Posted by Michael Haran on Nov 1, 2012
A Bunch of Malarkey in our Own Backyard
By Michael Haran
Published Healdsburg Tribune 11/01/2012
Regarding Mel Amato’s recent Letter to the Editor (I can read a Thesaurus 1018/12) Mr. Amato’s should look up the word “malarkey.” How stupid does he think people are? Either he is a one percenter, a lapdog for the rich or just loves seeing his name in print. I am not going to comment on his Thesaurus BS and focus on the facts.
He like every other conservative extremist in this country likes to twist the facts to pander to likeminded ignorant and prejudiced people. The reason the deficit has increased over the past four years is b
ecause our economy is working through the worst recession since the Great Depression. The deficit had to rise to help people and businesses get through these tough times on shrinking tax revenues. When Obama took office the economy was in a free fall. His administration implemented a stimulus package which helped stop the slide in the summer of 2009. In retrospect no one knew just how bad this recession really was and that the stimulus package was actually too small. Obama has since tried several times to get a jobs stimulation package through congress but has been stymied by congress at every turn. They have no intention of trying to stimulate the economy they only want the “black” man out of the “white” house.
Mr. Amato would be doing the local community a great service is he would recalculate his figures from the summer of 2009 forward. The reason food stamp dependency is up is also a result of the crashed economy. The unemployment rate has improved considerably since the bottom of the recession.
Another reason the recession has lasted so long is because of the housing market. Traditionally the U.S. has been lead out of recessions by housing. This time, because of the largest building boom the world has ever seen and subsequent crash, it has taken longer to get out of the mess the previous administration got us into with deregulation and two unfunded wars which benefited only the U.S. military industrial complex.
The current administration has steered us through the hard times. The economy appears to be improving. Consumer debt is the lowest in six years. The housing market looks like it’s healing with modest price increases, lower foreclosures and short sales, increased builder confidents and higher traffic to new home subdivisions. Not only does Romney have no real plan to further simulate the economy if he gets elected guess who’s going to take the credit for the improving economy.
As the president said Romney has no “five point plan” his only focus is to pander to the wealthy. The richest four hundred families in the U.S. saw their wealth increase by over four hundred percent over the past 10 years while the middle class has lost over two trillion dollars in the past three years – that’s trillion as in trillion! And if Romney gets elected the Republicans will continue to squeeze the middle class to pay for more tax deductions for the rich. This is no way to promote growth. Just look at the Middle East where in most countries the lack of a strong and vibrant middle class has led to stagnation and extremism. Our system of government was set up by our founding fathers to prevent Mr. Amato’s type of ideological extremism.
If Mr. Amato truly believes in what he is saying about adhering to our “founding principles” and turn back “our stampede down the Marxist road” he should send his Social Security and Medicare checks back to the government. And while he’s looking up “malarkey” he should also look up “oligarchy” and “hypocrisy.”
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Posted by Michael Haran on Oct 30, 2012
I have been following this year’s city council race in Healdsburg. The town has a sales tax increase, Measure V on this year’s ballot which will raise about one million dollars which current city council member have said will go toward public safety, street maintenance, economic development activities and general repairs and maintenance to city facilities. Two of the council members running for reelection are Gary Plass and Susan Jones both retired public employees.
Everyone knows we need a strong tax base to ensure public safety and a smooth running local, county and state government which provides for both business growth and a good quality of life. What bothers me about agreeing to a tax increases is that I don’t feel enough has been done to get rid of the waste in government. Once redevelopment funds dried up it became obvious that city and county government had been using these funds to expand government growth whether it was needed or not. A recent CBS report which showed Caltrans administrators using state rented pick-up trucks to shop for wine and clothes at Nordstrom’s during business hours and then being stonewalled by Caltrans management continues to erode voter trust.
