The Henry George Program

There's one wild race in the South Bay for the state senate, in which one candidate took dubious positions on housing, labor, taxes, and more... but still got the endorsement of Barack Obama. We talk about this race and more, with Prop 15 advocate Natasha Cougoule and transit advocate Monica Mallon; what's the deal with Prop 22, how do local and national political organizations align and depart ... and what's the role for young people in the changing political landscape?

It's election time! We have on Angie Evans and Jordan Grimes of Peninsula for Everyone to talk about each of the roughly 1,000 city council elections up and down the peninsula, plus local and statewide ballot measures... as well as discursions into the weird and woolly world of housing.

John Lashlee is running for Mountain View City Council on a Democratic Socialist Platform; we talk about what this means, in terms of creating a "snowballing" effect for municipal housing policy, police issues, and economic justice for residents. We also talk some theory, getting a marxist perspective to housing policy.

Darrell Owens of East Bay for Everyone is back, and answering the big questions: is disinvestment in minority neighborhoods the right approach for anti-gentrification (no); are there Black anti-tenant NIMBYs in SoCal who get confused for anti-gentrification advocates (yes); are duplexes scary (listen to find out). Finally, hear about Berkeley becoming the first US city to take the police out of traffic enforcement

Jordan Grimes has been live-tweeting Livable California calls over the last year, and comes on the show to share his insights into the ideology and political framework of California's NIMBY conspiracy. Learn more about Joel Kotkin, Jeffersonianism, what 'WIMBYs' are, and what the left should do about it. Also some brief updates on anti-eviction bills and whatever the hell was going on with Caltrain.

Chris Beiser is back to talk about his recent article on Administration Markets; we talk what this means for the bureaucracies we see all around us. Topics covered: structured competition in South Korea, Estonian e-residency, automation, railroad standards, Zume pizza, railroad standards, city planning, and the role for risk and debt during the COVID crisis.

We're in the midst of an eviction crisis in the danger of getting much, much worse. Shanti Singh of Tenants Together is on to talk about what is getting done, and what can be done to stop this. (We agree not to go at each other's throats about land-use for an entire show!) Talk about local-level, state-level, and federal-level interventions; talk about neoliberal vs forward-looking approaches to remedy tenant issues, and on the struggle to organize tenants and build power.

Max and I check in with San Francisco, in the aftermath of COVID, and discover it's still cursed. Talk about its aesthetic identity, the baffling lack of ideology of the progs, and more.

Laksh Bhasin (of the SF Berniecrats) is a co-author of the SF Community Housing Act, which looks to cross-subsidize public housing so that the city can operate units with less dependence on the vagaries of federal financing. We talk the nuts and bolts of the policy, interesting new ways it empowers its tenants, its political challenges, as well as the future of Article 34.

COVID has nuked tax receipts, and cities are hurting; what patterns do we see in their budget crises, and what can we do to avoid a new regime of austerity?