Help Shock The DCCC-- Help Replace Crooked Ken Calvert With Liam O'Mara In Riverside County

 

In 2016, Trump won 7 of California's 53 congressional districts and all have relatively strong red PVIs. Only one of those districts is in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, CA-42 in western Riverside County. The district goes from Eastvale and Norco just west of Riverside down through Corona, the Temescal Valley and Lake Elsinore to Menifee and Murrieta. The PVI is R+9 and Trump took the district 53.4% to 41.4%. Whites are a plurality there-- 42.9%-- with a large Latino population (38.5%) and electorally significant Asian (9%) and black communities (5.2%). It was the only congressional district in southern California to vote against Gavin Newsom for governor in 2018 but the district has been slowly, slowly, slowly turning from red to purple.

The current congressman is an amoral, corrupt, out-of-touch hack, Ken Calvert. When Fox News was looking for an example of congressional corruption for a TV special, they came up with three of the worst in DC, one being Calvert. Watch while Chris Wallace explains why:





Calvert has served the corrupt corporate agenda of big-moneyed donors and lobbyists. Since 1993, he has used his power and influence against Inland Empire working class and marginalized communities. His largest donors are part of the military-industrial complex, and he has pushed ever greater corporate welfare for bomb-makers, while voting for every use of force and sending American youth to die for oil and foreign infrastructure contracts. Along the way he has championed the expanding police state, and resisted every opportunity to make life better for the residents of his district.

This cycle, the California Democratic Party endorsed history of ideas professor Liam O'Mara, an outspoken, working class progressive. But the DCCC showed no interest in the district or in O'Mara, who they would consider "too progressive" and far too independent-minded. He is campaigning on issues the DCCC and Democratic Party establishment oppose: Medicare-for-All, a Green New Deal, UBI (universal basic income), and systemic government reform. When I first met him last year he told me that the very same ideas that have helped members of Squad beat entrenched establishment Democrats in blue strongholds can work to defeat entrenched establishment Republicans in red strongholds. His point was that by sticking to progressive policies which address the economic interests of American workers-- and framing those policies in ways that make sense to them-- progressives can go back to winning elections all across the heartland, and finally have the numbers in Congress to address the major challenges our time is crying out for. He told me that the American Dream is "being murdered by conservative and neoliberal economic policies which strip wealth from ordinary Americans and siphon it into the accounts of an oligarchic elite. As a historian, I pay close attention to the lessons of the past and the way they help to explain the present. Nothing about the Trumpist phenomenon has been a surprise; indeed, I have long argued that this turn towards neofascist populism was inevitable in the Republican party post-Reagan.

We live today in a world created by Reaganite policies-- a world very like that of the Robber Baron era, when most of the country’s wealth was held in a tiny number of hands, and people today are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Nearly a trillion dollars was lost by the bottom 50% of the country in the last few decades. Meanwhile, the top few per cent have seen record-breaking levels of profit.

The media is lying when it talks about economic growth, because-- let’s face it-- the stock market and job-creation numbers do not paint a full-enough picture of what is happening. Despite higher levels of workforce participation and more education, Millennials earn less than Boomers did at the same age, and have a far higher cost of living. The reasons for this are not complex-- wages have remained flat for nearly fifty years. As productivity levels have soared, poor tax policy has allowed those gains to translate into wealth for a few, and rising debt for the many.

It is this disparity in wealth which has made the Trump era possible. When the liberal orthodoxies only increase inequality and fears for the future, and no left-populist or socialist alternative is available, workers will drift into the arms of demagogues who offer simple solutions to their ills. It’s the immigrants! It’s China! It’s the fake news media! When people are hurting, and someone offers them an enemy, it is all-too-tempting to listen.

Trump’s rise was made possible, not by latent racism or by conservatism, but by the failure to articulate a rational alternative. An alliance with financial elites may have translated into some short-term successes in the 1990s, but even these were illusory-- Bill Clinton won the presidency both times with less than half of the vote because an independent populist sapped votes from the two major parties. There was a lesson to be learned from Ross Perot’s “great sucking sound,” and unfortunately it was some in the Republican party who listened.

Income inequality lies at the core of the collapsing American Dream. What we need to be talking about is equality of opportunity-- giving people the resources they need to pick themselves up and make whatever they want of their lives. This is what made America great! There is a real irony in watching a reactionary Republican party herald a past “golden age” of prosperity which was created by the very policies they most despise! Post-war America built a strong welfare state on the back of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Republican and Democratic presidents alike, from Truman and Eisenhower, through Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, all accepted its basic outlines. Massive federal spending was supported by progressive taxation and steady growth. That growth itself was a result of tax policy, as it incentivized investment in the real economy and good pay for workers. Fordist logic-- the principle whereby workers are paid enough to be able to afford your products-- was the order of the day, and factory workers could afford a suburban dream-home just as easily as dentists and lawyers.

If we are going to fight back against the destructive influence of the Chicago School’s neoliberal economic ideals, we have to get back to talking about those bold liberal visions that created the middle class in America. And that means taking a class-conscious approach, reaching out to working class voters regardless of education levels, and telling them our ideas will make them richer-- because they will!

Failure to heed this strategy has been disastrous for Democrats and for the country. Letting our emphasis on the workers slip has allowed a Republican party whose ideas are harming workers to claim their loyalty. We must get back to fighting for those same hearts and minds, and we can do that by talking about basic economics again, and showing the voters that we have a path forward that will help all Americans.

This morning, with the election just days away, he is busy putting his get out the vote program into action with no help at all from the DCCC. He told me that "When this race began I knew that the 42nd and Calvert got ignored across the country, and that we're usually written off as safely red. So, my team and I came at this with a different strategy that better suited the demography and the unique issues in the area, and the proof of that is in the pudding. We have had countless Republicans and conservative independents reach out to say they are voting for me, despite knowing I am a solid progressive, because I frame issues in ways that make more sense. That effort is starting to get noticed, too. Even the conservative predictive models used by FiveThirtyEight show a solid chance of flipping this seat, potentially one of the very best chances for any progressive in a red/purple district, and about seven times the chance of any Democrat here in the last dozen years. And turn-out is already historically high. Every single day of early returns there have been more Democratic ballots than Republican, and if this continues we are on track for a historic upset."

Currently, Liam's campaign has three different ads in Spanish running on Univision stations, and an English radio ad on major Inland Empire radio station KOLA. They're being heard four and five times a day and the campaign needs to keep them on the air through Tuesday. Despite the cluelessness of Cheri Bustos and the DCCC, CA-42 is a flippable district, but Liam needs to keep those phone banks running and those ads on the radio! Blue America is making one last appeal for you to flip one of the last Republican districts in California. Please click on the thermometer on the right, which takes you to a unique ActBlue page for progressives running in districts that Trump won in 2016. These are the seats we are concentrating on for our final 2020 push. The DCCC is ignoring them but they are among the most important gains progressives can make this cycle. Please consider giving what you can to help Liam flip this seat.

The White Working Class Is Not Sold On Biden, But Will It Abandon Trump In The COVID-Election?

Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently watched a series of focus groups of white working class voters in rural Wisconsin, the Mahoning Valley region in Ohio, northern Maine and suburban Macomb County, Michigan, all swing areas where Trump did well. Vote-rich Macomb County, for example, gave Trump a 53.6-42.1% victory over Hillary in 2016, after going for Obama both times he ran. Trump won the northern Maine congressional district, which also voted for Obama twice, by an astounding 10 points-- 51.4% to 41.1%. In 2018 though, the district ousted its Republican congressman and elected, Jared Golden, a Democratic state legislator in his place.

Greenberg wrote that what he watched told him that "the heartbreaking health care crisis that is ravaging working-class and rural communities threatens to cut short Donald Trump’s political career, and demands a forceful response from opposition Democrats. It will teach big lessons about how to reach working people who are struggling, regardless of color." He shared his findings with the American Prospect, noting that "In 2016, a white working-class revolt enabled Trump to win [working class] men by an unimaginable 48 points and women by 27. But disillusionment was real in the midterms: The Republican House margin dropped 13 points across the white working class. In the new poll, Trump lost a further 6 points with white working-class women, where Biden only trailed Trump by 8 points (52 to 44 percent). While Trump has been throwing a lot of red meat to his base, white working-class men have not been dislodged from their trajectory, as Trump’s margin eroded another 4 points."

These are mostly low-wage families, many with children raised by a single parent. They are consumed with rising opioid deaths and disabilities and a deadly expensive health care system. That was a big part of why they voted for Donald Trump in 2016: so he could end Obamacare and its costly mandate, and deliver affordable health insurance for all. When he failed to do so, many voted against the Republicans in the midterms.

But the pandemic was the perfect storm. I have never seen such a poignant discussion of the health and disability problems facing families and their children, the risks they faced at work, and the prospect of even higher health care and prescription drug costs. The final straw was a president who battled not for the “forgotten Americans,” but for himself, the top one percent, and the biggest, greediest companies.

That is why most in the Zoom focus groups pulled back from President Trump. Three-quarters of these voters supported Trump in 2016, but less than half planned to vote for him now. Even those who still supported him did not push back when other participants expressed anger with his doing nothing about health care, fostering hatred and racism, dividing the country, siding with the upper classes, and having no plan for COVID-19. This is a life-and-death issue for them, as much as nearly any other group in American society.

The same voters were still very cautious about Joe Biden, who seemed old and not very strong, but most importantly offered the prospect of only minor changes to the health care system and seemed unlikely to challenge the power of the top one percent. Like lots of other working people, they are looking for a leader who will make big changes in health care, fight for working people over big business, and unite the country to defeat the current economic and public-health crisis.

Working-class anger with the establishment after the financial crisis of 2008 ran deep into the Democratic base of Blacks, Hispanics, unmarried women, and millennials, too. Many were not initially enthusiastic about the Affordable Care Act, and in election after election failed to rally fully for Democratic candidates until the 2018 midterms, when Democrats ran on “health care, health care, health care!” The pandemic may allow progressives to battle for working people, regardless of color.

In today's working-class and rural communities, health care is everything. In introductory remarks, participants in the focus groups went right to the personal health care crises they were facing every day.

“My wife is disabled,” said one man from Wisconsin. “My daughter has 30 percent immune system left so she’s bouncing around from doctor to doctor and the wife says don’t bring [the pandemic] home.” Another Wisconsin man spoke of his terminally ill seven-year-old son. A woman in Maine explained how she nearly bled to death and had a $24,000 medical bill “on my credit report for who knows how long.” One woman from Ohio had two kids with autism, and another had a grandson with allergies, requiring access to a lifesaving EpiPen. “I haven’t been able to get him one for the last three years, I can’t afford it... my insurance won’t cover it,” the woman said. Prices have skyrocketed for EpiPens and remain stubbornly high.

As I was observing the Zoom group, I initially wondered whether the focus group recruiter had used some specialized list to find the participants. But then I checked the census data on disabilities.

Across the country, 12.6 percent of the population has disabilities, rising to 15.1 percent in rural areas. Black and Native American populations are more likely to have disabilities than their white counterparts. The rate is over a quarter for those 65 to 74 years old and half of those over 75 years-- all groups that are overrepresented in these rural areas. And structural racism has played a powerful role here: 20 percent of Blacks with disabilities were employed at the beginning of this year, compared to 30 percent of whites and Hispanics with disabilities.

Then I looked at census data for the congressional districts where these sessions were being held. It was a new window into America in the pandemic. In suburban Macomb County, the disability rate looks like the rural areas, with 14 percent of both whites and Blacks disabled. In northern Maine, the numbers show one in five with disabilities, slightly more for whites. In Ohio’s Sixth Congressional District, both one in five whites and Blacks are disabled. And seniors in these areas are even more disabled than other rural Americans.



TRUMP KNEW IN FEBRUARY-- AND LIED TO THE PUBLIC


So COVID violently brought together the personal health crises of these people and the failed and corrupted government response, breaking their emotional bond with Trump.

Just throw out the words “health care,” and people relayed a train of horrors: a “$16,000 deductible,” employers throwing them off health insurance, “ridiculous” premiums, a $400 bill for their asthma medicine paid for out of pocket. They spoke of the frustrations of making too much money to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to stay in the solid middle class. They explained how people avoid treatment because they can’t pay the associated costs. “The way we deliver health care is just unbelievable,” said one woman from Michigan, “the amount of waste and how much it costs to let people go bankrupt to pay for medical bills.”

Most of the respondents live on the edge in a virtual “minimum wage” economy, where companies don’t care about their employees and look just to enrich themselves. “You’re just a number now,” said one Ohio woman. They fight for every dime, as they are being overwhelmed by a health care crisis that they recognize Donald Trump has failed to fix. And importantly, for working families outside poverty, the health care reforms passed by the Democrats-- the Affordable Care Act and insurance on the health care exchanges-- just were not much help.

Discussion of the Affordable Care Act did not sound ideological, as they talked about their direct experience with insurance on the exchanges, which in the words of one woman “costs a lot of money and doesn’t pay for much of anything.” The health care system is failing them, and they want someone to fix it. And Joe Biden’s rhetoric has not been very reassuring that he would make big changes. “He’s been vague on health care,” one woman from Wisconsin said. “I want to know the specifics of what he’ll do to make it better.”

These working-class and rural swing voters voted overwhelmingly for Trump, but their response to him is now profoundly shaped by what has happened in the COVID-19 crisis. They think he failed to take the virus seriously and has just made a mess of it. They think he is failing at the most important issue for them.

What was striking is how the usual Trump deflect-and-blame strategy no longer works with these swing voters. “It seems like a lot of the stuff he’s saying could be proven wrong,” said one man from Wisconsin. “He just won’t admit where things are, he’s out of touch with reality,” said another woman. “It’s just embarrassing to have a country with the highest COVID cases, highest COVID deaths,” said a man in Michigan. “We’re supposed to be the leader in the world and we completely fumbled the ball on this.”

