Hopelessly Hoping

In January, the finance wizards of California Governor Jerry Brown’s administration projected a budget deficit of $9 billion. When Brown released his May Revise a few days ago – an annual ritual watched raptly by school districts and other government agencies – the deficit had swelled to $16 billion, meaning more austerity for the Golden State, unless voters approve tax increases in November.

Because raising taxes in our state requires a super-majority, a couple of anti-tax Republicans in the Legislature can effectively block any tax increase, which is why Brown has no choice but to take his proposal directly to the voters by way of the initiative process.

The people’s elected representatives cannot behave like grownups, so appeal is made directly to the voters, leading more often than not to unintended consequences, like the most sacred of all sacred cows, Prop 13.

It’s an abject state of affairs, but Californians know the drill by rote. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to clean up the mess in Sacramento, drive his Hummer through the gridlock and partisanship, usher in a new era of prosperity, and instead Arnold managed only to punt tough decisions and leave the state worse off than he found it in 2003.

The official unemployment rate in California is 11%, meaning the true rate is much higher. School children may have a shorter school year ahead, and students in the UC, Cal State and community college systems will surely face higher fees. Next month, thousands of young people will graduate saddled with student loan debt and anemic job prospects. Sorry your American Dream is unattainable.

The other day I was listening to Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now. The venerable old professor admitted that optimism is difficult to muster these days, what with senseless foreign wars (AF-PAK, Yemen, Iraq, and others related to the War on Terror or the War on Drugs), Wall Street criminality aided and abetted by Democrats and Republicans alike, a dysfunctional political system, national elections that are nothing more than crass and misleading advertising campaigns, environmental denial, human rights abuses, and state sanctioned murder – at home in the penal system and abroad with the use of drones. 

This is a grim list for sure, yet Chomsky identified the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the recent election in France, the popular pushback against austerity measures in some European countries, and the fact that Latin American nations are asserting their independence from domination by the United States, specifically when it comes to the failed War on Drugs.

Chomsky takes hope from the fact that some people are not asleep, passive, insensate, cowed or demoralized to the point they are willing to surrender ideals of freedom, justice and equality without a battle.

One other comment from Chomsky caught my ear, and that was when he talked about April 15, tax day in the U.S. If we had a functioning democracy, Chomsky said, April 15 would be a day of celebration rather than a day of dread. If we had a functioning democracy, we would relate paying taxes with contributing to the public good, the public welfare, to taking care of our common needs, rather than with an evil, over-reaching, liberty-stealing government. Americans have been fed a steady diet of anti-government propaganda for so long that even people who benefit from programs like Medicare and Social Security claim to hate the government!

Which brings us back to California, where citizens profess to want safe roads and freeways, top-notch schools and public safety, parks and recreation areas, clean beaches and safe water, but balk at ponying up the dough to pay for these services. The wealthy apparently feel they are above paying taxes, the poor can’t pay, and the middle class is no longer broad or deep enough to carry the freight.

And so, divided and polarized or simply driven to indifference, we cannibalize our state and our children’s future.

This weekend several thousand people who refuse to accept the status quo will gather in Chicago to protest a NATO summit taking place in the Windy City. The Chicago police, with ample assistance from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, will lockdown quadrants of the city. The NATO ministers need peace, quiet and privacy as they discuss contingencies for future conflicts and armed interventions -- democracy from the barrel of a gun. At the slightest provocation, such as a grandmother holding aloft a bouquet of roses at the wrong moment, the heavily armed security forces will spring to action.

Don’t expect the major American news media to cover the Chicago demonstrations, at least not in any meaningful way. What the protestors want and have to say won’t fit the narrative frame the media will have decided upon in advance. If the protests become violent and property is damaged, we’ll hear about it, but if peace prevails, we won’t hear a word.