A Question of Class, Ethics, Homophobia, and Defending the Established Order
Summary: The Desert Sun has been guilty of classism and homophobia in its obsessive pursuit of Cathedral city councilmember Greg Pettis. The Desert Sun seeks to impose a precondition of private wealth for public service, a precondition that is both undemocratic and un-American. The Desert Sun editorial board has never forgiven Greg Pettis for being a highly effective queer Democrat in public office, and has actively sought to interfere with his political campaigning and to fabricate the appearance of wrongdoing at every opportunity. If Mr. Pettis had been an affluent Republican, the Desert Sun would have been curiously silent. But, because the Desert Sun believes politics should be the pursuit of the white, the well-off, and the straight, it will eagerly attempt to discredit and defame any office holder who does not meet its own criteria. Its apparent obsession with doing whatever harm it can to Greg Pettis has led it into tawdry political alliances with the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, and its carrying of her water, and its unashamed willingness to traffic in verifiable lies on her behalf, has been unethical and unacceptable. If anyone should be run out of office, is the mayor of Cathedral city.
By: Paul S. Marchand
My friend and sometime colleague Greg Pettis recently became president of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Having served on SCAG policy committees, I can attest that being president of SCAG is no easy job. It represents real achievement, and is a testament to the regard in which Mr. Pettis is held by his peers and colleagues, and I congratulate him on his achievement.
Over at the Desert Sun, our local Gannett organ, institutional hatred of Greg Pettis seems to have blinded that newspaper to the value added Greg brings the Coachella Valley. In a series of slanted articles and sanctimonious, self-righteous editorials, the Desert Sun has sought --- with, at best, limited success --- to minimize his achievements, and worse, to fabricate some sort of scandal out of Mr. Pettis’s travel expenses, by which it hopes to see him driven from office.
Of course, this is par for the course for the Desert Sun. In past campaigns, Desert Sun resources and personnel were made available under the table to Mr. Pettis’s political opponents, and the Desert Sun unblushingly sought to paint Mr. Pettis in the worst possible light. Indeed, to borrow an old phrase from Lyndon Johnson: if Greg Pettis were seen walking on the waters of the Salton Sea, the Desert Sun would rush to print with a hyperventilating editorial lambasting Greg for his inability to swim, and talk radio bloviator Steve Kelly would no doubt echo such sentiments.
Of course, the gravamen of the Desert Sun’s monomaniacal, nay, rabid, years-long pursuit of Mr. Pettis is that public service ought to be the preserve of white, wealthy, heterosexual Republicans, to which no middle or working class queer person, especially not queer Democrats, should apply.
Indeed, the Desert Sun’s conduct raises disturbing questions about class, ethics, homophobia, and what the Sun apparently sees as its mission to defend established conservative political dispensations in the Coachella Valley.
For many years, there has existed a view, prevalent in politically conservative circles, that persons in public office should subsidize their public service from private means. While such a view might have been unexceptionable in 18th century England, where members of Parliament were not compensated, and where public service or public office were accompanied by a de facto means test, the emergent democracy of the United States soon rejected at the federal level the idea that private wealth should be a prerequisite to public service.
Now, the Desert Sun impliedly calls, with dog whistles and code phrases, for the reimposition of just such a de facto means test for local elective office. The Desert Sun has been careful to avoid specifically accusing Greg Pettis of any crime, but its nudge-nudge, wink-wink suggestion has been that because Mr. Pettis has done public work and been compensated from the public fisc, he must necessarily be guilty of some kind of nameless transgression. Presumably, had Mr. Pettis applied private personal wealth to public service, the classist Desert Sun would have had no trouble with such a thing.
The Desert Sun’s suggestion in this matter is unacceptable, unethical, and un-American. If the Desert Sun believes Mr. Pettis has been guilty of a crime, then its editors ought to have the testicular fortitude --the balls-- to come right out with their suggestion. If the Desert Sun does not believe Mr. Pettis has been guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, then they need to acknowledge that reality forthrightly and concurrently acknowledge that they are in effect trying to act as a de facto legislator, seeking to impose their own particular rules and norms upon local public office holders.
Given the Desert Sun’s reputation for trying to play kingmaker, it is certainly reasonable to suppose that the newspaper has succumbed to the arrogance of influence in trying to dictate what is and is not appropriate behavior on the part of our public officials. Unfortunately for the Desert Sun, we already have a legislature; it sits in Sacramento, and is not answerable to Greg Burton or any of the other self-important dependable conservative water carriers at the Desert Sun.
If anyone has been guilty of anything, it has been Desert Sun. Not only has the Desert Sun been guilty of classism, it has also been guilty of political homophobia. Greg Pettis makes no secret of being an out gay man. He was the first out gay man to have run and won as an out gay men in the Coachella Valley. I was the second. I know that the Desert Sun has always had a preferential option for non-queer candidates and officeholders, and has always been very ready to condemn and attack queerfolk in public office for the slightest transgressions, whether real or existing only in the hyperventilated minds of the Desert Sun’s editorial staff.
Let us remember that as recently as the end of the last century, the Desert Sun still got its editorial knickers in a swivet over a drag queen night at the local minor-league ballpark, wringing its metaphorical hands over whether the impressionable children of our Valley should be “exposed to such conduct.” (While comparisons are always odious, it should be noted that the L.A. Times of 1997 would not even have thought drag queens at a local ballpark newsworthy, and would certainly not have wasted print or bandwidth obsessing over whether children should be “exposed to such conduct.”)
A newspaper that could get itself so wrought up over drag queens in 1997 still has much work to do in 2013 if the idea of queerfolk serving in public office seems to excite in its personnel such a sense of panic that Desert Sun reporters and administrative personnel gave their time and effort to Mr. Pettis’s opponents in the primary campaign of 2008, when one reporter actually boosted confidential information from the Pettis campaign and provided it to Pettis’s opponents, and when other personnel of the Desert Sun were deeply involved in the creation and maintenance of an anti-Pettis political website.
Clearly, in the eyes of the Desert Sun and the conservative fellow travelers who call the shots there, Greg Pettis has been guilty of the unpardonable sin of being a highly effective queer Democrat in local public office. Apparently the Desert Sun has no problem with queerfolk as long as we are nothing more than harmless, affluent exotics, tastefully redecorating midcentury houses and giving fabulous benefit functions for worthy causes, but when a middle-class homosexual has the temerity to undertake public service, and to undertake it well, being held in sufficient esteem by his peers to be made president of SCAG, then the Desert Sun’s amour propre has been offended, and its sense of offense leads it into tawdry political alliances with Kathleen Joan DeRosa, the most dangerously sociopathic mayor in the corporate history of Cathedral City.
Indeed, so blatant has been the Desert Sun’s obvious bias, prejudice, corruption, and interest in its slanted reporting and hatchet piece editorializing that thread comments supporting Greg Pettis have heavily outnumbered those condemning him, and the wave of outrage both DeRosa and the Desert Sun evidently hope will sweep him from office does not seem to be materializing. Instead, the Desert Sun’s pursuit of Greg Pettis seems to have accomplished nothing more than a hardening, extension, and escalation of community contempt for both it and the power-hungry mayor who so evidently set this latest pursuit in train. If anyone deserves to be run out of public office for this latest nonsense, it is Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
-XXX-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as member of the city Council. He is familiar with the workings of such regional bodies as SCAG and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Friday, May 3, 2013
LITTLE SNAPPERS: LOUDMOUTH LOW-INFORMATION IDIOTS AND STEVE “TED CRUZ” KELLY
Summary: a couple of Little Snappers as we approach Cinco de Mayo. First, I found myself belabored recently in Palm Springs by a low-information pinhead who sought to blame me for my former colleague Greg Pettis’s travel. She waved her fist in my face and shouted at me until I reached for my phone to call the cops. Sadly, this pinhead represents and personifies the debasement of our political culture under the mayoralty of Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
Of course, DeRosa has her defenders and water carriers, including talk radio bloviator Steve Kelly. Kelly works predictably from DeRosa’s playbook, which is all about trying to equate dissent with criminality. In a Sarah Palin-esque Facebook comment, Kelly implied that those of us who were critical of the mayor had violated some mythical duty of “transparency,” and had, by implication, entered into some kind of illicit combination to “alienate” his beloved mayor from her supposedly devoted masses. Kelly’s performance put one in mind of Ted Cruz’s breathless assertions about Communists on the Harvard faculty. Those of us whose integrity was impugned by Kelly’s irresponsible Facebook snark, have a right to resent his comments and implications.
