Hold Your Nose and Vote

It’s not exactly an inspiring election day. There six measures on the ballot, and not one of them deserves to be there. They are ugly comprimises dreamed up by a dysfunctional legislature.

So, Californians, probably very few of us, trudged to the voting booth, and not very enthusiastically.

I voted yes on all ballot measures. Why? Not because the legislation proposed represented competent lawmaking, but because they were the best on offer for a bad situation.

I have no doubt that the measures will go down in flames. They were written by an unpopular legislature and supported by an unpopular governor. 

Furthermore, the few who cast their ballots today were probably predominately out-of-sorts voters fed up with bailouts and recession, not willing to spend a dime. You know, the tea party types.

California voters are a fickle lot: we want all our services, but don’t want to pay for them. Republicans block raising taxes, but are unwilling to make unpopular cuts.

So I voted today in what must have been the most uninspiring election day of a lifetime. Quite a downer compared with November.

And what will tomorrow bring? A huge deficit, and more bad budgetary news.

We Californians must fix our budget, and we should start with reform of the state’s government. We should remove the gerrymandering that elects extremists from both parties. We should remove the absurd two-thirds requirement to pass budgets and the requirement for a two-thirds vote to raise taxes.

The time for reform is now, while the dust is settling. Maybe we won’t have to hold our noses for the next election.

This Week in Conejo Valley Politics, April 5, 2009

They have common ground after all. Congresspersons Lois Capps and Elton Gallegly each received an award by the Humane Society for writing legislation that protects animals. Protection of human life was obvious excepted, as Gallegly has been a strong supporter of continuing the Iraq war.

The Do It Center was victorious in its campaign to squelch legitimate competition. On Wednesday, supporters of the failed Measure B  successfully lobbied the Thousand Oaks City Council to forbid Home Depot from building a store in the city. Free enterprise be damned.

During his state senate campaign last year, Tony Strickland weakly claimed to be an alternative energy executive, although he admits in papers filed last month that his income from his putative company, Green Wave Energy Solutions, was between $0 and  $499 last year. Could it be that Green Wave was just an expedient way to ride the clean energy wave without doing anything substantive?

Justice takes a holiday. The man who killed a jogger in Thousand Oaks last summer was sentenced to only six years in prison and financial restitution. Six years? That’s four less than the maximum, which itself is insufficient.

Plastic bags are bad for the environment, so the city of Moorpark wants to ban them. It will not because it fears being sued. The cost, too, is high. Then there’s the plastics industry. The environment usually loses out to industry.

California beware: climate change is real in the state and it is worse than expected. Higher temperatures, loss of agriculture revenue, greater electricity use, and worse, says the state’s Climate Action Team. Let’s hope Republicans take the team’s report to heart.

Governor Schwarzenegger appointed an independent auditor to oversee the $50 billion  California will likely receive from President Obama’s stimulus package.  Well done, both of you.

A man in New York walks into a building with two guns and a lot of ammunition. He kills 13 people there before killing himself. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the fifth such massacre this month. And yet the NRA opposes restrictions on gun ownership. Enough already.

Republican religious extremists were further marginalized this week by an Iowa Supreme Court decision that struck down as unconstitutional a law banning gay marriage. As Iowa goes, so goes the nation.

Why You Should Oppose the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act

During this time of crisis, when our country is faced with an economic meltdown, when unemployment   nearly 10% in Ventura County, and when the nation is struggling to end two wars, fight global warming, and defuse an incendiary Middle East, our representative in Congress, Elton Gallegly, suggests we take a time out and honor Ronald Reagan.

That’s right, Gallegly and his Republican cronies want to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Reagan’s birth next year using federal resources and under federal auspices. This is the kind of thing normally reserved for someone like, say, Abraham Lincoln, whose bicentennial we celebrated on February 12 of this year.

Now Lincoln, one of the first Republicans, accomplished a lot of things during his presidency: he crushed a rebellion that nearly destroyed the nation, he signed an Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves held in rebel territory, and, despite his suspension of habeas corpus—permitted during time of insurrection—he honorably upheld the Constitution during a time of civil war.

Reagan, in contrast, violated the Constitution with an impunity that foreshadowed George W. Bush’s  presidency. Remember the Iran-Contra affair? Students of history may recall that American hostages being held in Lebanon were freed in exchange for weapons—highly effective missiles, as it turns out. That’s right, Reagan brokered a deal whereby he sold Iran weapons in exchange for the release of the hostages. A dirty business that also happened to contravene American law.

