The mid-term 2010 Congressional elections are over and the exaggerations are front and center. “A tidal wave,” “an earthquake,” “a tsunami,” cried the Republican victors and their media acolytes.

Wait a minute! No more than 7 percent of the actual voters switched sides to create a 14 point spread. This amounts to about 3 percent of all the eligible voters who produced this “tidal wave.” That is what happens in our winner-take-all system. So when it is said that “the people have spoken,” chalk it up to 7 percent or so switcheroos. The rest voted the way they did in the previous Presidential and Congressional election (and about 28 million voters stayed home.)

Such sweeping descriptions gave incoming House Speaker, John Boehner, even more leeway than usual to play with words when he declared, without further elaboration, that “the peoples priorities and agenda are our priorities.” Mr. Boehner is the consummate corporate logo-man masquerading as a Congressman. If someone drew the logos of all the big companies that have marinated his career and put them on his suit coat, they would run into each other.

How then did the Democrats lose against the most craven Republican party in modern history—a Party that opposes again and again the fair rights of workers, consumers, investors, savers and patients.

Regarding patients, Boehner’s oft-repeated view of the modest, non-single-payer health insurance changes by Congress and Obama—“it will kill jobs, destroy the best health care system in the world and bankrupt our country.” Reporters listen to Mr. Boehner say this repeatedly and do not ask him to explain his wild rhetoric.

So, in listing some of the ways the Democrats failed to defend the country against such Republicans, put near the top not rebutting the crisp lies and abstract assertions that Republican candidates uttered while campaigning or “debating” their Democratic opponents. Listening to debate after debate on C-Span radio, I was amazed at how infrequently the Democrats demanded examples from their Republican opponents each time the words “cut spending,” “cut taxes,” “reduce the deficit,” “deregulate” and “create jobs,” were uttered.

In elections, one side is on the offensive and the other is on the defensive. The offense creates momentum unless it is countered and driven back. Since the Democrats are furiously dialing for the same corporate campaign dollars, it is difficult for them to stand for the people. That is why the Democrats are wishy-washy, reticent and reluctant to put major subjects of abusive power on the table.

Rarely did one hear Democrats state their position on corporate crime law enforcement, huge fraud on the taxpayer (Medicare), anti-collective-bargaining laws for labor, the bloated military budgets, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the flood of corporate subsidies, handouts, giveaways and bailouts, or the grotesque tax escapes for the multinational corporations and the super-wealthy.

They did not want to talk about consumer rip-offs, or the hundreds of thousands of unprotected Americans who lose their lives every year from un-regulated workplace-related diseases/traumas, medical malpractice, air, water and food contamination, or having no health insurance.

Too many Democrats are cowering candidates. Speaker Nancy Pelosi told incumbent Democrats that they could criticize her if necessary to get elected and preserve their majority in the House. Since Republicans made a practice of assailing Pelosi in almost every debate or on every occasion, many Democrats did not rebut their Republican opponents. Some Democrats stated they would not vote for Pelosi as Speaker in 2012. Unrebutted political attacks often influence voters who wonder at mixed messages from members of a Party.

A key Democratic failure was not to keep on Howard Dean, as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Between 2005 and 2009, Dr. Dean, with his 50 state strategy, energized both the DNC and state Democratic Committees. He knew what it took to go on the offensive against Republicans. He produced victories in 2006 and 2008 before his bête noire, Obama’s Rahm Emmanuel, pushed him out.

Dr. Dean would have challenged the Tea Party and slowed its momentum. When the Democrats saw this self-styled conservative/libertarian rebellion receive the first of its vast mass media coverage (especially by Fox News and Fox Cable) in August, 2009 when Tea Partiers loudly showed up at town meetings of incumbent Congresspersons, there should have been a Democratic response. A “Coffee Party” of progressives and deprived workers rebelling against the corporate control that 75 percent of Americans believe is excessive might have caught on.

Instead, the Tea Partiers, in all their disparate strands and wealthy right-wingers trying to take them over, became the daily feature and news of the 2010 campaign year.

Obama came out of his 2008 victory with 13 million names of donors and supporters, along with great enthusiasm from young voters. The Democrats squandered this support. This astonishing blunder happened, in no small part, because Obama turned his back on his supporters and denied their leaders White House access that he so often afforded corporate CEOs—eg. from the health insurance giants, drug companies, and banking behemoths. That’s one reason so many of his 2008 supporters stayed home in 2010 and did not vote. They felt betrayed.

With 23 Democratic Senators up in 2012, as compared with 10 Republican Senators, the Democrats may lose both Houses of Congress. Voters shouldn’t only have the barren choice of voting for the least worst of the Two Parties. Here we go again. Or as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

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Day laborers hold press conference to announce a lawsuit against the city, Feb. 2, 2010.