Back in 2002 the Board of Supervisors enacted measures that have now increased pension costs by over 400 percent. The 2012 Sonoma County Grand Jury concluded that these pension increases were approved in a manner that did not comply with the law in an obvious attempt to dupe voters. In a September 2012 Santa Rosa Press Democrat article on the subject Brett Wilkinson wrote “Zane and other county leaders, nevertheless, were unified in defending the legality of the enhanced pensions. Trying to roll them back would be a costly lost cause, officials said, so the county will continue to pursue changes through legislation and collective bargaining.” I think a jury might think otherwise.
Most newly enacted pension reforms pertain to new hires in a so called “second-tier” reform. As far as I know nothing has been done to reduce the spiked pensions of current retirees who continue to collect lifetime pay increases because they were allowed to roll in their vacation, sick and car allowance pay into their lifetime retirement benefits.
I really don’t blame the public worker rank and file for this. In fact, as the LA Times columnist Steve Lopez recently said (Don’t Blame the State’s Teachers 10/28/12) “As a group (private sector workers), we’re torn between envy and anger, faced with uncertain financial futures while we pay for the comfy retirements of government retirees.” A friend has joked, “Where were we when this gravy train was went by?” Not wanting to be hypocritical I know that if I were a public employee and was offered the same spiking opportunities I would have taken it them too. But this isn’t about blame it’s about correcting a wrong.
Because of, the thinking went at the time, lower pay for government employees should be offset by taxpayer retirement guarantees. That was all well and good until the tide went out on the private sector and exposed the rotten under pinning of the public sector. Again, I don’t blame the public sector workers I think the whole immoral practice of pension spiking was a result of union shenanigans due to their unrestricted power over our state legislators. This is what gave rise to this year’s Prop. 32. This country’s oligarchs saw a chance to deceptively crush the state’s unions. This is frightening thought but the unions have no one to blame but themselves for this challenge.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m not saying that what the Board of Supervisors did in 2002 is the same as what went on in Bell, CA but it came from the same “look how well the private sector is doing – we deserve this” mentality. It was a culture of total contempt for the people who trusted them.
I don’t know if anyone has looked at what the saving would be if all currently retired public employees had their current retirement pay rolled back to what it would be if their retirement benefits hadn’t been spiked. I’m not suggesting reducing their base pay but just cutting off what was unfairly gained. Maybe if an actuary were to exam this it could be a substantial savings on the local, county and state budgets without reducing the retirement pay that the retirees agreed to when working. If the retiree has already collected what would have been a lump sum payment at retirement the overage should be cut off. If we just wait around for runaway inflation to bail us out the liability is just going to get bigger. There is nothing “grey” about insider trading and conflicts of Interest and there should be nothing grey about gaming a system of public trust.
This brings us back to our little burg north of Santa Rosa. Council members Gary Plass and Susan Jones are good people who care a great deal about our town. However, as retired public employees and the city facing a $26 million dollar unfunded pension liability I think their conflict of interest is just too great to ignore. One can’t help but wonder if they are supporting Measure V to help Healdsburg or to protect their retirement pay. If you have to rebuild the chicken coop you don’t want a fox designing the blueprint?
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Posted by Michael Haran on Oct 17, 2012
I was happy to see the president hold his own in the second debate although I think he was again unnecessarily polite and I would like to have seen a little more of a political Chicago street fighter in him.
First of all why did the president let Romney rattle off a bunch of four year stats? The recession ended in the summer of 2009. That should be Obama’s floor. All analysis of the economy should start from there including the unemployment rate and why didn’t Obama slam Romney on the deficit.
The reason the deficit is up four trillion dollars is because we are just coming out of a devastating recession that shrank tax revenues and an economy that needed deficit spending to stimulate the economy much of which was stymied by the obstructionist republican congress whose only goal was not to tend to the economy but to get Obama out of office.
Next, with only three week left in the race Obama has to appeal to voter “lowest common denominator.” For example, why wasn’t the fact that consumer debt is the lowest it’s been since the bottom of the recession, consumer confidence is up and inflation is nowhere to be seen brought up?
