The Letter That Should Have Ran Today

Yipee! My latest letter to the editor of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin finally came into print.

But, sadly, it was not the letter I wanted to see printed.

The first letter was sent on April 16th, the day after the Tea Bag event, and should have been printed soon after to have retained its pertinance. But, as any of us can check out for ourselves, it was printed today, May 4th. I can't blame the Daily Bull's 30 day rule; my previous letter was printed four weeks before April 16th. After waiting two weeks, after seeing a handful of similar letters reach the light of day, and after...surprise, surprise, reading a flood of overwrought pro-Tea-Bag letters, I figured that my letter met the circular file. So I recalled a copy from my hard-drive, re-thought it, re-worked it, and tied it to a recently launched effort to bring badly needed campaign finance reform to our own backyard. After an hour of work, I submitted it to the Daily Bulletin on May 1st via email, asking the Letters editor to pull the first one and replace it with what was sent.

Although there may be an alternative explanation for what happened, such as my original letter may have been in the pipeline for printing today all along, I do wonder if the secret of getting a now stale letter out of the circular file and resurrected into print is to send a second, much more punchier letter?

It may always remain a mystery, known only to God and some folk inside the Daily Bull, but it also may be of interest for my readers to ponder. So I present both letters for your perusal.

First, my original letter, emailed April 16th, and printed today, May 4, 2009:

Dear Editor:

Looks like San Bernardino County Supervisor Neil Derry has joined magicians and con-artists in perfecting the art of fooling the public through distraction.

Like McCain in the last election, Supervisor Derry, in his Point of View of April 16, 2009, is now positioning himself as a foe of earmarks. Additionally, he now rightfully charges his fellow GOP colleague’s with shafting poor and senior citizens in the less densely populated sections of our county. Usually, I would congratulate him -- if it were not for the glaring suspicion that his new and very media-savvy chief of staff, George Watson, is really behind this new populist posture.

Along with his hiring of the indicted Jim Erwin as Watson’s predecessor, and the recent addition to his paid staff of the immigrant-bashing activist Jim Turner. Neil Derry is most infamous for being one of three poster children for what appears to be a county culture of Illinois-like “Pay to Play.” Along with Supervisors Ovitt and Biane, and a host of local GOP operatives and PACs, Derry paved the way for Upland’s Colonies Partners to both game the taxpayers of this county for $102 million, and to fund the latest Republican-led version of our county’s perennial culture of corruption to the tune of $400,000.00. It is obvious that Supervisor Derry has no legitimacy as a real populist or ethical watchdog.

Along the same theme, it is no wonder that many showed up countywide at April 15’s Tea Bag Protest Parties. It is what false populists, like Neil Derry, do. These entirely fabricated Astroturf events were designed to distract the larger public from the utter failures of the 28-year Republican dominance of our nation’s financial policies and governance. Ample evidence of having been a deliberate “Wrecking Crew” of good government and building the middle class should generate shame and an asking for forgiveness. Millions of us are hurting throughout our nation because of what has happened after current GOP philosophy was fully implemented. But instead of self-correction, we are given a steady stream of deflection, such as April 15’s, which aimed to make us angry that 95% of us are soon to have our federal income taxes LOWERED.

And why did the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin give such over-the-top coverage to this Tea Bag sham? A recent bout of good coverage of the county culture of “pay to play” is not something that needs to be offset with a binge of obsequious reporting.

And my second letter, the one sent a few days back, which never saw the light of day:

Letters to the Editor
The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
May 1, 2009

Dear Editor:

Looks like the requisite talent Republicans and Right-Wingers in the Inland Valley possess nowadays is the art of fooling the wider public through distraction. The evidence is overwhelming, from county supervisors, like Neil Derry and Gary Ovitt, who submit Points of View touting the good things they are doing for the most beleaguered of our citizenry, to the Tea-Baggers, who have flooded the Letters section of this paper in recent days, arguing, like Street-Corner Prophets, that the end is near because apparently “sacred” Reagan-Bush policies, like Market Fundamentalism, have been abandoned.

