If you live in California and watch television at all, you’ve likely seen Meg Whitman’s current campaign ad. The 33 second video is entitled, “The Facts: Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown.” In this day and age of so much hyperbole and distortion, a political candidate putting together an ad based on facts would be something truly rare. So, does Meg Whitman deserve some accolades? The answer really depends on her “facts?”

Whitman’s “Fact” number one: “Brown promised to improve schools, but the dropout rate increased 50% and the State had to take over the schools.”

The numbers behind this “fact” aren’t given, but according to the California Department of Education’s Ed-Data website, the number of dropouts in Oakland Unified School District for the year Brown took office (98-99) was 846. During his last full year as mayor (05-06) the number had climbed by 11% to 941. But the following year (06-07), one in which Brown left office halfway through, dropouts did shoot up to 1384 — a whopping 64% jump. That’s a staggering leap for a single year. Well . . . as it turns out, it was also the first year that districts throughout the State were required to use Statewide Student Identifiers (SSID) for their reports. The Ed-Data site states that prior to 2007, dropout numbers were mere estimates, and that “trend data is not meaningful.”

Could Whitman’s campaign have just overlooked the warning about dropout data? That’s possible, but when you also consider that the Academic Performance Index (API) scores for the district climbed every year from inception through the end of Brown’s term: 2003: 596; 2004: 605; 2005: 634; 2006: 653; 2007: 658, you might conclude that the distortion is intentional. If you also evaluate the second part of Whitman’s claim, taking into consideration that the State take-over was in response to the $82 million debt incurred by the independent government body that presided over the district, completely outside of Brown’s control, you would likely remove all doubt.

Whitman’s “Fact” number two: “The city controller found employees paid for 22,000 hours they never worked.”

This time, at least the source of the figure is known. It comes from a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by Larae Brown, the former Oakland city controller, in 2008. There is a trial pending. But according to City Auditor Courtney Ruby, an independent audit performed in 2007 showed no such finding. Likewise, officials in the city administrator’s office said, “We have no data to support that claim.”

Obviously, in the Whitman world an unsubstantiated accusation foisted by a former employee with a grudge sufficiently constitutes a “fact.” This is actually valuable information for anyone interested in evaluating the facts regarding Meg Whitman’s character.

Whitman’s “Fact” number three: “Brown promised to cut crime, but murders doubled making Oakland the fourth most dangerous city in America.”

Oddly enough, this is Whitman’s most veracious claim — and it’s a half-truth. The number of murders did escalate during Brown’s tenure, from 72 in 1998 to 145 in 2006. But the murder rate is only one factor to be considered in determining the relative danger or safety associated with a city. The rest of the story, the part Meg Whitman doesn’t want to mention about Oakland, is that overall crime dropped by 13% while Brown was in office. There were nearly 5,000 fewer crimes reported in 2006 than in 1998, and amongst those that dropped were several other of the violent variety, like rape and assault.

So, what about those accolades? The Whitman ad isn’t completely devoid of factual data, but to present it as an assemblage of facts is a distortion of the highest degree. The ad is a patent perversion of the truth that mostly twists questionable “facts” into outrageously false assertions. In the end, the only fact about Whitman’s ad that rings true is that it can safely be considered 99% fact-free.

There are 537 elected officials representing all Americans in our federal government. So, disregarding the inequalities that result from congressional district sizing and the 2-per-state allocation of Senate seats, this means that each elected official represents, on average, around 575,000 Americans. This number alone should raise an eyebrow or two, in that it begs the question of adequate representation, but while the ratio does further dilute the voice of the average person, its impact pales when compared to the effects of a government sold to the highest bidder.

Washington, long ago, lost any semblance of legitimate representation of The People. Being one voice in a half-million may seem weak, but the reality is that the average person’s voice is far smaller than that. Both the Presidency and the Congress of 21^st Century America have been purchased, and unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to contribute to election campaigns, you really have no voice at all.

Elections are costly. Contributions for the 2008 federal campaign totaled $5.3 billion. The average winner of a House seat spent $1.4 million while the average Senate seat went for $8.5 million. Sure, there are many small donors; in fact, about half of the 2008 money came from donations of under $200. Unfortunately, that means the other half came from larger donations, with $1.9 billion coming from donations over $2,300, and $974 million in large donations — over $10,000.

