School though she no longer practices law) tried patiently and even eloquently to explain the many, many legal problems with a plan like this, but she got exactly nowhere with the gung-ho proponents.

Instead, they spoke in glowing terms of their desire to create a bulletproof set of simple-minded standards which could be easily enforced by staff without messy citizen input which would magically produce affordable housing very very soon. This, remember, is the same Berkeley Planning Department staff which permitted the approval and construction of the Library Gardens apartments with resulting fatalities. 

District 5 Councilmember Susan Wengraf, who expressed a number of reservations from the beginning of the discussion, showed unfeigned shock when she learned that one goal of the scheme was to prevent citizen input. 

The public comment period on this idea turned out to be the obvious parade of pre-programmed Yimbys, mostly whiteboys from elsewhere, developer-funded stooges whose simplistic neoliberal economic analysis comes straight from Econ 101: The Market Will Decide. It was clear that they’d missed the upper division courses where knotty questions of elasticity and efficacy of markets are debated. 

My big faves in this crowd were a couple of these guys who used “aesthetics” as a shock-and-awe pejorative, as in “people even want to consider aesthetics! OMG!” Their parent organization, headed by one self-styled Victoria Fierce, who used to live in Oakland and probably still does, has been renamed East Bay For Everyone (formerly East Bay Forward). . Victoria herself even showed up. 

This name change, at least, is truth in packaging. These people do appear to believe that everyone in the world who wants to live in the East Bay can be enabled to do so. 

Guess what? Sooner or later we’re going to run out of land in the East Bay, and even in the whole Bay Area. Details, details. 

Councilmember Droste, the main proponent of the zoning law changes which would be needed to advance Yimby schemes, has shown herself to be dedicated to the proposition that it’s Berkeley’s destiny to make sure that everyone who’d like to live here is shoehorned in somehow. Perhaps she was elected to make sure that happened, but looking at District 8 I kind of doubt it. 

This is the district which was severely gerrymandered by the previous Council majority to make it possible to create a student-only enclave as District 7. District 8 contains the Claremont and Elmwood single-family neighborhoods, which have gotten very pricey, and the multiple-unit areas on its north and west edges which can roughly be characterized as South of Campus. The latter (parts of the old Bateman and LeConte neighborhoods) are an uneasy juxtaposition of crammed-in students and long-term UCB-oriented families who have periodic culture clashes over things like loud parties and end-of-semester dumping. 

My poll-free guess is that if asked a large number of Droste’s District 8 constituents would say that they moved to the area because they wanted to be able to walk to UCB for classes or work. The hillier Claremont and Elmwood (where Droste lives) neighborhoods were built in the first part of the 20^th century as streetcar suburbs, convenient for those who wanted to commute to San Francisco via public transit, an option which BART and AC Transit’s E bus still make possible, though the original Key System train tracks were removed in the 1960s. 

Though I have no data which proves my point, I seriously doubt that a large percentage of District 8 voters, either in flats or hills, would voice enthusiasm for the aesthetics-be-damned big ugly box market-rate rental and condo buildings which have gone up in Berkeley in the last ten years. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that the majority would say that they’d like Berkeley to remain a diverse community, and would gladly support appropriate buildings to ensure housing for lower-income tenants 

But that doesn’t mean that anything goes. 

I remember the big billboards which were all over St. Louis when I was a child: “Progress or decay? St. Louis must choose.” They represented the marketing of that city’s well-intention but disastrous Urban Renewal plan. The professional planners behind that scheme produced the infamous Pruitt-Igoe high-rise projects which were completed in 1954 and demolished in the 1970s as a spectacular failure. 

Design matters. Most of Berkeley’s existing low-rise scattered-site public housing units went through a seemingly laborious public process which was so successful that many citizens don’t even know where they are located. Truncating that successful process will not produce better results. 

Or—and this is the crucial part—faster results. The problem, as astute Councilmember Kate Harrison tried to explain to her gung-ho colleagues with little success, is the current shortage of funding and land, not the length of the permitting process, which plays a relatively minor role in slowing down development of housing for low-income tenants. 

