The Corporate Newspaper

The local corporate newspaper keeps pushing for the election of Linda Hopkins to the Board of Supervisors (which would give them a corporate majority). They give two main reasons: she is a graduate of Stanford and she’s not Noreen Evans, the genuine Democrat in the race. 

I agree that Stanford is one of the great universities  of California, along with Berkeley and UCLA, but why that qualifies a graduate without political experience to be a county supervisor, I don’t know. I graduated from UCLA and, like Hopkins, have never held elective office,  yet no group of plutocrats has handed me $100,000 and told voters to support me. 

Noreen Evans is the real deal, a competent, experienced  progressive with a long record of being focused on helping people who work for a living. Don’t be tricked by the Sonoma Alliance of Plutocrats and the newspaper they bought. Vote for Evans. 

What CBS Cannot Say

How many times have you seen or read someone explaining the rise of Donald Jelly Belly Trump in economic terms? The claim is that there aren’t enough jobs, and the ones we have pay poverty wages. Poor people are angry, so they turn to Jelly Belly for help. That explains Trump’s massive support from people near the bottom of our economic ladder: many (but not all)  African-Americans, Latinos, women, Sioux, some Asians, etc. Of course none of those groups actually support Trump; the average income among his genuine supporters is reported to be $70,000 a year or more. So what is the real reason Trump has followers? What is the reason that networks do not discuss? 

I don’t suppose there is one single reason people support Trump. It is true, for example, that government in our nation has tended for 30 years to ignore ordinary citizens and their concerns. We understand that what we want doesn’t matter to Paul Ryan. That makes people mad. But Jelly Belly’s main appeal is more obvious. According to Trump, China has been cheating us in trade deals, Muslims want to murder us in our beds. Mexicans are rapists. Indians are on the dole. Women are to be valued by bra size. Former POWs are losers. Trump promises to turn back the clock to when men were Men and Make American White Again. CBS just can’t bring itself to say "racism" out loud. 

Hotel California

The Donald “Jelly Belly” Trump team has leaked some strategy. In part they are basing their presidential campaign on taking California. Can’t you see Trump now, on a dark desert highway, near Needles, cool wind in his transplanted hair? He slows, looking for his journey’s end. And there they stand in the doorway, the Asian, Latina, White, African-American women of California. A mission bell is tolling for someone. Welcome to the Hotel California.  And, by the way, you can never leave.

Hillary vs. FDR

I don’t understand the thinking of liberals who like Hillary Clinton. Twenty years ago, Bill Clinton dumped the New Deal Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In her autobiography Hillary wrote that she agreed with Bill, because the New Deal had “helped to create generations of welfare-dependent Americans.” Robert Pear of the NY Times points out that this led to a withering away of help to parents who have trouble feeding their kids.

A more recent Federal law now restricts payments to care for children to five years at maximum. Arizona can and will lower that to one year. “It really feels like a hatred of poor people,” the Times quoted one state representative. “It’s just mean.” 

The Clintons did great damage to our New Deal system of support for impoverished families. Talk to a social worker. That’s one example in one area of why I find Hillary toxic. At this point I will have to support Hillary in November, but I’m not lying to myself about her history or the damage the Clintons have done. 

It's Time for Washington to Surrender

I know what you're going to say. Washington has won some small victories at Cowpens and Trenton, but he’s lost the big ones to the King of England. There will be no revolution. That’s not a partisan conclusion, just math. The King has a hundred ships for every one in the American navy. The King has ten soldiers for each private in our small army. His generals have experience and wisdom our leaders can’t begin to match. The King has won.

Yes, Washington’s goals are ambitious, but are they pragmatic? Can we hope to achieve his gigantic goals in one huge change? Americans understand that that’s not how change occurs. Great Britain takes small manageable prudent steps. In some aspects of life Britain may seem to lag behind us—they have yet to make slavery an institution, instead  abandoning the Africans among them to their individual fates--but in most areas Britain’s slow prudent changes have consistently outdone our impatient attempts to leap forward. 

There’s no place in politics here or elsewhere for the unrealistic aspirations represented by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and others. We already have the vote for our white male gentry—do we really want to risk losing that much democracy by continuing this doomed revolt against an anointed King? 

(With thanks to Tom Tomorrow)

The Democratic End Game

Once Sen. Obama was nominated, he met with Hillary Clinton.  They needed one another. Obama could not win the Presidency without support from the Clintons and the Democratic corporate establishment. Hillary needed to stay active and important for eight years so she could run for President. The two of them worked things out.

