Trump's Latino Pressure Cooker

I am writing this entry because I am seeing something I have never before seen in 78 years, and I think it important.  My vantage point is Oakland, California, and that makes all the difference in what I am about to explain.

First, you need to know more about the setting.  California's ethnic composition recently shifted. Whites are no longer the largest ethnic group of citizens.  There are now 14.99 million Latinos in California, and 14.92 million whites.

Trump's comments about Mexicans didn't sit well with the Hispanic community.  Furthermore, I have never before seen such ardent opposition to a President-Elerct as what I am seeing now among whites.

The State Legislature of California is working on a bill that should be passed very shortly and which rules that except in cases of serious crime such as murder or assault or robbery, etc., State officials are forbidden to cooperate with any federal agents over any immigrant or immigration issues.  It should pass within a few days.  San Francisco is reaffirming its position as a "sanctuary city," and so is Oakland.  I know personally that in Oakland, the schools do not pass around any immigration information about students.  At least 15% of them, by a recent estimate, are "illegals."  And if you want to hire a day laborer in this city, there are several places where you can go, meet potential workers, strike up a bargain with them, and bring them home to do work on one's premises.

Understand the sort of issu that we are dealing with here.  We are not dealing with whether or not the President should add another 500 square miles to a marine sanctury, or wether street repairs should be given a higher financial priority than new parking meters, or whether ten new building inspectors should be hired to make certain buildings meet the City code.  From the immigrant point of view, we are dealing with a situation that threatens their families and their very existence.

If some of your family members arrived here without documentation and their children were born here as legal American citizens, would you be willing to accept a situation in which your very family's cohesion was threatened ?  What would you do if your family were threatened ?  What would millions of people in the same class do if they were in the same situation ?  What would set up a mass revolt ?  How many millions of people would it take to be effective ?

Call in the National Guard?  How many millions of them were and are law-abiding citizens who do not want to see their communities torn apart ?  Would they (and should they) all follow orders ?

Let us consider the case of the young man who heard the false news about Hillary being involved in some kind of porn business out of a pizza parlor, and who brought a gun to the scene to "fix" the situation.  Are there any unbalanced Hispanics out there who might do something similar to try to remedy Trump's inhumane and insane immigration policy ?  It only takes one out of a group of people feeling their families and communities are in danger, or out of 15 million or more whites who feel a keen sense of injustice, to attempt something insane and terrible.

We are sitting oin a pressure cooker, and Trump is turning up the heat.

A Fascinating, New Political Book

I want to pass on a recommendation of a relatively new book. It is called “Dark Money.” The author, Jane Mayer, describes the extensive activities of the Koch Brothers in propagandizing right-wing points of view that benefited them financially.

The book started out as an article or two that appeared in The New Yorker Magazine. In case you are unfamiliar with the policies of The New Yorker Magazine, they are known for perhaps the most careful and strict fact checking in the publishing business. It is also a sure thing that the publisher of this book, Doubleday, did their own fact checking and consulted carefully with lawyers before issuing this work.

Mayer discovered after her New Yorker article that she was being investigated by a private detective to see if he could find anything detrimental about her (he couldn't), and was also accused of plagiarizing from the works of a number of authors. A check with the authors revealed that not a one of them felt she had plagiarized from them.

The book is strictly factual, without hysterical emotion. It simply states that this happened, that happened, so and so paid for such and such a thing, and so on. I saw her interviewed by two different people, and in each interview she was strictly factual, not at all emotional.

If you want to learn how many people in this country have had their political views pushed to the right, read this book.  

It Has Been a Bad Week for Conservatives

It's been a bad week for conservatives, hasn't it ? 

First we have the Pope recognizing that climate change is real and is a serious threat – and telling this to 1.2 BILLION people, many of whom, though undecided in the past, will now accept his point of view. 

Then we have that pesky Supreme Court. First they rejected the attempt to eviscerate ObamaCare – a loss they should celebrate because if they had won they would definitely have lost the 2016 election. And then this terrible, terrible decision making it legal for people to marry anyone they want to marry, no matter what their sex. Conservatives have long claimed that legalizing marriage between same sex couples threatens normal heterosexual marriage, though no conservative yet has come up with a convincing argument explaining why this is so. It's just the natural conservative impulse to want to run people's lives under the banner of “freedom.”

The long-term trend in history is one of liberal ideology becoming stronger and stronger. The very establishment of this nation is one example. The advance of women's rights, the legalization of unions, the advance of civil rights, the establishment of social security, the establishment of Medicare and ObamaCare demonstrate this. Eventually, liberalism wins.

Yes, there are occasional bumps in the road. The Supreme Court decision to award the Presidency to George W. Bush was one. But we survived it. We didn't have a revolution, though most liberals thought the Court's decision was politically motivated. The fabric of our government held. 