Some of the money from the proceeds of the sale of the missiles went to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Congress had explicitly prohibited any part of government from supporting the Contras, but this was subverted by the Reagan administration.

The American legislative branch of government and the people were in the dark about this until a Lebanese newspaper blew the story wide open, prompting Reagan to deny the charges. A week later he backtracked, admitting they were true, but stating that he didn’t know about them at the time.

The National Security Archive website describes the reaction of the American people: “Of all the revelations that emerged, the most galling for the American public was the president’s abandonment of the longstanding policy against dealing with terrorists, which Reagan repeatedly denied doing in spite of overwhelming evidence that made it appear he was simply lying to cover up the story.”

It was bad enough that a president would arm terrorists after having sworn in public never to even talk to them, but what he did with the money subverted the very Constitution he swore to protect and defend.

Reagan was lucky not to have been impeached. Many cabinet officials were charged with crimes. They all lied to protect Reagan, because impeachment was unthinkable to them. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, also a co-consipirator, later pardoned the cabinet officials at the end of his term.

By and large the American people forgave Reagan, but Iran-Contra remained forever a black spot on his record. Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes are trifling in comparison.

Gallegly and his Republican colleagues long ago decided that Reagan was a saint. They have engaged in a systematic campaign to canonize him, naming all manner of public edifices after him, including what was formerly known as Washington National Airport, now renamed after the Gipper.

If the Republicans had their way, they would probably replace Lincoln’s chiseled face on Mount Rushmore with the aw-shucks grin our most famous actor-politician. After all, Republicans have thoroughly abandoned Lincoln’s legacy. They now see war as the first option, not the last; they no longer claim to need Constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus; they are no longer concerned with the rights of minorities.

This partisan Republican campaign to elevate Reagan is clearly wrong. It seeks to turn a partisan hero into a nonpartisan emblem of America. We must oppose it vigorously.

On March 9, the dubious legislation Gallegly sponsored, HR131, passed the House. It was supported overwhelmingly by  Republicans. Democrats, I am ashamed to say, voiced little opposition. Reagan remains widely popular. Reagan’s legacy is now viewed by many people through the opaque lens of nostalgia. Many credit him with bringing down the Berlin wall and winning the Cold War. He does deserve a lot of credit for this.

Reagan was a good man, but not a great man. He did, after all, make many of us feel good about ourselves after the malaise of the 1970s. He was charming. But he was a strong partisan, and his presidency ushered in an era of intolerant conservatism. Here is a short list of the sins of the Reagan administration, which demonstrates that we should not, in fact, portray him as a hero or allow our children to be brainwashed by Republican propaganda about him:

• He lied to the American people about his knowledge of Iran-Contra.
• He displayed a willingness to subvert the Constitution.
• He ignored the AIDS crisis that was ravaging America.
• He cut social programs to make way for a massive military buildup.
• His budget cuts hurt the poor; his tax cuts favored the rich.
• He began the foolish process of excessively deregulating businesses, which was the root cause  our current economic woes.
• He oversaw a crumbling of the separation between church and state that prepared the way for the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
• He promulgated the odious doctrine that government is the enemy—that it should be reduced at all costs—even at the cost of financial meltdown, as we now know.

HR131 is now in the Senate. Please write your senators to ask them to kill this bill before it sees the light of day. Write to Gallegly to voice your displeasure for his sponsorship of this bill.

If the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act is passed into law, your children will be subjected to Republican propaganda as they are forced to learn a too-rosy version of Reagan’s story in their schools. They will certainly not learn about the Iran-Contra affair. They will instead learn that government is the problem, not the solution; that prosperity must begin at the top and might trickle down, eventually.

Do not stand for this, America. Stop the  Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act dead in its tracks.

We can respect Reagan for the good things he accomplished, for the dignity of his office, and for his valiant and ultimately successful fight against communism, but we should never allow Republicans to paint Reagan as an American saint. Someone so willing to trample our Constitution can never be called a hero

This Week in Conejo Valley Politics, March 29, 2009

It was wrong of you to fire Geoff Dean, said the Civil Service Commission to Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks. The sheriff fired Dean for preparing to run for Brooks’s office when Brooks retires in 2010. Dean gets back pay and is the apparent frontrunner in the race.

There is a special election on May 19. It’s about the California budget. Most people don’t like the ballot measures and will vote against them according to a recent poll. This will disappoint the governor.

Californians are not happy: 77% said the state was headed in the wrong direction, 80% disapprove of the legislature’s performance, and 57% disapprove of Governor Schwarzenegger’s performance. Perhaps this is why 81% of people support Proposition 1F, limiting legislative pay during deficits. It’s the economy, stupid.

