Whitman Proposal to Resolve Illegal Immigration

California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman unveiled a bold proposal today to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. At a press conference in the Silicon Valley, the former CEO of EBAY said she would work with major employers throughout the high tech industry to outsource over a million jobs south of the border.

Whitman, who has considerable experience in both layoff-management and outsourcing is bringing together her skills and vision to create a California with considerably less traffic congestion on its freeways, less smog, and far fewer illegal immigrants. Critics have pointed to a huge hike in unemployment benefit costs that will impact the state, but Whitman points out that she will keep those benefits lean and temporary. Unemployed workers are more likely to leave the state, or fill the many gardener, housekeeper, restaurant, and nanny openings when "the illegals" hurry home to scoop up the high tech assembly jobs.

Wall Street is already showing a favorable response to the Whitman Plan that promises profits and lowered costs for key corporations.

Let's Make the Budget Work for California

When I first came to California in January 1973, the community colleges were free, as was day use of state parks, and many communities had multiple library branches. Now there's a plan to have entry fees at the state parks (many have already been temporarily closed); California cities are shutting down library branches; and there's no more free education at community colleges. That's just the tip of the iceberg with program cuts taking place in every arena from rehab programs in the prisons to sidewalk repairs. Why has the state gone backwards?

Very few of us have paid much attention to the state economy, but I don't think that's a viable option anymore. Something has gone really wrong and there's not enough political will in the legislature to change anything. It's high time for us citizens to learn what has caused the mess and how to turn it around.

I listened to a radio show that said we now depend on 140,000 of the richest Californians for 25% of our tax revenues. Is the problem that we stopped taxing the middle class to the levels we used to? Or is the problem that the gap between rich and poor has grown so much that we don't tax those richest folks nearly enough? Did corporations pay much more in taxes back in '73? I know that Prop 13, passed in '78, keeps property taxes low. Is that where the money used to come from? Or is there some truth to the Republican chorus that we added too many state workers and benefits?

It's time for regular citizens to collect data and start to understand the reasons for this demise. If you have some answers, then help educate me. Let's put California back on track.

Show Me the Money!

In California we have come up over $24 billion dollars short for our upcoming budget year. There's a number of facts that would help me know where to make up the shortfall. Most of all, I'd like to see a list of Californians by income levels in one column and what they paid in taxes in the other column.

If there's a half million Californians making $2 million dollars or more and paying less than one million in taxes, then I know where I'd recommend we make up the entire shortfall. ($100K per person)

If there's 2 million Californians making over $200K and paying less than $50,000, then I know where I'd make up 20 billion dollars by charging each an additional $10K in taxes.

It makes no sense to have a huge gap between rich and poor if we aren't taking care of so many in our society – let alone closing the state parks.

If there's no such unreasonable gap......if everyone is already shouldering the collective load to a fair extent, then I'm as ready as any Republican to get out my red marker. I'd just like to see this financial information about personal wealth and what portion people have put in for the common good.

Doesn't that seem like one of the first things newspapers should put into their coverage of this budget crisis?

Encore!

Yesterday I went up to Marin to see a play by the drama students at Saint Mark's School in Marin. They have an annual performance at the posh little Showcase Theatre near the civic center. My dear friend Jessica Sage has been the drama teacher there for the past eight years. I've seen a number of the performances, but this one was the last because Jessica resigned in order to travel for a couple of years with her partner Barry. They'll have a couple of lengthy stopovers when Barry performs for one Shakespearean company or another. Those gigs get set up a couple of years ahead. One might assume because they've lived in Marin - that they'll be traveling "first class" living off their inheritance or stock portfolios, but as lifelong theatre-people, cottage-renters, and artists, they'll be traveling frugal-class. They decided that the time had come to take a big leap or let those traveling dreams pass by. Barry is in his sixties. First major stop will be the solar eclipse in Siberia this August.

