News is suddenly moving so fast that it's becoming hard for me to keep up; that's why we're not finishing the story today that we just began Tuesday. You know, the one about Titan Cement suing two North Carolina residents who appear to be doing nothing more than speaking the truth.
Unfortunately, other important news has forced itself to the front of the line, and it's going to demand that we break schedule, whether we like it or not.
That's why today we're going to be talking about Wisconsin, and how workers there are fighting back against the State's Republican legislators and Governor, who seem to have gone out of their way this past three weeks to govern without the consent of the governed.
It's kind of chilly today in Wisconsin...but I can assure you, things are heating up fast-and it ain't because of spring.
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There's a lot of ways to be petty and cheap and stupid, and a lot of ways to stick it to a program you don't like, and by extension, the clients of that program...and this week the House Republicans have embarked on an effort to combine the two into one petty, cheap, and stupid way to stick it to the clients of Social Security and the workers who administer the program.
They're going to sell it to you, if they can, as a way to "lower the deficit", or words similar...but what this is really about is making the actual Social Security program work less well-because, after all, if a program is popular today, the best way to make it less so is to apply a bit of "treat 'em like their cars were impounded" to every interaction customers have with the system.
And what better way to make sure that happens...then to aggressively demoralize everyone who works down at the ol' Social Security office?
Newly-elected Council Member Jim Righeimer and recently-appointed Council Member Steve Mensinger are leading the ideologically-driven jihad, with an agenda item to give notice to 250 Costa Mesa employees that their jobs will be outsourced. This represents a third of the city's public employees in a wide range of departments. Without any study of the problem, Righeimer has also used local columnist Frank Mickadeit, to float an ill-conceived idea to privatize paramedic service in this column.
Their notice fails to take into account the opinion of Costa Mesa's City Attorney, which required that notice be given after a decision has been made to outsource, not based on a vague idea to study outsourcing. But, in a move that some see as directly related to the direction of the new City Council, the City Attorney has resigned and the City Manager abruptly retired.
As in Wisconsin, Republicans are battling a phantom "budget crisis" which is disappearing after Costa Mesa residents approved an increase in the hotel tax in November to protect public services and as revenues from sales taxes return.
A massive phantom gap in future pension costs for public employees is forecast, although the cost to the city has been flat for years as public employee unions have picked up part of the cost.
You may not recognize Jim Righeimer's name, but he has been one of the movers of Republican politics in Orange County for decades, managing Dana Rohrabacher's Congressional campaign in 2008, as a founding member of the Education Alliance, and as a co-author of prop 226. Righeimer and his brother-in-law Mark Bucher have led movement conservatives through groups like the Family Action PAC. Support by Riggy and his regressive allies helped elect wacky movement conservative Don Wagner (R-Irvine), Assembly leader of the Taxpayer Caucus.
State news sources don't reach behind the Orange Curtain, and the local newspaper, the Orange County Register, uses their near-monopoly for almost daily attacks on public employee pensions, not just with commentary but with daily slanted headlines and news coverage.
Costa Mesa is the beachhead, but other Orange County elected Republicans attended OC Republican chair Scott Baugh's Pension Boot Camp, and are ready to go on the attack against public employees.
Update As expected, the Costa Mesa City Council voted Tuesday night to issue lay-off notices to over 150 workers and study privatizing paramedic service despite overwhelmingly negative testimony from city residents. Basically saying, "You're Fired, but come back to work tomorrow", the six-month notices will only go into effect if the Council approves outsourcing in 18 separate city departments, based on approval of $200,000 to study reorganization of all city services.
So it's Day 3 of my fake campaign for Congress, and we've run into our first obstacle
The Fake Campaign, as you may recall, is fake headed for Wisconsin, to show solidarity, and we've fake hitched a ride on a delivery truck headed for Rush Limbaugh's Florida broadcasting studios-but we fake found ourselves caught up in the all-too-real Giant Grip Of Winter that has seized the Midwest over the past week.
We're back on the road now, but we were stuck for darn near a half-day there at Wall...and if you know anything about South Dakota, you know there are really only two things to do in the City of Wall: you can shuffle back and forth between Gold Diggers and the Badlands Bar, partaking of numerous intoxicating liquors along the way...or you can head on into Wall Drug (the same one that's on all those bumper stickers and signs) and partake of the finest display of Giant Jackalopia on the planet.
The Campaign, naturally, chose Jackalopia-and that's why today's Manifesto is all about the fake impromptu 5-cent-coffee-fueled Social Security Town Hall that we held in the Wall Drug Mall for several hours while we waited for I-90 to reopen.
How far do you have to get into the Little Hoover Commission report on pension reform to start questioning its results?
How about the graph on page ii that shows the percentage of funding of major pension funds in California.
It looks pretty bad, but then when you look closely, the numbers just don't look right.
CalPERS, the last time I looked, had around 230 billion dollar invested in a broad portfolio of assets, but the handy chart that shows that CALPers is only 61% funded has a value on the graph that looks like it's around 180 billion.