The unending attempt of some of the current councilmembers, including Droste, to fast-track approval of Yimby-backed expensive developments in prime transit-friendly locations will only exacerbate the problem, because of course market-rate units in a bull market are exponentially more profitable to financial backers than less pricey inclusionary units. The trickle-down theory which is being used to promote constructing luxury buildings on transit corridors in Berkeley is just the same voodoo economics advanced by Republicans who say that tax cuts for the rich will somehow help the poor. 

But there’s no real reason to be concerned about the measure which the council passed on Tuesday with Droste’s leadership. It simply, in lay terms, referred the matter to the City Manager and her staff for study and recommendations. 

In the end, councilmembers voted for it unanimously, even the ones who knew it was a do-nothing deal. Since there’s no money and no land, and since it’s almost certainly impossible for the Berkeley Planning Department staff to create a one-size-fits-all set of standards which will speed up affordable housing production sans civic approval, no harm will be done, in all probability. 

That doesn’t mean you won’t hear claims to the contrary. On Friday, for example, District 3 Councilmember Ben Bartlett, who has chosen to run for State Assembly before he’s even finished the first year of his first term in Berkeley, sent me three or four copies of a commercial-type email blast which says in large bold-face: 

I am proud to announce that I helped pass a groundbreaking law to streamline affordable housing production. This will dramatically increase our ability to create affordable housing.

I emailed him (or his consultant) back to ask what he was talking about—I do hope it wasn’t Tuesday’s meaningless enactment, which is nothing but a tin fiddle, and will dramatically do exactly zilch, nada, to create housing. I’ll let you know if he gets back to me on this. 

And as far as Councilmember Lori Droste is concerned, if you’re in her district you might want to start tracking her votes on the never-ending stream of developer variances which end up at the City Council these days. She’s up for re-election in 2018, and if you don’t agree with her positions on this crucial issue, you might want to look for someone to replace her. Or, even, you might be able to change her mind, but don’t hold your breath. 

As the author of the Berkeley City Council resolution requiring that the Council approve and be informed of past items acquired by our Police Department through the Department of Defense 1033 Program, I want to respond to concerns in Mr. Martinot’s Op-Ed. I also want to further explain my intent.

I am deeply concerned about the blurring of the lines between the military and our police. Our country was founded on the principles of the military and police being subordinate to civilian control and clear boundaries between the civilian sphere and the military. The 1033 Program as now conceived under President Trump has the potential to subvert these principles by: (1) facilitating transfers of excess defense material that is often wholly inappropriate for police-use, and (2) doing so without local civilian oversight.

I share the goal of a complete prohibition of participation in the program. Mr. Martinot’s arguments that future Councils may be less skeptical about this program and that interacting at all with the federal security state is the slippery slope are well taken. However, given the range of views on the Council and lack of awareness about this program generally, I was not confident that a prohibition would be politically and logistically feasible in the short-term. My item remedied the immediate harms posed by a lack of oversight and transparency and started a vitally important conversation within the Council, the Police Review Commission (PRC), and the public. The item initiated a process at the PRC that will require the Council to revisit the issue.

Mr. Martinot questioned whether the City Council “can establish the right to oversee, and to confirm before the fact … equipment the Berkeley PD will request from Project 1033.” The California Office of Emergency Services, which administers the 1033 program in California, confirmed that local governments can limit use of the program. Further, local oversight of this program is the official recommendation of the American Civil Liberties Union. We are the first city in the country to take any action on this front; our legislation is now being used as a national model.

In his Op-Ed, Mr. Martinot incorrectly suggested that the Council “renewed its membership in Project 1033” at the November 14 meeting. The BPD likely enrolled in the program sometime after it was created in 1997, without any required Council action. Increasing transparency, implementing immediate oversight, and seeking more information pending further consideration of the program that has existed in near secrecy is not tantamount to a “renewal.”