*****
By: Paul S. Marchand
Every once in a while, I find myself adopting a practice of the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, who would sometimes pen brief concurrences or dissents to opinions being handed down by the Supreme Court. He would call them “Little Snappers.” Though many of Burger’s so-called Little Snappers were never filed, they did provide him with a certain measure of emotional release. In keeping with that practice, herewith are two Little Snappers thematically related by their common nexus with sociopathic Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
LOW-INFORMATION LOUDMOUTHS
Yesterday, I was in Palm Springs for some routine medical tests. I happened to strike up a conversation with former Cathedral city mayor George Stettler, who happened to be there at the same time. As our conversation was ending, an elderly woman, obviously Latina, came up to me and began waving her fist in my face and yelling “shame on you!” I was somewhat astonished by such uncivil behavior, especially as she continued with “shame on you for spending $85,000.”
The only inference I could draw was that this low-information loudmouth had either accidentally or deliberately confused me with my former colleague, councilmember Greg Pettis, and was trying to take out her misplaced wrath on me. After she rebuffed my attempt to engage her in a civil fashion, I gave as good as I got, telling her that she should be ashamed of herself for not knowing the facts. She continued to wave her fist in my face and shout at me, at which point I reached for my cell phone and said to her that I would be calling the police. Apparently not wishing to find herself caught in the toils of the criminal justice system, loudmouth lady stormed out of the room.
And thus it is in Cathedral City after nine bitter winters of Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s mayoralty. I blame DeRosa for this incident, because on her watch nastiness and innuendo have become the order of the day. DeRosa has a long history of seeking to recruit surrogates to carry her political and personal water, and an equally long history of seeking to fabricate a cult of personality in which any dissent ultimately becomes viewed as criminal.
In a city whose mayor feels herself entitled not only to tell a prominent constituent --- in a very public venue --- to go fuck himself, and who subsequently feels no particular compunction in lying about the episode to anyone foolish enough to accept her representations is true, it is hardly surprising that the quality of our civil discourse should be so poor as to lead to loudmouth, low-information jackasses making public fools of themselves in neighboring cities.
I don’t mind being criticized for acts for which I’m responsible, but I do resent being belabored by people whom God has not given the good sense to understand their facts. To use Bill O’Reilly’s phrase, this gal was a pinhead, encouraged in her pinheadedness by the existence of a debased political culture facilitated and encouraged by debased politicians and their enablers within the community.
MORE FOOT CHEWING FROM OUR OWN LITTLE TED CRUZ
Sarah Palin, the rampant maenad of Mat-Su, routinely gets herself flamed to a well done crisp after posting inflammatory diatribes on Facebook. Palm Springs radio bloviator Steve Kelly should have learned from prior experience that Facebook indiscretions can lead to sharply critical pushback.
In the Facebook comment thread to an April 30, 2013 article written by the Tamara Sone, the Desert Sun’s easily-bamboozled beat reporter for Cathedral City, headlined “Finance panel wants closer look at Greg Pettis,” a number of comments critical of the article were posted. Among the critical commentors were Palm Springs Councilwoman Ginny Foat, former Desert Stonewall Democrats chair George Zander, and I.
Ineluctably, dependable DeRosa defender and water carrier Steve Kelly saw fit to weigh in and impugn my integrity and that of Ms. Foat and Mr. Zander. Kelly’s comment reads as follows:
“C'mon guys!! All interesting post but please disclose your connections with Greg Pettis. I was approved by him for the City Arts Commission. Ginny you are a former business partner of his. George, you and he worked together in the Stonewall Democrats and Paul you are a political ally. This does not lessen your opinions but let's practice some transparency in this process.”
By inventing some sort of mythical duty of “transparency” that exists only in his swelled head, Kelly’s implication was clearly that Ms. Foat, Mr. Zander, and I had come together in some sort of illicit combination, and that we had acted wrongly in not making some kind of comprehensive, “transparent” disclosure, that by not making such “disclosure” we had engaged in some kind of wrongful, dishonorable, and deceptive conduct.
Really, Steve, really? Just who the hell died and left you in charge?
I think Ms. Foat, Mr. Zander, and I would be entitled to resent such a transparently (pun fully intended) obvious effort to frame our remarks as some kind of conspiracy.
Of course, given Kelly’s prior history of breathlessly carrying water for an increasingly unpopular mayor, we should not be surprised. After all, Kelly recently attacked councilmembers Greg Pettis, Chuck Vasquez, and Sam Toles for having impliedly conspired to “alienate” DeRosa from “the community” when his precious mayor found herself on the wrong side of the council’s history-making vote on marriage equality. Kelly’s attack was right in line with the way in which DeRosa and her surrogates have historically attempted, across the nine bitter winters of her reign, to cast any opposition to or dissents from her views as somehow deceitful, dishonorable, or criminal. (For more, see also “A Foot-chewing "Defense" of Cathedral City’s Indefensible Mayor.” The link is:
http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-foot-chewing-defense-of-cathedral.html. (you will need to cut and paste into your navigation bar))
By parroting such a line, Kelly has once again demonstrated a lack of journalistic integrity. His tactic is, and has been, to imply that those whose views do not match his own must somehow be engaged in some kind of nefarious or illicit activity. When will we see from Steve Kelly the kind of comprehensive “transparency” he likes to demand from others?
In short, by penning his poisonous little post, Steve Kelly engaged in the kind of McCarthyism we have come to expect from freshman Texas Senator Ted Cruz (he of all those “known Communists” on the Harvard faculty).
Essentially, Kelly’s argument is that Ginny Foat, George Zander, and I, must be part of that terrible conspiracy he and Kathleen Joan DeRosa imagine exists to “alienate” her from a community that has grown increasingly skeptical of her character, her competence, and her capacity to tell the truth. I doubt that Steve Kelly would have demanded similar “transparency” from known supporters of the reigning mayor, and that is why I am entitled to resent the implications of his Palin-esque Facebook post.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and he will police them vigorously, and will defend vigorously against any attempt to retaliate against him for their expression. They are not intended, and should not be construed, as legal advice.
Of course, DeRosa has her defenders and water carriers, including talk radio bloviator Steve Kelly. Kelly works predictably from DeRosa’s playbook, which is all about trying to equate dissent with criminality. In a Sarah Palin-esque Facebook comment, Kelly implied that those of us who were critical of the mayor had violated some mythical duty of “transparency,” and had, by implication, entered into some kind of illicit combination to “alienate” his beloved mayor from her supposedly devoted masses. Kelly’s performance put one in mind of Ted Cruz’s breathless assertions about Communists on the Harvard faculty. Those of us whose integrity was impugned by Kelly’s irresponsible Facebook snark, have a right to resent his comments and implications.
*****
By: Paul S. Marchand
Every once in a while, I find myself adopting a practice of the late Chief Justice Warren Burger, who would sometimes pen brief concurrences or dissents to opinions being handed down by the Supreme Court. He would call them “Little Snappers.” Though many of Burger’s so-called Little Snappers were never filed, they did provide him with a certain measure of emotional release. In keeping with that practice, herewith are two Little Snappers thematically related by their common nexus with sociopathic Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa.