Respondents despaired about the lack of a national plan of action, with everyone “just left on their own.” Meanwhile, there was dismay that the president gave more care to his family’s businesses than the rest of the nation. One woman theorized that he didn’t shut down domestic travel “because he owns hotels.” These participants are paying a lot of attention to the position of Trump’s family in the administration and how the bailouts and loans are benefiting his family business, his cronies, and the top one percent.

At the same time, they are on a financial knife’s edge, worried about being one bad break away from being homeless. The focus groups happened after the $600 federal unemployment benefit ended, and those in the groups who were out of work despaired of getting by without that. Nearly all of them supported Trump in 2016 because he was a businessman who would grow the economy. But now they’re scared about the economic damage. Trump reminding these voters of his great economic successes before the pandemic fell flat. His economic bravado was not reassuring at a terrifying moment. “I remember my father watching the news and crying, and I find myself crying sometimes when I watch the news,” related a woman from Wisconsin. “And I think, oh god, I’m turning into my parents. You have no choice. The things you see are gut-wrenching.”

In emails we asked the participants to send to President Trump, you can feel that the spirit that led them to join the working-class revolt is just broken. While some hope he will get back in the right direction, most used their email to express their deep disillusionment. You can feel that they wanted a president who didn’t divide the country and make it a “laughingstock” (two writers used that exact word) internationally. They wanted a president who put the interests of the people, not just big business, first.

“I supported you in the beginning over Hillary but in the end unfortunately, you show me you’re just not for the people,” wrote one man from Wisconsin. “You lied to the American people about COVID,” wrote another. “You are everything that is wrong with America, you have effectively ruined this country,” added a woman from Ohio. “Congrats, you suck.”

It is critical to listen for what they did not say: “What an ass I was to vote for that guy in the last election.” They did not regret or say they made a mistake. All working Americans have been in financial trouble since the 2008 crash, and rising health care problems and disabilities, health care costs and deductibles, and empowered insurance and pharmaceutical companies were an explosive brew. It is why many working people voted for Trump in 2016. It is why many working-class Democrats of color and millennials failed to turn out and defend Obamacare in midterm elections and in 2016. All these voters had reasons for those choices.

COVID has shattered so many lives, but also seemingly insurmountable political barriers. The great majority of working people, regardless of color, are desperate for a government that stops taking direction from the pharmaceutical companies, and brings the boldest feasible changes to our health care system.

Western Riverside County (CA-42) is one of the fastest growing areas in southern California-- and one of the last southern California districts with a Republican member of Congress, in this case "Crooked" Ken Calvert. In 2016, Trump won the district, although by smaller margins than McCain or Romney. Still, his 53.4% to 41.4% win over Hillary was substantial. In 2018, the anti-red wave wasn't big enough to dislodge Calvert. This year, though, the Democrats nominated a better candidate, independent minded progressive Liam O'Mara. His district shares a lot of traits with the districts Greenberg was looking at. There is a white plurality and nearly 40% of the adults did not go beyond high school. About 21% are blue collar workers and 44% are sales and service workers. Liam had quite a lot to say about it, as you might expect. Please read it-- and then consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the Bluer California thermometer below.

There is a lot of anger in the Inland Empire. The biggest challenges Democrats have faced out here have to do with the targets of that anger. Lacking the populist energy nationally to focus it on the élites who have kept wages low and costs high, too much of the population has been susceptible to fearmongering about immigration and crime. In election after election, Calvert has been all-too-happy to shift the blame for his policies onto working class brown and black people, maintaining a firm lock on the working class white vote in the district.

A couple of key factors now threaten that strategy, both in 2020 and long term. The first is demography. While white voters remain solidly in the majority for the district, they are not as monolithic in their views, with many more recent migrants from other parts of southern California attracted by lower housing costs. And the district is a lot more diverse than it once was, with large immigrant communities from Asia, and with Hispanic people making up more than a third of the total.

The other important change is to the national conversation on economics. It is true that Biden is exactly the kind of milquetoast neoliberal who has said he cares about the people but delivers mainly for the super rich, and he will not excite people at the polls. That he isn't Trump just won't be enough in this area, even with the pandemic raging. Bernie won the district by a very solid margin in the primary, and were he our standard-bearer, retiring Crooked Ken Calvert would be much easier. But the shift in policy emphasis matters still for our own race, and it is why we have drawn in so many new voters and historic independents this year.

Given the very real impact on ordinary people of rising costs and stagnant wages, this country needs to turn around. It elected Barack Obama because he spun a tale about hope and change that resonated with a country in the grip of recession. There was a historic opportunity in those first two years to realign the economy to favour growth for all, not just the one per cent. Alas, Obama failed completely to rise to the challenge of the day, preferring to bail out the people who caused the problem, not those who suffered its effects. At the end of the day, exactly the same people and ideas were left in charge. This is how we got Trump. And people really thought Biden was their best shot against him? For some reason, "It's the economy, stupid!" remains one of the hardest lessons for this party to learn.

If Democrats really want to win nationally, not just against Trump but consistently, and regain ground in the swing states, we must get back to our New Deal roots and tear up the nonsensical DLC crap that's driven the party since the 1970s. And a new batch of policy-driven challengers across the state and country give me hope that we're gaining ground at the grassroots at least. The Squad is already set to double this year, and there are a lot of great challengers running in red districts as well as the safely blue seats.

The purplish districts are where the real action is, in my view. If folks like Kara Eastman, Blair Walsingham, and I can flip red seats, or at the least improve upon past Democratic performance in these areas, we can show that populist issues resonate with a wider share of the population. That is the path back to the unchallenged dominance which the Democratic party enjoyed in the House thanks to the FDR to LBJ economic consensus. Since those days, we have lamentably allowed the fault lines to shift to racial issues and law-and-order dogwhistles, thanks to Republican strategy.

But we didn't need to fall for it! It's the same shit they pulled in the late 19th century against the populist movement of those days, disrupting solidarity with racism. And as I like to remind people, those who reject the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes. We need to get past the narrow focus on identity politics and work for all Americans again. Yes, the country is more diverse, and we should continue to embrace that diversity... but not at the expense of talking about the cost of living and the declining American Dream.

We need to be laser-focussed on the things that will get the attention of working people overall: The high cost of health care and housing, the unjust tax burden, the lack of affordable child care and elder care, the limited opportunities for education and business-creation, and the high crime rates caused by stubbornly-high poverty. We need to stop ceding the economy to the Republicans and the corrupt neoliberals, and start telling people that they can dream again.

I am running to lower the cost of living for working families, period. I don't talk about Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi because they have nothing to do with my race. I tell people that they'll have a fighter in me-- someone who will go to bat for them against anyone, of either party, who says they need to tolerate the poor conditions they face now. We deserve an economy that works for all of us, and that starts with replacing tools of the ruling class like Crooked Ken Calvert.

Why Hasn't Pelosi Pulled The Funding Bill For The Department Of Homeland Security?

