Any Bells Tolling In Your Town?

I pay a fair amount of attention to politics, but I usually have no idea what's going on in my home town except what I learn every two years from the campaign signs on street corners when I go for a walk or drive to work.

For instance, next month in Yorba Linda, there's something up for a vote called Measure Z, which, depending on the sign, is supposed to be about either ethics or local control. Another sign says that a City Council candidate who is seeking reelection is against this "ethics measure." Does that mean she's unethical? Coming to that conclusion requires, among other things, an assumption that Measure Z is really about ethics. Often enough, proponents and opponents of state and local ballot initiatives unethically claim that they're about something they're really not.

Yes, I do know how to figure it all out. I could pour over the materials that come in the mail from the Registrar of Voters and scour the local weekly for the occasional reference to municipal policy debates. I could watch City Council meetings on cable TV, and if there were a pressing issue that affected me or my family, I could dig even deeper.

Perhaps I should be ashamed to say this, but I really don't have the time. And there's shame in numbers. In many if not most smaller southern California communities, elections for city councils and especially school and water boards are dominated by those who habitually and sometimes obsessively take an ongoing interest or are motivated by passion or ambition related to single issues. In some local elections, no more than 20-30% of the jurisdiction's eligible voters will turn out.

If the group of those who are active is small enough, can it be construed as a special interest? Perhaps. It would be better if more people paid attention, but saying so and its coming to pass are wildly different things.

In many cases, such as in Yorba Linda, the electorate's disinterest is justifiably blissful, a consequence of the city being well run. On the other hand, there's the scandal in the nearby city of Bell, where elected and staff officials were allegedly looting the treasury with the broad impunity that can only be granted through a tacit agreement between oblivious voters and negligent journalists (though it was the LA Times, while looking pretty slim and haunted these days, that finally broke the story). The Bell rang as a warning for most of us in suburban southern California whose passion about municipal government usually extends no further than complaining when candidates don't collect their multicolored litter soon enough after election day.

* * *

Thanks to the local paper, some internet research, and more careful examination of the political signs sprouting up around town, I've learned that the so-called ethics initiative on Yorba Linda's Nov. 2 ballot is measure Y, which indeed proposes a revision of the city's ethics ordinance. Measure Z has to do with higher-density, or so-called work force, housing in a part of our city called Savi Ranch.

I've also learned from local columnist Jim Drummond that campaign signs aren't supposed to be posted within 15 feet of an intersection, which means that some of our candidates are technically scofflaws.

Under The Shelter of TARP

As Tea Party activists target Republicans who supported the 2008-09 federal bailout which rescued the U.S. financial system (and would be in the black as of today if it weren't for losses related to mortgages), Rich Straton reflects on the story of a friend in Newport Beach who had spent nearly 20 years building up a fund specializing in municipal bonds that had served its investors well until Lehman Bros. failed in September 2008:

Lehman was one of the leading providers of the bond funds that Bob leveraged against each other. As Lehman went under, calls against all of its investments drew down the values of all of their funds to fire sale levels. For Bob, all the investments were down in his hedge fund and the fund was bankrupt.

Almost 20 years of work and the reputation that goes with it was almost all gone. Bob took the remnants of the fund and started over. And the point is that Bob did nothing wrong. He was the prudent investor and advisor. The problems with Lehman cascaded into his business. They also cascaded into other small investment businesses that went bankrupt that season.

Had TARP or something like it been in place when Lehman went under then the cascade would have been prevented and Bob’s fund would have been saved.

The conclusion is that TARP was intended to provide a firewall around some of the innocent investors who, like Bob, did nothing wrong. These are the people who responsibly managed the retirements of lots of small investors whose retirements are now either gone or severely impaired. The impact could have been disastrous for so many.

We've Got A Sap For That

Be careful where you take your iPhone -- for instance, Canada.

Bibi Needs To Go To China

The ball is totally in Israel's court.

Time For Another Beer Summit?

"Palestinian" isn't the same as "Muslim" -- almost, but not quite. About 50,000 people in the West Bank and Gaza, or 2% of the population, are Christian, and last weekend in the all-Christian West Bank town of Taybeh, a good number of them were hoisting one of the finest lagers in the world at the town's sixth annual Oktoberfest. Founded by the Khoury family in the heady early 1990s, when the Oslo accords seemed to presage a Palestinian renaissance, the Taybeh Brewing Co., which makes about 160,000 Pale-stein gallons a year using German and Polish hops, was the subject of a tasty LA Times article today.

You won't find Taybeh beer at Trader Joe's. Two strikes and it's out: It ships without preservatives and with a label reading "Made in Palestine." Israeli checkpoints make it hard (but not impossible) for the brewery to get its beer into Jerusalem. It's controversial on the home front as well, according to the Times:

Subtle Muslim-Christian tensions were apparent Saturday during the festival's opening ceremony. The mayor spoke of the need for a "moderate Palestine." Later, the regional governor, a Muslim woman wearing a head scarf, invited Oktoberfest attendees to enjoy the locally made products, such as olive oil and spices. But she couldn't bring herself to mention the beer.