Finally, Mr. Martinot suggests that “[t]he Berkeley police department has been amassing military weaponry and military grade surveillence [sic] equipment for years now – assault rifles, grenade launchers, stingray technology, etc.” To date, I have found no indication of these materials coming from the 1033 program but am concerned that the record keeping on this point is wholly inadequate. The City Manager reported on November 28, 2017 that the BPD recalls acquiring ballistic helmets through the 1033 program but no longer has the helmets or any other material from the 1033 program in their inventory. We need more than recollection; we need documentation.

This issue is just one of many involving protection of privacy, civil liberties, civil rights and transparency facing the Council in the very near future. After voting to prohibit BPD’s participation in the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) and Urban Shield, I have continued to push for withdrawal from both NCRIC and Urban Shield. Early next year, we will also be considering the proposed Surveillance Technology Use and Community Safety ordinance, which will help implement critical oversight over surveillance technology and contribute to protecting our privacy.

We need to remain vigilant. 

I found this [article] interesting since affordable housing is an issue in Connecticut and NYC as well, something I follow and support, yet no housing is truly affordable without sustainable employment:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/economy/single-family-home.html?_r=0

1310 Haskell St. in Berkeley is all about doing well for the neighborhood and the larger community.

The builder is not creating affordable housing selling three new units for $1M each. If the property was sold for $650,000 in 2015 needing work, the Investor will be the only big winner here. Would this have been a different story if the next-door neighbor bought the property to renovate it to a comparable quality neighborhood value? Or a Neighborhood Development Corporation renovating for an owner occupant with a deed covenant restricting resale for profit? Or an owner occupant using a FHA 203K rehabilitation loan? 

For a little price and value background, the HUD 2018 Fair market rent for this 3 bedroom residence is $4070/ month, with houses in the 94702 neighborhood comparably selling at $500,000 to above $1.5M. 12 blocks to the east is the Cesar Chavez and McLaughlin State Beaches, U. Cal. Berkley 12 blocks to the West, a desirable location. To a mortgage an $800,000 house at 4% over 30 years with $10,500/year tax, $1200 insurance and $6000 Private Mortgage Insurance would cost about $5300/month with nothing down, not much more than paying a comparable single family rent. 

New affordable housing requires deed covenants to control resale and match appreciation with Cost Of Living Adjustments. Existing landlords are profiting from lack of rent control. Rent control might be to be placed on rental units relative to Return on Investment. Companies that are seeking “affordable housing” for their employees may have to redefine their compensation practices, since affordable house means paying about 30% of your gross salary on housing. To buy this $800,000 property as described, household income would have to be $15,000/month 

Homeowners who choose to live in this mixed-use zone bought in at a discount, which is now being called by the market demand. Lot sizes, height, impermeable coverage and setbacks should be maintained, since cities have to obey their laws. Can laws be changed? Can residents call for new zoning, possibly alienating employers in the future? When it is suggested “low slung neighborhoods have to change to keep everyone from being priced out” that undefined change bears a cost which is payable to the existing residents, since their quality of life is being impacted. Neighbors who have their gardens impacted by shadows might consider compensation with creation of community gardens, greenhouses, hydroponics, grow lights and reflective lighting solutions, paid for by a shadow assessment levied on the offending property. 

It seems the tech industry is at fault for much of the Bay Area housing problem, since rental and housing prices go up based on demand, which is created by relocating people looking for high pay jobs in desirable environments. If pre-existing residents were being retrained and employed there might not be so many homeless persons, an ethical responsibility of the Bay Area tech industry. The industry and their shareholders should be financially responsible for the systemic effects, good and bad, of their presence and effect on the community. 

