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.

Why the 2010 Redistricting Matters Locally

The recent rant by Rancho Cucamonga's own Bob Dutton, our state senator, against another local Republican, Anthony Adams, serves to remind us of how much the upcoming redistricting matters. Our current district lines provide simply too many safe havens for either abundant lunacy and/or apathy, which provides manna from heaven for elected crooks and loony-tunes. Even more to the root of the problem is that the existing districting pattern encourges all sorts of artifical divisions that are self-defeating for nearly everyone in our region.

No one is happy with the budget deal that the governor signed on Friday. No one should be happy with the cuts, tax increases and further state indebtedness that it takes to close a $42 billion deficit. But what State Assembyman Adams of Claremont did, when he cast one of the six GOP vots needed in both the Assembly and the Senate, was necessary and wise. The alternative was to plunge the state into insolvancy. Which is why it is utterly repulsive to those of us who value good governance and hard-headed realism, to witness the petulant meltdown of Senator Bob Dutton. Did he expect his untenable stance of "new new taxes," to prevail? What happened is what had to happen. His house of joker cards came crashing down as reality told us it should. What should happen next is a fundamental reappraisal of Dutton's own Reaganesque approach to governing, instead of his childish threat to strip Assemblyman Adams of his position within the San Bernardino GOP apparatus.

We see many Bob Duttons proliferating in the safe enclaves provided for wing-nuttery in the various state and national office districts that ring our local mountains. I refer to the relatively affulent and largely white foothill districts that are occupied by the likes of Jerry Lewis, David Dreier, Gary Miller, Ken Calvert, Bob Dutton, Bob Huff, Bill Emmerson and other right wingers who uniformly have supported deregulatory and other reckless policies that have brought us all to the brink of another depression. To know one is to know them all. Recently, the Daily Bulletin reported on candidates for the Rancho Cucamonga city council, and what we heard from them was ditto-headedness on steriods. It was little else but one-upmanship attacks on liberals, who apparently are more of a civic threat than criminals, meth-heads, foreclosures and other features of a community in crisis and a falling economy.

When I think of the upcoming 2010 redistricting, which will be the first to be fashioned by a party other than the state legislature, my thoughts are split between what should happen and what is likely to happen. What is likely to happen is that incumbants will prevail and get district lines that preserve entrenched power balances. But a man can dream, and I hope that the panel will wield pens that move north to south rather than east to west. It has always seemed strange that a city like my own Upland, is tied politically to places like Redlands and Arcadia, with which it shares only superficial similarities, than Ontario, with which it shares a history and many other ties.

Another rationale for having new lines drawn with a north-south orientation, is to break up the "good old boy" networks that dominate politics on the valley floor. If politics in the foothills is dominated by cabals of right-wingers, politics on the flats is dominated by deeply entrenched cabals of men and women on the make and take. Whether in Pomona or in Ontario, the city council players take advantage of the inattention of a largely apathetic and uninformed local electorate to reward friends and punish enemies. Even though Ontario seems to assidously avoid racial politics, inspite of some prominent examples to the contrary, and Pomona seems to play that card with relish, both cities end up being governed with the end game of getting the more ambitious elected upwards and outwards. Congressman Joe Baca seems to be the very epitome of the other kind of dysfunction we end up with, a deal-maker that no one who is interested in common development and good governance can trust. Oh how we miss Congressman George Brown, a Democrat we could be proud of.

While Democrats in the foothills face the naturally demoralizing consequences of perpetually being out of power, it seems to me that we are in better shape than Democrats who are demoralized by having distasteful rouges and sell-outs in power. Breaking up the status quo could enable new dynamics that will give progressive Democrats real opportunties to govern. I see it as mixing in the political vigor and networking of foothill Democrats with the untapped voting power of the natural Democrats who are clustered in the flats. The marriage of the two disempowered factors could produce a Tom Bradley coaliton that flattens the towering arrogance of the local GOP cliques that now dominate the hills, and that elevates the political life and the concept of what constitutes community interests in the valley.

2010 is coming fast. It is time to get a discussion going on how we can take advantage of the opportunities that could open up like Spring after a prolonged Winter.

Instruments of Mass Dumbing-Down

Readers of the Ontario-based Inland Valley Daily Bulletin yesterday (Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009) may have noticed that the first page featured a story by Josh Dulaney bylined: "ECONOMY IN CRISIS," and headlined "Conference promises hope in hard times: Thousands expected at Chino event." It occupied a prominent place, above the fold and above the main story of the day, President Obama's signing of the $787 billion jobs and recovery bill.

When I saw first saw this, my thoughts turned to local TV news coverage of thoroughly commendable and newsworthy efforts by Southland churches to help persons driven to desperation by the downturn. One church in the L.A. basin went so far as to help pay outstanding and overdue bills for people who were not even members.

Was this an similar, local effort? I hoped so. Which explains why reading it turned out to be an exercise in all-too-common infuriation with the Daily Bulletin.

