The Jobs Are Coming! The Jobs are Coming! Or Are They?

by Charles Bayer



The previous VV contained a fine article by former club president and vice-president Ivan Light, in which he wisely advocated that we explain our “Democratic values” to “values” voters.  He focused on three values that distinguish us from the Republicans: Friendly foreign relations that encourage international peace, preservation of the environment for future generations, and compassionate assistance to our fellow humans who are poor, sick, unemployed or otherwise in need.  It was a timely reminder that Democrats promote “Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards All” all year long, not just on Christmas Day.
 
I would like to add a fourth value: Protection of ourselves and our fellow humans from external harm, regardless of its source.

While the Republican Party wants to protect us only from poor crooks who use a knife or gun, Democrats want to protect us as well from rich crooks who use economic power, and deception.

While the Republican Party protects property, Democrats protect property and people – their health and their livelihood.

While the Republican Party claims to protect our capitalist economic system, by protecting  speculators, monopolists, and exploiters, Republican policies actually endanger that system. Democrats authored the laws which kept the economy functioning for 70 years.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal policies during the Great Depression of the 1930’s saved the American people from destitution and saved the capitalist economic system.

While both parties want to protect us from attack by foreign terrorists and invaders, only the Democrats protect us from toxic emissions, financial crises, export of our jobs, unsafe consumer products, and hazardous working conditions. Conservative Republicans claim that the government’s only job is protection, but Republicans leave us altogether unprotected in the face of all these inescapable hazards.



Anthony Portantino is a termed-out State Assembly member from La Canada. He has decided to seek the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 27th CD next year, and has held meetings in support of his candidacy in Claremont and elsewhere. Portantino captured headlines recently because of his controversy with the Democratic Party leadership in Sacramento after Portantino refused to support Gov. Brown’s stop-gap budget.

Now, apparently responding to pressure from Portantino, who initiated the idea, the Democratic State leadership has released members' spending records, information that Assembly leaders had previously said was protected from public disclosure. According to the Los Angeles Times (Aug. 27) the spending records were released after a few lawmakers broke ranks to release their office budgets to several media outlets. Assembly officials previously denied requests for members' current spending reports, citing state law that exempts legislative memoranda and correspondence from disclosure requirements. The records fight stems from that feud between Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge), who sought the documents partly to clear his name after Pérez labeled him a profligate spender and slashed his office budget. The published documents support Perez. In point of fact,  Portantino was the Assembly’s biggest spender. In the first
eight months of this year, he spent almost $300,000 of taxpayer money running his office. On the other hand, members’ spending information would probably not be available at all to the public now were it not for Portantino.   From Anthony Portantino's newsletter:



We recently lost three of our oldest, most dedicated, and most effective members. Sally Alexander passed away on May 18; Ware Meyers and Helen Grove Meyer both passed away on July 22.

A lifelong and passionate Democrat, Sally Alexander ran for Congress in Orange County in her eighties, then retired to Claremont to be near her daughter Sandra Hester and her family. Sally was a regular participant at DCC luncheons and membership meetings where she contributed actively in discussions and debates. During political campaigns she volunteered in the headquarters even  though over ninety years of age at the time. She had an optimistic and positive approach to life that affected all who knew her. Sally is survived by her daughter, Sandra Hester, a DCC member and former DCC President, and by her grandchildren.

At the time of his death Ware, 96, was still a contributing member of our Issues Committee.  Ware had been a member of our Executive Board for many years before and after the death of his able wife, Helen, a founder of the California Democratic Council in the 1960s. A naval veteran of World War II, and author of software engineering books, Ware read and thought about political events, spoke his mind, and fearlessly called the events as he saw them. He gave the Republicans hell all the time, but was unafraid to criticize Democrats too when they fell for easy slogans or mistook wishes for reality.  He is survived by his son, Paul.

A long-term resident of Claremont, Helen Grove Meyer is best known as a founder of the Claremont League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization. She was also a pioneer of the environmental movement in our region. But, among her many civic involvements,  Helen Grove Meyer was also a member of the Democratic Club of Claremont as well as its much earlier and now defunct predecessor, the Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club. She is survived by two children.



For at least two years, progressive Democrats have been complaining about President Obama’s performance in office.  He has slighted the environment, left Guantanamo open, strengthened troop commitments in Afghanistan, opened a third military front in Libya, and bought hopelessly into the erroneous Republican view that deficit reduction is the economic nostrum we need now.  Recent news stories even report that President Obama is attracting serious funding on Wall Street whose “malefactors of great wealth” he chose not to prosecute, much to the dismay of many in his electoral base.  It looks like a sell-out, and possibly it is, but I wish to propose an alternative scenario.

On this view, in the aftermath of the elections of  2010, Obama decided that the Democratic Party is on the political defensive, and must move to the right to capture independent voters. He’s a calculating politician, not a bold leader. I regret it, but that’s who he is.  However, there is more. The GOP’s Tea Party wing is now so scary, I suspect, that elements of the dominant capitalist class are becoming afraid of it. In a recent column, Paul Krugman  accused the GOP of opposition to science. Al Gore said something quite similar regarding the GOP’s intransigent indifference to climate change. The capitalist class cannot tolerate a political leadership that opposes science. Business needs science for competitive advantage. If the USA becomes indifferent or hostile to science, some elements of the dominant capitalist class (bio-pharma for example) will lose economic advantage. That is why, I suspect, some Wall Street elements are now reconsidering their long-standing commitment to the GOP. They are backing Democrats instead. The Democrats have become the party of at least one segment of business. It’s not just Obama courting Wall Street, it’s Wall Street needing Obama, the only sane person on the political horizon.

Where does this leave the progressive wing of the Democratic Party? Out in the cold for the next few years. The progressive agenda is dead in the water now, and cannot move forward until and unless the electorate shows it’s ready to drop its infatuation with the GOP and the Tea Party. In the meantime, the best that will happen is that Obama and his new Wall Street allies will succeed in turning back the Tea Party in 2012. If that victory is decisive, and the Tea Party appears defunct, then progressives can hope for a renewed surge of progressive legislation in the next Obama administration. The worst case, of course, is that Obama’s new allies on Wall Street will not suffice to reelect him, Obama will lose in November, 2012, the rightward political slide will continue, and Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann will become President of the United States with the GOP in control of both houses of Congress as well as the Supreme Court.  We will drift into an American fascism consisting of fundamentalist Bible-pounding, suppression of dissent, and aggressive warfare in the name of freedom.