It’s these large donations that do more than merely help support a candidate; they are the currency of government. The average Joe, who donates $10 or $25 to their favorite candidate, expects nothing specific in return, but such is not the case for the Goldman Sachs of the world. As expected, in the shadow of the housing/banking crash, the 2008 election was largely financed by big banks, insurance companies and real estate. The largest contributor to the 2008 election, this sector donated $477 million. And companies like Goldman, who topped bank spenders at more then $7 million, and JPMorgan and Citigroup, who each coughed up over $5 million, don’t spend money unless it improves profits.

The fact that no financial reform legislation was passed, for more than two years after Bear Stearns crashed and started the collapse of the economy, is prima facie evidence of the power of campaign capital. It’s no coincidence that the top donor for Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the chair of the Senate’s committee for banking and housing, is the securities and banking sector — the very people he’s charged to oversee. The nearly $5 million investment the sector made in contributions, over the 2008 and 2010 cycles, to Dodd and the ranking committee Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), not only helped stall legislation for years, but it paid for the diluted excuse for “reform” that was finally passed.

This is but one example of business-as-usual in Washington.  Healthcare legislation wrangled its way through Congress for most of 2009, while the Health industry was busy greasing the skids with $84 million in campaign donations. Their investment was not in vain. It actually produced excellent returns, netting 32 million new government sponsored patients and nothing in the way of real reform. Energy, Communication/Electronics, Trial Lawyers, they’re all present, and they’re all spending millions to make sure that any legislation that’s passed is favorable to their business profits. With government so clearly under the control of big-business, is it any wonder why the 61.7% voter turnout for the 2008 election was the high-water mark since 1968?

American voters feel increasingly frustrated with Washington politics, and there’s good reason for it. Regardless of which party people support, it’s becoming more evident with every passing year that the will of The People is being ignored, their voices unheard beneath the din of the corporate campaign hijacking.

Angry conservatives are already gathering under banners proclaiming, “Take our country back!” But the loss of voice in Washington politics isn’t a partisan issue. Campaign funding for the 2010 election, and the control that goes with it, is nearly split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans. There may be legitimate political differences being liberal and conservative voters, but neither is served when special interests have bought and paid for the federal government.

If indeed the country is ever to be taken back, Americans from left and right must join forces on this critical issue. Together, they can put an end to big-money control of Congress. It’s time voters stop falling for the blatant misdirection of party talking points and start demanding results. The American people can take back control of the nation, and the surest path to that end is through real campaign finance reform.

The sad truth is that while votes are the mechanism by which politicians are elected, it’s money that makes campaigns — and campaigns are the means through which votes are secured. Today’s system ensures that elected officials are beholding to the big-money donors who finance their election. The People are but pawns in this game of quid pro quo, and they will remain so until and unless they unite and change the system that allows this corruption to exist.

Like students left with the huge loan balances, the present system ensures that our elected officials are left with huge favor balances on their books. To think that politicians will bite the hand that feeds them and vote against the interests of their big-money benefactors is delusional at best. To take back the country, The People must take back the Congress, and to take back the Congress, the politicians must once again be beholding, not to influence peddling special interests, but to the people who elect them. One person, one vote must again reflect the control of the nation.

There’s only one way to make this happen, and that’s through public financing of elections. It’s already working in several states in the form of Clean Elections. And there’s a bipartisan bill in the House and also the Senate to bring similar reform to Washington. Public financing will require that candidates secure significant funding in small donations from their constituents before qualifying for public money. But once established as a viable candidate, public funding would be allocated in amounts sufficient to finance a competitive campaign.

The power of such a system is obvious. For a relatively small investment, American voters could actually ensure that elected officials would owe their loyalty to no one but the people who elected them. It would in essence break the favor bank.

But the benefits of public campaign financing don’t end with properly placed loyalties. The investment would also pay dividends in productivity, as it would mitigate the demand for fund raising by incumbents. In the present system, officials start focusing on the next election cycle as soon as they’re elected. Estimates place fund raising efforts for members of Congress at 20% to 40% of their time. With so much misuse of time, is it any wonder they get so little done? It’s like a business that pays its employees to look for another job two days out of every week.