If you visit the brewery, as I did during pilgrimages in 2007 and 2009, you get a tour and free samples. That's my elder daughter, Valerie (left), on last year's trip with Madees Khoury, daughter of one of the brewery's co-founders. The Khourys make a non-alcoholic beer (with a label in Hamas green) for abstemious Muslims. Maybe they should send a few cases to help loosen up the Israeli and Palestinian peace delegations. As for us St. John's pilgrims, keep some in the fridge for us, because, in January, Taybeh, here we come.

"She Had To Go"

Luisa Lopez

Hat tip to the good people at "No Depression"

Good Paranoia

From Glenn Garvin at the Miami Herald (my mother's paper for a few months in 1965, during one of Detroit's periodic newspaper strikes, many of which were called by my genial journalistic Joe Hill of a godfather), a balanced take on Vietnam-era antagonists Richard Nixon and Daniel Ellsberg, subjects of a new public television documentary:

The fundamental problem with The Most Dangerous Man is that it's not really a documentary at all. Narrated by Ellsberg and based largely on his 2002 autobiography, it's more of an illustrated memoir. Though it includes interviews with reporters, Ellsberg colleagues and other figures in the case, virtually all of them treat him as an unalloyed hero.

The exceptions are Richard Nixon and a few henchmen who can be heard on White House tapes cursing Ellsberg and plotting vengeance. ``We've got to get this son of a bitch,'' snarls Nixon in one of the milder excerpts. They tried, filing criminal charges and even burglarizing the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in search of dirty laundry -- an act of over-enthusiasm that would help topple Nixon's presidency.

Nixon and his minions make easy (and, in many ways, appropriate) villains. But The Most Dangerous Man makes no attempt to put the government's side of the story in perspective. Ellsberg had just leaked 7,000 pages of classified documents and not just to reporters: A Russian double agent told the FBI a set had been delivered to the Soviet embassy in Washington.

Nobody knew what else Ellsberg had lifted from Pentagon files or what he might be planning to do with it. His ex-wife, though an anti-war activist, told the FBI she thought he was having a mental breakdown. Some of his accomplices were not merely anti war but pro communist, openly supporting North Vietnam's Stalinist government. If Nixon was paranoid about Ellsberg, he had good reason.

The Most Dangerous Man goes beyond omission to outright falsification in its implication that Nixon was trying to suppress the Pentagon Papers because they showed he was thinking of using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. In fact, the papers contained not a single word about his presidency; their account of the war ended in 1969, before Nixon took office. Nor was he escalating the war, as The Most Dangerous Man implies. When Ellsberg leaked the papers, Nixon had reduced the number of troops from the 536,000 deployed by Lyndon Johnson to 157,000.

More Nixon Records

My conversation with historian and former National Archives tapes specialist Maarja Krusten about the tussles over Richard Nixon's records and library, posted on the message board of the Society of American Archivists.

Missile Gaps And Freedom Fighters

Reacting to Ted Sorensen's recent paean to 1960 debater John F. Kennedy, anti-Castro writer Humberto Fontova criticizes the Democratic nominee's use of inside information to get to the right of Richard Nixon on foreign policy:

Take Kennedy’s claim that President Eisenhower had fallen asleep (or gone golfing) during his command and allowed a perilous “missile gap” to grow between the U.S. and the Soviets. In fact a huge gap had grown (roughly six thousand for us, three hundred for the Soviets)

Might this qualify as an “outrageous claim” by Kennedy? Not if your source is Ted Sorensen and the New York Times. In fact, prior to the debates, CIA director Allen Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the genuine missile numbers. But rather than respond to this genuinely outrageous claim, Nixon bit his tongue. Disclosing the real number (that JFK knew perfectly well) in public would alert the Soviets to how we got their number, and jeopardize U.S. national security. Which is to say, to blindside his Republican opponent Kennedy relied on that opponent's patriotism. ...

"The Republicans have allowed a communist dictatorship to flourish eight jet minutes from our borders!” Kennedy charged during the second debate. “We must support anti-Castro fighters. So far these freedom fighters have received no help from our government."...

Short weeks before the debates Allen Dulles (on Ike's orders) had also briefed Kennedy about Cuban invasion plans (what became the Bay of Pigs invasion). So the “Real Story” (as you well know Mr Ted Sorensen) is that Kennedy was again lying through his teeth. He knew [very] well the Republican administration was training Cuban freedom fighters. And since the plans were secret, he knew [very] well Nixon couldn't rebut. So Nixon bit his tongue again. He could easily have stomped Kennedy on it. But to some candidates national security trumps debating points.

Hat tip to Mick Gilford

More Oxygen On The Fiorina

Did the GOP wildfire crest too early? The New York Times:

Democrats pointed to positive signs in recent weeks, including that Senator Barbara Boxer, a third-term Democrat, appears to be running ahead of her Republican challenger, Carly Fiorina, in California. Mrs. Boxer’s seat is among those Republicans have been working to capture.