Once Hillary is nominated she (or her people) will need to meet with Bernie Sanders, who represents many Democrats and independent voters. He will endorse her, but persuading some of  his followers to back Clinton will be difficult. They will first have to be persuaded that the Democratic party wants them and will listen to their concerns. At the moment, many don't believe that, and if Bernie were to end his campaign at this moment, many of his followers would abandon the party and Hillary. I think she understands that, although some of her followers apparently do not. They want to run Bernie's 40% of the Democrats out of the party. Reuniting the party and attracting independents is going to be a long and sensitive process. Hurrying it will be a disaster.

Don't Be Fooled Again (or something)

The Press Democrat, voice of the Sonoma Alliance, has once again endorsed the Alliance candidate for the Board of Supervisors. The Sonoma Alliance is a grouping of the county’s richest and most careless types. It exists to guide and fund the political campaigns of lackeys pretending to be progressive. Two years ago they chose an unknown but pleasant young fellow who, backed with big money and the newspaper, won going away, beating a genuine Democrat and liberal. This time it is an unqualified but pleasant young woman, a Stanford graduate, who will vote in ways most pleasing to the rich, while pretending to be a servant of the working class. 

If you live in the district, don’t be fooled.  Support Noreen Evans. 

Follow the Money--Crooked Politics, American Style

by Ernie CarpenterAmerican style

Syar Industries, a former Russian River gravel miner and Superior Supplies, a gravel supplier, has entered the Fifth District Supervisorial contest. They gave candidate Lynda Hopkins $15,000 in March 2016 and that is how they entered the Fifth District campaign. Whatever one may conjecture, Syar Industries definitely knows that one vote counts.

The Sonoma County Aggregate Resources Management Plan long called for an end to instream and Terrace pit mining on the Russian River. Syar Industries tried well after County deadlines had passed to continue terrace mining. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors after intense lobbying allowed Syar to resume gravel mining on a 3-2 vote in 2009 in the Russian River terraces. That was “blocked by a Sonoma County Superior Court judge’s ruling that county supervisors exceeded their authority in granting a permit extension to the quarry company.”

Syar was challenged by Russian Riverkeeper, Westside Association to Save Agriculture and North Coast Rivers Alliance according to a November 19, 2009 Press Democrat story. Now, Fifth District Supervisorial candidate Lynda Hopkins has received $7,500 from Syar owners; one lump coming from a “Closed” Napa golf course owned by the Syar family. At the same time, Superior Building Supplies, gravel suppliers, bequeathed an equal donation of $7,500 to Hopkins; $15,000 at one table setting from river rock mining companies.

River residents must be scratching their heads over this one given Hopkins proclaimed love for the Russian River. Hopkins may be a “fresh face” but it is an old staid gravel, construction, Big Wine and real estate money faucet that is funding her campaign. A majority of her contributions flow from out of the District and that has given her the boost she needs. Syar has now apparently found a candidate that is to their liking. Must be the open seat. It has been rare for gravel miners to spread their wealth into the Fifth. Previously, no environmentally conscious Fifth District candidate would take instream gravel mining money.

Hiroshima

When the sculptor Mowry Baden and I were young punks, we sometimes would apologize for one another to anyone nearby. “I’d like to apologize for the shirt my friend decided to wear this morning” etc. The joke, of course, was that it makes no sense to apologize for something someone else has done. Soon President Obama is going to visit Hiroshima, and most of my friends want him to apologize for the nuclear holocaust Truman committed before Obama was born. That would not bring back the dead, and it would not address the central crime, which goes unmentioned even by Amy Goodman.

At the start of the Second World War, America had a policy in place that forbad the deliberate bombing of civilians. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, who led our bombers in Europe, was adamantly opposed to bombing civilians, as was FDR in the beginning. The British, however, decided that bombing German civilians might scare them into quitting the war. The Brits won the argument with us, Doolittle was relieved of command, Berlin was bombed, Hitler retaliated, and the race to the bottom was on. 

We tend to focus on whatever weapon gets used. Right now it is drones. It used to be bombs. The actual war crime is simple. It’s a crime to kill civilians on purpose. It doesn’t matter whether you use an a-bomb, a drone, a knife or wear a vest filled with explosives. It’s a war crime to target civilians. 