In a completely unrelated story, Governor Schwarzenegger said he would not run for political office again, since the Constitution forbids foreign-born presidents. Republicans were relieved.

Most drugs sold in Ventura County come from Mexico, say law enforcement officials. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh should buy a sombrero and move south, closer to his suppliers.

The Ventura County Supervisors graciously voted to accept $2.7 million of Barack Obama’s stimulus money this week. It will be used to buy up houses that have been foreclosed and sitting empty. They will be sold to lower-income and middle-class people. Thanks for help Ventura County, Mr. President.

Stimulus money might save police and firefighter jobs in Ventura, but only if they are still around. The Ventura City Council voted to use reserve funds to keep the officers and firefighters employed. Mayor Christy Weir, pinching pennies, voted against it.

Evangelical apocalypse enthusiasts infiltrated the military and George W. Bush’s White House, said filmmaker Michael Wilson during a screening of his movie Silhouette City in Thousand Oaks. They don’t like gays and want to “reclaim the nation for Christ.”

This Week in Conejo Valley Politics, March 22, 2009

A Thousand Oaks group will submit a plan to the city council to revitalize Thousand Oaks Boulevard. If they can improve it to ugly from horrendously ugly, that will be a marked improvement.

A made-for-TV movie is being filmed at California Lutheran University. Officials would not comment on how bad the movie was likely to be or how seriously it would damage the university’s reputation.

Newt Gingrich screened his new propaganda film about Ronald Reagan at the former president’s library in Simi Valley. Starry-eyed Republicans glossed over Iran-Contra and massive Reagan budget deficits.

The Conejo Valley Unified School District is a model for dropout prevention, says the State Attendance Review Board. Time, then, to cut funding, says the state.

Protesters in pink waved placards in front of Thousand Oaks High School condemning the budget cuts that caused 860 educators to lose their jobs in Ventura County. Republican legislators were unmoved.

Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks will decide this summer whether he is retiring. He might be replaced by front-runner Geoff Dean, not the sheriff’s first choice.

The unemployment rate in Ventura County was 9.2% in February. It feels much worse. Everyone knows someone who is out of work.

Gallegly Caught in His Own Confused Logic

I had thought the week before last had been Elton Gallegly Appreciation Week at the Ventura County Star. There had been a editorial by him on Sunday, an article where he bragged about bringing money into the county, and a simpering piece about how much he loved his pet poodle.

I suppose enough readers had brought it to the attention of the Star that it was strange for the congressman to brag about bringing money home, then voting against the bill that was supposed to write the check, that the paper’s editors felt that they had to explain the inconsistencies.

And a good job they did of it, too. Michael Collins wrote an excellent article yesterday titled “Gallegly Votes Against Bill Containing His Funding Requests.” It was a triumph. Not only did Collins point out Gallegly’s circular logic, but he fairly pointed out that Democrats, too, share the same level of inconsistency.

Gallegly, it seems, argues that his earmarks are not pork, but that other people’s are.
That, he says, is the reason he voted against the budget bill last week. He gives as examples of wasteful spending money for the National Endowment for the Arts—that favorite target of Republican ire; a footbridge in St. Louis; a water taxi in Connecticut, and, of all things, research on the red snapper in Florida.

We all know that Republicans hate spending money on art and think that infrastructure is only appropriate for bridges in Alaska, but Gallegly’s last example, the red snapper research, is particularly telling. It reveals a hostility to science the evokes Sarah Palin’s objections to research involving the fruit fly.

You may recall that during the last presidential election, Palin cited research involving the fruit fly as wasteful government spending. She was universally pilloried in the scientific community for these comments, which revealed her immense ignorance. The fruit fly, it turns out, is absolutely vital for scientific research. The particular project she singled out would benefit American agriculture despite some of the research being conducted in that other favorite Republican target—France.

The bottom line of all this is that both sides—Republicans and Democrats—insert their own pet projects into legislation. These are called earmarks, or pork. They can be bad, wasteful spending, or good, needed spending. Regardless of their merit, this kind of spending causes the cost of things like budget bills and stimulus packages to rise.

Republicans, like Gallegly, like to claim they are against earmarks. However, as Michael Collins’s article revealed, they like to have it both ways. This is hypocrisy. It is practiced by both political parties.

It was nice to see our congressman get caught up in his own fragile logic. He seemed to grow a bit testy at the end of the article. Perhaps he should start looking for a new job.

