But the University of California may slow that momentum. At a Board of Regents meeting Tuesday in San Francisco, a proposal meant to curb harassment of Jewish students at UC’s 10 campuses was unveiled. It declares “anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California” and that university officials must “challenge speech and action reflecting bias, stereotypes, and/or intolerance.”

This is significantly stronger language than a previous proposal unveiled last year — and quickly rejected — that was more generally worded without a specific reference to anti-Zionism. UC regents are expected to vote on the language at their meeting next Wednesday in San Francisco.

But that vote will only come after they hear sharp protests from students and faculty who see this policy as damaging their speech rights and exonerating Israeli for its treatment of Palestinians.

Professor: Criticizing Israel not equal to bigotry

UC Berkeley literature professor Judith Butler told the Los Angeles Times that the language of the policy allowed for arbitrary definitions of what is unacceptable speech:

[She] questioned who would define that term or decide what crossed the line into discriminatory speech.

 

And although the statement provides no sanctions, calling on university leaders to “challenge” bias, Butler wondered whether those singled out as criticizing Zionism would be denied faculty research funds, promotions or other benefits.

 

“To include anti-Zionism as an instance of intolerance and bigotry is actually to suppress a set of political beliefs that we actually need to hear,” she said. “It saddens me and strikes at the heart of the task of the university.”

UCLA student Eitan Peled, a member of the liberal Jewish Voice for Peace group, blasted the proposal in an interview with the Associated Press. “As a student who considers my work advocating for Palestinian human rights as an expression of my Jewish values, I am surprised to see that criticism of a modern nation-state that regularly violates international law is so centered in a report against intolerance,” he told AP. “Debate over Zionism and the abusive policies of the state of Israel absolutely should be debated vigorously, not silenced by accusations of discrimination.”

Ex-UC president: ‘Microaggression’ against Jews common

Meanwhile, former University of California President Mark Yudof is also speaking out about the BDS movement and the treatment of Jewish students at some universities. He’s joined the advisory board of the Academic Engagement Network, which seeks to “bring together faculty members and administrators to address issues related to Israel.” Its members include Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard president.

In a December essay published by Inside Higher Education, Yudof depicted the BDS movement as trying to shut down discussion of issues involving Israel while linking Zionism to other issues, including police violence toward African Americans. “In age of exquisite sensitivity on some campuses to microaggression, or language that subtly offends underrepresented groups, the ironic toleration of microaggression against Jews often goes unnoted,” he wrote.

It was while Yudof was UC president that the UC system suffered perhaps its most notorious display of anti-Israeli sentiment. Eleven UC Irvine and UC Riverside students were arrested in February 2010 after they interrupted a speech at UC Irvine by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and refused to let him complete his remarks. The incident triggered vast reaction.

Which brings us to the affordable-housing policies of the majority faction of the San Diego City Council.

I have lived in San Diego for more than eight years and believe that during that time, it has been a relatively well-run city in that it’s dealt with a fiscal crisis in a responsible manner; done a good job in keeping crime low; and avoided the ingrained hostility to business seen in so many coastal Califoria cities.

The most constructive politicians haven’t just been Republicans such as firebrand reformer Carl DeMaio and mainstream, businesslike former Mayor Jerry Sanders. They’ve also been City Council Democrats like former council leader Tony Young and Todd Gloria, presently the interim mayor.

That’s why I’m so stunned at the absolutely nutty approach Gloria and council Democrats are taking on the affordable housing front. The great majority of people who study economics with an empirical bent — including practical liberals like Slate economics writer Matt Yglesias — have concluded that the government command-and-control model of trying to dictate housing outcomes through regulations, impact fees and project conditions is an abject failure. Here is a sample of Yglesias’ thinking from last year after he had digested a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition:

Here’s the book Yglesias wrote on the topic.

Sacramento housing policies failing ‘by any measure’

That’s how the Golden State’s housing policies look from the outside. Here’s how they look to Sacramento lawyer and community activist Craig Powell:

“A discussion of what the city should do to increase the availability of affordable housing all too often turns into an argument between builders and low-income housing advocates. It’s the kind of discussion that opens up a gulf of ideologies and yields little common ground. But there is common ground on one point: The city’s existing low-income housing policies are, by any measure, failing.

“Look to North Natomas. It is one of several designated ‘growth areas’ where the city requires builders to set aside 15 percent of all new houses and apartments for low-income residents under the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance (also known as the mixed-income housing ordinance). The ordinance’s goals were idealistic: 15 percent of all new houses and 15 percent of all new apartments in North Natomas would be built for the subsidized poor who would live happily side by side with their unsubsidized neighbors, who would pay the full market rate for their houses and apartments.

