Walter Ballin

A few days ago while watching the 10:00 nightly Newscast on a San Francisco tv station, in reference to the proposed bailouts for the automobile corporations, some people being interviewed on the streets were saying that failing corporate stores that are closing should also be bailed out.

As far as the automobile corporations are concerned, I only favor the federal bailout if the current CEO's would be forced to resign and that the new CEO's take heavy pay cuts, along with conditions that the auto corporations manufacture trains, streetcars, and buses. This would be under a federal plan which I hope Barack Obama will embark on a program to drastically expand mass public transit.

I don't favor a bailout for the failed corporate stores such as Mervyn's, Circuit City, and Shoe Pavillion and there haven't been any serious proposals for that anyway. Many of these businesses have been badly managed for years, and there has been a lot of corruption at the top. A few years ago Mervyn's was sold to a group of greedy investors who had no interest in the stores. The investors made bad decisions like selling the buildings that housed their stores, and then they ran into difficulty paying the rent for the stores. A couple of years ago, the greedy corporate owners of Circuit City fired their workers and gave them the option of re-applying for their jobs at close to the minimum wage.

I remember when I was a child and a young adult during the 1950's and 1960's in San Francisco, that there were many locally owned department stores. One didn't usually see so many of the same stores when visiting different cities. Department stores generally were open from approximately 9:00 or 10:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M., and until 9:00 P.M. on Mondays and Thursday nights, and they were closed on Sundays and most holidays. Store owners ran sales as they do today to attract business, and they did draw customers. The Friday after Thanksgiving was a busy day in the stores, but there wasn't the frenzy that we have today. I do recall that between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that many department stores stayed open until 9:00 P.M. every night Monday through Friday, except that they closed earlier on the last day before Christmas so that their employees could spend more time with their families. There was none of this business of stores opening up at 4:00 in the morning with people stampeding into the stores to buy stuff. There was no such thing as a worker being trampled to death by a stampeding crowd entering a store, like what occurred at a Wal-Mart store in New York at 5:00 in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving.

I believe that what is needed is a restructuring of our businesses. With so many businesses closing and workers being laid off, here is what I would like to see. I would like to see Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress set up a program to encourage the growth of small and medium sized businesses, and to discourage corporations. I also would like for the government to encourage a massive growth of cooperative businesses. I recall the Berkeley Co-Op supermarkets back in the 1960's and 1970's. We could have co-ops the size of Wal-Mart superstores or Costco's where people could purchase all kinds of goods, clothing, food, televisions and you name it. I'm not proposing a specific location, but for example right here in Chico we could have such a store around the North Valley Plaza area, and another one in the area where the Chico Mall is. These cooperative stores would be owned by the workers and by member-customers. Of course another thing that we need to do is to stop the outsourcing of our jobs, so that these goods will be made in the USA by people making a living wage. Another thing that the Obama administration could do is to encourage cooperative farms. Also in the case of privately owned businesses, where possible the government should encourage business owners to allow their workers to have more of a voice in the operations of their businesses. More often than not, when people have a voice as to how their workplaces are run and feel like a part of the respective businesses, they produce better.

Here is a letter I wrote to a San Francisco Black minister who refused to attend a San Francisco chapter NAACP dinner because of their opposition to Prop 8. The article http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/21/BA19148QAH.DTL I refer to is in Friday's San Francisco Chronicle. Scroll down

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Walter Ballin
Date: Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Subject: For Rev. Boyd: Your Comment "We follow that direction. The people have spoken on this issue."
To: BethelAMEC@aol.com

Dear Rev. Boyd:

I read an article in Friday's San Francisco Chronicle about several Black ministers who will not attend the San Francisco NAACP's fundraiser dinner, because of the the SF NAACP's opposition to Proposition 8. In the article you were quoted as saying "I did not take a position on this issue in front of my congregation but our general assembly agreed that marriage was between a man and a woman," said Boyd. "We follow that direction. The people have spoken on this issue. It became law and everyone should abide by that. The tension is mostly coming from people who disagree with that, but they had their opportunity and the yes campaign won."