Sexting

Young people will, in a few years, have to deal with a world of sexting and internet porn unlike what my children faced. I have wondered why there seems to be an epidemic of young women ending up with photos of themselves naked on the ‘net. The truth seems to be that a few of them don’t mind. The others were talked into sending photos to their boyfriends. The boyfriends went public. . . . It’s going to be up to parents to discuss with their children the choices they will face. 

Pornography fills the gap left by our fear of sex education. But porn can be unrealistic and confusing. For example, porn sex is quite noisy because, as an expert pointed out recently, who wants to shoot a silent movie?

San Francisco

Today I will be driving around in the city (SF) with my wife, daughter and granddaughter. We will be headed toward a new destination. My wife will insist on driving, although she can't drive around the block without getting lost. That is absolutely true. My daughter will be in the shotgun seat navigating although she has no sense of direction at all. Meanwhile my granddaughter will be in a back seat although she has an excellent sense of direction, and I will be back there beside her--my nose for the correct direction is famous. Those of us banished to the back seat will be there because my science-denying wife and daughter fear the GPS I toy with. Any machine younger than a scrap of paper with a penciled route that leads to Death Valley is something they react to with horror. (Actually my patient son-in-law, who knows every alley in SF, will draw them a good map and hope they make the turns in the right order.)

The Republicans Take a Gander at the Future

Trump has insulted and threatened Latinos, who are now engaged in a massive registration drive. They’re going to crush him. How many years will it take for the Latinos to forgive the Republican party? 

In the 1920s the Republicans insulted and threatened Catholics. For the next 60 years Catholics voted for Democrats. The average Latino voter today is in her twenties. The average white male voter is in his forties.  

(Just a note to say that I'm on Facebook, too.)

Trump Is Right

What if a woman-hating racist butthead had a valid insight?

A few weeks back, Donald Trump said that we were chumps. He claimed we needed to rethink the purposes of NATO and stop funding it. He was immediately derided for saying something so downright strange and outside the box of our military/foreign policy consensus of the last 100 years of endless war.

NATO was invented to defend Europe against the Soviet Union, which vanished about 25 years ago. NATO now it has a different purpose, which is to save Europe money.  As you know, the first duty that a nation has is to defend its citizens against attack. That’s expensive, so Germany, The Netherlands, and 26 other NATO countries have outsourced the job to the United States, who will defend all 28 at no cost to anyone except American taxpayers. It happens to be the case that the NATO countries have no remaining external enemies, so what could be sweeter than outsourcing their national defense? (We could let them defend themselves, but we wouldn’t think of it.)  

A Republican Gives His Word

Not long ago, I watched on TV as the Republican candidates promised to support the eventual nominee of their party. Now their party has settled on Donald Trump as the nominee, and several losing contenders have said they won't keep their word after all, among them Jeb! (Bush). Their reason is that Trump is a sociopathic idiot who can't be trusted with the nuclear codes. But that was obvious months ago when they all pledged to support him.

I suppose it is a good thing that certain Republicans leaders are willing to break their word and dishonor themselves and their families in order to protect the whole damned world from a goon. They should do that. They owe it to all of us. It's the other ones (the party chair, Rinse Prenis, for example) we have to wonder about. To Rinse, party loyalty is more important than the possible extinction of all life on this planet. That's almost creepy.

Too Big to Care

I've been here a while, longer than the average life span, and never before seen major Presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I've witnessed a paranoid President (Nixon was classic)  and a senile President--between them they proved that our system of balances and checks (mostly checks on what voters need)  can survive inadequate leadership: see Presidents Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Harding, Hoover, Bush. But Trump and Cruz have been obviously balmy from the first day of the campaign.

Cruz is meaner than a stepped-on gator while pretending to be a religious fanatic. He kept dragging his young children out into public where they pushed him away in front of the cameras and contradicted the nonsense he said about them.  Now that he's failed, the Canadians have sealed their border to keep him from returning to his birthplace. 

If Cruz is a sociopath, so is Trump, who says anything until he says the next thing. If the audience is racist, he's racist. In a room filled with Latinos, he'd tell them he loved sombreros. If they booed that, he'd backtrack and praise Cervantes. He is without care. He doesn't care. If the Cervantes move got booed, he'd tell the room to kiss off. He doesn't care. That's the quality that some voters respond to. He's too big to care.