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Letter to the Daily Bulletin RE: Campaign Finance Reform


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Larry Hernandez

Fri Feb 12 2010, 04:53AM

Registered Member #6

Joined: Mon Jun 29 2009, 02:44AM
Posts: 21

Below is my latest point of view to the Daily Bulletin in response to the breaking news of arrests and possible further action in the County deal with Colonies Partnership. My tone is not outright partisanship because that would be sheer hubris. This could easily have been something happening in a county that is effectively run by Democrats, like Cook County in Illinois. Good government is a unifying issue and could help to loosen some of the TEA bag folk away from being unwilling pawns of the GOP and its corporate backers.

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The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Point of View
February 12, 2010

Dear Editor:

In light of the recent arrests and charges leveled against members of the San Bernardino County Republican machine, and the strong possibility of further action against so-far unidentified co-conspirators looming, the rot in Washington and Sacramento has now become the rot in our own backyard. The fate of over a hundred million of our scarce tax dollars are currently at stake, and if we do not rectify the local laissez-faire attitude towards big and small political corruption, such as what is involved in the Colonies Partners settlement deal, many hundreds of millions more will follow soon enough.

People are waking up and they are angry. Across the American political spectrum, from the far right to the far left, and all points in between, one thing is coming to unite us all. We all have accepted the all-too-clear evidence that those we elect to serve us, be they Republican or Democrat, from the White House to the local council-person, much too often decide public matters, and the use of public monies, with the interests of big campaign donors first, second and third in mind. If the general public good enters into the mix, it is somewhere far down the line, below partisan considerations and pleasing the base (whatever that is). Of course, not everyone in elected office is criminally corrupt, indeed, most are not; but it is very fair to think that nearly all know of it, tolerate it, and don’t act to expose or rectify it. They seem to shrug at it as if saying: “It’s Chinatown.”

And the situation will only get worse, once corporations start to take advantage of the new freedom to flood all kinds of elections with campaign donations and self-serving advertisements. They can’t be stopped and why should we even try? The problem is not that the Jeff Burums of this nation and now, the world, give truckloads of money to our politicians; it is that our politicians are largely free to take the money, either directly or laundered, as apparently much of the corrupt money flowing into local races is. We can’t effectively change the predatory behavior of the many wannabe Masters of the Universe among us, but we can and should severely limit the ability of public servants to take the money flowing towards them.

Let us, as a county and in our own cities, demand limits on individual campaign contributions to all candidates, as Claremont has. Furthermore, let us restrict the ability of people on the public payroll or their family members to form or benefit from political action committees or all other ingenious devices of laundering payoff monies. And to prevent a deferred payoff, let us also severely jam-up the revolving door between leaving public service and taking a position with any firm doing business with local or county government. Such an action may limit the pool of applicants, but it will effectively winnow out the money-chasers from those truly committed to public service. Today, the mood is to thrown the bums out, and many should go. But if the existing system of campaign finance and related matters is not radically fixed, then nothing will have changed.

No one is forced at gunpoint to stand for election or to take a public job, therefore, if the people demand the erection of a wall between their servants and big money, accept it or resign. Let us have a government that we can trust and that works for us.

Larry Hernandez


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