“The reality turned out to be dramatically different. It turns out that it’s exceedingly difficult to make subsidized low-income single-family homes work in the real world. It’s hard for such folks to get financing, even at subsidized home prices. It’s very expensive for builders who must incur the same cost to build a subsidized house as one they sell at market prices. Once a subsidized home is bought by an eligible buyer, it turns out they can’t sell it in the future for a profit: They have to turn any profit over to the government and the home must be sold to another qualifying low-income buyer. Such a limitation on resale lasts for 45 or 50 years. How would you like to buy a home, take on all the risks of a mortgage, but never be able to benefit from the appreciation of your property?

“So North Natomas builders of large subdivisions, being rational actors, decide to meet their 15 percent low-income housing mandates by building less expensive low-income units in apartment houses with 200 units or more, where 80 percent to 100 percent of the residents would end up being low-income tenants—exactly the sort of environment that created no end of social pathologies in large-scale public-housing projects in cities built throughout the country over the past 60-plus years. … the city’s inclusionary housing ordinance has, in practice, led to precisely the sort of housing that everyone acknowledges is a major mistake.”

$31 million project yields 96 beds!

None of this history has sunk in with Todd Gloria and San Diego City Council Democrats Marti Emerald, David Alvarez (the Dem mayoral candidate in Tuesday’s special election), Sherri Lightner and Myrtle Cole. They want to sock commercial developers with a huge fee increase to provide more funding for traditional government command-and-control housing-creation polices. They say that the fee now up for a raise was cut in half in 1996, and that’s a prime reason housing is so expensive.

Oh, come on! Even if the fee is increased by the massive amount council Democrats want, it will only provide about 100 homes a year — in a city with tens of thousands of families on a waiting list for affordable housing.

Then there’s this: the insane way the city of San Diego has used the money it did have for affordable housing, most notably $31 million on 96 beds. I repeat, $31 million for 96 beds.

“The new permanent homeless shelter downtown, former World Trade Center, is costing more than $450,000 per room, according to news reports. 

“Demanding brand-new affordable housing in redevelopment areas costing more than $337,000 per unit is akin to demanding Mercedes-Benz to sell 20 percent of its new cars to people who can’t afford them.”

That’s from an essay written by former San Diego Councilman Fred Schnaubelt, an expert on land-use issues who once was invited to testify before a presidential housing commission. Schnaubelt makes more sense on this issue than anyone in San Diego — and he’s not just a critic. He offers what for California is out-of-the-box thinking:

“In 2010, 18,228 ‘used’ or previously occupied apartments sold countywide at a median price of $110,664. Just one of many reasons so many Americans think the government is on the wrong track. What’s wrong with a used car or used house for people with limited education, limited work experience and limited income? It is a question needing an answer.

“In 30 years, not a single person has been able to explain why poor people, many without a high school diploma and who self-report to the census they can’t speak English, are entitled to enjoy the most expensive consumer product in society — a brand-new home or apartment. Or why housing for the poor should cost more than triple the housing occupied by most self-supporting renters.

“According to a University of Michigan study, ‘New Homes and Poor People,’ the construction of 1,000 new dwelling units, both homes and apartments, makes it possible for 3,545 households to move to better accommodations. Of the 3,545 moves surveyed, 1,290 were by low- and moderate-income families. This is the essence of upward mobility. Anyone who didn’t move to a brand-new house when they left their parents’ home or graduated from college knows how the housing market works. Used housing is ‘affordable housing.’”

Unfortunately, Schnaubelt hasn’t been on the San Diego City Council since 1981, and his smarts have no influence on San Diego’s present loony policy, namely (my words) the following:

“Let’s throw millions of dollars at a problem with an approach that has a history of meager results. And let’s raise the money to throw at the problem by socking it to commercial developers with a huge fee increase at a time when competition for their projects is intense.”

No wonder business interests are trying to get the fee hike overturned at the ballot box.

The boilerplate paragraph that’s never found

But what’s also unfortunate is how rare it is to see basic context in any story about government command-and-control housing policies.

I have whined for 25 years that any stories on Cuba that are more than 500 words should have a paragraph like this:

“Although Cuba is a socialist state associated with progressive values, in a key way it resembles pre-1995 South Africa. Black and part-black Cubans make up more than 60 percent of the population but are rarely found in key positions, which are held almost entirely by Cubans of Spanish descent.”

The Economist agrees with me about Cuba’s ruling “white gerontacracy.”

I have whined for nearly as long that stories on affordable housing in California that are more than 500 words should have content like this:

“Affordable-housing programs in California that use fees from developers and project conditions have a weak track record of actually decreasing rents and home prices.”