And why didn’t the President bring up the fact that it is traditionally housing that lead us out of recessions. The reason this recession has been so sever is that the Wall Street derivatives allowed the largest building boom the world has ever seen. Massive over supply cause a massive crash and because almost every financial institution in this country, and many around the world, that were involved crashed too.
Housing is now getting stronger. Builder confidence is up and traffic to new home subdivision is the highest it’s been since the crash. It will be housing that will drop unemployment and start a sustainable recovery. The President should talk up housing and point out its momentum because if Romney wins guess who will take credit for this momentum.
Romney likes to refer to “trickle-down-government” and wants to see a smaller federal government. I kind of like a strong central government that has the power to bailout huge banks and can stabilize a crashing economy.
The President has also got to bring up the fact that the four hundred richest families in this country saw their wealth go up by over four hundred percent in the past ten years while the middle class took it in the shorts by a cool two trillion… as in trillion – in the past four years. What’s happening is that wealth is migrating toward the rich from the middle class. The reason it’s going to take a long time to stabilize the middle-east is because very few middle-eastern countries have a stable middle class. They are either rich or poor which does nothing for economic growth and leads to descent.
It also baffles me why the rich aren’t more proactive in getting the middle class back up and buying things again. Since two thirds of the economy is driven by consumer consumption you would think that it would be in the self-interest of the wealthy, a lot of who’s wealth came from consumer consumption, do more to help make the middle class whole again.
A good analogy is the old joke about the rich guy, the middle class guy and the poor guy who enter a room with only a table and on that table is a plate of 12 cookies. The rich guy takes 11 and tells the middle class guy and the poor guy that each is trying to steal the other guy’s cookie.
Time is fleeting so these points have got to get out either in campaign ads, presidential speeches or in the next debate. Speaking of the next debate the President has to really focus on the lowest common denominators – it works at the local level and, because people are people, it will work nationally. And it just might determine the election.
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Posted by Michael Haran on Aug 15, 2012
I am a 65 year old white guy who lives in Sonoma County, California. I’m a registered Democrat but I consider myself a center-left independent. I am a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I’m a veteran and I’m collecting social security. I am also working on a project which will combine curriculum, eBook and entertainment to teach middle schoolers. If this works it could revolutionize K-12 education as we know it.
First of all I would like to say that it is absolutely amazing that anyone would vote for Romney except the right-wing wealthy and those under their thumb. With their stance on reproductive rights how could any women vote for him? Being ultra-rich how could any middle-class voter even identify with Romney yet alone vote for him. With Romney’s promise to gut our national social services programs how could any senior or unemployed person even think of voting for him? With his hypocrisy toward Latinos how could any minority vote for him? And yet the polls, which I feel are suspect because of their small samplings, are relatively close – although it looks like you are widening your lead at this point.
It is also unbelievable that anyone would vote for a Republican U.S. Congressman or Senator. Maybe in ’10 when democrats were blindsided by the Tea Party but not now since these people have been exposed as the obstructionists and mindless tools of the right-wing rich. Most people were shocked by the tea party members of congress unwillingness to compromise regardless of the situation. Bring the country to the brink of default is not what we want to see in our elected officials. And what’s with this Norquist pledge? How can they even think of putting this pledge before their pledge to the U.S. and its citizens? Americans are so used to seeing congress work deals out that it was shocking to see this extremism.
What I think you have to do is put a lot of effort into educating the swing state voters. You should win the popular vote but, as with Bush/Gore, lose the election. In order to avoid a similar fate you have to “double-down” on education. In a February ‘12 article by Paul Krugman he states that Suzanne Mettler pointed out that “many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system.” She states that 44% of social security recipients, 43% on unemployment, and 40% of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.” That’s hard to believe. I mean we all joke that you can’t “under estimate the stupidity of the American public” but those statistics are amazing.
You would think with our education system in the U.S. people could not be that dumb – its mind boggling. So I think voter education in the red states is going to be critical. Remember when Ohio put Bush over the top in “04? One of the first things he did was to cut the welfare benefits for the poor. “Thanks for voting for me, suckers.” So I think the easy “low hanging fruit” part is going to be “Romney bashing.” The hard part is going to be educating people who don’t understand that they are not educated.
