Division and disagreement

Falling victim to their extreme dominance in statewide politics, an increasing number of Democrats have sharpened their blades against one another this election season — driving uncomfortable wedges between minority groups that have long formed the bedrock of the Democrats’ broad coalition. “The racial and ethnic overtones of politics in California, the country’s most diverse state, surfaced again last week,” the Sacramento Bee observed. “Two Democratic Assembly incumbents, Mike Gipson and Cheryl Brown, both of whom are black, are facing challenges from Latina opponents within their own party.”

“The challenges to Brown and Gipson are motivated by their stances on environmental legislation, not race. But the prospect of unseating two black incumbents, with African Americans’ share of the state’s population dwindling, stirred concern.”

Elsewhere, some Democrats have found themselves in hot water for departing too far or too often from party orthodoxy — a dangerous move in increasingly partisan and populist times. In California’s 7th District, for instance, Rep. Ami Bera has begun to lose key support within his own party, thanks to votes roiling labor and other elements of California Democrats’ liberal base. “Bera’s votes on issues such as Syria refugees and trade are coming under intense examination as local Democrats debate withholding endorsement from him in his re-election race against Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, a Republican,” McClatchy reported. “Last week, the Elk Grove-South County Democratic Club, Bera’s home club, voted against endorsing him.”

Brown’s balancing act

In his State of the State speech this month, Gov. Jerry Brown sought to ameliorate some intraparty divides while holding fast to others. “Legislative Democrats say they can spend some of California’s budget surplus on expanded government services without disrupting Gov. Jerry Brown’s push for fiscal restraint,” as the Sacramento Bee also reported, while Brown urged them “instead to focus on paying down debts and liabilities incurred in the past.” But Brown didn’t mention the multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project that has been one of his marquee projects, despite arousing the frustration of environmentalists to his left who believed cap-and-trade money should not be spent on the system.

A recent Field poll revealed that a modest but sharply critical segment of Democrats appear to have turned their backs on Brown. Fully 17 percent said a description of Brown as having “the right experience to deal with the problems facing California” applied “not at all,” while 18 percent took the same dim view of the claim that Brown “has the vision to lead California into the future.” At the same time, over 40 percent of Democrat respondents agreed at least somewhat with the idea that Brown favors too many unaffordable projects and isn’t doing enough to help average Californians.

But Brown has consolidated support, despite sometimes unorthodox policies, to an unprecedented degree in California politics. At a time when Democrats nationwide have become increasingly split over whether to embrace Hillary Clinton as their nominee, Brown’s name has perennially appeared in conversations about where they might look for an alternative to both Clinton and Sanders. Despite Brown’s refusal to play along, he has been floated once again — by New York City liberals, according to Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen. “Their pet conspiracy theory is that President Barack Obama so detests Hillary Clinton — and worries about her ability to win in November and preserve his agenda — that his Justice Department will indict her this spring on charges of breaching national security in the email scandal,” he wrote at the Sacramento Bee. “Exit a wounded Hillary, enter a prominent Democrat to rescue the party — none other than California’s governor.”

This is no surprise. California was home to the largest protest over police brutality in U.S. history: the 1992 riots after a Simi Valley jury mostly cleared four LAPD officers for their videotaped beating of Rodney King.

But do the Democrats these Californians elect to office ever do anything about it? Do they pass laws cracking down on police misconduct or encouraging outside investigations when there are credible examples of a police department treating minority communities with hostility?

I know of no substantive policies of this kind enacted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature in the past 20 years. After a 2006 court decision (Copley Press v. Superior Court) further insulated law enforcement officers from accountability, activists attempted to get the Legislature to rewrite state law. They got nowhere. The result:

An investigation by ColorLines and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute has found that the decision, combined with state laws that protect police privacy, has blocked the public from knowing whether local police officers have engaged in misconduct, or a pattern of misconduct, even when such misconduct involves officers inappropriately shooting civilians. …

“Now, you don’t have to worry that your dirty laundry or allegations about your dirty laundry will be on the front page of the newspaper,” the attorney representing the local Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Everett Bobbitt, said at the time. In her dissent, Justice Kathryn Werdegar argued in a dissenting opinion that the ruling “overvalues” police officers’ privacy concerns, and “undervalues the public’s interest in disclosure.”

Combined, Copley and the Bill of Rights mean California has the tightest restrictions on public access to police disciplinary information in the country. “Copley differs greatly from laws in the rest of the country,” said Philip Eure, the head of the District of Columbia’s Office of Police Complaints and a former president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Copley, Eure said, is “rather extreme” in its public records restrictions and has “caused alarm in the oversight community.”

Issue a focus of elected Dems in New York

Now of course not just Democrats but Republicans and independents should be worried about police misconduct or mistreatment of minority groups. But in California, it is Democrats who have the political power and Democrats who have a strong hold on the support of African-Americans and Latinos — the groups most likely to cite systemic police mistreatment.

So why don’t elected Golden State Dems do anything about this issue?

One reason is plain: The huge political power of police unions, which are courted by both parties.

One reason should be plain but isn’t: The assumption of California’s elected Democrats that African-Americans and Latinos will always vote for them, so they don’t have to tend to their concerns about cops.

Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York after a campaign in which he directly addressed the concerns of black voters about police behavior. He may not be following through on his rhetoric, but he at least he brought up the issue. It remains a big issue with the progressive bloc on the New York City Council.