LOW-INFORMATION LOUDMOUTHS
Yesterday, I was in Palm Springs for some routine medical tests. I happened to strike up a conversation with former Cathedral city mayor George Stettler, who happened to be there at the same time. As our conversation was ending, an elderly woman, obviously Latina, came up to me and began waving her fist in my face and yelling “shame on you!” I was somewhat astonished by such uncivil behavior, especially as she continued with “shame on you for spending $85,000.”
The only inference I could draw was that this low-information loudmouth had either accidentally or deliberately confused me with my former colleague, councilmember Greg Pettis, and was trying to take out her misplaced wrath on me. After she rebuffed my attempt to engage her in a civil fashion, I gave as good as I got, telling her that she should be ashamed of herself for not knowing the facts. She continued to wave her fist in my face and shout at me, at which point I reached for my cell phone and said to her that I would be calling the police. Apparently not wishing to find herself caught in the toils of the criminal justice system, loudmouth lady stormed out of the room.
And thus it is in Cathedral City after nine bitter winters of Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s mayoralty. I blame DeRosa for this incident, because on her watch nastiness and innuendo have become the order of the day. DeRosa has a long history of seeking to recruit surrogates to carry her political and personal water, and an equally long history of seeking to fabricate a cult of personality in which any dissent ultimately becomes viewed as criminal.
In a city whose mayor feels herself entitled not only to tell a prominent constituent --- in a very public venue --- to go fuck himself, and who subsequently feels no particular compunction in lying about the episode to anyone foolish enough to accept her representations is true, it is hardly surprising that the quality of our civil discourse should be so poor as to lead to loudmouth, low-information jackasses making public fools of themselves in neighboring cities.
I don’t mind being criticized for acts for which I’m responsible, but I do resent being belabored by people whom God has not given the good sense to understand their facts. To use Bill O’Reilly’s phrase, this gal was a pinhead, encouraged in her pinheadedness by the existence of a debased political culture facilitated and encouraged by debased politicians and their enablers within the community.
MORE FOOT CHEWING FROM OUR OWN LITTLE TED CRUZ
Sarah Palin, the rampant maenad of Mat-Su, routinely gets herself flamed to a well done crisp after posting inflammatory diatribes on Facebook. Palm Springs radio bloviator Steve Kelly should have learned from prior experience that Facebook indiscretions can lead to sharply critical pushback.
In the Facebook comment thread to an April 30, 2013 article written by the Tamara Sone, the Desert Sun’s easily-bamboozled beat reporter for Cathedral City, headlined “Finance panel wants closer look at Greg Pettis,” a number of comments critical of the article were posted. Among the critical commentors were Palm Springs Councilwoman Ginny Foat, former Desert Stonewall Democrats chair George Zander, and I.
Ineluctably, dependable DeRosa defender and water carrier Steve Kelly saw fit to weigh in and impugn my integrity and that of Ms. Foat and Mr. Zander. Kelly’s comment reads as follows:
“C'mon guys!! All interesting post but please disclose your connections with Greg Pettis. I was approved by him for the City Arts Commission. Ginny you are a former business partner of his. George, you and he worked together in the Stonewall Democrats and Paul you are a political ally. This does not lessen your opinions but let's practice some transparency in this process.”
By inventing some sort of mythical duty of “transparency” that exists only in his swelled head, Kelly’s implication was clearly that Ms. Foat, Mr. Zander, and I had come together in some sort of illicit combination, and that we had acted wrongly in not making some kind of comprehensive, “transparent” disclosure, that by not making such “disclosure” we had engaged in some kind of wrongful, dishonorable, and deceptive conduct.
Really, Steve, really? Just who the hell died and left you in charge?
I think Ms. Foat, Mr. Zander, and I would be entitled to resent such a transparently (pun fully intended) obvious effort to frame our remarks as some kind of conspiracy.
Of course, given Kelly’s prior history of breathlessly carrying water for an increasingly unpopular mayor, we should not be surprised. After all, Kelly recently attacked councilmembers Greg Pettis, Chuck Vasquez, and Sam Toles for having impliedly conspired to “alienate” DeRosa from “the community” when his precious mayor found herself on the wrong side of the council’s history-making vote on marriage equality. Kelly’s attack was right in line with the way in which DeRosa and her surrogates have historically attempted, across the nine bitter winters of her reign, to cast any opposition to or dissents from her views as somehow deceitful, dishonorable, or criminal. (For more, see also “A Foot-chewing "Defense" of Cathedral City’s Indefensible Mayor.” The link is:
http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-foot-chewing-defense-of-cathedral.html. (you will need to cut and paste into your navigation bar))
By parroting such a line, Kelly has once again demonstrated a lack of journalistic integrity. His tactic is, and has been, to imply that those whose views do not match his own must somehow be engaged in some kind of nefarious or illicit activity. When will we see from Steve Kelly the kind of comprehensive “transparency” he likes to demand from others?
In short, by penning his poisonous little post, Steve Kelly engaged in the kind of McCarthyism we have come to expect from freshman Texas Senator Ted Cruz (he of all those “known Communists” on the Harvard faculty).
Essentially, Kelly’s argument is that Ginny Foat, George Zander, and I, must be part of that terrible conspiracy he and Kathleen Joan DeRosa imagine exists to “alienate” her from a community that has grown increasingly skeptical of her character, her competence, and her capacity to tell the truth. I doubt that Steve Kelly would have demanded similar “transparency” from known supporters of the reigning mayor, and that is why I am entitled to resent the implications of his Palin-esque Facebook post.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and he will police them vigorously, and will defend vigorously against any attempt to retaliate against him for their expression. They are not intended, and should not be construed, as legal advice.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
UPDATED: A PREFERENTIAL OPTION FOR BAKERS OVER BANKERS
By: Paul S. Marchand
Summary: On May Day (or Beltane, if you prefer) we need to remember Lincon’s reminder that Labor is prior and superior to capital. The bankers at Bain Capital don’t bake bread to feed hungry people. Bakers do that, and today, we need to revive a preferential option for bakers and others who make real things over bankers and speculators who do not.
Happy Beltane.
If you didn’t know that tomorrow is Beltane, don’t feel bad; it’s a Celtic holiday that, until recently, had largely gone unnoticed in Christian and “post-Christian” Europe.
If you did not know that May 1 is Law Day and Loyalty Day in the U.S. you shouldn’t feel bad, either; you are not alone. They are obscure observances at best, and only exist because during the Eisenhower administration, the Federal government, skittish at the “socialist” overtones of the May Day celebrations of work and workers that happen throughout Europe and the rest of the world, metaphorically called out the forces of law and order to prevent a “socialist” holiday from gaining a beachhead on the shores of the New World.
Of course, the historic irony here is that May Day, as an international day of labor, got its start here in the United States, to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago, where dozens of labor protesters were gunned down by police. Nonetheless, our almost obsessional fear of “socialism” has put the United States in the company of a number of right-wing governments that, over the years, have sought to repress or eliminate May 1 as a day dedicated to workers.
Now socialism -a concept of which almost no American has even a working understanding- has been, and remains, a bugaboo to most Americans. It is what the late semanticist (and sometime Republican U.S. Senator) S.I. Hayakawa would have called a “snarl word,” raising primitive, inarticulate, and angry passions. Yet, in reality, most Americans would not know a socialist if bit by one.
Names from the socialist pantheon -August Bebel, Jean Jaurès, Keir Hardie, and Eugene V. Debs, to name just a few- are unknown to the vast majority of Americans, who are taught little and care less about the social changes of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that established the social paradigms most of society now regards as normal.
