BY BARBARA ARIETTA
It was a full morning's agenda, both outdoors and indoors at Sharp Park Golf Course on November 17. Outside, on the greens, members of the Sharp Park Golf Club competed in a "turkey shoot." Inside, at the clubhouse restaurant, Pacifica Democrats competed in a "question-and-answer shoot" with the distinguished representative of the 12th Congressional District, Tom Lantos.
The morning's pervasive fog kept no one away from either event. A quick scan of the Democrats revealed the presence of City Councilmembers Julie Lancelle and Sue Digre, PSD School Board President Pro Tem Connie Menefee, former Pacifica Mayor Sid Lorvan, West Sharp Park Chair and committee members Deborah Nagle-Burks and Mary Anne Nihart, Pacifica Historical Society Executive Officers John Meria and his wife Katherine, former Pacifica Tribune Publisher and Editor (and current Special Assistant to Congressman Lantos) Chris Hunter, Pacifica Beach Coalition leader Lynn Adams, newly elected SAMCAR representative Suzan Getchell-Wallace, former Planning Commissioner Todd Bray, and Pacifica Tribune columnist and Pacifica Riptide editor and publisher John Maybury.
As the meeting proceeded, more and more people walked through the doors, with a final count of upward of 60 attendees. All had come to hear Lantos, and as it turned out, many were well-prepared with a host of questions for the 14-term Congressman.
Lantos recalled that Nicolas Sarkozy, the new president of France, last week addressed a Joint Session of Congress and that he, too, shares a Hungarian heritage with Lantos. "I am probably one of a handful of public figures who knows how to pronounce his name. I also explained to him the meaning of his name, which he did not know and I will now make you equally knowledgeable," Lantos explained. "The word 'sar' in Hungarian means 'mud'...'kozy" means 'in between.' There's a tiny village, really a hamlet, called Sarkozy, which means 'a little village between two mud flats,' and the president of France was just delighted to know the origin of his name."
"Let me also...express my deep appreciation to a fellow Pacifican, Chris Hunter, who joined my staff awhile back. I have known Chris as long as you have, as the past editor and publisher of the Tribune. I have had my eyes on him for a long time and I made him an offer he could not refuse," Lantos continued. "In the very short time that he has been with me, he has made a mark and I look forward to working with him in the many, many years to come. So Pacifica is well-represented in the Congressional office."
Lantos then introduced his "pro bono executive assistant for the past 27 years and executive wife for the past 57 years," Annette Lantos. Lantos remarked that he and his wife are the only working husband-and-wife team in Congress, adding, "I couldn't begin to tell you the value and the compassion and the hard work that goes into her working day... . Now occasionally she gets rewarded... . She gets rewarded by going to these wonderful shopping places, like North Korea, Libya and Damascus, Syria." This comment brought down the house.
"All the time I have viewed this community as the most cutting edge, exciting, 'ahead of the times' community, and you have never disappointed me. This is the community which, in the Congressional office, gets the most attention, because we get the most letters from you," Lantos said. "Whatever happens in Afghanistan or to Yahoo or to anything else, we always get a horde of communications, letters, phone calls and emails, but whatever it is, Pacifica is always at the top of the list. So may I thank you for being the most valuable, alert citizens of this entire Congressional district."
Then Lantos shifted into high gear: "The range of issues that I would like to talk about is unlimited. It is from Iraq to the spill at the bridge. It is also the mortgage foreclosures that are rapidly increasing on a daily basis...but one of the most important things I would like to say is that once we determine who our Democratic candidate will be, we must get behind him or her with a passion that we have never seen before, because this White House needs to be recaptured by Democrats!"
"I have never seen a more dysfunctional White House operation, which has its values and priorities as screwed up as this one does, I never thought that I would have, in the same week, a bill presented by the White House for $200 billion additional for the war in Iraq and the presidential veto on children's health insurance," said Lantos scornfully.
He stated unequivocally that there will be a Democratic president next time around and that he very much hopes for a larger Democratic majority in both the House and Senate, He said both of these changes are essential to stopping the Bush veto machine. Lantos said a bill passed last week in the House that would compel the White House to begin troop withdrawals from Iraq within 30 days of passage of the bill and complete withdrawal by the end of next year. It never got anywhere in the Senate because the two parties are equally divided and Bush threatened to veto it if it passed.
"I can't begin to tell you how frequently Nancy Pelosi and I and the rest of the leadership sit down and talk strategy to move things faster than we are capapable of moving," Lantos revealed. "But the fact remains that as long as the Senate requires 60 votes to have anything passed and we only have 51, and in the House our majority is about 28 votes, which means it's not enough to override a veto, to a very large extent for the balance of the next 13 months of this administration, don't expect spectacular results."
"We have had marginal successes here and there. We have had a number of them already," said Lantos, citing the "long overdue" minimum wage increase. He said the House backs mortgage legislation to protect future millions of Americans from the nightmare of initial mortgage payment increases of 50%, 75% or 100%. "I anticipate that from two and a half to three million American families will lose their homes during the next 12 to 18 months...all because of the greed of the mortgage bankers," said Lantos.
