US Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Case on Homelessness

The US Supreme court decided not to hear a case from Boise, Idaho that had an ordinance around homelessness. NPR has this short description:

The case stems from a lawsuit filed nearly a decade ago. A handful of people sued the city of Boise for repeatedly ticketing them for violating an ordinance against sleeping outside. While Boise officials later amended it to prohibit citations when shelters are full, the 9th Circuit eventually determined the local law was unconstitutional . . . That means states across the 9th Circuit can no longer enforce similar statutes if they don't have enough shelter beds for homeless people sleeping outside.

Algeria: Abdelmadjid Tebboune is next President. But for how long?

Algeria held elections for president this past Thursday. Abdelmadjid Tebboune won the election with 58% of the vote. The BBC has the following:

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of the Algerian capital, Algiers, in protest at the results of Thursday's presidential election. . . . Polling day itself was marred by protests and calls for people to boycott the election.

. . . "The vote is rigged. Your elections are of no concern to us and your president will not govern us," demonstrators chanted in central Algiers on Friday.

. . . Mr Tebboune rose from a long career as a civil servant to become prime minister in 2017 but lasted just seven months after falling out with influential businessmen. He also served as housing minister and information minister.

Libya: Decisive Battle for Tripoli?

The latest from Libya. From Japan Times:

Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar announced a “decisive battle” for the capital Tripoli on Thursday, eight months after he launched an offensive to wrest it from the unity government. “Zero hour has come for the broad and total assault expected by every free and honest Libyan,” he said in a speech aired by the pro-Haftar Al-Hadath channel.

When I read about Haftar making this claim, I was scratching my head. Why would he make such a bold claim when from everything I've read the battle for Tripoli has been stalled since it started back in April. One thought did come to mind on why he would make this bold claim. In my previous blog post on Libya I did link to two Reuters articles (here and here) that mentioned that oil fields under control of Haftar were temporarily loss to Tripoli and Chad mercenary forces. Is Haftar finally feeling pressure on his flanks and figures his best move is an attempt to get Tripoli to surrender?

 AP hints at another reason:

Hifter’s declaration of his most recent offensive came after the signing of a security arrangement and maritime deal between Sarraj’s government and Turkey last month. The maritime deal would give Turkey access to a Mediterranean Sea economic zone offshore from Libya. Cyprus, Egypt and Greece claim the accord violates international law.

Since Turkey has long sided with Tripoli, I'm not sure this would give Haftar the impetus to make such an announcement. Though, as the article goes on to say, this Turkey-Tripoli agreement does provide some Mediterranean intrigue that goes beyond these two countries. This also has implications for Greece, Cyprus and Egypt.

Haftar's declaration was just not words. The AP continues.

Just two days after rebel Libyan commander Khalifa Hifter declared a “final” and decisive battle for the capital Tripoli, heavy fighting raged for a 24-hour period between his troops and militias loosely allied with the internationally backed government based in the city, officials said Saturday.

. . . Hifter’s forces took control of the town of al-Tawghaar, just south of Tripoli, the LNA said. But Tripoli-based forces disputed that claim.

Now I tried to find al-Tawghaar on the map, but couldn't. I do know that in October, the LNA (Haftar) had made it to Aziziyah, which is 40 kilometers from Tripoli.

From al Jazeera, European nations want the fighting to end:

The leaders of France, Germany and Italy have urged all sides in the Libyan conflict to cease fighting, after renegade military chief Khalifa Haftar called on his forces to advance towards the centre of the capital, Tripoli. Following a European Union summit on Friday in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Giuseppe Conte said stability in Libya "can only be achieved through a political solution" . . . Separately, Russia's foreign ministry on Friday called for dialogue between Libya's foreign warring factions. 

Since I do believe that both France and Russia has been helping Haftar, I'm not sure how seriously I should take those comments. However, they may be weighing Turkey's growing role in Libya. Of course, Turkey also has issues in Syria. Part of me really thinks that Russia encouraged Haftar to make this move.

Though I think Haftar is making a serious error in judgement as the battle in Tripoli is likely to be street by street and bloody, it does appear that there is an attempt to end the stalemate.

