A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business

 

 

David Horsey of the Los Angeles Times newspaper opines that if money is the mother’s milk of politics, then America’s big corporations are Big Mama and Big Baby is the Republican Party suckling at the enormous bosom of business. Democrats, meanwhile, are abandoned brats scrounging for nourishment wherever they can find it.

During the long decades the Democrats held a solid majority in Congress, campaign donations from the corporate world were spread around among incumbents in both parties – not evenly, but at least the D's got their share. Since the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, however, corporate dollars have increasingly flowed in one direction.

This happened, in part, because Republican leaders like Tom “The Hammer” DeLay instituted a program to punish corporate lobbyists who were too bipartisan with their donations. Even more significantly, the evolution of the GOP into a militantly anti-tax and anti-regulation party has made Republican policy goals and the political aims of big corporations indistinguishable. 

Now, in 2012, the discrepancy in campaign contributions is stark. Where once big business favored the GOP by 2 to 1, a survey by the Center for Responsive Politics has found Republicans enjoying a 7-1 advantage in some sectors. Energy companies, in particular, are giving heavily to Republican candidates, but so are financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate firms and agribusiness.

In addition to direct contributions, corporate givers -- unleashed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling allowing unlimited contributions to independent political action committees – are dumping massive amounts of money into conservative "super PACs." And those super PACs are certainly not coming to the aid of any Democrats. 

Even as an incumbent, President Obama is having a tough time attracting corporate dollars. Hedge fund managers who gave big to his campaign in 2008 are putting their political investments elsewhere in 2012. He may have saved Wall Street from its own excesses and provided the bailouts that allowed the financial moguls to hold on to their fortunes, but they are not showing Obama any gratitude. They would prefer to have one of their own, Mitt Romney, in the White House.

Go here for the full article at the Los Angeles Times newspaper's website   --->>>

San Francisco union sends members to picket Fresh & Easy market

 

(Originally published in the April, 2012, issue of the Richmond Review newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.) 

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

People living around the Lincoln Park and Seacliff neighborhoods of San Francisco have probably noticed a few picket signs in front of the new Fresh & Easy market at Clement Street and 32nd Avenue. 

The store has about 25 employees and none of them belong to a union, which the United Food and Commercial Worker's Union (UFCW) Local 648 takes issue with. The union represents retail clerks throughout the City in stores like Safeway, Luckys and Mollie Stone's.

According to a flyer handed out on the picket line, the union is asking the public to boycott the store. It says Fresh & Easy's parent company, the United Kingdom's Tesco, "is pulling money out of our community, state and country. It's bad enough that good American jobs are being outsourced to other countries, but now this global giant from the U.K. is taking advantage of American workers."

 

Go here for the full story at the Richmond Review newspaper's website   --->>>

San Francisco mayor optimistic despite $482 million deficit

 

(Originally published in the May, 2012, issue of the Sunset Beacon newspaper, a community news source serving the Richmond District of San Francisco.) 

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

 

Despite a projected $482 million deficit over the next two years, city officials told people at a recent Town Hall Meeting at the San Francisco Zoo that the city's budget situation is improving compared to the last few years.

The City recently switched from using an annual budget to a bi-annual budgeting process. This coming fiscal year the deficit is expected to be about $170 million, while next year it is projected to be almost twice as much, at $312 million. 

Nevertheless, revenues are up this year to $6.8 billion, the most the City has ever taken in. 

Cindy Czerwin, a budget analyst in the city Controller's Office, said about half of the City's $6.8 billion in revenues are from dedicated sources that can only be used for certain expenses. This leaves the other half, about $3.4 billion, for everyone else tethered to city coffers.

"We are seeing some amount of recovery in our economics this year, which is really exciting and a very different story than we've dealt with the last few years. We're no longer in a downturn. We're actually seeing our revenues improve," said Czerwin. "However, our expenses are really increasing faster than our revenue stream. It's as if we were to get a small boost in our paychecks and then go home to get letters from our landlords with an increase in rent; letters from our health insurance company telling us that our health insurance premiums are going up; going to the gas station and knowing that the price of gas is rising. It's more than eating up that little boost in the paycheck that you're getting."

