Super Tuesday is over. Do you feel super about it? Can I get a big “meh”?

Despite all the policy pushing out there, most people vote based on what they feel. Some Democrats won and some lost, the same thing happened with MAGAites. Don’t get me wrong, voting is an important civic duty, and elections do matter. The build up for March 5 was almost as bad as how boring it was.

President Biden’s primary vote totals are significantly outpacing those of former President Obama in his 2012 re-election campaign. And with all the hoo-ha about horse races, a significant action by the president yesterday will benefit millions of Americans is not getting the attention it deserves: 

• …the Biden administration announced an $8 cap on late fees charged by credit card issuers that have more than a million accounts. These companies hold more than 95% of outstanding credit card debt. Currently, fees average $32, and they fall on more than 45 million people. The White House estimates that late fees currently cost Americans about $25 billion a year. The rule change will save Americans about $10 billion a year.

Back to election central… Nikki Haley dropped out, sore winner Trump left significant parts of the electorate behind, Biden had better be hoping for resolution of the conflict in Gaza/Israel, and the voters of San Diego’s East County want an obnoxious Republican Assembly person to represent them. (We’ll see how that works out in practical terms soon enough)

In California, the big unanswered question as I write this (I think it will squeak through) concerns the fate of Proposition 1, the package Gov. Newsom fought hard to create his vision for addressing homelessness. There was, we were told, something for everybody in the package; mental health care and housing as opposed to incarceration, local control, and yada, yada.

Support for the measure faded in the weeks leading up to the election, driven by arguments about cuts in mental health services (really just a shifting of funding), the likelihood of failure for a one-size-fits-all program (true) overseen by ghouls in Sacramento (maybe), and the need to do nothing right away (for sure)..

I’ll both-sides this by saying each side was right. And wrong. They were both wrong because the thinking behind the package was centered on prevailing mythology about unhoused people needing treatment. The real problem here is a failure to acknowledge the very real economic forces leading to living on the street. 

While I certainly approve of building out our mental health infrastructure –there are plenty of housed people living with mental illness, and addiction is not at all unique to any strata of economic status– the overall safety net needs to include some form of direct payments to struggling households. 

There are several ways this could be approached; making a living wage the standard (as Jim Miller does in today’s Union-Tribune) or through some form of guaranteed basic income  (as I wrote about yesterday), for starters. 

A couple of other local notes… The Mayor got his wish. He’ll be running against sort-of-Republican Larry Turner in November. Of course, the Independent Expenditure committee funding all those :”Hey, look! A Republican!” ads weren't coordinating with the candidate, just like the PAC that spent a ton of cash to let voters know that Steve Garvey was “too conservative for California” weren't linked to Rep.Adam Schiff.

FYI– According to early returns, 49.1% of San Diegans didn’t choose to fill in the circle next to Mayor Todd Gloria’s name. None of that matters now, because the only things of interest left for the General Election are: will Turner be disqualified for misrepresenting his address? Or what will the over/under for Gloria be, with a baseline of 56% (his margin against Barbara Bry in 2020)? 

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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The Next Chapter In The Battle Of The Books: Librarians by Bruce Maiman at HuffPo Opinion

• If there’s a place where silence meets solitude in perfect confluence, it’s the library. You can hear the silence. Every sound interrupting that silence is magnified. A cough, a sneeze or a sudden burst of laughter. Even the whispers of one person to another coming from a distant table. Those interruptions enhance the beauty and one’s appreciation for the silence you hear in a library.

• And now it’s the books being silenced. Books shouldn’t be banned. They should be explained.

• Efforts like this are nothing more than a rationale for laws that restrict someone else’s access to free choice, and purge books and ideas that might challenge strict conservative values. It all seems driven by a group of people reacting to people who aren’t like them, who don’t think like them, and they don’t like people who aren’t like them and don’t think like them.

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Business, civic groups pitch 'open streets' event on 163 freeway in Balboa Park via Andrew Bowen at KPBS

• A coalition of business and civic groups is asking Caltrans for permission to hold a one-day "open streets" event on State Route 163 that would invite people to walk and bike in an otherwise off-limits section of Balboa Park.

• "Park-Way for a Day" would be similar to CicloSDias, a regular San Diego event when streets are closed off to cars, opened for pedestrians and cyclists and activated with food vendors, art installations, music and activities.

• The proposal has been endorsed by World Design Capital 2024, a yearlong series of events taking place in San Diego and Tijuana meant to highlight the region as a hub for design that fosters innovation and collaboration in public spaces.

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Microsoft and Starbucks have now pledged to stay neutral in union organizing campaigns by Charles Jay at Daily Kos

• Two leading U.S. corporations—first Microsoft and more recently Starbucks, in a major reversal—have now declared that they will stay neutral and not oppose efforts by their employees to join unions. This could be a major breakthrough for organizing in the private sector where only 6% of workers are union members. 

• December saw two major developments. Starbucks suddenly reversed course and abandoned its union busting campaign, declaring its desire to reach contract agreements with its unionized stores by the end of 2024. It also pledged to conduct bargaining “in a way that honors and respects the dignity, individuality and privacy of our partners.”

• That same month, Microsoft President Brad Smith took part in a forum at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he announced that the tech giant will stay neutral if any group of workers seeks to form a union. About 100,000 Microsoft employees would be eligible for unionization.