The kitchen is as hot as ever

My daughters are away at camp. This is the second summer they have gone away for two weeks and we really miss them. At the same time our dog, Ollie, developed an eye problem so he has been treated by the vet and is currently off rehabbing his cornea. The house is eerily quiet and the silence is a reminder of who’s not there. Fortunately, my wife Janet is running for Supervisor in San Francisco’s District 2 and there is much to distract us from the girls’ absence.

District 2 is the illustrious area in San Francisco which has elected such luminaries as Dianne Feinstein, Louise Renne and Gavin Newsom in former times. All of them are endorsing Janet. She has even received the endorsement of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, another famous D2 resident. In fact, it is hard to find a leader in the City who is not enthusiastic about Janet’s run. Running for the vacant seat of termed out Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, Janet has garnered an impressive array of supporters. Read More »

The Final Screed

Today marks my final column after three years of weekly dissertations. That’s 156 columns, or about 100,000 words.

Writers know sleepless nights and the midnight oil. Frankly, I’ll miss them both.

There is satisfaction in communicating a simple thought in writing – however difficult it can be at times. And there’s something gratifying about sending your thoughts out to be critiqued by the literate masses.

Am I inflating my vitae to call myself a columnist when no newspaper actually hired me? Will the résumé police unmask my inflated biography? Many readers simply thought I was buying the space – a blowhard’s advertorial.

That would be a plausible explanation in a day when novice politician Meg Whitman is spending tens of millions to become a public servant.

But readers know by now that I was really given the space by this newspaper’s owner.

Imagine if you could pretty much write anything you wanted in 650 words every seven days as long as it wasn’t X-rated or otherwise unfit for a family newspaper. In these angry times, there is plenty to rail about. Read More »

NATIONAL EMERGENCY

James Fallows recently wrote a long piece in The Atlantic titled, “How America Can Rise Again.”

We should listen to him.

While pundits claim that America’s greatest challenge is the bitter economic aftermath of our recent near-Depression, Fallows disagrees. “The American tragedy of the early 21st Century…is a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke,” he writes.

“When the United States Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had ten times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Now the most populous, California, has 69 times the population as the least populous, Wyoming. And yet they both have the same two votes in the Senate. A business organization as inflexible as the United States Congress would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry.”

In other words, our ossified and creaky political system is increasingly unable to address and solve the problems of the American Commonweal. Or, as Fallows succinctly states, “our government is old and broken and dysfunctional and may even be beyond repair.”

During such desperate economic times, government reform may seem disingenuous and disconnected from our real problems. But just read the headlines:

The right makes a goal line stand against health care reform. An $800 billion stimulus package can’t bust out of Washington. Double-digit unemployment persists even as seven figure bonuses rain down on Wall Street. Budget deficits storm in like tornadoes – more than $1 trillion in Washington, $20 billion in Sacramento and $500 million in San Francisco. Polls by both CNN and The Wall Street Journal reflect the unpopularity of President Obama’s policies.

Republicans crow that these are all examples of Democratic failure and government’s inability to work effectively and efficiently.

But the nihilistic attacks of so many ideologues against “big government” are nothing more than a puerile denial that we need government at all.

In fact, a robust, vibrant government is the only forum that exists in a democratic society where we come together to address our most daunting challenges. Read More »

Stop Bashing Government

Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and a parade of conservative pundits – usually speaking for a big business lobby – continue to berate the Democratic Party as the party of “Big Government.”

Their underlying argument is the same broken record we’ve been hearing since Reagan: “Government is bad.”

But the quarrel over whether a strong, proactive federal government is good for America was won decisively last November when Barack Obama routed John McCain for the presidency and Democrats swept to huge majorities in the House and Senate.

The debate was settled for me decades ago by a Catholic priest, a labor leader, a politician and an organizer. They taught me that government can improve lives, drive progress and increase the odds that average people will get a fair shake.

I was standing next to Bobby Kennedy in 1968 when he received communion from Father Eugene Boyle on the day Cesar Chavez ended his long fast for farm workers’ rights in Delano.

At the time, Father Boyle was Chairman of the Commission on Social Justice of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. I remember thinking that Kennedy was smaller than I expected and his eyes were bluer. Chavez was emaciated from a brutal fast.

There were tens of thousands of people at that mass. The hunched Mexican-American leader embodied the aspirations of the huge crowd, but so did the charismatic senator at his side. Kennedy’s presence sent a signal that the Democratic Party was closely aligned with the struggle of disenfranchised farm workers, not powerful growers.

When Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, I happened to be sitting with Father Boyle watching the election results of the California Democratic primary on television. Kennedy won the primary that night only to die in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he headed to his car.

It was a heartbreaking moment. Only weeks before, Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis and Kennedy appeared on national television urging calm and forgiveness. Now, he too fell to an assassin’s bullet just as his campaign for president gained momentum.

I was still in college at the time, but no career seemed as relevant or important as public service on that tragic night. Read More »

What’s Your Job Worth?

I  grew up in a working class enclave in San Leandro. My dad was a milkman. Our next door neighbor was an airplane navigator. In our neighborhood there was a plumber, a carpenter, a mailman, an Oakland fire department captain and two Berkeley Farms Creamery drivers who worked with my father.

Each job held a fascination for us kids, and our dads were very serious about their work. We watched the carpenter build custom furniture for his own home and were proud to be coached by a genuine fire captain in Little League baseball. Of course, we were on the edge of our seats listening to flight stories by the navigator who flew all over the world.

But the value of a day’s labor in America has become dangerously distorted.

The eye-popping paychecks in the financial services industry are dangerously undermining the egalitarian ethic that helped make America the greatest country on earth.

Wall Street’s outrageous pay packages are luring a disproportionate percentage of our most talented young people away from science, engineering, technology, teaching, medicine, architecture and the arts – jobs that are vital to America’s future competitiveness. Read More »

Earl Warren

As time marches on it’s easy to forget that one of the most influential Supreme Court Justices in American history began his career in Oakland in the 1920′s. After graduating from UC Berkeley Law School, Earl Warren became Alameda County District Attorney, Attorney General of California and Governor of California. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1954. Almost immediately after his ascendancy to the High Court, Warren was confronted with a landmark legal case that would impact politics, education and the law in the nation for the next fifty years. The case was known simply as “Brown v. Board of Education.” Warren led a potentially divided Court to issue a unanimous opinion banning segregated schools in America.

The civil rights movement of the 1960′s was waged over the principles laid down by the monumental ruling of The Warren Court in Brown v. Board of Education and other rulings for civil rights and racial justice made under Warren’s leadership. Read More »

Deconstructing Public Service

Deconstructing the motives of those who serve the public interest is America’s favorite indoor sport. Consider the case of Senator John Kerry. As a young man, Kerry voluntarily enlisted in the Armed Forces and served admirably in Vietnam as a Swift Boat captain. Kerry was awarded for exemplary leadership in combat. Nevertheless, as a Presidential candidate, Kerry’s combat record was smeared and twisted until a sizeable percentage of Americans doubted his courage and deeds. A new phrase was created to describe the successful smear – swiftboating. In an era when voters are dissatisfied with government, it has become too easy to discredit honor and too difficult to confer praise where it is legitimately due.

The greatest challenge that public servants have today is communicating their good deeds. Voters are predisposed to believe negative information and reject positive facts. Politicians have always faced a wall of doubt. Today the National Inquirer would have run an expose on George Washington having chopped down the cherry tree before he had a chance to confess. How would “Honest Abe” fare on Fox News? Read More »