Jeff Denham (R-CA)-- Disingenuous And Misleading

Jeff Denham wants to cut Medicare-- but he doesn't want the voters to know that

A friend of mine, Michael Stewart Foley, had an interesting way to start the introduction to his newest book, The Rise Of Front Porch Politics In America. It sounds like he's talking about a bumper sticker, but what he's really talking about is how politicians do everything than can to hide the simple facts from the voters. Nothing is ever clear Inside the Beltway.

Maybe you have seen it on America's highways, a bumpersticker designed to prick your conscience" IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION. A few years ago, that slogan most often appeared alongside an image of George W. Bush inside a circle with a line running through his face; these days, the face might be Barack Obama's. It is an amazingly versatile phrase, equally at home on bumpers sporting Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street slogans. Over the years it has been marshaled in the service of many political causes, but it originated in the 1970s and 1980s, when Americans were notably outraged about a wide range of issues.

At the risk of over-thinking mass-manufactured protest items, I begin with the bumpersticker because it expresses a very particular and personal kind of passion and anger over the state of the union. "You're not paying attention" means that you, individually, are ignoring things that should preoccupy, rankle and motivate you. The driver in front of you hopes to leave you thinking about who you are as an American, what you expect from your country and fellow citizens, and what you are prepared to do to get it. The point is to shake you from your reckless complacency.

Wednesday the U.S. Senate voted to press forward with the vile package of bills that make up the TPP. This is how the official Senate publication that makes it easy for citizens to track votes described the successful attempt to shut down the filibuster against the job-killing package:

On the Cloture Motion: Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Concur in the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2146; A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow Federal law enforcement officers, firefighters, and air traffic controllers to make penalty-free withdrawals from governmental plans after age 50, and for other purposes.

How many people do you know who would understand that the 60 senators who voted for it were voting for the catastrophic corporate trade agenda? Don't worry; they're not supposed to be able to figure it out. It's supposed to be lost to history so the senators can be reelected when the results of their support for this tragic legislation kick in.

Blue America has been running a moving billboard campaign in two Central Valley congressional districts, CA-10 and CA-16, the former represented by Republican Jeff Denham and the latter represented by Blue Dog Jim Costa. Both are enthusiastic supporters of the reactionary trade agenda and both are mighty lucky that Congress has decided to write the laws in such a way that bribery in the form of "campaign contributions" is not considered bribery by the criminal justice system, a whole other deception worth taking time to think about.

Denham is well aware that his Democratic-leaning district would not put up with a $700 million Medicare ripoff to grease the skids of the TPP, so he tried to disguise his support. (Costa, who has no respect for the voters who have given him a comfy lifestyle, doesn't care if the voters know what he did or not.) Modesto Bee reporter Nan Austin asked Denham's office for a comment on the rather blunt and unambiguous accusations against him that are being driven up and down CA-10 and into almost every city and town Denham represents. "Congressman Jeff Denham just voted to cut your mom’s Medicare by $700 million to finance a trade agenda that sends your job to China" is not what Denham wants voters thinking about when they decide between him and Democrat Michael Eggman. But that is exactly what we want voters to be thinking about when they visit the polls next year. Austin:

The Denham camp called the signs "disingenuous and misleading."

"Congressman Denham supported legislation to eliminate the Medicare cuts that were contained in the Senate version of TPA, and he supported legislation to increase trade and bring jobs to the Central Valley. This a disingenuous and misleading line of attack," said Denham Press Secretary Jordan Langdon, in response to a Bee inquiry.

Blue America, however, stood behind the Blue America Pac political ads, saying the message referred to an earlier vote that included the Medicare cut. Denham voted against that portion of what was then a two-part package, but the group called that a slight of hand.

"Costa voted for both halves. Denham voted for one half. But the clear intent of the House Republicans was to pass both halves," said a Blue America spokesman who would give only the pen name Gaius Publius. "Any vote for any piece was a vote for the whole package to succeed," he said in a phone interview Tuesday.

If you'd like to help Blue America keep the truck rolling for Denham and Costa, here's what you can do.

How Far A Leap From Steve Scalise To Chris Christie-- And From Louisiana Racism To New Jersey Racism?

As we mentioned last night, Professor Michael Stewart Foley has been on the West Coast researching his new book on the political movement aspects of the late '70's/early '80s punk rock explosion in San Francisco. We've recommended his last book, Front Porch Politics-- The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism In the 1970s And 1980s and I somehow managed to persuade him to update an article about Chris Christie 2 years ago for George Mason University's History News Network.