Why hasn't the House Democratic Leadership pulled the bill for funding for Department of Homeland Security off the floor. It's supposed to be voted on next week? Are Pelosi and Hoyer actually contemplating funding an agency that is helping Trump deploy his private militia/secret police on our streets? Many people are wondering.

ACRE, the Action Center on Race and the Economy, is a campaign hub for organizations working at the intersection of racial justice and corporate accountability. They provide research and strategic support for organizations working on campaigns to win structural change by directly taking on the corporations that are responsible for pillaging communities of color, devastating working-class communities, and harming our environment. Maurice BP-Weeks, Co-Executive Director, was very clear about ACRE's reaction to Pelosi moving forward with the funding bill: "As Trump unleashes an all-out attack on our cities with his brutal, militarized, and out-of-control secret police, Democrats shouldn’t be appropriating another single penny for his out control and reckless fascist regime. Bringing any bill to the House floor to fund a DHS that is deploying a cold, calculated, and secret police force is not only unconstitutional, but also deeply immoral. Democrats ought to be pulling every lever they have in their power right now to defund and abolish Trump’s secret police not to pour more money into it. Unfortunately, their track record is lacking to say the least. Democratic leadership in the past supported some of the same heavily militarized DHS practices that disappeared, surveilled and terrorized the Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities around the country for decades, and refused to take action when undocumented people were detained in countless raids. We’re at another make or break moment for Democratic leadership. If despite all the calls to defund and abolish the police nationwide the House chooses to further fund Trump’s secret force, they will cement a leadership failure of epic proportions. The time for rhetoric and nuance is over."




PPP did a series of surveys for MoveOn, released this week, that show voters in Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina prepared to vote against Trump and his Senate enablers at least in part because of the way Trump is using military force against civilian protesters in Portland. "Majorities of voters in all three states," reported MoveOn, "oppose Trump’s militarized used of federal agents without identification, witnessed in Portland and pledged to expand into NYC, Baltimore, Detroit, Philly, and Chicago. And voters want Congress to act to rein Trump in on this front-- again, majorities in all states, and particularly strongly in North Carolina, where 61% of voters support the no-brainer policies included in Sen. Merkley’s Preventing Authoritarian Policing Tactics on America’s Streets Act (eg: must wear ID on uniform, no unmarked vans for detentions, etc.). This Resolution has 42 cosponsors in the Senate-- Tillis, McSally, and Collins are all absent... This is more evidence of the broader story we’ve all seen: Republicans in the Senate have been choosing Trump over their constituents and their country. Our poll also shows that this decision might cost Republicans their jobs and control of the Senate. In all three races, the Republican incumbents are trailing their Democratic challengers. 

• In Maine, Gideon leads Collins 47-42 (in the first poll since Gideon clinched the nomination).
• In North Carolina, Cal’s up on Thom 48-40.
• And in Arizona, Kelly leads McSally 51-42. 

If you follow Marianne Williamson on Twitter you have probably noticed that she is more than outraged by the Trump unconstitutional incursions in Portland and his threats to do the same thing in Albuquerque and Chicago. A few days ago she used a longer form to write that Trump has announced that his goon squad is "going to go into American cities with high crime rates and fill them up with militarized agents who will fix all that. How, exactly? Well, no one is sure, because violent criminals don’t wear signs that say, 'Me! I’m the bad guy! Come get me!' Our esteemed crime-busters from DHS will presumably do what they’ve done in Portland: pretty much take anyone around and grab them into unmarked vans, in one of those 'proactive arrests' meant to make people aware that they should not and will not do anything criminal… such as… standing around in public after 10pm. The situation would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous. My biggest fear-- I’m sure everyone’s biggest fear if they think about it-- is that someone’s going to get killed in all this. And then, my fellow Americans, expect all hell to break loose. The giant of the American spirit has been slow to awaken to the deeper problems in our midst, but it’s awakened now. And she’s pissed."

I don’t think the president’s goons from the Department of Homeland Security (I always thought that name was creepy), untrained though they apparently are, are being told to shoot lethal weapons at protestors. But that’s not the point. Situations like this are volatile and they shouldn’t even be happening. Only in a dictatorship do squads of secret police invade cities, presumably to establish “law and order” but doing nothing but spreading chaos and fury.

When running for president, at my CNN Town Hall I said we needed to be aware of the risk of encroaching fascism. No wonder the political status quo didn’t think those the words of a serious candidate, huh? But what an insane system calls crazy might not be, and what it calls sane might be what is bound to drive all of us crazy. Such is the state of America today.

Am I hopeful? Yes, because hope is a moral imperative. Am I cynical? No, because to me that’s an excuse for not helping. In truth, I think that in the long run we’re going to be more than okay; I think we’re going to be magnificent. I think we’re going to have Lincoln’s proverbial “new birth of freedom.” But not immediately, not easily, and not without pain. Not in the short term, and perhaps not even in the middle term. There’s no reason to expect things will not get ugly very, very soon. The president is sending his troops to cities whose citizens simply will not have it.

Nor should they. This has gone too far. There are times when you have to draw a line, and now is such a time. A dangerous man is trying to destroy our democracy and we must not let him. America does not belong to him; it belongs to us. And millions of us are buckling up.

After she ended her presidential run, Marianne endorsed several progressive candidates for Congress this cycle. I asked a few of them if they're as disturbed by Trump's display of aggressive authoritarianism as she is. You can probably imagine that Shahid Buttar, running for the San Francisco seat occupied by Pelosi, is incensed. He told me that "the democracy of which we are rightfully proud is fragile. It has sustained brutal damage at the hands of Republicans-- and Democrats-- who have openly embraced authoritarian policies for generations. Mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, indefinite detention, executive secrecy, and militarized police are all facets of a problem far worse than the sum of its parts: fascism. The generations that preceded us fell asleep at the switch, but the sordid abuses of an aspiring tyrant have awakened in America a memory of our civic commitments. Today, from Portland to Washington, we are taking action reclaim our sovereignty, resist the unconstitutional orders of a criminal president, and hold the corporate opposition accountable for having funded authoritarian agencies for decades without meaningful oversight. I’m disgusted by our so-called leaders, and horrified by their mounting violations of our rights. At the same time, the growing movement to defend democracy makes me immensely proud of We the People of the United States."

West Virginia progressive Cathy Kunkel notes that even in the most Trump-friendly state, Trump has been turning toxic. "Congressman Alex Mooney has spent the last four years," she told me, "defining himself by his support for President Trump. And here in West Virginia-- as around the country-- voters are not impressed by Trump's handling of the pandemic. Running on Trump's coattails is not the strategy it was 4 years ago."

Eva Putzova, a former Flagstaff, Arizona City Council member, lived in Slovakia at one time and this authoritarian outburst from the dying-- but very dangerous-- embers of Trumpism is not her first brush with fascis, something she tweeted about yesterday. This morning she told me that "Trump's Homeland Security forces are no different than KGB, STASI, and my home country's ŠTB. What we see in the U.S. cities today is what we fought against in 1989 in former Czechoslovakia. I'm extremely worried about Trump's abuse of power and the long-term effects it can have on our democracy, especially when we consider how the public health crisis limits people's appetite to protest that power."

