Foreclosure King Rules Orange County Republican Party

With Orange County’s real estate and mortgage industry-driven economy in shambles and local home foreclosures on the rise, you might think that our Republican politicians would want to distance themselves from those who are profiting from the misery of Orange County voters who have lost or are about to lose their homes.

Not so.

The Orange County Business Journal recently featured a glowing cover article on local Republican contributor, fundraiser, and king-maker Dale Dykema, founder and chief executive of Santa Ana-based T.D. Service Financial Corp, which bills itself as “one of the nation’s largest and most successful” foreclosure processing firms.

Not surprisingly, Dykema’s firm is “looking at record profits this year amid the foreclosure wave.”

According to the Business Journal, Dykema has helped lenders foreclose on more than 450,000 homes, and expects the current foreclosure crisis to make this his best year ever, with his company taking in more than $70 million in foreclosure fees.

Dykema also expects his good fortune to continue as the local economy tanks.

As Dykema told the Business Journal, “It takes time for the foreclosures to hit after the economy dropped. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hit a peak next year for this time around.”

The focus of the Business Journal article, however, was not on Dykema’s success as a foreclosure-profiteer or his record profits, but on his role as an Orange County GOP king-maker.

Dykema, the Business Journal explained, “has helped GOP congressmen get elected with money and campaign advice. His beneficiaries include nearly all of the county’s congressional delegation: John Campbell, Ed Royce, Dana Rohrbacher, Ken Calvert, John Lewis, as well as former congressman and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox.”

According to the Campaign Money website, Dykema contributed $54,450 to Republicans in 2008.   He is also responsible for raising many thousands more from others.

Of course, all of the current GOP congressmen on this list voted against the stimulus legislation intended to relieve the economic crisis from which Dykema is profiting.

All of them oppose efforts to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

And all of them, including former congressman Chris Cox, were instrumental in creating the deregulated mortgage mess that lead to the foreclosure crisis in the first place.

Amidst the rubble of Orange County’s housing market, Dykema and his Orange County Republican cronies can be proud of helping at least one business expand:

Dykema’s.

Biting the Hand that Feeds You: More Republican Hypocrisy

“And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”
Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity

You might think that Orange County’s Republican elected officials would be caught between a rock and hard place in the current economic crisis.

With the local economy in shambles, home values crashing, foreclosures on the rise, unemployment skyrocketing and good jobs scarcer than Republican fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you might think that the staunch and total opposition of Orange County Republicans to President Obama’s stimulus efforts would be, at the least, a political embarrassment.

But then you would underestimate the shameless hypocrisy of Orange County’s Republican establishment.

In her most recent online newsletter, Republican Orange County Supervisor Pat Bates (District 5) makes the following incredible claim:

“Orange County Projects Receive Stimulus Funds

A number of significant environmental enhancement and flood management projects in Orange County will receive vital support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the Federal stimulus program.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced more than $50 million will be spent in Orange County on projects selected based on their anticipated economic and environmental return. The projects selected for funding include:

• $26,550,000 to complete channel improvements on the lower Santa Ana River within Orange County
• $1,000,000 for mitigation related to the Seven Oaks Dam, which provides flood protection to Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties
• $17,363,000 to complete plans and specifications and award a construction contract for the environmental restoration of Upper Newport Bay
• $5,265,000 for needed maintenance for the Santa Ana River, Carbon Canyon Dam, Prado Dam and Fullerton Dam
• $500,000 for a Dana Point Harbor breakwater study to identify and recommend any repairs to the breakwater/jetties and improve water quality.

The approval of funding for these projects is great news for Orange County. Orange County residents will directly benefit from these improvements and the Federal support is greatly appreciated. Our success is the result of great teamwork involving our County staff, our representatives in Washington and many city and community leaders.”

In informing her constituents of this “great news,” Bates does not mention the fact that all of “our [Republican] representatives in Washington” voted against Obama’s economic stimulus legislation, including these very projects.

Nor does she mention the fact that all of Orange County’s Republican “city and community leaders” have been vocally attacking the stimulus package as an evil socialist plot to destroy capitalism.

And Bates does not mention the fact that every penny of the more than $50 million that she is so grateful that Orange County will receive from the stimulus package will come from — dare we say it – taxes.

What Bates should have said is the “great teamwork involving our Republican County staff, our Republican representatives in Washington and many Republican city and community leaders failed to prevent President Obama and the Democrats from passing the federal stimulus package – and thank God for that.”

Of course, Bates won’t say it.

But the voters in Orange County should.

Golden State Hooverism: How the Republican Party is Destroying California

California’s state government has been vandalized and those responsible for the damage are not difficult to identify.

Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman wrote recently in the New York Times that while “No modern American president would repeat the fiscal mistake of 1932, in which the federal government tried to balance its budget in the face of a severe recession . .  . the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers — state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.”

Of the nation’s fifty governors, Krugman singled out California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for special criticism: “Arnold Schwarzenegger, in particular, deserves some jeers. He became governor in the first place because voters were outraged over his predecessor’s budget problems, but he did nothing to secure the state’s fiscal future — and he now faces a projected budget deficit bigger than the one that did in Gray Davis.”

The cause of Cailifornia’s budget crisis is the fundamental policy assumptions of the Republican Party:

· No to government regulation of markets and the economy.

·  No to taxes, even in order to fund essential government programs.

