California Ballot Endorsements by the “FACTION”
“FACTION” stands for “Friends And Cohorts of Tucker Independently Organizing Nationally.” It is my tongue-in-cheek, semi-Stalinist “Cult of Personality,” through which my friends (and cohorts) and I conduct our political operations in the electoral sphere. The following thoughts, recommendations and endorsements are for the California Ballot for the November 2, 2010 election.
Governor—Other than my view that electing Meg Whitman would portend a disaster for California, I’m not even considering voting for Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr. His father, “Pat” Brown, was a great governor assuming that one ignores his ties to the Chicago mob’s boys in California. But Jerry demonstrated throughout his career that he’s more interested in hyping his purported achievements in the media than he is in governing. When he was Secretary of State, he transferred so many employees to the P.R. office the real work of the office got slower and slower and practically to a standstill.
I sued Jerry when he was Secretary of State and got an injunction against enforcement of the filing fees from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which were then mandatory for all candidates regardless of whether they were wealthy, working class, or indigent, to run for office. A conservative Democrat, Ray Choate, also had an injunction against them in Northern California. The day after the U.S. Supreme Court in Lubin vs. Panish unanimously declared California’s electoral filing fees to be unconstitutional, Jerry threw five (5) candidates off the ballot, including Peace & Freedom Party candidates Robert Donovan (Attorney General), Bernie Klitzner (Controller), and Jim Stanbery (Treasurer) off the ballot for not paying the unconstitutional fees.
While serving as California Attorney General, he has allowed Deputy Attorney General Phillip Scott Chan to persecute the California League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) – tacitly assisting a LULAC member who is Chair of the California Democratic Party’s Chicano – Latino Caucus to assist a Republican Party takeover attempt of National LULAC – while ignoring complaints that she herself unlawfully ran a suspended corporation during her four (4) years as LULAC State Director.
So, I am voting without hesitation for CARLOS ALVAREZ, the Peace & Freedom Party candidate for Governor. Carlos is an activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). While I have disagreements with the PSL on some policy issues, they have always told me to my face when and why they disagree, unlike the Feiginite and Berkeley Bolshevik leadership cult of PFP who lied and backstabbed on foreign policy issues relating to Armenia (more about that later).
Lieutenant Governor—I am dual endorsing GAVIN NEWSOM (Democrat) and C.T. WEBER (PFP). While I would have much preferred Matt Gonzalez as Mayor of San Francisco, I admire Newsom’s unequivocal support for same sex marriage rights and his reorganization of San Francisco’s health care delivery system. C.T. has a long history of organizing and struggle on many causes and has at times been an outsider from the cabal that tends to hang onto power in PFP by keeping it cult-like. Hopefully his leadership in PFP will make the organization the independent, radical, and inclusive organization that it once was and which it purports to be.
Secretary of State—Again, MARYLOU CABRAL (PFP) is a PSL member running on the PFP ticket. Debra Bowen to her credit is prosecuting Larry “Nativo” Lopez for voter fraud (it would be more interesting if the State would look into all the non-profit corporations he has left suspended and bankrupt) but when she was a state senator, she had a penchant for trying to ban and criminalize standard and legitimate private investigator practices that are necessary to enforce the rights to criminal defendants and other litigants to due process of law and equal protection.
State Controller—KAREN MARTINEZ (PFP). Controller is a race that frequently helps keep PFP on the ballot and with recent changes in election laws, that may be imperative to insure that working people have a way to participate in elections and debate the issues.
State Treasurer—Dual endorsement: DEBRA REIGER (PFP) and CHARLES “KIT” CRITTENDEN (Green). Debra is one of the more sensible people in PFP. At CSU Northridge where he taught, we used to call retired Philosophy Professor Crittenden “Crito.” It was an in-joke with those of us who were studying ancient Greek philosophy.
Attorney General—KAMALA HARRIS (Democratic). PFP candidate Robert J. Evans is guilty of Feiginism and Berkeley Bolshevism (for details on what these ultra-sectarian disputes are all about, email me privately). In 1994, Evans (along with Senate candidate Marsha Feinland) took park in an Alice in Wonderland-like telephonic PFP State Executive Committee meeting which resulted in PFP taking a position that effectively meant that Armenia should be punished with sanctions for the crime of having been blockaded by Turkey and Azerbaijan. This was a position to the right of the Turkish Embassy and Dick Cheney (who was the recipient of the Azeri-American Chamber of Commerce “Freedom Support” award). Evans later denied that he knew anything about this position (I didn’t believe him when he made that claim in 1998 and I don’t believe it now). Evans is so sectarian that I could see him wince when PFP adopted a part of my proposed 1978 platform on breaking up large agricultural holdings with redistribution to small family farmers and farm workers. I guess his consternation at the proposal was that this was part of Lenin’s “New Economic Program” which was dismantled when Stalin collectivized agriculture (more to Evans liking I guess).
KAMALA HARRIS’s election is imperative because LGBTI rights are not trivial and same-sex marriage is a very important issue. Harris will not appeal decisions striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional; Republican Steve Cooley is committed to doing so.
United States Senate—BARBARA BOXER has her faults. But when she was in the House of Representatives my NOW Chapter (San Fernando Valley/Northeast Los Angeles) gave her a big boost featuring her at our “Rally in the Valley” in 1992 shortly after she made a big push to get funding for abortion for rape and incest victims. Reproductive rights are front and center of many “culture war” election issues throughout the country these days and Boxer is always on the correct side of the issue.
That said, in some ways she exemplifies what Newspaper Guild founder Heywood Campbell Broun was talking about when he said that “A liberal is one who leaves the room when the fight begins.” When she was up for re-election years ago, at a gathering in a private residence I found myself standing next to Actor David Clennon. He asked Boxer, “what about Palestinian rights?”
Boxer launched into a long and belabored explanation of why Israel was created, including the horrors of the World War II Holocaust. At the end she finally said, “…and Palestinian rights? Of course! Of course!” Weeelllllll, I’m not sure what rights and how they are supposed to get them, about which Boxer said nothing.
As to Feinland though, as pointed out earlier she was part of the cabal that voted to have Armenia sanctioned, in spite of the knowledge I had presented on the issue to the PFP leadership that: (a) just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Azeri mobs raped, pillaged, and drove out around 800,000 ethnic Armenians in old fashioned pogroms, (b) unlawfully and unilaterally stripped a 90% ethnic Armenian region of its autonomy when Azerbaijan declared independence from the Soviet Union, and (c) blockaded the formerly autonomous region (Nagorno-Karabakh) and Armenia itself, leading to the death of about 1% of the Armenian population through cold alone in a single year. As pointed out, this puts her to the right of Dick Cheney, and that is really difficult to achieve on almost any issue.
BALLOT PROPOSITIONS
No. 19: YES
No. 20: Yes
No. 21: Yes
No. 22: No
No. 23: No
No. 24: Yes
No. 25: Yes
No. 26: No
No. 27: No