History professor and Riverside County congressional candidate Liam O'Mara noted that his district, the 42nd "has been changing along with the rest of Riverside, but went for Trump from a combination of progressive apathy and Trump's own populist rhetoric. But while he claims to stand for the common man, all he cares to do is line his own pockets and funnel taxpayer cash to the oligarchy. And that's totally Ken Calvert's jam. For 28 years now, #CrookedKenCalvert has been serving his corporate owners in the defense and real estate industries, and actively making life harder for people in the 42nd. He likes to brag that he's helped with freeway congestion, but what he's actually done is helped developers throw up bedroom communities for commuters, thus creating that traffic, and then funneled jobs to contractors to deal with the same traffic... and never mind all the pollution. People are starting to get wise to Calvert's lies, and his full-throated support for reopening schools is just to help Trump's own play for reëlection. Crooked Ken doesn't care if kids die or get permanent lung damage, or if they bring the infection home to vulnerable family members. He cares only about serving Trump and the oligarchy. And people are talking about it. Is DC a swamp of corruption? Oh yeah. And we could have started draining it four years ago by electing Bernie Sanders. Instead we elected a swamp-monster like Trump, who brought in dozens of lobbyists to top jobs. Naturally, the long-term corrupt like Calvert drifted into his orbit, and now we have to knock them both out in November."

David Kim, is a progressive Democrat running for Congress in Los Angeles, promising a more activist and grassroots approach to governance than the incumbent, Jimmy Gomez. "As an immigration attorney who defends people fleeing dangerous governments," said Kim this morning, "I am incredibly saddened and disturbed by Trump's escalating displays of authoritarianism. I am equally disgusted that Congress has taken no proactive measures to address the current situation, such as pulling the bill for funding DHS off the floor. If our leaders allow Trump to oppress and silence the people with his fascist goon squad, then they, along with Trump, will be sent home in November by a mass of voters fed up with our morally bankrupt system. The American people cannot, must not, and will not let this country devolve into an authoritarian dystopia."

This week Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced a bill in the House to restrict the ability of the U.S. Marshals Service to deputize other federal employees to perform the functions of a Deputy U.S. Marshal. The bill would also prohibit the Attorney General from designating Drug Enforcement Administration officers to enforce federal laws outside of their Title 21 authority. The bill allows for an exception when the federal support is requested by the state governor. The bill is in response to what the Trump goon squad has been doing in Portland, a city represented by Blumenauer. Lieu noted that "What happened in Washington, DC and Portland is outrageous... We cannot allow this Administration or any future one to abuse its authorities against Americans practicing their First Amendment right to protest. In light of reports that the Trump Administration may use authoritarian tactics in additional cities around the country, we are working at breakneck speed to reign in this unfettered and troubling use of force."

Blumenauer sees right through what Trump has been up to, "From the dramatic influx of unnecessary federal agents, to the egregious use of violent tactics, it’s clear that the Trump Administration’s goal in Portland is to inflame tensions for political gain, rather than to keep our city safe. No community should face such a siege from the very people sworn to protect them. In order to ensure the rights of all Americans, it’s clear that we must fundamentally change the way federal officials can be deployed and used."

Blue America's Last Endorsement Of 2019-- Meet Liam O'Mara, Of Riverside County, California

We hope everyone's going to have a great holiday season and a wonderful kickoff to 2020. This is going to be our last candidate endorsement of the year, although we are in the middle of the vetting process for nearly a dozen more candidates for 2020. We also want to announce the winner of our Nirvana/Pramila contest, which ended last night: Venetia R. of Seattle. In all, over 400 of you contributed around $8,000. Thanks very much. Pramila deserves that kind of continuing support; she's never let us down and she always goes the extra mile for working families.

I hope you can dig deep and find it in your heart to contribute to one last campaign one last time for 2019-- this time to progressive Riverside County, CA history professor Liam O'Mara. Liam, who has been endorsed by the California Democratic Party, is running for one of the last Southern California GOP held congressional seats, this one by Ken Calvert, a corrupt and extreme ideologue who was even denounced by Fox News for his crooked ways! He likes to say "I am running as a progressive populist in a red district in California... Much attention has gone to insurgent runs against Democrats by 'The Squad,' but the same ideas can work in Republican strongholds if the messaging is clear. By sticking to progressive policies which address the economic interests of American workers-- and framing those policies in ways that make sense to them-- we can go back to winning elections all across the heartland, and finally have the numbers in Congress to address the major challenges of our time."

Blue America endorsed Liam-- heartily-- primarily because of his spirit and his platform. He's a brilliant guy who would make an incredible member of Congress These are his half dozen top priorities. what he calls "the major challenges of our time."

• Income and wealth inequality-- which he hopes to address by taking action against stagnant wages and for progressive tax policy
• Campaign finance reform, public financing of elections. He has been speaking out about banning dark money in politics for years.
• Green New Deal with a regional emphasis on infrastructure investment.
• Single-payer Medicare-for-All health care
• Tuition-free trade schools and state colleges along with student loan debt forgiveness
• Strengthening unions and addressing the rising tide of automation and job loss

Sound familiar? It should. Liam has officially endorsed Bernie for president. When I asked him why, he said that Bernie "best expresses two things I look for in a candidate-- principle and policy. The Senator's judgement has been proven right time and again, and he has stuck to his positions in spite of their unpopularity, in so doing helping to make them popular. And his platform has the widest range of initiatives for tackling the systemic factors which made Trump viable. His proposals deal with our historically absurd levels of wealth and income inequality, address climate change, offer Medicare for all, root out corruption in Washington by addressing the dirty campaign finance system, deal with the long-festering immigration and criminal justice messes, and strengthen the unions and their bargaining position. If we want to defeat not only Trump but the kind of politics he has brought to America, we need to address the underlying socioeconomic causes. As a historian, I can tell you that Bernie Sanders is trying to do just that."

Please consider contributing to what you can to Liam's campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer above. And take a look as the video he made to launch his campaign:

The DCCC Isn't Interested But The California Democratic Party Just Endorsed Berniecrat Liam O'Mara To Take On GOP Crook Ken Calvert

CA-42 is one of the last remaining red districts in California. The district voted against Obama both times he ran and last year gave Trump a 53.4-41.4% win over Hillary. The district, entirely in western Riverside County has an R+9 PVI. The main population centers are Corona, Norco, Eastvale, Menifee and Murrieta. A weird crooked Republican, Ken Calvert, has been in office there since 1992. The demographics of the district have been shifting away from the GOP and whites are no longer a majority:

• White- 42.9%
• Latino- 38.5%
• Asian- 9.0%
• Black- 5.2%

The Republican registration edge is beginning to erode and Republicans are no longer a majority:

• Republicans- 143,195 (38.30%)
• Democrats- 110,516 (29.56%)
• No Party Preference- 99,502 (26.62%)

Over the weekend, the California Democratic Party convention endorsed Liam O'Mara to take on Calvert. Liam is a history professor at Chapman University and comes from all-union family. His campaign website begins with his extensive issues pages-- Medicare-for-All, Green New Deal, fair taxation, affordable housing, tuition-free state colleges, gun regulation, comprehensive immigration reform, campaign finance reform... all the things you would expect from a Berniecrat. But I want to start with a section called Frequently Asked Questions, because it's funny and I've never seen anything like it on any candidate's website. I republished 3. Please read them and if you like them, please consider contributing to his campaign by tapping on the Bluer California thermometer on the right.

