Why the American People Are Not Excited this Election Year.

It's August in Altadena. A hot still humid sweltering August. It's a Presidential election year summer, volunteers should be calling and walking precincts, but here in the blazing foothills of Southern California it seems as if no election is happening. Those Southern Californians who are calling are calling into "battleground States" . California is assumed to be deeply in the Obama camp, so no one, not Governor Romney, nor President Obama, Not Even Congressman Ron Paul, is "wasting" money on the most populace state in the Union. So far this means that Californians can contemplate the election from afar.

I have been doing just that. I will not deny I have at times made calls for President Obama into a few "battleground States". The voters there are just as un enthused about this election as I am. Yes, they will vote for the President, but they will not do so enthusiastically. Why?

The first problem is President Obama's first year in office. He lost the troops there. Candidate Obama had said to the party faithful, the hard core of believers who march through precincts, make phone calls, and volunteer every waking hour for the candidate, that they would have to hold his feet to the fire (actually quoting FDR) and "make me do it". They did. The reaction from Rham Emannuel and his staff, who ran all the White House Communications was antagonistic, rude, spiteful and in a short time alienated the troops on the street that Obama administration would have had. It was a betrayal and a slap in the face. The ground troops have never stopped being disaffected. The Obama machine pretends to not notice this on the one hand and  on the other snickers that the disaffected have no where else to go. Have they considered that the disaffected can just stay home?

The second problem was the Health Care Reform fight. A large portion of the members of the Democratic Party wanted Universal Coverage, Single Payer. Perhaps the President and his administration knew that Universal Coverage Single Payer was not possible with Congress, but they never started there. They started with Romneycare and slowly negotiated pieces of that away to the Republicans in Congress. Lobbying for Single Payer Universal Coverage would have made the President seem as if he had stood up high in the saddle, and eventhough he may not have won, He would have been a hero to his troops. He could have on his initial wave of popularity galvanized the nation. Instead by being a mealy compromiser, he threw that popularity away, almost instantly. Probably starting from that point could have negotiated more from the Republicans. Instead he passed the Heritage Foundations bill, was escoriated as if he had passed a socialist program by the Republicans, whose very legislation is what he must take "credit" for,  and gave the Democrats a "Success" they can not be proud of.

So far not very good.

But the REAL problem with this election isn't that Governor Romney is as honest as a kid with his hands in a cookie jar and as dull as white paint in the Mojave desert on a stucco west facing wall, nor is it that President Obama has disaffected his troops, it's that this election is not about the crisis the American public have been living through and dealing with for thirty years now.

 Somehow the election is about how much various benefits the baby boomers have paid into their whole lives, will be reduced, who is the biggest tax cheat, and whose Vice Presidential candidate has had the biggest gaffe this week. Most American voters are tired of the dog grooming show. They want some reality and some answers to what they face. No one is excited because so far this election is not about anything real.

You see real America, Street Level America, if you call that the 99% or the 49%, is in trouble. Deep trouble. our politicians are gleefully ignoring the trouble. The wealth of any nation is in three areas: labor, infrastructure and natural resources. We are in the water surrounded by sharks on all three.

First Trouble:  Labor.

The work is in China, everything we buy seems imported from there and we are surviving on loans from China. For some reason, America's industrial and political classes have deemed this "inevitable", It wasn't. \Laws were changed, factories unbolted and shipped. The American People want the laws changed. they want work to come home. They want to create wealth here and loan the fruits from ourselves to ourselves. The political classes pretend they can't hear us. We need Tariffs based upon the working conditions and wages of the nations we are importing from and the environmental costs of producing those same goods here.  It's not protectionism, it a level playing field.

Second Trouble: Labor.

Many of the jobs that do remain here are to a large part being taken by Illegal alien workers so that those jobs can be done for the investor class at low wages and in 19th Century working conditions. Both parties are complete total whores to this investor class and explain the exploitation of these workers in bizarre terms of kindness and compassion for mankind. I kid you not. the Bullshit can not be believed, but when this bullshit is challenged, one is accused of a lack of compassion and racism by the people benefiting form the largess of those exploiting these illegal aliens. Even worse, there has been bipartisan support for allowing the children of illegals imported here to be educated for free, stay, get professional licenses and have an easy route to citizenship. This is killing American wages. We need a immigration policy that is kind and compassionate, We already take 500,000 people a year legally, and almost half of those are from Mexico, we take more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Isn't that enough? Each year we import three and one half cities the size of Pasadena Ca. in population and we build no sewage plant, no electrical generation plant, no roads, no bridges, no schools for them...And we have to compete with these legal and illegal folks for our jobs. What American worker really thinks thats a good idea?