Now I recall back in the 1960's just before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and signed into law, hearing white ministers in the south stating that it states in the Bible that God said that there must be segregation. Until the Supreme Court made its decision in the Loving case in 1967, inter-racial marriage was illegal in many states and it was also illegal in California until 1948 when our state Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional. After the California voters voted for Proposition 14 to repeal the Rumford Fair Housing Act in 1964, the state Supreme Court ruled Proposition 14 unconstitutional. Perhaps we all should have left everything well enough alone and said as you just did that "We follow that direction. The people have spoken on this issue. It became law and everyone should abide by that. The tension is mostly coming from people who disagree with that, but they had their opportunity and the yes campaign won?"

Sincerely Yours,

Walter Ballin
Chico, CA

Obama met with a dangerous world leader without pre-conditions. If clicking on this link http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2008/11/11/obama-meets-with-dangerous-world-leader-without-preconditions/ doesn't work, copy and paste it into your web browser.

This link http://www.sacbee.com/breton/story/1382695.html takes you to a column by the Sacramento Bee's Marcos Breton who opposed Prop 8. In the column Breton comments about why prop 8 passed If the link doesn't work here, you can copy and paste the link into your web browser. Breton is critical of the people who ran the No on 8 campaign. I don't agree with absolutely every single iota of what Breton said. For instance I don't agree with this: "Gay marriage advocates need to understand that religious opposition to their cause is often bathed in love, not hate. Wallace, like Bishop Jaime Soto of the Diocese of Sacramento, speaks of loving gay people but condemning the act of homosexual love," because that's bigotry pure and simple! Still I say that the people who were paid to run the No on campaign ran a lousy one. I agree with Breton that the campaign managers of the No side failed to get a good message out. Also the Democratic Headquarters here in Chico wanted No on 8 signs, as people were coming in requesting them. I heard that the statewide No on 8 campaign ran out of signs a few weeks before the election. Meanwhile I saw numerous Yes on 8 signs around Chico. All of this was not because the No on 8 side didn't have money. I understand that they had funds. Unfortunately the paid campaign managers just assumed that that Prop 8 would be defeated. I know that there's a lot of bigotry out there, but I think that No on 8 should have prevailed by at least 52%-48% instead of the other way around.

Prop 8 and the initiatives that passed in other states will ultimately come before the U.S. Supreme Court, where these laws that ban Gays and Lesbians from marrying will be ruled unconstitutional, just as the Supreme Court threw out laws in states that banned inter-racial marriage.

Tikun Olam's(not to be confused with Michael Lerner's Tikkun) Richard Silverstein writes that we might be witnessing the disintegration of the Republican Party, with so many prominent Republicans jumping ship and endorsing Barack Obama. I also think that this may very well be if the Democrats take advantage of the opportunity that they will hopefully have to do what's necessary to solve the serious problems that this country faces.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2008/10/24/is-the-republican-party-disintegrat

Is the Republican Party Disintegrating Before Our Very Eyes?
Oct 24th, 2008 by Richard Silverstein

I think that some of us may not be truly aware of what is happening within the Republican Party. Comment is Free yesterday published my article about the Republicans who've defected from the McCain-Palin ticket to endorse Barack Obama. As Democrats, we're tickled and flattered by the embrace of former foes. But I think more is going on that just that.

First, let's note that besides the major figures like Colin Powell, Lincoln Chaffee, Christopher Buckley, Jim Leach, Bruce Bartlett, and others I mentioned in my earlier posts, there are new "turncoats:" yesterday Scott McClellan endorsed Obama as did CC Goldwater, Barry's grand-daughter. Today, former Republican Massachussets governor William Weld endorsed. As did former Republican Minnesota governor Arne Carlsson. Former Regan solicitor general, McCain advisor and eminent Republican legal scholar Charles FriedKenneth Adelman endorsed. This guy worked for Ronald Reagan for Pete's sake! American Conservative Magazine editor Scott McClellan endorsed the Democrat. Republican Hollywood actor, Dennis Hopper has endorsed. endorsed. Shockingly, neocon former NSA advisor

I wouldn't be at all surprised if before November 4th Richard Lugar (who has already spoken highly favorably of Obama) and Chuck Hagel (his wife already has) endorse Barack. Can Olympia Snowe be far behind?

I can remember in past presidential elections Democrats who turned tail and ran by endorsing Republicans. Zell Miller comes to mind and of course Joe Lieberman, not to menon Ron Silver. But we viewed them as strange anomalies who didn't signal any serious challenge to the prevailing ideas of the Party.

