What’s the Matter with California?



  • Becky Curry
    Chair, Lake County Democratic Central Committee
    Volunteers Co-Chair, Take Back Red California

    As the concept of Take Back Red California took shape in the spring and summer of 2005, we were all reading “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” In his very important book, Thomas Frank asked how it was that a blue-collar state like Kansas could become solidly “red” in any election in spite of the fact that Republican policies by and large benefit the wealthy at the expense of average workers.

    As I looked at this issue, it occurred to me that the same question could be asked right here in California. What’s the matter with Fresno, or Delano, or any other blue-collar or rural area in California where Republicans hold the governing majority? I don’t have the answer to that question but I do know it’s important to respond to the problem.   I live in a blue county and my Democratic legislators serve me well and generally reflect my philosophy of good government. So, why should I care about counties or regions or states that do not have Democrats representing them?

    Several reasons come to mind. First, at both the federal level and the state level, it’s important to achieve legislative majorities in swing states and districts in order to break legislative roadblocks to solving the problems we all care about. There are certainly districts in every state where no Democrat is likely to succeed.   But there are many “swing” districts where no political party has overwhelming advantages. Winning in these districts presents the best opportunity for our party to gain votes in legislative bodies.

    If we can win Congressional seats in states like Missouri, Ohio, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Colorado, we increase our chances of gaining a supermajority in Congress and making our policies on taxation, healthcare, the environment, and war veto-proof. There are also fiscal benefits at stake.   Statistics from the Tax Foundation indicate that states with Democratic majorities get less back from every federal tax dollar than do states governed by Republicans. A 2005 report shows that for every dollar sent to Washington, California got back 73 cents, and Massachusetts got back 82 cents while Mississippi received $2.02 and Oklahoma $1.37 in federal spending. Only by gaining strong Democratic majorities in Congress can those inequities be corrected.

    In California’s Legislature the two-thirds majority rule has hamstrung our budget process for years. This year, for want of two or three votes in each legislative house, single payer health care died on the governor’s desk. Achieving a Democratic supermajority in Sacramento could blunt the impact of the most harmful budget cuts being proposed and help our chances for enacting proposed increases in state revenues.

    A second reason for supporting Democratic candidates in red districts is the power held by officeholders in those districts over our precious natural and production resources. States and districts that are governed by Republicans generally receive the lion's share of federal and state support for agriculture, resource development, and water subsidies. In other words, our tax dollars are subsidizing these resources and their delivery, although we have no say in how they are managed.

    Rural areas and less populated areas, generally governed by Republicans, control the most basic resources cities and suburbs need to survive:

    Our water -- The primary water sources for the Los Angeles basin and the Bay Area are the Sierra Nevada and the Colorado River system. In those regions, decisions for water distribution, storage and disbursement are in the hands of Republicans beholden to corporate agriculture and industrial interests.   Should water go to corporate agriculture? Should our water supplies and infrastructure become a for-profit industry? Or should consideration be given to keeping our watersheds healthy and our fisheries viable and thriving? Should the public continue to own and manage its most precious resource? How these policy questions are answered, and whether our interests are represented when these policies are set, affects all of us.

    One example is the political drama that played out during the 2002 election, in the Klamath River Basin in northeastern California and southern Oregon. To appease and pander to conservative farmers in Modoc County in California and Klamath County in Oregon, the river was allowed to practically dry up downstream as it headed to the Pacific. Millions of salmon and their fry were killed, destroying the prime food source of many native peoples who live subsistence lifestyles and rely on the salmon runs to survive. As a further consequence, all the rest of the watershed that feeds the network of rivers in California’s north country was affected.  At the river's mouth in Eureka, the salmon fishing industry was practically destroyed that year.

    The collapse of the salmon fishing industry, now spreading along the entire coast of northern California and Oregon, has been declared a federal emergency. Millions of tax dollars are now going to support those displaced fisherman, mainly because of water management practices that favored only group of users - the ones that vote Republican. Why did Karl Rove and his aides care about water flow levels on an obscure western river in 2002? Because they wanted to reelect Republican Gordon Smith to the Senate by appealing to agricultural interests in Oregon. Smith was reelected.