Third trouble: Infrastructure.

 Anybody who has driven a crater filled road in California, stood below a bridge after the first thaw of winter and listened as the concrete chips fell to the ground as cars rolled across, seen the eroded condition of a levve sidewall on an American river, or experienced a summer brownout, knows that this countries infrastructure needs some serious and thoughtful reinvestment. Our great grandparents and grandparents built harbors, airports, highways, damns and bridges that this nation has used and benefitted from for seventy five years. Our work, companies, and personal lives all benefitted far beyond the cost of these improvements. They were indeed investments in the future. Now we are told we can not afford to build more and better roads and bridges and that what scant work will be done will be done with materials and crews imported from China. We need to rebuild our country, the great things our great grandparents built are all worn out. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren deserve smooth roads, functioning electrical plants, water purification plants, bridges the envy of the world, national parks, railroads, mass tansit, and a world of wonders.

We can afford these things, we just can not have them and endless war for no real reason. It's time we chose life for our people instead of the ability to potentially destroy any population disobediant to the will of our Oligarchs, at a moments notice. We need the oil you say? Buying it at three times its present price would be cheaper than the three wars we have fought this decade and for that we could have solar panalized every roof on every house in the county twice over...

Fourth trouble: Natural resources.

 This ties in with infrastructure. Our water is impure and we are running out of it. We need a system nationwide that cleans our sewage (YES, I said that) makes the water pure and pumps it back into our rapidly depleting aquifirs. We need to stop running water off our roofs into gutters and out to sea. Again it needs to be cleaned and pumped back to the ground. Our residential developments need to be built so that water runs into french drains at the property edge and back to the ground.

Fifth trouble: Natural resources.

The soil. We depleted our top soil of natural minerals and nuetriants by 1937. The Nation has been living off petrochemically derived fertilizers ever since. The nuitrition of American grain, fruit and vegetables grown with these petrochemical fetilizers has steady declined over time. Presenlty America takes all of it's green waste, food waste and solid sewage waste and landfills it. We need a national drive to restore our soil.

The American People are aware of most of these issues. they dont know what to do about them and we can not understand why our "leaders" wont even discuss them. Thats why we just can't get excited about this election.

We should have two years of national service for every American, not to build up our war machine, but to build our roads, our bridges, our sewage reclamation plants, our national parks, to restore our streams, to rebuild and re-envigorate our topsoil, to make America once again the shining city on the hill. We can give all our Children the same benefits as we now give military veterans. Free health care, Assisted living when they are old, reduced or free University.

This time we can make it not an illusion, not Las Vegas lights made up of gas from the death cycle, but made up of regenerative policies that care fro the land as if we believe that Genisis is true, God placed mankind upon the earth to tend it as a garden fit for his children to live in. We the American People can repent of our love of the war machine, of endless profligate waste, or carelessness of everything and everyone, and we can heal our land.

Thats the kind of thing a voting public can get excited about.

Uh No the Middle Class Wasn't divided by Scott Walker.

O.K. I'm at LEAST as liberal as the next guy. More so, mostly. This week Scott Walker narrowly escaped recall as Governor of Wisconsin. The pundits left and right are declaring the working class of Wisconsin was split in half. Half voted for Tea party Walker, half voted for the Union Champion, Barrett.

A couple things that are important, especially for those of us on the left who may want , moving forward to take lessons from this loss...

1. You don't run the guy the People didn't like so much last time that they elected a Tea Party Whackadoodle , this time in the recall. Hey, the People said "No thanks" to this guy once already.Get a new face. Americans LOVE new, that's why the same old products always have a NEW AND IMPROVED label on them every six months.

2. Working class unionized and non unionized private sector  workers don't see any public sector workers as their brothers and sisters. They see them as what they generally are: the enforcement arm of the Corporatist State. Private sector workers and voters see these public sector employees as the ENEMY. Until the left comes to terms with this, understands it, admits it to themselves, they won't be able to capture the working class like the Tea Party has. It's not that there is something wrong with Kansas, its that Kansas has experiences we on the left have refused to recognize.