But is what is happening now to the Republican Party something different? Is this merely a strange, interesting footnote to an amazing political campaign; or does it denote a major shift occuring within the Republican Party? Dare we hope that with the end of the Bush reign, those Republicans who can no longer stomach it are turning against the Party for embracing the worst excesses of Bushism? Might this signal a possible break between the Party and neoconservatism? Might a new Republican leadership emerge from the McCain-Palin debacle which will chart a different path than the one chosen over the past eight years and even farther back?

Or even more interestingly, might the Democrats recruit some of these former Republican faithful to come on over to our side? This would stun the remaining neocons on the Republican sinking ship even further.

I don't hold out much hope for the Republicans reforming their Party from within. The second scenario may be more possible. I think in effect, this has been what the Democrats started in recruiting Congressional candidates in 2006. They deliberately chose more centrist, conservative candidates in districts where this was necessary for a Democrat to win. Perhaps Republican moderates have noticed this and the defections are part of that process. Certainly, the fact that Democrats picked off Lincoln Chaffee in the last election has to be a message to the moderates that they have little or no future in their Party as presently constituted. This may've played no small role in Chaffee's endorsement of Obama. As long as such moderates remain they will be isolated on the "left" of an increasingly marginal & extremist Party; and Democrats will gradually pick them off like low-hanging fruit.

I don't want to make the mistake that Republicans like Karl Rove made in claiming a major "realignment" of political power in the offing. Democrats could do much to ensure their own downfall if they play their cards wrong in the next two or four years. But it's clear that "something's happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. [GOP] Jones."

I am for protecting marriage. So I am going to the crux of the entire issue. I oppose Proposition 8. However, I call for an initiative to ban divorce.

I sent this message to Obama's campaign via the campaign website, regarding the news report today that McCain is going to play extra dirty in the debate Tuesday night and throughout the remainder of the campaign. As the website does not have a feature to bold words, I used caps on the part of the letter that I wanted to emphasize. Also on the news last night, it was mentioned that as we know that the Obama campaign is bottom up rather than top down, and that at his headquarters in Chicago Obama's top campaign managers work together in the same place as all of the other campaign workers. Here's my letter.

Dear Barack,

I am a staunch supporter of yours in Chico California. I have written to you before.

On the CBS Evening News on Saturday, it was mentioned that John McCain is going to play much dirtier from here on out until the election, including the debate on Tuesday. As I know that you also heard, in the debate and in his speeches McCain is going to mention Ayres who was once involved in the Weathermen and also the Pastor. I know that you will keep your cool. What I am suggesting is that throughout the debate and throughout the remainder of your campaign, but especially in the debates, that you pound on McCain, Bush, and the Republicans about the terrible shape of the economy and the high unemployment. You tell the American people that IF THEY THINK THAT THE DIRT THAT McCAIN IS TALKING ABOUT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE TERRIBLE ECONOMY AND THE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT, AND IF THE PEOPLE ARE SATISFIED WITH THINGS AS THEY HAVE BEEN UNDER BUSH, THAT THEY SHOULD GO RIGHT AHEAD AND VOTE FOR McCAIN! THAT'S WHAT YOU CONTINUOUSLY SAY THROUGHOUT THE DEBATE. You can also say that McCain lacks the character to hold the high office of President of the United States by resorting to dirty tactics.

I hope that you see my message before the debate, and I will greatly appreciate a response from you that addresses the advice I gave to you. I believe that you and the Democrats are headed for a great victory on November 4th.

During recent months I received emails asking me to sign petitions that would admit Ralph Nader, the Green Party and other minor parties into the debates. I think that the minor parties have a problem which is their refusal to take steps to build up from the ground up. In this blog I will focus on the Green Party which I was a member of for a time.

Although I have been active in volunteer liberal Democratic politics for over 40 years, for a time between 1997 and 2004, I was registered in the Green Party. In 2001, I moved from San Francisco, where I lived all of my life, to Chico California. I served on the Butte County Green Party's County Council from 2001-2004. The reason that I left the Democrats during that period, was because I was very disappointed at President Bill Clinton for his failure to deliver universal health care, his signing of the awful Welfare Reform legislation of 1996, NAFTA, his failure to stem corporate mergers resulting in worker layoffs, and other issues. Our Democratic Governor at the time, Gray Davis, was also a disappointment and incompetent, which is why we had the re-call in 2003 and ended up with Schwarzenegger. During the past few years that I lived in San Francisco, Mayor Willie Brown who was supposed to be a liberal Democrat, sold out to the landlords, developers, real estate interests, and other corporate interests. So, I became a Green. I voted for Ralph Nader for President in 1996 and 2000.