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the fourth of five parts in video. This segment shows the English version of the press conference held on Feb. 2, 2010 in front of Costa Mesa’s city hall. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the day laborers by the ACLU, MALDEF and ENDLON.

Protester outside of Costa Mesa city hall, Feb. 2, 2010. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the second of five parts in video,  and the second part of a three-part interview with Chief of Police Christopher Shawkey.

Chilling Effect, first reported in the OC Voice in Oct. 2007.

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the first of five parts in video, including a three part interview with Chief of Police Christopher Shawkey.

By Judie Mancuso
Special to the OC Voice

If you love dogs and cats, you are out of luck getting attention or protection for them from Orange County elected officials.

Since 2006, we have been working on statewide legislation to help curb the massive pet overpopulation problem in California. Our non-profit volunteer organization Social Compassion in Legislation (SCiL) works to help craft and lobby state legislation that will reduce pet euthanasia through increased licensing and spay and neuter.

California shelters see about one million dogs and cats coming through the front door every year, and they euthanize (kill) over 500,000 of them who were not lucky enough to be adopted or redeemed by their family. The cost to California taxpayers is a whopping $300 million dollars each year, and it is on the rise.

We receive support letters from every nook and cranny of the state for our legislation. Over 5,000 individuals and organizations have sent support letters just in the past few months for Senate Bill 250, the Pet Responsibility Act. Sponsored by SCiL and authored by Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, the bill enacts a proven method to reduce shelter overpopulation.

Guess which area of the state has provided the most support for our bill? Right here at home, Orange County. Dogs and cats are a major part of life in the OC and pet lovers are not happy about the numbers killed in our shelters.

Even the OC Grand Jury got on board in 2008, releasing a 12 page report on spay and neuter laws. The report exposed Orange County’s animal overpopulation problem, pointing out that “animals brought to the County Shelter have less than a 50/50 chance of survival,” and that “the tragedy of euthanasia is the typical, not the occasional, situation.”

In response to our previous statewide spay and neuter bill, the Grand Jury concluded that “since all counties and most cities adopt their animal regulations from the California Codes, the proposed law would help ease Orange County’s animal overpopulation and reduce the operating cost of the County Animal Shelter.”

Thousands of cats and dogs killed neadlessly every year.

You would think that after such a comprehensive report OC elected officials would wake up and take a look at spay and neuter laws, right? Nope. The OC Board of Supervisors refuses to take a position. In fact, my OC Supervisor, Pat Bates won’t even take a call or a meeting on the issue.

OC’s so-called “fiscally responsible” state representatives in the Assembly and Senate won’t go near the legislation, even though tens of millions of dollars and countless pets will be saved statewide as shelter population would be reduced.

Why not? Personally, I think for OC Republicans it is easier to talk fiscal responsibility than to walk it. They say things like “the state has no business telling people what to do with their pets,” when California is already involved to the tune of $300 million dollars each year.

There’s one more piece to the puzzle: underground pet breeding. In California today, anyone selling more than two pets per year must obtain a seller’s permit and pay sales and income tax on the profits. And, most cities require breeders to get a business and kennel license. But as you might guess, virtually no backyard pet breeders follow these laws. There are thousands of underground breeders spread across California, cheating the state out of millions of tax dollars while producing excess animals that take homes away from pets awaiting adoption. Worse still, they dump their unsold “product” in our shelters.

In Sacramento, where SB 250 recently had a hearing, over 200 backyard breeders showed up to protest the bill. They feel that our law will bring scrutiny on their activities, and give animal control a tool to locate them and force them to comply with current law.

Underground breeders have even worked themselves up into a frenzy on blogs and chat rooms, convincing themselves in a bizarre echo chamber that spay and neuter laws don’t work and are actually meant to eliminate pets forever. Never mind that in the numerous jurisdictions with similar laws, including Santa Cruz and New York City, the only thing that has been eliminated is a large percentage of unnecessary euthanasia. There is a large body of proof that spay and neuter laws are effective by helping to prevent a large percentage of the homeless pets going from being put to death.

A statewide Zogby poll taken in 2008 found that “California voters are strongly in support of a law that would enforce the spaying and neutering of pets” and “voters are three times more likely to say they would vote for a legislator who supports a spaying and neutering bill than they would be to vote against him or her”.

The same poll found that 80 percent of the public are supportive of spay and neuter laws. “Even majorities of those groups that might be considered anti-regulation…say they are in support of such legislation.”
So why do the backyard pet breeders have the ear of our Republican representatives, instead of the good pet lovers supporting these laws? It may be that on issues they feel are controversial, the Republicans stick with the status quo because it’s easier.