"Steve, Steve , Steve", you say in a condescending, humoring mockingly gentle voice, "How can you say
T H A T ?"  Well, in my many years as a Activist and Town Councilman no one ever came to my office or called my phone asking for solidarity with some Union.

 Little old widow ladies called in panic because they had signed a petition against some development and two weeks later the County Zoning Department with Sheriffs carrying pistols and shot guns swept down on her property and demanded costly and extensive repairs and alterations be made. Those were Unionized Public Sector Employees devastating her meager retirement funds, attempting to drive her out of her home, and being used to retaliate against her free speech rights. That happened a few times and each incident took years of the little old ladies life and all of her energy to resolve.

A Little old woman whose family had lived in her house since it was built in 1919 owns three homes in a row on a small street next to a commercial district. A developer wanted her land. She spent six years with endless inspections, demands, shotguns pointed at her, her family members, her friends. Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the Public Sector employees gave up, after they had gone through every single home on the block subjecting them to Zoning hell. Those folks were all working class, some unionized, some not, but none of them see Public Sector employees union or not, as friends.

A carpenter has a trailer on his commercial property at his shop. There is mixed zoning on his land and he rented the trailer to the local Parking Enforcement Officer. She filed a complaint against the department for discrimination. Zoning, Building and Safety, Edison Inspectors, and the Sheriff's Department, guns brandished forced their way warrent-less into the friends property. He had to remove the trailer,so the complaining unionized County employee became homeless at the hands of complying unionized County employees, Solidarity? There was no permit on the storage building that had been there for at least seventy years, that had to go. They made him install fire systems in his studio. Cal Osha showed up to inspect all of his vintage saws and equipment, and wanted thousands of dollars of safety equipment on them and tens of thousands of dollars in dust collection and spray booth equipment. All this in spite of the fact that my carpenter friend has no employees. You see he MAY have them someday. That went through rounds and rounds of administrative hearings. Cost my buddy a FORTUNE, all because he had committed the crime of renting to a County employee who thought she had rights.

A friend works at a Automotive repair shop. Its been in business here in town since 1916. It is the oldest continuing operating automotive repair shop in Los Angeles County. My friend buys the shop from his boss. I go with him to the County when he transfers the business licenses. We are told everything is in order. Six months later, my friend who has put his life savings into purchasing his shop, gets a letter from the County saying his licenses have been revoked.  His business that has continuously operated in the same fashion since 1916 at the same location was rezoned at some point. He has to apply for a Conditional Use Permit and he has to stop operations until he does. This normally takes a year and a half, costs about $30,000 by the time all the permits, fees, drawings, and fixers are paid. In the meantime the mortgage on the shop must be paid.  I make an appointment with my friend and the County Zoning guy. Eight County thugs show up who proceed to mock and humiliate my friend for starting his own business and not getting a good paying safe secure County job. I would not have believed it had I not heard it. We ran out of the meeting before we each killed some County Bastard. We organized. we got the County to lay off, yet every eight months some new person would take over the County Zoning desk, start again, and we would have to start everyone calling to save this guys shop. Some brilliant County employee figured out the way to ruin my friend was to call in the State. My friend got inspections and fees and fines and work orders on a monthly basis until the oldest continuous business in town and my friends bottom line and life savings were completely destroyed. Do we imagine my mechanic friend sees government employees as people he has some kind of solidarity with? Uh NO.

These are not unusual stories. I can go on for pages upon pages of people just going about their lives in a way we would all consider "normal" who upset someone in government and were then persecuted by government employees.

Working class people see government employees as the enemy, because they behave that way, and with complete total contempt for members of the public. Until we on the left UNDERSTAND this, we will continue to lose to the Tea Party, to the Koch brothers, and the Oligarchs. We have to understand, government employees are not the same as private sector workers and small employers. There is and as long as they function as arms of  enforcement for the international corporations and government who are attempting to destroy the workers and the middle class, never will be any solidarity with the Working and middle classes and government employees.

We on the left need to figure out a message that is for the Working Class, By the Working Class and Of the Working Class, or we will continue to lose and be irrelevant noise.