The Year in Review

It has been a bittersweet year for the Conejo Valley. We’ve seen the worst—a crippling downturn in the housing market, a rash of store closings, a sharp increase in unemployment, the reelection of Elton Gallegly and Audra Strickland, the election of Tony Strickland, the passage of antigay legislation—and we’ve seen the best—the election to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Only one mark in our favor seems trifling, pitiful, laughable. But it is not. The nation can always and forever be proud to have elected an African American to the highest office in the land. The Democratic party can always be proud that it was the first party to successfully run an African American candidate. But most of all, the American people can never cease to be proud of what it has accomplished by the election of this man to the White House.

We have rejected eight years of regressive policies, economic mismanagement, willful ignorance, and petulant statesmanship. We have accepted in its place a new openness. We have confirmed America’s place at the standard bearer of liberty, as a place where the Constitution, not a muddled theocratic conception of the world, is the highest source of law. We have reclaimed our rightful place among the community of nations.

Barack Obama, there is a lot on your shoulders, but we believe in you. Do not ever be discouraged. There is a nation depending on you.

There was a telling few seconds of video on the NBC Nightly News the other night. The story dealt with California’s fiscal crisis and Republican obstructionism. A brief snippet of video showed Tony Strickland in the Senate chamber lethargically poking away at a Blackberry while the important business of the state passed him by. His answer to the budget crisis was a simple “no.” No is not a responsible answer. No simply abdicates responsibility to someone else. No is not leadership.

It would be easy at this point to bemoan the loss of Hannah-Beth Jackson to Strickland in the narrowly contested Senate race. But what matters is where we go from here. We have a budget; there is still much work to be done. So Democrats lick the wounds they’ve suffered from during the last year, but  can be confident in the knowledge that they have won the fight—and that their good work will continue to invigorate our nation.

Environment Topic of Next Meeting of the Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley

Voters in upcoming elections have a clear and easy choice: vote for Republicans, who in general deny that climate change is real, caused by human activity, and who will do nothing to address the issue, or vote for Democrats, who in general recognize that climate change is real, caused by human activity, and will draft legislation to mitigate its effects.

 

 

Former Vice President Al Gore wins a Nobel Prize for his work in publicizing the effects of climate change; current President George W. Bush suppresses testimony of executive branch officials about the severe effects of climate change.

 

 

It’s time we register our disapproval of the climate change deniers with our votes.

 

 

The Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley will devote its next meeting on Wednesday, November 14, to discussing ideas and “tangible actions we can take to reduce global warming in our community and our homes,” according to its newsletter.

 

 

The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Goebel Senior Center at 1385 E. Janss Road in Thousand Oaks. For more information, see www.conejodemocrats.com or call 805-675-8785.

 

Bush’s Poodle: Why Gallegly Won’t Fund Children’s Health Care

Apparently funding the health care of poor children is not as important to Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Thousand Oaks) as funding the war.

After all, poor children are certainly not going to vote Republican when they grow up. If they survive without health care, that is.

There’s no doubt about it, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which would cost taxpayers $60 billion over 5 years, would be expensive. But isn’t it the legitimate business of government to protect those who are most vulnerable?

Only if it is not too expensive, apparently.

“I understand where the president is, and I agree with him on this issue,” Gallegly told the Ventura County Star.

The president vetoed a bill to renew SCHIP on Wednesday, despite overwhelming support in the House and Senate.

The bill is popular with Republicans, Democrats, and most Americans. But not with Gallegly or Bush.

Both say the bill is too expensive. And, says the president, “government coverage would displace private health insurance for many children.”

This is certainly not true, but even if it were children with health insurance, even government-sponsored health insurance, are better off than children with none.

Senate Republicans have bent over backwards to meet the president’s demands.

“Frankly, I think the president has had pretty poor advice on this,” said Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

“I can answer every objection that they’ve made, and I’m very favorable to the president. I know he’s compassionate. I know he’s concerned about these kids, but he’s been sold a bill of goods.”

Gallegly told the Star that “this is a classic case of the ugliest part of our government process, which is taking something as critical as the healthcare of children and turning it into political spin. Today is a day that I think is an embarrassment to this institution.”

Wednesday certainly was an embarrassment. It was embarrassing for Gallegly, for Bush, for the Republican Party, and for the nation. It shows the world that we value a wasteful war in Iraq—a war that has nothing to do with terrorism—more than we do the health of our own children.

The proposed $35 billion increase in funding for the SCHIP program, an increase that will cover a five-year period, mind you, is about as much as it costs to finance the war in Iraq for a mere three months.