Even today, to call something “socialist” is in many quarters to define it as wrong, perverse, and saturated with nameless evil. Ideologues of the American Right, those Beltway Bourbons who , as Talleyrand once observed of their namesakes, have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing --- “ils n'ont rien appris ni rien oublié” --- have been remarkably persistent and effective in tarring with the brush of socialism any person or school of thought who differs from their often remarkably retrograde -thoroughly Bourbon- ancien régime views of How Things Ought to Be.
One of the fundamental truths our Beltway Bourbons seem not merely to have forgotten, but to have actively rejected, is that “[l]abor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” These were not the words of a bomb throwing agitator; they were the carefully considered phrases of President Abraham Lincoln’s first Message to Congress.
At a time when the Beltway Bourbons and their Tea Party fellow travelers seem intent upon denigrating the dignity of work and workers by any means necessary, Lincoln’s words become all the more important. The American right has busily disseminated a narrative that the Ninety-nine percent of us who do not enjoy the spectacular success of the One Percent are, at best, mere slaves to class envy, and at worst, traitors to what should be the established order.
In fact, what angers the Ninety-nine Percent is not that some in our society have enjoyed spectacular success. Those whose skills or genius have changed the way we do things have earned their success. What the Ninety-nine Percent correctly resent are the sanctimonious and self-congratulatory posturings of those who -- as the late Texas governor Ann Richards once put it -- were born on third base yet believe they hit a triple, and who now seek to pull up the ladder of their vicarious success behind them.
What angers the Ninety-nine Percent is not necessarily that the system, if honest, may nonetheless produce disparate outcomes, but that increasingly, the system appears to be, and is, rigged. When it becomes clear that the deal has been crooked, and some of the players in the game have been unfairly disadvantaged by that crooked deal, those who have been cheated are justified in their anger and outrage.
On this May Day, which some in the party opposite would tar with the brush of “socialism,” or worse, we should ask the Beltway Bourbons and their useful idiots in the Tea Party what outcomes they think they should expect from their ongoing and systematic contempt for the workers who teach our children, walk our beats, fight our fires, harvest our crops, repair our cars, build our houses and offices, defend us at home and abroad, or otherwise do the work with which they themselves would not sully their lily white hands.
Eugene V. Debs used to point out that “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.” America is what she is today because of the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of millions of workers who laid down their tools and took up arms in her defense. On May Day, we should remember that all of the financial speculation on the floors of all the securities exchanges of all the world will never produce one single tangible, useful object. Not any of the bankers at Bain Capital can perform the simple task of baking bread to feed hungry people.
Yet, the Bain bankers are often the first to express contempt for America’s workers, whom Mitt Romney so airily dismissed as the Forty-seven Percent. Certainly in Cathedral City, our reigning mayor has expressed her contempt for those who work for our city. When the mayor foists off on a colleague responsibility for work, travel, and representing the city because she herself is too lazy or personally obnoxious to others to do that work herself, and when she then attacks that colleague for actually doing the work in question, she demonstrates her contempt for work and workers.
On May Day, at Beltane, let us remember why we should always have a preferential option for the baker over the banker, and for those who work to advance the interests of their community over lazy, ego-driven sociopaths who won’t lift a finger to do any actual work.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of any entity or organization with which he may be associated. They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice, though common sense would suggest that if one were marooned on a desert island, one might prefer to be marooned with the baker rather than the banker, anc never with the sociopath. This post is an updated version of one published last year at May Day.
Summary: On May Day (or Beltane, if you prefer) we need to remember Lincon’s reminder that Labor is prior and superior to capital. The bankers at Bain Capital don’t bake bread to feed hungry people. Bakers do that, and today, we need to revive a preferential option for bakers and others who make real things over bankers and speculators who do not.
Happy Beltane.
If you didn’t know that tomorrow is Beltane, don’t feel bad; it’s a Celtic holiday that, until recently, had largely gone unnoticed in Christian and “post-Christian” Europe.
If you did not know that May 1 is Law Day and Loyalty Day in the U.S. you shouldn’t feel bad, either; you are not alone. They are obscure observances at best, and only exist because during the Eisenhower administration, the Federal government, skittish at the “socialist” overtones of the May Day celebrations of work and workers that happen throughout Europe and the rest of the world, metaphorically called out the forces of law and order to prevent a “socialist” holiday from gaining a beachhead on the shores of the New World.
Of course, the historic irony here is that May Day, as an international day of labor, got its start here in the United States, to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago, where dozens of labor protesters were gunned down by police. Nonetheless, our almost obsessional fear of “socialism” has put the United States in the company of a number of right-wing governments that, over the years, have sought to repress or eliminate May 1 as a day dedicated to workers.
Now socialism -a concept of which almost no American has even a working understanding- has been, and remains, a bugaboo to most Americans. It is what the late semanticist (and sometime Republican U.S. Senator) S.I. Hayakawa would have called a “snarl word,” raising primitive, inarticulate, and angry passions. Yet, in reality, most Americans would not know a socialist if bit by one.
Names from the socialist pantheon -August Bebel, Jean Jaurès, Keir Hardie, and Eugene V. Debs, to name just a few- are unknown to the vast majority of Americans, who are taught little and care less about the social changes of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that established the social paradigms most of society now regards as normal.
Even today, to call something “socialist” is in many quarters to define it as wrong, perverse, and saturated with nameless evil. Ideologues of the American Right, those Beltway Bourbons who , as Talleyrand once observed of their namesakes, have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing --- “ils n'ont rien appris ni rien oublié” --- have been remarkably persistent and effective in tarring with the brush of socialism any person or school of thought who differs from their often remarkably retrograde -thoroughly Bourbon- ancien régime views of How Things Ought to Be.
One of the fundamental truths our Beltway Bourbons seem not merely to have forgotten, but to have actively rejected, is that “[l]abor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” These were not the words of a bomb throwing agitator; they were the carefully considered phrases of President Abraham Lincoln’s first Message to Congress.
At a time when the Beltway Bourbons and their Tea Party fellow travelers seem intent upon denigrating the dignity of work and workers by any means necessary, Lincoln’s words become all the more important. The American right has busily disseminated a narrative that the Ninety-nine percent of us who do not enjoy the spectacular success of the One Percent are, at best, mere slaves to class envy, and at worst, traitors to what should be the established order.
In fact, what angers the Ninety-nine Percent is not that some in our society have enjoyed spectacular success. Those whose skills or genius have changed the way we do things have earned their success. What the Ninety-nine Percent correctly resent are the sanctimonious and self-congratulatory posturings of those who -- as the late Texas governor Ann Richards once put it -- were born on third base yet believe they hit a triple, and who now seek to pull up the ladder of their vicarious success behind them.
What angers the Ninety-nine Percent is not necessarily that the system, if honest, may nonetheless produce disparate outcomes, but that increasingly, the system appears to be, and is, rigged. When it becomes clear that the deal has been crooked, and some of the players in the game have been unfairly disadvantaged by that crooked deal, those who have been cheated are justified in their anger and outrage.
On this May Day, which some in the party opposite would tar with the brush of “socialism,” or worse, we should ask the Beltway Bourbons and their useful idiots in the Tea Party what outcomes they think they should expect from their ongoing and systematic contempt for the workers who teach our children, walk our beats, fight our fires, harvest our crops, repair our cars, build our houses and offices, defend us at home and abroad, or otherwise do the work with which they themselves would not sully their lily white hands.
Eugene V. Debs used to point out that “a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end.” America is what she is today because of the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of millions of workers who laid down their tools and took up arms in her defense. On May Day, we should remember that all of the financial speculation on the floors of all the securities exchanges of all the world will never produce one single tangible, useful object. Not any of the bankers at Bain Capital can perform the simple task of baking bread to feed hungry people.