At the end of the play there was a standing ovation and the 8th grade actors were at the front of the stage bowing and pointing back to all the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grade actors behind them who were part of the 60-kid ensemble in the musical we'd just seen. Then one of the 8th graders called up Ms. Sage to accept a boquet of roses. She walked up there with a somewhat sheepish, modest grin (that might have been practiced for this occasion). But a young boy from the back of the stage, barely visible due to his height-challenged fourth-grade stature, must have called to her. He was crying and wanted to hug her, knowing she was departing soon. Suddenly a gaggle of little ones were holding on to her and I saw at least one other who was crying. That's when Jessica started to sob, even as she tried to compose herself.

The eighth graders each wanted to say something to her and they took turns telling the audience about Jessica's influence on their lives. Some have been in her classes all eight years. One called herself a "drama geek" who always tried to have lunch near Jessica. Another talked about Jessica's impending "epoch journey" and thanked her for preparing them for their own parallel "epoch journey" into high school. Jess was totally unprepared for their heartfelt remarks about how she'd given them courage and made them able to perform and dream about acting.

I was so proud and so happy she was witnessing these testimonies about her impact. What a reward for her high-energy years of work in the acting trenches. Not many folks who invest so much in their jobs get to hear that from the people they've touched and changed.

It was wonderful to see the really talented kids perform and sing so well. They knocked our socks off with their unexpected skill levels. But what is even more amazing is to see the performances of the kids who appear to be shy or gawky - taking big risks on stage with pubescent voices and bodies they no longer control. When these kids belt out their lines and their songs, you know that there was some magic worked by a drama teacher who believed in them and got them to believe as well.

Housing in Palo Alto

Currently, a lot of community leaders are furious at the Association of Bay Area Governments which expects Palo Alto to add 3700 units of housing over the next five or so years. The fact that other communities are bearing the cost of housing while Palo Alto enjoys the revenues of a jobs-housing imbalance doesn't carry any weight locally. The fact that we are contributing heavily to global warming by requiring so many workers to commute in has not yet caused an outcry. The fact that housing sprawl to cheaper areas keeps gobbling up open space and farmland is a total yawn. In our recent City Council election, none of the 11 candidates talked up "smart growth", let alone high density housing along transportation corridors.

In beautiful Palo Alto, most neighborhood leaders are very vocal against housing developments, especially anything high density. We don't have the room. We don't want more cars on our already congested roads. Our schools can't handle more kids per classroom. High density housing (30 units per acre) doesn't fit in architecturally with the rest of the neighborhood. If any space along a transit line becomes available, we should bring in more retail outlets because that brings more sales tax revenues. Housing brings additional expenses (read taxes and fees) what with police, fire, and utilities services to provide. It's probably a pretty familiar refrain in communities across the country.

But in Palo Alto, housing values have gone up more than almost anywhere in the world. A house that sold in the 20 thousands in the early 70's is now worth well over a million dollars. (Median cost in 1970 was $33K and in 2006 it was $1.3 million dollars) In most cases they are bought by wealthy young couples who knock them down and build a much bigger place in its stead. Over the past 35 years, Palo Alto has become a financially gated community. Our kids can't come back and live here unless they become corporate or finance managers like many of their parents.
A digression:


This is what the house looked like that I rented with my kids for 13 years. (It's actually our old neighbors' house, but exact same model.)


This is the new house going up and replacing our old 950 sq ft. rental.


This is the new house next to my old neighbors' house. This "Mutt and Jeff" effect is a common sight througout Palo Alto.

Every day an army of teachers, nurses, waiters, clerks, nannies, gardeners, utility workers, police, and non-profit employees commute in and out of town to make everything function for the successful residents. The Palo Alto population balloons up to 90,000 in the daytime, even as many of the 60,000 residents fan out among the familiar corporations of the Silicon Valley.

Maybe the growing concern about global warming will wake people up to see that our "neighborhoods" extend far beyond Palo Alto and we need to care about the region and the planet. It would not be a bad thing at all if the baker's kid attended the same school as the Google manager's kid.

We'll see how the political battle plays out this Spring and Summer as the City updates its housing element (that dictates how much housing the city is prepared to develop) as required by the state.