The tech industry is also uniquely suited to solving community based employment problems by expanding their presence into neighborhoods and communities across the United States, where jobs are needed and real estate is more affordable. One can regularly see the blue bulls eye of poverty surrounded by rings of red wealth in 2017 demographic, financial and political maps across USA. Emerging Tech Companies are accountable for choosing to locate in one of the most desirable and expensive locations in the USA. The San Francisco bay area is an idyllic combination of weather, beaches, vineyards, outdoor recreation and overall “California Lifestyle” that is coveted across our country. The tech industry has the logistical capabilities to transform struggling communities by supporting wise use planning, economic development that targets impacted demographics, and financial interventions. Employee home ownership programs, like Yale University has invested in New Haven, CT makes home ownership work. Current home seekers can explore alternatives, like owner occupying multifamily buildings to reduce their mothy costs. Possibilities abound! The need in re-shore, create jobs and seek systemic solutions for disenfranchised individuals is an ethical obligation of high tech, high profit employers, corporations and investors on the 21st century 

Rent control and zoning are issues that East Coast cities like mine have wrestled with since the housing boom of 1948 . Now would be the time to look at existing community development models to seek wisdom form the past and guidance for the future. If density is going to be increased, existing `land owners need to be offered the opportunity for relocation and compensation for price differentials, possibly with money supplied by the tech industry in a cooperative fund bank. It’s not fair for a developer to depreciate the value of a block, census tract or neighborhood for profit without the existing neighbors reaping the short term financial benefit. 

Maybe the neighbors of 1310 Haskell Street need to be the developers here, or partner with the current developer if the city is going to allow this to move ahead. Is there no community development model or agency in place to oversee this process with experienced citizen input? Maybe maintaining stability, not building up is one answer in the San Francisco Bay. New one and two-story housing that conforms to existing height limits needs to happen in previously less desirable parts of the city, while protecting existing citizens with life use, New York City style rent controls. We, as a nation, are going to need more housing where the opportunity is, and opportunity where the need for employment is. The tech industry is uniquely suited with financial and logistical capabilities to deliver solutions in community based manufacturing and home-based employment models. This can be the transformative workplace that has been envisioned.

At the December 5 meeting, City Council will take up a matter continued from November 28: Item C titled 1 “Ministerial Approval of Zoning-Compliant Affordable Housing”. The item proposes that two public interests are at odds:

• early public participation in the land use entitlement process vs.

• the development of privately operated subsidized housing.

Item C proposes to sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter. This council item is admirable in its intent, which is to better facilitate the creation of housing offered at affordable prices. Unfortunately, the item is based on a misreading of the research it cites. It is also not supported by any analysis of Berkeley’s own conditions. My analysis suggests that the item is unlikely to advance its stated aim. Worse, as written, it is virtually certain to have negative consquences. I recommended that the item be amended as described below and then passed, but that it not be passed in its present form.

For the full analysis, click here.

Though it proclaims itself against police militarization, Berkeley City Council has renewed three militarizing federal relationships: the Fusion Center (NCRIC), urban surveillence technology, and Project 1033. It apparently does not see how these projects work together, nor that they are pro-militarist. And in its conceit, it thinks it can control them each separately. That is a mistake.



Police militarization

In his familiar twisted fashion, Trump briefly proposed lifting a ban (instituted by Obama) on obtaining trophy elephant parts. (The ghoulishness of that sentence just makes me shudder.) The "trompeur" opined that this would be a "conservationist" measure toward elephants, an endangered species, because the act of recognizing and honoring the hunters would obviate bootlegging. Transparency in destructiveness? Hunters don’t just hunt for fun. They do it for profit. Conservationism does not mean acquiescing to profit hunger.

Here in Berkeley, City Council and the Mayor proclaim themselves opposed to further militarizing the police. Yet on Nov. 14, 2017, Berkeley City Council renewed its membership in Project 1033, a program begun in the 1980s of bestowing military equipment on police departments. The Berkeley police department has been amassing military weaponry and military grade surveillence equipment for years now – assault rifles, grenade launchers, stingray technology, etc. 

The 1033 program is pro-militarist because it wants police departments to think of themselves as military entities. The Pentagon will maintain oversight and control on the equipment it distributes because its real purpose is militarizing the mind of the cop. The current police demand for absolute obedience to any officer’s command, which militates for civilian regimentation, is the social dimension of that process. Technology is the machinic dimension. Its political purpose is for social control, not for law enforcement. 