• But but but... that beard! And that hair!

Yes, I have a long beard and long hair. I’m glad you noticed. I realize that this is highly unusual in American politics today, and yes I could have trimmed it shorter for the campaign-- here is why I did not.

My campaign is built around a central theme: integrity. To cut it off just for an election would be inauthentic. It would be pursuing body-modification for the sole purpose of chasing votes, and that to me rings false. It seems dishonest. As I will be telling people again and again in this campaign, we may not agree on every issue, but one thing you’ll always get with me is honesty. I will sit down with you, listen to your concerns, and answer your questions as directly and honestly as I can. I want government to serve the people, and that means listening to them, taking their thoughts seriously, and finding solutions that address their concerns. With me you’ll always get that. And the easiest way to see that is, well… that in spite of all the political advice to conform to expectations, I decided to come to you as I am, and make my appeal to you based upon my character, my experience, and what I can do for you-- not what I look like.

• How is a historian helpful to me in Congress?

I have always read widely-- indeed, my house is literally a private library, with bookcases covering every possible space. For me, history is the center of a vast spider web that connects every branch of human knowledge, its sole defining feature being the recognition of change over time. As a historian of ideas, that is what I study. And in that capacity, I have learned a lot about who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we might still go. I have studied economic history, so I know what made American rich and how to ensure that promise reaches us all. I have studied cultural history, so I know something about our differences and how to bridge divides, find common ground, and treat others with respect. I have studied diplomatic history, so I know a fair bit about foreign policy and geopolitics-- I still read a dozen newspapers a week from half a dozen countries. I have studied the history of science, so I have a keen sense of what we can do when we put our minds to it.

With me in Congress, you get someone not only dedicated to public service, but who has knowledge directly revelant to many areas of public policy, from foreign relations to macroeconomics to the environment. I can draw on my background in research, my contacts in academia, and my willingness to reach outside my comfort zone and confront difficult truths. Politics requires not only a willingness to compromise and work toward common goals-- it also requires solid data and the tools to identify it. My training makes it harder for bad information to slip past unnoticed, and means I am a lot more critical of what I get from the news. With me on a committee, I can promise attention to detail and a willingness to put in long hours to review how a proposal actually works… or whether it works! Electing me gets you not just another partisan hack-- it gets you someone able to work through complex bills and make an informed decision about whether they serve your interests.

• With the demographics of CA-42, how will you appeal to independents and moderate Republicans?

An explicitly “centrist” message, designed to lure Republicans, does not work, and Democrats steadily chasing Republicans to the right has been shown a massive failure all across the country. What can work, however, is a campaign centered on economic populism, since this has proven cross-over appeal-- in fact, such messages are behind the previous success of Democrats in much of the country prior to the rightward realignment of our political landscape. My principles will be clear and my positions progressive, but they will be cast in economic terms so that they can best be understood and appreciated by voters who are not interested in the moral priorities Democrats consider vital. Focussing my messaging to suit the characteristics of the district-- by hammering home kitchen-table economic issues-- allows us to expand our coalition and gain enough votes to win.

One way to see the value of this is to consider that, for all their massive differences in social policy and personal integrity, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both hit populist notes in their campaign rhetoric which had substantial bipartisan appeal. A massive post-election survey of 50,000 voters suggests that up to 12% of Bernie’s primary voters went for Trump in the general election. Finding a way to reach that fraction of the electorate can give us much of the difference between Republican and Democratic votes in the 42nd. That ultimately Trump’s rhetoric is dishonest, and his policies mostly their opposite, is beside the point-- what mattered was his effort to channel the frustrations of the working class. If Democrats stand firmly for the working class above all-- a proposition that works well with our priorities in general-- then I believe a portion of Trump’s coalition can be attracted to our ticket.

Another way in which I can reach out to independents and NPPs is my own non-partisan mentality and outsider mentality. Yes, my views are consistently progressive, but I am not a tribal person by nature, and will review all policies, issues, and bills on their own merits, on their own details, and determine what is in the best interests of the 42nd. My background is in policy analysis, not as a creature of machine politics, and I will let my principles guide my legislative identity, not partisan calculations.

Now, a few words about the whacko congressman who Liam is running to replace, Ken Calvert. Let's start with a report about Calvert on, of all places, Fox News. Here's Chris Wallace reporting about what a totally crooked slime ball Calvert is:





Calvert first came to wide attention when he was arrested-- a pretty typical Republican "Family Values" hypocrite-- with a young woman he didn't know in a parked car, his pants down around his knees. (She turned out to be Lore Lorena Lindberg, a heroin addict with several prostitution convictions.) Although he tried to flee the scene of the crime, the policeman caught him and arrested him. Here's an interesting report on Calvert from the arresting officer:

You can click on the document to make it easier to read

Let's end on a better note than that wretched Calvert and his hypocrisy and lack of ethics. He's just another Trumpist. Instead, let's go back and take a look at Liam's introductory video. It's a good one:

Ken Calvert Is Surrounded-- Time To Replace This Corrupt Trump Enabler

When Ken Calvert was first elected to Congress in 1992, CA-42, the western Riverside County district, was in the heart of a deep red swathe of Republican California. Today, Calvert is surrounded by Democrats. To the east is CA-36, the Palms Springs district, today Raul Ruiz's D+2 seat. To the north, he's bordered by Mark Takano's CA-41 (D+12) and Norma Torres' CA-35 (D+19). To the west are 3 districts that just flipped from red to blue last year-- CA-39 (Gil Cisneros), CA-45 (Katie Porter) and CA-49 (Mike Levin). In the South is a big desert-- CA-50-- where Duncan Hunter, Jr, the son of Calvert's old crony, Duncan Hunter, Sr, is on very vulnerable and seriously on the ropes.

Calvert is the last Republican holdout in the Inland Empire and, with the exception of Hunter, the last Republican holdout in southern California (not counting a part of Paul Cook's CA-08, which begins nearly as far north as Sacramento along the eastern border of the state and makes its way down into Barstow and Victorville). The clock is ticking for Calvert as well. CA-42 is no longer a white majority district.

• White- 44.7%
• Black- 5.2%
• Latino- 37.2%
• Asian-8.9%

Last year, Calvert managed to beat Julia Peacock, a school teacher, spending $1,611,609 to her $149,565. The DCCC studiously ignored the race and Peacock was left to fight Calvert on her own, in a district where the PVI is still a daunting R+9. McCain beat Obama 54-43% there and Romney did even better: 56.5% to 41.4%. Hillary scored the same 41.4% although Trump did worse than Romney and McCain with 53.4%. Peacock actually did better last year than Hillary or Obama had done in the district.

