This week, there is a mad media scramble going on, with a number of competing narratives vying to be the top story of the week. Normally, the battle over the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee would easily be first, but our prez—never one to let anyone else get top billing—immediately jumped into the fray. He attacked his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for allowing two Republican congressmen—Duncan Hunter of California for misuse of campaign funds and Chris Collins of New York for some stock market violations—to be indicted. He clearly tweeted in his sarcastic “thanks, Jeff” tweet that the Justice Department should be indicting Democrats, not faithful Republicans, and poor Jeff was just not doing his job. The legal community gasped, members of the bench squirmed and poor Judge Kavanaugh can now expect another few hours of questioning on that particular subject. The Dems still smarting about the fact that Obama’s last nominee couldn’t get a hearing in the Senate in the 11 months between Scalia’s death and Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, so they are not in a very charitable mood and are preparing for a major battle to the death on the Kavanaugh nomination. And just to make the week that much more interesting, Robert Redford look-alike Bob Woodward, who practically achieved journalistic sainthood when he and Bernstein brought down the Nixon presidency, just released his new book about the Trump presidency, and as you might suspect, it apparently isn’t pretty. Plus the Silicon Valley heavyweights from Facebook, Google, Twitter et al. are coming into Washington, D.C., to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee, probably about Russian action in our election cycles, although they’d be lucky to make it to page three of the New York Times with all that’s going on this week.
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Locally, Labor Day meant the end of summer and our annual end-of-season event, the Malibu Chili Cook-Off, which is now being run by the Boys & Girls Club of Malibu and no longer the Kiwanis Club. No matter who sponsored the event, the crowds continued to come and I understood on Friday, the opening night, people had to wait over an hour to buy tickets. For a first-time try by the Boys & Girls Club, I thought it did fine and in time, it will work out all the kinks. Last year, under the sponsorship of the Kiwanis, the event raised over $100,000, which was distributed to many local charities. We should know soon how much money the Boys & Girls Club raised and where it’s going to be going.
I was curious and went back to look into the origins of Labor Day, which began in the 1880s in New York as a way of beefing up support for the growing labor movement. Labor relations in the late 1800s and early 1900s were bloody with paid thugs and cops that lined up on the side of the moneyed interests with clout as lots of new immigrants joined the labor force. In the ensuing 100-plus years, with the passage of child labor laws, minimum wage and hourly laws, and improvement in conditions, the labor force has gotten much of what it started out to get but, in the process, has lost a great deal of its political clout in many places. In the early 20th century, the newspapers were filled with stories of epic battles between labor and management and also labor battles with American presidents—something you seldom see today.
Labor Day has become a day for picnics, hot dogs and back to school; most people can’t remember why it’s even called Labor Day.
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Tuesday, Nov. 6, is Election Day, which is barely two months away. Traditionally, Labor Day kicks off the political campaign season, although many candidates and campaigns have been raising money and working the precincts for months. Probably the single biggest race is for control of the House of Representatives. California is a particularly critical place because a number of congressional seats are in play in this state. I’ve seen some predictions that as many as six California congressional seats could swing from Republican to Democratic, but I’ve heard that before and frankly, incumbents are often harder to dislodge then people think. Still, Trump’s electoral success means that many people are looking for change and that cuts both ways for both parties.
We’ve got some very important local Malibu issues on the ballot. Lou La Monte and Laura Rosenthal are termed out and we’ll be electing two new council members this November. There are five new candidates running for those two open seats and there are no incumbents running, which means new blood on the council and maybe different agendas. There is also a very important school bond issue called Measure M on the ballot. We’ve been trying hard for several years to get our own school district. We could, if we become our own school district, have one of the finest public school districts in the country. But before that can happen, we have to pass this school bond to tell the educational world that Malibu is behind having its own school district and willing to support its schools. I believe that our own school district is going to be a win-win situation for all of us.