What If County Supervisor Vargas Became a Republican?

Dream Big takes on a Whole New Meaning (because working with Democratic constituencies is too hard) if she would actualize this impulse, made public today with texts and social media messages made.

Today, Words & Deeds published an open letter signed by eight prominent political and labor activists condemning County Supervisor Nora Vargas hypocrisy concerning the controversial hiring process for a new County Administrative Office. 

The document includes texts and conversations from What’s App purported to be the Supervisor views on race, organized labor, and activists. Needless to say, they don’t portray Vargas in a positive light.

The open letter is a response to criticisms and calls for the resignation of Labor Council leader Brigette Browning for using racially charged terms during 30 seconds of an hours-long rally calling for reopening the county hiring search.

What I see as the premise for these quoted statements is that Supervisor Vargas was / is frustrated by the demands of her job. 

I know she was NOT being serious in voicing that desire; I HOPE that’s not a deep seated urge.

Think about it. Four years of progress in County governance would grind to a halt, as the motivations for watering down priorities came to light.

Look who she’d be hanging out with, metaphorically. First up there is no Republican Party in existence at this point. There is only the MAGA movement, which has attracted leaders who don’t believe in the rules of law.

Vargas, and everyone else who cares about governance of the people by the people should understand just how serious things are. It’s not about just choice or not; it’s about the air we breathe, the food we eat, our daily lives, and the future of the nation. By the time Vargas or someone like her got through all the exceptions needed to sustain her allegiance to the GOP they wouldn’t want her.

To be sure, there are those who dislike the former president who still claim to be Republicans, but the reality is that what’s left of the organization is completely dedicated to establishing an autocracy.

Laying waste to the checks and balances of representative democracy has emerged as the MAGA action agenda, thanks to the warped sense of reality common to (much of) the ultrawealthy, whose riches were enabled by decades of policy malfeasance based on the faulty premise that “the market” should be the final arbiter of economic and social progress.

Being a pro choice Republican is akin to being a carnivorous vegan. The thrust of every aspect of the many segments of the elephantine electorate leadership is denigrating democracy and placing the needs of the few over the needs of the many. 

This business over the twists and turns of hiring a County Administrative Officer arrived at a point where it should have been best just to start all over again. Having a County bureaucracy not operating in sync with the wishes of their elected leaders was what (I hope) we were trying to avoid.

JUST IN: A decision about the next County Administrative Officer has been made. The Union-Tribune described it as a unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors. The public will be informed on that decision on June 4.

I don’t know if Cindy Chavez, the Bay Area politician/labor leader originally offered the post, was the best person for the job. I don’t know that she was NOT the best person, either.

What we had here was a constituent faction trying to get their way with this appointment on the down-low (do tell, where was the transparency leading up to offering Chavez the post?). 

Now another constituent faction eliminated her candidacy for “reasons” on the down-low.

Via the Times of San Diego: "Building Industry Opposes Nominee from San Jose for Top County Administrator Role"

Frankly speaking, I’d rather have the builders and their buddies mad at me than screwing with the organization representing most county workers. And the real bottom line here is that the people with the most money may well have called the shots… so maybe Vargas is a Republican and just hasn’t told us?

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Thursday’s Other News to Think About

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Scenes From a MAGA Meltdown: Inside the “America First” Movement’s War Over Democracy by Andy Kroll at ProPublica

• What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s Republican insurgents believe democracy has been stolen, and they don’t trust the ability of democratic processes to restore it.

• This phenomenon is evident across the country, in Georgia and Nevada, in Arizona, Idaho and Florida. But it’s perhaps the starkest in Michigan, a place long associated with political pragmatism and a business-friendly GOP, embodied by governors George Romney, John Engler and, most recently, Rick Snyder. It was a son of Michigan, former President Gerald Ford, who once said, “I have never mistaken moderation for weakness, nor civility for surrender.”

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The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly by Mel Freilicher at The Jumping Off Place

•  “Benjamin Harrison Fletcher surely ranks among the greatest African Americans of his generation and top echelon of black unionists and radicals in all of US history”—the opening sentence of Peter Cole’s introduction.

• Fletcher “helped lead a pathbreaking union that likely was the most diverse and integrated organization (not simply union) despite the era’s rampant racism, anti-unionism and xenophobia.” Cole’s volume is intended to recognize this forgotten (“save for aficionados of black labor and radical history”) IWW organizer who in 1913, at age 23, became the leader of Philadelphia’s longshoremen, the last major port workforce to be unionized.  

• Famously, of course, the IWW advocated one big union, representing not just specific crafts, like the virtually all white AFL—and very much unlike them, dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism. The newly created Local 8 was initially composed of roughly one-third African Americans, one-third Irish and Irish-Americans, and one-third immigrants from other European countries. All work crews were thoroughly integrated and remained so during the 10 years the IWW dominated the Philadelphia waterfront.

• A young Ben Fletcher started working along the Philadelphia shore, joining the IWW in 1910 or ’11, and rapidly developing into an accomplished speaker or “soapboxer.” In 1913, approximately 4,000 Philadelphia longshoremen walked off their jobs: a little over half were African American, the remaining mostly Polish, Lithuanian, and Irish immigrants. Both AFL and IWW organizers quickly materialized, hoping to convince strikers to join their respective unions.

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The chopped steak eaters by Emily Atkin at HEATED

• It’s the chopped steak eaters who deserve our scrutiny: the relatively anonymous oilmen and oilwomen fueling Trump’s probably-ketchup-based gravy train, as well as countless other campaigns to reverse climate progress.

• The fossil fuel industry is Trump’s fifth-largest industry donor this election cycle, having already given $7.3 million to his campaign and associated groups, compared to $186,000 in support of Biden. The oil and gas industry has also poured another $6.4 million into a joint fundraising committee called Trump 47, which helps pay for some of Trump’s legal defense.

• That $7.3 million is at least three times more than what the fossil fuel industry gave Trump’s campaign by this period in 2020, according to OpenSecrets. And now that Trump’s made the ROI explicit, the industry is very likely about to give much more.