Pensions: The Coming Crisis Isn't Just in the United States

The LA Times has a couple articles up about pension issues across the globe. Here are some quotes from a Nov 24th article:

Tens of millions more pensioners and savers around the world are facing the same retirement insecurity, as plunging interest rates since the financial crisis wreak havoc on the funding of schemes. As average life expectancy increases, pensions have become a defining political issue in countries as diverse as Russia, Japan and Brazil.

. . . A common factor in this global pension upheaval has been suppressed bond yields. Bonds have historically provided a simple match for the cash flows needed to be paid out to the members of retirement schemes. But decades of declining bond yields have made it far harder for pension funds to buy an income for their members, pushing them more into equities and other riskier, untraded investments, such as real estate and private equity. 

Sweden: far right Sweden Democrats to become largest political party in 2022?

Could the Sweden Democrats become the largest party in Sweden come the next election - 2022? As a note, all the other parties would probably prefer not to align themselves with the Sweden Democrats (at least not at this point in time).

Reuters mention that the Sweden Democrats polled at 24.2%. This would make them the largest party. The Social Democrats, which has long been the largest party in Sweden, polled at 22.2%. In the 2018 vote, the Sweden Democrats came in at 17.5% while the Social Democrats got 28.3% of the vote. The poll was put out by a polling company called Demoskop.

I was able to track down a Sifo poll result that came out at the same time. The polling results are slightly different with the Social Democrats at 24.4% and the Sweden Democrats at 23.0%. I'm breaking this down in the alliances that I learned about when blogging about the 2018 results with some notes as the two alliances hit some snags. Currently, the Social Democrats lead a minority government.

Libya: Fighting for Control of Oil Fields

While the LNA (Libyan National Army - Eastern Libya) and the GNA (Government of National Accord (Tripoli) are fighting around Tripoli, there are some flank moves occurring against the LNA in southern Libya.

Reuters reported the following:

Forces based in eastern Libya said on Wednesday they had driven rival factions from the 70,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) El Feel oilfield after attacking the area with air strikes, leading to production being halted.

The eastern-based forces had counter-attacked after forces aligned to the internationally recognized government in Tripoli took control of the field earlier in the day. 

Libya: Washington calling Haftar

The Washington Post reports that the US via the State Department is asking the LNA (Libyan National Army) to stop their attack on Tripoli:

“The message to General Hifter was very clear, that we feel a military incursion into Tripoli would be disastrous right now, or ever,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to characterize the closed-door discussions.

. . . Germany is leading an effort to hold a political summit on Libya to breathe new life into a U.N. process.

. . . The official said the United States had asked Libyans to find ways to reduce the violence and had stressed to Hifter the “very negative potential” outcomes from Russian involvement.

. .  . Asked about reports of divisions between the State Department, which has voiced consistent support for the GNA, and the White House, which is seen as more open to Hifter, the official said: “I don’t see a Hifter solution; I don’t see a GNA solution; I see a Libyan solution.”

(Note: I've been using the spelling of Haftar while the Washington Post is using the spelling Hifter.)

What first came to my mind was why is the US suddenly interested again in what is happening in Libya? The last I heard about any Washington interaction with Haftar was back in April when I quoted the following in an older blog post:

Sweden: Gangs and Explosions

I was talking with a friend who is a native Swede. He hasn't lived in the country for years, however. I decided to ask him if he followed the news about Sweden and what he might know about the increasing grenade attacks. He asked if I was getting my news from right wing news sources. Though some of the news reports I read do come from right wing news sources, not all of it does. Here's a couple articles that would hardly be considered right wing:

BBC has the following to say:

Swedish police are dealing with unprecedented levels of attacks, targeting city centre locations too. The bomb squad was called to deal with 97 explosions in the first nine months of this year.

. . . This category of crime was not even logged prior to 2017. Then, in 2018, there were 162 explosions and in the past two months alone the bomb squad have been called to almost 30.

. . . Police say the criminals involved are part of the same gangs behind an increase in gun crime, often connected to the drugs trade. Sweden saw 45 deadly shootings in 2018, compared with 17 in 2011. 

Los Angeles Homeless: what does $630,000 build?