You have to show that the Obama Administration has not only handled the economy as best as humanly possible during the worst economic down turn since the Great Depression but also has established the apparatus for future growth. To beat the Republicans at their own game you have to continually state, “Everyone knows waste in government has to be eliminated and the deficit has to be brought down – but not now not during a time of such slow growth.” Most people don’t know that the unemployment rate would be much lower if where not for the waste cutting that has been going on at the federal, state and local public sectors. Unfortunately, cutting waste at this time, like cutting the deficit, causes a big drag on the economy. But that’s exactly what the Republicans want.
When the tide went out on the private sector exposing the rotten under pinning of the public pension programs people were shocked. When the economy was strong no one cared but when people started losing their jobs people were outraged to learn that a fireman with a high school education could retire at age 50 with a $150,000 pension. A grand jury where I live has suggested that these pensions were instituted behind closed doors and may be unlawful. However, the California Supreme Court, so far, has sided with the unions. The billons in unfunded pension liabilities that look like corruption are the things that cause revolutions. I know that the democrats rely on the unions for a lot of their support but this isn’t right and there will be a big voter backlash, as in Wisconsin, if this problem isn’t solved. I’ve talked to our district’s county supervisor and he says that the county can’t do much with existing conditions without filing for bankruptcy.
The problem with job creation, as you all know, is that during the last four years business have cut waste by becoming more efficient which also meant cutting overlapping jobs. That said, because businesses have managed to become productive with less many of those jobs won’t be coming back even when the economy starts growing again. Now with Europe in such a slump that will continue to be a drag on our economy not only through the election but also for years ahead as Obama has mentioned.
What we need is a jobs bill that will stimulate the economy even if it means increasing the deficit over the short term. But, as we have seen over the past couple of years, this congress will never agree to a jobs bill. They have shown that they don’t care about the economy or the American people. They only want to get you out of office even if that means further harm to middle class America. The rich don’t care because they’re rich and they will continue to be rich regardless of who wins the election. It’s just with Romney they will get richer which is all they seem to focus on. That too is amazing to me since 70% of our economy is from retail sales and it’s the middle class who buy most of the one percent’s goods and services. You’d think they would care more about preserving their customer base.
This admiration would be wise to create a program that would bring employers to red state areas that have good neighborhood but where housing costs have gone down. Since the cost of buying a home has gone down dramatically employer could pay internationally competitive wages but the workers could still buy the most import family investment – the family home. You should conduct a study to identify the best neighborhoods with lowest housing costs. The cost of housing on the coasts is too expensive but a program like this would be perfect for Middle America. Airbus locating in Alabama I think is a prime example of this.
The cost of education in this country is another albatross. Watching college student cost rise while administrators continue to get raises to the hundreds of thousands of dollars they already make is discouraging students and parents alike – and look at how the for-profit colleges have become an outright scam. Why graduate from college with all that debt just to live at home and work part time in fast food industry? I don’t think this is sustainable and, again, it’s just not right. I think the only entity with the power to correct this is the federal government. Any college that receives government grants should be accountable for their costs.
But wait! – There’s more. With the three months left until the election you should build a crescendo with your campaign advertising. As stated I think you should start with an education program. Such a program should contain an element of Romney bashing which look like education of the facts. “Did you know,” and “It may seem” should be key phrases. By now you should pretty much know where Romney/Ryan is going to be going in the debates. Your ads should subtly start rebutting Romney’s positions so that when the debates actually happen he won’t have anywhere to go. Since the Republicans have no addenda for job creation or deficit reduction other that attacking the middle class the Obama’s campaign catch phrase with Romney should be what you used with McCain which is – “That’s just not true” and “look at the American people and say that.”