There are glimmers of hope. Conservative Republicans in the Laguna Hills City Council have passed a resolution in support of SB 250, joining the bi-partisan army of cities and counties across California who has officially endorsed the bill.

So although I am not the first, let me add my voice to the large chorus of Orange County voters asking our State Legislators to step up to the plate and support life saving, money saving, spay and neuter laws like SB 250. This is not a partisan issue for OC citizens, and it should not be for our elected officials.

Editor’s note: SB 250 was recently defeated, but proponents are working to bring the bill back to the California State Assembly in January, 2010

Judie Mancuso is president of Social Compassion in Legislation based in Laguna Beach
For more information about SB 250 visit www.YESonSB250.com.

While Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher made repeated assurances that he takes the problem of detainee abuse “very seriously” during an interview with the OC Voice recently, he apparently lacked familiarity with a number of issues associated with the system – including the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to detainees, and a number of widely documented incidents of abuse.

Critics chastised the congressman earlier this month for dismissing mistreatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay – specifically, an incident in which a pair of women’s underwear was placed on a prisoner’s head – as an act of “humiliation” and “frat boy pranks,” not torture. Rohrabacher made the remarks June 6 as a member of the Human Rights subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

While both the humiliation and torturing of prisoners is expressly forbade in the Geneva Conventions, Rohrabacher nevertheless stressed the importance of the distinction.

“The whole point is: what is the definition of torture?” he said. “We’ve had people define torture [so broadly] that it has become meaningless – if you tickle someone with a feather, is that torture? That’s certainly a physical tactic, and by the definitions some people have used for ‘torture,’ it would include tickling someone with a feather.”

While maintaining he “spend[s] a lot of time and effort reading…reports” on the issue, the Congressman still expressed disbelief that over 108 detainees had died in US custody, and that over 25 of the incidents are considered acts of homicide by the Pentagon, according to government data obtained by the Associated Press and recent testimony by Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture.

A Feb. 2006 report by Human Rights First claimed that over 100 detainees had died in custody since 2002, including 34 cases that were suspected or confirmed murders and 8 cases where the victims had been tortured to death, but that only 12 of those deaths had resulted in disciplinary action. The extensive report was based on government documents and is online at www.humanrightsfirst.org.

Rohrabacher also expressed incredulity at other documented acts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against detainees, but noted he thought there was a “big difference between an American soldier who doesn’t intentionally target civilians,” and non-uniformed terrorists under the Geneva Conventions.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, extended the protections of the Geneva Convention to “enemy combatants” in a 2006 decision. Detainees in the “war on terror” have been held without due process of law, but the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled last month that they have the right to challenge their detention and seek release in court.

“Listen – I’m not someone who reads the Geneva Convention or says I am an expert in it,” he explained. “…some people have told me that [the Convention] does not apply to those not in uniform.”

The Congressman added he was “of course” concerned that these abuses may be endured by those falsely imprisoned by U.S. forces, though he has previously characterized such detentions as the “price we pay in the real world,” for security, noting he’d rather falsely detain ten innocent people then let 90 terrorists “walk the street.”

“When we found possible examples of [false imprisonment], I have been very supportive of trying to free them and get them compensation and an apology,” he said. “No matter what are you trying to accomplish…there are going to be people who are accidentally caught up in a bad situation who are not guilty, and are unintentionally hurt.”

A little over half of the initial 775 prisoners detained in Guantanamo Bay have been released from the prison without charge since 2002, according to Amnesty International. A 2004 report from the International Red Cross quotes intelligence officials who estimate as many as 90 percent of detainees in Iraq are arrested by mistake or in mass detention, and have no connection with terrorism.

Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook, the Democratic challenger for Rohrabacher’s seat in the 46^th district, said Rohrabacher’s ignorance was “rather shocking.”

“I’ve followed the situation at Guantanamo Bay, but it would be really difficult to miss this sort of information [if you read the news],” she said. “I just can’t believe he wasn’t familiar with these issues.”

“It’s the unfortunate result of gerrymandered districts – when you no longer have to compete for your seat, you become very complacent in your ability to hold onto it,” she added. “So you lose your competitive edge; really, you almost lose interest in governance.”

But in an interview with the OC Voice earlier this year Cook proclaimed ignorance of her own about the related issue of holding government officials, including President George W. Bush, accountable for conducting a war based on false evidence. “I’m not going to sit as judge and jury over something I don’t know about,” she said, adding, “I’ve been focused here on local issues. I don’t spend my time 24/7 studying what Bush did or didn’t do.”

Efforts to contact Green Party candidate Tom Lash for comment were unsuccessful.