Here in the First District, a thousand dollars is big money, $10,000 or $100K shout really loud, and a million dollars buys major improvements. To federal paymasters, these are crumbs. On the scale of national spending, or even spending by our rich neighbors, it won't take much new money to completely change the outlook, your standard of living, the whole quality of life and the future prospects for the people who live in the California First Congressional District (CD1). Somebody just has to BRING IT HOME. Mike Thompson has one of the lowest rankings in congress for bringing it home. It's called "pork" when it's federal money going to somebody else's district. When it's coming to ours, it's called "JOBS." It's called "PROSPERITY." THAT'S WHAT YOUR CONGRESSMAN IS SUPPOSED TO DO FOR YOU! Thompson refuses to say what cash he's got lined up to bring home this year. There will be a bundle of emergency money to spread around the West Coast this year from the failed salmon season. Count on Mike to strut around and tell us he did it. He did, along with 46 other California Congress members, the six senators from California, Washington and Oregon and all three state governors. All these people have worked extra hard to get the Secretary of Commerce to send money for fishermen, their suppliers and the businesses that depend on good fishin' for their livelihoods. It's coming, folks!
Look at the District first, then we'll jump to national issues.
Wine Country, one of the major features of the incredible First District
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on the hunt for "illegal aliens."
The issues that loom largest here are jobs, jobs and jobs. Our representative in congress, Mr. Mike Thompson, who serves on the spying committee, is occupied with terrorism, terrorism and terrorism. That's not the biggest concern here...
(unless we're Latinos, at risk of being terrorized daily by police and immigration officials).
RESTORE IMMIGRATION CODE 245(i). HISPANIC PEOPLE WORK HARD, OBEY THE LAW, LOOK AFTER THEIR FAMILIES AND CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY. THEY DESERVE BETTER. REINSTATE 245(i)!
We've lost most of our coastal timber and fishing industries since he's been our rep. Our truck drivers and construction workers are on unemployment and welfare. Medical services are pinched everywhere, and schools are under-funded and under-performing. Child abuse, in parts of CD1 (in my own county of Mendocino!) is the highest in California. We're out of work, a lot of us, and without professional health care. We have a deadly methamphetamine epidemic.
The morale of the kids is bad. Not a great report card!
Child in detention
In Mike's home county of Napa, though, things are much better. In the last national survey, Napa was the 107th richest county in America, out of more than 3,100 in the entire country, 10th out of California's 58 counties. Pretty darn good!
In terms of family income, here's how our seven counties in this Congressional District measure up statewide (California has 58 counties), with 1 being the richest and 58 the poorest:
Napa County 10 Sonoma County 12 Mendocino County 29 Yolo County 31 Humboldt County 41 Lake County 45 Del Norte County 53
As you see, Napa and Sonoma are in the top tier, but most of us are in the bottom half, a "first" district in name only. We'll change that, if you put me to work for you, and come with me. This fabulous region has the human and natural resources to make it first for real! Let's do it!
CD1 (cream colored) touches the city limits of Sacramento and Vallejo--and the Oregon border!
ARE YOU IN THE FIRST?
Look at a map of Northern California, the North State, in all her glory. The First District (CD1) is the cream-colored part, extending from Oregon to the top of San Francisco Bay, 360 miles!
It's the longest CD, outside of Alaska, in the United States. Stand on a beach and look west. There's nothing but the Pacific Ocean between you and Japan. To the east are the wild mountains of the Coast Range, humping off past the horizon to the Sacramento Valley. These mountains, which start right at the sea up at the north end, cover much of the district, but it's the gentler lands west of Sacramento, towns like Woodland, Davis and Napa that have most of the people in CD1.
So what does somebody in Crescent City, on the chilly, stormy edge of the ocean, have in common with someone in mild, sunny West Sac?
Plenty! If you're under 20 you're worrying about school or finding better work than flipping burgers. Can you better yourself by going to college or trade school? Where can you get the money, how can you survive while you're a student?
A little meth helps you work through these worries, right? Wrong! This stuff is major trouble, whether it's for fun, a "study buddy" or whatever. Take a look at the lady user. This is the worst drug epidemic we have ever had. What's our congressman doing about it? Nothing! STAY AWAY FROM IT! IF YOU'RE INTO IT, STOP!
10 Years of Methamphetamine Use
If you're 30, you're still worrying about your job. How can you do better? Can you even hold what you've got? Are you going to lose the house? Is the landlord going to lose the house you live in? How can you make the car payments, fix what's broken, pay for gas? What are you going to do about those growing credit-card debts?
The kids. How on earth are you going to provide an education for them? How can you pay for doctors' visits? What's all this talk about recession going to do to your household, your security? How bad will it get? Is this the best place to be?