Yet, the Bain bankers are often the first to express contempt for America’s workers, whom Mitt Romney so airily dismissed as the Forty-seven Percent. Certainly in Cathedral City, our reigning mayor has expressed her contempt for those who work for our city. When the mayor foists off on a colleague responsibility for work, travel, and representing the city because she herself is too lazy or personally obnoxious to others to do that work herself, and when she then attacks that colleague for actually doing the work in question, she demonstrates her contempt for work and workers.
On May Day, at Beltane, let us remember why we should always have a preferential option for the baker over the banker, and for those who work to advance the interests of their community over lazy, ego-driven sociopaths who won’t lift a finger to do any actual work.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of any entity or organization with which he may be associated. They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice, though common sense would suggest that if one were marooned on a desert island, one might prefer to be marooned with the baker rather than the banker, anc never with the sociopath. This post is an updated version of one published last year at May Day.
Monday, April 29, 2013
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY ALL OVER AGAIN: WHY CATHEDRAL CITY ENDURES BAD GOVERNMENT
Summary: If we are, as Mahatma Gandhi once counseled, to be the change we seek, we must eschew and reject the temptation to fall out among ourselves, engaging in flame wars and testy exchanges. Political movements fail because their members seem more interested in policing each other’s tone than in coalescing to advance a commonly held goal. We are recapitulating in Cathedral City the later history of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The hatred Austria-Hungary’s squabbling nationalities bore each other prior to World War I exceeded their hatred of Vienna, and helped keep the fabulous Habsburg invalid alive into the closing days of that conflict. Where hypersensitive umbrage-takers and fight-pickers hijack a movement, no critical mass is possible, and what could have been a successful community-based movement or bloc fragments and dissolves. Bad politicians hold onto office when their opposition self-sabotages. I see this process fully at work in Cathedral City, and I beseech my brothers and sisters (in Oliver Cromwell’s “bowels of Christ”) to prove me wrong.
-----------------------
By: Paul S. Marchand
A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. Mark 6:4
No man is a hero to his mishpokhe. -Yiddish proverb
Bad government holds on when there is no effective movement out there to force it into competence. Opposition movements often enable bad government because they cannot effectively coalesce to advance commonly held goals. That has been the case in Cathedral City.
One of the saddest realities of politics is that almost any group, particularly a group seeking change, will ultimately fall out, as its members succumb to the inevitable temptation toward internecine backbiting and fights. Like-minded people flee from consensus and seek discord. Where no discord exists, it will be fabricated.
In almost any Usenet discussion thread, including threads on Facebook, the progress by which consensus breaks down can be easily detected just by reading the posts in the discussion thread. Commentor A will post or comment. Commentor B will take exception to the tone or content of A’s comment and the flame war will be well and truly underway. No matter how uncontroversial or anodyne A’s comment may have been, ineluctably there will be someone to take offense, and sadly, it is the hypersensitive umbrage-takers or fight-pickers who often wind up hijacking comment or Usenet discussion threads, indeed, entire movements.
Such tendencies particularly show up when there may be matters of public or political interest under discussion. The briefest visit to the discussion threads of the Los Angeles Times or the Desert Sun will disclose the inevitable tendency of comment threads to veer toward angry denunciations of the President, or toward off-topic personal attacks on other commentors on the thread. Moreover, the degree of emotional capital certain commentors will invest in their posts is often in inverse proportion to the relevancy or importance of the original news item. When a comment thread on the use of Wikipedia in schools degenerates into exchanges of threats of violence, it is not difficult to conclude that way too much emotional capital is in play.
Yet, my disappointment is not with the inevitable inability of participants in a Usenet discussion thread to stay focused on the original matter under discussion, any more than it is a function of my deep suspicion of any invocation of Godwin’s law, which postulates that as the length of any Usenet discussion group increases, the probability of comparisons involving Hitler or Nazis approaches one.
Rather, my disappointment is more in the way like-minded people flee from consensus and eagerly set up barriers to joint action by engaging in self-sabotaging infighting that inevitably breaks the consensus, undermines collegiality, and destroys friendships. Moreover, many participants in any kind of consensus or movement group find the courage of conviction somewhat difficult to muster, and their want of such courage often manifests itself in the form of prim little attacks upon the tone and manner in which others express their views.
Indeed, “I agree with you, but I don’t like your tone,” has become the bane of just about any effort to organize joint action. No sooner will a more zealous and intrepid soul venture an opinion than do more timid souls emerge to find fault, and to attempt police others’ tone. In fine, it is hard to muster any kind of commitment or conviction when one’s so-called friends are busy taking one to task.
A sentiment often attributed to Edmund Burke holds that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good persons to do nothing. (Originally, Burke is said to have used the word “men” in its all-inclusive and traditional signification. I changed it to “persons” precisely because I know that if I were to use the word “men” someone, somewhere would take umbrage and spin out of my word choice of whole lengthy attack on my sexist male chauvinist, piggery, flaming me in the process to a well done crisp, and utterly losing sight of the issue under discussion.) The corollary here is that evil triumphs when good people fight among one another over tone, word choice, or irrelevant, overwhelm-the-main-event sideshows.
So, if I sound a little despairing, it is because I am. I’m tired of unproductive flame wars and testy exchanges. In many communities, civic minded citizens attempt to coalesce, as Gandhi once counseled, to be the change they seek. Yet, such efforts often fail because group cohesion often takes second place to gratifying the felt need of specific individuals could be right, score points, and police the tone or thinking of other participants in the effort. Unpopular and embattled politicians often hold on to office not merely because their opposition splits in the run-up to the election, but because that opposition is never able to muster the will to cohesion upon which success and positive change depend. Call it the Austria-Hungary effect, thanks to which the Danubian Habsburg monarchy was able to hold itself together into the closing days of the Great War because the minority nationalities of the Monarchy hated each other more than they hated the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King in Vienna or Budapest.
Scripture tells us in Mark’s Gospel that “a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country.” Jesus having been Jewish, he might with a wry smile have agreed with the later Yiddish proverb “no man is a hero to his Mishpokhe (family).” Any movement, even if ultimately successful, ultimately falls prey to its own internal contradictions. When the internal contradictions arise before a given movement or community of interest can reach a critical mass of self-sustaining, long-term cohesiveness, the movement dissolves.
Here in Cathedral City, the unexpectedly strong opposition movement to our unpopular incumbent Mayor came within 13 votes of ending the nine long winters of her tenure. Sadly, that movement seems to have Balkanized end fragmented, and when Councilmember Greg Pettis came under attack in the pages of the Desert Sun, those who rallied to his defense found themselves under attack from others who claimed to support the Councilmember, but who --- curious to say --- spent more time criticizing Mr. Pettis’s defenders for their tone than they did actually defending Mr. Pettis. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
If we are to ensure meaningful, positive change in our community, we will need to coalesce into a broad-based community movement whose members understand the importance of vigorous, zealous advocacy, organization, and action. Unfortunately, the recent flurry of flame wars and testy exchanges among those who should be at the forefront of being the change we seek leaves me skeptical that such a movement or bloc can survive long enough to reach a political critical mass.
Brothers and sisters in Cathedral City, prove me wrong! In the bowels of Christ, I beseech you, prove me wrong!
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. The views herein are his own and not anybody else’s, and he expects to be roundly attacked by hypersensitive umbrage-takers. Given what has happened of late, Mr. Marchand finds himself increasingly emotionally constipated, and has difficulty giving a shit.
-----------------------
By: Paul S. Marchand
A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. Mark 6:4
No man is a hero to his mishpokhe. -Yiddish proverb
Bad government holds on when there is no effective movement out there to force it into competence. Opposition movements often enable bad government because they cannot effectively coalesce to advance commonly held goals. That has been the case in Cathedral City.
One of the saddest realities of politics is that almost any group, particularly a group seeking change, will ultimately fall out, as its members succumb to the inevitable temptation toward internecine backbiting and fights. Like-minded people flee from consensus and seek discord. Where no discord exists, it will be fabricated.