The president just asked Congress for an additional $200 billion in war funding. The war in Iraq has cost about $457 billion to date, and increasing at a rate of about $300 million a day, according to economist Scott Wallsten.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ineptly named war on terror will cost about $1.2 trillion between now and 2017.

Less than half of this amount, writes David Leonhardt in the New York Times, “would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.”

And yet the president and his obedient congressman can’t scrape up enough money, or moral courage, to help out 10 million poor kids.

Bush and his sycophants, like Gallegly, have been calling recently for more fiscal discipline. This is a laughable attempt to salvage some respectability at the last minute after six years of deficit spending.

The public debt is now up to more than $9 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. When Bill Clinton left office, there was a budget surplus of $127 billion.

And yet the president and his party continually tout themselves as being deficit hawks and Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals.

Nobody’s buying it, least of all now, and Republicans will pay a hefty fine at the ballot box in the 2008 elections.

The presidential veto is meant to be a check on congressional power. But in some cases, the president, be he (or soon, she) a Republican or Democrat, is just plain wrong.

This is one of those cases.

The Constitution provides Congress with the ability to override a presidential veto. The House needs 25 more votes to do this, and even Republicans are lining up to oppose the president.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the last days of a failing presidency.

Will Gallegly go down with the ship?

That’s up to Ventura County voters. Let’s all turn out for the elections in November 2008 and show Gallegly the door.

Key Links:

Gallegly’s Voting Record, as reported by the Washington Post

“Bush Vetoes Child Healthcare Bill,” by Michael Collins, Ventura County Star, October 4, 2007

“Families Brace for SCHIP Demise,” by Carla Williams, ABC News, October 4, 2007

“Bush Vetoes Health Measure,” by Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, October 4, 2007

 

“The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Public Debt, retrieved October 4, 2007

 

“Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities Related to the War on Terrorism,” Congressional Budget Office, testimony before the Committee on the Budget
U.S. House of Representatives, July 31, 2007.

 

“What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy,” by David Leonhardt, New York Times, January 17, 2007.

 

“President Clinton announces another record budget surplus,” by Kelly Wallace, CNN.com, September 27, 2000

 

“Snow, Praising Bush on Budget, Calls Clinton’s Surplus `Mirage,’” by Alison Fitzgerald, Bloomberg.com, December 21, 2005.

 

 

 

Gallegly Refuses to Discuss Earmark Plans

Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Thousand Oaks) refused a newspaper’s request to reveal his plans to add earmarks to the federal budget, but recently criticized others who keep their earmarks secret.

 

Gallegly, Reps. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, Howard “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita, and Gary Miller of Brea recently signed a petition calling for Democrats to do more to reveal the names of lawmakers adding earmarks to legislation.

 

However, each of these representatives declined to reveal their own pet projects.

 

According to the article in the L.A. Daily News, an aide from Gallegly’s office “noted the petition called for public disclosure of projects approved for funding, not those still under consideration.”

 

This is splitting hairs. What does Gallegly have to hide?

 

It is just another example of Republican hypocrisy at work.

 

But lest we get too smug, even some Democrats are guilty of the same sort of obfuscation. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena), for example, has been on record criticizing a Republican bill to match lawmakers with earmarks as not going far enough, but refuses to release his own list of earmarks.

 

“I strongly believe that all projects funded by Congress should be disclosed,” he told the Daily News.

 

The key here is the word “funded.” Many lawmakers feel that they need not disclose their earmarks until they receive funding.

 

The advantages of this strategy for lawmakers are that they do not offend constituents when their efforts to fund earmarks fail and that they do not appear to be favoring one earmark over another.

 

However, this lack of transparency indicates a shortage of courage on the part of these members of Congress. And courage is exactly the quality we need in our representatives, who make the vital decisions daily that we have to live with.

 

Earmarks, it should be noted, are not uniformly bad. Some, like efforts to fund improvements in the Los Angeles River, for example, help support noble efforts.

 

Others, like the infamous Alaskan “bridge to nowhere,” waste taxpayers’ money. These projects are rightly called pork. Even that is being generous.

 

“If they [members of Congress] are endorsing a project as a good expenditure for federal money, they have an obligation to tell their constituents, ‘This is what I’m supporting. This is what I think we should be spending our tax dollars on,’ ” said Steve Ellis, spokesman for Taxpayers for Common Sense.

 

Refusing to disclose earmarks in advance “shows at least some level of contempt for their constituents,” he said.

 

Amen to that.

 

Congressman Gallegly, we have a right to know what you’re up to. Release your plans for earmarks without delay.