Chris Christie And The Legacy Of New Jersey's Rosa Parks
by Michael Stewart Foley

It is hard to imagine any circumstances in which a public official would try to openly dismantle the legacy of Rosa Parks. But since taking office in 2010, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie-- the man Time labeled the “Master of Disaster,” in a nod to the compassionate human touch he displayed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy-- has worked tirelessly to roll back the legacy of his state’s own Rosa Parks, the late Ethel Lawrence.

So far, Christie’s efforts have been beaten back by the New Jersey Supreme Court. In 2013, the Court ruled for a second time against Christie, upholding the two court decisions known as Mount Laurel I and Mount Laurel II that resulted directly from Ethel Lawrence’s efforts to keep African Americans from being pushed out of developing suburbs. Despite a direct order from the court, however, Christie, now contemplating a run for president, continues to stonewall the court. Two months ago, he ignored the court’s directive to ratify new rules on the construction of affordable housing. We now wait to see if the court will what is necessary, and take over the building of new and dearly needed affordable housing in New Jersey.

But it is shocking that it has even come to this, for it is no overstatement to say that Lawrence and the Mount Laurel cases should be mentioned in the same breath as Rosa Parks or Brown v. Board of Education. And Chris Christie’s name should be listed alongside other segregationist governors like Orval Faubus and George Wallace.

Today, Mount Laurel is one of Philadelphia’s archetypal suburbs, but up until the 1960s, it was a small, rural community. African-Americans lived there from the days when New Jersey laws allowed slavery, and later many became tenant farmers on white-- owned land.

In the 1950s and 60s, the growing network of highways that came through Mount Laurel-- particularly the New Jersey Turnpike-- made the area attractive to developers. When farmers could sell their land for so much more than their crops could ever bring-- in 1963, one farm sold for nearly $2 million-- they did not hesitate. In the process, tenant farmers were cast off, leaving many of the town’s poor black residents corralled in a kind of shanty town called Springville.

Led by Ethel Lawrence, a group of residents formed the Springville Community Action Committee in 1968 and secured a small grant from the state to begin planning a low-income housing project. But Mount Laurel’s existing zoning laws allowed the construction only of single-family homes. In order to permit the low-income housing, the Mount Laurel township council-- which openly spoke in favor of building an “executive-type town”-- would have to revise the zoning ordinances. Predictably, it refused. “If you people can’t afford to live in our town,” said one town committeeman, “then you’ll just have to leave.”

But Ethel Lawrence would not leave. Born in 1926, Lawrence grew up tenant farming in Mount Laurel (where her family had lived for generations), and she was a mother of eight children, a Girl Scout leader and church pianist. And like Rosa Parks, Lawrence was an officer in her local NAACP. In Southern Burlington County NAACP et al v. Township of Mount Laurel, ultimately best known as Mount Laurel I, Lawrence made an ideal plaintiff.

During the four day trial in March 1972, township lawyers acknowledged that a “pattern of economic and social segregation” existed in Mount Laurel, but they denied that town officials had anything to do with it. The racial separation occurred, they suggested, as a result of market forces. The judge, shocked that some plaintiffs had been forced to leave their homes, even though some had lived in them for fifty years, disagreed. He ruled for the plaintiffs and ordered town officials to work with Ethel Lawrence and others to find a solution.

Mount Laurel’s officials complied as little as possible, but in March 1975, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously upheld the lower court’s decision and ordered the state’s developing towns to rewrite their zoning laws so that developers could provide a “fair share” of the state’s poor and moderate-income citizens with housing.

It was a stunning victory for the poor African American plaintiffs in Mount Laurel, but fierce reaction (marked, at times, by barely disguised racism) followed. Lawrence received death threats and saw her children frequently bullied and badgered.

In 1983, the state Supreme Court once again ruled-- in the case known as Mount Laurel II-- that Mount Laurel and other municipalities must “in fact provide a realistic opportunity for the construction of [each community’s] fair share of low and moderate income housing,” and must prove they were doing so.

Following another wave of hostile reaction, the legislature finally intervened with a compromise. New Jersey’s Fair Housing Act of 1985 both validated the fair share ideal and provided mechanisms for suburbs to, in the words of one team of analysts, “buy their way out of much of their fair-share obligation” with only “a modest cash outlay.” Under “regional contribution agreements” supervised by a new bipartisan agency called the Council on Affordable Housing, suburbs paid to trade away as much as half of their fair-share obligation to urban areas.