City Council thinks it can establish the right to oversee, and to confirm before the fact, whatever equipment the Berkeley PD will request from Project 1033. They evidently haven’t read the webpage of the DLA (Defense Logistics Agency which administers 1033) where it says that no civilian oversight of the program will be allowed for security reasons. The council’s enactment is thus pro-militarist because it gives recognition and credence to a militarist program and to its purpose, even while intending to limit it. By maintaining its membership in 1033, the City Council has actually approved the military’s purpose. 

The Surveillance State 

A few weeks earlier, the City Council affirmed a request by Berkeley PD to purchase “automated license-plate readers” from the government. When mounted on a police car, these LP readers record all the license plates of cars parked along the street. Those plate numbers then get put in a database, which then includes information that such-and-such a car, belonging to such-and-such a person, was parked at a particular location at a particular time. The owner of the car can be included in the data because City Council in its wisdom allowed Berkeley PD to maintain its connection with NCRIC (Northern California Regional Intelligence Center), a federal body for coordinating local police departments. NCRIC will provide car ownership information faster than the DMV. And somehow, the City Council thinks that renewing these agreements with the military and federal surveillence agencies is a first step toward demilitarizing the police. 

Trump, Trompeur, Trumpist. 

City Council Assumption #1 

City Council assumes that the LP readers are benign, and their databases can be controlled by civilian government – that is, that this kind of participation in a surveillence process has nothing to do with militarization. 

The rationale for buying the license-plate readers is to better control downtown parking. Taking its lead from its business association, which complains that parking violations are having a detrimental effect on downtown businesses (new arrivals can’t find space), the Council decided that better enforcement, with more efficient ticketing, would alleviate the shortage. That in itself is questionable. Downtown parking is limited to two hours for cars. But reading a license plate won’t tell the database how long into its two hours a car has been there. So someone will have to check again in two hours, or read the little permits on dashboards. The collected database, which will do neither of these things, will have to communicate itself by radio or otherwise, to metermaids to ticket any violators. Rather than just hire more metermaids, who will have to do the footwork anyway, the city buys into a program of sophisticated data collection and complicated communications between agencies. And Council actually thinks, through some fantasy splurge that equates these readers with cellphones, that this technology will provide better monitoring of parking space usage in downtown Berkeley. 

The PD contributed to this kind of twisted thinking by assuring City Council that none of the data collected by these LP readers would be passed on to the military, nor to NCRIC, even though some of the data will come from NCRIC. In other words, the police are running a number on City Council. And Council actually believes what the police say, that the feds will be denied access. 

Think about that. The readers are run on software provided by the manufacturer through the feds. The software will compile the data, and organize it (by zone, neighborhood, address, owner, day, month, state, etc.), some of which will come through NCRIC – like owner ID. (This explains why the NCRIC connection was made first at BPD request, back in June.) What the government is good at is putting backdoor capability into software, meaning that the government, with preset access codes, will be able to get into those databases without either the City Council or the BPD knowing about it. It is probable that the BPD would know, but since it has promised not to provide access to this database to NCRIC, it will not inform the City Council, in order to stay true to its alleged "promise." 

In effect, instead of just hiring more traffic control personnel, Berkeley has decided to join the surveillence state (a euphemism for “police state” – Cf. Edward Snowden), while thinking it is only enhancing downtown shopping. 

Reading license plates is an old game for the FBI. Back in 1959, they went around reading every license plate in a four block radius around a concert given by the Weavers in NYC, and passed their collected information on to the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC). When HUAC scheduled hearings in SF, it subpoenaed the Californians that were on the list. What brought the SF hearings to public attention was that a biology professor at Stanford (whose car had been in midtown Manhattan the night of the Weavers concert) committed suicide rather than undergo the humiliation of committee questioning (he was apparently totally apolitical, but believed in freedom of thought). [Cf. Fred Cook’s article in the Nation, 1960] This arounsed the interest of Cal students, and they appeared at the hearing in the hundreds, for which they got beaten up by the police and expelled from the hearings. That was the beginning of the student movement in Berkeley. Playing with this kind of database can be a question of life and death, even if one only wants to free up parking space. 