If you're in your forties or fifties, it's a shift of emphasis, but the concerns stay the same. The kids and their education become major concerns or else you and they settle for more modest lives, accept what the conditions deal you.
If you're in your sixties or older, the shift favors health concerns. Will your insurance cover what you need? You hear so many stories of insurance companies refusing to pay for critical health care. Now you're on a fixed income, a little from here, a little from there, Social Security. It's enough, barely, but what happens if the company you worked for for 35 years goes bankrupt? You know people that's happened to and read about millions more. You have what ought to be a nice cushion, but one single health crisis can wipe it out and leave you an impossible debt.
I WILL REINSTATE 245(i)!!!!!!!!!
If you're Latino, these worries are almost luxuries. Immigration authorities, the ICE, "Las Migras," can kick down your door at any minute. Unless you start your own business, or somehow get a good education, or have rich folks back home, you're going to settle for bottom-rung work in the fields or the fast-food places. Maybe your kids can go to school, maybe not. Maybe there's a clinic you can take them to, maybe not. There's opportunity here, and you want to stay, but it's hard, and there's no such thing as security, not for most people who speak Spanish or whose parents do. They can rip your household apart at any minute. Your family and friends will suffer, but the greater community doesn't seem to care much.
These are things most of us have in common from end to end of CD1. The years that Mike Thompson has represented us have gone mostly downward.
You can divide CD1 by bioregions, by county, by watersheds, with the different rivers that drain them, by economic activity, where Davis, say, is still a farm town, but the university is by far the bigger business; where Woodland hosts tourists at its annual Pig Day and Hot Rod Reunion and Chili Cook-Off and dozens of other times, but you wouldn't call it mainly a tourist town (like Mendocino). It's still mainly a farm town.
However you slice it, the First is huge and diverse. What are the concerns in your town, your neighborhood, your house? I need to know. If I get to meet you, tell me then. If I don't, SEND THEM TO ME. We don't know if we can fix it until we know it's broke! If you don't think of the federal government as a potential partner, it's because you haven't been encouraged to. In fact, it's the opposite: You see on TV how the feds abandoned the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast when they most needed help. It didn't used to be that way, and it doesn't have to be that way now.
Remember Silicon Valley's dot-com bubble? So much money poured in, so many people had great jobs, so much creativity and productivity went to work that it not only made California richer than the Gold Rush ever did, it lifted the economy of the entire country!
This fantastic First District has more going for it than the imaginary place called Silicon Valley ever thought of. Add to that we're the most progressive place in the country. New ideas are welcome here and converted into action in a flash. Do we need new energy systems? What's best: wind, wave, sun, bioconversion, a combination? Let's get state and federal funding, set up the programs and work it out-RIGHT HERE!
Are we tired of wasting our time in traffic jams? Wouldn't it be great if you used your car for fun and a fast train to work or school and a high-speed boat up the river to Sacramento? Think of all these banged-up people limping home from Iraq and Afghanistan: Can you get a new body part from a laboratory, made from your own cells? Do the trillion-dollar companies that dot the landscape of California, making things designed to tear human life from its bones need to make that stuff--could they make useful things instead?
I'm old enough to know, because I've seen it happen with my own eyes, time and again: THE ANSWER TO EVERY ONE OF THESE QUESTIONS IS YES! I'm not Harry Potter or his half-wizard, half-giant friend Hagrid; I'm not Gandalf or Santa Claus. I can't do these things just because they're good ideas. There will be strong resistance.
BUT IF I HAVE THE SUPPORT OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN CALIFORNIA'S FIRST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, I CAN DO ANYTHING.
COME WITH ME!
Taking a look at national issues, the economy's tanking. How far down will it go, how long will it last?
I don't know.
I want to know this instead: Do we need to have a recession at all? The cost of Iraq, according to the Congressional Budget Office is, right now, $517 billion and counting--counting fast. The numbers at the end go too fast to read. As of this moment, every American household has paid $4,100 for this obscenity, this nightmare.
That's the current amount, spinning by below. Click on the blue "click to learn more" tag and see how this affects your own community, your own household!
Blackwater mercenaries stalk the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
What would happen to our national bank account if this outrushing of blood and money stopped right now? What if the money that disappears into the black, black holes of the profoundly sinister Blackwater Company, Vice President Cheney's Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, a property of Henry Kissinger, a man whose evil nature would be comical if it weren't absolutely real and still a very influential source of lies and intrigue-what if those billions went into education, healthcare, and physical improvements instead of neglect "because of the war"?
Henry Kissinger, a very sinister man and a Bush adviser
Is this possible?
