The exemplary blog, DemocracyforCalifornia, has been posting what looks to be a thorough rundown of the California state and local elections this year. I don't know enough about the politics of that huge state, but the way DfC has broken it down makes me yearn for something like this here in Maryland.
It's business as usual here in Snoozeville right now...Our outgoing county executive was arrested with his wife, whom we just elected to the county board of supervisors, as they tried to get out of their house with a bunch of payola from developers. The wife, when taken into custody, had nearly $80,000 in US currency stuffed in her bra. (Her name on the ballot was "Jane Doe"(D)--should have been (DD)!) She earlier had been recorded on tape while flushing a check for another $100,000 down the toilet. (Dang! Why don't these developers give these bribes right to the voters instead of to crooks??!!!)
My point is that we don't have anything we can rely on when we're preparing to vote in our local elections. Our yards are full of signs foisted on us by door-to-door campaigners, and we get reams of flyers every time we leave the house, but they don't tell us much. They don't tell us who is in whose pocket. The newspapers aren't going to tell us this.
Great job, DemocracyforCalifornia. You're a shining example of democracy in action.
You're right that it's more and more difficult to find out what politicians are really for. We hear nothing but slogans and sound bites from them.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to know you "get it."
ReplyDeleteRichard and Sara will be pleased to know you took the time to commend their efforts. Their analysis of California's ballot measures was particularly helpful, since we just don't know who is behind them, and what their agendas are, until you dig deeper.
There used to be a DemocracyforMaryland site. It was an affiliate of Howard Dean's DemocracyforAmerica, but no more. I looked it up and strangely the domain is now owned by a Japanese enterprise of some kind.
Cheers!
I'm sorry, I wrote the above in a bit of a rush and didn't flesh out what I meant by "you get it."
ReplyDeleteI believe you get that we need more communication on a local level. The power brokers have the big money to buy the big megaphones, which gives them access to the eyes and ears of the people on a mass scale, but we (the people) have very little access to each other locally. That creates a huge vaccum, where only their messages get through. We can't compete with that unless we scale down, communicating with each other more directly and intimately, sharing information that they strive mightily to diffuse and confuse, especially during elections.
I'm sorry that so many of the DFA state affiliate sites, like democracyformaryland.com are now defunct, and that you and others have no place to turn for real information that cuts through all the political hype and b.s. I think when Howard Dean attempted to turn DFA into an unofficial arm of the DNC, the whole concept lost the support of the progressive Netroots movement that his Presidential campaign had initially inspired.
But maybe the idea can be revived. I'm hoping California, which is now solidly progressive, will lead the way.
Your post encourages me to believe that Democracy for California has a role to play, and I thank you for that.
Diana: Thanks for your additional comments on the role of personal communication in local political campaigns. Where I live, we have a local listserv that COULD do a life-giving mitzvah if it would cast some light on such influences as developers, businesses and corporations with the will and the guts to keep jobs here (or not)...the list is endless. Just for a small example of the kind of thing that needs talking about, I got a bill today for $800+ from a lab in Kansas. When I had my annual physical in August, the doctor ordered some necessary lab work. I've had this done yearly for almost 20 years. Every other year, since the lab work was done on the day of my appointment, my health insurance covered it. This year, however, my clinic, associated with a prominent university, sent everything to a lab in Kansas to be analyzed. And the insurance company has declined to pay for the lab's services--because it's out of town and not affiliated with my clinic. This kind of maneuvering should be illegal. But how can we stop it if politicians, from the local council members on up, are on the take from
ReplyDeletelobbyists for the health insurance industry, Big Pharma, et al.?? Far from having any kind of transparency, even at the local level, the picture has gotten steadily murkier the longer the conservatives (not all Republicans, alas) are working their dark arts.
That's outrageous. Surely there there are laws against it, but even if there are, who, as you pointed out, is there to enforce them? What recourse does someone like yourself have to protect themselves, and their pocket books, from these insurance ripoffs?
ReplyDeleteYou probably heard about Bell, the small city in the Los Angeles suburbs, and the massive corruption the L.A. Times finally exposed last July. I say "finally" because the L.A. Times certainly knew about it for years, as did the L.A. County D.A., but no one acted until an election year. In other words, Bell shows us what a complete breakdown in the system really looks like. We often speak of what ails our democracy in broad strokes. "It's the system," we say. "The system is failing us." While this is undeniably true, it doesn't give us much to work with when we try to understand how to fix it. Something is missing. The "missing" element is the people working within the system, those who are charged with making the system work for the people, and who are absent by simply
failing to do their job -- a job citizens pay them to do. When mainstream papers fail to act as our watchdog by no longer covering the local beat; when authorities like the District Attorney's office turn a blind eye to corrupt officials taking advantage of the people, then we don't just have a breakdown in the machine, we have a breakdown in the moral fiber that is meant to underpin it. Finally, when the system only works for a small ruling elite, something is very wrong with Democracy in America.
hi M.E.,
ReplyDeleteRichard here from Democracy For California. Thank you again for noticing our work. Great things came our way this last election, and we are now all riding high on Moonbeams!
Best wishes to you and yours for Thanksgiving... Then we'll all get back to work... There's so much more to do up ahead...
Single Payer in 2011!
Hi. Sara here, from Democracy for California. Thanks for mentioning us, and have a very happy holiday season! I can't wait to ride a Moonbeam home to California!
ReplyDelete