What the council’s twisted thinking does admit is that downtown development is already out of hand, though the major construction projects have not yet even started. It also admits that City Council is not interested in people "using" downtown, but only going there to shop, to quickly use time to buy things and then go home. Finally, it admits that if extreme measures are not taken to provide parking, downtown will wither. 

Clearly, the three measures that this City Council has passed this year, renewing its NCRIC agreement, buying license-plate readers, and renewing its 1033 membership, all work together. For council to pretend it has civilian control over police militarization is really the politics of the absurd. 

City Council Assumption #2 

In confirming and ratifying its agreements with the military under the 1033 program, the council is assuming that the military is going to be honest and honorable in the way it deals with the city. We have the police assurances that the military will not secretly use that database, nor will it be shared with NCRIC or other federal agencies. Yet the Berkeley PD has consistently resisted any accountability to civilian government, whether with respect to its “use of force” (the 2014 demonstrations), or its killing of Kayla Moore, or its persistence in racial profiling, or its acceptance of a police chief without public process, or its insistence on renewing all prior agreements with the federal government. What need has the military to be honorable and honest when it has the BPD mediating its relation to the city? 

The BPD even came to City Council with a request of pepper spray technology to be used for crowd control while promising the City Council that it wouldn’t use it for crowd control. And the City Council went along with this. 

The US military is part of a government that has violated every treaty it has ever signed, from the first one made with Native Americans in 1795, all the way to the present. For instance, there are international staandards banning torture, to which the US is signatory, yet the police torture people on the street using pepper spray and tasers without fear of criminal charges (under the Human Rights Treaties, and Article 6). And this City Council thinks that the federal government will honor the votes taken by the city with respect to militarizing the police? 

In addition, the US military, the most powerful military establishment in the world, is a military that has taken time and effort to repeal Posse Comitatus, which means it is now free to engage in law enforcement inside the US. What this means is that the boundary between the police and the military is dissolving; they are becoming one. And that implies that the boundary between the police and City Council is widening and becoming more impassable. 

Just as Trump’s proposed legalization of hunting elephants would be anti-conservationist, so the city’s agreement with the military is pro-militarist. 

City Council Assumption #3 

What City Council decided concerning its 1033 access was that it would maintain its connections to the military, amd that each PD request for military equipment it would have to passed by the City Council. The assumption it makes in establishing this procedure is that it has civilian control over the police. But it doesn’t. There is no accountability. 

What Berkeley City Council found it impossible to say to itself (perhaps because it has spent too much time looking in the mirror) is that this same council will be here 2 years from now, and 4 years from now, and on into eternity – so there is nothing to worry about. "We" will prevent Berkeley from becoming (overly) militarized, council says to itself. Somehow, this council is not taking future moments, future political situations, and future generations into account. And that is a great abrogation of responsibility. 

Anyone who has listened to the arguments in City Council has heard the councilmembers actually say that they think these measures are a step forward toward demilitarizing the police. That is not a con. They actually believe it. It is just straight-out twisted thinking. 

Technological militarization of the police has already been underway for years. If you want to demilitarize the police, the first step is break prior arrangements and agreements with the sources of militarization. Then reduce the level of militarization to what is democratically desired. That is, the second step is to establish autonomous and independent standards. The third step is to then see what is offered that one might use ethically from federal programs, and make agreements with the sources of that technology to get it if possible without violating one’s own standards. But this council thinks the their first step should be step three. Then they will work their way back up to step one. If that isn’t stupidity, it is at least complicity. 

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This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! 