I think you are in a good position with the recent health care victory. You should keep repeating that the law is still a work in progress and will be refined as weaknesses in it are exposed during its implementation. Roll out a program giving manufactures incentives to bring jobs back from overseas using low cost housing in quality neighborhood as an incentive. I, like most liberals, were a little disappointed when you pulled center-right in trying to deal with congress but now that the Republicans have been exposed for what they are you can now go back center-left with a passion to rally the base and capture the independents. Remember the guy that said, “I want the government out of my social security?’ Remember – it’s all about education.
What I would say to someone who would vote for Romney/Ryan? – “What?! Are you crazy?” That may not be the most articulate approach but it pretty much sums it up.
My personal connect to you was when he said to Larry Baer, the president of the San Francisco Giants at a fund raiser, “What’s wrong with Timmy?” So cool – it’s nice to know that Obama doesn’t spend his entire time think about running the country. It’s healthier and, unlike Romney, makes him feel more in-touch with us little guys. Also, being a fifty-year basketball player (at 65 I’m lucky to still be able to play full court pick-up hoops at our local high school) I would love to hoop-it-up with you and your b-ball buddies. I entered the contest but if you have an extra ticket lying around let me know.
So there you go and good luck – although it’s amazing that you’ll even need it.
Michael Haran
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Posted by Michael Haran on Jul 8, 2012
Close to Home
By Michael Haran
Published Press Democrat 7/8/2012
With the recent spat bicycle/car accidents there has been a lot of commentary about what’s going on. I have been road riding (as in spandex) for about a year. My riding partner, who has ridden across country, is an excellent trainer and I’ve learned a lot from him. I try to ride 100 miles a week and my partner rides about double that. We ride mainly in the Alexander and Dry Creek Valleys from Healdsburg to Cloverdale.
First of all it is important to note that almost all of the recent accidents have been caused by rider error the only exception appears to be Professor Norwick who didn’t have a chance because he was killed by someone who appears to have been physically and mentally impaired. Even Michael Torckler, who is a professional rider, was probably going too fast down Pine Flat Road given all that road’s blind turns. Kip Miller, a friend who lives off Pine Flat and who has been warning riders for years to slow down, said to me, “for five years I asked the bikers to slow down and be careful on blind curves, they told to get lost, and most gave me the “bird” and they still use the middle of the road……I hope this is a wakeup call of what could have been worse.”
A lot of “hard-core riders” are into it for the power and speed. Most of us recreational riders average about 12 mph for an overall ride. Pro riders can sprint up to 35 mph for stretches up to 20 miles (amazing!). I know coming down the east side of Canon Road I start squeezing the rear brake handle at about 28 mph. Any faster than that and I can’t see any road hazards that might be lurking in the tree shadows. Pine Flat Road has no center dividing line and, because it’s not used much, has lots of road hazards. 
Add a steep grade and a distracted driver (drunk or not) and it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
I have found that most motorists are very cautious around riders. I have only been “buzzed” once and “yelled at” once. When a driver slows down to get around me I always give then a “thank-you” wave to acknowledge their consideration. Even though it’s still against the law most drivers will go halfway over the double yellow line to give riders ample room. I find that Latino and women drivers are the most conscientious around riders. It can get a little dicey with semi-truck drivers on our narrow country roads but for the most part they know their rigs and can judge their distances pretty good.
My riding partner has long felt that the little rearview mirrors that attached to rider’s sunglasses should be required by law. It is almost impossible to turn your body far enough to see behind you while riding without losing control of your bike. These little mirrors allow you to see “360” while riding. Also the county should do a study (maybe by one of the county’s cycling coalitions) to identify the most bicycled roads. Because of the bicycling tourist dollars that flow into the county those roads should be a maintenance focus. Most people don’t care about new paving they just want the potholes filled and that goes for motorist as well as bicyclists. In addition, the county should paint a white stripe on the right side of all roads. These stripes give both the bicyclists and motorist a point of reference from which to judge the position of one another especially where there is no shoulder. With Sonoma County’s growing popularity as a cycling destination protecting cyclist should be a high priority.
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