In almost any Usenet discussion thread, including threads on Facebook, the progress by which consensus breaks down can be easily detected just by reading the posts in the discussion thread. Commentor A will post or comment. Commentor B will take exception to the tone or content of A’s comment and the flame war will be well and truly underway. No matter how uncontroversial or anodyne A’s comment may have been, ineluctably there will be someone to take offense, and sadly, it is the hypersensitive umbrage-takers or fight-pickers who often wind up hijacking comment or Usenet discussion threads, indeed, entire movements.
Such tendencies particularly show up when there may be matters of public or political interest under discussion. The briefest visit to the discussion threads of the Los Angeles Times or the Desert Sun will disclose the inevitable tendency of comment threads to veer toward angry denunciations of the President, or toward off-topic personal attacks on other commentors on the thread. Moreover, the degree of emotional capital certain commentors will invest in their posts is often in inverse proportion to the relevancy or importance of the original news item. When a comment thread on the use of Wikipedia in schools degenerates into exchanges of threats of violence, it is not difficult to conclude that way too much emotional capital is in play.
Yet, my disappointment is not with the inevitable inability of participants in a Usenet discussion thread to stay focused on the original matter under discussion, any more than it is a function of my deep suspicion of any invocation of Godwin’s law, which postulates that as the length of any Usenet discussion group increases, the probability of comparisons involving Hitler or Nazis approaches one.
Rather, my disappointment is more in the way like-minded people flee from consensus and eagerly set up barriers to joint action by engaging in self-sabotaging infighting that inevitably breaks the consensus, undermines collegiality, and destroys friendships. Moreover, many participants in any kind of consensus or movement group find the courage of conviction somewhat difficult to muster, and their want of such courage often manifests itself in the form of prim little attacks upon the tone and manner in which others express their views.
Indeed, “I agree with you, but I don’t like your tone,” has become the bane of just about any effort to organize joint action. No sooner will a more zealous and intrepid soul venture an opinion than do more timid souls emerge to find fault, and to attempt police others’ tone. In fine, it is hard to muster any kind of commitment or conviction when one’s so-called friends are busy taking one to task.
A sentiment often attributed to Edmund Burke holds that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good persons to do nothing. (Originally, Burke is said to have used the word “men” in its all-inclusive and traditional signification. I changed it to “persons” precisely because I know that if I were to use the word “men” someone, somewhere would take umbrage and spin out of my word choice of whole lengthy attack on my sexist male chauvinist, piggery, flaming me in the process to a well done crisp, and utterly losing sight of the issue under discussion.) The corollary here is that evil triumphs when good people fight among one another over tone, word choice, or irrelevant, overwhelm-the-main-event sideshows.
So, if I sound a little despairing, it is because I am. I’m tired of unproductive flame wars and testy exchanges. In many communities, civic minded citizens attempt to coalesce, as Gandhi once counseled, to be the change they seek. Yet, such efforts often fail because group cohesion often takes second place to gratifying the felt need of specific individuals could be right, score points, and police the tone or thinking of other participants in the effort. Unpopular and embattled politicians often hold on to office not merely because their opposition splits in the run-up to the election, but because that opposition is never able to muster the will to cohesion upon which success and positive change depend. Call it the Austria-Hungary effect, thanks to which the Danubian Habsburg monarchy was able to hold itself together into the closing days of the Great War because the minority nationalities of the Monarchy hated each other more than they hated the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King in Vienna or Budapest.
Scripture tells us in Mark’s Gospel that “a prophet is not without honor, but in his own country.” Jesus having been Jewish, he might with a wry smile have agreed with the later Yiddish proverb “no man is a hero to his Mishpokhe (family).” Any movement, even if ultimately successful, ultimately falls prey to its own internal contradictions. When the internal contradictions arise before a given movement or community of interest can reach a critical mass of self-sustaining, long-term cohesiveness, the movement dissolves.
Here in Cathedral City, the unexpectedly strong opposition movement to our unpopular incumbent Mayor came within 13 votes of ending the nine long winters of her tenure. Sadly, that movement seems to have Balkanized end fragmented, and when Councilmember Greg Pettis came under attack in the pages of the Desert Sun, those who rallied to his defense found themselves under attack from others who claimed to support the Councilmember, but who --- curious to say --- spent more time criticizing Mr. Pettis’s defenders for their tone than they did actually defending Mr. Pettis. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
If we are to ensure meaningful, positive change in our community, we will need to coalesce into a broad-based community movement whose members understand the importance of vigorous, zealous advocacy, organization, and action. Unfortunately, the recent flurry of flame wars and testy exchanges among those who should be at the forefront of being the change we seek leaves me skeptical that such a movement or bloc can survive long enough to reach a political critical mass.
Brothers and sisters in Cathedral City, prove me wrong! In the bowels of Christ, I beseech you, prove me wrong!
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. The views herein are his own and not anybody else’s, and he expects to be roundly attacked by hypersensitive umbrage-takers. Given what has happened of late, Mr. Marchand finds himself increasingly emotionally constipated, and has difficulty giving a shit.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE: The Desert Sun’s Hit Piece against Councilmember Greg Pettis
Summary: The Desert Sun’s hit piece against Councilmember Greg Pettis represents the latest salvo in incumbent Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s attempt to secure what amounts to a mayoralty for life in Cathedral City. Reporter Tamara Sone left herself get played by the mayor and her willing henchman Bud England, who spoonfed her every bit of negative information they could find on Greg Pettis. By relying heavily on Pettis’ political rivals, and glossing over or ignoring any information that might have put matters in a more truth-friendly context, Sone and the Desert Sun have effectively let themselves get drafted as foot soldiers in a nasty political battle that has gone on for years. By dwelling on the party affiliations of the dramatis personae, Sone has impliedly accused Democrats in the Coachella Valley of being dishonest spongers of taxpayer dollars; she has thus carried water for the Republican Party. All in all, a piss poor performance by a reporter and a newspaper whose sycophancy and toadying toward DeRosa have damaged what little reputation it had for being a reliable or trustworthy news source.
By: Paul S. Marchand
The Desert Sun ran a hit piece today headlined “Cathedral City Councilman Greg Pettis spent $92,000 using a city-backed credit card.”
The article is bylined Tamara Sone, but it bears all the hallmarks of having been conceived and put together by the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, Kathleen Joan DeRosa, whose entitled conceit of herself as “Mayor-for-life” has earned her reputation for vindictiveness, untruth, and divisiveness.
Certainly, the baleful effects of the Desert Sun’s policy of assigning beat reporters who do not know the beat they are covering have played themselves out in Cathedral City many times over the years, as reporters effectively allow themselves to be spoonfed by whatever politico is willing to give them a sound bite or by whatever politico TDS has decided it likes. This enables crafty and deceitful people like Kathleen DeRosa and her faithful henchman Bud England to play the Desert Sun and its reporters like a Stradivarius.
A number of features from this morning’s monstrosity merit being called out and held up for critical examination (an examination the Desert Sun should have done in-house before even allowing the piece to go to print --- Greg Burton, master of the art of self-congratulation, are you listening?)
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this morning’s monstrosity was its open failure of due diligence. The only council or quasi-council sources quoted extensively were DeRosa and England, whose detached sense of “Christian entitlement” --- to say nothing of his intellectual dishonesty in taking credit for my legislative initiatives as a councilmember--- cost him his council seat last November. See: “Somebody Thinks We’re Stupid: an Incumbent Councilman’s Effort to Take Credit for the Work of Another,” www.http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2012/11/somebody-thinks-were-stupid-incumbent.html (Full disclosure: I ran unsuccessfully to reclaim the seat on the council on which I served between 2002 and 2010. I know whereof I speak in these matters, and I take some pleasure in having drawn off some of the votes Bud England might otherwise have relied upon to hold on to his seat.)