SICKO

On opening night, a group of us went to see Michael Moore's movie, "Sicko," about our decaying healthcare system. Moore says this movie is not directed at the nearly 50 million Americans who have no health insurance, but to the 250 million who are entrusting their medical benefits to the insurance and HMO industries. Everyone in our group was 50+ years old and well into the stage of life where every conversation touches on body functions and dysfunctions that didn't use to register a blip on our radar screens. But this movie should also concern my 24 year old with his six concussions and everyone else who has left any kind of trail on their medical record. The insurance industry REWARDS doctors who refuse to recommend medical procedures and they employ people to investigate the insured who may not have volunteered enough information about their medical pasts when they "applied" for healthcare.

Normally a video or article about Health Care is like all the "Privacy Policies" we skip online and just click "OKAY", or Terms of Agreements that we flip right into the garbage when they come in the mail. The good news for my son and the rest of us is that Michael Moore knows how to make political awareness and multilayered issues wildly entertaining.

As Moore takes us to countries like Britain and France, we find out that healthcare can actually be determined by doctors who take an oath to fix us, rather than by bureaucrats who get fired when they give back too many of our dollars. We discover that our system is as absurd as it is uncaring. We discover that doctors still make housecalls in France and it's not something that had to go the way of the Milk Man in the name of progress.

For Californians who see the movie and then realize they are "mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore," there is a bill in the State Senate that would create universal healthcare. SB 840 is strong medicine. It's sitting in some committee, but if a few million of us get vocal about it, we can make it win out over the two other reform plans that would leave the insurance/HMO industry in charge.

See the movie first as it begins to rebut the myths we've grown up on about "socialized medicine." Sure, there is no system that will be perfect for everyone, but right now there are nearly 300 million of us who are standing on shaky ground even as we pay through the nose for the "privilege" of healthcare.

"Illegal" Immigration

Yesterday, I attended a forum on immigration put on by the League of Women Voters and the World Affairs Forum, held at Hewlett-Packard, one of the many high tech companies in the Silicon Valley that is deeply interested in immigration policy. Richard Hobbs, the Director of the Office of Human Relations for Santa Clara County told us that 36% of our county's population are foreign born and when you add in their children, it comes to 67% of the population. That's hard to believe from my rather "gated" perspective living in affluent Palo Alto.

In California there are nearly 3 million illegal immigrants among the 10 million foreign born, though the path for "illegals" is now taking 75% to other states with more jobs.

Hobbs made it clear that most immigrants come either because of economic desperation or because they are fleeing a dangerous political situation.

NAFTA and GATT free trade agreements have led to the loss of about 8 million jobs in Mexico across numerous sectors including farming, retail, manufacturing, and artisans. While somehow the US can subsidize its farmers to the tune of $11 billion (annually I think), NAFTA eliminates protective tariffs that used to keep US crops more expensive in Mexico. Add to that our superior productivity and bingo!, we've conquered the Mexican grocery shoppers. While the average cost per hour of a Mexican factory worker is $2.82, the average in China is now 70 cents p/hr. In Monterrey, Mexico, 80,000 factory workers have lost their jobs as corporations have moved to ever cheaper locations. Another speaker at the forum told us about a community in Mexico, famous for its tequila products. They make a good living there and nobody has ever left to illegally cross into the US.

Obviously, if we focused more on helping third world countries raise their standard of livings we wouldn't have the flow of impovershed people coming to the U.S. to clean our homes, trim our grass, and flip our burgers. Some of that translates to FAIR trade rather than FREE trade agreements. Debt forgiveness, an end to agribusiness subsidies, a world minimum wage, and a world MAXIMUM wage were all mentioned by Hobbs on the solutions side of the equation.

Regarding political refugees, there are now 12 million people worldwide who are languishing in refugee camps. This doesn't impact the U.S. as much because most of them are an ocean away from our Statue of Liberty. For example, there are now 1 million Iraqis displaced by the war. So far, the U.S. has decided to allow 7,000 into our country. During the Reagan years when Salvadorans and Nicaraguans would come to escape death squads, we'd send them back if we caught them, because we were supporting the governments that spawned those death squads.

As is often the case, the average age at this kind of event was over 60. At least the room was packed with over 200 gray heads.