    Our food -- We are dependent on the San Joaquin Valley, the Imperial Valley, and the Great Plains states for most of our basic food supplies. These areas feed the nation and provide us with the bulk of our meat, poultry, grains, corn and dairy products. Issues of pesticide use and runoff, air pollution, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) genetically modified crops are all decided by policy makers who shun regulation and accountability to the consumer, the environment, and to the communities in which they operate.

    As long as the powers that be in agricultural areas are beholden to corporate interests, we have no way to control the increasing use of biotech in food production. We have no way to ensure that the people who work in these industries are fairly compensated with a living wage and given protection from workplace hazards. We have no way to be sure that our food is properly inspected, safe, clean, and free of the hormones and antibiotics that are often used in dairy, poultry, cattle, and even aquaculture operations.

    Our land     -- Agricultural land is being paved over by corporate development projects, for housing and business space, often with little or no objection from local officials. This is land that once provided our food and kept our watersheds healthy.   Studies have linked suburban sprawl to increased traffic and air pollution as well as to the rapid loss of farmland and open space. Sprawl, enabled by corporate developers and their Republican legislators, also threatens water quality as well as our food production capacity.

    In the Natomas suburb north of Sacramento, over the last five years, thousands of houses have been built on what were once rice fields. In addition to the residential and accompanying retail development, this once-productive land has been filled with endless sprawl of light industrial facilities, business/medical centers, and distribution warehouses. Right now, 2.3 million square feet of planned retail real estate is sitting, mostly empty, on land that was once used for agricultural production – at a time of growing food shortages and soaring prices.

    Our environment     – Most of the extractive activities -- dredging, drilling, logging, mining, concrete making -- that provide materials for building and development take place in regions of our state and nation that are governed by policy makers who favor limited or no regulation regarding their impact on the living systems that they draw from.
    Mountain top removal and valley fill mining, or strip mining on steroids, is one particularly devastating practice.   It annihilates ecosystems, transforming some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world into biologically barren moonscapes. These industries won’t address the pollution and environmental degradation they cause, or the cost to the health of their communities and the people that work in these industries unless they are held accountable by elected officials.

    Our people – The men and women who work on corporate farms, for extractive industries and in building occupations were once largely union organized. They enjoyed good wages, health insurance, and job safety. But many of these jobs are located in swing states or regions of our own state that are governed by Republicans, whose philosophy of unfettered free trade, deregulation, and hostility to unions has changed the lives of workers. Their ability to organize has been undercut and slowly destroyed -- in some cases made illegal.
    One of the consequences of this trend is that these critically important industries are now the main employers of most of the undocumented labor in this country. The social benefits of an organized workplace - a healthy workforce living in a clean, safe community and working in a clean and safe environment, with people justly compensated for their place in the prodution chain - have been abandoned in favor of the corporate bottom line. A bottom line that is protected by Republican legislators.

    This is why we must work for candidates and Democratic organizations in the so-called red counties.   We need a majority of progressive officeholders, at every level and in every city, county, and political district, in order to pass and enforce legislation that protects our vital water resources, that ensures a continuing supply of healthy and affordable food, that preserves agricultural land and open space, that maintains the health of our environment, and that values the rights and safety of working families.
    We are all in this together!


    Resources for further information
    Documentaries

    “The End of Suburbia” - Gregory Green - director/writer
    http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

    “The Battle for the Klamath” - Veriscope Productions, Steven Johnson writer
    http://www.veriscope.com/BattlefortheKlamath

    “The Future of Food” - Producer, Writer /Director - Deborah Koons Garcia
    http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

    “Thirst” - Produced and Directed by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman
    http://www.thirstthemovie.org/
    "Mountain Top Removal" Haw River Films
    http://www.hawriverfilms.com/id2.html

    Books and Magazines
    “Monsanto's Harvest of Fear” - Vanity Fair - May 2008
    http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805

    "Fast Food Nation" - Eric Schlosser
    http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/food/schlosse.htm

    Websites

    Farm Aid
    http://www.farmaid.org/
    Food & Water Watch
    http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/

    Sacramento Real Estate Statistics
    http://sacrealstats.blogspot.com/2008/02/natomas-area-commercial-real-estate.html




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