You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2021.
The big stories of the year in summary: January 6 and the ongoing fallout, the economy, the pandemic, and next year’s midterm elections.
This is a bit of an exaggeration. The guy on the Internet will link you to a long-winded youtube video with pretty graphics and ominous public domain background music!
Deven Nunes’s district is even bluer than in the previous draft, so his retirement seems even more practical. Democrat Katie Porter has a challenge. Republican Mike Garcia has a serious challenge. Republican David Valladeo is probably toast. Republican Michael Steele is probably toast. Republican Kim Young is probably toast. Democrat Juan Vargas is now in a heavily Republican district with Darryl Issa and doesn’t have much of a chance.
If the Democrats are as effective with the GOTV model as they were with the recall election a few months ago, they’re looking at a net gain of four seats next year.
McConnell looking to neutralize Trump and his acolytes in Congress? He must have some idea of what the committee has. They’re right. He’s a machine who says nothing that isn’t calculated. What do you think his game is? You know he hates Trump. But is he willing to push a civil war that would jeopardize the likelihood that he could be Majority Leader in 2023? He must think Trump is on the way out, or he wouldn’t be talking this way.
This is a really upsetting well-written Atlantic story about the human casualties of an obsessive false narrative in futile search of villains.
As I’ve discussed in previous posts, it’s a myth that there was complacence and no opposition to the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the late 20s and 30s. There was vehement opposition, sometimes violent opposition. Street battles – often multiple injuries and deaths on both sides. What there wasn’t was a UNIFIED front against Nazism. And to this day, you will hear radicals, social democrats, and centrists justify why they wouldn’t have coalitioned with the others even knowing the long term results.
Regarding the argument modern conservatives make that the Nazis were socialists because the word “socialist” is in the name, Hitler wrote that he had incorporated the word to attract supporters as the concept had been very popular and in that vein he did manage to draw some support from the SPD and KPD. But his primary base was the right. Rural conservatives. By 1939 he had privatized about 90 percent of the publicly owned industries. He would write that he regretted using the word socialism because it implied promises that generated pressure later on, which he had no intention of keeping.
This Nation article discusses an out-of-print book which contains and analyzes the voting data of national and municipal German elections from 1928 to 1933. Spoiler – Hitler’s constituencies weren’t primarily urban labor, university radicals, artists, or any of the typical left milieu. Not even close.
“In the decisive July 31, 1932, election, Hitler received exactly 37.3 percent of the overall vote across Germany. He fared less well in the cities, averaging 32.3 percent in urban centers with populations over 100,000. However, in towns with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants he scored better, averaging 41.3 percent of the vote. And in some of the smallest rural communities across Germany, he scored 80 percent or more of the votes, and in several the Nazi vote was 100 percent. The rural groundswell for Hitler included people of all classes and income levels. And the more it was a question of Protestant communities, the better Hitler did. It would later become something of a footnote, but throughout most of these years, the conservative lay Catholic Zentrumspartei (Center Party) was a bulwark against Hitler’s Nazis, along with the radical Communists, and the once-dominant SPD socialists. But what is most striking is how none of these three major parties managed to present a clear alternative.
In the rural communities where the allure of Nazism was strongest, the main competition was the two parties of the left, the SPD and the KPD. Up until the First World War, the Social Democrats had commanded 60 percent or more of the vote nationally and had this majority among working-, middle-, and upper-middle-class voters. After the seismic upheavals of the early decades of the 20th century and then the First World War, the major Weimar parties had turned their backs on their citizens’ needs and aspirations. Hamilton finds no evidence to support the truism that a disenfranchised lower-middle class embraced Hitler’s Nazi Party. What he does find is that the Nazis were a party that organized people, especially in rural communities; that it was largely a Protestant phenomenon; and that it coincided with an inability and disinterest on the part of the major parties of the left to organize, even though the SPD had commanded the loyalty of the majority of German voters not so many years before.”
Over 70,000,000 Americans voted for an authoritarian a year ago. A good percentage of them believe that the election was somehow stolen and would support a forceful coup to install the same person. But it can’t happen here, right?
AC Paz Dominguez says that she is looking forward to the controversy being turned over to a process which won’t be governed by internal County politics. She is confident that what she has tried to report to the Board will bear out.
I had an email conversation with AC Karen Paz Dominguez about the delinquent annual roads report discussed in the LoCo post and she sent me the statement which she sent to LoCo which is in full:
“Thank you for your inquiry and for providing me an opportunity to respond. First, I would like to say that I sincerely appreciate Director Mattson’s collaboration with the A-C office. He was proactive prior to December 1st and communicated with me about this report and what would need to be completed by December 1st. He also directly assisted our office in accomplishing this task by sending us one of his staff to assist us with the posting of transactions. She was a delight to have in our office and with her assistance, we were able to review and post all of the outstanding journals related to the Roads fund.
It is my understanding that the State Controller’s Office engages with the Public Works department by preparing the ARR on their behalf. What is expected of Public Works is that they submit the financial data to the SCO. In order to accomplish this, Public Works needs the A-C Office to post any and all transactions that directly impact their Roads fund (which also happens to be 1 of only 3 major funds of the County – the other two are the General Fund and the Headwaters Fund.)