 

Go here for the full story on the website of the Sunset Beacon newspaper   --->>>

Protesters air grievances at Wells Fargo meeting

 

Carolyn Jones, Vivian Ho, Jill Tucker and Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper reported that protesters enraged about the country's economic miasma disrupted Wells Fargo's annual summit Tuesday, as shareholders celebrated the bank's record profit and awarded its chief executive a pay package of nearly $20 million.

Hundreds of activists - including union members, Occupy activists and people whose homes have been foreclosed - surrounded the Merchants Exchange Building in downtown San Francisco, where about 250 shareholders gathered on the 15th floor to hear details of the bank's 28 percent profit increase last year.

Shareholders meetings are seldom tense affairs, but people attending this one had to pass through metal detectors and several layers of security. Afterward, San Francisco police ordered them to stay inside the chandelier-laden Julia Morgan Ballroom for 45 minutes as protesters outside dispersed.

Fifteen protesters, allowed into the meeting because they own stock in Wells Fargo, shouted over CEO John Stumpf as he presented a PowerPoint slide show about the bank's $15.9 billion profit last year.

Police escorted out the protesters, who were cited for disrupting the meeting and released.

 

Go here for the full story on SFGate.com   --->>>

Happy 4/20!

 

 

Photographs by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

April 20, 2012 @ 4:20 p.m., Pacific Time, on "Hippy Hill" in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Every year there is a gathering of a certain tribe, to celebrate a certain plant. There are many rumors as to why they do this. Nobody really knows for sure. Who can remember? They apparently don't much care either.

 

Go here for the full photo essay   --->>>

 

 

Protesters across California call on City Hall about home foreclosures

 

About 50 people gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall on Monday, joining a statewide protest against what they say are illegal home foreclosures.

 

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

Citizens and clergy angry about what they claim are illegal home foreclosures showed up at the offices of elected officials across the state of California Monday, protesting home foreclosures and calling for criminal prosecutions.

Calling this action “Occupy the Crime Scene,” organizers said rallies and direct actions are taking place from Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area and at various points south all the way to Los Angeles. Cities included in this claim are Eureka, Fort Bragg, Santa Rosa, Ventura, Oroville, Santa Barbara and Nevada City.

In San Francisco about 50 people, including about a half-dozen local ministers, rallied in front of City Hall before going into visit Phil Ting at the County Assessor’s office and then the office of City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

“We don’t think this is a blame game as much as a wakeup time,” said Reverend Franzo King, of San Francisco’s St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. “So we’re saying we’re not here to blame anyone but we are here to say that some crimes have been committed and that the banks and the mortgage companies are thieves, thugs and criminals of a very serious nature.

“I’m not the only minister that’s going through this. There’s other ministers. There are even churches that are being preyed upon.”

Go here for the full story and photo slide show on the Examiner.com news website   --->>>

Under pressure from feds, Mendocino pulls plug on marijuana program

 

Michael Montgomery of the Associated Press reported that officials in Mendocino County, Northern California, are expected to pull the plug on an unusual program that put pot growing under supervision of the local sheriff. It was the first effort of its kind in the nation and proved a success, at least in the eyes of many locals. Federal prosecutors, however, took a different view.

For years, Mendocino County, like other places in Northern California, struggled to contain an explosion in pot growing, especially since the state legalized the use of medical marijuana. So two years ago, officials decided to try something completely new – legalize medical marijuana production under strict conditions. And they gave the job to a barrel-chested sheriff's sergeant named Randy Johnson.

The program has earned the sheriff's department more than half a million dollars and enlisted nearly 100 growers.

After California voters legalized medical marijuana use 16 years ago, the state never determined how pot should be produced, leaving such regulations to local authorities. So far, only Mendocino has taken on the challenge.

But in October, federal prosecutors went on the offensive against California's marijuana industry, closing dozens of storefront dispensaries and seizing properties.

Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, said the California law has been hijacked by profiteers who are motivated not by compassion, but by money.  She also warned cities and counties that marijuana licensing schemes were against federal law. Soon after, heavily armed Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided a farm in Mendocino owned by one of the county's legal growers.

 

Go here for the full story on the San Diego Union Tribune website   --->>>

 

Banks targeted at OWS West protest

 

A man is taken into custody by SFPD officers, in front of the Bank of America at 555 California Street on January 20, 2012..

 

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

A steady rain that came down most of Friday didn’t stop Occupy demonstrators in the hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand throughout the day, from converging on San Francisco’s Financial District.

They showed up in the belly of the city's international business machine to protest real estate foreclosures and financial institutions profiting from people losing their homes.

Two years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that it's unconstitutional for the government to limit how much money corporations and labor unions can donate to poitical causes, in the Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission case.

Now the headquarters, offices and branches of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other finance companies were targeted by a variety of groups aligned with the Occupy movement for direct actions, and in some cases, human blockades or “lock downs”.

By 5 p.m., 18 people had been arrested for misdemeanor trespassing, most of them taken into custody after they blocked the exit of a bank. Another man was also arrested and charged with a felony, after he was found to be in possession of a police baton that someone had stolen from an officer at the scene, said Sgt. Michael Andraychak of the San Francisco Police Department. 

Calling the event Occupy Wall Street West, protesters began the first actions early in the morning, before 8 a.m., and went on with them throughout the day and into the evening hours. They targeted more than 20 "action sites" for protesters to visit -- including the Macy's at Union Square, where a small flash mob showed up at about 2 p.m. -- ending at about 8 p.m., when a core group of about 40 people broke into an abandoned hotel, presumably hoping to squat there.

“Banks have spent more than any other sector, the greatest amount, on lobbying. Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo dropped $12 million between them in lobbying in 2011 alone,” said Cinthya Munoz over a bullhorn to a group of demonstrators standing in front of a Wells Fargo branch on California Street. “We’re asking that Wells Fargo put a moratorium on all foreclosures because we need our homes more than the banks need one more. … Wells Fargo, you owe us!”

 

Go here for the full story on the Examiner.com website   --->>>

 

Brown enlarges his role in California's foundering bullet train project

With the $100-billion project at a critical juncture, the governor puts his people in key positions.

 

Roelof van Ark is stepping down as head of the California High Speed Rail Authority. (Bryan Patrick / Sacramento Bee)

 

Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel of the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported that a surprise shake-up of senior leaders at California's bullet-train agency this week was partly Gov. Jerry Brown's response to a growing crisis of confidence and credibility in recent months that has threatened the political viability of the project.

As criticism of the project has intensified, Brown has moved to exert more direct control, installing two representatives on the board of the California High Speed Rail Authority and, on Thursday, playing at least a peripheral role in replacing the authority's chief executive, Roelof van Ark. Several state government sources said Van Ark, an engineering manager and high-speed rail expert, had become personally frustrated and lost the confidence of some key legislators.

Brown is under pressure from unions, engineering firms, big-city mayors and the Obama administration to stabilize and press ahead on a nearly $100-billion project that would be the biggest in California's lofty history of extraordinary public works gambles. With so much at stake, Brown is putting his own people in charge, although their ability to quickly reverse the damage of a wave of negative outside reviews of the project remains unclear.

Go here for the full article at the LA Times website  --->>>

The recession's toll on Seattle

 

Drew DeSilver of the Seattle Times reported that for most of residents of Washington state the economy has never been this bad. Since the mortgage bubble popped more jobs have been lost, faster, and recovery has been more slow, than at any time since the Second World War. That includes iconic slumps such as the Boeing Bust, the early-'80s double-dip and the dot-com crash barely a decade ago.

DeSilver provides charts and graphs that show this and he states the recession has fallen hardest on people in the lower-middle and working classes -- folks who were just getting by or maybe starting to make some headway when the bottom fell out. Statistics can't capture the pervasive sense of economic dislocation the slump has engendered. But they can at least help us understand what's happening and to whom.

 

Go here for the report in the Seattle Times   --->>>