Liberal progress will continue. And because of this we'll have a better world .

Romney was trying to sell a lot of snake oil in his debate with the President.  Here's a great example:

He absolutely insists that he has no plan to raise taxes.  However, one of his aims that he has repeatedly stated over the last few months is that he is going to close loopholes and deductions.  One of the loopholes he has said he wants to eliminate is the mortgage interest deduction, in which someone buying a house can deduct the cost of his mortgage interest from the calculation of his income.  He wants to end this practice.

Let's do some calculations.

If you are paying $1,000/month in mortgage interest -- and I bet this is a low amount for most Americans -- you don't get to deduct 12 (months) x $1,000 from your reported income.  If you still manage to stay within the 15% tax bracket, your paper income increases by $12,000 and you are taxed an additional 12 x $1,000 x 15% = $1,800.  It doesn't matter if Romney keeps your tax rate the same.  He is now forcing you to be taxed on a greater amount.  Who cares whether it is called a tax or what ?  A greater amount still has to come out of your pocket.

"I don't care," you say.  "I rent my house,"  So your landlord has to pay more, and he will simply increase your rent to cover that cost increase.

Romney snake oil.

Solving California's Fiscal Crisis

I don't pretend to know how to completely solve California's fiscal crisis, but we know one step that could be taken to help the process. Examine every lifer in tyhe California prison system for possible parole, and give the deserving ones their freedom. A lot of them deserve it.

This isn't an idle, uninformed comment. I spent full-time for six months reading parole hearing transcripts and other official documents relating to the Board's activities and what I found made me think of Alice in Wonderland. In the end, I wropte a 12-page friend of the court brief proving beyond any doubt that the members of the Board were not doing their legislatively-mandated task, actually considering whether or not inmates deserved parole. It became clear that the Board had been instructed by Governor Gray not to grant parole except in certain cases -- when the applicant was a friend of a well-connected Republican, or was an ex-lawman.

At the time, the victims of crime were a strong lobby with the Prison Guard's Union.  The San Francisco Chronicle once called the union "The Invisible Government."  Their greed has costs the taxpayers of the State of California billions of dollars, and if their wings could be trimmed, this would help bring the California budget under control.

Has you read the article in the latest issue of Harper's Magazine called, "Why Vote ?"  It is subtitled. "When Your Vote Counts for Nothing"  and is by Kevin Baker.  I quote the opening paragraph here:

"The heroic narrative of modern society has always been that democracy would prevail in the end.  We believe that democracy somehow has an infinite resilience, that it is a bottomless reserve capable of being tapped whenever necessary, that in times of crisis not only will great men be recognized, called forth, and elected to office but that we,the people will rise to the occasion when required to do so. We have long counted on democracy to be the safety brake on our worst impulses, to be the countervailing force against fanatical ideologies, to serve as a check on the routine excesses of capitalism.  But we can no longer count on democracy as some sort of natural force or secret weapon, for today it has been turned against us, its very institutions now reinforcing the triumph of money and fueling the growth of nihilistic and antidemocratic movements."

I urge you to read it.    Whether you support Obama or (God forbid) Romney, you will agree with much that Baker has written.     See Harper's Magazine, October 2012

Sarah has been around long enough to have established record of behavior.

My take on Palin comes from what I have seen and also from facts that I believe are true.

First, she is a shrewd person. I think she has considerable intelligence, particularly in how to manipulate and maneuver. If the saying is correct that what a man believes can be determined not by what he says but by what he does, we can determine certain of her values. Note that after she emerged from obscurity thanks to McCain, halfway through her term as governor she quit, and then went on the lecture circuit where she cleaned up in speaker's and appearance fees. This is a woman who knows how the financial cookie crumbles, and who values her own personal financial gain over commitment and public service. Her behavior shows that.

That she can be quixotic in her behavior can be seen by her educational record, where she shifted around from college to college for a number of petty reasons (she said she left the University of Hawaii because she didn't like the weather). This kind of erratic behavior reveals something important about her.

I was in Ivory Coast, West Africa, leading up to and including the night of Obama's election. For weeks up to McCain's loss, she always appeared holding her retarded baby, trying to demonstrate what a devoted mother she is. However, the kid practically disappeared after McCain's loss when his appearance could no longer garner her sympathy votes. Have you seen him lately ? I haven't. The devotion was evidently short-lived, lasting less than the span of an election

Sarah's defining moment, however, and one we should all remember despite her cagey and manipulative winks, came when Katie C was interviewing her as they walked along. Katie asked her what she read, thinking this would give us a better grasp of her interests. Remember the minute of stunned silence in which she could not give an answer ? This told me everything I needed to know about whether she was qualified to be vice president or president.

Regrettably I am reminded by her actions and by her family of a term I think accurately describes the bunch of them: "White trash."