It is this quite reasonable arrangement that Governor Christie has sought to upend. Perhaps because the long contest between Mount Laurel and its poor black residents lacked the vivid imagery we associate with the civil rights movements-- no fire hoses or German Shepherds unleashed on protesters, no iconic photo of Ethel Lawrence in police custody-- Christie has gotten away with painting the Mount Laurel doctrine’s fair-share obligation as reckless judicial activism. Now that the Court has stopped his attempts to eliminate the Council on Affordable Housing and to let municipalities essentially determine what their own fair share of affordable housing would be, Christie speaks openly of reforming the “liberal” Court.

But decrying judicial activism is a smoke screen to hide attempts to roll back a historic civil rights victory. Indeed, a 2010 study showed that Mount Laurel has seen no negative effects as a result of the opening of the Ethel Lawrence Homes (in 2000, six years after Lawrence died); instead of spikes in crime and plunges in surrounding property values, the development has seen higher rates of employment and income among its residents (as compared to prospective residents who moved elsewhere) and, among their children, better education. More broadly, the Mount Laurel doctrine resulted in 60,000 new units of affordable housing in the state-- far less than what is needed, but still an achievement worth preserving. How Christie explains his assault on that historic victory-- in a manner that recalls the obstructionism of southern segregationists-- should be central to any discussion of his presidential ambitions.

-MSF

Christie delivers his State of the State message today, with an eye on a presidential bid... and with rapidly sinking approval ratings from New Jersey voters. The video below by American Bridge is a excellent preview of the Christie speech:

Should David Petraeus Get Away With It Because "He's Suffered Enough?"

Elites rarely think other elites need to face the same kind of justice non-elites have to face when they break the law. Whether banksters on Wall Street or legislators on Capitol Hill, the worst criminals in our society-- those given the greatest amount of public trust-- are rarely held to account for their transgressions. And the lack of accountability is systemic and has become almost a tenet of our entire society. Sunday, Dianne Feinstein was a guest on CNN's State of the Union. She echoed comments by 2 other Military Industrial Complex shills from across the aisle, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, that David Petraeus should not be prosecuted and that the Justice Department had erred in recommending charges against him.

"This man has suffered enough in my view," said Feinstein, whose own husband has been bbagman for her entire political career and who, as a military contractor, has made millions of dollars in obscene profits off Feinstein's positions. Both should be rotting in prison now instead of going on CNN to excoriate the Justice Department for trying to bring justice to the high and mighty. Calling Petraeus "the four-star general of our generation" and "a very brilliant man," Feinstein used the common refrain elites always use when telling us to just get over it when one of their own gets into legal trouble: "It's done, it's over. He's retired. He's lost his job. I mean, how much does government want?"



This week, Michael Foley, an author and academic from the University of Groeningen, interviewed me for his next book which is on the politics of the San Francisco punk music scene of the late 1970s/early 80s. Among his recent books are Front Porch Politics: The Forgotten Heyday of American Activism in the 1970s and 1980s and Dead Kennedys' Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (33 1/3). A few days ago we had finished up and I was exhausted from talking non-stop for almost 3 hours. Foley asked me if I wanted to add anything but I was too tired to think. The next morning I remembered that he hadn't asked me about the White Night riots of May 21, 1979, sparked by the wrist slap to right-wing politician Dan White after he murdered Harvey Milk. Foley came back to my house a few days later for another segment of interview.

Although history paints the riots as part of a conflict between the gay community and the police, it was no such thing. The gay community organized a peaceful candlelight vigil and a march to City Hall. The gay community did not want violence, trouble or any kind of confrontation with the police. Individual gays, of course, had a different perspective.

Harvey was a close friend and mentor. If you watch the credits roll on the first PBS documentary of his life, you will see that I was credited with still photography. Harvey had staked me with a darkroom when I was flat broke and in return, I did his campaign photos. My partner Chris' punk rock record store, Aquarius, was right next door to Harvey's camera shop. I spent my days going back and forth between the two. Harvey has always distrusted and disliked Dianne Feinstein, a member, like himself and Dan White, of the Board of Supervisors (City Council). I had never heard of her until he told me what a pompous asshole she was. The assassinations of Harvey and liberal Mayor George Moscone launched the long, tedious career of the horribly conservative Feinstein.

May 21 found me distraught that White was given the most lenient possible sentence (7 years). I was beside myself and very much ready to do something about it. There may have been one or two other gay people with me and my friends but we were all from the punk rock community. Some cared about Harvey Milk or Dan White; some just wanted trouble. I wanted both. We were the first ones to turn over and burn the first (of a couple dozen) police cars. A picture of it wound up on the cover of the Dead Kennedys' debut album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.

Dan White served 5 years of his 7 year term. Two years later, the story goes, he committed suicide by using a garden hose hooked up to his car engine. He did die of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage... but he didn't commit suicide. By this time the gays didn't need the punk rockers to teach them about peoples' justice.