While Councilmember Sam Toles was apparently briefly consulted, his remarks received short shrift in the article, though Sone was at pains to identify his partisan affiliation.
With the exception of a single brief reference to city manager Andy Hall, the only other city employee quoted was administrative services director Tami Scott, whose federal felony record is a matter of public knowledge, and who was pled guilty to making a false statement to a federal investigator, which in the law of evidence, is considered non-recommending for a witness’s credibility. At least city clerk Pat Hammers, whose indiscreet e-mails to the incumbent mayor exposed her unneutral betrayal of the public trust during the 2012 election, had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. And, of course, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet also gets in a sound bite; God forbid the Desert Sun should not slip in its own Palm Springs-centric bias.
Of course, it is common knowledge in Cathedral City that there is no love lost between Greg Pettis on one side and DeRosa/England on the other. That there is a political rivalry among them is as unsurprising as the fact that water is wet. Thus, for Sone to have relied heavily upon known rivals of the target, and to make no effort to have consulted with others, myself included, with some degree of institutional memory, constitutes journalistic malpractice.
It was equal journalistic malpractice to have accepted, without any apparent effort to corroborate it, England’s representation that Pettis’ travel on the city’s behalf was an ongoing, contentious issue, that “we’ve been fighting that fight for years.” I find myself searching for polite equivalent of the word “lie.” Yet there is none. What Bud England said to Tamara Sone was a flat-out lie. I served eight years on the city Council alongside both Greg Pettis and Bud England, and during that time, there was almost no substantive or substantial discussion of Mr. Pettis’ travel.
Indeed, the only discussion of council member travel came when I expressed reservations about the propriety of DeRosa’s having accompanied the high school band on a junket to New York City that brought no value added back to our community, and which no other California mayor would have undertaken. As is her style, DeRosa attacked me personally for questioning her waste of taxpayer dollars, and rounded up a few cronies from the community to show up at the next council meeting to gush enthusiastically about how “wonderful it was” that she had gone junketing to the Big Apple on the taxpayers’ dime, and while there guzzled down $11 glasses of wine at tony restaurants.
Indeed, Tamara Sone’s journalistic malpractice continued when she went out of her way to ignore Sam Toles’s observation that travel is an integral part of what we elect our public officials to do. Because DeRosa is both lazy and has an offputting personality, the default policy of the city during the nine bitter winters of her mayoralty has been to foist off on Greg Pettis many of the responsibilities that a less lazy and incompetent mayor would have taken upon herself. As either Clare Booth Luce or Oscar Wilde once observed: no good deed goes unpunished. Pettis busts his butt because the Dear Leader, the Mayor for Life, is too bloody lazy and disengaged to do her job, and she shivs him to an eager and uncritical reporter for having done so. Shameful, shameful.
Lazy narcissists like DeRosa and eager, willing dupes like England either cannot or will not understand that history is made by those who show up, and that when our destiny is being decided in places like Sacramento or Washington City, we need to be at the table and involved in the discussion, or the decisions made will be made without reference to, and often in derogation of, the best interests of the city. Having Greg Pettis at the table in those discussions may not produce the kind of revenue that a sanctimonious cynic like Bud England might expect, but Mr. Pettis’ presence at the table has often protected us from decisions being made at our expense, and contrary to our interests. If Bud England cannot understand that protecting the city from the foreseeable consequences of bad decisions made outside our presence is itself a form of value added, then he really is stranger to anything resembling true wisdom.
Of course, expecting wisdom ---or anything beyond shallow political nastiness--- from either Kathleen DeRosa or Bud England is a doomed enterprise. Both of those individuals live down to Oscar Wilde’s famous definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Bud England would not know the value of Greg Pettis’ contributions to the city if those contributions came up and bit him on the rear end. Indeed, during the 12 winters he served on the council, England developed a reputation for being remarkably ignorant and obtuse, having to have simple things explained to him multiple times. Not only did he not understand that there was a larger picture to see, he didn’t see the picture at all, and thus has remained a perfect unthinking and uncritical surrogate for a mayor who has little hesitation being confrontational, but who usually prefers to do her dirty work through third parties.
Having relied for the bulk of her story on Pettis’ political opponents, both of whom regard him as an enemy, and having essentially dismissed any comments or remarks that might have portrayed Mr. Pettis in a more positive light, Sone then went on to make much of, and to read much into, the fact that he sought protection in bankruptcy in 2010.
And here lies the great internal contradiction in Sone’s monstrosity. On the one hand, Sone implies that somehow Mr. Pettis is making himself rich on taxpayer dollars, yet on the other, she takes the contradictory position that Mr. Pettis, having filed for bankruptcy, must be some kind of dishonest ---even criminal--- operator. Yet, millions of Americans seek protection in bankruptcy every year. For Sone to take the position she does betrays either willful ignorance or a kind of privileged, entitled contempt for huge numbers of her fellow citizens. We do not expect our political leaders to enrich themselves at public expense, yet Sone apparently wants it both ways. If Pettis enriched himself at public expense, he is a bad man; if he did not he is a bad man. Catch-22.
If Tamara Sone cannot seem to understand that seeking bankruptcy protection is a right protected by the Constitution of the United States, she also seems to take a perverse delight in introducing partisanship into her hit piece. Here, her lack of due diligence and personal bias show nakedly through. The clear implication of the article is that somehow Democrats are not to be trusted, that Democratic hands should not be allowed anywhere near the municipal cookie jar. Of course, the briefest textual analysis of Sone’s hit piece also discloses clear partisan motive on England’s part to fabricate and score political points off someone not of his own party.
Of course, it would have been more honest of Ms. Sone had she bothered to include any of the back story behind why DeRosa and her running dogs have now taken out after both Chuck Vasquez and Greg Pettis. DeRosa came in for some well-deserved criticism after her unbelievably cynical performance on the recent Council vote to adopt a resolution supporting marriage equality, and she didn’t like that criticism one little bit. DeRosa has a reputation for vindictiveness, for striking back, usually below the belt, at her enemies, real or imagined. Today’s article represents nothing more than an effort at political payback, undertaken by a reporter who knows her beat so poorly that she can be played like that Stradivarius by a political operator who will stop at nothing to reward her friends, punish her enemies, and seek by any means available to consolidate political power and criminalize any opposition to her reign.
North Korea has its Kim Jong-Un and legions of sycophantic propaganda toadies to disseminate the boy dictator’s message. The Coachella Valley has Kathleen Joan DeRosa and the Desert Sun to accomplish similar purposes, and such sycophancy and toadying have only damaged what little reputation the Desert Sun had for being a reliable, trustworthy news source.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served on the city Council from 2002 to 2010. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Riverside County Democratic Party or any other organization with which he is associated, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice. He is prepared to vigorously litigate against any person or entity which attempts to attack him on the basis of his expression of views herein. So, Kathleen, back the f--k off; you too, Bud.
By: Paul S. Marchand
The Desert Sun ran a hit piece today headlined “Cathedral City Councilman Greg Pettis spent $92,000 using a city-backed credit card.”
The article is bylined Tamara Sone, but it bears all the hallmarks of having been conceived and put together by the incumbent mayor of Cathedral City, Kathleen Joan DeRosa, whose entitled conceit of herself as “Mayor-for-life” has earned her reputation for vindictiveness, untruth, and divisiveness.
Certainly, the baleful effects of the Desert Sun’s policy of assigning beat reporters who do not know the beat they are covering have played themselves out in Cathedral City many times over the years, as reporters effectively allow themselves to be spoonfed by whatever politico is willing to give them a sound bite or by whatever politico TDS has decided it likes. This enables crafty and deceitful people like Kathleen DeRosa and her faithful henchman Bud England to play the Desert Sun and its reporters like a Stradivarius.