What they are trying to deflect attention from, is their hideous record of serving the well-connected and well heeled at every available opportunity, and calling that the public good. The pages of the Daily Bulletin itself have documented the culture of “pay to play” GOP Supervisors Biane, Ovitt, Derry and former GOP supervisor Postmus created. And the Tea-Baggers now decry deficit spending and special favors to bankers and others who put their privileges and fortunes above what is good for the country, when they were eerily silent in these pages during the twenty of the last twenty-eight years when the Bushes and Reagan did exactly the same thing.

There is plenty to complain about, as the Tea-Baggers do, about how public money is spent, and about shafting the average citizen whenever it comes down to choosing between the rich and the commons. Very recently, the U.S. Senate killed legislation that would have equalized the treatment in U.S. foreclosure courts of cases between people like you and me, and people like Donald Trump and Bernie Madoff. Plenty of Democrats and every Republican voted to preserve the exclusive right of the rich to get their property reappraised at lower current market prices when paying off their debtors. This proves, once again, that it isn’t party affiliation that really matters; it is who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from this or that special interest.

This recent vote, and thousands of other situations like it that come up at the city, county, state and federal level shows just how important it is that we enact stringent campaign donation limits. Terry Masl and the Inland Valley Democratic Club have proposed implementing such reform, starting at the city level. The city of Claremont has such donation limits, and they have served its citizens very well. Such reforms need to spread, as part of a citizens campaign to recapture government. And the first local city to challenge toward reform is the very hotbed that has given us the largest number of perpetrators of the county culture of corruption: Rancho Cucamonga. But not to worry, Upland, Ontario, Fontana and others are on the list too.

I especially challenge the Tea-Baggers to join in this effort. Put your feet where your mouths are.
_______________________________________

You may think that I am simply jaded, a bitter lefty who lashes out in conspiratorial accusations at every imagined slight. But knowing the Daily Bulletin as we do, can it be that even this broken clock has found the right time at least once?

Also, dear reader, if you compare my original first letter with what was printed today, you may have noticed that an entire section of my first letter, specifically the last half of the fourth paragraph, was chopped off. It is clear that my submitted letter would have been too long if printed in its entirety. But I question: why did my sharpest indictment of the Tea-Bag fiasco end up on the cuttng room floor? Especially, when regular readers of the Daily Bulletin's "The Mail" section often read longer, nastier lists of accusations thrown at the Left and other targets of Right-Wing ire by local wingnuts. Makes me wonder......

Labor Matters to the Left

Since my last post dealt with the local labor situation, I have been mulling over why labor issues generate such little discussion whenever I get together with left-leaning friends. Hell, Tibet (which while serious, is not the number one issue before us here and now) gets more play in some of these circles than issues dealing with the one thing that consumes our precious hours of life, other than sleep for the lucky ones among us.

Since the personal is often the origin of the personally political, I figured that if I examined my own history with organized labor, I may be able to gain insight as to why others are so quiet on labor issues and unions.

In my background, I have several connections to a union. First and foremost, I was born into a labor household. My father voted around 1961-2, along with others, to successfully bring the United Steelworkers into the sheet-metal-finishing plant he worked at in Rancho Cucamonga. From then on, until his retirement in 1997, he was a member of a local of the United Steelworkers of America AFL-CIO. As a result, I grew up exposed to union culture. Don't get me wrong, my dad was not an active union man, so I cannot claim to be something of a union-diaper baby. But every month or so, a multi-page newsletter did come in the mail from the union, and as a boy eager to read whatever came before me, I consumed it and it shaped my mind.

From its pages I learned about union struggle in the past and in the then present. Added to what my parents and relatives taught me, those pages informed me about FDR and the New Deal long before it came up in school. That USWA newsletter also taught me a lot about the burning issues of the early and mid 60s: the War on Poverty, civil rights, minority group struggles, the Cold War, Vietnam and also about those who oppossed progress on most of these issues, our friends on the right. More importantly, it helped to dissolve the ethnic isolation I lived in as a child. My parents kept mainly to family and a few fellow Latino friends, so I grew up with very few non-latino peers. But in those pages, I encountered people from all over the country who shared stories, recipes and other things that I could relate to. Most important, they were union people, like my dad, so they were, in a way, family too. It was testiment to the power of the printed word, TV, while informative, didn't break down the same kinds of walls.