2017 political news contained two preeminent images: Donald Trump and sexual assault. Trump's objective has been to be dominate the news each day. Nonetheless, beginning with revelations about the sexual behavior of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, Trump tidings were pushed aside by reports of celebrity sexual misconduct. (Time Magazine recognized this by naming "the silence breakers" their persons of the year.) The two images are connected. Trump has been accused of sexual assault. And the Republican Party is engaged in systematic rape of American workers.

A little over a year ago, Donald Trump's presidential campaign was momentarily derailed by the release of a salacious recording where Trump bragged about assaulting women: "When you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything... grab them by the pussy." Amazingly, Trump survived this. His most ardent supporters came to regard the recording as "fake news." Mainstream Republicans adopted the attitude, "Whatever Trump may have done in the past, he's preferable to Hillary Clinton."

During 2017, Donald Trump put his imprint on the Republican Party and, in the process, "normalized" sexual assault, for the Party faithful. We see this in GOP support for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. Multiple women have come forward with tales of Moore's sexual misbehavior -- one of the women was 14 when Moore assaulted her. The mainstream Republican response is, "Whatever Moore may have done in the past, he's preferable to the Democratic candidate."

Republicans have adopted the dubious ethical maxim: "the end justifies the means." And they have gone farther; they've adopted the tactics used to denigrate sexual assault victims. We can see this in the Republican tax plan that passed the Senate in the early hours of Saturday, December 2nd. 

The first of the Republican tactics is the lie. Trump claims that the women who accuse him of sexual assault are lying. Alabama Senate candidate Moore also claims that the women who accuse him of sexual assault are lying. Similarly, when confronted about problems with their tax bill, Republicans respond with lies; for example, the tax cuts will benefit America's working families -- when actually the GOP tax plan will primarily benefit corporations and the wealthiest one percent. Republicans have also lied about the impact of the tax bill on the economy; they claim it will cause the economy to grow because of the "trickle-down" effect -- when actually there is little evidence that the GOP tax plan will have long-term positive impacts on the economy (to the contrary, there is a lot of evidence that increasing economic inequality will have long-term negative consequences). 

The second of the Republican tactics is to demean the victim. Trump and Moore have suggested that their accusers came forward because they wanted publicity. Congressional Republicans have argued that the rich deserve tax breaks because they've worked hard to make their money and, in contrast, the poor do not deserve tax breaks (or social services) because they have not worked hard (this conforms to the long-time Republican contention that the poor are shiftless). 

It's only a small step from the Trump and Moore statements to the classic rapist contention: "she asked for it." In court, rapists often attempt to discredit their victims by claiming the woman "asked for it," suggesting that the assault victim was a person of loose morals or "incited" the rapist by dressing in a provocative way. Similarly, Republicans in Congress are suggesting that working-class voters "asked for it" because they have not amassed enough funds to be able to pay for social services. 

A recent study of 41 convicted rapists found they had three dominant justifications for their behavior: 79 percent opined, "it is a dangerous world and you have to treat others as they would treat you." 51 percent described women as sex objects, "whose function is to be sexually available to men." And 44 percent "expressed feelings of entitlement, assuming that as a man they could take what they wanted from the woman." 

Sadly, these horrific sentiments are similar to those expressed by Donald Trump and other senior Republicans. Trump infamously never apologizes, stating that when he perceives he is under attack, he responds in kind. This is an expression of Trump's governing philosophy, "it is a dangerous world and you have to treat others as they would treat you." 

Furthermore, Trump historically has treated women as sex objects. And it's hard to imagine any American who expresses a stronger feeling of entitlement than does Trump. This is shown by his remark: "When you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything... grab them by the pussy." 

With regards to their tax plan, the Republican leadership has expressed similar feelings of entitlement. Witness the statements of Trump, Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin, Secretary of Commerce Ross, and Chief Economic Adviser Cohn. They've all made comments to the effect, "When you're rich, you can do anything..." 

During 2017, Donald Trump put his imprint on the Republican Party. In the process, he "normalized" sexual assault and encouraged congressional Republicans to rape America's working families.