The 42nd, entirely in Riverside County, starts up in Corona, goes south through the Temescal Valley, past Lake Elsinore through Murrieta and east to Menifee and beyond into a part of the state where there's not much to do besides manufacture and take meth. The stink of cooking meth hangs heavy in the air in some parts of the sparsely-populated eastern end of the district.

Calvert is kind of a lowlife-- who was caught with an underage prostitute in a parked car [read the police report here] and has been involved with some shady financial real estate dealings in the district. Watch Chris Wallace exposing Calvert's criminal activities on Fox News:





Who the hell votes to reelect someone like Ken Calvert? Meth-heads? I've long thought it was commuters, stuck in traffic with hate talk radio blaring in their consciousnesses day after day, month after month, year after year. Yesterday, I asked Julia Peacock how she thought she might be able to do better in 2020 than she did in 2018. Here's what she told me:

My team and I have learned a lot. We saw what worked and what didn't. We know that our biggest challenge is money (isn't it always), but it's also making sure we knock on more doors. Our grassroots volunteers knocked on 30,000 doors (not nearly enough) and polled the voters to the tune of 97% pro-Julia. We have to have a larger apparatus for canvassing, and we're already working on that now by reaching out to grassroots organizations across blue areas in Southern California.

One of the mistakes we made the first cycle was keeping ourselves close to home. I felt it necessary to work within the district to reach voters right here. However, we didn't have the capacity to turn that into a victory. Lesson learned: We need more help from other groups who aren't married to the Democratic party (which hasn't done squat to shift this district blue in more than a quarter century). We have to earn more attention state- and nationwide so we can raise more money and amplify our message. Will that guarantee victory? Nope. But it has all the potential to push the needle to the win column.

We did some things well last time, too. The effort I'm most proud of is how we addressed issues and not political parties. Whether writing postcards, sending texts and emails, or talking to voters personally, we asked what issues mattered to them. Sometimes they had a quick answer and sometimes they didn't, but it always opened up a more honest conversation about common ground that transcends party lines. That's where we're the strongest. We expand that effort to every single voter in the district and we win. Not an easy task, but we're down for the work.

...We talked to voters about issues everywhere we met them. The issues that came up the most were healthcare, education, and jobs. Close behind was traffic and affordable housing. For younger voters, the environment, gun reform, and higher education. Really, there's such a diverse population, something that Calvert has been ignoring for too long, that the issues are vast and very personal.

As for healthcare, 80,000 people in our district alone benefit from the Affordable Care Act. While a step in the right direction, it obviously hasn't gone far enough. One of the most powerful conversations I had was with an NPP voter. His wife is a strong supporter of mine, but he wasn't convinced. He came with her to one of my meet and greets and grilled me for 45 minutes about healthcare, guns, and more. After patiently answering his questions, listening to his concerns, and trying to make valid, humane points about why the current system of healthcare wasn't working, he looked at me and said, "You know, I'd gladly give up all of my guns so my neighbor doesn't have to go bankrupt over healthcare costs." THAT'S the difference we can make with real conversations.

Education is a hot button in our community because we are very suburban. Many families, if they can afford it, move here to raise families. They expect quality schools with opportunities for their children. One of the biggest issues I've found as an educator myself is that we're not spending the money necessary to provide social/emotional support for our students. In Riverside County alone, we have 3,000 children on home hospital (still enrolled in the public school, but they study at home, and a certificated teacher visits them 2-3 times per week with personal educational support) for anxiety. Anxiety. Kids are terrified to go to school. Counselors are overworked with caseloads of sometimes over 500 students. They do not have the training or expertise to do more than provide academic support and guidance. We don't invest, especially in California, in the education of our children, which makes families very vulnerable to the for-profit charter movement with their promises of the best education and results with almost zero oversight. Betsy's got to go, to say the very least. Parents want their kids to go to good schools. That's the least our children deserve.

What I followed of the Orange County campaigns (when I could, being a full-time teacher and a candidate myself) was the strength of their ground game. I made some connections with some of the activist groups in the OC who canvassed their butts off for their candidates. People all across the area, including here in the 42nd, got brave enough to leave their own backyards to talk to their friends and neighbors. That has to be repeated x1000. It's not lost on me, however, that some of the OC folks had some serious support from big names and national organizations. Our R+9 district didn't get any love from any of those fronts, even though some of the local and regional folks actually on the ground here were pushing hard to get us recognized. We're hoping to change that this time around by, again, getting out of the district and working with activists across the region and the state. I'm hopeful that dropping us to R+7 on all of our volunteer-led efforts might open a few more doors this time around. I know it's worked to get me an interview with TYT on May 28, so I'm excited about that.

Want to help Julia even the odds a little? That Turning California Bluer thermometer above... that's what that's for. Please consider making a contribution-- anything you feel comfortable with. $20.20 is what we usually suggest. You probably never heard this song; listen to it while you decide if today is the day you want to help Julia Peacock replace Ken Calvert in Congress:

How Do Members Of Congress Get So Rich While They're In Congress (A Full Time Job)?

Ken Calvert

There are some really, really wealthy members of Congress, most of them-- though not all-- crooks. 7 House members are ungodly rich:

• Darrell Issa (R-CA)- stealing cars & the starting a car alarm company-- $330,050,015
• Jared Polis (D-CO)- internet entrepreneur-- $313,556,22
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)- bankster-- $232,816,089
• David Trott (R-MI)- foreclosure and eviction king-- $177,149,145
• Vernon Buchanan (R-FL)- used car salesman, offshore insurance and charter jets-- $115,534,558
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- married an investment banker-- $100,643,521
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- says he was a humble pigeon cage cleaner before he married an heiress-- $95,569,028

They were rich before they got to Congress and some may have used their offices to increase their wealth, none of them are in the Open Secrets list of members of Congress with the mega-increases of wealth for the decade from 2005-2015. That list indicates that 8 House members became very wealthy while they were in Congress, each of them increasing their net worth by over a 1,000%. The worst is a notorious crook, Ken Calvert from California's Inland Empire. His district is one of the reddest in the state and he's likely to be one of the last Republicans left in the California congressional delegation, which will probably shrink by half this year. Calvert knows there's no accountability headed his way. The district (CA-42) starts in the suburbs west of Riverside and goes from Eastvale, Norco and Corona. south past Lake Elsinore through Menifee and Murrieta to the suburbs north of Temecula. Obama lost the district both times he ran, 55-44% against McCain and 57-41% to Romney. Trump beat Hillary 53.4% to 41.4% and the PVI stands at R+9. Calvert has never been in a competitive reelection. His opponents have never raised, if anything, more than a fraction of what he has and the best they do, generally, is just over 40% of the vote. This cycle there are 3 Democrats vying to take him on, Julia Peacock, Norman Quintero and Thomas Price. As of the Sept. 30 FEC reporting deadline Peacock had raised $23,060 and neither Quintero nor Price had raised the $5,000 that triggers a report. Calvert has a $962,663 warchest. Hde isn't worried.