Now, had I known that 'Dubya' Bush was going to be as bad a President as he is, and in fact much worse than his father, and had I resided in a state in 2000 where the election was close, I would have voted for Gore.

Early in 2004, I expressed my view to the Butte County Green Party's County Council that the Green Party must not support Ralph Nader for President in that year, nor should the party run a Presidential candidate. The party leadership here disagreed with me and stated it's intention to actively campaign for Nader again. This was despite the fact that the national Green Party nominated an unknown candidate, David Cobb, who ran a "safe states" campaign. So, I left the Green Party and became a Democrat again and I supported the Kerry-Edwards ticket. However, I will say that my departure from the local Green Party was amicable.

Before I left the Green Party, I made a couple of suggestions as to what the party could do to make themselves a more viable political party. I suggested that the Green Party should stop running candidates for President, U.S. Senator, and other statewide offices, but target U.S. House of Representative and state legislative districts where they would have a chance of electing someone, and running candidates in those districts. The Green Party has done a terrific job of electing local non-partisan officials, but has elected very few if any candidates to partisan offices. So, the Green Party has officials who hold local offices who have a base and could get elected to partisan offices like the Legislature. Santa Monica California is an example where Greens serve on the City Council. I also stated that running candidates for the higher offices that I mentioned, would be a distraction from the effort to elect more candidates to the lower partisan positions, and also would be divisive if the Greens adopted my idea. Unfortunately, the local leadership didn't see all of this the way I saw it.

Another point that I want to bring up is that there are some people who join the Green and I suppose other third parties, who have racist, sexist, and homophobic and judgmental views, and of course I'm not saying everyone. There is one man in particular who expresses some of these views to me. This man happens to strongly admire Ralph Nader. He supports Single Payer health care, opposes the Iraq War, war spending, bad trade deals like NAFTA, the power of the corporations, and wants big money taken out of politics. This gentleman often criticizes the Democrats for not being good enough on some of these issues and most recently criticized Barack Obama. However, he has also expressed homophobic views. He refers to women who out of necessity have abortions as "baby killers." He even opposes the government educating people about birth control and supports teaching "abstinence only" in our schools. The man I'm talking about actually became a Decline to State a couple of years ago, but today he told me that he gave money to the American Independent Party, which is the party that the late Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for President on in 1968. Wallace was known for standing in the door of the University of Alabama in 1963 in a futile attempt to block the admittance of Black people who wanted to study there. This fellow once belonged to that party. When I pointed out to him that the AIP opposes programs that he supports like Single Payer health care, and Social Security and Medicare which he benefits from, he got very angry. He said that he doesn't really support the the positions of the AIP but that he likes to contribute to 3rd parties, just for the sake of 3rd parties.

Some time ago, I was also told by a reliable source that there were a couple of other Greens who were holier than thou in speaking out against the Greens supporting any liberal Democrats even for local offices, but who made racist remarks against Blacks and Latinos. Now, those particular Greens stated in 2004 that any Green who would not support Nader for President, should get out of the party.

In stating this, as far as the Green Party is concerned, I know that the views of all of those particular individuals run contrary to the positions of the Green Party. My point is that when the Green Party fails to take the necessary steps that I suggested above to make themselves a more viable political party, while it attracts some very intelligent and well meaning people who seek to make this a better country and who want a better world, it also attracts people who simply want to be non-conformists or what I might call "Minor Political Party Shoppers." Another point that I want to mention is that the Greens and many of the people on what I'll call the left fringe(I'm not knocking the left, as I'm on the left myself) can't even agree among themselves. On this year's ballot the left fringe has 2 candidates, Ralph Nader and former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. So in view of what I said in this blog, before I sign any petition to admit the minor parties to the debates, I say let them get their act together and build from the ground up.

This piece about John McCain's VP pick Sarah Palen being a member of an anti-Jewish church in Alaska, is in a newsletter that I received from Jews for Obama. Note especially the 5th paragraph. See below.