What made this story newsworthy enough to place just under the masthead of the front page? At best, the only promise of any concrete help is perhaps, a free meal. And that wasn't guaranteed. Ofterwise, this story concerns an albeit large but otherwise un-newsworthy confab of holy rollers and snake-oil peddlers. At least Rick Warren earned his front page coverage months ago by having presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama attend his event in Orange County. This event in Chino is no more newsworthy than a Benny Hinn freak show.

The Chino get-together is called: the Southern California Prophecy Conference, and the conference itself is entitled: "Finding Hope in the Global Crisis." All the guest speakers are luminaries in the far fringes of the Christian right, and at best, will likely offer attendees the same sage advice that Cal Thomas, formerly the mouthpiece of the late Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, offered in his POV of a few days earlier: "work harder and get by with less." Other than that, one can expect routine rants on favorite right-wing obsessions couched in the language of biblical prophecy. About the only newsworthy thing that can be anticipated from this event is a speaker comparing Barack Obama to the Anti-Christ. And heck!, we can get that piece of illuminating info from talkradio.

So what exactly, Josh Dulaney, made this story so newsworthy? And what possessed the editors to place it where a hundred more important, useful stories could have gone?

Perhaps, the more important question is: When, at last, is the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin going to become a serious newspaper?

We Shall Know Them by Their Priorities

The score at this late point in the game of games in Sacramento so far:

99% of Californians (meaning, you and me, but maybe not the hundredth reader)------ $14.4 billion in tax increases of various kinds.

versus....

the wealthiest 1% and the top corporations in the state........ $1 billion in tax cuts.

We can guess who is winning this game so far.

And who is responsible for this score? Those plucky fighters for the average taxpayer: our Republican state senators and assemblypersons.

When the game began, every Republican legislator stood firmly behind a "no new taxes" pledge. And then, come the demand: "give us a tax cut targeted only for the richest percentile of California taxpayers!" And to back up the demand, play blackmail.

Blackmail pays off.
Drag the state into budget stalemate months after the constitutional deadline.
Bring on IOUs and furlough days at the DMV.
Plunge the state credit rating below that of a third-world banana republic.
And you get weak-knee'd Democrats to cave in and agree to a billion dollar tax cut for top Californian corporations.

Thereafter, with the tax-cut concession in hand, enough Republicans switch sides to vote *Yes" on $14.4 billion dollars in tax increases on everyone else to get the budget deal approved in the Assembly and almost though the Senate. Only one state senator is now holding up the final passage. So much for the "No New Taxes" pledge.

Is it unreasonable to guess that our lone hold-out wants $2 billion in tax cuts for the corporations as the price for his/her vote?

Yeap, the California GOP. Looking out for the average Joe Taxpayer.

What Really Is At Stake

Sometimes dark thoughts intrude into mind when I hear the talking financial heads yak on CNN, CNBC, Fox Business News, etc. It is hard to take these pundits seriously when one remembers that in the months prior to the meltdown of the banks, Wall Street and the Dow Jones in September 2008, these same voices, almost to a person, served as cheerleaders for many of the sectors that soon lead the way in hitting the crapper. Can anyone ever forget Ben Stein gushing over the prospects of AIG, or Lehman Brothers? Where is his apology, his explanation? It's as if he never said a thing. It is if none of them ever said a thing.

Nowadays, many of these unchastened voices twitter and chattter in aghast voice and negative terms about the size, cost and details of the President's initial recovery bill. It isn't if there is not any criticism to be leveled at either the size, cost or the details. But when I hear their steady buzz of criticism, what comes to mind are thoughts that they are still shilling for the interests in the financial sector that have long buttered their bread.

Then my thoughts move on to what is the big game these interests are playing? And my mind fixes on the still-to-burst bubble that is out there, the one that will come when the wildly out-of-touch-with-reality paper value of all the world's total pile of junk paper is finally adjusted to what is real. What I am referring to is a shadow market of global securities with a paper value of many trillions of dollars, perhaps up in the 30-40 trillion dollar range. Frank Schiavone of Rancho Cucamonga puts the worldwide value of this house of cards much higher....Egads! This is a market which consists of all sorts of futures, derivatives, spliced and diced mortgages and credit cards turned into securities, and other inventions of marketeers with Gordon Gecko's imagination and absolutely no prudence.

Now my thoughts grow darker. Many of us who opposed John McCain last Fall suspected that if elected, he intended to bail out the banks holding crashing mortgages dollar for dollar. What else do corporatist Republicans do but strive endlessly to make money flow upward? Now, what if the relatively few very wealthy interests who hold much of the world's junk securities expect to be bailed out, for the full paper worth of the paper they hold or something very close to that? It would take trillions of dollars of government money the world over to do this for them. Trillions that cannot and must not be spent on other things, like giving you, me and the man down the street tax cuts or government jobs.