There was a recent audit of Los Angeles' Proposition HHH that highlighted the high cost of building housing for the homeless. Yahoo wrote this a couple months:

At an average cost of $531,373 per unit – with many apartments costing more than $600,000 each – building costs of many of the homeless units will exceed the median sale price of a market-rate condominium. In the city of Los Angeles, the median price for a condo is $546,000, and a single-family home in Los Angeles County has a median price of $627,690, the study states.

Sweden Gangs: Denmark Putting Up Border Checks

Via The Guardian, we are learning that gang violence is crossing over from Sweden to Denmark. So much so that Denmark has decided to put up border checks between the two nations:

There have been 13 explosions in and around Copenhagen since February, including the bombing in August of the Danish tax agency by what authorities described as “criminals who had crossed the border from Sweden”. Two Swedish nationals are in custody.

. . . Malmö, 25 miles from Copenhagen by the Øresund crossing, has been the scene of many of the gangland bombings and shootings that have recently struck Sweden. On Saturday a 15-year-old boy was shot dead in the city and another teenager critically wounded. Both were known to police.

Los Angeles Homeless Issue: Will Housing Really Change Anything?

I came across this NBC Los Angeles video and report. The video and article are mainly about Heidi Van Tassel, a woman who had a bucket of feces dumped on her head by a homeless person in Hollywood.

The article also shows that reports of crimes by the homeless has increased from 6,528 in 2017 to 9,846 in 2018. 2019 is expected to increase above this level. As of September 2019, reported crime is at 9,173. If you do a straight line calculation, 2019 could hit 12,230.

The article blames mental health and drug problems. It also states that many of those that are homeless are just released back onto the streets where they no doubt will commit similar crimes again.

Guyana: Recommendations from Bloomberg

Yahoo has an opinion piece that has recommendations for how Guyana should deal with its 2020 and beyond oil wealth. Here are some recommendations:

Don’t bring the oil onshore . . . Building a tangle of pipelines and refineries is exorbitant, brings marginal returns and makes the host country a magnet for corruption, [Rice University energy expert Francisco] Monaldi said. One of the headline scandals in Brazil’s Carwash corruption probe was a head-turning case of contract fraud on a grossly overpriced domestic refinery and petrochemical complex launched amid the euphoria over earlier big oil discoveries . . . 

Resist the local content temptation . . . Get the rules straight . . . Forge a political pact . . . Hire globally. 

Algeria: Presidential Candidates Announced for December 12th Elections

Algeria has scheduled elections for December 12th. The presidential candidates were recently announced. Al Jazeera lists those running for president:

1. Former Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune
2. Former Prime Minister Ali Benflis
3. Former Culture Minister Azzedine Mihoubi
4. Former Tourism Minister Abdelkader Bengrine
5. Abdelaziz Belaid, head of the El Mostakbal Movement party

Some of the facts that Al Jazeera mentions are that all are establishment candidates, 23 candidates initially applied to run, and that each candidate had to get at least 50,000 signatures.

California: Fiscal Audit of Cities

Cal Matters has an article up about an audit that was conducted by State Auditor Elaine Howle. The audit was done to determine the level of fiscal risk for California cities. The audit looked at various factors:

Cash position/liquidity
Debt Burden
Financial Reserves
Revenue Trends
Retirement Obligations

The cities were ranked as red, yellow or green -- which is worst and which is best is self-explanatory.

Eighteen cities ranked as red. The 2 that shocked me the most were Monrovia (10th) and West Covina (17th). I recently did a blog post about the budget issues in Montebello. That city ranks 31st and was listed as yellow.

Libya: Bogged Down

BBC has an Oct 27, 2019 article up that states that there isn't much movement in the battle between the Libyan National Army (Benghazi/Tobruk) and the Government of National Accord (Tripoli).

He [Haftar] heads the self-styled Libyan National Army, and already controls most of the country. But six months on, Tripoli still eludes the moustachioed military strongman, who is backed by the Tobruk-based government. He is stuck on the southern outskirts of the city.

. . . "This conflict is largely sustained by the foreign powers backing Haftar," said Emad Badi, a Libyan non-resident scholar at the US-based Middle East Institute.

. . . "Haftar can't and won't win, but Egypt and the Emiratis can't afford to lose. The Egyptians want to control their Western neighbour, and they don't want terrorism on their border. For them it's existential," he said.