 Sure, that content could be made even more thorough:

“Affordable-housing programs in California that use fees from developers and project conditions have a weak track record of actually decreasing rents and home prices. But advocates for the poor say alternatives have not been offered by Republicans and contend many conservatives simply don’t care about making housing affordable for the less affluent and the underprivileged.”

If that second part were included, that would be fine by me — because at the very least, we’d have every story of more than 500 words making the point that existing policies aren’t working. Then maybe it would dawn on politicians in San Diego and elsewhere that failed public policies shouldn’t be continued ad infinitum.

Dumb de dumb dumb.

Some states’ main retirement systems may be in worse shape than the California Public Employees’ Retirement System or the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. But at the local level, there are more government bodies facing ruin in the Golden State than anywhere in the U.S.

And the political influence of the pension status quo-ists is stunning. Gov. Jerry Brown may tout himself as a pension reformer, but the union allies he put in charge of the state Public Employment Relations Board are so militant that they attempted to block a city of San Diego pension reform measure before it even got on the ballot. There are many examples of such reform monkey-wrenching around the Golden State.

Fossil-fuel ‘divestment’ comes with a price

This doesn’t change the basic fact that with all the strain that underfunded pensions are causing cities, counties and school districts, it is more crucial than ever that pension funds focus like a laser on generating healthy returns.

But this is California. Smart, responsible governance is for others, not for us.

And so we see the state’s emergence as Ground Zero for a movement dedicated to pension fund divestment in a consistently lucrative sector of the economy.

The Contra Costa Times has the details:

“In the 1980s, hundreds of American cities, states and universities sold their investments in South African companies as part of a protest against that country’s former apartheid government.

“Now, environmental groups are trying to duplicate that effort, but with global warming polluters in the role of villain. And, just as with South African divestment a generation ago, the Bay Area is at the head of the parade again, prompting cheers from environmentalists and jeers from skeptics who say the whole effort amounts to little more than empty symbolism.

“On Tuesday night, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose, is scheduled to vote to drop its investments in fossil fuel companies. If the measure passes, as expected, the water district will become the first Silicon Valley governmental agency to join the movement. It also will join Berkeley, San Francisco and Richmond — along with Seattle, Portland and other cities — among a small, but growing group of local governments that have taken similar stands in recent months.”

Bailing on oil, gas firms just as they boom

But what makes this especially ludicrous is that the world is going in the opposite direction — toward expanded use of natural gas and oil — despite fears about climate change. That’s thanks to the stunning technological breakthroughs that have made energy exploration much more efficient. Don’t take that from me. Take that from The New York Times, which devoted a special section to the new energy world on Oct. 26, 2011. Its key takeaway:

“From the high Arctic waters north of Norway to a shale field in Argentine Patagonia, from the oil sands of western Canada to deepwater oil prospects off the shores of Angola, giant new oil and gas fields are being mined, steamed and drilled with new technologies. Put together, these fuels should bring hundreds of billions of barrels of recoverable reserves to market in coming decades and shift geopolitical and economic calculations around the world.” …

“’Use whatever hackneyed phrase you want, like tectonic shift or game-changer,’” Edward L. Morse, global head of commodity research at Citigroup, told the Times. ‘These sources will dramatically change the energy supply outlook, and there is little debate about that.’”

So environmental zealots are trying to force pension funds to abandon fossil-fuel companies just as they approach a bonanza, courtesy of fracking, horizontal drilling and other newly productive exploration strategies. This is crazy.

Most of the world understands that this new era is coming. This spring, I did a 13-part blog series on all the different nations that have jumped on the fracking phenomenon — Germany, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Poland, Algeria, Indonesia and Great Britain.

Energy giants won’t suffer — just Californians

But California greens would rather just pretend none of this is happening. And so we’ll see pressure on pension funds to divest holdings in fossil-fuel companies even as they solidify their standing as one of the safest, smartest investments for decades to come. Even as they occasion paragraphs like the following from The Economist:

“Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalisation of $417 billion, vies with Apple as the world’s most valuable listed company. Royal Dutch Shell is the most valuable firm on the London Stock Exchange. Chevron employs 62,000 people; Total operates in more than 130 countries. In BP’s case the big numbers are more calamitous—it may end up paying out $90 billion in fines and compensation stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But its ability to do so and stay standing is a perverse sign of the company’s underlying strength.”

Losing a few investments from California pension funds isn’t going to hurt these behemoths in the slightest.

Instead, the pain from that decision will have to be borne by Californians dealing with chronic pension shortfalls as a new and near-permanent fixture of local governance.

Great. Just great.