It may be that all the yak-yak about Obama's spending spree is part of a pre-emptive effort to keep a huge pile of our tax dollars free and available for bailing out this modern economic royalty? Those who dutifully serve others than the immediate interests of average Joes, would be very attuned to what this royalty wishes. They don't even have to be told, they know in their bones.

It bears remembering that we know that all during the Bush years, the networks hired former generals and defense spokespersons to serve as on-air media consultants. As it turned out, many were still working secretively with the Rumsfeld DOD to spin the reporting of the Iraq War and other defense matters to the liking of the War advocates. When I see these talking-heads on the financial shows, I see similar flaks, this time shilling for the business they supposedly are reporting on. It is no surprise that business reporters and pundits would claim to be the voice of the people, but actually serve vested power. The same has been long observed by Left media critics like Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.

From Glenn Greenwald’s Salon column of February 14. 2009, speaking specifically of the NY Times' David Brooks:

The most significant fact of American political life is that political journalists (of all people) see their role primarily as defenders of, servants to, spokespeople for the Washington establishment. That's how they obtain all of their rewards and remain relevant. The concept of journalists as watchdogs over political power has been turned completely on its head by power-revering servants like David Brooks, who is anything but atypical (indeed, there's a whole new generation of Beltway journalists who have learned and are eagerly replicating this model). Brooks is about as typical and illustrative as it gets. They benefit substantially from the prevailing rules of political power and, thus, their only concern is to preserve and strengthen it and protect it from the growing dissatisfaction and anger of the peasant class. The more they do that, the more they are rewarded.

The game, as it has been played in Washington, on Wall Street and in world financial capitals since Reagan opened up the gates to unregulated speculation, the commodification of what Thom Hartmann calls the "commons" and corporate consolidation on a global scale, has pulled in much of the media. When we see a steady, unveering message that is uniformly negative towards what President Obama is trying to do, we are seeing versions of the RCA dog, hearing and heeding its master's voice.

Further proof will soon be seen when the White House unveils its legislative efforts to wring the bad paper out of the American investment marketplace. If it offers to only back up that fraction of the paper value of all the securitized junk out there that corresponds somewhat closely to the real value, we'll know whose voice these pundits hear when they react. I'm betting on a global scream of indignation and worse.

It would be grimly satisfying to just let this hidden market crash and burn, if only to see several classes of cretins get their deserved comeupance, but it is in our best, long-term interest that our government and what is left of that segment of the financial sector that is still rooted in social responsibility work to bring accountability, regulation, stabililty and reality to this hidden market. To let it crash and burn is to cut our throats. Frankly, there is a place in a vibrant, creative capitalist market system for the kind of risk taking that created these speculative instruments. But as I see it, it should always be a case of taking three steps onto the ice and no farther, that way if the ice should crack, solid ground is not too far away. What has happened in the last few crazed decades is a mass stepping onto the ice far beyond any solid ground. The ice will soon break and we cannot let trillions of real value just plunge into the dark cold water. It may well turn out that many large pension funds, like CALPERS and CALSTRS have monies invested in this shadow economy, and to let it go under would punish many good folk. We cannot let many thousands of retirees pay a brutal price for the foolish choices of their pension managers.

The following is a letter to the editor I sent to the Riverside Press Enterprise on February 6, 2009. It should provide proof that voices other than from the far Right-Wing do send in letters to local papers. Now, if only our generally right-leaning publishers would actually publish them, that would be a welcome change.
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Dear Editor:
Our local Republican legislators, both state and federal, are all playing a dangerous game with our future as Americans and Californians. To a person, they are holding fast to positions that keep realistic solutions from being reached. Local state GOP office holders are delusional in their "No New Taxes" stand. That stand cannot prevail in the face of the projected budget shortfall of $42 billion. Similarly, our federal GOP office holders are holding up our President and the Democrat's proposal to meet the challenges we face economically with offering anything remotely sufficient as an alternative. They simply regurgitate the kind of solutions that brought us to where we are today.

Local voters, mostly Republicans, have got to free their legislators to act on today's problems with new approaches. There is no alternative. We have not seen the worst of it yet. The multi-trillion dollar financial and stock bubble that burst in 2008 is still to be joined by the multi-trillion dollar derivatives bubble that has yet to burst. It will burst, and when it does, the piddling ideas of today's GOP will seem like cruel jokes. As it is, the huge Democrat bill that is being widely criticized as something of a drunken spending spree is likely to be inadequate. We will wish we had gone futher in 2009. Turn off the Reagan-era tape from the last thirty years and get real with today. We don't have time to lose.
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Other letters to the editors of local papers will be shared via this blog in upcoming weeks. Included will be blasts from the past, perhaps even back into the 80s, when this blogger was one of only a few steady voices that confronted the pall of ignorance that fell on local ears and eyes over the issue of AIDS and gay rights.

Under Construction.

Watch for falling Wing-Nuts and bolts!