The New York Times writes:

If President Obama has a big economic initiative up his sleeve, as he hinted recently, now would be a good time to let the rest of us in on it. . . .

The fiscal stimulus of 2009, coupled with low interest rates and other Federal Reserve interventions, kept the recession from being much worse. But it has not been enough to revive hiring, without which a real recovery is impossible. In the meantime and even more ominously, economic policy making has all but ground to a halt. . . .

Mr. Obama and his economic team had clearly hoped for an economic rebound in time for the midterm elections. They are not going to get it. The economic damage they inherited was too deep, and the economic stimulus they pushed through Congress, for all of the fight, was too small. Standing back is not doing the country or his party any good. We believe Americans are ready for hard truths and big ideas.

Read the rest of this Editorial in the New York Times . . .

Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in the New York Times:

President Obama is weighing new steps to bolster the economy, he said Monday. But any measures he takes seem likely to be small ones, and his options are limited with Congress showing little appetite for more spending in a hotly contested midterm election year. . . .

The president . . . said he and his team were “hard at work in identifying additional measures,” including extending tax cuts for the middle class that are scheduled to expire this year, increasing government investment in clean energy and rebuilding more infrastructure.

None of those steps, however, will come close to the $787 billion stimulus measure that Democrats passed at the outset of the Obama presidency. With voters angry about government spending, and economists divided about just what approach is the correct one, such aggressive steps are by now out of the question.

“There’s a deep frustration among economists that they simply don’t know what to do under these circumstances, at least in terms of fiscal policy,” said Bruce Bartlett, an economist who advised Republican presidents.

“I think there are a lot of economists who, in principle, would support some new fiscal stimulus, perhaps a jobs program where people were directly employed by the government or something of that sort,” Mr. Bartlett said. “But politically it’s simply not possible to do anything remotely like that under the current circumstances.” . . .

Read the rest of this article in the Times . . .

Laura Tyson writes:

Our national debate about fiscal policy has become skewed, with far too much focus on the deficit and far too little on unemployment. There is too much worry about the size of government, and too little appreciation for how stimulus spending has helped stabilize the economy and how more of the right kind of government spending could boost job creation and economic growth. By focusing on the wrong things, we are in serious danger of failing to do the right things to help the economy recover from its worst labor market crisis since the Great Depression. . . .

Two forms of spending with the biggest and quickest bang for the buck are unemployment benefits and aid to state governments. The federal government should pledge generous financing increases for both programs through 2011. . . .

An increase in government investment in roads, airports and other kinds of public infrastructure would be cost-effective, too, as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of spending.

Read the rest of this Op-Ed in the Times . . .

Peter S. Goodman writes:

By default, muddling through has emerged as the prescription of the moment.

Read the rest of this story in the Times . . .

Click here to read  about economic recovery and Nature’s New Deal . . .

Click here to read about Economic Stimulus, Green Space and Equal Justice . . .

Judy Baca says: “It’s the moment in the city history in which it decides what kind of place it is. It’s nothing less than that. If you don’t believe in the common spaces and places where we can put public memory, and you sell us everything we don’t need in every square inch of eye space, and you allow the corporate world to run rampant with billboards, there is no space for public art. Maybe L.A. is choosing at this moment who the city wants to be. It’s already chosen not to be the mural capital [any longer].”

Read the interview with Judy Baca in the Los Angeles Times . . .

Judy Baca and Dolores Huerta at the Cesar Chavez Monument at San Jose State University.

A Million Women vs. Wal-Mart
Read what the New York Times has to say
about the Impact Fund’s record-breaking class action


Wal-Mart plaintiffs Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes
at the Impact Fund’s 17th anniversary event May 13, 2010

“For nine years, Wal-Mart has fought to stave off a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company has long discriminated against its female workers in pay and promotions. So far it has avoided a trial on the merits of the issue. The battleground instead is whether the million or so women who have worked for Wal-Mart since 2001 really constitute a class, which the company vigorously disputes. In 2004, a federal district court judge said they did, and in April the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling the case could proceed.” Read more

For more information about the Impact Fund, please visit
www.impactfund.org

Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times:

[W]e can safely predict what [Ben Bernanke] and other officials will say about where we are right now: that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit more slowly than they would like. Unfortunately, that’s not true: this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact. . . .

The important question is whether growth is fast enough to bring down sky-high unemployment. We need about 2.5 percent growth just to keep unemployment from rising, and much faster growth to bring it significantly down. Yet growth is currently running somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, with a good chance that it will slow even further in the months ahead. . . .

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, says that “we’re on the road to recovery.” No, we aren’t. . . .

In the case of the Obama administration, officials seem loath to admit that the original stimulus was too small. True, it was enough to limit the depth of the slump — a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says unemployment would probably be well into double digits now without the stimulus — but it wasn’t big enough to bring unemployment down significantly.