Nearly every crisis that California and the nation is now facing can be traced to Republican adherence to these principles – including our current budget gridlock, our crumbling infrastructure, our failing schools, our exploding prison and homeless populations, our shameful neglect of children and elders, and our inequitable and dysfunctional heath care system.

Here in Southern California’s Orange County – which, while it can no longer legitimately call itself “America’s Most Republican County,” voted this November for John McCain and returned local Republicans to office despite the the havoc caused by the failed economic and social policies of the Republican Party – Republican policies are devastating local communities and crippling public schools and social services.

Especially hard hit have been Orange County’s children.  Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed to balance the state’s budget by cutting billions of dollars from our public schools and community colleges, resulting in thousands of teacher layoffs and severe reductions in much needed programs and services.

As Diane Grey, a teacher in the Capistrano Unified School District, said, the budget cuts have already left her with and her fellow teachers with “No copy paper. No ink cartridges for computers. No hall passes for kids to go to the bathroom. No index cards for activities/learning. No scantrons for tests. No pens. No overhead transparencies. No nothing! In other words, nothing to do our jobs!”  Or as Susan Ross, a teacher from Northern California, said, “What more can we cut? Heat? Light? Water?”

The Republican economic and budget crisis has also lead to a drastic increase in homeless school children in Orange County. The latest figures from the Orange County Department of Education show that for the 2007-2008 school year there were 16,422 homeless students – a 20 percent increase from the previous school year’s total of 13,130.

Yet now comes the news that our Republican officials are expected this week to order crippling layoffs in the Orange County Social Services Agency, where Republican budget cutters are seeking to eliminate $30 million from the department that serves the region’s neediest and most vulnerable.

According to the Orange County Register, “Of the 4,218 Social Services employees, 193 vacant positions will be eliminated. Another 110 probationary employees and 100 permanent workers will be pink slipped as well, effective Jan. 19. The remaining employees may be forced to take off two weeks sans pay to balance the books. The jobs that will be hit the hardest are the ones that work directly with the disadvantaged.”

As a result,  Orange County will soon cut or eliminate programs that help prevent child and senior abuse and neglect, find jobs for people on welfare, and provide child care services to working parents.

As Paul Krugman noted, the Obama administration will not be able to rescue America from recession (or worse) so long as state government – and in particular, the government of California — is still dominated by the failed policies of the Republican Party.

It’s time to end Hooverism in The Golden State.

Why I’m NOT Giving to National Public Radio

Southern California’s public radio station, KPCC-FM (89.3), is in the midst of an on-air fund raising drive.  I won’t be contributing, and here’s why:

During the past election campaign, KPCC repeatedly refused to give air time on it’s talk shows (in particular, Larry Mantle’s Air Talk and the Patt Morrison show) to Democratic candidates in Orange County who were challenging Republican incumbents.  At the same time, Orange County Republican Representative John Campbell (48th CD) was featured several times on KPCC, explaining and defending his vote in favor of the massive federal bailout of financial institutions.

No one on KPCC questioned Campbell on the incongruity of his vote in favor of giving billions of dollars to financial institutions, while consistently voting against nearly every other expenditure of federal funds, including funds for a local desalinization plant and for veterans’ benefits.

Nor did KPCC permit Campbell’s Democratic opponent, Steve Young, who was against the bailout, to respond to Campbell.  Instead, KPCC insisted that before Young got any airtime, he would have to prove to KPCC that his candidacy was in a position to unseat Campbell.  Of course, it is more difficult to unseat an incumbent when only the incumbent gets free access to the public airwaves.

Since KPCC has shown that it is no friend of Democrats and progressives in Orange County, I will not be contributing to its fund raising campaign.

I also suggest that other Democrats and progressives in Orange County give their money to causes and organizations that are more responsive and even-handed.

“Most Republican County in USA” Going for Obama

Good vibrations:

Local Republicans have proudly called Orange County, California, where I live, “The Most Republican County in the USA” on the basis of delivering George W. Bush the nation’s largest margin of victory in raw votes in 2004.

What else would you expect from the home of Mickey Mouse, the Beach Boys, the Richard Nixon Library and Museum and John Wayne Airport?

But change is coming, and coming fast, to our sunshine and subprime paradise.

Republican voter registration is falling dramatically throughout California, including Orange County.

According to the Orange County Register, “Republicans have dramatically lost ground among new California voters, particularly the young, in the past five years. . .  Republicans eventually could fall to third place in party preference, behind Democrats and the growing number of voters who choose no party at all. Even in Orange County, the state’s Republican heartland, more people registered as Democrats than as Republicans last year and this year.”

“Among current California voters, 37.7 percent of those who registered before 2000 became Republicans. That dropped to 26.6 percent among voters who registered in the past five years – and just 21.9 percent this year. In Orange County, among current voters, 52.3 percent of those who registered before 2000 were Republicans. That dropped to 39.2 percent in the past five years – and 31.4 percent this year.”

And there is even worse news for John McCain in a currently on-going Orange County Register poll.

The poll asks online readers to choose between (1) Republican voting for McCain, (2) Democrat voting for Obama, (3) Democrat voting for McCain, and (4) Republican voting for Obama.

The current results (as of 5:13 p.m. Pacific Time) are:

• Republican voting McCain – 37%
• Democrat voting Obama – 37%
• Democrat voting McCain – 5%
• Republican voting Obama – 22%

That’s 59% Republican, but also 59% for Obama.

59% for Obama in “The Most Republican County in the USA” is not good news for John McCain.

“Good, good, good, good vibrations…”