Although at the time, I didn't realize it, I was lucky because it was the newsletter of the USWA, and the USWA was among the more left-leaning unions in the AFL-CIO. If it had been from a different union, I may have been exposed to a more rightist slant. So, to sum it up, I grew up as a self-taught unionist.

However, I was also a child of the unruly 60s and the deeply divided 70s. Unions became associated with George Meany, with the Nixon Teamsters, with Cold War brinksmanship, with support for Vietnam, with Archie-Bunker-like fear and loathing of the Counterculture, with entrenched racism, and ultimately, as Marcuse articulated it, with the old left that must be overcome. I didn't entirely buy into the popular left criticism of the time, but it did temper my thoughts.

My own experience as a member of a union also further tempered my thoughts. When I was employed in 1980 at Chaffey College as an Instructional Assistant in their learning center, I eagerly joined the CSEA, the union for those who were not certificated teachers. I soon found out that that meant being down in the pecking order. And later, when I attained a adjunct teaching position, that also meant being down the food chain from the full timers. What I found is that like all other American democratic institutions, unions are far from perfect. But I did not forget that being part of the union gave me benefits and gave me backing when I dealt with the district. This lesson was reinforced by some years working in non-union retail. I could see and feel my freedom curtailed when working non-union.

So my personal background with unions is imperfect. So what? I am also a student of history. My BA and all of my considerable masters work, is in history. And all of that has taught me that unions are a product of real progressive democratic progress in action. We of the left cannot help but to be involved with bringing democracy to the workplace. It remains the last, enduring work of human liberation. And sure, because unions are democratic, they are inherently imperfect and require constant involvement by everyone involved. That I had to get over, and I have.

But at a price. Like my father, I was not as involved in the union as I should have been, and like my father, I missed out on the opportunity my union afforded me by being too wrapped up in my family and my own life-dramas. It didn't help that I also got caught up in mind-numbing consumerist culture. And to make it more mind-numbing, it was gay consumerist culture. The worst! But gay or non-gay, doesn't a lack of involvement in things that should matter sound familiar? We aren't let down by democratic institutions, like unions, we let them down when we are not involved.

We of the left have got to collectively get over whatever keeps us from being involved in promoting unionization and in perfecting our unions when we are in them.

The Battle Has Begun....in the pages of the Daily Bulletin

Today's (Friday, April 10, 2008) Inland Valley Daily Bulletin features a Point of View submitted by three local managers with Caterpillar Logistics, a subsidiary of Caterpillar International, the multinational corporation that started off ages ago making tractors. This article is important because it is a parting shot by one side in a forthcoming battle over the future of the logistics industry in the Inland Empire.

The subject of their article is the alleged "theft" of an employee's right to a secret ballot union election. What they are actually doing is spewing a thoroughly discredited argument against the upcoming Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), working its way through Congress as we converse. Even the Wall Street Journal, no friend of labor, in its news section, discredited the argument they push. For a brief and thorough examination of the issue of the EFCA, check out the Wikipedia article on the EFCA at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Free_Choice_Act
And if you do so, please note that currently, it is the employers who get to choose whether their employees get to organize either by secret ballot or card check. What the two executives from Cat lament is a right that does not exist outside of the bad brains of right wing think tanks.

This battle over EFCA will barely be mentioned in the Daily Bull's own coverage of the Ontario Logistics Summit now underway at the Ontario Convention Center. Any mention of labor is going to be hard to find. The Bull's coverage is certain to be a rehash of talking points put out by the corporate players in the industry and by their devoted courtiers, many of our local elected leaders. As seen in the Daily Bulletin's surprisingly revealing front page article earlier this week, if the Colonies, the land-developer in Upland, could ensnare three current or former GOP county supervisors in their $400,000.00 web, can we imagine what the far wealthier logistics industry can do?