A quick check of the footnotes shows that the chart was based on numbers from the end of the fiscal year 2008-2009, not the most recent fiscal year.
How important is that?
Well, the value of CALPers investments as of June 30th, 2009 was $178.9 billion. By the date that the Little Hoover report was released, that number had increased by 50 billion dollars. Even using numbers from the end of FY 09-10 would have been much more honest, but the rebound from market bottoms is only mentioned in passing in the body of the report.
This is not a trivial difference, and CALPers is not unique in posting large gains since the market bottom. CALStrs is the second largest pension fund in the state and covers teachers and community college professors. Since March 2009, when markets bottomed after a global financial Great Recession, the CalSTRS investment portfolio has rebounded by more than $34.8 billion to $146.4 billion.
So when we were last together, as you all know, I announced that I'm fake running for Congress in Washington State's 8th District-and that I'm doing it because, so far as I know, the best way to get a candidate to truly "come out Liberal" is to be a fake candidate...and to make good and sure The Campaign isn't out chasing money when it's being done.
Having made the announcement, we're already making our first campaign trip-and oddly enough, our first trip as a Congressional candidate will take us to Madison, Wisconsin, where we'll link up with a few folks who, apparently inspired by me, have taken to the streets in a very big way.
When we get there I'll need a parka, a nice hat, a thermos of coffee, and a big fat Sharpie-so let me go get it all together, and then we'll be on our way.
We have been talking a lot about Social Security these past few weeks, even to the point where I've missed out on talking about things that I also wanted to bring to the table, particularly the effort to reform Senate rules.
We'll make up for that today with a conversation that bears upon both of those issues, and a lot of others besides, by getting back to one of the fundamentals in a very real way...and today's fundamental involves the question of whether it's a good idea to keep pushing for what you want, even if it seems pointless at the time.
To put it another way: when it comes to this Administration and this Congress and trying to influence policy...if Elvis has already left the building, what's the point?
There have been many unlikely things that have happened this past month or so: some of them appearing as legislation, some of them appearing in the form of Republicans who set new records for running away from the words they used to get elected-and some of them appearing in the markets, where, believe it or not, many Europeans finds themselves wishing for our economic situation right about now.
There are even improbable sports stories: our frequently hapless Seattle Seahawks, the only team to ever make the NFL Playoffs with a losing record, are today preparing to knock the Chicago Bears out of their bid to play in the Super Bowl, having crushed the defending holders of the Lombardi Trophy just last week before the 12th Man in Seattle.
But as improbable as all that is, the one thing I never thought I would see is Barack Obama getting into a political argument with himself over Social Security-and then losing the argument.
Even more improbably, it looks like there's just about a week left for him to come to a decision...and it looks like you're going to have to help him make up his mind.
It is about time for the 112th House to come back into session, and the first thing on the agenda appears to be an effort to take away any healthcare reform that have been passed by this Administration.
Next comes an effort to slash Social Security and Medicare, an effort to reverse financial reforms, and proposals to "slash" spending-but only on domestic discretionary items.
If the House majority had its way there would be no restrictions on offshore drilling, no rules designed to prevent climate change-in fact, few if any environmental protections at all...and all of this is intended to bring to life the philosophy that government, for all intents and purposes, should just go away and leave us all alone.
I don't buy into that kind of thinking-not even a little bit-and today we're going to look around the world and see if we can't figure out why.
We have been following the story of Betsie Gallardo lately, she being the woman that, due to a medical decision, was being starved to death in a Florida prison.
She has inoperable cancer, her death is imminent, and her mother was working hard to make it possible for Betsie to die at home with some dignity.
As we reported just a couple days ago, half the battle was already won, as the Florida Department of Corrections had agreed to place her in a hospital so that she could again go back on nutritional support.
On January 5th, the Florida Parole Commission voted to allow her to end her life at home-and that means you spoke out, made a difference, and achieved a complete victory for the effort.
But even as we celebrate that victory, I think we should take a moment to realize that there is a bigger lesson here: the lesson that the fights over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT), benefits for 9/11 first responders (the Zadroga Bill), and Betsie Gallardo's imminent release are all actually pointing us to a political strategy that works, over and over, if we are willing to understand the wisdom that's been laid before us.
We are coming down to the end of the 111th Congress, and we are all surprised that a number of things actually got done: a nuclear arms reduction treaty appears to be on the verge of approval, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed; we have new health care and financial reforms (admittedly, they're imperfect solutions, but...), food safety reform, a better way to do student loans, and a credit card reform act that's forcing issuers to spend thousands of labor hours to develop new and better ways to work over consumers.
And yet there is one important bit of legislation that is still being blocked by Republicans, and, amazingly enough, it's a bill that would provide health care and compensation for those people who ran down to the World Trade Center site on September 11th, and for months thereafter, in the effort to rescue and recover victims, and to restore normal operations in the city after the attack.