A number of features from this morning’s monstrosity merit being called out and held up for critical examination (an examination the Desert Sun should have done in-house before even allowing the piece to go to print --- Greg Burton, master of the art of self-congratulation, are you listening?)
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this morning’s monstrosity was its open failure of due diligence. The only council or quasi-council sources quoted extensively were DeRosa and England, whose detached sense of “Christian entitlement” --- to say nothing of his intellectual dishonesty in taking credit for my legislative initiatives as a councilmember--- cost him his council seat last November. See: “Somebody Thinks We’re Stupid: an Incumbent Councilman’s Effort to Take Credit for the Work of Another,” www.http://cathedralcityobserved.blogspot.com/2012/11/somebody-thinks-were-stupid-incumbent.html (Full disclosure: I ran unsuccessfully to reclaim the seat on the council on which I served between 2002 and 2010. I know whereof I speak in these matters, and I take some pleasure in having drawn off some of the votes Bud England might otherwise have relied upon to hold on to his seat.)
While Councilmember Sam Toles was apparently briefly consulted, his remarks received short shrift in the article, though Sone was at pains to identify his partisan affiliation.
With the exception of a single brief reference to city manager Andy Hall, the only other city employee quoted was administrative services director Tami Scott, whose federal felony record is a matter of public knowledge, and who was pled guilty to making a false statement to a federal investigator, which in the law of evidence, is considered non-recommending for a witness’s credibility. At least city clerk Pat Hammers, whose indiscreet e-mails to the incumbent mayor exposed her unneutral betrayal of the public trust during the 2012 election, had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. And, of course, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet also gets in a sound bite; God forbid the Desert Sun should not slip in its own Palm Springs-centric bias.
Of course, it is common knowledge in Cathedral City that there is no love lost between Greg Pettis on one side and DeRosa/England on the other. That there is a political rivalry among them is as unsurprising as the fact that water is wet. Thus, for Sone to have relied heavily upon known rivals of the target, and to make no effort to have consulted with others, myself included, with some degree of institutional memory, constitutes journalistic malpractice.
It was equal journalistic malpractice to have accepted, without any apparent effort to corroborate it, England’s representation that Pettis’ travel on the city’s behalf was an ongoing, contentious issue, that “we’ve been fighting that fight for years.” I find myself searching for polite equivalent of the word “lie.” Yet there is none. What Bud England said to Tamara Sone was a flat-out lie. I served eight years on the city Council alongside both Greg Pettis and Bud England, and during that time, there was almost no substantive or substantial discussion of Mr. Pettis’ travel.
Indeed, the only discussion of council member travel came when I expressed reservations about the propriety of DeRosa’s having accompanied the high school band on a junket to New York City that brought no value added back to our community, and which no other California mayor would have undertaken. As is her style, DeRosa attacked me personally for questioning her waste of taxpayer dollars, and rounded up a few cronies from the community to show up at the next council meeting to gush enthusiastically about how “wonderful it was” that she had gone junketing to the Big Apple on the taxpayers’ dime, and while there guzzled down $11 glasses of wine at tony restaurants.
Indeed, Tamara Sone’s journalistic malpractice continued when she went out of her way to ignore Sam Toles’s observation that travel is an integral part of what we elect our public officials to do. Because DeRosa is both lazy and has an offputting personality, the default policy of the city during the nine bitter winters of her mayoralty has been to foist off on Greg Pettis many of the responsibilities that a less lazy and incompetent mayor would have taken upon herself. As either Clare Booth Luce or Oscar Wilde once observed: no good deed goes unpunished. Pettis busts his butt because the Dear Leader, the Mayor for Life, is too bloody lazy and disengaged to do her job, and she shivs him to an eager and uncritical reporter for having done so. Shameful, shameful.
Lazy narcissists like DeRosa and eager, willing dupes like England either cannot or will not understand that history is made by those who show up, and that when our destiny is being decided in places like Sacramento or Washington City, we need to be at the table and involved in the discussion, or the decisions made will be made without reference to, and often in derogation of, the best interests of the city. Having Greg Pettis at the table in those discussions may not produce the kind of revenue that a sanctimonious cynic like Bud England might expect, but Mr. Pettis’ presence at the table has often protected us from decisions being made at our expense, and contrary to our interests. If Bud England cannot understand that protecting the city from the foreseeable consequences of bad decisions made outside our presence is itself a form of value added, then he really is stranger to anything resembling true wisdom.
Of course, expecting wisdom ---or anything beyond shallow political nastiness--- from either Kathleen DeRosa or Bud England is a doomed enterprise. Both of those individuals live down to Oscar Wilde’s famous definition of a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Bud England would not know the value of Greg Pettis’ contributions to the city if those contributions came up and bit him on the rear end. Indeed, during the 12 winters he served on the council, England developed a reputation for being remarkably ignorant and obtuse, having to have simple things explained to him multiple times. Not only did he not understand that there was a larger picture to see, he didn’t see the picture at all, and thus has remained a perfect unthinking and uncritical surrogate for a mayor who has little hesitation being confrontational, but who usually prefers to do her dirty work through third parties.
Having relied for the bulk of her story on Pettis’ political opponents, both of whom regard him as an enemy, and having essentially dismissed any comments or remarks that might have portrayed Mr. Pettis in a more positive light, Sone then went on to make much of, and to read much into, the fact that he sought protection in bankruptcy in 2010.
And here lies the great internal contradiction in Sone’s monstrosity. On the one hand, Sone implies that somehow Mr. Pettis is making himself rich on taxpayer dollars, yet on the other, she takes the contradictory position that Mr. Pettis, having filed for bankruptcy, must be some kind of dishonest ---even criminal--- operator. Yet, millions of Americans seek protection in bankruptcy every year. For Sone to take the position she does betrays either willful ignorance or a kind of privileged, entitled contempt for huge numbers of her fellow citizens. We do not expect our political leaders to enrich themselves at public expense, yet Sone apparently wants it both ways. If Pettis enriched himself at public expense, he is a bad man; if he did not he is a bad man. Catch-22.
If Tamara Sone cannot seem to understand that seeking bankruptcy protection is a right protected by the Constitution of the United States, she also seems to take a perverse delight in introducing partisanship into her hit piece. Here, her lack of due diligence and personal bias show nakedly through. The clear implication of the article is that somehow Democrats are not to be trusted, that Democratic hands should not be allowed anywhere near the municipal cookie jar. Of course, the briefest textual analysis of Sone’s hit piece also discloses clear partisan motive on England’s part to fabricate and score political points off someone not of his own party.
Of course, it would have been more honest of Ms. Sone had she bothered to include any of the back story behind why DeRosa and her running dogs have now taken out after both Chuck Vasquez and Greg Pettis. DeRosa came in for some well-deserved criticism after her unbelievably cynical performance on the recent Council vote to adopt a resolution supporting marriage equality, and she didn’t like that criticism one little bit. DeRosa has a reputation for vindictiveness, for striking back, usually below the belt, at her enemies, real or imagined. Today’s article represents nothing more than an effort at political payback, undertaken by a reporter who knows her beat so poorly that she can be played like that Stradivarius by a political operator who will stop at nothing to reward her friends, punish her enemies, and seek by any means available to consolidate political power and criminalize any opposition to her reign.
North Korea has its Kim Jong-Un and legions of sycophantic propaganda toadies to disseminate the boy dictator’s message. The Coachella Valley has Kathleen Joan DeRosa and the Desert Sun to accomplish similar purposes, and such sycophancy and toadying have only damaged what little reputation the Desert Sun had for being a reliable, trustworthy news source.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served on the city Council from 2002 to 2010. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of the Riverside County Democratic Party or any other organization with which he is associated, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice. He is prepared to vigorously litigate against any person or entity which attempts to attack him on the basis of his expression of views herein. So, Kathleen, back the f--k off; you too, Bud.
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