The transactions that still need to be posted are what are called the “cost plan charges”. These transactions are submitted to the A-C office by the different internal service fund departments. MGO has been working closely with the internal service fund departments for several months to correct their cost plan charge journals so that they will be compliant with federal regulations that govern the charges.
To date, the only cost plan-related journals that the A-C Office has been able to approve due to meeting federal requirements and having sufficient corroborating evidence are those of County Counsel, Public Works – Motorpool ISF and Public Works – Heavy Equipment ISF. MGO and the ISF departments have made great progress together and I anticipate that completed and approved journals will be submitted to us soon for the following remaining ISFs: CAO – ADA ISF, CAO – Communications ISF, CAO – Information Technology ISF, CAO – Purchasing ISF, Risk Management ISF, Liability ISF, and the cumulative Central Service Charges. As soon as we get those, we will prioritize their posting.“
So basically, it looks like the AC office is waiting on the CAO.
Update: It looks like Public Works is going to submit the report without the ISF charges. They could have submitted it before, according to the AC, because everything else had been posted.
For whatever reason, Lost Coast Outpost left all of that out of the story.
Second update: Ryan Burns informs me that there is a dispute as to whether the journals as originally posted were compliant and needed revision, and that PW Head Tom Mattson reports that the outstanding journal was posted yesterday after the article was posted. And that he had reached out to Mattson and Hayes, but Hayes is out until Tuesday, and basically that what I am calling for is getting too much into the weeds.
I have to get back to something, but you know, we’re talking about a weed-oriented topic. Just saying.
I watched this presser the other morning, and it was one of the more remarkable I’ve seen of a District Attorney announcing charges. She’s being attacked for announcing them before the arrests were made, which allowed the Crumbleys to make a weak attempt at flight. Apparently this woman is unpopular with Republicans. But what I found remarkable is that she left her script when asked to comment on whether the school dropped the ball, and she hesitated and then pretty much, well – I guess you can accuse her of not only “poisoning the jury” for the criminal case, but also the inevitable wrongful death cases against the school. Most in her position would have simply said, “You will have to ask the school officials about their decisions.” Apparently right wingers only like pols who “say it like they see it” when they’re rich white men.
The school officials not taking action despite the disturbing drawing and other warning signals resonating with an experience I had as a substitute teacher some years ago. I attended Law School at night and for the first couple of years I subbed during the day. In this one high school schedule of classes I was told I would be placed for the maximum of 15 days because they were still looking for a permanent teacher with an English credential to take them over as they had been thrown together at the last minute because other classes were overcrowded. Teachers were asked to send some of their students to these classes and unfortunately at least a couple of them took the opportunity to dump off the problem students and so these classes were very challenging. I was the third or fourth of the 15 day stints – the maximum a sub can be in a classroom without a credential for the particular subject matter.
Of course there was no lesson plan. The textbooks had not even been handed out – not even been given to the subs because the idiot in charge of the b for another time). The class was unruly from the start, so to keep them occupied I asked the students to take out some paper and write a page on something about them that even their friends don’t know about. I was making it up on the spot as I was going through the paperwork trying to figure out what they had done, which wasn’t much.
So at the end of the day I read all of the essays and one 14-year-old girl had submitted a piece in which she said that when she was younger she had wanted to tie her babysitter up and drown her in the bathtub. And also she wanted to hang her stepfather by the neck from the pipes in the parking garage at the Nordstrom’s downtown. She drew pictures of it.
It was couched in jokes. She was not a reclusive girl. Very pretty blond girl and popular – the center of attention, and in all likelihood just thought she was being funny. That’s what she would say later on. But was a mandated reporter and it was a little disturbing ooks didn’t trust subs with them (I just went in a grabbed them from the storage room one day after a fruitless discussion with the principle in his last year before retirement – story, so the next morning I brought the essay to the school counselor. She read it and then looked at me and asked, “What was the context of the assignment?”
I was kind of taken aback. I explained that I was really just trying to buy time to put together a lesson plan, and added that I wasn’t sure I understood the point of the question.
She said, “Well, if you don’t want to see results like this, you should provide more guidance in your lessons.”
That kind of pissed me off.
“It’s not a question of what results I would like to see. I brought it to you because I’m worried that this may be an indication of abuse by her babysitter and/or stepfather.”
She got testy, “Oh, is that your professional opinion?”
I shrugged at that point and said, “I’ve done my duty as a mandated reporter. It’s in your hands ma’m.”
She was called out of the classroom and they had a conversation. The girl came back to the classroom the next day and looked at me and said, “It was just a joke man!”
I said, “I’m really glad to hear you say that. But that is how some children alert teachers that they are being abused at home. Do you understand that? Because children to have the right to be safe. From anyone who might hurt them.”
She said, “I know that. I’m not dumb.”
I really hope the counselor snapped out of it and did well by the girl.
I don’t want to give the impression that all schools are this way. I did come across some excellent administrators in my time as a sub. But as we know, the decision making in those positions can be as crucial as those in police or rescue services.
The HSU press release posted in the Redheaded Blackbelt article credits organizing and professors, but the dramatic increase in college turnouts in California has much to do with the new policy of mailing ballots to all voters – which is why there is a good chance that Democrats will retake four or five House seats next year.
Sohum Parlance II 
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