Candidate for
Member, Democratic Party County Central Committee; County of Los Angeles; Assembly District 42

COUNT ME OUT
By Brad Parker

WOW..... Now that was a season of darkness, wasn't it? Have you ever been witness to, let alone participant in, such a spectacle of bad intentions masquerading as representative governance? Why you would have to go to City hall or the State Capitol or Congress to find a rival flimflammery. In fact that's the genesis of this enforcement process. Oh excuse me, I meant to say endorsement process.

Like a tawdry pimp ginning up the Johns and Ho's, it glided from hood to hood in its flashy trashy vehicle spewing its silent killer fumes over the somnambulant crowd. Narrow self-interest is very seductive even to those of us vigilantly exorcising it from our modus operandi in favor of enlightened self-interest. One way or the other self-interest is part of our DNA. Like sleeping Buddhas we can awaken but only if we abandon our primal instruction to always make our narrow self-interests primary in our pursuits. We have to become aware of our actions and meditate upon the possibilities of the group responsibilities above our own so that we can grow into enlightened self-interest. It's no easy walk to freedom. But I digress.

Tammany Hall types in fact invented endorsement over a century ago to strong-arm constituents into toeing the line. It's a gangster process replete with thugs and bosses whirling around from meeting to meeting making sure you support their handpicked stooge. This is then foisted upon the vertiginous multitude as the "choice of the people". It's a scene out of the "Sopranos" not Philadelphia in "1776". Right now you're probably thinking that you weren't involved in that but you would be wrong, we are all complicit. Sometimes you liked the outcome and boasted that it was principled. Sometimes you decried the outcome and said it was rigged. In fact a very few were principled but the overwhelming majority were rigged. Coercion, innuendo, character assassination, threats, strong-arm tactics and banana republic style manipulation of appointed delegates along with secret society style recommendation committees rigged them. Ouch, is this the Da Vinci code in our midst? No, it is worse. It's dupes being duped. It's a three card Monte swindle by a bunch of grifters. I'm not talking about us, the peons. I'm talking about the patrons.

Corporate Cronies need a rigged system to keep the deception of representative government from being uncovered. In their narrow self-interest they have rigged every level of government to appear to be controlled by the vote when in fact it is manipulated by the money. What better way to keep all of the dogs in the kennel than to train them at an early age? Voila, the endorsement process. First you have enforcement, I meant to say endorsement, at the local level, Assembly Districts, clubs and chapters of national organizations. Then you repeat the indoctrination at the County Central Committee level and finally take it to the State level (I should say that the Federal Auction is actually the big enchilada) where any result not completed at lower levels can be institutionally guaranteed with clever rules and voluminous pronouncements and testimonials by the leadership. Plus, the people are deceived into believing they had a choice because a vote is taken. Sweet, huh? All the while the leadership is lining up those lucrative new lobbying jobs being offered by the "Candyman" (i.e. Corporate sponsors) that will help them make a soft landing into retirement. If you can't see this happening then I must assume that you are angling for a position in the leadership, as it is currently constituted, rather than making the effort to wake up and challenge the corporate plantation masters.

Perhaps the saddest chapter of this most recent saga drenched in sludge was the spectacle of Progressive friends clutching their long knives to deny each other one of these meaningless prizes. Principled players slugged it out in a fiesta of self-immolation. I presided over one of these trivialities blown up by bogus imaginary rewards and witnessed good people caught in a bad system, as Tom Hayden has remarked, marching determinedly into a ditch of exasperated hollowed out grimness. What a waste.

For my part, I will not participate in the endorsement process. Further, I will do everything in my power to organize against the process in every organization I am a member of unless it is radically altered to restore fairness. I refuse to be manipulated into Hobbesian choices by the Corporate vultures picking at the bones of the Republic. I am proud to be a member of Valley Democrats United, which steadfastly refuses to hold one of these chicaneries. I am equally proud to have not been endorsed by any organization in my Los Angeles County Central Committee race. I leave it to the people, the citizens, and the voters to decide my fate in this race. Win or lose, I can live with the outcome of their choice. What I cannot live with is this divisive, maniacal, arcane, insidious, vituperative and undemocratic banana republic circus of so-called endorsement, which stands for enforcement and makes a thinking caring person want to vomit. I'll have to take many showers to get the foul stench of this process off of me. How about you?

Brad Parker
Valley Democrats United, Exec. Bd.
Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, Vice Pres.
CDP, Voter Services Committee
CDP, Progressive Caucus, Officer. riozen@riozen.com