With a $38 billion state deficit, California is labeled the nation's basket case. The election to recall the governor will be held October 7, with over 240 candidates running for governor. This election will determine if Bush and his gang will gain control of the state. The people of California face a serious challenge from the forces of evil and greed.
The national media portrays the California election as a circus with more than 240 "clowns" vying for office, but this is inaccurate. The recall and its opening of the political process to any and everyone reveals deep discontent by every sector of society - as California, and indicates that masses of citizens are politically fragmented and willing to act outside the so-called two party framework.
California's crisis is the worst of nearly all the states and recently shifted from the fifth to the seventh largest "economy" in the world. In their commentaries on the situation, few have had the courage to go into the morality behind the political decisions that laid the foundation for the crisis. Every political decision flows from moral consideration of what is right and wrong. Inevitably, people are ennobled by their decisions, or these decisions come back to haunt them.
California's, and much of the nation's economic and social crisis is rooted in the people's moral response to the 1965-Watts uprising. The week-long uprising of the socially and economically oppressed people of Watts captured the nation, and indeed the world. The Watts uprising was a continuation of and social response to the mechanization of agriculture, the intense pressure to desegregate American society and the ever present need of the ruling class to maintain the unity of the property relations and expansion of the industrial system.
The battle for Albany, Georgia and two years later the battle for Birmingham Alabama witnessed the outbreak of street fighting and uprisings in 1963 and indicated new social forces were making their appearance. The moral response to the cries for justice, the jailing of thousands for seeking basic human rights, the booming of churches and the murder of children shifted the consciousness of our country. In a real sense the uprising in Watts was the historic consequence and moral imperative of those seeking justice and the right to escape the design of poverty and social degradation.
The process of realigning the political system, that is to reform the system is itself a political crisis and had lead to the break away of the "Dixie Rats" or rather Dixiecrats in 1948, and the defection of Southern democrats to the Republican Party after 1964.
After the Watts uprising was crushed, the national and local press went into a campaign to create and organize a "white backlash." The reactionary gang around Ronald Reagan understood this was their opportunity if they could undo the moral sense that society is ultimately responsible for the well being of all its citizens. To accomplish this, the Reagan gang relied on the history of racism in the nation.
Los Angeles is a southern city, and it was the logical place to begin this campaign. As the media fired up the "white backlash," Reagan began his campaign by making the most selfish, anti social attitudes appear normal. In 1966, he was elected Governor of California. Reagan tried to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, and again in 1976 and finally succeeded in 1980 and went on to be elected President in 1980 and 1984.
It is said that Reagan gave America a new moral sense, a new vision and brought back to our country a sense of "class and pride." This is true and we can review how he brought back "class and pride." The need was to undo the deep moral outrage over the war in Vietnam and massive student unrest and social protest that had been ignited by the Civil Rights Movement and a series of events traceable to Montgomery, Alabama and the bus boycott of 1956. What did Reagan do and how did he subdue the deep moral stirrings of the American people?
His point of departure was the propagandistic creation of the "Black Welfare Queen" with three shopping carts of hams and filet minion paid for by the property taxes of hard working undernourished white men. The next step was mobilization for the antisocial Proposition 13. This proposition would freeze property taxes where they were when the property was purchased. Much of the state government's income came from the rapidly rising assessed value of California property. Rolling back and freezing this income meant an immediate and continuing slashing of social services.
The political goal of the proposition was to shift the social struggle from class to color. This proposition appealed to the meanest and most racist aspects of Americans' political personality, frankly stating, "I'm for me and the hell with you!" Economically, this resulted in a rupture of the "normal" circulation of money. There was an immediate growth of poverty and a heretofore unheard of accumulation of wealth by the few.
Proposition 13, by shrinking the consumer market, accelerated the decline of jobs and education opportunities. Under these conditions, drugs were introduced into the state and after Detroit exploded in 1967, throughout the country. Again relying on racism, - drugs like poverty, was presented as a question of color, a choice made by the African Americans. The response was the tidal wave of "lock 'em up and throw away the key" legislation. The cost of prison building and incarceration was added to the already stretched state budget and then became a national artifact in American culture.
Interestingly, the expansion of the prison system and new construction occurred outside the areas where the most poverty stricken are criminalized and sent away to be institutionalized. This method of passing employment and "economic opportunity" to depressed areas and communities - that exist outside the drug infested and police controlled areas of those criminalized, provides the economic incentive and basis for the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" legislation and ideology among a small section of the population. This design provides a certain political support for the demand for prisons and this support appear as the economics of race theory.
Additionally, in the drive to abandon the poor, California made it nearly impossible to increase property taxes or to progressively tax the billionaires. Just as water runs downstream, the war on the poor inevitably led to undercutting the economic stability of the entire state. All categories of labor and wages are inevitably driven in the direction of those who labor in the penal institutions. Such is the law of money and labor as private investment.
With the battle cry of "Today California, tomorrow the nation," the Reagan gang won the country over to the creed of selfishness as the foundation of a new society. With the poorest of American citizens being driven deeper into poverty - and the rest of the country slowly following, the Reagan gang would finally declare that "America is now standing tall." Reagan and his gang sowed the wind. California and the nation are reaping the whirlwind.
Later as President, Reagan would fire 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers who ignored his personal order to return to work. These men and women sought nothing more than decent conditions of labor and wages. California and the nation are reaping the whirlwind.
Conditions change, - sometimes slow and at other times not so slow, but change is inescapable. With the advance of the technological revolution - computerization, digitalized processes, advanced robotics and globalization, the need for a privileged white section of the working class is rapidly declining. The high flying days of California's Silicon Valley are over. A relationship from history - slavery and its awful aftermath, continues to unravel with a brutal logic. All highly specialized and protected sectors of labor are being outsourced to the areas of the lowest wages and the centuries old pecking order face historic collapse.
Today, deflation and the looming economic crisis threaten the homeowners that Proposition 13 was supposed to protect. The ideology of selfishness and greed eliminated the legislation meant to protect them.
The destruction of social morality was key to the mess we are in. The re-establishment of social morality is key to getting us out. We must replace "Each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost" with "All for each and each for all" as our morality, in the economy as well as in our politics.
