Another way

The people want something better.

“This is a protest song,” said British actor Hugh Laurie at the start of a particularly inspired bit on last week’s episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Doing his best Bob Dylan imitation, Laurie sang:

“When the poor keep getting hungry, and the rich keep getting fat. Politicians change, but they’re never gonna change that. Girl we’ve got the answer; it’s so easy you won’t believe. All we got to do is…” He then mumbles incoherently.

Get it? Republican or Democrat, right or left — with the options before voters Tuesday, it seems all but impossible to fix a nation plagued by war, greed and injustice. The system, a democracy no less, just won’t allow it.

But don’t abandon hope just yet. There is another way, say members of the California Green Party who want your vote Tuesday.

And in Pasadena’s left-leaning congressional and state Assembly districts, there are two who are not only making a point; they’re running to win.

Bill Paparian, an attorney who served as a Pasadena City Council member for 12 years, is running for Congress to pull the plug on the unpopular and deadly occupation of Iraq. He also wants to bring impeachment proceedings against President Bush for misleading the country in the lead-up to war as well as for the administration’s constitutionally questionable torture and domestic spying programs.

Ricardo Costa, a union film projectionist and anti-war activist, is running for state Assembly to better fund education, support universal health insurance and promote affordable housing while cutting out tax loopholes for millionaires and mega-corporations.

Like other Greens, both have on principle rejected corporate campaign funding — which, according to Green gubernatorial candidate and eco-friendly financial planning wizard Peter Camejo, is the very evil that corrupts Sacramento and Washington and why no matter who gets elected nothing ever really seems to change.

Follow the money

When it comes to causes like Social Security, Medicare and the environment, Paparian’s rival, incumbent Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, is actually pretty progressive. He’s also regarded by most people as a very likeable guy.

But when it comes to the Iraq War, the former federal prosecutor has met with criticism from constituents for supporting the invasion of Iraq and the war on terrorism.

While Schiff has recently backed a gradual withdrawal, or redeployment, of troops from the region — and this following his calls for congressional oversight of domestic spying programs associated with the war on terrorism — his commitment to what Paparian characterizes as the policies of imperialism is written all over his contributors list.

While Schiff’s financial backers, according to Federal Elections Commission reports, range from the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO to Hollywood movie studios to telecom giants AT&T, he has accepted tens of thousands of dollars from companies and political committees directly associated with Iraq and the Bush-led war on terrorism.

Schiff, whose campaign had a reported $1.4 million on Oct. 18, has received $13,000 from Pasadena’s Parsons Corp., which is under investigation for allegedly botching one of its several lucrative Iraq rebuilding contracts, and its officers.

Schiff has also received military-industrial complex sponsorship from General Electric ($3,500), a political action committee, or PAC, for Northrup Grumman employees ($1,000), Boeing ($2,000) and Raytheon ($6,000). Raytheon manufactures the guidance systems for the bunker-buster bombs used during the recent shelling of Lebanon, according to reports.

A committee for the more socially and economically conservative Blue Dog Democrats, of which Schiff is a member, gave $10,000.

The National Action Committee, which according to its Web site backs candidates who “support the war on terrorism” and favor American military support for Israel that includes the development of “advanced military systems,” gave Schiff $2,000.

A committee for News America – FOX (the people who gave us Bill O’Reilly) gave $4,000.

To Paparian, all of this is outrageous.

“Schiff has been bought and paid for by the defense industry, and he’s certainly no different from many other Democrats and Republicans in this regard,” he said.

Schiff’s list of Democratic endorsers is enormous: Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Assembly members Carol Liu and Judy Chu, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and majorities of council and school board members throughout the 29th Congressional District.

‘A new America’

Despite a near media blackout on coverage of his campaign in corporate-owned dailies like the Pasadena Star-News, the Glendale News-Press and the Burbank Leader, Paparian has gained notice through this newspaper, USA Armenian Life magazine and a number of public appearances at anti-war rallies and teach-ins.

Although he’s raised only about $30,000 for his campaign, Paparian, a father of three, feels endorsements from area activists and the anti-war community make up in moral goodness what he’s missing in money.

On Saturday, he spoke with activist Cindy Sheehan and “Born on the 4th of July” author Ron Kovic at a war protest in Hollywood, getting cheers from the crowd for explaining his re-entry into politics after six years: “I don’t want to see my sons used as cannon fodder, as so many brave sons and daughters of our nation have already become.”

Following that speech, fellow Marine Corps vet Kovic endorsed Paparian.

“Never have the stakes been higher. He represents that change, that new approach, that sanity that this country needs right now and that willingness to cooperate rather than bomb and kill and create even more terrorists and a greater threat to the United States. Bill represents a new America and a new opportunity for all of us,” Kovic said.

Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in Iraq and made headlines camping in front of Bush’s Texas home, also spoke highly of Paparian’s candidacy.

“I think we need to vote for people who reflect our values, not the lesser of two evils, no matter what party they are,” she said.

Aside from prominent members of the anti-war movement, Paparian has captured the endorsements of prominent Democrats fed up with party leadership, most notably civil rights activist and developer Danny Bakewell, who contributed $500 to the campaign as well as the endorsement of his LA Sentinel newspaper.

“He understands that war is not the answer. He understands that we need employment,” said Bakewell, who described Paparian as “a tremendous friend to the African-American and Latino communities” at a recent Paparian fund-raiser.

$tate of denial

When it comes to ending corporate influence over the decision-making process, Costa and Camejo believe that changing the world starts with changing Sacramento.

To Costa, there really isn’t all that much difference between his Republican opponent, area businessman Scott Carwile, and La Cañada Flintridge City Councilman and Democratic Assembly candidate Anthony Portantino.

