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that is a major difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans are into wrecking government, with quite deliberately incompetent people, starting with George W. Bush. This ill intention has come back to bite them on Iraq--although there is plenty of evidence that chaos was their goal (all the better to loot all of us, both Americans and Iraqis).
And you are right that this important matter--competence--and also working for the common good, are simply ignored by this truly stupid article. There is no question in my mind that Angelides and Westly are both highly competent people with the common good in mind. And having the common good in mind is almost revolutionary these days, given what this fascist junta is up to. Yet the NYT plays it as a personality contest.
I'm voting for Michael Strimling--who gets no breaks from the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and has no corporate, super-rich, or big time union support--and thus faces Seabiscuit odds in being heard and getting votes. But I expect to be voting for Angelides in the fall (and will vote for Westly if he wins the primary), for these very reasons, basic competence and the common good. A pox on these fascists who are wrecking and looting our government!
California was the first to take the hit--with an $80 BILLION theft by Enron/Texas energy giants. THAT'S what killed Davis--that and his goddamned corporate games, by which he facilitated their theft. But I don't have much hope that Angelides or Westly understands this fascist junta and what it intends for California, any better than Davis did. It's difficult to SEE the problem if you are part of the problem--if your money and your perspective are from inside the Corporate Rulership. They all, for instance, buy into Reaganite de-regulation. That's what made us vulnerable to the biggest corporate theft in our country's history.
And I am suspicious of this narrative that the corpRAT media is writing of the comeback of socially liberal Corporate Democrats, who behave as if NOTHING HAD HAPPENED INT THE LAST FIVE AND A HALF YEARS! They're still for gigantic, unaccountable, military boondoggles. They're still for global corporate piracy ("free trade"). They can't even SEE that the Corporate Rulers have now taken over our elections, that our elections are now completely NON-TRANSPARENT, that Bushite corporations are the ones 'counting' all our votes with "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, and that this might be a rather HUGE PROBLEM.
I think it may be a pre-written narrative: Stick Bush in our faces for a while, and then maybe we'll be grateful for Corporate Democrats. (Remember Seattle '99!)
Angelides/Westly will run the corporate state far better than Schwarzenegger, with far more benefit to the average person. We might be able to start building something here, instead of fighting off Bushites and their thievery and their diabolical agendas. But neither Angelides, nor Westly, is even close to addressing the structural economic and election system problems that made a Schwarzenegger--and Bush--possible. They will extract some help for the poor from the Corporate Rulers. They will not do what's really needed--busting up the corporate oil, ag and news monopolies, and restoring TRANSPARENT elections. We, the people, might have a better to chance to restore transparent elections with an Angelides or Westly in office. Maybe. But they will not take the initiative on desperately needed, fundamental changes--that arise BECAUSE of decades of Corporate Rule, capped by Bush Corporate fascism.
Taxation of corporate land in California is a big one. The Corporate Rulers sold Prop 13 to poor and middle-class Californians with the story that it would prevent old people from being driven from their homes (by escalating tax reassessments). Guess who the REAL beneficiaries were?--trillions of dollars worth of benefit to corporate landowners. And now, they're driving old people out of their homes anyway, with skyrocketing energy and medical costs!
Give these people an inch and you know what they will do with it! The Democrats should NEVER have given them an inch--not on property taxation, not on "deregulation," not on 3-strikes, not on capital punishment, not on clean air, not on deregulated energy speculation, not on ANYTHING.
I remember when they released all the mentally ill people onto the streets to become California's homeless. They wanted the Corporate Rulers to be free of the taxes necessary to take care of sick people. So they sold it as a "half-way" house transition back into normal society. Then they didn't fund the "half-way" houses. And now we have a large population of non-functioning, mentally ill, in some cases alcohol/drug addicted, very sick people living on the streets, sleeping on the streets, getting hurt on the streets, and having to defecate on the streets, because there is nobody to take care of them, and nowhere for them to go.
That's the kind of Reaganite crap the California Democratic Party has bought into. So now, if the Democrats regain the governorship, THEY have to face--like Davis had to face--all the horrid problems that Reaganites/Bushites have created by smashing into public policy with their fascist agendas, often without significant Democratic opposition. The Democrats bend, and bend, and bend toward the right. End result: social disaster; energy policy disaster; educational disaster; foreign policy disaster.
I don't see any sign that Angelides or Westly has brought any fresh thinking to this systemic problem of Corporate Rule. Michael Strimling DOES have fresh thinking, and deserves our votes in the primary, to try to move these bumps on a log--Angelides and Westly--and awaken them! They think the "pie" is big enough for everybody, in California. And they don't seem to notice that the Corporate Rulers have become outlandlish pigs who don't intend to leave the slightest crumb for anybody else.
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