Calvert had a 4900% increase in net worth since he 2005. At that time he was in debt (around $100,000) and now his net worth is $4,800,003. So how did he get so rich? Well, Calvert graduated from San Diego State in 1975 and managed his family's restaurant, the Jolly Fox, in Corona before becoming a real estate agent and starting his own realty company, Ken Calvert Real Properties. He was elected to Congress in 1992. He is thought to use his perch on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior and Environment to enrich himself. He is notorious for frequently using taxpayer money to build highways to worthless land he owned to increase its value. That's why he's a multimillionaire today.

There are at least 4 other congressional criminals who became millionaires while in Congress. You can see their net worth in 2005 followed by their net worth in 2015

• Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)-- $267,511--> $12,193,002
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)-- $81,537--> $2,523,001
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)-- $83,001--> $1,687,509
• Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)-- $175,505--> $3,547,506

In 2015, CNN made the point that "the typical American family is still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, but Congress is getting wealthier every year. The median net worth of lawmakers was just over $1 million in 2013, or 18 times the wealth of the typical American household, according to new research released Monday by the Center for Responsive Politics. And while Americans' median wealth is down 43% since 2007, Congress members' net worth has jumped 28%."

Mommy, How Did The Tea Party Start?

If we were alive back in the 1770s, today's Tea Party activists would probably have been active back then too-- but active on behalf of the British. Conservatives fought against the revolutionaries who wanted to throw off the British imperial yoke and many conservatives would up fighting on the side of the British troops, killing patriots. Today's Tea Partiers would have been those traitors to America.

How do I know? If you think teabaggers only live in backward, theocratic parts of South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas, you've never been to California's Inland Empire. I was there yesterday, and the sun was beating down in sweltering Lake Elsinore in the heart of Ken Calvert's blood red 42nd congressional district. Obama had one of his worst results in California there against Romney, a pitiful 41.4%. When I parked the car, I noticed the digital thermometer gage was hovering on the wrong side of 100. I looked in the back seat and found my bright yellow baseball cap emblazoned with the logo "99%." Who would even know what it meant? They knew. And I was soon arguing with a Tea Party fanatic who is convinced that Ken Calvert-- whose ProgressivePunch score is zero this year (and 1.43 for his career; that's 1.43 out of 100)-- is a liberal "Obama-symp." How do you even have a political conversation with someone like that? All his "information" came directly from Glenn Beck-- although I detected a smattering of Alex Jones in there as well. I asked him if he knew where Benghazi (which he was using as a punctuation mark for every statement he made) was, remembering I had just seen a poll that showed that 40% of teabaggers had no idea. He was one of those 40%. "Cuba," he asserted aggressively. Who was I to disabuse him of his cherished ignorance. I asked him if he knows anything about the actual Boston Tea Party. And he did have some vague notions about it-- mostly wrong... although he did know it involved Indians and Boston and tea and taxes. He was right about Boston. When I told him the real story of the Tea Party, he didn't believe me and looked at me in a way that made me think he was wondering if I was armed and if I'd shoot at him if he took a swing at me.

The story of the Boston Tea Party was very fresh in my mind because I just started reading Lee Fang's fascinating new book The Machine and he's got the actual story they gloss over in elementary school American History. It was all about the British East India Company, which was, back them something like Exxon-meets-Enron-- the biggest and most powerful company in the world. And they had well-connected lobbyists too.

Fierce competition from the Dutch and a variety of other factors pushed the British East India Company to near bankruptcy in the mid- to late eighteenth century. Members of Parliament, as well as the king and his family, were large shareholders of the East India Company. So with little hesitation, in 1767 the British government began passing a series of laws called the Townshend Acts to help the East India Company solidify its monopoly over the market in the American colonies as well as in England. American shipping companies competed directly with the East India Company by opening new trading lines, and small American retailers purchased products in bulk from the Dutch. To mitigate the East India Company’s competition, the Townshend laws included harsh measures to give the corporation new powers to search American homes and businesses for smuggled goods. Other Townshend Acts imposed new fees and taxes for various goods, including glass items and paint. Of course, none of these laws were passed with the colonists’ democratic input or consent.

To the colonists, perhaps the most insulting measure was the Tea Act passed in May of 1773. The Tea Act was a tax cut for the East India Company that allowed the corporation to bypass any duties and taxes on tea so it could sell directly to the colonists. The tax loophole applied only to the East India Company and allowed the company to severely undercut the price on tea imported by private American businesses.

Popular disgust at the East India Company rippled through the colonies. As news broke of the Tea Act, the May 27, 1773, edition of the Alarm, an insurgent paper bent on agitation, circulated around the colonies. The newsletter charged that the East India Company, through “Barbarities, Extortions and Monopolies,” had stolen land in Asia and forced famine in colonized countries for the sake of profit. The newsletter, signed by the anonymous “Rusticus,” asked the question: “Are we in like manner to be given to the disposal of the East India Company, who have now the Assurance, to step forth in Aid of the Minister, to execute his Plan, of enslaving America?” The colonial press buzzed with similar furor at the Tea Act, spurring a broad coalition of opposition.

The first shipments of the untaxed East India Company tea met well-organized resistance in November and December of 1773. In Charleston, South Carolina, protesters forced customs officials to keep the tea on the dock, and eventually the East India ship sailed back to England. In Philadelphia, a confrontation with the captain of the East India Company ship arriving there stalled the tea from making delivery. And in Boston, more than one hundred protesters, led by Samuel Adams, boarded the East India Company ship and dumped containers of the company’s tea, worth nearly two million in present-day dollars, into the harbor. The so-called Boston Tea Party faced down employees of the East India Company, many of whom acted as spies for their employer, as well as the military force of the British Empire, which at that time served the interests of the company. As the East India Company demanded repayments for their lost property, a series of escalating confrontations between British soldiers, acting on orders from the East India Company, and American colonists resulted in America’s war for independence.

"You see," I told the Glenn Beck Teatard from Lake Elsinore-- he was actually from Corona up the I-15 and worked at a place doing something with Monster Energy drinks-- "the Boston Tea Party wasn't about reducing taxes, it was about tax loopholes for big companies, which the Tea Party is protecting today. The were angry about the tax cuts that London gave to the British East India Company."

He looked more angry than confused. And he looked dumb as shit and I figured it was time to finish my business at Lake Elsinore and go back to L.A., where it's 20 degrees cooler and... well, you can walk around for a week and never run into a teabagger or a Glenn Beck fan or at someone who will look twice a bright yellow "99%" baseball cap.

As for Ken Calvert, he was caught by police getting a blowjob in a parked car from a heroin addict. He actually tried to drive away when the police interrupted him. (Here's a copy of the official police report.) He was later caught in various crooked real estate deals. His district is so red and so dumb that he keeps getting reelected anyway. Last year he beat his Democratic opponent, Michael Williamson 117,407 (61%) to 74,776 (39%). Unless a teabagger takes him out in a primary, he's there forever.