Will an elected California Democrat take the issue and run with it? We shall see.

African-American students are less likely to graduate college with degrees in high-tech fields. This is not because of a lack of interest in these fields. It appears to be due to  higher rates of attrition:

“A new report from the U.S. Department of Education shows that more than one half of all African Americans who enter bachelor’s degree programs in STEM-related disciplines either drop out of college or change majors and graduate with a degree in a non-STEM field.”

The reasons for these facts can be endlessly debated. It’s easy to see why someone would look at this and say it’s a shame. It’s also easy to see why people of a certain mind-set would look at this and say it’s a failing of society.

But if you know these facts, it is preposterous to look at the paucity of African-Americans working in Silicon Valley tech jobs and cry “apartheid.” That, of course, is just what Jesse Jackson is doing:

“’This valley is driving the industrial growth of America – in fact, it’s driving global growth,’ Jackson said. But while people of color constitute a huge part of the marketplace for tech products and services, he said, they’re woefully underrepresented in the sector’s executive offices and boardrooms. …

“Jackson on Thursday contended minorities still are being shut out of many of Silicon Valley’s opportunities. He scoffed at the idea that there aren’t enough minorities entering the industry with appropriate training: ‘It’s almost insulting to suggest they can’t be found.’”

That’s from a Bay Area News Group political blog. It noted that the first time Jackson depicted Silicon Valley as a hotbed of racism for not hiring African-American techies, Cypress Semiconductors CEO T.J. Rodgers gave him grief.

The Silicon Valley CEO who stood up to Jackson

I dug up some of the coverage. This is from an amazing L.A. Times article on March 13, 2001:

“T.J. Rodgers, president and CEO of Cypress Semiconductors in San Jose, has a different view after Jackson’s recent efforts to promote diversity and raise money in Silicon Valley.

“‘It’s a shakedown,’ Rodgers said. ‘The basic shakedown mechanism is, he declares racism based on dubious statistics. Then he gives you a chance to repent–and the basic way is to give Jesse money. The threat is you’ll be labeled a racist if you don’t. That scares business leaders.’

“Rodgers and Jackson squared off last spring during Jackson’s first concerted effort to promote minority hiring and raise money in Silicon Valley. Rodgers argued that the high-tech industry was much more racially diverse than Jackson was suggesting. After the two traded barbs in the local paper, Jackson’s local office dubbed Rodgers a racist and Cypress Semiconductors a ‘white supremacist hate group.'”

As the article chronicled, Rodgers had a far better case that Jackson was a shakedown artist than Jackson’s case that the Silicon Valley was akin to the Jim Crow South.

“… corporations have paid handsomely to get Jackson off their backs.

“In February 1997, Viacom sought permission to sell 10 radio stations for $ 1.1 billion to two other companies. Rainbow/PUSH filed a petition to block the transfer, contending that Viacom had reneged on a prior commitment to sell some broadcast properties to minorities.

“Following negotiations with Rainbow/PUSH, Viacom and the two buyers donated $ 2 million to create a fund to promote minority ownership of broadcast properties. About a third of the money was overseen by a trustee, David Dinkins, former mayor of New York and a longtime Jackson associate. Dinkins later was replaced by the Washington lawyer and lobbyist Warner H. Session.

“None of the money went to Rainbow/PUSH, per se. Such a payment might have violated the FCC’s ‘greenmail’ rule, which prohibits an opponent of a license transfer from receiving money, even indirectly, in exchange for withdrawing the complaint. Nevertheless, Session later awarded $ 680,000 to [Jackson’s] Citizenship Education Fund to run two conferences.

“Jackson’s group ended its opposition, and the FCC approved the deal. …”

Still more corporations who paid Jesse to quiet down

Wait, there’s more!

“What concerns some critics is the appearance of a connection between corporate donations to Jackson’s organizations and a change in Jackson’s position.

“In February 1999, attorneys for about 13,000 minority Boeing employees had been trying for nearly a year to negotiate a settlement in a racial discrimination lawsuit. Jackson flew to Seattle, met with Boeing head Phil Condit and performed the task in a couple of days.

“But 1,700 of the plaintiffs later formally opposed the settlement as too soft, and some questioned the company’s relationship with Jackson.

“Within days of the settlement Jackson negotiated, Boeing made the first of several contributions to the Citizenship Education Fund, a donation of $ 50,000. That was nothing compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds that, a few months later, Boeing sent to be managed by a handful of minority investment banks, at least some of which have supported Jackson’s charities.”

Wait, there’s even more!

“Later in 1999, Jackson criticized the merger of AT&T and TCI. Jackson reversed his position after the companies pledged to hire a minority investment bank to help handle a massive $ 8-billion bond offer. Blaylock & Partners, headed by Jackson friend Ronald Blaylock, got the contract.

“Soon after, AT&T donated $ 425,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund. Blaylock & Partners donated $ 30,000 to the same fund in 1999.”

It’s pretty amazing that Jesse Jackson’s modus operandi is so flagrant, but that he’s still taken seriously. Good for T.J. Rodgers for standing up to him.

And, no, Jesse didn’t stop the shakedowns after the negative coverage in 2001. This is from two months ago. When you’ve got a lucrative gig going, why stop?