San Jose Inside

As much as I wanted to write this week about Thanksgiving, the Notre Dame–USC game, or the new James Bond movie, Monday’s article in the Mercury News, concerning the Reed transition, contained one set of comments that I could not ignore.  They came from the mouth, if not the mind, of Ms. Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, leader of the South Bay Labor Council.  In them, she decried the “divisiveness” that could creep into the Transition Committee of Mayor-elect Chuck Reed, and her fear that “old families” would return to hegemony in our city.  It would be easy to let this set of vacuous comments go unanswered but, somehow, the lecturing of a person who just had her agenda, her candidates and her attempts to control the city repudiated in a historic rout, called out for a response. (It was almost as if Rummy began to lecture us now on military tactics for our future success in Iraq, or Kissinger—ah, but that’s another blog.) Such advice from Ellis-Lamkins falls not from weight but from absurdity. 

I thought I would run a list of things I am thankful for before Thanksgiving.  Beside the obvious—family, friends, etc.—here are some San Jose items.

I am thankful for:

Voters all over the nation stood up against the forces of unethical government on Tuesday. The decisive wave struck here in San Jose with the rejection of Manny Diaz and the Gonzales-associated Cindy Chavez and the election of Sam Liccardo and Chuck Reed. The Jack Abramoff-connected California District 11 Congressman Richard Pombo was swept out of office, in what was thought to be a safe Republican seat, along with several of his colleagues in similar positions. The voters in besieged Ohio rejected the corrupt Ken Blackwell’s bid to become their governor, and in Florida, they firmly turned down Katherine Harris, the ethically challenged engineer of the 2000 Bush “victory” who wanted to be a U.S. senator.

The writer John Reed once said, rather infamously, “I have seen the future and it works.”  Fortunately, he was not correct about his prediction.  In San Jose, though, I think we are able to say that the future now has a very good chance to work. I saw it last night.  The victory of Chuck Reed was a remarkable achievement against the forces of the Democratic establishment who had Bill Clinton in the van, a two to one edge in money, and everyone from the dog catcher to Kofi Annan in Chavez’s corner. Reed absorbed all the hits and kept going. 

On this Election Day 2006, as I sit here with my fingers crossed, I hope that things will turn out for the best for San Jose today.  When I cast my vote this morning, I tried not to think of all that is wrong with politics today and tried to be proud of my own decisions and support other voters who have their own convictions about who they were supporting today.  I tried to look at all candidates as worthy, competent and honorable because they were giving of themselves to serve others.  I tried to see all the candidates’ good qualities and commendable campaigning strategies.

The editorial board of San Jose Inside recommends voting for the following:

New Laborcratic Entity Delivers Fatwa: Buy All Elections

After raising several million dollars to cover independent expenditures for the Chavez for Mayor campaign, the Santa Clara County Democratic Party and the South Bay Labor Council have decided to unite, forming a venture capital leviathan known as the Laborcratic Superfund.

Without wanting to beat a dead horse, I just cannot seem to fathom some of the tactics that Manny Diaz uses in order to get elected to the city council.  His latest doozy is to actually have a press conference, in front of an elementary school no less, promoting supposed links of Sam Liccardo’s MySpace page to pornography.  He was handing out nude photos to passersby and claiming that Liccardo was linked to these photos.  There are so many things wrong with that, I really don’t even know where to start.  Yeah, Manny, it makes perfect sense that a district attorney who spends his time prosecuting child molesters and pedophiles would be linked to porn sites.  It would almost make me sick if it wasn’t so laughable.

Wants to Focus on Current Political Election

Council 3 Candidate and Human Being, Manny Diaz, has decided to quit his job with NASA Ames Research in order to concentrate on his council race against opponent Sam Liccardo.

Ballots for the November runoff election will likely have to be reprinted to include the word “former” in front of his career description of “rocket scientist.”

I can’t resist bringing up a few items in light of Election Day’s results. First and foremost: Where were you missing voters? I went to my downtown polling station at 3:30 p.m., where there are nearly 1300 voters registered, and I was voter number 88 for the day. The poll workers were bored stiff. Is there no sense of civic responsibility any more? I know that many voted “absentee,” but still—88 voters in more than eight hours of polling! According to the official Santa Clara County website, 229,172 voted out of 747,644 registered, including absentee. That’s a little higher than a 30 percent turnout throughout the county. 106,436 ballots were cast for mayor, somewhat less than 30 percent in the city. This is pathetic. Under the circumstances, do we get what we deserve?

Well, the votes are all in and the winners and loser are clear.  To the extent that people did not participate, they and we lost; to those who did, and read San Jose Inside, thanks for what you do and the diligence you apply to it.  Adlai Stevenson once said that, after a loss, it was like stubbing your toe—it hurts too much to laugh and you’re too old to cry. We should all cry for the depths that our city has fallen; we should decry the timid and dishonest campaigning for the top spot in the city.  Current council members should have the sense to understand repudiation and be ashamed for their active or tacit part in the past disgraceful performance of this council.

There have been several instances of a distinct lack of ethics shown by some candidates and interest groups in this election.  Some glaring examples of “lapses” in ethical conduct are the unscrupulous actions of Manny Diaz, an ethically-challenged candidate for the District 3 San Jose City Council seat. (This is also the opinion of the Mercury News.) Diaz has used the names of neighborhood leader Elizabeth Mattson and respected politician Mike Honda for his campaign pieces, falsely saying they were endorsing him for the election.  This has become carpetbagger Diaz’s method of operation. So where has this unethical behavior gotten him?  In the past, it seems it got him elected. 

Decision day has arrived. It’s time for a radical change at City Hall. We need new blood in the office of mayor and on the council so that we can begin to come to terms with the mess left by the Gonzales years and look to a better future. We need leaders with a strong, clear vision based on wide experiences in life that are honest, wise, trustworthy and steady, and open to innovation and new ideas in our rapidly changing world.

How we trust the men and women in blue may be an age-old question, but this time it is not from the usual perspective. We know that in San Jose we have an outstanding contingent of officers who add credit to the uniform in most every encounter. This has long been the tradition of the San Jose PD.  But politics reared its ugly head during the regime of the current mayor when the Police Officers Association (POA) freely gave thousands of dollars to an informal slush fund. This dwarfed the small amounts of money that has been given to all past candidates and previous mayors.