We are not so sure about Sarah Palin

The selection of a virtually unknown governor as the Republican VP choice generated a lot of news, and a lot of loshon hara, of the sort we have been fighting against when used against Senator Obama. However, there are enough facts on the ground that respected media and trusted columnists are verifying:

McCain only met Gov. Palin once prior to the selection. This is more a reflection on McCain's decision making ability then on her qualifications for the job.

Palin's conservative social views are totally out-of-step with those of most American Jews. She opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. She has stated that mankind does not play any role in climate change. She wants schools to teach creationism, undermining the separation between church and state. Even as we can cheer a female candidate, we can dread what she represents as a symbol to Republicans.

Palin has no track record on Israel. The sum total of Palin's record on Israel is that she signed a boilerplate Alaska-Israel friendship resolution passed by the Alaska state legislature. To our knowledge, she had never made a public statement about Israel as of the date she was nominated.

Palin remains an enthusiastic member of a church supporting anti-Jewish views. Just two weeks before she was nominated, Palin was at Wasilla Bible Church when her pastor glowingly introduced David Brickman, the head of Jews for Jesus; Brickman proceeded to explain that Israelis curse Jesus whenever they say his name and that terrorist attacks against Israelis are the result of God's judgment against unbelievers. Palin did not (and to our knowledge has not) repudiated these teachings.

On the central economic questions governing the future of our nation, including the mortgage crisis, Palin's experience — as mayor of a town which sought federal funding to build a sports center, and as a governor with a $5B surplus from oil and gas revenues — does not predict she can make up for the economic smarts John McCain has admitted lacking.

The McCain campaign dropped various clues that they might choose Joe Lieberman or Eric Cantor as the running mate. Then, McCain chose Palin. According to Fred Zeidman, co-chair of Jewish outreach for the McCain campaign, Sen. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate engendered "a lot of consternation" among Jewish delegates to the Republican National Convention.

We think the process and the outcome both merit consternation".

On July 22, 2008 I saw a report on the KTVU-TV newscast about how employees at the San Francisco Department of Human Services put some people's most private personal data literally out on the street. This had to do with people who applied for benefits such as food stamps and general assistance. Here is the link http://www.ktvu.com/news/16961916/detail.html If it doesn't work, you can copy it and paste it onto your web browser.

While I am not qualified to say what the exact cause of this terrible security breach was, I do strongly believe that the way that the city and county of San Francisco has been hiring many of its employees over the past 25 years or so could be a major factor. There is a practice where San Francisco hires workers as "provisional." Supposedly they're hired to work for something like up to 6 months and then perhaps take a civil service test. Often these tests aren't given and the workers become permanent. Many of the people who are hired for these "provisional" positions with the city are Filipino, but I want it to be understood that I'm not saying that anybody who is Filipino can get a job with the city of San Francisco this way and they don't, but it does help to be part of a network. I am also not opposed to Affirmative Action, although I would like to see Affirmative Action be something that is more class based. I also must state that there are many excellent and dedicated people who work for the city and county of San Francisco, and I know many of them. I also will say that San Francisco's policy of hiring people "provisionally" instead of giving more job related civil service tests is very bad. It shows in the quality of the work that gets done. When I lived in San Francisco, I had a couple of situations where I had to call a city office. Even though I called the office during the times that employees should have been answering the telephones, I would get a voice mail that I should call within the certain specified hours. During the 7 years that I lived in Chico, whenever I needed to call a Chico or Butte County office I have always found that someone answered the telephone. I find that the Chico and Butte County personnel are very helpful and professional.

Eleven years ago, I had an experience of my own when I applied for one of the San Francisco city government's "provisional" positions. The position that was available was for a Supply Room clerk. The position required being able to take inventory. A major part of my duties in my position as a custodian and utility person in the private sector up to that time, involved taking inventory and ordering supplies for office buildings. When I applied for this "provisional" position with the city I was turned down. I was told that I didn't have any previous experience working in a supply room. In the downtown San Francisco high-rise office buildings where I worked, there were many firms that had supply rooms. Unlike how it is in the government, firms in the private sector don't have someone holding a position strictly being in charge of a supply room, so what I was told by the city department didn't make any sense. I have to add that I asked then State Senator John Burton for his assistance so that I could obtain that Supply Room clerk position, but he didn't want to get involved. A good friend of mine who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago, told me that if John Burton's brother, Congressman Phil Burton were alive at that time, that I would have obtained the job. I didn't get that position because I simply wasn't a part of the network.