Now, it’s arguable that even in early 2009, when President Obama was at the peak of his popularity, he couldn’t have gotten a bigger plan through the Senate. And he certainly couldn’t pass a supplemental stimulus now. So officials could, with considerable justification, place the onus for the non-recovery on Republican obstructionism. But they’ve chosen, instead, to draw smiley faces on a grim picture, convincing nobody. And the likely result in November — big gains for the obstructionists — will paralyze policy for years to come.

So what should officials be doing, aside from telling the truth about the economy?

The Fed has a number of options. It can buy more long-term and private debt; it can push down long-term interest rates by announcing its intention to keep short-term rates low; it can raise its medium-term target for inflation, making it less attractive for businesses to simply sit on their cash. . . .

The administration . . .  can revamp its deeply unsuccessful attempt to aid troubled homeowners. It can use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored lenders, to engineer mortgage refinancing that puts money in the hands of American families . . . .  It can finally get serious about confronting China over its currency manipulation . . . .

It’s time to admit that what we have now isn’t a recovery, and do whatever we can to change that situation.

Read the rest of this column in the New York Times . . .

Natasha Singer writes in The New York Times:

WHY are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple explanation is that we eat too much junk food and spend too much time in front of screens — be they television, phone or computer — to burn off all those empty calories.

Unfortunately, behavior changes won’t work on their own without seismic societal shifts, health experts say, because eating too much and exercising too little are merely symptoms of a much larger malady. The real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast-food meals; saturation advertising for fatty, sugary products; inner cities that lack supermarkets; and unhealthy, high-stress workplaces.

To that end, health researchers are grappling with how to fix systems that are the root causes of obesity, says Dee W. Edington, the director of the Health Management Research Center at the University of Michigan.

“If you take a changed person and put them in the same environment, they are going to go back to the old behaviors,” says Dr. Edington, who has a doctorate in physical education. “If you change the culture and the environment first, then you can go back into a healthy environment and, when you get change, it sticks.”

Indeed, despite individual efforts by some states to tax soda pop, promote farm stands, require healthier school lunches or mandate calorie information in chain restaurants, obesity rates in the United States are growing. An estimated 72.5 million adults in the United States are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, about 27 percent of adults said they were obese, compared with about 20 percent in 2000, as reported in a C.D.C. study published this month. And, the report said, obesity may cost the medical system as much as $147 billion annually.

Fast-food restaurants can charge lower prices for value meals of hamburgers and French fries than for salad because the government subsidizes the corn and soybeans used for animal feed and vegetable oil, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“We have made it more expensive to eat healthy in a very big way,” says Dr. Popkin, who has a doctorate in agricultural economics and is the author of a book called “The World Is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race.”

The inflation-adjusted price of a McDonald’s quarter-pounder with cheese, for example, fell 5.44 percent from 1990 to 2007, according to an article on the economics of child obesity published in the journal Health Affairs. But the inflation-adjusted price of fruit and vegetables, which are not subject to federal largess, rose 17 percent just from 1997 to 2003, the study said. Cutting agricultural subsidies would have a big impact on people’s eating habits, says Dr. Popkin.

“If we cut the subsidy on whole milk and made it cheaper only to drink low-fat milk,” he says, “people would switch to it and it would save a lot of calories.”

American efforts can seem piecemeal compared with those in Britain, where the government has undertaken a multipronged national attack, requiring changes in schools, health services and the food industry.Britain now places restrictions on advertising fatty, sugary and salty foods during children’s shows, for example. And by 2011, cooking classes will be mandatory for all 11- to 14-year-old students in the nation. The hope is to teach a generation of children who grew up on prepared foods how to cook healthy meals, and perhaps to make eating at home — instead of at the local fried fish-and-chips shop — the default option.

Click here to read the entire article NYT: Fixing a World That Fosters Fat

“Manzanar National Historic Site preserves the stories and resources of Manzanar for this and future generations. We will facilitate a park experience that weaves the stories of the various occupations of Manzanar faithfully, completely, and accurately. Manzanzar Historic Site will provide leadership for the protection and interpretation of associated sites. From this foundation, the park will stimulate and provoke a greater understanding of, and dialogue on, civil rights, democracy, and freedom.” Mission Statement 2001

Learn more about Monuments: Diversity, Democracy and Freedom.

Visit the Heritage Parkscape online and on flickr.

Veronica Rocha writes in The Los Angeles Times and Glendale News-Press:

Ed O’Keefe reports in the Washington Post column Federal Eye: Keeping Tabs on the Government as follows:

The Interior Department is implementing new workplace rules for diversity and inclusion amid years of reports that it hasn’t done a good job hiring and promoting minorities.

A study conducted by the department’s black employees last year found that Interior was the only Cabinet-level agency falling below “relevant civilian labor force” representation for African Americans and was experiencing more departures of black employees than new hires.