Portantino, current Democrat Assemblywoman Carol Liu’s choice to replace her after she terms out of office, is, like Schiff, endorsed by several prominent Democratic Party leaders as well as area city council and school board members.

His campaign has been able to spend more than $700,000, according to state records, thanks to contributors as diverse as the League of Conservation Voters, movie studios, AT&T and unions. But there’s also cash from a committee representing oil interests, thousands of dollars from health care and developer PACs, $1,500 from Defense Department suppliers Raytheon, money from the drug company GlaxoSmithKline and nearly $20,000 from insurance companies and related PACs.

At a recent debate, Portantino was asked about the universal health insurance bill that Gov. Schwarzenegger recently vetoed, and responded that Democrats should craft a bill the governor would sign.

“It’s like it’s not his job to help get the bill reintroduced and keep shoving it down the governor’s throat until he has to sign it or it has an unvetoable majority. Doing what the people actually want is out of the question. Business-as-usual politicians have to speak for their corporate masters,” said Costa, who has a 2-year-old son.

“The main thing is cutting the corporations out of the decision-making loop. The elite, the super-wealthy, can take care of themselves, and they certainly don’t need the help of government,” he said.

Costa describes himself as pro-small business, and believes so-called business-friendly policies that favor corporate interests are akin to “being tough on crime but supporting the mafia.”

Perhaps his biggest issue, however, is Paparian’s: the war in Iraq.

Although some, including Portantino, have said it’s more a federal than a state issue, Costa believes working to end the war as well as supporting Assemblyman Paul Koretz’s resolution calling for impeachment of Bush are key ways of improving California.

“Anyone who wants to know if Iraq is a local issue,” said Costa, “should just read The Count in your paper,” which details taxpayer costs and casualties of the war and can by found on page 4.

“If anyone thinks [the Pasadena Unified School District] would still be closing schools if we had that money in our coffers, they’re just lying to themselves. We might as well ask the Air Force to drop one of those bombs that we paid for on one of the middle schools we closed. It’s criminal, and that’s why it’s an Assembly issue.”

Fair taxes!

The corporate dominance of California’s political system is costing you money, argues Camejo, who has run for governor three times in the past six years and came in fourth during the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis and was Ralph Nader’s running mate in 2004.

Among his top priorities is, like Costa, closing the gap in per-pupil education spending and rewriting the tax code to do it.

On the way to Los Angeles International Airport after a meeting with Paparian and Costa last week in Glendale, a very animated Camejo proved himself a gifted numbers cruncher by literally ripping the oppressive state tax code to pieces — and all over a Jumbo Jack and Diet Coke in this reporter’s beat-up Oldsmobile.

“Why are we 49th in class size and 48th in test scores? We spend $1,000 less per student than the national average. Arnold is running an ad that says we are spending more on education than ever before. It’s not true at all. He’s not adjusting it for inflation or for population. Per pupil, we used to be $600 above the national average,” said Camejo. “But what I find shocking about it is that absolutely no one challenges it. The daily newspapers” — all of which have ignored Camejo since the recall, just as all other local news outlets have also buried Costa’s campaign — “have a million pages and could easily look up these facts, but they don’t. And [Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil] Angelides doesn’t say a tiddlywink!”

(Adjusted for inflation, he paused to point out, California’s current $6.75 minimum wage pales in comparison to 1968’s, which in today’s dollars would be worth $10.25.)

The solution: “Think about this fact: The richest people pay the lowest tax rate. They pay 7.2 percent. The poorest people in California pay 11.3 percent. It’s 7.2 for the rich; 11.3 for the poor. As bad as that is, the richest one percent has more income than 60 percent of our people. If the rich paid what the poorest people are paying, we would have $10 billion more. It would take us $6 billion to get above the national average for education per year,” said Camejo, who in 1976 ran for president as a member of the Socialist Party. “If a person made $1 million a year and they paid all the state taxes and all the federal taxes — which they don’t, but let’s say they did — they would have about $50,000 a month to live on. If you increase the taxes to what the poor people pay in California, they would have $47,200 to live on. There will be no suffering. And don’t forget this tax is deductible from the federal.”

As for Raytheon, Exxon and the insurance companies: “The rate at which corporations are now paying taxes has dropped 40 percent in the last 20 years. Where they used to pay about 9 percent, they’re now paying a little bit over 5 percent. A huge drop! If they paid what they used to pay 20 years ago, it would add $5 billion to the budget.”

So, “We’ve been cutting back programs, closing down after-school activities, closing schools — all of that’s unnecessary. You could stop all the rises in tuition for students in college,” Camejo, who works as a financial investment planner for funds that invest only in socially and ecologically responsible companies, then concluded.

‘Flush’ the attitude

How come the supposedly pro-people Democrats, who controlled the state for years before Schwarzenegger, never changed any of this?

“You don’t present bills that are going to piss off the people who funded your campaign. The lobbyists run Sacramento,” said Camejo. “This is really a corrupt system. It’s broken, but it’s not clear and obvious. The Democrats are very similar to the Republicans on this. They just respond to different sets of lobbyists.”

Costa, Paparian and Camejo are all supporting the California Nurses Association-backed Proposition 89, which would limit the amount of money that any donor could give to any single candidate.

Others, including a few longtime Democrats, say they want to change all this, too.

“We’ve got to flush this attitude that we can’t beat the incumbent, that a party that is not the Democrat or Republican Party cannot win,” said Bakewell, a past president of the Brotherhood Crusade, during his endorsement speech for Paparian.

“We’ve got to start getting out the message that these two parties are corrupt and represent money, not people,” said Camejo. “It’s like the early abolitionists who started the Liberty Party. They ran for office and said they would no longer vote for a party that is pro-slavery. What we’re saying is we’re no longer going to vote for these parties that are helping to destroy the world.”