Shock doctrine comes home to Central Valley

by Brian Leubitz

In many ways, it is hard to fault the current City leadership.  Sure, some of them have been around a while and had a hand in some bad decisions.  However, while Stockton over leveraged in search of the growth gods, they were doing what they thought was the American way. They were building a community based upon construction and growth. And when the bubble burst, they were out on the edge. And now they are going through an “orderly mediation”

The City Council is expected to approve an eight-point plan this evening that calls for the city to suspend approximately $2 million in bond payments through the end of the current fiscal year. The plan also calls for the city to embark on two months of private discussions with its bond holders, city employee unions and any other creditors with at least $5 million in claims against the city to determine if parties can reach accommodations that will allow Stockton to avoid bankruptcy.

If the council agrees – and it really has no other viable option – Stockton will become the first city in the state to undergo the AB 506 process, a formalized mediation period designed to help jurisdictions restructure their debts and avoid municipal bankruptcy.(Modesto Bee)

At this point, Stockton is in a corner. Under state law, they have few viable choices. Labor will have to take a big cut, whether through this mediation process or through bankruptcy.  But this is about more than some bond holders.  Stockton made a deal with its employees. In exchange for taking lower salaries, they would get better long term benefits and stability.  Turns out that they are going to fail on both accounts.

I doubt this process will make many on Wall Street happy, but even if they are going to lose a few bucks, they do get to continue their attacks on the middle class and organized labor. And so far, they seem to be winning even when they lose.

We at AmericanLP have created a new ad to spotlight Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy on the issue of bailouts. By now, most observers have learned that Mitt Romney was against a bailout for Detroit. But what even many political insiders don’t realize is that Mitt Romney has been the beneficiary of a Federal bailout of sorts. As head of Bain and Co in the early 90s (he had been brought back from Bain Capital to sort out the mess at the mother company), Romney was in charge of keeping Bain from imploding under a huge mountain of debt. In addition to firing lots of people (naturally), Romney also squeezed suppliers and other creditors. What’s more, Bain had a $38 million loan from the Bank of New England, and that the Bank of New England had its own problems and had been taken over by the FDIC.

Romney shrewdly re-negotiated the Bain loan from $38 million to $28 million. So what does that mean, exactly? Well, since the FDIC is an arm of the Federal government, that means, essentially, that the FDIC (ahem, taxpayers) ate the difference. In other words, Romney conned the government into giving him and his cronies a $10 million bailout.

Yes, this was legal for Romney to do-other business people do it all the time. But it was a bailout to the tune of $10 million, Romney did personally benefit, and it’s a bit rich for Romney to be so sanctimonious about other people getting bailouts. Critics of our ad would suggest that it is unfair to imply that Romney benefited personally from the $10, million write-offs. While the money went to Bain and Co, Romney actually benefited to a much greater degree than $10 million. If Bain and Co had not gotten the bailout, it would have likely imploded. If Bain and Co had imploded, it would have likely tainted Bain Capital to such a degree that it would have been destroyed. If Bain Capital had been dismantled, Romney would have never been able to make his quarter billion that has allowed him the life of the perpetual candidate. Yes, this stuff is complicated-but that’s why rich finance guys like Romney are able to play the system to their advantage.

We start the ad with images of Ronald Reagan talking about the Chicago welfare queen in a Cadillac. This was a story Reagan told over and over again in the 1976 and 1980 campaigns. Even though Reagan never specified it was a black woman, it was widely assumed by most observers across the spectrum that Reagan was in fact talking about a black woman from Chicago with 80 different fake names. (It turns out that Reagan didn’t have his facts straight on this-surprise, surprise)

By showing Reagan at the beginning of the ad, we are trying to evoke the warm feelings conservative Republicans have toward Reagan and his beliefs about “welfare queens.” That is why we are literally showing what appears to be a woman driving a pink Cadillac in an inner city. We then show that in fact the “woman” is none other than Mitt Romney in drag. Romney should actually be seen as a modern day welfare queen who ripped off the government for more than any “welfare queen” from the inner city could ever imagine.

By portraying Romney this way, we are attempting to turn ugly racist beliefs on their head and make people realize that the biggest freeloaders on the government system are actually people who look like Mitt Romney.

At the end of the ad, we show Mitt Romney’s vacation mansion worth $10 million. We aren’t suggesting that Romney criminally stole tax dollars to buy his house illegally. But money is fungible, so any money that benefits Romney in one account can be used to purchase luxuries from any other account.

The point is that Romney and his colleagues at Bain were already wealthy by the early 1990s when the difficulties with the loan arose. Because, as we know, “corporations are people,” Romney and his cronies weren’t personally liable for the full $38 million. Instead, just the corporate entity of Bain and Company was liable. But there was nothing stopping Romney or his wealthy colleagues at Bain from paying back the full $10 million out of their own pocket at the time. For that matter, Romney and his colleagues could have paid the Government back in later years, after they’d all become super, super rich.