The poor numbers prompted Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to call for changes and he announced a series of changes last month, including a decision to link performance evaluations and awards for senior executives to their progress on hiring diversity. He also ordered managers to file monthly diversity reports. . . .

Interior certainly is one of the most diverse and varied departments — responsible for everything from last weekend’s deadly off-road racing crash to cleaning up the Gulf Coast and managing national parks. But will monthly diversity reports, a new diversity chief and strategic hiring diversity plans help recruit and promote more minorities? Or are Salazar’s plans just window dressing that require much more?

The City Project has posted the following comment on the Washington Post web site:

Diversity in the work place at the Department of Interior (DOI) is a step in the right direction, but it is not nearly enough to ensure equal access to the benefits of the National Park Service (NPS) and other DOI resources.

A diverse and growing alliance is working to diversify access to and support for National Parks to help distribute the economic benefits of DOI and NPS. A diverse work force is important to get Americans back to work in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. DOI and NPS can learn important lessons from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of the most successful New Deal programs.

The CCC created 8,000 new parks including state parks, planted 2 billion trees – more than half of all trees planted in U.S. up until that time — and created 3 million new jobs for young men — mostly men, and mostly white. CCC programs were generally off limits to most people of color and women. DOI can do better than that today in its own workforce.

Secretary Ken Salazar must do more than diversify his own work force through CCC type programs. DOI must also ensure that recipients of federal funds like the California Department of Parks and Recreation comply with civil rights and environmental laws by keeping endangered state parks open for all. DOI’s own National Trust for Historic Preservation includes state parks on the list of eleven most endangered historic places in the United States.

Yet DOI has failed to investigate an Administrative Complaint filed over a year ago that would provide a plan to distribute the benefits and burdens of state park resources fairly for all. We have personally briefed federal officials but they have failed to investigate, including Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Will Shafroth, head of President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Campaign.

Diverse allies continue to seek equal justice to save state parks for all. These allies include California LULAC (League of Latin American Citizens), The City Project, Coastwalk California, Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles (one of the first black environmental organizations in the country), CPEHN (California Pan Ethnic Health Network), SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center), and Robert Bracamontes of the Acjachemen nation.

Learn more about our struggle to persuade DOI and EPA to enforce the law to save state parks for all here: http://www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/6059

Robert Garcia, Executive Director and Counsel
The City Project

Lauren Osen of KPCC/NPR reports:

Vast swatches of L.A. are limited to few grocery options. These are L.A.’s “food deserts” and their lack of nutritional resources is reflected in the health of the people who live in them.

L.A.’s location, coupled with its vibrant ethnic communities, makes it a culinary crossroads. Positioned in what is arguably the country’s richest agricultural state, the region boasts farmers’ markets and cutting-edge cuisine. Still, “food deserts” exist in L.A.

For residents in South Los Angeles, the rate of obesity is 34.4 percent, while for those living in West L.A. the rate is only 11.7 percent. The rate of obesity for teenagers in South L.A. is 19.6 percent; for teens in West L.A. it’s 4.1 percent.

After the 1992 riots, city government made it a priority to bring full-service grocery stores back to South and East L.A. neighborhoods, and though there were some successes, most of the stores that did open closed soon after.

In the ’60s and ’70s, the relatively affluent fled the inner city for the suburbs, and many supermarkets followed them.

Now, there are 60 full-service grocery stores in South L.A. serving an average population of 22,156 residents per-store, compared to 57 stores in West L.A. that serve only 11,150 residents on average.

While the disparity in access to healthy food is undeniable, the potential solutions are more debatable

Read the full transcript with links to more information here KPCC

Louis Sahagun writes in the Los Angeles Times

Environmental activist George Wolfe has always believed the best way to know a river is to kayak it. So when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently designated the entire Los Angeles River a “traditional navigable waterway,” he organized an expedition. . . .

Normally, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, which have operated the river for decades as a flood-control channel, would not allow such a voyage because of safety and water-quality concerns. In this case, however, they would neither approve nor deny a boating permit pending clarification of what is allowable in the river under the new EPA designation.

Wolfe’s party took advantage of that legal gray area, launching at dawn on a recent workday in one canoe and five brightly colored kayaks just south of Los Feliz Boulevard in Atwater Village — one of the few stretches of the Los Angeles River that has a soft bottom and still looks like a river. . . .

Most people see the Los Angeles River from a freeway: a flood-control channel of treated water a few inches deep flowing between graffiti-marred concrete banks strewn with trash and occasionally polluted with chemicals illegally dumped in storm drains and gutters that empty into it. . . .

The waterway is slowly being transformed into a greenbelt of parks, trees and bike paths as a result of a statewide recreational bond measure approved by voters. . . .

Now, it has been formally christened a navigable waterway, subject in its entirety, from Chatsworth to Long Beach, to the protections of the federal Clean Water Act.

Read the entire story Los Angeles Times . . .