"We need legislation on the full spectrum of issues where this Republican Congress has prevented us from moving," Lantos declared. "They relate to health. They relate to education. They relate to the infrastructure." He cited the example of Minneapolis' main downtown freeway bridge collapsing into the river. "This does not happen in a place like Bangladesh, but it happens here because these administrations and these Congresses have not invested in infrastructure," said Lantos. "I have tremendous optimism for the future of this country because everywhere I go, I meet people who are anxious and eager to build a better life for their children and their grandchildren. [But] this is a government which clearly does not share our values. This is a government of corporate America."
Lantos touched upon a looming tax problem for middle-class America. "Quite a few years ago, given the peculiarity of our tax system, we passed a very complicated piece of legislation called the Alternative Minimum Tax. This made it mandatory for multimillionaires, who took advantage of every conceiveable loophole to figure their tax another way, which then captured some revenue from them," said Lantos, pointing out that this law was aimed at the "one-tenth of 1 percent of the wealthiest members of this society. The problem was that it was not indexed for inflation, and as inflation moved on, more and more middle-class Americans were caught by it."
"And as we meet here this morning, 21 million American families will be pushed into a higher tax bracket, unless we change it," said Lantos. "We changed it in the House and we pay for it by having, literally, people, with an annual income of over a million dollars, have a slightly higher tax rate. So you take 21 million middle-class American families, a handful of ultra-rich and the Administration says it will veto the legislation because it is hell-bent on protecting the ultra-rich."
(Note: The media have been reporting recently that the Alternative Minimum Tax could mean an average tax increase of $2,000 for middle-class households.) Lantos concluded, "These are not the values that this country was built on. These are not the values that this country will have, once come November of 2008 and a Democratic president is elected."
Then an attendee asked Lantos why Senate and House leadership can't communicate to the voters what it is doing in Washington and why it can't do more. Lantos said that he too wished leadership would communicate more effectively and get more done. He again referred to the numbers that it takes to override a presidential veto, though recently the Senate overrode a Bush veto for the first time. It was a water bill, locally oriented legislation affection all 50 states. "The Republican Senators from Republican states voted to override the veto because they were correctly afraid that they would be turned out of office unless they went ahead with their water projects. Unfortunately, they don't do this on Iraq legislation, they don't do it on child health care legislation. and they don't do it on education legislation, " said Lantos.
Another questioner asked who has "authority" when things go wrong and people refuse to take any blame for things when accidents happen. Lantos replied, "With respect to this last accident that happened in the San Francisco Bay with the oil spill, at 10 o'clock Monday morning, they are holding a hearing and we'll get to the bottom of it." Lynn Adams of the Pacifica Beach Coalition said that she was not so much concerned about who was to blame as she was about fixing the problems. She complained about red tape and restrictions on volunteer training and cleanup efforts. Lantos replied, "Let me first thank you because you played a key role in rescuing the birds and in doing this whole job. I am personally grateful. And I will go ahead and see if we can cut this idiotic red tape, so looking forward, we may be able to move immediately and effectively."
Former Mayor Sid Lorvan then questioned the development of nuclear power in Iran and said that some Americans want the United States to bomb Iran if its development of nuclear power is only two years away. Lantos said, "I think I have some wisdom on it, but more importantly I have some legislation which passed the House of Representatives by 397 to 16. It's pending in the Senate and it will pass the Senate. The Iranians say that they wish to have and are legally entitled to have civilian nuclear power. And that they are attempting to develop the full nuclear cycle, to have civilian nuclear power plants... ." Lantos added that many Americans believe the Iranians want nuclear to develop nuclear weapons. He said that he found a way of dealing with this "Gordian knot." His legislation would establish, under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, an international nuclear fuel bank to make nuclear fuel available, under proper safeguards, to any country to reprocess the used fuel for civilian purposes.
The Congressman said he had gone to Moscow to explain the plan to the Russians. "They loved it. The Chinese loved it and, so far, they haven't seen any opposition from the international community," Lantos claimed. He has spoken about it with the chancellor of Germany, the president of France, the new British prime minister. and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Lantos believes they will find a reasonable solution: "What my plan, once it becomes law, will do is to say, 'You say you want nuclear power for civilian purposes... . We are going to make it available to you on a silver platter. We will provide nuclear fuel. We will reprocess the used fuel and you can have as much nuclear fuel for civilian purposes as you wish.' There is tremendous interest in this legislation."
Former Planning Commissioner Todd Bray asked Lantos if he had considered different types of nuclear reactors that could be used with his new legislation. Bray said his research indicated that modular pebble bed reactors (MPBRs) keep reactor heat so low that a meltdown such as the Three Mile Island disaster would be virtually impossible. Lantos complimented Bray and said that he had indeed considered MPBR. Lantos said several nuclear scientists from several countries were involved in drafting his legislation. He added that if Bush signs his legislation, it will open the door to not only resolving the Iranian issue but also energy issues facing newly emerging countries.
Rick DeAlba asked about energy and when the United States will stop using oil and fossil fuels for energy. "I think it is very, very appropriate that the last question is, in many ways, the most significant question, " said Lantos. "The energy package that we put together in the House is a very rational package, which over the course of the next 10, 12, 15 years will move us into a new energy economy. It will have basically two components: one, alternate sources of energy...wind, biodiesel, you name it, and two, an incredibly efficient conservation program. We waste way too much energy. We shall kill two birds with one stone. We will move into a sustainable economy and we will deprive the singularly unfriendly and undemocratic nations from vast resources."
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Barbara Arietta
Press Representative
Pacifica Democrats
650-359-4858
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