The bottom line is Romney got the best deal he could, just because he could. And yet he belongs to a political party that says people who do that are evil parasites for not being “rugged individuals” and succeeding on their own merits.

Finally, our goal here is to make conservatives sickened by the hypocrisy of Romney taking bailouts and for moderates and independents to be disgusted by Romney for making himself richer at the expense of average taxpayers. This bailout for Romney is a perfect window into why Romney should be seen as an utterly detestable and phony candidate regardless of one’s ideological position. Please take a look at the ad below.

http://youtu.be/-L8oCg_pM2M

More info at www.americanlp.org

Republicans aim to block reappointment

by Brian Leubitz

Herbert Carter, originally appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2004, has presided over the CSU Board of Trustees as its Chair since 2009.  As you may know, those years have not exactly been a picnic for CSU or the state budget.  However, being the guy who raised tuition while also paying higher executive salaries is going to make you a target no matter how diplomatically you handle it.

He’s up for confirmation on his reappointment, and it isn’t going smoothly.  Apparently, the Republicans are up in arms, UP IN ARMS I tell you, about high executive pay.

Last week, Sen. Joel Anderson (R-San Diego) sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking him to withdraw his appointment of Carter.

“Since 1984, Herbert Carter has been near the center of every CSU pay hike scandal,” Anderson wrote. “The CSU trustees don’t seem to understand that their ‘compromise’ of setting a CSU’s president’s pay at $325,000 is insulting to California students, parents, and taxpayers.” (LA Times)

Without jumping into the morass that is CSU executive pay, I will say that hiring for a job at institution in chaos isn’t exactly an easy prospect. And the tuition/fee issue, well, you are never going to win in that position. But Republicans playing the tuition card seems kind of rich when they are all about cutting funding for the institution.

Perhaps Gov. Brown will have to come to some compromise on this candidate, but in a world where this is one of the few votes that matters for Republican support, they are doing their best to be heard.  Whether it has any larger impact on anything whatsoever is a different question altogether.

Race could be critical for Democratic hopes in the House

by Brian Leubitz

Since Sup. Steve Bennett dropped out of the race for CA-26, the Democrats have been looking for a candidate that could raise the money in what is likely to be a pretty expensive race.  Bennett had been pretty successful at fund raising, and has promised to help for any future Democratic candidate.  Until now, that has been limited to David Cruz Thayne, who is described as a “businessman” on the CA-26 page on AroundTheCapitol. But considering that Tony Strickland appears set to contest this race, his fundraising left a lot to be desired.

So, enter Asm. Julia Brownley, who represents much of the district in the Assembly in a district that runs the coast from Santa Monica to Oxnard:

I’m thrilled to announce my candidacy for Congress in a district I’ve represented for over five years. It’s clear that we need to end the partisan gridlock in Washington and start representing the interests of the voters who elected us. Ventura County residents want to get back to work, they want their children to have the same quality education they had, they want to make sure our coastlines are protected and they want access to affordable health care. These are the values I’ve fought for on behalf of my constituents and I’d be honored to be able to continue that work in Congress.

Brownley received Bennett’s endorsement, so perhaps this could really be all one big story. But whatever it happened, it certainly made the DCCC happy. In Brownley they found somebody with good name ID and fundraising acumen. Assuming the top-two is between Strickland and Brownley, expect to see a very expensive campaign.

Finally, as David Nir points out, this likely puts the kibosh on the pressure to move Brad Sherman over to this seat instead of the new 30th district. Game on, “-ermans”.

If you were spending a few bucks in California politics, where would you put it?

by Brian Leubitz

I was recently asked by a Democratic donor where I would recommend giving money in state politics. Well, that is certainly a challenging question.  Like the national Dems, the state dems have quite the bit of dysfunction.

I think there are a few different priorities, which occasionally come into conflict. First, in order to really break the deadlock in Sac, you need to get to 2/3 in each house. The absolute hard and fast anti-tax pledges from the Republicans mean that you can’t really accomplish any larger goals w/o 2/3. And that goal is very doable, at least in the Senate, this year. The Assembly is less likely, but not impossible. So, if that’s the goal, then there are a few races where you would want to contribute: Cathleen Galgiani in SD-05, Russ Warner in AD-40 and a number of other.  You can  find more swing seats at AroundTheCapitol.

The other question is about better Democrats.  As you get to the end of each session, you always see good bills die because some “moderate” Democrat came up with some reason to walk out on the vote or just plain voted against it. There are more than a few examples of a Democrat that runs as somebody who won’t raise your taxes, or will cut regulations, or something similarly anti-progressive that feeds into Republican talking points. That is more than a single campaign issue, more than just one race, whether that be in Santa Barbara or the Central Valley, we need to work on developing candidates that will work to get the state on the right track through progressive economic growth.

