A Not-so-new Pledge - Can We Afford to Live by These Words and Deeds?

By Michael Monasky | November 22, 2016 |

The latest election of the city council contradicts the claim that Elk Grove is a culturally diverse city. None of the members of the Elk Grove City Council is a woman, and none lack a brick-and-mortar day job with great benefits. None are military veterans. These men represent what is white, business-as-usual, reassuring to establishment financiers, investors, speculators, and bosses who run this country behind the scenes. That's why these men get money from those men to run for office.

None of these elected officials represent despised minorities, like people from Mexico, Central America, the Middle East, or the Muslim religion. Even the Sikhs are excluded. Asians are the new whites (http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/asian.htm,) just as other, once despised immigrants were eventually accepted into the fold, like the Irish, the Polish, and even the Jews. That's why so many candidates did not fear endorsement from the likes of Darrell Steinberg, my old neighbor who sold the farm to raise cash for development; think Sacramento parking revenues and CEQA streamlining for the Golden One Arena. Our council hopes that they should get so lucky, and they have been...so far.

Yes, it's all about the money; and these obsequious sycophants bow in servile deference to those who bankroll their campaigns, obeisant to rich and powerful speculators, whose names form a litany from the public record of the Fair Political Practices Commission's periodic campaign finance reports. 

How do we solve the problem of inordinate capital influence in elections? Here's where the power of the state comes in; it commands when it forbids and requires. The very same FPPC should forbid money influence altogether, from any source, through and to any agency including the media, and to any candidate. It should require that local, regional, and state resources be used to conduct informational campaigns through the Internet, town halls, and real debates of the issues. 

The media outcry will be deafening; candidates pay outrageous sums of money to printers, the post office, radio, television, and other purveyors of influence to disseminate their names, faces, and silly slogans to your mailbox and electronic media. This stuff litters our landscape and defaces our neighborhoods with distracting street signage, while these moneyed campaigns fail to inform us at all.

The city clerk and county registrar of voters required a payment of $1,150 for a two-hundred word statement by council and mayoral candidates. They claimed it's to offset the cost of printing the local ballot book. A candidate can obtain a commercial website large enough for pictures and platforms for no charge at all. Such a website can be accessed by anyone, worldwide, at any time, free of charge. When will the city clerk and the county registrar of voters join the 21^st century digital world? 

In the meantime, I sadly propose a not-so-new Pledge of Allegiance to be recited before each council event by these conniving officials. In lieu of a salute or hand-on-the-heart, pledges will be performed in a stance where the upper body is flexed forward at ninety degrees, with a twenty-dollar bill at their feet. The object of their gaze will be the face of the enforcer of the Trail of Tears, President Andrew Jackson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act.)

Here is that not-so-new Pledge:

WE PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE CASH

THAT FUNDED OUR CAMPAIGNS

AND TO THE SPECULATORS

FOR WHICH THE BUILDING INDUSTRY STANDS;

THE VOTERS

SO MISLED

FLUMMOXED AND BAMBOOZLED

OUR THANKS THEY MADE IT POSSIBLE AT ALL