It better be. Under our present "leadership" our economy's failing, our healthcare system's broken our schools rank 20th among the rich countries of the world, our death rates at both ends, for babies and old people, are higher than for other modern countries. Our debts, both as a nation and as individuals, are so heavy that we and our creditors have to pretend that everything will just magically keep on working anyway.
They don't.
We're losing our jobs, our homes and our future, as a nation with a well-educated work force.
An Iraqi boy reacts to the bombing of his neighborhood. Click to enlarge.
The war is a theft of all these social benefits: our public safety, our schools and colleges, our public works (streets, bridges, highways, public transportation, water and other utilities, national security, health, economic prosperity, international respect, and our natural environment. While we're destroying Iraq and Afghanistan (and planning the destruction of Iran), we're also destroying ourselves, our environment, our natural resources, our climate and the support systems--natural and man-made--that life on Earth depends on. We're doing this purely because it is very profitable for a very small segment of society, the ones who profit from war and its weapons.
The war has to end immediately, and our bloated defense budget must be re-dedicated to programs that produce prosperity instead of ruin, programs that are good for kids and growing things instead of deadly for everybody. We were promised this when the Cold War ended, remember? They tore down that ugly wall in Berlin, Germany, and we were promised a "peace dividend," remember?
People in Berlin, Germany, tore down the wall that had shut them in from 1961 to 1989.
Can we do this, stop paying most of our hard-earned taxes for weapons? Do we have to spend more for the military than all other countries combined? Of course we can, but Americans need to shout about it. We need to be revolutionaries again. Voting every couple of years is basic. Then we have to go beyond the basics. The super-rich do. They buy TV networks, radio networks and chains of newspapers, so we get what information they want us to get as news and entertainment. (Not everything: there's "South Park.")
They buy senators and congress people by the dozens and pay them millions to vote the "right" way. Remember: 450 members in the House of Representatives; 435 of them are millionaires. Do they feel our pain when times are hard? They say they do at election time. Ignore what they say. Watch what they do. They serve the rich. It doesn't have to be that way.
How can we resolve this noisy debate about health care? The second-biggest health program in the U.S., after Medicare, is the VA's Veteran's Health Administration. I'm a beneficiary of it. Three years ago I learned I had a cancer that usually kills you. Now I'm cancer free. The VA medical care I got was totally awesome. (Don't confuse it with the scandals about the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. That's the Army's, not the VA's.)
Leading experts in public health--I've talked to them personally--say the VA system is a perfect model for universal, single-payer national health care, and so do I!
Insurance companies don't want this. Drug companies don't want this. For-profit medical centers don't want this. Our congressman Mike Thompson gets a fortune in political donations from medical insurance and drug companies, so he doesn't want this.
How can we make it happen?
We demand it! The time has come. Ask yourself this: Who runs the country, business corporations or we the people? If we have the constitutionally given power to govern ourselves, the people who have usurped that power need to GET OUT OF OUR WAY!
Come with me.
It's not complicated, folks. The politicians and media want you to think it will take years to sort out and more years to fix. That way everybody keeps raking in money from your paycheck and your savings to pay for their ultra-high-priced inefficiency. When a horde of people go their telephones, their post offices and their computers, suddenly it doesn't take so long to get things done, and if we hook up with people in other congressional districts around the country that fight like us, that will be quite a horde!
I'm not asking you to come with me to Washington. Sometime I might, if we need a monster public demonstration--I'll line up cheap bus rides--but mostly I'll be here, in the Fierce First District, and we can work together, in person, to move these boulders out of our way. I used to belong to the Operating Engineers' Union, the people who run the big construction machines. I know how to move boulders. Congress moves, presidents and governors move, boards of supervisors and school boards move when they feel the pressure of great numbers of citizens demanding change. The fabulous organization called Amnesty International uses the pressure of great numbers of people to rescue victims of political prisons and political torture, to free them from the grip of murderers and sadists, to walk in the sun again. They never use guns; they use numbers of people. So will we.
SURPRISE! This is still a democracy!
Consider immigration. Mexicans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans, Latinos from El Salvador and Panama, people from all over South America-these are people who come here just as we did, willing to work long hours and "GIT 'ER DONE!" so they can carve a foothold and work for a better life.
Night Patrol
An Iraqi child, hurt and helpless at the feet of American troops at night. How do we explain this?
What are we doing in Iraq? What are we doing in Afghanistan? Are we destroying terrorists? Are we eliminating Al-Qaeda? Are we making the U.S. more secure? We know we're spending $275 million taxpayer dollars, every single day, 24/7, and that this money is going to companies that contract with the Department of Defense. Those companies are thriving, with fantastic profits. The rest of our country is falling into foreclosure and depression. There's no argument about this.