In that we are fortunate to have the party lead by a strong progressive like John Burton, and they can do some of that work. However, ultimately that has to come through training and cultivation that may or may not be the right place for the party. It is somewhat conflicted in this matter, as they represent both sides of the intraparty fight. Term limits make it all that much more difficult as you have to keep looking for new candidates.

This June there will be a measure on the ballot to at least fix that one small part, moving term limits to 12 years total. And in November there will be a number of Dem-on-Dem races where we need to ensure that a progressive wins, while also picking up those swing districts? These are somewhat competing interests, and as a donor, you have to choose your priorities?

So, any thoughts?

(I meant to promote this yesterday, but it is still worth noting. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Today, Feb. 19, 2012, is the 70th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which ordered the imprisonment of some 120,000 Japanese Americans, about 3/5 of them US citizens.  They were imprisoned without charges, let alone convictions.

Less well known is the direct connection that one of the heroic resisters of that internment with President Bush’s similar imprisonment of uncharged, unconvicted men at Guantanamo.  So this is a good day to honor the memory of Fred Korematsu.

In 2003 Fred Korematsu filed an amicus habeas corpus brief in the case Shafiq Rasul v. George W.  Bush, in which Rasul, a British citizen, was represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights.  A District Court and a Court of Appeals had ruled that US courts had no jurisdiction over Guantanamo because it is not on US territory. Korematsu argued that “in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the Supreme Court should make clear in these cases that the United States respects fundamental constitutional and human rights-even in times of war. These cases present the Supreme Court with a direct test of whether it will meet its deepest constitutional responsibilities to uphold the law in a clear-eyed and courageous manner.”  He won, and the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration. Rasul and his fellow prisoner Asif Iqbal were released to the British.

Here is the whole story: Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, in 1919, where he attended school.  Rejected for the draft because of stomach ulcers, he worked as a welder in a defense plant until the attack on Pearl Harbor when he was fired.  Ordered to report to an internment camp, he joined a minority of American citizens of Japanese descent who determined to resist what they considered an unconstitutional order; he later said that he believed he was entitled to a fair trial and a chance to defend his loyalty to the US.  He was then jailed in San Francisco.  When asked by the ACLU, he agreed to become a “test case,” was tried, convicted of refusing the order, and forcibly taken to a camp.  He appealed and was again convicted in 1944 by the US Supreme Court, Justice Hugo Black writing the opinion, Frankfurter concurring.  Released after the War, he returned to Oakland.

The case was reopened 40 years later, when scholar Peter Irons discovered evidence that FDR’s Solicitor General had deliberately suppressed evidence that both the FBI and armed forces intelligence had determined that Japanese Americans offered no disloyalty threat.  Korematsu’s conviction was voided in 1983 and in 1988 President Clinton gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Fred Korematsu exhibited his citizenly courage once again in 2003-04.  He actually filed three amicus briefs, in Rasul v Bush, in Khaled A.F. Al Odah v. United States of America, and in Donald Rumsfeld v. Jose Padilla, assisted by several Bar associations and law firms, all with similar arguments: against imprisonment without trial.  Korematsu remarked, “If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.”

Korematsu died in 2005 at age 85.  “I’ll never forget my government treating me like this. And I really hope that this will never happen to anybody else because of the way they look, if they look like the enemy of our country…. protest, but not with violence, and don’t be afraid to speak up. One person can make a difference, even if it takes forty years.”

Bakersfield Republican doesn’t think she has been using her time productively.



by Brian Leubitz

If you are like me, you don’t really know who Shannon Grove is.  But if you are also like me, you are going to be rather confused when you hear the message that she brings to you courtesy of the Inter-tubes.

See, she’s a member of the Assembly who wants to go back to the idyllic days of a “citizen legislature” who aren’t “professional politicians.”  What Shannon apparently doesn’t remember from her California history classes or didn’t bother to look at in Texas, the state closest to us in size that has a part-time legislature, is that a part-time legislature breeds corruption and conflicts of interests galore.

Sure, it would be great if the state could be governed in a period of 90 days every other year, but things aren’t really that easy.  Leaving California to a part-time legislature means that while the lobbyists never go away, the legislators do.  Guess what that means for the relative power between the groups? The last thing we need is a further increase in power in unelected staffers and lobbyists.

But, you know, what the heck, why not have people who are in industry vote on that industry? Sounds great!

If Shannon Grove thinks she’s not busy enough, maybe she should find a different line of work. One that she finds more satisfying.  Maybe she doesn’t like regulating fonts (that would be so we have better campaign finance disclosure) or shark fins (so we stop torturing sharks), but these are important issues.  That she is so flippant about them, makes me think that perhaps she could find work that is more satisfying.