If the Daily Bulletin can do an expose on the contributions in this can of foul worms, maybe, I'll reconsider using the Daily Bull or the Bull, as a shorthand.

Getting back to my point, this battle will be over the future of organized labor in the I.E., and its attempts to organize the vastly unorganized and exploited laborforce in the logistics industry. The Daily Bull's portrayal of logistics mainly centers on the trucking and rail aspects of the industry, and their many problems to date. But the bulk of the workforce in this industry work on the warehouse end of things, and they are the target of the unionization drive soon to be launched by Warehouse Workers United, a joint effort of the SEIU and Teamsters. This effort could change the work environment in the I.E. and that, if it happens, will change the political balance in many local communities.

But this effort remains contingent on getting the EFCA bill passed and signed by Pres. Obama. Inland Progressives need to speak out and counter the lies being pushed by corporate America and their toadies. Our marching orders are clear: We need to put pressure on a backsliding Senator Feinstein, tell Majority Leader Reid to grow a spine in regards to the 60 vote majority rule, and taking back some of my unkind words from before, encourage Congressman Baca to remain a resolute backer of EFCA.

A Real Socialist Speaks

In light of all the right-wing hoohah over President Obama being the socialist in chief taking us to where even Marx wouldn't dare go, I thought it was refreshing and educational to see Bill Moyers interview a real American socialist and get his imput on comrade Barack, on the economic crisis, on the role of the left in that crisis, and on passing the torch. The socialist in question teaches at our own University of California Riverside. He is Mike Davis, professor and prolific author. He even has words about the reactionary forces we face in the Inland Valley. Take the time to watch this March 20 interview via the PBS/Bill Moyers Journal website at: www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03202009/watch2.html
It will regenerate the brain cells lost in watching the Sunday Morning claptrap you may have stumbled into this rainy cold morning.

Warning: Veteran Gay Baiter on the Loose in the I.E.

Unreported so far in our local news-sources is the gay baiting history of Matt Schumsky, our newly named San Bernardino County Republican Executive Director. Indeed, nothing has been reported as to his past other than the credit attributed to him for the growth of the San Diego party.

Mr. Schumsky does have a history, and it is very typical of what a lot of our far right political wrecking crew devotees have. Rise up within the local GOP, farm oneself out to consult on projects and campaigns loved by the various fanatics in the party, and run as a stealth candidate for election to various non-partisan local boards. Boards such as the water board or school board. In Schumsky's case, he ran for his local school board by simultaneously portraying himself as a non-partisan ally of good classroom teaching in one media venue, and arguing in another that nobody can and should be truly non-partisan in a non-partisan office.

Indeed, Executive Director Matt Schumsky choose to run for election to the Alpine School District Board in nothern San Diego County in order push an anti-gay policy item. Schumsky ran to defeat and replace one of several incumbants who stood up for fairness in public school textbooks. Several years ago, these incumbants refused to join other board members in voting to condemn the state legislature for bringing to the governor's desk a bill that would mandate screening of state textbooks for unjustifiable statements about gay people. Their vote became the major campaign issue, and Schumsky led the charge. Fortunately for the children of the Alpine School District, our new Executive Director lost.

Unfortunately for the children of our state, our governor, in one of his periods of sucking up to the right, vetoed the bill.

We will soon see if Executive Director Schumsky will wish to inject anti-gay politics into the local GOP toolbox of divisive issues. So far, it hasn't been a prominent tool. Seeing that San Bernardino County represents the eastern end of Congressman's Dreier's district, it hasn't been a surprise. But if the Ken and John take-over of the County continues, Schumsky may not be able to help himself from returning to his old, gay-baiting ways.

The Daily Bulletin Hails the Lords of the Local GOP

Today's (Sunday, March 22, 2009) Inland Valley Daily Bulletin featured a front page story, with a splashy color photo included, on the unelected kingmakers and agenda-setters for our local Republican party: KFI-AM radio's own John and Ken. Far from being a news story, it was journalistic hero-worship and functioned as little else than a call to arms directed at local anti-tax zealots. Even the fig-leaf of stating that the duo lets the other side be heard on the tax issue, with quotes included, was transparent in its intention of further gilding the crowns on the pandering duos' heads.