Yes, folks, you heard me correctly: the Party of waving flags and "Second Amendment solutions" and tri-cornered hats and Rudy ("noun, verb, 9/11") Giuliani is now engaged in a desperate battle to screw over the very 9/11 first responders that you would think they would be...well, putting up on a stage somewhere next to Rudy Giuliani.
So it has come to pass that Elizabeth Edwards has died.
Despite having more things thrown at her than anyone I've ever had the chance to support in my entire political life, she managed to represent, in her very presence, a sense of grace and kindness and concern for those who were looking to have a better life than the one they had now, and I don't know that I could ever live up to the quiet courage she showed as her life came to an end.
And, bless her heart, it appears that she took the time to make sure that her kids knew her, and that she helped them put away enough "past" to, hopefully, ease some of the pain of the future.
But now the time has come to look beyond death, and, John...that's why I want to talk to you today.
So here it is, almost halfway through this President's first term, and it's starting to become abundantly clear that there is no way Obama is going to pursue the same agenda that he ran on in 2008.
In fact, as the President announces a deal that even he agrees the majority of the American people do not support, and he prepares the Nation for the news that we're going to have to borrow money for the very tax cuts he said we couldn't afford a few weeks ago, it's starting to look like Obama isn't even going to pursue the same agenda he campaigned for in October.
Now it is true that a lot of the problem here is the President's-but it's also fair to say that we Progressives have failed to force the President, and certain reluctant Members of Congress, to govern in a way that promotes that agenda.
That's a real problem, and it needs a real solution; before we get done today I'll offer a suggestion that could be not only highly effective, and a lot of fun besides, but a great chance to release your artistic muse as well.
I took a couple of weeks off, as Thanksgiving and snow came around (a subject we'll address in a day or so), but we are all again occupied as lots of things we've been talking about either will or won't come to pass, and it seems like all that's happening all at once.
Today we'll take on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT); this because the Pentagon's top leadership just came out and reported that revocation of the policy, following a period of preparation, would be their preferred way to go.
There will be lots of others who will take on the question of what's right and wrong here, and exactly how implementation might occur; my interest is, instead, to focus on one little fact that makes all teh rest of the conversation a lot more relevant.
That is the fact that about 70,000 LBGT troops serve in the military today, DADT notwithstanding, and, that if it wasn't for DADT, almost 45,000 more troops would be serving that aren't today.
And that one little fact leads to today's Great Big Question: exactly how much military would 115,000 troops be, exactly?
Over the course of the past couple of weeks we've been talking about how the War On Social Security was about to get under way and what happens when countries choose to privatize their systems.
Today we take on another bite-sized chunk of economic analysis: how can you get to a situation where Social Security is financially stable for the next 75 years?
We'll describe some proposals that are out there-but the big focus of this conversation will be to look at one change that, all by itself, could not only solve the entire funding problem, but could actually allow us to lower the Social Security tax rate, immediately, and still achieve fiscal balance.
"Well, if that's such a bright idea" you might ask, "why haven't we adopted it already?"
That's a great question-and after you hear the proposal, you may well have explanations of your own.
So if you've been following my work lately, you know that there is a renewed effort underway to change Social Security, and that the fight officially began just this very morning.
Now what's supposed to happen is that a television ad buy sponsored by a Wall Street billionaire is supposed to get you enthused about cutting your own Social Security benefits in the future; this is the tip of a "disinformation iceberg" that is trying to get you to act, right now, because if you don't you will never, ever, ever, ever, see a single dime of Social Security when you get older.
I was on a "let's talk strategy" conference call today that laid out some ideas for the "next steps"; we'll be talking about that call over the next couple of stories...but for today, we're going to talk about something you can do that will bring the message right to your favorite Member of Congress.
It is my job to bring to you not just the news that took place, but the news that has yet to happen.
Today, that's exactly what we have.
There is a war coming to try to change Social Security from a social safety net to a "revenue stream" for certain corporate interests, and that war is set to begin Tuesday morning, according to information that was provided to me yesterday afternoon.
Follow along, and you'll be both forewarned and forearmed.
This is the last part of a series of posts analyzing competitive Senate elections in blue states. It is the second section of two posts focusing on the greatest state in the union (otherwise known as California). The first part of the series can be found here.
Suburban SoCal
Southern California (SoCal, in short) is where the battle for California will be won or lost. Ms. Fiorina must accomplish two tasks in the region.
First, she must clean the clock in the suburban counties outside Los Angeles.
This is the part of a series of posts analyzing competitive Senate elections in blue states. It will focus on California. Because California is such a big and complicated state, it will have two sections - of which this is the first. The second part can be found here.
California, Section 1
In the greatest state of the union, a fierce senatorial battle is brewing. Former HP executive Carly Fiorina is mounting a tough challenge to incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. In an anti-Democratic national environment, polls show the race close and competitive. This post will examine the obstacles Ms. Fiorina will face as she seeks to overcome California's formidable Democratic geography.
As America's most populous state, California contains a number of distinct regions. This post, and the one following, will examine each.