Public campaign finance is not a silver bullet; it won’t by itself bring the federal government back under the control of The People, but without it — there is no hope of that happening. The removal of special interest influence on election campaigns is a critical first step for Americans to take back the country. Couple public financing with preferential voting, which would allow a significant increase in votes for third party candidates, add congressional term limits and weld shut the revolving lobbyist door, and America may once again return to a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

The Labor Department released its latest employment numbers this morning, and the only good news is that the situation hasn’t gotten any worse. Official unemployment (BLS-U3) still sits at 9.5%, and real unemployment (BLS-U6) — which includes both the underemployed and those who have stopped looking — is stuck at 16.5%. Here at home in Contra Costa County, it’s even worse with the “official” rate up slightly for June at 11.1%, but still better than California overall, which remains over 12%.

Sadly, as job growth remains stagnant, more and more people forget how we came to the disaster that we now face. Memory of the policies that gutted federal tax revenues, sent millions of American jobs overseas, and culminated in an economic crash that extracted a third of the wealth of the middle class and gave it to Wall Street fat cats, has become obscured. The awareness that drove the American populace to reject conservative politics just 20 months ago has somehow been crowded out by impatience and clouded out by Republican propaganda.

We are living today in an America designed and produced by Republican policy. Concentration of wealth is at its highest level since the Great Depression. The GDP continues to grow but unemployment is steady and wages are dropping. We’re told that we have a “jobless recovery,” which for all but the most wealthy means NO RECOVERY AT ALL. The very term is oxymoronic and should cause fits of cognitive dissonance. When the metrics used to gauge the economy show improvement but the quality of life for most Americans continues to decline, it should be clear to everyone that we’re focused on the wrong target.

But even in the pits of massive unemployment, distraction and subterfuge prevail. The Republicans continue their fight for the upper 2%, even to the extreme of deliberately sabotaging progress for the middle and working classes — and still people remain oblivious. They’ve bought the lie and embrace those who seek to exploit them while rejecting the very vehicle established to ensure their prosperity.

It’s Operation MindCrime, and it started 30 years ago, when Reagan sold the notion that government is the problem. Belief in that myth still lingers today, providing the fertile ground for the misinformation machine known as the Republican Party. They know that the true power does still reside with The People, but they also understand that the power is only realized in unity, and that The People can be divided through the unethical use of lies and distortions intended to play on fears and prejudices.

It doesn’t take an economist to understand what’s happened over the past 30 years, what conservative politics has wrought. It doesn’t even take an intelligent person; it simply requires a pause to look at the actual evidence.

The record is clear: the deficit originated with Reaganomics under the pretense of “trickle-down” which was later even refuted by the elder Bush and termed “voodoo economics.” But still, in spite of its detrimental effect on the well being of most Americans, the Republican Party has maintained loyalty to the self-serving fallacy. This allegiance has done nothing to help anyone but the upper 2%. It has resulted in concentrating more wealth in the upper 1% than the bottom 90%, the slowest rate of average job growth of any cycle since 1945, the first decline in median household income of any cycle since 1967, and the 2008 crash and present “jobless recovery.”

This is class warfare, plain and simple. It’s between the top 2% and everyone else. Sadly, far too many conservative middle class Americans have mistakenly taken the wrong side. They’ve bought the lies and fight toward their own demise. The solution is not in raging against these people but in understanding their concerns and sharing the facts with them. The line has been drawn in the sand, and although this truth is too often swept up in the maelstrom of conservative misinformation, it needs to be communicated.

The Democrats certainly have their share of issues, but they alone promote policies that will benefit 98% of Americans. Voters will have another chance in November to put an end to corporate exploitation of our nation. They already know what Republican policy will produce — we’re living in it! They need to open their eyes and give the Democrats a real chance to turn things around.

When speaking earlier this week at the AFL-CIO, President Obama summarized the decision to be made. He first reminded people that it took a decade to drive us into the ditch, and that it will likely take that long to dig us out. He then offered an analogy, “When you’re in a car and you want to go forward, you put it in D. You want to go back in the ditch, you put it on R.” Which direction do you want to go?