What is up at the Daily Bulletin? Does the management think that they can save the conservative establishment in the west end of the Inland Valley from collapsing from its own hubris and corruption by conjuring up a rehash of the late 70s Howard Jarvis movement? Do they expect this blast from the past, which gave us schools near the national bottom and a near- annual state budget crisis, to merge with the pitchfork psuedo-populism of John and Ken, and form a movement that will bring back Reaganism?

We have only ourselves to blame if this farce is allowed to make us forget Commander Codpiece and thirty-eight years of consistent, intentional conservative governmental and fiscal misrule.

A News Story We Should Have Known More About

The following is an expanded version of a post I made today via email to members of the Inland Valley Democratic Club of Rancho Cucamonga, CA.
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Today, we have gotten the news that Charles Freeman, known to his friends as Chas Freeman, took his name out of consideration to join National Intelligence Director Admiral Dennis Blair's circle of advisors, the National Intelligence Council. This one piece of news, when expanded into its full significance, truly tells us everything we need to know about, and gives us every reason to loathe, the Main-Stream Media (MSM). I say this because I didn't know until today what had happened, and it thoroughly appalls me. I should have been tipped off to this story by simply following the MSM, and then been able to follow it up on my own by checking out my usual sources of REAL news. But I wasn't tipped off, and I am pissed!

The fact that some of you may be asking: "Who is Chas Freeman, and what is this story about? (More about this soon) gets to my point. The whole Chas Freeman affair should have been big news, and yet was almost entirely ignored by the MSM. Unless we are closely and regularly attuned to the opinion pages of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, or to the major journals of opinion like the New Republic, or to blogs kike the Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan, we just didn't know what going on with this story under our noses. Though I watched my news on TV and read my Daily Bulletin, not a word on what was brewing with Chas Freeman. To get this story, I needed to be diligent in checking out the former news sources, and I wasn't in the last few days.

So, who is Chas Freeman and what is this story about?

I know of Chas Freeman from hearing him as a somewhat frequent guest on the excellent local radio program, heard on Sundays 11 am to 1 pm on KPFK-FM (90.7), "Background Briefing/Live from the Left Coast," which is hosted by Ian Masters. Chas Freeman is a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and is a respected foreign policy expert on the Middle East. He is a relatively independent thinker on many issues dealing with that area, which is a rare thing in a practicing diplomat nowadays. Freeman is especially out of the box when compared to neo-con dogma on Israel and its Arab neighbors. And that is what cost him his nomination.

Admiral Blair wanted a full range of opinions to be heard on his National Intelligence Council, and chose Freeman to provide a diffeernt voice from what the old consensus on the Middle East would provide. This move provoked the Entrenched Empire of Tired and Failed Thinking on the Middle East to strike back. In a matter of a few days, a virtual hurricane of slanderous vitriol, organized by the neo-conservative spin machine, working with the usual old Israel hands, and pushed by reliable voices in the WaPo, the WSJ, The New Republic and other organs of neo-con spin, made Freeman's name and reputation toxic. His defenders rose up too late to save him, and he withdrew his name.

This episode should have gotten him more attention because it points out what is wrong with our foreign policy better than a thousand pages of commentary that no-one reads. If our foreign policy is informed by all the bright minds on the spectrum from point A to point................... B, and never beyond to point C, D, E, or on to Z, then it is bound to be ignorant and to fail, which it often has. Such ignorance is the fertile field on which neo-conservatism has thrived. Not only does such ignorance harm our interests as Americans, it does a vast disservice to both Israel and its Arab neighbors. It says alot that there is a broader range of opinion in Israeli media on matters relating to Israel and is neighbors than we find in our own, constipated media.

Having Chas Freeman as an advisor to Admiral Blair would have been a positive move toward unplugging Washington's constipated mind. He would have been a great addition to the needed laxative tht is the Obama administration.

Where is Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, and his flamethrower? We desperately need both to be sic'ed on the neo-con cabal.